THE SCENE: In this heartwarming tale, a weasel decides against murdering the son of a noble after a happy turn of events.
THE TEXT: In our own times it happened in this same castle of Pembroke that a man discovered some baby weasels inside a sheepskin in his house. Without hurting them, he carefully removed them, still inside the sheepskin, and put them somewhere else. When the mother weasel came back, she looked for them everywhere, but could not find them. Her grief was very great. She went over to a jug of milk, which had been set aside for the man’s son and heir, stood up on her hind legs, spat the venom which she had inside her body into the milk and so infected it with deadly poison. In this way she planned to seek vengeance for the loss of her own offspring by killing the man’s son. The man had watched her doing all this, and he put the sheepskin back in its place. The weasel returned, in her motherly care torn between hope and despair, and found it there once more. Her relief was only too plain, both from the squeaks which she emitted and the way she behaved. She rushed back to the jug and knocked it over, so that all the milk was spilt. In her gratitude for the return of her own babies, she was determined that her host’s son should suffer no harm.
– A Journey Through Wales, Gerald of Wales, 12th Century AD
