The sun had not risen yet. The ship passed the castle silently, and soon they were out on the open sea. A light breeze blew and the sails filled out. The young man sat down, leaned up against the mast and, breathing the fresh air, soon fell asleep, although this was hardly advisable.
Only three days later, the ship lay off the shore of the island of Falster. “Do you know anyone around here who might put me up and not charge too much?” the student asked the captain.
“I think you might do best with the ferryman’s wife at Borrehuset,” he said, and then added with a grin, “If you want to speak politely, then she is called Mother Soren Sorensen Miller, but be careful and don’t speak too refined, for she has no use for that. Her goodman is in jail for some misdeed or another, so she rows the ferry herself. She has hands fit for it.”
The student took his knapsack and walked to the ferryman’s house. The door was not locked and he entered. The main room had a cobblestone floor. A bench covered with skins, which could be used as a bed at night, was the most imposing piece of furniture in it. A white hen who had chicks was tied to the leg of the bench. She had upset her trough and the water was running all over the floor. In a small room next to the large one, there was a cradle with a baby in it; otherwise the place was empty. The young man walked outside again. The ferryboat was coming. There was only one person in it, the one who was rowing. It was hard to see whether it was a man or a woman, for the rower wore a greatcoat and a hat that looked like an oversized bonnet and hid the face. Finally the boat reached the little wooden pier.
A woman entered the room. She carried herself well. Straightening her shoulders, with proud dark eyes, she looked at the young man. She was Mother Soren, the ferryman’s wife. The crows, rooks, and jackdaws would have screamed a different name, and that one we would have recognized.
She was sullen and did not like to talk, but enough of a conversation took place so that they agreed upon the price of room and board, and that the young student might stay as long as was necessary to avoid the plague in Copenhagen.
From the nearby town respectable citizens came to the ferryman’s house to drink a glass of beer. Frands Knife-maker and Sivert “Bag Peeper”—that was the nickname for the local customs official—liked to sit and talk to the student, for they thought him a bright young lad who knew about all the things he was supposed to. He could read both Latin and Greek, and had studied other scholarly matters.
“The less you know, the happier you are,” said Mother Soren.
“You have had a hard life,” said Holberg one morning while he stood watching Mother Soren washing clothes. Earlier the same morning he had seen her chopping wood like a man.
“That is my business, not yours,” she answered, but her tone did not discourage him from asking if she had always had to work so hard, even when she was a child.
“Maybe you can read it in my hands,” she replied, and held out two small hands, with bitten nails, that in spite of their size appeared strong. “You have learned to read, haven’t you?”
At Christmas the weather turned very cold, and it began to snow. The wind was so sharp that it felt like acid when it whipped your face. But it did not seem to bother Mother Soren. She put on her greatcoat and her strange hat and rowed her customers across the Sound.
There were only a few hours of daylight, and by early afternoon it was dark in the house. Mother Soren put peat and wood in the fireplace and sat down beside it to darn stockings. That evening she spoke more than was her habit, and told Holberg something about her husband.
“He killed a man by accident, a captain from Dragor. Now he is in irons and must serve a term of three years on Holmen. He was only an ordinary seaman, so the law took its course.”
“The law is the same for everyone,” replied the student.
“Do you really believe that?” Mother Soren said, staring at the fire for a long time. Then she continued: “Have you ever heard of Kai Lykke? He tore down one of the churches on his estate, and when the local minister, Herr Mads, rumbled about it from the pulpit, Squire Lykke had him put in irons and ordered a court convened with himself as judge. It was said that Herr Mads’s throat had offended him, and so it was cut in two.… That was not an accident, and yet Kai Lykke remained a free man and was respected.”
“In his time, he had the right to do what he did,” argued Holberg. “Times have changed; today he could not act like that.”
“Save your theories for fools who can be convinced by them.” Mother Soren rose and went into the little room. She took the baby—that “brat” as she called it—in her arms and then put it back into the cradle. She made up the student’s bed on the bench and gave him the skin covering, since he suffered more from the cold than she, in spite of his having been born in Norway.
New Year’s morning the sky was cloudless and the sun shone. The frost had been severe the night before, and the snow had such a strong crust that one could walk on it without sinking down into it. The bells of the church rang in the nearby town, and Ludvig Holberg put on his woolen cloak and went to services.
Above the house flew so many screaming rooks, crows, and jackdaws that one could hardly hear the church bells. Mother Soren had come outside with her copper kettle, to fill it with snow, which she would melt for drinking water. She stopped to look up pensively at the swarm of birds.
Both entering and leaving the town, Holberg passed the cottage at the gate of the “Bag Peeper,” and on his way home he was invited in to have a cup of warm beer with molasses and ginger in it. The conversation turned to Mother Soren. The customs official knew little about her and doubted that anyone else knew more: she was not from Falster, of that he was certain. She had had a bit of money, but that was gone long ago. Her husband was an ordinary seaman with a bad temper and he had killed a captain from Dragor in a fight. “He beats his old woman too, but she defends him,” he added.
“I wouldn’t stand for that!” said Sivert’s wife, and glared at her husband. “But then I come from a better class; my father was a royal stocking knitter.”
“And that is why you are married to a royal official,” said the student, and bowed toward her and the “Bag Peeper.” Sivert’s work was to examine the carts and wagons of the peasants as they entered the town and collect taxes on the wares to be sold in the market.
On Twelfth Night, Mother Soren made the “Holy Kings’ Light”; that is, she placed three candles that she had dipped herself next to each other and lit them.
“One candle for each man,” said Holberg, smiling.
“What do you mean?” Mother Soren demanded sternly.
“One for each of the wise men who came from the east,” Holberg explained, surprised at her anger.
“Oh, them.” Mother Soren looked thoughtfully at the candles and again was silent. Yes, that evening Ludvig Holberg learned more about her than he had during all his stay.
“You love the man you live with and yet people tell me that he does not treat you well,” he said.
“That is my own business,” she replied. “Those beatings I get now would have done me good when I was a child. I suppose they come now because of my sins. How my husband beats me everybody knows, but the good that man has done me only I know. When I lay sick on the heath, and no one cared what happened to me, except maybe the jackdaws and the crows that would have liked to pick my eyes out, he found me. He carried me in his arms to his ship, and he received nothing but hard words from the captain and rest of the crew for the deed. I was not created for sickness, so I got well. Each of us has his own peculiarities and Soren has his; one should not judge a horse by the harness it wears. I have lived better with him than with the ‘noblest man in the kingdom,’ as Gyldenløve was called. For I have been married to the Governor of Norway, the king’s half brother, and later to Palle Dyre. One was as bad as the other, and I probably am no better than they. That was a long talk, now you know my story.” Mother Soren rose and walked into the other room.
She was Marie Grub
be, and that was the story of her strange tumble through life—for journey it could hardly be called. She did not live to see many more Twelfth Nights. Holberg wrote in his diary that she died in June 1716. But he did not add—for he did not know it—that when Mother Soren lay dead in Borrehuset a great flock of birds gathered above the house. They did not scream as rooks, jackdaws, and crows usually do but flew about silently, as if they knew that stillness was the proper behavior during a funeral.
As soon as she was laid in her grave the birds disappeared. They had flown to Jutland to the old castle. There an ungodly amount of crows, jackdaws, and rooks were seen. They screamed at each other as though they had great news to tell. Maybe they told how the peasant’s son who had stolen eggs and little downy chicks now wore iron fetters, by order of the king; and that the noblewoman who had been mistress of the castle and had become the wife of a ferryman at Grønsund, now was dead. “Caw! Caw!”
Their children—new rooks, crows, and jackdaws—screeched when the old castle was torn down: “Caw! Caw!”
“And now, although there is nothing left to scream about, they still open their mouths to make their hoarse cry,” said the schoolteacher. “No one today bears the name Grubbe. The castle is gone, and where it stood, Hen-Grethe’s henhouse now stands. She is happy with her house. If she had not become mistress of the hens and ducks she would have had to live in the poorhouse.”
The doves cooed above Hen-Grethe, the turkeys gobbled around her, and the ducks said: “Quack!”
“Nobody knows where she came from,” a duck remarked. “She has no family. It is a blessing for her that she is allowed to live among us. She doesn’t know which drake is her father or which duck is her mother.”
But parents she did have, even though she did not know who they were. The schoolteacher, in spite of all the notes he had in the table drawer, didn’t know who Hen-Grethe’s parents were either. But one of the old crows knew, and she told. She had heard about Hen-Grethe’s mother and grandmother from her own mother and grandmother. We know Hen-Grethe’s grandmother, too: from the time she was a small child riding proudly across the drawbridge, as though all the world and all its birds’ nests belonged to her. We saw her on the heath, and near the sand dunes, and finally at Borrehuset.
Her grandchild, the last of the noble family, had come home to the spot where the ancestral castle once stood. The wild birds cried above her, but she sat inside among the tame fowl, whom she knew and who knew her. Hen-Grethe had nothing more to wish for; she was old enough for death and she was happy to die.
“Grave! Grave!” screamed the crows.
Hen-Grethe was properly buried, although none knows where her grave is, except the old crow, if she is still alive.
Now we know the story of the old castle, the noble family, and the ancestors of Hen-Grethe.
138
The Adventures of a Thistle
Around the manor house was a lovely garden with very rare and beautiful plants and trees. Guests always expressed their delight and wonder when they saw it. On Sundays, people from the district, and even from the towns, asked for permission to look at the garden, and sometimes classes of school children came with their teachers.
Outside the garden, right up next to the fence, grew a thistle. It was so big, spreading its branches out in all directions, that it could be called a bush. No one noticed it except the donkey who drew the milk wagon. He would stretch his neck toward the thistle and say, “You are so beautiful that I could eat you up.” But he couldn’t, for the rope with which he was tethered wasn’t long enough for him to reach it.
The manor house was filled with guests: members of the most distinguished families in Copenhagen were there. Many of the young girls were beautiful, and among them was an heiress from Scotland. In her homeland she belonged to the very best society, and she was wealthy. “A bride worth winning,” whispered many of the young men and their mothers, too.
The young people were meandering on the lawns. Some of them were playing croquet. They walked among the flower beds, and one of the girls picked a flower and gave it to a young man to wear in his buttonhole. And all the other girls did the same. But the Scottish girl went about for a very long time without being able to decide which flower to choose. None seemed to satisfy her. Then she noticed the thistle bush with its bright reddish-blue flowers, growing on the other side of the fence. She smiled and asked her host’s son if he would pluck one of them for her. “It is the national flower of Scotland,” she explained. “It is portrayed in our coat of arms. Get one of them for me, please.”
The young man climbed over the fence and plucked the most beautiful of the thistle’s flowers; and was pricked as properly as though he had picked a rose.
The girl put the flower in his buttonhole, and the young man felt deeply honored. The other young men envied him, and every one of them would gladly have exchanged his lovely garden flower for the thistle given by the Scottish girl. But if the son of the owner of the manor was pleased, how do you think the thistle felt? It was as if dew had fallen upon it in the middle of the day.
“I am more than I thought I was,” she mumbled to herself. “I undoubtedly belong on the other side of the fence: inside the garden, not outside it. It is strange, the world we live in, and not everything gets the position it deserves. Now, at least, one of my flowers is on the other side of the fence, and that in a buttonhole.”
Every new bud that came and unfolded itself into a flower was told the story, for there is no reason to keep good news a secret. Soon the thistle bush heard—not from the chatter of birds or the voices of human beings, but from the air, which knows all secrets and can penetrate locked doors—that the young man who had been given the thistle flower had also gained the hand of the young Scottish girl. It was a good match.
“I have joined them together,” the thistle bush said. She was thinking of the flower that she had supplied for the buttonhole. Now there was still another story to tell her offspring. “I shall probably be planted inside the garden,” she thought. “Maybe I’ll be put in a flowerpot; you get squeezed a little, but it is glorious.” And the thistle bush imagined it all so vividly that soon she was convinced that this was her future. “I know it, I shall be planted in a flowerpot!”
She promised every new flower that it would be potted, or be put in a buttonhole, which was an even greater honor. But none of them ever was placed in either. The thistle drank the air and the sunshine during the day and licked the dew at night. She was visited by bees in search of honey for their dowries, and they took the honey from the flowers and left the flowers themselves behind. “Robbers!” screamed the thistle bush. “I wish I could prick every one of you.” But it couldn’t.
Old flowers hung their heads, withered, and died; but new ones came, and every one was greeted with the same joy and expectation by the bush. “You have come just at the right moment,” she would say to each one. “Any minute now we are moving into the garden.”
There were a couple of innocent daisies and a plantain who admired the thistle bush greatly; they heard every word she had said and believed them all.
The old donkey who pulled the milk wagon was standing in the ditch. He glanced at the flowering thistle, but his rope was too short, he could not reach it.
The thistle bush gave so much thought to the thistle from Scotland, whom she felt she must be related to, that at last she believed that she, too, had come from that country; and that her parents were probably the thistles that had grown in the Scottish coat of arms. This was a daring assumption, but a great thistle is capable of great thoughts.
“Sometimes one is descended from so great a family that one hardly dares to think about it,” said a nettle that grew nearby. She had once heard that, in olden times, cloth had been woven from nettles, and she had never forgotten it.
Summer passed and fall passed, the leaves fell from the trees, and the few flowers that were left had even brighter colors, but less fragrance. The gardener’s apprentice sang w
hile he worked in the garden:
“Uphill and downhill,
All is God’s will.”
The young spruce trees down in the forest began to get “Christmas-yearning,” although it was only the end of October and there was long to wait.
“Here I stand. No one thinks about me, and yet I was the matchmaker,” said the thistle. “First they got engaged and then they were married a week ago. And I am going nowhere because I can’t move.”
A few weeks went by. The thistle now had only one last flower. It grew on the stem near the root and was particularly large and beautiful. The cold winds blew on it and its color and loveliness faded; finally its pod stood naked: it looked like a silver sunflower.
The young couple were out walking in the garden. They took the path along the fence, and the young woman was looking beyond it.
“The thistle is still there!” she exclaimed. “But now it has no more flowers.”
“Yes, it does,” her husband laughed. “There is the ghost of one.” And he pointed at the silver-colored pod, which had become as beautiful as a flower.
“How lovely it is!” she said. “It should be carved in the frame around our portrait.”
Again the young man had to climb the fence and pick a flower from the thistle bush. It pricked him—that was revenge for calling its last flower a ghost. The silver pod was brought into the garden, and from there into the hall of the manor house, where it was placed beside the painting of the young couple. In the bridegroom’s buttonhole a thistle flower had been painted. Everyone talked about the flower in the buttonhole and the silver pod whose image was to be carved into the frame. And the air carried the conversation far and wide.
“What adventures I have had!” cried the thistle bush. “My firstborn was put in a buttonhole and my last is going to be in a frame. I wonder what is going to happen to me?”
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories Page 109