The Windfairies · Chapter
The Gipsy's Cup explained
The potter, searching for the gipsy to break the charm, encounters a gipsy man boasting of a cup that will make a beautiful woman love him.
What happens
The potter, searching for the gipsy to break the charm, encounters a gipsy man boasting of a cup that will make a beautiful woman love him. Recognizing the cup, the potter seizes it and learns from a traveller about a woman who weaves mats with a rhyme about a gipsy's cup. He returns home to find his wife waiting, having woven the rhyme into her mats. The gipsy boy hides the original cup to prevent his father from undoing the charm. The potter confronts and throws out the gipsy man, reunites with his wife, and they adopt the gipsy boy, who later becomes a potter making harmless cups.
Themes in this chapter
Love and Sacrifice
The potter's wife sacrifices her comfort, weaving and waiting faithfully for her husband's return, while the potter journeys tirelessly to break the charm for her sake.
Greed and Its Downfall
The gipsy man's boastful greed for the beautiful woman and his attempt to reclaim the cup lead to his expulsion and defeat.
Characters to notice
- The Potter's Wife
Continues to grieve and weave mats with the rhyme, hoping the potter will see it; keeps the gipsy's cup as a consolation.
- The Gipsy
Boasts in a drinking booth about a charm cup to win a beautiful woman; later threatens the potter's wife before being thrown out.
- The Ploughman
Not directly mentioned; no match in excerpts.
Key passages
“From the gipsy’s cup I drank for love, From the gipsy’s cup I drank for hate, And when she gave me that cup again My love was gone and I drank too late.”
The rhyme on the mat tells of drinking from the gipsy's cup for both love and hate, and realizing too late that love had vanished when the cup was returned.
This rhyme is central to the plot, as it is woven into the mats and eventually leads the potter back to his wife.
“The gipsy speaks truth when he says she is the most beautiful woman in the world, but he speaks false when he says that she will ever love him; for he has stolen that cup, and I shall take it from him.”
The potter declares that the gipsy is truthful about the woman's beauty but lying about her love, and he reclaims the cup as stolen property.
This moment shows the potter's determination and his recognition of the cup, leading to the confrontation.