Around these parts they still tell the story of the tiny
fairy child who wanted to go and dwell with humans. Because she was so ugly, her mean fairy
parents were only too happy to let her go.
So they sent her to a village in the hope that an ugly human couple would
adopt the ugly fairy child. In her
little pack they placed a large bottle of fairy wine, or so they told her, to
share with each human in the village as a gift.
Now this bottle really contained a secret fairy draught which, once
consumed, turned the drinker into whatever plant they last saw. In this way, the fairies hoped to rid
themselves of the villagers and steal all their wealth.
So off she went to the village and sat down in the town
square, hoping for the right couple to come by and adopt her. But she was so tiny and so plain that no one
paid any attention to her at all. There
she sat for most of the day, and when the sun was low on the horizon, she
trudged away toward the woods, very sad and dejected. “Perhaps I am too ugly even for them,” she
thought. And that was saying something.
As she was leaving the village, she noticed it was
completely surrounded by beautiful white rhododendrons in full bloom. In those days white rhododendrons were the
only kind that grew. She thought of how
beautiful they were and wished terribly she could be as beautiful as they
were. “I will leave them a part of me,”
she thought. So she pricked her finger with
a thorn and spilled one tiny drop of fairy blood on each rhododendron. Well, there were hundreds and hundreds of
rhododendrons, and by the time she finished she was exhausted and sick. So she sat down and decided she would drink
the bottle of wine, and then she hoped she would drift off to the next world.
 |
| The blood-red rhododendron. |
Meanwhile, the band of evil fairies decided they would attack
the village in the morning since they figured that most of the ugly humans
would be turned into plants anyhow. They
would make their raid and steal any valuables the humans had. But they had quite a surprise waiting for
them when they got there, for surrounding the village were huge, brilliant red
rhododendrons with hundreds and hundreds of humans exclaiming about them. When the humans saw the fairies, they set
upon them with pitchforks and fire because this was not the first time they had
encounters with this unsavory band of raiding fairies, and they beat the
fairies far back into the woods.
The humans were in awe and a bit afraid of the beautiful
blood-red rhododendrons. At first they
thought they would cut them down now that the fairies were gone, but each time they
gazed at the deep red color, a fire of determination grew in their hearts. They finally decided that it was a good fire
and a brave fire and a protective fire, so they allowed the rhododendrons to
stay put. They had a big party with
music and dancing and much wine all around the rhododendrons, which they now
believed were magically placed there as the protectors of their village, and
they continued this tradition every year when the rhododendrons were in bloom.
And somewhere in some way an ugly little fairy child was not
so ugly or sad anymore. She was as
beautiful as she had always wanted to be, and she was living among the peculiar
but funny humans as she had always wanted to do. The humans, in turn, believed their strange
unusual red rhododendrons to be the finest in the land, and so they were.
