In our Thursday morning college, the Cascadia Academy presented to us a play called ‘Once Upon a Time.’ During the play we heard four fairy tales from around the world. The first fairy tale took place in Japan where an old man could understand what the plants and animals were saying. One day a spirit came to him and gave him a listening cap. He accepted it, put it on and called himself a fortune teller. He went into the village where he met an old lady whose husband was very sick and dying. The fortune teller told her that her husband would be alright and that they would live happily ever after.
The old man receives his listening cap
The second fairy tale took place in the Canadian woods. In this fairy tale a tall tree was mean to a small tree. The tall tree said, “You will never grow up. You won’t be as important as I am. All the squirrels like to climb me and the birds like to build their nest on my branches.” One day, the little tree grew up to be a tall tree and from then on it was also respected and loved.
The young tree tells the old tree how useful she has been
The third fairy tale was about a fisherman and his wife, a fairy tale from Germany. In this story a man caught a small goldfish but he threw it back into the water. He then went home and told his wife what he had done. His wife was very unhappy. She told him to go back to the stream to ask the fish for a piece of bread. The fish gave him the bread so he went back to his wife who again was unhappy. She asked the fisherman to ask the fish for a palace so that she could be queen. Still not happy, she again asked for more – she wanted to be queen of the sea, fishes and oceans of the whole world. Suddenly there was a great storm and she lost everything. She was so happy to see that she got her little hut back and they lived happily ever after.
The fisherman and his wife
The poor fisherman calls the little fish to help him
In the fourth and last story, a prince from Japan wanted to marry a princess, but the king did not approve of the marriage, so he challenged the prince to pass three tests. For the first test, the prince slept in a room with snakes. In the morning the king asked the prince how he slept. The prince answered that he did not see or feel anything. For the second test, the prince slept in a room with bees and centipedes, but they also did not harm him.This upset the king so he gave the prince another challenge which was to throw a bow and arrow across a field. Again the prince was successful. On the last night the prince and princess planned to get rid of the king. While the king was sleeping both of them tied him up and ran away. They lived happily ever after but the king was left alone with his bees, snakes and centipedes.
The wicked king laughs at the princess and prince