by Robert Bly
Something inside me is still imprisoned in winter straw,
Or far back in the mountain where Charlemagne sleeps,
Or under the water, hard to get to, guarded by women.
Enough rises from that place to darken my poems;
Perhaps too much; and what remains down there
Makes a faint glow in the dead leaves.
I am less than half risen. I see how carefully
I have covered my tracks as I wrote,
How well I have brushed over the past with my tail.
Faces look at me from the shallow waters,
Where I have pushed them down—
Father and mother pushed into the dark.
What am I in my ambition and loneliness?
I am the dust that fills the cracks on the ocean floor.
Floating like the stingray, used to the weight
Of the ocean floor, retreating to a cave,
I live as a lizard or a winged shark,
Darting out at times to wound others, or get food.
How do we know that the hidden will ever rise?
How do we know that the buried will be revealed?
Some beings get used to life underneath.
Some dreams do not want to move into the light.
Some want to, but they can’t; they can’t make their way out,
Because someone is guarding the posts of the door.
Have you seen those Chinese tomb guardians
Left at the closed door? They stand with one knee raised;
They half-stand, half-dance, half-rage, half-shout—
Hot-tempered muscle-bulgers, big-kneed brow-bulgers.
They scowl for eternity at the half-risen.
What do you have that can get past them?
Grimm recorded the very old Germanic version of this story. This version is adapted from “The Frog Prince” as found in the Pantheon Grimm’s Fairy Tales. In other versions the frog demands to have his head cut off and then he is transformed, or he simply hangs out with the Princess until the transformation takes place, or in the Italian version the kiss the Princess gives him transforms him. Ours is the Northern European version and I like it much better, the little shock you feel when instead of kissing the frog she throws it against the wall. The frog form as it was is destroyed and then transforms into a marvelous Prince form. We ask ourselves whether this old story refers to a sacrifice of a young male to refresh the King. (An earlier name for the story was “The Frog King.”) The story’s setting in the Pantheon telling is a castle, a refinement added in the nineteenth century. Earlier versions begin in mysterious evocative forests that hint at the otherworldly divinities inhabiting them. The old Germanic goddess Holle, who occasionally turned into a frog, might be there, and Nerthus, too, who, when she was washed by her slaves, had them drowned in a hidden lake connected with mysteries and sacrifice.
This story is an observation of the frog’s darker maneuvers. Well, maybe that’s more indictment than the frog deserves, but no Princess wants to devote herself completely to the subterranean watery world. She can’t live forever in the losses she has known—of her mother and of her nice-girl-Princess-world. Her blow against the frog’s suggestion had the effect of the frog’s becoming human. When we really have lived with the hidden and buried and cold-blooded, when we see who we are and understand something of what it means to have pockets of the prehuman in our hidden nature, then finally it’s possible to say, “Okay. You’re always there. But you have to stop trying to have it all your way. I’ve had enough. You can’t possibly take over my whole life.”
Then even the cold-blooded alien part of ourselves gets a bit more human. Here’s a poem about the moment just before that happens. The poem began when it was getting dark out and I hadn’t noticed. I opened a door and found moonlight flooding the whole room.
I
After many strange thoughts,
Thoughts of distant harbors, and new life,
I came in and found the moonlight lying on the floor.
II
Outside it covers the trees like pure sound,
The sound of tower bells, or of water moving under the ice,
The sound of the deaf hearing through the bones of their heads.
III
We know the road; as the moonlight
Lifts everything, so in a night like this
The road goes on ahead, it is all clear.
When the frog becomes human, after the Princess’s determined act has released him from the sorcerer’s spell, he wants to marry her. A footman, Faithful Henri, attends the pair on their way to the father’s kingdom. It is strange for Faithful Henri, a familiar fairy-tale character, to turn up so late in a story. This time he says he has been carrying so much of the Prince’s grief during his enchantment that it took three iron bands around his chest to keep his heart from breaking. It was the grief of having no speech, no way of talking things over, no heart-to-heart, that made things so sad for him.
Some traditions indicate that this is a story of different states of a woman’s masculine side—the Germanic goddess Holle, who shifts sometimes into frog form, for example, is female. Others believe the narrative follows the progress of a man’s feminine soul. I like the latter, because the sudden and final act that transforms the Prince feels, to me, male in tone, and a male retainer (Faithful Henri) has been able to carry the sustained grief of the Prince’s enchantment only with the help of three iron (from Mars) bands. Henri’s powerful grief will be fertile now, as this poem suggests:
What is sorrow for? It is a storehouse
Where we store wheat, barley, corn and tears.
We step to the door on a round stone,
And the storehouse feeds all the birds of sorrow.
And I say to myself: Will you have
Sorrow at last? Go on, be cheerful in autumn,
Be stoic, yes, be tranquil, calm;
Or in the valley of sorrows spread your wings.
Though the frog was basically a royal being, his grief at becoming a frog was still mute. Faithful Henri himself, on the other hand, is not young, and he knows what his heart has to say and has listened to the heart of the Prince while he was enchanted. His witnessing requires great faithfulness. And when all three of Faithful Henri’s bands are broken he can let his compassion flow out toward the Prince, but still he doesn’t interfere. This is very important. He allows things to go on, to take their own way. He’s gone unnoticed for many years, watching the direction things were moving. That was fine with him. He knows about the frog and at the same time he’s riding behind eight white horses leading the carriage. He is both high and low. Divine and human. But in our civilization the higher part of him has gotten tangled up with the mind and with the ego. We must be very suspicious of the ego when it tells us we are among the high. The kind of intellectual work the ego does has a fixed quality, and it doesn’t allow itself to be loose enough to say, as this story does, Yes, that’s great, you’re playing with your golden ball; but you’re missing a whole other world. The ego’s kind of intellect avoids our immense suffering and pain and it runs around like the well-known monkey trying to keep us going. Love gets trampled in the rush. That’s why myth is so helpful. It helps us recognize the intelligence of the body, of the heart, and of the whole being that is, at its center, a golden ball. We get to see the difference between what the ego wants and an enduring love, like the love of Faithful Henri, who won’t give up grieving the Prince’s enchantment until it’s completely broken and the Prince is free. We should all be lucky enough to know love like that.
A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long
At this moment to be older, or younger, or born
In any other nation, or any other time, or any other place.
They are content to be where they are, talking or not talking.
Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know.
The man sees the way his fingers move;
H
e sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.
They obey a third body that they share in common.
They have promised to love that body.
Age may come; parting may come; death will come!
A man and a woman sit near each other;
As they breathe they feed someone whom we do not know,
Someone we know of, whom we have never seen.
THREE
THE LINDWORM
A King and Queen ruled over vast lands and longed for an offspring but didn’t have one. So one day the Queen was thinking about her situation and walking in the woods, and she met an old lady there who said, “Why do you look so sad?”
“Ah, you see, I’m longing for a child and we haven’t had one.”
“Oh, it’s not a big problem. I can tell you what to do so that you can have two sons and not just one.”
“Just tell me. I’ll do whatever you say.”
The old lady said, “You must listen carefully and follow my instructions. Tonight, fill your bath as usual, but when you’re done with it, throw the water under the tub and then you’ll find two onions. Peel them carefully and eat them, and pretty soon you’re going to have two boys.”
The Queen was delighted. She went straight home, filled her bath, and the two onions appeared as soon as she threw the water under the tub. Seeing them, she forgot what the old woman told her and she ate the first onion whole, peel and all. Then she remembered, Oh yes. Peel the onion. So she did and she ate the second one, too.
After several months she said to her husband the King, “I think we’re going to need a midwife.” He was very happy. The midwife came in the ninth month when the Queen was giving birth. She and the Queen were alone in the chamber. The first thing that came out was a little snake about six inches long. The midwife said, Well, I don’t think it’s worth mentioning, and she threw it out the window. And then the second one came and it was a beautiful, shining boy. He was gorgeous. Golden hair. A wonderful child. And the subjects sent gifts. Everybody rejoiced. It was marvelous.
So things went on. The boy got to be about twenty and that was the time to be married. So the father and mother decided he should find someone to marry and he should search for her in a different kingdom. The boy started out with his two horses and his gilded carriage to search for a bride and bring her back to his parents’ castle. He got about three miles out and all of a sudden the horses screamed and stopped the carriage. In front of them in the middle of the road lay a huge serpent.
“Argaaaahhhhhhhh. Where are you going?”
“As if it is any business of yours. But I’m going out to look for a bride.”
“Noooo,” the serpent roared. “A bride for me before a bride for you!” The horses struggled to break free, frightened by the horrible sound. “I am the eldest son. Eldest sons marry first.”
The golden boy turned around and drove home. He said to his father, “I met somebody at the crossroads today. Do you know anything about an older son?”
Father said, “Nooo.”
So the royal son waited a couple of weeks and set out again. He got about three miles out of town, and there, right in the middle of the road, was the same awful serpent, bigger than ever.
“Rooooarah. A bride for me before a bride for you. Eldest sons marry first.” The horses all coughed at the horrible stench on the serpent’s breath. So the royal boy hurried home and said to his father, “I think there’s something out there. Let’s ask Mother.”
And they went to her and said, “Do you know anything about an elder son?”
“No.” Because she didn’t know about that one.
But the midwife was still alive. They went to her and they said, “Something has turned up which leads us to believe that there may have been an earlier child. Do you know anything about this?”
“Yes, I do. The first one to come out was a little snake about six inches long.”
“Really! What did you do?”
“I hardly thought it was worth mentioning. It was so small, I just threw it out.”
* * *
So now we know that the snake has grown up in nature, and it was certainly quite large, and not happy about being thrown out the window while the royal boy was safe inside the castle, getting all the goodies.
The parents realized that what the Lindworm said was true. And he was also right that custom dictates that the first son marries first. So what could they do? They searched around and found a woman who was willing to marry him. The King declared, The marriage will be tomorrow. And in this culture it was also true that the bride and groom sleep together the night before the wedding, then wed in the morning.
So that night the King and Queen gave the Lindworm a room in the castle.
When he came out to greet the bride-to-be, she was standing there all alone. He wrapped his tail around her, took her into the bedroom, and shut the door.
In the morning the King and the Queen went into the chamber—but they saw that only the snake was there. It seemed that during the night he had eaten his bride. The royal Prince waited for a time, then climbed into his royal carriage and headed out to seek a bride. But again, at the crossroads the serpent reared up in his path, looking very angry.
“Rooooar. A bride for me before a bride for you. I’m the eldest son. I’m not married.”
The Prince turned around and hurried home to confer with his parents. They had searched far and wide and come up with another candidate for marriage with the Lindworm. Again the bride-to-be stood outside the door of the Lindworm’s room. He wrapped his tail around her, too, and took her into the bedroom and shut the door. The following morning the King and Queen went to the chamber. Again only the snake was there. The bride-to-be was completely gone. No trace of her was left.
Now at the edge of the kingdom there lived a stepmother who was terribly annoyed that her husband’s daughter was so beautiful, much more beautiful than her own daughter was. Over time, this stepmother had conceived a hatred for the beautiful stepdaughter, so that when she heard the news from the King’s palace that there was a serpent who ate each woman who agreed to marry him, and who was now demanding another beautiful new bride, she went to the King and casually remarked that her stepdaughter had offered to wed the Lindworm. So that the royal Prince will be able to travel abroad and find his bride, she said. The King and Queen agreed to try out this new candidate, but they were a little sorrowful.
When the messengers arrived to fetch the third young girl, she was terribly frightened. She knew her wicked stepmother had made the arrangement in order that the Lindworm would devour her, as he had devoured the others. She begged to be allowed to spend one more night at her father’s house. Permission was given, and she went to her mother’s grave. There she wept bitterly, telling everything about the stepmother’s hatred and about being promised to the Lindworm. She cried out to her mother and after a long time fell asleep on the earth. In the morning she woke just as the sun was rising. It was the day she was to meet her bridegroom.
When she arrived at the castle she remembered the words her mother had spoken to her while she slept. She asked at the castle for a pot of lye, three scrubbing brushes, and a pot of milk to be set by the fire. Then she dressed herself in seven clean, snow-white shifts. As soon as the Lindworm carried her into the chamber where they were to spend the night, he commanded her:
“Undress yourself.”
“You undress yourself first!”
No one had ever uttered a command in the Lindworm’s presence before. He was so surprised that he did what she demanded. He struggled and struggled his way out of his “enameled skin.”
In response, the bride took off one of her snow-white shifts.
“Undress yourself,” he said again.
“You first!”
So he fought his way out of his second skin. It was painful to remove it and he suffered very much with the pain.
They continued in this manner until there were seven skins and seven sh
ifts on the floor and the Lindworm lay in a white formless mass alongside them. That is what a man fears most—lying in a formless white mass on the bedroom floor. But the stepdaughter took one of the three scrub brushes her mother had told her to use, dipped it in lye, and, even though he was raw, she scrubbed him with all her might. She wore out all three brushes before she was finished. But by that time she had uncovered a Prince much lovelier than his younger brother. And she was more than content to marry him. The King and Queen attended the wedding, the Lindworm inherited the kingdom, and the younger brother went off to another kingdom where he found his bride and his fortune as well.
And they all lived happily ever after.
* * *
In the Lindworm story, there is infertility in the land. It’s a theme that tells the reader that the two people at the very center of a kingdom, the King and Queen themselves, can’t coax fecundity or renewal into their lives. They are not interested in anything wild and nothing from the under-worldly part of life, which includes the great serpent that’s soon to be roaming around outside the castle and crashing through the forests, doing whatever it pleases. This situation has antecedents. Myths several centuries before the Common Era told of the great serpent Python, who kept fertility from the land, partly because Leto, his mother, was not allowed to give birth in any place where the sun shone. Python was an earth-dragon and would normally have brought fecundity with him, as snakes have been thought to do, but not in this case. Beyond Python, there are many, many serpent fairy stories. Even Eros, the god of love, in some versions of his story begins as a serpent and Lord of the Underworld, and eventually takes his part in a resurrection story, as the Lindworm does.
But who or what nurtured the Lindworm after he was thrown away? His predecessor, Python, found sustenance at the navel of the world, but that only lasted until the sun god Apollo killed him and took over that navel for himself. The Lindworm had grown so big, so fast, that maybe he was nurtured at that same navel. The Apollo-like second son in our story has golden hair and a conscious way about him that helps him accept his parents’ claim that their choices for him are better than anything he would choose for himself. He clings, in his obedience, to their wishes. If they think he should marry, he will do just that.
