it is now. And the
wolves came to the doors of the huts, even into the villages, and no
one stirred farther than he need. And then the snow melted, and the
buds broke on the trees, and the birds began singing, and the sun
shone warmer every dry. The old people had almost forgotten the little
pretty one who lay dead in the forest. The bad ones had not forgotten,
because now they had to do the work, and they did not like that at
all.

And then one day some lambs strayed away into the forest, and a young
shepherd went after them to bring them safely back to their mothers.
And as he wandered this way and that through the forest, following
their light tracks, he came to a little birch tree, bright with new
leaves, waving over a little mound of earth. And there was a reed
growing in the mound, and that, you know as well as I, is a strange
thing, one reed all by itself under a birch tree in the forest. But it
was no stranger than the flowers, for there were flowers round it,
some red as the sun at dawn and others blue as the summer sky.

Well, the shepherd looks at the reed, and he looks at those flowers,
and he thinks, "I've never seen anything like that before. I'll make a
whistle-pipe of that reed, and keep it for a memory till I grow old."

So he did. He cut the reed, and sat himself down on the mound, and
carved away at the reed with his knife, and got the pith out of it by
pushing a twig through it, and beating it gently till the bark
swelled, made holes in it, and there was his whistle-pipe. And then he
put it to his lips to see what sort of music he could make on it. But
that he never knew, for before his lips touched it the whistle-pipe
began playing by itself and reciting in a girl's sweet voice. This is
what it sang:--

"Play, play, whistle-pipe. Bring happiness to my dear father and to my
little mother. I was killed--yes, my life was taken from me in the
deep forest for the sake of a silver saucer, for the sake of a
transparent apple."

When he heard that the shepherd went back quickly to the village to
show it to the people. And all the way the whistle-pipe went on
playing and reciting, singing its little song. And everyone who heard
it said, "What a strange song! But who is it who was killed?"

"I know nothing about it," says the shepherd, and he tells them about
the mound and the reed and the flowers, and how he cut the reed and
made the whistle-pipe, and how the whistle-pipe does its playing by
itself.