THE SILVER CRADLE

Evening Star, Issue 21090, 30 April 1932, Page 5

THE SILVER CRADLE

We are all very familiar with fairy stories of babies in silver cradles and beautiful princesses being married to handsome young princes and living happy over after. But we do not look for romantic happenings in the lives of the people who are known as “saints”!

Yet there is one saint who lifed in “the Middle Ages” who was a princess and was young and beautiful, and who had a silver cradle, and also a young and handsome and good prince for a husband. Beyond all these nice things this saint-princess had a good and gentle and loving heart, and as she grow up she pitied the sorrows of the poor lepers and of the peasants with their sickness and their hunger and poverty. She built a hospital, where she nursed them with her own hands and sat up with them at night, and often and often she would take her own warm clothes and even the blankets from her own bed to cover them. Poor little princess-saint! She was only a few weeks old when she was married, twenty-four years old when she died, and out of ail the beautiful possessions and gifts she had had she was only able to keep three to the end of her 'short life. All the rest were taken from her by death or by her enemies. The three things she kept were her sweet face, her good and gentle heart, and the love of he brave young husband, who died on a crusade when she was only twenty. The name of our princess-saint was Elizabeth—St. Elizabeth of Hungary—and she was born in 1207. Perhaps the people in olden tinns who _wanted to amuse the children vith fairy stories, and the people who vanted to help the children to live beautiful and good lives, went back to this story of the Middle Ages and took the princess and saint for their model. Directly the little princess was born there came messenger to her father, Andrew Jl. of Hmgnry. from the Prince of Thuringia aid Hesse, asking for the baby princess 10 be married to his eldest son Ludwig, who was a little boy of four. King Andrew agreed. The baby was placed in a silver cradlt and carried to the Castle of the Wartiurg.

Here the baby and the little boy wore married, and the baby grew up there. Little Ludwig’s mother was not kind to the child, and allowed no one else to be kind to her, for she thought her little boy might have had a richer and a grander wife. But Ludwig always loved the little girl, and was always kind to her, and always brought her home a pretty present when he went away on a journey. When Ludwig was twenty and Elizabeth fifteen they had another formal marriage. They had two beautiful children, and were very happy. Ludwig liked Elizabeth to care for his poor peasants. One day, when there was a famine and many of the poor peasants were dying of hunger, Elizabeth filled her apron with bread from the Castle and hurried down the steep path to the valley. On the way she met her husband. On this occasion Elizabeth thought he would be very angry, because bread was very, very precious.

When the Prince said “ What are you carrying in your apron?” Elizabeth was so frightened that she said, “Roses, my lord”; and when the Prince looked in her apron he saw no loaves of bread, but only roses, and above her fair head he saw a cross shining. There are many wonderful s cones like this told about St. Elizabeth, and the fairy stories and the saint stones have got a little mixed. But though, after her husband’s death, Elizabeth’s enemies took from her Jiis lands and her little boy and girl, and her nome and her money, yet, however poor and lonely and sad and sick she was, to the very end she spent all her time, and all she could earn, on those poorer and sadder than herself.

The fairy stories stopped when her happy days were over, but tlie saint stories lasted through the sad days.