“The poor often think that they must make sacrifices to God or to any power greater than themselves, it is a sort of way of keeping off ill-luck from their thresholds. And yet God knows their lives are full enough of sacrifices from beginning to end.”
Fragment from “A Christmas Tale” by Queen Marie of Romania – the second queen of Romania, who was writing fairy tales about her Kingdom Romania for English-speaking children, following the example of the first queen of Romania, Elisabeth (Carmen Sylva), who did just the same in her mother tongue, German, some decades before Marie.
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Read the whole tale in:
The Child of the Sun: Royal Fairy Tales and Essays by the Queens of Romania, Elisabeth (Carmen Sylva, 1843-1916) and Marie (1875-1938). Selected and edited, with an introduction and bibliography by Silvia Irina Zimmermann. [Series of the Research Center Carmen Sylva – Princely Archive of Wied, vol. 9], 315 pages, 54 illustrations (7 colored), Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag (Ibidem Press), 2020, 315 pages, 54 illustrations (7 colored), ISBN-13: 978-3-8382-1393-4.
https://www.sizimmermann.de/writing-queens-romania
Image: Cover and title page of the volume “The Queen of Roumania’s Fairy Book”, ca. 1923 (private collection S.I. Zimmermann).