“So you fooled me again!” he shouted. “First I killed my horses and then my grandmother; and it’s all your fault. But you have fooled me for the last time!” Grabbing Little Claus around the waist, he shoved him into the sack. As he flung the sack over his shoulder he said loudly, “And now I am going to drown you!”
It was quite far to the river, and as he walked the sack with Little Claus in it seemed to grow heavier and heavier. The road went past the church, and Big Claus heard the organ being played and the congregation singing. “It would be nice to hear a hymn or two before I go on,” he thought. “Everybody’s in church and Little Claus can’t get out of the sack.” So Big Claus put down the sack near the entrance and went into the church.
“Poor me! Poor me!” sighed Little Claus. He twisted and turned but he could not loosen the cord that had been tied around the opening of the sack.
At that moment an old herdsman happened to pass. He had snow-white hair and walked with a long crook. In front of him he drove a large herd of cows and bulls. One of the bulls bumped into the sack and Little Claus was turned over.
“Poor me! Poor me!” cried Little Claus. “I am so young and am already bound for heaven.”
“Think of poor me; I am an old man,” said the herdsman, “and am not allowed to enter it.”
“Open up the sack!” shouted Little Claus. “You get inside it, instead of me, and then you will get to heaven right away!”
“Nothing could be better,” said the old man. He untied the sack and Little Claus crawled out at once.
“Take good care of my cattle,” the herdsman begged as he climbed into the sack. Little Claus promised that he would and tied the sack securely. Then he went on his way, driving the herd before him.
A little later Big Claus came out of the church and lifted the sack onto his back. He was surprised how much lighter it was now, for the old man weighed only half as much as Little Claus.
“How easy it is to carry now; it did do me good to hear a hymn!” he thought.
Big Claus went directly down to the river that was both deep and wide and dumped the sack into the water, shouting after it: “You have made a fool of me for the last time!” For of course he believed that Little Claus was still inside the sack that was disappearing into the river.
On his way home he met Little Claus with all his cattle at the crossroads.
“What!” exclaimed Big Claus. “Haven’t I drowned you?”
“Oh yes,” answered Little Claus, “You threw me in the river about half an hour ago.”
“But where did you get that huge herd of cattle?” Big Claus demanded.
“They are river cattle,” replied Little Claus. “I’ll tell you everything that happened to me. But, by the way, first I want to thank you for drowning me. For now I shall never have anything to worry about again, I am really rich.… Believe me, I was frightened when you threw me over the bridge. The wind whistled in my ears as I fell into the cold water. I sank straight to the bottom; but I didn’t hurt myself because I landed on the softest, most beautiful green grass you can imagine. Then the sack was opened by the loveliest maiden. She was all dressed in white except for the green wreath in her wet hair. Taking my hand, she asked, ‘Aren’t you Little Claus?’ When I nodded she said, ‘Here are some cattle for you and six miles up the road there is an even bigger herd waiting for you.’ Then I realized that to the water people the streams and rivers were as roads are to us. They use them to travel on. Far from their homes under the oceans, they follow the streams and the rivers until they finally become too shallow and come to an end. There are the most beautiful flowers growing down there and the finest, freshest grass; the fish swimming around above your head remind you of the birds flying in the air. The people are as nice as they can be; and the cattle fat and friendly.”
“Then tell me why you came up here on land again?” asked Big Claus. “I never would have left a place as wonderful as that.”
“Well,” said Little Claus, “that is just because I am smart. I told you that the water maiden said that another herd of cattle would be waiting for me six miles up the road. By ‘road,’ she meant the river; and I am eager to see my cattle. You know how the river twists and turns while the road up here on land is straight; so I thought that if I used the road instead of the river I would get there much faster and save myself at least two miles of walking.”
“Oh, you are a lucky man!” exclaimed Big Claus. “Do you think that if I were thrown into the river I would be given cattle too?”
“I don’t know why not,” replied Little Claus. “But I cannot carry you, as you did me, you’re too heavy. But if you’ll find a sack and climb into it yourself I’ll be glad to go to the bridge with you and push you into the water.”
“Thank you very much,” said Big Claus. “But if I don’t get a herd of cattle when I get down there I’ll beat you as you have never been beaten before.”
“Oh no! How can you think of being so mean!” whimpered Little Claus as they made their way to the river.
It was a hot day and when the cattle spied the water they started running toward it, for they were very thirsty. “See how eager they are to get to the river,” remarked Little Claus. “They are longing for their home under the water.”
“Never mind them!” shouted Big Claus. “Or I’ll give you a beating right here and now.” He grabbed a sack that was lying on one of the bulls’ backs and climbed up on the bridge. “Get a rock and put it in with me, I’m afraid that I might float.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Little Claus. But he found a big stone anyway and rolled it into the sack next to Big Claus before he tied the opening as tightly as he could. Then he pushed the sack off the bridge.
Splash! Plop! Down went Big Claus into the river and straight to the bottom he went.
“I am afraid that he will have trouble finding his cattle,” said Little Claus, and drove his own herd home.
3
The Princess and the Pea
Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess, but she would have to be a real one. He traveled around the whole world looking for her; but every time he met a princess there was always something amiss. There were plenty of princesses but not one of them was quite to his taste. Something was always the matter: they just weren’t real princesses. So he returned home very sad and sorry, for he had set his heart on marrying a real princess.
One evening a storm broke over the kingdom. The lightning flashed, the thunder roared, and the rain came down in bucketfuls. In the midst of this horrible storm, someone knocked on the city gate; and the king himself went down to open it.
On the other side of the gate stood a princess. But goodness, how wet she was! Water ran down her hair and her clothes in streams. It flowed in through the heels of her shoes and out through the toes. But she said that she was a real princess.
“We’ll find that out quickly enough,” thought the old queen, but she didn’t say a word out loud. She hurried to the guest room and took all the bedclothes off the bed; then on the bare bedstead she put a pea. On top of the pea she put twenty mattresses; and on top of the mattresses, twenty eiderdown quilts. That was the bed on which the princess had to sleep.
In the morning, when someone asked her how she had slept, she replied, “Oh, just wretchedly! I didn’t close my eyes once, the whole night through. God knows what was in that bed; but it was something hard, and I am black and blue all over.”
Now they knew that she was a real princess, since she had felt the pea that was lying on the bedstead through twenty mattresses and twenty eiderdown quilts. Only a real princess could be so sensitive!
The prince married her. The pea was exhibited in the royal museum; and you can go there and see it, if it hasn’t been stolen.
Now that was a real story!
4
Little Ida’s Flowers
“What a pity, all my flowers are dead!” said little Ida. “Last night they were so beautiful, and now
all their leaves have withered. Why does that happen?” she asked the student who had come visiting.
The young man was sitting on the sofa. Ida was very fond of him because he knew the most marvelous stories, and with a pair of scissors could cut out of paper the most wonderful pictures: flowers, hearts, little dancing ladies, and castles with doors that could open. He was a happy young man and fond of children.
“Why do my flowers look so sad today?” she asked again, and showed the student her bouquet of dying flowers.
He looked at them a moment before he said, “I know what is wrong with them, they have been dancing all night and that is why they look so tired and hang their heads.”
“But flowers can’t dance,” said little Ida.
“Sure they can,” replied the student. “When darkness comes and we go to bed and sleep, then the flowers jump about gaily enough. Nearly every night they hold a grand ball.”
“Are children allowed to come to the ball too?” asked little Ida, who was eager to know how flowers brought up their children.
“Oh yes, both the little daisies and the lilies of the valley are allowed to come,” smiled the student.
“Where do the most beautiful of the flowers dance?”
“You have been in the park near the king’s summer castle, the one that has the splendid garden. You’ve been there to feed the swans. Remember how they swim toward you when you throw bread crumbs? That’s where the grand ball is held; and very grand it is.”
“I was there yesterday with my mother,” little Ida said, and looked pensive. “But there wasn’t a leaf on any of the trees, and not a flower anywhere. There were a lot this summer. Where are they now?”
“As soon as the king and all his courtiers move into town, then the flowers move up to the castle. There they live a merry life; I wish you could see it. The two most beautiful roses sit on the throne; they are the king and queen. The big red tiger lilies are lords in waiting; they stand behind the throne and bow. Then in come all the most beautiful flowers and the grand ball begins. The blue violets are midshipmen. They dance with the hyacinths and the crocuses, and call them Miss. The tulips and the big yellow lilies are the old ladies, they see to it that everyone behaves and dances in time to the music.”
“But,” interrupted little Ida, “are the flowers allowed to dance in the king’s castle?”
“No one knows they are there,” continued the student. “Sometimes the old night watchman, who is supposed to take care of the castle when the king is away, does walk through it. He carries a great bunch of keys, one for every door in the castle; and as soon as the flowers hear the rattle of the keys they hide. The old night watchman can smell them but he has never seen them.”
“Oh, how wonderful!” little Ida clapped her hands. “Wouldn’t I see the flowers either if I were there?”
“I think you could,” said the student. “Next time you are in the park, look in through the windows of the castle and you will probably see them. I was out there today, I saw a long yellow daffodil, she was lying stretched out on a sofa. She was a lady in waiting.”
“What about the flowers in the botanical garden; are they allowed to attend the ball too? And how do they get out there? It is a very long way from where they live to the castle.”
“Oh sure, they can come!” exclaimed the student. “When flowers want to, they can fly. You have seen butterflies. Don’t they look like yellow, red, and white flowers? That is exactly what they were once. They are flowers who have jumped off their stems and have learned to fly with their petals; and when they first get a taste for it, they never return to their stems, and their little petals become real wings.
“There’s no way of knowing whether the flowers from the botanical garden know about what goes on in the castle. The next time you are there, you can whisper to one of the flowers that there will be a grand ball that night in the castle, and see what happens. Flowers can’t keep a secret, so that flower will tell it to the others; and when night comes, they will all fly to the castle. That will certainly surprise the professor who is in charge of the garden. The next day when he takes his morning walk, there won’t be a single flower left in the whole botanical garden; and I am sure he will write a paper about it.”
“But how will the flower I tell it to talk to the others? I am sure that I have never seen a flower speak,” said little Ida.
“They mime. It’s a regular pantomime. You have seen how, when the wind blows, all the flowers shake their heads and rustle their leaves; what they are saying to each other is just as plain as what we say with our tongues is to us.”
“Does the professor understand what they are saying?” asked little Ida.
“Sure he does. One morning when he came into the garden he saw a large nettle rustle its leaves at a carnation. It was saying, ‘You are so beautiful that I love you.’ But that kind of talk the professor doesn’t like, so he hit the nettle across the fingers—that is, its leaves. But the nettle burned him, and since then the professor has never dared touch a nettle.”
“That is very funny!” little Ida laughed.
“I don’t think that it’s the least bit funny,” said the old chancellor, who had just come into the room and had overheard the last part of the conversation; but he never found anything funny. “Such fantastic ideas are nonsense; they are harmful to a child and boring for grownups.”
The old chancellor did not like the student, especially when he found him cutting pictures out of paper with a pair of scissors. The student had just finished cutting a hanged man holding a heart; he’d been condemned for stealing hearts. Now the young man had started on another. It was the picture of a witch who was riding on a broom and was carrying her husband on the end of her nose.
Little Ida thought that everything the student did was amusing; and she thought a great deal about what he had said about her flowers. “My flowers are tired from dancing,” she thought, and carried her bouquet over to the little table on which her playthings were. She had a whole drawer full of toys too, and even a doll that lay in its own bed.
The doll’s name was Sophie. Little Ida picked her up and explained, “Please, be a good doll and sleep in the drawer tonight. The flowers are sick and have to sleep in your bed, so they can get well.”
The doll didn’t answer; she was angry because someone else was to sleep in her bed.
Little Ida put the flowers in the bed and pulled the covers up around them. She promised them that if they would be good and lie still she would make them a cup of tea. “You will be well enough to be up and around tomorow morning,” she added. Then she drew the curtains around the bed so the sun wouldn’t shine in their eyes.
All that evening she could not think about anything but what the student had told her. When her bedtime came, she ran over to the window and pulled aside the drapes to look at her mother’s plants, which were sitting in flowerpots on the window sill. She whispered to both the tulips and the hyacinths, “I know where you are going tonight.” The flowers acted as though they hadn’t heard her. They moved neither a petal nor a leaf; but little Ida believed what she had been told.
When she got into bed, little Ida lay awake thinking about how beautiful it must have been when all the flowers danced in the royal castle. “I wonder if my flowers have really been there,” she muttered; and then she fell asleep.
Late at night she woke; she had dreamed about the flowers and the student, who the chancellor had said was filling her head with nonsense. It was very quiet in the bedroom. On the table beside her parents’ bed, the night light burned.
“I wonder if my flowers are still lying in Sophie’s bed,” she whispered. “Oh, God, how I would love to know!”
She sat up in bed and looked toward the door. It was ajar; in the next room were her flowers and all her playthings. She listened; someone was playing the piano softly and more beautifully than she had ever heard it played before.
“Now all the flowers are dancing. Oh, God, how I would love to see it
,” she whispered. But she didn’t dare get up, for she was afraid she would wake her father and mother.
“If only the flowers would come in here,” she thought. But the flowers didn’t come, and the music kept on playing.
Finally she climbed out of bed, tiptoed over to the door, and looked into the living room.
There was no night light burning in there, but she could see anyway, for the moon shone in through the windows onto the floor. It was so bright that it was almost as light as day. All the tulips and the hyacinths stood in two long rows on the floor; on the window sill stood only their empty flowerpots. The flowers danced so gracefully, holding onto each other’s leaves. They formed chains and swung each other around, just as children do when they dance.
A big yellow lily sat at the piano and played. Little Ida remembered that she had seen it in the garden that summer. The student had said, “Why, it looks like Miss Line!” Everybody had laughed at him then; but now little Ida thought that the slender yellow flower really did look like Miss Line; and behaved just as she did when she played. There the flower was, turning its yellow face from side to side and nodding in time to the music.
None of the flowers noticed little Ida. Suddenly a big blue crocus jumped up on the table where her playthings were, went right over to the doll’s bed, and drew the curtains. There lay the sick flowers. But they didn’t seem sick any more. They leaped out of bed. They wanted to dance too. The little porcelain man, whose chin was chipped, bowed to the flowers. They jumped down onto the floor; and what a good time they had!
Now in Denmark at Shrovetide little children are given a bunch of birch and beech branches tied together with ribbons, and fastened to their twigs are paper flowers, little toys, and candies. It is an old custom for the children to whip their parents out of bed with these switches on Shrove Monday. The switches are pretty and most of the children keep them. Little Ida’s had been lying on the table among her other toys. Bump! Down they jumped with their ribbons flying; they thought they were flowers. A handsome little wax doll, with a broad-brimmed hat just like the one the chancellor wore, was tied to the top of the longest branch.
The Complete Fairy Tales Page 4