One Christmas, a young girl named Marie receives a nutcracker doll as a gift from her godfather, Herr Drosselmeyer. However, her brother Fritz accidentally breaks the doll, and Marie tenderly cares for it with great devotion. From that moment on, the story unfolds with the breaking of the Mouse Queen’s curse, leading the Nutcracker—revealed to be a prince from the Land of Dolls—back to his true form. Through Marie’s sincere love, the tale concludes with the two living happily ever after.
The Golden Axe and the Silver Axe is one of Aesop’s fables, and it is also known by the title Hermes and the Dishonest Woodcutter . This tale is often staged as a scene in which a mountain spirit appears and presents a golden axe and a silver axe. Long ago, in a remote village deep in the mountains, there lived a kind woodcutter. One day, while chopping wood, his hand slipped and his axe fell into a pond. As he stood there, troubled and distressed, a mountain spirit appeared and asked what had happened. After hearing the story, the spirit rewarded the honest woodcutter by giving him both a golden axe and a silver axe as gifts. When a wicked woodcutter heard the news, he came to the same pond and deliberately dropped his own axe into the water. When the mountain spirit appeared again, the wicked woodcutter lied. In the end, he could not even get back his iron axe.
