Wee Scots Myth: The Tree

Wee Scots Myth? True or false?

This is the story.

Jealous Eara takes the knife of crystal, silver, sun beams, and rainbows, gifted by the elf queen. Letters appear and disappear on the blade too swift to be read. The handle is a thick braid of blonde human hair.

Eara slits the pale smooth flesh, on the left leg, of their lover, Athdare. The knife, still held in the jealous lover’s trembling right hand, explodes into a million sun-sparkling crystals suspended in the air, only to reform once more into a shimmering blade. The cut is bloodless. There is no pain but a warm enveloping as they become a beautiful tree, their pale smooth limbs the stretching branches.

Immediately, jealous Eara regrets that their lover, Athdare, has become a tree. Trapped inside the beautiful tree, piteous cries are heard, ‘let me out, please, I forgive you.’ Full of remorse, jealous Eara plunges the blade into the almost white tree bark. In a shower of brilliant stars, the tree splits into two and their lover, Athdare, is back in human form.

But all is not well.

Athdare seizes the knife, stabbing the jealous Eara. In turn, Eara now becomes a beautiful pale-limbed tree.

‘Aye, let’s see how ye like being stuck in a tree’, says Athdare, who confirms Eara’s suspicions by mounting a fine cuddy with their paramour, Aira, and galloping off, never to be seen in those parts again.

And that’s why if you approach a particular pale-limbed, fine looking tree, you may hear these words on the gentle wind caressing your lugs, ‘let me out, please, I forgive you.’