In the lovely meadow, far, far from here, where the little people live, there is a Singing Tree which blesses them with its song. It is a beautiful tree, with spreading branches and delicate leaves of every shade of green. This tree is not alone, for it has many friends among other trees, both great and small.
There is a little tree, a Treetop, who presents the story, feeling proud to belong to the Singing Tree. By the roots of the tree, which spread far and wide, you may see growing a great many soft mosses in every shade of brown and green; and everywhere birds sing and flowers bloom. The little Treetop, who is Tommy, is a great friend of the other trees, also of the wild flowers and birds and bees; and one friend, a bird, whom he loves best of all and who is most learned and wise, sings to him every day if it does not rain or snow too hard.
The people of the meadow were very much troubled last summer. A great baron came there with a great many people with him. The little people of the meadow were not great people, or even quite so good; and they grew very angry with themselves, and with the baron, and with everybody, when they saw what bad work he made there and how he passed his time. And then they went away until winter. During the winter everything was frozen and rained on in turn, and Tommy, the Treetop, had quite forgotten how to sing by springtime.
“I am so afraid I have lost my song altogether!” he said to his favorite bird. “I feel too bad to sing.”
“I hear you sing in your sleep, my dear tree,” the bird said. “But I, too, have lost my song since last summer when this sorrowful baron came. Then he gave me a terrible fright, for he wanted to cut off my head. But I was wiser than he, for I flew away, and I have never sung since.”
“But why did you do that, Fred?” asked Tommy.
“It was given me as a secret, but I can trust you, so I will tell you. This baron hates all music. He is a great villain, and has other wickedness in his heart, but this is the wickedest. Music has only brought him sorrow and trouble, so he wants to make all persons and birds and animals in the whole world as miserable as he is; and to do this he wants to cut down our beautiful Singing Tree and burn up and drown everything that can possibly make a noise, or cause him or one of his friends the least little trouble; or that has ever listened to the song of the Singing Tree.”
“But why did you run away? Perhaps he could not find your head,” asked Tommy.
“No, nothing could make so foolish a bird as I was then think of that, I am glad to say,” was the answer. “But I was so frightened that I flew all the way to America; and now I am only sorry that I was so wicked as to leave my friends alone. Now it just happens that I can sit up here and look about, and I see that he has sent away all the little people of the meadow. And now all the trees are trying to save the Singing Tree.”
“I don’t know what they mean, for I am only a tree,” said Tommy. “And what can I do?”
But when he asked, he was told that about this time last year, when the baron’s men first came, all the quails, and starlings, and swallows, and blackbirds, and robins, and musicians themselves all wanted the little people to go with hymns, and songs of praise, and outdoors concerts to keep all the trees alive; and so they marched off one day. But that was his last concert, for it was then that he came. But now these birds would again fly off, and everybody would like to go with them, but there was no one to stay and play the last concert.
Now the old trees wanted the Treetops to take turns in going to the Singing Tree to please him with a last song, and they were his little brood, and would rather that anything dreadful happen to them than that their good mother be hurt. Then the Treetops sent the longest of all their number down, and twisted it round and around him until the little mosses gave him his whole bath. But it hurt him so much that he swelled more and more and finally burst with the weight of the moss.
Then he went to sleep, and they locked up all his doors and windows, and there were so many that the tree would never find them all, and when he got drunk, and wanted to do anything that was wicked, nobody could make him get them with all the noise in the world and as nobody could make him. Then he was never heard from, so this last concert was for the Treetops to go to.
Tommy said that he must live in the meadow all winter long, but he never expected that that was what they wanted. The next summer they would frighten away the baron, and then, if his people came, the Singing Tree would be all right. The birds who understood everything and he were about the first persons who began to sing the most charming songs one could imagine. “No one need say anything ridiculous like, ‘Here’s to you, Tommy-boy!’” The song was such that his mother let his down at once again, “The Secret of the Singing Tree”. It’s all about Tommy and his adventure.
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