Fairy Tale

Now this is the story of Olaf
Who ages and ages ago
Lived right on the top of a mountain,
A mountain all covered with snow.

And he was quite pretty and tiny
With beautiful curling fair hair
And small hands like delicate flowers--
Cheeks kissed by the cold mountain air.

He lived in a hut made of pinewood
Just one little room and a door
A table, a chair, and a bedstead
And animal skins on the floor.

Now Olaf was partly fairy
And so never wanted to eat;
He thought dewdrops and raindrops were plenty
And snowflakes and all perfumes sweet.

In the daytime when sweeping and dusting
And cleaning were quite at an end,
He would sit very still on the doorstep
And dream--O, that he had a friend!

Somebody to come when he called them,
Somebody to catch by the hand,
Somebody to sleep with at night time,
Somebody who'd quite understand.

One night in the middle of Winter
He lay wide awake on his bed,
Outside there was fury of tempest
And calling of wolves to be fed--

Thin wolves, grey and silent as shadows;
And Olaf was frightened to death.
He had peeped through a crack in the doorpost,
He had seen the white smoke of their breath.

But suddenly over the storm wind
He heard a small voice pleadingly
Cry, "I am a snow fairy, Olaf,
Unfasten the window for me."

So he did, and there flew through the opening
The daintiest, prettiest sprite
Her face and her dress and her stockings,
Her hands and her curls were all white.

And she said, "O you poor little stranger
Before I am melted, you know,
I have brought you a valuable present,
A little brown fiddle and bow.

So now you can never be lonely,
With a fiddle, you see, for a friend,
But all through the Summer and Winter
Play beautiful songs without end."

And then,--O she melted like water,
But Olaf was happy at last;
The fiddle he tucked in his shoulder,
He held his small bow very fast.

So perhaps on the quietest of evenings
If you listen, you may hear him soon,
The child who is playing the fiddle
Away up in the cold, lonely moon.

Background and Analysis of This Poem

Katherine Mansfield's Fairy Tale is a brief, dreamlike poem from her collected Poems, first published in 1923, the year of her death. The poem is listed among Mansfield's poetic works by the Katherine Mansfield Society, while the text is also preserved in public-domain collections such as Wikisource. Like many of Mansfield's shorter poems, it does not tell a story in the usual sense. Instead, it creates a little world of transformation, where evening arrives as if the natural world were closing its petals and preparing for a secret nocturnal ceremony.

The opening image is one of the poem's most delicate inventions: the "Tree of Day" folds its perfect flowers, and each bloom becomes a bud again. Mansfield imagines sunset not as an ending, but as a reversal. The day does not simply darken; it closes inward, as if returning to a state before full blossoming. This gives the poem a gentle magical logic. Time appears to fold back on itself, and the world of daylight, labour and open visibility becomes private, sealed and hidden. The natural scene behaves like a fairy tale because it transforms without explanation.

The poem's soundscape deepens that enchantment. A wild and mournful strain is blown from shadowy towers and echoed from shadow ships upon the foam. Mansfield's images are difficult to pin to a single realistic scene, and that slipperiness is part of the pleasure. Towers, ships, foam and music seem to belong to an imagined kingdom at the edge of night. The poem does not ask us to map the place; it asks us to feel the moment when ordinary evening becomes theatrical, mysterious and just a little haunted.

At the centre of the poem is the "Queen of Night", whose arrival summons the dark princesses from their bowers. These figures are not developed as characters, but they give the poem a ceremonial shape. Night becomes royal, feminine and ancient, while the departing flowers or shadowy presences become attendants returning home. This is Mansfield's fairy-tale instinct at work: she personifies the change from day to night without turning it into a heavy allegory. The result is light, but not empty. The poem suggests that daily natural changes can feel marvellous when seen through an imagination willing to grant them pageantry.

There is also a trace of melancholy in the poem's beauty. The flowers close, the music is mournful, and the movement is towards darkness. Yet the darkness is not threatening in a simple way. It is maternal, immense and absorbing, "huge" and old enough to receive the little figures of the evening. The night does not destroy the day so much as gather it back. This gives the poem a strangely comforting sadness, as though every ending contains a return to some older home.

For modern readers, Fairy Tale is best approached as an atmosphere rather than a narrative. Mansfield's gift here lies in making the daily transition from light to dark feel enchanted, ritualised and intimate. The poem is brief, but it opens a door onto the way imagination can transform ordinary perception. A sunset becomes a folded tree, night becomes a queen, shadows become princesses, and the world quietly slips into another register. Mansfield reminds us that the fairy tale does not always need a castle, a quest or a wicked stepmother. Sometimes it begins when the flowers close and the evening starts to sing.