crispina kemp

“Stop your whistling,” my grandpa said.

And when I turned to him – cos he’d never said it before – he added, “A whistling woman’s good for God nor man.” Was he saying I wasn’t a kid anymore?

“Come, sit in my workshop, I’ll tell you a tale.”

I willingly went, for my grandpa’s tales were something other. He told me about the three sisters who’d lived in the next village along, how the new vicar had accused them of “Whistling up storms.”

The villagers didn’t like that accusation for they’d made a good living out of their wrecking activities. They chased the vicar out of the village – which brought the wrath of the bishop upon them.

“I charge you to whistle for ever more,” he ordered the sisters. “But now your whistling will help humankind.”

And so the sisters continue to whistle through to this day.