Once upon a time there lived in the middle of a forest a poor woodcutter.
He had one little daughter called Annis, whom he loved dearly. Annis was a dear little girl, kind and gentle.
She was very fond of all the woodland creatures, and they in turn knew and loved her well. The fairies loved her also. They used to dance on the top of the low stone wall that went round the little garden in front of the cottage.
"Annis! Annis!" they would call to her while she was busy helping her mother in the kitchen. But she would shake her head.
"I cant't come. I'm busy," she would answer.
But at night-time, when she was fast asleep under her red quilt, they would come tapping at the little window.
"Annis! Annis"
Then she would slip out of bed and run quickly downstairs with her bare feet, and off with the fairies into the moon-shining woods.
But the next day she was never sure whether it had been a dream or reality.
That was in the summer.
It was winter now, and very cold. The sky was dark and heavy with coming snow.
Every evening, all through the winter, Annis would hang a little lantern with a candle in it on the small fir tree that grew just inside the garden gate. Her father could see it as he came home through the trees. It was a little bright welcome for him even before he reached home.
On Christmas Eve, he went to work as usual. He came home for his dinner at midday and started back early. He was at work quite a long way off.
"I shall finish there today," he said to his wife as he left the house. "Then I shall come nearer home. If the snow comes, it will be difficult to find the way in the dark evenings."
And that very day the snow began. All the afternoon it fell in great, soft flakes. Down, down, down....It seemed as if the whole sky were fallig in little bits.
The woodcutter worked hard in the fading light. It was quite dark by the time he had finished, and he had to keep shaking the snow from his shoulders and from his old hat. The wood was all neatly stacked in the little shed which had been built up there to house it.
He started off home with a sigh of relief, smiling to himself as he thought of his warm hearth and the bowl of hot porridge waiting for him on the hob, and of little Annis knitting in the chimney-corner.
But presently~~how it happened I know not, for he knew the forest well, and the snow had almost stopped falling, and the moon was shining~~he found that he had lost his way.
He was quite cheerful at first. "In a minute I shall find the path again," he said. But minutes passed and he did not find it. A cloud came over the moon; the snow began to fall again more thickly. It was like a moving, whirling mist where the trees stood less close together.
The woodcutter began to lose heart. Then, suddenly, he saw a light ahead of him on one of the fir trees.
"Can I be so near~home?" he said, half-bewildered. But when he came near he found that is was not a fir tree in his own garden that was lit up, but an ordinary forest tree. Little lights twinkled and glittered on its branches, burning brightly and steadily in spite of the falling snow. The woodcutter rubbed his eyes. Then he crossed himself. "If this be wicked magic," he thought, "it will now disappear." But the lights burned more brightly than ever, and as he looked about him he saw in the distance another tree lit up in the same way. Then he understood.
"It is the good fairies helping me," he said, and trudged off cheerily in the direction of the second tree.
And when he looked back, the first one had already grown dark again. But when he reached the second tree, another was shining ahead to show him the way.
And so he went on from tree to tree until at last he was guided safely home to Annis' little lantern in his own garden.
And always after that he used to put lights on a little fir tree on Christmas Eve in memory of the time when the fairies saved him from being lost in the forest. And so the
custom began, and because it was such a pretty one, and because the fairies so willed it, it spread, and today the fairy Christmas Tree is to be found all over the world in houses where there are children and where fairies come.....
