And ever since that day at creation time, when God the Father named every beast of the forest and every bird and flower and tree, the wee blossom whose petals are the color of heaven and whose heart is the color of gold, has been called “Forget-me-not.”
THE LITTLE STEPMOTHER
(Thuringian Folk Tale—Nature Study)
Once upon a time, say the peasants of the Rhineland, a woodman lived with his wife and two daughters in a little hut in the forest. They were very poor, but what mattered that, since they were very happy?
They had five chairs,—one apiece, and one for company,—clean, sweet feather beds to keep them warm at night, a bit of soup to eat with their black bread, and once each year they went to the fair.
But after a time the mother died, and things were different. The father took another wife, who had two children of her own, and she was very unkind to her husband’s little daughters. She forced them to do all the work, and if the poor woodman so much as opened his mouth to object, she beat him with her slipper. You will know how greedy she was when I tell you that she took two of the fine wood chairs for her own children and kept two for herself, and you remember there were only five in the hut. That left one for the husband and his daughters, and as the father was kind and good, he let them have it all to themselves and patiently stood while he ate his meals.
For a long time that greedy little stepmother ruled her husband and his children with an iron hand, while her own daughters acted like spoiled princesses, until one night something happened. The hut and the family disappeared. Just how it came to pass, nobody knows, but the next morning the other woodmen found a little flower growing where the house had stood, and they knew that a fairy or witch or something had turned the family into the blossom which you may see almost any summer day. The greedy stepmother still sits on her two chairs, with her children on each side of her holding a chair apiece. The woodman’s little daughters are crowded together on one, just as they were in the hut. And what of the poor henpecked husband, who did not dare to object to anything his spouse chose to do? Look in the center, right under her slipper, and you will find what most people say is the pistil. But the peasants of the Rhineland know better. It is the woodman, who once upon a time lived in the hut in the forest, and the flower you call the pansy is to them “The Little Stepmother.”
THE RABBIT AND THE EASTER EGGS
(Bavarian Folk Tale)
Once, in the German land of Bavaria, there was a mother who was very poor. She was sad as Easter time drew near, for it was the custom in that land to give presents then just as we do at Christmas, and she had nothing for her children. She grieved about it day and night, and one day was so unhappy over it that she wept.