Story The secret of King Mahón: adaptation of the Irish legend.
To the east of Ireland, in a province called Leinster, many years ago a monarch named Maon reigned.
This king had an oddity that everyone knew and for which no one could find an explanation: he always wore a hood that covered his head and only allowed himself to have his hair cut once a year. To decide who would have the honor of being his hairdresser for a day, he held a public lottery among all of his subjects.
The truly strange thing about all this was that whoever was lucky completed their task but then never returned home. As if the earth had swallowed him, no one heard from him again because King Maon made him disappear. Logically, when the election date approached, all the neighbors felt that his fate depended on a cursed and unfair game and they began to tremble.
But why did the king do this? …The reason, which no one knew, was that he had horrible ears, big and pointed like those of a wood elf, and he couldn’t stand anyone knowing. It was his best kept secret! Therefore, to make sure that the word did not spread and everyone found out, every year he cut the hair of a person from his kingdom and then locked them up for life in a dungeon.
On one occasion the unfortunate winner of the raffle was a young woodcutter named Liam who, against his will, was taken to a remote part of the palace where the king was waiting for him.
– Come in, boy. This year it’s your turn to cut my hair.
Liam watched as the king very slowly removed his hood and instantly realized that he had discovered the king’s famous secret. He felt terrible panic and wanted to escape, but he had no choice but to carry out the royal command. Terrified, he took the scissors and began to trim the tips and bangs.
When he finished, the king put his hood back on. Liam, fearing the worst, knelt before him and crying like a child begged him:
– Your Majesty, I beg you, let me go! I have an elderly mother who I must take care of. If I don’t return, who is going to take care of her? Who is going to work to bring the money home?
– You already know that I can’t set you free because now you know my secret!
– Sir, please, I swear I will never tell anyone! Believe me, I am a man of my word!
The king thought he was a sincere boy and felt sorry for him.
– Okay, okay, stop whining! This time I’m going to make an exception and let you leave, but you better never tell anyone about my ears or there will be no place in the world you can hide. I warn you: I will come for you and the punishment you will receive will be terrible. Understand?
– Thank you thank you thank you! I promise you, Your Majesty, that I will take the secret to the grave.
The young peasant had just been the first in many years to save his skin after seeing the king’s hideous ears. Relieved, he returned to his home ready to resume his quiet life as a lumberjack.
The first few days he felt completely happy and lucky because the king had freed him, but as time went by he began to feel bad because it was unbearable for him to have to keep such an important secret! The idea of not being able to tell it even to his mother scared him. tortured!
Little by little the secret became an obsession that occupied his thoughts twenty-four hours a day. This affected his mind and her body so much that she became weaker, and withered like a plant that no one waters. One morning she couldn’t take it anymore and she fainted.
His mother had been seeing something strange happen to her son for a while, but the day he lost his strength and collapsed on the bed, she knew that he had fallen seriously ill. Desperate, she went to look for the druid, the wisest man in the village, so that he could give her a remedy to heal him.
The man walked her to the house and saw Liam completely still and drenched in sweat. Immediately he was very clear about the diagnosis:
– Your son’s problem is that he keeps a very important secret that he cannot tell and that responsibility is ending his life. Only if he tells someone can he be saved.
The poor woman was speechless. She would never have imagined that her beloved son would be so sick because of a secret!
– Believe me, madam, it is the only solution and you must hurry.
After saying this, the druid approached the trembling and pale Liam and spoke slowly in his ear so that he could understand his words well.
– Listen to me, boy, I’ll tell you what you have to do if you want to get well: put on a coat to keep from getting cold and go to the forest. Once there, look for the place where four paths intersect and take the one on the right. You will find a huge willow tree and you will tell him the secret. The tree has no mouth and won’t be able to tell anyone, but at least you will have gotten rid of it once and for all.
The boy obeyed. Even though he was very weak he went to the forest, he found the willow tree and approaching the trunk he told it in a low voice his secret. Suddenly, something changed: his fever disappeared, he stopped shivering, and he regained the color in his cheeks and the strength in his muscles. He had healed!
It happened that a few weeks later, a musician who was looking for wood in the forest saw the enormous willow tree and it caught his attention.
– Oh, what an impressive tree! The wood from its trunk is perfect for making a harp… I’m going to cut it down right now!
So he did. With a very sharp ax he felled the trunk and took the wood to his workshop. There, with his own hands, he made the harp with the most beautiful sound in the universe and then he went to tour the surrounding towns to delight everyone who wanted to listen to him with his music. The melodies were so beautiful that he quickly became famous throughout the province.
Of course, the harpist’s musical prowess reached the ears of the king, who one day said to his advisor:
– Tonight I will give a banquet for five hundred people and I order you to find that musician that everyone is talking about. I want him to play the harp after dessert so there’s no time to waste. Go get him right now!
The counselor obeyed and the harpist appeared dressed in his best clothes before the court. At the end of the meal, the monarch gave him permission to start playing. The musician stood in the center of the room, and with great finesse placed his hands on the strings of his wonderful instrument.
But something unexpected happened: the harp, made from the willow wood that knew the king’s secret, could not contain itself and instead of emitting musical notes it spoke to the spectators:
KING MAON HAS TWO BIG EARS!
KING MAON HAS TWO BIG EARS!
KING MAON HAS TWO BIG EARS!
King Maon was shocked and turned red as a tomato because of the great shame that invaded him, but when he saw that no one was laughing at him, he thought there was no point in continuing to hide any longer.
Very dignified, as befits a monarch, he rose from the throne and took off his hood so that everyone could see his ugly ears. The five hundred guests rose to their feet and thanked him for his bravery with thunderous applause.
King Maon felt immensely liberated and happy. From that day on he stopped wearing a hood and never punished anyone again for cutting his hair.