The Lion's Whisker
Classical Stories · No. 63 — The patience it takes to pluck one whisker from a living lion.
- Classical Stories
- 48 min
- Ages 8–13
- 6 chapters
About this audiobook
A newly married woman loves her husband's young son, but the boy, still grieving his mother, will not accept her — he refuses her food, her words, her kindness. In despair she goes to the village healer and begs for a charm to win his love. The healer says he can make one, but she must first bring him a whisker from a living lion. She is terrified, but determined. Each day she carries meat to the edge where a lion lives, leaving it and retreating; each day she comes a little closer, until weeks later the lion eats from her hand and lets her sit beside it — and she gently plucks a single whisker. When she brings it in triumph, the healer smiles and throws it into the fire: the medicine, he says, was never the whisker. It was the patience.
Why it's worth a listen
A young woman despairs that her grieving stepson will never warm to her, and asks a wise healer for a potion to win his heart. The healer agrees — if she can bring back a single whisker plucked from a living lion. Her long, patient courtship of the most dangerous animal in the country teaches her the very thing she needed all along. A quietly profound Ethiopian tale about patience and love.
A question to keep
If you can tame a lion with patience, what could patience do for the people you love?
Chapters
- The Cold Hearth
- The Healer's Chamber
- The Edge of the Forest
- The Breath of the Beast
- Into the Fire
- A Question to Keep