There was a humming noise. Where did it come from? Was it the wind that was playing with the broken window? Or was it the shadow on the floor that was talking?
It was she! Madame Toothache herself! In all her horrible, monstrous splendor. Satania infernalis! May God free us and save us from her visit!
“This is a nice place to be,” she hummed. “I think the house is built on a filled-in swamp. Here the poisonous mosquitoes have buzzed. They are gone, but I have their sting, and I sharpen it on human teeth. Look how nice and white they shine in the mouth of the fellow in the bed. They have tasted sour and sweet, hot and cold, nutshells and plum pits! I will rock them loose, fertilize them with an icy wind; they will feel a draft around their roots.”
What a horrible harangue! What a horrible hag!
“So you are a poet!” she squeaked. “I shall help you to compose an ‘Ode to Pain.’ You will be so versed in shooting and sharp pain, I shall make your jaded nerves jingle!”
It felt as if a hot iron awl had been driven through my cheekbone.
“You have a good set of teeth!” she continued. “It is an organ to play upon—a mouth organ! We’ll have a concert with drums, flutes, trumpets. The wisdom teeth can play the bassoons. For a great poet, great music!”
Hideously did she play, and hideous did she look, although all I saw was her hand. It was ice-cold and she held it in front of my face: her shadowy gray hand. She had long awl-like fingers. The thumb and the index finger were pinchers; the middle finger was a pointed needle; the ring finger, a drill; and the little finger stung.
“I shall teach you to write verses,” she screamed. “For a great poet a great toothache, to a little poet a little toothache.”
“Oh, let me be a little poet,” I begged. “Oh, let me just be! I am no poet! I only have attacks of poetry, as I have attacks of toothaches. Let me be! Leave me alone!”
“Do you admit that I am greater than poetry, mathematics, philosophy, and all the rest of the music?” she asked. “Do you confess that I am stronger and more penetrating than all other feeling that has been painted on canvas or carved in marble? I am older than all the others. I was born right outside the gates of paradise, where the wet winds blow and the toadstools grow. I made Eve put an extra fig leaf on; and Adam—oh, believe me, that was some toothache, the first one in the world!”
“I agree to anything, to everything!” I moaned. “Just leave!”
“Will you agree to give up trying to become a poet? Never again to write a verse down on a piece of paper or a blackboard or anything else? If you promise, I shall let you go, but if you break your promise I shall come back!”
“I swear I won’t!” I screamed. “Let me never sense your presence again!”
“Feel me you won’t, but see me you shall. In a more substantial form than I have now. In the shape that is more pleasing to you than the one I now possess. You shall see me as Aunt Mille and I shall say to you: ‘You are a dear boy and a great poet, the greatest we have!’ But if you believe that and start writing verses, then I shall compose music to them and play them on your mouth organ. You sweet child! Remember me when you look at Auntie.”
Then she disappeared, giving me a sharp jab with the awl before she left. The pain disappeared and I felt as though I were gliding through still waters, where the white lotus flower bloomed with its great green leaves. I sank beneath the water, into the great stillness where peace reigns.
“Die, melt like the snow,” the waters sang around me. “Sail like the cloud and disappear.” Through the waters I saw the victorious banners on which the names of the immortal were inscribed; the banners were made of mayfly wings.
I slept deeply and my sleep was dreamless. I did not hear the singing wind, or the banging of the gates, or the lodger above me doing his morning exercises. Oh, bliss!
A gust of wind shook the house, and the door next to Auntie’s bed rattled. She woke, got dressed, and came into my room. I was sleeping like “one of God’s little angels,” she declared, and she could not bear to wake me.
A little later I opened my eyes. I had forgotten that Auntie had spent the night there. When I saw her I remembered my toothache: dream and reality walked hand in hand.
“Did you write anything last night after I left?” asked Auntie. “I wish you had! You are my poet, and a great poet you will become.”
It seemed to me that she smiled curiously while she spoke. I did not know whether it was sweet old Aunt Mille who sat on the chair across from me or the horror of my dream, to whom I had made a promise.
“Have you written something, a verse, my sweet boy?”
“No! No!” I screamed. “Are you Aunt Mille?”
“Who else should I be?” she answered; and she was Aunt Mille. She kissed me, got into a cab, and drove home. I wrote down what is written here, but it is not in verse, and it will never be published.
Here the manuscript ended. It had been longer but my friend, the grocer’s apprentice, could not find the missing pages. They had disappeared out in the world, not as literature, but as wrapping for pickled herring, butter, and green soap. The paper had done its duty.
The brewer is dead. Auntie is dead. The student is dead—the spark of whose brain ended in the paper barrel. The story is over: the story of Auntie Toothache.
Translator’s Note
In an age more economical than our own, paperbacks were published first; and then, if they were successful, a bound volume appeared. Throughout Andersen’s life his fairy tales and stories were printed in almost leaflet-sized booklets, without binding or illustrations—containing anywhere from one to more than a dozen tales—before they were collected and printed in book form. It is to these booklets that Andersen refers in his notes.
The notes were written for the Danish editions of Andersen’s works. Many of his stories appeared in Germany, some in England, and a few in the United States, before they were published in his native land. Although he always wrote his tales in Danish, he was able to supervise the German translations personally.
The present translation follows the text and order of the Danish edition of 1874, which Andersen himself edited; except for two insignificant changes: an ABC Book and a poem titled Ask Mother Amager—a joke, the humor of which depends on the reader knowing Amager, which is a district of Copenhagen—for obvious reasons, have been replaced by two brief sketches. The Talisman and It Is You the Fable Is About, which Andersen wrote for a Danish newspaper; thus the magic number of 156 fairy tales and stories has been kept.
Preface, 1837: for the Older Readers
Nothing that I have written has been evaluated so differently as Fairy Tales, told for children. A few people, whose judgment I prize, have said that these fairy tales are the most valuable of all my work; while others have remarked that they are of no importance whatever and advised me not to write any more of them. This diversity of opinion, and the silence with which the professional critics greeted these tales, weakened my desire to write again in this literary form. Thus a year has passed before the third booklet follows the second and the first.
While I was engaged in writing something larger and completely different, the idea and the plot of THE LITTLE MERMAID intruded and would not go away, so I had to write this fairy tale.
I feared that if I published it alone it would seem a little too presumptuous, so I decided to place it among a group of tales that I had already begun. The others in this booklet are more children’s stories than this one, whose deeper meaning only an adult can understand; but I believe that a child will enjoy it for the story’s sake alone: that the plot, in itself, is exciting enough to absorb a child’s attention.
The shorter tale, THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES, is a Spanish story. For the whole amusing idea we must thank Prince Don Juan Manuel, who was born in 1277 and died in 1347.
While talking about these two tales, I will take the opportunity of saying a few words about my earlier stories.
In my childhood I loved to listen to
fairy tales and stories. Many of them are still very alive in my memory. Certain of them seem to me to be Danish in origin for I have never heard them anywhere else. These I have told in my own way: where I thought it fitting, I have changed them and let imagination freshen the colors in the picture that had begun to fade. There are four such stories in this volume: THE TINDERBOX, LITTLE CLAUS AND BIG CLAUS, THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA; and THE TRAVELING COMPANION. In Anacreon’s poem, as most people know, the fable THE NAUGHTY BOY is to be found.
Three of the stories are entirely my own; LITTLE IDA’S FLOWERS, INCHELINA, THE LITTLE MERMAID.
With the third booklet, the tales become a little volume; whether this will be the only one depends upon the impression this collection makes on the public.
In a little land like ours, the poet is always poor; honor, therefore, is the golden bird he tries to grasp. Time will tell whether I can catch it by telling fairy tales.
Copenhagen, March 1837 H. C. Andersen
Notes for My
Fairy Tales and Stories
It has been said to me that a few remarks as to how my fairy tales came into being, and what happened to them once they did, might be of interest to some of my readers; therefore I am writing these notes.
At Christmastime 1829, I had printed a small volume of poetry, in which was included a fairy tale: THE SPECTER. This story, which I had heard as a child, I retold in a style resembling that of Musäus. It was not a success and I rewrote it several years later, in a different manner, and called it THE TRAVELING COMPANION. In 1831, during a journey to Hartzen, the true spirit of the fairy tale came to me for the first time; I found it in the story about the old king who believed that he had never heard a lie and therefore offered his daughter and half his kingdom to anyone who could tell him one.
My first booklet, Fairy Tales, told for children, was published in 1835. It was 61 pages long and contained:
THE TINDERBOX
LITTLE CLAUS AND BIG CLAUS
THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA
LITTLE IDA’S FLOWERS
I wanted the style to be such that the reader felt the presence of the storyteller; therefore the spoken language had to be used. I wrote the stories for children, but older people ought to find them worth listening to. The first three of the tales I had heard as a child, either in the spinning room or during the harvesting of the hops.
LITTLE IDA’S FLOWERS came to me during a visit to the poet Thiele, while I was telling his little daughter Ida about the flowers in the botanical gardens; and some of the child’s remarks are recorded in the story.
The second booklet appeared in 1836 and contained:
INCHELINA
THE NAUGHTY BOY
THE TRAVELING COMPANION
The year after followed a third which included:
THE LITTLE MERMAID
THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES
The three booklets were made into a volume and published in book form, with a title page and a table of contents; and I wrote a little introduction for it, in which I complained that my tales had met with indifference, which was true. Of the nine stories, only LITTLE IDA’S FLOWERS, INCHELINA, and THE LITTLE MERMAID are original fairy tales, not folk tales which I have retold, THE LITTLE MERMAID did receive some applause, which encouraged me to try to write more tales of my own invention.
THE MAGIC GALOSHES was published in 1838; the poet Hostrup borrowed my galoshes in his marvelous student comedy,
THE NEIGHBORS. The same year at Chistmastime appeared a booklet containing:
THE DAISY
THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER
These are both original, whereas the third fairy tale, THE WILD SWANS, is a Danish folk tale retold.
The second booklet included:
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
THE FLYING TRUNK
THE STORKS
The first of these is an old tale that I had heard as a child and that had pleased me very much. I wanted, however, to make it longer; I felt the winds must have more to tell; and the garden should be more fully described, and this I attempted to do.
The theme for THE FLYING TRUNK is from The Arabian Nights. THE STORKS is based on the common superstitions about that bird and on those nursery rhymes that children know about storks.
In the years 1840 and ’41, after a journey to Greece and Constantinople, I published a book called A Poet’s Bazaar. In the German edition of my collected Fairy Tales, three stories from this book were included: THE BRONZE PIG, THE PACT OF FRIENDSHIP, and A ROSE FROM HOMER’S GRAVE. I have now included them in the Danish collection, in the order that they appeared in the German.
The third booklet with the title Fairy Tales, told for children was published in 1842; it contained:
THE SANDMAN
THE ROSE ELF
THE SWINEHERD
THE BUCKWHEAT
In THE SANDMAN, only the name and the idea of there being a creature who appears and makes children sleepy have been borrowed. The plot of THE ROSE ELF comes from an Italian folk song, THE SWINEHERD has certain traits in common with an old Danish folk tale, but the version I heard, as a child, would be quite unprintable. This fairy tale has been dramatized in Germany. It was called Die Prinzessin von Marzipan und der Schweinehirt von Zuckerland and was performed in Berlin.
THE BUCKWHEAT stems from the common superstition that lightning will scorch it black.
This was the final booklet in the second volume of fairy tales and was dedicated to Johanne Louise Heiberg: “It was said that fairies only exist in the fairy tale; but then you came, and everyone believes what he can see, that one exists also in reality.”
This book was dedicated to Mrs. Heiberg not only because she was a great artist and actress but also because she was one of the few persons who had liked and appreciated my fairy tales when they first appeared. Her kind words and H. C. Oersted’s often repeated fondness for the humorous aspects of my fairy tales were my first real encouragement.
In the year 1842 the fairy tale MOTHER ELDERBERRY was published in a magazine. The “seed” for that story comes from a legend, retold by Thiele: “In the elderberry tree lives a creature called the ‘elderberry woman’ or ‘Mother Elderberry.’ She will revenge any harm done to the tree, and it has been told that a man who cut down an elderberry tree which grew in one of the little gardens of ‘the new cottages’ had died shortly after he did the deed.” In my fairy tale, Mother Elderberry has become a Danish dryad: memory herself. Later the story was dramatized.
That same year, in Gerson’s and Kaalund’s monthly magazine, the fairy tale THE BELL was published. This, like nearly all of my later fairy tales and stories, was wholly original. They lay in my mind like seeds and only needed a gentle touch—the kiss of a sunbeam or drop of malice—to flower.
How much could be accomplished through the fairy tale became clearer and clearer to me as I learned through the years of my own power and its limitation.
My fairy tales won me readers not alone among the children but among grownups as well. When in 1845 a new booklet was published, it was given the shorter title of New Fairy Tales. This little booklet contained:
THE ANGEL
THE NIGHTINGALE
THE SWEETHEARTS
THE UGLY DUCKLING
This was dedicated to the poet Carl Bagger “as a humble thank you for all those inspiring thoughts and wealth of feeling which his poetry has given me.”
The first half of THE UGLY DUCKLING was written at Gisselfeldt but it was not completed until six months later. The other three works were written one after another, as if from the same inspiration. With the publication of this booklet, my fairy tales began to receive widespread recognition.
In the summer of 1846, I stayed at Nysø Castle while Thorvaldsen was there. He had been very amused by THE SWEETHEARTS and THE UGLY DUCKLING, and said to me: “Now write us a new and funny fairy tale! Why, you can write about anything, even a darning needle.” I went straight up to my room and wrote THE DARNING NEEDLE. The second booklet c
ontained:
THE PINE TREE
THE SNOW QUEEN
These were dedicated to the poet Professor Frederik Hoegh-Guldberg. The story of the pine tree came to me in the Royal Theater during a performance of Mozart’s Don Juan, and I wrote it down the same night. The first chapter of THE SNOW QUEEN was written in Maxen near Dresden in Germany, the rest of the fairy tale was written in Denmark.
The third booklet was published as a spring greeting to the poet Henrik Hertz, “in gratitude for all that his works, his deeply poetic soul, and rich wit have given us.” It contained:
THE HELL OF THE ELVES
THE RED SHOES
THE JUMPING COMPETITION
THE SHEPHERDESS AND THE CHIMNEY SWEEP
HOLGER THE DANE
In The Fairy Tale of My Life, I have told how I received for my confirmation my first pair of boots; and how they squeaked as I walked up the aisle of the church; this pleased me no end, for I felt that now the whole congregation must know that my boots were new. But at the same time my conscience bothered me terribly, for I was aware that I was thinking as much about my new boots as I was about Our Lord. It was this recollection that inspired the fairy tale THE RED SHOES. This story has been particularly popular in the United States and in Holland.
THE JUMPING COMPETITION was told on the spur of the moment to some children who demanded a story.
HOLGER THE DANE is based on a Danish legend; it is very similar to a legend told about Frederick Barbarossa, who is supposed to be sitting inside the Kyffhäuser Mountain.
The first booklet that was included in the second volume of my fairy tales was published in 1847 and dedicated to J. L. Heiberg’s mother, “the witty, brilliant and intelligent Mrs. Gyllembourg.” It included:
THE OLD STREET LAMP
THE NEIGHBORS
THE DARNING NEEDLE
LITTLE TUCK
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories Page 120