A prosperous, easy-going miller was brought into trouble with his king when the miller’s cook brazenly painted, “I have no cares in all the world,” across the side of the miller’s house,

when any fool ought to know this is simply an invitation to trouble.

The king himself saw the declaration and sent a message to the unsuspecting miller, demanding he present himself in the throne room in one week’s time with the answers to three impossible questions:

• How many stars are in the heavens?
• What is the king worth?
• What is the king thinking?

The miller’s life would be forfeit if he didn’t answer to the king’s satisfaction.

Understandably peeved at his cook, the miller went to his kitchen with much hand-wringing and agonizing over the unfairness of his own lot.

The cook, feeling just a little bit responsible, offered to go in the miller’s place to answer the king, being ready (he assured his master) also to take the ax if his answers were unsatisfactory.

This solution seemed most appropriate to the miller (the king knew neither of them, making the switch possible) and he agreed. After a few sleepless nights the cook felt prepared.

Appearing before the king in the miller’s clothes, the cook entered the throne room pushing a wheelbarrow filled with sacks of flour.

“What’s this?”

“It is the answer to your first riddle, O Majesty,” the false miller replied. “I have collected a grain of flour for every heavenly star– though the exercise quite addled my wits and my memory.

“If you want the exact number and have the grains re-counted, please remind me of the total.”

The king smiled and let the matter of the first question pass by.

In answer to the second question, the false miller offered a sum of 29 pieces of silver. The king was about to be offended by this when the cook reminded him that Jesus himself was sold for 30 pieces of silver.

“Finally,” said the false-miller, pulling off his hat, “I will read your thoughts: You are thinking that I am the miller, when, in truth, I am his cook.”

The king was pleased with the cook’s clever answers and ordered that both he and the miller should be richly rewarded.

The cook returned to his position in the miller’s household, and together they changed the writing on the house to read, “We have no cares in all the world!”

(Most recently read variant was in Clever Cooks.)

(While I know this will be very familiar in some circles, it is clearly not known to the population at large. It ought to be. Naturally this is just one version out of many.)

A handsome young man was being held captive by the fairy folk. Tam Lin had been a favorite of the Queen’s for some time but she had finally found a new toy, and Tam Lin was to be the fairies’ next human sacrifice.

He met in secret with his lady, Byrd Janet, and told her what would happen, begging her to be brave enough to rescue him from his fate. Giving her detailed instructions about how to identify him among the crowd, he explained what would happen.

On All Hallows Eve Byrd Janet was to make a circle of holy water to stand in for protection, then watch the procession of the fairy folk. She must let the riders of the black horse and the brown horse pass by. Tam Lin would be riding the third– a white horse. Janet was to run to him, pull him down from the horse, and hold him; no matter what might happen.

He warned her the fairies would change his shape in her arms, but she must never let go, until she could render him human again.

It all happened as he had described.

When Byrd Janet pulled Tan Lin from his horse the entire procession halted. The folk gathered all about, trying their magic on Tam Lin. They turned him into freezing ice, a poisonous serpent, and a struggling dove who almost escaped.

Tam Lin was brought through a surging struggle of transformations until the fairies turned him into a piece of red-hot iron.

With this in her arms, Byrd Janet rushed to a nearby well and cast it in, revealing her beloved, naked, in his true form. She threw her green mantle around him, covering his nakedness and claiming him.

At this there was a great grief and wailing among the fairy folk, and their Queen declaimed in verse that she would have blinded Tam Lin, or exchanged his heart of flesh for a heart of stone, rather than lose so fair a knight to a mortal girl.

A young man and his old father worked their farm together with no ill-feeling or complaint.

When the young man took it into his head to marry, life only improved (there finally being a proper cook about the place).

It wasn’t until a full year after the marriage, at the birth of a little baby boy, that the young man began to show a change in character; for now he, full and sudden, felt the heaviness of fatherhood fall on him.

That weight of responsibility caused him to become more and more critical of his own father, who was only growing less strong and able to help with necessary work.

Finally, the young man ordered his sweet wife to fetch a blanket and send it with the old man to the poorhouse.

In those days, blankets were often woven double long, in order that they might be doubled on the bed for extra warmth.

When the young man saw the good work that his wife had made, it went to his heart to send the whole thing off with a worthless old man, and he ordered her to cut it in half.

“Half a blanket will be enough for him.”

Young Mary, who disapproved of the whole event began to argue,

When up from the cradle by the fire piped the voice of the tiny infant.

“Mother,” he chirruped, “You do as Father says. And lay that other half safely by, so I know where it is when the time comes to pack my father off to the poorhouse.”

You can imagine that changed the young father’s outlook pretty quickly, and he realized the old man still had at least one job left to his old age.

He would help his grandson learn to care for his elders.

~ ~ ~

One other submission today:

A tale from Hindu mythology called The Wasted Sermon

From Barbara Leonie Picard’s The Faun and the Woodcutter’s Daughter.

Duke Roland was a coward. He and everyone else knew it. Afraid to ride fast, learn to swim, participate in tournaments, or even climb his own high towers to look out over his own lands, Roland was quietly ashamed but never did anything about it.

Until (cue the rising music) a beautiful young woman came to his castle.

Her eyes were blue and her hair was golden, her voice was music and her smile was the smile of one who has never glanced on pain or sorrow or cared for their existence. She lived only for the joyous things in life.

When good Duke Roland attempted to gain her favor, she only laughed at him.

“Have you never heard that only the brave deserve the fair?”

She then threw her bracelet into the fire and bid him pull it out in proof of his courage. He could not.

And so Roland went to a wise old man to inquire where to find courage. Under the old man’s direction he looked in a chest at the top of a high tower, in a casket under deep water, in the locket of a mysterious knight (whom Roland must fight to obtain the locket), and in the flickering blue flame that races through a dark wood, as fast as a horse may gallop.

Having faced his fears, and discovered his courage in doing so, Duke Roland returned to his lady fair. Again the Lady Alison mocked him and his efforts, tossing her bracelet into the fire. Seeing her with new eyes, Roland realized that he was greatly changed, but she was not.

He stooped and picked the bracelet out of the fire and dropped it at her feet.

“Your bracelet,” he said. “Good night, cousin,” and he turned from her and left the hall.

And for the first time in her life, the Lady Alison’s blue eyes filled with tears, for she knew that she had lost him.

I’m working at starting a weekly storytelling carnival, Tuesday Tales: Beyond Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin.

The purpose is to summarize a lesser-known story to the length of a blog post, in order to introduce others to stories that we love, and train ourselves to maximize the efficiency of our language.

Literary tales (Anderson, Picard) are fine, as long as they’re fully attributed. These are only summaries, remember, not full-text copies, so we’re not going to violate copyright or anything; It’ll be more like a review.

~~~

I’ve begun what I hope to be a regular Tuesday Tales series (there’s one up already for this week, which is what gave me the idea).

To be included in my next edition, email me a link to your story at the address on my contact page by Monday evening.

I’m excited at the chance to meet new stories and tellers. Anyone else game?

Raven was drowning in the open ocean and a whale took him in.

Once inside, Raven saw a young woman by the light of a seal oil lamp. The girl bid him welcome, but warned him not to touch the burning lamp. She came and went frequently from the place, and Raven, feeling curious, disregarded her warning.

He bumped the lamp in his clumsiness, causing it to go out. The young woman, just returning, fell in a dead faint as the inside of the whale went black, and bloody.

The lamp had been the whale’s heart, and the girl its soul, going out and returning with the great creature’s every breath.

When Raven finally managed to escape from the huge animal’s carcass, he transformed himself into a man and told the approaching people he was a great hunter.

“I killed the whale, I killed the whale!” he crowed, rather than saying,

“I meddled with something too great and precious for me to understand and destroyed it.”