German popular stories and fairy tales Author:Jacob Grimm Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SONG. Oh ! let us be fairies, if fairies are free From heartless, dull fancies, that plague you and ma t If labyrinths of fashion ne'er tangle their feet, Nor... more » pleasure brings sorrow, nor kindness deceit! The fairies ! the fairies ! oh, be they indeed Gay children of nature, whose home is the mead ? Who toil not, and care not; who, blessing and blest, Just live out their summer, and close it in rest ? There's wisdom with fairies : I'll visit their school, They'll show me their Order, and teach me their Riils J And if they adopt me, why fare thee well, earth I We wuit uot em other, in mourning or loirtii 1 EVENING THE SECOND. ROSE-BUD FRITZ AND HIS FRIENDS — THE ELFIN GROVE. ROSE-BUD. A King and queen once upon a time reigned in a country a great way off, where there were in those days fairies. Now this king and queen had plenty of money,and plenty of fine clothes to wear, and plenty of good things to eat and drink, and a coach to ride out in every day: but though they had been married n.any years they had no children, and this grieved them very much indeed. But one day as the queen was walking by the side of the river, at the bottom of the garden, she saw a poor little fish, that had thrown itself out of the water, and lay gasping and nearly dead on the bank. Then the queen took pity on the little fish, and threw it back again into the river j and before it swam away it lifted its head out of the water and said, " I know what your wish is, and it shall be fulfilled, in return for your kindness to me—you will soon have a daughter." What the little fish had foretold soon came to pass; and the queen had a little girl, so very beautiful that the king could not cease looking on it for joy, and said he would hold a great feast and make merry, and show the child t...« less