“Oh, that is the greatest blessing, to be able to forget yourself in caring for others. The flower didn’t say thank you; I don’t think it even noticed me. But everyone admired the flower, and if that made me happy, think of how much happier it must have made the flower.
“One day I heard someone say that the flower was so lovely that it deserved a better flowerpot. They cracked me in two, and that hurt terribly. My plant was placed in a finer flowerpot, and I was thrown out into the yard, and here I lie, an old broken piece of pottery. But I have my memories and they cannot be taken from me.”
122
The Songbird of the People
(A Mood)
It is winter. The ground is covered with snow and looks like the white marble that is hewn out of the mountains. The sky is bright and clear. The wind blows sharply and cuts into your face as if it were a sword made by the elves. The ice-decked trees look like white coral, like flowering almond trees. The air is as fresh as it is in the heights of the Alps. The night is lovely; there are northern lights and innumerable stars in the sky.
A storm is coming! The clouds shake themselves and snowflakes, like the down of the swan, drift across the scene. Soon the open fields and the narrow lanes, the highways and the houses are covered with snow.
We are sitting inside around the stove in the living room, talking of olden times. Now we are listening to a saga that opens on the seacoast, where there was an ancient burial mound. At midnight the ghost of the king who had been interred there would rise from the dead. He would climb to the top of the hill above his own burial chamber and sit there on a great stone, sorrowfully moaning and sighing. His hair, beneath the gold band that was his crown, would flutter in the wind. He was dressed in iron and steel, in the armor that he wore in battle.
One night a ship anchored nearby and its crew came ashore. Among them there was a poet, who approached the ghost and asked, “Why do you suffer so? What are you waiting for?”
The dead man answered: “No one has sung of my deeds; therefore, death has undone them. Poetry did not carry them through the land so that they would be kept alive in human heart. And that is why I cannot find peace, why I cannot rest.” Then he told about his adventures and the acts of courage he had performed, which had brought him fame in his own time but were unknown now, because no poet had sung of them.
The bard took his harp and sang of the hero’s youthful courage, of his power during the days of his prime, and how great his good deeds had been. The face of the king grew as bright as the edge of a cloud illuminated by the moon. He rose and glanced happily, blissfully upward. His ghostly figure shimmered like a northern light and was gone. Now all there was to be seen on that grassy knoll were the big boulders on which no runic letters had been carved.
When the last chord was struck, a bird flew up; it seemed to have come out of the harp. It was small but it is the most wonderful of all the songbirds. It is the one whose voice has the melodious throb of the thrush and the soulful beat of the human heart, and whose song calls the migrant bird back to his native land. It flies high over the mountains and across the valleys, above the dark forest and the meadows. It is the songbird of the people: the bird that sings the folk songs, and it will never die.
We heard its song while we sat in the warm room, with the snow falling outside and the storm increasing. We hear not only of the tragedies of heroes, but the bird sings softer songs as well: tender love songs, ballads of fidelity and loyalty. They are like fairy tales told in melody and in words. They are like the proverbs of the people, like the magic runic letters that can give life to a dead man’s tongue and make him tell us of his home.
In pagan times, during the Age of the Vikings, this songbird built its nest in the harp of the poet. Later, in the Age of Chivalry, when the knights ruled and justice was an iron fist—for might determined right—then when a peasant and a hunting dog were of equal value, where did the songbird hide? The cruel and the petty never gave the bird a thought, but somewhere in the thick-walled castle sat a noblewoman with ink and parchment and wrote down songs and ballads. Across from her sat an old woman who lived in a turf hut; or a peddler, who went from place to place with his wares on his back. While they told their stories, the immortal bird flew about the room and sang, for it will never die, as long as there is a place for it to nest.
It is singing for us now. Outside it is dark and there is a snowstorm. The bird puts its magic runic letters on our tongue, so that we can understand our homeland. God talks to us in our native tongue, in the language of the folk tale and the folk song. Old memories come alive, colors that were faded become bright; the sagas and the ancient songs are a blessed drink that raise our souls and lift our thoughts to make the evening as joyful as Christmas Eve. The snow lies in drifts, the ice creaks and groans, the storm rages; it is master but it is not God.
It is winter. The wind is as sharp as the sword made by the elves. The snow falls for days, for weeks; it has covered the whole city: an evil dream in the winter night. Everything is hidden, buried beneath the snow, except the golden cross on the church steeple. The symbol of our faith rises above the snow into the blue air to reflect the sunlight.
Above the buried city fly the birds of heaven, both the large and the small, and each of them is singing as well as he can. First come a flock of sparrows. They sing of the small incidents, of the things that happen in the streets and the lanes, in the nests and in the houses, where they know what goes on in the garret and on the first floor. “We know everyone in the buried city and everything about them. But none of them knows a thing … a thing … a thing.”
Now come the ravens and the crows. “Dig! Dig!” they screech. “There is something underneath to eat. Dig! Dig! Nothing is more important than to eat! Everybody agrees with us and we agree with everybody.… Dig! Dig!”
The wild swans come. Hear the whirring of their wings. They sing of the greatness and the wonder of the things that the minds of the men who are buried under the snow can create.
Death is not there but life. We sense it in sound; it comes to us like the tones from a great church organ. We hear the Valkyrian wings, the song of Ossian, and the music of the elves. They are in harmony and speak directly to our hearts, to give our thoughts hope. It is the songbird of the people that we hear, and God’s warm breath begins to blow. The rays of the sun again shine upon the city, the mountain of snow cracks.
Spring has come. The birds have come, and among them are fledglings singing the homely tunes we know so well. Here is the drama of the year: the power of the snowstorm, the dream and hope of the long winter night is redeemed. It is told by the bird who cannot die: the songbird of the people.
123
The Little Green Ones
On the window sill stood a rosebush. Just a week ago it had looked healthy and filled with buds; now it looked sickly, something was the matter with it.
It had soldiers billeted on it, they were eating it up. They were a respectable lot and wore green uniforms. I talked with one of them; he was only three days old and already was a grandfather. Do you know what he said? He talked about himself and the whole army that were quartered on the rosebush, and everything he said was quite true:
“Of all the inhabitants of the earth, we are one of the strangest regiments. In the summer, when the weather is warm, we give birth to our children. As soon as they are born, they get engaged and married. But when the weather turns cold we lay eggs instead. That is for the little ones’ sake, to keep them warm. The wisest of all the animals, the ant, whom we hold in esteem, has studied us and evaluated our worth. He doesn’t eat us right away, he takes our eggs and carries them to the family anthill. There on the bottom floor, he numbers them and stores them. The ants put our eggs side by side, layer on layer, and in such a way that they always know which egg is ready to hatch. The young ones they put in their stable, then they squeeze us and milk us until we die. It is a great pleasure. They have the nicest name for us: ‘The Sweet Little Milk Cows.’
All animals with the intelligence of an ant call us by that name; only man calls us something else, and the name he has given us is so great an insult that it is enough to lose one’s sweetness, just thinking about it. Couldn’t you write a protest against it? Explain to them how wrong they are, these human beings. They look disdainfully at us, with their glassy eyes, just because we eat a rose leaf, while they themselves eat everything that is alive. Then they call us a contemptible, a disgusting name. I can’t even mention it without feeling sick to my stomach. I am not going to say it, at least, not so long as I am dressed in my uniform; and I never take it off.
“I was born on a rose leaf. The whole regiment and I live on that rosebush, but in a way it lives again inside us. After all, we belong to one of the higher orders of animals. Man can’t stand the sight of us; he is always trying to kill us with soapy water. Ugh, that is a horrible drink! I can almost smell it now. It is terrible to be washed, when you have been created not to be washed.
“Human beings! You, who are looking at me now, with your soapy-water eyes, consider our place in nature’s order, our strange ability to give birth to live children and to lay eggs. Also we were blessed and told to ‘be fruitful and multiply.’ We are born in a rose and we die in a rose; our whole life is poetry. Don’t give us a name that you yourself consider loathsome and ugly. That name … No, I won’t say it! Call us the milk cow of the ants, or the rose’s regiment or just: the little green ones.”
And I, the human being, stood and looked at the rosebush and thought about the little green ones, whose name I, too, shan’t mention, for I do not want to offend the tenants of a rose: a family so clever that it can both lay eggs and give birth. The soapy water that I was going to wash the rosebush with—for I had come with evil intentions—I shall whip into suds and then blow soap bubbles with it. I shall look at the beautiful bubbles and maybe I shall find a fairy tale hidden in them.
The soap bubble grew bigger and bigger, it was filled with the most radiant colors, and in the bottom of it lay a silver pearl. It rose, flew across the room, hit the door, and burst. The door flew open and there stood an old lady: Dame Fairy Tale, herself.
Now she can tell us the story much better than I can. She will tell us about the … No, I won’t say any name … the story of the “little green ones.”
“Plant lice!” exclaimed the old lady. “One ought to call everything by its right name, and if one doesn’t dare do it in everyday life, then at least one should do it in a fairy tale.”
124
The Pixy and the Gardener’s Wife
Pixies you know, but do you know the gardener’s wife?
She had read a lot of books and knew many verses by heart. She could even write them herself; only with the rhymes did she have any difficulty—“the gluing together of the verses” as she called it.
She had a talent, both for writing and for conversation. She ought to have been a minister, or at least a minister’s wife.
“The earth is lovely in its Sunday dress,” she wrote, and “glued” that thought, using rhymes as paste, to a great many other thoughts, until she had composed a ballad that was both long and beautiful.
The schoolteacher, Mr. Kisserup—the name is of no importance whatsoever. He was a nephew of the gardener, and while he was visiting, he heard the poem and claimed that this experience had done him no end of good. “You have both spirit and talent,” he said.
“Chatter and twaddle,” said the gardener. “Spirit indeed! Don’t put her up to any nonsense. A wife is a body—a decent one. She is to tend to her pots and make sure that the porridge doesn’t burn.”
“If the porridge burns, I take off the burned part with a little wooden spoon; and if you are burned, I take it off with a kiss,” said his wife. “One would think you only thought of heads of cabbage and potatoes, but you love your flowers.” Then she kissed him. “And flowers are the spirit of the garden.”
“Take care of your pots and pans,” said he, and walked out into the garden, which was his “pots and pans,” and he took good care of it.
The schoolteacher stayed and talked with his aunt. In his own way, he held a whole sermon over her words: “The earth is lovely.”
“The earth is beautiful; and it was said that we should subdue it and be its master. One is so by the power of his spirit, another by the power of his body. One man is created in the image of a thoughtful question mark, another like an exclamation point. One becomes a bishop, another merely a schoolteacher. But everything is for the best: the earth is beautiful and always dressed in its Sunday best. It is a very thoughtful poem, madam; filled with feeling and geography.”
“You have spirit yourself, Mr. Kisserup!” said the gardener’s wife. “A great deal of spirit, I assure you. Why, after a conversation with you, one understands oneself so much better.”
And they talked on and on, just as cleverly and intelligently as we have just heard them. Out in the kitchen sat the pixy. You know what he looks like: dressed in gray, with a red woolen cap on his head. He, too, was talking, but no one heard him except the black cat, who was called “cream thief” by the gardener’s wife.
The pixy was angry at the mistress of the house because she did not believe that he existed. She had never seen him but, considering all the books she had read, she ought at least to have known about him. A little attention would have been appreciated. But even on Christmas Eve, not a spoonful of porridge was given him; and his ancestors had all got a whole bowlful, and that from women who couldn’t even read or write. The porridge had had a lump of butter in the middle and cream around the sides. The cat licked its chops just hearing about it.
“She calls me a notion, a conception, a fancy,” grumbled the pixy. “What she means by that is more than I can understand. But that she denies my existence, that I have figured out. And I have figured out one thing more; and that is that she is sitting in there spinning like a cat for the favor of that boy-thrasher called a schoolteacher. I say, as the man in the house does, ‘Keep to your pots, woman!’ And now I will make them boil over.”
And the pixy blew on the fire and the flames rose and the pot boiled over. “Now I am going upstairs and unravel some of the gardener’s socks. I will make holes in both the toes and heels, then there will be something for her to mend,” laughed the pixy. “If she isn’t too busy poetizing to mend her husband’s socks.”
The cat sneezed but said nothing; it had caught cold even though it always wore a fur coat.
“I have opened the door to the larder,” the pixy said to the cat. “There is cream in there as thick as butter. If you won’t lick it, I will.”
“I will get the blame and the beating, so I might as well lick the cream,” replied the cat, stretching herself.
“First the cream, then the scream,” grinned the pixy. “I am going up to the schoolmaster’s room and hang his suspenders on the mirror and put his socks into the washbasin. Then he will think that the punch he drank was too strong, and that he is dizzy. Last night I was sitting on the wood pile, teasing the watchdog. He jumped for my legs but he couldn’t reach them. It didn’t matter how high he jumped, I was higher, and that irritated the stupid dog so much that he barked and barked. He made an awful din. The schoolmaster stuck his head out of the window but he didn’t see me, even though he had his glasses on; he always sleeps with them on.”
“Say meow if the mistress comes,” the cat begged. “I am not feeling so well today, I can hardly hear.”
“You are dying for something sweet,” said the pixy. “Go into the larder and lick the cream—lick your sickness away; but remember to wipe your whiskers. I am going to the parlor, to listen.”
And the pixy ran to the door. It was standing ajar. Only the schoolmaster and gardener’s wife were in the room. They were talking about what the schoolmaster had so beautifully called, the most important thing to have in the pots and pans of a household: the gift of understanding.
“Mr. Kisserup”—the gardener’s wife blushed—“
I will show you something that I have never shown to another earthly being—least of all a man—my poems! Some of them are quite long. I have called them Poesy of a Danish Goodwife. I am so fond of the old words.”
“One must honor our language,” the schoolteacher agreed. “We ought to get rid of all the German words.”
“I do!” said the gardener’s wife. “I never say Kleiner or Blätterteig, I say fat cakes and leafy dough.” Then she took out of a drawer a little notebook with a green cover, that had two ink spots on it.
“There is a great deal of pathos in this book. I have a strong inclination toward the tragic. There is one titled ‘Sighs in the Night’ and another called ‘My Sunset.’ The one named, ‘When I Married Clemmensen,’ you may skip, it is about my husband, and it is deeply felt. ‘The Housewife’s Duty,’ I think, is the best of them all. They are all tragic, that is the direction in which I am most talented. One of them is humorous; it has some playful thoughts. I sometimes think—you mustn’t laugh!—think of becoming a poetess. No one knows my verses but myself, the drawer, and now you, Mr. Kisserup. I love poetry; it comes to me, teases me, conquers and rules me. I have described my feelings in that poem named ‘The Little Pixy.’ You know the old peasant belief about the house pixy who is always playing tricks around the farmhouse. I have thought that I am such a house and that poetry—the feelings inside me—is the pixy, the spirit that commands. His power and greatness I have described in my poem, ‘The Little Pixy.’ Please read it aloud to me, so I can hear it—if you can read my writing. But promise—swear to me—that you will never tell my husband or anyone else about it.”
The Complete Fairy Tales Page 96