This poem is a legend of an old lady who angered Saint Peter because of her greed. The story goes like this. Long long ago, there lived an old lady in Northland. She was very selfish and greedy.
One day Saint Peter, while preaching round the world, reached her door. She was making cakes and baking them on a hearth. St. Peter was fainting with hunger. He asked the lady to give him a piece of cake. So, he made a very small cake. As it was being baked, it appeared to her be very big. She did not give him that piece.
She made another still smaller but that too seemed her to be very big. Again, she took an extremely little scrape of dough and rolled it flat. She baked it as thin as a wafer, but she could not part with it. This made St. Peter angry. He told her that she was not fit to live in a human form and enjoy food and warmth. He cursed her and turned her into a woodpecker who has to bore a hole in hard and dry wood to get its scanty food. She can be seen in the trees till this day boring and boring for food.