Widow's Cruisie, The

DESCRIPTION: His hearers knew he was a fool but he "tried the Psalms." "He tell't the story aff wi glee ... Aye the wifie wi her vessle." Then he'd wish them all into glory, assuring them of plenty and "meal an' eelie [oil] to be yer dainty"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1917 (Greig/Duncan3)
KEYWORDS: humorous nonballad religious clergy
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Greig/Duncan3 683, "The Widow's Cruisie" (1 text)
Roud #6108
NOTES [209 words]: Greig/Duncan3 quoting William Walker: "'About a minister who preached always when in a strange pulpit the same sermon on the text - "the widow's cruisie."' See 1 Kings 17.8-16." In that passage Elijah, hiding from Ahab during a drought, is told by God to go to a widow He has commanded "to sustain thee." When Elijah asks her for "a morsel of bread" she says she has only a handful of meal in a barrel and a little oil in a cruse which is insufficient for her and her son; she plans to use the oil to bake the meal into a cake for their last meal before they die. Elijah asks her to make the cake for him and then make it for herself and her son; if she would do that the barrel and cruise would be filled until the drought breaks. She does and the three survive the drought. - BS
[With the slight complication that the boy "died" -- or at least slipped into a coma -- in the aftermath of the famine, and was revived by Elijah via what sounds like artificial respiration. There is also the curiosity that the widow lived in Zarephath in Sidonian Phoenicia rather than Israel -- a curious place for an Israeli prophet to go.]
[The nitpicker in me also has to note that, on that diet, Elijah, the widow, and her son would all have ended up with scurvy. - RBW]
Last updated in version 2.4
File: GrD3683

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