Fairy Tales

THE STORKS TELL THEIR young so many fairy tales, all from the bog and the marsh. They usually adapt the stories to age and apprehension. The youngest ones are satisfied if they say, “cribble crabble paddle waddle,” which they think is super. But the older ones want a deeper meaning, or at least something about the family. We all know one of the two oldest and longest stories that the storks have preserved—the one about Moses who was placed in the waters of the Nile by his mother. He was found by a princess, given a good upbringing, and became a great man even though we don’t know where he’s buried. That’s a well-known story!

The other story is not well known, maybe because it’s more a domestic story. This story has been passed from stork mother to stork mother for a thousand years, and each of them has told it better and better. And now we shall tell it best of all.

The first stork couple who experienced it and told about it had their summer home on a Viking log house by Vildmosen in Vendsyssel. That’s a great bog in Hjorring County, close to Skagen in Jutland, if we are to give a precise description. It’s still an enormously big bog. You can read about it in the Hjorring county description. It was once a sea bottom, but it heaved itself up. It stretches for miles in all directions, surrounded by damp meadows and ponds, peat bogs, cloudberry plants, and stunted trees. There’s almost always a fog hovering over the bogs, and seventy years ago there were still wolves there. It really deserves its name, “Wild Bog,” and you can imagine how wild it was, how much bog and water there were a thousand years ago! But for the most part, you saw the same things then that you see now. The reeds are the same height and had the same long leaves and purplish brown feathery flowers that they have now. The birch stood there with white bark and its fine airy leaves as it does now, and as far as living things that came there are concerned—well, the fly carried the same cut to his black funereal outfit as he does now, and the stork’s colors were white with black and red stockings. In contrast, the people had a different cut to their clothes then than now, but it happened the same for all of them, peasant or hunter—everyone—who walked onto the quagmire a thousand years ago, as it does today. They fell through and sank down to the bog king, as they called him, who rules in the great bog kingdom. You could also call him the swamp king, but we think it’s better to say bog king. And the storks called him that too. Very little is known about his reign, but that’s probably for the best.

Close to the bog, right by the Lim fjord, lay the Viking’s log house with a cellar of stone, a tower, and three floors of logs. The storks had built their nest at the top of the roof. The mother stork was lying on her eggs and was certain that all would go well.

One evening stork father was out later than usual, and when he came home, he looked ruffled and uneasy.

“I have something quite terrible to tell you,” he said to mother stork.

“Don’t do it!” she said. “Remember that I’m brooding. I could take injury from it, and that would affect the eggs.”

“You have to know about it,” he said. “The daughter of our host in Egypt has come up here. She dared to make the trip, and she has disappeared!”

“The one who’s related to the fairies? Oh, tell me! You know that I can’t stand being kept waiting when I’m brooding.”

“You see, mother, she came to believe what the doctor said, like you told me. She believes that the white water lilies here might help her sick father, and she flew here in swan-skin with the two other swan-skin princesses, who fly up here every year to bathe and be rejuvenated. She came, and she is gone!”

“You’re so long-winded,” said stork mother. “The eggs can catch cold! I can’t stand being kept in suspense!”

“I keep alert, you know,” said stork father, “and this evening, as I was walking in the reeds where the swamp can support me, three swans came flying. There was something about the flying style that told me: pay attention— these are not really swans— they are just swan-skins! You have a feeling about it, mother. Like me, you know what is real!”

“Of course,” she said, “but tell me about the princess. I am tired of hearing about swan-skins.”

“Well, here in the middle of the bog, you know, it’s like a lake,” said stork father. “You can see a little of it if you get up. By the reeds and the green quagmire there’s a big alder stump. The three swans landed on that, flapped their wings, and looked around. One of them threw off her swan-shape, and I recognized the princess of our house in Egypt. She sat with no other cape than her long black hair. I heard her ask the other two to take good care of the swan-skin while she dove under the water to pick the flower she thought she saw. They nodded and then rose up and took along the empty swan-skin. ‘I wonder what they are going to do with that,’ I thought, and she must have asked them the same thing because she got an answer, right in front of her eyes. They flew up in the air with her swan-skin. ‘Dive down,’ they shouted, ‘you’ll never fly in swanskin again, never see Egypt! Stay in the wild bog!’ and then they tore her swan-skin in hundreds of pieces so that the feathers were flying everywhere like in a snow storm. And the two wretched princesses flew away.”

“That’s ghastly!” said stork mother. “I can’t stand hearing about it—tell me what happened next!”

“The princess moaned and cried! The tears rolled down onto the alder stump, and then it moved—because it was the bog king himself! The one who lives in the bog. I saw how the stump turned, and then it wasn’t a stump any longer. Two long mossy branches reached up, like arms. The poor child was frightened and ran away into the quivering quagmire, but the bog can’t bear me, much less her, and so she sank right down. The alder trunk sank with her, for it was he who was pulling her down. Big black bubbles rose, and then there was no trace left. Now she is buried in the wild bog. She’ll never bring the flower back to Egypt. Oh, you wouldn’t have been able to stand the sight of this, mother!”

“You shouldn’t tell me things like this at such a time! It can affect the eggs. The princess will take care of herself, I’m sure. I suppose some one will help her. Now if it had been you or me, or one of ours, it would have been all over!”

“Well, I’ll keep a close eye on it,” said stork father, and he did.

And a long time passed.

Then one day he saw a green stalk shoot up deep from the bottom, and when it reached up to the surface of the water, a leaf grew out, wider and still wider. Close by there was a bud, and when the stork flew over it one morning, it opened in the strong rays of the sun, and right in the middle of it lay a lovely child, a little girl. She looked as if she had just gotten out of her bath. She resembled the princess from Egypt so much that at first the stork thought it was her, who had become little again. But when he thought about it, he realized it was more likely that she was the child of the princess and the bog king. That’s why she was lying in a water lily.

“She can’t remain lying there,” thought the stork, “and there are already so many of us in my nest. But I have an idea! The Viking’s wife doesn’t have any children, but she wishes she had a little one. Since they say I bring the little ones, I might as well do it for once! I’ll take the child to the Viking woman. That will make her happy.”