Hello, it's me, Lily, a frog who lives in a pond, and loves to tell stories. This is a very old fairy tale

for you called The Legend of the Wooden Shoe, and it was first written down in 1918 by William

Elliott Griffith in Dutch fairy tales for young folk, and it's here rewritten and rearranged by

Marlene Wurfel for tales from the Lily Pad.

A very, very long time ago, before there was such thing as cars and soccer games and supermarkets,

and even before that, before there were horses and knights and princesses reading fairy tales

in gloomy high towers and even before that, before clocks and watches, before feathered pens and ink,

and before the oldest books written in the oldest languages, there were millions of good fairies

living in the sun. The good fairies came down from the sun and went deep into the dark

earth. In the earth, the good fairies changed themselves into roots and leaves, and eventually they

became trees. They became pine trees, birch trees, ash trees, and oak trees. They stood still,

mostly, until people arrived to walk among them. In this old world, people lived on acorns,

they roasted boiled and mashed acorns. They made porridge and baked bread from acorns.

They wore oak tree bark for clothing pounded soft into a sort of leather and they used oak timber

to make boats and houses. Everything happened around and under the boughs of oak trees.

If a person were sick, their family laid them under an oak tree and asked the gods to heal them.

If a person wanted to become a warrior, they would kneel before their lord or lady under the

oak tree and vow to protect them. Marriage oaths and other promises were made under oak trees.

Babies were brought to the oaks and their mothers asked for blessings of good health,

strength, and beauty, prosperity, and wisdom for them. The trees held the earth,

the earth held the trees, and the earth and the trees held the people. Everywhere around

the trees and the people was water. The people were barefoot and often afraid. The people were

...