“Stories are the only wedding gift I shall bring,” said the merchant’s son, and smiled most pleasingly. Before they parted, the princess gave him a sword with a whole lot of gold coins attached to the hilt; and these he was in need of.
The merchant’s son flew away and bought himself a new dressing gown. When he returned to the forest he started to compose the fairy tale that he would tell on Saturday. And that wasn’t so easy. But finally he was finished and Saturday came.
The king, the queen, and the whole court were having tea with the princess. They greeted him most kindly.
“Now you must tell us a fairy tale,” said the queen, “and I want it to be both profound and instructive.”
“But at the same time funny,” added the king.
“I will try,” said the merchant’s son.
Here is his story; if you listen carefully, you will understand it: “Once upon a time there were some sulphur matches who were extremely proud because they came of such good family. Their family tree, of which each of them was a tiny splinter, had been the largest pine tree in the forest. The matches lay on a shelf between a tinderbox and an old iron pot; and to them they told the story of their childhood and youth:
“ ‘Then we lived high, so to speak. We were served diamond tea every morning and evening; it is called dew. Whenever the sun was out it shone upon us, and all the little birds had to tell us stories. We knew that we were rich, for we could afford to wear our green clothes all year round, whereas the poor beeches and oaks had to stand quite naked in the winter and freeze. Then the woodcutter came, it was a revolution! The whole family was split. The trunk of our family tree got a job as the mainmast on a full-rigged ship; he can sail around the whole world if he feels like it. We are not sure what happened to the branches, but we got the job of lighting fires for the mean and base multitudes; that is how such noble and aristocratic things as we are ended up in the kitchen.’
“ ‘My life has been quite different,’ said the iron pot that stood on the shelf beside the matches. ‘From my very birth I have been scrubbed and set over the fire to boil. I have lost count of how many times that has happened. I do the solid, the most important work here, and should be counted first among you all. My only diversion is to stand properly cleaned on the shelf and engage in a dignified conversation with my friends. We are all proper stay-at-homes here, except for the water bucket, which does run down to the well every so often, and the market basket. She brings us news from the town, but as far as I am concerned it is all disagreeable. All she can talk about are the people and the government. Why, the other day an old earthen pot got so frightened that it fell down and broke in pieces. The market basket is a liberal!’
“ ‘You talk too much!’ grumbled the tinderbox. ‘Let us have a pleasant evening.’ And the steel struck the flint so that sparks flew.
“ ‘Yes, let us discuss who is the most important person here,’ suggested the matches.
“ ‘I don’t like to talk about myself,’ said an earthenware pot. ‘Let’s tell stories instead. I will begin with an everyday story, the kind that could have happened to any of us. I think that kind of story is the most amusing: “By the Baltic Sea where the Danish beeches mirror their—” ’
“ ‘That is a beautiful beginning,’ exclaimed the plates. ‘We are sure we will love that story.’
“ ‘There I spent my youth in a quiet home,’ continued the earthenware pot. ‘The furniture was polished each week, the floors washed every second day, and the curtains were washed and ironed every fortnight.’
“ ‘How interestingly you describe it,’ interrupted the feather duster. ‘One can hear that a woman is talking, there is an air of cleanliness about it all.’
“ ‘How true, how true!’ said the water bucket, and jumped, out of pure joy, several inches into the air.
“The earthenware pot told its story; and both the middle and the end were just as interesting as the beginning had been.
“All the plates clattered in unison as applause; and the feather duster took some parsley and made it into a garland with which to crown the pot. She knew it would irritate the others; besides, she thought, ‘If I honor her today, she will honor me tomorrow.’
“ ‘We will dance,’ said the big black pair of tongs; and so they did! Goodness, how they could stretch their legs. The cover on the old chair, over in the corner, split right down the middle just trying to follow them with his eyes. ‘Where are our laurel leaves?’ demanded the tongs when they had finished; and they were crowned with a garland too.
“ ‘Vulgar rabble,’ thought the matches; but they didn’t say it out loud.
“The samovar was going to sing; but it had caught cold—at least so it claimed, but it wasn’t true. She was too proud; she would only sing in the dining room, when the master and mistress were present.
“Over on the window sill was an old pen that the maid used to write with. There was nothing special about it except that it had been dipped a little too deeply in the inkwell. The pen thought that this was a distinction and was proud of it. ‘If the samovar won’t sing,’ remarked the pen, ‘we shouldn’t beg it to. Outside the window hangs a bird cage with a nightingale in it; why not let him sing? True, his voice is untrained and he is quite uneducated; but his song has a pleasing naïve simplicity about it.’
“ ‘I object. I think it is most improper,’ complained the teakettle, who was a half sister of the samovar. ‘Why should we listen to a foreign bird? Is that patriotic? Let the market basket judge between us.’
“ ‘I am annoyed and irritated,’ shouted the market basket. ‘It is most aggravating; what a way to spend an evening! Let’s put everything back in its right place, then I’ll rule the roost, as I ought to. And you’ll see what a difference that will make.’
“ ‘Let’s make noise! Let’s make noise!’ screamed all the others.
“At that moment the door opened and the maid entered. Instantly, they stood still and kept quiet, every one of them. But even the smallest earthenware pot thought to herself, ‘I am really the most important person here in the kitchen and, if I had wanted to, I could have made it into a most amusing evening.’
“The maid took a match, struck it, and lighted the fire. ‘Now everyone can see,’ thought the match, ‘that we are the true aristocrats here. What a flame we make. What glorious light!’ And that was the end of the match, it burned out.”
“That was a lovely fairy tale,” said the queen. “I feel just as if I had been in the kitchen with the matches. You shall have our daughter.”
“Certainly,” said the king. “We will hold the wedding on Monday,” and he patted the merchant’s son on the back, for now he was part of the family.
On Sunday evening the whole town was illuminated in honor of the impending marriage. Buns and pretzels were given away to everyone; and the street urchins whistled through their fingers. It was a moving sight.
“I’d better add to the festivities,” thought the merchant’s son. He went out and bought all the fireworks he could, put them in the trunk, and flew up in the air.
Ah! how high he flew and the fireworks sputtered, glittered, and banged. Such a spectacle no one had seen before. All the Turks jumped a foot up into the air and lost their slippers. Now they knew it was the God of the Turks who would be marrying their princess.
When the merchant’s son had returned in his trunk to the forest, he decided to go back into town in order to hear what everyone was saying about his performance—and it’s quite understandable that he should want to.
And the things that people said! Everyone had seen something different, but they all agreed that it was marvelous.
“I saw the God himself,” said one man. “He had eyes like stars and a beard like the foaming ocean.”
“He flew wearing a cloak of fire,” said another, “and the prettiest cherubs were peeping out from under its folds.”
It was all very pleasing to hear; and tomorrow was his wedding day!
&n
bsp; He hurried back to the forest to sleep the night away in his trunk. But where was it?
It had burned to ashes. A little spark from one of the fireworks had ignited it; and that was the end of the trunk, and the merchant’s son too! Now he could not fly to his bride.
She waited for him on the roof all day. She is still waiting for him, while he is wandering around the world, telling fairy tales; but they are not so lighthearted as the one he told about the sulphur matches.
16
The Storks
On the roof of the last house at the edge of the town, storks had built their home. The mother stork was sitting in the nest. Her four little ones stuck their heads up and peeped out over the edge. Their bills were still black, for they were so young that they had not yet turned red. A few feet away on the ridge of the roof stood their father, as rigidly as a soldier on guard. He was standing on one leg, as still as a wooden statue.
“It looks very distinguished to have a sentry at the nest,” he thought. “No one knows that it is my own family; people passing by will believe that I am here on duty. It looks most noble.” So he stayed where he was without blinking an eyelid.
Some children were playing down in the street. They looked up at the storks, and the boldest boy among them began singing the old nursery rhyme about the storks. Soon the other joined him:
“Stork, stork, with legs so long,
And wings so broad and strong,
Fly home to your wife and your nest.
The four young ones you love best:
The first shall be hanged from the gallow,
The second shall be dipped in tallow,
The third shall be plucked and burned,
The fourth upside down shall be turned.”
“Listen to what the boys are singing,” said the young storks. “They say we are going to be hanged and burned.”
“Don’t listen to them,” advised their mother. “What one does not hear cannot hurt one.”
But the little boys kept singing and pointing their fingers at the storks. Only one of them—his name was Peter—said it was a shame to make fun of the birds, and he wouldn’t join the others in their naughty game.
The mother tried to comfort her young ones. “Don’t pay any attention to them,” she said. “Look how calmly your father is standing guard on one leg.”
“We are still afraid,” squeaked the young storks, and hid beneath their mother.
The next day the children were playing in the street again, and when they saw the storks they began to sing the song once more:
“The first shall be hanged from the gallow,
The second shall be dipped in tallow,
The third shall be plucked and burned,
The fourth upside down shall be turned.”
“Are we really to be hanged and burned?” asked the young storks again.
“Nonsense!” said their mother. “You are going to learn to fly, then we will visit the meadow and the lake. The frogs will give us a concert, Croak … Croak! Afterward we eat them, it is a marvelous amusement!”
“What happens after that?” asked her young ones.
“Then comes the harvest maneuvers, when all the storks in the whole district gather together. It is of great importance to be able to fly well then, for if you can’t the general kills you. He sticks his bill right into your heart. So pay attention and learn your lessons.”
“So we are going to be killed after all,” exclaimed the young storks. “Listen, the boys are singing that song again.”
“Listen to me and not to those bad boys,” grumbled their mother. “After the great maneuvers, we fly to the hot countries. They are far from here. We have to fly over forests and mountains. We travel to Egypt, where they have triangular stone houses so high that their tops reach the clouds; they are called pyramids. They are so ancient that no stork can remember when they were built. Near them flows a river with muddy banks; one walks in mud and eats frogs all day.”
“Oh,” sighed her young ones.
“Yes,” continued their mother, “one does nothing else but eat all day. While we are living in comfort, it is so cold up here that there is not a green leaf left, and all the clouds freeze to pieces and fall down as little white flakes.”
“Do the naughty children freeze to pieces too?” asked the young storks.
“Not quite, but almost. They have to stay inside, in little dark rooms, while you are free to fly about among the flowers in the warm sunshine.”
Time passed and the young storks were old enough to stand up in the nest and look about them. Their father came every day with frogs, little snakes, and other goodies that he found. He was fond of his children and did his best to amuse them. He twisted his long neck and made noise with his bill and told them stories about the swamp.
“Now I will have to teach you to fly,” said their mother one day, and commanded all four of them up on the ridge of the roof. There they stood, and none too steadily; they used their wings to balance themselves, but they almost fell down.
“Now look at me,” commanded their mother. “This is the way you must hold your head, and this the way to keep your legs. One … two, one … two. You flap your wings; they will bring you ahead in this world.”
The mother stork flew in a little circle around the house and landed again. The young ones made some clumsy hops and one of them almost fell off the roof.
“I don’t want to learn to fly,” said the one that had almost fallen, and climbed back into the nest. “I don’t care about the warm countries.”
“Do you want to freeze to death when winter comes? Shall I call the boys, so that they can come and hang or burn you?”
“Oh no,” said the little stork, and jumped out on the roof again.
By the third day of their training they could really fly. One of them thought that he could sit down in the air as in the nest; but then he fell and learned that to stay in the air you have to use your wings. The boys down in the street were still singing their stupid song.
“Shouldn’t we fly down and prick out their eyes?” suggested one of the young storks.
“No nonsense here!” called the mother. “Listen to me, that is more important than anything else. One … two … three. First we circle to the left around the chimney, then we turn and fly the opposite way around.… That was fine! You have been so good that tomorrow I am going to take you all down to the swamp. You will meet some other distinguished families of storks there. Now make sure you behave yourselves better than all the other children there. Remember to hold your heads high and walk straight. It not only looks fine but makes the others respect you.”
“But aren’t we to avenge ourselves on the naughty children?” asked the young storks.
“Let them scream as loudly as they wish. You will fly high above the clouds, and see the pyramids, while they will stay and freeze here, where there is not a green leaf anywhere or a sweet apple for them to eat.”
“We want our revenge anyway,” the young ones whispered, though not so loud that their mother could hear them.
The child who had started singing the song and mocked the storks most was only six years old and small for his age at that. But the young storks thought he was a hundred, for he was much bigger than their father and mother. They had no real idea of the difference between children and grownups, and all their hate and wish for revenge were directed toward this particular little boy. He had started it and was the worst child, as far as they were concerned. As the storks grew their anger against the children grew too; and at last their mother had to promise them that they would have their vengeance, but she wanted them to wait until one of the days just before they left.
“I have to see first how you get along on the great harvest maneuver. If your flying is too poor, then the general will put his bill right through you and pierce your heart, and then, after all, the boys will be proven right and you can’t blame them.”
“We will do our best,” said the young storks, and the
y did. They trained every day, and soon flew so well in formation that it was a pleasure to watch them.
The harvest began and all the storks gathered in preparation for the long flight down to Africa. It was a grand maneuver; in great flocks, they flew over the forests and the towns, and the general observed each one’s flight closely. The young storks in this story did particularly well; they were given the grade: A plus frogs and snakes! That was the best grade one could get, and they were allowed to eat the frogs and snakes and that they quickly did.
“Now is the time for our revenge,” they demanded.
“Yes,” said their mother. “I have thought about it and now I know how it shall be done. There is a pond where all the little children lie until the stork comes and gets them for delivery to their parents. There they lie dreaming far more pleasantly than they ever will later in their lives. All parents love and desire such little sweet babes and all children want a little sister or little brother. Now we will fly to that pond and bring all the good children who didn’t sing the ugly song a little brother or sister; but the bad ones shan’t ever get any.”
“But the one who started it all, that ugly, horrible little boy,” screamed all the young storks, “what shall we do to him?”
“In the pond there is a dead child,” said the mother. “He has dreamed himself to death. We will bring that baby to the boy and he will cry because we have brought him a dead little brother. But in all your anger, have you forgotten the good little boy who shamed the others when they made fun of you? Him we will bring both a brother and a sister; and since his name is Peter, you shall all be called Peter.”
All that the mother said came true, and the storks in Denmark are still called Peter, even to this day.