The Scarlet-Tufted Woodpecker — A Legend

1874

Tap, tap, tap!

What a busy little creature, the brown birdie with, a scarlet crown! See her running up the trunk of the large elm by our door, striking the rough, bark with her long beak — tap, tap, tap! — stopping a moment, her pretty head held sideways as if listening, then hopping so fast half around the tree, and tapping again, with now and then a blithe chirp. Pretty, useful little woodpecker! While she gets her daily food she is keeping, tiny as she is the great elm sound and fair. Well may we love the birdies, one and all, for their beauty and song and the many sweet lessons they bring us, as they wing their way from bough to bough, seek their daily bread and nurse their tiny broods in wind-rocked cradles — lessons of love and kindness and industry and trust in a Father's care.

There is a northern legend of the woodpecker that, though it is hardly fair toward the bird, is yet a pretty story. It runs in this way:

Long ago, when St. Peter was traveling about and teaching the people, he was poor, and often went hungry. One morning at sunrise he came to a cottage where a woman in a brown dress and scarlet cape was making cakes. He asked her for a single one, and at first she said yes, and rolled out a small cake. She put it down to bake, but kept looking at it, and soon concluded it was more than she wanted to give. So she kneaded out another, a smaller one; but when it was baking, that, too, seemed large to her. All this time Peter was waiting quietly, patiently, though faint with hunger. She took the tiny bits of dough, put them together and rolled out a tiny cake, thin as a wafer; but when it was baked, she wanted even that.

"My cakes seem small when I eat them myself," said she, "but they are too large to give away, for all that." So she put even the wafer-like cake on the shelf.

Then Peter made indignant answer: "Thou art far too selfish, too mean, to wear a human form, to have a home to shelter thee, clothes and food and fire. Thou shalt live hereafter as the birds do, build in the trees, and get thy living by constant labor, boring, boring, all day in hard, dry wood."

Then up through the chimney went she without a word. Out from the top flew a woodpecker. The little scarlet cap was still on her head, and her dress, changed to feathers, was covered with soot. And from that day to this — so runs the legend — she has been in the wood tapping trees for a scanty living, and every child knows her sooty dress and scarlet hood.

Now, though it is only a legend, and the woodpecker is as good as she is pretty, it will be worth something to us, when we see her, to remember that story, if it lead us to shun every form of selfishness, and pity and help the needy as far as in our power.

You may not be changed to a bird, though you live as selfishly as you can, but you will be changed to a smaller thing, a mean and selfish man. — Children's Hour.