Eden Coybee

“ She is very old, for she is the Mother of all the fairies and elves.
SNOWDROP
“What is it you want of me, my children?” she asks, in a voice like a silver bell.
And all the fairies curtsey very long and low, and they answer her:
“The New Year is come, Lady Elder; and we want you to grant us leave to wake the little flowers that sleep under the snow!”
“The World is yet cold for the flowers, my children,” answers the Lady Elder. “They are all asleep, each to be awakened in her time. But this you may do. ”

“ When the snow lies thick on the ground and all the streams that babble in summer lie still in their houses of ice, you think, I daresay, that the flowers are asleep, and that nothing can wake them before the spring?
But I know of a wood where the little elves and sprites and the delicate fairies dance in a ring in the moonlight, and I will tell you of what happens there at twelve o'clock on the first night of every year. ”

“ Most beautiful of them all is Rusialka, the queen of fairies and elves. She wears a necklet of dewdrops, and dew-drops sparkle in her dress and in her hair. She glides softly over the snow, and all the fairies follow her to a great elder bush that grows in the middle of the little wood. ”