The Dreaming Time: Of Fox Mothers and Secret Forests

Maria: 00:00:22

Hello from Cork.

Jim: 00:00:24

Hello from New York.

Maria: 00:00:25

Is mise Máire, Seanchaí Corcaí.

Maria: 00:00:28

It's Maria the Cork-based storyteller.

Jim: 00:00:31

It's me, Jim here in Fayetteville, New York.

Maria: 00:00:33

We can't wait to tell you a few stories.

Maria: 00:00:38

Well, how is the weather in New York, Jim?

Jim: 00:00:42

Well, the weather in New York is what we like to call WinterSpring.

Jim: 00:00:48

It's barely above freezing and raining.

Maria: 00:00:51

Yeah.

Jim: 00:00:52

So it's a good day to be on the story road, not outdoors.

Maria: 00:00:58

Very true.

Maria: 00:00:59

You know, and the, the weather is very similar here, so it's not often

Maria: 00:01:03

we have the same kind of weather.

Maria: 00:01:05

We might have a few degrees warmer, but we've had a lot of rain.

Maria: 00:01:09

You know, it's, it's even made our, uh, newsrooms that it has rained

Maria: 00:01:16

the whole way through 2026 so far.

Jim: 00:01:21

And I was just speaking to one of our colleagues in

Jim: 00:01:24

Marrakesh, and it is raining there.

Jim: 00:01:27

It's been raining there so long that they've left for warmer climes.

Jim: 00:01:32

So, you know, I think this is the state of the world right now.

Maria: 00:01:35

Yeah, I think you're right.

Maria: 00:01:36

Yeah.

Maria: 00:01:37

You know, um, so I think we're just going to have to warm one

Maria: 00:01:41

another up with a few stories today.

Maria: 00:01:43

What do you think?

Jim: 00:01:45

I think let's wrap ourselves warmly in a couple of stories.

Jim: 00:01:48

Yes.

Maria: 00:01:48

Yeah.

Maria: 00:01:49

Great stuff.

Maria: 00:01:50

So I was, I was thinking, you know, that it's still almost

Maria: 00:01:55

the, uh, dreaming time of year.

Maria: 00:01:58

So as we're recording now, you know, the St. Brigid's Day has happened, St.

Maria: 00:02:03

Gobnait's Day has happened, and in the modern world, that means Imbolc is over.

Maria: 00:02:08

Imbolc, in the stomach, and the gestation period is over.

Maria: 00:02:13

But in the old days, Jim, I think for both of our traditions,

Maria: 00:02:19

it's still the dreaming time.

Maria: 00:02:21

You know, it's still kind of late winter, early spring, as you said.

Maria: 00:02:26

You know, it's, it's that kind of weather.

Maria: 00:02:29

It's also that kind of thinking, isn't it?

Jim: 00:02:32

It's, it's, you know.

Jim: 00:02:33

Yeah.

Maria: 00:02:34

So, um, the story that I'm thinking of today is a story like that.

Maria: 00:02:41

It's a ban feasa story, so it's a wise woman story, so I might

Maria: 00:02:45

tell you that story and see how it opens up the threads of story

Maria: 00:02:49

to what you'll tell us after that.

Jim: 00:02:52

Please do.

Jim: 00:02:52

Please do.

Maria: 00:02:53

You know, once there was a woman and her name was Máire Rua.

Maria: 00:02:59

She had long red hair.

Maria: 00:03:02

She had white skin.

Maria: 00:03:04

She had a man who loved her and she loved him.

Maria: 00:03:10

And to the outside world, it seems that she had a charmed life.

Maria: 00:03:14

She had a little yellow cottage nestled in the Irish countryside, and she had a

Maria: 00:03:20

little, uh, garden that was big enough for her to feed her family and have

Maria: 00:03:25

enough leftover to sometimes give a few presents to the neighbors as well.

Maria: 00:03:30

She had hens that gave eggs.

Maria: 00:03:33

She had a goat that gave milk, and life seemed really good.

Maria: 00:03:38

So to the outside world, it seemed as if she had everything that you could need.

Maria: 00:03:45

But you know, and I know that life is not like that, and that

Maria: 00:03:50

nobody leaves this world unscathed.

Maria: 00:03:54

She had a little dream, a short, short, little secret that she

Maria: 00:04:00

kept in the bottom of her heart.

Maria: 00:04:02

For you see, she longed for a baby, a little baby, to croon to, to tell stories

Maria: 00:04:12

to, to sit in the rocking chair, up in that room that she'd made for the baby.

Maria: 00:04:19

But that baby, it never came despite the fact that she had a little room inside

Maria: 00:04:26

in her cottage where she had put mobiles hanging from the ceiling, made by her very

Maria: 00:04:32

own hand, her own mother's rocking chair, and then there was the little cot that

Maria: 00:04:39

she had laid in herself as a little baby.

Maria: 00:04:43

And all the things her talented husband had made for this child,

Maria: 00:04:49

including the changing table.

Maria: 00:04:52

But that baby never came.

Maria: 00:04:55

Máire was a ban feasa, a woman of the knowing, a wise woman, and she had anam

Maria: 00:05:03

cara, she had a soul friend, the Madra Rua, the red dog, also known as the Fox.

Maria: 00:05:12

Long, long ago, her husband had given up reacting, when she'd sit up in the middle

Maria: 00:05:18

of the night when the ceo draíochta, when the magical mist was forming on the land.

Maria: 00:05:25

And this morning, deep in the night, long before the dawn was to break,

Maria: 00:05:31

she sat bold upright in in the bed.

Maria: 00:05:34

Her husband snuggled in to the little hollow that she left as she hopped out,

Maria: 00:05:40

pulling on her green jacket and her Wellington boots as she ran down the

Maria: 00:05:45

stairs, opened the door and ran out into the foggy night where you couldn't

Maria: 00:05:50

see your hand in front of your face.

Maria: 00:05:53

But sure she didn't need to see her hand for the soles of her feet

Maria: 00:05:59

knew every inch of that garden.

Maria: 00:06:02

She came then to the fairy tree, to the white thorn tree at the

Maria: 00:06:07

edge of her garden, and she knelt down and she looked deep into the

Maria: 00:06:13

eyes of an Madra Rua, the Red Fox.

Maria: 00:06:18

Something happened then that had never happened before.

Maria: 00:06:23

Her spirit rose up out of her body and crossed the space between her

Maria: 00:06:30

and her anam cara., Her right hand went into the right paw of the fox,

Maria: 00:06:35

her left hand into the left paw.

Maria: 00:06:39

She lined up her eyes until they became one with the fox.

Maria: 00:06:45

Then the fox stood up and she felt the movement like a beautiful dance.

Maria: 00:06:52

Like every sinew worked, every muscle was so beautiful.

Maria: 00:06:59

She began to walk towards the edge of the river.

Maria: 00:07:03

And then she stuck her long fox tongue into the freezing crystal clear there.

Maria: 00:07:11

The wild garlic and the salmon who had swum here not ten minutes before.

Maria: 00:07:19

She was aware that the sheep were nervous, that they could feel her presence.

Maria: 00:07:25

She was aware that the chicks and the hens were on guard knowing that she was around.

Maria: 00:07:32

But she had no interest in chicks or sheep or even salmon that day.

Maria: 00:07:40

She stood up and she began to pad down the old path into the deep forest.

Maria: 00:07:48

And she made for the center where the oldest tree was, with a little opening

Maria: 00:07:54

at the end of it, and she thought to herself, I've never seen that before.

Maria: 00:08:01

The forest looked so different through these eyes, and just as the fox made its

Maria: 00:08:08

way to the opening and squeezed itself through, down, down, down, she went, into

Maria: 00:08:16

the deep, moist, dark, comforting Earth.

Maria: 00:08:23

And as she went down, she saw twelve stars moving in the sky.

Maria: 00:08:29

Stars under the ground, she thought, that's not possible!

Maria: 00:08:35

Then she smiled to herself.

Maria: 00:08:37

She was taking a ride in the body of a fox: anything was possible!

Maria: 00:08:44

Just at that moment, she realized these were not stars that she was

Maria: 00:08:49

seeing, but six pairs of bright eyes.

Maria: 00:08:54

Madra Rua had given birth.

Maria: 00:08:58

Madra Rua was a mother, and they licked her nose and up her, uh, her ears and

Maria: 00:09:06

pushed her over for mother's milk.

Maria: 00:09:10

The earth held her spine as she fed her babies, and she thought to herself, This,

Maria: 00:09:18

this is what it's like to be a mother.

Maria: 00:09:22

And in that second, a fierce protectiveness came into her.

Maria: 00:09:28

She knew that if anyone stood between her and these fox cubs, that

Maria: 00:09:34

they would have her to deal with.

Maria: 00:09:38

When she had that thought, the fox stood up, shook herself down, and began to make

Maria: 00:09:45

her way back up the little tunnel until she came out at the foot of the tree.

Maria: 00:09:52

The mist had cleared, and all back to her own garden she saw her own body

Maria: 00:10:01

standing with her hand over the whitehorn tree, as if she was in a deep reverie.

Maria: 00:10:08

And as she saw this, her spirit lifted up out of the fox, went to cross

Maria: 00:10:14

space and back into her own body.

Maria: 00:10:19

Thank you.

Maria: 00:10:20

Thank you, Madra Rua, she said, thank you for this great gift,

Maria: 00:10:26

but Madra Rua stood stock still.

Maria: 00:10:30

Madra Rua looked deep into her eyes.

Maria: 00:10:35

I know, she said, I know what I must do.

Maria: 00:10:40

She ran into the house, pulling off her Wellington boots and her green

Maria: 00:10:44

jacket as she ran up the stairs and into that little yellow room.

Maria: 00:10:50

She took the mobiles down from the ceiling first and into the cot they went.

Maria: 00:10:55

Then the rocking chair that belonged to her mother.

Maria: 00:10:58

Then all the little bits that her husband had made.

Maria: 00:11:02

She took the whole lot and she rolled it down the stairs.

Maria: 00:11:07

The noise woke her husband up.

Maria: 00:11:09

I'm glad you're up.

Maria: 00:11:10

She said, you know that long piece of wood that I was saving.

Maria: 00:11:15

Yes, he said.

Maria: 00:11:16

Well, I know what we have to do with it.

Maria: 00:11:19

I need to make it into a big desk in this little room.

Maria: 00:11:24

He didn't question her.

Maria: 00:11:26

He just got on with making that desk, and as he was doing it, she

Maria: 00:11:32

went into town and bought the best art materials that she could afford.

Maria: 00:11:39

She set them out on that long table and then she went through

Maria: 00:11:43

the village calling out, Who wants to come to Máire Rua's house?

Maria: 00:11:48

Any children?

Maria: 00:11:50

Any children that want to come to Máire's house?

Maria: 00:11:54

And they went.

Maria: 00:11:55

She was like the pied piper of children and they had great times in Máire's house.

Maria: 00:12:02

They learned to make art, and to have conversations, and to say

Maria: 00:12:07

there the things they couldn't say at home: words like fart.

Maria: 00:12:15

And they made deep friendships.

Maria: 00:12:18

Those friendships turned into love, and as those children grew and began

Maria: 00:12:24

to love one another, the weddings came, and Máire Rua became the seanmháithair

Maria: 00:12:30

Liath, became the gray-haired grandmother, and they would invite her to their

Maria: 00:12:37

weddings and she would frame one of the pictures that they had made as children,

Maria: 00:12:43

and she would present it to them as if it was a precious gift, which it was!

Maria: 00:12:50

A memory that hung on their, the walls of those happy homes in that village,

Maria: 00:12:57

and the village learned that it takes a whole village to raise a child.

Maria: 00:13:06

And Máire learned you don't have to give birth to be a mother.

Maria: 00:13:12

Sin é mo scéal, that is my story.

Jim: 00:13:16

A delightful story!

Jim: 00:13:18

You know, a lot of the stories that come from folklore have to do with

Jim: 00:13:24

childless women or childless couples.

Jim: 00:13:28

And the solution is always that they get magically pregnant,

Jim: 00:13:34

and then everything's fine.

Jim: 00:13:35

And I love that this is different, you know, that there's, there's a,

Jim: 00:13:40

a journey there that is fulfilling.

Jim: 00:13:42

Yeah.

Jim: 00:13:42

And it says, you know what?

Jim: 00:13:44

There's, there's more.

Jim: 00:13:46

There's the whole village that we need.

Jim: 00:13:48

I thank you for that.

Jim: 00:13:50

That's a beautiful story.

Maria: 00:13:52

Oh, you're welcome.

Maria: 00:13:53

And I suppose where it came from because, you know, and I know Jim,

Maria: 00:13:57

that storytelling is a living art and that sometimes it's nice to

Maria: 00:14:04

catch the threads of a story in the wise way, in the old wise way.

Maria: 00:14:08

So that one was haunting me for a, for a while, you know, that, that Fox story.

Maria: 00:14:15

And um, I was thinking.

Maria: 00:14:18

What is trying to come through here?

Maria: 00:14:20

And I kept seeing foxes everywhere I went and uh, and I was talking to women

Maria: 00:14:27

who were feeling grief in the corporate world that I had inhabited myself.

Maria: 00:14:33

And they were saying it feels like we have to make a choice

Maria: 00:14:37

between career and children.

Maria: 00:14:40

And even when children came, they were handing those children over while

Maria: 00:14:44

they were sleeping and then getting them back at the end of the day.

Maria: 00:14:48

And the children were still sleeping and they were missing

Maria: 00:14:51

those early milestones, you know.

Maria: 00:14:53

And they were saying, oh my God, like, you know, to the outside world,

Maria: 00:14:57

it looks like we have everything.

Maria: 00:14:59

So that became a thread in the story, you know?

Maria: 00:15:02

And then, um, I was talking to people, you know, kind of young women who felt

Maria: 00:15:09

that they had to get married and they had to fulfill their family's dreams

Maria: 00:15:14

and traditions of having children quickly, and they didn't feel ready.

Maria: 00:15:18

So that was another thread that came into the, the stories.

Maria: 00:15:22

And still I spoke to men, who said that they were finding it difficult, uh, to

Maria: 00:15:28

get pregnant with their partner, you know, and that it was the front and

Maria: 00:15:33

center in everything in their lives that had become, you know, kind of

Maria: 00:15:37

almost like an obsession, you know?

Maria: 00:15:40

And they were thinking, could we fill that void with a child that

Maria: 00:15:45

has been born through somebody else?

Maria: 00:15:48

So that was yet, yet another thread.

Maria: 00:15:49

So it was all those threads that are so valid in our modern world, you know,

Maria: 00:15:55

real, real life griefs and joys and struggles and connections, you know?

Maria: 00:16:02

And then we were talking about how, long ago when you had kids, that

Maria: 00:16:08

you had the other moms to rely on.

Maria: 00:16:09

Like we were thinking as children of the eighties, we could go into any

Maria: 00:16:13

house and say, what's in the pot?

Maria: 00:16:15

Can I, can I join your table?

Maria: 00:16:17

You know?

Maria: 00:16:19

Um, and that, that doesn't really exist anymore.

Maria: 00:16:22

So, so there's lots of little threads that went into that story.

Jim: 00:16:27

Well, and it reminds me also, my daughter is a postpartum doula.

Jim: 00:16:33

So she, she works with mothers and their children after birth.

Jim: 00:16:39

And all the stories that many modern women hear about, oh, you

Jim: 00:16:45

know, that's such a natural thing, it's just, just gonna be wonderful.

Jim: 00:16:48

No, no pressure.

Jim: 00:16:50

And of course that's untrue.

Jim: 00:16:52

My daughter would remind them that all those notions of the ease of the

Jim: 00:16:59

early days of raising a child come from a time when there was a community.

Jim: 00:17:05

Yeah.

Jim: 00:17:05

And you know, and that's why it wasn't easy, but a far easier than a

Jim: 00:17:10

single person or even a couple trying to manage this all on their own.

Jim: 00:17:14

Yeah.

Maria: 00:17:14

And it's nice to have that topic spoken about because also part of the

Maria: 00:17:22

feeling of inadequacy is, Oh my God, everybody out there seems to be coping,

Maria: 00:17:28

but I can't cope in my situation.

Maria: 00:17:30

Yeah.

Maria: 00:17:30

So it's really nice to know actually you're going to be sleep deprived.

Maria: 00:17:34

You know, it's isolating unless you have family around.

Maria: 00:17:38

It can be very isolating as well.

Jim: 00:17:40

Absolutely.

Maria: 00:17:40

You know, um, we seem to divide things up in our society these days.

Maria: 00:17:45

Do you find that Jim, like by age?

Maria: 00:17:48

Do, you know?

Maria: 00:17:49

So like you have the young moms, you know, and then they're missing the grannies.

Maria: 00:17:54

Okay.

Jim: 00:17:54

It's even worse than that in the sense that we really

Jim: 00:17:57

have, in so many parts of our modern world, lost that notion of

Jim: 00:18:03

community, of even of neighborhood.

Jim: 00:18:06

Something that hopefully stories are the way to reknit that,

Jim: 00:18:10

uh, to reweave that for sure.

Jim: 00:18:12

Yeah.

Jim: 00:18:13

Yeah.

Maria: 00:18:14

Cause you, you have every age in the story circle.

Maria: 00:18:17

I love that.

Maria: 00:18:18

I love that about this work.

Maria: 00:18:20

That you've, every age, you have every background: everybody's welcome.

Maria: 00:18:24

There's no borders, there's no boundaries.

Maria: 00:18:27

Yeah.

Maria: 00:18:27

It's great.

Jim: 00:18:29

Well, no big surprise I heard your story, I said, no, this is

Jim: 00:18:32

a story that needs to be told.

Jim: 00:18:35

Um, and it's not, it's only inspired by, it's not the exactly the same thing.

Jim: 00:18:41

This is a, story about a young man, a young boy actually, whose, um,

Jim: 00:18:47

mother had died when he was very young, not unusual in those old days.

Jim: 00:18:52

And his father was really worried about how was he gonna raise him on his own.

Jim: 00:19:01

And this father was kind of, had some money and he decided to

Jim: 00:19:06

send him to school, to a boarding school to be raised there.

Jim: 00:19:10

And this is a Jewish story.

Jim: 00:19:11

So he was sent to a Jewish boarding school many years ago and he grew up

Jim: 00:19:21

there and started to mature a little bit.

Jim: 00:19:25

And then, when he was ten years old, his father died.

Jim: 00:19:30

And so now here he is in this boarding school all on his own, but they were very

Jim: 00:19:37

good to him and they took care of him.

Jim: 00:19:40

And finally, you know, he had his bar mitzvah, and he just stayed.

Jim: 00:19:45

He was a good student and he stayed.

Jim: 00:19:48

And it was when he was seventeen years old, on the evening of the anniversary

Jim: 00:19:57

of his father's death, he had a dream.

Jim: 00:20:02

And in his dream, his father came to him and said, You must

Jim: 00:20:08

go visit the Seer of Lublin.

Jim: 00:20:11

Now, the Seer of Lublin was a, a fellow just amazing who

Jim: 00:20:16

could see what was coming.

Jim: 00:20:19

This young man, we'll call him Yitzhak, woke up and he thought,

Jim: 00:20:23

that's a very strange dream.

Jim: 00:20:25

And he kind of forgot about it.

Jim: 00:20:28

And the next night he had another dream and his father came back and he says, No,

Jim: 00:20:33

you, you have to go to the Seer of Lublin.

Jim: 00:20:37

You have to get there right away.

Jim: 00:20:41

And he woke up in the morning.

Jim: 00:20:43

Oh, now this is two nights the same dream.

Jim: 00:20:46

And he thought, maybe I better think about this.

Jim: 00:20:49

The third night his father came back: "Visit the Seer of Lublin,

Jim: 00:20:54

not just soon, right now, go!"

Jim: 00:21:00

So he, he went to the elders of the school and told them of his dreams and they

Jim: 00:21:05

said, Well, of course you've got to go.

Jim: 00:21:07

That's the word.

Jim: 00:21:10

And so he made his way to the, the Seer's home, which was cities away.

Jim: 00:21:16

Took a long way to get there.

Jim: 00:21:18

So finally, one afternoon, one Friday afternoon, just before Shabbas is

Jim: 00:21:25

supposed to start, he arrives at the front door of the Seer of Lublin's house.

Jim: 00:21:32

He walks up to the door and just before he knocks, the Seer opens the door and

Jim: 00:21:39

says, You're late, but there's still time.

Jim: 00:21:44

Go to the Mikva.

Jim: 00:21:46

Now, one of the traditions in these Orthodox communities is

Jim: 00:21:50

that just before Shabbat, you immerse yourself in a ritual bath.

Jim: 00:21:56

And he of course, was surprised that the Seer was ready for him.

Jim: 00:22:03

And he said, Well, where is there a Mikva?

Jim: 00:22:06

And the Seer said, right around back, I've got my own.

Jim: 00:22:09

And so he headed away from the door and off to this little

Jim: 00:22:14

tiny shack that didn't look big enough to hold a full ritual bath.

Jim: 00:22:19

He opened the door.

Jim: 00:22:22

And he looked down and there were stairs down into darkness.

Jim: 00:22:27

He, he couldn't really see what was there, but clearly it was mikvah.

Jim: 00:22:33

So he did what everybody does: you have to disrobe before you get in.

Jim: 00:22:38

And he starts taking off his clothes as he's going down, and

Jim: 00:22:43

it's just not seeming right.

Jim: 00:22:45

He's going down much further than he should be able to go and still no mikvah.

Jim: 00:22:53

Finally, he's down to his tzitzit.

Jim: 00:22:55

So he is just wearing this shirt that barely covers him.

Jim: 00:23:01

And his feet come to solid ground, not water.

Jim: 00:23:07

And he steps a little further out and it starts to lighten a little bit.

Jim: 00:23:15

And he takes another step and all of a sudden he sees he's on the banks of a

Jim: 00:23:20

river and there's a huge tree in front of him and a a little road around it,

Jim: 00:23:31

and he, he doesn't know what's going on and he figures he's in the wrong place.

Jim: 00:23:35

He turns around to go back up the steps and they've disappeared.

Jim: 00:23:41

So here he is standing almost naked in the middle of this, this forest,

Jim: 00:23:46

and he hears voices approaching and he thinks, well, I'll ask them

Jim: 00:23:52

where I can go and what I can do.

Jim: 00:23:55

But as they get closer, he realizes these are angry men that are coming.

Jim: 00:24:01

These are men who are robbers.

Jim: 00:24:05

Thieves and he doesn't wanna be seen by them.

Jim: 00:24:08

So what does he do?

Jim: 00:24:09

He climbs up the tree and he hugs the, the trunk of the tree, up as far as he can go.

Jim: 00:24:17

And sure enough, you have these, these men arrive on horseback and they're,

Jim: 00:24:23

they're just, they're a little drunk already and they're crowing about the

Jim: 00:24:28

last person they killed, and he knows he's in danger and he hopes they leave soon.

Jim: 00:24:36

But the tree is so inviting that they said, Let's make camp here tonight.

Jim: 00:24:41

And so they put down all their gear and they light a fire, and

Jim: 00:24:45

they hang a wine skin from one of the lower branches of the tree.

Jim: 00:24:50

And they're just having a party that night and he thinks, Well, I'll just wait here

Jim: 00:24:55

till the morning, and they'll go away.

Jim: 00:24:57

And then he sees it: there's a snake.

Jim: 00:25:02

A big snake is slithering down the tree.

Jim: 00:25:07

Its fangs dripping poison, and now he doesn't know what to do.

Jim: 00:25:13

He can't go down, he can't go up.

Jim: 00:25:15

And the snake slithers right by him and off to that branch

Jim: 00:25:20

that held the wine skin.

Jim: 00:25:24

And it bites into the wine skin and it starts to drink the wine.

Jim: 00:25:31

When it bites, of course the venom goes into the wine skin and it doesn't take

Jim: 00:25:37

the snake long to get so drunk that it slithers off away and heads back down.

Jim: 00:25:47

Well, the men haven't seen the snake and they don't know what it's done.

Jim: 00:25:50

And they come and they get the wine skin because they run out of their

Jim: 00:25:53

other wine and they drink the wine and, well, you know, they weren't the

Jim: 00:25:59

best men in the world and they all die.

Jim: 00:26:02

That's, you know, they drank the snake's poison.

Jim: 00:26:06

Well, finally morning comes and he figures he can come down the tree

Jim: 00:26:12

safely, and sure enough he does.

Jim: 00:26:15

And he decides, he's not gonna take anything from these people,

Jim: 00:26:19

but he's gonna take some clothes.

Jim: 00:26:21

You know, he's gotta get dressed.

Jim: 00:26:23

So he takes some clothes and he's rummaging around in their bags, and

Jim: 00:26:27

in the bottom of one of the bags, he finds this jewel that is just glowing

Jim: 00:26:33

and he knows it must be stolen.

Jim: 00:26:35

I mean, these, these folks wouldn't have the jewel of their own.

Jim: 00:26:38

So he takes it and he says, I'll return it.

Jim: 00:26:41

And he heads off down the road in the direction they were going.

Jim: 00:26:46

The road gets a little wider.

Jim: 00:26:49

In the distance he can see city walls.

Jim: 00:26:51

He comes to the the city walls and he stopped by the guards

Jim: 00:26:57

at the gate and questioned.

Jim: 00:27:01

'cause he is dressed like you know, thieves.

Jim: 00:27:06

He said, No, no, no, no.

Jim: 00:27:08

I'm not a thief.

Jim: 00:27:08

In fact, there were some thieves back there and I, I took care of 'em.

Jim: 00:27:12

Well, the snake took care of 'em, but it's all okay.

Jim: 00:27:15

And they said, Well, let us search your bag.

Jim: 00:27:18

And they find the glowing jewel.

Jim: 00:27:21

They say, Oh, you're the one who stole it!

Jim: 00:27:23

He said, no, no, no, no.

Jim: 00:27:25

Come back with me.

Jim: 00:27:25

I'll show you that they're there.

Jim: 00:27:27

So he takes them back and sure enough, they realized that, that he didn't

Jim: 00:27:31

steal it, that he's trying to return it.

Jim: 00:27:35

And they say, You know, this is the jewel that was gonna be a gift

Jim: 00:27:42

to the princess upon her wedding.

Jim: 00:27:46

And it was stolen.

Jim: 00:27:47

And the king was so upset that he said, whoever finds it can marry my daughter.

Jim: 00:27:54

So they take him to her and, you know, good things start to happen.

Jim: 00:28:00

And they're married, and they start to have a family.

Jim: 00:28:06

And the years go by and he's in love with his princess.

Jim: 00:28:12

I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful family.

Jim: 00:28:14

He loves his children beyond measure.

Jim: 00:28:18

And finally he's getting to be a little older and he thinks, I

Jim: 00:28:23

wonder if the tree is still there.

Jim: 00:28:29

And so he takes a horse and he and the horse go riding back up

Jim: 00:28:34

that road to look for the tree.

Jim: 00:28:38

And as he's getting closer to the tree, the river starts to

Jim: 00:28:42

rise, and it starts to flood.

Jim: 00:28:46

And it gets higher and higher and the horse is swimming and the

Jim: 00:28:50

horse gets too tired and he jumps off the horse and he's trying to

Jim: 00:28:53

stay afloat in this rising flood.

Jim: 00:28:57

And all of a sudden his foot hits something solid and he pushes up

Jim: 00:29:06

a little bit and there's another thing, and he's walking up steps.

Jim: 00:29:14

And as he walks up the steps, his clothes fall off of him, and

Jim: 00:29:19

there he is in just his tzitzit,

Jim: 00:29:24

and he emerges from that tiny little mikvah dripping wet,

Jim: 00:29:33

dries himself off as best he can, puts his clothes back on, and wonders if

Jim: 00:29:41

the Seer of Lublin still lives there because he's been there so long.

Jim: 00:29:46

He comes back to the front door and again, the Seer opens the door,

Jim: 00:29:54

and he doesn't seem to have aged a day.

Jim: 00:29:58

And he says to the Seer, what's going on?

Jim: 00:30:02

I can't?

Jim: 00:30:02

What?

Jim: 00:30:04

And the Seer said, come in, I'll, I'll explain.

Jim: 00:30:09

And he walks into the house, and there seated on the couch is the

Jim: 00:30:16

Seer's wife, and the Seer's daughter.

Jim: 00:30:20

And he looks at the Seer's daughter, and he recognizes the wife that he had had.

Jim: 00:30:30

And the Seer said, I knew that you were destined to become my

Jim: 00:30:37

son-in-law, but I had to make sure that you were a good person and

Jim: 00:30:41

that you would love your family.

Jim: 00:30:44

And so I see that you will.

Jim: 00:30:47

So please come have dinner with us.

Jim: 00:30:51

And that's the story of the Underground Forest.

Maria: 00:30:56

Oh my God, that's an epic journey, isn't it, Jim?

Maria: 00:30:59

Isn't it?

Maria: 00:31:00

Oh, I loved, I loved the drunken snake.

Jim: 00:31:08

It's especially fun to tell that to kids 'cause they just, yeah,

Jim: 00:31:11

they, they loved the drunken snake.

Maria: 00:31:14

But there were so many sumptuous beautiful images in that,

Maria: 00:31:19

you know, and then also visceral images that make made you recoil a bit.

Maria: 00:31:24

Like, you know, like when they were drinking the poison and they died.

Maria: 00:31:28

That was one where you're like, oh, you know.

Maria: 00:31:30

And then the jewel and, um, I could see it in my mind's eye.

Maria: 00:31:34

To me it was blue.

Maria: 00:31:36

I'm not sure what color your jewel was, but I, I often ask people

Maria: 00:31:40

afterwards, what color was your jewel?

Maria: 00:31:42

Or what did you see in your mind's eye?

Maria: 00:31:44

You know, so I saw many pictures and I absolutely loved that.

Maria: 00:31:51

And as he was going into the room and the Seer's daughter was there, I knew.

Maria: 00:31:58

I knew it was so satisfying.

Jim: 00:32:01

Yes, yes, yes.

Maria: 00:32:03

When you said that was the wife in, in his dream.

Maria: 00:32:07

Yeah.

Maria: 00:32:07

It was like he lived his life twice, wasn't it?

Maria: 00:32:09

Yes.

Jim: 00:32:09

Yeah.

Jim: 00:32:10

Yeah.

Maria: 00:32:10

I knew what was coming.

Maria: 00:32:11

Yeah.

Jim: 00:32:12

Yeah.

Maria: 00:32:12

You know?

Maria: 00:32:12

Yeah.

Maria: 00:32:13

Wouldn't that be lovely?

Maria: 00:32:14

I'd, I'd love to have that power, you know?

Jim: 00:32:19

Well, there's, you know, it's, it's interesting 'cause there are many stories.

Jim: 00:32:22

The Seer of Lublin was a real person.

Jim: 00:32:25

Mm-hmm.

Jim: 00:32:25

And, um, there are many stories about him wrestling with his foreknowledge.

Maria: 00:32:33

Yes.

Jim: 00:32:34

Be because he didn't wanna deprive people.

Jim: 00:32:39

It's,

Maria: 00:32:39

it's bright and shiny, but it's hard.

Jim: 00:32:40

Yeah,

Maria: 00:32:41

yeah.

Maria: 00:32:42

Yeah.

Jim: 00:32:43

Um, but even if it's bright and shiny, if I tell you your future,

Jim: 00:32:47

have I just taken away your free will?

Maria: 00:32:51

Yeah.

Jim: 00:32:51

Um, and, and that so that he would wrestle with it.

Jim: 00:32:54

That a lot.

Jim: 00:32:56

Yeah.

Jim: 00:32:56

Uh, yeah.

Maria: 00:32:57

Your chance to go another way to go down another path.

Jim: 00:32:59

Sure.

Maria: 00:33:00

You know?

Maria: 00:33:00

Sure.

Jim: 00:33:01

For

Maria: 00:33:01

sure.

Maria: 00:33:01

You know.

Maria: 00:33:02

Oh Jim, that was great.

Maria: 00:33:04

You know, so will we say goodbye for today?

Jim: 00:33:07

I think it's a good time to say goodbye.

Jim: 00:33:10

We'll, have our underground lives.

Jim: 00:33:12

Yeah.

Jim: 00:33:12

And, um, we'll, we'll see our, see each other in a couple weeks.

Maria: 00:33:17

Meet you again on the Story Road.

Maria: 00:33:22

Will we say goodbye from Cork?

Jim: 00:33:24

And goodbye from New York, but only for a while because we'll be

Jim: 00:33:28

back again with another episode.

Jim: 00:33:30

Absolutely.

Maria: 00:33:31

We can't wait to see you on the Story Road one more time, and from this

Maria: 00:33:36

time till that be safe on the Story Road.