A Christmas Legend

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 251, 18 December 1940, Page 6

A Christmas Legend

All around the wondrous of Bethlehem and the first Christmas njglit have grown many quaint legends most of them with a charm of their own and all containing some interesting thought. In some parts of Russia the peasants have a legend of a woman whom'they call the Babouslika. The story runs that the Three Wise Men passed her house on their journey to find the place where the GShild lay. They stopped at her cottage door and begged her to accompany them in their search. "We have seen His star in the East," they said. "Come with us, for we are going to worship. Him." But the Babouslika' was busy and would not join them. "I will come some time," she said, "but not now." And the Wise Men went on without, her., Then she was filled' with a great longing to be ■with'them,-but it was too late, though she followed them she never saw the Christ Child. But the legend says, she is still living and s.lill searching, and it is she, in those Russian houses who fills the children's stockings and hangs the lights and the presents on the Christmas trees, and on Christmas morning the children cry, "Behold the Babouslika," and rush out hoping they may see her. For she is always hoping that some day, in some home, she may find amongst the children, the Christ Child she missed those hundred years ago. In another part of Russia a young girl is believed to bring the presents for the children on Christmas Eve. She is a white-clad maiden known as Ivolyada, and she drives in a sledge from hcuse to house distributing presents in the manner of our Santa Glaus. So do the legends grow in every country and of every kind, for out of every great event come stories, and it is small" wonder that the stupendous event of Christmas should be decked with garlands of story and song.