Once upon a time there was a young man who was in love with a young maiden. She was beautiful and fair, and every boy in the village wished to have her hand in marriage. The young man tried everything he could to win her affection. One day when he could hold his love in for no longer, the young man took the young maiden down to a hidden spot beneath a willow by the river. He confessed his love for her and begged her to love him back. Alas, though, the maiden had been toying with the poor man's heart all along, and she rejected him with a laugh. She had seen the whole thing as a simple game.
The young man was utterly crestfallen. That night as he lay in bed his heart ached terribly and he wept for he knew it was thoroughly broken. Days and weeks passed, but the young man's aching broken heart did not heal; in fact, it cracked and ripped and split apart over and over every time he say the young maiden who did not love him back.
Eventually the young man grew tired of the ceaseless sting of his broken heart. One day he happened to find himself beneath the same willow where his love had rejected him, and his heart hurt so much he could scarcely stand it and collapsed onto the ground.
"What use is a heart," cried the young man, "If it does nothing but cause me suffering?" and in this sudden fit of pain and anger, he took up his knife, cut his heart out of his chest and threw it into the river. He felt instantaneously better, but terribly empty and hollow.
The young man searched around for something to place within his chest instead of his heart, to take away the feeling of emptiness, and found a head of cabbage that had rolled out of his sack when he had fallen. Cabbages, thought the young man, were useful. They could feed a man or his horse and were easy to grow. A cabbage would be a worthwhile replacement for a useless heart. And so he set the head of lettuce within his chest where his heart had once been, and gathered his things, and went back to town with a spring in his step.
The next morning the man found a large scar on his chest where he had cut out his heart. When he touched it, he felt no heartbeat. That pleased the young man very much. Later that day he came face to face with the maiden who had not loved him, and though he expected pain he felt nothing but apathy. This pleased the young man even more.
The cabbage remained within the young man's chest for many, many years. He watched the other villagers fall in love and marry and start families together, and most of the time he was content on his own. He worked hard, and was as beneficial to the village as the cabbage in his chest. Once in a while, if he got very lonely or miserable, the young man would place a hand on his chest to feel the absence of a heartbeat and remind himself that he was better off like this.
After all and he remembered how much it hurt to have a broken heart.
But as the years passed, the cabbage in the man's chest began to wilt. It withered and drooped until there was scarcely anything within his chest at all. And when that happened the man felt so hollow and empty he longed to feel love or heartbreak once more, but it was far too late- his heart had years ago shriveled away at the bottom of the river, and nobody could love cabbage-hearted man.
