The Grandfather, the Grandson and the Green Bud

If a lad comes back from the city to the village with books under his arm, he's bound to want to tear something down. Old Yakiv the beekeeper knew this. So when his grandson looked over the apiary and declared that the old weeping willow shading the hives was in the way and had to be cut down, the old man only nodded in silence.

The grandson found that funny. He'd read in his books that old trees are best left alone before felling. But the old man insisted - there was, he said, a village custom for it. So the lad hauled water from the well in an old oaken pail and poured three bucketfuls straight into the willow's hollow. He shrugged, went off to sharpen the axe, already counting the planks in his head. And Yakiv sat down on the earthen bench by the wall and smiled quietly into his grey moustache.

The night passed. In the morning the grandson comes out with the axe on his shoulder, resolute as progress itself. He walks up to the willow and freezes. The tree that only yesterday stood bald and grey had put out a hundred bright green buds overnight. The bark had gone dark with moisture and swelled with life. The lad touched the trunk, felt its coolness, and suddenly remembered how as a child he used to hide from the rain right here, cheek pressed against the rough bark.

The axe sank into the grass. The grandson turned around and went to his grandfather, who was just then smoking the bees. Grandpa, he says, the tree has come alive. I watered it, and it put out shoots. This is an experiment - you can't cut it down, it has to be observed. Yakiv nodded gravely, praised the young scientist for his keen eye, and went on spinning the honey.

People often think that wisdom means out-shouting the other fellow. But true cunning is when you let a man find the right answer on his own - and convince him, on top of that, that it was his own idea. It wasn't the water that saved the willow from the axe. It was an old man's love, which knew how to pass itself off, just in time, as ordinary superstition.