The story of the Easter bunny

According to legend, several hundred years ago Duchess Rosilinda of Lindenberg had to flee her home with her children and a servant to hide from a war in her country. They found shelter in a small mining village in the mountains. The poor villagers didn't have much, but they shared what they had. Because the village was so isolated, they had never heard of chickens producing eggs. The Duchess wanted to do something to help the friendly villagers who were hosting them. So when she sent her servant to get news from her husband about the war, she also instructed him to bring back chickens. Within a week, he was back with an entire cage full of live, egg-producing chickens. The Duchess collected the eggs and stored them until she had enough. Then she prepared a feast for the housewives in the village, serving the eggs in various ways ... to show them what they should do with this new food. Then she gave the chickens away to the villagers. When Easter came, she wanted to give the children something special, but she had no treats. Eggs would be the gift, as she thought "an egg is the first gift of the reawakening spring." To make them special, she boiled the eggs down with moss and roots to give them color. On Easter Sunday, she had the little children build nests out of sticks and moss in the forest.... each had his own. Then they went into the house for the feast. After the feast, the children went into the woods to look at their nests; in each one they found five beautiful colorful eggs with a rhyme written on them. The children were quite excited and wondered how the chickens could lay such beautiful eggs! Then one little girl said, "Oh no, it wasn't the chickens, it must have been the little rabbit that jumped out of the juniper bush when I was building my nest there." All the children laughed and agreed, believing that it must have been the hare. When the Duchess was finally able to return to her home, she kept up the tradition of preparing a feast of eggs for the village children on Easter Sunday. The custom spread throughout Germany. Children prepared nests to see what the little Easter bunny would bring. In time, sweets, sugar eggs and dyed chicken eggs were added. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)