The Mare’s Egg

As your Halloween pumpkins begin to decay, see if you can find a copy of a colourful storybook called The Mare’s Egg. While growing up, my children listened to me read it every fall. The illustrations, by Kim La Fave, are worthy of being animated. The gullible, lovable hero of the story is reminiscent of Ichabod Crane in the animated version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, as are some of the spooky forest scenes. Every page of this book is bathed in a golden glow.

I love Carole Spray’s retelling of this new world folk tale, published in 1981. In the story, a very gullible young pioneer, who wants a horse, is tricked into buying a pumpkin from a mischievous farmer, who tells him it is a mare’s egg. For weeks, the pioneer sits on his egg, anxiously waiting for his colt to hatch. The story moves from this point to an utterly absurd and entertaining ending. I won’t spoil it for you, because I hope you find the book at your local second-hand bookstore, your library, or online. Children, as young as four years of age, can relate to the humour of the situation, but older children and adults will enjoy it too.

Reading this story makes me admire my own ancestors for the pioneering adventures they lived. They made decisions every day that determined survival. In my copy of The Mare’s Egg, the afterward contains a wealth of information about the experiences of our pioneering ancestors. It is easy to understand that gullibility might have grown from a desperate need to find solutions to so many problems. Today, as winter sweeps over our prairies, I wonder how I would have taken to sleeping in a sod house. Maybe someone unscrupulous could have sold me a fanciful invention to keep me warm.

If I had pioneered in 1911, like my grandmother did, it would have been because my entrepreneurial husband thought we could have a better life here in Canada, owning land, than we could have, renting land, back home. My husband, the boy in the Get a Bigger Wagon books, has often told me that if something seems too good to be true — it is, and that hard work is the quickest way to get the job done. He would have ensured that no one took advantage of us. Having the right partner would have made the pioneering experience better.

On the other hand, I realize that some of my favourite people are the most gullible. They are the trusting, loving ones I hang out with when I am tired of the rat race. Speaking of rats, I am posting another blog very soon. I will share a story about the boy’s adventures in the nickel mines of northern Manitoba. He was a bit naive at the time and as lanky as Ichabod Crane. He learned the hard way about stope rats. As he says, “When men are bored, someone usually gets the worst of it.”

If you find The Mare’s Egg, online or in a little shop somewhere, please share your sources with me.