Swiss Fairy Tales
Copyright© 2025 by William Elliot Griffis
Chapter 21: The Fairies’ Palace Car
Once upon a time, the fairies that live up near the mountain tops got together, and one said to another:
“Let us go travelling.”
“We’ll go as far as Geneva,” said another.
“Agreed,” they all shouted in chorus. “It will be like going from the North Pole to the Spice Islands. We can see all sorts of landscapes and go through many climates, before we get to Geneva. So let us all begin our journey today!”
It was not at all strange, that they should all start off at once. The fairies had no laundry to get home in time, nor new clothes to have made and fitted, nor trunks to pack, nor expressmen to bother with. There were no tickets to be bought, or reserved seats in the cars to look after, or handbags to carry, or telegrams to send, or letters to write. Neither did they fume or fret, because the taxicab man did not arrive on the split second. They had no watches to wind up, or to look at, lest they might miss the train, nor hunting cases to snap, nor sandwiches to carry, in case there were no buffet or dining cars. No! Happily for them, all they had to do was to jump on their ice-chairs at once, and be off.
Now let us ask what was their palace car, in which they were to journey, from the top of Mont Blanc to the Rhone river, and over Lake Leman and thence by ship to Geneva the Beautiful?
It was nothing less than a glacier, twenty miles long and two miles wide. This car, made of white snow and ice crystal, moves, as everybody knows, steadily along, and down, from mountain top to the valley. It does not fly as fast indeed as the Empire State lightning express. Yet it starts on time, and is sure to arrive at its terminal. It takes only about a thousand years, from the mountain’s tip top to the down below, or from snow flake to Rhone river.
When motion was begun, by the fairies in the air, several hundred of them caught, each, a snow flake at the summit, and rode on it from the clouds to the ground, until enough had fallen from the sky to make up the party, which sat, all together, on a snow bank, for awhile, till the train was all ready. Then the slide downhill began.
Every day the sun would tickle the ice mass and melt it, so it had to move on. Then, for the fairies, it was like coasting on a bob sled, and they were as merry as if they were on a toboggan. So they mightily enjoyed the fun. The fairies did not have to sit on a narrow line, or hold on tight, lest they might fall off, bump against a post, or hit a tree, or a rock.
On the contrary, it was more like going on board a big ship, or promenading on the deck of an ocean liner. They played ball, and hockey, and shuffle board, and danced and waltzed, and had guessing and finger games, and leap frog for exercise. They sat in the cabins, which were crystal ice caverns. They played hide and seek in the crevices, and blindman’s buff among the ice ridges. They leaped merrily over the hammocks, and they bathed and swam in the ponds of water, which the sun melted every day toward noon. In the baths, which lasted several hours, they sported around like a lot of mermaids.
In this way, they so amused themselves, that they forgot or did not care to remember the passing months, or years, or centuries. They were travelling for fun, and had no business or social engagements to attend to, or guide books, to tell where they were going. So they were in no hurry, for the glacier only moved at the rate of half an inch an hour, or a few miles in a century. What cared they for rapid transit? There were no strikes or delay, no subway or tunnel rules, no hustler to make you “step lively,” and shut the car door on you, or tell you to “let ‘em out,” or “watch your steps.” No policeman on foot, or motorcycle, to overtake and arrest you for speeding! It was all pure fun.
The fairies had a watcher, who sat on an ice pinnacle, like a man in the foretop of an ocean steamer. He it was, who announced anything new in the weather, or the country, or landscape through which they passed. Then, also, a lecturer came aboard, every ten or twenty years, to explain the history and point out the wonderful things along the route, or what had happened, at this or that place.
These wise prompters were also expected to tell what famous trees or flowers lived, along the route, and in the various climates. Without a telescope, they could see little moving specks, looking like flies, or fleas, high up on the eternal snows. These were human beings, who had either, like wild flowers, escaped cultivation; or, perhaps, had fled from prison, or lunatic asylums, and were bound to get up to the mountain tops, as if their keepers were after them with guns. Occasionally an electric railroad, with snorting locomotive, on a track and pinion system of cog-wheels, with central rail, carried the passengers, fat or thin, who could not climb, or who were sane, or, it might be, lazy.
Occasionally, in rambling through the ice halls, the fairies could discern, embedded in the crystal walls, black spots. Asking whether these were flies in amber, such as they had heard of, they were told that these specks were mortals, men and women, mountain climbers, who had fallen down precipices, or upon the ice, or slipped into crevices. Having ended their lives thus, they were kept in the crystal for years, until their bodies were shot out on the moraines, or washed down the rivers. Sometimes the fairies found bits of rope and alpenstocks. They even learned to tell the difference between blondes and brunettes.
Often some of the fairies wondered how it would feel to be born as a baby, and drink milk, and eat candy, and first crawl over the floor, and then walk and grow up to be a man or a woman. They could only guess vaguely what it was to die. For that is the curious thing about fairies, they cannot die, because they were never born. They do not have to grow like human babies, or big elephants, or little kangaroos, or be hatched out of eggs, like chickens, or wriggle in the ponds, or swim in the water like frogs, or fishes, or whales, or porpoises. Once in a while, some fairy thought she would like to try it, just once, to live and die, just to see how it felt, but the other fairies, who did not admire her taste, only laughed at her.
As a rule, these passengers on the glacier did not pay close attention to such matters. They were not much interested in mortals, but more in themselves, for they considered boys and girls, and men and women, to be very inferior creatures. They gave more attention to what they saw, as they traveled through the country, changing climate every few thousand feet and every century or so.
At first, all was snow, ice and rocks, with no birds, shrubs, or trees, or flowers, and not even moss. Indeed, some of them grumbled and declared they would not have left home, if they thought they were to see nothing more than mere human beings. But very soon, that is, after a few years, ten or twenty, perhaps, their ice chariot or train had carried them past this old scenery.
Now they began to see mosses and lichens, and occasionally a condor, or Alpine eagle, on a crag, eating his dinner—perhaps a young lamb, or a rabbit, or a marmot, or a chamois kid, or something from a cow’s carcass, which the big bird of prey had stolen from some butcher’s slaughter house. This was the first sign of that uncanny thing they called life; which, inside of mortals and other animals, makes them move about.
It was a stunning novelty, when the conductor called out the name of a new station:
“Flowers!”
Then they saw, overhanging the rocks, or near the edges of the precipices, or in the crevices and crannies of the cliffs, what they called flowers. Yet to us folks, who live in the house and nursery, these plants, so bundled up in white, hardly seemed to be flowers. They rather looked like babies, ready to be taken out to ride, for they were well swaddled in what appeared to be fur or flannel. In fact, their flowers, so called, were so woolly, and cushiony, and flat, and low, and they kept holding on so hard, as if for dear life, in the biting cold wind, that they looked bleak and ghostly. Some of these Alpine flowers were as downy as a duckling, and as hairy as a poodle. But this was to keep the plants warm. For life is warm. Death is cold.
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