But that night—the very first after the girl’s death—while the brother slept, the flowers of the jasmine bush opened. The invisible souls of the flowers, every one carrying a poisoned spear, gathered around his ears and told him stories that gave him terrible dreams. When he screamed in fear, they stuck the deadly points of their spears into his tongue.
“Now we have revenged the dead,” they cried, and flew back into their flowers.
In the morning when the window of the bedchamber was opened, the rose elf and the bees, led by the queen, flew into the room to kill the brother. But he was already dead. People were standing around his bed. “The strong smell of the jasmine killed him,” one of the men said.
Now the elf understood the flowers’ vengeance, and told the queen bee about it. She and all the other bees swarmed about the jasmine bush. The people tried to shoo them out. Finally a man picked up the plant and was going to carry it outside. One of the bees stung his hand. The flowerpot fell to the floor and broke.
All the people looked in horror at the white skull that was loosened from the black earth. Now they knew that the dead man had been a murderer.
The queen bee hummed a song about the flowers’ revenge and about the little elf that may live within even the tiniest leaf and can expose and avenge evil.
22
The Swineherd
There once was a poor prince. He had a kingdom and, though it wasn’t very big, it was large enough to marry on, and married he wanted to be.
Now it was rather bold of him to say to the emperor’s daughter: “Do you want me?” But he was a young man of spirit who was quite famous, and there were at least a hundred princesses who would have said thank you very much to his proposal. But the emperor’s daughter didn’t. Let me tell you the story.
On the grave of the prince’s father there grew a rose tree. It was a beautiful tree that only flowered every fifth year; and then it bore only one rose. That rose had such a sweet fragrance that anyone who smelled it forgot immediately all his sorrow and troubles. The prince also owned a nightingale which sang as though all the melodies ever composed lived in its throat—so beautiful was its song. The prince decided to send the rose and the nightingale to the emperor’s daughter, and had two little silver chests made to put them in.
The emperor ordered the gifts to be carried into the grand assembly room where the princess was playing house with her ladies in waiting. That was their favorite game and they never played any other. When the princess saw the pretty little silver chests she clapped her hands and jumped for joy.
“Oh, I hope one of them contains a pretty little kitten,” she said; but when she opened the chest, she found a rose.
“It is very prettily made,” said one of the ladies in waiting.
“It is more than pretty; it is nice,” remarked the emperor. Then the princess touched the rose and she almost wept with disappointment.
“Oh, Papa,” she shrieked. “It is not glass, it’s real!”
“Oh, oh!” shrieked all the ladies in waiting. “How revolting! It is real!”
“Let’s see what is in the other chest first, before we get angry,” admonished the emperor. There was the nightingale, who sang so beautifully that it was difficult to find anything wrong with it.
“Superbe! Charmant!” said the ladies in waiting. They all spoke French, one worse than the other.
“That bird reminds me of the late empress’ music box,” said an old courtier. “It has the same tone, the same sense of rhythm.”
“You are right,” said the emperor, and cried like a baby.
“I would like to know if that is real too,” demanded the princess.
“Oh yes, it is a real bird,” said one of the pages who had brought the gifts.
“In that case we will let the bird fly away,” said the princess; and she sent a messenger to say that she would not even permit the prince to come inside her father’s kingdom.
But the prince was not easily discouraged. He smeared his face with both black and brown shoe polish, put a cap on his head, then he walked up to the emperor’s castle and knocked.
“Good morning, Emperor,” said the young man, for it was the emperor himself who had opened the door. “Can I get a job in the castle?”
“Oh, there are so many people who want to work here,” answered the emperor, and shook his head. “But I do need someone to tend the pigs, we have such an awful lot of them.”
And so the prince was hired as the emperor’s swineherd. There was a tiny, dirty room next to the pigpen, and that was where he was expected to live.
The young man spent the rest of the day making a very pretty little pot. By evening it was finished. The pot had little bells all around it, and when it boiled, they played, ever so sweetly:
Ach, du lieber Augustin,
Alles ist weg, weg, weg.
But the strangest and most wonderful thing about the pot was that, if you held your finger in the steam above it, then you could smell what was cooking on any stove in town. Now there was something a little different from the rose.
The princess was out walking with her ladies in waiting, and when she heard the musical pot she stopped immediately. She listened and smiled, for “Ach, du lieber Augustin” she knew. She could play the melody herself on the piano with one finger.
“It is a song I know!” she exclaimed. “That swineherd must be cultured. Please go in and ask him what the instrument costs.”
One of the ladies in waiting was ordered to run over to the pigpen, but she put wooden shoes on first.
“What do you want for the pot?” she asked.
“Ten kisses from the princess,” said the swineherd.
“God save us!” cried the lady in waiting.
“I won’t settle for less,” said the swineherd.
“Well, what did he want?” asked the princess.
“I can’t say it,” blushed the lady in waiting.
“Then you can whisper it,” said the princess; and the lady in waiting whispered.
“He is very naughty,” said the princess, and walked on. But she had gone only a few steps when she heard the little bells play again, and they sounded even sweeter to her than they had before.
Ach, du lieber Augustin,
Alles ist weg, weg, weg.
“Listen,” she said, “ask him if he will be satisfied with ten kisses from one of my ladies in waiting.”
“No, thank you!” replied the swineherd to that proposal. “Ten kisses from the princess or I keep my pot.”
“This is most embarrassing,” declared the princess. “You will all have to stand around me so no one can see it.”
And the ladies in waiting formed a circle and held out their skirts so no one could peep. The swineherd got his kisses and the princess the pot.
Oh, what a grand time they had! All day and all evening they made the little pot boil. There wasn’t a stove in the whole town that had anything cooking on it that they didn’t know about. They knew what was served for dinner on every table: both the count’s and the cowherd’s. The ladies in waiting were so delighted that they clapped their little hands.
“We know who is going to have soup and pancakes and who is eating porridge and rib roast! Oh, it is most interesting.”
“Very!” said the imperial housekeeper.
“Keep your mouth shut. Remember, I am the princess,” said the emperor’s daughter.
And all the ladies in waiting and the imperial housekeeper said: “God preserve us, we won’t say a word.”
The swineherd—that is to say, the prince whom everyone thought was a swineherd—did not like to waste his time, so he constructed a rattle which was so ingenious that, when you swung it around, it played all the waltzes, polkas, and dance melodies ever composed since the creation of the world.
“It is superb!” exclaimed the princess as she was walking past the pigsty. “I have never heard a more exquisite composition. Do go in and ask what he wants for the instrument, but I won’t
kiss him!”
“He wants a hundred kisses from the princess,” said the lady in waiting who had been sent to speak to the swineherd.
“He must be mad,” declared the princess. She walked on a few steps and then she stood still. “One ought to encourage art,” she said. “I am the emperor’s daughter. Tell him he can have ten kisses from me just as he got yesterday. The rest he can get from my ladies in waiting.”
“But we don’t want to kiss him,” they all cried.
“Stuff and nonsense!” replied the princess, for she was angry. “If I can kiss him, you can too. Besides, what do you think I give you room and board for?”
And one of the ladies in waiting went to talk with the swineherd. “One hundred kisses from the princess or I keep the rattle,” was the message she came back with.
“Then gather around me!” commanded the princess. The ladies in waiting took their positions and the kissing began.
“I wonder what is going on down there by the pigsty,” said the emperor, who was standing out on the balcony. He rubbed his eyes and put his glasses on. “It is the ladies in waiting. What devilment are they up to? I’d better go down and see.” Then he pulled up the backs of his slippers, for they were really only a comfortable old pair of shoes with broken backs. Oh, how he ran! But as soon as he came near the pigsty he walked on tiptoe.
The ladies in waiting were so busy counting kisses—to make sure that the bargain was justly carried out and that the swineherd did not get one kiss too many or one too few—that they didn’t hear or see the emperor, who was standing on tiptoe outside the circle.
“What’s going on here?” he shouted. When he saw the kissing he took off one of his slippers and started hitting the ladies in waiting on the tops of their heads, just as the swineherd was getting his eighty-sixth kiss.
“Heraus! Get out!” he screamed, for he was really angry; and both the swineherd and the princess were thrown out of his empire.
There they stood: the princess was crying, the swineherd was grumbling, and the rain was streaming down.
“Oh, poor me!” wailed the princess. “If only I had married the prince. Oh, I am so unhappy!”
The swineherd stepped behind a tree, rubbed all the black and brown shoe polish off his face, and put on his splendid royal robes. He looked so impressive that the princess curtsied when she saw him.
“I have come to despise you,” said the prince. “You did not want an honest prince. You did not appreciate the rose or the nightingale, but you could kiss a swineherd for the sake of a toy. Farewell!”
The prince entered his own kingdom and locked the door behind him; and there the princess could stand and sing:
“Ach, du lieber Augustin,
Alles ist weg, weg, weg.”
For, indeed, everything was “all gone”!
23
The Buckwheat
It happens often after a thunderstorm that the buckwheat fields appear all black, as if they had been burned. If you ask the farmer, he will say that the buckwheat has been singed by lightning, but he doesn’t know why. Let me tell you what I heard from a sparrow, who had the story from an old willow tree. This willow tree grew right next to a buckwheat field, and it’s still there if you want to see it. It’s a large, dignified tree; but it’s ancient and has a knobby bark. It’s split down the middle and in the crevice grass and blackberries grow. The trunk leans a little to one side and the branches hang down toward the earth like long green hair.
All around it are fields of grain: rye, barley, and oats. How lovely oats are! The kernels, when they are ripe, look like so many canary birds sitting on a branch. It stands so gloriously as harvest time approaches, for the heavier the oats become, the more humbly they bend their heads toward the ground.
But on the field nearest the old willow tree grew buckwheat; and buckwheat do not bow their heads but hold them high. They always stand stiff and proud.
“We are as fruitful as any of the others,” said the buckwheat. “And we are more beautiful, besides. Our flowers are as lovely as the apple tree’s. It is a delight to look at us. You, old willow tree, do you know of anything more beautiful than we are?”
The old willow tree nodded its head vigorously, as if it were saying, “Yes, I certainly do!”
The buckwheat were so indignant that they stood even straighter. “You stupid tree! You are so old that you have grass growing in your stomach.”
The weather turned nasty. A storm was brewing and all the flowers of the fields folded their leaves and bent their delicate heads, while the wind tore past them; but the buckwheat proudly tossed their heads.
“Bend your heads as we do,” called the flowers.
“I don’t need to,” replied the buckwheat.
“Bend, bend,” screamed the other grains. “In a minute the storm’s angel, with its great wings that stretch from the clouds down to the earth, will be here! And he will cut you in two if you do not ask him to be merciful!”
“I will not bow and bend,” shouted the buckwheat.
“Close your flowers and fold your leaves,” warned the old willow tree. “And do not look at the bolts of lightning that appear when the clouds burst; even man does not dare do that, for through the lightning you can see right into God’s heaven and that sight makes men blind. Think what would happen to us if we, who are so much less than man—we who are merely humble plants—should dare to do such a thing.”
“Much less?” scowled the buckwheat “Now I am going to look right into God’s heaven!” And it did, confidently and proudly, while the whole sky was aflame with lightning.
When the bad weather was over the grain and the flowers, refreshed by the rain, raised their heads in the still, clear air; but the buckwheat had been singed black; they were dead and useless, not fit for the reaper but only for the plow.
The old willow tree swayed her branches gently in the breeze. Drops of water fell from its leaves, and the little sparrows asked, “Why are you crying? The weather is so glorious now. See how the sun shines and the clouds sail by above us. Can’t you smell the sweet fragrance of the flowers and the bushes? Why are you weeping, old willow tree?”
The old tree told the sparrow about the buckwheat’s pride, presumption, and its punishment—for punishment always follows presumption.
Now I have told you the story, as the sparrow told it to me, one evening when I asked him to tell me a fairy tale.
24
The Angel
“When a good child dies, an angel comes down from heaven and takes the dead child in his arms; then the angel spreads out his wings and flies with the child to visit all the places that the little one has loved. They pick a whole armful of flowers and bring them to God; in heaven, these flowers will bloom even more beautifully than they have on earth. God presses all the flowers to His heart; but the one that is dearest to Him, He gives a kiss, and then that flower can sing and join in the hosanna.”
This was what one of God’s angels was telling to a dead child whom he was carrying up to heaven. The child heard it as though in a dream, while the angel flew with him above all the places where he had played and been happy. At last they came to a garden filled with the most beautiful flowers.
“Which ones shall we take along and plant up in heaven?” asked the angel.
There was a tall rosebush whose stem some evil hand had broken, so that all the branches, with their half-open buds that had already begun to wither, lay limp all around it.
“Oh, the poor bush!” cried the child. “Take it along that it may flower again up with God.”
The angel kissed the child for the choice he had made and took the rosebush. They picked other flowers. Some were the most elegant in the garden; but they took some wild pansies and violets too.
“Now we have enough flowers,” said the child, and the angel nodded. Now they could fly up to God, but the angel tarried.
Night came, and the town grew still. The angel flew with the child above the narrow streets where the
poor lived. The day before had been moving day, and the lanes were filled with old straw, broken pots and plates, rags and garbage. It was a sorry sight.
The angel pointed to a broken earthenware pot; near it lay a dried-out wild flower, to whose roots a clump of soil still clung. It had been thrown out in the street together with the other trash.
“That flower we shall take along,” said the angel. “And I shall tell you its story while we fly.” The angel picked up the dead wild flower and they flew on their way.
“Down in that narrow street,” the angel began, “there lived in a cellar a little poor boy who had been ill from birth and had spent his life in bed. When he was ‘well,’ he would walk around the room, leaning on two crutches. In the middle of the summer, when the sun was so high in the sky that its rays fell into the little courtyard, a chair would be placed by the door of the cellar, and there the boy would enjoy the warm sunshine. The child had to hold up his hands in front of his face, for his eyes were used to the twilight of the cellar. His hands were white and thin, and beneath the transparent skin one could see the blood pulsing through his veins. After such a day his parents would say: ‘Today he has been outside.’
“He knew about the greenness of the forest in spring because the neighbor’s children would bring him the first green branch of the beech tree. The sick boy would hold it over his head and pretend that he was out in the woods, where the sun shone and the birds sang. One day one of the children brought him a bouquet of wild flowers. Among them was one flower that still had roots. This was planted in an earthenware pot and placed next to the bed. It grew. Each year it had new shoots and new flowers unfolded. The wild flower became the sick child’s garden: his treasure on this earth. He watered it and took care of it, making sure that it always stood where the bit of light that came through the tiny cellar window would fall upon it. The flower became part of his world, not only when he was awake but when he dreamed as well. It bloomed for him alone: to give pleasure to his eyes and send sweet fragrance for him to enjoy. When God called him, the boy turned in death toward the flower.