Supernatural Friday: Legend of the Evergreen Trees



It is said that one winter, as the birds flew south for the winter, one little bird broke its wing on the way and fell to down into strange woods. It began to snow and when the whole forest was covered in it, the little bird couldn’t fly up to a tree and her nest, and with snow on the ground, she couldn’t find sees or worms. Frightened that she might perish, she begged the trees to help her and get her up into one of their branches. However, the trees were not kind. The birch tree, proud of being beautiful and haughtily, said it could not possibly help the bird because it had to look after the birds of his own forest first. The strong oak tree mentioned that it was afraid that the bird would have to live there till spring time and would eat up some of its acorns. Even the willow tree, normally gentle otherwise refused to help.

Distress, the little bird tried to fly again, but her wing was still not fit for the purpose. Seeing her struggle, the spruce tree asked her, “Why are you so downcast?” When the bird revealed her problem, it offered her its thickest, softest and warmest branch.


Inspired by the kindness of spruce tree, the big and strong pine tree also volunteered to protect the spruce tree and the bird from the North Wind through the winter. The little juniper tree offered its berries to the bird to quench her hunger. The bird remained through the winter, safe and warm, and when spring came, his wing was healed and he could fly away comfortably there and flew away again at springtime.


The Frost King, who kept close note of the behavior of all trees, strictly instructed the North Wind not to touch even a single leaf of the kind spruce, pine and juniper trees; while he was free to play havoc with the leaves of other trees. The North Wind especially enjoyed in plucking the shining, green leaves of the willow, oak and bird trees and leaving them bare for the winters, with nothing to protect them from snow, rain and sleet. It is for this kindness that the leaves of the spruce, the pine, and the juniper are always green and they are known as evergreen trees.