Part 1
HANS ANDERSEN’S FAIRY TALES
HANS:ANDERSEN’S FAIRY:TALES;WITH ILLUSTRATIONS:BY W:HEATH:ROBINSON
NEW:YORK HENRY:HOLT:&:CO. 1913
CONTENTS
PAGE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii
LIST OF COLOURED PLATES xi
THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER 2
TOMMELISE 52
THE SNOW QUEEN.
PART THE FIRST--WHICH TREATS OF THE MIRROR AND ITS FRAGMENTS 69
PART THE SECOND--A LITTLE BOY AND A LITTLE GIRL 72
PART THE THIRD--THE ENCHANTED FLOWER-GARDEN 80
PART THE FOURTH--THE PRINCE AND THE PRINCESS 90
PART THE FIFTH--THE LITTLE ROBBER-MAIDEN 99
PART THE SIXTH--THE LAPLAND WOMAN AND THE FINLAND WOMAN 107
PART THE SEVENTH--WHICH TREATS OF THE SNOW QUEEN’S PALACE, AND OF WHAT CAME TO PASS THEREIN 112
ELFIN-MOUNT 121
THE LITTLE MERMAID 133
THE STORKS 165
THE NIGHTINGALE 173
THE WILD SWANS 190
THE REAL PRINCESS 214
THE RED SHOES 218
THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES 229
THE SWINEHERD 238
THE FLYING TRUNK 247
THE LEAPING MATCH 258
THE SHEPHERDESS AND THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER 263
THE UGLY DUCKLING 271
THE NAUGHTY BOY 286
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The marsh king’s daughter 1
She understood the speech of birds 2
It was he who pulled her down 7
The Nile flood had retired 13
There was a little bird that beat its wings 27
Placed the golden circuit about his neck 35
Then she saw the storks 41
The swallow soared high into the air 51
‘Thou poor little thing,’ said the field-mouse 52
‘This is just the wife for my son,’ said the toad 56
Oh, how terrified was poor Tommelise 59
That was the greatest of pleasures 65
They carried the mirror from place to place 69
He chuckled with delight 71
She wore a large hat, with most beautiful flowers painted on it 79
Gerda knew every flower in the garden 87
Suddenly a large raven hopped upon the snow in front of her 94
Cabinet councillors were walking about barefooted 97
And the nearer they were to the door the prouder they looked 102
And flapped his black wings at the carriage till it was out of sight 106
The little robber-maiden 109
The snow queen 112
She ran on as fast as she could 115
She entered the large, cold, empty hall 117
Tailpiece 119
The elfin king’s housekeeper 120
The mer-king must be invited first 124
They felt quite as if they were at home 127
I will have thee myself to wife 130
The little mermaid 132
She was on the whole a sensible sort of lady 137
The youngest was the most lovely 140
They ate from their hands 148
Many an evening she rose to the place 155
When the sun arose she awoke 159
Father stork 164
‘Stork! stork! long-legged stork!’ 168
And fetch one for each of the boys 170
‘Oh! how pretty that is!’ he would say 172
Among the branches dwelt a nightingale 177
They admired the city, the palace, and the garden 179
The kitchen-maid 181
The chief imperial nightingale bringer 184
He was quite as successful as the real nightingale 187
The wild swans 189
So Elise took off her clothes and stepped into the water 195
And met an old woman with a basket full of berries 198
Not a boat was to be seen 201
There was only just room for her and them 204
I must venture to the churchyard 209
Tailpiece 212
I have scarcely closed my eyes the whole night through 213
The old king himself went out to open it 215
And the pea was preserved in the cabinet of curiosities 216
Karen 217
And Karen was dressed very neatly 220
Karen and the old lady walked to church 222
He sat there nodding at her 224
Dance she must, over field and meadow 226
Two rogues calling themselves weavers made their appearance 228
‘Oh, it is excellent!’ replied the minister 231
As if in the act of holding something up 233
So now the emperor walked under his high canopy 234
The two rogues 235
Tailpiece 236
The emperor’s daughter 237
All cares and sorrows were forgotten by him who inhaled its fragrance 239
And he wept like a child 241
‘Ach! du lieber Augustin’ 243
Up flew the trunk 246
The son lived merrily 248
He met a nurse 249
Will you tell us a story? asked the queen 252
‘But let it make us laugh,’ said the king 253
Their slippers flew about their ears 255
And thus the frog won the princess 257
The old councillor 259
‘Say nothing for the present,’ remarked the king 260
It may not be perfectly true 261
The shepherdess and the chimney-sweeper 262
Heading 263
Tailpiece 269
The poor duckling was scorned by all 270
He came to a large moor 275
And the cat said, ‘Can you purr?’ 280
And every one said, ‘The new one is the best’ 283
Beware of him, dear child! 285
THE END 289
LIST OF COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS
‘The bud opened into a full-blown flower, in the middle of which lay a beautiful child’ _Frontispiece_
‘She stood at the door and begged for a piece of barley-corn’ _Facing page_ 56
‘Yes! I will go with thee, said Tommelise, and she seated herself on the bird’s back’ ” 64
‘The swing moves and the bubbles fly upward with bright ever-changing colours’ ” 84
‘He did not come to woo her, he said, he had only come to hear the wisdom of the princess’ ” 94
‘Round and round they went, such whirling and twirling’ ” 126
‘She put the statue in her garden’ ” 134
‘With the rest of the children of air, soared high above the rosy cloud’ ” 162
‘We will bring him two little ones, a brother and a sister’ ” 170
‘Then began the nightingale to sing’ ” 176
‘The peasant’s wife sat on Sundays at the door of her cottage reading her hymn-book’ ” 190
‘Princesses he found in plenty, but whether they were real princesses it was impossible for him to decide’ ” 214
‘She sat down one day and made out of some old pieces of red cloth a pair of little shoes’ _Opposite page_ 218
‘The Swineherd scolded and the rain poured down’ ” 244
‘She sat the live-long day upon the roof of her palace, expecting him’ ” 256
‘He jumped down from the old man’s lap and danced around him on the floor’ ” 286
THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER
The storks tell their young ones ever so many fairy tales, all of them from the fen and the moss. Generally the tales are suited to the youngsters’ age and understanding. The baby birds are pleased if they are told just ‘kribly, krably, plurry-murry!’ which they think wonderful; but the older ones will have something with more sense in it, or, at the least, a tale about themselves. Of the two oldest and longest tales which have been told among the storks, one we all know--that about Moses, who was placed by his mother in an ark on the waters of the Nile, was found by the king’s daughter, and then was taught all learning, and became a great man, and no one knows where he was buried. Everybody has heard that tale.
But the other story is not known at all even now; perhaps because it is really a chimney-corner tale. It has been handed down by mother-stork to mother-stork for hundreds of years, and each in turn has told it better, till now we are telling it best of all.
The first pair of storks who knew it had their summer quarters on a Viking’s log-house by the moor in Wendsyssel, which is in the county of Hjörring, near Skagen in Jutland, if we want to be accurate. To this day there is still an enormous great moss there. You can read all about it in your geography book. The moss lies where was once the bottom of the sea, before the great upheaval of the land; and now it stretches for miles, surrounded on all sides by watery meadows and quivering bog, with turf-moss cloudberries and stunted trees growing. A fog hangs over it almost continually, and till about seventy years ago wolves were still found there. It may certainly be called a wild moor, and you can imagine what lack of paths and what abundance of swamp and sea was there thousands of years ago. In that waste man saw ages back just what he sees to-day. The reeds were just as high, with the same kind of long leaves and purplish-brown, feathery flowers as they have now; the birches stood with white bark and fine, loose-hung leaves just as they now stand; and for the living creatures that came there, why, the fly wore its gauze suit of just the same cut as now, and the colour of the stork’s dress was white and black, with red stockings. On the other hand, the men of that time wore different clothes from those we wear. But whoever it was, poor peasant or free hunter, that trod on the quagmire, it happened thousands of years ago just as it does to-day--in he went and down he sank, down to the Marsh King, as they called him, who reigned beneath in the great Moss Kingdom. He was called also the Mire King, but we will call him by the stork’s name for him--Marsh King. People know very little about how he governed, but perhaps that is just as well.
Near to the moss, and right in the Liim Fjord, stood the Viking’s log-house, with paved cellar and tower two storeys high. On the roof the storks had built their nest. Mother-stork sat on her eggs, and was positive they would turn out well.
One evening father-stork had been out for a long time, and when he came home he seemed excited and flurried.
‘I’ve dreadful news for you!’ he said to mother-stork.
‘Don’t get excited,’ said she. ‘Remember I’m sitting on my eggs, and I might be upset by it, and then the eggs would suffer.’
‘You must know it!’ he answered. ‘She has come here, our landlord’s daughter in Egypt! She has ventured on the journey here, and she is lost!’
‘Why, she is of fairy descent! Tell me all about it; you know I can’t bear to wait at this time, when I’m sitting.’
‘Listen, mother. It’s as you told me. She has believed what the doctor said, that the moor-flowers here could do her sick father good, and so she has flown here in a feather-dress with the other winged princesses, who have to come to the north every year to bathe and renew their youth. She has come, and she is lost!’
‘You’re getting too long-winded!’ said mother-stork. ‘The eggs may be chilled! I can’t bear to be excited!’
‘I have watched,’ said father-stork, ‘and in the evening, when I went into the reeds, where the quagmire is able to bear me, there came three swans. Something in the way they flew told me, “Watch; that isn’t a real swan; it’s only swan feathers.” You know the feeling, mother, as well as I do; you can tell if it is right.’
‘Yes, certainly,’ said she; ‘but tell me about the princess. I’m tired of hearing about the swan’s feathers.’
‘Here, in the middle of the moor, you know,’ said father-stork, ‘is a kind of lake; you can see a part of it if you stand up. There, by the reeds and the green quagmire, lies a great elder-stump. The three swans lighted on it, flapped their wings, and looked round them. Then one of them threw off her swan’s plumage, and I saw it was our own princess, of our house in Egypt. Then she sat down, and she had no other covering than her own long, black hair. I heard her ask the two others to take great care of her swan-skin while she plunged under the water to gather a flower which she thought she saw. They nodded, and lifted up the loose feather-dress. “I wonder what they mean to do with it,” said I to myself; and no doubt she asked them the same. And she got an answer, something she could see for herself. They flew aloft with her feather-dress! “Sink down,” they cried; “you shall never fly in the swan-skin again; never see Egypt again! Stay in the moss!” And so they tore her feather-dress into a hundred pieces, till the feathers flew about as if it was snowing, and off flew the two good-for-nothing princesses.’
‘Oh, how dreadful!’ said mother-stork. ‘I can’t bear to hear it. But, tell me, what else happened?’
‘Our princess moaned and wept. Her tears fell on the elder-stump, and it was quite moved, for it was the Marsh King himself, who lives in the quagmire. I saw the stump turn itself, so it wasn’t only a trunk, for it put out long, muddy boughs like arms. Then the unhappy girl was frightened, and sprang aside into the quivering marsh, which will not bear me, much less her. In at once she sank, and down with her went the elder-stump--it was he who pulled her down. Then a few big black bubbles, and no trace of her left. She is engulfed in the marsh, and will never return to Egypt with her flower. You couldn’t have borne to see it, mother!’
‘You shouldn’t have told me anything of the sort just now; it may affect the eggs. The princess can take good care of herself. She’ll get help easily enough. Had it been you or I, there would have been an end of us.’
‘However, I’ll go day by day to see about it,’ said father-stork; and so he did.
The days and months went by. He saw at last one day that right from the bottom of the marsh a green stalk pushed up till it reached the surface of the water. Out of it grew a leaf, that grew wider and wider, and close to it a bud put out. Then one morning, as the stork was flying over it, it opened, with the sun’s warmth, into a full-blown flower, in the middle of which lay a beautiful child, a little girl, as if she were fresh from the bath. So like was the child to the princess from Egypt, that at first the stork believed it to be herself turned a child again. But when he thought it over, he decided that it was more likely to be the child of the princess and the Marsh King, and that was why she was lying in a water lily.
‘She mustn’t be left lying there,’ thought father-stork, ‘and there are too many already in my nest. But I have it! The Viking’s wife has no children, and she has often wished for a little one. Yes, I get the name for bringing the babies; I will do it in sober truth for once! I’ll fly to the Viking’s wife with the child. They’ll be delighted!’
So the stork took the little girl, flew to the log-house, made a hole with his beak in the window, with panes made of bladder, laid the child on the bosom of the Viking’s wife, and flew away
to mother-stork to tell her all about it. Her young ones heard it too, for they were now old enough.
‘Listen; the princess is not dead. She has sent her little one up, and the child has a home found for her.’
‘Yes, so I said from the first,’ said mother-stork. ‘Now think a little about your own children. It’s almost time for our journey. I begin to feel a tingling under my wings. The cuckoo and the nightingale are off already, and I hear the quails chattering about it, and saying that we shall soon have a favourable wind. Our young ones are quite fit for training, I’m sure.’
Glad indeed was the Viking’s wife when she woke in the morning to find the beautiful little child near her side. She kissed and fondled it, but it screamed with passion, and threw out its arms and legs, and seemed utterly miserable. At last it cried itself to sleep, and there it lay, one of the prettiest babies you could set eyes on.
The Viking’s wife was so happy, so gay, so well, that she could not but hope that her husband and his men would return as suddenly as the little one had come, and so she and all her household busied themselves to get everything into order. The long coloured tapestries, which she and her maidens had woven with figures of their gods--Odin, Thor, Freya, as they were called--were hung up; the slaves were set to polish the old shields used for decoration; cushions were arranged on the benches, and dry wood placed on the hearth in the middle of the hall, so that the fire could be lit in a moment. The Viking’s wife took her share in the work, so that by the evening she was very tired, and slept soundly.
When she woke towards daybreak she was terribly frightened. The little child had vanished! She sprang up, lighted a brand, and looked everywhere around. There, just at the foot of the bed where she had lain, was, not a baby, but a great ugly toad! In utter disgust at it she took a heavy stick to kill it, but the creature looked at her with such wonderfully sad eyes that she could not destroy it. Once more she gazed round; the toad uttered a faint, mournful croak. She started, and sprang from the bedside to the window, and opened it. At that moment the sun rose, and cast its rays upon the bed and upon the great toad. All at once it seemed that the creature’s wide mouth shrank, and became small and rosy; the limbs filled out into the most charming shape. It was her own beautiful babe that lay there, not the hideous reptile!
‘What is this?’ cried the dame. ‘Was it an ill dream? Yes, there is my own sweet elfin child lying there!’ She kissed it, and pressed it to her heart; but it fought and bit like a wild kitten!
The Viking, however, did not come that day, nor the next; for though he was on his way, the wind was against him as it blew to the south for the storks. Fair wind for one is foul for the other.
In those two days and nights the Viking’s wife saw clearly how it was with her little child. And dreadful indeed was the spell that lay on it. By day it was as beautiful as an angel of light, but it had a bad, evil disposition. By night, on the other hand, it was a hideous toad, quiet, sad, with sorrowful eyes. It had two natures, which changed with its outward form. And so it was that the baby, brought by the stork, had by daylight its mother’s own rightful shape, but its father’s temper; while again, night made the kinship with him evident in the bodily form, in which, however, dwelt the mother’s mind and heart. Who could loose the spell cast by the power of witchcraft? The Viking’s wife was worn and distressed about it, and her heart was heavy for the unhappy being, of whose condition she did not think that she dared tell her husband if he came home then, for he would certainly follow the custom and practice of the time, and expose the poor child on the high-road for any one that liked to take away. The good dame had not the heart to do this: her husband should see the child only by daylight.
One morning the wings of storks were heard above the roof. More than a hundred pairs of the birds had rested themselves for the night after their heavy exercise, and they now flew up, preparatory to starting southwards.
‘All ready, and the wives and children?’ was their cry.
‘Oh, I’m so light,’ said the young storks. ‘My bones feel all kribly-krably, as if I was filled with live frogs! How splendid it is to have to go abroad!’
‘Keep up in the flight,’ said father and mother, ‘and don’t chatter so much; it tires the chest.’
And they flew.