Atondido Stories
The Story of a Clinging Vine
There was once a woman named Katcha who lived in a village
where she owned her own cottage and garden. She had money
besides but little good it did her because she was such an ill-
tempered vixen that nobody, not even the poorest laborer,
would marry her. Nobody would even work for her, no matter
what she paid, for she couldn’t open her mouth without scold-
ing, and whenever she scolded she raised her shrill voice until
you could hear it a mile away. The older she grew the worse she
became until by the time she was forty she was as sour as vine-
gar.
Now as it always happens in a village, every Sunday after-
noon there was a dance either at the burgomaster’s, or at the tav-
ern. As soon as the bagpipes sounded, the boys all crowded into
the room and the girls gathered outside and looked in the win-
dows. Katcha was always the first at the window. The music
would strike up and the boys would beckon the girls to come in
and dance, but no one ever beckoned Katcha. Even when she
paid the piper no one ever asked her to dance. Yet she came Sun-
day after Sunday just the same.
One Sunday afternoon as she was hurrying to the tavern she
thought to herself: “Here I am getting old and yet I’ve never
once danced with a boy! Plague take it, today I’d dance with the
devil if he asked me!”
She was in a fine rage by the time she reached the tavern,
where she sat down near the stove and looked around to see
what girls the boys had invited to dance.
Suddenly a stranger in hunter’s green came in. He sat down
at a table near Katcha and ordered drink. When the serving
maid brought the beer, he reached over to Katcha and asked her
to drink with him. At first she was much taken back at this
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