Mother Holle

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a snow-falling chamber, celesta and strings, soft and moral)

[Verse 1]
I dropped the spindle down the well and my stepmother said "go get it,"
so I leapt in the dark after what I'd lost — the world will make you regret it,
or reward it. I fell through the water and landed in a meadow of light,
where a baker's oven cried "pull us out! we're done, we're burning bright!"

[Chorus]
So I did the work that was in front of me — the bread, the apple tree,
and I came to old Mother Holle who said, "shake my featherbeds for me;
when the down flies up, it snows on the world" — so I shook them, day on day,
and the effort you pour where no one sees is the effort that finds its pay.

[Verse 2]
When the homesick ache grew too big to hold, she led me to a gate,
and a shower of gold came raining down and gilded me head to foot with fate.
My stepsister, greedy, jumped in next, but she let the bread all char,
left the apples to rot and the beds unshook — she wanted the gold, not the far.

[Bridge]
(the celesta chimes cold)
So the gate that gilded me poured for her a bucket of black pitch instead —
the reward you get is the shape of the work, not the wish inside your head.

[Outro]
It snows in the world when Mother Holle shakes her beds up above...
and the gold goes to the hands that labor, and never to the hands that shove.