A Story of the Lord of the Snow -The Mother

I could tell you many stories, but I shall finish with this one she had told me, which I did not see myself.

As I was telling you, Tlemcen is very near the Sahara and it has a desert climate except that in the valley a river flows which never dries up and makes the whole country very fertile. But the mountains were absolutely arid. Only in the part occupied by farmers did something grow. Now, Monsieur X’s park—a large estate—was, as I said, a marvellous place… everything grew there, everything one could imagine and to a magnificent size. Now, she told me—they had been there a very long time—that about five or six years before, I think, they had felt that these barren mountains might one day cause the river to dry up and that it would be better to plant trees there; and the administrator of Tlemcen ordered trees to be planted on all the neighbouring hills; a wide amphitheatre, you know. He said that pine trees should be planted, for in Algeria the sea-pine grows very well. And they wanted to try it. Well, for some reason or other—forgetfulness or fantasy, heaven knows!—instead of ordering pine trees they ordered fir trees! Fir trees belong to Scandinavian countries, not at all to desert lands. And very conscientiously all these fir trees were planted. Now Madame X saw this and I believe she felt like making an experiment. So it happened that four or five years later these fir trees had not only grown but had become magnificent and when I went to Tlemcen the mountains all around were absolutely green, magnificent with trees. She said to me, “You see, these are not pine trees, they are fir trees”, and indeed they were—you know fir trees are Christmas trees, don’t you?—they were fir trees. Then she told me how after three years when the fir trees had grown, suddenly one day or rather one December night, as she had just gone to bed and put out her light, she was awakened by a tiny little noise—she was very sensitive to noise; she opened her eyes and saw something like a moonbeam—there was no moon that night—lighting up a corner of her room. And she noticed that a little gnome was there, like the ones you see in the fairy-tales of Norway and Sweden, Scandinavian fairy-tales. He was a tiny little fellow with a big head, a pointed cap, pointed shoes of dark green, a long white beard, and all covered with snow.

So she looked at him—her eyes were open—she looked at him and said, “But… Eh! what are you doing here?”—she was a little worried, for in the warmth of her room the snow was melting and making a little pool on the floor of her room. “But what are you doing here!”

Then he smiled at her, gave her his sweetest smile and said, “But we were called by the fir trees! Fir trees call the snow. They are trees of the snow countries. I am the Lord of the Snow, so I came to announce to you that… we are coming. We have been called, we are coming.”

“Snow?… But we are near the Sahara!”

“Ah! then you shouldn’t have planted fir trees.”

Finally she told him, “Listen, I don’t know if what you tell me is true, but you are spoiling my floor. Go away!”

So he went away. The moonlight went with him. She lit a lamp—for there was no electricity—she lit a lamp and saw… a little pool of water in the place where he had stood. So it was not a dream, there really was a little being whose snow had melted in her room. And the next morning when the sun rose, it rose upon mountains covered with snow. It was the first time, it had never been seen before in that country.

Since then, every winter—not for long, just for a little while—all the mountains are covered with snow.

So that’s my story.

The Mother
CWM, Vol. 09, pp. 62-64