I found this Christmas story called “Aidan of the Cows” in an old book.

A young woman named Aidan had a herd of  choice cows producing the best milk and cheese anywhere in the village of St.Koatsven in a distant land near the shore of a distant sea.

Unfortunately, Aidan fell on bad times because the young man she loved spent her fortune and all her cows had to be sold  to moneylenders.

Christmas morning Aidan wandered sadly down a meadow near the sea and  heard a robin singing:

She listened with amazement, with fear and trembling,  with a fearful joy, because the bird sang in human speech.
“I am Robin Redbreast,” he sang, ” the Bird of Good Hope, much admired among birds. For in ancient times when He was toiling up the heavy hill bearing the bitter Cross, I was moved by Heaven to alight on His head, and I plucked from out His bleeding brow one thorn from the cruel crown that bound His temples. One drop of His blood bedewed my throat as I stooped to the blessed task and dyed my breast in a hue of glorious beauty for ever.”

Aidan listened with all the ears of her heart.
“In remembrance of what I did, a blessing was given me—that once  every year, on Christmas-eve, I can give a good gift to the first maiden, good but unhappy, who should put her foot upon the herb Marie, as you, Aidan, have done.”

The girl looked down. Her foot was lightly- pressing the pretty little yellow trefoil plantret, an herb called Marie. “As you have done, Aidan of the Cows,” the robin repeated with a confident chirrup.

Of course, Aidan got her cows back and even got her repentant young man, whom she married, and they live happily ever after. All this took place in a Distant Land where things like this take place.

May the Bird of Good Hope speak to you today.

Unfortunately, we’ve lost this wonderful imaginative tradition that sees divine mysteries allied to the ordinary plants and creatures of creation. Science has taken over our Christian imagination. May we get it back some day; maybe the Christmas mystery so closely allied to a simple stable and donkeys and cattle and camels and straw may help us.