Page 3 - THE LEGEND..LESSON NOTES

by, boring, boring – ‘b’ sound is repeating

3. Repetition: any word or sentence is repeated to lay emphasis on it.

Stanza 1 - ‘away’ word is repeated
Stanza 9 – ‘rolled’ word is repeated
Stanza 13, 16 – ‘boring’ word is repeated

4. Enjambment: running lines of poetry from one to the next without using any kind of
punctuation to indicate a stop
Stanza 1 - line 3 and 4
Stanza 2 - Line 1 and 2; line 3 and 4
Stanza 3 - Line 3 and 4
Stanza 4 - Line 1 and 2; 3 and 4
Stanza 10 - Line 1, 2 and 3
Stanza 11 - Line 1 and 2

5. Simile: Comparison using ‘as’ or ‘like’
Stanza 2 – ‘the children look like bear’s cubs’. Children compared to bear’s cubs
Stanza 9 – ‘baked it thin as a wafer’. Cake is compared to a wafer.

Stanza 15 – ‘clothes were burned black as a coal’. The colour of the burned clothes is
compared to that of coal.

Key points

 The poem is a story of an old woman.

 She is asked for food by Saint Peter who had become weak because of fasting
and travelling
 But her greed forces her not to give him anything

 He becomes angry and makes her a woodpecker, which bores hard, dry wood to
get food.

 Her clothes are burnt to ashes and she is left with a cap on her head.
 She continues boring into hard wood for her little food.

Character sketch

Saint Peter

Saint Peter, the apostle of Christianity, has been presented through this legend of
Northland as a messenger of God whose mission is to preach age old human values of
kindness and charity. He is a dedicated and devoted saint who had come to this earth

with the purpose of imparting good values to humanity.