capful of wind
In the poem The Golden Legend, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow talks about the maritime belief concerning a capful of wind:
Only a little hour ago
I was whistling to Saint Antonio
For a capful of wind to fill our sail,
And instead of a breeze he has sent a gale.
Literally the term means a sudden light breeze (enough to fit inside a sailor's cap); but the term is also applied to one who, in myth, could control the ocean's winds and weather. In the Dark Ages it was a common belief that witches could do just that. With all knowledge comes sacrifice; I wonder what a person needed to do to discover the wind's secrets? Something terrible, no doubt, something terrible.
She did not take it. I gave up that eye
to her. Yes. I let her draw the sickle
toothed-shark bone across me. Screamed as the sky
went out and the waves rushed in. All that gruel
meat of an eyeball. Gone. She packed it full
of spiced tide weeds, sewed it shut. My poor skull
shattered. My spine burned. Now with my capful
of wind I have become a sea jackal.
My scar remains. The way it crisscrosses
across my right cheekbone, like a ripple,
a fate, something lost while the sea rages.
Even now it binds me. Something hateful.
Spiteful. Something I could not hear clearly
but a thing I'll always have to carry.