A Legend of The Northland Summary Class 9 English – This post gives an explanation about the meaning of the poem. This is a ballad poem which means it narrates a story in short paragraphs. Also, in a ballad, all the paragraph contains four lines. And in total it has 16 stanzas that tell us a story. They are part of the folk culture or popular culture that orally passed from one generation to the next.
However, folk culture is stories of an area that we know as a ballad. Besides, this is the story of the Northern area, which is near the North Pole. The poet doesn’t specify the exact place. But ‘Northland’ means the area in the northernmost part of the earth i.e., near the North Pole. Further, ‘legend’ refers to a historical story that is very old and has been orally passed from generation to generation. It is also available in pdf format.
Read more: The Road Not Taken – Summary Class 9 English
Table of Contents
A legend of the northland summary
The Northland
The Northland is an area near the North Pole where days are short because the sun’s rays reach for very little time. Here, during the winter, the duration of the night is longer and days are shorter. The word ‘they’ in line 4 refers to the people who live in this region. Also, the poet says that the duration of nights is long and people can’t sleep them through. The poet wants to emphasize the fact that the nights are very long.
Description of the region
The region experiences severe cold conditions as it is a snowy area. Moreover, reindeers are the animals that live in the polar region, which the people use to pull their sleds. Also, the poet says that children look like polar bear cubs as they wear clothes made from the fur of the skin of the bear. Inline 1 of the 3rd para, ‘they’ refers to the elders and ‘them’ refers to the children. In addition, the elders tell a strange and interesting story about the young ones. However, the poet does not believe that the story is true, still, it gives an important message.
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Saint Peter
This ballad refers to the time when Saint Peter lives in the world and went around, giving spiritual lectures to the people like all saints do, and then one day an incident happened. While giving lectures, one day he reached the door of a cottage where a small woman was making cakes in the fireplace. Saint Peter was very hungry that day, as he hasn’t had a meal and was feeling weak. So, he approaches the women and asks for one cake out of the many baked by her.
The selfish woman
The women were selfish and she did not give him a cake from the store. In its place, she makes a very small cake for Saint Peter. She does not want to share her things. However, when she places the cake for baking she thought that it’s too big to give away. The miser women then again started making a smaller cake. She did this three-time but didn’t give any cake to Saint Peter. She reason that when she ate them they felt small. But when she had to give them they felt too big to give to someone. And finally, she put all the cakes on her kitchen shelf and didn’t give any cake to the saint.
The curse
Saint Peter get angry and cursed her because he was very hungry and felt very weak. Saint said to her that you are selfish and did not deserve to live as a human being. He further adds that God has given her food, shelter, and fire to keep her warm but she became selfish and greedy. Hence the women became a bird who had to build their houses by boring into the wood and collect very little food by working the entire day.
When Saint Peter cursed her she became a bird and flew through the chimney. When she flew the bird has a red cap on her head dame as the women wear. Moreover, when people in the countryside and children see this kind of bird their elder tells them this story of a bird.
A legend of the northland summary (200 words)
The poem is a legend about an old lady who angered Saint Peter because of her greed. The story goes’ on like this. In Northland lived a lady who was very selfish and greedy. Saint Peter while preaching the world reached her door one day. She was making cakes and baking them on a hearth. St. Peter was fainting with hunger. He asked the lady to give him a piece of cake.
The cake that she was baking then appeared to be too big so she did not give him a piece from that and baked another small one. That also appeared to be big so she did not give him that also. Now she took an extremely little scrap of dough and rolled it flat. She had it as thin as a wafer but was unable to part with that also. This angered St. Peter a lot. He said that she was not fit to live in human form and enjoy food and warmth. He cursed her and transformed her into a woodpecker who has to bore in hard and dry wood to get its scanty food. She can be seen in the trees all day boring and boring for food.
Conclusion – a legend of the northland summary
A Legend of The Northland Summary Class 9 English – This post has given an explanation about the meaning of the poem and helps us understand the qualities and weather of the North Pole. It also talks about Saint Peter and his activities. It is also available in pdf format.
