Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Heart of the Matter - "Mother's Heart"

Herewith follows a very old Armenian story from Marash, Ottoman Empire, apocryphal, one would hope; a tale which was retold to Marash Girl by her dad many years ago.

A young man was very much in love with a young woman, and married her, the love of his life.  The only problem was that the love of his life, his wife, did not love his mother.  In fact she hated his mother.  And so the young man's wife said to the young man, "If you really love me, you must prove it."  "How shall I prove it?" asked the young man.  "You must bring me your mother's heart on a platter. When you do that, I will know that I am the only love in your life," answered his wife.  "But how can I do that?" asked the young man.  "If you do not, I will know that you do not love me fully, and I will leave you," answered his wife.  The young man, so in love was he, that he followed his wife's orders and went to fetch his mother's heart.  (The gory details were left out of the retelling.)  As he was returning home to present his wife with his mother's heart, he tripped and fell and dropped his mother's heart onto the ground, at which point, his mother's heart called out to him, "Are you hurt, my son?"

2 comments:

  1. without such love, the human race could never have survived the virus of its own self-destruction injected to it at the Fall.

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  2. It's an old Armenian story called "Mother's Heart"...

    ReplyDelete