Little White-Thorn and the Talking Bird
“Little White-Thorn and the Talking Bird,” from Celtic Tales (Chronicle Books). Also from Folk Tales of Brittany by Elsie Masson. Read online.
Image from Folk Tales of Brittany by Elsie Masson.
If “The Kildore Pooka” is a story about sloth, this is a story about greed, so we seem to be making our way through the seven deadly sins.
White-Thorn and her widowed mother are shuffled off to a ramshackle cottage after the death of her wealthy grandfather. The mother’s greedy brothers take everything and leave their sister and her child to fend for themselves and half starve. Little White-Thorn is not fated to die a pauper, though. She meets and enchanted bird, is gifted with an enchanted cow, and through the machinations of the bird and the cow, she and her mother are restored to their rightful inheritance while the greedy uncles face their punishment.
It’s a lovely tale to offer a little hope to the downtrodden, and White-Thorn does sound a lot like another variation on Snow White--there’s no prince and no dwarf, but there is an innocent girl who has an affinity for animals and who is protected by them because of her kindness and her interest in the natural world.
