Legend of the Northland

A Legend of The Northland

By Phoebe Cary

Analysis of the poem: 

§  The poem ‘The Legend of Northland’ is composed by Phoebe Cary who is an American poetess.

§  This is a ballad. It narrates a story in short stanzas containing four lines each. It is divided into 16 stanzas that tell us a story.

§  The story is a part of the folk culture of small region. It is the story of the Northern area, which is near North Pole. The poet doesn’t specify the exact place but ‘Northland’ means the area in the northernmost part of the earth.

§  The word ‘legend’ refers to a historical or very old story that has been orally passed from generation to generation.

§  The tone of the poem is didactic as the poet wants to teach the readers a lesson or a moral.

§  A very significant message is conveyed through the poem that we should not be selfish and greedy. We need to be helpful, kind, generous and sympathetic towards others.

Summary / Synopsis

·       The poem opens with the scene of a beautiful place in northern part of the world where a woman was baking cakes.

·       In Northland the days are short because the sun’s rays reach for very little time and during winter, the duration of the night is much longer that the people can’t sleep them through.

·       The region experiences severe cold conditions as it snows most of the time there. The people, there use reindeers to pull their sledges and the children look like polar bear cubs as they wear clothes made of the fur and the skin of the bear.

·       The elders tell a strange and interesting story about the young ones. However, the poet does not believe that the story is true but it gives an important message.

·       The story goes like this – Saint Peter goes around the world giving sermons, spiritual lectures to the people. Once, while giving lectures, he reached the door of a cottage where a small woman was making cakes in the fireplace. Saint Peter was very hungry as he hadn’t had a meal for days and was feeling weak. So, he approached the woman and asked for one cake out of many baked by her.

·       The woman was selfish and she could not give him a cake from the store. In its place, she made a very small cake for Saint Peter but when she placed the cake for baking she thought that was too big to give away. The miserly woman then again started making a smaller cake but couldn’t give any cake to Saint Peter. She felt that when she ate them they seemed to be small but they seemed to be too big to be given away that’s why she put all the cakes on her kitchen shelf and didn’t give any to Saint Peter. This shows she was very selfish lady who thinks too much about her gains, pleasure and pains

·       Saint Peter got angry and cursed the woman because she was selfish, greedy and did not deserve to live as a human being. He cursed the woman to become a bird (woodpecker) who had to build its nest and found it food by boring into the wood and to collect very little food by working the entire day.

·       The woman became a woodpecker and flew through the chimney. The woman’s body became black due to fire and smoke of chimney and her red head dress remained there as the red cap of the woodpecker. The people in the countryside tell this story seeing woodpecker in the surroundings and the school kids who hear the tale can find the bird in the jungle.

Wind

Poetic Devices

Away, away in the Northland – Repetition

Where the hours of the day are few – Repetition

And the nights are so long in winter – Assonance

That they cannot sleep them through – Alliteration

To the sledges, when it snows – Alliteration & Imagery  

And the children look like bear's cubs – Simile & Imagery

Where they harness the swift reindeer – Imagery

In their funny, furry clothes – Imagery

In their funny, furry clothes – Alliteration

They tell them a curious story – Assonance 

And yet you may learn a lesson – Alliteration

If I tell the tale to you – Alliteration

And being faint with fasting – Alliteration

 To give him a single one – Assonance

 And rolled and rolled it flat – Repetition

And rolled and rolled it flat – Repetition

To dwell in a human form                             

To have both food and shelter                                - Anaphora

And rolled and rolled it flat                                                  

And baked it thin as a wafer                                    - Anaphora

 you shall build as the birds do – Simile

By boring, and boring, and boring – Repetition

All day in the hard, dry wood – Consonance 

Black as a coal in the flame – Simile

 she lives in the trees till this very day – Assonance

she lives in the trees till this very day – Consonance

Rhyme Scheme

ABCB for each stanza

Message

This folklore brings out a very significant message that we need to be helpful and sympathetic towards the poor and needy people. We should not be selfish and greedy and must not think about only our needs, desires, gain, loss and pleasure and pain. The poem gives a message to nurture human values of love, kindness and compassion for the entire mankind.

Video on Road not Taken