The Butchered Man Folktale

The Butchered Man is a medieval folktale from Ispanthia. More recently, a version of it appeared in Christopher Buehlman’s novel The Daughters’ War.

This is a retelling in my own words.

The Fable

A family was driving a wagon through the woods on a dark night. There was a father, a mother, their three children, and the wolves that followed.

The wolves kept to the shadows behind and beside the cart. There were three or four of them. Perhaps more. It was very dark. The father had a knife but nothing else—no spear, nor swords, nor torch with which to threaten them.

He urged the horse on, but the wagon was much too heavy to outrun the wolves, and he knew they would strike soon.

The mother said, “Let the children take the horse! They can escape. The oldest is old enough to care for the others.”

The father said, “I cannot lose you, but I have no need of this ornament.”

And with that, he cut off his hand and tossed it to the wolves.

Three wolves lunged into the light, and he saw them clearly for the first time. They were starved and gaunt and vicious, with ribs made for counting. They fought over the hand, biting and snarling at one another, soon falling behind and out of sight.

But the hand was only enough to whet their appetite. Soon, the wolves were licking at their heels again, more ravenous than before.

The middle child, in his terror, said, “Mother, cast the baby from your arms! You can make another! It will be over too quick for him to suffer.”

The father would not have it. “I will not lose her. But what is a stem without its flower?”

So saying, he cut his arm off and cast it to the wolves. Again, they pounced upon it, snarling and biting. And again, they fell out of sight.

Some time went by before the wolves returned, more vigorous than before.

And so went the father’s foot, then his leg, and then the other.

The wolves loped along easily beside the wagon now.

The eldest son said, “Father, you have nothing left to give! We must stand and fight!”

But, of course, it was too late for that. The father was much too weak, and the wolves had grown much too strong, and they had worked up quite a hunger.

The Moral

In the original version of The Butchered Man, the fable ends with deus ex machina—with a god turning the wolves into sheep and restoring the family’s severed limbs. The moral is that sacrifice is rewarded. In that version, the fable is told by a general as she sends her doomed soldiers into battle, where they perish.

It’s the sort of story a master would tell his slave. The sort of story where a life of brutal servitude is rewarded in the afterlife.

In this retelling, the moral is nearly the opposite. With each limb the father severs, he grows weaker, and the wolves grow stronger. To expect anything else is folly.

There’s another old saying: give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile. The expression means that if you show weakness, conceding even a small point or giving even a little leeway, then you invite others to grasp for even more.

Imagine you’ve fallen on hard times, and you get so caught up in surviving the moment that you forget about the future. Perhaps you cut back on exercise or sleep. Maybe you let yourself fall into debt. Perhaps you dream and gamble. You find yourself hoping for a break, a bit of luck. But situations often get worse before they get better, and if you grow softer as times grow harder, how long will you survive?

There’s a saying from the 15th century: the wolf is always at the door. It urges us to prepare ourselves against the looming dread. We don’t know when the wolves will come, but we must keep ourselves strong for when they do.

If you liked this story, you might like The Ant and the Grasshopper or A Tale of Two Orangs. Both of them agree with this fable, even though they have opposite moral lessons to each other.