Folktale

1 Pages 330 Words

THE WHITE SATIN GOWN


This tail has been repeated throughout the mid west for several hundred years.
A young man invited a young woman to a formal dance. But the woman was very poor, and she could not afford to buy the evening gown she needed for the dance. The young woman’s mother suggested that she rent a dress instead of buying one. So she went to a pawnshop not far from where she lived. There she found a white satin evening gown in her size. The gown fit perfect, and did not cost very much to rent. When she arrived at the dance with her friend wearing the gown she had rented, she looked very elegant, and she danced over and over again and was having a wonderful time. But then she began to feel dizzy and faint, and she asked her friend to take her home. When she got home, she laid down on her bed. The next morning her mother found her dead. The doctor could not understand what could have killed her. So the doctor had the coroner do an autopsy. The coroner found that embalming fluid had poisoned her. The embalming fluid had stopped her blood from flowing. There were traces of the fluid on her dress. The coroner decided the fluid had entered her skin when she perspired while she was dancing. The pawnbroker said he bought the dress from an undertaker’s helper. The dress was used in a funeral for another young woman, and the helper had stolen it just before she was buried. This story originated in ancient Greece, it is a retelling of the story of Hercules and the Centaur Nessus when the centaur insulted Deianira while crossing the river Hercules shot the centaur and with his blood Deianira anoints a splendid robe for Hercules but when he puts the robe on he is killed....