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A Finnish Story<\/strong><\/span>*<\/p>\n by Edward Mackinnon<\/em><\/p>\n Landless, she worked on the land of a great landlord and his lady * After a scene in <\/em>Herr Puntila and His Servant Matti by Bertolt Brecht and Hella Wuolijoki. Image is <\/em>Peasant Woman and Cows in a Landscape, by Paul Gauguin, 1890.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Finnish Story* by Edward Mackinnon Landless, she worked on the land of a great landlord and his lady\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0where the grass…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":564,"featured_media":13808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/564"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0where the grass was lush and fat cows blinked at the northern light
But she had to walk thirty miles with a fish and a pound of butter
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0and having an honest heart she told everyone she met on the way
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0that the good fish and butter she was carrying were for her son
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0and had been given to her by the lady of her great landlord
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0because her son was in prison
The northern air was as sharp as the spiny fins of a fish
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0and the sun was the colour of pale butter
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0and she had to walk thirty miles
For part of the way she was given a lift by a farmer
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0and as she always babbled and spoke from the heart
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0she said the lady of the estate with lush grass and white birches
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0had given her a fish and a pound of butter for her son in prison
But when she told him her son was a Red
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0(it was the time after the civil war)
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0the farmer ordered her to get down from his wagon and walk
Along the way she met women doing their washing in a stream
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0all gathered together like water birds
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0and when she told them about the fish and the butter and her son
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0they looked up and listened
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0glad to be fed a scrap of news from the wider world
The woman walked on, past green fields and poplars with sun-dappled leaves
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0until she came to the prison
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0where the ground was bare and the trees were scraggly and bent
Her son enquired of her about this and that, her neighbours and her aching back
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0and when he saw the fish and the butter
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0he asked whether she had begged for it from the landlord and his lady
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0and when she answered yes he refused to eat it
I won\u2019t take anything from them he said
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0this although the prison rations were scarcely enough
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0to feed a crow in winter
So the landless woman had to walk back the thirty miles
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0with the fish and the pound of butter
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0which began to smell and turn rancid
She therefore ate the food as she walked along and told everyone she met
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0– farmers and women hunched over their washing at the stream –\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0that the food had been for her son in prison
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0but that he had refused to eat it
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0because she had begged for it from the great lord and his lady
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0explaining that he wouldn\u2019t take anything from them
Thus she walked all the way back to the estate with lush grass and white birches
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0babbling like a child and speaking from the heart
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0and in this way many people heard about her son
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0and there were those who talked about him and remembered
Yes, some people are like that, they said.<\/p>\n