"Frau Trude! It's raining, it's raining!"

I swear this is how I'll look when it finally rains here again. Underwear and all. If it happens on the staff trip on Thursday, all the more fun. 

Die Regentrude is a fairytale that's been with me my whole life. It was written by Theodor Storm, a 19th century (Northern) German author, and I had a record with the tale on it as a child. The tale seems extremely modern in its ideas (including feminist approach) and I used to listen to it up and down, usually while drawing. It was before I could even read, and my mother had drawn little pictures in the middle of all my fairytale records so I knew which was which (I never put them back in their sleeves). On this one, she'd drawn a cloud with raindrops.

The tale goes like this: 

In a terribly hot summer, drought threatens the village of Mutter Stine, her son Andrees, and Andrees' lover Maren. Mutter Stine tells Maren about the Regentrude, the Rain Maiden, who can bring rain but who must be long-asleep, because the people have forgotten about the Old Powers that took care of nature and men in older days (whom Maren's father, the meadow-farmer, represents). Stine remembers that her great-grandmother once woke her up with a specific poem, but she has long since forgotten it. 

Then Andrees comes home with a dead lamb. It died of thirst after the water-trough was cast over by a malicious hand. Andrees recounts seeing a little fey creature dancing on the dried-up meadows among the dying cattle, chanting parts of a poem Stine immediately recognises, and together, they manage to compile it all: 

Dunst ist die Welle, Staub ist die Quelle.
Stumm sind die Wälder, Feuermann tanzet über die Felder.
Nimm dich in acht;
eh du erwacht
nimmt dich die Mutter
heim in die Nacht. 

(Haze is the river, dust is the well. Silent the woods, Fire-man dances over the fields. Beware; ere thou wakest, the Mother will take thee home into the night.) 

The fey Andrees saw was the Fire-man, and he tricks the fey into revealing the way to the place where the Rain Maiden sleeps. The Fire-man tells him, thinking Andrees doesn't know the poem, but that night, Andrees and Maren set out to wake the Rain Maiden. They pass through an old willow and an underground dried-up river, always threatened by the fire-man, and finally, Maren must go on alone and finds an old woman asleep by the dry well. When she recounts the verses, Frau Trude, the Rain Maiden awakens, and with her help, Maren unlocks the well with a key and frees the pent-up clouds*, which rise up through the well and bring rain - and she sees that Frau Trude is in the form of a beautiful young maiden. She tells Maren that if she had stayed asleep for only a little longer, she would have had to return into the earth, and Fire-man would have had dominion over the world. 

Frau Trude sends Maren back to Andrees, and tells them to always remember and honour the Old Powers of the land. They promise it, and marry a little later. There is bright sunshine on their wedding, only a small white cloud hovers over Maren, a few raindrops falling from it: The Rain Maiden's blessing. 

*If you think you recognise elements of my "Haunted Forest" story, you're absolutely right. ;)