The Miraculous Pitcher

The Miraculous Pitcher is one of the six retold Greek myths in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1851 children’s book A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys. The story retells the classical Greek myth of Baucis and Philemon, the elderly poor couple who unknowingly host the gods Jupiter and Mercury in disguise and are rewarded for their hospitality while the wider community that turned the strangers away is punished.

Hawthorne’s retelling is framed within the wider Wonder Book structure, with young Eustace Bright telling the story to a group of children at the Tanglewood estate in the Berkshires. Eustace tells the Baucis and Philemon story to the children with Hawthorne’s characteristic warm prose, with the central pitcher of the title being the magical vessel that the gods leave for the elderly couple as one of their rewards for the kind hospitality.

The miraculous pitcher of the title produces an inexhaustible supply of milk for Baucis and Philemon, with the magical vessel functioning both as practical reward and as symbolic recognition of the couple’s generosity. Hawthorne renders the central scene of the gods being welcomed and the meal being served with the kind of warm domestic detail that his children’s writing reliably delivered.

The story is one of the most beloved entries in the Wonder Book, with the central premise of hospitality being rewarded and inhospitality being punished providing the kind of clear moral framework that children’s storytelling reliably uses. For families with young children encountering Greek mythology for the first time, The Miraculous Pitcher remains one of the most accessible and most affecting versions of the Baucis and Philemon story available.

For students of nineteenth century American children’s literature or of Hawthorne’s wider catalogue, the story is essential.