All of this was told by the schoolmaster in our own time. He had collected and gathered it together from books and notes. It all lay hidden away in the drawer with many other writings.
“Rise and fall is the way of the world,” he said. “It’s a strange story.” And we do want to hear what happened to Marie Grubbe, but we mustn’t forget Hen-Grethe. She’s sitting in her fine henhouse in our own time. Marie Grubbe sat here in her time, but with a different disposition than old Hen-Grethe’s.
The winter passed, spring and summer too, and then the blustery autumn came again with clammy, cold fogs from the sea. It was a lonely life, a boring life there in the castle.
Marie Grubbe took her gun and went out on the heath. She shot hares and foxes and whatever birds she could hit. More than once she met the nobleman Palle Dyre from Nørrebœk, who was also out with his gun and dogs. He was big and strong, and he boasted about that when they spoke together. He could have measured up to the deceased Mr. Brockenhuus from Egeskov in Fyn, whose strength was legendary. Palle Dyre had followed his example and had had an iron chain fastened to the top of his entrance portal. It had a hunting horn attached to it, and when he rode home through the gate, he grabbed the chain and lifted himself and his horse off the ground and blew the horn.
“Come see for yourself, Mrs. Marie,” he said. “There’s fresh air at Nørrebæk!”
It’s not recorded when she moved to his manor, but engravings on the candlesticks in Nørrebœk church say they were gifts of Palle Dyre and Marie Grubbe of Nørrebœk.
Palle Dyre had a big body and brute strength. He drank like a sponge and was like a barrel that could never be filled. He snored like a whole pen full of pigs and was red and puffy looking.
“He’s cunning and mischievous!” said Mrs. Palle Dyre, Grubbe’s daughter. She was soon bored with that life, but that didn’t help.
One day the table was set, and the food was getting cold. Palle Dyre was out hunting fox, and his wife was nowhere to be found. Palle Dyre came home about midnight, but Mrs. Dyre came neither at midnight nor in the morning. She had turned her back on Nørrebæk and had ridden away without so much as a word.
The weather was grey and wet. A cold wind was blowing, and a flock of black screaming birds flew over her, but they were not as homeless as she was. First she rode south, to the German border. She sold a pair of gold rings with precious stones and then headed towards the east. Then she turned and went west again. She had no goal, and was angry with everyone, even gracious God, so miserable was her spirit. Soon her body became so as well, and she could hardly lift her foot. The plover flew up from its tuft when she stumbled over it, and cried as it always cries: “Raah-ber raah-ber.” She had never stolen anything, but she had had eggs and young birds brought to her from tuft and tree when she was a little girl. She thought about that now.
From where she lay she could see the sand dunes. Fishermen lived over there on the shore, but she was too sick to reach them. The big white seagulls came flying over her and cried like the rooks, crows, and jackdaws cried over the garden at home. The birds flew quite close to her, and at last it seemed to her that they appeared coal black, but then everything went black for her.
When she opened her eyes again, she was being lifted and carried. A big, strong fellow had her in his arms. She looked right into his bearded face, and saw that he had a scar over his eye so that it looked like his eyebrow was divided into two parts. He carried her, as miserable as she was, to the ship, where he got angry words from the captain for his actions.
The next day the ship sailed. Marie Grubbe had not come ashore. Indeed, she was taken along. But did she come back? Well, when and where?
The schoolmaster knew about this too, but it was not a story he had put together himself. He knew the whole strange course of events from a credible old book, one that we could take out and read ourselves. The Danish storyteller Ludvig Holberg,1 who has written so many books worth reading and those funny comedies in which we recognize his time and its people, tells about Marie Grubbe in his letters, and about where and how he met her. It’s worth hearing, but we certainly won’t forget Hen-Grethe, who is sitting happy and satisfied in the magnificent henhouse.
The ship sailed off with Marie Grubbe. That’s where we left off.
Years and years passed.
It was 1711, and the plague was raging in Copenhagen. The queen of Denmark went to her home town in Germany. The king left the capital, and everyone who could manage it hurried away from the city. Students, even if they had free room and board, left town. One of them, the last one left in the so-called Borch residence, right by the residence close to the Round Tower, was now leaving too. It was two o’clock in the morning. He had his knapsack with him which had more books and written materials in it than clothing. There was a wet, clammy fog hanging over the city, and not a person was to be seen on the street where he walked. Crosses had been posted on doors and gates round about, which meant that there was plague inside or that the people had died. There weren’t any people to be seen on the wider, curving Kjød-manger street, as it was called, either—the street that goes from the Round Tower down to the King’s castle. Then a big hearse went rumbling by. The driver was cracking his whip, and the horses galloped. The wagon was full of bodies. The young student held his hand to his face and smelled the strong alcohol that he carried on a sponge in a little brass box. From a pub in one of the alleys came raucous singing and cheerless laughter from people who were drinking the night away in order to forget that the plague was at their door and wanted to add them to the hearse with the other dead. The student headed towards the bridge by the castle where there were a couple of small boats. One was just pulling away to escape the infested city.
“If God allows us to live, and we have a good wind, we’re headed to Grønsund by Falster,” said the captain and asked the student, who wanted to go along, for his name.
“Ludvig Holberg,” said the student, and the name sounded like any other name. Now it resounds as one of the proudest names in Denmark, but then he was just a young, unknown student.
The ship sailed past the castle. It wasn’t quite light yet when it came into the open sea. A light breeze blew and the sail swelled. The young student sat with his face to the fresh wind and fell asleep, which wasn’t really advisable.
By the third morning the ship was already lying off Falster.
“Do you know a place I can stay here that’s not too expensive?” Holberg asked the captain.
“I think you could do well with the ferryman’s wife at Borrehuset,” he answered. “If you want to be especially courteous, her name is Mother Søren Sørensen Møller. But she might get angry if you are too high-class with her. Her husband was arrested for some misdeed, so she drives the ferry herself. She certainly has the fists for it!”
The student took his knapsack and walked to the ferry house. The living room door was not locked, the latch opened, and he walked into a paved room where a sleeping bench with a huge pelt comforter was the most noticeable thing. A white hen with chicks was tied to the bench and had tipped over the water dish so water was spilled all over the floor. There was no one in this room, or the little chamber next to it except a baby in a cradle. The ferry was on its way back, and there was only one person in it. It wasn’t easy to say if it was a man or a woman. The person had a big cloak wrapped around itself and a man’s hat with ear flaps, but tied under the chin like a woman’s hat. The boat docked.
It was a woman who came into the room. She looked pretty big when she straightened up and had two proud eyes under black eyebrows. It was mother Søren, the ferryman’s wife. Rooks, crows, and jackdaws would call her by another name that we would know better.
She looked sullen and didn’t seem to like to talk, but this much was said and decided—the student bargained for room and board for an undetermined time—while things were so bad in Copenhagen.
One or another pair of decent citizens from the nearby town were in the habit of frequent
ing the ferry house. Frands the knife-maker and Sivert the sack-peeper2 were two of them. They drank a pint of beer in the ferry house and talked with the young student. He was a competent young man, who understood practical things, as they called it. He also read Greek and Latin and knew about learned things.
“The less you know, the less you’re burdened,” said Mother Søren.
“You have a hard life,” said Holberg one day, when she was washing her clothes in warm soapy lye water, and had to chop wood stumps into firewood herself.
“Leave me to it,” she answered.
“Have you had to work so hard from childhood on?”
“I guess you can read that in my hands,” she said and held out two quite small but hard, strong hands with bitten nails. “You are so learned, you can read these.”
Christmas time brought a strong snowstorm. It became very cold, and the wind blew as if it were washing people in the face with nitric acid. Mother Søren didn’t let it affect her. She threw her cloak around her and pulled the hat down over her head. It became dark in the house early in the afternoon. She laid wood and peat in the fire and sat down to darn her stockings. There was no one else to do it. Towards evening she spoke more to the student than she was in the habit of doing. She talked about her husband.
“He accidentally killed a man, a captain from Dragør, and has to work in irons for three years on Holmen. He’s just a common sailor, so the law must take its course.”
“The law also applies to the higher classes,” said Holberg.
“Do you think so?” said Mother Søren and looked into the fire. But then she started talking again. “Have you heard about Kai Lykke who ordered one of his churches to be torn down? And when Pastor Mads thundered about it from the pulpit, Lykke had him thrown in irons, and sentenced him to lose his head, and lose it he did. That was not accidental, and yet Kai Lykke walked free as air!”
“He was in the right according to the views of that time,” said Holberg. “But that time is past now.”
“You can make fools believe that,” Mother Søren said. She got up and went into the chamber where “Lassy,” the little baby, lay. She picked her up, and laid her down again. Then she made up the bed on the bench for the student. He got the pelt comforter because he was more sensitive to cold than she was, even though he was born in Norway.
New Year’s Day was a clear sunny day. There had been a heavy frost so cold that the snow was frozen solid so you could walk on it. The church bells were ringing for services, and student Holberg wrapped his woolen cloak around him and went to town.
Rooks, crows, and jackdaws flew over the ferry house with cries and shrieks. You couldn’t hear the church bells over the squalling. Mother Søren was outside filing a brass kettle with snow to melt over the fire for drinking water. She looked up towards the flocks of birds, and thought her own thoughts.
Student Holberg went to church. On the way there and coming back he went by Sivert the sack-peeper’s house at the gate and was invited in for a mug of warm beer with syrup and ginger. The talk fell to Mother Søren, but the sack-peeper didn’t know much about her. Nobody did. She wasn’t from Falster, he said. She had evidently had a little money once. Her husband was an ordinary sailor with a hot temper. He had beat a captain from Dragør to death. “He whips his old lady too, and yet she defends him.”
“I wouldn’t tolerate such treatment!” said the sack-peeper’s wife. “But I come from a better class. My father was a royal stocking weaver.”
“And therefore you also married a royal civil servant,” said Holberg and made a deep bow to her and the sack-peeper.
It was Twelfth Night Eve.3 Mother Søren lit for Holberg a Twelfth Night light, that is to say, three tallow candles she had dipped herself.
“One candle for each man!” said Holberg.
“Each man?” said the woman and stared hard at him.
“Each of the wise men from the east,” said Holberg.
“Oh, them,” she said and was quiet for a long time. But in that Twelfth Night he learned more about her than he had known before.
“You care about the man you’re married to,” said Holberg, “but people say that he mistreats you.”
“That only concerns me,” she answered. “Those blows could have done me some good as a child. I guess I get them now because of my sins, but I know what good he has done for me.” She stood up. “When I lay on the open heath, and no one cared about me, except maybe the rooks and crows who wanted to peck at me, he carried me in his arms and received only angry words for bringing me to the ship. I wasn’t made for illness. So I got well. Everyone has his own way, and Søren has his. You can’t judge the horse by the halter. I have lived more happily with him than with the one they call the most courteous and distinguished of all the king’s subjects. I was married to Governor Gyldenløve, the king’s half-brother. Later I married Palle Dyre. It makes no difference. Each has his own way, and I have mine. That was a long talk, but now you know it!” And she left the room.
It was Marie Grubbe! How strange were her changes of fortune! She didn’t live many more Twelfth Nights. Holberg wrote that she died in June of 1716, but what he didn’t write, because he didn’t know, was that when Mother Søren, as she was called, lay in her coffin in the ferry house, a flock of big black birds flew over. They didn’t shriek, as if they knew that silence belongs to funerals. As soon as she was buried, the birds were no longer seen, but the same evening enormous flocks of rooks, crows, and jackdaws were sighted in Jutland, by the old castle. Each screamed louder than the next, as if they had something to tell. Maybe it was about him who as a little boy had taken their eggs and downy chicks, the farmer’s son, who ended up in irons on the king’s island; and about the noble maiden, who ended up a ferryman’s wife at Grønsund. “Bra! Bra!”4 they cried.
And their relatives cried “Bra, bra!” when the old castle was torn down. “They are crying it yet, and there’s nothing left to cry over,” said the schoolteacher as he related it. “The family has died out. The castle was torn down, and where it stood now stands the stately henhouse with the gilded weathervane, and with old Hen-Grethe inside. She is so happy to have her lovely house, and if she hadn’t come here, she’d be in the poorhouse.”
The doves cooed above her. The turkeys gobbled round about, and the ducks quacked. “No one knew her,” they said. “She has no family. It’s an act of mercy that she’s here. She has neither a drake father nor a hen mother, and no offspring.”
But she did have a family. She didn’t know it, nor did the schoolmaster, no matter how much material he had in his table drawer. But one of the old crows knew and told about it. From its mother and grandmother it had heard about Hen-Grethe’s mother and grandmother, whom we know too, from the time she rode as a child over the drawbridge and looked around proudly as if the whole world and all its bird nests were hers. We saw her on the heath by the sand dunes, and finally at the ferry house. Her grandchild, the last of the family, had come home again where the old castle had stood and the wild black birds had screamed. But she sat amongst tame birds, known to them and knowing them. Hen-Grethe had nothing more to wish for. She was happy to die, and old enough to die.
“Grave! Grave!” croaked the crows.
And Hen-Grethe got a good resting place, but no one knows where, except the old crow, unless she’s dead too.
And now we know the story about the old castle, the old kin-ships, and all of Hen-Grethe’s family.
NOTES
1 Often called the father of Danish and Norwegian literature, Ludwig Holberg (1684-1754) was the most important intellectual and writer in eighteenth-century Denmark and Norway; he wrote drama, comedies, history, and essays on a wide variety of topics.
2 Reference to a nickname for tollgate attendants who collected tax on products at town gates. The name comes from Ludvig Holberg’s play Den politiske Kandestøber (The Political Tinker).
3 The twelfth day after Christmas is called Epiphany. The evening before (s
ometimes the evening of) this day is called Twelfth Night.
4 In Danish bra means “good” or “fine.” Andersen is very fond of onomatopoeia.
EVERYTHING IN ITS PROPER PLACE
IT WAS OVER A hundred years ago.
Back in the forest beside the big lake there was an old manor house, and around it there was a deep moat full of rushes and reeds. Right by the bridge to the entrance gate stood an old weeping willow, whose branches leaned over the reeds.
From the high banked road she heard horns and the tramping of horses so the little goose girl hurried to get her geese off the bridge before the hunting party came galloping over. They came so fast that she quickly had to jump up on one of the high stones by the bridge to avoid being run down. She was still half a child, thin and delicate, but with a blessed expression on her face and two pretty clear eyes, but the lord of the manor didn’t look at that. At the great pace he was traveling, he turned his whip in his hand and in coarse merriment, he poked her with the shaft right in the chest so she fell over backwards.
“Everything in its proper place!” he yelled, “into the dirt you go!” and then he laughed. It was supposed to be so funny, and the others laughed too. The whole party was yelling and screeching, and the hunting dogs were barking. It really was “rich birds come a’whistling,” but God knows how rich he still was then.