“Well, I’d better also do something,” the merchant’s son thought, and so he bought some rockets, caps, and all the fireworks you could think of, put them in his trunk, and flew up in the air with it.
Whoosh, how it went! And how it popped and puffed!
All the Turks jumped in the air at this so that their slippers flew around their ears. They had never seen such a sight in the sky before. Now they understood that it really was the Turkish God himself who was going to marry the princess.
As soon as the merchant’s son landed in the forest with his trunk, he thought, “I’ll just go into town to find out how that looked to everyone.” And it was understandable that he wanted to do that.
Well, how the people were talking! Every single one he asked about it had seen it in his own way, but it had been beautiful for all of them.
“I saw the Turkish God himself,” one said. “He had eyes like shining stars and a beard like foaming water.”
“He flew in a coat of fire,” another one said, “and the most gorgeous little angels peeked out from the folds.”
Yes, he heard lovely things, and the next day he was getting married.
Then he went back to the forest to put himself in his trunk—but where was it? The trunk had burned up. A spark from the fireworks had remained, had started a fire, and the trunk was in ashes. He couldn’t fly any longer and couldn’t get to his bride.
She stood all day on the roof waiting. She’s still waiting, but he’s wandering the world telling fairy tales. But they aren’t any longer so lighthearted as the one he told about the matches.
NOTE
1. Danish shares with many European languages formal and informal forms of direct address. “Du” is informal.
THE WILL-O’-THE-WISPS ARE IN TOWN
THERE WAS A MAN who at one time had known so many new fairy tales, but now they had come to an end, he said. The tale used to come by its own accord, but now it didn’t knock at his door anymore. And why didn’t it come? Well, it’s true enough that the man hadn’t thought about it for a whole year, had not expected it to come knocking, and it evidently hadn’t been around there either, since there was war without, and within the sorrow and distress that war carries with it.
The stork and the swallow returned from their long voyages. They didn’t think of any danger, but when they arrived their nests had been burned. People’s houses were burned, gates broken, or just entirely gone. The enemy’s horses trampled on the old graves. They were hard, dark times, but even those have an end.
And now it was over, they said, but the fairy tale still hadn’t come knocking, nor was it heard from.
“I guess it’s dead and gone along with many others,” said the man. But the fairy tale never dies!
And over a year passed, and he longed sorely for it.
“I wonder if the fairy tale will ever come knocking again?” And he remembered so vividly all the many shapes in which it had come to him. Sometimes young and beautiful, like spring itself, a lovely little girl with a wreath of woodruff in her hair and beech branches in her hand. Her eyes shone like deep forest lakes in the clear sunshine. Sometimes it had also come as a peddler, opened its pack of wares and let silk ribbons wave with verses and inscriptions from old memories. But still, it was most beautiful when it came as a little old woman with silvery white hair and with eyes so big and wise. She had told about the oldest times, long before princesses spun gold while dragons and serpents lay outside keeping watch. She told stories so vividly that the eyes of everyone who listened would go dim, and the floor would become black with human blood. Awful to see and to hear, and yet so delightful because it all happened so very long ago.
“I wonder if she’ll never come again!” the man said, and stared towards the door until he saw black spots in front of his eyes and black spots on the floor. He didn’t know if it was blood or mourning crepe from the heavy, dark days.
And as he sat, it occurred to him that maybe the fairy tale had gone into hiding, like the princesses in the old folk tales, and now had to be sought out. If she were found, she would shine with a new splendor, more beautiful than ever before.
“Who knows? Maybe she lies hidden in the littered straw that’s tilted at the edge of the well. Careful! Careful! Maybe she has hidden in a withered flower that’s lying in one of the big books on the shelf.”
And the man went to the shelf and opened one of the newest instructive books, but there was no flower there. It was about Holger the Dane, and the man read that the entire story had been invented and put together by a monk in France. That it was just a novel that had been “translated and published in the Danish language.” And that Holger the Dane had not existed at all and so would certainly never come again, as the Danes had sung about and so wanted to believe. Holger the Dane was just like William Tell, idle talk, not to be relied upon, and all this was written in this most scholarly book.
“Well, I believe what I believe,” said the man. “There’s no smoke without fire.”
And he shut the book, put it back on the shelf, and went over to the fresh flowers on the windowsill. Maybe the fairy tale had hidden there in the red tulip with the golden yellow edges, in the fresh rose, or the vibrantly colored camellia. Sunshine lay amongst the leaves, but no fairy tale.
“The flowers that were here during the sad times were all much more beautiful, but every one of them was cut off, bound into wreaths, and laid into coffins and over the folded flag. Maybe the fairy tale is buried with those flowers! But the flowers would have known about that, and the coffin would have sensed it. The earth would have sensed it too, and every little blade of grass that shoots forth would have told about it. The fairy tale never dies!”
“Maybe it was even here and knocked, but who at that time would have had an ear for it, or even a thought about it? We looked dark and heavily, almost angrily, at the sunshine of the spring, the twittering of birds, and all the pleasant greenery. Our tongues couldn’t sing the favorite old folk songs. They were put away with so many other things that had been dear to our hearts. The fairy tale could very well have knocked, but not have been heard, not welcomed, and so it just went away.”
“I will go out and find it. Into the country, out in the forest, along the sweeping seashore!”
An old manor house can be found out there with red brick walls, corbiestep gables, and a fluttering flag on the tower. The nightingale sings under the finely fringed beech leaves while it looks at the garden’s blooming apple blossoms and thinks they are roses. The bees are busy here in the summertime, and they swarm around their queen in buzzing song. The storms of autumn can tell about the wild hunt, about mankind, and the leaves of the forest that blow away. At Christmas time the wild swans sing from the open sea, while inside the old manor, by the side of the stove, people are in the mood for hearing songs and old stories.
Down in the old part of the garden, where the big avenue of wild chestnut trees lures you into the shade, the man who was seeking the fairy tale was walking. The wind had once whispered to him here of Valdemar Daa and His Daughters. The dryad in the tree, none other than Mother fairy tale herself, had told him The Old Oak Tree’s Dream here. In grandmother’s time trimmed hedges stood here, but now only ferns and nettles grew there. They spread over the abandoned remains of old statuary. Moss grew from their stony eyes, although they could see just as well as before, but the man looking for the fairy tale couldn’t. He couldn’t see the fairy tale. Where was it? Above him and over the old trees hundreds of crows flew crying, “Fly from here, from here!”
And he walked from the garden over the manor’s moat, and into the grove of alders. There was a little six-sided house here and a hen and duck yard. In the middle of the room sat the old woman who ruled all of this. She knew about every egg that was laid, and every chick that came from the egg, but she was not the fairy tale the man was looking for. She could prove that with a Christian baptism certificate and a vaccination certificate, both lying in the chest of drawers.