NCERT Solutions For Class 9 English Poem Chapter 5: A Legend of the Northland

Written in the style of a Ballad, Phoebe Cary penned "A Legend of the Northland," depicting stories of a place close to the North Pole. In the first stanza, Cary gives an account of the lives of the native folk of the Northlands. The Northlands is located at the farthest pole experiences short days and long nights during the winter. The nights are described to be so long that the native folk cannot "sleep them through". No matter how long people sleep whenever they wake up, they witness a dark sky without the Sun's rays.

As the Northlands are very cold, the folk dress themselves in thick clothing; the children endearingly resemble bear cubs when they are dressed in their "furry clothes". The only transport available there are sleighs pulled by reindeers raised by the folk. The elders there tell the younger one's stories, and legends passed on them by their elders.

The story the poet talks of is of Saint Peter, an apostle of Christ, who went around the world spreading preaching religious lessons like all other apostles. Saint Peter came across the house of a little woman who was busy baking cakes on the hearth in her cottage. Saint Peter, who had been travelling preaching, felt famished and faint. He requested the little woman to spare him one to recollect his energy and satisfy his hunger. The woman, unwilling to give Saint Peter any of her cakes, decided to make a small one for him. When she put the cake on the hearth, she deemed it to be too big to be given away.

Hence, she tried to make another one smaller than the one of the hearth. The cake, she deemed, was still too big to be given away, so "she took a tiny scrap of dough" and rolled it flat to make a wafer. The woman was still unwilling to give it away, which made the Saint angry. In his anger, Saint Peter curses the woman to turn into a woodpecker. The poem expresses the consequences of selfishness.