In my last post I described a dream I had recently where someone who had harmed me through my childhood appeared large and angry but I was able to tell him how the dead have no hold upon the living. I had those words from a story I learned from the telling of Clarissa Pinkola Estés and I want to share it with you.

**

There was once a bride groom who was travelling with his friends to the next village to be married. As the day was drawing to a close they made camp under a big tree by the river just outside his wife’s village. They built a fire to heat the stew they had brought with them, the bridegrooms friends brought out the wine and with singing music and laughter they set about helping him enjoy the last night of his single life.

By the early hours of the morning the singing had become extremely raucous and the group were extremely merry. The bride groom tugged on the arm of his comrade and pointed at one of the twisted roots of the tree.

“What say you, does that not look like a finger.”

Gales of laughter greeted his remark and the whole company gathered round.

“Well that’s what we’re here for isn’t it?” one of his friends joked “Get the ring on a finger and have done!”

Amid more laughter the bridegroom pulled from his pocket the gold ring he had brought for his wife and dropped it over the protruding route.

“Might as well do the thing properly.” someone yelled.

And laughing along with them the Bridegroom spoke the wedding vow that he had learned so carefully to say to his bride and encouraged by the cheers and guffaws he danced the wedding dance three times around the root which looked so like a bony finger with the ring encircling it. In fact had it twitched?

Yes, the whole crowd started back in horror as the soil cracked around the finger and out from the ground burst the Corpse Bride. She was truly a horrific sight. Her flesh was rotten and maggot eaten so that in place it had dropped off all together. Her hair and veil where entangled and filled with worms and beetles and the stained and tattered remains of her dress hung from her. One of her eyes was entirely gone and maggots crawled in the other yet with terrible purpose she strode forward and her skeletal mouth opened to rasp her words.

“I demand my wedding night!”

The bridegroom and his friends turned screaming and ran for all they were worth for the safety of the village. There despite the early hour the bridegroom banged frantically on the Rabbi’s door.

It was opened quickly as the Rabbi had started early to have his other tasks done in preparation for the wedding. Seeing the bridegroom and his friends he gestured them in with a welcoming smile.

“What can I do for you this morning my sons?”

The bridegrooms friends all glanced at him before looking firmly at their toes and he swallowed hard.

“Well the thing is Rabbi…” he began awkwardly. “We were having a discussion this morning….”

“Yes my son?”

“Well we were wondering… Wondering about the law and marriage and how, well if, suppose if, someone were to put a wedding ring on a tree root, and say the wedding vow then dance the wedding dance and then that root were somehow to turn out to be a finger… er Rabbi would that constitute a legal marriage?”

The Rabbi looked at him closely noting his rapid breathing and wide eyes.

“An interesting set of circumstances. This was an intellectual discussion you were having?”

“Er yes Rabbi, we were just talking and I’m asking for a friend really…”

At that moment the Rabbi’s door crashed open framing the Corpse Bride her tattered gown trailing behind her still rasping,

“I demand my wedding night.”

“Ah,” said the Rabbi turning his head to address the bridegroom and his friends who were suddenly cowering behind him. “Can I assume that this is the friend on whose behalf you are enquiring?”

The bridegroom hung his head and nodded.

“I’m so sorry Rabbi.”

“There is no need to be sorry to me my son. However this is certainly a complex situation and too much for one Rabbi to figure out alone. I must ask you Miss and you young Sir’s to wait on my porch while I send for other Rabbis to take counsel.”

So the bridegroom and his friends huddled at one end of the open porch and the Corpse Bride staggered and rocked at the other as the sun came up and the council of Rabbis assembled. They made a remarkable sight and it wasn’t long before news got around and the bridegrooms betrothed came rushing to the Rabbi’s house to see if it was true. At the sight of the Corpse Bride she turned on him angrily.

“What have you done? How could you? All our hopes and all our dreams, how could you?”

She burst into gut wrenching sobs and the bridegroom could only pat her arm and repeat over and over,

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry.”

Gradually her sobs quieted and they sat together in blank silence as the Corpse Bride shuffled and muttered and the sun climbed higher in the sky and still the Rabbi’s debated.

At one point one of them stuck his head out of the door and asked the bridegroom.

“When you spoke the wedding vow did you do so correctly and in it’s entirety?”

and under the hopeful gaze of his Betrothed the bridegroom hung his head and replied,

“Yes Rabbi I did.”

The Rabbi shook his head and went back inside.

Sometime later another Rabbi leant out of the door and asked,

“The dance you did, was it definitely the wedding dance and did you complete the full three circuits?”

and with his Betrothed gripping his hand the bride groom was forced to reply

“Yes it was and I did.”

The Rabbi shook his head sadly and went back inside and his Betrothed began to cry again in a quiet hopeless way until the third Rabbi opened the door and asked

“The ring, was it pure gold.”

and the bridegroom bowed his head in grief and facing his Betrothed admitted

“It was, it was the one I had chosen for my wife.”

and the Rabbi went back inside and they waited again until the sun was just past it’s highest point when all the Rabbis stepped out onto the porch. Everyone stared at them desperately as the village Rabbi stepped forward.

“It has been a hard decision.” he said sternly “But we are agreed that in a situation where someone has placed a golden ring onto a finger and that man has freely chosen to speak the wedding vow correctly and in it’s entirety and that person has also gone on to dance the wedding dance the the whole three times round. In that situation…”

Both the Corpse Bride and the Betrothed stood on tip toe. One in hope the other in despair. The bridegroom held his breath.

“Even in that situation” the Rabbi continued “The dead can have no hold upon the living.”

The bridegroom let out his breath as his Betrothed broke into a rapturous smile and clung to his arm and the Corpse Bride collapsed in a heap before them.

“All is lost.” She moaned “Everything. All I ever hoped for, all I ever dreamed of, all gone all taken, all gone and no way back.”

At this the Betrothed let go of her bridegrooms arm and stepped forward to gather the Corpse Bride into her arms.

“There there” she soothed her “there there, I will live the dreams for you I will find your hopes and we will never forget.”

Gently and lovingly she carried the Corpse Bride back to the river bank where the bridegroom and his friends made ready her grave and the the Betrothed laid her gently in it.

“That’s it, give me the dreams and hopes let me take them on and rest now, rest and be at peace.”

And as the Betrothed stroked the Corpse Brides hair the energy slipped gently out of her until only the husk of what had been was left to return to the ground.

**

Stories speak to different people in different ways at different times. In this one I think that it’s important to remember that in the time of the pogroms Jewish wedding parties were sometimes attacked and the bride murdered and buried in her wedding gown to prevent her from birthing Jewish children.

On a more symbolic level it speaks to me because the Corpse Bride remains an object of terror and a force capable of destroying the dreams and hopes of the Betrothed and her bridegroom only until it is decided that the dead do not have a hold on the living. Then when she collapses the Betrothed does not instantly walk away, move on and put the whole thing behind them. By comforting the Corpse Bride and listening to her story the Betrothed takes the next step in overcoming the horror so that she can take forward the hopes and dreams of the one that is gone while laying them and the nightmares they experienced to rest. For me it could be applied to different parts of one person but also to cycles of abuse that pass down through the generations if we try to break away from them without every looking knowing and feeling what happened.

I hope you find words that you need in it too.