Dreamtime Stories: Life & Adventures Of Santa Claus Ch 1 & 2

Come join me for a few chapters out of the book The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum, the beloved author of the Wizard of Oz stories from the early 1900s. This book tells the story of how a baby, abandoned in the deep forest, was raised by a Nymph who named him Claus and his adventures as he grew up to become Santa Claus. Dreamtime Stories with Jacqui is the perfect soothing way to get sleepy for bedtime. Stories for all who are children and children at heart.

So just pull your blankets up to your chin, fluff up your pillow, and come along on this little-known story of Santa Claus.

Transcript

Good evening.

Welcome to Dreamtime Stories with Jackie.

Tonight we're going to start a Christmas book and it is all about Santa Claus.

It's called The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and it was written by L.

Frank Baum.

He is most remembered for The Wizard of Oz,

But he was a very prolific writer.

So the first part of the story is when he is a young person,

A very little person,

And it is titled Youth.

Chapter 1,

Bersie.

Have you heard of the Great Forest of Bersie?

Nurse used to sing of it when I was a child.

She sang of the big tree trunks standing close together with their roots intertwining below the earth and their branches intertwining above it,

Of their rough coating of bark and queer gnarled limbs,

Of the bushy foliage that roofed the entire forest save where the sunbeams found a path through which to touch the ground in little spots and to cast weird and curious shadows over the mosses,

The lichens,

And the drifts of dried leaves.

The forest of Bersie is mighty and grand and awesome to those who steal beneath its shade.

Coming from the sunlit meadows into its mazes,

It seems at first gloomy,

Then pleasant,

And afterward filled with never-ending delight.

For hundreds of years it has flourished in all its magnificence,

The silence of its enclosure unbroken,

Saved by the chirp of busy chipmunks,

The growl of wild beasts,

And the songs of birds.

Yet Bersie has its inhabitants for all of this.

Nature peopled it in the beginning with fairies,

Nooks,

Rills,

And nymphs.

As long as the forest stands,

It will be a home,

A refuge,

And a playground to these sweet immortals who revel undisturbed in its depths.

Civilization has never yet reached Bersie.

Will it ever,

I wonder?

Chapter Two.

The Child of the Forest.

Once,

So long ago,

Our great-grandfathers could scarcely have heard it mentioned,

There lived within the great forest of Bersie a wood-nymph named Nassil.

She was closely related to the mighty queen Zerline,

And her home was beneath the shade of widespread oak.

Once every year on budding day,

When the trees put forth their new buds,

Nassil held the golden chalice of Ack to the lips of the queen,

Who drank therefrom to the prosperity of the forest.

So,

You see,

She was a nymph of some importance,

And moreover,

It is said,

She was highly regarded because of her beauty and grace.

When she was created,

No one could have told you.

Queen Zerline could not have told,

The great Ack himself could not have told.

It was long ago when the world was new and nymphs were needed to guard the forests and to minister to the wants of the young trees.

Then,

On some day not remembered,

Nassil sprang into being,

Radiant,

Lovely,

Straight,

And slim as the sapling she was created to guard.

Her hair was the color that lines a chestnut burr.

Her eyes were blue in the sunlight and purple in the shade.

Her cheeks bloomed with the faint pink that edges the clouds at sunset.

Her lips were full red,

Pouting and sweet.

For costume,

She adopted oak leaf green.

All the wood nymphs dressed in that color and no,

No other so desirable.

Her dainty feet were sandal clad,

While her head remained bare of covering other than her silken tresses.

Nassil's duties were few and simple.

She kept hurtful weeds from growing beneath her trees and sapping the earth food required by her charges.

She frightened away the gadgols who took evil delight in flying against the tree trunks and wounding them so that they drooped and died from the poisonous contact.

In dry seasons,

She carried water from the brooks and pools and moistened the roots of her thirsty dependents.

That was in the beginning.

The weeds had now learned to avoid the forests where wood nymphs dwelt.

The loathsome gadgols no longer dared come nigh.

The trees had become old and sturdy and could bear the drought better than when fresh sprouted.

So Nassil's duties were lessened and time grew laggard,

While succeeding years became more tiresome and uneventful than the nymphs' joyous spirit loved.

Truly the forest dwellers did not lack amusement.

Each full moon they danced in the royal circle of the Queen.

There were also the Feast of Nuts,

The Jubilee of Autumn Tintings,

The Solemn Ceremony of Leaf-Shedding,

And the Revelry of Budding Day.

But these periods of enjoyment were far apart and left many weary hours between.

That a wood nymph should grow discontented was not thought of by Nassil's sisters.

It came upon her only after many years of brooding,

But when once she had settled in her mind that life was irksome,

She had no patience with her condition and longed to do something of real interest,

To pass her days in ways hitherto undreamed of by forest nymphs.

The law of the forest alone restrained her from going forth in search of adventure.

While this mood lay heavy upon pretty Nassil,

It chanced that the great Ach visited the forest of Bersey and allowed the wood nymphs,

As was their want,

To lie at his feet and listen to the words of wisdom that fell from his lips.

Ach is the master woodsman of the world.

He sees everything and knows more than the sons of men.

That night he held the Queen's hand,

For he loved the nymphs as a father loves his children,

And Nassil lay at his feet with many of her sisters and earnestly hearkened as he spoke.

We live so happily,

My fair ones,

In our forest glades,

Said Ach,

Stroking his grizzled beard thoughtfully,

That we know nothing of the sorrow and misery that fall to the lot of those poor mortals who inhabit the open spaces of the earth.

They are not of our race,

It is true,

Yet compassion well befits being so fairly favored as ourselves.

Often as I pass by the dwelling of some suffering mortal I am tempted to stop and banish the poor thing's misery,

Yet suffering in moderation is the natural lot of mortals and it is not our place to interfere with the laws of nature.

Nevertheless,

Said the fair Queen,

Nodding her golden head at the master woodsman,

It would not be a vain guess that Ach has often assisted these hapless mortals.

Ach smiled.

Sometimes,

He replied,

When they are very young,

Children the mortals call them,

I have stopped to rescue them from misery.

The men and women I dare not interfere with,

They must bear the burdens nature has imposed upon them,

But the hapless infants,

The innocent children of men,

Have a right to be happy until they become full-grown and able to bear the trials of humanity.

So,

I feel I am justified in assisting them.

Not long ago,

A year maybe,

I found four poor children huddled in a wooden hut,

Slowly freezing.

Their parents had gone to a neighboring village for food and had left a fire to warm their little ones while they were absent,

But a storm arose and drifted the snow in their path,

So they were long on the road.

Meantime,

The fire went out and the frost crept into the bones of the waiting children.

Poor things,

Murmured the Queen softly,

What did you do?

I called Nelko,

Bidding him fetch wood from my forests and breathe upon it until the fire blazed again and warmed the little room where the children lay.

Then,

They ceased shivering and fell asleep until their parents came.

I am glad you did thus,

Said the good Queen,

Beaming upon the Master,

And Nassil,

Who had eagerly listened to every word,

Echoed in a whisper,

I too am glad.

And this very night,

Continued Ak,

As I came to the edge of Berzey,

I heard a feeble cry,

Which,

I judged,

Came from a human infant.

I looked about me and found,

Close to the forest,

A helpless babe lying quite naked upon the grasses and wailing piteously.

Not far away,

Screened by the forest,

Crouched Shagra,

The henness,

Intent upon devouring the infant for her evening meal.

And what did you do,

Ak?

Asked the Queen,

Breathlessly.

Not much,

Being in a hurry to greet my nymphs,

But I commanded Shagra to lie close to the babe and give it her milk to quiet its hunger,

And I told her to send word throughout the forest to all beasts and reptiles that the child should not be harmed.

I'm glad you did thus,

Said the good Queen again,

In a tone of relief,

But this time Nassil did not echo her words,

For the nymph,

Filled with a strange resolve,

Had suddenly stolen away from the group.

Swiftly her lithe form darted through the forest paths until she reached the edge of mighty Burzi,

When she paused to gaze curiously about her.

Never until now had she ventured so far,

For the law of the forest had placed the nymphs in its inmost depths.

Nassil knew she was breaking the law,

But the thought did not give pause to her dainty feet.

She had decided to see with her own eyes this infant Ach had told of,

For she had never yet beheld a child of man.

All the mortals are full-grown,

There are no children among them.

Peering through the trees,

Nassil saw the child lying on the grass,

But now it was sweetly sleeping,

Having been comforted by the milk drawn from Shagra.

It was not old enough to know what peril means.

If it did not feel hungry,

It was content.

Softly the nymph stole to the side of the babe and knelt upon the sword,

Her long robe of rose-leaf color spreading about her like a gossamer cloud.

Her lovely countenance expressed curiosity and surprise,

But most of all a tender womanly pity.

The babe was newborn,

Chubby and pink.

It was entirely helpless.

While the nymph gazed,

The infant opened its eyes and smiled upon her and stretched out two dimpled arms.

In another instant,

Nassil had caught it to her breast and was hurrying with it through the forest paths.

Come back again very soon and we'll read some more from the book,

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.

Have a good night's sleep now.

This is Jackie.

Come back again soon.