The old woman gave the soldier a coin, and then she and Karen went into the church.
And all the people there looked at Karen’s red shoes, and all the pictures looked at them, and when Karen knelt at the altar and put the gold chalice to her lips, she thought only about the red shoes, and it was as if they were swimming in the chalice in front of her. She forgot to sing the hymns, and she forgot to say the Lord’s Prayer.
Then all the people left the church, and the old woman climbed into her coach. Karen lifted her foot to follow behind her, but the old soldier, who was standing nearby, said, “What lovely dancing shoes!” And Karen couldn’t help herself; she had to do a few dance steps, and once she started her legs kept dancing. It was as if the shoes had power over them. She danced around the corner of the church. She couldn’t stop. The coachman had to run after her and grab her, and he lifted her into the coach, but her feet kept on dancing so that she kicked the good old woman horribly. Finally they got the shoes off, and her legs stopped moving.
At home the shoes were put away in a cupboard, but Karen couldn’t help looking at them.
Then one day the old woman became ill. They said she wouldn’t live long. She needed to be cared for and watched over, and no one was better suited to do this than Karen, but in town there was a great ball and Karen had been invited. She looked at the old woman, who couldn’t live anyway, and she looked at the red shoes and there wasn’t any harm in that. She put on the red shoes, and she certainly could do that too—but then she went to the dance and started dancing.
But when she wanted to go right, the shoes danced to the left, and when she wanted to dance up the floor, the shoes danced down—down the stairs and through the streets and out the gates of the town. Dance she did and dance she must, way out into the dark woods.
There was something shining up in the trees, and she thought it was the moon, because it was a face. But it was the old soldier with the red beard. He nodded and said, “What lovely dancing shoes!”
Then she got scared and wanted to throw the red shoes away, but they stuck fast, and she flung off her stockings but the shoes had grown onto her feet. Dance she did and dance she must, over fields and meadows, in rain and in sunshine, night and day, but it was worst at night.
She danced into the open churchyard, but the dead weren’t dancing there. They had much better things to do than dance. She wanted to sit down on the grave of the poor where the bitter tansy grew, but there was neither rest nor repose for her, and when she danced towards the open church door, she saw an angel there with long white robes and wings that stretched from his shoulders to the ground. His face was stern and serious, and in his hand he held a sword, broad and shining.
“Dance you shall!” he said, “dance in your red shoes until you are pale and cold! Until your skin shrinks together like a skeleton. Dance you shall from door to door and wherever proud and vain children live, you are to knock at the door so that they hear you and fear you! Dance you shall, dance—!”
“Mercy!” cried Karen. But she didn’t hear what the angel answered because the shoes carried her through the gate, out to the fields, over roads and paths, and she had no choice but to dance.
One morning she danced past a door she knew well. There was the sound of hymn singing from inside, and they carried out a coffin decorated with flowers. Then she knew that the old woman was dead, and she believed that now she was deserted by everyone and cursed by God’s angel.
Dance she did and dance she must, dance in the dark night. The shoes carried her away over thorns and stubble that scratched her until she bled. She danced over the heath until she came to a lonely little cottage. She knew that the executioner lived there, and she tapped on the window with her fingers and said:
“Come out! Come out!—I can’t come inside because I’m dancing.”
And the executioner said, “Maybe you don’t know who I am? I chop heads off evil people, and I notice that my axe is vibrating!”
“Don’t chop my head off!” said Karen, “because then I can’t repent my sin. But chop off my feet along with the red shoes.”
And then she confessed all her sins, and the executioner chopped off her feet along with the red shoes, but the shoes with the small feet in them danced away over the meadow into the deep forest.
Then he whittled wooden legs and crutches for her, taught her a hymn that sinners always sing, and she kissed the hand that had guided the axe and went on across the heath.
“Now I have suffered enough for the red shoes,” she said. “I’ll go to the church so everyone can see me.” And she walked quite quickly towards the church door, but when she got there, the red shoes were dancing in front of her, and she became terrified and turned around.
All week long she was sad and cried many heavy tears, but when Sunday came she said, “Surely now I have suffered and struggled enough. I should think that I am just as good as many of those who sit and hold their heads high in church.” And she walked quite bravely, but she didn’t get further than the gate when she saw the red shoes dancing in front of her. She was terrified, turned around, and regretted her sins with all her heart.
Then she went to the parsonage and asked if she could work there. She would be diligent and do everything she could. She didn’t care about the salary, she just wanted a roof over her head and to be with good people. And the minister’s wife felt sorry for her and gave her a job. And she was diligent and thoughtful. She sat still and listened in the evenings when the minister read aloud from the Bible. All of the little children liked her very much, but when they talked about finery and frills and about being as beautiful as a queen, she shook her head.
The following Sunday they all went to church, and they asked her if she wanted to go along, but with tears in her eyes she looked sadly at her crutches, and so the others went to hear God’s word while she went alone into her little room. It was only big enough for a bed and a chair and she sat there with her hymnal, and as she read it with a pious spirit, the wind carried the organ music from the church to her, and she lifted her face with tears in her eyes and said, “Oh, God help me!”
Then the sun shone brightly and right in front of her stood God’s angel in the white robes, the one she had seen that night in the church door. But now he wasn’t holding the sharp sword, but rather a lovely green branch that was full of roses. He touched the ceiling with it, and it rose up so high and where he had touched there was a golden star shining. Then he touched the walls and they extended, and she saw the organ, which was playing. She saw the old pictures with ministers and their wives. The congregation was sitting in the decorated pews, singing in their hymnals. The church itself had come home to the poor girl in the narrow little room, or maybe she had come to the church. She sat in the pews with the others from the parsonage, and when they had finished the hymn and looked up, they nodded and said, “It’s good you came, Karen!”
“It was grace,” she said.
And the organ sounded, and the children’s voices in the choir sang so softly and beautifully! The clear sunshine streamed so warmly through the window into the church pew where Karen sat. Her heart grew so full of sunshine, peace, and joy that it burst. Her soul flew on the sunshine up to God, and there was no one there who asked about the red shoes.
THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL
IT WAS SO AWFULLY cold. It was snowing, and it was beginning to get dark. And it was New Year’s Eve, the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness a poor little girl came walking down the street. She was both barefoot and bareheaded. She had been wearing slippers when she left home, but it hadn’t helped. They were very big slippers, used last by her mother. They were so big that the little girl lost them when she hurried across the street as two coaches rushed swiftly by. She couldn’t find the one slipper, and a boy ran off with the other. He said that he could use it for a cradle when he had children of his own.
The little girl walked along on her naked little feet that were red and blue from cold. In an old a
pron she had a bundle of matches, and she was carrying a bunch in her hand. No one had bought any the whole day, and no one had given her so much as a shilling. She walked, hungry and frozen, and looked so dejected, poor little thing! Flakes of snow fell on her long yellow hair that curled so lovely around her neck, but she wasn’t thinking about her appearance. Lights shone out from all the windows, and there was such a lovely smell of roasted goose in the street. It was New Year’s Eve, after all, and that’s what she was thinking about.
In a corner between two houses, one stuck out into the street a little further than the other, she sat down and huddled up. She had drawn her little legs up under herself, but she was still freezing more and more, and she didn’t dare go home since she hadn’t sold any matches, hadn’t earned a single shilling. Her father would hit her, and it was also cold at home. They had only a roof over their heads, and the wind blew through, even though the biggest cracks were stuffed with straw and rags. Her small hands were almost dead with cold. Oh, a little match could do a lot of good! If she only dared pull one from the bundle, strike it against the wall, and warm her fingers. She pulled one out, “ritsch!” How it sparked! How it burned! It was a warm, clear flame, like a little candle when she held her hand around it. But it was a strange light! It seemed to the little girl that she sat in front of a big iron stove with shiny brass knobs and brass fixtures. The fire burned so blessedly, warmed so well. But what’s this? The little one had already stretched her feet out to warm them too when the flame went out. The stove disappeared. She sat with a little stump of burned out match in her hand.
Another one was struck, it burned and sparkled, and where the light fell on the wall, the wall became transparent like a veil. She could look right into the living room where the table was set with a glossy white tablecloth, fine porcelain, and a splendid steaming roast goose, filled with prunes and apples! And what was even more marvelous: the goose sprang from the platter, waddled across the floor with the fork and knife in its back, right over to the poor girl. Then the match went out, and she could only see the thick cold wall.
It shone all around, and her old grandmother appeared in the glow.
She lit another one. Then she was sitting under the most beautiful Christmas tree. It was even bigger and better decorated than the one she had seen through the glass door of the rich merchant this past Christmas. Thousands of candles burned on the green branches, and colorful pictures, like those that graced store windows, looked down at her. The little girl reached both arms into the air—then the match went out. The many Christmas candles rose higher and higher. She could see that now they were the clear stars. One of them fell and made a long streak of fire in the sky.
“Now someone is dying!” said the little girl because her old grandmother, who was the only person who had been good to her but was now dead, had told her that whenever a star falls, a soul rises to God.
She struck another match against the brick wall. It shone all around, and her old grandmother appeared in the glow, so clear, shining, so gentle and kind.
“Grandma!” shouted the little one. “Oh, take me with you! I know you’ll be gone when the match goes out. Gone like the warm stove, the lovely roast goose, and the great splendid Christmas tree.” And quickly she struck the whole bundle of matches that were left. She wanted to keep grandmother there. The matches shone with such splendor that it was lighter than bright daylight. Grandmother had never been so tall and beautiful before. She lifted the little girl into her arms, and they flew in joy and glory—so high, so high. There was no cold, no hunger, no fear—they were with God!
In the corner by the house in the cold morning light the little girl was sitting with red cheeks and a smile on her lips—dead, frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. New Year’s Day dawned on the little corpse, sitting with her matches, almost all burned up. She had tried to warm herself, they said. No one knew the beauty she had seen, and in what radiance she with her old grandmother had gone into the joy of the New Year.
THE BOG KING’S DAUGHTER
THE STORKS TELL THEIR young so many fairy tales, all from the bog and the marsh. They usually adapt the stories to age and apprehension. The youngest ones are satisfied if they say, “cribble crabble paddle waddle,” which they think is super. But the older ones want a deeper meaning, or at least something about the family. We all know one of the two oldest and longest stories that the storks have preserved—the one about Moses who was placed in the waters of the Nile by his mother. He was found by a princess, given a good upbringing, and became a great man even though we don’t know where he’s buried. That’s a well-known story!
The other story is not well known, maybe because it’s more a domestic story. This story has been passed from stork mother to stork mother for a thousand years, and each of them has told it better and better. And now we shall tell it best of all.
The first stork couple who experienced it and told about it had their summer home on a Viking log house by Vildmosen in Vendsyssel. That’s a great bog in Hjørring County, close to Skagen in Jutland, if we are to give a precise description. It’s still an enormously big bog. You can read about it in the Hjørring county description. It was once a sea bottom, but it heaved itself up. It stretches for miles in all directions, surrounded by damp meadows and ponds, peat bogs, cloudberry plants, and stunted trees. There’s almost always a fog hovering over the bogs, and seventy years ago there were still wolves there. It really deserves its name, “Wild Bog,” and you can imagine how wild it was, how much bog and water there were a thousand years ago! But for the most part, you saw the same things then that you see now. The reeds are the same height and had the same long leaves and purplish brown feathery flowers that they have now. The birch stood there with white bark and its fine airy leaves as it does now, and as far as living things that came there are concerned—well, the fly carried the same cut to his black funereal outfit as he does now, and the stork’s colors were white with black and red stockings. In contrast, the people had a different cut to their clothes then than now, but it happened the same for all of them, peasant or hunter—everyone—who walked onto the quagmire a thousand years ago, as it does today. They fell through and sank down to the bog king, as they called him, who rules in the great bog kingdom. You could also call him the swamp king, but we think it’s better to say bog king. And the storks called him that too. Very little is known about his reign, but that’s probably for the best.
Close to the bog, right by the Lim fjord, lay the Viking’s log house with a cellar of stone, a tower, and three floors of logs. The storks had built their nest at the top of the roof. The mother stork was lying on her eggs and was certain that all would go well.
One evening stork father was out later than usual, and when he came home, he looked ruffled and uneasy.
“I have something quite terrible to tell you,” he said to mother stork.
“Don’t do it!” she said. “Remember that I’m brooding. I could take injury from it, and that would affect the eggs.”
“You have to know about it,” he said. “The daughter of our host in Egypt has come up here. She dared to make the trip, and she has disappeared!”
“The one who’s related to the fairies? Oh, tell me! You know that I can’t stand being kept waiting when I’m brooding.”
“You see, mother, she came to believe what the doctor said, like you told me. She believes that the white water lilies here might help her sick father, and she flew here in swan-skin with the two other swan-skin princesses, who fly up here every year to bathe and be rejuvenated. She came, and she is gone!”
“You’re so long-winded,” said stork mother. “The eggs can catch cold! I can’t stand being kept in suspense!”
“I keep alert, you know,” said stork father, “and this evening, as I was walking in the reeds where the swamp can support me, three swans came flying. There was something about the flying style that told me: pay attention—these are not really swans— they are just swan-skins! You
have a feeling about it, mother. Like me, you know what is real!”
“Of course,” she said, “but tell me about the princess. I am tired of hearing about swan-skins.”
“Well, here in the middle of the bog, you know, it’s like a lake,” said stork father. “You can see a little of it if you get up. By the reeds and the green quagmire there’s a big alder stump. The three swans landed on that, flapped their wings, and looked around. One of them threw off her swan-shape, and I recognized the princess of our house in Egypt. She sat with no other cape than her long black hair. I heard her ask the other two to take good care of the swan-skin while she dove under the water to pick the flower she thought she saw. They nodded and then rose up and took along the empty swan-skin. ‘I wonder what they are going to do with that,’ I thought, and she must have asked them the same thing because she got an answer, right in front of her eyes. They flew up in the air with her swan-skin. ‘Dive down,’ they shouted, ‘you’ll never fly in swanskin again, never see Egypt! Stay in the wild bog!’ and then they tore her swan-skin in hundreds of pieces so that the feathers were flying everywhere like in a snow storm. And the two wretched princesses flew away.”
“That’s ghastly!” said stork mother. “I can’t stand hearing about it—tell me what happened next!”
“The princess moaned and cried! The tears rolled down onto the alder stump, and then it moved—because it was the bog king himself! The one who lives in the bog. I saw how the stump turned, and then it wasn’t a stump any longer. Two long mossy branches reached up, like arms. The poor child was frightened and ran away into the quivering quagmire, but the bog can’t bear me, much less her, and so she sank right down. The alder trunk sank with her, for it was he who was pulling her down. Big black bubbles rose, and then there was no trace left. Now she is buried in the wild bog. She’ll never bring the flower back to Egypt. Oh, you wouldn’t have been able to stand the sight of this, mother!”
Fairy Tales Page 44