The Miller and the Old Hag by G. C. McRae

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There was once a miller and his wife who had three sons. Day after day, the miller tried to get his sons to work in the mill with him. But try as he might, the boys wouldn’t do a thing to help him. So the miller had to do everything himself.

The truth was, the boys were very talented and slaving over grain and flour all day was like torture to them. The youngest of the boys wanted to be a musician, the middle boy a painter and the eldest dreamt of one day building bridges and cathedrals.

Their father too had once had such dreams. He had wanted to be a sculptor. But then he married and soon had children to feed. So he had gritted his teeth and taken over the mill when his own father died.

Now one day, the miller decided enough was enough. The boys were now strong young men and were complaining daily that there wasn’t enough to eat. If they didn’t work, he decided, they wouldn’t eat either. So he would sell the ox that turned his millstone, buy a larger stone and get his sons to turn it themselves.

But when his boys heard this idea, they were not very pleased with it and loudly said so. Back and forth they fought and argued while their mother crouched at the kitchen fire, asking the supper pot for the strength to keep quiet. But once they’d eaten and calmed themselves a bit, the boys tried to be reasonable and presented their own idea of what should be done.

“Father,” said the eldest son. “Do not buy this new millstone. Take the gold from selling the ox and let us become apprentices in our own trades.”

“Who should turn the millstone then?” said the father, “Me alone?”

The son answered, “I have found a stream deep in the ground below the millhouse. I know of a way to use the rushing water to run the mill for you.”

“What a foolish idea!” said the father. “And what will that teach you and your brothers? Nothing!”

“Father,” said second son. “We are all unhappy in this house. We three could become millers like you but it would cost us our dreams. Yet we cannot leave, for we have no means to support ourselves.”

“Then you must grit your teeth and accept your fate,” said the miller. “For I will not change my mind.”

Now the miller’s wife was a quiet woman, who listened day in and day out to the griping and complaining of her husband and sons. She had no daughters and no one ever thought to help her fetch water from the river or take up a cloth to dry the plates. But she never complained and tried her best to solve everyone else’s troubles. In all cases she listened carefully and always found a way to calm them. But this time, she could think of no solution. Night after night she lay awake with their voices ringing in her head. Surely, she thought, there must be way out of this.

Then the night before her husband was to take the ox to market she had an idea, though she didn’t know if she had the courage to carry it out. When the miller was gone, she called her three sons to her.

“We are all miserable,” she said. “You boys, your father; and I can’t stand to see any of you unhappy. I have a plan that could send you all off to your own trades. Now listen carefully.”

When she was done, the two youngest boys laughed at the idea, but the eldest shook his head.

“What is it?” asked the mother. “You don’t think it will work?”

“That’s not it,” said the eldest. “If your plan works, we will be the happiest men in the whole country. If it doesn’t we will be no better off than we are today.”

“Then what is it?”

“Mother,” he said, “You have your dreams too. Why should we and our father get everything and you nothing? Didn’t you always want to open a shop in the village to make fine hats and dresses?”

The mother considered for a moment. “My boys,” she said, “If I can make you and your father content, then I will be content. Don’t concern yourselves with me. It is your father you must worry about.”

On the highroad the following morning, the miller led his ox on the long trip to the village market. It was a hard thing he had to do, he knew. But he couldn’t feed his grown sons without a larger millstone. Getting them to turn it themselves after he sold his ox was going to be difficult.

There weren’t many people on the road this early in the day but the miller kept a sharp eye out for bandits. He passed a beggarman with a tattered blanket over his head limping along slowly with a crutch. The beggar asked him for a penny, but the miller had to tell him he had nothing in the world but the ox he was leading. A little farther on, he passed an old hag and then saw no one for a long while.

When he was no more than three or four miles from home the road turned into a dark wood. A few of his neighbours had been robbed here and the miller tightened his grip on the ox’s rope and quickened his pace. But he was only a stone’s throw into the wood when two men in masks jumped out. Though he put up a good fight, he made the mistake of keeping hold of the rope so as not to lose his ox and soon the men overpowered him. They hurried the ox away by its bridle and used the rope to tie him to a tree and it took a long time for him to get loose. By then there was no hope of catching the thieves.

What was he to do now? Without the ox to sell, he couldn’t afford a new millstone. His sons would have to turn the old one day after day, and after all their work, there wouldn’t be any more bread on the table for them. What kind of a father was he that he should treat his boys like this?

Broken in spirit, he made his way home, only to come upon the beggarman skipping down the road toward him. His limp was gone and so was the crutch he had been walking with.

“I’m cured! I’m cured!” the beggar was shouting. And off down the road he went, skipping like a child on the first day of spring.

A little closer to home, the miller found the old hag at the side of the road. She was dressed in rags, and her head and face were wrapped in a tattered old scarf. The beggarman’s crutch lay on the ground beside her.

“Help a poor old woman and she will help you,” she croaked.

“What is it you need?” asked the miller.

“I can solve the troubles of any man or child,” said the old hag. “But it costs me dearly to do it. I’ve made a lame man walk again, and yet now I cannot walk myself. Carry me to the crossroads and I may help you in your troubles.”

Despite seeing the skipping beggar with his own eyes, the miller thought the old woman was crazy, but he couldn’t say no to someone in need. And so he carried her to the crossroads.

Suddenly the old woman jumped from his back and began dancing around in the road. “Thank you! Thank you! Your gift has healed me!”

The miller thought this was all very strange.

“I must repay your kindness,” said the old hag. “Come here and let me look at you.”

When he came near, the old woman took hold of him by the scruff of the neck and looked up close at one of his eyes.

“I know just what you need,” she said. “Your trade is not your chosen one; but soon that will change.”

Then she pushed his head over and looked into his other eye. “Ah, your children are lazy; but soon they will work without you asking.”

Finally she looked at his worried brow and said, “You have had something stolen; but soon you will no longer need it.”

Then she let go of his neck and stepped back. “To have these things, what feeds you must feed me. Now go. Your kindness has been repaid.”

On his walk home, rubbing his neck, the miller didn’t know what to think of the words of the crazy old woman. But if she was right, he would be the happiest man alive.

When he got in the door of the millhouse, the first thing he heard was the sound of his mill at work. He blinked and stood dumbly in the doorway. There were two grindstones in the millhouse now. His old one standing on end by the door and a new one at work, turning apparently by itself, without ox or man.

What was all this? He called for his wife and sons to come and see, but they did not appear. He looked everywhere to try and figure out how the new millstone was being made to turn, but found nothing.

In a panic, he rushed out and hurried far down the road to where the old hag was just entering the dark wood. “What have you done? How is my millstone turning?”

The old woman smiled and reached into a bag at her side. “Take these,” she said, and handed him a mallet and a stone-carving chisel.

“What are these for?”

The old woman squinted up at him and said, “Those are to get your sons out of the stone. You wanted them to turn it. Now they are turning it.”

Horrified, the miller stared at the old hag in disbelief.

“If you choose,” she said, “you may let them grind your grain forever. That is what you wanted, isn’t it? But if you want them back, you must find them in the stone and free them with those tools.”

The miller searched for words. “But ... how do I bring them to life again?”

The old hag grinned and said, “This gift is to last seven years. I can solve the troubles of man or child, but it costs me dearly to do it. I have helped you to be fed. But now I cannot feed myself and will find no bread for these seven years. You must bring half the flour you grind every month and leave it at the crossroads for me. After seven years I will restore your sons to life, from whatever shape you have carved them.”

With that, the old hag went off into the wood leaving the miller staring at the tools in his hands.

When he returned home, he waited and waited for his wife and sons to return. At last, just before dark, his wife appeared, her coat and hair in disarray.

“Our boys have been taken by a witch!” she said as soon as she was in the door. “I’ve been searching for them all day!”

The miller was in terrible distress and had no idea what to do. He told her the whole story of the hag and the ox and the millstone. She cried bitter tears for the loss of their sons, but said she didn’t blame him for the bandits stealing the ox or for the old hag’s trickery.

The next day, the miller took the new stone from the mill and laid it up on his big workbench. When he put the old grinding stone back on the mill, it didn’t turn a bit.

“What am I to do?” he lamented.

Over the next several months, when his sons did not return, he came to believe the old hag and left half the grain he ground, by his own and his wife’s sweat, at the crossroads. It took a long time for him to gather enough courage to even look at the carving tools. But his wife saw him poking with his knife at chunks of turnip at the supper table. Or he would sit outside after a long day’s work whittling twigs or gouging shapes out of small blocks of wood. And she would smile to herself but say nothing.

After a year of practicing on wood he began bringing rocks home from the river and cutting crude faces into them. He had a natural talent for the work, but his heart sank whenever he thought of going near the millstone with a chisel.

Day in and day out he and his wife took turns pushing the old millstone around and around to grind the grain. Month in and month out he had no choice but to leave the old witch half of the flour they ground. His customers began asking about all the carvings he had laying about the yard and soon he had small commissions for stone steps and lintels. By the fourth year, he was asked to carve the saints for a new cathedral in a far city and with the money from that, he found he could spend less time on the mill work and more on his carving. But it wasn’t until the end of the fourth year that he thought to put a chisel to the stone that stood in his millhouse.

After three sleepless nights he finally sat up in bed and told his wife what was troubling him.

She said nothing for a long while, thinking of the differences between a man’s work and her own.

“Well,” she said at last. “Those boys were made once, and you didn’t care for the job I did. Now it’s your turn.”

The next day the miller walked around the millstone a hundred times without touching it. Many weeks he had spent drawing lines in chalk on it where he would begin to cut. But staring at them now, though he could find no fault with them, he kept turning away and turning away. Finally he worked up his courage and stood to face the millstone.

And he began.

Many a long day and sleepless night the miller’s tears wetted the hard stone. I have made a dozen saints, he kept thinking to himself, I should be able to do this. There were good days when a leg or arm would emerge from the millstone. But it was years since the miller had looked upon the faces of his sons. The work of carving their fair cheeks, their delicate ears and eyes took more pained hours of standing back and trying to recall than time spent removing chips of stone.

At last the day came when he was done all the carving, the smoothing and polishing. Three stone figures lay curled in a circle on his workbench. Perhaps, he thought, this was the best work any man had ever done. And when his wife came in to see his accomplishment, they wept in each other’s arms for gladness.

Not long after, the miller’s wife went off to the river for water and a knock came at the millhouse door. When the miller went to answer it, there stood the hag he had met on the highroad so many years before. She had grown fat on the miller’s flour and patted her belly.

“Well, miller,” she croaked. “It was a fair trade, I must say.”

Then she went to the mill, gathered her hands full of flour and began throwing it into the air all around the millhouse. When the cloud of dust settled, the stone figures were gone, and in their place were the miller’s three sons.

With a wild cackle, the old hag was gone out the door never to be seen again.

The father stood staring at his sons for a long while, his eyes brimming with tears, not knowing what to say. Then when the boy’s mother returned they hugged and kissed and cried over their reunion and their father, with a warm embrace, welcomed them home.

And so with a sculptor father that was earning a far better wage than any miller, the youngest son became a musician, the second son a painter and the eldest son learned the trade of a builder. Though the father told the story a thousand times to neighbours and customers and anyone else that would listen, his wife never told him what had really happened.

Years later she went down to the river one day and came across the three stone figures buried in the bank. The memories they called up brought tears to her eyes. She bent and began to uncover the face of one of them with her hands, smiling with pride at her husband’s work and knowing that her sons were now happy in their new lives.

Just as she was about to bury the figures again she was startled by an old man who had come up behind her. She stood and saw he was dressed in rags and his face was covered. In a creaky voice, he said, “I must repay your kindness. I know just what you need. Your trade is not your chosen one...”

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G. C. McRae has been writing fiction and poetry since he was knee high to a cliché. Born in Edmonton, he is one of the Founding Fathers of The Raving Poets (www.ravingpoets.com), is working on a second novel, recording a kid’s poetry & music CD and is rapidly turning his opera-singing girlfriend into the MIDI-widow. “The Miller and the Old Hag” is one of a series of G.C.’s literary fairy tales, written to show that intricate or novel concepts are often best expressed in simple, familiar terms.