For in the springtime these Little People of the
Light hid in sheltered places. They listened to
the complaints of the seeds that lay covered in
the ground, and they whispered to the earth until
the seeds burst their pods and sent their shoots
upward to the light. Then the little Elves
wandered over the fields and through the woods,
bidding all growing things to look upon the sun.
The Tree-Elves tended the trees, unfolding
their leaves, and feeding their roots with sap
from the earth. The Flower-Elves unwrapped
the baby buds, and tinted the petals of the
opening flowers, and played with the bees and the
butterflies.
But the busiest of all were the Fruit-Elves.
Their greatest care in the spring was the strawberry
plant. When the ground softened from the
frost, the Fruit-Elves loosened the earth around
each strawberry root, that its shoots might push
through to the light. They shaped the plant's
leaves, and turned its blossoms toward the warm
rays of the sun. They trained its runners, and
assisted the timid fruit to form. They painted
the luscious berry, and bade it ripen. And when
the first strawberries blushed on the vines, these
guardian Elves protected them from the evil
insects that had escaped from the world of darkness
underground.
And the old Iroquois grandmother tells, how
once, when the fruit first came to earth, the Evil
Spirit, Hahgwehdaetgah, stole the strawberry
plant, and carried it to his gloomy cave, where
he hid it away.
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