What strange music. The dryad had never heard such melodies before, and yet it was as if it spoke with a voice well known to her. The voice was her own, it came from the very depth of her soul, from the heart of all things created. She heard the wind play in the old oak tree, and the voice of the old priest telling his stories of great men and the gifts they had given to future generations: the gifts they had had to offer in order to give life to their names.
The tones of the organ grew louder and seemed to speak: “Your longing, your desire, tore you from the place that God had given you; that was your tragedy, poor dryad!” The music changed, grew softer. Now it sounded like a lament, then slowly it ceased. In the heavens toward the east, the clouds were red, the wind sang its monotonous song.
“Be gone, all you who are dead, now the sun is rising.”
The first of its rays fell on the dryad. Her body shone in all the colors of the rainbow, like a soap bubble before it bursts and becomes a drop of water: a tear that falls to the earth and disappears. Poor dryad, a dewdrop was all that was left, a pearl of water, and then she was gone.
The sun shone on the fata morgana on the Field of Mars; it shone on the great city of Paris, on the square with the fountain and the tall houses. The chestnut tree stood with sagging branches and dead leaves. Only yesterday it had seemed as green as spring itself. Now it was dead; the dryad had left it, as people said. She was gone like the clouds, no one knew where.
On the ground lay a withered chestnut flower. Holy water from the church could not bring it back to life. Soon the feet of passers-by would tread it down into the dust.
This all happened, I saw it myself, during the great World’s Fair of Paris, in the year 1867, in our own wonderful times, the age when fairy tales come true.
137
The Family of Hen-Grethe
Hen-Grethe was the only human being who lived in the fine new house that had been built on the manor for the hens and the ducks. It stood on the site of the old castle, which had had a tower, corbie gables, a moat, and a drawbridge; but nothing was left of that now. There had been a garden that stretched as far as a lake, but that was now a swamp, and a wilderness of trees and bushes led down to it. Crows, jackdaws, and rooks flew among the old trees and filled the air with their hoarse screams. There were so many of them that, even though the squire did shoot them, there never seemed to be any fewer; indeed, they always seemed to be increasing. You could hear them inside the henhouse where Hen-Grethe sat with the ducklings running all about her—they even stepped on her clogs. She knew every hen and duck from the moment it hatched. She was proud of them and proud of the good house that had been built for them. Her own room was clean and neat; the lady of the manor demanded that. It was she who had ordered that the henhouse be built, and she often brought her guests to see “the barracks of the ducks and hens,” as she called it.
In Hen-Grethe’s room there were a wardrobe, an easy chair, and even a chest of drawers on top of which rested a polished brass plate with the word “Grubbe” engraved in it. That was the name of the very noble family who had once owned the old castle. The brass plate had been found when the foundations of the henhouse were dug; and the local schoolteacher had declared that it had no value except a historical one. The schoolteacher, who was also a deacon, knew a great deal about the castle and its history. He had his knowledge from books. The drawer of his table was filled with notes that he had made. He knew a lot about olden times but maybe the oldest crow in the trees knew as much as, if not more than, he did. But the crow spoke crow language, and however learned the deacon was, he did not understand it.
On summer days when the weather was warm, a fog would lie over the swamp where the rooks, jackdaws, and crows sat in the trees, and then it would again look like the lake it once had been when the castle was there with its red brick walls and the most noble knight, Grubbe, living in it. Then a fierce watchdog had dragged its chain in front of the gate. Let us enter through the door in the tower and walk along the stone-paved corridors that led to the rooms.
The windows were narrow and the windowpanes small even in the hall, where the dances were held. During the time of the last Grubbe there had not been any dancing. Still in a corner of the hall stood an old kettledrum; it had served its time. Here, too, was an old, intricately carved chest in which Mistress Grubbe kept rare flower bulbs, for she was interested in gardening; she planted trees and grew herbs. Her husband was more interested in hunting wolves and wild boars, and his daughter Marie rode beside him on these wild hunting trips. Ever since she was five years old, little Marie had sat proudly on a horse, her black eyes staring without fear at everything about her. She liked to let the dogs feel her whip, but her father would have preferred that she used it to lash out at the peasant boys who came to watch their master and the young mistress.
There lived in a hut near the castle a peasant who had a son named Soren; he was the same age as the young noble lady. He was good at climbing trees and little Marie often ordered him up in the highest ones to fetch birds’ nests for her. Once a mother bird attacked him and pecked him above one of his eyes. It bled a great deal; and at first they thought that he had lost his eye, but it had not been harmed. Marie called him “my Soren” and that was a great honor, which once benefited his father, poor Jon. He had done something wrong and was condemned to ride the wooden horse. That “animal” stood firmly with its four legs made of beams on the cobblestones of the courtyard. Its back was one narrow plank; this poor Jon had to straddle. In order that he should not sit too lightly, heavy stones were tied to his feet. Jon’s face was drawn in pain, and little Soren cried and begged Marie to help his father. She ordered that Jon’s father be set free at once, and when no one paid any attention to her, she pulled on her father’s sleeve until she ripped it. She stamped her little feet. She wanted to be obeyed and she was. Soren’s father was released. Mistress Grubbe came, and her hand stroked her daughter’s hair lightly. She looked at her with warm approval but little Marie did not understand why.
She wanted to be with the hunting dogs, not with her mother in the garden. She watched her mother walking down toward the lake where water lilies bloomed and bulrushes stood among the reeds. She did not see any beauty in all this luxuriant and yet fresh greenness. “How ordinary, how common it is,” she remarked.
In the middle of the garden stood a copper beech. Marie’s mother had planted it herself; in those days it was a very rare tree. Its leaves were dark brown; it was a Moor among all the green trees. The copper beech needs plenty of sunlight; if it stands in the shade, its leaves will stay green, and then it will look like any other tree. There were also some tall chestnut trees; in them and in the bushes there were birds’ nests. It was as if the birds knew that the garden was the safest place to build; here no one dared to shoot them.
Little Marie Grubbe went down to the garden one day with Soren, who, as we know, was good at climbing trees. That day many eggs and downy little chicks were gathered. Birds flew up in fury and fear. All tried to fly, both the big and the small—the plover from the field; and the rooks, crows, and jackdaws from the tall trees in the garden, shrieked and cried as shrilly as they do today.
The noble Mistress Grubbe came running from the castle. “What are you doing? … It is ungodly!”
Soren looked down at his feet. Maria, too, looked away, but she said glumly: “I have my father’s permission to do it.”
“Away! Away!” screamed the large black birds, and flew; but they came back the next day, for the garden was their home. The noble mistress of the castle, however, did not stay. God called her and she went; and maybe His house was a more fitting home for her than the castle had ever been. The bells tolled when her corpse was driven to the churchyard. Many a poor man had tears in his eyes, for she had been kind and good.
When she was gone, no one any longer took care of the garden and it became a wilderness.
Squire Grubbe was a hard man, so the peasants said. But his young daughter could
handle him. She made him laugh and he always let her have her way. She was only twelve but strong and well built. She rode a horse like a man, handled a gun like a hunter, and looked boldly at everyone with her black eyes.
The most distinguished men in Denmark—the young king and his friend and half brother, Master Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve—had come to hunt wild boars in the district, and they stayed the night at Squire Grubbe’s castle.
At dinner Master Gyldenløve sat down next to Marie. He gave her a kiss, as if they were related. Marie slapped his face and told him that she hated him. Everybody laughed as though this were the funniest of jokes. And maybe it was a good joke, for five years later, when Maria was seventeen, a letter came from Master Gyldenløve asking for her hand—that was something!
“He is the noblest and most gallant man in the kingdom,” said Squire Grubbe. “A proposal like that is not easy to reject.”
“I do not care much for him,” Marie Grubbe said thoughtfully, but she did not refuse Master Gyldenløve, the nobleman who was always at the king’s side.
Silverware, linen, and most of her clothes were packed and sent by ship to Copenhagen. Marie traveled by land; it took ten days. The ship ran into bad winds or no wind, and it was four months before her goods arrived, and by that time Mistress Gyldenløve was gone.
“I would rather sleep on straw than in his silken bed, and I would rather walk on bare feet than ride in his coach,” she had said.
Late one November evening, two women came riding into the town of Aarhus from Vejle, where they had been brought by ship from Copenhagen. One of them was the wife of the half brother of the king, Mistress Gyldenløve, and the other was her maid. They walked up to the locked entrance of Squire Grubbe’s town house. He was not pleased to see his visitors. He spoke harshly to his daughter, although he allowed her and her servant to stay in his home. The following morning, with her porridge, Marie was served more words of reproach, and they were not easy to swallow. Her father showed his hardness and ill temper, and that Marie was not used to. But she herself was not meek, and she answered as rudely as she was questioned. Of her husband she spoke with bitterness and hatred, and said that she would never go back to him, for she had too much self-respect.
A year went by, and it was not a happy year. Cruel words passed between father and daughter, and cruel words bear evil fruit. How was it all going to end?
“We two cannot live under the same roof!” her father finally said. “Go.… Move to the old castle but, mind you, it would be better for you to bite off your tongue than to start spreading lies.”
So father and daughter parted. Marie and her maid journeyed to the old castle where she had been born and brought up, and where her mother—the silent, noble, pious lady—rested in her grave chamber. An old cowherd was the only person still living there. He and the maid became Marie’s only servants. The rooms were filled with spider webs that were black with dust. Bindweed and wild hop vines made nets between the bushes and the trees in the garden. Hemlock and nettles flourished. The copper beech’s leaves were now green as though it were an ordinary tree, for it stood completely in the shade; its time of glory had passed.
Rooks, crows, and jackdaws in great flocks flew above the tall chestnut trees. They screamed and cried as though they had some important news. “She has come again,” they said. But where was the other egg thief? The boy had become a seaman. Now he climbed a leafless tree to sit high up in the mast, and got a taste of the cat-o’-nine-tails when he didn’t behave.
All this the schoolteacher told us. He had collected the information from old books and letters, and they lay, together with his notes and other printed matter, in his table drawer.
“Up and down, that is the way of the world,” said the schoolteacher. “But it is a very strange story you are about to hear.”
Although we want to hear more of Marie Grubbe, we must not forget Hen-Grethe. She sits in her nice henhouse in our own times, as Marie Grubbe sat in her castle then; but Marie didn’t have old Grethe’s kind disposition.
Winter passed, spring and summer passed, and again it was autumn. The fog swept in from the sea, wet and cold. Life in the castle was boring and lonely.
Marie Grubbe took down her gun and went hunting on the heath, shot foxes and hares and whatever birds came within range. Out there among the heather-covered hills she met another hunter with his gun and his dogs, the noble Palle Dyre from Nørrebaek. He was big and strong and loved to boast. In imitation of the late Squire Brockenhouse of Egeskov, whose strength was legendary, he had suspended an iron chain from the top of the entrance gate of his estate; to the chain was attached a hunting horn, which he would blow, on arriving home, by grabbing hold of the chain while he pressed his legs around the horse, lifting both himself and the animal off the ground.
“Come and see me do it for yourself, Mistress Marie,” he invited. “At Nørrebaek, the winds blow freshly!”
Exactly when she went to his manor to live we do not know, but on one of the candlesticks in the church is engraved that it was a gift from Palle Dyre and Marie Grubbe of Nørrebaek.
Palle Dyre was big-bodied and strong. He drank like a fish. He was a bottomless barrel that never could be filled. He snored like a whole pigpen; his face was red and his skin spongy.
“He is as sly as an old boar and as mischievous,” said his wife, who was soon tired of that sort of life, but being tired of it did not change it.
One day when the table was set for dinner, no one came. The master was fox hunting and the servants could not find their mistress. Palle Dyre came home near midnight, but his wife did not, nor did she come the next morning. She had saddled a horse and ridden away. She had turned her back on Nørrebaek without even a word of farewell.
The weather was gray and wet, a cold wind blew. Some crows flew screaming above her; the birds were not as homeless as she. She rode south all the way to the German border. There she sold her golden rings with their precious stones and her horse. She walked east, turned and went west, for her wandering had no goal. She was angry at everyone, even God; and her spirit was wretched and broken. Soon her body was as weak as her soul. She felt that she could not walk any farther. The lapwing flew from its nest and cried as it always cries: “Thief, thief!” Marie Grubbe smiled. She had never stolen her neighbors’ goods, but birds’ eggs and chicks she had ordered to be brought to her when she was a girl; she remembered it when she heard the cry of the bird.
Finally she fell. From where she lay she could see the sand dunes; on the beach fishermen lived, but she was too sick, too weak, to go that far. The big white gulls flew over her and screamed as the rooks, crows, and jackdaws had screamed in the garden at home. The gulls came nearer, and suddenly it seemed to her that they were not white but black; and then she remembered no more.
When she opened her eyes again, she was being carried by a man. She looked into his bearded face. He had a scar over one eye that split his eyebrow in two. He carried her, sick as she was, down to a boat. The captain did not praise him for the deed, but he was allowed to take her on board.
The next day the ship sailed. Marie Grubbe had not been returned to land. What happened to her? Where did the ship carry her?
To these questions also the schoolteacher knew the answers. But this was not a story he himself had pieced together; he had read it in a book. The Danish author, Ludvig Holberg, who wrote so many books worth reading and so many comedies worth seeing, that bring to life his times, described in his letters how and where he met Marie Grubbe, and that tale is worth hearing. We shan’t forget Hen-Grethe because of that, she is still sitting in her henhouse, happy and contented.
Marie Grubbe sailed away on board the ship; that’s where we left off. Now we will start again but many years later.
It is 1711. The plague is raging in Copenhagen. The queen had departed for her native Germany, the king, too, had thought it better to leave, and those of the citizens of the capital who could, followed the royal examples. The students,
even those who had free room and board, sought refuge in the country. One of the last of the students to leave—he lived at Borchs Collegium near the Round Tower—departed from the stricken town early one morning. It was two o’clock; on his back he carried a knapsack, which had more books in it than clothes.
A damp fog hung over the city. The streets were empty. On some of the doors crosses had been painted; which meant that the pest was within or that all the inhabitants were dead. Even on the main thoroughfare, from the Round Tower down to the king’s castle, not a person was to be seen.
A large public hearse rumbled by. The driver swung his whip, the horses galloped. It was filled with corpses. The young student took a sponge soaked in ammonia out of a little brass box and held it up to his nostrils. From a tavern in one of the narrow streets the noise of hysterical laughter and drunken singing could be heard. It was frightful: people were drinking to forget their fear, to forget that the pest stood outside the door, beckoning them to take their places on the hearse among the dead. The student had reached the pier near the castle. A couple of small ships were moored there. One of them was getting ready to sail away from the plague-infested town.
“If God wills and the wind will blow, we are sailing to Grønsund near Falster,” the captain said, and asked the young man, who wanted passage, what his name was.
“Ludvig Holberg,” answered the student, and that name sounded then as common as any other name, for he was not yet the most famous of all Danish writers; he was just another student.
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.
The Complete Fairy Tales Page 108