Prince Jackalope
Feb. 14th, 2025 04:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootI must have posted this here before, but I can't find it. So here it is, to cheer myself up in the dark of the year.
Here is a story out of the Old Country. It is not for just dashing past when you have lots to see and do, no; sit yourself down with pipe or soup or drink that warms the cockles, and give yourself a moment to enjoy for we are in the Wintertime Dark and need our comfort. Here then is a story of Prince Jackalope, Lord of all Hares, who also bears antlers upon his head and this is how you know him when you see him.
Now it came to pass that an old widow woman's daughter was very ill, and there seemed no cure for her. So the woman went out on a night deep in ice, and called to the woods that Prince Jackalope might hear her. She told him of her sorrow and left him his favourite drink, a boon of whisky, asking in return for the most magical thing the Lord of Hares and Rabbits has at his command; jackalope milk which is said to cure all sickness.
Out of the bare boned woods came the answer clear as a bell; that she should hurry home and not look back, and after snowfall sweep well around her cottage door.
She did as she was told, and just in time too, for the tempest came raging like the fever across her child's brow. By daybreak snow was piled up all around the widow woman's house. You can be sure she swept it away swiftly, only to find tucked against her step, a sparkling phial of starlight-tinted liquid with a rowan berry in it. This she took to her daughter, who drank it up, berry and all. And by the time the sun was high above the trees, the little one was well, laughing and smiling as though she had never known a day's sickness.
The widow wanted to find a way to express her gratitude, but how? For many of the hidden folk cannot bear to be thanked. So instead, she left him a little gift of whisky every day, and long she lived to see her girl, Isobel, grow into a fine young woman, strong and clever and beautiful.
Isobel heard tales of Prince Jackalope all her life, and grew up with a great interest in magic. After her mother's death, her head was full of the wondrous things she might do, if only she could cast spells! Endlessly she tried to coax him into meeting but the Lord of Hares never answered her call, not even for whisky. Angered at his silence, she joined a coven mighty in secrets, to serve a master who promised her power in return for her soul. Gladly she agreed, but she already had ideas about whose soul she could feed him rather than her own.
When Isobel's power had grown and she was Queen of all the Witches, when she had gold and silver and a fine farm and a grand house and many rich men laying their fortunes at the feet of her beauty, she felt the tingling air of winter close by, the growing pangs of her master's hunger, just before All Hallow's Eve. It seemed to her that little time was hers before she must needs fulfil her promise. So she laid a trap for the Prince of Hares, calling for him to aid her in the name of his old friend, her mother, the Widow Gowdie.
And it almost worked.
He slipped through the snare, though his foot bled some, yet he ran as he sang:
'Oh I shall go out in the shape of a hare,
with sorrow and sighing and mickle care!
For here you come in the Devil's Name,
But ne'er shall I be fetchèd hame.'
But Isobel changed her shape to pursue him singing:
'Prince, take heed of a bitch greyhound
Who will harry thee well all these fells around
For here come I in the Devil's Name
All but for to fetch thee hame!'
The greyhound chased the hare across the frost lands from here to the moon, singing, always singing. At the river's edge, (you see the cold water below there, black and narrow but deep!) Prince Jackalope turned himself into a trout, only to see Isobel close behind him in the form of an otter. Leaping out of the water as a frog, he caught sight of her behind him, following as the great grey heron. Seeing a house he knew ahead, he shrank to the form of a tiny beetle and scurried towards it. Isobel laughed, and swiftly became a sharp-eyed mouse, that she might not lose sight of him. The house, she noted was full of light and warmth and smelled of grain. Easily she scuttled under the door, singing
'Yes I shall go into a mouse
For my prize awaits in the miller’s house,
There indeed shall I have good game
And thou, my prince, be fetchèd hame.'
But oh! When inside, where were the lights, the warmth, the grain? All was empty and rotted and dark, a cottage she should have recognised though abandoned... Or almost abandoned. Before she could think, a piercing pain crunched through her back and seized around her limbs!
From just outside the door, she heard the last verse:
'Mouse, take heed of the old stray cat
That never was baulked of mouse or rat,
For she'll crack thy bones in the Devil's name:
Thus shalt thou be fetchèd hame.'
There sat Grimalkin chewing, and there lay Isobel, feeding cat and the devil himself at last.
But Prince Jackalope ran away from the Widow Gowdie's house into the frosty track, towards a tiny bright light on the horizon, the house of the New Born Sun; and there he resides till the Maiden's time, when he returns again to dance in the fields.
Here is a story out of the Old Country. It is not for just dashing past when you have lots to see and do, no; sit yourself down with pipe or soup or drink that warms the cockles, and give yourself a moment to enjoy for we are in the Wintertime Dark and need our comfort. Here then is a story of Prince Jackalope, Lord of all Hares, who also bears antlers upon his head and this is how you know him when you see him.
Now it came to pass that an old widow woman's daughter was very ill, and there seemed no cure for her. So the woman went out on a night deep in ice, and called to the woods that Prince Jackalope might hear her. She told him of her sorrow and left him his favourite drink, a boon of whisky, asking in return for the most magical thing the Lord of Hares and Rabbits has at his command; jackalope milk which is said to cure all sickness.
Out of the bare boned woods came the answer clear as a bell; that she should hurry home and not look back, and after snowfall sweep well around her cottage door.
She did as she was told, and just in time too, for the tempest came raging like the fever across her child's brow. By daybreak snow was piled up all around the widow woman's house. You can be sure she swept it away swiftly, only to find tucked against her step, a sparkling phial of starlight-tinted liquid with a rowan berry in it. This she took to her daughter, who drank it up, berry and all. And by the time the sun was high above the trees, the little one was well, laughing and smiling as though she had never known a day's sickness.
The widow wanted to find a way to express her gratitude, but how? For many of the hidden folk cannot bear to be thanked. So instead, she left him a little gift of whisky every day, and long she lived to see her girl, Isobel, grow into a fine young woman, strong and clever and beautiful.
Isobel heard tales of Prince Jackalope all her life, and grew up with a great interest in magic. After her mother's death, her head was full of the wondrous things she might do, if only she could cast spells! Endlessly she tried to coax him into meeting but the Lord of Hares never answered her call, not even for whisky. Angered at his silence, she joined a coven mighty in secrets, to serve a master who promised her power in return for her soul. Gladly she agreed, but she already had ideas about whose soul she could feed him rather than her own.
When Isobel's power had grown and she was Queen of all the Witches, when she had gold and silver and a fine farm and a grand house and many rich men laying their fortunes at the feet of her beauty, she felt the tingling air of winter close by, the growing pangs of her master's hunger, just before All Hallow's Eve. It seemed to her that little time was hers before she must needs fulfil her promise. So she laid a trap for the Prince of Hares, calling for him to aid her in the name of his old friend, her mother, the Widow Gowdie.
And it almost worked.
He slipped through the snare, though his foot bled some, yet he ran as he sang:
'Oh I shall go out in the shape of a hare,
with sorrow and sighing and mickle care!
For here you come in the Devil's Name,
But ne'er shall I be fetchèd hame.'
But Isobel changed her shape to pursue him singing:
'Prince, take heed of a bitch greyhound
Who will harry thee well all these fells around
For here come I in the Devil's Name
All but for to fetch thee hame!'
The greyhound chased the hare across the frost lands from here to the moon, singing, always singing. At the river's edge, (you see the cold water below there, black and narrow but deep!) Prince Jackalope turned himself into a trout, only to see Isobel close behind him in the form of an otter. Leaping out of the water as a frog, he caught sight of her behind him, following as the great grey heron. Seeing a house he knew ahead, he shrank to the form of a tiny beetle and scurried towards it. Isobel laughed, and swiftly became a sharp-eyed mouse, that she might not lose sight of him. The house, she noted was full of light and warmth and smelled of grain. Easily she scuttled under the door, singing
'Yes I shall go into a mouse
For my prize awaits in the miller’s house,
There indeed shall I have good game
And thou, my prince, be fetchèd hame.'
But oh! When inside, where were the lights, the warmth, the grain? All was empty and rotted and dark, a cottage she should have recognised though abandoned... Or almost abandoned. Before she could think, a piercing pain crunched through her back and seized around her limbs!
From just outside the door, she heard the last verse:
'Mouse, take heed of the old stray cat
That never was baulked of mouse or rat,
For she'll crack thy bones in the Devil's name:
Thus shalt thou be fetchèd hame.'
There sat Grimalkin chewing, and there lay Isobel, feeding cat and the devil himself at last.
But Prince Jackalope ran away from the Widow Gowdie's house into the frosty track, towards a tiny bright light on the horizon, the house of the New Born Sun; and there he resides till the Maiden's time, when he returns again to dance in the fields.
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no subject
Date: 2025-02-14 04:05 pm (UTC)Is this your story? I know it is your telling, but did you come up with the plot, too?
Spectacular!
You are so talented!!!
no subject
Date: 2025-02-14 05:12 pm (UTC)Prince Jackalope with his taste for whisky is a fairy-touched adaptation of the jackalope myth of North America. Jackalope milk was cited as a cure for all ills!
Isobel Gowdie was a real 17th century Scottish woman accused of being a witch. She didn't just confess, she gave them detailed tales of being the devil's mistress and a witch queen. One of the things she mentioned was a shape-changing charm which went like this:
I shall go into a hare
With sorrow and such and meikle care
And I shall go in the Devils name
Ay while I come home again.
So I built the poem from that.
There is also an old Welsh legend of a goddess/witch called Ceridwen who sets a mortal boy, Gwion Bach, to stir her cauldron continuously. But some drops of the brew land on Gwion Bach who instantly becomes magical. She hunts him down, both changing shape several times in the chase. Gwion gets to the mill and changes himself into a grain of corn but then Ceridwen becomes a hen and gobbles him up!