The Story of Tulips and Easter Celebrations

Do you know why Easter is always celebrated in spring? The story of tulips, this springtime English folk tale of fairies and tulips will help you understand the cycle of birth and death and life even after death. Easter Sunday is the day when Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and different people celebrate it in different ways.

Read the Story of Tulips

Level A1/A2

Once upon a time there was a good old woman who lived in a little house. She had in her garden a bed of beautiful striped tulips. There were tulips of many different colours. Red, pink, purple, yellow and tangerine.

One night she was wakened by the sounds of sweet singing and of babies laughing. She looked out of the window. The sounds seemed to come from the tulip bed, but she could see nothing. After looking out of the window for a few minutes, she decided to go back to bed. She slept well and woke refreshed the next day.

The next morning she walked among her flowers, but there were no signs of any one having been there the night before.

On the following night she was again wakened by sweet singing and babies laughing. She got up and went quietly to her garden. The moon was full and was shining brightly on the tulip bed. The colourful flowers were swaying to and fro. The old woman looked closely and she saw, standing by each tulip, a little Fairy mother who was singing and rocking the flower like a cradle, while in each tulip cup lay a little Fairy baby laughing happily and playing. The old lady stood very still, watching the fairies with their babies. It was the most wonderful
sight she had ever seen in her life.

The good old woman stole quietly back to her house, and from that time on she never picked a tulip, nor did she allow her neighbors to touch the flowers.

The tulips grew daily brighter in color and larger in size, and they gave out a delicious perfume like that of roses. They began, too, to bloom all the year round. And every night the little Fairy mothers caressed their babies and rocked them to sleep in the flower-cups.

The day came when the good old woman died, and the tulip-bed was torn up by folks who did not know about the Fairies, and parsley was planted there instead of the flowers. But the parsley withered, and so did all the other plants in the garden, and from that time nothing would grow there.

But the good old woman’s grave grew beautiful, for the Fairies sang above it, and kept it green; while on the grave and all around it there sprang up tulips, daffodils, and violets, and other lovely flowers of spring. Each night in spring and Easter, people say they can hear the fairies singing their little ones to sleep if they go to her grave.