the girl , for instance , had learnt most of the olden myths from a blind old man who lived in a cave and sung of the gods heroic deeds to the awful strum of a broken lyre , and who , though subsisting on what the girl caught or gathered for him , thought that she should be so grateful as to repay his wisdom by offering up herself to his lecherous gropings a fate she avoided for months by digging holes in pumpkins and placing them between her legs , so that the abominable old man unknowingly copulated with his dinner while she whimpered and moaned to the rhythm of his huffing and puffing .