And I Hoist My Axe Again...

I received this hilarious relation from RK today that sounds to me a tad like Monty Python spoofing Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Think 1625. A young Frenchwoman called Heleine Gillet, whose father is Governor of some Royal castle in Burgundy, has been convicted of "doing to death her fruit", i.e. killing her child (born or unborn), and sentenced to be beheaded. She mounts the scaffold and lays her head on the block. The executioner, whether drunk or incompetent, swings his axe but does not hit her neck, but her shoulder. He tries again, and this time wounds her only lightly. By this time the crowd, clearly on the girl's side, starts to hurl abuse and stones at the hapless axeman, who takes to his heels. BUT -- on the scaffold is also the executioner's wife, who, seeing that her husband is covering himself with shame, tries to finishe the job by strangling the girl with her bare hands. This does not work -- presumably Heleine, feeling that this woman has not been authorized by anyone to do her to death, resists. And by now the crowd is so worked up that it hurls, says the story, such a quantity of stones at the executioner and his wife, "that both of them perished." Meanwhile, a rather mangled and bleeding girl, still under sentence of death, is left on the scaffold. What to do with her? They take her to a surgeon, and the magistrate gives permission for her to be bandaged. And now somebody intelligent has clearly had the idea of having a quiet word with someone at Court; and the next thing we know is that King Louis XIII sends word that, in celebration of his sister's marriage to the King of England, young Heleine is receiving a Royal pardon. End of story. Make a great play or film, no?

Yes, indeed. Shades of the execution of St. Cecilia... (For those not in the know, see Chaucer's The Second Nun's Tale.)