Improvise Melodies based on training a stochastic model on 20 German children's songs using a hidden Markov chain. This project explores using the very same technique to generate either random German fairy tales or random melodies.
# Intoduction to Markov chains
see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpJP6_v8Qq8data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAKAAAAB4CAYAAAB1ovlvAAAQAElEQVR4AezcB7xdRfEH8NnQeyhSLBhAAVEgNuwaUSkqEmlSJVRRikoREJQuSg0iVUpCVxBUOogkgPTeO6EISO+9/N93H3s/Jzc3yc17eX9eOXzcnD27s7uzs7Mzv5lzn4Perf+rJfA+SmBQvPff008/Hcstt1w89NBDcemll+bWDr7ihRdeyHX/vPHGGx6TLffdd1+mMT5XJvHPhhtuOIneiBdffHGS/TqvvfZaj3jppZfys/mf8847b7ymcePGjfc+sRcyefLJJyfoPuigg+Kiiy7K7f/5z39inXXWyfWu/PPWW29NMOzVV1+NW2+9NcaMGZP7brnllnjsscdyvdU/jz766HjN9957b2y77bbjtZWXxRdfPL785S+X1/Ge999/f+P9+uuvj+23377xXq0suuii8YUvfCHaOd8y7uWXXy7V8Z4NBfzKV74SF1xwQSy44IJx8803x+c///mYf/7543//+1/ss88+8fbbb4eNEs4777wTr7/+eowcOTIc0NChQ2OJJZZoKOtll10Wv/3tb+P555/Pi73yyiuZ2TPOOCM+9rGPxfe///0YNmxY7jPPI488EpTWYfz3v/8N8xPgeuutF6NGjcp0/tGuXHzxxXHYYYeF/m984xtRNoc/B2WeP//5z7HCCisYFocffnisuuqq8cADD+R3/+APvfnUL7zwwthuu+1ijTXWiKuvvhpJpr/nnntynbDffPPN+OUvf5nfyz9jxoyJ1157La9hnnHjxuWuZ599Nrc/9dRTWQ4bbLBBlpV9/exnP8s01X/I9+GHH46999477xlf1f7bbrstTjzxxLjiiiviL3/5S5bRDTfckEko6Pnnnx977rlnfj/llFPyeVEol89c//rXv3KftbfYYotgTLRTVmfo8qpnoo5//vrXv3b8G5n3Sy65JK935pln5rZNN900dtppp7juuuvyOs7DvvbYY4944oknYptttom///3vWSYGuMh0QL25DCoN3/ve94LwVllllVhqqaVipplmikGDOrtZwQcffDCmnXbarHgppZhhhhmygDFtM5/73Ofi3//+d5ku05bxGlNKMc8882SGd9hhhzjnnHM053nQTT/99PmWq1MMykuxBw8eHJQeMf5YaBtacsklwxg8Ebj+aaaZJltMbZSS8LUrn/rUp+LOO+9UzWXEiBF5j5SSVWD155tvvnjuueeyF8hEHf+Y01zPPPNM5s9BdTQ3/ofPGWecMdAtsMACgTedc845Z75s9uygFltssTj44IOD0liHYqIrxfgf/vCHMdtss4UzKO3VJ0trT/ilrB/60Ica3R/5yEcadXMp5LDIIosE2g9+8IO5P6UUa6+9dhx//PFZHo8//ng+x3/84x+ZdwYAYUrJI1JKYV/mYJA0ppTiBz/4QT4761D0hRZaKOaaa66smC5TOTP09IP8XErv1TKovOy///4xZMiQOP300+NrX/ta0HrW5OMf/3i+WQsvvHB8+MMfDgqRUidzFOlLX/pS3H777XHcccfF8OHD83Trr79+toCzzz57fp955pnz07wOfPfdd4/SdswxxwThEKBis9ZhwdwkVo6VNAEe8LjaaqvFV7/61Tj66KOzK2QN9RM29+BmO2htitu42267xYorrug179NclMQYB4Int5iFNj9Cl4qrmWWWWWLuuefO3gFfP//5z+Nb3/oWkuwdWKZNNtkkfvrTn8ZnP/vZ3O5iHnroobm+7LLLBllZg+veZZdd8mXUSUk8FVCCdaKgjMCwYcM0h8v27W9/O9ftY+mll46PfvSjMe+88+a25ZdfPnugnXfeOb/vuOOOsd9++2V+nR9aHkrnlltu6REbbbRRHkOO5E6511prrWylEbDEf/jDH8IZljl4RX3OxRNfnubafPPNQyGfkSNHhrk222wz3VmBXUDnkhsq/wyq1FtWuZ7SQbNLvTtPrr46vhVj1X5K773Ki/eJlZRSjB49emLdjfZW+ylK0yB6r9KKx0nxQ8FZifeGt3yU8eXZkqgHG63bvK+hQ4f22IoucfPkDQXkSrg37u/GG2/MdHAH9+GFNn/mM5+Ju+66KzDuqb16iKwOF8XiMLv64aZx48YF89vsdlgFNHvttVegMYaF1AYzeIfJWBOgHNZiypl8rhIt/INeMQcMAud4J1x41hh706bAS9FR4fJgPGO4HmvYm3ms30GSAxvvf/rTn6KsZU59+DJW3ViWmifhEbg2/eALGcC46Lho+1DHEysOutx9992aMjaDie1dg7W933HHHVnuzkR7KXCnumDNfPi2J/IpkMPerOkJ7xUL9re//S1bPPPj3zzmJy9z4IE+wNT6eqI0FJAL4e64E6aV4D75yU821uQavRAENzdq1CivucBXzLMbbyMwEYXWacOwChcC5GtrLimlOOqoo7JbEWHq56JtnOC4LreH4o3pAP0f+MAHkGRXyt1TNA0E5zALr+jhLkqlv7nAmwQtOHJxTj755Nhqq62C6xkxYkQmN1+xivAcuVDGolCZqOOfH//4xzkIs9cjjjgiW2ABg/oGHQFImSOlFPZgDooKBnDxZHrVVVfloA/+5uY7pg3jgH/KdOCBB8ZJJ50Ul19+ua7xCvgggHR+v/jFLzLN4h0Rr3Eppfj9738f5nFBnE8ZfNppp2XZw3AU0pnj749//GOQLWhVhQll3NR6NhRwXIeVstnpppsuzw0Mwz/lcEU6GAc6KWEB/ogp3TXXXJMxkFsPF6JbffXV861NKQWBsxCEboxS1hLQqN90000xduxYXbms0BHFslKs7JprrpkBsXl1zjHHHCEaM7YomJSIviIwN3jWWWeNQw45JI/Vp5Q5jKWE6GEU0S/sAwe6MGitw3qjSakT+7IYu3VgypRSY15K5MJw/SU4Yr1dTIcpyjYfoC6KhfesDTMWhfKeUsrBnzmi4z9PstHncrgs0ijFGuOrgyxgx1//+tfZ08BzxaIap5gDj5/+9KcbOJUclDKHNBxMqI1spMgYAvP3VGkoIOHTfrcHAymlcCOXWWaZvLZb4X2llVbKES73pwOtp0IA6667bjg0gj711FODRbBBSun2FjCMXtjuyTIC5kA1N65NEQixHm41xTR25ZVXzpFiSikAXlam8ABgU1R8GI+e1eCmAG1tSlEuikDJgWjtlITCclGUW5s0j3W4dVEgUC6CZxkoarHGomiW99xzz4199903p3Qc4rBhw3J0WNy2OY899tjgQQQPAoStt95ac059CcBYxeIJpFY23njjsG9yLBeYlzLI3jy9/+53v4tf/epXOcp1jtpZVnxLm/BwP/rRjxpRtssNWgleKCejI4VmLUHMd77znewRzNNTpaGA7SxQrOGU0LJek6Iv1gvNlMyPflIF7mIBW9GUdbj3Vv0Tayt7MXeVprRX27pSL3wZW617Vya2n+r6xpFptc3YrhZWXWk1vvBT1mxFU8byfq36Gwoo2Bg5cmR2V5LSrJcBEpJlIdlxFlA7y2FyCU64iNXQrmCINdXP2nCNLIQ+4NwtPeGEE4J1gdu0uZmssLXRwaTSCUC7uVky7YC0OdXlsjxHjBiR3THrALNJ7bAgbj3cYw7uy6Gw0CAD5WN9zj777Lxn8IO13XXXXQNuA+LNPa4DmvzkJz/JWIxMvv71r2crI7mtX2Am6CpwQyqqKKg9ySFK/1ibxaMcsDLZ2KNEv3kUgR3LhTc8ws8gAe/AZbOULJ5Aw37IWQqJ5TZeYa3xxivwBmRvnD70cB1Pht+CY8lsh47cLKssYY+2FN6H5QU55CB9RLAX7tkYdGRNf9Slp/TLZdILXob3sK7+5tJQQMKhCDbH9cmFOQQMMcfamGgJS0ojMY0JkS3XyS1VJ4cZKQhmAF3KrZ+p1ydRKSdGKApGuR6uDR0+KAhgbW7KIULDIyU0X4EHlHZYh6sTPNisgzSHqNB6Lo1DAiMovj54FlbCgzykKJIL8/mJknJN6LgnsoH7BEKUgTu3b/3cI7dNOeFgazssfdaAfclMkEOx4GeBDzdNblJSUjaU1Zz2JVAwnuycATng3zrWBjW8gzQK2lJclpRSfl2oIzmsX35Sg4s1evTonNhnWEr+VFbAnl0WgUiJ7I1xLiASZeLOYXxnhAfYEo2vQ3Km6jArnn3YOOuss/JXKrpEFvqbS0MBWQDC5vdNnFIKt9tNgt9YAgJLKeXkpMN2Y4BojIvCiqVMKQVsZLwbbV4bs7i5ywEZT6gwoz4JWLdT3Y0BiG2GxRw8eHD+RGi93/zmN2Fe/KB1SSQ+WQcKApC7iSJJkaDLQ4gSwhLtsJpxbikrSwHsW/uVV16Zv7BQeDQsImGa11z4MQ+l1M/KGK8uGyDaFLV7h7kotMABdqSscGlR9C9+8YvhcojWHTSvwcrgCXZ28fAIa7ossJnLJmNgXkpjP5/4xCfyZzFrKuRG8fEuxeXCaqecgkcy57n0azeXQIt1966/jDnggAMypoUX7RNudzYuN96cjTGlOAeGhIV3+fHLmOC/0FSfDQUUsVl46NChjciOYBB/85vfDGkGE6eUchDCjVAmWXJKCsjTfvQppfxpSsYekyxHvPcfpr773e8G9+NApBy06aZkXIq6iMyBit6KMticvkKDH+8CnpRS+KqBhpUQ7YkWWTcuhLVOKWUA7nIY56DU8emyaLNXaxYFc/iCCcW8lH3o0KE5YEBvbTJQFzFSEnLxXqAC65ZSyt+utTtMNJTPnrUp5gJt9JEZnmUiKAZPwBBQ4JRSgB3GkC8L6WJ6V8jNJcSz+XkH7eZ1YVgrF855a7eur1QCGe/24QKou3SeZOXJdZvHPsnX7wS0l0JP9FN2NC4Vt229QlN9NhQQNmFmq53t1ml4K1ous1X7xNqqkWIzDXfU3FbeubRSb35Ojgcus3kMDMequ8Xk0tw/Je8wHu9RxoAvpc7llvrkntU5qrT4w2e1rSt1kMg4MEHdmcrlmh9E0qeu8AJkpK7P+tqcUfGC+o2ZXGkoIPdD800GNJuQlWPZaLCMOCyhn5UBOvVzEzCim0jYFnTjBRhcDfzHZDPxLJ+NCSowj1ZhVZhy9PAC/OWmuTUUhMUzzoGZy2GwcFyc8UC3ueE4rpkQuCd93D0XaoyngMQtBertE5TAj++Y6BU5NhYEVrVvgrV3Sql/+PDhwXpzreikSqwpaPBub+SGFu9wGMBuP3CiwIC8yJCs0NuLdfEIOxvLjZKxoIo1BCkEBWi4TxfPecBjYAarU3AdLMmrwXpkIr0itQRiwMHWNQZ0shb+7AHUELSATaCRLzXWhfNSSvnLCatqn3iQY5UiK21ynvjmRcw7udJQQBlzrorblcviFn0ZAEgdEiU0sUPWzsxyRTAb7AVDloTqkCFDAk6yOMaBYZGWiJMCwEMwhH6Fi7VxdePwwn2UgyB0UaF+id5//vOfQYHcVm1oCcI4btlB4lUfIcJBFNl8DhuIhp2AffCBIAUZ6BXuWK6OPAhS8CKX5hD1vudLzgAAEABJREFUc4n2CA9xXyNGjAhK4kC5dLlMlwmti+Hpcoto1SWni8uE/SgSfCURTzkoKDprgyo8A/nbi8NWN0dx/XAnmfBgLqmxzokCesLWeDvyyCPzhwE8SbyTE+OBXgGhnKs6OblwLpqvSSULoU+783aGzqHaRqEpo7Z2SkMByyCRjoE2TwmlMfhxKRiHRQgYIDBgm4VB74BgG3UKS6Eojp/xOGBWLqUUcJQ+uKXkhgjUWgCyKNaBW8uc5kspBfzjU5h3KQgWze337rApuUMxt8Mt+5GWcFFgOspS5jAGntJfontzVQs8KNAR0JjXHPqLhSATMpA8ZrXtER0FduhoWVeJcZcU9jKHg5YiUkdD5uTIartALLp2Fg1OZM2saS1KxBqzgmickzOhSAyDAE27J2/CEgtq8KCdHMnBXFWrL5Wi3yVhRSmcM9FWLeSh3fm4pAwC+WhLKWVS+8iVNv5pKGAbtJnEDbGYTeeGKfinmZTlam4r7zam7qZ6NhcBBxfY3F6/9y0JNBSQ66DJ8A7TLvqBs2yHi3GT1ZlyN5ZiuF3auE0YkmWC1Uq/EF5/mccYrgsO0S7Ul3xWZ4n0s5AggDZu0Sc/v40r+JKV06eIcN1y7tm88oIl8oRFpHlYSe6fxTYPrGUsi2AtlhDMYI0LX/rNzdVyRd6rpWo5Cuyo9qtLlXhWS9lrta2dOoxX6FjAUm/nKe/oTHmMKj3XXyCMdpjOs1qcj3dQBdZXby7lrLQLWjynpDQUEDNMO9MqOQtPidgkE+EIbtfELCDXA1NZUL+AhcI6dHiOoPUbox/uM1Yb008RtEvCUhB91tdP2bk+/ZKthAcDUUD4xhiRlzEUaFhHAlragSJZFy4xViSnoHMhKIR5BBX68QaIU0RfMrie8gHfGCkJh22Md/3GAfQuRvVAYFs0LoJ9AO0CEvxyndwtJbI/dJTCkxI43HK5WXRpDbCH4puDjMkAPXwF0ggY8ADLSmi7pGRvbcWF8qGArGBG38uNF2SAOer2WureyQp2tbb3crEEj4yKNcgQrwKUYnzQ4s9XFZfYvBLeDIq+yZWGAgLcLJmDLoMoG3zmnRWxsaoFoqylnyIRCkGgV8p4T+/VYhxrBQsSNPzS3M8iayME1hU+hJFEltrhPLkm9VJAA3N7B8wdOuvsXYH3Sr/DorRyY+YUHTsIdOCBS8UzuGDylfik/DAfHIdOgcMoija8ooWzRNHkap9k4CDR6zenuvaUOrGTwIgcKV9KKf89hsuPTrG2+fEm4IC17A3+NI9CyeA0CmI+OU78acdfNT1i/+YxN57kBT3txRjtvuCk1MkfTO7MFX2leHehvVvbmdqDebRNqjQU0MYIDXiW9DSI1nv6ikGzTW7zGNXuBnuyiL71OhjjKYZ2N9+zav4dsohQOwsm4emQy40TWZbPNviQCKZ0AhMpBePKzfUJyRzaKJCnNIen7D73IIAiIJdLO2vnCXSLlLltUTkrqd0BeFJeT67Yflg+1t0FE3FTKv2SsZLmFN8cFEJUKoCQSmLRWHTraTMGXDAnC6xPAKFdlM4iS714t3cyFXF6B2nwLGARQFE4SkgOXCgFsxe0vnQIZgQdktl4014giCCF4vryot28oJd92QtD42zIl8UDO1xc+2HZRe7GSWV58mr0w74k06V8StZA/8RKQwEnRlC396wEROg9u8KkZ5eqmTTFhL0uoFhgwp7xW0qkPn7r+G8NBWTemWeluCHPkucRleoznDn39M7Uqivoq8/Spx0+8K7O9KMrRRscwV2WPnO7lWhYUGOLC9PGdXJXhW9tivEstz7zalNHZw1Pc8MorKpvlWjkMz1hSuCb1TeXNvNYHwzxbv/eS395lj1aT7FOZ1+E/Kpxxhc6/KArPOkzxlObdUu9tEtplTlLv3ffutFK91TXUdcPz3viWxtaBS9ws7n0aYPnCq71DqeWsd7xXOQlbtDGQ5q3zGE+PFfPDF1zaSggJuR+5JyYcowVd2QQpnyFkP4A5LVx21wa/49BPl+bp34FLeBMibgbuIqbBJL1a7dOSb6aSwDAhRqHhrkH3LlublWbiwHs+4YJaJc27puAKCGchS9BEBfK/cC4wD56ygYrqXPFMK4DpJjaKAgMRLASxGSknRwEJPooljXwK+rWxkXKpXFzJYgxDq4SOOBLICGo8LQPckTj6wjZwI/kwo3aP7euH2az33LA5OW8ysHbq8vFZbrQ+OOqjXUW8pQCCe8S9CCVsXizd+3gB1ilXgq5Ojey8HXEX0yWPk8YnjLCyZSXDuCtrI2mVWkooHSGzafUCTjhpoLLDIRHKIDEqI1p88GcpZCugGNEUX4uZdMUOKUU5oU/0FEsoNyH7YKHYJZymxy4SNLN8bMfXwasA3MSFKH4BYk2dVgEFqI42swlclZnQRyk3wgSHgBtbVG2z4Mpde7T5zH0KaWAgVhEylXa8OGLQdmXdvuGj1wKh6+fUsFOkr5oXSz5UgdrjJJSyn8XLd0juJCIFljBzS4uGvvz9cO+0HHRLow59VvDmi6Ey0gGMGBKnfuhZC4umTMa6F06+0BnXuuZS8Je1JtSyn+OC5tqTynln/ZTOO8Kj6Of600pZYuuPaXOddVhdcpLSe3fHsul1d+qNBSQRRFUuJWUz2EB2LL3BgoehOEsJMFpQ0cQFBdQBUj9NMg4CoOmKDFw7ZMOoQjTCU8/0CqVwJIRjm/IUkA2UgAyIM3y+sJgk8bhBb9uewlACJ1CUSQ5RYdpjEOwPuvjEAQzPjGZB8j2VNxafLvNvmq4cBTAheHipJDQgQbmxbMgwdOeRNP68MRtsYAlByoPaaxARuQusADWtZMd0K4fb74gCWbwr7CScJd+FownoaSCGBEnuZOhfsrKWrKqvkyZxx5ZeBYKj9ZDa30GRbAHCxZvwFsIeIxDx2IaL8gQpOBVekmffXhSekaIXK2Lb+Odif6JlYYCToygJ9pFXyl13hwmumqRemK9vjQnRZAV6A088xrt8sEgtEtbpWsoIOANqMrlIWDKPVkF7owF0AaDcDdMvzFoYAjYA613RRjvyRUzx2jQe3I3nkw092l+tN65moIvzIdW6kM/lwBvFR616Wfy8VXoyxywID6tBYtxRdayJn6NNQecZW9cv3c4rqR6uGzW05z68GYOsoJxYDHteJdGsRZ+0JhTXykFdvglDBkWgC5FY23yQWstHwPMg39tSukvT57CGsWisXz2BouywEUpYEh8mwNGs1bZOxlpV/R5L7LEB8sGkvB8aKZ2aSggt8m803rYiyBtnvtiuuEw5trBwF8UUh+GCJLrKu/aSoEzYDBWztwOjhuV7+PCmXVWkFD9cgbWAOB9OaB4ftgAU5oPphJtcXvGa/N7P5jIVwuH5hBgMxCCAP34oLgLbhJ88NMmdBTPHJQF7+CBdwERHtXtzYGVgyAXF8H8Ag+8ouO2KVVKKf8/W6Ep8EO/AmLIz5GlgM/XG+0UjSJzYUUBBEjcGwyLxjpwp2DF0zteuFjj0XDV5OnScJuUxn4plD3Ky4I2ZEtGxlSLX/TQAVDJlx94z7nK/3HLVdp265OjayigjRShS97CSxLTJgDupSAcJkHDiWhT6nSjKaUAtt0U9ApaT/gNRoFbpHJEdtopE8U0n3fJXNEljIHGYRImjFhwhHZCJ9hy6z0FOoSFZ/Tmpdzm9Vs9lgd/Dpmi2ZdAwr7QUGBWAxaS5iB0QZM+B4ceja8KlNanP+8uqMuKDl6kGCy0tVhEQVlRDjQCHJ/w8EhBuFvtggKKRaYsNeXWbi54UB12dEHl1lwexsA69mZPLgO6amG5YV7z2hdchhaeo8BoU+o8Q3UeIqWU/39w7Jm8eQN9PVUaCijiArJtXhHNsUwWBnCF/jYjPcACAqmUSD/hOzQ3xbtSggyA3EFQSJYHrX4HYH4/bvXOkgHz+q3NnRGuWy1SROMnV5TAbUypU3BSJqyrm+0QjaX0BIg/Cir1Izhyq9FSVPNKVZgXcFa3toNifVhUfejNaV2gmozMS8l5A5cKnS8SXKt20b6LJM1BUfUrAjpyY9lZN18PtAvwFGkQwY3AxAXCI6uNxrysJqXTzgvITOCTZeMp0FVLCc7M5xworcvqHMgXrXU8Fby5sDC6HwijN1ZfT5WGAk7JAjBdMz3LpGiHxVgA9fezuPnv5/qTWpsSTap/oPQ1FJDmSwHAUXJD/sxQXo4gpEbgID8IkK4peBE2Y2G4NtYKDXoW0k3lvlg1gQgLwVrpr0stgSKBhgL6mbZfuHJ33FUhAMKBZiaeC/L3ELAJoCtHRtm45pKnMg4AhzdEXn6kQDlhrII70NSllgAJNBQQMIYnYEEWDVbwVQIugjFYOsEJbMc6AqgCBVhOYtX/pRvsaFIJTYrplyQUkPKxlhS8toIkVJcigYYCApssHNwERKeUAvBGyOV6spL6/E5PSkUQoZ5Syn8n6x2dCFM9pZT/31a1iWQpM4DvvcdLvUCfkEBDAfsEtzWT/U4CtQL2uyPtWxuqFbBvnVe/47ZWwH53pH1rQ7UC9q3z6nfc1grY7440+tSOagXsU8fV/5itFbD/nWmf2lGtgH3quPofs7UC9r8z7VM7qhWwTx1X/2O2VsD+d6Z9akdTVQH71M5rZnuFBGoF7BXHMHCZqBVw4J59r9h5rYC94hgGLhO1Ag7cs+8VO68VsFccw8BlolbAqXL29SRdlUCtgF2VXD1uqkigVsCpIsZ6kq5KoFbArkquHjdVJFAr4FQRYz1JVyVQK2BXJVePmyoSqBVwqohx4E7S3Z3XCthdCdbjuyWBWgG7Jb56cHclUCtgdyVYj++WBGoF7Jb46sHdlUCtgN2VYD2+WxKoFbBb4qsHd1cCfVcBu7vzenyvkECtgL3iGAYuE7UCDtyz7xU7rxWwVxzDwGWiVsCBe/a9Yue1AvaKYxi4TNQK2PfOvl9xXCtgvzrOvreZWgH73pn1K45rBexXx9n3NlMrYN87s37Fca2A/eo4+95magXse2fWrzieIgXsVzuvN9MrJFArYK84hoHLRK2AA/fse8XOawXsFccwcJmoFXDgnn2v2HmtgL3iGAYuE7UCtnX2NVFPSaBWwJ6SbD1vWxKoFbAtMdVEPSWBWgF7SrL1vG1JoFbAtsRUE/WUBGoF7CnJ1vO2JYFaAdsS08Alamfn77zzTtx///1xyy23xNVXX53LNddcE7fddls8+uijk5yiVsBJiqfubEcCd955Z7z22mux6KKLxtChQ3NZeumlY6GFForHHnss7rnnnolOUyvgREVTd7QjgbvvvjteeeWVWGyxxWKGGWaI6aefvlFmnnnmWHLJJePpp5+OF154oeV0tQK2FEvd2K4EnnjiiZh77rljmmmmaTmEQs4+++zx5ptvtuyvFbClWOrGdiVAsaabbroG+UsvvRRnnXVWvP766422aaedNt59993Ge7VSK2BVGnW9WxKgZMccc0yMGjUqKGI7k0AQkooAAAa3SURBVNUK2I6Uapq2JFCw3quvvhrPP/98W2N6rwK2xX5N1JskMOecc8amm24agwcPDgFIO7zVCtiOlGqaiUoA/nv77bdzv0Bk3nnnjRNPPDHmn3/+3OYfecKUkuoEpVbACURSN0yJBOaZZ57Jult4kHK2mneKFNBEd9xxR1x66aVx+umnx+GHHx4jR46MAw88cLwyubb+3l/kUd1ntd6f+s8999y46KKLGudf3Wep05djjz0204ys6Iv6ZBXwjTfeCLmeq666Ks4555yc2ZbbkfVebrnlYpVVVolVV111vDK5tv7eX+RR3We13h/7u7qnSSrg448/nrX7vvvui9lmmy2WWWaZWGSRRbJ/986sCr3r8m7Oc9VymHI5TFQBfWK5/PLLY+GFF44FFligEdXUQp5yIU+hzAaUMrdUwAsvvDAeeuihWGqppfJ3vVqAtdL1lA5MoIB+UpNSyq6Wi20VudRttQSmlgTGU8CHH344HnjggRgyZEjI3TRrfau2Kk1P9FfnrNbLutW2ar0n+suc1WerNbvbX52zWi/zVtuq9Z7oL3NWn63W7Gp/QwF9Rrnyyivzb7pS6kwaVidVp/WeEys90V+ds1ovPFTbqvWe6C9zVp+t1uxuf3XOar3MW22r1nuiv8xZfbZas6v9DQUU6UqtlF8umLBZ03vbezOPzfxNaX8zfW98b+apr+85K6CPx1IuM844Y47AioaXp00r5b35qU9pbi/v+pTy3vzUpzS3l3d9SvN7afOToCuuuCLOO++8ACO0l1IdU60395e+8vz/7id/Sd0xY8bk3841r1/ePas8Vuv6lGpbqcvnjh07NstIXrdKV2i0KeXdk24ISsn2ueeea6kf6Iwrpbw3P1v1ZwUUePikklLKC7S6VWWw5/vdj4dq8XPw/fbbL7baaqu46667wvfJan879fd7T9ddd13mf7fddouqF2qH93ZoXnzxxdh1111jyy23zB8WrNHOnindtttum8e56ALTsl474wttq6fxg2ip3+z7VWsror7Q5svMDjvsECeffHIsu+yy+RL1Bb6rPDoHJaUUgwYN6pE9xHv/UT7V6vqTqqNVXGzPSdFOaV9WwDnmmKPLG/ZXTyuvvHKstNJK+Q9TLr744lhnnXVi6623zrlEDPmMt8kmm8QGG2wQ119//XhrCX7233//WHfddWP11VePvfbaK/+NgXF+VbvjjjvG8ssvH2i0KcaYa8UVV8wuhXsZPXp07LTTTnH++eeH91tvvTWPGz58eP517nHHHZf5YmGeeuqpzMMZZ5wRa621VmyzzTbxzDPP5Dbz77333nnsQQcd1GjT7nMTXvzll/d999030/n1B7e23Xbb5X1wpfrBge233z7WXnvtOProo1tmFtCV4nBLKW1coPk333zzWH/99eOAAw6IRx55ZDy+0LJwvrduttlmWc54x5O+UsrcnqWNVbQne37rrbcmmBcdeiWlFDfeeGOWs3X88ll/KSza2WefHfrIaosttgiWvfSXJ4915JFHxkYbbRRZAf0xiQW6WiStWVGBjA/tnr4bU0QMORhfVuC0XXbZJVJKeamiSA7HH7a4+YTtu+mTTz6Zk+BrrLFG/qMWCuSvrwxUN9d8882XlTallP/8z58GzjTTTNkFp5TiwQcfDGNgGD+eUGcld9999zjqqKPikEMOiXvvvTcKjyl18mVtYwm0WAvrUijts8wyS96DQ/fO7RPmDTfcENdee23svPPOYb+U3Zo33XRT/hA/duxY00y2OChE5Or3dXvuuWc8++yz+e8u7H211VaL0047LQqdfbvg++yzT+DJWMro8tlbodNeikt66KGHximnnBL+ZsO52FfpL8/qWD86YBBuvvnmuOyyy4JrJk+05jOHy+wHK+ayX3y5sCl1ylaaj7E5+OCDw8+4BnUMvrFDyG9YqCslpc6JO+bJVs9Bn3nmmSGgcZCjRo3Kt+Ckk05Ckv9ET7onpRSnnnpqPqi55porLrjggjj++ONjiSWWyJbz9ttvzwL2NcambZCbJQQKS9FYPZtwc/PkE/mHIIDoPfbYIx8iK00olPiwww7Lo3x2dInyS+WfqkwqzZm38s7qutH2wJu8/PLL2Qqtt956QfnBAjzio0PWeWx13lKPyn/26zL7+9o111wzz3PCCSdkD+HXxn6JJHBhIXkNlsklwAs6lpfSHnHEEfnnUs1rkAGeF1xwweAJnJe5Cl15VljKVpzVs8bGG2+cu5zhrLPOmv8mWJ0RueSSS/KvpTbccMPszVhZRo4MyJt3GjFiRP5xy/8BAAD//y5WFLAAAAAGSURBVAMAAqijESSaYOUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=Improvise Melodies based on training a stochastic model on 20 German children's songs using a hidden Markov chain. This project explores using the very same technique to generate either random German fairy tales or random melodies.
# Intoduction to Markov chains
see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpJP6_v8Qq8tokensmatches1112posdirpen 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Controls:
click on a stack to run it
If you see >> then type a prompt
If the output stops at a . then press → to continue* run this one
* type: I will honour Christmas in my heart,
* Next set the maximum look back to 3
* run this script again, with the same input
What do you notice?
Go back and try the addition AI with maximum look back of 3. What happens?*run this one
* type: what is 4 + 7?
(ensure you get the spaces right, this AI very stupid)
* run again
* type what is 42 + 3?
Controls:
click on a stack to run it
If you see >> then type a prompt
If the output stops at a . then press → to continueEinem reichen Manne dem wurde seine Frau krank, und als sie fühlte daß ihr Ende heran kam, rief sie ihr einziges Töchterlein zu sich ans Bett und sprach „liebes Kind, bleib fromm und gut, so wird dir der liebe Gott immer beistehen, und ich will vom Himmel auf dich herabblicken, und will um dich sein.“ Darauf that sie die Augen zu und verschied. Das Mädchen gieng jeden Tag hinaus zu dem Grabe der Mutter und weinte, und blieb fromm und gut. Als der Winter kam, deckte der Schnee ein weißes Tüchlein auf das Grab, und als die Sonne im Frühjahr es wieder herabgezogen hatte, nahm sich der Mann eine andere Frau.
Die Frau hatte zwei Töchter mit ins Haus gebracht, die schön und weiß von Angesicht waren, aber garstig und schwarz von Herzen. Da gieng eine schlimme Zeit für das arme Stiefkind an. „Soll die dumme Gans bei uns in der Stube sitzen!“ sprachen sie, „wer Brot essen will, muß es verdienen: hinaus mit der Küchenmagd.“ Sie nahmen ihm seine schönen Kleider weg, zogen ihm einen grauen alten Kittel an, und gaben ihm hölzerne Schuhe. „Seht einmal die stolze Prinzessin, wie sie geputzt ist!“ riefen sie, lachten und führten es in die Küche. Da mußte es von Morgen bis Abend schwere Arbeit thun, früh vor Tag aufstehn, Wasser tragen, Feuer anmachen, kochen und waschen. Obendrein thaten ihm die Schwestern alles ersinnliche Herzeleid an, verspotteten es und schütteten ihm die Erbsen und Linsen in die Asche, so daß es sitzen und sie wieder auslesen mußte. Abends, wenn es sich müde gearbeitet hatte, kam es in kein Bett, sondern mußte sich neben den Herd in die Asche legen. Und weil es darum immer staubig und schmutzig aussah, nannten sie es Aschenputtel. Es trug sich zu, daß der Vater einmal in die Messe ziehen wollte, da fragte er die beiden Stieftöchter was er ihnen mitbringen sollte? „Schöne Kleider“ sagte die eine, „Perlen und Edelsteine“ die zweite. „Aber du, Aschenputtel,“ sprach er, „was willst du haben?“ „Vater, das erste Reis, das euch auf eurem Heimweg an den Hut stößt, das brecht für mich ab.“ Er kaufte nun für die beiden Stiefschwestern schöne Kleider, Perlen und Edelsteine, und auf dem Rückweg, als er durch einen grünen Busch ritt, streifte ihn ein Haselreis und stieß ihm den Hut ab. Da brach er das Reis ab und nahm es mit. Als er nach Haus kam, gab er den Stieftöchtern was sie sich gewünscht hatten, und dem Aschenputtel gab er das Reis von dem Haselbusch. Aschenputtel dankte ihm, gieng zu seiner Mutter Grab und pflanzte das Reis darauf, und weinte so sehr, daß die Thränen darauf niederfielen und es begossen. Es wuchs aber, und ward ein schöner Baum. Aschenputtel gieng alle Tage dreimal darunter, weinte und betete, und allemal kam ein weißes Vöglein auf den Baum, und wenn es einen Wunsch aussprach, so warf ihm das Vöglein herab was es sich gewünscht hatte.
Es begab sich aber, daß der König ein Fest anstellte, das drei Tage dauern sollte, und wozu alle schönen Jungfrauen im Lande eingeladen wurden, damit sich sein Sohn eine Braut aussuchen möchte. Die zwei Stiefschwestern als sie hörten daß sie auch dabei erscheinen sollten, waren guter Dinge, riefen Aschenputtel, und sprachen „kämm uns die Haare, bürste uns die Schuhe und mache uns die Schnallen fest, wir gehen zur Hochzeit auf des Königs Schloß.“ Aschenputtel gehorchte, weinte aber, weil es auch gern zum Tanz mitgegangen wäre, und bat die Stiefmutter sie möchte es ihm erlauben. „Du Aschenputtel,“ sprach sie, „bist voll Staub und Schmutz und willst zur Hochzeit? du hast keine Kleider und Schuhe, und willst tanzen!“ Als es aber mit Bitten anhielt, sprach sie endlich „da habe ich dir eine Schüssel Linsen in die Asche geschüttet, wenn du die Linsen in zwei Stunden wieder ausgelesen hast, so sollst du mitgehen.“ Das Mädchen gieng durch die Hinterthüre nach dem Garten und rief „ihr zahmen Täubchen, ihr Turteltäubchen, all ihr Vöglein unter dem Himmel, kommt und helft mir lesen,
die guten ins Töpfchen,
die schlechten ins Kröpfchen.“
Da kamen zum Küchenfenster zwei weiße Täubchen herein, und danach die Turteltäubchen, und endlich schwirrten und schwärmten alle Vöglein unter dem Himmel herein, und ließen sich um die Asche nieder. Und die Täubchen nickten mit den Köpfchen und fiengen an pik, pik, pik, pik, und da fiengen die übrigen auch an pik, pik, pik, pik, und lasen alle guten Körnlein in die Schüssel. Kaum war eine Stunde herum, so waren sie schon fertig und flogen alle wieder hinaus. Da brachte das Mädchen die Schüssel der Stiefmutter, freute sich und glaubte es dürfte nun mit auf die Hochzeit gehen. Aber sie sprach „nein, Aschenputtel, du hast keine Kleider, und kannst nicht tanzen: du wirst nur ausgelacht.“ Als es nun weinte, sprach sie „wenn du mir zwei Schüsseln voll Linsen in einer Stunde aus der Asche rein lesen kannst, so sollst du mitgehen,“ und dachte „das kann es ja nimmermehr.“ Als sie die zwei Schüsseln Linsen in die Asche geschüttet hatte, gieng das Mädchen durch die Hinterthüre nach dem Garten und rief „ihr zahmen Täubchen, ihr Turteltäubchen, all ihr Vöglein unter dem Himmel, kommt und helft mir lesen,
die guten ins Töpfchen,
die schlechten ins Kröpfchen.“
Da kamen zum Küchenfenster zwei weiße Täubchen herein und danach die Turteltäubchen, und endlich schwirrten und schwärmten alle Vöglein unter dem Himmel herein, und ließen sich um die Asche nieder. Und die Täubchen nickten mit ihren Köpfchen und fiengen an pik, pik, pik, pik, und da fiengen die übrigen auch an pik, pik, pik, pik, und lasen alle guten Körner in die Schüsseln. Und eh eine halbe Stunde herum war, waren sie schon fertig, und flogen alle wieder hinaus. Da trug das Mädchen die Schüsseln zu der Stiefmutter, freute sich und glaubte nun dürfte es mit auf die Hochzeit gehen. Aber sie sprach „es hilft dir alles nichts: du kommst nicht mit, denn du hast keine Kleider und kannst nicht tanzen; wir müßten uns deiner schämen.“ Darauf kehrte sie ihm den Rücken zu und eilte mit ihren zwei stolzen Töchtern fort.
Als nun niemand mehr daheim war, gieng Aschenputtel zu seiner Mutter Grab unter den Haselbaum und rief
„Bäumchen, rüttel dich und schüttel dich
wirf Gold und Silber über mich.“
Da warf ihm der Vogel ein golden und silbern Kleid herunter, und mit Seide und Silber ausgestickte Pantoffeln. In aller Eile zog es das Kleid an und gieng zur Hochzeit. Seine Schwestern aber und die Stiefmutter kannten es nicht, und meinten es müßte eine fremde Königstochter sein, so schön sah es in dem goldenen Kleide aus. An Aschenputtel dachten sie gar nicht und dachten es säße daheim im Schmutz und suchte die Linsen aus der Asche. Der Königssohn kam ihm entgegen, nahm es bei der Hand und tanzte mit ihm. Er wollte auch mit sonst niemand tanzen, also daß er ihm die Hand nicht los ließ, und wenn ein anderer kam, es aufzufordern, sprach er „das ist meine Tänzerin.“
Es tanzte bis es Abend war, da wollte es nach Haus gehen. Der Königssohn aber sprach „ich gehe mit und begleite dich,“ denn er wollte sehen wem das schöne Mädchen angehörte. Sie entwischte ihm aber und sprang in das Taubenhaus. Nun wartete der Königssohn bis der Vater kam und sagte ihm das fremde Mädchen wär in das Taubenhaus gesprungen. Der Alte dachte „sollte es Aschenputtel sein,“ und sie mußten ihm Axt und Hacken bringen, damit er das Taubenhaus entzwei schlagen konnte: aber es war niemand darin. Und als sie ins Haus kamen, lag Aschenputtel in seinen schmutzigen Kleidern in der Asche, und ein trübes Öllämpchen brannte im Schornstein; denn Aschenputtel war geschwind aus dem Taubenhaus hinten herab gesprungen, und war zu dem Haselbäumchen gelaufen: da hatte es die schönen Kleider abgezogen und aufs Grab gelegt, und der Vogel hatte sie wieder weggenommen, und dann hatte es sich in seinem grauen Kittelchen in die Küche zur Asche gesetzt.
Am andern Tag, als das Fest von neuem anhub, und die Eltern und Stiefschwestern wieder fort waren, gieng Aschenputtel zu dem Haselbaum und sprach
„Bäumchen, rüttel dich und schüttel dich,
wirf Gold und Silber über mich.“
Da warf der Vogel ein noch viel stolzeres Kleid herab, als am vorigen Tag. Und als es mit diesem Kleide auf der Hochzeit erschien, erstaunte jedermann über seine Schönheit. Der Königssohn aber hatte gewartet bis es kam, nahm es gleich bei der Hand und tanzte nur allein mit ihm. Wenn die andern kamen und es aufforderten, sprach er „das ist meine Tänzerin.“ Als es nun Abend war, wollte es fort, und der Königssohn gieng ihm nach und wollte sehen in welches Haus es gieng: aber es sprang ihm fort und in den Garten hinter dem Haus. Darin stand ein schöner großer Baum an dem die herrlichsten Birnen hiengen, es kletterte so behend wie ein Eichhörnchen zwischen die Äste, und der Königssohn wußte nicht wo es hingekommen war. Er wartete aber bis der Vater kam und sprach zu ihm „das fremde Mädchen ist mir entwischt, und ich glaube es ist auf den Birnbaum gesprungen.“ Der Vater dachte „sollte es Aschenputtel sein,“ ließ sich die Axt holen und hieb den Baum um, aber es war niemand darauf. Und als sie in die Küche kamen, lag Aschenputtel da in der Asche, wie sonst auch, denn es war auf der andern Seite vom Baum herabgesprungen, hatte dem Vogel auf dem Haselbäumchen die schönen Kleider wieder gebracht und sein graues Kittelchen angezogen.
Am dritten Tag, als die Eltern und Schwestern fort waren, gieng Aschenputtel wieder zu seiner Mutter Grab und sprach zu dem Bäumchen
„Bäumchen, rüttel dich und schüttel dich,
wirf Gold und Silber über mich.“
Nun warf ihm der Vogel ein Kleid herab, das war so prächtig und glänzend wie es noch keins gehabt hatte, und die Pantoffeln waren ganz golden. Als es in dem Kleid zu der Hochzeit kam, wußten sie alle nicht was sie vor Verwunderung sagen sollten. Der Königssohn tanzte ganz allein mit ihm, und wenn es einer aufforderte, sprach er „das ist meine Tänzerin.“
Als es nun Abend war, wollte Aschenputtel fort, und der Königssohn wollte es begleiten, aber es entsprang ihm so geschwind daß er nicht folgen konnte. Der Königssohn hatte aber eine List gebraucht, und hatte die ganze Treppe mit Pech bestreichen lassen: da war, als es hinabsprang, der linke Pantoffel des Mädchens hängen geblieben. Der Königssohn hob ihn auf, und er war klein und zierlich und ganz golden. Am nächsten Morgen gieng er damit zu dem Mann, und sagte zu ihm „keine andere soll meine Gemahlin werden als die, an deren Fuß dieser goldene Schuh paßt.“ Da freuten sich die beiden Schwestern, denn sie hatten schöne Füße. Die Älteste gieng mit dem Schuh in die Kammer und wollte ihn anprobieren, und die Mutter stand dabei. Aber sie konnte mit der großen Zehe nicht hineinkommen, und der Schuh war ihr zu klein, da reichte ihr die Mutter ein Messer und sprach „hau die Zehe ab: wann du Königin bist, so brauchst du nicht mehr zu Fuß zu gehen.“ Das Mädchen hieb die Zehe ab, zwängte den Fuß in den Schuh, verbiß den Schmerz und gieng heraus zum Königssohn. Da nahm er sie als seine Braut aufs Pferd, und ritt mit ihr fort. Sie mußten aber an dem Grabe vorbei, da saßen die zwei Täubchen auf dem Haselbäumchen, und riefen
„rucke di guck, rucke di guck,
Blut ist im Schuck (Schuh):
Der Schuck ist zu klein,
die rechte Braut sitzt noch daheim.“
Da blickte er auf ihren Fuß und sah wie das Blut herausquoll. Er wendete sein Pferd um, brachte die falsche Braut wieder nach Haus und sagte das wäre nicht die rechte, die andere Schwester sollte den Schuh anziehen. Da gieng diese in die Kammer und kam mit den Zehen glücklich in den Schuh, aber die Ferse war zu groß. Da reichte ihr die Mutter ein Messer und sprach „hau ein Stück von der Ferse ab: wann du Königin bist, brauchst du nicht mehr zu Fuß zu gehen.“ Das Mädchen hieb ein Stück von der Ferse ab, zwängte den Fuß in den Schuh, verbiß den Schmerz und gieng heraus zum Königssohn. Da nahm er sie als seine Braut aufs Pferd und ritt mit ihr fort. Als sie an dem Haselbäumchen vorbeikamen, saßen die zwei Täubchen darauf und riefen
„rucke di guck, rucke di guck,
Blut ist im Schuck:
der Schuck ist zu klein,
die rechte Braut sitzt noch daheim.“
Er blickte nieder auf ihren Fuß, und sah wie das Blut aus dem Schuh quoll und an den weißen Strümpfen ganz roth heraufgestiegen war. Da wendete er sein Pferd, und brachte die falsche Braut wieder nach Haus. „Das ist auch nicht die rechte,“ sprach er, „habt ihr keine andere Tochter?“ „Nein,“ sagte der Mann, „nur von meiner verstorbenen Frau ist noch ein kleines verbuttetes Aschenputtel da: das kann unmöglich die Braut sein.“ Der Königssohn sprach er sollte es heraufschicken, die Mutter aber antwortete „ach nein, das ist viel zu schmutzig, das darf sich nicht sehen lassen.“ Er wollte es aber durchaus haben, und Aschenputtel mußte gerufen werden. Da wusch es sich erst Hände und Angesicht rein, gieng dann hin und neigte sich vor dem Königssohn, der ihm den goldenen Schuh reichte. Dann setzte es sich auf einen Schemel, zog den Fuß aus dem schweren Holzschuh und steckte ihn in den Pantoffel, der war wie angegossen. Und als es sich in die Höhe richtete und der König ihm ins Gesicht sah, so erkannte er das schöne Mädchen, das mit ihm getanzt hatte, und rief „das ist die rechte Braut!“ Die Stiefmutter und die beiden Schwestern erschraken und wurden bleich vor Ärger: er aber nahm Aschenputtel aufs Pferd und ritt mit ihm fort. Als sie an dem Haselbäumchen vorbei kamen, riefen die zwei weißen Täubchen
„rucke di guck, rucke di guck,
kein Blut im Schuck:
der Schuck ist nicht zu klein,
die rechte Braut, die führt er heim.“
Und als sie das gerufen hatten, kamen sie beide herab geflogen und setzten sich dem Aschenputtel auf die Schultern, eine rechts, die andere links, und blieben da sitzen.
Als die Hochzeit mit dem Königssohn sollte gehalten werden, kamen die falschen Schwestern, wollten sich einschmeicheln und Theil an seinem Glück nehmen. Als die Brautleute nun zur Kirche giengen, war die älteste zur rechten, die jüngste zur linken Seite: da pickten die Tauben einer jeden das eine Auge aus. Hernach als sie heraus giengen, war die älteste zur linken und die jüngste zur rechten: da pickten die Tauben einer jeden das andere Auge aus. Und waren sie also für ihre Bosheit und Falschheit mit Blindheit auf ihr Lebtag gestraft. Brüderchen nahm sein Schwesterchen an der Hand und sprach „seit die Mutter todt ist, haben wir keine gute Stunde mehr; die Stiefmutter schlägt uns alle Tage, und wenn wir zu ihr kommen, stößt sie uns mit den Füßen fort. Die harten Brotkrusten, die übrig bleiben, sind unsere Speise, und dem Hündlein unter dem Tisch gehts besser: dem wirft sie doch manchmal einen guten Bissen zu. Daß Gott erbarm, wenn das unsere Mutter wüßte! Komm, wir wollen miteinander in die weite Welt gehen.“ Sie giengen den ganzen Tag über Wiesen, Felder und Steine, und wenn es regnete, sprach das Schwesterchen „Gott und unsere Herzen die weinen zusammen!“ Abends kamen sie in einen großen Wald und waren so müde von Jammer, Hunger und dem langen Weg, daß sie sich in einen hohlen Baum setzten und einschliefen.
Am andern Morgen, als sie aufwachten, stand die Sonne schon hoch am Himmel und schien heiß in den Baum hinein. Da sprach das Brüderchen „Schwesterchen, mich dürstet, wenn ich ein Brünnlein wüßte, ich gieng und tränk einmal; ich mein, ich hört eins rauschen.“ Brüderchen stand auf, nahm Schwesterchen an der Hand, und sie wollten das Brünnlein suchen. Die böse Stiefmutter aber war eine Hexe und hatte wohl gesehen wie die beiden Kinder fortgegangen waren, war ihnen nachgeschlichen, heimlich, wie die Hexen schleichen, und hatte alle Brunnen im Walde verwünscht. Als sie nun ein Brünnlein fanden, das so glitzerig über die Steine sprang, wollte das Brüderchen daraus trinken: aber das Schwesterchen hörte wie es im Rauschen sprach „wer aus mir trinkt, wird ein Tiger: wer aus mir trinkt, wird ein Tiger.“ Da rief das Schwesterchen „ich bitte dich, Brüderchen, trink nicht, sonst wirst du ein wildes Thier und zerreißest mich.“ Das Brüderchen trank nicht, ob es gleich so großen Durst hatte, und sprach „ich will warten bis zur nächsten Quelle.“ Als sie zum zweiten Brünnlein kamen, hörte das Schwesterchen wie auch dieses sprach „wer aus mir trinkt, wird ein Wolf: wer aus mir trinkt, wird ein Wolf.“ Da rief das Schwesterchen „Brüderchen, ich bitte dich, trink nicht, sonst wirst du ein Wolf und frissest mich.“ Das Brüderchen trank nicht und sprach „ich will warten, bis wir zur nächsten Quelle kommen, aber dann muß ich trinken, du magst sagen, was du willst: mein Durst ist gar zu groß.“ Und als sie zum dritten Brünnlein kamen, hörte das Schwesterlein, wie es im Rauschen sprach „wer aus mir trinkt, wird ein Reh: wer aus mir trinkt, wird ein Reh.“ Das Schwesterchen sprach „ach Brüderchen, ich bitte dich, trink nicht, sonst wirst du ein Reh und läufst mir fort.“ Aber das Brüderchen hatte sich gleich beim Brünnlein nieder geknieet, hinab gebeugt und von dem Wasser getrunken, und wie die ersten Tropfen auf seine Lippen gekommen waren, lag es da als ein Rehkälbchen.
Nun weinte das Schwesterchen über das arme verwünschte Brüderchen, und das Rehchen weinte auch und saß so traurig neben ihm. Da sprach das Mädchen endlich „sei still, liebes Rehchen, ich will dich ja nimmermehr verlassen.“ Dann band es sein goldenes Strumpfband ab und that es dem Rehchen um den Hals, und rupfte Binsen und flocht ein weiches Seil daraus. Daran band es das Thierchen und führte es weiter, und gieng immer tiefer in den Wald hinein. Und als sie lange lange gegangen waren, kamen sie endlich an ein kleines Haus, und das Mädchen schaute hinein, und weil es leer war, dachte es „hier können wir bleiben und wohnen.“ Da suchte es dem Rehchen Laub und Moos zu einem weichen Lager, und jeden Morgen gieng es aus und sammelte sich Wurzeln, Beeren und Nüsse, und für das Rehchen brachte es zartes Gras mit, das fraß es ihm aus der Hand, war vergnügt und spielte vor ihm herum. Abends wenn Schwesterchen müde war und sein Gebet gesagt hatte, legte es seinen Kopf auf den Rücken des Rehkälbchens, das war sein Kissen, darauf es sanft einschlief. Und hätte das Brüderchen nur seine menschliche Gestalt gehabt, es wäre ein herrliches Leben gewesen.
Das dauerte eine Zeitlang, daß sie so allein in der Wildnis waren. Es trug sich aber zu, daß der König des Landes eine große Jagd in dem Wald hielt. Da schallte das Hörnerblasen, Hundegebell und das lustige Geschrei der Jäger durch die Bäume, und das Rehlein hörte es und wäre gar zu gerne dabei gewesen. „Ach,“ sprach es zum Schwesterlein, „laß mich hinaus in die Jagd, ich kanns nicht länger mehr aushalten,“ und bat so lange, bis es einwilligte. „Aber,“ sprach es zu ihm, „komm mir ja Abends wieder, vor den wilden Jägern schließ ich mein Thürlein; und damit ich dich kenne, so klopf und sprich mein Schwesterlein, laß mich herein: und wenn du nicht so sprichst, so schließ ich mein Thürlein nicht auf.“ Nun sprang das Rehchen hinaus, und war ihm so wohl und war so lustig in freier Luft. Der König und seine Jäger sahen das schöne Thier und setzten ihm nach, aber sie konnten es nicht einholen, und wenn sie meinten, sie hätten es gewiß, da sprang es über das Gebüsch weg und war verschwunden. Als es dunkel ward, lief es zu dem Häuschen, klopfte und sprach „mein Schwesterlein, laß mich herein.“ Da ward ihm die kleine Thür aufgethan, es sprang hinein und ruhete sich die ganze Nacht auf seinem weichen Lager aus. Am andern Morgen gieng die Jagd von neuem an, und als das Rehlein wieder das Hüfthorn hörte und das ho, ho! der Jäger, da hatte es keine Ruhe, und sprach „Schwesterchen, mach mir auf, ich muß hinaus.“ Das Schwesterchen öffnete ihm die Thüre und sprach „aber zu Abend mußt du wieder da sein und dein Sprüchlein sagen.“ Als der König und seine Jäger das Rehlein mit dem goldenen Halsband wieder sahen, jagten sie ihm alle nach, aber es war ihnen zu schnell und behend. Das währte den ganzen Tag, endlich aber hatten es die Jäger Abends umzingelt, und einer verwundete es ein wenig am Fuß, so daß es hinken mußte und langsam fortlief. Da schlich ihm ein Jäger nach bis zu dem Häuschen und hörte wie es rief „mein Schwesterlein, laß mich herein,“ und sah daß die Thür ihm aufgethan und alsbald wieder zugeschlossen ward. Der Jäger behielt das alles wohl im Sinn, gieng zum König und erzählte ihm was er gesehen und gehört hatte. Da sprach der König „morgen soll noch einmal gejagt werden.“
Das Schwesterchen aber erschrack gewaltig, als es sah daß sein Rehkälbchen verwundet war. Es wusch ihm das Blut ab, legte Kräuter auf und sprach „geh auf dein Lager, lieb Rehchen, daß du wieder heil wirst.“ Die Wunde aber war so gering, daß das Rehchen am Morgen nichts mehr davon spürte. Und als es die Jagdlust wieder draußen hörte, sprach es „ich kanns nicht aushalten, ich muß dabei sein; so bald soll mich keiner kriegen.“ Das Schwesterchen weinte und sprach „nun werden sie dich tödten, und ich bin hier allein im Wald und bin verlassen von aller Welt: ich laß dich nicht hinaus.“ „So sterb ich dir hier vor Betrübnis,“ antwortete das Rehchen, „wenn ich das Hüfthorn höre, so mein ich, ich müßt aus den Schuhen springen!“ Da konnte das Schwesterchen nicht anders und schloß ihm mit schwerem Herzen die Thür auf, und das Rehchen sprang gesund und fröhlich in den Wald. Als es der König erblickte, sprach er zu seinen Jägern „nun jagt ihm nach den ganzen Tag bis in die Nacht, aber daß ihm keiner etwas zu Leide thut.“ Sobald die Sonne untergegangen war, sprach der König zum Jäger „nun komm und zeige mir das Waldhäuschen.“ Und als er vor dem Thürlein war, klopfte er an und rief „lieb Schwesterlein, laß mich herein.“ Da gieng die Thür auf, und der König trat herein, und da stand ein Mädchen, das war so schön wie er noch keins gesehen hatte. Das Mädchen erschrack als es sah daß nicht sein Rehlein sondern ein Mann herein kam, der eine goldene Krone auf dem Haupt hatte. Aber der König sah es freundlich an, reichte ihm die Hand und sprach „willst du mit mir gehen auf mein Schloß und meine liebe Frau sein?“ „Ach ja,“ antwortete das Mädchen, „aber das Rehchen muß auch mit, das verlaß ich nicht.“ Sprach der König „es soll bei dir bleiben, so lange du lebst, und soll ihm an nichts fehlen.“ Indem kam es hereingesprungen, da band es das Schwesterchen wieder an das Binsenseil, nahm es selbst in die Hand und gieng mit ihm aus dem Waldhäuschen fort.
Der König nahm das schöne Mädchen auf sein Pferd und führte es in sein Schloß, wo die Hochzeit mit großer Pracht gefeiert wurde, und war es nun die Frau Königin, und lebten sie lange Zeit vergnügt zusammen; das Rehlein ward gehegt und gepflegt und sprang in dem Schloßgarten herum. Die böse Stiefmutter aber, um derentwillen die Kinder in die Welt hineingegangen waren, die meinte nicht anders als Schwesterchen wäre von den wilden Thieren im Walde zerrissen worden und Brüderchen als ein Rehkalb von den Jägern todt geschossen. Als sie nun hörte daß sie so glücklich waren, und es ihnen so wohl gieng, da wurden Neid und Mißgunst in ihrem Herzen rege und ließen ihr keine Ruhe, und sie hatte keinen andern Gedanken, als wie sie die beiden doch noch ins Unglück bringen könnte. Ihre rechte Tochter, die häßlich war wie die Nacht, und nur ein Auge hatte, die machte ihr Vorwürfe und sprach „eine Königin zu werden, das Glück hätte mir gebührt.“ „Sei nur still,“ sagte die Alte und sprach sie zufrieden, „wenns Zeit ist, will ich schon bei der Hand sein.“ Als nun die Zeit heran gerückt war, und die Königin ein schönes Knäblein zur Welt gebracht hatte, und der König gerade auf der Jagd war, nahm die alte Hexe die Gestalt der Kammerfrau an, trat in die Stube, wo die Königin lag und sprach zu der Kranken „kommt, das Bad ist fertig, das wird euch wohlthun und frische Kräfte geben: geschwind, eh es kalt wird.“ Ihre Tochter war auch bei der Hand, sie trugen die schwache Königin in die Badstube und legten sie in die Wanne: dann schlossen sie die Thür ab und liefen davon. In der Badstube aber hatten sie ein rechtes Höllenfeuer angemacht, daß die schöne junge Königin bald ersticken mußte.
Als das vollbracht war, nahm die Alte ihre Tochter, setzte ihr eine Haube auf, und legte sie ins Bett an der Königin Stelle. Sie gab ihr auch die Gestalt und das Ansehen der Königin, nur das verlorene Auge konnte sie ihr nicht wieder geben. Damit es aber der König nicht merkte, mußte sie sich auf die Seite legen, wo sie kein Auge hatte. Am Abend, als er heim kam und hörte daß ihm ein Söhnlein geboren war, freute er sich herzlich, und wollte ans Bett seiner lieben Frau gehen und sehen was sie machte. Da rief die Alte geschwind „bei Leibe, laßt die Vorhänge zu, die Königin darf noch nicht ins Licht sehen und muß Ruhe haben.“ Der König gieng zurück und wußte nicht daß eine falsche Königin im Bette lag.
Als es aber Mitternacht war und alles schlief, da sah die Kinderfrau, die in der Kinderstube neben der Wiege saß und allein noch wachte, wie die Thüre aufgieng, und die rechte Königin herein trat. Sie nahm das Kind aus der Wiege, legte es in ihren Arm und gab ihm zu trinken. Dann schüttelte sie ihm sein Kißchen, legte es wieder hinein und deckte es mit dem Deckbettchen zu. Sie vergaß aber auch das Rehchen nicht, gieng in die Ecke, wo es lag, und streichelte ihm über den Rücken. Darauf gieng sie ganz stillschweigend wieder zur Thüre hinaus, und die Kinderfrau fragte am andern Morgen die Wächter ob jemand während der Nacht ins Schloß gegangen wäre, aber sie antworteten „nein, wir haben niemand gesehen.“ So kam sie viele Nächte und sprach niemals ein Wort dabei; die Kinderfrau sah sie immer, aber sie getraute sich nicht jemand etwas davon zu sagen.
Als nun so eine Zeit verflossen war, da hub die Königin in der Nacht an zu reden und sprach
„was macht mein Kind? was macht mein Reh?
Nun komm ich noch zweimal und dann nimmermehr.“
Die Kinderfrau antwortete ihr nicht, aber als sie wieder verschwunden war, gieng sie zum König und erzählte ihm alles. Sprach der König „Ach Gott, was ist das! ich will in der nächsten Nacht bei dem Kinde wachen.“ Abends gieng er in die Kinderstube, aber um Mitternacht erschien die Königin wieder und sprach
„was macht mein Kind? was macht mein Reh?
Nun komm ich noch einmal und dann nimmermehr.“
Und pflegte dann des Kindes, wie sie gewöhnlich that, ehe sie verschwand. Der König getraute sich nicht sie anzureden, aber er wachte auch in der folgenden Nacht. Sie sprach abermals
„was macht mein Kind? was macht mein Reh?
Nun komm ich noch diesmal und dann nimmermehr.“
Da konnte sich der König nicht zurückhalten, sprang zu ihr und sprach „du kannst niemand anders sein, als meine liebe Frau.“ Da antwortete sie „ja, ich bin deine liebe Frau,“ und hatte in dem Augenblick durch Gottes Gnade das Leben wieder erhalten, war frisch, roth und gesund. Darauf erzählte sie dem König den Frevel, den die böse Hexe und ihre Tochter an ihr verübt hatten. Der König ließ beide vor Gericht führen, und es ward ihnen das Urtheil gesprochen. Die Tochter ward in Wald geführt, wo sie die wilden Thiere zerrissen, die Hexe aber ward ins Feuer gelegt und mußte jammervoll verbrennen. Und wie sie zu Asche verbrannt war, verwandelte sich das Rehkälbchen und erhielt seine menschliche Gestalt wieder; Schwesterchen und Brüderchen aber lebten glücklich zusammen bis an ihr Ende. Es war einmal ein Soldat, der hatte dem König lange Jahre treu gedient: als aber der Krieg zu Ende war und der Soldat, der vielen Wunden wegen, die er empfangen hatte, nicht weiter dienen konnte, sprach der König zu ihm „du kannst heim gehen, ich brauche dich nicht mehr: Geld bekommst du weiter nicht, denn Lohn erhält nur der, welcher mir Dienste dafür leistet.“ Da wußte der Soldat nicht womit er sein Leben fristen sollte; gieng voll Sorgen fort und gieng den ganzen Tag, bis er Abends in einen Wald kam. Als die Finsternis einbrach, sah er ein Licht, dem näherte er sich und kam zu einem Haus, darin wohnte eine Hexe. „Gib mir doch ein Nachtlager und ein wenig Essen und Trinken,“ sprach er zu ihr, „ich verschmachte sonst.“ „Oho!“ antwortete sie, „wer gibt einem verlaufenen Soldaten etwas? doch will ich barmherzig sein und dich aufnehmen, wenn du thust was ich verlange.“ „Was verlangst du?“ fragte der Soldat. „Daß du mir morgen meinen Garten umgräbst.“ Der Soldat willigte ein und arbeitete den folgenden Tag aus allen Kräften, konnte aber vor Abend nicht fertig werden. „Ich sehe wohl,“ sprach die Hexe, „daß du heute nicht weiter kannst: ich will dich noch eine Nacht behalten, dafür sollst du mir morgen ein Fuder Holz spalten und klein machen.“ Der Soldat brauchte dazu den ganzen Tag, und Abends machte ihm die Hexe den Vorschlag noch eine Nacht zu bleiben. „Du sollst mir morgen nur eine geringe Arbeit thun, hinter meinem Hause ist ein alter wasserleerer Brunnen, in den ist mir mein Licht gefallen, es brennt blau und verlischt nicht, das sollst du mir wieder herauf holen.“ Den andern Tag führte ihn die Alte zu dem Brunnen und ließ ihn in einem Korb hinab. Er fand das blaue Licht und machte ein Zeichen daß sie ihn wieder hinauf ziehen sollte. Sie zog ihn auch in die Höhe, als er aber dem Rand nahe war, reichte sie die Hand hinab und wollte ihm das blaue Licht abnehmen. „Nein,“ sagte er und merkte ihre bösen Gedanken, „das Licht gebe ich dir nicht eher, als bis ich mit beiden Füßen auf dem Erdboden stehe.“ Da gerieth die Hexe in Wuth, ließ ihn wieder hinab in den Brunnen fallen und gieng fort.
Der arme Soldat fiel ohne Schaden zu nehmen auf den feuchten Boden, und das blaue Licht brannte fort, aber was konnte ihm das helfen? er sah wohl daß er dem Tod nicht entgehen würde. Er saß eine Weile ganz traurig, da griff er zufällig in seine Tasche und fand seine Tabackspfeife, die noch halb gestopft war. „Das soll dein letztes Vergnügen sein“ dachte er, zog sie heraus, zündete sie an dem blauen Licht an und fieng an zu rauchen. Als der Dampf in der Höhle umhergezogen war, stand auf einmal ein kleines schwarzes Männchen vor ihm und fragte „Herr was befiehlst du?“ „Was habe ich dir zu befehlen?“ erwiderte der Soldat ganz verwundert. „Ich muß alles thun,“ sagte das Männchen, „was du verlangst.“ „Gut,“ sprach der Soldat, „so hilf mir zuerst aus dem Brunnen.“ Das Männchen nahm ihn bei der Hand und führte ihn durch einen unterirdischen Gang, vergaß aber nicht das blaue Licht mitzunehmen. Es zeigte ihm unterwegs die Schätze, welche die Hexe zusammengebracht und da versteckt hatte, und der Soldat nahm so viel Gold als er tragen konnte. Als er oben war, sprach er zu dem Männchen „nun geh hin, bind die alte Hexe und führe sie vor das Gericht.“ Nicht lange, so kam sie auf einem wilden Kater mit furchtbarem Geschrei schnell wie der Wind vorbei geritten, und es dauerte abermals nicht lang, so war das Männchen zurück, „es ist alles ausgerichtet“ sprach es, „und die Hexe hängt schon am Galgen.“ „Herr, was befiehlst du weiter?“ fragte der Kleine. „In dem Augenblick nichts,“ antwortete der Soldat, „du kannst nach Haus gehen: sei nur gleich bei der Hand wenn ich dich rufe.“ „Es ist nichts nöthig,“ sprach das Männchen, „als daß du deine Pfeife an dem blauen Licht anzündest, dann stehe ich gleich vor dir.“ Darauf verschwand es vor seinen Augen.
Der Soldat kehrte in die Stadt zurück, aus der er gekommen war. Er gieng in den besten Gasthof und ließ sich schöne Kleider machen, dann befahl er dem Wirth ihm ein Zimmer so prächtig als möglich einzurichten. Als es fertig war und der Soldat es bezogen hatte, rief er das schwarze Männchen und sprach „ich habe dem König treu gedient, er aber hat mich fortgeschickt und mich hungern lassen, dafür will ich jetzt Rache nehmen.“ „Was soll ich thun?“ fragte der Kleine. „Spät Abends wenn die Königstochter im Bett liegt, so bring sie schlafend hierher, sie soll Mägdedienste bei mir thun.“ Das Männchen sprach „für mich ist das ein leichtes, für dich aber ein gefährliches Ding, wenn das heraus kommt, wird es dir schlimm ergehen.“ Als es zwölf geschlagen hatte, sprang die Thüre auf, und das Männchen trug die Königstochter herein. „Aha, bist du da?“ rief der Soldat, „frisch an die Arbeit! geh, hol den Besen und kehr die Stube.“ Als sie fertig war, hieß er sie zu seinem Sessel kommen, streckte ihr die Füße entgegen und sprach „zieh mir die Stiefel aus,“ warf sie ihr dann ins Gesicht, und sie mußte sie aufheben, reinigen und glänzend machen. Sie that aber alles, was er ihr befahl, ohne Widerstreben, stumm und mit halbgeschlossenen Augen. Bei dem ersten Hahnschrei trug sie das Männchen wieder in das königliche Schloß und in ihr Bett zurück.
Am andern Morgen, als die Königstochter aufgestanden war, gieng sie zu ihrem Vater, und erzählte ihm sie hätte einen wunderlichen Traum gehabt, „ich ward durch die Straßen mit Blitzesschnelle fortgetragen und in das Zimmer eines Soldaten gebracht, dem mußte ich als Magd dienen und aufwarten und alle gemeine Arbeit thun, die Stube kehren und die Stiefel putzen. Es war nur ein Traum, und doch bin ich so müde, als wenn ich wirklich alles gethan hätte.“ „Der Traum könnte wahr gewesen sein,“ sprach der König, „ich will dir einen Rath geben, stecke deine Tasche voll Erbsen und mache ein klein Loch in die Tasche, wirst du wieder abgeholt, so fallen sie heraus und lassen die Spur auf der Straße.“ Als der König so sprach, stand das Männchen unsichtbar dabei und hörte alles mit an. Nachts, als es die schlafende Königstochter wieder durch die Straßen trug, fielen zwar einzelne Erbsen aus der Tasche, aber sie konnten keine Spur machen, denn das listige Männchen hatte vorher in allen Straßen Erbsen verstreut. Die Königstochter aber mußte wieder bis zum Hahnenschrei Mägdedienste thun.
Der König schickte am folgenden Morgen seine Leute aus, welche die Spur suchen sollten, aber es war vergeblich, denn in allen Straßen saßen die armen Kinder und lasen Erbsen auf und sagten „es hat heut Nacht Erbsen geregnet.“ „Wir müssen etwas anderes aussinnen,“ sprach der König, „behalt deine Schuh an, wenn du dich zu Bett legst, und ehe du von dort zurück kehrst, verstecke einen davon; ich will ihn schon finden.“ Das schwarze Männchen vernahm den Anschlag, und als der Soldat Abends verlangte er sollte die Königstochter wieder herbei tragen, rieth es ihm ab und sagte gegen diese List wüßte es kein Mittel, und wenn der Schuh bei ihm gefunden würde, so könnte es ihm schlimm ergehen. „Thue was ich dir sage“ erwiderte der Soldat, und die Königstochter mußte auch in der dritten Nacht wie eine Magd arbeiten; sie versteckte aber, ehe sie zurückgetragen wurde, einen Schuh unter das Bett.
Am andern Morgen ließ der König in der ganzen Stadt den Schuh seiner Tochter suchen: er ward bei dem Soldaten gefunden, und der Soldat selbst, der sich auf Bitten des Kleinen zum Thor hinaus gemacht hatte, ward bald eingeholt und ins Gefängnis geworfen. Er hatte sein Bestes bei der Flucht vergessen, das blaue Licht und das Gold, und hatte nur noch einen Dukaten in der Tasche. Als er nun mit Ketten belastet an dem Fenster seines Gefängnisses stand, sah er einen seiner Kameraden vorbeigehen. Er klopfte an die Scheibe, und als er herbeikam, sagte er „sei so gut und hol mir das kleine Bündelchen, das ich in dem Gasthaus habe liegen lassen, ich gebe dir dafür einen Dukaten.“ Der Kamerad lief hin, und brachte ihm das Verlangte. Sobald der Soldat wieder allein war, steckte er seine Pfeife an und ließ das schwarze Männchen kommen. „Sei ohne Furcht,“ sprach es zu seinem Herrn, „geh hin wo sie dich hinführen und laß alles geschehen, nimm nur das blaue Licht mit.“ Am anderen Tag ward Gericht über den Soldaten gehalten, und obgleich er nichts Böses gethan hatte, verurtheilte ihn der Richter doch zum Tode. Als er nun hinaus geführt wurde, bat er den König um eine letzte Gnade. „Was für eine?“ fragte der König. „Daß ich auf dem Weg noch eine Pfeife rauchen darf.“ „Du kannst drei rauchen,“ antwortete der König, „aber glaube nicht daß ich dir das Leben schenke.“ Da zog der Soldat seine Pfeife heraus und zündete sie an dem blauen Licht an, und wie ein paar Ringel von Rauch aufgestiegen waren, so stand schon das Männchen da, hatte einen kleinen Knüppel in der Hand und sprach „was befiehlt mein Herr?“ „Schlag mir da die falschen Richter und ihre Häscher zu Boden, und verschone auch den König nicht, der mich so schlecht behandelt hat.“ Da fuhr das Männchen wie der Blitz, zickzack, hin und her, und wen es mit seinem Knüppel nur anrührte, der fiel schon zu Boden, und getraute sich nicht mehr zu regen. Dem König ward angst, er legte sich auf das Bitten und um nur das Leben zu behalten gab er dem Soldat das Reich und seine Tochter zur Frau. An einem Sommermorgen saß ein Schneiderlein auf seinem Tisch am Fenster, war guter Dinge und nähte aus Leibeskräften. Da kam eine Bauersfrau die Straße herab und rief „gut Mus feil! gut Mus feil!“ Das klang dem Schneiderlein lieblich in die Ohren, er steckte sein zartes Haupt zum Fenster hinaus und rief „hier herauf, liebe Frau, hier wird sie ihre Waare los.“ Die Frau stieg die drei Treppen mit ihrem schweren Korbe zu dem Schneider herauf und mußte die Töpfe sämmtlich vor ihm auspacken. Er besah sie alle, hob sie in die Höhe, hielt die Nase dran und sagte endlich „das Mus scheint mir gut, wieg sie mir doch vier Loth ab, liebe Frau, wenns auch ein Viertelpfund ist, kommt es mir nicht darauf an.“ Die Frau, welche gehofft hatte einen guten Absatz zu finden, gab ihm was er verlangte, gieng aber ganz ärgerlich und brummig fort. „Nun, das Mus soll mir Gott gesegnen,“ rief das Schneiderlein, „und soll mir Kraft und Stärke geben,“ holte das Brot aus dem Schrank, schnitt sich ein Stück über den ganzen Laib und strich das Mus darüber. „Das wird nicht bitter schmecken,“ sprach er, „aber erst will ich den Wams fertig machen, eh ich anbeiße.“ Er legte das Brot neben sich, nähte weiter und machte vor Freude immer größere Stiche. Indeß stieg der Geruch von dem süßen Mus hinauf an die Wand, wo die Fliegen in großer Menge saßen, so daß sie heran gelockt wurden und sich scharenweiß darauf nieder ließen. „Ei, wer hat euch eingeladen?“ sprach das Schneiderlein, und jagte die ungebetenen Gäste fort. Die Fliegen aber, die kein deutsch verstanden, ließen sich nicht abweisen, sondern kamen in immer größerer Gesellschaft wieder. Da lief dem Schneiderlein endlich, wie man sagt, die Laus über die Leber, es langte aus seiner Hölle nach einem Tuchlappen, und „wart, ich will es euch geben!“ schlug es unbarmherzig drauf. Als es abzog und zählte, so lagen nicht weniger als sieben vor ihm todt und streckten die Beine. „Bist du so ein Kerl?“ sprach er, und mußte selbst seine Tapferkeit bewundern, „das soll die ganze Stadt erfahren.“ Und in der Hast schnitt sich das Schneiderlein einen Gürtel, nähte ihn und stickte mit großen Buchstaben darauf: „siebene auf einen Streich!“ „Ei was Stadt!“ sprach er weiter, „die ganze Welt solls erfahren!“ und sein Herz wackelte ihm vor Freude wie ein Lämmerschwänzchen.
Der Schneider band sich den Gürtel um den Leib, und wollte in die Welt hinaus, weil er meinte die Werkstätte sei zu klein für seine Tapferkeit. Eh er abzog, suchte er im Haus herum ob nichts da wäre, was er mitnehmen könnte, er fand aber nichts als einen alten Käs, den steckte er ein. Vor dem Thore bemerkte er einen Vogel, der sich im Gesträuch gefangen hatte, der mußte zu dem Käse in die Tasche. Nun nahm er den Weg tapfer zwischen die Beine, und weil er leicht und behend war, fühlte er keine Müdigkeit. Der Weg führte ihn auf einen Berg, und als er den höchsten Gipfel erreicht hatte, so saß da ein gewaltiger Riese und schaute sich ganz gemächlich um. Das Schneiderlein gieng beherzt auf ihn zu, redete ihn an und sprach „guten Tag, Kamerad, gelt, du sitzest da, und besiehst dir die weitläuftige Welt? ich bin eben auf dem Wege dahin und will mich versuchen. Hast du Lust mit zu gehen?“ Der Riese sah den Schneider verächtlich an und sprach „du Lump! du miserabler Kerl!“ „Das wäre!“ antwortete das Schneiderlein, knöpfte den Rock auf und zeigte dem Riesen den Gürtel, „da kannst du lesen was ich für ein Mann bin.“ Der Riese las „siebene auf einen Streich,“ meinte das wären Menschen gewesen, die der Schneider erschlagen hätte, und kriegte ein wenig Respekt vor dem kleinen Kerl. Doch wollte er ihn erst prüfen, nahm einen Stein in die Hand, und drückte ihn zusammen daß das Wasser heraus tropfte. „Das mach mir nach,“ sprach der Riese, „wenn du Stärke hast.“ „Ists weiter nichts?“ sagte das Schneiderlein, „das ist bei unser einem Spielwerk,“ griff in die Tasche, holte den weichen Käs und drückte ihn daß der Saft heraus lief. „Gelt,“ sprach er, „das war ein wenig besser?“ Der Riese wußte nicht was er sagen sollte, und konnte es von dem Männlein nicht glauben. Da hob der Riese einen Stein auf und warf ihn so hoch, daß man ihn mit Augen kaum noch sehen konnte: „nun, du Erpelmännchen, das thu mir nach.“ „Gut geworfen,“ sagte der Schneider, „aber der Stein hat doch wieder zur Erde herabfallen müssen, ich will dir einen werfen, der soll gar nicht wieder kommen;“ griff in die Tasche, nahm den Vogel und warf ihn in die Luft. Der Vogel, froh über seine Freiheit, stieg auf, flog fort und kam nicht wieder. „Wie gefällt dir das Stückchen, Kamerad?“ fragte der Schneider. „Werfen kannst du wohl,“ sagte der Riese, „aber nun wollen wir sehen ob du im Stande bist etwas ordentliches zu tragen.“ Er führte das Schneiderlein zu einem mächtigen Eichbaum, der da gefällt auf dem Boden lag, und sagte „wenn du stark genug bist, so hilf mir den Baum aus dem Walde heraus tragen.“ „Gerne,“ antwortete der kleine Mann, „nimm du nur den Stamm auf deine Schulter, ich will die Äste mit dem Gezweig aufheben und tragen, das ist doch das schwerste.“ Der Riese nahm den Stamm auf die Schulter, der Schneider aber setzte sich auf einen Ast, und der Riese, der sich nicht umsehen konnte, mußte den ganzen Baum und das Schneiderlein noch obendrein forttragen. Es war da hinten ganz lustig und guter Dinge, pfiff das Liedchen „es ritten drei Schneider zum Thore hinaus,“ als wäre das Baumtragen ein Kinderspiel. Der Riese, nachdem er ein Stück Wegs die schwere Last fortgeschleppt hatte, konnte nicht weiter und rief „hör, ich muß den Baum fallen lassen.“ Der Schneider sprang behendiglich herab, faßte den Baum mit beiden Armen, als wenn er ihn getragen hätte, und sprach zum Riesen „du bist ein so großer Kerl und kannst den Baum nicht einmal tragen.“
Sie giengen zusammen weiter, und als sie an einem Kirschbaum vorbei kamen, faßte der Riese die Krone des Baums, wo die zeitigsten Früchte hiengen, bog sie herab, gab sie dem Schneider in die Hand und hieß ihn essen. Das Schneiderlein aber war viel zu schwach um den Baum zu halten, und als der Riese los ließ, fuhr der Baum in die Höhe, und der Schneider ward mit in die Luft geschnellt. Als er wieder ohne Schaden herabgefallen war, sprach der Riese „was ist das, hast du nicht Kraft die schwache Gerte zu halten?“ „An der Kraft fehlt es nicht,“ antwortete das Schneiderlein, „meinst du das wäre etwas für einen, der siebene mit einem Streich getroffen hat? ich bin über den Baum gesprungen, weil die Jäger da unten in das Gebüsch schießen. Spring nach, wenn dus vermagst.“ Der Riese machte den Versuch, konnte aber nicht über den Baum kommen, sondern blieb in den Ästen hängen, also daß das Schneiderlein auch hier die Oberhand behielt.
Der Riese sprach „wenn du ein so tapferer Kerl bist, so komm mit in unsere Höhle und übernachte bei uns.“ Das Schneiderlein war bereit und folgte ihm. Als sie in der Höhle anlangten, saßen da noch andere Riesen beim Feuer, und jeder hatte ein gebratenes Schaf in der Hand und aß davon. Das Schneiderlein sah sich um und dachte „es ist doch hier viel weitläuftiger als in meiner Werkstatt.“ Der Riese wies ihm ein Bett an und sagte er sollte sich hineinlegen und ausschlafen. Dem Schneiderlein war aber das Bett zu groß, er legte sich nicht hinein, sondern kroch in eine Ecke. Als es Mitternacht war, und der Riese meinte das Schneiderlein läge in tiefem Schlafe, so stand er auf, nahm eine große Eisenstange und schlug das Bett mit einem Schlag durch, und meinte er hätte dem Grashüpfer den Garaus gemacht. Mit dem frühsten Morgen giengen die Riesen in den Wald und hatten das Schneiderlein ganz vergessen, da kam es auf einmal ganz lustig und verwegen daher geschritten. Die Riesen erschracken, fürchteten es schlüge sie alle todt und liefen in einer Hast fort.
Das Schneiderlein zog weiter, immer seiner spitzen Nase nach. Nachdem es lange gewandert war, kam es in den Hof eines königlichen Palastes, und da es Müdigkeit empfand, so legte es sich ins Gras und schlief ein. Während es da lag, kamen die Leute, betrachteten es von allen Seiten und lasen auf dem Gürtel „siebene auf einen Streich.“ „Ach,“ sprachen sie, „was will der große Kriegsheld hier mitten im Frieden? Das muß ein mächtiger Herr sein.“ Sie giengen und meldeten es dem König, und meinten wenn Krieg ausbrechen sollte, wäre das ein wichtiger und nützlicher Mann, den man um keinen Preis fortlassen dürfte. Dem König gefiel der Rath und er schickte einen von seinen Hofleuten an das Schneiderlein ab, der sollte ihm, wenn es aufgewacht wäre, Kriegsdienste anbieten. Der Abgesandte blieb bei dem Schläfer stehen, wartete bis er seine Glieder streckte und die Augen aufschlug, und brachte dann seinen Antrag vor. „Eben deshalb bin ich hierher gekommen,“ antwortete er, „ich bin bereit in des Königs Dienste zu treten.“ Also ward er ehrenvoll empfangen und ihm eine besondere Wohnung angewiesen.
Die Kriegsleute aber waren dem Schneiderlein aufgesessen und wünschten es wäre tausend Meilen weit weg. „Was soll daraus werden?“ sprachen sie untereinander, „wenn wir Zank mit ihm kriegen und er haut zu, so fallen auf jeden Streich siebene. Da kann unser einer nicht bestehen.“ Also faßten sie einen Entschluß, begaben sich allesammt zum König und baten um ihren Abschied. „Wir sind nicht gemacht,“ sprachen sie, „neben einem Mann auszuhalten, der siebene auf einen Streich schlägt.“ Der König war traurig daß er um des Einen willen alle seine treuen Diener verlieren sollte, wünschte daß seine Augen ihn nie gesehen hätten und wäre ihn gerne wieder los gewesen. Aber er getrauete sich nicht ihm den Abschied zu geben, weil er fürchtete er möchte ihn sammt seinem Volke todt schlagen und sich auf den königlichen Thron setzen. Er sann lange hin und her, endlich fand er einen Rath. Er schickte zu dem Schneiderlein und ließ ihm sagen weil er ein so großer Kriegsheld wäre, so wollte er ihm ein Anerbieten machen. In einem Walde seines Landes hausten zwei Riesen, die mit Rauben Morden Sengen und Brennen großen Schaden stifteten: niemand dürfte sich ihnen nahen ohne sich in Lebensgefahr zu setzen. Wenn er diese beiden Riesen überwände und tödtete, so wollte er ihm seine einzige Tochter zur Gemahlin geben und das halbe Königreich zur Ehesteuer; auch sollten hundert Reiter mit ziehen und ihm Beistand leisten. „Das wäre so etwas für einen Mann, wie du bist,“ dachte das Schneiderlein, „eine schöne Königstochter und ein halbes Königreich wird einem nicht alle Tage angeboten.“ „O ja,“ gab er zur Antwort, „die Riesen will ich schon bändigen, und habe die hundert Reiter dabei nicht nöthig: wer siebene auf einen Streich trifft, braucht sich vor zweien nicht zu fürchten.“
Das Schneiderlein zog aus, und die hundert Reiter folgten ihm. Als er zu dem Rand des Waldes kam, sprach er zu seinen Begleitern „bleibt hier nur halten, ich will schon allein mit den Riesen fertig werden.“ Dann sprang er in den Wald hinein und schaute sich rechts und links um. Über ein Weilchen erblickte er beide Riesen: sie lagen unter einem Baume und schliefen und schnarchten dabei, daß sich die Äste auf und nieder bogen. Das Schneiderlein, nicht faul, las beide Taschen voll Steine und stieg damit auf den Baum. Als es in der Mitte war, rutschte es auf einem Ast bis es gerade über die Schläfer zu sitzen kam, und ließ dem einen Riesen einen Stein nach dem andern auf die Brust fallen. Der Riese spürte lange nichts, doch endlich wachte er auf, stieß seinen Gesellen an und sprach „was schlägst du mich.“ „Du träumst,“ sagte der andere, „ich schlage dich nicht.“ Sie legten sich wieder zum Schlaf, da warf der Schneider auf den zweiten einen Stein herab. „Was soll das?“ rief der andere, „warum wirfst du mich?“ „Ich werfe dich nicht,“ antwortete der erste und brummte. Sie zankten sich eine Weile herum, doch weil sie müde waren, ließen sies gut sein, und die Augen fielen ihnen wieder zu. Das Schneiderlein fieng sein Spiel von neuem an, suchte den dicksten Stein aus und warf ihn dem ersten Riesen mit aller Gewalt auf die Brust. „Das ist zu arg!“ schrie er, sprang wie ein Unsinniger auf und stieß seinen Gesellen wider den Baum daß dieser zitterte. Der andere zahlte mit gleicher Münze, und sie geriethen in solche Wuth, daß sie Bäume ausrissen, auf einander los schlugen, so lang bis sie endlich beide zugleich todt auf die Erde fielen. Nun sprang das Schneiderlein herab. „Ein Glück nur,“ sprach es, „daß sie den Baum, auf dem ich saß, nicht ausgerissen haben, sonst hätte ich wie ein Eichhörnchen auf einen andern springen müssen: doch unser einer ist flüchtig!“ Es zog sein Schwert und versetzte jedem ein paar tüchtige Hiebe in die Brust, dann gieng es hinaus zu den Reitern und sprach „die Arbeit ist gethan, ich habe beiden den Garaus gemacht: aber hart ist es hergegangen, sie haben in der Noth Bäume ausgerissen und sich gewehrt, doch das hilft alles nichts wenn einer kommt wie ich, der siebene auf einen Streich schlägt.“ „Seid ihr denn nicht verwundet?“ fragten die Reiter. „Das hat gute Wege,“ antwortete der Schneider, „kein Haar haben sie mir gekrümmt.“ Die Reiter wollten ihm keinen Glauben beimessen und ritten in den Wald hinein: da fanden sie die Riesen in ihrem Blute schwimmend, und rings herum lagen die ausgerissenen Bäume.
Das Schneiderlein verlangte von dem König die versprochene Belohnung, den aber reute sein Versprechen und er sann aufs neue wie er sich den Helden vom Halse schaffen könnte. „Ehe du meine Tochter und das halbe Reich erhältst,“ sprach er zu ihm, „mußt du noch eine Heldenthat vollbringen. In dem Walde läuft ein Einhorn, das großen Schaden anrichtet, das mußt du erst einfangen.“ „Vor einem Einhorne fürchte ich mich noch weniger als vor zwei Riesen; siebene auf einen Streich, das ist meine Sache.“ Er nahm sich einen Strick und eine Axt mit, gieng hinaus in den Wald, und hieß abermals die, welche ihm zugeordnet waren, außen warten. Er brauchte nicht lange zu suchen, das Einhorn kam bald daher, und sprang geradezu auf den Schneider los, als wollte es ihn ohne Umstände aufspießen. „Sachte, sachte,“ sprach er, „so geschwind geht das nicht,“ blieb stehen und wartete bis das Thier ganz nahe war, dann sprang er behendiglich hinter dem Baum. Das Einhorn rannte mit aller Kraft gegen den Baum und spießte sein Horn so fest in den Stamm, daß es nicht Kraft genug hatte es wieder heraus zu ziehen, und so war es gefangen. „Jetzt hab ich das Vöglein,“ sagte der Schneider, kam hinter dem Baum hervor, legte dem Einhorn den Strick erst um den Hals, dann hieb er mit der Axt das Horn aus dem Baum und als alles in Ordnung war führte er das Thier ab und brachte es dem König.
Der König wollte ihm den verheißenen Lohn noch nicht gewähren, und machte eine dritte Forderung. Der Schneider sollte ihm vor der Hochzeit erst ein Wildschwein fangen, das in dem Wald großen Schaden that; die Jäger sollten ihm Beistand leisten. „Gerne,“ sprach der Schneider, „das ist ein Kinderspiel.“ Die Jäger nahm er nicht mit in den Wald, und sie warens wohl zufrieden, denn das Wildschwein hatte sie schon mehrmals so empfangen daß sie keine Lust hatten ihm nachzustellen. Als das Schwein den Schneider erblickte, lief es mit schäumendem Munde und wetzenden Zähnen auf ihn zu, und wollte ihn zur Erde werfen: der flüchtige Held aber sprang in eine Kapelle, die in der Nähe war, und gleich oben zum Fenster in einem Satze wieder hinaus. Das Schwein war hinter ihm her gelaufen, er aber hüpfte außen herum und schlug die Thüre hinter ihm zu; da war das wüthende Thier gefangen, das viel zu schwer und unbehilflich war, um zu dem Fenster hinaus zu springen. Das Schneiderlein rief die Jäger herbei, die mußten den Gefangenen mit eigenen Augen sehen: der Held aber begab sich zum Könige, der nun, er mochte wollen oder nicht, sein Versprechen halten mußte und ihm seine Tochter und das halbe Königreich übergab. Hätte er gewußt daß kein Kriegsheld sondern ein Schneiderlein vor ihm stand, es wäre ihm noch mehr zu Herzen gegangen. Die Hochzeit ward also mit großer Pracht und kleiner Freude gehalten, und aus einem Schneider ein König gemacht.
Nach einiger Zeit hörte die junge Königin in der Nacht wie ihr Gemahl im Traume sprach „Junge, mach mir den Wams und flick mir die Hosen, oder ich will dir die Elle über die Ohren schlagen.“ Da merkte sie in welcher Gasse der junge Herr geboren war, klagte am andern Morgen ihrem Vater ihr Leid und bat er möchte ihr von dem Manne helfen, der nichts anders als ein Schneider wäre. Der König sprach ihr Trost zu und sagte „laß in der nächsten Nacht deine Schlafkammer offen, meine Diener sollen außen stehen und, wenn er eingeschlafen ist, hineingehen, ihn binden und auf ein Schiff tragen, das ihn in die weite Welt führt.“ Die Frau war damit zufrieden, des Königs Waffenträger aber, der alles mit angehört hatte, war dem jungen Herrn gewogen und hinterbrachte ihm den ganzen Anschlag. „Dem Ding will ich einen Riegel vorschieben,“ sagte das Schneiderlein. Abends legte es sich zu gewöhnlicher Zeit mit seiner Frau zu Bett: als sie glaubte er sei eingeschlafen, stand sie auf, öffnete die Thüre und legte sich wieder. Das Schneiderlein, das sich nur stellte als wenn es schlief, fieng an mit heller Stimme zu rufen „Junge, mach mir den Wams und flick mir die Hosen, oder ich will dir die Elle über die Ohren schlagen! ich habe siebene mit einem Streich getroffen, zwei Riesen getödtet, ein Einhorn fortgeführt, und ein Wildschwein gefangen, und sollte mich vor denen fürchten, die draußen vor der Kammer stehen!“ Als diese den Schneider also sprechen hörten, überkam sie eine große Furcht, sie liefen als wenn das wilde Heer hinter ihnen wäre, und keiner wollte sich mehr an ihn wagen. Also war und blieb das Schneiderlein sein Lebtag ein König. Es war ein armer Bauersmann, der saß Abends beim Herd und schürte das Feuer, und die Frau saß und spann. Da sprach er „wie ists so traurig, daß wir keine Kinder haben! es ist so still bei uns, und in den andern Häusern ists so laut und lustig.“ „Ja,“ antwortete die Frau und seufzte, „wenns nur ein einziges wäre, und wenns auch ganz klein wäre, nur Daumens groß, so wollt ich schon zufrieden sein; wir hättens doch von Herzen lieb.“ Nun geschah es, daß die Frau kränklich ward und nach sieben Monaten ein Kind gebar, das zwar an allen Gliedern vollkommen aber nicht länger als ein Daumen war. Da sprachen sie „es ist wie wir es gewünscht haben, und es soll unser liebes Kind sein,“ und nannten es nach seiner Gestalt Daumesdick. Sie ließens nicht an Nahrung fehlen, aber das Kind ward nicht größer, sondern blieb wie es in der ersten Stunde gewesen war; doch schaute es verständig aus den Augen, und zeigte sich bald als ein kluges und behendes Ding, dem alles glückte was es anfieng.
Der Bauer machte sich eines Tages fertig in den Wald zu gehen und Holz zu fällen, da sprach er so vor sich hin „nun wollt ich daß einer da wäre, der mir den Wagen nachbrächte.“ „O Vater,“ rief Daumesdick, „den Wagen will ich schon bringen, verlaßt euch drauf, er soll zur bestimmten Zeit im Walde sein.“ Da lachte der Mann und sprach „wie sollte das zugehen, du bist viel zu klein, um das Pferd mit dem Zügel zu leiten.“ „Das thut nichts, Vater, wenn nur die Mutter anspannen will, ich setze mich dem Pferd ins Ohr und rufe ihm zu wie es gehen soll.“ „Nun,“ antwortete der Vater, „einmal wollen wirs versuchen.“ Als die Stunde kam, spannte die Mutter an und setzte Daumesdick ins Ohr des Pferdes, und dann rief der Kleine, wie das Pferd gehen sollte, „jüh und joh! hott und har!“ Da gieng es ganz ordentlich als wie bei einem Meister, und der Wagen fuhr den rechten Weg nach dem Walde. Es trug sich zu, als er eben um eine Ecke bog, und der Kleine „har, har!“ rief, daß zwei fremde Männer daher kamen. „Mein,“ sprach der eine, „was ist das? da fährt ein Wagen, und ein Fuhrmann ruft dem Pferde zu, und ist doch nicht zu sehen.“ „Das geht nicht mit rechten Dingen zu,“ sagte der andere, „wir wollen dem Karren folgen und sehen wo er anhält.“ Der Wagen aber fuhr vollends in den Wald hinein und richtig zu dem Platze, wo das Holz gehauen ward. Als Daumesdick seinen Vater erblickte, rief er ihm zu „siehst du, Vater, da bin ich mit dem Wagen, nun hol mich herunter.“ Der Vater faßte das Pferd mit der linken, und holte mit der rechten sein Söhnlein aus dem Ohr, das sich ganz lustig auf einen Strohhalm niedersetzte. Als die beiden fremden Männer den Daumesdick erblickten, wußten sie nicht was sie vor Verwunderung sagen sollten. Da nahm der eine den andern beiseit und sprach „hör, der kleine Kerl könnte unser Glück machen, wenn wir ihn in einer großen Stadt vor Geld sehen ließen: wir wollen ihn kaufen.“ Sie giengen zu dem Bauer und sprachen „verkauft uns den kleinen Mann, er solls gut bei uns haben.“ „Nein,“ antwortete der Vater, „es ist mein Herzblatt, und ist mir für alles Gold in der Welt nicht feil.“ Daumesdick aber, als er von dem Handel gehört, war an den Rockfalten seines Vaters hinaufgekrochen, stellte sich ihm auf die Schulter, und wisperte ihm ins Ohr „Vater, gib mich nur hin, ich will schon wieder zurück kommen.“ Da gab ihn der Vater für ein schönes Stück Geld den beiden Männern hin. „Wo willst du sitzen?“ sprachen sie zu ihm. „Ach, setzt mich nur auf den Rand von eurem Hut, da kann ich auf und ab spazieren und die Gegend betrachten, und falle doch nicht herunter.“ Sie thaten ihm den Willen, und als Daumesdick Abschied von seinem Vater genommen hatte, machten sie sich mit ihm fort. So giengen sie bis es dämmerig ward, da sprach der Kleine „hebt mich einmal herunter, es ist nöthig.“ „Bleib nur droben,“ sprach der Mann, auf dessen Kopf er saß, „ich will mir nichts draus machen, die Vögel lassen mir auch manchmal was drauf fallen.“ „Nein,“ sprach Daumesdick, „ich weiß auch, was sich schickt: hebt mich nur geschwind herab.“ Der Mann nahm den Hut ab, und setzte den Kleinen auf einen Acker am Weg, da sprang und kroch er ein wenig zwischen den Schollen hin und her, dann schlüpfte er plötzlich in ein Mausloch, das er sich ausgesucht hatte. „Guten Abend, ihr Herren, geht nur ohne mich heim,“ rief er ihnen zu, und lachte sie aus. Sie liefen herbei und stachen mit Stöcken in das Mausloch, aber das war vergebliche Mühe: Daumesdick kroch immer weiter zurück und da es bald ganz dunkel ward, so mußten sie mit Ärger und mit leerem Beutel wieder heim wandern.
Als Daumesdick merkte daß sie fort waren, kroch er aus dem unterirdischen Gang wieder hervor. „Es ist auf dem Acker in der Finsternis so gefährlich gehen,“ sprach er, „wie leicht bricht einer Hals und Bein!“ Zum Glück stieß er an ein leeres Schneckenhaus. „Gottlob,“ sagte er, „da kann ich die Nacht sicher zubringen,“ und setzte sich hinein. Nicht lang, als er eben einschlafen wollte, so hörte er zwei Männer vorüber gehen, davon sprach der eine „wie wirs nur anfangen, um dem reichen Pfarrer sein Geld und sein Silber zu holen?“ „Das könnt ich dir sagen,“ rief Daumesdick dazwischen. „Was war das?“ sprach der eine Dieb erschrocken, „ich hörte jemand sprechen.“ Sie blieben stehen und horchten, da sprach Daumesdick wieder „nehmt mich mit, so will ich euch helfen.“ „Wo bist du denn?“ „Sucht nur auf der Erde und merkt wo die Stimme herkommt,“ antwortete er. Da fanden ihn endlich die Diebe und hoben ihn in die Höhe. „Du kleiner Wicht, was willst du uns helfen!“ sprachen sie. „Seht,“ antwortete er, „ich krieche zwischen den Eisenstäben in die Kammer des Pfarrers und reiche euch heraus was ihr haben wollt.“ „Wohlan,“ sagten sie, „wir wollen sehen was du kannst.“ Als sie bei dem Pfarrhaus kamen, kroch Daumesdick in die Kammer, schrie aber gleich aus Leibeskräften „wollt ihr alles haben, was hier ist?“ Die Diebe erschraken und sagten „so sprich doch leise, damit niemand aufwacht.“ Aber Daumesdick that als hätte er sie nicht verstanden und schrie von neuem „was wollt ihr? wollt ihr alles haben, was hier ist?“ Das hörte die Köchin, die in der Stube daran schlief, richtete sich im Bette auf und horchte. Die Diebe aber waren vor Schrecken ein Stück Wegs zurück gelaufen, endlich faßten sie wieder Muth und dachten „der kleine Kerl will uns necken.“ Sie kamen zurück und flüsterten ihm zu „nun mach Ernst und reich uns etwas heraus.“ Da schrie Daumesdick noch einmal so laut er konnte „ich will euch ja alles geben, reicht nur die Hände herein.“ Das hörte die horchende Magd ganz deutlich, sprang aus dem Bett und stolperte zur Thür herein. Die Diebe liefen fort und rannten als wäre der wilde Jäger hinter ihnen: die Magd aber, als sie nichts bemerken konnte, gieng ein Licht anzuzünden. Wie sie damit herbei kam, machte sich Daumesdick, ohne daß er gesehen wurde, hinaus in die Scheune: die Magd aber, nachdem sie alle Winkel durchgesucht und nichts gefunden hatte, legte sich endlich wieder zu Bett und glaubte sie hätte mit offenen Augen und Ohren doch nur geträumt.
Daumesdick war in den Heuhälmchen herumgeklettert und hatte einen schönen Platz zum Schlafen gefunden: da wollte er sich ausruhen bis es Tag wäre, und dann zu seinen Eltern wieder heim gehen. Aber er mußte andere Dinge erfahren! ja, es gibt viel Trübsal und Noth auf der Welt! Die Magd stieg, als der Tag graute, schon aus dem Bett, um das Vieh zu füttern. Ihr erster Gang war in die Scheune, wo sie einen Arm voll Heu packte, und gerade dasjenige, worin der arme Daumesdick lag und schlief. Er schlief aber so fest, daß er nichts gewahr ward, und nicht eher aufwachte als bis er in dem Maul der Kuh war, die ihn mit dem Heu aufgerafft hatte. „Ach Gott,“ rief er, „wie bin ich in die Walkmühle gerathen!“ merkte aber bald wo er war. Da hieß es aufpassen, daß er nicht zwischen die Zähne kam und zermalmt ward, und hernach mußte er doch mit in den Magen hinab rutschen. „In dem Stübchen sind die Fenster vergessen,“ sprach er, „und scheint keine Sonne hinein: ein Licht wird auch nicht gebracht.“ Überhaupt gefiel ihm das Quartier schlecht, und was das schlimmste war, es kam immer mehr neues Heu zur Thüre hinein, und der Platz ward immer enger. Da rief er endlich in der Angst, so laut er konnte, „bringt mir kein frisch Futter mehr, bringt mir kein frisch Futter mehr.“ Die Magd melkte gerade die Kuh, und als sie sprechen hörte ohne jemand zu sehen, und es dieselbe Stimme war, die sie auch in der Nacht gehört hatte, erschrack sie so, daß sie von ihrem Stühlchen herabglitschte und die Milch verschüttete. Sie lief in der größten Hast zu ihrem Herrn, und rief „ach Gott, Herr Pfarrer, die Kuh hat geredet.“ „Du bist verrückt,“ antwortete der Pfarrer, gieng aber doch selbst in den Stall und wollte nachsehen was es da gäbe. Kaum aber hatte er den Fuß hineingesetzt, so rief Daumesdick aufs neue „bringt mir kein frisch Futter mehr, bringt mir kein frisch Futter mehr.“ Da erschrack der Pfarrer selbst, meinte es wäre ein böser Geist in die Kuh gefahren und hieß sie tödten. Sie ward geschlachtet, der Magen aber, worin Daumesdick steckte, auf den Mist geworfen. Daumesdick hatte große Mühe sich hindurch zu arbeiten und hatte große Mühe damit, doch brachte ers so weit daß er Platz bekam, aber als er eben sein Haupt herausstrecken wollte, kam ein neues Unglück. Ein hungriger Wolf lief heran und verschlang den ganzen Magen mit einem Schluck. Daumesdick verlor den Muth nicht, „vielleicht,“ dachte er, „läßt der Wolf mit sich reden,“ und rief ihm aus dem Wanste zu „lieber Wolf, ich weiß dir einen herrlichen Fraß.“ „Wo ist der zu holen?“ sprach der Wolf. „In dem und dem Haus, da mußt du durch die Gosse hinein kriechen, und wirst Kuchen, Speck und Wurst finden, so viel du essen willst,“ und beschrieb ihm genau seines Vaters Haus. Der Wolf ließ sich das nicht zweimal sagen, drängte sich in der Nacht zur Gosse hinein und fraß in der Vorrathskammer nach Herzenslust. Als er sich gesättigt hatte, wollte er wieder fort, aber er war so dick geworden, daß er denselben Weg nicht wieder hinaus konnte. Darauf hatte Daumesdick gerechnet und fieng nun an in dem Leib des Wolfs einen gewaltigen Lärmen zu machen, tobte und schrie, was er konnte. „Willst du stille sein,“ sprach der Wolf, „du weckst die Leute auf.“ „Ei was,“ antwortete der Kleine, „du hast dich satt gefressen, ich will mich auch lustig machen,“ und fieng von neuem an aus allen Kräften zu schreien. Davon erwachte endlich sein Vater und seine Mutter, liefen an die Kammer und schauten durch die Spalte hinein. Wie sie sahen daß ein Wolf darin hauste, liefen sie davon, und der Mann holte die Axt, und die Frau die Sense. „Bleib dahinten,“ sprach der Mann, als sie in die Kammer traten, „wenn ich ihm einen Schlag gegeben habe, und er davon noch nicht todt ist, so mußt du auf ihn einhauen, und ihm den Leib zerschneiden.“ Da hörte Daumesdick die Stimme seines Vaters und rief „lieber Vater, ich bin hier, ich stecke im Leibe des Wolfs.“ Sprach der Vater voll Freuden „gottlob, unser liebes Kind hat sich wieder gefunden,“ und hieß die Frau die Sense wegthun, damit Daumesdick nicht beschädigt würde. Danach holte er aus, und schlug dem Wolf einen Schlag auf den Kopf daß er todt niederstürzte, dann suchten sie Messer und Scheere, schnitten ihm den Leib auf und zogen den Kleinen wieder hervor. „Ach,“ sprach der Vater, „was haben wir für Sorge um dich ausgestanden!“ „Ja, Vater, ich bin viel in der Welt herumgekommen; gottlob, daß ich wieder frische Luft schöpfe!“ „Wo bist du denn all gewesen?“ „Ach, Vater, ich war in einem Mauseloch, in einer Kuh Bauch und in eines Wolfes Wanst: nun bleib ich bei euch.“ „Und wir verkaufen dich um alle Reichthümer der Welt nicht wieder,“ sprachen die Eltern, herzten und küßten ihren lieben Daumesdick. Sie gaben ihm zu essen und trinken, und ließen ihm neue Kleider machen, denn die seinigen waren ihm auf der Reise verdorben. Es war einmal eine arme Frau, die gebar ein Söhnlein, und weil es eine Glückshaut um hatte, als es zur Welt kam, so ward ihm geweissagt es werde im vierzehnten Jahr die Tochter des Königs zur Frau haben. Es trug sich zu, daß der König bald darauf ins Dorf kam, und niemand wußte daß es der König war, und als er die Leute fragte was es Neues gäbe, so antworteten sie „es ist in diesen Tagen ein Kind mit einer Glückshaut geboren: was so einer unternimmt, das schlägt ihm zum Glück aus. Es ist ihm auch voraus gesagt, in seinem vierzehnten Jahre solle er die Tochter des Königs zur Frau haben.“ Der König, der ein böses Herz hatte und über die Weissagung sich ärgerte, gieng zu den Eltern, that ganz freundlich und sagte „ihr armen Leute, überlaßt mir euer Kind, ich will es versorgen.“ Anfangs weigerten sie sich, da aber der fremde Mann schweres Gold dafür bot, und sie dachten „es ist ein Glückskind, es muß doch zu seinem Besten ausschlagen,“ so willigten sie endlich ein und gaben ihm das Kind.
Der König legte es in eine Schachtel und ritt damit weiter bis er zu einem tiefen Wasser kam: da warf er die Schachtel hinein und dachte „von dem unerwarteten Freier habe ich meine Tochter geholfen.“ Die Schachtel aber gieng nicht unter, sondern schwamm wie ein Schiffchen, und es drang auch kein Tröpfchen Wasser hinein. So schwamm sie bis zwei Meilen von des Königs Hauptstadt, wo eine Mühle war, an dessen Wehr sie hängen blieb. Ein Mahlbursche, der glücklicherweise da stand und sie bemerkte, zog sie mit einem Haken heran und meinte große Schätze zu finden, als er sie aber aufmachte, lag ein schöner Knabe darin, der ganz frisch und munter war. Er brachte ihn zu den Müllersleuten, und weil diese keine Kinder hatten, freuten sie sich und sprachen „Gott hat es uns beschert.“ Sie pflegten den Fündling wohl, und er wuchs in allen Tugenden heran.
Es trug sich zu, daß der König einmal bei einem Gewitter in die Mühle trat und die Müllersleute fragte ob der große Junge ihr Sohn wäre. „Nein,“ antworteten sie, „es ist ein Fündling, er ist vor vierzehn Jahren in einer Schachtel ans Wehr geschwommen, und der Mahlbursche hat ihn aus dem Wasser gezogen.“ Da merkte der König daß es niemand anders, als das Glückskind war, das er ins Wasser geworfen hatte, und sprach „ihr guten Leute, könnte der Junge nicht einen Brief an die Frau Königin bringen, ich will ihm zwei Goldstücke zum Lohn geben?“ „Wie der Herr König gebietet,“ antworteten die Leute, und hießen den Jungen sich bereit halten. Da schrieb der König einen Brief an die Königin, worin stand „sobald der Knabe mit diesem Schreiben angelangt ist, soll er getödtet und begraben werden, und das alles soll geschehen sein ehe ich zurückkomme.“
Der Knabe machte sich mit diesem Briefe auf den Weg, verirrte sich aber und kam Abends in einen großen Wald. In der Dunkelheit sah er ein kleines Licht, gieng darauf zu und gelangte zu einem Häuschen. Als er hinein trat, saß eine alte Frau beim Feuer ganz allein. Sie erschrack als sie den Knaben erblickte und sprach „wo kommst du her und wo willst du hin?“ „Ich komme von der Mühle,“ antwortete er, „und will zur Frau Königin, der ich einen Brief bringen soll: weil ich mich aber in dem Walde verirrt habe, so wollte ich hier gerne übernachten.“ „Du armer Junge,“ sprach die Frau, „du bist in ein Räuberhaus gerathen, und wenn sie heim kommen, so bringen sie dich um.“ „Mag kommen wer will,“ sagte der Junge, „ich fürchte mich nicht: ich bin aber so müde, daß ich nicht weiter kann,“ streckte sich auf eine Bank, und schlief ein. Bald hernach kamen die Räuber und fragten zornig was da für ein fremder Knabe läge. „Ach,“ sagte die Alte, „es ist ein unschuldiges Kind, es hat sich im Walde verirrt, und ich habe ihn aus Barmherzigkeit aufgenommen: er soll einen Brief an die Frau Königin bringen.“ Die Räuber erbrachen den Brief und lasen ihn, und es stand darin daß der Knabe sogleich, wie er ankäme, sollte ums Leben gebracht werden. Da empfanden die hartherzigen Räuber Mitleid, und der Anführer zerriß den Brief und schrieb einen andern, und es stand darin so wie der Knabe ankäme, sollte er sogleich mit der Königstochter vermählt werden. Sie ließen ihn dann ruhig bis zum andern Morgen auf der Bank liegen, und als er aufgewacht war, gaben sie ihm den Brief und zeigten ihm den rechten Weg. Die Königin aber, als sie den Brief empfangen und gelesen hatte, that wie darin stand, hieß ein prächtiges Hochzeitsfest anstellen, und die Königstochter ward mit dem Glückskind vermählt; und da der Jüngling schön und freundlich war, so lebte sie vergnügt und zufrieden mit ihm.
Nach einiger Zeit kam der König wieder in sein Schloß und sah daß die Weissagung erfüllt und das Glückskind mit seiner Tochter vermählt war. „Wie ist das zugegangen?“ sprach er, „ich habe in meinem Brief einen ganz andern Befehl ertheilt.“ Da reichte ihm die Königin den Brief und sagte er möchte selbst sehen was darin stände. Der König las den Brief und merkte wohl daß er mit einem andern war vertauscht worden. Er fragte den Jüngling wie es mit dem anvertrauten Briefe zugegangen wäre, warum er einen andern dafür gebracht hätte. „Ich weiß von nichts,“ antwortete er, „er muß mir in der Nacht vertauscht sein, als ich im Walde geschlafen habe.“ Voll Zorn sprach der König „so leicht soll es dir nicht werden, wer meine Tochter haben will, der muß mir aus der Hölle drei goldene Haare von dem Haupte des Teufels holen; bringst du mir was ich verlange, so sollst du meine Tochter behalten.“ Damit hoffte der König ihn auf immer los zu werden. Das Glückskind aber antwortete „die goldenen Haare will ich wohl holen, ich fürchte mich vor dem Teufel nicht.“ Darauf nahm er Abschied und begann seine Wanderschaft.
Der Weg führte ihn zu einer großen Stadt, wo ihn der Wächter an dem Thore ausfragte was für ein Gewerbe er verstände und was er wüßte. „Ich weiß alles“ antwortete das Glückskind. „So kannst du uns einen Gefallen thun,“ sagte der Wächter, „wenn du uns sagst warum unser Marktbrunnen, aus dem sonst Wein quoll, trocken geworden ist, und nicht einmal mehr Wasser gibt.“ „Das sollt ihr erfahren,“ antwortete er, „wartet nur bis ich wiederkomme.“ Da gieng er weiter und kam vor eine andere Stadt, da fragte der Thorwächter wiederum was für ein Gewerb er verstünde und was er wüßte. „Ich weiß alles“ antwortete er. „So kannst du uns einen Gefallen thun, und uns sagen warum ein Baum in unserer Stadt, der sonst goldene Äpfel trug, jetzt nicht einmal Blätter hervor treibt.“ „Das sollt ihr erfahren,“ antwortete er, „wartet nur bis ich wiederkomme.“ Da gieng er weiter, und kam an ein großes Wasser, über das er hinüber mußte. Der Fährmann fragte ihn was er für ein Gewerb verstände und was er wüßte. „Ich weiß alles“ antwortete er. „So kannst du mir einen Gefallen thun,“ sprach der Fährmann, „und mir sagen warum ich immer hin und her fahren muß und niemals abgelöst werde.“ „Das sollst du erfahren,“ antwortete er, „warte nur bis ich wiederkomme?“
Als er über das Wasser hinüber war, so fand er den Eingang zur Hölle. Es war schwarz und rußig darin, und der Teufel war nicht zu Haus, aber seine Ellermutter saß da in einem breiten Sorgenstuhl. „Was willst du?“ sprach sie zu ihm, sah aber gar nicht so böse aus. „Ich wollte gerne drei goldene Haare von des Teufels Kopf,“ antwortete er, „sonst kann ich meine Frau nicht behalten.“ „Das ist viel verlangt,“ sagte sie, „wenn der Teufel heim kommt und findet dich, so geht dirs an den Kragen; aber du dauerst mich, ich will sehen ob ich dir helfen kann.“ Sie verwandelte ihn in eine Ameise und sprach „kriech in meine Rockfalten, da bist du sicher.“ „Ja“ antwortete er, „das ist schon gut, aber drei Dinge möcht ich gerne noch wissen, warum ein Brunnen, aus dem sonst Wein quoll, trocken geworden ist, jetzt nicht einmal mehr Wasser gibt: warum ein Baum, der sonst goldene Äpfel trug, nicht einmal mehr Laub treibt, und warum ein Fährmann immer herüber und hinüber fahren muß und nicht abgelöst wird.“ „Das sind schwere Fragen,“ antwortete sie, „aber halte dich nur still und ruhig, und hab acht was der Teufel spricht, wann ich ihm die drei goldenen Haare ausziehe.“
Als der Abend einbrach, kam der Teufel nach Haus. Kaum war er eingetreten, so merkte er daß die Luft nicht rein war. „Ich rieche rieche Menschenfleisch,“ sagte er, „es ist hier nicht richtig.“ Dann guckte er in alle Ecken, und suchte, konnte aber nichts finden. Die Ellermutter schalt ihn aus, „eben ist erst gekehrt“ sprach sie, „und alles in Ordnung gebracht, nun wirfst du mirs wieder untereinander; immer hast du Menschenfleisch in der Nase! Setze dich nieder und iß dein Abendbrot.“ Als er gegessen und getrunken hatte, war er müde, legte der Ellermutter seinen Kopf in den Schoß und sagte sie sollte ihn ein wenig lausen. Es dauerte nicht lange, so schlummerte er ein, blies und schnarchte. Da faßte die Alte ein goldenes Haar, riß es aus und legte es neben sich. „Autsch!“ schrie der Teufel, „was hast du vor?“ „Ich habe einen schweren Traum gehabt,“ antwortete die Ellermutter, „da hab ich dir in die Haare gefaßt.“ „Was hat dir denn geträumt?“ fragte der Teufel. „Mir hat geträumt ein Marktbrunnen, aus dem sonst Wein quoll, sei versiegt, und es habe nicht einmal Wasser daraus quellen wollen, was ist wohl Schuld daran?“ „He, wenn sies wüßten!“ antwortete der Teufel, „es sitzt eine Kröte unter einem Stein im Brunnen, wenn sie die tödten, so wird der Wein schon wieder fließen.“ Die Ellermutter lauste ihn wieder, bis er einschlief und schnarchte daß die Fenster zitterten. Da riß sie ihm das zweite Haar aus. „Hu! was machst du?“ schrie der Teufel zornig. „Nimms nicht übel,“ antwortete sie, „ich habe es im Traum gethan.“ „Was hat dir wieder geträumt?“ fragte er. „Mir hat geträumt in einem Königreiche ständ ein Obstbaum, der hätte sonst goldene Äpfel getragen und wollte jetzt nicht einmal Laub treiben. Was war wohl die Ursache davon?“ „He, wenn sies wüßten!“ antwortete der Teufel, „an der Wurzel nagt eine Maus, wenn sie die tödten, so wird er schon wieder goldene Äpfel tragen, nagt sie aber noch länger, so verdorrt der Baum gänzlich. Aber laß mich mit deinen Träumen in Ruhe, wenn du mich noch einmal im Schlafe störst, so kriegst du eine Ohrfeige.“ Die Ellermutter sprach ihn zu gut, und lauste ihn wieder bis er eingeschlafen war und schnarchte. Da faßte sie das dritte goldene Haar und riß es ihm aus. Der Teufel fuhr in die Höhe, schrie und wollte übel mit ihr wirthschaften, aber sie besänftigte ihn nochmals und sprach, „wer kann für böse Träume!“ „Was hat dir denn geträumt?“ fragte er, und war doch neugierig. „Mir hat von einem Fährmann geträumt, der sich beklagte daß er immer hin und her fahren müßte, und nicht abgelöst würde. Was ist wohl Schuld?“ „He, der Dummbart!“ antwortete der Teufel, „wenn einer kommt und will überfahren, so muß er ihm die Stange in die Hand geben, dann muß der andere überfahren und er ist frei.“ Da die Ellermutter ihm die drei goldenen Haare ausgerissen hatte und die drei Fragen beantwortet waren, so ließ sie den alten Drachen in Ruhe, und er schlief bis der Tag anbrach.
Als der Teufel wieder fortgezogen war, holte die Alte die Ameise aus der Rockfalte, und gab dem Glückskind die menschliche Gestalt zurück. „Da hast du die drei goldenen Haare,“ sprach sie, „was der Teufel zu deinen drei Fragen gesagt hat, wirst du wohl gehört haben.“ „Ja,“ antwortete er, „ich habe es gehört und wills wohl behalten.“ „So ist dir geholfen,“ sagte sie, „und nun kannst du deiner Wege ziehen.“ Er bedankte sich bei der Alten für die Hilfe in der Noth, verließ die Hölle, und war vergnügt daß ihm alles so wohl geglückt war. Als er zu dem Fährmann kam, sollte er ihm die versprochene Antwort geben. „Fahr mich erst hinüber,“ sprach das Glückskind, „so will ich dir sagen wie du erlöst wirst,“ und als er auf dem jenseitigen Ufer angelangt war, gab er ihm des Teufels Rath, „wenn wieder einer kommt, und will übergefahren sein, so gib ihm nur die Stange in die Hand.“ Er gieng weiter und kam zu der Stadt, worin der unfruchtbare Baum stand, und wo der Wächter auch Antwort haben wollte. Da sagte er ihm, wie er vom Teufel gehört hatte, „tödtet die Maus, die an seiner Wurzel nagt, so wird er wieder goldene Äpfel tragen.“ Da dankte ihm der Wächter und gab ihm zur Belohnung zwei mit Gold beladene Esel, die mußten ihm nachfolgen. Zuletzt kam er zu der Stadt, deren Brunnen versiegt war. Da sprach er zu dem Wächter, wie der Teufel gesprochen hatte, „es sitzt eine Kröte im Brunnen unter einem Stein, die müßt ihr aufsuchen und tödten, so wird er wieder reichlich Wein geben.“ Der Wächter dankte, und gab ihm ebenfalls zwei mit Gold beladene Esel.
Endlich langte das Glückskind daheim bei seiner Frau an, die sich herzlich freute als sie ihn wiedersah und hörte wie wohl ihm alles gelungen war. Dem König brachte er was er verlangt hatte, die drei goldenen Haare des Teufels, und als dieser die vier Esel mit dem Golde sah, ward er ganz vergnügt und sprach „nun sind alle Bedingungen erfüllt und du kannst meine Tochter behalten. Aber, lieber Schwiegersohn, sage mir doch woher ist das viele Gold? das sind ja gewaltige Schätze!“ „Ich bin über einen Fluß gefahren,“ antwortete er, „und da habe ich es mitgenommen, es liegt dort statt des Sandes am Ufer.“ „Kann ich mir auch davon holen?“ sprach der König und war ganz begierig. „So viel ihr nur wollt,“ antwortete er, „es ist ein Fährmann auf dem Fluß, von dem laßt euch überfahren, so könnt ihr drüben eure Säcke füllen.“ Der habsüchtige König machte sich in aller Eile auf den Weg, und als er zu dem Fluß kam, so winkte er dem Fährmann, der sollte ihn übersetzen. Der Fährmann kam und hieß ihn einsteigen, und als sie an das jenseitige Ufer kamen, gab er ihm die Ruderstange in die Hand, und sprang davon. Der König aber mußte von nun an fahren zur Strafe für seine Sünden.
„Fährt er wohl noch?“ „Was denn? es wird ihm niemand die Stange abgenommen haben.“ Es war ein Mann, der hatte drei Söhne und weiter nichts im Vermögen als das Haus, worin er wohnte. Nun hätte jeder gerne nach seinem Tode das Haus gehabt, dem Vater war aber einer so lieb als der andere, da wußte er nicht wie ers anfangen sollte, daß er keinem zu nahe thät; verkaufen wollte er das Haus auch nicht, weils von seinen Voreltern war, sonst hätte er das Geld unter sie getheilt. Da fiel ihm endlich ein Rath ein und er sprach zu seinen Söhnen „geht in die Welt und versucht euch und lerne jeder sein Handwerk, wenn ihr dann wiederkommt, wer das beste Meisterstück macht, der soll das Haus haben.“
Das waren die Söhne zufrieden, und der älteste wollte ein Hufschmied, der zweite ein Barbier, der dritte aber ein Fechtmeister werden. Darauf bestimmten sie eine Zeit, wo sie wieder nach Haus zusammen kommen wollten, und zogen fort. Es traf sich auch, daß jeder einen tüchtigen Meister fand, wo er was rechtschaffenes lernte. Der Schmied mußte des Königs Pferde beschlagen und dachte „nun kann dirs nicht fehlen, du kriegst das Haus.“ Der Barbier rasierte lauter vornehme Herren und meinte auch das Haus wäre schon sein. Der Fechtmeister kriegte manchen Hieb, biß aber die Zähne zusammen und ließ sichs nicht verdrießen, denn er dachte bei sich „fürchtest du dich vor einem Hieb, so kriegst du das Haus nimmermehr.“ Als nun die gesetzte Zeit herum war, kamen sie bei ihrem Vater wieder zusammen; sie wußten aber nicht wie sie die beste Gelegenheit finden sollten, ihre Kunst zu zeigen, saßen beisammen und rathschlagten. Wie sie so saßen, kam auf einmal ein Hase übers Feld daher gelaufen. „Ei,“ sagte der Barbier, „der kommt wie gerufen,“ nahm Becken und Seife, schaumte so lange, bis der Hase in die Nähe kam, dann seifte er ihn in vollem Laufe ein, und rasierte ihm auch in vollem Laufe ein Stutzbärtchen, und dabei schnitt er ihn nicht und that ihm an keinem Haare weh. „Das gefällt mir,“ sagte der Vater, „wenn sich die andern nicht gewaltig angreifen, so ist das Haus dein.“ Es währte nicht lang, so kam ein Herr in einem Wagen daher gerennt in vollem Jagen. „Nun sollt ihr sehen, Vater, was ich kann,“ sprach der Hufschmied, sprang dem Wagen nach, riß dem Pferd, das in einem fort jagte, die vier Hufeisen ab und schlug ihm auch im Jagen vier neue wieder an. „Du bist ein ganzer Kerl,“ sprach der Vater, „du machst deine Sachen so gut, wie dein Bruder; ich weiß nicht wem ich das Haus geben soll.“ Da sprach der dritte „Vater, laßt mich auch einmal gewähren,“ und weil es anfieng zu regnen, zog er seinen Degen und schwenkte ihn in Kreuzhieben über seinen Kopf, daß kein Tropfen auf ihn fiel: und als der Regen stärker ward, und endlich so stark, als ob man mit Mulden vom Himmel göße, schwang er den Degen immer schneller und blieb so trocken, als säß er unter Dach und Fach. Wie der Vater das sah, erstaunte er und sprach „du hast das beste Meisterstück gemacht, das Haus ist dein.“
Die beiden andern Brüder waren damit zufrieden, wie sie vorher gelobt hatten, und weil sie sich einander so lieb hatten, blieben sie alle drei zusammen im Haus und trieben ihr Handwerk; und da sie so gut ausgelernt hatten und so geschickt waren, verdienten sie viel Geld. So lebten sie vergnügt bis in ihr Alter zusammen, und als der eine krank ward und starb, grämten sich die zwei andern so sehr darüber, daß sie auch krank wurden und bald starben. Da wurden sie, weil sie so geschickt gewesen waren und sich so lieb gehabt hatten, alle drei zusammen in ein Grab gelegt. Einmal waren sieben Schwaben beisammen, der erste war der Herr Schulz, der zweite der Jackli, der dritte der Marli, der vierte der Jergli, der fünfte der Michal, der sechste der Hans, der siebente der Veitli; die hatten alle siebene sich vorgenommen die Welt zu durchziehen, Abenteuer zu suchen und große Thaten zu vollbringen. Damit sie aber auch mit bewaffneter Hand und sicher giengen, sahen sies für gut an, daß sie sich zwar nur einen einzigen aber recht starken und langen Spieß machen ließen. Diesen Spieß faßten sie alle siebene zusammen an, vorn gieng der kühnste und männlichste, das mußte der Herr Schulz sein, und dann folgten die andern nach der Reihe und der Veitli war der letzte.
Nun geschah es, als sie im Heumonat eines Tags einen weiten Weg gegangen waren, auch noch ein gut Stück bis in das Dorf hatten, wo sie über Nacht bleiben mußten, daß in der Dämmerung auf einer Wiese ein großer Roßkäfer oder eine Hornisse nicht weit von ihnen hinter einer Staude vorbeiflog und feindlich brummelte. Der Herr Schulz erschrack, daß er fast den Spieß hätte fallen lassen und ihm der Angstschweiß am ganzen Leibe ausbrach. „Horcht, horcht,“ rief er seinen Gesellen, „Gott, ich höre eine Trommel!“ Der Jackli, der hinter ihm den Spieß hielt und dem ich weiß nicht was für ein Geruch in die Nase kam, sprach „etwas ist ohne Zweifel vorhanden, denn ich schmeck das Pulver und den Zündstrick.“ Bei diesen Worten hub der Herr Schulz an die Flucht zu ergreifen, und sprang im Hui über einen Zaun, weil er aber gerade auf die Zinken eines Rechen sprang, der vom Heumachen da liegen geblieben war, so fuhr ihm der Stiel ins Gesicht und gab ihm einen ungewaschenen Schlag. „O wei, o wei,“ schrie der Herr Schulz, „nimm mich gefangen, ich ergeb mich, ich ergeb mich!“ Die andern sechs hüpften auch alle einer über den andern herzu und schrien „gibst du dich, so geb ich mich auch, gibst du dich, so geb ich mich auch.“ Endlich, wie kein Feind da war, der sie binden und fortführen wollte, merkten sie daß sie betrogen waren: und damit die Geschichte nicht unter die Leute käme, und sie nicht genarrt und gespottet würden, verschwuren sie sich unter einander so lang davon still zu schweigen, bis einer unverhofft das Maul aufthäte.
Hierauf zogen sie weiter. Die zweite Gefährlichkeit, die sie erlebten, kann aber mit der ersten nicht verglichen werden. Nach etlichen Tagen trug sie ihr Weg durch ein Brachfeld, da saß ein Hase in der Sonne und schlief, streckte die Ohren in die Höhe, und hatte die großen gläsernen Augen starr aufstehen. Da erschraken sie bei dem Anblick des grausamen und wilden Thieres insgesammt und hielten Rath was zu thun das wenigst gefährliche wäre. Denn so sie fliehen wollten, war zu besorgen, das Ungeheuer setzte ihnen nach und verschlänge sie alle mit Haut und Haar. Also sprachen sie „wir müssen einen großen und gefährlichen Kampf bestehen, frisch gewagt ist halb gewonnen!“ faßten alle siebene den Spieß an, der Herr Schulz vorn und der Veitli hinten. Der Herr Schulz wollte den Spieß noch immer anhalten, der Veitli aber war hinten ganz muthig geworden, wollte losbrechen und rief
„stoß zu in aller Schwabe Name,
sonst wünsch i, daß ihr möcht erlahme.“
Aber der Hans wußt ihn zu treffen und sprach
„beim Element, du hascht gut schwätze,
bischt stets der letscht beim Drachehetze.“
Der Michal rief
„es wird nit fehle um ei Haar,
so ischt es wohl der Teufel gar.“
Drauf kam an den Jergli die Reihe der sprach
„ischt er es nit, so ischts sei Muter
oder des Teufels Stiefbruder.“
Der Marli hatte da einen guten Gedanken und sagte zum Veitli
„gang, Veitli, gang, gang du voran,
i will dahinte vor di stahn.“
Der Veitli hörte aber nicht drauf und der Jackli sagte
„der Schulz, der muß der erschte sei,
denn ihm gebührt die Ehr allei.“
Da nahm sich der Herr Schulz ein Herz und sprach gravitätisch
„so zieht denn herzhaft in den Streit,
hieran erkennt man tapfre Leut.“
Da giengen sie insgesammt auf den Drachen los. Der Herr Schulz segnete sich und rief Gott um Beistand an: wie aber das alles nicht helfen wollte und er dem Feind immer näher kam, schrie er in großer Angst „hau! hurlehau! hau! hauhau!“ Davon erwachte der Has, erschrack und sprang eilig davon. Als ihn der Herr Schulz so feldflüchtig sah, da rief er voll Freude
„potz, Veitli, lueg, lueg, was isch das?
das Ungehüer ischt a Has.“
Der Schwabenbund suchte aber weiter Abenteuer und kam an die Mosel, ein mosiges, stilles und tiefes Wasser, darüber nicht viel Brücken sind, sondern man an mehrern Orten sich muß in Schiffen überfahren lassen. Weil die sieben Schwaben dessen unberichtet waren, riefen sie einem Mann, der jenseits des Wassers seine Arbeit vollbrachte, zu, wie man doch hinüber kommen könnte? Der Mann verstand wegen der Weite und wegen ihrer Sprache nicht was sie wollten, und fragte auf sein trierisch „wat? wat?“ Da meinte der Herr Schulz er spräche nicht anders als „wade, wade durchs Wasser,“ und hub an, weil er der Vorderste war, sich auf den Weg zu machen und in die Mosel hineinzugehen. Nicht lang, so versank er in den Schlamm und in die antreibenden tiefen Wellen, seinen Hut aber jagte der Wind hinüber an das jenseitige Ufer, und ein Frosch setzte sich dabei und quackte „wat, wat, wat.“ Die sechs andern hörten das drüben und sprachen „unser Gesell, der Herr Schulz, ruft uns, kann er hinüber waden, warum wir nicht auch?“ Sprangen darum eilig alle zusammen in das Wasser und ertranken, also daß ein Frosch ihrer sechse ums Leben brachte, und niemand von dem Schwabenbund wieder nach Haus kam. Es hatte ein Mann einen Esel, der schon lange Jahre die Säcke unverdrossen zur Mühle getragen hatte, dessen Kräfte aber nun zu Ende giengen, so daß er zur Arbeit immer untauglicher ward. Da dachte der Herr daran, ihn aus dem Futter zu schaffen, aber der Esel merkte daß kein guter Wind wehte, lief fort und machte sich auf den Weg nach Bremen: dort, meinte er, könnte er ja Stadtmusikant werden. Als er ein Weilchen fortgegangen war, fand er einen Jagdhund auf dem Wege liegen, der jappte wie einer, der sich müde gelaufen hat. „Nun, was jappst du so, Packan?“ fragte der Esel. „Ach,“ sagte der Hund, „weil ich alt bin und jeden Tag schwächer werde, auch auf der Jagd nicht mehr fort kann, hat mich mein Herr wollen todt schlagen, da hab ich Reißaus genommen; aber womit soll ich nun mein Brot verdienen?“ „Weißt du was,“ sprach der Esel, „ich gehe nach Bremen und werde dort Stadtmusikant, geh mit und laß dich auch bei der Musik annehmen. Ich spiele die Laute, und du schlägst die Pauken.“ Der Hund wars zufrieden, und sie giengen weiter. Es dauerte nicht lange, so saß da eine Katze an dem Weg und machte ein Gesicht wie drei Tage Regenwetter. „Nun, was ist dir in die Quere gekommen, alter Bartputzer?“ sprach der Esel. „Wer kann da lustig sein, wenns einem an den Kragen geht,“ antwortete die Katze, „weil ich nun zu Jahren komme, meine Zähne stumpf werden, und ich lieber hinter dem Ofen sitze und spinne, als nach Mäusen herum jage, hat mich meine Frau ersäufen wollen; ich habe mich zwar noch fortgemacht, aber nun ist guter Rath theuer: wo soll ich hin?“ „Geh mit uns nach Bremen, du verstehst dich doch auf die Nachtmusik, da kannst du ein Stadtmusikant werden.“ Die Katze hielt das für gut und gieng mit. Darauf kamen die drei Landesflüchtigen an einem Hof vorbei, da saß auf dem Thor der Haushahn und schrie aus Leibeskräften. „Du schreist einem durch Mark und Bein,“ sprach der Esel, „was hast du vor?“ „Da hab ich gut Wetter prophezeit,“ sprach der Hahn, „weil unserer lieben Frauen Tag ist, wo sie dem Christkindlein die Hemdchen gewaschen hat und sie trocknen will; aber weil Morgen zum Sonntag Gäste kommen, so hat die Hausfrau doch kein Erbarmen, und hat der Köchin gesagt sie wollte mich Morgen in der Suppe essen, und da soll ich mir heut Abend den Kopf abschneiden lassen. Nun schrei ich aus vollem Hals, so lang ich noch kann.“ „Ei was, du Rothkopf,“ sagte der Esel, „zieh lieber mit uns fort, wir gehen nach Bremen, etwas besseres als den Tod findest du überall; du hast eine gute Stimme, und wenn wir zusammen musicieren, so muß es eine Art haben.“ Der Hahn ließ sich den Vorschlag gefallen, und sie giengen alle viere zusammen fort.
Sie konnten aber die Stadt Bremen in einem Tag nicht erreichen und kamen Abends in einen Wald, wo sie übernachten wollten. Der Esel und der Hund legten sich unter einen großen Baum, die Katze und der Hahn machten sich in die Äste, der Hahn aber flog bis in die Spitze, wo es am sichersten für ihn war. Ehe er einschlief, sah er sich noch einmal nach allen vier Winden um, da däuchte ihn er sähe in der Ferne ein Fünkchen brennen und rief seinen Gesellen zu es müßte nicht gar weit ein Haus sein, denn es scheine ein Licht. Sprach der Esel „so müssen wir uns aufmachen und noch hingehen, denn hier ist die Herberge schlecht.“ Der Hund meinte ein paar Knochen und etwas Fleisch dran, thäten ihm auch gut. Also machten sie sich auf den Weg nach der Gegend, wo das Licht war, und sahen es bald heller schimmern, und es ward immer größer, bis sie vor ein hell erleuchtetes Räuberhaus kamen. Der Esel, als der größte, näherte sich dem Fenster und schaute hinein. „Was siehst du, Grauschimmel?“ fragte der Hahn. „Was ich sehe?“ antwortete der Esel, „einen gedeckten Tisch mit schönem Essen und Trinken, und Räuber sitzen daran und lassens sich wohl sein.“ „Das wäre was für uns“ sprach der Hahn. „Ja, ja, ach, wären wir da!“ sagte der Esel. Da rathschlagten die Thiere wie sie es anfangen müßten, um die Räuber hinaus zu jagen und fanden endlich ein Mittel. Der Esel mußte sich mit den Vorderfüßen auf das Fenster stellen, der Hund auf des Esels Rücken springen, die Katze auf den Hund klettern, und endlich flog der Hahn hinauf, und setzte sich der Katze auf den Kopf. Wie das geschehen war, fiengen sie auf ein Zeichen insgesammt an ihre Musik zu machen: der Esel schrie, der Hund bellte, die Katze miaute und der Hahn krähte; dann stürzten sie durch das Fenster in die Stube hinein daß die Scheiben klirrten. Die Räuber fuhren bei dem entsetzlichen Geschrei in die Höhe, meinten nicht anders als ein Gespenst käme herein und flohen in größter Furcht in den Wald hinaus. Nun setzten sich die vier Gesellen an den Tisch, nahmen mit dem vorlieb, was übrig geblieben war, und aßen als wenn sie vier Wochen hungern sollten.
Wie die vier Spielleute fertig waren, löschten sie das Licht aus und suchten sich eine Schlafstätte, jeder nach seiner Natur und Bequemlichkeit. Der Esel legte sich auf den Mist, der Hund hinter die Thüre, die Katze auf den Herd bei die warme Asche, und der Hahn setzte sich auf den Hahnenbalken: und weil sie müde waren von ihrem langen Weg, schliefen sie auch bald ein. Als Mitternacht vorbei war, und die Räuber von weitem sahen daß kein Licht mehr im Haus brannte, auch alles ruhig schien, sprach der Hauptmann „wir hätten uns doch nicht sollen ins Bockshorn jagen lassen,“ und hieß einen hingehen und das Haus untersuchen. Der Abgeschickte fand alles still, gieng in die Küche, ein Licht anzuzünden, und weil er die glühenden, feurigen Augen der Katze für lebendige Kohlen ansah, hielt er ein Schwefelhölzchen daran, daß es Feuer fangen sollte. Aber die Katze verstand keinen Spaß, sprang ihm ins Gesicht, spie und kratzte. Da erschrack er gewaltig, lief und wollte zur Hinterthüre hinaus, aber der Hund, der da lag, sprang auf und biß ihn ins Bein: und als er über den Hof an dem Miste vorbei rannte, gab ihm der Esel noch einen tüchtigen Schlag mit dem Hinterfuß; der Hahn aber, der vom Lärmen aus dem Schlaf geweckt und munter geworden war, rief vom Balken herab „kikeriki!“ Da lief der Räuber, was er konnte, zu seinem Hauptmann zurück und sprach „ach, in dem Haus sitzt eine gräuliche Hexe, die hat mich angehaucht und mit ihren langen Fingern mir das Gesicht zerkratzt: und vor der Thüre steht ein Mann mit einem Messer, der hat mich ins Bein gestochen: und auf dem Hof liegt ein schwarzes Ungethüm, das hat mit einer Holzkeule auf mich losgeschlagen: und oben auf dem Dache, da sitzt der Richter, der rief bringt mir den Schelm her. Da machte ich daß ich fortkam.“ Von nun an getrauten sich die Räuber nicht weiter in das Haus, den vier Bremer Musikanten gefiels aber so wohl darin, daß sie nicht wieder heraus wollten. Und der das zuletzt erzählt hat, dem ist der Mund noch warm. Es war ein Mann, der hatte drei Söhne, davon hieß der jüngste der Dummling, und wurde verachtet und verspottet, und bei jeder Gelegenheit zurückgesetzt. Es geschah, daß der älteste in den Wald gehen wollte, Holz hauen, und eh er gieng, gab ihm noch seine Mutter einen schönen feinen Eierkuchen und eine Flasche Wein mit, damit er nicht Hunger und Durst litte. Als er in den Wald kam, begegnete ihm ein altes graues Männlein, das bot ihm einen guten Tag und sprach „gieb mir doch ein Stück Kuchen aus deiner Tasche, und laß mich einen Schluck von deinem Wein trinken, ich bin so hungrig und durstig.“ Der kluge Sohn aber antwortete „geb ich dir meinen Kuchen und meinen Wein, so hab ich selber nichts, pack dich deiner Wege,“ ließ das Männlein stehen und gieng fort. Als er nun anfieng einen Baum zu behauen, dauerte es nicht lange, so hieb er fehl, und die Axt fuhr ihm in den Arm, daß er mußte heimgehen und sich verbinden lassen. Das war aber von dem grauen Männchen gekommen.
Darauf gieng der zweite Sohn in den Wald, und die Mutter gab ihm, wie dem ältesten, einen Eierkuchen und eine Flasche Wein. Dem begegnete gleichfalls das alte graue Männchen und hielt um ein Stückchen Kuchen und einen Trunk Wein an. Aber der zweite Sohn sprach auch ganz verständig „was ich dir gebe, das geht mir selber ab, pack dich deiner Wege,“ ließ das Männlein stehen und gieng fort. Die Strafe blieb nicht aus, als er ein paar Hiebe am Baum gethan, hieb er sich ins Bein, daß er mußte nach Haus getragen werden. Da sagte der Dummling „Vater, laß mich einmal hinaus gehen und Holz hauen.“ Antwortete der Vater „deine Brüder haben sich Schaden dabei gethan, laß dich davon, du verstehst nichts davon.“ Der Dummling aber bat so lange, bis er endlich sagte „geh nur hin, durch Schaden wirst du klug werden.“ Die Mutter gab ihm einen Kuchen, der war mit Wasser in der Asche gebacken, und dazu eine Flasche saueres Bier. Als er in den Wald kam, begegnete ihm gleichfalls das alte graue Männchen, grüßte ihn und sprach „gieb mir ein Stück von deinem Kuchen und einen Trunk aus deiner Flasche, ich bin so hungrig und durstig.“ Antwortete der Dummling „ich habe aber nur Aschenkuchen und saueres Bier, wenn dir das recht ist, so wollen wir uns setzen und essen.“ Da setzten sie sich, und als der Dummling seinen Aschenkuchen herausholte, so wars ein feiner Eierkuchen, und das sauere Bier war ein guter Wein. Nun aßen und tranken sie, und danach sprach das Männlein „weil du ein gutes Herz hast und von dem Deinigen gerne mittheilst, so will ich dir Glück bescheren. Dort steht ein alter Baum, den hau ab, so wirst du in den Wurzeln etwas finden.“ Darauf nahm das Männlein Abschied.
Der Dummling gieng hin und hieb den Baum um, und wie er fiel, saß in den Wurzeln eine Gans, die hatte Federn von reinem Gold. Er hob sie heraus, nahm sie mit sich und gieng in ein Wirthshaus, da wollte er übernachten. Der Wirth hatte aber drei Töchter, die sahen die Gans, waren neugierig was das für ein wunderlicher Vogel wäre und hätten gar gern eine von seinen goldenen Federn gehabt. Die älteste dachte „es wird sich schon eine Gelegenheit finden wo ich mir eine Feder ausziehen kann,“ und als der Dummling einmal hinaus gegangen war, faßte sie die Gans beim Flügel, aber Finger und Hand blieben ihr daran festhängen. Bald danach kam die zweite und hatte keinen andern Gedanken als sich eine goldene Feder zu holen: kaum aber hatte sie ihre Schwester angerührt, so blieb sie festhängen. Endlich kam auch die dritte in gleicher Absicht: da schrieen die andern „bleib weg, ums Himmelswillen, bleib weg.“ Aber sie begriff nicht warum sie wegbleiben sollte, dachte „sind die dabei, so kann ich auch dabei sein,“ und sprang herzu, und wie sie ihre Schwester angerührt hatte, so blieb sie an ihr hängen. So mußten sie die Nacht bei der Gans zubringen.
Am andern Morgen nahm der Dummling die Gans in den Arm, gieng fort, und bekümmerte sich nicht um die drei Mädchen, die daran hiengen. Sie mußten immer hinter ihm drein laufen, links und rechts, wies ihm in die Beine kam. Mitten auf dem Felde begegnete ihnen der Pfarrer, und als er den Aufzug sah, sprach er „schämt euch, ihr garstigen Mädchen, was lauft ihr dem jungen Bursch durchs Feld nach, schickt sich das?“ Damit faßte er die jüngste an die Hand und wollte sie zurückziehen: wie er sie aber anrührte, blieb er gleichfalls hängen und mußte selber hinter drein laufen. Nicht lange, so kam der Küster daher, und sah den Herrn Pfarrer, der drei Mädchen auf dem Fuß folgte. Da verwunderte er sich und rief „ei, Herr Pfarrer, wo hinaus so geschwind? vergeßt nicht daß wir heute noch eine Kindtaufe haben,“ lief auf ihn zu und faßte ihn am Ermel, blieb aber auch fest hängen. Wie die fünf so hinter einander her trabten, kamen zwei Bauern mit ihren Hacken vom Feld: da rief der Pfarrer sie an und bat sie möchten ihn und den Küster los machen. Kaum aber hatten sie den Küster angerührt, so blieben sie hängen, und waren ihrer nun siebene, die dem Dummling mit der Gans nachliefen.
Er kam darauf in eine Stadt, da herrschte ein König, der hatte eine Tochter, die war so ernsthaft, daß sie niemand zum lachen bringen konnte. Darum hatte er ein Gesetz gegeben, wer sie könnte zum lachen bringen, der sollte sie heirathen. Der Dummling, als er das hörte, gieng mit seiner Gans und ihrem Anhang vor die Königstochter, und als diese die sieben Menschen immer hinter einander herlaufen sah, fieng sie überlaut an zu lachen und wollte gar nicht wieder aufhören. Da verlangte sie der Dummling zur Braut, aber dem König gefiel der Schwiegersohn nicht, er machte allerlei Einwendungen und sagte er müßte ihm erst einen Mann bringen, der einen Keller voll Wein austrinken könnte. Der Dummling dachte an das graue Männchen, das könnte ihm wohl helfen, gieng hinaus in den Wald, und auf der Stelle, wo er den Baum abgehauen hatte, sah er einen Mann sitzen, der machte ein ganz betrübtes Gesicht. Der Dummling fragte was er sich so sehr zu Herzen nähme. Da antwortete er „ich habe so großen Durst, und kann ihn nicht löschen, das kalte Wasser vertrage ich nicht, ein Faß Wein habe ich zwar ausgeleert, aber was ist ein Tropfen auf einem heißen Stein?“ „Da kann ich dir helfen,“ sagte der Dummling, „komm nur mit mir, du sollst satt haben.“ Er führte ihn darauf in des Königs Keller, und der Mann machte sich über die großen Fässer, trank und trank, daß ihm die Hüften weh thaten, und ehe ein Tag herum war, hatte er den ganzen Keller ausgetrunken. Der Dummling verlangte abermals seine Braut, der König aber ärgerte sich daß ein schlechter Bursch, den jedermann einen Dummling nannte, seine Tochter davon tragen sollte, und machte neue Bedingungen: er müßte erst einen Mann schaffen, der einen Berg voll Brot aufessen könnte. Der Dummling besann sich nicht lange, sondern gieng gleich hinaus in den Wald: da saß auf demselben Platz ein Mann, der schnürte sich den Leib mit einem Riemen zusammen, machte ein grämliches Gesicht, und sagte „ich habe einen ganzen Backofen voll Raspelbrot gegessen, aber was hilft das, wenn man so großen Hunger hat, wie ich: mein Magen bleibt leer, und ich muß mich nur zuschnüren, wenn ich nicht Hungers sterben soll.“ Der Dummling war froh darüber, und sprach „mach dich auf und geh mit mir, du sollst dich satt essen.“ Er führte ihn an den Hof des Königs, der hatte alles Mehl aus dem ganzen Reich zusammenfahren und einen ungeheuern Berg davon backen lassen: der Mann aber aus dem Walde stellte sich davor, fieng an zu essen, und in einem Tag war der ganze Berg verschwunden. Der Dummling forderte zum drittenmal seine Braut, der König aber suchte noch einmal Ausflucht, und verlangte ein Schiff das zu Land und zu Wasser fahren könnte: „so wie du aber damit angesegelt kommst,“ sagte er, „so sollst du gleich meine Tochter zur Gemahlin haben.“ Der Dummling gieng gerades Weges in den Wald, da saß das alte graue Männchen, dem er seinen Kuchen gegeben hatte, und sagte „ich habe für dich getrunken und gegessen, ich will dir auch das Schiff geben; das alles thu ich, weil du barmherzig gegen mich gewesen bist.“ Da gab er ihm das Schiff, das zu Land und zu Wasser fuhr, und als der König das sah, konnte er ihm seine Tochter nicht länger vorenthalten. Die Hochzeit ward gefeiert, nach des Königs Tod erbte der Dummling das Reich, und lebte lange Zeit vergnügt mit seiner Gemahlin. Es war ein Mann, der hatte eine Tochter, die hieß die kluge Else. Als sie nun erwachsen war, sprach der Vater „wir wollen sie heirathen lassen.“ „Ja,“ sagte die Mutter, „wenn nur einer käme, der sie haben wollte.“ Endlich kam von weither einer, der hieß Hans, und hielt um sie an, er machte aber die Bedingung, daß die kluge Else auch recht gescheidt wäre. „O,“ sprach der Vater, „die hat Zwirn im Kopf,“ und die Mutter sagte „ach, die sieht den Wind auf der Gasse laufen und hört die Fliegen husten.“ „Ja,“ sprach der Hans, „wenn sie nicht recht gescheidt ist, so nehm ich sie nicht.“ Als sie nun zu Tisch saßen und gegessen hatten, sprach die Mutter „Else, geh in den Keller und hol Bier.“ Da nahm die kluge Else den Krug von der Wand, gieng in den Keller und klappte unterwegs brav mit dem Deckel, damit ihr die Zeit ja nicht lang würde. Als sie unten war, holte sie ein Stühlchen, und stellte es vors Faß, damit sie sich nicht zu bücken brauchte und ihrem Rücken etwa nicht wehe thäte und unverhofften Schaden nähme. Dann stellte sie die Kanne vor sich und drehte den Hahn auf, und während der Zeit daß das Bier hinein lief, wollte sie doch ihre Augen nicht müßig lassen, sah oben an die Wand hinauf und erblickte nach vielem Hin- und Herschauen eine Kreuzhacke gerade über sich, welche die Maurer da aus Versehen hatten stecken lassen. Da fieng die kluge Else an zu weinen und sprach „wenn ich den Hans kriege, und wir kriegen ein Kind, und das ist groß, und wir schicken das Kind in den Keller, daß es hier soll Bier zapfen, so fällt ihm die Kreuzhacke auf den Kopf und schlägts todt.“ Da saß sie und weinte und schrie aus Leibeskräften über das bevorstehende Unglück. Die oben warteten auf den Trank, aber die kluge Else kam immer nicht. Da sprach die Frau zur Magd „geh doch hinunter in den Keller und sieh wo die Else bleibt.“ Die Magd gieng und fand sie vor dem Fasse sitzend und laut schreiend. „Else, was weinst du?“ fragte die Magd. „Ach,“ antwortete sie „soll ich nicht weinen? wenn ich den Hans kriege, und wir kriegen ein Kind, und das ist groß, und soll hier Trinken zapfen, so fällt ihm vielleicht die Kreuzhacke auf den Kopf und schlägt es todt.“ Da sprach die Magd „was haben wir für eine kluge Else!“ setzte sich zu ihr und fieng auch an über das Unglück zu weinen. Über eine Weile, als die Magd nicht wiederkam, und die droben durstig nach dem Trank waren, sprach der Mann zum Knecht „geh doch hinunter in den Keller und sieh wo die Else und die Magd bleibt.“ Der Knecht gieng hinab, da saß die kluge Else und die Magd, und weinten beide zusammen. Da fragte er „was weint ihr denn?“ „Ach,“ sprach die Else, „soll ich nicht weinen? wenn ich den Hans kriege, und wir kriegen ein Kind, und das ist groß, und soll hier Trinken zapfen, so fällt ihm die Kreuzhacke auf den Kopf, und schlägts todt.“ Da sprach der Knecht „was haben wir für eine kluge Else!“ setzte sich zu ihr und fieng auch an laut zu heulen. Oben warteten sie auf den Knecht, als er aber immer nicht kam, sprach der Mann zur Frau „geh doch hinunter in den Keller und sieh wo die Else bleibt.“ Die Frau gieng hinab und fand alle drei in Wehklagen, und fragte nach der Ursache, da erzählte ihr die Else auch daß ihr zukünftiges Kind wohl würde von der Kreuzhacke todtgeschlagen werden, wenn es erst groß wäre, und Bier zapfen sollte, und die Kreuzhacke fiele herab. Da sprach die Mutter gleichfalls „ach, was haben wir für eine kluge Else!“ setzte sich hin und weinte mit. Der Mann oben wartete noch ein Weilchen, als aber seine Frau nicht wieder kam, und sein Durst immer stärker ward, sprach er „ich muß nur selber in den Keller gehn und sehen wo die Else bleibt.“ Als er aber in den Keller kam, und alle da bei einander saßen und weinten, und er die Ursache hörte, daß das Kind der Else schuld wäre, das sie vielleicht einmal zur Welt brächte, und von der Kreuzhacke könnte todtgeschlagen werden, wenn es gerade zur Zeit, wo sie herab fiele, darunter säße, Bier zu zapfen: da rief er „was für eine kluge Else!“ setzte sich und weinte auch mit. Der Bräutigam blieb lange oben allein, da niemand wiederkommen wollte, dachte er „sie werden unten auf dich warten, du mußt auch hingehen und sehen was sie vorhaben.“ Als er hinab kam, saßen da fünfe und schrien und jammerten ganz erbärmlich, einer immer besser als der andere. „Was für ein Unglück ist denn geschehen?“ fragte er. „Ach, lieber Hans,“ sprach die Else, „wann wir einander heirathen und haben ein Kind, und es ist groß, und wir schickens vielleicht hierher Trinken zu zapfen, da kann ihm ja die Kreuzhacke, die da oben ist stecken geblieben, wenn sie herabfallen sollte, den Kopf zerschlagen, daß es liegen bleibt; sollen wir da nicht weinen?“ „Nun,“ sprach Hans, „mehr Verstand ist für meinen Haushalt nicht nöthig; weil du so eine kluge Else bist, so will ich dich haben,“ packte sie bei der Hand und nahm sie mit hinauf und hielt Hochzeit mit ihr.
Als sie den Hans eine Weile hatte, sprach er „Frau, ich will ausgehen arbeiten und uns Geld verdienen, geh du ins Feld, und schneid das Korn, daß wir Brot haben.“ „Ja, mein lieber Hans, das will ich thun.“ Nachdem der Hans fort war, kochte sie sich einen guten Brei und nahm ihn mit ins Feld. Als sie vor den Acker kam, sprach sie zu sich selbst „was thu ich? schneid ich ehr, oder eß ich ehr? hei, ich will erst essen.“ Nun aß sie ihren Topf mit Brei aus, und als sie dick satt war, sprach sie wieder „was thu ich? schneid ich ehr, oder schlaf ich ehr? hei, ich will erst schlafen.“ Da legte sie sich ins Korn und schlief ein. Der Hans war längst zu Haus, aber die Else wollte nicht kommen, da sprach er „was hab ich für eine kluge Else, die ist so fleißig, daß sie nicht einmal nach Haus kommt und ißt.“ Als sie aber noch immer ausblieb und es Abend ward, gieng der Hans hinaus, und wollte sehen was sie geschnitten hätte: aber es war nichts geschnitten, sondern sie lag im Korn und schlief. Da eilte Hans geschwind heim, und holte ein Vogelgarn mit kleinen Schellen und hängte es um sie herum; und sie schlief noch immer fort. Dann lief er heim, schloß die Hausthüre zu und setzte sich auf seinen Stuhl und arbeitete. Endlich, als es schon ganz dunkel war, erwachte die kluge Else, und als sie aufstand, rappelte es um sie herum, und die Schellen klingelten bei jedem Schritte, den sie that. Da erschrack sie, ward irre ob sie auch wirklich die kluge Else wäre und sprach „bin ichs, oder bin ichs nicht?“ Sie wußte aber nicht was sie darauf antworten sollte und stand eine Zeitlang zweifelhaft: endlich dachte sie „ich will nach Haus gehen und fragen ob ichs bin oder ob ichs nicht bin, die werdens ja wissen.“ Sie lief vor ihre Hausthüre, aber die war verschlossen: da klopfte sie an das Fenster und rief „Hans, ist die Else drinnen?“ „Ja,“ antwortete der Hans, „sie ist drinnen.“ Da erschrack sie, und sprach „ach Gott, dann bin ichs nicht,“ und gieng vor eine andere Thür; als aber die Leute das Klingeln der Schellen hörten, wollten sie nicht aufmachen, und sie konnte nirgend unterkommen. Da lief sie fort zum Dorfe hinaus, und niemand hat sie wieder gesehen. Vor Zeiten war ein König und eine Königin, die sprachen jeden Tag „ach, wenn wir doch ein Kind hätten!“ und kriegten immer keins. Da trug sich zu, als die Königin einmal im Bade saß, daß ein Frosch aus dem Wasser ans Land kroch und zu ihr sprach, „dein Wunsch wird erfüllt werden, ehe ein Jahr vergeht, wirst du eine Tochter zur Welt bringen.“ Was der Frosch gesagt hatte, das geschah, und die Königin gebar ein Mädchen, das war so schön, daß der König vor Freude sich nicht zu lassen wußte und ein großes Fest anstellte. Er ladete nicht blos seine Verwandte, Freunde und Bekannte, sondern auch die weisen Frauen dazu ein, damit sie dem Kind hold und gewogen wären. Es waren ihrer dreizehn in seinem Reiche, weil er aber nur zwölf goldene Teller hatte, von welchen sie essen sollten, so mußte eine von ihnen daheim bleiben. Das Fest ward mit aller Pracht gefeiert, und als es zu Ende war, beschenkten die weisen Frauen das Kind mit ihren Wundergaben: die eine mit Tugend, die andere mit Schönheit, die dritte mit Reichthum, und so mit allem, was auf der Welt zu wünschen ist. Als elfe ihre Sprüche eben gethan hatten, trat plötzlich die dreizehnte herein. Sie wollte sich dafür rächen daß sie nicht eingeladen war, und ohne jemand zu grüßen oder nur anzusehen, rief sie mit lauter Stimme „die Königstochter soll sich in ihrem funfzehnten Jahr an einer Spindel stechen und todt hinfallen.“ Und ohne ein Wort weiter zu sprechen kehrte sie sich um und verließ den Saal. Alle waren erschrocken, da trat die zwölfte hervor, die ihren Wunsch noch übrig hatte und weil sie den bösen Spruch nicht aufheben, sondern nur ihn mildern konnte, so sagte sie „es soll aber kein Tod sein, sondern ein hundertjähriger tiefer Schlaf, in welchen die Königstochter fällt.“
Der König, der sein liebes Kind vor dem Unglück gern bewahren wollte, ließ den Befehl ausgehen, daß alle Spindeln im ganzen Königreiche sollten verbrannt werden. An dem Mädchen aber wurden die Gaben der weisen Frauen sämmtlich erfüllt, denn es war so schön, sittsam, freundlich und verständig, daß es jedermann, der es ansah, lieb haben mußte. Es geschah, daß an dem Tage, wo es gerade funfzehn Jahr alt ward, der König und die Königin nicht zu Haus waren, und das Mädchen ganz allein im Schloß zurückblieb. Da gieng es aller Orten herum, besah Stuben und Kammern, wie es Lust hatte, und kam endlich auch an einen alten Thurm. Es stieg die enge Wendeltreppe hinauf, und gelangte zu einer kleinen Thüre. In dem Schloß steckte ein verrosteter Schlüssel, und als es umdrehte, sprang die Thüre auf, und saß da in einem kleinen Stübchen eine alte Frau mit einer Spindel und spann emsig ihren Flachs. „Guten Tag, du altes Mütterchen,“ sprach die Königstochter, „was machst du da?“ „Ich spinne,“ sagte die Alte und nickte mit dem Kopf. „Was ist das für ein Ding, das so lustig herumspringt?“ sprach das Mädchen, nahm die Spindel und wollte auch spinnen. Kaum hatte sie aber die Spindel angerührt, so gieng der Zauberspruch in Erfüllung, und sie stach sich damit in den Finger.
In dem Augenblick aber, wo sie den Stich empfand, fiel sie auf das Bett nieder, das da stand, und lag in einem tiefen Schlaf. Und dieser Schlaf verbreitete sich über das ganze Schloß: der König und die Königin, die eben heim gekommen waren und in den Saal getreten waren, fiengen an einzuschlafen, und der ganze Hofstaat mit ihnen. Da schliefen auch die Pferde im Stall, die Hunde im Hofe, die Tauben auf dem Dache, die Fliegen an der Wand, ja, das Feuer, das auf dem Herde flackerte, ward still und schlief ein, und der Braten hörte auf zu brutzeln, und der Koch, der den Küchenjungen, weil er etwas versehen hatte, in den Haaren ziehen wollte, ließ ihn los und schlief. Und der Wind legte sich, und auf den Bäumen vor dem Schloß regte sich kein Blättchen mehr.
Rings um das Schloß aber begann eine Dornenhecke zu wachsen, die jedes Jahr höher ward, und endlich das ganze Schloß umzog, und darüber hinaus wuchs, daß gar nichts mehr davon zu sehen war, selbst nicht die Fahne auf dem Dach. Es gieng aber die Sage in dem Land von dem schönen schlafenden Dornröschen, denn so ward die Königstochter genannt, also daß von Zeit zu Zeit Königssöhne kamen und durch die Hecke in das Schloß dringen wollten. Es war ihnen aber nicht möglich, denn die Dornen, als hätten sie Hände, hielten fest zusammen, und die Jünglinge blieben darin hängen, konnten sich nicht wieder los machen und starben eines jämmerlichen Todes. Nach langen langen Jahren kam wieder einmal ein Königssohn in das Land, und hörte wie ein alter Mann von der Dornhecke erzählte, es sollte ein Schloß dahinter stehen, in welchem eine wunderschöne Königstochter, Dornröschen genannt, schon seit hundert Jahren schliefe, und mit ihr schliefe der König und die Königin und der ganze Hofstaat. Er wußte auch von seinem Großvater daß schon viele Königssöhne gekommen wären und versucht hätten durch die Dornenhecke zu dringen, aber sie wären darin hängen geblieben und eines traurigen Todes gestorben. Da sprach der Jüngling „ich fürchte mich nicht, ich will hinaus und das schöne Dornröschen sehen.“ Der gute Alte mochte ihm abrathen, wie er wollte, er hörte nicht auf seine Worte.
Nun waren aber gerade die hundert Jahre verflossen, und der Tag war gekommen, wo Dornröschen wieder erwachen sollte. Als der Königssohn sich der Dornenhecke näherte, waren es lauter große schöne Blumen, die thaten sich von selbst auseinander und ließen ihn unbeschädigt hindurch, und hinter ihm thaten sie sich wieder als eine Hecke zusammen. Im Schloßhof sah er die Pferde und scheckigen Jagdhunde liegen und schlafen, auf dem Dache saßen die Tauben und hatten das Köpfchen unter den Flügel gesteckt. Und als er ins Haus kam, schliefen die Fliegen an der Wand, der Koch in der Küche hielt noch die Hand, als wollte er den Jungen anpacken, und die Magd saß vor dem schwarzen Huhn, das sollte gerupft werden. Da gieng er weiter, und sah im Saale den ganzen Hofstaat liegen und schlafen, und oben bei dem Throne lag der König und die Königin. Da gieng er noch weiter, und alles war so still, daß einer seinen Athem hören konnte, und endlich kam er zu dem Thurm und öffnete die Thüre zu der kleinen Stube, in welcher Dornröschen schlief. Da lag es und war so schön, daß er die Augen nicht abwenden konnte, und er bückte sich und gab ihm einen Kuß. Wie er es mit dem Kuß berührt hatte, schlug Dornröschen die Augen auf, erwachte, und blickte ihn ganz freundlich an. Da giengen sie zusammen herab, und der König erwachte und die Königin, und der ganze Hofstaat, und sahen einander mit großen Augen an. Und die Pferde im Hof standen auf und rüttelten sich: die Jagdhunde sprangen und wedelten: die Tauben auf dem Dache zogen das Köpfchen unterm Flügel hervor, sahen umher und flogen ins Feld: die Fliegen an den Wänden krochen weiter: das Feuer in der Küche erhob sich, flackerte: und kochte das Essen: der Braten fieng wieder an zu brutzeln: und der Koch gab dem Jungen eine Ohrfeige daß er schrie: und die Magd rupfte das Huhn fertig. Und da wurde die Hochzeit des Königssohns mit dem Dornröschen in aller Pracht gefeiert, und sie lebten vergnügt bis an ihr Ende. Es war einmal ein König, der hatte einen großen Wald bei seinem Schloß, darin lief Wild aller Art herum. Zu einer Zeit schickte er einen Jäger hinaus, der sollte ein Reh schießen, aber er kam nicht wieder. „Vielleicht ist ihm ein Unglück zugestoßen,“ sagte der König, und schickte den folgenden Tag zwei andere Jäger hinaus, die sollten ihn auf suchen, aber die blieben auch weg. Da ließ er am dritten Tag alle seine Jäger kommen und sprach „streift durch den ganzen Wald und laßt nicht ab bis ihr sie alle drei gefunden habt.“ Aber auch von diesen kam keiner wieder heim, und von der Meute Hunde, die sie mitgenommen hatten, ließ sich keiner wieder sehen. Von der Zeit an wollte sich niemand mehr in den Wald wagen, und er lag da in tiefer Stille und Einsamkeit, und man sah nur zuweilen einen Adler oder Habicht darüber hin fliegen. Das dauerte viele Jahre, da meldete sich ein fremder Jäger bei dem König, suchte eine Versorgung und erbot sich in den gefährlichen Wald zu gehen. Der König aber wollte seine Einwilligung nicht geben und sprach „es ist nicht geheuer darin, ich fürchte es geht dir nicht besser als den andern, und du kommst nicht wieder heraus.“ Der Jäger antwortete „Herr, ich wills auf meine Gefahr wagen: von Furcht weiß ich nichts.“
Der Jäger begab sich also mit seinem Hund in den Wald. Es dauerte nicht lange, so gerieth der Hund einem Wild auf die Fährte und wollte hinter ihm her: kaum aber war er ein paar Schritte gelaufen, so stand er vor einem tiefen Pfuhl, konnte nicht weiter und ein nackter Arm streckte sich aus dem Wasser, packte ihn und zog ihn hinab. Als der Jäger das sah, gieng er zurück und holte drei Männer, die mußten mit Eimern kommen und das Wasser ausschöpfen. Als sie auf den Grund sehen konnten, so lag da ein wilder Mann, der braun am Leib war, wie rostiges Eisen, und dem die Haare über das Gesicht bis zu den Knieen herab hiengen. Sie banden ihn mit Stricken und führten ihn fort, in das Schloß. Da war große Verwunderung über den wilden Mann, der König aber ließ ihn in einen eisernen Käfig auf seinen Hof setzen und verbot bei Lebensstrafe die Thüre des Käfigs zu öffnen, und die Königin mußte den Schlüssel selbst in Verwahrung nehmen. Von nun an konnte ein jeder wieder mit Sicherheit in den Wald gehen.
Der König hatte einen Sohn von acht Jahren, der spielte einmal auf dem Hof, und bei dem Spiel fiel ihm sein goldener Ball in den Käfig. Der Knabe lief hin und sprach „gib mir meinen Ball heraus.“ „Nicht eher,“ antwortete der Mann, „als bis du mir die Thüre aufgemacht hast.“ „Nein,“ sagte der Knabe, „das thue ich nicht, das hat der König verboten,“ und lief fort. Am andern Tag kam er wieder und forderte seinen Ball: der wilde Mann sagte „öffne meine Thüre,“ aber der Knabe wollte nicht. Am dritten Tag war der König auf die Jagd geritten, da kam der Knabe nochmals und sagte „wenn ich auch wollte, ich kann die Thüre nicht öffnen, ich habe den Schlüssel nicht.“ Da sprach der wilde Mann „er liegt unter dem Kopfkissen deiner Mutter, da kannst du ihn holen.“ Der Knabe, der seinen Ball wieder haben wollte, schlug alles Bedenken in den Wind und brachte den Schlüssel herbei. Die Thüre gieng schwer auf, und der Knabe klemmte sich den Finger. Als sie offen war, trat der wilde Mann heraus, gab ihm den goldenen Ball und eilte hinweg. Dem Knaben war angst geworden, er schrie und rief ihm nach „ach, wilder Mann, geh nicht fort, sonst bekomme ich Schläge.“ Der wilde Mann kehrte um, hob ihn auf, setzte ihn auf seinen Nacken und gieng mit schnellen Schritten in den Wald hinein. Als der König heim kam, bemerkte er den leeren Käfig und fragte die Königin wie das zugegangen wäre. Sie wußte nichts davon, suchte den Schlüssel, aber er war weg. Sie rief den Knaben, aber niemand antwortete. Der König schickte Leute aus, die ihn auf dem Feld suchen sollten, aber sie fanden ihn nicht. Da konnte er leicht errathen was geschehen war, und es herrschte große Trauer an dem königlichen Hof.
Als der wilde Mann wieder in dem finstern Wald angelangt war, so setzte er den Knaben von den Schultern herab und sprach zu ihm „Vater und Mutter siehst du nicht wieder, aber ich will dich bei mir behalten, denn du hast mich befreit, und ich habe Mitleid mit dir. Wenn du alles thust, was ich dir sage, so sollst dus gut haben. Schätze und Gold habe ich genug und mehr als jemand in der Welt.“ Er machte dem Knaben ein Lager von Moos, auf dem er einschlief, und am andern Morgen führte ihn der Mann zu einem Brunnen und sprach „siehst du der Goldbrunnen ist hell und klar wie Krystall: du sollst dabei sitzen und acht haben daß nichts hinein fällt, sonst ist er verunehrt. Jeden Abend komme ich und sehe ob du mein Gebot befolgt hast.“ Der Knabe setzte sich an den Rand des Brunnens, sah wie manchmal ein goldner Fisch, manchmal eine goldne Schlange sich darin zeigte, und hatte acht daß nichts hinein fiel. Als er so saß, schmerzte ihn einmal der Finger so heftig daß er ihn unwillkürlich in das Wasser steckte. Er zog ihn schnell wieder heraus, sah aber daß er ganz vergoldet war, und wie große Mühe er sich gab das Gold wieder abzuwischen, es war alles vergeblich. Abends kam der Eisenhans zurück, sah den Knaben an und sprach „was ist mit dem Brunnen geschehen?“ „Nichts, nichts“ antwortete er und hielt den Finger auf den Rücken, daß er ihn nicht sehen sollte. Aber der Mann sagte „du hast den Finger in das Wasser getaucht: diesmal mags hingehen, aber hüte dich daß du nicht wieder etwas hinein fallen läßt.“ Am frühsten Morgen saß er schon bei dem Brunnen und bewachte ihn. Der Finger that ihm wieder weh und er fuhr damit über seinen Kopf, da fiel unglücklicher Weise ein Haar herab in den Brunnen. Er nahm es schnell heraus, aber es war schon ganz vergoldet. Der Eisenhans kam und wußte schon was geschehen war. „Du hast ein Haar in den Brunnen fallen lassen,“ sagte er, „ich will dirs noch einmal nachsehen, aber wenns zum drittenmal geschieht, so ist der Brunnen entehrt, und du kannst nicht länger bei mir bleiben.“ Am dritten Tag saß der Knabe am Brunnen, und bewegte den Finger nicht, wenn er ihm noch so weh that. Aber die Zeit ward ihm lang, und er betrachtete sein Angesicht, das auf dem Wasserspiegel stand. Und als er sich dabei immer mehr beugte, und sich recht in die Augen sehen wollte, so fielen ihm seine langen Haare von den Schultern herab in das Wasser. Er richtete sich schnell in die Höhe, aber das ganze Haupthaar war schon vergoldet und glänzte wie eine Sonne. Ihr könnt denken wie der arme Knabe erschrack. Er nahm sein Taschentuch und band es um den Kopf, damit es der Mann nicht sehen sollte. Als er kam, wußte er schon alles und sprach „binde das Tuch auf.“ Da quollen die goldenen Haare hervor und der Knabe mochte sich entschuldigen, wie er wollte, es half ihm nichts. „Du hast die Probe nicht bestanden und kannst nicht länger hier bleiben. Geh hinaus in die Welt, da wirst du erfahren, wie die Armuth thut. Aber weil du kein böses Herz hast und ichs gut mit dir meine, so will ich dir eins erlauben: wenn du in Noth geräthst, so geh zu dem Wald und rufe „Eisenhans,“ dann will ich kommen und dir helfen. Meine Macht ist groß, größer als du denkst, und Gold und Silber habe ich im Überfluß.“
Da verließ der Königssohn den Wald und gieng über gebahnte und ungebahnte Wege immer zu, bis er zuletzt in eine große Stadt kam. Er suchte da Arbeit, aber er konnte keine finden und hatte auch nichts erlernt, womit er sich hätte forthelfen können. Endlich gieng er in das Schloß und fragte ob sie ihn behalten wollten. Die Hofleute wußten nicht wozu sie ihn brauchen sollten, aber sie hatten Wohlgefallen an ihm und hießen ihn bleiben. Zuletzt nahm ihn der Koch in Dienst und sagte er könnte Holz und Wasser tragen und die Asche zusammen kehren. Einmal, als gerade kein anderer zur Hand war, hieß ihn der Koch die Speisen zur königlichen Tafel tragen, da er aber seine goldenen Haare nicht wollte sehen lassen, so behielt er sein Hütchen auf. Dem König war so etwas noch nicht vorgekommen, und er sprach „wenn du zur königlichen Tafel kommst, mußt du deinen Hut abziehen.“ „Ach Herr,“ antwortete er, „ich kann nicht, ich habe einen bösen Grind auf dem Kopf.“ Da ließ der König den Koch herbei rufen, schalt ihn und fragte wie er einen solchen Jungen hätte in seinen Dienst nehmen können; er sollte ihn gleich fortjagen. Der Koch aber hatte Mitleiden mit ihm und vertauschte ihn mit dem Gärtnerjungen.
Nun mußte der Junge im Garten pflanzen und begießen, hacken und graben, und Wind und böses Wetter über sich ergehen lassen. Einmal im Sommer als er allein im Garten arbeitete, war der Tag so heiß daß er sein Hütchen abnahm und die Luft ihn kühlen sollte. Wie die Sonne auf das Haar schien, glitzte und blitzte es daß die Strahlen in das Schlafzimmer der Königstochter fielen und sie aufsprang um zu sehen was das wäre. Da erblickte sie den Jungen und rief ihn an „Junge, bring mir einen Blumenstrauß.“ Er setzte in aller Eile sein Hütchen auf, brach wilde Feldblumen ab und band sie zusammen. Als er damit die Treppe hinauf stieg, begegnete ihm der Gärtner und sprach „wie kannst du der Königstochter einen Strauß von schlechten Blumen bringen? geschwind hole andere, und suche die schönsten und seltensten aus.“ „Ach nein,“ antwortete der Junge, „die wilden riechen kräftiger und werden ihr besser gefallen.“ Als er in ihr Zimmer kam, sprach die Königstochter „nimm dein Hütchen ab, es ziemt sich nicht daß du ihn vor mir auf behältst.“ Er antwortete wieder „ich darf nicht, ich habe einen grindigen Kopf.“ Sie griff aber nach dem Hütchen und zog es ab, da rollten seine goldenen Haare auf die Schultern herab, daß es prächtig anzusehen war. Er wollte fortspringen, aber sie hielt ihn am Arm und gab ihm eine Hand voll Dukaten. Er gieng damit fort, achtete aber des Goldes nicht, sondern er brachte es dem Gärtner und sprach „ich schenke es deinen Kindern, die können damit spielen.“ Den andern Tag rief ihm die Königstochter abermals zu er sollte ihr einen Strauß Feldblumen bringen, und als er damit eintrat, grapste sie gleich nach seinem Hütchen und wollte es ihm wegnehmen, aber er hielt es mit beiden Händen fest. Sie gab ihm wieder eine Hand voll Dukaten, aber er wollte sie nicht behalten und gab sie dem Gärtner zum Spielwerk für seine Kinder. Den dritten Tag giengs nicht anders, sie konnte ihm sein Hütchen nicht weg nehmen, und er wollte ihr Gold nicht.
Nicht lange danach ward das Land mit Krieg überzogen. Der König sammelte sein Volk und wußte nicht ob er dem Feind, der übermächtig war und ein großes Heer hatte, Widerstand leisten könnte. Da sagte der Gärtnerjunge „ich bin herangewachsen und will mit in den Krieg ziehen, gebt mir nur ein Pferd.“ Die andern lachten und sprachen „wenn wir fort sind, so suche dir eins: wir wollen dir eins im Stall zurück lassen.“ Als sie ausgezogen waren, gieng er in den Stall und zog das Pferd heraus; es war an einem Fuß lahm und hickelte hunkepuus, hunkepuus. Dennoch setzte er sich auf und ritt fort nach dem dunkeln Wald. Als er an den Rand desselben gekommen war, rief er dreimal Eisenhans so laut daß es durch die Bäume schallte. Gleich darauf erschien der wilde Mann und sprach „was verlangst du?“ „Ich verlange ein starkes Roß, denn ich will in den Krieg ziehen.“ „Das sollst du haben und noch mehr als du verlangst.“ Dann gieng der wilde Mann in den Wald zurück, und es dauerte nicht lange, so kam ein Stallknecht aus dem Wald und führte ein Roß herbei, das schnaubte aus den Nüstern, und war kaum zu bändigen. Und hinterher folgte eine große Schaar Kriegsvolk, ganz in Eisen gerüstet, und ihre Schwerter blitzten in der Sonne. Der Jüngling übergab dem Stallknecht sein dreibeiniges Pferd, bestieg das andere und ritt vor der Schaar her. Als er sich dem Schlachtfeld näherte, war schon ein großer Theil von des Königs Leuten gefallen und es fehlte nicht viel, so mußten die übrigen weichen. Da jagte der Jüngling mit seiner eisernen Schaar heran, fuhr wie ein Wetter über die Feinde und schlug alles nieder was sich ihm widersetzte. Sie wollten fliehen, aber der Jüngling saß ihnen auf dem Nacken und ließ nicht ab bis kein Mann mehr übrig war. Statt aber zu dem König zurück zu kehren, führte er seine Schaar auf Umwegen wieder zu dem Wald und rief den Eisenhans heraus. „Was verlangst du?“ fragte der wilde Mann. „Nimm dein Roß und deine Schaar zurück und gib mir mein dreibeiniges Pferd wieder.“ Es geschah alles, was er verlangte, und ritt auf seinem dreibeinigen Pferd heim. Als der König wieder in sein Schloß kam, gieng ihm seine Tochter entgegen und wünschte ihm Glück zu seinem Sieg. „Ich bin es nicht, der den Sieg davon getragen hat“ sprach er „sondern ein fremder Ritter, der mir mit seiner Schaar zu Hilfe kam.“ Die Tochter wollte wissen wer der fremde Ritter wäre, aber der König wußte es nicht und sagte „er hat die Feinde verfolgt, und ich habe ihn nicht wieder gesehen.“ Sie erkundigte sich bei dem Gärtner nach seinem Jungen: der lachte aber und sprach „eben ist er auf seinem dreibeinigen Pferd heim gekommen, und die andern haben gespottet und gerufen "da kommt unser Hunkepuus wieder an." Sie fragten auch "hinter welcher Hecke hast du derweil gelegen und geschlafen?" Er sprach aber "ich habe das beste gethan, und ohne mich wäre es schlecht gegangen." Da ward er noch mehr ausgelacht.“
Der König sprach zu seiner Tochter „ich will ein großes Fest ansagen lassen, das drei Tage währen soll, und du sollst einen goldenen Apfel werfen: vielleicht kommt der unbekannte herbei.“ Als das Fest verkündigt war, gieng der Jüngling hinaus zu dem Wald und rief den Eisenhans. „Was verlangst du?“ fragte er. „Daß ich den goldenen Apfel der Königstochter fange.“ „Es ist so gut als hättest du ihn schon“ sagte Eisenhans, „du sollst auch eine rothe Rüstung dazu haben und auf einem stolzen Fuchs reiten.“ Als der Tag kam, sprengte der Jüngling heran, stellte sich unter die Ritter und ward von niemand erkannt. Die Königstochter trat hervor und warf den Rittern einen goldenen Apfel zu, aber keiner fieng ihn als er allein, aber sobald er ihn hatte, jagte er davon. Am zweiten Tag hatte ihn Eisenhans als weißen Ritter ausgerüstet und ihm einen Schimmel gegeben. Abermals fieng er allein den Apfel, verweilte aber keinen Augenblick, sondern jagte damit fort. Der König ward bös und sprach „das ist nicht erlaubt, er muß vor mir erscheinen und seinen Namen nennen.“ Er gab den Befehl, wenn der Ritter, der den Apfel gefangen habe, sich wieder davon machte, so sollte man ihm nachsetzen und wenn er nicht gutwillig zurück kehrte, auf ihn hauen und stechen. Am dritten Tag erhielt er vom Eisenhans eine schwarze Rüstung und einen Rappen und fieng auch wieder den Apfel. Als er aber damit fortjagte, verfolgten ihn die Leute des Königs und einer kam ihm so nahe daß er mit der Spitze des Schwerts ihm das Bein verwundete. Er entkam ihnen jedoch, aber sein Pferd sprang so gewaltig daß der Helm ihm vom Kopf fiel, und sie konnten sehen daß er goldene Haare hatte. Sie ritten zurück und meldeten dem König alles.
Am andern Tag fragte die Königstochter den Gärtner nach seinem Jungen. „Er arbeitet im Garten: der wunderliche Kautz ist auch bei dem Fest gewesen und erst gestern Abend wieder gekommen; er hat auch meinen Kindern drei goldene Äpfel gezeigt, die er gewonnen hat.“ Der König ließ ihn vor sich fordern, und er erschien und hatte wieder sein Hütchen auf dem Kopf. Aber die Königstochter gieng auf ihn zu und nahm es ihm ab, und da fielen seine goldenen Haare über die Schultern, und er war so schön, daß alle erstaunten. „Bist du der Ritter gewesen, der jeden Tag zu dem Fest gekommen ist, immer in einer andern Farbe, und der die drei goldenen Äpfel gefangen hat?“ fragte der König. „Ja“ antwortete er, „und da sind die Äpfel,“ holte sie aus seiner Tasche und reichte sie dem König. „Wenn ihr noch mehr Beweise verlangt, so könnt ihr die Wunde sehen, die mir eure Leute geschlagen haben, als sie mich verfolgten. Aber ich bin auch der Ritter, der euch zum Sieg über die Feinde geholfen hat.“ „Wenn du solche Thaten verrichten kannst, so bist du kein Gärtnerjunge: sage mir, wer ist dein Vater?“ „Mein Vater ist ein mächtiger König und Goldes habe ich die Fülle und so viel ich nur verlange.“ „Ich sehe wohl,“ sprach der König, „ich bin dir Dank schuldig, kann ich dir etwas zu Gefallen thun?“ „Ja“ antwortete er, „das könnt ihr wohl, gebt mir eure Tochter zur Frau.“ Da lachte die Jungfrau und sprach „der macht keine Umstände, aber ich habe schon an seinen goldenen Haaren gesehen daß er kein Gärtnerjunge ist:“ gieng dann hin und küßte ihn. Zu der Vermählung kam sein Vater und seine Mutter und waren in großer Freude, denn sie hatten schon alle Hoffnung aufgegeben ihren lieben Sohn wieder zu sehen. Und als sie an der Hochzeitstafel saßen, da schwieg auf einmal die Musik, die Thüren giengen auf und ein stolzer König trat herein mit großem Gefolge. Er gieng auf den Jüngling zu, umarmte ihn und sprach „ich bin der Eisenhans, und war in einen wilden Mann verwünscht, aber du hast mich erlöst. Alle Schätze, die ich besitze, die sollen dein Eigenthum sein.“ Eine Wittwe hatte zwei Töchter, davon war die eine schön und fleißig, die andere häßlich und faul. Sie hatte aber die häßliche und faule, weil sie ihre rechte Tochter war, viel lieber, und die andere mußte alle Arbeit thun und der Aschenputtel im Hause sein. Das arme Mädchen mußte sich täglich auf die große Straße bei einem Brunnen setzen, und mußte so viel spinnen, daß ihm das Blut aus den Fingern sprang. Nun trug es sich zu, daß die Spule einmal ganz blutig war, da bückte es sich damit in den Brunnen und wollte sie abwaschen: sie sprang ihm aber aus der Hand und fiel hinab. Es weinte, lief zur Stiefmutter und erzählte ihr das Unglück. Sie schalt es aber so heftig und war so unbarmherzig, daß sie sprach „hast du die Spule hinunterfallen lassen, so hol sie auch wieder herauf.“ Da gieng das Mädchen zu dem Brunnen zurück und wußte nicht was es anfangen sollte: und in seiner Herzensangst sprang es in den Brunnen hinein, um die Spule zu holen. Es verlor die Besinnung, und als es erwachte und wieder zu sich selber kam, war es auf einer schönen Wiese wo die Sonne schien und viel tausend Blumen standen. Auf dieser Wiese gieng es fort und kam zu einem Backofen, der war voller Brot; das Brot aber rief „ach, zieh mich raus, zieh mich raus, sonst verbrenn ich: ich bin schon längst ausgebacken.“ Da trat es herzu, und holte mit dem Brotschieber alles nach einander heraus. Danach gieng es weiter und kam zu einem Baum, der hieng voll Äpfel, und rief ihm zu „ach schüttel mich, schüttel mich, wir Äpfel sind alle mit einander reif.“ Da schüttelte es den Baum, daß die Äpfel fielen als regneten sie, und schüttelte bis keiner mehr oben war; und als es alle in einen Haufen zusammengelegt hatte, gieng es wieder weiter. Endlich kam es zu einem kleinen Haus, daraus guckte eine alte Frau, weil sie aber so große Zähne hatte, ward ihm angst, und es wollte fortlaufen. Die alte Frau aber rief ihm nach „was fürchtest du dich, liebes Kind? bleib bei mir, wenn du alle Arbeit im Hause ordentlich thun willst, so soll dirs gut gehn. Du mußt nur Acht geben daß du mein Bett gut machst und es fleißig aufschüttelst, daß die Federn fliegen, dann schneit es in der Welt; ich bin die Frau Holle.“ Weil die Alte ihm so gut zusprach, so faßte sich das Mädchen ein Herz, willigte ein und begab sich in ihren Dienst. Es besorgte auch alles nach ihrer Zufriedenheit, und schüttelte ihr das Bett immer gewaltig auf daß die Federn wie Schneeflocken umher flogen; dafür hatte es auch ein gut Leben bei ihr, kein böses Wort, und alle Tage Gesottenes und Gebratenes. Nun war es eine Zeitlang bei der Frau Holle, da ward es traurig und wußte anfangs selbst nicht was ihm fehlte, endlich merkte es daß es Heimweh war; ob es ihm hier gleich viel tausendmal besser gieng als zu Haus, so hatte es doch ein Verlangen dahin. Endlich sagte es zu ihr „ich habe den Jammer nach Haus kriegt, und wenn es mir auch noch so gut hier unten geht, so kann ich doch nicht länger bleiben, ich muß wieder hinauf zu den Meinigen.“ Die Frau Holle sagte „es gefällt mir, daß du wieder nach Haus verlangst, und weil du mir so treu gedient hast, so will ich dich selbst wieder hinauf bringen.“ Sie nahm es darauf bei der Hand und führte es vor ein großes Thor. Das Thor ward aufgethan, und wie das Mädchen gerade darunter stand, fiel ein gewaltiger Goldregen, und alles Gold blieb an ihm hängen, so daß es über und über davon bedeckt war. „Das sollst du haben, weil du so fleißig gewesen bist“ sprach die Frau Holle und gab ihm auch die Spule wieder, die ihm in den Brunnen gefallen war. Darauf ward das Thor verschlossen, und das Mädchen befand sich oben auf der Welt, nicht weit von seiner Mutter Haus: und als es in den Hof kam, saß der Hahn auf dem Brunnen und rief
„kikeriki,
unsere goldene Jungfrau ist wieder hie.“
Da gieng es hinein zu seiner Mutter, und weil es so mit Gold bedeckt ankam, ward es von ihr und der Schwester gut aufgenommen.
Das Mädchen erzählte alles, was ihm begegnet war, und als die Mutter hörte wie es zu dem großen Reichthum gekommen war, wollte sie der andern häßlichen und faulen Tochter gerne dasselbe Glück verschaffen. Sie mußte sich an den Brunnen setzen und spinnen; und damit ihre Spule blutig ward, stach sie sich in die Finger und stieß sich die Hand in die Dornhecke. Dann warf sie die Spule in den Brunnen und sprang selber hinein. Sie kam, wie die andere, auf die schöne Wiese und gieng auf demselben Pfade weiter. Als sie zu dem Backofen gelangte, schrie das Brot wieder „ach, zieh mich raus, zieh mich raus, sonst verbrenn ich, ich bin schon längst ausgebacken.“ Die Faule aber antwortete „da hätt ich Lust mich schmutzig zu machen,“ und gieng fort. Bald kam sie zu dem Apfelbaum, der rief „ach, schüttel mich, schüttel mich, wir Äpfel sind alle mit einander reif.“ Sie antwortete aber „du kommst mir recht, es könnte mir einer auf den Kopf fallen,“ und gieng damit weiter. Als sie vor der Frau Holle Haus kam, fürchtete sie sich nicht, weil sie von ihren großen Zähnen schon gehört hatte, und verdingte sich gleich zu ihr. Am ersten Tag that sie sich Gewalt an, war fleißig und folgte der Frau Holle, wenn sie ihr etwas sagte, denn sie dachte an das viele Gold, das sie ihr schenken würde; am zweiten Tag aber fieng sie schon an zu faullenzen, am dritten noch mehr, da wollte sie Morgens gar nicht aufstehen. Sie machte auch der Frau Holle das Bett nicht wie sichs gebührte, und schüttelte es nicht, daß die Federn aufflogen. Das ward die Frau Holle bald müde und sagte ihr den Dienst auf. Die Faule war das wohl zufrieden und meinte nun würde der Goldregen kommen; die Frau Holle führte sie auch zu dem Thor, als sie aber darunter stand, ward statt des Goldes ein großer Kessel voll Pech ausgeschüttet. „Das ist zur Belohnung deiner Dienste“ sagte die Frau Holle und schloß das Thor zu. Da kam die Faule heim, aber sie war ganz mit Pech bedeckt, und der Hahn auf dem Brunnen, als er sie sah, rief
„kikeriki,
unsere schmutzige Jungfrau ist wieder hie.“
Das Pech aber blieb fest an ihr hängen und wollte, so lange sie lebte, nicht abgehen. In den alten Zeiten, wo das Wünschen noch geholfen hat, lebte ein König, dessen Töchter waren alle schön, aber die jüngste war so schön, daß die Sonne selber, die doch so vieles gesehen hat, sich verwunderte so oft sie ihr ins Gesicht schien. Nahe bei dem Schlosse des Königs lag ein großer dunkler Wald, und in dem Walde unter einer alten Linde war ein Brunnen: wenn nun der Tag recht heiß war, so ging das Königskind hinaus in den Wald und setzte sich an den Rand des kühlen Brunnens: und wenn sie Langeweile hatte, so nahm sie eine goldene Kugel, warf sie in die Höhe und fieng sie wieder; und das war ihr liebstes Spielwerk.
Nun trug es sich einmal zu, daß die goldene Kugel der Königstochter nicht in ihr Händchen fiel, das sie in die Höhe gehalten hatte, sondern vorbei auf die Erde schlug und geradezu ins Wasser hinein rollte. Die Königstochter folgte ihr mit den Augen nach, aber die Kugel verschwand, und der Brunnen war tief, so tief daß man keinen Grund sah. Da fieng sie an zu weinen und weinte immer lauter und konnte sich gar nicht trösten. Und wie sie so klagte, rief ihr jemand zu „was hast du vor, Königstochter, du schreist ja daß sich ein Stein erbarmen möchte.“ Sie sah sich um, woher die Stimme käme, da erblickte sie einen Frosch, der seinen dicken häßlichen Kopf aus dem Wasser streckte. „Ach, du bists, alter Wasserpatscher,“ sagte sie, „ich weine über meine goldene Kugel, die mir in den Brunnen hinab gefallen ist.“ „Sei still und weine nicht,“ antwortete der Frosch, „ich kann wohl Rath
schaffen, aber was gibst du mir, wenn ich dein Spielwerk wieder heraufhole?“ „Was du haben willst, lieber Frosch,“ sagte sie, „meine Kleider, meine Perlen und Edelsteine, auch noch die goldene Krone, die ich trage.“ Der Frosch antwortete „deine Kleider, deine Perlen und Edelsteine, und deine goldene Krone, die mag ich nicht: aber wenn du mich lieb haben willst, und ich soll dein Geselle und Spielkamerad sein, an deinem Tischlein neben dir sitzen, von deinem goldenen Tellerlein essen, aus deinem Becherlein trinken, in deinem Bettlein schlafen: wenn du mir das versprichst, so will ich hinunter steigen und dir die goldene Kugel wieder herauf holen.“ „Ach ja,“ sagte sie, „ich verspreche dir alles, was du willst, wenn du mir nur die Kugel wieder bringst.“ Sie dachte aber „was der einfältige Frosch schwätzt, der sitzt im Wasser bei seines Gleichen und quackt, und kann keines Menschen Geselle sein.“
Der Frosch, als er die Zusage erhalten hatte, tauchte seinen Kopf unter, sank hinab und über ein Weilchen kam er wieder herauf gerudert, hatte die Kugel im Maul und warf sie ins Gras. Die Königstochter war voll Freude, als sie ihr schönes Spielwerk wieder erblickte, hob es auf und sprang damit fort. „Warte, warte,“ rief der Frosch, „nimm mich mit, ich kann nicht so laufen wie du.“ Aber was half ihm daß er ihr sein quack quack so laut nachschrie als er konnte! sie hörte nicht darauf, eilte nach Haus und hatte bald den armen Frosch vergessen, der wieder in seinen Brunnen hinab steigen mußte.
Am andern Tage, als sie mit dem König und allen Hofleuten sich zur Tafel gesetzt hatte und von ihrem goldenen Tellerlein aß, da kam, plitsch platsch, plitsch platsch, etwas die Marmortreppe herauf gekrochen, und als es oben angelangt war, klopfte es an der Thür und rief „Königstochter, jüngste, mach mir auf.“ Sie lief und wollte sehen wer draußen wäre, als sie aber aufmachte,
so saß der Frosch davor. Da warf sie die Thür hastig zu, setzte sich wieder an den Tisch, und war ihr ganz angst. Der König sah wohl daß ihr das Herz gewaltig klopfte und sprach „mein Kind, was fürchtest du dich, steht etwa ein Riese vor der Thür und will dich holen?“ „Ach nein,“ antwortete sie, „es ist kein Riese, sondern ein garstiger Frosch.“ „Was will der Frosch von dir?“ „Ach lieber Vater, als ich gestern im Wald bei dem Brunnen saß und spielte, da fiel meine goldene Kugel ins Wasser. Und weil ich so weinte, hat sie der Frosch wieder heraufgeholt, und weil er es durchaus verlangte, so versprach ich ihm er sollte mein Geselle werden, ich dachte aber nimmermehr daß er aus seinem Wasser heraus könnte. Nun ist er draußen und will zu mir herein.“ Indem klopfte es zum zweitenmal und rief
„Königstochter, jüngste,
mach mir auf,
weißt du nicht was gestern
du zu mir gesagt
bei dem kühlen Brunnenwasser?
Königstochter, jüngste,
mach mir auf.“
Da sagte der König „was du versprochen hast, das mußt du auch halten; geh nur und mach ihm auf.“ Sie gieng und öffnete die Thüre, da hüpfte der Frosch herein, ihr immer auf dem Fuße nach, bis zu ihrem Stuhl. Da saß er und rief „heb mich herauf zu dir.“ Sie zauderte bis es endlich der König befahl. Als der Frosch erst auf dem Stuhl war, wollte er auf den Tisch, und als er da saß, sprach er „nun schieb mir dein goldenes Tellerlein näher, damit wir zusammen essen.“ Das that sie zwar, aber man sah wohl daß sies nicht gerne that. Der Frosch ließ sichs gut schmecken, aber ihr blieb fast jedes Bißlein im Halse. Endlich sprach er „ich habe mich satt gegessen, und bin müde, nun trag mich in dein Kämmerlein
und mach dein seiden Bettlein zurecht, da wollen wir uns schlafen legen.“ Die Königstochter fieng an zu weinen und fürchtete sich vor dem kalten Frosch, den sie nicht anzurühren getraute, und der nun in ihrem schönen reinen Bettlein schlafen sollte. Der König aber ward zornig und sprach „wer dir geholfen hat, als du in der Noth warst, den sollst du hernach nicht verachten.“ Da packte sie ihn mit zwei Fingern, trug ihn hinauf und setzte ihn in eine Ecke. Als sie aber im Bett lag, kam er gekrochen und sprach „ich bin müde, ich will schlafen so gut wie du: heb mich herauf, oder ich sags deinem Vater.“ Da ward sie erst bitterböse, holte ihn herauf und warf ihn aus allen Kräften wider die Wand, „nun wirst du Ruhe haben, du garstiger Frosch.“
Als er aber herab fiel, war er kein Frosch, sondern ein Königssohn mit schönen und freundlichen Augen. Der war nun nach ihres Vaters Willen ihr lieber Geselle und Gemahl. Da erzählte er ihr, er wäre von einer bösen Hexe verwünscht worden, und Niemand hätte ihn aus dem Brunnen erlösen können als sie allein, und morgen wollten sie zusammen in sein Reich gehen. Dann schliefen sie ein, und am andern Morgen, als die Sonne sie aufweckte, kam ein Wagen heran gefahren mit acht weißen Pferden bespannt, die hatten weiße Straußfedern auf dem Kopf, und giengen in goldenen Ketten, und hinten stand der Diener des jungen Königs, das war der treue Heinrich. Der treue Heinrich hatte sich so betrübt, als sein Herr war in einen Frosch verwandelt worden, daß er drei eiserne Bande hatte um sein Herz legen lassen, damit es ihm nicht vor Weh und Traurigkeit zerspränge. Der Wagen aber sollte den jungen König in sein Reich abholen; der treue Heinrich hob beide hinein, stellte sich wieder hinten auf und war voller Freude über die Erlösung. Und als sie ein Stück Wegs gefahren waren, hörte der Königssohn daß es hinter ihm krachte, als wäre etwas zerbrochen. Da drehte er sich um und rief
„Heinrich, der Wagen bricht.“
„Nein, Herr, der Wagen nicht,
es ist ein Band von meinem Herzen,
das da lag in großen Schmerzen,
als ihr in dem Brunnen saßt,
als ihr eine Fretsche (Frosch) wast (wart).“
Noch einmal und noch einmal krachte es auf dem Weg, und der Königssohn meinte immer der Wagen bräche, und es waren doch nur die Bande, die vom Herzen des treuen Heinrich absprangen, weil sein Herr erlöst und glücklich war. Es war einmal ein armer Holzhacker, der arbeitete vom Morgen bis in die späte Nacht. Als er sich endlich etwas Geld zusammengespart hatte, sprach er zu seinem Jungen „du bist mein einziges Kind, ich will das Geld, das ich mit saurem Schweiß erworben habe, zu deinem Unterricht anwenden; lernst du etwas rechtschaffenes, so kannst du mich im Alter ernähren, wenn meine Glieder steif geworden sind, und ich daheim sitzen muß.“ Da gieng der Junge auf eine hohe Schule und lernte fleißig, so daß ihn seine Lehrer rühmten, und blieb eine Zeit lang dort. Als er ein paar Schulen durchgelernt hatte, doch aber noch nicht in allem vollkommen war, so war das bischen Armuth, das der Vater erworben hatte, drauf gegangen, und er mußte wieder zu ihm heim kehren. „Ach,“ sprach der Vater betrübt, „ich kann dir nichts mehr geben und kann in der theuern Zeit auch keinen Heller mehr verdienen als das tägliche Brot.“ „Lieber Vater,“ antwortete der Sohn, „macht euch darüber keine Gedanken, wenns Gottes Wille also ist, so wirds zu meinem Besten ausschlagen; ich will mich schon drein schicken.“ Als der Vater hinaus in den Wald wollte, um etwas am Malterholz (am Zuhauen und Aufrichten) zu verdienen, so sprach der Sohn „ich will mit euch gehen und euch helfen.“ „Ja, mein Sohn,“ sagte der Vater, „das sollte dir beschwerlich an kommen, du bist an harte Arbeit nicht gewöhnt, du hältst das nicht aus; ich habe auch nur eine Axt und kein Geld übrig, um noch eine zu kaufen.“ „Geht nur zum Nachbar,“ antwortete der Sohn, „der leiht euch seine Axt so lange, bis ich mir selbst eine verdient habe.“
Da borgte der Vater beim Nachbar eine Axt, und am andern Morgen, bei Anbruch des Tags, giengen sie zusammen hinaus in den Wald. Der Sohn half dem Vater und war ganz munter und frisch dabei. Als nun die Sonne über ihnen stand, sprach der Vater „wir wollen rasten und Mittag halten, hernach gehts noch einmal so gut.“ Der Sohn nahm sein Brot in die Hand und sprach „ruht euch nur aus, Vater, ich bin nicht müde, ich will in dem Wald ein wenig auf und abgehen und Vogelnester suchen.“ „O du Geck,“ sprach der Vater, „was willst du da herum laufen, hernach bist du müde und kannst den Arm nicht mehr aufheben; bleib hier und setze dich zu mir.“
Der Sohn aber gieng in den Wald, aß sein Brot, war ganz fröhlich und sah in die grünen Zweige hinein, ob er etwa ein Nest entdeckte. So gieng er hin und her, bis er endlich zu einer großen gefährlichen Eiche kam, die gewiß schon viele hundert Jahre alt war und die keine fünf Menschen umspannt hätten. Er blieb stehen und sah sie an und dachte „es muß doch mancher Vogel sein Nest hinein gebaut haben.“ Da däuchte ihn auf einmal als hörte er eine Stimme. Er horchte und vernahm wie es mit so einem recht dumpfen Ton rief „laß mich heraus, laß mich heraus.“ Er sah sich rings um, konnte aber nichts entdecken, doch es war ihm als ob die Stimme unten aus der Erde hervor käme. Da rief er „wo bist du?“ Die Stimme antwortete „ich stecke da unten bei den Eichwurzeln. Laß mich heraus, laß mich heraus.“ Der Schüler fieng an unter dem Baum aufzuräumen und bei den Wurzeln zu suchen, bis er endlich in einer kleinen Höhlung eine Glasflasche entdeckte. Er hob sie in die Höhe und hielt sie gegen das Licht, da sah er ein Ding, gleich einem Frosch gestaltet, das sprang darin auf und nieder. „Laß mich heraus, laß mich heraus,“ riefs von neuem, und der Schüler, der an nichts Böses dachte, nahm den Pfropfen von der Flasche ab. Alsbald stieg ein Geist heraus und fieng an zu wachsen, und wuchs so schnell, daß er in wenigen Augenblicken als ein entsetzlicher Kerl, so groß wie der halbe Baum, vor dem Schüler stand. „Weißt du,“ rief er mit einer fürchterlichen Stimme, „was dein Lohn dafür ist, daß du mich heraus gelassen hast?“ „Nein,“ antwortete der Schüler ohne Furcht, „wie soll ich das wissen?“ „So will ich dirs sagen,“ rief der Geist, „den Hals muß ich dir dafür brechen.“ „Das hättest du mir früher sagen sollen,“ antwortete der Schüler, „so hätte ich dich stecken lassen; mein Kopf aber soll vor dir wohl feststehen, da müssen mehr Leute gefragt werden.“ „Mehr Leute hin, mehr Leute her,“ rief der Geist, „deinen verdienten Lohn den sollst du haben. Denkst du, ich wäre aus Gnade da so lange Zeit eingeschlossen worden, nein, es war zu meiner Strafe; ich bin der großmächtige Merkurius, wer mich losläßt, dem muß ich den Hals brechen.“ „Sachte,“ antwortete der Schüler, „so geschwind geht das nicht, erst muß ich auch wissen daß du wirklich in der kleinen Flasche gesessen hast und daß du der rechte Geist bist: kannst du auch wieder hinein, so will ichs glauben, und dann magst du mit mir anfangen was du willst.“ Der Geist sprach voll Hochmuth „das ist eine geringe Kunst,“ zog sich zusammen und machte sich so dünn und klein, wie er anfangs gewesen war, also daß er durch dieselbe Öffnung und durch den Hals der Flasche wieder hinein kroch. Kaum aber war er darin, so drückte der Schüler den abgezogenen Pfropfen wieder auf und warf die Flasche unter die Eichwurzeln an ihren alten Platz, und der Geist war betrogen.
Nun wollte der Schüler zu seinem Vater zurückgehen, aber der Geist rief ganz kläglich „ach, laß mich doch heraus, laß mich doch heraus.“ „Nein,“ antwortete der Schüler, „zum zweitenmale nicht: wer mir einmal nach dem Leben gestrebt hat, den laß ich nicht los, wenn ich ihn wieder eingefangen habe.“ „Wenn du mich frei machst,“ rief der Geist, „so will ich dir so viel geben, daß du dein Lebtag genug hast.“ „Nein,“ antwortete der Schüler, „du würdest mich betriegen wie das erstemal.“ „Du verscherzest dein Glück,“ sprach der Geist, „ich will dir nichts thun, sondern dich reichlich belohnen.“ Der Schüler dachte „ich wills wagen, vielleicht hält er Wort, und anhaben soll er mir doch nichts.“ Da nahm er den Pfropfen ab, und der Geist stieg wie das vorigemal heraus, dehnte sich auseinander, und ward groß wie ein Riese. „Nun sollst du deinen Lohn haben,“ sprach er, und reichte dem Schüler einen kleinen Lappen, ganz wie ein Pflaster, und sagte „wenn du mit dem einen Ende eine Wunde bestreichst, so heilt sie: und wenn du mit dem andern Ende Stahl und Eisen bestreichst, so wird es in Silber verwandelt.“ „Das muß ich erst versuchen,“ sprach der Schüler, gieng an einen Baum, ritzte die Rinde mit seiner Axt und bestrich sie mit dem einen Ende des Pflasters: alsbald schloß sie sich wieder zusammen und war geheilt. „Nun, es hat seine Richtigkeit,“ sprach er zum Geist, „jetzt können wir uns trennen.“ Der Geist dankte ihm für seine Erlösung, und der Schüler dankte dem Geist für sein Geschenk und gieng zurück zu seinem Vater.
„Wo bist du herum gelaufen?“ sprach der Vater, „warum hast du die Arbeit vergessen? Ich habe es ja gleich gesagt daß du nichts zu Stande bringen würdest.“ „Gebt euch zufrieden, Vater, ich wills nachholen.“ „Ja, nachholen,“ sprach der Vater zornig, „das hat keine Art.“ „Habt acht, Vater, den Baum da will ich gleich umhauen, daß er krachen soll.“ Da nahm er sein Pflaster, bestrich die Axt damit und that einen gewaltigen Hieb: aber weil das Eisen in Silber verwandelt war, so legte sich die Schneide um. „Ei, Vater, seht einmal, was habt ihr mir für eine schlechte Axt gegeben, die ist ganz schief geworden.“ Da erschrack der Vater und sprach „ach, was hast du gemacht! nun muß ich die Axt bezahlen und weiß nicht womit; das ist der Nutzen, den ich von deiner Arbeit habe.“ „Werdet nicht bös,“ antwortete der Sohn, „die Axt will ich schon bezahlen.“ „O, du Dummbart,“ rief der Vater, „wovon willst du sie bezahlen? du hast nichts als was ich dir gebe; das sind Studentenkniffe, die dir im Kopf stecken, aber vom Holzhacken hast du keinen Verstand.“
Über ein Weilchen sprach der Schüler „Vater, ich kann doch nichts mehr arbeiten, wir wollen lieber Feierabend machen.“ „Ei was,“ antwortete er, „meinst du ich wollte die Hände in den Schooß legen wie du? ich muß noch schaffen, du kannst dich aber heim packen.“ „Vater, ich bin zum erstenmal hier in dem Wald, ich weiß den Weg nicht allein, geht doch mit mir.“ Weil sich der Zorn gelegt hatte, so ließ der Vater sich endlich bereden und gieng mit ihm heim. Da sprach er zum Sohn „geh und verkauf die verschändete Axt und sieh zu was du dafür kriegst; das übrige muß ich verdienen, um sie dem Nachbar zu bezahlen.“ Der Sohn nahm die Axt und trug sie in die Stadt zu einem Goldschmied, der probierte sie, legte sie auf die Wage und sprach „sie ist vierhundert Thaler werth, so viel habe ich nicht baar.“ Der Schüler sprach „gebt mir was ihr habt, das übrige will ich euch borgen.“ Der Goldschmied gab ihm dreihundert Thaler und blieb einhundert schuldig. Darauf gieng der Schüler heim und sprach „Vater, ich habe Geld, geht und fragt was der Nachbar für die Axt haben will.“ „Das weiß ich schon,“ antwortete der Alte, „einen Thaler, sechs Groschen.“ „So gebt ihm zwei Thaler zwölf Groschen, das ist das Doppelte und ist genug; seht ihr, ich habe Geld im Überfluß,“ und gab dem Vater einhundert Thaler und sprach „es soll euch niemals fehlen, lebt nach eurer Bequemlichkeit.“ „Mein Gott,“ sprach der Alte, „wie bist du zu dem Reichthum gekommen?“ Da erzählte er ihm wie alles zugegangen wäre und wie er im Vertrauen auf sein Glück einen so reichen Fang gethan hätte. Mit dem übrigen Geld aber zog er wieder hin auf die hohe Schule, und lernte weiter, und weil er mit seinem Pflaster alle Wunden heilen konnte, ward er der berühmteste Doctor auf der ganzen Welt. Hans hatte sieben Jahre bei seinem Herrn gedient, da sprach er zu ihm „Herr, meine Zeit ist herum, nun wollte ich gerne wieder heim zu meiner Mutter, gebt mir meinen Lohn.“ Der Herr antwortete „du hast mir treu und ehrlich gedient, wie der Dienst war, so soll der Lohn sein,“ und gab ihm ein Stück Gold, das so groß als Hansens Kopf war. Hans zog sein Tüchlein aus der Tasche, wickelte den Klumpen hinein, setzte ihn auf die Schulter und machte sich auf den Weg nach Haus. Wie er so dahin gieng und immer ein Bein vor das andere setzte, kam ihm ein Reiter in die Augen, der frisch und fröhlich auf einem muntern Pferd vorbei trabte. „Ach,“ sprach Hans ganz laut, „was ist das Reiten ein schönes Ding! da sitzt einer wie auf einem Stuhl, stößt sich an keinen Stein, spart die Schuh, und kommt fort, er weiß nicht wie.“ Der Reiter, der das gehört hatte, hielt an und rief „ei, Hans, warum laufst du auch zu Fuß?“ „Ich muß ja wohl,“ antwortete er, „da habe ich einen Klumpen heim zu tragen: es ist zwar Gold, aber ich kann den Kopf dabei nicht gerad halten, auch drückt mirs auf die Schulter.“ „Weißt du was,“ sagte der Reiter, „wir wollen tauschen: ich gebe dir mein Pferd, und du gibst mir deinen Klumpen.“ „Von Herzen gern,“ sprach Hans, „aber ich sage euch ihr müßt euch damit schleppen.“ Der Reiter stieg ab, nahm das Gold und half dem Hans hinauf, gab ihm die Zügel fest in die Hände und sprach „wenns nun recht geschwind soll gehen, so mußt du mit der Zunge schnalzen, und hopp hopp rufen.“
Hans war seelenfroh, als er auf dem Pferde saß und so frank und frei dahin ritt. Über ein Weilchen fiels ihm ein, es sollte noch schneller gehen, und fieng an mit der Zunge zu schnalzen und hopp hopp zu rufen. Das Pferd setzte sich in starken Trab, und ehe sichs Hans versah, war er abgeworfen und lag in einem Graben, der die Äcker von der Landstraße trennte. Das Pferd wäre auch durchgegangen, wenn es nicht ein Bauer aufgehalten hätte, der des Weges kam und eine Kuh vor sich her trieb. Hans suchte seine Glieder zusammen und machte sich wieder auf die Beine. Er war aber verdrießlich und sprach zu dem Bauer „es ist ein schlechter Spaß, das Reiten, zumal, wenn man auf so eine Mähre geräth wie diese, die stößt und einen herabwirft, daß man den Hals brechen kann; ich setze mich nun und nimmermehr wieder auf. Da lob ich mir eure Kuh, da kann einer mit Gemächlichkeit hinter her gehen und hat obendrein seine Milch, Butter und Käse jeden Tag gewiß. Was gäb ich darum, wenn ich so eine Kuh hätte!“ „Nun,“ sprach der Bauer, „geschieht euch so ein großer Gefallen, so will ich euch wohl die Kuh für das Pferd vertauschen.“ Hans willigte mit tausend Freuden ein: der Bauer schwang sich aufs Pferd und ritt eilig davon.
Hans trieb seine Kuh ruhig vor sich her und bedachte den glücklichen Handel. „Hab ich nur ein Stück Brot, und daran wird mirs doch nicht fehlen, so kann ich, so oft mirs beliebt, Butter und Käse dazu essen; hab ich Durst, so melk ich meine Kuh und trinke Milch. Herz, was verlangst du mehr?“ Als er zu einem Wirthshaus kam, machte er Halt, aß in der großen Freude alles, was er bei sich hatte, sein Mittags- und Abendbrot, rein auf, und ließ sich für seine letzten paar Heller ein halbes Glas Bier einschenken. Dann trieb er seine Kuh weiter, immer nach dem Dorfe seiner Mutter zu. Die Hitze ward drückender, je näher der Mittag kam, und Hans befand sich in einer Heide, die wohl noch eine Stunde dauerte. Da ward es ihm ganz heiß, so daß ihm vor Durst die Zunge am Gaumen klebte. „Dem Ding ist zu helfen,“ dachte Hans, „jetzt will ich meine Kuh melken und mich an der Milch laben.“ Er band sie an einen dürren Baum, und da er keinen Eimer hatte, so stellte er seine Ledermütze unter, aber wie er sich auch bemühte, es kam kein Tropfen Milch zum Vorschein. Und weil er sich ungeschickt dabei anstellte, so gab ihm das ungeduldige Thier endlich mit einem der Hinterfüße einen solchen Schlag vor den Kopf, daß er zu Boden taumelte und eine zeitlang sich gar nicht besinnen konnte wo er war. Glücklicherweise kam gerade ein Metzger des Weges, der auf einem Schubkarren ein junges Schwein liegen hatte. „Was sind das für Streiche!“ rief er und half dem guten Hans auf. Hans erzählte was vorgefallen war. Der Metzger reichte ihm seine Flasche und sprach „da trinkt einmal und erholt euch. Die Kuh will wohl keine Milch geben, das ist ein altes Thier, das höchstens noch zum Ziehen taugt oder zum Schlachten.“ „Ei, ei,“ sprach Hans, und strich sich die Haare über den Kopf, „wer hätte das gedacht! es ist freilich gut, wenn man so ein Thier ins Haus abschlachten kann, was gibts für Fleisch! aber ich mache mir aus dem Kuhfleisch nicht viel, es ist mir nicht saftig genug. Ja, wer so ein junges Schwein hätte! das schmeckt anders, dabei noch die Würste.“ „Hört, Hans,“ sprach da der Metzger, „euch zu Liebe will ich tauschen und will euch das Schwein für die Kuh lassen.“ „Gott lohn euch eure Freundschaft“ sprach Hans, übergab ihm die Kuh, ließ sich das Schweinchen vom Karren losmachen und den Strick, woran es gebunden war, in die Hand geben.
Hans zog weiter und überdachte wie ihm doch alles nach Wunsch gienge, begegnete ihm ja eine Verdrießlichkeit, so würde sie doch gleich wieder gut gemacht. Es gesellte sich danach ein Bursch zu ihm, der trug eine schöne weiße Gans unter dem Arm. Sie boten einander die Zeit, und Hans fieng an von seinem Glück zu erzählen und wie er immer so vortheilhaft getauscht hätte. Der Bursch erzählte ihm daß er die Gans zu einem Kindtaufschmaus brächte. „Hebt einmal,“ fuhr er fort, und packte sie bei den Flügeln, „wie schwer sie ist, die ist aber auch acht Wochen lang genudelt worden. Wer in den Braten beißt, muß sich das Fett von beiden Seiten abwischen.“ „Ja,“ sprach Hans, und wog sie mit der einen Hand, „die hat ihr Gewicht, aber mein Schwein ist auch keine Sau.“ Indessen sah sich der Bursch nach allen Seiten ganz bedenklich um, schüttelte auch wohl mit dem Kopf. „Hört,“ fieng er darauf an, „mit eurem Schweine mags nicht ganz richtig sein. In dem Dorfe, durch das ich gekommen bin, ist eben dem Schulzen eins aus dem Stall gestohlen worden. Ich fürchte, ich fürchte, ihr habts da in der Hand. Sie haben Leute ausgeschickt, und es wäre ein schlimmer Handel, wenn sie euch mit dem Schwein erwischten: das geringste ist, daß ihr ins finstere Loch gesteckt werdet.“ Dem guten Hans ward bang, „ach Gott,“ sprach er, „helft mir aus der Noth, ihr wißt hier herum bessern Bescheid, nehmt mein Schwein da und laßt mir eure Gans.“ „Ich muß schon etwas aufs Spiel setzen,“ antwortete der Bursche, „aber ich will doch nicht Schuld sein daß ihr ins Unglück gerathet.“ Er nahm also das Seil in die Hand und trieb das Schwein schnell auf einen Seitenweg fort: der gute Hans aber gieng, seiner Sorgen entledigt, mit der Gans unter dem Arme der Heimath zu. „Wenn ichs recht überlege,“ sprach er mit sich selbst, „habe ich noch Vortheil bei dem Tausch: erstlich den guten Braten, hernach die Menge von Fett, die herausträufeln wird, das gibt Gänsefettbrot auf ein Vierteljahr: und endlich die schönen weißen Federn, die laß ich mir in mein Kopfkissen stopfen, und darauf will ich wohl ungewiegt einschlafen. Was wird meine Mutter eine Freude haben!“
Als er durch das letzte Dorf gekommen war, stand da ein Scheerenschleifer mit seinem Karren, sein Rad schnurrte, und er sang dazu
„ich schleife die Scheere und drehe geschwind,
und hänge mein Mäntelchen nach dem Wind.“
Hans blieb stehen und sah ihm zu; endlich redete er ihn an, und sprach „euch gehts wohl, weil ihr so lustig bei eurem Schleifen seid.“ „Ja,“ antwortete der Scheerenschleifer, „das Handwerk hat einen güldenen Boden. Ein rechter Schleifer ist ein Mann, der, so oft er in die Tasche greift, auch Geld darin findet. Aber wo habt ihr die schöne Gans gekauft?“ „Die hab ich nicht gekauft, sondern für mein Schwein eingetauscht.“ „Und das Schwein?“ „Das hab ich für eine Kuh gekriegt.“ „Und die Kuh?“ „Die hab ich für ein Pferd bekommen.“ „Und das Pferd?“ „Dafür hab ich einen Klumpen Gold, so groß als mein Kopf, gegeben.“ „Und das Gold?“ „Ei, das war mein Lohn für sieben Jahre Dienst.“ „Ihr habt euch jederzeit zu helfen gewußt,“ sprach der Schleifer, „könnt ihrs nun dahin bringen, daß ihr das Geld in der Tasche springen hört, wenn ihr aufsteht, so habt ihr euer Glück gemacht.“ „Wie soll ich das anfangen?“ sprach Hans „Ihr müßt ein Schleifer werden, wie ich; dazu gehört eigentlich nichts, als ein Wetzstein, das andere findet sich schon von selbst. Da hab ich einen, der ist zwar ein wenig schadhaft, dafür sollt ihr mir aber auch weiter nichts als eure Gans geben; wollt ihr das?“ „Wie könnt ihr noch fragen,“ antwortete Hans, „ich werde ja zum glücklichsten Menschen auf Erden; habe ich Geld, so oft ich in die Tasche greife, was brauche ich da länger zu sorgen?“ reichte ihm die Gans hin, und nahm den Wetzstein in Empfang. „Nun,“ sprach der Schleifer, und hob einen gewöhnlichen schweren Feldstein, der neben ihm lag, auf, „da habt ihr noch einen tüchtigen Stein dazu, auf dem sichs gut schlagen läßt, und ihr eure alten Nägel gerade klopfen könnt. Nehmt hin und hebt ihn ordentlich auf.“
Hans lud den Stein auf und gieng mit vergnügtem Herzen weiter; seine Augen leuchteten vor Freude, „ich muß in einer Glückshaut geboren sein,“ rief er aus, „alles was ich wünsche trifft mir ein, wie einem Sonntagskind.“ Indessen, weil er seit Tagesanbruch auf den Beinen gewesen war, begann er müde zu werden; auch plagte ihn der Hunger, da er allen Vorrath auf einmal in der Freude über die erhandelte Kuh aufgezehrt hatte. Er konnte endlich nur mit Mühe weiter gehen und mußte jeden Augenblick Halt machen; dabei drückten ihn die Steine ganz erbärmlich. Da konnte er sich des Gedankens nicht erwehren, wie gut es wäre, wenn er sie gerade jetzt nicht zu tragen brauchte. Wie eine Schnecke kam er zu einem Feldbrunnen geschlichen, wollte da ruhen und sich mit einem frischen Trunk laben: damit er aber die Steine im Niedersitzen nicht beschädigte, legte er sie bedächtig neben sich auf den Rand des Brunnens. Darauf setzte er sich nieder und wollte sich zum Trinken bücken, da versah ers, stieß ein klein wenig an, und beide Steine plumpten hinab. Hans, als er sie mit seinen Augen in die Tiefe hatte versinken sehen, sprang vor Freuden auf, kniete dann nieder und dankte Gott mit Thränen in den Augen daß er ihm auch diese Gnade noch erwiesen und ihn auf eine so gute Art und ohne daß er sich einen Vorwurf zu machen brauchte, von den schweren Steinen befreit hätte, die ihm allein noch hinderlich gewesen wären. „So glücklich wie ich,“ rief er aus, „gibt es keinen Menschen unter der Sonne.“ Mit leichtem Herzen und frei von aller Last sprang er nun fort, bis er daheim bei seiner Mutter war. Vor einem großen Walde wohnte ein armer Holzhacker mit seiner Frau und seinen zwei Kindern; das Bübchen hieß Hänsel und das Mädchen Grethel. Er hatte wenig zu beißen und zu brechen, und einmal, als große Theuerung ins Land kam, konnte er auch das täglich Brot nicht mehr schaffen. Wie er sich nun Abends im Bette Gedanken machte und sich vor Sorgen herum wälzte, seufzte er und sprach zu seiner Frau „was soll aus uns werden? wie können wir unsere armen Kinder ernähren, da wir für uns selbst nichts mehr haben?“ „Weißt du was, Mann,“ antwortete die Frau, „wir wollen Morgen in aller Frühe die Kinder hinaus in den Wald führen, wo er am dicksten ist: da machen wir ihnen ein Feuer an und geben jedem noch ein Stückchen Brot, dann gehen wir an unsere Arbeit und lassen sie allein. Sie finden den Weg nicht wieder nach Haus und wir sind sie los.“ „Nein, Frau,“ sagte der Mann, „das thue ich nicht; wie sollt ichs übers Herz bringen meine Kinder im Walde allein zu lassen, die wilden Thiere würden bald kommen und sie zerreißen.“ „O du Narr,“ sagte sie, „dann müssen wir alle viere Hungers sterben, du kannst nur die Bretter für die Särge hobelen,“ und ließ ihm keine Ruhe bis er einwilligte. „Aber die armen Kinder dauern mich doch“ sagte der Mann.
Die zwei Kinder hatten vor Hunger auch nicht einschlafen können und hatten gehört was die Stiefmutter zum Vater gesagt hatte. Grethel weinte bittere Thränen und sprach zu Hänsel „nun ists um uns geschehen.“ „Still, Grethel,“ sprach Hänsel, „gräme dich nicht, ich will uns schon helfen.“ Und als die Alten eingeschlafen waren, stand er auf, zog sein Röcklein an, machte die Unterthüre auf und schlich sich hinaus. Da schien der Mond ganz helle, und die weißen Kieselsteine, die vor dem Haus lagen, glänzten wie lauter Batzen. Hänsel bückte sich und steckte so viel in sein Rocktäschlein, als nur hinein wollten. Dann gieng er wieder zurück, sprach zu Grethel „sei getrost, liebes Schwesterchen und schlaf nur ruhig ein, Gott wird uns nicht verlassen,“ und legte sich wieder in sein Bett.
Als der Tag anbrach, noch ehe die Sonne aufgegangen war, kam schon die Frau und weckte die beiden Kinder, „steht auf, ihr Faullenzer, wir wollen in den Wald gehen und Holz holen.“ Dann gab sie jedem ein Stückchen Brot und sprach „da habt ihr etwas für den Mittag, aber eßts nicht vorher auf, weiter kriegt ihr nichts.“ Grethel nahm das Brot unter die Schürze, weil Hänsel die Steine in der Tasche hatte. Danach machten sie sich alle zusammen auf den Weg nach dem Wald. Als sie ein Weilchen gegangen waren, stand Hänsel still und guckte nach dem Haus zurück und that das wieder und immer wieder. Der Vater sprach „Hänsel, was guckst du da und bleibst zurück, hab Acht und vergiß deine Beine nicht.“ „Ach, Vater,“ sagte Hänsel, „ich sehe nach meinem weißen Kätzchen, das sitzt oben auf dem Dach und will mir Ade sagen.“ Die Frau sprach „Narr, das ist dein Kätzchen nicht, das ist die Morgensonne, die auf den Schornstein scheint.“ Hänsel aber hatte nicht nach dem Kätzchen gesehen, sondern immer einen von den blanken Kieselsteinen aus seiner Tasche auf den Weg geworfen.
Als sie mitten in den Wald gekommen waren, sprach der Vater „nun sammelt Holz, ihr Kinder, ich will ein Feuer anmachen, damit ihr nicht friert.“ Hänsel und Grethel trugen Reisig zusammen, einen kleinen Berg hoch. Das Reisig ward angezündet, und als die Flamme recht hoch brannte, sagte die Frau „nun legt euch ans Feuer, ihr Kinder und ruht euch aus, wir gehen in den Wald und hauen Holz. Wenn wir fertig sind, kommen wir wieder und holen euch ab.“
Hänsel und Grethel saßen am Feuer, und als der Mittag kam, aß jedes sein Stücklein Brot. Und weil sie die Schläge der Holzaxt hörten, so glaubten sie ihr Vater wäre in der Nähe. Es war aber nicht die Holzaxt, es war ein Ast, den er an einen dürren Baum gebunden hatte und den der Wind hin und her schlug. Und als sie so lange gesessen hatten, fielen ihnen die Augen vor Müdigkeit zu, und sie schliefen fest ein. Als sie endlich erwachten, war es schon finstere Nacht. Grethel fieng an zu weinen und sprach „wie sollen wir nun aus dem Wald kommen!“ Hänsel aber tröstete sie, „wart nur ein Weilchen, bis der Mond aufgegangen ist, dann wollen wir den Weg schon finden.“ Und als der volle Mond aufgestiegen war, so nahm Hänsel sein Schwesterchen an der Hand und gieng den Kieselsteinen nach, die schimmerten wie neu geschlagene Batzen und zeigten ihnen den Weg. Sie giengen die ganze Nacht hindurch und kamen bei anbrechendem Tag wieder zu ihres Vaters Haus. Sie klopften an die Thür, und als die Frau aufmachte und sah daß es Hänsel und Grethel war, sprach sie „ihr bösen Kinder, was habt ihr so lange im Walde geschlafen, wir haben geglaubt ihr wolltet gar nicht wieder kommen.“ Der Vater aber freute sich, denn es war ihm zu Herzen gegangen daß er sie so allein zurück gelassen hatte.
Nicht lange danach war wieder Noth in allen Ecken, und die Kinder hörten wie die Mutter Nachts im Bette zu dem Vater sprach „alles ist wieder aufgezehrt, wir haben noch einen halben Laib Brot, hernach hat das Lied ein Ende. Die Kinder müssen fort, wir wollen sie tiefer in den Wald hineinführen, damit sie den Weg nicht wieder heraus finden; es ist sonst keine Rettung für uns.“ Dem Mann fiels schwer aufs Herz und er dachte „es wäre besser, daß du den letzten Bissen mit deinen Kindern theiltest.“ Aber die Frau hörte auf nichts, was er sagte, schalt ihn und machte ihm Vorwürfe. Wer A sagt muß auch B sagen, und weil er das erste Mal nachgegeben hatte, so mußte er es auch zum zweiten Mal.
Die Kinder waren aber noch wach gewesen und hatten das Gespräch mit angehört. Als die Alten schliefen, stand Hänsel wieder auf, wollte hinaus und Kieselsteine auflesen, wie das vorigemal, aber die Frau hatte die Thür verschlossen, und Hänsel konnte nicht heraus. Aber er tröstete sein Schwesterchen und sprach „weine nicht, Grethel, und schlaf nur ruhig, der liebe Gott wird uns schon helfen.“
Am frühen Morgen kam die Frau und holte die Kinder aus dem Bette. Sie erhielten ihr Stückchen Brot, das war aber noch kleiner als das vorigemal. Auf dem Wege nach dem Wald bröckelte es Hänsel in der Tasche, stand oft still und warf ein Bröcklein auf die Erde. „Hänsel, was stehst du und guckst dich um,“ sagte der Vater, „geh deiner Wege.“ „Ich sehe nach meinem Täubchen, das sitzt auf dem Dache und will mir Ade sagen,“ antwortete Hänsel. „Narr,“ sagte die Frau, „das ist dein Täubchen nicht, das ist die Morgensonne, die auf den Schornstein oben scheint.“ Hänsel aber warf nach und nach alle Bröcklein auf den Weg.
Die Frau führte die Kinder noch tiefer in den Wald, wo sie ihr Lebtag noch nicht gewesen waren. Da ward wieder ein großes Feuer angemacht, und die Mutter sagte „bleibt nur da sitzen, ihr Kinder, und wenn ihr müde seid, könnt ihr ein wenig schlafen: wir gehen in den Wald und hauen Holz, und Abends, wenn wir fertig sind, kommen wir und holen euch ab.“ Als es Mittag war, theilte Grethel ihr Brot mit Hänsel, der sein Stück auf den Weg gestreut hatte. Dann schliefen sie ein, und der Abend vergieng, aber niemand kam zu den armen Kindern. Sie erwachten erst in der finstern Nacht, und Hänsel tröstete sein Schwesterchen und sagte, „wart nur, Grethel, bis der Mond aufgeht, dann werden wir die Brotbröcklein sehen, die ich ausgestreut habe, die zeigen uns den Weg nach Haus.“ Als der Mond kam, machten sie sich auf, aber sie fanden kein Bröcklein mehr, denn die viel tausend Vögel, die im Walde und im Felde umher fliegen, die hatten sie weggepickt. Hänsel sagte zu Grethel „wir werden den Weg schon finden,“ aber sie fanden ihn nicht. Sie giengen die ganze Nacht und noch einen Tag von Morgen bis Abend, aber sie kamen aus dem Wald nicht heraus, und waren so hungrig, denn sie hatten nichts als die paar Beeren, die auf der Erde standen. Und weil sie so müde waren daß die Beine sie nicht mehr tragen wollten, so legten sie sich unter einen Baum und schliefen ein.
Nun wars schon der dritte Morgen, daß sie ihres Vaters Haus verlassen hatten. Sie fiengen wieder an zu gehen, aber sie geriethen immer tiefer in den Wald und wenn nicht bald Hilfe kam, so mußten sie verschmachten. Als es Mittag war, sahen sie ein schönes schneeweißes Vöglein auf einem Ast sitzen, das sang so schön, daß sie stehen blieben und ihm zuhörten. Und als es fertig war, schwang es seine Flügel und flog vor ihnen her, und sie giengen ihm nach, bis sie zu einem Häuschen gelangten, auf dessen Dach es sich setzte, und als sie ganz nah heran kamen, so sahen sie daß das Häuslein aus Brot gebaut war, und mit Kuchen gedeckt; aber die Fenster waren von hellem Zucker. „Da wollen wir uns dran machen,“ sprach Hänsel, „und eine gesegnete Mahlzeit halten. Ich will ein Stück vom Dach essen, Grethel, du kannst vom Fenster essen, das schmeckt süß.“ Hänsel reichte in die Höhe und brach sich ein wenig vom Dach ab, um zu versuchen wie es schmeckte, und Grethel stellte sich an die Scheiben und knuperte daran. Da rief eine feine Stimme aus der Stube heraus
„knuper, knuper, kneischen,
wer knupert an meinem Häuschen?“
die Kinder antworteten
„der Wind, der Wind,
das himmlische Kind,“
und aßen weiter, ohne sich irre machen zu lassen. Hänsel, dem das Dach sehr gut schmeckte, riß sich ein großes Stück davon herunter, und Grethel stieß eine ganze runde Fensterscheibe heraus, setzte sich nieder, und that sich wohl damit. Da gieng auf einmal die Thüre auf, und eine steinalte Frau, die sich auf eine Krücke stützte, kam heraus geschlichen. Hänsel und Grethel erschracken so gewaltig, daß sie fallen ließen was sie in den Händen hielten. Die Alte aber wackelte mit dem Kopfe und sprach „ei, ihr lieben Kinder, wer hat euch hierher gebracht? kommt nur herein und bleibt bei mir, es geschieht euch kein Leid.“ Sie faßte beide an der Hand und führte sie in ihr Häuschen. Da ward gutes Essen aufgetragen, Milch und Pfannekuchen mit Zucker, Äpfel und Nüsse. Hernach wurden zwei schöne Bettlein weiß gedeckt, und Hänsel und Grethel legten sich hinein und meinten sie wären im Himmel.
Die Alte hatte sich nur so freundlich angestellt, sie war aber eine böse Hexe, die den Kindern auflauerte, und hatte das Brothäuslein bloß gebaut, um sie herbeizulocken. Wenn eins in ihre Gewalt kam, so machte sie es todt, kochte es und aß es, und das war ihr ein Festtag. Die Hexen haben rothe Augen und können nicht weit sehen, aber sie haben eine feine Witterung, wie die Thiere, und merkens wenn Menschen heran kommen. Als Hänsel und Grethel in ihre Nähe kamen, da lachte sie boshaft und sprach höhnisch „die habe ich, die sollen mir nicht wieder entwischen.“ Früh Morgens ehe die Kinder erwacht waren, stand sie schon auf, und als sie beide so lieblich ruhen sah, mit den vollen rothen Backen, so murmelte sie vor sich hin „das wird ein guter Bissen werden.“ Da packte sie Hänsel mit ihrer dürren Hand und trug ihn in einen kleinen Stall und sperrte ihn mit einer Gitterthüre ein; er mochte schreien wie er wollte, es half ihm nichts. Dann gieng sie zur Grethel, rüttelte sie wach und rief „steh auf, Faullenzerin, trag Wasser und koch deinem Bruder etwas gutes, der sitzt draußen im Stall und soll fett werden. Wenn er fett ist, so will ich ihn essen.“ Grethel fieng an bitterlich zu weinen, aber es war alles vergeblich, sie mußte thun was die böse Hexe verlangte.
Nun ward dem armen Hänsel das beste Essen gekocht, aber Grethel bekam nichts als Krebsschalen. Jeden Morgen schlich die Alte zu dem Ställchen und rief „Hänsel, streck deine Finger heraus, damit ich fühle ob du bald fett bist.“ Hänsel streckte ihr aber ein Knöchlein heraus, und die Alte, die trübe Augen hatte, konnte es nicht sehen, und meinte es wären Hänsels Finger, und verwunderte sich daß er gar nicht fett werden wollte. Als vier Wochen herum waren und Hänsel immer mager blieb, da übernahm sie die Ungeduld, und sie wollte nicht länger warten. „Heda, Grethel,“ rief sie dem Mädchen zu, „sei flink und trag Wasser: Hänsel mag fett oder mager sein, morgen will ich ihn schlachten und kochen.“ Ach, wie jammerte das arme Schwesterchen, als es das Wasser tragen mußte, und wie flossen ihm die Thränen über die Backen herunter! „Lieber Gott, hilf uns doch,“ rief sie aus, „hätten uns nur die wilden Thiere im Wald gefressen, so wären wir doch zusammen gestorben.“ „Spar nur dein Geblärre,“ sagte die Alte, „es hilft dir alles nichts.“
Früh Morgens mußte Grethel heraus, den Kessel mit Wasser aufhängen und Feuer anzünden. „Erst wollen wir backen“ sagte die Alte, „ich habe den Backofen schon eingeheizt und den Teig geknätet.“ Sie stieß das arme Grethel hinaus zu dem Backofen, aus dem die Feuerflammen schon heraus schlugen. „Kriech hinein,“ sagte die Hexe, „und sieh zu ob recht eingeheizt ist, damit wir das Brot hineinschieben können.“ Und wenn Grethel darin war, wollte sie den Ofen zumachen, und Grethel sollte darin braten, und dann wollte sies auch aufessen. Aber Grethel merkte was sie im Sinn hatte und sprach „ich weiß nicht wie ichs machen soll; wie komm ich da hinein?“ „Dumme Gans,“ sagte die Alte, „die Öffnung ist groß genug, siehst du wohl, ich könnte selbst hinein,“ krappelte heran und steckte den Kopf in den Backofen. Da gab ihr Grethel einen Stoß daß sie weit hinein fuhr, machte die eiserne Thür zu und schob den Riegel vor. Hu! da fieng sie an zu heulen, ganz grauselich; aber Grethel lief fort, und die gottlose Hexe mußte elendiglich verbrennen.
Grethel aber lief schnurstracks zum Hänsel, öffnete sein Ställchen und rief „Hänsel, wir sind erlöst, die alte Hexe ist todt.“ Da sprang Hänsel heraus, wie ein Vogel aus dem Käfig, wenn ihm die Thüre aufgemacht wird. Wie haben sie sich gefreut, sind sich um den Hals gefallen, sind herumgesprungen und haben sich geküßt! Und weil sie sich nicht mehr zu fürchten brauchten, so giengen sie in das Haus der Hexe hinein, da standen in allen Ecken Kasten mit Perlen und Edelsteinen. „Die sind noch besser als Kieselsteine“ sagte Hänsel und steckte in seine Taschen was hinein wollte, und Grethel sagte „ich will auch etwas mit nach Haus bringen“ und füllte sich sein Schürzchen voll. „Aber jetzt wollen wir fort,“ sagte Hänsel, „damit wir aus dem Hexenwald herauskommen.“ Als sie aber ein paar Stunden gegangen waren, gelangten sie an ein großes Wasser. „Wir können nicht hinüber,“ sprach Hänsel, „ich sehe keinen Steg und keine Brücke.“ „Hier fährt auch kein Schiffchen,“ antwortete Grethel, „aber da schwimmt eine weiße Ente, wenn ich die bitte, so hilft sie uns hinüber.“ Da rief sie
„Entchen, Entchen,
da steht Grethel und Hänsel.
Kein Steg und keine Brücke,
nimm uns auf deinen weißen Rücken.“
Das Entchen kam auch heran, und Hänsel setzte sich auf und bat sein Schwesterchen sich zu ihm zu setzen. „Nein,“ antwortete Grethel, „es wird dem Entchen zu schwer, es soll uns nach einander hinüber bringen.“ Das that das gute Thierchen, und als sie glücklich drüben waren und ein Weilchen fortgiengen, da kam ihnen der Wald immer bekannter und immer bekannter vor, und endlich erblickten sie von weitem ihres Vaters Haus. Da fiengen sie an zu laufen, stürzten in die Stube hinein und fielen ihrem Vater um den Hals. Der Mann hatte keine frohe Stunde gehabt, seitdem er die Kinder im Walde gelassen hatte, die Frau aber war gestorben. Grethel schüttete sein Schürzchen aus daß die Perlen und Edelsteine in der Stube herumsprangen, und Hänsel warf eine Handvoll nach der andern aus seiner Tasche dazu. Da hatten alle Sorgen ein Ende, und sie lebten in lauter Freude zusammen. Mein Märchen ist aus, dort lauft eine Maus, wer sie fängt, darf sich eine große große Pelzkappe daraus machen. Es war einmal ein Mann und eine Frau, die wünschten sich schon lange vergeblich ein Kind, endlich machte sich die Frau Hoffnung der liebe Gott werde ihren Wunsch erfüllen. Die Leute hatten in ihrem Hinterhaus ein kleines Fenster, daraus konnte man in einen prächtigen Garten sehen, der voll der schönsten Blumen und Kräuter stand; er war aber von einer hohen Mauer umgeben, und niemand wagte hinein zu gehen, weil er einer Zauberin gehörte, die große Macht hatte und von aller Welt gefürchtet ward. Eines Tags stand die Frau an diesem Fenster und sah in den Garten hinab, da erblickte sie ein Beet, das mit den schönsten Rapunzeln bepflanzt war: und sie sahen so frisch und grün aus, daß sie lüstern ward und das größte Verlangen empfand von den Rapunzeln zu essen. Das Verlangen nahm jeden Tag zu, und da sie wußte daß sie keine davon bekommen konnte, so fiel sie ganz ab, sah blaß und elend aus. Da erschrack der Mann und fragte „was fehlt dir, liebe Frau?“ „Ach,“ antwortete sie, „wenn ich keine Rapunzeln aus dem Garten hinter unserm Hause zu essen kriege, so sterbe ich.“ Der Mann, der sie lieb hatte, dachte „eh du deine Frau sterben lässest, holst du ihr von den Rapunzeln, es mag kosten was es will.“ In der Abenddämmerung stieg er also über die Mauer in den Garten der Zauberin, stach in aller Eile eine Hand voll Rapunzeln und brachte sie seiner Frau. Sie machte sich sogleich Salat daraus und aß sie in voller Begierde auf. Sie hatten ihr aber so gut, so gut geschmeckt, daß sie den andern Tag noch dreimal so viel Lust bekam. Sollte sie Ruhe haben, so mußte der Mann noch einmal in den Garten steigen. Er machte sich also in der Abenddämmerung wieder hinab, als er aber die Mauer herabgeklettert war, erschrack er gewaltig, denn er sah die Zauberin vor sich stehen. „Wie kannst du es wagen,“ sprach sie mit zornigem Blick, „in meinen Garten zu steigen und wie ein Dieb mir meine Rapunzeln zu stehlen? das soll dir schlecht bekommen.“ „Ach,“ antwortete er, „laßt Gnade für Recht ergehen, ich habe mich nur aus Noth dazu entschlossen: meine Frau hat eure Rapunzeln aus dem Fenster erblickt, und empfindet ein so großes Gelüsten, daß sie sterben würde, wenn sie nicht davon zu essen bekäme.“ Da ließ die Zauberin in ihrem Zorne nach und sprach zu ihm „verhält es sich so, wie du sagst, so will ich dir gestatten Rapunzeln mitzunehmen so viel du willst, allein ich mache eine Bedingung: du mußt mir das Kind geben, das deine Frau zur Welt bringen wird. Es soll ihm gut gehen, und ich will für es sorgen wie eine Mutter.“ Der Mann sagte in der Angst alles zu, und als die Frau in Wochen kam, so erschien sogleich die Zauberin, gab dem Kinde den Namen Rapunzel und nahm es mit sich fort.
Rapunzel ward das schönste Kind unter der Sonne. Als es zwölf Jahre alt war, schloß es die Zauberin in einen Thurm, der in einem Walde lag, und weder Treppe noch Thüre hatte, nur ganz oben war ein kleines Fensterchen. Wenn die Zauberin hinein wollte, so stellte sie sich unten hin, und rief
„Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
laß mir dein Haar herunter.“
Rapunzel hatte lange prächtige Haare, fein wie gesponnen Gold. Wenn sie nun die Stimme der Zauberin vernahm, so band sie ihre Zöpfe los, wickelte sie oben um einen Fensterhaken, und dann fielen die Haare zwanzig Ellen tief herunter, und die Zauberin stieg daran hinauf. Nach ein paar Jahren trug es sich zu, daß der Sohn des Königs durch den Wald ritt und an dem Thurm vorüber kam. Da hörte er einen Gesang, der war so lieblich, daß er still hielt und horchte. Das war Rapunzel, die in ihrer Einsamkeit sich die Zeit damit vertrieb, ihre süße Stimme erschallen zu lassen. Der Königssohn wollte zu ihr hinauf steigen und suchte nach einer Thüre des Thurms, aber es war keine zu finden. Er ritt heim, doch der Gesang hatte ihm so sehr das Herz gerührt, daß er jeden Tag hinaus in den Wald gieng und zuhörte. Als er einmal so hinter einem Baum stand, sah er daß eine Zauberin heran kam und hörte wie sie hinauf rief
„Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
laß dein Haar herunter.“
Da ließ Rapunzel die Haarflechten herab, und die Zauberin stieg zu ihr hinauf. „Ist das die Leiter, auf welcher man hinauf kommt, so will ich auch einmal mein Glück versuchen.“ Und den folgenden Tag, als es anfieng dunkel zu werden, gieng er zu dem Thurme und rief
„Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
laß dein Haar herunter.“
Alsbald fielen die Haare herab und der Königssohn stieg hinauf.
Anfangs erschrack Rapunzel gewaltig als ein Mann zu ihr herein kam, wie ihre Augen noch nie einen erblickt hatten, doch der Königssohn fing an ganz freundlich mit ihr zu reden und erzählte ihr daß von ihrem Gesang sein Herz so sehr sei bewegt worden, daß es ihm keine Ruhe gelassen, und er sie selbst habe sehen müssen. Da verlor Rapunzel ihre Angst, und als er sie fragte ob sie ihn zum Manne nehmen wollte, und sie sah daß er jung und schön war, so dachte sie „der wird mich lieber haben als die alte Frau Gothel,“ und sagte ja und legte ihre Hand in seine Hand. Sie sprach „ich will gerne mit dir gehen, aber ich weiß nicht wie ich herab kommen kann. Wenn du kommst, so bring jedesmal einen Strang Seide mit, daraus will ich eine Leiter flechten und wenn die fertig ist, so steige ich herunter und du nimmst mich auf dein Pferd.“ Sie verabredeten daß er bis dahin alle Abend zu ihr kommen sollte, denn bei Tag kam die Alte. Die Zauberin merkte auch nichts davon, bis einmal Rapunzel anfieng und zu ihr sagte „sag sie mir doch, Frau Gothel, wie kommt es nur, sie wird mir viel schwerer heraufzuziehen, als der junge Königssohn, der ist in einem Augenblick bei mir.“ „Ach du gottloses Kind,“ rief die Zauberin, „was muß ich von dir hören, ich dachte ich hätte dich von aller Welt geschieden, und du hast mich doch betrogen!“ In ihrem Zorne packte sie die schönen Haare der Rapunzel, schlug sie ein paar mal um ihre linke Hand, griff eine Scheere mit der rechten, und ritsch, ratsch, waren sie abgeschnitten, und die schönen Flechten lagen auf der Erde. Und sie war so unbarmherzig daß sie die arme Rapunzel in eine Wüstenei brachte, wo sie in großem Jammer und Elend leben mußte.
Denselben Tag aber, wo sie Rapunzel verstoßen hatte, machte Abends die Zauberin die abgeschnittenen Flechten oben am Fensterhaken fest, und als der Königssohn kam und rief
„Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
laß dein Haar herunter,“
so ließ sie die Haare hinab. Der Königssohn stieg hinauf, aber er fand oben nicht seine liebste Rapunzel, sondern die Zauberin, die ihn mit bösen und giftigen Blicken ansah. „Aha,“ rief sie höhnisch, „du willst die Frau Liebste holen, aber der schöne Vogel sitzt nicht mehr im Nest und singt nicht mehr, die Katze hat ihn geholt und wird dir auch noch die Augen auskratzen. Für dich ist Rapunzel verloren, du wirst sie nie wieder erblicken.“ Der Königssohn gerieth außer sich vor Schmerz, und in der Verzweiflung sprang er den Thurm herab: das Leben brachte er davon, aber die Dornen, in die er fiel, zerstachen ihm die Augen. Da irrte er blind im Walde umher, aß nichts als Wurzeln und Beeren, und that nichts als jammern und weinen über den Verlust seiner liebsten Frau. So wanderte er einige Jahre im Elend umher und gerieth endlich in die Wüstenei, wo Rapunzel mit den Zwillingen, die sie geboren hatte, einem Knaben und Mädchen, kümmerlich lebte. Er vernahm eine Stimme, und sie däuchte ihn so bekannt: da gieng er darauf zu, und wie er heran kam, erkannte ihn Rapunzel und fiel ihm um den Hals und weinte. Zwei von ihren Thränen aber benetzten seine Augen, da wurden sie wieder klar, und er konnte damit sehen wie sonst. Er führte sie in sein Reich, wo er mit Freude empfangen ward, und sie lebten noch lange glücklich und vergnügt. Es war einmal eine kleine süße Dirne, die hatte jedermann lieb, der sie nur ansah, am allerliebsten aber ihre Großmutter, die wußte gar nicht was sie alles dem Kinde geben sollte. Einmal schenkte sie ihm ein Käppchen von rothem Sammet, und weil ihm das so wohl stand, und es nichts anders mehr tragen wollte, hieß es nur das Rothkäppchen. Eines Tages sprach seine Mutter zu ihm „komm, Rothkäppchen, da hast du ein Stück Kuchen und eine Flasche Wein, bring das der Großmutter hinaus; sie ist krank und schwach und wird sich daran laben. Mach dich auf bevor es heiß wird, und wenn du hinaus kommst, so geh hübsch sittsam und lauf nicht vom Weg ab, sonst fällst du und zerbrichst das Glas und die Großmutter hat nichts. Und wenn du in ihre Stube kommst, so vergiß nicht guten Morgen zu sagen und guck nicht erst in alle Ecken herum.“
„Ich will schon alles gut machen“ sagte Rothkäppchen zur Mutter, und gab ihr die Hand darauf. Die Großmutter aber wohnte draußen im Wald, eine halbe Stunde vom Dorf. Wie nun Rothkäppchen in den Wald kam, begegnete ihm der Wolf. Rothkäppchen aber wußte nicht was das für ein böses Thier war und fürchtete sich nicht vor ihm. „Guten Tag, Rothkäppchen,“ sprach er. „Schönen Dank, Wolf.“ „Wo hinaus so früh, Rothkäppchen?“ „Zur Großmutter.“ „Was trägst du unter der Schürze?“ „Kuchen und Wein: gestern haben wir gebacken, da soll sich die kranke und schwache Großmutter etwas zu gut thun, und sich damit stärken.“ „Rothkäppchen, wo wohnt deine Großmutter?“ „Noch eine gute Viertelstunde weiter im Wald, unter den drei großen Eichbäumen, da steht ihr Haus, unten sind die Nußhecken, das wirst du ja wissen“ sagte Rothkäppchen. Der Wolf dachte bei sich „das junge zarte Ding, das ist ein fetter Bissen, der wird noch besser schmecken als die Alte: du mußt es listig anfangen, damit du beide erschnappst.“ Da gieng er ein Weilchen neben Rothkäppchen her, dann sprach er „Rothkäppchen, sieh einmal die schönen Blumen, die rings umher stehen, warum guckst du dich nicht um? ich glaube du hörst gar nicht, wie die Vöglein so lieblich singen? du gehst ja für dich hin als wenn du zur Schule giengst, und ist so lustig haußen in dem Wald.“
Rothkäppchen schlug die Augen auf, und als es sah wie die Sonnenstrahlen durch die Bäume hin und her tanzten, und alles voll schöner Blumen stand, dachte es „wenn ich der Großmutter einen frischen Strauß mitbringe, der wird ihr auch Freude machen; es ist so früh am Tag, daß ich doch zu rechter Zeit ankomme,“ lief vom Wege ab in den Wald hinein und suchte Blumen. Und wenn es eine gebrochen hatte, meinte es weiter hinaus stände eine schönere, und lief darnach, und gerieth immer tiefer in den Wald hinein. Der Wolf aber gieng geradeswegs nach dem Haus der Großmutter, und klopfte an die Thüre. „Wer ist draußen?“ „Rothkäppchen, das bringt Kuchen und Wein, mach auf.“ „Drück nur auf die Klinke,“ rief die Großmutter, „ich bin zu schwach und kann nicht aufstehen.“ Der Wolf drückte auf die Klinke, die Thüre sprang auf und er gieng, ohne ein Wort zu sprechen, gerade zum Bett der Großmutter und verschluckte sie. Dann that er ihre Kleider an, setzte ihre Haube auf, legte sich in ihr Bett und zog die Vorhänge vor.
Rothkäppchen aber war nach den Blumen herum gelaufen, und als es so viel zusammen hatte, daß es keine mehr tragen konnte, fiel ihm die Großmutter wieder ein und es machte sich auf den Weg zu ihr. Es wunderte sich daß die Thüre aufstand, und wie es in die Stube trat, so kam es ihm so seltsam darin vor, daß es dachte „ei, du mein Gott, wie ängstlich wird mirs heute zu Muth, und bin sonst so gerne bei der Großmutter!“ Es rief „guten Morgen,“ bekam aber keine Antwort. Darauf gieng es zum Bett und zog die Vorhänge zurück: da lag die Großmutter, und hatte die Haube tief ins Gesicht gesetzt und sah so wunderlich aus. „Ei, Großmutter, was hast du für große Ohren!“ „Daß ich dich besser hören kann.“ „Ei, Großmutter, was hast du für große Augen!“ „Daß ich dich besser sehen kann.“ „Ei, Großmutter, was hast du für große Hände!“ „Daß ich dich besser packen kann.“ „Aber, Großmutter, was hast du für ein entsetzlich großes Maul!“ „Daß ich dich besser fressen kann.“ Kaum hatte der Wolf das gesagt, so that er einen Satz aus dem Bette und verschlang das arme Rothkäppchen.
Wie der Wolf sein Gelüsten gestillt hatte, legte er sich wieder ins Bett, schlief ein und fieng an überlaut zu schnarchen. Der Jäger gieng eben an dem Haus vorbei und dachte „wie die alte Frau schnarcht, du mußt doch sehen ob ihr etwas fehlt.“ Da trat er in die Stube, und wie er vor das Bette kam, so sah er daß der Wolf darin lag. „Finde ich dich hier, du alter Sünder,“ sagte er, „ich habe dich lange gesucht.“ Nun wollte er seine Büchse anlegen, da fiel ihm ein der Wolf könnte die Großmutter gefressen haben, und sie wäre noch zu retten: schoß nicht, sondern nahm eine Scheere und fieng an dem schlafenden Wolf den Bauch aufzuschneiden. Wie er ein paar Schnitte gethan hatte, da sah er das rothe Käppchen leuchten, und noch ein paar Schnitte, da sprang das Mädchen heraus und rief „ach, wie war ich erschrocken, wie wars so dunkel in dem Wolf seinem Leib!“ Und dann kam die alte Großmutter auch noch lebendig heraus und konnte kaum athmen. Rothkäppchen aber holte geschwind große Steine, damit füllten sie dem Wolf den Leib, und wie er aufwachte, wollte er fortspringen, aber die Steine waren so schwer, daß er gleich niedersank und sich todt fiel.
Da waren alle drei vergnügt; der Jäger zog dem Wolf den Pelz ab und gieng damit heim, die Großmutter aß den Kuchen und trank den Wein den Rothkäppchen gebracht hatte, und erholte sich wieder, Rothkäppchen aber dachte „du willst dein Lebtag nicht wieder allein vom Wege ab in den Wald laufen, wenn dirs die Mutter verboten hat.“
Es wird auch erzählt, daß einmal, als Rothkäppchen der alten Großmutter wieder Gebackenes brachte, ein anderer Wolf ihm zugesprochen und es vom Wege habe ableiten wollen. Rothkäppchen aber hütete sich und gieng gerade fort seines Wegs und sagte der Großmutter daß es dem Wolf begegnet wäre, der ihm guten Tag gewünscht, aber so bös aus den Augen geguckt hätte: „wenns nicht auf offner Straße gewesen wäre, er hätte mich gefressen.“ „Komm,“ sagte die Großmutter, „wir wollen die Thüre verschließen, daß er nicht herein kann.“ Bald darnach klopfte der Wolf an und rief „mach auf, Großmutter, ich bin das Rothkäppchen, ich bring dir Gebackenes.“ Sie schwiegen aber still und machten die Thüre nicht auf: da schlich der Graukopf etlichemal um das Haus, sprang endlich aufs Dach und wollte warten bis Rothkäppchen Abends nach Haus gienge, dann wollte er ihm nachschleichen und wollts in der Dunkelheit fressen. Aber die Großmutter merkte was er im Sinn hatte. Nun stand vor dem Haus ein großer Steintrog, da sprach sie zu dem Kind „nimm den Eimer, Rothkäppchen, gestern hab ich Würste gekocht, da trag das Wasser, worin sie gekocht sind, in den Trog.“ Rothkäppchen trug so lange, bis der große große Trog ganz voll war. Da stieg der Geruch von den Würsten dem Wolf in die Nase, er schnupperte und guckte hinab, endlich machte er den Hals so lang, daß er sich nicht mehr halten konnte, und anfieng zu rutschen: so rutschte er vom Dach herab, gerade in den großen Trog hinein und ertrank. Rothkäppchen aber gieng fröhlich nach Haus, und that ihm niemand etwas zu Leid. Es war einmal ein Müller, der war arm, aber er hatte eine schöne Tochter. Nun traf es sich, daß er mit dem König zu sprechen kam, und um sich ein Ansehen zu geben, sagte er zu ihm „ich habe eine Tochter, die kann Stroh zu Gold spinnen.“ Der König sprach zum Müller „das ist eine Kunst, die mir wohl gefällt, wenn deine Tochter so geschickt ist, wie du sagst, so bring sie Morgen in mein Schloß, da will ich sie auf die Probe stellen.“ Als nun das Mädchen zu ihm gebracht ward, führte er es in eine Kammer, die ganz voll Stroh lag, gab ihr Rad und Haspel und sprach „jetzt mache dich an die Arbeit, und wenn du diese Nacht durch bis morgen früh dieses Stroh nicht zu Gold versponnen hast, so mußt du sterben.“ Darauf schloß er die Kammer selbst zu, und sie blieb allein darin.
Da saß nun die arme Müllerstochter und wußte um ihr Leben keinen Rath: sie verstand gar nichts davon, wie man Stroh zu Gold spinnen konnte, und ihre Angst ward immer größer, daß sie endlich zu weinen anfieng. Da gieng auf einmal die Thüre auf, und trat ein kleines Männchen herein und sprach „guten Abend, Jungfer Müllerin, warum weint sie so sehr?“ „Ach,“ antwortete das Mädchen, „ich soll Stroh zu Gold spinnen, und verstehe das nicht.“ Sprach das Männchen „was gibst du mir, wenn ich dirs spinne?“ „Mein Halsband“ sagte das Mädchen. Das Männchen nahm das Halsband, setzte sich vor das Rädchen, und schnurr, schnurr, schnurr, dreimal gezogen, war die Spule voll. Dann steckte es eine andere auf, und schnurr, schnurr, schnurr, dreimal gezogen, war auch die zweite voll: und so giengs fort bis zum Morgen, da war alles Stroh versponnen, und alle Spulen waren voll Gold. Bei Sonnenaufgang kam schon der König und als er das Gold erblickte, erstaunte er und freute sich, aber sein Herz ward nur noch goldgieriger. Er ließ die Müllerstochter in eine andere Kammer voll Stroh bringen, die noch viel größer war, und befahl ihr das auch in einer Nacht zu spinnen, wenn ihr das Leben lieb wäre. Das Mädchen wußte sich nicht zu helfen und weinte, da gieng abermals die Thüre auf, und das kleine Männchen erschien und sprach „was gibst du mir, wenn ich dir das Stroh zu Gold spinne?“ „Meinen Ring von dem Finger“ antwortete das Mädchen. Das Männchen nahm den Ring, fieng wieder an zu schnurren mit dem Rade und hatte bis zum Morgen alles Stroh zu glänzendem Gold gesponnen. Der König freute sich über die Maßen bei dem Anblick, war aber noch immer nicht Goldes satt, sondern ließ die Müllerstochter in eine noch größere Kammer voll Stroh bringen und sprach „die mußt du noch in dieser Nacht verspinnen: gelingt dirs aber, so sollst du meine Gemahlin werden.“ „Wenns auch eine Müllerstochter ist,“ dachte er, „eine reichere Frau finde ich in der ganzen Welt nicht.“ Als das Mädchen allein war, kam das Männlein zum drittenmal wieder und sprach „was gibst du mir, wenn ich dir noch diesmal das Stroh spinne?“ „Ich habe nichts mehr, das ich geben könnte“ antwortete das Mädchen.“So versprich mir, wenn du Königin wirst, dein erstes Kind.“ „Wer weiß wie das noch geht“ dachte die Müllerstochter und wußte sich auch in der Noth nicht anders zu helfen; sie versprach also dem Männchen was es verlangte, und das Männchen spann dafür noch einmal das Stroh zu Gold. Und als am Morgen der König kam und alles fand wie er gewünscht hatte, so hielt er Hochzeit mit ihr, und die schöne Müllerstochter ward eine Königin. Über ein Jahr brachte sie ein schönes Kind zur Welt und dachte gar nicht mehr an das Männchen: da trat es plötzlich in ihre Kammer und sprach „nun gib mir was du versprochen hast.“ Die Königin erschrack und bot dem Männchen alle Reichthümer des Königreichs an, wenn es ihr das Kind lassen wollte: aber das Männchen sprach „nein, etwas lebendes ist mir lieber als alle Schätze der Welt.“ Da fieng die Königin so an zu jammern und zu weinen, daß das Männchen Mitleiden mit ihr hatte: „drei Tage will ich dir Zeit lassen,“ sprach er, „wenn du bis dahin meinen Namen weißt, so sollst du dein Kind behalten.“
Nun besann sich die Königin die ganze Nacht über auf alle Namen, die sie jemals gehört hatte, und schickte einen Boten über Land, der sollte sich erkundigen weit und breit was es sonst noch für Namen gäbe. Als am andern Tag das Männchen kam, fieng sie an mit Caspar, Melchior, Balzer, und sagte alle Namen, die sie wußte, nach der Reihe her, aber bei jedem sprach das Männlein „so heiß ich nicht.“ Den zweiten Tag ließ sie in der Nachbarschaft herumfragen wie die Leute da genannt würden, und sagte dem Männlein die ungewöhnlichsten und seltsamsten Namen vor, „heißt du vielleicht Rippenbiest oder Hammelswade oder Schnürbein?“ aber es antwortete immer „so heiß ich nicht.“ Den dritten Tag kam der Bote wieder zurück und erzählte „neue Namen habe ich keinen einzigen finden können, aber wie ich an einen hohen Berg um die Waldecke kam, wo Fuchs und Has sich gute Nacht sagen, so sah ich da ein kleines Haus, und vor dem Haus brannte ein Feuer, und um das Feuer sprang ein gar zu lächerliches Männchen, hüpfte auf einem Bein und schrie
„heute back ich, morgen brau ich,
übermorgen hol ich der Königin ihr Kind;
ach, wie gut ist daß niemand weiß
daß ich Rumpelstilzchen heiß!“
Da könnt ihr denken wie die Königin froh war, als sie den Namen hörte, und als bald hernach das Männlein herein trat und fragte „nun, Frau Königin, wie heiß ich?“ fragte sie erst „heißest du Kunz?“ „Nein.“ „Heißest du Heinz?“ „Nein.“
„Heißt du etwa Rumpelstilzchen?“
„Das hat dir der Teufel gesagt, das hat dir der Teufel gesagt“ schrie das Männlein und stieß mit dem rechten Fuß vor Zorn so tief in die Erde, daß es bis an den Leib hineinfuhr, dann packte es in seiner Wuth den linken Fuß mit beiden Händen und riß sich selbst mitten entzwei. Es war einmal mitten im Winter, und die Schneeflocken fielen wie Federn vom Himmel herab, da saß eine Königin an einem Fenster, das einen Rahmen von schwarzem Ebenholz hatte, und nähte. Und wie sie so nähte und nach dem Schnee aufblickte, stach sie sich mit der Nadel in den Finger, und es fielen drei Tropfen Blut in den Schnee. Und weil das Rothe im weißen Schnee so schön aussah, dachte sie bei sich „hätt ich ein Kind so weiß wie Schnee, so roth wie Blut, und so schwarz wie das Holz an dem Rahmen.“ Bald darauf bekam sie ein Töchterlein, das war so weiß wie Schnee, so roth wie Blut, und so schwarzhaarig wie Ebenholz, und ward darum das Sneewittchen (Schneeweißchen) genannt. Und wie das Kind geboren war, starb die Königin.
Über ein Jahr nahm sich der König eine andere Gemahlin. Es war eine schöne Frau, aber sie war stolz und übermüthig, und konnte nicht leiden daß sie an Schönheit von jemand sollte übertroffen werden. Sie hatte einen wunderbaren Spiegel, wenn sie vor den trat und sich darin beschaute, sprach sie
„Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand,
wer ist die schönste im ganzen Land?“
so antwortete der Spiegel
„Frau Königin, ihr seid die schönste im Land.“
Da war sie zufrieden, denn sie wußte daß der Spiegel die Wahrheit sagte.
Sneewittchen aber wuchs heran, und wurde immer schöner, und als es sieben Jahr alt war, war es so schön, wie der klare Tag, und schöner als die Königin selbst. Als diese einmal ihren Spiegel fragte
„Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand,
wer ist die schönste im ganzen Land?“
so antwortete er
„Frau Königin, ihr seid die schönste hier,
aber Sneewittchen ist tausendmal schöner als ihr.“
Da erschrack die Königin, und ward gelb und grün vor Neid. Von Stund an, wenn sie Sneewittchen erblickte, kehrte sich ihr das Herz im Leibe herum, so haßte sie das Mädchen. Und der Neid und Hochmuth wuchsen wie ein Unkraut in ihrem Herzen immer höher, daß sie Tag und Nacht keine Ruhe mehr hatte. Da rief sie einen Jäger und sprach „bring das Kind hinaus in den Wald, ich wills nicht mehr vor meinen Augen sehen. Du sollst es tödten, und mir Lunge und Leber zum Wahrzeichen mitbringen.“ Der Jäger gehorchte und führte es hinaus, und als er den Hirschfänger gezogen hatte und Sneewittchens unschuldiges Herz durchbohren wollte, fieng es an zu weinen und sprach „ach, lieber Jäger, laß mir mein Leben; ich will in den wilden Wald laufen und nimmermehr wieder heim kommen.“ Und weil es so schön war, hatte der Jäger Mitleiden und sprach „so lauf hin, du armes Kind.“ „Die wilden Thiere werden dich bald gefressen haben“ dachte er, und doch wars ihm als wär ein Stein von seinem Herzen gewälzt, weil er es nicht zu tödten brauchte. Und als gerade ein junger Frischling daher gesprungen kam, stach er ihn ab, nahm Lunge und Leber heraus, und brachte sie als Wahrzeichen der Königin mit. Der Koch mußte sie in Salz kochen, und das boshafte Weib aß sie auf und meinte sie hätte Sneewittchens Lunge und Leber gegessen.
Nun war das arme Kind in dem großen Wald mutterseelig allein, und ward ihm so angst, daß es alle Blätter an den Bäumen ansah und nicht wußte wie es sich helfen sollte. Da fieng es an zu laufen und lief über die spitzen Steine und durch die Dornen, und die wilden Thiere sprangen an ihm vorbei, aber sie thaten ihm nichts. Es lief so lange nur die Füße noch fort konnten, bis es bald Abend werden wollte, da sah es ein kleines Häuschen und gieng hinein sich zu ruhen. In dem Häuschen war alles klein, aber so zierlich und reinlich, daß es nicht zu sagen ist. Da stand ein weiß gedecktes Tischlein mit sieben kleinen Tellern, jedes Tellerlein mit seinem Löffelein, ferner sieben Messerlein und Gäblein, und sieben Becherlein. An der Wand waren sieben Bettlein neben einander aufgestellt und schneeweiße Laken darüber gedeckt. Sneewittchen, weil es so hungrig und durstig war, aß von jedem Tellerlein ein wenig Gemüs und Brot, und trank aus jedem Becherlein einen Tropfen Wein; denn es wollte nicht einem allein alles wegnehmen. Hernach, weil es so müde war, legte es sich in ein Bettchen, aber keins paßte; das eine war zu lang, das andere zu kurz, bis endlich das siebente recht war: und darin blieb es liegen, befahl sich Gott und schlief ein.
Als es ganz dunkel geworden war, kamen die Herren von dem Häuslein, das waren die sieben Zwerge, die in den Bergen nach Erz hackten und gruben. Sie zündeten ihre sieben Lichtlein an, und wie es nun hell im Häuslein ward, sahen sie daß jemand darin gewesen war, denn es stand nicht alles so in der Ordnung, wie sie es verlassen hatten. Der erste sprach „wer hat auf meinem Stühlchen gesessen?“ Der zweite „wer hat von meinem Tellerchen gegessen?“ Der dritte „wer hat von meinem Brötchen genommen?“ Der vierte „wer hat von meinem Gemüschen gegessen?“ Der fünfte „wer hat mit meinem Gäbelchen gestochen?“ Der sechste „wer hat mit meinem Messerchen geschnitten?“ Der siebente „wer hat aus meinem Becherlein getrunken?“ Dann sah sich der erste um und sah daß auf seinem Bett eine kleine Dälle war, da sprach er „wer hat in mein Bettchen getreten?“ Die andern kamen gelaufen und riefen „in meinem hat auch jemand gelegen.“ Der siebente aber, als er in sein Bett sah, erblickte Sneewittchen, das lag darin und schlief. Nun rief er die andern, die kamen herbeigelaufen, und schrien vor Verwunderung, holten ihre sieben Lichtlein, und beleuchteten Sneewittchen. „Ei, du mein Gott! ei, du mein Gott!“ riefen sie, „was ist das Kind so schön!“ und hatten so große Freude, daß sie es nicht aufweckten, sondern im Bettlein fortschlafen ließen. Der siebente Zwerg aber schlief bei seinen Gesellen, bei jedem eine Stunde, da war die Nacht herum.
Als es Morgen war, erwachte Sneewittchen, und wie es die sieben Zwerge sah, erschrack es. Sie waren aber freundlich und fragten „wie heißt du?“ „Ich heiße Sneewittchen,“ antwortete es. „Wie bist du in unser Haus gekommen?“ sprachen weiter die Zwerge. Da erzählte es ihnen daß seine Stiefmutter es hätte wollen umbringen lassen, der Jäger hätte ihm aber das Leben geschenkt, und da wär es gelaufen den ganzen Tag, bis es endlich ihr Häuslein gefunden hätte. Die Zwerge sprachen „willst du unsern Haushalt versehen, kochen, betten, waschen, nähen und stricken, und willst du alles ordentlich und reinlich halten, so kannst du bei uns bleiben, und es soll dir an nichts fehlen.“ „Ja,“ sagte Sneewittchen, „von Herzen gern,“ und blieb bei ihnen. Es hielt ihnen das Haus in Ordnung: Morgens giengen sie in die Berge und suchten Erz und Gold, Abends kamen sie wieder, und da mußte ihr Essen bereit sein. Den Tag über war das Mädchen allein, da warnten es die guten Zwerglein und sprachen „hüte dich vor deiner Stiefmutter, die wird bald wissen daß du hier bist; laß ja niemand herein.“
Die Königin aber, nachdem sie Sneewittchens Lunge und Leber glaubte gegessen zu haben, dachte nicht anders als sie wäre wieder die erste und allerschönste, trat vor ihren Spiegel und sprach
„Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand,
wer ist die schönste im ganzen Land?“
Da antwortete der Spiegel
„Frau Königin, ihr seid die schönste hier,
aber Sneewittchen über den Bergen
bei den sieben Zwergen
ist noch tausendmal schöner als ihr.“
Da erschrack sie, denn sie wußte, daß der Spiegel keine Unwahrheit sprach, und merkte daß der Jäger sie betrogen hatte, und Sneewittchen noch am Leben war. Und da sann und sann sie aufs neue, wie sie es umbringen wollte; denn so lange sie nicht die schönste war im ganzen Land, ließ ihr der Neid keine Ruhe. Und als sie sich endlich etwas ausgedacht hatte, färbte sie sich das Gesicht, und kleidete sich wie eine alte Krämerin, und war ganz unkenntlich. In dieser Gestalt gieng sie über die sieben Berge zu den sieben Zwergen, klopfte an die Thüre, und rief „schöne Waare feil! feil!“ Sneewittchen guckte zum Fenster heraus und rief „guten Tag, liebe Frau, was habt ihr zu verkaufen?“ „Gute Waare, schöne Waare,“ antwortete sie, „Schnürriemen von allen Farben,“ und holte einen hervor, der aus bunter Seide geflochten war. „Die ehrliche Frau kann ich herein lassen“ dachte Sneewittchen, riegelte die Thüre auf und kaufte sich den hübschen Schnürriemen. „Kind,“ sprach die Alte, „wie du aussiehst! komm, ich will dich einmal ordentlich schnüren.“ Sneewittchen hatte kein Arg, stellte sich vor sie, und ließ sich mit dem neuen Schnürriemen schnüren: aber die Alte schnürte geschwind und schnürte so fest, daß dem Sneewittchen der Athem vergieng, und es für todt hinfiel. „Nun bist du die schönste gewesen“ sprach sie, und eilte hinaus.
Nicht lange darauf, zur Abendzeit, kamen die sieben Zwerge nach Haus, aber wie erschraken sie, als sie ihr liebes Sneewittchen auf der Erde liegen sahen; und es regte und bewegte sich nicht, als wäre es todt. Sie hoben es in die Höhe, und weil sie sahen daß es zu fest geschnürt war, schnitten sie den Schnürriemen entzwei: da fieng es an ein wenig zu athmen, und ward nach und nach wieder lebendig. Als die Zwerge hörten was geschehen war, sprachen sie, „die alte Krämerfrau war niemand als die gottlose Königin: hüte dich und laß keinen Menschen herein, wenn wir nicht bei dir sind.“
Das böse Weib aber, als es nach Haus gekommen war, gieng vor den Spiegel und fragte
„Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand,
wer ist die schönste im ganzen Land?“
Da antwortete er wie sonst
„Frau Königin, ihr seid die schönste hier,
aber Sneewittchen über den Bergen
bei den sieben Zwergen
ist noch tausendmal schöner als ihr.“
Als sie das hörte, lief ihr alles Blut zum Herzen, so erschrack sie, denn sie sah wohl daß Sneewittchen wieder lebendig geworden war. „Nun aber,“ sprach sie, „will ich etwas aussinnen, das dich zu Grunde richten soll,“ und mit Hexenkünsten, die sie verstand, machte sie einen giftigen Kamm. Dann verkleidete sie sich und nahm die Gestalt eines andern alten Weibes an. So gieng sie hin über die sieben Berge zu den sieben Zwergen, klopfte an die Thüre, und rief „gute Waare feil! feil!“ Sneewittchen schaute heraus und sprach „geht nur weiter, ich darf niemand hereinlassen.“ „Das Ansehen wird dir doch erlaubt sein“ sprach die Alte, zog den giftigen Kamm heraus und hielt ihn in die Höhe. Da gefiel er dem Kinde so gut, daß es sich bethören ließ und die Thüre öffnete. Als sie des Kaufs einig waren, sprach die Alte „nun will ich dich einmal ordentlich kämmen.“ Das arme Sneewittchen dachte an nichts, und ließ die Alte gewähren, aber kaum hatte sie den Kamm in die Haare gesteckt, als das Gift darin wirkte, und das Mädchen ohne Besinnung niederfiel. „Du Ausbund von Schönheit,“ sprach das boshafte Weib, „jetzt ists um dich geschehen,“ und gieng fort. Zum Glück aber war es bald Abend, wo die sieben Zwerglein nach Haus kamen. Als sie Sneewittchen wie todt auf der Erde liegen sahen, hatten sie gleich die Stiefmutter in Verdacht, suchten nach, und fanden den giftigen Kamm, und kaum hatten sie ihn herausgezogen, so kam Sneewittchen wieder zu sich, und erzählte was vorgegangen war. Da warnten sie es noch einmal auf seiner Hut zu sein und niemand die Thüre zu öffnen.
Die Königin stellte sich daheim vor den Spiegel und sprach
„Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand,
wer ist die schönste im ganzen Land?“
Da antwortete er, wie vorher,
„Frau Königin, ihr seid die schönste hier,
aber Sneewittchen über den Bergen
bei den sieben Zwergen
ist doch noch tausendmal schöner als ihr.“
Als sie den Spiegel so reden hörte, zitterte und bebte sie vor Zorn. „Sneewittchen soll sterben,“ rief sie, „und wenn es mein eignes Leben kostet.“ Darauf gieng sie in eine ganz verborgene einsame Kammer, wo niemand hinkam, und machte da einen giftigen giftigen Apfel. Äußerlich sah er schön aus, weiß mit rothen Backen, daß jeder, der ihn erblickte, Lust danach bekam, aber wer ein Stückchen davon aß, der mußte sterben. Als der Apfel fertig war, färbte sie sich das Gesicht, und verkleidete sich in eine Bauersfrau, und so gieng sie über die sieben Berge zu den sieben Zwergen. Sie klopfte an, Sneewittchen streckte den Kopf zum Fenster heraus, und sprach „ich darf keinen Menschen einlassen, die sieben Zwerge haben mirs verboten.“ „Mir auch recht,“ antwortete die Bäurin, „meine Äpfel will ich schon los werden. Da, einen will ich dir schenken.“ „Nein,“ sprach Sneewittchen, „ich darf nichts annehmen.“ „Fürchtest du dich vor Gift?“ sprach die Alte, „siehst du, da schneide ich den Apfel in zwei Theile; den rothen Backen iß du, den weißen will ich essen.“ Der Apfel war aber so künstlich gemacht, daß der rothe Backen allein vergiftet war. Sneewittchen lusterte den schönen Apfel an, und als es sah, daß die Bäurin davon aß, so konnte es nicht länger widerstehen, streckte die Hand hinaus und nahm die giftige Hälfte. Kaum aber hatte es einen Bissen davon im Mund, so fiel es todt zur Erde nieder. Da betrachtete es die Königin mit grausigen Blicken und lachte überlaut, und sprach „weiß wie Schnee, roth wie Blut, schwarz wie Ebenholz! diesmal können dich die Zwerge nicht wieder erwecken.“ Und als sie daheim den Spiegel befragte,
„Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand,
wer ist die schönste im ganzen Land?“
so antwortete er endlich
„Frau Königin, ihr seid die schönste im Land.“
Da hatte ihr neidisches Herz Ruhe, so gut ein neidisches Herz Ruhe haben kann.
Die Zwerglein, wie sie Abends nach Haus kamen, fanden Sneewittchen auf der Erde liegen, und es gieng kein Athem mehr aus seinem Mund, und es war todt. Sie hoben es auf, suchten ob sie was giftiges fänden, schnürten es auf, kämmten ihm die Haare, wuschen es mit Wasser und Wein, aber es half alles nichts; das liebe Kind war todt und blieb todt. Sie legten es auf eine Bahre und setzten sich alle siebene daran und beweinten es, und weinten drei Tage lang. Da wollten sie es begraben, aber es sah noch so frisch aus wie ein lebender Mensch, und hatte noch seine schönen rothen Backen. Sie sprachen „das können wir nicht in die schwarze Erde versenken,“ und ließen einen durchsichtigen Sarg von Glas machen, daß man es von allen Seiten sehen konnte, legten es hinein, und schrieben mit goldenen Buchstaben seinen Namen darauf, und daß es eine Königstochter wäre. Dann setzten sie den Sarg hinaus auf den Berg, und einer von ihnen blieb immer dabei, und bewachte ihn. Und die Thiere kamen auch und beweinten Sneewittchen, erst eine Eule, dann ein Rabe, zuletzt ein Täubchen.
Nun lag Sneewittchen lange lange Zeit in dem Sarg und verweste nicht, sondern sah aus als wenn es schliefe, denn es war noch so weiß als Schnee, so roth als Blut, und so schwarzhaarig wie Ebenholz. Es geschah aber, daß ein Königssohn in den Wald gerieth und zu dem Zwergenhaus kam, da zu übernachten. Er sah auf dem Berg den Sarg, und das schöne Sneewittchen darin, und las was mit goldenen Buchstaben darauf geschrieben war. Da sprach er zu den Zwergen „laßt mir den Sarg, ich will euch geben, was ihr dafür haben wollt.“ Aber die Zwerge antworteten „wir geben ihn nicht um alles Gold in der Welt.“ Da sprach er „so schenkt mir ihn, denn ich kann nicht leben ohne Sneewittchen zu sehen, ich will es ehren und hochachten wie mein Liebstes.“ Wie er so sprach, empfanden die guten Zwerglein Mitleiden mit ihm und gaben ihm den Sarg. Der Königssohn ließ ihn nun von seinen Dienern auf den Schultern forttragen. Da geschah es, daß sie über einen Strauch stolperten, und von dem Schüttern fuhr der giftige Apfelgrütz, den Sneewittchen abgebissen hatte, aus dem Hals. Und nicht lange so öffnete es die Augen, hob den Deckel vom Sarg in die Höhe, und richtete sich auf, und war wieder lebendig. „Ach Gott, wo bin ich?“ rief es. Der Königssohn sagte voll Freude „du bist bei mir,“ und erzählte was sich zugetragen hatte und sprach „ich habe dich lieber als alles auf der Welt; komm mit mir in meines Vaters Schloß, du sollst meine Gemahlin werden.“ Da war ihm Sneewittchen gut und gieng mit ihm, und ihre Hochzeit ward mit großer Pracht und Herrlichkeit angeordnet. Zu dem Fest wurde aber auch Sneewittchens gottlose Stiefmutter eingeladen. Wie sie sich nun mit schönen Kleidern angethan hatte, trat sie vor den Spiegel und sprach
„Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand,
wer ist die schönste im ganzen Land?“
Der Spiegel antwortete
„Frau Königin, ihr seid die schönste hier,
aber die junge Königin ist tausendmal schöner als ihr.“
Da stieß das böse Weib einen Fluch aus, und ward ihr so angst, so angst, daß sie sich nicht zu lassen wußte. Sie wollte zuerst gar nicht auf die Hochzeit kommen: doch ließ es ihr keine Ruhe, sie mußte fort und die junge Königin sehen. Und wie sie hineintrat, erkannte sie Sneewittchen, und vor Angst und Schrecken stand sie da und konnte sich nicht regen. Aber es waren schon eiserne Pantoffeln über Kohlenfeuer gestellt und wurden mit Zangen herein getragen und vor sie hingestellt. Da mußte sie in die rothglühenden Schuhe treten und so lange tanzen, bis sie todt zur Erde fiel. Es war einmal ein kleines Mädchen, dem war Vater und Mutter gestorben, und es war so arm, daß es kein Kämmerchen mehr hatte darin zu wohnen und kein Bettchen mehr darin zu schlafen und endlich gar nichts mehr als die Kleider auf dem Leib und ein Stückchen Brot in der Hand, das ihm ein mitleidiges Herz geschenkt hatte. Es war aber gut und fromm. Und weil es so von aller Welt verlassen war, gieng es im Vertrauen auf den lieben Gott hinaus ins Feld. Da begegnete ihm ein armer Mann, der sprach „ach, gib mir etwas zu essen, ich bin so hungerig.“ Es reichte ihm das ganze Stückchen Brot und sagte „Gott segne dirs“ und gieng weiter. Da kam ein Kind das jammerte und sprach „es friert mich so an meinem Kopfe, schenk mir etwas, womit ich ihn bedecken kann.“ Da that es seine Mütze ab und gab sie ihm. Und als es noch eine Weile gegangen war, kam wieder ein Kind und hatte kein Leibchen an und fror: da gab es ihm seins: und noch weiter, da bat eins um ein Röcklein, das gab es auch von sich hin. Endlich gelangte es in einen Wald, und es war schon dunkel geworden, da kam noch eins und bat um ein Hemdlein, und das fromme Mädchen dachte „es ist dunkle Nacht, da sieht dich niemand du kannst wohl dein Hemd weg geben,“ und zog das Hemd ab und gab es auch noch hin. Und wie es so stand und gar nichts mehr hatte, fielen auf einmal die Sterne vom Himmel, und waren lauter harte blanke Thaler: und ob es gleich sein Hemdlein weg gegeben, so hatte es ein neues an und das war vom allerfeinsten Linnen. Da sammelte es sich die Thaler hinein und war reich für sein Lebtag. Vor Zeiten war ein Schneider, der drei Söhne hatte und nur eine einzige Ziege. Aber die Ziege, weil sie alle zusammen mit ihrer Milch ernährte, mußte ihr gutes Futter haben und täglich hinaus auf die Weide geführt werden. Die Söhne thaten das auch nach der Reihe. Einmal brachte sie der älteste auf den Kirchhof, wo die schönsten Kräuter standen, ließ sie da fressen und herumspringen. Abends, als es Zeit war heim zu gehen, fragte er „Ziege, bist du satt?“ Die Ziege antwortete
„ich bin so satt,
ich mag kein Blatt: meh! meh!“
„So komm nach Haus“ sprach der Junge, faßte sie am Strickchen, führte sie in den Stall und band sie fest. „Nun,“ sagte der alte Schneider, „hat die Ziege ihr gehöriges Futter?“ „O,“ antwortete der Sohn, „die ist so satt, sie mag kein Blatt.“ Der Vater aber wollte sich selbst überzeugen, gieng hinab in den Stall, streichelte das liebe Thier und fragte „Ziege, bist du auch satt?“ Die Ziege antwortete
„wovon sollt ich satt sein?
ich sprang nur über Gräbelein,
und fand kein einzig Blättelein: meh! meh!“
„Was muß ich hören!“ rief der Schneider, lief hinauf und sprach zu dem Jungen „ei, du Lügner, sagst die Ziege wäre satt, und hast sie hungern lassen?“ und in seinem Zorne nahm er die Elle von der Wand und jagte ihn mit Schlägen hinaus.
Am andern Tag war die Reihe am zweiten Sohn, der suchte an der Gartenhecke einen Platz aus, wo lauter gute Kräuter standen, und die Ziege fraß sie rein ab. Abends, als er heim wollte, fragte er „Ziege, bist du satt?“ Die Ziege antwortete
„ich bin so satt,
ich mag kein Blatt: meh! meh!“
„So komm nach Haus,“ sprach der Junge, zog sie heim und band sie im Stalle fest. „Nun,“ sagte der alte Schneider, „hat die Ziege ihr gehöriges Futter?“ „O,“ antwortete der Sohn, „die ist so satt, sie mag kein Blatt.“ Der Schneider wollte sich darauf nicht verlassen, gieng hinab in den Stall und fragte „Ziege, bist du auch satt?“ Die Ziege antwortete
„wovon sollt ich satt sein?
ich sprang nur über Gräbelein,
und fand kein einzig Blättelein: meh! meh!“
„Der gottlose Bösewicht!“ schrie der Schneider, „so ein frommes Thier hungern zu lassen!“ lief hinauf, und schlug mit der Elle den Jungen zur Hausthüre hinaus.
Die Reihe kam jetzt an den dritten Sohn, der wollte seine Sache gut machen, suchte Buschwerk mit dem schönsten Laube aus, und ließ die Ziege daran fressen. Abends, als er heim wollte, fragte er „Ziege, bist du auch satt?“ Die Ziege antwortete
„ich bin so satt,
ich mag kein Blatt: meh! meh!“
„So komm nach Haus,“ sagte der Junge, führte sie in den Stall und band sie fest. „Nun,“ sagte der alte Schneider, „hat die Ziege ihr gehöriges Futter?“ „O,“ antwortete der Sohn, „die ist so satt, sie mag kein Blatt.“ Der Schneider traute nicht, gieng hinab und fragte „Ziege, bist du auch satt?“ Das boshafte Thier antwortete
„wovon sollt ich satt sein?
ich sprang nur über Gräbelein,
und fand kein einzig Blättlein: meh! meh!“
„O die Lügenbrut!“ rief der Schneider, „einer so gottlos und pflichtvergessen wie der andere! ihr sollt mich nicht länger zum Narren haben!“ und vor Zorn ganz außer sich sprang er hinauf und gerbte dem armen Jungen mit der Elle den Rücken so gewaltig, daß er zum Haus hinaus sprang.
Der alte Schneider war nun mit seiner Ziege allein. Am andern Morgen gieng er hinab in den Stall, liebkoste die Ziege und sprach „komm, mein liebes Thierlein, ich will dich selbst zur Weide führen.“ Er nahm sie am Strick und brachte sie zu grünen Hecken und unter Schafrippe und was sonst die Ziegen gerne fressen. „Da kannst du dich einmal nach Herzenslust sättigen“ sprach er zu ihr, und ließ sie weiden bis zum Abend. Da fragte er „Ziege, bist du satt?“ Sie antwortete
„ich bin so satt,
ich mag kein Blatt: meh! meh!“
„So komm nach Haus“ sagte der Schneider, führte sie in den Stall und band sie fest. Als er weggieng, kehrte er sich noch einmal um, und sagte „nun bist du doch einmal satt!“ Aber die Ziege machte es ihm nicht besser und rief
„wie sollt ich satt sein?
ich sprang nur über Gräbelein,
und fand kein einzig Blättlein: meh! meh!“
Als der Schneider das hörte, stutzte er und sah wohl daß er seine drei Söhne ohne Ursache verstoßen hatte. „Wart,“ rief er, „du undankbares Geschöpf, dich fortzujagen ist noch zu wenig, ich will dich zeichnen daß du dich unter ehrbaren Schneidern nicht mehr darfst sehen lassen.“ In einer Hast sprang er hinauf, holte sein Bartmesser, seifte der Ziege den Kopf ein, und schor sie so glatt wie seine flache Hand. Und weil die Elle zu ehrenvoll gewesen wäre, holte er die Peitsche und versetzte ihr solche Hiebe, daß sie in gewaltigen Sprüngen davon lief.
Der Schneider, als er so ganz einsam in seinem Hause saß, verfiel in große Traurigkeit und hätte seine Söhne gerne wieder gehabt, aber niemand wußte wo sie hingerathen waren. Der älteste war zu einem Schreiner in die Lehre gegangen, da lernte er fleißig und unverdrossen, und als seine Zeit herum war, daß er wandern sollte, schenkte ihm der Meister ein Tischchen, das gar kein besonderes Ansehen hatte und von gewöhnlichem Holz war: aber es hatte eine gute Eigenschaft. Wenn man es hinstellte, und sprach „Tischchen, deck dich,“ so war das gute Tischchen auf einmal mit einem saubern Tüchlein bedeckt, und stand da ein Teller, und Messer und Gabel daneben, und Schüsseln mit Gesottenem und Gebratenem, so viel Platz hatten, und ein großes Glas mit rothem Wein leuchtete daß einem das Herz lachte. Der junge Gesell dachte „damit hast du genug für dein Lebtag,“ zog guter Dinge in der Welt umher und bekümmerte sich gar nicht darum ob ein Wirthshaus gut oder schlecht und ob etwas darin zu finden war, oder nicht. Wenn es ihm gefiel, so kehrte er gar nicht ein, sondern im Felde, im Wald, auf einer Wiese, wo er Lust hatte, nahm er sein Tischchen vom Rücken, stellte es vor sich und sprach „deck dich,“ so war alles da, was sein Herz begehrte. Endlich kam es ihm in den Sinn, er wollte zu seinem Vater zurückkehren, sein Zorn würde sich gelegt haben, und mit dem Tischchen deck dich würde er ihn gerne wieder aufnehmen. Es trug sich zu, daß er auf dem Heimweg Abends in ein Wirthshaus kam, das mit Gästen angefüllt war: sie hießen ihn willkommen und luden ihn ein sich zu ihnen zu setzen und mit ihnen zu essen, sonst würde er schwerlich noch etwas bekommen. „Nein,“ antwortete der Schreiner, „die paar Bissen will ich euch nicht vor dem Munde nehmen, lieber sollt ihr meine Gäste sein.“ Sie lachten und meinten er triebe seinen Spaß mit ihnen. Er aber stellte sein hölzernes Tischchen mitten in die Stube und sprach „Tischchen, deck dich.“ Augenblicklich war es mit Speisen besetzt, so gut wie sie der Wirth nicht hätte herbeischaffen können, und wovon der Geruch den Gästen lieblich in die Nase stieg. „Zugegriffen, liebe Freunde,“ sprach der Schreiner, und die Gäste, als sie sahen wie es gemeint war, ließen sich nicht zweimal bitten, rückten heran, zogen ihre Messer und griffen tapfer zu. Und was sie am meisten verwunderte, wenn eine Schüssel leer geworden war, so stellte sich gleich von selbst eine volle an ihren Platz. Der Wirth stand in einer Ecke und sah dem Dinge zu; er wußte gar nicht was er sagen sollte, dachte aber „einen solchen Koch könntest du in deiner Wirthschaft wohl brauchen.“ Der Schreiner und seine Gesellschaft waren lustig bis in die späte Nacht, endlich legten sie sich schlafen, und der junge Geselle gieng auch zu Bett und stellte sein Wünschtischchen an die Wand. Dem Wirthe aber ließen seine Gedanken keine Ruhe, es fiel ihm ein daß in seiner Rumpelkammer ein altes Tischchen stände, das gerade so aussähe: das holte er ganz sachte herbei und vertauschte es mit dem Wünschtischchen. Am andern Morgen zahlte der Schreiner sein Schlafgeld, packte sein Tischchen auf, dachte gar nicht daran daß er ein falsches hätte und gieng seiner Wege. Zu Mittag kam er bei seinem Vater an, der ihn mit großer Freude empfieng. „Nun, mein lieber Sohn, was hast du gelernt?“ sagte er zu ihm. „Vater, ich bin ein Schreiner geworden.“ „Ein gutes Handwerk,“ erwiederte der Alte, „aber was hast du von deiner Wanderschaft mitgebracht?“ „Vater, das beste, was ich mitgebracht habe, ist das Tischchen.“ Der Schneider betrachtete es von allen Seiten und sagte „daran hast du kein Meisterstück gemacht, das ist ein altes und schlechtes Tischchen.“ „Aber es ist ein Tischchen deck dich,“ antwortete der Sohn, „wenn ich es hinstelle, und sage ihm es sollte sich decken, so stehen gleich die schönsten Gerichte darauf und ein Wein dabei, der das Herz erfreut. Ladet nur alle Verwandte und Freunde ein, die sollen sich einmal laben und erquicken, denn das Tischchen macht sie alle satt.“ Als die Gesellschaft beisammen war, stellte er sein Tischchen mitten in die Stube und sprach „Tischchen, deck dich.“ Aber das Tischchen regte sich nicht und blieb so leer wie ein anderer Tisch, der die Sprache nicht versteht. Da merkte der arme Geselle daß ihm das Tischchen vertauscht war, und schämte sich daß er wie ein Lügner da stand. Die Verwandten aber lachten ihn aus, und mußten ungetrunken und ungegessen wieder heim wandern. Der Vater holte seine Lappen wieder herbei und schneiderte fort, der Sohn aber gieng bei einem Meister in die Arbeit.
Der zweite Sohn war zu einem Müller gekommen und bei ihm in die Lehre gegangen. Als er seine Jahre herum hatte, sprach der Meister „weil du dich so wohl gehalten hast, so schenke ich dir einen Esel von einer besondern Art, er zieht nicht am Wagen und trägt auch keine Säcke.“ „Wozu ist er denn nütze?“ fragte der junge Geselle. „Er speit Gold,“ antwortete der Müller, „wenn du ihn auf ein Tuch stellst und sprichst „Bricklebrit,“ so speit dir das gute Thier Goldstücke aus, hinten und vorn.“ „Das ist eine schöne Sache,“ sprach der Geselle, dankte dem Meister und zog in die Welt. Wenn er Gold nöthig hatte, brauchte er nur zu seinem Esel „Bricklebrit“ zu sagen, so regnete es Goldstücke, und er hatte weiter keine Mühe als sie von der Erde aufzuheben. Wo er hinkam, war ihm das beste gut genug, und je theurer je lieber, denn er hatte immer einen vollen Beutel. Als er sich eine Zeit lang in der Welt umgesehen hatte, dachte er „du mußt deinen Vater aufsuchen, wenn du mit dem Goldesel kommst, so wird er seinen Zorn vergessen und dich gut aufnehmen.“ Es trug sich zu, daß er in dasselbe Wirthshaus gerieth, in welchem seinem Bruder das Tischchen vertauscht war. Er führte seinen Esel an der Hand, und der Wirth wollte ihm das Thier abnehmen und anbinden, der junge Geselle aber sprach „gebt euch keine Mühe, meinen Grauschimmel führe ich selbst in den Stall und binde ihn auch selbst an, denn ich muß wissen wo er steht.“ Dem Wirth kam das wunderlich vor, und er meinte einer, der seinen Esel selbst besorgen müßte, hätte nicht viel zu verzehren: als aber der Fremde in die Tasche griff, zwei Goldstücke heraus holte und sagte er sollte nur etwas gutes für ihn einkaufen, so machte er große Augen, lief und suchte das beste, das er auftreiben konnte. Nach der Mahlzeit fragte der Gast was er schuldig wäre, der Wirth wollte die doppelte Kreide nicht sparen und sagte noch ein paar Goldstücke müßte er zulegen. Der Geselle griff in die Tasche, aber sein Gold war eben zu Ende. „Wartet einen Augenblick, Herr Wirth,“ sprach er, „ich will nur gehen und Gold holen;“ nahm aber das Tischtuch mit. Der Wirth wußte nicht was das heißen sollte, war neugierig, schlich ihm nach, und da der Gast die Stallthüre zuriegelte, so guckte er durch ein Astloch. Der Fremde breitete unter dem Esel das Tuch aus, rief „Bricklebrit,“ und augenblicklich fieng das Thier an Gold zu speien von hinten und vorn, daß es ordentlich auf die Erde herabregnete. „Ei der tausend,“ sagte der Wirth, „da sind die Ducaten bald geprägt! so ein Geldbeutel ist nicht übel!“ Der Gast bezahlte seine Zeche und legte sich schlafen, der Wirth aber schlich in der Nacht herab in den Stall, führte den Münzmeister weg und band einen andern Esel an seine Stelle. Den folgenden Morgen in der Frühe zog der Geselle mit seinem Esel ab und meinte er hätte seinen Goldesel. Mittags kam er bei seinem Vater an, der sich freute als er ihn wiedersah und ihn gerne aufnahm. „Was ist aus dir geworden, mein Sohn?“ fragte der Alte. „Ein Müller, lieber Vater,“ antwortete er. „Was hast du von deiner Wanderschaft mitgebracht?“ „Weiter nichts als einen Esel.“ „Esel gibts hier genug,“ sagte der Vater, „da wäre mir doch eine gute Ziege lieber gewesen.“ „Ja,“ antwortete der Sohn, „aber es ist kein gemeiner Esel, sondern ein Goldesel: wenn ich sage „Bricklebrit,“ so speit euch das gute Thier ein ganzes Tuch voll Goldstücke. Laßt nur alle Verwandte herbei rufen, ich mache sie alle zu reichen Leuten.“ „Das laß ich mir gefallen,“ sagte der Schneider, „dann brauch ich mich mit der Nadel nicht weiter zu quälen,“ sprang selbst fort, und rief die Verwandten herbei. Sobald sie beisammen waren, hieß sie der Müller Platz machen, breitete sein Tuch aus, und brachte den Esel in die Stube. „Jetzt gebt acht“ sagte er und rief „Bricklebrit,“ aber es waren keine Goldstücke was herabfiel, und es zeigte sich, daß das Thier nichts von der Kunst verstand, denn es bringts nicht jeder Esel so weit. Da machte der arme Müller ein langes Gesicht, sah daß er betrogen war und bat die Verwandten um Verzeihung, die so arm heim giengen, als sie gekommen waren. Es blieb nichts übrig, der Alte mußte wieder nach der Nadel greifen, und der Junge sich bei einem Müller verdingen.
Der dritte Bruder war zu einem Drechsler in die Lehre gegangen, und weil es ein kunstreiches Handwerk ist, mußte er am längsten lernen. Seine Brüder aber meldeten ihm in einem Briefe wie schlimm es ihnen ergangen wäre, und wie sie der Wirth noch am letzten Abende um ihre schönen Wünschdinge gebracht hätte. Als der Drechsler nun ausgelernt hatte und wandern sollte, so schenkte ihm sein Meister, weil er sich so wohl gehalten, einen Sack, und sagte „es liegt ein Knüppel darin.“ „Den Sack kann ich umhängen, und er kann mir gute Dienste leisten, aber was soll der Knüppel darin? der macht ihn nur schwer.“ „Das will ich dir sagen,“ antwortete der Meister, „hat dir jemand etwas zu leid gethan, so sprich nur „Knüppel, aus dem Sack,“ so springt dir der Knüppel heraus unter die Leute und tanzt ihnen so lustig auf dem Rücken herum, daß sie sich acht Tage lang nicht regen und bewegen können; und eher läßt er nicht ab als bis du sagst: „Knüppel, in den Sack.“ Der Gesell dankte ihm, hieng den Sack um, und wenn ihm jemand zu nahe kam und auf den Leib wollte, so sprach er „Knüppel, aus dem Sack,“ alsbald sprang der Knüppel heraus und klopfte einem nach dem andern den Rock oder Wams gleich auf dem Rücken aus, und wartete nicht erst bis er ihn ausgezogen hatte; und das gieng so geschwind, daß eh sichs einer versah die Reihe schon an ihm war. Der junge Drechsler langte zur Abendzeit in dem Wirthshaus an, wo seine Brüder waren betrogen worden. Er legte seinen Ranzen vor sich auf den Tisch und fieng an zu erzählen was er alles merkwürdiges in der Welt gesehen habe. „Ja,“ sagte er, „man findet wohl ein Tischchen deck dich, einen Goldesel und dergleichen: lauter gute Dinge, die ich nicht verachte, aber das ist alles nichts gegen den Schatz, den ich mir erworben habe und mit mir da in meinem Sack führe.“ Der Wirth spitzte die Ohren: „was in aller Welt mag das sein?“ dachte er „der Sack ist wohl mit lauter Edelsteinen angefüllt; den sollte ich billig auch noch haben, denn aller guten Dinge sind drei.“ Als Schlafenszeit war, streckte sich der Gast auf die Bank und legte seinen Sack als Kopfkissen unter. Der Wirth als er meinte der Gast läge in tiefem Schlaf, gieng herbei, rückte und zog ganz sachte und vorsichtig an dem Sack, ob er ihn vielleicht wegziehen und einen andern unterlegen könnte. Der Drechsler aber hatte schon lange darauf gewartet, wie nun der Wirth eben einen herzhaften Ruck thun wollte, rief er „Knüppel, aus dem Sack.“ Alsbald fuhr das Knüppelchen heraus, dem Wirth auf den Leib, und rieb ihm die Nähte daß es eine Art hatte. Der Wirth schrie zum Erbarmen, aber je lauter er schrie, desto kräftiger schlug der Knüppel ihm den Tact dazu auf dem Rücken, bis er endlich erschöpft zur Erde fiel. Da sprach der Drechsler „wo du das Tischchen deck dich und den Goldesel nicht wieder heraus gibst, so soll der Tanz von neuem angehen.“ „Ach nein,“ rief der Wirth ganz kleinlaut, „ich gebe alles gerne wieder heraus, laßt nur den verwünschten Kobold wieder in den Sack kriechen.“ Da sprach der Geselle „ich will Gnade für Recht ergehen lassen, aber hüte dich vor Schaden!“ dann rief er „Knüppel, in den Sack!“ und ließ ihn ruhen.
Der Drechsler zog am andern Morgen mit dem Tischchen deck dich und dem Goldesel heim zu seinem Vater. Der Schneider freute sich als er ihn wieder sah, und fragte auch ihn was er in der Fremde gelernt hätte. „Lieber Vater,“ antwortete er, „ich bin ein Drechsler geworden.“ „Ein kunstreiches Handwerk,“ sagte der Vater, „was hast du von der Wanderschaft mitgebracht?“ „Ein kostbares Stück, lieber Vater,“ antwortete der Sohn, „einen Knüppel in dem Sack.“ „Was!“ rief der Vater, „einen Knüppel! das ist der Mühe werth! den kannst du dir von jedem Baume abhauen.“ „Aber einen solchen nicht, lieber Vater: sage ich „Knüppel, aus dem Sack,“ so springt der Knüppel heraus und macht mit dem, der es nicht gut mit mir meint, einen schlimmen Tanz, und läßt nicht eher nach als bis er auf der Erde liegt und um gut Wetter bittet. Seht ihr, mit diesem Knüppel habe ich das Tischchen deck dich und den Goldesel wieder herbei geschafft, die der diebische Wirth meinen Brüdern abgenommen hatte. Jetzt laßt sie beide rufen und ladet alle Verwandten ein, ich will sie speisen und tränken und will ihnen die Taschen noch mit Gold füllen.“ Der alte Schneider wollte nicht recht trauen, brachte aber doch die Verwandten zusammen. Da deckte der Drechsler ein Tuch in die Stube, führte den Goldesel herein und sagte zu seinem Bruder „nun, lieber Bruder, sprich mit ihm.“ Der Müller sagte „Bricklebrit,“ und augenblicklich sprangen die Goldstücke auf das Tuch herab, als käme ein Platzregen, und der Esel hörte nicht eher auf als bis alle so viel hatten, daß sie nicht mehr tragen konnten. (Ich sehe dirs an, du wärst auch gerne dabei gewesen.) Dann holte der Drechsler das Tischchen und sagte „lieber Bruder, nun sprich mit ihm.“ Und kaum hatte der Schreiner „Tischchen deck dich“ gesagt, so war es gedeckt und mit den schönsten Schüsseln reichlich besetzt. Da ward eine Mahlzeit gehalten, wie der gute Schneider noch keine in seinem Hause erlebt hatte, und die ganze Verwandtschaft blieb beisammen bis in die Nacht, und waren alle lustig und vergnügt. Der Schneider verschloß Nadel und Zwirn, Elle und Bügeleisen in einen Schrank, und lebte mit seinen drei Söhnen in Freude und Herrlichkeit.
Wo ist aber die Ziege hingekommen, die Schuld war daß der Schneider seine drei Söhne fortjagte? Das will ich dir sagen. Sie schämte sich daß sie einen kahlen Kopf hatte, lief in eine Fuchshöhle und verkroch sich hinein. Als der Fuchs nach Haus kam, funkelten ihm ein paar große Augen aus der Dunkelheit entgegen, daß er erschrack und wieder zurücklief. Der Bär begegnete ihm, und da der Fuchs ganz verstört aussah, so sprach er „was ist dir, Bruder Fuchs, was machst du für ein Gesicht?“ „Ach,“ antwortete der Rothe, „ein grimmig Thier sitzt in meiner Höhle und hat mich mit feurigen Augen angeglotzt.“ „Das wollen wir bald austreiben,“ sprach der Bär, gieng mit zu der Höhle und schaute hinein; als er aber die feurigen Augen erblickte, wandelte ihn ebenfalls Furcht an: er wollte mit dem grimmigen Thiere nichts zu thun haben und nahm Reißaus. Die Biene begegnete ihm, und da sie merkte daß es ihm in seiner Haut nicht wohl zu Muthe war, sprach sie „Bär, du machst ja ein gewaltig verdrießlich Gesicht, wo ist deine Lustigkeit geblieben?“ „Du hast gut reden,“ antwortete der Bär, „es sitzt ein grimmiges Thier mit Glotzaugen in dem Hause des Rothen, und wir können es nicht herausjagen.“ Die Biene sprach „du dauerst mich, Bär, ich bin ein armes schwaches Geschöpf, das ihr im Wege nicht anguckt, aber ich glaube doch daß ich euch helfen kann.“ Sie flog in die Fuchshöhle, setzte sich der Ziege auf den glatten geschorenen Kopf, und stach sie so gewaltig, daß sie aufsprang, „meh! meh!“ schrie, und wie toll in die Welt hineinlief; und weiß niemand auf diese Stunde wo sie hingelaufen ist. Es war einmal eine alte Geis, die hatte sieben junge Geislein, und hatte sie lieb, wie eine Mutter ihre Kinder lieb hat. Eines Tages wollte sie in den Wald gehen und Futter holen, da rief sie alle sieben herbei und sprach „liebe Kinder, ich will hinaus in den Wald, seid auf eurer Hut vor dem Wolf, wenn er herein kommt, so frißt er Euch alle mit Haut und Haar. Der Bösewicht verstellt sich oft, aber an seiner rauhen Stimme und an seinen schwarzen Füßen werdet ihr ihn gleich erkennen.“ Die Geislein sagten, „liebe Mutter, wir wollen uns schon in Acht nehmen, Ihr könnt ohne Sorge fortgehen.“ Da meckerte die Alte und machte sich getrost auf den Weg.
Es dauerte nicht lange, so klopfte jemand an die Hausthür und rief „macht auf, ihr lieben Kinder, eure Mutter ist da und hat jedem von Euch etwas mitgebracht.“ Aber die Geiserchen hörten an der rauhen Stimme daß es der Wolf war, „wir machen nicht auf,“ riefen sie, „du bist unsere Mutter nicht, die hat eine feine und liebliche Stimme, aber deine Stimme ist rauh; du bist der Wolf.“ Da gieng der Wolf fort zu einem Krämer, und kaufte sich ein großes Stück Kreide: die aß er und machte damit seine Stimme fein. Dann kam er zurück, klopfte an die Hausthür und rief „macht auf, ihr lieben Kinder, eure Mutter ist da und hat jedem von Euch etwas mitgebracht.“ Aber der Wolf hatte seine schwarze Pfote in das Fenster gelegt, das sahen die Kinder und riefen „wir machen nicht auf, unsere Mutter hat keinen schwarzen Fuß, wie du: du bist der Wolf.“ Da lief der Wolf zu einem Bäcker und sprach „ich habe mich an den Fuß gestoßen, streich mir Teig darüber.“ Und als ihm der Bäcker die Pfote bestrichen hatte, so lief er zum Müller und sprach „streu mir weißes Mehl auf meine Pfote.“ Der Müller dachte „der Wolf will einen betrügen“ und weigerte sich, aber der Wolf sprach „wenn du es nicht thust, so fresse ich dich.“ Da fürchtete sich der Müller und machte ihm die Pfote weiß. Ja, das sind die Menschen.
Nun gieng der Bösewicht zum drittenmal zu der Hausthüre, klopfte an und sprach „macht mir auf, Kinder, euer liebes Mütterchen ist heim gekommen und hat jedem von Euch etwas aus dem Walde mitgebracht.“ Die Geiserchen riefen „zeig uns erst deine Pfote, damit wir wissen daß du unser liebes Mütterchen bist.“ Da legte er die Pfote ins Fenster, und als sie sahen daß sie weiß war, so glaubten sie es wäre alles wahr, was er sagte, und machten die Thüre auf. Wer aber hereinkam, das war der Wolf. Sie erschraken und wollten sich verstecken. Das eine sprang unter den Tisch, das zweite ins Bett, das dritte in den Ofen, das vierte in die Küche, das fünfte in den Schrank, das sechste unter die Waschschüssel, das siebente in den Kasten der Wanduhr. Aber der Wolf fand sie alle und machte nicht langes Federlesen: eins nach dem andern schluckte er in seinen Rachen; nur das jüngste in dem Uhrkasten das fand er nicht. Als der Wolf seine Lust gebüßt hatte, trollte er sich fort, legte sich draußen auf der grünen Wiese unter einen Baum und fieng an zu schlafen.
Nicht lange danach kam die alte Geis aus dem Walde wieder heim. Ach, was mußte sie da erblicken! Die Hausthüre stand sperrweit auf: Tisch, Stühle und Bänke waren umgeworfen, die Waschschüssel lag in Scherben, Decke und Kissen waren aus dem Bett gezogen. Sie suchte ihre Kinder, aber nirgend waren sie zu finden. Sie rief sie nacheinander bei Namen, aber niemand antwortete. Endlich als sie an das jüngste kam, da rief eine feine Stimme „liebe Mutter, ich stecke im Uhrkasten.“ Sie holte es heraus, und es erzählte ihr daß der Wolf gekommen wäre und die andern alle gefressen hätte. Da könnt ihr denken wie sie über ihre armen Kinder geweint hat.
Endlich gieng sie in ihrem Jammer hinaus, und das jüngste Geislein lief mit. Als sie auf die Wiese kam, so lag da der Wolf an dem Baum und schnarchte daß die Äste zitterten. Sie betrachtete ihn von allen Seiten, und sah daß in seinem angefüllten Bauch sich etwas regte und zappelte. „Ach Gott,“ dachte sie, „sollten meine armen Kinder, die er zum Abendbrot hinunter gewürgt hat, noch am Leben sein?“ Da mußte das Geislein nach Haus laufen und Scheere, Nadel und Zwirn holen. Dann schnitt sie dem Ungethüm den Wanst auf, und kaum hatte sie einen Schnitt gethan, so streckte schon ein Geislein den Kopf heraus, und als sie weiter schnitt, so sprangen nacheinander alle sechse heraus, und waren noch alle am Leben, und hatten nicht einmal Schaden gelitten, denn das Ungethüm hatte sie in der Gier ganz hinunter geschluckt. Das war eine Freude! Da herzten sie ihre liebe Mutter, und hüpften wie ein Schneider, der Hochzeit hält. Die Alte aber sagte „jetzt geht und sucht Wackersteine, damit wollen wir dem gottlosen Thier den Bauch füllen, so lange es noch im Schlafe liegt.“ Da schleppten die sieben Geiserchen in aller Eile die Steine herbei und steckten sie ihm in den Bauch, so viel sie hinein bringen konnten. Dann nähte ihn die Alte in aller Geschwindigkeit wieder zu, daß er nichts merkte und sich nicht einmal regte.
Als der Wolf endlich ausgeschlafen hatte, machte er sich auf die Beine, und weil ihm die Steine im Magen so großen Durst erregten, so wollte er zu einem Brunnen gehen und trinken. Als er aber anfieng zu gehen und sich hin und her zu bewegen, so stießen die Steine in seinem Bauch aneinander und rappelten. Da rief er
„was rumpelt und pumpelt
in meinem Bauch herum?
ich meinte es wären sechs Geislein,
so sinds lauter Wackerstein.“
Und als er an den Brunnen kam und sich über das Wasser bückte und trinken wollte, da zogen ihn die schweren Steine hinein, und er mußte jämmerlich ersaufen. Als die sieben Geislein das sahen, da kamen sie herbei gelaufen, riefen laut „der Wolf ist todt! der Wolf ist todt!“ und tanzten mit ihrer Mutter vor Freude um den Brunnen herum. Ein Bauer, der hatte seine Kuh auf den Markt getrieben und für sieben Thaler verkauft. Auf dem Heimweg mußte er an einem Teich vorbei, und da hörte er schon von weitem wie die Frösche riefen „ak, ak, ak, ak.“ „Ja,“ sprach er für sich, „die schreien auch ins Haberfeld hinein: sieben sinds, die ich gelöst habe, keine acht.“ Als er zu dem Wasser heran kam, rief er ihnen zu „dummes Vieh, das ihr seid! wißt ihrs nicht besser? sieben Thaler sinds und keine acht.“ Die Frösche blieben aber bei ihrem „ak, ak, ak, ak.“ „Nun, wenn ihrs nicht glauben wollt, ich kanns euch vorzählen,“ holte das Geld aus der Tasche und zählte die sieben Thaler ab, immer vierundzwanzig Groschen auf einen. Die Frösche kehrten sich aber nicht an seine Rechnung und riefen abermals „ak, ak, ak, ak.“ „Ei,“ rief der Bauer ganz bös, „wollt ihrs besser wissen als ich, so zählt selber,“ und warf ihnen das Geld miteinander ins Wasser hinein. Er blieb stehen und wollte warten bis sie fertig wären und ihm das Seinige wieder brächten, aber die Frösche beharrten auf ihrem Sinn, schrien immerfort „ak, ak, ak, ak“, und warfen auch das Geld nicht wieder heraus. Er wartete noch eine gute Weile, bis der Abend anbrach, und er nach Haus mußte, da schimpfte er die Frösche aus und rief „ihr Wasserpatscher, ihr Dickköpfe, ihr Klotzaugen, ein groß Maul habt ihr und könnt schreien daß einem die Ohren weh thun, aber sieben Thaler könnt ihr nicht zählen: meint ihr, ich wollte da stehen bis ihr fertig wärt?“ Damit gieng er fort, aber die Frösche riefen noch „ak, ak, ak, ak“ hinter ihm her, daß er ganz verdrießlich heim kam. Über eine Zeit erhandelte er sich wieder eine Kuh, die schlachtete er, und machte die Rechnung, wenn er das Fleisch gut verkaufte, könnte er so viel lösen, als die beiden Kühe werth wären, und das Fell hätte er obendrein. Als er nun mit dem Fleisch zu der Stadt kam, war vor dem Thore ein ganzes Rudel Hunde zusammengelaufen, voran ein großer Windhund: der sprang um das Fleisch, schnupperte und bellte „was, was, was, was.“ Als er gar nicht aufhören wollte, sprach der Bauer zu ihm „ja, ich merke wohl, du sagst „was, was,“ weil du etwas von dem Fleisch verlangst, da sollt ich aber schön ankommen, wenn ich dirs geben wollte.“ Der Hund antwortete nichts als „was, was.“ „Willst dus auch nicht wegfressen und für deine Kameraden da gut stehen?“ „Was, was“ sprach der Hund. „Nun, wenn du dabei beharrst, so will ich dirs lassen, ich kenne dich wohl und weiß bei wem du dienst: aber das sage ich dir, in drei Tagen muß ich mein Geld haben, sonst geht dirs schlimm: du kannst mirs nur hinausbringen.“ Darauf lud er das Fleisch ab und kehrte wieder um: die Hunde machten sich darüber her und bellten laut „was, was.“ Der Bauer, der es von weitem hörte, sprach zu sich „horch, jetzt verlangen sie alle was, aber der große muß mir einstehen.“
Als drei Tage herum waren, dachte der Bauer „heute Abend hast du dein Geld in der Tasche“ und war ganz vergnügt. Aber es wollte niemand kommen und auszahlen. „Es ist kein Verlaß mehr auf jemand,“ sprach er, und endlich riß ihm die Geduld, daß er in die Stadt zu dem Fleischer gieng und sein Geld forderte. Der Fleischer meinte, es wäre ein Spaß, aber der Bauer sagte „Spaß beiseite, ich will mein Geld: hat der große Hund euch nicht die ganze geschlachtete Kuh vor drei Tagen heim gebracht?“ Da ward der Fleischer zornig, griff nach einem Besenstiel und jagte ihn hinaus. „Wart,“ sprach der Bauer, „es gibt noch Gerechtigkeit auf der Welt!“ und gieng in das königliche Schloß und bat sich Gehör aus. Er ward vor den König geführt, der da saß mit seiner Tochter und fragte was ihm für ein Leid wiederfahren wäre? „Ach,“ sagte er, „die Frösche und die Hunde haben mir das Meinige genommen, und der Metzger hat mich dafür mit dem Stock bezahlt,“ und erzählte weitläufig wie es zugegangen war. Darüber fieng die Königstochter laut an zu lachen, und der König sprach zu ihm „Recht kann ich dir hier nicht geben, aber dafür sollst du meine Tochter zur Frau haben: ihr Lebtag hat sie noch nicht gelacht, als eben über dich, und ich habe sie dem versprochen, der sie zum Lachen brächte. Du kannst Gott für dein Glück danken.“ „O,“ antwortete der Bauer, „ich will sie gar nicht: ich habe daheim nur eine einzige Frau, und die ist mir schon zuviel: wenn ich nach Haus komme, so ist mir nicht anders als ob in jedem Winkel eine stände.“ Da ward der König zornig und sagte „du bist ein Grobian.“ „Ach, Herr König,“ antwortete der Bauer, „was könnt Ihr von einem Ochsen anders erwarten, als Rindfleisch!“ „Warte,“ erwiederte der König, „du sollst einen andern Lohn haben. Jetzt pack dich fort, aber in drei Tagen komm wieder, so sollen dir fünfhundert vollgezählt werden.“
Wie der Bauer hinaus vor die Thür kam, sprach die Schildwache „du hast die Königstochter zum Lachen gebracht, da wirst du was rechtes bekommen haben.“ „Ja, das mein ich,“ antwortete der Bauer, „fünfhundert werden mir ausgezahlt.“ „Hör,“ sprach der Soldat, „gib mir etwas davon: was willst du mit all dem Geld anfangen!“ „Weil dus bist,“ sprach der Bauer, „so sollst du zweihundert haben, melde dich in drei Tagen beim König, und laß dirs aufzählen.“ Ein Jude, der in der Nähe gestanden und das Gespräch mit angehört hatte, lief dem Bauer nach, hielt ihn beim Rock und sprach „Gotteswunder, was seid ihr ein Glückskind! ich wills euch wechseln, ich wills euch umsetzen in Scheidemünz, was wollt ihr mit den harten Thalern?“ „Mauschel,“ sagte der Bauer, „dreihundert kannst du noch haben, gib mirs gleich in Münze, heut über drei Tage wirst du dafür beim König bezahlt werden.“ Der Jude freute sich über das Profitchen und brachte die Summe in schlechten Groschen, wo drei so viel werth sind als zwei gute. Nach Verlauf der drei Tage gieng der Bauer, dem Befehl des Königs gemäß, vor den König. „Zieht ihm den Rock aus,“ sprach dieser, „er soll seine fünfhundert haben.“ „Ach,“ sagte der Bauer, „sie gehören nicht mehr mein, zweihundert habe ich an die Schildwache verschenkt, und dreihundert hat mir der Jude eingewechselt, von Rechtswegen gebührt mir gar nichts.“ Indem kam der Soldat und der Jude herein, verlangten das Ihrige, das sie dem Bauer abgewonnen hätten, und erhielten die Schläge richtig zugemessen. Der Soldat ertrugs geduldig und wußte schon wies schmeckte: der Jude aber that jämmerlich, „au weih geschrien! sind das die harten Thaler?“ Der König mußte über den Bauer lachen, und da aller Zorn verschwunden war, sprach er, „weil du deinen Lohn schon verloren hast, bevor er dir zu Theil ward, so will ich dir einen Ersatz geben: geh in meine Schatzkammer und hol dir Geld, so viel du willst.“ Der Bauer ließ sich das nicht zweimal sagen, und füllte in seine weiten Taschen was nur hinein wollte. Danach gieng er ins Wirthshaus und überzählte sein Geld. Der Jude war ihm nachgeschlichen und hörte wie er mit sich allein brummte „nun hat mich der Spitzbube von König doch hinters Licht geführt! hätte er mir nicht selbst das Geld geben können, so wüßte ich was ich hätte, wie kann ich nun wissen ob das richtig ist was ich so auf gut Glück eingesteckt habe!“ „Gott bewahre,“ sprach der Jude für sich, „der spricht despectirlich von unserm Herrn, ich lauf und gebs an, da krieg ich eine Belohnung, und er wird obendrein noch bestraft.“ Als der König von den Reden des Bauern hörte, gerieth er in Zorn und hieß den Juden hingehen und den Sünder herbeiholen. Der Jude lief zum Bauer, „ihr sollt gleich zum Herrn König kommen, wie ihr geht und steht.“ „Ich weiß besser, was sich schickt,“ antwortete der Bauer, „erst laß ich mir einen neuen Rock machen; meinst du ein Mann, der so viel Geld in der Tasche hat, sollte in dem alten Lumpenrock hingehen?“ Der Jude, als er sah daß der Bauer ohne einen andern Rock nicht wegzubringen war, und weil er fürchtete wenn der Zorn des Königs verraucht wäre, so käme er um seine Belohnung und der Bauer um seine Strafe, so sprach er „ich will euch für die kurze Zeit einen schönen Rock leihen aus bloßer Freundschaft; was thut der Mensch nicht alles aus Liebe!“ Der Bauer ließ sich das gefallen, zog den Rock vom Juden an und gieng mit ihm fort. Der König hielt dem Bauer die bösen Reden vor, die der Jude hinterbracht hatte. „Ach,“ sprach der Bauer, „was ein Jude sagt ist immer gelogen, dem geht kein wahres Wort aus dem Munde; der Kerl da ist im Stand und behauptet ich hätte seinen Rock an.“ „Was soll mir das?“ schrie der Jude, „ist der Rock nicht mein? hab ich ihn euch nicht aus bloßer Freundschaft geborgt, damit ihr vor den Herrn König treten konntet?“ Wie der König das hörte, sprach er „einen hat der Jude gewiß betrogen, mich oder den Bauer,“ und ließ ihm noch etwas in harten Thalern nachzahlen. Der Bauer aber gieng in dem guten Rock und mit dem guten Geld in der Tasche heim und sprach „diesmal hab ichs getroffen.“ König Drosselbart
Ein König hatte eine Tochter, die war über alle Maßen schön, aber dabei so stolz und übermüthig, daß ihr kein Freier gut genug war. Sie wies einen nach dem andern ab, und trieb noch dazu Spott mit ihnen. Einmal ließ der König ein großes Fest anstellen, und ladete dazu aus der Nähe und Ferne die heirathslustigen Männer ein. Sie wurden alle in eine Reihe nach Rang und Stand geordnet; erst kamen die Könige, dann die Herzöge, die Fürsten, Grafen und Freiherrn, zuletzt die Edelleute. Nun ward die Königstochter durch die Reihen geführt, aber an jedem hatte sie etwas auszusetzen. Der eine war ihr zu dick, „das Weinfaß!“ sprach sie. Der andere zu lang, „lang und schwank hat keinen Gang.“ Der dritte zu kurz, „kurz und dick hat kein Geschick.“ Der vierte zu blaß, „der bleiche Tod!“ der fünfte zu roth, „der Zinshahn!“ der sechste war nicht gerad genug, „grünes Holz, hinterm Ofen getrocknet!“ Und so hatte sie an einem jeden etwas auszusetzen, besonders aber machte sie sich über einen guten König lustig, der ganz oben stand, und dem das Kinn ein wenig krumm gewachsen war. „Ei,“ rief sie und lachte, „der hat ein Kinn, wie die Drossel einen Schnabel;“ und seit der Zeit bekam er den Namen Drosselbart. Der alte König aber, als er sah daß seine Tochter nichts that als über die Leute spotten, und alle Freier, die da versammelt waren, verschmähte, ward er zornig und schwur, sie sollte den ersten besten Bettler zum Manne nehmen, der vor seine Thüre käme.
Ein paar Tage darauf hub ein Spielmann an unter dem Fenster zu singen, um damit ein geringes Almosen zu verdienen. Als es der König hörte, sprach er „laßt ihn herauf kommen.“ Da trat der Spielmann in seinen schmutzigen verlumpten Kleidern herein, sang vor dem König und seiner Tochter, und bat, als er fertig war, um eine milde Gabe. Der König sprach „dein Gesang hat mir so wohl gefallen, daß ich dir meine Tochter da zur Frau geben will.“ Die Königstochter erschrack, aber der König sagte „ich habe den Eid gethan, dich dem ersten besten Bettelmann zu geben, den will ich auch halten.“ Es half keine Einrede, der Pfarrer ward geholt, und sie mußte sich gleich mit dem Spielmann trauen lassen. Als das geschehen war, sprach der König, „nun schickt sichs nicht, daß du als ein Bettelweib noch länger in meinem Schloß bleibst, du kannst nur mit deinem Manne fortziehen.“
Der Bettelmann führte sie an der Hand hinaus, und sie mußte mit ihm zu Fuß fort gehen. Als sie in einen großen Wald kamen, da fragte sie
„ach, wem gehört der schöne Wald?“
„Der gehört dem König Drosselbart;
hättst du’n genommen, so wär er dein.“
„Ich arme Jungfer zart,
ach, hätt ich genommen den König Drosselbart!“
Darauf kamen sie über eine Wiese, da fragte sie wieder
„wem gehört die schöne grüne Wiese?“
„Sie gehört dem König Drosselbart;
hättst du’n genommen, so wär sie dein.“
„Ich arme Jungfer zart,
ach, hätt ich genommen den König Drosselbart!“
Dann kamen sie durch eine große Stadt, da fragte sie wieder
„wem gehört diese schöne große Stadt?“
„Sie gehört dem König Drosselbart;
hättst du’n genommen, so wär sie dein.“
„Ich arme Jungfer zart,
ach, hätt ich genommen den König Drosselbart!“
„Es gefällt mir gar nicht,“ sprach der Spielmann, „daß du dir immer einen andern zum Mann wünschest: bin ich dir nicht gut genug?“ Endlich kamen sie an ein ganz kleines Häuschen, da sprach sie
„ach, Gott, was ist das Haus so klein!
wem mag das elende winzige Häuschen sein?“
Der Spielmann antwortete „das ist mein und dein Haus, wo wir zusammen wohnen.“ Sie mußte sich bücken, damit sie zu der niedrigen Thür hinein kam. „Wo sind die Diener?“ sprach die Königstochter. „Was Diener!“ antwortete der Bettelmann, „du mußt selber thun was du willst gethan haben. Mach nur gleich Feuer an und stell Wasser auf, daß du mir mein Essen kochst; ich bin ganz müde.“ Die Königstochter verstand aber nichts vom Feueranmachen und Kochen, und der Bettelmann mußte selber mit Hand anlegen, daß es noch so leidlich gieng. Als sie die schmale Kost verzehrt hatten, legten sie sich zu Bett: aber am Morgen trieb er sie schon ganz früh heraus, weil sie das Haus besorgen sollte. Ein paar Tage lebten sie auf diese Art schlecht und recht, und zehrten ihren Vorrath auf. Da sprach der Mann „Frau, so gehts nicht länger, daß wir hier zehren und nichts verdienen. Du sollst Körbe flechten.“ Er gieng aus, schnitt Weiden, und brachte sie heim: da fieng sie an zu flechten, aber die harten Weiden stachen ihr die zarten Hände wund. „Ich sehe das geht nicht,“ sprach der Mann, „spinn lieber, vielleicht kannst du das besser.“ Sie setzte sich hin, und versuchte zu spinnen, aber der harte Faden schnitt ihr bald in die weichen Finger, daß das Blut daran herunter lief. „Siehst du,“ sprach der Mann, „du taugst zu keiner Arbeit, mit dir bin ich schlimm angekommen. Nun will ichs versuchen, und einen Handel mit Töpfen und irdenem Geschirr anfangen: du sollst dich auf den Markt setzen, und die Waare feil halten.“ „Ach,“ dachte sie, „wenn auf den Markt Leute aus meines Vaters Reich kommen, und sehen mich da sitzen und feil halten, wie werden sie mich verspotten!“ Aber es half nichts, sie mußte sich fügen, wenn sie nicht Hungers sterben wollten. Das erstemal gings gut, denn die Leute kauften der Frau, weil sie schön war, gern ihre Waare ab, und bezahlten was sie forderte: ja, viele gaben ihr das Geld, und ließen ihr die Töpfe noch dazu. Nun lebten sie von dem erworbenen so lang es dauerte, da handelte der Mann wieder eine Menge neues Geschirr ein. Sie setzte sich damit an eine Ecke des Marktes, und stellte es um sich her, und hielt feil. Da kam plötzlich ein trunkener Husar daher gejagt, und ritt gerade zu in die Töpfe hinein, daß alles in tausend Scherben zersprang. Sie fieng an zu weinen und wußte vor Angst nicht was sie anfangen sollte. „Ach, wie wird mirs ergehen!“ rief sie, „was wird mein Mann dazu sagen!“ Sie lief heim und erzählte ihm das Unglück. „Wer setzt sich auch an die Ecke des Marktes mit irdenem Geschirr!“ sprach der Mann, „laß nur das Weinen, ich sehe wohl du bist zu keiner ordentlichen Arbeit zu gebrauchen. Da bin ich in unseres Königs Schloß gewesen und habe gefragt ob sie nicht eine Küchenmagd brauchen könnten, und sie haben mir versprochen sie wollten dich dazu nehmen; dafür bekommst du freies Essen.“
Nun ward die Königstochter eine Küchenmagd, mußte dem Koch zur Hand gehen und die sauerste Arbeit thun. Sie machte sich in beiden Taschen ein Töpfchen fest, darin brachte sie nach Haus was ihr von dem übrig gebliebenen zu Theil ward, und davon nährten sie sich. Es trug sich zu, daß die Hochzeit des ältesten Königssohnes sollte gefeiert werden, da gieng die arme Frau hinauf, stellte sich vor die Saalthüre und wollte zusehen. Als nun die Lichter angezündet waren, und immer einer schöner als der andere hereintrat, und alles voll Pracht und Herrlichkeit war, da dachte sie mit betrübtem Herzen an ihr Schicksal, und verwünschte ihren Stolz und Übermuth, der sie erniedrigt und in so große Armuth gestürzt hatte. Von den köstlichen Speisen, die da ein und ausgetragen wurden, und von welchen der Geruch zu ihr aufstieg, warfen ihr Diener manchmal ein paar Brocken zu, die that sie in ihr Töpfchen, und wollte es heim tragen. Auf einmal trat der Königssohn herein, war in Sammt und Seide gekleidet und hatte goldene Ketten um den Hals. Und als er die schöne Frau in der Thüre stehen sah, ergriff er sie bei der Hand, und wollte mit ihr tanzen, aber sie weigerte sich und erschrack, denn sie sah daß es der König Drosselbart war, der um sie gefreit und den sie mit Spott abgewiesen hatte. Ihr Sträuben half nichts, er zog sie in den Saal: da zerriß das Band, an welchem die Taschen hiengen, und die Töpfe fielen heraus, daß die Suppe floß und die Brocken umher sprangen. Und wie das die Leute sahen, entstand ein allgemeines Gelächter und Spotten, und sie war so beschämt, daß sie sich lieber tausend Klafter unter die Erde gewünscht hätte. Sie sprang zur Thüre hinaus und wollte entfliehen, aber auf der Treppe holte sie ein Mann ein, und brachte sie zurück: und wie sie ihn ansah, war es wieder der König Drosselbart. Er sprach ihr freundlich zu, „fürchte dich nicht, ich und der Spielmann, der mit dir in dem elenden Häuschen gewohnt hat, sind eins: dir zu Liebe habe ich mich so verstellt, und der Husar, der dir die Töpfe entzwei geritten hat, bin ich auch gewesen. Das alles ist geschehen, um deinen stolzen Sinn zu beugen, und dich für deinen Hochmuth zu strafen, womit du mich verspottet hast.“ Da weinte sie bitterlich und sagte „ich habe großes Unrecht gehabt und bin nicht werth deine Frau zu sein.“ Er aber sprach „tröste dich, die bösen Tage sind vorüber, jetzt wollen wir unsere Hochzeit feiern.“ Da kamen die Kammerfrauen und thaten ihr die prächtigsten Kleider an, und ihr Vater kam und der ganze Hof, und wünschten ihr Glück zu ihrer Vermählung mit dem König Drosselbart, und die rechte Freude fieng jetzt erst an. Ich wollte, du und ich, wir wären auch dabei gewesen. Es waren einmal drei Brüder, die waren immer tiefer in Armuth gerathen, und endlich war die Noth so groß, daß sie Hunger leiden mußten und nichts mehr zu beißen und zu brechen hatten. Da sprachen sie „es kann so nicht bleiben: es ist besser wir gehen in die Welt und suchen unser Glück.“ Sie machten sich also auf, und waren schon weite Wege und über viele Grashälmerchen gegangen, aber das Glück war ihnen noch nicht begegnet. Da gelangten sie eines Tags in einen großen Wald, und mitten darin war ein Berg, und als sie näher kamen, so sahen sie daß der Berg ganz von Silber war. Da sprach der älteste „nun habe ich das gewünschte Glück gefunden und verlange kein größeres.“ Er nahm von dem Silber so viel er nur tragen konnte, kehrte dann um und gieng wieder nach Haus. Die beiden andern aber sprachen „wir verlangen vom Glück noch etwas mehr als bloßes Silber,“ rührten es nicht an und giengen weiter. Nachdem sie abermals ein paar Tage gegangen waren, so kamen sie zu einem Berg, der ganz von Gold war. Der zweite Bruder stand, besann sich und war ungewiß. „Was soll ich thun?“ sprach er, „soll ich mir von dem Golde so viel nehmen, daß ich mein Lebtag genug habe, oder soll ich weiter gehen?“ Endlich faßte er einen Entschluß, füllte in seine Taschen was hinein wollte, sagte seinem Bruder Lebewohl und gieng heim. Der dritte aber sprach „Silber und Gold das rührt mich nicht: ich will meinem Glück nicht absagen, vielleicht ist mir etwas besseres beschert.“ Er zog weiter, und als er drei Tage gegangen war, so kam er in einen Wald, der noch größer war als die vorigen und gar kein Ende nehmen wollte; und da er nichts zu essen und zu trinken fand, so war er nahe daran zu verschmachten. Da stieg er auf einen hohen Baum, ob er da oben Waldes Ende sehen möchte, aber so weit sein Auge reichte sah er nichts als die Gipfel der Bäume. Da begab er sich von dem Baume wieder herunter zu steigen, aber der Hunger quälte ihn, und er dachte „wenn ich nur noch einmal meinen Leib ersättigen könnte.“ Als er herab kam, sah er mit Erstaunen unter dem Baum einen Tisch, der mit Speisen reichlich besetzt war, die ihm entgegen dampften. „Diesmal,“ sprach er, „ist mein Wunsch zu rechter Zeit erfüllt worden,“ und ohne zu fragen wer das Essen gebracht und wer es gekocht hätte, nahte er sich dem Tisch und aß mit Lust bis er seinen Hunger gestillt hatte. Als er fertig war, dachte er „es wäre doch Schade wenn das feine Tischtüchlein hier in dem Walde verderben sollte,“ legte es säuberlich zusammen und steckte es ein. Darauf gieng er weiter, und Abends, als der Hunger sich wieder regte, wollte er sein Tüchlein auf die Probe stellen, breitete es aus und sagte „so wünsche ich daß du abermals mit guten Speisen besetzt wärest,“ und kaum war der Wunsch über seine Lippen gekommen, so standen so viel Schüsseln mit dem schönsten Essen darauf, als nur Platz hatten. „Jetzt merke ich,“ sagte er, „in welcher Küche für mich gekocht wird; du sollst mir lieber sein als der Berg von Silber und Gold,“ denn er sah wohl daß es ein Tüchleindeckdich war. Das Tüchlein war ihm aber doch nicht genug, um sich daheim zur Ruhe zu setzen, sondern er wollte lieber noch in der Welt herum wandern und weiter sein Glück versuchen. Eines Abends traf er in einem einsamen Walde einen schwarz bestaubten Köhler, der brannte da Kohlen, und hatte Kartoffeln am Feuer stehen, damit wollte er seine Mahlzeit halten. „Guten Abend, du Schwarzamsel,“ sagte er, „wie geht dirs in deiner Einsamkeit?“ „Einen Tag wie den andern,“ erwiederte der Köhler, „und jeden Abend Kartoffeln; hast du Lust dazu und willst mein Gast sein?“ „Schönen Dank,“ antwortete der Reisende, „ich will dir die Mahlzeit nicht wegnehmen, du hast auf einen Gast nicht gerechnet, aber wenn du mit mir vorlieb nehmen willst, so sollst du eingeladen sein.“ „Wer soll dir anrichten?“ sprach der Köhler, „ich sehe daß du nichts bei dir hast, und ein paar Stunden im Umkreis ist niemand, der dir etwas geben könnte.“ „Und doch solls ein Essen sein,“ antwortete er, „so gut, wie du noch keins gekostet hast.“ Darauf holte er sein Tüchlein aus dem Ranzen, breitete es auf die Erde, und sprach „Tüchlein, deck dich,“ und alsbald stand da Gesottenes und Gebratenes, und war so warm als wenn es eben aus der Küche käme. Der Köhler machte große Augen, ließ sich aber nicht lange bitten, sondern langte zu und schob immer größere Bissen in sein schwarzes Maul hinein. Als sie abgegessen hatten, schmunzelte der Köhler und sagte „hör, dein Tüchlein hat meinen Beifall, das wäre so etwas für mich in dem Walde, wo mir niemand etwas gutes kocht. Ich will dir einen Tausch vorschlagen, da in der Ecke hängt ein Soldatenranzen, der zwar alt und unscheinbar ist, in dem aber wunderbare Kräfte stecken; da ich ihn doch nicht mehr brauche, so will ich ihn für das Tüchlein geben.“ „Erst muß ich wissen was das für wunderbare Kräfte sind,“ erwiederte er. „Das will ich dir sagen,“ antwortete der Köhler, „wenn du mit der Hand darauf klopfst, so kommt jedesmal ein Gefreiter mit sechs Mann, die haben Ober- und Untergewehr, und was du befiehlst, das vollbringen sie.“ „Meinetwegen,“ sagte er „wenns nicht anders sein kann, so wollen wir tauschen,“ gab dem Köhler das Tüchlein, hob den Ranzen von dem Haken, hieng ihn um und nahm Abschied. Als er ein Stück Wegs gegangen war, wollte er die Wunderkräfte seines Ranzens versuchen und klopfte darauf. Alsbald traten die sieben Kriegshelden vor ihn, und der Gefreite sprach „was verlangt mein Herr und Gebieter?“ „Marschiert im Eilschritt zu dem Köhler und fordert mein Wünschtüchlein zurück.“ Sie machten links um, und gar nicht lange, so brachten sie das Verlangte und hatten es dem Köhler, ohne viel zu fragen, abgenommen. Er hieß sie wieder abziehen, gieng weiter und hoffte das Glück würde ihm noch heller scheinen. Bei Sonnenuntergang kam er zu einem andern Köhler, der bei dem Feuer seine Abendmahlzeit bereitete. „Willst du mit mir essen,“ sagte der rußige Geselle, „Kartoffeln mit Salz aber ohne Schmalz, so setz dich zu mir nieder.“ „Nein,“ antwortete er, „für diesmal sollst du mein Gast sein,“ deckte sein Tüchlein auf, das gleich mit den schönsten Gerichten besetzt war. Sie aßen und tranken zusammen und waren guter Dinge. Nach dem Essen sprach der Kohlenbrenner „da oben auf der Kammbank liegt ein altes abgegriffenes Hütlein, das hat seltsame Eigenschaften: wenn das einer aufsetzt und dreht es auf dem Kopf herum, so gehen die Feldschlangen, als wären zwölfe neben einander aufgeführt, und schießen alles darnieder, daß niemand dagegen bestehen kann. Mir nützt das Hütlein nichts und für dein Tischtuch will ichs wohl hingeben.“ „Das läßt sich hören,“ antwortete er, nahm das Hütlein, setzte es auf und ließ sein Tüchlein zurück. Kaum aber war er ein Stück Wegs gegangen, so klopfte er auf seinen Ranzen, und seine Soldaten mußten ihm das Tüchlein wieder holen. „Es kommt eins zum andern,“ dachte er, „und es ist mir, als wäre mein Glück noch nicht zu Ende.“ Seine Gedanken hatten ihn auch nicht betrogen. Nachdem er abermals einen Tag gegangen war, kam er zu einem dritten Köhler, der ihn nicht anders als die vorigen zu ungeschmelzten Kartoffeln einlud. Er ließ ihn aber von seinem Wunschtüchlein mitessen, und das schmeckte dem Köhler so gut, daß er ihm zuletzt ein Hörnlein dafür bot, das noch ganz andere Eigenschaften hatte als das Hütlein. Wenn man darauf blies, so fielen alle Mauern und Festungswerke, endlich alle Städte und Dörfer übern Haufen. Er gab dem Köhler zwar das Tüchlein dafür, ließ sichs aber hernach von seiner Mannschaft wieder abfordern, so daß er endlich Ranzen, Hütlein und Hörnlein beisammen hatte. „Jetzt,“ sprach er, „bin ich ein gemachter Mann, und es ist Zeit, daß ich heimkehre und sehe wie es meinen Brüdern ergeht.“
Als er daheim anlangte, hatten sich seine Brüder von ihrem Silber und Gold ein schönes Haus gebaut und lebten in Saus und Braus. Er trat bei ihnen ein, weil er aber in einem halb zerrissenen Rock kam, das schäbige Hütlein auf dem Kopf und den alten Ranzen auf dem Rücken, so wollten sie ihn nicht für ihren Bruder anerkennen. Sie spotteten und sagten „du gibst dich für unsern Bruder aus, der Silber und Gold verschmähte, und für sich ein besseres Glück verlangte: der kommt gewiß in voller Pracht als ein mächtiger König angefahren, nicht als ein Bettelmann,“ und jagten ihn zur Thüre hinaus. Da gerieth er in Zorn, klopfte auf seinen Ranzen so lange bis hundert und funfzig Mann in Reih und Glied vor ihm standen. Er befahl ihnen das Haus seiner Brüder zu umzingeln, und zwei sollten Haselgerten mitnehmen und den beiden übermüthigen die Haut auf dem Leib so lange weich gerben, bis sie wüßten wer er wäre. Es entstand ein gewaltiger Lärm, die Leute liefen zusammen und wollten den beiden in der Noth Beistand leisten, aber sie konnten gegen die Soldaten nichts ausrichten. Es geschah endlich dem Könige Meldung davon der ward unwillig, und ließ einen Hauptmann mit seiner Schaar ausrücken, der sollte den Ruhestörer aus der Stadt jagen: aber der Mann mit dem Ranzen hatte bald eine größere Mannschaft zusammen, die schlug den Hauptmann mit seinen Leuten zurück, daß sie mit blutigen Nasen abziehen mußten. Der König sprach „der hergelaufene Kerl ist noch zu bändigen,“ und schickte am andern Tage eine größere Schaar gegen ihn aus, aber sie konnte noch weniger ausrichten. Er stellte noch mehr Volk entgegen, und um noch schneller fertig zu werden, drehte er ein paarmal sein Hütlein auf dem Kopfe herum: da fieng das schwere Geschütz an zu spielen, und des Königs Leute wurden geschlagen und in die Flucht gejagt. „Jetzt mache ich nicht eher Frieden,“ sprach er, „als bis mir der König seine Tochter zur Frau gibt, und ich in seinem Namen das ganze Reich beherrsche.“ Das ließ er dem König verkündigen, und dieser sprach zu seiner Tochter „Muß ist eine harte Nuß: was bleibt mir anders übrig, als daß ich thue was er verlangt? will ich Frieden haben und die Krone auf meinem Haupte behalten, so muß ich dich hingeben.“
Die Hochzeit ward also gefeiert, aber die Königstochter war verdrießlich daß ihr Gemahl ein gemeiner Mann war, der einen schäbigen Hut trug und einen alten Ranzen umhängen hatte. Sie wäre ihn gerne wieder los gewesen und sann Tag und Nacht wie sie das bewerkstelligen könnte. Da dachte sie „sollten seine Wunderkräfte wohl in dem Ranzen stecken?“ verstellte sich und liebkoste ihm, und als sein Herz weich geworden war, sprach sie „wenn du nur den schlechten Ranzen ablegen wolltest, er verunziert dich so sehr, daß ich mich deiner schämen muß.“ „Liebes Kind,“ antwortete er, „dieser Ranzen ist mein größter Schatz, so lange ich den habe, fürchte ich keine Macht der Welt;“ und verrieth ihr mit welchen Wunderkräften er begabt war. Da fiel sie ihm um den Hals, als wenn sie ihn küssen wollte, nahm ihm aber mit Behendigkeit den Ranzen von der Schulter und lief damit fort. Sobald sie allein war, klopfte sie darauf und befahl den Kriegsleuten sie sollten ihren vorigen Herrn festnehmen und aus dem königlichen Palast fortführen. Sie gehorchten, und die falsche Frau ließ noch mehr Leute hinter ihm her ziehen, die ihn ganz zum Lande hinaus jagen sollten. Da wäre er verloren gewesen, wenn er nicht das Hütlein gehabt hätte. Kaum aber waren seine Hände frei, so schwenkte er es ein paar mal: alsbald fieng das Geschütz an zu donnern und schlug alles nieder, und die Königstochter mußte selbst kommen und um Gnade bitten. Weil sie so beweglich bat und sich zu bessern versprach, so ließ er sich überreden und bewilligte ihr Frieden. Sie that freundlich mit ihm, stellte sich an als hätte sie ihn sehr lieb und wußte ihn nach einiger Zeit so zu bethören daß er ihr vertraute wenn auch einer den Ranzen in seine Gewalt bekäme, so könnte er doch nichts gegen ihn ausrichten so lange das alte Hütlein noch sein wäre. Als sie das Geheimnis wußte, wartete sie bis er eingeschlafen war, dann nahm sie ihm das Hütlein weg, und ließ ihn hinaus auf die Straße werfen. Aber noch war ihm das Hörnlein übrig, und in großem Zorne blies er aus allen Kräften hinein. Alsbald fiel alles zusammen, Mauern, Festungswerk, Städte und Dörfer, und schlugen den König und die Königstochter todt. Und wenn er das Hörnlein nicht abgesetzt und nur noch ein wenig länger geblasen hätte, so wäre alles über den Haufen gestürzt und kein Stein auf dem andern geblieben. Da widerstand ihm niemand mehr, und er setzte sich zum König über das ganze Reich. Es war einmal ein König, der hatte eine Frau mit goldenen Haaren, und sie war so schön, daß sich ihres Gleichen nicht mehr auf Erden fand. Es geschah, daß sie krank lag, und als sie fühlte daß sie bald sterben würde, rief sie den König und sprach „wenn du nach meinem Tode dich wieder vermählen willst, so nimm keine, die nicht eben so schön ist, als ich bin, und die nicht solche goldene Haare hat, wie ich habe; das mußt du mir versprechen.“ Nachdem es ihr der König versprochen hatte, that sie die Augen zu und starb.
Der König war lange Zeit nicht zu trösten und dachte nicht daran, eine zweite Frau zu nehmen. Endlich sprachen seine Räthe „es geht nicht anders, der König muß sich wieder vermählen, damit wir eine Königin haben.“ Nun wurden Boten weit und breit umhergeschickt, eine Braut zu suchen, die an Schönheit der verstorbenen Königin ganz gleich käme. Es war aber keine in der ganzen Welt zu finden, und wenn man sie auch gefunden hätte, so war doch keine da, die solche goldene Haare gehabt hätte. Also kamen die Boten unverrichteter Sache wieder heim.
Nun hatte der König eine Tochter, die war gerade so schön wie ihre verstorbene Mutter, und hatte auch solche goldene Haare. Als sie herangewachsen war, sah sie der König einmal an und sah daß sie in allem seiner verstorbenen Gemahlin ähnlich war und fühlte plötzlich eine heftige Liebe zu ihr. Da sprach er zu seinen Räthen „ich will meine Tochter heirathen, denn sie ist das Ebenbild meiner verstorbenen Frau, und sonst kann ich doch keine Braut finden, die ihr gleicht.“ Als die Räthe das hörten, erschraken sie und sprachen „Gott hat verboten daß der Vater seine Tochter heirathe, aus der Sünde kann nichts Gutes entspringen und das Reich wird mit ins Verderben gezogen.“ Die Tochter erschrak noch mehr als sie den Entschluß ihres Vaters vernahm, hoffte aber ihn von seinem Vorhaben noch abzubringen. Da sagte sie zu ihm „eh ich euren Wunsch erfülle, muß ich erst drei Kleider haben, eins so golden wie die Sonne, eins so silbern wie der Mond, und eins so glänzend wie die Sterne; ferner verlange ich einen Mantel von tausenderlei Pelz und Rauhwerk zusammengesetzt, und ein jedes Thier in euerm Reich muß ein Stück von seiner Haut dazu geben.“ Sie dachte aber „das anzuschaffen ist ganz unmöglich, und ich bringe damit meinen Vater von seinen bösen Gedanken ab.“ Der König ließ aber nicht ab, und die geschicktesten Jungfrauen in seinem Reiche mußten die drei Kleider weben, eins so golden wie die Sonne, eins so silbern wie der Mond, und eins so glänzend wie die Sterne; und seine Jäger mußten alle Thiere im ganzen Reiche auffangen und ihnen ein Stück von ihrer Haut abziehen; daraus ward ein Mantel von tausenderlei Rauhwerk gemacht. Endlich, als alles fertig war, ließ der König den Mantel herbei holen, breitete ihn vor ihr aus und sprach „morgen soll die Hochzeit sein.“
Als nun die Königstochter sah daß keine Hoffnung mehr war ihres Vaters Herz umzuwenden, so faßte sie den Entschluß zu entfliehen. In der Nacht, während alles schlief, stand sie auf und nahm von ihren Kostbarkeiten dreierlei, einen goldenen Ring, ein goldenes Spinnrädchen und ein goldenes Haspelchen; die drei Kleider von Sonne Mond und Sternen, that sie in eine Nußschale, zog den Mantel von allerlei Rauhwerk an und machte sich Gesicht und Hände mit Ruß schwarz. Dann befahl sie sich Gott und gieng fort, und gieng die ganze Nacht, bis sie in einen großen Wald kam. Und weil sie müde war, setzte sie sich in einen hohlen Baum, und schlief ein.
Die Sonne gieng auf und sie schlief fort und schlief noch immer, als es schon hoher Tag war. Da trug es sich zu, daß der König, dem dieser Wald gehörte, darin jagte. Als seine Hunde zu dem Baum kamen, schnupperten sie, liefen rings herum und bellten. Sprach der König zu den Jägern „seht doch was dort für ein Wild sich versteckt hat.“ Die Jäger folgten dem Befehl, und als sie wieder kamen, sprachen sie „in dem hohlen Baum liegt ein wunderliches Thier, wie wir noch niemals eins gesehen haben: an seiner Haut ist tausenderlei Pelz; es liegt aber und schläft.“ Sprach der König „seht zu ob ihrs lebendig fangen könnt, dann bindets auf den Wagen und nehmts mit.“ Als die Jäger das Mädchen anfaßten, erwachte es voll Schrecken und rief ihnen zu „ich bin ein armes Kind, von Vater und Mutter verlassen, erbarmt euch mein und nehmt mich mit.“ Da sprachen sie „Allerleirauh, du bist gut für die Küche, komm nur mit, da kannst du die Asche zusammenkehren.“ Also setzten sie es auf den Wagen und fuhren heim in das königliche Schloß. Dort wiesen sie ihm ein Ställchen an unter der Treppe, wo kein Tageslicht hinkam, und sagten „Rauhthierchen, da kannst du wohnen und schlafen.“ Dann ward es in die Küche geschickt, da trug es Holz und Wasser, schürte das Feuer, rupfte das Federvieh, belas das Gemüs, kehrte die Asche und that alle schlechte Arbeit.
Da lebte Allerleirauh lange Zeit recht armselig. Ach, du schöne Königstochter, wie solls mit dir noch werden! Es geschah aber einmal, daß ein Fest im Schloß gefeiert ward, da sprach sie zum Koch „darf ich ein wenig hinauf gehen und zusehen? ich will mich außen vor die Thüre stellen.“ Antwortete der Koch „ja, geh nur hin, aber in einer halben Stunde mußt du wieder hier sein und die Asche zusammentragen.“ Da nahm sie ihr Öllämpchen, gieng in ihr Ställchen, zog den Pelzrock aus und wusch sich den Ruß von dem Gesicht und den Händen ab, so daß ihre volle Schönheit wieder an den Tag kam. Dann machte sie die Nuß auf und holte ihr Kleid hervor, das wie die Sonne glänzte. Und wie das geschehen war, gieng sie hinauf zum Fest, und alle traten ihr aus dem Weg, denn niemand kannte sie, und meinten nicht anders als daß es eine Königstochter wäre. Der König aber kam ihr entgegen, reichte ihr die Hand und tanzte mit ihr, und dachte in seinem Herzen „so schön haben meine Augen noch keine gesehen.“ Als der Tanz zu Ende war, verneigte sie sich, und wie sich der König umsah, war sie verschwunden, und niemand wußte wohin. Die Wächter, die vor dem Schlosse standen, wurden gerufen und ausgefragt, aber niemand hatte sie erblickt.
Sie war aber in ihr Ställchen gelaufen, hatte geschwind ihr Kleid ausgezogen, Gesicht und Hände schwarz gemacht und den Pelzmantel umgethan, und war wieder Allerleirauh. Als sie nun in die Küche kam, und an ihre Arbeit gehen und die Asche zusammenkehren wollte, sprach der Koch „laß das gut sein bis morgen und koche mir da die Suppe für den König, ich will auch einmal ein bischen oben zugucken: aber laß mir kein Haar hineinfallen, sonst kriegst du in Zukunft nichts mehr zu essen.“ Da gieng der Koch fort, und Allerleirauh kochte die Suppe für den König, und kochte eine Brotsuppe, so gut es konnte, und wie sie fertig war, holte es in dem Ställchen seinen goldenen Ring und legte ihn in die Schüssel, in welche die Suppe angerichtet ward. Als der Tanz zu Ende war, ließ sich der König die Suppe bringen und aß sie, und sie schmeckte ihm so gut, daß er meinte niemals eine bessere Suppe gegessen zu haben. Wie er aber auf den Grund kam, sah er da einen goldenen Ring liegen und konnte nicht begreifen wie er dahin gerathen war. Da befahl er der Koch sollte vor ihn kommen. Der Koch erschrack, wie er den Befehl hörte, und sprach zu Allerleirauh „gewiß hast du ein Haar in die Suppe fallen lassen; wenns wahr ist, so kriegst du Schläge.“ Als er vor den König kam, fragte dieser wer die Suppe gekocht hätte? Antwortete der Koch „ich habe sie gekocht.“ Der König aber sprach „das ist nicht wahr, denn sie war auf andere Art und viel besser gekocht als sonst.“ Antwortete er „ich muß es gestehen daß ich sie nicht gekocht habe, sondern das Rauhthierchen.“ Sprach der König „geh und laß es herauf kommen.“
Als Allerleirauh kam, fragte der König „wer bist du?“ „Ich bin ein armes Kind, das keinen Vater und Mutter mehr hat.“ Fragte er weiter „wozu bist du in meinem Schloß?“ Antwortete es „ich bin zu nichts gut als daß mir die Stiefeln um den Kopf geworfen werden.“ Fragte er weiter „wo hast du den Ring her, der in der Suppe war?“ Antwortete es „von dem Ring weiß ich nichts.“ Also konnte der König nichts erfahren und mußte es wieder fortschicken.
Über eine Zeit war wieder ein Fest, da bat Allerleirauh den Koch wie vorigesmal um Erlaubnis zusehen zu dürfen. Antwortete er „ja, aber komm in einer halben Stunde wieder und koch dem König die Brotsuppe, die er so gerne ißt.“ Da lief es in sein Ställchen, wusch sich geschwind und nahm aus der Nuß das Kleid, das so silbern war wie der Mond, und that es an. Da gieng sie hinauf, und glich einer Königstochter: und der König trat ihr entgegen und freute sich daß er sie wiedersah, und weil eben der Tanz anhub, so tanzten sie zusammen. Als aber der Tanz zu Ende war, verschwand sie wieder so schnell daß der König nicht bemerken konnte wo sie hingieng. Sie sprang aber in ihr Ställchen, und machte sich wieder zum Rauhthierchen, und gieng in die Küche, die Brotsuppe zu kochen. Als der Koch oben war, holte es das goldene Spinnrad und that es in die Schüssel, so daß die Suppe darüber angerichtet wurde. Danach ward sie dem König gebracht, der aß sie und sie schmeckte ihm so gut, wie das vorigemal, und ließ den Koch kommen, der mußte auch diesmal gestehen daß Allerleirauh die Suppe gekocht hätte. Allerleirauh kam da wieder vor den König, aber sie antwortete daß sie nur dazu da wäre, daß ihr die Stiefeln an den Kopf geworfen würden und daß sie von dem goldenen Spinnrädchen gar nichts wüßte.
Als der König zum drittenmal ein Fest anstellte, da gieng es nicht anders als die vorigemale. Der Koch sprach zwar „du bist eine Hexe, Rauhthierchen, und thust immer etwas in die Suppe, davon sie so gut wird, und dem König besser schmeckt als was ich koche;“ doch weil es so bat, so ließ er es auf die bestimmte Zeit hingehen. Nun zog es ein Kleid an, das wie die Sterne glänzte, und trat damit in den Saal. Der König tanzte wieder mit der schönen Jungfrau und meinte daß sie noch niemals so schön gewesen wäre. Und während er tanzte, steckte er ihr, ohne daß sie es merkte, einen goldenen Ring an den Finger, und hatte befohlen daß der Tanz recht lang währen sollte. Wie er zu Ende war, wollte er sie an den Händen fest halten, aber sie riß sich los und sprang so geschwind unter die Leute, daß sie vor seinen Augen verschwand. Sie lief, was sie konnte, in ihr Ställchen unter der Treppe, weil sie aber zu lange und über eine halbe Stunde geblieben war, so konnte sie das schöne Kleid nicht ausziehen, sondern warf nur den Mantel von Pelz darüber, und in der Eile machte sie sich auch nicht ganz rußig, sondern ein Finger blieb weiß. Allerleirauh lief nun in die Küche, kochte dem König die Brotsuppe und legte, wie der Koch fort war, den goldenen Haspel hinein. Der König als er den Haspel auf dem Grunde fand, ließ Allerleirauh rufen: da erblickte er den weißen Finger und sah den Ring, den er im Tanze ihr angesteckt hatte. Da ergriff er sie an der Hand, und hielt sie fest, und als sie sich losmachen und fortspringen wollte, that sich der Pelzmantel ein wenig auf, und das Sternenkleid schimmerte hervor. Der König faßte den Mantel und riß ihn ab. Da kamen die goldenen Haare hervor und sie stand da in voller Pracht und konnte sich nicht länger verbergen. Und als sie Ruß und Asche aus ihrem Gesicht gewischt hatte, da war sie schöner als man noch jemand auf Erden gesehen hat. Der König aber sprach „du bist meine liebe Braut, und wir scheiden nimmermehr von einander.“ Darauf ward die Hochzeit gefeiert, und sie lebten vergnügt bis an ihren Tod. Es war einmal ein Mann, der verstand allerlei Künste: er diente im Krieg, und hielt sich brav und tapfer, aber als der Krieg zu Ende war, bekam er den Abschied und drei Heller Zehrgeld auf den Weg. „Wart,“ sprach er, „das laß ich mir nicht gefallen, finde ich die rechten Leute, so soll mir der König noch die Schätze des ganzen Landes heraus geben.“ Da gieng er voll Zorn in den Wald, und sah einen darin stehen, der hatte sechs Bäume ausgerupft, als wärens Kornhalme. Sprach er zu ihm „willst du mein Diener sein und mit mir ziehen?“ „Ja,“ antwortete er, „aber erst will ich meiner Mutter das Wellchen Holz heimbringen,“ und nahm einen von den Bäumen, und wickelte ihn um die fünf andern, hob die Welle auf die Schulter und trug sie fort. Dann kam er wieder, und gieng mit seinem Herrn, der sprach „wir zwei sollten wohl durch die ganze Welt kommen.“ Und als sie ein Weilchen gegangen waren, fanden sie einen Jäger, der lag auf den Knien, hatte die Büchse angelegt und zielte. Sprach der Herr zu ihm „Jäger, was willst du schießen?“ Er antwortete „zwei Meilen von hier sitzt eine Fliege auf dem Ast eines Eichbaums, der will ich das linke Auge heraus schießen.“ „O, geh mit mir,“ sprach der Mann, „wenn wir drei zusammen sind, sollten wir wohl durch die ganze Welt kommen.“ Der Jäger war bereit und gieng mit ihm, und sie kamen zu sieben Windmühlen, deren Flügel trieben ganz hastig herum, und gieng doch links und rechts kein Wind, und bewegte sich kein Blättchen. Da sprach der Mann „ich weiß nicht, was die Windmühlen treibt, es regt sich ja kein Lüftchen,“ und gieng mit seinen Dienern weiter, und als sie zwei Meilen fortgegangen waren, sahen sie einen auf einem Baum sitzen, der hielt das eine Nasenloch zu und blies aus dem andern. „Mein, was treibst du da oben?“ fragte der Mann. Er antwortete „zwei Meilen von hier stehen sieben Windmühlen, seht, die blase ich an, daß sie laufen.“ „O, geh mit mir,“ sprach der Mann, „wenn wir vier zusammen sind, sollten wir wohl durch die ganze Welt kommen.“ Da stieg der Bläser herab und gieng mit, und über eine Zeit sahen sie einen, der stand da auf einem Bein, und hatte das andere abgeschnallt und neben sich gelegt. Da sprach der Herr „du hast dirs ja bequem gemacht zum Ausruhen.“ „Ich bin ein Laufer,“ antwortete er, „und damit ich nicht gar zu schnell springe, habe ich mir das eine Bein abgeschnallt; wenn ich mit zwei Beinen laufe, so gehts geschwinder als ein Vogel fliegt.“ „O, geh mit mir, wenn wir fünf zusammen sind, sollten wir wohl durch die ganze Welt kommen.“ Da gieng er mit, und gar nicht lang, so begegneten sie einem, der hatte ein Hütchen auf, hatte es aber ganz auf dem einen Ohr sitzen. Da sprach der Herr zu ihm „manierlich! manierlich! häng deinen Hut doch nicht auf ein Ohr, du siehst ja aus wie ein Hans Narr.“ „Ich darfs nicht thun,“ sprach der andere, „denn setz ich meinen Hut gerad, so kommt ein gewaltiger Frost, und die Vögel unter dem Himmel erfrieren und fallen todt zur Erde.“ „O, geh mit mir,“ sprach der Herr, „wenn wir sechs zusammen sind, sollten wir wohl durch die ganze Welt kommen.“
Nun gingen die sechse in eine Stadt, wo der König hatte bekannt machen lassen wer mit seiner Tochter in die Wette laufen wollte, und den Sieg davon trüge, der sollte ihr Gemahl werden; wer aber verlöre, müßte auch seinen Kopf hergeben. Da meldete sich der Mann, und sprach „ich will aber meinen Diener für mich laufen lassen.“ Der König antwortete „dann mußt du auch noch dessen Leben zum Pfand setzen, also daß sein und dein Kopf für den Sieg haften.“ Als das verabredet und fest gemacht war, schnallte der Mann dem Laufer das andere Bein an und sprach zu ihm „nun sei hurtig und hilf daß wir siegen.“ Es war aber bestimmt, daß wer am ersten Wasser aus einem weit abgelegenen Brunnen brächte, der sollte Sieger sein. Nun bekam der Laufer einen Krug, und die Königstochter auch einen, und sie fiengen zu gleicher Zeit zu laufen an: aber in einem Augenblick, als die Königstochter erst eine kleine Strecke fort war, konnte den Laufer schon kein Zuschauer mehr sehen, und es war nicht anders, als wäre der Wind vorbei gesaust. In kurzer Zeit langte er bei dem Brunnen an, schöpfte den Krug voll Wasser und kehrte wieder um. Mitten aber auf dem Heimweg überkam ihn eine Müdigkeit, da setzte er den Krug hin, legte sich nieder, und schlief ein. Er hatte aber einen Pferdeschädel, der da auf der Erde lag, zum Kopfkissen gemacht, damit er hart läge, und bald wieder erwachte. Indessen war die Königstochter, die auch gut laufen konnte, so gut es ein gewöhnlicher Mensch vermag, bei dem Brunnen angelangt, und eilte mit ihrem Krug voll Wasser zurück; und als sie den Laufer da liegen und schlafen sah, war sie froh und sprach „der Feind ist in meine Hände gegeben,“ leerte seinen Krug aus und sprang weiter. Nun wär alles verloren gewesen, wenn nicht zu gutem Glück der Jäger mit seinen scharfen Augen oben auf dem Schloß gestanden und alles mit angesehen hätte. Da sprach er „die Königstochter soll doch gegen uns nicht aufkommen,“ lud seine Büchse und schoß so geschickt, daß er dem Laufer den Pferdeschädel unter dem Kopf wegschoß ohne ihm weh zu thun. Da erwachte der Laufer, sprang in die Höhe und sah daß sein Krug leer und die Königstochter schon weit voraus war. Aber er verlor den Muth nicht, lief mit dem Krug wieder zum Brunnen zurück, schöpfte aufs neue Wasser und war noch zehn Minuten eher als die Königstochter daheim. „Seht ihr,“ sprach er, „jetzt hab ich erst die Beine aufgehoben, vorher wars gar kein Laufen zu nennen.“
Den König aber kränkte es, und seine Tochter noch mehr, daß sie so ein gemeiner abgedankter Soldat davon tragen sollte; sie rathschlagten mit einander wie sie ihn sammt seinen Gesellen los würden. Da sprach der König zu ihr „ich habe ein Mittel gefunden, laß dir nicht bang sein, sie sollen nicht wieder heim kommen.“ Und sprach zu ihnen „ihr sollt euch nun zusammen lustig machen, essen und trinken“ und führte sie zu einer Stube, die hatte einen Boden von Eisen, und die Thüren waren auch von Eisen, und die Fenster waren mit eisernen Stäben verwahrt. In der Stube war eine Tafel mit köstlichen Speisen besetzt, da sprach der König zu ihnen „geht hinein, und laßts euch wohl sein.“ Und wie sie darinnen waren, ließ er die Thüre verschließen und verriegeln. Dann ließ er den Koch kommen, und befahl ihm ein Feuer so lang unter die Stube zu machen, bis das Eisen glühend würde. Das that der Koch, und es fieng an und ward den sechsen in der Stube, während sie an der Tafel saßen, ganz warm, und sie meinten das käme vom Essen; als aber die Hitze immer größer ward und sie hinaus wollten, Thüre und Fenster aber verschlossen fanden, da merkten sie daß der König Böses im Sinne gehabt hatte und sie ersticken wollte. „Es soll ihm aber nicht gelingen,“ sprach der mit dem Hütchen, „ich will einen Frost kommen lassen, vor dem sich das Feuer schämen und verkriechen soll.“ Da setzte er sein Hütchen gerade, und alsobald fiel ein Frost daß alle Hitze verschwand und die Speisen auf den Schüsseln anfiengen zu frieren. Als nun ein paar Stunden herum waren, und der König glaubte sie wären in der Hitze verschmachtet, ließ er die Thüre öffnen und wollte selbst nach ihnen sehen. Aber wie die Thüre aufgieng, standen sie alle sechse da, frisch und gesund, und sagten es wäre ihnen lieb daß sie heraus könnten, sich zu wärmen, denn bei der großen Kälte in der Stube frören die Speisen an den Schüsseln fest. Da gieng der König voll Zorn hinab zu dem Koch, schalt ihn und fragte warum er nicht gethan hätte was ihm wäre befohlen worden. Der Koch aber antwortete „es ist Glut genug da, seht nur selbst.“ Da sah der König daß ein gewaltiges Feuer unter der Eisenstube brannte, und merkte daß er den sechsen auf diese Weise nichts anhaben könnte.
Nun sann der König aufs neue wie er der bösen Gäste los würde, ließ den Meister kommen und sprach „willst du Gold nehmen, und dein Recht auf meine Tochter aufgeben, so sollst du haben so viel du willst.“ „O ja, Herr König,“ antwortete er, „gebt mir so viel als mein Diener tragen kann, so verlange ich eure Tochter nicht.“ Das war der König zufrieden, und jener sprach weiter „so will ich in vierzehn Tagen kommen und es holen.“ Darauf rief er alle Schneider aus dem ganzen Reich herbei, die mußten vierzehn Tage lang sitzen und einen Sack nähen. Und als er fertig war, mußte der Starke, welcher Bäume ausrupfen konnte, den Sack auf die Schulter nehmen und mit ihm zu dem König gehen. Da sprach der König „was ist das für ein gewaltiger Kerl, der den hausgroßen Ballen Leinewand auf der Schulter trägt?“ erschrack und dachte „was wird der für Gold wegschleppen!“ Da hieß er eine Tonne Gold herbringen, die mußten sechzehn der stärksten Männer tragen, aber der Starke packte sie mit einer Hand, steckte sie in den Sack und sprach „warum bringt ihr nicht gleich mehr, das deckt ja kaum den Boden.“ Da ließ der König nach und nach seinen ganzen Schatz herbeitragen, den schob der Starke in den Sack hinein, und der Sack ward davon noch nicht zur Hälfte voll. „Schafft mehr herbei,“ rief er, „die paar Brocken füllen nicht.“ Da mußten noch siebentausend Wagen mit Gold in dem ganzen Reich zusammen gefahren werden: die schob der Starke sammt den vorgespannten Ochsen in seinen Sack. „Ich wills nicht lange besehen,“ sprach er, „und nehmen was kommt, damit der Sack nur voll wird.“ Wie alles darin stack, gieng doch noch viel hinein, da sprach er „ich will dem Ding nur ein Ende machen, man bindet wohl einmal einen Sack zu, wenn er auch noch nicht voll ist.“ Dann huckte er ihn auf den Rücken und gieng mit seinen Gesellen fort.
Als der König nun sah wie der einzige Mann des ganzen Landes Reichthum forttrug, ward er zornig und ließ seine Reiterei aufsitzen, die sollten den sechsen nachjagen, und hatten Befehl dem Starken den Sack wieder abzunehmen. Zwei Regimenter holten sie bald ein, und riefen ihnen zu „ihr seid Gefangene, legt den Sack mit dem Gold nieder, oder ihr werdet zusammengehauen.“ „Was sagt ihr?“ sprach der Bläser, „wir wären Gefangene? eher sollt ihr sämmtlich in der Luft herumtanzen,“ hielt das eine Nasenloch zu und blies mit dem andern die beiden Regimenter an, da fuhren sie aus einander und in die blaue Luft über alle Berge weg, der eine hierhin, der andere dorthin. Ein Feldwebel rief um Gnade, er hätte neun Wunden und wäre ein braver Kerl, der den Schimpf nicht verdiente. Da ließ der Bläser ein wenig nach, so daß er ohne Schaden wieder herab kam, dann sprach er zu ihm „nun geh heim zum König und sag er sollte nur noch mehr Reiterei schicken, ich wollte sie alle in die Luft blasen.“ Der König, als er den Bescheid vernahm, sprach „laßt die Kerle gehen, die haben etwas an sich.“ Da brachten die sechs den Reichthum heim, theilten ihn unter sich und lebten vergnügt bis an ihr Ende.Seven swabians were once together. The first was master
schulz, the second, jackli, the third, marli, the fourth,
jergli, the fifth, michal, the sixth, Hans, the seventh,
veitli. All seven had made up their minds to travel
about the world to seek adventures and perform great
deeds. But in order that they might go in safety and with
arms in their hands, they thought it would be advisable
that they should have one solitary, but very strong,
and very long spear made for them. This spear all seven of
them took in their hands at once. In front walked the
boldest and bravest,
and that was master schulz. All the others followed in a
row, and veitli was the last. Then it came to pass one
day in the hay month, when they had walked a long distance,
and still had a long way to go before they reached the
village where they were to pass the night, that as they
were in a meadow in the twilight a great beetle or hornet
flew by them from behind a bush, and hummed in a menacing
manner. Master schulz was so terrified that he all but dropped
the spear, and a cold sweat broke out over his whole body.
Hark, hark, cried he to his comrades, good heavens. I hear a
drum. Jackli, who was behind him holding the spear, and into
whose nose some smell had risen, said, something is most
certainly going on, for I smell the powder and the match. At
these words master schulz began to take to flight, and in a
trice jumped
over a hedge, but as he just happened to jump on to the teeth of
a rake which had been left lying there after the hay-making, the
handle of it struck against his face and gave him a tremendous
blow. O dear. O dear, screamed master schulz. Take me
prisoner, I surrender, I surrender. The other six all leapt
over, one on the top of the other, crying, if you surrender, I
surrender too. If you surrender, I surrender too. At length,
as no enemy was there to bind and take them away, they saw that
they had been mistaken, and in order that the story might not
be known, and they be treated as fools and ridiculed, they
all swore to each other to hold their peace about it until one
of them should speak of it by mistake.
Then they journeyed onwards. The second danger which they
survived cannot be compared with the first. Some days afterwards,
their path led them through a fallow-field where a hare was sitting
sleeping in the sun. Her ears were standing straight up, and her
great glassy eyes were wide open. All of them were alarmed at
the sight of the horrible wild beast, and they consulted together
as to what it would be the least dangerous to do. For if they
were to run away, they knew that the monster would pursue and
swallow them whole. So they said, we must go through a great
and dangerous struggle. Boldly ventured, is half won, and all
seven grasped the spear, master schulz in front, and veitli
behind. Master schulz was always trying to keep the spear
back, but veitli had become quite brave while behind, and wanted
to dash forward and cried,
strike home, in every swabian's name,
or else I wish you may be lame.
But Hans knew how to meet this, and said,
thunder and lightning, it's fine to prate,
but for dragon-hunting you are always late.
Michal cried,
nothing is missing, not even a hair,
be sure the devil himself is there.
Then it was jergli's turn, and he said,
if it be not he, it's at least his mother,
or else the devil's own step-brother.
And now marli had a bright thought, and said to veitli,
advance, veitli, advance, advance,
and I behind will hold the lance.
Veitli, however, did not obey, and jackli said,
tis schulz's place the first to be,
no one deserves that honor but he.
Then master schulz plucked up his courage, and said, gravely,
then let us boldly advance to the fight,
thus we shall show our valor and might.
Hereupon they all together set on the dragon. Master
schulz crossed himself and prayed for God's assistance, but
as all this was of no avail, and he was getting nearer and nearer
to the enemy, he screamed, oho, oho, ho, ho, ho, in the greatest
anguish. This awakened the hare, which in great alarm darted
swiftly away. When master schulz saw her thus flying from the
field of battle, he cried in his joy,
quick, veitli, quick, look there, look there,
the monster's nothing but a hare.
But the swabian allies went in search of further adventures, and
came to the moselle, a mossy, quiet, deep river, over which there are
few bridges, and which in many places people have to cross in
boats. As the seven swabians did not know this, they called
to a man who was working on the opposite side of the river, to
know how people contrived to get across. The distance and their
way of speaking made the man unable to understand what they
wanted, and he said, what, what, in the way people speak in
the neighborhood of treves. Master schulz thought he was saying,
wade, wade through the water, and as he was the first, began
to set out and
went into the moselle. It was not long before he sank in the
mud and the deep waves which drove against him, but his hat was
blown on the opposite shore by the wind, and a frog sat down
beside it, and croaked, wat, wat, wat. The other six on the
opposite side heard that, and said, oho, comrades, master
schulz is calling us. If he can wade across, why cannot we.
So they all jumped into the water together in a great hurry, and
were drowned, and thus one frog took the lives of all six of
them, and not one of the swabian allies ever reached home again. There were once upon a time a king and a queen who lived
happily together and had twelve children, but they were
all boys. Then said the king to his wife, if the thirteenth
child which you are about to bring into the world, is a girl, the
twelve boys shall die, in order that her possessions may be great,
and that the kingdom may fall to her alone. He even caused twelve
coffins to be made, which were already filled with shavings, and
in each lay a little death pillow, and he had them taken into a
locked-up room, and then he gave the queen the key of it, and bade
her not to speak of this to anyone.
The mother, however, now sat and lamented all day long, until
the youngest son, who was always with her, and whom she had
named benjamin, from the bible, said to her, dear mother, why
are you so sad.
Dearest child, she answered, I may not tell you. But he let
her have no rest until she went and unlocked the room, and showed
him the twelve coffins ready filled with shavings. Then she said,
my dearest benjamin, your father has had these coffins made for
you and for your eleven brothers, for if I bring a little girl into
the world, you are all to be killed and buried in them. And as she
wept while she was saying this, the son comforted her and said, weep
not, dear mother, we will save ourselves, and go hence. But she
said, go forth into the forest with your eleven brothers, and let
one sit constantly on the highest tree which can be found, and keep
watch, looking towards the tower here in the castle. If I give
birth to a little son, I will put up a white flag, and then you may
venture to come back. But if I bear a daughter, I will hoist a red
flag, and then fly hence as quickly as you are able, and may the
good God protect you. And every night I will rise up and pray for
you - in winter that you may be able to warm yourself at a fire, and
in summer that you may not faint away in the heat.
After she had blessed her sons therefore, they went forth into
the forest. They each kept watch in turn, and sat on the highest
oak and looked towards the tower. When eleven days had passed
and the turn came to benjamin, he saw that a flag was being raised.
It was, however, not the white, but the blood-red flag which
announced that they were all to die. When the brothers heard that,
they were very angry and said, are we all to suffer death for the
sake of a girl. We swear that we will avenge ourselves -
wheresoever we find a girl, her red blood shall flow.
Thereupon they went deeper into the forest, and in the midst
of it, where it was the darkest, they found a little bewitched hut,
which was standing empty. Then said they, here we will dwell,
and you benjamin, who are the youngest and weakest, you shall
stay at home and keep house, we others will go out and fetch food.
Then they went into the forest and shot hares, wild deer, birds and
pigeons, and whatsoever there was to eat. This they took to
benjamin, who had to dress it for them in order that they might
appease their hunger. They lived together ten years in the little
hut, and the time did not appear long to them.
The little daughter which their mother the queen had given
birth to, was now grown up. She was good of heart, and fair of
face, and had a golden star on her forehead. Once, on a great
washing, she saw twelve men's shirts among the things, and asked her
mother, to whom do these twelve shirts belong, for they are far
too small for father. Then the queen answered with a heavy
heart, dear child, these belong to your twelve brothers. Said the
maiden, where are my twelve brothers, I have never yet heard
of them. She replied, God knows where they are, they are
wandering about the world. Then she took the maiden and opened
the chamber for her, and showed her the twelve coffins with the
shavings, and the death pillows. These coffins, said she,
were destined for your brothers, who went away secretly before you
were born, and she related to her how everything had happened.
Then said the maiden, dear mother, weep not, I will go and seek
my brothers.
So she took the twelve shirts and went forth, and straight into
the great forest. She walked the whole day, and in the evening she
came to the bewitched hut. Then she entered it and found a young
boy, who asked, from whence do you come, and whither are you
bound, and was astonished that she was so beautiful, and wore
royal garments, and had a star on her forehead. And she answered,
I am a king's daughter, and am seeking my twelve brothers, and
I will walk as far as the sky is blue until I find them. And she
showed him the twelve shirts which belonged to them. Then
benjamin saw that she was his sister, and said, I am benjamin, your
youngest brother. And she began to weep for joy, and benjamin
wept also, and they kissed and embraced each other with the
greatest love. But after this he said, dear sister, there is still
one difficulty. We have agreed that every maiden whom we meet
shall die, because we have been obliged to leave our kingdom on
account of a girl. Then said she, I will willingly die, if by so
doing I can save my twelve brothers.
No, answered he, you shall not die. Seat yourself beneath this
tub until our eleven brothers come, and then I will soon come to
an agreement with them.
She did so, and when it was night the others came from hunting,
and their dinner was ready. And as they were sitting at table, and
eating, they asked, what news is there. Said benjamin, don't
you know anything. No, they answered. He continued, you have
been in the forest and I have stayed at home, and yet I know
more than you do. Tell us then, they cried. He answered, but
promise me that the first maiden who meets us shall not be killed.
Yes, they all cried, she shall have mercy, only do tell us.
Then said he, our sister is here, and he lifted up the tub, and
the king's daughter came forth in her royal garments with the
golden star on her forehead, and she was beautiful, delicate and
fair. Then they were all rejoiced, and fell on her neck, and kissed
and loved her with all their hearts.
Now she stayed at home with benjamin and helped him with
the work. The eleven went into the forest and caught game, and
deer, and birds, and wood-pigeons that they might have food, and
the little sister and benjamin took care to make it ready for them.
She sought for the wood for cooking and herbs for vegetables, and
put the pans on the fire so that the dinner was always ready when
the eleven came. She likewise kept order in the little house, and
put beautifully white clean coverings on the little beds and the
brothers were always contented and lived in great harmony with her.
Once upon a time the two at home had prepared a wonderful
feast, and when they were all together, they sat down and ate and
drank and were full of gladness. There was, however, a little
garden belonging to the bewitched house wherein stood twelve lily
flowers, which are likewise called student-lilies. She wished to
give her brothers pleasure, and plucked the twelve flowers, and
thought she would present each brother with one while at dinner.
But at the self-same moment that she plucked the flowers the twelve
brothers were changed into twelve ravens, and flew away over the
forest, and the house and garden vanished likewise. And now the
poor maiden was alone in the wild forest, and when she looked
around, an old woman was standing near her who said, my child,
what have you done. Why did you not leave the twelve white
flowers growing. They were your brothers, who are now forevermore
changed into ravens. The maiden said, weeping, is there no way of
saving them.
No, said the woman, there is but one in the whole world, and
that is so hard that you will not save them by it, for you must be
dumb for seven years, and may not speak or laugh, and if you speak
one single word, and only an hour of the seven years is wanting, all
is in vain, and your brothers will be killed by the one word.
Then said the maiden in her heart, I know with certainty that
I shall set my brothers free, and went and sought a high tree and
seated herself in it and spun, and neither spoke nor laughed. Now
it so happened that a king was hunting in the forest, who had a
great greyhound which ran to the tree on which the maiden was
sitting, and sprang about it, whining, and barking at her. Then
the king came by and saw the beautiful king's daughter with the
golden star on her brow, and was so charmed with her beauty that
he called to ask her if she would be his wife. She made no answer,
but nodded a little with her head. So he climbed up the tree
himself, carried her down, placed her on his horse, and bore her
home. Then the wedding was solemnized with great magnificence and
rejoicing, but the bride neither spoke nor smiled. When they had
lived happily together for a few years, the king's mother, who was
a wicked woman, began to slander the young queen, and said to
the king, this is a common beggar girl whom you have brought
back with you. Who knows what wicked tricks she practises secretly.
Even if she be dumb, and not able to speak, she still might
laugh for once. But those who do not laugh have bad consciences.
At first the king would not believe it, but the old woman urged this
so long, and accused her of so many evil things, that at last the
king let himself be persuaded and sentenced her to death.
And now a great fire was lighted in the courtyard in which she
was to be burnt, and the king stood above at the window and
looked on with tearful eyes, because he still loved her so much.
And when she was bound fast to the stake, and the fire was licking
at her clothes with its red tongue, the last instant of the seven
years expired. Then a whirring sound was heard in the air, and
twelve ravens came flying towards the place, and sank downwards, and
when they touched the earth they were her twelve brothers, whom
she had saved. They tore the fire asunder, extinguished the flames,
set their dear sister free, and kissed and embraced her. And now
as she dared to open her mouth and speak, she told the king why she
had been dumb, and had never laughed. The king rejoiced when
he heard that she was innocent, and they all lived in great unity
until their death. The wicked step-mother was taken before the
judge, and put into a barrel filled with boiling oil and venomous
snakes, and died an evil death. There was once on a time a soldier who for many years had served the
king faithfully, but when the war came to an end could serve no
longer because of the many wounds which he had received. The king
said to him, "You may return to your home, I need you no longer, and
you will not receive any more money, for he only receives wages who
renders me serve for them." Then the soldier did not know how to earn
a living, went away greatly troubled, and walked the whole day, until
in the evening he entered a forest. When darkness came on, he saw a
light, which he went up to, and came to a house wherein lived a
witch. "Do give me one night's lodging, and a little to eat and
drink," said he to her, "or I shall starve." "Oho," she answered,
"who gives anything to a run-away soldier? Yet will I be
compassionate, and take you in, if you will do what I wish." "What do
you wish?" said the soldier. "That you should dig all round my
garden for me, tomorrow." The soldier consented, and next day labored
with all his strength, but could not finish it by the evening. "I
see well enough," said the witch, "that you can do no more today, but
I will keep you yet another night, in payment for which you must
tomorrow chop me a load of wood, and chop it small." The soldier
spent the whole day in doing it, and in the evening the witch
proposed that he should stay one night more. "Tomorrow, you shall
only do me a very trifling piece of work. Behind my house, there is
an old dry well, into which my light has fallen, it burns blue, and
never goes out, and you shall bring it up again."
Next day the old woman took him to the well, and let him down in a
basket. He found the blue light, and made her a signal to draw him
up again. She did draw him up, but when he came near the edge, she
stretched down her hand and wanted to take the blue light away from
him. "No," said he, perceiving her evil intention, "I will not give
you the light until I am standing with both feet upon the ground."
The witch fell into a passion, let him fall again into the well, and
went away.
The poor soldier fell without injury on the moist ground, and the
blue light went on burning, but of what use was that to him. He saw
very well that he could not escape death. He sat for a while very
sorrowfully, then suddenly he felt in his pocket and found his
tobacco pipe, which was still half full. "This shall be my last
pleasure," thought he, pulled it out, lit it at the blue light and
began to smoke. When the smoke had circled about the cavern,
suddenly a little black dwarf stood before him, and said, "Lord, what
are your commands?" "What my commands are?" replied the soldier,
quite astonished. "I must do everything you bid me," said the little
man. "Good," said the soldier, "then in the first place help me out
of this well." The little man took him by the hand, and led him
through an underground passage, but he did not forget to take the
blue light with him. On the way the dwarf showed him the treasures
which the witch had collected and hidden there, and the soldier took
as much gold as he could carry. When he was above, he said to the
little man, "Now go and bind the old witch, and carry her before the
judge."
In a short time she came by like the wind, riding on a wild tom-cat
and screaming frightfully. Nor was it long before the little man
re-appeared. "It is all done," said he, "and the witch is already
hanging on the gallows. What further commands has my lord," inquired
the dwarf. "At this moment, none," answered the soldier, "You can
return home, only be at hand immediately, if I summon you." "Nothing
more is needed than that you should light your pipe at the blue
light, and I will appear before you at once." Thereupon he vanished
from his sight.
The soldier returned to the town from which he had come. He went to
the best inn, ordered himself handsome clothes, and then bade the
landlord furnish him a room as handsome as possible. When it was
ready and the soldier had taken possession of it, he summoned the
little black mannikin and said, "I have served the king faithfully,
but he has dismissed me, and left me to hunger, and now I want to
take my revenge." "What am I to do?" asked the little man. "Late at
night, when the king's daughter is in bed, bring her here in her
sleep, she shall do servant's work for me." The mannikin said, "That
is an easy thing for me to do, but a very dangerous thing for you,
for if it is discovered, you will fare ill." When twelve o'clock had
struck, the door sprang open, and the mannikin carried in the
princess. "Aha, are you there?" cried the soldier, "Get to your work
at once. Fetch the broom and sweep the chamber." When she had done
this, he ordered her to come to his chair, and then he stretched out
his feet and said, "Pull off my boots," and then he threw them in her
face, and made her pick them up again, and clean and brighten them.
She, however, did everything he bade her, without opposition,
silently and with half-shut eyes. When the first cock crowed, the
mannikin carried her back to the royal palace, and laid her in her
bed.
Next morning when the princess arose she went to her father, and told
him that she had had a very strange dream. "I was carried through
the streets with the rapidity of lightning," said she, "and taken
into a soldier's room, and I had to wait upon him like a servant,
sweep his room, clean his boots, and do all kinds of menial work. It
was only a dream, and yet I am just as tired as if I really had done
everything." "The dream may have been true," said the king, "I will
give you a piece of advice. Fill your pocket full of peas, and make
a small hole in the pocket, and then if you are carried away again,
they will fall out and leave a track in the streets." But unseen by
the king, the mannikin was standing beside him when he said that, and
heard all. At night when the sleeping princess was again carried
through the streets, some peas certainly did fall out of her pocket,
but they made no track, for the crafty mannikin had just before
scattered peas in every street there was. And again the princess was
compelled to do servant's work until cock-crow.
Next morning the king sent his people out to seek the track, but it
was all in vain, for in every street poor children were sitting,
picking up peas, and saying, "It must have rained peas, last night."
"We must think of something else," said the king, "keep your shoes on
when you go to bed, and before you come back from the place where you
are taken, hide one of them there, I will soon contrive to find it."
The black mannikin heard this plot, and at night when the soldier
again ordered him to bring the princess, revealed it to him, and told
him that he knew of no expedient to counteract this stratagem, and
that if the shoe were found in the soldier's house it would go badly
with him. "Do what I bid you," replied the soldier, and again this
third night the princess was obliged to work like a servant, but
before she went away, she hid her shoe under the bed.
Next morning the king had the entire town searched for his daughter's
shoe. It was found at the soldier's, and the soldier himself, who at
the entreaty of the dwarf had gone outside the gate, was soon brought
back, and thrown into prison. In his flight he had forgotten the
most valuable things he had, the blue light and the gold, and had
only one ducat in his pocket. And now loaded with chains, he was
standing at the window of his dungeon, when he chanced to see one of
his comrades passing by. The soldier tapped at the pane of glass,
and when this man came up, said to him, "Be so kind as to fetch me
that small bundle I have lying in the inn, and I will give you a
ducat for doing it."
His comrade ran thither and brought him what he wanted. As soon as
the soldier was alone again, he lighted his pipe and summoned the
black mannikin. "Have no fear," said the latter to his master. "Go
wheresoever they take you, and let them do what they will, only take
the blue light with you." Next day the soldier was tried, and though
he had done nothing wicked, the judge condemned him to death. When
he was led forth to die, he begged a last favor of the king. "What
is it?" asked the king. "That I may smoke one more pipe on my way."
"You may smoke three," answered the king, "but do not imagine that I
will spare your life." Then the soldier pulled out his pipe and
lighted it at the blue light, and as soon as a few wreaths of smoke
had ascended, the mannikin was there with a small cudgel in his hand,
and said, "What does my lord command?" "Strike down to earth that
false judge there, and his constable, and spare not the king who has
treated me so ill." Then the mannikin fell on them like lightning,
darting this way and that way, and whosoever was so much as touched
by his cudgel fell to earth, and did not venture to stir again. The
king was terrified, he threw himself on the soldier's mercy, and
merely to be allowed to live at all, gave him his kingdom for his
own, and his daughter to wife. A certain man had a donkey, which had carried the corn-sacks
to the mill indefatigably for many a long year. But his
strength was going, and he was growing more and more unfit
for work. Then his master began to consider how he might
best save his keep. But the donkey, seeing that no good wind
was blowing, ran away and set out on the road to bremen. There,
he thought, I can surely be a town-musician. When he had walked
some distance, he found a hound lying on the road, gasping like
one who had run till he was tired. What are you gasping so for,
you big fellow, asked the donkey.
Ah, replied the hound, as I am old, and daily grow weaker, and
no longer can hunt, my master wanted to kill me, so I took to
flight, but now how am I to earn my bread.
I tell you what, said the donkey, I am going to bremen, and
shall be town-musician there. Go with me and engage yourself
also as a musician. I will play the lute, and you shall beat
the kettle-drum.
The hound agreed, and on they went.
Before long they came to a cat, sitting on the path, with a face
like three rainy days. Now then, old shaver, what has gone
askew with you, asked the donkey.
Who can be merry when his neck is in danger, answered the cat.
Because I am now getting old, and my teeth are worn to
stumps, and I prefer to sit by the fire and spin, rather than
hunt about after mice, my mistress wanted to drown me, so I
ran away. But now good advice is scarce. Where am I to go.
Go with us to bremen. You understand night-music, you
can be a town-musician.
The cat thought well of it, and went with them. After this the
three fugitives came to a farm-yard, where the cock was sitting
upon the gate, crowing with all his might. Your crow goes
through and through one, said the donkey. What is the matter.
I have been foretelling fine weather, because it is the day on
which our lady washes the christ-child's little shirts, and
wants to dry them, said the cock. But guests are coming for
sunday, so the housewife has no pity, and has told the cook that
she intends to eat me in the soup to-morrow, and this evening
I am to have my head cut off. Now I am crowing at the top of
my lungs while still I can.
Ah, but red-comb, said the donkey, you had better come away
with us. We are going to bremen. You can find something better
than death everywhere. You have a good voice, and if we make
music together it must have some quality.
The cock agreed to this plan, and all four went on together.
They could not reach the city of bremen in one day, however,
and in the evening they came to a forest where they meant to
pass the night. The donkey and the hound laid themselves down
under a large tree, the cat and the cock settled themselves in
the branches. But the cock flew right to the top, where he was
most safe. Before he went to sleep he looked round on all four
sides, and thought he saw in the distance a little spark burning.
So he called out to his companions that there must be a house
not far off, for he saw a light. The donkey said, if so, we
had better get up and go on, for the shelter here is bad. The
hound thought too that a few bones with some meat on would do
him good.
So they made their way to the place where the light was, and
soon saw it shine brighter and grow larger, until they came to
a well-lighted robbers, house. The donkey, as the biggest, went
to the window and looked in.
What do you see, my grey-horse, asked the cock. What do I
see, answered the donkey. A table covered with good things to
eat and drink, and robbers sitting at it enjoying themselves.
That would be the sort of thing for us, said the cock. Yes,
yes. Ah, if only we were there, said the donkey.
Then the animals took counsel together how they should manage
to drive away the robbers, and at last they thought of a plan.
The donkey was to place himself with his fore-feet upon the
window-ledge, the hound was to jump on the donkey's back, the
cat was to climb upon the dog, and lastly the cock was to fly
up and perch upon the head of the cat.
When this was done, at a given signal, they began to perform
their music together. The donkey brayed, the hound barked,
the cat mewed, and the cock crowed. Then they burst through the
window into the room, shattering the glass. At this horrible din,
the robbers sprang up, thinking no otherwise than that a ghost
had come in, and fled in a great fright out into the forest. The
four companions now sat down at the table, well content with
what was left, and ate as if they were going to fast for a
month.
As soon as the four minstrels had done, they put out the light,
and each sought for himself a sleeping-place according to his
nature and what suited him. The donkey laid himself down upon
some straw in the yard, the hound behind the door, the cat upon
the hearth near the warm ashes, and the cock perched himself
upon a beam of the roof. And being tired from their long walk,
they soon went to sleep.
When it was past midnight, and the robbers saw from afar that
the light was no longer burning in their house, and all appeared
quiet, the captain said, we ought not to have let ourselves
be frightened out of our wits, and ordered one of them to go
and examine the house.
The messenger finding all still, went into the kitchen to light
a candle, and, taking the glistening fiery eyes of the cat for
live coals, he held a lucifer-match to them to light it. But
the cat did not understand the joke, and flew in his face, spitting
and scratching. He was dreadfully frightened, and ran to the
back-door, but the dog, who lay there sprang up and bit his
leg. And as he ran across the yard by the dunghill, the donkey
gave him a smart kick with its hind foot. The cock, too, who had
been awakened by the noise, and had become lively, cried down
from the beam, cock-a-doodle-doo.
Then the robber ran back as fast as he could to his captain, and
said, ah, there is a horrible witch sitting in the house, who
spat on me and scratched my face with her long claws. And by
the door stands a man with a knife, who stabbed me in the leg.
And in the yard there lies a black monster, who beat me with
a wooden club. And above, upon the roof, sits the judge, who
called out, bring the rogue here to me. So I got away as well
as I could.
After this the robbers never again dared enter the house.
But it suited the four musicians of bremen so well that they
did not care to leave it any more. And the mouth of him who
last told this story is still warm. Little brother took his little sister by the hand and said, since
our mother died we have had no happiness. Our step-mother
beats us every day, and if we come near her she kicks us away
with her foot. Our meals are the hard crusts of bread that are left
over. And the little dog under the table is better off, for she
often throws it a choice morsel. God pity us, if our mother only
knew. Come, we will go forth together into the wide world.
They walked the whole day over meadows, fields, and stony
places. And when it rained the little sister said, heaven and our
hearts are weeping together. In the evening they came to a large
forest, and they were so weary with sorrow and hunger and the
long walk, that they lay down in a hollow tree and fell asleep.
The next day when they awoke, the sun was already high in the
sky, and shone down hot into the tree. Then the brother said,
sister, I am thirsty. If I knew of a little brook I would go and
just take a drink. I think I hear one running. The brother got up
and took the little sister by the hand, and they set off to find
the brook. But the wicked step-mother was a witch, and had seen how
the two children had gone away, and had crept after them secretly,
as witches creep, and had bewitched all the brooks in the forest.
Now when they found a little brook leaping brightly over the
stones, the brother was going to drink out of it, but the sister
heard how it said as it ran, who drinks of me will be a tiger.
Who drinks of me will be a tiger. Then the sister cried, pray,
dear brother, do not drink, or you will become a wild beast, and
tear me to pieces. The brother did not drink, although he was so
thirsty, but said, I will wait for the next spring.
When they came to the next brook the sister heard this also say,
who drinks of me will be a wolf. Who drinks of me will be a wolf.
Then the sister cried out, pray, dear brother, do not drink,
or you will become a wolf, and devour me. The brother did not
drink, and said, I will wait until we come to the next spring, but
then I must drink, say what you like. For my thirst is too great.
And when they came to the third brook the sister heard how it
said as it ran, who drinks of me will be a roebuck. Who drinks
of me will be a roebuck. The sister said, oh, I pray you, dear
brother, do not drink, or you will become a roebuck, and run away
from me. But the brother had knelt down at once by the brook,
and had bent down and drunk some of the water, and as soon as
the first drops touched his lips he lay there in the form of a
young roebuck.
And now the sister wept over her poor bewitched brother, and
the little roe wept also, and sat sorrowfully near to her. But at
last the girl said, be quiet, dear little roe, I will never,
never leave you.
Then she untied her golden garter and put it round the roebuck's
neck, and she plucked rushes and wove them into a soft cord. This
she tied to the little animal and led it on, and she walked deeper
and deeper into the forest.
And when they had gone a very long way they came at last to a
little house, and the girl looked in. And as it was empty, she
thought, we can stay here and live. Then she sought for leaves
and moss to make a soft bed for the roe. And every morning she
went out and gathered roots and berries and nuts for herself, and
brought tender grass for the roe, who ate out of her hand, and was
content and played round about her. In the evening, when the sister
was tired, and had said her prayer, she laid her head upon the
roebuck's back - that was her pillow, and she slept softly on it.
And if only the brother had had his human form it would have been a
delightful life.
For some time they were alone like this in the wilderness. But
it happened that the king of the country held a great hunt in the
forest. Then the blasts of the horns, the barking of dogs and the
merry shouts of the huntsmen rang through the trees, and the roebuck
heard all, and was only too anxious to be there. Oh, said he,
to his sister, let me be off to the hunt, I cannot bear it any
longer, and he begged so much that at last she agreed. But, said
she to him, come back to me in the evening. I must shut my door for
fear of the rough huntsmen, so knock and say, my little sister,
let me in, that I may know you. And if you do not say that, I
shall not open the door. Then the young roebuck sprang away. So
happy was he and so merry in the open air.
The king and the huntsmen saw the lovely animal, and started
after him, but they could not catch him, and when they thought
that they surely had him, away he sprang through the bushes and
vanished. When it was dark he ran to the cottage, knocked, and
said, my little sister, let me in. Then the door was opened for
him, and he jumped in, and rested himself the whole night through
upon his soft bed.
The next day the hunt began again, and when the roebuck once
more heard the bugle-horn, and the ho. Ho. Of the huntsmen, he
had no peace, but said, sister, let me out, I must be off. His
sister opened the door for him, and said, but you must be here again
in the evening and say your pass-word.
When the king and his huntsmen again saw the young roebuck
with the golden collar, they all chased him, but he was too quick
and nimble for them. This lasted the whole day, but by the evening
the huntsmen had surrounded him, and one of them wounded him
a little in the foot, so that he limped and ran slowly. Then a
hunter crept after him to the cottage and heard how he said, my
little sister, let me in, and saw that the door was opened for him,
and was shut again at once. The huntsman took notice of it all, and
went to the king and told him what he had seen and heard. Then
the king said, to-morrow we will hunt once more.
The little sister, however, was dreadfully frightened when she
saw that her fawn was hurt. She washed the blood off him, laid
herbs on the wound, and said, go to your bed, dear roe, that you
may get well again. But the wound was so slight that the roebuck,
next morning, did not feel it any more. And when he again heard
the sport outside, he said, I cannot bear it, I must be there.
They shall not find it so easy to catch me. The sister cried, and
said, this time they will kill you, and here am I alone in the
forest and forsaken by all the world. I will not let you out. Then
you will have me die of grief, answered the roe. When I hear the
bugle-horns I feel as if I must jump out of my skin. Then the
sister could not do otherwise, but opened the door for him with a
heavy heart, and the roebuck, full of health and joy, bounded into
the forest.
When the king saw him, he said to his huntsmen, now chase
him all day long till night-fall, but take care that no one does him
any harm.
As soon as the sun had set, the king said to the huntsman, now
come and show me the cottage in the wood. And when he was at
the door, he knocked and called out, dear little sister, let me in.
Then the door opened, and the king walked in, and there stood
a maiden more lovely than any he had ever seen. The maiden was
frightened when she saw, not her little roe, but a man come in who
wore a golden crown upon his head. But the king looked kindly
at her, stretched out his hand, and said, will you go with me to
my palace and be my dear wife. Yes, indeed, answered the
maiden, but the little roe must go with me, I cannot leave him.
The king said, it shall stay with you as long as you live, and
shall want nothing. Just then he came running in, and the sister
again tied him with the cord of rushes, took it in her own hand, and
went away with the king from the cottage.
The king took the lovely maiden upon his horse and carried
her to his palace, where the wedding was held with great pomp.
She was now the queen, and they lived for a long time happily
together. The roebuck was tended and cherished, and ran about in
the palace-garden.
But the wicked step-mother, because of whom the children had
gone out into the world, had never thought but that the sister had
been torn to pieces by the wild beasts in the wood, and that the
brother had been shot for a roebuck by the huntsmen. Now when
she heard that they were so happy, and so well off, envy and
jealousy rose in her heart and left her no peace, and she thought of
nothing but how she could bring them again to misfortune. Her own
daughter, who was ugly as night, and had only one eye, reproached
her and said, a queen. That ought to have been my luck. Just be
quiet, answered the old woman, and comforted her by saying,
when the time comes I shall be ready.
As time went on the queen had a pretty little boy, and it
happened that the king was out hunting. So the old witch took the
form of the chamber maid, went into the room where the queen
lay, and said to her, come the bath is ready. It will do you good,
and give you fresh strength. Make haste before it gets cold.
Her daughter also was close by. So they carried the weakly
queen into the bath-room, and put her into the bath. Then they
shut the door and ran away. But in the bath-room they had made
a fire of such hellish heat that the beautiful young queen was soon
suffocated.
When this was done the old woman took her daughter, put a
nightcap on her head, and laid her in bed in place of the queen.
She gave her too the shape and look of the queen, only she
could not make good the lost eye. But in order that the king might
not see it, she was to lie on the side on which she had no eye.
In the evening when he came home and heard that he had a son
he was heartily glad, and was going to the bed of his dear wife to
see how she was. But the old woman quickly called out, for your
life leave the curtains closed. The queen ought not to see the
light yet, and must have rest. The king went away, and did not find
out that a false queen was lying in the bed.
But at midnight, when all slept, the nurse, who was sitting in the
nursery by the cradle, and who was the only person awake, saw
the door open and the true queen walk in. She took the child out
of the cradle, laid it on her arm, and suckled it. Then she shook
up its pillow, laid the child down again, and covered it with the
little quilt. And she did not forget the roebuck, but went into the
corner where it lay, and stroked its back. Then she went quite
silently out of the door again. The next morning the nurse asked
the guards whether anyone had come into the palace during the night,
but they answered, no, we have seen no one.
She came thus many nights and never spoke a word. The nurse
always saw her, but she did not dare to tell anyone about it.
When some time had passed in this manner, the queen began to
speak in the night, and said,
how fares my child, how fares my roe.
Twice shall I come, then never more.
The nurse did not answer, but when the queen had gone again,
went to the king and told him all. The king said, ah, God.
What is this. To-morrow night I will watch by the child. In the
evening he went into the nursery, and at midnight the queen again
appeared and said,
how fares my child, how fares my roe.
Once will I come, then never more.
And she nursed the child as she was wont to do before she
disappeared. The king dared not speak to her, but on the next
night he watched again. Then she said,
how fares my child, how fares my roe.
This time I come, then never more.
Then the king could not restrain himself. He sprang towards her,
and said, you can be none other than my dear wife. She answered,
yes, I am your dear wife, and at the same moment she received
life again, and by God's grace became fresh, rosy and full of
health.
Then she told the king the evil deed which the wicked witch
and her daughter had been guilty of towards her. The king ordered
both to be led before the judge, and the judgment was delivered
against them. The daughter was taken into the forest where she was
torn to pieces by wild beasts, but the witch was cast into the fire
and miserably burnt. And as soon as she was burnt to ashes, the
roebuck changed his shape, and received his human form again, so the
sister and brother lived happily together all their lives. Cinderella
The wife of a rich man fell sick, and as she felt that her end
was drawing near, she called her only daughter to her bedside and
said, dear child, be good and pious, and then the
good God will always protect you, and I will look down on you
from heaven and be near you. Thereupon she closed her eyes and
departed. Every day the maiden went out to her mother's grave,
and wept, and she remained pious and good. When winter came
the snow spread a white sheet over the grave, and by the time the
spring sun had drawn it off again, the man had taken another wife.
The woman had brought with her into the house two daughters,
who were beautiful and fair of face, but vile and black of heart.
Now began a bad time for the poor step-child. Is the stupid goose
to sit in the parlor with us, they said. He who wants to eat bread
must earn it. Out with the kitchen-wench. They took her pretty
clothes away from her, put an old grey bedgown on her, and gave
her wooden shoes. Just look at the proud princess, how decked
out she is, they cried, and laughed, and led her into the kitchen.
There she had to do hard work from morning till night, get up
before daybreak, carry water, light fires, cook and wash. Besides
this, the sisters did her every imaginable injury - they mocked her
and emptied her peas and lentils into the ashes, so that she was
forced to sit and pick them out again. In the evening when she had
worked till she was weary she had no bed to go to, but had to sleep
by the hearth in the cinders. And as on that account she always
looked dusty and dirty, they called her cinderella.
It happened that the father was once going to the fair, and he
asked his two step-daughters what he should bring back for them.
Beautiful dresses, said one, pearls and jewels, said the second.
And you, cinderella, said he, what will you have. Father
break off for me the first branch which knocks against your hat on
your way home. So he bought beautiful dresses, pearls and jewels
for his two step-daughters, and on his way home, as he was riding
through a green thicket, a hazel twig brushed against him and
knocked off his hat. Then he broke off the branch and took it with
him. When he reached home he gave his step-daughters the things
which they had wished for, and to cinderella he gave the branch
from the hazel-bush. Cinderella thanked him, went to her mother's
grave and planted the branch on it, and wept so much that the tears
fell down on it and watered it. And it grew and became a handsome
tree. Thrice a day cinderella went and sat beneath it, and wept and
prayed, and a little white bird always came on the tree, and if
cinderella expressed a wish, the bird threw down to her what she
had wished for.
It happened, however, that the king gave orders for a festival
which was to last three days, and to which all the beautiful young
girls in the country were invited, in order that his son might choose
himself a bride. When the two step-sisters heard that they too were
to appear among the number, they were delighted, called cinderella
and said, comb our hair for us, brush our shoes and fasten our
buckles, for we are going to the wedding at the king's palace.
Cinderella obeyed, but wept, because she too would have liked to
go with them to the dance, and begged her step-mother to allow
her to do so. You go, cinderella, said she, covered in dust and
dirt as you are, and would go to the festival. You have no clothes
and shoes, and yet would dance. As, however, cinderella went on
asking, the step-mother said at last, I have emptied a dish of
lentils into the ashes for you, if you have picked them out again in
two hours, you shall go with us. The maiden went through the
back-door into the garden, and called, you tame pigeons, you
turtle-doves, and all you birds beneath the sky, come and help me
to pick
the good into the pot,
the bad into the crop.
Then two white pigeons came in by the kitchen window, and
afterwards the turtle-doves, and at last all the birds beneath the
sky, came whirring and crowding in, and alighted amongst the ashes.
And the pigeons nodded with their heads and began pick, pick,
pick, pick, and the rest began also pick, pick, pick, pick, and
gathered all the good grains into the dish. Hardly had one hour
passed before they had finished, and all flew out again. Then the
girl took the dish to her step-mother, and was glad, and believed
that now she would be allowed to go with them to the festival.
But the step-mother said, no, cinderella, you have no clothes and
you can not dance. You would only be laughed at. And as
cinderella wept at this, the step-mother said, if you can pick two
dishes of lentils out of the ashes for me in one hour, you shall go
with us. And she thought to herself, that she most certainly
cannot do again. When the step-mother had emptied the two
dishes of lentils amongst the ashes, the maiden went through the
back-door into the garden and cried, you tame pigeons, you
turtle-doves, and all you birds beneath the sky, come and help me
to pick
the good into the pot,
the bad into the crop.
Then two white pigeons came in by the kitchen-window, and
afterwards the turtle-doves, and at length all the birds beneath the
sky, came whirring and crowding in, and alighted amongst the
ashes. And the doves nodded with their heads and began pick,
pick, pick, pick, and the others began also pick, pick, pick, pick,
and gathered all the good seeds into the dishes, and before half an
hour was over they had already finished, and all flew out again.
Then the maiden was delighted, and believed that she might now go
with them to the wedding. But the step-mother said, all this will
not help. You cannot go with us, for you have no clothes and can
not dance. We should be ashamed of you. On this she turned her
back on cinderella, and hurried away with her two proud daughters.
As no one was now at home, cinderella went to her mother's
grave beneath the hazel-tree, and cried -
shiver and quiver, little tree,
silver and gold throw down over me.
Then the bird threw a gold and silver dress down to her, and
slippers embroidered with silk and silver. She put on the dress
with all speed, and went to the wedding. Her step-sisters and the
step-mother however did not know her, and thought she must be a
foreign princess, for she looked so beautiful in the golden dress.
They never once thought of cinderella, and believed that she was
sitting at home in the dirt, picking lentils out of the ashes. The
prince approached her, took her by the hand and danced with her.
He would dance with no other maiden, and never let loose of her
hand, and if any one else came to invite her, he said, this is my
partner.
She danced till it was evening, and then she wanted to go home.
But the king's son said, I will go with you and bear you company,
for he wished to see to whom the beautiful maiden belonged.
She escaped from him, however, and sprang into the
pigeon-house. The king's son waited until her father came, and
then he told him that the unknown maiden had leapt into the
pigeon-house. The old man thought, can it be cinderella. And
they had to bring him an axe and a pickaxe that he might hew
the pigeon-house to pieces, but no one was inside it. And when they
got home cinderella lay in her dirty clothes among the ashes, and
a dim little oil-lamp was burning on the mantle-piece, for
cinderella had jumped quickly down from the back of the pigeon-house
and had run to the little hazel-tree, and there she had taken off
her beautiful clothes and laid them on the grave, and the bird had
taken them away again, and then she had seated herself in the
kitchen amongst the ashes in her grey gown.
Next day when the festival began afresh, and her parents and
the step-sisters had gone once more, cinderella went to the
hazel-tree and said -
shiver and quiver, my little tree,
silver and gold throw down over me.
Then the bird threw down a much more beautiful dress than on
the preceding day. And when cinderella appeared at the wedding
in this dress, every one was astonished at her beauty. The king's
son had waited until she came, and instantly took her by the hand
and danced with no one but her. When others came and invited
her, he said, this is my partner. When evening came she wished
to leave, and the king's son followed her and wanted to see into
which house she went. But she sprang away from him, and into
the garden behind the house. Therein stood a beautiful tall tree on
which hung the most magnificent pears. She clambered so nimbly
between the branches like a squirrel that the king's son did not
know where she was gone. He waited until her father came, and
said to him, the unknown maiden has escaped from me, and I
believe she has climbed up the pear-tree. The father thought,
can it be cinderella. And had an axe brought and cut the
tree down, but no one was on it. And when they got into the
kitchen, cinderella lay there among the ashes, as usual, for she
had jumped down on the other side of the tree, had taken the
beautiful dress to the bird on the little hazel-tree, and put on her
grey gown.
On the third day, when the parents and sisters had gone away,
cinderella went once more to her mother's grave and said to the
little tree -
shiver and quiver, my little tree,
silver and gold throw down over me.
And now the bird threw down to her a dress which was more
splendid and magnificent than any she had yet had, and the
slippers were golden. And when she went to the festival in the
dress, no one knew how to speak for astonishment. The king's son
danced with her only, and if any one invited her to dance, he said
this is my partner.
When evening came, cinderella wished to leave, and the king's
son was anxious to go with her, but she escaped from him so quickly
that he could not follow her. The king's son, however, had
employed a ruse, and had caused the whole staircase to be smeared
with pitch, and there, when she ran down, had the maiden's left
slipper remained stuck. The king's son picked it up, and it was
small and dainty, and all golden. Next morning, he went with it to
the father, and said to him, no one shall be my wife but she whose
foot this golden slipper fits. Then were the two sisters glad,
for they had pretty feet. The eldest went with the shoe into her
room and wanted to try it on, and her mother stood by. But she
could not get her big toe into it, and the shoe was too small for
her. Then her mother gave her a knife and said, cut the toe off,
when you are queen you will have no more need to go on foot. The
maiden cut the toe off, forced the foot into the shoe, swallowed
the pain, and went out to the king's son. Then he took her on his
his horse as his bride and rode away with her. They were
obliged, however, to pass the grave, and there, on the hazel-tree,
sat the two pigeons and cried -
turn and peep, turn and peep,
there's blood within the shoe,
the shoe it is too small for her,
the true bride waits for you.
Then he looked at her foot and saw how the blood was trickling
from it. He turned his horse round and took the false bride
home again, and said she was not the true one, and that the
other sister was to put the shoe on. Then this one went into her
chamber and got her toes safely into the shoe, but her heel was
too large. So her mother gave her a knife and said, cut a bit
off your heel, when you are queen you will have no more need
to go on foot. The maiden cut a bit off her heel, forced
her foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the
king's son. He took her on his horse as his bride, and rode away
with her, but when they passed by the hazel-tree, the two pigeons
sat on it and cried -
turn and peep, turn and peep,
there's blood within the shoe,
the shoe it is too small for her,
the true bride waits for you.
He looked down at her foot and saw how the blood was running
out of her shoe, and how it had stained her white stocking quite
red. Then he turned his horse and took the false bride home
again. This also is not the right one, said he, have you no
other daughter. No, said the man, there is still a little
stunted kitchen-wench which my late wife left behind her, but
she cannot possibly be the bride. The king's son said he was
to send her up to him, but the mother answered, oh, no, she is
much too dirty, she cannot show herself. But he absolutely
insisted on it, and cinderella had to be called. She first
washed her hands and face clean, and then went and bowed down
before the king's son, who gave her the golden shoe. Then she
seated herself on a stool, drew her foot out of the heavy
wooden shoe, and put it into the slipper, which fitted like a
glove. And when she rose up and the king's son looked at her
face he recognized the beautiful maiden who had danced with
him and cried, that is the true bride. The step-mother and
the two sisters were horrified and became pale with rage, he,
however, took cinderella on his horse and rode away with her. As
they passed by the hazel-tree, the two white doves cried -
turn and peep, turn and peep,
no blood is in the shoe,
the shoe is not too small for her,
the true bride rides with you,
and when they had cried that, the two came flying down and
placed themselves on cinderella's shoulders, one on the right,
the other on the left, and remained sitting there.
When the wedding with the king's son was to be celebrated, the
two false sisters came and wanted to get into favor with
cinderella and share her good fortune. When the betrothed
couple went to church, the elder was at the right side and the
younger at the left, and the pigeons pecked out one eye from
each of them. Afterwards as they came back the elder was at
the left, and the younger at the right, and then the pigeons
pecked out the other eye from each. And thus, for their
wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness
all their days. There was once a man who had a daughter who was called clever
elsie. And when she had grown up her father said, we will get
her married. Yes, said the mother, if only someone would come who
would have her. At length a man came from a distance and wooed
her, who was called Hans, but he stipulated that clever elsie
should be really smart. Oh, said the father, she has plenty of
good sense. And the mother said, oh, she can see the wind coming
up the street, and hear the flies coughing.
Well, said Hans, if she is not really smart, I won't have her.
When they were sitting at dinner and had eaten, the mother said,
elsie, go into the cellar and fetch some beer. Then clever elsie
took the pitcher from the wall, went into the cellar, and tapped
the lid briskly as she went, so that the time might not appear
long. When she was below she fetched herself a chair, and set
it before the barrel so that she had no need to stoop, and did
not hurt her back or do herself any unexpected injury. Then she
placed the can before her, and turned the tap, and while the
beer was running she would not let her eyes be idle, but looked
up at the wall, and after much peering here and there, saw a
pick-axe exactly above her, which the masons had accidentally
left there.
Then clever elsie began to weep, and said, if I get Hans, and we
have a child, and he grows big, and we send him into the cellar
here to draw beer, then the pick-axe will fall on his head and
kill him. Then she sat and wept and screamed with all the strength
of her body, over the misfortune which lay before her. Those
upstairs waited for the drink, but clever elsie still did not
come. Then the woman said to the servant, just go down into the
cellar and see where elsie is. The maid went and found her
sitting in front of the barrel, screaming loudly. Elsie, why do
you weep, asked the maid. Ah, she answered, have I not reason
to weep. If I get Hans, and we have a child, and he grows big,
and has to draw beer here, the pick-axe will perhaps fall on his
head, and kill him. Then said the maid, what a clever elsie we
have. And sat down beside her and began loudly to weep over the
misfortune. After a while, as the maid did not come back, those
upstairs were thirsty for the beer, the man said to the boy, just
go down into the cellar and see where elsie and the girl are.
The boy went down, and there sat clever elsie and the girl both
weeping together. Then he asked, why are you weeping, ah, said
elsie, have I not reason to weep. If I get Hans, and we have a
child, and he grows big, and has to draw beer here, the pick-axe
will fall on his head and kill him. Then said the boy, what a
clever elsie we have. And sat down by her, and likewise began
to howl loudly. Upstairs they
waited for the boy, but as he still did not return, the man said
to the woman, just go down into the cellar and see where elsie is.
The woman went down, and found all three in the midst of their
lamentations, and inquired what was the cause, then elsie told
her also that her future child was to be killed by the pick-axe,
when it grew big and had to draw beer, and the pick-axe fell
down. Then said the mother likewise, what a clever elsie we have.
And sat down and wept with them. The man upstairs waited a short
time, but as his wife did not come back and his thirst grew ever
greater, he said, I must go into the cellar myself and see where
elsie is. But when he got into the cellar, and they were all
sitting together crying, and he heard the reason, and that elsie's
child was the cause, and that elsie might perhaps bring one into
the world some day, and that he might be killed by the
pick-axe, if he should happen to be sitting beneath it, drawing
beer just at the very time when it fell down, he cried, oh,
what a clever elsie. And sat down, and likewise wept with them.
The bridegroom stayed upstairs alone for a long time, then as
no one would come back he thought, they must be waiting for me
below, I too must go there and see what they are about. When he
got down, the five of them were sitting screaming and lamenting
quite piteously, each out-doing the other. What misfortune has
happened then, he asked. Ah, dear Hans, said elsie, if we marry
each other and have a child, and he is big, and we perhaps send
him here to draw something to drink, then the pick-axe which has
been left up there might dash his brains out if it were to fall
down, so have we not reason to weep. Come, said Hans, more
understanding than that is not needed for my household, as you
are such a clever elsie, I will have you. And he seized her
hand, took her upstairs with him, and married her.
After Hans had had her some time, he said, wife, I am going
out to work and earn some money for us, go into the field and cut
the corn that we may have some bread. Yes, dear Hans, I will do
that. After Hans had gone away, she cooked herself some good
broth and took it into the field with her. When she came to the
field she said to herself, what shall I do, shall I cut first, or
shall I eat first. Oh, I will eat first. Then she drank her cup
of broth, and when she was fully satisfied, she once more said,
what shall I do. Shall I cut first, or shall I sleep first. I
will sleep first. Then she lay down among the corn and fell
asleep. Hans had been at home for a long time, but elsie did not
come, then said he, what a clever elsie I have, she is so
industrious that she does not even come home to eat. But when
evening came and she still stayed away, Hans went out to see what
she had cut, but nothing was cut, and she was lying among the
corn asleep. Then Hans hastened home and brought a fowler's net
with little bells and hung it round about her, and she still
went on sleeping. Then he ran home, shut the house-door, and sat
down in his chair and worked. At length, when it was quite dark,
clever elsie awoke and when she got up there was a jingling all
round about her, and the bells rang at each step which she took.
Then she was alarmed, and became uncertain whether she really was
clever elsie or not, and said, is it I, or is it not I. But she
knew not what answer to make to this, and stood for a time in
doubt, at length she thought, I will go home and ask if it be I,
or if it be not I, they will be sure to know. She ran to the door
of her own house, but it was shut, then she knocked at the
window and cried, Hans, is elsie within. Yes, answered Hans, she
is within. Hereupon she was terrified, and said, ah, heavens.
Then it is not I. And went to another door, but when the people
heard the jingling of the bells they would not open it, and she
could get in nowhere. Then she ran out of the village, and no
one has seen her since. The mother of Hans said, whither away, Hans. Hans answered, to
Gretel. Behave well, Hans. Oh, I'll behave well. Good-bye,
mother. Good-bye, Hans. Hans comes to Gretel. Good day, Gretel.
Good day, Hans. What do you bring that is good. I bring nothing,
I want to have something given me. Gretel presents Hans with a
needle. Hans says, good-bye, Gretel. Good-bye, Hans.
Hans takes the needle, sticks it into a hay-cart, and follows the
cart home. Good evening, mother. Good evening, Hans. Where have
you been. With Gretel. What did you take her. Took her nothing,
had something given me. What did Gretel give you. Gave me a
needle. Where is the needle, Hans. Stuck it in the hay-cart.
That was ill done, Hans. You should have stuck the needle in
your sleeve. Never mind, I'll do better next time.
Whither away, Hans. To Gretel, mother. Behave well, Hans.
Oh, I'll behave well. Good-bye, mother. Good-bye, Hans. Hans
comes to Gretel. Good day, Gretel. Good day, Hans. What do you
bring that is good. I bring nothing, I want to have something
given to me. Gretel presents Hans with a knife. Good-bye, Gretel.
Good-bye Hans. Hans takes the knife, sticks it in his sleeve, and
goes home. Good evening, mother. Good evening, Hans. Where
have you been. With Gretel. What did you take her. Took her
nothing, she gave me something. What did Gretel give you. Gave
me a knife. Where is the knife, Hans. Stuck in my sleeve.
That's ill done, Hans, you should have put the knife in your
pocket. Never mind, will do better next time.
Whither away, Hans. To Gretel, mother. Behave well, Hans.
Oh, I'll behave well. Good-bye, mother. Good-bye, Hans. Hans
comes to Gretel. Good day, Gretel. Good day, Hans. What good
thing do you bring. I bring nothing, I want something given me.
Gretel presents Hans with a young goat. Good-bye, Gretel.
Good-bye, Hans. Hans takes the goat, ties its legs, and puts it
in his pocket. When he gets home it is suffocated. Good evening,
mother. Good evening, Hans. Where have you been. With Gretel.
What did you take her. Took nothing, she gave me something. What
did Gretel give you. She gave me a goat. Where is the goat, Hans.
Put it in my pocket. That was ill done, Hans, you should have
put a rope round the goat's neck. Never mind, will do better next
time.
Whither away, Hans, to Gretel, mother. Behave well, Hans.
Oh, I'll behave well good-bye, mother. Good-bye, Hans. Hans
comes to Gretel. Good day, Gretel. Good day, Hans. What good
thing do you bring. I bring nothing, I want something given to
me. Gretel presents Hans with a piece of bacon. Good-bye,
Gretel. Good-bye, Hans.
Hans takes the bacon, ties it to a rope, and drags it away
behind him. The dogs come and devour the bacon. When he gets
home, he has the rope in his hand, and there is no longer
anything hanging to it. Good evening, mother. Good evening,
Hans. Where have you been. With Gretel. What did you take
her. I took her nothing, she gave me something. What did
Gretel give you.
Gave me a bit of bacon. Where is the bacon, Hans. I tied it to
a rope, brought it home, dogs took it. That was ill done, Hans,
you should have carried the bacon on your head. Never mind, will
do better next time.
Whither away, Hans. To Gretel, mother. Behave well, Hans.
I'll behave well. Good-bye, mother. Good-bye, Hans. Hans
comes to Gretel. Good day, Gretel. Good day, Hans. What good
thing do you bring. I bring nothing, but would have something
given. Gretel presents Hans with a calf. Good-bye, Gretel.
Good-bye, Hans.
Hans takes the calf, puts it on his head, and the calf kicks his
face. Good evening, mother. Good evening, Hans. Where have you
been. With Gretel. What did you take her. I took nothing, but
had something given me. What did Gretel give you. A calf.
Where have you the calf, Hans. I set it on my head and it
kicked my face. That was ill done, Hans, you should have led
the calf, and put it in the stall. Never mind, will do better
next time.
Whither away, Hans. To Gretel, mother. Behave well, Hans.
I'll behave well. Good-bye, mother. Good-bye, Hans.
Hans comes to Gretel. Good day, Gretel. Good day, Hans. What
good thing do you bring. I bring nothing, but would have
something given. Gretel says to Hans, I will go with you.
Hans takes Gretel, ties her to a rope, leads her to the rack and
binds her fast. Then Hans goes to his mother. Good evening,
mother. Good evening, Hans. Where have you been. With Gretel.
What did you take her. I took her nothing. What did Gretel
give you. She gave me nothing, she came with me. Where have
you left Gretel. I led her by the rope, tied her to the rack,
and scattered some grass for her. That was ill done, Hans, you
should have cast friendly eyes on her. Never mind, will do better.
Hans went into the stable, cut out all the calves, and sheep's eyes,
and threw them in Gretel's face. Then Gretel became angry, tore
herself loose and ran away, and was no longer the bride of Hans. Let no one ever say that a poor tailor cannot do great things
and win high honors. All that is needed is that he should go to
the right smithy, and what is of most consequence, that he
should have good luck. A civil, smart tailor's apprentice
once went out traveling, and came into a great forest, and,
as he did not know the way, he lost himself. Night fell and
nothing was left for him to do in this painful solitude, but to
seek a bed. He might certainly have found a good bed on the
soft moss, but the fear of wild beasts let him have no rest
there, and at last he made up his mind to spend the night in
a tree. He sought out a high oak, climbed up to the top of it,
and thanked God that he had his goose with him, for otherwise
the wind which blew over the top of the tree would have carried
him away.
After he had spent some hours in the darkness, not without fear
and trembling, he saw at a very short distance the glimmer of a
light, and as he thought that a human habitation might be there,
where he would be better off than on the branches of a tree, he
got carefully down and went towards the light. It guided him
to a small hut that was woven together of reeds and rushes. He
knocked
boldly, the door opened, and by the light which came forth he saw
a little hoary old man who wore a coat made of bits of colored
stuff sewn together. Who are you, and what do you want, asked
the man in a grumbling voice. I am a poor tailor, he answered,
whom night has surprised here in the wilderness, and I earnestly
beg you to take me into your hut until morning. Go your way,
replied the old man in a surly voice, I will have nothing to do
with tramps, seek for yourself a shelter elsewhere. Having said
this, he was about to slip into his hut again, but the tailor
held him so tightly by the corner of his coat, and pleaded so
piteously, that the old man, who was not so ill-natured as he
wished to appear, was at last softened, and took him into the
hut with him where he gave him something to eat, and then offered
him a very good bed in a corner.
The weary tailor needed no rocking, but slept sweetly till morning,
but even then would not have thought of getting up, if he had
not been aroused by a great noise. A violent sound of screaming
and roaring forced its way through the thin walls of the hut.
The tailor, full of unwonted courage, jumped up, put his clothes
on in haste, and hurried out. Then close by the hut, he saw
a great black bull and a beautiful stag, which were just
preparing for a violent struggle. They rushed at each other with
such extreme rage that the ground shook with their trampling,
and the air resounded with their cries. For a long time it
was uncertain which of the two would gain the victory, at
length the stag thrust his horns into his adversary's body,
whereupon the bull fell to the earth with a terrific roar, and
was finished off by a few strokes from the stag.
The tailor, who had watched the fight with astonishment, was
still standing there motionless, when the stag in full career
bounded up to him, and before he could escape, caught him up
on his great horns. He had not much time to collect his thoughts,
for it went in a swift race over stock and stone, mountain and
valley, wood and meadow. He held with both hands to the ends
of the horns, and resigned himself to his fate. It seemed
to him just as if he were flying away. At length the stag
stopped in front of a wall of rock, and gently let the tailor
down. The tailor, more dead than alive, required
some time to come to himself. When he had in some degree
recovered, the stag, which had remained standing by him, pushed
its horns with such force against a door in the rock, that
it sprang open. Flames of fire shot forth, after which followed
a great smoke, which hid the stag from his sight. The tailor
did not know what to do, or whither to turn, in order to get
out of this desert and back to human beings again. Whilst
he was standing thus undecided, a voice sounded out of the rock,
which cried to him, enter without fear, no evil shall befall you.
He hesitated, but driven by a mysterious force, he obeyed the
voice and went through the iron-door into a large spacious
hall, whose ceiling, walls and floor were made of shining polished
square stones, on each of which were carved signs which were
unknown to him. He looked at everything full of admiration,
and was on the point of going out again, when he once more
heard the voice which said to him, step on the stone
which lies in the middle of the hall, and great good fortune
awaits you.
His courage had already grown so great that he obeyed the order.
The stone began to give way under his feet, and sank slowly down
into the depths. When it was once more firm, and the tailor looked
round, he found himself in a hall which in size resembled the
former. Here, however, there was more to look at and to admire.
Hollow places were cut in the walls, in which stood vases of
transparent glass and filled with colored spirit or with a
bluish vapor. On the floor of the hall two great glass chests
stood opposite to each other, which at once excited his curiosity.
When he went to one of them he saw inside it a handsome structure
like a castle surrounded by farm-buildings, stables and barns,
and a quantity of other good things. Everything was small, but
exceedingly carefully and delicately made, and seemed to be
carved out by a dexterous hand with the greatest precision.
He might not have turned away his eyes from the consideration
of this rarity for some time, had not the voice once more made
itself heard. It ordered him to turn round and look at the
glass chest which was standing opposite. How his admiration
increased when
he saw therein a maiden of the greatest beauty. She lay as if
asleep, and was wrapped in her long fair hair as in a
precious mantle. Her eyes were closely shut, but the brightness
of her complexion and a ribbon which her breathing moved to
and fro, left no doubt that she was alive. The tailor was
looking at the beauty with beating heart, when she suddenly
opened her eyes, and started up at the sight of him with a shock
of joy. Divine providence, cried she, my deliverance is
at hand. Quick, quick, help me out of my prison. If you
push back the bolt of this glass coffin, then I shall be free.
The tailor obeyed without delay, and she immediately raised up
the glass lid, came out and hastened into the corner of the hall,
where she covered herself with a large cloak. Then she seated
herself on a
stone, ordered the young man to come to her, and after she had
imprinted a friendly kiss on his lips, she said, my long-desired
deliverer, kind heaven has guided you to me, and put an end
to my sorrows. On the self-same day when they end, shall your
happiness begin. You are the husband chosen for me by heaven, and
shall pass your life in unbroken joy, loved by me, and rich to
overflowing in every earthly possession. Seat yourself, and
listen to the story of my life.
I am the daughter of a rich count. My parents died when I was
still in my tender youth, and recommended me in their last will
to my elder brother, by whom I was brought up. We loved each
other so tenderly, and were so alike in our way of thinking
and our inclinations, that we both embraced the resolution
never to marry, but to stay together to the end of our lives.
In our house there was no lack of company. Neighbors and friends
visited us often, and we showed the greatest hospitality to
every one. So it came to pass one evening that a stranger came
riding to our castle, and, under pretext of not being able to
get on to the next place, begged for shelter for the night.
We granted his request with ready courtesy, and he entertained us
in the most agreeable manner during supper by conversation
intermingled with stories. My brother liked the stranger so
much that he begged him to spend a couple of days with us, to
which, after some hesitation, he consented. We did not rise
from table until late in the night, the stranger was shown to
a room, and I hastened, as I was tired, to lay my limbs in
my soft bed. Hardly had I fallen off to sleep, when the sound
of faint and delightful music awoke me. As I could not
conceive from whence it came, I wanted to summon my waiting-maid
who slept in the next room, but to my astonishment I found that
speech was taken away from me by an unknown force. I felt as if
a nightmare were weighing down my breast, and was unable to make
the very slightest sound. In the meantime, by the light of
my night-lamp, I saw the stranger enter my room through two
doors which were fast bolted. He came to me and said, that
by magic arts which were at his command, he had caused the
lovely music to sound in order to awaken me, and
that he now forced his way through all fastenings with the
intention of offering his hand and heart. My dislike of his
magic arts was so great, however, that I refused to answer him.
He remained for a time standing without moving, apparently with
the idea of waiting for a favorable decision, but as I continued
to keep silence, he angrily declared he would revenge himself
and find means to punish my pride, and left the room. I
passed the night in the greatest disquietude, and fell asleep
only towards morning. When I awoke, I hurried to my brother, but
did not find him in his room, and the attendants told me that he
had ridden forth with the stranger to the chase at daybreak.
I at once suspected nothing good. I dressed myself quickly,
ordered my palfrey to be saddled, and accompanied only by one
servant, rode full gallop to the forest. The servant fell with
his horse, and could not follow me, for the horse had broken its
foot. I pursued my way without halting, and in a few minutes
I saw the stranger coming towards me with a beautiful stag which
he led by a cord. I asked him where he had left my brother, and
how he had come by this stag, out of whose great eyes I saw
tears flowing. Instead of answering me, he began to laugh
loudly. I fell into a great rage at this, pulled out a pistol
and discharged it at the monster, but the ball rebounded from
his breast and went into my horse's head. I fell to the ground,
and the stranger muttered some words which deprived me of
consciousness.
When I came to my senses again I found myself in this underground
cave in a glass coffin. The magician appeared once again, and
said he had changed my brother into a stag, my castle with all
that belonged to it, diminished in size by his arts, he had
shut up in the other glass chest, and my people, who were all
turned into smoke, he had confined in glass bottles. He
told me that if I would now comply with his wish, it would be an
easy thing for him to put everything back in its former state, as
he had nothing to do but open the vessels, and everything would
return once more to its natural form. I answered him as little
as I had done the first time. He vanished and left me in my
prison, in which a deep sleep came on me.
Among the visions which passed before my eyes, the most
comforting was that in which a young man came and set me free,
and when I opened my eyes to-day I saw you, and beheld my
dream fulfilled. Help me to accomplish the other things
which happened in those visions. The first is that we lift the
glass chest in which my castle is enclosed, on to that broad stone.
As soon as the stone was laden, it began to rise up on high with
the maiden and the young man, and mounted through the opening
of the ceiling into the upper hall, from whence they then could
easily reach the open air. Here the maiden opened the lid, and
it was marvellous to behold how the castle, the houses, and
the farm buildings which were enclosed, stretched themselves out
and grew to their natural size with the greatest rapidity.
After this, the maiden and the tailor returned to the cave beneath
the earth, and had the vessels which were filled with smoke
carried up by the stone. The maiden had scarcely opened the
bottles when the blue smoke rushed out and changed itself into
living men, in whom she recognized her servants and her people.
Her joy was still more increased when her brother, who had
killed the magician in the form of the bull, came out of the
forest towards them in his human form, and on the self-same day
the maiden, in accordance with her promise, gave her hand at the
altar to the lucky tailor. There was once a peasant who had driven his cow to the fair, and sold
her for seven talers. On the way home he had to pass a pond, and
already from afar he heard the frogs crying, aik, aik, aik, aik.
Well, said he to himself, they are talking without rhyme or reason,
it is seven that I have received, not eight. When he got to the
water, he cried to them, stupid animals that you are. Don't you know
better than that. It is seven thalers and not eight. The frogs,
however, stuck to their, aik aik, aik, aik. Come, then, if you won't
believe it, I can count it out to you. And he took his money out of
his pocket and counted out the seven talers, always reckoning four
and twenty groschen to a taler. The frogs, however, paid no
attention to his reckoning, but still cried, aik, aik, aik, aik.
What, cried the peasant, quite angry, if you know better than I,
count it yourselves, and threw all the money at them into the water.
He stood still and wanted to wait until they were through and had
returned to him what was his, but the frogs maintained their opinion
and cried continually, aik, aik, aik, aik. And besides that, did not
throw the money out again. He still waited a long while until
evening came on and he was forced to go home. Then he abused the
frogs and cried, you water-splashers, you thick-heads, you
goggle-eyes, you have great mouths and can screech till you hurt
one's ears, but you cannot count seven talers. Do you think I'm
going to stand here till you get through. And with that he went
away, but the frogs still cried, aik, aik, aik, aik, after him till
he went home sorely vexed. After a while he bought another cow, which
he slaughtered, and he made the calculation that if he sold the meat
well he might gain as much as the two cows were worth, and have the
hide into the bargain. When therefore he got to the town with the
meat, a great pack of dogs were gathered together in front of the
gate, with a large greyhound at the head of them, which jumped at the
meat, sniffed at it, and barked, wow, wow, wow. As there was no
stopping him, the peasant said to him, yes, yes, I know quite well
that you are saying wow, wow, wow, because you want some of the meat,
but I should be in a fine state if I were to give it to you. The
dog, however, answered nothing but wow, wow. Will you promise not to
devour it all then, and will you go bail for your companions. Wow,
wow, wow, said the dog. Well, if you insist on it, I will leave it
for you, I know you well, and know whom you serve, but this I tell
you, I must have my money in three days or else it will go ill with
you, you can just bring it out to me. Thereupon he unloaded the meat
and turned back again. The dogs fell upon it and loudly barked, wow,
wow. The countryman, who heard them from afar, said to himself, hark,
now they all want some, but the big one is responsible to me for it.
When three days had passed, the countryman thought, to-night my money
will be in my pocket, and was quite delighted. But no one would come
and pay it. There is no trusting any one now, said he. At last he
lost patience, and went into the town to the butcher and demanded his
money. The butcher thought it was a joke, but the peasant said,
jesting apart, I will have my money. Did not the big dog bring you
the whole of the slaughtered cow three days ago. Then the butcher
grew angry, snatched a broomstick and drove him out. Wait, said the
peasant, there is still some justice in the world, and went to the
royal palace and begged for an audience. He was led before the king,
who sat there with his daughter, and asked him what injury he had
suffered. Alas, said he, the frogs and the dogs have taken from me
what is mine, and the butcher has paid me for it with the stick. And
he related at full length what had happened. Thereupon the king's
daughter began to laugh heartily, and the king said to him, I cannot
give you justice in this, but you shall have my daughter to wife for
it - in her whole life she has never yet laughed as she has just done
at you, and I have promised her to him who could make her laugh. You
may thank God for your good fortune. Oh, answered the peasant, I do
not want her at all. I have a wife already, and she is one too many
for me, when I go home, it is just as if I had a wife standing in
every corner. Then the king grew angry, and said, you are a boor.
Ah, lord king, replied the peasant, what can you expect from an ox,
but beef. Stop, answered the king, you shall have another reward.
Be off now, but come back in three days, and then you shall have five
hundred counted out in full. When the peasant went out by the gate,
the sentry said, you have made the king's daughter laugh, so you will
certainly receive something good. Yes, that is what I think,
answered the peasant, five hundred are to be counted out to me.
Listen, said the soldier, give me some of it. What can you do with
all that money. As it is you, said the peasant, you shall have two
hundred, present yourself in three days, time before the king, and
let it be paid to you. A Jew, who was standing by and had heard the
conversation, ran after the peasant, held him by the coat, and said,
oh, wonder of God, what a child of fortune you are. I will change it
for you, I will change it for you into small coins, what do you want
with the great talers. Jew, said the countryman, three hundred can
you still have, give it to me at once in coin, in three days from
this, you will be paid for it by the king. The Jew was delighted
with the small profit, and brought the sum in bad groschen, three of
which were worth two good ones. After three days had passed,
according to the king's command, the peasant went before the king.
Pull his coat off, said the latter, and he shall have his five
hundred. Ah, said the peasant, they no longer belong to me, I
presented two hundred of them to the sentry, and three hundred the
Jew has changed for me, so by right nothing at all belongs to me. In
the meantime the soldier and the Jew entered and claimed what they
had gained from the peasant, and they received the blows strictly
counted out. The soldier bore it patiently and knew already how it
tasted, but the Jew said sorrowfully, alas, alas, are these the heavy
talers. The king could not help laughing at the peasant, and when
all his anger was spent, he said, as you have already lost your
reward before it fell to your lot, I will give you compensation. Go
into my treasure chamber and get some money for yourself, as much as
you will. The peasant did not need to be told twice, and stuffed
into his big pockets whatsoever would go in. Afterwards he went to
an inn and counted out his money. The Jew had crept after him and
heard how he muttered to himself, that rogue of a king has cheated me
after all, why could he not have given me the money himself, and then
I should have known what I had. How can I tell now if what I have
had the luck to put in my pockets is right or not. Good heavens,
said the Jew to himself, that man is speaking disrespectfully of our
lord the king, I will run and inform, and then I shall get a reward,
and he will be punished as well. When the king heard of the peasant's
words he fell into a passion, and commanded the Jew to go and bring
the offender to him. The Jew ran to the peasant, you are to go at
once to the lord king in the very clothes you have on. I know what's
right better than that, answered the peasant, I shall have a new coat
made first. Do you think that a man with so much money in his pocket
should go there in his ragged old coat. The Jew, as he saw that the
peasant would not stir without another coat, and as he feared that if
the king's anger cooled, he himself would lose his reward, and the
peasant his punishment, said, I will out of pure friendship lend you
a coat for the short time. What people will not do for love. The
peasant was contented with this, put the Jew's coat on, and went off
with him. The king reproached the countryman because of the evil
speaking of which the Jew had informed him. Ah, said the peasant,
what a Jew says is always false - no true word ever comes out of his
mouth. That rascal there is capable of maintaining that I have his
coat on. What is that, shrieked the Jew, is the coat not mine. Have
I not lent it to you out of pure friendship, in order that you might
appear before the lord king. When the king heard that, he said, the
Jew has assuredly deceived one or the other of us, either myself or
the peasant. And again he ordered something to be counted out to him
in hard thalers. The peasant, however, went home in the good coat,
with the good money in his pocket, and said to himself, this time I
have made it. Hans had served his master for seven years, so he said to him,
master, my time is up, now I should be glad to go back home to my
mother, give me my wages. The master answered, you have served me
faithfully and honestly, as the service was so shall the reward be.
And he gave Hans a piece of gold as big as his head. Hans pulled his
handkerchief out of his pocket, wrapped up the lump in it, put it on
his shoulder, and set out on the way home.
As he went on, always putting one foot before the other, he saw a
horseman trotting quickly and merrily by on a lively horse. Ah, said
Hans quite loud, what a fine thing it is to ride. There you sit as
on a chair, you stumble over no stones, you save your shoes, and
cover the ground, you don't know how.
The rider, who had heard him, stopped and called out, hi, there,
Hans, why do you go on foot, then.
I must, answered he, for I have this lump to carry home, it is true
that it is gold, but I cannot hold my head straight for it, and it
hurts my shoulder.
I will tell you what, said the rider, we will exchange, I will give
you my horse, and you can give me your lump. With all my heart, said
Hans, but I can tell you, you will have to crawl along with it.
The rider got down, took the gold, and helped Hans up, then gave him
the bridle tight in his hands and said, if you want to go at a really
good pace, you must click your tongue and call out, jup. Jup.
Hans was heartily delighted as he sat upon the horse and rode away so
bold and free. After a little while he thought that it ought to go
faster, and he began to click with his tongue and call out, jup.
Jup. The horse put himself into a sharp trot, and before Hans knew
where he was, he was thrown off and lying in a ditch which separated
the field from the highway. The horse would have gone off too if it
had not been stopped by a countryman, who was coming along the road
and driving a cow before him.
Hans pulled himself together and stood up on his legs again, but he
was vexed, and said to the countryman, it is a poor joke, this
riding, especially when one gets hold of a mare like this, that kicks
and throws one off, so that one has a chance of breaking one's neck.
Never again will I mount it. Now I like your cow, for one can walk
quietly behind her, and have, over and above, one's milk, butter and
cheese every day without fail. What would I not give to have such a
cow. Well, said the countryman, if it would give you so much
pleasure, I do not mind giving the cow for the horse. Hans agreed
with the greatest delight, the countryman jumped upon the horse, and
rode quickly away.
Hans drove his cow quietly before him, and thought over his lucky
bargain. If only I have a morsel of bread - and that can hardly fail
me - I can eat butter and cheese with it as often as I like, if I am
thirsty, I can milk my cow and drink the milk. My goodness, what
more can I want.
When he came to an inn he made a halt, and in his great concern ate
up what he had with him - his dinner and supper - and all he had, and
with his last few farthings had half a glass of beer. Then he drove
his cow onwards along the road to his mother's village.
As it drew nearer mid-day, the heat was more oppressive, and Hans
found himself upon a moor which it took about an hour to cross. He
felt it very hot and his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth with
thirst. I can find a cure for this, thought Hans, I will milk the
cow now and refresh myself with the milk. He tied her to a withered
tree, and as he had no pail he put his leather cap underneath, but
try as he would, not a drop of milk came. And as he set himself to
work in a clumsy way, the impatient beast at last gave him such a
blow on his head with its hind foot, that he fell on the ground, and
for a long time could not think where he was.
By good fortune a butcher just then came along the road with a
wheel-barrow, in which lay a young pig. What sort of a trick is
this, cried he, and helped the good Hans up. Hans told him what had
happened. The butcher gave him his flask and said, take a drink and
refresh yourself. The cow will certainly give no milk, it is an old
beast, at the best it is only fit for the plough, or for the butcher.
Well, well, said Hans, as he stroked his hair down on his head, who
would have thought it. Certainly it is a fine thing when one can
kill a beast like that at home, what meat one has. But I do not care
much for beef, it is not juicy enough for me. A young pig like that
now is the thing to have, it tastes quite different, and then there
are the sausages.
Listen, Hans, said the butcher, out of love for you I will exchange,
and will let you have the pig for the cow. Heaven repay you for your
kindness, said Hans as he gave up the cow, whilst the pig was unbound
from the barrow, and the cord by which it was tied was put in his
hand.
Hans went on, and thought to himself how everything was going just as
he wished, if he did meet with any vexation it was immediately set
right. Presently there joined him a lad who was carrying a fine
white goose under his arm. They said good morning to each other, and
Hans began to tell of his good luck, and how he had always made such
good bargains. The boy told him that he was taking the goose to a
christening-feast. Just lift her, added he, and laid hold of her by
the wings, how heavy she is - she has been fattened up for the last
eight weeks. Whosoever has a bit of her when she is roasted will
have to wipe the fat from both sides of his mouth. Yes, said Hans,
as he weighed her in one hand, she is a good weight, but my pig is no
bad one.
Meanwhile the lad looked suspiciously from one side to the other, and
shook his head. Look here, he said at length, it may not be all
right with your pig. In the village through which I passed, the
mayor himself had just had one stolen out of its sty. I fear - I
fear that you have got hold of it there. They have sent out some
people and it would be a bad business if they caught you with the
pig, at the very least, you would be shut up in the dark hole.
The good Hans was terrified. Goodness, he said, help me out of this
fix, you know more about this place than I do, take my pig and leave
me your goose. I shall risk something at that game, answered the
lad, but I will not be the cause of your getting into trouble. So he
took the cord in his hand, and drove away the pig quickly along a
by-path.
The good Hans, free from care, went homewards with the goose under
his arm. When I think over it properly, said he to himself, I have
even gained by the exchange. First there is the good roast meat,
then the quantity of fat which will drip from it, and which will give
me dripping for my bread for a quarter of a year, and lastly the
beautiful white feathers. I will have my pillow stuffed with them,
and then indeed I shall go to sleep without rocking. How glad my
mother will be.
As he was going through the last village, there stood a
scissors-grinder with his barrow, as his wheel whirred he sang,
I sharpen scissors and quickly grind,
my coat blows out in the wind behind.
Hans stood still and looked at him, at last he spoke to him and said,
all's well with you, as you are so merry with your grinding. Yes,
answered the scissors-grinder, the trade has a golden foundation. A
real grinder is a man who as often as he puts his hand into his
pocket finds gold in it. But where did you buy that fine goose?
I did not buy it, but exchanged my pig for it.
And the pig?
That I got for a cow.
And the cow?
I took that instead of a horse.
And the horse?
For that I gave a lump of gold as big as my head.
And the gold?
Well, that was my wages for seven years, service.
You have known how to look after yourself each time, said the
grinder. If you can only get on so far as to hear the money jingle
in your pocket whenever you stand up, you will have made your
fortune.
How shall I manage that, said Hans. You must be a grinder, as I am,
nothing particular is wanted for it but a grindstone, the rest finds
itself. I have one here, it is certainly a little worn, but you need
not give me anything for it but your goose, will you do it?
How can you ask, answered Hans. I shall be the luckiest fellow on
earth. If I have money whenever I put my hand in my pocket, why
should I ever worry again. And he handed him the goose and received
the grindstone in exchange. Now, said the grinder, as he took up an
ordinary heavy stone that lay by him, here is a strong stone for you
into the bargain, you can hammer well upon it, and straighten your
old nails. Take it with you and keep it carefully. Hans loaded
himself with the stones, and went on with a contented heart, his eyes
shining with joy. I must have been born with a caul, he cried,
everything I want happens to me just as if I were a sunday-child.
Meanwhile, as he had been on his legs since daybreak, he began to
feel tired. Hunger also tormented him, for in his joy at the bargain
by which he got the cow he had eaten up all his store of food at
once. At last he could only go on with great trouble, and was forced
to stop every minute, the stones, too, weighed him down dreadfully.
Then he could not help thinking how nice it would be if he had not to
carry them just then.
He crept like a snail to a well in a field, and there he thought that
he would rest and refresh himself with a cool draught of water, but
in order that he might not injure the stones in sitting down, he laid
them carefully by his side on the edge of the well. Then he sat down
on it, and was to stoop and drink, when he made a slip, pushed
against the stones, and both of them fell into the water. When Hans
saw them with his own eyes sinking to the bottom, he jumped for joy,
and then knelt down, and with tears in his eyes thanked God for
having shown him this favor also, and delivered him in so good a way,
and without his having any need to reproach himself, from those heavy
stones which had been the only things that troubled him.
There is no man under the sun so fortunate as I, he cried out. With a
light heart and free from every burden he now ran on until he was
with his mother at home. Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife
and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the
girl Gretel. He had little to bite and to break, and once when
great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily
bread. Now when he thought over this by night in his bed, and
tossed about in his anxiety, he groaned and said to his wife, what
is to become of us. How are we to feed our poor children, when
we no longer have anything even for ourselves. I'll tell you what,
husband, answered the woman, early to-morrow morning we
will take the children out into the forest to where it is the
thickest. There we will light a fire for them, and give each of
them one more piece of bread, and then we will go to our work and
leave them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we
shall be rid of them. No, wife, said the man, I will not do that.
How can I bear to leave my children alone in the forest. The wild
animals would soon come and tear them to pieces. O' you fool, said
she, then we must all four die of hunger, you may as well plane the
planks for our coffins, and she left him no peace until he
consented. But I feel very sorry for the poor children, all the
same, said the man.
The two children had also not been able to sleep for hunger, and
had heard what their step-mother had said to their father. Gretel
wept bitter tears, and said to Hansel, now all is over with us.
Be quiet, Gretel, said Hansel, do not distress yourself, I will soon
find a way to help us. And when the old folks had fallen asleep,
he got up, put on his little coat, opened the door below, and crept
outside. The moon shone brightly, and the white pebbles which lay
in front of the house glittered like real silver pennies. Hansel
stooped and stuffed the little pocket of his coat with as many as he
could get in. Then he went back and said to Gretel, be comforted,
dear little sister, and sleep in peace, God will not forsake us, and
he lay down again in his bed. When day dawned, but before the
sun had risen, the woman came and awoke the two children, saying
get up, you sluggards. We are going into the forest to fetch
wood. She gave each a little piece of bread, and said, there is
something for your dinner, but do not eat it up before then, for you
will get nothing else. Gretel took the bread under her apron, as
Hansel had the pebbles in his pocket. Then they all set out
together on the way to the forest. When they had walked a short
time, Hansel stood still and peeped back at the house, and did so
again and again. His father said, Hansel, what are you looking at
there and staying behind for. Pay attention, and do not forget how
to use your legs. Ah, father, said Hansel, I am looking at my
little white cat, which is sitting up on the roof, and wants to say
good-bye to me. The wife said, fool, that is not your little cat,
that is the morning sun which is shining on the chimneys. Hansel,
however, had not been looking back at the cat, but had been
constantly throwing one of the white pebble-stones out of his pocket
on the road.
When they had reached the middle of the forest, the father said,
now, children, pile up some wood, and I will light a fire that you
may not be cold. Hansel and Gretel gathered brushwood together,
as high as a little hill. The brushwood was lighted, and when the
flames were burning very high, the woman said, now, children,
lay yourselves down by the fire and rest, we will go into the forest
and cut some wood. When we have done, we will come back and
fetch you away.
Hansel and Gretel sat by the fire, and when noon came, each ate
a little piece of bread, and as they heard the strokes of the
wood-axe they believed that their father was near. It was not the
axe, however, but a branch which he had fastened to a withered tree
which the wind was blowing backwards and forwards. And as they had
been sitting such a long time, their eyes closed with fatigue, and
they fell fast asleep. When at last they awoke, it was already dark
night. Gretel began to cry and said, how are we to get out of the
forest now. But Hansel comforted her and said, just wait a little,
until the moon has risen, and then we will soon find the way. And
when the full moon had risen, Hansel took his little sister by the
hand, and followed the pebbles which shone like newly-coined silver
pieces, and showed them the way.
They walked the whole night long, and by break of day came
once more to their father's house. They knocked at the door, and
when the woman opened it and saw that it was Hansel and Gretel,
she said, you naughty children, why have you slept so long in the
forest. We thought you were never coming back at all. The father,
however, rejoiced, for it had cut him to the heart to leave them
behind alone.
Not long afterwards, there was once more great dearth throughout
the land, and the children heard their mother saying at night to
their father, everything is eaten again, we have one half loaf left,
and that is the end. The children must go, we will take them
farther into the wood, so that they will not find their way out
again. There is no other means of saving ourselves. The man's
heart was heavy, and he thought, it would be better for you to share
the last mouthful with your children. The woman, however, would
listen to nothing that he had to say, but scolded and reproached
him. He who says a must say b, likewise, and as he had yielded the
first time, he had to do so a second time also.
The children, however, were still awake and had heard the
conversation. When the old folks were asleep, Hansel again got up,
and wanted to go out and pick up pebbles as he had done before, but
the woman had locked the door, and Hansel could not get out.
Nevertheless he comforted his little sister, and said, do not cry,
Gretel, go to sleep quietly, the good God will help us.
Early in the morning came the woman, and took the children out of
their beds. Their piece of bread was given to them, but it was
still smaller than the time before. On the way into the forest
Hansel crumbled his in his pocket, and often stood still and threw a
morsel on the ground. Hansel, why do you stop and look round.
Said the father, go on. I am looking back at my little pigeon
which is sitting on the roof, and wants to say good-bye to me,
answered Hansel. Fool. Said the woman, that is not your little
pigeon, that is the morning sun that is shining on the chimney.
Hansel, however, little by little, threw all the crumbs on the path.
The woman led the children still deeper into the forest, where they
had never in their lives been before. Then a great fire was again
made, and the mother said, just sit there, you children, and when
you are tired you may sleep a little. We are going into the forest
to cut wood, and in the evening when we are done, we will come and
fetch you away. When it was noon, Gretel shared her piece of
bread with Hansel, who had scattered his by the way. Then they
fell asleep and evening passed, but no one came to the poor
children. They did not awake until it was dark night, and Hansel
comforted his little sister and said, just wait, Gretel, until the
moon rises, and then we shall see the crumbs of bread which I have
strewn about, they will show us our way home again. When the moon
came they set out, but they found no crumbs, for the many thousands
of birds which fly about in the woods and fields had picked them all
up. Hansel said to Gretel, we shall soon find the way, but they did
not find it. They walked the whole night and all the next day too
from morning till evening, but they did not get out of the forest,
and were very hungry, for they had nothing to eat but two or three
berries, which grew on the ground. And as they were so weary that
their legs would carry them no longer, they lay down beneath a tree
and fell asleep.
It was now three mornings since they had left their father's house.
They began to walk again, but they always came deeper into the
forest, and if help did not come soon, they must die of hunger and
weariness. When it was mid-day, they saw a beautiful snow-white
bird sitting on a bough, which sang so delightfully that they stood
still and listened to it. And when its song was over, it spread its
wings and flew away before them, and they followed it until they
reached a little house, on the roof of which it alighted. And when
they approached the little house they saw that it was built of
bread and covered with cakes, but that the windows were of clear
sugar. We will set to work on that, said Hansel, and have a good
meal. I will eat a bit of the roof, and you Gretel, can eat some
of the window, it will taste sweet. Hansel reached up above, and
broke off a little of the roof to try how it tasted, and Gretel
leant against the window and nibbled at the panes. Then a soft
voice cried from the parlor -
nibble, nibble, gnaw
who is nibbling at my little house.
The children answered -
the wind, the wind,
the heaven-born wind,
and went on eating without disturbing themselves. Hansel, who
liked the taste of the roof, tore down a great piece of it, and
Gretel pushed out the whole of one round window-pane, sat down, and
enjoyed herself with it. Suddenly the door opened, and a woman
as old as the hills, who supported herself on crutches, came
creeping out. Hansel and Gretel were so terribly frightened that
they let fall what they had in their hands. The old woman, however,
nodded her head, and said, oh, you dear children, who has brought
you here. Do come in, and stay with me. No harm shall happen to
you. She took them both by the hand, and led them into her little
house. Then good food was set before them, milk and pancakes,
with sugar, apples, and nuts. Afterwards two pretty little beds
were covered with clean white linen, and Hansel and Gretel lay down
in them, and thought they were in heaven.
The old woman had only pretended to be so kind. She was in reality
a wicked witch, who lay in wait for children, and had only built the
little house of bread in order to entice them there. When a child
fell into her power, she killed it, cooked and ate it, and that
was a feast day with her. Witches have red eyes, and cannot see
far, but they have a keen scent like the beasts, and are aware when
human beings draw near. When Hansel and Gretel came into her
neighborhood, she laughed with malice, and said mockingly, I have
them, they shall not escape me again. Early in the morning before
the children were awake, she was already up, and when she saw both
of them sleeping and looking so pretty, with their plump and rosy
cheeks, she muttered to herself, that will be a dainty mouthful.
Then she seized Hansel with her shrivelled hand, carried
him into a little stable, and locked him in behind a grated door.
Scream as he might, it would not help him. Then she went to
Gretel, shook her till she awoke, and cried, get up, lazy thing,
fetch some water, and cook something good for your brother, he is
in the stable outside, and is to be made fat. When he is fat, I
will eat him. Gretel began to weep bitterly, but it was all in
vain, for she was forced to do what the wicked witch commanded.
And now the best food was cooked for poor Hansel, but Gretel
got nothing but crab-shells. Every morning the woman crept to the
little stable, and cried, Hansel, stretch out your finger that I may
feel if you will soon be fat. Hansel, however, stretched out a
little bone to her, and the old woman, who had dim eyes, could not
see it, and thought it was Hansel's finger, and was astonished that
there was no way of fattening him. When four weeks had gone by,
and Hansel still remained thin, she was seized with impatience and
would not wait any longer. Now, then, Gretel, she cried to the
girl, stir yourself, and bring some water. Let Hansel be fat or
lean, to-morrow I will kill him, and cook him. Ah, how the poor
little sister did lament when she had to fetch the water, and how
her tears did flow down her cheeks. Dear God, do help us, she
cried. If the wild beasts in the forest had but devoured us, we
should at any rate have died together. Just keep your noise to
yourself, said the old woman, it won't help you at all.
Early in the morning, Gretel had to go out and hang up the
cauldron with the water, and light the fire. We will bake first,
said the old woman, I have already heated the oven, and kneaded
the dough. She pushed poor Gretel out to the oven, from which
flames of fire were already darting. Creep in, said the witch,
and see if it properly heated, so that we can put the bread in.
And once Gretel was inside, she intended to shut the oven and let
her bake in it, and then she would eat her, too. But Gretel saw
what she had in mind, and said, I do not know how I am to do it.
How do I get in. Silly goose, said the old woman, the door is big
enough. Just look, I can get in myself, and she crept up and
thrust her head into the oven. Then Gretel gave her a push that
drove her far into it, and shut the iron door, and fastened the
bolt. Oh. Then she began to howl quite horribly, but Gretel ran
away, and the godless witch was miserably burnt to death.
Gretel, however, ran like lightning to Hansel, opened his little
stable, and cried, Hansel, we are saved. The old witch is dead.
Then Hansel sprang like a bird from its cage when the door is
opened. How they did rejoice and embrace each other, and dance
about and kiss each other. And as they had no longer any need to
fear her, they went into the witch's house, and in every corner
there stood chests full of pearls and jewels. These are far better
than pebbles. Said Hansel, and thrust into his pockets whatever
could be got in, and Gretel said, I, too, will take something home
with me, and filled her pinafore full. But now we must be off, said
Hansel, that we may get out of the witch's forest.
When they had walked for two hours, they came to a great
stretch of water. We cannot cross, said Hansel, I see no
foot-plank, and no bridge. And there is also no ferry, answered
Gretel, but a white duck is swimming there. If I ask her, she
will help us over. Then she cried -
little duck, little duck, dost thou see,
Hansel and Gretel are waiting for thee.
There's never a plank, or bridge in sight,
take us across on thy back so white.
The duck came to them, and Hansel seated himself on its back,
and told his sister to sit by him. No, replied Gretel, that will be
too heavy for the little duck. She shall take us across, one after
the other. The good little duck did so, and when they were once
safely across and had walked for a short time, the forest seemed to
be more and more familiar to them, and at length they saw from
afar their father's house. Then they began to run, rushed into the
parlor, and threw themselves round their father's neck. The man
had not known one happy hour since he had left the children in the
forest. The woman, however, was dead. Gretel emptied her
pinafore until pearls and precious stones ran about the room, and
Hansel threw one handful after another out of his pocket to add to
them. Then all anxiety was at an end, and they lived together in
perfect happiness. My tale is done, there runs a mouse, whosoever
catches it, may make himself a big fur cap out of it. ***There was once upon a time a king who had a great forest near
his palace, full of all kinds of wild animals. One day he sent
out a huntsman to shoot him a roe, but he did not come back.
Perhaps some accident has befallen him, said the king, and the
next day he sent out two more huntsmen who were to search for him,
but they too stayed away. Then on the third day, he sent for all
his huntsmen, and said, scour the whole forest through, and do
not give up until you have found all three. But of these also,
none came home again, and of the pack of hounds which they had
taken with them, none were seen again. From that time forth,
no one would any longer venture into the forest, and it lay
there in deep stillness and solitude, and nothing was seen of it,
but sometimes an eagle or a hawk flying over it. This lasted
for many years, when an unknown huntsman announced himself
to the king as seeking a situation, and offered to go into the
dangerous forest. The king, however, would not give his consent,
and said, it is not safe in there, I fear it would fare with you
no better than with the others, and you would never come out
again. The huntsman replied, lord, I will venture it at my own
risk, of fear I know nothing.
The huntsman therefore betook himself with his dog to the forest.
It was not long before the dog fell in with some game on the way,
and wanted to pursue it, but hardly had the dog run two steps
when it stood before a deep pool, could go no farther, and a
naked
arm stretched itself out of the water, seized it, and drew it
under. When the huntsman saw that, he went back and fetched
three men to come with buckets and bale out the water. When
they could see to the bottom there lay a wild man whose body
was brown like rusty iron, and whose hair hung over his face
down to his knees. They bound him with cords, and led
him away to the castle. There was great astonishment over the
wild man, the king, however, had him put in an iron cage in his
court-yard, and forbade the door to be opened on pain of death,
and the queen herself was to take the key into her keeping.
And from this time forth every one could again go into the
forest with safety.
The king had a son of eight years, who was once playing in the
court-yard, and while he was playing, his golden ball fell into
the cage. The boy ran thither and said, give me my ball out.
Not till you have opened the door for me, answered the man. No,
said the boy, I will not do that, the king has forbidden it,
and ran away. The next day he again went and asked for his
ball. The wild man said, open my
door, but the boy would not. On the third day the king had
ridden out hunting, and the boy went once more and said, I
cannot open the door even if I wished, for I have not the key.
Then the wild man said, it lies under your mother's pillow,
you can get it there. The boy, who wanted to have his ball back,
cast all thought to the winds, and brought the key. The door
opened with difficulty, and the boy pinched his fingers. When
it was open the wild man stepped out, gave him the golden ball,
and hurried away. The boy had become afraid, he called and
cried after him, oh, wild man, do not go away, or I shall be
beaten. The wild man turned back, took him up, set him on his
shoulder, and went with hasty steps into the forest. When the
king came home, he observed the empty cage, and asked the queen
how that had happened. She knew nothing about it, and sought the
key, but it was gone. She called the boy, but no one answered.
The king sent out people to seek for him in the fields, but
they did not find him. Then he could easily guess what had
happened, and much grief reigned in the royal court.
When the wild man had once more reached the dark forest, he
took the boy down from his shoulder, and said to him, you
will never see your father and mother again, but I will keep
you with me, for you have set me free, and I have compassion
on you. If you do all I bid you, you shall fare well. Of
treasure and gold have I enough, and more than anyone in the
world. He made a bed of moss for the boy on which he slept,
and the next morning the man took him to a well, and said,
behold, the gold well is as bright and clear as crystal, you
shall sit beside it, and take care that nothing falls into
it, or it will be polluted. I will come every evening to see if
you have obeyed my order. The boy placed himself by the brink of
the well, and often saw a golden fish or a golden snake show
itself therein, and took care that nothing fell in. As he was
thus sitting, his finger hurt him so violently that he
involuntarily put it in the water. He drew it quickly out
again, but saw that it was quite gilded, and whatsoever pains
he took to wash the gold off again, all was to no purpose. In
the evening iron Hans came back, looked at the boy, and said,
what has happened to the well. Nothing,
nothing, he answered, and held his finger behind his back, that
the man might not see it. But he said, you have dipped your
finger into the water, this time it may pass, but take care
you do not again let anything go in. By daybreak the boy was
already sitting by the well and watching it. His finger hurt
him again and he passed it over his head, and then unhappily
a hair fell down into the well. He took it quickly out, but
it was already quite gilded. Iron Hans came, and already knew
what had happened. You have let a hair fall into the well,
said he. I will allow you to watch by it once more, but if this
happens for the third time then the well is polluted, and you
can no longer remain with me.
On the third day, the boy sat by the well, and did not stir his
finger, however much it hurt him. But the time was long to
him, and he looked at the reflection of his face on the surface
of the water. And as he still bent down more and more while he
was doing so, and trying to look straight into the eyes, his
long hair fell down from his shoulders into the water. He
raised himself up quickly, but the whole of the hair of his head
was already golden and shone like the sun. You can imagine how
terrified the poor boy was. He took his pocket-handkerchief
and tied it round his head, in order that the man might not
see it. When he came he already knew everything, and said,
take the handkerchief off. Then the golden hair streamed forth,
and let the boy excuse himself as he might, it was of no use.
You have not stood the trial, and can stay here no longer. Go
forth into the world, there you will learn what poverty is. But
as you have not a bad heart, and as I mean well by you, there is
one thing I will grant you. If you fall into any difficulty,
come to the forest and cry, iron Hans, and then I will come and
help you. My power is great, greater than you think, and I have
gold and silver in abundance.
Then the king's son left the forest, and walked by beaten and
unbeaten paths ever onwards until at length he reached a great
city. There he looked for work, but could find none, and he
had learnt nothing by which he could help himself. At length
he went to the palace, and asked if they would take him in.
The people about
court did not at all know what use they could make of him, but
they liked him, and told him to stay. At length the cook took
him into his service, and said he might carry wood and water, and
rake the cinders together. Once when it so happened that
no one else was at hand, the cook ordered him to carry the
food to the royal table, but as he did not like to let his
golden hair be seen, he kept his little cap on. Such a thing
as that had never yet come under the king's notice, and he said,
when you come to the royal table you must take your hat off. He
answered, ah, lord, I cannot. I have a bad sore place on my
head. Then the king had the cook called before him and scolded
him, and asked how he could take such a boy as that into his
service, and that he was to send him away at once. The cook,
however, had pity on him, and exchanged him for the gardener's
boy.
And now the boy had to plant and water the garden, hoe and dig,
and bear the wind and bad weather. Once in summer when he was
working alone in the garden, the day was so warm he took his
little cap off that the air might cool him. As the sun shone
on his hair it glittered and flashed so that the rays fell into
the bed-room of the king's daughter, and up she sprang to
see what that could be. Then she saw the boy, and cried to
him, boy, bring me a wreath of flowers. He put his cap on
with all haste, and gathered wild field-flowers and bound them
together. When he was ascending the stairs with them, the
gardener met him, and said, how can you take the king's daughter a
garland of such common flowers. Go quickly, and get another,
and seek out the prettiest and rarest. Oh, no, replied the
boy, the wild ones have more scent, and will please her better.
When he got into the room, the king's daughter said, take
your cap off, it is not seemly to keep it on in my presence.
He again said, I may not, I have a sore head. She, however,
caught at his cap and pulled it off, and then his golden hair
rolled down on his shoulders, and it was splendid to behold.
He wanted to run out, but she held him by the arm, and gave him
a handful of ducats. With these he departed, but he cared
nothing for the gold pieces. He took them to the gardener, and
said, I present them to
your children, they can play with them. The following day the
king's daughter again called to him that he was to bring her a
wreath of field-flowers, and when he went in with it, she
instantly snatched at his cap, and wanted to take it away from
him, but he held it fast with both hands. She again gave him a
handful of ducats, but he would not keep them, and gave them
to the gardener for playthings for his children. On the third
day things went just the same. She could not get his cap away
from him, and he would not have her money.
Not long afterwards, the country was overrun by war. The king
gathered together his people, and did not know whether or not
he could offer any opposition to the enemy, who was superior
in strength and had a mighty army. Then said the gardener's boy,
I am grown up, and will go to the wars also, only give me a
I am grown up, and will go the the wars also, only give me a
horse. The others laughed, and said, seek one for yourself when
we are gone, we will leave one behind us in the stable for you.
When they had gone forth, he went into the stable, and led the
horse out. It was lame of one foot, and limped hobblety
jig, hobblety jig, nevertheless he mounted it, and rode away
to the dark forest. When he came to the outskirts, he called
'iron Hans, three times so loudly that it echoed through the
trees. Thereupon the wild man appeared immediately, and said,
what do you desire. I want a strong steed, for I am going to the
wars. That you shall have, and still more than you ask for.
Then the wild man went back into the forest, and it was not
long before a stable-boy came out of it, who led a horse that
snorted with its nostrils, and could hardly be restrained,
and behind them followed a great troop of warriors entirely
equipped in iron, and their swords flashed in the sun. The
youth made over his three-legged horse to the stable-boy,
mounted the other, and rode at the head of the soldiers. When
he got near the battle-field a great part of the king's men had
already fallen, and little was wanting to make the rest give way.
Then the youth galloped thither with his iron soldiers, broke
like a hurricane over the enemy, and beat down all who opposed
him. They began to flee, but the youth pursued, and never
stopped, until there was not a single man left. Instead
of returning to the king, however, he conducted his troop
by byways back to the forest, and called forth iron Hans.
What do you desire, asked the wild man. Take back your horse and
your troops, and give me my three-legged horse again. All
that he asked was done, and soon he was riding on his three-legged
horse. When the king returned to his palace, his daughter went
to meet him, and wished him joy of his victory. I am not the
one who carried away the victory, said he, but a strange knight
who came to my assistance with his soldiers. The daughter
wanted to hear who the strange knight was, but the king did
not know, and said, he followed the enemy, and I did not see him
again. She inquired of the gardener where his boy was, but he
smiled, and said, he has just come home on his three-legged
horse, and the others have been mocking him, and crying, here
comes our hobblety jig back again. They asked, too, under
what hedge have you been lying sleeping all the time. So he
said, I did the best of all, and it would have gone badly without
me. And then he was still more ridiculed.
The king said to his daughter, I will proclaim a great feast
that shall last for three days, and you shall throw a golden
apple. Perhaps the unknown man will show himself. When the
feast was announced, the youth went out to the forest, and called
iron Hans. What do you desire, asked he. That I may catch the
king's daughter's golden apple. It is as safe as if you had
it already, said iron Hans. You shall likewise have a suit of
red armor for the occasion, and ride on a spirited chestnut-horse.
When the day came, the youth galloped to the spot, took his
place amongst the knights, and was recognized by no one. The
king's daughter came forward, and threw a golden apple to the
knights, but none of them caught it but he, only as soon as he
had it he galloped away.
On the second day iron Hans equipped him as a white knight, and
gave him a white horse. Again he was the only one who caught
the apple, and he did not linger an instant, but galloped
off with it. The king grew angry, and said, that is not allowed.
He must appear before me and tell his name. He gave the order
that if the knight who caught the apple, should go away again
they should
pursue him, and if he would not come back willingly, they were
to cut him down and stab him.
On the third day, he received from iron Hans a suit of black armor
and a black horse, and again he caught the apple. But when he was
riding off with it, the king's attendants pursued him, and
one of them got so near him that he wounded the youth's leg
with the point of his sword. The youth nevertheless escaped
from them, but his horse leapt so violently that the helmet fell
from the youth's head, and they could see that he had golden
hair. They rode back and announced this to the king.
The following day the king's daughter asked the gardener about
his boy. He is at work in the garden. The queer creature has
been at the festival too, and only came home yesterday evening.
He has likewise shown my children three golden apples which he
has won.
The king had him summoned into his presence, and he came and again
had his little cap on his head. But the king's daughter went up
to him and took it off, and then his golden hair fell down
over his shoulders, and he was so handsome that all were amazed.
Are you the knight who came every day to the festival, always in
different colors, and who caught the three golden apples, asked
the king. Yes, answered he, and here the apples are, and he
took them out of his pocket, and returned them to the king. If
you desire further proof, you may see the wound which your people
gave me when they followed me. But I am likewise the knight
who helped you to your victory over your enemies. If you can
perform such deeds as that, you are no gardener's boy, tell me,
who is your father. My father is a mighty king, and gold have
I in plenty as great as I require. I well see, said the king,
that I owe thanks to you, can I do anything to please you. Yes,
answered he, that indeed you can. Give me your daughter to wife.
The maiden laughed, and said, he does not stand much on ceremony,
but I have already seen by his golden hair that he was no
gardener's boy, and then she went and kissed him. His father and
mother came to the wedding, and were in great delight, for they
had given up all
hope of ever seeing their dear son again. And as they were sitting
at the marriage-feast, the music suddenly stopped, the doors
opened, and a stately king came in with a great retinue. He went
up to the youth, embraced him and said, I am iron Hans, and was by
enchantment a wild man, but you have set me free. All the
treasures which I possess, shall be your property. There were once three brothers who had fallen deeper and deeper into
poverty, and at last their need was so great that they had to endure
hunger, and had nothing to eat or drink. Then said they, it cannot go
on like this, we had better go into the world and seek our fortune.
They therefore set out, and had already walked over many a long road
and many a blade of grass, but had not yet met with good luck. One
day they arrived in a great forest, and in the midst of it was a
hill, and when they came nearer they saw that the hill was all
silver. Then spoke the eldest, now I have found the good luck I
wished for, and I desire nothing more. He took as much of the silver
as he could possibly carry, and then turned back and went home again.
But the two others said, we want something more from good luck than
mere silver, and did not touch it, but went onwards. After they had
walked for two days longer without stopping, they came to a hill
which was all gold. The second brother stopped, took thought with
himself, and was undecided. What shall I do, said he, shall I take
for myself so much of this gold, that I have sufficient for all the
rest of my life, or shall I go farther. At length he made a
decision, and putting as much into his pockets as would go in, said
farewell to his brother, and went home.
But the third said, silver and gold do not move me, I will not
renounce my chance of fortune, perhaps something better still will be
given me. He journeyed onwards, and when he had walked for three
days, he came to a forest which was still larger than the one before,
and never would come to an end, and as he found nothing to eat or to
drink, he was all but exhausted. Then he climbed up a high tree to
find out if up there he could see the end of the forest, but so far
as his eye could pierce he saw nothing but the tops of trees. Then
he began to descend the tree again, but hunger tormented him, and he
thought to himself, if I could but eat my fill once more.
When he got down he saw with astonishment a table beneath the tree
richly spread with food, the steam of which rose up to meet him.
This time, said he, my wish has been fulfilled at the right moment.
And without inquiring who had brought the food, or who had cooked it,
he approached the table, and ate with enjoyment until he had appeased
his hunger. When he was done, he thought, it would after all be a
pity if the pretty little table-cloth were to be spoilt in the forest
here, and folded it up tidily and put it in his pocket. Then he went
onwards, and in the evening, when hunger once more returned to him,
he wanted to make a trial of his little cloth, and spread it out and
said, I wish you to be covered with good cheer again, and scarcely
had the wish crossed his lips than as many dishes with the most
exquisite food on them stood on the table as there was room for. Now
I perceive, said he, in what kitchen my cooking is done. You shall
be dearer to me than the mountains of silver and gold. For he saw
plainly that it was a wishing-cloth. The cloth, however, was still
not enough to enable him to sit down quietly at home, he preferred to
wander about the world and pursue his fortune farther.
One night he met, in a lonely wood, a dusty, black charcoal-burner,
who was burning charcoal there, and had some potatoes by the fire, on
which he was going to make a meal. Good evening, blackbird, said the
youth. How do you get on in your solitude.
One day is like another, replied the charcoal-burner, and every night
potatoes. Have you a mind to have some, and will you be my guest.
Many thanks, replied the traveler, I won't rob you of your supper,
you did not reckon on a visitor, but if you will put up with what I
have, you shall have an invitation. Who is to prepare it for you,
said the charcoal-burner. I see that you have nothing with you, and
there is no one within a two hours' walk who could give you anything.
And yet there shall be a meal, answered the youth, and better than
any you have ever tasted. Thereupon he brought his cloth out of his
knapsack, spread it on the ground, and said, little cloth, cover
yourself, and instantly boiled meat and baked meat stood there, and
as hot as if it had just come out of the kitchen.
The charcoal-burner stared with wide-open eyes, but did not require
much pressing, he fell to, and thrust larger and larger mouthfuls
into his black mouth. When they had eaten everything, the
charcoal-burner smiled contentedly, and said, listen, your
table-cloth has my approval, it would be a fine thing for me in this
forest, where no one ever cooks me anything good. I will propose an
exchange to you, there in the corner hangs a soldier's knapsack,
which is certainly old and shabby, but in it lie concealed wonderful
powers, but, as I no longer use it, I will give it to you for the
table-cloth.
I must first know what these wonderful powers are, answered the
youth.
That will I tell you, replied the charcoal-burner, every time you tap
it with your hand, a corporal comes with six men armed from head to
foot, and they do whatsover you command them. So far as I am
concerned, said the youth, if nothing else can be done, we will
exchange, and he gave the charcoal-burner the cloth, took the
knapsack from the hook, put it on, and bade farewell. When he had
walked a while, he wished to make a trial of the magical powers of
his knapsack and tapped it. Immediately the seven warriors stepped
up to him, and the corporal said, what does my lord and ruler wish
for.
March with all speed to the charcoal-burner, and demand my
wishing-cloth back. They faced to the left, and it was not long
before they brought what he required, and had taken it from the
charcoal-burner without asking many questions. The young man bade
them retire, went onwards, and hoped fortune would shine yet more
brightly on him. By sunset he came to another charcoal-burner, who
was making his supper ready by the fire. If you will eat some
potatoes with salt, but with no dripping, come and sit down with me,
said the sooty fellow.
No, he replied, this time you shall be my guest, and he spread out
his cloth, which was instantly covered with the most beautiful
dishes. They ate and drank together, and enjoyed themselves
heartily. After the meal was over, the charcoal-burner said, up
there on that shelf lies a little old worn-out hat which has strange
properties - the moment someone puts it on, and turns it round on his
head, the cannons go off as if twelve were fired all together, and
they demolish everything so that no one can withstand them. The hat
is of no use to me, and I will willingly give it for your tablecloth.
That suits me very well, he answered, took the hat, put it on, and
left his table-cloth behind him. But hardly had he walked away than
he tapped on his knapsack, and his soldiers had to fetch the cloth
back again. One thing comes on the top of another, thought he, and I
feel as if my luck had not yet come to an end. Neither had his
thoughts deceived him. After he had walked on for the whole of one
day, he came to a third charcoal-burner, who like the previous one,
invited him to potatoes without dripping. But he let him also dine
with him from his wishing-cloth, and the charcoal-burner liked it so
well, that at last he offered him a horn for it, which had very
different properties from those of the hat. The moment someone blew
it all the walls and fortifications fell down, and all towns and
villages became ruins. For this he immediately gave the
charcoal-burner the cloth, but he afterwards sent his soldiers to
demand it back again, so that at length he had the knapsack, hat and
horn, all three. Now, said he, I am a made man, and it is time for
me to go home and see how my brothers are getting on.
When he reached home, his brothers had built themselves a handsome
house with their silver and gold, and were living in clover. He went
to see them, but as he came in a ragged coat, with his shabby hat on
his head, and his old knapsack on his back, they would not
acknowledge him as their brother. They mocked and said, you give out
that you are our brother who despised silver and gold, and craved for
something still better for himself. Such a person arrives in his
carriage in full splendor like a mighty king, not like a beggar, and
they drove him out of doors. Then he fell into a rage, and tapped
his knapsack until a hundred and fifty men stood before him armed
from head to foot. He commanded them to surround his brothers,
house, and two of them were to take hazelsticks with them, and beat
the two insolent men until they knew who he was.
A violent disturbance broke out, people ran together, and wanted to
lend the two some help in their need, but against the soldiers they
could do nothing. News of this at length came to the king, who was
very angry, and ordered a captain to march out with his troop, and
drive this disturber of the peace out of the town, but the man with
knapsack soon got a greater body of men together, who repulsed the
captain and his men, so that they were forced to retire with bloody
noses. The king said, this vagabond is not brought to order yet, and
next day sent a still larger troop against him, but they could do
even less. The youth set still more men against them, and in order
to be done the sooner, he turned his hat twice round on his head, and
heavy guns began to play, and the king's men were beaten and put to
flight.
And now, said he, I will not make peace until the king gives me his
daughter to wife, and I govern the whole kingdom in his name. He
caused this to be announced to the king, and the latter said to his
daughter, necessity is a hard nut to crack. What else is there for
me to do but what he desires. If I want peace and to keep the crown
on my head, I must give you away.
So the wedding was celebrated, but the king's daughter was vexed that
her husband should be a common man, who wore a shabby hat, and put on
an old knapsack. She longed to get rid of him, and night and day
studied how she could accomplished this. Then she thought to
herself, is it possible that his wonderful powers lie in the
knapsack, and she feigned affection and caressed him, and when his
heart was softened, she said, if you would but lay aside that horrid
knapsack, it makes you look so ugly, that I can't help being ashamed
of you. Dear child, said he, this knapsack is my greatest treasure,
as long as I have it, there is no power on earth that I am afraid of.
And he revealed to her the wonderful virtue with which it was
endowed.
Then she threw herself in his arms as if she were going to kiss him,
but cleverly took the knapsack off his shoulders, and ran away with
it. As soon as she was alone she tapped it, and commanded the
warriors to seize their former master, and take him out of the royal
palace. They obeyed, and the false wife sent still more men after
him, who were to drive him quite out of the country. Then he would
have been ruined if he had not had the little hat. And hardly were
his hands free before he turned it twice. Immediately the cannon
began to thunder, and demolished everything, and the king's daughter
herself was forced to come and beg for mercy. As she entreated in
such moving terms, and promised to better her ways, he allowed
himself to be persuaded and granted her peace.
She behaved in a friendly manner to him, and acted as if she loved
him very much, and after some time managed so to befool him, that he
confided to her that even if someone got the knapsack into his power,
he could do nothing against him so long as the old hat was still his.
When she knew the secret, she waited until he was asleep, and then
she took the hat away from him, and had it thrown out into the
street. But the horn still remained to him, and in great anger he
blew it with all his strength.
Instantly all walls, fortifications, towns, and villages, toppled
down, and crushed the king and his daughter to death. And had he not
put down the horn and had blown just a little longer, everything
would have been in ruins, and not one stone would have been left
standing on another. Then no one opposed him any longer, and he made
himself king of the whole country. Little Red-Cap
Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved
by every one who looked at her, but most of all by her
grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have
given to the child. Once she gave her a little cap of red
velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear
anything else. So she was always called little red-cap.
One day her mother said to her, come, little red-cap, here
is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine. Take them to your
grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good.
Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk
nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may
fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will
get nothing. And when you go into her room, don't forget
to say, good-morning, and don't peep into every corner before
you do it.
I will take great care, said little red-cap to her mother, and
gave her hand on it.
The grandmother lived out in the wood, half a league from the
village, and just as little red-cap entered the wood, a wolf
met her. Red-cap did not know what a wicked creature he was,
and was not at all afraid of him.
"Good-day, little red-cap," said he.
"Thank you kindly, wolf."
"Whither away so early, little red-cap?"
"To my grandmother's."
"What have you got in your apron?"
"Cake and wine. Yesterday was baking-day, so poor sick
grandmother is to have something good, to make her stronger."
"Where does your grandmother live, little red-cap?"
"A good quarter of a league farther on in the wood. Her house
stands under the three large oak-trees, the nut-trees are just
below. You surely must know it," replied little red-cap.
The wolf thought to himself, what a tender young creature. What a
nice plump mouthful, she will be better to eat than the old
woman. I must act craftily, so as to catch both. So he walked
for a short time by the side of little red-cap, and then he
said, "see little red-cap, how pretty the flowers are about here.
Why do you not look round. I believe, too, that you do not
hear how sweetly the little birds are singing. You walk gravely
along as if you were going to school, while everything else out
here in the wood is merry."
Little red-cap raised her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams
dancing here and there through the trees, and pretty flowers
growing everywhere, she thought, suppose I take grandmother a
fresh nosegay. That would please her too. It is so early in the
day that I shall still get there in good time. And so she ran
from the path into the wood to look for flowers. And whenever
she had picked one, she fancied that she saw a still prettier one
farther on, and ran after it, and so got deeper and deeper into
the wood.
Meanwhile the wolf ran straight to the grandmother's house and
knocked at the door.
"Who is there?"
"Little red-cap," replied the wolf. "She is bringing cake and
wine. Open the door."
"Lift the latch," called out the grandmother, "I am too weak, and
cannot get up."
The wolf lifted the latch, the door sprang open, and without
saying a word he went straight to the grandmother's bed, and
devoured her. Then he put on her clothes, dressed himself in
her cap, laid himself in bed and drew the curtains.
Little red-cap, however, had been running about picking flowers,
and when she had gathered so many that she could carry
no more, she remembered her grandmother, and set out on the
way to her.
She was surprised to find the cottage-door standing open, and
when she went into the room, she had such a strange feeling that
she said to herself, oh dear, how uneasy I feel to-day, and at
other times I like being with grandmother so much. She called
out, "good morning," but received no answer. So she went to the
bed and drew back the curtains. There lay her grandmother with
her cap pulled far over her face, and looking very strange.
"Oh, grandmother," she said, "what big ears you have."
"The better to hear you with, my child," was the reply.
"But, grandmother, what big eyes you have," she said.
"The better to see you with," my dear.
"But, grandmother, what large hands you have."
"The better to hug you with."
"Oh, but, grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have."
"The better to eat you with."
And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with one bound he was
out of bed and swallowed up red-cap.
When the wolf had appeased his appetite, he lay down again in
the bed, fell asleep and began to snore very loud. The
huntsman was just passing the house, and thought to himself, how
the old woman is snoring. I must just see if she wants anything.
So he went into the room, and when he came to the bed, he saw
that the wolf was lying in it. Do I find you here, you old
sinner, said he. I have long sought you. Then just as he was going
to fire at him, it occurred to him that the wolf might have
devoured the grandmother, and that she might still be saved, so
he did not fire, but took a pair of scissors, and began to cut
open the stomach of the sleeping wolf. When he had made two
snips, he saw the little red-cap shining, and then he made two
snips more, and the little girl sprang out, crying, ah, how
frightened I have been. How dark it was inside the wolf. And
after that the aged grandmother came out alive also, but scarcely
able to breathe. Red-cap, however, quickly
fetched great stones with which they filled the wolf's belly, and
when he awoke, he wanted to run away, but the stones were so
heavy that he collapsed at once, and fell dead.
Then all three were delighted. The huntsman drew off the wolf's
skin and went home with it. The grandmother ate the cake and
drank the wine which red-cap had brought, and revived, but
red-cap thought to herself, as long as I live, I will never by
myself leave the path, to run into the wood, when my mother has
forbidden me to do so.
It is also related that once when red-cap was again taking cakes
to the old grandmother, another wolf spoke to her, and tried to
entice her from the path. Red-cap, however, was on her guard,
and went straight forward on her way, and told her grandmother
that she had met the wolf, and that he had said good-morning to
her, but with such a wicked look in his eyes, that if they had
not been on the public road she was certain he would have eaten
her up. Well, said the grandmother, we will shut the door, that
he may not come in. Soon afterwards the wolf knocked, and cried,
open the door, grandmother, I am little red-cap, and am bringing
you some cakes. But they did not speak, or open the door, so
the grey-beard stole twice or thrice round the house, and at last
jumped on the roof, intending to wait until red-cap went home in
the evening, and then to steal after her and devour her in the
darkness. But the grandmother saw what was in his thoughts. In
front of the house was a great stone trough, so she said to the
child, take the pail, red-cap. I made some sausages yesterday,
so carry the water in which I boiled them to the trough. Red-cap
carried until the great trough was quite full. Then the smell
of the sausages reached the wolf, and he sniffed and peeped
down, and at last stretched out his neck so far that he could
no longer keep his footing and began to slip, and slipped down
from the roof straight into the great trough, and was drowned.
But red-cap went joyously home, and no one ever did anything
to harm her again. There was once a widow who had two daughters - one of
whom was pretty and industrious, whilst the other was ugly
and idle. But she was much fonder of the ugly and idle one,
because she was her own daughter. And the other, who was a
step-daughter, was obliged to do all the work, and be the
cinderella of the house. Every day the poor girl had to sit by a
well, in the highway, and spin and spin till her fingers bled.
Now it happened that one day the shuttle was marked with her
blood, so she dipped it in the well, to wash the mark off, but it
dropped out of her hand and fell to the bottom. She began to
weep, and ran to her step-mother and told her of the mishap. But
she scolded her sharply, and was so merciless as to say, since
you have let the shuttle fall in, you must fetch it out again.
So the girl went back to the well, and did not know what to do.
And in the sorrow of her heart she jumped into the well to get the
shuttle. She lost her senses. And when she awoke and came to
herself again, she was in a lovely meadow where the sun was
shining and many thousands of flowers were growing. Across this
meadow she went, and at last came to a baker's oven full of bread,
and the bread cried out, oh, take me out. Take me out. Or I shall
burn. I have been baked a long time. So she went up to it, and
took out all the loaves one after another with the bread-shovel.
After that she went on till she came to a tree covered with apples,
which called out to her, oh, shake me. Shake me. We apples are
all ripe. So she shook the tree till the apples fell like rain,
and went on shaking till they were all down, and when she had
gathered them into a heap, she went on her way.
At last she came to a little house, out of which an old woman
peeped. But she had such large teeth that the girl was
frightened, and was about to run away. But the old woman called
out to her, what are you afraid of, dear child. Stay with me.
If you will do all the work in the house properly, you shall be
the better for it. Only you must take care to make my bed well,
and shake it thoroughly till the feathers fly - for then there
is snow on the earth. I am mother holle.
As the old woman spoke so kindly to her, the girl took courage
and agreed to enter her service. She attended to everything to the
satisfaction of her mistress, and always shook her bed so vigorously
that the feathers flew about like snow-flakes. So she had a
pleasant life with her. Never an angry word. And to eat she had
boiled or roast meat every day.
She stayed some time with mother holle, before she became sad.
At first she did not know what was the matter with her, but found
at length that it was home-sickness. Although she was many thousand
times better off here than at home, still she had a longing to be
there. At last she said to the old woman, I have a longing for
home, and however well off I am down here, I cannot stay any
longer. I must go up again to my own people. Mother holle said,
I am pleased that you long for your home again, and as you have
served me so truly, I myself will take you up again. Thereupon
she took her by the hand, and led her to a large door. The door
was opened, and just as the maiden was standing beneath the
doorway, a heavy shower of golden rain fell, and all the gold clung
to her, so that she was completely covered over with it.
You shall have that because you have been so industrious, said
mother holle, and at the same time she gave her back the shuttle
which she had let fall into the well. Thereupon the door closed,
and the maiden found herself up above upon the earth, not far
from her mother's house.
And as she went into the yard the cock was sitting on the well,
and cried -
cock-a-doodle-doo.
Your golden girl's come back to you.
So she went in to her mother, and as she arrived thus covered with
gold, she was well received, both by her and her sister.
The girl told all that had happened to her, and as soon as the
mother heard how she had come by so much wealth, she was very
anxious to obtain the same good luck for the ugly and lazy daughter.
She had to seat herself by the well and spin. And in order that
her shuttle might be stained with blood, she stuck her hand into a
thorn bush and pricked her finger. Then she threw her shuttle
into the well, and jumped in after it.
She came, like the other, to the beautiful meadow and walked
along the very same path. When she got to the oven the bread again
cried, oh, take me out. Take me out. Or I shall burn. I have been
baked a long time. But the lazy thing answered, as if I had any
wish to make myself dirty. And on she went. Soon she came to the
apple-tree, which cried, oh, shake me. Shake me. We apples are all
ripe. But she answered, I like that. One of you might fall on
my head, and so went on. When she came to mother holle's house
she was not afraid, for she had already heard of her big teeth, and
she hired herself to her immediately.
The first day she forced herself to work diligently, and obeyed
mother holle when she told her to do anything, for she was thinking
of all the gold that she would give her. But on the second day
she began to be lazy, and on the third day still more so, and then
she would not get up in the morning at all. Neither did she make
mother holle's bed as she ought, and did not shake it so as to
make the feathers fly up. Mother holle was soon tired of this, and
gave her notice to leave. The lazy girl was willing enough to go,
and thought that now the golden rain would come. Mother holle led
her also to the great door, but while she was standing beneath it,
instead of the gold a big kettleful of pitch was emptied over her.
That is the reward for your service, said mother holle, and shut
the door.
So the lazy girl went home, but she was quite covered with pitch,
and the cock on the well, as soon as he saw her, cried out -
cock-a-doodle-doo.
Your dirty girl's come back to you.
But the pitch clung fast to her, and could not be got off as long
as she lived. There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain
wished for a child. At length the woman hoped that God
was about to grant her desire. These people had a little
window at the back of their house from which a splendid garden
could be seen, which was full of the most beautiful flowers and
herbs. It was, however, surrounded by a high wall, and no one
dared to go into it because it belonged to an enchantress, who had
great power and was dreaded by all the world. One day the woman
was standing by this window and looking down into the garden,
when she saw a bed which was planted with the most beautiful
rampion - rapunzel, and it looked so fresh and green that she
longed for it, and had the greatest desire to eat some. This desire
increased every day, and as she knew that she could not get any
of it, she quite pined away, and began to look pale and miserable.
Then her husband was alarmed, and asked, what ails you, dear
wife. Ah, she replied, if I can't eat some of the rampion, which
is in the garden behind our house, I shall die. The man, who loved
her, thought, sooner than let your wife die, bring her some of
the rampion yourself, let it cost what it will. At twilight, he
clambered down over the wall into the garden of the enchantress,
hastily clutched a handful of rampion, and took it to his wife. She
at once made herself a salad of it, and ate it greedily. It tasted
so good to her - so very good, that the next day she longed for it
three times as much as before. If he was to have any rest, her
husband must once more descend into the garden. In the gloom of
evening, therefore, he let himself down again. But when he had
clambered down the wall he was terribly afraid, for he saw the
enchantress standing before him. How can you dare, said she with
angry look, descend into my garden and steal my rampion like a
thief. You shall suffer for it. Ah, answered he, let mercy take
the place of justice, I only made up my mind to do it out of
necessity. My wife saw your rampion from the window, and felt such
a longing for it that she would have died if she had not got some
to eat. Then the enchantress allowed her anger to be softened, and
said to him, if the case be as you say, I will allow you to take
away with you as much rampion as you will, only I make one
condition, you must give me the child which your wife will bring
into the world. It shall be well treated, and I will care for it
like a mother. The man in his terror consented to everything, and
when the woman was brought to bed, the enchantress appeared at once,
gave the child the name of rapunzel, and took it away with her.
Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child under the sun.
When she was twelve years old, the enchantress shut her into a
tower, which lay in a forest, and had neither stairs nor door, but
quite at the top was a little window. When the enchantress
wanted to go in, she placed herself beneath it and cried,
rapunzel, rapunzel,
let down your hair to me.
Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold, and when
she heard the voice of the enchantress she unfastened her braided
tresses, wound them round one of the hooks of the window above,
and then the hair fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed
up by it.
After a year or two, it came to pass that the king's son rode
through the forest and passed by the tower. Then he heard a song,
which was so charming that he stood still and listened. This was
rapunzel, who in her solitude passed her time in letting her sweet
voice resound. The king's son wanted to climb up to her, and
looked for the door of the tower, but none was to be found. He
rode home, but the singing had so deeply touched his heart, that
every day he went out into the forest and listened to it. Once when
he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw that an enchantress
came there, and he heard how she cried,
rapunzel, rapunzel,
let down your hair.
Then rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the
enchantress climbed up to her. If that is the ladder by which one
mounts, I too will try my fortune, said he, and the next day when
it began to grow dark, he went to the tower and cried,
rapunzel, rapunzel,
let down your hair.
Immediately the hair fell down and the king's son climbed up.
At first rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man, such as
her eyes had never yet beheld, came to her. But the king's son
began to talk to her quite like a friend, and told her that his
heart had been so stirred that it had let him have no rest, and he
had been forced to see her. Then rapunzel lost her fear, and when
he asked her if she would take him for her husband, and she saw that
he was young and handsome, she thought, he will love me more than
old dame gothel does. And she said yes, and laid her hand in his.
She said, I will willingly go away with you, but I do not know
how to get down. Bring with you a skein of silk every time that
you come, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when that is ready
I will descend, and you will take me on your horse. They agreed
that until that time he should come to her every evening, for the
old woman came by day. The enchantress remarked nothing of
this, until once rapunzel said to her, tell me, dame gothel, how
it happens that you are so much heavier for me to draw up than
the young king's son - he is with me in a moment. Ah. You
wicked child, cried the enchantress. What do I hear you say. I
thought I had separated you from all the world, and yet you have
deceived me. In her anger she clutched rapunzel's beautiful
tresses, wrapped them twice round her left hand, seized a pair of
scissors with the right, and snip, snap, they were cut off, and the
lovely braids lay on the ground. And she was so pitiless that she
took poor rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great
grief and misery.
On the same day that she cast out rapunzel, however, the
enchantress fastened the braids of hair, which she had cut off, to
the hook of the window, and when the king's son came and cried,
rapunzel, rapunzel,
let down your hair,
she let the hair down. The king's son ascended, but instead of
finding his dearest rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed
at him with wicked and venomous looks. Aha, she cried mockingly,
you would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits
no longer singing in the nest. The cat has got it, and will scratch
out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you. You will never see
her again. The king's son was beside himself with pain, and in
his despair he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life,
but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes. Then he
wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but roots and
berries, and did naught but lament and weep over the loss of his
dearest wife. Thus he roamed about in misery for some years, and at
length came to the desert where rapunzel, with the twins to which
she had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness. He
heard a voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that he went towards
it, and when he approached, rapunzel knew him and fell on his neck
and wept. Two of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew clear
again, and he could see with them as before. He led her to his
kingdom where he was joyfully received, and they lived for a long
time afterwards, happy and contented. Rumpelstiltskin
Once there was a miller who was poor, but who had a beautiful
daughter. Now it happened that he had to go and speak to the
king, and in order to make himself appear important he said
to him, I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold. The
king said to the miller, that is an art which
pleases me well, if your daughter is as clever as you say, bring
her to-morrow to my palace, and I will put her to the test.
And when the girl was brought to him he took her into a room
which was quite full of straw, gave her a spinning-wheel and a
reel, and said, now set to work, and if by to-morrow morning
early you have not spun this straw into gold during the night,
you must die. Thereupon he himself locked up the room, and
left her in it alone. So there sat the poor miller's daughter,
and for the life of her could not tell what to do, she had no
idea how straw could be spun into gold, and she grew more and
more frightened, until at last she began to weep.
But all at once the door opened, and in came a little man,
and said, good evening, mistress miller, why are you crying so.
Alas, answered the girl, I have to spin straw into gold, and I do
not know how to do it. What will you give me, said the
manikin, if I do it for you. My necklace, said the girl. The
little man took the necklace, seated himself in front of the
wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three turns, and the reel was
full, then he put another on, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three times
round, and the second was full too. And so it went on until
the morning, when all the straw was spun, and all the reels
were full of gold.
By daybreak the king was already there, and
when he saw the gold he was astonished and delighted, but his
heart became only more greedy. He had the miller's daughter
taken into another room full of straw, which was much larger,
and commanded her to spin that also in one night if she valued
her life. The girl knew not how to help herself, and was
crying, when the door opened again, and the little man appeared,
and said, what will you give me if I spin that straw into gold
for you. The ring on my finger, answered the girl. The little
man took the ring, again began to turn the wheel, and by
morning had spun all the straw into glittering gold.
The king rejoiced beyond measure at the sight, but still he had
not gold enough, and he had the miller's daughter taken into
a still larger room full of straw, and said, you must spin this,
too, in the course of this night, but if you succeed, you shall
be my wife.
Even if she be a miller's daughter, thought he, I could not
find a richer wife in the whole world.
When the girl was alone the manikin came again for the third
time, and said, what will you give me if I spin the straw for
you this time also. I have nothing left that I could give,
answered the girl. Then promise me, if you should become queen,
to give me your first child. Who knows whether that will
ever happen, thought the miller's daughter, and, not knowing
how else to help herself in this strait, she promised the
manikin what he wanted, and for that he once more spun the
straw into gold.
And when the king came in the morning, and found all as he
had wished, he took her in marriage, and the pretty miller's
daughter became a queen.
A year after, she brought a beautiful child into the world,
and she never gave a thought to the manikin. But suddenly he
came into her room, and said, now give me what you promised.
The queen was horror-struck, and offered the manikin all the
riches of the kingdom if he would leave her the child. But the
manikin said, no, something alive is dearer to me than all the
treasures in the world. Then the queen began to lament and cry,
so that the manikin pitied her. I will give you three days,
time, said he, if by that time you find out my name, then shall
you keep your child.
So the queen thought the whole night of all the names that
she had ever heard, and she sent a messenger over the country to
inquire, far and wide, for any other names that there might be.
When the manikin came the next day, she began with caspar,
melchior, balthazar, and said all the names she knew, one
after another, but to every one the little man said, that is not
my name. On the second day she had inquiries made in the
neighborhood as to the names of the people there, and she
repeated to the manikin the most uncommon and curious. Perhaps
your name is shortribs, or sheepshanks, or laceleg, but he
always answered, that is not my name.
On the third day the messenger came back again, and said, I
have not been able to find a single new name, but as I came to
a high mountain at the end of the forest, where the fox and the hare
bid each other good night, there I saw a little house, and
before the house a fire was burning, and round about the fire
quite a ridiculous little man was jumping, he hopped upon
one leg, and shouted -
to-day I bake, to-morrow brew,
the next I'll have the young queen's child.
Ha, glad am I that no one knew
that Rumpelstiltskin I am styled.
You may imagine how glad the queen was when she heard the
name. And when soon afterwards the little man came in, and
asked, now, mistress queen, what is my name, at first she
said, is your name Conrad? No. Is your name Harry? No.
Perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin?
The devil has told you that! The devil has told you that, cried
the little man, and in his anger he plunged his right foot so
deep into the earth that his whole leg went in, and then in
rage he pulled at his left leg so hard with both hands that
he tore himself in two. There was once upon a time a king who had twelve daughters, each one
more beautiful than the other. They all slept together in one
chamber, in which their beds stood side by side, and every night when
they were in them the king locked the door, and bolted it. But in
the morning when he unlocked the door, he saw that their shoes were
worn out with dancing, and no one could find out how that had come to
pass. Then the king caused it to be proclaimed that whosoever could
discover where they danced at night, should choose one of them for
his wife and be king after his death, but that whosoever came forward
and had not discovered it within three days and nights, should have
forfeited his life.
It was not long before a king's son presented himself, and offered to
undertake the enterprise. He was well received, and in the evening
was led into a room adjoining the princesses, sleeping-chamber. His
bed was placed there, and he was to observe where they went and
danced, and in order that they might do nothing secretly or go away
to some other place, the door of their room was left open. But the
eyelids of the prince grew heavy as lead, and he fell asleep, and
when he awoke in the morning, all twelve had been to the dance, for
their shoes were standing there with holes in the soles. On the
second and third nights there was no difference, and then his head
was struck off without mercy.
Many others came after this and undertook the enterprise, but all
forfeited their lives. Now it came to pass that a poor soldier, who
had a wound, and could serve no longer, found himself on the road to
the town where the king lived. There he met an old woman, who asked
him where he was going. "I hardly know myself," answered he, and
added in jest, "I had half a mind to discover where the princesses
danced their shoes into holes, and thus become king." "That is not so
difficult," said the old woman, "you must not drink the wine which
will be brought to you at night, and must pretend to be sound
asleep." With that she gave him a little cloak, and said, "If you
wear this, you will be invisible, and then you can steal after the
twelve." When the soldier had received this good advice, he fell to
in earnest, took heart, went to the king, and announced himself as a
suitor. He was as well received as the others, and royal garments
were put upon him. He was conducted that evening at bed-time into
the antechamber, and as he was about to go to bed, the eldest came
and brought him a cup of wine, but he had tied a sponge under his
chin, and let the wine run down into it, without drinking a drop.
Then he lay down and when he had lain a while, he began to snore, as
if in the deepest sleep. The twelve princesses heard that, and
laughed, and the eldest said, "He, too, might as well have saved his
life." With that they got up, opened wardrobes, presses, cupboards,
and brought out pretty dresses, dressed themselves before the
mirrors, sprang about, and rejoiced at the prospect of the dance.
Only the youngest said, "I know not how it is, you are very happy,
but I feel very strange, some misfortune is certainly about to befall
us." "You are a goose, who are always frightened," said the eldest.
"Have you forgotten how many kings' sons have already come here in
vain. I had hardly any need to give the soldier a sleeping-draught,
the booby would not have awakened anyway."
When they were all ready they looked carefully at the soldier, but he
had closed his eyes and did not move or stir, so they felt themselves
safe enough. The eldest then went to her bed and tapped it,
whereupon it immediately sank into the earth, and one after the other
they descended through the opening, the eldest going first. The
soldier, who had watched everything, tarried no longer, put on his
little cloak, and went down last with the youngest. Half-way down
the steps, he just trod a little on her dress, she was terrified at
that, and cried out, "What is that? Who is pulling my dress?" "Don't
be so silly," said the eldest, "you have caught it on a nail."
Then they went all the way down, and when they were at the bottom,
they were standing in a wonderfully pretty avenue of trees, all the
leaves of which were of silver, and shone and glistened. The soldier
thought, "I must carry a token away with me," and broke off a twig
from one of them, on which the tree cracked with a loud report. The
youngest cried out again. "Something is wrong, did you hear the
crack?" But the eldest said, "It is a gun fired for joy, because we
have got rid of our prince so quickly." After that they came into an
avenue where all the leaves were of gold, and lastly into a third
where they were of bright diamonds, he broke off a twig from each,
which made such a crack each time that the youngest started back in
terror, but the eldest still maintained that they were salutes.
They went on and came to a great lake whereon stood twelve little
boats, and in every boat sat a handsome prince, all of whom were
waiting for the twelve, and each took one of them with him, but the
soldier seated himself by the youngest. Then her prince said, "I
wonder why the boat is so much heavier to-day. I shall have to row
with all my strength, if I am to get it across." "What should cause
that," said the youngest, "but the warm weather?" "I feel very warm
too." On the opposite side of the lake stood a splendid, brightly-lit
castle, from whence resounded the joyous music of trumpets and
kettle-drums. They rowed there, entered, and each prince danced with
the girl he loved, but the soldier danced with them unseen, and when
one of them had a cup of wine in her hand he drank it up, so that the
cup was empty when she carried it to her mouth, the youngest was
alarmed at this, but the eldest always silenced her. They danced
there till three o'clock in the morning when all the shoes were
danced into holes, and they were forced to leave off, the princes
rowed them back again over the lake, and this time the soldier seated
himself by the eldest.
On the shore they took leave of their princes, and promised to return
the following night. When they reached the stairs the soldier ran on
in front and lay down in his bed, and when the twelve had come up
slowly and wearily, he was already snoring so loudly that they could
all hear him, and they said, "So far as he is concerned, we are
safe." They took off their beautiful dresses, laid them away, put the
worn-out shoes under the bed, and lay down. Next morning the soldier
was resolved not to speak, but to watch the wonderful goings-on, and
again went with them a second and a third night.
Then everything was just as it had been the first time, and each time
they danced until their shoes were worn to pieces. But the third
time he took a cup away with him as a token. When the hour had
arrived for him to give his answer, he took the three twigs and the
cup, and went to the king, but the twelve stood behind the door, and
listened for what he was going to say. When the king put the
question, "Where have my twelve daughters danced their shoes to
pieces in the night?" He answered, "In an underground castle with
twelve princes," and related how it had come to pass, and brought out
the tokens. The king then summoned his daughters, and asked them if
the soldier had told the truth, and when they saw that they were
betrayed, and that falsehood would be of no avail, they were obliged
to confess all. Thereupon the king asked which of them he would have
to wife. He answered, "I am no longer young, so give me the eldest."
Then the wedding was celebrated on the self-same day, and the kingdom
was promised him after the king's death. But the princes were
bewitched for as many days as they had danced nights with the twelve. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Once upon a time in the middle of winter, when the flakes of
snow were falling like feathers from the sky, a queen sat at
a window sewing, and the frame of the window was made of black
ebony. And whilst she was sewing and looking out of the window
at the snow, she pricked her finger with the needle, and three
drops of blood fell upon the snow. And the red looked pretty
upon the white snow, and she thought to herself, would that I had
a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the
wood of the window-frame.
Soon after that she had a little daughter, who was as white as
snow, and as red as blood, and her hair was as black as ebony,
and she was therefore called little snow-white. And when the
child was born, the queen died.
After a year had passed the king took to himself another wife.
She was a beautiful woman, but proud and haughty, and she could
not bear that anyone else chould surpass her in beauty. She
had a wonderful looking-glass, and when she stood in front of it
and looked at herself in it, and said,
looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall,
who in this land is the fairest of all.
The looking-glass answered,
thou, o queen, art the fairest of all.
Then she was satisfied, for she knew that the looking-glass spoke
the truth.
But snow-white was growing up, and grew more and more beautiful,
and when she was seven years old she was as beautiful as the day,
and more beautiful than the queen herself. And once when the
queen asked her looking-glass,
looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall,
who in this land is the fairest of all.
It answered,
thou art fairer than all who are here, lady queen.
But more beautiful still is snow-white, as I ween.
Then the queen was shocked, and turned yellow and green with
envy. From that hour, whenever she looked at snow-white, her
heart heaved in her breast, she hated the girl so much.
And envy and pride grew higher and higher in her heart like a
weed, so that she had no peace day or night. She called a
huntsman, and said, take the child away into the forest. I will
no longer have her in my sight. Kill her, and bring me back her
lung and liver as a token. The huntsman obeyed, and took her away
but when he had drawn his knife, and was about to pierce
snow-white's innocent heart, she began to weep, and said, ah dear
huntsman, leave me my life. I will run away into the wild forest,
and never come home again.
And as she was so beautiful the huntsman had pity on her and
said, run away, then, you poor child. The wild beasts will soon
have devoured you, thought he, and yet it seemed as if a stone had
been rolled from his heart since it was no longer needful for
him to kill her. And as a young bear just then came running by
he stabbed it, and cut out its lung and liver and took them to the
queen as proof that the child was dead. The cook had to salt them,
and the wicked queen ate them, and thought she had eaten the lung
and liver of snow-white.
But now the poor child was all alone in the great forest, and so
terrified that she looked at all the leaves on the trees, and did
not know what to do. Then she began to run, and ran over sharp
stones and through thorns, and the wild beasts ran past her, but
did her no harm.
She ran as long as her feet would go until it was almost evening,
then she saw a little cottage and went into it to rest herself.
Everything in the cottage was small, but neater and cleaner than
can be told. There was a table on which was a white cover, and
seven little plates, and on each plate a little spoon, moreover,
there were seven little knives and forks, and seven little mugs.
Against the wall stood seven little beds side by side, and
covered with snow-white counterpanes.
Little snow-white was so hungry and thirsty that she ate some
vegetables and bread from each plate and drank a drop of wine
out of each mug, for she did not wish to take all from one only.
Then, as she was so tired, she laid herself down on one of the
little beds, but none of them suited her, one was too long,
another too short, but at last she found that the seventh one was
right, and so she remained in it, said a prayer and went to
sleep.
When it was quite dark the owners of the cottage came back.
They were seven dwarfs who dug and delved in the mountains for
ore. They lit their seven candles, and as it was now light within
the cottage they saw that someone had been there, for everything
was not in the same order in which they had left it.
The first said, who has been sitting on my chair.
The second, who has been eating off my plate.
The third, who has been taking some of my bread.
The fourth, who has been eating my vegetables.
The fifth, who has been using my fork.
The sixth, who has been cutting with my knife.
The seventh, who has been drinking out of my mug.
Then the first looked round and saw that there was a little
hollow on his bed, and he said, who has been getting into my
bed. The others came up and each called out, somebody has been
lying in my bed too. But the seventh when he looked at his bed
saw little snow-white, who was lying asleep therein. And he
called the others, who came running up, and they cried out with
astonishment, and brought their seven little candles and let the
light fall on little snow-white. Oh, heavens, oh, heavens, cried
they, what a lovely child. And they were so glad that they did
not wake her up, but let her sleep on in the bed. And the
seventh dwarf slept with his companions, one hour with each, and
so passed the night.
When it was morning little snow-white awoke, and was frightened
when she saw the seven dwarfs. But they were friendly and asked
her what her name was. My name is snow-white, she answered.
How have you come to our house, said the dwarfs. Then she told
them that her step-mother had wished to have her killed, but
that the huntsman had spared her life, and that she had run for
the whole day, until at last she had found their dwelling.
The dwarfs said, if you will take care of our house, cook, make
the beds, wash, sew and knit, and if you will keep everything neat
and clean you can stay with us and you shall want for nothing.
Yes, said snow-white, with all my heart. And she stayed with
them. She kept the house in order for them. In the mornings
they went to the mountains and looked for copper and gold, in the
evenings they came back, and then their supper had to be ready.
The girl was alone the whole day, so the good dwarfs warned her
and said, beware of your step-mother, she will soon know that you
are here, be sure to let no one come in.
But the queen, believing that she had eaten snow-white's lung and
liver, could not but think that she was again the first and most
beautiful of all, and she went to her looking-glass and said,
looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall,
who in this land is the fairest of all.
And the glass answered,
oh, queen, thou art fairest of all I see,
but over the hills, where the seven dwarfs dwell,
snow-white is still alive and well,
and none is so fair as she.
Then she was astounded, for she knew that the looking-glass
never spoke falsely, and she knew that the huntsman had betrayed
her, and that little snow-white was still alive.
And so she thought and thought again how she might kill her,
for so long as she was not the fairest in the whole land, envy let
her have no rest. And when she had at last thought of something
to do, she painted her face, and dressed herself like an old
pedlar-woman, and no one could have known her. In this disguise
she went over the seven mountains to the seven dwarfs, and
knocked at the door and cried, pretty things to sell, very cheap,
very cheap. Little snow-white looked out of the window and called
out, good-day my good woman, what have you to sell. Good things,
pretty things, she answered, stay-laces of all colors, and she
pulled out one which was woven of bright-colored silk. I may let
the worthy old woman in, thought snow-white, and she unbolted the
door and bought the pretty laces. Child, said the old woman,
what a fright you look, come, I will lace you properly for once.
Snow-white had no suspicion, but stood before her, and let herself
be laced with the new laces. But the old woman laced so quickly
and so tightly that snow-white lost her breath and fell down as
if dead. Now I am the most beautiful, said the queen to herself,
and ran away.
Not long afterwards, in the evening, the seven dwarfs came home,
but how shocked they were when they saw their dear little snow-white
lying on the ground, and that she neither stirred nor
moved, and seemed to be dead. They lifted her up, and, as they
saw that she was laced too tightly, they cut the laces, then she
began to breathe a little, and after a while came to life again.
When the dwarfs heard what had happened they said, the old
pedlar-woman was no one
else than the wicked queen, take care and let no one come in
when we are not with you.
But the wicked woman when she had reached home went in front
of the glass and asked,
looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall,
who in this land is the fairest of all.
And it answered as before,
oh, queen, thou art fairest of all I see,
but over the hills, where the seven dwarfs dwell,
snow-white is still alive and well,
and none is so fair as she.
When she heard that, all her blood rushed to her heart with fear,
for she saw plainly that little snow-white was again alive.
But now, she said, I will think of something that shall really
put an end to you. And by the help of witchcraft, which she
understood, she made a poisonous comb. Then she disguised
herself and took the shape of another old woman. So she went
over the seven mountains to the seven dwarfs, knocked at the
door, and cried, good things to sell, cheap, cheap. Little
snow-white looked out and said, go away, I cannot let anyone come
in. I suppose you can look, said the old woman, and pulled the
poisonous comb out and held it up. It pleased the girl so well
that she let herself be beguiled, and opened the door. When they
had made a bargain the old woman said, now I will comb you
properly for once. Poor little snow-white had no suspicion, and
let the old woman do as she pleased, but hardly had she put the
comb in her hair than the poison in it took effect, and the girl
fell down senseless. You paragon of beauty, said the wicked
woman, you are done for now, and she went away.
But fortunately it was almost evening, when the seven dwarfs
came home. When they saw snow-white lying as if dead upon the
ground they at once suspected the step-mother, and they looked
and found the poisoned comb. Scarcely had they taken it out when
snow-white came to herself, and told them what had happened.
Then they warned her once more to be upon her guard and to open
the door to no one.
The queen, at home, went in front of the glass and said,
looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall,
who in this land is the fairest of all.
Then it answered as before,
oh, queen, thou art fairest of all I see,
but over the hills, where the seven dwarfs dwell,
snow-white is still alive and well,
and none is so fair as she.
When she heard the glass speak thus she trembled and shook
with rage. Snow-white shall die, she cried, even if it costs me
my life.
Thereupon she went into a quite secret, lonely room, where no
one ever came, and there she made a very poisonous apple.
Outside it looked pretty, white with a red cheek, so that
everyone who saw it longed for it, but whoever ate a piece of it
must surely die.
When the apple was ready she painted her face, and dressed herself
up as a farmer's wife, and so she went over the seven
mountains to the seven dwarfs. She knocked at the door. Snow-white
put her head out of the window and said, I cannot let
anyone in, the seven dwarfs have forbidden me. It is all the
same to me, answered the woman, I shall soon get rid of my apples.
There, I will give you one.
No, said snow-white, I dare not take anything. Are you afraid
of poison, said the old woman, look, I will cut the apple in two
pieces, you eat the red cheek, and I will eat the white. The
apple was so cunningly made that only the red cheek was
poisoned. Snow-white longed for the fine apple, and when she saw
that the woman ate part of it she could resist no longer, and
stretched out
her hand and took the poisonous half. But hardly had she a bit
of it in her mouth than she fell down dead. Then the queen
looked at her with a dreadful look, and laughed aloud and said,
white as snow, red as blood, black as ebony-wood, this time the
dwarfs cannot wake you up again.
And when she asked of the looking-glass at home,
looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall,
who in this land is the fairest of all.
And it answered at last,
oh, queen, in this land thou art fairest of all.
Then her envious heart had rest, so far as an envious heart can
have rest.
The dwarfs, when they came home in the evening, found snow-white
lying upon the ground, she breathed no longer and was dead.
They lifted her up, looked to see whether they could find
anything poisonous, unlaced her, combed her hair, washed her
with water and wine, but it was all of no use, the poor child was
dead, and remained dead. They laid her upon a bier, and all
seven of them sat round it and wept for her, and wept three days
long.
Then they were going to bury her, but she still looked as if she
were living, and still had her pretty red cheeks. They said,
we could not bury her in the dark ground, and they had a
transparent coffin of glass made, so that she could be seen from
all sides, and they laid her in it, and wrote her name upon it
in golden letters, and that she was a king's daughter. Then they
put the coffin out upon the mountain, and one of them always
stayed by it and watched it. And birds came too, and wept for
snow-white, first an owl, then a raven, and last a dove.
And now snow-white lay a long, long time in the coffin, and she
did not change, but looked as if she were asleep, for she was as
white as snow, as red as blood, and her hair was as black as
ebony.
It happened, however, that a king's son came into the forest, and
went to the dwarfs, house to spend the night. He saw the coffin
on the mountain, and the beautiful snow-white within it, and read
what was written upon it in golden letters. Then he said to the
dwarfs, let me have the coffin, I will give you whatever you want
for it. But the dwarfs answered, we will not part with it for all
the gold in the world. Then he said, let me have it as a gift, for
I cannot live without seeing snow-white. I will honor and prize
her as my dearest possession. As he spoke in this way the good
dwarfs took pity upon him, and gave him the coffin.
And now the king's son had it carried away by his servants on
their shoulders. And it happened that they stumbled over a
tree-stump, and with the shock the poisonous piece of apple
which snow-white had bitten off came out of her throat. And
before long she opened her eyes, lifted up the lid of the coffin,
sat up, and was
once more alive. Oh, heavens, where am I, she cried. The king's
son, full of joy, said, you are with me. And told her what had
happened, and said, I love you more than everything in the
world, come with me to my father's palace, you shall be my wife.
And snow-white was willing, and went with him, and their wedding
was held with great show and splendor. But snow-white's
wicked step-mother was also bidden to the feast. When she had
arrayed herself in beautiful clothes she went before the
looking-glass, and said,
looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall,
who in this land is the fairest of all.
The glass answered,
oh, queen, of all here the fairest art thou,
but the young queen is fairer by far as I trow.
Then the wicked woman uttered a curse, and was so wretched,
so utterly wretched that she knew not what to do. At first she
would not go to the wedding at all, but she had no peace, and
had to go to see the young queen. And when she went in she
recognized snow-white, and she stood still with rage and fear,
and could not stir. But iron slippers had already been put upon
the fire, and they were brought in with tongs, and set before
her. Then she was forced to put on the red-hot shoes, and dance
until she dropped down dead. There was once a girl whose father and mother died while
she was still a little child. All alone, in a small house at the
end of the village, dwelt her godmother, who supported herself
by spinning, weaving, and sewing. The old woman took the
forlorn child to live with her, kept her to her work, and educated
her in all that is good. When the girl was fifteen years old,
the old woman became ill, called the child to her bedside,
and said, dear daughter, I feel my end drawing near. I leave you
the little house, which will protect you from wind and weather, and
my spindle, shuttle, and needle, with which you can earn your
bread. Then she laid her hands on the girl's head, blessed her,
and said, only preserve the love of God in your heart, and all will
go well with you. Thereupon she closed her eyes, and when she was
laid in the earth, the maiden followed the coffin, weeping
bitterly, and paid her the last mark of respect.
And now the maiden lived quite alone in the little house, and
was industrious, and spun, wove, and sewed, and the blessing of the
good old woman was on all that she did. It seemed as if the flax
in the room increased of its own accord, and whenever she wove a
piece of cloth or carpet, or had made a shirt, she at once found
a buyer who paid her amply for it, so that she was in want of
nothing, and even had something to share with others.
About this time, the son of the king was traveling about the
country looking for a bride. He was not to choose a poor one, and
did not want to have a rich one. So he said, she shall be my wife
who is the poorest, and at the same time the richest. When he came
to the village where the maiden dwelt, he inquired, as he did
wherever he went, who was the richest and also the poorest girl in
the place. They first named the richest. The poorest, they said,
was the girl who lived in the small house quite at the end of the
village. The rich girl was sitting in all her splendor before the
door of her house, and when the prince approached her, she got up,
went to meet him, and made him a low curtsy. He looked at her,
said nothing, and rode on. When he came to the house of the poor
girl, she was not standing at the door, but sitting in her little
room. He stopped his horse, and saw through the window, on which
the bright sun was shining, the girl sitting at her spinning-wheel,
busily spinning. She looked up, and when she saw that the prince
was looking in, she blushed all over her face, let her eyes fall,
and went on spinning. I do not know whether, just at that
moment, the thread was quite even, but she went on spinning until
the king's son had ridden away again. Then she went to the
window, opened it, and said, it is so warm in this room, and she
looked after him as long as she could distinguish the white
feathers in his hat. Then she sat down to work again in her room
and went on with her spinning, and a saying which the old woman
had often repeated when she was
sitting at her work, came into her mind, and she sang these
words to herself,
spindle, my spindle, haste, haste thee away,
and here to my house bring the wooer, I pray.
And what do you think happened. The spindle sprang out of her
hand in an instant, and out of the door, and when, in her
astonishment, she got up and looked after it, she saw that it was
dancing out merrily into the open country, and drawing a shining
gold thread after it. Before long, it had entirely vanished from
her sight. As she had now no spindle, the girl took the weaver's
shuttle in her hand, sat down to her loom, and began to weave.
The spindle, however, danced continually onwards, and just as
the thread came to an end, reached the prince. What do I see, he
cried, the spindle certainly wants to show me the way, turned
his horse about, and rode back with the golden thread. The girl
however, was sitting at her work singing,
shuttle, my shuttle, weave well this day,
and guide the wooer to me, I pray.
Immediately the shuttle sprang out of her hand and out by the door.
Before the threshold, however, it began to weave a carpet which
was more beautiful than the eyes of man had ever yet beheld.
Lilies and roses blossomed on both sides of it, and on a golden
ground in the center green branches ascended, under which bounded
hares and rabbits, stags and deer stretched their heads in
between them, brightly-colored birds were sitting in the branches
above, they lacked nothing but the gift of song. The shuttle
leapt hither and thither, and everything seemed to grow of
its own accord.
As the shuttle had run away, the girl sat down to sew. She held
the needle in her hand and sang,
needle, my needle, sharp-pointed and fine,
prepare for the wooer this house of mine.
Then the needle leapt out of her fingers, and flew everywhere
about the room as quick as lightning. It was just as if
invisible spirits were working, it covered tables and benches
with green cloth in an instant,
and the chairs with velvet, and hung the windows with silken
curtains. Hardly had the needle put in the last stitch than the
maiden saw through the window the white feathers of the prince,
whom the spindle had brought thither by the golden thread. He
alighted, stepped over the carpet into the house, and when he
entered the room, there stood the maiden in her poor garments, but
she shone out from within them like a rose surrounded by leaves.
You are the poorest and also the richest, said he to her. Come
with me, you shall be my bride. She did not speak, but she gave
him her hand. Then he gave her a kiss, led her forth, lifted her
on to his horse, and took her to the royal castle, where the
wedding was solemnized with great rejoicings. The spindle,
shuttle, and needle were preserved in the treasure-chamber,
and held in great honor. There was once a poor woodcutter who toiled from early
morning till late at night. When at last he had laid by some
money he said to his boy, "You are my only child, I will spend the
money which I have earned with the sweat of my brow on your
education, if you learn some honest trade you can support me in
my old age, when my limbs have grown stiff and I am obliged to
stay at home."
Then the boy went to a high school and learned
diligently so that his masters praised him, and he remained
there a long time. When he had worked through two classes, but
was still not yet perfect in everything, the little pittance
which the father had earned was all spent, and the boy was
obliged to return home to him.
"Ah," said the father, sorrowfully, "I can
give you no more, and in these hard times I cannot earn a
farthing more than will suffice for our daily bread." "Dear
father," answered the son, "don't trouble yourself about it, if it
is God's will, it will turn to my advantage. I shall soon
accustom myself to it." When the father wanted to go into the
forest to earn money by helping to chop and stack wood, the
son said, "I will go with you and help you." "Nay, my son," said
the father, "that would be hard for you. You are not accustomed
to rough work, and will not be able to bear it. Besides, I have
only one axe and no money left wherewith to buy another." "Just
go to the neighbor," answered the son, "he will lend you his axe
until I have earned one for myself."
The father then borrowed an axe of the neighbor, and next
morning at break of day they went out into the forest together.
The son helped his father and was quite merry and brisk about
it. But when the sun was right over their heads, the father
said, "We will rest, and have our dinner, and then we shall work
twice as well." The son took his bread in his hands, and said,
"Just you rest, father, I am not tired, I will walk up and down
a little in the forest, and look for birds' nests." "Oh, you fool,"
said the father, "why should you want to run about there? Afterwards
you will be tired, and no longer able to raise your arm.
Stay here, and sit down beside me."
The son, however, went into the forest, ate his bread, was very
merry and peered in among the green branches to see if he could
discover a bird's nest anywhere. So he walked to and fro until
at last he came to a great dangerous-looking oak, which
certainly was already many hundred years old, and which five
men could not have spanned. He stood still and looked at it, and
thought, many a bird must have built its nest in that. Then all at
once it seemed to him that he heard a voice. He listened and
became aware that someone was crying in a very smothered voice,
"Let me out, let me out." He looked around, but could discover
nothing. Then he fancied that the voice came out of the ground.
So he cried, "Where are you?" The voice answered, "I am down here
amongst the roots of the oak-tree. Let me out. Let me out."
The schoolboy began to loosen the earth under the tree, and search
among the roots, until at last he found a glass bottle in a little
hollow. He lifted it up and held it against the light, and then
saw a creature shaped like a frog, springing up and down in it.
"Let me out. Let me out," it cried anew, and the boy thinking no
evil, drew the cork out of the bottle. Immediately a spirit
ascended from it, and began to grow, and grew so fast that in a
very few moments he stood before the boy, a terrible fellow as big
as half the tree. "Do you know," he cried in an awful voice, "what
your reward is for having let me out?" "No," replied the boy
fearlessly, "how should I know that?" "Then I will tell you," cried
the spirit, "I must strangle you for it." "You should have told me
that sooner," said the boy, "for I should then have left you shut
up, but my head shall stand fast for all you can do, more persons
than one must be consulted about that." "More persons here, more
persons there," said the spirit. "You shall have the reward you
have earned. Do you think that I was shut up there for such a
long time as a favor. No, it was a punishment for me. I am the
mighty Mercurius. Whoso releases me, him must I strangle."
"Slowly," answered the boy, "not so fast. I must first know that
you really were shut up in that little bottle, and that you are
the right spirit. If, indeed, you can get in again, I will believe
and then you may do as you will with me." The spirit said
haughtily, "that is a very trifling feat." Drew himself together,
and made himself as small and slender as he had been at first, so
that he crept through the same opening, and right through the neck
of the bottle in again. Scarcely was he within than the boy
thrust the cork he had drawn back into the bottle, and threw
it among the roots of the oak into its old place, and the spirit
was deceived.
And now the schoolboy was about to return to his father, but the
spirit cried very piteously, "Ah, do let me out, ah, do let me out."
"No," answered the boy, "not a second time. He who has once tried to
take my life shall not be set free by me, now that I have caught
him again." "If you will set me free," said the spirit, "I will give
you so much that you will have plenty all the days of your life."
"No," answered the boy, "you would cheat me as you did the first time."
"You are spurning you own good luck," said the spirit, "I will do you
no harm but will reward you richly." The boy thought, "I will
venture it, perhaps he will keep his word, and anyhow he shall not
get the better of me."
Then he took out the cork, and the spirit
rose up from the bottle as he had done before, stretched himself
out and became as big as a giant. "Now you shall have your reward,"
said he, and handed the boy a little rag just like stiking-plaster,
and said, "If you spread one end of this over a wound it
will heal, and if you rub steel or iron with the other end it will
be changed into silver." "I must just try that," said the boy, and
went to a tree, tore off the bark with his axe, and rubbed it
with one end of the plaster. It immediately closed together and
was healed. "Now, it is all right," he said to the spirit, "and we
can part." The spirit thanked him for his release, and the boy
thanked the spirit for his present, and went back to his father.
"Where have you been racing about?" said the father. "Why have you
forgotten your work? I always said that you would never come to
anything." "Be easy, father, I will make it up." "Make it up indeed,"
said the father angrily, "that's no use." "Take care, father, I will
soon hew that tree there, so that it will split." Then he took
his plaster, rubbed the axe with it, and dealt a mighty blow, but
as the iron had changed into silver, the edge bent. "Hi, father,
just look what a bad axe you've given me, it has become quite
crooked." The father was shocked and said, "Ah, what have you done!
Now I shall have to pay for that, and have not the wherewithal, and
that is all the good I have got by your
work." "Don't get angry," said the son, "I will soon pay for the axe."
"Oh, you blockhead," cried the father, "Wherewith will you pay for it?
You have nothing but what I give you. These are students' tricks
that are sticking in your head, you have no idea of woodcutting."
After a while the boy said, "Father, I can really work no more, we
had better take a holiday." "Eh, what," answered he, "do you think I
will sit with my hands lying in my lap like you. I must go on
working, but you may take yourself off home." "Father, I am here in
this wood for the first time, I don't know my way alone. Do go
with me." As his anger had now abated, the father at last let
himself be persuaded and went home with him. Then he said to the
son, "Go and sell your damaged axe, and see what you can get for it,
and I must earn the difference, in order to pay the neighbor."
The son took the axe, and carried it into town to a goldsmith,
who tested it, laid it in the scales, and said, "It is worth four
hundred talers, I have not so much as that by me." The son said,
"Give me what thou have, I will lend you the rest." The goldsmith
gave him three hundred talers, and remained a hundred in his
debt. The son thereupon went home and said, "Father, I have got
the money, go and ask the neighbor what he wants for the axe."
"I know that already," answered the old man, "one taler, six groschen."
"Then give him him two talers, twelve groschen, that is double and
enough. See, I have money in plenty." And he gave the father
a hundred talers, and said, "You shall never know want, live as
comfortably as you like."
"Good heavens," said the father, "how
have you come by these riches?" The boy then told how all had come
to pass, and how he, trusting in his luck, had made such a packet.
But with the money that was left, he went back to the high school
and went on learning more, and as he could heal all wounds with
his plaster, he became the most famous doctor in the whole world. There were once a man and a woman who had an only child, and
lived quite alone in a solitary valley. It came to pass that the
mother once went into the wood to gather branches of fir, and
took with her little Hans, who was just two years old. As it
was spring-time, and the child took pleasure in the many-colored
flowers, she went still further onwards with him into the forest.
Suddenly two robbers sprang out of the thicket, seized the mother
and child, and carried them far away into the black forest, where
no one ever came from one year's end to another. The poor woman
urgently begged the robbers to set her and her child free, but
their hearts were made of stone, they would not listen to her
prayers and entreaties, and drove her on farther by force. After
they had worked their way through bushes and briars for about
two miles, they came to a rock where there was a door, at which
the robbers knocked and it opened at once. They had to go through
a long dark passage, which burnt on the hearth. On the wall hung
swords, sabres, and other deadly weapons which gleamed in the
light, and in the midst stood a black table at which four other
robbers were sitting gambling, and the captain sat at the head of
it. As soon as he saw the woman he came and spoke to her, and
told her to be at ease and have no fear, they would do nothing to
hurt her, but she must look after the housekeeping, and if she
kept everything in order, she should not fare ill with them.
Thereupon they gave her something to eat, and showed her a bed
where she might sleep with her child.
The woman stayed many years with the robbers, and Hans grew
tall and strong. His mother told him stories, and taught him
to read an old book of tales about knights which she found in
the cave. When Hans was nine years old, he made himself a strong
club out of a branch of fir, hid it behind the bed, and then
went to his mother and said, dear mother, pray tell me who is
my father. I must and will know. His mother was silent and
would not tell him, that he might not become home-sick. Moreover
she knew that the godless robbers would not let him go away, but
it almost broke her heart that Hans should not go to his father.
In the night, when the robbers came home from their robbing
expedition, Hans brought out his club, stood before the captain,
and said, I now wish to know who my father is, and if you do not
tell me at once I will strike you down. Then the captain laughed,
and gave Hans such a box on the ear that he rolled under the table.
Hans got up again, held his tongue, and thought, I will wait
another year and then try again, perhaps I shall do better then.
When the year was over, he brought out his club again, rubbed the
dust off it, looked at it well, and said,
it is a stout strong club. At night the robbers came home,
drank one jug of wine after another, and their heads began to be
heavy. Then Hans brought out his club, placed himself before
the captain, and asked him who his father was. But the captain
again gave him such a vigorous box on the ear that Hans rolled
under the table. However, it was not long before he was up again,
and so beat the captain and the robbers with his club, that
they could no longer move either their arms or their legs.
His mother stood in a corner full of admiration for his bravery
and strength. When Hans had done his work, he went to his mother,
and said, now I have shown myself to be in earnest, but now I
must also know who my father is. Dear Hans, answered the
mother, come, we will go and seek him until we find him. She
took from the captain the key to the entrance-door, and Hans
fetched a great meal-sack and packed into it gold and silver, and
whatsoever else he could find that was beautiful, until it was
full, and then he took it on his back. They left the cave, but
how Hans did open his eyes when he came out of the darkness
into daylight, and saw the green forest, and the flowers, and
the birds, and the morning sun in the sky. He stood there and
wondered at everything just as if he were not quite right in the
head. His mother looked for the way home, and when they had
walked for a couple of hours, they got safely into their lonely
valley and to their little house. The father was sitting in the
doorway. He wept for joy when he recognized his wife and heard
that Hans was his son, for he had long regarded them both as
dead. But Hans, although he was not twelve years old, was a
head taller than his father. They went into the little room
together, but Hans had scarcely put his sack on the bench by
the stove, than the whole house began to crack - the bench broke
down and then the floor, and the heavy sack fell through into
the cellar. God save us, cried the father, what's that. Now
you have broken our little house to pieces. Don't let that turn
your hair grey, dear father, answered Hans. There, in that sack,
is more than is wanting for a new house. The father and Hans
at once began to build a new house, to buy cattle and land, and
to keep a farm. Hans ploughed the fields, and
when he followed the plough and pushed it into the ground, the
bullocks had scarcely any need to draw.
The next spring, Hans said, keep all the money and have made for
me a walking-stick that weighs a hundred-weight, that I may
go a-traveling. When the stick was ready, he left his father's
house, went forth, and came to a deep, dark forest. There he
heard something crunching and cracking, looked round, and saw
a fir-tree which was wound round like a rope from the bottom to
the top, and when he looked upwards he saw a great fellow who
had laid hold of the tree and was twisting it like a willow-wand.
Hullo, cried Hans, what are you doing up there. The fellow
replied, I got some faggots together yesterday and am twisting
a rope for them. That is what I like, thought Hans, he has some
strength, and he called to him, leave that alone, and come with
me. The fellow came down, and he was taller by a whole head than
Hans, and Hans was not little. Your name is now fir-twister,
said Hans to him. Thereupon they went further and heard something
knocking and hammering with such force that the ground shook
at every stroke. Shortly afterwards they came to a mighty rock,
before which a giant was standing and striking great pieces of
it away with his fist. When Hans asked what he was doing, he
answered, at night, when I want to sleep, bears, wolves, and
other vermin of that kind come, which sniff and snuffle about
me and won't let me rest, so I want to build myself a house and
lay myself inside it, so that I may have some peace. Oh indeed,
thought Hans, I can make use of this one also, and said to him,
leave your house-building alone, and go with me. You shall be
called rock-splitter. The man consented, and they all three
roamed through the forest, and wherever they went the wild beasts
were terrified, and ran away from them. In the evening they
came to an old deserted castle, went up into it, and
laid themselves down in the hall to sleep. The next morning Hans
went into the garden. It had run quite wild, and was full of
thorns and brambles. And as he was thus walking round about,
a wild boar rushed at him, he, however, gave it such a blow
with his club that it fell directly. He took it on his shoulders
and carried it
in, and they put it on a spit, roasted it, and enjoyed themselves.
Then they arranged that each day, in turn, two should go out
hunting, and one should stay at home, and cook nine pounds
of meat for each of them. Fir-twister stayed at home the first,
and Hans and rock-splitter went out hunting. When fir-twister
was busy cooking, a little shrivelled-up old mannikin came to him
in the castle, and asked for some meat. Be off, you sneaking
imp, he answered, you need no meat. But how astonished fir-twister
was when the little insignificant dwarf sprang up at him, and
belabored him so with his fists that he could not defend himself,
but fell on the ground and gasped for breath. The dwarf did
not go away until he had thoroughly vented his anger on him.
When the two others came home from hunting, fir-twister said
nothing to them of the old mannikin and of the blows which he
himself had received, and thought, when they stay at home, they
may just try their chance with the little scrubbing-brush, and
the mere thought of that gave him pleasure already.
The next day rock-splitter stayed at home, and he fared just
as fir-twister had done, being very ill-treated by the dwarf
because he was not willing to give him any meat. When the others
came home in the evening, fir-twister saw clearly what he had
suffered, but both kept silence, and thought, Hans also
must taste some of that soup.
Hans, who had to stay at home the next day, did his work in
the kitchen as it had to be done, and as he was standing
skimming the pan, the dwarf came and without more ado
demanded a piece of meat. Then Hans thought, he is a poor
wretch, I will give him some of my share, that the others may
not run short, and handed him a bit. When the dwarf had
devoured it, he again asked for some meat, and good-natured
Hans gave it to him, and told him it was a handsome piece,
and that he was to be content with it. But the dwarf begged
again for the third time. You are shameless, said Hans, and gave
him none. Then the malicious dwarf wanted to spring on him and
treat him as he had treated fir-twister and rock-splitter, but
he had chosen the wrong man. Hans, without
exerting himself much, gave him a couple of blows which made
him jump down the castle steps. Hans was about to run after him,
but fell right over, flat on his face. When he rose up again,
the dwarf had got the start of him. Hans hurried after him as far
as the forest, and saw him slip into a hole in the rock. Hans now
went home, but he had marked the spot. When the two others
came back, they were surprised that Hans was so well. He told
them what had happened, and then they no longer concealed how
it had fared with them. Hans laughed and said, it served you
quite right. Why were you so mean with your meat. It is a
disgrace that you who are so big should have let yourselves be
beaten by the dwarf. Thereupon they took a basket and a rope,
and all three went to the hole in the rock into which the
dwarf had slipped, and let Hans and his club
down in the basket. When Hans had reached the bottom, he found
a door, and when he opened it a maiden was sitting there
who was lovely as any picture, nay, so beautiful that no words
can express it, and by her side sat the dwarf and grinned at
Hans like a sea-cat. She, however, was bound with chains, and
looked so mournfully at him that Hans felt great pity for her,
and thought to himself, you must deliver her out of the power of
the wicked dwarf, and gave him such a blow with his club that he
fell down dead. Immediately the chains fell from
the maiden, and Hans was enraptured with her beauty. She told
him she was a king's daughter whom a savage count had stolen
away from her home, and imprisoned there among the rocks,
because she would have nothing to say to him. The count, however,
had set the dwarf as a watchman, and he had made her suffer
misery and vexation enough. And now Hans placed the maiden in the
basket and had her drawn up. The basket came down again, but
Hans did not trust his two companions, and thought, they have
already shown themselves to be false, and told me nothing about
the dwarf. Who knows what design they may have against me. So
he put his club in the basket, and it was lucky he did, for when
the basket was half-way up, they let it fall again, and if Hans
had really been sitting in it he would have been killed. But
now he did not know how he was to work his way out of the depths,
and when he turned it over and over in his mind he found no
counsel. It is indeed sad, said he to himself, that I have to
waste away down here, and as he was thus walking backwards and
forwards, he once more came to the little chamber where the maiden
had been sitting, and saw that the dwarf had a ring on his finger
which shone and sparkled. Then he drew it off and put it on, and
when he turned it round on his finger, he suddenly heard something
rustle over his head. He looked up and saw spirits of the air
hovering above, who told him he was their master, and asked
what his desire might be. Hans was at first struck dumb, but
afterwards he said that they were to carry him up again. They
obeyed instantly, and it was just as if he had flown up himself.
But when he had arrived there, he found no one in sight.
Fir-twister and rock-splitter
had hurried away, and had taken the beautiful maiden with them.
But Hans turned the ring, and the spirits of the air came and
told him that the two were on the sea. Hans ran and ran without
stopping, until he came to the sea-shore, and there far, far out
on the water, he perceived a little boat in which his faithless
comrades were sitting, and in fierce anger he leapt, without
thinking what he was doing, club in hand into the water, and
began to swim, but the club, which weighed a hundredweight,
dragged him deep down until he was all but drowned. Then
in the very nick of time he turned his ring, and immediately
the spirits of the air came and bore him as swift as lightning into
the boat. He swung his club and gave his wicked comrades the
reward they merited and threw them into the water, and then he
sailed with the beautiful maiden, who had been in the greatest
alarm, and whom he delivered for the second time, home to her
father and mother, and married her, and all rejoiced exceedingly. There was once a man who had seven sons, and still he had
no daughter, however much he wished for one. At length his
wife again gave him hope of a child, and when it came into
the world it was a girl. The joy was great, but the child was
sickly and small, and had to be privately baptized on account of
its weakness. The father sent one of the boys in haste to the
spring to fetch water for the baptism. The other six went with
him, and as each of them wanted to be first to fill it, the jug
fell into the well. There they stood and did not know what to do,
and none of them dared to go home. As they still did not return,
the father grew impatient, and said, they have certainly forgotten
it while playing some game, the wicked boys. He became afraid that
the girl would have to die without being baptized, and in his
anger cried, I wish the boys were all turned into ravens. Hardly
was the word spoken before he heard a whirring of wings over his
head, looked up and saw seven coal-black ravens flying away.
The parents could not withdraw the curse, and however sad they
were at the loss of their seven sons, they still to some extent
comforted themselves with their dear little daughter, who soon
grew strong and every day became more beautiful. For a long time
she did not know that she had had brothers, for her parents were
careful not to mention them before her, but one day she
accidentally heard some people saying of herself, that the girl was
certainly beautiful, but that in reality she was to blame for the
misfortune which had befallen her seven brothers. Then she was much
troubled, and went to her father and mother and asked if it was
true that she had had brothers, and what had become of them. The
parents now dared keep the secret no longer, but said that what
had befallen her brothers was the will of heaven, and that her
birth had only been the innocent cause. But the maiden took it to
heart daily, and thought she must save her brothers. She had no
rest or peace until she set out secretly, and went forth into the
wide world to search for her brothers and set them free, let it
cost what it might. She took nothing with her but a little ring
belonging to her parents as a keepsake, a loaf of bread against
hunger, a little pitcher of water against thirst, and a little
chair as a provision against weariness.
And now she went continually onwards, far, far to the very end of
the world. Then she came to the sun, but it was too hot and
terrible, and devoured little children. Hastily she ran away, and
ran to the moon, but it was far too cold, and also awful and
malicious, and when it saw the child, it said, I smell, I smell
the flesh of men. At this she ran swiftly away, and came to the
stars, which were kind and good to her, and each of them sat on its
own particular little chair. But the morning star arose, and gave
her the drumstick of a chicken, and said, if you have not that
drumstick you can not open the glass mountain, and in the glass
mountain are your brothers.
The maiden took the drumstick, wrapped it carefully in a cloth,
and went onwards again until she came to the glass mountain. The
door was shut, and she thought she would take out the drumstick.
But when she undid the cloth, it was empty, and she had lost the
good star's present. What was she now to do. She wished to rescue
her brothers, and had no key to the glass mountain. The good
sister took a knife, cut off one of her little fingers, put it in
the door, and succeeded in opening it. When she had gone inside, a
little dwarf came to meet her, who said, my child, what are you
looking for. I am looking for my brothers, the seven ravens, she
replied. The dwarf said, the lord ravens are not at home, but if
you will wait here until they come, step in. Thereupon the little
dwarf carried the ravens' dinner in, on seven little plates, and
in seven little glasses, and the little sister ate a morsel from
each plate, and from each little glass she took a sip, but in the
last little glass she dropped the ring which she had brought away
with her.
Suddenly she heard a whirring of wings and a rushing through
the air, and then the little dwarf said, now the lord ravens are
flying home. Then they came, and wanted to eat and drink, and
looked for their little plates and glasses. Then said one after
the other, who has eaten something from my plate. Who has drunk
out of my little glass. It was a human mouth. And when the
seventh came to the bottom of the glass, the ring rolled against
his mouth. Then he looked at it, and saw that it was a ring
belonging to his father and mother, and said, God grant that our
sister may be here, and then we shall be free. When the maiden,
who was standing behind the door watching, heard that wish,
she came forth, and on this all the ravens were restored to their
human form again. And they embraced and kissed each other,
and went joyfully home. There was once a poor woman who gave birth to a little son,
and as he came into the world with a caul on, it was predicted
that in his fourteenth year he would have the king's daughter
for his wife. It happened that soon afterwards the king
came into the village, and no one knew that he was the king,
and when he asked the people what news there was, they answered,
a child has just been born with a caul on, whatever anyone so
born undertakes turns out well. It is prophesied, too, that
in his fourteenth year he will have the king's daughter for his
wife.
The king, who had a bad heart, and was angry about the prophecy,
went to the parents, and, seeming quite friendly, said, you poor
people, let me have your child, and I will take care of it. At
first they refused, but when the stranger offered them a large
amount of gold for it, and they thought, it is a child of good
fortune, and everything must turn out well for it, they at last
consented, and gave him the child.
The king put it in a box and rode away with it until he came to
a deep piece of water, then he threw the box into it and thought,
I have freed my daughter from her undesired suitor.
The box, however, did not sink, but floated like a boat, and not
a drop of water made its way into it. And it floated to within
two miles of the king's chief city, where there was a mill, and
it came to a halt at the mill-dam. A miller's boy, who by good
luck was standing there, noticed it and pulled it out with a hook,
thinking that he had found a great treasure, but when he opened
it there lay a pretty boy inside, quite fresh and lively. He
took him to the miller and his wife, and as they had no children
they were glad, and said, "God has given him to us." They took
great care of the foundling, and he grew up in all goodness.
It happened that once in a storm, the king went into the mill, and
asked the mill-folk if the tall youth were their son. No,
answered they, he's a foundling. Fourteen years ago he floated
down to the mill-dam in a box, and the mill-boy pulled him out
of the water.
Then the king knew that it was none other than the child of
good fortune which he had thrown into the water, and he said,
my good people, could not the youth take a letter to the queen.
I will give him two gold pieces as a reward. Just as the king
commands, answered they, and they told the boy to hold himself
in readiness. Then the king wrote a letter to the queen, wherein
he said, as soon as the boy arrives with this letter, let him be
killed and buried, and all must be done before I come home.
The boy set out with this letter, but he lost his way, and in the
evening came to a large forest. In the darkness he saw a small
light, he went towards it and reached a cottage. When he went in,
an old woman was sitting by the fire quite alone. She started
when she saw the boy, and said, whence do you come, and whither
are you going. I come from the mill, he answered, and wish
to go to the queen, to whom I am taking a letter, but as I have
lost my way in the forest I should like to stay here over night.
You poor boy, said the woman, you have come into a den of thieves,
and when they come home they will kill you. Let them come,
said the boy, I am not afraid, but I am so tired that I cannot go
any farther. And he stretched himself upon a bench and fell
asleep.
Soon afterwards the robbers came, and angrily asked what strange
boy was lying there. Ah, said the old woman, it is an innocent
child who has lost himself in the forest, and out of pity I have
let him come in, he has to take a letter to the queen. The robbers
opened the letter and read it, and in it was written that the
boy as soon as he arrived should be put to death. Then the
hardhearted robbers felt pity, and their leader tore up the letter
and wrote another, saying, that as soon as the boy came, he should
be married at once to the king's daughter. Then they let him lie
quietly on the bench until the next morning, and when he awoke
they gave him the letter, and showed him the right way.
And the queen, when she had received the letter and read it,
did as was written in it, and had a splendid wedding-feast
prepared, and the king's daughter was married to the child of
good fortune, and as the youth was handsome and friendly she lived
with him in joy and contentment.
After some time the king returned to his palace and saw that
the prophecy was fulfilled, and the child married to his daughter.
How has that come to pass, said he, I gave quite another order
in my letter.
So the queen gave him the letter, and said that he might see for
himself what was written in it. The king read the letter and
saw quite well that it had been exchanged for the other. He
asked the youth what had become of the letter entrusted to him,
and why he had brought another instead of it. I know nothing
about it, answered he, it must have been changed in the night,
when I slept in the forest. The king said in a passion, you shall
not have everything quite so much your own way, whosoever marries
my daughter must fetch me from hell three golden hairs from
the head of the devil, bring me what I want, and you shall keep
my daughter. In this way the king hoped to be rid of him for ever.
But the child of good fortune answered, I will fetch the golden
hairs, I am not afraid of the devil. Whereupon he took leave of
them and began his journey.
The road led him to a large town, where the watchman by the gates
asked him what his trade was, and what he knew. I know
everything, answered the child of good fortune. Then you can do us
a favor, said the watchman, if you will tell us why our market
fountain, which once flowed with wine has become dry, and no
longer gives even water. That you shall know, answered he, only
wait until I come back.
Then he went farther and came to another town, and there also the
gatekeeper asked him what was his trade, and what he knew.
I know everything, answered he. Then you can do us a favor and
tell us why a tree in our town which once bore golden apples now
does not even put forth leaves. You shall know that, answered he,
only wait until I come back.
Then he went on and came to a wide river over which he must cross.
The ferryman asked him what his trade was, and what he knew. I
know everything, answered he. Then you can do me a favor, said
the ferryman, and tell me why I must always be rowing backwards
and forwards, and am never set free. You shall know that,
answered he, only wait until I come back.
When he had crossed the water he found the entrance to hell. It
was black and sooty within, and the devil was not at home, but
his grandmother was sitting in a large arm-chair. What do you
want, said she to him, but she did not look so very wicked. I
should like to have three golden hairs from the devil's head,
answered he, else I cannot keep my wife. That is a good deal
to ask for, said she, if the devil comes home and finds you, it
will cost you your life, but as I pity you, I will see if I cannot
help you.
She changed him into an ant and said, creep into the folds of my
dress, you will be safe there. Yes, answered he, so far, so good,
but there are three things besides that I want to know - why a
fountain which once flowed with wine has become dry, and no
longer gives even water, why a tree which once bore golden apples
does not even put forth leaves, and why a ferryman must always be
going backwards and forwards, and is never set free.
Those are difficult questions, answered she, but just be silent
and quiet and pay attention to what the devil says when I pull out
the three golden hairs.
As the evening came on, the devil returned home. No sooner had he
entered than he noticed that the air was not pure. I smell man's
flesh, said he, all is not right here. Then he pried into
every corner, and searched, but could not find anything. His
grandmother scolded him. It has just been swept, said she, and
everything put in order, and now you are upsetting it again, you
have always got man's flesh in your nose. Sit down and eat your
supper.
When he had eaten and drunk he was tired, and laid his head in
his grandmother's lap, and told her she should louse him a little.
It was not long before he was fast asleep, snoring and breathing
heavily. Then the old woman took hold of a golden hair, pulled
it out, and laid it down beside her. Oh, cried the devil,
what are you doing. I have had a bad dream, answered the
grandmother, so I seized hold of your hair. What did you dream
then, said the devil. I dreamt that a fountain in a market-place
from which wine once flowed was dried up, and not even water
would flow out of it - what is the cause of it. Oh, ho, if they
did but know it, answered the devil, there is a toad sitting
under a stone in the well - if they killed it, the wine would flow
again.
The grandmother loused him again until he went to sleep and
snored so that the windows shook. Then she pulled the second hair
out. Ha, what are you doing, cried the devil angrily. Do not
take it ill, said she, I did it in a dream. What have you dreamt
this time, asked he. I dreamt that in a certain kingdom there
stood an apple-tree which had once borne golden apples, but now
would not even bear leaves. What, think you, was the reason.
Oh, if they did but know, answered the devil. A mouse is
gnawing at the root - if they killed it they would have golden
apples again, but if it gnaws much longer the tree will wither
altogether. But I have had enough of your dreams, if you disturb
me in my sleep again you will get a box on the ear.
The grandmother spoke gently to him and picked his lice once
more until he fell asleep and snored. Then she took hold of the
third golden hair and pulled it out. The devil jumped up,
roared out, and would have treated her ill if she had not
quieted him again and said, who can help bad dreams. What
was the dream, then, asked he, and was quite curious. I dreamt
of a ferryman who complained that he must always ferry from
one side to the other, and was never released. What is the
cause of it. Ah, the fool, answered the devil, when anyone
comes and wants to go across he must put the oar in his hand,
and the other man will have
to ferry and he will be free. As the grandmother had plucked
out the three golden hairs, and the three questions were
answered, she let the old devil alone, and he slept until
daybreak.
When the devil had gone out again the old woman took the ant
out of the folds of her dress, and gave the child of good
fortune his human shape again. There are the three golden
hairs for you, said she. What the devil said to your three
questions, I suppose you heard. Yes, answered he, I heard, and
will take care to remember. You have what you want, said she,
and now you can go your way. He thanked the old woman for
helping him in his need, and left hell well content that
everything had turned out so fortunately.
When he came to the ferryman he was expected to give the
promised answer. Ferry me across first, said the child of good
fortune, and then I will tell you how you can be set free, and
when he reached the opposite shore he gave him the devil's advice.
Next time anyone comes, who wants to be ferried over, just put the
oar in his hand.
He went on and came to the town wherein stood the unfruitful
tree, and there too the watchman wanted an answer. So he
told him what he had heard from the devil. Kill the mouse
which is gnawing at its root, and it will again bear golden
apples. Then the watchman thanked him, and gave him as a reward
two asses laden with gold, which followed him.
Finally, he came to the town whose well was dry. He told the
watchman what the devil had said, a toad is in the well beneath
a stone, you must find it and kill it, and the well will again
give wine in plenty. The watchman thanked him, and also
gave him two asses laden with gold.
At last the child of good fortune got home to his wife, who
was heartily glad to see him again, and to hear how well he had
prospered in everything. To the king he took what he had asked
for, the devil's three golden hairs, and when the king saw the
four asses laden with gold he was quite content, and said, now
all the conditions are fulfilled, and you can keep my daughter.
But tell
me, dear son-in-law, where did all that gold come from - this
is tremendous wealth. I was rowed across a river, answered he,
and got it there, it lies on the shore instead of sand. Can I
too fetch some of it, said the king, and he was quite eager
about it. As much as you like, answered he. There is a
ferryman on the river, let him ferry you over, and you can fill
your sacks on the other side. The greedy king set out in all
haste, and when he came to the river he beckoned to the ferryman
to put him across. The ferryman came and bade him get in,
and when they got to the other shore he put the oar in his
hand and sprang over. But from this time forth the king had to
ferry, as a punishment for his sins. Perhaps he is ferrying
still. If he is, it is because no one has taken the oar from
him. In olden times when wishing still helped one, there lived a king
whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful
that the sun itself, which has seen so much, was astonished whenever
it shone in her face. Close by the king's castle lay a great dark
forest, and under an old lime-tree in the forest was a well, and when
the day was very warm, the king's child went out into the forest and
sat down by the side of the cool fountain, and when she was bored she
took a golden ball, and threw it up on high and caught it, and this
ball was her favorite plaything.
Now it so happened that on one occasion the princess's golden ball
did not fall into the little hand which she was holding up for it,
but on to the ground beyond, and rolled straight into the water. The
king's daughter followed it with her eyes, but it vanished, and the
well was deep, so deep that the bottom could not be seen. At this
she began to cry, and cried louder and louder, and could not be
comforted. And as she thus lamented someone said to her, "What ails
you, king's daughter? You weep so that even a stone would show pity."
She looked round to the side from whence the voice came, and saw a
frog stretching forth its big, ugly head from the water. "Ah, old
water-splasher, is it you," she said, "I am weeping for my golden ball,
which has fallen into the well." "Be quiet, and do not weep," answered
the frog, "I can help you, but what will you give me if I bring your
plaything up again?" "Whatever you will have, dear frog," said she, "My
clothes, my pearls and jewels, and even the golden crown which I am
wearing." The frog answered, "I do not care for your clothes, your
pearls and jewels, nor for your golden crown, but if you will love me
and let me be your companion and play-fellow, and sit by you at your
little table, and eat off your little golden plate, and drink out of
your little cup, and sleep in your little bed - if you will promise
me this I will go down below, and bring you your golden ball up
again."
"Oh yes," said she, "I promise you all you wish, if you will but bring
me my ball back again." But she thought, "How the silly frog does
talk. All he does is to sit in the water with the other frogs, and
croak. He can be no companion to any human being."
But the frog when he had received this promise, put his head into the
water and sank down; and in a short while came swimmming up again
with the ball in his mouth, and threw it on the grass. The king's
daughter was delighted to see her pretty plaything once more, and
picked it up, and ran away with it. "Wait, wait," said the frog. "Take
me with you. I can't run as you can." But what did it avail him to
scream his croak, croak, after her, as loudly as he could. She did
not listen to it, but ran home and soon forgot the poor frog, who was
forced to go back into his well again.
The next day when she had seated herself at table with the king and
all the courtiers, and was eating from her little golden plate,
something came creeping splish splash, splish splash, up the marble
staircase, and when it had got to the top, it knocked at the door and
cried, "Princess, youngest princess, open the door for me." She ran to
see who was outside, but when she opened the door, there sat the frog
in front of it. Then she slammed the door to, in great haste, sat
down to dinner again, and was quite frightened. The king saw plainly
that her heart was beating violently, and said, "My child, what are
you so afraid of? Is there perchance a giant outside who wants to
carry you away?" "Ah, no," replied she. "It is no giant but a disgusting
frog."
"What does a frog want with you?" "Ah, dear father, yesterday as I was
in the forest sitting by the well, playing, my golden ball fell into
the water. And because I cried so, the frog brought it out again for
me, and because he so insisted, I promised him he should be my
companion, but I never thought he would be able to come out of his
water. And now he is outside there, and wants to come in to me."
In the meantime it knocked a second time, and cried, "Princess,
youngest princess, open the door for me, do you not know what you
said to me yesterday by the cool waters of the well. Princess,
youngest princess, open the door for me."
Then said the king, "That which you have promised must you perform.
Go and let him in." She went and opened the door, and the frog hopped
in and followed her, step by step, to her chair. There he sat and
cried, "Lift me up beside you." She delayed, until at last the king
commanded her to do it. Once the frog was on the chair he wanted to
be on the table, and when he was on the table he said, "Now, push your
little golden plate nearer to me that we may eat together." She did
this, but it was easy to see that she did not do it willingly. The
frog enjoyed what he ate, but almost every mouthful she took choked
her. At length he said, "I have eaten and am satisfied, now I am
tired, carry me into your little room and make your little silken bed
ready, and we will both lie down and go to sleep."
The king's daughter began to cry, for she was afraid of the cold frog
which she did not like to touch, and which was now to sleep in her
pretty, clean little bed. But the king grew angry and said, "He who
helped you when you were in trouble ought not afterwards to be
despised by you." So she took hold of the frog with two fingers,
carried him upstairs, and put him in a corner, but when she was in
bed he crept to her and said, "I am tired, I want to sleep as well as
you, lift me up or I will tell your father." At this she was terribly
angry, and took him up and threw him with all her might against the
wall. "Now, will you be quiet, odious frog," said she. But when he
fell down he was no frog but a king's son with kind and beautiful
eyes. He by her father's will was now her dear companion and
husband. Then he told her how he had been bewitched by a wicked
witch, and how no one could have delivered him from the well but
herself, and that to-morrow they would go together into his kingdom.
Then they went to sleep, and next morning when the sun awoke them, a
carriage came driving up with eight white horses, which had white
ostrich feathers on their heads, and were harnessed with golden
chains, and behind stood the young king's servant Faithful Henry.
Faithful Henry had been so unhappy when his master was changed into a
frog, that he had caused three iron bands to be laid round his heart,
lest it should burst with grief and sadness. The carriage was to
conduct the young king into his kingdom. Faithful Henry helped them
both in, and placed himself behind again, and was full of joy because
of this deliverance. And when they had driven a part of the way the
king's son heard a cracking behind him as if something had broken.
So he turned round and cried, "Henry, the carriage is breaking."
"No, master, it is not the carriage. It is a band from my heart,
which was put there in my great pain when you were a frog and
imprisoned in the well." Again and once again while they were on
their way something cracked, and each time the king's son thought the
carriage was breaking, but it was only the bands which were springing
from the heart of Faithful Henry because his master was set free and
was happy. There was once upon a time an old goat who had seven little kids, and
loved them with all the love of a mother for her children. One day
she wanted to go into the forest and fetch some food. So she called
all seven to her and said, dear children, I have to go into the
forest, be on your guard against the wolf, if he comes in, he will
devour you all - skin, hair, and everything. The wretch often
disguises himself, but you will know him at once by his rough voice
and his black feet. The kids said, dear mother, we will take good
care of ourselves, you may go away without any anxiety. Then the old
one bleated, and went on her way with an easy mind.
It was not long before some one knocked at the house-door and called,
open the door, dear children, your mother is here, and has brought
something back with her for each of you. But the little kids knew
that it was the wolf, by the rough voice. We will not open the door,
cried they, you are not our mother. She has a soft, pleasant voice,
but your voice is rough, you are the wolf. Then the wolf went away
to a shopkeeper and bought himself a great lump of chalk, ate this
and made his voice soft with it. The he came back, knocked at the
door of the house, and called, open the door, dear children, your
mother is here and has brought something back with her for each of
you. But the wolf had laid his black paws against the window, and
the children saw them and cried, we will not open the door, our
mother has not black feet like you, you are the wolf. Then the wolf
ran to a baker and said, I have hurt my feet, rub some dough over
them for me. And when the baker had rubbed his feet over, he ran to
the miller and said, strew some white meal over my feet for me. The
miller thought to himself, the wolf wants to deceive someone, and
refused, but the wolf said, if you will not do it, I will devour you.
Then the miller was afraid, and made his paws white for him. Truly,
this the way of mankind.
So now the wretch went for the third time to the house-door, knocked
at it and said, open the door for me, children, your dear little
mother has come home, and has brought every one of you something back
from the forest with her. The little kids cried, first show us your
paws that we may know if you are our dear little mother. Then he put
his paws in through the window, and when the kids saw that they were
white, they believed that all he said was true, and opened the door.
But who should come in but the wolf they were terrified and wanted to
hide themselves. One sprang under the table, the second into the
bed, the third into the stove, the fourth into the kitchen, the fifth
into the cupboard, the sixth under the washing-bowl, and the seventh
into the clock-case. But the wolf found them all, and used no great
ceremony, one after the other he swallowed them down his throat. The
youngest, who was in the clock-case, was the only one he did not
find. When the wolf had satisfied his appetite he took himself off,
laid himself down under a tree in the green meadow outside, and began
to sleep. Soon afterwards the old goat came home again from the
forest. Ah. What a sight she saw there. The house-door stood wide
open. The table, chairs, and benches were thrown down, the
washing-bowl lay broken to pieces, and the quilts and pillows were
pulled off the bed. She sought her children, but they were nowhere
to be found. She called them one after another by name, but no one
answered. At last, when she caame to the youngest, a soft voice
cried, dear mother, I am in the clock-case. She took the kid out,
and it told her that the wolf had come and had eaten all the others.
Then you may imagine how she wept over her poor children.
At length in her grief she went out, and the youngest kid ran with
her. When they came to the meadow, there lay the wolf by the tree
and snored so loud that the branches shook. She looked at him on
every side and saw that something was moving and struggling in his
gorged belly. Ah, heavens, she said, is it possible that my poor
children whom he has swallowed down for his supper, can be still
alive. Then the kid had to run home and fetch scissors, and a needle
and thread and the goat cut open the monster's stomach, and hardly
had she make one cut, than one little kid thrust its head out, and
when she cut farther, all six sprang out one after another, and were
all still alive, and had suffered no injury whatever, for in his
greediness the monster had swallowed them down whole. What rejoicing
there was. They embraced their dear mother, and jumped like a sailor
at his wedding. The mother, however, said, now go and look for some
big stones, and we will fill the wicked beast's stomach with them
while he is still asleep. Then the seven kids dragged the stones
thither with all speed, and put as many of them into his stomach as
they could get in, and the mother sewed him up again in the greatest
haste, so that he was not aware of anything and never once stirred.
When the wolf at length had had his fill of sleep, he got on his
legs, and as the stones in his stomach made him very thirsty, he
wanted to go to a well to drink. But when he began to walk and move
about, the stones in his stomach knocked against each other and
rattled. Then cried he, what rumbles and tumbles against my poor
bones. I thought 'twas six kids, but it feels like big stones. And
when he got to the well and stooped over the water to drink, the
heavy stones made him fall in, and he had to drown miserably. When
the seven kids saw that, they came running to the spot and cried
aloud, the wolf is dead. The wolf is dead, and danced for joy round
about the well with their mother. There was once a poor peasant who sat in the evening by the
hearth and poked the fire, and his wife sat and spun. Then
said he, how sad it is that we have no children. With us all
is so quiet, and in other houses it is noisy and lively.
Yes, replied the wife, and sighed, even if we had only one,
and it were quite small, and only as big as a thumb, I should be
quite satisfied, and we would still love it with all our hearts.
Now it so happened that the woman fell ill, and after seven
months gave birth to a child, that was perfect in all its limbs,
but no longer than a thumb. Then said they, it is as we wished
it to be, and it shall be our dear child. And because of its
size, they called it thumbling. Though they did not let it want
for food, the child did not grow taller, but remained as it had
been at the first. Nevertheless it looked sensibly out of its
eyes, and soon showed itself to be a wise and nimble creature,
for everything it did turned out well.
One day the peasant was getting ready to go into the forest to
cut wood, when he said as if to himself, how I wish that there
was someone who would bring the cart to me. Oh father, cried
thumbling, I will soon bring the cart, rely on that. It shall
be in the forest at the appointed time. The man smiled and
said, how can that be done, you are far too small to lead the
horse by the reins. That's of no consequence, father, if my
mother will only harness it, I shall sit in the horse's ear
and call out to him how he is to go. Well, answered the man,
for once we will try it.
When the time came, the mother harnessed the horse, and placed
thumbling in its ear, and then the little creature cried, gee
up, gee up.
Then it went quite properly as if with its master, and the cart
went the right way into the forest. It so happened that just
as he was turning a corner, and the little one was crying, gee
up, two strange men came towards him. My word, said one of them,
what is this. There is a cart coming, and a driver is calling to
the horse and still he is not to be seen. That can't be right,
said the other, we will follow the cart and see where it stops. The
cart, however, drove right into the forest, and exactly to the
place where the wood had been cut. When thumbling saw his
father, he cried to him, do you see, father, here I am with the
cart, now take me down. The father got hold of the horse with
his left hand and with the right took his little son out of the
ear. Thumbling sat down quite merrily on a straw, but when the
two strange men
saw him, they did not know what to say for
astonishment. Then one of them took the other aside and said,
listen, the little fellow would make our fortune if we exhibited
him in a large town, for money. We will buy him. They went to
the peasant and said, sell us the little man. He shall be well
treated with us. No, replied the father, he is the apple of my
eye, and all the money in the world cannot buy him from me.
Thumbling, however, when he heard of the bargain, had crept up
the folds of his father's coat, placed himself on his shoulder,
and whispered in his ear, father do give me away, I will soon
come back again. Then the father parted with him to the two
men for a handsome sum of money. Where will you sit, they
said to him. Oh just set me on the rim of your hat, and then I
can walk backwards and forwards and look at the country, and
still not fall down. They did as he wished, and when thumbling
had taken leave of his father, they went away with him. They
walked until it was dusk, and then the little fellow said,
do take me down, it is necessary. Just stay up there, said the
man on whose hat he sat, it makes no difference to me. The birds
sometimes let things fall on me. No, said thumbling, I
know what's manners, take me quickly down. The man took his hat
off, and put the little fellow on the ground by the wayside, and
he leapt and crept about a little between the sods, and then he
suddenly slipped into a mousehole which he had sought out.
Good evening, gentlemen, just go home without me, he cried to
them, and mocked them. They ran thither and stuck their sticks
into the mousehole, but it was all in vain. Thumbling crept
still farther in, and as it soon became quite
dark, they were forced to go home with their vexation and
their empty purses.
When thumbling saw that they were gone, he crept back out of the
subterranean passage. It is so dangerous to walk on the ground
in the dark, said he, how easily a neck or a leg is broken.
Fortunately he stumbled against an empty snail-shell. Thank God,
said he, in that I can pass the night in safety. And got into it.
Not long afterwards, when he was just going to sleep, he heard two
men go by, and one of them was saying, how shall we set about
getting hold of the rich pastor's silver and gold. I could tell
you that, cried thumbling, interrupting them. What was that, said
one of the thieves in fright, I heard someone speaking. They stood
still listening, and thumbling spoke again, and said, take
me with you, and I'll help you.
But where are you. Just look on the ground, and observe from
whence my voice comes, he replied. There the thieves at length
found him, and lifted him up. You little imp, how will you help
us, they said. Listen, said he, I will creep into the pastor's
room through the iron bars, and will reach out to you whatever
you want to have. Come then, they said, and we will see what you
can do. When they got to the pastor's house, thumbling crept into
the room, but instantly cried out with all his might, do you want
to have everything that is here. The thieves were alarmed, and
said, but do speak softly, so as not to waken any one. Thumbling
however, behaved as if he had not understood this, and cried
again, what do you want. Do you want to have everything that is
here. The cook, who slept in the next room, heard this and sat up
in bed, and listened. The thieves, however, had in their fright
run some distance away, but at last they took courage, and
thought, the little rascal wants to mock us. They came back and
whispered to him, come be serious, and reach something out to us.
Then thumbling again cried as loudly as he could, I really will
give you everything, just put your hands in. The maid who was
listening, heard this quite distinctly, and jumped out of bed
and rushed to the door. The thieves took flight, and ran as if
the wild huntsman
were behind them, but as the maid could not see
anything, she went to strike a light. When she came to the
place with it, thumbling, unperceived, betook himself to the
granary, and the maid after she had examined every corner and
found nothing, lay down in her bed again, and believed that,
after all, she had only been dreaming with open eyes and ears.
Thumbling had climbed up among the hay and found a beautiful
place to sleep in. There he intended to rest until day, and
then go home again to his parents. But there were other things in
store for him. Truly, there is much worry and affliction in
this world. When the day dawned, the maid arose from her bed to
feed the cows. Her first walk was into the barn, where she laid
hold of an armful of hay, and precisely that very one in which
poor thumbling was lying asleep. He, however, was sleeping so
soundly that he was aware of nothing, and did not awake until he
was in the mouth of the cow, who had picked him up with the hay.
Ah, heavens, cried he, how have I got into the fulling mill. But
he soon discovered where he was. Then he had to take care not to
let himself go between the teeth and be dismembered, but he was
subsequently forced to slip down into the stomach with the hay.
In this little room the windows are forgotten, said he, and no
sun shines in, neither will a candle be brought. His quarters
were especially unpleasing to him, and the worst was that more
and more hay was always coming in by the door, and the space grew
less and less. When at length in his anguish, he cried as
loud as he could, bring me no more fodder, bring me no more
fodder. The maid was just milking the cow, and when she heard
some one speaking, and saw no one, and perceived that it was the
same voice that she had heard in the night, she was so
terrified that she slipped off her stool, and spilt the milk.
She ran in great haste to her master, and said, oh heavens,
pastor, the cow has been speaking. You are mad, replied the
pastor, but he went himself to the byre to see what was there.
Hardly, however had he set his foot inside when thumbling again
cried, bring me no more fodder, bring me no more fodder. Then
the pastor himself was alarmed, and thought that an evil
spirit had gone into the cow, and ordered her to be killed. She was
killed, but the stomach, in which thumbling was, was thrown on
the dunghill. Thumbling had great difficulty in working his
way out. However, he succeeded so far as to get some room, but
just as he was going to thrust his head out, a new misfortune
occurred. A hungry wolf ran thither, and swallowed the whole
stomach at one gulp. Thumbling did not lose courage. Perhaps,
thought he, the wolf will listen to what I have got to say. And
he called to him from out of his belly, dear wolf, I know of a
magnificent feast for you.
Where is it to be had, said the wolf.
In such and such a house. You must creep into it through the
kitchen-sink, and will find cakes, and bacon, and sausages, and
as much of them as you can eat. And he described to him exactly
his father's house. The wolf did not require to be told this
twice, squeezed himself in at night through the sink, and ate to
his heart's content in the larder. When he had eaten his fill,
he wanted to go out again, but he had become so big that he could
not go out by the same way. Thumbling had reckoned on this, and
now began to make a violent noise in the wolf's body, and raged
and screamed as loudly as he could. Will you be quiet, said the
wolf, you will waken up the people. What do I care, replied the
little fellow, you have eaten your fill, and I will make merry
likewise. And began once more to scream with all his strength.
At last his father and mother were aroused by it, and ran to the
room and looked in through the opening in the door. When they
saw that a wolf was inside, they ran away, and teh husband
fetched his axe, and the wife the scythe. Stay behind, said the
man, when they entered the room. When I have given the blow, if
he is not killed by it, you must cut him down and hew his body
to pieces. Then thumbling heard his parents, voices and cried,
dear father, I am here, I am in the wolf's body. Said the father,
full of joy, thank God, our dear child has found us again. And
bade the
woman take away her scythe, that thumbling might not be hurt
with it. After that he raised his arm, and struck the wolf
such a blow on his head that he fell down
dead, and then they got knives and scissors and cut his body open
and drew the little fellow forth.
Ah, said the father, what sorrow we have gone through for your
sake. Yes father, I have gone about the world a great deal.
Thank heaven, I breathe fresh air again. Where have you been,
then. Ah, father, I have been in a mouse's hole, in a cow's
belly, and then in a wolf's paunch. Now I will stay with you.
And we will not sell you again, no not for all the riches in
the world, said his parents, and they embraced and kissed their
dear thumbling. They gave him to eat and to drink, and had
some new clothes made for him, for his own had been spoiled
on his journey. One summer's morning a little tailor was sitting on his table
by the window, he was in good spirits, and sewed with all his
might. Then came a peasant woman down the street crying, good
jams, cheap. Good jams, cheap. This rang pleasantly in the
tailor's ears, he stretched his delicate head out of the
window, and called, come up here, dear woman, here you will get
rid of your goods. The woman came up the three steps to the
tailor with her heavy basket, and he made her unpack all the pots
for him. He inspected each one, lifted it up, put his nose to it,
and at length said, the jam seems to me to be good, so weigh me
out four ounces, dear woman, and if it is a quarter of a pound
that is of no consequence. The woman who had hoped to find a
good sale, gave him what he desired, but went away quite angry
and grumbling. Now, this jam shall be blessed by God, cried the
little tailor, and give me health and strength. So he brought
the bread out of the cupboard, cut himself a piece right across
the loaf and spread the jam over it. This won't taste bitter,
said he, but I will just finish the jacket before I take a bite.
He laid the bread near him, sewed on, and in his joy, made bigger
and bigger stitches. In the meantime the smell of the sweet jam
rose to where the flies were sitting in great numbers, and they
were attracted and descended on it in hosts. HI, who invited you,
said the little tailor, and drove the unbidden guests away. The
flies, however, who understood no german, would not be turned
away, but came back again in ever-increasing companies. The
little tailor at last lost all patience,
and drew a piece of cloth from the hole under his work-table, and
saying, wait, and I will give it to you, struck it mercilessly
on them. When he drew it away and counted, there lay before him
no fewer than seven, dead and with legs stretched out. Are you a
fellow of that sort, said he, and could not help admiring his own
bravery. The whole town shall know of this. And the little tailor
hastened to cut himself a girdle, stitched it, and embroidered on
it in large letters, seven at one stroke. What, the town, he
continued, the whole world shall hear of it. And his heart
wagged with joy like a lamb's tail. The tailor put on the girdle,
and resolved to go forth into the world, because he thought his
workshop was too small for his valor. Before he went away, he
sought about in the house to see if there was anything which he
could take with him, however, he found nothing but an old cheese,
and that he put in his pocket. In front of the door he observed a
bird which had caught itself in the thicket. It had to go into his
pocket with the cheese. Now he took to the road boldly, and as he
was light and nimble, he felt no fatigue. The road led him up a
mountain, and when he had reached the highest point of it, there
sat a powerful giant looking peacefully about him. The little
tailor went bravely up, spoke to him, and said, good day, comrade,
so you are sitting there overlooking the wide-spread world. I am
just on my way thither, and want to try my luck. Have you any
inclination to go with me. The giant looked contemptuously at the
tailor, and said, you ragamuffin. You miserable creature.
Oh, indeed, answered the little tailor, and unbuttoned his coat,
and showed the giant the girdle, there may you read what kind of
a man I am. The giant read, seven at one stroke. And thought
that they had been men whom the tailor had killed, and began to
feel a little respect for the tiny fellow. Nevertheless, he
wished to try him first, and took a stone in his hand and
squeezed it together so that water dropped out of it. Do that
likewise, said the giant, if you have strength. Is that all, said
the tailor, that is child's play with us, and put his hand into his
pocket, brought out the soft cheese, and pressed it until the
liquid ran out
of it. Faith, said he, that was a little better, wasn't it. The
giant did not know what to say, and could not believe it of the
little man. Then the giant picked up a stone and threw it so high
that the eye could scarcely follow it. Now, little mite of a man,
do that likewise. Well thrown, said the tailor, but after all the
stone came down to earth again, I will throw you one which shall
never come back at all. And he put his hand into his pocket,
took out the bird, and threw it into the air. The bird,
delighted with its liberty, rose, flew away and did not come
back. How does that shot please you, comrade, asked the tailor.
You can certainly throw, said the giant, but now we will see if
you are able to carry anything properly. He took the little
tailor to a mighty oak tree which lay there felled on the ground,
and said, if you are strong enough, help me to carry the tree out
of the forest. Readily, answered the little man, take the trunk
on your shoulders, and I will raise up the branches and twigs,
after all, they are the heaviest. The giant took the trunk on
his shoulder, but the tailor seated himself on a branch, and the
giant who could not look round, had to carry away the whole tree,
and the little tailor into the bargain, he behind, was quite
merry and happy, and whistled the song, three tailors rode forth
from the gate, as if carrying the tree were child's play. The
giant, after he had dragged the heavy burden part of the way,
could go no further, and cried, hark you, I shall have to let the
tree fall. The tailor sprang nimbly down, seized the tree with
both arms as if he had been carrying it, and said to the giant,
you are such a great fellow, and yet can not even carry the tree.
They went on together, and as they passed a cherry-tree, the giant
laid hold of the top of the tree where the ripest fruit was
hanging, bent it down, gave it into the tailor's hand, and bade
him eat. But the little tailor was much too weak to hold the
tree, and when the giant let it go, it sprang back again, and the
tailor was tossed into the air with it. When he had fallen down
again without injury, the giant said, what is this. Have you
not strength enough to hold the weak twig. There is no lack of
strength, answered the little tailor. Do you think that could be
anything to a man who has
struck down seven at one blow. I leapt over the tree because the
huntsmen are shooting down there in the thicket. Jump as I did,
if you can do it. The giant made the attempt, but could not get
over the tree, and remained hanging in the branches, so that in
this also the tailor kept the upper hand.
The giant said, if you are such a valiant fellow, come with me
into our cavern and spend the night with us. The little tailor
was willing, and followed him. When they went into the cave,
other giants were sitting there by the fire, and each of them
had a roasted sheep in his hand and was eating it. The little
tailor looked round and thought, it is much more spacious here
than in my workshop. The giant showed him a bed, and said he was
to lie down in it and sleep. The bed, however, was too big for
the little tailor, he did not lie down in it, but crept into a
corner. When it was midnight, and the giant thought that the
little tailor was lying in a sound sleep, he got up, took a great
iron bar, cut through the bed with one blow, and thought he had
finished off the grasshopper for good. With the earliest dawn
the giants went into the forest, and had quite forgotten the little
tailor, when all at once he walked up to them quite merrily
and boldly. The giants were terrified, they were afraid that he
would strike them all dead, and ran away in a great hurry.
The little tailor went onwards, always following his own
pointed nose. After he had walked for a long time, he came to the
courtyard of a royal palace, and as he felt weary, he lay down
on the grass and fell asleep. Whilst he lay there, the people
came and inspected him on all sides, and read on his girdle,
seven at one stroke. Ah, said they, what does the great warrior
here in the midst of peace. He must be a mighty lord. They went
and announced him to the king, and gave it as their opinion that
if war should break out, this would be a weighty and useful man
who ought on no account to be allowed to depart. The counsel
pleased the king, and he sent one of his courtiers to the little
tailor to offer him military service when he awoke. The
ambassador remained standing by the sleeper, waited until he
stretched his limbs and
opened his eyes, and then conveyed to him this proposal. For this
reason have I come here, the tailor replied, I am ready to enter
the king's service. He was therefore honorably received and a
special dwelling was assigned him.
The soldiers, however, were set against the little tailor, and
wished him a thousand miles away. What is to be the end of this,
they said among themselves. If we quarrel with him, and he strikes
about him, seven of us will fall at every blow, not one of
us can stand against him. They came therefore to a decision,
betook themselves in a body to the king, and begged for their
dismissal. We are not prepared, said they, to stay with a man
who kills seven at one stroke. The king was sorry that for the
sake of one he should lose all his faithful servants, wished that
he had never set eyes on the tailor, and would willingly have
been rid of him again. But he did not venture to give him his
dismissal, for he dreaded lest he should strike him and all his
people dead, and place himself on the royal throne. He thought
about it for a long time, and at last found good counsel. He
sent to the little tailor and caused him to be informed that as
he was such a great warrior, he had one request to make of him.
In a forest of his country lived two giants who caused great
mischief with their robbing, murdering, ravaging, and burning,
and no one could approach them without putting himself in danger
of death. If the tailor conquered and killed these two giants,
he would give him his only daughter to wife, and half of his
kingdom as a dowry, likewise one hundred horsemen should go with
him to assist him. That would indeed be a fine thing for a man
like me, thought the little tailor. One is not offered a
beautiful princess and half a kingdom every day of one's life.
Oh, yes, he replied, I will soon subdue the giants, and do not
require the help of the hundred horsemen to do it, he who can
hit seven with one blow has no need to be afraid of two.
The little tailor went forth, and the hundred horsemen followed
him. When he came to the outskirts of the forest, he said to
his followers, just stay waiting here, I alone will soon finish
off the giants. Then he bounded into the forest and looked about
right and left. After a while he perceived both giants. They lay
sleeping under a tree, and snored so that the branches waved up
and down. The little tailor, not idle, gathered two pocketsful
of stones, and with these climbed up the tree. When he was
half-way up, he slipped down by a branch, until he sat just above
the sleepers, and then let one stone after another fall on the
breast of one of the giants. For a long time the giant felt
nothing, but at last he awoke, pushed his comrade, and said, why
are you knocking me. You must be dreaming, said the other, I am
not knocking you. They laid themselves down to sleep again, and
then the tailor threw a stone down on the second. What is the
meaning of this, cried the other. Why are you pelting me. I am
not pelting you, answered the first, growling. They disputed
about it for a time, but as they were weary they let the matter
rest, and their eyes closed once more. The little tailor began
his game again, picked out the biggest stone, and threw it with
all his might on the breast of the first giant. That is too
bad, cried he, and sprang up like a madman, and pushed his
companion against the tree until it shook. The other paid him
back in the same coin, and they got into such a rage that they
tore up trees and belabored each other so long, that at last they
both fell down dead on the ground at the same time. Then the
little tailor leapt down. It is a lucky thing, said he, that
they did not tear up the tree on which I was sitting, or I should
have had to spring on to another like a squirrel, but we tailors
are nimble. He drew out his sword and gave each of them a couple
of thrusts in the breast, and then went out to the horsemen and
said, the work is done, I have finished both of them off, but it
was hard work. They tore up trees in their sore need, and
defended themselves with them, but all that is to no purpose
when a man like myself comes, who can kill seven at one blow.
But you are not wounded, asked the horsemen. You need not
concern yourself about that, answered the tailor, they have not
bent one hair of mine. The horsemen would not believe him, and
rode into the forest, there they found the giants swimming in their
blood, and all round about lay the torn-up trees.
The little tailor demanded of the king the promised reward. He,
however, repented of his promise, and again bethought himself how
he could get rid of the hero. Before you receive my daughter,
and the half of my kingdom, said he to him, you must perform one
more heroic deed. In the forest roams a unicorn which does great
harm, and you must catch it first. I fear one unicorn still
less than two giants. Seven at one blow, is my kind of affair.
He took a rope and an axe with him, went forth into the forest,
and again bade those who were sent with him to wait outside. He
had not long to seek. The unicorn soon came towards him, and
rushed directly on the tailor, as if it would gore him with its
horn without more ado. Softly, softly, it can't be done as
quickly as that, said he, and stood still and waited until the
animal was quite close, and then sprang nimbly behind the tree.
The unicorn ran against the tree with all its strength, and
struck its horn so fast in the trunk that it had not strength
enough to draw it out again, and thus it was caught. Now, I have
got the bird, said the tailor, and came out from behind the tree
and put the rope round its neck, and then with his axe he hewed
the horn out of the tree, and when all was ready he led the beast
away and took it to the king.
The king still would not give him the promised reward, and made
a third demand. Before the wedding the tailor was to catch him a
wild boar that made great havoc in the forest, and the huntsmen
should give him their help. Willingly, said the tailor, that is
child's play. He did not take the huntsmen with him into the
forest, and they were well pleased that he did not, for the wild
boar had several times received them in such a manner that they
had no inclination to lie in wait for him. When the boar
perceived the tailor, it ran on him with foaming mouth and
whetted tusks, and was about to throw him to the ground, but the
hero fled and sprang into a chapel which was near, and up to the
window at once, and in one bound out again. The boar ran in
after him, but the tailor ran round outside and shut the door
behind it, and then the raging beast, which was much too heavy
and awkward to leap out of the window, was caught. The little
tailor called the huntsmen thither
that they might see the prisoner with their own eyes. The hero,
however went to the king, who was now, whether he liked it or
not, obliged to keep his promise, and gave him his daughter and
the half of his kingdom. Had he known that it was no warlike
hero, but a little tailor who was standing before him it would
have gone to his heart still more than it did. The wedding was
held with great magnificence and small joy, and out of a
tailor a king was made.
After some time the young queen heard her husband say in his
dreams at night, boy, make me the doublet, and patch the
pantaloons, or else I will rap the yard-measure over your ears.
Then she discovered in what state of life the young lord had been
born, and next morning complained of her wrongs to her father, and
begged him to help her to get rid of her husband, who was
nothing else but a tailor. The king comforted her and said,
leave your bedroom door open this night, and my servants shall
stand outside, and when he has fallen asleep shall go in, bind
him, and take him on board a ship which shall carry him into the
wide world. The woman was satisfied with this, but the king's
armor-bearer, who had heard all, was friendly with the young
lord, and informed him of the whole plot. I'll put a screw into
that business, said the little tailor. At night he went to bed
with his wife at the usual time, and when she thought that he
had fallen asleep, she got up, opened the door, and then lay down
again. The little tailor, who was only pretending to be asleep,
began to cry out in a clear voice, boy, make me the doublet and
patch me the pantaloons, or I will rap the yard-measure over
your ears. I smote seven at one blow. I killed two giants, I
brought away one unicorn and caught a wild boar, and am I to
fear those who are standing outside the room. When these men
heard the tailor speaking thus, they were overcome by a great
dread, and ran as if the wild huntsman were behind them, and none
of them would venture anything further against him. So the little
tailor was and remained a king to the end of his life. There was once upon a time a tailor who had three sons, and
only one goat. But as the goat supported all of them with
her milk, she was obliged to have good food, and to be taken
every day to pasture. The sons did this, in turn. Once the eldest
took her to the churchyard, where the finest herbs were to be found,
and let her eat and run about there. At night when it was time to
go home he asked, goat, have you had enough. The goat answered
I have eaten so much,
not a leaf more I'll touch, meh. Meh.
Come home, then, said the youth, and took hold of the cord
round her neck, led her into the stable and tied her up securely.
Well, said the old tailor, has the goat had as much food as she
ought. Oh, answered the son, she has eaten so much, not a
leaf more she'll touch. But the father wished to satisfy himself,
and went down to the stable, stroked the dear animal and asked,
goat, are you satisfied. The goat answered,
how should I be satisfied.
Among the ditches I leapt about,
found no leaf, so went without, meh. Meh.
What do I hear, cried the tailor, and ran upstairs and said to the
youth. HI, you liar, you said the goat had had enough, and have
let her hunger, and in his anger he took the yard-measure from
the wall, and drove him out with blows.
Next day it was the turn of the second son, who sought a place
in the fence of the garden, where nothing but good herbs grew, and
the goat gobbled them all up. At night when he wanted to go home,
he asked, goat, are you satisfied. The goat answered,
I have eaten so much,
not a leaf more I'll touch, meh. Meh.
Come home, then, said the youth, and led her home, and tied her
up in the stable. Well, said the old tailor, has the goat had as
much food as she ought. Oh, answered the son, she has eaten
so much, not a leaf more she'll touch. The tailor would not rely
on this, but went down to the stable and said, goat, have you had
enough. The goat answered,
how should I be satisfied.
Among the ditches I leapt about,
found no leaf, so went without, meh. Meh.
The godless wretch. Cried the tailor, to let such a good animal
hunger, and he ran up and drove the youth out of doors with the
yard-measure.
Now came the turn of the third son, who wanted to do his duty
well, and sought out some bushes with the finest leaves, and let the
goat devour them. In the evening when he wanted to go home, he
asked, goat, have you had enough. The goat answered,
I have eaten so much,
not a leaf more I'll touch, meh. Meh.
Come home, then, said the youth, and led her into the stable, and
tied her up. Well, said the old tailor, has the goat had her full
share of food. She has eaten so much, not a leaf more she'll
touch. The tailor was distrustful, went down and asked, goat,
have you had enough. The wicked beast answered,
how should I be satisfied.
Among the ditches I leapt about,
found no leaf, so went without, meh. Meh.
Oh, the brood of liars, cried the tailor, each as wicked and
forgetful of his duty as the other. You shall no longer make a
fool of me, and quite beside himself with anger, he ran upstairs
and belabored the poor young fellow so vigorously with the
yard-measure that he sprang out of the house.
The old tailor was now alone with his goat. Next morning he
went down into the stable, stroked the goat and said, come, my
dear little animal, I myself will take you to feed. He took her
by the rope and conducted her to green hedges, and amongst milfoil
and whatever else goats like to eat. There you may for once eat to
your heart's content, said he to her, and let her browse till
evening. Then he asked, goat, are you satisfied. She replied.
I have eaten so much,
not a leaf more I'll touch, meh. Meh.
Come home, then, said the tailor, and led her into the stable, and
tied her fast. When he was going away, he turned round again and
said, well, are you satisfied for once. But the goat behaved no
better to him, and cried,
how should I be satisfied.
Among the ditches I leapt about,
found no leaf, so went without, meh. Meh.
When the tailor heard that, he was shocked, and saw clearly that
he had driven away his three sons without cause. Wait, you
ungrateful creature, cried he, it is not enough to drive you forth,
I will brand you so that you will no more dare to show yourself
amongst honest tailors. In great haste he ran upstairs, fetched his
razor, lathered the goat's head, and shaved her as clean as the palm
of his hand. And as the yard-measure would have been too good for
her, he brought the horsewhip, and gave her such cuts with it that
she bounded away with tremendous leaps.
When the tailor was thus left quite alone in his house he fell into
great grief, and would gladly have had his sons back again, but no
one knew whither they were gone. The eldest had apprenticed
himself to a joiner, and learnt industriously and indefatigably,
and when the time came for him to go traveling, his master presented
him with a little table which was not particularly beautiful, and
was made of common wood, but which had one good property. If
anyone set it out, and said, little table, spread yourself, the good
little table was at once covered with a clean little cloth, and a
plate was there, and a knife and fork beside it, and dishes with
boiled meats and roasted meats, as many as there was room for, and a
great glass of red wine shone so that it made the heart glad. The
young journeyman thought, with this you have enough for your
whole life, and went joyously about the world and never troubled
himself at all whether an inn was good or bad, or if anything was
to be found in it or not. When it suited him he did not enter an
inn at all, but either on the plain, in a wood, a meadow, or
wherever he fancied, he took his little table off his back, set it
down before him, and said, spread yourself, and then everything
appeared that his heart desired. At length he took it into his head
to go back to his father, whose anger would now be appeased, and
who would now willingly receive him with his magic table. It came
to pass that on his way home, he came one evening to an inn which
was filled with guests. They bade him welcome, and invited him to
sit and eat with them, for otherwise he would have difficulty in
getting anything. No, answered the joiner, I will not take the few
morsels out of
your mouths. Rather than that, you shall be my guests. They
laughed, and thought he was jesting with them. He but placed his
wooden table in the middle of the room, and said, little table,
spread yourself. Instantly it was covered with food, so good that
the host could never have procured it, and the smell of it
ascended pleasantly to the nostrils of the guests. Fall to, dear
friends, said the joiner, and the guests when they saw that he
meant it, did not need to be asked twice, but drew near, pulled out
their knives and attacked it valiantly. And what surprised them the
most was that when a dish became empty, a full one instantly took
its place of its own accord. The innkeeper stood in one corner and
watched the affair. He did not at all know what to say, but
thought, you could easily find a use for such a cook as that in your
household. The joiner and his comrades made merry until late
into the night. At length they lay down to sleep, and the young
apprentice also went to bed, and set his magic table against the
wall. The host's thoughts, however, let him have no rest. It
occurred to him that there was a little old table in his lumber-room
which looked just like the apprentice's and he brought it out,
and carefully exchanged it for the wishing table. Next morning
the joiner paid for his bed, took up his table, never thinking
that he had got a false one, and went his way. At mid-day he
reached his father, who received him with great joy. Well, my dear
son, what have you learnt. Said he to him. Father, I have become
a joiner.
A good trade, replied the old man, but what have you brought
back with you from your apprenticeship. Father, the best thing
which I have brought back with me is this little table. The
tailor inspected it on all sides and said, you did not make a
masterpiece when you made that. It is a bad old table. But it
is a table which furnishes itself, replied the son. When I set it
out, and tell it to spread itself, the most beautiful dishes stand
on it, and a wine also, which gladdens the heart. Just invite all
our relations and friends, they shall refresh and enjoy themselves
for once, for the table will give them all they require. When the
company was assembled, he put his table in the middle of the room and
said, little table,
spread yourself, but the little table did not bestir itself, and
remained just as bare as any other table which does not understand
language. Then the poor apprentice became aware that his table
had been changed, and was ashamed at having to stand there like a
liar. The relations, however, mocked him, and were forced to go
home without having eaten or drunk. The father brought out his
patches again, and went on tailoring, but the son went to a
master in the craft.
The second son had gone to a miller and had apprenticed himself
to him. When his years were over, the master said, as you
have conducted yourself so well, I give you an ass of a peculiar
kind, which neither draws a cart nor carries a sack. What good is
he, then. Asked the young apprentice. He spews forth gold, answered
the miller. If you set him on a cloth and say bricklebrit,
the good animal will spew forth gold pieces for you from back and
front. That is a fine thing, said the apprentice, and thanked the
master, and went out into the world. When he had need of gold,
he had only to say bricklebrit to his ass, and it rained gold
pieces, and he had nothing to do but pick them off the ground.
Wheresoever he went, the best of everything was good enough for
him, and the dearer the better, for he had always a full purse.
When he had looked about the world for some time, he thought, you
must seek out your father. If you go to him with the gold-ass he
will forget his anger, and receive you well. It came to pass
that he came to the same inn in which his brother's table had been
exchanged. He led his ass by the bridle, and the host was about
to take the animal from him and tie him up, but the young
apprentice said, don't trouble yourself, I will take my grey
horse into the stable, and tie him up myself too, for I must know
where he stands. This struck the host as odd, and he thought
that a man who was forced to look after his ass himself, could not
have much to spend. But when the stranger put his hand in his
pocket and brought out two gold pieces, and said he was to
provide something good for him, the host opened his eyes wide, and
ran and sought out the best he could muster. After dinner the
guest asked what he owed. The host did
not see why he should not double the reckoning, and said the
apprentice must give two more gold pieces. He felt in his pocket,
but his gold was just at an end. Wait an instant, sir host, said
he, I will go and fetch some money. But he took the table-cloth
with him. The host could not imagine what this could mean, and
being curious, stole after him, and as the guest bolted the stable
door, he peeped through a hole left by a knot in the wood. The
stranger spread out the cloth under the animal and cried,
bricklebrit, and immediately the beast began to let gold pieces fall
from back and front, so that it fairly rained down money on the
ground. Eh, my word, said the host, ducats are quickly coined
there. A purse like that is not to be sniffed at. The guest
paid his score, and went to bed, but in the night the host stole
down into the stable, led away the master of the mint, and tied up
another ass in his place.
Early next morning the apprentice traveled away with his ass,
and thought that he had his gold-ass. At mid-day he reached his
father, who rejoiced to see him again, and gladly took him in.
What have you made of yourself, my son. Asked the old man.
A miller, dear father, he answered. What have you brought back
with you from your travels. Nothing else but an ass. There are
asses enough here, said the father, I would rather have had a good
goat. Yes, replied the son, but it is no common ass, but a
gold-ass, when I say bricklebrit, the good beast spews forth a whole
sheetful of gold pieces. Just summon all our relations hither,
and I will make them rich folks. That suits me well, said the
tailor, for then I shall have no need to torment myself any longer
with the needle, and ran out himself and called the relations
together. As soon as they were assembled, the miller bade them
make way, spread out his cloth, and brought the ass into the room.
Now watch, said he, and cried, bricklebrit, but what fell were not
gold pieces, and it was clear that the animal knew nothing of the
art, for every ass does not attain such perfection. Then the poor
miller pulled a long face, saw that he was betrayed, and begged
pardon of the relatives, who went home as poor as they came. There
was no help for it, the old man had to betake him to his needle once
more, and the youth hired himself to a miller.
The third brother had apprenticed himself to a turner, and as that
is skilled labor, he was the longest in learning. His brothers,
however, told him in a letter how badly things had gone with them,
and how the innkeeper had cheated them of ther beautiful
wishing-gifts on the last evening before they reached home. When
the turner had served his time, and had to set out on his travels,
as he had conducted himself so well, his master presented him with a
sack and said, there is a cudgel in it. I can put on the sack, said
he, and it may be of good service to me, but why should the cudgel
be in it. It only makes it heavy. I will tell you why, replied
the master. If anyone has done anything to injure you, do but say,
out of the sack, cudgel. And the cudgel will leap forth among the
people, and play such a dance on their backs that they will not be
able to stir or move for a week, and it will not leave off until
you say, into the sack, cudgel. The apprentice thanked him, and
put the sack on his back, and when anyone came too near him, and
wished to attack him, he said, out of the sack, cudgel, and
instantly the cudgel sprang out, and dusted the coat or jacket of
one after the other on their backs, and never stopped until it had
stripped it off them, and it was done so quickly, that before anyone
was aware, it was already his own turn. In the evening the
young turner reached the inn where his brothers had been cheated.
He laid his sack on the table before him, and began to talk of all
the wonderful things which he had seen in the world. Yes, said
he, people may easily find a table which will spread itself, a
gold-ass, and things of that kind - extremely good things which
I by no means despise - but these are nothing in comparison with
the treasure which I have won for myself, and am carrying about
with me in my sack there. The innkeeper pricked up his ears.
What in the world can that be. Thought he. The sack must be filled
with nothing but jewels. I ought to get them cheap too, for all
good things go in threes. When it was time for sleep, the guest
stretched himself on the bench, and laid his sack beneath him
for a pillow. When the innkeeper thought his guest
was lying in a sound sleep, he went to him and pushed and pulled
quite gently and carefully at the sack to see if he could possibly
draw it away and lay another in its place.
The turner, however, had been waiting for this for a long time, and
now just as the inn-keeper was about to give a hearty tug, he cried,
out of the sack, cudgel. Instantly the little cudgel came forth,
and fell on the inn-keeper and gave him a sound thrashing.
The host cried for mercy. But the louder he cried, the harder the
cudgel beat the time on his back, until at length he fell to the
ground exhausted. Then the turner said, if you do not give back
the table which spreads itself, and the gold-ass, the dance shall
begin afresh. Oh, no, cried the host, quite humbly, I will gladly
produce everything, only make the accursed kobold creep back into
the sack. Then said the apprentice, I will let mercy take the
place of justice, but beware of getting into mischief again. So he
cried, into the sack, cudgel. And let him have rest.
Next morning the turner went home to his father with the
wishing-table, and the gold-ass. The tailor rejoiced when he saw
him once more, and asked him likewise what he had learned in foreign
parts. Dear father, said he, I have become a turner. A skilled
trade, said the father. What have you brought back with you from
your travels.
A precious thing, dear father, replied the son, a cudgel in the
sack.
What cried the father, a cudgel. That's certainly worth your
trouble. From every tree you can cut yourself one. But not one
like this, dear father. If I say, out of the sack, cudgel, the
cudgel springs out and leads anyone ill-disposed toward me a weary
dance, and never stops until he lies on the ground and prays for
fair weather. Look you, with this cudgel have I rescued the
wishing-table and the gold-ass which the thievish innkeeper took
away from my brothers. Now let them both be sent for, and invite
all our kinsmen. I will give them to eat and to drink, and will
fill their pockets with gold into the bargain. The old tailor
had not much confidence. Nevertheless he summoned the relatives
together. Then the turner spread a cloth in the room and led in the
gold-ass, and said to his brother, now, dear brother, speak to him.
The miller said, bricklebrit, and instantly the gold pices rained
down on the cloth like a thunder-shower, and the ass did not stop
until every one of them had so much that he could carry no more.
- I can see by your face that you also would have liked to be
there. -
Then the turner brought the little table, and said, now dear
brother, speak to it. And scarcely had the carpenter said, table,
spread yourself, than it was spread and amply covered with the
most exquisite dishes. Then such a meal took place as the good
tailor had never yet known in his house, and the whole party of
kinsmen stayed together till far in the night, and were all merry
and glad. The tailor locked away needle and thread, yard-measure
and goose, in a closet, and lived with his three sons in joy and
splendor.
What, however, happened to the goat who was to blame for the
tailor driving out his three sons? That I will tell you. She
was ashamed that she had a bald head, and ran to a fox's hole and
crept into it. When the fox came home, he was met by two great
eyes shining out of the darkness, and was terrified and ran away.
A bear met him, and as the fox looked quite disturbed, he said,
what is the matter with you, brother fox, why do you look like
that. Ah, answered redskin, a fierce beast is in my cave and stared
at me with its fiery eyes. We will soon drive him out, said
the bear, and went with him to the cave and looked in, but when
he saw the fiery eyes, fear seized on him likewise. He would have
nothing to do with the furious beast, and took to his heels. The
bee met him, and as she saw that he was ill at ease, she said,
bear, you are really pulling a very pitiful face. What has become
of all your gaiety. It is all very well for you to talk, replied
the bear, a furious beast with staring eyes is in redskin's house,
and we can't drive him out. The bee said, bear I pity you, I am
a poor weak creature whom you would not turn aside to look at, but
still, I believe, I can help you. She flew into the fox's cave,
lighted on the goat's smoothly-shorn head, and stung her so
violently, that she sprang up, crying meh, meh, and ran forth
into the world as if mad, and to this hour no one knows where she
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g e2 g e2 d c d c2. d d e f2 d e e f g2 e g2 e g2 e d c d c2.5Child of the pure unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet, and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy-tale.
I have not seen thy sunny face,
Nor heard thy silver laughter;
No thought of me shall find a place
In thy young life’s hereafter—
Enough that now thou wilt not fail
To listen to my fairy-tale.
A tale begun in other days,
When summer suns were glowing—
A simple chime, that served to time
The rhythm of oar rowing—
Whose echoes live in memory yet,
Though envious years would say ‘forget.’
Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread,
With bitter tidings laden,
Shall summon to unwelcome bed
A melancholy maiden!
We are but older children, dear,
Who fret to find our bedtime near.
Without, the frost, the blinding snow,
The storm-wind’s moody madness—
Within, the firelight’s ruddy glow,
And childhood’s nest of gladness.
The magic words shall hold thee fast:
Thou shalt not heed the raving blast.
And though the shadow of a sigh
May tremble through the story,
For ‘happy summer days’ gone by,
And vanish’d summer glory—
It shall not touch with breath of bale
The pleasance of our fairy-tale.
Contents
CHAPTER I. Looking-Glass House
CHAPTER II. The Garden of Live Flowers
CHAPTER III. Looking-Glass Insects
CHAPTER IV. Tweedledum And Tweedledee
CHAPTER V. Wool and Water
CHAPTER VI. Humpty Dumpty
CHAPTER VII. The Lion and the Unicorn
CHAPTER VIII. “It’s my own Invention”
CHAPTER IX. Queen Alice
CHAPTER X. Shaking
CHAPTER XI. Waking
CHAPTER XII. Which Dreamed it?
CHAPTER I.
Looking-Glass House
One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it:—it was the black kitten’s fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it couldn’t have had any hand in the mischief.
The way Dinah washed her children’s faces was this: first she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr—no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good.
But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the middle.
“Oh, you wicked little thing!” cried Alice, catching up the kitten, and giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace. “Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners! You ought, Dinah, you know you ought!” she added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage—and then she scrambled back into the arm-chair, taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and began winding up the ball again. But she didn’t get on very fast, as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely on her knee, pretending to watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one paw and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to help, if it might.
“Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?” Alice began. “You’d have guessed if you’d been up in the window with me—only Dinah was making you tidy, so you couldn’t. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire—and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, we’ll go and see the bonfire to-morrow.” Here Alice wound two or three turns of the worsted round the kitten’s neck, just to see how it would look: this led to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down upon the floor, and yards and yards of it got unwound again.
“Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty,” Alice went on as soon as they were comfortably settled again, “when I saw all the mischief you had been doing, I was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out into the snow! And you’d have deserved it, you little mischievous darling! What have you got to say for yourself? Now don’t interrupt me!” she went on, holding up one finger. “I’m going to tell you all your faults. Number one: you squeaked twice while Dinah was washing your face this morning. Now you can’t deny it, Kitty: I heard you! What’s that you say?” (pretending that the kitten was speaking.) “Her paw went into your eye? Well, that’s your fault, for keeping your eyes open—if you’d shut them tight up, it wouldn’t have happened. Now don’t make any more excuses, but listen! Number two: you pulled Snowdrop away by the tail just as I had put down the saucer of milk before her! What, you were thirsty, were you? How do you know she wasn’t thirsty too? Now for number three: you unwound every bit of the worsted while I wasn’t looking!
“That’s three faults, Kitty, and you’ve not been punished for any of them yet. You know I’m saving up all your punishments for Wednesday week—Suppose they had saved up all my punishments!” she went on, talking more to herself than the kitten. “What would they do at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when the day came. Or—let me see—suppose each punishment was to be going without a dinner: then, when the miserable day came, I should have to go without fifty dinners at once! Well, I shouldn’t mind that much! I’d far rather go without them than eat them!
“Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’ And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about—whenever the wind blows—oh, that’s very pretty!” cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands. “And I do so wish it was true! I’m sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.
“Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don’t smile, my dear, I’m asking it seriously. Because, when we were playing just now, you watched just as if you understood it: and when I said ‘Check!’ you purred! Well, it was a nice check, Kitty, and really I might have won, if it hadn’t been for that nasty Knight, that came wiggling down among my pieces. Kitty, dear, let’s pretend—” And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to say, beginning with her favourite phrase “Let’s pretend.” She had had quite a long argument with her sister only the day before—all because Alice had begun with “Let’s pretend we’re kings and queens;” and her sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn’t, because there were only two of them, and Alice had been reduced at last to say, “Well, you can be one of them then, and I’ll be all the rest.” And once she had really frightened her old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear, “Nurse! Do let’s pretend that I’m a hungry hyaena, and you’re a bone.”
But this is taking us away from Alice’s speech to the kitten. “Let’s pretend that you’re the Red Queen, Kitty! Do you know, I think if you sat up and folded your arms, you’d look exactly like her. Now do try, there’s a dear!” And Alice got the Red Queen off the table, and set it up before the kitten as a model for it to imitate: however, the thing didn’t succeed, principally, Alice said, because the kitten wouldn’t fold its arms properly. So, to punish it, she held it up to the Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was—“and if you’re not good directly,” she added, “I’ll put you through into Looking-glass House. How would you like that?”
“Now, if you’ll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I’ll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there’s the room you can see through the glass—that’s just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair—all but the bit behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see that bit! I want so much to know whether they’ve a fire in the winter: you never can tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too—but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way; I know that, because I’ve held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room.
“How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they’d give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn’t good to drink—But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little peep of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open: and it’s very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House! I’m sure it’s got, oh! such beautiful things in it! Let’s pretend there’s a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it’s turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It’ll be easy enough to get through—” She was up on the chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.
In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. “So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room,” thought Alice: “warmer, in fact, because there’ll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it’ll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can’t get at me!”
Then she began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was as different as possible. For instance, the pictures on the wall next the fire seemed to be all alive, and the very clock on the chimney-piece (you know you can only see the back of it in the Looking-glass) had got the face of a little old man, and grinned at her.
“They don’t keep this room so tidy as the other,” Alice thought to herself, as she noticed several of the chessmen down in the hearth among the cinders: but in another moment, with a little “Oh!” of surprise, she was down on her hands and knees watching them. The chessmen were walking about, two and two!
“Here are the Red King and the Red Queen,” Alice said (in a whisper, for fear of frightening them), “and there are the White King and the White Queen sitting on the edge of the shovel—and here are two castles walking arm in arm—I don’t think they can hear me,” she went on, as she put her head closer down, “and I’m nearly sure they can’t see me. I feel somehow as if I were invisible—”
Here something began squeaking on the table behind Alice, and made her turn her head just in time to see one of the White Pawns roll over and begin kicking: she watched it with great curiosity to see what would happen next.
“It is the voice of my child!” the White Queen cried out as she rushed past the King, so violently that she knocked him over among the cinders. “My precious Lily! My imperial kitten!” and she began scrambling wildly up the side of the fender.
“Imperial fiddlestick!” said the King, rubbing his nose, which had been hurt by the fall. He had a right to be a little annoyed with the Queen, for he was covered with ashes from head to foot.
Alice was very anxious to be of use, and, as the poor little Lily was nearly screaming herself into a fit, she hastily picked up the Queen and set her on the table by the side of her noisy little daughter.
The Queen gasped, and sat down: the rapid journey through the air had quite taken away her breath and for a minute or two she could do nothing but hug the little Lily in silence. As soon as she had recovered her breath a little, she called out to the White King, who was sitting sulkily among the ashes, “Mind the volcano!”
“What volcano?” said the King, looking up anxiously into the fire, as if he thought that was the most likely place to find one.
“Blew—me—up,” panted the Queen, who was still a little out of breath. “Mind you come up—the regular way—don’t get blown up!”
Alice watched the White King as he slowly struggled up from bar to bar, till at last she said, “Why, you’ll be hours and hours getting to the table, at that rate. I’d far better help you, hadn’t I?” But the King took no notice of the question: it was quite clear that he could neither hear her nor see her.
So Alice picked him up very gently, and lifted him across more slowly than she had lifted the Queen, that she mightn’t take his breath away: but, before she put him on the table, she thought she might as well dust him a little, he was so covered with ashes.
She said afterwards that she had never seen in all her life such a face as the King made, when he found himself held in the air by an invisible hand, and being dusted: he was far too much astonished to cry out, but his eyes and his mouth went on getting larger and larger, and rounder and rounder, till her hand shook so with laughing that she nearly let him drop upon the floor.
“Oh! please don’t make such faces, my dear!” she cried out, quite forgetting that the King couldn’t hear her. “You make me laugh so that I can hardly hold you! And don’t keep your mouth so wide open! All the ashes will get into it—there, now I think you’re tidy enough!” she added, as she smoothed his hair, and set him upon the table near the Queen.
The King immediately fell flat on his back, and lay perfectly still: and Alice was a little alarmed at what she had done, and went round the room to see if she could find any water to throw over him. However, she could find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when she got back with it she found he had recovered, and he and the Queen were talking together in a frightened whisper—so low, that Alice could hardly hear what they said.
The King was saying, “I assure, you my dear, I turned cold to the very ends of my whiskers!”
To which the Queen replied, “You haven’t got any whiskers.”
“The horror of that moment,” the King went on, “I shall never, never forget!”
“You will, though,” the Queen said, “if you don’t make a memorandum of it.”
Alice looked on with great interest as the King took an enormous memorandum-book out of his pocket, and began writing. A sudden thought struck her, and she took hold of the end of the pencil, which came some way over his shoulder, and began writing for him.
The poor King looked puzzled and unhappy, and struggled with the pencil for some time without saying anything; but Alice was too strong for him, and at last he panted out, “My dear! I really must get a thinner pencil. I can’t manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of things that I don’t intend—”
“What manner of things?” said the Queen, looking over the book (in which Alice had put “The White Knight is sliding down the poker. He balances very badly”) “That’s not a memorandum of your feelings!”
There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while she sat watching the White King (for she was still a little anxious about him, and had the ink all ready to throw over him, in case he fainted again), she turned over the leaves, to find some part that she could read, “—for it’s all in some language I don’t know,” she said to herself.
It was like this.
.YKCOWREBBAJ
sevot yhtils eht dna, gillirb sawT’
ebaw eht ni elbmig dna eryg diD
,sevogorob eht erew ysmim llA
.ebargtuo shtar emom eht dnA
She puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck her. “Why, it’s a Looking-glass book, of course! And if I hold it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again.”
This was the poem that Alice read.
JABBERWOCKY.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“It seems very pretty,” she said when she had finished it, “but it’s rather hard to understand!” (You see she didn’t like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate—”
“But oh!” thought Alice, suddenly jumping up, “if I don’t make haste I shall have to go back through the Looking-glass, before I’ve seen what the rest of the house is like! Let’s have a look at the garden first!” She was out of the room in a moment, and ran down stairs—or, at least, it wasn’t exactly running, but a new invention of hers for getting down stairs quickly and easily, as Alice said to herself. She just kept the tips of her fingers on the hand-rail, and floated gently down without even touching the stairs with her feet; then she floated on through the hall, and would have gone straight out at the door in the same way, if she hadn’t caught hold of the door-post. She was getting a little giddy with so much floating in the air, and was rather glad to find herself walking again in the natural way.
CHAPTER II.
The Garden of Live Flowers
“I should see the garden far better,” said Alice to herself, “if I could get to the top of that hill: and here’s a path that leads straight to it—at least, no, it doesn’t do that—” (after going a few yards along the path, and turning several sharp corners), “but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it twists! It’s more like a corkscrew than a path! Well, this turn goes to the hill, I suppose—no, it doesn’t! This goes straight back to the house! Well then, I’ll try it the other way.”
And so she did: wandering up and down, and trying turn after turn, but always coming back to the house, do what she would. Indeed, once, when she turned a corner rather more quickly than usual, she ran against it before she could stop herself.
“It’s no use talking about it,” Alice said, looking up at the house and pretending it was arguing with her. “I’m not going in again yet. I know I should have to get through the Looking-glass again—back into the old room—and there’d be an end of all my adventures!”
So, resolutely turning her back upon the house, she set out once more down the path, determined to keep straight on till she got to the hill. For a few minutes all went on well, and she was just saying, “I really shall do it this time—” when the path gave a sudden twist and shook itself (as she described it afterwards), and the next moment she found herself actually walking in at the door.
“Oh, it’s too bad!” she cried. “I never saw such a house for getting in the way! Never!”
However, there was the hill full in sight, so there was nothing to be done but start again. This time she came upon a large flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle.
“O Tiger-lily,” said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, “I wish you could talk!”
“We can talk,” said the Tiger-lily: “when there’s anybody worth talking to.”
Alice was so astonished that she could not speak for a minute: it quite seemed to take her breath away. At length, as the Tiger-lily only went on waving about, she spoke again, in a timid voice—almost in a whisper. “And can all the flowers talk?”
“As well as you can,” said the Tiger-lily. “And a great deal louder.”
“It isn’t manners for us to begin, you know,” said the Rose, “and I really was wondering when you’d speak! Said I to myself, ‘Her face has got some sense in it, though it’s not a clever one!’ Still, you’re the right colour, and that goes a long way.”
“I don’t care about the colour,” the Tiger-lily remarked. “If only her petals curled up a little more, she’d be all right.”
Alice didn’t like being criticised, so she began asking questions. “Aren’t you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?”
“There’s the tree in the middle,” said the Rose: “what else is it good for?”
“But what could it do, if any danger came?” Alice asked.
“It says ‘Bough-wough!’” cried a Daisy: “that’s why its branches are called boughs!”
“Didn’t you know that?” cried another Daisy, and here they all began shouting together, till the air seemed quite full of little shrill voices. “Silence, every one of you!” cried the Tiger-lily, waving itself passionately from side to side, and trembling with excitement. “They know I can’t get at them!” it panted, bending its quivering head towards Alice, “or they wouldn’t dare to do it!”
“Never mind!” Alice said in a soothing tone, and stooping down to the daisies, who were just beginning again, she whispered, “If you don’t hold your tongues, I’ll pick you!”
There was silence in a moment, and several of the pink daisies turned white.
“That’s right!” said the Tiger-lily. “The daisies are worst of all. When one speaks, they all begin together, and it’s enough to make one wither to hear the way they go on!”
“How is it you can all talk so nicely?” Alice said, hoping to get it into a better temper by a compliment. “I’ve been in many gardens before, but none of the flowers could talk.”
“Put your hand down, and feel the ground,” said the Tiger-lily. “Then you’ll know why.”
Alice did so. “It’s very hard,” she said, “but I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“In most gardens,” the Tiger-lily said, “they make the beds too soft—so that the flowers are always asleep.”
This sounded a very good reason, and Alice was quite pleased to know it. “I never thought of that before!” she said.
“It’s my opinion that you never think at all,” the Rose said in a rather severe tone.
“I never saw anybody that looked stupider,” a Violet said, so suddenly, that Alice quite jumped; for it hadn’t spoken before.
“Hold your tongue!” cried the Tiger-lily. “As if you ever saw anybody! You keep your head under the leaves, and snore away there, till you know no more what’s going on in the world, than if you were a bud!”
“Are there any more people in the garden besides me?” Alice said, not choosing to notice the Rose’s last remark.
“There’s one other flower in the garden that can move about like you,” said the Rose. “I wonder how you do it—” (“You’re always wondering,” said the Tiger-lily), “but she’s more bushy than you are.”
“Is she like me?” Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed her mind, “There’s another little girl in the garden, somewhere!”
“Well, she has the same awkward shape as you,” the Rose said, “but she’s redder—and her petals are shorter, I think.”
“Her petals are done up close, almost like a dahlia,” the Tiger-lily interrupted: “not tumbled about anyhow, like yours.”
“But that’s not your fault,” the Rose added kindly: “you’re beginning to fade, you know—and then one can’t help one’s petals getting a little untidy.”
Alice didn’t like this idea at all: so, to change the subject, she asked “Does she ever come out here?”
“I daresay you’ll see her soon,” said the Rose. “She’s one of the thorny kind.”
“Where does she wear the thorns?” Alice asked with some curiosity.
“Why all round her head, of course,” the Rose replied. “I was wondering you hadn’t got some too. I thought it was the regular rule.”
“She’s coming!” cried the Larkspur. “I hear her footstep, thump, thump, thump, along the gravel-walk!”
Alice looked round eagerly, and found that it was the Red Queen. “She’s grown a good deal!” was her first remark. She had indeed: when Alice first found her in the ashes, she had been only three inches high—and here she was, half a head taller than Alice herself!
“It’s the fresh air that does it,” said the Rose: “wonderfully fine air it is, out here.”
“I think I’ll go and meet her,” said Alice, for, though the flowers were interesting enough, she felt that it would be far grander to have a talk with a real Queen.
“You can’t possibly do that,” said the Rose: “I should advise you to walk the other way.”
This sounded nonsense to Alice, so she said nothing, but set off at once towards the Red Queen. To her surprise, she lost sight of her in a moment, and found herself walking in at the front-door again.
A little provoked, she drew back, and after looking everywhere for the queen (whom she spied out at last, a long way off), she thought she would try the plan, this time, of walking in the opposite direction.
It succeeded beautifully. She had not been walking a minute before she found herself face to face with the Red Queen, and full in sight of the hill she had been so long aiming at.
“Where do you come from?” said the Red Queen. “And where are you going? Look up, speak nicely, and don’t twiddle your fingers all the time.”
Alice attended to all these directions, and explained, as well as she could, that she had lost her way.
“I don’t know what you mean by your way,” said the Queen: “all the ways about here belong to me—but why did you come out here at all?” she added in a kinder tone. “Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say, it saves time.”
Alice wondered a little at this, but she was too much in awe of the Queen to disbelieve it. “I’ll try it when I go home,” she thought to herself, “the next time I’m a little late for dinner.”
“It’s time for you to answer now,” the Queen said, looking at her watch: “open your mouth a little wider when you speak, and always say ‘your Majesty.’”
“I only wanted to see what the garden was like, your Majesty—”
“That’s right,” said the Queen, patting her on the head, which Alice didn’t like at all, “though, when you say ‘garden,’—I’ve seen gardens, compared with which this would be a wilderness.”
Alice didn’t dare to argue the point, but went on: “—and I thought I’d try and find my way to the top of that hill—”
“When you say ‘hill,’” the Queen interrupted, “I could show you hills, in comparison with which you’d call that a valley.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” said Alice, surprised into contradicting her at last: “a hill can’t be a valley, you know. That would be nonsense—”
The Red Queen shook her head, “You may call it ‘nonsense’ if you like,” she said, “but I’ve heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!”
Alice curtseyed again, as she was afraid from the Queen’s tone that she was a little offended: and they walked on in silence till they got to the top of the little hill.
For some minutes Alice stood without speaking, looking out in all directions over the country—and a most curious country it was. There were a number of tiny little brooks running straight across it from side to side, and the ground between was divided up into squares by a number of little green hedges, that reached from brook to brook.
“I declare it’s marked out just like a large chessboard!” Alice said at last. “There ought to be some men moving about somewhere—and so there are!” She added in a tone of delight, and her heart began to beat quick with excitement as she went on. “It’s a great huge game of chess that’s being played—all over the world—if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn’t mind being a Pawn, if only I might join—though of course I should like to be a Queen, best.”
She glanced rather shyly at the real Queen as she said this, but her companion only smiled pleasantly, and said, “That’s easily managed. You can be the White Queen’s Pawn, if you like, as Lily’s too young to play; and you’re in the Second Square to begin with: when you get to the Eighth Square you’ll be a Queen—” Just at this moment, somehow or other, they began to run.
Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying “Faster! Faster!” but Alice felt she could not go faster, though she had not breath left to say so.
The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. “I wonder if all the things move along with us?” thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried, “Faster! Don’t try to talk!”
Not that Alice had any idea of doing that. She felt as if she would never be able to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath: and still the Queen cried “Faster! Faster!” and dragged her along. “Are we nearly there?” Alice managed to pant out at last.
“Nearly there!” the Queen repeated. “Why, we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster!” And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling in Alice’s ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, she fancied.
“Now! Now!” cried the Queen. “Faster! Faster!” And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, “You may rest a little now.”
Alice looked round her in great surprise. “Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!”
“Of course it is,” said the Queen, “what would you have it?”
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
“I’d rather not try, please!” said Alice. “I’m quite content to stay here—only I am so hot and thirsty!”
“I know what you’d like!” the Queen said good-naturedly, taking a little box out of her pocket. “Have a biscuit?”
Alice thought it would not be civil to say “No,” though it wasn’t at all what she wanted. So she took it, and ate it as well as she could: and it was very dry; and she thought she had never been so nearly choked in all her life.
“While you’re refreshing yourself,” said the Queen, “I’ll just take the measurements.” And she took a ribbon out of her pocket, marked in inches, and began measuring the ground, and sticking little pegs in here and there.
“At the end of two yards,” she said, putting in a peg to mark the distance, “I shall give you your directions—have another biscuit?”
“No, thank you,” said Alice: “one’s quite enough!”
“Thirst quenched, I hope?” said the Queen.
Alice did not know what to say to this, but luckily the Queen did not wait for an answer, but went on. “At the end of three yards I shall repeat them—for fear of your forgetting them. At the end of four, I shall say good-bye. And at the end of five, I shall go!”
She had got all the pegs put in by this time, and Alice looked on with great interest as she returned to the tree, and then began slowly walking down the row.
At the two-yard peg she faced round, and said, “A pawn goes two squares in its first move, you know. So you’ll go very quickly through the Third Square—by railway, I should think—and you’ll find yourself in the Fourth Square in no time. Well, that square belongs to Tweedledum and Tweedledee—the Fifth is mostly water—the Sixth belongs to Humpty Dumpty—But you make no remark?”
“I—I didn’t know I had to make one—just then,” Alice faltered out.
“You should have said, ‘It’s extremely kind of you to tell me all this’—however, we’ll suppose it said—the Seventh Square is all forest—however, one of the Knights will show you the way—and in the Eighth Square we shall be Queens together, and it’s all feasting and fun!” Alice got up and curtseyed, and sat down again.
At the next peg the Queen turned again, and this time she said, “Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing—turn out your toes as you walk—and remember who you are!” She did not wait for Alice to curtsey this time, but walked on quickly to the next peg, where she turned for a moment to say “good-bye,” and then hurried on to the last.
How it happened, Alice never knew, but exactly as she came to the last peg, she was gone. Whether she vanished into the air, or whether she ran quickly into the wood (“and she can run very fast!” thought Alice), there was no way of guessing, but she was gone, and Alice began to remember that she was a Pawn, and that it would soon be time for her to move.
CHAPTER III.
Looking-Glass Insects
Of course the first thing to do was to make a grand survey of the country she was going to travel through. “It’s something very like learning geography,” thought Alice, as she stood on tiptoe in hopes of being able to see a little further. “Principal rivers—there are none. Principal mountains—I’m on the only one, but I don’t think it’s got any name. Principal towns—why, what are those creatures, making honey down there? They can’t be bees—nobody ever saw bees a mile off, you know—” and for some time she stood silent, watching one of them that was bustling about among the flowers, poking its proboscis into them, “just as if it was a regular bee,” thought Alice.
However, this was anything but a regular bee: in fact it was an elephant—as Alice soon found out, though the idea quite took her breath away at first. “And what enormous flowers they must be!” was her next idea. “Something like cottages with the roofs taken off, and stalks put to them—and what quantities of honey they must make! I think I’ll go down and—no, I won’t just yet,” she went on, checking herself just as she was beginning to run down the hill, and trying to find some excuse for turning shy so suddenly. “It’ll never do to go down among them without a good long branch to brush them away—and what fun it’ll be when they ask me how I like my walk. I shall say—‘Oh, I like it well enough—’” (here came the favourite little toss of the head), “‘only it was so dusty and hot, and the elephants did tease so!’”
“I think I’ll go down the other way,” she said after a pause: “and perhaps I may visit the elephants later on. Besides, I do so want to get into the Third Square!”
So with this excuse she ran down the hill and jumped over the first of the six little brooks.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * *
“Tickets, please!” said the Guard, putting his head in at the window. In a moment everybody was holding out a ticket: they were about the same size as the people, and quite seemed to fill the carriage.
“Now then! Show your ticket, child!” the Guard went on, looking angrily at Alice. And a great many voices all said together (“like the chorus of a song,” thought Alice), “Don’t keep him waiting, child! Why, his time is worth a thousand pounds a minute!”
“I’m afraid I haven’t got one,” Alice said in a frightened tone: “there wasn’t a ticket-office where I came from.” And again the chorus of voices went on. “There wasn’t room for one where she came from. The land there is worth a thousand pounds an inch!”
“Don’t make excuses,” said the Guard: “you should have bought one from the engine-driver.” And once more the chorus of voices went on with “The man that drives the engine. Why, the smoke alone is worth a thousand pounds a puff!”
Alice thought to herself, “Then there’s no use in speaking.” The voices didn’t join in this time, as she hadn’t spoken, but to her great surprise, they all thought in chorus (I hope you understand what thinking in chorus means—for I must confess that I don’t), “Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!”
“I shall dream about a thousand pounds tonight, I know I shall!” thought Alice.
All this time the Guard was looking at her, first through a telescope, then through a microscope, and then through an opera-glass. At last he said, “You’re travelling the wrong way,” and shut up the window and went away.
“So young a child,” said the gentleman sitting opposite to her (he was dressed in white paper), “ought to know which way she’s going, even if she doesn’t know her own name!”
A Goat, that was sitting next to the gentleman in white, shut his eyes and said in a loud voice, “She ought to know her way to the ticket-office, even if she doesn’t know her alphabet!”
There was a Beetle sitting next to the Goat (it was a very queer carriage-full of passengers altogether), and, as the rule seemed to be that they should all speak in turn, he went on with “She’ll have to go back from here as luggage!”
Alice couldn’t see who was sitting beyond the Beetle, but a hoarse voice spoke next. “Change engines—” it said, and was obliged to leave off.
“It sounds like a horse,” Alice thought to herself. And an extremely small voice, close to her ear, said, “You might make a joke on that—something about ‘horse’ and ‘hoarse,’ you know.”
Then a very gentle voice in the distance said, “She must be labelled ‘Lass, with care,’ you know—”
And after that other voices went on (“What a number of people there are in the carriage!” thought Alice), saying, “She must go by post, as she’s got a head on her—” “She must be sent as a message by the telegraph—” “She must draw the train herself the rest of the way—” and so on.
But the gentleman dressed in white paper leaned forwards and whispered in her ear, “Never mind what they all say, my dear, but take a return-ticket every time the train stops.”
“Indeed I shan’t!” Alice said rather impatiently. “I don’t belong to this railway journey at all—I was in a wood just now—and I wish I could get back there.”
“You might make a joke on that,” said the little voice close to her ear: “something about ‘you would if you could,’ you know.”
“Don’t tease so,” said Alice, looking about in vain to see where the voice came from; “if you’re so anxious to have a joke made, why don’t you make one yourself?”
The little voice sighed deeply: it was very unhappy, evidently, and Alice would have said something pitying to comfort it, “If it would only sigh like other people!” she thought. But this was such a wonderfully small sigh, that she wouldn’t have heard it at all, if it hadn’t come quite close to her ear. The consequence of this was that it tickled her ear very much, and quite took off her thoughts from the unhappiness of the poor little creature.
“I know you are a friend,” the little voice went on; “a dear friend, and an old friend. And you won’t hurt me, though I am an insect.”
“What kind of insect?” Alice inquired a little anxiously. What she really wanted to know was, whether it could sting or not, but she thought this wouldn’t be quite a civil question to ask.
“What, then you don’t—” the little voice began, when it was drowned by a shrill scream from the engine, and everybody jumped up in alarm, Alice among the rest.
The Horse, who had put his head out of the window, quietly drew it in and said, “It’s only a brook we have to jump over.” Everybody seemed satisfied with this, though Alice felt a little nervous at the idea of trains jumping at all. “However, it’ll take us into the Fourth Square, that’s some comfort!” she said to herself. In another moment she felt the carriage rise straight up into the air, and in her fright she caught at the thing nearest to her hand, which happened to be the Goat’s beard.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * *
But the beard seemed to melt away as she touched it, and she found herself sitting quietly under a tree—while the Gnat (for that was the insect she had been talking to) was balancing itself on a twig just over her head, and fanning her with its wings.
It certainly was a very large Gnat: “about the size of a chicken,” Alice thought. Still, she couldn’t feel nervous with it, after they had been talking together so long.
“—then you don’t like all insects?” the Gnat went on, as quietly as if nothing had happened.
“I like them when they can talk,” Alice said. “None of them ever talk, where I come from.”
“What sort of insects do you rejoice in, where you come from?” the Gnat inquired.
“I don’t rejoice in insects at all,” Alice explained, “because I’m rather afraid of them—at least the large kinds. But I can tell you the names of some of them.”
“Of course they answer to their names?” the Gnat remarked carelessly.
“I never knew them to do it.”
“What’s the use of their having names,” the Gnat said, “if they won’t answer to them?”
“No use to them,” said Alice; “but it’s useful to the people who name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?”
“I can’t say,” the Gnat replied. “Further on, in the wood down there, they’ve got no names—however, go on with your list of insects: you’re wasting time.”
“Well, there’s the Horse-fly,” Alice began, counting off the names on her fingers.
“All right,” said the Gnat: “half way up that bush, you’ll see a Rocking-horse-fly, if you look. It’s made entirely of wood, and gets about by swinging itself from branch to branch.”
“What does it live on?” Alice asked, with great curiosity.
“Sap and sawdust,” said the Gnat. “Go on with the list.”
Alice looked up at the Rocking-horse-fly with great interest, and made up her mind that it must have been just repainted, it looked so bright and sticky; and then she went on.
“And there’s the Dragon-fly.”
“Look on the branch above your head,” said the Gnat, “and there you’ll find a snap-dragon-fly. Its body is made of plum-pudding, its wings of holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning in brandy.”
“And what does it live on?”
“Frumenty and mince pie,” the Gnat replied; “and it makes its nest in a Christmas box.”
“And then there’s the Butterfly,” Alice went on, after she had taken a good look at the insect with its head on fire, and had thought to herself, “I wonder if that’s the reason insects are so fond of flying into candles—because they want to turn into Snap-dragon-flies!”
“Crawling at your feet,” said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), “you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.”
“And what does it live on?”
“Weak tea with cream in it.”
A new difficulty came into Alice’s head. “Supposing it couldn’t find any?” she suggested.
“Then it would die, of course.”
“But that must happen very often,” Alice remarked thoughtfully.
“It always happens,” said the Gnat.
After this, Alice was silent for a minute or two, pondering. The Gnat amused itself meanwhile by humming round and round her head: at last it settled again and remarked, “I suppose you don’t want to lose your name?”
“No, indeed,” Alice said, a little anxiously.
“And yet I don’t know,” the Gnat went on in a careless tone: “only think how convenient it would be if you could manage to go home without it! For instance, if the governess wanted to call you to your lessons, she would call out ‘come here—,’ and there she would have to leave off, because there wouldn’t be any name for her to call, and of course you wouldn’t have to go, you know.”
“That would never do, I’m sure,” said Alice: “the governess would never think of excusing me lessons for that. If she couldn’t remember my name, she’d call me ‘Miss!’ as the servants do.”
“Well, if she said ‘Miss,’ and didn’t say anything more,” the Gnat remarked, “of course you’d miss your lessons. That’s a joke. I wish you had made it.”
“Why do you wish I had made it?” Alice asked. “It’s a very bad one.”
But the Gnat only sighed deeply, while two large tears came rolling down its cheeks.
“You shouldn’t make jokes,” Alice said, “if it makes you so unhappy.”
Then came another of those melancholy little sighs, and this time the poor Gnat really seemed to have sighed itself away, for, when Alice looked up, there was nothing whatever to be seen on the twig, and, as she was getting quite chilly with sitting still so long, she got up and walked on.
She very soon came to an open field, with a wood on the other side of it: it looked much darker than the last wood, and Alice felt a little timid about going into it. However, on second thoughts, she made up her mind to go on: “for I certainly won’t go back,” she thought to herself, and this was the only way to the Eighth Square.
“This must be the wood,” she said thoughtfully to herself, “where things have no names. I wonder what’ll become of my name when I go in? I shouldn’t like to lose it at all—because they’d have to give me another, and it would be almost certain to be an ugly one. But then the fun would be trying to find the creature that had got my old name! That’s just like the advertisements, you know, when people lose dogs—‘answers to the name of “Dash:” had on a brass collar’—just fancy calling everything you met ‘Alice,’ till one of them answered! Only they wouldn’t answer at all, if they were wise.”
She was rambling on in this way when she reached the wood: it looked very cool and shady. “Well, at any rate it’s a great comfort,” she said as she stepped under the trees, “after being so hot, to get into the—into what?” she went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. “I mean to get under the—under the—under this, you know!” putting her hand on the trunk of the tree. “What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it’s got no name—why, to be sure it hasn’t!”
She stood silent for a minute, thinking: then she suddenly began again. “Then it really has happened, after all! And now, who am I? I will remember, if I can! I’m determined to do it!” But being determined didn’t help much, and all she could say, after a great deal of puzzling, was, “L, I know it begins with L!”
Just then a Fawn came wandering by: it looked at Alice with its large gentle eyes, but didn’t seem at all frightened. “Here then! Here then!” Alice said, as she held out her hand and tried to stroke it; but it only started back a little, and then stood looking at her again.
“What do you call yourself?” the Fawn said at last. Such a soft sweet voice it had!
“I wish I knew!” thought poor Alice. She answered, rather sadly, “Nothing, just now.”
“Think again,” it said: “that won’t do.”
Alice thought, but nothing came of it. “Please, would you tell me what you call yourself?” she said timidly. “I think that might help a little.”
“I’ll tell you, if you’ll move a little further on,” the Fawn said. “I can’t remember here.”
So they walked on together though the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice’s arms. “I’m a Fawn!” it cried out in a voice of delight, “and, dear me! you’re a human child!” A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed.
Alice stood looking after it, almost ready to cry with vexation at having lost her dear little fellow-traveller so suddenly. “However, I know my name now.” she said, “that’s some comfort. Alice—Alice—I won’t forget it again. And now, which of these finger-posts ought I to follow, I wonder?”
It was not a very difficult question to answer, as there was only one road through the wood, and the two finger-posts both pointed along it. “I’ll settle it,” Alice said to herself, “when the road divides and they point different ways.”
But this did not seem likely to happen. She went on and on, a long way, but wherever the road divided there were sure to be two finger-posts pointing the same way, one marked “TO TWEEDLEDUM’S HOUSE” and the other “TO THE HOUSE OF TWEEDLEDEE.”
“I do believe,” said Alice at last, “that they live in the same house! I wonder I never thought of that before—But I can’t stay there long. I’ll just call and say ‘how d’you do?’ and ask them the way out of the wood. If I could only get to the Eighth Square before it gets dark!” So she wandered on, talking to herself as she went, till, on turning a sharp corner, she came upon two fat little men, so suddenly that she could not help starting back, but in another moment she recovered herself, feeling sure that they must be.
CHAPTER IV.
Tweedledum And Tweedledee
They were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other’s neck, and Alice knew which was which in a moment, because one of them had “DUM” embroidered on his collar, and the other “DEE.” “I suppose they’ve each got ‘TWEEDLE’ round at the back of the collar,” she said to herself.
They stood so still that she quite forgot they were alive, and she was just looking round to see if the word ‘TWEEDLE’ was written at the back of each collar, when she was startled by a voice coming from the one marked “DUM.”
“If you think we’re wax-works,” he said, “you ought to pay, you know. Wax-works weren’t made to be looked at for nothing, nohow!”
“Contrariwise,” added the one marked “DEE,” “if you think we’re alive, you ought to speak.”
“I’m sure I’m very sorry,” was all Alice could say; for the words of the old song kept ringing through her head like the ticking of a clock, and she could hardly help saying them out loud:—
“Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.”
“I know what you’re thinking about,” said Tweedledum: “but it isn’t so, nohow.”
“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”
“I was thinking,” Alice said very politely, “which is the best way out of this wood: it’s getting so dark. Would you tell me, please?”
But the little men only looked at each other and grinned.
They looked so exactly like a couple of great schoolboys, that Alice couldn’t help pointing her finger at Tweedledum, and saying “First Boy!”
“Nohow!” Tweedledum cried out briskly, and shut his mouth up again with a snap.
“Next Boy!” said Alice, passing on to Tweedledee, though she felt quite certain he would only shout out “Contrariwise!” and so he did.
“You’ve been wrong!” cried Tweedledum. “The first thing in a visit is to say ‘How d’ye do?’ and shake hands!” And here the two brothers gave each other a hug, and then they held out the two hands that were free, to shake hands with her.
Alice did not like shaking hands with either of them first, for fear of hurting the other one’s feelings; so, as the best way out of the difficulty, she took hold of both hands at once: the next moment they were dancing round in a ring. This seemed quite natural (she remembered afterwards), and she was not even surprised to hear music playing: it seemed to come from the tree under which they were dancing, and it was done (as well as she could make it out) by the branches rubbing one across the other, like fiddles and fiddle-sticks.
“But it certainly was funny,” (Alice said afterwards, when she was telling her sister the history of all this,) “to find myself singing ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush.’ I don’t know when I began it, but somehow I felt as if I’d been singing it a long long time!”
The other two dancers were fat, and very soon out of breath. “Four times round is enough for one dance,” Tweedledum panted out, and they left off dancing as suddenly as they had begun: the music stopped at the same moment.
Then they let go of Alice’s hands, and stood looking at her for a minute: there was a rather awkward pause, as Alice didn’t know how to begin a conversation with people she had just been dancing with. “It would never do to say ‘How d’ye do?’ now,” she said to herself: “we seem to have got beyond that, somehow!”
“I hope you’re not much tired?” she said at last.
“Nohow. And thank you very much for asking,” said Tweedledum.
“So much obliged!” added Tweedledee. “You like poetry?”
“Ye-es, pretty well—some poetry,” Alice said doubtfully. “Would you tell me which road leads out of the wood?”
“What shall I repeat to her?” said Tweedledee, looking round at Tweedledum with great solemn eyes, and not noticing Alice’s question.
“‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ is the longest,” Tweedledum replied, giving his brother an affectionate hug.
Tweedledee began instantly:
“The sun was shining—”
Here Alice ventured to interrupt him. “If it’s very long,” she said, as politely as she could, “would you please tell me first which road—”
Tweedledee smiled gently, and began again:
“The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright—
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done—
‘It’s very rude of him,’ she said,
‘To come and spoil the fun!’
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying over head—
There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
‘If this were only cleared away,’
They said, ‘it would be grand!’
‘If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,’ the Walrus said,
‘That they could get it clear?’
‘I doubt it,’ said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
‘O Oysters, come and walk with us!’
The Walrus did beseech.
‘A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each.’
The eldest Oyster looked at him.
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head—
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat—
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn’t any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more—
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.’
‘But wait a bit,’ the Oysters cried,
‘Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!’
‘No hurry!’ said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.
‘A loaf of bread,’ the Walrus said,
‘Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed—
Now if you’re ready Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.’
‘But not on us!’ the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue,
‘After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!’
‘The night is fine,’ the Walrus said
‘Do you admire the view?
‘It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!’
The Carpenter said nothing but
‘Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf—
I’ve had to ask you twice!’
‘It seems a shame,’ the Walrus said,
‘To play them such a trick,
After we’ve brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!’
The Carpenter said nothing but
‘The butter’s spread too thick!’
‘I weep for you,’ the Walrus said.
‘I deeply sympathize.’
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size.
Holding his pocket handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
‘O Oysters,’ said the Carpenter.
‘You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?’
But answer came there none—
And that was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.”
“I like the Walrus best,” said Alice: “because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters.”
“He ate more than the Carpenter, though,” said Tweedledee. “You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn’t count how many he took: contrariwise.”
“That was mean!” Alice said indignantly. “Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn’t eat so many as the Walrus.”
“But he ate as many as he could get,” said Tweedledum.
This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, “Well! They were both very unpleasant characters—” Here she checked herself in some alarm, at hearing something that sounded to her like the puffing of a large steam-engine in the wood near them, though she feared it was more likely to be a wild beast. “Are there any lions or tigers about here?” she asked timidly.
“It’s only the Red King snoring,” said Tweedledee.
“Come and look at him!” the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice’s hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping.
“Isn’t he a lovely sight?” said Tweedledum.
Alice couldn’t say honestly that he was. He had a tall red night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring loud—“fit to snore his head off!” as Tweedledum remarked.
“I’m afraid he’ll catch cold with lying on the damp grass,” said Alice, who was a very thoughtful little girl.
“He’s dreaming now,” said Tweedledee: “and what do you think he’s dreaming about?”
Alice said “Nobody can guess that.”
“Why, about you!” Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be?”
“Where I am now, of course,” said Alice.
“Not you!” Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. “You’d be nowhere. Why, you’re only a sort of thing in his dream!”
“If that there King was to wake,” added Tweedledum, “you’d go out—bang!—just like a candle!”
“I shouldn’t!” Alice exclaimed indignantly. “Besides, if I’m only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know?”
“Ditto” said Tweedledum.
“Ditto, ditto” cried Tweedledee.
He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn’t help saying, “Hush! You’ll be waking him, I’m afraid, if you make so much noise.”
“Well, it no use your talking about waking him,” said Tweedledum, “when you’re only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you’re not real.”
“I am real!” said Alice and began to cry.
“You won’t make yourself a bit realler by crying,” Tweedledee remarked: “there’s nothing to cry about.”
“If I wasn’t real,” Alice said—half-laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous—“I shouldn’t be able to cry.”
“I hope you don’t suppose those are real tears?” Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.
“I know they’re talking nonsense,” Alice thought to herself: “and it’s foolish to cry about it.” So she brushed away her tears, and went on as cheerfully as she could. “At any rate I’d better be getting out of the wood, for really it’s coming on very dark. Do you think it’s going to rain?”
Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself and his brother, and looked up into it. “No, I don’t think it is,” he said: “at least—not under here. Nohow.”
“But it may rain outside?”
“It may—if it chooses,” said Tweedledee: “we’ve no objection. Contrariwise.”
“Selfish things!” thought Alice, and she was just going to say “Good-night” and leave them, when Tweedledum sprang out from under the umbrella and seized her by the wrist.
“Do you see that?” he said, in a voice choking with passion, and his eyes grew large and yellow all in a moment, as he pointed with a trembling finger at a small white thing lying under the tree.
“It’s only a rattle,” Alice said, after a careful examination of the little white thing. “Not a rattle-snake, you know,” she added hastily, thinking that he was frightened: “only an old rattle—quite old and broken.”
“I knew it was!” cried Tweedledum, beginning to stamp about wildly and tear his hair. “It’s spoilt, of course!” Here he looked at Tweedledee, who immediately sat down on the ground, and tried to hide himself under the umbrella.
Alice laid her hand upon his arm, and said in a soothing tone, “You needn’t be so angry about an old rattle.”
“But it isn’t old!” Tweedledum cried, in a greater fury than ever. “It’s new, I tell you—I bought it yesterday—my nice new RATTLE!” and his voice rose to a perfect scream.
All this time Tweedledee was trying his best to fold up the umbrella, with himself in it: which was such an extraordinary thing to do, that it quite took off Alice’s attention from the angry brother. But he couldn’t quite succeed, and it ended in his rolling over, bundled up in the umbrella, with only his head out: and there he lay, opening and shutting his mouth and his large eyes—“looking more like a fish than anything else,” Alice thought.
“Of course you agree to have a battle?” Tweedledum said in a calmer tone.
“I suppose so,” the other sulkily replied, as he crawled out of the umbrella: “only she must help us to dress up, you know.”
So the two brothers went off hand-in-hand into the wood, and returned in a minute with their arms full of things—such as bolsters, blankets, hearth-rugs, table-cloths, dish-covers and coal-scuttles. “I hope you’re a good hand at pinning and tying strings?” Tweedledum remarked. “Every one of these things has got to go on, somehow or other.”
Alice said afterwards she had never seen such a fuss made about anything in all her life—the way those two bustled about—and the quantity of things they put on—and the trouble they gave her in tying strings and fastening buttons—“Really they’ll be more like bundles of old clothes than anything else, by the time they’re ready!” she said to herself, as she arranged a bolster round the neck of Tweedledee, “to keep his head from being cut off,” as he said.
“You know,” he added very gravely, “it’s one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle—to get one’s head cut off.”
Alice laughed aloud: but she managed to turn it into a cough, for fear of hurting his feelings.
“Do I look very pale?” said Tweedledum, coming up to have his helmet tied on. (He called it a helmet, though it certainly looked much more like a saucepan.)
“Well—yes—a little,” Alice replied gently.
“I’m very brave generally,” he went on in a low voice: “only to-day I happen to have a headache.”
“And I’ve got a toothache!” said Tweedledee, who had overheard the remark. “I’m far worse off than you!”
“Then you’d better not fight to-day,” said Alice, thinking it a good opportunity to make peace.
“We must have a bit of a fight, but I don’t care about going on long,” said Tweedledum. “What’s the time now?”
Tweedledee looked at his watch, and said “Half-past four.”
“Let’s fight till six, and then have dinner,” said Tweedledum.
“Very well,” the other said, rather sadly: “and she can watch us—only you’d better not come very close,” he added: “I generally hit everything I can see—when I get really excited.”
“And I hit everything within reach,” cried Tweedledum, “whether I can see it or not!”
Alice laughed. “You must hit the trees pretty often, I should think,” she said.
Tweedledum looked round him with a satisfied smile. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “there’ll be a tree left standing, for ever so far round, by the time we’ve finished!”
“And all about a rattle!” said Alice, still hoping to make them a little ashamed of fighting for such a trifle.
“I shouldn’t have minded it so much,” said Tweedledum, “if it hadn’t been a new one.”
“I wish the monstrous crow would come!” thought Alice.
“There’s only one sword, you know,” Tweedledum said to his brother: “but you can have the umbrella—it’s quite as sharp. Only we must begin quick. It’s getting as dark as it can.”
“And darker,” said Tweedledee.
It was getting dark so suddenly that Alice thought there must be a thunderstorm coming on. “What a thick black cloud that is!” she said. “And how fast it comes! Why, I do believe it’s got wings!”
“It’s the crow!” Tweedledum cried out in a shrill voice of alarm: and the two brothers took to their heels and were out of sight in a moment.
Alice ran a little way into the wood, and stopped under a large tree. “It can never get at me here,” she thought: “it’s far too large to squeeze itself in among the trees. But I wish it wouldn’t flap its wings so—it makes quite a hurricane in the wood—here’s somebody’s shawl being blown away!”
CHAPTER V.
Wool and Water
She caught the shawl as she spoke, and looked about for the owner: in another moment the White Queen came running wildly through the wood, with both arms stretched out wide, as if she were flying, and Alice very civilly went to meet her with the shawl.
“I’m very glad I happened to be in the way,” Alice said, as she helped her to put on her shawl again.
The White Queen only looked at her in a helpless frightened sort of way, and kept repeating something in a whisper to herself that sounded like “bread-and-butter, bread-and-butter,” and Alice felt that if there was to be any conversation at all, she must manage it herself. So she began rather timidly: “Am I addressing the White Queen?”
“Well, yes, if you call that a-dressing,” The Queen said. “It isn’t my notion of the thing, at all.”
Alice thought it would never do to have an argument at the very beginning of their conversation, so she smiled and said, “If your Majesty will only tell me the right way to begin, I’ll do it as well as I can.”
“But I don’t want it done at all!” groaned the poor Queen. “I’ve been a-dressing myself for the last two hours.”
It would have been all the better, as it seemed to Alice, if she had got some one else to dress her, she was so dreadfully untidy. “Every single thing’s crooked,” Alice thought to herself, “and she’s all over pins!—may I put your shawl straight for you?” she added aloud.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with it!” the Queen said, in a melancholy voice. “It’s out of temper, I think. I’ve pinned it here, and I’ve pinned it there, but there’s no pleasing it!”
“It can’t go straight, you know, if you pin it all on one side,” Alice said, as she gently put it right for her; “and, dear me, what a state your hair is in!”
“The brush has got entangled in it!” the Queen said with a sigh. “And I lost the comb yesterday.”
Alice carefully released the brush, and did her best to get the hair into order. “Come, you look rather better now!” she said, after altering most of the pins. “But really you should have a lady’s maid!”
“I’m sure I’ll take you with pleasure!” the Queen said. “Twopence a week, and jam every other day.”
Alice couldn’t help laughing, as she said, “I don’t want you to hire me—and I don’t care for jam.”
“It’s very good jam,” said the Queen.
“Well, I don’t want any to-day, at any rate.”
“You couldn’t have it if you did want it,” the Queen said. “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.”
“It must come sometimes to ‘jam to-day,’” Alice objected.
“No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other day: to-day isn’t any other day, you know.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Alice. “It’s dreadfully confusing!”
“That’s the effect of living backwards,” the Queen said kindly: “it always makes one a little giddy at first—”
“Living backwards!” Alice repeated in great astonishment. “I never heard of such a thing!”
“—but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways.”
“I’m sure mine only works one way,” Alice remarked. “I can’t remember things before they happen.”
“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.
“What sort of things do you remember best?” Alice ventured to ask.
“Oh, things that happened the week after next,” the Queen replied in a careless tone. “For instance, now,” she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster on her finger as she spoke, “there’s the King’s Messenger. He’s in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn’t even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.”
“Suppose he never commits the crime?” said Alice.
“That would be all the better, wouldn’t it?” the Queen said, as she bound the plaster round her finger with a bit of ribbon.
Alice felt there was no denying that. “Of course it would be all the better,” she said: “but it wouldn’t be all the better his being punished.”
“You’re wrong there, at any rate,” said the Queen: “were you ever punished?”
“Only for faults,” said Alice.
“And you were all the better for it, I know!” the Queen said triumphantly.
“Yes, but then I had done the things I was punished for,” said Alice: “that makes all the difference.”
“But if you hadn’t done them,” the Queen said, “that would have been better still; better, and better, and better!” Her voice went higher with each “better,” till it got quite to a squeak at last.
Alice was just beginning to say “There’s a mistake somewhere—,” when the Queen began screaming so loud that she had to leave the sentence unfinished. “Oh, oh, oh!” shouted the Queen, shaking her hand about as if she wanted to shake it off. “My finger’s bleeding! Oh, oh, oh, oh!”
Her screams were so exactly like the whistle of a steam-engine, that Alice had to hold both her hands over her ears.
“What is the matter?” she said, as soon as there was a chance of making herself heard. “Have you pricked your finger?”
“I haven’t pricked it yet,” the Queen said, “but I soon shall—oh, oh, oh!”
“When do you expect to do it?” Alice asked, feeling very much inclined to laugh.
“When I fasten my shawl again,” the poor Queen groaned out: “the brooch will come undone directly. Oh, oh!” As she said the words the brooch flew open, and the Queen clutched wildly at it, and tried to clasp it again.
“Take care!” cried Alice. “You’re holding it all crooked!” And she caught at the brooch; but it was too late: the pin had slipped, and the Queen had pricked her finger.
“That accounts for the bleeding, you see,” she said to Alice with a smile. “Now you understand the way things happen here.”
“But why don’t you scream now?” Alice asked, holding her hands ready to put over her ears again.
“Why, I’ve done all the screaming already,” said the Queen. “What would be the good of having it all over again?”
By this time it was getting light. “The crow must have flown away, I think,” said Alice: “I’m so glad it’s gone. I thought it was the night coming on.”
“I wish I could manage to be glad!” the Queen said. “Only I never can remember the rule. You must be very happy, living in this wood, and being glad whenever you like!”
“Only it is so very lonely here!” Alice said in a melancholy voice; and at the thought of her loneliness two large tears came rolling down her cheeks.
“Oh, don’t go on like that!” cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. “Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you’ve come to-day. Consider what o’clock it is. Consider anything, only don’t cry!”
Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. “Can you keep from crying by considering things?” she asked.
“That’s the way it’s done,” the Queen said with great decision: “nobody can do two things at once, you know. Let’s consider your age to begin with—how old are you?”
“I’m seven and a half exactly.”
“You needn’t say ‘exactually,’” the Queen remarked: “I can believe it without that. Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”
The brooch had come undone as she spoke, and a sudden gust of wind blew the Queen’s shawl across a little brook. The Queen spread out her arms again, and went flying after it, and this time she succeeded in catching it for herself. “I’ve got it!” she cried in a triumphant tone. “Now you shall see me pin it on again, all by myself!”
“Then I hope your finger is better now?” Alice said very politely, as she crossed the little brook after the Queen.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * *
“Oh, much better!” cried the Queen, her voice rising to a squeak as she went on. “Much be-etter! Be-etter! Be-e-e-etter! Be-e-ehh!” The last word ended in a long bleat, so like a sheep that Alice quite started.
She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have suddenly wrapped herself up in wool. Alice rubbed her eyes, and looked again. She couldn’t make out what had happened at all. Was she in a shop? And was that really—was it really a sheep that was sitting on the other side of the counter? Rub as she could, she could make nothing more of it: she was in a little dark shop, leaning with her elbows on the counter, and opposite to her was an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spectacles.
“What is it you want to buy?” the Sheep said at last, looking up for a moment from her knitting.
“I don’t quite know yet,” Alice said, very gently. “I should like to look all round me first, if I might.”
“You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like,” said the Sheep: “but you can’t look all round you—unless you’ve got eyes at the back of your head.”
But these, as it happened, Alice had not got: so she contented herself with turning round, looking at the shelves as she came to them.
The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things—but the oddest part of it all was, that whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty: though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.
“Things flow about so here!” she said at last in a plaintive tone, after she had spent a minute or so in vainly pursuing a large bright thing, that looked sometimes like a doll and sometimes like a work-box, and was always in the shelf next above the one she was looking at. “And this one is the most provoking of all—but I’ll tell you what—” she added, as a sudden thought struck her, “I’ll follow it up to the very top shelf of all. It’ll puzzle it to go through the ceiling, I expect!”
But even this plan failed: the “thing” went through the ceiling as quietly as possible, as if it were quite used to it.
“Are you a child or a teetotum?” the Sheep said, as she took up another pair of needles. “You’ll make me giddy soon, if you go on turning round like that.” She was now working with fourteen pairs at once, and Alice couldn’t help looking at her in great astonishment.
“How can she knit with so many?” the puzzled child thought to herself. “She gets more and more like a porcupine every minute!”
“Can you row?” the Sheep asked, handing her a pair of knitting-needles as she spoke.
“Yes, a little—but not on land—and not with needles—” Alice was beginning to say, when suddenly the needles turned into oars in her hands, and she found they were in a little boat, gliding along between banks: so there was nothing for it but to do her best.
“Feather!” cried the Sheep, as she took up another pair of needles.
This didn’t sound like a remark that needed any answer, so Alice said nothing, but pulled away. There was something very queer about the water, she thought, as every now and then the oars got fast in it, and would hardly come out again.
“Feather! Feather!” the Sheep cried again, taking more needles. “You’ll be catching a crab directly.”
“A dear little crab!” thought Alice. “I should like that.”
“Didn’t you hear me say ‘Feather’?” the Sheep cried angrily, taking up quite a bunch of needles.
“Indeed I did,” said Alice: “you’ve said it very often—and very loud. Please, where are the crabs?”
“In the water, of course!” said the Sheep, sticking some of the needles into her hair, as her hands were full. “Feather, I say!”
“Why do you say ‘feather’ so often?” Alice asked at last, rather vexed. “I’m not a bird!”
“You are,” said the Sheep: “you’re a little goose.”
This offended Alice a little, so there was no more conversation for a minute or two, while the boat glided gently on, sometimes among beds of weeds (which made the oars stick fast in the water, worse then ever), and sometimes under trees, but always with the same tall river-banks frowning over their heads.
“Oh, please! There are some scented rushes!” Alice cried in a sudden transport of delight. “There really are—and such beauties!”
“You needn’t say ‘please’ to me about ’em,” the Sheep said, without looking up from her knitting: “I didn’t put ’em there, and I’m not going to take ’em away.”
“No, but I meant—please, may we wait and pick some?” Alice pleaded. “If you don’t mind stopping the boat for a minute.”
“How am I to stop it?” said the Sheep. “If you leave off rowing, it’ll stop of itself.”
So the boat was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it glided gently in among the waving rushes. And then the little sleeves were carefully rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep to get the rushes a good long way down before breaking them off—and for a while Alice forgot all about the Sheep and the knitting, as she bent over the side of the boat, with just the ends of her tangled hair dipping into the water—while with bright eager eyes she caught at one bunch after another of the darling scented rushes.
“I only hope the boat won’t tipple over!” she said to herself. “Oh, what a lovely one! Only I couldn’t quite reach it.” And it certainly did seem a little provoking (“almost as if it happened on purpose,” she thought) that, though she managed to pick plenty of beautiful rushes as the boat glided by, there was always a more lovely one that she couldn’t reach.
“The prettiest are always further!” she said at last, with a sigh at the obstinacy of the rushes in growing so far off, as, with flushed cheeks and dripping hair and hands, she scrambled back into her place, and began to arrange her new-found treasures.
What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade, and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while—and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at her feet—but Alice hardly noticed this, there were so many other curious things to think about.
They hadn’t gone much farther before the blade of one of the oars got fast in the water and wouldn’t come out again (so Alice explained it afterwards), and the consequence was that the handle of it caught her under the chin, and, in spite of a series of little shrieks of “Oh, oh, oh!” from poor Alice, it swept her straight off the seat, and down among the heap of rushes.
However, she wasn’t hurt, and was soon up again: the Sheep went on with her knitting all the while, just as if nothing had happened. “That was a nice crab you caught!” she remarked, as Alice got back into her place, very much relieved to find herself still in the boat.
“Was it? I didn’t see it,” Said Alice, peeping cautiously over the side of the boat into the dark water. “I wish it hadn’t let go—I should so like to see a little crab to take home with me!” But the Sheep only laughed scornfully, and went on with her knitting.
“Are there many crabs here?” said Alice.
“Crabs, and all sorts of things,” said the Sheep: “plenty of choice, only make up your mind. Now, what do you want to buy?”
“To buy!” Alice echoed in a tone that was half astonished and half frightened—for the oars, and the boat, and the river, had vanished all in a moment, and she was back again in the little dark shop.
“I should like to buy an egg, please,” she said timidly. “How do you sell them?”
“Fivepence farthing for one—Twopence for two,” the Sheep replied.
“Then two are cheaper than one?” Alice said in a surprised tone, taking out her purse.
“Only you must eat them both, if you buy two,” said the Sheep.
“Then I’ll have one, please,” said Alice, as she put the money down on the counter. For she thought to herself, “They mightn’t be at all nice, you know.”
The Sheep took the money, and put it away in a box: then she said “I never put things into people’s hands—that would never do—you must get it for yourself.” And so saying, she went off to the other end of the shop, and set the egg upright on a shelf.
“I wonder why it wouldn’t do?” thought Alice, as she groped her way among the tables and chairs, for the shop was very dark towards the end. “The egg seems to get further away the more I walk towards it. Let me see, is this a chair? Why, it’s got branches, I declare! How very odd to find trees growing here! And actually here’s a little brook! Well, this is the very queerest shop I ever saw!”
* * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * *
So she went on, wondering more and more at every step, as everything turned into a tree the moment she came up to it, and she quite expected the egg to do the same.
CHAPTER VI.
Humpty Dumpty
However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was HUMPTY DUMPTY himself. “It can’t be anybody else!” she said to herself. “I’m as certain of it, as if his name were written all over his face.”
It might have been written a hundred times, easily, on that enormous face. Humpty Dumpty was sitting with his legs crossed, like a Turk, on the top of a high wall—such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how he could keep his balance—and, as his eyes were steadily fixed in the opposite direction, and he didn’t take the least notice of her, she thought he must be a stuffed figure after all.
“And how exactly like an egg he is!” she said aloud, standing with her hands ready to catch him, for she was every moment expecting him to fall.
“It’s very provoking,” Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, “to be called an egg—Very!”
“I said you looked like an egg, Sir,” Alice gently explained. “And some eggs are very pretty, you know” she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of a compliment.
“Some people,” said Humpty Dumpty, looking away from her as usual, “have no more sense than a baby!”
Alice didn’t know what to say to this: it wasn’t at all like conversation, she thought, as he never said anything to her; in fact, his last remark was evidently addressed to a tree—so she stood and softly repeated to herself:—
“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.”
“That last line is much too long for the poetry,” she added, almost out loud, forgetting that Humpty Dumpty would hear her.
“Don’t stand there chattering to yourself like that,” Humpty Dumpty said, looking at her for the first time, “but tell me your name and your business.”
“My name is Alice, but—”
“It’s a stupid enough name!” Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. “What does it mean?”
“Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully.
“Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: “my name means the shape I am—and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.”
“Why do you sit out here all alone?” said Alice, not wishing to begin an argument.
“Why, because there’s nobody with me!” cried Humpty Dumpty. “Did you think I didn’t know the answer to that? Ask another.”
“Don’t you think you’d be safer down on the ground?” Alice went on, not with any idea of making another riddle, but simply in her good-natured anxiety for the queer creature. “That wall is so very narrow!”
“What tremendously easy riddles you ask!” Humpty Dumpty growled out. “Of course I don’t think so! Why, if ever I did fall off—which there’s no chance of—but if I did—” Here he pursed his lips and looked so solemn and grand that Alice could hardly help laughing. “If I did fall,” he went on, “The King has promised me—with his very own mouth—to—to—”
“To send all his horses and all his men,” Alice interrupted, rather unwisely.
“Now I declare that’s too bad!” Humpty Dumpty cried, breaking into a sudden passion. “You’ve been listening at doors—and behind trees—and down chimneys—or you couldn’t have known it!”
“I haven’t, indeed!” Alice said very gently. “It’s in a book.”
“Ah, well! They may write such things in a book,” Humpty Dumpty said in a calmer tone. “That’s what you call a History of England, that is. Now, take a good look at me! I’m one that has spoken to a King, I am: mayhap you’ll never see such another: and to show you I’m not proud, you may shake hands with me!” And he grinned almost from ear to ear, as he leant forwards (and as nearly as possible fell off the wall in doing so) and offered Alice his hand. She watched him a little anxiously as she took it. “If he smiled much more, the ends of his mouth might meet behind,” she thought: “and then I don’t know what would happen to his head! I’m afraid it would come off!”
“Yes, all his horses and all his men,” Humpty Dumpty went on. “They’d pick me up again in a minute, they would! However, this conversation is going on a little too fast: let’s go back to the last remark but one.”
“I’m afraid I can’t quite remember it,” Alice said very politely.
“In that case we start fresh,” said Humpty Dumpty, “and it’s my turn to choose a subject—” (“He talks about it just as if it was a game!” thought Alice.) “So here’s a question for you. How old did you say you were?”
Alice made a short calculation, and said “Seven years and six months.”
“Wrong!” Humpty Dumpty exclaimed triumphantly. “You never said a word like it!”
“I though you meant ‘How old are you?’” Alice explained.
“If I’d meant that, I’d have said it,” said Humpty Dumpty.
Alice didn’t want to begin another argument, so she said nothing.
“Seven years and six months!” Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully. “An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you’d asked my advice, I’d have said ‘Leave off at seven’—but it’s too late now.”
“I never ask advice about growing,” Alice said indignantly.
“Too proud?” the other inquired.
Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. “I mean,” she said, “that one can’t help growing older.”
“One can’t, perhaps,” said Humpty Dumpty, “but two can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven.”
“What a beautiful belt you’ve got on!” Alice suddenly remarked.
(They had had quite enough of the subject of age, she thought: and if they really were to take turns in choosing subjects, it was her turn now.) “At least,” she corrected herself on second thoughts, “a beautiful cravat, I should have said—no, a belt, I mean—I beg your pardon!” she added in dismay, for Humpty Dumpty looked thoroughly offended, and she began to wish she hadn’t chosen that subject. “If I only knew,” she thought to herself, “which was neck and which was waist!”
Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though he said nothing for a minute or two. When he did speak again, it was in a deep growl.
“It is a—most—provoking—thing,” he said at last, “when a person doesn’t know a cravat from a belt!”
“I know it’s very ignorant of me,” Alice said, in so humble a tone that Humpty Dumpty relented.
“It’s a cravat, child, and a beautiful one, as you say. It’s a present from the White King and Queen. There now!”
“Is it really?” said Alice, quite pleased to find that she had chosen a good subject, after all.
“They gave it me,” Humpty Dumpty continued thoughtfully, as he crossed one knee over the other and clasped his hands round it, “they gave it me—for an un-birthday present.”
“I beg your pardon?” Alice said with a puzzled air.
“I’m not offended,” said Humpty Dumpty.
“I mean, what is an un-birthday present?”
“A present given when it isn’t your birthday, of course.”
Alice considered a little. “I like birthday presents best,” she said at last.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” cried Humpty Dumpty. “How many days are there in a year?”
“Three hundred and sixty-five,” said Alice.
“And how many birthdays have you?”
“One.”
“And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five, what remains?”
“Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.”
Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful. “I’d rather see that done on paper,” he said.
Alice couldn’t help smiling as she took out her memorandum-book, and worked the sum for him:
365
1
____
364
___
Humpty Dumpty took the book, and looked at it carefully. “That seems to be done right—” he began.
“You’re holding it upside down!” Alice interrupted.
“To be sure I was!” Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round for him. “I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven’t time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—”
“Certainly,” said Alice.
“And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”
“Would you tell me, please,” said Alice “what that means?”
“Now you talk like a reasonable child,” said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. “I meant by ‘impenetrability’ that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.”
“That’s a great deal to make one word mean,” Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
“When I make a word do a lot of work like that,” said Humpty Dumpty, “I always pay it extra.”
“Oh!” said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.
“Ah, you should see ’em come round me of a Saturday night,” Humpty Dumpty went on, wagging his head gravely from side to side: “for to get their wages, you know.”
(Alice didn’t venture to ask what he paid them with; and so you see I can’t tell you.)
“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”
“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that were ever invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.”
This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“That’s enough to begin with,” Humpty Dumpty interrupted: “there are plenty of hard words there. ‘Brillig’ means four o’clock in the afternoon—the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.”
“That’ll do very well,” said Alice: “and ‘slithy’?”
“Well, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy.’ ‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active.’ You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”
“I see it now,” Alice remarked thoughtfully: “and what are ‘toves’?”
“Well, ‘toves’ are something like badgers—they’re something like lizards—and they’re something like corkscrews.”
“They must be very curious looking creatures.”
“They are that,” said Humpty Dumpty: “also they make their nests under sun-dials—also they live on cheese.”
“And what’s the ‘gyre’ and to ‘gimble’?”
“To ‘gyre’ is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To ‘gimble’ is to make holes like a gimlet.”
“And ‘the wabe’ is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?” said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.
“Of course it is. It’s called ‘wabe,’ you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it—”
“And a long way beyond it on each side,” Alice added.
“Exactly so. Well, then, ‘mimsy’ is ‘flimsy and miserable’ (there’s another portmanteau for you). And a ‘borogove’ is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round—something like a live mop.”
“And then ‘mome raths’?” said Alice. “I’m afraid I’m giving you a great deal of trouble.”
“Well, a ‘rath’ is a sort of green pig: but ‘mome’ I’m not certain about. I think it’s short for ‘from home’—meaning that they’d lost their way, you know.”
“And what does ‘outgrabe’ mean?”
“Well, ‘outgrabing’ is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you’ll hear it done, maybe—down in the wood yonder—and when you’ve once heard it you’ll be quite content. Who’s been repeating all that hard stuff to you?”
“I read it in a book,” said Alice. “But I had some poetry repeated to me, much easier than that, by—Tweedledee, I think it was.”
“As to poetry, you know,” said Humpty Dumpty, stretching out one of his great hands, “I can repeat poetry as well as other folk, if it comes to that—”
“Oh, it needn’t come to that!” Alice hastily said, hoping to keep him from beginning.
“The piece I’m going to repeat,” he went on without noticing her remark, “was written entirely for your amusement.”
Alice felt that in that case she really ought to listen to it, so she sat down, and said “Thank you” rather sadly.
“In winter, when the fields are white,
I sing this song for your delight—
only I don’t sing it,” he added, as an explanation.
“I see you don’t,” said Alice.
“If you can see whether I’m singing or not, you’ve sharper eyes than most.” Humpty Dumpty remarked severely. Alice was silent.
“In spring, when woods are getting green,
I’ll try and tell you what I mean.”
“Thank you very much,” said Alice.
“In summer, when the days are long,
Perhaps you’ll understand the song:
In autumn, when the leaves are brown,
Take pen and ink, and write it down.”
“I will, if I can remember it so long,” said Alice.
“You needn’t go on making remarks like that,” Humpty Dumpty said: “they’re not sensible, and they put me out.”
“I sent a message to the fish:
I told them ‘This is what I wish.’
The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes’ answer was
‘We cannot do it, Sir, because—’”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” said Alice.
“It gets easier further on,” Humpty Dumpty replied.
“I sent to them again to say
‘It will be better to obey.’
The fishes answered with a grin,
‘Why, what a temper you are in!’
I told them once, I told them twice:
They would not listen to advice.
I took a kettle large and new,
Fit for the deed I had to do.
My heart went hop, my heart went thump;
I filled the kettle at the pump.
Then some one came to me and said,
‘The little fishes are in bed.’
I said to him, I said it plain,
‘Then you must wake them up again.’
I said it very loud and clear;
I went and shouted in his ear.”
Humpty Dumpty raised his voice almost to a scream as he repeated this verse, and Alice thought with a shudder, “I wouldn’t have been the messenger for anything!”
“But he was very stiff and proud;
He said ‘You needn’t shout so loud!’
And he was very proud and stiff;
He said ‘I’d go and wake them, if—’
I took a corkscrew from the shelf:
I went to wake them up myself.
And when I found the door was locked,
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but—”
There was a long pause.
“Is that all?” Alice timidly asked.
“That’s all,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Good-bye.”
This was rather sudden, Alice thought: but, after such a very strong hint that she ought to be going, she felt that it would hardly be civil to stay. So she got up, and held out her hand. “Good-bye, till we meet again!” she said as cheerfully as she could.
“I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet,” Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake; “you’re so exactly like other people.”
“The face is what one goes by, generally,” Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.
“That’s just what I complain of,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Your face is the same as everybody has—the two eyes, so—” (marking their places in the air with this thumb) “nose in the middle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance—or the mouth at the top—that would be some help.”
“It wouldn’t look nice,” Alice objected. But Humpty Dumpty only shut his eyes and said “Wait till you’ve tried.”
Alice waited a minute to see if he would speak again, but as he never opened his eyes or took any further notice of her, she said “Good-bye!” once more, and, getting no answer to this, she quietly walked away: but she couldn’t help saying to herself as she went, “Of all the unsatisfactory—” (she repeated this aloud, as it was a great comfort to have such a long word to say) “of all the unsatisfactory people I ever met—” She never finished the sentence, for at this moment a heavy crash shook the forest from end to end.
CHAPTER VII.
The Lion and the Unicorn
The next moment soldiers came running through the wood, at first in twos and threes, then ten or twenty together, and at last in such crowds that they seemed to fill the whole forest. Alice got behind a tree, for fear of being run over, and watched them go by.
She thought that in all her life she had never seen soldiers so uncertain on their feet: they were always tripping over something or other, and whenever one went down, several more always fell over him, so that the ground was soon covered with little heaps of men.
Then came the horses. Having four feet, these managed rather better than the foot-soldiers: but even they stumbled now and then; and it seemed to be a regular rule that, whenever a horse stumbled the rider fell off instantly. The confusion got worse every moment, and Alice was very glad to get out of the wood into an open place, where she found the White King seated on the ground, busily writing in his memorandum-book.
“I’ve sent them all!” the King cried in a tone of delight, on seeing Alice. “Did you happen to meet any soldiers, my dear, as you came through the wood?”
“Yes, I did,” said Alice: “several thousand, I should think.”
“Four thousand two hundred and seven, that’s the exact number,” the King said, referring to his book. “I couldn’t send all the horses, you know, because two of them are wanted in the game. And I haven’t sent the two Messengers, either. They’re both gone to the town. Just look along the road, and tell me if you can see either of them.”
“I see nobody on the road,” said Alice.
“I only wish I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!”
All this was lost on Alice, who was still looking intently along the road, shading her eyes with one hand. “I see somebody now!” she exclaimed at last. “But he’s coming very slowly—and what curious attitudes he goes into!” (For the messenger kept skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel, as he came along, with his great hands spread out like fans on each side.)
“Not at all,” said the King. “He’s an Anglo-Saxon Messenger—and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He only does them when he’s happy. His name is Haigha.” (He pronounced it so as to rhyme with “mayor.”)
“I love my love with an H,” Alice couldn’t help beginning, “because he is Happy. I hate him with an H, because he is Hideous. I fed him with—with—with Ham-sandwiches and Hay. His name is Haigha, and he lives—”
“He lives on the Hill,” the King remarked simply, without the least idea that he was joining in the game, while Alice was still hesitating for the name of a town beginning with H. “The other Messenger’s called Hatta. I must have two, you know—to come and go. One to come, and one to go.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Alice.
“It isn’t respectable to beg,” said the King.
“I only meant that I didn’t understand,” said Alice. “Why one to come and one to go?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” the King repeated impatiently. “I must have two—to fetch and carry. One to fetch, and one to carry.”
At this moment the Messenger arrived: he was far too much out of breath to say a word, and could only wave his hands about, and make the most fearful faces at the poor King.
“This young lady loves you with an H,” the King said, introducing Alice in the hope of turning off the Messenger’s attention from himself—but it was no use—the Anglo-Saxon attitudes only got more extraordinary every moment, while the great eyes rolled wildly from side to side.
“You alarm me!” said the King. “I feel faint—Give me a ham sandwich!”
On which the Messenger, to Alice’s great amusement, opened a bag that hung round his neck, and handed a sandwich to the King, who devoured it greedily.
“Another sandwich!” said the King.
“There’s nothing but hay left now,” the Messenger said, peeping into the bag.
“Hay, then,” the King murmured in a faint whisper.
Alice was glad to see that it revived him a good deal. “There’s nothing like eating hay when you’re faint,” he remarked to her, as he munched away.
“I should think throwing cold water over you would be better,” Alice suggested: “or some sal-volatile.”
“I didn’t say there was nothing better,” the King replied. “I said there was nothing like it.” Which Alice did not venture to deny.
“Who did you pass on the road?” the King went on, holding out his hand to the Messenger for some more hay.
“Nobody,” said the Messenger.
“Quite right,” said the King: “this young lady saw him too. So of course Nobody walks slower than you.”
“I do my best,” the Messenger said in a sulky tone. “I’m sure nobody walks much faster than I do!”
“He can’t do that,” said the King, “or else he’d have been here first. However, now you’ve got your breath, you may tell us what’s happened in the town.”
“I’ll whisper it,” said the Messenger, putting his hands to his mouth in the shape of a trumpet, and stooping so as to get close to the King’s ear. Alice was sorry for this, as she wanted to hear the news too. However, instead of whispering, he simply shouted at the top of his voice “They’re at it again!”
“Do you call that a whisper?” cried the poor King, jumping up and shaking himself. “If you do such a thing again, I’ll have you buttered! It went through and through my head like an earthquake!”
“It would have to be a very tiny earthquake!” thought Alice. “Who are at it again?” she ventured to ask.
“Why the Lion and the Unicorn, of course,” said the King.
“Fighting for the crown?”
“Yes, to be sure,” said the King: “and the best of the joke is, that it’s my crown all the while! Let’s run and see them.” And they trotted off, Alice repeating to herself, as she ran, the words of the old song:—
“The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown:
The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town.
Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum-cake and drummed them out of town.”
“Does—the one—that wins—get the crown?” she asked, as well as she could, for the run was putting her quite out of breath.
“Dear me, no!” said the King. “What an idea!”
“Would you—be good enough,” Alice panted out, after running a little further, “to stop a minute—just to get—one’s breath again?”
“I’m good enough,” the King said, “only I’m not strong enough. You see, a minute goes by so fearfully quick. You might as well try to stop a Bandersnatch!”
Alice had no more breath for talking, so they trotted on in silence, till they came in sight of a great crowd, in the middle of which the Lion and Unicorn were fighting. They were in such a cloud of dust, that at first Alice could not make out which was which: but she soon managed to distinguish the Unicorn by his horn.
They placed themselves close to where Hatta, the other messenger, was standing watching the fight, with a cup of tea in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other.
“He’s only just out of prison, and he hadn’t finished his tea when he was sent in,” Haigha whispered to Alice: “and they only give them oyster-shells in there—so you see he’s very hungry and thirsty. How are you, dear child?” he went on, putting his arm affectionately round Hatta’s neck.
Hatta looked round and nodded, and went on with his bread and butter.
“Were you happy in prison, dear child?” said Haigha.
Hatta looked round once more, and this time a tear or two trickled down his cheek: but not a word would he say.
“Speak, can’t you!” Haigha cried impatiently. But Hatta only munched away, and drank some more tea.
“Speak, won’t you!” cried the King. “How are they getting on with the fight?”
Hatta made a desperate effort, and swallowed a large piece of bread-and-butter. “They’re getting on very well,” he said in a choking voice: “each of them has been down about eighty-seven times.”
“Then I suppose they’ll soon bring the white bread and the brown?” Alice ventured to remark.
“It’s waiting for ’em now,” said Hatta: “this is a bit of it as I’m eating.”
There was a pause in the fight just then, and the Lion and the Unicorn sat down, panting, while the King called out “Ten minutes allowed for refreshments!” Haigha and Hatta set to work at once, carrying rough trays of white and brown bread. Alice took a piece to taste, but it was very dry.
“I don’t think they’ll fight any more to-day,” the King said to Hatta: “go and order the drums to begin.” And Hatta went bounding away like a grasshopper.
For a minute or two Alice stood silent, watching him. Suddenly she brightened up. “Look, look!” she cried, pointing eagerly. “There’s the White Queen running across the country! She came flying out of the wood over yonder—How fast those Queens can run!”
“There’s some enemy after her, no doubt,” the King said, without even looking round. “That wood’s full of them.”
“But aren’t you going to run and help her?” Alice asked, very much surprised at his taking it so quietly.
“No use, no use!” said the King. “She runs so fearfully quick. You might as well try to catch a Bandersnatch! But I’ll make a memorandum about her, if you like—She’s a dear good creature,” he repeated softly to himself, as he opened his memorandum-book. “Do you spell ‘creature’ with a double ‘e’?”
At this moment the Unicorn sauntered by them, with his hands in his pockets. “I had the best of it this time?” he said to the King, just glancing at him as he passed.
“A little—a little,” the King replied, rather nervously. “You shouldn’t have run him through with your horn, you know.”
“It didn’t hurt him,” the Unicorn said carelessly, and he was going on, when his eye happened to fall upon Alice: he turned round rather instantly, and stood for some time looking at her with an air of the deepest disgust.
“What—is—this?” he said at last.
“This is a child!” Haigha replied eagerly, coming in front of Alice to introduce her, and spreading out both his hands towards her in an Anglo-Saxon attitude. “We only found it to-day. It’s as large as life, and twice as natural!”
“I always thought they were fabulous monsters!” said the Unicorn. “Is it alive?”
“It can talk,” said Haigha, solemnly.
The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said “Talk, child.”
Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: “Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! I never saw one alive before!”
“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?”
“Yes, if you like,” said Alice.
“Come, fetch out the plum-cake, old man!” the Unicorn went on, turning from her to the King. “None of your brown bread for me!”
“Certainly—certainly!” the King muttered, and beckoned to Haigha. “Open the bag!” he whispered. “Quick! Not that one—that’s full of hay!”
Haigha took a large cake out of the bag, and gave it to Alice to hold, while he got out a dish and carving-knife. How they all came out of it Alice couldn’t guess. It was just like a conjuring-trick, she thought.
The Lion had joined them while this was going on: he looked very tired and sleepy, and his eyes were half shut. “What’s this!” he said, blinking lazily at Alice, and speaking in a deep hollow tone that sounded like the tolling of a great bell.
“Ah, what is it, now?” the Unicorn cried eagerly. “You’ll never guess! I couldn’t.”
The Lion looked at Alice wearily. “Are you animal—vegetable—or mineral?” he said, yawning at every other word.
“It’s a fabulous monster!” the Unicorn cried out, before Alice could reply.
“Then hand round the plum-cake, Monster,” the Lion said, lying down and putting his chin on his paws. “And sit down, both of you,” (to the King and the Unicorn): “fair play with the cake, you know!”
The King was evidently very uncomfortable at having to sit down between the two great creatures; but there was no other place for him.
“What a fight we might have for the crown, now!” the Unicorn said, looking slyly up at the crown, which the poor King was nearly shaking off his head, he trembled so much.
“I should win easy,” said the Lion.
“I’m not so sure of that,” said the Unicorn.
“Why, I beat you all round the town, you chicken!” the Lion replied angrily, half getting up as he spoke.
Here the King interrupted, to prevent the quarrel going on: he was very nervous, and his voice quite quivered. “All round the town?” he said. “That’s a good long way. Did you go by the old bridge, or the market-place? You get the best view by the old bridge.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” the Lion growled out as he lay down again. “There was too much dust to see anything. What a time the Monster is, cutting up that cake!”
Alice had seated herself on the bank of a little brook, with the great dish on her knees, and was sawing away diligently with the knife. “It’s very provoking!” she said, in reply to the Lion (she was getting quite used to being called “the Monster”). “I’ve cut several slices already, but they always join on again!”
“You don’t know how to manage Looking-glass cakes,” the Unicorn remarked. “Hand it round first, and cut it afterwards.”
This sounded nonsense, but Alice very obediently got up, and carried the dish round, and the cake divided itself into three pieces as she did so. “Now cut it up,” said the Lion, as she returned to her place with the empty dish.
“I say, this isn’t fair!” cried the Unicorn, as Alice sat with the knife in her hand, very much puzzled how to begin. “The Monster has given the Lion twice as much as me!”
“She’s kept none for herself, anyhow,” said the Lion. “Do you like plum-cake, Monster?”
But before Alice could answer him, the drums began.
Where the noise came from, she couldn’t make out: the air seemed full of it, and it rang through and through her head till she felt quite deafened. She started to her feet and sprang across the little brook in her terror,
* * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * *
and had just time to see the Lion and the Unicorn rise to their feet, with angry looks at being interrupted in their feast, before she dropped to her knees, and put her hands over her ears, vainly trying to shut out the dreadful uproar.
“If that doesn’t ‘drum them out of town,’” she thought to herself, “nothing ever will!”
CHAPTER VIII.
“It’s my own Invention”
After a while the noise seemed gradually to die away, till all was dead silence, and Alice lifted up her head in some alarm. There was no one to be seen, and her first thought was that she must have been dreaming about the Lion and the Unicorn and those queer Anglo-Saxon Messengers. However, there was the great dish still lying at her feet, on which she had tried to cut the plum-cake, “So I wasn’t dreaming, after all,” she said to herself, “unless—unless we’re all part of the same dream. Only I do hope it’s my dream, and not the Red King’s! I don’t like belonging to another person’s dream,” she went on in a rather complaining tone: “I’ve a great mind to go and wake him, and see what happens!”
At this moment her thoughts were interrupted by a loud shouting of “Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!” and a Knight dressed in crimson armour came galloping down upon her, brandishing a great club. Just as he reached her, the horse stopped suddenly: “You’re my prisoner!” the Knight cried, as he tumbled off his horse.
Startled as she was, Alice was more frightened for him than for herself at the moment, and watched him with some anxiety as he mounted again. As soon as he was comfortably in the saddle, he began once more “You’re my—” but here another voice broke in “Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!” and Alice looked round in some surprise for the new enemy.
This time it was a White Knight. He drew up at Alice’s side, and tumbled off his horse just as the Red Knight had done: then he got on again, and the two Knights sat and looked at each other for some time without speaking. Alice looked from one to the other in some bewilderment.
“She’s my prisoner, you know!” the Red Knight said at last.
“Yes, but then I came and rescued her!” the White Knight replied.
“Well, we must fight for her, then,” said the Red Knight, as he took up his helmet (which hung from the saddle, and was something the shape of a horse’s head), and put it on.
“You will observe the Rules of Battle, of course?” the White Knight remarked, putting on his helmet too.
“I always do,” said the Red Knight, and they began banging away at each other with such fury that Alice got behind a tree to be out of the way of the blows.
“I wonder, now, what the Rules of Battle are,” she said to herself, as she watched the fight, timidly peeping out from her hiding-place: “one Rule seems to be, that if one Knight hits the other, he knocks him off his horse, and if he misses, he tumbles off himself—and another Rule seems to be that they hold their clubs with their arms, as if they were Punch and Judy—What a noise they make when they tumble! Just like a whole set of fire-irons falling into the fender! And how quiet the horses are! They let them get on and off them just as if they were tables!”
Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not noticed, seemed to be that they always fell on their heads, and the battle ended with their both falling off in this way, side by side: when they got up again, they shook hands, and then the Red Knight mounted and galloped off.
“It was a glorious victory, wasn’t it?” said the White Knight, as he came up panting.
“I don’t know,” Alice said doubtfully. “I don’t want to be anybody’s prisoner. I want to be a Queen.”
“So you will, when you’ve crossed the next brook,” said the White Knight. “I’ll see you safe to the end of the wood—and then I must go back, you know. That’s the end of my move.”
“Thank you very much,” said Alice. “May I help you off with your helmet?” It was evidently more than he could manage by himself; however, she managed to shake him out of it at last.
“Now one can breathe more easily,” said the Knight, putting back his shaggy hair with both hands, and turning his gentle face and large mild eyes to Alice. She thought she had never seen such a strange-looking soldier in all her life.
He was dressed in tin armour, which seemed to fit him very badly, and he had a queer-shaped little deal box fastened across his shoulder, upside-down, and with the lid hanging open. Alice looked at it with great curiosity.
“I see you’re admiring my little box.” the Knight said in a friendly tone. “It’s my own invention—to keep clothes and sandwiches in. You see I carry it upside-down, so that the rain can’t get in.”
“But the things can get out,” Alice gently remarked. “Do you know the lid’s open?”
“I didn’t know it,” the Knight said, a shade of vexation passing over his face. “Then all the things must have fallen out! And the box is no use without them.” He unfastened it as he spoke, and was just going to throw it into the bushes, when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he hung it carefully on a tree. “Can you guess why I did that?” he said to Alice.
Alice shook her head.
“In hopes some bees may make a nest in it—then I should get the honey.”
“But you’ve got a bee-hive—or something like one—fastened to the saddle,” said Alice.
“Yes, it’s a very good bee-hive,” the Knight said in a discontented tone, “one of the best kind. But not a single bee has come near it yet. And the other thing is a mouse-trap. I suppose the mice keep the bees out—or the bees keep the mice out, I don’t know which.”
“I was wondering what the mouse-trap was for,” said Alice. “It isn’t very likely there would be any mice on the horse’s back.”
“Not very likely, perhaps,” said the Knight: “but if they do come, I don’t choose to have them running all about.”
“You see,” he went on after a pause, “it’s as well to be provided for everything. That’s the reason the horse has all those anklets round his feet.”
“But what are they for?” Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity.
“To guard against the bites of sharks,” the Knight replied. “It’s an invention of my own. And now help me on. I’ll go with you to the end of the wood—What’s the dish for?”
“It’s meant for plum-cake,” said Alice.
“We’d better take it with us,” the Knight said. “It’ll come in handy if we find any plum-cake. Help me to get it into this bag.”
This took a very long time to manage, though Alice held the bag open very carefully, because the Knight was so very awkward in putting in the dish: the first two or three times that he tried he fell in himself instead. “It’s rather a tight fit, you see,” he said, as they got it in a last; “There are so many candlesticks in the bag.” And he hung it to the saddle, which was already loaded with bunches of carrots, and fire-irons, and many other things.
“I hope you’ve got your hair well fastened on?” he continued, as they set off.
“Only in the usual way,” Alice said, smiling.
“That’s hardly enough,” he said, anxiously. “You see the wind is so very strong here. It’s as strong as soup.”
“Have you invented a plan for keeping the hair from being blown off?” Alice enquired.
“Not yet,” said the Knight. “But I’ve got a plan for keeping it from falling off.”
“I should like to hear it, very much.”
“First you take an upright stick,” said the Knight. “Then you make your hair creep up it, like a fruit-tree. Now the reason hair falls off is because it hangs down—things never fall upwards, you know. It’s a plan of my own invention. You may try it if you like.”
It didn’t sound a comfortable plan, Alice thought, and for a few minutes she walked on in silence, puzzling over the idea, and every now and then stopping to help the poor Knight, who certainly was not a good rider.
Whenever the horse stopped (which it did very often), he fell off in front; and whenever it went on again (which it generally did rather suddenly), he fell off behind. Otherwise he kept on pretty well, except that he had a habit of now and then falling off sideways; and as he generally did this on the side on which Alice was walking, she soon found that it was the best plan not to walk quite close to the horse.
“I’m afraid you’ve not had much practice in riding,” she ventured to say, as she was helping him up from his fifth tumble.
The Knight looked very much surprised, and a little offended at the remark. “What makes you say that?” he asked, as he scrambled back into the saddle, keeping hold of Alice’s hair with one hand, to save himself from falling over on the other side.
“Because people don’t fall off quite so often, when they’ve had much practice.”
“I’ve had plenty of practice,” the Knight said very gravely: “plenty of practice!”
Alice could think of nothing better to say than “Indeed?” but she said it as heartily as she could. They went on a little way in silence after this, the Knight with his eyes shut, muttering to himself, and Alice watching anxiously for the next tumble.
“The great art of riding,” the Knight suddenly began in a loud voice, waving his right arm as he spoke, “is to keep—” Here the sentence ended as suddenly as it had begun, as the Knight fell heavily on the top of his head exactly in the path where Alice was walking. She was quite frightened this time, and said in an anxious tone, as she picked him up, “I hope no bones are broken?”
“None to speak of,” the Knight said, as if he didn’t mind breaking two or three of them. “The great art of riding, as I was saying, is—to keep your balance properly. Like this, you know—”
He let go the bridle, and stretched out both his arms to show Alice what he meant, and this time he fell flat on his back, right under the horse’s feet.
“Plenty of practice!” he went on repeating, all the time that Alice was getting him on his feet again. “Plenty of practice!”
“It’s too ridiculous!” cried Alice, losing all her patience this time. “You ought to have a wooden horse on wheels, that you ought!”
“Does that kind go smoothly?” the Knight asked in a tone of great interest, clasping his arms round the horse’s neck as he spoke, just in time to save himself from tumbling off again.
“Much more smoothly than a live horse,” Alice said, with a little scream of laughter, in spite of all she could do to prevent it.
“I’ll get one,” the Knight said thoughtfully to himself. “One or two—several.”
There was a short silence after this, and then the Knight went on again. “I’m a great hand at inventing things. Now, I daresay you noticed, that last time you picked me up, that I was looking rather thoughtful?”
“You were a little grave,” said Alice.
“Well, just then I was inventing a new way of getting over a gate—would you like to hear it?”
“Very much indeed,” Alice said politely.
“I’ll tell you how I came to think of it,” said the Knight. “You see, I said to myself, ‘The only difficulty is with the feet: the head is high enough already.’ Now, first I put my head on the top of the gate—then I stand on my head—then the feet are high enough, you see—then I’m over, you see.”
“Yes, I suppose you’d be over when that was done,” Alice said thoughtfully: “but don’t you think it would be rather hard?”
“I haven’t tried it yet,” the Knight said, gravely: “so I can’t tell for certain—but I’m afraid it would be a little hard.”
He looked so vexed at the idea, that Alice changed the subject hastily. “What a curious helmet you’ve got!” she said cheerfully. “Is that your invention too?”
The Knight looked down proudly at his helmet, which hung from the saddle. “Yes,” he said, “but I’ve invented a better one than that—like a sugar loaf. When I used to wear it, if I fell off the horse, it always touched the ground directly. So I had a very little way to fall, you see—But there was the danger of falling into it, to be sure. That happened to me once—and the worst of it was, before I could get out again, the other White Knight came and put it on. He thought it was his own helmet.”
The knight looked so solemn about it that Alice did not dare to laugh. “I’m afraid you must have hurt him,” she said in a trembling voice, “being on the top of his head.”
“I had to kick him, of course,” the Knight said, very seriously. “And then he took the helmet off again—but it took hours and hours to get me out. I was as fast as—as lightning, you know.”
“But that’s a different kind of fastness,” Alice objected.
The Knight shook his head. “It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can assure you!” he said. He raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong into a deep ditch.
Alice ran to the side of the ditch to look for him. She was rather startled by the fall, as for some time he had kept on very well, and she was afraid that he really was hurt this time. However, though she could see nothing but the soles of his feet, she was much relieved to hear that he was talking on in his usual tone. “All kinds of fastness,” he repeated: “but it was careless of him to put another man’s helmet on—with the man in it, too.”
“How can you go on talking so quietly, head downwards?” Alice asked, as she dragged him out by the feet, and laid him in a heap on the bank.
The Knight looked surprised at the question. “What does it matter where my body happens to be?” he said. “My mind goes on working all the same. In fact, the more head downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new things.”
“Now the cleverest thing of the sort that I ever did,” he went on after a pause, “was inventing a new pudding during the meat-course.”
“In time to have it cooked for the next course?” said Alice. “Well, not the next course,” the Knight said in a slow thoughtful tone: “no, certainly not the next course.”
“Then it would have to be the next day. I suppose you wouldn’t have two pudding-courses in one dinner?”
“Well, not the next day,” the Knight repeated as before: “not the next day. In fact,” he went on, holding his head down, and his voice getting lower and lower, “I don’t believe that pudding ever was cooked! In fact, I don’t believe that pudding ever will be cooked! And yet it was a very clever pudding to invent.”
“What did you mean it to be made of?” Alice asked, hoping to cheer him up, for the poor Knight seemed quite low-spirited about it.
“It began with blotting paper,” the Knight answered with a groan.
“That wouldn’t be very nice, I’m afraid—”
“Not very nice alone,” he interrupted, quite eagerly: “but you’ve no idea what a difference it makes mixing it with other things—such as gunpowder and sealing-wax. And here I must leave you.” They had just come to the end of the wood.
Alice could only look puzzled: she was thinking of the pudding.
“You are sad,” the Knight said in an anxious tone: “let me sing you a song to comfort you.”
“Is it very long?” Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
“It’s long,” said the Knight, “but very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it—either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else—”
“Or else what?” said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
“Or else it doesn’t, you know. The name of the song is called ‘Haddocks’ Eyes.’”
“Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?” Alice said, trying to feel interested.
“No, you don’t understand,” the Knight said, looking a little vexed. “That’s what the name is called. The name really is ‘The Aged Aged Man.’”
“Then I ought to have said ‘That’s what the song is called’?” Alice corrected herself.
“No, you oughtn’t: that’s quite another thing! The song is called ‘Ways and Means’: but that’s only what it’s called, you know!”
“Well, what is the song, then?” said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
“I was coming to that,” the Knight said. “The song really is ‘A-sitting On A Gate’: and the tune’s my own invention.”
So saying, he stopped his horse and let the reins fall on its neck: then, slowly beating time with one hand, and with a faint smile lighting up his gentle foolish face, as if he enjoyed the music of his song, he began.
Of all the strange things that Alice saw in her journey Through The Looking-Glass, this was the one that she always remembered most clearly. Years afterwards she could bring the whole scene back again, as if it had been only yesterday—the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight—the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her—the horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet—and the black shadows of the forest behind—all this she took in like a picture, as, with one hand shading her eyes, she leant against a tree, watching the strange pair, and listening, in a half dream, to the melancholy music of the song.
“But the tune isn’t his own invention,” she said to herself: “it’s ‘I give thee all, I can no more.’” She stood and listened very attentively, but no tears came into her eyes.
“I’ll tell thee everything I can;
There’s little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
‘Who are you, aged man?’ I said,
‘and how is it you live?’
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.
He said ‘I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men,’ he said,
‘Who sail on stormy seas;
And that’s the way I get my bread—
A trifle, if you please.’
But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one’s whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried, ‘Come, tell me how you live!’
And thumped him on the head.
His accents mild took up the tale:
He said ‘I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze;
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rolands’ Macassar Oil—
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil.’
But I was thinking of a way
To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
Getting a little fatter.
I shook him well from side to side,
Until his face was blue:
‘Come, tell me how you live,’ I cried,
‘And what it is you do!’
He said ‘I hunt for haddocks’ eyes
Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat-buttons
In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold
Or coin of silvery shine
But for a copper halfpenny,
And that will purchase nine.
‘I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
Or set limed twigs for crabs;
I sometimes search the grassy knolls
For wheels of Hansom-cabs.
And that’s the way’ (he gave a wink)
‘By which I get my wealth—
And very gladly will I drink
Your Honour’s noble health.’
I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
I thanked him much for telling me
The way he got his wealth,
But chiefly for his wish that he
Might drink my noble health.
And now, if e’er by chance I put
My fingers into glue
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe,
Or if I drop upon my toe
A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so,
Of that old man I used to know—
Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow,
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo—
That summer evening, long ago,
A-sitting on a gate.”
As the Knight sang the last words of the ballad, he gathered up the reins, and turned his horse’s head along the road by which they had come. “You’ve only a few yards to go,” he said, “down the hill and over that little brook, and then you’ll be a Queen—But you’ll stay and see me off first?” he added as Alice turned with an eager look in the direction to which he pointed. “I shan’t be long. You’ll wait and wave your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the road? I think it’ll encourage me, you see.”
“Of course I’ll wait,” said Alice: “and thank you very much for coming so far—and for the song—I liked it very much.”
“I hope so,” the Knight said doubtfully: “but you didn’t cry so much as I thought you would.”
So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the forest. “It won’t take long to see him off, I expect,” Alice said to herself, as she stood watching him. “There he goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on again pretty easily—that comes of having so many things hung round the horse—” So she went on talking to herself, as she watched the horse walking leisurely along the road, and the Knight tumbling off, first on one side and then on the other. After the fourth or fifth tumble he reached the turn, and then she waved her handkerchief to him, and waited till he was out of sight.
“I hope it encouraged him,” she said, as she turned to run down the hill: “and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen! How grand it sounds!” A very few steps brought her to the edge of the brook. “The Eighth Square at last!” she cried as she bounded across,
* * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * *
and threw herself down to rest on a lawn as soft as moss, with little flower-beds dotted about it here and there. “Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what is this on my head?” she exclaimed in a tone of dismay, as she put her hands up to something very heavy, and fitted tight all round her head.
“But how can it have got there without my knowing it?” she said to herself, as she lifted it off, and set it on her lap to make out what it could possibly be.
It was a golden crown.
CHAPTER IX.
Queen Alice
“Well, this is grand!” said Alice. “I never expected I should be a Queen so soon—and I’ll tell you what it is, your majesty,” she went on in a severe tone (she was always rather fond of scolding herself), “it’ll never do for you to be lolling about on the grass like that! Queens have to be dignified, you know!”
So she got up and walked about—rather stiffly just at first, as she was afraid that the crown might come off: but she comforted herself with the thought that there was nobody to see her, “and if I really am a Queen,” she said as she sat down again, “I shall be able to manage it quite well in time.”
Everything was happening so oddly that she didn’t feel a bit surprised at finding the Red Queen and the White Queen sitting close to her, one on each side: she would have liked very much to ask them how they came there, but she feared it would not be quite civil. However, there would be no harm, she thought, in asking if the game was over. “Please, would you tell me—” she began, looking timidly at the Red Queen.
“Speak when you’re spoken to!” The Queen sharply interrupted her.
“But if everybody obeyed that rule,” said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, “and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that—”
“Ridiculous!” cried the Queen. “Why, don’t you see, child—” here she broke off with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly changed the subject of the conversation. “What do you mean by ‘If you really are a Queen’? What right have you to call yourself so? You can’t be a Queen, you know, till you’ve passed the proper examination. And the sooner we begin it, the better.”
“I only said ‘if’!” poor Alice pleaded in a piteous tone.
The two Queens looked at each other, and the Red Queen remarked, with a little shudder, “She says she only said ‘if’—”
“But she said a great deal more than that!” the White Queen moaned, wringing her hands. “Oh, ever so much more than that!”
“So you did, you know,” the Red Queen said to Alice. “Always speak the truth—think before you speak—and write it down afterwards.”
“I’m sure I didn’t mean—” Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen interrupted her impatiently.
“That’s just what I complain of! You should have meant! What do you suppose is the use of child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning—and a child’s more important than a joke, I hope. You couldn’t deny that, even if you tried with both hands.”
“I don’t deny things with my hands,” Alice objected.
“Nobody said you did,” said the Red Queen. “I said you couldn’t if you tried.”
“She’s in that state of mind,” said the White Queen, “that she wants to deny something—only she doesn’t know what to deny!”
“A nasty, vicious temper,” the Red Queen remarked; and then there was an uncomfortable silence for a minute or two.
The Red Queen broke the silence by saying to the White Queen, “I invite you to Alice’s dinner-party this afternoon.”
The White Queen smiled feebly, and said “And I invite you.”
“I didn’t know I was to have a party at all,” said Alice; “but if there is to be one, I think I ought to invite the guests.”
“We gave you the opportunity of doing it,” the Red Queen remarked: “but I daresay you’ve not had many lessons in manners yet?”
“Manners are not taught in lessons,” said Alice. “Lessons teach you to do sums, and things of that sort.”
“And you do Addition?” the White Queen asked. “What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?”
“I don’t know,” said Alice. “I lost count.”
“She can’t do Addition,” the Red Queen interrupted. “Can you do Subtraction? Take nine from eight.”
“Nine from eight I can’t, you know,” Alice replied very readily: “but—”
“She can’t do Subtraction,” said the White Queen. “Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife—what’s the answer to that?”
“I suppose—” Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen answered for her. “Bread-and-butter, of course. Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains?”
Alice considered. “The bone wouldn’t remain, of course, if I took it—and the dog wouldn’t remain; it would come to bite me—and I’m sure I shouldn’t remain!”
“Then you think nothing would remain?” said the Red Queen.
“I think that’s the answer.”
“Wrong, as usual,” said the Red Queen: “the dog’s temper would remain.”
“But I don’t see how—”
“Why, look here!” the Red Queen cried. “The dog would lose its temper, wouldn’t it?”
“Perhaps it would,” Alice replied cautiously.
“Then if the dog went away, its temper would remain!” the Queen exclaimed triumphantly.
Alice said, as gravely as she could, “They might go different ways.” But she couldn’t help thinking to herself, “What dreadful nonsense we are talking!”
“She can’t do sums a bit!” the Queens said together, with great emphasis.
“Can you do sums?” Alice said, turning suddenly on the White Queen, for she didn’t like being found fault with so much.
The Queen gasped and shut her eyes. “I can do Addition, if you give me time—but I can’t do Subtraction, under any circumstances!”
“Of course you know your A B C?” said the Red Queen.
“To be sure I do.” said Alice.
“So do I,” the White Queen whispered: “we’ll often say it over together, dear. And I’ll tell you a secret—I can read words of one letter! Isn’t that grand! However, don’t be discouraged. You’ll come to it in time.”
Here the Red Queen began again. “Can you answer useful questions?” she said. “How is bread made?”
“I know that!” Alice cried eagerly. “You take some flour—”
“Where do you pick the flower?” the White Queen asked. “In a garden, or in the hedges?”
“Well, it isn’t picked at all,” Alice explained: “it’s ground—”
“How many acres of ground?” said the White Queen. “You mustn’t leave out so many things.”
“Fan her head!” the Red Queen anxiously interrupted. “She’ll be feverish after so much thinking.” So they set to work and fanned her with bunches of leaves, till she had to beg them to leave off, it blew her hair about so.
“She’s all right again now,” said the Red Queen. “Do you know Languages? What’s the French for fiddle-de-dee?”
“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English,” Alice replied gravely.
“Who ever said it was?” said the Red Queen.
Alice thought she saw a way out of the difficulty this time. “If you’ll tell me what language ‘fiddle-de-dee’ is, I’ll tell you the French for it!” she exclaimed triumphantly.
But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly, and said “Queens never make bargains.”
“I wish Queens never asked questions,” Alice thought to herself.
“Don’t let us quarrel,” the White Queen said in an anxious tone. “What is the cause of lightning?”
“The cause of lightning,” Alice said very decidedly, for she felt quite certain about this, “is the thunder—no, no!” she hastily corrected herself. “I meant the other way.”
“It’s too late to correct it,” said the Red Queen: “when you’ve once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.”
“Which reminds me—” the White Queen said, looking down and nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, “we had such a thunderstorm last Tuesday—I mean one of the last set of Tuesdays, you know.”
Alice was puzzled. “In our country,” she remarked, “there’s only one day at a time.”
The Red Queen said, “That’s a poor thin way of doing things. Now here, we mostly have days and nights two or three at a time, and sometimes in the winter we take as many as five nights together—for warmth, you know.”
“Are five nights warmer than one night, then?” Alice ventured to ask.
“Five times as warm, of course.”
“But they should be five times as cold, by the same rule—”
“Just so!” cried the Red Queen. “Five times as warm, and five times as cold—just as I’m five times as rich as you are, and five times as clever!”
Alice sighed and gave it up. “It’s exactly like a riddle with no answer!” she thought.
“Humpty Dumpty saw it too,” the White Queen went on in a low voice, more as if she were talking to herself. “He came to the door with a corkscrew in his hand—”
“What did he want?” said the Red Queen.
“He said he would come in,” the White Queen went on, “because he was looking for a hippopotamus. Now, as it happened, there wasn’t such a thing in the house, that morning.”
“Is there generally?” Alice asked in an astonished tone.
“Well, only on Thursdays,” said the Queen.
“I know what he came for,” said Alice: “he wanted to punish the fish, because—”
Here the White Queen began again. “It was such a thunderstorm, you can’t think!” (“She never could, you know,” said the Red Queen.) “And part of the roof came off, and ever so much thunder got in—and it went rolling round the room in great lumps—and knocking over the tables and things—till I was so frightened, I couldn’t remember my own name!”
Alice thought to herself, “I never should try to remember my name in the middle of an accident! Where would be the use of it?” but she did not say this aloud, for fear of hurting the poor Queen’s feeling.
“Your Majesty must excuse her,” the Red Queen said to Alice, taking one of the White Queen’s hands in her own, and gently stroking it: “she means well, but she can’t help saying foolish things, as a general rule.”
The White Queen looked timidly at Alice, who felt she ought to say something kind, but really couldn’t think of anything at the moment.
“She never was really well brought up,” the Red Queen went on: “but it’s amazing how good-tempered she is! Pat her on the head, and see how pleased she’ll be!” But this was more than Alice had courage to do.
“A little kindness—and putting her hair in papers—would do wonders with her—”
The White Queen gave a deep sigh, and laid her head on Alice’s shoulder. “I am so sleepy?” she moaned.
“She’s tired, poor thing!” said the Red Queen. “Smooth her hair—lend her your nightcap—and sing her a soothing lullaby.”
“I haven’t got a nightcap with me,” said Alice, as she tried to obey the first direction: “and I don’t know any soothing lullabies.”
“I must do it myself, then,” said the Red Queen, and she began:
“Hush-a-by lady, in Alice’s lap!
Till the feast’s ready, we’ve time for a nap:
When the feast’s over, we’ll go to the ball—
Red Queen, and White Queen, and Alice, and all!
“And now you know the words,” she added, as she put her head down on Alice’s other shoulder, “just sing it through to me. I’m getting sleepy, too.” In another moment both Queens were fast asleep, and snoring loud.
“What am I to do?” exclaimed Alice, looking about in great perplexity, as first one round head, and then the other, rolled down from her shoulder, and lay like a heavy lump in her lap. “I don’t think it ever happened before, that any one had to take care of two Queens asleep at once! No, not in all the History of England—it couldn’t, you know, because there never was more than one Queen at a time. Do wake up, you heavy things!” she went on in an impatient tone; but there was no answer but a gentle snoring.
The snoring got more distinct every minute, and sounded more like a tune: at last she could even make out the words, and she listened so eagerly that, when the two great heads vanished from her lap, she hardly missed them.
She was standing before an arched doorway over which were the words QUEEN ALICE in large letters, and on each side of the arch there was a bell-handle; one was marked “Visitors’ Bell,” and the other “Servants’ Bell.”
“I’ll wait till the song’s over,” thought Alice, “and then I’ll ring—the—which bell must I ring?” she went on, very much puzzled by the names. “I’m not a visitor, and I’m not a servant. There ought to be one marked ‘Queen,’ you know—”
Just then the door opened a little way, and a creature with a long beak put its head out for a moment and said “No admittance till the week after next!” and shut the door again with a bang.
Alice knocked and rang in vain for a long time, but at last, a very old Frog, who was sitting under a tree, got up and hobbled slowly towards her: he was dressed in bright yellow, and had enormous boots on.
“What is it, now?” the Frog said in a deep hoarse whisper.
Alice turned round, ready to find fault with anybody. “Where’s the servant whose business it is to answer the door?” she began angrily.
“Which door?” said the Frog.
Alice almost stamped with irritation at the slow drawl in which he spoke. “This door, of course!”
The Frog looked at the door with his large dull eyes for a minute: then he went nearer and rubbed it with his thumb, as if he were trying whether the paint would come off; then he looked at Alice.
“To answer the door?” he said. “What’s it been asking of?” He was so hoarse that Alice could scarcely hear him.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“I talks English, doesn’t I?” the Frog went on. “Or are you deaf? What did it ask you?”
“Nothing!” Alice said impatiently. “I’ve been knocking at it!”
“Shouldn’t do that—shouldn’t do that—” the Frog muttered. “Vexes it, you know.” Then he went up and gave the door a kick with one of his great feet. “You let it alone,” he panted out, as he hobbled back to his tree, “and it’ll let you alone, you know.”
At this moment the door was flung open, and a shrill voice was heard singing:
“To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said,
‘I’ve a sceptre in hand, I’ve a crown on my head;
Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be,
Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me.’”
And hundreds of voices joined in the chorus:
“Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea—
And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three!”
Then followed a confused noise of cheering, and Alice thought to herself, “Thirty times three makes ninety. I wonder if any one’s counting?” In a minute there was silence again, and the same shrill voice sang another verse;
“‘O Looking-Glass creatures,’ quoth Alice, ‘draw near!
’Tis an honour to see me, a favour to hear:
’Tis a privilege high to have dinner and tea
Along with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!’”
Then came the chorus again:—
“Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink,
Or anything else that is pleasant to drink:
Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the wine—
And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-nine!”
“Ninety times nine!” Alice repeated in despair, “Oh, that’ll never be done! I’d better go in at once—” and there was a dead silence the moment she appeared.
Alice glanced nervously along the table, as she walked up the large hall, and noticed that there were about fifty guests, of all kinds: some were animals, some birds, and there were even a few flowers among them. “I’m glad they’ve come without waiting to be asked,” she thought: “I should never have known who were the right people to invite!”
There were three chairs at the head of the table; the Red and White Queens had already taken two of them, but the middle one was empty. Alice sat down in it, rather uncomfortable in the silence, and longing for some one to speak.
At last the Red Queen began. “You’ve missed the soup and fish,” she said. “Put on the joint!” And the waiters set a leg of mutton before Alice, who looked at it rather anxiously, as she had never had to carve a joint before.
“You look a little shy; let me introduce you to that leg of mutton,” said the Red Queen. “Alice—Mutton; Mutton—Alice.” The leg of mutton got up in the dish and made a little bow to Alice; and Alice returned the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened or amused.
“May I give you a slice?” she said, taking up the knife and fork, and looking from one Queen to the other.
“Certainly not,” the Red Queen said, very decidedly: “it isn’t etiquette to cut any one you’ve been introduced to. Remove the joint!” And the waiters carried it off, and brought a large plum-pudding in its place.
“I won’t be introduced to the pudding, please,” Alice said rather hastily, “or we shall get no dinner at all. May I give you some?”
But the Red Queen looked sulky, and growled “Pudding—Alice; Alice—Pudding. Remove the pudding!” and the waiters took it away so quickly that Alice couldn’t return its bow.
However, she didn’t see why the Red Queen should be the only one to give orders, so, as an experiment, she called out “Waiter! Bring back the pudding!” and there it was again in a moment like a conjuring-trick. It was so large that she couldn’t help feeling a little shy with it, as she had been with the mutton; however, she conquered her shyness by a great effort and cut a slice and handed it to the Red Queen.
“What impertinence!” said the Pudding. “I wonder how you’d like it, if I were to cut a slice out of you, you creature!”
It spoke in a thick, suety sort of voice, and Alice hadn’t a word to say in reply: she could only sit and look at it and gasp.
“Make a remark,” said the Red Queen: “it’s ridiculous to leave all the conversation to the pudding!”
“Do you know, I’ve had such a quantity of poetry repeated to me to-day,” Alice began, a little frightened at finding that, the moment she opened her lips, there was dead silence, and all eyes were fixed upon her; “and it’s a very curious thing, I think—every poem was about fishes in some way. Do you know why they’re so fond of fishes, all about here?”
She spoke to the Red Queen, whose answer was a little wide of the mark. “As to fishes,” she said, very slowly and solemnly, putting her mouth close to Alice’s ear, “her White Majesty knows a lovely riddle—all in poetry—all about fishes. Shall she repeat it?”
“Her Red Majesty’s very kind to mention it,” the White Queen murmured into Alice’s other ear, in a voice like the cooing of a pigeon. “It would be such a treat! May I?”
“Please do,” Alice said very politely.
The White Queen laughed with delight, and stroked Alice’s cheek. Then she began:
“‘First, the fish must be caught.’
That is easy: a baby, I think, could have caught it.
‘Next, the fish must be bought.’
That is easy: a penny, I think, would have bought it.
‘Now cook me the fish!’
That is easy, and will not take more than a minute.
‘Let it lie in a dish!’
That is easy, because it already is in it.
‘Bring it here! Let me sup!’
It is easy to set such a dish on the table.
‘Take the dish-cover up!’
Ah, that is so hard that I fear I’m unable!
For it holds it like glue—
Holds the lid to the dish, while it lies in the middle:
Which is easiest to do,
Un-dish-cover the fish, or dishcover the riddle?”
“Take a minute to think about it, and then guess,” said the Red Queen. “Meanwhile, we’ll drink your health—Queen Alice’s health!” she screamed at the top of her voice, and all the guests began drinking it directly, and very queerly they managed it: some of them put their glasses upon their heads like extinguishers, and drank all that trickled down their faces—others upset the decanters, and drank the wine as it ran off the edges of the table—and three of them (who looked like kangaroos) scrambled into the dish of roast mutton, and began eagerly lapping up the gravy, “just like pigs in a trough!” thought Alice.
“You ought to return thanks in a neat speech,” the Red Queen said, frowning at Alice as she spoke.
“We must support you, you know,” the White Queen whispered, as Alice got up to do it, very obediently, but a little frightened.
“Thank you very much,” she whispered in reply, “but I can do quite well without.”
“That wouldn’t be at all the thing,” the Red Queen said very decidedly: so Alice tried to submit to it with a good grace.
(“And they did push so!” she said afterwards, when she was telling her sister the history of the feast. “You would have thought they wanted to squeeze me flat!”)
In fact it was rather difficult for her to keep in her place while she made her speech: the two Queens pushed her so, one on each side, that they nearly lifted her up into the air: “I rise to return thanks—” Alice began: and she really did rise as she spoke, several inches; but she got hold of the edge of the table, and managed to pull herself down again.
“Take care of yourself!” screamed the White Queen, seizing Alice’s hair with both her hands. “Something’s going to happen!”
And then (as Alice afterwards described it) all sorts of things happened in a moment. The candles all grew up to the ceiling, looking something like a bed of rushes with fireworks at the top. As to the bottles, they each took a pair of plates, which they hastily fitted on as wings, and so, with forks for legs, went fluttering about in all directions: “and very like birds they look,” Alice thought to herself, as well as she could in the dreadful confusion that was beginning.
At this moment she heard a hoarse laugh at her side, and turned to see what was the matter with the White Queen; but, instead of the Queen, there was the leg of mutton sitting in the chair. “Here I am!” cried a voice from the soup tureen, and Alice turned again, just in time to see the Queen’s broad good-natured face grinning at her for a moment over the edge of the tureen, before she disappeared into the soup.
There was not a moment to be lost. Already several of the guests were lying down in the dishes, and the soup ladle was walking up the table towards Alice’s chair, and beckoning to her impatiently to get out of its way.
“I can’t stand this any longer!” she cried as she jumped up and seized the table-cloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor.
“And as for you,” she went on, turning fiercely upon the Red Queen, whom she considered as the cause of all the mischief—but the Queen was no longer at her side—she had suddenly dwindled down to the size of a little doll, and was now on the table, merrily running round and round after her own shawl, which was trailing behind her.
At any other time, Alice would have felt surprised at this, but she was far too much excited to be surprised at anything now. “As for you,” she repeated, catching hold of the little creature in the very act of jumping over a bottle which had just lighted upon the table, “I’ll shake you into a kitten, that I will!”
CHAPTER X.
Shaking
She took her off the table as she spoke, and shook her backwards and forwards with all her might.
The Red Queen made no resistance whatever; only her face grew very small, and her eyes got large and green: and still, as Alice went on shaking her, she kept on growing shorter—and fatter—and softer—and rounder—and—
CHAPTER XI.
Waking
—and it really was a kitten, after all.
CHAPTER XII.
Which Dreamed it?
“Your majesty shouldn’t purr so loud,” Alice said, rubbing her eyes, and addressing the kitten, respectfully, yet with some severity. “You woke me out of oh! such a nice dream! And you’ve been along with me, Kitty—all through the Looking-Glass world. Did you know it, dear?”
It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them, they always purr. “If they would only purr for ‘yes’ and mew for ‘no,’ or any rule of that sort,” she had said, “so that one could keep up a conversation! But how can you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?”
On this occasion the kitten only purred: and it was impossible to guess whether it meant “yes” or “no.”
So Alice hunted among the chessmen on the table till she had found the Red Queen: then she went down on her knees on the hearth-rug, and put the kitten and the Queen to look at each other. “Now, Kitty!” she cried, clapping her hands triumphantly. “Confess that was what you turned into!”
(“But it wouldn’t look at it,” she said, when she was explaining the thing afterwards to her sister: “it turned away its head, and pretended not to see it: but it looked a little ashamed of itself, so I think it must have been the Red Queen.”)
“Sit up a little more stiffly, dear!” Alice cried with a merry laugh. “And curtsey while you’re thinking what to—what to purr. It saves time, remember!” And she caught it up and gave it one little kiss, “just in honour of having been a Red Queen.”
“Snowdrop, my pet!” she went on, looking over her shoulder at the White Kitten, which was still patiently undergoing its toilet, “when will Dinah have finished with your White Majesty, I wonder? That must be the reason you were so untidy in my dream—Dinah! do you know that you’re scrubbing a White Queen? Really, it’s most disrespectful of you!
“And what did Dinah turn to, I wonder?” she prattled on, as she settled comfortably down, with one elbow in the rug, and her chin in her hand, to watch the kittens. “Tell me, Dinah, did you turn to Humpty Dumpty? I think you did—however, you’d better not mention it to your friends just yet, for I’m not sure.
“By the way, Kitty, if only you’d been really with me in my dream, there was one thing you would have enjoyed—I had such a quantity of poetry said to me, all about fishes! To-morrow morning you shall have a real treat. All the time you’re eating your breakfast, I’ll repeat ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ to you; and then you can make believe it’s oysters, dear!
“Now, Kitty, let’s consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question, my dear, and you should not go on licking your paw like that—as if Dinah hadn’t washed you this morning! You see, Kitty, it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course—but then I was part of his dream, too! Was it the Red King, Kitty? You were his wife, my dear, so you ought to know—Oh, Kitty, do help to settle it! I’m sure your paw can wait!” But the provoking kitten only began on the other paw, and pretended it hadn’t heard the question.
Which do you think it was?
A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July—
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear—
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die.
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream—
Lingering in the golden gleam—
Life, what is it but a dream?
THE ENDTitle: Winnie-the-Pooh
Author: A. A. Milne
Illustrator: Ernest H. Shepard
Release Date: January 3, 2022 [eBook #67098]
[Most recently updated: October 12, 2022]
Language: English
Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan, Iona Vaughan, David T. Jones and the
online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at
http://www.pgdpcanada.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINNIE-THE-POOH ***
WINNIE-THE-POOH
_BY A. A. MILNE_
_JUVENILES_
When We Were Very Young
"_The best book of verses for children_ _ever written._"--A. EDWARD
NEWTON in _The Atlantic Monthly_.
Fourteen Songs from When We Were Very Young
Words by A. A. Milne. Music by H. Fraser-Simson. Decorations by
E. H. Shepard.
The King's Breakfast
Words by A. A. Milne. Music by H. Fraser-Simson. Decorations by
E. H. Shepard
_ESSAYS_
Not That It Matters
The Sunny Side
If I May
_MYSTERY STORY_
The Red House Mystery
WINNIE-THE-POOH
BY A. A. MILNE
McCLELLAND & STEWART, LTD.
PUBLISHERS - - TORONTO
Copyright, Canada, 1926
By McClelland & Stewart, Limited
Publishers, Toronto
First Printing, October, 1926
Second " July, 1927
Third " December, 1928
Fourth " December, 1929
Fifth " March, 1931
Printed in Canada
TO HER
HAND IN HAND WE COME
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN AND I
TO LAY THIS BOOK IN YOUR LAP.
SAY YOU'RE SURPRISED?
SAY YOU LIKE IT?
SAY IT'S JUST WHAT YOU WANTED?
BECAUSE IT'S YOURS----
BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU.
INTRODUCTION
If you happen to have read another book about Christopher Robin, you may
remember that he once had a swan (or the swan had Christopher Robin, I
don't know which) and that he used to call this swan Pooh. That was a
long time ago, and when we said good-bye, we took the name with us, as
we didn't think the swan would want it any more. Well, when Edward Bear
said that he would like an exciting name all to himself, Christopher
Robin said at once, without stopping to think, that he was
Winnie-the-Pooh. And he was. So, as I have explained the Pooh part, I
will now explain the rest of it.
You can't be in London for long without going to the Zoo. There are some
people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as
quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called
WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the
most, and stay there. So when Christopher Robin goes to the Zoo, he goes
to where the Polar Bears are, and he whispers something to the third
keeper from the left, and doors are unlocked, and we wander through dark
passages and up steep stairs, until at last we come to the special cage,
and the cage is opened, and out trots something brown and furry, and
with a happy cry of "Oh, Bear!" Christopher Robin rushes into its arms.
Now this bear's name is Winnie, which shows what a good name for bears
it is, but the funny thing is that we can't remember whether Winnie is
called after Pooh, or Pooh after Winnie. We did know once, but we have
forgotten....
I had written as far as this when Piglet looked up and said in his
squeaky voice, "What about _Me_?" "My dear Piglet," I said, "the whole
book is about you." "So it is about Pooh," he squeaked. You see what it
is. He is jealous because he thinks Pooh is having a Grand Introduction
all to himself. Pooh is the favourite, of course, there's no denying it,
but Piglet comes in for a good many things which Pooh misses; because
you can't take Pooh to school without everybody knowing it, but Piglet
is so small that he slips into a pocket, where it is very comforting to
feel him when you are not quite sure whether twice seven is twelve or
twenty-two. Sometimes he slips out and has a good look in the ink-pot,
and in this way he has got more education than Pooh, but Pooh doesn't
mind. Some have brains, and some haven't, he says, and there it is.
And now all the others are saying, "What about _Us_?" So perhaps the
best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the
book.
A. A. M.
CONTENTS
I. IN WHICH WE ARE INTRODUCED TO WINNIE-THE-POOH AND SOME
BEES, AND THE STORIES BEGIN
II. IN WHICH POOH GOES VISITING AND GETS INTO A TIGHT PLACE
III. IN WHICH POOH AND PIGLET GO HUNTING AND NEARLY CATCH A
WOOZLE
IV. IN WHICH EEYORE LOSES A TAIL AND POOH FINDS ONE
V. IN WHICH PIGLET MEETS A HEFFALUMP
VI. IN WHICH EEYORE HAS A BIRTHDAY AND GETS TWO PRESENTS
VII. IN WHICH KANGA AND BABY ROO COME TO THE FOREST, AND
PIGLET HAS A BATH
VIII. IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN LEADS AN EXPOTITION TO THE
NORTH POLE
IX. IN WHICH PIGLET IS ENTIRELY SURROUNDED BY WATER
X. IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN GIVES A POOH PARTY, AND WE SAY
GOOD-BYE
WINNIE-THE-POOH
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH WE ARE INTRODUCED TO
WINNIE-THE-POOH AND SOME BEES,
AND THE STORIES BEGIN
Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the
back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows,
the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there
really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and
think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't. Anyhow, here he
is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh.
When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, "But
I thought he was a boy?"
"So did I," said Christopher Robin.
"Then you can't call him Winnie?"
"I don't."
"But you said----"
"He's Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don't you know what '_ther_' means?"
"Ah, yes, now I do," I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it
is all the explanation you are going to get.
Sometimes Winnie-the-Pooh likes a game of some sort when he comes
downstairs, and sometimes he likes to sit quietly in front of the fire
and listen to a story. This evening----
"What about a story?" said Christopher Robin.
"_What_ about a story?" I said.
"Could you very sweetly tell Winnie-the-Pooh one?"
"I suppose I could," I said. "What sort of stories does he like?"
"About himself. Because he's _that_ sort of Bear."
"Oh, I see."
"So could you very sweetly?"
"I'll try," I said.
So I tried.
* * * * *
Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday,
Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of
Sanders.
(_"What does 'under the name' mean?" asked Christopher Robin._
"_It means he had the name over the door in gold letters, and lived
under it._"
_"Winnie-the-Pooh wasn't quite sure," said Christopher Robin._
_"Now I am," said a growly voice._
_"Then I will go on," said I._)
One day when he was out walking, he came to an open place in the middle
of the forest, and in the middle of this place was a large oak-tree,
and, from the top of the tree, there came a loud buzzing-noise.
Winnie-the-Pooh sat down at the foot of the tree, put his head between
his paws and began to think.
First of all he said to himself: "That buzzing-noise means something.
You don't get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing,
without its meaning something. If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's
making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise
that _I_ know of is because you're a bee."
Then he thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason for
being a bee that I know of is making honey."
And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason for making honey is
so as _I_ can eat it." So he began to climb the tree.
He climbed and he climbed and he climbed, and as he climbed he sang a
little song to himself. It went like this:
Isn't it funny
How a bear likes honey?
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
I wonder why he does?
Then he climbed a little further ... and a little further ... and
then just a little further. By that time he had thought of another song.
It's a very funny thought that, if Bears were Bees,
They'd build their nests at the _bottom_ of trees.
And that being so (if the Bees were Bears),
We shouldn't have to climb up all these stairs.
He was getting rather tired by this time, so that is why he sang a
Complaining Song. He was nearly there now, and if he just stood on that
branch ...
_Crack!_
"Oh, help!" said Pooh, as he dropped ten feet on the branch below him.
"If only I hadn't----" he said, as he bounced twenty feet on to the next
branch.
"You see, what I _meant_ to do," he explained, as he turned
head-over-heels, and crashed on to another branch thirty feet below,
"what I _meant_ to do----"
"Of course, it _was_ rather----" he admitted, as he slithered very
quickly through the next six branches.
"It all comes, I suppose," he decided, as he said good-bye to the last
branch, spun round three times, and flew gracefully into a gorse-bush,
"it all comes of _liking_ honey so much. Oh, help!"
He crawled out of the gorse-bush, brushed the prickles from his nose,
and began to think again. And the first person he thought of was
Christopher Robin.
(_"Was that me?" said Christopher Robin in an awed voice, hardly daring
to believe it._
"_That was you._"
_Christopher Robin said nothing, but his eyes got larger and larger, and
his face got pinker and pinker._)
So Winnie-the-Pooh went round to his friend Christopher Robin, who lived
behind a green door in another part of the forest.
"Good morning, Christopher Robin," he said.
"Good morning, Winnie-_ther_-Pooh," said you.
"I wonder if you've got such a thing as a balloon about you?"
"A balloon?"
"Yes, I just said to myself coming along: 'I wonder if Christopher Robin
has such a thing as a balloon about him?' I just said it to myself,
thinking of balloons, and wondering."
"What do you want a balloon for?" you said.
Winnie-the-Pooh looked round to see that nobody was listening, put his
paw to his mouth, and said in a deep whisper: "_Honey!_"
"But you don't get honey with balloons!"
"_I_ do," said Pooh.
Well, it just happened that you had been to a party the day before at
the house of your friend Piglet, and you had balloons at the party. You
had had a big green balloon; and one of Rabbit's relations had had a big
blue one, and had left it behind, being really too young to go to a
party at all; and so you had brought the green one _and_ the blue one
home with you.
"Which one would you like?" you asked Pooh.
He put his head between his paws and thought very carefully.
"It's like this," he said. "When you go after honey with a balloon, the
great thing is not to let the bees know you're coming. Now, if you have
a green balloon, they might think you were only part of the tree, and
not notice you, and, if you have a blue balloon, they might think you
were only part of the sky, and not notice you, and the question is:
Which is most likely?"
"Wouldn't they notice _you_ underneath the balloon?" you asked.
"They might or they might not," said Winnie-the-Pooh. "You never can
tell with bees." He thought for a moment and said: "I shall try to look
like a small black cloud. That will deceive them."
"Then you had better have the blue balloon," you said; and so it was
decided.
Well, you both went out with the blue balloon, and you took your gun
with you, just in case, as you always did, and Winnie-the-Pooh went to a
very muddy place that he knew of, and rolled and rolled until he was
black all over; and then, when the balloon was blown up as big as big,
and you and Pooh were both holding on to the string, you let go
suddenly, and Pooh Bear floated gracefully up into the sky, and stayed
there--level with the top of the tree and about twenty feet away from
it.
"Hooray!" you shouted.
"Isn't that fine?" shouted Winnie-the-Pooh down to you. "What do I look
like?"
"You look like a Bear holding on to a balloon," you said.
"Not," said Pooh anxiously, "--not like a small black cloud in a blue
sky?"
"Not very much."
"Ah, well, perhaps from up here it looks different. And, as I say, you
never can tell with bees."
There was no wind to blow him nearer to the tree, so there he stayed. He
could see the honey, he could smell the honey, but he couldn't quite
reach the honey.
After a little while he called down to you.
"Christopher Robin!" he said in a loud whisper.
"Hallo!"
"I think the bees _suspect_ something!"
"What sort of thing?"
"I don't know. But something tells me that they're _suspicious_!"
"Perhaps they think that you're after their honey."
"It may be that. You never can tell with bees."
There was another little silence, and then he called down to you again.
"Christopher Robin!"
"Yes?"
"Have you an umbrella in your house?"
"I think so."
"I wish you would bring it out here, and walk up and down with it, and
look up at me every now and then, and say 'Tut-tut, it looks like rain.'
I think, if you did that, it would help the deception which we are
practising on these bees."
Well, you laughed to yourself, "Silly old Bear!" but you didn't say it
aloud because you were so fond of him, and you went home for your
umbrella.
"Oh, there you are!" called down Winnie-the-Pooh, as soon as you got
back to the tree. "I was beginning to get anxious. I have discovered
that the bees are now definitely Suspicious."
"Shall I put my umbrella up?" you said.
"Yes, but wait a moment. We must be practical. The important bee to
deceive is the Queen Bee. Can you see which is the Queen Bee from down
there?"
"No."
"A pity. Well, now, if you walk up and down with your umbrella, saying,
'Tut-tut, it looks like rain,' I shall do what I can by singing a little
Cloud Song, such as a cloud might sing.... Go!"
So, while you walked up and down and wondered if it would rain,
Winnie-the-Pooh sang this song:
How sweet to be a Cloud
Floating in the Blue!
Every little cloud
_Always_ sings aloud.
"How sweet to be a Cloud
Floating in the Blue!"
It makes him very proud
To be a little cloud.
The bees were still buzzing as suspiciously as ever. Some of them,
indeed, left their nests and flew all round the cloud as it began the
second verse of this song, and one bee sat down on the nose of the cloud
for a moment, and then got up again.
"Christopher--_ow!_--Robin," called out the cloud.
"Yes?"
"I have just been thinking, and I have come to a very important
decision. _These are the wrong sort of bees._"
"Are they?"
"Quite the wrong sort. So I should think they would make the wrong sort
of honey, shouldn't you?"
"Would they?"
"Yes. So I think I shall come down."
"How?" asked you.
Winnie-the-Pooh hadn't thought about this. If he let go of the string,
he would fall--_bump_--and he didn't like the idea of that. So he
thought for a long time, and then he said:
"Christopher Robin, you must shoot the balloon with your gun. Have you
got your gun?"
"Of course I have," you said. "But if I do that, it will spoil the
balloon," you said.
"But if you _don't_," said Pooh, "I shall have to let go, and that would
spoil _me_."
When he put it like this, you saw how it was, and you aimed very
carefully at the balloon, and fired.
"_Ow!_" said Pooh.
"Did I miss?" you asked.
"You didn't exactly _miss_," said Pooh, "but you missed the _balloon_."
"I'm so sorry," you said, and you fired again, and this time you hit the
balloon, and the air came slowly out, and Winnie-the-Pooh floated down
to the ground.
But his arms were so stiff from holding on to the string of the balloon
all that time that they stayed up straight in the air for more than a
week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it
off. And I think--but I am not sure--that _that_ is why he was always
called Pooh.
* * * * *
"Is that the end of the story?" asked Christopher Robin.
"That's the end of that one. There are others."
"About Pooh and Me?"
"And Piglet and Rabbit and all of you. Don't you remember?"
"I do remember, and then when I try to remember, I forget."
"That day when Pooh and Piglet tried to catch the Heffalump----"
"They didn't catch it, did they?"
"No."
"Pooh couldn't, because he hasn't any brain. Did _I_ catch it?"
"Well, that comes into the story."
Christopher Robin nodded.
"I do remember," he said, "only Pooh doesn't very well, so that's why he
likes having it told to him again. Because then it's a real story and
not just a remembering."
"That's just how _I_ feel," I said.
Christopher Robin gave a deep sigh, picked his Bear up by the leg, and
walked off to the door, trailing Pooh behind him. At the door he turned
and said, "Coming to see me have my bath?"
"I might," I said.
"I didn't hurt him when I shot him, did I?"
"Not a bit."
He nodded and went out, and in a moment I heard Winnie-the-Pooh--_bump,
bump, bump_--going up the stairs behind him.
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH POOH GOES VISITING AND
GETS INTO A TIGHT PLACE
Edward Bear, known to his friends as Winnie-the-Pooh, or Pooh for
short, was walking through the forest one day, humming proudly to
himself. He had made up a little hum that very morning, as he was doing
his Stoutness Exercises in front of the glass: _Tra-la-la, tra-la-la_,
as he stretched up as high as he could go, and then _Tra-la-la,
tra-la--oh, help!--la_, as he tried to reach his toes. After breakfast
he had said it over and over to himself until he had learnt it off by
heart, and now he was humming it right through, properly. It went like
this:
_Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,_
_Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,_
_Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum._
_Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,_
_Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,_
_Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um._
Well, he was humming this hum to himself, and walking along gaily,
wondering what everybody else was doing, and what it felt like, being
somebody else, when suddenly he came to a sandy bank, and in the bank
was a large hole.
"Aha!" said Pooh. (_Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum._) "If I know anything about
anything, that hole means Rabbit," he said, "and Rabbit means Company,"
he said, "and Company means Food and Listening-to-Me-Humming and such
like. _Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um._"
So he bent down, put his head into the hole, and called out:
"Is anybody at home?"
There was a sudden scuffling noise from inside the hole, and then
silence.
"What I said was, 'Is anybody at home?'" called out Pooh very loudly.
"No!" said a voice; and then added, "You needn't shout so loud. I heard
you quite well the first time."
"Bother!" said Pooh. "Isn't there anybody here at all?"
"Nobody."
Winnie-the-Pooh took his head out of the hole, and thought for a little,
and he thought to himself, "There must be somebody there, because
somebody must have _said_ 'Nobody.'" So he put his head back in the
hole, and said:
"Hallo, Rabbit, isn't that you?"
"No," said Rabbit, in a different sort of voice this time.
"But isn't that Rabbit's voice?"
"I don't _think_ so," said Rabbit. "It isn't _meant_ to be."
"Oh!" said Pooh.
He took his head out of the hole, and had another think, and then he put
it back, and said:
"Well, could you very kindly tell me where Rabbit is?"
"He has gone to see his friend Pooh Bear, who is a great friend of his."
"But this _is_ Me!" said Bear, very much surprised.
"What sort of Me?"
"Pooh Bear."
"Are you sure?" said Rabbit, still more surprised.
"Quite, quite sure," said Pooh.
"Oh, well, then, come in."
So Pooh pushed and pushed and pushed his way through the hole, and at
last he got in.
"You were quite right," said Rabbit, looking at him all over. "It _is_
you. Glad to see you."
"Who did you think it was?"
"Well, I wasn't sure. You know how it is in the Forest. One can't have
_anybody_ coming into one's house. One has to be _careful_. What about a
mouthful of something?"
Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning,
and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and
when Rabbit said, "Honey or condensed milk with your bread?" he was so
excited that he said, "Both," and then, so as not to seem greedy, he
added, "But don't bother about the bread, please." And for a long time
after that he said nothing ... until at last, humming to himself in a
rather sticky voice, he got up, shook Rabbit lovingly by the paw, and
said that he must be going on.
"Must you?" said Rabbit politely.
"Well," said Pooh, "I could stay a little longer if it--if you----" and
he tried very hard to look in the direction of the larder.
"As a matter of fact," said Rabbit, "I was going out myself directly."
"Oh, well, then, I'll be going on. Good-bye."
"Well, good-bye, if you're sure you won't have any more."
"_Is_ there any more?" asked Pooh quickly.
Rabbit took the covers off the dishes, and said, "No, there wasn't."
"I thought not," said Pooh, nodding to himself. "Well, good-bye. I must
be going on."
So he started to climb out of the hole. He pulled with his front paws,
and pushed with his back paws, and in a little while his nose was out in
the open again ... and then his ears ... and then his front paws ...
and then his shoulders ... and then----
"Oh, help!" said Pooh. "I'd better go back."
"Oh, bother!" said Pooh. "I shall have to go on."
"I can't do either!" said Pooh. "Oh, help _and_ bother!"
Now by this time Rabbit wanted to go for a walk too, and finding the
front door full, he went out by the back door, and came round to Pooh,
and looked at him.
"Hallo, are you stuck?" he asked.
"N-no," said Pooh carelessly. "Just resting and thinking and humming to
myself."
"Here, give us a paw."
Pooh Bear stretched out a paw, and Rabbit pulled and pulled and
pulled....
"_Ow!_" cried Pooh. "You're hurting!"
"The fact is," said Rabbit, "you're stuck."
"It all comes," said Pooh crossly, "of not having front doors big
enough."
"It all comes," said Rabbit sternly, "of eating too much. I thought at
the time," said Rabbit, "only I didn't like to say anything," said
Rabbit, "that one of us was eating too much," said Rabbit, "and I knew
if wasn't _me_," he said. "Well, well, I shall go and fetch Christopher
Robin."
Christopher Robin lived at the other end of the Forest, and when he came
back with Rabbit, and saw the front half of Pooh, he said, "Silly old
Bear," in such a loving voice that everybody felt quite hopeful again.
"I was just beginning to think," said Bear, sniffing slightly, "that
Rabbit might never be able to use his front door again. And I should
_hate_ that," he said.
"So should I," said Rabbit.
"Use his front door again?" said Christopher Robin. "Of course he'll use
his front door again."
"Good," said Rabbit.
"If we can't pull you out, Pooh, we might push you back."
Rabbit scratched his whiskers thoughtfully, and pointed out that, when
once Pooh was pushed back, he was back, and of course nobody was more
glad to see Pooh than _he_ was, still there it was, some lived in trees
and some lived underground, and----
"You mean I'd _never_ get out?" said Pooh.
"I mean," said Rabbit, "that having got _so_ far, it seems a pity to
waste it."
Christopher Robin nodded.
"Then there's only one thing to be done," he said. "We shall have to
wait for you to get thin again."
"How long does getting thin take?" asked Pooh anxiously.
"About a week, I should think."
"But I can't stay here for a _week_!"
"You can _stay_ here all right, silly old Bear. It's getting you out
which is so difficult."
"We'll read to you," said Rabbit cheerfully. "And I hope it won't snow,"
he added. "And I say, old fellow, you're taking up a good deal of room
in my house--_do_ you mind if I use your back legs as a towel-horse?
Because, I mean, there they are--doing nothing--and it would be very
convenient just to hang the towels on them."
"A week!" said Pooh gloomily. "_What about meals?_"
"I'm afraid no meals," said Christopher Robin, "because of getting thin
quicker. But we _will_ read to you."
Bear began to sigh, and then found he couldn't because he was so tightly
stuck; and a tear rolled down his eye, as he said:
"Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a
Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?"
So for a week Christopher Robin read that sort of book at the North end
of Pooh, and Rabbit hung his washing on the South end ... and in
between Bear felt himself getting slenderer and slenderer. And at the
end of the week Christopher Robin said, "_Now!_"
So he took hold of Pooh's front paws and Rabbit took hold of Christopher
Robin, and all Rabbit's friends and relations took hold of Rabbit, and
they all pulled together....
And for a long time Pooh only said "_Ow!_" ...
And "_Oh!_" ...
And then, all of a sudden, he said "_Pop!_" just as if a cork were
coming out of a bottle.
And Christopher Robin and Rabbit and all Rabbit's friends and relations
went head-over-heels backwards ... and on the top of them came
Winnie-the-Pooh--free!
So, with a nod of thanks to his friends, he went on with his walk
through the forest, humming proudly to himself. But, Christopher Robin
looked after him lovingly, and said to himself, "Silly old Bear!"
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH POOH AND PIGLET GO HUNTING
AND NEARLY CATCH A WOOZLE
The Piglet lived in a very grand house in the middle of a beech-tree,
and the beech-tree was in the middle of the forest, and the Piglet lived
in the middle of the house. Next to his house was a piece of broken
board which had: "TRESPASSERS W" on it. When Christopher Robin asked the
Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather's name, and had
been in the family for a long time, Christopher Robin said you
_couldn't_ be called Trespassers W, and Piglet said yes, you could,
because his grandfather was, and it was short for Trespassers Will,
which was short for Trespassers William. And his grandfather had had two
names in case he lost one--Trespassers after an uncle, and William after
Trespassers.
"I've got two names," said Christopher Robin carelessly.
"Well, there you are, that proves it," said Piglet.
One fine winter's day when Piglet was brushing away the snow in front of
his house, he happened to look up, and there was Winnie-the-Pooh. Pooh
was walking round and round in a circle, thinking of something else, and
when Piglet called to him, he just went on walking.
"Hallo!" said Piglet, "what are _you_ doing?"
"Hunting," said Pooh.
"Hunting what?"
"Tracking something," said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.
"Tracking what?" said Piglet, coming closer.
"That's just what I ask myself. I ask myself, What?"
"What do you think you'll answer?"
"I shall have to wait until I catch up with it," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"Now, look there." He pointed to the ground in front of him. "What do
you see there?"
"Tracks," said Piglet. "Paw-marks." He gave a little squeak of
excitement. "Oh, Pooh! Do you think it's a--a--a Woozle?"
"It may be," said Pooh. "Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. You
never can tell with paw-marks."
With these few words he went on tracking, and Piglet, after watching him
for a minute or two, ran after him. Winnie-the-Pooh had come to a sudden
stop, and was bending over the tracks in a puzzled sort of way.
"What's the matter?" asked Piglet.
"It's a very funny thing," said Bear, "but there seem to be
_two_ animals now. This--whatever-it-was--has been joined by
another--whatever-it-is--and the two of them are now proceeding
in company. Would you mind coming with me, Piglet, in case they
turn out to be Hostile Animals?"
Piglet scratched his ear in a nice sort of way, and said that he had
nothing to do until Friday, and would be delighted to come, in case it
really _was_ a Woozle.
"You mean, in case it really is two Woozles," said Winnie-the-Pooh, and
Piglet said that anyhow he had nothing to do until Friday. So off they
went together.
There was a small spinney of larch trees just here, and it seemed as if
the two Woozles, if that is what they were, had been going round this
spinney; so round this spinney went Pooh and Piglet after them; Piglet
passing the time by telling Pooh what his Grandfather Trespassers W had
done to Remove Stiffness after Tracking, and how his Grandfather
Trespassers W had suffered in his later years from Shortness of Breath,
and other matters of interest, and Pooh wondering what a Grandfather was
like, and if perhaps this was Two Grandfathers they were after now, and,
if so, whether he would be allowed to take one home and keep it, and
what Christopher Robin would say. And still the tracks went on in front
of them....
Suddenly Winnie-the-Pooh stopped, and pointed excitedly in front of him.
"_Look!_"
"_What?_" said Piglet, with a jump. And then, to show that he hadn't
been frightened, he jumped up and down once or twice more in an
exercising sort of way.
"The tracks!" said Pooh. "_A third animal has joined the other two!_"
"Pooh!" cried Piglet. "Do you think it is another Woozle?"
"No," said Pooh, "because it makes different marks. It is either Two
Woozles and one, as it might be, Wizzle, or Two, as it might be, Wizzles
and one, if so it is, Woozle. Let us continue to follow them."
So they went on, feeling just a little anxious now, in case the three
animals in front of them were of Hostile Intent. And Piglet wished very
much that his Grandfather T. W. were there, instead of elsewhere, and
Pooh thought how nice it would be if they met Christopher Robin suddenly
but quite accidentally, and only because he liked Christopher Robin so
much. And then, all of a sudden, Winnie-the-Pooh stopped again, and
licked the tip of his nose in a cooling manner, for he was feeling more
hot and anxious than ever in his life before. _There were four animals
in front of them!_
"Do you see, Piglet? Look at their tracks! Three, as it were, Woozles,
and one, as it was, Wizzle. _Another Woozle has joined them!_"
And so it seemed to be. There were the tracks; crossing over each other
here, getting muddled up with each other there; but, quite plainly every
now and then, the tracks of four sets of paws.
"I _think_," said Piglet, when he had licked the tip of his nose too,
and found that it brought very little comfort, "I _think_ that I have
just remembered something. I have just remembered something that I
forgot to do yesterday and shan't be able to do to-morrow. So I suppose
I really ought to go back and do it now."
"We'll do it this afternoon, and I'll come with you," said Pooh.
"It isn't the sort of thing you can do in the afternoon," said Piglet
quickly. "It's a very particular morning thing, that has to be done in
the morning, and, if possible, between the hours of----What would you
say the time was?"
"About twelve," said Winnie-the-Pooh, looking at the sun.
"Between, as I was saying, the hours of twelve and twelve five. So,
really, dear old Pooh, if you'll excuse me----_What's that?_"
Pooh looked up at the sky, and then, as he heard the whistle again, he
looked up into the branches of a big oak-tree, and then he saw a friend
of his.
"It's Christopher Robin," he said.
"Ah, then you'll be all right," said Piglet. "You'll be quite safe with
_him_. Good-bye," and he trotted off home as quickly as he could, very
glad to be Out of All Danger again.
Christopher Robin came slowly down his tree.
"Silly old Bear," he said, "what _were_ you doing? First you went round
the spinney twice by yourself, and then Piglet ran after you and you
went round again together, and then you were just going round a fourth
time----"
"Wait a moment," said Winnie-the-Pooh, holding up his paw.
He sat down and thought, in the most thoughtful way he could think. Then
he fitted his paw into one of the Tracks ... and then he scratched his
nose twice, and stood up.
"Yes," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"I see now," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of No Brain
at All."
"You're the Best Bear in All the World," said Christopher Robin
soothingly.
"Am I?" said Pooh hopefully. And then he brightened up suddenly.
"Anyhow," he said, "it is nearly Luncheon Time."
So he went home for it.
CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH EEYORE LOSES A TAIL
AND POOH FINDS ONE
The Old Grey Donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a thistly corner of
the forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought
about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and
sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch
as which?"--and sometimes he didn't quite know what he _was_ thinking
about. So when Winnie-the-Pooh came stumping along, Eeyore was very glad
to be able to stop thinking for a little, in order to say "How do you
do?" in a gloomy manner to him.
"And how are you?" said Winnie-the-Pooh.
Eeyore shook his head from side to side.
"Not very how," he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a
long time."
"Dear, dear," said Pooh, "I'm sorry about that. Let's have a look at
you."
So Eeyore stood there, gazing sadly at the ground, and Winnie-the-Pooh
walked all round him once.
"Why, what's happened to your tail?" he said in surprise.
"What _has_ happened to it?" said Eeyore.
"It isn't there!"
"Are you sure?"
"Well, either a tail _is_ there or it isn't there. You can't make a
mistake about it. And yours _isn't_ there!"
"Then what is?"
"Nothing."
"Let's have a look," said Eeyore, and he turned slowly round to the
place where his tail had been a little while ago, and then, finding that
he couldn't catch it up, he turned round the other way, until he came
back to where he was at first, and then he put his head down and looked
between his front legs, and at last he said, with a long, sad sigh, "I
believe you're right."
"Of course I'm right," said Pooh.
"That Accounts for a Good Deal," said Eeyore gloomily. "It Explains
Everything. No Wonder."
"You must have left it somewhere," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"Somebody must have taken it," said Eeyore. "How Like Them," he added,
after a long silence.
Pooh felt that he ought to say something helpful about it, but didn't
quite know what. So he decided to do something helpful instead.
"Eeyore," he said solemnly, "I, Winnie-the-Pooh, will find your tail for
you."
"Thank you, Pooh," answered Eeyore. "You're a real friend," said he.
"Not like Some," he said.
So Winnie-the-Pooh went off to find Eeyore's tail.
It was a fine spring morning in the forest as he started out. Little
soft clouds played happily in a blue sky, skipping from time to time in
front of the sun as if they had come to put it out, and then sliding
away suddenly so that the next might have his turn. Through them and
between them the sun shone bravely; and a copse which had worn its firs
all the year round seemed old and dowdy now beside the new green lace
which the beeches had put on so prettily. Through copse and spinney
marched Bear; down open slopes of gorse and heather, over rocky beds of
streams, up steep banks of sandstone into the heather again; and so at
last, tired and hungry, to the Hundred Acre Wood. For it was in the
Hundred Acre Wood that Owl lived.
"And if anyone knows anything about anything," said Bear to himself,
"it's Owl who knows something about something," he said, "or my name's
not Winnie-the-Pooh," he said. "Which it is," he added. "So there you
are."
Owl lived at The Chestnuts, an old-world residence of great charm, which
was grander than anybody else's, or seemed so to Bear, because it had
both a knocker _and_ a bell-pull. Underneath the knocker there was a
notice which said:
PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD.
Underneath the bell-pull there was a notice which said:
PLEZ CNOKE IF AN RNSR IS NOT REQID.
These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only
one in the forest who could spell; for Owl, wise though he was in many
ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow
went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.
Winnie-the-Pooh read the two notices very carefully, first from left to
right, and afterwards, in case he had missed some of it, from right to
left. Then, to make quite sure, he knocked and pulled the knocker, and
he pulled and knocked the bell-rope, and he called out in a very loud
voice, "Owl! I require an answer! It's Bear speaking." And the door
opened, and Owl looked out.
"Hallo, Pooh," he said. "How's things?"
"Terrible and Sad," said Pooh, "because Eeyore, who is a friend of mine,
has lost his tail. And he's Moping about it. So could you very kindly
tell me how to find it for him?"
"Well," said Owl, "the customary procedure in such cases is as follows."
"What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said Pooh. "For I am a Bear of
Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me."
"It means the Thing to Do."
"As long as it means that, I don't mind," said Pooh humbly.
"The thing to do is as follows. First, Issue a Reward. Then----"
"Just a moment," said Pooh, holding up his paw. "_What_ do we do to
this--what you were saying? You sneezed just as you were going to tell
me."
"I _didn't_ sneeze."
"Yes, you did, Owl."
"Excuse me, Pooh, I didn't. You can't sneeze without knowing it."
"Well, you can't know it without something having been sneezed."
"What I _said_ was, 'First _Issue_ a Reward'."
"You're doing it again," said Pooh sadly.
"A Reward!" said Owl very loudly. "We write a notice to say that we will
give a large something to anybody who finds Eeyore's tail."
"I see, I see," said Pooh, nodding his head. "Talking about large
somethings," he went on dreamily, "I generally have a small something
about now--about this time in the morning," and he looked wistfully at
the cupboard in the corner of Owl's parlour; "just a mouthful of
condensed milk or whatnot, with perhaps a lick of honey----"
"Well, then," said Owl, "we write out this notice, and we put it up all
over the forest."
"A lick of honey," murmured Bear to himself, "or--or not, as the case
may be." And he gave a deep sigh, and tried very hard to listen to what
Owl was saying.
But Owl went on and on, using longer and longer words, until at last he
came back to where he started, and he explained that the person to write
out this notice was Christopher Robin.
"It was he who wrote the ones on my front door for me. Did you see them,
Pooh?"
For some time now Pooh had been saying "Yes" and "No" in turn, with his
eyes shut, to all that Owl was saying, and having said, "Yes, yes," last
time, he said "No, not at all," now, without really knowing what Owl was
talking about.
"Didn't you see them?" said Owl, a little surprised. "Come and look at
them now."
So they went outside. And Pooh looked at the knocker and the notice
below it, and he looked at the bell-rope and the notice below it, and
the more he looked at the bell-rope, the more he felt that he had seen
something like it, somewhere else, sometime before.
"Handsome bell-rope, isn't it?" said Owl.
Pooh nodded.
"It reminds me of something," he said, "but I can't think what. Where
did you get it?"
"I just came across it in the Forest. It was hanging over a bush, and I
thought at first somebody lived there, so I rang it, and nothing
happened, and then I rang it again very loudly, and it came off in my
hand, and as nobody seemed to want it, I took it home, and----"
"Owl," said Pooh solemnly, "you made a mistake. Somebody did want it."
"Who?"
"Eeyore. My dear friend Eeyore. He was--he was fond of it."
"Fond of it?"
"Attached to it," said Winnie-the-Pooh sadly.
* * * * *
So with these words he unhooked it, and carried it back to Eeyore; and
when Christopher Robin had nailed it on in its right place again, Eeyore
frisked about the forest, waving his tail so happily that
Winnie-the-Pooh came over all funny, and had to hurry home for a little
snack of something to sustain him. And, wiping his mouth half an hour
afterwards, he sang to himself proudly:
_Who found the Tail?_
"I," said Pooh,
"At a quarter to two
(Only it was quarter to eleven really),
_I_ found the Tail!"
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH PIGLET MEETS A HEFFALUMP
One day, when Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet were
all talking together, Christopher Robin finished the mouthful he was
eating and said carelessly: "I saw a Heffalump to-day, Piglet."
"What was it doing?" asked Piglet.
"Just lumping along," said Christopher Robin. "I don't think it saw
_me_."
"I saw one once," said Piglet. "At least, I think I did," he said. "Only
perhaps it wasn't."
"So did I," said Pooh, wondering what a Heffalump was like.
"You don't often see them," said Christopher Robin carelessly.
"Not now," said Piglet.
"Not at this time of year," said Pooh.
Then they all talked about something else, until it was time for Pooh
and Piglet to go home together. At first as they stumped along the path
which edged the Hundred Acre Wood, they didn't say much to each other;
but when they came to the stream and had helped each other across the
stepping stones, and were able to walk side by side again over the
heather, they began to talk in a friendly way about this and that, and
Piglet said, "If you see what I mean, Pooh," and Pooh said, "It's just
what I think myself, Piglet," and Piglet said, "But, on the other hand,
Pooh, we must remember," and Pooh said, "Quite true, Piglet, although I
had forgotten it for the moment." And then, just as they came to the Six
Pine Trees, Pooh looked round to see that nobody else was listening, and
said in a very solemn voice:
"Piglet, I have decided something."
"What have you decided, Pooh?"
"I have decided to catch a Heffalump."
Pooh nodded his head several times as he said this, and waited for
Piglet to say "How?" or "Pooh, you couldn't!" or something helpful of
that sort, but Piglet said nothing. The fact was Piglet was wishing that
_he_ had thought about it first.
"I shall do it," said Pooh, after waiting a little longer, "by means of
a trap. And it must be a Cunning Trap, so you will have to help me,
Piglet."
"Pooh," said Piglet, feeling quite happy again now, "I will." And then
he said, "How shall we do it?" and Pooh said, "That's just it. How?" And
then they sat down together to think it out.
Pooh's first idea was that they should dig a Very Deep Pit, and then the
Heffalump would come along and fall into the Pit, and----
"Why?" said Piglet.
"Why what?" said Pooh.
"Why would he fall in?"
Pooh rubbed his nose with his paw, and said that the Heffalump might be
walking along, humming a little song, and looking up at the sky,
wondering if it would rain, and so he wouldn't see the Very Deep Pit
until he was half-way down, when it would be too late.
Piglet said that this was a very good Trap, but supposing it were
raining already?
Pooh rubbed his nose again, and said that he hadn't thought of that. And
then he brightened up, and said that, if it were raining already, the
Heffalump would be looking at the sky wondering if it would _clear up_,
and so he wouldn't see the Very Deep Pit until he was half-way
down.... When it would be too late.
Piglet said that, now that this point had been explained, he thought it
was a Cunning Trap.
Pooh was very proud when he heard this, and he felt that the Heffalump
was as good as caught already, but there was just one other thing which
had to be thought about, and it was this. _Where should they dig the
Very Deep Pit?_
Piglet said that the best place would be somewhere where a Heffalump
was, just before he fell into it, only about a foot farther on.
"But then he would see us digging it," said Pooh.
"Not if he was looking at the sky."
"He would Suspect," said Pooh, "if he happened to look down." He thought
for a long time and then added sadly, "It isn't as easy as I thought. I
suppose that's why Heffalumps hardly _ever_ get caught."
"That must be it," said Piglet.
They sighed and got up; and when they had taken a few gorse prickles out
of themselves they sat down again; and all the time Pooh was saying to
himself, "If only I could _think_ of something!" For he felt sure that a
Very Clever Brain could catch a Heffalump if only he knew the right way
to go about it.
"Suppose," he said to Piglet, "_you_ wanted to catch _me_, how would you
do it?"
"Well," said Piglet, "I should do it like this. I should make a Trap,
and I should put a Jar of Honey in the Trap, and you would smell it, and
you would go in after it, and----"
"And I would go in after it," said Pooh excitedly, "only very carefully
so as not to hurt myself, and I would get to the Jar of Honey, and I
should lick round the edges first of all, pretending that there wasn't
any more, you know, and then I should walk away and think about it a
little, and then I should come back and start licking in the middle of
the jar, and then----"
"Yes, well never mind about that. There you would be, and there I should
catch you. Now the first thing to think of is, What do Heffalumps like?
I should think acorns, shouldn't you? We'll get a lot of----I say, wake
up, Pooh!"
Pooh, who had gone into a happy dream, woke up with a start, and said
that Honey was a much more trappy thing than Haycorns. Piglet didn't
think so; and they were just going to argue about it, when Piglet
remembered that, if they put acorns in the Trap, _he_ would have to find
the acorns, but if they put honey, then Pooh would have to give up some
of his own honey, so he said, "All right, honey then," just as Pooh
remembered it too, and was going to say, "All right, haycorns."
"Honey," said Piglet to himself in a thoughtful way, as if it were now
settled. "_I'll_ dig the pit, while _you_ go and get the honey."
"Very well," said Pooh, and he stumped off.
As soon as he got home, he went to the larder; and he stood on a chair,
and took down a very large jar of honey from the top shelf. It had HUNNY
written on it, but, just to make sure, he took off the paper cover and
looked at it, and it _looked_ just like honey. "But you never can tell,"
said Pooh. "I remember my uncle saying once that he had seen cheese just
this colour." So he put his tongue in, and took a large lick. "Yes," he
said, "it is. No doubt about that. And honey, I should say, right down
to the bottom of the jar. Unless, of course," he said, "somebody put
cheese in at the bottom just for a joke. Perhaps I had better go a
_little_ further ... just in case ... in case Heffalumps _don't_
like cheese ... same as me.... Ah!" And he gave a deep sigh. "I
_was_ right. It _is_ honey, right the way down."
Having made certain of this, he took the jar back to Piglet, and Piglet
looked up from the bottom of his Very Deep Pit, and said, "Got it?" and
Pooh said, "Yes, but it isn't quite a full jar," and he threw it down to
Piglet, and Piglet said, "No, it isn't! Is that all you've got left?"
and Pooh said "Yes." Because it was. So Piglet put the jar at the bottom
of the Pit, and climbed out, and they went off home together.
"Well, good night, Pooh," said Piglet, when they had got to Pooh's
house. "And we meet at six o'clock to-morrow morning by the Pine Trees,
and see how many Heffalumps we've got in our Trap."
"Six o'clock, Piglet. And have you got any string?"
"No. Why do you want string?"
"To lead them home with."
"Oh! ... I _think_ Heffalumps come if you whistle."
"Some do and some don't. You never can tell with Heffalumps. Well, good
night!"
"Good night!"
And off Piglet trotted to his house TRESPASSERS W, while Pooh made his
preparations for bed.
Some hours later, just as the night was beginning to steal away, Pooh
woke up suddenly with a sinking feeling. He had had that sinking feeling
before, and he knew what it meant. _He was hungry._ So he went to the
larder, and he stood on a chair and reached up to the top shelf, and
found--nothing.
"That's funny," he thought. "I know I had a jar of honey there. A full
jar, full of honey right up to the top, and it had HUNNY written on it,
so that I should know it was honey. That's very funny." And then he
began to wander up and down, wondering where it was and murmuring a
murmur to himself. Like this:
It's very, very funny,
'Cos I _know_ I had some honey;
'Cos it had a label on,
Saying HUNNY.
A goloptious full-up pot too,
And I don't know where it's got to,
No, I don't know where it's gone--
Well, it's funny.
He had murmured this to himself three times in a singing sort of way,
when suddenly he remembered. He had put it into the Cunning Trap to
catch the Heffalump.
"Bother!" said Pooh. "It all comes of trying to be kind to Heffalumps."
And he got back into bed.
But he couldn't sleep. The more he tried to sleep, the more he couldn't.
He tried Counting Sheep, which is sometimes a good way of getting to
sleep, and, as that was no good, he tried counting Heffalumps. And that
was worse. Because every Heffalump that he counted was making straight
for a pot of Pooh's honey, _and eating it all_. For some minutes he lay
there miserably, but when the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalump
was licking its jaws, and saying to itself, "Very good honey this, I
don't know when I've tasted better," Pooh could bear it no longer. He
jumped out of bed, he ran out of the house, and he ran straight to the
Six Pine Trees.
The Sun was still in bed, but there was a lightness in the sky over the
Hundred Acre Wood which seemed to show that it was waking up and would
soon be kicking off the clothes. In the half-light the Pine Trees looked
cold and lonely, and the Very Deep Pit seemed deeper than it was, and
Pooh's jar of honey at the bottom was something mysterious, a shape and
no more. But as he got nearer to it his nose told him that it was indeed
honey, and his tongue came out and began to polish up his mouth, ready
for it.
"Bother!" said Pooh, as he got his nose inside the jar. "A Heffalump has
been eating it!" And then he thought a little and said, "Oh, no, _I_
did. I forgot."
Indeed, he had eaten most of it. But there was a little left at the very
bottom of the jar, and he pushed his head right in, and began to
lick....
By and by Piglet woke up. As soon as he woke he said to himself, "Oh!"
Then he said bravely, "Yes," and then, still more bravely, "Quite so."
But he didn't feel very brave, for the word which was really jiggeting
about in his brain was "Heffalumps."
What was a Heffalump like?
Was it Fierce?
_Did_ it come when you whistled? And _how_ did it come?
Was it Fond of Pigs at all?
If it was Fond of Pigs, did it make any difference _what sort of Pig_?
Supposing it was Fierce with Pigs, would it make any difference _if the
Pig had a grandfather called TRESPASSERS WILLIAM_?
He didn't know the answer to any of these questions ... and he was
going to see his first Heffalump in about an hour from now!
Of course Pooh would be with him, and it was much more Friendly with
two. But suppose Heffalumps were Very Fierce with Pigs _and_ Bears?
Wouldn't it be better to pretend that he had a headache, and couldn't go
up to the Six Pine Trees this morning? But then suppose that it was a
very fine day, and there was no Heffalump in the trap, here he would be,
in bed all the morning, simply wasting his time for nothing. What should
he do?
And then he had a Clever Idea. He would go up very quietly to the Six
Pine Trees now, peep very cautiously into the Trap, and see if there
_was_ a Heffalump there. And if there was, he would go back to bed, and
if there wasn't, he wouldn't.
So off he went. At first he thought that there wouldn't be a Heffalump
in the Trap, and then he thought that there would, and as he got nearer
he was _sure_ that there would, because he could hear it heffalumping
about it like anything.
"Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!" said Piglet to himself. And he wanted to
run away. But somehow, having got so near, he felt that he must just see
what a Heffalump was like. So he crept to the side of the Trap and
looked in....
And all the time Winnie-the-Pooh had been trying to get the honey-jar
off his head. The more he shook it, the more tightly it stuck.
"_Bother!_" he said, inside the jar, and "_Oh, help!_" and, mostly,
"_Ow!_" And he tried bumping it against things, but as he couldn't see
what he was bumping it against, it didn't help him; and he tried to
climb out of the Trap, but as he could see nothing but jar, and not much
of that, he couldn't find his way. So at last he lifted up his head, jar
and all, and made a loud, roaring noise of Sadness and Despair ... and
it was at that moment that Piglet looked down.
"Help, help!" cried Piglet, "a Heffalump, a Horrible Heffalump!" and he
scampered off as hard as he could, still crying out, "Help, help, a
Herrible Hoffalump! Hoff, Hoff, a Hellible Horralump! Holl, Holl, a
Hoffable Hellerump!" And he didn't stop crying and scampering until he
got to Christopher Robin's house.
"Whatever's the matter, Piglet?" said Christopher Robin, who was just
getting up.
"Heff," said Piglet, breathing so hard that he could hardly speak, "a
Heff--a Heff--a Heffalump."
"Where?"
"Up there," said Piglet, waving his paw.
"What did it look like?"
"Like--like----It had the biggest head you ever saw, Christopher Robin.
A great enormous thing, like--like nothing. A huge big--well, like a--I
don't know--like an enormous big nothing. Like a jar."
"Well," said Christopher Robin, putting on his shoes, "I shall go and
look at it. Come on."
Piglet wasn't afraid if he had Christopher Robin with him, so off they
went....
"I can hear it, can't you?" said Piglet anxiously, as they got near.
"I can hear _something_," said Christopher Robin.
It was Pooh bumping his head against a tree-root he had found.
"There!" said Piglet. "Isn't it _awful_?" And he held on tight to
Christopher Robin's hand.
Suddenly Christopher Robin began to laugh ... and he laughed ... and he
laughed ... and he laughed. And while he was still laughing--_Crash_
went the Heffalump's head against the tree-root, Smash went the jar,
and out came Pooh's head again....
Then Piglet saw what a Foolish Piglet he had been, and he was so ashamed
of himself that he ran straight off home and went to bed with a
headache. But Christopher Robin and Pooh went home to breakfast
together.
"Oh, Bear!" said Christopher Robin. "How I do love you!"
"So do I," said Pooh.
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH EEYORE HAS A BIRTHDAY
AND GETS TWO PRESENTS
Eeyore, the old grey Donkey, stood by the side of the stream, and
looked at himself in the water.
"Pathetic," he said. "That's what it is. Pathetic."
He turned and walked slowly down the stream for twenty yards, splashed
across it, and walked slowly back on the other side. Then he looked at
himself in the water again.
"As I thought," he said. "No better from _this_ side. But nobody minds.
Nobody cares. Pathetic, that's what it is."
There was a crackling noise in the bracken behind him, and out came
Pooh.
"Good morning, Eeyore," said Pooh.
"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it _is_ a good
morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.
"Why, what's the matter?"
"Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's
all there is to it."
"Can't all _what_?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose.
"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush."
"Oh!" said Pooh. He thought for a long time, and then asked, "What
mulberry bush is that?"
"Bon-hommy," went on Eeyore gloomily. "French word meaning bonhommy," he
explained. "I'm not complaining, but There It Is."
Pooh sat down on a large stone, and tried to think this out. It sounded
to him like a riddle, and he was never much good at riddles, being a
Bear of Very Little Brain. So he sang _Cottleston Pie_ instead:
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"_Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie._"
That was the first verse. When he had finished it, Eeyore didn't
actually say that he didn't like it, so Pooh very kindly sang the second
verse to him:
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fish can't whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"_Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie_."
Eeyore still said nothing at all, so Pooh hummed the third verse quietly
to himself:
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken, I don't know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"_Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie_."
"That's right," said Eeyore. "Sing. Umty-tiddly, umty-too. Here we go
gathering Nuts and May. Enjoy yourself."
"I am," said Pooh.
"Some can," said Eeyore.
"Why, what's the matter?"
"_Is_ anything the matter?"
"You seem so sad, Eeyore."
"Sad? Why should I be sad? It's my birthday. The happiest day of the
year."
"Your birthday?" said Pooh in great surprise.
"Of course it is. Can't you see? Look at all the presents I have had."
He waved a foot from side to side. "Look at the birthday cake. Candles
and pink sugar."
Pooh looked--first to the right and then to the left.
"Presents?" said Pooh. "Birthday cake?" said Pooh. "_Where?_"
"Can't you see them?"
"No," said Pooh.
"Neither can I," said Eeyore. "Joke," he explained. "Ha ha!"
Pooh scratched his head, being a little puzzled by all this.
"But is it really your birthday?" he asked.
"It is."
"Oh! Well, Many happy returns of the day, Eeyore."
"And many happy returns to you, Pooh Bear."
"But it isn't _my_ birthday."
"No, it's mine."
"But you said 'Many happy returns'----"
"Well, why not? You don't always want to be miserable on my birthday, do
you?"
"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
"It's bad enough," said Eeyore, almost breaking down, "being miserable
myself, what with no presents and no cake and no candles, and no proper
notice taken of me at all, but if everybody else is going to be
miserable too----"
This was too much for Pooh. "Stay there!" he called to Eeyore, as he
turned and hurried back home as quick as he could; for he felt that he
must get poor Eeyore a present of _some_ sort at once, and he could
always think of a proper one afterwards.
Outside his house he found Piglet, jumping up and down trying to reach
the knocker.
"Hallo, Piglet," he said.
"Hallo, Pooh," said Piglet.
"What are _you_ trying to do?"
"I was trying to reach the knocker," said Piglet. "I just came
round----"
"Let me do it for you," said Pooh kindly. So he reached up and knocked
at the door. "I have just seen Eeyore," he began, "and poor Eeyore is in
a Very Sad Condition, because it's his birthday, and nobody has taken
any notice of it, and he's very Gloomy--you know what Eeyore is--and
there he was, and----What a long time whoever lives here is answering
this door." And he knocked again.
"But Pooh," said Piglet, "it's your own house!"
"Oh!" said Pooh. "So it is," he said. "Well, let's go in."
So in they went. The first thing Pooh did was to go to the cupboard to
see if he had quite a small jar of honey left; and he had, so he took it
down.
"I'm giving this to Eeyore," he explained, "as a present. What are _you_
going to give?"
"Couldn't I give it too?" said Piglet. "From both of us?"
"No," said Pooh. "That would _not_ be a good plan."
"All right, then, I'll give him a balloon. I've got one left from my
party. I'll go and get it now, shall I?"
"That, Piglet, is a _very_ good idea. It is just what Eeyore wants to
cheer him up. Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon."
So off Piglet trotted; and in the other direction went Pooh, with his
jar of honey.
It was a warm day, and he had a long way to go. He hadn't gone more than
half-way when a sort of funny feeling began to creep all over him. It
began at the tip of his nose and trickled all through him and out at the
soles of his feet. It was just as if somebody inside him were saying,
"Now then, Pooh, time for a little something."
"Dear, dear," said Pooh, "I didn't know it was as late as that." So he
sat down and took the top off his jar of honey. "Lucky I brought this
with me," he thought. "Many a bear going out on a warm day like this
would never have thought of bringing a little something with him." And
he began to eat.
"Now let me see," he thought, as he took his last lick of the inside of
the jar, "where was I going? Ah, yes, Eeyore." He got up slowly.
And then, suddenly, he remembered. He had eaten Eeyore's birthday
present!
"_Bother!_" said Pooh. "What _shall_ I do? I _must_ give him
_something_."
For a little while he couldn't think of anything. Then he thought:
"Well, it's a very nice pot, even if there's no honey in it, and if I
washed it clean, and got somebody to write '_A Happy Birthday_' on it,
Eeyore could keep things in it, which might be Useful." So, as he was
just passing the Hundred Acre Wood, he went inside to call on Owl, who
lived there.
"Good morning, Owl," he said.
"Good morning, Pooh," said Owl.
"Many happy returns of Eeyore's birthday," said Pooh.
"Oh, is that what it is?"
"What are you giving him, Owl?"
"What are _you_ giving him, Pooh?"
"I'm giving him a Useful Pot to Keep Things In, and I wanted to ask
you----"
"Is this it?" said Owl, taking it out of Pooh's paw.
"Yes, and I wanted to ask you----"
"Somebody has been keeping honey in it," said Owl.
"You can keep _anything_ in it," said Pooh earnestly. "It's Very Useful
like that. And I wanted to ask you----"
"You ought to write '_A Happy Birthday_' on it."
"_That_ was what I wanted to ask you," said Pooh. "Because my spelling
is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the
wrong places. Would _you_ write 'A Happy Birthday' on it for me?"
"It's a nice pot," said Owl, looking at it all round. "Couldn't I give
it too? From both of us?"
"No," said Pooh. "That would _not_ be a good plan. Now I'll just wash it
first, and then you can write on it."
Well, he washed the pot out, and dried it, while Owl licked the end of
his pencil, and wondered how to spell "birthday."
"Can you read, Pooh?" he asked a little anxiously. "There's a notice
about knocking and ringing outside my door, which Christopher Robin
wrote. Could you read it?"
"Christopher Robin told me what it said, and _then_ I could."
"Well, I'll tell you what _this_ says, and then you'll be able to."
So Owl wrote ... and this is what he wrote:
HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY.
Pooh looked on admiringly.
"I'm just saying 'A Happy Birthday'," said Owl carelessly.
"It's a nice long one," said Pooh, very much impressed by it.
"Well, _actually_, of course, I'm saying 'A Very Happy Birthday with
love from Pooh.' Naturally it takes a good deal of pencil to say a long
thing like that."
"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
While all this was happening, Piglet had gone back to his own house to
get Eeyore's balloon. He held it very tightly against himself, so that
it shouldn't blow away, and he ran as fast as he could so as to get to
Eeyore before Pooh did; for he thought that he would like to be the
first one to give a present, just as if he had thought of it without
being told by anybody. And running along, and thinking how pleased
Eeyore would be, he didn't look where he was going ... and suddenly he
put his foot in a rabbit hole, and fell down flat on his face.
BANG!!!???***!!!
Piglet lay there, wondering what had happened. At first he thought that
the whole world had blown up; and then he thought that perhaps only the
Forest part of it had; and then he thought that perhaps only _he_ had,
and he was now alone in the moon or somewhere, and would never see
Christopher Robin or Pooh or Eeyore again. And then he thought, "Well,
even if I'm in the moon, I needn't be face downwards all the time," so
he got cautiously up and looked about him.
He was still in the Forest!
"Well, that's funny," he thought. "I wonder what that bang was. I
couldn't have made such a noise just falling down. And where's my
balloon? And what's that small piece of damp rag doing?"
It was the balloon!
"Oh, dear!" said Piglet "Oh, dear, oh, dearie, dearie, dear! Well, it's
too late now. I can't go back, and I haven't another balloon, and
perhaps Eeyore doesn't _like_ balloons so _very_ much."
So he trotted on, rather sadly now, and down he came to the side of the
stream where Eeyore was, and called out to him.
"Good morning, Eeyore," shouted Piglet.
"Good morning, Little Piglet," said Eeyore. "If it _is_ a good morning,"
he said. "Which I doubt," said he. "Not that it matters," he said.
"Many happy returns of the day," said Piglet, having now got closer.
Eeyore stopped looking at himself in the stream, and turned to stare at
Piglet.
"Just say that again," he said.
"Many hap----"
"Wait a moment."
Balancing on three legs, he began to bring his fourth leg very
cautiously up to his ear. "I did this yesterday," he explained, as he
fell down for the third time. "It's quite easy. It's so as I can hear
better.... There, that's done it! Now then, what were you saying?" He
pushed his ear forward with his hoof.
"Many happy returns of the day," said Piglet again.
"Meaning me?"
"Of course, Eeyore."
"My birthday?"
"Yes."
"Me having a real birthday?"
"Yes, Eeyore, and I've brought you a present."
Eeyore took down his right hoof from his right ear, turned round, and
with great difficulty put up his left hoof.
"I must have that in the other ear," he said. "Now then."
"A present," said Piglet very loudly.
"Meaning me again?"
"Yes."
"My birthday still?"
"Of course, Eeyore."
"Me going on having a real birthday?"
"Yes, Eeyore, and I brought you a balloon."
"_Balloon?_" said Eeyore. "You did say balloon? One of those big
coloured things you blow up? Gaiety, song-and-dance, here we are and
there we are?"
"Yes, but I'm afraid--I'm very sorry, Eeyore--but when I was running
along to bring it you, I fell down."
"Dear, dear, how unlucky! You ran too fast, I expect. You didn't hurt
yourself, Little Piglet?"
"No, but I--I--oh, Eeyore, I burst the balloon!"
There was a very long silence.
"My balloon?" said Eeyore at last.
Piglet nodded.
"My birthday balloon?"
"Yes, Eeyore," said Piglet sniffing a little. "Here it is. With--with
many happy returns of the day." And he gave Eeyore the small piece of
damp rag.
"Is this it?" said Eeyore, a little surprised.
Piglet nodded.
"My present?"
Piglet nodded again.
"The balloon?"
"Yes."
"Thank you, Piglet," said Eeyore. "You don't mind my asking," he went
on, "but what colour was this balloon when it--when it _was_ a balloon?"
"Red."
"I just wondered.... Red," he murmured to himself. "My favourite
colour.... How big was it?"
"About as big as me."
"I just wondered.... About as big as Piglet," he said to himself
sadly. "My favourite size. Well, well."
Piglet felt very miserable, and didn't know what to say. He was still
opening his mouth to begin something, and then deciding that it wasn't
any good saying _that_, when he heard a shout from the other side of the
river, and there was Pooh.
"Many happy returns of the day," called out Pooh, forgetting that he had
said it already.
"Thank you, Pooh, I'm having them," said Eeyore gloomily.
"I've brought you a little present," said Pooh excitedly.
"I've had it," said Eeyore.
Pooh had now splashed across the stream to Eeyore, and Piglet was
sitting a little way off, his head in his paws, snuffling to himself.
"It's a Useful Pot," said Pooh. "Here it is. And it's got 'A Very Happy
Birthday with love from Pooh' written on it. That's what all that
writing is. And it's for putting things in. There!"
When Eeyore saw the pot, he became quite excited.
"Why!" he said. "I believe my Balloon will just go into that Pot!"
"Oh, no, Eeyore," said Pooh. "Balloons are much too big to go into Pots.
What you do with a balloon is, you hold the ballon----"
"Not mine," said Eeyore proudly. "Look, Piglet!" And as Piglet looked
sorrowfully round, Eeyore picked the balloon up with his teeth, and
placed it carefully in the pot; picked it out and put it on the ground;
and then picked it up again and put it carefully back.
"So it does!" said Pooh. "It goes in!"
"So it does!" said Piglet. "And it comes out!"
"Doesn't it?" said Eeyore. "It goes in and out like anything."
"I'm very glad," said Pooh happily, "that I thought of giving you a
Useful Pot to put things in."
"I'm very glad," said Piglet happily, "that I thought of giving you
Something to put in a Useful Pot."
But Eeyore wasn't listening. He was taking the balloon out, and putting
it back again, as happy as could be....
* * * * *
"And didn't _I_ give him anything?" asked Christopher Robin sadly.
"Of course you did," I said. "You gave him--don't you remember--a
little--a little----"
"I gave him a box of paints to paint things with."
"That was it."
"Why didn't I give it to him in the morning?"
"You were so busy getting his party ready for him. He had a cake with
icing on the top, and three candles, and his name in pink sugar,
and----"
"Yes, _I_ remember," said Christopher Robin.
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH KANGA AND BABY ROO COME
TO THE FOREST, AND PIGLET HAS A BATH
Nobody seemed to know where they came from, but there they were in the
Forest: Kanga and Baby Roo. When Pooh asked Christopher Robin, "How did
they come here?" Christopher Robin said, "In the Usual Way, if you know
what I mean, Pooh," and Pooh, who didn't, said "Oh!" Then he nodded his
head twice and said, "In the Usual Way. Ah!" Then he went to call upon
his friend Piglet to see what _he_ thought about it. And at Piglet's
house he found Rabbit. So they all talked about it together.
"What I don't like about it is this," said Rabbit. "Here are we--you,
Pooh, and you, Piglet, and Me--and suddenly----"
"And Eeyore," said Pooh.
"And Eeyore--and then suddenly----"
"And Owl," said Pooh.
"And Owl--and then all of a sudden----"
"Oh, and Eeyore," said Pooh. "I was forgetting _him_."
"Here--we--are," said Rabbit very slowly and carefully, "all--of--us,
and then, suddenly, we wake up one morning and, what do we find? We find
a Strange Animal among us. An animal of whom we have never even heard
before! An animal who carries her family about with her in her pocket!
Suppose _I_ carried _my_ family about with me in _my_ pocket, how many
pockets should I want?"
"Sixteen," said Piglet.
"Seventeen, isn't it?" said Rabbit. "And one more for a
handkerchief--that's eighteen. Eighteen pockets in one suit! I haven't
time."
There was a long and thoughtful silence ... and then Pooh, who had
been frowning very hard for some minutes, said: "_I_ make it fifteen."
"What?" said Rabbit.
"Fifteen."
"Fifteen what?"
"Your family."
"What about them?"
Pooh rubbed his nose and said that he thought Rabbit had been talking
about his family.
"Did I?" said Rabbit carelessly.
"Yes, you said----"
"Never mind, Pooh," said Piglet impatiently.
"The question is, What are we to do about Kanga?"
"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
"The best way," said Rabbit, "would be this. The best way would be to
steal Baby Roo and hide him, and then when Kanga says, 'Where's Baby
Roo?' we say, '_Aha!_'"
"_Aha!_" said Pooh, practising. "_Aha! Aha!_ ... Of course," he went
on, "we could say 'Aha!' even if we hadn't stolen Baby Roo."
"Pooh," said Rabbit kindly, "you haven't any brain."
"I know," said Pooh humbly.
"We say '_Aha!_' so that Kanga knows that _we_ know where Baby Roo is.
'_Aha!_' means 'We'll tell you where Baby Roo is, if you promise to go
away from the Forest and never come back.' Now don't talk while I
think."
Pooh went into a corner and tried saying 'Aha!' in that sort of voice.
Sometimes it seemed to him that it did mean what Rabbit said, and
sometimes it seemed to him that it didn't. "I suppose it's just
practice," he thought. "I wonder if Kanga will have to practise too so
as to understand it."
"There's just one thing," said Piglet, fidgeting a bit. "I was talking
to Christopher Robin, and he said that a Kanga was Generally Regarded as
One of the Fiercer Animals. I am not frightened of Fierce Animals in the
ordinary way, but it is well known that, if One of the Fiercer Animals
is Deprived of Its Young, it becomes as fierce as Two of the Fiercer
Animals. In which case '_Aha!_' is perhaps a _foolish_ thing to say."
"Piglet," said Rabbit, taking out a pencil, and licking the end of it,
"you haven't any pluck."
"It is hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're
only a Very Small Animal."
Rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said:
"It is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in
the adventure before us."
Piglet was so excited at the idea of being Useful, that he forgot to be
frightened any more, and when Rabbit went on to say that Kangas were
only Fierce during the winter months, being at other times of an
Affectionate Disposition, he could hardly sit still, he was so eager to
begin being useful at once.
"What about me?" said Pooh sadly. "I suppose _I_ shan't be useful?"
"Never mind, Pooh," said Piglet comfortingly. "Another time perhaps."
"Without Pooh," said Rabbit solemnly as he sharpened his pencil, "the
adventure would be impossible."
"Oh!" said Piglet, and tried not to look disappointed. But Pooh went
into a corner of the room and said proudly to himself, "Impossible
without Me! _That_ sort of Bear."
"Now listen all of you," said Rabbit when he had finished writing, and
Pooh and Piglet sat listening very eagerly with their mouths open. This
was what Rabbit read out:
PLAN TO CAPTURE BABY ROO
1. _General Remarks._ Kanga runs faster than any of Us, even Me.
2. _More General Remarks._ Kanga never takes her eye off Baby Roo,
except when he's safely buttoned up in her pocket.
3. _Therefore._ If we are to capture Baby Roo, we must get a Long
Start, because Kanga runs faster than any of Us, even Me.
(_See_ 1.)
4. _A Thought._ If Roo had jumped out of Kanga's pocket and Piglet
had jumped in, Kanga wouldn't know the difference, because Piglet
is a Very Small Animal.
5. Like Roo.
6. But Kanga would have to be looking the other way first, so as not
to see Piglet jumping in.
7. See 2.
8. _Another Thought._ But if Pooh was talking to her very excitedly,
she _might_ look the other way for a moment.
9. And then I could run away with Roo.
10. Quickly.
11. _And Kanga wouldn't discover the difference until Afterwards._
Well, Rabbit read this out proudly, and for a little while after he had
read it nobody said anything. And then Piglet, who had been opening and
shutting his mouth without making any noise, managed to say very
huskily:
"And--Afterwards?"
"How do you mean?"
"When Kanga _does_ Discover the Difference?"
"Then we all say '_Aha!_'"
"All three of us?"
"Yes."
"Oh!"
"Why, what's the trouble, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, "as long as _we all three_ say it. As long as we
all three say it," said Piglet, "I don't mind," he said, "but I
shouldn't care to say '_Aha!_' by myself. It wouldn't sound _nearly_ so
well. By the way," he said, "you _are_ quite sure about what you said
about the winter months?"
"The winter months?"
"Yes, only being Fierce in the Winter Months."
"Oh, yes, yes, that's all right. Well, Pooh? You see what you have to
do?"
"No," said Pooh Bear. "Not yet," he said. "What _do_ I do?"
"Well, you just have to talk very hard to Kanga so as she doesn't notice
anything."
"Oh! What about?"
"Anything you like."
"You mean like telling her a little bit of poetry or something?"
"That's it," said Rabbit. "Splendid. Now come along."
So they all went out to look for Kanga.
Kanga and Roo were spending a quiet afternoon in a sandy part of the
Forest. Baby Roo was practising very small jumps in the sand, and
falling down mouse-holes and climbing out of them, and Kanga was
fidgeting about and saying "Just one more jump, dear, and then we must
go home." And at that moment who should come stumping up the hill but
Pooh.
"Good afternoon, Kanga."
"Good afternoon, Pooh."
"Look at me jumping," squeaked Roo, and fell into another mouse-hole.
"Hallo, Roo, my little fellow!"
"We were just going home," said Kanga. "Good afternoon, Rabbit. Good
afternoon, Piglet."
Rabbit and Piglet, who had now come up from the other side of the hill,
said "Good afternoon," and "Hallo, Roo," and Roo asked them to look at
him jumping, so they stayed and looked.
And Kanga looked too....
"Oh, Kanga," said Pooh, after Rabbit had winked at him twice, "I don't
know if you are interested in Poetry at all?"
"Hardly at all," said Kanga.
"Oh!" said Pooh.
"Roo, dear, just one more jump and then we must go home."
There was a short silence while Roo fell down another mouse-hole.
"Go on," said Rabbit in a loud whisper behind his paw.
"Talking of Poetry," said Pooh, "I made up a little piece as I was
coming along. It went like this. Er--now let me see----"
"Fancy!" said Kanga. "Now Roo, dear----"
"You'll like this piece of poetry," said Rabbit.
"You'll love it," said Piglet.
"You must listen very carefully," said Rabbit.
"So as not to miss any of it," said Piglet.
"Oh, yes," said Kanga, but she still looked at Baby Roo.
"_How_ did it go, Pooh?" said Rabbit.
Pooh gave a little cough and began.
LINES WRITTEN BY A BEAR OF VERY LITTLE BRAIN
On Monday, when the sun is hot
I wonder to myself a lot:
"Now is it true, or is it not,
"That what is which and which is what?"
On Tuesday, when it hails and snows,
The feeling on me grows and grows
That hardly anybody knows
If those are these or these are those.
On Wednesday, when the sky is blue,
And I have nothing else to do,
I sometimes wonder if it's true
That who is what and what is who.
On Thursday, when it starts to freeze
And hoar-frost twinkles on the trees,
How very readily one sees
That these are whose--but whose are these?
On Friday----
"Yes, it is, isn't it?" said Kanga, not waiting to hear what happened on
Friday. "Just one more jump, Roo, dear, and then we really _must_ be
going."
Rabbit gave Pooh a hurrying-up sort of nudge.
"Talking of Poetry," said Pooh quickly, "have you ever noticed that tree
right over there?"
"Where?" said Kanga. "Now, Roo----"
"Right over there," said Pooh, pointing behind Kanga's back.
"No," said Kanga. "Now jump in, Roo, dear, and we'll go home."
"You ought to look at that tree right over there," said Rabbit. "Shall I
lift you in, Roo?" And he picked up Roo in his paws.
"I can see a bird in it from here," said Pooh. "Or is it a fish?"
"You ought to see that bird from here," said Rabbit. "Unless it's a
fish."
"It isn't a fish, it's a bird," said Piglet.
"So it is," said Rabbit.
"Is it a starling or a blackbird?" said Pooh.
"That's the whole question," said Rabbit. "Is it a blackbird or a
starling?"
And then at last Kanga did turn her head to look. And the moment that
her head was turned, Rabbit said in a loud voice "In you go, Roo!" and
in jumped Piglet into Kanga's pocket, and off scampered Rabbit, with Roo
in his paws, as fast as he could.
"Why, where's Rabbit?" said Kanga, turning round again. "Are you all
right, Roo, dear?"
Piglet made a squeaky Roo-noise from the bottom of Kanga's pocket.
"Rabbit had to go away," said Pooh. "I think he thought of something he
had to go and see about suddenly."
"And Piglet?"
"I think Piglet thought of something at the same time. Suddenly."
"Well, we must be getting home," said Kanga. "Good-bye, Pooh." And in
three large jumps she was gone.
Pooh looked after her as she went.
"I wish I could jump like that," he thought. "Some can and some can't.
That's how it is."
But there were moments when Piglet wished that Kanga couldn't. Often,
when he had had a long walk home through the Forest, he had wished that
he were a bird; but now he thought jerkily to himself at the bottom of
Kanga's pocket,
this take
"If is shall really to
flying I never it."
And as he went up in the air he said, "_Ooooooo!_" and as he came down
he said, "_Ow!_" And he was saying, "_Ooooooo-ow, Ooooooo-ow,
Ooooooo-ow_" all the way to Kanga's house.
Of course as soon as Kanga unbuttoned her pocket, she saw what had
happened. Just for a moment, she thought she was frightened, and then
she knew she wasn't; for she felt quite sure that Christopher Robin
would never let any harm happen to Roo. So she said to herself, "If they
are having a joke with me, I will have a joke with them."
"Now then, Roo, dear," she said, as she took Piglet out of her pocket.
"Bed-time."
"_Aha!_" said Piglet, as well as he could after his Terrifying Journey.
But it wasn't a very good "_Aha!_" and Kanga didn't seem to understand
what it meant.
"Bath first," said Kanga in a cheerful voice.
"_Aha!_" said Piglet again, looking round anxiously for the others. But
the others weren't there. Rabbit was playing with Baby Roo in his own
house, and feeling more fond of him every minute, and Pooh, who had
decided to be a Kanga, was still at the sandy place on the top of the
Forest, practising jumps.
"I am not at all sure," said Kanga in a thoughtful voice, "that it
wouldn't be a good idea to have a _cold_ bath this evening. Would you
like that, Roo, dear?"
Piglet, who had never been really fond of baths, shuddered a long
indignant shudder, and said in as brave a voice as he could:
"Kanga, I see that the time has come to spleak painly."
"Funny little Roo," said Kanga, as she got the bath-water ready.
"I am _not_ Roo," said Piglet loudly. "I am Piglet!"
"Yes, dear, yes," said Kanga soothingly. "And imitating Piglet's voice
too! So clever of him," she went on, as she took a large bar of yellow
soap out of the cupboard. "What _will_ he be doing next?"
"Can't you _see_?" shouted Piglet. "Haven't you got _eyes_? _Look_ at
me!"
"I _am_ looking, Roo, dear," said Kanga rather severely. "And you know
what I told you yesterday about making faces. If you go on making faces
like Piglet's, you will grow up to _look_ like Piglet--and _then_ think
how sorry you will be. Now then, into the bath, and don't let me have to
speak to you about it again."
Before he knew where he was, Piglet was in the bath, and Kanga was
scrubbing him firmly with a large lathery flannel.
"Ow!" cried Piglet. "Let me out! I'm Piglet!"
"Don't open the mouth, dear, or the soap goes in," said Kanga. "There!
What did I tell you?"
"You--you--you did it on purpose," spluttered Piglet, as soon as he
could speak again ... and then accidentally had another mouthful of
lathery flannel.
"That's right, dear, don't say anything," said Kanga, and in another
minute Piglet was out of the bath, and being rubbed dry with a towel.
"Now," said Kanga, "there's your medicine, and then bed."
"W-w-what medicine?" said Piglet.
"To make you grow big and strong, dear. You don't want to grow up small
and weak like Piglet, do you? Well, then!"
At that moment there was a knock at the door.
"Come in," said Kanga, and in came Christopher Robin.
"Christopher Robin, Christopher Robin!" cried Piglet. "Tell Kanga who I
am! She keeps saying I'm Roo. I'm _not_ Roo, am I?"
Christopher Robin looked at him very carefully, and shook his head.
"You can't be Roo," he said, "because I've just seen Roo playing in
Rabbit's house."
"Well!" said Kanga. "Fancy that! Fancy my making a mistake like that."
"There you are!" said Piglet. "I told you so. I'm Piglet."
Christopher Robin shook his head again.
"Oh, you're not Piglet," he said. "I know Piglet well, and he's _quite_
a different colour."
Piglet began to say that this was because he had just had a bath, and
then he thought that perhaps he wouldn't say that, and as he opened his
mouth to say something else, Kanga slipped the medicine spoon in, and
then patted him on the back and told him that it was really quite a nice
taste when you got used to it.
"I knew it wasn't Piglet," said Kanga. "I wonder who it can be."
"Perhaps it's some relation of Pooh's," said Christopher Robin. "What
about a nephew or an uncle or something?"
Kanga agreed that this was probably what it was, and said that they
would have to call it by some name.
"I shall call it Pootel," said Christopher Robin. "Henry Pootel for
short."
And just when it was decided, Henry Pootel wriggled out of Kanga's arms
and jumped to the ground. To his great joy Christopher Robin had left
the door open. Never had Henry Pootel Piglet run so fast as he ran then,
and he didn't stop running until he had got quite close to his house.
But when he was a hundred yards away he stopped running, and rolled the
rest of the way home, so as to get his own nice comfortable colour
again....
So Kanga and Roo stayed in the Forest. And every Tuesday Roo spent the
day with his great friend Rabbit, and every Tuesday Kanga spent the day
with her great friend Pooh, teaching him to jump, and every Tuesday
Piglet spent the day with his great friend Christopher Robin. So they
were all happy again.
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN LEADS
AN EXPOTITION TO THE NORTH POLE
One fine day Pooh had stumped up to the top of the Forest to see if
his friend Christopher Robin was interested in Bears at all. At
breakfast that morning (a simple meal of marmalade spread lightly over a
honeycomb or two) he had suddenly thought of a new song. It began like
this:
"_Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear._"
When he had got as far as this, he scratched his head, and thought to
himself "That's a very good start for a song, but what about the second
line?" He tried singing "Ho," two or three times, but it didn't seem to
help. "Perhaps it would be better," he thought, "if I sang Hi for the
life of a Bear." So he sang it ... but it wasn't. "Very well, then,"
he said, "I shall sing that first line twice, and perhaps if I sing it
very quickly, I shall find myself singing the third and fourth lines
before I have time to think of them, and that will be a Good Song. Now
then:"
Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!
Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!
I don't much mind if it rains or snows,
'Cos I've got a lot of honey on my nice new nose,
I don't much care if it snows or thaws,
'Cos I've got a lot of honey on my nice clean paws!
Sing Ho! for a Bear!
Sing Ho! for a Pooh!
And I'll have a little something in an hour or two!
He was so pleased with this song that he sang it all the way to the top
of the Forest, "and if I go on singing it much longer," he thought, "it
will be time for the little something, and then the last line won't be
true." So he turned it into a hum instead.
Christopher Robin was sitting outside his door, putting on his Big
Boots. As soon as he saw the Big Boots, Pooh knew that an Adventure was
going to happen, and he brushed the honey off his nose with the back of
his paw, and spruced himself up as well as he could, so as to look Ready
for Anything.
"Good-morning, Christopher Robin," he called out.
"Hallo, Pooh Bear. I can't get this boot on."
"That's bad," said Pooh.
"Do you think you could very kindly lean against me, 'cos I keep pulling
so hard that I fall over backwards."
Pooh sat down, dug his feet into the ground, and pushed hard against
Christopher Robin's back, and Christopher Robin pushed hard against his,
and pulled and pulled at his boot until he had got it on.
"And that's that," said Pooh. "What do we do next?"
"We are all going on an Expedition," said Christopher Robin, as he got
up and brushed himself. "Thank you, Pooh."
"Going on an Expotition?" said Pooh eagerly. "I don't think I've ever
been on one of those. Where are we going to on this Expotition?"
"Expedition, silly old Bear. It's got an 'x' in it."
"Oh!" said Pooh. "I know." But he didn't really.
"We're going to discover the North Pole."
"Oh!" said Pooh again. "What _is_ the North Pole?" he asked.
"It's just a thing you discover," said Christopher Robin carelessly, not
being quite sure himself.
"Oh! I see," said Pooh. "Are bears any good at discovering it?"
"Of course they are. And Rabbit and Kanga and all of you. It's an
Expedition. That's what an Expedition means. A long line of everybody.
You'd better tell the others to get ready, while I see if my gun's all
right. And we must all bring Provisions."
"Bring what?"
"Things to eat."
"Oh!" said Pooh happily. "I thought you said Provisions. I'll go and
tell them." And he stumped off.
The first person he met was Rabbit.
"Hallo, Rabbit," he said, "is that you?"
"Let's pretend it isn't," said Rabbit, "and see what happens."
"I've got a message for you."
"I'll give it to him."
"We're all going on an Expotition with Christopher Robin!"
"What is it when we're on it?"
"A sort of boat, I think," said Pooh.
"Oh! that sort."
"Yes. And we're going to discover a Pole or something. Or was it a Mole?
Anyhow we're going to discover it."
"We are, are we?" said Rabbit.
"Yes. And we've got to bring Pro--things to eat with us. In case we want
to eat them. Now I'm going down to Piglet's. Tell Kanga, will you?"
He left Rabbit and hurried down to Piglet's house. The Piglet was
sitting on the ground at the door of his house blowing happily at a
dandelion, and wondering whether it would be this year, next year,
sometime or never. He had just discovered that it would be never, and
was trying to remember what "_it_" was, and hoping it wasn't anything
nice, when Pooh came up.
"Oh! Piglet," said Pooh excitedly, "we're going on an Expotition, all of
us, with things to eat. To discover something."
"To discover what?" said Piglet anxiously.
"Oh! just something."
"Nothing fierce?"
"Christopher Robin didn't say anything about fierce. He just said it had
an 'x'."
"It isn't their necks I mind," said Piglet earnestly. "It's their teeth.
But if Christopher Robin is coming I don't mind anything."
In a little while they were all ready at the top of the Forest, and the
Expotition started. First came Christopher Robin and Rabbit, then Piglet
and Pooh; then Kanga, with Roo in her pocket, and Owl; then Eeyore; and,
at the end, in a long line, all Rabbit's friends-and-relations.
"I didn't ask them," explained Rabbit carelessly. "They just came. They
always do. They can march at the end, after Eeyore."
"What I say," said Eeyore, "is that it's unsettling. I didn't want to
come on this Expo--what Pooh said. I only came to oblige. But here I
am; and if I am the end of the Expo--what we're talking about--then
let me _be_ the end. But if, every time I want to sit down for a
little rest, I have to brush away half a dozen of Rabbit's smaller
friends-and-relations first, then this isn't an Expo--whatever it
is--at all, it's simply a Confused Noise. That's what _I_ say."
"I see what Eeyore means," said Owl. "If you ask me----"
"I'm not asking anybody," said Eeyore. "I'm just telling everybody. We
can look for the North Pole, or we can play 'Here we go gathering Nuts
and May' with the end part of an ant's nest. It's all the same to me."
There was a shout from the top of the line.
"Come on!" called Christopher Robin.
"Come on!" called Pooh and Piglet.
"Come on!" called Owl.
"We're starting," said Rabbit. "I must go." And he hurried off to the
front of the Expotition with Christopher Robin.
"All right," said Eeyore. "We're going. Only Don't Blame Me."
So off they all went to discover the Pole. And as they walked, they
chattered to each other of this and that, all except Pooh, who was
making up a song.
"This is the first verse," he said to Piglet, when he was ready with it.
"First verse of what?"
"My song."
"What song?"
"This one."
"Which one?"
"Well, if you listen, Piglet, you'll hear it."
"How do you know I'm not listening?"
Pooh couldn't answer that one, so he began to sing.
They all went off to discover the Pole,
Owl and Piglet and Rabbit and all;
It's a Thing you Discover, as I've been tole
By Owl and Piglet and Rabbit and all.
Eeyore, Christopher Robin and Pooh
And Rabbit's relations all went too--
And where the Pole was none of them knew....
Sing Hey! for Owl and Rabbit and all!
"Hush!" said Christopher Robin turning round to Pooh, "we're just coming
to a Dangerous Place."
"Hush!" said Pooh turning round quickly to Piglet.
"Hush!" said Piglet to Kanga.
"Hush!" said Kanga to Owl, while Roo said "Hush!" several times to
himself very quietly.
"Hush!" said Owl to Eeyore.
"_Hush!_" said Eeyore in a terrible voice to all Rabbit's
friends-and-relations, and "Hush!" they said hastily to each other all
down the line, until it got to the last one of all. And the last and
smallest friend-and-relation was so upset to find that the whole
Expotition was saying "Hush!" to _him_, that he buried himself head
downwards in a crack in the ground, and stayed there for two days until
the danger was over, and then went home in a great hurry, and lived
quietly with his Aunt ever-afterwards. His name was Alexander Beetle.
They had come to a stream which twisted and tumbled between high rocky
banks, and Christopher Robin saw at once how dangerous it was.
"It's just the place," he explained, "for an Ambush."
"What sort of bush?" whispered Pooh to Piglet. "A gorse-bush?"
"My dear Pooh," said Owl in his superior way, "don't you know what an
Ambush is?"
"Owl," said Piglet, looking round at him severely, "Pooh's whisper was a
perfectly private whisper, and there was no need----"
"An Ambush," said Owl, "is a sort of Surprise."
"So is a gorse-bush sometimes," said Pooh.
"An Ambush, as I was about to explain to Pooh," said Piglet, "is a sort
of Surprise."
"If people jump out at you suddenly, that's an Ambush," said Owl.
"It's an Ambush, Pooh, when people jump at you suddenly," explained
Piglet.
Pooh, who now knew what an Ambush was, said that a gorse-bush had sprung
at him suddenly one day when he fell off a tree, and he had taken six
days to get all the prickles out of himself.
"We are not _talking_ about gorse-bushes," said Owl a little crossly.
"I am," said Pooh.
They were climbing very cautiously up the stream now, going from rock to
rock, and after they had gone a little way they came to a place where
the banks widened out at each side, so that on each side of the water
there was a level strip of grass on which they could sit down and rest.
As soon as he saw this, Christopher Robin called "Halt!" and they all
sat down and rested.
"I think," said Christopher Robin, "that we ought to eat all our
Provisions now, so that we shan't have so much to carry."
"Eat all our what?" said Pooh.
"All that we've brought," said Piglet, getting to work.
"That's a good idea," said Pooh, and he got to work too.
"Have you all got something?" asked Christopher Robin with his mouth
full.
"All except me," said Eeyore. "As Usual." He looked round at them in his
melancholy way. "I suppose none of you are sitting on a thistle by any
chance?"
"I believe I am," said Pooh. "Ow!" He got up, and looked behind him.
"Yes, I was. I thought so."
"Thank you, Pooh. If you've quite finished with it." He moved across to
Pooh's place, and began to eat.
"It don't do them any Good, you know, sitting on them," he went on, as
he looked up munching. "Takes all the Life out of them. Remember that
another time, all of you. A little Consideration, a little Thought for
Others, makes all the difference."
As soon as he had finished his lunch Christopher Robin whispered to
Rabbit, and Rabbit said "Yes, yes, of course," and they walked a little
way up the stream together.
"I didn't want the others to hear," said Christopher Robin.
"Quite so," said Rabbit, looking important.
"It's--I wondered--It's only--Rabbit, I suppose _you_ don't know, What
does the North Pole _look_ like?"
"Well," said Rabbit, stroking his whiskers. "Now you're asking me."
"I did know once, only I've sort of forgotten," said Christopher Robin
carelessly.
"It's a funny thing," said Rabbit, "but I've sort of forgotten too,
although I did know _once_."
"I suppose it's just a pole stuck in the ground?"
"Sure to be a pole," said Rabbit, "because of calling it a pole, and if
it's a pole, well, I should think it would be sticking in the ground,
shouldn't you, because there'd be nowhere else to stick it."
"Yes, that's what I thought."
"The only thing," said Rabbit, "is, _where is it sticking_?"
"That's what we're looking for," said Christopher Robin.
They went back to the others. Piglet was lying on his back, sleeping
peacefully. Roo was washing his face and paws in the stream, while Kanga
explained to everybody proudly that this was the first time he had ever
washed his face himself, and Owl was telling Kanga an Interesting
Anecdote full of long words like Encyclopædia and Rhododendron to which
Kanga wasn't listening.
"I don't hold with all this washing," grumbled Eeyore. "This modern
Behind-the-ears nonsense. What do _you_ think, Pooh?"
"Well," said Pooh, "_I_ think----"
But we shall never know what Pooh thought, for there came a sudden
squeak from Roo, a splash, and a loud cry of alarm from Kanga.
"So much for _washing_," said Eeyore.
"Roo's fallen in!" cried Rabbit, and he and Christopher Robin came
rushing down to the rescue.
"Look at me swimming!" squeaked Roo from the middle of his pool, and was
hurried down a waterfall into the next pool.
"Are you all right, Roo dear?" called Kanga anxiously.
"Yes!" said Roo. "Look at me sw----" and down he went over the next
waterfall into another pool.
Everybody was doing something to help. Piglet, wide awake suddenly, was
jumping up and down and making "Oo, I say" noises; Owl was explaining
that in a case of Sudden and Temporary Immersion the Important Thing was
to keep the Head Above Water; Kanga was jumping along the bank, saying
"Are you _sure_ you're all right, Roo dear?" to which Roo, from whatever
pool he was in at the moment, was answering "Look at me swimming!"
Eeyore had turned round and hung his tail over the first pool into which
Roo fell, and with his back to the accident was grumbling quietly to
himself, and saying, "All this washing; but catch on to my tail, little
Roo, and you'll be all right"; and, Christopher Robin and Rabbit came
hurrying past Eeyore, and were calling out to the others in front of
them.
"All right, Roo, I'm coming," called Christopher Robin.
"Get something across the stream lower down, some of you fellows,"
called Rabbit.
But Pooh was getting something. Two pools below Roo he was standing with
a long pole in his paws, and Kanga came up and took one end of it, and
between them they held it across the lower part of the pool; and Roo,
still bubbling proudly, "Look at me swimming," drifted up against it,
and climbed out.
"Did you see me swimming?" squeaked Roo excitedly, while Kanga scolded
him and rubbed him down. "Pooh, did you see me swimming? That's called
swimming, what I was doing. Rabbit, did you see what I was doing?
Swimming. Hallo, Piglet! I say, Piglet! What do you think I was doing!
Swimming! Christopher Robin, did you see me----"
But Christopher Robin wasn't listening. He was looking at Pooh.
"Pooh," he said, "where did you find that pole?"
Pooh looked at the pole in his hands.
"I just found it," he said. "I thought it ought to be useful. I just
picked it up."
"Pooh," said Christopher Robin solemnly, "the Expedition is over. You
have found the North Pole!"
"Oh!" said Pooh.
Eeyore was sitting with his tail in the water when they all got back to
him.
"Tell Roo to be quick, somebody," he said. "My tail's getting cold. I
don't want to mention it, but I just mention it. I don't want to
complain but there it is. My tail's cold."
"Here I am!" squeaked Roo.
"Oh, there you are."
"Did you see me swimming?"
Eeyore took his tail out of the water, and swished it from side to side.
"As I expected," he said. "Lost all feeling. Numbed it. That's what it's
done. Numbed it. Well, as long as nobody minds, I suppose it's all
right."
"Poor old Eeyore. I'll dry it for you," said Christopher Robin, and he
took out his handkerchief and rubbed it up.
"Thank you, Christopher Robin. You're the only one who seems to
understand about tails. They don't think--that's what the matter with
some of these others. They've no imagination. A tail isn't a tail to
_them_, it's just a Little Bit Extra at the back."
"Never mind, Eeyore," said Christopher Robin, rubbing his hardest. "Is
_that_ better?"
"It's feeling more like a tail perhaps. It Belongs again, if you know
what I mean."
"Hullo, Eeyore," said Pooh, coming up to them with his pole.
"Hullo, Pooh. Thank you for asking, but I shall be able to use it again
in a day or two."
"Use what?" said Pooh.
"What we are talking about."
"I wasn't talking about anything," said Pooh, looking puzzled.
"My mistake again. I thought you were saying how sorry you were about my
tail, being all numb, and could you do anything to help?"
"No," said Pooh. "That wasn't me," he said. He thought for a little and
then suggested helpfully, "Perhaps it was somebody else."
"Well, thank him for me when you see him."
Pooh looked anxiously at Christopher Robin.
"Pooh's found the North Pole," said Christopher Robin. "Isn't that
lovely?"
Pooh looked modestly down.
"Is that it?" said Eeyore.
"Yes," said Christopher Robin.
"Is that what we were looking for?"
"Yes," said Pooh.
"Oh!" said Eeyore. "Well, anyhow--it didn't rain," he said.
They stuck the pole in the ground, and Christopher Robin tied a message
on to it.
NORTH POLE
DISCOVERED BY POOH
POOH FOUND IT.
Then they all went home again. And I think, but I am not quite sure,
that Roo had a hot bath and went straight to bed. But Pooh went back to
his own house, and feeling very proud of what he had done, had a little
something to revive himself.
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH PIGLET IS ENTIRELY
SURROUNDED BY WATER
It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never
in all his life, and _he_ was goodness knows _how_ old--three, was it,
or four?--never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days.
"If only," he thought, as he looked out of the window, "I had been in
Pooh's house, or Christopher Robin's house, or Rabbit's house when it
began to rain, then I should have had Company all this time, instead of
being here all alone, with nothing to do except wonder when it will
stop." And he imagined himself with Pooh, saying, "Did you ever see such
rain, Pooh?" and Pooh saying, "Isn't it _awful_, Piglet?" and Piglet
saying, "I wonder how it is over Christopher Robin's way" and Pooh
saying, "I should think poor old Rabbit is about flooded out by this
time." It would have been jolly to talk like this, and really, it wasn't
much good having anything exciting like floods, if you couldn't share
them with somebody.
For it was rather exciting. The little dry ditches in which Piglet had
nosed about so often had become streams, the little streams across which
he had splashed were rivers, and the river, between whose steep banks
they had played so happily, had sprawled out of its own bed and was
taking up so much room everywhere, that Piglet was beginning to wonder
whether it would be coming into _his_ bed soon.
"It's a little Anxious," he said to himself, "to be a Very Small Animal
Entirely Surrounded by Water. Christopher Robin and Pooh could escape by
Climbing Trees, and Kanga could escape by Jumping, and Rabbit could
escape by Burrowing, and Owl could escape by Flying, and Eeyore could
escape by--by Making a Loud Noise Until Rescued, and here am I,
surrounded by water and I can't do _anything_."
It went on raining, and every day the water got a little higher, until
now it was nearly up to Piglet's window ... and still he hadn't done
anything.
"There's Pooh," he thought to himself. "Pooh hasn't much Brain, but he
never comes to any harm. He does silly things and they turn out right.
There's Owl. Owl hasn't exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things. He would
know the Right Thing to Do when Surrounded by Water. There's Rabbit. He
hasn't Learnt in Books, but he can always Think of a Clever Plan.
There's Kanga. She isn't Clever, Kanga isn't, but she would be so
anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking
about It. And then there's Eeyore. And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow
that he wouldn't mind about this. But I wonder what Christopher Robin
would do?"
Then suddenly he remembered a story which Christopher Robin had told him
about a man on a desert island who had written something in a bottle and
thrown it in the sea; and Piglet thought that if he wrote something in a
bottle and threw it in the water, perhaps somebody would come and rescue
_him_!
He left the window and began to search his house, all of it that wasn't
under water, and at last he found a pencil and a small piece of dry
paper, and a bottle with a cork to it. And he wrote on one side of the
paper:
HELP!
PIGLET (ME)
and on the other side:
IT'S ME PIGLET, HELP HELP.
Then he put the paper in the bottle, and he corked the bottle up as
tightly as he could, and he leant out of his window as far as he could
lean without falling in, and he threw the bottle as far as he could
throw--_splash!_--and in a little while it bobbed up again on the water;
and he watched it floating slowly away in the distance, until his eyes
ached with looking, and sometimes he thought it was the bottle, and
sometimes he thought it was just a ripple on the water which he was
following, and then suddenly he knew that he would never see it again
and that he had done all that he could do to save himself.
"So now," he thought, "somebody else will have to do something, and I
hope they will do it soon, because if they don't I shall have to swim,
which I can't, so I hope they do it soon." And then he gave a very long
sigh and said, "I wish Pooh were here. It's so much more friendly with
two."
* * * * *
When the rain began Pooh was asleep. It rained, and it rained, and it
rained, and he slept and he slept and he slept. He had had a tiring day.
You remember how he discovered the North Pole; well, he was so proud of
this that he asked Christopher Robin if there were any other Poles such
as a Bear of Little Brain might discover.
"There's a South Pole," said Christopher Robin, "and I expect there's an
East Pole and a West Pole, though people don't like talking about them."
Pooh was very excited when he heard this, and suggested that they should
have an Expotition to discover the East Pole, but Christopher Robin had
thought of something else to do with Kanga; so Pooh went out to discover
the East Pole by himself. Whether he discovered it or not, I forget; but
he was so tired when he got home that, in the very middle of his supper,
after he had been eating for little more than half-an-hour, he fell fast
asleep in his chair, and slept and slept and slept.
Then suddenly he was dreaming. He was at the East Pole, and it was a
very cold pole with the coldest sort of snow and ice all over it. He had
found a bee-hive to sleep in, but there wasn't room for his legs, so he
had left them outside. And Wild Woozles, such as inhabit the East Pole,
came and nibbled all the fur off his legs to make nests for their Young.
And the more they nibbled, the colder his legs got, until suddenly he
woke up with an _Ow!_--and there he was, sitting in his chair with his
feet in the water, and water all round him!
He splashed to his door and looked out....
"This is Serious," said Pooh. "I must have an Escape."
So he took his largest pot of honey and escaped with it to a broad
branch of his tree, well above the water, and then he climbed down again
and escaped with another pot ... and when the whole Escape was
finished, there was Pooh sitting on his branch, dangling his legs, and
there, beside him, were ten pots of honey....
Two days later, there was Pooh, sitting on his branch, dangling his
legs, and there, beside him, were four pots of honey....
Three days later, there was Pooh, sitting on his branch, dangling his
legs, and there beside him, was one pot of honey.
Four days later, there was Pooh ...
And it was on the morning of the fourth day that Piglet's bottle came
floating past him, and with one loud cry of "Honey!" Pooh plunged into
the water, seized the bottle, and struggled back to his tree again.
"Bother!" said Pooh, as he opened it. "All that wet for nothing. What's
that bit of paper doing?"
He took it out and looked at it.
"It's a Missage," he said to himself, "that's what it is. And that
letter is a 'P,' and so is that, and so is that, and 'P' means 'Pooh,'
so it's a very important Missage to me, and I can't read it. I must find
Christopher Robin or Owl or Piglet, one of those Clever Readers who can
read things, and they will tell me what this missage means. Only I can't
swim. Bother!"
Then he had an idea, and I think that for a Bear of Very Little Brain,
it was a good idea. He said to himself:
"If a bottle can float, then a jar can float, and if a jar floats, I can
sit on the top of it, if it's a very big jar."
So he took his biggest jar, and corked it up. "All boats have to have a
name," he said, "so I shall call mine _The Floating Bear_." And with
these words he dropped his boat into the water and jumped in after it.
For a little while Pooh and _The Floating Bear_ were uncertain as to
which of them was meant to be on the top, but after trying one or two
different positions, they settled down with _The Floating Bear_
underneath and Pooh triumphantly astride it, paddling vigorously with
his feet.
* * * * *
Christopher Robin lived at the very top of the Forest. It rained, and it
rained, and it rained, but the water couldn't come up to _his_ house. It
was rather jolly to look down into the valleys and see the water all
round him, but it rained so hard that he stayed indoors most of the
time, and thought about things. Every morning he went out with his
umbrella and put a stick in the place where the water came up to, and
every next morning he went out and couldn't see his stick any more, so
he put another stick in the place where the water came up to, and then
he walked home again, and each morning he had a shorter way to walk than
he had had the morning before. On the morning of the fifth day he saw
the water all round him, and knew that for the first time in his life he
was on a real island. Which was very exciting.
It was on this morning that Owl came flying over the water to say "How
do you do," to his friend Christopher Robin.
"I say, Owl," said Christopher Robin, "isn't this fun? I'm on an
island!"
"The atmospheric conditions have been very unfavourable lately," said
Owl.
"The what?"
"It has been raining," explained Owl.
"Yes," said Christopher Robin. "It has."
"The flood-level has reached an unprecedented height."
"The who?"
"There's a lot of water about," explained Owl.
"Yes," said Christopher Robin, "there is."
"However, the prospects are rapidly becoming more favourable. At any
moment----"
"Have you seen Pooh?"
"No. At any moment----"
"I hope he's all right," said Christopher Robin. "I've been wondering
about him. I expect Piglet's with him. Do you think they're all right,
Owl?"
"I expect so. You see, at any moment----"
"Do go and see, Owl. Because Pooh hasn't got very much brain, and he
might do something silly, and I do love him so, Owl. Do you see, Owl?"
"That's all right," said Owl. "I'll go. Back directly." And he flew off.
In a little while he was back again.
"Pooh isn't there," he said.
"Not there?"
"Has _been_ there. He's been sitting on a branch of his tree outside his
house with nine pots of honey. But he isn't there now."
"Oh, Pooh!" cried Christopher Robin. "Where _are_ you?"
"Here I am," said a growly voice behind him.
"Pooh!"
They rushed into each other's arms.
"How did you get here, Pooh?" asked Christopher Robin, when he was ready
to talk again.
"On my boat," said Pooh proudly. "I had a Very Important Missage sent me
in a bottle, and owing to having got some water in my eyes, I couldn't
read it, so I brought it to you. On my boat."
With these proud words he gave Christopher Robin the missage.
"But it's from Piglet!" cried Christopher Robin when he had read it.
"Isn't there anything about Pooh in it?" asked Bear, looking over his
shoulder.
Christopher Robin read the message aloud.
"Oh, are those 'P's' piglets? I thought they were poohs."
"We must rescue him at once! I thought he was with _you_, Pooh. Owl,
could you rescue him on your back?"
"I don't think so," said Owl, after grave thought. "It is doubtful if
the necessary dorsal muscles----"
"Then would you fly to him at _once_ and say that Rescue is Coming? And
Pooh and I will think of a Rescue and come as quick as ever we can. Oh,
don't _talk_, Owl, go on quick!" And, still thinking of something to
say, Owl flew off.
"Now then, Pooh," said Christopher Robin, "where's your boat?"
"I ought to say," explained Pooh as they walked down to the shore of the
island, "that it isn't just an ordinary sort of boat. Sometimes it's a
Boat, and sometimes it's more of an Accident. It all depends."
"Depends on what?"
"On whether I'm on the top of it or underneath it."
"Oh! Well, where is it?"
"There!" said Pooh, pointing proudly to _The Floating Bear_.
It wasn't what Christopher Robin expected, and the more he looked at it,
the more he thought what a Brave and Clever Bear Pooh was, and the more
Christopher Robin thought this, the more Pooh looked modestly down his
nose and tried to pretend he wasn't.
"But it's too small for two of us," said Christopher Robin sadly.
"Three of us with Piglet."
"That makes it smaller still. Oh, Pooh Bear, what shall we do?"
And then this Bear, Pooh Bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, F.O.P. (Friend of
Piglet's), R.C. (Rabbit's Companion), P.D. (Pole Discoverer), E.C. and
T.F. (Eeyore's Comforter and Tail-finder)--in fact, Pooh himself--said
something so clever that Christopher Robin could only look at him with
mouth open and eyes staring, wondering if this was really the Bear of
Very Little Brain whom he had known and loved so long.
"We might go in your umbrella," said Pooh.
"?"
"We might go in your umbrella," said Pooh.
"? ?"
"We might go in your umbrella," said Pooh.
"!!!!!!"
For suddenly Christopher Robin saw that they might. He opened his
umbrella and put it point downwards in the water. It floated but
wobbled. Pooh got in. He was just beginning to say that it was all right
now, when he found that it wasn't, so after a short drink which he
didn't really want he waded back to Christopher Robin. Then they both
got in together, and it wobbled no longer.
"I shall call this boat _The Brain of Pooh_," said Christopher Robin,
and _The Brain of Pooh_ set sail forthwith in a south-westerly
direction, revolving gracefully.
You can imagine Piglet's joy when at last the ship came in sight of him.
In after-years he liked to think that he had been in Very Great Danger
during the Terrible Flood, but the only danger he had really been in was
in the last half-hour of his imprisonment, when Owl, who had just flown
up, sat on a branch of his tree to comfort him, and told him a very long
story about an aunt who had once laid a seagull's egg by mistake, and
the story went on and on, rather like this sentence, until Piglet who
was listening out of his window without much hope, went to sleep quietly
and naturally, slipping slowly out of the window towards the water until
he was only hanging on by his toes, at which moment luckily, a sudden
loud squawk from Owl, which was really part of the story, being what his
aunt said, woke the Piglet up and just gave him time to jerk himself
back into safety and say, "How interesting, and did she?" when--well,
you can imagine his joy when at last he saw the good ship, _Brain of
Pooh_ (_Captain_, C. Robin; _1st Mate_, P. Bear) coming over the sea to
rescue him. Christopher Robin and Pooh again....
And that is really the end of the story, and I am very tired after that
last sentence, I think I shall stop there.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN GIVES
POOH A PARTY, AND WE SAY GOOD-BYE
One day when the sun had come back over the Forest, bringing with it
the scent of may, and all the streams of the Forest were tinkling
happily to find themselves their own pretty shape again, and the little
pools lay dreaming of the life they had seen and the big things they had
done, and in the warmth and quiet of the Forest the cuckoo was trying
over his voice carefully and listening to see if he liked it, and
wood-pigeons were complaining gently to themselves in their lazy
comfortable way that it was the other fellow's fault, but it didn't
matter very much; on such a day as this Christopher Robin whistled in a
special way he had, and Owl came flying out of the Hundred Acre Wood to
see what was wanted.
"Owl," said Christopher Robin, "I am going to give a party."
"You are, are you?" said Owl.
"And it's to be a special sort of party, because it's because of what
Pooh did when he did what he did to save Piglet from the flood."
"Oh, that's what it's for, is it?" said Owl.
"Yes, so will you tell Pooh as quickly as you can, and all the others,
because it will be to-morrow."
"Oh, it will, will it?" said Owl, still being as helpful as possible.
"So will you go and tell them, Owl?"
Owl tried to think of something very wise to say, but couldn't, so he
flew off to tell the others. And the first person he told was Pooh.
"Pooh," he said, "Christopher Robin is giving a party."
"Oh!" said Pooh. And then seeing that Owl expected him to say something
else, he said "Will there be those little cake things with pink sugar
icing?"
Owl felt that it was rather beneath him to talk about little cake things
with pink sugar icing, so he told Pooh exactly what Christopher Robin
had said, and flew off to Eeyore.
"A party for Me?" thought Pooh to himself. "How grand!" And he began to
wonder if all the other animals would know that it was a special Pooh
Party, and if Christopher Robin had told them about _The Floating Bear_
and the _Brain of Pooh_ and all the wonderful ships he had invented and
sailed on, and he began to think how awful it would be if everybody had
forgotten about it, and nobody quite knew what the party was for; and
the more he thought like this, the more the party got muddled in his
mind, like a dream when nothing goes right. And the dream began to sing
itself over in his head until it became a sort of song. It was an
ANXIOUS POOH SONG.
3 Cheers for Pooh!
(_For Who?_)
For Pooh--
(_Why what did he do?_)
I thought you knew;
He saved his friend from a wetting!
3 Cheers for Bear!
(_For where?_)
For Bear--
He couldn't swim,
But he rescued him!
(_He rescued who?_)
Oh, listen, do!
I am talking of Pooh--
(_Of who?_)
Of Pooh!
(_I'm sorry I keep forgetting_).
Well, Pooh was a Bear of Enormous Brain
(_Just say it again!_)
Of enormous brain--
(_Of enormous what?_)
Well, he ate a lot,
And I don't know if he could swim or not,
But he managed to float
On a sort of boat
(_On a sort of what?_)
Well, a sort of pot--
So now let's give him three hearty cheers
(_So now let's give him three hearty whiches?_)
And hope he'll be with us for years and years,
And grow in health and wisdom and riches!
3 Cheers for Pooh!
(_For who?_)
For Pooh--
3 Cheers for Bear!
(_For where?_)
For Bear--
3 Cheers for the wonderful Winnie-the-Pooh!
(_Just tell me, somebody_--WHAT DID HE DO?)
While this was going on inside him, Owl was talking to Eeyore.
"Eeyore," said Owl, "Christopher Robin is giving a party."
"Very interesting," said Eeyore. "I suppose they will be sending me down
the odd bits which got trodden on. Kind and Thoughtful. Not at all,
don't mention it."
"There is an Invitation for you."
"What's that like?"
"An Invitation!"
"Yes, I heard you. Who dropped it?"
"This isn't anything to eat, it's asking you to the party. To-morrow."
Eeyore shook his head slowly.
"You mean Piglet. The little fellow with the excited ears. That's
Piglet. I'll tell him."
"No, no!" said Owl, getting quite fussy. "It's you!"
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. Christopher Robin said 'All of them! Tell all of
them.'"
"All of them, except Eeyore?"
"All of them," said Owl sulkily.
"Ah!" said Eeyore. "A mistake, no doubt, but still, I shall come. Only
don't blame _me_ if it rains."
But it didn't rain. Christopher Robin had made a long table out of some
long pieces of wood, and they all sat round it. Christopher Robin sat at
one end, and Pooh sat at the other, and between them on one side were
Owl and Eeyore and Piglet, and between them on the other side were
Rabbit, and Roo and Kanga. And all Rabbit's friends and relations spread
themselves about on the grass, and waited hopefully in case anybody
spoke to them, or dropped anything, or asked them the time.
It was the first party to which Roo had ever been, and he was very
excited. As soon as ever they had sat down he began to talk.
"Hallo, Pooh!" he squeaked.
"Hallo, Roo!" said Pooh.
Roo jumped up and down in his seat for a little while and then began
again.
"Hallo, Piglet!" he squeaked.
Piglet waved a paw at him, being too busy to say anything.
"Hallo, Eeyore!" said Roo.
Eeyore nodded gloomily at him. "It will rain soon, you see if it
doesn't," he said.
Roo looked to see if it didn't, and it didn't, so he said "Hallo,
Owl!"--and Owl said "Hallo, my little fellow," in a kindly way, and went
on telling Christopher Robin about an accident which had nearly happened
to a friend of his whom Christopher Robin didn't know, and Kanga said to
Roo, "Drink up your milk first, dear, and talk afterwards." So Roo, who
was drinking his milk, tried to say that he could do both at once ...
and had to be patted on the back and dried for quite a long time
afterwards.
When they had all nearly eaten enough, Christopher Robin banged on the
table with his spoon, and everybody stopped talking and was very silent,
except Roo who was just finishing a loud attack of hiccups and trying to
look as if it was one of Rabbit's relations.
"This party," said Christopher Robin, "is a party because of what
someone did, and we all know who it was, and it's his party, because of
what he did, and I've got a present for him and here it is." Then he
felt about a little and whispered, "Where is it?"
While he was looking, Eeyore coughed in an impressive way and began to
speak.
"Friends," he said, "including oddments, it is a great pleasure, or
perhaps I had better say it has been a pleasure so far, to see you at my
party. What I did was nothing. Any of you--except Rabbit and Owl and
Kanga--would have done the same. Oh, and Pooh. My remarks do not, of
course, apply to Piglet and Roo, because they are too small. Any of you
would have done the same. But it just happened to be Me. It was not, I
need hardly say, with an idea of getting what Christopher Robin is
looking for now"--and he put his front leg to his mouth and said in a
loud whisper, "Try under the table"--"that I did what I did--but because
I feel that we should all do what we can to help. I feel that we should
all----"
"H--hup!" said Roo accidentally.
"Roo, dear!" said Kanga reproachfully.
"Was it me?" asked Roo, a little surprised.
"What's Eeyore talking about?" Piglet whispered to Pooh.
"I don't know," said Pooh rather dolefully.
"I thought this was _your_ party."
"I thought it was _once_. But I suppose it isn't."
"I'd sooner it was yours than Eeyore's," said Piglet.
"So would I," said Pooh.
"H--hup!" said Roo again.
"AS--I--WAS--SAYING," said Eeyore loudly and sternly, "as I was saying
when I was interrupted by various Loud Sounds, I feel that----"
"Here it is!" cried Christopher Robin excitedly. "Pass it down to silly
old Pooh. It's for Pooh."
"For Pooh?" said Eeyore.
"Of course it is. The best bear in all the world."
"I might have known," said Eeyore. "After all, one can't complain. I
have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last
week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said 'Bother!'
The Social Round. Always something going on."
Nobody was listening, for they were all saying "Open it, Pooh," "What is
it, Pooh?" "I know what it is," "No, you don't" and other helpful
remarks of this sort. And of course Pooh was opening it as quickly as
ever he could, but without cutting the string, because you never know
when a bit of string might be Useful. At last it was undone.
When Pooh saw what it was, he nearly fell down, he was so pleased. It
was a Special Pencil Case. There were pencils in it marked "B" for Bear,
and pencils marked "HB" for Helping Bear, and pencils marked "BB" for
Brave Bear. There was a knife for sharpening the pencils, and
india-rubber for rubbing out anything which you had spelt wrong, and a
ruler for ruling lines for the words to walk on, and inches marked on
the ruler in case you wanted to know how many inches anything was, and
Blue Pencils and Red Pencils and Green Pencils for saying special things
in blue and red and green. And all these lovely things were in little
pockets of their own in a Special Case which shut with a click when you
clicked it. And they were all for Pooh.
"Oh!" said Pooh.
"Oh, Pooh!" said everybody else except Eeyore.
"Thank-you," growled Pooh.
But Eeyore was saying to himself, "This writing business. Pencils and
what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it."
Later on, when they had all said "Good-bye" and "Thank-you" to
Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in
the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent.
"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's
the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do _you_ say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting _to-day_?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
"It's the same thing," he said.
* * * * *
"And what did happen?" asked Christopher Robin.
"When?"
"Next morning."
"I don't know."
"Could you think and tell me and Pooh some time?"
"If you wanted it very much."
"Pooh does," said Christopher Robin.
He gave a deep sigh, picked his bear up by the leg and walked off to the
door, trailing Winnie-the-Pooh behind him. At the door he turned and
said "Coming to see me have my bath?"
"I might," I said.
"Was Pooh's pencil case any better than mine?"
"It was just the same," I said.
He nodded and went out ... and in a moment I heard
Winnie-the-Pooh--_bump, bump, bump_--going up the stairs behind him.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
IN PROSE
BEING
A Ghost Story of Christmas
by Charles Dickens
PREFACE
I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book,
to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my
readers out of humour with themselves, with each other,
with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses
pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.
Their faithful Friend and Servant,
C. D.
December, 1843.
CONTENTS
Stave I: Marley's Ghost
Stave II: The First of the Three Spirits
Stave III: The Second of the Three Spirits
Stave IV: The Last of the Spirits
Stave V: The End of It
STAVE I: MARLEY'S GHOST
MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt
whatever about that. The register of his burial was
signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and
Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he
chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a
door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my
own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about
a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to
regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery
in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors
is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that
Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did.
How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were
partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge
was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole
assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and
sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully
cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent
man of business on the very day of the funeral,
and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to
the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley
was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or
nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going
to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that
Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there
would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a
stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts,
than there would be in any other middle-aged
gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy
spot--say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance--
literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name.
There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse
door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as
Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the
business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley,
but he answered to both names. It was all the
same to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone,
Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint,
from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire;
secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The
cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed
nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his
eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his
grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his
eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low
temperature always about with him; he iced his office in
the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on
Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather
chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he,
no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no
pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't
know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and
snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage
over him in only one respect. They often "came down"
handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with
gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you?
When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored
him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him
what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all
his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of
Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to
know him; and when they saw him coming on, would
tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and
then would wag their tails as though they said, "No
eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"
But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing
he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths
of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance,
was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.
Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year,
on Christmas Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his
counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy
withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside,
go wheezing up and down, beating their hands
upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the
pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had
only just gone three, but it was quite dark already--
it had not been light all day--and candles were flaring
in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like
ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog
came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was
so dense without, that although the court was of the
narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.
To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring
everything, one might have thought that Nature
lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open
that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a
dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying
letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's
fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one
coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept
the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the
clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted
that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore
the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to
warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being
a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried
a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's
nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was
the first intimation he had of his approach.
"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the
fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was
all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his
eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's
nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure?"
"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What
right have you to be merry? What reason have you
to be merry? You're poor enough."
"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What
right have you to be dismal? What reason have you
to be morose? You're rich enough."
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur
of the moment, said, "Bah!" again; and followed it up
with "Humbug."
"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.
"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I
live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas!
Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas
time to you but a time for paying bills without
money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but
not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books
and having every item in 'em through a round dozen
of months presented dead against you? If I could
work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot
who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips,
should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried
with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"
"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
"Nephew!" returned the uncle sternly, "keep Christmas
in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you
don't keep it."
"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much
good may it do you! Much good it has ever done
you!"
"There are many things from which I might have
derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare
say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the
rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas
time, when it has come round--apart from the
veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything
belonging to it can be apart from that--as a
good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant
time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar
of the year, when men and women seem by one consent
to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think
of people below them as if they really were
fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race
of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore,
uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or
silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me
good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"
The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded.
Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety,
he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark
for ever.
"Let me hear another sound from you," said
Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing
your situation! You're quite a powerful speaker,
sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you
don't go into Parliament."
"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."
Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he
did. He went the whole length of the expression,
and said that he would see him in that extremity first.
"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"
"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.
"Because I fell in love."
"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if
that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous
than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"
"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before
that happened. Why give it as a reason for not
coming now?"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you;
why cannot we be friends?"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so
resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I
have been a party. But I have made the trial in
homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas
humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!"
"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
"And A Happy New Year!"
"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word,
notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to
bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who,
cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned
them cordially.
"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge; who
overheard him: "my clerk, with fifteen shillings a
week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry
Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."
This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had
let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen,
pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off,
in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in
their hands, and bowed to him.
"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the
gentlemen, referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure
of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"
"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,"
Scrooge replied. "He died seven years ago, this very
night."
"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented
by his surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting
his credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred
spirits. At the ominous word "liberality," Scrooge
frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials
back.
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,"
said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than
usually desirable that we should make some slight
provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer
greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in
want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands
are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down
the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge.
"Are they still in operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish
I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour,
then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first,
that something had occurred to stop them in their
useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to
hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish
Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,"
returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring
to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink,
and means of warmth. We choose this time, because
it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt,
and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down
for?"
"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you
ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.
I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't
afford to make idle people merry. I help to support
the establishments I have mentioned--they cost
enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had
better do it, and decrease the surplus population.
Besides--excuse me--I don't know that."
"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's
enough for a man to understand his own business, and
not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies
me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue
their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed
his labours with an improved opinion of himself,
and in a more facetious temper than was usual
with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that
people ran about with flaring links, proffering their
services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct
them on their way. The ancient tower of a church,
whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down
at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became
invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the
clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if
its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.
The cold became intense. In the main street, at the
corner of the court, some labourers were repairing
the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier,
round which a party of ragged men and boys were
gathered: warming their hands and winking their
eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug
being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed,
and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness
of the shops where holly sprigs and berries
crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale
faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers'
trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant,
with which it was next to impossible to believe that
such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything
to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the
mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks
and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's
household should; and even the little tailor, whom he
had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for
being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up
to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean
wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
Foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting
cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped
the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather
as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then
indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The
owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled
by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs,
stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with
a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of
"God bless you, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!"
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action,
that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to
the fog and even more congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house
arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his
stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant
clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out,
and put on his hat.
"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said
Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, sir."
"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not
fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd
think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used,
when I pay a day's wages for no work."
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every
twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning
his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must
have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
morning."
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge
walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a
twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his
white comforter dangling below his waist (for he
boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill,
at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in
honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home
to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play
at blindman's-buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual
melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and
beguiled the rest of the evening with his
banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in
chambers which had once belonged to his deceased
partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a
lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so
little business to be, that one could scarcely help
fancying it must have run there when it was a young
house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses,
and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough
now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but
Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices.
The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew
its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands.
The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway
of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of
the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the
threshold.
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all
particular about the knocker on the door, except that it
was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had
seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence
in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what
is called fancy about him as any man in the city of
London, even including--which is a bold word--the
corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be
borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one
thought on Marley, since his last mention of his
seven years' dead partner that afternoon. And then
let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened
that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door,
saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate
process of change--not a knocker, but Marley's face.
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow
as the other objects in the yard were, but had a
dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark
cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked
at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly
spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The
hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air;
and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly
motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it
horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the
face and beyond its control, rather than a part of
its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it
was a knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood
was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it
had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue.
But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished,
turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before
he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind
it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the
sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall.
But there was nothing on the back of the door, except
the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he
said "Pooh, pooh!" and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder.
Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant's
cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal
of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to
be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and
walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too:
trimming his candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six
up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad
young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you
might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken
it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall
and the door towards the balustrades: and done it
easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room
to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge
thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before
him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of
the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well,
so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with
Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that.
Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before
he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms
to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection
of the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they
should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under
the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin
ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had
a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the
bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown,
which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude
against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard,
old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three
legs, and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked
himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his
custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off
his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and
his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take
his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a
bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and
brood over it, before he could extract the least
sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.
The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch
merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint
Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures.
There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters;
Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending
through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams,
Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats,
hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts;
and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came
like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the
whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first,
with power to shape some picture on its surface from
the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would
have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.
"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the
room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he
threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened
to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the
room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten
with a chamber in the highest story of the
building. It was with great astonishment, and with
a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he
saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in
the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it
rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute,
but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had
begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking
noise, deep down below; as if some person were
dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the
wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have
heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as
dragging chains.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound,
and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors
below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight
towards his door.
"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."
His colour changed though, when, without a pause,
it came on through the heavy door, and passed into
the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the
dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know
him; Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail,
usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on
the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts,
and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was
clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound
about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge
observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks,
ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.
His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him,
and looking through his waistcoat, could see
the two buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no
bowels, but he had never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he
looked the phantom through and through, and saw
it standing before him; though he felt the chilling
influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very
texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head
and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before;
he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever.
"What do you want with me?"
"Much!"--Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
"Who are you?"
"Ask me who I was."
"Who were you then?" said Scrooge, raising his
voice. "You're particular, for a shade." He was going
to say "to a shade," but substituted this, as more
appropriate.
"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."
"Can you--can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking
doubtfully at him.
"I can."
"Do it, then."
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know
whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in
a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event
of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity
of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat
down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he
were quite used to it.
"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
"I don't," said Scrooge.
"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of
your senses?"
"I don't know," said Scrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them.
A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may
be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of
cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of
gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking
jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means
waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be
smart, as a means of distracting his own attention,
and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice
disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence
for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very
deuce with him. There was something very awful,
too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal
atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it
himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the
Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts,
and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour
from an oven.
"You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning
quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned;
and wishing, though it were only for a second, to
divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
"I do," replied the Ghost.
"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.
"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."
"Well!" returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow
this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a
legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug,
I tell you! humbug!"
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook
its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that
Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself
from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was
his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage
round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors,
its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands
before his face.
"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do
you trouble me?"
"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do
you believe in me or not?"
"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits
walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"
"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned,
"that the spirit within him should walk abroad among
his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that
spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so
after death. It is doomed to wander through the
world--oh, woe is me!--and witness what it cannot
share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to
happiness!"
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain
and wrung its shadowy hands.
"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell
me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost.
"I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded
it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I
wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"
Scrooge trembled more and more.
"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the
weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?
It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven
Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since.
It is a ponderous chain!"
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the
expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty
or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see
nothing.
"Jacob," he said, imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley,
tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!"
"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "It comes
from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed
by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor
can I tell you what I would. A very little more is
all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I
cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked
beyond our counting-house--mark me!--in life my
spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our
money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before
me!"
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became
thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets.
Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now,
but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his
knees.
"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,"
Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though
with humility and deference.
"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.
"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And travelling
all the time!"
"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no
peace. Incessant torture of remorse."
"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.
"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.
"You might have got over a great quantity of
ground in seven years," said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and
clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of
the night, that the Ward would have been justified in
indicting it for a nuisance.
"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the
phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour
by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into
eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is
all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit
working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may
be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast
means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of
regret can make amends for one life's opportunity
misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"
"But you were always a good man of business,
Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this
to himself.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands
again. "Mankind was my business. The common
welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance,
and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings
of my trade were but a drop of water in the
comprehensive ocean of my business!"
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were
the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it
heavily upon the ground again.
"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said,
"I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of
fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never
raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise
Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to
which its light would have conducted me!"
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the
spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake
exceedingly.
"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly
gone."
"I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon
me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!"
"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that
you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible
beside you many and many a day."
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered,
and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
"That is no light part of my penance," pursued
the Ghost. "I am here to-night to warn you, that you
have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A
chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."
"You were always a good friend to me," said
Scrooge. "Thank'ee!"
"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by
Three Spirits."
Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the
Ghost's had done.
"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned,
Jacob?" he demanded, in a faltering voice.
"It is."
"I--I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.
"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot
hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow,
when the bell tolls One."
"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over,
Jacob?" hinted Scrooge.
"Expect the second on the next night at the same
hour. The third upon the next night when the last
stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see
me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you
remember what has passed between us!"
When it had said these words, the spectre took its
wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head,
as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its
teeth made, when the jaws were brought together
by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again,
and found his supernatural visitor confronting him
in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and
about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at
every step it took, the window raised itself a little,
so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.
It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did.
When they were within two paces of each other,
Marley's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to
come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear:
for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible
of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of
lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and
self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment,
joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the
bleak, dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his
curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither
and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they
went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's
Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments)
were linked together; none were free. Many had
been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He
had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white
waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to
its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist
a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below,
upon a door-step. The misery with them all was,
clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in
human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist
enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and
their spirit voices faded together; and the night became
as it had been when he walked home.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door
by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked,
as he had locked it with his own hands, and
the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Humbug!"
but stopped at the first syllable. And being,
from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues
of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or
the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of
the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to
bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the
instant.
STAVE II: THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS
WHEN Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed,
he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from
the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to
pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a
neighbouring church struck the four quarters. So he listened
for the hour.
To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from
six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to
twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he
went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have
got into the works. Twelve!
He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most
preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve:
and stopped.
"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have
slept through a whole day and far into another night. It
isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and
this is twelve at noon!"
The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed,
and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub
the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he
could see anything; and could see very little then. All he
could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely
cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro,
and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been
if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the
world. This was a great relief, because "three days after sight
of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his
order," and so forth, would have become a mere United States'
security if there were no days to count by.
Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought
it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he
thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavoured
not to think, the more he thought.
Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved
within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his
mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first
position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through,
"Was it a dream or not?"
Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters
more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned
him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie
awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he could
no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the
wisest resolution in his power.
The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he
must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock.
At length it broke upon his listening ear.
"Ding, dong!"
"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.
"Ding, dong!"
"Half-past!" said Scrooge.
"Ding, dong!"
"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.
"Ding, dong!"
"The hour itself," said Scrooge, triumphantly, "and nothing else!"
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a
deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light flashed up in the room
upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a
hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his
back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains
of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a
half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the
unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now
to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
It was a strange figure--like a child: yet not so like a
child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural
medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded
from the view, and being diminished to a child's proportions.
Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was
white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in
it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were
very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold
were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately
formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic
of the purest white; and round its waist was bound
a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held
a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular
contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed
with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was,
that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear
jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was
doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a
great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.
Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing
steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt
sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another,
and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so
the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a
thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs,
now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a
body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible
in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the
very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and
clear as ever.
"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to
me?" asked Scrooge.
"I am!"
The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if
instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
"Who, and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
"Long Past?" inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish
stature.
"No. Your past."
Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if
anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire
to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered.
"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out,
with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough
that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and
force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon
my brow!"
Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend
or any knowledge of having wilfully "bonneted" the Spirit at
any period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what
business brought him there.
"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.
Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not
help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been
more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard
him thinking, for it said immediately:
"Your reclamation, then. Take heed!"
It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him
gently by the arm.
"Rise! and walk with me!"
It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the
weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes;
that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below
freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers,
dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that he had a cold upon him at
that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand,
was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit
made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.
"I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."
"Bear but a touch of my hand there," said the Spirit,
laying it upon his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more
than this!"
As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall,
and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either
hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it
was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished
with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon
the ground.
"Good Heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together,
as he looked about him. "I was bred in this place. I was
a boy here!"
The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch,
though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still
present to the old man's sense of feeling. He was conscious
of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected
with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares
long, long, forgotten!
"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is
that upon your cheek?"
Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice,
that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him
where he would.
"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.
"Remember it!" cried Scrooge with fervour; "I could
walk it blindfold."
"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!" observed
the Ghost. "Let us go on."
They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every
gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared
in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river.
Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them
with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in
country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys
were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the
broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air
laughed to hear it!
"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said
the Ghost. "They have no consciousness of us."
The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge
knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond
all bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and
his heart leap up as they went past! Why was he filled
with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry
Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and bye-ways, for
their several homes! What was merry Christmas to Scrooge?
Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done
to him?
"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A
solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still."
Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and
soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little
weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell
hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken
fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their walls
were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their
gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables;
and the coach-houses and sheds were over-run with grass.
Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for
entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open
doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished,
cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a
chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow
with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too
much to eat.
They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a
door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and
disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by
lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely
boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down
upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he
used to be.
Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle
from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the
half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among
the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle
swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in
the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening
influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.
The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his
younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in
foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at:
stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and
leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.
"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's
dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas
time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone,
he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And
Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his wild brother, Orson; there
they go! And what's his name, who was put down in his
drawers, asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don't you see him!
And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii;
there he is upon his head! Serve him right. I'm glad of it.
What business had he to be married to the Princess!"
To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature
on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between
laughing and crying; and to see his heightened and excited
face; would have been a surprise to his business friends in
the city, indeed.
"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and
yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the
top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called
him, when he came home again after sailing round the
island. 'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin
Crusoe?' The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't.
It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running
for his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!"
Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his
usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, "Poor
boy!" and cried again.
"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his
pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his
cuff: "but it's too late now."
"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.
"Nothing," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy
singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should
like to have given him something: that's all."
The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand:
saying as it did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"
Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the
room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk,
the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the
ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how
all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than you
do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything
had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all
the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.
He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly.
Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of
his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.
It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy,
came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and
often kissing him, addressed him as her "Dear, dear
brother."
"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the
child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh.
"To bring you home, home, home!"
"Home, little Fan?" returned the boy.
"Yes!" said the child, brimful of glee. "Home, for good
and all. Home, for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder
than he used to be, that home's like Heaven! He spoke so
gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that
I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come
home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach
to bring you. And you're to be a man!" said the child,
opening her eyes, "and are never to come back here; but
first, we're to be together all the Christmas long, and have
the merriest time in all the world."
"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy.
She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his
head; but being too little, laughed again, and stood on
tiptoe to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, in her
childish eagerness, towards the door; and he, nothing loth to
go, accompanied her.
A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master
Scrooge's box, there!" and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster
himself, who glared on Master Scrooge with a ferocious
condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind
by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and his
sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best-parlour that
ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial
and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold.
Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a
block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments
of those dainties to the young people: at the same time,
sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of "something"
to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman,
but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had
rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied
on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster
good-bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove
gaily down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the
hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens
like spray.
"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have
withered," said the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"
"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I will not
gainsay it, Spirit. God forbid!"
"She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and had, as I think,
children."
"One child," Scrooge returned.
"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"
Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly,
"Yes."
Although they had but that moment left the school behind
them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city,
where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy
carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and
tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by
the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Christmas
time again; but it was evening, and the streets were
lighted up.
The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked
Scrooge if he knew it.
"Know it!" said Scrooge. "Was I apprenticed here!"
They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh
wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two
inches taller he must have knocked his head against the
ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement:
"Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it's Fezziwig
alive again!"
Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the
clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his
hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over
himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and
called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice:
"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"
Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly
in, accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.
"Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to the Ghost.
"Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached
to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!"
"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night.
Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's
have the shutters up," cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap
of his hands, "before a man can say Jack Robinson!"
You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it!
They charged into the street with the shutters--one, two,
three--had 'em up in their places--four, five, six--barred
'em and pinned 'em--seven, eight, nine--and came back
before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.
"Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the
high desk, with wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads,
and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup,
Ebenezer!"
Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared
away, or couldn't have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking
on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if
it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was
swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon
the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and
bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter's
night.
In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the
lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty
stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial
smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and
lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they
broke. In came all the young men and women employed in
the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the
baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular friend,
the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was
suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying
to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who
was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress.
In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly,
some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling;
in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went,
twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again
the other way; down the middle and up again; round
and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old
top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top
couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top
couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them! When
this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his
hands to stop the dance, cried out, "Well done!" and the
fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially
provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his
reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no
dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home,
exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man
resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.
There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more
dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there
was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece
of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer.
But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast
and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort
of man who knew his business better than you or I could
have told it him!) struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley." Then
old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top
couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them;
three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were
not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no
notion of walking.
But if they had been twice as many--ah, four times--old
Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would
Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner
in every sense of the term. If that's not high praise, tell me
higher, and I'll use it. A positive light appeared to issue
from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the
dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given
time, what would have become of them next. And when old
Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance;
advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and
curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to
your place; Fezziwig "cut"--cut so deftly, that he appeared
to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without
a stagger.
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up.
Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side
of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually
as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas.
When everybody had retired but the two 'prentices, they did
the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away,
and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a
counter in the back-shop.
During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a
man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene,
and with his former self. He corroborated everything,
remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent
the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the
bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from
them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious
that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its
head burnt very clear.
"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly
folks so full of gratitude."
"Small!" echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices,
who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig:
and when he had done so, said,
"Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of
your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so
much that he deserves this praise?"
"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and
speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self.
"It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy
or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a
pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and
looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is
impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness
he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.
"Nothing particular," said Scrooge.
"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.
"No," said Scrooge, "No. I should like to be able to say
a word or two to my clerk just now. That's all."
His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance
to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by
side in the open air.
"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"
This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he
could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again
Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime
of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later
years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice.
There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which
showed the passion that had taken root, and where the
shadow of the growing tree would fall.
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young
girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears,
which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of
Christmas Past.
"It matters little," she said, softly. "To you, very little.
Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort
you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have
no just cause to grieve."
"What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.
"A golden one."
"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said.
"There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and
there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity
as the pursuit of wealth!"
"You fear the world too much," she answered, gently.
"All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being
beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your
nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion,
Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"
"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so
much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you."
She shook her head.
"Am I?"
"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were
both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could
improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You
are changed. When it was made, you were another man."
"I was a boy," he said impatiently.
"Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you
are," she returned. "I am. That which promised happiness
when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that
we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of
this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it,
and can release you."
"Have I ever sought release?"
"In words. No. Never."
"In what, then?"
"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another
atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In
everything that made my love of any worth or value in your
sight. If this had never been between us," said the girl,
looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; "tell me,
would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!"
He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in
spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, "You think
not."
"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered,
"Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this,
I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you
were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe
that you would choose a dowerless girl--you who, in your
very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or,
choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your
one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your
repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I
release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you
once were."
He was about to speak; but with her head turned from
him, she resumed.
"You may--the memory of what is past half makes me
hope you will--have pain in this. A very, very brief time,
and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an
unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you
awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!"
She left him, and they parted.
"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct
me home. Why do you delight to torture me?"
"One shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.
"No more!" cried Scrooge. "No more. I don't wish to
see it. Show me no more!"
But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms,
and forced him to observe what happened next.
They were in another scene and place; a room, not very
large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter
fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge
believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely
matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this
room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children
there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count;
and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not
forty children conducting themselves like one, but every
child was conducting itself like forty. The consequences
were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care;
on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily,
and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning to
mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands
most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be one of
them! Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I
wouldn't for the wealth of all the world have crushed that
braided hair, and torn it down; and for the precious little
shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off, God bless my soul! to
save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they
did, bold young brood, I couldn't have done it; I should
have expected my arm to have grown round it for a punishment,
and never come straight again. And yet I should
have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have
questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have
looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never
raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of
which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should
have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence
of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its
value.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a
rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and
plundered dress was borne towards it the centre of a flushed
and boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, who
came home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys
and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and
the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter!
The scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his
pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight
by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel his back,
and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The shouts of
wonder and delight with which the development of every
package was received! The terrible announcement that the
baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll's frying-pan
into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having
swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter!
The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy,
and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike.
It is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions
got out of the parlour, and by one stair at a time, up to the
top of the house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever,
when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning
fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his
own fireside; and when he thought that such another
creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might
have called him father, and been a spring-time in the
haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a
smile, "I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon."
"Who was it?"
"Guess!"
"How can I? Tut, don't I know?" she added in the
same breath, laughing as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."
"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as
it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could
scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point
of death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in
the world, I do believe."
"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me
from this place."
"I told you these were shadows of the things that have
been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do
not blame me!"
"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed, "I cannot bear it!"
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon
him with a face, in which in some strange way there were
fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.
"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"
In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which
the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was
undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed
that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly
connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the
extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down
upon its head.
The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher
covered its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down
with all his force, he could not hide the light: which streamed
from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an
irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own
bedroom. He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand
relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank
into a heavy sleep.
STAVE III: THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS
AWAKING in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and
sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had
no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the
stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness
in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding
a conference with the second messenger despatched to him
through Jacob Marley's intervention. But finding that he
turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which
of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put
them every one aside with his own hands; and lying down
again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For
he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its
appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise, and
made nervous.
Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves
on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually
equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their
capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for
anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which
opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and
comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for
Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on you
to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of
strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and
rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by
any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the
Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a
violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter
of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time, he lay
upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy
light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the
hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than
a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it
meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive
that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of
spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of
knowing it. At last, however, he began to think--as you or
I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not
in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done
in it, and would unquestionably have done it too--at last, I
say, he began to think that the source and secret of this
ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence,
on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking
full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in
his slippers to the door.
The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange
voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He
obeyed.
It was his own room. There was no doubt about that.
But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls
and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a
perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming
berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and
ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had
been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring
up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had
never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and
many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form
a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn,
great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages,
mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts,
cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears,
immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that
made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy
state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to
see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's
horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge,
as he came peeping round the door.
"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know
me better, man!"
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this
Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and
though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like
to meet them.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit.
"Look upon me!"
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple
green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment
hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was
bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any
artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the
garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other
covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining
icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its
genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice,
its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded
round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword
was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.
"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed
the Spirit.
"Never," Scrooge made answer to it.
"Have never walked forth with the younger members of
my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers
born in these later years?" pursued the Phantom.
"I don't think I have," said Scrooge. "I am afraid I have
not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?"
"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.
"A tremendous family to provide for!" muttered Scrooge.
The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "conduct me where
you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt
a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you have aught
to teach me, let me profit by it."
"Touch my robe!"
Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game,
poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings,
fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room,
the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood
in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the
weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and
not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the
pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of
their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see
it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting
into artificial little snow-storms.
The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows
blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow
upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground;
which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by
the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that crossed
and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great
streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace
in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy,
and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist,
half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended
in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great
Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away
to their dear hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful
in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of
cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest
summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.
For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops
were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another
from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious
snowball--better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest--
laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it
went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the
fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round,
pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats
of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out
into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were
ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in
the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking
from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went
by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were
pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there
were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence
to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might
water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy
and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among
the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered
leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting
off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great
compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and
beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after
dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among
these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and
stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was
something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and
round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.
The Grocers'! oh, the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps
two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such
glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the
counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller
parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled
up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended
scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even
that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so
extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight,
the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and
spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on
feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs
were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in
modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that
everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but
the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful
promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other
at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left
their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to
fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in
the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people
were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which
they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own,
worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws
to peck at if they chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and
chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in
their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the
same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and
nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners
to the bakers' shops. The sight of these poor revellers
appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with
Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off the
covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their
dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind
of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words
between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he
shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good
humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame
to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love
it, so it was!
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and
yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners
and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of
wet above each baker's oven; where the pavement smoked as
if its stones were cooking too.
"Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from
your torch?" asked Scrooge.
"There is. My own."
"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?"
asked Scrooge.
"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."
"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.
"Because it needs it most."
"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, "I wonder
you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should
desire to cramp these people's opportunities of innocent
enjoyment."
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You would deprive them of their means of dining every
seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said
to dine at all," said Scrooge. "Wouldn't you?"
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?" said
Scrooge. "And it comes to the same thing."
"I seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.
"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your
name, or at least in that of your family," said Scrooge.
"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit,
"who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion,
pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness
in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and
kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge
their doings on themselves, not us."
Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on,
invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the
town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which
Scrooge had observed at the baker's), that notwithstanding
his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place
with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as
gracefully and like a supernatural creature, as it was possible
he could have done in any lofty hall.
And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in
showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind,
generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor
men, that led him straight to Scrooge's clerk's; for there he
went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe; and
on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped
to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinkling of his
torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen "Bob" a-week
himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his
Christian name; and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present
blessed his four-roomed house!
Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out
but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons,
which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and
she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of
her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter
Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and
getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob's private
property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the
day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly
attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks.
And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing
in, screaming that outside the baker's they had smelt the
goose, and known it for their own; and basking in luxurious
thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced
about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the
skies, while he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked
him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up,
knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and
peeled.
"What has ever got your precious father then?" said Mrs.
Cratchit. "And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha
warn't as late last Christmas Day by half-an-hour?"
"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she
spoke.
"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits.
"Hurrah! There's such a goose, Martha!"
"Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!"
said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off
her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal.
"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the
girl, "and had to clear away this morning, mother!"
"Well! Never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs.
Cratchit. "Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have
a warm, Lord bless ye!"
"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two young
Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha,
hide!"
So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father,
with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe,
hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned
up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his
shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and
had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking
round.
"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his
high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way
from church, and had come home rampant. "Not coming
upon Christmas Day!"
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only
in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet
door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits
hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house,
that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.
"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit,
when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had
hugged his daughter to his heart's content.
"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he
gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the
strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home,
that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he
was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember
upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind
men see."
Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and
trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing
strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back
came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by
his brother and sister to his stool before the fire; and while
Bob, turning up his cuffs--as if, poor fellow, they were
capable of being made more shabby--compounded some hot
mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round
and round and put it on the hob to simmer; Master Peter,
and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the
goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose
the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a
black swan was a matter of course--and in truth it was
something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made
the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot;
Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour;
Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted
the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny
corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for
everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard
upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest
they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be
helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was
said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs.
Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared
to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the
long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of
delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim,
excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with
the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe
there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and
flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal
admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes,
it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as
Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small
atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at
last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest
Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to
the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss
Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous to
bear witnesses--to take the pudding up and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should
break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got
over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they
were merry with the goose--a supposition at which the two
young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were
supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of
the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the
cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next
door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that!
That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit
entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding,
like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half
of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with
Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly
too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by
Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that
now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had
had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had
something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it
was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have
been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed
to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the
hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the
jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges
were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the
fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in
what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and
at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass.
Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as
golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with
beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and
cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
Which all the family re-echoed.
"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father's side upon his little
stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he
loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and
dreaded that he might be taken from him.
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt
before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor
chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully
preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future,
the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he
will be spared."
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none
other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here.
What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and
decrease the surplus population."
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by
the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not
adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered
What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what
men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the
sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live
than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear
the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life
among his hungry brothers in the dust!"
Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast
his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily, on
hearing his own name.
"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob; "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the
Founder of the Feast!"
"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit,
reddening. "I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece
of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good
appetite for it."
"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas Day."
"It should be Christmas Day, I am sure," said she, "on
which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard,
unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert!
Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!"
"My dear," was Bob's mild answer, "Christmas Day."
"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said
Mrs. Cratchit, "not for his. Long life to him! A merry
Christmas and a happy new year! He'll be very merry and
very happy, I have no doubt!"
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of
their proceedings which had no heartiness. Tiny Tim drank
it last of all, but he didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge
was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast
a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full
five minutes.
After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than
before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done
with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his
eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, full
five-and-sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits laughed
tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man of business;
and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from
between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular
investments he should favour when he came into the receipt
of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor
apprentice at a milliner's, then told them what kind of work
she had to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch,
and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for a
good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at
home. Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some
days before, and how the lord "was much about as tall as
Peter;" at which Peter pulled up his collars so high that you
couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All this
time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and
by-and-bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in
the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice,
and sang it very well indeed.
There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not
a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes
were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty;
and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside
of a pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased
with one another, and contented with the time; and when
they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings
of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon
them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.
By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty
heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets,
the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and
all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of
the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot
plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep
red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness.
There all the children of the house were running out
into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins,
uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again,
were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and
there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted,
and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near
neighbour's house; where, woe upon the single man who saw
them enter--artful witches, well they knew it--in a glow!
But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on
their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought
that no one was at home to give them welcome when they
got there, instead of every house expecting company, and
piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how
the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and
opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with
a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything
within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before,
dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was
dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly
as the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamplighter
that he had any company but Christmas!
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they
stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses
of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place
of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed,
or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner;
and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse rank grass.
Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery
red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a
sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in
the thick gloom of darkest night.
"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.
"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of
the earth," returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they
advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and
stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a
glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their
children and their children's children, and another generation
beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire.
The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling
of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a
Christmas song--it had been a very old song when he was a
boy--and from time to time they all joined in the chorus.
So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite
blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour
sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his
robe, and passing on above the moor, sped--whither? Not
to sea? To sea. To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw
the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them;
and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it
rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it
had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league
or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed,
the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse.
Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds
--born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the
water--rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.
But even here, two men who watched the light had made
a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed
out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their
horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they
wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and
one of them: the elder, too, with his face all damaged and
scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship
might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in
itself.
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea
--on, on--until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any
shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman
at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who
had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations;
but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or
had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his
companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward
hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or
sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another
on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared
to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those
he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted
to remember him.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the
moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it
was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown
abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death: it
was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear
a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge
to recognise it as his own nephew's and to find himself in a
bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling
by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving
affability!
"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"
If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a
man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can
say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me,
and I'll cultivate his acquaintance.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that
while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing
in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and
good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding
his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the
most extravagant contortions: Scrooge's niece, by marriage,
laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being
not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily.
"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried
Scrooge's nephew. "He believed it too!"
"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece,
indignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything by
halves. They are always in earnest.
She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,
surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that
seemed made to be kissed--as no doubt it was; all kinds of
good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another
when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever
saw in any little creature's head. Altogether she was what
you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too.
Oh, perfectly satisfactory.
"He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's
the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However,
his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing
to say against him."
"I'm sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Scrooge's niece.
"At least you always tell me so."
"What of that, my dear!" said Scrooge's nephew. "His
wealth is of no use to him. He don't do any good with it.
He don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the
satisfaction of thinking--ha, ha, ha!--that he is ever going
to benefit US with it."
"I have no patience with him," observed Scrooge's niece.
Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed
the same opinion.
"Oh, I have!" said Scrooge's nephew. "I am sorry for
him; I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers
by his ill whims! Himself, always. Here, he takes it into
his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us.
What's the consequence? He don't lose much of a dinner."
"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted
Scrooge's niece. Everybody else said the same, and they
must be allowed to have been competent judges, because
they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the
table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.
"Well! I'm very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew,
"because I haven't great faith in these young housekeepers.
What do you say, Topper?"
Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's
sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast,
who had no right to express an opinion on the subject.
Whereat Scrooge's niece's sister--the plump one with the lace
tucker: not the one with the roses--blushed.
"Do go on, Fred," said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands.
"He never finishes what he begins to say! He is such a
ridiculous fellow!"
Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was
impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister
tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was
unanimously followed.
"I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that
the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making
merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant
moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses
pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts,
either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I
mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he
likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas
till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it--I defy
him--if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after
year, and saying Uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only
puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds,
that's something; and I think I shook him yesterday."
It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking
Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much
caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any
rate, he encouraged them in their merriment, and passed the
bottle joyously.
After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical
family, and knew what they were about, when they sung a
Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially Topper, who
could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never
swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face
over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp; and
played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing:
you might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had
been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the
boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of
Christmas Past. When this strain of music sounded, all the
things that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he
softened more and more; and thought that if he could have
listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the
kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands,
without resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob
Marley.
But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After
a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children
sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its
mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first
a game at blind-man's buff. Of course there was. And I
no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he
had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done
thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the
Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after
that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the
credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons,
tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the piano,
smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went,
there went he! He always knew where the plump sister was.
He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up
against him (as some of them did), on purpose, he would
have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would
have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly
have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister.
She often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it really was not.
But when at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her
silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got
her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his
conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to
know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her
head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by
pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain
about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told
him her opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in
office, they were so very confidential together, behind the
curtains.
Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind-man's buff party,
but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool,
in a snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge were close
behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her
love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet.
Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was
very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat
her sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as Topper
could have told you. There might have been twenty people there,
young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for
wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that
his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with
his guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too;
for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut
in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in
his head to be.
The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood,
and looked upon him with such favour, that he begged like
a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But
this the Spirit said could not be done.
"Here is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half hour,
Spirit, only one!"
It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew
had to think of something, and the rest must find out what;
he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case
was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed,
elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live
animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an
animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes,
and lived in London, and walked about the streets,
and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and
didn't live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market,
and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a
tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh
question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a
fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that
he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last
the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:
"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know
what it is!"
"What is it?" cried Fred.
"It's your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal
sentiment, though some objected that the reply to "Is it a
bear?" ought to have been "Yes;" inasmuch as an answer
in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts
from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency
that way.
"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said
Fred, "and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health.
Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the
moment; and I say, 'Uncle Scrooge!'"
"Well! Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.
"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old
man, whatever he is!" said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't
take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle
Scrooge!"
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light
of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious
company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech,
if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene
passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his
nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they
visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood
beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands,
and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they
were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was
rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery's every
refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not
made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his
blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge
had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared
to be condensed into the space of time they passed
together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained
unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly
older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of
it, until they left a children's Twelfth Night party, when,
looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place,
he noticed that its hair was grey.
"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.
"My life upon this globe, is very brief," replied the Ghost.
"It ends to-night."
"To-night!" cried Scrooge.
"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing
near."
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at
that moment.
"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said
Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see
something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding
from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?"
"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was
the Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed
the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling,
wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where
graceful youth should have filled their features out, and
touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled
hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and
pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No
change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any
grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has
monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to
him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but
the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie
of such enormous magnitude.
"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon
them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for
on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out
its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye!
Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse.
And bide the end!"
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him
for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not.
As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the
prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes,
beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like
a mist along the ground, towards him.
STAVE IV: THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS
THE Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When
it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in
the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to
scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed
its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible
save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been
difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it
from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside
him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a
solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither
spoke nor moved.
"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To
Come?" said Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its
hand.
"You are about to show me shadows of the things that
have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,"
Scrooge pursued. "Is that so, Spirit?"
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an
instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head.
That was the only answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time,
Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled
beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when
he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as
observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him
with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the
dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon
him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost,
could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap
of black.
"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more
than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose
is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another
man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company,
and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak
to me?"
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight
before them.
"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is
waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead
on, Spirit!"
The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him.
Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him
up, he thought, and carried him along.
They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather
seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of its
own act. But there they were, in the heart of it; on
'Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down,
and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in
groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully
with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had
seen them often.
The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men.
Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge
advanced to listen to their talk.
"No," said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, "I
don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's
dead."
"When did he die?" inquired another.
"Last night, I believe."
"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third,
taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box.
"I thought he'd never die."
"God knows," said the first, with a yawn.
"What has he done with his money?" asked a red-faced
gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his
nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.
"I haven't heard," said the man with the large chin,
yawning again. "Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn't
left it to me. That's all I know."
This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.
"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same
speaker; "for upon my life I don't know of anybody to go
to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?"
"I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the
gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. "But I must
be fed, if I make one."
Another laugh.
"Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,"
said the first speaker, "for I never wear black gloves, and I
never eat lunch. But I'll offer to go, if anybody else will.
When I come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't
his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak
whenever we met. Bye, bye!"
Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with
other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the
Spirit for an explanation.
The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed
to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking
that the explanation might lie here.
He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business:
very wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point
always of standing well in their esteem: in a business point
of view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.
"How are you?" said one.
"How are you?" returned the other.
"Well!" said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at
last, hey?"
"So I am told," returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?"
"Seasonable for Christmas time. You're not a skater, I
suppose?"
"No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!"
Not another word. That was their meeting, their
conversation, and their parting.
Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the
Spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so
trivial; but feeling assured that they must have some hidden
purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be.
They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the
death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was Past, and this
Ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he think of any
one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could
apply them. But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they
applied they had some latent moral for his own improvement,
he resolved to treasure up every word he heard,
and everything he saw; and especially to observe the
shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation
that the conduct of his future self would give him
the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these
riddles easy.
He looked about in that very place for his own image; but
another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the
clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he
saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured
in through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, however;
for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and
thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried
out in this.
Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its
outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his
thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and
its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes
were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel
very cold.
They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part
of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before,
although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute. The
ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched;
the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and
archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of
smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the
whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed,
beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags,
bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor
within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges,
files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets
that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in
mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and
sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a
charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal,
nearly seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the
cold air without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous
tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury
of calm retirement.
Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this
man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the
shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman,
similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely followed by
a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight
of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each
other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which
the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three
burst into a laugh.
"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who
had entered first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second;
and let the undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look
here, old Joe, here's a chance! If we haven't all three met
here without meaning it!"
"You couldn't have met in a better place," said old Joe,
removing his pipe from his mouth. "Come into the parlour.
You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other
two an't strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop.
Ah! How it skreeks! There an't such a rusty bit of metal
in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I'm sure there's
no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! We're all suitable
to our calling, we're well matched. Come into the
parlour. Come into the parlour."
The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The
old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and
having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night), with the
stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.
While he did this, the woman who had already spoken
threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting
manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and
looking with a bold defiance at the other two.
"What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?" said the
woman. "Every person has a right to take care of themselves.
He always did."
"That's true, indeed!" said the laundress. "No man
more so."
"Why then, don't stand staring as if you was afraid,
woman; who's the wiser? We're not going to pick holes in
each other's coats, I suppose?"
"No, indeed!" said Mrs. Dilber and the man together.
"We should hope not."
"Very well, then!" cried the woman. "That's enough.
Who's the worse for the loss of a few things like these?
Not a dead man, I suppose."
"No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.
"If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old
screw," pursued the woman, "why wasn't he natural in his
lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look
after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying
gasping out his last there, alone by himself."
"It's the truest word that ever was spoke," said Mrs.
Dilber. "It's a judgment on him."
"I wish it was a little heavier judgment," replied the
woman; "and it should have been, you may depend upon it,
if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that
bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out
plain. I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to
see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves,
before we met here, I believe. It's no sin. Open the bundle,
Joe."
But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this;
and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first,
produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two,
a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no
great value, were all. They were severally examined and
appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed
to give for each, upon the wall, and added them up into a
total when he found there was nothing more to come.
"That's your account," said Joe, "and I wouldn't give
another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it.
Who's next?"
Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing
apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of
sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall
in the same manner.
"I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine,
and that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's
your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made
it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal and knock
off half-a-crown."
"And now undo my bundle, Joe," said the first woman.
Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience
of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots,
dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff.
"What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed-curtains!"
"Ah!" returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward
on her crossed arms. "Bed-curtains!"
"You don't mean to say you took 'em down, rings and
all, with him lying there?" said Joe.
"Yes I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"
"You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and
you'll certainly do it."
"I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything
in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He
was, I promise you, Joe," returned the woman coolly. "Don't
drop that oil upon the blankets, now."
"His blankets?" asked Joe.
"Whose else's do you think?" replied the woman. "He
isn't likely to take cold without 'em, I dare say."
"I hope he didn't die of anything catching? Eh?" said
old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.
"Don't you be afraid of that," returned the woman. "I
an't so fond of his company that I'd loiter about him for
such things, if he did. Ah! you may look through that
shirt till your eyes ache; but you won't find a hole in it, nor
a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine one too.
They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me."
"What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.
"Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied
the woman with a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to
do it, but I took it off again. If calico an't good enough for
such a purpose, it isn't good enough for anything. It's quite
as becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than he did
in that one."
Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat
grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by
the old man's lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and
disgust, which could hardly have been greater, though they
had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself.
"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe,
producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their
several gains upon the ground. "This is the end of it, you
see! He frightened every one away from him when he was
alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!"
"Spirit!" said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. "I
see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own.
My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is
this!"
He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now
he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which,
beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up,
which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful
language.
The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with
any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience
to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it
was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon
the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept,
uncared for, was the body of this man.
Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand
was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted
that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon
Scrooge's part, would have disclosed the face. He thought
of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it;
but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss
the spectre at his side.
Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar
here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy
command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved,
revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair
to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is
not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released;
it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the
hand WAS open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm,
and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike!
And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow
the world with life immortal!
No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge's ears, and
yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He
thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be
his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares?
They have brought him to a rich end, truly!
He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a
woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this
or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be
kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was
a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What
they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so
restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.
"Spirit!" he said, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it,
I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!"
Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the
head.
"I understand you," Scrooge returned, "and I would do
it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have
not the power."
Again it seemed to look upon him.
"If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion
caused by this man's death," said Scrooge quite agonised,
"show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!"
The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a
moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a room
by daylight, where a mother and her children were.
She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness;
for she walked up and down the room; started at every
sound; looked out from the window; glanced at the clock;
tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly
bear the voices of the children in their play.
At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried
to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was
careworn and depressed, though he was young. There was
a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight
of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.
He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for
him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news
(which was not until after a long silence), he appeared
embarrassed how to answer.
"Is it good?" she said, "or bad?"--to help him.
"Bad," he answered.
"We are quite ruined?"
"No. There is hope yet, Caroline."
"If he relents," she said, amazed, "there is! Nothing is
past hope, if such a miracle has happened."
"He is past relenting," said her husband. "He is dead."
She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke
truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she
said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next
moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of
her heart.
"What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of last
night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a
week's delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid
me; turns out to have been quite true. He was not only
very ill, but dying, then."
"To whom will our debt be transferred?"
"I don't know. But before that time we shall be ready
with the money; and even though we were not, it would be
a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his
successor. We may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline!"
Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter.
The children's faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what
they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier
house for this man's death! The only emotion that the
Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of
pleasure.
"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death," said
Scrooge; "or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just
now, will be for ever present to me."
The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar
to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and
there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They
entered poor Bob Cratchit's house; the dwelling he had
visited before; and found the mother and the children seated
round the fire.
Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as
still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter,
who had a book before him. The mother and her daughters
were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet!
"'And He took a child, and set him in the midst of
them.'"
Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not
dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he
and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not
go on?
The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her
hand up to her face.
"The colour hurts my eyes," she said.
The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!
"They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife. "It
makes them weak by candle-light; and I wouldn't show weak
eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It
must be near his time."
"Past it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his book.
"But I think he has walked a little slower than he used,
these few last evenings, mother."
They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a
steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once:
"I have known him walk with--I have known him walk
with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed."
"And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."
"And so have I," exclaimed another. So had all.
"But he was very light to carry," she resumed, intent upon
her work, "and his father loved him so, that it was no
trouble: no trouble. And there is your father at the door!"
She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his comforter
--he had need of it, poor fellow--came in. His tea
was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried who should
help him to it most. Then the two young Cratchits got
upon his knees and laid, each child a little cheek, against
his face, as if they said, "Don't mind it, father. Don't be
grieved!"
Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to
all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, and
praised the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls.
They would be done long before Sunday, he said.
"Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?" said his
wife.
"Yes, my dear," returned Bob. "I wish you could have
gone. It would have done you good to see how green a
place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him that I
would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child!"
cried Bob. "My little child!"
He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he
could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther
apart perhaps than they were.
He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room above,
which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas.
There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were
signs of some one having been there, lately. Poor Bob sat
down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed
himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what
had happened, and went down again quite happy.
They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother
working still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness
of Mr. Scrooge's nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but
once, and who, meeting him in the street that day, and seeing
that he looked a little--"just a little down you know," said
Bob, inquired what had happened to distress him. "On
which," said Bob, "for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman
you ever heard, I told him. 'I am heartily sorry for it, Mr.
Cratchit,' he said, 'and heartily sorry for your good wife.'
By the bye, how he ever knew that, I don't know."
"Knew what, my dear?"
"Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.
"Everybody knows that!" said Peter.
"Very well observed, my boy!" cried Bob. "I hope they
do. 'Heartily sorry,' he said, 'for your good wife. If I
can be of service to you in any way,' he said, giving me
his card, 'that's where I live. Pray come to me.' Now, it
wasn't," cried Bob, "for the sake of anything he might be
able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was
quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our
Tiny Tim, and felt with us."
"I'm sure he's a good soul!" said Mrs. Cratchit.
"You would be surer of it, my dear," returned Bob, "if
you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised--
mark what I say!--if he got Peter a better situation."
"Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping
company with some one, and setting up for himself."
"Get along with you!" retorted Peter, grinning.
"It's just as likely as not," said Bob, "one of these days;
though there's plenty of time for that, my dear. But however
and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we
shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim--shall we--or this
first parting that there was among us?"
"Never, father!" cried they all.
"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when
we recollect how patient and how mild he was; although he
was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily among
ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it."
"No, never, father!" they all cried again.
"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very happy!"
Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the
two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook
hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from
God!
"Spectre," said Scrooge, "something informs me that our
parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not
how. Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying dead?"
The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as
before--though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there
seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were
in the Future--into the resorts of business men, but showed
him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay for anything,
but went straight on, as to the end just now desired,
until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.
"This court," said Scrooge, "through which we hurry now,
is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a length
of time. I see the house. Let me behold what I shall be,
in days to come!"
The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.
"The house is yonder," Scrooge exclaimed. "Why do you
point away?"
The inexorable finger underwent no change.
Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked
in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was
not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself.
The Phantom pointed as before.
He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither
he had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate.
He paused to look round before entering.
A churchyard. Here, then; the wretched man whose name
he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a
worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and
weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up
with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A
worthy place!
The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to
One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was
exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new
meaning in its solemn shape.
"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,"
said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the
shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of
things that May be, only?"
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which
it stood.
"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if
persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the
courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is
thus with what you show me!"
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and
following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected
grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.
"Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried, upon
his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"
The finger still was there.
"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me!
I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must
have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I
am past all hope!"
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he
fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities
me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you
have shown me, by an altered life!"
The kind hand trembled.
"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it
all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the
Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I
will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I
may sponge away the writing on this stone!"
In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to
free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it.
The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.
Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate
reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress.
It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.
STAVE V: THE END OF IT
YES! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own,
the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time
before him was his own, to make amends in!
"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!"
Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits
of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley!
Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say
it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!"
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions,
that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his
call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the
Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.
"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of
his bed-curtains in his arms, "they are not torn down, rings
and all. They are here--I am here--the shadows of the
things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will
be. I know they will!"
His hands were busy with his garments all this time;
turning them inside out, putting them on upside down,
tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every
kind of extravagance.
"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and
crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of
himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I
am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I
am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to
everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo
here! Whoop! Hallo!"
He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing
there: perfectly winded.
"There's the saucepan that the gruel was in!" cried
Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fireplace.
"There's the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley
entered! There's the corner where the Ghost of Christmas
Present, sat! There's the window where I saw the wandering
Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it all happened.
Ha ha ha!"
Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so
many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh.
The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!
"I don't know what day of the month it is!" said
Scrooge. "I don't know how long I've been among the
Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never
mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop!
Hallo here!"
He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing
out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang,
hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang,
clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!
Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his
head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold;
cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight;
Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious!
Glorious!
"What's to-day!" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a
boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look
about him.
"EH?" returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.
"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.
"To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."
"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I
haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night.
They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of
course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"
"Hallo!" returned the boy.
"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one,
at the corner?" Scrooge inquired.
"I should hope I did," replied the lad.
"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy!
Do you know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that
was hanging up there?--Not the little prize Turkey: the
big one?"
"What, the one as big as me?" returned the boy.
"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure
to talk to him. Yes, my buck!"
"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.
"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."
"Walk-ER!" exclaimed the boy.
"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy
it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that I may give them the
direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and
I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than
five minutes and I'll give you half-a-crown!"
The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady
hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.
"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's!" whispered Scrooge,
rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. "He sha'n't
know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe
Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's
will be!"
The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady
one, but write it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to
open the street door, ready for the coming of the poulterer's
man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker
caught his eye.
"I shall love it, as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting
it with his hand. "I scarcely ever looked at it before.
What an honest expression it has in its face! It's a
wonderful knocker!--Here's the Turkey! Hallo! Whoop!
How are you! Merry Christmas!"
It was a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his
legs, that bird. He would have snapped 'em short off in a
minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.
"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town,"
said Scrooge. "You must have a cab."
The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with
which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which
he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed
the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle
with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and
chuckled till he cried.
Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to
shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even when
you don't dance while you are at it. But if he had cut the
end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of
sticking-plaister over it, and been quite satisfied.
He dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out
into the streets. The people were by this time pouring forth,
as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present;
and walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded
every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly
pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows
said, "Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!"
And Scrooge said often afterwards, that of all the blithe
sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.
He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he
beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his
counting-house the day before, and said, "Scrooge and Marley's, I
believe?" It sent a pang across his heart to think how this
old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he
knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.
"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and
taking the old gentleman by both his hands. "How do you
do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of
you. A merry Christmas to you, sir!"
"Mr. Scrooge?"
"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it
may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon.
And will you have the goodness"--here Scrooge whispered in
his ear.
"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath
were taken away. "My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"
"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A
great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you.
Will you do me that favour?"
"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him.
"I don't know what to say to such munifi--"
"Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge. "Come
and see me. Will you come and see me?"
"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he
meant to do it.
"Thank'ee," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you.
I thank you fifty times. Bless you!"
He went to church, and walked about the streets, and
watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children
on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into
the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found
that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never
dreamed that any walk--that anything--could give him so
much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps
towards his nephew's house.
He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the
courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and
did it:
"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the
girl. Nice girl! Very.
"Yes, sir."
"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.
"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll
show you up-stairs, if you please."
"Thank'ee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand
already on the dining-room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."
He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door.
They were looking at the table (which was spread out in
great array); for these young housekeepers are always nervous
on such points, and like to see that everything is right.
"Fred!" said Scrooge.
Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started!
Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting
in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn't have done
it, on any account.
"Why bless my soul!" cried Fred, "who's that?"
"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner.
Will you let me in, Fred?"
Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off.
He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier.
His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he
came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did
every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful
games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was
early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob
Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he had set his
heart upon.
And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No
Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen
minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his
door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank.
His hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter
too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his
pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o'clock.
"Hallo!" growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as
near as he could feign it. "What do you mean by coming
here at this time of day?"
"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I am behind my time."
"You are?" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are.
Step this way, sir, if you please."
"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from
the Tank. "It shall not be repeated. I was making rather
merry yesterday, sir."
"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge, "I
am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And
therefore," he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving
Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into
the Tank again; "and therefore I am about to raise your
salary!"
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He
had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it,
holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help
and a strait-waistcoat.
"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness
that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the
back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I
have given you, for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and
endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss
your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of
smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another
coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and
infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was
a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a
master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or
any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old
world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him,
but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was
wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this
globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill
of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these
would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they
should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in
less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was
quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon
the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was
always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas
well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that
be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim
observed, God bless Us, Every One!
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Grimms' Fairy Tales
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
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before using this eBook.
Title: Grimms' Fairy Tales
Author: Jacob Grimm
Wilhelm Grimm
Release date: April 1, 2001 [eBook #2591]
Most recently updated: June 28, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Emma Dudding, John Bickers, Dagny and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRIMMS' FAIRY TALES ***
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
By Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
PREPARER’S NOTE
The text is based on translations from
the Grimms’ Kinder und Hausmärchen by
Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes.
CONTENTS:
THE GOLDEN BIRD
HANS IN LUCK
JORINDA AND JORINDEL
THE TRAVELLING MUSICIANS
OLD SULTAN
THE STRAW, THE COAL, AND THE BEAN
BRIAR ROSE
THE DOG AND THE SPARROW
THE TWELVE DANCING PRINCESSES
THE FISHERMAN AND HIS WIFE
THE WILLOW-WREN AND THE BEAR
THE FROG-PRINCE
CAT AND MOUSE IN PARTNERSHIP
THE GOOSE-GIRL
THE ADVENTURES OF CHANTICLEER AND PARTLET
1. HOW THEY WENT TO THE MOUNTAINS TO EAT NUTS
2. HOW CHANTICLEER AND PARTLET WENT TO VISIT MR KORBES
RAPUNZEL
FUNDEVOGEL
THE VALIANT LITTLE TAILOR
HANSEL AND GRETEL
THE MOUSE, THE BIRD, AND THE SAUSAGE
MOTHER HOLLE
LITTLE RED-CAP [LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD]
THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM
TOM THUMB
RUMPELSTILTSKIN
CLEVER GRETEL
THE OLD MAN AND HIS GRANDSON
THE LITTLE PEASANT
FREDERICK AND CATHERINE
SWEETHEART ROLAND
SNOWDROP
THE PINK
CLEVER ELSIE
THE MISER IN THE BUSH
ASHPUTTEL
THE WHITE SNAKE
THE WOLF AND THE SEVEN LITTLE KIDS
THE QUEEN BEE
THE ELVES AND THE SHOEMAKER
THE JUNIPER-TREE
the juniper-tree.
THE TURNIP
CLEVER HANS
THE THREE LANGUAGES
THE FOX AND THE CAT
THE FOUR CLEVER BROTHERS
LILY AND THE LION
THE FOX AND THE HORSE
THE BLUE LIGHT
THE RAVEN
THE GOLDEN GOOSE
THE WATER OF LIFE
THE TWELVE HUNTSMEN
THE KING OF THE GOLDEN MOUNTAIN
DOCTOR KNOWALL
THE SEVEN RAVENS
THE WEDDING OF MRS FOX
FIRST STORY
SECOND STORY
THE SALAD
THE STORY OF THE YOUTH WHO WENT FORTH TO LEARN WHAT FEAR WAS
KING GRISLY-BEARD
IRON HANS
CAT-SKIN
SNOW-WHITE AND ROSE-RED
THE BROTHERS GRIMM FAIRY TALES
THE GOLDEN BIRD
A certain king had a beautiful garden, and in the garden stood a tree
which bore golden apples. These apples were always counted, and about
the time when they began to grow ripe it was found that every night one
of them was gone. The king became very angry at this, and ordered the
gardener to keep watch all night under the tree. The gardener set his
eldest son to watch; but about twelve o’clock he fell asleep, and in
the morning another of the apples was missing. Then the second son was
ordered to watch; and at midnight he too fell asleep, and in the morning
another apple was gone. Then the third son offered to keep watch; but
the gardener at first would not let him, for fear some harm should come
to him: however, at last he consented, and the young man laid himself
under the tree to watch. As the clock struck twelve he heard a rustling
noise in the air, and a bird came flying that was of pure gold; and as
it was snapping at one of the apples with its beak, the gardener’s son
jumped up and shot an arrow at it. But the arrow did the bird no harm;
only it dropped a golden feather from its tail, and then flew away.
The golden feather was brought to the king in the morning, and all the
council was called together. Everyone agreed that it was worth more than
all the wealth of the kingdom: but the king said, ‘One feather is of no
use to me, I must have the whole bird.’
Then the gardener’s eldest son set out and thought to find the golden
bird very easily; and when he had gone but a little way, he came to a
wood, and by the side of the wood he saw a fox sitting; so he took his
bow and made ready to shoot at it. Then the fox said, ‘Do not shoot me,
for I will give you good counsel; I know what your business is, and
that you want to find the golden bird. You will reach a village in the
evening; and when you get there, you will see two inns opposite to each
other, one of which is very pleasant and beautiful to look at: go not in
there, but rest for the night in the other, though it may appear to you
to be very poor and mean.’ But the son thought to himself, ‘What can
such a beast as this know about the matter?’ So he shot his arrow at
the fox; but he missed it, and it set up its tail above its back and
ran into the wood. Then he went his way, and in the evening came to
the village where the two inns were; and in one of these were people
singing, and dancing, and feasting; but the other looked very dirty,
and poor. ‘I should be very silly,’ said he, ‘if I went to that shabby
house, and left this charming place’; so he went into the smart house,
and ate and drank at his ease, and forgot the bird, and his country too.
Time passed on; and as the eldest son did not come back, and no tidings
were heard of him, the second son set out, and the same thing happened
to him. He met the fox, who gave him the good advice: but when he came
to the two inns, his eldest brother was standing at the window where
the merrymaking was, and called to him to come in; and he could not
withstand the temptation, but went in, and forgot the golden bird and
his country in the same manner.
Time passed on again, and the youngest son too wished to set out into
the wide world to seek for the golden bird; but his father would not
listen to it for a long while, for he was very fond of his son, and
was afraid that some ill luck might happen to him also, and prevent his
coming back. However, at last it was agreed he should go, for he would
not rest at home; and as he came to the wood, he met the fox, and heard
the same good counsel. But he was thankful to the fox, and did not
attempt his life as his brothers had done; so the fox said, ‘Sit upon my
tail, and you will travel faster.’ So he sat down, and the fox began to
run, and away they went over stock and stone so quick that their hair
whistled in the wind.
When they came to the village, the son followed the fox’s counsel, and
without looking about him went to the shabby inn and rested there all
night at his ease. In the morning came the fox again and met him as he
was beginning his journey, and said, ‘Go straight forward, till you come
to a castle, before which lie a whole troop of soldiers fast asleep and
snoring: take no notice of them, but go into the castle and pass on and
on till you come to a room, where the golden bird sits in a wooden cage;
close by it stands a beautiful golden cage; but do not try to take the
bird out of the shabby cage and put it into the handsome one, otherwise
you will repent it.’ Then the fox stretched out his tail again, and the
young man sat himself down, and away they went over stock and stone till
their hair whistled in the wind.
Before the castle gate all was as the fox had said: so the son went in
and found the chamber where the golden bird hung in a wooden cage, and
below stood the golden cage, and the three golden apples that had been
lost were lying close by it. Then thought he to himself, ‘It will be a
very droll thing to bring away such a fine bird in this shabby cage’; so
he opened the door and took hold of it and put it into the golden cage.
But the bird set up such a loud scream that all the soldiers awoke, and
they took him prisoner and carried him before the king. The next morning
the court sat to judge him; and when all was heard, it sentenced him to
die, unless he should bring the king the golden horse which could run as
swiftly as the wind; and if he did this, he was to have the golden bird
given him for his own.
So he set out once more on his journey, sighing, and in great despair,
when on a sudden his friend the fox met him, and said, ‘You see now
what has happened on account of your not listening to my counsel. I will
still, however, tell you how to find the golden horse, if you will do as
I bid you. You must go straight on till you come to the castle where the
horse stands in his stall: by his side will lie the groom fast asleep
and snoring: take away the horse quietly, but be sure to put the old
leathern saddle upon him, and not the golden one that is close by it.’
Then the son sat down on the fox’s tail, and away they went over stock
and stone till their hair whistled in the wind.
All went right, and the groom lay snoring with his hand upon the golden
saddle. But when the son looked at the horse, he thought it a great pity
to put the leathern saddle upon it. ‘I will give him the good one,’
said he; ‘I am sure he deserves it.’ As he took up the golden saddle the
groom awoke and cried out so loud, that all the guards ran in and took
him prisoner, and in the morning he was again brought before the court
to be judged, and was sentenced to die. But it was agreed, that, if he
could bring thither the beautiful princess, he should live, and have the
bird and the horse given him for his own.
Then he went his way very sorrowful; but the old fox came and said, ‘Why
did not you listen to me? If you had, you would have carried away
both the bird and the horse; yet will I once more give you counsel. Go
straight on, and in the evening you will arrive at a castle. At twelve
o’clock at night the princess goes to the bathing-house: go up to her
and give her a kiss, and she will let you lead her away; but take care
you do not suffer her to go and take leave of her father and mother.’
Then the fox stretched out his tail, and so away they went over stock
and stone till their hair whistled again.
As they came to the castle, all was as the fox had said, and at twelve
o’clock the young man met the princess going to the bath and gave her the
kiss, and she agreed to run away with him, but begged with many tears
that he would let her take leave of her father. At first he refused,
but she wept still more and more, and fell at his feet, till at last
he consented; but the moment she came to her father’s house the guards
awoke and he was taken prisoner again.
Then he was brought before the king, and the king said, ‘You shall never
have my daughter unless in eight days you dig away the hill that stops
the view from my window.’ Now this hill was so big that the whole world
could not take it away: and when he had worked for seven days, and had
done very little, the fox came and said. ‘Lie down and go to sleep; I
will work for you.’ And in the morning he awoke and the hill was gone;
so he went merrily to the king, and told him that now that it was
removed he must give him the princess.
Then the king was obliged to keep his word, and away went the young man
and the princess; and the fox came and said to him, ‘We will have all
three, the princess, the horse, and the bird.’ ‘Ah!’ said the young man,
‘that would be a great thing, but how can you contrive it?’
‘If you will only listen,’ said the fox, ‘it can be done. When you come
to the king, and he asks for the beautiful princess, you must say, “Here
she is!” Then he will be very joyful; and you will mount the golden
horse that they are to give you, and put out your hand to take leave of
them; but shake hands with the princess last. Then lift her quickly on
to the horse behind you; clap your spurs to his side, and gallop away as
fast as you can.’
All went right: then the fox said, ‘When you come to the castle where
the bird is, I will stay with the princess at the door, and you will
ride in and speak to the king; and when he sees that it is the right
horse, he will bring out the bird; but you must sit still, and say that
you want to look at it, to see whether it is the true golden bird; and
when you get it into your hand, ride away.’
This, too, happened as the fox said; they carried off the bird, the
princess mounted again, and they rode on to a great wood. Then the fox
came, and said, ‘Pray kill me, and cut off my head and my feet.’ But the
young man refused to do it: so the fox said, ‘I will at any rate give
you good counsel: beware of two things; ransom no one from the gallows,
and sit down by the side of no river.’ Then away he went. ‘Well,’
thought the young man, ‘it is no hard matter to keep that advice.’
He rode on with the princess, till at last he came to the village where
he had left his two brothers. And there he heard a great noise and
uproar; and when he asked what was the matter, the people said, ‘Two men
are going to be hanged.’ As he came nearer, he saw that the two men were
his brothers, who had turned robbers; so he said, ‘Cannot they in any
way be saved?’ But the people said ‘No,’ unless he would bestow all his
money upon the rascals and buy their liberty. Then he did not stay to
think about the matter, but paid what was asked, and his brothers were
given up, and went on with him towards their home.
And as they came to the wood where the fox first met them, it was so
cool and pleasant that the two brothers said, ‘Let us sit down by the
side of the river, and rest a while, to eat and drink.’ So he said,
‘Yes,’ and forgot the fox’s counsel, and sat down on the side of the
river; and while he suspected nothing, they came behind, and threw him
down the bank, and took the princess, the horse, and the bird, and went
home to the king their master, and said. ‘All this have we won by our
labour.’ Then there was great rejoicing made; but the horse would not
eat, the bird would not sing, and the princess wept.
The youngest son fell to the bottom of the river’s bed: luckily it was
nearly dry, but his bones were almost broken, and the bank was so steep
that he could find no way to get out. Then the old fox came once more,
and scolded him for not following his advice; otherwise no evil would
have befallen him: ‘Yet,’ said he, ‘I cannot leave you here, so lay hold
of my tail and hold fast.’ Then he pulled him out of the river, and said
to him, as he got upon the bank, ‘Your brothers have set watch to kill
you, if they find you in the kingdom.’ So he dressed himself as a poor
man, and came secretly to the king’s court, and was scarcely within the
doors when the horse began to eat, and the bird to sing, and the princess
left off weeping. Then he went to the king, and told him all his
brothers’ roguery; and they were seized and punished, and he had the
princess given to him again; and after the king’s death he was heir to
his kingdom.
A long while after, he went to walk one day in the wood, and the old fox
met him, and besought him with tears in his eyes to kill him, and cut
off his head and feet. And at last he did so, and in a moment the
fox was changed into a man, and turned out to be the brother of the
princess, who had been lost a great many many years.
HANS IN LUCK
Some men are born to good luck: all they do or try to do comes
right--all that falls to them is so much gain--all their geese are
swans--all their cards are trumps--toss them which way you will, they
will always, like poor puss, alight upon their legs, and only move on so
much the faster. The world may very likely not always think of them as
they think of themselves, but what care they for the world? what can it
know about the matter?
One of these lucky beings was neighbour Hans. Seven long years he had
worked hard for his master. At last he said, ‘Master, my time is up; I
must go home and see my poor mother once more: so pray pay me my wages
and let me go.’ And the master said, ‘You have been a faithful and good
servant, Hans, so your pay shall be handsome.’ Then he gave him a lump
of silver as big as his head.
Hans took out his pocket-handkerchief, put the piece of silver into it,
threw it over his shoulder, and jogged off on his road homewards. As he
went lazily on, dragging one foot after another, a man came in sight,
trotting gaily along on a capital horse. ‘Ah!’ said Hans aloud, ‘what a
fine thing it is to ride on horseback! There he sits as easy and happy
as if he was at home, in the chair by his fireside; he trips against no
stones, saves shoe-leather, and gets on he hardly knows how.’ Hans did
not speak so softly but the horseman heard it all, and said, ‘Well,
friend, why do you go on foot then?’ ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘I have this load to
carry: to be sure it is silver, but it is so heavy that I can’t hold up
my head, and you must know it hurts my shoulder sadly.’ ‘What do you say
of making an exchange?’ said the horseman. ‘I will give you my horse,
and you shall give me the silver; which will save you a great deal of
trouble in carrying such a heavy load about with you.’ ‘With all my
heart,’ said Hans: ‘but as you are so kind to me, I must tell you one
thing--you will have a weary task to draw that silver about with you.’
However, the horseman got off, took the silver, helped Hans up, gave him
the bridle into one hand and the whip into the other, and said, ‘When
you want to go very fast, smack your lips loudly together, and cry
“Jip!”’
Hans was delighted as he sat on the horse, drew himself up, squared his
elbows, turned out his toes, cracked his whip, and rode merrily off, one
minute whistling a merry tune, and another singing,
‘No care and no sorrow,
A fig for the morrow!
We’ll laugh and be merry,
Sing neigh down derry!’
After a time he thought he should like to go a little faster, so he
smacked his lips and cried ‘Jip!’ Away went the horse full gallop; and
before Hans knew what he was about, he was thrown off, and lay on his
back by the road-side. His horse would have ran off, if a shepherd who
was coming by, driving a cow, had not stopped it. Hans soon came to
himself, and got upon his legs again, sadly vexed, and said to the
shepherd, ‘This riding is no joke, when a man has the luck to get upon
a beast like this that stumbles and flings him off as if it would break
his neck. However, I’m off now once for all: I like your cow now a great
deal better than this smart beast that played me this trick, and has
spoiled my best coat, you see, in this puddle; which, by the by, smells
not very like a nosegay. One can walk along at one’s leisure behind that
cow--keep good company, and have milk, butter, and cheese, every day,
into the bargain. What would I give to have such a prize!’ ‘Well,’ said
the shepherd, ‘if you are so fond of her, I will change my cow for your
horse; I like to do good to my neighbours, even though I lose by it
myself.’ ‘Done!’ said Hans, merrily. ‘What a noble heart that good man
has!’ thought he. Then the shepherd jumped upon the horse, wished Hans
and the cow good morning, and away he rode.
Hans brushed his coat, wiped his face and hands, rested a while, and
then drove off his cow quietly, and thought his bargain a very lucky
one. ‘If I have only a piece of bread (and I certainly shall always be
able to get that), I can, whenever I like, eat my butter and cheese with
it; and when I am thirsty I can milk my cow and drink the milk: and what
can I wish for more?’ When he came to an inn, he halted, ate up all his
bread, and gave away his last penny for a glass of beer. When he had
rested himself he set off again, driving his cow towards his mother’s
village. But the heat grew greater as soon as noon came on, till at
last, as he found himself on a wide heath that would take him more than
an hour to cross, he began to be so hot and parched that his tongue
clave to the roof of his mouth. ‘I can find a cure for this,’ thought
he; ‘now I will milk my cow and quench my thirst’: so he tied her to the
stump of a tree, and held his leathern cap to milk into; but not a drop
was to be had. Who would have thought that this cow, which was to bring
him milk and butter and cheese, was all that time utterly dry? Hans had
not thought of looking to that.
While he was trying his luck in milking, and managing the matter very
clumsily, the uneasy beast began to think him very troublesome; and at
last gave him such a kick on the head as knocked him down; and there he
lay a long while senseless. Luckily a butcher soon came by, driving a
pig in a wheelbarrow. ‘What is the matter with you, my man?’ said the
butcher, as he helped him up. Hans told him what had happened, how he
was dry, and wanted to milk his cow, but found the cow was dry too. Then
the butcher gave him a flask of ale, saying, ‘There, drink and refresh
yourself; your cow will give you no milk: don’t you see she is an old
beast, good for nothing but the slaughter-house?’ ‘Alas, alas!’ said
Hans, ‘who would have thought it? What a shame to take my horse, and
give me only a dry cow! If I kill her, what will she be good for? I hate
cow-beef; it is not tender enough for me. If it were a pig now--like
that fat gentleman you are driving along at his ease--one could do
something with it; it would at any rate make sausages.’ ‘Well,’ said
the butcher, ‘I don’t like to say no, when one is asked to do a kind,
neighbourly thing. To please you I will change, and give you my fine fat
pig for the cow.’ ‘Heaven reward you for your kindness and self-denial!’
said Hans, as he gave the butcher the cow; and taking the pig off the
wheel-barrow, drove it away, holding it by the string that was tied to
its leg.
So on he jogged, and all seemed now to go right with him: he had met
with some misfortunes, to be sure; but he was now well repaid for all.
How could it be otherwise with such a travelling companion as he had at
last got?
The next man he met was a countryman carrying a fine white goose. The
countryman stopped to ask what was o’clock; this led to further chat;
and Hans told him all his luck, how he had so many good bargains, and
how all the world went gay and smiling with him. The countryman then
began to tell his tale, and said he was going to take the goose to a
christening. ‘Feel,’ said he, ‘how heavy it is, and yet it is only eight
weeks old. Whoever roasts and eats it will find plenty of fat upon it,
it has lived so well!’ ‘You’re right,’ said Hans, as he weighed it in
his hand; ‘but if you talk of fat, my pig is no trifle.’ Meantime the
countryman began to look grave, and shook his head. ‘Hark ye!’ said he,
‘my worthy friend, you seem a good sort of fellow, so I can’t help doing
you a kind turn. Your pig may get you into a scrape. In the village I
just came from, the squire has had a pig stolen out of his sty. I was
dreadfully afraid when I saw you that you had got the squire’s pig. If
you have, and they catch you, it will be a bad job for you. The least
they will do will be to throw you into the horse-pond. Can you swim?’
Poor Hans was sadly frightened. ‘Good man,’ cried he, ‘pray get me out
of this scrape. I know nothing of where the pig was either bred or born;
but he may have been the squire’s for aught I can tell: you know this
country better than I do, take my pig and give me the goose.’ ‘I ought
to have something into the bargain,’ said the countryman; ‘give a fat
goose for a pig, indeed! ‘Tis not everyone would do so much for you as
that. However, I will not be hard upon you, as you are in trouble.’ Then
he took the string in his hand, and drove off the pig by a side path;
while Hans went on the way homewards free from care. ‘After all,’
thought he, ‘that chap is pretty well taken in. I don’t care whose pig
it is, but wherever it came from it has been a very good friend to me. I
have much the best of the bargain. First there will be a capital roast;
then the fat will find me in goose-grease for six months; and then there
are all the beautiful white feathers. I will put them into my pillow,
and then I am sure I shall sleep soundly without rocking. How happy my
mother will be! Talk of a pig, indeed! Give me a fine fat goose.’
As he came to the next village, he saw a scissor-grinder with his wheel,
working and singing,
‘O’er hill and o’er dale
So happy I roam,
Work light and live well,
All the world is my home;
Then who so blythe, so merry as I?’
Hans stood looking on for a while, and at last said, ‘You must be well
off, master grinder! you seem so happy at your work.’ ‘Yes,’ said the
other, ‘mine is a golden trade; a good grinder never puts his hand
into his pocket without finding money in it--but where did you get that
beautiful goose?’ ‘I did not buy it, I gave a pig for it.’ ‘And where
did you get the pig?’ ‘I gave a cow for it.’ ‘And the cow?’ ‘I gave a
horse for it.’ ‘And the horse?’ ‘I gave a lump of silver as big as my
head for it.’ ‘And the silver?’ ‘Oh! I worked hard for that seven long
years.’ ‘You have thriven well in the world hitherto,’ said the grinder,
‘now if you could find money in your pocket whenever you put your hand
in it, your fortune would be made.’ ‘Very true: but how is that to be
managed?’ ‘How? Why, you must turn grinder like myself,’ said the other;
‘you only want a grindstone; the rest will come of itself. Here is one
that is but little the worse for wear: I would not ask more than the
value of your goose for it--will you buy?’ ‘How can you ask?’ said
Hans; ‘I should be the happiest man in the world, if I could have money
whenever I put my hand in my pocket: what could I want more? there’s
the goose.’ ‘Now,’ said the grinder, as he gave him a common rough stone
that lay by his side, ‘this is a most capital stone; do but work it well
enough, and you can make an old nail cut with it.’
Hans took the stone, and went his way with a light heart: his eyes
sparkled for joy, and he said to himself, ‘Surely I must have been born
in a lucky hour; everything I could want or wish for comes of itself.
People are so kind; they seem really to think I do them a favour in
letting them make me rich, and giving me good bargains.’
Meantime he began to be tired, and hungry too, for he had given away his
last penny in his joy at getting the cow.
At last he could go no farther, for the stone tired him sadly: and he
dragged himself to the side of a river, that he might take a drink of
water, and rest a while. So he laid the stone carefully by his side on
the bank: but, as he stooped down to drink, he forgot it, pushed it a
little, and down it rolled, plump into the stream.
For a while he watched it sinking in the deep clear water; then sprang
up and danced for joy, and again fell upon his knees and thanked Heaven,
with tears in his eyes, for its kindness in taking away his only plague,
the ugly heavy stone.
‘How happy am I!’ cried he; ‘nobody was ever so lucky as I.’ Then up he
got with a light heart, free from all his troubles, and walked on till
he reached his mother’s house, and told her how very easy the road to
good luck was.
JORINDA AND JORINDEL
There was once an old castle, that stood in the middle of a deep gloomy
wood, and in the castle lived an old fairy. Now this fairy could take
any shape she pleased. All the day long she flew about in the form of
an owl, or crept about the country like a cat; but at night she always
became an old woman again. When any young man came within a hundred
paces of her castle, he became quite fixed, and could not move a step
till she came and set him free; which she would not do till he had given
her his word never to come there again: but when any pretty maiden came
within that space she was changed into a bird, and the fairy put her
into a cage, and hung her up in a chamber in the castle. There were
seven hundred of these cages hanging in the castle, and all with
beautiful birds in them.
Now there was once a maiden whose name was Jorinda. She was prettier
than all the pretty girls that ever were seen before, and a shepherd
lad, whose name was Jorindel, was very fond of her, and they were soon
to be married. One day they went to walk in the wood, that they might be
alone; and Jorindel said, ‘We must take care that we don’t go too near
to the fairy’s castle.’ It was a beautiful evening; the last rays of the
setting sun shone bright through the long stems of the trees upon
the green underwood beneath, and the turtle-doves sang from the tall
birches.
Jorinda sat down to gaze upon the sun; Jorindel sat by her side; and
both felt sad, they knew not why; but it seemed as if they were to be
parted from one another for ever. They had wandered a long way; and when
they looked to see which way they should go home, they found themselves
at a loss to know what path to take.
The sun was setting fast, and already half of its circle had sunk behind
the hill: Jorindel on a sudden looked behind him, and saw through the
bushes that they had, without knowing it, sat down close under the old
walls of the castle. Then he shrank for fear, turned pale, and trembled.
Jorinda was just singing,
‘The ring-dove sang from the willow spray,
Well-a-day! Well-a-day!
He mourn’d for the fate of his darling mate,
Well-a-day!’
when her song stopped suddenly. Jorindel turned to see the reason, and
beheld his Jorinda changed into a nightingale, so that her song ended
with a mournful _jug, jug_. An owl with fiery eyes flew three times
round them, and three times screamed:
‘Tu whu! Tu whu! Tu whu!’
Jorindel could not move; he stood fixed as a stone, and could neither
weep, nor speak, nor stir hand or foot. And now the sun went quite down;
the gloomy night came; the owl flew into a bush; and a moment after the
old fairy came forth pale and meagre, with staring eyes, and a nose and
chin that almost met one another.
She mumbled something to herself, seized the nightingale, and went away
with it in her hand. Poor Jorindel saw the nightingale was gone--but
what could he do? He could not speak, he could not move from the spot
where he stood. At last the fairy came back and sang with a hoarse
voice:
‘Till the prisoner is fast,
And her doom is cast,
There stay! Oh, stay!
When the charm is around her,
And the spell has bound her,
Hie away! away!’
On a sudden Jorindel found himself free. Then he fell on his knees
before the fairy, and prayed her to give him back his dear Jorinda: but
she laughed at him, and said he should never see her again; then she
went her way.
He prayed, he wept, he sorrowed, but all in vain. ‘Alas!’ he said, ‘what
will become of me?’ He could not go back to his own home, so he went to
a strange village, and employed himself in keeping sheep. Many a time
did he walk round and round as near to the hated castle as he dared go,
but all in vain; he heard or saw nothing of Jorinda.
At last he dreamt one night that he found a beautiful purple flower,
and that in the middle of it lay a costly pearl; and he dreamt that he
plucked the flower, and went with it in his hand into the castle, and
that everything he touched with it was disenchanted, and that there he
found his Jorinda again.
In the morning when he awoke, he began to search over hill and dale for
this pretty flower; and eight long days he sought for it in vain: but
on the ninth day, early in the morning, he found the beautiful purple
flower; and in the middle of it was a large dewdrop, as big as a costly
pearl. Then he plucked the flower, and set out and travelled day and
night, till he came again to the castle.
He walked nearer than a hundred paces to it, and yet he did not become
fixed as before, but found that he could go quite close up to the door.
Jorindel was very glad indeed to see this. Then he touched the door with
the flower, and it sprang open; so that he went in through the court,
and listened when he heard so many birds singing. At last he came to the
chamber where the fairy sat, with the seven hundred birds singing in
the seven hundred cages. When she saw Jorindel she was very angry, and
screamed with rage; but she could not come within two yards of him, for
the flower he held in his hand was his safeguard. He looked around at
the birds, but alas! there were many, many nightingales, and how then
should he find out which was his Jorinda? While he was thinking what to
do, he saw the fairy had taken down one of the cages, and was making the
best of her way off through the door. He ran or flew after her, touched
the cage with the flower, and Jorinda stood before him, and threw her
arms round his neck looking as beautiful as ever, as beautiful as when
they walked together in the wood.
Then he touched all the other birds with the flower, so that they all
took their old forms again; and he took Jorinda home, where they were
married, and lived happily together many years: and so did a good many
other lads, whose maidens had been forced to sing in the old fairy’s
cages by themselves, much longer than they liked.
THE TRAVELLING MUSICIANS
An honest farmer had once an ass that had been a faithful servant to him
a great many years, but was now growing old and every day more and more
unfit for work. His master therefore was tired of keeping him and
began to think of putting an end to him; but the ass, who saw that some
mischief was in the wind, took himself slyly off, and began his journey
towards the great city, ‘For there,’ thought he, ‘I may turn musician.’
After he had travelled a little way, he spied a dog lying by the
roadside and panting as if he were tired. ‘What makes you pant so, my
friend?’ said the ass. ‘Alas!’ said the dog, ‘my master was going to
knock me on the head, because I am old and weak, and can no longer make
myself useful to him in hunting; so I ran away; but what can I do to
earn my livelihood?’ ‘Hark ye!’ said the ass, ‘I am going to the great
city to turn musician: suppose you go with me, and try what you can
do in the same way?’ The dog said he was willing, and they jogged on
together.
They had not gone far before they saw a cat sitting in the middle of the
road and making a most rueful face. ‘Pray, my good lady,’ said the ass,
‘what’s the matter with you? You look quite out of spirits!’ ‘Ah, me!’
said the cat, ‘how can one be in good spirits when one’s life is in
danger? Because I am beginning to grow old, and had rather lie at my
ease by the fire than run about the house after the mice, my mistress
laid hold of me, and was going to drown me; and though I have been lucky
enough to get away from her, I do not know what I am to live upon.’
‘Oh,’ said the ass, ‘by all means go with us to the great city; you are
a good night singer, and may make your fortune as a musician.’ The cat
was pleased with the thought, and joined the party.
Soon afterwards, as they were passing by a farmyard, they saw a cock
perched upon a gate, and screaming out with all his might and main.
‘Bravo!’ said the ass; ‘upon my word, you make a famous noise; pray what
is all this about?’ ‘Why,’ said the cock, ‘I was just now saying that
we should have fine weather for our washing-day, and yet my mistress and
the cook don’t thank me for my pains, but threaten to cut off my
head tomorrow, and make broth of me for the guests that are coming
on Sunday!’ ‘Heaven forbid!’ said the ass, ‘come with us Master
Chanticleer; it will be better, at any rate, than staying here to have
your head cut off! Besides, who knows? If we care to sing in tune, we
may get up some kind of a concert; so come along with us.’ ‘With all my
heart,’ said the cock: so they all four went on jollily together.
They could not, however, reach the great city the first day; so when
night came on, they went into a wood to sleep. The ass and the dog laid
themselves down under a great tree, and the cat climbed up into the
branches; while the cock, thinking that the higher he sat the safer he
should be, flew up to the very top of the tree, and then, according to
his custom, before he went to sleep, looked out on all sides of him to
see that everything was well. In doing this, he saw afar off something
bright and shining and calling to his companions said, ‘There must be a
house no great way off, for I see a light.’ ‘If that be the case,’ said
the ass, ‘we had better change our quarters, for our lodging is not the
best in the world!’ ‘Besides,’ added the dog, ‘I should not be the
worse for a bone or two, or a bit of meat.’ So they walked off together
towards the spot where Chanticleer had seen the light, and as they drew
near it became larger and brighter, till they at last came close to a
house in which a gang of robbers lived.
The ass, being the tallest of the company, marched up to the window and
peeped in. ‘Well, Donkey,’ said Chanticleer, ‘what do you see?’ ‘What
do I see?’ replied the ass. ‘Why, I see a table spread with all kinds of
good things, and robbers sitting round it making merry.’ ‘That would
be a noble lodging for us,’ said the cock. ‘Yes,’ said the ass, ‘if we
could only get in’; so they consulted together how they should contrive
to get the robbers out; and at last they hit upon a plan. The ass placed
himself upright on his hind legs, with his forefeet resting against the
window; the dog got upon his back; the cat scrambled up to the dog’s
shoulders, and the cock flew up and sat upon the cat’s head. When
all was ready a signal was given, and they began their music. The ass
brayed, the dog barked, the cat mewed, and the cock screamed; and then
they all broke through the window at once, and came tumbling into
the room, amongst the broken glass, with a most hideous clatter! The
robbers, who had been not a little frightened by the opening concert,
had now no doubt that some frightful hobgoblin had broken in upon them,
and scampered away as fast as they could.
The coast once clear, our travellers soon sat down and dispatched what
the robbers had left, with as much eagerness as if they had not expected
to eat again for a month. As soon as they had satisfied themselves, they
put out the lights, and each once more sought out a resting-place to
his own liking. The donkey laid himself down upon a heap of straw in
the yard, the dog stretched himself upon a mat behind the door, the
cat rolled herself up on the hearth before the warm ashes, and the
cock perched upon a beam on the top of the house; and, as they were all
rather tired with their journey, they soon fell asleep.
But about midnight, when the robbers saw from afar that the lights were
out and that all seemed quiet, they began to think that they had been in
too great a hurry to run away; and one of them, who was bolder than
the rest, went to see what was going on. Finding everything still, he
marched into the kitchen, and groped about till he found a match in
order to light a candle; and then, espying the glittering fiery eyes of
the cat, he mistook them for live coals, and held the match to them to
light it. But the cat, not understanding this joke, sprang at his face,
and spat, and scratched at him. This frightened him dreadfully, and away
he ran to the back door; but there the dog jumped up and bit him in the
leg; and as he was crossing over the yard the ass kicked him; and the
cock, who had been awakened by the noise, crowed with all his might. At
this the robber ran back as fast as he could to his comrades, and told
the captain how a horrid witch had got into the house, and had spat at
him and scratched his face with her long bony fingers; how a man with a
knife in his hand had hidden himself behind the door, and stabbed him
in the leg; how a black monster stood in the yard and struck him with a
club, and how the devil had sat upon the top of the house and cried out,
‘Throw the rascal up here!’ After this the robbers never dared to go
back to the house; but the musicians were so pleased with their quarters
that they took up their abode there; and there they are, I dare say, at
this very day.
OLD SULTAN
A shepherd had a faithful dog, called Sultan, who was grown very old,
and had lost all his teeth. And one day when the shepherd and his wife
were standing together before the house the shepherd said, ‘I will shoot
old Sultan tomorrow morning, for he is of no use now.’ But his wife
said, ‘Pray let the poor faithful creature live; he has served us well a
great many years, and we ought to give him a livelihood for the rest of
his days.’ ‘But what can we do with him?’ said the shepherd, ‘he has not
a tooth in his head, and the thieves don’t care for him at all; to
be sure he has served us, but then he did it to earn his livelihood;
tomorrow shall be his last day, depend upon it.’
Poor Sultan, who was lying close by them, heard all that the shepherd
and his wife said to one another, and was very much frightened to think
tomorrow would be his last day; so in the evening he went to his good
friend the wolf, who lived in the wood, and told him all his sorrows,
and how his master meant to kill him in the morning. ‘Make yourself
easy,’ said the wolf, ‘I will give you some good advice. Your master,
you know, goes out every morning very early with his wife into the
field; and they take their little child with them, and lay it down
behind the hedge in the shade while they are at work. Now do you lie
down close by the child, and pretend to be watching it, and I will come
out of the wood and run away with it; you must run after me as fast as
you can, and I will let it drop; then you may carry it back, and they
will think you have saved their child, and will be so thankful to you
that they will take care of you as long as you live.’ The dog liked this
plan very well; and accordingly so it was managed. The wolf ran with the
child a little way; the shepherd and his wife screamed out; but Sultan
soon overtook him, and carried the poor little thing back to his master
and mistress. Then the shepherd patted him on the head, and said, ‘Old
Sultan has saved our child from the wolf, and therefore he shall live
and be well taken care of, and have plenty to eat. Wife, go home, and
give him a good dinner, and let him have my old cushion to sleep on
as long as he lives.’ So from this time forward Sultan had all that he
could wish for.
Soon afterwards the wolf came and wished him joy, and said, ‘Now, my
good fellow, you must tell no tales, but turn your head the other way
when I want to taste one of the old shepherd’s fine fat sheep.’ ‘No,’
said the Sultan; ‘I will be true to my master.’ However, the wolf
thought he was in joke, and came one night to get a dainty morsel. But
Sultan had told his master what the wolf meant to do; so he laid wait
for him behind the barn door, and when the wolf was busy looking out for
a good fat sheep, he had a stout cudgel laid about his back, that combed
his locks for him finely.
Then the wolf was very angry, and called Sultan ‘an old rogue,’ and
swore he would have his revenge. So the next morning the wolf sent the
boar to challenge Sultan to come into the wood to fight the matter. Now
Sultan had nobody he could ask to be his second but the shepherd’s old
three-legged cat; so he took her with him, and as the poor thing limped
along with some trouble, she stuck up her tail straight in the air.
The wolf and the wild boar were first on the ground; and when they
espied their enemies coming, and saw the cat’s long tail standing
straight in the air, they thought she was carrying a sword for Sultan to
fight with; and every time she limped, they thought she was picking up
a stone to throw at them; so they said they should not like this way of
fighting, and the boar lay down behind a bush, and the wolf jumped
up into a tree. Sultan and the cat soon came up, and looked about and
wondered that no one was there. The boar, however, had not quite hidden
himself, for his ears stuck out of the bush; and when he shook one of
them a little, the cat, seeing something move, and thinking it was a
mouse, sprang upon it, and bit and scratched it, so that the boar jumped
up and grunted, and ran away, roaring out, ‘Look up in the tree, there
sits the one who is to blame.’ So they looked up, and espied the wolf
sitting amongst the branches; and they called him a cowardly rascal,
and would not suffer him to come down till he was heartily ashamed of
himself, and had promised to be good friends again with old Sultan.
THE STRAW, THE COAL, AND THE BEAN
In a village dwelt a poor old woman, who had gathered together a dish
of beans and wanted to cook them. So she made a fire on her hearth, and
that it might burn the quicker, she lighted it with a handful of straw.
When she was emptying the beans into the pan, one dropped without her
observing it, and lay on the ground beside a straw, and soon afterwards
a burning coal from the fire leapt down to the two. Then the straw
began and said: ‘Dear friends, from whence do you come here?’ The coal
replied: ‘I fortunately sprang out of the fire, and if I had not escaped
by sheer force, my death would have been certain,--I should have been
burnt to ashes.’ The bean said: ‘I too have escaped with a whole skin,
but if the old woman had got me into the pan, I should have been made
into broth without any mercy, like my comrades.’ ‘And would a better
fate have fallen to my lot?’ said the straw. ‘The old woman has
destroyed all my brethren in fire and smoke; she seized sixty of them at
once, and took their lives. I luckily slipped through her fingers.’
‘But what are we to do now?’ said the coal.
‘I think,’ answered the bean, ‘that as we have so fortunately escaped
death, we should keep together like good companions, and lest a new
mischance should overtake us here, we should go away together, and
repair to a foreign country.’
The proposition pleased the two others, and they set out on their way
together. Soon, however, they came to a little brook, and as there was
no bridge or foot-plank, they did not know how they were to get over
it. The straw hit on a good idea, and said: ‘I will lay myself straight
across, and then you can walk over on me as on a bridge.’ The straw
therefore stretched itself from one bank to the other, and the coal,
who was of an impetuous disposition, tripped quite boldly on to the
newly-built bridge. But when she had reached the middle, and heard the
water rushing beneath her, she was after all, afraid, and stood still,
and ventured no farther. The straw, however, began to burn, broke in
two pieces, and fell into the stream. The coal slipped after her, hissed
when she got into the water, and breathed her last. The bean, who had
prudently stayed behind on the shore, could not but laugh at the event,
was unable to stop, and laughed so heartily that she burst. It would
have been all over with her, likewise, if, by good fortune, a tailor who
was travelling in search of work, had not sat down to rest by the brook.
As he had a compassionate heart he pulled out his needle and thread,
and sewed her together. The bean thanked him most prettily, but as the
tailor used black thread, all beans since then have a black seam.
BRIAR ROSE
A king and queen once upon a time reigned in a country a great way off,
where there were in those days fairies. Now this king and queen had
plenty of money, and plenty of fine clothes to wear, and plenty of
good things to eat and drink, and a coach to ride out in every day: but
though they had been married many years they had no children, and this
grieved them very much indeed. But one day as the queen was walking
by the side of the river, at the bottom of the garden, she saw a poor
little fish, that had thrown itself out of the water, and lay gasping
and nearly dead on the bank. Then the queen took pity on the little
fish, and threw it back again into the river; and before it swam away
it lifted its head out of the water and said, ‘I know what your wish is,
and it shall be fulfilled, in return for your kindness to me--you will
soon have a daughter.’ What the little fish had foretold soon came to
pass; and the queen had a little girl, so very beautiful that the king
could not cease looking on it for joy, and said he would hold a great
feast and make merry, and show the child to all the land. So he asked
his kinsmen, and nobles, and friends, and neighbours. But the queen
said, ‘I will have the fairies also, that they might be kind and good
to our little daughter.’ Now there were thirteen fairies in the kingdom;
but as the king and queen had only twelve golden dishes for them to eat
out of, they were forced to leave one of the fairies without asking her.
So twelve fairies came, each with a high red cap on her head, and red
shoes with high heels on her feet, and a long white wand in her hand:
and after the feast was over they gathered round in a ring and gave all
their best gifts to the little princess. One gave her goodness, another
beauty, another riches, and so on till she had all that was good in the
world.
Just as eleven of them had done blessing her, a great noise was heard in
the courtyard, and word was brought that the thirteenth fairy was
come, with a black cap on her head, and black shoes on her feet, and a
broomstick in her hand: and presently up she came into the dining-hall.
Now, as she had not been asked to the feast she was very angry, and
scolded the king and queen very much, and set to work to take her
revenge. So she cried out, ‘The king’s daughter shall, in her fifteenth
year, be wounded by a spindle, and fall down dead.’ Then the twelfth of
the friendly fairies, who had not yet given her gift, came forward, and
said that the evil wish must be fulfilled, but that she could soften its
mischief; so her gift was, that the king’s daughter, when the spindle
wounded her, should not really die, but should only fall asleep for a
hundred years.
However, the king hoped still to save his dear child altogether from
the threatened evil; so he ordered that all the spindles in the kingdom
should be bought up and burnt. But all the gifts of the first eleven
fairies were in the meantime fulfilled; for the princess was so
beautiful, and well behaved, and good, and wise, that everyone who knew
her loved her.
It happened that, on the very day she was fifteen years old, the king
and queen were not at home, and she was left alone in the palace. So she
roved about by herself, and looked at all the rooms and chambers, till
at last she came to an old tower, to which there was a narrow staircase
ending with a little door. In the door there was a golden key, and when
she turned it the door sprang open, and there sat an old lady spinning
away very busily. ‘Why, how now, good mother,’ said the princess; ‘what
are you doing there?’ ‘Spinning,’ said the old lady, and nodded her
head, humming a tune, while buzz! went the wheel. ‘How prettily that
little thing turns round!’ said the princess, and took the spindle
and began to try and spin. But scarcely had she touched it, before the
fairy’s prophecy was fulfilled; the spindle wounded her, and she fell
down lifeless on the ground.
However, she was not dead, but had only fallen into a deep sleep; and
the king and the queen, who had just come home, and all their court,
fell asleep too; and the horses slept in the stables, and the dogs in
the court, the pigeons on the house-top, and the very flies slept upon
the walls. Even the fire on the hearth left off blazing, and went to
sleep; the jack stopped, and the spit that was turning about with a
goose upon it for the king’s dinner stood still; and the cook, who was
at that moment pulling the kitchen-boy by the hair to give him a box
on the ear for something he had done amiss, let him go, and both fell
asleep; the butler, who was slyly tasting the ale, fell asleep with the
jug at his lips: and thus everything stood still, and slept soundly.
A large hedge of thorns soon grew round the palace, and every year it
became higher and thicker; till at last the old palace was surrounded
and hidden, so that not even the roof or the chimneys could be seen. But
there went a report through all the land of the beautiful sleeping Briar
Rose (for so the king’s daughter was called): so that, from time to
time, several kings’ sons came, and tried to break through the thicket
into the palace. This, however, none of them could ever do; for the
thorns and bushes laid hold of them, as it were with hands; and there
they stuck fast, and died wretchedly.
After many, many years there came a king’s son into that land: and an
old man told him the story of the thicket of thorns; and how a beautiful
palace stood behind it, and how a wonderful princess, called Briar Rose,
lay in it asleep, with all her court. He told, too, how he had heard
from his grandfather that many, many princes had come, and had tried to
break through the thicket, but that they had all stuck fast in it, and
died. Then the young prince said, ‘All this shall not frighten me; I
will go and see this Briar Rose.’ The old man tried to hinder him, but
he was bent upon going.
Now that very day the hundred years were ended; and as the prince came
to the thicket he saw nothing but beautiful flowering shrubs, through
which he went with ease, and they shut in after him as thick as ever.
Then he came at last to the palace, and there in the court lay the dogs
asleep; and the horses were standing in the stables; and on the roof sat
the pigeons fast asleep, with their heads under their wings. And when he
came into the palace, the flies were sleeping on the walls; the spit
was standing still; the butler had the jug of ale at his lips, going
to drink a draught; the maid sat with a fowl in her lap ready to be
plucked; and the cook in the kitchen was still holding up her hand, as
if she was going to beat the boy.
Then he went on still farther, and all was so still that he could hear
every breath he drew; till at last he came to the old tower, and opened
the door of the little room in which Briar Rose was; and there she lay,
fast asleep on a couch by the window. She looked so beautiful that he
could not take his eyes off her, so he stooped down and gave her a kiss.
But the moment he kissed her she opened her eyes and awoke, and smiled
upon him; and they went out together; and soon the king and queen also
awoke, and all the court, and gazed on each other with great wonder.
And the horses shook themselves, and the dogs jumped up and barked; the
pigeons took their heads from under their wings, and looked about and
flew into the fields; the flies on the walls buzzed again; the fire in
the kitchen blazed up; round went the jack, and round went the spit,
with the goose for the king’s dinner upon it; the butler finished his
draught of ale; the maid went on plucking the fowl; and the cook gave
the boy the box on his ear.
And then the prince and Briar Rose were married, and the wedding feast
was given; and they lived happily together all their lives long.
THE DOG AND THE SPARROW
A shepherd’s dog had a master who took no care of him, but often let him
suffer the greatest hunger. At last he could bear it no longer; so he
took to his heels, and off he ran in a very sad and sorrowful mood.
On the road he met a sparrow that said to him, ‘Why are you so sad,
my friend?’ ‘Because,’ said the dog, ‘I am very very hungry, and have
nothing to eat.’ ‘If that be all,’ answered the sparrow, ‘come with me
into the next town, and I will soon find you plenty of food.’ So on they
went together into the town: and as they passed by a butcher’s shop,
the sparrow said to the dog, ‘Stand there a little while till I peck you
down a piece of meat.’ So the sparrow perched upon the shelf: and having
first looked carefully about her to see if anyone was watching her, she
pecked and scratched at a steak that lay upon the edge of the shelf,
till at last down it fell. Then the dog snapped it up, and scrambled
away with it into a corner, where he soon ate it all up. ‘Well,’ said
the sparrow, ‘you shall have some more if you will; so come with me to
the next shop, and I will peck you down another steak.’ When the dog had
eaten this too, the sparrow said to him, ‘Well, my good friend, have you
had enough now?’ ‘I have had plenty of meat,’ answered he, ‘but I should
like to have a piece of bread to eat after it.’ ‘Come with me then,’
said the sparrow, ‘and you shall soon have that too.’ So she took him
to a baker’s shop, and pecked at two rolls that lay in the window, till
they fell down: and as the dog still wished for more, she took him to
another shop and pecked down some more for him. When that was eaten, the
sparrow asked him whether he had had enough now. ‘Yes,’ said he; ‘and
now let us take a walk a little way out of the town.’ So they both went
out upon the high road; but as the weather was warm, they had not gone
far before the dog said, ‘I am very much tired--I should like to take a
nap.’ ‘Very well,’ answered the sparrow, ‘do so, and in the meantime
I will perch upon that bush.’ So the dog stretched himself out on the
road, and fell fast asleep. Whilst he slept, there came by a carter with
a cart drawn by three horses, and loaded with two casks of wine. The
sparrow, seeing that the carter did not turn out of the way, but would
go on in the track in which the dog lay, so as to drive over him, called
out, ‘Stop! stop! Mr Carter, or it shall be the worse for you.’ But the
carter, grumbling to himself, ‘You make it the worse for me, indeed!
what can you do?’ cracked his whip, and drove his cart over the poor
dog, so that the wheels crushed him to death. ‘There,’ cried the
sparrow, ‘thou cruel villain, thou hast killed my friend the dog. Now
mind what I say. This deed of thine shall cost thee all thou art worth.’
‘Do your worst, and welcome,’ said the brute, ‘what harm can you do me?’
and passed on. But the sparrow crept under the tilt of the cart, and
pecked at the bung of one of the casks till she loosened it; and then
all the wine ran out, without the carter seeing it. At last he looked
round, and saw that the cart was dripping, and the cask quite empty.
‘What an unlucky wretch I am!’ cried he. ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ said
the sparrow, as she alighted upon the head of one of the horses, and
pecked at him till he reared up and kicked. When the carter saw this,
he drew out his hatchet and aimed a blow at the sparrow, meaning to kill
her; but she flew away, and the blow fell upon the poor horse’s head
with such force, that he fell down dead. ‘Unlucky wretch that I am!’
cried he. ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ said the sparrow. And as the carter
went on with the other two horses, she again crept under the tilt of the
cart, and pecked out the bung of the second cask, so that all the wine
ran out. When the carter saw this, he again cried out, ‘Miserable wretch
that I am!’ But the sparrow answered, ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ and
perched on the head of the second horse, and pecked at him too. The
carter ran up and struck at her again with his hatchet; but away she
flew, and the blow fell upon the second horse and killed him on the
spot. ‘Unlucky wretch that I am!’ said he. ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ said
the sparrow; and perching upon the third horse, she began to peck him
too. The carter was mad with fury; and without looking about him, or
caring what he was about, struck again at the sparrow; but killed his
third horse as he done the other two. ‘Alas! miserable wretch that I
am!’ cried he. ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ answered the sparrow as she flew
away; ‘now will I plague and punish thee at thy own house.’ The
carter was forced at last to leave his cart behind him, and to go home
overflowing with rage and vexation. ‘Alas!’ said he to his wife, ‘what
ill luck has befallen me!--my wine is all spilt, and my horses all three
dead.’ ‘Alas! husband,’ replied she, ‘and a wicked bird has come into
the house, and has brought with her all the birds in the world, I am
sure, and they have fallen upon our corn in the loft, and are eating it
up at such a rate!’ Away ran the husband upstairs, and saw thousands of
birds sitting upon the floor eating up his corn, with the sparrow in the
midst of them. ‘Unlucky wretch that I am!’ cried the carter; for he saw
that the corn was almost all gone. ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ said the
sparrow; ‘thy cruelty shall cost thee thy life yet!’ and away she flew.
The carter seeing that he had thus lost all that he had, went down
into his kitchen; and was still not sorry for what he had done, but sat
himself angrily and sulkily in the chimney corner. But the sparrow sat
on the outside of the window, and cried ‘Carter! thy cruelty shall cost
thee thy life!’ With that he jumped up in a rage, seized his hatchet,
and threw it at the sparrow; but it missed her, and only broke the
window. The sparrow now hopped in, perched upon the window-seat, and
cried, ‘Carter! it shall cost thee thy life!’ Then he became mad and
blind with rage, and struck the window-seat with such force that he
cleft it in two: and as the sparrow flew from place to place, the carter
and his wife were so furious, that they broke all their furniture,
glasses, chairs, benches, the table, and at last the walls, without
touching the bird at all. In the end, however, they caught her: and the
wife said, ‘Shall I kill her at once?’ ‘No,’ cried he, ‘that is letting
her off too easily: she shall die a much more cruel death; I will eat
her.’ But the sparrow began to flutter about, and stretch out her neck
and cried, ‘Carter! it shall cost thee thy life yet!’ With that he
could wait no longer: so he gave his wife the hatchet, and cried, ‘Wife,
strike at the bird and kill her in my hand.’ And the wife struck; but
she missed her aim, and hit her husband on the head so that he fell down
dead, and the sparrow flew quietly home to her nest.
THE TWELVE DANCING PRINCESSES
There was a king who had twelve beautiful daughters. They slept in
twelve beds all in one room; and when they went to bed, the doors were
shut and locked up; but every morning their shoes were found to be quite
worn through as if they had been danced in all night; and yet nobody
could find out how it happened, or where they had been.
Then the king made it known to all the land, that if any person could
discover the secret, and find out where it was that the princesses
danced in the night, he should have the one he liked best for his
wife, and should be king after his death; but whoever tried and did not
succeed, after three days and nights, should be put to death.
A king’s son soon came. He was well entertained, and in the evening was
taken to the chamber next to the one where the princesses lay in their
twelve beds. There he was to sit and watch where they went to dance;
and, in order that nothing might pass without his hearing it, the door
of his chamber was left open. But the king’s son soon fell asleep; and
when he awoke in the morning he found that the princesses had all been
dancing, for the soles of their shoes were full of holes. The same thing
happened the second and third night: so the king ordered his head to be
cut off. After him came several others; but they had all the same luck,
and all lost their lives in the same manner.
Now it chanced that an old soldier, who had been wounded in battle
and could fight no longer, passed through the country where this king
reigned: and as he was travelling through a wood, he met an old woman,
who asked him where he was going. ‘I hardly know where I am going, or
what I had better do,’ said the soldier; ‘but I think I should like very
well to find out where it is that the princesses dance, and then in time
I might be a king.’ ‘Well,’ said the old dame, ‘that is no very hard
task: only take care not to drink any of the wine which one of the
princesses will bring to you in the evening; and as soon as she leaves
you pretend to be fast asleep.’
Then she gave him a cloak, and said, ‘As soon as you put that on
you will become invisible, and you will then be able to follow the
princesses wherever they go.’ When the soldier heard all this good
counsel, he determined to try his luck: so he went to the king, and said
he was willing to undertake the task.
He was as well received as the others had been, and the king ordered
fine royal robes to be given him; and when the evening came he was led
to the outer chamber. Just as he was going to lie down, the eldest of
the princesses brought him a cup of wine; but the soldier threw it all
away secretly, taking care not to drink a drop. Then he laid himself
down on his bed, and in a little while began to snore very loud as if
he was fast asleep. When the twelve princesses heard this they laughed
heartily; and the eldest said, ‘This fellow too might have done a wiser
thing than lose his life in this way!’ Then they rose up and opened
their drawers and boxes, and took out all their fine clothes, and
dressed themselves at the glass, and skipped about as if they were eager
to begin dancing. But the youngest said, ‘I don’t know how it is, while
you are so happy I feel very uneasy; I am sure some mischance will
befall us.’ ‘You simpleton,’ said the eldest, ‘you are always afraid;
have you forgotten how many kings’ sons have already watched in vain?
And as for this soldier, even if I had not given him his sleeping
draught, he would have slept soundly enough.’
When they were all ready, they went and looked at the soldier; but he
snored on, and did not stir hand or foot: so they thought they were
quite safe; and the eldest went up to her own bed and clapped her hands,
and the bed sank into the floor and a trap-door flew open. The soldier
saw them going down through the trap-door one after another, the eldest
leading the way; and thinking he had no time to lose, he jumped up, put
on the cloak which the old woman had given him, and followed them;
but in the middle of the stairs he trod on the gown of the youngest
princess, and she cried out to her sisters, ‘All is not right; someone
took hold of my gown.’ ‘You silly creature!’ said the eldest, ‘it is
nothing but a nail in the wall.’ Then down they all went, and at the
bottom they found themselves in a most delightful grove of trees; and
the leaves were all of silver, and glittered and sparkled beautifully.
The soldier wished to take away some token of the place; so he broke
off a little branch, and there came a loud noise from the tree. Then the
youngest daughter said again, ‘I am sure all is not right--did not you
hear that noise? That never happened before.’ But the eldest said, ‘It
is only our princes, who are shouting for joy at our approach.’
Then they came to another grove of trees, where all the leaves were of
gold; and afterwards to a third, where the leaves were all glittering
diamonds. And the soldier broke a branch from each; and every time there
was a loud noise, which made the youngest sister tremble with fear; but
the eldest still said, it was only the princes, who were crying for joy.
So they went on till they came to a great lake; and at the side of the
lake there lay twelve little boats with twelve handsome princes in them,
who seemed to be waiting there for the princesses.
One of the princesses went into each boat, and the soldier stepped into
the same boat with the youngest. As they were rowing over the lake, the
prince who was in the boat with the youngest princess and the soldier
said, ‘I do not know why it is, but though I am rowing with all my might
we do not get on so fast as usual, and I am quite tired: the boat
seems very heavy today.’ ‘It is only the heat of the weather,’ said the
princess: ‘I feel it very warm too.’
On the other side of the lake stood a fine illuminated castle, from
which came the merry music of horns and trumpets. There they all landed,
and went into the castle, and each prince danced with his princess; and
the soldier, who was all the time invisible, danced with them too; and
when any of the princesses had a cup of wine set by her, he drank it
all up, so that when she put the cup to her mouth it was empty. At this,
too, the youngest sister was terribly frightened, but the eldest always
silenced her. They danced on till three o’clock in the morning, and then
all their shoes were worn out, so that they were obliged to leave off.
The princes rowed them back again over the lake (but this time the
soldier placed himself in the boat with the eldest princess); and on the
opposite shore they took leave of each other, the princesses promising
to come again the next night.
When they came to the stairs, the soldier ran on before the princesses,
and laid himself down; and as the twelve sisters slowly came up very
much tired, they heard him snoring in his bed; so they said, ‘Now all
is quite safe’; then they undressed themselves, put away their fine
clothes, pulled off their shoes, and went to bed. In the morning the
soldier said nothing about what had happened, but determined to see more
of this strange adventure, and went again the second and third night;
and every thing happened just as before; the princesses danced each time
till their shoes were worn to pieces, and then returned home. However,
on the third night the soldier carried away one of the golden cups as a
token of where he had been.
As soon as the time came when he was to declare the secret, he was taken
before the king with the three branches and the golden cup; and the
twelve princesses stood listening behind the door to hear what he would
say. And when the king asked him. ‘Where do my twelve daughters dance at
night?’ he answered, ‘With twelve princes in a castle under ground.’ And
then he told the king all that had happened, and showed him the three
branches and the golden cup which he had brought with him. Then the king
called for the princesses, and asked them whether what the soldier said
was true: and when they saw that they were discovered, and that it was
of no use to deny what had happened, they confessed it all. And the king
asked the soldier which of them he would choose for his wife; and he
answered, ‘I am not very young, so I will have the eldest.’--And they
were married that very day, and the soldier was chosen to be the king’s
heir.
THE FISHERMAN AND HIS WIFE
There was once a fisherman who lived with his wife in a pigsty, close
by the seaside. The fisherman used to go out all day long a-fishing; and
one day, as he sat on the shore with his rod, looking at the sparkling
waves and watching his line, all on a sudden his float was dragged away
deep into the water: and in drawing it up he pulled out a great fish.
But the fish said, ‘Pray let me live! I am not a real fish; I am an
enchanted prince: put me in the water again, and let me go!’ ‘Oh, ho!’
said the man, ‘you need not make so many words about the matter; I will
have nothing to do with a fish that can talk: so swim away, sir, as soon
as you please!’ Then he put him back into the water, and the fish darted
straight down to the bottom, and left a long streak of blood behind him
on the wave.
When the fisherman went home to his wife in the pigsty, he told her how
he had caught a great fish, and how it had told him it was an enchanted
prince, and how, on hearing it speak, he had let it go again. ‘Did not
you ask it for anything?’ said the wife, ‘we live very wretchedly here,
in this nasty dirty pigsty; do go back and tell the fish we want a snug
little cottage.’
The fisherman did not much like the business: however, he went to the
seashore; and when he came back there the water looked all yellow and
green. And he stood at the water’s edge, and said:
‘O man of the sea!
Hearken to me!
My wife Ilsabill
Will have her own will,
And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
Then the fish came swimming to him, and said, ‘Well, what is her will?
What does your wife want?’ ‘Ah!’ said the fisherman, ‘she says that when
I had caught you, I ought to have asked you for something before I let
you go; she does not like living any longer in the pigsty, and wants
a snug little cottage.’ ‘Go home, then,’ said the fish; ‘she is in the
cottage already!’ So the man went home, and saw his wife standing at the
door of a nice trim little cottage. ‘Come in, come in!’ said she; ‘is
not this much better than the filthy pigsty we had?’ And there was a
parlour, and a bedchamber, and a kitchen; and behind the cottage there
was a little garden, planted with all sorts of flowers and fruits; and
there was a courtyard behind, full of ducks and chickens. ‘Ah!’ said the
fisherman, ‘how happily we shall live now!’ ‘We will try to do so, at
least,’ said his wife.
Everything went right for a week or two, and then Dame Ilsabill said,
‘Husband, there is not near room enough for us in this cottage; the
courtyard and the garden are a great deal too small; I should like to
have a large stone castle to live in: go to the fish again and tell him
to give us a castle.’ ‘Wife,’ said the fisherman, ‘I don’t like to go to
him again, for perhaps he will be angry; we ought to be easy with this
pretty cottage to live in.’ ‘Nonsense!’ said the wife; ‘he will do it
very willingly, I know; go along and try!’
The fisherman went, but his heart was very heavy: and when he came to
the sea, it looked blue and gloomy, though it was very calm; and he went
close to the edge of the waves, and said:
‘O man of the sea!
Hearken to me!
My wife Ilsabill
Will have her own will,
And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
‘Well, what does she want now?’ said the fish. ‘Ah!’ said the man,
dolefully, ‘my wife wants to live in a stone castle.’ ‘Go home, then,’
said the fish; ‘she is standing at the gate of it already.’ So away went
the fisherman, and found his wife standing before the gate of a great
castle. ‘See,’ said she, ‘is not this grand?’ With that they went into
the castle together, and found a great many servants there, and the
rooms all richly furnished, and full of golden chairs and tables; and
behind the castle was a garden, and around it was a park half a
mile long, full of sheep, and goats, and hares, and deer; and in the
courtyard were stables and cow-houses. ‘Well,’ said the man, ‘now we
will live cheerful and happy in this beautiful castle for the rest of
our lives.’ ‘Perhaps we may,’ said the wife; ‘but let us sleep upon it,
before we make up our minds to that.’ So they went to bed.
The next morning when Dame Ilsabill awoke it was broad daylight, and
she jogged the fisherman with her elbow, and said, ‘Get up, husband,
and bestir yourself, for we must be king of all the land.’ ‘Wife, wife,’
said the man, ‘why should we wish to be the king? I will not be king.’
‘Then I will,’ said she. ‘But, wife,’ said the fisherman, ‘how can you
be king--the fish cannot make you a king?’ ‘Husband,’ said she, ‘say
no more about it, but go and try! I will be king.’ So the man went away
quite sorrowful to think that his wife should want to be king. This time
the sea looked a dark grey colour, and was overspread with curling waves
and the ridges of foam as he cried out:
‘O man of the sea!
Hearken to me!
My wife Ilsabill
Will have her own will,
And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
‘Well, what would she have now?’ said the fish. ‘Alas!’ said the poor
man, ‘my wife wants to be king.’ ‘Go home,’ said the fish; ‘she is king
already.’
Then the fisherman went home; and as he came close to the palace he saw
a troop of soldiers, and heard the sound of drums and trumpets. And when
he went in he saw his wife sitting on a throne of gold and diamonds,
with a golden crown upon her head; and on each side of her stood six
fair maidens, each a head taller than the other. ‘Well, wife,’ said the
fisherman, ‘are you king?’ ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘I am king.’ And when he had
looked at her for a long time, he said, ‘Ah, wife! what a fine thing it
is to be king! Now we shall never have anything more to wish for as long
as we live.’ ‘I don’t know how that may be,’ said she; ‘never is a long
time. I am king, it is true; but I begin to be tired of that, and I
think I should like to be emperor.’ ‘Alas, wife! why should you wish to
be emperor?’ said the fisherman. ‘Husband,’ said she, ‘go to the fish!
I say I will be emperor.’ ‘Ah, wife!’ replied the fisherman, ‘the fish
cannot make an emperor, I am sure, and I should not like to ask him for
such a thing.’ ‘I am king,’ said Ilsabill, ‘and you are my slave; so go
at once!’
So the fisherman was forced to go; and he muttered as he went along,
‘This will come to no good, it is too much to ask; the fish will be
tired at last, and then we shall be sorry for what we have done.’ He
soon came to the seashore; and the water was quite black and muddy, and
a mighty whirlwind blew over the waves and rolled them about, but he
went as near as he could to the water’s brink, and said:
‘O man of the sea!
Hearken to me!
My wife Ilsabill
Will have her own will,
And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
‘What would she have now?’ said the fish. ‘Ah!’ said the fisherman,
‘she wants to be emperor.’ ‘Go home,’ said the fish; ‘she is emperor
already.’
So he went home again; and as he came near he saw his wife Ilsabill
sitting on a very lofty throne made of solid gold, with a great crown on
her head full two yards high; and on each side of her stood her guards
and attendants in a row, each one smaller than the other, from the
tallest giant down to a little dwarf no bigger than my finger. And
before her stood princes, and dukes, and earls: and the fisherman went
up to her and said, ‘Wife, are you emperor?’ ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘I am
emperor.’ ‘Ah!’ said the man, as he gazed upon her, ‘what a fine thing
it is to be emperor!’ ‘Husband,’ said she, ‘why should we stop at being
emperor? I will be pope next.’ ‘O wife, wife!’ said he, ‘how can you be
pope? there is but one pope at a time in Christendom.’ ‘Husband,’ said
she, ‘I will be pope this very day.’ ‘But,’ replied the husband, ‘the
fish cannot make you pope.’ ‘What nonsense!’ said she; ‘if he can make
an emperor, he can make a pope: go and try him.’
So the fisherman went. But when he came to the shore the wind was raging
and the sea was tossed up and down in boiling waves, and the ships were
in trouble, and rolled fearfully upon the tops of the billows. In the
middle of the heavens there was a little piece of blue sky, but towards
the south all was red, as if a dreadful storm was rising. At this sight
the fisherman was dreadfully frightened, and he trembled so that his
knees knocked together: but still he went down near to the shore, and
said:
‘O man of the sea!
Hearken to me!
My wife Ilsabill
Will have her own will,
And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
‘What does she want now?’ said the fish. ‘Ah!’ said the fisherman, ‘my
wife wants to be pope.’ ‘Go home,’ said the fish; ‘she is pope already.’
Then the fisherman went home, and found Ilsabill sitting on a throne
that was two miles high. And she had three great crowns on her head, and
around her stood all the pomp and power of the Church. And on each side
of her were two rows of burning lights, of all sizes, the greatest as
large as the highest and biggest tower in the world, and the least no
larger than a small rushlight. ‘Wife,’ said the fisherman, as he looked
at all this greatness, ‘are you pope?’ ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘I am pope.’
‘Well, wife,’ replied he, ‘it is a grand thing to be pope; and now
you must be easy, for you can be nothing greater.’ ‘I will think about
that,’ said the wife. Then they went to bed: but Dame Ilsabill could not
sleep all night for thinking what she should be next. At last, as she
was dropping asleep, morning broke, and the sun rose. ‘Ha!’ thought she,
as she woke up and looked at it through the window, ‘after all I cannot
prevent the sun rising.’ At this thought she was very angry, and wakened
her husband, and said, ‘Husband, go to the fish and tell him I must
be lord of the sun and moon.’ The fisherman was half asleep, but the
thought frightened him so much that he started and fell out of bed.
‘Alas, wife!’ said he, ‘cannot you be easy with being pope?’ ‘No,’
said she, ‘I am very uneasy as long as the sun and moon rise without my
leave. Go to the fish at once!’
Then the man went shivering with fear; and as he was going down to
the shore a dreadful storm arose, so that the trees and the very rocks
shook. And all the heavens became black with stormy clouds, and the
lightnings played, and the thunders rolled; and you might have seen in
the sea great black waves, swelling up like mountains with crowns of
white foam upon their heads. And the fisherman crept towards the sea,
and cried out, as well as he could:
‘O man of the sea!
Hearken to me!
My wife Ilsabill
Will have her own will,
And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
‘What does she want now?’ said the fish. ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘she wants to
be lord of the sun and moon.’ ‘Go home,’ said the fish, ‘to your pigsty
again.’
And there they live to this very day.
THE WILLOW-WREN AND THE BEAR
Once in summer-time the bear and the wolf were walking in the forest,
and the bear heard a bird singing so beautifully that he said: ‘Brother
wolf, what bird is it that sings so well?’ ‘That is the King of birds,’
said the wolf, ‘before whom we must bow down.’ In reality the bird was
the willow-wren. ‘IF that’s the case,’ said the bear, ‘I should very
much like to see his royal palace; come, take me thither.’ ‘That is not
done quite as you seem to think,’ said the wolf; ‘you must wait until
the Queen comes,’ Soon afterwards, the Queen arrived with some food in
her beak, and the lord King came too, and they began to feed their young
ones. The bear would have liked to go at once, but the wolf held him
back by the sleeve, and said: ‘No, you must wait until the lord and lady
Queen have gone away again.’ So they took stock of the hole where the
nest lay, and trotted away. The bear, however, could not rest until he
had seen the royal palace, and when a short time had passed, went to it
again. The King and Queen had just flown out, so he peeped in and saw
five or six young ones lying there. ‘Is that the royal palace?’ cried
the bear; ‘it is a wretched palace, and you are not King’s children, you
are disreputable children!’ When the young wrens heard that, they were
frightfully angry, and screamed: ‘No, that we are not! Our parents are
honest people! Bear, you will have to pay for that!’
The bear and the wolf grew uneasy, and turned back and went into their
holes. The young willow-wrens, however, continued to cry and scream, and
when their parents again brought food they said: ‘We will not so much as
touch one fly’s leg, no, not if we were dying of hunger, until you have
settled whether we are respectable children or not; the bear has been
here and has insulted us!’ Then the old King said: ‘Be easy, he shall
be punished,’ and he at once flew with the Queen to the bear’s cave, and
called in: ‘Old Growler, why have you insulted my children? You shall
suffer for it--we will punish you by a bloody war.’ Thus war was
announced to the Bear, and all four-footed animals were summoned to take
part in it, oxen, asses, cows, deer, and every other animal the earth
contained. And the willow-wren summoned everything which flew in the
air, not only birds, large and small, but midges, and hornets, bees and
flies had to come.
When the time came for the war to begin, the willow-wren sent out spies
to discover who was the enemy’s commander-in-chief. The gnat, who was
the most crafty, flew into the forest where the enemy was assembled,
and hid herself beneath a leaf of the tree where the password was to be
announced. There stood the bear, and he called the fox before him
and said: ‘Fox, you are the most cunning of all animals, you shall be
general and lead us.’ ‘Good,’ said the fox, ‘but what signal shall we
agree upon?’ No one knew that, so the fox said: ‘I have a fine long
bushy tail, which almost looks like a plume of red feathers. When I lift
my tail up quite high, all is going well, and you must charge; but if I
let it hang down, run away as fast as you can.’ When the gnat had heard
that, she flew away again, and revealed everything, down to the minutest
detail, to the willow-wren. When day broke, and the battle was to begin,
all the four-footed animals came running up with such a noise that the
earth trembled. The willow-wren with his army also came flying through
the air with such a humming, and whirring, and swarming that every one
was uneasy and afraid, and on both sides they advanced against each
other. But the willow-wren sent down the hornet, with orders to settle
beneath the fox’s tail, and sting with all his might. When the fox felt
the first string, he started so that he lifted one leg, from pain, but
he bore it, and still kept his tail high in the air; at the second
sting, he was forced to put it down for a moment; at the third, he could
hold out no longer, screamed, and put his tail between his legs. When
the animals saw that, they thought all was lost, and began to flee, each
into his hole, and the birds had won the battle.
Then the King and Queen flew home to their children and cried:
‘Children, rejoice, eat and drink to your heart’s content, we have won
the battle!’ But the young wrens said: ‘We will not eat yet, the bear
must come to the nest, and beg for pardon and say that we are honourable
children, before we will do that.’ Then the willow-wren flew to the
bear’s hole and cried: ‘Growler, you are to come to the nest to my
children, and beg their pardon, or else every rib of your body shall
be broken.’ So the bear crept thither in the greatest fear, and begged
their pardon. And now at last the young wrens were satisfied, and sat
down together and ate and drank, and made merry till quite late into the
night.
THE FROG-PRINCE
One fine evening a young princess put on her bonnet and clogs, and went
out to take a walk by herself in a wood; and when she came to a cool
spring of water, that rose in the midst of it, she sat herself down
to rest a while. Now she had a golden ball in her hand, which was her
favourite plaything; and she was always tossing it up into the air, and
catching it again as it fell. After a time she threw it up so high that
she missed catching it as it fell; and the ball bounded away, and rolled
along upon the ground, till at last it fell down into the spring. The
princess looked into the spring after her ball, but it was very deep, so
deep that she could not see the bottom of it. Then she began to bewail
her loss, and said, ‘Alas! if I could only get my ball again, I would
give all my fine clothes and jewels, and everything that I have in the
world.’
Whilst she was speaking, a frog put its head out of the water, and said,
‘Princess, why do you weep so bitterly?’ ‘Alas!’ said she, ‘what can you
do for me, you nasty frog? My golden ball has fallen into the spring.’
The frog said, ‘I want not your pearls, and jewels, and fine clothes;
but if you will love me, and let me live with you and eat from off
your golden plate, and sleep upon your bed, I will bring you your ball
again.’ ‘What nonsense,’ thought the princess, ‘this silly frog is
talking! He can never even get out of the spring to visit me, though
he may be able to get my ball for me, and therefore I will tell him he
shall have what he asks.’ So she said to the frog, ‘Well, if you will
bring me my ball, I will do all you ask.’ Then the frog put his head
down, and dived deep under the water; and after a little while he came
up again, with the ball in his mouth, and threw it on the edge of the
spring. As soon as the young princess saw her ball, she ran to pick
it up; and she was so overjoyed to have it in her hand again, that she
never thought of the frog, but ran home with it as fast as she could.
The frog called after her, ‘Stay, princess, and take me with you as you
said,’ But she did not stop to hear a word.
The next day, just as the princess had sat down to dinner, she heard a
strange noise--tap, tap--plash, plash--as if something was coming up the
marble staircase: and soon afterwards there was a gentle knock at the
door, and a little voice cried out and said:
‘Open the door, my princess dear,
Open the door to thy true love here!
And mind the words that thou and I said
By the fountain cool, in the greenwood shade.’
Then the princess ran to the door and opened it, and there she saw
the frog, whom she had quite forgotten. At this sight she was sadly
frightened, and shutting the door as fast as she could came back to her
seat. The king, her father, seeing that something had frightened her,
asked her what was the matter. ‘There is a nasty frog,’ said she, ‘at
the door, that lifted my ball for me out of the spring this morning: I
told him that he should live with me here, thinking that he could never
get out of the spring; but there he is at the door, and he wants to come
in.’
While she was speaking the frog knocked again at the door, and said:
‘Open the door, my princess dear,
Open the door to thy true love here!
And mind the words that thou and I said
By the fountain cool, in the greenwood shade.’
Then the king said to the young princess, ‘As you have given your word
you must keep it; so go and let him in.’ She did so, and the frog hopped
into the room, and then straight on--tap, tap--plash, plash--from the
bottom of the room to the top, till he came up close to the table where
the princess sat. ‘Pray lift me upon chair,’ said he to the princess,
‘and let me sit next to you.’ As soon as she had done this, the frog
said, ‘Put your plate nearer to me, that I may eat out of it.’ This
she did, and when he had eaten as much as he could, he said, ‘Now I am
tired; carry me upstairs, and put me into your bed.’ And the princess,
though very unwilling, took him up in her hand, and put him upon the
pillow of her own bed, where he slept all night long. As soon as it was
light he jumped up, hopped downstairs, and went out of the house.
‘Now, then,’ thought the princess, ‘at last he is gone, and I shall be
troubled with him no more.’
But she was mistaken; for when night came again she heard the same
tapping at the door; and the frog came once more, and said:
‘Open the door, my princess dear,
Open the door to thy true love here!
And mind the words that thou and I said
By the fountain cool, in the greenwood shade.’
And when the princess opened the door the frog came in, and slept upon
her pillow as before, till the morning broke. And the third night he did
the same. But when the princess awoke on the following morning she was
astonished to see, instead of the frog, a handsome prince, gazing on her
with the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen, and standing at the head
of her bed.
He told her that he had been enchanted by a spiteful fairy, who had
changed him into a frog; and that he had been fated so to abide till
some princess should take him out of the spring, and let him eat from
her plate, and sleep upon her bed for three nights. ‘You,’ said the
prince, ‘have broken his cruel charm, and now I have nothing to wish for
but that you should go with me into my father’s kingdom, where I will
marry you, and love you as long as you live.’
The young princess, you may be sure, was not long in saying ‘Yes’ to
all this; and as they spoke a gay coach drove up, with eight beautiful
horses, decked with plumes of feathers and a golden harness; and behind
the coach rode the prince’s servant, faithful Heinrich, who had bewailed
the misfortunes of his dear master during his enchantment so long and so
bitterly, that his heart had well-nigh burst.
They then took leave of the king, and got into the coach with eight
horses, and all set out, full of joy and merriment, for the prince’s
kingdom, which they reached safely; and there they lived happily a great
many years.
CAT AND MOUSE IN PARTNERSHIP
A certain cat had made the acquaintance of a mouse, and had said so much
to her about the great love and friendship she felt for her, that at
length the mouse agreed that they should live and keep house together.
‘But we must make a provision for winter, or else we shall suffer
from hunger,’ said the cat; ‘and you, little mouse, cannot venture
everywhere, or you will be caught in a trap some day.’ The good advice
was followed, and a pot of fat was bought, but they did not know where
to put it. At length, after much consideration, the cat said: ‘I know no
place where it will be better stored up than in the church, for no one
dares take anything away from there. We will set it beneath the altar,
and not touch it until we are really in need of it.’ So the pot was
placed in safety, but it was not long before the cat had a great
yearning for it, and said to the mouse: ‘I want to tell you something,
little mouse; my cousin has brought a little son into the world, and has
asked me to be godmother; he is white with brown spots, and I am to hold
him over the font at the christening. Let me go out today, and you look
after the house by yourself.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ answered the mouse, ‘by all
means go, and if you get anything very good to eat, think of me. I
should like a drop of sweet red christening wine myself.’ All this,
however, was untrue; the cat had no cousin, and had not been asked to
be godmother. She went straight to the church, stole to the pot of fat,
began to lick at it, and licked the top of the fat off. Then she took a
walk upon the roofs of the town, looked out for opportunities, and then
stretched herself in the sun, and licked her lips whenever she thought
of the pot of fat, and not until it was evening did she return home.
‘Well, here you are again,’ said the mouse, ‘no doubt you have had a
merry day.’ ‘All went off well,’ answered the cat. ‘What name did they
give the child?’ ‘Top off!’ said the cat quite coolly. ‘Top off!’ cried
the mouse, ‘that is a very odd and uncommon name, is it a usual one in
your family?’ ‘What does that matter,’ said the cat, ‘it is no worse
than Crumb-stealer, as your godchildren are called.’
Before long the cat was seized by another fit of yearning. She said to
the mouse: ‘You must do me a favour, and once more manage the house for
a day alone. I am again asked to be godmother, and, as the child has a
white ring round its neck, I cannot refuse.’ The good mouse consented,
but the cat crept behind the town walls to the church, and devoured
half the pot of fat. ‘Nothing ever seems so good as what one keeps to
oneself,’ said she, and was quite satisfied with her day’s work. When
she went home the mouse inquired: ‘And what was the child christened?’
‘Half-done,’ answered the cat. ‘Half-done! What are you saying? I
never heard the name in my life, I’ll wager anything it is not in the
calendar!’
The cat’s mouth soon began to water for some more licking. ‘All good
things go in threes,’ said she, ‘I am asked to stand godmother again.
The child is quite black, only it has white paws, but with that
exception, it has not a single white hair on its whole body; this only
happens once every few years, you will let me go, won’t you?’ ‘Top-off!
Half-done!’ answered the mouse, ‘they are such odd names, they make me
very thoughtful.’ ‘You sit at home,’ said the cat, ‘in your dark-grey
fur coat and long tail, and are filled with fancies, that’s because
you do not go out in the daytime.’ During the cat’s absence the mouse
cleaned the house, and put it in order, but the greedy cat entirely
emptied the pot of fat. ‘When everything is eaten up one has some
peace,’ said she to herself, and well filled and fat she did not return
home till night. The mouse at once asked what name had been given to
the third child. ‘It will not please you more than the others,’ said the
cat. ‘He is called All-gone.’ ‘All-gone,’ cried the mouse ‘that is the
most suspicious name of all! I have never seen it in print. All-gone;
what can that mean?’ and she shook her head, curled herself up, and lay
down to sleep.
From this time forth no one invited the cat to be godmother, but
when the winter had come and there was no longer anything to be found
outside, the mouse thought of their provision, and said: ‘Come, cat,
we will go to our pot of fat which we have stored up for ourselves--we
shall enjoy that.’ ‘Yes,’ answered the cat, ‘you will enjoy it as much
as you would enjoy sticking that dainty tongue of yours out of the
window.’ They set out on their way, but when they arrived, the pot of
fat certainly was still in its place, but it was empty. ‘Alas!’ said the
mouse, ‘now I see what has happened, now it comes to light! You are a true
friend! You have devoured all when you were standing godmother. First
top off, then half-done, then--’ ‘Will you hold your tongue,’ cried the
cat, ‘one word more, and I will eat you too.’ ‘All-gone’ was already on
the poor mouse’s lips; scarcely had she spoken it before the cat sprang
on her, seized her, and swallowed her down. Verily, that is the way of
the world.
THE GOOSE-GIRL
The king of a great land died, and left his queen to take care of their
only child. This child was a daughter, who was very beautiful; and her
mother loved her dearly, and was very kind to her. And there was a good
fairy too, who was fond of the princess, and helped her mother to watch
over her. When she grew up, she was betrothed to a prince who lived a
great way off; and as the time drew near for her to be married, she
got ready to set off on her journey to his country. Then the queen her
mother, packed up a great many costly things; jewels, and gold, and
silver; trinkets, fine dresses, and in short everything that became a
royal bride. And she gave her a waiting-maid to ride with her, and give
her into the bridegroom’s hands; and each had a horse for the journey.
Now the princess’s horse was the fairy’s gift, and it was called Falada,
and could speak.
When the time came for them to set out, the fairy went into her
bed-chamber, and took a little knife, and cut off a lock of her hair,
and gave it to the princess, and said, ‘Take care of it, dear child; for
it is a charm that may be of use to you on the road.’ Then they all took
a sorrowful leave of the princess; and she put the lock of hair into
her bosom, got upon her horse, and set off on her journey to her
bridegroom’s kingdom.
One day, as they were riding along by a brook, the princess began to
feel very thirsty: and she said to her maid, ‘Pray get down, and fetch
me some water in my golden cup out of yonder brook, for I want to
drink.’ ‘Nay,’ said the maid, ‘if you are thirsty, get off yourself, and
stoop down by the water and drink; I shall not be your waiting-maid any
longer.’ Then she was so thirsty that she got down, and knelt over the
little brook, and drank; for she was frightened, and dared not bring out
her golden cup; and she wept and said, ‘Alas! what will become of me?’
And the lock answered her, and said:
‘Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it,
Sadly, sadly, would she rue it.’
But the princess was very gentle and meek, so she said nothing to her
maid’s ill behaviour, but got upon her horse again.
Then all rode farther on their journey, till the day grew so warm, and
the sun so scorching, that the bride began to feel very thirsty again;
and at last, when they came to a river, she forgot her maid’s rude
speech, and said, ‘Pray get down, and fetch me some water to drink in
my golden cup.’ But the maid answered her, and even spoke more haughtily
than before: ‘Drink if you will, but I shall not be your waiting-maid.’
Then the princess was so thirsty that she got off her horse, and lay
down, and held her head over the running stream, and cried and said,
‘What will become of me?’ And the lock of hair answered her again:
‘Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it,
Sadly, sadly, would she rue it.’
And as she leaned down to drink, the lock of hair fell from her bosom,
and floated away with the water. Now she was so frightened that she did
not see it; but her maid saw it, and was very glad, for she knew the
charm; and she saw that the poor bride would be in her power, now that
she had lost the hair. So when the bride had done drinking, and would
have got upon Falada again, the maid said, ‘I shall ride upon Falada,
and you may have my horse instead’; so she was forced to give up her
horse, and soon afterwards to take off her royal clothes and put on her
maid’s shabby ones.
At last, as they drew near the end of their journey, this treacherous
servant threatened to kill her mistress if she ever told anyone what had
happened. But Falada saw it all, and marked it well.
Then the waiting-maid got upon Falada, and the real bride rode upon the
other horse, and they went on in this way till at last they came to the
royal court. There was great joy at their coming, and the prince flew to
meet them, and lifted the maid from her horse, thinking she was the one
who was to be his wife; and she was led upstairs to the royal chamber;
but the true princess was told to stay in the court below.
Now the old king happened just then to have nothing else to do; so he
amused himself by sitting at his kitchen window, looking at what was
going on; and he saw her in the courtyard. As she looked very pretty,
and too delicate for a waiting-maid, he went up into the royal chamber
to ask the bride who it was she had brought with her, that was thus left
standing in the court below. ‘I brought her with me for the sake of her
company on the road,’ said she; ‘pray give the girl some work to do,
that she may not be idle.’ The old king could not for some time think
of any work for her to do; but at last he said, ‘I have a lad who takes
care of my geese; she may go and help him.’ Now the name of this lad,
that the real bride was to help in watching the king’s geese, was
Curdken.
But the false bride said to the prince, ‘Dear husband, pray do me one
piece of kindness.’ ‘That I will,’ said the prince. ‘Then tell one of
your slaughterers to cut off the head of the horse I rode upon, for it
was very unruly, and plagued me sadly on the road’; but the truth was,
she was very much afraid lest Falada should some day or other speak, and
tell all she had done to the princess. She carried her point, and the
faithful Falada was killed; but when the true princess heard of it, she
wept, and begged the man to nail up Falada’s head against a large
dark gate of the city, through which she had to pass every morning
and evening, that there she might still see him sometimes. Then the
slaughterer said he would do as she wished; and cut off the head, and
nailed it up under the dark gate.
Early the next morning, as she and Curdken went out through the gate,
she said sorrowfully:
‘Falada, Falada, there thou hangest!’
and the head answered:
‘Bride, bride, there thou gangest!
Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it,
Sadly, sadly, would she rue it.’
Then they went out of the city, and drove the geese on. And when she
came to the meadow, she sat down upon a bank there, and let down her
waving locks of hair, which were all of pure silver; and when Curdken
saw it glitter in the sun, he ran up, and would have pulled some of the
locks out, but she cried:
‘Blow, breezes, blow!
Let Curdken’s hat go!
Blow, breezes, blow!
Let him after it go!
O’er hills, dales, and rocks,
Away be it whirl’d
Till the silvery locks
Are all comb’d and curl’d!
Then there came a wind, so strong that it blew off Curdken’s hat; and
away it flew over the hills: and he was forced to turn and run after
it; till, by the time he came back, she had done combing and curling her
hair, and had put it up again safe. Then he was very angry and sulky,
and would not speak to her at all; but they watched the geese until it
grew dark in the evening, and then drove them homewards.
The next morning, as they were going through the dark gate, the poor
girl looked up at Falada’s head, and cried:
‘Falada, Falada, there thou hangest!’
and the head answered:
‘Bride, bride, there thou gangest!
Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it,
Sadly, sadly, would she rue it.’
Then she drove on the geese, and sat down again in the meadow, and began
to comb out her hair as before; and Curdken ran up to her, and wanted to
take hold of it; but she cried out quickly:
‘Blow, breezes, blow!
Let Curdken’s hat go!
Blow, breezes, blow!
Let him after it go!
O’er hills, dales, and rocks,
Away be it whirl’d
Till the silvery locks
Are all comb’d and curl’d!
Then the wind came and blew away his hat; and off it flew a great way,
over the hills and far away, so that he had to run after it; and when
he came back she had bound up her hair again, and all was safe. So they
watched the geese till it grew dark.
In the evening, after they came home, Curdken went to the old king, and
said, ‘I cannot have that strange girl to help me to keep the geese any
longer.’ ‘Why?’ said the king. ‘Because, instead of doing any good, she
does nothing but tease me all day long.’ Then the king made him tell him
what had happened. And Curdken said, ‘When we go in the morning through
the dark gate with our flock of geese, she cries and talks with the head
of a horse that hangs upon the wall, and says:
‘Falada, Falada, there thou hangest!’
and the head answers:
‘Bride, bride, there thou gangest!
Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it,
Sadly, sadly, would she rue it.’
And Curdken went on telling the king what had happened upon the meadow
where the geese fed; how his hat was blown away; and how he was forced
to run after it, and to leave his flock of geese to themselves. But the
old king told the boy to go out again the next day: and when morning
came, he placed himself behind the dark gate, and heard how she spoke
to Falada, and how Falada answered. Then he went into the field, and
hid himself in a bush by the meadow’s side; and he soon saw with his own
eyes how they drove the flock of geese; and how, after a little time,
she let down her hair that glittered in the sun. And then he heard her
say:
‘Blow, breezes, blow!
Let Curdken’s hat go!
Blow, breezes, blow!
Let him after it go!
O’er hills, dales, and rocks,
Away be it whirl’d
Till the silvery locks
Are all comb’d and curl’d!
And soon came a gale of wind, and carried away Curdken’s hat, and away
went Curdken after it, while the girl went on combing and curling her
hair. All this the old king saw: so he went home without being seen; and
when the little goose-girl came back in the evening he called her aside,
and asked her why she did so: but she burst into tears, and said, ‘That
I must not tell you or any man, or I shall lose my life.’
But the old king begged so hard, that she had no peace till she had told
him all the tale, from beginning to end, word for word. And it was very
lucky for her that she did so, for when she had done the king ordered
royal clothes to be put upon her, and gazed on her with wonder, she was
so beautiful. Then he called his son and told him that he had only a
false bride; for that she was merely a waiting-maid, while the true
bride stood by. And the young king rejoiced when he saw her beauty, and
heard how meek and patient she had been; and without saying anything to
the false bride, the king ordered a great feast to be got ready for all
his court. The bridegroom sat at the top, with the false princess on one
side, and the true one on the other; but nobody knew her again, for her
beauty was quite dazzling to their eyes; and she did not seem at all
like the little goose-girl, now that she had her brilliant dress on.
When they had eaten and drank, and were very merry, the old king said
he would tell them a tale. So he began, and told all the story of the
princess, as if it was one that he had once heard; and he asked the
true waiting-maid what she thought ought to be done to anyone who would
behave thus. ‘Nothing better,’ said this false bride, ‘than that she
should be thrown into a cask stuck round with sharp nails, and that
two white horses should be put to it, and should drag it from street to
street till she was dead.’ ‘Thou art she!’ said the old king; ‘and as
thou has judged thyself, so shall it be done to thee.’ And the young
king was then married to his true wife, and they reigned over the
kingdom in peace and happiness all their lives; and the good fairy came
to see them, and restored the faithful Falada to life again.
THE ADVENTURES OF CHANTICLEER AND PARTLET
1. HOW THEY WENT TO THE MOUNTAINS TO EAT NUTS
‘The nuts are quite ripe now,’ said Chanticleer to his wife Partlet,
‘suppose we go together to the mountains, and eat as many as we can,
before the squirrel takes them all away.’ ‘With all my heart,’ said
Partlet, ‘let us go and make a holiday of it together.’
So they went to the mountains; and as it was a lovely day, they stayed
there till the evening. Now, whether it was that they had eaten so many
nuts that they could not walk, or whether they were lazy and would not,
I do not know: however, they took it into their heads that it did not
become them to go home on foot. So Chanticleer began to build a little
carriage of nutshells: and when it was finished, Partlet jumped into
it and sat down, and bid Chanticleer harness himself to it and draw her
home. ‘That’s a good joke!’ said Chanticleer; ‘no, that will never do;
I had rather by half walk home; I’ll sit on the box and be coachman,
if you like, but I’ll not draw.’ While this was passing, a duck came
quacking up and cried out, ‘You thieving vagabonds, what business have
you in my grounds? I’ll give it you well for your insolence!’ and upon
that she fell upon Chanticleer most lustily. But Chanticleer was no
coward, and returned the duck’s blows with his sharp spurs so fiercely
that she soon began to cry out for mercy; which was only granted her
upon condition that she would draw the carriage home for them. This she
agreed to do; and Chanticleer got upon the box, and drove, crying, ‘Now,
duck, get on as fast as you can.’ And away they went at a pretty good
pace.
After they had travelled along a little way, they met a needle and a pin
walking together along the road: and the needle cried out, ‘Stop, stop!’
and said it was so dark that they could hardly find their way, and such
dirty walking they could not get on at all: he told them that he and his
friend, the pin, had been at a public-house a few miles off, and had sat
drinking till they had forgotten how late it was; he begged therefore
that the travellers would be so kind as to give them a lift in their
carriage. Chanticleer observing that they were but thin fellows, and not
likely to take up much room, told them they might ride, but made them
promise not to dirty the wheels of the carriage in getting in, nor to
tread on Partlet’s toes.
Late at night they arrived at an inn; and as it was bad travelling in
the dark, and the duck seemed much tired, and waddled about a good
deal from one side to the other, they made up their minds to fix their
quarters there: but the landlord at first was unwilling, and said his
house was full, thinking they might not be very respectable company:
however, they spoke civilly to him, and gave him the egg which Partlet
had laid by the way, and said they would give him the duck, who was in
the habit of laying one every day: so at last he let them come in, and
they bespoke a handsome supper, and spent the evening very jollily.
Early in the morning, before it was quite light, and when nobody was
stirring in the inn, Chanticleer awakened his wife, and, fetching the
egg, they pecked a hole in it, ate it up, and threw the shells into the
fireplace: they then went to the pin and needle, who were fast asleep,
and seizing them by the heads, stuck one into the landlord’s easy chair
and the other into his handkerchief; and, having done this, they crept
away as softly as possible. However, the duck, who slept in the open
air in the yard, heard them coming, and jumping into the brook which ran
close by the inn, soon swam out of their reach.
An hour or two afterwards the landlord got up, and took his handkerchief
to wipe his face, but the pin ran into him and pricked him: then he
walked into the kitchen to light his pipe at the fire, but when he
stirred it up the eggshells flew into his eyes, and almost blinded him.
‘Bless me!’ said he, ‘all the world seems to have a design against my
head this morning’: and so saying, he threw himself sulkily into his
easy chair; but, oh dear! the needle ran into him; and this time the
pain was not in his head. He now flew into a very great passion, and,
suspecting the company who had come in the night before, he went to look
after them, but they were all off; so he swore that he never again
would take in such a troop of vagabonds, who ate a great deal, paid no
reckoning, and gave him nothing for his trouble but their apish tricks.
2. HOW CHANTICLEER AND PARTLET WENT TO VISIT MR KORBES
Another day, Chanticleer and Partlet wished to ride out together;
so Chanticleer built a handsome carriage with four red wheels, and
harnessed six mice to it; and then he and Partlet got into the carriage,
and away they drove. Soon afterwards a cat met them, and said, ‘Where
are you going?’ And Chanticleer replied,
‘All on our way
A visit to pay
To Mr Korbes, the fox, today.’
Then the cat said, ‘Take me with you,’ Chanticleer said, ‘With all my
heart: get up behind, and be sure you do not fall off.’
‘Take care of this handsome coach of mine,
Nor dirty my pretty red wheels so fine!
Now, mice, be ready,
And, wheels, run steady!
For we are going a visit to pay
To Mr Korbes, the fox, today.’
Soon after came up a millstone, an egg, a duck, and a pin; and
Chanticleer gave them all leave to get into the carriage and go with
them.
When they arrived at Mr Korbes’s house, he was not at home; so the mice
drew the carriage into the coach-house, Chanticleer and Partlet flew
upon a beam, the cat sat down in the fireplace, the duck got into
the washing cistern, the pin stuck himself into the bed pillow, the
millstone laid himself over the house door, and the egg rolled himself
up in the towel.
When Mr Korbes came home, he went to the fireplace to make a fire; but
the cat threw all the ashes in his eyes: so he ran to the kitchen to
wash himself; but there the duck splashed all the water in his face; and
when he tried to wipe himself, the egg broke to pieces in the towel all
over his face and eyes. Then he was very angry, and went without his
supper to bed; but when he laid his head on the pillow, the pin ran into
his cheek: at this he became quite furious, and, jumping up, would have
run out of the house; but when he came to the door, the millstone fell
down on his head, and killed him on the spot.
3. HOW PARTLET DIED AND WAS BURIED, AND HOW CHANTICLEER DIED OF GRIEF
Another day Chanticleer and Partlet agreed to go again to the mountains
to eat nuts; and it was settled that all the nuts which they found
should be shared equally between them. Now Partlet found a very large
nut; but she said nothing about it to Chanticleer, and kept it all to
herself: however, it was so big that she could not swallow it, and it
stuck in her throat. Then she was in a great fright, and cried out to
Chanticleer, ‘Pray run as fast as you can, and fetch me some water, or I
shall be choked.’ Chanticleer ran as fast as he could to the river, and
said, ‘River, give me some water, for Partlet lies in the mountain, and
will be choked by a great nut.’ The river said, ‘Run first to the bride,
and ask her for a silken cord to draw up the water.’ Chanticleer ran to
the bride, and said, ‘Bride, you must give me a silken cord, for then
the river will give me water, and the water I will carry to Partlet, who
lies on the mountain, and will be choked by a great nut.’ But the bride
said, ‘Run first, and bring me my garland that is hanging on a willow
in the garden.’ Then Chanticleer ran to the garden, and took the garland
from the bough where it hung, and brought it to the bride; and then
the bride gave him the silken cord, and he took the silken cord to
the river, and the river gave him water, and he carried the water to
Partlet; but in the meantime she was choked by the great nut, and lay
quite dead, and never moved any more.
Then Chanticleer was very sorry, and cried bitterly; and all the beasts
came and wept with him over poor Partlet. And six mice built a little
hearse to carry her to her grave; and when it was ready they harnessed
themselves before it, and Chanticleer drove them. On the way they
met the fox. ‘Where are you going, Chanticleer?’ said he. ‘To bury my
Partlet,’ said the other. ‘May I go with you?’ said the fox. ‘Yes; but
you must get up behind, or my horses will not be able to draw you.’ Then
the fox got up behind; and presently the wolf, the bear, the goat, and
all the beasts of the wood, came and climbed upon the hearse.
So on they went till they came to a rapid stream. ‘How shall we get
over?’ said Chanticleer. Then said a straw, ‘I will lay myself across,
and you may pass over upon me.’ But as the mice were going over, the
straw slipped away and fell into the water, and the six mice all fell in
and were drowned. What was to be done? Then a large log of wood came
and said, ‘I am big enough; I will lay myself across the stream, and you
shall pass over upon me.’ So he laid himself down; but they managed
so clumsily, that the log of wood fell in and was carried away by the
stream. Then a stone, who saw what had happened, came up and kindly
offered to help poor Chanticleer by laying himself across the stream;
and this time he got safely to the other side with the hearse, and
managed to get Partlet out of it; but the fox and the other mourners,
who were sitting behind, were too heavy, and fell back into the water
and were all carried away by the stream and drowned.
Thus Chanticleer was left alone with his dead Partlet; and having dug
a grave for her, he laid her in it, and made a little hillock over her.
Then he sat down by the grave, and wept and mourned, till at last he
died too; and so all were dead.
RAPUNZEL
There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a
child. At length the woman hoped that God was about to grant her desire.
These people had a little window at the back of their house from which
a splendid garden could be seen, which was full of the most beautiful
flowers and herbs. It was, however, surrounded by a high wall, and no
one dared to go into it because it belonged to an enchantress, who had
great power and was dreaded by all the world. One day the woman was
standing by this window and looking down into the garden, when she saw a
bed which was planted with the most beautiful rampion (rapunzel), and it
looked so fresh and green that she longed for it, she quite pined away,
and began to look pale and miserable. Then her husband was alarmed, and
asked: ‘What ails you, dear wife?’ ‘Ah,’ she replied, ‘if I can’t eat
some of the rampion, which is in the garden behind our house, I shall
die.’ The man, who loved her, thought: ‘Sooner than let your wife die,
bring her some of the rampion yourself, let it cost what it will.’
At twilight, he clambered down over the wall into the garden of the
enchantress, hastily clutched a handful of rampion, and took it to his
wife. She at once made herself a salad of it, and ate it greedily. It
tasted so good to her--so very good, that the next day she longed for it
three times as much as before. If he was to have any rest, her husband
must once more descend into the garden. In the gloom of evening
therefore, he let himself down again; but when he had clambered down the
wall he was terribly afraid, for he saw the enchantress standing before
him. ‘How can you dare,’ said she with angry look, ‘descend into my
garden and steal my rampion like a thief? You shall suffer for it!’
‘Ah,’ answered he, ‘let mercy take the place of justice, I only made
up my mind to do it out of necessity. My wife saw your rampion from the
window, and felt such a longing for it that she would have died if she
had not got some to eat.’ Then the enchantress allowed her anger to be
softened, and said to him: ‘If the case be as you say, I will allow
you to take away with you as much rampion as you will, only I make one
condition, you must give me the child which your wife will bring into
the world; it shall be well treated, and I will care for it like a
mother.’ The man in his terror consented to everything, and when the
woman was brought to bed, the enchantress appeared at once, gave the
child the name of Rapunzel, and took it away with her.
Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child under the sun. When she was
twelve years old, the enchantress shut her into a tower, which lay in
a forest, and had neither stairs nor door, but quite at the top was a
little window. When the enchantress wanted to go in, she placed herself
beneath it and cried:
‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.’
Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold, and when she
heard the voice of the enchantress she unfastened her braided tresses,
wound them round one of the hooks of the window above, and then the hair
fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.
After a year or two, it came to pass that the king’s son rode through
the forest and passed by the tower. Then he heard a song, which was so
charming that he stood still and listened. This was Rapunzel, who in her
solitude passed her time in letting her sweet voice resound. The king’s
son wanted to climb up to her, and looked for the door of the tower,
but none was to be found. He rode home, but the singing had so deeply
touched his heart, that every day he went out into the forest and
listened to it. Once when he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw
that an enchantress came there, and he heard how she cried:
‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.’
Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress
climbed up to her. ‘If that is the ladder by which one mounts, I too
will try my fortune,’ said he, and the next day when it began to grow
dark, he went to the tower and cried:
‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.’
Immediately the hair fell down and the king’s son climbed up.
At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man, such as her eyes
had never yet beheld, came to her; but the king’s son began to talk to
her quite like a friend, and told her that his heart had been so stirred
that it had let him have no rest, and he had been forced to see her.
Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would take
him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she
thought: ‘He will love me more than old Dame Gothel does’; and she said
yes, and laid her hand in his. She said: ‘I will willingly go away with
you, but I do not know how to get down. Bring with you a skein of silk
every time that you come, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when
that is ready I will descend, and you will take me on your horse.’ They
agreed that until that time he should come to her every evening, for the
old woman came by day. The enchantress remarked nothing of this, until
once Rapunzel said to her: ‘Tell me, Dame Gothel, how it happens that
you are so much heavier for me to draw up than the young king’s son--he
is with me in a moment.’ ‘Ah! you wicked child,’ cried the enchantress.
‘What do I hear you say! I thought I had separated you from all
the world, and yet you have deceived me!’ In her anger she clutched
Rapunzel’s beautiful tresses, wrapped them twice round her left hand,
seized a pair of scissors with the right, and snip, snap, they were cut
off, and the lovely braids lay on the ground. And she was so pitiless
that she took poor Rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great
grief and misery.
On the same day that she cast out Rapunzel, however, the enchantress
fastened the braids of hair, which she had cut off, to the hook of the
window, and when the king’s son came and cried:
‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.’
she let the hair down. The king’s son ascended, but instead of finding
his dearest Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed at him with
wicked and venomous looks. ‘Aha!’ she cried mockingly, ‘you would fetch
your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest;
the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is
lost to you; you will never see her again.’ The king’s son was beside
himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He
escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his
eyes. Then he wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but
roots and berries, and did naught but lament and weep over the loss of
his dearest wife. Thus he roamed about in misery for some years, and at
length came to the desert where Rapunzel, with the twins to which she
had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness. He heard a
voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that he went towards it, and
when he approached, Rapunzel knew him and fell on his neck and wept. Two
of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew clear again, and he could
see with them as before. He led her to his kingdom where he was
joyfully received, and they lived for a long time afterwards, happy and
contented.
FUNDEVOGEL
There was once a forester who went into the forest to hunt, and as
he entered it he heard a sound of screaming as if a little child were
there. He followed the sound, and at last came to a high tree, and at
the top of this a little child was sitting, for the mother had fallen
asleep under the tree with the child, and a bird of prey had seen it in
her arms, had flown down, snatched it away, and set it on the high tree.
The forester climbed up, brought the child down, and thought to himself:
‘You will take him home with you, and bring him up with your Lina.’ He
took it home, therefore, and the two children grew up together. And the
one, which he had found on a tree was called Fundevogel, because a bird
had carried it away. Fundevogel and Lina loved each other so dearly that
when they did not see each other they were sad.
Now the forester had an old cook, who one evening took two pails and
began to fetch water, and did not go once only, but many times, out
to the spring. Lina saw this and said, ‘Listen, old Sanna, why are you
fetching so much water?’ ‘If you will never repeat it to anyone, I will
tell you why.’ So Lina said, no, she would never repeat it to anyone,
and then the cook said: ‘Early tomorrow morning, when the forester
is out hunting, I will heat the water, and when it is boiling in the
kettle, I will throw in Fundevogel, and will boil him in it.’
Early next morning the forester got up and went out hunting, and when he
was gone the children were still in bed. Then Lina said to Fundevogel:
‘If you will never leave me, I too will never leave you.’ Fundevogel
said: ‘Neither now, nor ever will I leave you.’ Then said Lina: ‘Then
will I tell you. Last night, old Sanna carried so many buckets of water
into the house that I asked her why she was doing that, and she said
that if I would promise not to tell anyone, and she said that early
tomorrow morning when father was out hunting, she would set the kettle
full of water, throw you into it and boil you; but we will get up
quickly, dress ourselves, and go away together.’
The two children therefore got up, dressed themselves quickly, and went
away. When the water in the kettle was boiling, the cook went into the
bedroom to fetch Fundevogel and throw him into it. But when she came in,
and went to the beds, both the children were gone. Then she was terribly
alarmed, and she said to herself: ‘What shall I say now when the
forester comes home and sees that the children are gone? They must be
followed instantly to get them back again.’
Then the cook sent three servants after them, who were to run and
overtake the children. The children, however, were sitting outside the
forest, and when they saw from afar the three servants running, Lina
said to Fundevogel: ‘Never leave me, and I will never leave you.’
Fundevogel said: ‘Neither now, nor ever.’ Then said Lina: ‘Do you become
a rose-tree, and I the rose upon it.’ When the three servants came to
the forest, nothing was there but a rose-tree and one rose on it, but
the children were nowhere. Then said they: ‘There is nothing to be done
here,’ and they went home and told the cook that they had seen nothing
in the forest but a little rose-bush with one rose on it. Then the
old cook scolded and said: ‘You simpletons, you should have cut the
rose-bush in two, and have broken off the rose and brought it home with
you; go, and do it at once.’ They had therefore to go out and look for
the second time. The children, however, saw them coming from a distance.
Then Lina said: ‘Fundevogel, never leave me, and I will never leave
you.’ Fundevogel said: ‘Neither now; nor ever.’ Said Lina: ‘Then do you
become a church, and I’ll be the chandelier in it.’ So when the three
servants came, nothing was there but a church, with a chandelier in
it. They said therefore to each other: ‘What can we do here, let us go
home.’ When they got home, the cook asked if they had not found them;
so they said no, they had found nothing but a church, and there was a
chandelier in it. And the cook scolded them and said: ‘You fools! why
did you not pull the church to pieces, and bring the chandelier home
with you?’ And now the old cook herself got on her legs, and went with
the three servants in pursuit of the children. The children, however,
saw from afar that the three servants were coming, and the cook waddling
after them. Then said Lina: ‘Fundevogel, never leave me, and I will
never leave you.’ Then said Fundevogel: ‘Neither now, nor ever.’
Said Lina: ‘Be a fishpond, and I will be the duck upon it.’ The cook,
however, came up to them, and when she saw the pond she lay down by it,
and was about to drink it up. But the duck swam quickly to her, seized
her head in its beak and drew her into the water, and there the old
witch had to drown. Then the children went home together, and were
heartily delighted, and if they have not died, they are living still.
THE VALIANT LITTLE TAILOR
One summer’s morning a little tailor was sitting on his table by the
window; he was in good spirits, and sewed with all his might. Then came
a peasant woman down the street crying: ‘Good jams, cheap! Good jams,
cheap!’ This rang pleasantly in the tailor’s ears; he stretched his
delicate head out of the window, and called: ‘Come up here, dear woman;
here you will get rid of your goods.’ The woman came up the three steps
to the tailor with her heavy basket, and he made her unpack all the pots
for him. He inspected each one, lifted it up, put his nose to it, and
at length said: ‘The jam seems to me to be good, so weigh me out four
ounces, dear woman, and if it is a quarter of a pound that is of no
consequence.’ The woman who had hoped to find a good sale, gave him
what he desired, but went away quite angry and grumbling. ‘Now, this jam
shall be blessed by God,’ cried the little tailor, ‘and give me health
and strength’; so he brought the bread out of the cupboard, cut himself
a piece right across the loaf and spread the jam over it. ‘This won’t
taste bitter,’ said he, ‘but I will just finish the jacket before I
take a bite.’ He laid the bread near him, sewed on, and in his joy, made
bigger and bigger stitches. In the meantime the smell of the sweet jam
rose to where the flies were sitting in great numbers, and they were
attracted and descended on it in hosts. ‘Hi! who invited you?’ said the
little tailor, and drove the unbidden guests away. The flies, however,
who understood no German, would not be turned away, but came back
again in ever-increasing companies. The little tailor at last lost all
patience, and drew a piece of cloth from the hole under his work-table,
and saying: ‘Wait, and I will give it to you,’ struck it mercilessly on
them. When he drew it away and counted, there lay before him no fewer
than seven, dead and with legs stretched out. ‘Are you a fellow of that
sort?’ said he, and could not help admiring his own bravery. ‘The whole
town shall know of this!’ And the little tailor hastened to cut himself
a girdle, stitched it, and embroidered on it in large letters: ‘Seven at
one stroke!’ ‘What, the town!’ he continued, ‘the whole world shall hear
of it!’ and his heart wagged with joy like a lamb’s tail. The tailor
put on the girdle, and resolved to go forth into the world, because he
thought his workshop was too small for his valour. Before he went away,
he sought about in the house to see if there was anything which he could
take with him; however, he found nothing but an old cheese, and that
he put in his pocket. In front of the door he observed a bird which
had caught itself in the thicket. It had to go into his pocket with the
cheese. Now he took to the road boldly, and as he was light and nimble,
he felt no fatigue. The road led him up a mountain, and when he had
reached the highest point of it, there sat a powerful giant looking
peacefully about him. The little tailor went bravely up, spoke to him,
and said: ‘Good day, comrade, so you are sitting there overlooking the
wide-spread world! I am just on my way thither, and want to try my luck.
Have you any inclination to go with me?’ The giant looked contemptuously
at the tailor, and said: ‘You ragamuffin! You miserable creature!’
‘Oh, indeed?’ answered the little tailor, and unbuttoned his coat, and
showed the giant the girdle, ‘there may you read what kind of a man I
am!’ The giant read: ‘Seven at one stroke,’ and thought that they had
been men whom the tailor had killed, and began to feel a little respect
for the tiny fellow. Nevertheless, he wished to try him first, and took
a stone in his hand and squeezed it together so that water dropped out
of it. ‘Do that likewise,’ said the giant, ‘if you have strength.’ ‘Is
that all?’ said the tailor, ‘that is child’s play with us!’ and put his
hand into his pocket, brought out the soft cheese, and pressed it until
the liquid ran out of it. ‘Faith,’ said he, ‘that was a little better,
wasn’t it?’ The giant did not know what to say, and could not believe it
of the little man. Then the giant picked up a stone and threw it so high
that the eye could scarcely follow it. ‘Now, little mite of a man, do
that likewise,’ ‘Well thrown,’ said the tailor, ‘but after all the stone
came down to earth again; I will throw you one which shall never come
back at all,’ and he put his hand into his pocket, took out the bird,
and threw it into the air. The bird, delighted with its liberty,
rose, flew away and did not come back. ‘How does that shot please you,
comrade?’ asked the tailor. ‘You can certainly throw,’ said the giant,
‘but now we will see if you are able to carry anything properly.’ He
took the little tailor to a mighty oak tree which lay there felled on
the ground, and said: ‘If you are strong enough, help me to carry the
tree out of the forest.’ ‘Readily,’ answered the little man; ‘take you
the trunk on your shoulders, and I will raise up the branches and twigs;
after all, they are the heaviest.’ The giant took the trunk on his
shoulder, but the tailor seated himself on a branch, and the giant, who
could not look round, had to carry away the whole tree, and the little
tailor into the bargain: he behind, was quite merry and happy, and
whistled the song: ‘Three tailors rode forth from the gate,’ as if
carrying the tree were child’s play. The giant, after he had dragged the
heavy burden part of the way, could go no further, and cried: ‘Hark
you, I shall have to let the tree fall!’ The tailor sprang nimbly down,
seized the tree with both arms as if he had been carrying it, and said
to the giant: ‘You are such a great fellow, and yet cannot even carry
the tree!’
They went on together, and as they passed a cherry-tree, the giant laid
hold of the top of the tree where the ripest fruit was hanging, bent it
down, gave it into the tailor’s hand, and bade him eat. But the little
tailor was much too weak to hold the tree, and when the giant let it go,
it sprang back again, and the tailor was tossed into the air with it.
When he had fallen down again without injury, the giant said: ‘What is
this? Have you not strength enough to hold the weak twig?’ ‘There is no
lack of strength,’ answered the little tailor. ‘Do you think that could
be anything to a man who has struck down seven at one blow? I leapt over
the tree because the huntsmen are shooting down there in the thicket.
Jump as I did, if you can do it.’ The giant made the attempt but he
could not get over the tree, and remained hanging in the branches, so
that in this also the tailor kept the upper hand.
The giant said: ‘If you are such a valiant fellow, come with me into our
cavern and spend the night with us.’ The little tailor was willing, and
followed him. When they went into the cave, other giants were sitting
there by the fire, and each of them had a roasted sheep in his hand and
was eating it. The little tailor looked round and thought: ‘It is much
more spacious here than in my workshop.’ The giant showed him a bed, and
said he was to lie down in it and sleep. The bed, however, was too
big for the little tailor; he did not lie down in it, but crept into
a corner. When it was midnight, and the giant thought that the little
tailor was lying in a sound sleep, he got up, took a great iron bar,
cut through the bed with one blow, and thought he had finished off the
grasshopper for good. With the earliest dawn the giants went into the
forest, and had quite forgotten the little tailor, when all at once he
walked up to them quite merrily and boldly. The giants were terrified,
they were afraid that he would strike them all dead, and ran away in a
great hurry.
The little tailor went onwards, always following his own pointed nose.
After he had walked for a long time, he came to the courtyard of a royal
palace, and as he felt weary, he lay down on the grass and fell asleep.
Whilst he lay there, the people came and inspected him on all sides, and
read on his girdle: ‘Seven at one stroke.’ ‘Ah!’ said they, ‘what does
the great warrior want here in the midst of peace? He must be a mighty
lord.’ They went and announced him to the king, and gave it as their
opinion that if war should break out, this would be a weighty and useful
man who ought on no account to be allowed to depart. The counsel pleased
the king, and he sent one of his courtiers to the little tailor to offer
him military service when he awoke. The ambassador remained standing by
the sleeper, waited until he stretched his limbs and opened his eyes,
and then conveyed to him this proposal. ‘For this very reason have
I come here,’ the tailor replied, ‘I am ready to enter the king’s
service.’ He was therefore honourably received, and a special dwelling
was assigned him.
The soldiers, however, were set against the little tailor, and wished
him a thousand miles away. ‘What is to be the end of this?’ they said
among themselves. ‘If we quarrel with him, and he strikes about him,
seven of us will fall at every blow; not one of us can stand against
him.’ They came therefore to a decision, betook themselves in a body to
the king, and begged for their dismissal. ‘We are not prepared,’ said
they, ‘to stay with a man who kills seven at one stroke.’ The king was
sorry that for the sake of one he should lose all his faithful servants,
wished that he had never set eyes on the tailor, and would willingly
have been rid of him again. But he did not venture to give him his
dismissal, for he dreaded lest he should strike him and all his people
dead, and place himself on the royal throne. He thought about it for a
long time, and at last found good counsel. He sent to the little tailor
and caused him to be informed that as he was a great warrior, he had one
request to make to him. In a forest of his country lived two giants,
who caused great mischief with their robbing, murdering, ravaging,
and burning, and no one could approach them without putting himself in
danger of death. If the tailor conquered and killed these two giants, he
would give him his only daughter to wife, and half of his kingdom as a
dowry, likewise one hundred horsemen should go with him to assist him.
‘That would indeed be a fine thing for a man like me!’ thought the
little tailor. ‘One is not offered a beautiful princess and half a
kingdom every day of one’s life!’ ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, ‘I will soon
subdue the giants, and do not require the help of the hundred horsemen
to do it; he who can hit seven with one blow has no need to be afraid of
two.’
The little tailor went forth, and the hundred horsemen followed him.
When he came to the outskirts of the forest, he said to his followers:
‘Just stay waiting here, I alone will soon finish off the giants.’ Then
he bounded into the forest and looked about right and left. After a
while he perceived both giants. They lay sleeping under a tree, and
snored so that the branches waved up and down. The little tailor, not
idle, gathered two pocketsful of stones, and with these climbed up the
tree. When he was halfway up, he slipped down by a branch, until he sat
just above the sleepers, and then let one stone after another fall on
the breast of one of the giants. For a long time the giant felt nothing,
but at last he awoke, pushed his comrade, and said: ‘Why are you
knocking me?’ ‘You must be dreaming,’ said the other, ‘I am not knocking
you.’ They laid themselves down to sleep again, and then the tailor
threw a stone down on the second. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ cried
the other ‘Why are you pelting me?’ ‘I am not pelting you,’ answered
the first, growling. They disputed about it for a time, but as they were
weary they let the matter rest, and their eyes closed once more. The
little tailor began his game again, picked out the biggest stone, and
threw it with all his might on the breast of the first giant. ‘That
is too bad!’ cried he, and sprang up like a madman, and pushed his
companion against the tree until it shook. The other paid him back in
the same coin, and they got into such a rage that they tore up trees and
belaboured each other so long, that at last they both fell down dead on
the ground at the same time. Then the little tailor leapt down. ‘It is
a lucky thing,’ said he, ‘that they did not tear up the tree on which
I was sitting, or I should have had to sprint on to another like a
squirrel; but we tailors are nimble.’ He drew out his sword and gave
each of them a couple of thrusts in the breast, and then went out to the
horsemen and said: ‘The work is done; I have finished both of them
off, but it was hard work! They tore up trees in their sore need, and
defended themselves with them, but all that is to no purpose when a man
like myself comes, who can kill seven at one blow.’ ‘But are you not
wounded?’ asked the horsemen. ‘You need not concern yourself about
that,’ answered the tailor, ‘they have not bent one hair of mine.’ The
horsemen would not believe him, and rode into the forest; there they
found the giants swimming in their blood, and all round about lay the
torn-up trees.
The little tailor demanded of the king the promised reward; he, however,
repented of his promise, and again bethought himself how he could get
rid of the hero. ‘Before you receive my daughter, and the half of my
kingdom,’ said he to him, ‘you must perform one more heroic deed. In
the forest roams a unicorn which does great harm, and you must catch
it first.’ ‘I fear one unicorn still less than two giants. Seven at one
blow, is my kind of affair.’ He took a rope and an axe with him, went
forth into the forest, and again bade those who were sent with him to
wait outside. He had not long to seek. The unicorn soon came towards
him, and rushed directly on the tailor, as if it would gore him with its
horn without more ado. ‘Softly, softly; it can’t be done as quickly as
that,’ said he, and stood still and waited until the animal was quite
close, and then sprang nimbly behind the tree. The unicorn ran against
the tree with all its strength, and stuck its horn so fast in the trunk
that it had not the strength enough to draw it out again, and thus it
was caught. ‘Now, I have got the bird,’ said the tailor, and came out
from behind the tree and put the rope round its neck, and then with his
axe he hewed the horn out of the tree, and when all was ready he led the
beast away and took it to the king.
The king still would not give him the promised reward, and made a third
demand. Before the wedding the tailor was to catch him a wild boar that
made great havoc in the forest, and the huntsmen should give him their
help. ‘Willingly,’ said the tailor, ‘that is child’s play!’ He did not
take the huntsmen with him into the forest, and they were well pleased
that he did not, for the wild boar had several times received them in
such a manner that they had no inclination to lie in wait for him. When
the boar perceived the tailor, it ran on him with foaming mouth and
whetted tusks, and was about to throw him to the ground, but the hero
fled and sprang into a chapel which was near and up to the window at
once, and in one bound out again. The boar ran after him, but the tailor
ran round outside and shut the door behind it, and then the raging
beast, which was much too heavy and awkward to leap out of the window,
was caught. The little tailor called the huntsmen thither that they
might see the prisoner with their own eyes. The hero, however, went to
the king, who was now, whether he liked it or not, obliged to keep his
promise, and gave his daughter and the half of his kingdom. Had he known
that it was no warlike hero, but a little tailor who was standing before
him, it would have gone to his heart still more than it did. The wedding
was held with great magnificence and small joy, and out of a tailor a
king was made.
After some time the young queen heard her husband say in his dreams at
night: ‘Boy, make me the doublet, and patch the pantaloons, or else I
will rap the yard-measure over your ears.’ Then she discovered in what
state of life the young lord had been born, and next morning complained
of her wrongs to her father, and begged him to help her to get rid of
her husband, who was nothing else but a tailor. The king comforted her
and said: ‘Leave your bedroom door open this night, and my servants
shall stand outside, and when he has fallen asleep shall go in, bind
him, and take him on board a ship which shall carry him into the wide
world.’ The woman was satisfied with this; but the king’s armour-bearer,
who had heard all, was friendly with the young lord, and informed him of
the whole plot. ‘I’ll put a screw into that business,’ said the little
tailor. At night he went to bed with his wife at the usual time, and
when she thought that he had fallen asleep, she got up, opened the door,
and then lay down again. The little tailor, who was only pretending to
be asleep, began to cry out in a clear voice: ‘Boy, make me the doublet
and patch me the pantaloons, or I will rap the yard-measure over your
ears. I smote seven at one blow. I killed two giants, I brought away one
unicorn, and caught a wild boar, and am I to fear those who are standing
outside the room.’ When these men heard the tailor speaking thus, they
were overcome by a great dread, and ran as if the wild huntsman were
behind them, and none of them would venture anything further against
him. So the little tailor was and remained a king to the end of his
life.
HANSEL AND GRETEL
Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his
two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. He had
little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the
land, he could no longer procure even daily bread. Now when he thought
over this by night in his bed, and tossed about in his anxiety, he
groaned and said to his wife: ‘What is to become of us? How are we
to feed our poor children, when we no longer have anything even for
ourselves?’ ‘I’ll tell you what, husband,’ answered the woman, ‘early
tomorrow morning we will take the children out into the forest to where
it is the thickest; there we will light a fire for them, and give each
of them one more piece of bread, and then we will go to our work and
leave them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be
rid of them.’ ‘No, wife,’ said the man, ‘I will not do that; how can I
bear to leave my children alone in the forest?--the wild animals would
soon come and tear them to pieces.’ ‘O, you fool!’ said she, ‘then we
must all four die of hunger, you may as well plane the planks for our
coffins,’ and she left him no peace until he consented. ‘But I feel very
sorry for the poor children, all the same,’ said the man.
The two children had also not been able to sleep for hunger, and had
heard what their stepmother had said to their father. Gretel wept
bitter tears, and said to Hansel: ‘Now all is over with us.’ ‘Be quiet,
Gretel,’ said Hansel, ‘do not distress yourself, I will soon find a way
to help us.’ And when the old folks had fallen asleep, he got up, put
on his little coat, opened the door below, and crept outside. The moon
shone brightly, and the white pebbles which lay in front of the house
glittered like real silver pennies. Hansel stooped and stuffed the
little pocket of his coat with as many as he could get in. Then he went
back and said to Gretel: ‘Be comforted, dear little sister, and sleep in
peace, God will not forsake us,’ and he lay down again in his bed. When
day dawned, but before the sun had risen, the woman came and awoke the
two children, saying: ‘Get up, you sluggards! we are going into the
forest to fetch wood.’ She gave each a little piece of bread, and said:
‘There is something for your dinner, but do not eat it up before then,
for you will get nothing else.’ Gretel took the bread under her apron,
as Hansel had the pebbles in his pocket. Then they all set out together
on the way to the forest. When they had walked a short time, Hansel
stood still and peeped back at the house, and did so again and again.
His father said: ‘Hansel, what are you looking at there and staying
behind for? Pay attention, and do not forget how to use your legs.’ ‘Ah,
father,’ said Hansel, ‘I am looking at my little white cat, which is
sitting up on the roof, and wants to say goodbye to me.’ The wife said:
‘Fool, that is not your little cat, that is the morning sun which is
shining on the chimneys.’ Hansel, however, had not been looking back at
the cat, but had been constantly throwing one of the white pebble-stones
out of his pocket on the road.
When they had reached the middle of the forest, the father said: ‘Now,
children, pile up some wood, and I will light a fire that you may not
be cold.’ Hansel and Gretel gathered brushwood together, as high as a
little hill. The brushwood was lighted, and when the flames were burning
very high, the woman said: ‘Now, children, lay yourselves down by the
fire and rest, we will go into the forest and cut some wood. When we
have done, we will come back and fetch you away.’
Hansel and Gretel sat by the fire, and when noon came, each ate a little
piece of bread, and as they heard the strokes of the wood-axe they
believed that their father was near. It was not the axe, however, but
a branch which he had fastened to a withered tree which the wind was
blowing backwards and forwards. And as they had been sitting such a long
time, their eyes closed with fatigue, and they fell fast asleep. When
at last they awoke, it was already dark night. Gretel began to cry and
said: ‘How are we to get out of the forest now?’ But Hansel comforted
her and said: ‘Just wait a little, until the moon has risen, and then we
will soon find the way.’ And when the full moon had risen, Hansel took
his little sister by the hand, and followed the pebbles which shone like
newly-coined silver pieces, and showed them the way.
They walked the whole night long, and by break of day came once more
to their father’s house. They knocked at the door, and when the woman
opened it and saw that it was Hansel and Gretel, she said: ‘You naughty
children, why have you slept so long in the forest?--we thought you were
never coming back at all!’ The father, however, rejoiced, for it had cut
him to the heart to leave them behind alone.
Not long afterwards, there was once more great dearth throughout the
land, and the children heard their mother saying at night to their
father: ‘Everything is eaten again, we have one half loaf left, and that
is the end. The children must go, we will take them farther into the
wood, so that they will not find their way out again; there is no other
means of saving ourselves!’ The man’s heart was heavy, and he thought:
‘It would be better for you to share the last mouthful with your
children.’ The woman, however, would listen to nothing that he had to
say, but scolded and reproached him. He who says A must say B, likewise,
and as he had yielded the first time, he had to do so a second time
also.
The children, however, were still awake and had heard the conversation.
When the old folks were asleep, Hansel again got up, and wanted to go
out and pick up pebbles as he had done before, but the woman had locked
the door, and Hansel could not get out. Nevertheless he comforted his
little sister, and said: ‘Do not cry, Gretel, go to sleep quietly, the
good God will help us.’
Early in the morning came the woman, and took the children out of their
beds. Their piece of bread was given to them, but it was still smaller
than the time before. On the way into the forest Hansel crumbled his
in his pocket, and often stood still and threw a morsel on the ground.
‘Hansel, why do you stop and look round?’ said the father, ‘go on.’ ‘I
am looking back at my little pigeon which is sitting on the roof, and
wants to say goodbye to me,’ answered Hansel. ‘Fool!’ said the woman,
‘that is not your little pigeon, that is the morning sun that is shining
on the chimney.’ Hansel, however little by little, threw all the crumbs
on the path.
The woman led the children still deeper into the forest, where they had
never in their lives been before. Then a great fire was again made, and
the mother said: ‘Just sit there, you children, and when you are tired
you may sleep a little; we are going into the forest to cut wood, and in
the evening when we are done, we will come and fetch you away.’ When
it was noon, Gretel shared her piece of bread with Hansel, who had
scattered his by the way. Then they fell asleep and evening passed, but
no one came to the poor children. They did not awake until it was dark
night, and Hansel comforted his little sister and said: ‘Just wait,
Gretel, until the moon rises, and then we shall see the crumbs of bread
which I have strewn about, they will show us our way home again.’ When
the moon came they set out, but they found no crumbs, for the many
thousands of birds which fly about in the woods and fields had picked
them all up. Hansel said to Gretel: ‘We shall soon find the way,’ but
they did not find it. They walked the whole night and all the next day
too from morning till evening, but they did not get out of the forest,
and were very hungry, for they had nothing to eat but two or three
berries, which grew on the ground. And as they were so weary that their
legs would carry them no longer, they lay down beneath a tree and fell
asleep.
It was now three mornings since they had left their father’s house. They
began to walk again, but they always came deeper into the forest, and if
help did not come soon, they must die of hunger and weariness. When it
was mid-day, they saw a beautiful snow-white bird sitting on a bough,
which sang so delightfully that they stood still and listened to it. And
when its song was over, it spread its wings and flew away before them,
and they followed it until they reached a little house, on the roof of
which it alighted; and when they approached the little house they saw
that it was built of bread and covered with cakes, but that the windows
were of clear sugar. ‘We will set to work on that,’ said Hansel, ‘and
have a good meal. I will eat a bit of the roof, and you Gretel, can eat
some of the window, it will taste sweet.’ Hansel reached up above, and
broke off a little of the roof to try how it tasted, and Gretel leant
against the window and nibbled at the panes. Then a soft voice cried
from the parlour:
‘Nibble, nibble, gnaw,
Who is nibbling at my little house?’
The children answered:
‘The wind, the wind,
The heaven-born wind,’
and went on eating without disturbing themselves. Hansel, who liked the
taste of the roof, tore down a great piece of it, and Gretel pushed out
the whole of one round window-pane, sat down, and enjoyed herself with
it. Suddenly the door opened, and a woman as old as the hills, who
supported herself on crutches, came creeping out. Hansel and Gretel were
so terribly frightened that they let fall what they had in their
hands. The old woman, however, nodded her head, and said: ‘Oh, you dear
children, who has brought you here? do come in, and stay with me. No
harm shall happen to you.’ She took them both by the hand, and led them
into her little house. Then good food was set before them, milk and
pancakes, with sugar, apples, and nuts. Afterwards two pretty little
beds were covered with clean white linen, and Hansel and Gretel lay down
in them, and thought they were in heaven.
The old woman had only pretended to be so kind; she was in reality
a wicked witch, who lay in wait for children, and had only built the
little house of bread in order to entice them there. When a child fell
into her power, she killed it, cooked and ate it, and that was a feast
day with her. Witches have red eyes, and cannot see far, but they have
a keen scent like the beasts, and are aware when human beings draw near.
When Hansel and Gretel came into her neighbourhood, she laughed with
malice, and said mockingly: ‘I have them, they shall not escape me
again!’ Early in the morning before the children were awake, she was
already up, and when she saw both of them sleeping and looking so
pretty, with their plump and rosy cheeks she muttered to herself: ‘That
will be a dainty mouthful!’ Then she seized Hansel with her shrivelled
hand, carried him into a little stable, and locked him in behind a
grated door. Scream as he might, it would not help him. Then she went to
Gretel, shook her till she awoke, and cried: ‘Get up, lazy thing, fetch
some water, and cook something good for your brother, he is in the
stable outside, and is to be made fat. When he is fat, I will eat him.’
Gretel began to weep bitterly, but it was all in vain, for she was
forced to do what the wicked witch commanded.
And now the best food was cooked for poor Hansel, but Gretel got nothing
but crab-shells. Every morning the woman crept to the little stable, and
cried: ‘Hansel, stretch out your finger that I may feel if you will soon
be fat.’ Hansel, however, stretched out a little bone to her, and
the old woman, who had dim eyes, could not see it, and thought it was
Hansel’s finger, and was astonished that there was no way of fattening
him. When four weeks had gone by, and Hansel still remained thin, she
was seized with impatience and would not wait any longer. ‘Now, then,
Gretel,’ she cried to the girl, ‘stir yourself, and bring some water.
Let Hansel be fat or lean, tomorrow I will kill him, and cook him.’ Ah,
how the poor little sister did lament when she had to fetch the water,
and how her tears did flow down her cheeks! ‘Dear God, do help us,’ she
cried. ‘If the wild beasts in the forest had but devoured us, we should
at any rate have died together.’ ‘Just keep your noise to yourself,’
said the old woman, ‘it won’t help you at all.’
Early in the morning, Gretel had to go out and hang up the cauldron with
the water, and light the fire. ‘We will bake first,’ said the old woman,
‘I have already heated the oven, and kneaded the dough.’ She pushed poor
Gretel out to the oven, from which flames of fire were already darting.
‘Creep in,’ said the witch, ‘and see if it is properly heated, so that
we can put the bread in.’ And once Gretel was inside, she intended to
shut the oven and let her bake in it, and then she would eat her, too.
But Gretel saw what she had in mind, and said: ‘I do not know how I am
to do it; how do I get in?’ ‘Silly goose,’ said the old woman. ‘The door
is big enough; just look, I can get in myself!’ and she crept up and
thrust her head into the oven. Then Gretel gave her a push that drove
her far into it, and shut the iron door, and fastened the bolt. Oh! then
she began to howl quite horribly, but Gretel ran away and the godless
witch was miserably burnt to death.
Gretel, however, ran like lightning to Hansel, opened his little stable,
and cried: ‘Hansel, we are saved! The old witch is dead!’ Then Hansel
sprang like a bird from its cage when the door is opened. How they did
rejoice and embrace each other, and dance about and kiss each other! And
as they had no longer any need to fear her, they went into the witch’s
house, and in every corner there stood chests full of pearls and jewels.
‘These are far better than pebbles!’ said Hansel, and thrust into his
pockets whatever could be got in, and Gretel said: ‘I, too, will take
something home with me,’ and filled her pinafore full. ‘But now we must
be off,’ said Hansel, ‘that we may get out of the witch’s forest.’
When they had walked for two hours, they came to a great stretch of
water. ‘We cannot cross,’ said Hansel, ‘I see no foot-plank, and no
bridge.’ ‘And there is also no ferry,’ answered Gretel, ‘but a white
duck is swimming there: if I ask her, she will help us over.’ Then she
cried:
‘Little duck, little duck, dost thou see,
Hansel and Gretel are waiting for thee?
There’s never a plank, or bridge in sight,
Take us across on thy back so white.’
The duck came to them, and Hansel seated himself on its back, and told
his sister to sit by him. ‘No,’ replied Gretel, ‘that will be too heavy
for the little duck; she shall take us across, one after the other.’ The
good little duck did so, and when they were once safely across and had
walked for a short time, the forest seemed to be more and more familiar
to them, and at length they saw from afar their father’s house. Then
they began to run, rushed into the parlour, and threw themselves round
their father’s neck. The man had not known one happy hour since he had
left the children in the forest; the woman, however, was dead. Gretel
emptied her pinafore until pearls and precious stones ran about the
room, and Hansel threw one handful after another out of his pocket to
add to them. Then all anxiety was at an end, and they lived together
in perfect happiness. My tale is done, there runs a mouse; whosoever
catches it, may make himself a big fur cap out of it.
THE MOUSE, THE BIRD, AND THE SAUSAGE
Once upon a time, a mouse, a bird, and a sausage, entered into
partnership and set up house together. For a long time all went well;
they lived in great comfort, and prospered so far as to be able to add
considerably to their stores. The bird’s duty was to fly daily into the
wood and bring in fuel; the mouse fetched the water, and the sausage saw
to the cooking.
When people are too well off they always begin to long for something
new. And so it came to pass, that the bird, while out one day, met a
fellow bird, to whom he boastfully expatiated on the excellence of his
household arrangements. But the other bird sneered at him for being a
poor simpleton, who did all the hard work, while the other two stayed
at home and had a good time of it. For, when the mouse had made the fire
and fetched in the water, she could retire into her little room and rest
until it was time to set the table. The sausage had only to watch the
pot to see that the food was properly cooked, and when it was near
dinner-time, he just threw himself into the broth, or rolled in and out
among the vegetables three or four times, and there they were, buttered,
and salted, and ready to be served. Then, when the bird came home and
had laid aside his burden, they sat down to table, and when they had
finished their meal, they could sleep their fill till the following
morning: and that was really a very delightful life.
Influenced by those remarks, the bird next morning refused to bring in
the wood, telling the others that he had been their servant long enough,
and had been a fool into the bargain, and that it was now time to make a
change, and to try some other way of arranging the work. Beg and pray
as the mouse and the sausage might, it was of no use; the bird remained
master of the situation, and the venture had to be made. They therefore
drew lots, and it fell to the sausage to bring in the wood, to the mouse
to cook, and to the bird to fetch the water.
And now what happened? The sausage started in search of wood, the bird
made the fire, and the mouse put on the pot, and then these two waited
till the sausage returned with the fuel for the following day. But the
sausage remained so long away, that they became uneasy, and the bird
flew out to meet him. He had not flown far, however, when he came across
a dog who, having met the sausage, had regarded him as his legitimate
booty, and so seized and swallowed him. The bird complained to the dog
of this bare-faced robbery, but nothing he said was of any avail, for
the dog answered that he found false credentials on the sausage, and
that was the reason his life had been forfeited.
He picked up the wood, and flew sadly home, and told the mouse all he
had seen and heard. They were both very unhappy, but agreed to make the
best of things and to remain with one another.
So now the bird set the table, and the mouse looked after the food and,
wishing to prepare it in the same way as the sausage, by rolling in and
out among the vegetables to salt and butter them, she jumped into the
pot; but she stopped short long before she reached the bottom, having
already parted not only with her skin and hair, but also with life.
Presently the bird came in and wanted to serve up the dinner, but he
could nowhere see the cook. In his alarm and flurry, he threw the wood
here and there about the floor, called and searched, but no cook was to
be found. Then some of the wood that had been carelessly thrown down,
caught fire and began to blaze. The bird hastened to fetch some water,
but his pail fell into the well, and he after it, and as he was unable
to recover himself, he was drowned.
MOTHER HOLLE
Once upon a time there was a widow who had two daughters; one of them
was beautiful and industrious, the other ugly and lazy. The mother,
however, loved the ugly and lazy one best, because she was her own
daughter, and so the other, who was only her stepdaughter, was made
to do all the work of the house, and was quite the Cinderella of the
family. Her stepmother sent her out every day to sit by the well in
the high road, there to spin until she made her fingers bleed. Now it
chanced one day that some blood fell on to the spindle, and as the girl
stopped over the well to wash it off, the spindle suddenly sprang out
of her hand and fell into the well. She ran home crying to tell of her
misfortune, but her stepmother spoke harshly to her, and after giving
her a violent scolding, said unkindly, ‘As you have let the spindle fall
into the well you may go yourself and fetch it out.’
The girl went back to the well not knowing what to do, and at last in
her distress she jumped into the water after the spindle.
She remembered nothing more until she awoke and found herself in a
beautiful meadow, full of sunshine, and with countless flowers blooming
in every direction.
She walked over the meadow, and presently she came upon a baker’s oven
full of bread, and the loaves cried out to her, ‘Take us out, take us
out, or alas! we shall be burnt to a cinder; we were baked through long
ago.’ So she took the bread-shovel and drew them all out.
She went on a little farther, till she came to a tree full of apples.
‘Shake me, shake me, I pray,’ cried the tree; ‘my apples, one and all,
are ripe.’ So she shook the tree, and the apples came falling down upon
her like rain; but she continued shaking until there was not a single
apple left upon it. Then she carefully gathered the apples together in a
heap and walked on again.
The next thing she came to was a little house, and there she saw an old
woman looking out, with such large teeth, that she was terrified, and
turned to run away. But the old woman called after her, ‘What are you
afraid of, dear child? Stay with me; if you will do the work of my house
properly for me, I will make you very happy. You must be very careful,
however, to make my bed in the right way, for I wish you always to shake
it thoroughly, so that the feathers fly about; then they say, down there
in the world, that it is snowing; for I am Mother Holle.’ The old woman
spoke so kindly, that the girl summoned up courage and agreed to enter
into her service.
She took care to do everything according to the old woman’s bidding and
every time she made the bed she shook it with all her might, so that the
feathers flew about like so many snowflakes. The old woman was as good
as her word: she never spoke angrily to her, and gave her roast and
boiled meats every day.
So she stayed on with Mother Holle for some time, and then she began
to grow unhappy. She could not at first tell why she felt sad, but she
became conscious at last of great longing to go home; then she knew she
was homesick, although she was a thousand times better off with Mother
Holle than with her mother and sister. After waiting awhile, she went
to Mother Holle and said, ‘I am so homesick, that I cannot stay with
you any longer, for although I am so happy here, I must return to my own
people.’
Then Mother Holle said, ‘I am pleased that you should want to go back
to your own people, and as you have served me so well and faithfully, I
will take you home myself.’
Thereupon she led the girl by the hand up to a broad gateway. The gate
was opened, and as the girl passed through, a shower of gold fell upon
her, and the gold clung to her, so that she was covered with it from
head to foot.
‘That is a reward for your industry,’ said Mother Holle, and as she
spoke she handed her the spindle which she had dropped into the well.
The gate was then closed, and the girl found herself back in the old
world close to her mother’s house. As she entered the courtyard, the
cock who was perched on the well, called out:
‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Your golden daughter’s come back to you.’
Then she went in to her mother and sister, and as she was so richly
covered with gold, they gave her a warm welcome. She related to them
all that had happened, and when the mother heard how she had come by her
great riches, she thought she should like her ugly, lazy daughter to go
and try her fortune. So she made the sister go and sit by the well
and spin, and the girl pricked her finger and thrust her hand into a
thorn-bush, so that she might drop some blood on to the spindle; then
she threw it into the well, and jumped in herself.
Like her sister she awoke in the beautiful meadow, and walked over it
till she came to the oven. ‘Take us out, take us out, or alas! we shall
be burnt to a cinder; we were baked through long ago,’ cried the loaves
as before. But the lazy girl answered, ‘Do you think I am going to dirty
my hands for you?’ and walked on.
Presently she came to the apple-tree. ‘Shake me, shake me, I pray; my
apples, one and all, are ripe,’ it cried. But she only answered, ‘A nice
thing to ask me to do, one of the apples might fall on my head,’ and
passed on.
At last she came to Mother Holle’s house, and as she had heard all about
the large teeth from her sister, she was not afraid of them, and engaged
herself without delay to the old woman.
The first day she was very obedient and industrious, and exerted herself
to please Mother Holle, for she thought of the gold she should get in
return. The next day, however, she began to dawdle over her work, and
the third day she was more idle still; then she began to lie in bed in
the mornings and refused to get up. Worse still, she neglected to
make the old woman’s bed properly, and forgot to shake it so that the
feathers might fly about. So Mother Holle very soon got tired of her,
and told her she might go. The lazy girl was delighted at this, and
thought to herself, ‘The gold will soon be mine.’ Mother Holle led her,
as she had led her sister, to the broad gateway; but as she was passing
through, instead of the shower of gold, a great bucketful of pitch came
pouring over her.
‘That is in return for your services,’ said the old woman, and she shut
the gate.
So the lazy girl had to go home covered with pitch, and the cock on the
well called out as she saw her:
‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Your dirty daughter’s come back to you.’
But, try what she would, she could not get the pitch off and it stuck to
her as long as she lived.
LITTLE RED-CAP [LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD]
Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone
who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother, and there was
nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a
little cap of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never
wear anything else; so she was always called ‘Little Red-Cap.’
One day her mother said to her: ‘Come, Little Red-Cap, here is a piece
of cake and a bottle of wine; take them to your grandmother, she is ill
and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and
when you are going, walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path,
or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will
get nothing; and when you go into her room, don’t forget to say, “Good
morning”, and don’t peep into every corner before you do it.’
‘I will take great care,’ said Little Red-Cap to her mother, and gave
her hand on it.
The grandmother lived out in the wood, half a league from the village,
and just as Little Red-Cap entered the wood, a wolf met her. Red-Cap
did not know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of
him.
‘Good day, Little Red-Cap,’ said he.
‘Thank you kindly, wolf.’
‘Whither away so early, Little Red-Cap?’
‘To my grandmother’s.’
‘What have you got in your apron?’
‘Cake and wine; yesterday was baking-day, so poor sick grandmother is to
have something good, to make her stronger.’
‘Where does your grandmother live, Little Red-Cap?’
‘A good quarter of a league farther on in the wood; her house stands
under the three large oak-trees, the nut-trees are just below; you
surely must know it,’ replied Little Red-Cap.
The wolf thought to himself: ‘What a tender young creature! what a nice
plump mouthful--she will be better to eat than the old woman. I must
act craftily, so as to catch both.’ So he walked for a short time by
the side of Little Red-Cap, and then he said: ‘See, Little Red-Cap, how
pretty the flowers are about here--why do you not look round? I believe,
too, that you do not hear how sweetly the little birds are singing; you
walk gravely along as if you were going to school, while everything else
out here in the wood is merry.’
Little Red-Cap raised her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing
here and there through the trees, and pretty flowers growing everywhere,
she thought: ‘Suppose I take grandmother a fresh nosegay; that would
please her too. It is so early in the day that I shall still get there
in good time’; and so she ran from the path into the wood to look for
flowers. And whenever she had picked one, she fancied that she saw a
still prettier one farther on, and ran after it, and so got deeper and
deeper into the wood.
Meanwhile the wolf ran straight to the grandmother’s house and knocked
at the door.
‘Who is there?’
‘Little Red-Cap,’ replied the wolf. ‘She is bringing cake and wine; open
the door.’
‘Lift the latch,’ called out the grandmother, ‘I am too weak, and cannot
get up.’
The wolf lifted the latch, the door sprang open, and without saying a
word he went straight to the grandmother’s bed, and devoured her. Then
he put on her clothes, dressed himself in her cap laid himself in bed
and drew the curtains.
Little Red-Cap, however, had been running about picking flowers,
and when she had gathered so many that she could carry no more, she
remembered her grandmother, and set out on the way to her.
She was surprised to find the cottage-door standing open, and when she
went into the room, she had such a strange feeling that she said to
herself: ‘Oh dear! how uneasy I feel today, and at other times I like
being with grandmother so much.’ She called out: ‘Good morning,’ but
received no answer; so she went to the bed and drew back the curtains.
There lay her grandmother with her cap pulled far over her face, and
looking very strange.
‘Oh! grandmother,’ she said, ‘what big ears you have!’
‘The better to hear you with, my child,’ was the reply.
‘But, grandmother, what big eyes you have!’ she said.
‘The better to see you with, my dear.’
‘But, grandmother, what large hands you have!’
‘The better to hug you with.’
‘Oh! but, grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have!’
‘The better to eat you with!’
And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with one bound he was out of
bed and swallowed up Red-Cap.
When the wolf had appeased his appetite, he lay down again in the bed,
fell asleep and began to snore very loud. The huntsman was just passing
the house, and thought to himself: ‘How the old woman is snoring! I must
just see if she wants anything.’ So he went into the room, and when he
came to the bed, he saw that the wolf was lying in it. ‘Do I find you
here, you old sinner!’ said he. ‘I have long sought you!’ Then just as
he was going to fire at him, it occurred to him that the wolf might have
devoured the grandmother, and that she might still be saved, so he did
not fire, but took a pair of scissors, and began to cut open the stomach
of the sleeping wolf. When he had made two snips, he saw the little
Red-Cap shining, and then he made two snips more, and the little girl
sprang out, crying: ‘Ah, how frightened I have been! How dark it was
inside the wolf’; and after that the aged grandmother came out alive
also, but scarcely able to breathe. Red-Cap, however, quickly fetched
great stones with which they filled the wolf’s belly, and when he awoke,
he wanted to run away, but the stones were so heavy that he collapsed at
once, and fell dead.
Then all three were delighted. The huntsman drew off the wolf’s skin and
went home with it; the grandmother ate the cake and drank the wine which
Red-Cap had brought, and revived, but Red-Cap thought to herself: ‘As
long as I live, I will never by myself leave the path, to run into the
wood, when my mother has forbidden me to do so.’
It also related that once when Red-Cap was again taking cakes to the old
grandmother, another wolf spoke to her, and tried to entice her from the
path. Red-Cap, however, was on her guard, and went straight forward on
her way, and told her grandmother that she had met the wolf, and that he
had said ‘good morning’ to her, but with such a wicked look in his eyes,
that if they had not been on the public road she was certain he would
have eaten her up. ‘Well,’ said the grandmother, ‘we will shut the door,
that he may not come in.’ Soon afterwards the wolf knocked, and cried:
‘Open the door, grandmother, I am Little Red-Cap, and am bringing you
some cakes.’ But they did not speak, or open the door, so the grey-beard
stole twice or thrice round the house, and at last jumped on the roof,
intending to wait until Red-Cap went home in the evening, and then to
steal after her and devour her in the darkness. But the grandmother
saw what was in his thoughts. In front of the house was a great stone
trough, so she said to the child: ‘Take the pail, Red-Cap; I made some
sausages yesterday, so carry the water in which I boiled them to the
trough.’ Red-Cap carried until the great trough was quite full. Then the
smell of the sausages reached the wolf, and he sniffed and peeped down,
and at last stretched out his neck so far that he could no longer keep
his footing and began to slip, and slipped down from the roof straight
into the great trough, and was drowned. But Red-Cap went joyously home,
and no one ever did anything to harm her again.
THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM
There was once a miller who had one beautiful daughter, and as she was
grown up, he was anxious that she should be well married and provided
for. He said to himself, ‘I will give her to the first suitable man who
comes and asks for her hand.’ Not long after a suitor appeared, and as
he appeared to be very rich and the miller could see nothing in him with
which to find fault, he betrothed his daughter to him. But the girl did
not care for the man as a girl ought to care for her betrothed husband.
She did not feel that she could trust him, and she could not look at him
nor think of him without an inward shudder. One day he said to her, ‘You
have not yet paid me a visit, although we have been betrothed for some
time.’ ‘I do not know where your house is,’ she answered. ‘My house is
out there in the dark forest,’ he said. She tried to excuse herself by
saying that she would not be able to find the way thither. Her betrothed
only replied, ‘You must come and see me next Sunday; I have already
invited guests for that day, and that you may not mistake the way, I
will strew ashes along the path.’
When Sunday came, and it was time for the girl to start, a feeling of
dread came over her which she could not explain, and that she might
be able to find her path again, she filled her pockets with peas and
lentils to sprinkle on the ground as she went along. On reaching the
entrance to the forest she found the path strewed with ashes, and these
she followed, throwing down some peas on either side of her at every
step she took. She walked the whole day until she came to the deepest,
darkest part of the forest. There she saw a lonely house, looking so
grim and mysterious, that it did not please her at all. She stepped
inside, but not a soul was to be seen, and a great silence reigned
throughout. Suddenly a voice cried:
‘Turn back, turn back, young maiden fair,
Linger not in this murderers’ lair.’
The girl looked up and saw that the voice came from a bird hanging in a
cage on the wall. Again it cried:
‘Turn back, turn back, young maiden fair,
Linger not in this murderers’ lair.’
The girl passed on, going from room to room of the house, but they were
all empty, and still she saw no one. At last she came to the cellar,
and there sat a very, very old woman, who could not keep her head from
shaking. ‘Can you tell me,’ asked the girl, ‘if my betrothed husband
lives here?’
‘Ah, you poor child,’ answered the old woman, ‘what a place for you to
come to! This is a murderers’ den. You think yourself a promised bride,
and that your marriage will soon take place, but it is with death that
you will keep your marriage feast. Look, do you see that large cauldron
of water which I am obliged to keep on the fire! As soon as they have
you in their power they will kill you without mercy, and cook and eat
you, for they are eaters of men. If I did not take pity on you and save
you, you would be lost.’
Thereupon the old woman led her behind a large cask, which quite hid her
from view. ‘Keep as still as a mouse,’ she said; ‘do not move or speak,
or it will be all over with you. Tonight, when the robbers are
all asleep, we will flee together. I have long been waiting for an
opportunity to escape.’
The words were hardly out of her mouth when the godless crew returned,
dragging another young girl along with them. They were all drunk, and
paid no heed to her cries and lamentations. They gave her wine to drink,
three glasses full, one of white wine, one of red, and one of yellow,
and with that her heart gave way and she died. Then they tore off her
dainty clothing, laid her on a table, and cut her beautiful body into
pieces, and sprinkled salt upon it.
The poor betrothed girl crouched trembling and shuddering behind the
cask, for she saw what a terrible fate had been intended for her by
the robbers. One of them now noticed a gold ring still remaining on
the little finger of the murdered girl, and as he could not draw it off
easily, he took a hatchet and cut off the finger; but the finger sprang
into the air, and fell behind the cask into the lap of the girl who was
hiding there. The robber took a light and began looking for it, but he
could not find it. ‘Have you looked behind the large cask?’ said one of
the others. But the old woman called out, ‘Come and eat your suppers,
and let the thing be till tomorrow; the finger won’t run away.’
‘The old woman is right,’ said the robbers, and they ceased looking for
the finger and sat down.
The old woman then mixed a sleeping draught with their wine, and before
long they were all lying on the floor of the cellar, fast asleep and
snoring. As soon as the girl was assured of this, she came from behind
the cask. She was obliged to step over the bodies of the sleepers, who
were lying close together, and every moment she was filled with renewed
dread lest she should awaken them. But God helped her, so that she
passed safely over them, and then she and the old woman went upstairs,
opened the door, and hastened as fast as they could from the murderers’
den. They found the ashes scattered by the wind, but the peas and
lentils had sprouted, and grown sufficiently above the ground, to guide
them in the moonlight along the path. All night long they walked, and it
was morning before they reached the mill. Then the girl told her father
all that had happened.
The day came that had been fixed for the marriage. The bridegroom
arrived and also a large company of guests, for the miller had taken
care to invite all his friends and relations. As they sat at the feast,
each guest in turn was asked to tell a tale; the bride sat still and did
not say a word.
‘And you, my love,’ said the bridegroom, turning to her, ‘is there no
tale you know? Tell us something.’
‘I will tell you a dream, then,’ said the bride. ‘I went alone through a
forest and came at last to a house; not a soul could I find within, but
a bird that was hanging in a cage on the wall cried:
‘Turn back, turn back, young maiden fair,
Linger not in this murderers’ lair.’
and again a second time it said these words.’
‘My darling, this is only a dream.’
‘I went on through the house from room to room, but they were all empty,
and everything was so grim and mysterious. At last I went down to the
cellar, and there sat a very, very old woman, who could not keep her
head still. I asked her if my betrothed lived here, and she answered,
“Ah, you poor child, you are come to a murderers’ den; your betrothed
does indeed live here, but he will kill you without mercy and afterwards
cook and eat you.”’
‘My darling, this is only a dream.’
‘The old woman hid me behind a large cask, and scarcely had she done
this when the robbers returned home, dragging a young girl along with
them. They gave her three kinds of wine to drink, white, red, and
yellow, and with that she died.’
‘My darling, this is only a dream.’
‘Then they tore off her dainty clothing, and cut her beautiful body into
pieces and sprinkled salt upon it.’
‘My darling, this is only a dream.’
‘And one of the robbers saw that there was a gold ring still left on her
finger, and as it was difficult to draw off, he took a hatchet and cut
off her finger; but the finger sprang into the air and fell behind the
great cask into my lap. And here is the finger with the ring.’ And
with these words the bride drew forth the finger and shewed it to the
assembled guests.
The bridegroom, who during this recital had grown deadly pale, up and
tried to escape, but the guests seized him and held him fast. They
delivered him up to justice, and he and all his murderous band were
condemned to death for their wicked deeds.
TOM THUMB
A poor woodman sat in his cottage one night, smoking his pipe by the
fireside, while his wife sat by his side spinning. ‘How lonely it is,
wife,’ said he, as he puffed out a long curl of smoke, ‘for you and me
to sit here by ourselves, without any children to play about and amuse
us while other people seem so happy and merry with their children!’
‘What you say is very true,’ said the wife, sighing, and turning round
her wheel; ‘how happy should I be if I had but one child! If it were
ever so small--nay, if it were no bigger than my thumb--I should be very
happy, and love it dearly.’ Now--odd as you may think it--it came to
pass that this good woman’s wish was fulfilled, just in the very way she
had wished it; for, not long afterwards, she had a little boy, who was
quite healthy and strong, but was not much bigger than my thumb. So
they said, ‘Well, we cannot say we have not got what we wished for, and,
little as he is, we will love him dearly.’ And they called him Thomas
Thumb.
They gave him plenty of food, yet for all they could do he never grew
bigger, but kept just the same size as he had been when he was born.
Still, his eyes were sharp and sparkling, and he soon showed himself to
be a clever little fellow, who always knew well what he was about.
One day, as the woodman was getting ready to go into the wood to cut
fuel, he said, ‘I wish I had someone to bring the cart after me, for I
want to make haste.’ ‘Oh, father,’ cried Tom, ‘I will take care of that;
the cart shall be in the wood by the time you want it.’ Then the woodman
laughed, and said, ‘How can that be? you cannot reach up to the horse’s
bridle.’ ‘Never mind that, father,’ said Tom; ‘if my mother will only
harness the horse, I will get into his ear and tell him which way to
go.’ ‘Well,’ said the father, ‘we will try for once.’
When the time came the mother harnessed the horse to the cart, and put
Tom into his ear; and as he sat there the little man told the beast how
to go, crying out, ‘Go on!’ and ‘Stop!’ as he wanted: and thus the horse
went on just as well as if the woodman had driven it himself into the
wood. It happened that as the horse was going a little too fast, and Tom
was calling out, ‘Gently! gently!’ two strangers came up. ‘What an odd
thing that is!’ said one: ‘there is a cart going along, and I hear a
carter talking to the horse, but yet I can see no one.’ ‘That is queer,
indeed,’ said the other; ‘let us follow the cart, and see where it
goes.’ So they went on into the wood, till at last they came to the
place where the woodman was. Then Tom Thumb, seeing his father, cried
out, ‘See, father, here I am with the cart, all right and safe! now take
me down!’ So his father took hold of the horse with one hand, and with
the other took his son out of the horse’s ear, and put him down upon a
straw, where he sat as merry as you please.
The two strangers were all this time looking on, and did not know what
to say for wonder. At last one took the other aside, and said, ‘That
little urchin will make our fortune, if we can get him, and carry him
about from town to town as a show; we must buy him.’ So they went up to
the woodman, and asked him what he would take for the little man. ‘He
will be better off,’ said they, ‘with us than with you.’ ‘I won’t sell
him at all,’ said the father; ‘my own flesh and blood is dearer to me
than all the silver and gold in the world.’ But Tom, hearing of the
bargain they wanted to make, crept up his father’s coat to his shoulder
and whispered in his ear, ‘Take the money, father, and let them have me;
I’ll soon come back to you.’
So the woodman at last said he would sell Tom to the strangers for a
large piece of gold, and they paid the price. ‘Where would you like to
sit?’ said one of them. ‘Oh, put me on the rim of your hat; that will be
a nice gallery for me; I can walk about there and see the country as we
go along.’ So they did as he wished; and when Tom had taken leave of his
father they took him away with them.
They journeyed on till it began to be dusky, and then the little man
said, ‘Let me get down, I’m tired.’ So the man took off his hat, and
put him down on a clod of earth, in a ploughed field by the side of the
road. But Tom ran about amongst the furrows, and at last slipped into
an old mouse-hole. ‘Good night, my masters!’ said he, ‘I’m off! mind and
look sharp after me the next time.’ Then they ran at once to the place,
and poked the ends of their sticks into the mouse-hole, but all in vain;
Tom only crawled farther and farther in; and at last it became quite
dark, so that they were forced to go their way without their prize, as
sulky as could be.
When Tom found they were gone, he came out of his hiding-place. ‘What
dangerous walking it is,’ said he, ‘in this ploughed field! If I were to
fall from one of these great clods, I should undoubtedly break my neck.’
At last, by good luck, he found a large empty snail-shell. ‘This is
lucky,’ said he, ‘I can sleep here very well’; and in he crept.
Just as he was falling asleep, he heard two men passing by, chatting
together; and one said to the other, ‘How can we rob that rich parson’s
house of his silver and gold?’ ‘I’ll tell you!’ cried Tom. ‘What noise
was that?’ said the thief, frightened; ‘I’m sure I heard someone speak.’
They stood still listening, and Tom said, ‘Take me with you, and I’ll
soon show you how to get the parson’s money.’ ‘But where are you?’ said
they. ‘Look about on the ground,’ answered he, ‘and listen where the
sound comes from.’ At last the thieves found him out, and lifted him
up in their hands. ‘You little urchin!’ they said, ‘what can you do for
us?’ ‘Why, I can get between the iron window-bars of the parson’s house,
and throw you out whatever you want.’ ‘That’s a good thought,’ said the
thieves; ‘come along, we shall see what you can do.’
When they came to the parson’s house, Tom slipped through the
window-bars into the room, and then called out as loud as he could bawl,
‘Will you have all that is here?’ At this the thieves were frightened,
and said, ‘Softly, softly! Speak low, that you may not awaken anybody.’
But Tom seemed as if he did not understand them, and bawled out again,
‘How much will you have? Shall I throw it all out?’ Now the cook lay in
the next room; and hearing a noise she raised herself up in her bed and
listened. Meantime the thieves were frightened, and ran off a little
way; but at last they plucked up their hearts, and said, ‘The little
urchin is only trying to make fools of us.’ So they came back and
whispered softly to him, saying, ‘Now let us have no more of your
roguish jokes; but throw us out some of the money.’ Then Tom called out
as loud as he could, ‘Very well! hold your hands! here it comes.’
The cook heard this quite plain, so she sprang out of bed, and ran to
open the door. The thieves ran off as if a wolf was at their tails: and
the maid, having groped about and found nothing, went away for a light.
By the time she came back, Tom had slipped off into the barn; and when
she had looked about and searched every hole and corner, and found
nobody, she went to bed, thinking she must have been dreaming with her
eyes open.
The little man crawled about in the hay-loft, and at last found a snug
place to finish his night’s rest in; so he laid himself down, meaning
to sleep till daylight, and then find his way home to his father and
mother. But alas! how woefully he was undone! what crosses and sorrows
happen to us all in this world! The cook got up early, before daybreak,
to feed the cows; and going straight to the hay-loft, carried away
a large bundle of hay, with the little man in the middle of it, fast
asleep. He still, however, slept on, and did not awake till he found
himself in the mouth of the cow; for the cook had put the hay into the
cow’s rick, and the cow had taken Tom up in a mouthful of it. ‘Good
lack-a-day!’ said he, ‘how came I to tumble into the mill?’ But he soon
found out where he really was; and was forced to have all his wits about
him, that he might not get between the cow’s teeth, and so be crushed to
death. At last down he went into her stomach. ‘It is rather dark,’ said
he; ‘they forgot to build windows in this room to let the sun in; a
candle would be no bad thing.’
Though he made the best of his bad luck, he did not like his quarters at
all; and the worst of it was, that more and more hay was always coming
down, and the space left for him became smaller and smaller. At last he
cried out as loud as he could, ‘Don’t bring me any more hay! Don’t bring
me any more hay!’
The maid happened to be just then milking the cow; and hearing someone
speak, but seeing nobody, and yet being quite sure it was the same voice
that she had heard in the night, she was so frightened that she fell off
her stool, and overset the milk-pail. As soon as she could pick herself
up out of the dirt, she ran off as fast as she could to her master the
parson, and said, ‘Sir, sir, the cow is talking!’ But the parson
said, ‘Woman, thou art surely mad!’ However, he went with her into the
cow-house, to try and see what was the matter.
Scarcely had they set foot on the threshold, when Tom called out, ‘Don’t
bring me any more hay!’ Then the parson himself was frightened; and
thinking the cow was surely bewitched, told his man to kill her on the
spot. So the cow was killed, and cut up; and the stomach, in which Tom
lay, was thrown out upon a dunghill.
Tom soon set himself to work to get out, which was not a very easy
task; but at last, just as he had made room to get his head out, fresh
ill-luck befell him. A hungry wolf sprang out, and swallowed up the
whole stomach, with Tom in it, at one gulp, and ran away.
Tom, however, was still not disheartened; and thinking the wolf would
not dislike having some chat with him as he was going along, he called
out, ‘My good friend, I can show you a famous treat.’ ‘Where’s that?’
said the wolf. ‘In such and such a house,’ said Tom, describing his own
father’s house. ‘You can crawl through the drain into the kitchen and
then into the pantry, and there you will find cakes, ham, beef, cold
chicken, roast pig, apple-dumplings, and everything that your heart can
wish.’
The wolf did not want to be asked twice; so that very night he went to
the house and crawled through the drain into the kitchen, and then into
the pantry, and ate and drank there to his heart’s content. As soon as
he had had enough he wanted to get away; but he had eaten so much that
he could not go out by the same way he came in.
This was just what Tom had reckoned upon; and now he began to set up a
great shout, making all the noise he could. ‘Will you be easy?’ said the
wolf; ‘you’ll awaken everybody in the house if you make such a clatter.’
‘What’s that to me?’ said the little man; ‘you have had your frolic, now
I’ve a mind to be merry myself’; and he began, singing and shouting as
loud as he could.
The woodman and his wife, being awakened by the noise, peeped through
a crack in the door; but when they saw a wolf was there, you may well
suppose that they were sadly frightened; and the woodman ran for his
axe, and gave his wife a scythe. ‘Do you stay behind,’ said the woodman,
‘and when I have knocked him on the head you must rip him up with the
scythe.’ Tom heard all this, and cried out, ‘Father, father! I am here,
the wolf has swallowed me.’ And his father said, ‘Heaven be praised! we
have found our dear child again’; and he told his wife not to use the
scythe for fear she should hurt him. Then he aimed a great blow, and
struck the wolf on the head, and killed him on the spot! and when he was
dead they cut open his body, and set Tommy free. ‘Ah!’ said the father,
‘what fears we have had for you!’ ‘Yes, father,’ answered he; ‘I have
travelled all over the world, I think, in one way or other, since we
parted; and now I am very glad to come home and get fresh air again.’
‘Why, where have you been?’ said his father. ‘I have been in a
mouse-hole--and in a snail-shell--and down a cow’s throat--and in the
wolf’s belly; and yet here I am again, safe and sound.’
‘Well,’ said they, ‘you are come back, and we will not sell you again
for all the riches in the world.’
Then they hugged and kissed their dear little son, and gave him plenty
to eat and drink, for he was very hungry; and then they fetched new
clothes for him, for his old ones had been quite spoiled on his journey.
So Master Thumb stayed at home with his father and mother, in peace; for
though he had been so great a traveller, and had done and seen so many
fine things, and was fond enough of telling the whole story, he always
agreed that, after all, there’s no place like HOME!
RUMPELSTILTSKIN
By the side of a wood, in a country a long way off, ran a fine stream
of water; and upon the stream there stood a mill. The miller’s house was
close by, and the miller, you must know, had a very beautiful daughter.
She was, moreover, very shrewd and clever; and the miller was so proud
of her, that he one day told the king of the land, who used to come and
hunt in the wood, that his daughter could spin gold out of straw. Now
this king was very fond of money; and when he heard the miller’s boast
his greediness was raised, and he sent for the girl to be brought before
him. Then he led her to a chamber in his palace where there was a great
heap of straw, and gave her a spinning-wheel, and said, ‘All this must
be spun into gold before morning, as you love your life.’ It was in vain
that the poor maiden said that it was only a silly boast of her father,
for that she could do no such thing as spin straw into gold: the chamber
door was locked, and she was left alone.
She sat down in one corner of the room, and began to bewail her hard
fate; when on a sudden the door opened, and a droll-looking little man
hobbled in, and said, ‘Good morrow to you, my good lass; what are you
weeping for?’ ‘Alas!’ said she, ‘I must spin this straw into gold, and
I know not how.’ ‘What will you give me,’ said the hobgoblin, ‘to do it
for you?’ ‘My necklace,’ replied the maiden. He took her at her word,
and sat himself down to the wheel, and whistled and sang:
‘Round about, round about,
Lo and behold!
Reel away, reel away,
Straw into gold!’
And round about the wheel went merrily; the work was quickly done, and
the straw was all spun into gold.
When the king came and saw this, he was greatly astonished and pleased;
but his heart grew still more greedy of gain, and he shut up the poor
miller’s daughter again with a fresh task. Then she knew not what to do,
and sat down once more to weep; but the dwarf soon opened the door, and
said, ‘What will you give me to do your task?’ ‘The ring on my finger,’
said she. So her little friend took the ring, and began to work at the
wheel again, and whistled and sang:
‘Round about, round about,
Lo and behold!
Reel away, reel away,
Straw into gold!’
till, long before morning, all was done again.
The king was greatly delighted to see all this glittering treasure;
but still he had not enough: so he took the miller’s daughter to a yet
larger heap, and said, ‘All this must be spun tonight; and if it is,
you shall be my queen.’ As soon as she was alone that dwarf came in, and
said, ‘What will you give me to spin gold for you this third time?’
‘I have nothing left,’ said she. ‘Then say you will give me,’ said
the little man, ‘the first little child that you may have when you are
queen.’ ‘That may never be,’ thought the miller’s daughter: and as she
knew no other way to get her task done, she said she would do what he
asked. Round went the wheel again to the old song, and the manikin once
more spun the heap into gold. The king came in the morning, and, finding
all he wanted, was forced to keep his word; so he married the miller’s
daughter, and she really became queen.
At the birth of her first little child she was very glad, and forgot the
dwarf, and what she had said. But one day he came into her room, where
she was sitting playing with her baby, and put her in mind of it. Then
she grieved sorely at her misfortune, and said she would give him all
the wealth of the kingdom if he would let her off, but in vain; till at
last her tears softened him, and he said, ‘I will give you three days’
grace, and if during that time you tell me my name, you shall keep your
child.’
Now the queen lay awake all night, thinking of all the odd names that
she had ever heard; and she sent messengers all over the land to find
out new ones. The next day the little man came, and she began with
TIMOTHY, ICHABOD, BENJAMIN, JEREMIAH, and all the names she could
remember; but to all and each of them he said, ‘Madam, that is not my
name.’
The second day she began with all the comical names she could hear of,
BANDY-LEGS, HUNCHBACK, CROOK-SHANKS, and so on; but the little gentleman
still said to every one of them, ‘Madam, that is not my name.’
The third day one of the messengers came back, and said, ‘I have
travelled two days without hearing of any other names; but yesterday, as
I was climbing a high hill, among the trees of the forest where the fox
and the hare bid each other good night, I saw a little hut; and before
the hut burnt a fire; and round about the fire a funny little dwarf was
dancing upon one leg, and singing:
“Merrily the feast I’ll make.
Today I’ll brew, tomorrow bake;
Merrily I’ll dance and sing,
For next day will a stranger bring.
Little does my lady dream
Rumpelstiltskin is my name!”
When the queen heard this she jumped for joy, and as soon as her little
friend came she sat down upon her throne, and called all her court round
to enjoy the fun; and the nurse stood by her side with the baby in her
arms, as if it was quite ready to be given up. Then the little man began
to chuckle at the thought of having the poor child, to take home with
him to his hut in the woods; and he cried out, ‘Now, lady, what is my
name?’ ‘Is it JOHN?’ asked she. ‘No, madam!’ ‘Is it TOM?’ ‘No, madam!’
‘Is it JEMMY?’ ‘It is not.’ ‘Can your name be RUMPELSTILTSKIN?’ said the
lady slyly. ‘Some witch told you that!--some witch told you that!’ cried
the little man, and dashed his right foot in a rage so deep into the
floor, that he was forced to lay hold of it with both hands to pull it
out.
Then he made the best of his way off, while the nurse laughed and the
baby crowed; and all the court jeered at him for having had so much
trouble for nothing, and said, ‘We wish you a very good morning, and a
merry feast, Mr RUMPLESTILTSKIN!’
CLEVER GRETEL
There was once a cook named Gretel, who wore shoes with red heels, and
when she walked out with them on, she turned herself this way and that,
was quite happy and thought: ‘You certainly are a pretty girl!’ And when
she came home she drank, in her gladness of heart, a draught of wine,
and as wine excites a desire to eat, she tasted the best of whatever she
was cooking until she was satisfied, and said: ‘The cook must know what
the food is like.’
It came to pass that the master one day said to her: ‘Gretel, there is a
guest coming this evening; prepare me two fowls very daintily.’ ‘I will
see to it, master,’ answered Gretel. She killed two fowls, scalded them,
plucked them, put them on the spit, and towards evening set them before
the fire, that they might roast. The fowls began to turn brown, and were
nearly ready, but the guest had not yet arrived. Then Gretel called out
to her master: ‘If the guest does not come, I must take the fowls away
from the fire, but it will be a sin and a shame if they are not eaten
the moment they are at their juiciest.’ The master said: ‘I will run
myself, and fetch the guest.’ When the master had turned his back,
Gretel laid the spit with the fowls on one side, and thought: ‘Standing
so long by the fire there, makes one sweat and thirsty; who knows
when they will come? Meanwhile, I will run into the cellar, and take a
drink.’ She ran down, set a jug, said: ‘God bless it for you, Gretel,’
and took a good drink, and thought that wine should flow on, and should
not be interrupted, and took yet another hearty draught.
Then she went and put the fowls down again to the fire, basted them,
and drove the spit merrily round. But as the roast meat smelt so good,
Gretel thought: ‘Something might be wrong, it ought to be tasted!’
She touched it with her finger, and said: ‘Ah! how good fowls are! It
certainly is a sin and a shame that they are not eaten at the right
time!’ She ran to the window, to see if the master was not coming with
his guest, but she saw no one, and went back to the fowls and thought:
‘One of the wings is burning! I had better take it off and eat it.’
So she cut it off, ate it, and enjoyed it, and when she had done, she
thought: ‘The other must go down too, or else master will observe that
something is missing.’ When the two wings were eaten, she went and
looked for her master, and did not see him. It suddenly occurred to
her: ‘Who knows? They are perhaps not coming at all, and have turned in
somewhere.’ Then she said: ‘Well, Gretel, enjoy yourself, one fowl has
been cut into, take another drink, and eat it up entirely; when it is
eaten you will have some peace, why should God’s good gifts be spoilt?’
So she ran into the cellar again, took an enormous drink and ate up the
one chicken in great glee. When one of the chickens was swallowed down,
and still her master did not come, Gretel looked at the other and said:
‘What one is, the other should be likewise, the two go together; what’s
right for the one is right for the other; I think if I were to take
another draught it would do me no harm.’ So she took another hearty
drink, and let the second chicken follow the first.
While she was making the most of it, her master came and cried: ‘Hurry
up, Gretel, the guest is coming directly after me!’ ‘Yes, sir, I will
soon serve up,’ answered Gretel. Meantime the master looked to see that
the table was properly laid, and took the great knife, wherewith he was
going to carve the chickens, and sharpened it on the steps. Presently
the guest came, and knocked politely and courteously at the house-door.
Gretel ran, and looked to see who was there, and when she saw the guest,
she put her finger to her lips and said: ‘Hush! hush! go away as quickly
as you can, if my master catches you it will be the worse for you; he
certainly did ask you to supper, but his intention is to cut off your
two ears. Just listen how he is sharpening the knife for it!’ The guest
heard the sharpening, and hurried down the steps again as fast as he
could. Gretel was not idle; she ran screaming to her master, and cried:
‘You have invited a fine guest!’ ‘Why, Gretel? What do you mean by
that?’ ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘he has taken the chickens which I was just
going to serve up, off the dish, and has run away with them!’ ‘That’s a
nice trick!’ said her master, and lamented the fine chickens. ‘If he had
but left me one, so that something remained for me to eat.’ He called to
him to stop, but the guest pretended not to hear. Then he ran after him
with the knife still in his hand, crying: ‘Just one, just one,’ meaning
that the guest should leave him just one chicken, and not take both. The
guest, however, thought no otherwise than that he was to give up one of
his ears, and ran as if fire were burning under him, in order to take
them both with him.
THE OLD MAN AND HIS GRANDSON
There was once a very old man, whose eyes had become dim, his ears dull
of hearing, his knees trembled, and when he sat at table he could hardly
hold the spoon, and spilt the broth upon the table-cloth or let it run
out of his mouth. His son and his son’s wife were disgusted at this, so
the old grandfather at last had to sit in the corner behind the stove,
and they gave him his food in an earthenware bowl, and not even enough
of it. And he used to look towards the table with his eyes full of
tears. Once, too, his trembling hands could not hold the bowl, and it
fell to the ground and broke. The young wife scolded him, but he said
nothing and only sighed. Then they brought him a wooden bowl for a few
half-pence, out of which he had to eat.
They were once sitting thus when the little grandson of four years old
began to gather together some bits of wood upon the ground. ‘What are
you doing there?’ asked the father. ‘I am making a little trough,’
answered the child, ‘for father and mother to eat out of when I am big.’
The man and his wife looked at each other for a while, and presently
began to cry. Then they took the old grandfather to the table, and
henceforth always let him eat with them, and likewise said nothing if he
did spill a little of anything.
THE LITTLE PEASANT
There was a certain village wherein no one lived but really rich
peasants, and just one poor one, whom they called the little peasant. He
had not even so much as a cow, and still less money to buy one, and
yet he and his wife did so wish to have one. One day he said to her:
‘Listen, I have a good idea, there is our gossip the carpenter, he shall
make us a wooden calf, and paint it brown, so that it looks like any
other, and in time it will certainly get big and be a cow.’ the woman
also liked the idea, and their gossip the carpenter cut and planed
the calf, and painted it as it ought to be, and made it with its head
hanging down as if it were eating.
Next morning when the cows were being driven out, the little peasant
called the cow-herd in and said: ‘Look, I have a little calf there,
but it is still small and has to be carried.’ The cow-herd said: ‘All
right,’ and took it in his arms and carried it to the pasture, and set
it among the grass. The little calf always remained standing like one
which was eating, and the cow-herd said: ‘It will soon run by itself,
just look how it eats already!’ At night when he was going to drive the
herd home again, he said to the calf: ‘If you can stand there and eat
your fill, you can also go on your four legs; I don’t care to drag you
home again in my arms.’ But the little peasant stood at his door, and
waited for his little calf, and when the cow-herd drove the cows through
the village, and the calf was missing, he inquired where it was. The
cow-herd answered: ‘It is still standing out there eating. It would not
stop and come with us.’ But the little peasant said: ‘Oh, but I must
have my beast back again.’ Then they went back to the meadow together,
but someone had stolen the calf, and it was gone. The cow-herd said: ‘It
must have run away.’ The peasant, however, said: ‘Don’t tell me
that,’ and led the cow-herd before the mayor, who for his carelessness
condemned him to give the peasant a cow for the calf which had run away.
And now the little peasant and his wife had the cow for which they had
so long wished, and they were heartily glad, but they had no food for
it, and could give it nothing to eat, so it soon had to be killed. They
salted the flesh, and the peasant went into the town and wanted to sell
the skin there, so that he might buy a new calf with the proceeds. On
the way he passed by a mill, and there sat a raven with broken wings,
and out of pity he took him and wrapped him in the skin. But as the
weather grew so bad and there was a storm of rain and wind, he could
go no farther, and turned back to the mill and begged for shelter. The
miller’s wife was alone in the house, and said to the peasant: ‘Lay
yourself on the straw there,’ and gave him a slice of bread and cheese.
The peasant ate it, and lay down with his skin beside him, and the woman
thought: ‘He is tired and has gone to sleep.’ In the meantime came the
parson; the miller’s wife received him well, and said: ‘My husband is
out, so we will have a feast.’ The peasant listened, and when he heard
them talk about feasting he was vexed that he had been forced to make
shift with a slice of bread and cheese. Then the woman served up four
different things, roast meat, salad, cakes, and wine.
Just as they were about to sit down and eat, there was a knocking
outside. The woman said: ‘Oh, heavens! It is my husband!’ she quickly
hid the roast meat inside the tiled stove, the wine under the pillow,
the salad on the bed, the cakes under it, and the parson in the closet
on the porch. Then she opened the door for her husband, and said: ‘Thank
heaven, you are back again! There is such a storm, it looks as if the
world were coming to an end.’ The miller saw the peasant lying on the
straw, and asked, ‘What is that fellow doing there?’ ‘Ah,’ said the
wife, ‘the poor knave came in the storm and rain, and begged for
shelter, so I gave him a bit of bread and cheese, and showed him where
the straw was.’ The man said: ‘I have no objection, but be quick and get
me something to eat.’ The woman said: ‘But I have nothing but bread and
cheese.’ ‘I am contented with anything,’ replied the husband, ‘so far as
I am concerned, bread and cheese will do,’ and looked at the peasant and
said: ‘Come and eat some more with me.’ The peasant did not require to
be invited twice, but got up and ate. After this the miller saw the skin
in which the raven was, lying on the ground, and asked: ‘What have you
there?’ The peasant answered: ‘I have a soothsayer inside it.’ ‘Can
he foretell anything to me?’ said the miller. ‘Why not?’ answered
the peasant: ‘but he only says four things, and the fifth he keeps to
himself.’ The miller was curious, and said: ‘Let him foretell something
for once.’ Then the peasant pinched the raven’s head, so that he croaked
and made a noise like krr, krr. The miller said: ‘What did he say?’ The
peasant answered: ‘In the first place, he says that there is some wine
hidden under the pillow.’ ‘Bless me!’ cried the miller, and went there
and found the wine. ‘Now go on,’ said he. The peasant made the raven
croak again, and said: ‘In the second place, he says that there is some
roast meat in the tiled stove.’ ‘Upon my word!’ cried the miller, and
went thither, and found the roast meat. The peasant made the raven
prophesy still more, and said: ‘Thirdly, he says that there is some
salad on the bed.’ ‘That would be a fine thing!’ cried the miller, and
went there and found the salad. At last the peasant pinched the raven
once more till he croaked, and said: ‘Fourthly, he says that there
are some cakes under the bed.’ ‘That would be a fine thing!’ cried the
miller, and looked there, and found the cakes.
And now the two sat down to the table together, but the miller’s wife
was frightened to death, and went to bed and took all the keys with
her. The miller would have liked much to know the fifth, but the little
peasant said: ‘First, we will quickly eat the four things, for the fifth
is something bad.’ So they ate, and after that they bargained how much
the miller was to give for the fifth prophecy, until they agreed on
three hundred talers. Then the peasant once more pinched the raven’s
head till he croaked loudly. The miller asked: ‘What did he say?’ The
peasant replied: ‘He says that the Devil is hiding outside there in
the closet on the porch.’ The miller said: ‘The Devil must go out,’ and
opened the house-door; then the woman was forced to give up the keys,
and the peasant unlocked the closet. The parson ran out as fast as he
could, and the miller said: ‘It was true; I saw the black rascal with my
own eyes.’ The peasant, however, made off next morning by daybreak with
the three hundred talers.
At home the small peasant gradually launched out; he built a beautiful
house, and the peasants said: ‘The small peasant has certainly been to
the place where golden snow falls, and people carry the gold home in
shovels.’ Then the small peasant was brought before the mayor, and
bidden to say from whence his wealth came. He answered: ‘I sold my cow’s
skin in the town, for three hundred talers.’ When the peasants heard
that, they too wished to enjoy this great profit, and ran home, killed
all their cows, and stripped off their skins in order to sell them in
the town to the greatest advantage. The mayor, however, said: ‘But my
servant must go first.’ When she came to the merchant in the town, he
did not give her more than two talers for a skin, and when the others
came, he did not give them so much, and said: ‘What can I do with all
these skins?’
Then the peasants were vexed that the small peasant should have thus
outwitted them, wanted to take vengeance on him, and accused him of this
treachery before the mayor. The innocent little peasant was unanimously
sentenced to death, and was to be rolled into the water, in a barrel
pierced full of holes. He was led forth, and a priest was brought who
was to say a mass for his soul. The others were all obliged to retire to
a distance, and when the peasant looked at the priest, he recognized the
man who had been with the miller’s wife. He said to him: ‘I set you free
from the closet, set me free from the barrel.’ At this same moment up
came, with a flock of sheep, the very shepherd whom the peasant knew had
long been wishing to be mayor, so he cried with all his might: ‘No, I
will not do it; if the whole world insists on it, I will not do it!’ The
shepherd hearing that, came up to him, and asked: ‘What are you about?
What is it that you will not do?’ The peasant said: ‘They want to make
me mayor, if I will but put myself in the barrel, but I will not do it.’
The shepherd said: ‘If nothing more than that is needful in order to be
mayor, I would get into the barrel at once.’ The peasant said: ‘If you
will get in, you will be mayor.’ The shepherd was willing, and got in,
and the peasant shut the top down on him; then he took the shepherd’s
flock for himself, and drove it away. The parson went to the crowd,
and declared that the mass had been said. Then they came and rolled the
barrel towards the water. When the barrel began to roll, the shepherd
cried: ‘I am quite willing to be mayor.’ They believed no otherwise than
that it was the peasant who was saying this, and answered: ‘That is
what we intend, but first you shall look about you a little down below
there,’ and they rolled the barrel down into the water.
After that the peasants went home, and as they were entering the
village, the small peasant also came quietly in, driving a flock of
sheep and looking quite contented. Then the peasants were astonished,
and said: ‘Peasant, from whence do you come? Have you come out of the
water?’ ‘Yes, truly,’ replied the peasant, ‘I sank deep, deep down,
until at last I got to the bottom; I pushed the bottom out of the
barrel, and crept out, and there were pretty meadows on which a number
of lambs were feeding, and from thence I brought this flock away with
me.’ Said the peasants: ‘Are there any more there?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said he,
‘more than I could want.’ Then the peasants made up their minds that
they too would fetch some sheep for themselves, a flock apiece, but the
mayor said: ‘I come first.’ So they went to the water together, and just
then there were some of the small fleecy clouds in the blue sky, which
are called little lambs, and they were reflected in the water, whereupon
the peasants cried: ‘We already see the sheep down below!’ The mayor
pressed forward and said: ‘I will go down first, and look about me, and
if things promise well I’ll call you.’ So he jumped in; splash! went
the water; it sounded as if he were calling them, and the whole crowd
plunged in after him as one man. Then the entire village was dead, and
the small peasant, as sole heir, became a rich man.
FREDERICK AND CATHERINE
There was once a man called Frederick: he had a wife whose name was
Catherine, and they had not long been married. One day Frederick said.
‘Kate! I am going to work in the fields; when I come back I shall be
hungry so let me have something nice cooked, and a good draught of ale.’
‘Very well,’ said she, ‘it shall all be ready.’ When dinner-time drew
nigh, Catherine took a nice steak, which was all the meat she had, and
put it on the fire to fry. The steak soon began to look brown, and to
crackle in the pan; and Catherine stood by with a fork and turned it:
then she said to herself, ‘The steak is almost ready, I may as well go
to the cellar for the ale.’ So she left the pan on the fire and took a
large jug and went into the cellar and tapped the ale cask. The beer ran
into the jug and Catherine stood looking on. At last it popped into her
head, ‘The dog is not shut up--he may be running away with the steak;
that’s well thought of.’ So up she ran from the cellar; and sure enough
the rascally cur had got the steak in his mouth, and was making off with
it.
Away ran Catherine, and away ran the dog across the field: but he ran
faster than she, and stuck close to the steak. ‘It’s all gone, and “what
can’t be cured must be endured”,’ said Catherine. So she turned round;
and as she had run a good way and was tired, she walked home leisurely
to cool herself.
Now all this time the ale was running too, for Catherine had not turned
the cock; and when the jug was full the liquor ran upon the floor till
the cask was empty. When she got to the cellar stairs she saw what had
happened. ‘My stars!’ said she, ‘what shall I do to keep Frederick from
seeing all this slopping about?’ So she thought a while; and at last
remembered that there was a sack of fine meal bought at the last fair,
and that if she sprinkled this over the floor it would suck up the ale
nicely. ‘What a lucky thing,’ said she, ‘that we kept that meal! we have
now a good use for it.’ So away she went for it: but she managed to set
it down just upon the great jug full of beer, and upset it; and thus
all the ale that had been saved was set swimming on the floor also. ‘Ah!
well,’ said she, ‘when one goes another may as well follow.’ Then she
strewed the meal all about the cellar, and was quite pleased with her
cleverness, and said, ‘How very neat and clean it looks!’
At noon Frederick came home. ‘Now, wife,’ cried he, ‘what have you for
dinner?’ ‘O Frederick!’ answered she, ‘I was cooking you a steak; but
while I went down to draw the ale, the dog ran away with it; and while
I ran after him, the ale ran out; and when I went to dry up the ale
with the sack of meal that we got at the fair, I upset the jug: but the
cellar is now quite dry, and looks so clean!’ ‘Kate, Kate,’ said he,
‘how could you do all this?’ Why did you leave the steak to fry, and the
ale to run, and then spoil all the meal?’ ‘Why, Frederick,’ said she, ‘I
did not know I was doing wrong; you should have told me before.’
The husband thought to himself, ‘If my wife manages matters thus, I must
look sharp myself.’ Now he had a good deal of gold in the house: so he
said to Catherine, ‘What pretty yellow buttons these are! I shall put
them into a box and bury them in the garden; but take care that you
never go near or meddle with them.’ ‘No, Frederick,’ said she, ‘that
I never will.’ As soon as he was gone, there came by some pedlars with
earthenware plates and dishes, and they asked her whether she would buy.
‘Oh dear me, I should like to buy very much, but I have no money: if
you had any use for yellow buttons, I might deal with you.’ ‘Yellow
buttons!’ said they: ‘let us have a look at them.’ ‘Go into the garden
and dig where I tell you, and you will find the yellow buttons: I dare
not go myself.’ So the rogues went: and when they found what these
yellow buttons were, they took them all away, and left her plenty of
plates and dishes. Then she set them all about the house for a show:
and when Frederick came back, he cried out, ‘Kate, what have you been
doing?’ ‘See,’ said she, ‘I have bought all these with your yellow
buttons: but I did not touch them myself; the pedlars went themselves
and dug them up.’ ‘Wife, wife,’ said Frederick, ‘what a pretty piece of
work you have made! those yellow buttons were all my money: how came you
to do such a thing?’ ‘Why,’ answered she, ‘I did not know there was any
harm in it; you should have told me.’
Catherine stood musing for a while, and at last said to her husband,
‘Hark ye, Frederick, we will soon get the gold back: let us run after
the thieves.’ ‘Well, we will try,’ answered he; ‘but take some butter
and cheese with you, that we may have something to eat by the way.’
‘Very well,’ said she; and they set out: and as Frederick walked the
fastest, he left his wife some way behind. ‘It does not matter,’ thought
she: ‘when we turn back, I shall be so much nearer home than he.’
Presently she came to the top of a hill, down the side of which there
was a road so narrow that the cart wheels always chafed the trees
on each side as they passed. ‘Ah, see now,’ said she, ‘how they have
bruised and wounded those poor trees; they will never get well.’ So she
took pity on them, and made use of the butter to grease them all, so
that the wheels might not hurt them so much. While she was doing this
kind office one of her cheeses fell out of the basket, and rolled down
the hill. Catherine looked, but could not see where it had gone; so she
said, ‘Well, I suppose the other will go the same way and find you; he
has younger legs than I have.’ Then she rolled the other cheese after
it; and away it went, nobody knows where, down the hill. But she said
she supposed that they knew the road, and would follow her, and she
could not stay there all day waiting for them.
At last she overtook Frederick, who desired her to give him something to
eat. Then she gave him the dry bread. ‘Where are the butter and cheese?’
said he. ‘Oh!’ answered she, ‘I used the butter to grease those poor
trees that the wheels chafed so: and one of the cheeses ran away so I
sent the other after it to find it, and I suppose they are both on
the road together somewhere.’ ‘What a goose you are to do such silly
things!’ said the husband. ‘How can you say so?’ said she; ‘I am sure
you never told me not.’
They ate the dry bread together; and Frederick said, ‘Kate, I hope you
locked the door safe when you came away.’ ‘No,’ answered she, ‘you did
not tell me.’ ‘Then go home, and do it now before we go any farther,’
said Frederick, ‘and bring with you something to eat.’
Catherine did as he told her, and thought to herself by the way,
‘Frederick wants something to eat; but I don’t think he is very fond of
butter and cheese: I’ll bring him a bag of fine nuts, and the vinegar,
for I have often seen him take some.’
When she reached home, she bolted the back door, but the front door she
took off the hinges, and said, ‘Frederick told me to lock the door, but
surely it can nowhere be so safe if I take it with me.’ So she took
her time by the way; and when she overtook her husband she cried
out, ‘There, Frederick, there is the door itself, you may watch it as
carefully as you please.’ ‘Alas! alas!’ said he, ‘what a clever wife I
have! I sent you to make the house fast, and you take the door away, so
that everybody may go in and out as they please--however, as you have
brought the door, you shall carry it about with you for your pains.’
‘Very well,’ answered she, ‘I’ll carry the door; but I’ll not carry the
nuts and vinegar bottle also--that would be too much of a load; so if
you please, I’ll fasten them to the door.’
Frederick of course made no objection to that plan, and they set off
into the wood to look for the thieves; but they could not find them: and
when it grew dark, they climbed up into a tree to spend the night there.
Scarcely were they up, than who should come by but the very rogues they
were looking for. They were in truth great rascals, and belonged to that
class of people who find things before they are lost; they were tired;
so they sat down and made a fire under the very tree where Frederick and
Catherine were. Frederick slipped down on the other side, and picked up
some stones. Then he climbed up again, and tried to hit the thieves on
the head with them: but they only said, ‘It must be near morning, for
the wind shakes the fir-apples down.’
Catherine, who had the door on her shoulder, began to be very tired;
but she thought it was the nuts upon it that were so heavy: so she said
softly, ‘Frederick, I must let the nuts go.’ ‘No,’ answered he, ‘not
now, they will discover us.’ ‘I can’t help that: they must go.’ ‘Well,
then, make haste and throw them down, if you will.’ Then away rattled
the nuts down among the boughs and one of the thieves cried, ‘Bless me,
it is hailing.’
A little while after, Catherine thought the door was still very heavy:
so she whispered to Frederick, ‘I must throw the vinegar down.’ ‘Pray
don’t,’ answered he, ‘it will discover us.’ ‘I can’t help that,’ said
she, ‘go it must.’ So she poured all the vinegar down; and the thieves
said, ‘What a heavy dew there is!’
At last it popped into Catherine’s head that it was the door itself that
was so heavy all the time: so she whispered, ‘Frederick, I must throw
the door down soon.’ But he begged and prayed her not to do so, for he
was sure it would betray them. ‘Here goes, however,’ said she: and down
went the door with such a clatter upon the thieves, that they cried
out ‘Murder!’ and not knowing what was coming, ran away as fast as they
could, and left all the gold. So when Frederick and Catherine came down,
there they found all their money safe and sound.
SWEETHEART ROLAND
There was once upon a time a woman who was a real witch and had two
daughters, one ugly and wicked, and this one she loved because she was
her own daughter, and one beautiful and good, and this one she hated,
because she was her stepdaughter. The stepdaughter once had a pretty
apron, which the other fancied so much that she became envious, and
told her mother that she must and would have that apron. ‘Be quiet, my
child,’ said the old woman, ‘and you shall have it. Your stepsister has
long deserved death; tonight when she is asleep I will come and cut her
head off. Only be careful that you are at the far side of the bed, and
push her well to the front.’ It would have been all over with the poor
girl if she had not just then been standing in a corner, and heard
everything. All day long she dared not go out of doors, and when bedtime
had come, the witch’s daughter got into bed first, so as to lie at the
far side, but when she was asleep, the other pushed her gently to the
front, and took for herself the place at the back, close by the wall. In
the night, the old woman came creeping in, she held an axe in her right
hand, and felt with her left to see if anyone were lying at the outside,
and then she grasped the axe with both hands, and cut her own child’s
head off.
When she had gone away, the girl got up and went to her sweetheart, who
was called Roland, and knocked at his door. When he came out, she said
to him: ‘Listen, dearest Roland, we must fly in all haste; my stepmother
wanted to kill me, but has struck her own child. When daylight comes,
and she sees what she has done, we shall be lost.’ ‘But,’ said Roland,
‘I counsel you first to take away her magic wand, or we cannot escape
if she pursues us.’ The maiden fetched the magic wand, and she took the
dead girl’s head and dropped three drops of blood on the ground, one in
front of the bed, one in the kitchen, and one on the stairs. Then she
hurried away with her lover.
When the old witch got up next morning, she called her daughter, and
wanted to give her the apron, but she did not come. Then the witch
cried: ‘Where are you?’ ‘Here, on the stairs, I am sweeping,’ answered
the first drop of blood. The old woman went out, but saw no one on the
stairs, and cried again: ‘Where are you?’ ‘Here in the kitchen, I am
warming myself,’ cried the second drop of blood. She went into the
kitchen, but found no one. Then she cried again: ‘Where are you?’ ‘Ah,
here in the bed, I am sleeping,’ cried the third drop of blood. She went
into the room to the bed. What did she see there? Her own child,
whose head she had cut off, bathed in her blood. The witch fell into
a passion, sprang to the window, and as she could look forth quite far
into the world, she perceived her stepdaughter hurrying away with her
sweetheart Roland. ‘That shall not help you,’ cried she, ‘even if you
have got a long way off, you shall still not escape me.’ She put on her
many-league boots, in which she covered an hour’s walk at every step,
and it was not long before she overtook them. The girl, however, when
she saw the old woman striding towards her, changed, with her magic
wand, her sweetheart Roland into a lake, and herself into a duck
swimming in the middle of it. The witch placed herself on the shore,
threw breadcrumbs in, and went to endless trouble to entice the duck;
but the duck did not let herself be enticed, and the old woman had to
go home at night as she had come. At this the girl and her sweetheart
Roland resumed their natural shapes again, and they walked on the whole
night until daybreak. Then the maiden changed herself into a beautiful
flower which stood in the midst of a briar hedge, and her sweetheart
Roland into a fiddler. It was not long before the witch came striding up
towards them, and said to the musician: ‘Dear musician, may I pluck that
beautiful flower for myself?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, ‘I will play to
you while you do it.’ As she was hastily creeping into the hedge and was
just going to pluck the flower, knowing perfectly well who the flower
was, he began to play, and whether she would or not, she was forced
to dance, for it was a magical dance. The faster he played, the more
violent springs was she forced to make, and the thorns tore her clothes
from her body, and pricked her and wounded her till she bled, and as he
did not stop, she had to dance till she lay dead on the ground.
As they were now set free, Roland said: ‘Now I will go to my father and
arrange for the wedding.’ ‘Then in the meantime I will stay here and
wait for you,’ said the girl, ‘and that no one may recognize me, I will
change myself into a red stone landmark.’ Then Roland went away, and the
girl stood like a red landmark in the field and waited for her beloved.
But when Roland got home, he fell into the snares of another, who so
fascinated him that he forgot the maiden. The poor girl remained there a
long time, but at length, as he did not return at all, she was sad, and
changed herself into a flower, and thought: ‘Someone will surely come
this way, and trample me down.’
It befell, however, that a shepherd kept his sheep in the field and saw
the flower, and as it was so pretty, plucked it, took it with him, and
laid it away in his chest. From that time forth, strange things happened
in the shepherd’s house. When he arose in the morning, all the work was
already done, the room was swept, the table and benches cleaned, the
fire in the hearth was lighted, and the water was fetched, and at noon,
when he came home, the table was laid, and a good dinner served. He
could not conceive how this came to pass, for he never saw a human being
in his house, and no one could have concealed himself in it. He was
certainly pleased with this good attendance, but still at last he was so
afraid that he went to a wise woman and asked for her advice. The wise
woman said: ‘There is some enchantment behind it, listen very early some
morning if anything is moving in the room, and if you see anything, no
matter what it is, throw a white cloth over it, and then the magic will
be stopped.’
The shepherd did as she bade him, and next morning just as day dawned,
he saw the chest open, and the flower come out. Swiftly he
sprang towards it, and threw a white cloth over it. Instantly the
transformation came to an end, and a beautiful girl stood before him,
who admitted to him that she had been the flower, and that up to this
time she had attended to his house-keeping. She told him her story,
and as she pleased him he asked her if she would marry him, but she
answered: ‘No,’ for she wanted to remain faithful to her sweetheart
Roland, although he had deserted her. Nevertheless, she promised not to
go away, but to continue keeping house for the shepherd.
And now the time drew near when Roland’s wedding was to be celebrated,
and then, according to an old custom in the country, it was announced
that all the girls were to be present at it, and sing in honour of the
bridal pair. When the faithful maiden heard of this, she grew so sad
that she thought her heart would break, and she would not go thither,
but the other girls came and took her. When it came to her turn to sing,
she stepped back, until at last she was the only one left, and then she
could not refuse. But when she began her song, and it reached Roland’s
ears, he sprang up and cried: ‘I know the voice, that is the true
bride, I will have no other!’ Everything he had forgotten, and which had
vanished from his mind, had suddenly come home again to his heart. Then
the faithful maiden held her wedding with her sweetheart Roland, and
grief came to an end and joy began.
SNOWDROP
It was the middle of winter, when the broad flakes of snow were falling
around, that the queen of a country many thousand miles off sat working
at her window. The frame of the window was made of fine black ebony, and
as she sat looking out upon the snow, she pricked her finger, and three
drops of blood fell upon it. Then she gazed thoughtfully upon the red
drops that sprinkled the white snow, and said, ‘Would that my little
daughter may be as white as that snow, as red as that blood, and as
black as this ebony windowframe!’ And so the little girl really did grow
up; her skin was as white as snow, her cheeks as rosy as the blood, and
her hair as black as ebony; and she was called Snowdrop.
But this queen died; and the king soon married another wife, who became
queen, and was very beautiful, but so vain that she could not bear
to think that anyone could be handsomer than she was. She had a fairy
looking-glass, to which she used to go, and then she would gaze upon
herself in it, and say:
‘Tell me, glass, tell me true!
Of all the ladies in the land,
Who is fairest, tell me, who?’
And the glass had always answered:
‘Thou, queen, art the fairest in all the land.’
But Snowdrop grew more and more beautiful; and when she was seven years
old she was as bright as the day, and fairer than the queen herself.
Then the glass one day answered the queen, when she went to look in it
as usual:
‘Thou, queen, art fair, and beauteous to see,
But Snowdrop is lovelier far than thee!’
When she heard this she turned pale with rage and envy, and called to
one of her servants, and said, ‘Take Snowdrop away into the wide wood,
that I may never see her any more.’ Then the servant led her away; but
his heart melted when Snowdrop begged him to spare her life, and he
said, ‘I will not hurt you, thou pretty child.’ So he left her by
herself; and though he thought it most likely that the wild beasts would
tear her in pieces, he felt as if a great weight were taken off his
heart when he had made up his mind not to kill her but to leave her to
her fate, with the chance of someone finding and saving her.
Then poor Snowdrop wandered along through the wood in great fear; and
the wild beasts roared about her, but none did her any harm. In the
evening she came to a cottage among the hills, and went in to rest, for
her little feet would carry her no further. Everything was spruce and
neat in the cottage: on the table was spread a white cloth, and there
were seven little plates, seven little loaves, and seven little glasses
with wine in them; and seven knives and forks laid in order; and by
the wall stood seven little beds. As she was very hungry, she picked
a little piece of each loaf and drank a very little wine out of each
glass; and after that she thought she would lie down and rest. So she
tried all the little beds; but one was too long, and another was too
short, till at last the seventh suited her: and there she laid herself
down and went to sleep.
By and by in came the masters of the cottage. Now they were seven little
dwarfs, that lived among the mountains, and dug and searched for gold.
They lighted up their seven lamps, and saw at once that all was not
right. The first said, ‘Who has been sitting on my stool?’ The second,
‘Who has been eating off my plate?’ The third, ‘Who has been picking my
bread?’ The fourth, ‘Who has been meddling with my spoon?’ The fifth,
‘Who has been handling my fork?’ The sixth, ‘Who has been cutting with
my knife?’ The seventh, ‘Who has been drinking my wine?’ Then the first
looked round and said, ‘Who has been lying on my bed?’ And the rest came
running to him, and everyone cried out that somebody had been upon his
bed. But the seventh saw Snowdrop, and called all his brethren to come
and see her; and they cried out with wonder and astonishment and brought
their lamps to look at her, and said, ‘Good heavens! what a lovely child
she is!’ And they were very glad to see her, and took care not to wake
her; and the seventh dwarf slept an hour with each of the other dwarfs
in turn, till the night was gone.
In the morning Snowdrop told them all her story; and they pitied her,
and said if she would keep all things in order, and cook and wash and
knit and spin for them, she might stay where she was, and they would
take good care of her. Then they went out all day long to their work,
seeking for gold and silver in the mountains: but Snowdrop was left at
home; and they warned her, and said, ‘The queen will soon find out where
you are, so take care and let no one in.’
But the queen, now that she thought Snowdrop was dead, believed that she
must be the handsomest lady in the land; and she went to her glass and
said:
‘Tell me, glass, tell me true!
Of all the ladies in the land,
Who is fairest, tell me, who?’
And the glass answered:
‘Thou, queen, art the fairest in all this land:
But over the hills, in the greenwood shade,
Where the seven dwarfs their dwelling have made,
There Snowdrop is hiding her head; and she
Is lovelier far, O queen! than thee.’
Then the queen was very much frightened; for she knew that the glass
always spoke the truth, and was sure that the servant had betrayed her.
And she could not bear to think that anyone lived who was more beautiful
than she was; so she dressed herself up as an old pedlar, and went
her way over the hills, to the place where the dwarfs dwelt. Then she
knocked at the door, and cried, ‘Fine wares to sell!’ Snowdrop looked
out at the window, and said, ‘Good day, good woman! what have you to
sell?’ ‘Good wares, fine wares,’ said she; ‘laces and bobbins of all
colours.’ ‘I will let the old lady in; she seems to be a very good
sort of body,’ thought Snowdrop, as she ran down and unbolted the door.
‘Bless me!’ said the old woman, ‘how badly your stays are laced! Let me
lace them up with one of my nice new laces.’ Snowdrop did not dream of
any mischief; so she stood before the old woman; but she set to work
so nimbly, and pulled the lace so tight, that Snowdrop’s breath was
stopped, and she fell down as if she were dead. ‘There’s an end to all
thy beauty,’ said the spiteful queen, and went away home.
In the evening the seven dwarfs came home; and I need not say how
grieved they were to see their faithful Snowdrop stretched out upon the
ground, as if she was quite dead. However, they lifted her up, and when
they found what ailed her, they cut the lace; and in a little time she
began to breathe, and very soon came to life again. Then they said, ‘The
old woman was the queen herself; take care another time, and let no one
in when we are away.’
When the queen got home, she went straight to her glass, and spoke to it
as before; but to her great grief it still said:
‘Thou, queen, art the fairest in all this land:
But over the hills, in the greenwood shade,
Where the seven dwarfs their dwelling have made,
There Snowdrop is hiding her head; and she
Is lovelier far, O queen! than thee.’
Then the blood ran cold in her heart with spite and malice, to see that
Snowdrop still lived; and she dressed herself up again, but in quite
another dress from the one she wore before, and took with her a poisoned
comb. When she reached the dwarfs’ cottage, she knocked at the door, and
cried, ‘Fine wares to sell!’ But Snowdrop said, ‘I dare not let anyone
in.’ Then the queen said, ‘Only look at my beautiful combs!’ and gave
her the poisoned one. And it looked so pretty, that she took it up and
put it into her hair to try it; but the moment it touched her head,
the poison was so powerful that she fell down senseless. ‘There you may
lie,’ said the queen, and went her way. But by good luck the dwarfs
came in very early that evening; and when they saw Snowdrop lying on
the ground, they thought what had happened, and soon found the poisoned
comb. And when they took it away she got well, and told them all that
had passed; and they warned her once more not to open the door to
anyone.
Meantime the queen went home to her glass, and shook with rage when she
read the very same answer as before; and she said, ‘Snowdrop shall die,
if it cost me my life.’ So she went by herself into her chamber, and got
ready a poisoned apple: the outside looked very rosy and tempting, but
whoever tasted it was sure to die. Then she dressed herself up as a
peasant’s wife, and travelled over the hills to the dwarfs’ cottage,
and knocked at the door; but Snowdrop put her head out of the window and
said, ‘I dare not let anyone in, for the dwarfs have told me not.’ ‘Do
as you please,’ said the old woman, ‘but at any rate take this pretty
apple; I will give it you.’ ‘No,’ said Snowdrop, ‘I dare not take it.’
‘You silly girl!’ answered the other, ‘what are you afraid of? Do you
think it is poisoned? Come! do you eat one part, and I will eat the
other.’ Now the apple was so made up that one side was good, though the
other side was poisoned. Then Snowdrop was much tempted to taste, for
the apple looked so very nice; and when she saw the old woman eat, she
could wait no longer. But she had scarcely put the piece into her mouth,
when she fell down dead upon the ground. ‘This time nothing will save
thee,’ said the queen; and she went home to her glass, and at last it
said:
‘Thou, queen, art the fairest of all the fair.’
And then her wicked heart was glad, and as happy as such a heart could
be.
When evening came, and the dwarfs had gone home, they found Snowdrop
lying on the ground: no breath came from her lips, and they were afraid
that she was quite dead. They lifted her up, and combed her hair, and
washed her face with wine and water; but all was in vain, for the little
girl seemed quite dead. So they laid her down upon a bier, and all seven
watched and bewailed her three whole days; and then they thought they
would bury her: but her cheeks were still rosy; and her face looked just
as it did while she was alive; so they said, ‘We will never bury her in
the cold ground.’ And they made a coffin of glass, so that they might
still look at her, and wrote upon it in golden letters what her name
was, and that she was a king’s daughter. And the coffin was set among
the hills, and one of the dwarfs always sat by it and watched. And the
birds of the air came too, and bemoaned Snowdrop; and first of all came
an owl, and then a raven, and at last a dove, and sat by her side.
And thus Snowdrop lay for a long, long time, and still only looked as
though she was asleep; for she was even now as white as snow, and as red
as blood, and as black as ebony. At last a prince came and called at the
dwarfs’ house; and he saw Snowdrop, and read what was written in golden
letters. Then he offered the dwarfs money, and prayed and besought them
to let him take her away; but they said, ‘We will not part with her for
all the gold in the world.’ At last, however, they had pity on him, and
gave him the coffin; but the moment he lifted it up to carry it home
with him, the piece of apple fell from between her lips, and Snowdrop
awoke, and said, ‘Where am I?’ And the prince said, ‘Thou art quite safe
with me.’
Then he told her all that had happened, and said, ‘I love you far better
than all the world; so come with me to my father’s palace, and you shall
be my wife.’ And Snowdrop consented, and went home with the prince;
and everything was got ready with great pomp and splendour for their
wedding.
To the feast was asked, among the rest, Snowdrop’s old enemy the queen;
and as she was dressing herself in fine rich clothes, she looked in the
glass and said:
‘Tell me, glass, tell me true!
Of all the ladies in the land,
Who is fairest, tell me, who?’
And the glass answered:
‘Thou, lady, art loveliest here, I ween;
But lovelier far is the new-made queen.’
When she heard this she started with rage; but her envy and curiosity
were so great, that she could not help setting out to see the bride. And
when she got there, and saw that it was no other than Snowdrop, who, as
she thought, had been dead a long while, she choked with rage, and fell
down and died: but Snowdrop and the prince lived and reigned happily
over that land many, many years; and sometimes they went up into the
mountains, and paid a visit to the little dwarfs, who had been so kind
to Snowdrop in her time of need.
THE PINK
There was once upon a time a queen to whom God had given no children.
Every morning she went into the garden and prayed to God in heaven to
bestow on her a son or a daughter. Then an angel from heaven came to her
and said: ‘Be at rest, you shall have a son with the power of wishing,
so that whatsoever in the world he wishes for, that shall he have.’ Then
she went to the king, and told him the joyful tidings, and when the time
was come she gave birth to a son, and the king was filled with gladness.
Every morning she went with the child to the garden where the wild
beasts were kept, and washed herself there in a clear stream. It
happened once when the child was a little older, that it was lying in
her arms and she fell asleep. Then came the old cook, who knew that the
child had the power of wishing, and stole it away, and he took a hen,
and cut it in pieces, and dropped some of its blood on the queen’s apron
and on her dress. Then he carried the child away to a secret place,
where a nurse was obliged to suckle it, and he ran to the king and
accused the queen of having allowed her child to be taken from her by
the wild beasts. When the king saw the blood on her apron, he believed
this, fell into such a passion that he ordered a high tower to be built,
in which neither sun nor moon could be seen and had his wife put into
it, and walled up. Here she was to stay for seven years without meat
or drink, and die of hunger. But God sent two angels from heaven in the
shape of white doves, which flew to her twice a day, and carried her
food until the seven years were over.
The cook, however, thought to himself: ‘If the child has the power of
wishing, and I am here, he might very easily get me into trouble.’ So
he left the palace and went to the boy, who was already big enough to
speak, and said to him: ‘Wish for a beautiful palace for yourself with
a garden, and all else that pertains to it.’ Scarcely were the words out
of the boy’s mouth, when everything was there that he had wished for.
After a while the cook said to him: ‘It is not well for you to be so
alone, wish for a pretty girl as a companion.’ Then the king’s son
wished for one, and she immediately stood before him, and was more
beautiful than any painter could have painted her. The two played
together, and loved each other with all their hearts, and the old cook
went out hunting like a nobleman. The thought occurred to him, however,
that the king’s son might some day wish to be with his father, and thus
bring him into great peril. So he went out and took the maiden aside,
and said: ‘Tonight when the boy is asleep, go to his bed and plunge this
knife into his heart, and bring me his heart and tongue, and if you do
not do it, you shall lose your life.’ Thereupon he went away, and when
he returned next day she had not done it, and said: ‘Why should I shed
the blood of an innocent boy who has never harmed anyone?’ The cook once
more said: ‘If you do not do it, it shall cost you your own life.’ When
he had gone away, she had a little hind brought to her, and ordered her
to be killed, and took her heart and tongue, and laid them on a plate,
and when she saw the old man coming, she said to the boy: ‘Lie down in
your bed, and draw the clothes over you.’ Then the wicked wretch came in
and said: ‘Where are the boy’s heart and tongue?’ The girl reached the
plate to him, but the king’s son threw off the quilt, and said: ‘You old
sinner, why did you want to kill me? Now will I pronounce thy sentence.
You shall become a black poodle and have a gold collar round your neck,
and shall eat burning coals, till the flames burst forth from your
throat.’ And when he had spoken these words, the old man was changed
into a poodle dog, and had a gold collar round his neck, and the cooks
were ordered to bring up some live coals, and these he ate, until the
flames broke forth from his throat. The king’s son remained there a
short while longer, and he thought of his mother, and wondered if she
were still alive. At length he said to the maiden: ‘I will go home to my
own country; if you will go with me, I will provide for you.’ ‘Ah,’
she replied, ‘the way is so long, and what shall I do in a strange land
where I am unknown?’ As she did not seem quite willing, and as they
could not be parted from each other, he wished that she might be changed
into a beautiful pink, and took her with him. Then he went away to his
own country, and the poodle had to run after him. He went to the tower
in which his mother was confined, and as it was so high, he wished for
a ladder which would reach up to the very top. Then he mounted up and
looked inside, and cried: ‘Beloved mother, Lady Queen, are you still
alive, or are you dead?’ She answered: ‘I have just eaten, and am still
satisfied,’ for she thought the angels were there. Said he: ‘I am your
dear son, whom the wild beasts were said to have torn from your arms;
but I am alive still, and will soon set you free.’ Then he descended
again, and went to his father, and caused himself to be announced as a
strange huntsman, and asked if he could offer him service. The king said
yes, if he was skilful and could get game for him, he should come to
him, but that deer had never taken up their quarters in any part of the
district or country. Then the huntsman promised to procure as much game
for him as he could possibly use at the royal table. So he summoned all
the huntsmen together, and bade them go out into the forest with him.
And he went with them and made them form a great circle, open at one end
where he stationed himself, and began to wish. Two hundred deer and more
came running inside the circle at once, and the huntsmen shot them.
Then they were all placed on sixty country carts, and driven home to the
king, and for once he was able to deck his table with game, after having
had none at all for years.
Now the king felt great joy at this, and commanded that his entire
household should eat with him next day, and made a great feast. When
they were all assembled together, he said to the huntsman: ‘As you are
so clever, you shall sit by me.’ He replied: ‘Lord King, your majesty
must excuse me, I am a poor huntsman.’ But the king insisted on it,
and said: ‘You shall sit by me,’ until he did it. Whilst he was sitting
there, he thought of his dearest mother, and wished that one of the
king’s principal servants would begin to speak of her, and would ask how
it was faring with the queen in the tower, and if she were alive still,
or had perished. Hardly had he formed the wish than the marshal began,
and said: ‘Your majesty, we live joyously here, but how is the queen
living in the tower? Is she still alive, or has she died?’ But the king
replied: ‘She let my dear son be torn to pieces by wild beasts; I will
not have her named.’ Then the huntsman arose and said: ‘Gracious lord
father she is alive still, and I am her son, and I was not carried away
by wild beasts, but by that wretch the old cook, who tore me from her
arms when she was asleep, and sprinkled her apron with the blood of a
chicken.’ Thereupon he took the dog with the golden collar, and said:
‘That is the wretch!’ and caused live coals to be brought, and these the
dog was compelled to devour before the sight of all, until flames burst
forth from its throat. On this the huntsman asked the king if he would
like to see the dog in his true shape, and wished him back into the form
of the cook, in which he stood immediately, with his white apron,
and his knife by his side. When the king saw him he fell into a passion,
and ordered him to be cast into the deepest dungeon. Then the huntsman
spoke further and said: ‘Father, will you see the maiden who brought me
up so tenderly and who was afterwards to murder me, but did not do it,
though her own life depended on it?’ The king replied: ‘Yes, I would
like to see her.’ The son said: ‘Most gracious father, I will show her
to you in the form of a beautiful flower,’ and he thrust his hand into
his pocket and brought forth the pink, and placed it on the royal table,
and it was so beautiful that the king had never seen one to equal it.
Then the son said: ‘Now will I show her to you in her own form,’ and
wished that she might become a maiden, and she stood there looking so
beautiful that no painter could have made her look more so.
And the king sent two waiting-maids and two attendants into the tower,
to fetch the queen and bring her to the royal table. But when she was
led in she ate nothing, and said: ‘The gracious and merciful God who has
supported me in the tower, will soon set me free.’ She lived three days
more, and then died happily, and when she was buried, the two white
doves which had brought her food to the tower, and were angels of
heaven, followed her body and seated themselves on her grave. The aged
king ordered the cook to be torn in four pieces, but grief consumed the
king’s own heart, and he soon died. His son married the beautiful maiden
whom he had brought with him as a flower in his pocket, and whether they
are still alive or not, is known to God.
CLEVER ELSIE
There was once a man who had a daughter who was called Clever Elsie. And
when she had grown up her father said: ‘We will get her married.’ ‘Yes,’
said the mother, ‘if only someone would come who would have her.’ At
length a man came from a distance and wooed her, who was called Hans;
but he stipulated that Clever Elsie should be really smart. ‘Oh,’ said
the father, ‘she has plenty of good sense’; and the mother said: ‘Oh,
she can see the wind coming up the street, and hear the flies coughing.’
‘Well,’ said Hans, ‘if she is not really smart, I won’t have her.’ When
they were sitting at dinner and had eaten, the mother said: ‘Elsie, go
into the cellar and fetch some beer.’ Then Clever Elsie took the pitcher
from the wall, went into the cellar, and tapped the lid briskly as she
went, so that the time might not appear long. When she was below she
fetched herself a chair, and set it before the barrel so that she had
no need to stoop, and did not hurt her back or do herself any unexpected
injury. Then she placed the can before her, and turned the tap, and
while the beer was running she would not let her eyes be idle, but
looked up at the wall, and after much peering here and there, saw a
pick-axe exactly above her, which the masons had accidentally left
there.
Then Clever Elsie began to weep and said: ‘If I get Hans, and we have
a child, and he grows big, and we send him into the cellar here to draw
beer, then the pick-axe will fall on his head and kill him.’ Then she
sat and wept and screamed with all the strength of her body, over the
misfortune which lay before her. Those upstairs waited for the drink,
but Clever Elsie still did not come. Then the woman said to the servant:
‘Just go down into the cellar and see where Elsie is.’ The maid went and
found her sitting in front of the barrel, screaming loudly. ‘Elsie why
do you weep?’ asked the maid. ‘Ah,’ she answered, ‘have I not reason to
weep? If I get Hans, and we have a child, and he grows big, and has to
draw beer here, the pick-axe will perhaps fall on his head, and kill
him.’ Then said the maid: ‘What a clever Elsie we have!’ and sat down
beside her and began loudly to weep over the misfortune. After a while,
as the maid did not come back, and those upstairs were thirsty for the
beer, the man said to the boy: ‘Just go down into the cellar and see
where Elsie and the girl are.’ The boy went down, and there sat Clever
Elsie and the girl both weeping together. Then he asked: ‘Why are you
weeping?’ ‘Ah,’ said Elsie, ‘have I not reason to weep? If I get Hans,
and we have a child, and he grows big, and has to draw beer here, the
pick-axe will fall on his head and kill him.’ Then said the boy: ‘What
a clever Elsie we have!’ and sat down by her, and likewise began to
howl loudly. Upstairs they waited for the boy, but as he still did not
return, the man said to the woman: ‘Just go down into the cellar and see
where Elsie is!’ The woman went down, and found all three in the midst
of their lamentations, and inquired what was the cause; then Elsie told
her also that her future child was to be killed by the pick-axe, when it
grew big and had to draw beer, and the pick-axe fell down. Then said the
mother likewise: ‘What a clever Elsie we have!’ and sat down and wept
with them. The man upstairs waited a short time, but as his wife did not
come back and his thirst grew ever greater, he said: ‘I must go into the
cellar myself and see where Elsie is.’ But when he got into the cellar,
and they were all sitting together crying, and he heard the reason, and
that Elsie’s child was the cause, and the Elsie might perhaps bring one
into the world some day, and that he might be killed by the pick-axe, if
he should happen to be sitting beneath it, drawing beer just at the very
time when it fell down, he cried: ‘Oh, what a clever Elsie!’ and sat
down, and likewise wept with them. The bridegroom stayed upstairs alone
for a long time; then as no one would come back he thought: ‘They must be
waiting for me below: I too must go there and see what they are about.’
When he got down, the five of them were sitting screaming and lamenting
quite piteously, each out-doing the other. ‘What misfortune has happened
then?’ asked he. ‘Ah, dear Hans,’ said Elsie, ‘if we marry each other
and have a child, and he is big, and we perhaps send him here to draw
something to drink, then the pick-axe which has been left up there might
dash his brains out if it were to fall down, so have we not reason to
weep?’ ‘Come,’ said Hans, ‘more understanding than that is not needed
for my household, as you are such a clever Elsie, I will have you,’ and
seized her hand, took her upstairs with him, and married her.
After Hans had had her some time, he said: ‘Wife, I am going out to work
and earn some money for us; go into the field and cut the corn that we
may have some bread.’ ‘Yes, dear Hans, I will do that.’ After Hans had
gone away, she cooked herself some good broth and took it into the field
with her. When she came to the field she said to herself: ‘What shall I
do; shall I cut first, or shall I eat first? Oh, I will eat first.’ Then
she drank her cup of broth and when she was fully satisfied, she once
more said: ‘What shall I do? Shall I cut first, or shall I sleep first?
I will sleep first.’ Then she lay down among the corn and fell asleep.
Hans had been at home for a long time, but Elsie did not come; then said
he: ‘What a clever Elsie I have; she is so industrious that she does not
even come home to eat.’ But when evening came and she still stayed away,
Hans went out to see what she had cut, but nothing was cut, and she
was lying among the corn asleep. Then Hans hastened home and brought
a fowler’s net with little bells and hung it round about her, and she
still went on sleeping. Then he ran home, shut the house-door, and sat
down in his chair and worked. At length, when it was quite dark, Clever
Elsie awoke and when she got up there was a jingling all round about
her, and the bells rang at each step which she took. Then she was
alarmed, and became uncertain whether she really was Clever Elsie or
not, and said: ‘Is it I, or is it not I?’ But she knew not what answer
to make to this, and stood for a time in doubt; at length she thought:
‘I will go home and ask if it be I, or if it be not I, they will be sure
to know.’ She ran to the door of her own house, but it was shut; then
she knocked at the window and cried: ‘Hans, is Elsie within?’ ‘Yes,’
answered Hans, ‘she is within.’ Hereupon she was terrified, and said:
‘Ah, heavens! Then it is not I,’ and went to another door; but when the
people heard the jingling of the bells they would not open it, and she
could get in nowhere. Then she ran out of the village, and no one has
seen her since.
THE MISER IN THE BUSH
A farmer had a faithful and diligent servant, who had worked hard for
him three years, without having been paid any wages. At last it came
into the man’s head that he would not go on thus without pay any longer;
so he went to his master, and said, ‘I have worked hard for you a long
time, I will trust to you to give me what I deserve to have for my
trouble.’ The farmer was a sad miser, and knew that his man was very
simple-hearted; so he took out threepence, and gave him for every year’s
service a penny. The poor fellow thought it was a great deal of money to
have, and said to himself, ‘Why should I work hard, and live here on bad
fare any longer? I can now travel into the wide world, and make myself
merry.’ With that he put his money into his purse, and set out, roaming
over hill and valley.
As he jogged along over the fields, singing and dancing, a little dwarf
met him, and asked him what made him so merry. ‘Why, what should make
me down-hearted?’ said he; ‘I am sound in health and rich in purse, what
should I care for? I have saved up my three years’ earnings and have it
all safe in my pocket.’ ‘How much may it come to?’ said the little man.
‘Full threepence,’ replied the countryman. ‘I wish you would give them
to me,’ said the other; ‘I am very poor.’ Then the man pitied him, and
gave him all he had; and the little dwarf said in return, ‘As you have
such a kind honest heart, I will grant you three wishes--one for every
penny; so choose whatever you like.’ Then the countryman rejoiced at
his good luck, and said, ‘I like many things better than money: first, I
will have a bow that will bring down everything I shoot at; secondly,
a fiddle that will set everyone dancing that hears me play upon it; and
thirdly, I should like that everyone should grant what I ask.’ The dwarf
said he should have his three wishes; so he gave him the bow and fiddle,
and went his way.
Our honest friend journeyed on his way too; and if he was merry before,
he was now ten times more so. He had not gone far before he met an old
miser: close by them stood a tree, and on the topmost twig sat a thrush
singing away most joyfully. ‘Oh, what a pretty bird!’ said the miser; ‘I
would give a great deal of money to have such a one.’ ‘If that’s all,’
said the countryman, ‘I will soon bring it down.’ Then he took up his
bow, and down fell the thrush into the bushes at the foot of the tree.
The miser crept into the bush to find it; but directly he had got into
the middle, his companion took up his fiddle and played away, and the
miser began to dance and spring about, capering higher and higher in
the air. The thorns soon began to tear his clothes till they all hung
in rags about him, and he himself was all scratched and wounded, so that
the blood ran down. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ cried the miser, ‘Master!
master! pray let the fiddle alone. What have I done to deserve this?’
‘Thou hast shaved many a poor soul close enough,’ said the other; ‘thou
art only meeting thy reward’: so he played up another tune. Then the
miser began to beg and promise, and offered money for his liberty; but
he did not come up to the musician’s price for some time, and he danced
him along brisker and brisker, and the miser bid higher and higher, till
at last he offered a round hundred of florins that he had in his purse,
and had just gained by cheating some poor fellow. When the countryman
saw so much money, he said, ‘I will agree to your proposal.’ So he took
the purse, put up his fiddle, and travelled on very pleased with his
bargain.
Meanwhile the miser crept out of the bush half-naked and in a piteous
plight, and began to ponder how he should take his revenge, and serve
his late companion some trick. At last he went to the judge, and
complained that a rascal had robbed him of his money, and beaten him
into the bargain; and that the fellow who did it carried a bow at his
back and a fiddle hung round his neck. Then the judge sent out his
officers to bring up the accused wherever they should find him; and he
was soon caught and brought up to be tried.
The miser began to tell his tale, and said he had been robbed of
his money. ‘No, you gave it me for playing a tune to you.’ said the
countryman; but the judge told him that was not likely, and cut the
matter short by ordering him off to the gallows.
So away he was taken; but as he stood on the steps he said, ‘My Lord
Judge, grant me one last request.’ ‘Anything but thy life,’ replied the
other. ‘No,’ said he, ‘I do not ask my life; only to let me play upon
my fiddle for the last time.’ The miser cried out, ‘Oh, no! no! for
heaven’s sake don’t listen to him! don’t listen to him!’ But the judge
said, ‘It is only this once, he will soon have done.’ The fact was, he
could not refuse the request, on account of the dwarf’s third gift.
Then the miser said, ‘Bind me fast, bind me fast, for pity’s sake.’ But
the countryman seized his fiddle, and struck up a tune, and at the first
note judge, clerks, and jailer were in motion; all began capering, and
no one could hold the miser. At the second note the hangman let his
prisoner go, and danced also, and by the time he had played the first
bar of the tune, all were dancing together--judge, court, and miser, and
all the people who had followed to look on. At first the thing was merry
and pleasant enough; but when it had gone on a while, and there seemed
to be no end of playing or dancing, they began to cry out, and beg him
to leave off; but he stopped not a whit the more for their entreaties,
till the judge not only gave him his life, but promised to return him
the hundred florins.
Then he called to the miser, and said, ‘Tell us now, you vagabond, where
you got that gold, or I shall play on for your amusement only,’ ‘I stole
it,’ said the miser in the presence of all the people; ‘I acknowledge
that I stole it, and that you earned it fairly.’ Then the countryman
stopped his fiddle, and left the miser to take his place at the gallows.
ASHPUTTEL
The wife of a rich man fell sick; and when she felt that her end drew
nigh, she called her only daughter to her bed-side, and said, ‘Always be
a good girl, and I will look down from heaven and watch over you.’ Soon
afterwards she shut her eyes and died, and was buried in the garden;
and the little girl went every day to her grave and wept, and was always
good and kind to all about her. And the snow fell and spread a beautiful
white covering over the grave; but by the time the spring came, and the
sun had melted it away again, her father had married another wife. This
new wife had two daughters of her own, that she brought home with her;
they were fair in face but foul at heart, and it was now a sorry time
for the poor little girl. ‘What does the good-for-nothing want in the
parlour?’ said they; ‘they who would eat bread should first earn it;
away with the kitchen-maid!’ Then they took away her fine clothes, and
gave her an old grey frock to put on, and laughed at her, and turned her
into the kitchen.
There she was forced to do hard work; to rise early before daylight, to
bring the water, to make the fire, to cook and to wash. Besides that,
the sisters plagued her in all sorts of ways, and laughed at her. In the
evening when she was tired, she had no bed to lie down on, but was made
to lie by the hearth among the ashes; and as this, of course, made her
always dusty and dirty, they called her Ashputtel.
It happened once that the father was going to the fair, and asked his
wife’s daughters what he should bring them. ‘Fine clothes,’ said the
first; ‘Pearls and diamonds,’ cried the second. ‘Now, child,’ said he
to his own daughter, ‘what will you have?’ ‘The first twig, dear
father, that brushes against your hat when you turn your face to come
homewards,’ said she. Then he bought for the first two the fine clothes
and pearls and diamonds they had asked for: and on his way home, as he
rode through a green copse, a hazel twig brushed against him, and almost
pushed off his hat: so he broke it off and brought it away; and when he
got home he gave it to his daughter. Then she took it, and went to
her mother’s grave and planted it there; and cried so much that it was
watered with her tears; and there it grew and became a fine tree. Three
times every day she went to it and cried; and soon a little bird came
and built its nest upon the tree, and talked with her, and watched over
her, and brought her whatever she wished for.
Now it happened that the king of that land held a feast, which was to
last three days; and out of those who came to it his son was to choose
a bride for himself. Ashputtel’s two sisters were asked to come; so they
called her up, and said, ‘Now, comb our hair, brush our shoes, and tie
our sashes for us, for we are going to dance at the king’s feast.’
Then she did as she was told; but when all was done she could not help
crying, for she thought to herself, she should so have liked to have
gone with them to the ball; and at last she begged her mother very hard
to let her go. ‘You, Ashputtel!’ said she; ‘you who have nothing to
wear, no clothes at all, and who cannot even dance--you want to go to
the ball? And when she kept on begging, she said at last, to get rid of
her, ‘I will throw this dishful of peas into the ash-heap, and if in
two hours’ time you have picked them all out, you shall go to the feast
too.’
Then she threw the peas down among the ashes, but the little maiden ran
out at the back door into the garden, and cried out:
‘Hither, hither, through the sky,
Turtle-doves and linnets, fly!
Blackbird, thrush, and chaffinch gay,
Hither, hither, haste away!
One and all come help me, quick!
Haste ye, haste ye!--pick, pick, pick!’
Then first came two white doves, flying in at the kitchen window; next
came two turtle-doves; and after them came all the little birds under
heaven, chirping and fluttering in: and they flew down into the ashes.
And the little doves stooped their heads down and set to work, pick,
pick, pick; and then the others began to pick, pick, pick: and among
them all they soon picked out all the good grain, and put it into a dish
but left the ashes. Long before the end of the hour the work was quite
done, and all flew out again at the windows.
Then Ashputtel brought the dish to her mother, overjoyed at the thought
that now she should go to the ball. But the mother said, ‘No, no! you
slut, you have no clothes, and cannot dance; you shall not go.’ And when
Ashputtel begged very hard to go, she said, ‘If you can in one hour’s
time pick two of those dishes of peas out of the ashes, you shall go
too.’ And thus she thought she should at least get rid of her. So she
shook two dishes of peas into the ashes.
But the little maiden went out into the garden at the back of the house,
and cried out as before:
‘Hither, hither, through the sky,
Turtle-doves and linnets, fly!
Blackbird, thrush, and chaffinch gay,
Hither, hither, haste away!
One and all come help me, quick!
Haste ye, haste ye!--pick, pick, pick!’
Then first came two white doves in at the kitchen window; next came two
turtle-doves; and after them came all the little birds under heaven,
chirping and hopping about. And they flew down into the ashes; and the
little doves put their heads down and set to work, pick, pick, pick; and
then the others began pick, pick, pick; and they put all the good grain
into the dishes, and left all the ashes. Before half an hour’s time all
was done, and out they flew again. And then Ashputtel took the dishes to
her mother, rejoicing to think that she should now go to the ball.
But her mother said, ‘It is all of no use, you cannot go; you have no
clothes, and cannot dance, and you would only put us to shame’: and off
she went with her two daughters to the ball.
Now when all were gone, and nobody left at home, Ashputtel went
sorrowfully and sat down under the hazel-tree, and cried out:
‘Shake, shake, hazel-tree,
Gold and silver over me!’
Then her friend the bird flew out of the tree, and brought a gold and
silver dress for her, and slippers of spangled silk; and she put them
on, and followed her sisters to the feast. But they did not know her,
and thought it must be some strange princess, she looked so fine and
beautiful in her rich clothes; and they never once thought of Ashputtel,
taking it for granted that she was safe at home in the dirt.
The king’s son soon came up to her, and took her by the hand and danced
with her, and no one else: and he never left her hand; but when anyone
else came to ask her to dance, he said, ‘This lady is dancing with me.’
Thus they danced till a late hour of the night; and then she wanted to
go home: and the king’s son said, ‘I shall go and take care of you to
your home’; for he wanted to see where the beautiful maiden lived. But
she slipped away from him, unawares, and ran off towards home; and as
the prince followed her, she jumped up into the pigeon-house and shut
the door. Then he waited till her father came home, and told him that
the unknown maiden, who had been at the feast, had hid herself in the
pigeon-house. But when they had broken open the door they found no one
within; and as they came back into the house, Ashputtel was lying, as
she always did, in her dirty frock by the ashes, and her dim little
lamp was burning in the chimney. For she had run as quickly as she could
through the pigeon-house and on to the hazel-tree, and had there taken
off her beautiful clothes, and put them beneath the tree, that the bird
might carry them away, and had lain down again amid the ashes in her
little grey frock.
The next day when the feast was again held, and her father, mother, and
sisters were gone, Ashputtel went to the hazel-tree, and said:
‘Shake, shake, hazel-tree,
Gold and silver over me!’
And the bird came and brought a still finer dress than the one she
had worn the day before. And when she came in it to the ball, everyone
wondered at her beauty: but the king’s son, who was waiting for her,
took her by the hand, and danced with her; and when anyone asked her to
dance, he said as before, ‘This lady is dancing with me.’
When night came she wanted to go home; and the king’s son followed here
as before, that he might see into what house she went: but she sprang
away from him all at once into the garden behind her father’s house.
In this garden stood a fine large pear-tree full of ripe fruit; and
Ashputtel, not knowing where to hide herself, jumped up into it without
being seen. Then the king’s son lost sight of her, and could not find
out where she was gone, but waited till her father came home, and said
to him, ‘The unknown lady who danced with me has slipped away, and I
think she must have sprung into the pear-tree.’ The father thought to
himself, ‘Can it be Ashputtel?’ So he had an axe brought; and they cut
down the tree, but found no one upon it. And when they came back into
the kitchen, there lay Ashputtel among the ashes; for she had slipped
down on the other side of the tree, and carried her beautiful clothes
back to the bird at the hazel-tree, and then put on her little grey
frock.
The third day, when her father and mother and sisters were gone, she
went again into the garden, and said:
‘Shake, shake, hazel-tree,
Gold and silver over me!’
Then her kind friend the bird brought a dress still finer than the
former one, and slippers which were all of gold: so that when she came
to the feast no one knew what to say, for wonder at her beauty: and the
king’s son danced with nobody but her; and when anyone else asked her to
dance, he said, ‘This lady is _my_ partner, sir.’
When night came she wanted to go home; and the king’s son would go with
her, and said to himself, ‘I will not lose her this time’; but, however,
she again slipped away from him, though in such a hurry that she dropped
her left golden slipper upon the stairs.
The prince took the shoe, and went the next day to the king his father,
and said, ‘I will take for my wife the lady that this golden slipper
fits.’ Then both the sisters were overjoyed to hear it; for they
had beautiful feet, and had no doubt that they could wear the golden
slipper. The eldest went first into the room where the slipper was, and
wanted to try it on, and the mother stood by. But her great toe could
not go into it, and the shoe was altogether much too small for her. Then
the mother gave her a knife, and said, ‘Never mind, cut it off; when you
are queen you will not care about toes; you will not want to walk.’ So
the silly girl cut off her great toe, and thus squeezed on the shoe,
and went to the king’s son. Then he took her for his bride, and set her
beside him on his horse, and rode away with her homewards.
But on their way home they had to pass by the hazel-tree that Ashputtel
had planted; and on the branch sat a little dove singing:
‘Back again! back again! look to the shoe!
The shoe is too small, and not made for you!
Prince! prince! look again for thy bride,
For she’s not the true one that sits by thy side.’
Then the prince got down and looked at her foot; and he saw, by the
blood that streamed from it, what a trick she had played him. So he
turned his horse round, and brought the false bride back to her home,
and said, ‘This is not the right bride; let the other sister try and put
on the slipper.’ Then she went into the room and got her foot into the
shoe, all but the heel, which was too large. But her mother squeezed it
in till the blood came, and took her to the king’s son: and he set her
as his bride by his side on his horse, and rode away with her.
But when they came to the hazel-tree the little dove sat there still,
and sang:
‘Back again! back again! look to the shoe!
The shoe is too small, and not made for you!
Prince! prince! look again for thy bride,
For she’s not the true one that sits by thy side.’
Then he looked down, and saw that the blood streamed so much from the
shoe, that her white stockings were quite red. So he turned his horse
and brought her also back again. ‘This is not the true bride,’ said he
to the father; ‘have you no other daughters?’ ‘No,’ said he; ‘there is
only a little dirty Ashputtel here, the child of my first wife; I am
sure she cannot be the bride.’ The prince told him to send her. But the
mother said, ‘No, no, she is much too dirty; she will not dare to show
herself.’ However, the prince would have her come; and she first washed
her face and hands, and then went in and curtsied to him, and he reached
her the golden slipper. Then she took her clumsy shoe off her left foot,
and put on the golden slipper; and it fitted her as if it had been made
for her. And when he drew near and looked at her face he knew her, and
said, ‘This is the right bride.’ But the mother and both the sisters
were frightened, and turned pale with anger as he took Ashputtel on his
horse, and rode away with her. And when they came to the hazel-tree, the
white dove sang:
‘Home! home! look at the shoe!
Princess! the shoe was made for you!
Prince! prince! take home thy bride,
For she is the true one that sits by thy side!’
And when the dove had done its song, it came flying, and perched upon
her right shoulder, and so went home with her.
THE WHITE SNAKE
A long time ago there lived a king who was famed for his wisdom through
all the land. Nothing was hidden from him, and it seemed as if news of
the most secret things was brought to him through the air. But he had a
strange custom; every day after dinner, when the table was cleared,
and no one else was present, a trusty servant had to bring him one more
dish. It was covered, however, and even the servant did not know what
was in it, neither did anyone know, for the king never took off the
cover to eat of it until he was quite alone.
This had gone on for a long time, when one day the servant, who took
away the dish, was overcome with such curiosity that he could not help
carrying the dish into his room. When he had carefully locked the door,
he lifted up the cover, and saw a white snake lying on the dish. But
when he saw it he could not deny himself the pleasure of tasting it,
so he cut of a little bit and put it into his mouth. No sooner had it
touched his tongue than he heard a strange whispering of little voices
outside his window. He went and listened, and then noticed that it was
the sparrows who were chattering together, and telling one another of
all kinds of things which they had seen in the fields and woods. Eating
the snake had given him power of understanding the language of animals.
Now it so happened that on this very day the queen lost her most
beautiful ring, and suspicion of having stolen it fell upon this trusty
servant, who was allowed to go everywhere. The king ordered the man to
be brought before him, and threatened with angry words that unless he
could before the morrow point out the thief, he himself should be looked
upon as guilty and executed. In vain he declared his innocence; he was
dismissed with no better answer.
In his trouble and fear he went down into the courtyard and took thought
how to help himself out of his trouble. Now some ducks were sitting
together quietly by a brook and taking their rest; and, whilst they
were making their feathers smooth with their bills, they were having a
confidential conversation together. The servant stood by and listened.
They were telling one another of all the places where they had been
waddling about all the morning, and what good food they had found; and
one said in a pitiful tone: ‘Something lies heavy on my stomach; as
I was eating in haste I swallowed a ring which lay under the queen’s
window.’ The servant at once seized her by the neck, carried her to the
kitchen, and said to the cook: ‘Here is a fine duck; pray, kill her.’
‘Yes,’ said the cook, and weighed her in his hand; ‘she has spared
no trouble to fatten herself, and has been waiting to be roasted long
enough.’ So he cut off her head, and as she was being dressed for the
spit, the queen’s ring was found inside her.
The servant could now easily prove his innocence; and the king, to make
amends for the wrong, allowed him to ask a favour, and promised him
the best place in the court that he could wish for. The servant refused
everything, and only asked for a horse and some money for travelling, as
he had a mind to see the world and go about a little. When his request
was granted he set out on his way, and one day came to a pond, where he
saw three fishes caught in the reeds and gasping for water. Now, though
it is said that fishes are dumb, he heard them lamenting that they must
perish so miserably, and, as he had a kind heart, he got off his
horse and put the three prisoners back into the water. They leapt with
delight, put out their heads, and cried to him: ‘We will remember you
and repay you for saving us!’
He rode on, and after a while it seemed to him that he heard a voice in
the sand at his feet. He listened, and heard an ant-king complain: ‘Why
cannot folks, with their clumsy beasts, keep off our bodies? That stupid
horse, with his heavy hoofs, has been treading down my people without
mercy!’ So he turned on to a side path and the ant-king cried out to
him: ‘We will remember you--one good turn deserves another!’
The path led him into a wood, and there he saw two old ravens standing
by their nest, and throwing out their young ones. ‘Out with you, you
idle, good-for-nothing creatures!’ cried they; ‘we cannot find food for
you any longer; you are big enough, and can provide for yourselves.’
But the poor young ravens lay upon the ground, flapping their wings, and
crying: ‘Oh, what helpless chicks we are! We must shift for ourselves,
and yet we cannot fly! What can we do, but lie here and starve?’ So the
good young fellow alighted and killed his horse with his sword, and gave
it to them for food. Then they came hopping up to it, satisfied their
hunger, and cried: ‘We will remember you--one good turn deserves
another!’
And now he had to use his own legs, and when he had walked a long
way, he came to a large city. There was a great noise and crowd in
the streets, and a man rode up on horseback, crying aloud: ‘The king’s
daughter wants a husband; but whoever seeks her hand must perform a hard
task, and if he does not succeed he will forfeit his life.’ Many had
already made the attempt, but in vain; nevertheless when the youth
saw the king’s daughter he was so overcome by her great beauty that he
forgot all danger, went before the king, and declared himself a suitor.
So he was led out to the sea, and a gold ring was thrown into it, before
his eyes; then the king ordered him to fetch this ring up from the
bottom of the sea, and added: ‘If you come up again without it you will
be thrown in again and again until you perish amid the waves.’ All the
people grieved for the handsome youth; then they went away, leaving him
alone by the sea.
He stood on the shore and considered what he should do, when suddenly
he saw three fishes come swimming towards him, and they were the very
fishes whose lives he had saved. The one in the middle held a mussel in
its mouth, which it laid on the shore at the youth’s feet, and when he
had taken it up and opened it, there lay the gold ring in the shell.
Full of joy he took it to the king and expected that he would grant him
the promised reward.
But when the proud princess perceived that he was not her equal in
birth, she scorned him, and required him first to perform another
task. She went down into the garden and strewed with her own hands ten
sacksful of millet-seed on the grass; then she said: ‘Tomorrow morning
before sunrise these must be picked up, and not a single grain be
wanting.’
The youth sat down in the garden and considered how it might be possible
to perform this task, but he could think of nothing, and there he sat
sorrowfully awaiting the break of day, when he should be led to death.
But as soon as the first rays of the sun shone into the garden he saw
all the ten sacks standing side by side, quite full, and not a single
grain was missing. The ant-king had come in the night with thousands
and thousands of ants, and the grateful creatures had by great industry
picked up all the millet-seed and gathered them into the sacks.
Presently the king’s daughter herself came down into the garden, and was
amazed to see that the young man had done the task she had given him.
But she could not yet conquer her proud heart, and said: ‘Although he
has performed both the tasks, he shall not be my husband until he had
brought me an apple from the Tree of Life.’ The youth did not know where
the Tree of Life stood, but he set out, and would have gone on for ever,
as long as his legs would carry him, though he had no hope of finding
it. After he had wandered through three kingdoms, he came one evening to
a wood, and lay down under a tree to sleep. But he heard a rustling in
the branches, and a golden apple fell into his hand. At the same time
three ravens flew down to him, perched themselves upon his knee, and
said: ‘We are the three young ravens whom you saved from starving; when
we had grown big, and heard that you were seeking the Golden Apple,
we flew over the sea to the end of the world, where the Tree of Life
stands, and have brought you the apple.’ The youth, full of joy, set out
homewards, and took the Golden Apple to the king’s beautiful daughter,
who had now no more excuses left to make. They cut the Apple of Life in
two and ate it together; and then her heart became full of love for him,
and they lived in undisturbed happiness to a great age.
THE WOLF AND THE SEVEN LITTLE KIDS
There was once upon a time an old goat who had seven little kids, and
loved them with all the love of a mother for her children. One day she
wanted to go into the forest and fetch some food. So she called all
seven to her and said: ‘Dear children, I have to go into the forest,
be on your guard against the wolf; if he comes in, he will devour you
all--skin, hair, and everything. The wretch often disguises himself, but
you will know him at once by his rough voice and his black feet.’ The
kids said: ‘Dear mother, we will take good care of ourselves; you may go
away without any anxiety.’ Then the old one bleated, and went on her way
with an easy mind.
It was not long before someone knocked at the house-door and called:
‘Open the door, dear children; your mother is here, and has brought
something back with her for each of you.’ But the little kids knew that
it was the wolf, by the rough voice. ‘We will not open the door,’ cried
they, ‘you are not our mother. She has a soft, pleasant voice, but
your voice is rough; you are the wolf!’ Then the wolf went away to a
shopkeeper and bought himself a great lump of chalk, ate this and made
his voice soft with it. Then he came back, knocked at the door of the
house, and called: ‘Open the door, dear children, your mother is here
and has brought something back with her for each of you.’ But the wolf
had laid his black paws against the window, and the children saw them
and cried: ‘We will not open the door, our mother has not black feet
like you: you are the wolf!’ Then the wolf ran to a baker and said: ‘I
have hurt my feet, rub some dough over them for me.’ And when the baker
had rubbed his feet over, he ran to the miller and said: ‘Strew some
white meal over my feet for me.’ The miller thought to himself: ‘The
wolf wants to deceive someone,’ and refused; but the wolf said: ‘If you
will not do it, I will devour you.’ Then the miller was afraid, and made
his paws white for him. Truly, this is the way of mankind.
So now the wretch went for the third time to the house-door, knocked at
it and said: ‘Open the door for me, children, your dear little mother
has come home, and has brought every one of you something back from the
forest with her.’ The little kids cried: ‘First show us your paws that
we may know if you are our dear little mother.’ Then he put his paws
in through the window and when the kids saw that they were white, they
believed that all he said was true, and opened the door. But who should
come in but the wolf! They were terrified and wanted to hide themselves.
One sprang under the table, the second into the bed, the third into the
stove, the fourth into the kitchen, the fifth into the cupboard, the
sixth under the washing-bowl, and the seventh into the clock-case. But
the wolf found them all, and used no great ceremony; one after the
other he swallowed them down his throat. The youngest, who was in
the clock-case, was the only one he did not find. When the wolf had
satisfied his appetite he took himself off, laid himself down under a
tree in the green meadow outside, and began to sleep. Soon afterwards
the old goat came home again from the forest. Ah! what a sight she saw
there! The house-door stood wide open. The table, chairs, and benches
were thrown down, the washing-bowl lay broken to pieces, and the quilts
and pillows were pulled off the bed. She sought her children, but they
were nowhere to be found. She called them one after another by name, but
no one answered. At last, when she came to the youngest, a soft voice
cried: ‘Dear mother, I am in the clock-case.’ She took the kid out, and
it told her that the wolf had come and had eaten all the others. Then
you may imagine how she wept over her poor children.
At length in her grief she went out, and the youngest kid ran with her.
When they came to the meadow, there lay the wolf by the tree and snored
so loud that the branches shook. She looked at him on every side and
saw that something was moving and struggling in his gorged belly. ‘Ah,
heavens,’ she said, ‘is it possible that my poor children whom he has
swallowed down for his supper, can be still alive?’ Then the kid had to
run home and fetch scissors, and a needle and thread, and the goat cut
open the monster’s stomach, and hardly had she made one cut, than one
little kid thrust its head out, and when she had cut farther, all six
sprang out one after another, and were all still alive, and had suffered
no injury whatever, for in his greediness the monster had swallowed them
down whole. What rejoicing there was! They embraced their dear mother,
and jumped like a tailor at his wedding. The mother, however, said: ‘Now
go and look for some big stones, and we will fill the wicked beast’s
stomach with them while he is still asleep.’ Then the seven kids dragged
the stones thither with all speed, and put as many of them into this
stomach as they could get in; and the mother sewed him up again in the
greatest haste, so that he was not aware of anything and never once
stirred.
When the wolf at length had had his fill of sleep, he got on his legs,
and as the stones in his stomach made him very thirsty, he wanted to
go to a well to drink. But when he began to walk and to move about, the
stones in his stomach knocked against each other and rattled. Then cried
he:
‘What rumbles and tumbles
Against my poor bones?
I thought ‘twas six kids,
But it feels like big stones.’
And when he got to the well and stooped over the water to drink, the
heavy stones made him fall in, and he drowned miserably. When the seven
kids saw that, they came running to the spot and cried aloud: ‘The wolf
is dead! The wolf is dead!’ and danced for joy round about the well with
their mother.
THE QUEEN BEE
Two kings’ sons once upon a time went into the world to seek their
fortunes; but they soon fell into a wasteful foolish way of living, so
that they could not return home again. Then their brother, who was a
little insignificant dwarf, went out to seek for his brothers: but when
he had found them they only laughed at him, to think that he, who was so
young and simple, should try to travel through the world, when they, who
were so much wiser, had been unable to get on. However, they all set
out on their journey together, and came at last to an ant-hill. The two
elder brothers would have pulled it down, in order to see how the poor
ants in their fright would run about and carry off their eggs. But the
little dwarf said, ‘Let the poor things enjoy themselves, I will not
suffer you to trouble them.’
So on they went, and came to a lake where many many ducks were swimming
about. The two brothers wanted to catch two, and roast them. But the
dwarf said, ‘Let the poor things enjoy themselves, you shall not kill
them.’ Next they came to a bees’-nest in a hollow tree, and there was
so much honey that it ran down the trunk; and the two brothers wanted to
light a fire under the tree and kill the bees, so as to get their honey.
But the dwarf held them back, and said, ‘Let the pretty insects enjoy
themselves, I cannot let you burn them.’
At length the three brothers came to a castle: and as they passed by the
stables they saw fine horses standing there, but all were of marble, and
no man was to be seen. Then they went through all the rooms, till they
came to a door on which were three locks: but in the middle of the door
was a wicket, so that they could look into the next room. There they saw
a little grey old man sitting at a table; and they called to him once or
twice, but he did not hear: however, they called a third time, and then
he rose and came out to them.
He said nothing, but took hold of them and led them to a beautiful
table covered with all sorts of good things: and when they had eaten and
drunk, he showed each of them to a bed-chamber.
The next morning he came to the eldest and took him to a marble table,
where there were three tablets, containing an account of the means by
which the castle might be disenchanted. The first tablet said: ‘In the
wood, under the moss, lie the thousand pearls belonging to the king’s
daughter; they must all be found: and if one be missing by set of sun,
he who seeks them will be turned into marble.’
The eldest brother set out, and sought for the pearls the whole day:
but the evening came, and he had not found the first hundred: so he was
turned into stone as the tablet had foretold.
The next day the second brother undertook the task; but he succeeded no
better than the first; for he could only find the second hundred of the
pearls; and therefore he too was turned into stone.
At last came the little dwarf’s turn; and he looked in the moss; but it
was so hard to find the pearls, and the job was so tiresome!--so he sat
down upon a stone and cried. And as he sat there, the king of the ants
(whose life he had saved) came to help him, with five thousand ants; and
it was not long before they had found all the pearls and laid them in a
heap.
The second tablet said: ‘The key of the princess’s bed-chamber must be
fished up out of the lake.’ And as the dwarf came to the brink of it,
he saw the two ducks whose lives he had saved swimming about; and they
dived down and soon brought in the key from the bottom.
The third task was the hardest. It was to choose out the youngest and
the best of the king’s three daughters. Now they were all beautiful, and
all exactly alike: but he was told that the eldest had eaten a piece of
sugar, the next some sweet syrup, and the youngest a spoonful of honey;
so he was to guess which it was that had eaten the honey.
Then came the queen of the bees, who had been saved by the little dwarf
from the fire, and she tried the lips of all three; but at last she sat
upon the lips of the one that had eaten the honey: and so the dwarf knew
which was the youngest. Thus the spell was broken, and all who had been
turned into stones awoke, and took their proper forms. And the dwarf
married the youngest and the best of the princesses, and was king after
her father’s death; but his two brothers married the other two sisters.
THE ELVES AND THE SHOEMAKER
There was once a shoemaker, who worked very hard and was very honest:
but still he could not earn enough to live upon; and at last all he
had in the world was gone, save just leather enough to make one pair of
shoes.
Then he cut his leather out, all ready to make up the next day, meaning
to rise early in the morning to his work. His conscience was clear and
his heart light amidst all his troubles; so he went peaceably to bed,
left all his cares to Heaven, and soon fell asleep. In the morning after
he had said his prayers, he sat himself down to his work; when, to his
great wonder, there stood the shoes all ready made, upon the table. The
good man knew not what to say or think at such an odd thing happening.
He looked at the workmanship; there was not one false stitch in the
whole job; all was so neat and true, that it was quite a masterpiece.
The same day a customer came in, and the shoes suited him so well that
he willingly paid a price higher than usual for them; and the poor
shoemaker, with the money, bought leather enough to make two pairs more.
In the evening he cut out the work, and went to bed early, that he might
get up and begin betimes next day; but he was saved all the trouble, for
when he got up in the morning the work was done ready to his hand. Soon
in came buyers, who paid him handsomely for his goods, so that he bought
leather enough for four pair more. He cut out the work again overnight
and found it done in the morning, as before; and so it went on for some
time: what was got ready in the evening was always done by daybreak, and
the good man soon became thriving and well off again.
One evening, about Christmas-time, as he and his wife were sitting over
the fire chatting together, he said to her, ‘I should like to sit up and
watch tonight, that we may see who it is that comes and does my work for
me.’ The wife liked the thought; so they left a light burning, and hid
themselves in a corner of the room, behind a curtain that was hung up
there, and watched what would happen.
As soon as it was midnight, there came in two little naked dwarfs; and
they sat themselves upon the shoemaker’s bench, took up all the work
that was cut out, and began to ply with their little fingers, stitching
and rapping and tapping away at such a rate, that the shoemaker was all
wonder, and could not take his eyes off them. And on they went, till the
job was quite done, and the shoes stood ready for use upon the table.
This was long before daybreak; and then they bustled away as quick as
lightning.
The next day the wife said to the shoemaker. ‘These little wights have
made us rich, and we ought to be thankful to them, and do them a good
turn if we can. I am quite sorry to see them run about as they do; and
indeed it is not very decent, for they have nothing upon their backs to
keep off the cold. I’ll tell you what, I will make each of them a shirt,
and a coat and waistcoat, and a pair of pantaloons into the bargain; and
do you make each of them a little pair of shoes.’
The thought pleased the good cobbler very much; and one evening, when
all the things were ready, they laid them on the table, instead of the
work that they used to cut out, and then went and hid themselves, to
watch what the little elves would do.
About midnight in they came, dancing and skipping, hopped round the
room, and then went to sit down to their work as usual; but when they
saw the clothes lying for them, they laughed and chuckled, and seemed
mightily delighted.
Then they dressed themselves in the twinkling of an eye, and danced and
capered and sprang about, as merry as could be; till at last they danced
out at the door, and away over the green.
The good couple saw them no more; but everything went well with them
from that time forward, as long as they lived.
THE JUNIPER-TREE
Long, long ago, some two thousand years or so, there lived a rich
man with a good and beautiful wife. They loved each other dearly, but
sorrowed much that they had no children. So greatly did they desire
to have one, that the wife prayed for it day and night, but still they
remained childless.
In front of the house there was a court, in which grew a juniper-tree.
One winter’s day the wife stood under the tree to peel some apples, and
as she was peeling them, she cut her finger, and the blood fell on the
snow. ‘Ah,’ sighed the woman heavily, ‘if I had but a child, as red as
blood and as white as snow,’ and as she spoke the words, her heart grew
light within her, and it seemed to her that her wish was granted, and
she returned to the house feeling glad and comforted. A month passed,
and the snow had all disappeared; then another month went by, and all
the earth was green. So the months followed one another, and first the
trees budded in the woods, and soon the green branches grew thickly
intertwined, and then the blossoms began to fall. Once again the wife
stood under the juniper-tree, and it was so full of sweet scent that her
heart leaped for joy, and she was so overcome with her happiness, that
she fell on her knees. Presently the fruit became round and firm, and
she was glad and at peace; but when they were fully ripe she picked the
berries and ate eagerly of them, and then she grew sad and ill. A little
while later she called her husband, and said to him, weeping. ‘If I
die, bury me under the juniper-tree.’ Then she felt comforted and happy
again, and before another month had passed she had a little child, and
when she saw that it was as white as snow and as red as blood, her joy
was so great that she died.
Her husband buried her under the juniper-tree, and wept bitterly for
her. By degrees, however, his sorrow grew less, and although at times he
still grieved over his loss, he was able to go about as usual, and later
on he married again.
He now had a little daughter born to him; the child of his first wife
was a boy, who was as red as blood and as white as snow. The mother
loved her daughter very much, and when she looked at her and then looked
at the boy, it pierced her heart to think that he would always stand in
the way of her own child, and she was continually thinking how she could
get the whole of the property for her. This evil thought took possession
of her more and more, and made her behave very unkindly to the boy. She
drove him from place to place with cuffings and buffetings, so that the
poor child went about in fear, and had no peace from the time he left
school to the time he went back.
One day the little daughter came running to her mother in the
store-room, and said, ‘Mother, give me an apple.’ ‘Yes, my child,’ said
the wife, and she gave her a beautiful apple out of the chest; the chest
had a very heavy lid and a large iron lock.
‘Mother,’ said the little daughter again, ‘may not brother have one
too?’ The mother was angry at this, but she answered, ‘Yes, when he
comes out of school.’
Just then she looked out of the window and saw him coming, and it seemed
as if an evil spirit entered into her, for she snatched the apple out
of her little daughter’s hand, and said, ‘You shall not have one before
your brother.’ She threw the apple into the chest and shut it to. The
little boy now came in, and the evil spirit in the wife made her say
kindly to him, ‘My son, will you have an apple?’ but she gave him a
wicked look. ‘Mother,’ said the boy, ‘how dreadful you look! Yes, give
me an apple.’ The thought came to her that she would kill him. ‘Come
with me,’ she said, and she lifted up the lid of the chest; ‘take one
out for yourself.’ And as he bent over to do so, the evil spirit urged
her, and crash! down went the lid, and off went the little boy’s head.
Then she was overwhelmed with fear at the thought of what she had done.
‘If only I can prevent anyone knowing that I did it,’ she thought. So
she went upstairs to her room, and took a white handkerchief out of
her top drawer; then she set the boy’s head again on his shoulders, and
bound it with the handkerchief so that nothing could be seen, and placed
him on a chair by the door with an apple in his hand.
Soon after this, little Marleen came up to her mother who was stirring
a pot of boiling water over the fire, and said, ‘Mother, brother is
sitting by the door with an apple in his hand, and he looks so pale;
and when I asked him to give me the apple, he did not answer, and that
frightened me.’
‘Go to him again,’ said her mother, ‘and if he does not answer, give him
a box on the ear.’ So little Marleen went, and said, ‘Brother, give me
that apple,’ but he did not say a word; then she gave him a box on the
ear, and his head rolled off. She was so terrified at this, that she ran
crying and screaming to her mother. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘I have knocked off
brother’s head,’ and then she wept and wept, and nothing would stop her.
‘What have you done!’ said her mother, ‘but no one must know about it,
so you must keep silence; what is done can’t be undone; we will make
him into puddings.’ And she took the little boy and cut him up, made him
into puddings, and put him in the pot. But Marleen stood looking on,
and wept and wept, and her tears fell into the pot, so that there was no
need of salt.
Presently the father came home and sat down to his dinner; he asked,
‘Where is my son?’ The mother said nothing, but gave him a large dish of
black pudding, and Marleen still wept without ceasing.
The father again asked, ‘Where is my son?’
‘Oh,’ answered the wife, ‘he is gone into the country to his mother’s
great uncle; he is going to stay there some time.’
‘What has he gone there for, and he never even said goodbye to me!’
‘Well, he likes being there, and he told me he should be away quite six
weeks; he is well looked after there.’
‘I feel very unhappy about it,’ said the husband, ‘in case it should not
be all right, and he ought to have said goodbye to me.’
With this he went on with his dinner, and said, ‘Little Marleen, why do
you weep? Brother will soon be back.’ Then he asked his wife for more
pudding, and as he ate, he threw the bones under the table.
Little Marleen went upstairs and took her best silk handkerchief out of
her bottom drawer, and in it she wrapped all the bones from under the
table and carried them outside, and all the time she did nothing but
weep. Then she laid them in the green grass under the juniper-tree, and
she had no sooner done so, then all her sadness seemed to leave her,
and she wept no more. And now the juniper-tree began to move, and the
branches waved backwards and forwards, first away from one another, and
then together again, as it might be someone clapping their hands for
joy. After this a mist came round the tree, and in the midst of it there
was a burning as of fire, and out of the fire there flew a beautiful
bird, that rose high into the air, singing magnificently, and when it
could no more be seen, the juniper-tree stood there as before, and the
silk handkerchief and the bones were gone.
Little Marleen now felt as lighthearted and happy as if her brother were
still alive, and she went back to the house and sat down cheerfully to
the table and ate.
The bird flew away and alighted on the house of a goldsmith and began to
sing:
‘My mother killed her little son;
My father grieved when I was gone;
My sister loved me best of all;
She laid her kerchief over me,
And took my bones that they might lie
Underneath the juniper-tree
Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
The goldsmith was in his workshop making a gold chain, when he heard the
song of the bird on his roof. He thought it so beautiful that he got
up and ran out, and as he crossed the threshold he lost one of his
slippers. But he ran on into the middle of the street, with a slipper on
one foot and a sock on the other; he still had on his apron, and still
held the gold chain and the pincers in his hands, and so he stood gazing
up at the bird, while the sun came shining brightly down on the street.
‘Bird,’ he said, ‘how beautifully you sing! Sing me that song again.’
‘Nay,’ said the bird, ‘I do not sing twice for nothing. Give that gold
chain, and I will sing it you again.’
‘Here is the chain, take it,’ said the goldsmith. ‘Only sing me that
again.’
The bird flew down and took the gold chain in his right claw, and then
he alighted again in front of the goldsmith and sang:
‘My mother killed her little son;
My father grieved when I was gone;
My sister loved me best of all;
She laid her kerchief over me,
And took my bones that they might lie
Underneath the juniper-tree
Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
Then he flew away, and settled on the roof of a shoemaker’s house and
sang:
‘My mother killed her little son;
My father grieved when I was gone;
My sister loved me best of all;
She laid her kerchief over me,
And took my bones that they might lie
Underneath the juniper-tree
Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
The shoemaker heard him, and he jumped up and ran out in his
shirt-sleeves, and stood looking up at the bird on the roof with his
hand over his eyes to keep himself from being blinded by the sun.
‘Bird,’ he said, ‘how beautifully you sing!’ Then he called through the
door to his wife: ‘Wife, come out; here is a bird, come and look at it
and hear how beautifully it sings.’ Then he called his daughter and the
children, then the apprentices, girls and boys, and they all ran up the
street to look at the bird, and saw how splendid it was with its red
and green feathers, and its neck like burnished gold, and eyes like two
bright stars in its head.
‘Bird,’ said the shoemaker, ‘sing me that song again.’
‘Nay,’ answered the bird, ‘I do not sing twice for nothing; you must
give me something.’
‘Wife,’ said the man, ‘go into the garret; on the upper shelf you will
see a pair of red shoes; bring them to me.’ The wife went in and fetched
the shoes.
‘There, bird,’ said the shoemaker, ‘now sing me that song again.’
The bird flew down and took the red shoes in his left claw, and then he
went back to the roof and sang:
‘My mother killed her little son;
My father grieved when I was gone;
My sister loved me best of all;
She laid her kerchief over me,
And took my bones that they might lie
Underneath the juniper-tree
Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
When he had finished, he flew away. He had the chain in his right claw
and the shoes in his left, and he flew right away to a mill, and the
mill went ‘Click clack, click clack, click clack.’ Inside the mill were
twenty of the miller’s men hewing a stone, and as they went ‘Hick hack,
hick hack, hick hack,’ the mill went ‘Click clack, click clack, click
clack.’
The bird settled on a lime-tree in front of the mill and sang:
‘My mother killed her little son;
then one of the men left off,
My father grieved when I was gone;
two more men left off and listened,
My sister loved me best of all;
then four more left off,
She laid her kerchief over me,
And took my bones that they might lie
now there were only eight at work,
Underneath
And now only five,
the juniper-tree.
And now only one,
Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
then he looked up and the last one had left off work.
‘Bird,’ he said, ‘what a beautiful song that is you sing! Let me hear it
too; sing it again.’
‘Nay,’ answered the bird, ‘I do not sing twice for nothing; give me that
millstone, and I will sing it again.’
‘If it belonged to me alone,’ said the man, ‘you should have it.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the others: ‘if he will sing again, he can have it.’
The bird came down, and all the twenty millers set to and lifted up the
stone with a beam; then the bird put his head through the hole and took
the stone round his neck like a collar, and flew back with it to the
tree and sang--
‘My mother killed her little son;
My father grieved when I was gone;
My sister loved me best of all;
She laid her kerchief over me,
And took my bones that they might lie
Underneath the juniper-tree
Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
And when he had finished his song, he spread his wings, and with the
chain in his right claw, the shoes in his left, and the millstone round
his neck, he flew right away to his father’s house.
The father, the mother, and little Marleen were having their dinner.
‘How lighthearted I feel,’ said the father, ‘so pleased and cheerful.’
‘And I,’ said the mother, ‘I feel so uneasy, as if a heavy thunderstorm
were coming.’
But little Marleen sat and wept and wept.
Then the bird came flying towards the house and settled on the roof.
‘I do feel so happy,’ said the father, ‘and how beautifully the sun
shines; I feel just as if I were going to see an old friend again.’
‘Ah!’ said the wife, ‘and I am so full of distress and uneasiness that
my teeth chatter, and I feel as if there were a fire in my veins,’ and
she tore open her dress; and all the while little Marleen sat in the
corner and wept, and the plate on her knees was wet with her tears.
The bird now flew to the juniper-tree and began singing:
‘My mother killed her little son;
the mother shut her eyes and her ears, that she might see and hear
nothing, but there was a roaring sound in her ears like that of a
violent storm, and in her eyes a burning and flashing like lightning:
My father grieved when I was gone;
‘Look, mother,’ said the man, ‘at the beautiful bird that is singing so
magnificently; and how warm and bright the sun is, and what a delicious
scent of spice in the air!’
My sister loved me best of all;
then little Marleen laid her head down on her knees and sobbed.
‘I must go outside and see the bird nearer,’ said the man.
‘Ah, do not go!’ cried the wife. ‘I feel as if the whole house were in
flames!’
But the man went out and looked at the bird.
She laid her kerchief over me,
And took my bones that they might lie
Underneath the juniper-tree
Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
With that the bird let fall the gold chain, and it fell just round the
man’s neck, so that it fitted him exactly.
He went inside, and said, ‘See, what a splendid bird that is; he has
given me this beautiful gold chain, and looks so beautiful himself.’
But the wife was in such fear and trouble, that she fell on the floor,
and her cap fell from her head.
Then the bird began again:
‘My mother killed her little son;
‘Ah me!’ cried the wife, ‘if I were but a thousand feet beneath the
earth, that I might not hear that song.’
My father grieved when I was gone;
then the woman fell down again as if dead.
My sister loved me best of all;
‘Well,’ said little Marleen, ‘I will go out too and see if the bird will
give me anything.’
So she went out.
She laid her kerchief over me,
And took my bones that they might lie
and he threw down the shoes to her,
Underneath the juniper-tree
Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
And she now felt quite happy and lighthearted; she put on the shoes and
danced and jumped about in them. ‘I was so miserable,’ she said, ‘when I
came out, but that has all passed away; that is indeed a splendid bird,
and he has given me a pair of red shoes.’
The wife sprang up, with her hair standing out from her head like flames
of fire. ‘Then I will go out too,’ she said, ‘and see if it will lighten
my misery, for I feel as if the world were coming to an end.’
But as she crossed the threshold, crash! the bird threw the millstone
down on her head, and she was crushed to death.
The father and little Marleen heard the sound and ran out, but they only
saw mist and flame and fire rising from the spot, and when these had
passed, there stood the little brother, and he took the father and
little Marleen by the hand; then they all three rejoiced, and went
inside together and sat down to their dinners and ate.
THE TURNIP
There were two brothers who were both soldiers; the one was rich and
the other poor. The poor man thought he would try to better himself; so,
pulling off his red coat, he became a gardener, and dug his ground well,
and sowed turnips.
When the seed came up, there was one plant bigger than all the rest; and
it kept getting larger and larger, and seemed as if it would never cease
growing; so that it might have been called the prince of turnips for
there never was such a one seen before, and never will again. At last it
was so big that it filled a cart, and two oxen could hardly draw it; and
the gardener knew not what in the world to do with it, nor whether it
would be a blessing or a curse to him. One day he said to himself, ‘What
shall I do with it? if I sell it, it will bring no more than another;
and for eating, the little turnips are better than this; the best thing
perhaps is to carry it and give it to the king as a mark of respect.’
Then he yoked his oxen, and drew the turnip to the court, and gave it
to the king. ‘What a wonderful thing!’ said the king; ‘I have seen many
strange things, but such a monster as this I never saw. Where did you
get the seed? or is it only your good luck? If so, you are a true child
of fortune.’ ‘Ah, no!’ answered the gardener, ‘I am no child of fortune;
I am a poor soldier, who never could get enough to live upon; so I
laid aside my red coat, and set to work, tilling the ground. I have a
brother, who is rich, and your majesty knows him well, and all the world
knows him; but because I am poor, everybody forgets me.’
The king then took pity on him, and said, ‘You shall be poor no
longer. I will give you so much that you shall be even richer than your
brother.’ Then he gave him gold and lands and flocks, and made him so
rich that his brother’s fortune could not at all be compared with his.
When the brother heard of all this, and how a turnip had made the
gardener so rich, he envied him sorely, and bethought himself how he
could contrive to get the same good fortune for himself. However, he
determined to manage more cleverly than his brother, and got together a
rich present of gold and fine horses for the king; and thought he must
have a much larger gift in return; for if his brother had received so
much for only a turnip, what must his present be worth?
The king took the gift very graciously, and said he knew not what to
give in return more valuable and wonderful than the great turnip; so
the soldier was forced to put it into a cart, and drag it home with him.
When he reached home, he knew not upon whom to vent his rage and spite;
and at length wicked thoughts came into his head, and he resolved to
kill his brother.
So he hired some villains to murder him; and having shown them where to
lie in ambush, he went to his brother, and said, ‘Dear brother, I have
found a hidden treasure; let us go and dig it up, and share it between
us.’ The other had no suspicions of his roguery: so they went out
together, and as they were travelling along, the murderers rushed out
upon him, bound him, and were going to hang him on a tree.
But whilst they were getting all ready, they heard the trampling of a
horse at a distance, which so frightened them that they pushed their
prisoner neck and shoulders together into a sack, and swung him up by a
cord to the tree, where they left him dangling, and ran away. Meantime
he worked and worked away, till he made a hole large enough to put out
his head.
When the horseman came up, he proved to be a student, a merry fellow,
who was journeying along on his nag, and singing as he went. As soon as
the man in the sack saw him passing under the tree, he cried out, ‘Good
morning! good morning to thee, my friend!’ The student looked about
everywhere; and seeing no one, and not knowing where the voice came
from, cried out, ‘Who calls me?’
Then the man in the tree answered, ‘Lift up thine eyes, for behold here
I sit in the sack of wisdom; here have I, in a short time, learned great
and wondrous things. Compared to this seat, all the learning of the
schools is as empty air. A little longer, and I shall know all that man
can know, and shall come forth wiser than the wisest of mankind. Here
I discern the signs and motions of the heavens and the stars; the laws
that control the winds; the number of the sands on the seashore; the
healing of the sick; the virtues of all simples, of birds, and of
precious stones. Wert thou but once here, my friend, though wouldst feel
and own the power of knowledge.
The student listened to all this and wondered much; at last he said,
‘Blessed be the day and hour when I found you; cannot you contrive to
let me into the sack for a little while?’ Then the other answered, as if
very unwillingly, ‘A little space I may allow thee to sit here, if thou
wilt reward me well and entreat me kindly; but thou must tarry yet an
hour below, till I have learnt some little matters that are yet unknown
to me.’
So the student sat himself down and waited a while; but the time hung
heavy upon him, and he begged earnestly that he might ascend forthwith,
for his thirst for knowledge was great. Then the other pretended to give
way, and said, ‘Thou must let the sack of wisdom descend, by untying
yonder cord, and then thou shalt enter.’ So the student let him down,
opened the sack, and set him free. ‘Now then,’ cried he, ‘let me ascend
quickly.’ As he began to put himself into the sack heels first, ‘Wait a
while,’ said the gardener, ‘that is not the way.’ Then he pushed him
in head first, tied up the sack, and soon swung up the searcher after
wisdom dangling in the air. ‘How is it with thee, friend?’ said he,
‘dost thou not feel that wisdom comes unto thee? Rest there in peace,
till thou art a wiser man than thou wert.’
So saying, he trotted off on the student’s nag, and left the poor fellow
to gather wisdom till somebody should come and let him down.
CLEVER HANS
The mother of Hans said: ‘Whither away, Hans?’ Hans answered: ‘To
Gretel.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘Oh, I’ll behave well. Goodbye, mother.’
‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans comes to Gretel. ‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day,
Hans. What do you bring that is good?’ ‘I bring nothing, I want to have
something given me.’ Gretel presents Hans with a needle, Hans says:
‘Goodbye, Gretel.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’
Hans takes the needle, sticks it into a hay-cart, and follows the cart
home. ‘Good evening, mother.’ ‘Good evening, Hans. Where have you been?’
‘With Gretel.’ ‘What did you take her?’ ‘Took nothing; had something
given me.’ ‘What did Gretel give you?’ ‘Gave me a needle.’ ‘Where is the
needle, Hans?’ ‘Stuck in the hay-cart.’ ‘That was ill done, Hans. You
should have stuck the needle in your sleeve.’ ‘Never mind, I’ll do
better next time.’
‘Whither away, Hans?’ ‘To Gretel, mother.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘Oh,
I’ll behave well. Goodbye, mother.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans comes to
Gretel. ‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day, Hans. What do you bring that is
good?’ ‘I bring nothing. I want to have something given to me.’ Gretel
presents Hans with a knife. ‘Goodbye, Gretel.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans
takes the knife, sticks it in his sleeve, and goes home. ‘Good evening,
mother.’ ‘Good evening, Hans. Where have you been?’ ‘With Gretel.’ What
did you take her?’ ‘Took her nothing, she gave me something.’ ‘What did
Gretel give you?’ ‘Gave me a knife.’ ‘Where is the knife, Hans?’ ‘Stuck
in my sleeve.’ ‘That’s ill done, Hans, you should have put the knife in
your pocket.’ ‘Never mind, will do better next time.’
‘Whither away, Hans?’ ‘To Gretel, mother.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘Oh,
I’ll behave well. Goodbye, mother.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans comes to
Gretel. ‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day, Hans. What good thing do you
bring?’ ‘I bring nothing, I want something given me.’ Gretel presents
Hans with a young goat. ‘Goodbye, Gretel.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans takes
the goat, ties its legs, and puts it in his pocket. When he gets home it
is suffocated. ‘Good evening, mother.’ ‘Good evening, Hans. Where have
you been?’ ‘With Gretel.’ ‘What did you take her?’ ‘Took nothing, she
gave me something.’ ‘What did Gretel give you?’ ‘She gave me a goat.’
‘Where is the goat, Hans?’ ‘Put it in my pocket.’ ‘That was ill done,
Hans, you should have put a rope round the goat’s neck.’ ‘Never mind,
will do better next time.’
‘Whither away, Hans?’ ‘To Gretel, mother.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘Oh,
I’ll behave well. Goodbye, mother.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans comes to
Gretel. ‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day, Hans. What good thing do you
bring?’ ‘I bring nothing, I want something given me.’ Gretel presents
Hans with a piece of bacon. ‘Goodbye, Gretel.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’
Hans takes the bacon, ties it to a rope, and drags it away behind him.
The dogs come and devour the bacon. When he gets home, he has the rope
in his hand, and there is no longer anything hanging on to it. ‘Good
evening, mother.’ ‘Good evening, Hans. Where have you been?’ ‘With
Gretel.’ ‘What did you take her?’ ‘I took her nothing, she gave me
something.’ ‘What did Gretel give you?’ ‘Gave me a bit of bacon.’ ‘Where
is the bacon, Hans?’ ‘I tied it to a rope, brought it home, dogs took
it.’ ‘That was ill done, Hans, you should have carried the bacon on your
head.’ ‘Never mind, will do better next time.’
‘Whither away, Hans?’ ‘To Gretel, mother.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘I’ll
behave well. Goodbye, mother.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans comes to Gretel.
‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day, Hans, What good thing do you bring?’ ‘I
bring nothing, but would have something given.’ Gretel presents Hans
with a calf. ‘Goodbye, Gretel.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’
Hans takes the calf, puts it on his head, and the calf kicks his face.
‘Good evening, mother.’ ‘Good evening, Hans. Where have you been?’ ‘With
Gretel.’ ‘What did you take her?’ ‘I took nothing, but had something
given me.’ ‘What did Gretel give you?’ ‘A calf.’ ‘Where have you the
calf, Hans?’ ‘I set it on my head and it kicked my face.’ ‘That was
ill done, Hans, you should have led the calf, and put it in the stall.’
‘Never mind, will do better next time.’
‘Whither away, Hans?’ ‘To Gretel, mother.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘I’ll
behave well. Goodbye, mother.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’
Hans comes to Gretel. ‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day, Hans. What good
thing do you bring?’ ‘I bring nothing, but would have something given.’
Gretel says to Hans: ‘I will go with you.’
Hans takes Gretel, ties her to a rope, leads her to the rack, and binds
her fast. Then Hans goes to his mother. ‘Good evening, mother.’ ‘Good
evening, Hans. Where have you been?’ ‘With Gretel.’ ‘What did you take
her?’ ‘I took her nothing.’ ‘What did Gretel give you?’ ‘She gave me
nothing, she came with me.’ ‘Where have you left Gretel?’ ‘I led her by
the rope, tied her to the rack, and scattered some grass for her.’ ‘That
was ill done, Hans, you should have cast friendly eyes on her.’ ‘Never
mind, will do better.’
Hans went into the stable, cut out all the calves’ and sheep’s eyes,
and threw them in Gretel’s face. Then Gretel became angry, tore herself
loose and ran away, and was no longer the bride of Hans.
THE THREE LANGUAGES
An aged count once lived in Switzerland, who had an only son, but he
was stupid, and could learn nothing. Then said the father: ‘Hark you,
my son, try as I will I can get nothing into your head. You must go from
hence, I will give you into the care of a celebrated master, who shall
see what he can do with you.’ The youth was sent into a strange town,
and remained a whole year with the master. At the end of this time,
he came home again, and his father asked: ‘Now, my son, what have you
learnt?’ ‘Father, I have learnt what the dogs say when they bark.’ ‘Lord
have mercy on us!’ cried the father; ‘is that all you have learnt? I
will send you into another town, to another master.’ The youth was taken
thither, and stayed a year with this master likewise. When he came back
the father again asked: ‘My son, what have you learnt?’ He answered:
‘Father, I have learnt what the birds say.’ Then the father fell into a
rage and said: ‘Oh, you lost man, you have spent the precious time and
learnt nothing; are you not ashamed to appear before my eyes? I will
send you to a third master, but if you learn nothing this time also, I
will no longer be your father.’ The youth remained a whole year with the
third master also, and when he came home again, and his father inquired:
‘My son, what have you learnt?’ he answered: ‘Dear father, I have this
year learnt what the frogs croak.’ Then the father fell into the most
furious anger, sprang up, called his people thither, and said: ‘This man
is no longer my son, I drive him forth, and command you to take him
out into the forest, and kill him.’ They took him forth, but when they
should have killed him, they could not do it for pity, and let him go,
and they cut the eyes and tongue out of a deer that they might carry
them to the old man as a token.
The youth wandered on, and after some time came to a fortress where he
begged for a night’s lodging. ‘Yes,’ said the lord of the castle, ‘if
you will pass the night down there in the old tower, go thither; but I
warn you, it is at the peril of your life, for it is full of wild dogs,
which bark and howl without stopping, and at certain hours a man has to
be given to them, whom they at once devour.’ The whole district was in
sorrow and dismay because of them, and yet no one could do anything to
stop this. The youth, however, was without fear, and said: ‘Just let me
go down to the barking dogs, and give me something that I can throw to
them; they will do nothing to harm me.’ As he himself would have it so,
they gave him some food for the wild animals, and led him down to the
tower. When he went inside, the dogs did not bark at him, but wagged
their tails quite amicably around him, ate what he set before them, and
did not hurt one hair of his head. Next morning, to the astonishment of
everyone, he came out again safe and unharmed, and said to the lord of
the castle: ‘The dogs have revealed to me, in their own language, why
they dwell there, and bring evil on the land. They are bewitched, and
are obliged to watch over a great treasure which is below in the tower,
and they can have no rest until it is taken away, and I have likewise
learnt, from their discourse, how that is to be done.’ Then all who
heard this rejoiced, and the lord of the castle said he would adopt him
as a son if he accomplished it successfully. He went down again, and
as he knew what he had to do, he did it thoroughly, and brought a chest
full of gold out with him. The howling of the wild dogs was henceforth
heard no more; they had disappeared, and the country was freed from the
trouble.
After some time he took it in his head that he would travel to Rome. On
the way he passed by a marsh, in which a number of frogs were sitting
croaking. He listened to them, and when he became aware of what they
were saying, he grew very thoughtful and sad. At last he arrived in
Rome, where the Pope had just died, and there was great doubt among
the cardinals as to whom they should appoint as his successor. They at
length agreed that the person should be chosen as pope who should be
distinguished by some divine and miraculous token. And just as that was
decided on, the young count entered into the church, and suddenly two
snow-white doves flew on his shoulders and remained sitting there. The
ecclesiastics recognized therein the token from above, and asked him on
the spot if he would be pope. He was undecided, and knew not if he were
worthy of this, but the doves counselled him to do it, and at length he
said yes. Then was he anointed and consecrated, and thus was fulfilled
what he had heard from the frogs on his way, which had so affected him,
that he was to be his Holiness the Pope. Then he had to sing a mass, and
did not know one word of it, but the two doves sat continually on his
shoulders, and said it all in his ear.
THE FOX AND THE CAT
It happened that the cat met the fox in a forest, and as she thought to
herself: ‘He is clever and full of experience, and much esteemed in the
world,’ she spoke to him in a friendly way. ‘Good day, dear Mr Fox,
how are you? How is all with you? How are you getting on in these hard
times?’ The fox, full of all kinds of arrogance, looked at the cat from
head to foot, and for a long time did not know whether he would give
any answer or not. At last he said: ‘Oh, you wretched beard-cleaner, you
piebald fool, you hungry mouse-hunter, what can you be thinking of? Have
you the cheek to ask how I am getting on? What have you learnt? How
many arts do you understand?’ ‘I understand but one,’ replied the
cat, modestly. ‘What art is that?’ asked the fox. ‘When the hounds are
following me, I can spring into a tree and save myself.’ ‘Is that all?’
said the fox. ‘I am master of a hundred arts, and have into the bargain
a sackful of cunning. You make me sorry for you; come with me, I will
teach you how people get away from the hounds.’ Just then came a hunter
with four dogs. The cat sprang nimbly up a tree, and sat down at the top
of it, where the branches and foliage quite concealed her. ‘Open your
sack, Mr Fox, open your sack,’ cried the cat to him, but the dogs had
already seized him, and were holding him fast. ‘Ah, Mr Fox,’ cried the
cat. ‘You with your hundred arts are left in the lurch! Had you been
able to climb like me, you would not have lost your life.’
THE FOUR CLEVER BROTHERS
‘Dear children,’ said a poor man to his four sons, ‘I have nothing to
give you; you must go out into the wide world and try your luck. Begin
by learning some craft or another, and see how you can get on.’ So the
four brothers took their walking-sticks in their hands, and their little
bundles on their shoulders, and after bidding their father goodbye, went
all out at the gate together. When they had got on some way they came
to four crossways, each leading to a different country. Then the eldest
said, ‘Here we must part; but this day four years we will come back
to this spot, and in the meantime each must try what he can do for
himself.’
So each brother went his way; and as the eldest was hastening on a man
met him, and asked him where he was going, and what he wanted. ‘I am
going to try my luck in the world, and should like to begin by learning
some art or trade,’ answered he. ‘Then,’ said the man, ‘go with me, and
I will teach you to become the cunningest thief that ever was.’ ‘No,’
said the other, ‘that is not an honest calling, and what can one look
to earn by it in the end but the gallows?’ ‘Oh!’ said the man, ‘you need
not fear the gallows; for I will only teach you to steal what will be
fair game: I meddle with nothing but what no one else can get or care
anything about, and where no one can find you out.’ So the young man
agreed to follow his trade, and he soon showed himself so clever, that
nothing could escape him that he had once set his mind upon.
The second brother also met a man, who, when he found out what he was
setting out upon, asked him what craft he meant to follow. ‘I do not
know yet,’ said he. ‘Then come with me, and be a star-gazer. It is a
noble art, for nothing can be hidden from you, when once you understand
the stars.’ The plan pleased him much, and he soon became such a skilful
star-gazer, that when he had served out his time, and wanted to leave
his master, he gave him a glass, and said, ‘With this you can see all
that is passing in the sky and on earth, and nothing can be hidden from
you.’
The third brother met a huntsman, who took him with him, and taught him
so well all that belonged to hunting, that he became very clever in the
craft of the woods; and when he left his master he gave him a bow, and
said, ‘Whatever you shoot at with this bow you will be sure to hit.’
The youngest brother likewise met a man who asked him what he wished to
do. ‘Would not you like,’ said he, ‘to be a tailor?’ ‘Oh, no!’ said
the young man; ‘sitting cross-legged from morning to night, working
backwards and forwards with a needle and goose, will never suit me.’
‘Oh!’ answered the man, ‘that is not my sort of tailoring; come with me,
and you will learn quite another kind of craft from that.’ Not knowing
what better to do, he came into the plan, and learnt tailoring from the
beginning; and when he left his master, he gave him a needle, and said,
‘You can sew anything with this, be it as soft as an egg or as hard as
steel; and the joint will be so fine that no seam will be seen.’
After the space of four years, at the time agreed upon, the four
brothers met at the four cross-roads; and having welcomed each other,
set off towards their father’s home, where they told him all that had
happened to them, and how each had learned some craft.
Then, one day, as they were sitting before the house under a very high
tree, the father said, ‘I should like to try what each of you can do in
this way.’ So he looked up, and said to the second son, ‘At the top of
this tree there is a chaffinch’s nest; tell me how many eggs there are
in it.’ The star-gazer took his glass, looked up, and said, ‘Five.’
‘Now,’ said the father to the eldest son, ‘take away the eggs without
letting the bird that is sitting upon them and hatching them know
anything of what you are doing.’ So the cunning thief climbed up the
tree, and brought away to his father the five eggs from under the bird;
and it never saw or felt what he was doing, but kept sitting on at its
ease. Then the father took the eggs, and put one on each corner of the
table, and the fifth in the middle, and said to the huntsman, ‘Cut all
the eggs in two pieces at one shot.’ The huntsman took up his bow, and
at one shot struck all the five eggs as his father wished.
‘Now comes your turn,’ said he to the young tailor; ‘sew the eggs and
the young birds in them together again, so neatly that the shot shall
have done them no harm.’ Then the tailor took his needle, and sewed the
eggs as he was told; and when he had done, the thief was sent to take
them back to the nest, and put them under the bird without its knowing
it. Then she went on sitting, and hatched them: and in a few days they
crawled out, and had only a little red streak across their necks, where
the tailor had sewn them together.
‘Well done, sons!’ said the old man; ‘you have made good use of your
time, and learnt something worth the knowing; but I am sure I do not
know which ought to have the prize. Oh, that a time might soon come for
you to turn your skill to some account!’
Not long after this there was a great bustle in the country; for the
king’s daughter had been carried off by a mighty dragon, and the king
mourned over his loss day and night, and made it known that whoever
brought her back to him should have her for a wife. Then the four
brothers said to each other, ‘Here is a chance for us; let us try
what we can do.’ And they agreed to see whether they could not set the
princess free. ‘I will soon find out where she is, however,’ said the
star-gazer, as he looked through his glass; and he soon cried out, ‘I
see her afar off, sitting upon a rock in the sea, and I can spy the
dragon close by, guarding her.’ Then he went to the king, and asked for
a ship for himself and his brothers; and they sailed together over the
sea, till they came to the right place. There they found the princess
sitting, as the star-gazer had said, on the rock; and the dragon was
lying asleep, with his head upon her lap. ‘I dare not shoot at him,’
said the huntsman, ‘for I should kill the beautiful young lady also.’
‘Then I will try my skill,’ said the thief, and went and stole her away
from under the dragon, so quietly and gently that the beast did not know
it, but went on snoring.
Then away they hastened with her full of joy in their boat towards the
ship; but soon came the dragon roaring behind them through the air; for
he awoke and missed the princess. But when he got over the boat, and
wanted to pounce upon them and carry off the princess, the huntsman took
up his bow and shot him straight through the heart so that he fell down
dead. They were still not safe; for he was such a great beast that in
his fall he overset the boat, and they had to swim in the open sea
upon a few planks. So the tailor took his needle, and with a few large
stitches put some of the planks together; and he sat down upon these,
and sailed about and gathered up all pieces of the boat; and then tacked
them together so quickly that the boat was soon ready, and they then
reached the ship and got home safe.
When they had brought home the princess to her father, there was great
rejoicing; and he said to the four brothers, ‘One of you shall marry
her, but you must settle amongst yourselves which it is to be.’ Then
there arose a quarrel between them; and the star-gazer said, ‘If I had
not found the princess out, all your skill would have been of no use;
therefore she ought to be mine.’ ‘Your seeing her would have been of
no use,’ said the thief, ‘if I had not taken her away from the dragon;
therefore she ought to be mine.’ ‘No, she is mine,’ said the huntsman;
‘for if I had not killed the dragon, he would, after all, have torn you
and the princess into pieces.’ ‘And if I had not sewn the boat together
again,’ said the tailor, ‘you would all have been drowned, therefore she
is mine.’ Then the king put in a word, and said, ‘Each of you is right;
and as all cannot have the young lady, the best way is for neither of
you to have her: for the truth is, there is somebody she likes a great
deal better. But to make up for your loss, I will give each of you, as a
reward for his skill, half a kingdom.’ So the brothers agreed that this
plan would be much better than either quarrelling or marrying a lady who
had no mind to have them. And the king then gave to each half a kingdom,
as he had said; and they lived very happily the rest of their days, and
took good care of their father; and somebody took better care of the
young lady, than to let either the dragon or one of the craftsmen have
her again.
LILY AND THE LION
A merchant, who had three daughters, was once setting out upon a
journey; but before he went he asked each daughter what gift he should
bring back for her. The eldest wished for pearls; the second for jewels;
but the third, who was called Lily, said, ‘Dear father, bring me a
rose.’ Now it was no easy task to find a rose, for it was the middle
of winter; yet as she was his prettiest daughter, and was very fond of
flowers, her father said he would try what he could do. So he kissed all
three, and bid them goodbye.
And when the time came for him to go home, he had bought pearls and
jewels for the two eldest, but he had sought everywhere in vain for the
rose; and when he went into any garden and asked for such a thing, the
people laughed at him, and asked him whether he thought roses grew in
snow. This grieved him very much, for Lily was his dearest child; and as
he was journeying home, thinking what he should bring her, he came to a
fine castle; and around the castle was a garden, in one half of which it
seemed to be summer-time and in the other half winter. On one side the
finest flowers were in full bloom, and on the other everything looked
dreary and buried in the snow. ‘A lucky hit!’ said he, as he called to
his servant, and told him to go to a beautiful bed of roses that was
there, and bring him away one of the finest flowers.
This done, they were riding away well pleased, when up sprang a fierce
lion, and roared out, ‘Whoever has stolen my roses shall be eaten up
alive!’ Then the man said, ‘I knew not that the garden belonged to you;
can nothing save my life?’ ‘No!’ said the lion, ‘nothing, unless you
undertake to give me whatever meets you on your return home; if you
agree to this, I will give you your life, and the rose too for your
daughter.’ But the man was unwilling to do so and said, ‘It may be my
youngest daughter, who loves me most, and always runs to meet me when
I go home.’ Then the servant was greatly frightened, and said, ‘It may
perhaps be only a cat or a dog.’ And at last the man yielded with a
heavy heart, and took the rose; and said he would give the lion whatever
should meet him first on his return.
And as he came near home, it was Lily, his youngest and dearest
daughter, that met him; she came running, and kissed him, and welcomed
him home; and when she saw that he had brought her the rose, she was
still more glad. But her father began to be very sorrowful, and to weep,
saying, ‘Alas, my dearest child! I have bought this flower at a high
price, for I have said I would give you to a wild lion; and when he has
you, he will tear you in pieces, and eat you.’ Then he told her all that
had happened, and said she should not go, let what would happen.
But she comforted him, and said, ‘Dear father, the word you have given
must be kept; I will go to the lion, and soothe him: perhaps he will let
me come safe home again.’
The next morning she asked the way she was to go, and took leave of her
father, and went forth with a bold heart into the wood. But the lion was
an enchanted prince. By day he and all his court were lions, but in the
evening they took their right forms again. And when Lily came to the
castle, he welcomed her so courteously that she agreed to marry him. The
wedding-feast was held, and they lived happily together a long time. The
prince was only to be seen as soon as evening came, and then he held his
court; but every morning he left his bride, and went away by himself,
she knew not whither, till the night came again.
After some time he said to her, ‘Tomorrow there will be a great feast in
your father’s house, for your eldest sister is to be married; and if
you wish to go and visit her my lions shall lead you thither.’ Then she
rejoiced much at the thoughts of seeing her father once more, and set
out with the lions; and everyone was overjoyed to see her, for they had
thought her dead long since. But she told them how happy she was, and
stayed till the feast was over, and then went back to the wood.
Her second sister was soon after married, and when Lily was asked to
go to the wedding, she said to the prince, ‘I will not go alone this
time--you must go with me.’ But he would not, and said that it would be
a very hazardous thing; for if the least ray of the torch-light should
fall upon him his enchantment would become still worse, for he should be
changed into a dove, and be forced to wander about the world for seven
long years. However, she gave him no rest, and said she would take care
no light should fall upon him. So at last they set out together, and
took with them their little child; and she chose a large hall with thick
walls for him to sit in while the wedding-torches were lighted; but,
unluckily, no one saw that there was a crack in the door. Then the
wedding was held with great pomp, but as the train came from the church,
and passed with the torches before the hall, a very small ray of light
fell upon the prince. In a moment he disappeared, and when his wife came
in and looked for him, she found only a white dove; and it said to her,
‘Seven years must I fly up and down over the face of the earth, but
every now and then I will let fall a white feather, that will show you
the way I am going; follow it, and at last you may overtake and set me
free.’
This said, he flew out at the door, and poor Lily followed; and every
now and then a white feather fell, and showed her the way she was to
journey. Thus she went roving on through the wide world, and looked
neither to the right hand nor to the left, nor took any rest, for seven
years. Then she began to be glad, and thought to herself that the time
was fast coming when all her troubles should end; yet repose was still
far off, for one day as she was travelling on she missed the white
feather, and when she lifted up her eyes she could nowhere see the dove.
‘Now,’ thought she to herself, ‘no aid of man can be of use to me.’ So
she went to the sun and said, ‘Thou shinest everywhere, on the hill’s
top and the valley’s depth--hast thou anywhere seen my white dove?’
‘No,’ said the sun, ‘I have not seen it; but I will give thee a
casket--open it when thy hour of need comes.’
So she thanked the sun, and went on her way till eventide; and when
the moon arose, she cried unto it, and said, ‘Thou shinest through the
night, over field and grove--hast thou nowhere seen my white dove?’
‘No,’ said the moon, ‘I cannot help thee but I will give thee an
egg--break it when need comes.’
Then she thanked the moon, and went on till the night-wind blew; and she
raised up her voice to it, and said, ‘Thou blowest through every tree
and under every leaf--hast thou not seen my white dove?’ ‘No,’ said the
night-wind, ‘but I will ask three other winds; perhaps they have seen
it.’ Then the east wind and the west wind came, and said they too had
not seen it, but the south wind said, ‘I have seen the white dove--he
has fled to the Red Sea, and is changed once more into a lion, for the
seven years are passed away, and there he is fighting with a dragon;
and the dragon is an enchanted princess, who seeks to separate him from
you.’ Then the night-wind said, ‘I will give thee counsel. Go to the
Red Sea; on the right shore stand many rods--count them, and when thou
comest to the eleventh, break it off, and smite the dragon with it; and
so the lion will have the victory, and both of them will appear to you
in their own forms. Then look round and thou wilt see a griffin, winged
like bird, sitting by the Red Sea; jump on to his back with thy beloved
one as quickly as possible, and he will carry you over the waters to
your home. I will also give thee this nut,’ continued the night-wind.
‘When you are half-way over, throw it down, and out of the waters will
immediately spring up a high nut-tree on which the griffin will be able
to rest, otherwise he would not have the strength to bear you the whole
way; if, therefore, thou dost forget to throw down the nut, he will let
you both fall into the sea.’
So our poor wanderer went forth, and found all as the night-wind had
said; and she plucked the eleventh rod, and smote the dragon, and the
lion forthwith became a prince, and the dragon a princess again. But
no sooner was the princess released from the spell, than she seized
the prince by the arm and sprang on to the griffin’s back, and went off
carrying the prince away with her.
Thus the unhappy traveller was again forsaken and forlorn; but she
took heart and said, ‘As far as the wind blows, and so long as the cock
crows, I will journey on, till I find him once again.’ She went on for
a long, long way, till at length she came to the castle whither the
princess had carried the prince; and there was a feast got ready, and
she heard that the wedding was about to be held. ‘Heaven aid me now!’
said she; and she took the casket that the sun had given her, and found
that within it lay a dress as dazzling as the sun itself. So she put it
on, and went into the palace, and all the people gazed upon her; and
the dress pleased the bride so much that she asked whether it was to be
sold. ‘Not for gold and silver.’ said she, ‘but for flesh and blood.’
The princess asked what she meant, and she said, ‘Let me speak with the
bridegroom this night in his chamber, and I will give thee the dress.’
At last the princess agreed, but she told her chamberlain to give the
prince a sleeping draught, that he might not hear or see her. When
evening came, and the prince had fallen asleep, she was led into
his chamber, and she sat herself down at his feet, and said: ‘I have
followed thee seven years. I have been to the sun, the moon, and the
night-wind, to seek thee, and at last I have helped thee to overcome
the dragon. Wilt thou then forget me quite?’ But the prince all the time
slept so soundly, that her voice only passed over him, and seemed like
the whistling of the wind among the fir-trees.
Then poor Lily was led away, and forced to give up the golden dress; and
when she saw that there was no help for her, she went out into a meadow,
and sat herself down and wept. But as she sat she bethought herself of
the egg that the moon had given her; and when she broke it, there ran
out a hen and twelve chickens of pure gold, that played about, and then
nestled under the old one’s wings, so as to form the most beautiful
sight in the world. And she rose up and drove them before her, till the
bride saw them from her window, and was so pleased that she came forth
and asked her if she would sell the brood. ‘Not for gold or silver, but
for flesh and blood: let me again this evening speak with the bridegroom
in his chamber, and I will give thee the whole brood.’
Then the princess thought to betray her as before, and agreed to
what she asked: but when the prince went to his chamber he asked
the chamberlain why the wind had whistled so in the night. And the
chamberlain told him all--how he had given him a sleeping draught, and
how a poor maiden had come and spoken to him in his chamber, and was
to come again that night. Then the prince took care to throw away the
sleeping draught; and when Lily came and began again to tell him what
woes had befallen her, and how faithful and true to him she had been,
he knew his beloved wife’s voice, and sprang up, and said, ‘You have
awakened me as from a dream, for the strange princess had thrown a spell
around me, so that I had altogether forgotten you; but Heaven hath sent
you to me in a lucky hour.’
And they stole away out of the palace by night unawares, and seated
themselves on the griffin, who flew back with them over the Red Sea.
When they were half-way across Lily let the nut fall into the water,
and immediately a large nut-tree arose from the sea, whereon the griffin
rested for a while, and then carried them safely home. There they found
their child, now grown up to be comely and fair; and after all their
troubles they lived happily together to the end of their days.
THE FOX AND THE HORSE
A farmer had a horse that had been an excellent faithful servant to
him: but he was now grown too old to work; so the farmer would give him
nothing more to eat, and said, ‘I want you no longer, so take yourself
off out of my stable; I shall not take you back again until you are
stronger than a lion.’ Then he opened the door and turned him adrift.
The poor horse was very melancholy, and wandered up and down in the
wood, seeking some little shelter from the cold wind and rain. Presently
a fox met him: ‘What’s the matter, my friend?’ said he, ‘why do you hang
down your head and look so lonely and woe-begone?’ ‘Ah!’ replied the
horse, ‘justice and avarice never dwell in one house; my master has
forgotten all that I have done for him so many years, and because I
can no longer work he has turned me adrift, and says unless I become
stronger than a lion he will not take me back again; what chance can I
have of that? he knows I have none, or he would not talk so.’
However, the fox bid him be of good cheer, and said, ‘I will help you;
lie down there, stretch yourself out quite stiff, and pretend to be
dead.’ The horse did as he was told, and the fox went straight to the
lion who lived in a cave close by, and said to him, ‘A little way off
lies a dead horse; come with me and you may make an excellent meal of
his carcase.’ The lion was greatly pleased, and set off immediately; and
when they came to the horse, the fox said, ‘You will not be able to eat
him comfortably here; I’ll tell you what--I will tie you fast to
his tail, and then you can draw him to your den, and eat him at your
leisure.’
This advice pleased the lion, so he laid himself down quietly for the
fox to make him fast to the horse. But the fox managed to tie his legs
together and bound all so hard and fast that with all his strength he
could not set himself free. When the work was done, the fox clapped the
horse on the shoulder, and said, ‘Jip! Dobbin! Jip!’ Then up he sprang,
and moved off, dragging the lion behind him. The beast began to roar
and bellow, till all the birds of the wood flew away for fright; but the
horse let him sing on, and made his way quietly over the fields to his
master’s house.
‘Here he is, master,’ said he, ‘I have got the better of him’: and when
the farmer saw his old servant, his heart relented, and he said. ‘Thou
shalt stay in thy stable and be well taken care of.’ And so the poor old
horse had plenty to eat, and lived--till he died.
THE BLUE LIGHT
There was once upon a time a soldier who for many years had served the
king faithfully, but when the war came to an end could serve no longer
because of the many wounds which he had received. The king said to him:
‘You may return to your home, I need you no longer, and you will not
receive any more money, for he only receives wages who renders me
service for them.’ Then the soldier did not know how to earn a living,
went away greatly troubled, and walked the whole day, until in the
evening he entered a forest. When darkness came on, he saw a light,
which he went up to, and came to a house wherein lived a witch. ‘Do give
me one night’s lodging, and a little to eat and drink,’ said he to
her, ‘or I shall starve.’ ‘Oho!’ she answered, ‘who gives anything to a
run-away soldier? Yet will I be compassionate, and take you in, if you
will do what I wish.’ ‘What do you wish?’ said the soldier. ‘That you
should dig all round my garden for me, tomorrow.’ The soldier consented,
and next day laboured with all his strength, but could not finish it by
the evening. ‘I see well enough,’ said the witch, ‘that you can do no
more today, but I will keep you yet another night, in payment for
which you must tomorrow chop me a load of wood, and chop it small.’ The
soldier spent the whole day in doing it, and in the evening the witch
proposed that he should stay one night more. ‘Tomorrow, you shall only
do me a very trifling piece of work. Behind my house, there is an old
dry well, into which my light has fallen, it burns blue, and never goes
out, and you shall bring it up again.’ Next day the old woman took him
to the well, and let him down in a basket. He found the blue light, and
made her a signal to draw him up again. She did draw him up, but when he
came near the edge, she stretched down her hand and wanted to take the
blue light away from him. ‘No,’ said he, perceiving her evil intention,
‘I will not give you the light until I am standing with both feet upon
the ground.’ The witch fell into a passion, let him fall again into the
well, and went away.
The poor soldier fell without injury on the moist ground, and the blue
light went on burning, but of what use was that to him? He saw very well
that he could not escape death. He sat for a while very sorrowfully,
then suddenly he felt in his pocket and found his tobacco pipe, which
was still half full. ‘This shall be my last pleasure,’ thought he,
pulled it out, lit it at the blue light and began to smoke. When the
smoke had circled about the cavern, suddenly a little black dwarf stood
before him, and said: ‘Lord, what are your commands?’ ‘What my commands
are?’ replied the soldier, quite astonished. ‘I must do everything you
bid me,’ said the little man. ‘Good,’ said the soldier; ‘then in the
first place help me out of this well.’ The little man took him by the
hand, and led him through an underground passage, but he did not forget
to take the blue light with him. On the way the dwarf showed him the
treasures which the witch had collected and hidden there, and the
soldier took as much gold as he could carry. When he was above, he said
to the little man: ‘Now go and bind the old witch, and carry her before
the judge.’ In a short time she came by like the wind, riding on a wild
tom-cat and screaming frightfully. Nor was it long before the little man
reappeared. ‘It is all done,’ said he, ‘and the witch is already hanging
on the gallows. What further commands has my lord?’ inquired the dwarf.
‘At this moment, none,’ answered the soldier; ‘you can return home, only
be at hand immediately, if I summon you.’ ‘Nothing more is needed than
that you should light your pipe at the blue light, and I will appear
before you at once.’ Thereupon he vanished from his sight.
The soldier returned to the town from which he came. He went to the
best inn, ordered himself handsome clothes, and then bade the landlord
furnish him a room as handsome as possible. When it was ready and the
soldier had taken possession of it, he summoned the little black manikin
and said: ‘I have served the king faithfully, but he has dismissed me,
and left me to hunger, and now I want to take my revenge.’ ‘What am I to
do?’ asked the little man. ‘Late at night, when the king’s daughter is
in bed, bring her here in her sleep, she shall do servant’s work for
me.’ The manikin said: ‘That is an easy thing for me to do, but a very
dangerous thing for you, for if it is discovered, you will fare ill.’
When twelve o’clock had struck, the door sprang open, and the manikin
carried in the princess. ‘Aha! are you there?’ cried the soldier, ‘get
to your work at once! Fetch the broom and sweep the chamber.’ When
she had done this, he ordered her to come to his chair, and then he
stretched out his feet and said: ‘Pull off my boots,’ and then he
threw them in her face, and made her pick them up again, and clean
and brighten them. She, however, did everything he bade her, without
opposition, silently and with half-shut eyes. When the first cock
crowed, the manikin carried her back to the royal palace, and laid her
in her bed.
Next morning when the princess arose she went to her father, and told
him that she had had a very strange dream. ‘I was carried through the
streets with the rapidity of lightning,’ said she, ‘and taken into a
soldier’s room, and I had to wait upon him like a servant, sweep his
room, clean his boots, and do all kinds of menial work. It was only a
dream, and yet I am just as tired as if I really had done everything.’
‘The dream may have been true,’ said the king. ‘I will give you a piece
of advice. Fill your pocket full of peas, and make a small hole in the
pocket, and then if you are carried away again, they will fall out and
leave a track in the streets.’ But unseen by the king, the manikin was
standing beside him when he said that, and heard all. At night when
the sleeping princess was again carried through the streets, some peas
certainly did fall out of her pocket, but they made no track, for the
crafty manikin had just before scattered peas in every street there
was. And again the princess was compelled to do servant’s work until
cock-crow.
Next morning the king sent his people out to seek the track, but it was
all in vain, for in every street poor children were sitting, picking up
peas, and saying: ‘It must have rained peas, last night.’ ‘We must think
of something else,’ said the king; ‘keep your shoes on when you go to
bed, and before you come back from the place where you are taken, hide
one of them there, I will soon contrive to find it.’ The black manikin
heard this plot, and at night when the soldier again ordered him to
bring the princess, revealed it to him, and told him that he knew of no
expedient to counteract this stratagem, and that if the shoe were found
in the soldier’s house it would go badly with him. ‘Do what I bid you,’
replied the soldier, and again this third night the princess was obliged
to work like a servant, but before she went away, she hid her shoe under
the bed.
Next morning the king had the entire town searched for his daughter’s
shoe. It was found at the soldier’s, and the soldier himself, who at the
entreaty of the dwarf had gone outside the gate, was soon brought back,
and thrown into prison. In his flight he had forgotten the most valuable
things he had, the blue light and the gold, and had only one ducat in
his pocket. And now loaded with chains, he was standing at the window of
his dungeon, when he chanced to see one of his comrades passing by. The
soldier tapped at the pane of glass, and when this man came up, said to
him: ‘Be so kind as to fetch me the small bundle I have left lying in
the inn, and I will give you a ducat for doing it.’ His comrade ran
thither and brought him what he wanted. As soon as the soldier was alone
again, he lighted his pipe and summoned the black manikin. ‘Have no
fear,’ said the latter to his master. ‘Go wheresoever they take you, and
let them do what they will, only take the blue light with you.’ Next day
the soldier was tried, and though he had done nothing wicked, the judge
condemned him to death. When he was led forth to die, he begged a last
favour of the king. ‘What is it?’ asked the king. ‘That I may smoke one
more pipe on my way.’ ‘You may smoke three,’ answered the king, ‘but do
not imagine that I will spare your life.’ Then the soldier pulled out
his pipe and lighted it at the blue light, and as soon as a few wreaths
of smoke had ascended, the manikin was there with a small cudgel in his
hand, and said: ‘What does my lord command?’ ‘Strike down to earth that
false judge there, and his constable, and spare not the king who has
treated me so ill.’ Then the manikin fell on them like lightning,
darting this way and that way, and whosoever was so much as touched by
his cudgel fell to earth, and did not venture to stir again. The king
was terrified; he threw himself on the soldier’s mercy, and merely to
be allowed to live at all, gave him his kingdom for his own, and his
daughter to wife.
THE RAVEN
There was once a queen who had a little daughter, still too young to run
alone. One day the child was very troublesome, and the mother could not
quiet it, do what she would. She grew impatient, and seeing the ravens
flying round the castle, she opened the window, and said: ‘I wish you
were a raven and would fly away, then I should have a little peace.’
Scarcely were the words out of her mouth, when the child in her arms was
turned into a raven, and flew away from her through the open window. The
bird took its flight to a dark wood and remained there for a long time,
and meanwhile the parents could hear nothing of their child.
Long after this, a man was making his way through the wood when he heard
a raven calling, and he followed the sound of the voice. As he drew
near, the raven said, ‘I am by birth a king’s daughter, but am now under
the spell of some enchantment; you can, however, set me free.’ ‘What
am I to do?’ he asked. She replied, ‘Go farther into the wood until you
come to a house, wherein lives an old woman; she will offer you food and
drink, but you must not take of either; if you do, you will fall into
a deep sleep, and will not be able to help me. In the garden behind the
house is a large tan-heap, and on that you must stand and watch for me.
I shall drive there in my carriage at two o’clock in the afternoon for
three successive days; the first day it will be drawn by four white, the
second by four chestnut, and the last by four black horses; but if you
fail to keep awake and I find you sleeping, I shall not be set free.’
The man promised to do all that she wished, but the raven said, ‘Alas! I
know even now that you will take something from the woman and be unable
to save me.’ The man assured her again that he would on no account touch
a thing to eat or drink.
When he came to the house and went inside, the old woman met him, and
said, ‘Poor man! how tired you are! Come in and rest and let me give you
something to eat and drink.’
‘No,’ answered the man, ‘I will neither eat not drink.’
But she would not leave him alone, and urged him saying, ‘If you will
not eat anything, at least you might take a draught of wine; one drink
counts for nothing,’ and at last he allowed himself to be persuaded, and
drank.
As it drew towards the appointed hour, he went outside into the garden
and mounted the tan-heap to await the raven. Suddenly a feeling of
fatigue came over him, and unable to resist it, he lay down for a little
while, fully determined, however, to keep awake; but in another minute
his eyes closed of their own accord, and he fell into such a deep sleep,
that all the noises in the world would not have awakened him. At two
o’clock the raven came driving along, drawn by her four white horses;
but even before she reached the spot, she said to herself, sighing, ‘I
know he has fallen asleep.’ When she entered the garden, there she found
him as she had feared, lying on the tan-heap, fast asleep. She got out
of her carriage and went to him; she called him and shook him, but it
was all in vain, he still continued sleeping.
The next day at noon, the old woman came to him again with food and
drink which he at first refused. At last, overcome by her persistent
entreaties that he would take something, he lifted the glass and drank
again.
Towards two o’clock he went into the garden and on to the tan-heap to
watch for the raven. He had not been there long before he began to feel
so tired that his limbs seemed hardly able to support him, and he could
not stand upright any longer; so again he lay down and fell fast asleep.
As the raven drove along her four chestnut horses, she said sorrowfully
to herself, ‘I know he has fallen asleep.’ She went as before to look
for him, but he slept, and it was impossible to awaken him.
The following day the old woman said to him, ‘What is this? You are not
eating or drinking anything, do you want to kill yourself?’
He answered, ‘I may not and will not either eat or drink.’
But she put down the dish of food and the glass of wine in front of him,
and when he smelt the wine, he was unable to resist the temptation, and
took a deep draught.
When the hour came round again he went as usual on to the tan-heap in
the garden to await the king’s daughter, but he felt even more overcome
with weariness than on the two previous days, and throwing himself down,
he slept like a log. At two o’clock the raven could be seen approaching,
and this time her coachman and everything about her, as well as her
horses, were black.
She was sadder than ever as she drove along, and said mournfully, ‘I
know he has fallen asleep, and will not be able to set me free.’ She
found him sleeping heavily, and all her efforts to awaken him were of no
avail. Then she placed beside him a loaf, and some meat, and a flask
of wine, of such a kind, that however much he took of them, they would
never grow less. After that she drew a gold ring, on which her name was
engraved, off her finger, and put it upon one of his. Finally, she laid
a letter near him, in which, after giving him particulars of the food
and drink she had left for him, she finished with the following words:
‘I see that as long as you remain here you will never be able to set me
free; if, however, you still wish to do so, come to the golden castle
of Stromberg; this is well within your power to accomplish.’ She then
returned to her carriage and drove to the golden castle of Stromberg.
When the man awoke and found that he had been sleeping, he was grieved
at heart, and said, ‘She has no doubt been here and driven away again,
and it is now too late for me to save her.’ Then his eyes fell on the
things which were lying beside him; he read the letter, and knew from it
all that had happened. He rose up without delay, eager to start on his
way and to reach the castle of Stromberg, but he had no idea in which
direction he ought to go. He travelled about a long time in search of it
and came at last to a dark forest, through which he went on walking for
fourteen days and still could not find a way out. Once more the night
came on, and worn out he lay down under a bush and fell asleep. Again
the next day he pursued his way through the forest, and that evening,
thinking to rest again, he lay down as before, but he heard such a
howling and wailing that he found it impossible to sleep. He waited till
it was darker and people had begun to light up their houses, and then
seeing a little glimmer ahead of him, he went towards it.
He found that the light came from a house which looked smaller than
it really was, from the contrast of its height with that of an immense
giant who stood in front of it. He thought to himself, ‘If the giant
sees me going in, my life will not be worth much.’ However, after a
while he summoned up courage and went forward. When the giant saw him,
he called out, ‘It is lucky for that you have come, for I have not had
anything to eat for a long time. I can have you now for my supper.’ ‘I
would rather you let that alone,’ said the man, ‘for I do not willingly
give myself up to be eaten; if you are wanting food I have enough to
satisfy your hunger.’ ‘If that is so,’ replied the giant, ‘I will leave
you in peace; I only thought of eating you because I had nothing else.’
So they went indoors together and sat down, and the man brought out the
bread, meat, and wine, which although he had eaten and drunk of them,
were still unconsumed. The giant was pleased with the good cheer, and
ate and drank to his heart’s content. When he had finished his supper
the man asked him if he could direct him to the castle of Stromberg.
The giant said, ‘I will look on my map; on it are marked all the towns,
villages, and houses.’ So he fetched his map, and looked for the castle,
but could not find it. ‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘I have larger maps
upstairs in the cupboard, we will look on those,’ but they searched in
vain, for the castle was not marked even on these. The man now thought
he should like to continue his journey, but the giant begged him to
remain for a day or two longer until the return of his brother, who was
away in search of provisions. When the brother came home, they asked him
about the castle of Stromberg, and he told them he would look on his own
maps as soon as he had eaten and appeased his hunger. Accordingly, when
he had finished his supper, they all went up together to his room and
looked through his maps, but the castle was not to be found. Then he
fetched other older maps, and they went on looking for the castle until
at last they found it, but it was many thousand miles away. ‘How shall I
be able to get there?’ asked the man. ‘I have two hours to spare,’ said
the giant, ‘and I will carry you into the neighbourhood of the castle; I
must then return to look after the child who is in our care.’
The giant, thereupon, carried the man to within about a hundred leagues
of the castle, where he left him, saying, ‘You will be able to walk the
remainder of the way yourself.’ The man journeyed on day and night
till he reached the golden castle of Stromberg. He found it situated,
however, on a glass mountain, and looking up from the foot he saw the
enchanted maiden drive round her castle and then go inside. He was
overjoyed to see her, and longed to get to the top of the mountain, but
the sides were so slippery that every time he attempted to climb he
fell back again. When he saw that it was impossible to reach her, he was
greatly grieved, and said to himself, ‘I will remain here and wait for
her,’ so he built himself a little hut, and there he sat and watched for
a whole year, and every day he saw the king’s daughter driving round her
castle, but still was unable to get nearer to her.
Looking out from his hut one day he saw three robbers fighting and he
called out to them, ‘God be with you.’ They stopped when they heard the
call, but looking round and seeing nobody, they went on again with their
fighting, which now became more furious. ‘God be with you,’ he cried
again, and again they paused and looked about, but seeing no one went
back to their fighting. A third time he called out, ‘God be with you,’
and then thinking he should like to know the cause of dispute between
the three men, he went out and asked them why they were fighting so
angrily with one another. One of them said that he had found a stick,
and that he had but to strike it against any door through which he
wished to pass, and it immediately flew open. Another told him that he
had found a cloak which rendered its wearer invisible; and the third had
caught a horse which would carry its rider over any obstacle, and even
up the glass mountain. They had been unable to decide whether they
would keep together and have the things in common, or whether they would
separate. On hearing this, the man said, ‘I will give you something in
exchange for those three things; not money, for that I have not got,
but something that is of far more value. I must first, however, prove
whether all you have told me about your three things is true.’ The
robbers, therefore, made him get on the horse, and handed him the stick
and the cloak, and when he had put this round him he was no longer
visible. Then he fell upon them with the stick and beat them one after
another, crying, ‘There, you idle vagabonds, you have got what you
deserve; are you satisfied now!’
After this he rode up the glass mountain. When he reached the gate of
the castle, he found it closed, but he gave it a blow with his stick,
and it flew wide open at once and he passed through. He mounted the
steps and entered the room where the maiden was sitting, with a golden
goblet full of wine in front of her. She could not see him for he still
wore his cloak. He took the ring which she had given him off his finger,
and threw it into the goblet, so that it rang as it touched the bottom.
‘That is my own ring,’ she exclaimed, ‘and if that is so the man must
also be here who is coming to set me free.’
She sought for him about the castle, but could find him nowhere.
Meanwhile he had gone outside again and mounted his horse and thrown off
the cloak. When therefore she came to the castle gate she saw him, and
cried aloud for joy. Then he dismounted and took her in his arms; and
she kissed him, and said, ‘Now you have indeed set me free, and tomorrow
we will celebrate our marriage.’
THE GOLDEN GOOSE
There was a man who had three sons, the youngest of whom was called
Dummling,[*] and was despised, mocked, and sneered at on every occasion.
[*] Simpleton
It happened that the eldest wanted to go into the forest to hew wood,
and before he went his mother gave him a beautiful sweet cake and a
bottle of wine in order that he might not suffer from hunger or thirst.
When he entered the forest he met a little grey-haired old man who bade
him good day, and said: ‘Do give me a piece of cake out of your pocket,
and let me have a draught of your wine; I am so hungry and thirsty.’ But
the clever son answered: ‘If I give you my cake and wine, I shall have
none for myself; be off with you,’ and he left the little man standing
and went on.
But when he began to hew down a tree, it was not long before he made a
false stroke, and the axe cut him in the arm, so that he had to go home
and have it bound up. And this was the little grey man’s doing.
After this the second son went into the forest, and his mother gave him,
like the eldest, a cake and a bottle of wine. The little old grey man
met him likewise, and asked him for a piece of cake and a drink of wine.
But the second son, too, said sensibly enough: ‘What I give you will be
taken away from myself; be off!’ and he left the little man standing and
went on. His punishment, however, was not delayed; when he had made a
few blows at the tree he struck himself in the leg, so that he had to be
carried home.
Then Dummling said: ‘Father, do let me go and cut wood.’ The father
answered: ‘Your brothers have hurt themselves with it, leave it alone,
you do not understand anything about it.’ But Dummling begged so long
that at last he said: ‘Just go then, you will get wiser by hurting
yourself.’ His mother gave him a cake made with water and baked in the
cinders, and with it a bottle of sour beer.
When he came to the forest the little old grey man met him likewise,
and greeting him, said: ‘Give me a piece of your cake and a drink out
of your bottle; I am so hungry and thirsty.’ Dummling answered: ‘I have
only cinder-cake and sour beer; if that pleases you, we will sit
down and eat.’ So they sat down, and when Dummling pulled out his
cinder-cake, it was a fine sweet cake, and the sour beer had become good
wine. So they ate and drank, and after that the little man said: ‘Since
you have a good heart, and are willing to divide what you have, I will
give you good luck. There stands an old tree, cut it down, and you will
find something at the roots.’ Then the little man took leave of him.
Dummling went and cut down the tree, and when it fell there was a goose
sitting in the roots with feathers of pure gold. He lifted her up, and
taking her with him, went to an inn where he thought he would stay the
night. Now the host had three daughters, who saw the goose and were
curious to know what such a wonderful bird might be, and would have
liked to have one of its golden feathers.
The eldest thought: ‘I shall soon find an opportunity of pulling out a
feather,’ and as soon as Dummling had gone out she seized the goose by
the wing, but her finger and hand remained sticking fast to it.
The second came soon afterwards, thinking only of how she might get a
feather for herself, but she had scarcely touched her sister than she
was held fast.
At last the third also came with the like intent, and the others
screamed out: ‘Keep away; for goodness’ sake keep away!’ But she did
not understand why she was to keep away. ‘The others are there,’ she
thought, ‘I may as well be there too,’ and ran to them; but as soon as
she had touched her sister, she remained sticking fast to her. So they
had to spend the night with the goose.
The next morning Dummling took the goose under his arm and set out,
without troubling himself about the three girls who were hanging on to
it. They were obliged to run after him continually, now left, now right,
wherever his legs took him.
In the middle of the fields the parson met them, and when he saw the
procession he said: ‘For shame, you good-for-nothing girls, why are you
running across the fields after this young man? Is that seemly?’ At the
same time he seized the youngest by the hand in order to pull her away,
but as soon as he touched her he likewise stuck fast, and was himself
obliged to run behind.
Before long the sexton came by and saw his master, the parson, running
behind three girls. He was astonished at this and called out: ‘Hi!
your reverence, whither away so quickly? Do not forget that we have a
christening today!’ and running after him he took him by the sleeve, but
was also held fast to it.
Whilst the five were trotting thus one behind the other, two labourers
came with their hoes from the fields; the parson called out to them
and begged that they would set him and the sexton free. But they had
scarcely touched the sexton when they were held fast, and now there were
seven of them running behind Dummling and the goose.
Soon afterwards he came to a city, where a king ruled who had a daughter
who was so serious that no one could make her laugh. So he had put forth
a decree that whosoever should be able to make her laugh should marry
her. When Dummling heard this, he went with his goose and all her train
before the king’s daughter, and as soon as she saw the seven people
running on and on, one behind the other, she began to laugh quite
loudly, and as if she would never stop. Thereupon Dummling asked to have
her for his wife; but the king did not like the son-in-law, and made all
manner of excuses and said he must first produce a man who could drink
a cellarful of wine. Dummling thought of the little grey man, who could
certainly help him; so he went into the forest, and in the same place
where he had felled the tree, he saw a man sitting, who had a very
sorrowful face. Dummling asked him what he was taking to heart so
sorely, and he answered: ‘I have such a great thirst and cannot quench
it; cold water I cannot stand, a barrel of wine I have just emptied, but
that to me is like a drop on a hot stone!’
‘There, I can help you,’ said Dummling, ‘just come with me and you shall
be satisfied.’
He led him into the king’s cellar, and the man bent over the huge
barrels, and drank and drank till his loins hurt, and before the day was
out he had emptied all the barrels. Then Dummling asked once more
for his bride, but the king was vexed that such an ugly fellow, whom
everyone called Dummling, should take away his daughter, and he made a
new condition; he must first find a man who could eat a whole mountain
of bread. Dummling did not think long, but went straight into the
forest, where in the same place there sat a man who was tying up his
body with a strap, and making an awful face, and saying: ‘I have eaten a
whole ovenful of rolls, but what good is that when one has such a hunger
as I? My stomach remains empty, and I must tie myself up if I am not to
die of hunger.’
At this Dummling was glad, and said: ‘Get up and come with me; you shall
eat yourself full.’ He led him to the king’s palace where all the
flour in the whole Kingdom was collected, and from it he caused a huge
mountain of bread to be baked. The man from the forest stood before it,
began to eat, and by the end of one day the whole mountain had vanished.
Then Dummling for the third time asked for his bride; but the king again
sought a way out, and ordered a ship which could sail on land and on
water. ‘As soon as you come sailing back in it,’ said he, ‘you shall
have my daughter for wife.’
Dummling went straight into the forest, and there sat the little grey
man to whom he had given his cake. When he heard what Dummling wanted,
he said: ‘Since you have given me to eat and to drink, I will give you
the ship; and I do all this because you once were kind to me.’ Then he
gave him the ship which could sail on land and water, and when the king
saw that, he could no longer prevent him from having his daughter. The
wedding was celebrated, and after the king’s death, Dummling inherited
his kingdom and lived for a long time contentedly with his wife.
THE WATER OF LIFE
Long before you or I were born, there reigned, in a country a great way
off, a king who had three sons. This king once fell very ill--so ill
that nobody thought he could live. His sons were very much grieved
at their father’s sickness; and as they were walking together very
mournfully in the garden of the palace, a little old man met them and
asked what was the matter. They told him that their father was very ill,
and that they were afraid nothing could save him. ‘I know what would,’
said the little old man; ‘it is the Water of Life. If he could have a
draught of it he would be well again; but it is very hard to get.’ Then
the eldest son said, ‘I will soon find it’: and he went to the sick
king, and begged that he might go in search of the Water of Life, as
it was the only thing that could save him. ‘No,’ said the king. ‘I had
rather die than place you in such great danger as you must meet with in
your journey.’ But he begged so hard that the king let him go; and the
prince thought to himself, ‘If I bring my father this water, he will
make me sole heir to his kingdom.’
Then he set out: and when he had gone on his way some time he came to a
deep valley, overhung with rocks and woods; and as he looked around, he
saw standing above him on one of the rocks a little ugly dwarf, with a
sugarloaf cap and a scarlet cloak; and the dwarf called to him and said,
‘Prince, whither so fast?’ ‘What is that to thee, you ugly imp?’ said
the prince haughtily, and rode on.
But the dwarf was enraged at his behaviour, and laid a fairy spell
of ill-luck upon him; so that as he rode on the mountain pass became
narrower and narrower, and at last the way was so straitened that he
could not go to step forward: and when he thought to have turned his
horse round and go back the way he came, he heard a loud laugh ringing
round him, and found that the path was closed behind him, so that he was
shut in all round. He next tried to get off his horse and make his way
on foot, but again the laugh rang in his ears, and he found himself
unable to move a step, and thus he was forced to abide spellbound.
Meantime the old king was lingering on in daily hope of his son’s
return, till at last the second son said, ‘Father, I will go in search
of the Water of Life.’ For he thought to himself, ‘My brother is surely
dead, and the kingdom will fall to me if I find the water.’ The king was
at first very unwilling to let him go, but at last yielded to his wish.
So he set out and followed the same road which his brother had done,
and met with the same elf, who stopped him at the same spot in the
mountains, saying, as before, ‘Prince, prince, whither so fast?’ ‘Mind
your own affairs, busybody!’ said the prince scornfully, and rode on.
But the dwarf put the same spell upon him as he put on his elder
brother, and he, too, was at last obliged to take up his abode in the
heart of the mountains. Thus it is with proud silly people, who think
themselves above everyone else, and are too proud to ask or take advice.
When the second prince had thus been gone a long time, the youngest son
said he would go and search for the Water of Life, and trusted he should
soon be able to make his father well again. So he set out, and the dwarf
met him too at the same spot in the valley, among the mountains, and
said, ‘Prince, whither so fast?’ And the prince said, ‘I am going in
search of the Water of Life, because my father is ill, and like to die:
can you help me? Pray be kind, and aid me if you can!’ ‘Do you know
where it is to be found?’ asked the dwarf. ‘No,’ said the prince, ‘I do
not. Pray tell me if you know.’ ‘Then as you have spoken to me kindly,
and are wise enough to seek for advice, I will tell you how and where to
go. The water you seek springs from a well in an enchanted castle; and,
that you may be able to reach it in safety, I will give you an iron wand
and two little loaves of bread; strike the iron door of the castle three
times with the wand, and it will open: two hungry lions will be lying
down inside gaping for their prey, but if you throw them the bread they
will let you pass; then hasten on to the well, and take some of the
Water of Life before the clock strikes twelve; for if you tarry longer
the door will shut upon you for ever.’
Then the prince thanked his little friend with the scarlet cloak for his
friendly aid, and took the wand and the bread, and went travelling on
and on, over sea and over land, till he came to his journey’s end, and
found everything to be as the dwarf had told him. The door flew open at
the third stroke of the wand, and when the lions were quieted he went on
through the castle and came at length to a beautiful hall. Around it he
saw several knights sitting in a trance; then he pulled off their rings
and put them on his own fingers. In another room he saw on a table a
sword and a loaf of bread, which he also took. Further on he came to a
room where a beautiful young lady sat upon a couch; and she welcomed him
joyfully, and said, if he would set her free from the spell that bound
her, the kingdom should be his, if he would come back in a year and
marry her. Then she told him that the well that held the Water of Life
was in the palace gardens; and bade him make haste, and draw what he
wanted before the clock struck twelve.
He walked on; and as he walked through beautiful gardens he came to a
delightful shady spot in which stood a couch; and he thought to himself,
as he felt tired, that he would rest himself for a while, and gaze on
the lovely scenes around him. So he laid himself down, and sleep
fell upon him unawares, so that he did not wake up till the clock was
striking a quarter to twelve. Then he sprang from the couch dreadfully
frightened, ran to the well, filled a cup that was standing by him full
of water, and hastened to get away in time. Just as he was going out of
the iron door it struck twelve, and the door fell so quickly upon him
that it snapped off a piece of his heel.
When he found himself safe, he was overjoyed to think that he had got
the Water of Life; and as he was going on his way homewards, he passed
by the little dwarf, who, when he saw the sword and the loaf, said, ‘You
have made a noble prize; with the sword you can at a blow slay whole
armies, and the bread will never fail you.’ Then the prince thought
to himself, ‘I cannot go home to my father without my brothers’; so he
said, ‘My dear friend, cannot you tell me where my two brothers are, who
set out in search of the Water of Life before me, and never came back?’
‘I have shut them up by a charm between two mountains,’ said the dwarf,
‘because they were proud and ill-behaved, and scorned to ask advice.’
The prince begged so hard for his brothers, that the dwarf at last set
them free, though unwillingly, saying, ‘Beware of them, for they have
bad hearts.’ Their brother, however, was greatly rejoiced to see them,
and told them all that had happened to him; how he had found the Water
of Life, and had taken a cup full of it; and how he had set a beautiful
princess free from a spell that bound her; and how she had engaged to
wait a whole year, and then to marry him, and to give him the kingdom.
Then they all three rode on together, and on their way home came to a
country that was laid waste by war and a dreadful famine, so that it was
feared all must die for want. But the prince gave the king of the land
the bread, and all his kingdom ate of it. And he lent the king the
wonderful sword, and he slew the enemy’s army with it; and thus the
kingdom was once more in peace and plenty. In the same manner he
befriended two other countries through which they passed on their way.
When they came to the sea, they got into a ship and during their voyage
the two eldest said to themselves, ‘Our brother has got the water which
we could not find, therefore our father will forsake us and give him the
kingdom, which is our right’; so they were full of envy and revenge, and
agreed together how they could ruin him. Then they waited till he was
fast asleep, and poured the Water of Life out of the cup, and took it
for themselves, giving him bitter sea-water instead.
When they came to their journey’s end, the youngest son brought his cup
to the sick king, that he might drink and be healed. Scarcely, however,
had he tasted the bitter sea-water when he became worse even than he was
before; and then both the elder sons came in, and blamed the youngest
for what they had done; and said that he wanted to poison their father,
but that they had found the Water of Life, and had brought it with them.
He no sooner began to drink of what they brought him, than he felt his
sickness leave him, and was as strong and well as in his younger days.
Then they went to their brother, and laughed at him, and said, ‘Well,
brother, you found the Water of Life, did you? You have had the trouble
and we shall have the reward. Pray, with all your cleverness, why did
not you manage to keep your eyes open? Next year one of us will take
away your beautiful princess, if you do not take care. You had better
say nothing about this to our father, for he does not believe a word you
say; and if you tell tales, you shall lose your life into the bargain:
but be quiet, and we will let you off.’
The old king was still very angry with his youngest son, and thought
that he really meant to have taken away his life; so he called his court
together, and asked what should be done, and all agreed that he ought to
be put to death. The prince knew nothing of what was going on, till one
day, when the king’s chief huntsmen went a-hunting with him, and they
were alone in the wood together, the huntsman looked so sorrowful that
the prince said, ‘My friend, what is the matter with you?’ ‘I cannot and
dare not tell you,’ said he. But the prince begged very hard, and said,
‘Only tell me what it is, and do not think I shall be angry, for I will
forgive you.’ ‘Alas!’ said the huntsman; ‘the king has ordered me to
shoot you.’ The prince started at this, and said, ‘Let me live, and I
will change dresses with you; you shall take my royal coat to show to my
father, and do you give me your shabby one.’ ‘With all my heart,’ said
the huntsman; ‘I am sure I shall be glad to save you, for I could not
have shot you.’ Then he took the prince’s coat, and gave him the shabby
one, and went away through the wood.
Some time after, three grand embassies came to the old king’s court,
with rich gifts of gold and precious stones for his youngest son; now
all these were sent from the three kings to whom he had lent his sword
and loaf of bread, in order to rid them of their enemy and feed their
people. This touched the old king’s heart, and he thought his son might
still be guiltless, and said to his court, ‘O that my son were still
alive! how it grieves me that I had him killed!’ ‘He is still alive,’
said the huntsman; ‘and I am glad that I had pity on him, but let him
go in peace, and brought home his royal coat.’ At this the king was
overwhelmed with joy, and made it known throughout all his kingdom, that
if his son would come back to his court he would forgive him.
Meanwhile the princess was eagerly waiting till her deliverer should
come back; and had a road made leading up to her palace all of shining
gold; and told her courtiers that whoever came on horseback, and rode
straight up to the gate upon it, was her true lover; and that they must
let him in: but whoever rode on one side of it, they must be sure was
not the right one; and that they must send him away at once.
The time soon came, when the eldest brother thought that he would make
haste to go to the princess, and say that he was the one who had set
her free, and that he should have her for his wife, and the kingdom with
her. As he came before the palace and saw the golden road, he stopped to
look at it, and he thought to himself, ‘It is a pity to ride upon this
beautiful road’; so he turned aside and rode on the right-hand side of
it. But when he came to the gate, the guards, who had seen the road
he took, said to him, he could not be what he said he was, and must go
about his business.
The second prince set out soon afterwards on the same errand; and when
he came to the golden road, and his horse had set one foot upon it,
he stopped to look at it, and thought it very beautiful, and said to
himself, ‘What a pity it is that anything should tread here!’ Then he
too turned aside and rode on the left side of it. But when he came to
the gate the guards said he was not the true prince, and that he too
must go away about his business; and away he went.
Now when the full year was come round, the third brother left the forest
in which he had lain hid for fear of his father’s anger, and set out in
search of his betrothed bride. So he journeyed on, thinking of her all
the way, and rode so quickly that he did not even see what the road was
made of, but went with his horse straight over it; and as he came to the
gate it flew open, and the princess welcomed him with joy, and said
he was her deliverer, and should now be her husband and lord of the
kingdom. When the first joy at their meeting was over, the princess told
him she had heard of his father having forgiven him, and of his wish to
have him home again: so, before his wedding with the princess, he went
to visit his father, taking her with him. Then he told him everything;
how his brothers had cheated and robbed him, and yet that he had borne
all those wrongs for the love of his father. And the old king was very
angry, and wanted to punish his wicked sons; but they made their escape,
and got into a ship and sailed away over the wide sea, and where they
went to nobody knew and nobody cared.
And now the old king gathered together his court, and asked all his
kingdom to come and celebrate the wedding of his son and the princess.
And young and old, noble and squire, gentle and simple, came at once
on the summons; and among the rest came the friendly dwarf, with the
sugarloaf hat, and a new scarlet cloak.
And the wedding was held, and the merry bells run.
And all the good people they danced and they sung,
And feasted and frolick’d I can’t tell how long.
THE TWELVE HUNTSMEN
There was once a king’s son who had a bride whom he loved very much. And
when he was sitting beside her and very happy, news came that his father
lay sick unto death, and desired to see him once again before his end.
Then he said to his beloved: ‘I must now go and leave you, I give you
a ring as a remembrance of me. When I am king, I will return and fetch
you.’ So he rode away, and when he reached his father, the latter was
dangerously ill, and near his death. He said to him: ‘Dear son, I wished
to see you once again before my end, promise me to marry as I wish,’ and
he named a certain king’s daughter who was to be his wife. The son was
in such trouble that he did not think what he was doing, and said: ‘Yes,
dear father, your will shall be done,’ and thereupon the king shut his
eyes, and died.
When therefore the son had been proclaimed king, and the time of
mourning was over, he was forced to keep the promise which he had given
his father, and caused the king’s daughter to be asked in marriage, and
she was promised to him. His first betrothed heard of this, and fretted
so much about his faithfulness that she nearly died. Then her father
said to her: ‘Dearest child, why are you so sad? You shall have
whatsoever you will.’ She thought for a moment and said: ‘Dear father,
I wish for eleven girls exactly like myself in face, figure, and size.’
The father said: ‘If it be possible, your desire shall be fulfilled,’
and he caused a search to be made in his whole kingdom, until eleven
young maidens were found who exactly resembled his daughter in face,
figure, and size.
When they came to the king’s daughter, she had twelve suits of
huntsmen’s clothes made, all alike, and the eleven maidens had to put
on the huntsmen’s clothes, and she herself put on the twelfth suit.
Thereupon she took her leave of her father, and rode away with them,
and rode to the court of her former betrothed, whom she loved so dearly.
Then she asked if he required any huntsmen, and if he would take all of
them into his service. The king looked at her and did not know her, but
as they were such handsome fellows, he said: ‘Yes,’ and that he would
willingly take them, and now they were the king’s twelve huntsmen.
The king, however, had a lion which was a wondrous animal, for he knew
all concealed and secret things. It came to pass that one evening he
said to the king: ‘You think you have twelve huntsmen?’ ‘Yes,’ said the
king, ‘they are twelve huntsmen.’ The lion continued: ‘You are mistaken,
they are twelve girls.’ The king said: ‘That cannot be true! How
will you prove that to me?’ ‘Oh, just let some peas be strewn in the
ante-chamber,’ answered the lion, ‘and then you will soon see. Men have
a firm step, and when they walk over peas none of them stir, but girls
trip and skip, and drag their feet, and the peas roll about.’ The king
was well pleased with the counsel, and caused the peas to be strewn.
There was, however, a servant of the king’s who favoured the huntsmen,
and when he heard that they were going to be put to this test he went to
them and repeated everything, and said: ‘The lion wants to make the king
believe that you are girls.’ Then the king’s daughter thanked him, and
said to her maidens: ‘Show some strength, and step firmly on the peas.’
So next morning when the king had the twelve huntsmen called before
him, and they came into the ante-chamber where the peas were lying, they
stepped so firmly on them, and had such a strong, sure walk, that not
one of the peas either rolled or stirred. Then they went away again,
and the king said to the lion: ‘You have lied to me, they walk just like
men.’ The lion said: ‘They have been informed that they were going to
be put to the test, and have assumed some strength. Just let twelve
spinning-wheels be brought into the ante-chamber, and they will go to
them and be pleased with them, and that is what no man would do.’
The king liked the advice, and had the spinning-wheels placed in the
ante-chamber.
But the servant, who was well disposed to the huntsmen, went to them,
and disclosed the project. So when they were alone the king’s daughter
said to her eleven girls: ‘Show some constraint, and do not look round
at the spinning-wheels.’ And next morning when the king had his twelve
huntsmen summoned, they went through the ante-chamber, and never once
looked at the spinning-wheels. Then the king again said to the lion:
‘You have deceived me, they are men, for they have not looked at the
spinning-wheels.’ The lion replied: ‘They have restrained themselves.’
The king, however, would no longer believe the lion.
The twelve huntsmen always followed the king to the chase, and his
liking for them continually increased. Now it came to pass that
once when they were out hunting, news came that the king’s bride was
approaching. When the true bride heard that, it hurt her so much that
her heart was almost broken, and she fell fainting to the ground. The
king thought something had happened to his dear huntsman, ran up to him,
wanted to help him, and drew his glove off. Then he saw the ring which
he had given to his first bride, and when he looked in her face he
recognized her. Then his heart was so touched that he kissed her, and
when she opened her eyes he said: ‘You are mine, and I am yours, and
no one in the world can alter that.’ He sent a messenger to the other
bride, and entreated her to return to her own kingdom, for he had a wife
already, and someone who had just found an old key did not require a new
one. Thereupon the wedding was celebrated, and the lion was again taken
into favour, because, after all, he had told the truth.
THE KING OF THE GOLDEN MOUNTAIN
There was once a merchant who had only one child, a son, that was very
young, and barely able to run alone. He had two richly laden ships then
making a voyage upon the seas, in which he had embarked all his wealth,
in the hope of making great gains, when the news came that both were
lost. Thus from being a rich man he became all at once so very poor that
nothing was left to him but one small plot of land; and there he often
went in an evening to take his walk, and ease his mind of a little of
his trouble.
One day, as he was roaming along in a brown study, thinking with no
great comfort on what he had been and what he now was, and was like
to be, all on a sudden there stood before him a little, rough-looking,
black dwarf. ‘Prithee, friend, why so sorrowful?’ said he to the
merchant; ‘what is it you take so deeply to heart?’ ‘If you would do me
any good I would willingly tell you,’ said the merchant. ‘Who knows but
I may?’ said the little man: ‘tell me what ails you, and perhaps you
will find I may be of some use.’ Then the merchant told him how all his
wealth was gone to the bottom of the sea, and how he had nothing left
but that little plot of land. ‘Oh, trouble not yourself about that,’
said the dwarf; ‘only undertake to bring me here, twelve years hence,
whatever meets you first on your going home, and I will give you as much
as you please.’ The merchant thought this was no great thing to ask;
that it would most likely be his dog or his cat, or something of that
sort, but forgot his little boy Heinel; so he agreed to the bargain, and
signed and sealed the bond to do what was asked of him.
But as he drew near home, his little boy was so glad to see him that he
crept behind him, and laid fast hold of his legs, and looked up in
his face and laughed. Then the father started, trembling with fear and
horror, and saw what it was that he had bound himself to do; but as no
gold was come, he made himself easy by thinking that it was only a joke
that the dwarf was playing him, and that, at any rate, when the money
came, he should see the bearer, and would not take it in.
About a month afterwards he went upstairs into a lumber-room to look
for some old iron, that he might sell it and raise a little money; and
there, instead of his iron, he saw a large pile of gold lying on the
floor. At the sight of this he was overjoyed, and forgetting all about
his son, went into trade again, and became a richer merchant than
before.
Meantime little Heinel grew up, and as the end of the twelve years drew
near the merchant began to call to mind his bond, and became very sad
and thoughtful; so that care and sorrow were written upon his face. The
boy one day asked what was the matter, but his father would not tell for
some time; at last, however, he said that he had, without knowing it,
sold him for gold to a little, ugly-looking, black dwarf, and that the
twelve years were coming round when he must keep his word. Then Heinel
said, ‘Father, give yourself very little trouble about that; I shall be
too much for the little man.’
When the time came, the father and son went out together to the place
agreed upon: and the son drew a circle on the ground, and set himself
and his father in the middle of it. The little black dwarf soon came,
and walked round and round about the circle, but could not find any way
to get into it, and he either could not, or dared not, jump over it. At
last the boy said to him. ‘Have you anything to say to us, my friend, or
what do you want?’ Now Heinel had found a friend in a good fairy, that
was fond of him, and had told him what to do; for this fairy knew what
good luck was in store for him. ‘Have you brought me what you said you
would?’ said the dwarf to the merchant. The old man held his tongue, but
Heinel said again, ‘What do you want here?’ The dwarf said, ‘I come to
talk with your father, not with you.’ ‘You have cheated and taken in my
father,’ said the son; ‘pray give him up his bond at once.’ ‘Fair and
softly,’ said the little old man; ‘right is right; I have paid my money,
and your father has had it, and spent it; so be so good as to let me
have what I paid it for.’ ‘You must have my consent to that first,’ said
Heinel, ‘so please to step in here, and let us talk it over.’ The old
man grinned, and showed his teeth, as if he should have been very glad
to get into the circle if he could. Then at last, after a long talk,
they came to terms. Heinel agreed that his father must give him up, and
that so far the dwarf should have his way: but, on the other hand, the
fairy had told Heinel what fortune was in store for him, if he followed
his own course; and he did not choose to be given up to his hump-backed
friend, who seemed so anxious for his company.
So, to make a sort of drawn battle of the matter, it was settled that
Heinel should be put into an open boat, that lay on the sea-shore hard
by; that the father should push him off with his own hand, and that he
should thus be set adrift, and left to the bad or good luck of wind and
weather. Then he took leave of his father, and set himself in the boat,
but before it got far off a wave struck it, and it fell with one side
low in the water, so the merchant thought that poor Heinel was lost, and
went home very sorrowful, while the dwarf went his way, thinking that at
any rate he had had his revenge.
The boat, however, did not sink, for the good fairy took care of her
friend, and soon raised the boat up again, and it went safely on. The
young man sat safe within, till at length it ran ashore upon an unknown
land. As he jumped upon the shore he saw before him a beautiful castle
but empty and dreary within, for it was enchanted. ‘Here,’ said he to
himself, ‘must I find the prize the good fairy told me of.’ So he once
more searched the whole palace through, till at last he found a white
snake, lying coiled up on a cushion in one of the chambers.
Now the white snake was an enchanted princess; and she was very glad
to see him, and said, ‘Are you at last come to set me free? Twelve
long years have I waited here for the fairy to bring you hither as she
promised, for you alone can save me. This night twelve men will come:
their faces will be black, and they will be dressed in chain armour.
They will ask what you do here, but give no answer; and let them do
what they will--beat, whip, pinch, prick, or torment you--bear all; only
speak not a word, and at twelve o’clock they must go away. The second
night twelve others will come: and the third night twenty-four, who
will even cut off your head; but at the twelfth hour of that night their
power is gone, and I shall be free, and will come and bring you the
Water of Life, and will wash you with it, and bring you back to life
and health.’ And all came to pass as she had said; Heinel bore all, and
spoke not a word; and the third night the princess came, and fell on his
neck and kissed him. Joy and gladness burst forth throughout the castle,
the wedding was celebrated, and he was crowned king of the Golden
Mountain.
They lived together very happily, and the queen had a son. And thus
eight years had passed over their heads, when the king thought of his
father; and he began to long to see him once again. But the queen was
against his going, and said, ‘I know well that misfortunes will come
upon us if you go.’ However, he gave her no rest till she agreed. At his
going away she gave him a wishing-ring, and said, ‘Take this ring, and
put it on your finger; whatever you wish it will bring you; only promise
never to make use of it to bring me hence to your father’s house.’ Then
he said he would do what she asked, and put the ring on his finger, and
wished himself near the town where his father lived.
Heinel found himself at the gates in a moment; but the guards would
not let him go in, because he was so strangely clad. So he went up to a
neighbouring hill, where a shepherd dwelt, and borrowed his old frock,
and thus passed unknown into the town. When he came to his father’s
house, he said he was his son; but the merchant would not believe him,
and said he had had but one son, his poor Heinel, who he knew was long
since dead: and as he was only dressed like a poor shepherd, he would
not even give him anything to eat. The king, however, still vowed that
he was his son, and said, ‘Is there no mark by which you would know me
if I am really your son?’ ‘Yes,’ said his mother, ‘our Heinel had a mark
like a raspberry on his right arm.’ Then he showed them the mark, and
they knew that what he had said was true.
He next told them how he was king of the Golden Mountain, and was
married to a princess, and had a son seven years old. But the merchant
said, ‘that can never be true; he must be a fine king truly who travels
about in a shepherd’s frock!’ At this the son was vexed; and forgetting
his word, turned his ring, and wished for his queen and son. In an
instant they stood before him; but the queen wept, and said he had
broken his word, and bad luck would follow. He did all he could to
soothe her, and she at last seemed to be appeased; but she was not so in
truth, and was only thinking how she should punish him.
One day he took her to walk with him out of the town, and showed her
the spot where the boat was set adrift upon the wide waters. Then he sat
himself down, and said, ‘I am very much tired; sit by me, I will rest my
head in your lap, and sleep a while.’ As soon as he had fallen asleep,
however, she drew the ring from his finger, and crept softly away, and
wished herself and her son at home in their kingdom. And when he awoke
he found himself alone, and saw that the ring was gone from his finger.
‘I can never go back to my father’s house,’ said he; ‘they would say I
am a sorcerer: I will journey forth into the world, till I come again to
my kingdom.’
So saying he set out and travelled till he came to a hill, where three
giants were sharing their father’s goods; and as they saw him pass they
cried out and said, ‘Little men have sharp wits; he shall part the goods
between us.’ Now there was a sword that cut off an enemy’s head whenever
the wearer gave the words, ‘Heads off!’; a cloak that made the owner
invisible, or gave him any form he pleased; and a pair of boots that
carried the wearer wherever he wished. Heinel said they must first let
him try these wonderful things, then he might know how to set a value
upon them. Then they gave him the cloak, and he wished himself a fly,
and in a moment he was a fly. ‘The cloak is very well,’ said he: ‘now
give me the sword.’ ‘No,’ said they; ‘not unless you undertake not to
say, “Heads off!” for if you do we are all dead men.’ So they gave it
him, charging him to try it on a tree. He next asked for the boots also;
and the moment he had all three in his power, he wished himself at
the Golden Mountain; and there he was at once. So the giants were left
behind with no goods to share or quarrel about.
As Heinel came near his castle he heard the sound of merry music; and
the people around told him that his queen was about to marry another
husband. Then he threw his cloak around him, and passed through the
castle hall, and placed himself by the side of the queen, where no one
saw him. But when anything to eat was put upon her plate, he took it
away and ate it himself; and when a glass of wine was handed to her, he
took it and drank it; and thus, though they kept on giving her meat and
drink, her plate and cup were always empty.
Upon this, fear and remorse came over her, and she went into her chamber
alone, and sat there weeping; and he followed her there. ‘Alas!’ said
she to herself, ‘was I not once set free? Why then does this enchantment
still seem to bind me?’
‘False and fickle one!’ said he. ‘One indeed came who set thee free, and
he is now near thee again; but how have you used him? Ought he to
have had such treatment from thee?’ Then he went out and sent away the
company, and said the wedding was at an end, for that he was come back
to the kingdom. But the princes, peers, and great men mocked at him.
However, he would enter into no parley with them, but only asked them
if they would go in peace or not. Then they turned upon him and tried
to seize him; but he drew his sword. ‘Heads Off!’ cried he; and with the
word the traitors’ heads fell before him, and Heinel was once more king
of the Golden Mountain.
DOCTOR KNOWALL
There was once upon a time a poor peasant called Crabb, who drove with
two oxen a load of wood to the town, and sold it to a doctor for two
talers. When the money was being counted out to him, it so happened that
the doctor was sitting at table, and when the peasant saw how well he
ate and drank, his heart desired what he saw, and would willingly
have been a doctor too. So he remained standing a while, and at length
inquired if he too could not be a doctor. ‘Oh, yes,’ said the doctor,
‘that is soon managed.’ ‘What must I do?’ asked the peasant. ‘In the
first place buy yourself an A B C book of the kind which has a cock on
the frontispiece; in the second, turn your cart and your two oxen into
money, and get yourself some clothes, and whatsoever else pertains to
medicine; thirdly, have a sign painted for yourself with the words: “I
am Doctor Knowall,” and have that nailed up above your house-door.’ The
peasant did everything that he had been told to do. When he had doctored
people awhile, but not long, a rich and great lord had some money
stolen. Then he was told about Doctor Knowall who lived in such and such
a village, and must know what had become of the money. So the lord had
the horses harnessed to his carriage, drove out to the village, and
asked Crabb if he were Doctor Knowall. Yes, he was, he said. Then he was
to go with him and bring back the stolen money. ‘Oh, yes, but Grete, my
wife, must go too.’ The lord was willing, and let both of them have a
seat in the carriage, and they all drove away together. When they came
to the nobleman’s castle, the table was spread, and Crabb was told to
sit down and eat. ‘Yes, but my wife, Grete, too,’ said he, and he seated
himself with her at the table. And when the first servant came with a
dish of delicate fare, the peasant nudged his wife, and said: ‘Grete,
that was the first,’ meaning that was the servant who brought the first
dish. The servant, however, thought he intended by that to say: ‘That is
the first thief,’ and as he actually was so, he was terrified, and said
to his comrade outside: ‘The doctor knows all: we shall fare ill, he
said I was the first.’ The second did not want to go in at all, but was
forced. So when he went in with his dish, the peasant nudged his wife,
and said: ‘Grete, that is the second.’ This servant was equally alarmed,
and he got out as fast as he could. The third fared no better, for the
peasant again said: ‘Grete, that is the third.’ The fourth had to carry
in a dish that was covered, and the lord told the doctor that he was to
show his skill, and guess what was beneath the cover. Actually, there
were crabs. The doctor looked at the dish, had no idea what to say, and
cried: ‘Ah, poor Crabb.’ When the lord heard that, he cried: ‘There! he
knows it; he must also know who has the money!’
On this the servants looked terribly uneasy, and made a sign to the
doctor that they wished him to step outside for a moment. When therefore
he went out, all four of them confessed to him that they had stolen
the money, and said that they would willingly restore it and give him a
heavy sum into the bargain, if he would not denounce them, for if he
did they would be hanged. They led him to the spot where the money was
concealed. With this the doctor was satisfied, and returned to the hall,
sat down to the table, and said: ‘My lord, now will I search in my book
where the gold is hidden.’ The fifth servant, however, crept into the
stove to hear if the doctor knew still more. But the doctor sat still
and opened his A B C book, turned the pages backwards and forwards, and
looked for the cock. As he could not find it immediately he said: ‘I
know you are there, so you had better come out!’ Then the fellow in the
stove thought that the doctor meant him, and full of terror, sprang out,
crying: ‘That man knows everything!’ Then Doctor Knowall showed the lord
where the money was, but did not say who had stolen it, and received
from both sides much money in reward, and became a renowned man.
THE SEVEN RAVENS
There was once a man who had seven sons, and last of all one daughter.
Although the little girl was very pretty, she was so weak and small that
they thought she could not live; but they said she should at once be
christened.
So the father sent one of his sons in haste to the spring to get some
water, but the other six ran with him. Each wanted to be first at
drawing the water, and so they were in such a hurry that all let their
pitchers fall into the well, and they stood very foolishly looking at
one another, and did not know what to do, for none dared go home. In the
meantime the father was uneasy, and could not tell what made the
young men stay so long. ‘Surely,’ said he, ‘the whole seven must have
forgotten themselves over some game of play’; and when he had waited
still longer and they yet did not come, he flew into a rage and wished
them all turned into ravens. Scarcely had he spoken these words when he
heard a croaking over his head, and looked up and saw seven ravens as
black as coal flying round and round. Sorry as he was to see his wish
so fulfilled, he did not know how what was done could be undone, and
comforted himself as well as he could for the loss of his seven sons
with his dear little daughter, who soon became stronger and every day
more beautiful.
For a long time she did not know that she had ever had any brothers; for
her father and mother took care not to speak of them before her: but one
day by chance she heard the people about her speak of them. ‘Yes,’ said
they, ‘she is beautiful indeed, but still ‘tis a pity that her brothers
should have been lost for her sake.’ Then she was much grieved, and went
to her father and mother, and asked if she had any brothers, and what
had become of them. So they dared no longer hide the truth from her, but
said it was the will of Heaven, and that her birth was only the innocent
cause of it; but the little girl mourned sadly about it every day, and
thought herself bound to do all she could to bring her brothers back;
and she had neither rest nor ease, till at length one day she stole
away, and set out into the wide world to find her brothers, wherever
they might be, and free them, whatever it might cost her.
She took nothing with her but a little ring which her father and mother
had given her, a loaf of bread in case she should be hungry, a little
pitcher of water in case she should be thirsty, and a little stool
to rest upon when she should be weary. Thus she went on and on, and
journeyed till she came to the world’s end; then she came to the sun,
but the sun looked much too hot and fiery; so she ran away quickly to
the moon, but the moon was cold and chilly, and said, ‘I smell flesh
and blood this way!’ so she took herself away in a hurry and came to the
stars, and the stars were friendly and kind to her, and each star sat
upon his own little stool; but the morning star rose up and gave her a
little piece of wood, and said, ‘If you have not this little piece of
wood, you cannot unlock the castle that stands on the glass-mountain,
and there your brothers live.’ The little girl took the piece of wood,
rolled it up in a little cloth, and went on again until she came to the
glass-mountain, and found the door shut. Then she felt for the little
piece of wood; but when she unwrapped the cloth it was not there, and
she saw she had lost the gift of the good stars. What was to be done?
She wanted to save her brothers, and had no key of the castle of the
glass-mountain; so this faithful little sister took a knife out of her
pocket and cut off her little finger, that was just the size of the
piece of wood she had lost, and put it in the door and opened it.
As she went in, a little dwarf came up to her, and said, ‘What are you
seeking for?’ ‘I seek for my brothers, the seven ravens,’ answered she.
Then the dwarf said, ‘My masters are not at home; but if you will wait
till they come, pray step in.’ Now the little dwarf was getting their
dinner ready, and he brought their food upon seven little plates, and
their drink in seven little glasses, and set them upon the table, and
out of each little plate their sister ate a small piece, and out of each
little glass she drank a small drop; but she let the ring that she had
brought with her fall into the last glass.
On a sudden she heard a fluttering and croaking in the air, and the
dwarf said, ‘Here come my masters.’ When they came in, they wanted to
eat and drink, and looked for their little plates and glasses. Then said
one after the other,
‘Who has eaten from my little plate? And who has been drinking out of my
little glass?’
‘Caw! Caw! well I ween
Mortal lips have this way been.’
When the seventh came to the bottom of his glass, and found there the
ring, he looked at it, and knew that it was his father’s and mother’s,
and said, ‘O that our little sister would but come! then we should be
free.’ When the little girl heard this (for she stood behind the door
all the time and listened), she ran forward, and in an instant all
the ravens took their right form again; and all hugged and kissed each
other, and went merrily home.
THE WEDDING OF MRS FOX
FIRST STORY
There was once upon a time an old fox with nine tails, who believed that
his wife was not faithful to him, and wished to put her to the test. He
stretched himself out under the bench, did not move a limb, and behaved
as if he were stone dead. Mrs Fox went up to her room, shut herself in,
and her maid, Miss Cat, sat by the fire, and did the cooking. When it
became known that the old fox was dead, suitors presented themselves.
The maid heard someone standing at the house-door, knocking. She went
and opened it, and it was a young fox, who said:
‘What may you be about, Miss Cat?
Do you sleep or do you wake?’
She answered:
‘I am not sleeping, I am waking,
Would you know what I am making?
I am boiling warm beer with butter,
Will you be my guest for supper?’
‘No, thank you, miss,’ said the fox, ‘what is Mrs Fox doing?’ The maid
replied:
‘She is sitting in her room,
Moaning in her gloom,
Weeping her little eyes quite red,
Because old Mr Fox is dead.’
‘Do just tell her, miss, that a young fox is here, who would like to woo
her.’ ‘Certainly, young sir.’
The cat goes up the stairs trip, trap,
The door she knocks at tap, tap, tap,
‘Mistress Fox, are you inside?’
‘Oh, yes, my little cat,’ she cried.
‘A wooer he stands at the door out there.’
‘What does he look like, my dear?’
‘Has he nine as beautiful tails as the late Mr Fox?’ ‘Oh, no,’ answered
the cat, ‘he has only one.’ ‘Then I will not have him.’
Miss Cat went downstairs and sent the wooer away. Soon afterwards there
was another knock, and another fox was at the door who wished to woo Mrs
Fox. He had two tails, but he did not fare better than the first. After
this still more came, each with one tail more than the other, but they
were all turned away, until at last one came who had nine tails, like
old Mr Fox. When the widow heard that, she said joyfully to the cat:
‘Now open the gates and doors all wide,
And carry old Mr Fox outside.’
But just as the wedding was going to be solemnized, old Mr Fox stirred
under the bench, and cudgelled all the rabble, and drove them and Mrs
Fox out of the house.
SECOND STORY
When old Mr Fox was dead, the wolf came as a suitor, and knocked at the
door, and the cat who was servant to Mrs Fox, opened it for him. The
wolf greeted her, and said:
‘Good day, Mrs Cat of Kehrewit,
How comes it that alone you sit?
What are you making good?’
The cat replied:
‘In milk I’m breaking bread so sweet,
Will you be my guest, and eat?’
‘No, thank you, Mrs Cat,’ answered the wolf. ‘Is Mrs Fox not at home?’
The cat said:
‘She sits upstairs in her room,
Bewailing her sorrowful doom,
Bewailing her trouble so sore,
For old Mr Fox is no more.’
The wolf answered:
‘If she’s in want of a husband now,
Then will it please her to step below?’
The cat runs quickly up the stair,
And lets her tail fly here and there,
Until she comes to the parlour door.
With her five gold rings at the door she knocks:
‘Are you within, good Mistress Fox?
If you’re in want of a husband now,
Then will it please you to step below?
Mrs Fox asked: ‘Has the gentleman red stockings on, and has he a pointed
mouth?’ ‘No,’ answered the cat. ‘Then he won’t do for me.’
When the wolf was gone, came a dog, a stag, a hare, a bear, a lion, and
all the beasts of the forest, one after the other. But one of the good
qualities which old Mr Fox had possessed, was always lacking, and the
cat had continually to send the suitors away. At length came a young
fox. Then Mrs Fox said: ‘Has the gentleman red stockings on, and has a
little pointed mouth?’ ‘Yes,’ said the cat, ‘he has.’ ‘Then let him come
upstairs,’ said Mrs Fox, and ordered the servant to prepare the wedding
feast.
‘Sweep me the room as clean as you can,
Up with the window, fling out my old man!
For many a fine fat mouse he brought,
Yet of his wife he never thought,
But ate up every one he caught.’
Then the wedding was solemnized with young Mr Fox, and there was much
rejoicing and dancing; and if they have not left off, they are dancing
still.
THE SALAD
As a merry young huntsman was once going briskly along through a wood,
there came up a little old woman, and said to him, ‘Good day, good day;
you seem merry enough, but I am hungry and thirsty; do pray give me
something to eat.’ The huntsman took pity on her, and put his hand in
his pocket and gave her what he had. Then he wanted to go his way; but
she took hold of him, and said, ‘Listen, my friend, to what I am going
to tell you; I will reward you for your kindness; go your way, and after
a little time you will come to a tree where you will see nine birds
sitting on a cloak. Shoot into the midst of them, and one will fall down
dead: the cloak will fall too; take it, it is a wishing-cloak, and when
you wear it you will find yourself at any place where you may wish to
be. Cut open the dead bird, take out its heart and keep it, and you will
find a piece of gold under your pillow every morning when you rise. It
is the bird’s heart that will bring you this good luck.’
The huntsman thanked her, and thought to himself, ‘If all this does
happen, it will be a fine thing for me.’ When he had gone a hundred
steps or so, he heard a screaming and chirping in the branches over him,
and looked up and saw a flock of birds pulling a cloak with their bills
and feet; screaming, fighting, and tugging at each other as if
each wished to have it himself. ‘Well,’ said the huntsman, ‘this is
wonderful; this happens just as the old woman said’; then he shot into
the midst of them so that their feathers flew all about. Off went the
flock chattering away; but one fell down dead, and the cloak with it.
Then the huntsman did as the old woman told him, cut open the bird, took
out the heart, and carried the cloak home with him.
The next morning when he awoke he lifted up his pillow, and there lay
the piece of gold glittering underneath; the same happened next day, and
indeed every day when he arose. He heaped up a great deal of gold, and
at last thought to himself, ‘Of what use is this gold to me whilst I am
at home? I will go out into the world and look about me.’
Then he took leave of his friends, and hung his bag and bow about his
neck, and went his way. It so happened that his road one day led through
a thick wood, at the end of which was a large castle in a green meadow,
and at one of the windows stood an old woman with a very beautiful young
lady by her side looking about them. Now the old woman was a witch, and
said to the young lady, ‘There is a young man coming out of the wood who
carries a wonderful prize; we must get it away from him, my dear child,
for it is more fit for us than for him. He has a bird’s heart that
brings a piece of gold under his pillow every morning.’ Meantime the
huntsman came nearer and looked at the lady, and said to himself, ‘I
have been travelling so long that I should like to go into this castle
and rest myself, for I have money enough to pay for anything I want’;
but the real reason was, that he wanted to see more of the beautiful
lady. Then he went into the house, and was welcomed kindly; and it was
not long before he was so much in love that he thought of nothing else
but looking at the lady’s eyes, and doing everything that she wished.
Then the old woman said, ‘Now is the time for getting the bird’s heart.’
So the lady stole it away, and he never found any more gold under his
pillow, for it lay now under the young lady’s, and the old woman took it
away every morning; but he was so much in love that he never missed his
prize.
‘Well,’ said the old witch, ‘we have got the bird’s heart, but not the
wishing-cloak yet, and that we must also get.’ ‘Let us leave him that,’
said the young lady; ‘he has already lost his wealth.’ Then the witch
was very angry, and said, ‘Such a cloak is a very rare and wonderful
thing, and I must and will have it.’ So she did as the old woman told
her, and set herself at the window, and looked about the country and
seemed very sorrowful; then the huntsman said, ‘What makes you so sad?’
‘Alas! dear sir,’ said she, ‘yonder lies the granite rock where all the
costly diamonds grow, and I want so much to go there, that whenever I
think of it I cannot help being sorrowful, for who can reach it? only
the birds and the flies--man cannot.’ ‘If that’s all your grief,’ said
the huntsman, ‘I’ll take you there with all my heart’; so he drew her under
his cloak, and the moment he wished to be on the granite mountain they
were both there. The diamonds glittered so on all sides that they were
delighted with the sight and picked up the finest. But the old witch
made a deep sleep come upon him, and he said to the young lady, ‘Let us
sit down and rest ourselves a little, I am so tired that I cannot stand
any longer.’ So they sat down, and he laid his head in her lap and
fell asleep; and whilst he was sleeping on she took the cloak from
his shoulders, hung it on her own, picked up the diamonds, and wished
herself home again.
When he awoke and found that his lady had tricked him, and left him
alone on the wild rock, he said, ‘Alas! what roguery there is in the
world!’ and there he sat in great grief and fear, not knowing what to
do. Now this rock belonged to fierce giants who lived upon it; and as
he saw three of them striding about, he thought to himself, ‘I can only
save myself by feigning to be asleep’; so he laid himself down as if he
were in a sound sleep. When the giants came up to him, the first pushed
him with his foot, and said, ‘What worm is this that lies here curled
up?’ ‘Tread upon him and kill him,’ said the second. ‘It’s not worth the
trouble,’ said the third; ‘let him live, he’ll go climbing higher up the
mountain, and some cloud will come rolling and carry him away.’ And they
passed on. But the huntsman had heard all they said; and as soon as they
were gone, he climbed to the top of the mountain, and when he had sat
there a short time a cloud came rolling around him, and caught him in a
whirlwind and bore him along for some time, till it settled in a garden,
and he fell quite gently to the ground amongst the greens and cabbages.
Then he looked around him, and said, ‘I wish I had something to eat, if
not I shall be worse off than before; for here I see neither apples
nor pears, nor any kind of fruits, nothing but vegetables.’ At last he
thought to himself, ‘I can eat salad, it will refresh and strengthen
me.’ So he picked out a fine head and ate of it; but scarcely had he
swallowed two bites when he felt himself quite changed, and saw with
horror that he was turned into an ass. However, he still felt very
hungry, and the salad tasted very nice; so he ate on till he came
to another kind of salad, and scarcely had he tasted it when he felt
another change come over him, and soon saw that he was lucky enough to
have found his old shape again.
Then he laid himself down and slept off a little of his weariness; and
when he awoke the next morning he broke off a head both of the good and
the bad salad, and thought to himself, ‘This will help me to my fortune
again, and enable me to pay off some folks for their treachery.’ So he
went away to try and find the castle of his friends; and after wandering
about a few days he luckily found it. Then he stained his face all over
brown, so that even his mother would not have known him, and went into
the castle and asked for a lodging; ‘I am so tired,’ said he, ‘that I
can go no farther.’ ‘Countryman,’ said the witch, ‘who are you? and what
is your business?’ ‘I am,’ said he, ‘a messenger sent by the king to
find the finest salad that grows under the sun. I have been lucky
enough to find it, and have brought it with me; but the heat of the sun
scorches so that it begins to wither, and I don’t know that I can carry
it farther.’
When the witch and the young lady heard of his beautiful salad, they
longed to taste it, and said, ‘Dear countryman, let us just taste it.’
‘To be sure,’ answered he; ‘I have two heads of it with me, and will
give you one’; so he opened his bag and gave them the bad. Then the
witch herself took it into the kitchen to be dressed; and when it was
ready she could not wait till it was carried up, but took a few leaves
immediately and put them in her mouth, and scarcely were they swallowed
when she lost her own form and ran braying down into the court in the
form of an ass. Now the servant-maid came into the kitchen, and seeing
the salad ready, was going to carry it up; but on the way she too felt a
wish to taste it as the old woman had done, and ate some leaves; so she
also was turned into an ass and ran after the other, letting the dish
with the salad fall on the ground. The messenger sat all this time with
the beautiful young lady, and as nobody came with the salad and she
longed to taste it, she said, ‘I don’t know where the salad can be.’
Then he thought something must have happened, and said, ‘I will go
into the kitchen and see.’ And as he went he saw two asses in the court
running about, and the salad lying on the ground. ‘All right!’ said
he; ‘those two have had their share.’ Then he took up the rest of
the leaves, laid them on the dish and brought them to the young lady,
saying, ‘I bring you the dish myself that you may not wait any longer.’
So she ate of it, and like the others ran off into the court braying
away.
Then the huntsman washed his face and went into the court that they
might know him. ‘Now you shall be paid for your roguery,’ said he; and
tied them all three to a rope and took them along with him till he
came to a mill and knocked at the window. ‘What’s the matter?’ said the
miller. ‘I have three tiresome beasts here,’ said the other; ‘if you
will take them, give them food and room, and treat them as I tell you,
I will pay you whatever you ask.’ ‘With all my heart,’ said the miller;
‘but how shall I treat them?’ Then the huntsman said, ‘Give the old
one stripes three times a day and hay once; give the next (who was
the servant-maid) stripes once a day and hay three times; and give
the youngest (who was the beautiful lady) hay three times a day and
no stripes’: for he could not find it in his heart to have her beaten.
After this he went back to the castle, where he found everything he
wanted.
Some days after, the miller came to him and told him that the old ass
was dead; ‘The other two,’ said he, ‘are alive and eat, but are so
sorrowful that they cannot last long.’ Then the huntsman pitied them,
and told the miller to drive them back to him, and when they came, he
gave them some of the good salad to eat. And the beautiful young lady
fell upon her knees before him, and said, ‘O dearest huntsman! forgive
me all the ill I have done you; my mother forced me to it, it was
against my will, for I always loved you very much. Your wishing-cloak
hangs up in the closet, and as for the bird’s heart, I will give it you
too.’ But he said, ‘Keep it, it will be just the same thing, for I mean
to make you my wife.’ So they were married, and lived together very
happily till they died.
THE STORY OF THE YOUTH WHO WENT FORTH TO LEARN WHAT FEAR WAS
A certain father had two sons, the elder of who was smart and sensible,
and could do everything, but the younger was stupid and could neither
learn nor understand anything, and when people saw him they said:
‘There’s a fellow who will give his father some trouble!’ When anything
had to be done, it was always the elder who was forced to do it; but
if his father bade him fetch anything when it was late, or in the
night-time, and the way led through the churchyard, or any other dismal
place, he answered: ‘Oh, no father, I’ll not go there, it makes me
shudder!’ for he was afraid. Or when stories were told by the fire at
night which made the flesh creep, the listeners sometimes said: ‘Oh,
it makes us shudder!’ The younger sat in a corner and listened with
the rest of them, and could not imagine what they could mean. ‘They are
always saying: “It makes me shudder, it makes me shudder!” It does not
make me shudder,’ thought he. ‘That, too, must be an art of which I
understand nothing!’
Now it came to pass that his father said to him one day: ‘Hearken to me,
you fellow in the corner there, you are growing tall and strong, and you
too must learn something by which you can earn your bread. Look how your
brother works, but you do not even earn your salt.’ ‘Well, father,’ he
replied, ‘I am quite willing to learn something--indeed, if it could but
be managed, I should like to learn how to shudder. I don’t understand
that at all yet.’ The elder brother smiled when he heard that, and
thought to himself: ‘Goodness, what a blockhead that brother of mine is!
He will never be good for anything as long as he lives! He who wants to
be a sickle must bend himself betimes.’
The father sighed, and answered him: ‘You shall soon learn what it is to
shudder, but you will not earn your bread by that.’
Soon after this the sexton came to the house on a visit, and the father
bewailed his trouble, and told him how his younger son was so backward
in every respect that he knew nothing and learnt nothing. ‘Just think,’
said he, ‘when I asked him how he was going to earn his bread, he
actually wanted to learn to shudder.’ ‘If that be all,’ replied the
sexton, ‘he can learn that with me. Send him to me, and I will soon
polish him.’ The father was glad to do it, for he thought: ‘It will
train the boy a little.’ The sexton therefore took him into his house,
and he had to ring the church bell. After a day or two, the sexton awoke
him at midnight, and bade him arise and go up into the church tower and
ring the bell. ‘You shall soon learn what shuddering is,’ thought he,
and secretly went there before him; and when the boy was at the top of
the tower and turned round, and was just going to take hold of the bell
rope, he saw a white figure standing on the stairs opposite the sounding
hole. ‘Who is there?’ cried he, but the figure made no reply, and did
not move or stir. ‘Give an answer,’ cried the boy, ‘or take yourself
off, you have no business here at night.’
The sexton, however, remained standing motionless that the boy might
think he was a ghost. The boy cried a second time: ‘What do you want
here?--speak if you are an honest fellow, or I will throw you down the
steps!’ The sexton thought: ‘He can’t mean to be as bad as his words,’
uttered no sound and stood as if he were made of stone. Then the boy
called to him for the third time, and as that was also to no purpose,
he ran against him and pushed the ghost down the stairs, so that it fell
down the ten steps and remained lying there in a corner. Thereupon he
rang the bell, went home, and without saying a word went to bed, and
fell asleep. The sexton’s wife waited a long time for her husband, but
he did not come back. At length she became uneasy, and wakened the boy,
and asked: ‘Do you know where my husband is? He climbed up the tower
before you did.’ ‘No, I don’t know,’ replied the boy, ‘but someone was
standing by the sounding hole on the other side of the steps, and as he
would neither give an answer nor go away, I took him for a scoundrel,
and threw him downstairs. Just go there and you will see if it was he.
I should be sorry if it were.’ The woman ran away and found her husband,
who was lying moaning in the corner, and had broken his leg.
She carried him down, and then with loud screams she hastened to the
boy’s father, ‘Your boy,’ cried she, ‘has been the cause of a great
misfortune! He has thrown my husband down the steps so that he broke his
leg. Take the good-for-nothing fellow out of our house.’ The father was
terrified, and ran thither and scolded the boy. ‘What wicked tricks
are these?’ said he. ‘The devil must have put them into your head.’
‘Father,’ he replied, ‘do listen to me. I am quite innocent. He was
standing there by night like one intent on doing evil. I did not know
who it was, and I entreated him three times either to speak or to go
away.’ ‘Ah,’ said the father, ‘I have nothing but unhappiness with you.
Go out of my sight. I will see you no more.’
‘Yes, father, right willingly, wait only until it is day. Then will I
go forth and learn how to shudder, and then I shall, at any rate,
understand one art which will support me.’ ‘Learn what you will,’ spoke
the father, ‘it is all the same to me. Here are fifty talers for you.
Take these and go into the wide world, and tell no one from whence you
come, and who is your father, for I have reason to be ashamed of you.’
‘Yes, father, it shall be as you will. If you desire nothing more than
that, I can easily keep it in mind.’
When the day dawned, therefore, the boy put his fifty talers into his
pocket, and went forth on the great highway, and continually said to
himself: ‘If I could but shudder! If I could but shudder!’ Then a man
approached who heard this conversation which the youth was holding with
himself, and when they had walked a little farther to where they could
see the gallows, the man said to him: ‘Look, there is the tree where
seven men have married the ropemaker’s daughter, and are now learning
how to fly. Sit down beneath it, and wait till night comes, and you will
soon learn how to shudder.’ ‘If that is all that is wanted,’ answered
the youth, ‘it is easily done; but if I learn how to shudder as fast as
that, you shall have my fifty talers. Just come back to me early in the
morning.’ Then the youth went to the gallows, sat down beneath it, and
waited till evening came. And as he was cold, he lighted himself a fire,
but at midnight the wind blew so sharply that in spite of his fire, he
could not get warm. And as the wind knocked the hanged men against each
other, and they moved backwards and forwards, he thought to himself:
‘If you shiver below by the fire, how those up above must freeze and
suffer!’ And as he felt pity for them, he raised the ladder, and climbed
up, unbound one of them after the other, and brought down all seven.
Then he stoked the fire, blew it, and set them all round it to warm
themselves. But they sat there and did not stir, and the fire caught
their clothes. So he said: ‘Take care, or I will hang you up again.’ The
dead men, however, did not hear, but were quite silent, and let their
rags go on burning. At this he grew angry, and said: ‘If you will not
take care, I cannot help you, I will not be burnt with you,’ and he hung
them up again each in his turn. Then he sat down by his fire and fell
asleep, and the next morning the man came to him and wanted to have
the fifty talers, and said: ‘Well do you know how to shudder?’ ‘No,’
answered he, ‘how should I know? Those fellows up there did not open
their mouths, and were so stupid that they let the few old rags which
they had on their bodies get burnt.’ Then the man saw that he would not
get the fifty talers that day, and went away saying: ‘Such a youth has
never come my way before.’
The youth likewise went his way, and once more began to mutter to
himself: ‘Ah, if I could but shudder! Ah, if I could but shudder!’ A
waggoner who was striding behind him heard this and asked: ‘Who are
you?’ ‘I don’t know,’ answered the youth. Then the waggoner asked: ‘From
whence do you come?’ ‘I know not.’ ‘Who is your father?’ ‘That I may
not tell you.’ ‘What is it that you are always muttering between your
teeth?’ ‘Ah,’ replied the youth, ‘I do so wish I could shudder, but
no one can teach me how.’ ‘Enough of your foolish chatter,’ said the
waggoner. ‘Come, go with me, I will see about a place for you.’ The
youth went with the waggoner, and in the evening they arrived at an inn
where they wished to pass the night. Then at the entrance of the parlour
the youth again said quite loudly: ‘If I could but shudder! If I could
but shudder!’ The host who heard this, laughed and said: ‘If that is
your desire, there ought to be a good opportunity for you here.’ ‘Ah,
be silent,’ said the hostess, ‘so many prying persons have already lost
their lives, it would be a pity and a shame if such beautiful eyes as
these should never see the daylight again.’
But the youth said: ‘However difficult it may be, I will learn it. For
this purpose indeed have I journeyed forth.’ He let the host have
no rest, until the latter told him, that not far from thence stood a
haunted castle where anyone could very easily learn what shuddering was,
if he would but watch in it for three nights. The king had promised that
he who would venture should have his daughter to wife, and she was the
most beautiful maiden the sun shone on. Likewise in the castle lay great
treasures, which were guarded by evil spirits, and these treasures would
then be freed, and would make a poor man rich enough. Already many men
had gone into the castle, but as yet none had come out again. Then the
youth went next morning to the king, and said: ‘If it be allowed, I will
willingly watch three nights in the haunted castle.’
The king looked at him, and as the youth pleased him, he said: ‘You may
ask for three things to take into the castle with you, but they must
be things without life.’ Then he answered: ‘Then I ask for a fire, a
turning lathe, and a cutting-board with the knife.’
The king had these things carried into the castle for him during the
day. When night was drawing near, the youth went up and made himself
a bright fire in one of the rooms, placed the cutting-board and knife
beside it, and seated himself by the turning-lathe. ‘Ah, if I could
but shudder!’ said he, ‘but I shall not learn it here either.’ Towards
midnight he was about to poke his fire, and as he was blowing it,
something cried suddenly from one corner: ‘Au, miau! how cold we are!’
‘You fools!’ cried he, ‘what are you crying about? If you are cold, come
and take a seat by the fire and warm yourselves.’ And when he had said
that, two great black cats came with one tremendous leap and sat down
on each side of him, and looked savagely at him with their fiery
eyes. After a short time, when they had warmed themselves, they said:
‘Comrade, shall we have a game of cards?’ ‘Why not?’ he replied, ‘but
just show me your paws.’ Then they stretched out their claws. ‘Oh,’ said
he, ‘what long nails you have! Wait, I must first cut them for you.’
Thereupon he seized them by the throats, put them on the cutting-board
and screwed their feet fast. ‘I have looked at your fingers,’ said he,
‘and my fancy for card-playing has gone,’ and he struck them dead and
threw them out into the water. But when he had made away with these two,
and was about to sit down again by his fire, out from every hole and
corner came black cats and black dogs with red-hot chains, and more
and more of them came until he could no longer move, and they yelled
horribly, and got on his fire, pulled it to pieces, and tried to put
it out. He watched them for a while quietly, but at last when they were
going too far, he seized his cutting-knife, and cried: ‘Away with you,
vermin,’ and began to cut them down. Some of them ran away, the others
he killed, and threw out into the fish-pond. When he came back he fanned
the embers of his fire again and warmed himself. And as he thus sat, his
eyes would keep open no longer, and he felt a desire to sleep. Then he
looked round and saw a great bed in the corner. ‘That is the very thing
for me,’ said he, and got into it. When he was just going to shut his
eyes, however, the bed began to move of its own accord, and went over
the whole of the castle. ‘That’s right,’ said he, ‘but go faster.’ Then
the bed rolled on as if six horses were harnessed to it, up and down,
over thresholds and stairs, but suddenly hop, hop, it turned over upside
down, and lay on him like a mountain. But he threw quilts and pillows up
in the air, got out and said: ‘Now anyone who likes, may drive,’ and
lay down by his fire, and slept till it was day. In the morning the king
came, and when he saw him lying there on the ground, he thought the evil
spirits had killed him and he was dead. Then said he: ‘After all it is a
pity,--for so handsome a man.’ The youth heard it, got up, and said: ‘It
has not come to that yet.’ Then the king was astonished, but very glad,
and asked how he had fared. ‘Very well indeed,’ answered he; ‘one
night is past, the two others will pass likewise.’ Then he went to the
innkeeper, who opened his eyes very wide, and said: ‘I never expected to
see you alive again! Have you learnt how to shudder yet?’ ‘No,’ said he,
‘it is all in vain. If someone would but tell me!’
The second night he again went up into the old castle, sat down by the
fire, and once more began his old song: ‘If I could but shudder!’ When
midnight came, an uproar and noise of tumbling about was heard; at
first it was low, but it grew louder and louder. Then it was quiet for
a while, and at length with a loud scream, half a man came down the
chimney and fell before him. ‘Hullo!’ cried he, ‘another half belongs
to this. This is not enough!’ Then the uproar began again, there was a
roaring and howling, and the other half fell down likewise. ‘Wait,’ said
he, ‘I will just stoke up the fire a little for you.’ When he had done
that and looked round again, the two pieces were joined together, and a
hideous man was sitting in his place. ‘That is no part of our bargain,’
said the youth, ‘the bench is mine.’ The man wanted to push him away;
the youth, however, would not allow that, but thrust him off with all
his strength, and seated himself again in his own place. Then still more
men fell down, one after the other; they brought nine dead men’s legs
and two skulls, and set them up and played at nine-pins with them. The
youth also wanted to play and said: ‘Listen you, can I join you?’ ‘Yes,
if you have any money.’ ‘Money enough,’ replied he, ‘but your balls are
not quite round.’ Then he took the skulls and put them in the lathe and
turned them till they were round. ‘There, now they will roll better!’
said he. ‘Hurrah! now we’ll have fun!’ He played with them and lost some
of his money, but when it struck twelve, everything vanished from his
sight. He lay down and quietly fell asleep. Next morning the king came
to inquire after him. ‘How has it fared with you this time?’ asked he.
‘I have been playing at nine-pins,’ he answered, ‘and have lost a couple
of farthings.’ ‘Have you not shuddered then?’ ‘What?’ said he, ‘I have
had a wonderful time! If I did but know what it was to shudder!’
The third night he sat down again on his bench and said quite sadly:
‘If I could but shudder.’ When it grew late, six tall men came in and
brought a coffin. Then he said: ‘Ha, ha, that is certainly my little
cousin, who died only a few days ago,’ and he beckoned with his finger,
and cried: ‘Come, little cousin, come.’ They placed the coffin on the
ground, but he went to it and took the lid off, and a dead man lay
therein. He felt his face, but it was cold as ice. ‘Wait,’ said he, ‘I
will warm you a little,’ and went to the fire and warmed his hand and
laid it on the dead man’s face, but he remained cold. Then he took him
out, and sat down by the fire and laid him on his breast and rubbed his
arms that the blood might circulate again. As this also did no good, he
thought to himself: ‘When two people lie in bed together, they warm each
other,’ and carried him to the bed, covered him over and lay down by
him. After a short time the dead man became warm too, and began to move.
Then said the youth, ‘See, little cousin, have I not warmed you?’ The
dead man, however, got up and cried: ‘Now will I strangle you.’
‘What!’ said he, ‘is that the way you thank me? You shall at once go
into your coffin again,’ and he took him up, threw him into it, and shut
the lid. Then came the six men and carried him away again. ‘I cannot
manage to shudder,’ said he. ‘I shall never learn it here as long as I
live.’
Then a man entered who was taller than all others, and looked terrible.
He was old, however, and had a long white beard. ‘You wretch,’ cried he,
‘you shall soon learn what it is to shudder, for you shall die.’ ‘Not so
fast,’ replied the youth. ‘If I am to die, I shall have to have a say
in it.’ ‘I will soon seize you,’ said the fiend. ‘Softly, softly, do not
talk so big. I am as strong as you are, and perhaps even stronger.’
‘We shall see,’ said the old man. ‘If you are stronger, I will let you
go--come, we will try.’ Then he led him by dark passages to a smith’s
forge, took an axe, and with one blow struck an anvil into the ground.
‘I can do better than that,’ said the youth, and went to the other
anvil. The old man placed himself near and wanted to look on, and his
white beard hung down. Then the youth seized the axe, split the anvil
with one blow, and in it caught the old man’s beard. ‘Now I have you,’
said the youth. ‘Now it is your turn to die.’ Then he seized an iron bar
and beat the old man till he moaned and entreated him to stop, when he
would give him great riches. The youth drew out the axe and let him go.
The old man led him back into the castle, and in a cellar showed him
three chests full of gold. ‘Of these,’ said he, ‘one part is for the
poor, the other for the king, the third yours.’ In the meantime it
struck twelve, and the spirit disappeared, so that the youth stood in
darkness. ‘I shall still be able to find my way out,’ said he, and felt
about, found the way into the room, and slept there by his fire.
Next morning the king came and said: ‘Now you must have learnt what
shuddering is?’ ‘No,’ he answered; ‘what can it be? My dead cousin was
here, and a bearded man came and showed me a great deal of money down
below, but no one told me what it was to shudder.’ ‘Then,’ said the
king, ‘you have saved the castle, and shall marry my daughter.’ ‘That
is all very well,’ said he, ‘but still I do not know what it is to
shudder!’
Then the gold was brought up and the wedding celebrated; but howsoever
much the young king loved his wife, and however happy he was, he still
said always: ‘If I could but shudder--if I could but shudder.’ And this
at last angered her. Her waiting-maid said: ‘I will find a cure for him;
he shall soon learn what it is to shudder.’ She went out to the stream
which flowed through the garden, and had a whole bucketful of gudgeons
brought to her. At night when the young king was sleeping, his wife was
to draw the clothes off him and empty the bucket full of cold water
with the gudgeons in it over him, so that the little fishes would
sprawl about him. Then he woke up and cried: ‘Oh, what makes me shudder
so?--what makes me shudder so, dear wife? Ah! now I know what it is to
shudder!’
KING GRISLY-BEARD
A great king of a land far away in the East had a daughter who was very
beautiful, but so proud, and haughty, and conceited, that none of the
princes who came to ask her in marriage was good enough for her, and she
only made sport of them.
Once upon a time the king held a great feast, and asked thither all
her suitors; and they all sat in a row, ranged according to their
rank--kings, and princes, and dukes, and earls, and counts, and barons,
and knights. Then the princess came in, and as she passed by them she
had something spiteful to say to every one. The first was too fat: ‘He’s
as round as a tub,’ said she. The next was too tall: ‘What a maypole!’
said she. The next was too short: ‘What a dumpling!’ said she. The
fourth was too pale, and she called him ‘Wallface.’ The fifth was too
red, so she called him ‘Coxcomb.’ The sixth was not straight enough;
so she said he was like a green stick, that had been laid to dry over
a baker’s oven. And thus she had some joke to crack upon every one: but
she laughed more than all at a good king who was there. ‘Look at
him,’ said she; ‘his beard is like an old mop; he shall be called
Grisly-beard.’ So the king got the nickname of Grisly-beard.
But the old king was very angry when he saw how his daughter behaved,
and how she ill-treated all his guests; and he vowed that, willing or
unwilling, she should marry the first man, be he prince or beggar, that
came to the door.
Two days after there came by a travelling fiddler, who began to play
under the window and beg alms; and when the king heard him, he said,
‘Let him come in.’ So they brought in a dirty-looking fellow; and when
he had sung before the king and the princess, he begged a boon. Then the
king said, ‘You have sung so well, that I will give you my daughter for
your wife.’ The princess begged and prayed; but the king said, ‘I have
sworn to give you to the first comer, and I will keep my word.’ So words
and tears were of no avail; the parson was sent for, and she was married
to the fiddler. When this was over the king said, ‘Now get ready to
go--you must not stay here--you must travel on with your husband.’
Then the fiddler went his way, and took her with him, and they soon came
to a great wood. ‘Pray,’ said she, ‘whose is this wood?’ ‘It belongs
to King Grisly-beard,’ answered he; ‘hadst thou taken him, all had been
thine.’ ‘Ah! unlucky wretch that I am!’ sighed she; ‘would that I had
married King Grisly-beard!’ Next they came to some fine meadows. ‘Whose
are these beautiful green meadows?’ said she. ‘They belong to King
Grisly-beard, hadst thou taken him, they had all been thine.’ ‘Ah!
unlucky wretch that I am!’ said she; ‘would that I had married King
Grisly-beard!’
Then they came to a great city. ‘Whose is this noble city?’ said she.
‘It belongs to King Grisly-beard; hadst thou taken him, it had all been
thine.’ ‘Ah! wretch that I am!’ sighed she; ‘why did I not marry King
Grisly-beard?’ ‘That is no business of mine,’ said the fiddler: ‘why
should you wish for another husband? Am not I good enough for you?’
At last they came to a small cottage. ‘What a paltry place!’ said she;
‘to whom does that little dirty hole belong?’ Then the fiddler said,
‘That is your and my house, where we are to live.’ ‘Where are your
servants?’ cried she. ‘What do we want with servants?’ said he; ‘you
must do for yourself whatever is to be done. Now make the fire, and put
on water and cook my supper, for I am very tired.’ But the princess knew
nothing of making fires and cooking, and the fiddler was forced to help
her. When they had eaten a very scanty meal they went to bed; but the
fiddler called her up very early in the morning to clean the house. Thus
they lived for two days: and when they had eaten up all there was in the
cottage, the man said, ‘Wife, we can’t go on thus, spending money and
earning nothing. You must learn to weave baskets.’ Then he went out and
cut willows, and brought them home, and she began to weave; but it made
her fingers very sore. ‘I see this work won’t do,’ said he: ‘try and
spin; perhaps you will do that better.’ So she sat down and tried to
spin; but the threads cut her tender fingers till the blood ran. ‘See
now,’ said the fiddler, ‘you are good for nothing; you can do no work:
what a bargain I have got! However, I’ll try and set up a trade in pots
and pans, and you shall stand in the market and sell them.’ ‘Alas!’
sighed she, ‘if any of my father’s court should pass by and see me
standing in the market, how they will laugh at me!’
But her husband did not care for that, and said she must work, if she
did not wish to die of hunger. At first the trade went well; for many
people, seeing such a beautiful woman, went to buy her wares, and paid
their money without thinking of taking away the goods. They lived on
this as long as it lasted; and then her husband bought a fresh lot of
ware, and she sat herself down with it in the corner of the market; but
a drunken soldier soon came by, and rode his horse against her stall,
and broke all her goods into a thousand pieces. Then she began to cry,
and knew not what to do. ‘Ah! what will become of me?’ said she; ‘what
will my husband say?’ So she ran home and told him all. ‘Who would
have thought you would have been so silly,’ said he, ‘as to put an
earthenware stall in the corner of the market, where everybody passes?
but let us have no more crying; I see you are not fit for this sort of
work, so I have been to the king’s palace, and asked if they did not
want a kitchen-maid; and they say they will take you, and there you will
have plenty to eat.’
Thus the princess became a kitchen-maid, and helped the cook to do all
the dirtiest work; but she was allowed to carry home some of the meat
that was left, and on this they lived.
She had not been there long before she heard that the king’s eldest son
was passing by, going to be married; and she went to one of the windows
and looked out. Everything was ready, and all the pomp and brightness of
the court was there. Then she bitterly grieved for the pride and folly
which had brought her so low. And the servants gave her some of the rich
meats, which she put into her basket to take home.
All on a sudden, as she was going out, in came the king’s son in golden
clothes; and when he saw a beautiful woman at the door, he took her
by the hand, and said she should be his partner in the dance; but she
trembled for fear, for she saw that it was King Grisly-beard, who was
making sport of her. However, he kept fast hold, and led her in; and the
cover of the basket came off, so that the meats in it fell about. Then
everybody laughed and jeered at her; and she was so abashed, that she
wished herself a thousand feet deep in the earth. She sprang to the
door to run away; but on the steps King Grisly-beard overtook her, and
brought her back and said, ‘Fear me not! I am the fiddler who has lived
with you in the hut. I brought you there because I really loved you. I
am also the soldier that overset your stall. I have done all this only
to cure you of your silly pride, and to show you the folly of your
ill-treatment of me. Now all is over: you have learnt wisdom, and it is
time to hold our marriage feast.’
Then the chamberlains came and brought her the most beautiful robes; and
her father and his whole court were there already, and welcomed her home
on her marriage. Joy was in every face and every heart. The feast was
grand; they danced and sang; all were merry; and I only wish that you
and I had been of the party.
IRON HANS
There was once upon a time a king who had a great forest near his
palace, full of all kinds of wild animals. One day he sent out a
huntsman to shoot him a roe, but he did not come back. ‘Perhaps some
accident has befallen him,’ said the king, and the next day he sent out
two more huntsmen who were to search for him, but they too stayed away.
Then on the third day, he sent for all his huntsmen, and said: ‘Scour
the whole forest through, and do not give up until you have found all
three.’ But of these also, none came home again, none were seen again.
From that time forth, no one would any longer venture into the forest,
and it lay there in deep stillness and solitude, and nothing was seen
of it, but sometimes an eagle or a hawk flying over it. This lasted for
many years, when an unknown huntsman announced himself to the king as
seeking a situation, and offered to go into the dangerous forest. The
king, however, would not give his consent, and said: ‘It is not safe in
there; I fear it would fare with you no better than with the others,
and you would never come out again.’ The huntsman replied: ‘Lord, I will
venture it at my own risk, of fear I know nothing.’
The huntsman therefore betook himself with his dog to the forest. It was
not long before the dog fell in with some game on the way, and wanted to
pursue it; but hardly had the dog run two steps when it stood before a
deep pool, could go no farther, and a naked arm stretched itself out of
the water, seized it, and drew it under. When the huntsman saw that, he
went back and fetched three men to come with buckets and bale out the
water. When they could see to the bottom there lay a wild man whose body
was brown like rusty iron, and whose hair hung over his face down to his
knees. They bound him with cords, and led him away to the castle. There
was great astonishment over the wild man; the king, however, had him put
in an iron cage in his courtyard, and forbade the door to be opened
on pain of death, and the queen herself was to take the key into her
keeping. And from this time forth everyone could again go into the
forest with safety.
The king had a son of eight years, who was once playing in the
courtyard, and while he was playing, his golden ball fell into the cage.
The boy ran thither and said: ‘Give me my ball out.’ ‘Not till you have
opened the door for me,’ answered the man. ‘No,’ said the boy, ‘I will
not do that; the king has forbidden it,’ and ran away. The next day he
again went and asked for his ball; the wild man said: ‘Open my door,’
but the boy would not. On the third day the king had ridden out hunting,
and the boy went once more and said: ‘I cannot open the door even if I
wished, for I have not the key.’ Then the wild man said: ‘It lies under
your mother’s pillow, you can get it there.’ The boy, who wanted to have
his ball back, cast all thought to the winds, and brought the key. The
door opened with difficulty, and the boy pinched his fingers. When it
was open the wild man stepped out, gave him the golden ball, and hurried
away. The boy had become afraid; he called and cried after him: ‘Oh,
wild man, do not go away, or I shall be beaten!’ The wild man turned
back, took him up, set him on his shoulder, and went with hasty steps
into the forest. When the king came home, he observed the empty cage,
and asked the queen how that had happened. She knew nothing about it,
and sought the key, but it was gone. She called the boy, but no one
answered. The king sent out people to seek for him in the fields, but
they did not find him. Then he could easily guess what had happened, and
much grief reigned in the royal court.
When the wild man had once more reached the dark forest, he took the boy
down from his shoulder, and said to him: ‘You will never see your father
and mother again, but I will keep you with me, for you have set me free,
and I have compassion on you. If you do all I bid you, you shall fare
well. Of treasure and gold have I enough, and more than anyone in the
world.’ He made a bed of moss for the boy on which he slept, and the
next morning the man took him to a well, and said: ‘Behold, the gold
well is as bright and clear as crystal, you shall sit beside it, and
take care that nothing falls into it, or it will be polluted. I will
come every evening to see if you have obeyed my order.’ The boy placed
himself by the brink of the well, and often saw a golden fish or a
golden snake show itself therein, and took care that nothing fell in.
As he was thus sitting, his finger hurt him so violently that he
involuntarily put it in the water. He drew it quickly out again, but saw
that it was quite gilded, and whatsoever pains he took to wash the gold
off again, all was to no purpose. In the evening Iron Hans came back,
looked at the boy, and said: ‘What has happened to the well?’ ‘Nothing
nothing,’ he answered, and held his finger behind his back, that the
man might not see it. But he said: ‘You have dipped your finger into
the water, this time it may pass, but take care you do not again let
anything go in.’ By daybreak the boy was already sitting by the well and
watching it. His finger hurt him again and he passed it over his head,
and then unhappily a hair fell down into the well. He took it quickly
out, but it was already quite gilded. Iron Hans came, and already knew
what had happened. ‘You have let a hair fall into the well,’ said he.
‘I will allow you to watch by it once more, but if this happens for the
third time then the well is polluted and you can no longer remain with
me.’
On the third day, the boy sat by the well, and did not stir his finger,
however much it hurt him. But the time was long to him, and he looked at
the reflection of his face on the surface of the water. And as he
still bent down more and more while he was doing so, and trying to look
straight into the eyes, his long hair fell down from his shoulders into
the water. He raised himself up quickly, but the whole of the hair of
his head was already golden and shone like the sun. You can imagine how
terrified the poor boy was! He took his pocket-handkerchief and tied it
round his head, in order that the man might not see it. When he came he
already knew everything, and said: ‘Take the handkerchief off.’ Then the
golden hair streamed forth, and let the boy excuse himself as he might,
it was of no use. ‘You have not stood the trial and can stay here no
longer. Go forth into the world, there you will learn what poverty is.
But as you have not a bad heart, and as I mean well by you, there is
one thing I will grant you; if you fall into any difficulty, come to the
forest and cry: “Iron Hans,” and then I will come and help you. My
power is great, greater than you think, and I have gold and silver in
abundance.’
Then the king’s son left the forest, and walked by beaten and unbeaten
paths ever onwards until at length he reached a great city. There he
looked for work, but could find none, and he learnt nothing by which he
could help himself. At length he went to the palace, and asked if they
would take him in. The people about court did not at all know what use
they could make of him, but they liked him, and told him to stay. At
length the cook took him into his service, and said he might carry wood
and water, and rake the cinders together. Once when it so happened that
no one else was at hand, the cook ordered him to carry the food to the
royal table, but as he did not like to let his golden hair be seen, he
kept his little cap on. Such a thing as that had never yet come under
the king’s notice, and he said: ‘When you come to the royal table you
must take your hat off.’ He answered: ‘Ah, Lord, I cannot; I have a bad
sore place on my head.’ Then the king had the cook called before him
and scolded him, and asked how he could take such a boy as that into his
service; and that he was to send him away at once. The cook, however,
had pity on him, and exchanged him for the gardener’s boy.
And now the boy had to plant and water the garden, hoe and dig, and bear
the wind and bad weather. Once in summer when he was working alone in
the garden, the day was so warm he took his little cap off that the air
might cool him. As the sun shone on his hair it glittered and flashed so
that the rays fell into the bedroom of the king’s daughter, and up she
sprang to see what that could be. Then she saw the boy, and cried to
him: ‘Boy, bring me a wreath of flowers.’ He put his cap on with all
haste, and gathered wild field-flowers and bound them together. When he
was ascending the stairs with them, the gardener met him, and said: ‘How
can you take the king’s daughter a garland of such common flowers? Go
quickly, and get another, and seek out the prettiest and rarest.’ ‘Oh,
no,’ replied the boy, ‘the wild ones have more scent, and will please
her better.’ When he got into the room, the king’s daughter said: ‘Take
your cap off, it is not seemly to keep it on in my presence.’ He again
said: ‘I may not, I have a sore head.’ She, however, caught at his
cap and pulled it off, and then his golden hair rolled down on his
shoulders, and it was splendid to behold. He wanted to run out, but she
held him by the arm, and gave him a handful of ducats. With these he
departed, but he cared nothing for the gold pieces. He took them to the
gardener, and said: ‘I present them to your children, they can play with
them.’ The following day the king’s daughter again called to him that he
was to bring her a wreath of field-flowers, and then he went in with it,
she instantly snatched at his cap, and wanted to take it away from him,
but he held it fast with both hands. She again gave him a handful of
ducats, but he would not keep them, and gave them to the gardener for
playthings for his children. On the third day things went just the
same; she could not get his cap away from him, and he would not have her
money.
Not long afterwards, the country was overrun by war. The king gathered
together his people, and did not know whether or not he could offer any
opposition to the enemy, who was superior in strength and had a mighty
army. Then said the gardener’s boy: ‘I am grown up, and will go to the
wars also, only give me a horse.’ The others laughed, and said: ‘Seek
one for yourself when we are gone, we will leave one behind us in the
stable for you.’ When they had gone forth, he went into the stable, and
led the horse out; it was lame of one foot, and limped hobblety jib,
hobblety jib; nevertheless he mounted it, and rode away to the dark
forest. When he came to the outskirts, he called ‘Iron Hans’ three
times so loudly that it echoed through the trees. Thereupon the wild man
appeared immediately, and said: ‘What do you desire?’ ‘I want a strong
steed, for I am going to the wars.’ ‘That you shall have, and still more
than you ask for.’ Then the wild man went back into the forest, and it
was not long before a stable-boy came out of it, who led a horse that
snorted with its nostrils, and could hardly be restrained, and behind
them followed a great troop of warriors entirely equipped in iron, and
their swords flashed in the sun. The youth made over his three-legged
horse to the stable-boy, mounted the other, and rode at the head of the
soldiers. When he got near the battlefield a great part of the king’s
men had already fallen, and little was wanting to make the rest give
way. Then the youth galloped thither with his iron soldiers, broke like
a hurricane over the enemy, and beat down all who opposed him. They
began to flee, but the youth pursued, and never stopped, until there
was not a single man left. Instead of returning to the king, however, he
conducted his troop by byways back to the forest, and called forth Iron
Hans. ‘What do you desire?’ asked the wild man. ‘Take back your horse
and your troops, and give me my three-legged horse again.’ All that he
asked was done, and soon he was riding on his three-legged horse. When
the king returned to his palace, his daughter went to meet him, and
wished him joy of his victory. ‘I am not the one who carried away the
victory,’ said he, ‘but a strange knight who came to my assistance with
his soldiers.’ The daughter wanted to hear who the strange knight was,
but the king did not know, and said: ‘He followed the enemy, and I did
not see him again.’ She inquired of the gardener where his boy was, but
he smiled, and said: ‘He has just come home on his three-legged horse,
and the others have been mocking him, and crying: “Here comes our
hobblety jib back again!” They asked, too: “Under what hedge have you
been lying sleeping all the time?” So he said: “I did the best of all,
and it would have gone badly without me.” And then he was still more
ridiculed.’
The king said to his daughter: ‘I will proclaim a great feast that shall
last for three days, and you shall throw a golden apple. Perhaps the
unknown man will show himself.’ When the feast was announced, the youth
went out to the forest, and called Iron Hans. ‘What do you desire?’
asked he. ‘That I may catch the king’s daughter’s golden apple.’ ‘It is
as safe as if you had it already,’ said Iron Hans. ‘You shall likewise
have a suit of red armour for the occasion, and ride on a spirited
chestnut-horse.’ When the day came, the youth galloped to the spot, took
his place amongst the knights, and was recognized by no one. The king’s
daughter came forward, and threw a golden apple to the knights, but none
of them caught it but he, only as soon as he had it he galloped away.
On the second day Iron Hans equipped him as a white knight, and gave him
a white horse. Again he was the only one who caught the apple, and
he did not linger an instant, but galloped off with it. The king grew
angry, and said: ‘That is not allowed; he must appear before me and tell
his name.’ He gave the order that if the knight who caught the apple,
should go away again they should pursue him, and if he would not come
back willingly, they were to cut him down and stab him.
On the third day, he received from Iron Hans a suit of black armour and
a black horse, and again he caught the apple. But when he was riding off
with it, the king’s attendants pursued him, and one of them got so near
him that he wounded the youth’s leg with the point of his sword. The
youth nevertheless escaped from them, but his horse leapt so violently
that the helmet fell from the youth’s head, and they could see that he
had golden hair. They rode back and announced this to the king.
The following day the king’s daughter asked the gardener about his
boy. ‘He is at work in the garden; the queer creature has been at the
festival too, and only came home yesterday evening; he has likewise
shown my children three golden apples which he has won.’
The king had him summoned into his presence, and he came and again had
his little cap on his head. But the king’s daughter went up to him and
took it off, and then his golden hair fell down over his shoulders, and
he was so handsome that all were amazed. ‘Are you the knight who came
every day to the festival, always in different colours, and who caught
the three golden apples?’ asked the king. ‘Yes,’ answered he, ‘and here
the apples are,’ and he took them out of his pocket, and returned them
to the king. ‘If you desire further proof, you may see the wound which
your people gave me when they followed me. But I am likewise the knight
who helped you to your victory over your enemies.’ ‘If you can perform
such deeds as that, you are no gardener’s boy; tell me, who is your
father?’ ‘My father is a mighty king, and gold have I in plenty as great
as I require.’ ‘I well see,’ said the king, ‘that I owe my thanks to
you; can I do anything to please you?’ ‘Yes,’ answered he, ‘that indeed
you can. Give me your daughter to wife.’ The maiden laughed, and said:
‘He does not stand much on ceremony, but I have already seen by his
golden hair that he was no gardener’s boy,’ and then she went and
kissed him. His father and mother came to the wedding, and were in great
delight, for they had given up all hope of ever seeing their dear
son again. And as they were sitting at the marriage-feast, the music
suddenly stopped, the doors opened, and a stately king came in with a
great retinue. He went up to the youth, embraced him and said: ‘I am
Iron Hans, and was by enchantment a wild man, but you have set me free;
all the treasures which I possess, shall be your property.’
CAT-SKIN
There was once a king, whose queen had hair of the purest gold, and was
so beautiful that her match was not to be met with on the whole face of
the earth. But this beautiful queen fell ill, and when she felt that her
end drew near she called the king to her and said, ‘Promise me that you
will never marry again, unless you meet with a wife who is as beautiful
as I am, and who has golden hair like mine.’ Then when the king in his
grief promised all she asked, she shut her eyes and died. But the king
was not to be comforted, and for a long time never thought of taking
another wife. At last, however, his wise men said, ‘this will not do;
the king must marry again, that we may have a queen.’ So messengers were
sent far and wide, to seek for a bride as beautiful as the late queen.
But there was no princess in the world so beautiful; and if there had
been, still there was not one to be found who had golden hair. So the
messengers came home, and had had all their trouble for nothing.
Now the king had a daughter, who was just as beautiful as her mother,
and had the same golden hair. And when she was grown up, the king looked
at her and saw that she was just like this late queen: then he said to
his courtiers, ‘May I not marry my daughter? She is the very image of my
dead wife: unless I have her, I shall not find any bride upon the whole
earth, and you say there must be a queen.’ When the courtiers heard this
they were shocked, and said, ‘Heaven forbid that a father should marry
his daughter! Out of so great a sin no good can come.’ And his daughter
was also shocked, but hoped the king would soon give up such thoughts;
so she said to him, ‘Before I marry anyone I must have three dresses:
one must be of gold, like the sun; another must be of shining silver,
like the moon; and a third must be dazzling as the stars: besides this,
I want a mantle of a thousand different kinds of fur put together, to
which every beast in the kingdom must give a part of his skin.’ And thus
she thought he would think of the matter no more. But the king made the
most skilful workmen in his kingdom weave the three dresses: one golden,
like the sun; another silvery, like the moon; and a third sparkling,
like the stars: and his hunters were told to hunt out all the beasts in
his kingdom, and to take the finest fur out of their skins: and thus a
mantle of a thousand furs was made.
When all were ready, the king sent them to her; but she got up in the
night when all were asleep, and took three of her trinkets, a golden
ring, a golden necklace, and a golden brooch, and packed the three
dresses--of the sun, the moon, and the stars--up in a nutshell, and
wrapped herself up in the mantle made of all sorts of fur, and besmeared
her face and hands with soot. Then she threw herself upon Heaven for
help in her need, and went away, and journeyed on the whole night, till
at last she came to a large wood. As she was very tired, she sat herself
down in the hollow of a tree and soon fell asleep: and there she slept
on till it was midday.
Now as the king to whom the wood belonged was hunting in it, his dogs
came to the tree, and began to snuff about, and run round and round, and
bark. ‘Look sharp!’ said the king to the huntsmen, ‘and see what sort
of game lies there.’ And the huntsmen went up to the tree, and when they
came back again said, ‘In the hollow tree there lies a most wonderful
beast, such as we never saw before; its skin seems to be of a thousand
kinds of fur, but there it lies fast asleep.’ ‘See,’ said the king, ‘if
you can catch it alive, and we will take it with us.’ So the huntsmen
took it up, and the maiden awoke and was greatly frightened, and said,
‘I am a poor child that has neither father nor mother left; have pity on
me and take me with you.’ Then they said, ‘Yes, Miss Cat-skin, you will
do for the kitchen; you can sweep up the ashes, and do things of that
sort.’ So they put her into the coach, and took her home to the king’s
palace. Then they showed her a little corner under the staircase, where
no light of day ever peeped in, and said, ‘Cat-skin, you may lie and
sleep there.’ And she was sent into the kitchen, and made to fetch wood
and water, to blow the fire, pluck the poultry, pick the herbs, sift the
ashes, and do all the dirty work.
Thus Cat-skin lived for a long time very sorrowfully. ‘Ah! pretty
princess!’ thought she, ‘what will now become of thee?’ But it happened
one day that a feast was to be held in the king’s castle, so she said to
the cook, ‘May I go up a little while and see what is going on? I will
take care and stand behind the door.’ And the cook said, ‘Yes, you may
go, but be back again in half an hour’s time, to rake out the ashes.’
Then she took her little lamp, and went into her cabin, and took off the
fur skin, and washed the soot from off her face and hands, so that her
beauty shone forth like the sun from behind the clouds. She next opened
her nutshell, and brought out of it the dress that shone like the sun,
and so went to the feast. Everyone made way for her, for nobody knew
her, and they thought she could be no less than a king’s daughter. But
the king came up to her, and held out his hand and danced with her; and
he thought in his heart, ‘I never saw any one half so beautiful.’
When the dance was at an end she curtsied; and when the king looked
round for her, she was gone, no one knew wither. The guards that stood
at the castle gate were called in: but they had seen no one. The truth
was, that she had run into her little cabin, pulled off her dress,
blackened her face and hands, put on the fur-skin cloak, and was
Cat-skin again. When she went into the kitchen to her work, and began
to rake the ashes, the cook said, ‘Let that alone till the morning, and
heat the king’s soup; I should like to run up now and give a peep: but
take care you don’t let a hair fall into it, or you will run a chance of
never eating again.’
As soon as the cook went away, Cat-skin heated the king’s soup, and
toasted a slice of bread first, as nicely as ever she could; and when it
was ready, she went and looked in the cabin for her little golden ring,
and put it into the dish in which the soup was. When the dance was over,
the king ordered his soup to be brought in; and it pleased him so well,
that he thought he had never tasted any so good before. At the bottom
he saw a gold ring lying; and as he could not make out how it had got
there, he ordered the cook to be sent for. The cook was frightened when
he heard the order, and said to Cat-skin, ‘You must have let a hair fall
into the soup; if it be so, you will have a good beating.’ Then he went
before the king, and he asked him who had cooked the soup. ‘I did,’
answered the cook. But the king said, ‘That is not true; it was better
done than you could do it.’ Then he answered, ‘To tell the truth I did
not cook it, but Cat-skin did.’ ‘Then let Cat-skin come up,’ said the
king: and when she came he said to her, ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am a poor
child,’ said she, ‘that has lost both father and mother.’ ‘How came you
in my palace?’ asked he. ‘I am good for nothing,’ said she, ‘but to be
scullion-girl, and to have boots and shoes thrown at my head.’ ‘But how
did you get the ring that was in the soup?’ asked the king. Then she
would not own that she knew anything about the ring; so the king sent
her away again about her business.
After a time there was another feast, and Cat-skin asked the cook to let
her go up and see it as before. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘but come again in half
an hour, and cook the king the soup that he likes so much.’ Then she
ran to her little cabin, washed herself quickly, and took her dress
out which was silvery as the moon, and put it on; and when she went in,
looking like a king’s daughter, the king went up to her, and rejoiced at
seeing her again, and when the dance began he danced with her. After the
dance was at an end she managed to slip out, so slyly that the king did
not see where she was gone; but she sprang into her little cabin, and
made herself into Cat-skin again, and went into the kitchen to cook the
soup. Whilst the cook was above stairs, she got the golden necklace and
dropped it into the soup; then it was brought to the king, who ate it,
and it pleased him as well as before; so he sent for the cook, who
was again forced to tell him that Cat-skin had cooked it. Cat-skin was
brought again before the king, but she still told him that she was only
fit to have boots and shoes thrown at her head.
But when the king had ordered a feast to be got ready for the third
time, it happened just the same as before. ‘You must be a witch,
Cat-skin,’ said the cook; ‘for you always put something into your soup,
so that it pleases the king better than mine.’ However, he let her go up
as before. Then she put on her dress which sparkled like the stars, and
went into the ball-room in it; and the king danced with her again, and
thought she had never looked so beautiful as she did then. So whilst
he was dancing with her, he put a gold ring on her finger without her
seeing it, and ordered that the dance should be kept up a long time.
When it was at an end, he would have held her fast by the hand, but she
slipped away, and sprang so quickly through the crowd that he lost sight
of her: and she ran as fast as she could into her little cabin under
the stairs. But this time she kept away too long, and stayed beyond the
half-hour; so she had not time to take off her fine dress, and threw her
fur mantle over it, and in her haste did not blacken herself all over
with soot, but left one of her fingers white.
Then she ran into the kitchen, and cooked the king’s soup; and as soon
as the cook was gone, she put the golden brooch into the dish. When the
king got to the bottom, he ordered Cat-skin to be called once more, and
soon saw the white finger, and the ring that he had put on it whilst
they were dancing: so he seized her hand, and kept fast hold of it, and
when she wanted to loose herself and spring away, the fur cloak fell off
a little on one side, and the starry dress sparkled underneath it.
Then he got hold of the fur and tore it off, and her golden hair and
beautiful form were seen, and she could no longer hide herself: so she
washed the soot and ashes from her face, and showed herself to be the
most beautiful princess upon the face of the earth. But the king said,
‘You are my beloved bride, and we will never more be parted from each
other.’ And the wedding feast was held, and a merry day it was, as ever
was heard of or seen in that country, or indeed in any other.
SNOW-WHITE AND ROSE-RED
There was once a poor widow who lived in a lonely cottage. In front of
the cottage was a garden wherein stood two rose-trees, one of which bore
white and the other red roses. She had two children who were like the
two rose-trees, and one was called Snow-white, and the other Rose-red.
They were as good and happy, as busy and cheerful as ever two children
in the world were, only Snow-white was more quiet and gentle than
Rose-red. Rose-red liked better to run about in the meadows and fields
seeking flowers and catching butterflies; but Snow-white sat at home
with her mother, and helped her with her housework, or read to her when
there was nothing to do.
The two children were so fond of one another that they always held each
other by the hand when they went out together, and when Snow-white said:
‘We will not leave each other,’ Rose-red answered: ‘Never so long as we
live,’ and their mother would add: ‘What one has she must share with the
other.’
They often ran about the forest alone and gathered red berries, and no
beasts did them any harm, but came close to them trustfully. The little
hare would eat a cabbage-leaf out of their hands, the roe grazed by
their side, the stag leapt merrily by them, and the birds sat still upon
the boughs, and sang whatever they knew.
No mishap overtook them; if they had stayed too late in the forest, and
night came on, they laid themselves down near one another upon the moss,
and slept until morning came, and their mother knew this and did not
worry on their account.
Once when they had spent the night in the wood and the dawn had roused
them, they saw a beautiful child in a shining white dress sitting near
their bed. He got up and looked quite kindly at them, but said nothing
and went into the forest. And when they looked round they found that
they had been sleeping quite close to a precipice, and would certainly
have fallen into it in the darkness if they had gone only a few paces
further. And their mother told them that it must have been the angel who
watches over good children.
Snow-white and Rose-red kept their mother’s little cottage so neat that
it was a pleasure to look inside it. In the summer Rose-red took care
of the house, and every morning laid a wreath of flowers by her mother’s
bed before she awoke, in which was a rose from each tree. In the winter
Snow-white lit the fire and hung the kettle on the hob. The kettle
was of brass and shone like gold, so brightly was it polished. In the
evening, when the snowflakes fell, the mother said: ‘Go, Snow-white, and
bolt the door,’ and then they sat round the hearth, and the mother took
her spectacles and read aloud out of a large book, and the two girls
listened as they sat and spun. And close by them lay a lamb upon the
floor, and behind them upon a perch sat a white dove with its head
hidden beneath its wings.
One evening, as they were thus sitting comfortably together, someone
knocked at the door as if he wished to be let in. The mother said:
‘Quick, Rose-red, open the door, it must be a traveller who is seeking
shelter.’ Rose-red went and pushed back the bolt, thinking that it was a
poor man, but it was not; it was a bear that stretched his broad, black
head within the door.
Rose-red screamed and sprang back, the lamb bleated, the dove fluttered,
and Snow-white hid herself behind her mother’s bed. But the bear began
to speak and said: ‘Do not be afraid, I will do you no harm! I am
half-frozen, and only want to warm myself a little beside you.’
‘Poor bear,’ said the mother, ‘lie down by the fire, only take care that
you do not burn your coat.’ Then she cried: ‘Snow-white, Rose-red, come
out, the bear will do you no harm, he means well.’ So they both came
out, and by-and-by the lamb and dove came nearer, and were not afraid
of him. The bear said: ‘Here, children, knock the snow out of my coat a
little’; so they brought the broom and swept the bear’s hide clean;
and he stretched himself by the fire and growled contentedly and
comfortably. It was not long before they grew quite at home, and played
tricks with their clumsy guest. They tugged his hair with their hands,
put their feet upon his back and rolled him about, or they took a
hazel-switch and beat him, and when he growled they laughed. But the
bear took it all in good part, only when they were too rough he called
out: ‘Leave me alive, children,
Snow-white, Rose-red,
Will you beat your wooer dead?’
When it was bed-time, and the others went to bed, the mother said to the
bear: ‘You can lie there by the hearth, and then you will be safe from
the cold and the bad weather.’ As soon as day dawned the two children
let him out, and he trotted across the snow into the forest.
Henceforth the bear came every evening at the same time, laid himself
down by the hearth, and let the children amuse themselves with him as
much as they liked; and they got so used to him that the doors were
never fastened until their black friend had arrived.
When spring had come and all outside was green, the bear said one
morning to Snow-white: ‘Now I must go away, and cannot come back for the
whole summer.’ ‘Where are you going, then, dear bear?’ asked Snow-white.
‘I must go into the forest and guard my treasures from the wicked
dwarfs. In the winter, when the earth is frozen hard, they are obliged
to stay below and cannot work their way through; but now, when the sun
has thawed and warmed the earth, they break through it, and come out to
pry and steal; and what once gets into their hands, and in their caves,
does not easily see daylight again.’
Snow-white was quite sorry at his departure, and as she unbolted the
door for him, and the bear was hurrying out, he caught against the bolt
and a piece of his hairy coat was torn off, and it seemed to Snow-white
as if she had seen gold shining through it, but she was not sure about
it. The bear ran away quickly, and was soon out of sight behind the
trees.
A short time afterwards the mother sent her children into the forest
to get firewood. There they found a big tree which lay felled on the
ground, and close by the trunk something was jumping backwards and
forwards in the grass, but they could not make out what it was. When
they came nearer they saw a dwarf with an old withered face and a
snow-white beard a yard long. The end of the beard was caught in a
crevice of the tree, and the little fellow was jumping about like a dog
tied to a rope, and did not know what to do.
He glared at the girls with his fiery red eyes and cried: ‘Why do you
stand there? Can you not come here and help me?’ ‘What are you up to,
little man?’ asked Rose-red. ‘You stupid, prying goose!’ answered the
dwarf: ‘I was going to split the tree to get a little wood for cooking.
The little bit of food that we people get is immediately burnt up with
heavy logs; we do not swallow so much as you coarse, greedy folk. I had
just driven the wedge safely in, and everything was going as I wished;
but the cursed wedge was too smooth and suddenly sprang out, and the
tree closed so quickly that I could not pull out my beautiful white
beard; so now it is tight and I cannot get away, and the silly, sleek,
milk-faced things laugh! Ugh! how odious you are!’
The children tried very hard, but they could not pull the beard out, it
was caught too fast. ‘I will run and fetch someone,’ said Rose-red. ‘You
senseless goose!’ snarled the dwarf; ‘why should you fetch someone? You
are already two too many for me; can you not think of something better?’
‘Don’t be impatient,’ said Snow-white, ‘I will help you,’ and she pulled
her scissors out of her pocket, and cut off the end of the beard.
As soon as the dwarf felt himself free he laid hold of a bag which lay
amongst the roots of the tree, and which was full of gold, and lifted it
up, grumbling to himself: ‘Uncouth people, to cut off a piece of my fine
beard. Bad luck to you!’ and then he swung the bag upon his back, and
went off without even once looking at the children.
Some time afterwards Snow-white and Rose-red went to catch a dish
of fish. As they came near the brook they saw something like a large
grasshopper jumping towards the water, as if it were going to leap in.
They ran to it and found it was the dwarf. ‘Where are you going?’ said
Rose-red; ‘you surely don’t want to go into the water?’ ‘I am not such
a fool!’ cried the dwarf; ‘don’t you see that the accursed fish wants
to pull me in?’ The little man had been sitting there fishing, and
unluckily the wind had tangled up his beard with the fishing-line; a
moment later a big fish made a bite and the feeble creature had not
strength to pull it out; the fish kept the upper hand and pulled the
dwarf towards him. He held on to all the reeds and rushes, but it was of
little good, for he was forced to follow the movements of the fish, and
was in urgent danger of being dragged into the water.
The girls came just in time; they held him fast and tried to free his
beard from the line, but all in vain, beard and line were entangled fast
together. There was nothing to do but to bring out the scissors and cut
the beard, whereby a small part of it was lost. When the dwarf saw that
he screamed out: ‘Is that civil, you toadstool, to disfigure a man’s
face? Was it not enough to clip off the end of my beard? Now you have
cut off the best part of it. I cannot let myself be seen by my people.
I wish you had been made to run the soles off your shoes!’ Then he took
out a sack of pearls which lay in the rushes, and without another word
he dragged it away and disappeared behind a stone.
It happened that soon afterwards the mother sent the two children to the
town to buy needles and thread, and laces and ribbons. The road led them
across a heath upon which huge pieces of rock lay strewn about. There
they noticed a large bird hovering in the air, flying slowly round and
round above them; it sank lower and lower, and at last settled near a
rock not far away. Immediately they heard a loud, piteous cry. They ran
up and saw with horror that the eagle had seized their old acquaintance
the dwarf, and was going to carry him off.
The children, full of pity, at once took tight hold of the little man,
and pulled against the eagle so long that at last he let his booty go.
As soon as the dwarf had recovered from his first fright he cried
with his shrill voice: ‘Could you not have done it more carefully! You
dragged at my brown coat so that it is all torn and full of holes, you
clumsy creatures!’ Then he took up a sack full of precious stones, and
slipped away again under the rock into his hole. The girls, who by
this time were used to his ingratitude, went on their way and did their
business in town.
As they crossed the heath again on their way home they surprised the
dwarf, who had emptied out his bag of precious stones in a clean spot,
and had not thought that anyone would come there so late. The evening
sun shone upon the brilliant stones; they glittered and sparkled with
all colours so beautifully that the children stood still and stared
at them. ‘Why do you stand gaping there?’ cried the dwarf, and his
ashen-grey face became copper-red with rage. He was still cursing when a
loud growling was heard, and a black bear came trotting towards them out
of the forest. The dwarf sprang up in a fright, but he could not reach
his cave, for the bear was already close. Then in the dread of his heart
he cried: ‘Dear Mr Bear, spare me, I will give you all my treasures;
look, the beautiful jewels lying there! Grant me my life; what do you
want with such a slender little fellow as I? you would not feel me
between your teeth. Come, take these two wicked girls, they are tender
morsels for you, fat as young quails; for mercy’s sake eat them!’ The
bear took no heed of his words, but gave the wicked creature a single
blow with his paw, and he did not move again.
The girls had run away, but the bear called to them: ‘Snow-white and
Rose-red, do not be afraid; wait, I will come with you.’ Then they
recognized his voice and waited, and when he came up to them suddenly
his bearskin fell off, and he stood there a handsome man, clothed all in
gold. ‘I am a king’s son,’ he said, ‘and I was bewitched by that wicked
dwarf, who had stolen my treasures; I have had to run about the forest
as a savage bear until I was freed by his death. Now he has got his
well-deserved punishment.
Snow-white was married to him, and Rose-red to his brother, and they
divided between them the great treasure which the dwarf had gathered
together in his cave. The old mother lived peacefully and happily with
her children for many years. She took the two rose-trees with her, and
they stood before her window, and every year bore the most beautiful
roses, white and red.A CHRISTMAS CAROL
IN PROSE
BEING
A Ghost Story of Christmas
by Charles Dickens
PREFACE
I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book,
to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my
readers out of humour with themselves, with each other,
with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses
pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.
Their faithful Friend and Servant,
C. D.
December, 1843.
CONTENTS
Stave I: Marley's Ghost
Stave II: The First of the Three Spirits
Stave III: The Second of the Three Spirits
Stave IV: The Last of the Spirits
Stave V: The End of It
STAVE I: MARLEY'S GHOST
MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt
whatever about that. The register of his burial was
signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and
Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he
chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a
door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my
own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about
a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to
regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery
in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors
is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that
Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did.
How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were
partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge
was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole
assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and
sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully
cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent
man of business on the very day of the funeral,
and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to
the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley
was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or
nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going
to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that
Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there
would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a
stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts,
than there would be in any other middle-aged
gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy
spot--say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance--
literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name.
There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse
door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as
Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the
business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley,
but he answered to both names. It was all the
same to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone,
Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint,
from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire;
secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The
cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed
nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his
eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his
grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his
eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low
temperature always about with him; he iced his office in
the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on
Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather
chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he,
no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no
pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't
know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and
snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage
over him in only one respect. They often "came down"
handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with
gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you?
When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored
him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him
what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all
his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of
Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to
know him; and when they saw him coming on, would
tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and
then would wag their tails as though they said, "No
eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"
But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing
he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths
of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance,
was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.
Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year,
on Christmas Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his
counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy
withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside,
go wheezing up and down, beating their hands
upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the
pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had
only just gone three, but it was quite dark already--
it had not been light all day--and candles were flaring
in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like
ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog
came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was
so dense without, that although the court was of the
narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.
To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring
everything, one might have thought that Nature
lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open
that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a
dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying
letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's
fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one
coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept
the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the
clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted
that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore
the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to
warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being
a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried
a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's
nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was
the first intimation he had of his approach.
"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the
fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was
all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his
eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's
nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure?"
"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What
right have you to be merry? What reason have you
to be merry? You're poor enough."
"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What
right have you to be dismal? What reason have you
to be morose? You're rich enough."
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur
of the moment, said, "Bah!" again; and followed it up
with "Humbug."
"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.
"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I
live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas!
Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas
time to you but a time for paying bills without
money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but
not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books
and having every item in 'em through a round dozen
of months presented dead against you? If I could
work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot
who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips,
should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried
with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"
"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
"Nephew!" returned the uncle sternly, "keep Christmas
in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you
don't keep it."
"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much
good may it do you! Much good it has ever done
you!"
"There are many things from which I might have
derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare
say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the
rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas
time, when it has come round--apart from the
veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything
belonging to it can be apart from that--as a
good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant
time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar
of the year, when men and women seem by one consent
to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think
of people below them as if they really were
fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race
of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore,
uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or
silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me
good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"
The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded.
Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety,
he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark
for ever.
"Let me hear another sound from you," said
Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing
your situation! You're quite a powerful speaker,
sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you
don't go into Parliament."
"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."
Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he
did. He went the whole length of the expression,
and said that he would see him in that extremity first.
"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"
"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.
"Because I fell in love."
"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if
that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous
than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"
"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before
that happened. Why give it as a reason for not
coming now?"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you;
why cannot we be friends?"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so
resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I
have been a party. But I have made the trial in
homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas
humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!"
"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
"And A Happy New Year!"
"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word,
notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to
bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who,
cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned
them cordially.
"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge; who
overheard him: "my clerk, with fifteen shillings a
week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry
Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."
This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had
let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen,
pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off,
in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in
their hands, and bowed to him.
"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the
gentlemen, referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure
of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"
"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,"
Scrooge replied. "He died seven years ago, this very
night."
"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented
by his surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting
his credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred
spirits. At the ominous word "liberality," Scrooge
frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials
back.
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,"
said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than
usually desirable that we should make some slight
provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer
greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in
want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands
are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down
the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge.
"Are they still in operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish
I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour,
then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first,
that something had occurred to stop them in their
useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to
hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish
Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,"
returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring
to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink,
and means of warmth. We choose this time, because
it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt,
and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down
for?"
"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you
ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.
I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't
afford to make idle people merry. I help to support
the establishments I have mentioned--they cost
enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had
better do it, and decrease the surplus population.
Besides--excuse me--I don't know that."
"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's
enough for a man to understand his own business, and
not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies
me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue
their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed
his labours with an improved opinion of himself,
and in a more facetious temper than was usual
with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that
people ran about with flaring links, proffering their
services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct
them on their way. The ancient tower of a church,
whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down
at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became
invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the
clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if
its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.
The cold became intense. In the main street, at the
corner of the court, some labourers were repairing
the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier,
round which a party of ragged men and boys were
gathered: warming their hands and winking their
eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug
being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed,
and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness
of the shops where holly sprigs and berries
crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale
faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers'
trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant,
with which it was next to impossible to believe that
such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything
to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the
mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks
and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's
household should; and even the little tailor, whom he
had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for
being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up
to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean
wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
Foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting
cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped
the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather
as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then
indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The
owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled
by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs,
stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with
a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of
"God bless you, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!"
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action,
that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to
the fog and even more congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house
arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his
stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant
clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out,
and put on his hat.
"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said
Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, sir."
"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not
fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd
think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used,
when I pay a day's wages for no work."
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every
twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning
his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must
have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
morning."
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge
walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a
twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his
white comforter dangling below his waist (for he
boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill,
at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in
honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home
to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play
at blindman's-buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual
melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and
beguiled the rest of the evening with his
banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in
chambers which had once belonged to his deceased
partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a
lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so
little business to be, that one could scarcely help
fancying it must have run there when it was a young
house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses,
and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough
now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but
Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices.
The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew
its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands.
The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway
of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of
the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the
threshold.
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all
particular about the knocker on the door, except that it
was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had
seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence
in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what
is called fancy about him as any man in the city of
London, even including--which is a bold word--the
corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be
borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one
thought on Marley, since his last mention of his
seven years' dead partner that afternoon. And then
let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened
that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door,
saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate
process of change--not a knocker, but Marley's face.
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow
as the other objects in the yard were, but had a
dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark
cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked
at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly
spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The
hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air;
and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly
motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it
horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the
face and beyond its control, rather than a part of
its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it
was a knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood
was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it
had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue.
But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished,
turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before
he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind
it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the
sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall.
But there was nothing on the back of the door, except
the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he
said "Pooh, pooh!" and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder.
Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant's
cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal
of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to
be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and
walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too:
trimming his candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six
up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad
young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you
might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken
it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall
and the door towards the balustrades: and done it
easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room
to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge
thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before
him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of
the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well,
so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with
Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that.
Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before
he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms
to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection
of the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they
should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under
the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin
ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had
a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the
bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown,
which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude
against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard,
old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three
legs, and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked
himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his
custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off
his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and
his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take
his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a
bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and
brood over it, before he could extract the least
sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.
The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch
merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint
Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures.
There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters;
Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending
through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams,
Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats,
hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts;
and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came
like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the
whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first,
with power to shape some picture on its surface from
the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would
have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.
"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the
room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he
threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened
to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the
room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten
with a chamber in the highest story of the
building. It was with great astonishment, and with
a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he
saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in
the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it
rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute,
but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had
begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking
noise, deep down below; as if some person were
dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the
wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have
heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as
dragging chains.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound,
and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors
below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight
towards his door.
"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."
His colour changed though, when, without a pause,
it came on through the heavy door, and passed into
the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the
dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know
him; Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail,
usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on
the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts,
and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was
clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound
about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge
observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks,
ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.
His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him,
and looking through his waistcoat, could see
the two buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no
bowels, but he had never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he
looked the phantom through and through, and saw
it standing before him; though he felt the chilling
influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very
texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head
and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before;
he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever.
"What do you want with me?"
"Much!"--Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
"Who are you?"
"Ask me who I was."
"Who were you then?" said Scrooge, raising his
voice. "You're particular, for a shade." He was going
to say "to a shade," but substituted this, as more
appropriate.
"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."
"Can you--can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking
doubtfully at him.
"I can."
"Do it, then."
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know
whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in
a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event
of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity
of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat
down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he
were quite used to it.
"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
"I don't," said Scrooge.
"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of
your senses?"
"I don't know," said Scrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them.
A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may
be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of
cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of
gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking
jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means
waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be
smart, as a means of distracting his own attention,
and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice
disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence
for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very
deuce with him. There was something very awful,
too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal
atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it
himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the
Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts,
and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour
from an oven.
"You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning
quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned;
and wishing, though it were only for a second, to
divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
"I do," replied the Ghost.
"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.
"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."
"Well!" returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow
this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a
legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug,
I tell you! humbug!"
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook
its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that
Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself
from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was
his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage
round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors,
its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands
before his face.
"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do
you trouble me?"
"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do
you believe in me or not?"
"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits
walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"
"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned,
"that the spirit within him should walk abroad among
his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that
spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so
after death. It is doomed to wander through the
world--oh, woe is me!--and witness what it cannot
share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to
happiness!"
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain
and wrung its shadowy hands.
"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell
me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost.
"I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded
it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I
wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"
Scrooge trembled more and more.
"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the
weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?
It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven
Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since.
It is a ponderous chain!"
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the
expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty
or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see
nothing.
"Jacob," he said, imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley,
tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!"
"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "It comes
from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed
by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor
can I tell you what I would. A very little more is
all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I
cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked
beyond our counting-house--mark me!--in life my
spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our
money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before
me!"
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became
thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets.
Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now,
but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his
knees.
"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,"
Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though
with humility and deference.
"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.
"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And travelling
all the time!"
"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no
peace. Incessant torture of remorse."
"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.
"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.
"You might have got over a great quantity of
ground in seven years," said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and
clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of
the night, that the Ward would have been justified in
indicting it for a nuisance.
"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the
phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour
by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into
eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is
all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit
working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may
be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast
means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of
regret can make amends for one life's opportunity
misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"
"But you were always a good man of business,
Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this
to himself.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands
again. "Mankind was my business. The common
welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance,
and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings
of my trade were but a drop of water in the
comprehensive ocean of my business!"
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were
the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it
heavily upon the ground again.
"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said,
"I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of
fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never
raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise
Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to
which its light would have conducted me!"
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the
spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake
exceedingly.
"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly
gone."
"I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon
me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!"
"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that
you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible
beside you many and many a day."
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered,
and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
"That is no light part of my penance," pursued
the Ghost. "I am here to-night to warn you, that you
have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A
chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."
"You were always a good friend to me," said
Scrooge. "Thank'ee!"
"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by
Three Spirits."
Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the
Ghost's had done.
"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned,
Jacob?" he demanded, in a faltering voice.
"It is."
"I--I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.
"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot
hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow,
when the bell tolls One."
"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over,
Jacob?" hinted Scrooge.
"Expect the second on the next night at the same
hour. The third upon the next night when the last
stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see
me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you
remember what has passed between us!"
When it had said these words, the spectre took its
wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head,
as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its
teeth made, when the jaws were brought together
by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again,
and found his supernatural visitor confronting him
in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and
about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at
every step it took, the window raised itself a little,
so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.
It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did.
When they were within two paces of each other,
Marley's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to
come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear:
for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible
of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of
lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and
self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment,
joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the
bleak, dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his
curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither
and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they
went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's
Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments)
were linked together; none were free. Many had
been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He
had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white
waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to
its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist
a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below,
upon a door-step. The misery with them all was,
clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in
human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist
enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and
their spirit voices faded together; and the night became
as it had been when he walked home.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door
by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked,
as he had locked it with his own hands, and
the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Humbug!"
but stopped at the first syllable. And being,
from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues
of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or
the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of
the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to
bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the
instant.
STAVE II: THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS
WHEN Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed,
he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from
the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to
pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a
neighbouring church struck the four quarters. So he listened
for the hour.
To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from
six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to
twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he
went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have
got into the works. Twelve!
He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most
preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve:
and stopped.
"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have
slept through a whole day and far into another night. It
isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and
this is twelve at noon!"
The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed,
and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub
the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he
could see anything; and could see very little then. All he
could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely
cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro,
and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been
if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the
world. This was a great relief, because "three days after sight
of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his
order," and so forth, would have become a mere United States'
security if there were no days to count by.
Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought
it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he
thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavoured
not to think, the more he thought.
Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved
within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his
mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first
position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through,
"Was it a dream or not?"
Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters
more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned
him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie
awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he could
no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the
wisest resolution in his power.
The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he
must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock.
At length it broke upon his listening ear.
"Ding, dong!"
"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.
"Ding, dong!"
"Half-past!" said Scrooge.
"Ding, dong!"
"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.
"Ding, dong!"
"The hour itself," said Scrooge, triumphantly, "and nothing else!"
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a
deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light flashed up in the room
upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a
hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his
back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains
of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a
half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the
unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now
to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
It was a strange figure--like a child: yet not so like a
child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural
medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded
from the view, and being diminished to a child's proportions.
Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was
white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in
it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were
very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold
were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately
formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic
of the purest white; and round its waist was bound
a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held
a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular
contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed
with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was,
that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear
jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was
doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a
great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.
Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing
steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt
sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another,
and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so
the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a
thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs,
now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a
body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible
in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the
very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and
clear as ever.
"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to
me?" asked Scrooge.
"I am!"
The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if
instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
"Who, and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
"Long Past?" inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish
stature.
"No. Your past."
Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if
anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire
to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered.
"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out,
with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough
that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and
force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon
my brow!"
Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend
or any knowledge of having wilfully "bonneted" the Spirit at
any period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what
business brought him there.
"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.
Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not
help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been
more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard
him thinking, for it said immediately:
"Your reclamation, then. Take heed!"
It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him
gently by the arm.
"Rise! and walk with me!"
It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the
weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes;
that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below
freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers,
dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that he had a cold upon him at
that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand,
was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit
made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.
"I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."
"Bear but a touch of my hand there," said the Spirit,
laying it upon his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more
than this!"
As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall,
and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either
hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it
was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished
with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon
the ground.
"Good Heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together,
as he looked about him. "I was bred in this place. I was
a boy here!"
The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch,
though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still
present to the old man's sense of feeling. He was conscious
of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected
with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares
long, long, forgotten!
"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is
that upon your cheek?"
Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice,
that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him
where he would.
"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.
"Remember it!" cried Scrooge with fervour; "I could
walk it blindfold."
"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!" observed
the Ghost. "Let us go on."
They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every
gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared
in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river.
Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them
with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in
country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys
were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the
broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air
laughed to hear it!
"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said
the Ghost. "They have no consciousness of us."
The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge
knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond
all bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and
his heart leap up as they went past! Why was he filled
with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry
Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and bye-ways, for
their several homes! What was merry Christmas to Scrooge?
Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done
to him?
"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A
solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still."
Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and
soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little
weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell
hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken
fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their walls
were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their
gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables;
and the coach-houses and sheds were over-run with grass.
Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for
entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open
doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished,
cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a
chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow
with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too
much to eat.
They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a
door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and
disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by
lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely
boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down
upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he
used to be.
Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle
from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the
half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among
the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle
swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in
the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening
influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.
The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his
younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in
foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at:
stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and
leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.
"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's
dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas
time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone,
he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And
Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his wild brother, Orson; there
they go! And what's his name, who was put down in his
drawers, asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don't you see him!
And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii;
there he is upon his head! Serve him right. I'm glad of it.
What business had he to be married to the Princess!"
To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature
on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between
laughing and crying; and to see his heightened and excited
face; would have been a surprise to his business friends in
the city, indeed.
"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and
yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the
top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called
him, when he came home again after sailing round the
island. 'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin
Crusoe?' The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't.
It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running
for his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!"
Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his
usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, "Poor
boy!" and cried again.
"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his
pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his
cuff: "but it's too late now."
"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.
"Nothing," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy
singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should
like to have given him something: that's all."
The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand:
saying as it did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"
Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the
room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk,
the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the
ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how
all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than you
do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything
had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all
the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.
He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly.
Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of
his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.
It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy,
came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and
often kissing him, addressed him as her "Dear, dear
brother."
"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the
child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh.
"To bring you home, home, home!"
"Home, little Fan?" returned the boy.
"Yes!" said the child, brimful of glee. "Home, for good
and all. Home, for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder
than he used to be, that home's like Heaven! He spoke so
gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that
I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come
home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach
to bring you. And you're to be a man!" said the child,
opening her eyes, "and are never to come back here; but
first, we're to be together all the Christmas long, and have
the merriest time in all the world."
"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy.
She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his
head; but being too little, laughed again, and stood on
tiptoe to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, in her
childish eagerness, towards the door; and he, nothing loth to
go, accompanied her.
A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master
Scrooge's box, there!" and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster
himself, who glared on Master Scrooge with a ferocious
condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind
by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and his
sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best-parlour that
ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial
and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold.
Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a
block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments
of those dainties to the young people: at the same time,
sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of "something"
to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman,
but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had
rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied
on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster
good-bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove
gaily down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the
hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens
like spray.
"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have
withered," said the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"
"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I will not
gainsay it, Spirit. God forbid!"
"She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and had, as I think,
children."
"One child," Scrooge returned.
"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"
Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly,
"Yes."
Although they had but that moment left the school behind
them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city,
where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy
carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and
tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by
the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Christmas
time again; but it was evening, and the streets were
lighted up.
The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked
Scrooge if he knew it.
"Know it!" said Scrooge. "Was I apprenticed here!"
They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh
wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two
inches taller he must have knocked his head against the
ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement:
"Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it's Fezziwig
alive again!"
Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the
clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his
hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over
himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and
called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice:
"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"
Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly
in, accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.
"Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to the Ghost.
"Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached
to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!"
"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night.
Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's
have the shutters up," cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap
of his hands, "before a man can say Jack Robinson!"
You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it!
They charged into the street with the shutters--one, two,
three--had 'em up in their places--four, five, six--barred
'em and pinned 'em--seven, eight, nine--and came back
before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.
"Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the
high desk, with wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads,
and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup,
Ebenezer!"
Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared
away, or couldn't have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking
on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if
it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was
swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon
the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and
bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter's
night.
In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the
lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty
stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial
smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and
lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they
broke. In came all the young men and women employed in
the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the
baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular friend,
the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was
suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying
to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who
was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress.
In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly,
some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling;
in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went,
twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again
the other way; down the middle and up again; round
and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old
top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top
couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top
couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them! When
this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his
hands to stop the dance, cried out, "Well done!" and the
fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially
provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his
reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no
dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home,
exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man
resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.
There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more
dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there
was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece
of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer.
But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast
and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort
of man who knew his business better than you or I could
have told it him!) struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley." Then
old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top
couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them;
three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were
not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no
notion of walking.
But if they had been twice as many--ah, four times--old
Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would
Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner
in every sense of the term. If that's not high praise, tell me
higher, and I'll use it. A positive light appeared to issue
from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the
dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given
time, what would have become of them next. And when old
Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance;
advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and
curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to
your place; Fezziwig "cut"--cut so deftly, that he appeared
to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without
a stagger.
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up.
Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side
of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually
as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas.
When everybody had retired but the two 'prentices, they did
the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away,
and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a
counter in the back-shop.
During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a
man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene,
and with his former self. He corroborated everything,
remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent
the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the
bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from
them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious
that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its
head burnt very clear.
"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly
folks so full of gratitude."
"Small!" echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices,
who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig:
and when he had done so, said,
"Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of
your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so
much that he deserves this praise?"
"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and
speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self.
"It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy
or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a
pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and
looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is
impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness
he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.
"Nothing particular," said Scrooge.
"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.
"No," said Scrooge, "No. I should like to be able to say
a word or two to my clerk just now. That's all."
His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance
to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by
side in the open air.
"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"
This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he
could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again
Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime
of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later
years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice.
There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which
showed the passion that had taken root, and where the
shadow of the growing tree would fall.
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young
girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears,
which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of
Christmas Past.
"It matters little," she said, softly. "To you, very little.
Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort
you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have
no just cause to grieve."
"What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.
"A golden one."
"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said.
"There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and
there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity
as the pursuit of wealth!"
"You fear the world too much," she answered, gently.
"All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being
beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your
nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion,
Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"
"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so
much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you."
She shook her head.
"Am I?"
"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were
both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could
improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You
are changed. When it was made, you were another man."
"I was a boy," he said impatiently.
"Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you
are," she returned. "I am. That which promised happiness
when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that
we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of
this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it,
and can release you."
"Have I ever sought release?"
"In words. No. Never."
"In what, then?"
"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another
atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In
everything that made my love of any worth or value in your
sight. If this had never been between us," said the girl,
looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; "tell me,
would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!"
He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in
spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, "You think
not."
"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered,
"Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this,
I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you
were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe
that you would choose a dowerless girl--you who, in your
very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or,
choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your
one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your
repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I
release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you
once were."
He was about to speak; but with her head turned from
him, she resumed.
"You may--the memory of what is past half makes me
hope you will--have pain in this. A very, very brief time,
and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an
unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you
awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!"
She left him, and they parted.
"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct
me home. Why do you delight to torture me?"
"One shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.
"No more!" cried Scrooge. "No more. I don't wish to
see it. Show me no more!"
But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms,
and forced him to observe what happened next.
They were in another scene and place; a room, not very
large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter
fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge
believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely
matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this
room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children
there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count;
and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not
forty children conducting themselves like one, but every
child was conducting itself like forty. The consequences
were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care;
on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily,
and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning to
mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands
most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be one of
them! Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I
wouldn't for the wealth of all the world have crushed that
braided hair, and torn it down; and for the precious little
shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off, God bless my soul! to
save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they
did, bold young brood, I couldn't have done it; I should
have expected my arm to have grown round it for a punishment,
and never come straight again. And yet I should
have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have
questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have
looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never
raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of
which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should
have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence
of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its
value.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a
rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and
plundered dress was borne towards it the centre of a flushed
and boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, who
came home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys
and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and
the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter!
The scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his
pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight
by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel his back,
and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The shouts of
wonder and delight with which the development of every
package was received! The terrible announcement that the
baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll's frying-pan
into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having
swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter!
The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy,
and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike.
It is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions
got out of the parlour, and by one stair at a time, up to the
top of the house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever,
when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning
fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his
own fireside; and when he thought that such another
creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might
have called him father, and been a spring-time in the
haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a
smile, "I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon."
"Who was it?"
"Guess!"
"How can I? Tut, don't I know?" she added in the
same breath, laughing as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."
"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as
it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could
scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point
of death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in
the world, I do believe."
"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me
from this place."
"I told you these were shadows of the things that have
been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do
not blame me!"
"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed, "I cannot bear it!"
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon
him with a face, in which in some strange way there were
fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.
"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"
In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which
the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was
undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed
that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly
connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the
extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down
upon its head.
The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher
covered its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down
with all his force, he could not hide the light: which streamed
from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an
irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own
bedroom. He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand
relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank
into a heavy sleep.
STAVE III: THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS
AWAKING in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and
sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had
no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the
stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness
in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding
a conference with the second messenger despatched to him
through Jacob Marley's intervention. But finding that he
turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which
of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put
them every one aside with his own hands; and lying down
again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For
he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its
appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise, and
made nervous.
Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves
on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually
equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their
capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for
anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which
opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and
comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for
Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on you
to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of
strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and
rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by
any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the
Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a
violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter
of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time, he lay
upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy
light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the
hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than
a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it
meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive
that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of
spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of
knowing it. At last, however, he began to think--as you or
I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not
in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done
in it, and would unquestionably have done it too--at last, I
say, he began to think that the source and secret of this
ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence,
on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking
full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in
his slippers to the door.
The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange
voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He
obeyed.
It was his own room. There was no doubt about that.
But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls
and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a
perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming
berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and
ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had
been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring
up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had
never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and
many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form
a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn,
great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages,
mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts,
cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears,
immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that
made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy
state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to
see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's
horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge,
as he came peeping round the door.
"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know
me better, man!"
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this
Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and
though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like
to meet them.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit.
"Look upon me!"
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple
green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment
hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was
bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any
artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the
garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other
covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining
icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its
genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice,
its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded
round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword
was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.
"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed
the Spirit.
"Never," Scrooge made answer to it.
"Have never walked forth with the younger members of
my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers
born in these later years?" pursued the Phantom.
"I don't think I have," said Scrooge. "I am afraid I have
not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?"
"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.
"A tremendous family to provide for!" muttered Scrooge.
The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "conduct me where
you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt
a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you have aught
to teach me, let me profit by it."
"Touch my robe!"
Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game,
poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings,
fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room,
the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood
in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the
weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and
not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the
pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of
their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see
it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting
into artificial little snow-storms.
The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows
blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow
upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground;
which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by
the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that crossed
and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great
streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace
in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy,
and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist,
half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended
in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great
Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away
to their dear hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful
in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of
cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest
summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.
For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops
were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another
from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious
snowball--better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest--
laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it
went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the
fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round,
pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats
of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out
into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were
ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in
the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking
from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went
by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were
pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there
were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence
to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might
water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy
and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among
the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered
leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting
off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great
compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and
beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after
dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among
these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and
stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was
something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and
round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.
The Grocers'! oh, the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps
two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such
glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the
counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller
parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled
up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended
scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even
that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so
extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight,
the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and
spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on
feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs
were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in
modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that
everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but
the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful
promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other
at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left
their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to
fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in
the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people
were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which
they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own,
worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws
to peck at if they chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and
chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in
their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the
same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and
nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners
to the bakers' shops. The sight of these poor revellers
appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with
Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off the
covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their
dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind
of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words
between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he
shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good
humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame
to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love
it, so it was!
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and
yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners
and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of
wet above each baker's oven; where the pavement smoked as
if its stones were cooking too.
"Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from
your torch?" asked Scrooge.
"There is. My own."
"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?"
asked Scrooge.
"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."
"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.
"Because it needs it most."
"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, "I wonder
you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should
desire to cramp these people's opportunities of innocent
enjoyment."
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You would deprive them of their means of dining every
seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said
to dine at all," said Scrooge. "Wouldn't you?"
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?" said
Scrooge. "And it comes to the same thing."
"I seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.
"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your
name, or at least in that of your family," said Scrooge.
"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit,
"who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion,
pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness
in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and
kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge
their doings on themselves, not us."
Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on,
invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the
town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which
Scrooge had observed at the baker's), that notwithstanding
his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place
with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as
gracefully and like a supernatural creature, as it was possible
he could have done in any lofty hall.
And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in
showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind,
generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor
men, that led him straight to Scrooge's clerk's; for there he
went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe; and
on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped
to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinkling of his
torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen "Bob" a-week
himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his
Christian name; and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present
blessed his four-roomed house!
Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out
but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons,
which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and
she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of
her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter
Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and
getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob's private
property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the
day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly
attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks.
And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing
in, screaming that outside the baker's they had smelt the
goose, and known it for their own; and basking in luxurious
thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced
about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the
skies, while he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked
him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up,
knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and
peeled.
"What has ever got your precious father then?" said Mrs.
Cratchit. "And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha
warn't as late last Christmas Day by half-an-hour?"
"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she
spoke.
"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits.
"Hurrah! There's such a goose, Martha!"
"Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!"
said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off
her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal.
"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the
girl, "and had to clear away this morning, mother!"
"Well! Never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs.
Cratchit. "Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have
a warm, Lord bless ye!"
"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two young
Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha,
hide!"
So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father,
with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe,
hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned
up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his
shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and
had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking
round.
"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his
high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way
from church, and had come home rampant. "Not coming
upon Christmas Day!"
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only
in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet
door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits
hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house,
that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.
"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit,
when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had
hugged his daughter to his heart's content.
"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he
gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the
strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home,
that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he
was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember
upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind
men see."
Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and
trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing
strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back
came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by
his brother and sister to his stool before the fire; and while
Bob, turning up his cuffs--as if, poor fellow, they were
capable of being made more shabby--compounded some hot
mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round
and round and put it on the hob to simmer; Master Peter,
and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the
goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose
the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a
black swan was a matter of course--and in truth it was
something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made
the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot;
Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour;
Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted
the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny
corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for
everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard
upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest
they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be
helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was
said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs.
Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared
to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the
long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of
delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim,
excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with
the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe
there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and
flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal
admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes,
it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as
Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small
atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at
last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest
Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to
the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss
Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous to
bear witnesses--to take the pudding up and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should
break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got
over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they
were merry with the goose--a supposition at which the two
young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were
supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of
the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the
cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next
door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that!
That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit
entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding,
like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half
of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with
Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly
too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by
Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that
now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had
had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had
something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it
was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have
been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed
to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the
hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the
jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges
were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the
fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in
what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and
at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass.
Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as
golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with
beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and
cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
Which all the family re-echoed.
"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father's side upon his little
stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he
loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and
dreaded that he might be taken from him.
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt
before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor
chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully
preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future,
the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he
will be spared."
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none
other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here.
What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and
decrease the surplus population."
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by
the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not
adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered
What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what
men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the
sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live
than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear
the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life
among his hungry brothers in the dust!"
Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast
his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily, on
hearing his own name.
"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob; "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the
Founder of the Feast!"
"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit,
reddening. "I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece
of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good
appetite for it."
"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas Day."
"It should be Christmas Day, I am sure," said she, "on
which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard,
unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert!
Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!"
"My dear," was Bob's mild answer, "Christmas Day."
"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said
Mrs. Cratchit, "not for his. Long life to him! A merry
Christmas and a happy new year! He'll be very merry and
very happy, I have no doubt!"
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of
their proceedings which had no heartiness. Tiny Tim drank
it last of all, but he didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge
was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast
a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full
five minutes.
After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than
before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done
with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his
eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, full
five-and-sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits laughed
tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man of business;
and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from
between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular
investments he should favour when he came into the receipt
of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor
apprentice at a milliner's, then told them what kind of work
she had to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch,
and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for a
good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at
home. Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some
days before, and how the lord "was much about as tall as
Peter;" at which Peter pulled up his collars so high that you
couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All this
time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and
by-and-bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in
the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice,
and sang it very well indeed.
There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not
a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes
were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty;
and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside
of a pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased
with one another, and contented with the time; and when
they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings
of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon
them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.
By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty
heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets,
the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and
all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of
the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot
plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep
red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness.
There all the children of the house were running out
into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins,
uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again,
were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and
there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted,
and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near
neighbour's house; where, woe upon the single man who saw
them enter--artful witches, well they knew it--in a glow!
But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on
their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought
that no one was at home to give them welcome when they
got there, instead of every house expecting company, and
piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how
the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and
opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with
a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything
within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before,
dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was
dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly
as the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamplighter
that he had any company but Christmas!
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they
stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses
of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place
of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed,
or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner;
and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse rank grass.
Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery
red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a
sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in
the thick gloom of darkest night.
"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.
"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of
the earth," returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they
advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and
stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a
glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their
children and their children's children, and another generation
beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire.
The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling
of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a
Christmas song--it had been a very old song when he was a
boy--and from time to time they all joined in the chorus.
So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite
blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour
sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his
robe, and passing on above the moor, sped--whither? Not
to sea? To sea. To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw
the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them;
and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it
rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it
had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league
or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed,
the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse.
Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds
--born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the
water--rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.
But even here, two men who watched the light had made
a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed
out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their
horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they
wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and
one of them: the elder, too, with his face all damaged and
scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship
might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in
itself.
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea
--on, on--until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any
shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman
at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who
had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations;
but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or
had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his
companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward
hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or
sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another
on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared
to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those
he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted
to remember him.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the
moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it
was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown
abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death: it
was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear
a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge
to recognise it as his own nephew's and to find himself in a
bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling
by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving
affability!
"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"
If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a
man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can
say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me,
and I'll cultivate his acquaintance.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that
while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing
in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and
good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding
his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the
most extravagant contortions: Scrooge's niece, by marriage,
laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being
not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily.
"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried
Scrooge's nephew. "He believed it too!"
"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece,
indignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything by
halves. They are always in earnest.
She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,
surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that
seemed made to be kissed--as no doubt it was; all kinds of
good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another
when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever
saw in any little creature's head. Altogether she was what
you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too.
Oh, perfectly satisfactory.
"He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's
the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However,
his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing
to say against him."
"I'm sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Scrooge's niece.
"At least you always tell me so."
"What of that, my dear!" said Scrooge's nephew. "His
wealth is of no use to him. He don't do any good with it.
He don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the
satisfaction of thinking--ha, ha, ha!--that he is ever going
to benefit US with it."
"I have no patience with him," observed Scrooge's niece.
Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed
the same opinion.
"Oh, I have!" said Scrooge's nephew. "I am sorry for
him; I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers
by his ill whims! Himself, always. Here, he takes it into
his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us.
What's the consequence? He don't lose much of a dinner."
"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted
Scrooge's niece. Everybody else said the same, and they
must be allowed to have been competent judges, because
they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the
table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.
"Well! I'm very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew,
"because I haven't great faith in these young housekeepers.
What do you say, Topper?"
Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's
sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast,
who had no right to express an opinion on the subject.
Whereat Scrooge's niece's sister--the plump one with the lace
tucker: not the one with the roses--blushed.
"Do go on, Fred," said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands.
"He never finishes what he begins to say! He is such a
ridiculous fellow!"
Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was
impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister
tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was
unanimously followed.
"I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that
the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making
merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant
moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses
pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts,
either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I
mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he
likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas
till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it--I defy
him--if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after
year, and saying Uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only
puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds,
that's something; and I think I shook him yesterday."
It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking
Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much
caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any
rate, he encouraged them in their merriment, and passed the
bottle joyously.
After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical
family, and knew what they were about, when they sung a
Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially Topper, who
could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never
swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face
over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp; and
played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing:
you might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had
been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the
boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of
Christmas Past. When this strain of music sounded, all the
things that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he
softened more and more; and thought that if he could have
listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the
kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands,
without resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob
Marley.
But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After
a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children
sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its
mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first
a game at blind-man's buff. Of course there was. And I
no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he
had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done
thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the
Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after
that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the
credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons,
tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the piano,
smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went,
there went he! He always knew where the plump sister was.
He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up
against him (as some of them did), on purpose, he would
have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would
have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly
have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister.
She often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it really was not.
But when at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her
silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got
her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his
conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to
know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her
head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by
pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain
about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told
him her opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in
office, they were so very confidential together, behind the
curtains.
Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind-man's buff party,
but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool,
in a snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge were close
behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her
love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet.
Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was
very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat
her sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as Topper
could have told you. There might have been twenty people there,
young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for
wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that
his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with
his guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too;
for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut
in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in
his head to be.
The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood,
and looked upon him with such favour, that he begged like
a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But
this the Spirit said could not be done.
"Here is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half hour,
Spirit, only one!"
It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew
had to think of something, and the rest must find out what;
he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case
was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed,
elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live
animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an
animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes,
and lived in London, and walked about the streets,
and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and
didn't live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market,
and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a
tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh
question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a
fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that
he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last
the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:
"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know
what it is!"
"What is it?" cried Fred.
"It's your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal
sentiment, though some objected that the reply to "Is it a
bear?" ought to have been "Yes;" inasmuch as an answer
in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts
from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency
that way.
"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said
Fred, "and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health.
Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the
moment; and I say, 'Uncle Scrooge!'"
"Well! Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.
"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old
man, whatever he is!" said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't
take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle
Scrooge!"
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light
of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious
company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech,
if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene
passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his
nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they
visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood
beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands,
and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they
were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was
rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery's every
refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not
made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his
blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge
had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared
to be condensed into the space of time they passed
together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained
unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly
older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of
it, until they left a children's Twelfth Night party, when,
looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place,
he noticed that its hair was grey.
"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.
"My life upon this globe, is very brief," replied the Ghost.
"It ends to-night."
"To-night!" cried Scrooge.
"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing
near."
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at
that moment.
"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said
Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see
something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding
from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?"
"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was
the Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed
the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling,
wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where
graceful youth should have filled their features out, and
touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled
hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and
pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No
change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any
grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has
monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to
him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but
the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie
of such enormous magnitude.
"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon
them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for
on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out
its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye!
Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse.
And bide the end!"
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him
for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not.
As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the
prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes,
beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like
a mist along the ground, towards him.
STAVE IV: THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS
THE Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When
it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in
the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to
scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed
its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible
save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been
difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it
from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside
him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a
solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither
spoke nor moved.
"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To
Come?" said Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its
hand.
"You are about to show me shadows of the things that
have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,"
Scrooge pursued. "Is that so, Spirit?"
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an
instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head.
That was the only answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time,
Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled
beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when
he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as
observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him
with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the
dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon
him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost,
could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap
of black.
"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more
than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose
is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another
man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company,
and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak
to me?"
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight
before them.
"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is
waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead
on, Spirit!"
The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him.
Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him
up, he thought, and carried him along.
They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather
seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of its
own act. But there they were, in the heart of it; on
'Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down,
and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in
groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully
with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had
seen them often.
The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men.
Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge
advanced to listen to their talk.
"No," said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, "I
don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's
dead."
"When did he die?" inquired another.
"Last night, I believe."
"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third,
taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box.
"I thought he'd never die."
"God knows," said the first, with a yawn.
"What has he done with his money?" asked a red-faced
gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his
nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.
"I haven't heard," said the man with the large chin,
yawning again. "Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn't
left it to me. That's all I know."
This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.
"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same
speaker; "for upon my life I don't know of anybody to go
to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?"
"I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the
gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. "But I must
be fed, if I make one."
Another laugh.
"Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,"
said the first speaker, "for I never wear black gloves, and I
never eat lunch. But I'll offer to go, if anybody else will.
When I come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't
his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak
whenever we met. Bye, bye!"
Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with
other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the
Spirit for an explanation.
The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed
to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking
that the explanation might lie here.
He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business:
very wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point
always of standing well in their esteem: in a business point
of view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.
"How are you?" said one.
"How are you?" returned the other.
"Well!" said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at
last, hey?"
"So I am told," returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?"
"Seasonable for Christmas time. You're not a skater, I
suppose?"
"No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!"
Not another word. That was their meeting, their
conversation, and their parting.
Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the
Spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so
trivial; but feeling assured that they must have some hidden
purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be.
They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the
death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was Past, and this
Ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he think of any
one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could
apply them. But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they
applied they had some latent moral for his own improvement,
he resolved to treasure up every word he heard,
and everything he saw; and especially to observe the
shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation
that the conduct of his future self would give him
the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these
riddles easy.
He looked about in that very place for his own image; but
another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the
clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he
saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured
in through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, however;
for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and
thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried
out in this.
Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its
outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his
thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and
its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes
were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel
very cold.
They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part
of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before,
although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute. The
ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched;
the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and
archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of
smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the
whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed,
beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags,
bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor
within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges,
files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets
that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in
mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and
sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a
charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal,
nearly seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the
cold air without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous
tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury
of calm retirement.
Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this
man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the
shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman,
similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely followed by
a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight
of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each
other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which
the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three
burst into a laugh.
"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who
had entered first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second;
and let the undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look
here, old Joe, here's a chance! If we haven't all three met
here without meaning it!"
"You couldn't have met in a better place," said old Joe,
removing his pipe from his mouth. "Come into the parlour.
You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other
two an't strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop.
Ah! How it skreeks! There an't such a rusty bit of metal
in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I'm sure there's
no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! We're all suitable
to our calling, we're well matched. Come into the
parlour. Come into the parlour."
The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The
old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and
having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night), with the
stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.
While he did this, the woman who had already spoken
threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting
manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and
looking with a bold defiance at the other two.
"What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?" said the
woman. "Every person has a right to take care of themselves.
He always did."
"That's true, indeed!" said the laundress. "No man
more so."
"Why then, don't stand staring as if you was afraid,
woman; who's the wiser? We're not going to pick holes in
each other's coats, I suppose?"
"No, indeed!" said Mrs. Dilber and the man together.
"We should hope not."
"Very well, then!" cried the woman. "That's enough.
Who's the worse for the loss of a few things like these?
Not a dead man, I suppose."
"No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.
"If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old
screw," pursued the woman, "why wasn't he natural in his
lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look
after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying
gasping out his last there, alone by himself."
"It's the truest word that ever was spoke," said Mrs.
Dilber. "It's a judgment on him."
"I wish it was a little heavier judgment," replied the
woman; "and it should have been, you may depend upon it,
if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that
bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out
plain. I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to
see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves,
before we met here, I believe. It's no sin. Open the bundle,
Joe."
But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this;
and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first,
produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two,
a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no
great value, were all. They were severally examined and
appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed
to give for each, upon the wall, and added them up into a
total when he found there was nothing more to come.
"That's your account," said Joe, "and I wouldn't give
another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it.
Who's next?"
Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing
apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of
sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall
in the same manner.
"I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine,
and that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's
your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made
it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal and knock
off half-a-crown."
"And now undo my bundle, Joe," said the first woman.
Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience
of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots,
dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff.
"What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed-curtains!"
"Ah!" returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward
on her crossed arms. "Bed-curtains!"
"You don't mean to say you took 'em down, rings and
all, with him lying there?" said Joe.
"Yes I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"
"You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and
you'll certainly do it."
"I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything
in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He
was, I promise you, Joe," returned the woman coolly. "Don't
drop that oil upon the blankets, now."
"His blankets?" asked Joe.
"Whose else's do you think?" replied the woman. "He
isn't likely to take cold without 'em, I dare say."
"I hope he didn't die of anything catching? Eh?" said
old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.
"Don't you be afraid of that," returned the woman. "I
an't so fond of his company that I'd loiter about him for
such things, if he did. Ah! you may look through that
shirt till your eyes ache; but you won't find a hole in it, nor
a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine one too.
They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me."
"What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.
"Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied
the woman with a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to
do it, but I took it off again. If calico an't good enough for
such a purpose, it isn't good enough for anything. It's quite
as becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than he did
in that one."
Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat
grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by
the old man's lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and
disgust, which could hardly have been greater, though they
had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself.
"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe,
producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their
several gains upon the ground. "This is the end of it, you
see! He frightened every one away from him when he was
alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!"
"Spirit!" said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. "I
see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own.
My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is
this!"
He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now
he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which,
beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up,
which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful
language.
The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with
any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience
to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it
was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon
the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept,
uncared for, was the body of this man.
Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand
was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted
that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon
Scrooge's part, would have disclosed the face. He thought
of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it;
but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss
the spectre at his side.
Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar
here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy
command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved,
revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair
to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is
not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released;
it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the
hand WAS open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm,
and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike!
And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow
the world with life immortal!
No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge's ears, and
yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He
thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be
his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares?
They have brought him to a rich end, truly!
He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a
woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this
or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be
kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was
a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What
they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so
restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.
"Spirit!" he said, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it,
I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!"
Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the
head.
"I understand you," Scrooge returned, "and I would do
it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have
not the power."
Again it seemed to look upon him.
"If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion
caused by this man's death," said Scrooge quite agonised,
"show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!"
The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a
moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a room
by daylight, where a mother and her children were.
She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness;
for she walked up and down the room; started at every
sound; looked out from the window; glanced at the clock;
tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly
bear the voices of the children in their play.
At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried
to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was
careworn and depressed, though he was young. There was
a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight
of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.
He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for
him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news
(which was not until after a long silence), he appeared
embarrassed how to answer.
"Is it good?" she said, "or bad?"--to help him.
"Bad," he answered.
"We are quite ruined?"
"No. There is hope yet, Caroline."
"If he relents," she said, amazed, "there is! Nothing is
past hope, if such a miracle has happened."
"He is past relenting," said her husband. "He is dead."
She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke
truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she
said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next
moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of
her heart.
"What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of last
night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a
week's delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid
me; turns out to have been quite true. He was not only
very ill, but dying, then."
"To whom will our debt be transferred?"
"I don't know. But before that time we shall be ready
with the money; and even though we were not, it would be
a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his
successor. We may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline!"
Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter.
The children's faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what
they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier
house for this man's death! The only emotion that the
Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of
pleasure.
"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death," said
Scrooge; "or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just
now, will be for ever present to me."
The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar
to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and
there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They
entered poor Bob Cratchit's house; the dwelling he had
visited before; and found the mother and the children seated
round the fire.
Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as
still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter,
who had a book before him. The mother and her daughters
were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet!
"'And He took a child, and set him in the midst of
them.'"
Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not
dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he
and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not
go on?
The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her
hand up to her face.
"The colour hurts my eyes," she said.
The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!
"They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife. "It
makes them weak by candle-light; and I wouldn't show weak
eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It
must be near his time."
"Past it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his book.
"But I think he has walked a little slower than he used,
these few last evenings, mother."
They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a
steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once:
"I have known him walk with--I have known him walk
with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed."
"And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."
"And so have I," exclaimed another. So had all.
"But he was very light to carry," she resumed, intent upon
her work, "and his father loved him so, that it was no
trouble: no trouble. And there is your father at the door!"
She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his comforter
--he had need of it, poor fellow--came in. His tea
was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried who should
help him to it most. Then the two young Cratchits got
upon his knees and laid, each child a little cheek, against
his face, as if they said, "Don't mind it, father. Don't be
grieved!"
Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to
all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, and
praised the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls.
They would be done long before Sunday, he said.
"Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?" said his
wife.
"Yes, my dear," returned Bob. "I wish you could have
gone. It would have done you good to see how green a
place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him that I
would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child!"
cried Bob. "My little child!"
He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he
could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther
apart perhaps than they were.
He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room above,
which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas.
There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were
signs of some one having been there, lately. Poor Bob sat
down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed
himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what
had happened, and went down again quite happy.
They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother
working still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness
of Mr. Scrooge's nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but
once, and who, meeting him in the street that day, and seeing
that he looked a little--"just a little down you know," said
Bob, inquired what had happened to distress him. "On
which," said Bob, "for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman
you ever heard, I told him. 'I am heartily sorry for it, Mr.
Cratchit,' he said, 'and heartily sorry for your good wife.'
By the bye, how he ever knew that, I don't know."
"Knew what, my dear?"
"Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.
"Everybody knows that!" said Peter.
"Very well observed, my boy!" cried Bob. "I hope they
do. 'Heartily sorry,' he said, 'for your good wife. If I
can be of service to you in any way,' he said, giving me
his card, 'that's where I live. Pray come to me.' Now, it
wasn't," cried Bob, "for the sake of anything he might be
able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was
quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our
Tiny Tim, and felt with us."
"I'm sure he's a good soul!" said Mrs. Cratchit.
"You would be surer of it, my dear," returned Bob, "if
you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised--
mark what I say!--if he got Peter a better situation."
"Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping
company with some one, and setting up for himself."
"Get along with you!" retorted Peter, grinning.
"It's just as likely as not," said Bob, "one of these days;
though there's plenty of time for that, my dear. But however
and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we
shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim--shall we--or this
first parting that there was among us?"
"Never, father!" cried they all.
"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when
we recollect how patient and how mild he was; although he
was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily among
ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it."
"No, never, father!" they all cried again.
"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very happy!"
Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the
two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook
hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from
God!
"Spectre," said Scrooge, "something informs me that our
parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not
how. Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying dead?"
The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as
before--though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there
seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were
in the Future--into the resorts of business men, but showed
him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay for anything,
but went straight on, as to the end just now desired,
until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.
"This court," said Scrooge, "through which we hurry now,
is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a length
of time. I see the house. Let me behold what I shall be,
in days to come!"
The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.
"The house is yonder," Scrooge exclaimed. "Why do you
point away?"
The inexorable finger underwent no change.
Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked
in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was
not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself.
The Phantom pointed as before.
He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither
he had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate.
He paused to look round before entering.
A churchyard. Here, then; the wretched man whose name
he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a
worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and
weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up
with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A
worthy place!
The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to
One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was
exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new
meaning in its solemn shape.
"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,"
said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the
shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of
things that May be, only?"
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which
it stood.
"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if
persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the
courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is
thus with what you show me!"
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and
following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected
grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.
"Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried, upon
his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"
The finger still was there.
"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me!
I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must
have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I
am past all hope!"
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he
fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities
me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you
have shown me, by an altered life!"
The kind hand trembled.
"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it
all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the
Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I
will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I
may sponge away the writing on this stone!"
In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to
free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it.
The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.
Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate
reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress.
It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.
STAVE V: THE END OF IT
YES! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own,
the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time
before him was his own, to make amends in!
"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!"
Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits
of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley!
Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say
it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!"
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions,
that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his
call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the
Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.
"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of
his bed-curtains in his arms, "they are not torn down, rings
and all. They are here--I am here--the shadows of the
things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will
be. I know they will!"
His hands were busy with his garments all this time;
turning them inside out, putting them on upside down,
tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every
kind of extravagance.
"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and
crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of
himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I
am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I
am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to
everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo
here! Whoop! Hallo!"
He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing
there: perfectly winded.
"There's the saucepan that the gruel was in!" cried
Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fireplace.
"There's the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley
entered! There's the corner where the Ghost of Christmas
Present, sat! There's the window where I saw the wandering
Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it all happened.
Ha ha ha!"
Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so
many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh.
The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!
"I don't know what day of the month it is!" said
Scrooge. "I don't know how long I've been among the
Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never
mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop!
Hallo here!"
He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing
out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang,
hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang,
clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!
Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his
head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold;
cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight;
Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious!
Glorious!
"What's to-day!" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a
boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look
about him.
"EH?" returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.
"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.
"To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."
"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I
haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night.
They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of
course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"
"Hallo!" returned the boy.
"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one,
at the corner?" Scrooge inquired.
"I should hope I did," replied the lad.
"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy!
Do you know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that
was hanging up there?--Not the little prize Turkey: the
big one?"
"What, the one as big as me?" returned the boy.
"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure
to talk to him. Yes, my buck!"
"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.
"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."
"Walk-ER!" exclaimed the boy.
"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy
it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that I may give them the
direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and
I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than
five minutes and I'll give you half-a-crown!"
The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady
hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.
"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's!" whispered Scrooge,
rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. "He sha'n't
know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe
Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's
will be!"
The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady
one, but write it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to
open the street door, ready for the coming of the poulterer's
man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker
caught his eye.
"I shall love it, as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting
it with his hand. "I scarcely ever looked at it before.
What an honest expression it has in its face! It's a
wonderful knocker!--Here's the Turkey! Hallo! Whoop!
How are you! Merry Christmas!"
It was a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his
legs, that bird. He would have snapped 'em short off in a
minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.
"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town,"
said Scrooge. "You must have a cab."
The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with
which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which
he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed
the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle
with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and
chuckled till he cried.
Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to
shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even when
you don't dance while you are at it. But if he had cut the
end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of
sticking-plaister over it, and been quite satisfied.
He dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out
into the streets. The people were by this time pouring forth,
as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present;
and walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded
every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly
pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows
said, "Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!"
And Scrooge said often afterwards, that of all the blithe
sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.
He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he
beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his
counting-house the day before, and said, "Scrooge and Marley's, I
believe?" It sent a pang across his heart to think how this
old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he
knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.
"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and
taking the old gentleman by both his hands. "How do you
do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of
you. A merry Christmas to you, sir!"
"Mr. Scrooge?"
"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it
may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon.
And will you have the goodness"--here Scrooge whispered in
his ear.
"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath
were taken away. "My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"
"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A
great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you.
Will you do me that favour?"
"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him.
"I don't know what to say to such munifi--"
"Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge. "Come
and see me. Will you come and see me?"
"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he
meant to do it.
"Thank'ee," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you.
I thank you fifty times. Bless you!"
He went to church, and walked about the streets, and
watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children
on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into
the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found
that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never
dreamed that any walk--that anything--could give him so
much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps
towards his nephew's house.
He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the
courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and
did it:
"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the
girl. Nice girl! Very.
"Yes, sir."
"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.
"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll
show you up-stairs, if you please."
"Thank'ee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand
already on the dining-room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."
He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door.
They were looking at the table (which was spread out in
great array); for these young housekeepers are always nervous
on such points, and like to see that everything is right.
"Fred!" said Scrooge.
Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started!
Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting
in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn't have done
it, on any account.
"Why bless my soul!" cried Fred, "who's that?"
"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner.
Will you let me in, Fred?"
Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off.
He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier.
His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he
came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did
every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful
games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was
early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob
Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he had set his
heart upon.
And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No
Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen
minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his
door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank.
His hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter
too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his
pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o'clock.
"Hallo!" growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as
near as he could feign it. "What do you mean by coming
here at this time of day?"
"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I am behind my time."
"You are?" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are.
Step this way, sir, if you please."
"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from
the Tank. "It shall not be repeated. I was making rather
merry yesterday, sir."
"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge, "I
am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And
therefore," he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving
Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into
the Tank again; "and therefore I am about to raise your
salary!"
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He
had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it,
holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help
and a strait-waistcoat.
"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness
that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the
back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I
have given you, for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and
endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss
your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of
smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another
coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and
infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was
a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a
master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or
any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old
world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him,
but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was
wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this
globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill
of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these
would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they
should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in
less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was
quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon
the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was
always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas
well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that
be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim
observed, God bless Us, Every One!
Title: Winnie-the-Pooh
Author: A. A. Milne
Illustrator: Ernest H. Shepard
Release Date: January 3, 2022 [eBook #67098]
[Most recently updated: October 12, 2022]
Language: English
Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan, Iona Vaughan, David T. Jones and the
online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at
http://www.pgdpcanada.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINNIE-THE-POOH ***
WINNIE-THE-POOH
_BY A. A. MILNE_
_JUVENILES_
When We Were Very Young
"_The best book of verses for children_ _ever written._"--A. EDWARD
NEWTON in _The Atlantic Monthly_.
Fourteen Songs from When We Were Very Young
Words by A. A. Milne. Music by H. Fraser-Simson. Decorations by
E. H. Shepard.
The King's Breakfast
Words by A. A. Milne. Music by H. Fraser-Simson. Decorations by
E. H. Shepard
_ESSAYS_
Not That It Matters
The Sunny Side
If I May
_MYSTERY STORY_
The Red House Mystery
WINNIE-THE-POOH
BY A. A. MILNE
McCLELLAND & STEWART, LTD.
PUBLISHERS - - TORONTO
Copyright, Canada, 1926
By McClelland & Stewart, Limited
Publishers, Toronto
First Printing, October, 1926
Second " July, 1927
Third " December, 1928
Fourth " December, 1929
Fifth " March, 1931
Printed in Canada
TO HER
HAND IN HAND WE COME
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN AND I
TO LAY THIS BOOK IN YOUR LAP.
SAY YOU'RE SURPRISED?
SAY YOU LIKE IT?
SAY IT'S JUST WHAT YOU WANTED?
BECAUSE IT'S YOURS----
BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU.
INTRODUCTION
If you happen to have read another book about Christopher Robin, you may
remember that he once had a swan (or the swan had Christopher Robin, I
don't know which) and that he used to call this swan Pooh. That was a
long time ago, and when we said good-bye, we took the name with us, as
we didn't think the swan would want it any more. Well, when Edward Bear
said that he would like an exciting name all to himself, Christopher
Robin said at once, without stopping to think, that he was
Winnie-the-Pooh. And he was. So, as I have explained the Pooh part, I
will now explain the rest of it.
You can't be in London for long without going to the Zoo. There are some
people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as
quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called
WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the
most, and stay there. So when Christopher Robin goes to the Zoo, he goes
to where the Polar Bears are, and he whispers something to the third
keeper from the left, and doors are unlocked, and we wander through dark
passages and up steep stairs, until at last we come to the special cage,
and the cage is opened, and out trots something brown and furry, and
with a happy cry of "Oh, Bear!" Christopher Robin rushes into its arms.
Now this bear's name is Winnie, which shows what a good name for bears
it is, but the funny thing is that we can't remember whether Winnie is
called after Pooh, or Pooh after Winnie. We did know once, but we have
forgotten....
I had written as far as this when Piglet looked up and said in his
squeaky voice, "What about _Me_?" "My dear Piglet," I said, "the whole
book is about you." "So it is about Pooh," he squeaked. You see what it
is. He is jealous because he thinks Pooh is having a Grand Introduction
all to himself. Pooh is the favourite, of course, there's no denying it,
but Piglet comes in for a good many things which Pooh misses; because
you can't take Pooh to school without everybody knowing it, but Piglet
is so small that he slips into a pocket, where it is very comforting to
feel him when you are not quite sure whether twice seven is twelve or
twenty-two. Sometimes he slips out and has a good look in the ink-pot,
and in this way he has got more education than Pooh, but Pooh doesn't
mind. Some have brains, and some haven't, he says, and there it is.
And now all the others are saying, "What about _Us_?" So perhaps the
best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the
book.
A. A. M.
CONTENTS
I. IN WHICH WE ARE INTRODUCED TO WINNIE-THE-POOH AND SOME
BEES, AND THE STORIES BEGIN
II. IN WHICH POOH GOES VISITING AND GETS INTO A TIGHT PLACE
III. IN WHICH POOH AND PIGLET GO HUNTING AND NEARLY CATCH A
WOOZLE
IV. IN WHICH EEYORE LOSES A TAIL AND POOH FINDS ONE
V. IN WHICH PIGLET MEETS A HEFFALUMP
VI. IN WHICH EEYORE HAS A BIRTHDAY AND GETS TWO PRESENTS
VII. IN WHICH KANGA AND BABY ROO COME TO THE FOREST, AND
PIGLET HAS A BATH
VIII. IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN LEADS AN EXPOTITION TO THE
NORTH POLE
IX. IN WHICH PIGLET IS ENTIRELY SURROUNDED BY WATER
X. IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN GIVES A POOH PARTY, AND WE SAY
GOOD-BYE
WINNIE-THE-POOH
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH WE ARE INTRODUCED TO
WINNIE-THE-POOH AND SOME BEES,
AND THE STORIES BEGIN
Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the
back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows,
the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there
really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and
think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't. Anyhow, here he
is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh.
When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, "But
I thought he was a boy?"
"So did I," said Christopher Robin.
"Then you can't call him Winnie?"
"I don't."
"But you said----"
"He's Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don't you know what '_ther_' means?"
"Ah, yes, now I do," I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it
is all the explanation you are going to get.
Sometimes Winnie-the-Pooh likes a game of some sort when he comes
downstairs, and sometimes he likes to sit quietly in front of the fire
and listen to a story. This evening----
"What about a story?" said Christopher Robin.
"_What_ about a story?" I said.
"Could you very sweetly tell Winnie-the-Pooh one?"
"I suppose I could," I said. "What sort of stories does he like?"
"About himself. Because he's _that_ sort of Bear."
"Oh, I see."
"So could you very sweetly?"
"I'll try," I said.
So I tried.
* * * * *
Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday,
Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of
Sanders.
(_"What does 'under the name' mean?" asked Christopher Robin._
"_It means he had the name over the door in gold letters, and lived
under it._"
_"Winnie-the-Pooh wasn't quite sure," said Christopher Robin._
_"Now I am," said a growly voice._
_"Then I will go on," said I._)
One day when he was out walking, he came to an open place in the middle
of the forest, and in the middle of this place was a large oak-tree,
and, from the top of the tree, there came a loud buzzing-noise.
Winnie-the-Pooh sat down at the foot of the tree, put his head between
his paws and began to think.
First of all he said to himself: "That buzzing-noise means something.
You don't get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing,
without its meaning something. If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's
making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise
that _I_ know of is because you're a bee."
Then he thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason for
being a bee that I know of is making honey."
And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason for making honey is
so as _I_ can eat it." So he began to climb the tree.
He climbed and he climbed and he climbed, and as he climbed he sang a
little song to himself. It went like this:
Isn't it funny
How a bear likes honey?
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
I wonder why he does?
Then he climbed a little further ... and a little further ... and
then just a little further. By that time he had thought of another song.
It's a very funny thought that, if Bears were Bees,
They'd build their nests at the _bottom_ of trees.
And that being so (if the Bees were Bears),
We shouldn't have to climb up all these stairs.
He was getting rather tired by this time, so that is why he sang a
Complaining Song. He was nearly there now, and if he just stood on that
branch ...
_Crack!_
"Oh, help!" said Pooh, as he dropped ten feet on the branch below him.
"If only I hadn't----" he said, as he bounced twenty feet on to the next
branch.
"You see, what I _meant_ to do," he explained, as he turned
head-over-heels, and crashed on to another branch thirty feet below,
"what I _meant_ to do----"
"Of course, it _was_ rather----" he admitted, as he slithered very
quickly through the next six branches.
"It all comes, I suppose," he decided, as he said good-bye to the last
branch, spun round three times, and flew gracefully into a gorse-bush,
"it all comes of _liking_ honey so much. Oh, help!"
He crawled out of the gorse-bush, brushed the prickles from his nose,
and began to think again. And the first person he thought of was
Christopher Robin.
(_"Was that me?" said Christopher Robin in an awed voice, hardly daring
to believe it._
"_That was you._"
_Christopher Robin said nothing, but his eyes got larger and larger, and
his face got pinker and pinker._)
So Winnie-the-Pooh went round to his friend Christopher Robin, who lived
behind a green door in another part of the forest.
"Good morning, Christopher Robin," he said.
"Good morning, Winnie-_ther_-Pooh," said you.
"I wonder if you've got such a thing as a balloon about you?"
"A balloon?"
"Yes, I just said to myself coming along: 'I wonder if Christopher Robin
has such a thing as a balloon about him?' I just said it to myself,
thinking of balloons, and wondering."
"What do you want a balloon for?" you said.
Winnie-the-Pooh looked round to see that nobody was listening, put his
paw to his mouth, and said in a deep whisper: "_Honey!_"
"But you don't get honey with balloons!"
"_I_ do," said Pooh.
Well, it just happened that you had been to a party the day before at
the house of your friend Piglet, and you had balloons at the party. You
had had a big green balloon; and one of Rabbit's relations had had a big
blue one, and had left it behind, being really too young to go to a
party at all; and so you had brought the green one _and_ the blue one
home with you.
"Which one would you like?" you asked Pooh.
He put his head between his paws and thought very carefully.
"It's like this," he said. "When you go after honey with a balloon, the
great thing is not to let the bees know you're coming. Now, if you have
a green balloon, they might think you were only part of the tree, and
not notice you, and, if you have a blue balloon, they might think you
were only part of the sky, and not notice you, and the question is:
Which is most likely?"
"Wouldn't they notice _you_ underneath the balloon?" you asked.
"They might or they might not," said Winnie-the-Pooh. "You never can
tell with bees." He thought for a moment and said: "I shall try to look
like a small black cloud. That will deceive them."
"Then you had better have the blue balloon," you said; and so it was
decided.
Well, you both went out with the blue balloon, and you took your gun
with you, just in case, as you always did, and Winnie-the-Pooh went to a
very muddy place that he knew of, and rolled and rolled until he was
black all over; and then, when the balloon was blown up as big as big,
and you and Pooh were both holding on to the string, you let go
suddenly, and Pooh Bear floated gracefully up into the sky, and stayed
there--level with the top of the tree and about twenty feet away from
it.
"Hooray!" you shouted.
"Isn't that fine?" shouted Winnie-the-Pooh down to you. "What do I look
like?"
"You look like a Bear holding on to a balloon," you said.
"Not," said Pooh anxiously, "--not like a small black cloud in a blue
sky?"
"Not very much."
"Ah, well, perhaps from up here it looks different. And, as I say, you
never can tell with bees."
There was no wind to blow him nearer to the tree, so there he stayed. He
could see the honey, he could smell the honey, but he couldn't quite
reach the honey.
After a little while he called down to you.
"Christopher Robin!" he said in a loud whisper.
"Hallo!"
"I think the bees _suspect_ something!"
"What sort of thing?"
"I don't know. But something tells me that they're _suspicious_!"
"Perhaps they think that you're after their honey."
"It may be that. You never can tell with bees."
There was another little silence, and then he called down to you again.
"Christopher Robin!"
"Yes?"
"Have you an umbrella in your house?"
"I think so."
"I wish you would bring it out here, and walk up and down with it, and
look up at me every now and then, and say 'Tut-tut, it looks like rain.'
I think, if you did that, it would help the deception which we are
practising on these bees."
Well, you laughed to yourself, "Silly old Bear!" but you didn't say it
aloud because you were so fond of him, and you went home for your
umbrella.
"Oh, there you are!" called down Winnie-the-Pooh, as soon as you got
back to the tree. "I was beginning to get anxious. I have discovered
that the bees are now definitely Suspicious."
"Shall I put my umbrella up?" you said.
"Yes, but wait a moment. We must be practical. The important bee to
deceive is the Queen Bee. Can you see which is the Queen Bee from down
there?"
"No."
"A pity. Well, now, if you walk up and down with your umbrella, saying,
'Tut-tut, it looks like rain,' I shall do what I can by singing a little
Cloud Song, such as a cloud might sing.... Go!"
So, while you walked up and down and wondered if it would rain,
Winnie-the-Pooh sang this song:
How sweet to be a Cloud
Floating in the Blue!
Every little cloud
_Always_ sings aloud.
"How sweet to be a Cloud
Floating in the Blue!"
It makes him very proud
To be a little cloud.
The bees were still buzzing as suspiciously as ever. Some of them,
indeed, left their nests and flew all round the cloud as it began the
second verse of this song, and one bee sat down on the nose of the cloud
for a moment, and then got up again.
"Christopher--_ow!_--Robin," called out the cloud.
"Yes?"
"I have just been thinking, and I have come to a very important
decision. _These are the wrong sort of bees._"
"Are they?"
"Quite the wrong sort. So I should think they would make the wrong sort
of honey, shouldn't you?"
"Would they?"
"Yes. So I think I shall come down."
"How?" asked you.
Winnie-the-Pooh hadn't thought about this. If he let go of the string,
he would fall--_bump_--and he didn't like the idea of that. So he
thought for a long time, and then he said:
"Christopher Robin, you must shoot the balloon with your gun. Have you
got your gun?"
"Of course I have," you said. "But if I do that, it will spoil the
balloon," you said.
"But if you _don't_," said Pooh, "I shall have to let go, and that would
spoil _me_."
When he put it like this, you saw how it was, and you aimed very
carefully at the balloon, and fired.
"_Ow!_" said Pooh.
"Did I miss?" you asked.
"You didn't exactly _miss_," said Pooh, "but you missed the _balloon_."
"I'm so sorry," you said, and you fired again, and this time you hit the
balloon, and the air came slowly out, and Winnie-the-Pooh floated down
to the ground.
But his arms were so stiff from holding on to the string of the balloon
all that time that they stayed up straight in the air for more than a
week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it
off. And I think--but I am not sure--that _that_ is why he was always
called Pooh.
* * * * *
"Is that the end of the story?" asked Christopher Robin.
"That's the end of that one. There are others."
"About Pooh and Me?"
"And Piglet and Rabbit and all of you. Don't you remember?"
"I do remember, and then when I try to remember, I forget."
"That day when Pooh and Piglet tried to catch the Heffalump----"
"They didn't catch it, did they?"
"No."
"Pooh couldn't, because he hasn't any brain. Did _I_ catch it?"
"Well, that comes into the story."
Christopher Robin nodded.
"I do remember," he said, "only Pooh doesn't very well, so that's why he
likes having it told to him again. Because then it's a real story and
not just a remembering."
"That's just how _I_ feel," I said.
Christopher Robin gave a deep sigh, picked his Bear up by the leg, and
walked off to the door, trailing Pooh behind him. At the door he turned
and said, "Coming to see me have my bath?"
"I might," I said.
"I didn't hurt him when I shot him, did I?"
"Not a bit."
He nodded and went out, and in a moment I heard Winnie-the-Pooh--_bump,
bump, bump_--going up the stairs behind him.
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH POOH GOES VISITING AND
GETS INTO A TIGHT PLACE
Edward Bear, known to his friends as Winnie-the-Pooh, or Pooh for
short, was walking through the forest one day, humming proudly to
himself. He had made up a little hum that very morning, as he was doing
his Stoutness Exercises in front of the glass: _Tra-la-la, tra-la-la_,
as he stretched up as high as he could go, and then _Tra-la-la,
tra-la--oh, help!--la_, as he tried to reach his toes. After breakfast
he had said it over and over to himself until he had learnt it off by
heart, and now he was humming it right through, properly. It went like
this:
_Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,_
_Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,_
_Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum._
_Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,_
_Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,_
_Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um._
Well, he was humming this hum to himself, and walking along gaily,
wondering what everybody else was doing, and what it felt like, being
somebody else, when suddenly he came to a sandy bank, and in the bank
was a large hole.
"Aha!" said Pooh. (_Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum._) "If I know anything about
anything, that hole means Rabbit," he said, "and Rabbit means Company,"
he said, "and Company means Food and Listening-to-Me-Humming and such
like. _Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um._"
So he bent down, put his head into the hole, and called out:
"Is anybody at home?"
There was a sudden scuffling noise from inside the hole, and then
silence.
"What I said was, 'Is anybody at home?'" called out Pooh very loudly.
"No!" said a voice; and then added, "You needn't shout so loud. I heard
you quite well the first time."
"Bother!" said Pooh. "Isn't there anybody here at all?"
"Nobody."
Winnie-the-Pooh took his head out of the hole, and thought for a little,
and he thought to himself, "There must be somebody there, because
somebody must have _said_ 'Nobody.'" So he put his head back in the
hole, and said:
"Hallo, Rabbit, isn't that you?"
"No," said Rabbit, in a different sort of voice this time.
"But isn't that Rabbit's voice?"
"I don't _think_ so," said Rabbit. "It isn't _meant_ to be."
"Oh!" said Pooh.
He took his head out of the hole, and had another think, and then he put
it back, and said:
"Well, could you very kindly tell me where Rabbit is?"
"He has gone to see his friend Pooh Bear, who is a great friend of his."
"But this _is_ Me!" said Bear, very much surprised.
"What sort of Me?"
"Pooh Bear."
"Are you sure?" said Rabbit, still more surprised.
"Quite, quite sure," said Pooh.
"Oh, well, then, come in."
So Pooh pushed and pushed and pushed his way through the hole, and at
last he got in.
"You were quite right," said Rabbit, looking at him all over. "It _is_
you. Glad to see you."
"Who did you think it was?"
"Well, I wasn't sure. You know how it is in the Forest. One can't have
_anybody_ coming into one's house. One has to be _careful_. What about a
mouthful of something?"
Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning,
and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and
when Rabbit said, "Honey or condensed milk with your bread?" he was so
excited that he said, "Both," and then, so as not to seem greedy, he
added, "But don't bother about the bread, please." And for a long time
after that he said nothing ... until at last, humming to himself in a
rather sticky voice, he got up, shook Rabbit lovingly by the paw, and
said that he must be going on.
"Must you?" said Rabbit politely.
"Well," said Pooh, "I could stay a little longer if it--if you----" and
he tried very hard to look in the direction of the larder.
"As a matter of fact," said Rabbit, "I was going out myself directly."
"Oh, well, then, I'll be going on. Good-bye."
"Well, good-bye, if you're sure you won't have any more."
"_Is_ there any more?" asked Pooh quickly.
Rabbit took the covers off the dishes, and said, "No, there wasn't."
"I thought not," said Pooh, nodding to himself. "Well, good-bye. I must
be going on."
So he started to climb out of the hole. He pulled with his front paws,
and pushed with his back paws, and in a little while his nose was out in
the open again ... and then his ears ... and then his front paws ...
and then his shoulders ... and then----
"Oh, help!" said Pooh. "I'd better go back."
"Oh, bother!" said Pooh. "I shall have to go on."
"I can't do either!" said Pooh. "Oh, help _and_ bother!"
Now by this time Rabbit wanted to go for a walk too, and finding the
front door full, he went out by the back door, and came round to Pooh,
and looked at him.
"Hallo, are you stuck?" he asked.
"N-no," said Pooh carelessly. "Just resting and thinking and humming to
myself."
"Here, give us a paw."
Pooh Bear stretched out a paw, and Rabbit pulled and pulled and
pulled....
"_Ow!_" cried Pooh. "You're hurting!"
"The fact is," said Rabbit, "you're stuck."
"It all comes," said Pooh crossly, "of not having front doors big
enough."
"It all comes," said Rabbit sternly, "of eating too much. I thought at
the time," said Rabbit, "only I didn't like to say anything," said
Rabbit, "that one of us was eating too much," said Rabbit, "and I knew
if wasn't _me_," he said. "Well, well, I shall go and fetch Christopher
Robin."
Christopher Robin lived at the other end of the Forest, and when he came
back with Rabbit, and saw the front half of Pooh, he said, "Silly old
Bear," in such a loving voice that everybody felt quite hopeful again.
"I was just beginning to think," said Bear, sniffing slightly, "that
Rabbit might never be able to use his front door again. And I should
_hate_ that," he said.
"So should I," said Rabbit.
"Use his front door again?" said Christopher Robin. "Of course he'll use
his front door again."
"Good," said Rabbit.
"If we can't pull you out, Pooh, we might push you back."
Rabbit scratched his whiskers thoughtfully, and pointed out that, when
once Pooh was pushed back, he was back, and of course nobody was more
glad to see Pooh than _he_ was, still there it was, some lived in trees
and some lived underground, and----
"You mean I'd _never_ get out?" said Pooh.
"I mean," said Rabbit, "that having got _so_ far, it seems a pity to
waste it."
Christopher Robin nodded.
"Then there's only one thing to be done," he said. "We shall have to
wait for you to get thin again."
"How long does getting thin take?" asked Pooh anxiously.
"About a week, I should think."
"But I can't stay here for a _week_!"
"You can _stay_ here all right, silly old Bear. It's getting you out
which is so difficult."
"We'll read to you," said Rabbit cheerfully. "And I hope it won't snow,"
he added. "And I say, old fellow, you're taking up a good deal of room
in my house--_do_ you mind if I use your back legs as a towel-horse?
Because, I mean, there they are--doing nothing--and it would be very
convenient just to hang the towels on them."
"A week!" said Pooh gloomily. "_What about meals?_"
"I'm afraid no meals," said Christopher Robin, "because of getting thin
quicker. But we _will_ read to you."
Bear began to sigh, and then found he couldn't because he was so tightly
stuck; and a tear rolled down his eye, as he said:
"Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a
Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?"
So for a week Christopher Robin read that sort of book at the North end
of Pooh, and Rabbit hung his washing on the South end ... and in
between Bear felt himself getting slenderer and slenderer. And at the
end of the week Christopher Robin said, "_Now!_"
So he took hold of Pooh's front paws and Rabbit took hold of Christopher
Robin, and all Rabbit's friends and relations took hold of Rabbit, and
they all pulled together....
And for a long time Pooh only said "_Ow!_" ...
And "_Oh!_" ...
And then, all of a sudden, he said "_Pop!_" just as if a cork were
coming out of a bottle.
And Christopher Robin and Rabbit and all Rabbit's friends and relations
went head-over-heels backwards ... and on the top of them came
Winnie-the-Pooh--free!
So, with a nod of thanks to his friends, he went on with his walk
through the forest, humming proudly to himself. But, Christopher Robin
looked after him lovingly, and said to himself, "Silly old Bear!"
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH POOH AND PIGLET GO HUNTING
AND NEARLY CATCH A WOOZLE
The Piglet lived in a very grand house in the middle of a beech-tree,
and the beech-tree was in the middle of the forest, and the Piglet lived
in the middle of the house. Next to his house was a piece of broken
board which had: "TRESPASSERS W" on it. When Christopher Robin asked the
Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather's name, and had
been in the family for a long time, Christopher Robin said you
_couldn't_ be called Trespassers W, and Piglet said yes, you could,
because his grandfather was, and it was short for Trespassers Will,
which was short for Trespassers William. And his grandfather had had two
names in case he lost one--Trespassers after an uncle, and William after
Trespassers.
"I've got two names," said Christopher Robin carelessly.
"Well, there you are, that proves it," said Piglet.
One fine winter's day when Piglet was brushing away the snow in front of
his house, he happened to look up, and there was Winnie-the-Pooh. Pooh
was walking round and round in a circle, thinking of something else, and
when Piglet called to him, he just went on walking.
"Hallo!" said Piglet, "what are _you_ doing?"
"Hunting," said Pooh.
"Hunting what?"
"Tracking something," said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.
"Tracking what?" said Piglet, coming closer.
"That's just what I ask myself. I ask myself, What?"
"What do you think you'll answer?"
"I shall have to wait until I catch up with it," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"Now, look there." He pointed to the ground in front of him. "What do
you see there?"
"Tracks," said Piglet. "Paw-marks." He gave a little squeak of
excitement. "Oh, Pooh! Do you think it's a--a--a Woozle?"
"It may be," said Pooh. "Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. You
never can tell with paw-marks."
With these few words he went on tracking, and Piglet, after watching him
for a minute or two, ran after him. Winnie-the-Pooh had come to a sudden
stop, and was bending over the tracks in a puzzled sort of way.
"What's the matter?" asked Piglet.
"It's a very funny thing," said Bear, "but there seem to be
_two_ animals now. This--whatever-it-was--has been joined by
another--whatever-it-is--and the two of them are now proceeding
in company. Would you mind coming with me, Piglet, in case they
turn out to be Hostile Animals?"
Piglet scratched his ear in a nice sort of way, and said that he had
nothing to do until Friday, and would be delighted to come, in case it
really _was_ a Woozle.
"You mean, in case it really is two Woozles," said Winnie-the-Pooh, and
Piglet said that anyhow he had nothing to do until Friday. So off they
went together.
There was a small spinney of larch trees just here, and it seemed as if
the two Woozles, if that is what they were, had been going round this
spinney; so round this spinney went Pooh and Piglet after them; Piglet
passing the time by telling Pooh what his Grandfather Trespassers W had
done to Remove Stiffness after Tracking, and how his Grandfather
Trespassers W had suffered in his later years from Shortness of Breath,
and other matters of interest, and Pooh wondering what a Grandfather was
like, and if perhaps this was Two Grandfathers they were after now, and,
if so, whether he would be allowed to take one home and keep it, and
what Christopher Robin would say. And still the tracks went on in front
of them....
Suddenly Winnie-the-Pooh stopped, and pointed excitedly in front of him.
"_Look!_"
"_What?_" said Piglet, with a jump. And then, to show that he hadn't
been frightened, he jumped up and down once or twice more in an
exercising sort of way.
"The tracks!" said Pooh. "_A third animal has joined the other two!_"
"Pooh!" cried Piglet. "Do you think it is another Woozle?"
"No," said Pooh, "because it makes different marks. It is either Two
Woozles and one, as it might be, Wizzle, or Two, as it might be, Wizzles
and one, if so it is, Woozle. Let us continue to follow them."
So they went on, feeling just a little anxious now, in case the three
animals in front of them were of Hostile Intent. And Piglet wished very
much that his Grandfather T. W. were there, instead of elsewhere, and
Pooh thought how nice it would be if they met Christopher Robin suddenly
but quite accidentally, and only because he liked Christopher Robin so
much. And then, all of a sudden, Winnie-the-Pooh stopped again, and
licked the tip of his nose in a cooling manner, for he was feeling more
hot and anxious than ever in his life before. _There were four animals
in front of them!_
"Do you see, Piglet? Look at their tracks! Three, as it were, Woozles,
and one, as it was, Wizzle. _Another Woozle has joined them!_"
And so it seemed to be. There were the tracks; crossing over each other
here, getting muddled up with each other there; but, quite plainly every
now and then, the tracks of four sets of paws.
"I _think_," said Piglet, when he had licked the tip of his nose too,
and found that it brought very little comfort, "I _think_ that I have
just remembered something. I have just remembered something that I
forgot to do yesterday and shan't be able to do to-morrow. So I suppose
I really ought to go back and do it now."
"We'll do it this afternoon, and I'll come with you," said Pooh.
"It isn't the sort of thing you can do in the afternoon," said Piglet
quickly. "It's a very particular morning thing, that has to be done in
the morning, and, if possible, between the hours of----What would you
say the time was?"
"About twelve," said Winnie-the-Pooh, looking at the sun.
"Between, as I was saying, the hours of twelve and twelve five. So,
really, dear old Pooh, if you'll excuse me----_What's that?_"
Pooh looked up at the sky, and then, as he heard the whistle again, he
looked up into the branches of a big oak-tree, and then he saw a friend
of his.
"It's Christopher Robin," he said.
"Ah, then you'll be all right," said Piglet. "You'll be quite safe with
_him_. Good-bye," and he trotted off home as quickly as he could, very
glad to be Out of All Danger again.
Christopher Robin came slowly down his tree.
"Silly old Bear," he said, "what _were_ you doing? First you went round
the spinney twice by yourself, and then Piglet ran after you and you
went round again together, and then you were just going round a fourth
time----"
"Wait a moment," said Winnie-the-Pooh, holding up his paw.
He sat down and thought, in the most thoughtful way he could think. Then
he fitted his paw into one of the Tracks ... and then he scratched his
nose twice, and stood up.
"Yes," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"I see now," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of No Brain
at All."
"You're the Best Bear in All the World," said Christopher Robin
soothingly.
"Am I?" said Pooh hopefully. And then he brightened up suddenly.
"Anyhow," he said, "it is nearly Luncheon Time."
So he went home for it.
CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH EEYORE LOSES A TAIL
AND POOH FINDS ONE
The Old Grey Donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a thistly corner of
the forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought
about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and
sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch
as which?"--and sometimes he didn't quite know what he _was_ thinking
about. So when Winnie-the-Pooh came stumping along, Eeyore was very glad
to be able to stop thinking for a little, in order to say "How do you
do?" in a gloomy manner to him.
"And how are you?" said Winnie-the-Pooh.
Eeyore shook his head from side to side.
"Not very how," he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a
long time."
"Dear, dear," said Pooh, "I'm sorry about that. Let's have a look at
you."
So Eeyore stood there, gazing sadly at the ground, and Winnie-the-Pooh
walked all round him once.
"Why, what's happened to your tail?" he said in surprise.
"What _has_ happened to it?" said Eeyore.
"It isn't there!"
"Are you sure?"
"Well, either a tail _is_ there or it isn't there. You can't make a
mistake about it. And yours _isn't_ there!"
"Then what is?"
"Nothing."
"Let's have a look," said Eeyore, and he turned slowly round to the
place where his tail had been a little while ago, and then, finding that
he couldn't catch it up, he turned round the other way, until he came
back to where he was at first, and then he put his head down and looked
between his front legs, and at last he said, with a long, sad sigh, "I
believe you're right."
"Of course I'm right," said Pooh.
"That Accounts for a Good Deal," said Eeyore gloomily. "It Explains
Everything. No Wonder."
"You must have left it somewhere," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"Somebody must have taken it," said Eeyore. "How Like Them," he added,
after a long silence.
Pooh felt that he ought to say something helpful about it, but didn't
quite know what. So he decided to do something helpful instead.
"Eeyore," he said solemnly, "I, Winnie-the-Pooh, will find your tail for
you."
"Thank you, Pooh," answered Eeyore. "You're a real friend," said he.
"Not like Some," he said.
So Winnie-the-Pooh went off to find Eeyore's tail.
It was a fine spring morning in the forest as he started out. Little
soft clouds played happily in a blue sky, skipping from time to time in
front of the sun as if they had come to put it out, and then sliding
away suddenly so that the next might have his turn. Through them and
between them the sun shone bravely; and a copse which had worn its firs
all the year round seemed old and dowdy now beside the new green lace
which the beeches had put on so prettily. Through copse and spinney
marched Bear; down open slopes of gorse and heather, over rocky beds of
streams, up steep banks of sandstone into the heather again; and so at
last, tired and hungry, to the Hundred Acre Wood. For it was in the
Hundred Acre Wood that Owl lived.
"And if anyone knows anything about anything," said Bear to himself,
"it's Owl who knows something about something," he said, "or my name's
not Winnie-the-Pooh," he said. "Which it is," he added. "So there you
are."
Owl lived at The Chestnuts, an old-world residence of great charm, which
was grander than anybody else's, or seemed so to Bear, because it had
both a knocker _and_ a bell-pull. Underneath the knocker there was a
notice which said:
PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD.
Underneath the bell-pull there was a notice which said:
PLEZ CNOKE IF AN RNSR IS NOT REQID.
These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only
one in the forest who could spell; for Owl, wise though he was in many
ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow
went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.
Winnie-the-Pooh read the two notices very carefully, first from left to
right, and afterwards, in case he had missed some of it, from right to
left. Then, to make quite sure, he knocked and pulled the knocker, and
he pulled and knocked the bell-rope, and he called out in a very loud
voice, "Owl! I require an answer! It's Bear speaking." And the door
opened, and Owl looked out.
"Hallo, Pooh," he said. "How's things?"
"Terrible and Sad," said Pooh, "because Eeyore, who is a friend of mine,
has lost his tail. And he's Moping about it. So could you very kindly
tell me how to find it for him?"
"Well," said Owl, "the customary procedure in such cases is as follows."
"What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said Pooh. "For I am a Bear of
Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me."
"It means the Thing to Do."
"As long as it means that, I don't mind," said Pooh humbly.
"The thing to do is as follows. First, Issue a Reward. Then----"
"Just a moment," said Pooh, holding up his paw. "_What_ do we do to
this--what you were saying? You sneezed just as you were going to tell
me."
"I _didn't_ sneeze."
"Yes, you did, Owl."
"Excuse me, Pooh, I didn't. You can't sneeze without knowing it."
"Well, you can't know it without something having been sneezed."
"What I _said_ was, 'First _Issue_ a Reward'."
"You're doing it again," said Pooh sadly.
"A Reward!" said Owl very loudly. "We write a notice to say that we will
give a large something to anybody who finds Eeyore's tail."
"I see, I see," said Pooh, nodding his head. "Talking about large
somethings," he went on dreamily, "I generally have a small something
about now--about this time in the morning," and he looked wistfully at
the cupboard in the corner of Owl's parlour; "just a mouthful of
condensed milk or whatnot, with perhaps a lick of honey----"
"Well, then," said Owl, "we write out this notice, and we put it up all
over the forest."
"A lick of honey," murmured Bear to himself, "or--or not, as the case
may be." And he gave a deep sigh, and tried very hard to listen to what
Owl was saying.
But Owl went on and on, using longer and longer words, until at last he
came back to where he started, and he explained that the person to write
out this notice was Christopher Robin.
"It was he who wrote the ones on my front door for me. Did you see them,
Pooh?"
For some time now Pooh had been saying "Yes" and "No" in turn, with his
eyes shut, to all that Owl was saying, and having said, "Yes, yes," last
time, he said "No, not at all," now, without really knowing what Owl was
talking about.
"Didn't you see them?" said Owl, a little surprised. "Come and look at
them now."
So they went outside. And Pooh looked at the knocker and the notice
below it, and he looked at the bell-rope and the notice below it, and
the more he looked at the bell-rope, the more he felt that he had seen
something like it, somewhere else, sometime before.
"Handsome bell-rope, isn't it?" said Owl.
Pooh nodded.
"It reminds me of something," he said, "but I can't think what. Where
did you get it?"
"I just came across it in the Forest. It was hanging over a bush, and I
thought at first somebody lived there, so I rang it, and nothing
happened, and then I rang it again very loudly, and it came off in my
hand, and as nobody seemed to want it, I took it home, and----"
"Owl," said Pooh solemnly, "you made a mistake. Somebody did want it."
"Who?"
"Eeyore. My dear friend Eeyore. He was--he was fond of it."
"Fond of it?"
"Attached to it," said Winnie-the-Pooh sadly.
* * * * *
So with these words he unhooked it, and carried it back to Eeyore; and
when Christopher Robin had nailed it on in its right place again, Eeyore
frisked about the forest, waving his tail so happily that
Winnie-the-Pooh came over all funny, and had to hurry home for a little
snack of something to sustain him. And, wiping his mouth half an hour
afterwards, he sang to himself proudly:
_Who found the Tail?_
"I," said Pooh,
"At a quarter to two
(Only it was quarter to eleven really),
_I_ found the Tail!"
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH PIGLET MEETS A HEFFALUMP
One day, when Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet were
all talking together, Christopher Robin finished the mouthful he was
eating and said carelessly: "I saw a Heffalump to-day, Piglet."
"What was it doing?" asked Piglet.
"Just lumping along," said Christopher Robin. "I don't think it saw
_me_."
"I saw one once," said Piglet. "At least, I think I did," he said. "Only
perhaps it wasn't."
"So did I," said Pooh, wondering what a Heffalump was like.
"You don't often see them," said Christopher Robin carelessly.
"Not now," said Piglet.
"Not at this time of year," said Pooh.
Then they all talked about something else, until it was time for Pooh
and Piglet to go home together. At first as they stumped along the path
which edged the Hundred Acre Wood, they didn't say much to each other;
but when they came to the stream and had helped each other across the
stepping stones, and were able to walk side by side again over the
heather, they began to talk in a friendly way about this and that, and
Piglet said, "If you see what I mean, Pooh," and Pooh said, "It's just
what I think myself, Piglet," and Piglet said, "But, on the other hand,
Pooh, we must remember," and Pooh said, "Quite true, Piglet, although I
had forgotten it for the moment." And then, just as they came to the Six
Pine Trees, Pooh looked round to see that nobody else was listening, and
said in a very solemn voice:
"Piglet, I have decided something."
"What have you decided, Pooh?"
"I have decided to catch a Heffalump."
Pooh nodded his head several times as he said this, and waited for
Piglet to say "How?" or "Pooh, you couldn't!" or something helpful of
that sort, but Piglet said nothing. The fact was Piglet was wishing that
_he_ had thought about it first.
"I shall do it," said Pooh, after waiting a little longer, "by means of
a trap. And it must be a Cunning Trap, so you will have to help me,
Piglet."
"Pooh," said Piglet, feeling quite happy again now, "I will." And then
he said, "How shall we do it?" and Pooh said, "That's just it. How?" And
then they sat down together to think it out.
Pooh's first idea was that they should dig a Very Deep Pit, and then the
Heffalump would come along and fall into the Pit, and----
"Why?" said Piglet.
"Why what?" said Pooh.
"Why would he fall in?"
Pooh rubbed his nose with his paw, and said that the Heffalump might be
walking along, humming a little song, and looking up at the sky,
wondering if it would rain, and so he wouldn't see the Very Deep Pit
until he was half-way down, when it would be too late.
Piglet said that this was a very good Trap, but supposing it were
raining already?
Pooh rubbed his nose again, and said that he hadn't thought of that. And
then he brightened up, and said that, if it were raining already, the
Heffalump would be looking at the sky wondering if it would _clear up_,
and so he wouldn't see the Very Deep Pit until he was half-way
down.... When it would be too late.
Piglet said that, now that this point had been explained, he thought it
was a Cunning Trap.
Pooh was very proud when he heard this, and he felt that the Heffalump
was as good as caught already, but there was just one other thing which
had to be thought about, and it was this. _Where should they dig the
Very Deep Pit?_
Piglet said that the best place would be somewhere where a Heffalump
was, just before he fell into it, only about a foot farther on.
"But then he would see us digging it," said Pooh.
"Not if he was looking at the sky."
"He would Suspect," said Pooh, "if he happened to look down." He thought
for a long time and then added sadly, "It isn't as easy as I thought. I
suppose that's why Heffalumps hardly _ever_ get caught."
"That must be it," said Piglet.
They sighed and got up; and when they had taken a few gorse prickles out
of themselves they sat down again; and all the time Pooh was saying to
himself, "If only I could _think_ of something!" For he felt sure that a
Very Clever Brain could catch a Heffalump if only he knew the right way
to go about it.
"Suppose," he said to Piglet, "_you_ wanted to catch _me_, how would you
do it?"
"Well," said Piglet, "I should do it like this. I should make a Trap,
and I should put a Jar of Honey in the Trap, and you would smell it, and
you would go in after it, and----"
"And I would go in after it," said Pooh excitedly, "only very carefully
so as not to hurt myself, and I would get to the Jar of Honey, and I
should lick round the edges first of all, pretending that there wasn't
any more, you know, and then I should walk away and think about it a
little, and then I should come back and start licking in the middle of
the jar, and then----"
"Yes, well never mind about that. There you would be, and there I should
catch you. Now the first thing to think of is, What do Heffalumps like?
I should think acorns, shouldn't you? We'll get a lot of----I say, wake
up, Pooh!"
Pooh, who had gone into a happy dream, woke up with a start, and said
that Honey was a much more trappy thing than Haycorns. Piglet didn't
think so; and they were just going to argue about it, when Piglet
remembered that, if they put acorns in the Trap, _he_ would have to find
the acorns, but if they put honey, then Pooh would have to give up some
of his own honey, so he said, "All right, honey then," just as Pooh
remembered it too, and was going to say, "All right, haycorns."
"Honey," said Piglet to himself in a thoughtful way, as if it were now
settled. "_I'll_ dig the pit, while _you_ go and get the honey."
"Very well," said Pooh, and he stumped off.
As soon as he got home, he went to the larder; and he stood on a chair,
and took down a very large jar of honey from the top shelf. It had HUNNY
written on it, but, just to make sure, he took off the paper cover and
looked at it, and it _looked_ just like honey. "But you never can tell,"
said Pooh. "I remember my uncle saying once that he had seen cheese just
this colour." So he put his tongue in, and took a large lick. "Yes," he
said, "it is. No doubt about that. And honey, I should say, right down
to the bottom of the jar. Unless, of course," he said, "somebody put
cheese in at the bottom just for a joke. Perhaps I had better go a
_little_ further ... just in case ... in case Heffalumps _don't_
like cheese ... same as me.... Ah!" And he gave a deep sigh. "I
_was_ right. It _is_ honey, right the way down."
Having made certain of this, he took the jar back to Piglet, and Piglet
looked up from the bottom of his Very Deep Pit, and said, "Got it?" and
Pooh said, "Yes, but it isn't quite a full jar," and he threw it down to
Piglet, and Piglet said, "No, it isn't! Is that all you've got left?"
and Pooh said "Yes." Because it was. So Piglet put the jar at the bottom
of the Pit, and climbed out, and they went off home together.
"Well, good night, Pooh," said Piglet, when they had got to Pooh's
house. "And we meet at six o'clock to-morrow morning by the Pine Trees,
and see how many Heffalumps we've got in our Trap."
"Six o'clock, Piglet. And have you got any string?"
"No. Why do you want string?"
"To lead them home with."
"Oh! ... I _think_ Heffalumps come if you whistle."
"Some do and some don't. You never can tell with Heffalumps. Well, good
night!"
"Good night!"
And off Piglet trotted to his house TRESPASSERS W, while Pooh made his
preparations for bed.
Some hours later, just as the night was beginning to steal away, Pooh
woke up suddenly with a sinking feeling. He had had that sinking feeling
before, and he knew what it meant. _He was hungry._ So he went to the
larder, and he stood on a chair and reached up to the top shelf, and
found--nothing.
"That's funny," he thought. "I know I had a jar of honey there. A full
jar, full of honey right up to the top, and it had HUNNY written on it,
so that I should know it was honey. That's very funny." And then he
began to wander up and down, wondering where it was and murmuring a
murmur to himself. Like this:
It's very, very funny,
'Cos I _know_ I had some honey;
'Cos it had a label on,
Saying HUNNY.
A goloptious full-up pot too,
And I don't know where it's got to,
No, I don't know where it's gone--
Well, it's funny.
He had murmured this to himself three times in a singing sort of way,
when suddenly he remembered. He had put it into the Cunning Trap to
catch the Heffalump.
"Bother!" said Pooh. "It all comes of trying to be kind to Heffalumps."
And he got back into bed.
But he couldn't sleep. The more he tried to sleep, the more he couldn't.
He tried Counting Sheep, which is sometimes a good way of getting to
sleep, and, as that was no good, he tried counting Heffalumps. And that
was worse. Because every Heffalump that he counted was making straight
for a pot of Pooh's honey, _and eating it all_. For some minutes he lay
there miserably, but when the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalump
was licking its jaws, and saying to itself, "Very good honey this, I
don't know when I've tasted better," Pooh could bear it no longer. He
jumped out of bed, he ran out of the house, and he ran straight to the
Six Pine Trees.
The Sun was still in bed, but there was a lightness in the sky over the
Hundred Acre Wood which seemed to show that it was waking up and would
soon be kicking off the clothes. In the half-light the Pine Trees looked
cold and lonely, and the Very Deep Pit seemed deeper than it was, and
Pooh's jar of honey at the bottom was something mysterious, a shape and
no more. But as he got nearer to it his nose told him that it was indeed
honey, and his tongue came out and began to polish up his mouth, ready
for it.
"Bother!" said Pooh, as he got his nose inside the jar. "A Heffalump has
been eating it!" And then he thought a little and said, "Oh, no, _I_
did. I forgot."
Indeed, he had eaten most of it. But there was a little left at the very
bottom of the jar, and he pushed his head right in, and began to
lick....
By and by Piglet woke up. As soon as he woke he said to himself, "Oh!"
Then he said bravely, "Yes," and then, still more bravely, "Quite so."
But he didn't feel very brave, for the word which was really jiggeting
about in his brain was "Heffalumps."
What was a Heffalump like?
Was it Fierce?
_Did_ it come when you whistled? And _how_ did it come?
Was it Fond of Pigs at all?
If it was Fond of Pigs, did it make any difference _what sort of Pig_?
Supposing it was Fierce with Pigs, would it make any difference _if the
Pig had a grandfather called TRESPASSERS WILLIAM_?
He didn't know the answer to any of these questions ... and he was
going to see his first Heffalump in about an hour from now!
Of course Pooh would be with him, and it was much more Friendly with
two. But suppose Heffalumps were Very Fierce with Pigs _and_ Bears?
Wouldn't it be better to pretend that he had a headache, and couldn't go
up to the Six Pine Trees this morning? But then suppose that it was a
very fine day, and there was no Heffalump in the trap, here he would be,
in bed all the morning, simply wasting his time for nothing. What should
he do?
And then he had a Clever Idea. He would go up very quietly to the Six
Pine Trees now, peep very cautiously into the Trap, and see if there
_was_ a Heffalump there. And if there was, he would go back to bed, and
if there wasn't, he wouldn't.
So off he went. At first he thought that there wouldn't be a Heffalump
in the Trap, and then he thought that there would, and as he got nearer
he was _sure_ that there would, because he could hear it heffalumping
about it like anything.
"Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!" said Piglet to himself. And he wanted to
run away. But somehow, having got so near, he felt that he must just see
what a Heffalump was like. So he crept to the side of the Trap and
looked in....
And all the time Winnie-the-Pooh had been trying to get the honey-jar
off his head. The more he shook it, the more tightly it stuck.
"_Bother!_" he said, inside the jar, and "_Oh, help!_" and, mostly,
"_Ow!_" And he tried bumping it against things, but as he couldn't see
what he was bumping it against, it didn't help him; and he tried to
climb out of the Trap, but as he could see nothing but jar, and not much
of that, he couldn't find his way. So at last he lifted up his head, jar
and all, and made a loud, roaring noise of Sadness and Despair ... and
it was at that moment that Piglet looked down.
"Help, help!" cried Piglet, "a Heffalump, a Horrible Heffalump!" and he
scampered off as hard as he could, still crying out, "Help, help, a
Herrible Hoffalump! Hoff, Hoff, a Hellible Horralump! Holl, Holl, a
Hoffable Hellerump!" And he didn't stop crying and scampering until he
got to Christopher Robin's house.
"Whatever's the matter, Piglet?" said Christopher Robin, who was just
getting up.
"Heff," said Piglet, breathing so hard that he could hardly speak, "a
Heff--a Heff--a Heffalump."
"Where?"
"Up there," said Piglet, waving his paw.
"What did it look like?"
"Like--like----It had the biggest head you ever saw, Christopher Robin.
A great enormous thing, like--like nothing. A huge big--well, like a--I
don't know--like an enormous big nothing. Like a jar."
"Well," said Christopher Robin, putting on his shoes, "I shall go and
look at it. Come on."
Piglet wasn't afraid if he had Christopher Robin with him, so off they
went....
"I can hear it, can't you?" said Piglet anxiously, as they got near.
"I can hear _something_," said Christopher Robin.
It was Pooh bumping his head against a tree-root he had found.
"There!" said Piglet. "Isn't it _awful_?" And he held on tight to
Christopher Robin's hand.
Suddenly Christopher Robin began to laugh ... and he laughed ... and he
laughed ... and he laughed. And while he was still laughing--_Crash_
went the Heffalump's head against the tree-root, Smash went the jar,
and out came Pooh's head again....
Then Piglet saw what a Foolish Piglet he had been, and he was so ashamed
of himself that he ran straight off home and went to bed with a
headache. But Christopher Robin and Pooh went home to breakfast
together.
"Oh, Bear!" said Christopher Robin. "How I do love you!"
"So do I," said Pooh.
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH EEYORE HAS A BIRTHDAY
AND GETS TWO PRESENTS
Eeyore, the old grey Donkey, stood by the side of the stream, and
looked at himself in the water.
"Pathetic," he said. "That's what it is. Pathetic."
He turned and walked slowly down the stream for twenty yards, splashed
across it, and walked slowly back on the other side. Then he looked at
himself in the water again.
"As I thought," he said. "No better from _this_ side. But nobody minds.
Nobody cares. Pathetic, that's what it is."
There was a crackling noise in the bracken behind him, and out came
Pooh.
"Good morning, Eeyore," said Pooh.
"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it _is_ a good
morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.
"Why, what's the matter?"
"Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's
all there is to it."
"Can't all _what_?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose.
"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush."
"Oh!" said Pooh. He thought for a long time, and then asked, "What
mulberry bush is that?"
"Bon-hommy," went on Eeyore gloomily. "French word meaning bonhommy," he
explained. "I'm not complaining, but There It Is."
Pooh sat down on a large stone, and tried to think this out. It sounded
to him like a riddle, and he was never much good at riddles, being a
Bear of Very Little Brain. So he sang _Cottleston Pie_ instead:
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"_Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie._"
That was the first verse. When he had finished it, Eeyore didn't
actually say that he didn't like it, so Pooh very kindly sang the second
verse to him:
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fish can't whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"_Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie_."
Eeyore still said nothing at all, so Pooh hummed the third verse quietly
to himself:
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken, I don't know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"_Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie_."
"That's right," said Eeyore. "Sing. Umty-tiddly, umty-too. Here we go
gathering Nuts and May. Enjoy yourself."
"I am," said Pooh.
"Some can," said Eeyore.
"Why, what's the matter?"
"_Is_ anything the matter?"
"You seem so sad, Eeyore."
"Sad? Why should I be sad? It's my birthday. The happiest day of the
year."
"Your birthday?" said Pooh in great surprise.
"Of course it is. Can't you see? Look at all the presents I have had."
He waved a foot from side to side. "Look at the birthday cake. Candles
and pink sugar."
Pooh looked--first to the right and then to the left.
"Presents?" said Pooh. "Birthday cake?" said Pooh. "_Where?_"
"Can't you see them?"
"No," said Pooh.
"Neither can I," said Eeyore. "Joke," he explained. "Ha ha!"
Pooh scratched his head, being a little puzzled by all this.
"But is it really your birthday?" he asked.
"It is."
"Oh! Well, Many happy returns of the day, Eeyore."
"And many happy returns to you, Pooh Bear."
"But it isn't _my_ birthday."
"No, it's mine."
"But you said 'Many happy returns'----"
"Well, why not? You don't always want to be miserable on my birthday, do
you?"
"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
"It's bad enough," said Eeyore, almost breaking down, "being miserable
myself, what with no presents and no cake and no candles, and no proper
notice taken of me at all, but if everybody else is going to be
miserable too----"
This was too much for Pooh. "Stay there!" he called to Eeyore, as he
turned and hurried back home as quick as he could; for he felt that he
must get poor Eeyore a present of _some_ sort at once, and he could
always think of a proper one afterwards.
Outside his house he found Piglet, jumping up and down trying to reach
the knocker.
"Hallo, Piglet," he said.
"Hallo, Pooh," said Piglet.
"What are _you_ trying to do?"
"I was trying to reach the knocker," said Piglet. "I just came
round----"
"Let me do it for you," said Pooh kindly. So he reached up and knocked
at the door. "I have just seen Eeyore," he began, "and poor Eeyore is in
a Very Sad Condition, because it's his birthday, and nobody has taken
any notice of it, and he's very Gloomy--you know what Eeyore is--and
there he was, and----What a long time whoever lives here is answering
this door." And he knocked again.
"But Pooh," said Piglet, "it's your own house!"
"Oh!" said Pooh. "So it is," he said. "Well, let's go in."
So in they went. The first thing Pooh did was to go to the cupboard to
see if he had quite a small jar of honey left; and he had, so he took it
down.
"I'm giving this to Eeyore," he explained, "as a present. What are _you_
going to give?"
"Couldn't I give it too?" said Piglet. "From both of us?"
"No," said Pooh. "That would _not_ be a good plan."
"All right, then, I'll give him a balloon. I've got one left from my
party. I'll go and get it now, shall I?"
"That, Piglet, is a _very_ good idea. It is just what Eeyore wants to
cheer him up. Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon."
So off Piglet trotted; and in the other direction went Pooh, with his
jar of honey.
It was a warm day, and he had a long way to go. He hadn't gone more than
half-way when a sort of funny feeling began to creep all over him. It
began at the tip of his nose and trickled all through him and out at the
soles of his feet. It was just as if somebody inside him were saying,
"Now then, Pooh, time for a little something."
"Dear, dear," said Pooh, "I didn't know it was as late as that." So he
sat down and took the top off his jar of honey. "Lucky I brought this
with me," he thought. "Many a bear going out on a warm day like this
would never have thought of bringing a little something with him." And
he began to eat.
"Now let me see," he thought, as he took his last lick of the inside of
the jar, "where was I going? Ah, yes, Eeyore." He got up slowly.
And then, suddenly, he remembered. He had eaten Eeyore's birthday
present!
"_Bother!_" said Pooh. "What _shall_ I do? I _must_ give him
_something_."
For a little while he couldn't think of anything. Then he thought:
"Well, it's a very nice pot, even if there's no honey in it, and if I
washed it clean, and got somebody to write '_A Happy Birthday_' on it,
Eeyore could keep things in it, which might be Useful." So, as he was
just passing the Hundred Acre Wood, he went inside to call on Owl, who
lived there.
"Good morning, Owl," he said.
"Good morning, Pooh," said Owl.
"Many happy returns of Eeyore's birthday," said Pooh.
"Oh, is that what it is?"
"What are you giving him, Owl?"
"What are _you_ giving him, Pooh?"
"I'm giving him a Useful Pot to Keep Things In, and I wanted to ask
you----"
"Is this it?" said Owl, taking it out of Pooh's paw.
"Yes, and I wanted to ask you----"
"Somebody has been keeping honey in it," said Owl.
"You can keep _anything_ in it," said Pooh earnestly. "It's Very Useful
like that. And I wanted to ask you----"
"You ought to write '_A Happy Birthday_' on it."
"_That_ was what I wanted to ask you," said Pooh. "Because my spelling
is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the
wrong places. Would _you_ write 'A Happy Birthday' on it for me?"
"It's a nice pot," said Owl, looking at it all round. "Couldn't I give
it too? From both of us?"
"No," said Pooh. "That would _not_ be a good plan. Now I'll just wash it
first, and then you can write on it."
Well, he washed the pot out, and dried it, while Owl licked the end of
his pencil, and wondered how to spell "birthday."
"Can you read, Pooh?" he asked a little anxiously. "There's a notice
about knocking and ringing outside my door, which Christopher Robin
wrote. Could you read it?"
"Christopher Robin told me what it said, and _then_ I could."
"Well, I'll tell you what _this_ says, and then you'll be able to."
So Owl wrote ... and this is what he wrote:
HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY.
Pooh looked on admiringly.
"I'm just saying 'A Happy Birthday'," said Owl carelessly.
"It's a nice long one," said Pooh, very much impressed by it.
"Well, _actually_, of course, I'm saying 'A Very Happy Birthday with
love from Pooh.' Naturally it takes a good deal of pencil to say a long
thing like that."
"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
While all this was happening, Piglet had gone back to his own house to
get Eeyore's balloon. He held it very tightly against himself, so that
it shouldn't blow away, and he ran as fast as he could so as to get to
Eeyore before Pooh did; for he thought that he would like to be the
first one to give a present, just as if he had thought of it without
being told by anybody. And running along, and thinking how pleased
Eeyore would be, he didn't look where he was going ... and suddenly he
put his foot in a rabbit hole, and fell down flat on his face.
BANG!!!???***!!!
Piglet lay there, wondering what had happened. At first he thought that
the whole world had blown up; and then he thought that perhaps only the
Forest part of it had; and then he thought that perhaps only _he_ had,
and he was now alone in the moon or somewhere, and would never see
Christopher Robin or Pooh or Eeyore again. And then he thought, "Well,
even if I'm in the moon, I needn't be face downwards all the time," so
he got cautiously up and looked about him.
He was still in the Forest!
"Well, that's funny," he thought. "I wonder what that bang was. I
couldn't have made such a noise just falling down. And where's my
balloon? And what's that small piece of damp rag doing?"
It was the balloon!
"Oh, dear!" said Piglet "Oh, dear, oh, dearie, dearie, dear! Well, it's
too late now. I can't go back, and I haven't another balloon, and
perhaps Eeyore doesn't _like_ balloons so _very_ much."
So he trotted on, rather sadly now, and down he came to the side of the
stream where Eeyore was, and called out to him.
"Good morning, Eeyore," shouted Piglet.
"Good morning, Little Piglet," said Eeyore. "If it _is_ a good morning,"
he said. "Which I doubt," said he. "Not that it matters," he said.
"Many happy returns of the day," said Piglet, having now got closer.
Eeyore stopped looking at himself in the stream, and turned to stare at
Piglet.
"Just say that again," he said.
"Many hap----"
"Wait a moment."
Balancing on three legs, he began to bring his fourth leg very
cautiously up to his ear. "I did this yesterday," he explained, as he
fell down for the third time. "It's quite easy. It's so as I can hear
better.... There, that's done it! Now then, what were you saying?" He
pushed his ear forward with his hoof.
"Many happy returns of the day," said Piglet again.
"Meaning me?"
"Of course, Eeyore."
"My birthday?"
"Yes."
"Me having a real birthday?"
"Yes, Eeyore, and I've brought you a present."
Eeyore took down his right hoof from his right ear, turned round, and
with great difficulty put up his left hoof.
"I must have that in the other ear," he said. "Now then."
"A present," said Piglet very loudly.
"Meaning me again?"
"Yes."
"My birthday still?"
"Of course, Eeyore."
"Me going on having a real birthday?"
"Yes, Eeyore, and I brought you a balloon."
"_Balloon?_" said Eeyore. "You did say balloon? One of those big
coloured things you blow up? Gaiety, song-and-dance, here we are and
there we are?"
"Yes, but I'm afraid--I'm very sorry, Eeyore--but when I was running
along to bring it you, I fell down."
"Dear, dear, how unlucky! You ran too fast, I expect. You didn't hurt
yourself, Little Piglet?"
"No, but I--I--oh, Eeyore, I burst the balloon!"
There was a very long silence.
"My balloon?" said Eeyore at last.
Piglet nodded.
"My birthday balloon?"
"Yes, Eeyore," said Piglet sniffing a little. "Here it is. With--with
many happy returns of the day." And he gave Eeyore the small piece of
damp rag.
"Is this it?" said Eeyore, a little surprised.
Piglet nodded.
"My present?"
Piglet nodded again.
"The balloon?"
"Yes."
"Thank you, Piglet," said Eeyore. "You don't mind my asking," he went
on, "but what colour was this balloon when it--when it _was_ a balloon?"
"Red."
"I just wondered.... Red," he murmured to himself. "My favourite
colour.... How big was it?"
"About as big as me."
"I just wondered.... About as big as Piglet," he said to himself
sadly. "My favourite size. Well, well."
Piglet felt very miserable, and didn't know what to say. He was still
opening his mouth to begin something, and then deciding that it wasn't
any good saying _that_, when he heard a shout from the other side of the
river, and there was Pooh.
"Many happy returns of the day," called out Pooh, forgetting that he had
said it already.
"Thank you, Pooh, I'm having them," said Eeyore gloomily.
"I've brought you a little present," said Pooh excitedly.
"I've had it," said Eeyore.
Pooh had now splashed across the stream to Eeyore, and Piglet was
sitting a little way off, his head in his paws, snuffling to himself.
"It's a Useful Pot," said Pooh. "Here it is. And it's got 'A Very Happy
Birthday with love from Pooh' written on it. That's what all that
writing is. And it's for putting things in. There!"
When Eeyore saw the pot, he became quite excited.
"Why!" he said. "I believe my Balloon will just go into that Pot!"
"Oh, no, Eeyore," said Pooh. "Balloons are much too big to go into Pots.
What you do with a balloon is, you hold the ballon----"
"Not mine," said Eeyore proudly. "Look, Piglet!" And as Piglet looked
sorrowfully round, Eeyore picked the balloon up with his teeth, and
placed it carefully in the pot; picked it out and put it on the ground;
and then picked it up again and put it carefully back.
"So it does!" said Pooh. "It goes in!"
"So it does!" said Piglet. "And it comes out!"
"Doesn't it?" said Eeyore. "It goes in and out like anything."
"I'm very glad," said Pooh happily, "that I thought of giving you a
Useful Pot to put things in."
"I'm very glad," said Piglet happily, "that I thought of giving you
Something to put in a Useful Pot."
But Eeyore wasn't listening. He was taking the balloon out, and putting
it back again, as happy as could be....
* * * * *
"And didn't _I_ give him anything?" asked Christopher Robin sadly.
"Of course you did," I said. "You gave him--don't you remember--a
little--a little----"
"I gave him a box of paints to paint things with."
"That was it."
"Why didn't I give it to him in the morning?"
"You were so busy getting his party ready for him. He had a cake with
icing on the top, and three candles, and his name in pink sugar,
and----"
"Yes, _I_ remember," said Christopher Robin.
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH KANGA AND BABY ROO COME
TO THE FOREST, AND PIGLET HAS A BATH
Nobody seemed to know where they came from, but there they were in the
Forest: Kanga and Baby Roo. When Pooh asked Christopher Robin, "How did
they come here?" Christopher Robin said, "In the Usual Way, if you know
what I mean, Pooh," and Pooh, who didn't, said "Oh!" Then he nodded his
head twice and said, "In the Usual Way. Ah!" Then he went to call upon
his friend Piglet to see what _he_ thought about it. And at Piglet's
house he found Rabbit. So they all talked about it together.
"What I don't like about it is this," said Rabbit. "Here are we--you,
Pooh, and you, Piglet, and Me--and suddenly----"
"And Eeyore," said Pooh.
"And Eeyore--and then suddenly----"
"And Owl," said Pooh.
"And Owl--and then all of a sudden----"
"Oh, and Eeyore," said Pooh. "I was forgetting _him_."
"Here--we--are," said Rabbit very slowly and carefully, "all--of--us,
and then, suddenly, we wake up one morning and, what do we find? We find
a Strange Animal among us. An animal of whom we have never even heard
before! An animal who carries her family about with her in her pocket!
Suppose _I_ carried _my_ family about with me in _my_ pocket, how many
pockets should I want?"
"Sixteen," said Piglet.
"Seventeen, isn't it?" said Rabbit. "And one more for a
handkerchief--that's eighteen. Eighteen pockets in one suit! I haven't
time."
There was a long and thoughtful silence ... and then Pooh, who had
been frowning very hard for some minutes, said: "_I_ make it fifteen."
"What?" said Rabbit.
"Fifteen."
"Fifteen what?"
"Your family."
"What about them?"
Pooh rubbed his nose and said that he thought Rabbit had been talking
about his family.
"Did I?" said Rabbit carelessly.
"Yes, you said----"
"Never mind, Pooh," said Piglet impatiently.
"The question is, What are we to do about Kanga?"
"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
"The best way," said Rabbit, "would be this. The best way would be to
steal Baby Roo and hide him, and then when Kanga says, 'Where's Baby
Roo?' we say, '_Aha!_'"
"_Aha!_" said Pooh, practising. "_Aha! Aha!_ ... Of course," he went
on, "we could say 'Aha!' even if we hadn't stolen Baby Roo."
"Pooh," said Rabbit kindly, "you haven't any brain."
"I know," said Pooh humbly.
"We say '_Aha!_' so that Kanga knows that _we_ know where Baby Roo is.
'_Aha!_' means 'We'll tell you where Baby Roo is, if you promise to go
away from the Forest and never come back.' Now don't talk while I
think."
Pooh went into a corner and tried saying 'Aha!' in that sort of voice.
Sometimes it seemed to him that it did mean what Rabbit said, and
sometimes it seemed to him that it didn't. "I suppose it's just
practice," he thought. "I wonder if Kanga will have to practise too so
as to understand it."
"There's just one thing," said Piglet, fidgeting a bit. "I was talking
to Christopher Robin, and he said that a Kanga was Generally Regarded as
One of the Fiercer Animals. I am not frightened of Fierce Animals in the
ordinary way, but it is well known that, if One of the Fiercer Animals
is Deprived of Its Young, it becomes as fierce as Two of the Fiercer
Animals. In which case '_Aha!_' is perhaps a _foolish_ thing to say."
"Piglet," said Rabbit, taking out a pencil, and licking the end of it,
"you haven't any pluck."
"It is hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're
only a Very Small Animal."
Rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said:
"It is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in
the adventure before us."
Piglet was so excited at the idea of being Useful, that he forgot to be
frightened any more, and when Rabbit went on to say that Kangas were
only Fierce during the winter months, being at other times of an
Affectionate Disposition, he could hardly sit still, he was so eager to
begin being useful at once.
"What about me?" said Pooh sadly. "I suppose _I_ shan't be useful?"
"Never mind, Pooh," said Piglet comfortingly. "Another time perhaps."
"Without Pooh," said Rabbit solemnly as he sharpened his pencil, "the
adventure would be impossible."
"Oh!" said Piglet, and tried not to look disappointed. But Pooh went
into a corner of the room and said proudly to himself, "Impossible
without Me! _That_ sort of Bear."
"Now listen all of you," said Rabbit when he had finished writing, and
Pooh and Piglet sat listening very eagerly with their mouths open. This
was what Rabbit read out:
PLAN TO CAPTURE BABY ROO
1. _General Remarks._ Kanga runs faster than any of Us, even Me.
2. _More General Remarks._ Kanga never takes her eye off Baby Roo,
except when he's safely buttoned up in her pocket.
3. _Therefore._ If we are to capture Baby Roo, we must get a Long
Start, because Kanga runs faster than any of Us, even Me.
(_See_ 1.)
4. _A Thought._ If Roo had jumped out of Kanga's pocket and Piglet
had jumped in, Kanga wouldn't know the difference, because Piglet
is a Very Small Animal.
5. Like Roo.
6. But Kanga would have to be looking the other way first, so as not
to see Piglet jumping in.
7. See 2.
8. _Another Thought._ But if Pooh was talking to her very excitedly,
she _might_ look the other way for a moment.
9. And then I could run away with Roo.
10. Quickly.
11. _And Kanga wouldn't discover the difference until Afterwards._
Well, Rabbit read this out proudly, and for a little while after he had
read it nobody said anything. And then Piglet, who had been opening and
shutting his mouth without making any noise, managed to say very
huskily:
"And--Afterwards?"
"How do you mean?"
"When Kanga _does_ Discover the Difference?"
"Then we all say '_Aha!_'"
"All three of us?"
"Yes."
"Oh!"
"Why, what's the trouble, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, "as long as _we all three_ say it. As long as we
all three say it," said Piglet, "I don't mind," he said, "but I
shouldn't care to say '_Aha!_' by myself. It wouldn't sound _nearly_ so
well. By the way," he said, "you _are_ quite sure about what you said
about the winter months?"
"The winter months?"
"Yes, only being Fierce in the Winter Months."
"Oh, yes, yes, that's all right. Well, Pooh? You see what you have to
do?"
"No," said Pooh Bear. "Not yet," he said. "What _do_ I do?"
"Well, you just have to talk very hard to Kanga so as she doesn't notice
anything."
"Oh! What about?"
"Anything you like."
"You mean like telling her a little bit of poetry or something?"
"That's it," said Rabbit. "Splendid. Now come along."
So they all went out to look for Kanga.
Kanga and Roo were spending a quiet afternoon in a sandy part of the
Forest. Baby Roo was practising very small jumps in the sand, and
falling down mouse-holes and climbing out of them, and Kanga was
fidgeting about and saying "Just one more jump, dear, and then we must
go home." And at that moment who should come stumping up the hill but
Pooh.
"Good afternoon, Kanga."
"Good afternoon, Pooh."
"Look at me jumping," squeaked Roo, and fell into another mouse-hole.
"Hallo, Roo, my little fellow!"
"We were just going home," said Kanga. "Good afternoon, Rabbit. Good
afternoon, Piglet."
Rabbit and Piglet, who had now come up from the other side of the hill,
said "Good afternoon," and "Hallo, Roo," and Roo asked them to look at
him jumping, so they stayed and looked.
And Kanga looked too....
"Oh, Kanga," said Pooh, after Rabbit had winked at him twice, "I don't
know if you are interested in Poetry at all?"
"Hardly at all," said Kanga.
"Oh!" said Pooh.
"Roo, dear, just one more jump and then we must go home."
There was a short silence while Roo fell down another mouse-hole.
"Go on," said Rabbit in a loud whisper behind his paw.
"Talking of Poetry," said Pooh, "I made up a little piece as I was
coming along. It went like this. Er--now let me see----"
"Fancy!" said Kanga. "Now Roo, dear----"
"You'll like this piece of poetry," said Rabbit.
"You'll love it," said Piglet.
"You must listen very carefully," said Rabbit.
"So as not to miss any of it," said Piglet.
"Oh, yes," said Kanga, but she still looked at Baby Roo.
"_How_ did it go, Pooh?" said Rabbit.
Pooh gave a little cough and began.
LINES WRITTEN BY A BEAR OF VERY LITTLE BRAIN
On Monday, when the sun is hot
I wonder to myself a lot:
"Now is it true, or is it not,
"That what is which and which is what?"
On Tuesday, when it hails and snows,
The feeling on me grows and grows
That hardly anybody knows
If those are these or these are those.
On Wednesday, when the sky is blue,
And I have nothing else to do,
I sometimes wonder if it's true
That who is what and what is who.
On Thursday, when it starts to freeze
And hoar-frost twinkles on the trees,
How very readily one sees
That these are whose--but whose are these?
On Friday----
"Yes, it is, isn't it?" said Kanga, not waiting to hear what happened on
Friday. "Just one more jump, Roo, dear, and then we really _must_ be
going."
Rabbit gave Pooh a hurrying-up sort of nudge.
"Talking of Poetry," said Pooh quickly, "have you ever noticed that tree
right over there?"
"Where?" said Kanga. "Now, Roo----"
"Right over there," said Pooh, pointing behind Kanga's back.
"No," said Kanga. "Now jump in, Roo, dear, and we'll go home."
"You ought to look at that tree right over there," said Rabbit. "Shall I
lift you in, Roo?" And he picked up Roo in his paws.
"I can see a bird in it from here," said Pooh. "Or is it a fish?"
"You ought to see that bird from here," said Rabbit. "Unless it's a
fish."
"It isn't a fish, it's a bird," said Piglet.
"So it is," said Rabbit.
"Is it a starling or a blackbird?" said Pooh.
"That's the whole question," said Rabbit. "Is it a blackbird or a
starling?"
And then at last Kanga did turn her head to look. And the moment that
her head was turned, Rabbit said in a loud voice "In you go, Roo!" and
in jumped Piglet into Kanga's pocket, and off scampered Rabbit, with Roo
in his paws, as fast as he could.
"Why, where's Rabbit?" said Kanga, turning round again. "Are you all
right, Roo, dear?"
Piglet made a squeaky Roo-noise from the bottom of Kanga's pocket.
"Rabbit had to go away," said Pooh. "I think he thought of something he
had to go and see about suddenly."
"And Piglet?"
"I think Piglet thought of something at the same time. Suddenly."
"Well, we must be getting home," said Kanga. "Good-bye, Pooh." And in
three large jumps she was gone.
Pooh looked after her as she went.
"I wish I could jump like that," he thought. "Some can and some can't.
That's how it is."
But there were moments when Piglet wished that Kanga couldn't. Often,
when he had had a long walk home through the Forest, he had wished that
he were a bird; but now he thought jerkily to himself at the bottom of
Kanga's pocket,
this take
"If is shall really to
flying I never it."
And as he went up in the air he said, "_Ooooooo!_" and as he came down
he said, "_Ow!_" And he was saying, "_Ooooooo-ow, Ooooooo-ow,
Ooooooo-ow_" all the way to Kanga's house.
Of course as soon as Kanga unbuttoned her pocket, she saw what had
happened. Just for a moment, she thought she was frightened, and then
she knew she wasn't; for she felt quite sure that Christopher Robin
would never let any harm happen to Roo. So she said to herself, "If they
are having a joke with me, I will have a joke with them."
"Now then, Roo, dear," she said, as she took Piglet out of her pocket.
"Bed-time."
"_Aha!_" said Piglet, as well as he could after his Terrifying Journey.
But it wasn't a very good "_Aha!_" and Kanga didn't seem to understand
what it meant.
"Bath first," said Kanga in a cheerful voice.
"_Aha!_" said Piglet again, looking round anxiously for the others. But
the others weren't there. Rabbit was playing with Baby Roo in his own
house, and feeling more fond of him every minute, and Pooh, who had
decided to be a Kanga, was still at the sandy place on the top of the
Forest, practising jumps.
"I am not at all sure," said Kanga in a thoughtful voice, "that it
wouldn't be a good idea to have a _cold_ bath this evening. Would you
like that, Roo, dear?"
Piglet, who had never been really fond of baths, shuddered a long
indignant shudder, and said in as brave a voice as he could:
"Kanga, I see that the time has come to spleak painly."
"Funny little Roo," said Kanga, as she got the bath-water ready.
"I am _not_ Roo," said Piglet loudly. "I am Piglet!"
"Yes, dear, yes," said Kanga soothingly. "And imitating Piglet's voice
too! So clever of him," she went on, as she took a large bar of yellow
soap out of the cupboard. "What _will_ he be doing next?"
"Can't you _see_?" shouted Piglet. "Haven't you got _eyes_? _Look_ at
me!"
"I _am_ looking, Roo, dear," said Kanga rather severely. "And you know
what I told you yesterday about making faces. If you go on making faces
like Piglet's, you will grow up to _look_ like Piglet--and _then_ think
how sorry you will be. Now then, into the bath, and don't let me have to
speak to you about it again."
Before he knew where he was, Piglet was in the bath, and Kanga was
scrubbing him firmly with a large lathery flannel.
"Ow!" cried Piglet. "Let me out! I'm Piglet!"
"Don't open the mouth, dear, or the soap goes in," said Kanga. "There!
What did I tell you?"
"You--you--you did it on purpose," spluttered Piglet, as soon as he
could speak again ... and then accidentally had another mouthful of
lathery flannel.
"That's right, dear, don't say anything," said Kanga, and in another
minute Piglet was out of the bath, and being rubbed dry with a towel.
"Now," said Kanga, "there's your medicine, and then bed."
"W-w-what medicine?" said Piglet.
"To make you grow big and strong, dear. You don't want to grow up small
and weak like Piglet, do you? Well, then!"
At that moment there was a knock at the door.
"Come in," said Kanga, and in came Christopher Robin.
"Christopher Robin, Christopher Robin!" cried Piglet. "Tell Kanga who I
am! She keeps saying I'm Roo. I'm _not_ Roo, am I?"
Christopher Robin looked at him very carefully, and shook his head.
"You can't be Roo," he said, "because I've just seen Roo playing in
Rabbit's house."
"Well!" said Kanga. "Fancy that! Fancy my making a mistake like that."
"There you are!" said Piglet. "I told you so. I'm Piglet."
Christopher Robin shook his head again.
"Oh, you're not Piglet," he said. "I know Piglet well, and he's _quite_
a different colour."
Piglet began to say that this was because he had just had a bath, and
then he thought that perhaps he wouldn't say that, and as he opened his
mouth to say something else, Kanga slipped the medicine spoon in, and
then patted him on the back and told him that it was really quite a nice
taste when you got used to it.
"I knew it wasn't Piglet," said Kanga. "I wonder who it can be."
"Perhaps it's some relation of Pooh's," said Christopher Robin. "What
about a nephew or an uncle or something?"
Kanga agreed that this was probably what it was, and said that they
would have to call it by some name.
"I shall call it Pootel," said Christopher Robin. "Henry Pootel for
short."
And just when it was decided, Henry Pootel wriggled out of Kanga's arms
and jumped to the ground. To his great joy Christopher Robin had left
the door open. Never had Henry Pootel Piglet run so fast as he ran then,
and he didn't stop running until he had got quite close to his house.
But when he was a hundred yards away he stopped running, and rolled the
rest of the way home, so as to get his own nice comfortable colour
again....
So Kanga and Roo stayed in the Forest. And every Tuesday Roo spent the
day with his great friend Rabbit, and every Tuesday Kanga spent the day
with her great friend Pooh, teaching him to jump, and every Tuesday
Piglet spent the day with his great friend Christopher Robin. So they
were all happy again.
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN LEADS
AN EXPOTITION TO THE NORTH POLE
One fine day Pooh had stumped up to the top of the Forest to see if
his friend Christopher Robin was interested in Bears at all. At
breakfast that morning (a simple meal of marmalade spread lightly over a
honeycomb or two) he had suddenly thought of a new song. It began like
this:
"_Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear._"
When he had got as far as this, he scratched his head, and thought to
himself "That's a very good start for a song, but what about the second
line?" He tried singing "Ho," two or three times, but it didn't seem to
help. "Perhaps it would be better," he thought, "if I sang Hi for the
life of a Bear." So he sang it ... but it wasn't. "Very well, then,"
he said, "I shall sing that first line twice, and perhaps if I sing it
very quickly, I shall find myself singing the third and fourth lines
before I have time to think of them, and that will be a Good Song. Now
then:"
Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!
Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!
I don't much mind if it rains or snows,
'Cos I've got a lot of honey on my nice new nose,
I don't much care if it snows or thaws,
'Cos I've got a lot of honey on my nice clean paws!
Sing Ho! for a Bear!
Sing Ho! for a Pooh!
And I'll have a little something in an hour or two!
He was so pleased with this song that he sang it all the way to the top
of the Forest, "and if I go on singing it much longer," he thought, "it
will be time for the little something, and then the last line won't be
true." So he turned it into a hum instead.
Christopher Robin was sitting outside his door, putting on his Big
Boots. As soon as he saw the Big Boots, Pooh knew that an Adventure was
going to happen, and he brushed the honey off his nose with the back of
his paw, and spruced himself up as well as he could, so as to look Ready
for Anything.
"Good-morning, Christopher Robin," he called out.
"Hallo, Pooh Bear. I can't get this boot on."
"That's bad," said Pooh.
"Do you think you could very kindly lean against me, 'cos I keep pulling
so hard that I fall over backwards."
Pooh sat down, dug his feet into the ground, and pushed hard against
Christopher Robin's back, and Christopher Robin pushed hard against his,
and pulled and pulled at his boot until he had got it on.
"And that's that," said Pooh. "What do we do next?"
"We are all going on an Expedition," said Christopher Robin, as he got
up and brushed himself. "Thank you, Pooh."
"Going on an Expotition?" said Pooh eagerly. "I don't think I've ever
been on one of those. Where are we going to on this Expotition?"
"Expedition, silly old Bear. It's got an 'x' in it."
"Oh!" said Pooh. "I know." But he didn't really.
"We're going to discover the North Pole."
"Oh!" said Pooh again. "What _is_ the North Pole?" he asked.
"It's just a thing you discover," said Christopher Robin carelessly, not
being quite sure himself.
"Oh! I see," said Pooh. "Are bears any good at discovering it?"
"Of course they are. And Rabbit and Kanga and all of you. It's an
Expedition. That's what an Expedition means. A long line of everybody.
You'd better tell the others to get ready, while I see if my gun's all
right. And we must all bring Provisions."
"Bring what?"
"Things to eat."
"Oh!" said Pooh happily. "I thought you said Provisions. I'll go and
tell them." And he stumped off.
The first person he met was Rabbit.
"Hallo, Rabbit," he said, "is that you?"
"Let's pretend it isn't," said Rabbit, "and see what happens."
"I've got a message for you."
"I'll give it to him."
"We're all going on an Expotition with Christopher Robin!"
"What is it when we're on it?"
"A sort of boat, I think," said Pooh.
"Oh! that sort."
"Yes. And we're going to discover a Pole or something. Or was it a Mole?
Anyhow we're going to discover it."
"We are, are we?" said Rabbit.
"Yes. And we've got to bring Pro--things to eat with us. In case we want
to eat them. Now I'm going down to Piglet's. Tell Kanga, will you?"
He left Rabbit and hurried down to Piglet's house. The Piglet was
sitting on the ground at the door of his house blowing happily at a
dandelion, and wondering whether it would be this year, next year,
sometime or never. He had just discovered that it would be never, and
was trying to remember what "_it_" was, and hoping it wasn't anything
nice, when Pooh came up.
"Oh! Piglet," said Pooh excitedly, "we're going on an Expotition, all of
us, with things to eat. To discover something."
"To discover what?" said Piglet anxiously.
"Oh! just something."
"Nothing fierce?"
"Christopher Robin didn't say anything about fierce. He just said it had
an 'x'."
"It isn't their necks I mind," said Piglet earnestly. "It's their teeth.
But if Christopher Robin is coming I don't mind anything."
In a little while they were all ready at the top of the Forest, and the
Expotition started. First came Christopher Robin and Rabbit, then Piglet
and Pooh; then Kanga, with Roo in her pocket, and Owl; then Eeyore; and,
at the end, in a long line, all Rabbit's friends-and-relations.
"I didn't ask them," explained Rabbit carelessly. "They just came. They
always do. They can march at the end, after Eeyore."
"What I say," said Eeyore, "is that it's unsettling. I didn't want to
come on this Expo--what Pooh said. I only came to oblige. But here I
am; and if I am the end of the Expo--what we're talking about--then
let me _be_ the end. But if, every time I want to sit down for a
little rest, I have to brush away half a dozen of Rabbit's smaller
friends-and-relations first, then this isn't an Expo--whatever it
is--at all, it's simply a Confused Noise. That's what _I_ say."
"I see what Eeyore means," said Owl. "If you ask me----"
"I'm not asking anybody," said Eeyore. "I'm just telling everybody. We
can look for the North Pole, or we can play 'Here we go gathering Nuts
and May' with the end part of an ant's nest. It's all the same to me."
There was a shout from the top of the line.
"Come on!" called Christopher Robin.
"Come on!" called Pooh and Piglet.
"Come on!" called Owl.
"We're starting," said Rabbit. "I must go." And he hurried off to the
front of the Expotition with Christopher Robin.
"All right," said Eeyore. "We're going. Only Don't Blame Me."
So off they all went to discover the Pole. And as they walked, they
chattered to each other of this and that, all except Pooh, who was
making up a song.
"This is the first verse," he said to Piglet, when he was ready with it.
"First verse of what?"
"My song."
"What song?"
"This one."
"Which one?"
"Well, if you listen, Piglet, you'll hear it."
"How do you know I'm not listening?"
Pooh couldn't answer that one, so he began to sing.
They all went off to discover the Pole,
Owl and Piglet and Rabbit and all;
It's a Thing you Discover, as I've been tole
By Owl and Piglet and Rabbit and all.
Eeyore, Christopher Robin and Pooh
And Rabbit's relations all went too--
And where the Pole was none of them knew....
Sing Hey! for Owl and Rabbit and all!
"Hush!" said Christopher Robin turning round to Pooh, "we're just coming
to a Dangerous Place."
"Hush!" said Pooh turning round quickly to Piglet.
"Hush!" said Piglet to Kanga.
"Hush!" said Kanga to Owl, while Roo said "Hush!" several times to
himself very quietly.
"Hush!" said Owl to Eeyore.
"_Hush!_" said Eeyore in a terrible voice to all Rabbit's
friends-and-relations, and "Hush!" they said hastily to each other all
down the line, until it got to the last one of all. And the last and
smallest friend-and-relation was so upset to find that the whole
Expotition was saying "Hush!" to _him_, that he buried himself head
downwards in a crack in the ground, and stayed there for two days until
the danger was over, and then went home in a great hurry, and lived
quietly with his Aunt ever-afterwards. His name was Alexander Beetle.
They had come to a stream which twisted and tumbled between high rocky
banks, and Christopher Robin saw at once how dangerous it was.
"It's just the place," he explained, "for an Ambush."
"What sort of bush?" whispered Pooh to Piglet. "A gorse-bush?"
"My dear Pooh," said Owl in his superior way, "don't you know what an
Ambush is?"
"Owl," said Piglet, looking round at him severely, "Pooh's whisper was a
perfectly private whisper, and there was no need----"
"An Ambush," said Owl, "is a sort of Surprise."
"So is a gorse-bush sometimes," said Pooh.
"An Ambush, as I was about to explain to Pooh," said Piglet, "is a sort
of Surprise."
"If people jump out at you suddenly, that's an Ambush," said Owl.
"It's an Ambush, Pooh, when people jump at you suddenly," explained
Piglet.
Pooh, who now knew what an Ambush was, said that a gorse-bush had sprung
at him suddenly one day when he fell off a tree, and he had taken six
days to get all the prickles out of himself.
"We are not _talking_ about gorse-bushes," said Owl a little crossly.
"I am," said Pooh.
They were climbing very cautiously up the stream now, going from rock to
rock, and after they had gone a little way they came to a place where
the banks widened out at each side, so that on each side of the water
there was a level strip of grass on which they could sit down and rest.
As soon as he saw this, Christopher Robin called "Halt!" and they all
sat down and rested.
"I think," said Christopher Robin, "that we ought to eat all our
Provisions now, so that we shan't have so much to carry."
"Eat all our what?" said Pooh.
"All that we've brought," said Piglet, getting to work.
"That's a good idea," said Pooh, and he got to work too.
"Have you all got something?" asked Christopher Robin with his mouth
full.
"All except me," said Eeyore. "As Usual." He looked round at them in his
melancholy way. "I suppose none of you are sitting on a thistle by any
chance?"
"I believe I am," said Pooh. "Ow!" He got up, and looked behind him.
"Yes, I was. I thought so."
"Thank you, Pooh. If you've quite finished with it." He moved across to
Pooh's place, and began to eat.
"It don't do them any Good, you know, sitting on them," he went on, as
he looked up munching. "Takes all the Life out of them. Remember that
another time, all of you. A little Consideration, a little Thought for
Others, makes all the difference."
As soon as he had finished his lunch Christopher Robin whispered to
Rabbit, and Rabbit said "Yes, yes, of course," and they walked a little
way up the stream together.
"I didn't want the others to hear," said Christopher Robin.
"Quite so," said Rabbit, looking important.
"It's--I wondered--It's only--Rabbit, I suppose _you_ don't know, What
does the North Pole _look_ like?"
"Well," said Rabbit, stroking his whiskers. "Now you're asking me."
"I did know once, only I've sort of forgotten," said Christopher Robin
carelessly.
"It's a funny thing," said Rabbit, "but I've sort of forgotten too,
although I did know _once_."
"I suppose it's just a pole stuck in the ground?"
"Sure to be a pole," said Rabbit, "because of calling it a pole, and if
it's a pole, well, I should think it would be sticking in the ground,
shouldn't you, because there'd be nowhere else to stick it."
"Yes, that's what I thought."
"The only thing," said Rabbit, "is, _where is it sticking_?"
"That's what we're looking for," said Christopher Robin.
They went back to the others. Piglet was lying on his back, sleeping
peacefully. Roo was washing his face and paws in the stream, while Kanga
explained to everybody proudly that this was the first time he had ever
washed his face himself, and Owl was telling Kanga an Interesting
Anecdote full of long words like Encyclopædia and Rhododendron to which
Kanga wasn't listening.
"I don't hold with all this washing," grumbled Eeyore. "This modern
Behind-the-ears nonsense. What do _you_ think, Pooh?"
"Well," said Pooh, "_I_ think----"
But we shall never know what Pooh thought, for there came a sudden
squeak from Roo, a splash, and a loud cry of alarm from Kanga.
"So much for _washing_," said Eeyore.
"Roo's fallen in!" cried Rabbit, and he and Christopher Robin came
rushing down to the rescue.
"Look at me swimming!" squeaked Roo from the middle of his pool, and was
hurried down a waterfall into the next pool.
"Are you all right, Roo dear?" called Kanga anxiously.
"Yes!" said Roo. "Look at me sw----" and down he went over the next
waterfall into another pool.
Everybody was doing something to help. Piglet, wide awake suddenly, was
jumping up and down and making "Oo, I say" noises; Owl was explaining
that in a case of Sudden and Temporary Immersion the Important Thing was
to keep the Head Above Water; Kanga was jumping along the bank, saying
"Are you _sure_ you're all right, Roo dear?" to which Roo, from whatever
pool he was in at the moment, was answering "Look at me swimming!"
Eeyore had turned round and hung his tail over the first pool into which
Roo fell, and with his back to the accident was grumbling quietly to
himself, and saying, "All this washing; but catch on to my tail, little
Roo, and you'll be all right"; and, Christopher Robin and Rabbit came
hurrying past Eeyore, and were calling out to the others in front of
them.
"All right, Roo, I'm coming," called Christopher Robin.
"Get something across the stream lower down, some of you fellows,"
called Rabbit.
But Pooh was getting something. Two pools below Roo he was standing with
a long pole in his paws, and Kanga came up and took one end of it, and
between them they held it across the lower part of the pool; and Roo,
still bubbling proudly, "Look at me swimming," drifted up against it,
and climbed out.
"Did you see me swimming?" squeaked Roo excitedly, while Kanga scolded
him and rubbed him down. "Pooh, did you see me swimming? That's called
swimming, what I was doing. Rabbit, did you see what I was doing?
Swimming. Hallo, Piglet! I say, Piglet! What do you think I was doing!
Swimming! Christopher Robin, did you see me----"
But Christopher Robin wasn't listening. He was looking at Pooh.
"Pooh," he said, "where did you find that pole?"
Pooh looked at the pole in his hands.
"I just found it," he said. "I thought it ought to be useful. I just
picked it up."
"Pooh," said Christopher Robin solemnly, "the Expedition is over. You
have found the North Pole!"
"Oh!" said Pooh.
Eeyore was sitting with his tail in the water when they all got back to
him.
"Tell Roo to be quick, somebody," he said. "My tail's getting cold. I
don't want to mention it, but I just mention it. I don't want to
complain but there it is. My tail's cold."
"Here I am!" squeaked Roo.
"Oh, there you are."
"Did you see me swimming?"
Eeyore took his tail out of the water, and swished it from side to side.
"As I expected," he said. "Lost all feeling. Numbed it. That's what it's
done. Numbed it. Well, as long as nobody minds, I suppose it's all
right."
"Poor old Eeyore. I'll dry it for you," said Christopher Robin, and he
took out his handkerchief and rubbed it up.
"Thank you, Christopher Robin. You're the only one who seems to
understand about tails. They don't think--that's what the matter with
some of these others. They've no imagination. A tail isn't a tail to
_them_, it's just a Little Bit Extra at the back."
"Never mind, Eeyore," said Christopher Robin, rubbing his hardest. "Is
_that_ better?"
"It's feeling more like a tail perhaps. It Belongs again, if you know
what I mean."
"Hullo, Eeyore," said Pooh, coming up to them with his pole.
"Hullo, Pooh. Thank you for asking, but I shall be able to use it again
in a day or two."
"Use what?" said Pooh.
"What we are talking about."
"I wasn't talking about anything," said Pooh, looking puzzled.
"My mistake again. I thought you were saying how sorry you were about my
tail, being all numb, and could you do anything to help?"
"No," said Pooh. "That wasn't me," he said. He thought for a little and
then suggested helpfully, "Perhaps it was somebody else."
"Well, thank him for me when you see him."
Pooh looked anxiously at Christopher Robin.
"Pooh's found the North Pole," said Christopher Robin. "Isn't that
lovely?"
Pooh looked modestly down.
"Is that it?" said Eeyore.
"Yes," said Christopher Robin.
"Is that what we were looking for?"
"Yes," said Pooh.
"Oh!" said Eeyore. "Well, anyhow--it didn't rain," he said.
They stuck the pole in the ground, and Christopher Robin tied a message
on to it.
NORTH POLE
DISCOVERED BY POOH
POOH FOUND IT.
Then they all went home again. And I think, but I am not quite sure,
that Roo had a hot bath and went straight to bed. But Pooh went back to
his own house, and feeling very proud of what he had done, had a little
something to revive himself.
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH PIGLET IS ENTIRELY
SURROUNDED BY WATER
It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never
in all his life, and _he_ was goodness knows _how_ old--three, was it,
or four?--never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days.
"If only," he thought, as he looked out of the window, "I had been in
Pooh's house, or Christopher Robin's house, or Rabbit's house when it
began to rain, then I should have had Company all this time, instead of
being here all alone, with nothing to do except wonder when it will
stop." And he imagined himself with Pooh, saying, "Did you ever see such
rain, Pooh?" and Pooh saying, "Isn't it _awful_, Piglet?" and Piglet
saying, "I wonder how it is over Christopher Robin's way" and Pooh
saying, "I should think poor old Rabbit is about flooded out by this
time." It would have been jolly to talk like this, and really, it wasn't
much good having anything exciting like floods, if you couldn't share
them with somebody.
For it was rather exciting. The little dry ditches in which Piglet had
nosed about so often had become streams, the little streams across which
he had splashed were rivers, and the river, between whose steep banks
they had played so happily, had sprawled out of its own bed and was
taking up so much room everywhere, that Piglet was beginning to wonder
whether it would be coming into _his_ bed soon.
"It's a little Anxious," he said to himself, "to be a Very Small Animal
Entirely Surrounded by Water. Christopher Robin and Pooh could escape by
Climbing Trees, and Kanga could escape by Jumping, and Rabbit could
escape by Burrowing, and Owl could escape by Flying, and Eeyore could
escape by--by Making a Loud Noise Until Rescued, and here am I,
surrounded by water and I can't do _anything_."
It went on raining, and every day the water got a little higher, until
now it was nearly up to Piglet's window ... and still he hadn't done
anything.
"There's Pooh," he thought to himself. "Pooh hasn't much Brain, but he
never comes to any harm. He does silly things and they turn out right.
There's Owl. Owl hasn't exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things. He would
know the Right Thing to Do when Surrounded by Water. There's Rabbit. He
hasn't Learnt in Books, but he can always Think of a Clever Plan.
There's Kanga. She isn't Clever, Kanga isn't, but she would be so
anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking
about It. And then there's Eeyore. And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow
that he wouldn't mind about this. But I wonder what Christopher Robin
would do?"
Then suddenly he remembered a story which Christopher Robin had told him
about a man on a desert island who had written something in a bottle and
thrown it in the sea; and Piglet thought that if he wrote something in a
bottle and threw it in the water, perhaps somebody would come and rescue
_him_!
He left the window and began to search his house, all of it that wasn't
under water, and at last he found a pencil and a small piece of dry
paper, and a bottle with a cork to it. And he wrote on one side of the
paper:
HELP!
PIGLET (ME)
and on the other side:
IT'S ME PIGLET, HELP HELP.
Then he put the paper in the bottle, and he corked the bottle up as
tightly as he could, and he leant out of his window as far as he could
lean without falling in, and he threw the bottle as far as he could
throw--_splash!_--and in a little while it bobbed up again on the water;
and he watched it floating slowly away in the distance, until his eyes
ached with looking, and sometimes he thought it was the bottle, and
sometimes he thought it was just a ripple on the water which he was
following, and then suddenly he knew that he would never see it again
and that he had done all that he could do to save himself.
"So now," he thought, "somebody else will have to do something, and I
hope they will do it soon, because if they don't I shall have to swim,
which I can't, so I hope they do it soon." And then he gave a very long
sigh and said, "I wish Pooh were here. It's so much more friendly with
two."
* * * * *
When the rain began Pooh was asleep. It rained, and it rained, and it
rained, and he slept and he slept and he slept. He had had a tiring day.
You remember how he discovered the North Pole; well, he was so proud of
this that he asked Christopher Robin if there were any other Poles such
as a Bear of Little Brain might discover.
"There's a South Pole," said Christopher Robin, "and I expect there's an
East Pole and a West Pole, though people don't like talking about them."
Pooh was very excited when he heard this, and suggested that they should
have an Expotition to discover the East Pole, but Christopher Robin had
thought of something else to do with Kanga; so Pooh went out to discover
the East Pole by himself. Whether he discovered it or not, I forget; but
he was so tired when he got home that, in the very middle of his supper,
after he had been eating for little more than half-an-hour, he fell fast
asleep in his chair, and slept and slept and slept.
Then suddenly he was dreaming. He was at the East Pole, and it was a
very cold pole with the coldest sort of snow and ice all over it. He had
found a bee-hive to sleep in, but there wasn't room for his legs, so he
had left them outside. And Wild Woozles, such as inhabit the East Pole,
came and nibbled all the fur off his legs to make nests for their Young.
And the more they nibbled, the colder his legs got, until suddenly he
woke up with an _Ow!_--and there he was, sitting in his chair with his
feet in the water, and water all round him!
He splashed to his door and looked out....
"This is Serious," said Pooh. "I must have an Escape."
So he took his largest pot of honey and escaped with it to a broad
branch of his tree, well above the water, and then he climbed down again
and escaped with another pot ... and when the whole Escape was
finished, there was Pooh sitting on his branch, dangling his legs, and
there, beside him, were ten pots of honey....
Two days later, there was Pooh, sitting on his branch, dangling his
legs, and there, beside him, were four pots of honey....
Three days later, there was Pooh, sitting on his branch, dangling his
legs, and there beside him, was one pot of honey.
Four days later, there was Pooh ...
And it was on the morning of the fourth day that Piglet's bottle came
floating past him, and with one loud cry of "Honey!" Pooh plunged into
the water, seized the bottle, and struggled back to his tree again.
"Bother!" said Pooh, as he opened it. "All that wet for nothing. What's
that bit of paper doing?"
He took it out and looked at it.
"It's a Missage," he said to himself, "that's what it is. And that
letter is a 'P,' and so is that, and so is that, and 'P' means 'Pooh,'
so it's a very important Missage to me, and I can't read it. I must find
Christopher Robin or Owl or Piglet, one of those Clever Readers who can
read things, and they will tell me what this missage means. Only I can't
swim. Bother!"
Then he had an idea, and I think that for a Bear of Very Little Brain,
it was a good idea. He said to himself:
"If a bottle can float, then a jar can float, and if a jar floats, I can
sit on the top of it, if it's a very big jar."
So he took his biggest jar, and corked it up. "All boats have to have a
name," he said, "so I shall call mine _The Floating Bear_." And with
these words he dropped his boat into the water and jumped in after it.
For a little while Pooh and _The Floating Bear_ were uncertain as to
which of them was meant to be on the top, but after trying one or two
different positions, they settled down with _The Floating Bear_
underneath and Pooh triumphantly astride it, paddling vigorously with
his feet.
* * * * *
Christopher Robin lived at the very top of the Forest. It rained, and it
rained, and it rained, but the water couldn't come up to _his_ house. It
was rather jolly to look down into the valleys and see the water all
round him, but it rained so hard that he stayed indoors most of the
time, and thought about things. Every morning he went out with his
umbrella and put a stick in the place where the water came up to, and
every next morning he went out and couldn't see his stick any more, so
he put another stick in the place where the water came up to, and then
he walked home again, and each morning he had a shorter way to walk than
he had had the morning before. On the morning of the fifth day he saw
the water all round him, and knew that for the first time in his life he
was on a real island. Which was very exciting.
It was on this morning that Owl came flying over the water to say "How
do you do," to his friend Christopher Robin.
"I say, Owl," said Christopher Robin, "isn't this fun? I'm on an
island!"
"The atmospheric conditions have been very unfavourable lately," said
Owl.
"The what?"
"It has been raining," explained Owl.
"Yes," said Christopher Robin. "It has."
"The flood-level has reached an unprecedented height."
"The who?"
"There's a lot of water about," explained Owl.
"Yes," said Christopher Robin, "there is."
"However, the prospects are rapidly becoming more favourable. At any
moment----"
"Have you seen Pooh?"
"No. At any moment----"
"I hope he's all right," said Christopher Robin. "I've been wondering
about him. I expect Piglet's with him. Do you think they're all right,
Owl?"
"I expect so. You see, at any moment----"
"Do go and see, Owl. Because Pooh hasn't got very much brain, and he
might do something silly, and I do love him so, Owl. Do you see, Owl?"
"That's all right," said Owl. "I'll go. Back directly." And he flew off.
In a little while he was back again.
"Pooh isn't there," he said.
"Not there?"
"Has _been_ there. He's been sitting on a branch of his tree outside his
house with nine pots of honey. But he isn't there now."
"Oh, Pooh!" cried Christopher Robin. "Where _are_ you?"
"Here I am," said a growly voice behind him.
"Pooh!"
They rushed into each other's arms.
"How did you get here, Pooh?" asked Christopher Robin, when he was ready
to talk again.
"On my boat," said Pooh proudly. "I had a Very Important Missage sent me
in a bottle, and owing to having got some water in my eyes, I couldn't
read it, so I brought it to you. On my boat."
With these proud words he gave Christopher Robin the missage.
"But it's from Piglet!" cried Christopher Robin when he had read it.
"Isn't there anything about Pooh in it?" asked Bear, looking over his
shoulder.
Christopher Robin read the message aloud.
"Oh, are those 'P's' piglets? I thought they were poohs."
"We must rescue him at once! I thought he was with _you_, Pooh. Owl,
could you rescue him on your back?"
"I don't think so," said Owl, after grave thought. "It is doubtful if
the necessary dorsal muscles----"
"Then would you fly to him at _once_ and say that Rescue is Coming? And
Pooh and I will think of a Rescue and come as quick as ever we can. Oh,
don't _talk_, Owl, go on quick!" And, still thinking of something to
say, Owl flew off.
"Now then, Pooh," said Christopher Robin, "where's your boat?"
"I ought to say," explained Pooh as they walked down to the shore of the
island, "that it isn't just an ordinary sort of boat. Sometimes it's a
Boat, and sometimes it's more of an Accident. It all depends."
"Depends on what?"
"On whether I'm on the top of it or underneath it."
"Oh! Well, where is it?"
"There!" said Pooh, pointing proudly to _The Floating Bear_.
It wasn't what Christopher Robin expected, and the more he looked at it,
the more he thought what a Brave and Clever Bear Pooh was, and the more
Christopher Robin thought this, the more Pooh looked modestly down his
nose and tried to pretend he wasn't.
"But it's too small for two of us," said Christopher Robin sadly.
"Three of us with Piglet."
"That makes it smaller still. Oh, Pooh Bear, what shall we do?"
And then this Bear, Pooh Bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, F.O.P. (Friend of
Piglet's), R.C. (Rabbit's Companion), P.D. (Pole Discoverer), E.C. and
T.F. (Eeyore's Comforter and Tail-finder)--in fact, Pooh himself--said
something so clever that Christopher Robin could only look at him with
mouth open and eyes staring, wondering if this was really the Bear of
Very Little Brain whom he had known and loved so long.
"We might go in your umbrella," said Pooh.
"?"
"We might go in your umbrella," said Pooh.
"? ?"
"We might go in your umbrella," said Pooh.
"!!!!!!"
For suddenly Christopher Robin saw that they might. He opened his
umbrella and put it point downwards in the water. It floated but
wobbled. Pooh got in. He was just beginning to say that it was all right
now, when he found that it wasn't, so after a short drink which he
didn't really want he waded back to Christopher Robin. Then they both
got in together, and it wobbled no longer.
"I shall call this boat _The Brain of Pooh_," said Christopher Robin,
and _The Brain of Pooh_ set sail forthwith in a south-westerly
direction, revolving gracefully.
You can imagine Piglet's joy when at last the ship came in sight of him.
In after-years he liked to think that he had been in Very Great Danger
during the Terrible Flood, but the only danger he had really been in was
in the last half-hour of his imprisonment, when Owl, who had just flown
up, sat on a branch of his tree to comfort him, and told him a very long
story about an aunt who had once laid a seagull's egg by mistake, and
the story went on and on, rather like this sentence, until Piglet who
was listening out of his window without much hope, went to sleep quietly
and naturally, slipping slowly out of the window towards the water until
he was only hanging on by his toes, at which moment luckily, a sudden
loud squawk from Owl, which was really part of the story, being what his
aunt said, woke the Piglet up and just gave him time to jerk himself
back into safety and say, "How interesting, and did she?" when--well,
you can imagine his joy when at last he saw the good ship, _Brain of
Pooh_ (_Captain_, C. Robin; _1st Mate_, P. Bear) coming over the sea to
rescue him. Christopher Robin and Pooh again....
And that is really the end of the story, and I am very tired after that
last sentence, I think I shall stop there.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN GIVES
POOH A PARTY, AND WE SAY GOOD-BYE
One day when the sun had come back over the Forest, bringing with it
the scent of may, and all the streams of the Forest were tinkling
happily to find themselves their own pretty shape again, and the little
pools lay dreaming of the life they had seen and the big things they had
done, and in the warmth and quiet of the Forest the cuckoo was trying
over his voice carefully and listening to see if he liked it, and
wood-pigeons were complaining gently to themselves in their lazy
comfortable way that it was the other fellow's fault, but it didn't
matter very much; on such a day as this Christopher Robin whistled in a
special way he had, and Owl came flying out of the Hundred Acre Wood to
see what was wanted.
"Owl," said Christopher Robin, "I am going to give a party."
"You are, are you?" said Owl.
"And it's to be a special sort of party, because it's because of what
Pooh did when he did what he did to save Piglet from the flood."
"Oh, that's what it's for, is it?" said Owl.
"Yes, so will you tell Pooh as quickly as you can, and all the others,
because it will be to-morrow."
"Oh, it will, will it?" said Owl, still being as helpful as possible.
"So will you go and tell them, Owl?"
Owl tried to think of something very wise to say, but couldn't, so he
flew off to tell the others. And the first person he told was Pooh.
"Pooh," he said, "Christopher Robin is giving a party."
"Oh!" said Pooh. And then seeing that Owl expected him to say something
else, he said "Will there be those little cake things with pink sugar
icing?"
Owl felt that it was rather beneath him to talk about little cake things
with pink sugar icing, so he told Pooh exactly what Christopher Robin
had said, and flew off to Eeyore.
"A party for Me?" thought Pooh to himself. "How grand!" And he began to
wonder if all the other animals would know that it was a special Pooh
Party, and if Christopher Robin had told them about _The Floating Bear_
and the _Brain of Pooh_ and all the wonderful ships he had invented and
sailed on, and he began to think how awful it would be if everybody had
forgotten about it, and nobody quite knew what the party was for; and
the more he thought like this, the more the party got muddled in his
mind, like a dream when nothing goes right. And the dream began to sing
itself over in his head until it became a sort of song. It was an
ANXIOUS POOH SONG.
3 Cheers for Pooh!
(_For Who?_)
For Pooh--
(_Why what did he do?_)
I thought you knew;
He saved his friend from a wetting!
3 Cheers for Bear!
(_For where?_)
For Bear--
He couldn't swim,
But he rescued him!
(_He rescued who?_)
Oh, listen, do!
I am talking of Pooh--
(_Of who?_)
Of Pooh!
(_I'm sorry I keep forgetting_).
Well, Pooh was a Bear of Enormous Brain
(_Just say it again!_)
Of enormous brain--
(_Of enormous what?_)
Well, he ate a lot,
And I don't know if he could swim or not,
But he managed to float
On a sort of boat
(_On a sort of what?_)
Well, a sort of pot--
So now let's give him three hearty cheers
(_So now let's give him three hearty whiches?_)
And hope he'll be with us for years and years,
And grow in health and wisdom and riches!
3 Cheers for Pooh!
(_For who?_)
For Pooh--
3 Cheers for Bear!
(_For where?_)
For Bear--
3 Cheers for the wonderful Winnie-the-Pooh!
(_Just tell me, somebody_--WHAT DID HE DO?)
While this was going on inside him, Owl was talking to Eeyore.
"Eeyore," said Owl, "Christopher Robin is giving a party."
"Very interesting," said Eeyore. "I suppose they will be sending me down
the odd bits which got trodden on. Kind and Thoughtful. Not at all,
don't mention it."
"There is an Invitation for you."
"What's that like?"
"An Invitation!"
"Yes, I heard you. Who dropped it?"
"This isn't anything to eat, it's asking you to the party. To-morrow."
Eeyore shook his head slowly.
"You mean Piglet. The little fellow with the excited ears. That's
Piglet. I'll tell him."
"No, no!" said Owl, getting quite fussy. "It's you!"
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. Christopher Robin said 'All of them! Tell all of
them.'"
"All of them, except Eeyore?"
"All of them," said Owl sulkily.
"Ah!" said Eeyore. "A mistake, no doubt, but still, I shall come. Only
don't blame _me_ if it rains."
But it didn't rain. Christopher Robin had made a long table out of some
long pieces of wood, and they all sat round it. Christopher Robin sat at
one end, and Pooh sat at the other, and between them on one side were
Owl and Eeyore and Piglet, and between them on the other side were
Rabbit, and Roo and Kanga. And all Rabbit's friends and relations spread
themselves about on the grass, and waited hopefully in case anybody
spoke to them, or dropped anything, or asked them the time.
It was the first party to which Roo had ever been, and he was very
excited. As soon as ever they had sat down he began to talk.
"Hallo, Pooh!" he squeaked.
"Hallo, Roo!" said Pooh.
Roo jumped up and down in his seat for a little while and then began
again.
"Hallo, Piglet!" he squeaked.
Piglet waved a paw at him, being too busy to say anything.
"Hallo, Eeyore!" said Roo.
Eeyore nodded gloomily at him. "It will rain soon, you see if it
doesn't," he said.
Roo looked to see if it didn't, and it didn't, so he said "Hallo,
Owl!"--and Owl said "Hallo, my little fellow," in a kindly way, and went
on telling Christopher Robin about an accident which had nearly happened
to a friend of his whom Christopher Robin didn't know, and Kanga said to
Roo, "Drink up your milk first, dear, and talk afterwards." So Roo, who
was drinking his milk, tried to say that he could do both at once ...
and had to be patted on the back and dried for quite a long time
afterwards.
When they had all nearly eaten enough, Christopher Robin banged on the
table with his spoon, and everybody stopped talking and was very silent,
except Roo who was just finishing a loud attack of hiccups and trying to
look as if it was one of Rabbit's relations.
"This party," said Christopher Robin, "is a party because of what
someone did, and we all know who it was, and it's his party, because of
what he did, and I've got a present for him and here it is." Then he
felt about a little and whispered, "Where is it?"
While he was looking, Eeyore coughed in an impressive way and began to
speak.
"Friends," he said, "including oddments, it is a great pleasure, or
perhaps I had better say it has been a pleasure so far, to see you at my
party. What I did was nothing. Any of you--except Rabbit and Owl and
Kanga--would have done the same. Oh, and Pooh. My remarks do not, of
course, apply to Piglet and Roo, because they are too small. Any of you
would have done the same. But it just happened to be Me. It was not, I
need hardly say, with an idea of getting what Christopher Robin is
looking for now"--and he put his front leg to his mouth and said in a
loud whisper, "Try under the table"--"that I did what I did--but because
I feel that we should all do what we can to help. I feel that we should
all----"
"H--hup!" said Roo accidentally.
"Roo, dear!" said Kanga reproachfully.
"Was it me?" asked Roo, a little surprised.
"What's Eeyore talking about?" Piglet whispered to Pooh.
"I don't know," said Pooh rather dolefully.
"I thought this was _your_ party."
"I thought it was _once_. But I suppose it isn't."
"I'd sooner it was yours than Eeyore's," said Piglet.
"So would I," said Pooh.
"H--hup!" said Roo again.
"AS--I--WAS--SAYING," said Eeyore loudly and sternly, "as I was saying
when I was interrupted by various Loud Sounds, I feel that----"
"Here it is!" cried Christopher Robin excitedly. "Pass it down to silly
old Pooh. It's for Pooh."
"For Pooh?" said Eeyore.
"Of course it is. The best bear in all the world."
"I might have known," said Eeyore. "After all, one can't complain. I
have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last
week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said 'Bother!'
The Social Round. Always something going on."
Nobody was listening, for they were all saying "Open it, Pooh," "What is
it, Pooh?" "I know what it is," "No, you don't" and other helpful
remarks of this sort. And of course Pooh was opening it as quickly as
ever he could, but without cutting the string, because you never know
when a bit of string might be Useful. At last it was undone.
When Pooh saw what it was, he nearly fell down, he was so pleased. It
was a Special Pencil Case. There were pencils in it marked "B" for Bear,
and pencils marked "HB" for Helping Bear, and pencils marked "BB" for
Brave Bear. There was a knife for sharpening the pencils, and
india-rubber for rubbing out anything which you had spelt wrong, and a
ruler for ruling lines for the words to walk on, and inches marked on
the ruler in case you wanted to know how many inches anything was, and
Blue Pencils and Red Pencils and Green Pencils for saying special things
in blue and red and green. And all these lovely things were in little
pockets of their own in a Special Case which shut with a click when you
clicked it. And they were all for Pooh.
"Oh!" said Pooh.
"Oh, Pooh!" said everybody else except Eeyore.
"Thank-you," growled Pooh.
But Eeyore was saying to himself, "This writing business. Pencils and
what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it."
Later on, when they had all said "Good-bye" and "Thank-you" to
Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in
the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent.
"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's
the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do _you_ say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting _to-day_?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
"It's the same thing," he said.
* * * * *
"And what did happen?" asked Christopher Robin.
"When?"
"Next morning."
"I don't know."
"Could you think and tell me and Pooh some time?"
"If you wanted it very much."
"Pooh does," said Christopher Robin.
He gave a deep sigh, picked his bear up by the leg and walked off to the
door, trailing Winnie-the-Pooh behind him. At the door he turned and
said "Coming to see me have my bath?"
"I might," I said.
"Was Pooh's pencil case any better than mine?"
"It was just the same," I said.
He nodded and went out ... and in a moment I heard
Winnie-the-Pooh--_bump, bump, bump_--going up the stairs behind him.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THERE IS NO ONE LEFT 1
II MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY 10
III ACROSS THE MOOR 23
IV MARTHA 30
V THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR 55
VI "THERE WAS SOME ONE CRYING--THERE WAS!" 65
VII THE KEY OF THE GARDEN 75
VIII THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY 85
IX THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN 97
X DICKON 111
XI THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH 128
XII "MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?" 140
XIII "I AM COLIN" 153
XIV A YOUNG RAJAH 172
XV NEST BUILDING 189
XVI "I WON'T!" SAID MARY 207
XVII A TANTRUM 218
XVIII "THA' MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME" 229
XIX "IT HAS COME!" 239
XX "I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!" 255
XXI BEN WEATHERSTAFF 268
XXII WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN 284
XXIII MAGIC 292
XXIV "LET THEM LAUGH" 310
XXV THE CURTAIN 328
XXVI "IT'S MOTHER!" 339
XXVII IN THE GARDEN 353
THE SECRET GARDEN
CHAPTER I
THERE IS NO ONE LEFT
When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle
everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It
was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin
light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was
yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one
way or another. Her father had held a position under the English
Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had
been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself
with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary
was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who was made to
understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the
child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly,
fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she
became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way
also. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces
of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her
and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be
angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years
old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. The
young English governess who came to teach her to read and write disliked
her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when other
governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a shorter
time than the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to
know how to read books she would never have learned her letters at all.
One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she
awakened feeling very cross, and she became crosser still when she saw
that the servant who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah.
"Why did you come?" she said to the strange woman. "I will not let you
stay. Send my Ayah to me."
The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah could
not come and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat and kicked
her, she looked only more frightened and repeated that it was not
possible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.
There was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing was done
in its regular order and several of the native servants seemed missing,
while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and scared
faces. But no one would tell her anything and her Ayah did not come. She
was actually left alone as the morning went on, and at last she wandered
out into the garden and began to play by herself under a tree near the
veranda. She pretended that she was making a flower-bed, and she stuck
big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into little heaps of earth, all the time
growing more and more angry and muttering to herself the things she
would say and the names she would call Saidie when she returned.
"Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!" she said, because to call a native a pig
is the worst insult of all.
She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over again when she
heard her mother come out on the veranda with some one. She was with a
fair young man and they stood talking together in low strange voices.
Mary knew the fair young man who looked like a boy. She had heard that
he was a very young officer who had just come from England. The child
stared at him, but she stared most at her mother. She always did this
when she had a chance to see her, because the Mem Sahib--Mary used to
call her that oftener than anything else--was such a tall, slim, pretty
person and wore such lovely clothes. Her hair was like curly silk and
she had a delicate little nose which seemed to be disdaining things, and
she had large laughing eyes. All her clothes were thin and floating, and
Mary said they were "full of lace." They looked fuller of lace than ever
this morning, but her eyes were not laughing at all. They were large and
scared and lifted imploringly to the fair boy officer's face.
"Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?" Mary heard her say.
"Awfully," the young man answered in a trembling voice. "Awfully, Mrs.
Lennox. You ought to have gone to the hills two weeks ago."
The Mem Sahib wrung her hands.
"Oh, I know I ought!" she cried. "I only stayed to go to that silly
dinner party. What a fool I was!"
At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the
servants' quarters that she clutched the young man's arm, and Mary stood
shivering from head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and wilder.
"What is it? What is it?" Mrs. Lennox gasped.
"Some one has died," answered the boy officer. "You did not say it had
broken out among your servants."
"I did not know!" the Mem Sahib cried. "Come with me! Come with me!" and
she turned and ran into the house.
After that appalling things happened, and the mysteriousness of the
morning was explained to Mary. The cholera had broken out in its most
fatal form and people were dying like flies. The Ayah had been taken ill
in the night, and it was because she had just died that the servants had
wailed in the huts. Before the next day three other servants were dead
and others had run away in terror. There was panic on every side, and
dying people in all the bungalows.
During the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary hid herself
in the nursery and was forgotten by every one. Nobody thought of her,
nobody wanted her, and strange things happened of which she knew
nothing. Mary alternately cried and slept through the hours. She only
knew that people were ill and that she heard mysterious and frightening
sounds. Once she crept into the dining-room and found it empty, though a
partly finished meal was on the table and chairs and plates looked as
if they had been hastily pushed back when the diners rose suddenly for
some reason. The child ate some fruit and biscuits, and being thirsty
she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled. It was sweet, and
she did not know how strong it was. Very soon it made her intensely
drowsy, and she went back to her nursery and shut herself in again,
frightened by cries she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound of
feet. The wine made her so sleepy that she could scarcely keep her eyes
open and she lay down on her bed and knew nothing more for a long time.
Many things happened during the hours in which she slept so heavily, but
she was not disturbed by the wails and the sound of things being carried
in and out of the bungalow.
When she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. The house was
perfectly still. She had never known it to be so silent before. She
heard neither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got
well of the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered also who
would take care of her now her Ayah was dead. There would be a new Ayah,
and perhaps she would know some new stories. Mary had been rather tired
of the old ones. She did not cry because her nurse had died. She was not
an affectionate child and had never cared much for any one. The noise
and hurrying about and wailing over the cholera had frightened her, and
she had been angry because no one seemed to remember that she was alive.
Every one was too panic-stricken to think of a little girl no one was
fond of. When people had the cholera it seemed that they remembered
nothing but themselves. But if every one had got well again, surely some
one would remember and come to look for her.
But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow more
and more silent. She heard something rustling on the matting and when
she looked down she saw a little snake gliding along and watching her
with eyes like jewels. She was not frightened, because he was a harmless
little thing who would not hurt her and he seemed in a hurry to get out
of the room. He slipped under the door as she watched him.
"How queer and quiet it is," she said. "It sounds as if there was no one
in the bungalow but me and the snake."
Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound, and then on
the veranda. They were men's footsteps, and the men entered the bungalow
and talked in low voices. No one went to meet or speak to them and they
seemed to open doors and look into rooms.
"What desolation!" she heard one voice say. "That pretty, pretty woman!
I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a child, though no one ever
saw her."
Mary was standing in the middle of the nursery when they opened the door
a few minutes later. She looked an ugly, cross little thing and was
frowning because she was beginning to be hungry and feel disgracefully
neglected. The first man who came in was a large officer she had once
seen talking to her father. He looked tired and troubled, but when he
saw her he was so startled that he almost jumped back.
"Barney!" he cried out. "There is a child here! A child alone! In a
place like this! Mercy on us, who is she!"
"I am Mary Lennox," the little girl said, drawing herself up stiffly.
She thought the man was very rude to call her father's bungalow "A place
like this!" "I fell asleep when every one had the cholera and I have
only just wakened up. Why does nobody come?"
"It is the child no one ever saw!" exclaimed the man, turning to his
companions. "She has actually been forgotten!"
"Why was I forgotten?" Mary said, stamping her foot. "Why does nobody
come?"
The young man whose name was Barney looked at her very sadly. Mary even
thought she saw him wink his eyes as if to wink tears away.
"Poor little kid!" he said. "There is nobody left to come."
It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found out that she had
neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away
in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died also had
left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of them even
remembering that there was a Missie Sahib. That was why the place was so
quiet. It was true that there was no one in the bungalow but herself and
the little rustling snake.
CHAPTER II
MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY
Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance and she had thought
her very pretty, but as she knew very little of her she could scarcely
have been expected to love her or to miss her very much when she was
gone. She did not miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a
self-absorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself, as she had
always done. If she had been older she would no doubt have been very
anxious at being left alone in the world, but she was very young, and as
she had always been taken care of, she supposed she always would be.
What she thought was that she would like to know if she was going to
nice people, who would be polite to her and give her her own way as her
Ayah and the other native servants had done.
She knew that she was not going to stay at the English clergyman's house
where she was taken at first. She did not want to stay. The English
clergyman was poor and he had five children nearly all the same age and
they wore shabby clothes and were always quarreling and snatching toys
from each other. Mary hated their untidy bungalow and was so
disagreeable to them that after the first day or two nobody would play
with her. By the second day they had given her a nickname which made her
furious.
It was Basil who thought of it first. Basil was a little boy with
impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose and Mary hated him. She was
playing by herself under a tree, just as she had been playing the day
the cholera broke out. She was making heaps of earth and paths for a
garden and Basil came and stood near to watch her. Presently he got
rather interested and suddenly made a suggestion.
"Why don't you put a heap of stones there and pretend it is a rockery?"
he said. "There in the middle," and he leaned over her to point.
"Go away!" cried Mary. "I don't want boys. Go away!"
For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease. He was
always teasing his sisters. He danced round and round her and made faces
and sang and laughed.
"Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And marigolds all in a row."
He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, too; and the
crosser Mary got, the more they sang "Mistress Mary, quite contrary";
and after that as long as she stayed with them they called her "Mistress
Mary Quite Contrary" when they spoke of her to each other, and often
when they spoke to her.
"You are going to be sent home," Basil said to her, "at the end of the
week. And we're glad of it."
"I am glad of it, too," answered Mary. "Where is home?"
"She doesn't know where home is!" said Basil, with seven-year-old scorn.
"It's England, of course. Our grandmama lives there and our sister Mabel
was sent to her last year. You are not going to your grandmama. You have
none. You are going to your uncle. His name is Mr. Archibald Craven."
"I don't know anything about him," snapped Mary.
"I know you don't," Basil answered. "You don't know anything. Girls
never do. I heard father and mother talking about him. He lives in a
great, big, desolate old house in the country and no one goes near him.
He's so cross he won't let them, and they wouldn't come if he would let
them. He's a hunchback, and he's horrid."
"I don't believe you," said Mary; and she turned her back and stuck her
fingers in her ears, because she would not listen any more.
But she thought over it a great deal afterward; and when Mrs. Crawford
told her that night that she was going to sail away to England in a few
days and go to her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven, who lived at
Misselthwaite Manor, she looked so stony and stubbornly uninterested
that they did not know what to think about her. They tried to be kind to
her, but she only turned her face away when Mrs. Crawford attempted to
kiss her, and held herself stiffly when Mr. Crawford patted her
shoulder.
"She is such a plain child," Mrs. Crawford said pityingly, afterward.
"And her mother was such a pretty creature. She had a very pretty
manner, too, and Mary has the most unattractive ways I ever saw in a
child. The children call her 'Mistress Mary Quite Contrary,' and though
it's naughty of them, one can't help understanding it."
"Perhaps if her mother had carried her pretty face and her pretty
manners oftener into the nursery Mary might have learned some pretty
ways too. It is very sad, now the poor beautiful thing is gone, to
remember that many people never even knew that she had a child at all."
"I believe she scarcely ever looked at her," sighed Mrs. Crawford.
"When her Ayah was dead there was no one to give a thought to the little
thing. Think of the servants running away and leaving her all alone in
that deserted bungalow. Colonel McGrew said he nearly jumped out of his
skin when he opened the door and found her standing by herself in the
middle of the room."
Mary made the long voyage to England under the care of an officer's
wife, who was taking her children to leave them in a boarding-school.
She was very much absorbed in her own little boy and girl, and was
rather glad to hand the child over to the woman Mr. Archibald Craven
sent to meet her, in London. The woman was his housekeeper at
Misselthwaite Manor, and her name was Mrs. Medlock. She was a stout
woman, with very red cheeks and sharp black eyes. She wore a very purple
dress, a black silk mantle with jet fringe on it and a black bonnet with
purple velvet flowers which stuck up and trembled when she moved her
head. Mary did not like her at all, but as she very seldom liked people
there was nothing remarkable in that; besides which it was very evident
Mrs. Medlock did not think much of her.
"My word! she's a plain little piece of goods!" she said. "And we'd
heard that her mother was a beauty. She hasn't handed much of it down,
has she, ma'am?"
"Perhaps she will improve as she grows older," the officer's wife said
good-naturedly. "If she were not so sallow and had a nicer expression,
her features are rather good. Children alter so much."
"She'll have to alter a good deal," answered Mrs. Medlock. "And there's
nothing likely to improve children at Misselthwaite--if you ask me!"
They thought Mary was not listening because she was standing a little
apart from them at the window of the private hotel they had gone to. She
was watching the passing buses and cabs, and people, but she heard quite
well and was made very curious about her uncle and the place he lived
in. What sort of a place was it, and what would he be like? What was a
hunchback? She had never seen one. Perhaps there were none in India.
Since she had been living in other people's houses and had had no Ayah,
she had begun to feel lonely and to think queer thoughts which were new
to her. She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to belong to
any one even when her father and mother had been alive. Other children
seemed to belong to their fathers and mothers, but she had never seemed
to really be any one's little girl. She had had servants, and food and
clothes, but no one had taken any notice of her. She did not know that
this was because she was a disagreeable child; but then, of course, she
did not know she was disagreeable. She often thought that other people
were, but she did not know that she was so herself.
She thought Mrs. Medlock the most disagreeable person she had ever seen,
with her common, highly colored face and her common fine bonnet. When
the next day they set out on their journey to Yorkshire, she walked
through the station to the railway carriage with her head up and trying
to keep as far away from her as she could, because she did not want to
seem to belong to her. It would have made her very angry to think people
imagined she was her little girl.
But Mrs. Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her and her thoughts.
She was the kind of woman who would "stand no nonsense from young ones."
At least, that is what she would have said if she had been asked. She
had not wanted to go to London just when her sister Maria's daughter was
going to be married, but she had a comfortable, well paid place as
housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor and the only way in which she could
keep it was to do at once what Mr. Archibald Craven told her to do. She
never dared even to ask a question.
"Captain Lennox and his wife died of the cholera," Mr. Craven had said
in his short, cold way. "Captain Lennox was my wife's brother and I am
their daughter's guardian. The child is to be brought here. You must go
to London and bring her yourself."
So she packed her small trunk and made the journey.
Mary sat in her corner of the railway carriage and looked plain and
fretful. She had nothing to read or to look at, and she had folded her
thin little black-gloved hands in her lap. Her black dress made her look
yellower than ever, and her limp light hair straggled from under her
black crêpe hat.
"A more marred-looking young one I never saw in my life," Mrs. Medlock
thought. (Marred is a Yorkshire word and means spoiled and pettish.) She
had never seen a child who sat so still without doing anything; and at
last she got tired of watching her and began to talk in a brisk, hard
voice.
"I suppose I may as well tell you something about where you are going
to," she said. "Do you know anything about your uncle?"
"No," said Mary.
"Never heard your father and mother talk about him?"
"No," said Mary frowning. She frowned because she remembered that her
father and mother had never talked to her about anything in particular.
Certainly they had never told her things.
"Humph," muttered Mrs. Medlock, staring at her queer, unresponsive
little face. She did not say any more for a few moments and then she
began again.
"I suppose you might as well be told something--to prepare you. You are
going to a queer place."
Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs. Medlock looked rather discomfited by
her apparent indifference, but, after taking a breath, she went on.
"Not but that it's a grand big place in a gloomy way, and Mr. Craven's
proud of it in his way--and that's gloomy enough, too. The house is six
hundred years old and it's on the edge of the moor, and there's near a
hundred rooms in it, though most of them's shut up and locked. And
there's pictures and fine old furniture and things that's been there for
ages, and there's a big park round it and gardens and trees with
branches trailing to the ground--some of them." She paused and took
another breath. "But there's nothing else," she ended suddenly.
Mary had begun to listen in spite of herself. It all sounded so unlike
India, and anything new rather attracted her. But she did not intend to
look as if she were interested. That was one of her unhappy,
disagreeable ways. So she sat still.
"Well," said Mrs. Medlock. "What do you think of it?"
"Nothing," she answered. "I know nothing about such places."
That made Mrs. Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.
"Eh!" she said, "but you are like an old woman. Don't you care?"
"It doesn't matter," said Mary, "whether I care or not."
"You are right enough there," said Mrs. Medlock. "It doesn't. What
you're to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor for I don't know, unless
because it's the easiest way. _He's_ not going to trouble himself about
you, that's sure and certain. He never troubles himself about no one."
She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something in time.
"He's got a crooked back," she said. "That set him wrong. He was a sour
young man and got no good of all his money and big place till he was
married."
Mary's eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention not to seem to
care. She had never thought of the hunchback's being married and she was
a trifle surprised. Mrs. Medlock saw this, and as she was a talkative
woman she continued with more interest. This was one way of passing some
of the time, at any rate.
"She was a sweet, pretty thing and he'd have walked the world over to
get her a blade o' grass she wanted. Nobody thought she'd marry him, but
she did, and people said she married him for his money. But she
didn't--she didn't," positively. "When she died--"
Mary gave a little involuntary jump.
"Oh! did she die!" she exclaimed, quite without meaning to. She had just
remembered a French fairy story she had once read called "Riquet à la
Houppe." It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess and
it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven.
"Yes, she died," Mrs. Medlock answered. "And it made him queerer than
ever. He cares about nobody. He won't see people. Most of the time he
goes away, and when he is at Misselthwaite he shuts himself up in the
West Wing and won't let any one but Pitcher see him. Pitcher's an old
fellow, but he took care of him when he was a child and he knows his
ways."
It sounded like something in a book and it did not make Mary feel
cheerful. A house with a hundred rooms, nearly all shut up and with
their doors locked--a house on the edge of a moor--whatsoever a moor
was--sounded dreary. A man with a crooked back who shut himself up also!
She stared out of the window with her lips pinched together, and it
seemed quite natural that the rain should have begun to pour down in
gray slanting lines and splash and stream down the window-panes. If the
pretty wife had been alive she might have made things cheerful by being
something like her own mother and by running in and out and going to
parties as she had done in frocks "full of lace." But she was not there
any more.
"You needn't expect to see him, because ten to one you won't," said Mrs.
Medlock. "And you mustn't expect that there will be people to talk to
you. You'll have to play about and look after yourself. You'll be told
what rooms you can go into and what rooms you're to keep out of. There's
gardens enough. But when you're in the house don't go wandering and
poking about. Mr. Craven won't have it."
"I shall not want to go poking about," said sour little Mary; and just
as suddenly as she had begun to be rather sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven
she began to cease to be sorry and to think he was unpleasant enough to
deserve all that had happened to him.
And she turned her face toward the streaming panes of the window of the
railway carriage and gazed out at the gray rain-storm which looked as if
it would go on forever and ever. She watched it so long and steadily
that the grayness grew heavier and heavier before her eyes and she fell
asleep.
CHAPTER III
ACROSS THE MOOR
She slept a long time, and when she awakened Mrs. Medlock had bought a
lunchbasket at one of the stations and they had some chicken and cold
beef and bread and butter and some hot tea. The rain seemed to be
streaming down more heavily than ever and everybody in the station wore
wet and glistening waterproofs. The guard lighted the lamps in the
carriage, and Mrs. Medlock cheered up very much over her tea and chicken
and beef. She ate a great deal and afterward fell asleep herself, and
Mary sat and stared at her and watched her fine bonnet slip on one side
until she herself fell asleep once more in the corner of the carriage,
lulled by the splashing of the rain against the windows. It was quite
dark when she awakened again. The train had stopped at a station and
Mrs. Medlock was shaking her.
"You have had a sleep!" she said. "It's time to open your eyes! We're at
Thwaite Station and we've got a long drive before us."
Mary stood up and tried to keep her eyes open while Mrs. Medlock
collected her parcels. The little girl did not offer to help her,
because in India native servants always picked up or carried things and
it seemed quite proper that other people should wait on one.
The station was a small one and nobody but themselves seemed to be
getting out of the train. The station-master spoke to Mrs. Medlock in a
rough, good-natured way, pronouncing his words in a queer broad fashion
which Mary found out afterward was Yorkshire.
"I see tha's got back," he said. "An' tha's browt th' young 'un with
thee."
"Aye, that's her," answered Mrs. Medlock, speaking with a Yorkshire
accent herself and jerking her head over her shoulder toward Mary.
"How's thy Missus?"
"Well enow. Th' carriage is waitin' outside for thee."
A brougham stood on the road before the little outside platform. Mary
saw that it was a smart carriage and that it was a smart footman who
helped her in. His long waterproof coat and the waterproof covering of
his hat were shining and dripping with rain as everything was, the burly
station-master included.
When he shut the door, mounted the box with the coachman, and they drove
off, the little girl found herself seated in a comfortably cushioned
corner, but she was not inclined to go to sleep again. She sat and
looked out of the window, curious to see something of the road over
which she was being driven to the queer place Mrs. Medlock had spoken
of. She was not at all a timid child and she was not exactly frightened,
but she felt that there was no knowing what might happen in a house with
a hundred rooms nearly all shut up--a house standing on the edge of a
moor.
"What is a moor?" she said suddenly to Mrs. Medlock.
"Look out of the window in about ten minutes and you'll see," the woman
answered. "We've got to drive five miles across Missel Moor before we
get to the Manor. You won't see much because it's a dark night, but you
can see something."
Mary asked no more questions but waited in the darkness of her corner,
keeping her eyes on the window. The carriage lamps cast rays of light a
little distance ahead of them and she caught glimpses of the things they
passed. After they had left the station they had driven through a tiny
village and she had seen whitewashed cottages and the lights of a public
house. Then they had passed a church and a vicarage and a little
shop-window or so in a cottage with toys and sweets and odd things set
out for sale. Then they were on the highroad and she saw hedges and
trees. After that there seemed nothing different for a long time--or at
least it seemed a long time to her.
At last the horses began to go more slowly, as if they were climbing
up-hill, and presently there seemed to be no more hedges and no more
trees. She could see nothing, in fact, but a dense darkness on either
side. She leaned forward and pressed her face against the window just as
the carriage gave a big jolt.
"Eh! We're on the moor now sure enough," said Mrs. Medlock.
The carriage lamps shed a yellow light on a rough-looking road which
seemed to be cut through bushes and low growing things which ended in
the great expanse of dark apparently spread out before and around them.
A wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low, rushing sound.
"It's--it's not the sea, is it?" said Mary, looking round at her
companion.
"No, not it," answered Mrs. Medlock. "Nor it isn't fields nor mountains,
it's just miles and miles and miles of wild land that nothing grows on
but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on but wild ponies
and sheep."
"I feel as if it might be the sea, if there were water on it," said
Mary. "It sounds like the sea just now."
"That's the wind blowing through the bushes," Mrs. Medlock said. "It's a
wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though there's plenty that likes
it--particularly when the heather's in bloom."
On and on they drove through the darkness, and though the rain stopped,
the wind rushed by and whistled and made strange sounds. The road went
up and down, and several times the carriage passed over a little bridge
beneath which water rushed very fast with a great deal of noise. Mary
felt as if the drive would never come to an end and that the wide, bleak
moor was a wide expanse of black ocean through which she was passing on
a strip of dry land.
"I don't like it," she said to herself. "I don't like it," and she
pinched her thin lips more tightly together.
The horses were climbing up a hilly piece of road when she first caught
sight of a light. Mrs. Medlock saw it as soon as she did and drew a long
sigh of relief.
"Eh, I am glad to see that bit o' light twinkling," she exclaimed. "It's
the light in the lodge window. We shall get a good cup of tea after a
bit, at all events."
It was "after a bit," as she said, for when the carriage passed through
the park gates there was still two miles of avenue to drive through and
the trees (which nearly met overhead) made it seem as if they were
driving through a long dark vault.
They drove out of the vault into a clear space and stopped before an
immensely long but low-built house which seemed to ramble round a stone
court. At first Mary thought that there were no lights at all in the
windows, but as she got out of the carriage she saw that one room in a
corner up-stairs showed a dull glow.
The entrance door was a huge one made of massive, curiously shaped
panels of oak studded with big iron nails and bound with great iron
bars. It opened into an enormous hall, which was so dimly lighted that
the faces in the portraits on the walls and the figures in the suits of
armor made Mary feel that she did not want to look at them. As she stood
on the stone floor she looked a very small, odd little black figure, and
she felt as small and lost and odd as she looked.
A neat, thin old man stood near the manservant who opened the door for
them.
"You are to take her to her room," he said in a husky voice. "He doesn't
want to see her. He's going to London in the morning."
"Very well, Mr. Pitcher," Mrs. Medlock answered. "So long as I know
what's expected of me, I can manage."
"What's expected of you, Mrs. Medlock," Mr. Pitcher said, "is that you
make sure that he's not disturbed and that he doesn't see what he
doesn't want to see."
And then Mary Lennox was led up a broad staircase and down a long
corridor and up a short flight of steps and through another corridor and
another, until a door opened in a wall and she found herself in a room
with a fire in it and a supper on a table.
Mrs. Medlock said unceremoniously:
"Well, here you are! This room and the next are where you'll live--and
you must keep to them. Don't you forget that!"
It was in this way Mistress Mary arrived at Misselthwaite Manor and she
had perhaps never felt quite so contrary in all her life.
CHAPTER IV
MARTHA
When she opened her eyes in the morning it was because a young housemaid
had come into her room to light the fire and was kneeling on the
hearth-rug raking out the cinders noisily. Mary lay and watched her for
a few moments and then began to look about the room. She had never seen
a room at all like it and thought it curious and gloomy. The walls were
covered with tapestry with a forest scene embroidered on it. There were
fantastically dressed people under the trees and in the distance there
was a glimpse of the turrets of a castle. There were hunters and horses
and dogs and ladies. Mary felt as if she were in the forest with them.
Out of a deep window she could see a great climbing stretch of land
which seemed to have no trees on it, and to look rather like an endless,
dull, purplish sea.
"What is that?" she said, pointing out of the window.
Martha, the young housemaid, who had just risen to her feet, looked and
pointed also.
"That there?" she said.
"Yes."
"That's th' moor," with a good-natured grin. "Does tha' like it?"
"No," answered Mary. "I hate it."
"That's because tha'rt not used to it," Martha said, going back to her
hearth. "Tha' thinks it's too big an' bare now. But tha' will like it."
"Do you?" inquired Mary.
"Aye, that I do," answered Martha, cheerfully polishing away at the
grate. "I just love it. It's none bare. It's covered wi' growin' things
as smells sweet. It's fair lovely in spring an' summer when th' gorse
an' broom an' heather's in flower. It smells o' honey an' there's such a
lot o' fresh air--an' th' sky looks so high an' th' bees an' skylarks
makes such a nice noise hummin' an' singin'. Eh! I wouldn't live away
from th' moor for anythin'."
Mary listened to her with a grave, puzzled expression. The native
servants she had been used to in India were not in the least like this.
They were obsequious and servile and did not presume to talk to their
masters as if they were their equals. They made salaams and called them
"protector of the poor" and names of that sort. Indian servants were
commanded to do things, not asked. It was not the custom to say
"please" and "thank you" and Mary had always slapped her Ayah in the
face when she was angry. She wondered a little what this girl would do
if one slapped her in the face. She was a round, rosy, good-natured
looking creature, but she had a sturdy way which made Mistress Mary
wonder if she might not even slap back--if the person who slapped her
was only a little girl.
"You are a strange servant," she said from her pillows, rather
haughtily.
Martha sat up on her heels, with her blacking-brush in her hand, and
laughed, without seeming the least out of temper.
"Eh! I know that," she said. "If there was a grand Missus at
Misselthwaite I should never have been even one of th' under housemaids.
I might have been let to be scullery-maid but I'd never have been let
up-stairs. I'm too common an' I talk too much Yorkshire. But this is a
funny house for all it's so grand. Seems like there's neither Master nor
Mistress except Mr. Pitcher an' Mrs. Medlock. Mr. Craven, he won't be
troubled about anythin' when he's here, an' he's nearly always away.
Mrs. Medlock gave me th' place out o' kindness. She told me she could
never have done it if Misselthwaite had been like other big houses."
"Are you going to be my servant?" Mary asked, still in her imperious
little Indian way.
Martha began to rub her grate again.
"I'm Mrs. Medlock's servant," she said stoutly. "An' she's Mr.
Craven's--but I'm to do the housemaid's work up here an' wait on you a
bit. But you won't need much waitin' on."
"Who is going to dress me?" demanded Mary.
Martha sat up on her heels again and stared. She spoke in broad
Yorkshire in her amazement.
"Canna' tha' dress thysen!" she said.
"What do you mean? I don't understand your language," said Mary.
"Eh! I forgot," Martha said. "Mrs. Medlock told me I'd have to be
careful or you wouldn't know what I was sayin'. I mean can't you put on
your own clothes?"
"No," answered Mary, quite indignantly. "I never did in my life. My Ayah
dressed me, of course."
"Well," said Martha, evidently not in the least aware that she was
impudent, "it's time tha' should learn. Tha' cannot begin younger. It'll
do thee good to wait on thysen a bit. My mother always said she couldn't
see why grand people's children didn't turn out fair fools--what with
nurses an' bein' washed an' dressed an' took out to walk as if they was
puppies!"
"It is different in India," said Mistress Mary disdainfully. She could
scarcely stand this.
But Martha was not at all crushed.
"Eh! I can see it's different," she answered almost sympathetically. "I
dare say it's because there's such a lot o' blacks there instead o'
respectable white people. When I heard you was comin' from India I
thought you was a black too."
Mary sat up in bed furious.
"What!" she said. "What! You thought I was a native. You--you daughter
of a pig!"
Martha stared and looked hot.
"Who are you callin' names?" she said. "You needn't be so vexed. That's
not th' way for a young lady to talk. I've nothin' against th' blacks.
When you read about 'em in tracts they're always very religious. You
always read as a black's a man an' a brother. I've never seen a black
an' I was fair pleased to think I was goin' to see one close. When I
come in to light your fire this mornin' I crep' up to your bed an'
pulled th' cover back careful to look at you. An' there you was,"
disappointedly, "no more black than me--for all you're so yeller."
Mary did not even try to control her rage and humiliation.
"You thought I was a native! You dared! You don't know anything about
natives! They are not people--they're servants who must salaam to you.
You know nothing about India. You know nothing about anything!"
She was in such a rage and felt so helpless before the girl's simple
stare, and somehow she suddenly felt so horribly lonely and far away
from everything she understood and which understood her, that she threw
herself face downward on the pillows and burst into passionate sobbing.
She sobbed so unrestrainedly that good-natured Yorkshire Martha was a
little frightened and quite sorry for her. She went to the bed and bent
over her.
"Eh! you mustn't cry like that there!" she begged. "You mustn't for
sure. I didn't know you'd be vexed. I don't know anythin' about
anythin'--just like you said. I beg your pardon, Miss. Do stop cryin'."
There was something comforting and really friendly in her queer
Yorkshire speech and sturdy way which had a good effect on Mary. She
gradually ceased crying and became quiet. Martha looked relieved.
"It's time for thee to get up now," she said. "Mrs. Medlock said I was
to carry tha' breakfast an' tea an' dinner into th' room next to this.
It's been made into a nursery for thee. I'll help thee on with thy
clothes if tha'll get out o' bed. If th' buttons are at th' back tha'
cannot button them up tha'self."
When Mary at last decided to get up, the clothes Martha took from the
wardrobe were not the ones she had worn when she arrived the night
before with Mrs. Medlock.
"Those are not mine," she said. "Mine are black."
She looked the thick white wool coat and dress over, and added with cool
approval:
"Those are nicer than mine."
"These are th' ones tha' must put on," Martha answered. "Mr. Craven
ordered Mrs. Medlock to get 'em in London. He said 'I won't have a child
dressed in black wanderin' about like a lost soul,' he said. 'It'd make
the place sadder than it is. Put color on her.' Mother she said she knew
what he meant. Mother always knows what a body means. She doesn't hold
with black hersel'."
"I hate black things," said Mary.
The dressing process was one which taught them both something. Martha
had "buttoned up" her little sisters and brothers but she had never seen
a child who stood still and waited for another person to do things for
her as if she had neither hands nor feet of her own.
"Why doesn't tha' put on tha' own shoes?" she said when Mary quietly
held out her foot.
"My Ayah did it," answered Mary, staring. "It was the custom."
She said that very often--"It was the custom." The native servants were
always saying it. If one told them to do a thing their ancestors had not
done for a thousand years they gazed at one mildly and said, "It is not
the custom" and one knew that was the end of the matter.
It had not been the custom that Mistress Mary should do anything but
stand and allow herself to be dressed like a doll, but before she was
ready for breakfast she began to suspect that her life at Misselthwaite
Manor would end by teaching her a number of things quite new to
her--things such as putting on her own shoes and stockings, and picking
up things she let fall. If Martha had been a well-trained fine young
lady's maid she would have been more subservient and respectful and
would have known that it was her business to brush hair, and button
boots, and pick things up and lay them away. She was, however, only an
untrained Yorkshire rustic who had been brought up in a moorland cottage
with a swarm of little brothers and sisters who had never dreamed of
doing anything but waiting on themselves and on the younger ones who
were either babies in arms or just learning to totter about and tumble
over things.
If Mary Lennox had been a child who was ready to be amused she would
perhaps have laughed at Martha's readiness to talk, but Mary only
listened to her coldly and wondered at her freedom of manner. At first
she was not at all interested, but gradually, as the girl rattled on in
her good-tempered, homely way, Mary began to notice what she was saying.
"Eh! you should see 'em all," she said. "There's twelve of us an' my
father only gets sixteen shilling a week. I can tell you my mother's put
to it to get porridge for 'em all. They tumble about on th' moor an'
play there all day an' mother says th' air of th' moor fattens 'em. She
says she believes they eat th' grass same as th' wild ponies do. Our
Dickon, he's twelve years old and he's got a young pony he calls his
own."
"Where did he get it?" asked Mary.
"He found it on th' moor with its mother when it was a little one an' he
began to make friends with it an' give it bits o' bread an' pluck young
grass for it. And it got to like him so it follows him about an' it
lets him get on its back. Dickon's a kind lad an' animals likes him."
Mary had never possessed an animal pet of her own and had always thought
she should like one. So she began to feel a slight interest in Dickon,
and as she had never before been interested in any one but herself, it
was the dawning of a healthy sentiment. When she went into the room
which had been made into a nursery for her, she found that it was rather
like the one she had slept in. It was not a child's room, but a grown-up
person's room, with gloomy old pictures on the walls and heavy old oak
chairs. A table in the center was set with a good substantial breakfast.
But she had always had a very small appetite, and she looked with
something more than indifference at the first plate Martha set before
her.
"I don't want it," she said.
"Tha' doesn't want thy porridge!" Martha exclaimed incredulously.
"No."
"Tha' doesn't know how good it is. Put a bit o' treacle on it or a bit
o' sugar."
"I don't want it," repeated Mary.
"Eh!" said Martha. "I can't abide to see good victuals go to waste. If
our children was at this table they'd clean it bare in five minutes."
"Why?" said Mary coldly.
"Why!" echoed Martha. "Because they scarce ever had their stomachs full
in their lives. They're as hungry as young hawks an' foxes."
"I don't know what it is to be hungry," said Mary, with the indifference
of ignorance.
Martha looked indignant.
"Well, it would do thee good to try it. I can see that plain enough,"
she said outspokenly. "I've no patience with folk as sits an' just
stares at good bread an' meat. My word! don't I wish Dickon and Phil an'
Jane an' th' rest of 'em had what's here under their pinafores."
"Why don't you take it to them?" suggested Mary.
"It's not mine," answered Martha stoutly. "An' this isn't my day out. I
get my day out once a month same as th' rest. Then I go home an' clean
up for mother an' give her a day's rest."
Mary drank some tea and ate a little toast and some marmalade.
"You wrap up warm an' run out an' play you," said Martha. "It'll do you
good and give you some stomach for your meat."
Mary went to the window. There were gardens and paths and big trees, but
everything looked dull and wintry.
"Out? Why should I go out on a day like this?"
"Well, if tha' doesn't go out tha'lt have to stay in, an' what has tha'
got to do?"
Mary glanced about her. There was nothing to do. When Mrs. Medlock had
prepared the nursery she had not thought of amusement. Perhaps it would
be better to go and see what the gardens were like.
"Who will go with me?" she inquired.
Martha stared.
"You'll go by yourself," she answered. "You'll have to learn to play
like other children does when they haven't got sisters and brothers. Our
Dickon goes off on th' moor by himself an' plays for hours. That's how
he made friends with th' pony. He's got sheep on th' moor that knows
him, an' birds as comes an' eats out of his hand. However little there
is to eat, he always saves a bit o' his bread to coax his pets."
It was really this mention of Dickon which made Mary decide to go out,
though she was not aware of it. There would be birds outside though
there would not be ponies or sheep. They would be different from the
birds in India and it might amuse her to look at them.
Martha found her coat and hat for her and a pair of stout little boots
and she showed her her way down-stairs.
"If tha' goes round that way tha'll come to th' gardens," she said,
pointing to a gate in a wall of shrubbery. "There's lots o' flowers in
summer-time, but there's nothin' bloomin' now." She seemed to hesitate a
second before she added, "One of th' gardens is locked up. No one has
been in it for ten years."
"Why?" asked Mary in spite of herself. Here was another locked door
added to the hundred in the strange house.
"Mr. Craven had it shut when his wife died so sudden. He won't let no
one go inside. It was her garden. He locked th' door an' dug a hole and
buried th' key. There's Mrs. Medlock's bell ringing--I must run."
After she was gone Mary turned down the walk which led to the door in
the shrubbery. She could not help thinking about the garden which no one
had been into for ten years. She wondered what it would look like and
whether there were any flowers still alive in it. When she had passed
through the shrubbery gate she found herself in great gardens, with wide
lawns and winding walks with clipped borders. There were trees, and
flower-beds, and evergreens clipped into strange shapes, and a large
pool with an old gray fountain in its midst. But the flower-beds were
bare and wintry and the fountain was not playing. This was not the
garden which was shut up. How could a garden be shut up? You could
always walk into a garden.
She was just thinking this when she saw that, at the end of the path she
was following, there seemed to be a long wall, with ivy growing over it.
She was not familiar enough with England to know that she was coming
upon the kitchen-gardens where the vegetables and fruit were growing.
She went toward the wall and found that there was a green door in the
ivy, and that it stood open. This was not the closed garden, evidently,
and she could go into it.
She went through the door and found that it was a garden with walls all
round it and that it was only one of several walled gardens which seemed
to open into one another. She saw another open green door, revealing
bushes and pathways between beds containing winter vegetables.
Fruit-trees were trained flat against the wall, and over some of the
beds there were glass frames. The place was bare and ugly enough, Mary
thought, as she stood and stared about her. It might be nicer in summer
when things were green, but there was nothing pretty about it now.
Presently an old man with a spade over his shoulder walked through the
door leading from the second garden. He looked startled when he saw
Mary, and then touched his cap. He had a surly old face, and did not
seem at all pleased to see her--but then she was displeased with his
garden and wore her "quite contrary" expression, and certainly did not
seem at all pleased to see him.
"What is this place?" she asked.
"One o' th' kitchen-gardens," he answered.
"What is that?" said Mary, pointing through the other green door.
"Another of 'em," shortly. "There's another on t'other side o' th' wall
an' there's th' orchard t'other side o' that."
"Can I go in them?" asked Mary.
"If tha' likes. But there's nowt to see."
Mary made no response. She went down the path and through the second
green door. There she found more walls and winter vegetables and glass
frames, but in the second wall there was another green door and it was
not open. Perhaps it led into the garden which no one had seen for ten
years. As she was not at all a timid child and always did what she
wanted to do, Mary went to the green door and turned the handle. She
hoped the door would not open because she wanted to be sure she had
found the mysterious garden--but it did open quite easily and she walked
through it and found herself in an orchard. There were walls all round
it also and trees trained against them, and there were bare fruit-trees
growing in the winter-browned grass--but there was no green door to be
seen anywhere. Mary looked for it, and yet when she had entered the
upper end of the garden she had noticed that the wall did not seem to
end with the orchard but to extend beyond it as if it enclosed a place
at the other side. She could see the tops of trees above the wall, and
when she stood still she saw a bird with a bright red breast sitting on
the topmost branch of one of them, and suddenly he burst into his winter
song--almost as if he had caught sight of her and was calling to her.
She stopped and listened to him and somehow his cheerful, friendly
little whistle gave her a pleased feeling--even a disagreeable little
girl may be lonely, and the big closed house and big bare moor and big
bare gardens had made this one feel as if there was no one left in the
world but herself. If she had been an affectionate child, who had been
used to being loved, she would have broken her heart, but even though
she was "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary" she was desolate, and the
bright-breasted little bird brought a look into her sour little face
which was almost a smile. She listened to him until he flew away. He was
not like an Indian bird and she liked him and wondered if she should
ever see him again. Perhaps he lived in the mysterious garden and knew
all about it.
Perhaps it was because she had nothing whatever to do that she thought
so much of the deserted garden. She was curious about it and wanted to
see what it was like. Why had Mr. Archibald Craven buried the key? If he
had liked his wife so much why did he hate her garden? She wondered if
she should ever see him, but she knew that if she did she should not
like him, and he would not like her, and that she should only stand and
stare at him and say nothing, though she should be wanting dreadfully to
ask him why he had done such a queer thing.
"People never like me and I never like people," she thought. "And I
never can talk as the Crawford children could. They were always talking
and laughing and making noises."
She thought of the robin and of the way he seemed to sing his song at
her, and as she remembered the tree-top he perched on she stopped rather
suddenly on the path.
"I believe that tree was in the secret garden--I feel sure it was," she
said. "There was a wall round the place and there was no door."
She walked back into the first kitchen-garden she had entered and found
the old man digging there. She went and stood beside him and watched
him a few moments in her cold little way. He took no notice of her and
so at last she spoke to him.
"I have been into the other gardens," she said.
"There was nothin' to prevent thee," he answered crustily.
"I went into the orchard."
"There was no dog at th' door to bite thee," he answered.
"There was no door there into the other garden," said Mary.
"What garden?" he said in a rough voice, stopping his digging for a
moment.
"The one on the other side of the wall," answered Mistress Mary. "There
are trees there--I saw the tops of them. A bird with a red breast was
sitting on one of them and he sang."
To her surprise the surly old weather-beaten face actually changed its
expression. A slow smile spread over it and the gardener looked quite
different. It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a person
looked when he smiled. She had not thought of it before.
He turned about to the orchard side of his garden and began to
whistle--a low soft whistle. She could not understand how such a surly
man could make such a coaxing sound.
Almost the next moment a wonderful thing happened. She heard a soft
little rushing flight through the air--and it was the bird with the red
breast flying to them, and he actually alighted on the big clod of earth
quite near to the gardener's foot.
"Here he is," chuckled the old man, and then he spoke to the bird as if
he were speaking to a child.
"Where has tha' been, tha' cheeky little beggar?" he said. "I've not
seen thee before to-day. Has tha' begun tha' courtin' this early in th'
season? Tha'rt too forrad."
The bird put his tiny head on one side and looked up at him with his
soft bright eye which was like a black dewdrop. He seemed quite familiar
and not the least afraid. He hopped about and pecked the earth briskly,
looking for seeds and insects. It actually gave Mary a queer feeling in
her heart, because he was so pretty and cheerful and seemed so like a
person. He had a tiny plump body and a delicate beak, and slender
delicate legs.
"Will he always come when you call him?" she asked almost in a whisper.
"Aye, that he will. I've knowed him ever since he was a fledgling. He
come out of th' nest in th' other garden an' when first he flew over
th' wall he was too weak to fly back for a few days an' we got
friendly. When he went over th' wall again th' rest of th' brood was
gone an' he was lonely an' he come back to me."
"What kind of a bird is he?" Mary asked.
"Doesn't tha' know? He's a robin redbreast an' they're th' friendliest,
curiousest birds alive. They're almost as friendly as dogs--if you know
how to get on with 'em. Watch him peckin' about there an' lookin' round
at us now an' again. He knows we're talkin' about him."
It was the queerest thing in the world to see the old fellow. He looked
at the plump little scarlet-waistcoated bird as if he were both proud
and fond of him.
"He's a conceited one," he chuckled. "He likes to hear folk talk about
him. An' curious--bless me, there never was his like for curiosity an'
meddlin'. He's always comin' to see what I'm plantin'. He knows all th'
things Mester Craven never troubles hissel' to find out. He's th' head
gardener, he is."
The robin hopped about busily pecking the soil and now and then stopped
and looked at them a little. Mary thought his black dewdrop eyes gazed
at her with great curiosity. It really seemed as if he were finding out
all about her. The queer feeling in her heart increased.
"Where did the rest of the brood fly to?" she asked.
"There's no knowin'. The old ones turn 'em out o' their nest an' make
'em fly an' they're scattered before you know it. This one was a knowin'
one an' he knew he was lonely."
Mistress Mary went a step nearer to the robin and looked at him very
hard.
"I'm lonely," she said.
She had not known before that this was one of the things which made her
feel sour and cross. She seemed to find it out when the robin looked at
her and she looked at the robin.
The old gardener pushed his cap back on his bald head and stared at her
a minute.
"Art tha' th' little wench from India?" he asked.
Mary nodded.
"Then no wonder tha'rt lonely. Tha'lt be lonelier before tha's done," he
said.
He began to dig again, driving his spade deep into the rich black garden
soil while the robin hopped about very busily employed.
"What is your name?" Mary inquired.
He stood up to answer her.
"Ben Weatherstaff," he answered, and then he added with a surly chuckle,
"I'm lonely mysel' except when he's with me," and he jerked his thumb
toward the robin. "He's th' only friend I've got."
"I have no friends at all," said Mary. "I never had. My Ayah didn't like
me and I never played with any one."
It is a Yorkshire habit to say what you think with blunt frankness, and
old Ben Weatherstaff was a Yorkshire moor man.
"Tha' an' me are a good bit alike," he said. "We was wove out of th'
same cloth. We're neither of us good lookin' an' we're both of us as
sour as we look. We've got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I'll
warrant."
This was plain speaking, and Mary Lennox had never heard the truth about
herself in her life. Native servants always salaamed and submitted to
you, whatever you did. She had never thought much about her looks, but
she wondered if she was as unattractive as Ben Weatherstaff and she also
wondered if she looked as sour as he had looked before the robin came.
She actually began to wonder also if she was "nasty tempered." She felt
uncomfortable.
Suddenly a clear rippling little sound broke out near her and she turned
round. She was standing a few feet from a young apple-tree and the robin
had flown on to one of its branches and had burst out into a scrap of a
song. Ben Weatherstaff laughed outright.
"What did he do that for?" asked Mary.
"He's made up his mind to make friends with thee," replied Ben. "Dang me
if he hasn't took a fancy to thee."
"To me?" said Mary, and she moved toward the little tree softly and
looked up.
"Would you make friends with me?" she said to the robin just as if she
was speaking to a person. "Would you?" And she did not say it either in
her hard little voice or in her imperious Indian voice, but in a tone so
soft and eager and coaxing that Ben Weatherstaff was as surprised as she
had been when she heard him whistle.
"Why," he cried out, "tha' said that as nice an' human as if tha' was a
real child instead of a sharp old woman. Tha' said it almost like Dickon
talks to his wild things on th' moor."
"Do you know Dickon?" Mary asked, turning round rather in a hurry.
"Everybody knows him. Dickon's wanderin' about everywhere. Th' very
blackberries an' heather-bells knows him. I warrant th' foxes shows him
where their cubs lies an' th' skylarks doesn't hide their nests from
him."
Mary would have liked to ask some more questions. She was almost as
curious about Dickon as she was about the deserted garden. But just that
moment the robin, who had ended his song, gave a little shake of his
wings, spread them and flew away. He had made his visit and had other
things to do.
"He has flown over the wall!" Mary cried out, watching him. "He has
flown into the orchard--he has flown across the other wall--into the
garden where there is no door!"
"He lives there," said old Ben. "He came out o' th' egg there. If he's
courtin', he's makin' up to some young madam of a robin that lives among
th' old rose-trees there."
"Rose-trees," said Mary. "Are there rose-trees?"
Ben Weatherstaff took up his spade again and began to dig.
"There was ten year' ago," he mumbled.
"I should like to see them," said Mary. "Where is the green door? There
must be a door somewhere."
Ben drove his spade deep and looked as uncompanionable as he had looked
when she first saw him.
"There was ten year' ago, but there isn't now," he said.
"No door!" cried Mary. "There must be."
"None as any one can find, an' none as is any one's business. Don't you
be a meddlesome wench an' poke your nose where it's no cause to go.
Here, I must go on with my work. Get you gone an' play you. I've no more
time."
And he actually stopped digging, threw his spade over his shoulder and
walked off, without even glancing at her or saying good-by.
CHAPTER V
THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR
At first each day which passed by for Mary Lennox was exactly like the
others. Every morning she awoke in her tapestried room and found Martha
kneeling upon the hearth building her fire; every morning she ate her
breakfast in the nursery which had nothing amusing in it; and after each
breakfast she gazed out of the window across to the huge moor which
seemed to spread out on all sides and climb up to the sky, and after she
had stared for a while she realized that if she did not go out she would
have to stay in and do nothing--and so she went out. She did not know
that this was the best thing she could have done, and she did not know
that, when she began to walk quickly or even run along the paths and
down the avenue, she was stirring her slow blood and making herself
stronger by fighting with the wind which swept down from the moor. She
ran only to make herself warm, and she hated the wind which rushed at
her face and roared and held her back as if it were some giant she could
not see. But the big breaths of rough fresh air blown over the heather
filled her lungs with something which was good for her whole thin body
and whipped some red color into her cheeks and brightened her dull eyes
when she did not know anything about it.
But after a few days spent almost entirely out of doors she wakened one
morning knowing what it was to be hungry, and when she sat down to her
breakfast she did not glance disdainfully at her porridge and push it
away, but took up her spoon and began to eat it and went on eating it
until her bowl was empty.
"Tha' got on well enough with that this mornin', didn't tha'?" said
Martha.
"It tastes nice to-day," said Mary, feeling a little surprised herself.
"It's th' air of th' moor that's givin' thee stomach for tha' victuals,"
answered Martha. "It's lucky for thee that tha's got victuals as well as
appetite. There's been twelve in our cottage as had th' stomach an'
nothin' to put in it. You go on playin' you out o' doors every day an'
you'll get some flesh on your bones an' you won't be so yeller."
"I don't play," said Mary. "I have nothing to play with."
"Nothin' to play with!" exclaimed Martha. "Our children plays with
sticks and stones. They just runs about an' shouts an' looks at things."
Mary did not shout, but she looked at things. There was nothing else to
do. She walked round and round the gardens and wandered about the paths
in the park. Sometimes she looked for Ben Weatherstaff, but though
several times she saw him at work he was too busy to look at her or was
too surly. Once when she was walking toward him he picked up his spade
and turned away as if he did it on purpose.
One place she went to oftener than to any other. It was the long walk
outside the gardens with the walls round them. There were bare
flower-beds on either side of it and against the walls ivy grew thickly.
There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark green leaves were
more bushy than elsewhere. It seemed as if for a long time that part had
been neglected. The rest of it had been clipped and made to look neat,
but at this lower end of the walk it had not been trimmed at all.
A few days after she had talked to Ben Weatherstaff Mary stopped to
notice this and wondered why it was so. She had just paused and was
looking up at a long spray of ivy swinging in the wind when she saw a
gleam of scarlet and heard a brilliant chirp, and there, on the top of
the wall, perched Ben Weatherstaff's robin redbreast, tilting forward
to look at her with his small head on one side.
"Oh!" she cried out, "is it you--is it you?" And it did not seem at all
queer to her that she spoke to him as if she was sure that he would
understand and answer her.
He did answer. He twittered and chirped and hopped along the wall as if
he were telling her all sorts of things. It seemed to Mistress Mary as
if she understood him, too, though he was not speaking in words. It was
as if he said:
"Good morning! Isn't the wind nice? Isn't the sun nice? Isn't everything
nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter. Come on! Come on!"
Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flights along the
wall she ran after him. Poor little thin, sallow, ugly Mary--she
actually looked almost pretty for a moment.
"I like you! I like you!" she cried out, pattering down the walk; and
she chirped and tried to whistle, which last she did not know how to do
in the least. But the robin seemed to be quite satisfied and chirped and
whistled back at her. At last he spread his wings and made a darting
flight to the top of a tree, where he perched and sang loudly.
That reminded Mary of the first time she had seen him. He had been
swinging on a tree-top then and she had been standing in the orchard.
Now she was on the other side of the orchard and standing in the path
outside a wall--much lower down--and there was the same tree inside.
"It's in the garden no one can go into," she said to herself. "It's the
garden without a door. He lives in there. How I wish I could see what it
is like!"
She ran up the walk to the green door she had entered the first morning.
Then she ran down the path through the other door and then into the
orchard, and when she stood and looked up there was the tree on the
other side of the wall, and there was the robin just finishing his song
and beginning to preen his feathers with his beak.
"It is the garden," she said. "I am sure it is."
She walked round and looked closely at that side of the orchard wall,
but she only found what she had found before--that there was no door in
it. Then she ran through the kitchen-gardens again and out into the walk
outside the long ivy-covered wall, and she walked to the end of it and
looked at it, but there was no door; and then she walked to the other
end, looking again, but there was no door.
"It's very queer," she said. "Ben Weatherstaff said there was no door
and there is no door. But there must have been one ten years ago,
because Mr. Craven buried the key."
This gave her so much to think of that she began to be quite interested
and feel that she was not sorry that she had come to Misselthwaite
Manor. In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much
about anything. The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begun
to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken her up a little.
She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she sat down to her
supper at night she felt hungry and drowsy and comfortable. She did not
feel cross when Martha chattered away. She felt as if she rather liked
to hear her, and at last she thought she would ask her a question. She
asked it after she had finished her supper and had sat down on the
hearth-rug before the fire.
"Why did Mr. Craven hate the garden?" she said.
She had made Martha stay with her and Martha had not objected at all.
She was very young, and used to a crowded cottage full of brothers and
sisters, and she found it dull in the great servants' hall down-stairs
where the footman and upper-housemaids made fun of her Yorkshire speech
and looked upon her as a common little thing, and sat and whispered
among themselves. Martha liked to talk, and the strange child who had
lived in India, and been waited upon by "blacks," was novelty enough to
attract her.
She sat down on the hearth herself without waiting to be asked.
"Art tha' thinkin' about that garden yet?" she said. "I knew tha' would.
That was just the way with me when I first heard about it."
"Why did he hate it?" Mary persisted.
Martha tucked her feet under her and made herself quite comfortable.
"Listen to th' wind wutherin' round the house," she said. "You could
bare stand up on the moor if you was out on it to-night."
Mary did not know what "wutherin'" meant until she listened, and then
she understood. It must mean that hollow shuddering sort of roar which
rushed round and round the house as if the giant no one could see were
buffeting it and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in.
But one knew he could not get in, and somehow it made one feel very safe
and warm inside a room with a red coal fire.
"But why did he hate it so?" she asked, after she had listened. She
intended to know if Martha did.
Then Martha gave up her store of knowledge.
"Mind," she said, "Mrs. Medlock said it's not to be talked about.
There's lots o' things in this place that's not to be talked over.
That's Mr. Craven's orders. His troubles are none servants' business, he
says. But for th' garden he wouldn't be like he is. It was Mrs. Craven's
garden that she had made when first they were married an' she just loved
it, an' they used to 'tend the flowers themselves. An' none o' th'
gardeners was ever let to go in. Him an' her used to go in an' shut th'
door an' stay there hours an' hours, readin' an' talkin'. An' she was
just a bit of a girl an' there was an old tree with a branch bent like a
seat on it. An' she made roses grow over it an' she used to sit there.
But one day when she was sittin' there th' branch broke an' she fell on
th' ground an' was hurt so bad that next day she died. Th' doctors
thought he'd go out o' his mind an' die, too. That's why he hates it. No
one's never gone in since, an' he won't let any one talk about it."
Mary did not ask any more questions. She looked at the red fire and
listened to the wind "wutherin'." It seemed to be "wutherin'" louder
than ever.
At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things
had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She
had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood
her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had
been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found
out what it was to be sorry for some one. She was getting on.
But as she was listening to the wind she began to listen to something
else. She did not know what it was, because at first she could scarcely
distinguish it from the wind itself. It was a curious sound--it seemed
almost as if a child were crying somewhere. Sometimes the wind sounded
rather like a child crying, but presently Mistress Mary felt quite sure
that this sound was inside the house, not outside it. It was far away,
but it was inside. She turned round and looked at Martha.
"Do you hear any one crying?" she said.
Martha suddenly looked confused.
"No," she answered. "It's th' wind. Sometimes it sounds like as if some
one was lost on th' moor an' wailin'. It's got all sorts o' sounds."
"But listen," said Mary. "It's in the house--down one of those long
corridors."
And at that very moment a door must have been opened somewhere
down-stairs; for a great rushing draft blew along the passage and the
door of the room they sat in was blown open with a crash, and as they
both jumped to their feet the light was blown out and the crying sound
was swept down the far corridor so that it was to be heard more plainly
than ever.
"There!" said Mary. "I told you so! It is some one crying--and it isn't a
grown-up person."
Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key, but before she did it
they both heard the sound of a door in some far passage shutting with a
bang, and then everything was quiet, for even the wind ceased
"wutherin'" for a few moments.
"It was th' wind," said Martha stubbornly. "An' if it wasn't, it was
little Betty Butterworth, th' scullery-maid. She's had th' toothache all
day."
But something troubled and awkward in her manner made Mistress Mary
stare very hard at her. She did not believe she was speaking the truth.
CHAPTER VI
"THERE WAS SOME ONE CRYING--THERE WAS!"
The next day the rain poured down in torrents again, and when Mary
looked out of her window the moor was almost hidden by gray mist and
cloud. There could be no going out to-day.
"What do you do in your cottage when it rains like this?" she asked
Martha.
"Try to keep from under each other's feet mostly," Martha answered. "Eh!
there does seem a lot of us then. Mother's a good-tempered woman but she
gets fair moithered. The biggest ones goes out in th' cow-shed and plays
there. Dickon he doesn't mind th' wet. He goes out just th' same as if
th' sun was shinin'. He says he sees things on rainy days as doesn't
show when it's fair weather. He once found a little fox cub half drowned
in its hole and he brought it home in th' bosom of his shirt to keep it
warm. Its mother had been killed nearby an' th' hole was swum out an'
th' rest o' th' litter was dead. He's got it at home now. He found a
half-drowned young crow another time an' he brought it home, too, an'
tamed it. It's named Soot because it's so black, an' it hops an' flies
about with him everywhere."
The time had come when Mary had forgotten to resent Martha's familiar
talk. She had even begun to find it interesting and to be sorry when she
stopped or went away. The stories she had been told by her Ayah when she
lived in India had been quite unlike those Martha had to tell about the
moorland cottage which held fourteen people who lived in four little
rooms and never had quite enough to eat. The children seemed to tumble
about and amuse themselves like a litter of rough, good-natured collie
puppies. Mary was most attracted by the mother and Dickon. When Martha
told stories of what "mother" said or did they always sounded
comfortable.
"If I had a raven or a fox cub I could play with it," said Mary. "But I
have nothing."
Martha looked perplexed.
"Can tha' knit?" she asked.
"No," answered Mary.
"Can tha' sew?"
"No."
"Can tha' read?"
"Yes."
"Then why doesn't tha' read somethin', or learn a bit o' spellin'?
Tha'st old enough to be learnin' thy book a good bit now."
"I haven't any books," said Mary. "Those I had were left in India."
"That's a pity," said Martha. "If Mrs. Medlock'd let thee go into th'
library, there's thousands o' books there."
Mary did not ask where the library was, because she was suddenly
inspired by a new idea. She made up her mind to go and find it herself.
She was not troubled about Mrs. Medlock. Mrs. Medlock seemed always to
be in her comfortable housekeeper's sitting-room down-stairs. In this
queer place one scarcely ever saw any one at all. In fact, there was no
one to see but the servants, and when their master was away they lived a
luxurious life below stairs, where there was a huge kitchen hung about
with shining brass and pewter, and a large servants' hall where there
were four or five abundant meals eaten every day, and where a great deal
of lively romping went on when Mrs. Medlock was out of the way.
Mary's meals were served regularly, and Martha waited on her, but no one
troubled themselves about her in the least. Mrs. Medlock came and looked
at her every day or two, but no one inquired what she did or told her
what to do. She supposed that perhaps this was the English way of
treating children. In India she had always been attended by her Ayah,
who had followed her about and waited on her, hand and foot. She had
often been tired of her company. Now she was followed by nobody and was
learning to dress herself because Martha looked as though she thought
she was silly and stupid when she wanted to have things handed to her
and put on.
"Hasn't tha' got good sense?" she said once, when Mary had stood waiting
for her to put on her gloves for her. "Our Susan Ann is twice as sharp
as thee an' she's only four year' old. Sometimes tha' looks fair soft in
th' head."
Mary had worn her contrary scowl for an hour after that, but it made her
think several entirely new things.
She stood at the window for about ten minutes this morning after Martha
had swept up the hearth for the last time and gone down-stairs. She was
thinking over the new idea which had come to her when she heard of the
library. She did not care very much about the library itself, because
she had read very few books; but to hear of it brought back to her mind
the hundred rooms with closed doors. She wondered if they were all
really locked and what she would find if she could get into any of them.
Were there a hundred really? Why shouldn't she go and see how many doors
she could count? It would be something to do on this morning when she
could not go out. She had never been taught to ask permission to do
things, and she knew nothing at all about authority, so she would not
have thought it necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she might walk about
the house, even if she had seen her.
She opened the door of the room and went into the corridor, and then she
began her wanderings. It was a long corridor and it branched into other
corridors and it led her up short flights of steps which mounted to
others again. There were doors and doors, and there were pictures on the
walls. Sometimes they were pictures of dark, curious landscapes, but
oftenest they were portraits of men and women in queer, grand costumes
made of satin and velvet. She found herself in one long gallery whose
walls were covered with these portraits. She had never thought there
could be so many in any house. She walked slowly down this place and
stared at the faces which also seemed to stare at her. She felt as if
they were wondering what a little girl from India was doing in their
house. Some were pictures of children--little girls in thick satin
frocks which reached to their feet and stood out about them, and boys
with puffed sleeves and lace collars and long hair, or with big ruffs
around their necks. She always stopped to look at the children, and
wonder what their names were, and where they had gone, and why they wore
such odd clothes. There was a stiff, plain little girl rather like
herself. She wore a green brocade dress and held a green parrot on her
finger. Her eyes had a sharp, curious look.
"Where do you live now?" said Mary aloud to her. "I wish you were here."
Surely no other little girl ever spent such a queer morning. It seemed
as if there was no one in all the huge rambling house but her own small
self, wandering about up-stairs and down, through narrow passages and
wide ones, where it seemed to her that no one but herself had ever
walked. Since so many rooms had been built, people must have lived in
them, but it all seemed so empty that she could not quite believe it
true.
It was not until she climbed to the second floor that she thought of
turning the handle of a door. All the doors were shut, as Mrs. Medlock
had said they were, but at last she put her hand on the handle of one of
them and turned it. She was almost frightened for a moment when she felt
that it turned without difficulty and that when she pushed upon the door
itself it slowly and heavily opened. It was a massive door and opened
into a big bedroom. There were embroidered hangings on the wall, and
inlaid furniture such as she had seen in India stood about the room. A
broad window with leaded panes looked out upon the moor; and over the
mantel was another portrait of the stiff, plain little girl who seemed
to stare at her more curiously than ever.
"Perhaps she slept here once," said Mary. "She stares at me so that she
makes me feel queer."
After that she opened more doors and more. She saw so many rooms that
she became quite tired and began to think that there must be a hundred,
though she had not counted them. In all of them there were old pictures
or old tapestries with strange scenes worked on them. There were curious
pieces of furniture and curious ornaments in nearly all of them.
In one room, which looked like a lady's sitting-room, the hangings were
all embroidered velvet, and in a cabinet were about a hundred little
elephants made of ivory. They were of different sizes, and some had
their mahouts or palanquins on their backs. Some were much bigger than
the others and some were so tiny that they seemed only babies. Mary had
seen carved ivory in India and she knew all about elephants. She opened
the door of the cabinet and stood on a footstool and played with these
for quite a long time. When she got tired she set the elephants in
order and shut the door of the cabinet.
In all her wanderings through the long corridors and the empty rooms,
she had seen nothing alive; but in this room she saw something. Just
after she had closed the cabinet door she heard a tiny rustling sound.
It made her jump and look around at the sofa by the fireplace, from
which it seemed to come. In the corner of the sofa there was a cushion,
and in the velvet which covered it there was a hole, and out of the hole
peeped a tiny head with a pair of frightened eyes in it.
Mary crept softly across the room to look. The bright eyes belonged to a
little gray mouse, and the mouse had eaten a hole into the cushion and
made a comfortable nest there. Six baby mice were cuddled up asleep near
her. If there was no one else alive in the hundred rooms there were
seven mice who did not look lonely at all.
"If they wouldn't be so frightened I would take them back with me," said
Mary.
She had wandered about long enough to feel too tired to wander any
farther, and she turned back. Two or three times she lost her way by
turning down the wrong corridor and was obliged to ramble up and down
until she found the right one; but at last she reached her own floor
again, though she was some distance from her own room and did not know
exactly where she was.
"I believe I have taken a wrong turning again," she said, standing still
at what seemed the end of a short passage with tapestry on the wall. "I
don't know which way to go. How still everything is!"
It was while she was standing here and just after she had said this that
the stillness was broken by a sound. It was another cry, but not quite
like the one she had heard last night; it was only a short one, a
fretful, childish whine muffled by passing through walls.
"It's nearer than it was," said Mary, her heart beating rather faster.
"And it _is_ crying."
She put her hand accidentally upon the tapestry near her, and then
sprang back, feeling quite startled. The tapestry was the covering of a
door which fell open and showed her that there was another part of the
corridor behind it, and Mrs. Medlock was coming up it with her bunch of
keys in her hand and a very cross look on her face.
"What are you doing here?" she said, and she took Mary by the arm and
pulled her away. "What did I tell you?"
"I turned round the wrong corner," explained Mary. "I didn't know which
way to go and I heard some one crying."
She quite hated Mrs. Medlock at the moment, but she hated her more the
next.
"You didn't hear anything of the sort," said the housekeeper. "You come
along back to your own nursery or I'll box your ears."
And she took her by the arm and half pushed, half pulled her up one
passage and down another until she pushed her in at the door of her own
room.
"Now," she said, "you stay where you're told to stay or you'll find
yourself locked up. The master had better get you a governess, same as
he said he would. You're one that needs some one to look sharp after
you. I've got enough to do."
She went out of the room and slammed the door after her, and Mary went
and sat on the hearth-rug, pale with rage. She did not cry, but ground
her teeth.
"There _was_ some one crying--there _was_--there _was_!" she said to
herself.
She had heard it twice now, and sometime she would find out. She had
found out a great deal this morning. She felt as if she had been on a
long journey, and at any rate she had had something to amuse her all the
time, and she had played with the ivory elephants and had seen the gray
mouse and its babies in their nest in the velvet cushion.
CHAPTER VII
THE KEY OF THE GARDEN
Two days after this, when Mary opened her eyes she sat upright in bed
immediately, and called to Martha.
"Look at the moor! Look at the moor!"
The rain-storm had ended and the gray mist and clouds had been swept
away in the night by the wind. The wind itself had ceased and a
brilliant, deep blue sky arched high over the moorland. Never, never had
Mary dreamed of a sky so blue. In India skies were hot and blazing; this
was of a deep cool blue which almost seemed to sparkle like the waters
of some lovely bottomless lake, and here and there, high, high in the
arched blueness floated small clouds of snow-white fleece. The
far-reaching world of the moor itself looked softly blue instead of
gloomy purple-black or awful dreary gray.
"Aye," said Martha with a cheerful grin. "Th' storm's over for a bit. It
does like this at this time o' th' year. It goes off in a night like it
was pretendin' it had never been here an' never meant to come again.
That's because th' springtime's on its way. It's a long way off yet, but
it's comin'."
"I thought perhaps it always rained or looked dark in England," Mary
said.
"Eh! no!" said Martha, sitting up on her heels among her black lead
brushes. "Nowt o' th' soart!"
"What does that mean?" asked Mary seriously. In India the natives spoke
different dialects which only a few people understood, so she was not
surprised when Martha used words she did not know.
Martha laughed as she had done the first morning.
"There now," she said. "I've talked broad Yorkshire again like Mrs. Medlock
said I mustn't. 'Nowt o' th' soart' means 'nothin'-of-the-sort,'" slowly
and carefully, "but it takes so long to say it. Yorkshire's th' sunniest
place on earth when it is sunny. I told thee tha'd like th' moor after a
bit. Just you wait till you see th' gold-colored gorse blossoms an' th'
blossoms o' th' broom, an' th' heather flowerin', all purple bells, an'
hundreds o' butterflies flutterin' an' bees hummin' an' skylarks soarin'
up an' singin'. You'll want to get out on it at sunrise an' live out on
it all day like Dickon does."
"Could I ever get there?" asked Mary wistfully, looking through her
window at the far-off blue. It was so new and big and wonderful and such
a heavenly color.
"I don't know," answered Martha. "Tha's never used tha' legs since tha'
was born, it seems to me. Tha' couldn't walk five mile. It's five mile
to our cottage."
"I should like to see your cottage."
Martha stared at her a moment curiously before she took up her polishing
brush and began to rub the grate again. She was thinking that the small
plain face did not look quite as sour at this moment as it had done the
first morning she saw it. It looked just a trifle like little Susan
Ann's when she wanted something very much.
"I'll ask my mother about it," she said. "She's one o' them that nearly
always sees a way to do things. It's my day out to-day an' I'm goin'
home. Eh! I am glad. Mrs. Medlock thinks a lot o' mother. Perhaps she
could talk to her."
"I like your mother," said Mary.
"I should think tha' did," agreed Martha, polishing away.
"I've never seen her," said Mary.
"No, tha' hasn't," replied Martha.
She sat up on her heels again and rubbed the end of her nose with the
back of her hand as if puzzled for a moment, but she ended quite
positively.
"Well, she's that sensible an' hard workin' an' good-natured an' clean
that no one could help likin' her whether they'd seen her or not. When
I'm goin' home to her on my day out I just jump for joy when I'm
crossin' th' moor."
"I like Dickon," added Mary. "And I've never seen him."
"Well," said Martha stoutly, "I've told thee that th' very birds likes
him an' th' rabbits an' wild sheep an' ponies, an' th' foxes themselves.
I wonder," staring at her reflectively, "what Dickon would think of
thee?"
"He wouldn't like me," said Mary in her stiff, cold little way. "No one
does."
Martha looked reflective again.
"How does tha' like thysel'?" she inquired, really quite as if she were
curious to know.
Mary hesitated a moment and thought it over.
"Not at all--really," she answered. "But I never thought of that
before."
Martha grinned a little as if at some homely recollection.
"Mother said that to me once," she said. "She was at her wash-tub an' I
was in a bad temper an' talkin' ill of folk, an' she turns round on me
an' says: 'Tha' young vixon, tha'! There tha' stands sayin' tha'
doesn't like this one an' tha' doesn't like that one. How does tha' like
thysel'?' It made me laugh an' it brought me to my senses in a minute."
She went away in high spirits as soon as she had given Mary her
breakfast. She was going to walk five miles across the moor to the
cottage, and she was going to help her mother with the washing and do
the week's baking and enjoy herself thoroughly.
Mary felt lonelier than ever when she knew she was no longer in the
house. She went out into the garden as quickly as possible, and the
first thing she did was to run round and round the fountain flower
garden ten times. She counted the times carefully and when she had
finished she felt in better spirits. The sunshine made the whole place
look different. The high, deep, blue sky arched over Misselthwaite as
well as over the moor, and she kept lifting her face and looking up into
it, trying to imagine what it would be like to lie down on one of the
little snow-white clouds and float about. She went into the first
kitchen-garden and found Ben Weatherstaff working there with two other
gardeners. The change in the weather seemed to have done him good. He
spoke to her of his own accord.
"Springtime's comin'," he said. "Cannot tha' smell it?"
Mary sniffed and thought she could.
"I smell something nice and fresh and damp," she said.
"That's th' good rich earth," he answered, digging away. "It's in a good
humor makin' ready to grow things. It's glad when plantin' time comes.
It's dull in th' winter when it's got nowt to do. In th' flower gardens
out there things will be stirrin' down below in th' dark. Th' sun's
warmin' 'em. You'll see bits o' green spikes stickin' out o' th' black
earth after a bit."
"What will they be?" asked Mary.
"Crocuses an' snowdrops an' daffydowndillys. Has tha' never seen them?"
"No. Everything is hot, and wet, and green after the rains in India,"
said Mary. "And I think things grow up in a night."
"These won't grow up in a night," said Weatherstaff. "Tha'll have to
wait for 'em. They'll poke up a bit higher here, an' push out a spike
more there, an' uncurl a leaf this day an' another that. You watch 'em."
"I am going to," answered Mary.
Very soon she heard the soft rustling flight of wings again and she knew
at once that the robin had come again. He was very pert and lively, and
hopped about so close to her feet, and put his head on one side and
looked at her so slyly that she asked Ben Weatherstaff a question.
"Do you think he remembers me?" she said.
"Remembers thee!" said Weatherstaff indignantly. "He knows every cabbage
stump in th' gardens, let alone th' people. He's never seen a little
wench here before, an' he's bent on findin' out all about thee. Tha's no
need to try to hide anything from _him_."
"Are things stirring down below in the dark in that garden where he
lives?" Mary inquired.
"What garden?" grunted Weatherstaff, becoming surly again.
"The one where the old rose-trees are." She could not help asking,
because she wanted so much to know. "Are all the flowers dead, or do
some of them come again in the summer? Are there ever any roses?"
"Ask him," said Ben Weatherstaff, hunching his shoulders toward the
robin. "He's the only one as knows. No one else has seen inside it for
ten year'."
Ten years was a long time, Mary thought. She had been born ten years
ago.
She walked away, slowly thinking. She had begun to like the garden just
as she had begun to like the robin and Dickon and Martha's mother. She
was beginning to like Martha, too. That seemed a good many people to
like--when you were not used to liking. She thought of the robin as one
of the people. She went to her walk outside the long, ivy-covered wall
over which she could see the tree-tops; and the second time she walked
up and down the most interesting and exciting thing happened to her, and
it was all through Ben Weatherstaff's robin.
She heard a chirp and a twitter, and when she looked at the bare
flower-bed at her left side there he was hopping about and pretending to
peck things out of the earth to persuade her that he had not followed
her. But she knew he had followed her and the surprise so filled her
with delight that she almost trembled a little.
"You do remember me!" she cried out. "You do! You are prettier than
anything else in the world!"
She chirped, and talked, and coaxed and he hopped, and flirted his tail
and twittered. It was as if he were talking. His red waistcoat was like
satin and he puffed his tiny breast out and was so fine and so grand and
so pretty that it was really as if he were showing her how important and
like a human person a robin could be. Mistress Mary forgot that she had
ever been contrary in her life when he allowed her to draw closer and
closer to him, and bend down and talk and try to make something like
robin sounds.
Oh! to think that he should actually let her come as near to him as
that! He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand
toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way. He knew it because
he was a real person--only nicer than any other person in the world. She
was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe.
The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers because the
perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest, but there were
tall shrubs and low ones which grew together at the back of the bed, and
as the robin hopped about under them she saw him hop over a small pile
of freshly turned up earth. He stopped on it to look for a worm. The
earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig up a mole
and he had scratched quite a deep hole.
Mary looked at it, not really knowing why the hole was there, and as she
looked she saw something almost buried in the newly-turned soil. It was
something like a ring of rusty iron or brass and when the robin flew up
into a tree nearby she put out her hand and picked the ring up. It was
more than a ring, however; it was an old key which looked as if it had
been buried a long time.
Mistress Mary stood up and looked at it with an almost frightened face
as it hung from her finger.
"Perhaps it has been buried for ten years," she said in a whisper.
"Perhaps it is the key to the garden!"
CHAPTER VIII
THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY
She looked at the key quite a long time. She turned it over and over,
and thought about it. As I have said before, she was not a child who had
been trained to ask permission or consult her elders about things. All
she thought about the key was that if it was the key to the closed
garden, and she could find out where the door was, she could perhaps
open it and see what was inside the walls, and what had happened to the
old rose-trees. It was because it had been shut up so long that she
wanted to see it. It seemed as if it must be different from other places
and that something strange must have happened to it during ten years.
Besides that, if she liked it she could go into it every day and shut
the door behind her, and she could make up some play of her own and play
it quite alone, because nobody would ever know where she was, but would
think the door was still locked and the key buried in the earth. The
thought of that pleased her very much.
Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred
mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse
herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually
awakening her imagination. There is no doubt that the fresh, strong,
pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it. Just as it had
given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her blood,
so the same things had stirred her mind. In India she had always been
too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything, but in this
place she was beginning to care and to want to do new things. Already
she felt less "contrary," though she did not know why.
She put the key in her pocket and walked up and down her walk. No one
but herself ever seemed to come there, so she could walk slowly and look
at the wall, or, rather, at the ivy growing on it. The ivy was the
baffling thing. Howsoever carefully she looked she could see nothing but
thickly-growing, glossy, dark green leaves. She was very much
disappointed. Something of her contrariness came back to her as she
paced the walk and looked over it at the tree-tops inside. It seemed so
silly, she said to herself, to be near it and not be able to get in. She
took the key in her pocket when she went back to the house, and she made
up her mind that she would always carry it with her when she went out,
so that if she ever should find the hidden door she would be ready.
Mrs. Medlock had allowed Martha to sleep all night at the cottage, but
she was back at her work in the morning with cheeks redder than ever and
in the best of spirits.
"I got up at four o'clock," she said. "Eh! it was pretty on th' moor
with th' birds gettin' up an' th' rabbits scamperin' about an' th' sun
risin'. I didn't walk all th' way. A man gave me a ride in his cart an'
I can tell you I did enjoy myself."
She was full of stories of the delights of her day out. Her mother had
been glad to see her and they had got the baking and washing all out of
the way. She had even made each of the children a dough-cake with a bit
of brown sugar in it.
"I had 'em all pipin' hot when they came in from playin' on th' moor.
An' th' cottage all smelt o' nice, clean hot bakin' an' there was a good
fire, an' they just shouted for joy. Our Dickon he said our cottage was
good enough for a king to live in."
In the evening they had all sat round the fire, and Martha and her
mother had sewed patches on torn clothes and mended stockings and Martha
had told them about the little girl who had come from India and who had
been waited on all her life by what Martha called "blacks" until she
didn't know how to put on her own stockings.
"Eh! they did like to hear about you," said Martha. "They wanted to know
all about th' blacks an' about th' ship you came in. I couldn't tell 'em
enough."
Mary reflected a little.
"I'll tell you a great deal more before your next day out," she said,
"so that you will have more to talk about. I dare say they would like to
hear about riding on elephants and camels, and about the officers going
to hunt tigers."
"My word!" cried delighted Martha. "It would set 'em clean off their
heads. Would tha' really do that, Miss? It would be same as a wild beast
show like we heard they had in York once."
"India is quite different from Yorkshire," Mary said slowly, as she
thought the matter over. "I never thought of that. Did Dickon and your
mother like to hear you talk about me?"
"Why, our Dickon's eyes nearly started out o' his head, they got that
round," answered Martha. "But mother, she was put out about your seemin'
to be all by yourself like. She said, 'Hasn't Mr. Craven got no
governess for her, nor no nurse?' and I said, 'No, he hasn't, though
Mrs. Medlock says he will when he thinks of it, but she says he mayn't
think of it for two or three years.'"
"I don't want a governess," said Mary sharply.
"But mother says you ought to be learnin' your book by this time an' you
ought to have a woman to look after you, an' she says: 'Now, Martha, you
just think how you'd feel yourself, in a big place like that, wanderin'
about all alone, an' no mother. You do your best to cheer her up,' she
says, an' I said I would."
Mary gave her a long, steady look.
"You do cheer me up," she said. "I like to hear you talk."
Presently Martha went out of the room and came back with something held
in her hands under her apron.
"What does tha' think," she said, with a cheerful grin. "I've brought
thee a present."
"A present!" exclaimed Mistress Mary. How could a cottage full of
fourteen hungry people give any one a present!
"A man was drivin' across the moor peddlin'," Martha explained. "An' he
stopped his cart at our door. He had pots an' pans an' odds an' ends,
but mother had no money to buy anythin'. Just as he was goin' away our
'Lizabeth Ellen called out, 'Mother, he's got skippin'-ropes with red
an' blue handles.' An' mother she calls out quite sudden, 'Here, stop,
mister! How much are they?' An' he says 'Tuppence,' an' mother she
began fumblin' in her pocket an' she says to me, 'Martha, tha's brought
me thy wages like a good lass, an' I've got four places to put every
penny, but I'm just goin' to take tuppence out of it to buy that child a
skippin'-rope,' an' she bought one an' here it is."
She brought it out from under her apron and exhibited it quite proudly.
It was a strong, slender rope with a striped red and blue handle at each
end, but Mary Lennox had never seen a skipping-rope before. She gazed at
it with a mystified expression.
"What is it for?" she asked curiously.
"For!" cried out Martha. "Does tha' mean that they've not got
skippin'-ropes in India, for all they've got elephants and tigers and
camels! No wonder most of 'em's black. This is what it's for; just watch
me."
And she ran into the middle of the room and, taking a handle in each
hand, began to skip, and skip, and skip, while Mary turned in her chair
to stare at her, and the queer faces in the old portraits seemed to
stare at her, too, and wonder what on earth this common little cottager
had the impudence to be doing under their very noses. But Martha did not
even see them. The interest and curiosity in Mistress Mary's face
delighted her, and she went on skipping and counted as she skipped
until she had reached a hundred.
"I could skip longer than that," she said when she stopped. "I've
skipped as much as five hundred when I was twelve, but I wasn't as fat
then as I am now, an' I was in practice."
Mary got up from her chair beginning to feel excited herself.
"It looks nice," she said. "Your mother is a kind woman. Do you think I
could ever skip like that?"
"You just try it," urged Martha, handing her the skipping-rope. "You
can't skip a hundred at first, but if you practise you'll mount up.
That's what mother said. She says, 'Nothin' will do her more good than
skippin' rope. It's th' sensiblest toy a child can have. Let her play
out in th' fresh air skippin' an' it'll stretch her legs an' arms an'
give her some strength in 'em.'"
It was plain that there was not a great deal of strength in Mistress
Mary's arms and legs when she first began to skip. She was not very
clever at it, but she liked it so much that she did not want to stop.
"Put on tha' things and run an' skip out o' doors," said Martha. "Mother
said I must tell you to keep out o' doors as much as you could, even
when it rains a bit, so as tha' wrap up warm."
Mary put on her coat and hat and took her skipping-rope over her arm.
She opened the door to go out, and then suddenly thought of something
and turned back rather slowly.
"Martha," she said, "they were your wages. It was your twopence really.
Thank you." She said it stiffly because she was not used to thanking
people or noticing that they did things for her. "Thank you," she said,
and held out her hand because she did not know what else to do.
Martha gave her hand a clumsy little shake, as if she was not accustomed
to this sort of thing either. Then she laughed.
"Eh! tha' art a queer, old-womanish thing," she said. "If tha'd been our
'Lizabeth Ellen tha'd have give me a kiss."
Mary looked stiffer than ever.
"Do you want me to kiss you?"
Martha laughed again.
"Nay, not me," she answered. "If tha' was different, p'raps tha'd want
to thysel'. But tha' isn't. Run off outside an' play with thy rope."
Mistress Mary felt a little awkward as she went out of the room.
Yorkshire people seemed strange, and Martha was always rather a puzzle
to her. At first she had disliked her very much, but now she did not.
The skipping-rope was a wonderful thing. She counted and skipped, and
skipped and counted, until her cheeks were quite red, and she was more
interested than she had ever been since she was born. The sun was
shining and a little wind was blowing--not a rough wind, but one which
came in delightful little gusts and brought a fresh scent of newly
turned earth with it. She skipped round the fountain garden, and up one
walk and down another. She skipped at last into the kitchen-garden and
saw Ben Weatherstaff digging and talking to his robin, which was hopping
about him. She skipped down the walk toward him and he lifted his head
and looked at her with a curious expression. She had wondered if he
would notice her. She really wanted him to see her skip.
"Well!" he exclaimed. "Upon my word! P'raps tha' art a young 'un, after
all, an' p'raps tha's got child's blood in thy veins instead of sour
buttermilk. Tha's skipped red into thy cheeks as sure as my name's Ben
Weatherstaff. I wouldn't have believed tha' could do it."
"I never skipped before," Mary said. "I'm just beginning. I can only go
up to twenty."
"Tha' keep on," said Ben. "Tha' shapes well enough at it for a young 'un
that's lived with heathen. Just see how he's watchin' thee," jerking his
head toward the robin. "He followed after thee yesterday. He'll be at
it again to-day. He'll be bound to find out what th' skippin'-rope is.
He's never seen one. Eh!" shaking his head at the bird, "tha' curosity
will be th' death of thee sometime if tha' doesn't look sharp."
Mary skipped round all the gardens and round the orchard, resting every
few minutes. At length she went to her own special walk and made up her
mind to try if she could skip the whole length of it. It was a good long
skip and she began slowly, but before she had gone half-way down the
path she was so hot and breathless that she was obliged to stop. She did
not mind much, because she had already counted up to thirty. She stopped
with a little laugh of pleasure, and there, lo and behold, was the robin
swaying on a long branch of ivy. He had followed her and he greeted her
with a chirp. As Mary had skipped toward him she felt something heavy in
her pocket strike against her at each jump, and when she saw the robin
she laughed again.
"You showed me where the key was yesterday," she said. "You ought to
show me the door to-day; but I don't believe you know!"
The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall
and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show
off. Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when
he shows off--and they are nearly always doing it.
Mary Lennox had heard a great deal about Magic in her Ayah's stories,
and she always said that what happened almost at that moment was Magic.
One of the nice little gusts of wind rushed down the walk, and it was a
stronger one than the rest. It was strong enough to wave the branches of
the trees, and it was more than strong enough to sway the trailing
sprays of untrimmed ivy hanging from the wall. Mary had stepped close to
the robin, and suddenly the gust of wind swung aside some loose ivy
trails, and more suddenly still she jumped toward it and caught it in
her hand. This she did because she had seen something under it--a round
knob which had been covered by the leaves hanging over it. It was the
knob of a door.
She put her hands under the leaves and began to pull and push them
aside. Thick as the ivy hung, it nearly all was a loose and swinging
curtain, though some had crept over wood and iron. Mary's heart began to
thump and her hands to shake a little in her delight and excitement. The
robin kept singing and twittering away and tilting his head on one side,
as if he were as excited as she was. What was this under her hands which
was square and made of iron and which her fingers found a hole in?
It was the lock of the door which had been closed ten years and she put
her hand in her pocket, drew out the key and found it fitted the
keyhole. She put the key in and turned it. It took two hands to do it,
but it did turn.
And then she took a long breath and looked behind her up the long walk
to see if any one was coming. No one was coming. No one ever did come,
it seemed, and she took another long breath, because she could not help
it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the
door which opened slowly--slowly.
Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her
back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with
excitement, and wonder, and delight.
She was standing _inside_ the secret garden.
CHAPTER IX
THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN
It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could
imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless
stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted
together. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen a great
many roses in India. All the ground was covered with grass of a wintry
brown and out of it grew clumps of bushes which were surely rose-bushes
if they were alive. There were numbers of standard roses which had so
spread their branches that they were like little trees. There were other
trees in the garden, and one of the things which made the place look
strangest and loveliest was that climbing roses had run all over them
and swung down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains, and here
and there they had caught at each other or at a far-reaching branch and
had crept from one tree to another and made lovely bridges of
themselves. There were neither leaves nor roses on them now and Mary did
not know whether they were dead or alive, but their thin gray or brown
branches and sprays looked like a sort of hazy mantle spreading over
everything, walls, and trees, and even brown grass, where they had
fallen from their fastenings and run along the ground. It was this hazy
tangle from tree to tree which made it all look so mysterious. Mary had
thought it must be different from other gardens which had not been left
all by themselves so long; and indeed it was different from any other
place she had ever seen in her life.
"How still it is!" she whispered. "How still!"
Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin, who
had flown to his tree-top, was still as all the rest. He did not even
flutter his wings; he sat without stirring, and looked at Mary.
"No wonder it is still," she whispered again. "I am the first person who
has spoken in here for ten years."
She moved away from the door, stepping as softly as if she were afraid
of awakening some one. She was glad that there was grass under her feet
and that her steps made no sounds. She walked under one of the
fairy-like gray arches between the trees and looked up at the sprays and
tendrils which formed them.
"I wonder if they are all quite dead," she said. "Is it all a quite dead
garden? I wish it wasn't."
If she had been Ben Weatherstaff she could have told whether the wood
was alive by looking at it, but she could only see that there were only
gray or brown sprays and branches and none showed any signs of even a
tiny leaf-bud anywhere.
But she was _inside_ the wonderful garden and she could come through the
door under the ivy any time and she felt as if she had found a world all
her own.
The sun was shining inside the four walls and the high arch of blue sky
over this particular piece of Misselthwaite seemed even more brilliant
and soft than it was over the moor. The robin flew down from his
tree-top and hopped about or flew after her from one bush to another. He
chirped a good deal and had a very busy air, as if he were showing her
things. Everything was strange and silent and she seemed to be hundreds
of miles away from any one, but somehow she did not feel lonely at all.
All that troubled her was her wish that she knew whether all the roses
were dead, or if perhaps some of them had lived and might put out leaves
and buds as the weather got warmer. She did not want it to be a quite
dead garden. If it were a quite alive garden, how wonderful it would
be, and what thousands of roses would grow on every side!
Her skipping-rope had hung over her arm when she came in and after she
had walked about for a while she thought she would skip round the whole
garden, stopping when she wanted to look at things. There seemed to have
been grass paths here and there, and in one or two corners there were
alcoves of evergreen with stone seats or tall moss-covered flower urns
in them.
As she came near the second of these alcoves she stopped skipping. There
had once been a flower-bed in it, and she thought she saw something
sticking out of the black earth--some sharp little pale green points.
She remembered what Ben Weatherstaff had said and she knelt down to look
at them.
"Yes, they are tiny growing things and they _might_ be crocuses or
snowdrops or daffodils," she whispered.
She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of the damp
earth. She liked it very much.
"Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other places," she said.
"I will go all over the garden and look."
She did not skip, but walked. She went slowly and kept her eyes on the
ground. She looked in the old border beds and among the grass, and after
she had gone round, trying to miss nothing, she had found ever so many
more sharp, pale green points, and she had become quite excited again.
"It isn't a quite dead garden," she cried out softly to herself. "Even
if the roses are dead, there are other things alive."
She did not know anything about gardening, but the grass seemed so thick
in some of the places where the green points were pushing their way
through that she thought they did not seem to have room enough to grow.
She searched about until she found a rather sharp piece of wood and
knelt down and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until she made
nice little clear places around them.
"Now they look as if they could breathe," she said, after she had
finished with the first ones. "I am going to do ever so many more. I'll
do all I can see. If I haven't time to-day I can come to-morrow."
She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself so
immensely that she was led on from bed to bed and into the grass under
the trees. The exercise made her so warm that she first threw her coat
off, and then her hat, and without knowing it she was smiling down on to
the grass and the pale green points all the time.
The robin was tremendously busy. He was very much pleased to see
gardening begun on his own estate. He had often wondered at Ben
Weatherstaff. Where gardening is done all sorts of delightful things to
eat are turned up with the soil. Now here was this new kind of creature
who was not half Ben's size and yet had had the sense to come into his
garden and begin at once.
Mistress Mary worked in her garden until it was time to go to her midday
dinner. In fact, she was rather late in remembering, and when she put on
her coat and hat, and picked up her skipping-rope, she could not believe
that she had been working two or three hours. She had been actually
happy all the time; and dozens and dozens of the tiny, pale green points
were to be seen in cleared places, looking twice as cheerful as they had
looked before when the grass and weeds had been smothering them.
"I shall come back this afternoon," she said, looking all round at her
new kingdom, and speaking to the trees and the rose-bushes as if they
heard her.
Then she ran lightly across the grass, pushed open the slow old door and
slipped through it under the ivy. She had such red cheeks and such
bright eyes and ate such a dinner that Martha was delighted.
"Two pieces o' meat an' two helps o' rice puddin'!" she said. "Eh!
mother will be pleased when I tell her what th' skippin'-rope's done
for thee."
In the course of her digging with her pointed stick Mistress Mary had
found herself digging up a sort of white root rather like an onion. She
had put it back in its place and patted the earth carefully down on it
and just now she wondered if Martha could tell her what it was.
"Martha," she said, "what are those white roots that look like onions?"
"They're bulbs," answered Martha. "Lots o' spring flowers grow from 'em.
Th' very little ones are snowdrops an' crocuses an' th' big ones are
narcissusis an' jonquils an' daffydowndillys. Th' biggest of all is
lilies an' purple flags. Eh! they are nice. Dickon's got a whole lot of
'em planted in our bit o' garden."
"Does Dickon know all about them?" asked Mary, a new idea taking
possession of her.
"Our Dickon can make a flower grow out of a brick walk. Mother says he
just whispers things out o' th' ground."
"Do bulbs live a long time? Would they live years and years if no one
helped them?" inquired Mary anxiously.
"They're things as helps themselves," said Martha. "That's why poor folk
can afford to have 'em. If you don't trouble 'em, most of 'em'll work
away underground for a lifetime an' spread out an' have little 'uns.
There's a place in th' park woods here where there's snowdrops by
thousands. They're the prettiest sight in Yorkshire when th' spring
comes. No one knows when they was first planted."
"I wish the spring was here now," said Mary. "I want to see all the
things that grow in England."
She had finished her dinner and gone to her favorite seat on the
hearth-rug.
"I wish--I wish I had a little spade," she said.
"Whatever does tha' want a spade for?" asked Martha, laughing. "Art tha'
goin' to take to diggin'? I must tell mother that, too."
Mary looked at the fire and pondered a little. She must be careful if
she meant to keep her secret kingdom. She wasn't doing any harm, but if
Mr. Craven found out about the open door he would be fearfully angry and
get a new key and lock it up forevermore. She really could not bear
that.
"This is such a big lonely place," she said slowly, as if she were
turning matters over in her mind. "The house is lonely, and the park is
lonely, and the gardens are lonely. So many places seem shut up. I never
did many things in India, but there were more people to look at--natives
and soldiers marching by--and sometimes bands playing, and my Ayah told
me stories. There is no one to talk to here except you and Ben
Weatherstaff. And you have to do your work and Ben Weatherstaff won't
speak to me often. I thought if I had a little spade I could dig
somewhere as he does, and I might make a little garden if he would give
me some seeds."
Martha's face quite lighted up.
"There now!" she exclaimed, "if that wasn't one of th' things mother
said. She says, 'There's such a lot o' room in that big place, why don't
they give her a bit for herself, even if she doesn't plant nothin' but
parsley an' radishes? She'd dig an' rake away an' be right down happy
over it.' Them was the very words she said."
"Were they?" said Mary. "How many things she knows, doesn't she?"
"Eh!" said Martha. "It's like she says: 'A woman as brings up twelve
children learns something besides her A B C. Children's as good as
'rithmetic to set you findin' out things.'"
"How much would a spade cost--a little one?" Mary asked.
"Well," was Martha's reflective answer, "at Thwaite village there's a
shop or so an' I saw little garden sets with a spade an' a rake an' a
fork all tied together for two shillings. An' they was stout enough to
work with, too."
"I've got more than that in my purse," said Mary. "Mrs. Morrison gave
me five shillings and Mrs. Medlock gave me some money from Mr. Craven."
"Did he remember thee that much?" exclaimed Martha.
"Mrs. Medlock said I was to have a shilling a week to spend. She gives
me one every Saturday. I didn't know what to spend it on."
"My word! that's riches," said Martha. "Tha' can buy anything in th'
world tha' wants. Th' rent of our cottage is only one an' threepence an'
it's like pullin' eye-teeth to get it. Now I've just thought of
somethin'," putting her hands on her hips.
"What?" said Mary eagerly.
"In the shop at Thwaite they sell packages o' flower-seeds for a penny
each, and our Dickon he knows which is th' prettiest ones an' how to
make 'em grow. He walks over to Thwaite many a day just for th' fun of
it. Does tha' know how to print letters?" suddenly.
"I know how to write," Mary answered.
Martha shook her head.
"Our Dickon can only read printin'. If tha' could print we could write a
letter to him an' ask him to go an' buy th' garden tools an' th' seeds
at th' same time."
"Oh! you're a good girl!" Mary cried. "You are, really! I didn't know
you were so nice. I know I can print letters if I try. Let's ask Mrs.
Medlock for a pen and ink and some paper."
"I've got some of my own," said Martha. "I bought 'em so I could print a
bit of a letter to mother of a Sunday. I'll go and get it."
She ran out of the room, and Mary stood by the fire and twisted her thin
little hands together with sheer pleasure.
"If I have a spade," she whispered, "I can make the earth nice and soft
and dig up weeds. If I have seeds and can make flowers grow the garden
won't be dead at all--it will come alive."
She did not go out again that afternoon because when Martha returned
with her pen and ink and paper she was obliged to clear the table and
carry the plates and dishes down-stairs and when she got into the
kitchen Mrs. Medlock was there and told her to do something, so Mary
waited for what seemed to her a long time before she came back. Then it
was a serious piece of work to write to Dickon. Mary had been taught
very little because her governesses had disliked her too much to stay
with her. She could not spell particularly well but she found that she
could print letters when she tried. This was the letter Martha dictated
to her:
"_My Dear Dickon:_
This comes hoping to find you well as it leaves me
at present. Miss Mary has plenty of money and will
you go to Thwaite and buy her some flower seeds
and a set of garden tools to make a flower-bed.
Pick the prettiest ones and easy to grow because
she has never done it before and lived in India
which is different. Give my love to mother and
every one of you. Miss Mary is going to tell me a
lot more so that on my next day out you can hear
about elephants and camels and gentlemen going
hunting lions and tigers.
"Your loving sister,
"MARTHA PHOEBE SOWERBY."
"We'll put the money in th' envelope an' I'll get th' butcher's boy to
take it in his cart. He's a great friend o' Dickon's," said Martha.
"How shall I get the things when Dickon buys them?" asked Mary.
"He'll bring 'em to you himself. He'll like to walk over this way."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mary, "then I shall see him! I never thought I should
see Dickon."
"Does tha' want to see him?" asked Martha suddenly, she had looked so
pleased.
"Yes, I do. I never saw a boy foxes and crows loved. I want to see him
very much."
Martha gave a little start, as if she suddenly remembered something.
"Now to think," she broke out, "to think o' me forgettin' that there;
an' I thought I was goin' to tell you first thing this mornin'. I asked
mother--and she said she'd ask Mrs. Medlock her own self."
"Do you mean--" Mary began.
"What I said Tuesday. Ask her if you might be driven over to our cottage
some day and have a bit o' mother's hot oat cake, an' butter, an' a
glass o' milk."
It seemed as if all the interesting things were happening in one day. To
think of going over the moor in the daylight and when the sky was blue!
To think of going into the cottage which held twelve children!
"Does she think Mrs. Medlock would let me go?" she asked, quite
anxiously.
"Aye, she thinks she would. She knows what a tidy woman mother is and
how clean she keeps the cottage."
"If I went I should see your mother as well as Dickon," said Mary,
thinking it over and liking the idea very much. "She doesn't seem to be
like the mothers in India."
Her work in the garden and the excitement of the afternoon ended by
making her feel quiet and thoughtful. Martha stayed with her until
tea-time, but they sat in comfortable quiet and talked very little. But
just before Martha went down-stairs for the tea-tray, Mary asked a
question.
"Martha," she said, "has the scullery-maid had the toothache again
to-day?"
Martha certainly started slightly.
"What makes thee ask that?" she said.
"Because when I waited so long for you to come back I opened the door
and walked down the corridor to see if you were coming. And I heard that
far-off crying again, just as we heard it the other night. There isn't a
wind to-day, so you see it couldn't have been the wind."
"Eh!" said Martha restlessly. "Tha' mustn't go walkin' about in
corridors an' listenin'. Mr. Craven would be that there angry there's no
knowin' what he'd do."
"I wasn't listening," said Mary. "I was just waiting for you--and I
heard it. That's three times."
"My word! There's Mrs. Medlock's bell," said Martha, and she almost ran
out of the room.
"It's the strangest house any one ever lived in," said Mary drowsily, as
she dropped her head on the cushioned seat of the armchair near her.
Fresh air, and digging, and skipping-rope had made her feel so
comfortably tired that she fell asleep.
CHAPTER X
DICKON
The sun shone down for nearly a week on the secret garden. The Secret
Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked
the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful
old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like
being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had
read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret
gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them
for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She
had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider
awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite. She was beginning to like
to be out of doors; she no longer hated the wind, but enjoyed it. She
could run faster, and longer, and she could skip up to a hundred. The
bulbs in the secret garden must have been much astonished. Such nice
clear places were made round them that they had all the breathing space
they wanted, and really, if Mistress Mary had known it, they began to
cheer up under the dark earth and work tremendously. The sun could get
at them and warm them, and when the rain came down it could reach them
at once, so they began to feel very much alive.
Mary was an odd, determined little person, and now she had something
interesting to be determined about, she was very much absorbed, indeed.
She worked and dug and pulled up weeds steadily, only becoming more
pleased with her work every hour instead of tiring of it. It seemed to
her like a fascinating sort of play. She found many more of the
sprouting pale green points than she had ever hoped to find. They seemed
to be starting up everywhere and each day she was sure she found tiny
new ones, some so tiny that they barely peeped above the earth. There
were so many that she remembered what Martha had said about the
"snowdrops by the thousands," and about bulbs spreading and making new
ones. These had been left to themselves for ten years and perhaps they
had spread, like the snowdrops, into thousands. She wondered how long it
would be before they showed that they were flowers. Sometimes she
stopped digging to look at the garden and try to imagine what it would
be like when it was covered with thousands of lovely things in bloom.
During that week of sunshine, she became more intimate with Ben
Weatherstaff. She surprised him several times by seeming to start up
beside him as if she sprang out of the earth. The truth was that she was
afraid that he would pick up his tools and go away if he saw her coming,
so she always walked toward him as silently as possible. But, in fact,
he did not object to her as strongly as he had at first. Perhaps he was
secretly rather flattered by her evident desire for his elderly company.
Then, also, she was more civil than she had been. He did not know that
when she first saw him she spoke to him as she would have spoken to a
native, and had not known that a cross, sturdy old Yorkshire man was not
accustomed to salaam to his masters, and be merely commanded by them to
do things.
"Tha'rt like th' robin," he said to her one morning when he lifted his
head and saw her standing by him. "I never knows when I shall see thee
or which side tha'll come from."
"He's friends with me now," said Mary.
"That's like him," snapped Ben Weatherstaff. "Makin' up to th' women
folk just for vanity an' flightiness. There's nothin' he wouldn't do for
th' sake o' showin' off an' flirtin' his tail-feathers. He's as full o'
pride as an egg's full o' meat."
He very seldom talked much and sometimes did not even answer Mary's
questions except by a grunt, but this morning he said more than usual.
He stood up and rested one hobnailed boot on the top of his spade while
he looked her over.
"How long has tha' been here?" he jerked out.
"I think it's about a month," she answered.
"Tha's beginnin' to do Misselthwaite credit," he said. "Tha's a bit
fatter than tha' was an' tha's not quite so yeller. Tha' looked like a
young plucked crow when tha' first came into this garden. Thinks I to
myself I never set eyes on an uglier, sourer faced young 'un."
Mary was not vain and as she had never thought much of her looks she was
not greatly disturbed.
"I know I'm fatter," she said. "My stockings are getting tighter. They
used to make wrinkles. There's the robin, Ben Weatherstaff."
There, indeed, was the robin, and she thought he looked nicer than ever.
His red waistcoat was as glossy as satin and he flirted his wings and
tail and tilted his head and hopped about with all sorts of lively
graces. He seemed determined to make Ben Weatherstaff admire him. But
Ben was sarcastic.
"Aye, there tha' art!" he said. "Tha' can put up with me for a bit
sometimes when tha's got no one better. Tha's been reddinin' up thy
waistcoat an' polishin' thy feathers this two weeks. I know what tha's
up to. Tha's courtin' some bold young madam somewhere, tellin' thy lies
to her about bein' th' finest cock robin on Missel Moor an' ready to
fight all th' rest of 'em."
"Oh! look at him!" exclaimed Mary.
The robin was evidently in a fascinating, bold mood. He hopped closer
and closer and looked at Ben Weatherstaff more and more engagingly. He
flew on to the nearest currant bush and tilted his head and sang a
little song right at him.
"Tha' thinks tha'll get over me by doin' that," said Ben, wrinkling his
face up in such a way that Mary felt sure he was trying not to look
pleased. "Tha' thinks no one can stand out against thee--that's what
tha' thinks."
The robin spread his wings--Mary could scarcely believe her eyes. He
flew right up to the handle of Ben Weatherstaff's spade and alighted on
the top of it. Then the old man's face wrinkled itself slowly into a new
expression. He stood still as if he were afraid to breathe--as if he
would not have stirred for the world, lest his robin should start away.
He spoke quite in a whisper.
"Well, I'm danged!" he said as softly as if he were saying something
quite different. "Tha' does know how to get at a chap--tha' does! Tha's
fair unearthly, tha's so knowin'."
And he stood without stirring--almost without drawing his breath--until
the robin gave another flirt to his wings and flew away. Then he stood
looking at the handle of the spade as if there might be Magic in it, and
then he began to dig again and said nothing for several minutes.
But because he kept breaking into a slow grin now and then, Mary was not
afraid to talk to him.
"Have you a garden of your own?" she asked.
"No. I'm bachelder an' lodge with Martin at th' gate."
"If you had one," said Mary, "what would you plant?"
"Cabbages an' 'taters an' onions."
"But if you wanted to make a flower garden," persisted Mary, "what would
you plant?"
"Bulbs an' sweet-smellin' things--but mostly roses."
Mary's face lighted up.
"Do you like roses?" she said.
Ben Weatherstaff rooted up a weed and threw it aside before he answered.
"Well, yes, I do. I was learned that by a young lady I was gardener to.
She had a lot in a place she was fond of, an' she loved 'em like they
was children--or robins. I've seen her bend over an' kiss 'em." He
dragged out another weed and scowled at it. "That were as much as ten
year' ago."
"Where is she now?" asked Mary, much interested.
"Heaven," he answered, and drove his spade deep into the soil, "'cording
to what parson says."
"What happened to the roses?" Mary asked again, more interested than
ever.
"They was left to themselves."
Mary was becoming quite excited.
"Did they quite die? Do roses quite die when they are left to
themselves?" she ventured.
"Well, I'd got to like 'em--an' I liked her--an' she liked 'em," Ben
Weatherstaff admitted reluctantly. "Once or twice a year I'd go an' work
at 'em a bit--prune 'em an' dig about th' roots. They run wild, but they
was in rich soil, so some of 'em lived."
"When they have no leaves and look gray and brown and dry, how can you
tell whether they are dead or alive?" inquired Mary.
"Wait till th' spring gets at 'em--wait till th' sun shines on th' rain
an' th' rain falls on th' sunshine an' then tha'll find out."
"How--how?" cried Mary, forgetting to be careful.
"Look along th' twigs an' branches an' if tha' sees a bit of a brown
lump swelling here an' there, watch it after th' warm rain an' see what
happens." He stopped suddenly and looked curiously at her eager face.
"Why does tha' care so much about roses an' such, all of a sudden?" he
demanded.
Mistress Mary felt her face grow red. She was almost afraid to answer.
"I--I want to play that--that I have a garden of my own," she stammered.
"I--there is nothing for me to do. I have nothing--and no one."
"Well," said Ben Weatherstaff slowly, as he watched her, "that's true.
Tha' hasn't."
He said it in such an odd way that Mary wondered if he was actually a
little sorry for her. She had never felt sorry for herself; she had only
felt tired and cross, because she disliked people and things so much.
But now the world seemed to be changing and getting nicer. If no one
found out about the secret garden, she should enjoy herself always.
She stayed with him for ten or fifteen minutes longer and asked him as
many questions as she dared. He answered every one of them in his queer
grunting way and he did not seem really cross and did not pick up his
spade and leave her. He said something about roses just as she was
going away and it reminded her of the ones he had said he had been fond
of.
"Do you go and see those other roses now?" she asked.
"Not been this year. My rheumatics has made me too stiff in th' joints."
He said it in his grumbling voice, and then quite suddenly he seemed to
get angry with her, though she did not see why he should.
"Now look here!" he said sharply. "Don't tha' ask so many questions.
Tha'rt th' worst wench for askin' questions I've ever come across. Get
thee gone an' play thee. I've done talkin' for to-day."
And he said it so crossly that she knew there was not the least use in
staying another minute. She went skipping slowly down the outside walk,
thinking him over and saying to herself that, queer as it was, here was
another person whom she liked in spite of his crossness. She liked old
Ben Weatherstaff. Yes, she did like him. She always wanted to try to
make him talk to her. Also she began to believe that he knew everything
in the world about flowers.
There was a laurel-hedged walk which curved round the secret garden and
ended at a gate which opened into a wood, in the park. She thought she
would skip round this walk and look into the wood and see if there were
any rabbits hopping about. She enjoyed the skipping very much and when
she reached the little gate she opened it and went through because she
heard a low, peculiar whistling sound and wanted to find out what it
was.
It was a very strange thing indeed. She quite caught her breath as she
stopped to look at it. A boy was sitting under a tree, with his back
against it, playing on a rough wooden pipe. He was a funny looking boy
about twelve. He looked very clean and his nose turned up and his cheeks
were as red as poppies and never had Mistress Mary seen such round and
such blue eyes in any boy's face. And on the trunk of the tree he leaned
against, a brown squirrel was clinging and watching him, and from behind
a bush nearby a cock pheasant was delicately stretching his neck to peep
out, and quite near him were two rabbits sitting up and sniffing with
tremulous noses--and actually it appeared as if they were all drawing
near to watch him and listen to the strange low little call his pipe
seemed to make.
When he saw Mary he held up his hand and spoke to her in a voice almost
as low as and rather like his piping.
"Don't tha' move," he said. "It'd flight 'em."
Mary remained motionless. He stopped playing his pipe and began to rise
from the ground. He moved so slowly that it scarcely seemed as though he
were moving at all, but at last he stood on his feet and then the
squirrel scampered back up into the branches of his tree, the pheasant
withdrew his head and the rabbits dropped on all fours and began to hop
away, though not at all as if they were frightened.
"I'm Dickon," the boy said. "I know tha'rt Miss Mary."
Then Mary realized that somehow she had known at first that he was
Dickon. Who else could have been charming rabbits and pheasants as the
natives charm snakes in India? He had a wide, red, curving mouth and his
smile spread all over his face.
"I got up slow," he explained, "because if tha' makes a quick move it
startles 'em. A body 'as to move gentle an' speak low when wild things
is about."
He did not speak to her as if they had never seen each other before but
as if he knew her quite well. Mary knew nothing about boys and she spoke
to him a little stiffly because she felt rather shy.
"Did you get Martha's letter?" she asked.
He nodded his curly, rust-colored head.
"That's why I come."
He stooped to pick up something which had been lying on the ground
beside him when he piped.
"I've got th' garden tools. There's a little spade an' rake an' a fork
an' hoe. Eh! they are good 'uns. There's a trowel, too. An' th' woman in
th' shop threw in a packet o' white poppy an' one o' blue larkspur when
I bought th' other seeds."
"Will you show the seeds to me?" Mary said.
She wished she could talk as he did. His speech was so quick and easy.
It sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would not
like him, though he was only a common moor boy, in patched clothes and
with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head. As she came closer to him
she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and
leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them. She liked it very
much and when she looked into his funny face with the red cheeks and
round blue eyes she forgot that she had felt shy.
"Let us sit down on this log and look at them," she said.
They sat down and he took a clumsy little brown paper package out of his
coat pocket. He untied the string and inside there were ever so many
neater and smaller packages with a picture of a flower on each one.
"There's a lot o' mignonette an' poppies," he said. "Mignonette's th'
sweetest smellin' thing as grows, an' it'll grow wherever you cast it,
same as poppies will. Them as'll come up an' bloom if you just whistle
to 'em, them's th' nicest of all."
He stopped and turned his head quickly, his poppy-cheeked face lighting
up.
"Where's that robin as is callin' us?" he said.
The chirp came from a thick holly bush, bright with scarlet berries, and
Mary thought she knew whose it was.
"Is it really calling us?" she asked.
"Aye," said Dickon, as if it was the most natural thing in the world,
"he's callin' some one he's friends with. That's same as sayin' 'Here I
am. Look at me. I wants a bit of a chat.' There he is in the bush. Whose
is he?"
"He's Ben Weatherstaff's, but I think he knows me a little," answered
Mary.
"Aye, he knows thee," said Dickon in his low voice again. "An' he likes
thee. He's took thee on. He'll tell me all about thee in a minute."
He moved quite close to the bush with the slow movement Mary had noticed
before, and then he made a sound almost like the robin's own twitter.
The robin listened a few seconds, intently, and then answered quite as
if he were replying to a question.
"Aye, he's a friend o' yours," chuckled Dickon.
"Do you think he is?" cried Mary eagerly. She did so want to know. "Do
you think he really likes me?"
"He wouldn't come near thee if he didn't," answered Dickon. "Birds is
rare choosers an' a robin can flout a body worse than a man. See, he's
making up to thee now. 'Cannot tha' see a chap?' he's sayin'."
And it really seemed as if it must be true. He so sidled and twittered
and tilted as he hopped on his bush.
"Do you understand everything birds say?" said Mary.
Dickon's grin spread until he seemed all wide, red, curving mouth, and
he rubbed his rough head.
"I think I do, and they think I do," he said. "I've lived on th' moor
with 'em so long. I've watched 'em break shell an' come out an' fledge
an' learn to fly an' begin to sing, till I think I'm one of 'em.
Sometimes I think p'raps I'm a bird, or a fox, or a rabbit, or a
squirrel, or even a beetle, an' I don't know it."
He laughed and came back to the log and began to talk about the flower
seeds again. He told her what they looked like when they were flowers;
he told her how to plant them, and watch them, and feed and water them.
"See here," he said suddenly, turning round to look at her. "I'll plant
them for thee myself. Where is tha' garden?"
Mary's thin hands clutched each other as they lay on her lap. She did
not know what to say, so for a whole minute she said nothing. She had
never thought of this. She felt miserable. And she felt as if she went
red and then pale.
"Tha's got a bit o' garden, hasn't tha'?" Dickon said.
It was true that she had turned red and then pale. Dickon saw her do it,
and as she still said nothing, he began to be puzzled.
"Wouldn't they give thee a bit?" he asked. "Hasn't tha' got any yet?"
She held her hands even tighter and turned her eyes toward him.
"I don't know anything about boys," she said slowly. "Could you keep a
secret, if I told you one? It's a great secret. I don't know what I
should do if any one found it out. I believe I should die!" She said the
last sentence quite fiercely.
Dickon looked more puzzled than ever and even rubbed his hand over his
rough head again, but he answered quite good-humoredly.
"I'm keepin' secrets all th' time," he said. "If I couldn't keep secrets
from th' other lads, secrets about foxes' cubs, an' birds' nests, an'
wild things' holes, there'd be naught safe on th' moor. Aye, I can keep
secrets."
Mistress Mary did not mean to put out her hand and clutch his sleeve but
she did it.
"I've stolen a garden," she said very fast. "It isn't mine. It isn't
anybody's. Nobody wants it, nobody cares for it, nobody ever goes into
it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already; I don't know."
She began to feel hot and as contrary as she had ever felt in her life.
"I don't care, I don't care! Nobody has any right to take it from me
when I care about it and they don't. They're letting it die, all shut in
by itself," she ended passionately, and she threw her arms over her face
and burst out crying--poor little Mistress Mary.
Dickon's curious blue eyes grew rounder and rounder.
"Eh-h-h!" he said, drawing his exclamation out slowly, and the way he
did it meant both wonder and sympathy.
"I've nothing to do," said Mary. "Nothing belongs to me. I found it
myself and I got into it myself. I was only just like the robin, and
they wouldn't take it from the robin."
"Where is it?" asked Dickon in a dropped voice.
Mistress Mary got up from the log at once. She knew she felt contrary
again, and obstinate, and she did not care at all. She was imperious and
Indian, and at the same time hot and sorrowful.
"Come with me and I'll show you," she said.
She led him round the laurel path and to the walk where the ivy grew so
thickly. Dickon followed her with a queer, almost pitying, look on his
face. He felt as if he were being led to look at some strange bird's
nest and must move softly. When she stepped to the wall and lifted the
hanging ivy he started. There was a door and Mary pushed it slowly open
and they passed in together, and then Mary stood and waved her hand
round defiantly.
"It's this," she said. "It's a secret garden, and I'm the only one in
the world who wants it to be alive."
Dickon looked round and round about it, and round and round again.
"Eh!" he almost whispered, "it is a queer, pretty place! It's like as if
a body was in a dream."
CHAPTER XI
THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH
For two or three minutes he stood looking round him, while Mary watched
him, and then he began to walk about softly, even more lightly than Mary
had walked the first time she had found herself inside the four walls.
His eyes seemed to be taking in everything--the gray trees with the gray
creepers climbing over them and hanging from their branches, the tangle
on the walls and among the grass, the evergreen alcoves with the stone
seats and tall flower urns standing in them.
"I never thought I'd see this place," he said at last, in a whisper.
"Did you know about it?" asked Mary.
She had spoken aloud and he made a sign to her.
"We must talk low," he said, "or some one'll hear us an' wonder what's
to do in here."
"Oh! I forgot!" said Mary, feeling frightened and putting her hand
quickly against her mouth. "Did you know about the garden?" she asked
again when she had recovered herself.
Dickon nodded.
"Martha told me there was one as no one ever went inside," he answered.
"Us used to wonder what it was like."
He stopped and looked round at the lovely gray tangle about him, and his
round eyes looked queerly happy.
"Eh! the nests as'll be here come springtime," he said. "It'd be th'
safest nestin' place in England. No one never comin' near an' tangles o'
trees an' roses to build in. I wonder all th' birds on th' moor don't
build here."
Mistress Mary put her hand on his arm again without knowing it.
"Will there be roses?" she whispered. "Can you tell? I thought perhaps
they were all dead."
"Eh! No! Not them--not all of 'em!" he answered. "Look here!"
He stepped over to the nearest tree--an old, old one with gray lichen
all over its bark, but upholding a curtain of tangled sprays and
branches. He took a thick knife out of his pocket and opened one of its
blades.
"There's lots o' dead wood as ought to be cut out," he said. "An'
there's a lot o' old wood, but it made some new last year. This here's a
new bit," and he touched a shoot which looked brownish green instead of
hard, dry gray.
Mary touched it herself in an eager, reverent way.
"That one?" she said. "Is that one quite alive--quite?"
Dickon curved his wide smiling mouth.
"It's as wick as you or me," he said; and Mary remembered that Martha
had told her that "wick" meant "alive" or "lively."
"I'm glad it's wick!" she cried out in her whisper. "I want them all to
be wick. Let us go round the garden and count how many wick ones there
are."
She quite panted with eagerness, and Dickon was as eager as she was.
They went from tree to tree and from bush to bush. Dickon carried his
knife in his hand and showed her things which she thought wonderful.
"They've run wild," he said, "but th' strongest ones has fair thrived on
it. The delicatest ones has died out, but th' others has growed an'
growed, an' spread an' spread, till they's a wonder. See here!" and he
pulled down a thick gray, dry-looking branch. "A body might think this
was dead wood, but I don't believe it is--down to th' root. I'll cut it
low down an' see."
He knelt and with his knife cut the lifeless-looking branch through, not
far above the earth.
"There!" he said exultantly. "I told thee so. There's green in that
wood yet. Look at it."
Mary was down on her knees before he spoke, gazing with all her might.
"When it looks a bit greenish an' juicy like that, it's wick," he
explained. "When th' inside is dry an' breaks easy, like this here piece
I've cut off, it's done for. There's a big root here as all this live
wood sprung out of, an' if th' old wood's cut off an' it's dug round,
an' took care of there'll be--" he stopped and lifted his face to look
up at the climbing and hanging sprays above him--"there'll be a fountain
o' roses here this summer."
They went from bush to bush and from tree to tree. He was very strong
and clever with his knife and knew how to cut the dry and dead wood
away, and could tell when an unpromising bough or twig had still green
life in it. In the course of half an hour Mary thought she could tell
too, and when he cut through a lifeless-looking branch she would cry out
joyfully under her breath when she caught sight of the least shade of
moist green. The spade, and hoe, and fork were very useful. He showed
her how to use the fork while he dug about roots with the spade and
stirred the earth and let the air in.
They were working industriously round one of the biggest standard roses
when he caught sight of something which made him utter an exclamation of
surprise.
"Why!" he cried, pointing to the grass a few feet away. "Who did that
there?"
It was one of Mary's own little clearings round the pale green points.
"I did it," said Mary.
"Why, I thought tha' didn't know nothin' about gardenin'," he exclaimed.
"I don't," she answered, "but they were so little, and the grass was so
thick and strong, and they looked as if they had no room to breathe. So
I made a place for them. I don't even know what they are."
Dickon went and knelt down by them, smiling his wide smile.
"Tha' was right," he said. "A gardener couldn't have told thee better.
They'll grow now like Jack's bean-stalk. They're crocuses an' snowdrops,
an' these here is narcissuses," turning to another patch, "an' here's
daffydowndillys. Eh! they will be a sight."
He ran from one clearing to another.
"Tha' has done a lot o' work for such a little wench," he said, looking
her over.
"I'm growing fatter," said Mary, "and I'm growing stronger. I used
always to be tired. When I dig I'm not tired at all. I like to smell
the earth when it's turned up."
"It's rare good for thee," he said, nodding his head wisely. "There's
naught as nice as th' smell o' good clean earth, except th' smell o'
fresh growin' things when th' rain falls on 'em. I get out on th' moor
many a day when it's rainin' an' I lie under a bush an' listen to th'
soft swish o' drops on th' heather an' I just sniff an' sniff. My nose
end fair quivers like a rabbit's, mother says."
"Do you never catch cold?" inquired Mary, gazing at him wonderingly. She
had never seen such a funny boy, or such a nice one.
"Not me," he said, grinning. "I never ketched cold since I was born. I
wasn't brought up nesh enough. I've chased about th' moor in all
weathers same as th' rabbits does. Mother says I've sniffed up too much
fresh air for twelve year' to ever get to sniffin' with cold. I'm as
tough as a white-thorn knobstick."
He was working all the time he was talking and Mary was following him
and helping him with her fork or the trowel.
"There's a lot of work to do here!" he said once, looking about quite
exultantly.
"Will you come again and help me to do it?" Mary begged. "I'm sure I can
help, too. I can dig and pull up weeds, and do whatever you tell me.
Oh! do come, Dickon!"
"I'll come every day if tha' wants me, rain or shine," he answered
stoutly. "It's th' best fun I ever had in my life--shut in here an'
wakenin' up a garden."
"If you will come," said Mary, "if you will help me to make it alive
I'll--I don't know what I'll do," she ended helplessly. What could you
do for a boy like that?
"I'll tell thee what tha'll do," said Dickon, with his happy grin.
"Tha'll get fat an' tha'll get as hungry as a young fox an' tha'll learn
how to talk to th' robin same as I do. Eh! we'll have a lot o' fun."
He began to walk about, looking up in the trees and at the walls and
bushes with a thoughtful expression.
"I wouldn't want to make it look like a gardener's garden, all clipped
an' spick an' span, would you?" he said. "It's nicer like this with
things runnin' wild, an' swingin' an' catchin' hold of each other."
"Don't let us make it tidy," said Mary anxiously. "It wouldn't seem like
a secret garden if it was tidy."
Dickon stood rubbing his rusty-red head with a rather puzzled look.
"It's a secret garden sure enough," he said, "but seems like some one
besides th' robin must have been in it since it was shut up ten year'
ago."
"But the door was locked and the key was buried," said Mary. "No one
could get in."
"That's true," he answered. "It's a queer place. Seems to me as if
there'd been a bit o' prunin' done here an' there, later than ten year'
ago."
"But how could it have been done?" said Mary.
He was examining a branch of a standard rose and he shook his head.
"Aye! how could it!" he murmured. "With th' door locked an' th' key
buried."
Mistress Mary always felt that however many years she lived she should
never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow. Of
course, it did seem to begin to grow for her that morning. When Dickon
began to clear places to plant seeds, she remembered what Basil had sung
at her when he wanted to tease her.
"Are there any flowers that look like bells?" she inquired.
"Lilies o' th' valley does," he answered, digging away with the trowel,
"an' there's Canterbury bells, an' campanulas."
"Let us plant some," said Mary.
"There's lilies o' th' valley here already; I saw 'em. They'll have
growed too close an' we'll have to separate 'em, but there's plenty. Th'
other ones takes two years to bloom from seed, but I can bring you some
bits o' plants from our cottage garden. Why does tha' want 'em?"
Then Mary told him about Basil and his brothers and sisters in India and
of how she had hated them and of their calling her "Mistress Mary Quite
Contrary."
"They used to dance round and sing at me. They sang--
'Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And marigolds all in a row.'
I just remembered it and it made me wonder if there were really flowers
like silver bells."
She frowned a little and gave her trowel a rather spiteful dig into the
earth.
"I wasn't as contrary as they were."
But Dickon laughed.
"Eh!" he said, and as he crumbled the rich black soil she saw he was
sniffing up the scent of it, "there doesn't seem to be no need for no
one to be contrary when there's flowers an' such like, an' such lots o'
friendly wild things runnin' about makin' homes for themselves, or
buildin' nests an' singin' an' whistlin', does there?"
Mary, kneeling by him holding the seeds, looked at him and stopped
frowning.
"Dickon," she said. "You are as nice as Martha said you were. I like
you, and you make the fifth person. I never thought I should like five
people."
Dickon sat up on his heels as Martha did when she was polishing the
grate. He did look funny and delightful, Mary thought, with his round
blue eyes and red cheeks and happy looking turned-up nose.
"Only five folk as tha' likes?" he said. "Who is th' other four?"
"Your mother and Martha," Mary checked them off on her fingers, "and the
robin and Ben Weatherstaff."
Dickon laughed so that he was obliged to stifle the sound by putting his
arm over his mouth.
"I know tha' thinks I'm a queer lad," he said, "but I think tha' art th'
queerest little lass I ever saw."
Then Mary did a strange thing. She leaned forward and asked him a
question she had never dreamed of asking any one before. And she tried
to ask it in Yorkshire because that was his language, and in India a
native was always pleased if you knew his speech.
"Does tha' like me?" she said.
"Eh!" he answered heartily, "that I does. I likes thee wonderful, an' so
does th' robin, I do believe!"
"That's two, then," said Mary. "That's two for me."
And then they began to work harder than ever and more joyfully. Mary was
startled and sorry when she heard the big clock in the courtyard strike
the hour of her midday dinner.
"I shall have to go," she said mournfully. "And you will have to go too,
won't you?"
Dickon grinned.
"My dinner's easy to carry about with me," he said. "Mother always lets
me put a bit o' somethin' in my pocket."
He picked up his coat from the grass and brought out of a pocket a lumpy
little bundle tied up in a quiet clean, coarse, blue and white
handkerchief. It held two thick pieces of bread with a slice of
something laid between them.
"It's oftenest naught but bread," he said, "but I've got a fine slice o'
fat bacon with it to-day."
Mary thought it looked a queer dinner, but he seemed ready to enjoy it.
"Run on an' get thy victuals," he said. "I'll be done with mine first.
I'll get some more work done before I start back home."
He sat down with his back against a tree.
"I'll call th' robin up," he said, "and give him th' rind o' th' bacon
to peck at. They likes a bit o' fat wonderful."
Mary could scarcely bear to leave him. Suddenly it seemed as if he might
be a sort of wood fairy who might be gone when she came into the garden
again. He seemed too good to be true. She went slowly half-way to the
door in the wall and then she stopped and went back.
"Whatever happens, you--you never would tell?" she said.
His poppy-colored cheeks were distended with his first big bite of bread
and bacon, but he managed to smile encouragingly.
"If tha' was a missel thrush an' showed me where thy nest was, does tha'
think I'd tell any one? Not me," he said. "Tha' art as safe as a missel
thrush."
And she was quite sure she was.
CHAPTER XII
"MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?"
Mary ran so fast that she was rather out of breath when she reached her
room. Her hair was ruffled on her forehead and her cheeks were bright
pink. Her dinner was waiting on the table, and Martha was waiting near
it.
"Tha's a bit late," she said. "Where has tha' been?"
"I've seen Dickon!" said Mary. "I've seen Dickon!"
"I knew he'd come," said Martha exultantly. "How does tha' like him?"
"I think--I think he's beautiful!" said Mary in a determined voice.
Martha looked rather taken aback but she looked pleased, too.
"Well," she said, "he's th' best lad as ever was born, but us never
thought he was handsome. His nose turns up too much."
"I like it to turn up," said Mary.
"An' his eyes is so round," said Martha, a trifle doubtful. "Though
they're a nice color."
"I like them round," said Mary. "And they are exactly the color of the
sky over the moor."
Martha beamed with satisfaction.
"Mother says he made 'em that color with always lookin' up at th' birds
an' th' clouds. But he has got a big mouth, hasn't he, now?"
"I love his big mouth," said Mary obstinately. "I wish mine were just
like it."
Martha chuckled delightedly.
"It'd look rare an' funny in thy bit of a face," she said. "But I knowed
it would be that way when tha' saw him. How did tha' like th' seeds an'
th' garden tools?"
"How did you know he brought them?" asked Mary.
"Eh! I never thought of him not bringin' 'em. He'd be sure to bring 'em
if they was in Yorkshire. He's such a trusty lad."
Mary was afraid that she might begin to ask difficult questions, but she
did not. She was very much interested in the seeds and gardening tools,
and there was only one moment when Mary was frightened. This was when
she began to ask where the flowers were to be planted.
"Who did tha' ask about it?" she inquired.
"I haven't asked anybody yet," said Mary, hesitating.
"Well, I wouldn't ask th' head gardener. He's too grand, Mr. Roach is."
"I've never seen him," said Mary. "I've only seen under-gardeners and
Ben Weatherstaff."
"If I was you, I'd ask Ben Weatherstaff," advised Martha. "He's not half
as bad as he looks, for all he's so crabbed. Mr. Craven lets him do what
he likes because he was here when Mrs. Craven was alive, an' he used to
make her laugh. She liked him. Perhaps he'd find you a corner somewhere
out o' the way."
"If it was out of the way and no one wanted it, no one _could_ mind my
having it, could they?" Mary said anxiously.
"There wouldn't be no reason," answered Martha. "You wouldn't do no
harm."
Mary ate her dinner as quickly as she could and when she rose from the
table she was going to run to her room to put on her hat again, but
Martha stopped her.
"I've got somethin' to tell you," she said. "I thought I'd let you eat
your dinner first. Mr. Craven came back this mornin' and I think he
wants to see you."
Mary turned quite pale.
"Oh!" she said. "Why! Why! He didn't want to see me when I came. I heard
Pitcher say he didn't."
"Well," explained Martha, "Mrs. Medlock says it's because o' mother. She
was walkin' to Thwaite village an' she met him. She'd never spoke to him
before, but Mrs. Craven had been to our cottage two or three times. He'd
forgot, but mother hadn't an' she made bold to stop him. I don't know
what she said to him about you but she said somethin' as put him in th'
mind to see you before he goes away again, to-morrow."
"Oh!" cried Mary, "is he going away to-morrow? I am so glad!"
"He's goin' for a long time. He mayn't come back till autumn or winter.
He's goin' to travel in foreign places. He's always doin' it."
"Oh! I'm so glad--so glad!" said Mary thankfully.
If he did not come back until winter, or even autumn, there would be
time to watch the secret garden come alive. Even if he found out then
and took it away from her she would have had that much at least.
"When do you think he will want to see--"
She did not finish the sentence, because the door opened, and Mrs.
Medlock walked in. She had on her best black dress and cap, and her
collar was fastened with a large brooch with a picture of a man's face
on it. It was a colored photograph of Mr. Medlock who had died years
ago, and she always wore it when she was dressed up. She looked nervous
and excited.
"Your hair's rough," she said quickly. "Go and brush it. Martha, help
her to slip on her best dress. Mr. Craven sent me to bring her to him in
his study."
All the pink left Mary's cheeks. Her heart began to thump and she felt
herself changing into a stiff, plain, silent child again. She did not
even answer Mrs. Medlock, but turned and walked into her bedroom,
followed by Martha. She said nothing while her dress was changed, and
her hair brushed, and after she was quite tidy she followed Mrs. Medlock
down the corridors, in silence. What was there for her to say? She was
obliged to go and see Mr. Craven and he would not like her, and she
would not like him. She knew what he would think of her.
She was taken to a part of the house she had not been into before. At
last Mrs. Medlock knocked at a door, and when some one said, "Come in,"
they entered the room together. A man was sitting in an armchair before
the fire, and Mrs. Medlock spoke to him.
"This is Miss Mary, sir," she said.
"You can go and leave her here. I will ring for you when I want you to
take her away," said Mr. Craven.
When she went out and closed the door, Mary could only stand waiting, a
plain little thing, twisting her thin hands together. She could see that
the man in the chair was not so much a hunchback as a man with high,
rather crooked shoulders, and he had black hair streaked with white. He
turned his head over his high shoulders and spoke to her.
"Come here!" he said.
Mary went to him.
He was not ugly. His face would have been handsome if it had not been so
miserable. He looked as if the sight of her worried and fretted him and
as if he did not know what in the world to do with her.
"Are you well?" he asked.
"Yes," answered Mary.
"Do they take good care of you?"
"Yes."
He rubbed his forehead fretfully as he looked her over.
"You are very thin," he said.
"I am getting fatter," Mary answered in what she knew was her stiffest
way.
What an unhappy face he had! His black eyes seemed as if they scarcely
saw her, as if they were seeing something else, and he could hardly keep
his thoughts upon her.
"I forgot you," he said. "How could I remember you? I intended to send
you a governess or a nurse, or some one of that sort, but I forgot."
"Please," began Mary. "Please--" and then the lump in her throat choked
her.
"What do you want to say?" he inquired.
"I am--I am too big for a nurse," said Mary. "And please--please don't
make me have a governess yet."
He rubbed his forehead again and stared at her.
"That was what the Sowerby woman said," he muttered absent-mindedly.
Then Mary gathered a scrap of courage.
"Is she--is she Martha's mother?" she stammered.
"Yes, I think so," he replied.
"She knows about children," said Mary. "She has twelve. She knows."
He seemed to rouse himself.
"What do you want to do?"
"I want to play out of doors," Mary answered, hoping that her voice did
not tremble. "I never liked it in India. It makes me hungry here, and I
am getting fatter."
He was watching her.
"Mrs. Sowerby said it would do you good. Perhaps it will," he said. "She
thought you had better get stronger before you had a governess."
"It makes me feel strong when I play and the wind comes over the moor,"
argued Mary.
"Where do you play?" he asked next.
"Everywhere," gasped Mary. "Martha's mother sent me a skipping-rope. I
skip and run--and I look about to see if things are beginning to stick
up out of the earth. I don't do any harm."
"Don't look so frightened," he said in a worried voice. "You could not
do any harm, a child like you! You may do what you like."
Mary put her hand up to her throat because she was afraid he might see
the excited lump which she felt jump into it. She came a step nearer to
him.
"May I?" she said tremulously.
Her anxious little face seemed to worry him more than ever.
"Don't look so frightened," he exclaimed. "Of course you may. I am your
guardian, though I am a poor one for any child. I cannot give you time
or attention. I am too ill, and wretched and distracted; but I wish you
to be happy and comfortable. I don't know anything about children, but
Mrs. Medlock is to see that you have all you need. I sent for you to-day
because Mrs. Sowerby said I ought to see you. Her daughter had talked
about you. She thought you needed fresh air and freedom and running
about."
"She knows all about children," Mary said again in spite of herself.
"She ought to," said Mr. Craven. "I thought her rather bold to stop me
on the moor, but she said--Mrs. Craven had been kind to her." It seemed
hard for him to speak his dead wife's name. "She is a respectable woman.
Now I have seen you I think she said sensible things. Play out of doors
as much as you like. It's a big place and you may go where you like and
amuse yourself as you like. Is there anything you want?" as if a sudden
thought had struck him. "Do you want toys, books, dolls?"
"Might I," quavered Mary, "might I have a bit of earth?"
In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and
that they were not the ones she had meant to say. Mr. Craven looked
quite startled.
"Earth!" he repeated. "What do you mean?"
"To plant seeds in--to make things grow--to see them come alive," Mary
faltered.
He gazed at her a moment and then passed his hand quickly over his
eyes.
"Do you--care about gardens so much," he said slowly.
"I didn't know about them in India," said Mary. "I was always ill and
tired and it was too hot. I sometimes made little beds in the sand and
stuck flowers in them. But here it is different."
Mr. Craven got up and began to walk slowly across the room.
"A bit of earth," he said to himself, and Mary thought that somehow she
must have reminded him of something. When he stopped and spoke to her
his dark eyes looked almost soft and kind.
"You can have as much earth as you want," he said. "You remind me of
some one else who loved the earth and things that grow. When you see a
bit of earth you want," with something like a smile, "take it, child,
and make it come alive."
"May I take it from anywhere--if it's not wanted?"
"Anywhere," he answered. "There! You must go now, I am tired." He
touched the bell to call Mrs. Medlock. "Good-by. I shall be away all
summer."
Mrs. Medlock came so quickly that Mary thought she must have been
waiting in the corridor.
"Mrs. Medlock," Mr. Craven said to her, "now I have seen the child I
understand what Mrs. Sowerby meant. She must be less delicate before she
begins lessons. Give her simple, healthy food. Let her run wild in the
garden. Don't look after her too much. She needs liberty and fresh air
and romping about. Mrs. Sowerby is to come and see her now and then and
she may sometimes go to the cottage."
Mrs. Medlock looked pleased. She was relieved to hear that she need not
"look after" Mary too much. She had felt her a tiresome charge and had
indeed seen as little of her as she dared. In addition to this she was
fond of Martha's mother.
"Thank you, sir," she said. "Susan Sowerby and me went to school
together and she's as sensible and good-hearted a woman as you'd find in
a day's walk. I never had any children myself and she's had twelve, and
there never was healthier or better ones. Miss Mary can get no harm from
them. I'd always take Susan Sowerby's advice about children myself.
She's what you might call healthy-minded--if you understand me."
"I understand," Mr. Craven answered. "Take Miss Mary away now and send
Pitcher to me."
When Mrs. Medlock left her at the end of her own corridor Mary flew back
to her room. She found Martha waiting there. Martha had, in fact,
hurried back after she had removed the dinner service.
"I can have my garden!" cried Mary. "I may have it where I like! I am
not going to have a governess for a long time! Your mother is coming to
see me and I may go to your cottage! He says a little girl like me could
not do any harm and I may do what I like--anywhere!"
"Eh!" said Martha delightedly, "that was nice of him wasn't it?"
"Martha," said Mary solemnly, "he is really a nice man, only his face is
so miserable and his forehead is all drawn together."
She ran as quickly as she could to the garden. She had been away so much
longer than she had thought she should and she knew Dickon would have to
set out early on his five-mile walk. When she slipped through the door
under the ivy, she saw he was not working where she had left him. The
gardening tools were laid together under a tree. She ran to them,
looking all round the place, but there was no Dickon to be seen. He had
gone away and the secret garden was empty--except for the robin who had
just flown across the wall and sat on a standard rose-bush watching
her.
"He's gone," she said wofully. "Oh! was he--was he--was he only a wood
fairy?"
Something white fastened to the standard rose-bush caught her eye. It
was a piece of paper--in fact, it was a piece of the letter she had
printed for Martha to send to Dickon. It was fastened on the bush with a
long thorn, and in a minute she knew Dickon had left it there. There
were some roughly printed letters on it and a sort of picture. At first
she could not tell what it was. Then she saw it was meant for a nest
with a bird sitting on it. Underneath were the printed letters and they
said:
"I will cum bak."
CHAPTER XIII
"I AM COLIN"
Mary took the picture back to the house when she went to her supper and
she showed it to Martha.
"Eh!" said Martha with great pride. "I never knew our Dickon was as
clever as that. That there's a picture of a missel thrush on her nest,
as large as life an' twice as natural."
Then Mary knew Dickon had meant the picture to be a message. He had
meant that she might be sure he would keep her secret. Her garden was
her nest and she was like a missel thrush. Oh, how she did like that
queer, common boy!
She hoped he would come back the very next day and she fell asleep
looking forward to the morning.
But you never know what the weather will do in Yorkshire, particularly
in the springtime. She was awakened in the night by the sound of rain
beating with heavy drops against her window. It was pouring down in
torrents and the wind was "wuthering" round the corners and in the
chimneys of the huge old house. Mary sat up in bed and felt miserable
and angry.
"The rain is as contrary as I ever was," she said. "It came because it
knew I did not want it."
She threw herself back on her pillow and buried her face. She did not
cry, but she lay and hated the sound of the heavily beating rain, she
hated the wind and its "wuthering." She could not go to sleep again. The
mournful sound kept her awake because she felt mournful herself. If she
had felt happy it would probably have lulled her to sleep. How it
"wuthered" and how the big rain-drops poured down and beat against the
pane!
"It sounds just like a person lost on the moor and wandering on and on
crying," she said.
* * * * *
She had been lying awake turning from side to side for about an hour,
when suddenly something made her sit up in bed and turn her head toward
the door listening. She listened and she listened.
"It isn't the wind now," she said in a loud whisper. "That isn't the
wind. It is different. It is that crying I heard before."
The door of her room was ajar and the sound came down the corridor, a
far-off faint sound of fretful crying. She listened for a few minutes
and each minute she became more and more sure. She felt as if she must
find out what it was. It seemed even stranger than the secret garden and
the buried key. Perhaps the fact that she was in a rebellious mood made
her bold. She put her foot out of bed and stood on the floor.
"I am going to find out what it is," she said. "Everybody is in bed and
I don't care about Mrs. Medlock--I don't care!"
There was a candle by her bedside and she took it up and went softly out
of the room. The corridor looked very long and dark, but she was too
excited to mind that. She thought she remembered the corners she must
turn to find the short corridor with the door covered with tapestry--the
one Mrs. Medlock had come through the day she lost herself. The sound
had come up that passage. So she went on with her dim light, almost
feeling her way, her heart beating so loud that she fancied she could
hear it. The far-off faint crying went on and led her. Sometimes it
stopped for a moment or so and then began again. Was this the right
corner to turn? She stopped and thought. Yes it was. Down this passage
and then to the left, and then up two broad steps, and then to the right
again. Yes, there was the tapestry door.
She pushed it open very gently and closed it behind her, and she stood
in the corridor and could hear the crying quite plainly, though it was
not loud. It was on the other side of the wall at her left and a few
yards farther on there was a door. She could see a glimmer of light
coming from beneath it. The Someone was crying in that room, and it was
quite a young Someone.
So she walked to the door and pushed it open, and there she was standing
in the room!
It was a big room with ancient, handsome furniture in it. There was a
low fire glowing faintly on the hearth and a night light burning by the
side of a carved four-posted bed hung with brocade, and on the bed was
lying a boy, crying fretfully.
Mary wondered if she was in a real place or if she had fallen asleep
again and was dreaming without knowing it.
The boy had a sharp, delicate face the color of ivory and he seemed to
have eyes too big for it. He had also a lot of hair which tumbled over
his forehead in heavy locks and made his thin face seem smaller. He
looked like a boy who had been ill, but he was crying more as if he were
tired and cross than as if he were in pain.
Mary stood near the door with her candle in her hand, holding her
breath. Then she crept across the room, and as she drew nearer the
light attracted the boy's attention and he turned his head on his pillow
and stared at her, his gray eyes opening so wide that they seemed
immense.
[Illustration: "'WHO ARE YOU?--ARE YOU A GHOST?'"--_Page 157_]
"Who are you?" he said at last in a half-frightened whisper. "Are you a
ghost?"
"No, I am not," Mary answered, her own whisper sounding half frightened.
"Are you one?"
He stared and stared and stared. Mary could not help noticing what
strange eyes he had. They were agate gray and they looked too big for
his face because they had black lashes all round them.
"No," he replied after waiting a moment or so. "I am Colin."
"Who is Colin?" she faltered.
"I am Colin Craven. Who are you?"
"I am Mary Lennox. Mr. Craven is my uncle."
"He is my father," said the boy.
"Your father!" gasped Mary. "No one ever told me he had a boy! Why
didn't they?"
"Come here," he said, still keeping his strange eyes fixed on her with
an anxious expression.
She came close to the bed and he put out his hand and touched her.
"You are real, aren't you?" he said. "I have such real dreams very
often. You might be one of them."
Mary had slipped on a woolen wrapper before she left her room and she
put a piece of it between his fingers.
"Rub that and see how thick and warm it is," she said. "I will pinch you
a little if you like, to show you how real I am. For a minute I thought
you might be a dream too."
"Where did you come from?" he asked.
"From my own room. The wind wuthered so I couldn't go to sleep and I
heard some one crying and wanted to find out who it was. What were you
crying for?"
"Because I couldn't go to sleep either and my head ached. Tell me your
name again."
"Mary Lennox. Did no one ever tell you I had come to live here?"
He was still fingering the fold of her wrapper, but he began to look a
little more as if he believed in her reality.
"No," he answered. "They daren't."
"Why?" asked Mary.
"Because I should have been afraid you would see me. I won't let people
see me and talk me over."
"Why?" Mary asked again, feeling more mystified every moment.
"Because I am like this always, ill and having to lie down. My father
won't let people talk me over either. The servants are not allowed to
speak about me. If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan't live. My
father hates to think I may be like him."
"Oh, what a queer house this is!" Mary said. "What a queer house!
Everything is a kind of secret. Rooms are locked up and gardens are
locked up--and you! Have you been locked up?"
"No. I stay in this room because I don't want to be moved out of it. It
tires me too much."
"Does your father come and see you?" Mary ventured.
"Sometimes. Generally when I am asleep. He doesn't want to see me."
"Why?" Mary could not help asking again.
A sort of angry shadow passed over the boy's face.
"My mother died when I was born and it makes him wretched to look at me.
He thinks I don't know, but I've heard people talking. He almost hates
me."
"He hates the garden, because she died," said Mary half speaking to
herself.
"What garden?" the boy asked.
"Oh! just--just a garden she used to like," Mary stammered. "Have you
been here always?"
"Nearly always. Sometimes I have been taken to places at the seaside,
but I won't stay because people stare at me. I used to wear an iron
thing to keep my back straight, but a grand doctor came from London to
see me and said it was stupid. He told them to take it off and keep me
out in the fresh air. I hate fresh air and I don't want to go out."
"I didn't when first I came here," said Mary. "Why do you keep looking
at me like that?"
"Because of the dreams that are so real," he answered rather fretfully.
"Sometimes when I open my eyes I don't believe I'm awake."
"We're both awake," said Mary. She glanced round the room with its high
ceiling and shadowy corners and dim firelight. "It looks quite like a
dream, and it's the middle of the night, and everybody in the house is
asleep--everybody but us. We are wide awake."
"I don't want it to be a dream," the boy said restlessly.
Mary thought of something all at once.
"If you don't like people to see you," she began, "do you want me to go
away?"
He still held the fold of her wrapper and he gave it a little pull.
"No," he said. "I should be sure you were a dream if you went. If you
are real, sit down on that big footstool and talk. I want to hear about
you."
Mary put down her candle on the table near the bed and sat down on the
cushioned stool. She did not want to go away at all. She wanted to stay
in the mysterious hidden-away room and talk to the mysterious boy.
"What do you want me to tell you?" she said.
He wanted to know how long she had been at Misselthwaite; he wanted to
know which corridor her room was on; he wanted to know what she had been
doing; if she disliked the moor as he disliked it; where she had lived
before she came to Yorkshire. She answered all these questions and many
more and he lay back on his pillow and listened. He made her tell him a
great deal about India and about her voyage across the ocean. She found
out that because he had been an invalid he had not learned things as
other children had. One of his nurses had taught him to read when he was
quite little and he was always reading and looking at pictures in
splendid books.
Though his father rarely saw him when he was awake, he was given all
sorts of wonderful things to amuse himself with. He never seemed to have
been amused, however. He could have anything he asked for and was never
made to do anything he did not like to do.
"Every one is obliged to do what pleases me," he said indifferently. "It
makes me ill to be angry. No one believes I shall live to grow up."
He said it as if he was so accustomed to the idea that it had ceased to
matter to him at all. He seemed to like the sound of Mary's voice. As
she went on talking he listened in a drowsy, interested way. Once or
twice she wondered if he were not gradually falling into a doze. But at
last he asked a question which opened up a new subject.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"I am ten," answered Mary, forgetting herself for the moment, "and so
are you."
"How do you know that?" he demanded in a surprised voice.
"Because when you were born the garden door was locked and the key was
buried. And it has been locked for ten years."
Colin half sat up, turning toward her, leaning on his elbows.
"What garden door was locked? Who did it? Where was the key buried?" he
exclaimed as if he were suddenly very much interested.
"It--it was the garden Mr. Craven hates," said Mary nervously. "He
locked the door. No one--no one knew where he buried the key."
"What sort of a garden is it?" Colin persisted eagerly.
"No one has been allowed to go into it for ten years," was Mary's
careful answer.
But it was too late to be careful. He was too much like herself. He too
had had nothing to think about and the idea of a hidden garden attracted
him as it had attracted her. He asked question after question. Where was
it? Had she never looked for the door? Had she never asked the
gardeners?
"They won't talk about it," said Mary. "I think they have been told not
to answer questions."
"I would make them," said Colin.
"Could you?" Mary faltered, beginning to feel frightened. If he could
make people answer questions, who knew what might happen!
"Every one is obliged to please me. I told you that," he said. "If I
were to live, this place would sometime belong to me. They all know
that. I would make them tell me."
Mary had not known that she herself had been spoiled, but she could see
quite plainly that this mysterious boy had been. He thought that the
whole world belonged to him. How peculiar he was and how coolly he spoke
of not living.
"Do you think you won't live?" she asked, partly because she was
curious and partly in hope of making him forget the garden.
"I don't suppose I shall," he answered as indifferently as he had spoken
before. "Ever since I remember anything I have heard people say I
shan't. At first they thought I was too little to understand and now
they think I don't hear. But I do. My doctor is my father's cousin. He
is quite poor and if I die he will have all Misselthwaite when my father
is dead. I should think he wouldn't want me to live."
"Do you want to live?" inquired Mary.
"No," he answered, in a cross, tired fashion. "But I don't want to die.
When I feel ill I lie here and think about it until I cry and cry."
"I have heard you crying three times," Mary said, "but I did not know
who it was. Were you crying about that?" She did so want him to forget
the garden.
"I dare say," he answered. "Let us talk about something else. Talk about
that garden. Don't you want to see it?"
"Yes," answered Mary, in quite a low voice.
"I do," he went on persistently. "I don't think I ever really wanted to
see anything before, but I want to see that garden. I want the key dug
up. I want the door unlocked. I would let them take me there in my
chair. That would be getting fresh air. I am going to make them open
the door."
He had become quite excited and his strange eyes began to shine like
stars and looked more immense than ever.
"They have to please me," he said. "I will make them take me there and I
will let you go, too."
Mary's hands clutched each other. Everything would be
spoiled--everything! Dickon would never come back. She would never again
feel like a missel thrush with a safe-hidden nest.
"Oh, don't--don't--don't--don't do that!" she cried out.
He stared as if he thought she had gone crazy!
"Why?" he exclaimed. "You said you wanted to see it."
"I do," she answered almost with a sob in her throat, "but if you make
them open the door and take you in like that it will never be a secret
again."
He leaned still farther forward.
"A secret," he said. "What do you mean? Tell me."
Mary's words almost tumbled over one another.
"You see--you see," she panted, "if no one knows but ourselves--if there
was a door, hidden somewhere under the ivy--if there was--and we could
find it; and if we could slip through it together and shut it behind
us, and no one knew any one was inside and we called it our garden and
pretended that--that we were missel thrushes and it was our nest, and if
we played there almost every day and dug and planted seeds and made it
all come alive--"
"Is it dead?" he interrupted her.
"It soon will be if no one cares for it," she went on. "The bulbs will
live but the roses--"
He stopped her again as excited as she was herself.
"What are bulbs?" he put in quickly.
"They are daffodils and lilies and snowdrops. They are working in the
earth now--pushing up pale green points because the spring is coming."
"Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like? You don't see it in
rooms if you are ill."
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine,
and things pushing up and working under the earth," said Mary. "If the
garden was a secret and we could get into it we could watch the things
grow bigger every day, and see how many roses are alive. Don't you see?
Oh, don't you see how much nicer it would be if it was a secret?"
He dropped back on his pillow and lay there with an odd expression on
his face.
"I never had a secret," he said, "except that one about not living to
grow up. They don't know I know that, so it is a sort of secret. But I
like this kind better."
"If you won't make them take you to the garden," pleaded Mary,
"perhaps--I feel almost sure I can find out how to get in sometime. And
then--if the doctor wants you to go out in your chair, and if you can
always do what you want to do, perhaps--perhaps we might find some boy
who would push you, and we could go alone and it would always be a
secret garden."
"I should--like--that," he said very slowly, his eyes looking dreamy. "I
should like that. I should not mind fresh air in a secret garden."
Mary began to recover her breath and feel safer because the idea of
keeping the secret seemed to please him. She felt almost sure that if
she kept on talking and could make him see the garden in his mind as she
had seen it he would like it so much that he could not bear to think
that everybody might tramp into it when they chose.
"I'll tell you what I _think_ it would be like, if we could go into it,"
she said. "It has been shut up so long things have grown into a tangle
perhaps."
He lay quite still and listened while she went on talking about the
roses which _might_ have clambered from tree to tree and hung
down--about the many birds which _might_ have built their nests there
because it was so safe. And then she told him about the robin and Ben
Weatherstaff, and there was so much to tell about the robin and it was
so easy and safe to talk about it that she ceased to feel afraid. The
robin pleased him so much that he smiled until he looked almost
beautiful, and at first Mary had thought that he was even plainer than
herself, with his big eyes and heavy locks of hair.
"I did not know birds could be like that," he said. "But if you stay in
a room you never see things. What a lot of things you know. I feel as if
you had been inside that garden."
She did not know what to say, so she did not say anything. He evidently
did not expect an answer and the next moment he gave her a surprise.
"I am going to let you look at something," he said. "Do you see that
rose-colored silk curtain hanging on the wall over the mantel-piece?"
Mary had not noticed it before, but she looked up and saw it. It was a
curtain of soft silk hanging over what seemed to be some picture.
"Yes," she answered.
"There is a cord hanging from it," said Colin. "Go and pull it."
Mary got up, much mystified, and found the cord. When she pulled it the
silk curtain ran back on rings and when it ran back it uncovered a
picture. It was the picture of a girl with a laughing face. She had
bright hair tied up with a blue ribbon and her gay, lovely eyes were
exactly like Colin's unhappy ones, agate gray and looking twice as big
as they really were because of the black lashes all round them.
"She is my mother," said Colin complainingly. "I don't see why she died.
Sometimes I hate her for doing it."
"How queer!" said Mary.
"If she had lived I believe I should not have been ill always," he
grumbled. "I dare say I should have lived, too. And my father would not
have hated to look at me. I dare say I should have had a strong back.
Draw the curtain again."
Mary did as she was told and returned to her footstool.
"She is much prettier than you," she said, "but her eyes are just like
yours--at least they are the same shape and color. Why is the curtain
drawn over her?"
He moved uncomfortably.
"I made them do it," he said. "Sometimes I don't like to see her looking
at me. She smiles too much when I am ill and miserable. Besides, she is
mine and I don't want every one to see her."
There were a few moments of silence and then Mary spoke.
"What would Mrs. Medlock do if she found out that I had been here?" she
inquired.
"She would do as I told her to do," he answered. "And I should tell her
that I wanted you to come here and talk to me every day. I am glad you
came."
"So am I," said Mary. "I will come as often as I can, but"--she
hesitated--"I shall have to look every day for the garden door."
"Yes, you must," said Colin, "and you can tell me about it afterward."
He lay thinking a few minutes, as he had done before, and then he spoke
again.
"I think you shall be a secret, too," he said. "I will not tell them
until they find out. I can always send the nurse out of the room and say
that I want to be by myself. Do you know Martha?"
"Yes, I know her very well," said Mary. "She waits on me."
He nodded his head toward the outer corridor.
"She is the one who is asleep in the other room. The nurse went away
yesterday to stay all night with her sister and she always makes Martha
attend to me when she wants to go out. Martha shall tell you when to
come here."
Then Mary understood Martha's troubled look when she had asked
questions about the crying.
"Martha knew about you all the time?" she said.
"Yes; she often attends to me. The nurse likes to get away from me and
then Martha comes."
"I have been here a long time," said Mary. "Shall I go away now? Your
eyes look sleepy."
"I wish I could go to sleep before you leave me," he said rather shyly.
"Shut your eyes," said Mary, drawing her footstool closer, "and I will
do what my Ayah used to do in India. I will pat your hand and stroke it
and sing something quite low."
"I should like that perhaps," he said drowsily.
Somehow she was sorry for him and did not want him to lie awake, so she
leaned against the bed and began to stroke and pat his hand and sing a
very low little chanting song in Hindustani.
"That is nice," he said more drowsily still, and she went on chanting
and stroking, but when she looked at him again his black lashes were
lying close against his cheeks, for his eyes were shut and he was fast
asleep. So she got up softly, took her candle and crept away without
making a sound.
CHAPTER XIV
A YOUNG RAJAH
The moor was hidden in mist when the morning came and the rain had not
stopped pouring down. There could be no going out of doors. Martha was
so busy that Mary had no opportunity of talking to her, but in the
afternoon she asked her to come and sit with her in the nursery. She
came bringing the stocking she was always knitting when she was doing
nothing else.
"What's the matter with thee?" she asked as soon as they sat down. "Tha'
looks as if tha'd somethin' to say."
"I have. I have found out what the crying was," said Mary.
Martha let her knitting drop on her knee and gazed at her with startled
eyes.
"Tha' hasn't!" she exclaimed. "Never!"
"I heard it in the night," Mary went on. "And I got up and went to see
where it came from. It was Colin. I found him."
Martha's face became red with fright.
"Eh! Miss Mary!" she said half crying. "Tha' shouldn't have done
it--tha' shouldn't! Tha'll get me in trouble. I never told thee nothin'
about him--but tha'll get me in trouble. I shall lose my place and
what'll mother do!"
"You won't lose your place," said Mary. "He was glad I came. We talked
and talked and he said he was glad I came."
"Was he?" cried Martha. "Art tha' sure? Tha' doesn't know what he's like
when anything vexes him. He's a big lad to cry like a baby, but when
he's in a passion he'll fair scream just to frighten us. He knows us
daren't call our souls our own."
"He wasn't vexed," said Mary. "I asked him if I should go away and he
made me stay. He asked me questions and I sat on a big footstool and
talked to him about India and about the robin and gardens. He wouldn't
let me go. He let me see his mother's picture. Before I left him I sang
him to sleep."
Martha fairly gasped with amazement.
"I can scarcely believe thee!" she protested. "It's as if tha'd walked
straight into a lion's den. If he'd been like he is most times he'd have
throwed himself into one of his tantrums and roused th' house. He won't
let strangers look at him."
"He let me look at him. I looked at him all the time and he looked at
me. We stared!" said Mary.
"I don't know what to do!" cried agitated Martha. "If Mrs. Medlock finds
out, she'll think I broke orders and told thee and I shall be packed
back to mother."
"He is not going to tell Mrs. Medlock anything about it yet. It's to be
a sort of secret just at first," said Mary firmly. "And he says
everybody is obliged to do as he pleases."
"Aye, that's true enough--th' bad lad!" sighed Martha, wiping her
forehead with her apron.
"He says Mrs. Medlock must. And he wants me to come and talk to him
every day. And you are to tell me when he wants me."
"Me!" said Martha; "I shall lose my place--I shall for sure!"
"You can't if you are doing what he wants you to do and everybody is
ordered to obey him," Mary argued.
"Does tha' mean to say," cried Martha with wide open eyes, "that he was
nice to thee!"
"I think he almost liked me," Mary answered.
"Then tha' must have bewitched him!" decided Martha, drawing a long
breath.
"Do you mean Magic?" inquired Mary. "I've heard about Magic in India,
but I can't make it. I just went into his room and I was so surprised
to see him I stood and stared. And then he turned round and stared at
me. And he thought I was a ghost or a dream and I thought perhaps he
was. And it was so queer being there alone together in the middle of the
night and not knowing about each other. And we began to ask each other
questions. And when I asked him if I must go away he said I must not."
"Th' world's comin' to a end!" gasped Martha.
"What is the matter with him?" asked Mary.
"Nobody knows for sure and certain," said Martha. "Mr. Craven went off
his head like when he was born. Th' doctors thought he'd have to be put
in a 'sylum. It was because Mrs. Craven died like I told you. He
wouldn't set eyes on th' baby. He just raved and said it'd be another
hunchback like him and it'd better die."
"Is Colin a hunchback?" Mary asked. "He didn't look like one."
"He isn't yet," said Martha. "But he began all wrong. Mother said that
there was enough trouble and raging in th' house to set any child wrong.
They was afraid his back was weak an' they've always been takin' care of
it--keepin' him lyin' down and not lettin' him walk. Once they made him
wear a brace but he fretted so he was downright ill. Then a big doctor
came to see him an' made them take it off. He talked to th' other doctor
quite rough--in a polite way. He said there'd been too much medicine and
too much lettin' him have his own way."
"I think he's a very spoiled boy," said Mary.
"He's th' worst young nowt as ever was!" said Martha. "I won't say as he
hasn't been ill a good bit. He's had coughs an' colds that's nearly
killed him two or three times. Once he had rheumatic fever an' once he
had typhoid. Eh! Mrs. Medlock did get a fright then. He'd been out of
his head an' she was talkin' to th' nurse, thinkin' he didn't know
nothin', an' she said, 'He'll die this time sure enough, an' best thing
for him an' for everybody.' An' she looked at him an' there he was with
his big eyes open, starin' at her as sensible as she was herself. She
didn't know what'd happen but he just stared at her an' says, 'You give
me some water an' stop talkin'.'"
"Do you think he will die?" asked Mary.
"Mother says there's no reason why any child should live that gets no
fresh air an' doesn't do nothin' but lie on his back an' read
picture-books an' take medicine. He's weak and hates th' trouble o'
bein' taken out o' doors, an' he gets cold so easy he says it makes him
ill."
Mary sat and looked at the fire.
"I wonder," she said slowly, "if it would not do him good to go out into
a garden and watch things growing. It did me good."
"One of th' worst fits he ever had," said Martha, "was one time they
took him out where the roses is by the fountain. He'd been readin' in a
paper about people gettin' somethin' he called 'rose cold' an' he began
to sneeze an' said he'd got it an' then a new gardener as didn't know
th' rules passed by an' looked at him curious. He threw himself into a
passion an' he said he'd looked at him because he was going to be a
hunchback. He cried himself into a fever an' was ill all night."
"If he ever gets angry at me, I'll never go and see him again," said
Mary.
"He'll have thee if he wants thee," said Martha. "Tha' may as well know
that at th' start."
Very soon afterward a bell rang and she rolled up her knitting.
"I dare say th' nurse wants me to stay with him a bit," she said. "I
hope he's in a good temper."
She was out of the room about ten minutes and then she came back with a
puzzled expression.
"Well, tha' has bewitched him," she said. "He's up on his sofa with his
picture-books. He's told the nurse to stay away until six o'clock. I'm
to wait in the next room. Th' minute she was gone he called me to him
an' says, 'I want Mary Lennox to come and talk to me, and remember
you're not to tell any one.' You'd better go as quick as you can."
Mary was quite willing to go quickly. She did not want to see Colin as
much as she wanted to see Dickon, but she wanted to see him very much.
There was a bright fire on the hearth when she entered his room, and in
the daylight she saw it was a very beautiful room indeed. There were
rich colors in the rugs and hangings and pictures and books on the walls
which made it look glowing and comfortable even in spite of the gray sky
and falling rain. Colin looked rather like a picture himself. He was
wrapped in a velvet dressing-gown and sat against a big brocaded
cushion. He had a red spot on each cheek.
"Come in," he said. "I've been thinking about you all morning."
"I've been thinking about you, too," answered Mary. "You don't know how
frightened Martha is. She says Mrs. Medlock will think she told me about
you and then she will be sent away."
He frowned.
"Go and tell her to come here," he said. "She is in the next room."
Mary went and brought her back. Poor Martha was shaking in her shoes.
Colin was still frowning.
"Have you to do what I please or have you not?" he demanded.
"I have to do what you please, sir," Martha faltered, turning quite red.
"Has Medlock to do what I please?"
"Everybody has, sir," said Martha.
"Well, then, if I order you to bring Miss Mary to me, how can Medlock
send you away if she finds it out?"
"Please don't let her, sir," pleaded Martha.
"I'll send _her_ away if she dares to say a word about such a thing,"
said Master Craven grandly. "She wouldn't like that, I can tell you."
"Thank you, sir," bobbing a curtsy, "I want to do my duty, sir."
"What I want is your duty," said Colin more grandly still. "I'll take
care of you. Now go away."
When the door closed behind Martha, Colin found Mistress Mary gazing at
him as if he had set her wondering.
"Why do you look at me like that?" he asked her. "What are you thinking
about?"
"I am thinking about two things."
"What are they? Sit down and tell me."
"This is the first one," said Mary, seating herself on the big stool.
"Once in India I saw a boy who was a Rajah. He had rubies and emeralds
and diamonds stuck all over him. He spoke to his people just as you
spoke to Martha. Everybody had to do everything he told them--in a
minute. I think they would have been killed if they hadn't."
"I shall make you tell me about Rajahs presently," he said, "but first
tell me what the second thing was."
"I was thinking," said Mary, "how different you are from Dickon."
"Who is Dickon?" he said. "What a queer name!"
She might as well tell him, she thought. She could talk about Dickon
without mentioning the secret garden. She had liked to hear Martha talk
about him. Besides, she longed to talk about him. It would seem to bring
him nearer.
"He is Martha's brother. He is twelve years old," she explained. "He is
not like any one else in the world. He can charm foxes and squirrels and
birds just as the natives in India charm snakes. He plays a very soft
tune on a pipe and they come and listen."
There were some big books on a table at his side and he dragged one
suddenly toward him.
"There is a picture of a snake-charmer in this," he exclaimed. "Come and
look at it."
The book was a beautiful one with superb colored illustrations and he
turned to one of them.
"Can he do that?" he asked eagerly.
"He played on his pipe and they listened," Mary explained. "But he
doesn't call it Magic. He says it's because he lives on the moor so much
and he knows their ways. He says he feels sometimes as if he was a bird
or a rabbit himself, he likes them so. I think he asked the robin
questions. It seemed as if they talked to each other in soft chirps."
Colin lay back on his cushion and his eyes grew larger and larger and
the spots on his cheeks burned.
"Tell me some more about him," he said.
"He knows all about eggs and nests," Mary went on. "And he knows where
foxes and badgers and otters live. He keeps them secret so that other
boys won't find their holes and frighten them. He knows about everything
that grows or lives on the moor."
"Does he like the moor?" said Colin. "How can he when it's such a great,
bare, dreary place?"
"It's the most beautiful place," protested Mary. "Thousands of lovely
things grow on it and there are thousands of little creatures all busy
building nests and making holes and burrows and chippering or singing
or squeaking to each other. They are so busy and having such fun under
the earth or in the trees or heather. It's their world."
"How do you know all that?" said Colin, turning on his elbow to look at
her.
"I have never been there once, really," said Mary suddenly remembering.
"I only drove over it in the dark. I thought it was hideous. Martha told
me about it first and then Dickon. When Dickon talks about it you feel
as if you saw things and heard them and as if you were standing in the
heather with the sun shining and the gorse smelling like honey--and all
full of bees and butterflies."
"You never see anything if you are ill," said Colin restlessly. He
looked like a person listening to a new sound in the distance and
wondering what it was.
"You can't if you stay in a room," said Mary.
"I couldn't go on the moor," he said in a resentful tone.
Mary was silent for a minute and then she said something bold.
"You might--sometime."
He moved as if he were startled.
"Go on the moor! How could I? I am going to die."
"How do you know?" said Mary unsympathetically. She didn't like the way
he had of talking about dying. She did not feel very sympathetic. She
felt rather as if he almost boasted about it.
"Oh, I've heard it ever since I remember," he answered crossly. "They
are always whispering about it and thinking I don't notice. They wish I
would, too."
Mistress Mary felt quite contrary. She pinched her lips together.
"If they wished I would," she said, "I wouldn't. Who wishes you would?"
"The servants--and of course Dr. Craven because he would get
Misselthwaite and be rich instead of poor. He daren't say so, but he
always looks cheerful when I am worse. When I had typhoid fever his face
got quite fat. I think my father wishes it, too."
"I don't believe he does," said Mary quite obstinately.
That made Colin turn and look at her again.
"Don't you?" he said.
And then he lay back on his cushion and was still, as if he were
thinking. And there was quite a long silence. Perhaps they were both of
them thinking strange things children do not usually think of.
"I like the grand doctor from London, because he made them take the iron
thing off," said Mary at last. "Did he say you were going to die?"
"No."
"What did he say?"
"He didn't whisper," Colin answered. "Perhaps he knew I hated
whispering. I heard him say one thing quite aloud. He said, 'The lad
might live if he would make up his mind to it. Put him in the humor.' It
sounded as if he was in a temper."
"I'll tell you who would put you in the humor, perhaps," said Mary
reflecting. She felt as if she would like this thing to be settled one
way or the other. "I believe Dickon would. He's always talking about
live things. He never talks about dead things or things that are ill.
He's always looking up in the sky to watch birds flying--or looking down
at the earth to see something growing. He has such round blue eyes and
they are so wide open with looking about. And he laughs such a big laugh
with his wide mouth--and his cheeks are as red--as red as cherries."
She pulled her stool nearer to the sofa and her expression quite changed
at the remembrance of the wide curving mouth and wide open eyes.
"See here," she said. "Don't let us talk about dying; I don't like it.
Let us talk about living. Let us talk and talk about Dickon. And then we
will look at your pictures."
It was the best thing she could have said. To talk about Dickon meant to
talk about the moor and about the cottage and the fourteen people who
lived in it on sixteen shillings a week--and the children who got fat on
the moor grass like the wild ponies. And about Dickon's mother--and the
skipping-rope--and the moor with the sun on it--and about pale green
points sticking up out of the black sod. And it was all so alive that
Mary talked more than she had ever talked before--and Colin both talked
and listened as he had never done either before. And they both began to
laugh over nothings as children will when they are happy together. And
they laughed so that in the end they were making as much noise as if
they had been two ordinary healthy natural ten-year-old
creatures--instead of a hard, little, unloving girl and a sickly boy who
believed that he was going to die.
They enjoyed themselves so much that they forgot the pictures and they
forgot about the time. They had been laughing quite loudly over Ben
Weatherstaff and his robin and Colin was actually sitting up as if he
had forgotten about his weak back when he suddenly remembered
something.
"Do you know there is one thing we have never once thought of," he said.
"We are cousins."
It seemed so queer that they had talked so much and never remembered
this simple thing that they laughed more than ever, because they had got
into the humor to laugh at anything. And in the midst of the fun the
door opened and in walked Dr. Craven and Mrs. Medlock.
Dr. Craven started in actual alarm and Mrs. Medlock almost fell back
because he had accidentally bumped against her.
"Good Lord!" exclaimed poor Mrs. Medlock, with her eyes almost starting
out of her head. "Good Lord!"
"What is this?" said Dr. Craven, coming forward. "What does it mean?"
Then Mary was reminded of the boy Rajah again. Colin answered as if
neither the doctor's alarm nor Mrs. Medlock's terror were of the
slightest consequence. He was as little disturbed or frightened as if an
elderly cat and dog had walked into the room.
"This is my cousin, Mary Lennox," he said. "I asked her to come and talk
to me. I like her. She must come and talk to me whenever I send for
her."
Dr. Craven turned reproachfully to Mrs. Medlock.
"Oh, sir," she panted. "I don't know how it's happened. There's not a
servant on the place that'd dare to talk--they all have their orders."
"Nobody told her anything," said Colin, "she heard me crying and found
me herself. I am glad she came. Don't be silly, Medlock."
Mary saw that Dr. Craven did not look pleased, but it was quite plain
that he dare not oppose his patient. He sat down by Colin and felt his
pulse.
"I am afraid there has been too much excitement. Excitement is not good
for you, my boy," he said.
"I should be excited if she kept away," answered Colin, his eyes
beginning to look dangerously sparkling. "I am better. She makes me
better. The nurse must bring up her tea with mine. We will have tea
together."
Mrs. Medlock and Dr. Craven looked at each other in a troubled way, but
there was evidently nothing to be done.
"He does look rather better, sir," ventured Mrs. Medlock.
"But"--thinking the matter over--"he looked better this morning before
she came into the room."
"She came into the room last night. She stayed with me a long time. She
sang a Hindustani song to me and it made me go to sleep," said Colin. "I
was better when I wakened up. I wanted my breakfast. I want my tea now.
Tell nurse, Medlock."
Dr. Craven did not stay very long. He talked to the nurse for a few
minutes when she came into the room and said a few words of warning to
Colin. He must not talk too much; he must not forget that he was ill; he
must not forget that he was very easily tired. Mary thought that there
seemed to be a number of uncomfortable things he was not to forget.
Colin looked fretful and kept his strange black-lashed eyes fixed on Dr.
Craven's face.
"I _want_ to forget it," he said at last. "She makes me forget it. That
is why I want her."
Dr. Craven did not look happy when he left the room. He gave a puzzled
glance at the little girl sitting on the large stool. She had become a
stiff, silent child again as soon as he entered and he could not see
what the attraction was. The boy actually did look brighter,
however--and he sighed rather heavily as he went down the corridor.
"They are always wanting me to eat things when I don't want to," said
Colin, as the nurse brought in the tea and put it on the table by the
sofa. "Now, if you'll eat I will. Those muffins look so nice and hot.
Tell me about Rajahs."
CHAPTER XV
NEST BUILDING
After another week of rain the high arch of blue sky appeared again and
the sun which poured down was quite hot. Though there had been no chance
to see either the secret garden or Dickon, Mistress Mary had enjoyed
herself very much. The week had not seemed long. She had spent hours of
every day with Colin in his room, talking about Rajahs or gardens or
Dickon and the cottage on the moor. They had looked at the splendid
books and pictures and sometimes Mary had read things to Colin, and
sometimes he had read a little to her. When he was amused and interested
she thought he scarcely looked like an invalid at all, except that his
face was so colorless and he was always on the sofa.
"You are a sly young one to listen and get out of your bed to go
following things up like you did that night," Mrs. Medlock said once.
"But there's no saying it's not been a sort of blessing to the lot of
us. He's not had a tantrum or a whining fit since you made friends. The
nurse was just going to give up the case because she was so sick of
him, but she says she doesn't mind staying now you've gone on duty with
her," laughing a little.
In her talks with Colin, Mary had tried to be very cautious about the
secret garden. There were certain things she wanted to find out from
him, but she felt that she must find them out without asking him direct
questions. In the first place, as she began to like to be with him, she
wanted to discover whether he was the kind of boy you could tell a
secret to. He was not in the least like Dickon, but he was evidently so
pleased with the idea of a garden no one knew anything about that she
thought perhaps he could be trusted. But she had not known him long
enough to be sure. The second thing she wanted to find out was this: If
he could be trusted--if he really could--wouldn't it be possible to take
him to the garden without having any one find it out? The grand doctor
had said that he must have fresh air and Colin had said that he would
not mind fresh air in a secret garden. Perhaps if he had a great deal of
fresh air and knew Dickon and the robin and saw things growing he might
not think so much about dying. Mary had seen herself in the glass
sometimes lately when she had realized that she looked quite a different
creature from the child she had seen when she arrived from India. This
child looked nicer. Even Martha had seen a change in her.
"Th' air from th' moor has done thee good already," she had said.
"Tha'rt not nigh so yeller and tha'rt not nigh so scrawny. Even tha'
hair doesn't slamp down on tha' head so flat. It's got some life in it
so as it sticks out a bit."
"It's like me," said Mary. "It's growing stronger and fatter. I'm sure
there's more of it."
"It looks it, for sure," said Martha, ruffling it up a little round her
face. "Tha'rt not half so ugly when it's that way an' there's a bit o'
red in tha' cheeks."
If gardens and fresh air had been good for her perhaps they would be
good for Colin. But then, if he hated people to look at him, perhaps he
would not like to see Dickon.
"Why does it make you angry when you are looked at?" she inquired one
day.
"I always hated it," he answered, "even when I was very little. Then
when they took me to the seaside and I used to lie in my carriage
everybody used to stare and ladies would stop and talk to my nurse and
then they would begin to whisper and I knew then they were saying I
shouldn't live to grow up. Then sometimes the ladies would pat my
cheeks and say 'Poor child!' Once when a lady did that I screamed out
loud and bit her hand. She was so frightened she ran away."
"She thought you had gone mad like a dog," said Mary, not at all
admiringly.
"I don't care what she thought," said Colin, frowning.
"I wonder why you didn't scream and bite me when I came into your room?"
said Mary. Then she began to smile slowly.
"I thought you were a ghost or a dream," he said. "You can't bite a
ghost or a dream, and if you scream they don't care."
"Would you hate it if--if a boy looked at you?" Mary asked uncertainly.
He lay back on his cushion and paused thoughtfully.
"There's one boy," he said quite slowly, as if he were thinking over
every word, "there's one boy I believe I shouldn't mind. It's that boy
who knows where the foxes live--Dickon."
"I'm sure you wouldn't mind him," said Mary.
"The birds don't and other animals," he said, still thinking it over,
"perhaps that's why I shouldn't. He's a sort of animal charmer and I am
a boy animal."
Then he laughed and she laughed too; in fact it ended in their both
laughing a great deal and finding the idea of a boy animal hiding in
his hole very funny indeed.
What Mary felt afterward was that she need not fear about Dickon.
* * * * *
On that first morning when the sky was blue again Mary wakened very
early. The sun was pouring in slanting rays through the blinds and there
was something so joyous in the sight of it that she jumped out of bed
and ran to the window. She drew up the blinds and opened the window
itself and a great waft of fresh, scented air blew in upon her. The moor
was blue and the whole world looked as if something Magic had happened
to it. There were tender little fluting sounds here and there and
everywhere, as if scores of birds were beginning to tune up for a
concert. Mary put her hand out of the window and held it in the sun.
"It's warm--warm!" she said. "It will make the green points push up and
up and up, and it will make the bulbs and roots work and struggle with
all their might under the earth."
She kneeled down and leaned out of the window as far as she could,
breathing big breaths and sniffing the air until she laughed because she
remembered what Dickon's mother had said about the end of his nose
quivering like a rabbit's.
"It must be very early," she said. "The little clouds are all pink and
I've never seen the sky look like this. No one is up. I don't even hear
the stable boys."
A sudden thought made her scramble to her feet.
"I can't wait! I am going to see the garden!"
She had learned to dress herself by this time and she put on her clothes
in five minutes. She knew a small side door which she could unbolt
herself and she flew down-stairs in her stocking feet and put on her
shoes in the hall. She unchained and unbolted and unlocked and when the
door was open she sprang across the step with one bound, and there she
was standing on the grass, which seemed to have turned green, and with
the sun pouring down on her and warm sweet wafts about her and the
fluting and twittering and singing coming from every bush and tree. She
clasped her hands for pure joy and looked up in the sky and it was so
blue and pink and pearly and white and flooded with springtime light
that she felt as if she must flute and sing aloud herself and knew that
thrushes and robins and skylarks could not possibly help it. She ran
around the shrubs and paths toward the secret garden.
"It is all different already," she said. "The grass is greener and
things are sticking up everywhere and things are uncurling and green
buds of leaves are showing. This afternoon I am sure Dickon will come."
The long warm rain had done strange things to the herbaceous beds which
bordered the walk by the lower wall. There were things sprouting and
pushing out from the roots of clumps of plants and there were actually
here and there glimpses of royal purple and yellow unfurling among the
stems of crocuses. Six months before Mistress Mary would not have seen
how the world was waking up, but now she missed nothing.
When she had reached the place where the door hid itself under the ivy,
she was startled by a curious loud sound. It was the caw--caw of a crow
and it came from the top of the wall, and when she looked up, there sat
a big glossy-plumaged blue-black bird, looking down at her very wisely
indeed. She had never seen a crow so close before and he made her a
little nervous, but the next moment he spread his wings and flapped away
across the garden. She hoped he was not going to stay inside and she
pushed the door open wondering if he would. When she got fairly into the
garden she saw that he probably did intend to stay because he had
alighted on a dwarf apple-tree, and under the apple-tree was lying a
little reddish animal with a bushy tail, and both of them were watching
the stooping body and rust-red head of Dickon, who was kneeling on the
grass working hard.
Mary flew across the grass to him.
"Oh, Dickon! Dickon!" she cried out. "How could you get here so early!
How could you! The sun has only just got up!"
He got up himself, laughing and glowing, and tousled; his eyes like a
bit of the sky.
"Eh!" he said. "I was up long before him. How could I have stayed abed!
Th' world's all fair begun again this mornin', it has. An' it's workin'
an' hummin' an' scratchin' an' pipin' an' nest-buildin' an' breathin'
out scents, till you've got to be out on it 'stead o' lyin' on your
back. When th' sun did jump up, th' moor went mad for joy, an' I was in
the midst of th' heather, an' I run like mad myself, shoutin' an'
singin'. An' I come straight here. I couldn't have stayed away. Why, th'
garden was lyin' here waitin'!"
Mary put her hands on her chest, panting, as if she had been running
herself.
"Oh, Dickon! Dickon!" she said. "I'm so happy I can scarcely breathe!"
Seeing him talking to a stranger, the little bushy-tailed animal rose
from its place under the tree and came to him, and the rook, cawing
once, flew down from its branch and settled quietly on his shoulder.
"This is th' little fox cub," he said, rubbing the little reddish
animal's head. "It's named Captain. An' this here's Soot. Soot he flew
across th' moor with me an' Captain he run same as if th' hounds had
been after him. They both felt same as I did."
Neither of the creatures looked as if he were the least afraid of Mary.
When Dickon began to walk about, Soot stayed on his shoulder and Captain
trotted quietly close to his side.
"See here!" said Dickon. "See how these has pushed up, an' these an'
these! An' Eh! look at these here!"
He threw himself upon his knees and Mary went down beside him. They had
come upon a whole clump of crocuses burst into purple and orange and
gold. Mary bent her face down and kissed and kissed them.
"You never kiss a person in that way," she said when she lifted her
head. "Flowers are so different."
He looked puzzled but smiled.
"Eh!" he said, "I've kissed mother many a time that way when I come in
from th' moor after a day's roamin' an' she stood there at th' door in
th' sun, lookin' so glad an' comfortable."
They ran from one part of the garden to another and found so many
wonders that they were obliged to remind themselves that they must
whisper or speak low. He showed her swelling leaf-buds on rose branches
which had seemed dead. He showed her ten thousand new green points
pushing through the mould. They put their eager young noses close to the
earth and sniffed its warmed springtime breathing; they dug and pulled
and laughed low with rapture until Mistress Mary's hair was as tumbled
as Dickon's and her cheeks were almost as poppy red as his.
There was every joy on earth in the secret garden that morning, and in
the midst of them came a delight more delightful than all, because it
was more wonderful. Swiftly something flew across the wall and darted
through the trees to a close grown corner, a little flare of
red-breasted bird with something hanging from its beak. Dickon stood
quite still and put his hand on Mary almost as if they had suddenly
found themselves laughing in a church.
"We munnot stir," he whispered in broad Yorkshire. "We munnot scarce
breathe. I knowed he was mate-huntin' when I seed him last. It's Ben
Weatherstaff's robin. He's buildin' his nest. He'll stay here if us
don't flight him."
They settled down softly upon the grass and sat there without moving.
"Us mustn't seem as if us was watchin' him too close," said Dickon.
"He'd be out with us for good if he got th' notion us was interferin'
now. He'll be a good bit different till all this is over. He's settin'
up housekeepin'. He'll be shyer an' readier to take things ill. He's got
no time for visitin' an' gossipin'. Us must keep still a bit an' try to
look as if us was grass an' trees an' bushes. Then when he's got used to
seein' us I'll chirp a bit an' he'll know us'll not be in his way."
Mistress Mary was not at all sure that she knew, as Dickon seemed to,
how to try to look like grass and trees and bushes. But he had said the
queer thing as if it were the simplest and most natural thing in the
world, and she felt it must be quite easy to him, and indeed she watched
him for a few minutes carefully, wondering if it was possible for him to
quietly turn green and put out branches and leaves. But he only sat
wonderfully still, and when he spoke dropped his voice to such a
softness that it was curious that she could hear him, but she could.
"It's part o' th' springtime, this nest-buildin' is," he said. "I
warrant it's been goin' on in th' same way every year since th' world
was begun. They've got their way o' thinkin' and doin' things an' a
body had better not meddle. You can lose a friend in springtime easier
than any other season if you're too curious."
"If we talk about him I can't help looking at him," Mary said as softly
as possible. "We must talk of something else. There is something I want
to tell you."
"He'll like it better if us talks o' somethin' else," said Dickon. "What
is it tha's got to tell me?"
"Well--do you know about Colin?" she whispered.
He turned his head to look at her.
"What does tha' know about him?" he asked.
"I've seen him. I have been to talk to him every day this week. He wants
me to come. He says I'm making him forget about being ill and dying,"
answered Mary.
Dickon looked actually relieved as soon as the surprise died away from
his round face.
"I am glad o' that," he exclaimed. "I'm right down glad. It makes me
easier. I knowed I must say nothin' about him an' I don't like havin' to
hide things."
"Don't you like hiding the garden?" said Mary.
"I'll never tell about it," he answered. "But I says to mother,
'Mother,' I says, 'I got a secret to keep. It's not a bad 'un, tha'
knows that. It's no worse than hidin' where a bird's nest is. Tha'
doesn't mind it, does tha'?'"
Mary always wanted to hear about mother.
"What did she say?" she asked, not at all afraid to hear.
Dickon grinned sweet-temperedly.
"It was just like her, what she said," he answered. "She give my head a
bit of a rub an' laughed an' she says, 'Eh, lad, tha' can have all th'
secrets tha' likes. I've knowed thee twelve year'.'"
"How did you know about Colin?" asked Mary.
"Everybody as knowed about Mester Craven knowed there was a little lad
as was like to be a cripple, an' they knowed Mester Craven didn't like
him to be talked about. Folks is sorry for Mester Craven because Mrs.
Craven was such a pretty young lady an' they was so fond of each other.
Mrs. Medlock stops in our cottage whenever she goes to Thwaite an' she
doesn't mind talkin' to mother before us children, because she knows us
has been brought up to be trusty. How did tha' find out about him?
Martha was in fine trouble th' last time she came home. She said tha'd
heard him frettin' an' tha' was askin' questions an' she didn't know
what to say."
Mary told him her story about the midnight wuthering of the wind which
had wakened her and about the faint far-off sounds of the complaining
voice which had led her down the dark corridors with her candle and had
ended with her opening of the door of the dimly lighted room with the
carven four-posted bed in the corner. When she described the small
ivory-white face and the strange black-rimmed eyes Dickon shook his
head.
"Them's just like his mother's eyes, only hers was always laughin', they
say," he said. "They say as Mr. Craven can't bear to see him when he's
awake an' it's because his eyes is so like his mother's an' yet looks so
different in his miserable bit of a face."
"Do you think he wants him to die?" whispered Mary.
"No, but he wishes he'd never been born. Mother she says that's th'
worst thing on earth for a child. Them as is not wanted scarce ever
thrives. Mester Craven he'd buy anythin' as money could buy for th' poor
lad but he'd like to forget as he's on earth. For one thing, he's afraid
he'll look at him some day and find he's growed hunchback."
"Colin's so afraid of it himself that he won't sit up," said Mary. "He
says he's always thinking that if he should feel a lump coming he
should go crazy and scream himself to death."
"Eh! he oughtn't to lie there thinkin' things like that," said Dickon.
"No lad could get well as thought them sort o' things."
The fox was lying on the grass close by him looking up to ask for a pat
now and then, and Dickon bent down and rubbed his neck softly and
thought a few minutes in silence. Presently he lifted his head and
looked round the garden.
"When first we got in here," he said, "it seemed like everything was
gray. Look round now and tell me if tha' doesn't see a difference."
Mary looked and caught her breath a little.
"Why!" she cried, "the gray wall is changing. It is as if a green mist
were creeping over it. It's almost like a green gauze veil."
"Aye," said Dickon. "An' it'll be greener and greener till th' gray's
all gone. Can tha' guess what I was thinkin'?"
"I know it was something nice," said Mary eagerly. "I believe it was
something about Colin."
"I was thinkin' that if he was out here he wouldn't be watchin' for
lumps to grow on his back; he'd be watchin' for buds to break on th'
rose-bushes, an' he'd likely be healthier," explained Dickon. "I was
wonderin' if us could ever get him in th' humor to come out here an'
lie under th' trees in his carriage."
"I've been wondering that myself. I've thought of it almost every time
I've talked to him," said Mary. "I've wondered if he could keep a secret
and I've wondered if we could bring him here without any one seeing us.
I thought perhaps you could push his carriage. The doctor said he must
have fresh air and if he wants us to take him out no one dare disobey
him. He won't go out for other people and perhaps they will be glad if
he will go out with us. He could order the gardeners to keep away so
they wouldn't find out."
Dickon was thinking very hard as he scratched Captain's back.
"It'd be good for him, I'll warrant," he said. "Us'd not be thinkin'
he'd better never been born. Us'd be just two children watchin' a garden
grow, an' he'd be another. Two lads an' a little lass just lookin' on at
th' springtime. I warrant it'd be better than doctor's stuff."
"He's been lying in his room so long and he's always been so afraid of
his back that it has made him queer," said Mary. "He knows a good many
things out of books but he doesn't know anything else. He says he has
been too ill to notice things and he hates going out of doors and hates
gardens and gardeners. But he likes to hear about this garden because
it is a secret. I daren't tell him much but he said he wanted to see
it."
"Us'll have him out here sometime for sure," said Dickon. "I could push
his carriage well enough. Has tha' noticed how th' robin an' his mate
has been workin' while we've been sittin' here? Look at him perched on
that branch wonderin' where it'd be best to put that twig he's got in
his beak."
He made one of his low whistling calls and the robin turned his head and
looked at him inquiringly, still holding his twig. Dickon spoke to him
as Ben Weatherstaff did, but Dickon's tone was one of friendly advice.
"Wheres'ever tha' puts it," he said, "it'll be all right. Tha' knew how
to build tha' nest before tha' came out o' th' egg. Get on with thee,
lad. Tha'st got no time to lose."
"Oh, I do like to hear you talk to him!" Mary said, laughing
delightedly. "Ben Weatherstaff scolds him and makes fun of him, and he
hops about and looks as if he understood every word, and I know he likes
it. Ben Weatherstaff says he is so conceited he would rather have stones
thrown at him than not be noticed."
Dickon laughed too and went on talking.
"Tha' knows us won't trouble thee," he said to the robin. "Us is near
bein' wild things ourselves. Us is nest-buildin' too, bless thee. Look
out tha' doesn't tell on us."
And though the robin did not answer, because his beak was occupied, Mary
knew that when he flew away with his twig to his own corner of the
garden the darkness of his dew-bright eye meant that he would not tell
their secret for the world.
CHAPTER XVI
"I WON'T!" SAID MARY
They found a great deal to do that morning and Mary was late in
returning to the house and was also in such a hurry to get back to her
work that she quite forgot Colin until the last moment.
"Tell Colin that I can't come and see him yet," she said to Martha. "I'm
very busy in the garden."
Martha looked rather frightened.
"Eh! Miss Mary," she said, "it may put him all out of humor when I tell
him that."
But Mary was not as afraid of him as other people were and she was not a
self-sacrificing person.
"I can't stay," she answered. "Dickon's waiting for me;" and she ran
away.
The afternoon was even lovelier and busier than the morning had been.
Already nearly all the weeds were cleared out of the garden and most of
the roses and trees had been pruned or dug about. Dickon had brought a
spade of his own and he had taught Mary to use all her tools, so that
by this time it was plain that though the lovely wild place was not
likely to become a "gardener's garden" it would be a wilderness of
growing things before the springtime was over.
"There'll be apple blossoms an' cherry blossoms overhead," Dickon said,
working away with all his might. "An' there'll be peach an' plum trees
in bloom against th' walls, an' th' grass'll be a carpet o' flowers."
The little fox and the rook were as happy and busy as they were, and the
robin and his mate flew backward and forward like tiny streaks of
lightning. Sometimes the rook flapped his black wings and soared away
over the tree-tops in the park. Each time he came back and perched near
Dickon and cawed several times as if he were relating his adventures,
and Dickon talked to him just as he had talked to the robin. Once when
Dickon was so busy that he did not answer him at first, Soot flew on to
his shoulders and gently tweaked his ear with his large beak. When Mary
wanted to rest a little Dickon sat down with her under a tree and once
he took his pipe out of his pocket and played the soft strange little
notes and two squirrels appeared on the wall and looked and listened.
"Tha's a good bit stronger than tha' was," Dickon said, looking at her
as she was digging. "Tha's beginning to look different, for sure."
Mary was glowing with exercise and good spirits.
"I'm getting fatter and fatter every day," she said quite exultantly.
"Mrs. Medlock will have to get me some bigger dresses. Martha says my
hair is growing thicker. It isn't so flat and stringy."
The sun was beginning to set and sending deep gold-colored rays slanting
under the trees when they parted.
"It'll be fine to-morrow," said Dickon. "I'll be at work by sunrise."
"So will I," said Mary.
* * * * *
She ran back to the house as quickly as her feet would carry her. She
wanted to tell Colin about Dickon's fox cub and the rook and about what
the springtime had been doing. She felt sure he would like to hear. So
it was not very pleasant when she opened the door of her room, to see
Martha standing waiting for her with a doleful face.
"What is the matter?" she asked. "What did Colin say when you told him I
couldn't come?"
"Eh!" said Martha, "I wish tha'd gone. He was nigh goin' into one o'
his tantrums. There's been a nice to do all afternoon to keep him quiet.
He would watch the clock all th' time."
Mary's lips pinched themselves together. She was no more used to
considering other people than Colin was and she saw no reason why an
ill-tempered boy should interfere with the thing she liked best. She
knew nothing about the pitifulness of people who had been ill and
nervous and who did not know that they could control their tempers and
need not make other people ill and nervous, too. When she had had a
headache in India she had done her best to see that everybody else also
had a headache or something quite as bad. And she felt she was quite
right; but of course now she felt that Colin was quite wrong.
He was not on his sofa when she went into his room. He was lying flat on
his back in bed and he did not turn his head toward her as she came in.
This was a bad beginning and Mary marched up to him with her stiff
manner.
"Why didn't you get up?" she said.
"I did get up this morning when I thought you were coming," he answered,
without looking at her. "I made them put me back in bed this afternoon.
My back ached and my head ached and I was tired. Why didn't you come?"
"I was working in the garden with Dickon," said Mary.
Colin frowned and condescended to look at her.
"I won't let that boy come here if you go and stay with him instead of
coming to talk to me," he said.
Mary flew into a fine passion. She could fly into a passion without
making a noise. She just grew sour and obstinate and did not care what
happened.
"If you send Dickon away, I'll never come into this room again!" she
retorted.
"You'll have to if I want you," said Colin.
"I won't!" said Mary.
"I'll make you," said Colin, "They shall drag you in."
"Shall they, Mr. Rajah!" said Mary fiercely. "They may drag me in but
they can't make me talk when they get me here. I'll sit and clench my
teeth and never tell you one thing. I won't even look at you. I'll stare
at the floor!"
They were a nice agreeable pair as they glared at each other. If they
had been two little street boys they would have sprung at each other and
had a rough-and-tumble fight. As it was, they did the next thing to it.
"You are a selfish thing!" cried Colin.
"What are you?" said Mary. "Selfish people always say that. Any one is
selfish who doesn't do what they want. You're more selfish than I am.
You're the most selfish boy I ever saw."
"I'm not!" snapped Colin. "I'm not as selfish as your fine Dickon is! He
keeps you playing in the dirt when he knows I am all by myself. He's
selfish, if you like!"
Mary's eyes flashed fire.
"He's nicer than any other boy that ever lived!" she said. "He's--he's
like an angel!" It might sound rather silly to say that but she did not
care.
"A nice angel!" Colin sneered ferociously. "He's a common cottage boy
off the moor!"
"He's better than a common Rajah!" retorted Mary. "He's a thousand times
better!"
Because she was the stronger of the two she was beginning to get the
better of him. The truth was that he had never had a fight with any one
like himself in his life and, upon the whole, it was rather good for
him, though neither he nor Mary knew anything about that. He turned his
head on his pillow and shut his eyes and a big tear was squeezed out and
ran down his cheek. He was beginning to feel pathetic and sorry for
himself--not for any one else.
"I'm not as selfish as you, because I'm always ill, and I'm sure there
is a lump coming on my back," he said. "And I am going to die besides."
"You're not!" contradicted Mary unsympathetically.
He opened his eyes quite wide with indignation. He had never heard such
a thing said before. He was at once furious and slightly pleased, if a
person could be both at the same time.
"I'm not?" he cried. "I am! You know I am! Everybody says so."
"I don't believe it!" said Mary sourly. "You just say that to make
people sorry. I believe you're proud of it. I don't believe it! If you
were a nice boy it might be true--but you're too nasty!"
In spite of his invalid back Colin sat up in bed in quite a healthy
rage.
"Get out of the room!" he shouted and he caught hold of his pillow and
threw it at her. He was not strong enough to throw it far and it only
fell at her feet, but Mary's face looked as pinched as a nutcracker.
"I'm going," she said. "And I won't come back!"
She walked to the door and when she reached it she turned round and
spoke again.
"I was going to tell you all sorts of nice things," she said. "Dickon
brought his fox and his rook and I was going to tell you all about
them. Now I won't tell you a single thing!"
She marched out of the door and closed it behind her, and there to her
great astonishment she found the trained nurse standing as if she had
been listening and, more amazing still--she was laughing. She was a big
handsome young woman who ought not to have been a trained nurse at all,
as she could not bear invalids and she was always making excuses to
leave Colin to Martha or any one else who would take her place. Mary had
never liked her, and she simply stood and gazed up at her as she stood
giggling into her handkerchief.
"What are you laughing at?" she asked her.
"At you two young ones," said the nurse. "It's the best thing that could
happen to the sickly pampered thing to have some one to stand up to him
that's as spoiled as himself;" and she laughed into her handkerchief
again. "If he'd had a young vixen of a sister to fight with it would
have been the saving of him."
"Is he going to die?"
"I don't know and I don't care," said the nurse. "Hysterics and temper
are half what ails him."
"What are hysterics?" asked Mary.
"You'll find out if you work him into a tantrum after this--but at any
rate you've given him something to have hysterics about, and I'm glad
of it."
Mary went back to her room not feeling at all as she had felt when she
had come in from the garden. She was cross and disappointed but not at
all sorry for Colin. She had looked forward to telling him a great many
things and she had meant to try to make up her mind whether it would be
safe to trust him with the great secret. She had been beginning to think
it would be, but now she had changed her mind entirely. She would never
tell him and he could stay in his room and never get any fresh air and
die if he liked! It would serve him right! She felt so sour and
unrelenting that for a few minutes she almost forgot about Dickon and
the green veil creeping over the world and the soft wind blowing down
from the moor.
Martha was waiting for her and the trouble in her face had been
temporarily replaced by interest and curiosity. There was a wooden box
on the table and its cover had been removed and revealed that it was
full of neat packages.
"Mr. Craven sent it to you," said Martha. "It looks as if it had
picture-books in it."
Mary remembered what he had asked her the day she had gone to his room.
"Do you want anything--dolls--toys--books?" She opened the package
wondering if he had sent a doll, and also wondering what she should do
with it if he had. But he had not sent one. There were several beautiful
books such as Colin had, and two of them were about gardens and were
full of pictures. There were two or three games and there was a
beautiful little writing-case with a gold monogram on it and a gold pen
and inkstand.
Everything was so nice that her pleasure began to crowd her anger out of
her mind. She had not expected him to remember her at all and her hard
little heart grew quite warm.
"I can write better than I can print," she said, "and the first thing I
shall write with that pen will be a letter to tell him I am much
obliged."
If she had been friends with Colin she would have run to show him her
presents at once, and they would have looked at the pictures and read
some of the gardening books and perhaps tried playing the games, and he
would have enjoyed himself so much he would never once have thought he
was going to die or have put his hand on his spine to see if there was a
lump coming. He had a way of doing that which she could not bear. It
gave her an uncomfortable frightened feeling because he always looked so
frightened himself. He said that if he felt even quite a little lump
some day he should know his hunch had begun to grow. Something he had
heard Mrs. Medlock whispering to the nurse had given him the idea and he
had thought over it in secret until it was quite firmly fixed in his
mind. Mrs. Medlock had said his father's back had begun to show its
crookedness in that way when he was a child. He had never told any one
but Mary that most of his "tantrums" as they called them grew out of his
hysterical hidden fear. Mary had been sorry for him when he had told
her.
"He always began to think about it when he was cross or tired," she said
to herself. "And he has been cross to-day. Perhaps--perhaps he has been
thinking about it all afternoon."
She stood still, looking down at the carpet and thinking.
"I said I would never go back again--" she hesitated, knitting her
brows--"but perhaps, just perhaps, I will go and see--if he wants me--in
the morning. Perhaps he'll try to throw his pillow at me again, but--I
think--I'll go."
CHAPTER XVII
A TANTRUM
She had got up very early in the morning and had worked hard in the
garden and she was tired and sleepy, so as soon as Martha had brought
her supper and she had eaten it, she was glad to go to bed. As she laid
her head on the pillow she murmured to herself:
"I'll go out before breakfast and work with Dickon and then afterward--I
believe--I'll go to see him."
She thought it was the middle of the night when she was wakened by such
dreadful sounds that she jumped out of bed in an instant. What was
it--what was it? The next minute she felt quite sure she knew. Doors
were opened and shut and there were hurrying feet in the corridors and
some one was crying and screaming at the same time, screaming and crying
in a horrible way.
"It's Colin," she said. "He's having one of those tantrums the nurse
called hysterics. How awful it sounds."
As she listened to the sobbing screams she did not wonder that people
were so frightened that they gave him his own way in everything rather
than hear them. She put her hands over her ears and felt sick and
shivering.
"I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do," she kept saying. "I
can't bear it."
Once she wondered if he would stop if she dared go to him and then she
remembered how he had driven her out of the room and thought that
perhaps the sight of her might make him worse. Even when she pressed her
hands more tightly over her ears she could not keep the awful sounds
out. She hated them so and was so terrified by them that suddenly they
began to make her angry and she felt as if she should like to fly into a
tantrum herself and frighten him as he was frightening her. She was not
used to any one's tempers but her own. She took her hands from her ears
and sprang up and stamped her foot.
"He ought to be stopped! Somebody ought to make him stop! Somebody ought
to beat him!" she cried out.
Just then she heard feet almost running down the corridor and her door
opened and the nurse came in. She was not laughing now by any means. She
even looked rather pale.
"He's worked himself into hysterics," she said in a great hurry. "He'll
do himself harm. No one can do anything with him. You come and try,
like a good child. He likes you."
"He turned me out of the room this morning," said Mary, stamping her
foot with excitement.
The stamp rather pleased the nurse. The truth was that she had been
afraid she might find Mary crying and hiding her head under the
bed-clothes.
"That's right," she said. "You're in the right humor. You go and scold
him. Give him something new to think of. Do go, child, as quick as ever
you can."
It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing had been
funny as well as dreadful--that it was funny that all the grown-up
people were so frightened that they came to a little girl just because
they guessed she was almost as bad as Colin himself.
She flew along the corridor and the nearer she got to the screams the
higher her temper mounted. She felt quite wicked by the time she reached
the door. She slapped it open with her hand and ran across the room to
the four-posted bed.
"You stop!" she almost shouted. "You stop! I hate you! Everybody hates
you! I wish everybody would run out of the house and let you scream
yourself to death! You _will_ scream yourself to death in a minute, and
I wish you would!"
A nice sympathetic child could neither have thought nor said such
things, but it just happened that the shock of hearing them was the best
possible thing for this hysterical boy whom no one had ever dared to
restrain or contradict.
He had been lying on his face beating his pillow with his hands and he
actually almost jumped around, he turned so quickly at the sound of the
furious little voice. His face looked dreadful, white and red and
swollen, and he was gasping and choking; but savage little Mary did not
care an atom.
"If you scream another scream," she said, "I'll scream too--and I can
scream louder than you can and I'll frighten you, I'll frighten you!"
He actually had stopped screaming because she had startled him so. The
scream which had been coming almost choked him. The tears were streaming
down his face and he shook all over.
"I can't stop!" he gasped and sobbed. "I can't--I can't!"
"You can!" shouted Mary. "Half that ails you is hysterics and
temper--just hysterics--hysterics--hysterics!" and she stamped each time
she said it.
"I felt the lump--I felt it," choked out Colin. "I knew I should. I
shall have a hunch on my back and then I shall die," and he began to
writhe again and turned on his face and sobbed and wailed but he didn't
scream.
"You didn't feel a lump!" contradicted Mary fiercely. "If you did it was
only a hysterical lump. Hysterics makes lumps. There's nothing the
matter with your horrid back--nothing but hysterics! Turn over and let
me look at it!"
She liked the word "hysterics" and felt somehow as if it had an effect
on him. He was probably like herself and had never heard it before.
"Nurse," she commanded, "come here and show me his back this minute!"
The nurse, Mrs. Medlock and Martha had been standing huddled together
near the door staring at her, their mouths half open. All three had
gasped with fright more than once. The nurse came forward as if she were
half afraid. Colin was heaving with great breathless sobs.
"Perhaps he--he won't let me," she hesitated in a low voice.
Colin heard her, however, and he gasped out between two sobs:
"Sh--show her! She--she'll see then!"
It was a poor thin back to look at when it was bared. Every rib could be
counted and every joint of the spine, though Mistress Mary did not count
them as she bent over and examined them with a solemn savage little
face. She looked so sour and old-fashioned that the nurse turned her
head aside to hide the twitching of her mouth. There was just a minute's
silence, for even Colin tried to hold his breath while Mary looked up
and down his spine, and down and up, as intently as if she had been the
great doctor from London.
"There's not a single lump there!" she said at last. "There's not a lump
as big as a pin--except backbone lumps, and you can only feel them
because you're thin. I've got backbone lumps myself, and they used to
stick out as much as yours do, until I began to get fatter, and I am not
fat enough yet to hide them. There's not a lump as big as a pin! If you
ever say there is again, I shall laugh!"
No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken childish
words had on him. If he had ever had any one to talk to about his secret
terrors--if he had ever dared to let himself ask questions--if he had
had childish companions and had not lain on his back in the huge closed
house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the fears of people who were
most of them ignorant and tired of him, he would have found out that
most of his fright and illness was created by himself. But he had lain
and thought of himself and his aches and weariness for hours and days
and months and years. And now that an angry unsympathetic little girl
insisted obstinately that he was not as ill as he thought he was he
actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth.
"I didn't know," ventured the nurse, "that he thought he had a lump on
his spine. His back is weak because he won't try to sit up. I could have
told him there was no lump there."
Colin gulped and turned his face a little to look at her.
"C-could you?" he said pathetically.
"Yes, sir."
"There!" said Mary, and she gulped too.
Colin turned on his face again and but for his long-drawn broken
breaths, which were the dying down of his storm of sobbing, he lay still
for a minute, though great tears streamed down his face and wet the
pillow. Actually the tears meant that a curious great relief had come to
him. Presently he turned and looked at the nurse again and strangely
enough he was not like a Rajah at all as he spoke to her.
"Do you think--I could--live to grow up?" he said.
The nurse was neither clever nor soft-hearted but she could repeat some
of the London doctor's words.
"You probably will if you will do what you are told to do and not give
way to your temper, and stay out a great deal in the fresh air."
Colin's tantrum had passed and he was weak and worn out with crying and
this perhaps made him feel gentle. He put out his hand a little toward
Mary, and I am glad to say that, her own tantrum having passed, she was
softened too and met him half-way with her hand, so that it was a sort
of making up.
"I'll--I'll go out with you, Mary," he said. "I shan't hate fresh air if
we can find--" He remembered just in time to stop himself from saying
"if we can find the secret garden" and he ended, "I shall like to go out
with you if Dickon will come and push my chair. I do so want to see
Dickon and the fox and the crow."
The nurse remade the tumbled bed and shook and straightened the pillows.
Then she made Colin a cup of beef tea and gave a cup to Mary, who really
was very glad to get it after her excitement. Mrs. Medlock and Martha
gladly slipped away, and after everything was neat and calm and in order
the nurse looked as if she would very gladly slip away also. She was a
healthy young woman who resented being robbed of her sleep and she
yawned quite openly as she looked at Mary, who had pushed her big
footstool close to the four-posted bed and was holding Colin's hand.
"You must go back and get your sleep out," she said. "He'll drop off
after a while--if he's not too upset. Then I'll lie down myself in the
next room."
"Would you like me to sing you that song I learned from my Ayah?" Mary
whispered to Colin.
His hand pulled hers gently and he turned his tired eyes on her
appealingly.
"Oh, yes!" he answered. "It's such a soft song. I shall go to sleep in a
minute."
"I will put him to sleep," Mary said to the yawning nurse. "You can go
if you like."
"Well," said the nurse, with an attempt at reluctance. "If he doesn't go
to sleep in half an hour you must call me."
"Very well," answered Mary.
The nurse was out of the room in a minute and as soon as she was gone
Colin pulled Mary's hand again.
"I almost told," he said; "but I stopped myself in time. I won't talk
and I'll go to sleep, but you said you had a whole lot of nice things to
tell me. Have you--do you think you have found out anything at all about
the way into the secret garden?"
Mary looked at his poor little tired face and swollen eyes and her heart
relented.
"Ye-es," she answered, "I think I have. And if you will go to sleep I
will tell you to-morrow."
His hand quite trembled.
"Oh, Mary!" he said. "Oh, Mary! If I could get into it I think I should
live to grow up! Do you suppose that instead of singing the Ayah
song--you could just tell me softly as you did that first day what you
imagine it looks like inside? I am sure it will make me go to sleep."
"Yes," answered Mary. "Shut your eyes."
He closed his eyes and lay quite still and she held his hand and began
to speak very slowly and in a very low voice.
"I think it has been left alone so long--that it has grown all into a
lovely tangle. I think the roses have climbed and climbed and climbed
until they hang from the branches and walls and creep over the
ground--almost like a strange gray mist. Some of them have died but
many--are alive and when the summer comes there will be curtains and
fountains of roses. I think the ground is full of daffodils and
snowdrops and lilies and iris working their way out of the dark. Now the
spring has begun--perhaps--perhaps--"
The soft drone of her voice was making him stiller and stiller and she
saw it and went on.
"Perhaps they are coming up through the grass--perhaps there are
clusters of purple crocuses and gold ones--even now. Perhaps the leaves
are beginning to break out and uncurl--and perhaps--the gray is changing
and a green gauze veil is creeping--and creeping over--everything. And
the birds are coming to look at it--because it is--so safe and still.
And perhaps--perhaps--perhaps--" very softly and slowly indeed, "the
robin has found a mate--and is building a nest."
And Colin was asleep.
CHAPTER XVIII
"THA' MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME"
Of course Mary did not waken early the next morning. She slept late
because she was tired, and when Martha brought her breakfast she told
her that though Colin was quite quiet he was ill and feverish as he
always was after he had worn himself out with a fit of crying. Mary ate
her breakfast slowly as she listened.
"He says he wishes tha' would please go and see him as soon as tha'
can," Martha said. "It's queer what a fancy he's took to thee. Tha' did
give it him last night for sure--didn't tha'? Nobody else would have
dared to do it. Eh! poor lad! He's been spoiled till salt won't save
him. Mother says as th' two worst things as can happen to a child is
never to have his own way--or always to have it. She doesn't know which
is th' worst. Tha' was in a fine temper tha'self, too. But he says to me
when I went into his room, 'Please ask Miss Mary if she'll please come
an' talk to me?' Think o' him saying please! Will you go, Miss?"
"I'll run and see Dickon first," said Mary. "No, I'll go and see Colin
first and tell him--I know what I'll tell him," with a sudden
inspiration.
She had her hat on when she appeared in Colin's room and for a second he
looked disappointed. He was in bed and his face was pitifully white and
there were dark circles round his eyes.
"I'm glad you came," he said. "My head aches and I ache all over because
I'm so tired. Are you going somewhere?"
Mary went and leaned against his bed.
"I won't be long," she said. "I'm going to Dickon, but I'll come back.
Colin, it's--it's something about the secret garden."
His whole face brightened and a little color came into it.
"Oh! is it!" he cried out. "I dreamed about it all night. I heard you
say something about gray changing into green, and I dreamed I was
standing in a place all filled with trembling little green leaves--and
there were birds on nests everywhere and they looked so soft and still.
I'll lie and think about it until you come back."
In five minutes Mary was with Dickon in their garden. The fox and the
crow were with him again and this time he had brought two tame
squirrels.
"I came over on the pony this mornin'," he said. "Eh! he is a good
little chap--Jump is! I brought these two in my pockets. This here one
he's called Nut an' this here other one's called Shell."
When he said "Nut" one squirrel leaped on to his right shoulder and when
he said "Shell" the other one leaped on to his left shoulder.
When they sat down on the grass with Captain curled at their feet, Soot
solemnly listening on a tree and Nut and Shell nosing about close to
them, it seemed to Mary that it would be scarcely bearable to leave such
delightfulness, but when she began to tell her story somehow the look in
Dickon's funny face gradually changed her mind. She could see he felt
sorrier for Colin than she did. He looked up at the sky and all about
him.
"Just listen to them birds--th' world seems full of 'em--all whistlin'
an' pipin'," he said. "Look at 'em dartin' about, an' hearken at 'em
callin' to each other. Come springtime seems like as if all th' world's
callin'. The leaves is uncurlin' so you can see 'em--an', my word, th'
nice smells there is about!" sniffing with his happy turned-up nose.
"An' that poor lad lyin' shut up an' seein' so little that he gets to
thinkin' o' things as sets him screamin'. Eh! my! we mun get him out
here--we mun get him watchin' an' listenin' an' sniffin' up th' air an'
get him just soaked through wi' sunshine. An' we munnot lose no time
about it."
When he was very much interested he often spoke quite broad Yorkshire
though at other times he tried to modify his dialect so that Mary could
better understand. But she loved his broad Yorkshire and had in fact
been trying to learn to speak it herself. So she spoke a little now.
"Aye, that we mun," she said (which meant "Yes, indeed, we must"). "I'll
tell thee what us'll do first," she proceeded, and Dickon grinned,
because when the little wench tried to twist her tongue into speaking
Yorkshire it amused him very much. "He's took a graidely fancy to thee.
He wants to see thee and he wants to see Soot an' Captain. When I go
back to the house to talk to him I'll ax him if tha' canna' come an' see
him to-morrow mornin'--an' bring tha' creatures wi' thee--an' then--in a
bit, when there's more leaves out, an' happen a bud or two, we'll get
him to come out an' tha' shall push him in his chair an' we'll bring him
here an' show him everything."
When she stopped she was quite proud of herself. She had never made a
long speech in Yorkshire before and she had remembered very well.
"Tha' mun talk a bit o' Yorkshire like that to Mester Colin," Dickon
chuckled. "Tha'll make him laugh an' there's nowt as good for ill folk
as laughin' is. Mother says she believes as half a hour's good laugh
every mornin' 'ud cure a chap as was makin' ready for typhus fever."
"I'm going to talk Yorkshire to him this very day," said Mary, chuckling
herself.
The garden had reached the time when every day and every night it seemed
as if Magicians were passing through it drawing loveliness out of the
earth and the boughs with wands. It was hard to go away and leave it
all, particularly as Nut had actually crept on to her dress and Shell
had scrambled down the trunk of the apple-tree they sat under and stayed
there looking at her with inquiring eyes. But she went back to the house
and when she sat down close to Colin's bed he began to sniff as Dickon
did though not in such an experienced way.
"You smell like flowers and--and fresh things," he cried out quite
joyously. "What is it you smell of? It's cool and warm and sweet all at
the same time."
"It's th' wind from th' moor," said Mary. "It comes o' sittin' on th'
grass under a tree wi' Dickon an' wi' Captain an' Soot an' Nut an'
Shell. It's th' springtime an' out o' doors an' sunshine as smells so
graidely."
She said it as broadly as she could, and you do not know how broadly
Yorkshire sounds until you have heard some one speak it. Colin began to
laugh.
"What are you doing?" he said. "I never heard you talk like that before.
How funny it sounds."
"I'm givin' thee a bit o' Yorkshire," answered Mary triumphantly. "I
canna' talk as graidely as Dickon an' Martha can but tha' sees I can
shape a bit. Doesn't tha' understand a bit o' Yorkshire when tha' hears
it? An' tha' a Yorkshire lad thysel' bred an' born! Eh! I wonder tha'rt
not ashamed o' thy face."
And then she began to laugh too and they both laughed until they could
not stop themselves and they laughed until the room echoed and Mrs.
Medlock opening the door to come in drew back into the corridor and
stood listening amazed.
"Well, upon my word!" she said, speaking rather broad Yorkshire herself
because there was no one to hear her and she was so astonished. "Whoever
heard th' like! Whoever on earth would ha' thought it!"
There was so much to talk about. It seemed as if Colin could never hear
enough of Dickon and Captain and Soot and Nut and Shell and the pony
whose name was Jump. Mary had run round into the wood with Dickon to see
Jump. He was a tiny little shaggy moor pony with thick locks hanging
over his eyes and with a pretty face and a nuzzling velvet nose. He was
rather thin with living on moor grass but he was as tough and wiry as if
the muscle in his little legs had been made of steel springs. He had
lifted his head and whinnied softly the moment he saw Dickon and he had
trotted up to him and put his head across his shoulder and then Dickon
had talked into his ear and Jump had talked back in odd little whinnies
and puffs and snorts. Dickon had made him give Mary his small front hoof
and kiss her on her cheek with his velvet muzzle.
"Does he really understand everything Dickon says?" Colin asked.
"It seems as if he does," answered Mary. "Dickon says anything will
understand if you're friends with it for sure, but you have to be
friends for sure."
Colin lay quiet a little while and his strange gray eyes seemed to be
staring at the wall, but Mary saw he was thinking.
"I wish I was friends with things," he said at last, "but I'm not. I
never had anything to be friends with, and I can't bear people."
"Can't you bear me?" asked Mary.
"Yes, I can," he answered. "It's very funny but I even like you."
"Ben Weatherstaff said I was like him," said Mary. "He said he'd warrant
we'd both got the same nasty tempers. I think you are like him too. We
are all three alike--you and I and Ben Weatherstaff. He said we were
neither of us much to look at and we were as sour as we looked. But I
don't feel as sour as I used to before I knew the robin and Dickon."
"Did you feel as if you hated people?"
"Yes," answered Mary without any affectation. "I should have detested
you if I had seen you before I saw the robin and Dickon."
Colin put out his thin hand and touched her.
"Mary," he said, "I wish I hadn't said what I did about sending Dickon
away. I hated you when you said he was like an angel and I laughed at
you but--but perhaps he is."
"Well, it was rather funny to say it," she admitted frankly, "because
his nose does turn up and he has a big mouth and his clothes have
patches all over them and he talks broad Yorkshire, but--but if an angel
did come to Yorkshire and live on the moor--if there was a Yorkshire
angel--I believe he'd understand the green things and know how to make
them grow and he would know how to talk to the wild creatures as Dickon
does and they'd know he was friends for sure."
"I shouldn't mind Dickon looking at me," said Colin; "I want to see
him."
"I'm glad you said that," answered Mary, "because--because--"
Quite suddenly it came into her mind that this was the minute to tell
him. Colin knew something new was coming.
"Because what?" he cried eagerly.
Mary was so anxious that she got up from her stool and came to him and
caught hold of both his hands.
"Can I trust you? I trusted Dickon because birds trusted him. Can I
trust you--for sure--_for sure_?" she implored.
Her face was so solemn that he almost whispered his answer.
"Yes--yes!"
"Well, Dickon will come to see you to-morrow morning, and he'll bring
his creatures with him."
"Oh! Oh!" Colin cried out in delight.
"But that's not all," Mary went on, almost pale with solemn excitement.
"The rest is better. There is a door into the garden. I found it. It is
under the ivy on the wall."
If he had been a strong healthy boy Colin would probably have shouted
"Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!" but he was weak and rather hysterical; his
eyes grew bigger and bigger and he gasped for breath.
"Oh! Mary!" he cried out with a half sob. "Shall I see it? Shall I get
into it? Shall I _live_ to get into it?" and he clutched her hands and
dragged her toward him.
"Of course you'll see it!" snapped Mary indignantly. "Of course you'll
live to get into it! Don't be silly!"
And she was so un-hysterical and natural and childish that she brought
him to his senses and he began to laugh at himself and a few minutes
afterward she was sitting on her stool again telling him not what she
imagined the secret garden to be like but what it really was, and
Colin's aches and tiredness were forgotten and he was listening
enraptured.
"It is just what you thought it would be," he said at last. "It sounds
just as if you had really seen it. You know I said that when you told me
first."
Mary hesitated about two minutes and then boldly spoke the truth.
"I had seen it--and I had been in," she said. "I found the key and got
in weeks ago. But I daren't tell you--I daren't because I was so afraid
I couldn't trust you--_for sure_!"
CHAPTER XIX
"IT HAS COME!"
Of course Dr. Craven had been sent for the morning after Colin had had
his tantrum. He was always sent for at once when such a thing occurred
and he always found, when he arrived, a white shaken boy lying on his
bed, sulky and still so hysterical that he was ready to break into fresh
sobbing at the least word. In fact, Dr. Craven dreaded and detested the
difficulties of these visits. On this occasion he was away from
Misselthwaite Manor until afternoon.
"How is he?" he asked Mrs. Medlock rather irritably when he arrived. "He
will break a blood-vessel in one of those fits some day. The boy is half
insane with hysteria and self-indulgence."
"Well, sir," answered Mrs. Medlock, "you'll scarcely believe your eyes
when you see him. That plain sour-faced child that's almost as bad as
himself has just bewitched him. How she's done it there's no telling.
The Lord knows she's nothing to look at and you scarcely ever hear her
speak, but she did what none of us dare do. She just flew at him like a
little cat last night, and stamped her feet and ordered him to stop
screaming, and somehow she startled him so that he actually did stop,
and this afternoon--well just come up and see, sir. It's past
crediting."
The scene which Dr. Craven beheld when he entered his patient's room was
indeed rather astonishing to him. As Mrs. Medlock opened the door he
heard laughing and chattering. Colin was on his sofa in his
dressing-gown and he was sitting up quite straight looking at a picture
in one of the garden books and talking to the plain child who at that
moment could scarcely be called plain at all because her face was so
glowing with enjoyment.
"Those long spires of blue ones--we'll have a lot of those," Colin was
announcing. "They're called Del-phin-iums."
"Dickon says they're larkspurs made big and grand," cried Mistress Mary.
"There are clumps there already."
Then they saw Dr. Craven and stopped. Mary became quite still and Colin
looked fretful.
"I am sorry to hear you were ill last night, my boy," Dr. Craven said a
trifle nervously. He was rather a nervous man.
"I'm better now--much better," Colin answered, rather like a Rajah.
"I'm going out in my chair in a day or two if it is fine. I want some
fresh air."
Dr. Craven sat down by him and felt his pulse and looked at him
curiously.
"It must be a very fine day," he said, "and you must be very careful not
to tire yourself."
"Fresh air won't tire me," said the young Rajah.
As there had been occasions when this same young gentleman had shrieked
aloud with rage and had insisted that fresh air would give him cold and
kill him, it is not to be wondered at that his doctor felt somewhat
startled.
"I thought you did not like fresh air," he said.
"I don't when I am by myself," replied the Rajah; "but my cousin is
going out with me."
"And the nurse, of course?" suggested Dr. Craven.
"No, I will not have the nurse," so magnificently that Mary could not
help remembering how the young native Prince had looked with his
diamonds and emeralds and pearls stuck all over him and the great rubies
on the small dark hand he had waved to command his servants to approach
with salaams and receive his orders.
"My cousin knows how to take care of me. I am always better when she is
with me. She made me better last night. A very strong boy I know will
push my carriage."
Dr. Craven felt rather alarmed. If this tiresome hysterical boy should
chance to get well he himself would lose all chance of inheriting
Misselthwaite; but he was not an unscrupulous man, though he was a weak
one, and he did not intend to let him run into actual danger.
"He must be a strong boy and a steady boy," he said. "And I must know
something about him. Who is he? What is his name?"
"It's Dickon," Mary spoke up suddenly. She felt somehow that everybody
who knew the moor must know Dickon. And she was right, too. She saw that
in a moment Dr. Craven's serious face relaxed into a relieved smile.
"Oh, Dickon," he said. "If it is Dickon you will be safe enough. He's as
strong as a moor pony, is Dickon."
"And he's trusty," said Mary. "He's th' trustiest lad i' Yorkshire." She
had been talking Yorkshire to Colin and she forgot herself.
"Did Dickon teach you that?" asked Dr. Craven, laughing outright.
"I'm learning it as if it was French," said Mary rather coldly. "It's
like a native dialect in India. Very clever people try to learn them. I
like it and so does Colin."
"Well, well," he said. "If it amuses you perhaps it won't do you any
harm. Did you take your bromide last night, Colin?"
"No," Colin answered. "I wouldn't take it at first and after Mary made
me quiet she talked me to sleep--in a low voice--about the spring
creeping into a garden."
"That sounds soothing," said Dr. Craven, more perplexed than ever and
glancing sideways at Mistress Mary sitting on her stool and looking down
silently at the carpet. "You are evidently better, but you must
remember--"
"I don't want to remember," interrupted the Rajah, appearing again.
"When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and
I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so.
If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill
instead of remembering it I would have him brought here." And he waved a
thin hand which ought really to have been covered with royal signet
rings made of rubies. "It is because my cousin makes me forget that she
makes me better."
Dr. Craven had never made such a short stay after a "tantrum"; usually
he was obliged to remain a very long time and do a great many things.
This afternoon he did not give any medicine or leave any new orders and
he was spared any disagreeable scenes. When he went down-stairs he
looked very thoughtful and when he talked to Mrs. Medlock in the library
she felt that he was a much puzzled man.
"Well, sir," she ventured, "could you have believed it?"
"It is certainly a new state of affairs," said the doctor. "And there's
no denying it is better than the old one."
"I believe Susan Sowerby's right--I do that," said Mrs. Medlock. "I
stopped in her cottage on my way to Thwaite yesterday and had a bit of
talk with her. And she says to me, 'Well, Sarah Ann, she mayn't be a
good child, an' she mayn't be a pretty one, but she's a child, an'
children needs children.' We went to school together, Susan Sowerby and
me."
"She's the best sick nurse I know," said Dr. Craven. "When I find her in
a cottage I know the chances are that I shall save my patient."
Mrs. Medlock smiled. She was fond of Susan Sowerby.
"She's got a way with her, has Susan," she went on quite volubly. "I've
been thinking all morning of one thing she said yesterday. She says,
'Once when I was givin' th' children a bit of a preach after they'd been
fightin' I ses to 'em all, "When I was at school my jography told as
th' world was shaped like a orange an' I found out before I was ten
that th' whole orange doesn't belong to nobody. No one owns more than
his bit of a quarter an' there's times it seems like there's not enow
quarters to go round. But don't you--none o' you--think as you own th'
whole orange or you'll find out you're mistaken, an' you won't find it
out without hard knocks." What children learns from children,' she says,
'is that there's no sense in grabbin' at th' whole orange--peel an' all.
If you do you'll likely not get even th' pips, an' them's too bitter to
eat.'"
"She's a shrewd woman," said Dr. Craven, putting on his coat.
"Well, she's got a way of saying things," ended Mrs. Medlock, much
pleased. "Sometimes I've said to her, 'Eh! Susan, if you was a different
woman an' didn't talk such broad Yorkshire I've seen the times when I
should have said you was clever.'"
* * * * *
That night Colin slept without once awakening and when he opened his
eyes in the morning he lay still and smiled without knowing it--smiled
because he felt so curiously comfortable. It was actually nice to be
awake, and he turned over and stretched his limbs luxuriously. He felt
as if tight strings which had held him had loosened themselves and let
him go. He did not know that Dr. Craven would have said that his nerves
had relaxed and rested themselves. Instead of lying and staring at the
wall and wishing he had not awakened, his mind was full of the plans he
and Mary had made yesterday, of pictures of the garden and of Dickon and
his wild creatures. It was so nice to have things to think about. And he
had not been awake more than ten minutes when he heard feet running
along the corridor and Mary was at the door. The next minute she was in
the room and had run across to his bed, bringing with her a waft of
fresh air full of the scent of the morning.
"You've been out! You've been out! There's that nice smell of leaves!"
he cried.
She had been running and her hair was loose and blown and she was bright
with the air and pink-cheeked, though he could not see it.
"It's so beautiful!" she said, a little breathless with her speed. "You
never saw anything so beautiful! It has _come_! I thought it had come
that other morning, but it was only coming. It is here now! It has come,
the Spring! Dickon says so!"
"Has it?" cried Colin, and though he really knew nothing about it he
felt his heart beat. He actually sat up in bed.
"Open the window!" he added, laughing half with joyful excitement and
half at his own fancy. "Perhaps we may hear golden trumpets!"
And though he laughed, Mary was at the window in a moment and in a
moment more it was opened wide and freshness and softness and scents and
birds' songs were pouring through.
"That's fresh air," she said. "Lie on your back and draw in long breaths
of it. That's what Dickon does when he's lying on the moor. He says he
feels it in his veins and it makes him strong and he feels as if he
could live forever and ever. Breathe it and breathe it."
She was only repeating what Dickon had told her, but she caught Colin's
fancy.
"'Forever and ever'! Does it make him feel like that?" he said, and he
did as she told him, drawing in long deep breaths over and over again
until he felt that something quite new and delightful was happening to
him.
Mary was at his bedside again.
"Things are crowding up out of the earth," she ran on in a hurry. "And
there are flowers uncurling and buds on everything and the green veil
has covered nearly all the gray and the birds are in such a hurry about
their nests for fear they may be too late that some of them are even
fighting for places in the secret garden. And the rose-bushes look as
wick as wick can be, and there are primroses in the lanes and woods, and
the seeds we planted are up, and Dickon has brought the fox and the crow
and the squirrels and a new-born lamb."
And then she paused for breath. The new-born lamb Dickon had found three
days before lying by its dead mother among the gorse bushes on the moor.
It was not the first motherless lamb he had found and he knew what to do
with it. He had taken it to the cottage wrapped in his jacket and he had
let it lie near the fire and had fed it with warm milk. It was a soft
thing with a darling silly baby face and legs rather long for its body.
Dickon had carried it over the moor in his arms and its feeding bottle
was in his pocket with a squirrel, and when Mary had sat under a tree
with its limp warmness huddled on her lap she had felt as if she were
too full of strange joy to speak. A lamb--a lamb! A living lamb who lay
on your lap like a baby!
She was describing it with great joy and Colin was listening and drawing
in long breaths of air when the nurse entered. She started a little at
the sight of the open window. She had sat stifling in the room many a
warm day because her patient was sure that open windows gave people
cold.
"Are you sure you are not chilly, Master Colin?" she inquired.
"No," was the answer. "I am breathing long breaths of fresh air. It
makes you strong. I am going to get up to the sofa for breakfast and my
cousin will have breakfast with me."
The nurse went away, concealing a smile, to give the order for two
breakfasts. She found the servants' hall a more amusing place than the
invalid's chamber and just now everybody wanted to hear the news from
up-stairs. There was a great deal of joking about the unpopular young
recluse who, as the cook said, "had found his master, and good for him."
The servants' hall had been very tired of the tantrums, and the butler,
who was a man with a family, had more than once expressed his opinion
that the invalid would be all the better "for a good hiding."
When Colin was on his sofa and the breakfast for two was put upon the
table he made an announcement to the nurse in his most Rajah-like
manner.
"A boy, and a fox, and a crow, and two squirrels, and a new-born lamb,
are coming to see me this morning. I want them brought up-stairs as soon
as they come," he said. "You are not to begin playing with the animals
in the servants' hall and keep them there. I want them here."
The nurse gave a slight gasp and tried to conceal it with a cough.
"Yes, sir," she answered.
"I'll tell you what you can do," added Colin, waving his hand. "You can
tell Martha to bring them here. The boy is Martha's brother. His name is
Dickon and he is an animal charmer."
"I hope the animals won't bite, Master Colin," said the nurse.
"I told you he was a charmer," said Colin austerely. "Charmers' animals
never bite."
"There are snake-charmers in India," said Mary; "and they can put their
snakes' heads in their mouths."
"Goodness!" shuddered the nurse.
They ate their breakfast with the morning air pouring in upon them.
Colin's breakfast was a very good one and Mary watched him with serious
interest.
"You will begin to get fatter just as I did," she said. "I never wanted
my breakfast when I was in India and now I always want it."
"I wanted mine this morning," said Colin. "Perhaps it was the fresh air.
When do you think Dickon will come?"
He was not long in coming. In about ten minutes Mary held up her hand.
"Listen!" she said. "Did you hear a caw?"
Colin listened and heard it, the oddest sound in the world to hear
inside a house, a hoarse "caw-caw."
"Yes," he answered.
"That's Soot," said Mary. "Listen again! Do you hear a bleat--a tiny
one?"
"Oh, yes!" cried Colin, quite flushing.
"That's the new-born lamb," said Mary. "He's coming."
Dickon's moorland boots were thick and clumsy and though he tried to
walk quietly they made a clumping sound as he walked through the long
corridors. Mary and Colin heard him marching--marching, until he passed
through the tapestry door on to the soft carpet of Colin's own passage.
"If you please, sir," announced Martha, opening the door, "if you
please, sir, here's Dickon an' his creatures."
[Illustration: "DICKON CAME IN SMILING HIS NICEST WIDE SMILE."--_Page
251_]
Dickon came in smiling his nicest wide smile. The new-born lamb was in
his arms and the little red fox trotted by his side. Nut sat on his left
shoulder and Soot on his right and Shell's head and paws peeped out of
his coat pocket.
Colin slowly sat up and stared and stared--as he had stared when he
first saw Mary; but this was a stare of wonder and delight. The truth
was that in spite of all he had heard he had not in the least understood
what this boy would be like and that his fox and his crow and his
squirrels and his lamb were so near to him and his friendliness that
they seemed almost to be part of himself. Colin had never talked to a
boy in his life and he was so overwhelmed by his own pleasure and
curiosity that he did not even think of speaking.
But Dickon did not feel the least shy or awkward. He had not felt
embarrassed because the crow had not known his language and had only
stared and had not spoken to him the first time they met. Creatures were
always like that until they found out about you. He walked over to
Colin's sofa and put the new-born lamb quietly on his lap, and
immediately the little creature turned to the warm velvet dressing-gown
and began to nuzzle and nuzzle into its folds and butt its tight-curled
head with soft impatience against his side. Of course no boy could have
helped speaking then.
"What is it doing?" cried Colin. "What does it want?"
"It wants its mother," said Dickon, smiling more and more. "I brought it
to thee a bit hungry because I knowed tha'd like to see it feed."
He knelt down by the sofa and took a feeding-bottle from his pocket.
"Come on, little 'un," he said, turning the small woolly white head with
a gentle brown hand. "This is what tha's after. Tha'll get more out o'
this than tha' will out o' silk velvet coats. There now," and he pushed
the rubber tip of the bottle into the nuzzling mouth and the lamb began
to suck it with ravenous ecstasy.
After that there was no wondering what to say. By the time the lamb fell
asleep questions poured forth and Dickon answered them all. He told them
how he had found the lamb just as the sun was rising three mornings ago.
He had been standing on the moor listening to a skylark and watching him
swing higher and higher into the sky until he was only a speck in the
heights of blue.
"I'd almost lost him but for his song an' I was wonderin' how a chap
could hear it when it seemed as if he'd get out o' th' world in a
minute--an' just then I heard somethin' else far off among th' gorse
bushes. It was a weak bleatin' an' I knowed it was a new lamb as was
hungry an' I knowed it wouldn't be hungry if it hadn't lost its mother
somehow, so I set off searchin'. Eh! I did have a look for it. I went in
an' out among th' gorse bushes an' round an' round an' I always seemed
to take th' wrong turnin'. But at last I seed a bit o' white by a rock
on top o' th' moor an' I climbed up an' found th' little 'un half dead
wi' cold an' clemmin'."
While he talked, Soot flew solemnly in and out of the open window and
cawed remarks about the scenery while Nut and Shell made excursions into
the big trees outside and ran up and down trunks and explored branches.
Captain curled up near Dickon, who sat on the hearth-rug from
preference.
They looked at the pictures in the gardening books and Dickon knew all
the flowers by their country names and knew exactly which ones were
already growing in the secret garden.
"I couldna' say that there name," he said, pointing to one under which
was written "Aquilegia," "but us calls that a columbine, an' that there
one it's a snapdragon and they both grow wild in hedges, but these is
garden ones an' they're bigger an' grander. There's some big clumps o'
columbine in th' garden. They'll look like a bed o' blue an' white
butterflies flutterin' when they're out."
"I'm going to see them," cried Colin. "I am going to see them!"
"Aye, that tha' mun," said Mary quite seriously. "An tha' munnot lose no
time about it."
CHAPTER XX
"I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!"
But they were obliged to wait more than a week because first there came
some very windy days and then Colin was threatened with a cold, which
two things happening one after the other would no doubt have thrown him
into a rage but that there was so much careful and mysterious planning
to do and almost every day Dickon came in, if only for a few minutes, to
talk about what was happening on the moor and in the lanes and hedges
and on the borders of streams. The things he had to tell about otters'
and badgers' and water-rats' houses, not to mention birds' nests and
field-mice and their burrows, were enough to make you almost tremble
with excitement when you heard all the intimate details from an animal
charmer and realized with what thrilling eagerness and anxiety the whole
busy underworld was working.
"They're same as us," said Dickon, "only they have to build their homes
every year. An' it keeps 'em so busy they fair scuffle to get 'em
done."
The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations to be made
before Colin could be transported with sufficient secrecy to the garden.
No one must see the chair-carriage and Dickon and Mary after they turned
a certain corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk outside the
ivied walls. As each day passed, Colin had become more and more fixed in
his feeling that the mystery surrounding the garden was one of its
greatest charms. Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever suspect that
they had a secret. People must think that he was simply going out with
Mary and Dickon because he liked them and did not object to their
looking at him. They had long and quite delightful talks about their
route. They would go up this path and down that one and cross the other
and go round among the fountain flower-beds as if they were looking at
the "bedding-out plants" the head gardener, Mr. Roach, had been having
arranged. That would seem such a rational thing to do that no one would
think it at all mysterious. They would turn into the shrubbery walks and
lose themselves until they came to the long walls. It was almost as
serious and elaborately thought out as the plans of march made by great
generals in time of war.
Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring in the
invalid's apartments had of course filtered through the servants' hall
into the stable yards and out among the gardeners, but notwithstanding
this, Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders from Master
Colin's room to the effect that he must report himself in the apartment
no outsider had ever seen, as the invalid himself desired to speak to
him.
"Well, well," he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat,
"what's to do now? His Royal Highness that wasn't to be looked at
calling up a man he's never set eyes on."
Mr. Roach was not without curiosity. He had never caught even a glimpse
of the boy and had heard a dozen exaggerated stories about his uncanny
looks and ways and his insane tempers. The thing he had heard oftenest
was that he might die at any moment and there had been numerous fanciful
descriptions of a humped back and helpless limbs, given by people who
had never seen him.
"Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach," said Mrs. Medlock, as
she led him up the back staircase to the corridor on to which opened the
hitherto mysterious chamber.
"Let's hope they're changing for the better, Mrs. Medlock," he
answered.
"They couldn't well change for the worse," she continued; "and queer as
it all is there's them as finds their duties made a lot easier to stand
up under. Don't you be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you find yourself in the
middle of a menagerie and Martha Sowerby's Dickon more at home than you
or me could ever be."
There really was a sort of Magic about Dickon, as Mary always privately
believed. When Mr. Roach heard his name he smiled quite leniently.
"He'd be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom of a coal mine,"
he said. "And yet it's not impudence, either. He's just fine, is that
lad."
It was perhaps well he had been prepared or he might have been startled.
When the bedroom door was opened a large crow, which seemed quite at
home perched on the high back of a carven chair, announced the entrance
of a visitor by saying "Caw--Caw" quite loudly. In spite of Mrs.
Medlock's warning, Mr. Roach only just escaped being sufficiently
undignified to jump backward.
The young Rajah was neither in bed nor on his sofa. He was sitting in an
armchair and a young lamb was standing by him shaking its tail in
feeding-lamb fashion as Dickon knelt giving it milk from its bottle. A
squirrel was perched on Dickon's bent back attentively nibbling a nut.
The little girl from India was sitting on a big footstool looking on.
"Here is Mr. Roach, Master Colin," said Mrs. Medlock.
The young Rajah turned and looked his servitor over--at least that was
what the head gardener felt happened.
"Oh, you are Roach, are you?" he said. "I sent for you to give you some
very important orders."
"Very good, sir," answered Roach, wondering if he was to receive
instructions to fell all the oaks in the park or to transform the
orchards into water-gardens.
"I am going out in my chair this afternoon," said Colin. "If the fresh
air agrees with me I may go out every day. When I go, none of the
gardeners are to be anywhere near the Long Walk by the garden walls. No
one is to be there. I shall go out about two o'clock and every one must
keep away until I send word that they may go back to their work."
"Very good, sir," replied Mr. Roach, much relieved to hear that the oaks
might remain and that the orchards were safe.
"Mary," said Colin, turning to her, "what is that thing you say in India
when you have finished talking and want people to go?"
"You say, 'You have my permission to go,'" answered Mary.
The Rajah waved his hand.
"You have my permission to go, Roach," he said. "But, remember, this is
very important."
"Caw--Caw!" remarked the crow hoarsely but not impolitely.
"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir," said Mr. Roach, and Mrs. Medlock took
him out of the room.
Outside in the corridor, being a rather good-natured man, he smiled
until he almost laughed.
"My word!" he said, "he's got a fine lordly way with him, hasn't he?
You'd think he was a whole Royal Family rolled into one--Prince Consort
and all."
"Eh!" protested Mrs. Medlock, "we've had to let him trample all over
every one of us ever since he had feet and he thinks that's what folks
was born for."
"Perhaps he'll grow out of it, if he lives," suggested Mr. Roach.
"Well, there's one thing pretty sure," said Mrs. Medlock. "If he does
live and that Indian child stays here I'll warrant she teaches him that
the whole orange does not belong to him, as Susan Sowerby says. And
he'll be likely to find out the size of his own quarter."
Inside the room Colin was leaning back on his cushions.
"It's all safe now," he said. "And this afternoon I shall see it--this
afternoon I shall be in it!"
Dickon went back to the garden with his creatures and Mary stayed with
Colin. She did not think he looked tired but he was very quiet before
their lunch came and he was quiet while they were eating it. She
wondered why and asked him about it.
"What big eyes you've got, Colin," she said. "When you are thinking they
get as big as saucers. What are you thinking about now?"
"I can't help thinking about what it will look like," he answered.
"The garden?" asked Mary.
"The springtime," he said. "I was thinking that I've really never seen
it before. I scarcely ever went out and when I did go I never looked at
it. I didn't even think about it."
"I never saw it in India because there wasn't any," said Mary.
Shut in and morbid as his life had been, Colin had more imagination than
she had and at least he had spent a good deal of time looking at
wonderful books and pictures.
"That morning when you ran in and said 'It's come! It's come!' you made
me feel quite queer. It sounded as if things were coming with a great
procession and big bursts and wafts of music. I've a picture like it in
one of my books--crowds of lovely people and children with garlands and
branches with blossoms on them, every one laughing and dancing and
crowding and playing on pipes. That was why I said, 'Perhaps we shall
hear golden trumpets' and told you to throw open the window."
"How funny!" said Mary. "That's really just what it feels like. And if
all the flowers and leaves and green things and birds and wild creatures
danced past at once, what a crowd it would be! I'm sure they'd dance and
sing and flute and that would be the wafts of music."
They both laughed but it was not because the idea was laughable but
because they both so liked it.
A little later the nurse made Colin ready. She noticed that instead of
lying like a log while his clothes were put on he sat up and made some
efforts to help himself, and he talked and laughed with Mary all the
time.
"This is one of his good days, sir," she said to Dr. Craven, who
dropped in to inspect him. "He's in such good spirits that it makes him
stronger."
"I'll call in again later in the afternoon, after he has come in," said
Dr. Craven. "I must see how the going out agrees with him. I wish," in a
very low voice, "that he would let you go with him."
"I'd rather give up the case this moment, sir, than even stay here while
it's suggested," answered the nurse with sudden firmness.
"I hadn't really decided to suggest it," said the doctor, with his
slight nervousness. "We'll try the experiment. Dickon's a lad I'd trust
with a new-born child."
The strongest footman in the house carried Colin down-stairs and put him
in his wheeled chair near which Dickon waited outside. After the
manservant had arranged his rugs and cushions the Rajah waved his hand
to him and to the nurse.
"You have my permission to go," he said, and they both disappeared
quickly and it must be confessed giggled when they were safely inside
the house.
Dickon began to push the wheeled chair slowly and steadily. Mistress
Mary walked beside it and Colin leaned back and lifted his face to the
sky. The arch of it looked very high and the small snowy clouds seemed
like white birds floating on outspread wings below its crystal blueness.
The wind swept in soft big breaths down from the moor and was strange
with a wild clear scented sweetness. Colin kept lifting his thin chest
to draw it in, and his big eyes looked as if it were they which were
listening--listening, instead of his ears.
"There are so many sounds of singing and humming and calling out," he
said. "What is that scent the puffs of wind bring?"
"It's gorse on th' moor that's openin' out," answered Dickon. "Eh! th'
bees are at it wonderful to-day."
Not a human creature was to be caught sight of in the paths they took.
In fact every gardener or gardener's lad had been witched away. But they
wound in and out among the shrubbery and out and round the fountain
beds, following their carefully planned route for the mere mysterious
pleasure of it. But when at last they turned into the Long Walk by the
ivied walls the excited sense of an approaching thrill made them, for
some curious reason they could not have explained, begin to speak in
whispers.
"This is it," breathed Mary. "This is where I used to walk up and down
and wonder and wonder."
"Is it?" cried Colin, and his eyes began to search the ivy with eager
curiousness. "But I can see nothing," he whispered. "There is no door."
"That's what I thought," said Mary.
Then there was a lovely breathless silence and the chair wheeled on.
"That is the garden where Ben Weatherstaff works," said Mary.
"Is it?" said Colin.
A few yards more and Mary whispered again.
"This is where the robin flew over the wall," she said.
"Is it?" cried Colin. "Oh! I wish he'd come again!"
"And that," said Mary with solemn delight, pointing under a big lilac
bush, "is where he perched on the little heap of earth and showed me the
key."
Then Colin sat up.
"Where? Where? There?" he cried, and his eyes were as big as the wolf's
in Red Riding-Hood, when Red Riding-Hood felt called upon to remark on
them. Dickon stood still and the wheeled chair stopped.
"And this," said Mary, stepping on to the bed close to the ivy, "is
where I went to talk to him when he chirped at me from the top of the
wall. And this is the ivy the wind blew back," and she took hold of the
hanging green curtain.
"Oh! is it--is it!" gasped Colin.
"And here is the handle, and here is the door. Dickon push him in--push
him in quickly!"
And Dickon did it with one strong, steady, splendid push.
But Colin had actually dropped back against his cushions, even though he
gasped with delight, and he had covered his eyes with his hands and held
them there shutting out everything until they were inside and the chair
stopped as if by magic and the door was closed. Not till then did he
take them away and look round and round and round as Dickon and Mary had
done. And over walls and earth and trees and swinging sprays and
tendrils the fair green veil of tender little leaves had crept, and in
the grass under the trees and the gray urns in the alcoves and here and
there everywhere were touches or splashes of gold and purple and white
and the trees were showing pink and snow above his head and there were
fluttering of wings and faint sweet pipes and humming and scents and
scents. And the sun fell warm upon his face like a hand with a lovely
touch. And in wonder Mary and Dickon stood and stared at him. He looked
so strange and different because a pink glow of color had actually
crept all over him--ivory face and neck and hands and all.
"I shall get well! I shall get well!" he cried out. "Mary! Dickon! I
shall get well! And I shall live forever and ever and ever!"
CHAPTER XXI
BEN WEATHERSTAFF
One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only
now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and
ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn
dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back
and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and
flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost
makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging
majesty of the rising of the sun--which has been happening every morning
for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then
for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by
oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness
slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again
and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then
sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of
stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of
far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one's eyes.
And it was like that with Colin when he first saw and heard and felt the
Springtime inside the four high walls of a hidden garden. That afternoon
the whole world seemed to devote itself to being perfect and radiantly
beautiful and kind to one boy. Perhaps out of pure heavenly goodness the
spring came and crowded everything it possibly could into that one
place. More than once Dickon paused in what he was doing and stood still
with a sort of growing wonder in his eyes, shaking his head softly.
"Eh! it is graidely," he said. "I'm twelve goin' on thirteen an' there's
a lot o' afternoons in thirteen years, but seems to me like I never seed
one as graidely as this 'ere."
"Aye, it is a graidely one," said Mary, and she sighed for mere joy.
"I'll warrant it's th' graidelest one as ever was in this world."
"Does tha' think," said Colin with dreamy carefulness, "as happen it was
made loike this 'ere all o' purpose for me?"
"My word!" cried Mary admiringly, "that there is a bit o' good
Yorkshire. Tha'rt shapin' first-rate--that tha' art."
And delight reigned.
They drew the chair under the plum-tree, which was snow-white with
blossoms and musical with bees. It was like a king's canopy, a fairy
king's. There were flowering cherry-trees near and apple-trees whose
buds were pink and white, and here and there one had burst open wide.
Between the blossoming branches of the canopy bits of blue sky looked
down like wonderful eyes.
Mary and Dickon worked a little here and there and Colin watched them.
They brought him things to look at--buds which were opening, buds which
were tight closed, bits of twig whose leaves were just showing green,
the feather of a woodpecker which had dropped on the grass, the empty
shell of some bird early hatched. Dickon pushed the chair slowly round
and round the garden, stopping every other moment to let him look at
wonders springing out of the earth or trailing down from trees. It was
like being taken in state round the country of a magic king and queen
and shown all the mysterious riches it contained.
"I wonder if we shall see the robin?" said Colin.
"Tha'll see him often enow after a bit," answered Dickon. "When th' eggs
hatches out th' little chap he'll be kep' so busy it'll make his head
swim. Tha'll see him flyin' backward an' for'ard carryin' worms nigh as
big as himsel' an' that much noise goin' on in th' nest when he gets
there as fair flusters him so as he scarce knows which big mouth to drop
th' first piece in. An' gapin' beaks an' squawks on every side. Mother
says as when she sees th' work a robin has to keep them gapin' beaks
filled, she feels like she was a lady with nothin' to do. She says she's
seen th' little chaps when it seemed like th' sweat must be droppin' off
'em, though folk can't see it."
This made them giggle so delightedly that they were obliged to cover
their mouths with their hands, remembering that they must not be heard.
Colin had been instructed as to the law of whispers and low voices
several days before. He liked the mysteriousness of it and did his best,
but in the midst of excited enjoyment it is rather difficult never to
laugh above a whisper.
Every moment of the afternoon was full of new things and every hour the
sunshine grew more golden. The wheeled chair had been drawn back under
the canopy and Dickon had sat down on the grass and had just drawn out
his pipe when Colin saw something he had not had time to notice before.
"That's a very old tree over there, isn't it?" he said.
Dickon looked across the grass at the tree and Mary looked and there was
a brief moment of stillness.
"Yes," answered Dickon, after it, and his low voice had a very gentle
sound.
Mary gazed at the tree and thought.
"The branches are quite gray and there's not a single leaf anywhere,"
Colin went on. "It's quite dead, isn't it?"
"Aye," admitted Dickon. "But them roses as has climbed all over it will
near hide every bit o' th' dead wood when they're full o' leaves an'
flowers. It won't look dead then. It'll be th' prettiest of all."
Mary still gazed at the tree and thought.
"It looks as if a big branch had been broken off," said Colin. "I wonder
how it was done."
"It's been done many a year," answered Dickon. "Eh!" with a sudden
relieved start and laying his hand on Colin. "Look at that robin! There
he is! He's been foragin' for his mate."
Colin was almost too late but he just caught sight of him, the flash of
red-breasted bird with something in his beak. He darted through the
greenness and into the close-grown corner and was out of sight. Colin
leaned back on his cushion again, laughing a little.
"He's taking her tea to her. Perhaps it's five o'clock. I think I'd like
some tea myself."
And so they were safe.
"It was Magic which sent the robin," said Mary secretly to Dickon
afterward. "I know it was Magic." For both she and Dickon had been
afraid Colin might ask something about the tree whose branch had broken
off ten years ago and they had talked it over together and Dickon had
stood and rubbed his head in a troubled way.
"We mun look as if it wasn't no different from th' other trees," he had
said. "We couldn't never tell him how it broke, poor lad. If he says
anything about it we mun--we mun try to look cheerful."
"Aye, that we mun," had answered Mary.
But she had not felt as if she looked cheerful when she gazed at the
tree. She wondered and wondered in those few moments if there was any
reality in that other thing Dickon had said. He had gone on rubbing his
rust-red hair in a puzzled way, but a nice comforted look had begun to
grow in his blue eyes.
"Mrs. Craven was a very lovely young lady," he had gone on rather
hesitatingly. "An' mother she thinks maybe she's about Misselthwaite
many a time lookin' after Mester Colin, same as all mothers do when
they're took out o' th' world. They have to come back, tha' sees. Happen
she's been in the garden an' happen it was her set us to work, an' told
us to bring him here."
Mary had thought he meant something about Magic. She was a great
believer in Magic. Secretly she quite believed that Dickon worked Magic,
of course good Magic, on everything near him and that was why people
liked him so much and wild creatures knew he was their friend. She
wondered, indeed, if it were not possible that his gift had brought the
robin just at the right moment when Colin asked that dangerous question.
She felt that his Magic was working all the afternoon and making Colin
look like an entirely different boy. It did not seem possible that he
could be the crazy creature who had screamed and beaten and bitten his
pillow. Even his ivory whiteness seemed to change. The faint glow of
color which had shown on his face and neck and hands when he first got
inside the garden really never quite died away. He looked as if he were
made of flesh instead of ivory or wax.
They saw the robin carry food to his mate two or three times, and it was
so suggestive of afternoon tea that Colin felt they must have some.
"Go and make one of the men servants bring some in a basket to the
rhododendron walk," he said. "And then you and Dickon can bring it
here."
It was an agreeable idea, easily carried out, and when the white cloth
was spread upon the grass, with hot tea and buttered toast and crumpets,
a delightfully hungry meal was eaten, and several birds on domestic
errands paused to inquire what was going on and were led into
investigating crumbs with great activity. Nut and Shell whisked up trees
with pieces of cake and Soot took the entire half of a buttered crumpet
into a corner and pecked at and examined and turned it over and made
hoarse remarks about it until he decided to swallow it all joyfully in
one gulp.
The afternoon was dragging toward its mellow hour. The sun was deepening
the gold of its lances, the bees were going home and the birds were
flying past less often. Dickon and Mary were sitting on the grass, the
tea-basket was re-packed ready to be taken back to the house, and Colin
was lying against his cushions with his heavy locks pushed back from his
forehead and his face looking quite a natural color.
"I don't want this afternoon to go," he said; "but I shall come back
to-morrow, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after."
"You'll get plenty of fresh air, won't you?" said Mary.
"I'm going to get nothing else," he answered. "I've seen the spring now
and I'm going to see the summer. I'm going to see everything grow here.
I'm going to grow here myself."
"That tha' will," said Dickon. "Us'll have thee walkin' about here an'
diggin' same as other folk afore long."
Colin flushed tremendously.
"Walk!" he said. "Dig! Shall I?"
Dickon's glance at him was delicately cautious. Neither he nor Mary had
ever asked if anything was the matter with his legs.
"For sure tha' will," he said stoutly. "Tha'--tha's got legs o' thine
own, same as other folks!"
Mary was rather frightened until she heard Colin's answer.
"Nothing really ails them," he said, "but they are so thin and weak.
They shake so that I'm afraid to try to stand on them."
Both Mary and Dickon drew a relieved breath.
"When tha' stops bein' afraid tha'lt stand on 'em," Dickon said with
renewed cheer. "An' tha'lt stop bein' afraid in a bit."
"I shall?" said Colin, and he lay still as if he were wondering about
things.
They were really very quiet for a little while. The sun was dropping
lower. It was that hour when everything stills itself, and they really
had had a busy and exciting afternoon. Colin looked as if he were
resting luxuriously. Even the creatures had ceased moving about and had
drawn together and were resting near them. Soot had perched on a low
branch and drawn up one leg and dropped the gray film drowsily over his
eyes. Mary privately thought he looked as if he might snore in a minute.
In the midst of this stillness it was rather startling when Colin half
lifted his head and exclaimed in a loud suddenly alarmed whisper:
"Who is that man?"
Dickon and Mary scrambled to their feet.
"Man!" they both cried in low quick voices.
Colin pointed to the high wall.
"Look!" he whispered excitedly. "Just look!"
Mary and Dickon wheeled about and looked. There was Ben Weatherstaff's
indignant face glaring at them over the wall from the top of a ladder!
He actually shook his fist at Mary.
"If I wasn't a bachelder, an' tha' was a wench o' mine," he cried, "I'd
give thee a hidin'!"
He mounted another step threateningly as if it were his energetic
intention to jump down and deal with her; but as she came toward him he
evidently thought better of it and stood on the top step of his ladder
shaking his fist down at her.
"I never thowt much o' thee!" he harangued. "I couldna' abide thee th'
first time I set eyes on thee. A scrawny buttermilk-faced young besom,
allus askin' questions an' pokin' tha' nose where it wasna' wanted. I
never knowed how tha' got so thick wi' me. If it hadna' been for th'
robin--Drat him--"
"Ben Weatherstaff," called out Mary, finding her breath. She stood below
him and called up to him with a sort of gasp. "Ben Weatherstaff, it was
the robin who showed me the way!"
Then it did seem as if Ben really would scramble down on her side of the
wall, he was so outraged.
"Tha' young bad 'un!" he called down at her. "Layin' tha' badness on a
robin,--not but what he's impidint enow for anythin'. Him showin' thee
th' way! Him! Eh! tha' young nowt,"--she could see his next words burst
out because he was overpowered by curiosity--"however i' this world did
tha' get in?"
"It was the robin who showed me the way," she protested obstinately. "He
didn't know he was doing it but he did. And I can't tell you from here
while you're shaking your fist at me."
He stopped shaking his fist very suddenly at that very moment and his
jaw actually dropped as he stared over her head at something he saw
coming over the grass toward him.
At the first sound of his torrent of words Colin had been so surprised
that he had only sat up and listened as if he were spellbound. But in
the midst of it he had recovered himself and beckoned imperiously to
Dickon.
"Wheel me over there!" he commanded. "Wheel me quite close and stop
right in front of him!"
And this, if you please, this is what Ben Weatherstaff beheld and which
made his jaw drop. A wheeled chair with luxurious cushions and robes
which came toward him looking rather like some sort of State Coach
because a young Rajah leaned back in it with royal command in his great
black-rimmed eyes and a thin white hand extended haughtily toward him.
And it stopped right under Ben Weatherstaff's nose. It was really no
wonder his mouth dropped open.
"Do you know who I am?" demanded the Rajah.
How Ben Weatherstaff stared! His red old eyes fixed themselves on what
was before him as if he were seeing a ghost. He gazed and gazed and
gulped a lump down his throat and did not say a word.
"Do you know who I am?" demanded Colin still more imperiously. "Answer!"
Ben Weatherstaff put his gnarled hand up and passed it over his eyes and
over his forehead and then he did answer in a queer shaky voice.
"Who tha' art?" he said. "Aye, that I do--wi' tha' mother's eyes starin'
at me out o' tha' face. Lord knows how tha' come here. But tha'rt th'
poor cripple."
Colin forgot that he had ever had a back. His face flushed scarlet and
he sat bolt upright.
"I'm not a cripple!" he cried out furiously. "I'm not!"
"He's not!" cried Mary, almost shouting up the wall in her fierce
indignation. "He's not got a lump as big as a pin! I looked and there
was none there--not one!"
Ben Weatherstaff passed his hand over his forehead again and gazed as if
he could never gaze enough. His hand shook and his mouth shook and his
voice shook. He was an ignorant old man and a tactless old man and he
could only remember the things he had heard.
"Tha'--tha' hasn't got a crooked back?" he said hoarsely.
"No!" shouted Colin.
"Tha'--tha' hasn't got crooked legs?" quavered Ben more hoarsely yet.
It was too much. The strength which Colin usually threw into his
tantrums rushed through him now in a new way. Never yet had he been
accused of crooked legs--even in whispers--and the perfectly simple
belief in their existence which was revealed by Ben Weatherstaff's voice
was more than Rajah flesh and blood could endure. His anger and insulted
pride made him forget everything but this one moment and filled him with
a power he had never known before, an almost unnatural strength.
"Come here!" he shouted to Dickon, and he actually began to tear the
coverings off his lower limbs and disentangle himself. "Come here! Come
here! This minute!"
Dickon was by his side in a second. Mary caught her breath in a short
gasp and felt herself turn pale.
"He can do it! He can do it! He can do it! He can!" she gabbled over to
herself under her breath as fast as ever she could.
There was a brief fierce scramble, the rugs were tossed on to the
ground, Dickon held Colin's arm, the thin legs were out, the thin feet
were on the grass. Colin was standing upright--upright--as straight as
an arrow and looking strangely tall--his head thrown back and his
strange eyes flashing lightning.
"Look at me!" he flung up at Ben Weatherstaff. "Just look at me--you!
Just look at me!"
"He's as straight as I am!" cried Dickon. "He's as straight as any lad
i' Yorkshire!"
What Ben Weatherstaff did Mary thought queer beyond measure. He choked
and gulped and suddenly tears ran down his weather-wrinkled cheeks as he
struck his old hands together.
"Eh!" he burst forth, "th' lies folk tells! Tha'rt as thin as a lath an'
as white as a wraith, but there's not a knob on thee. Tha'lt make a mon
yet. God bless thee!"
Dickon held Colin's arm strongly but the boy had not begun to falter. He
stood straighter and straighter and looked Ben Weatherstaff in the face.
"I'm your master," he said, "when my father is away. And you are to obey
me. This is my garden. Don't dare to say a word about it! You get down
from that ladder and go out to the Long Walk and Miss Mary will meet you
and bring you here. I want to talk to you. We did not want you, but now
you will have to be in the secret. Be quick!"
Ben Weatherstaff's crabbed old face was still wet with that one queer
rush of tears. It seemed as if he could not take his eyes from thin
straight Colin standing on his feet with his head thrown back.
"Eh! lad," he almost whispered. "Eh! my lad!" And then remembering
himself he suddenly touched his hat gardener fashion and said, "Yes,
sir! Yes, sir!" and obediently disappeared as he descended the ladder.
CHAPTER XXII
WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN
When his head was out of sight Colin turned to Mary.
"Go and meet him," he said; and Mary flew across the grass to the door
under the ivy.
Dickon was watching him with sharp eyes. There were scarlet spots on his
cheeks and he looked amazing, but he showed no signs of falling.
"I can stand," he said, and his head was still held up and he said it
quite grandly.
"I told thee tha' could as soon as tha' stopped bein' afraid," answered
Dickon. "An' tha's stopped."
"Yes, I've stopped," said Colin.
Then suddenly he remembered something Mary had said.
"Are you making Magic?" he asked sharply.
Dickon's curly mouth spread in a cheerful grin.
"Tha's doin' Magic thysel'," he said. "It's same Magic as made these
'ere work out o' th' earth," and he touched with his thick boot a clump
of crocuses in the grass.
Colin looked down at them.
"Aye," he said slowly, "there couldna' be bigger Magic then that
there--there couldna' be."
He drew himself up straighter than ever.
"I'm going to walk to that tree," he said, pointing to one a few feet
away from him. "I'm going to be standing when Weatherstaff comes here. I
can rest against the tree if I like. When I want to sit down I will sit
down, but not before. Bring a rug from the chair."
He walked to the tree and though Dickon held his arm he was wonderfully
steady. When he stood against the tree trunk it was not too plain that
he supported himself against it, and he still held himself so straight
that he looked tall.
When Ben Weatherstaff came through the door in the wall he saw him
standing there and he heard Mary muttering something under her breath.
"What art sayin'?" he asked rather testily because he did not want his
attention distracted from the long thin straight boy figure and proud
face.
But she did not tell him. What she was saying was this:
"You can do it! You can do it! I told you you could! You can do it! You
can do it! You _can_!"
She was saying it to Colin because she wanted to make Magic and keep him
on his feet looking like that. She could not bear that he should give in
before Ben Weatherstaff. He did not give in. She was uplifted by a
sudden feeling that he looked quite beautiful in spite of his thinness.
He fixed his eyes on Ben Weatherstaff in his funny imperious way.
"Look at me!" he commanded. "Look at me all over! Am I a hunchback? Have
I got crooked legs?"
Ben Weatherstaff had not quite got over his emotion, but he had
recovered a little and answered almost in his usual way.
"Not tha'," he said. "Nowt o' th' sort. What's tha' been doin' with
thysel'--? hidin' out o' sight an' lettin' folk think tha' was cripple
an' half-witted?"
"Half-witted!" said Colin angrily. "Who thought that?"
"Lots o' fools," said Ben. "Th' world's full o' jackasses brayin' an'
they never bray nowt but lies. What did tha' shut thysel' up for?"
"Every one thought I was going to die," said Colin shortly. "I'm not!"
And he said it with such decision Ben Weatherstaff looked him over, up
and down, down and up.
"Tha' die!" he said with dry exultation. "Nowt o' th' sort! Tha's got
too much pluck in thee. When I seed thee put tha' legs on th' ground in
such a hurry I knowed tha' was all right. Sit thee down on th' rug a bit
young Mester an' give me thy orders."
There was a queer mixture of crabbed tenderness and shrewd understanding
in his manner. Mary had poured out speech as rapidly as she could as
they had come down the Long Walk. The chief thing to be remembered, she
had told him, was that Colin was getting well--getting well. The garden
was doing it. No one must let him remember about having humps and dying.
The Rajah condescended to seat himself on a rug under the tree.
"What work do you do in the gardens, Weatherstaff?" he inquired.
"Anythin' I'm told to do," answered old Ben. "I'm kep' on by
favor--because she liked me."
"She?" said Colin.
"Tha' mother," answered Ben Weatherstaff.
"My mother?" said Colin, and he looked about him quietly. "This was her
garden, wasn't it?"
"Aye, it was that!" and Ben Weatherstaff looked about him too. "She were
main fond of it."
"It is my garden now, I am fond of it. I shall come here every day,"
announced Colin. "But it is to be a secret. My orders are that no one is
to know that we come here. Dickon and my cousin have worked and made it
come alive. I shall send for you sometimes to help--but you must come
when no one can see you."
Ben Weatherstaff's face twisted itself in a dry old smile.
"I've come here before when no one saw me," he said.
"What!" exclaimed Colin. "When?"
"Th' last time I was here," rubbing his chin and looking round, "was
about two year' ago."
"But no one has been in it for ten years!" cried Colin. "There was no
door!"
"I'm no one," said old Ben dryly. "An' I didn't come through th' door. I
come over th' wall. Th' rheumatics held me back th' last two year'."
"Tha' come an' did a bit o' prunin'!" cried Dickon. "I couldn't make out
how it had been done."
"She was so fond of it--she was!" said Ben Weatherstaff slowly. "An' she
was such a pretty young thing. She says to me once, 'Ben,' says she
laughin', 'if ever I'm ill or if I go away you must take care of my
roses.' When she did go away th' orders was no one was ever to come
nigh. But I come," with grumpy obstinacy. "Over th' wall I come--until
th' rheumatics stopped me--an' I did a bit o' work once a year. She'd
gave her order first."
"It wouldn't have been as wick as it is if tha' hadn't done it," said
Dickon. "I did wonder."
"I'm glad you did it, Weatherstaff," said Colin. "You'll know how to
keep the secret."
"Aye, I'll know, sir," answered Ben. "An' it'll be easier for a man wi'
rheumatics to come in at th' door."
On the grass near the tree Mary had dropped her trowel. Colin stretched
out his hand and took it up. An odd expression came into his face and he
began to scratch at the earth. His thin hand was weak enough but
presently as they watched him--Mary with quite breathless interest--he
drove the end of the trowel into the soil and turned some over.
"You can do it! You can do it!" said Mary to herself. "I tell you, you
can!"
Dickon's round eyes were full of eager curiousness but he said not a
word. Ben Weatherstaff looked on with interested face.
Colin persevered. After he had turned a few trowelfuls of soil he spoke
exultantly to Dickon in his best Yorkshire.
"Tha' said as tha'd have me walkin' about here same as other folk--an'
tha' said tha'd have me diggin'. I thowt tha' was just leein' to please
me. This is only th' first day an' I've walked--an' here I am diggin'."
Ben Weatherstaff's mouth fell open again when he heard him, but he ended
by chuckling.
"Eh!" he said, "that sounds as if tha'd got wits enow. Tha'rt a
Yorkshire lad for sure. An' tha'rt diggin', too. How'd tha' like to
plant a bit o' somethin'? I can get thee a rose in a pot."
"Go and get it!" said Colin, digging excitedly. "Quick! Quick!"
It was done quickly enough indeed. Ben Weatherstaff went his way
forgetting rheumatics. Dickon took his spade and dug the hole deeper and
wider than a new digger with thin white hands could make it. Mary
slipped out to run and bring back a watering-can. When Dickon had
deepened the hole Colin went on turning the soft earth over and over. He
looked up at the sky, flushed and glowing with the strangely new
exercise, slight as it was.
"I want to do it before the sun goes quite--quite down," he said.
Mary thought that perhaps the sun held back a few minutes just on
purpose. Ben Weatherstaff brought the rose in its pot from the
greenhouse. He hobbled over the grass as fast as he could. He had begun
to be excited, too. He knelt down by the hole and broke the pot from the
mould.
"Here, lad," he said, handing the plant to Colin. "Set it in the earth
thysel' same as th' king does when he goes to a new place."
The thin white hands shook a little and Colin's flush grew deeper as he
set the rose in the mould and held it while old Ben made firm the earth.
It was filled in and pressed down and made steady. Mary was leaning
forward on her hands and knees. Soot had flown down and marched forward
to see what was being done. Nut and Shell chattered about it from a
cherry-tree.
"It's planted!" said Colin at last. "And the sun is only slipping over
the edge. Help me up, Dickon. I want to be standing when it goes. That's
part of the Magic."
And Dickon helped him, and the Magic--or whatever it was--so gave him
strength that when the sun did slip over the edge and end the strange
lovely afternoon for them there he actually stood on his two
feet--laughing.
CHAPTER XXIII
MAGIC
Dr. Craven had been waiting some time at the house when they returned to
it. He had indeed begun to wonder if it might not be wise to send some
one out to explore the garden paths. When Colin was brought back to his
room the poor man looked him over seriously.
"You should not have stayed so long," he said. "You must not overexert
yourself."
"I am not tired at all," said Colin. "It has made me well. To-morrow I
am going out in the morning as well as in the afternoon."
"I am not sure that I can allow it," answered Dr. Craven. "I am afraid
it would not be wise."
"It would not be wise to try to stop me," said Colin quite seriously. "I
am going."
Even Mary had found out that one of Colin's chief peculiarities was that
he did not know in the least what a rude little brute he was with his
way of ordering people about. He had lived on a sort of desert island
all his life and as he had been the king of it he had made his own
manners and had had no one to compare himself with. Mary had indeed
been rather like him herself and since she had been at Misselthwaite had
gradually discovered that her own manners had not been of the kind which
is usual or popular. Having made this discovery she naturally thought it
of enough interest to communicate to Colin. So she sat and looked at him
curiously for a few minutes after Dr. Craven had gone. She wanted to
make him ask her why she was doing it and of course she did.
"What are you looking at me for?" he said.
"I'm thinking that I am rather sorry for Dr. Craven."
"So am I," said Colin calmly, but not without an air of some
satisfaction. "He won't get Misselthwaite at all now I'm not going to
die."
"I'm sorry for him because of that, of course," said Mary, "but I was
thinking just then that it must have been very horrid to have had to be
polite for ten years to a boy who was always rude. I would never have
done it."
"Am I rude?" Colin inquired undisturbedly.
"If you had been his own boy and he had been a slapping sort of man,"
said Mary, "he would have slapped you."
"But he daren't," said Colin.
"No, he daren't," answered Mistress Mary, thinking the thing out quite
without prejudice. "Nobody ever dared to do anything you didn't
like--because you were going to die and things like that. You were such
a poor thing."
"But," announced Colin stubbornly, "I am not going to be a poor thing. I
won't let people think I'm one. I stood on my feet this afternoon."
"It is always having your own way that has made you so queer," Mary went
on, thinking aloud.
Colin turned his head, frowning.
"Am I queer?" he demanded.
"Yes," answered Mary, "very. But you needn't be cross," she added
impartially, "because so am I queer--and so is Ben Weatherstaff. But I
am not as queer as I was before I began to like people and before I
found the garden."
"I don't want to be queer," said Colin. "I am not going to be," and he
frowned again with determination.
He was a very proud boy. He lay thinking for a while and then Mary saw
his beautiful smile begin and gradually change his whole face.
"I shall stop being queer," he said, "if I go every day to the garden.
There is Magic in there--good Magic, you know, Mary. I am sure there
is."
"So am I," said Mary.
"Even if it isn't real Magic," Colin said, "we can pretend it is.
_Something_ is there--_something_!"
"It's Magic," said Mary, "but not black. It's as white as snow."
They always called it Magic and indeed it seemed like it in the months
that followed--the wonderful months--the radiant months--the amazing
ones. Oh! the things which happened in that garden! If you have never
had a garden, you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you
will know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to
pass there. At first it seemed that green things would never cease
pushing their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in
the crevices of the walls. Then the green things began to show buds and
the buds began to unfurl and show color, every shade of blue, every
shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. In its happy days
flowers had been tucked away into every inch and hole and corner. Ben
Weatherstaff had seen it done and had himself scraped out mortar from
between the bricks of the wall and made pockets of earth for lovely
clinging things to grow on. Iris and white lilies rose out of the grass
in sheaves, and the green alcoves filled themselves with amazing armies
of the blue and white flower lances of tall delphiniums or columbines
or campanulas.
"She was main fond o' them--she was," Ben Weatherstaff said. "She liked
them things as was allus pointin' up to th' blue sky, she used to tell.
Not as she was one o' them as looked down on th' earth--not her. She
just loved it but she said as th' blue sky allus looked so joyful."
The seeds Dickon and Mary had planted grew as if fairies had tended
them. Satiny poppies of all tints danced in the breeze by the score,
gaily defying flowers which had lived in the garden for years and which
it might be confessed seemed rather to wonder how such new people had
got there. And the roses--the roses! Rising out of the grass, tangled
round the sun-dial, wreathing the tree trunks and hanging from their
branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long
garlands falling in cascades--they came alive day by day, hour by hour.
Fair fresh leaves, and buds--and buds--tiny at first but swelling and
working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent
delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden
air.
Colin saw it all, watching each change as it took place. Every morning
he was brought out and every hour of each day when it didn't rain he
spent in the garden. Even gray days pleased him. He would lie on the
grass "watching things growing," he said. If you watched long enough, he
declared, you could see buds unsheath themselves. Also you could make
the acquaintance of strange busy insect things running about on various
unknown but evidently serious errands, sometimes carrying tiny scraps of
straw or feather or food, or climbing blades of grass as if they were
trees from whose tops one could look out to explore the country. A mole
throwing up its mound at the end of its burrow and making its way out at
last with the long-nailed paws which looked so like elfish hands, had
absorbed him one whole morning. Ants' ways, beetles' ways, bees' ways,
frogs' ways, birds' ways, plants' ways, gave him a new world to explore
and when Dickon revealed them all and added foxes' ways, otters' ways,
ferrets' ways, squirrels' ways, and trout's and water-rats' and badgers'
ways, there was no end to the things to talk about and think over.
And this was not the half of the Magic. The fact that he had really once
stood on his feet had set Colin thinking tremendously and when Mary told
him of the spell she had worked he was excited and approved of it
greatly. He talked of it constantly.
"Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world," he said wisely
one day, "but people don't know what it is like or how to make it.
Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen
until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment."
The next morning when they went to the secret garden he sent at once for
Ben Weatherstaff. Ben came as quickly as he could and found the Rajah
standing on his feet under a tree and looking very grand but also very
beautifully smiling.
"Good morning, Ben Weatherstaff," he said. "I want you and Dickon and
Miss Mary to stand in a row and listen to me because I am going to tell
you something very important."
"Aye, aye, sir!" answered Ben Weatherstaff, touching his forehead. (One
of the long concealed charms of Ben Weatherstaff was that in his boyhood
he had once run away to sea and had made voyages. So he could reply like
a sailor.)
"I am going to try a scientific experiment," explained the Rajah. "When
I grow up I am going to make great scientific discoveries and I am going
to begin now with this experiment."
"Aye, aye, sir!" said Ben Weatherstaff promptly, though this was the
first time he had heard of great scientific discoveries.
It was the first time Mary had heard of them, either, but even at this
stage she had begun to realize that, queer as he was, Colin had read
about a great many singular things and was somehow a very convincing
sort of boy. When he held up his head and fixed his strange eyes on you
it seemed as if you believed him almost in spite of yourself though he
was only ten years old--going on eleven. At this moment he was
especially convincing because he suddenly felt the fascination of
actually making a sort of speech like a grown-up person.
"The great scientific discoveries I am going to make," he went on, "will
be about Magic. Magic is a great thing and scarcely any one knows
anything about it except a few people in old books--and Mary a little,
because she was born in India where there are fakirs. I believe Dickon
knows some Magic, but perhaps he doesn't know he knows it. He charms
animals and people. I would never have let him come to see me if he had
not been an animal charmer--which is a boy charmer, too, because a boy
is an animal. I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not
sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us--like
electricity and horses and steam."
This sounded so imposing that Ben Weatherstaff became quite excited and
really could not keep still.
"Aye, aye, sir," he said and he began to stand up quite straight.
"When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead," the orator
proceeded. "Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and
making things out of nothing. One day things weren't there and another
they were. I had never watched things before and it made me feel very
curious. Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be
scientific. I keep saying to myself, 'What is it? What is it?' It's
something. It can't be nothing! I don't know its name so I call it
Magic. I have never seen the sun rise but Mary and Dickon have and from
what they tell me I am sure that is Magic too. Something pushes it up
and draws it. Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up
through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being
happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making me
breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out
of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers
and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all
around us. In this garden--in all the places. The Magic in this garden
has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a man. I am going
to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some and put it in
myself and make it push and draw me and make me strong. I don't know how
to do it but I think that if you keep thinking about it and calling it
perhaps it will come. Perhaps that is the first baby way to get it. When
I was going to try to stand that first time Mary kept saying to herself
as fast as she could, 'You can do it! You can do it!' and I did. I had
to try myself at the same time, of course, but her Magic helped me--and
so did Dickon's. Every morning and evening and as often in the daytime
as I can remember I am going to say, 'Magic is in me! Magic is making me
well! I am going to be as strong as Dickon, as strong as Dickon!' And
you must all do it, too. That is my experiment. Will you help, Ben
Weatherstaff?"
"Aye, aye, sir!" said Ben Weatherstaff. "Aye, aye!"
"If you keep doing it every day as regularly as soldiers go through
drill we shall see what will happen and find out if the experiment
succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking
about them until they stay in your mind forever and I think it will be
the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you
it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things."
"I once heard an officer in India tell my mother that there were fakirs
who said words over and over thousands of times," said Mary.
"I've heard Jem Fettleworth's wife say th' same thing over thousands o'
times--callin' Jem a drunken brute," said Ben Weatherstaff dryly.
"Summat allus come o' that, sure enough. He gave her a good hidin' an'
went to th' Blue Lion an' got as drunk as a lord."
Colin drew his brows together and thought a few minutes. Then he cheered
up.
"Well," he said, "you see something did come of it. She used the wrong
Magic until she made him beat her. If she'd used the right Magic and had
said something nice perhaps he wouldn't have got as drunk as a lord and
perhaps--perhaps he might have bought her a new bonnet."
Ben Weatherstaff chuckled and there was shrewd admiration in his little
old eyes.
"Tha'rt a clever lad as well as a straight-legged one, Mester Colin," he
said. "Next time I see Bess Fettleworth I'll give her a bit of a hint o'
what Magic will do for her. She'd be rare an' pleased if th' sinetifik
'speriment worked--an' so 'ud Jem."
Dickon had stood listening to the lecture, his round eyes shining with
curious delight. Nut and Shell were on his shoulders and he held a
long-eared white rabbit in his arm and stroked and stroked it softly
while it laid its ears along its back and enjoyed itself.
"Do you think the experiment will work?" Colin asked him, wondering what
he was thinking. He so often wondered what Dickon was thinking when he
saw him looking at him or at one of his "creatures" with his happy wide
smile.
He smiled now and his smile was wider than usual.
"Aye," he answered, "that I do. It'll work same as th' seeds do when th'
sun shines on 'em. It'll work for sure. Shall us begin it now?"
Colin was delighted and so was Mary. Fired by recollections of fakirs
and devotees in illustrations Colin suggested that they should all sit
cross-legged under the tree which made a canopy.
"It will be like sitting in a sort of temple," said Colin. "I'm rather
tired and I want to sit down."
"Eh!" said Dickon, "tha' musn't begin by sayin' tha'rt tired. Tha' might
spoil th' Magic."
Colin turned and looked at him--into his innocent round eyes.
"That's true," he said slowly. "I must only think of the Magic."
It all seemed most majestic and mysterious when they sat down in their
circle. Ben Weatherstaff felt as if he had somehow been led into
appearing at a prayer-meeting. Ordinarily he was very fixed in being
what he called "agen' prayer-meetin's" but this being the Rajah's affair
he did not resent it and was indeed inclined to be gratified at being
called upon to assist. Mistress Mary felt solemnly enraptured. Dickon
held his rabbit in his arm, and perhaps he made some charmer's signal no
one heard, for when he sat down, cross-legged like the rest, the crow,
the fox, the squirrels and the lamb slowly drew near and made part of
the circle, settling each into a place of rest as if of their own
desire.
"The 'creatures' have come," said Colin gravely. "They want to help us."
Colin really looked quite beautiful, Mary thought. He held his head high
as if he felt like a sort of priest and his strange eyes had a wonderful
look in them. The light shone on him through the tree canopy.
"Now we will begin," he said. "Shall we sway backward and forward, Mary,
as if we were dervishes?"
"I canna' do no swayin' back'ard and for'ard," said Ben Weatherstaff.
"I've got th' rheumatics."
"The Magic will take them away," said Colin in a High Priest tone, "but
we won't sway until it has done it. We will only chant."
"I canna' do no chantin'," said Ben Weatherstaff a trifle testily. "They
turned me out o' th' church choir th' only time I ever tried it."
No one smiled. They were all too much in earnest. Colin's face was not
even crossed by a shadow. He was thinking only of the Magic.
"Then I will chant," he said. And he began, looking like a strange boy
spirit. "The sun is shining--the sun is shining. That is the Magic. The
flowers are growing--the roots are stirring. That is the Magic. Being
alive is the Magic--being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in me--the
Magic is in me. It is in me--it is in me. It's in every one of us. It's
in Ben Weatherstaff's back. Magic! Magic! Come and help!"
He said it a great many times--not a thousand times but quite a goodly
number. Mary listened entranced. She felt as if it were at once queer
and beautiful and she wanted him to go on and on. Ben Weatherstaff began
to feel soothed into a sort of dream which was quite agreeable. The
humming of the bees in the blossoms mingled with the chanting voice and
drowsily melted into a doze. Dickon sat cross-legged with his rabbit
asleep on his arm and a hand resting on the lamb's back. Soot had
pushed away a squirrel and huddled close to him on his shoulder, the
gray film dropped over his eyes. At last Colin stopped.
"Now I am going to walk round the garden," he announced.
Ben Weatherstaff's head had just dropped forward and he lifted it with a
jerk.
"You have been asleep," said Colin.
"Nowt o' th' sort," mumbled Ben. "Th' sermon was good enow--but I'm
bound to get out afore th' collection."
He was not quite awake yet.
"You're not in church," said Colin.
"Not me," said Ben, straightening himself. "Who said I were? I heard
every bit of it. You said th' Magic was in my back. Th' doctor calls it
rheumatics."
The Rajah waved his hand.
"That was the wrong Magic," he said. "You will get better. You have my
permission to go to your work. But come back to-morrow."
"I'd like to see thee walk round the garden," grunted Ben.
It was not an unfriendly grunt, but it was a grunt. In fact, being a
stubborn old party and not having entire faith in Magic he had made up
his mind that if he were sent away he would climb his ladder and look
over the wall so that he might be ready to hobble back if there were any
stumbling.
The Rajah did not object to his staying and so the procession was
formed. It really did look like a procession. Colin was at its head with
Dickon on one side and Mary on the other. Ben Weatherstaff walked
behind, and the "creatures" trailed after them, the lamb and the fox cub
keeping close to Dickon, the white rabbit hopping along or stopping to
nibble and Soot following with the solemnity of a person who felt
himself in charge.
It was a procession which moved slowly but with dignity. Every few yards
it stopped to rest. Colin leaned on Dickon's arm and privately Ben
Weatherstaff kept a sharp lookout, but now and then Colin took his hand
from its support and walked a few steps alone. His head was held up all
the time and he looked very grand.
"The Magic is in me!" he kept saying. "The Magic is making me strong! I
can feel it! I can feel it!"
It seemed very certain that something was upholding and uplifting him.
He sat on the seats in the alcoves, and once or twice he sat down on the
grass and several times he paused in the path and leaned on Dickon, but
he would not give up until he had gone all round the garden. When he
returned to the canopy tree his cheeks were flushed and he looked
triumphant.
"I did it! The Magic worked!" he cried. "That is my first scientific
discovery."
"What will Dr. Craven say?" broke out Mary.
"He won't say anything," Colin answered, "because he will not be told.
This is to be the biggest secret of all. No one is to know anything
about it until I have grown so strong that I can walk and run like any
other boy. I shall come here every day in my chair and I shall be taken
back in it. I won't have people whispering and asking questions and I
won't let my father hear about it until the experiment has quite
succeeded. Then sometime when he comes back to Misselthwaite I shall
just walk into his study and say 'Here I am; I am like any other boy. I
am quite well and I shall live to be a man. It has been done by a
scientific experiment.'"
"He will think he is in a dream," cried Mary. "He won't believe his
eyes."
Colin flushed triumphantly. He had made himself believe that he was
going to get well, which was really more than half the battle, if he had
been aware of it. And the thought which stimulated him more than any
other was this imagining what his father would look like when he saw
that he had a son who was as straight and strong as other fathers'
sons. One of his darkest miseries in the unhealthy morbid past days had
been his hatred of being a sickly weak-backed boy whose father was
afraid to look at him.
"He'll be obliged to believe them," he said. "One of the things I am
going to do, after the Magic works and before I begin to make scientific
discoveries, is to be an athlete."
"We shall have thee takin' to boxin' in a week or so," said Ben
Weatherstaff. "Tha'lt end wi' winnin' th' Belt an' bein' champion
prize-fighter of all England."
Colin fixed his eyes on him sternly.
"Weatherstaff," he said, "that is disrespectful. You must not take
liberties because you are in the secret. However much the Magic works I
shall not be a prize-fighter. I shall be a Scientific Discoverer."
"Ax pardon--ax pardon, sir," answered Ben, touching his forehead in
salute. "I ought to have seed it wasn't a jokin' matter," but his eyes
twinkled and secretly he was immensely pleased. He really did not mind
being snubbed since the snubbing meant that the lad was gaining strength
and spirit.
CHAPTER XXIV
"LET THEM LAUGH"
The secret garden was not the only one Dickon worked in. Round the
cottage on the moor there was a piece of ground enclosed by a low wall
of rough stones. Early in the morning and late in the fading twilight
and on all the days Colin and Mary did not see him, Dickon worked there
planting or tending potatoes and cabbages, turnips and carrots and herbs
for his mother. In the company of his "creatures" he did wonders there
and was never tired of doing them, it seemed. While he dug or weeded he
whistled or sang bits of Yorkshire moor songs or talked to Soot or
Captain or the brothers and sisters he had taught to help him.
"We'd never get on as comfortable as we do," Mrs. Sowerby said, "if it
wasn't for Dickon's garden. Anything'll grow for him. His 'taters and
cabbages is twice th' size of any one else's an' they've got a flavor
with 'em as nobody's has."
When she found a moment to spare she liked to go out and talk to him.
After supper there was still a long clear twilight to work in and that
was her quiet time. She could sit upon the low rough wall and look on
and hear stories of the day. She loved this time. There were not only
vegetables in this garden. Dickon had bought penny packages of flower
seeds now and then and sown bright sweet-scented things among gooseberry
bushes and even cabbages and he grew borders of mignonette and pinks and
pansies and things whose seeds he could save year after year or whose
roots would bloom each spring and spread in time into fine clumps. The
low wall was one of the prettiest things in Yorkshire because he had
tucked moorland foxglove and ferns and rock-cress and hedgerow flowers
into every crevice until only here and there glimpses of the stones were
to be seen.
"All a chap's got to do to make 'em thrive, mother," he would say, "is
to be friends with 'em for sure. They're just like th' 'creatures.' If
they're thirsty give 'em a drink and if they're hungry give 'em a bit o'
food. They want to live same as we do. If they died I should feel as if
I'd been a bad lad and somehow treated them heartless."
It was in these twilight hours that Mrs. Sowerby heard of all that
happened at Misselthwaite Manor. At first she was only told that
"Mester Colin" had taken a fancy to going out into the grounds with
Miss Mary and that it was doing him good. But it was not long before it
was agreed between the two children that Dickon's mother might "come
into the secret." Somehow it was not doubted that she was "safe for
sure."
So one beautiful still evening Dickon told the whole story, with all the
thrilling details of the buried key and the robin and the gray haze
which had seemed like deadness and the secret Mistress Mary had planned
never to reveal. The coming of Dickon and how it had been told to him,
the doubt of Mester Colin and the final drama of his introduction to the
hidden domain, combined with the incident of Ben Weatherstaff's angry
face peering over the wall and Mester Colin's sudden indignant strength,
made Mrs. Sowerby's nice-looking face quite change color several times.
"My word!" she said. "It was a good thing that little lass came to th'
Manor. It's been th' makin' o' her an' th' savin' o' him. Standin' on
his feet! An' us all thinkin' he was a poor half-witted lad with not a
straight bone in him."
She asked a great many questions and her blue eyes were full of deep
thinking.
"What do they make of it at th' Manor--him being so well an' cheerful
an' never complainin'?" she inquired.
"They don't know what to make of it," answered Dickon. "Every day as
comes round his face looks different. It's fillin' out and doesn't look
so sharp an' th' waxy color is goin'. But he has to do his bit o'
complainin'," with a highly entertained grin.
"What for, i' Mercy's name?" asked Mrs. Sowerby.
Dickon chuckled.
"He does it to keep them from guessin' what's happened. If the doctor
knew he'd found out he could stand on his feet he'd likely write and
tell Mester Craven. Mester Colin's savin' th' secret to tell himself.
He's goin' to practise his Magic on his legs every day till his father
comes back an' then he's goin' to march into his room an' show him he's
as straight as other lads. But him an' Miss Mary thinks it's best plan
to do a bit o' groanin' an' frettin' now an' then to throw folk off th'
scent."
Mrs. Sowerby was laughing a low comfortable laugh long before he had
finished his last sentence.
"Eh!" she said, "that pair's enjoyin' theirselves, I'll warrant. They'll
get a good bit o' play actin' out of it an' there's nothin' children
likes as much as play actin'. Let's hear what they do, Dickon lad."
Dickon stopped weeding and sat up on his heels to tell her. His eyes
were twinkling with fun.
"Mester Colin is carried down to his chair every time he goes out," he
explained. "An' he flies out at John, th' footman, for not carryin' him
careful enough. He makes himself as helpless lookin' as he can an' never
lifts his head until we're out o' sight o' th' house. An' he grunts an'
frets a good bit when he's bein' settled into his chair. Him an' Miss
Mary's both got to enjoyin' it an' when he groans an' complains she'll
say, 'Poor Colin! Does it hurt you so much? Are you so weak as that,
poor Colin?'--but th' trouble is that sometimes they can scarce keep
from burstin' out laughin'. When we get safe into the garden they laugh
till they've no breath left to laugh with. An' they have to stuff their
faces into Mester Colin's cushions to keep the gardeners from hearin',
if any of 'em's about."
"Th' more they laugh th' better for 'em!" said Mrs. Sowerby, still
laughing herself. "Good healthy child laughin's better than pills any
day o' th' year. That pair'll plump up for sure."
"They are plumpin' up," said Dickon. "They're that hungry they don't
know how to get enough to eat without makin' talk. Mester Colin says if
he keeps sendin' for more food they won't believe he's an invalid at
all. Miss Mary says she'll let him eat her share, but he says that if
she goes hungry she'll get thin an' they mun both get fat at once."
Mrs. Sowerby laughed so heartily at the revelation of this difficulty,
that she quite rocked backward and forward in her blue cloak, and Dickon
laughed with her.
"I'll tell thee what, lad," Mrs. Sowerby said when she could speak.
"I've thought of a way to help 'em. When tha' goes to 'em in th'
mornin's tha' shall take a pail o' good new milk an' I'll bake 'em a
crusty cottage loaf or some buns wi' currants in 'em, same as you
children like. Nothin's so good as fresh milk an' bread. Then they could
take off th' edge o' their hunger while they were in their garden an'
th' fine food they get indoors 'ud polish off th' corners."
"Eh! mother!" said Dickon admiringly, "what a wonder tha' art! Tha'
always sees a way out o' things. They was quite in a pother yesterday.
They didn't see how they was to manage without orderin' up more
food--they felt that empty inside."
"They're two young 'uns growin' fast, an' health's comin' back to both of
'em. Children like that feels like young wolves an' food's flesh an'
blood to 'em," said Mrs. Sowerby. Then she smiled Dickon's own curving
smile. "Eh! but they're enjoyin' theirselves for sure," she said.
She was quite right, the comfortable wonderful mother creature--and she
had never been more so than when she said their "play actin'" would be
their joy. Colin and Mary found it one of their most thrilling sources
of entertainment. The idea of protecting themselves from suspicion had
been unconsciously suggested to them first by the puzzled nurse and then
by Dr. Craven himself.
"Your appetite is improving very much, Master Colin," the nurse had said
one day. "You used to eat nothing, and so many things disagreed with
you."
"Nothing disagrees with me now," replied Colin, and then seeing the
nurse looking at him curiously he suddenly remembered that perhaps he
ought not to appear too well just yet. "At least things don't so often
disagree with me. It's the fresh air."
"Perhaps it is," said the nurse, still looking at him with a mystified
expression. "But I must talk to Dr. Craven about it."
"How she stared at you!" said Mary when she went away. "As if she
thought there must be something to find out."
"I won't have her finding out things," said Colin. "No one must begin to
find out yet." When Dr. Craven came that morning he seemed puzzled,
also. He asked a number of questions, to Colin's great annoyance.
"You stay out in the garden a great deal," he suggested. "Where do you
go?"
Colin put on his favorite air of dignified indifference to opinion.
"I will not let any one know where I go," he answered. "I go to a place
I like. Every one has orders to keep out of the way. I won't be watched
and stared at. You know that!"
"You seem to be out all day but I do not think it has done you harm--I
do not think so. The nurse says that you eat much more than you have
ever done before."
"Perhaps," said Colin, prompted by a sudden inspiration, "perhaps it is
an unnatural appetite."
"I do not think so, as your food seems to agree with you," said Dr.
Craven. "You are gaining flesh rapidly and your color is better."
"Perhaps--perhaps I am bloated and feverish," said Colin, assuming a
discouraging air of gloom. "People who are not going to live are
often--different."
Dr. Craven shook his head. He was holding Colin's wrist and he pushed up
his sleeve and felt his arm.
"You are not feverish," he said thoughtfully, "and such flesh as you
have gained is healthy. If we can keep this up, my boy, we need not talk
of dying. Your father will be very happy to hear of this remarkable
improvement."
"I won't have him told!" Colin broke forth fiercely. "It will only
disappoint him if I get worse again--and I may get worse this very
night. I might have a raging fever. I feel as if I might be beginning to
have one now. I won't have letters written to my father--I won't--I
won't! You are making me angry and you know that is bad for me. I feel
hot already. I hate being written about and being talked over as much as
I hate being stared at!"
"Hush-h! my boy," Dr. Craven soothed him. "Nothing shall be written
without your permission. You are too sensitive about things. You must
not undo the good which has been done."
He said no more about writing to Mr. Craven and when he saw the nurse he
privately warned her that such a possibility must not be mentioned to
the patient.
"The boy is extraordinarily better," he said. "His advance seems almost
abnormal. But of course he is doing now of his own free will what we
could not make him do before. Still, he excites himself very easily and
nothing must be said to irritate him."
Mary and Colin were much alarmed and talked together anxiously. From
this time dated their plan of "play actin'."
"I may be obliged to have a tantrum," said Colin regretfully. "I don't
want to have one and I'm not miserable enough now to work myself into a
big one. Perhaps I couldn't have one at all. That lump doesn't come in
my throat now and I keep thinking of nice things instead of horrible
ones. But if they talk about writing to my father I shall have to do
something."
He made up his mind to eat less, but unfortunately it was not possible
to carry out this brilliant idea when he wakened each morning with an
amazing appetite and the table near his sofa was set with a breakfast of
home-made bread and fresh butter, snow-white eggs, raspberry jam and
clotted cream. Mary always breakfasted with him and when they found
themselves at the table--particularly if there were delicate slices of
sizzling ham sending forth tempting odors from under a hot silver
cover--they would look into each other's eyes in desperation.
"I think we shall have to eat it all this morning, Mary," Colin always
ended by saying. "We can send away some of the lunch and a great deal of
the dinner."
But they never found they could send away anything and the highly
polished condition of the empty plates returned to the pantry awakened
much comment.
"I do wish," Colin would say also, "I do wish the slices of ham were
thicker, and one muffin each is not enough for any one."
"It's enough for a person who is going to die," answered Mary when first
she heard this, "but it's not enough for a person who is going to live.
I sometimes feel as if I could eat three when those nice fresh heather
and gorse smells from the moor come pouring in at the open window."
The morning that Dickon--after they had been enjoying themselves in the
garden for about two hours--went behind a big rose-bush and brought
forth two tin pails and revealed that one was full of rich new milk with
cream on the top of it, and that the other held cottage-made currant
buns folded in a clean blue and white napkin, buns so carefully tucked
in that they were still hot, there was a riot of surprised joyfulness.
What a wonderful thing for Mrs. Sowerby to think of! What a kind, clever
woman she must be! How good the buns were! And what delicious fresh
milk!
"Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon," said Colin. "It makes her
think of ways to do things--nice things. She is a Magic person. Tell her
we are grateful, Dickon--extremely grateful."
He was given to using rather grown-up phrases at times. He enjoyed them.
He liked this so much that he improved upon it.
"Tell her she has been most bounteous and our gratitude is extreme."
And then forgetting his grandeur he fell to and stuffed himself with
buns and drank milk out of the pail in copious draughts in the manner of
any hungry little boy who had been taking unusual exercise and breathing
in moorland air and whose breakfast was more than two hours behind him.
This was the beginning of many agreeable incidents of the same kind.
They actually awoke to the fact that as Mrs. Sowerby had fourteen people
to provide food for she might not have enough to satisfy two extra
appetites every day. So they asked her to let them send some of their
shillings to buy things.
Dickon made the stimulating discovery that in the wood in the park
outside the garden where Mary had first found him piping to the wild
creatures there was a deep little hollow where you could build a sort of
tiny oven with stones and roast potatoes and eggs in it. Roasted eggs
were a previously unknown luxury and very hot potatoes with salt and
fresh butter in them were fit for a woodland king--besides being
deliciously satisfying. You could buy both potatoes and eggs and eat as
many as you liked without feeling as if you were taking food out of the
mouths of fourteen people.
Every beautiful morning the Magic was worked by the mystic circle under
the plum-tree which provided a canopy of thickening green leaves after
its brief blossom-time was ended. After the ceremony Colin always took
his walking exercise and throughout the day he exercised his newly found
power at intervals. Each day he grew stronger and could walk more
steadily and cover more ground. And each day his belief in the Magic
grew stronger--as well it might. He tried one experiment after another
as he felt himself gaining strength and it was Dickon who showed him the
best things of all.
"Yesterday," he said one morning after an absence, "I went to Thwaite
for mother an' near th' Blue Cow Inn I seed Bob Haworth. He's the
strongest chap on th' moor. He's the champion wrestler an' he can jump
higher than any other chap an' throw th' hammer farther. He's gone all
th' way to Scotland for th' sports some years. He's knowed me ever since
I was a little 'un an' he's a friendly sort an' I axed him some
questions. Th' gentry calls him a athlete and I thought o' thee, Mester
Colin, and I says, 'How did tha' make tha' muscles stick out that way,
Bob? Did tha' do anythin' extra to make thysel' so strong?' An' he says
'Well, yes, lad, I did. A strong man in a show that came to Thwaite once
showed me how to exercise my arms an' legs an' every muscle in my body.'
An' I says, 'Could a delicate chap make himself stronger with 'em, Bob?'
an' he laughed an' says, 'Art tha' th' delicate chap?' an' I says, 'No,
but I knows a young gentleman that's gettin' well of a long illness an'
I wish I knowed some o' them tricks to tell him about.' I didn't say no
names an' he didn't ask none. He's friendly same as I said an' he stood
up an' showed me good-natured like, an' I imitated what he did till I
knowed it by heart."
Colin had been listening excitedly.
"Can you show me?" he cried. "Will you?"
"Aye, to be sure," Dickon answered, getting up. "But he says tha' mun do
'em gentle at first an' be careful not to tire thysel'. Rest in between
times an' take deep breaths an' don't overdo."
"I'll be careful," said Colin. "Show me! Show me! Dickon, you are the
most Magic boy in the world!"
Dickon stood up on the grass and slowly went through a carefully
practical but simple series of muscle exercises. Colin watched them with
widening eyes. He could do a few while he was sitting down. Presently he
did a few gently while he stood upon his already steadied feet. Mary
began to do them also. Soot, who was watching the performance, became
much disturbed and left his branch and hopped about restlessly because
he could not do them too.
From that time the exercises were part of the day's duties as much as
the Magic was. It became possible for both Colin and Mary to do more of
them each time they tried, and such appetites were the results that but
for the basket Dickon put down behind the bush each morning when he
arrived they would have been lost. But the little oven in the hollow and
Mrs. Sowerby's bounties were so satisfying that Mrs. Medlock and the
nurse and Dr. Craven became mystified again. You can trifle with your
breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner if you are full to the brim
with roasted eggs and potatoes and richly frothed new milk and oat-cakes
and buns and heather honey and clotted cream.
"They are eating next to nothing," said the nurse. "They'll die of
starvation if they can't be persuaded to take some nourishment. And yet
see how they look."
"Look!" exclaimed Mrs. Medlock indignantly. "Eh! I'm moithered to death
with them. They're a pair of young Satans. Bursting their jackets one
day and the next turning up their noses at the best meals Cook can
tempt them with. Not a mouthful of that lovely young fowl and bread
sauce did they set a fork into yesterday--and the poor woman fair
_invented_ a pudding for them--and back it's sent. She almost cried.
She's afraid she'll be blamed if they starve themselves into their
graves."
Dr. Craven came and looked at Colin long and carefully. He wore an
extremely worried expression when the nurse talked with him and showed
him the almost untouched tray of breakfast she had saved for him to look
at--but it was even more worried when he sat down by Colin's sofa and
examined him. He had been called to London on business and had not seen
the boy for nearly two weeks. When young things begin to gain health
they gain it rapidly. The waxen tinge had left Colin's skin and a warm
rose showed through it; his beautiful eyes were clear and the hollows
under them and in his cheeks and temples had filled out. His once dark,
heavy locks had begun to look as if they sprang healthily from his
forehead and were soft and warm with life. His lips were fuller and of a
normal color. In fact as an imitation of a boy who was a confirmed
invalid he was a disgraceful sight. Dr. Craven held his chin in his hand
and thought him over.
"I am sorry to hear that you do not eat anything," he said. "That will
not do. You will lose all you have gained--and you have gained
amazingly. You ate so well a short time ago."
"I told you it was an unnatural appetite," answered Colin.
Mary was sitting on her stool nearby and she suddenly made a very queer
sound which she tried so violently to repress that she ended by almost
choking.
"What is the matter?" said Dr. Craven, turning to look at her.
Mary became quite severe in her manner.
"It was something between a sneeze and a cough," she replied with
reproachful dignity, "and it got into my throat."
"But" she said afterward to Colin, "I couldn't stop myself. It just
burst out because all at once I couldn't help remembering that last big
potato you ate and the way your mouth stretched when you bit through
that thick lovely crust with jam and clotted cream on it."
"Is there any way in which those children can get food secretly?" Dr.
Craven inquired of Mrs. Medlock.
"There's no way unless they dig it out of the earth or pick it off the
trees," Mrs. Medlock answered. "They stay out in the grounds all day and
see no one but each other. And if they want anything different to eat
from what's sent up to them they need only ask for it."
"Well," said Dr. Craven, "so long as going without food agrees with them
we need not disturb ourselves. The boy is a new creature."
"So is the girl," said Mrs. Medlock. "She's begun to be downright pretty
since she's filled out and lost her ugly little sour look. Her hair's
grown thick and healthy looking and she's got a bright color. The
glummest, ill-natured little thing she used to be and now her and Master
Colin laugh together like a pair of crazy young ones. Perhaps they're
growing fat on that."
"Perhaps they are," said Dr. Craven. "Let them laugh."
CHAPTER XXV
THE CURTAIN
And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed
new miracles. In the robin's nest there were Eggs and the robin's
mate sat upon them keeping them warm with her feathery little breast
and careful wings. At first she was very nervous and the robin himself
was indignantly watchful. Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown
corner in those days, but waited until by the quiet working of some
mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the soul of the little
pair that in the garden there was nothing which was not quite like
themselves--nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what
was happening to them--the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking
beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that
garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if
an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and
crash through space and come to an end--if there had been even one who
did not feel it and act accordingly there could have been no happiness
even in that golden springtime air. But they all knew it and felt it and
the robin and his mate knew they knew it.
At first the robin watched Mary and Colin with sharp anxiety. For some
mysterious reason he knew he need not watch Dickon. The first moment he
set his dew-bright black eye on Dickon he knew he was not a stranger but
a sort of robin without beak or feathers. He could speak robin (which is
a quite distinct language not to be mistaken for any other). To speak
robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman. Dickon always
spoke it to the robin himself, so the queer gibberish he used when he
spoke to humans did not matter in the least. The robin thought he spoke
this gibberish to them because they were not intelligent enough to
understand feathered speech. His movements also were robin. They never
startled one by being sudden enough to seem dangerous or threatening.
Any robin could understand Dickon, so his presence was not even
disturbing.
But at the outset it seemed necessary to be on guard against the other
two. In the first place the boy creature did not come into the garden on
his legs. He was pushed in on a thing with wheels and the skins of wild
animals were thrown over him. That in itself was doubtful. Then when he
began to stand up and move about he did it in a queer unaccustomed way
and the others seemed to have to help him. The robin used to secrete
himself in a bush and watch this anxiously, his head tilted first on one
side and then on the other. He thought that the slow movements might
mean that he was preparing to pounce, as cats do. When cats are
preparing to pounce they creep over the ground very slowly. The robin
talked this over with his mate a great deal for a few days but after
that he decided not to speak of the subject because her terror was so
great that he was afraid it might be injurious to the Eggs.
When the boy began to walk by himself and even to move more quickly it
was an immense relief. But for a long time--or it seemed a long time to
the robin--he was a source of some anxiety. He did not act as the other
humans did. He seemed very fond of walking but he had a way of sitting
or lying down for a while and then getting up in a disconcerting manner
to begin again.
One day the robin remembered that when he himself had been made to learn
to fly by his parents he had done much the same sort of thing. He had
taken short flights of a few yards and then had been obliged to rest. So
it occurred to him that this boy was learning to fly--or rather to
walk. He mentioned this to his mate and when he told her that the Eggs
would probably conduct themselves in the same way after they were
fledged she was quite comforted and even became eagerly interested and
derived great pleasure from watching the boy over the edge of her
nest--though she always thought that the Eggs would be much cleverer and
learn more quickly. But then she said indulgently that humans were
always more clumsy and slow than Eggs and most of them never seemed
really to learn to fly at all. You never met them in the air or on
tree-tops.
After a while the boy began to move about as the others did, but all
three of the children at times did unusual things. They would stand
under the trees and move their arms and legs and heads about in a way
which was neither walking nor running nor sitting down. They went
through these movements at intervals every day and the robin was never
able to explain to his mate what they were doing or trying to do. He
could only say that he was sure that the Eggs would never flap about in
such a manner; but as the boy who could speak robin so fluently was
doing the thing with them, birds could be quite sure that the actions
were not of a dangerous nature. Of course neither the robin nor his mate
had ever heard of the champion wrestler, Bob Haworth, and his exercises
for making the muscles stand out like lumps. Robins are not like human
beings; their muscles are always exercised from the first and so they
develop themselves in a natural manner. If you have to fly about to find
every meal you eat, your muscles do not become atrophied (atrophied
means wasted away through want of use).
When the boy was walking and running about and digging and weeding like
the others, the nest in the corner was brooded over by a great peace and
content. Fears for the Eggs became things of the past. Knowing that your
Eggs were as safe as if they were locked in a bank vault and the fact
that you could watch so many curious things going on made setting a most
entertaining occupation. On wet days the Eggs' mother sometimes felt
even a little dull because the children did not come into the garden.
But even on wet days it could not be said that Mary and Colin were dull.
One morning when the rain streamed down unceasingly and Colin was
beginning to feel a little restive, as he was obliged to remain on his
sofa because it was not safe to get up and walk about, Mary had an
inspiration.
"Now that I am a real boy," Colin had said, "my legs and arms and all my
body are so full of Magic that I can't keep them still. They want to be
doing things all the time. Do you know that when I waken in the
morning, Mary, when it's quite early and the birds are just shouting
outside and everything seems just shouting for joy--even the trees and
things we can't really hear--I feel as if I must jump out of bed and
shout myself. And if I did it, just think what would happen!"
Mary giggled inordinately.
"The nurse would come running and Mrs. Medlock would come running and
they would be sure you had gone crazy and they'd send for the doctor,"
she said.
Colin giggled himself. He could see how they would all look--how
horrified by his outbreak and how amazed to see him standing upright.
"I wish my father would come home," he said. "I want to tell him myself.
I'm always thinking about it--but we couldn't go on like this much
longer. I can't stand lying still and pretending, and besides I look too
different. I wish it wasn't raining to-day."
It was then Mistress Mary had her inspiration.
"Colin," she began mysteriously, "do you know how many rooms there are
in this house?"
"About a thousand, I suppose," he answered.
"There's about a hundred no one ever goes into," said Mary. "And one
rainy day I went and looked into ever so many of them. No one ever
knew, though Mrs. Medlock nearly found me out. I lost my way when I was
coming back and I stopped at the end of your corridor. That was the
second time I heard you crying."
Colin started up on his sofa.
"A hundred rooms no one goes into," he said. "It sounds almost like a
secret garden. Suppose we go and look at them. You could wheel me in my
chair and nobody would know where we went."
"That's what I was thinking," said Mary. "No one would dare to follow
us. There are galleries where you could run. We could do our exercises.
There is a little Indian room where there is a cabinet full of ivory
elephants. There are all sorts of rooms."
"Ring the bell," said Colin.
When the nurse came in he gave his orders.
"I want my chair," he said. "Miss Mary and I are going to look at the
part of the house which is not used. John can push me as far as the
picture-gallery because there are some stairs. Then he must go away and
leave us alone until I send for him again."
Rainy days lost their terrors that morning. When the footman had wheeled
the chair into the picture-gallery and left the two together in
obedience to orders, Colin and Mary looked at each other delighted. As
soon as Mary had made sure that John was really on his way back to his
own quarters below stairs, Colin got out of his chair.
"I am going to run from one end of the gallery to the other," he said,
"and then I am going to jump and then we will do Bob Haworth's
exercises."
And they did all these things and many others. They looked at the
portraits and found the plain little girl dressed in green brocade and
holding the parrot on her finger.
"All these," said Colin, "must be my relations. They lived a long time
ago. That parrot one, I believe, is one of my great, great, great, great
aunts. She looks rather like you, Mary--not as you look now but as you
looked when you came here. Now you are a great deal fatter and better
looking."
"So are you," said Mary, and they both laughed.
They went to the Indian room and amused themselves with the ivory
elephants. They found the rose-colored brocade boudoir and the hole in
the cushion the mouse had left but the mice had grown up and run away
and the hole was empty. They saw more rooms and made more discoveries
than Mary had made on her first pilgrimage. They found new corridors
and corners and flights of steps and new old pictures they liked and
weird old things they did not know the use of. It was a curiously
entertaining morning and the feeling of wandering about in the same
house with other people but at the same time feeling as if one were
miles away from them was a fascinating thing.
"I'm glad we came," Colin said. "I never knew I lived in such a big
queer old place. I like it. We will ramble about every rainy day. We
shall always be finding new queer corners and things."
That morning they had found among other things such good appetites that
when they returned to Colin's room it was not possible to send the
luncheon away untouched.
When the nurse carried the tray down-stairs she slapped it down on the
kitchen dresser so that Mrs. Loomis, the cook, could see the highly
polished dishes and plates.
"Look at that!" she said. "This is a house of mystery, and those two
children are the greatest mysteries in it."
"If they keep that up every day," said the strong young footman John,
"there'd be small wonder that he weighs twice as much to-day as he did a
month ago. I should have to give up my place in time, for fear of doing
my muscles an injury."
That afternoon Mary noticed that something new had happened in Colin's
room. She had noticed it the day before but had said nothing because she
thought the change might have been made by chance. She said nothing
to-day but she sat and looked fixedly at the picture over the mantel.
She could look at it because the curtain had been drawn aside. That was
the change she noticed.
"I know what you want me to tell you," said Colin, after she had stared
a few minutes. "I always know when you want me to tell you something.
You are wondering why the curtain is drawn back. I am going to keep it
like that."
"Why?" asked Mary.
"Because it doesn't make me angry any more to see her laughing. I
wakened when it was bright moonlight two nights ago and felt as if the
Magic was filling the room and making everything so splendid that I
couldn't lie still. I got up and looked out of the window. The room was
quite light and there was a patch of moonlight on the curtain and
somehow that made me go and pull the cord. She looked right down at me
as if she were laughing because she was glad I was standing there. It
made me like to look at her. I want to see her laughing like that all
the time. I think she must have been a sort of Magic person perhaps."
"You are so like her now," said Mary, "that sometimes I think perhaps
you are her ghost made into a boy."
That idea seemed to impress Colin. He thought it over and then answered
her slowly.
"If I were her ghost--my father would be fond of me," he said.
"Do you want him to be fond of you?" inquired Mary.
"I used to hate it because he was not fond of me. If he grew fond of me
I think I should tell him about the Magic. It might make him more
cheerful."
CHAPTER XXVI
"IT'S MOTHER!"
Their belief in the Magic was an abiding thing. After the morning's
incantations Colin sometimes gave them Magic lectures.
"I like to do it," he explained, "because when I grow up and make great
scientific discoveries I shall be obliged to lecture about them and so
this is practise. I can only give short lectures now because I am very
young, and besides Ben Weatherstaff would feel as if he was in church
and he would go to sleep."
"Th' best thing about lecturin'," said Ben, "is that a chap can get up
an' say aught he pleases an' no other chap can answer him back. I
wouldn't be agen' lecturin' a bit mysel' sometimes."
But when Colin held forth under his tree old Ben fixed devouring eyes on
him and kept them there. He looked him over with critical affection. It
was not so much the lecture which interested him as the legs which
looked straighter and stronger each day, the boyish head which held
itself up so well, the once sharp chin and hollow cheeks which had
filled and rounded out and the eyes which had begun to hold the light he
remembered in another pair. Sometimes when Colin felt Ben's earnest gaze
meant that he was much impressed he wondered what he was reflecting on
and once when he had seemed quite entranced he questioned him.
"What are you thinking about, Ben Weatherstaff?" he asked.
"I was thinkin'," answered Ben, "as I'd warrant tha's gone up three or
four pound this week. I was lookin' at tha' calves an' tha' shoulders.
I'd like to get thee on a pair o' scales."
"It's the Magic and--and Mrs. Sowerby's buns and milk and things," said
Colin. "You see the scientific experiment has succeeded."
That morning Dickon was too late to hear the lecture. When he came he
was ruddy with running and his funny face looked more twinkling than
usual. As they had a good deal of weeding to do after the rains they
fell to work. They always had plenty to do after a warm deep sinking
rain. The moisture which was good for the flowers was also good for the
weeds which thrust up tiny blades of grass and points of leaves which
must be pulled up before their roots took too firm hold. Colin was as
good at weeding as any one in these days and he could lecture while he
was doing it.
"The Magic works best when you work yourself," he said this morning.
"You can feel it in your bones and muscles. I am going to read books
about bones and muscles, but I am going to write a book about Magic. I
am making it up now. I keep finding out things."
It was not very long after he had said this that he laid down his trowel
and stood up on his feet. He had been silent for several minutes and
they had seen that he was thinking out lectures, as he often did. When
he dropped his trowel and stood upright it seemed to Mary and Dickon as
if a sudden strong thought had made him do it. He stretched himself out
to his tallest height and he threw out his arms exultantly. Color glowed
in his face and his strange eyes widened with joyfulness. All at once he
had realized something to the full.
"Mary! Dickon!" he cried. "Just look at me!"
They stopped their weeding and looked at him.
"Do you remember that first morning you brought me in here?" he
demanded.
Dickon was looking at him very hard. Being an animal charmer he could
see more things than most people could and many of them were things he
never talked about. He saw some of them now in this boy.
"Aye, that we do," he answered.
Mary looked hard too, but she said nothing.
"Just this minute," said Colin, "all at once I remembered it
myself--when I looked at my hand digging with the trowel--and I had to
stand up on my feet to see if it was real. And it _is_ real! I'm
_well_--I'm _well_!"
"Aye, that tha' art!" said Dickon.
"I'm well! I'm well!" said Colin again, and his face went quite red all
over.
He had known it before in a way, he had hoped it and felt it and thought
about it, but just at that minute something had rushed all through
him--a sort of rapturous belief and realization and it had been so
strong that he could not help calling out.
"I shall live forever and ever and ever!" he cried grandly. "I shall
find out thousands and thousands of things. I shall find out about
people and creatures and everything that grows--like Dickon--and I shall
never stop making Magic. I'm well! I'm well! I feel--I feel as if I want
to shout out something--something thankful, joyful!"
Ben Weatherstaff, who had been working near a rose-bush, glanced round
at him.
"Tha' might sing th' Doxology," he suggested in his dryest grunt. He had
no opinion of the Doxology and he did not make the suggestion with any
particular reverence.
But Colin was of an exploring mind and he knew nothing about the
Doxology.
"What is that?" he inquired.
"Dickon can sing it for thee, I'll warrant," replied Ben Weatherstaff.
Dickon answered with his all-perceiving animal charmer's smile.
"They sing it i' church," he said. "Mother says she believes th'
skylarks sings it when they gets up i' th' mornin'."
"If she says that, it must be a nice song," Colin answered. "I've never
been in a church myself. I was always too ill. Sing it, Dickon. I want
to hear it."
Dickon was quite simple and unaffected about it. He understood what
Colin felt better than Colin did himself. He understood by a sort of
instinct so natural that he did not know it was understanding. He pulled
off his cap and looked round still smiling.
"Tha' must take off tha' cap," he said to Colin, "an' so mun tha',
Ben--an' tha' mun stand up, tha' knows."
Colin took off his cap and the sun shone on and warmed his thick hair as
he watched Dickon intently. Ben Weatherstaff scrambled up from his
knees and bared his head too with a sort of puzzled half-resentful look
on his old face as if he didn't know exactly why he was doing this
remarkable thing.
Dickon stood out among the trees and rose-bushes and began to sing in
quite a simple matter-of-fact way and in a nice strong boy voice:
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him above ye Heavenly Host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen."
When he had finished, Ben Weatherstaff was standing quite still with his
jaws set obstinately but with a disturbed look in his eyes fixed on
Colin. Colin's face was thoughtful and appreciative.
"It is a very nice song," he said. "I like it. Perhaps it means just
what I mean when I want to shout out that I am thankful to the Magic."
He stopped and thought in a puzzled way. "Perhaps they are both the same
thing. How can we know the exact names of everything? Sing it again,
Dickon. Let us try, Mary. I want to sing it, too. It's my song. How does
it begin? 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow'?"
[Illustration: "'PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW'"--_Page 344_]
And they sang it again, and Mary and Colin lifted their voices as
musically as they could and Dickon's swelled quite loud and
beautiful--and at the second line Ben Weatherstaff raspingly cleared his
throat and at the third he joined in with such vigor that it seemed
almost savage and when the "Amen" came to an end Mary observed that the
very same thing had happened to him which had happened when he found out
that Colin was not a cripple--his chin was twitching and he was staring
and winking and his leathery old cheeks were wet.
"I never seed no sense in th' Doxology afore," he said hoarsely, "but I
may change my mind i' time. I should say tha'd gone up five pound this
week, Mester Colin--five on 'em!"
Colin was looking across the garden at something attracting his
attention and his expression had become a startled one.
"Who is coming in here?" he said quickly. "Who is it?"
The door in the ivied wall had been pushed gently open and a woman had
entered. She had come in with the last line of their song and she had
stood still listening and looking at them. With the ivy behind her, the
sunlight drifting through the trees and dappling her long blue cloak,
and her nice fresh face smiling across the greenery she was rather like
a softly colored illustration in one of Colin's books. She had wonderful
affectionate eyes which seemed to take everything in--all of them, even
Ben Weatherstaff and the "creatures" and every flower that was in bloom.
Unexpectedly as she had appeared, not one of them felt that she was an
intruder at all. Dickon's eyes lighted like lamps.
"It's Mother--that's who it is!" he cried and he went across the grass
at a run.
Colin began to move toward her, too, and Mary went with him. They both
felt their pulses beat faster.
"It's Mother!" Dickon said again when they met half-way. "I knowed tha'
wanted to see her an' I told her where th' door was hid."
Colin held out his hand with a sort of flushed royal shyness but his
eyes quite devoured her face.
"Even when I was ill I wanted to see you," he said, "you and Dickon and
the secret garden. I'd never wanted to see any one or anything before."
The sight of his uplifted face brought about a sudden change in her own.
She flushed and the corners of her mouth shook and a mist seemed to
sweep over her eyes.
"Eh! dear lad!" she broke out tremulously. "Eh! dear lad!" as if she had
not known she were going to say it. She did not say, "Mester Colin,"
but just "dear lad" quite suddenly. She might have said it to Dickon in
the same way if she had seen something in his face which touched her.
Colin liked it.
"Are you surprised because I am so well?" he asked.
She put her hand on his shoulder and smiled the mist out of her eyes.
"Aye, that I am!" she said; "but tha'rt so like thy mother tha' made my
heart jump."
"Do you think," said Colin a little awkwardly, "that will make my father
like me?"
"Aye, for sure, dear lad," she answered and she gave his shoulder a soft
quick pat. "He mun come home--he mun come home."
"Susan Sowerby," said Ben Weatherstaff, getting close to her. "Look at
th' lad's legs, wilt tha'? They was like drumsticks i' stockin' two
month' ago--an' I heard folk tell as they was bandy an' knock-kneed both
at th' same time. Look at 'em now!"
Susan Sowerby laughed a comfortable laugh.
"They're goin' to be fine strong lad's legs in a bit," she said. "Let
him go on playin' an' workin' in th' garden an' eatin' hearty an'
drinkin' plenty o' good sweet milk an' there'll not be a finer pair i'
Yorkshire, thank God for it."
She put both hands on Mistress Mary's shoulders and looked her little
face over in a motherly fashion.
"An' thee, too!" she said. "Tha'rt grown near as hearty as our 'Lizabeth
Ellen. I'll warrant tha'rt like thy mother too. Our Martha told me as
Mrs. Medlock heard she was a pretty woman. Tha'lt be like a blush rose
when tha' grows up, my little lass, bless thee."
She did not mention that when Martha came home on her "day out" and
described the plain sallow child she had said that she had no confidence
whatever in what Mrs. Medlock had heard. "It doesn't stand to reason
that a pretty woman could be th' mother o' such a fou' little lass," she
had added obstinately.
Mary had not had time to pay much attention to her changing face. She
had only known that she looked "different" and seemed to have a great
deal more hair and that it was growing very fast. But remembering her
pleasure in looking at the Mem Sahib in the past she was glad to hear
that she might some day look like her.
Susan Sowerby went round their garden with them and was told the whole
story of it and shown every bush and tree which had come alive. Colin
walked on one side of her and Mary on the other. Each of them kept
looking up at her comfortable rosy face, secretly curious about the
delightful feeling she gave them--a sort of warm, supported feeling. It
seemed as if she understood them as Dickon understood his "creatures."
She stooped over the flowers and talked about them as if they were
children. Soot followed her and once or twice cawed at her and flew upon
her shoulder as if it were Dickon's. When they told her about the robin
and the first flight of the young ones she laughed a motherly little
mellow laugh in her throat.
"I suppose learnin' 'em to fly is like learnin' children to walk, but
I'm feared I should be all in a worrit if mine had wings instead o'
legs," she said.
It was because she seemed such a wonderful woman in her nice moorland
cottage way that at last she was told about the Magic.
"Do you believe in Magic?" asked Colin after he had explained about
Indian fakirs. "I do hope you do."
"That I do, lad," she answered. "I never knowed it by that name but what
does th' name matter? I warrant they call it a different name i' France
an' a different one i' Germany. Th' same thing as set th' seeds swellin'
an' th' sun shinin' made thee a well lad an' it's th' Good Thing. It
isn't like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of our
names. Th' Big Good Thing doesn't stop to worrit, bless thee. It goes
on makin' worlds by th' million--worlds like us. Never thee stop
believin' in th' Big Good Thing an' knowin' th' world's full of it--an'
call it what tha' likes. Tha' wert singin' to it when I come into th'
garden."
"I felt so joyful," said Colin, opening his beautiful strange eyes at
her. "Suddenly I felt how different I was--how strong my arms and legs
were, you know--and how I could dig and stand--and I jumped up and
wanted to shout out something to anything that would listen."
"Th' Magic listened when tha' sung th' Doxology. It would ha' listened
to anything tha'd sung. It was th' joy that mattered. Eh! lad,
lad--what's names to th' Joy Maker," and she gave his shoulders a quick
soft pat again.
She had packed a basket which held a regular feast this morning, and
when the hungry hour came and Dickon brought it out from its hiding
place, she sat down with them under their tree and watched them devour
their food, laughing and quite gloating over their appetites. She was
full of fun and made them laugh at all sorts of odd things. She told
them stories in broad Yorkshire and taught them new words. She laughed
as if she could not help it when they told her of the increasing
difficulty there was in pretending that Colin was still a fretful
invalid.
"You see we can't help laughing nearly all the time when we are
together," explained Colin. "And it doesn't sound ill at all. We try to
choke it back but it will burst out and that sounds worse than ever."
"There's one thing that comes into my mind so often," said Mary, "and I
can scarcely ever hold in when I think of it suddenly. I keep thinking
suppose Colin's face should get to look like a full moon. It isn't like
one yet but he gets a tiny bit fatter every day--and suppose some
morning it should look like one--what should we do!"
"Bless us all, I can see tha' has a good bit o' play actin' to do," said
Susan Sowerby. "But tha' won't have to keep it up much longer. Mester
Craven'll come home."
"Do you think he will?" asked Colin. "Why?"
Susan Sowerby chuckled softly.
"I suppose it 'ud nigh break thy heart if he found out before tha' told
him in tha' own way," she said. "Tha's laid awake nights plannin' it."
"I couldn't bear any one else to tell him," said Colin. "I think about
different ways every day. I think now I just want to run into his
room."
"That'd be a fine start for him," said Susan Sowerby. "I'd like to see
his face, lad. I would that! He mun come back--that he mun."
One of the things they talked of was the visit they were to make to her
cottage. They planned it all. They were to drive over the moor and lunch
out of doors among the heather. They would see all the twelve children
and Dickon's garden and would not come back until they were tired.
Susan Sowerby got up at last to return to the house and Mrs. Medlock. It
was time for Colin to be wheeled back also. But before he got into his
chair he stood quite close to Susan and fixed his eyes on her with a
kind of bewildered adoration and he suddenly caught hold of the fold of
her blue cloak and held it fast.
"You are just what I--what I wanted," he said. "I wish you were my
mother--as well as Dickon's!"
All at once Susan Sowerby bent down and drew him with her warm arms
close against the bosom under the blue cloak--as if he had been Dickon's
brother. The quick mist swept over her eyes.
"Eh! dear lad!" she said. "Thy own mother's in this 'ere very garden, I
do believe. She couldna' keep out of it. Thy father mun come back to
thee--he mun!"
CHAPTER XXVII
IN THE GARDEN
In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have
been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out
than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things still
more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to
believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it
can be done, then they see it can be done--then it is done and all the
world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things
people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts--just
mere thoughts--are as powerful as electric batteries--as good for one as
sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad
one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ
get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may
never get over it as long as you live.
So long as Mistress Mary's mind was full of disagreeable thoughts about
her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to
be pleased by or interested in anything, she was a yellow-faced, sickly,
bored and wretched child. Circumstances, however, were very kind to her,
though she was not at all aware of it. They began to push her about for
her own good. When her mind gradually filled itself with robins, and
moorland cottages crowded with children, with queer crabbed old
gardeners and common little Yorkshire housemaids, with springtime and
with secret gardens coming alive day by day, and also with a moor boy
and his "creatures," there was no room left for the disagreeable
thoughts which affected her liver and her digestion and made her yellow
and tired.
So long as Colin shut himself up in his room and thought only of his
fears and weakness and his detestation of people who looked at him and
reflected hourly on humps and early death, he was a hysterical
half-crazy little hypochondriac who knew nothing of the sunshine and the
spring and also did not know that he could get well and could stand upon
his feet if he tried to do it. When new beautiful thoughts began to push
out the old hideous ones, life began to come back to him, his blood ran
healthily through his veins and strength poured into him like a flood.
His scientific experiment was quite practical and simple and there was
nothing weird about it at all. Much more surprising things can happen to
any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his
mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting
in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one
place.
"Where you tend a rose, my lad,
A thistle cannot grow."
While the secret garden was coming alive and two children were coming
alive with it, there was a man wandering about certain far-away
beautiful places in the Norwegian fiords and the valleys and mountains
of Switzerland and he was a man who for ten years had kept his mind
filled with dark and heart-broken thinking. He had not been courageous;
he had never tried to put any other thoughts in the place of the dark
ones. He had wandered by blue lakes and thought them; he had lain on
mountain-sides with sheets of deep blue gentians blooming all about him
and flower breaths filling all the air and he had thought them. A
terrible sorrow had fallen upon him when he had been happy and he had
let his soul fill itself with blackness and had refused obstinately to
allow any rift of light to pierce through. He had forgotten and deserted
his home and his duties. When he traveled about, darkness so brooded
over him that the sight of him was a wrong done to other people because
it was as if he poisoned the air about him with gloom. Most strangers
thought he must be either half mad or a man with some hidden crime on
his soul. He was a tall man with a drawn face and crooked shoulders and
the name he always entered on hotel registers was, "Archibald Craven,
Misselthwaite Manor, Yorkshire, England."
He had traveled far and wide since the day he saw Mistress Mary in his
study and told her she might have her "bit of earth." He had been in the
most beautiful places in Europe, though he had remained nowhere more
than a few days. He had chosen the quietest and remotest spots. He had
been on the tops of mountains whose heads were in the clouds and had
looked down on other mountains when the sun rose and touched them with
such light as made it seem as if the world were just being born.
But the light had never seemed to touch himself until one day when he
realized that for the first time in ten years a strange thing had
happened. He was in a wonderful valley in the Austrian Tyrol and he had
been walking alone through such beauty as might have lifted any man's
soul out of shadow. He had walked a long way and it had not lifted his.
But at last he had felt tired and had thrown himself down to rest on a
carpet of moss by a stream. It was a clear little stream which ran quite
merrily along on its narrow way through the luscious damp greenness.
Sometimes it made a sound rather like very low laughter as it bubbled
over and round stones. He saw birds come and dip their heads to drink in
it and then flick their wings and fly away. It seemed like a thing alive
and yet its tiny voice made the stillness seem deeper. The valley was
very, very still.
As he sat gazing into the clear running of the water, Archibald Craven
gradually felt his mind and body both grow quiet, as quiet as the valley
itself. He wondered if he were going to sleep, but he was not. He sat
and gazed at the sunlit water and his eyes began to see things growing
at its edge. There was one lovely mass of blue forget-me-nots growing so
close to the stream that its leaves were wet and at these he found
himself looking as he remembered he had looked at such things years ago.
He was actually thinking tenderly how lovely it was and what wonders of
blue its hundreds of little blossoms were. He did not know that just
that simple thought was slowly filling his mind--filling and filling it
until other things were softly pushed aside. It was as if a sweet clear
spring had begun to rise in a stagnant pool and had risen and risen
until at last it swept the dark water away. But of course he did not
think of this himself. He only knew that the valley seemed to grow
quieter and quieter as he sat and stared at the bright delicate
blueness. He did not know how long he sat there or what was happening to
him, but at last he moved as if he were awakening and he got up slowly
and stood on the moss carpet, drawing a long, deep, soft breath and
wondering at himself. Something seemed to have been unbound and released
in him, very quietly.
"What is it?" he said, almost in a whisper, and he passed his hand over
his forehead. "I almost feel as if--I were alive!"
I do not know enough about the wonderfulness of undiscovered things to
be able to explain how this had happened to him. Neither does any one
else yet. He did not understand at all himself--but he remembered this
strange hour months afterward when he was at Misselthwaite again and he
found out quite by accident that on this very day Colin had cried out as
he went into the secret garden:
"I am going to live forever and ever and ever!"
The singular calmness remained with him the rest of the evening and he
slept a new reposeful sleep; but it was not with him very long. He did
not know that it could be kept. By the next night he had opened the
doors wide to his dark thoughts and they had come trooping and rushing
back. He left the valley and went on his wandering way again. But,
strange as it seemed to him, there were minutes--sometimes
half-hours--when, without his knowing why, the black burden seemed to
lift itself again and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one.
Slowly--slowly--for no reason that he knew of--he was "coming alive"
with the garden.
As the golden summer changed into the deeper golden autumn he went to
the Lake of Como. There he found the loveliness of a dream. He spent his
days upon the crystal blueness of the lake or he walked back into the
soft thick verdure of the hills and tramped until he was tired so that
he might sleep. But by this time he had begun to sleep better, he knew,
and his dreams had ceased to be a terror to him.
"Perhaps," he thought, "my body is growing stronger."
It was growing stronger but--because of the rare peaceful hours when his
thoughts were changed--his soul was slowly growing stronger, too. He
began to think of Misselthwaite and wonder if he should not go home. Now
and then he wondered vaguely about his boy and asked himself what he
should feel when he went and stood by the carved four-posted bed again
and looked down at the sharply chiseled ivory-white face while it slept
and the black lashes rimmed so startlingly the close-shut eyes. He
shrank from it.
One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon
was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver. The
stillness of lake and shore and wood was so wonderful that he did not go
into the villa he lived in. He walked down to a little bowered terrace
at the water's edge and sat upon a seat and breathed in all the heavenly
scents of the night. He felt the strange calmness stealing over him and
it grew deeper and deeper until he fell asleep.
He did not know when he fell asleep and when he began to dream; his
dream was so real that he did not feel as if he were dreaming. He
remembered afterward how intensely wide awake and alert he had thought
he was. He thought that as he sat and breathed in the scent of the late
roses and listened to the lapping of the water at his feet he heard a
voice calling. It was sweet and clear and happy and far away. It seemed
very far, but he heard it as distinctly as if it had been at his very
side.
"Archie! Archie! Archie!" it said, and then again, sweeter and clearer
than before, "Archie! Archie!"
He thought he sprang to his feet not even startled. It was such a real
voice and it seemed so natural that he should hear it.
"Lilias! Lilias!" he answered. "Lilias! where are you?"
"In the garden," it came back like a sound from a golden flute. "In the
garden!"
And then the dream ended. But he did not awaken. He slept soundly and
sweetly all through the lovely night. When he did awake at last it was
brilliant morning and a servant was standing staring at him. He was an
Italian servant and was accustomed, as all the servants of the villa
were, to accepting without question any strange thing his foreign master
might do. No one ever knew when he would go out or come in or where he
would choose to sleep or if he would roam about the garden or lie in the
boat on the lake all night. The man held a salver with some letters on
it and he waited quietly until Mr. Craven took them. When he had gone
away Mr. Craven sat a few moments holding them in his hand and looking
at the lake. His strange calm was still upon him and something more--a
lightness as if the cruel thing which had been done had not happened as
he thought--as if something had changed. He was remembering the
dream--the real--real dream.
"In the garden!" he said, wondering at himself. "In the garden! But the
door is locked and the key is buried deep."
When he glanced at the letters a few minutes later he saw that the one
lying at the top of the rest was an English letter and came from
Yorkshire. It was directed in a plain woman's hand but it was not a hand
he knew. He opened it, scarcely thinking of the writer, but the first
words attracted his attention at once.
"_Dear Sir:_
"I am Susan Sowerby that made bold to speak to you
once on the moor. It was about Miss Mary I spoke.
I will make bold to speak again. Please, sir, I
would come home if I was you. I think you would be
glad to come and--if you will excuse me, sir--I
think your lady would ask you to come if she was
here.
"Your obedient servant,
"SUSAN SOWERBY."
Mr. Craven read the letter twice before he put it back in its envelope.
He kept thinking about the dream.
"I will go back to Misselthwaite," he said. "Yes, I'll go at once."
And he went through the garden to the villa and ordered Pitcher to
prepare for his return to England.
* * * * *
In a few days he was in Yorkshire again, and on his long railroad
journey he found himself thinking of his boy as he had never thought in
all the ten years past. During those years he had only wished to forget
him. Now, though he did not intend to think about him, memories of him
constantly drifted into his mind. He remembered the black days when he
had raved like a madman because the child was alive and the mother was
dead. He had refused to see it, and when he had gone to look at it at
last it had been such a weak wretched thing that every one had been sure
it would die in a few days. But to the surprise of those who took care
of it the days passed and it lived and then every one believed it would
be a deformed and crippled creature.
He had not meant to be a bad father, but he had not felt like a father
at all. He had supplied doctors and nurses and luxuries, but he had
shrunk from the mere thought of the boy and had buried himself in his
own misery. The first time after a year's absence he returned to
Misselthwaite and the small miserable looking thing languidly and
indifferently lifted to his face the great gray eyes with black lashes
round them, so like and yet so horribly unlike the happy eyes he had
adored, he could not bear the sight of them and turned away pale as
death. After that he scarcely ever saw him except when he was asleep,
and all he knew of him was that he was a confirmed invalid, with a
vicious, hysterical, half-insane temper. He could only be kept from
furies dangerous to himself by being given his own way in every detail.
All this was not an uplifting thing to recall, but as the train whirled
him through mountain passes and golden plains the man who was "coming
alive" began to think in a new way and he thought long and steadily and
deeply.
"Perhaps I have been all wrong for ten years," he said to himself. "Ten
years is a long time. It may be too late to do anything--quite too late.
What have I been thinking of!"
Of course this was the wrong Magic--to begin by saying "too late." Even
Colin could have told him that. But he knew nothing of Magic--either
black or white. This he had yet to learn. He wondered if Susan Sowerby
had taken courage and written to him only because the motherly creature
had realized that the boy was much worse--was fatally ill. If he had not
been under the spell of the curious calmness which had taken possession
of him he would have been more wretched than ever. But the calm had
brought a sort of courage and hope with it. Instead of giving way to
thoughts of the worst he actually found he was trying to believe in
better things.
"Could it be possible that she sees that I may be able to do him good
and control him?" he thought. "I will go and see her on my way to
Misselthwaite."
But when on his way across the moor he stopped the carriage at the
cottage, seven or eight children who were playing about gathered in a
group and bobbing seven or eight friendly and polite curtsies told him
that their mother had gone to the other side of the moor early in the
morning to help a woman who had a new baby. "Our Dickon," they
volunteered, was over at the Manor working in one of the gardens where
he went several days each week.
Mr. Craven looked over the collection of sturdy little bodies and round
red-cheeked faces, each one grinning in its own particular way, and he
awoke to the fact that they were a healthy likable lot. He smiled at
their friendly grins and took a golden sovereign from his pocket and
gave it to "our 'Lizabeth Ellen" who was the oldest.
"If you divide that into eight parts there will be half a crown for each
of you," he said.
Then amid grins and chuckles and bobbing of curtsies he drove away,
leaving ecstasy and nudging elbows and little jumps of joy behind.
The drive across the wonderfulness of the moor was a soothing thing.
Why did it seem to give him a sense of home-coming which he had been
sure he could never feel again--that sense of the beauty of land and sky
and purple bloom of distance and a warming of the heart at drawing
nearer to the great old house which had held those of his blood for six
hundred years? How he had driven away from it the last time, shuddering
to think of its closed rooms and the boy lying in the four-posted bed
with the brocaded hangings. Was it possible that perhaps he might find
him changed a little for the better and that he might overcome his
shrinking from him? How real that dream had been--how wonderful and
clear the voice which called back to him, "In the garden--In the
garden!"
"I will try to find the key," he said. "I will try to open the door. I
must--though I don't know why."
When he arrived at the Manor the servants who received him with the
usual ceremony noticed that he looked better and that he did not go to
the remote rooms where he usually lived attended by Pitcher. He went
into the library and sent for Mrs. Medlock. She came to him somewhat
excited and curious and flustered.
"How is Master Colin, Medlock?" he inquired.
"Well, sir," Mrs. Medlock answered, "he's--he's different, in a manner
of speaking."
"Worse?" he suggested.
Mrs. Medlock really was flushed.
"Well, you see, sir," she tried to explain, "neither Dr. Craven, nor the
nurse, nor me can exactly make him out."
"Why is that?"
"To tell the truth, sir, Master Colin might be better and he might be
changing for the worse. His appetite, sir, is past understanding--and
his ways--"
"Has he become more--more peculiar?" her master asked, knitting his
brows anxiously.
"That's it, sir. He's growing very peculiar--when you compare him with
what he used to be. He used to eat nothing and then suddenly he began to
eat something enormous--and then he stopped again all at once and the
meals were sent back just as they used to be. You never knew, sir,
perhaps, that out of doors he never would let himself be taken. The
things we've gone through to get him to go out in his chair would leave
a body trembling like a leaf. He'd throw himself into such a state that
Dr. Craven said he couldn't be responsible for forcing him. Well, sir,
just without warning--not long after one of his worst tantrums he
suddenly insisted on being taken out every day by Miss Mary and Susan
Sowerby's boy Dickon that could push his chair. He took a fancy to both
Miss Mary and Dickon, and Dickon brought his tame animals, and, if
you'll credit it, sir, out of doors he will stay from morning until
night."
"How does he look?" was the next question.
"If he took his food natural, sir, you'd think he was putting on
flesh--but we're afraid it may be a sort of bloat. He laughs sometimes
in a queer way when he's alone with Miss Mary. He never used to laugh at
all. Dr. Craven is coming to see you at once, if you'll allow him. He
never was as puzzled in his life."
"Where is Master Colin now?" Mr. Craven asked.
"In the garden, sir. He's always in the garden--though not a human
creature is allowed to go near for fear they'll look at him."
Mr. Craven scarcely heard her last words.
"In the garden," he said, and after he had sent Mrs. Medlock away he
stood and repeated it again and again. "In the garden!"
He had to make an effort to bring himself back to the place he was
standing in and when he felt he was on earth again he turned and went
out of the room. He took his way, as Mary had done, through the door in
the shrubbery and among the laurels and the fountain beds. The fountain
was playing now and was encircled by beds of brilliant autumn flowers.
He crossed the lawn and turned into the Long Walk by the ivied walls. He
did not walk quickly, but slowly, and his eyes were on the path. He felt
as if he were being drawn back to the place he had so long forsaken, and
he did not know why. As he drew near to it his step became still more
slow. He knew where the door was even though the ivy hung thick over
it--but he did not know exactly where it lay--that buried key.
So he stopped and stood still, looking about him, and almost the moment
after he had paused he started and listened--asking himself if he were
walking in a dream.
The ivy hung thick over the door, the key was buried under the shrubs,
no human being had passed that portal for ten lonely years--and yet
inside the garden there were sounds. They were the sounds of running
scuffling feet seeming to chase round and round under the trees, they
were strange sounds of lowered suppressed voices--exclamations and
smothered joyous cries. It seemed actually like the laughter of young
things, the uncontrollable laughter of children who were trying not to
be heard but who in a moment or so--as their excitement mounted--would
burst forth. What in heaven's name was he dreaming of--what in heaven's
name did he hear? Was he losing his reason and thinking he heard things
which were not for human ears? Was it that the far clear voice had
meant?
And then the moment came, the uncontrollable moment when the sounds
forgot to hush themselves. The feet ran faster and faster--they were
nearing the garden door--there was quick strong young breathing and a
wild outbreak of laughing shouts which could not be contained--and the
door in the wall was flung wide open, the sheet of ivy swinging back,
and a boy burst through it at full speed and, without seeing the
outsider, dashed almost into his arms.
Mr. Craven had extended them just in time to save him from falling as a
result of his unseeing dash against him, and when he held him away to
look at him in amazement at his being there he truly gasped for breath.
He was a tall boy and a handsome one. He was glowing with life and his
running had sent splendid color leaping to his face. He threw the thick
hair back from his forehead and lifted a pair of strange gray eyes--eyes
full of boyish laughter and rimmed with black lashes like a fringe. It
was the eyes which made Mr. Craven gasp for breath.
"Who--What? Who!" he stammered.
This was not what Colin had expected--this was not what he had planned.
He had never thought of such a meeting. And yet to come dashing
out--winning a race--perhaps it was even better. He drew himself up to
his very tallest. Mary, who had been running with him and had dashed
through the door too, believed that he managed to make himself look
taller than he had ever looked before--inches taller.
"Father," he said, "I'm Colin. You can't believe it. I scarcely can
myself. I'm Colin."
Like Mrs. Medlock, he did not understand what his father meant when he
said hurriedly:
"In the garden! In the garden!"
"Yes," hurried on Colin. "It was the garden that did it--and Mary and
Dickon and the creatures--and the Magic. No one knows. We kept it to
tell you when you came. I'm well, I can beat Mary in a race. I'm going
to be an athlete."
He said it all so like a healthy boy--his face flushed, his words
tumbling over each other in his eagerness--that Mr. Craven's soul shook
with unbelieving joy.
Colin put out his hand and laid it on his father's arm.
"Aren't you glad, Father?" he ended.
"Aren't you glad? I'm going to live forever and ever and ever!"
Mr. Craven put his hands on both the boy's shoulders and held him still.
He knew he dared not even try to speak for a moment.
"Take me into the garden, my boy," he said at last. "And tell me all
about it."
And so they led him in.
The place was a wilderness of autumn gold and purple and violet blue and
flaming scarlet and on every side were sheaves of late lilies standing
together--lilies which were white or white and ruby. He remembered well
when the first of them had been planted that just at this season of the
year their late glories should reveal themselves. Late roses climbed and
hung and clustered and the sunshine deepening the hue of the yellowing
trees made one feel that one stood in an embowered temple of gold. The
newcomer stood silent just as the children had done when they came into
its grayness. He looked round and round.
"I thought it would be dead," he said.
"Mary thought so at first," said Colin. "But it came alive."
Then they sat down under their tree--all but Colin, who wanted to stand
while he told the story.
It was the strangest thing he had ever heard, Archibald Craven thought,
as it was poured forth in headlong boy fashion. Mystery and Magic and
wild creatures, the weird midnight meeting--the coming of the
spring--the passion of insulted pride which had dragged the young Rajah
to his feet to defy old Ben Weatherstaff to his face. The odd
companionship, the play acting, the great secret so carefully kept. The
listener laughed until tears came into his eyes and sometimes tears came
into his eyes when he was not laughing. The Athlete, the Lecturer, the
Scientific Discoverer was a laughable, lovable, healthy young human
thing.
"Now," he said at the end of the story, "it need not be a secret any
more. I dare say it will frighten them nearly into fits when they see
me--but I am never going to get into the chair again. I shall walk back
with you, Father--to the house."
* * * * *
Ben Weatherstaff's duties rarely took him away from the gardens, but on
this occasion he made an excuse to carry some vegetables to the kitchen
and being invited into the servants' hall by Mrs. Medlock to drink a
glass of beer he was on the spot--as he had hoped to be--when the most
dramatic event Misselthwaite Manor had seen during the present
generation actually took place.
One of the windows looking upon the courtyard gave also a glimpse of the
lawn. Mrs. Medlock, knowing Ben had come from the gardens, hoped that he
might have caught sight of his master and even by chance of his meeting
with Master Colin.
"Did you see either of them, Weatherstaff?" she asked.
Ben took his beer-mug from his mouth and wiped his lips with the back of
his hand.
"Aye, that I did," he answered with a shrewdly significant air.
"Both of them?" suggested Mrs. Medlock.
"Both of 'em," returned Ben Weatherstaff. "Thank ye kindly, ma'am, I
could sup up another mug of it."
"Together?" said Mrs. Medlock, hastily overfilling his beer-mug in her
excitement.
"Together, ma'am," and Ben gulped down half of his new mug at one gulp.
"Where was Master Colin? How did he look? What did they say to each
other?"
"I didna' hear that," said Ben, "along o' only bein' on th' step-ladder
lookin' over th' wall. But I'll tell thee this. There's been things
goin' on outside as you house people knows nowt about. An' what tha'll
find out tha'll find out soon."
And it was not two minutes before he swallowed the last of his beer and
waved his mug solemnly toward the window which took in through the
shrubbery a piece of the lawn.
"Look there," he said, "if tha's curious. Look what's comin' across th'
grass."
When Mrs. Medlock looked she threw up her hands and gave a little shriek
and every man and woman servant within hearing bolted across the
servants' hall and stood looking through the window with their eyes
almost starting out of their heads.
Across the lawn came the Master of Misselthwaite and he looked as many
of them had never seen him. And by his side with his head up in the air
and his eyes full of laughter walked as strongly and steadily as any boy
in Yorkshire--Master Colin!
THE ENDWhat is 0 + 0? Easy 0 + 0 is 0.
What is 0 + 1? Easy 0 + 1 is 1.
What is 0 + 2? Easy 0 + 2 is 2.
What is 0 + 3? Easy 0 + 3 is 3.
What is 0 + 4? Easy 0 + 4 is 4.
What is 0 + 5? Easy 0 + 5 is 5.
What is 0 + 6? Easy 0 + 6 is 6.
What is 0 + 7? Easy 0 + 7 is 7.
What is 0 + 8? Easy 0 + 8 is 8.
What is 0 + 9? Easy 0 + 9 is 9.
What is 1 + 0? Easy 1 + 0 is 1.
What is 1 + 1? Easy 1 + 1 is 2.
What is 1 + 2? Easy 1 + 2 is 3.
What is 1 + 3? Easy 1 + 3 is 4.
What is 1 + 4? Easy 1 + 4 is 5.
What is 1 + 5? Easy 1 + 5 is 6.
What is 1 + 6? Easy 1 + 6 is 7.
What is 1 + 7? Easy 1 + 7 is 8.
What is 1 + 8? Easy 1 + 8 is 9.
What is 1 + 9? Easy 1 + 9 is 10.
What is 2 + 0? Easy 2 + 0 is 2.
What is 2 + 1? Easy 2 + 1 is 3.
What is 2 + 2? Easy 2 + 2 is 4.
What is 2 + 3? Easy 2 + 3 is 5.
What is 2 + 4? Easy 2 + 4 is 6.
What is 2 + 5? Easy 2 + 5 is 7.
What is 2 + 6? Easy 2 + 6 is 8.
What is 2 + 7? Easy 2 + 7 is 9.
What is 2 + 8? Easy 2 + 8 is 10.
What is 2 + 9? Easy 2 + 9 is 11.
What is 3 + 0? Easy 3 + 0 is 3.
What is 3 + 1? Easy 3 + 1 is 4.
What is 3 + 2? Easy 3 + 2 is 5.
What is 3 + 3? Easy 3 + 3 is 6.
What is 3 + 4? Easy 3 + 4 is 7.
What is 3 + 5? Easy 3 + 5 is 8.
What is 3 + 6? Easy 3 + 6 is 9.
What is 3 + 7? Easy 3 + 7 is 10.
What is 3 + 8? Easy 3 + 8 is 11.
What is 3 + 9? Easy 3 + 9 is 12.
What is 4 + 0? Easy 4 + 0 is 4.
What is 4 + 1? Easy 4 + 1 is 5.
What is 4 + 2? Easy 4 + 2 is 6.
What is 4 + 3? Easy 4 + 3 is 7.
What is 4 + 4? Easy 4 + 4 is 8.
What is 4 + 5? Easy 4 + 5 is 9.
What is 4 + 6? Easy 4 + 6 is 10.
What is 4 + 7? Easy 4 + 7 is 11.
What is 4 + 8? Easy 4 + 8 is 12.
What is 4 + 9? Easy 4 + 9 is 13.
What is 5 + 0? Easy 5 + 0 is 5.
What is 5 + 1? Easy 5 + 1 is 6.
What is 5 + 2? Easy 5 + 2 is 7.
What is 5 + 3? Easy 5 + 3 is 8.
What is 5 + 4? Easy 5 + 4 is 9.
What is 5 + 5? Easy 5 + 5 is 10.
What is 5 + 6? Easy 5 + 6 is 11.
What is 5 + 7? Easy 5 + 7 is 12.
What is 5 + 8? Easy 5 + 8 is 13.
What is 5 + 9? Easy 5 + 9 is 14.
What is 6 + 0? Easy 6 + 0 is 6.
What is 6 + 1? Easy 6 + 1 is 7.
What is 6 + 2? Easy 6 + 2 is 8.
What is 6 + 3? Easy 6 + 3 is 9.
What is 6 + 4? Easy 6 + 4 is 10.
What is 6 + 5? Easy 6 + 5 is 11.
What is 6 + 6? Easy 6 + 6 is 12.
What is 6 + 7? Easy 6 + 7 is 13.
What is 6 + 8? Easy 6 + 8 is 14.
What is 6 + 9? Easy 6 + 9 is 15.
What is 7 + 0? Easy 7 + 0 is 7.
What is 7 + 1? Easy 7 + 1 is 8.
What is 7 + 2? Easy 7 + 2 is 9.
What is 7 + 3? Easy 7 + 3 is 10.
What is 7 + 4? Easy 7 + 4 is 11.
What is 7 + 5? Easy 7 + 5 is 12.
What is 7 + 6? Easy 7 + 6 is 13.
What is 7 + 7? Easy 7 + 7 is 14.
What is 7 + 8? Easy 7 + 8 is 15.
What is 7 + 9? Easy 7 + 9 is 16.
What is 8 + 0? Easy 8 + 0 is 8.
What is 8 + 1? Easy 8 + 1 is 9.
What is 8 + 2? Easy 8 + 2 is 10.
What is 8 + 3? Easy 8 + 3 is 11.
What is 8 + 4? Easy 8 + 4 is 12.
What is 8 + 5? Easy 8 + 5 is 13.
What is 8 + 6? Easy 8 + 6 is 14.
What is 8 + 7? Easy 8 + 7 is 15.
What is 8 + 8? Easy 8 + 8 is 16.
What is 8 + 9? Easy 8 + 9 is 17.
What is 9 + 0? Easy 9 + 0 is 9.
What is 9 + 1? Easy 9 + 1 is 10.
What is 9 + 2? Easy 9 + 2 is 11.
What is 9 + 3? Easy 9 + 3 is 12.
What is 9 + 4? Easy 9 + 4 is 13.
What is 9 + 5? Easy 9 + 5 is 14.
What is 9 + 6? Easy 9 + 6 is 15.
What is 9 + 7? Easy 9 + 7 is 16.
What is 9 + 8? Easy 9 + 8 is 17.
What is 9 + 9? Easy 9 + 9 is 18.