44.—THE JUNIPER TREE.
It is now a long while ago, full two thousand years, that there lived a rich man, who had a fair pious wife, and they had for each other great love, but yet they had no children, and the wife prayed therefore day and night.
Now before their house there stood a court, wherein stood a Juniper-tree, under which stood the wife once in the winter time, peeling herself an apple. And as she so peeled the apple, she cut herself in the finger and the blood fell upon the snow. ‘Alas,’ said the woman, and she sighed right out, and saw the blood before her, and was indeed troubled in her mind. ‘Alas, that I had but a child, as red as blood, and as white as snow!’ And as she said this, she became right glad in her mind, and felt as though it should come to pass.
Then went she into the house, and a month passed away and the snow disappeared, and in two months. all was green; in three months there came flowers upon the earth; in four months all the trees in the forest thickened, and the green twigs were all growing in one among another. Then the song of the little birds resounded through the forest, and the blossoms fell down from the branches.
