The Bone Woman
There was a young girl who married an
old, old man who treated her badly. He
worked her hard, beat her, starved her, and cast her off when she gave him no
children, leaving her in the desert with no food, or water, or shelter. The young wife hid in the meagre shade of
rocks by day when the sun was fierce. By
night she walked, crying for she could not find her way home. The nights were cold. Wolves prowled the hills and vultures flew
above her head. She was hungry, thirsty,
weary and she walked till she could go no further. Lying down, she wrapped herself in a long
white skirt. She said “Let the Bone
Woman take me, for I am spent”, and she died.
Wild animals ate her flesh. Her
spirit watched over the white bones and knew neither sorrow nor fear.
The bones lay in that secret place
until the moon was full once more. Then
the Bone Woman came and put them all in her woven sack. The old woman took the bones up to her cave
high in the mountaintop, then laid them out beside the fire. She sat and smoked. She smoked and thought. She smoked and thought for a long, long
time. Then she began to sing. “Flesh to bone! Flesh to bone! Flesh to bone!”. The Bone Woman sang and before long the bones
began to knit themselves together, covered in flesh. Where the girl had once been red and rough,
now she was soft and smooth. Her skin
was as gold as daylight and her hair as black as night. The Bone Woman sang and sang. She blew a puff of tobacco smoke. The young woman’s eyes flew open and she sat
up and looked around her.
The cave was empty. The ashes were cold. The old Bone Woman had disappeared. All that was left were tobacco seeds, and she
put them in her pocket. She left the
cave and started for home, following the rising sun. She knew she would find her village walking
this way and so she did. She came upon
her dwelling at last. The place was dark
and deserted now. “That old man has
died, that poor wife has died. Come away
from that place,” the people said, for they didn’t recognise the lovely young
woman who came to them out of the west.
They gave her a name, a fine set of clothes, a new dwelling place, a
goat, and a hen. They taught her human
speech, for she had forgotten all that she knew. She planted the Bone Woman’s seeds and tended
the new plants carefully. In time she
married and gave her young husband many gold-skinned daughters and black haired
sons, and her children’s children’s children still grow tobacco in that village
today.
Notes
I discovered this story within
a newspaper article concerning rites of passage. The author refers to it as a story from the
mountains of northern Mexico. I couldn’t
find any other references to it - I call it The Bone Woman.
The bone people from the old
Spanish land-grant farms and the Pueblos are said to bring the dead back to
life. There are stories of an old woman
whose sole purpose is that of collecting bones.
The woman is referred to by many names: La Huesera (Bone Woman), La Trapera (the Gatherer) and La Loba (Wolf Woman). La
Loba is said to have principally collected wolf bones, which she would take
back to her cave and sing to create their flesh. The wolf would then run out of the cave and
in doing so transform into a laughing woman!
This story speaks to me of
rites of passage and transformation – shedding flesh to get closer to our inner
world. Anthony Stevens (1990) writes
that ‘[t]ransition from one quarter to the next is a time of potential crisis
for everyone’. He continues to say that
each passage is a separation from previous circumstances and a rebirth to the
new. Primitive societies developed
rituals to help individuals through these transitions and powerful symbolism of
these ensured that archetypal needs for that particular stage in the
individual’s development were met.
I have mainly used this
story in training settings, however I think it provides an opportunity to
explore thresholds and those less predictable transitions.
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