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Glasilo Magazine Excerpt:
When Jesus Threshed Wheat in Slovenia
by Anne Urbancic: Canadian Slovenian
Historical Society
This article was published in the July / August 2005 issue of
Glasilo
Magazine. Our magazine helps build community. We
value your support.
Canadian autumn arrives, it seems, without warning. One day
the summer still invites us with long hot days and short nights.
Then Labour Day. And as evening falls on Labour Day, we all
know that summer has ended, unofficially of course, and the
Fall with its cooler, shorter days has crept in and settled
itself into our mindset. School starts and children are scurried
off to bed at an earlier hour, not yet ready for sleep.
I think
my father and mother knew how much we wanted to stay up just
a few more minutes in those first few weeks of school. Wisely,
they put us to bed but allowed us our few minutes by telling
us stories in Slovenian about themselves and their families,
about flying slippers, Kralj Matjaz, witches and fairies and
elves. Our favourites, however, recounted the travels of Jesus
in Slovenia’s Kras region. I still hear my father’s deep melodious
voice, the well-timed pauses, the colourful Slovenian adjectives
and verbs and dialect cadences.
I don’t do his stories justice
when I tell them, in English, to my daughters. Allow me to try,
however:
Jesus and St. Peter traveled on foot through the villages
of Slovenia preaching the Gospel. They had no money, but they
happily worked for food and lodging.
One evening, at nightfall,
they stopped at a tiny village, not far from where my father
grew up. They were tired. They were hungry. A light in a neat
little cottage invited them, and they decided to ask there for
food to eat and a place to sleep. Now, the cottage was owned
by a smart, old, obsessively clean, cunning, shrewish but kind,
greedy but generous (never mind the contradictions) widow. She
had two small fields of wheat but no sons or daughters to thresh
them. Jesus and St. Peter arrived at her doorstep just at threshing
time, and she thanked God for the miracle of two strong young
strangers who promised to work for a meal and lodging. She shared
her simple supper with them and told them they could sleep on
the clean hay in the barn loft. But she warned them that they
had to get up early the following morning to make most of the
day; she wanted one whole field threshed the next day, and the
other, threshed the day after. Up the loft ladder clambered
St. Peter, followed by Jesus. But St. Peter was tired and agitated
and just couldn’t find the right position to sleep. In the meantime,
Jesus was already snoring. (My father apparently knew exactly
how Jesus snored for he imitated the rumble and wheeze loudly,
much to our delight). “Wake up, wake up”, said St. Peter. “I
can’t sleep. You snore too loudly. And I’m squished on this
side. Maybe if we changed places...”
Jesus agreed and soon the
two fell fast asleep. At cockcrow, both of them were still in
the land of dreams but the widow in her house had already breakfasted,
made her bed, done the dishes, washed the clothes, swept the
floor, prepared some food for them and waited. And waited. And
waited. No Jesus. No St. Peter. “Ah” she thought to herself,
“They’re very tired. I’ll just go call them.” She shouted to
them from halfway up the ladder. “Wake up, wake up; you promised
to thresh today.”
“Don’t worry” replied Jesus, “We’ll get up
soon. The threshing will be done.”
But when she checked on them
again at 6 am, St. Peter and Jesus were still in bed. At 6:30
am, the woman began to be impatient; fearing she had struck
a bad bargain that would cut her profit from the sale of her
wheat, she went outside, cut a long willow branch from the tree
in front of her property, climbed up the loft ladder and said
angrily, as she whipped at the man nearest the loft edge:
“Get
up, get up, you lazy loafers; the field needs to be threshed
today.”
“Ow, ow, ow, we’re coming. Ow, ow, ow. Stop beating
me!” yelled St. Peter as he tried in vain to protect himself
from her thrashing.
“Don’t worry,” said Jesus calmly. “The work
will get done. Have faith.”
At 7am, the two were still in bed.
Up the ladder went the old woman and began to whip St. Peter
again, with more force and greater anger. Once more Jesus told
her not to worry. And he stayed in bed. Even St. Peter, rubbing
his bruises, was surprised and said:
“Are you sure, Jesus? Shouldn’t
we get up and start to work?”
“Have faith, Peter,” Jesus said.
“We will finish the threshing today as we promised.”
“Well,
in that case,” replied St. Peter, who by now had a fascinating
arrangement of black and blue bruises and red welts on his body
from the two beatings, “Would you mind switching places with
me? I don’t relish the idea of having her come back, finding
us in bed and beating me again.”
“Are you sure?” asked Jesus.
St. Peter nodded determinedly and the two switched places.
At
8 o’clock, back came the widow. By now she was livid, angrier
than she had ever been in her life, convinced that she had been
duped by these two strangers and knowing that the longer her
wheat remained unthreshed, the less she would get for it at
the market. Perched on the last rung of the loft ladder she
began to scream at the top of her lungs, calling the two all
sorts of names and waving her willow stick:
“I beat the first
guy twice with no results,” she shouted, “Now I’ll beat the
other one to see if he is any less lazy than his friend.” Whack,
whack, whip, whack!!!!! Poor St. Peter.
“Stop, stop,” said Jesus.
“You have no faith, and you are so impatient. However we will
keep our bargain.”
Soon the two men were out in the field. The
wheat was piled high ready for threshing. Jesus took a match
out of his rucksack, struck it against the sole of his sandal
and threw it into the wheat. Smoke billowed out, and flames
licked the pile, higher and higher. The woman, half crazy by
what she saw, ran out of her house, screaming, shouting, cursing.
But then, miraculously, the smoke died down, the flames disappeared
and there were two neat piles: one pile of wheat all bagged
and ready for market, and in another spot, the straw. The woman
couldn’t believe her eyes. But she was still very angry and
so she sent Jesus and St. Peter away with no breakfast. She
decided she could thresh her other field all by herself, without
the frustration of feeding and waiting for the two strangers
to help her. And so the next day she did exactly as she had
seen Jesus do. She lit the pile of wheat. The smoke billowed
out and the flames licked the second pile higher and higher.
After a while, the smoke died down and the flames disappeared.
Nothing but black ashes remained. Only then did the woman realize
who the two strangers had been...
“What happened after?” we
would ask our Dad, although our eyes were heavy with slumber.
But he would point to the youngest sister, already asleep, and
tell us we would have to wait till another bedtime.
Some months
ago, I came across a recent volume of Slovenian folk tales collected
by Nada Ker{evan and Marija Krebelj entitled Düsa na bicikli:
Folklorne pripovedi iz Brkinov, doline Reke in Okolice (Ljubljana:
Kmecki glas, 2003 ISBN 961-203-261-0). Accompanied by a wonderful
CD that captures all the nuances of tales told in dialect, it
contains over 450 stories including the one above (Kristus in
svioti Piotor Mladtla´sta zitu). I thought my father had made
it up and so I was surprised to find that it belongs to a rich
repertoire of Slovenian stories, each one a linguistic and ethnological
delight.
The collecting and recording of similar tales, which
began almost 200 years ago with the Austrian Grimm brothers,
is a vital aspect of archival work. The stories hold important
clues to culture and language. Have your parents or grandparents
tell you their favourites; the archives of the Canadian Slovenian
Historical Society would be pleased to receive the tapes/cassettes
and conserve them.
The CSHS gives all Canadian Slovenians an
opportunity to cherish their stories forever. We invite you
send us your family documents, or pictures or artifacts or your
stories. Originals or copies are acceptable and will be placed
in a special box identified by your family or organization name.
You can help carry on the important work of the CSHS by becoming
a member or by donating documents and artifacts of your own
or your family’s immigration history to the Archive.
You do not have to be famous to be important to us and to Slovenian-Canadian
history.
Contact us at cshs@look.ca.
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