May 2, 2011: dandle \ DAN-dl \ verb;

1. To move (a baby, child, etc.) lightly up and down, as on one’s knee or in one’s arms.

All she had wanted was a babe to dandle on her knee, someone to bundle up in blankets and coo at, and love. That was all she had asked for, but as someone always does in these tales, her husband had warned her to be careful what she wished for. And he had been right.

But what more could she rightly expect, when the one she had asked had been a witch?

“Go out into the woods each day, and bring me a twig from a different tree,” the young girl had said, gazing at her with sightless eyes. “Bring me alder to make him strong. Bring me ash to make him wise, and willow to help his little mind thrive. Bring me oak for nobility, and hazel for honesty. And bring me rowan, to protect him from harm. Bring me one each day, and in six you shall have your babe.”

And so she had gone out into the wood and collected one twig each day, to make her baby and make him strong and wise and noble and honest. She had brought them all to the witch and the girl had cut strands from her hair to bind them together and when she was done, she had formed a crude doll out of sticks.

“Do you truly want a babe to dandle on your knee, someone to bundle up in blankets and coo at, and love?” the witch had asked her, and so she nodded as fiercely as she could and proclaimed “YES!” just as fiercely.

“Then take this babe, and love him, and he shall be yours,” the witch had said, and she pressed the bundle of sticks and hair into her arms with a smile.

The witch would say no more, so all she could do was to press her money into the girl’s hand and take the bundle of sticks home to her husband.

But when she arrived home, her husband was not pleased.

“And what is that?” her husband had asked, all hard-eyed and frowning.

“This is to be our babe,” she had said fiercely, not daring to let herself feel foolish for saying it.

“What? That bundle of sticks? That’s not a babe!” Her husband snorted at her, and it cut right to her poor, desperate heart.

“If I dandle him, and bundle him in blankets, and love him, he will be mine.”

So she bundled him in blankets, and she cooed at him as if he were a real babe, and not a bundle of sticks, and she tried very hard to love him.

But as time passed, and the villagers whispered about the poor woman and the bundle of sticks she carried everywhere, and bundled in blankets, and dandled on her knee, it became harder and harder to try.

She would visit the witch again, from time to time, but the witch would only ask her “do you love him?” And the woman would leave, because she couldn’t quite bear to love a bundle of sticks, but she knew that to say no would not give her the answer she wanted.

Soon even her husband began to tease her, because he couldn’t stand the whispers and sidelong glances any longer, and the woman became less and less sure that if she could just find a way to love the bundle of sticks, it would be her babe.

“It’s just a bundle of sticks!” he would yell when she sat by the fire with it.

“No, it is my babe,” she would reply, but each time she sounded a little less certain.

Finally, one day, when months had passed and she felt sure that this bundle of sticks was just that, and that the witch had played a horrible, cruel joke on her, and she could take the whispers and stares no more, she stood and cried out, and cast the bundle of sticks into the fire.

And when she did, the sticks burned.

Because they were sticks.

The next day, she went to see the witch, but the girl had moved onto the next town where women had a poor understanding of human reproduction and were silly enough to believe that babies were made out of sticks and consequently paid quite a lot of money for kindling.

The end.

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