78. The Woman Who Married a Tree

78. THE WOMAN WHO MARRIED A TREE

An old spruce tree stood at the end of a certain village. In this same village a high-caste girl dreamed for several nights in succession that she was married to a fine-looking man, and by and by she gave birth to a boy baby. As she was a very virtuous girl, people wondered how she had come by it.

The child grew very fast, and soon began to talk. One day it began calling for its father. It would not stop, although they tried to humor it in every way. Then people wondered whom it was calling, so the boy's grandfather invited all the men of that village and of the surrounding villages to come to his house to see if the child would be able to recognize its father. When this proved fruitless he invited the people who inhabit trees to come in, and as soon as they entered and sat down, the child stopped crying and began crawling around the circle, looking at each person. Then the people said, "We will see where that fatherless child is going."

At the very end of the line toward the door sat an old man, and the child crawled right past the high-caste tree people toward him. As it did so, the others nudged one another, saying, "Look at KAsA'L!." They said this because the girl had had nothing to do with the high-caste

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tree people, but with this poor old man. The child, however, crawled right up to him, climbed into his lap and said, "Papa." At once the old man married the girl.