Devilish ways

Gender has become an issue in Australia, divisive and decidedly unpleasant in its extremes. We hear it from the top level of political leadership down, with all manner of commentators weighing in as an ever eager media stirs the pot.

But let’s lighten up from the sheer nastiness! So I’m offering the following from a much earlier era. I came across it in a fascinating 1935 book, She Travelled Alone in Spain, by Melbourne author, journalist, poet and broadcaster Nina (Madoline) Murdoch, who was one of Australia’s first women general newspaper reporters (Sydney’s Sun, Melbourne’s Herald).

She was moreover an intrepid, independent woman who travelled on her own in England and Europe, first in 1927, developing a lifelong passion with it. The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes that in her first travel book, from 1930, Seventh Heaven, a Joyous Discovery of Europe, that she “abounded in ecstatic enthusiasm for European art, antiquity and graciousness”.

But to the point of the extract from She Travelled Alone in Spain. While in Granada she was observing the collective noises from the bustling streets, including the braying of donkeys:

“I never got over the bizarre novelty of a donkey’s braying. It is the sort of noise a hippopotamus ought to make. Is it a defence noise, perhaps? Was it because of the donkey’s smallness and weakness that God gave him such a voice? Or did He get the various noises He had planned mixed up, leaving the giraffe dumb by mistake, when mute pathos would have sat so well upon the gentle-eyed donkey?

“Or perhaps the devil was already at his tricks, as in the Rumanian legend of the creation of Eve. You remember? God had told His angel to take Adam’s rib and make out of it a companion for man. The Lord Himself, being weary after seven days’ creating, was about to have a little rest under a tree in the Garden of Eden. So the angel went off, and had just taken Adam’s rib and was standing looking at it when the devil strolled up.

‘What’s that?’ asked he.

‘Adam’s rib,’ replied the angel.

‘Let’s see!’

‘No, I’ve got to do something important with it. Lord’s orders.’

‘Well, let’s have a look! How was it made? Go on, angel! I shan’t break the silly thing!’

“So, being a perfect angel, this one was stupid enough to let him get it in his hands, and away went the devil with Adam’s rib. The angel chased him here, there, and everywhere, and was in such a fright he ran like the devil himself and nearly caught up. At that the devil, close pressed, hopped down a hole, leaving nothing but the tip of his tail sticking out. The angel caught hold of that and tugged with all his might. But all he did was to pull the end of the devil’s tail off, while the rest of the creature stayed giggling down the hole with Adam’s rib.

“There was nothing for it but to go back and face the wrath of God with the tip of the devil’s tail as proof of what had happened. So the angel rushed back to the garden crying: ‘Lord! Lord!’

‘Oh, go away!’ said the Lord testily, opening one eye. But seeing the angel held something in his hand, He added: ‘Go away and do as I told you with that!’

“So the angel went off. And that, according to the Rumanians, is why women are the very devil.”