AMERICAN FORESTRY 



TREE STORIES 



SPIRITS IN TREES 



By Mary Isabel Curtis 



| ID you know, children, that there were 

 stories about all the trees ? The Greeks, 

 who lived long ago, believed that a 

 beautiful spirit called a dryad lived in 

 every tree. This dryad was born with 

 the tree and died with it. As long as 

 the tree lived the dryad had a lovely 

 time. She played with other dryads in the forests and 

 sang songs in the leafy branches of her tree. If anybody 

 stopped on a warm day to rest beneath the shade of a 

 tree in the woods, he might perhaps see a dryad and she 

 would come and talk to him in a sweet, rustling, little 

 voice that sounded like a soft breeze stirring the leaves 

 of the tree. 



But no dryad wanted to be caught. She would always 

 keep just out of reach, and if anybody tried to capture 

 her pff! she would vanish as completely as the gas 

 from a punctured toy balloon. 



Although in these days we are very matter-of-fact, 

 there are places where people still believe in tree spirits, 

 and in some parts of Austria the old peasants always beg 

 the pardon of a tree before they fell it. In Bulgaria if 

 a peasant has a tree which has borne no fruit, he will go 

 out on Christmas Eve with an ax and threaten to cut 

 down the tree. Another man will go with him and will 

 say: "Do not cut down this tree, it will soon bear fruit." 

 Three times the peasant will raise his ax and three 

 times his friend will beg him to spare the life of the 

 tree. They will then go away, and they believe that 

 the tree, fearing no mercy will be shown next time, will 

 bear fruit in the future. 



