The Pink Fairy Book. Andrew Lang
evening we had diamond-tea, which was the dew, and the whole day long we had sunshine, and the little birds used to tell us stories. We were very rich, because the other trees only dressed in summer, but we had green dresses in summer and in winter. Then the woodcutter came, and our family was split up. We have now the task of making light for the lowest people. That is why we grand people are in the kitchen.”
‘ “My fate was quite different,” said the iron pot, near which the matches lay.
‘ “Since I came into the world I have been many times scoured, and have cooked much. My only pleasure is to have a good chat with my companions when I am lying nice and clean in my place after dinner.”
‘ “Now you are talking too fast,” spluttered the fire.
‘ “Yes, let us decide who is the grandest!” said the matches.
‘ “No, I don’t like talking about myself,” said the pot.
‘ “Let us arrange an evening’s entertainment. I will tell the story of my life.
‘ “On the Baltic by the Danish shore-”
‘What a beautiful beginning!” said all the plates. “That’s a story that will please us all.”
‘And the end was just as good as the beginning. All the plates clattered for joy.
‘ “Now I will dance,” said the tongs, and she danced. Oh! how high she could kick!
‘The old chair-cover in the corner split when he saw her.
‘The urn would have sung but she said she had a cold; she could not sing unless she boiled.
‘In the window was an old quill pen. There was nothing remarkable about her except that she had been dipped too deeply into the ink. But she was very proud of that.
‘ “If the urn will not sing,” said she, “outside the door hangs a nightingale in a cage who will sing.”
‘ “I don’t think it’s proper,” said the kettle, “that such a foreign bird should be heard.”
‘ “Oh, let us have some acting,” said everyone. “Do let us!”
‘Suddenly the door opened and the maid came in. Everyone was quite quiet. There was not a sound. But each pot knew what he might have done, and how grand he was.
‘The maid took the matches and lit the fire with them. How they spluttered and flamed, to be sure! “Now everyone can see,” they thought, “that we are the grandest! How we sparkle! What a light-”
‘But here they were burnt out.’
‘That was a delightful story!’ said the sultana. ‘I quite feel myself in the kitchen with the matches. Yes, now you shall marry our daughter.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said the sultan, ‘you shall marry our daughter on Monday.’ And they treated the young man as one of the family.
The wedding was arranged, and the night before the whole town was illuminated.
Biscuits and gingerbreads were thrown among the people, the street boys stood on tiptoe crying hurrahs and whistling through their fingers. It was all splendid.
‘Now I must also give them a treat,’ thought the merchant’s son. And so he bought rockets, crackers, and all the kinds of fireworks you can think of, put them in his trunk, and flew up with them into the air.
Whirr-r-r, how they fizzed and blazed!
All the Turks jumped so high that their slippers flew above their heads; such a splendid glitter they had never seen before.
Now they could quite well understand that it was the god of the Turks himself who was to marry the princess.
As soon as the young merchant came down again into the wood with his trunk he thought, ‘Now I will just go into the town to see how the show has taken.’
And it was quite natural that he should want to do this.
Oh! what stories the people had to tell!
Each one whom he asked had seen it differently, but they had all found it beautiful.
‘I saw the Turkish god himself,’ said one. ‘He had eyes like glittering stars, and a beard like foaming water.’
‘He flew away in a cloak of fire,’ said another. They were splendid things that he heard, and the next day was to be his wedding day.
Then he went back into the wood to sit in his trunk; but what had become of it? The trunk had been burnt. A spark of the fireworks had set it alight, and the trunk was in ashes. He could no longer fly, and could never reach his bride.
She stood the whole day long on the roof and waited; perhaps she is waiting there still.
But he wandered through the world and told stories; though they are not so merry as the one he told about the matches.
The Snow-man
Translated from the German of Hans Andersen.
‘How astonishingly cold it is! My body is cracking all over!’ said the Snow-man. ‘The wind is really cutting one’s very life out! And how that fiery thing up there glares!’ He meant the sun, which was just setting. ‘It sha’n’t make me blink, though, and I shall keep quite cool and collected.’
Instead of eyes he had two large three-cornered pieces of slate in his head; his mouth consisted of an old rake, so that he had teeth as well.
He was born amidst the shouts and laughter of the boys, and greeted by the jingling bells and cracking whips of the sledges.
The sun went down, the full moon rose, large, round, clear and beautiful, in the dark blue sky.
‘There it is again on the other side!’ said the Snow-man, by which he meant the sun was appearing again. ‘I have become quite accustomed to its glaring. I hope it will hang there and shine, so that I may be able to see myself. I wish I knew, though, how one ought to see about changing one’s position. I should very much like to move about. If I only could, I would glide up and down the ice there, as I saw the boys doing; but somehow or other, I don’t know how to run.’
‘Bow-wow!’ barked the old yard-dog; he was rather hoarse and couldn’t bark very well. His hoarseness came on when he was a house-dog and used to lie in front of the stove. ‘The sun will soon teach you to run! I saw that last winter with your predecessor, and farther back still with his predecessors! They have all run away!’
‘I don’t understand you, my friend,’ said the Snow-man. ‘That thing up there is to teach me to run?’ He meant the moon. ‘Well, it certainly did run just now, for I saw it quite plainly over there, and now here it is on this side.’
‘You know nothing at all about it,’ said the yard-dog. ‘Why, you have only just been made. The thing you see there is the moon; the other thing you saw going down the other side was the sun. He will come up again tomorrow morning, and will soon teach you how to run away down the gutter. The weather is going to change; I feel it already by the pain in my left hind-leg; the weather is certainly going to change.’
‘I can’t understand him,’ said the Snow-man; ‘but I have an idea that he is speaking of something unpleasant. That thing that glares so, and then disappears, the sun, as he calls it, is not my friend. I know that by instinct.’
‘Bow-wow!’ barked the