1870 Danish Popular Legends

Danish Popular Legends (1870)

by

Hans Christian Andersen

DENMARK is rich in old legends of historical persons, churches, and manors, of hills, of fields, and bottomless moors; sayings from the days of the great plague, from the times of war and peace. The sayings live in books, and on the tongues of the people; they fly far about like a flock of birds, but still are as different from one another as the thrush is from the owl, as the wood-pigeon from the gull. Listen to me, and I will tell you some of them.

It happened one evening in days of yore, when the enemy were pillaging the Danish country, that a battle had been fought and won by the Danes, and many killed and wounded lay on the field of battle. One of these, an enemy, had lost both his legs by a shot. A Danish soldier, standing near by, had just taken out a bottle filled with beer, and was about to put it to his mouth, when the badly wounded man asked him for a drink. As he stopped to hand him the bottle, the enemy discharged his pistol at him, but the shot missed. The soldier drew his bottle back again, drank half of it, and gave the remaining half to his enemy, only saying. “You rascal, now you will only get half of it.”

The king afterward hearing of this, granted the soldier and his descendants an armorial bearing of nobility, on which was painted a half-filled bottle, in memory of his deed.

There is a beautiful tradition worth telling about the churchbell of Farum. The parsonage stood close by the church. It was a dark night late in the fall, and the minister was sitting up at a late hour preparing his sabbath sermon, when he heard a slight, strange sound from the large church-bell. No wind was blowing, and the sound was inexplicable to him; he got up, took the keys and went into the church. As he entered the church the sound stopped suddenly, but he heard a faint sigh from above. “Who is there, disturbing the peace of the church?” he asked, in a loud voice. Footsteps were heard from the tower, and he saw in the passage-way a little boy advancing toward him.

“Be not angry!” said the child. “I slipped in here when the Vesper Service was rung; my mother is very sick!” and now the little boy could not say more for the tears that choked him. The minister patted him on the check, and encouraged him to be frank, and to tell him all about it.

“They say that my mother—my sweet, good mother—is going to die; but I knew that when one is sick unto death he may recover again and live, if in the middle of the night one dares enter the church, and scrape off a little rust from the large church-bell; that is a safeguard against death. Therefore I came here and hid myself until I heard the clock strike twelve. I was so afraid! I thought of all the dead ones, and of their coming into the church. I dared not look out; I read my Lord’s Prayer, and scraped the rust off the bell.”

“Come, my good child,” said the minister; “our Lord will forsake neither thy mother nor thee.” So they went together to the poor cottage, where the sick woman was lying. She slept quietly and soundly. Our Lord granted her life, and his blessings shone over her and her son.

There is a legend about a poor young fellow, Paul Vendelbo, who became a great and honored man. He was born in Jutland, and had striven and studied so well that he got through the examination as student, but felt a still greater desire to become a soldier and stroll about in foreign countries. One day he walked with two young comrades, who were well off, along the ramparts of Copenhagen, and talked to them of his desire. He stopped suddenly, and looked up at the window of the Professor’s house, where a young girl was seated, whose beauty had astonished him and the two others. Perceiving how he blushed, they said in joke, “Go in to her, Paul; and if you can get a voluntary kiss from her at the window, so that we can see it, we will give you money for travelling, that you may go abroad and see if fortune is more favorable for you there than at home.”

Paul Vendelbo entered into the house, and knocked at the parlor door.

“My father is not at home,” said the young girl.

“Do not be angry with me!” he answered, and the blood rushed up into his checks, “it is not your father I want!” And now he told her frankly and heartily his wish to try the world and acquire an honorable name; he told her of his two friends who were standing in the street, and had promised him money for travelling on the condition that she should voluntarily give him a kiss at the open, honest, and frank face, that her anger disappeared.

“It is not right for you to speak such words to a chaste maid,” said she; “but you look so honest, I will not hinder your fortune!” An she led him to the window, and gave him a kiss. His friends kept their promise, and furnished him with money. He went into the service of the Czar, fought in the battle of Pultowa, and acquired nam and honor. Afterward, when Denmark needed him, he returned home, and became a mighty man of the army and of the king’s council. One day he entered the Professor’s plain room, and it was not just the Professor he wished to see this time either; it was again his daughter, Ingeborg Vinding, who gave him the kiss,—the inauguration of his fortune. A fortnight after, Paul Vendelbo Loevenoern (Lioneagle) celebrated his wedding.

The enemy made once a great attack on the Danish island of Funen. One village only was spared; but this was also soon to be sacked and burnt. Two poor people lived in a low-studded house, in the outskirts of the town. It was a dark winter evening; the enemy was expected; and in their anxiety they took the Book of Psalms, and opened it to see if the psalm which they first met with could render them any aid or comfort. They opened the book, and turned to the psalm, “A mighty fortress is our God.” Full of confidence, they sang it; and, strengthened in faith, they went to bed and slept well,—kept by the Lord’s guardianship. When they awoke in the morning it was quite dark in the room, and the daylight could not penetrate; they went to the door, but could not open it. Then they mounted the loft, got the trap-door open, and saw that it was broad daylight; but a heavy drift of snow had in the night fallen upon the whole house and hidden it from the enemies, who in the night-time had pillaged and burnt the town. Then they clasped their hands in thankfulness, and repeated the psalm, “A mighty fortress is our God!” The Lord had guarded them, and raised an intrenchment of snow around them.

From North Seeland there comes a gloomy incident that stirs the thoughts. The church of Roervig is situated far out toward the sand hills by the stormy Kattegat. One evening a large ship dropped anchor out there, and was presumed to be a Russian man-of-war. In the night a knocking was heard at the gate of the parsonage, and several armed and masked persons ordered the minister to put on his ecclesiastical gown and accompany them out to the church. They promised him good pay, but used menaces if he declined to go. He went with them. The church was lighted, unknown people were gathered, and all was in deep silence. Before the altar the bride and bridegroom were waiting, dressed in magnificent clothes, as if they were of high rank, but the bride was pale as a corpse. When the marriage ceremony was finished, a shot was heard, and the bride lay dead before the altar. They took the corpse, and all went away with it. The next morning the ship had weighed anchor. To this day nobody has been able to give any explanation of the event.

The minister who took part in it wrote down the whole event in his Bible, which is handed down in his family. The old church is still standing between the sand hills at the tossing Kattegat, and the story lives in writing and in memory.

I must tell you one more church legend. There lived in Denmark, on the island of Falster, a rich lady of rank, who had no children, and her family was about to die out. So she took a part of her riches, and built a magnificent church. When it was finished, and the altar-candles lighted, she stepped up to the altar-table and prayed on her knees to our Lord, that He would grant her, for her pious gift, a life upon the earth as long as her church was standing. Years went by. Her relations died, her old friends and acquaintances, and all the former servants of the manor were laid in their graves; but she, who made such an evil wish, did not die. Generation upon generation became strange to her, she did not approach anybody, and nobody approached her. She wasted away in a long dotage, and sat abandoned and alone; her senses were blunted, she was like a sleeping, but not like a dead person. Every Christmas Eve the life in her flashed up for a moment, and she got her voice again. Then she would order her people to put her in an oak coffin, and place it in the open burying-place of the church. The minister then would come on the Christmas night to her, in order to recceive her commands. She was laid in the coffin, and it was brought to the church. The minister came, as ordered, every Christmas night, through the choir up to the coffin, raised the cover for the old, wearied lady, who was lying there without rest.

“Is my church still standing?” she asked, with shivering voice; and upon the minister’s answer, “It stands still!” she sighed profoundly and sorrowfully, and fell back again. The minister let the cover down, and came again the next Christmas night, and the next again, and still again the following. Now there is no stone of the church left upon another, no traces of the buried dead ones. A large whitethorn grows here on the field, with beautiful flowers every spring, as if it were the sign of the resurrection of life. It is said that it grows on the very spot where the coffin with the noble lady stood, where her dust became dust of earth.

There is an old popular saying that our Lord, when he expelled the fallen angels, let some of them drop down upon the hills, where they live still, and are called “Bjergfolk” (mountain goblins), or “Trolde” (imps). They are always afraid, and flee away when it thunders, which is for them a voice from heaven. Others fell down in the alder moors; they are called “Elverfolk” (alder folks), and among them the women are very handsome to look at, but not to trust; their backs are also hollow, like a dough-trough. Others fell down in old farms and houses; they became dwarfs and “Nisser” (elves). Sometimes they are wont to have intercourse with men, and a great many stories about them are related which are very strang.

Up in Jutland lived in a large hill such a mountain goblin, together with a great many other imps. One of his daughters was married to the smith of the village. The smith was a bad man, and beat his wife. At last she got tired of it, and one day as he was going again to beat her, she took a horse-shoe and broke it over him. She possessed such an immense strength, that she easily could have broken him in pieces too. He thought about it, and did not beat her any more. Yet it was rumored abroad, and her respect among the country-people was lost, and she was known as a “Trold barn” (an imp child). No one in the parish would have any intercourse with her. The mountain goblin got a hint of this; and one Sunday, when the smith and his wife, together with other parishioners, were standing in the church-yard, waiting for the minister, she looked out over the bay, where a fog was rising.

“Now comes father,” she said, “and he is angry!” He came, and angry he was.

“Will you throw them to me, or will you rather do the catching?” he asked, and looked with greedy eyes upon the churchpeople.

“The catching!” she said; for she knew well that he would not be so gentle when they fell into his hands. And so the mountain goblin seized one after another, and flung them over the roof of the church, while the daughter, standing on the other side, caught them gently. From that time she got along very well with the parishioners; they were all afraid of the mountain goblin, and many of that kind were scattered about the country. The best they could do was to avoid quarreling with him, and rather turn his acquaintance to their profit. They knew well that the imps had big kettles filled with gold money, and it was certainly worth while to get a handful of it; but for that they had to be cunning and ingenious, like the peasant of whom I am going to tell you; as also of his boy, who was still more cunning.

The peasant had a hill on his field, which he would not leave uncultivated; he ploughed it, but the mountain goblin, who lived in the hill, came out and asked,—

“How dare you plough upon my roof?”

“I did not know that it was yours!” said the peasant; “but it is not advantageous for any of us to let such a piece of Land lie uncultivated. Let me plough and sow! and then you reap the first year what is growing over the earth, and I what grows in the earth. Next year we will change.” They agreed; and the peasant sowed the first year carrots, and the second corn. The mountain goblin got the top part of the carrots, and the roots of the corn. In this way they lived in harmony together.

But now it happened that there was to be a christening in the house of the peasant. The peasant was much embarrassed, as he could not well omit inviting the mountain goblin, with whom he lived in good accord; but if the imp accepted his invitation, the peasant would fall into bad repute with the minister and the other folk of the parish. Cunning as the peasant ordinarily was, this time he could not find out how to act. He spoke about it to his pig-boy, who was the more cunning of the two.

“I will help you!” said the boy; and taking a large bag, he went out to the hill of the mountain goblin; he knocked, and was let in. Then he said that he came to invite him to the christening. The mountain goblin accepted the invitation, and promised to come.

“I must give a christening-present, I suppose; mustn’t I?”

“They usually do,” said the boy, and opened the bag. The imp poured money into it.

“Is that sufficient?” The boy lifted the bag.

“Most people give as much!” Then all the money in the large money kettle was poured into the bag.

“Nobody gives more—most less.”

“Let me know, now,” said the mountain goblin, “the great guests you are expecting.”

“Three priests and one bishop,” said the boy.

“That is fine; but such gentlemen look only for eating and drinking,—they don’t care about me. Who else comes!”—“Mother Mary is expected!”—“Hm, hm! but I think there will always be a little place for me behind the stove! Well, and then?”

“Well, then comes ‘our Lord.’”—“Hm, hm, hm! that was mighty! but such highly distinguished guests usually come late and go away early. I shall therefore, while they are in, slink away a little. What sort of music shall you have?” “Drum-music!” said the boy; “our Father has ordered heavy thundering, after which we shall dance! drum-music it shall be.”

“O, is it not dreadul!” cried the mountain goblin. “Thank your master for the invitation, but I would rather stay at home. Did he not know, then, that thundering and drum are to me, and my whole race, a horror? Once, in my younger days, going out to take a walk, the thunder began to drum, and I got one of the drumsticks over my thigh-bone so that it cracked. I will not have more of that kind of music! Give my thanks and my greetings.”

And the boy took the bag on his back, and brought his master the great riches, and the imp’s friendly greetings.

We have many legends of this sort, but those we have told ought to be enough for to-day!

Reference:

Hans Christian Andersen

1870 The Most Incredible Thing

The Most Incredible Thing (1870)
by

Hans Christian Andersen

THE one who could do the most incredible thing should have the king’s daughter and the half of his kingdom.

The young men, and even the old ones, strained all their thoughts, sinews, and muscles; two ate themselves to death, and one drank until he died, to do the most incredible thing according to their own taste, but it was not in this way it was to be done. Little boys in the streets practised spitting on their own backs, they considered that the most incredible thing.

On a certain day an exhibition was to be held of what each had to show as the most incredible. The judges who were chosen were children from three years old to people up in the sixties. There was a whole exhibition of incredible things, but all soon agreed that the most incredible was a huge clock in a case marvellously designed inside and out.

On the stroke of every hour living figures came out, which showed what hour was striking: there were twelve representations in all, with moving figures and with music and conversation.

“That was the most incredible thing,” the people said.

The clock struck one, and Moses stood on the mountain and wrote down on the tables of the law the first commandment, “There is only one true God.”

The clock struck two, and the garden of Eden appeared, where Adam and Eve met, happy both of them, without having so much as a wardrobe; they did not need one either.

On the stroke of three, the three kings from the East were shown; one of them was coal-black, but he could not, help that,—the sun had blackened him. They came with incense and treasures.

On the stroke of four came the four seasons: spring with a cuckoo on a budding beech-bough; summer with a grasshopper on a stalk of ripe corn; autumn with an empty stork’s nest-the birds were flown; winter with an old crow which could tell stories in the chimney-corner, old memories.

When the clock struck five, the five senses appeared sight as a spectacle-maker, hearing as a coppersmith, smell sold violets and woodruff, taste was cook, and feeling was an undertaker with crape down to his heels.

The clock struck six; and there sat a gambler who threw the dice, and the highest side was turned up and showed six.

Then came the seven days of the week, or the seven deadly sins, people were not certain which; they belonged to each other and were not easily distinguished.

Then came a choir of monks and sang the eight o’clock service.

On the stroke of nine came the nine muses; one was busy with astronomy; one with historical archives; the others belonged to the theatre.

On the stroke of ten, Moses again came forward with the tables of the law, on which stood all God’s commandments, and they were ten.

The clock struck again; then little boys and girls danced and hopped about. They played a game, and sang, “Two and two and seven, the clock has struck eleven.”

When twelve struck the watchman appeared with his fur cap and halberd: he sang the old watch verse:

“Twas at the midnight hour

Our Saviour He was born.”

And while he sang, roses grew and changed into angel-beads borne on rainbow-coloured wings.

It was charming to hear, and lovely to see. The whole was a matchless work of art—the most incredible thing, every one said.

The designer of it was a young man, good-hearted and happy as a child, a true friend, and good to his old parents; he deserved the Princess and the half of the kingdom.

The day of decision arrived; the whole of the town had a holiday, and the Princess sat on the throne, which had got new horse-hair, but which was not any more comfortable. The judges round about looked very knowingly at he one who was to win, and he stood glad and confident; his good fortune was certain, he had made the most incredible thing.

“No, I shall do that now!” shouted just then a long bony fellow. “I am the man for the most incredible thing,” and he swung a great axe at the work of art.

“Crash, crash!” and there lay the whole of it. Wheels and springs flew in all directions; everything was destroyed.

“That I could do!” said the man. “My work has overcome his and overcome all of you. I have done the most incredible thing.”

“To destroy such a work of art!” said the judges. “Yes, certainly that is the most incredible thing.”

All the people said the same, and so he was to have the Princess and the half of the kingdom, for a promise is a promise, even if it is of the most incredible kind.

It was announced with trumpet-blast from the ramparts and from all the towers that the marriage should be celebrated. The Princess was not quite pleased about it, but she looked charming and was gorgeously dressed. The church shone with candles; it shows best late in the evening. The noble maidens of the town sang and led the bride forward; the knights sang and accompanied the bridegroom. He strutted as if he could never be broken.

Now the singing stopped and one could have heard a pin fall, but in the midst of the silence the great church door flew open with a crash and clatter, and boom! boom! the whole of the clock-work came marching up the passage and planted itself between the bride and bridegroom. Dead men cannot walk again, we know that very well, but a work of art can walk again; the body was knocked to pieces, but not the spirit; the spirit of the work walked, and that in deadly earnest.

The work of art stood there precisely as if it were whole and untouched. The hours struck, the one after the other, up to twelve, and the figures swarmed forward; first Moses: flames of fire seemed to flash from his forehead; he threw the heavy stone tables down on the feet of the bridegroom and pinned them to the church floor.

“I cannot lift them again,” said Moses, “you have knocked my arm off! Stand as you stand now!”

Then came Adam and Eve, the wise men from the East, and the four Seasons; each of these told him unpleasant truths, and said “For shame!”

But he was not in the least ashamed.

All the figures which each stroke of the clock had to exhibit came out of it, and all increased to a terrible size; there seemed scarcely to he room for the real people; and when at the stroke of twelve the watchman appeared with his fur cap and halberd, there was a wonderful commotion; the watchman walked straight up to the bridegroom and struck him on the forehead with his halberd.

“Lie there,” he said, “like for like! we are avenged and our master as well! we vanish!”

And so the whole work disappeared; but the candles round about in the church became great bouquets, and the gilded stars on the ceiling of the church sent out long, clear beams, and the organ played of itself. All the people said it was the most incredible thing they had ever experienced.

“Will you then summon the right one!” said the Princess, “the one who made the work of art; let him be my lord and husband.”

And he stood in the church with the whole of the people for his retinue. All were glad and all blessed him; there was not one who was jealous—and that was the most incredible thing of all.

Reference:

Hans Christian Andersen

1870 The Candles

The Candles (1870)

by

Hans Christian Andersen

THERE was once a big wax-candle which knew its own importance quite well.

“I am born of wax and moulded in a shape,” it said “I give better light and burn longer than other candles my place is in a chandelier or on a silver candlestick!”

“That must be a lovely existence!” said the tallow-candle. “I am only made of tallow, but I comfort myself with the thought that it is always a little better than being a farthing dip: that is only dipped twice, and I am dipped eight times to get my proper thickness. I am content! it is certainly finer and more fortunate to be born of wax instead of tallow, but one does not settle one’s own place in this world. You are placed in the big room in the glass chandelier, I remain in the kitchen, but that is also a good place; from there the whole house gets its food.”

“But there is something which is more important than food,” said the wax-candle. “Society! to see it shine, and to shine oneself! There is a ball this evening, and soon I and all my family will be fetched.”

Scarcely was the word spoken, when all the wax-candles were fetched, but the tallow-candle also went with them. The lady herself took it in her dainty hand, and carried it out to the kitchen: a little boy stood there with a basket, which was filled with potatoes; two or three apples also found their way there. The good lady gave all this to the poor boy.

“There is a candle for you as well, my little friend,” said she. “Your mother sits and works till late in the night; she can use it!”

The little daughter of the house stood close by, and when she heard the words “late in the night,” she said with great delight, “I also shall stay up till late in the night! We shall have a ball, and I shall wear My big red sash!;” How her face shone! that was with joy! No wax-candle can shine like two childish eyes!

“That is a blessing to see,” thought the tallow-candle; “I shall never forget it, and I shall certainly never see it again.”

And so it was laid in the basket, under the lid, and the boy went away with it.

“Where shall I go now?” thought the candle; “I shall go to poor people, and perhaps not even get a brass candlestick, while the wax-candle sits in silver and sees all the grand people. How lovely it must be to shine for the grand people! but it was my lot to be tallow and not way!”

And so the candle came to poor people, a widow with three children, in a little, low room, right opposite the rich house.

“God bless the good lady for her gifts,” said the mother, “what a lovely candle that is! it can burn till late in the night.”

And then the candle was lighted.

“Fut, foi,” it said, “what a horrid-smelling match that was she lighted me with! the wax-candle over in the rich house would not have such treatment offered to it.”

There also the candles were lighted: they shone, out across the street; the carriages rolled up with the elegant ball-guests and the music played.

“Now they begin across there,” the tallow-candle noticed, and thought of the beaming face of the rich little girl, more sparkling than all the wax-lights. “That sight I shall never see again!”

Then the smallest of the children in the poor house, a little girl, came and took her brother and sister round the neck: she had something very important to tell them, and it must be whispered. “To-night we shall have just think!—To-night we shall have hot potatoes!”

And her face shone with happiness: the tallow-candle shone right into it, and it saw a gladness, a happiness as great as over in the rich house, where the little girl said, “We shall have a ball to-night, and I shall wear my big red sash!”

“It is just as much to get hot potatoes,” thought the candle. “Here there is just as much joy amongst the children.” And it sneezed at that; that is to say, it spattered; a tallow-candle can do no more.

The table was laid, and the potatoes eaten. Oh, how good they tasted! it was a perfect feast, and each one got an apple besides, and the smallest child said the little verse:

“Thou good God, I give thanks to Thee

That Thou again bast nourished me. Amen!”

“Was that not nicely said, Mother?” broke out the little one.

“You must not ask that again,” said the mother; “you must think only of the good God who has fed you.”

The little ones went to bed, got a kiss and fell asleep at once, and the mother sat and sewed late into the night to get the means of support for them and for herself. And over from the big house the lights shone and the music sounded. The stars shone over all the houses, over the rich and over the poor, equally clear and blessed.

“This has really been a delightful evening!” thought the tallow-candle. “I wonder if the wax-candles had it any better in the silver candlestick? I would like to know that before I am burn burned out.”

And it thought of the two happy ones, the one lighted by the wax-candle, and the other by the tallow-candle.

Yes, that is the whole story!

Reference:

Hans Christian Andersen

1869 Poultry Meg’s Family

Poultry Meg’s Family (1869)
(The Family of Hen-Grethe)

by

Hans Christian Andersen

POULTRY MEG was the only person who lived in the new stately dwelling that had been built for the fowls and ducks belonging to the manor house. It stood there where once the old knightly building had stood with its tower, its pointed gables, its moat, and its drawbridge. Close by it was a wilderness of trees and thicket; here the garden had been, and had stretched out to a great lake, which was now moorland. Crows and choughs flew screaming over the old trees, and there were crowds of birds; they did not seem to get fewer when any one shot among them, but seemed rather to increase. One heard the screaming into the poultry-house, where Poultry Meg sat with the ducklings running to and fro over her wooden shoes. She knew every fowl and every duck from the moment it crept out of the shell; and she was fond of her fowls and her ducks, and proud of the stately house that had been built for them. Her own little room in the house was clean and neat, for that was the wish of the gracious lady to whom the house belonged. She often came in the company of grand noble guests, to whom she showed “the hens’ and ducks’ barracks,” as she called the little house.

Here were a clothes cupboard, and an, arm-chair, and even a chest of drawers; and on these drawers a polished metal plate had been placed, whereon was engraved the word “Grubbe,” and this was the name of the noble family that had lived in the house of old. The brass plate had been found when they were digging the foundation; and the clerk has said it had no value except in being an old relic. The clerk knew all about the place, and about the old times, for he had his knowledge from books, and many a memorandum had been written and put in his table-drawer. But the oldest of the crows perhaps knew more than he, and screamed it out in her own language; but that was the crow’s language, and the clerk did not understand that, clever as he was.

After the hot summer days the mist sometimes hung over the moorland as if a whole lake were behind the old trees, among which the crows and the daws were fluttering; and thus it had looked when the good Knight Grubbe had lived here—when the old manor house stood with its thick red walls. The dog-chain used to reach in those days quite over the gateway; through the tower one went into a paved passage which led to the rooms; the windows were narrow, and the panes were small, even in the great hall where the dancing used to be; but in the time of the last Grubbe, there had been no dancing in the hall within the memory of man, although an old drum still lay there that had served as part of the music. Here stood a quaintly carved cupboard, in which rare flower-roots were kept, for my Lady Grubbe was fond of plants and cultivated trees and shrubs. Her husband preferred riding out to shoot wolves and boars; and his little daughter Marie always went with him part of the way. When she was only five years old, she would sit proudly on her horse, and look saucily round with her great black eyes. It was a great amusement to her to hit out among the hunting-dogs with her whip; but her father would rather have seen her hit among the peasant boys, who came running up to stare at their lord.

The peasant in the clay hut close by the knightly house had a son named Søren, of the same age as the gracious little lady. The boy could climb well, and had always to bring her down the bird’s nests. The birds screamed as loud as they could, and one of the greatest of them hacked him with its beak over the eye so that the blood ran down, and it was at first thought the eye had been destroyed; but it had not been injured after all. Marie Grubbe used to call him her Søren, and that was a great favor, and was an advantage to Søren’s father—poor Jon, who had one day committed a fault, and was to be punished by riding on the wooden horse. This same horse stood in the courtyard, and had four poles for legs, and a single narrow plant for a back; on this Jon had to ride astride, and some heavy bricks were fastened to his feet into the bargain, that he might not sit too comfortably. He made horrible grimaces, and Søren wept and implored little Marie to interfere. She immediately ordered that Søren’s father should be taken down, and when they did not obey her, she stamped on the floor, and pulled at her father’s sleeve till it was torn to pieces. She would have her way, and she got her way, and Søren’s father was taken down.

Lady Grubbe, who now came up, parted her little daughter’s hair from the child’s brow, and looked at her affectionately; but Marie did not understand why.

She wanted to go to the hounds, and not to her mother, who went down into the garden, to the lake where the water-lily bloomed, and the heads of bulrushes nodded amid the reeds; and she looked at all this beauty and freshness. “How pleasant!” she said. In the garden stood at that time a rare tree, which she herself had planted. It was called the blood-beech—a kind of negro growing among the other trees, so dark brown were the leaves. This tree required much sunshine, for in continual shade it would become bright green like the other trees, and thus lose its distinctive character. In the lofty chestnut trees were many birds’ nests, and also in the thickets and in the grassy meadows. It seemed as though the birds knew that they were protected here, and that no one must fire a gun at them.

Little Marie came here with Søren. He knew how to climb, as we have already said, and eggs and fluffy-feathered young birds were brought down. The birds, great and small, flew about in terror and tribulation; the peewit from the fields, and the crows and daws from the high trees, screamed and screamed; it was just such din as the family will raise to the present day.

“What are you doing, you children?” cried the gentle lady; “that is sinful!”

Søren stood abashed, and even the little gracious lady looked down a little; but then he said, quite short and pretty,

“My father lets me do it!”

“Craw-craw! away-away from here!” cried the great black birds, and they flew away; but on the following day they came back, for they were at home here.

The quiet gentle lady did not remain long at home here on earth, for the good God called her away; and, indeed, her home was rather with Him than in the knightly house; and the church bells tolled solemnly when her corpse was carried to the church, and the eyes of the poor people were wet with tears, for she had been good to them.

When she was gone, no one attended to her plantations, and the garden ran to waste. Grubbe the knight was a hard man, they said; but his daughter, young as she was, knew how to manage him. He used to laugh and let her have her way. She was now twelve years old, and strongly built. She looked the people through and through with her black eyes, rode her horse as bravely as a man, and could fire off her gun like a practiced hunter.

One day there were great visitors in the neighborhood, the grandest visitors who could come. The young King, and his half-brother and comrade, the Lord Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve. They wanted to hunt the wild boar, and to pass a few days at the castle of Grubbe.

Gyldenløve sat at table next to Marie Grubbe, and he took her by the hand and gave her a kiss, as if she had been a relation; but she gave him a box on the ear, and told him she could not bear him, at which there was great laughter, as if that had been a very amusing thing.

And perhaps it was very amusing, for, five years afterwards, when Marie had fulfilled her seventeenth year, a messenger arrived with a letter, in which Lord Gyldenløve proposed for the hand of the noble young lady. There was a thing for you!

“He is the grandest and most gallant gentleman in the whole country,” said Grubbe the knight; “that is not a thing to despise.”

“I don’t care so very much about him,” said Marie Grubbe; but she did not despise the grandest man of all the country, who sat by the king’s side.

Silver plate, and fine linen and woollen, went off to Copenhagen in a ship, while the bride made the journey by land in ten days. But the outfit met with contrary winds, or with no winds at all, for four months passed before it arrived; and when it came, my Lady Gyldenløve was gone.

“I’d rather lie on coarse sacking than lie in his silken beds,” she declared. “I’d rather walk barefoot than drive with him in a coach!”

Late one evening in November two women came riding into the town of Aarhuus. They were the gracious Lady Gyldenløve (Marie Grubbe) and her maid. They came from the town of Weile, whither they had come in a ship from Copenhagen. They stopped at Lord Grubbe’s stone mansion in Aarhuus. Grubbe was not well pleased with this visit. Marie was accosted in hard words; but she had a bedroom given her, and got her beer soup of a morning; but the evil part of her father’s nature was aroused against her, and she was not used to that. She was not of a gentle temper, and we often answer as we are addressed. She answered openly, and spoke with bitterness and hatred of her husband, with whom she declared she would not live; she was too honorable for that.

A year went by, but it did not go by pleasantly. There were evil words between the father and the daughter, and that ought never to be. Bad words bear bad fruit. What could be the end of such a state of things?

“We two cannot live under the same roof,” said the father one day. “Go away from here to our old manor house; but you had better bite your tongue off than spread any lies among the people.”

And so the two parted. She went with her maid to the old castle where she had been born, and near which the gentle, pious lady, her mother, was lying in the church vault. An old cowherd lived in the courtyard, and was the only other inhabitant of the place. In the rooms heavy black cobwebs hung down, covered with dust; in the garden everything grew just as it would; hops and climbing plants ran like a net between the trees and bushes, and the hemlock and nettle grew larger and stronger. The blood-beech had been outgrown by other trees, and now stood in the shade; and its leaves were green like those of the common trees, and its glory had departed. Crows and choughs, in great close masses, flew past over the tall chestnut trees, and chattered and screamed as if they had something very important to tell one another—as if they were saying, “Now she’s come back again, the little girl who had their eggs and their young ones stolen from them; and as for the thief who had got them down, he had to climb up a leafless tree, for he sat on a tall ship’s mast, and was beaten with a rope’s end if he did not behave himself.”

The clerk told all this in our own times; he had collected it and looked it up in books and memoranda. It was to be found, with many other writings, locked up in his table-drawer.

“Upward and downward is the course of the world,” said he. “It is strange to hear.”

And we will hear how it went with Marie Grubbe. We need not for that forget Poultry Meg, who is sitting in her capital hen-house, in our own time. Marie Grubbe sat down in her times, but not with the same spirit that old Poultry Meg showed.

The winter passed away, and the spring and the summer passed away, and the autumn came again, with the damp, cold sea-fog. It was a lonely, desolate life in the old manor house. Marie Grubbe took her gun in her hand and went out to the heath, and shot hares and foxes, and whatever birds she could hit. More than once she met the noble Sir Palle Dyre, of Nørrebæk, who was also wandering about with his gun and his dogs. He was tall and strong, and boasted of this when they talked together. He could have measured himself against the deceased Mr. Brockenhuus, of Egeskov, of whom the people still talked. Palle Dyre had, after the example of Brockenhuus, caused an iron chain with a hunting-horn to be hung in his gateway; and when he came riding home, he used to seize the chain, and lift himself and his horse from the ground, and blow the horn.

“Come yourself, and see me do that, Dame Marie,” he said. “One can breathe fresh and free at Nørrebæk.”

When she went to his castle is not known, but on the altar candlestick in the church of Nørrebæk it was inscribed that they were the gift of Palle Dyre and Marie Grubbe, of Nørrebæk Castle.

A great stout man was Palle Dyre. He drank like a sponge. He was like a tub that could never get full; he snored like a whole sty of pigs, and he looked red and bloated.

“He is treacherous and malicious,” said Dame Pally Dyre, Grubbe’s daughter. Soon she was weary of her life with him, but that did not make it better.

One day the table was spread, and the dishes grew cold. Palle Dyre was out hunting foxes, and the gracious lady was nowhere to be found. Towards midnight Palle Dyre came home, but Dame Dyre came neither at midnight, nor next morning. She had turned her back upon Nørrebæk, and had ridden away without saying good-bye.

It was gray, wet weather; the wind grew cold, and a flight of black screaming birds flew over her head. They were not so homeless as she.

First she journeyed southward, quite down into the German land. A couple of golden rings with costly stones were turned into money; and then she turned to the east, and then she turned again and went towards the west. She had no food before her eyes, and murmured against everything, even against the good God himself, so wretched was her soul. Soon her body became wretched too, and she was scarcely able to move a foot. The peewit flew up as she stumbled over the mound of earth where it had built its nest. The bird cried, as it always cried, “You thief! you thief!” She had never stolen her neighbor’s goods; but as a little girl she had caused eggs and young birds to be taken from the trees, and she thought of that now.

From where she lay she could see the sand-dunes. By the seashore lived fishermen; but she could not get so far, she was so ill. The great white sea-mews flew over her head, and screamed as the crows and daws screamed at home in the garden of the manor house. The birds flew quite close to her, and at last it seemed to her as if they became black as crows, and then all was night before her eyes.

When she opened her eyes again, she was being lifted and carried. A great strong man had taken her up in his arms, and she was looking straight into his bearded face. He had a scar over one eye, which seemed to divide the eyebrow into two parts. Weak as she was, he carried her to the ship, where he got a rating for it from the captain.

The next day the ship sailed away. Madame Grubbe had not been put ashore, so she sailed away with it. But she will return, will she not? Yes, but where, and when?

The clerk could tell about this too, and it was not a story which he patched together himself. He had the whole strange history out of an old authentic book, which we ourselves can take out and read. The Danish historian, Ludwig Holberg, who has written so many useful books and merry comedies, from which we can get such a good idea of his times and their people, tells in his letters of Marie Grubbe, where and how he met her. It is well worth hearing; but for all that, we don’t at all forget Poultry Meg, who is sitting cheerful and comfortable in the charming fowl-house.

The ship sailed away with Marie Grubbe. That’s where we left off.

Long years went by.

The plague was raging at Copenhagen; it was in the year 1711. The Queen of Denmark went away to her German home, the King quitted the capital, and everybody who could do so hurried away. The students, even those who had board and lodging gratis, left the city. One of these students, the last who had remained in the free college, at last went away too. It was two o’clock in the morning. He was carrying his knapsack, which was better stacked with books and writings than with clothes. A damp mist hung over the town; not a person was to be seen in the streets; the street-doors around were marked with crosses, as a sign that the plague was within, or that all the inmates were dead. A great wagon rattled past him; the coachman brandished his whip, and the horses flew by at a gallop. The wagon was filled with corpses. The young student kept his hand before his face, and smelt at some strong spirits that he had with him on a sponge in a little brass scent-case. Out of a small tavern in one of the streets there were sounds of singing and of unhallowed laughter, from people who drank the night through to forget that the plague was at their doors, and that they might be put into the wagon as the others had been. The student turned his steps towards the canal at the castle bridge, where a couple of small ships were lying; one of these was weighing anchor, to get away from the plague-stricken city.

“If God spares our lives and grants us a fair wind, we are going to Gronmud, near Falster,” said the captain; and he asked the name of the student who wished to go with him.

“Ludvig Holberg,” answered the student; and the name sounded like any other. But now there sounds in it one of the proudest names of Denmark; then it was the name of a young, unknown student.

The ship glided past the castle. It was not yet bright day when it was in the open sea. A light wind filled the sails, and the young student sat down with his face turned towards the fresh wind, and went to sleep, which was not exactly the most prudent thing he could have done.

Already on the third day the ship lay by the island of Falster.

“Do you know any one here with whom I could lodge cheaply?” Holberg asked the captain.

“I should think you would do well to go to the ferry-woman in Borrehaus,” answered the captain. “If you want to be very civil to her, her name is Mother Søren Sørensen Muller. But it may happen that she may fly into a fury if you are too polite to her. The man is in custody for a crime, and that’s why she manages the ferry-boat herself—she has fists of her own.”

The student took his knapsack and betook himself to the ferry-house. The house door was not locked—it opened, and he went into a room with a brick floor, where a bench, with a great coverlet of leather, formed the chief article of furniture. A white hen, who had a brood of chickens, was fastened to the bench, and had overturned the pipkin of water, so that the wet ran across the floor. There were no people either here or in the adjoining room; only a cradle stood there, in which was a child. The ferry-boat came back with only one person in it. Whether that person was a man or a woman was not an easy matter to determine. The person in question was wrapped in a great cloak, and wore a kind of hood. Presently the boat lay to.

It was a woman who got out of it and came into the room. She looked very stately when she straightened her back; two proud eyes looked forth from beneath her black eyebrows. It was Mother Søren, the ferry-wife. The crows and daws might have called out another name for her, which we know better.

She looked morose, and did not seem to care to talk; but this much was settled, that the student should board in her house for an indefinite time, while things looked so bad in Copenhagen.

This or that honest citizen would often come to the ferry-house from the neighboring little town. There came Frank the cutler, and Sivert the exciseman. They drank a mug of beer in the ferry-house, and used to converse with the student, for he was a clever young man, who knew his “Practica,” as they called it; he could read Greek and Latin, and was well up in learned subjects.

“The less one knows, the less it presses upon one,” said Mother Søren.

“You have to work hard,” said Holberg one day, when she was dipping clothes in the strong soapy water, and was obliged herself to split the logs for the fire.

“That’s my affair,” she replied.

“Have you been obliged to toil in this way from your childhood?”

“You can read that from my hands,” she replied, and held out her hands, that were small indeed, but hard and strong, with bitten nails. “You are learned, and can read.”

At Christmas-time it began to snow heavily. The cold came on, the wind blue sharp, as if there were vitriol in it to wash the people’s faces. Mother Søren did not let that disturb her; she threw her cloak around her, and drew her hood over her head. Early in the afternoon—it was already dark in the house—she laid wood and turf on the hearth, and then she sat down to darn her stockings, for there was no one to do it for her. Towards evening she spoke more words to the student than it was customary with her to use; she spoke of her husband.

“He killed a sailor of Dragor by mischance, and for that he has to work for three years in irons. He’s only a common sailor, and therefore the law must take its course.”

“The law is there for people of high rank, too,” said Holberg.

“Do you think so?” said Mother Søren; then she looked into the fire for a while; but after a time she began to speak again. “Have you heard of Kai Lykke, who caused a church to be pulled down, and when the clergyman, Master Martin, thundered from the pulpit about it, he had him put in irons, and sat in judgment upon him, and condemned him to death? Yes, and the clergyman was obliged to bow his head to the stroke. And yet Kai Lykke went scot-free.”

“He had a right to do as he did in those times,” said Holberg; “but now we have left those times behind us.”

“You may get a fool to believe that,” cried Mother Søren; and she got up and went into the room where the child lay. She lifted up the child, and laid it down more comfortably. Then she arranged the bed-place of the student. He had the green coverlet, for he felt the cold more than she, though he was born in Norway.

On New Year’s morning it was a bright sunshiny day. The frost had been so strong, and was still so strong, that the fallen snow had become a hard mass, and one could walk upon it. The bells of the little town were tolling for church. Student Holberg wrapped himself up in his woollen cloak, and wanted to go to the town.

Over the ferry-house the crows and daws were flying with loud cries; one could hardly hear the church bells for their screaming. Mother Søren stood in front of the house, filling a brass pot with snow, which she was going to put on the fire to get drinking water. She looked up to the crowd of birds, and thought her own thoughts.

Student Holberg went to church. On his way there and on his return he passed by the house of tax-collector Sivert, by the town-gate. Here he was invited to take a mug of brown beer with treacle and sugar. The discourse fell upon Mother Søren, but the tax collector did not know much about her, and, indeed, few knew much about her. She did not belong to the island of Falster, he said; she had a little property of her own at one time. Her husband was a common sailor, a fellow of a very hot temper, and had killed a sailor of Dragor; and he beat his wife, and yet she defended him.

“I should not endure such treatment,” said the tax-collector’s wife. “I am come of more respectable people. My father was stocking-weaver to the Court.”

“And consequently you have married a governmental official,” said Holberg, and made a bow to her and to the collector.

It was on Twelfth Night, the evening of the festival of the Three Kings, Mother Søren lit up for Holberg a three-king candle, that is, a tallow candle with three wicks, which she had herself prepared.

“A light for each man,” said Holberg.

“For each man?” repeated the woman, looking sharply at him.

“For each of the wise men from the East,” said Holberg.

“You mean it that way,” said she, and then she was silent for a long time. But on this evening he learned more about her than he had yet known.

“You speak very affectionately of your husband,” observed Holberg, “and yet the people say that he ill-uses you every day.”

“That’s no one’s business but mine,” she replied. “The blows might have done me good when I was a child; now, I suppose, I get them for my sins. But I know what good he has done me,” and she rose up. “When I lay sick upon the desolate heath, and no one would have pity on me, and no one would have anything to do with me, except the crows and daws, which came to peck me to bits, he carried me in his arms, and had to bear hard words because of the burden he brought on board ship. It’s not in my nature to be sick, and so I got well. Every man has his own way, and Søren has his; but the horse must not be judged by the halter. Taking one thing with another, I have lived more agreeably with him than with the man whom they called the most noble and gallant of the King’s subjects. I have had the Stadtholder Gyldenløve, the King’s half-brother, for my husband; and afterwards I took Palle Dyre. One is as good as another, each in his own way, and I in mine. That was a long gossip, but now you know all about me.”

And with those words she left the room.

It was Marie Grubbe! so strangely had fate played with her. She did not live to see many anniversaries of the festival of the Three Kings; Holberg has recorded that she died in June, 1716; but he has not written down, for he did not know, that a number of great black birds circled over the ferry-house, when Mother Søren, as she was called, was lying there a corpse. They did not scream, as if they knew that at a burial silence should be observed. So soon as she lay in the earth, the birds disappeared; but on the same evening in Jutland, at the old manor house, an enormous number of crows and choughs were seen; they all cried as loud as they could, as if they had some announcement to make. Perhaps they talked of him who, as a little boy, had taken away their eggs and their young; of the peasant’s son, who had to wear an iron garter, and of the noble young lady, who ended by being a ferryman’s wife.

“Brave! brave!” they cried.

And the whole family cried, “Brave! brave!” when the old house was pulled down.

“They are still crying, and yet there’s nothing to cry about,” said the clerk, when he told the story. “The family is extinct, the house has been pulled down, and where it stood is now the stately poultry-house, with gilded weathercocks, and the old Poultry Meg. She rejoices greatly in her beautiful dwelling. If she had not come here,” the old clerk added, “she would have had to go into the work-house.”

The pigeons cooed over her, the turkey-cocks gobbled, and the ducks quacked.

“Nobody knew her,” they said; “she belongs to no family. It’s pure charity that she is here at all. She has neither a drake father nor a hen mother, and has no descendants.”

She came of a great family, for all that; but she did not know it, and the old clerk did not know it, though he had so much written down; but one of the old crows knew about it, and told about it. She had heard from her own mother and grandmother about Poultry Meg’s mother and grandmother. And we know the grandmother too. We saw her ride, as child, over the bridge, looking proudly around her, as if the whole world belonged to her, and all the birds’ nests in it; and we saw her on the heath, by the sand-dunes; and, last of all, in the ferry-house. The granddaughter, the last of her race, had come back to the old home, where the old castle had stood, where the black wild birds were screaming; but she sat among the tame birds, and these knew her and were fond of her. Poultry Meg had nothing left to wish for; she looked forward with pleasure to her death, and she was old enough to die.

“Grave, grave!” cried the crows.

And Poultry Meg has a good grave, which nobody knew except the old crow, if the old crow is not dead already.

And now we know the story of the old manor house, of its old proprietors, and of all Poultry Meg’s family.

Reference:

Hans Christian Andersen

1869 The Thistle’s Experiences

The Thistle’s Experiences (1869)
(The Adventures of a Thistle)

by

Hans Christian Andersen

BELONGING to the lordly manor-house was beautiful, well-kept garden, with rare trees and flowers; the guests of the proprietor declared their admiration of it; the people of the neighborhood, from town and country, came on Sundays and holidays, and asked permission to see the garden; indeed, whole schools used to pay visits to it.

Outside the garden, by the palings at the road-side, stood a great mighty Thistle, which spread out in many directions from the root, so that it might have been called a thistle bush. Nobody looked at it, except the old Ass which drew the milk-maid’s cart. This Ass used to stretch out his neck towards the Thistle, and say, “You are beautiful; I should like to eat you!” But his halter was not long enough to let him reach it and eat it.

There was great company at the manor-house—some very noble people from the capital; young pretty girls, and among them a young lady who came from a long distance. She had come from Scotland, and was of high birth, and was rich in land and in gold—a bride worth winning, said more than one of the young gentlemen; and their lady mothers said the same thing.

The young people amused themselves on the lawn, and played at ball; they wandered among the flowers, and each of the young girls broke off a flower, and fastened it in a young gentleman’s buttonhole. But the young Scotch lady looked round, for a long time, in an undecided way. None of the flowers seemed to suit her taste. Then her eye glanced across the paling—outside stood the great thistle bush, with the reddish-blue, sturdy flowers; she saw them, she smiled, and asked the son of the house to pluck one for her.

“It is the flower of Scotland,” she said. “It blooms in the scutcheon of my country. Give me yonder flower.”

And he brought the fairest blossom, and pricked his fingers as completely as if it had grown on the sharpest rose bush.

She placed the thistle-flower in the buttonhole of the young man, and he felt himself highly honored. Each of the other young gentlemen would willingly have given his own beautiful flower to have worn this one, presented by the fair hand of the Scottish maiden. And if the son of the house felt himself honored, what were the feelings of the Thistle bush? It seemed to him as if dew and sunshine were streaming through him.

“I am something more than I knew of,” said the Thistle to itself. “I suppose my right place is really inside the palings, and not outside. One is often strangely placed in this world; but now I have at least managed to get one of my people within the pale, and indeed into a buttonhole!”

The Thistle told this event to every blossom that unfolded itself, and not many days had gone by before the Thistle heard, not from men, not from the twittering of the birds, but from the air itself, which stores up the sounds, and carries them far around—out of the most retired walks of the garden, and out of the rooms of the house, in which doors and windows stood open, that the young gentleman who had received the thistle-flower from the hand of the fair Scottish maiden had also now received the heart and hand of the lady in question. They were a handsome pair—it was a good match.

“That match I made up!” said the Thistle; and he thought of the flower he had given for the buttonhole. Every flower that opened heard of this occurrence.

“I shall certainly be transplanted into the garden,” thought the Thistle, and perhaps put into a pot, which crowds one in. “That is said to be the greatest of all honors.”

And the Thistle pictured this to himself in such a lively manner, that at last he said, with full conviction, “I am to be transplanted into a pot.”

Then he promised every little thistle flower which unfolded itself that it also should be put into a pot, and perhaps into a buttonhole, the highest honor that could be attained. But not one of them was put into a pot, much less into a buttonhole. They drank in the sunlight and the air; lived on the sunlight by day, and on the dew by night; bloomed—were visited by bees and hornets, who looked after the honey, the dowry of the flower, and they took the honey, and left the flower where it was.

“The thievish rabble!” said the Thistle. “If I could only stab every one of them! But I cannot.”

The flowers hung their heads and faded; but after a time new ones came.

“You come in good time,” said the Thistle. “I am expecting every moment to get across the fence.”

A few innocent daisies, and a long thin dandelion, stood and listened in deep admiration, and believed everything they heard.

The old Ass of the milk-cart stood at the edge of the field-road, and glanced across at the blooming thistle bush; but his halter was too short, and he could not reach it.

And the Thistle thought so long of the thistle of Scotland, to whose family he said he belonged, that he fancied at last that he had come from Scotland, and that his parents had been put into the national escutcheon. That was a great thought; but, you see, a great thistle has a right to a great thought.

“One is often of so grand a family, that one may not know it,” said the Nettle, who grew close by. He had a kind of idea that he might be made into cambric if he were rightly treated.

And the summer went by, and the autumn went by. The leaves fell from the trees, and the few flowers left had deeper colors and less scent. The gardener’s boy sang in the garden, across the palings:

“Up the hill, down the dale we wend,

That is life, from beginning to end.”

The young fir trees in the forest began to long for Christmas, but it was a long time to Christmas yet.

“Here I am standing yet!” said the Thistle. “It is as if nobody thought of me, and yet I managed the match. They were betrothed, and they have had their wedding; it is now a week ago. I won’t take a single step-because I can’t.”

A few more weeks went by. The Thistle stood there with his last single flower large and full. This flower had shot up from near the roots; the wind blew cold over it, and the colors vanished, and the flower grew in size, and looked like a silvered sunflower.

One day the young pair, now man and wife, came into the garden. They went along by the paling, and the young wife looked across it.

“There’s the great thistle still growing,” she said. “It has no flowers now.”

“Oh, yes, the ghost of the last one is there still,” said he. And he pointed to the silvery remains of the flower, which looked like a flower themselves.

“It is pretty, certainly,” she said. “Such an one must be carved on the frame of our picture.”

And the young man had to climb across the palings again, and to break off the calyx of the thistle. It pricked his fingers, but then he had called it a ghost. And this thistle-calyx came into the garden, and into the house, and into the drawing-room. There stood a picture—“Young Couple.” A thistle-flower was painted in the buttonhole of the bridegroom. They spoke about this, and also about the thistle-flower they brought, the last thistle-flower, now gleaming like silver, whose picture was carved on the frame.

And the breeze carried what was spoken away, far away.

“What one can experience!” said the Thistle Bush. “My first born was put into a buttonhole, and my youngest has been put in a frame. Where shall I go?”

And the Ass stood by the road-side, and looked across at the Thistle.

“Come to me, my nibble darling!” said he. “I can’t get across to you.”

But the Thistle did not answer. He became more and more thoughtful—kept on thinking and thinking till near Christmas, and then a flower of thought came forth.

“If the children are only good, the parents do not mind standing outside the garden pale.”

“That’s an honorable thought,” said the Sunbeam. “You shall also have a good place.”

“In a pot or in a frame?” asked the Thistle.

“In a story,” replied the Sunbeam.

Reference:

Hans Christian Andersen