The Dandelion

Southland Times, Issue 22158, 28 October 1933, Page 18

The Dandelion

As everyone knows, the sky world is a beautiful place, and on it once lived bands of faithful working fairies and pixies all employed by King Sol and Queen Moon. These fairy workers lived in lots of bands all over the sky, and to each band King Sol and Queen Moon assigned different jobs, which they expected them to carry out fully and properly. Now the King ruled the sky by day and the Queen ruled it by night, and they each had bands and bands of the fairy workmen in each of their courts to help them with their work all over the sky. In the King’s court he employed what he called sunrise artists, who were always busy painting the sky a vivid red when he rose in the morning and greeted the world. And all through the day he had artists busily engaged in painting the clouds a lovely fluffy white but sometimes he would call forth the storm artists; and then the cloud artists would all flee away to make room for the storm artists who would almost immediately start painting the sky a purply-black colour.

Down on earth the wind would be shrieking and howling all over the land, and you’d see the land fairies flying for all their worth to the shelter of their little mushroom houses because they knew it was a sure sign the King was in a bad temper and he’d soon be having rain pouring from the sky.

These were not his best artists though. He kept all his best ones till he was slowly sinking to rest and then you would see each one with his paintpot making vivid splashes all over the sky in the most beautiful colours all warm and golden and bright. The Queen did not keep any artists but to make up for this her court was full of lots and lots of star fairies whose duty it was to wait on her when she sailed the sky, and help her to brighten the sky by twinkling and shining all over the place. Now among these fairy stars there was a little fellow called Starlight. In spite of the lovely home he had he was a very discontented little fellow and every night when the moon would be shining, he would look down on the earth and see lots of little land fairies revelling and dancing in the moonlight. How he longed to go down and join them and dance and play among the pretty flowers. So he plotted and planned how he would escape from the sky and after nights of thinking and wondering he decided he would wait his time and slide down to earth on a moonbeam. He waited for a while and at last took his chance and he found himself sliding down to earth. But alas! alack! he did not know that bis fairy godmother had seen him escape and it is a rule in sky land that if a star escapes to earth it is immediately turned into a flower which will spread and spread. So when the star arrived at the earth it found out it could neither move nor dance try as it would and when it looked into a dewdrop it found that it had turned into a bright golden flower like a daisy. How he longed and longed that he had not disobeyed his godmother, but he could not do anything because he knew he shoulden’t have broken the rules of the sky. Next morning a little girl, while rambling through the meadows, came across this little flower and taking it into her mother told her she thought it a “dandy flower,” and ever since that it has been called dandelion. So that is where we get our dandelions, which we always find in the most unusual places, and they always look so nice and bright and gay. —2 marks to Cousin Jean Neill (14) Tokanui.