“ ‘Oh!’ whispered Anna Dorthea. ‘No bells rang when you died, Valdemar Daae. No poor school children sang while they carried the former master of Borreby to his grave! … Oh, oh, all things must end; misery and sorrow also pass. My sister Ida married a serf. My father took that hard: his daughter married to an unfree man, a slave who had to obey his master. Father is dead and so is Ida, both rest now under the earth. Oh yes, oh yes. But for me, poor wretched thing, everything is not yet over. Oh, Christ, you who are so rich, give me peace. Let me die.’
“That was Anna Dorthea’s prayer as she lay sick and old on her bed in the little hut that was allowed to stand for the sake of the stork’s nest.
“The bravest of the sisters I took care of myself,” declared the wind. “She got her clothes cut to fit her nature and took hire on board a ship. Tight-lipped she was and sour, although willing enough to do her work. But she couldn’t climb the rigging. I blew her overboard, before anyone found out she was a woman. I think I did well.
“It was on Easter morning that Valdemar Daae thought he had discovered the secret of making gold, and it was on Easter morning that Anna Dorthea died. I heard her singing the last hymn she was ever to sing. There was no windowpane or window in her hut, just a hole in the wall. The sun rose and filled that hole like a great lump of gold. What splendor and brilliance! Her eyes grew blind and her heart stopped just at that moment. But that they would have done even if it had been a cloudy day and the sun had not shone on her.
“The stork had given her a roof over her head until she died, and I sang at her grave. I had sung at her father’s grave, too; I know where both the graves are and that is more than anyone else does. A new age, a time of change, has come. Old roads are overgrown with weeds and new ones cross old graves. Soon the steam engine, with its endless row of cars, will rush ahead over tombs and graves of people whose names are forgotten. Whoo! All will pass.… Whoo!
“That is the story of Valdemar Daae and his daughters. Let others tell it better if they can!” said the wind, turned, and was gone.
91
The Girl Who Stepped on Bread
I suppose you have heard about the girl who stepped on the bread in order not to get her shoes dirty, and how badly she fared. The story has been both written down and printed.
She was a poor child, but proud and arrogant; she had what is commonly called a bad character. When she was very little it had given her pleasure to tear the wings off flies, so they forever after would have to crawl. If she caught a dung beetle, she would stick a pin through its body; then place a tiny piece of paper where the poor creature’s legs could grab hold of it; and watch the insect twist and turn the paper, round and round, in the vain hope that, with its help, it could pull itself free of the pin.
“Look, the dung beetle is reading,” little Inger—that was her name—would scream and laugh. “Look, it is turning over the page.”
She did not improve as she grew up; in fact, she became worse. She was pretty, and that was probably her misfortune; otherwise, the world would have treated her rougher.
“A strong brine is needed to scrub that head,” her own mother said about her. “You stepped on my apron when you were small, I am afraid you will step on my heart when you grow older.”
And she did!
A job was found for her as a maid in a house out in the country. The family she worked for was very distinguished and wealthy. Both her master and mistress treated her kindly, more as if she were their daughter than their servant. Pretty she was and prettily was she dressed, and prouder and prouder she became.
After she had been in service for a year her mistress said to her, “You should go and visit your parents, little Inger.”
She went, but it was because she wanted to show off her fine dresses. When she came to the entrance of her village, near the little pond where the young men and girls were gossiping, she saw her mother sitting on a stone. The woman was resting, for she had been in the forest gathering wood, and a whole bundle of faggots lay beside her.
Inger was ashamed that she—who was so finely dressed—should have a mother who wore rags and had to collect sticks for her fire. The girl turned around and walked away, with irritation but no regret.
Half a year passed and her mistress said again, “You should go home for the day and visit your old parents. Here is a big loaf of white bread you can take along. I am sure they will be very happy to see you.”
Inger dressed in her very best clothes and put on her new shoes. She lifted her skirt a little as she walked and was very careful where she trod, so that she would not dirty or spoil her finery. That one must not hold against her; but when the path became muddy, and finally a big puddle blocked her way, she threw the bread into it rather than get her shoes wet. As she stepped on the bread, it sank deeper and deeper into the mud, carrying her with it, until she disappeared. At last, all that could be seen were a few dark bubbles on the surface of the puddle.
This is the manner in which the story is most often told. But what happened to the girl? Where did she disappear to? She came down to the bog witch! The bog witch is an aunt of the elves, on their father’s side. The elves everyone knows. Poems have been written about them and they have been painted, too. But about the bog witch most people don’t know very much.
When the mist lies over the swamps and bogs, one says, “Look, the bog witch is brewing!” It was into this very brewery that Inger sank, and that is not a place where it is pleasant to stay. A cesspool is a splendidly light and airy room in comparison to the bog witch’s brewery. The smell that comes from every one of the vats is so horrible that a human being would faint if he got even a whiff of it. The vats stand so close together that there is hardly room to walk between them, and if you do find a little space to squeeze through, then it is all filled with toads and slimy snakes. This is the place that Inger came to. The snakes and toads felt so cold against her body that she shivered and shook. But not for long. Inger felt her body grow stiffer and stiffer, until at last she was as rigid as a statue. The bread still stuck to her foot, there was no getting rid of it.
The bog witch was at home that day; the brewery was being inspected by the Devil’s great-grandmother. She is an ancient and very venomous old lady who never wastes her time. When she leaves home, she always takes some needlework with her. That day she was embroidering lies and crocheting thoughtless words that she had picked up as they fell. Everything she does is harmful and destructive. She knows how to sew, embroider, and crochet well, that old great-grandmother!
She looked at Inger, and then took out her glasses and looked at her a second time. “That girl has talent!” she declared. “I would like to have her as a souvenir of my visit. She is worthy of a pedestal in the entrance hall of my great-grandson’s palace.”
The bog witch gave Inger to the Devil’s great-grandmother. And that is the way she went to hell. Most people go straight down there, but if you are as talented as Inger, then you can get there via a detour.
The Devil’s entrance hall was an endless corridor that made you dizzy if you looked down it. Inger was not the only one to decorate this grand hall; the place was crowded with figures all waiting for the door of mercy to open for them, and they had long to wait. Around their feet, big fat spiders spun webs that felt like fetters and were as strong as copper chains, and they would last at least a thousand years. Every one of these immovable statues had a soul within it that was as restless as its body was rigid and stiff. The miser knew that he had forgotten the key to his money box in its lock and he could do nothing about it. Oh, it would take me much too long to explain and describe all the torments and tortures that they went through. Inger felt how horrible it was to stand there as a statue, her foot locked to the bread.
“That is what one gets for trying to keep one’s feet clean,” she said to herself. “Look how they are all staring at me!” That was true, they were all looking at the latest arrival, and their evil desires were mirrored in their eyes and spok
en without sound by their horrible lips. It was a monstrous sight!
“I, at least, am a pleasure to look at,” thought little Inger. “I have a pretty face and pretty clothes on.” She moved her eyes; her neck was too stiff to turn. Goodness me, how dirty she was! She had forgotten all the filth and slime she had been through in the bog witch’s brewery. All her clothes were so covered with mire that she looked as if she were dressed in mud. A snake had got into her hair and hung down her neck. And from the folds of her dress big toads looked up at her and barked like Pekinese dogs. It was all very unpleasant. But she comforted herself with the thought that the others didn’t look any better than she did.
But far worse than all this was the terrible hunger she felt. She couldn’t bend down and break off a piece of the bread she was stepping on. Her back was stiff and her arms and legs were stiff, her whole body was like a stone statue; only her eyes could move. They could turn all the way around, so that she looked inside herself and that, too, was an unpleasant sight. Then the flies came; they climbed all over her face, stepped back and forth across her eyes. She blinked to scare them away, but they couldn’t fly; their wings had been torn off. That was painful too, but the hunger was worse. Inger felt as if her stomach had eaten itself. She became more and more empty inside, horribly empty.
“If this is going to last long, then I won’t endure it!” she said to herself. But it didn’t stop, it kept on; and she had to endure it.
A tear fell on her head, rolled down her face and chest, and landed on the bread; and many more tears followed. Who was weeping because of little Inger? She had a mother up on earth, it was she who was weeping. Those tears that mothers shed in sorrow over their bad children always reach the children, but they do not help them, they only make their pain and misery greater. Oh, that terrible hunger did not cease. If only she could reach the bread she was stepping on. She felt as if everything inside her had eaten itself up, and she was a hollow shell in which echoed everything that was said about her up on earth. She could hear it all, and none of it was pleasant, every word was hard and condemning. Her mother wept over her, but she also said: “Pride goes before a fall! That was your misfortune, Inger! How you have grieved your poor mother!”
Everyone up on earth—her mother, too—knew about the sin she had committed, how she had stepped on the bread and disappeared into the mire. A shepherd had seen it happen, and he had told everyone about it.
“You have made me so miserable, Inger!” sighed her mother. “But that is what I expected would happen.”
“I wish I had never been born,” thought Inger. “That would have been much better. But it doesn’t help now that my mother cries.”
She heard her master and mistress, who had been like parents to her, talking. “She was a sinful child,” they said. “She did not appreciate God’s gifts but stepped on them; it will not be easy for her to find grace.”
“They should have been stricter,” thought Inger, “and shaken the nonsense out of me.”
She heard that a song had been made up about her, “The haughty girl who stepped on the bread to keep her pretty shoes dry.” It was very popular, everyone in the country sang it.
“Imagine that, one has to have it thrown in one’s face so often, and suffer so much for such a little sin,” thought Inger. “The others should also be punished for their sins. Then there would be a lot to punish! Uh! How I suffer!”
And her soul became as hard as or even harder than her shell. “How can one improve in such company as there is down here?” she thought. “But I don’t want to be good! Look how they stare!” And her soul was filled with hatred against all other human beings. “Now they have something to talk about up there. Oh, how I suffer!”
Every time that her story was told to some little child, Inger could hear it; and she never heard a kind word about herself, for children judge harshly. They would call her the “ungodly Inger” and say that she was disgusting, and even declare that they were glad that she was punished.
But one day, as hunger and anger were tearing at her insides, she heard her story being told to a sweet, innocent little girl, and the child burst out crying. She wept for the haughty, finery-loving Inger. “But won’t she ever come up to earth again?” she asked.
And the grownup who had told her the story said, “No, she will never come up on earth again.”
“But if she said she was sorry and she would never do it again?”
“But she won’t say she is sorry,” answered the grownup.
“I wish she would,” cried the little girl. “I would give my dollhouse, if she only could come back up on earth again. I think it must be so terrible for poor Inger.”
Those words did reach Inger’s heart and, for a moment, relieved her suffering. For this was the first time someone had said “poor Inger” and not added something about her sin. A little innocent child had cried for her sake and begged that she should be saved. She felt strange and would have liked to cry herself, but she could not weep, and that, too, was a torment.
As the years passed she heard little from the earth above her; she was talked about less and less. Down in hell’s entrance hall nothing ever changed. But one day she did hear a sigh and someone saying, “Inger! Inger! How you have made me suffer, but I thought you would.” That was her mother, she was dying.
Sometimes she heard her name mentioned by her old master and mistress; but they spoke kindly, especially her mistress. “I wonder if I will ever see you again, Inger! After all, one cannot be certain where one will go.”
But Inger was pretty certain that her kind old mistress would not end where she herself was.
Time passed: long and bitter years. When Inger, finally, again heard her name, she seemed to see above her, in the darkness of the endless hall, two bright stars shining; they were two kind eyes up on earth that now were closing. So many years had gone by that the little child who once had wept so bitterly because of “poor Inger” now was an old woman whom God had called up to Him. At that last moment when all her memories and thoughts of a long life passed through her mind, she remembered, too, that as a little child she had cried bitterly when she heard the story of Inger. In the moment before death, that which had happened so long ago was re-experienced so vividly by the old woman that she said aloud, “Oh, my Lord, have I not, like Inger, often stepped on Your gifts, and not even been aware that I have done it? Have I not, too, felt pride within me, and yet You have not deserted me. Do not leave me now!”
As the old woman’s eyes closed, the eyes of her soul opened for all that before had been hidden. Since Inger had been in her thoughts as she died, she now could see her in all her misery. At that sight, she burst into tears just as she had done as a child; in paradise she stood weeping because of Inger. Her tears and prayers echoed in the shell of the girl who stood as a statue in the Devil’s entrance hall. Inger’s tortured soul was overwhelmed by this unexpected love from above: one of God’s angels was crying for her. Why had this been granted her? Her tortured soul thought back upon its life on earth and remembered every deed it had done. The soul trembled and wept the tears that Inger had never shed. The girl understood that her folly had been her own; and in this moment of realization she thought, “Never can I be saved!”
No sooner had she had this thought than a light far stronger than that of a sunbeam shone from heaven down upon her. Far faster than the sun rays melt the snowman, or the snowflake disappears when it lands on a child’s warm mouth, did the statue of Inger melt and vanish. Where it had stood, a little bird flew up toward the world above.
Fear-ridden and full of shame, the bird hid in the darkest place it could find, a hole in an old crumbling wall. Its little body shivered. The bird was afraid of every living thing. It could not even chirp, for it was voiceless. It sat in the dark for a long time before it dared peek out and see the glory around it—for the world is, indeed, gloriously beautiful.
It was night; the moon was sailing in the sky and the air was fresh and mil
d. The bird could smell the fragrance of the trees and bushes. It glanced at its own feather dress and realized how lovely it was; everything in nature had been created with loving care. The bird would have liked to be able to express her thoughts in song; gladly would she have lifted her voice as the nightingale or the cuckoo does in spring, but she couldn’t. But God, who hears the silent worm’s hymn of praise, heard and understood hers, as He had David’s when they only existed in the poet’s heart and had not yet become words and melody.
Through days and weeks these soundless songs grew within the little bird; although they could not be expressed in words or music, they could be asserted in deeds.
Autumn passed and winter came, and the blessed Christmas feast drew near. The farmers hung a sheaf of oats on a pole in the yard so that the birds of the air should not go hungry on this day of Our Saviour’s birth.
When the sun rose Christmas morning, it shone on the sheaf of oats and all the twittering little birds that flew around it. At that moment the little lonesome bird that did not dare go near the others, but hid so much of the time in the little hole she had found in the old wall, uttered a single “Peep.” A thought, an idea, had come to her! She flew from her hiding place, and her weak little peep was a whole song of joy. On earth she was just another sparrow but up in heaven they knew who the bird was.
The winter was hard and harsh. The lakes were covered with ice, and the animals in the forest and the birds knew lean times; it was difficult to find food. The little bird flew along the highway. In the tracks made by the sleds she sometimes found a few grains of oats. At the places where the travelers had rested, she would sometimes find little pieces of bread and crumbs. She ate very little herself but called the other starving sparrows, so that they could eat. In town, she looked for the yards where a kind hand had thrown bread and grain for the hungry birds, and when she found such a place she would eat only a few grains and give all the rest away.