Swiss Fairy Tales

DEDICATED IN RADIANT MEMORIES OF MY SWISS MATERNAL ANCESTRY NEAR VALLEY FORGE FROM WHOSE LIPS I FIRST HEARD STORIES OF WASHINGTON, LAFAYETTE, STEUBEN AND OF SWITZERLAND THE LAND...

The fathers and mothers, who had known the old home land beyond the sea, talked often of chamois and ibex, and edelweiss and the rock roses, and the meadow flowers, and the cows...

There are many causes of an avalanche and a little thing may start one of these terrors. The irregular melting, by the morning sun, of ice, in light or shade, the fall of an ici...

After Hilty had enjoyed a good dinner, the dwarf told his guest that he would reveal to him one of the secrets of his skill, but he must not ask to be told more. He would be sho...

It might, indeed, take several millions of years to melt the ice and cover the ground with flowery meadows. But what was that? Because fairies never care anything about days, mo...

“Although we fairies all had a good laugh at you, when we saw you coming out of your house at night, with a lantern, to tell the time at the sundial, thus breaking up our party,...

In autumn, when Jack Frost returns, and storms are many and frequent, and the snows heavy, the march back and down is made in good order. Then, all the village folk turn out aga...

The chairman then selected, from the dwarfs that were passing out, one handsome fellow to take the message, in the most polite manner and correct language, to the fairy maids. T...

One summer’s day, this tremendous avalanche came rolling and thundering down the mountain side, and Pagoda Curve was directly in its path. When it struck this rounded rock, ther...

“Besides these foolish fashions, that will pass away,” said the president, “there was one place where machinery, or the jim-cracks of inventors, and all this chatter about scien...

Their sabots, or wooden shoes, were hollowed out of whole trunks of fir trees, and when they walked they made an awful stamping noise. Their breath, like mist, rolled out in gre...

But in one year, when midwinter came, the cold was so severe, the storms so much more frequent and the avalanches so much bigger and more destructive than usual, that the roads...

But the man, instead of hanging up his trusty rifle on its pegs, sallied out very early one fine morning to shoot, if possible, this very creature, the white chamois, of which h...

Nevertheless, the landslide, for so it was, had opened a view, impossible before, of a rich pasture, where many kine were grazing. Looking intently at a cow that, having filled...