5 min read

The Field Creature Tethered to Earth by Its Navel

A traveler heard his host tell his wife to serve their man for dinner, and went out the door at a run. Nobody in that house ate people.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. What the Host Meant by Our Man
  2. The Circle Nobody Walks Into
  3. The Dart
  4. The Thing They Carried Home
  5. What the Guest Found Out

The guest had been given a seat and was waiting for supper when he heard his host in the next room asking his wife what they had that was good enough for a visitor. She went through the options. The host settled it. "We will give him our man."

The Field Creature Tethered to Earth by Its Navel Click for full size

The guest was through the door and onto the road before either of them noticed. The host came out after him, calling, waving, running a little way down the road and then stopping, because a man who has decided he is dinner does not slow down for an explanation.

What the Host Meant by Our Man

Out in the fields around that region there stood a creature shaped exactly like a person. Arms, legs, a face, upright, the height of a man. Out of its navel ran a cord, and the cord went down into the earth and stayed there, and the earth was where its life came from. Tethered like that, it could not take a single step past the length of its own cord. Sever the cord and the thing dies. Nothing else is required and nothing else works as well.

It ate whatever the soil pushed up around it, roots and fruit and greens, dragging itself as far as the tether allowed and grazing the circle clean. People called it the man of the mountain. In the books it is the Adne Sadeh, the lord of the field, and it was there before anyone farming that valley was there.

The Circle Nobody Walks Into

The cord ran long. In some accounts it stretched more than a mile, which drew a wide ring of ground around each one, and inside that ring the creature took whatever came. Not out of hunger. It had the whole circle to eat from. Anything that wandered close enough got seized and torn apart, a goat, a dog, a child chasing a goat, and then the pieces lay there and the thing went back to grazing.

A traveler crossing that country at a distance would see a figure standing alone in the middle of a field, perfectly still, facing him. He would raise a hand. It would not raise one back. If he kept walking toward it he would be inside the ring before he was close enough to see the cord.

The Dart

So nobody hunting one ever walks up to it.

You stop at the edge of the ring, where the grass is still growing, and you sight along the cord, and you throw the dart from there. The cord parts. The creature does not fall right away. It stands in its field and it groans, and the groaning goes on and carries across the valley, and everyone in the surrounding houses stops what they are doing and waits it out. Then it goes down, and the loose end of the cord lies in the dirt, and only then does anyone step over the line and walk in.

The Thing They Carried Home

Then the body is carried indoors, under a roof, into a house with people in it, and that is where the trouble starts.

When a human being dies inside a tent, everyone under that roof becomes unclean and stays unclean, and everything open in the room with him goes the same way. Animals do not do this. A dead sheep in the house is a dead sheep. So the sages had a question in front of them that could not be answered by looking, and they argued it: is the thing in the field a wild animal or is it a man?

Rabbi Yose gave his answer without hedging. It makes the tent unclean, he said, exactly as a person does. It grows on the face of the field, and it is alive through its navel, and when it dies under your roof you are in mourning conditions whether you knew the deceased or not.

Which is how a creature nobody could classify ended up on the record as human enough to contaminate a room, and never human enough to be worth burying.

What the Guest Found Out

The traveler learned the rest of it later, somewhere down the road, from somebody who knew the country. There had been no cannibals. There had been a host trying to honor a stranger with the best meat in the house, which in that valley came off the creature everyone called the man.

He had run for his life from a dinner. What nobody offered him was any reason to feel foolish about it, because the thing on the table had a face, and hands, and had died groaning at the end of a cord that ran into the ground where the vegetables came from.

Adne SadehCreaturesFieldCreationLimits
← All myths

From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Yerushalmi Kilayim 8:5Talmud Yerushalmi, Kilayim

Translation of the source text.The Jerusalem Talmud, edition by Heinrich W. Guggenheimer. Berlin, De Gruyter, 1999-2015 · CC-BY

MISHNAH: The mules are forbidden, and the ramakh is permitted. And the adnei ha-sadeh (the field-men) are a wild beast. Rabbi Yose says: They convey impurity in a tent like a human. The hedgehog and the bramble-weasel are a wild beast. The wild ox is a kind of domesticated animal; Rabbi Yose says: a kind of wild beast. The dog is a kind of wild beast; Rabbi Meir says: a kind of domesticated animal. The pig is a kind of domesticated animal. The wild ass is a kind of wild beast. The elephant and the ape are a kind of wild beast. And a person is permitted with all of them, to plow and to draw.

The field-men are a wild beast. Yeisi said: It is a creature of the mountain, and it lives by its navel; if its navel is severed, it does not live. Rabbi Hama bar Ukba in the name of Rabbi Yose ben Hanina: the reason of Rabbi Yose is, "And whoever touches, on the open field" (Numbers 19:16), by "that which grows on the open field."

Full source
Legends of the Jews, I. The Creation Of The World, The Sixth DayLegends of the Jews

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Project Gutenberg eBook #1493, The Legends of the Jews, Volume 1 · Public Domain

Just as fish were formed from water and birds from boggy earth, mammals were formed from solid earth. And among these, we find some truly remarkable beings.

Take Behemot, for example, the king of the beasts. He's a creature of such immense strength that, like Leviathan, the king of the sea, God had to prevent him from reproducing, lest the world be overwhelmed! Can you imagine? The Zohar tells us that Behemot requires the produce of a thousand mountains just for his daily food! And it's said that all the water flowing through the Jordan River in a year is just one gulp for him. So, naturally, he has his own private stream flowing directly from Paradise, called Yubal. But don’t worry, this colossal creature isn't just a glutton; Behemot is destined to be a delectable treat for the righteous in the world to come. But before they feast, they'll get to witness a mighty battle between him and Leviathan – a reward,

Then there's the ziz, the giant bird, often compared to the Persian Simurgh or the Arabic Rukh. These three – Leviathan, Ziz, and Behemot – represent the pinnacle of their respective realms.

The wonders don't stop there. There's the re’em, a giant animal so large that only one pair exists, a male and a female, and they only mate once every seventy years. According to the legends, they live on opposite ends of the earth! The act of mating is fatal to the male, and the female remains pregnant for twelve years. For a year before giving birth, she can't even move! She survives only because her spittle fertilizes the earth around her, providing her with sustenance. When the twins, a male and a female, are finally born, the mother dies, making room for the new generation, destined to repeat the same cycle.

What about the "man of the mountain," the Adne Sadeh, or simply Adam? He looks just like a human being, but he's tethered to the ground by his navel-string! Sever that cord, and he dies. He feeds on the vegetation within reach of his tether, and woe betide anyone who wanders too close! You'd have to take him out from a distance with a well-aimed dart.

Even more curious is the barnacle-goose, which, according to some, grows directly from a tree! Is it an animal? Is it a plant? It’s a question that surely kept ancient scholars up at night.

And who could forget the phoenix? This bird, according to the tales, was the only one to refuse the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and was rewarded with eternal life. When it reaches a thousand years old, it shrinks and transforms, becoming small as an egg, the nucleus of a new phoenix. The phoenix is also described as the "guardian of the terrestrial sphere," intercepting the sun's fiery rays with its wings to protect the earth. Enoch, in his visions, describes phoenixes as wondrous creatures with the feet and tails of lions and the heads of crocodiles, attending the chariot of the sun.

Among reptiles, we find the salamander, born from a fire of myrtle wood kept burning for seven years through magic. Smear yourself with its blood, and you become invulnerable! And then there's the shamir, a tiny worm no bigger than a barley corn, but with the power to cut through the hardest diamonds. This was used to engrave the stones in the High Priest's breastplate and to shape the stones for the Temple, because the Torah prohibits the use of iron tools. According to the legends, the shamir was so powerful that it couldn't be stored in metal; it had to be kept in a woollen cloth, placed inside a lead basket filled with barley bran. The shamir was guarded in Paradise until Solomon needed it, and vanished with the destruction of the Temple.

And what of the tahash, a creature created solely to provide its skin for the Tabernacle? Once the Tabernacle was complete, it disappeared. It was a colorful animal, like a turkey-cock, with a horn on its forehead, and considered a clean animal.

The sea, too, holds its wonders, with sea-goats and dolphins, the latter described as half-human, even having relations with humans, hence their title "sons of the sea."

But it's not just about the creatures themselves; it's about their relationships, their struggles, and their transformations. The legends tell us that cats and mice, now enemies, were once friends. But the mouse betrayed the cat, and God punished it, decreeing that the cat would devour the mouse. As we find in Midrash Rabbah, this tale echoes the story of the moon, who lost part of her light for speaking ill of the sun. And dogs and cats, too, were once partners until a series of unfortunate events led to their eternal animosity.

Even physical characteristics, it is said, were not always as they are now. The mouse's mouth, for example, was changed during an incident in Noah's ark. The raven, too, bears the mark of Noah's curse, and the steer the kiss of Joshua. And the serpent, before the fall, was upright, intelligent, and resembled man.

The legends even explore the cunning of animals. The fox, for example, outwitted the Angel of Death by pretending to mourn the fate of his "friend" – his own reflection in the water! When Leviathan tried to capture him, the fox tricked the fish into believing he had left his heart behind, leading to their ridicule.

These stories, filled with fantastical creatures and moral lessons, offer a glimpse into the tradition of Jewish folklore. They remind us that even in the animal kingdom, there are tales of betrayal, redemption, and the enduring power of cunning. They make us wonder about the origins of the world as we know it, and the hidden stories behind the creatures that share it with us. So, the next time you see a cat chasing a mouse or a dog barking at a cat, remember the ancient tales, the curses, and the betrayals that shaped their destinies. Perhaps, just perhaps, you'll see the world in a whole new light.

Full source
Legends of the Jews 1:57Legends of the Jews

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1909) · Public Domain

Some traditions describe a primordial Adam tethered to the earth by an umbilical cord, a creature whose life hangs, quite literally, by that living thread. Snip the cord, and it's game over.

Rooted to a single spot, the Adam sustains himself on whatever the surrounding soil produces, as far as his tether allows him to crawl. Now, it first appears, "Poor guy!" But this isn't a gentle giant. Anything that dares to venture within the radius of his cord risks being seized and, well, demolished. He’s a territorial creature, to say the least!

So, how do you deal with such a being? You can't exactly walk up and shake his hand, can you? According to the lore, getting close is a fatal mistake. The only way to dispatch an Adne Sadeh is from a distance. You need to sever that navel-string with a well-aimed dart. And when you do, he dies amid groans and moans. It’s a rather dramatic end.

There’s even a story about a traveler who stumbled into a region inhabited by these creatures. Overhearing his host discussing plans to honor him by serving "our man," the traveler understandably panicked, assuming he was about to become dinner! He fled for his life, only to later discover that his host wasn't planning cannibalism, but rather a feast of Adne Sadeh flesh. A classic case of mistaken identity, fueled by the sheer strangeness of the creature.

But the bizarre doesn't end there. The text draws a comparison between the Adne Sadeh and the barnacle-goose, which, according to legend, grows to a tree by its bill. This leads to a rather perplexing question: is the barnacle-goose an animal, requiring ritual slaughter to be kosher, or is it a plant, making such a ceremony unnecessary? It's a question that blurs the lines between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, highlighting the sometimes-strange logic of ancient natural history.

What does it all mean? Perhaps the legend of the Adne Sadeh, and the barnacle-goose, serves as a reminder of the interconnectedness of life, the delicate balance between freedom and constraint, and the often-blurred boundaries of the natural world. Or maybe, just maybe, it's a cautionary tale about jumping to conclusions when you overhear dinner plans in a strange land! Either way, it certainly gives you something to chew on.

Full source