Long ago, when nothing showed any color and everything looked like shifting, foggy shades, a beautiful maiden lived among the Green Nation, and they called her Lady Redshank, for her beautiful legs, though of course, the word “red” did not mean for them then what it means for us today. Lady Redshank had a lover from the Black Nation, called Alum. One day, Lady Redshank said to her lover, “Doesn’t the endless gray bore you?”

“Of course not, my love,” Alum replied. “This is the way the world has always looked; how could it ever look any differently?”

“Let me show you!” Lady Redshank said, as she tenderly bedded her lover. She concieved then, and bore a child that burst forth from her in an explosion of color. “Our little daughter we will call, ‘Yellow’!” Lady Redshank said, and to this day, if you mix the leaves of the Color-Maiden with crushed alum, you will still create the same yellow dye that they birthed then, and proceeded to paint the world with. They painted the sun and the little flowers of the Sour-Heart, and everything yellow on the earth. Sour-Heart in particular so loved his new yellow flowers that he offered Lady Redshank some of his distinctive taste in return, and warned her, “It will make you delicious, but if any of the Red Nation eat too much of you, they’ll regret it!”

Lady Redshank admired the new, colorful world, and proceeded to create other colors, with the help of others in the Green Nation and the Black Nation, painting the whole world in all the colors we see today; and so did Lady Redshank come to be known as the Color-Maiden.

She created another color, Red, to paint herself with. She admired her beautiful colors, and adoringly touched her own leaves—and left a thumbprint, whereupon she rubbed off some of her fresh, green color, leaving a smudge where the original black color showed through. She gasped, realizing that she could never touch herself again, lest she wipe off more of her beautiful colors, and that is why even today, Lady Redshank is sometimes called “Lady’s Thumb,” from the tiny thumbprint that you can still see on her leaves.

Once all the colors covered the world, the Color-Maiden relaxed to enjoy the colorful world. Then she felt a pinch. It was a human, colored in her own hues of pink, picking at her leaves and munching happily on them. “You taste delicious!” the human said.

“Thank you,” the Color-Maiden blushed in her beautiful shade of pink. “But I recieved that gift from Sour-Heart; enjoy it sparingly, or you’ll regret it!”

“Ha!” the human laughed. “You taste too good!” And he continued chomping the leaves. Then, the human clutched his stomach. “Ooh, I don’t feel so good…”

“I warned you!” the Color-Maiden replied.

“Please forgive me, Color-Maiden,” the human begged. “Help me!”

“No, you brought this upon yourself!” the Color-Maiden answered. And she stood her ground staunchly, as the human grumbled in pain, clutching his stomach. Eventually, the human got up and left.

The next day, a shaman from the human’s village came to the Color-Maiden and approached her with all the proper respect. “Blessed Color-Maiden,” he said, “I apologize for the young one who came to you so impetuously yesterday. I accept the blame myself, for not showing him better how to approach blessed beings like you. But I must come now to beg of your mercy, for he lies now in great pain, and needs medicine to heal his ailing stomach. He has learned his lesson, and we will teach him to respect you as you deserve, and to honor all your gifts of color upon this world. Please, blessed Color-Maiden, will you have mercy?”

“Very well, shaman,” the Color-Maiden replied. “Since you have shown such great respect, I will relent. But remember this lesson and teach it to all your children, and I will give you my medicine. Make an infusion of my leaves, and give it to the ailing boy. That will relieve his pains.”

Others tell the same story of the elderly woman with arthritis, and still others tell the tale of a man who cut himself in sight of the Color-Maiden. “My color!” she swooned as the red blood swelled up. The man took some of the Color-Maiden’s fresh leaves, and they staunched the bleeding, and kept it from infection.

Field Guide

Find more about the Color-Maiden from:

• [[Lady’s Thumb|REWILD.info Field Guide]]
• Plants for a Future
• Wikipedia
• USDA PLANTS Database