Sunday, August 26, 2018

Chapter 9: I am Walpurga, Fairy Tale of Prince and Horse

Chapter 9
I am Walpurga



I was born in England, in Devonshire and my father was Richard, the Pilgrim, the Walker. When he left for Jerusalem I was but a virguncula*and so he entrusted me to the abbey of Wimbourne. But for my brothers, the Two Balds, the white spotted and the blazed one, known as Willibald and Winibald, I would have stayed in Wimbourne til my dying days, but my two brothers up and left for Germania,  beckoned by Onkel Winfrid the holy one. My dear Onkle soon became known as “Saint”, his name “Winfrid"  became Boniface, and I soon became known as the Abbess of Heidenheim. 

(young girl)




One day Onkle Winfrid was out in a sacred grove of oaks in a place called Gaesmere where he spied the largest oak, called the Oak of Jupiter, the mighty one, tree of all trees, which he felled with a single mighty chop! 



What to do with such wood? Workers started immediately on the monastery of Heidenheim, where I subsequently became abbess-in-chief. But soon after my Lieber Onkle chopped down the tree, the angry locals forthwith chopped down Onkle.  And that was that! (He now lies in the crypt in Fulda.) 



But back to my days in Heidenheim. One day I was strolling in said sacred grove, when I stumbled upon a Wolfbelt, or some would say, Wolfpelz,  lying on the ground where the Oak of Jupiter had once stood. I secured it round my waist and I transformed into a wolf! What appetite! What gnashing of teeth! What wild chases through the woods! If only I could get that darn thing off, quite difficult to un-notch with wolf paws!