This poem tells a folktale about an old woman who was turned into a woodpecker by Saint Peter as punishment for her greediness. Saint Peter, who was faint from fasting, asked the woman for a cake while visiting her cottage. However, the woman grew increasingly stingy and kept making smaller and smaller cakes, unwilling to part with even the tiniest scrap. As a result, Saint Peter transformed her into a woodpecker so that she would have to constantly bore into trees for sustenance, just as she bored into ever smaller pieces of dough. The moral of the story is about the dangers of greed and selfishness.

2. What is Ballad?
• A ballad is a song narrating a story in
short stanzas.
• Ballads are part of folk culture and
are passed on orally from one
generation to next generation.

3. About the author
• Phoebe Cary (September 4, 1824 –
July 31, 1871) was an American
poet, and the younger sister of
poet Alice Cary (1820–1871). The
sisters co-published poems in 1849,
and then each went on to publish
volumes of their own. After their
deaths in 1871, joint anthologies of
the sisters' unpublished poems were
also compiled

4. This is the poem
about an old lady who
angered Saint Peter
because of he greed

5. • Away, away in the northland,
where the hours of the day are few,
And the nights are so long in winter
That they cannot sleep them trough.

6. • Where they harness the swift reindeer
To the sledges, when it snows;
And the children look like bear’s cubs
In their funny furry clothes.

7. • They tell them a curious story-
I don’t believe ‘tis true;
And yet you may learn a lesson
If I tell the tale to you.

8. • Once, when the good saint peter
Lived in the world below,
And walked about It, preaching,
Just as he did, you know,

9. • He came to the doo of a cottage,
In the travelling round the Earth,
Where a little women was making cakes,
And baking them on the hearth.

10. • And being faint with fasting,
For the day was almost done,
He asked her, from her store of cakes,
To give him a single one.

11. • So she made a very little cake,
But as it baking lay,
She looked at it, and thought it seemed
Too large to give away.

12. • Therefore she kneaded another,
And still a smaller one;
But it looked, when she turned it over,
As large as the fist had done.
• Then she took a tiny scarp of dough,
And rolled an rolled it flat;
And baked it thin as a wafer-
But she couldn't part with that

13. • For she said, “my cakes that seem
too small
When I eat of them myself
Are yet too large to give away.”
So she put them on the shelf.

14. Then good saint peter grew angry,
For he was angry and faint;
And surely such a women
Was enough to provoke a saint.

15. And he said, “you are far too selfish
To dwell in a women form,
To have both food and shelter,
And fire to keep you warm.

16. Now you shall build as the birds do,
And shall get your scanty food
By boring, and boring, and boring,
All day in the hard, dry wood.

17. Then up she went through the chimney,
Never speaking a word,
And out of the top flew a wood pecker,
For she was changed to a bird.

18. She had a scarlet cap on her head,
And that was left the same;
But all the rest of her clothes were burned
Black as coal in flame.
And every country schoolboy
Has seen her in the wood,
Where she lived in the tree till this very
day.
Boring and boring for food.