The suns lantern

 

 

Once upon a time in a land not too far from where you are standing, but long ago, lived a small boy called Fionn. His father was a great King and his mother a beautiful Queen. Close by the house where he lived was a wonderful garden; it was full of flowers with beautiful colours and trees that you could climb in.

 

Fionn would spend all day playing in this garden and splashing in the small stream that bubbled and chubbled on its way to the distant sea.

 

Fionn was never bored, for if he wasn't making tree houses, or building dams, or picking the flowers, he would be playing with the deer and the birds that came to visit.

 

One day his friend the sun, who had just got out of bed and was spreading his light on the land beneath him, spoke to Fionn.

 

"Fionn," said the sun, "You are my favourite child. You play all day whilst I watch over you. But the time has come that I must leave you for a short while."

 

Fionn asked why. "Why must you go and leave me?" he said, a small frown crossing his forehead.

 

"Because," said the Sun, "I must go around the earth and shine on the Southern Lands, for whilst it is winter here it is summer there, and other gardens need my light."

 

Well the Sun visited Fionn less and less, and the days grew shorter as the night came on quickly. By the time it was dark before supper and all the flowers and trees had gone to sleep for their long winter rest, Fionn had become rather unhappy.

 

"Sun," he said, "Tell me, now that you spend so long away in the Southern Summer Lands, will you ever come back to my garden?"

 

"Yes," said the Sun, "I will return in the spring."

 

"But it is so dark and cold 'now', and the trees and flowers have all gone to sleep. I don't like it one bit."

 

"I am sorry for that," said the Sun. "But to cheer you up I will give you a gift. Go and make a lantern out of good strong paper. Wax it well, and paint on it a beautiful picture of the summer."

 

Fionn did as the Sun asked and made a beautiful lantern with a picture of the summer sun on it and he carefully waxed it so that the light could shine through the paper.

 

"Here is my lantern," said Fionn, smiling, "I made it all by myself."

 

"And here is my gift," said the Sun. And he poured a little of his light, the last of the summer sunlight, into Fionn's lantern.

 

"Now, I must be away to the southern lands," said the Sun. "Keep the lantern until Christmas, for then the year changes again and I will be coming back." And off he went calling over his shoulder so that Fionn only just heard him, "It will be my promise that I will return, and every time you see the lantern you will know that it is a small piece of my light, waiting to come back in the spring."

 

The lantern gleamed and glowed and glittered in the dark, and the picture was a glorious and wonderful shining picture. Fionn smiled every time he saw it, for the light the sun had left in the lantern still had all the magic of the summer days in it.

 

"I will tell all my friends", thought Fionn, "and then they will make lanterns and we will all remember the summer in the dark days of winter.