The Love of the South Wind for the Dandelion
An Algonquin tale of the love of the south wind for the dandelion, which is made in likeness of the sun: Shawondasee, the south wind, heavy, drowsy, lazy, likes to lie in the shade of live oaks and magnolias, inhaling the odor of blossoms and filling his lungs so full of it that when he breathes again you detect the perfume. One day Shawondasee, gazing over his fields with a sleepy eye, saw at a distance a slender girl with yellow hair. He admired her, and but for his heaviness he would even have called her to his side. Next morning he looked again, and she was still there, more beautiful than ever. Every day he looked, and his eye sparkled when he saw the maid in the warm green prairie. But one morning he rubbed his eyes and looked hard a second time, for he did not trust them at first: a woman was standing where the maid had been at sundown, but what a change! The youth was gone, the brightness fled. Instead of a crown of golden glory, here was a faded creature wearing a poll of gray. “Ah,” sighed Shawondasee, “my brother, the North Wind, has been here in the night. He has put his cruel hand upon her head, and whitened it with frost.” Shawondasee put out such a mighty sigh that it reached the spot where the girl had stood, and behold ! her white hair fell from her head, tossed off upon that breath, and she was gone. Others like her came, and the earth is glad with them; but in the spring Shawondasee sighs unceasingly for the maiden with the yellow hair as he first saw her.

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company