Once upon a time there was a girl and a boy. They had been friends from childhood and had grown up together. They were attracted to each other, they were in love and agreed to marry. But all their parents were alive and the boy’s father did not want them to get married. He didn’t allow the boy to marry the girl, but the boy refused to be parted from her, and the girl refused to be parted from the boy.
They then decided that if they could not get married, they had to die together, and agreed to kill themselves. One day they went into the mountains to a lake and tied themselves together with the roots of a tree and then jumped into the lake. People started missing them and went looking for them. They searched the lake and found the girl and the boy tied together with their arms wrapped around each other. The people took them out of the water, cut them apart and brought them to the farm. Coffins were made for them and the girl’s father asked the boy’s father:
Should we not bury them in the same grave? But the boy’s father replied:
No, we shall not. The girl’s father said:
I think we should bury them in the same grave, because I can see that they have loved each other since they were tied together. But the boy’s father became angry and said:
You will bury your daughter on one side of the church, and I will bury my son on the northern side of the church. Then they had to bury them like that.
A year passed. Then two birches grew on the churchyard. One birch grew from the boy’s grave and went across the roof of the church and the other grew on the girl’s grave and across the roof of the church. Over the church roof the birches met and grew together like they had been tied tied. Then the boy’s father became angry and went to his farm and got a big axe. He walked to the girl’s grave and chopped down the birch. Then he walked to his son’s grave to chop that birch down too. Right before the final blow to the trunk of the tree the axe slipped so that he cut himself in the leg right beneath the knee and he lost his leg. He only lived a few more days and then he died. The church minister buried him in his son’s grave.
A year passed and the birches grew again, in the same way as they had before over the church roof and the tree tops were so grown together that they looked like someone had tied them together and people let them be the way they had grown above the church roof.
The birches that grew together like that was the love between the boy and the girl. The birches were a sign of how much they had loved each other.
