There was once a village. The village sat on a
road, and there was much traffic through the village as people
travelled along that road. This brought wealth, as travellers stayed
at the inn, and sometimes a traveller would decide to stay in the
village longer, setting up a home and establishing a livelihood. Most
of the villagers came from families who had lived in the village for
generations, or who had married in from nearby villages.
In one of these families, there was a child. The
family, and the child, were walking through the village one summer's
day, greeting other families as they passed them in the street or
walked past their houses. They passed the house of the local
minister, and exchanged pleasantries as they were working on their
garden. They passed the cottage of the teacher in the village school
as they were hanging laundry, and complimented them on their work.
They passed an elderly couple who were taking a similar walk, and
respectfully exchanged greeting. They stopped at a village shop, and
bought bread and cheese and fruit for lunch, and stone bottles of
various drinks, and packed them in a basket they had brought, with a
brightly coloured cloth they used for picnics; and the parents bought
their child a wooden toy, and they exchanged news and gossip with the
shopkeeper.
Then they passed a dyer's house, with great tubs
in the yard, and the family stirring the cloth to be dyed, and they
said nothing. The child asked, “why do we not greet them, as we go
about our business and they go about theirs, and compliment them on
the vivid colours and patterns they make on cloth?” The father
replied, “that family came here from far away, and they are not
like us; they do not worship as we do, and we cannot trust them.”
The child thought for a moment, and took out the
cloth from the picnic basket. “Did they not dye this cloth, that we
bought and use on days such as these? Do they not drink the same
water we do, and also use it in their work?” The parents could not
think how to respond, so the child took the cloth and turned to the
dyer's family, held it up and said, “see this cloth you dyed; we
will be using it today when we have our lunch, and it is wonderful to
be able to picnic on such bright, happy cloth. I am glad that we
could get such pretty cloth.” The dyer's family smiled, and thanked
the child for their praise.
Then they passed a house belonging to a
cheesemaker and their family, where children were playing in the
yard, and they said nothing. The child asked, “why do we not greet
them, and ask after their parents?” The mother replied, “that
family came here from far away, and they are not like us; they do not
send their children to our school, and they speak strangely.”
The child thought for a moment and said, “did we
not buy cheese they had made, that we will enjoy for lunch today? Do
their children not play in the sun, just as I play with my friends?
Perhaps they would come to school with us if they were welcomed.”
With that, the child went to the garden where the children played,
and gave them the toy the parents had bought that day, smiling and
wishing them well.
Then they passed a poor cottage, the home of an
old lady who lived alone. Her husband had been a blacksmith, but
their son had moved away to a city where there was more interesting
work and new skills to learn, and when her husband died, a new
blacksmith had come and moved in to the blacksmith's house, and a new
blacksmith's wife helped keep the forge and shoe the horses. The
child asked, “why do we never greet that woman, who has lived here
longer than I have?” The father replied, “the old blacksmith met
her when he was a journeyman, travelling to learn his trade; her ways
are still strange to us, and she has no family here. With her husband
gone, we are not sure of her.”
The child thought for a moment and said, “did
people not come to know her while her husband lived? She was often
with him in his shop and his forge, and helped shoe the horses. Did
she not bring tea to those who waited for her husband, as the
blacksmith's wife does now? How can someone become a stranger simply
because their family die or move away?” Then the child walked over
to a nearby flowered bank, and gathered up a collection of flowers in
many colours. Taking a sniff of the bouquet, the child walked up to
the door of the cottage, and left the flowers upon the step.
Then they passed a large, well-appointed house.
The walls were smoothly plastered, with clean paint on the walls and
window-frames. An older man sat on a chair under a porch, reading a
book. The child asked, “why do we not greet this man, who sits at
leisure as the world passes by?” The mother answered, “he came
here from the city, where they say he was a scholar. He bought this
house, and hired men to make it bigger and smarter, and like they say
houses look in the city. It is even said he has more money than any
in the village, except perhaps the innkeeper. We do not know him, and
we do not understand him.”
The child thought a moment and said, “how can we
understand him without getting to know him, and how can we get to
know him without talking to him?” Just so, the child walk up the
well-kept path through the well-kept lawn, and made introductions to
the well-kept man, asking what he was reading, and how his day was.
The parents waited, worried, but after a few minutes the child
returned to them, smiling, and they continued on their way.
As they came towards the village church, they
passed a small cottage, poorly kept, where strange-looking young men
sat on stools in the yard, mending furniture, and a strange-looking
young woman sat mending clothes. Their own clothes were strange, and
they looked thin and unhappy, but they had clever hands and eyes,
though they watched those passing warily. The child asked, “why do
we not speak to these, who do such neat work mending, and who seem so
afraid?” The father explained, “these people come from very far
away, where there is war and famine. The church houses them out of
charity, as is proper, and helps them find some work fixing and
mending, but they mostly live on the goodwill of the church. They are
so different and strange; we do not know what to make of them, we
cannot trust them, and we look down on them as they cannot provide
for themselves.”
The child thought a moment and said, “do they
not eat, and sleep, and breathe the air and drink the water? Were we
driven from our homes, would we not hope to see not only charity from
those that took us in, but welcome and friendship? And see the clever
way she mends those clothes, and the neat way they mend that
furniture; I'm sure they could do much more with those hands, if they
had the chance.” So the child took some of the stone bottles, and
part of the bread, and gave it to the people working in the yard, and
said to them “we have more than we need, and I am glad to share it
with you. We're going to picnic on the green, and you could join us
if you like.” The people took the food, startled and not knowing
how to react, and the child returned to the parents with contentment,
and they went on their way.
And so they reached the green, and settled their
cloth upon the ground, and laid out their bread, and cheese, and
fruit, and the stone bottles, and began to eat, while the child
smiled and thought, and the parents dwelt on the things that had been
said and done on their way to the green.
Not long later, while they had barely begun their
meal, the blacksmith's widow approached them, holding a basket of her
own, with the bunch of wild flowers visible. She approached the
child, and asked, “was it you, who left these by my door?” The
child stood, smiled, and said “yes; did you like them?” The widow
smiled as well, and nodded; bringing the flowers out of the basket,
she set them on the ground and brought out a cake. “I used to make
this cake for my husband's customers. They said they hadn't seen cake
like it before. It is common where I come from, but they always
seemed to enjoy the novelty of it. I still make it, though I have
no-one to share it with; I would be glad to share it with you.” The
child offered her empty space on the cloth, and invited her to join
them.
Before the parents could react, the cheesemaker's
family came to the green. They thanked the child for the gift of the
toy to their children, and said, “we saw that you were coming here
to picnic, and thought you might care to try something different.”
Strange though their speech was, it was still easy enough to
understand. “The cheese we sell to the shop is made in the way
cheese has always been made here, but we also make some as it is made
where we come from; perhaps you might like to try some?” So they
offered a cloth bundle containing the strange cheese, and the child
took it, and unwrapped it, and put it with the other cheese. The
child thanked them, and offered them to join them, though there was
no more cloth on which to sit.
Just then the dyer's family came to the green,
carrying baskets of brightly coloured cloth. “We are glad you like
our cloth”, they said, “and we saw more people coming to the
green, and thought perhaps you could use more cloth to sit on.”
They laid some of their cloth on the ground, and then set out
earthenware dishes that they uncovered to reveal spiced cooked meats,
and rich fruit-breads. “Yesterday was a feast day in our faith,”
they explained, “and we thought you might like to share some of the
foods we have left.”
Seeing the growing group on the green, the young
men and young women from the church cottage came up, with some spare
lengths of wood and twine from their work. “It is very sunny,”
said one of the young men, “and we know that some do not like to
sit in the bright sun for very long.” The young men took the wood
and twine, and some of the spare cloth the dyers had brought, and
built an awning to cover part of the green, setting another cloth
beneath it near to the growing pile of food. The young woman said,
“thank you for the gift of your bread and your drink. Please allow
us to share ours with you.” She then brought out a plate of simple
flat bread that she had made, and a jug of a cool herbal tea. “This
is what we drink on sunny days where we come from, or as near as we
can make it with what we can find here. The bread is a sort my mother
taught me to make. We hope you will like it.” The child gestured to
everyone to sit, and sat under the awning.
Before the parents could react to the growing
crowd, the scholar walked up and said to them, “I hope you don't
mind, but I was thinking about what your child said to me, and it
occurred to me that I had some books that might be of interest. By
the time I'd found them, I saw the crowd gathering here, and thought
maybe I should bring along something to share as well.” The scholar
then brought out of a bag bottles of beer, and cider, and ginger
beer, and chocolate. “I'm afraid I don't cook very well, but I have
a stock of nice things I have bought, and I'm very happy to share.”
The scholar added them to the growing selection, and then brought out
a book to show the child. The child took it with interest, and
listened as the scholar described it.
By now the parents were astonished, and worried
what their friends and neighbours would think, seeing them at the
centre of this crowd of outsiders. But then another family came, and
another, bringing their own food, and cloths, saying, “what a good
idea! A big party for everyone is a marvellous way to spend such a
sunny day.” Tables and chairs arrived, and the innkeeper set up a
stall, and the various musicians of the village went to get their
instruments. Very soon you could not tell that the crowd had begun
with the people the villagers didn't speak to, and everyone spoke to
one another, and shared the products of their work or their wealth.
The musicians learned new tunes, and the cooks learned new recipes,
and for that day at least, there were no outsiders.
Written August 2017
