Storytelling for Week 3: Ailbe in the Yukon

Once, in the deep wilderness of the Yukon during the gold rush, there was a baby named Ailbe whose parents were retched, horrible people. They left him out in the wild to die when he was only a couple months old in nothing but a small lamb's wool.

It would have been a miracle to find a baby wrapped up in white wool in the snow even if you were looking for it. But, as we see later, Ailbe's life is never short on miracles. It just so happened that there was a white wolf with her cubs that smelled something unfamiliar and came to investigate. When she found the poor baby, she could not but feel compassion and pity toward the child and so picked him up in her soft mouth and took him to the warm (at least livable) cave. After one night of caring for the baby, she had made the decision to raise him as one of her cubs.

"Canis lupus arctos PO" by Cephas via Wikimedia Commons - White Wolf

Ailbe was treated with the same respect and harshness as the wolf cubs and grew up just as fierce and just as tough. When he was a toddler, his only clothes he had ever known, his lambskin, began to fall apart. The wolf mother worried about her hairless son but had no way of protecting him. On the day it finally fell off and Ailbe was exposed to the snow and bitter cold, he ran slower than the rest of the pack and could no longer howl. Running in the woods, he was spotted by a hunter, who chased after him so that he might save the little boy's life. He caught the boy, and took him as quickly as he could back to the warmth of his home. The pack tried to follow the hunter, but they lost him in the woods. Ailbe's mother and brother's mourned the loss of a family member.

The hunter and his wife took in Ailbe as their own son. And fortunately for him, they happened to own the Yukon's largest gold mine. He grew up getting a fine education and learning lessons of honest business and lasting, loving relationships.

Ailbe grew up to be a wise man and businessman, inheriting the mine when his father passed. Eventually, he was voted mayor of their hometown and he stayed in that position for many years. Being a rowdy society, every year the town set up a hunting competition and a prize was given for the fiercest animal trapped and caught alive. One particular year, a young hunter trapped an entire pack of the biggest, meanest, brightest, white wolves anyone in the town had seen. In order to officially win the prize, the mayor must decree you a winner and you must bring the beast into the town square. So, the young hunter brought the wolves, tied in ropes and muzzled, to Ailbe in front of the whole town. As soon as Ailbe saw the wolves, he knew it was his old family and the wolves knew it was him. He ran to them and quickly untied them all.

The crowd screamed in horror as their mayor jumped towards the wolves and tackled them. Every citizen thought he had surely gone mad to try to fight these wolves by hand. But he had not been fighting them, but hugging them, and they did not bite him but give him slobbery kisses. The mayor announced to his town that these wolves were family to him and that no one was permitted to hurt them. The townspeople were confused and still feared the wolves. They wanted proof that the frightening creatures could be tamed.

Ailbe quickly came up with an idea. He got ahold of a sled and roped up his pack to the sled. The wolves had never pulled a sled before, but they understood every command their brother gave them. He rode quickly around town and back to the town square. The mayor promised that every night, he would take a ride with his wild family through the town to assure everyone of their discipline and loyalty. And so, every night for the rest of the wolves lives, Ailbe once again was part of the pack and moved as a unit through his part of the wood, his town, and what had finally become his true home.


Author's Note: This story is very similar to the original but in a different setting and instead of a bishop who is the son of a prince, I made Ailbe a mayor who is son a wealthy miner. Originally, the story is Irish, but I liked the setting of the Yukon for white wolves and a rough, wild kind of saint.

Bibliography: Brown, Abbey Farwell. The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts. "The Wolf-Mother of Saint Ailbe." 1900. http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/05/saints-wolf-mother-of-saint-ailbe.html