Work is hard work. But if the world exists as it does today — nature enriched by creations never seen before — it is because human beings joined intelligence with their hands to build a workshop of dreams. And they called that tool Work.

Wizards may have their magic wands to turn wishes into reality. Ordinary people have theirs too: a wand that transforms stone into cobblestones, seeds into golden fields, words into poetry, and metal and fire into rockets. But when work becomes especially hard and weary arms begin to complain, the voice invents songs to accompany it.

A kind of abracadabra for reaping, spinning, herding cattle, hauling in fishing nets, or breaking rock. Two forms of magic instead of one.

These are the songs we sing here: stories, after all, about the life of bread — ploughing and sowing, harvesting and threshing, between rain and fire, between hunger and a full belly.

Work is hard work, indeed… but what comfort it brings.