Folk Tale: The Wind Sprite and the Grog Maker

The Wind Sprite and the Grog Maker

Briza i Fazedor di Grog

In the old days, there lived on the island a man who made grog.

His grog was the finest on the island — strong and sweet, the colour of amber. People came from distant villages to fill their jugs. But it was not only the taste they admired. It was the way the man worked — slowly, carefully, wasting nothing.

***

One year, the rains did not come.

The sun beat down day after day. The earth cracked. The wells sank low. Water became more precious than grog itself.

The grog maker looked at his still — the big copper pot where sugarcane juice was heated and turned to spirit. To make grog, you must cool the still. To cool the still, you need water.

But there was no water to spare.

His neighbours were thirsty. Their children were thirsty. He could not take what they needed.

***

For three days, the grog maker sat and thought.

On the fourth day, he rose before dawn. He gathered clay pots and set them in the shadiest spots he could find — beneath the tamarind tree, behind the stone wall, in the hollow where the ground stayed cool. Each night, he left them open to catch the cool air. Each morning, he carried that coolness to his still.

It was slow work. But it was enough.

The grog maker made his grog without taking a drop from the well.

***

Now, on that island lived a wind sprite.

She was quick and gentle, and she loved to dance through the village streets, carrying the scent of flowers and fruit. But during the drought, even she had grown tired. The air was heavy. There was nothing sweet to carry.

One hot afternoon, she passed by the grog maker’s house and caught a scent she had not smelled in weeks — the thick, sweet vapour of sugarcane turning to spirit.

She stopped. She breathed it in.

Then she had an idea.

***

With a swirl and a whistle, she swept down to the grog maker’s still. She gathered the sweet vapours in her arms — if a sprite can be said to have arms — and she flew.

She flew through the village streets, past the dusty market, past the cracked fountain, past the tired faces of people who had forgotten what sweetness smelled like.

And everywhere she passed, people lifted their heads.

Children smiled. Old men closed their eyes and remembered better times. Women stopped their work and breathed deeply.

***

The sprite could not bring them water. She could not end the drought. But she brought them something — a moment of sweetness, a small relief.

When the rains finally came, the villagers said it was the wind sprite who had carried their prayers up to heaven.

But the grog maker only shrugged.

“She carried the smell of my grog,” he said. “That is all.”

Still, from that year on, he always left a small cup of grog outside his door on the hottest days — for the sprite, should she pass by.

And they say she always did.

***
Beans upstream, beans downstream —
Let he, who knows best, tell it less badly!

Author of retelling: Mira Maria Belniak

Sources:

• Traditional oral narratives transmitted within Cape Verdean families and communities, documented by multiple collectors and storytellers across the islands;
• The Wind Sprite and the Grogue Maker: A Cape Verdean Tale, Great Storyteller, YouTube.