Fairy Tales

youngest. I certainly know her. I have been young too, and that’s not a childhood illness. I was once quite a pretty elf maiden, and danced with the others in the moonlight, listened to the nightingale, walked in the forests and met the fairy tale maiden, who was always out gadding about. Sometimes she spent the night in a partly opened tulip or in a globe flower. Sometimes she slipped into the church and wrapped herself in the mourning crepe that hung from the altar candles.”

“You have a lot of lovely information,” said the man.

“Well, I should hope I know as much as you do anyway!” said the bog witch. “Fairy tales and poetry—Well, they’re two of a kind. They can go lie down wherever they want. All their work and talk can be brewed both better and cheaper than they do it. You can get them from me for nothing. I have a whole cupboard full of poetry in bottles. It’s the essence of it, the best, the actual herb, both the sweet and the bitter. I have bottles of all the poetry people need, so they can put some on their handkerchiefs to smell on Sundays and holidays.”

“You’re saying some really strange things,” said the man. “You have bottled poetry?”

“More than you can stand!” said the witch. “You must know the story about the girl who stepped on bread to avoid dirtying her new shoes? It’s been both written and printed.”

“I wrote that story myself,” said the man.

“Well, then you know it.” said the witch, “And you know that the girl sank right down into the ground to the bog witch just as the devil’s great-grandmother was visiting to see the brewery. She saw the girl who sank and requested her for a pedestal, a souvenir of her visit. She got her, and I got a gift that I have no use for: a portable apothecary, a whole cupboard of poetry in bottles. Great-grandmother decided where it was to stand, and it’s still standing there. Just look! You have your seven four-leaf clovers, one of which is a six-leaf clover, in your pocket so I’m sure you’ll be able to see it.”

And truly, right in the middle of the bog there was a sort of big hollow alder stump, and that was great- grandmother’s cupboard. It was open to her and to everyone in all countries and in all times, the bog witch said, as long as they knew where the cupboard was. It could be opened in the front and the back, and on all sides and corners. It was a real work of art, but just looked like an old alder stump. The poets of all countries, especially our own, were copied there. Their essence was figured out, reviewed, cleaned up, concentrated and bottled. With sure instinct (as it’s called when one doesn’t want to say “genius” ) great-grandmother had taken the taste of this and that poet from nature, added a little witchcraft, and then she had his poetry bottled for eternity.

“Let me look!” said the man.

“But there are more important things to hear,” said the bog witch.

“But we’re right here by the cupboard,” said the man and looked inside. “There are bottles of all sizes here. What’s in that one? And that one there?”

“Here is what they call Essence of May,” said the bog witch. “I haven’t tried it, but I know that if you splash just a little on the floor, you’ll immediately get a lovely forest lake with water lilies, rushes, and curled mint. Only two drops on an old notebook, even from the elementary grades, and the book turns into a fragrant fantasy play that can be produced with a scent strong enough to put you to sleep. I’m sure it’s meant as a courtesy to me that it’s labeled ‘Bog Witch’s Brewery.’ ”

“Here is the Scandal Flagon. It looks like it only has dirty water in it, and it is dirty water, but with fizz powder of city-chatter added: three portions of lies to two grains of truth. It was stirred with a birch branch, but not from one soaked in salt and used on a criminal’s bloody back, or from one used by a schoolmaster for spanking, but taken directly from the broom that sweeps the gutters.”

“And here is the bottle with pious poetry, to be used for hymns. Every drop has the sound of hell’s gates slamming shut and is made of the blood and sweat of punishment. Some say it’s just bile of dove, but doves are the best and gentlest of creatures and have no bile. That’s what people who know nothing of zoology say.”

There stood the mother of all bottles! It took over half the cupboard—the bottle of Everyday Stories.1 It was wrapped in both pigskin and bladder so it wouldn’t lose its strength. Each nation could make its own soup here, depending on how you turned and tipped the bottle. There was old German blood stew with robber dumplings, and also thin crofter’s soup with real courtiers at the bottom, and a pat of philosophy floating in the middle. There was English governess gruel and the French potage a la Kock,2 made from cock bones and sparrow eggs. In Danish it’s called cancan soup. But the best soup was the Copenhagian, that’s what the family said.

Tragedy was bottled in champagne bottles that start out with a bang, as tragedy should. Comedy looked like fine sand that could be thrown in people’s eyes. That is to say, the finer comedy. The coarse kind was also in bottles, but these were made up only of future playbills, where the name of the piece was the most powerful. There were excellent comedy titles, such as “Do you Dare to Spit in the Mechanism?” “One on the Jaw,” “The Sweet Ass,” and “She’s Dead Drunk.”

The man became lost in thought from all this, but the bog witch was thinking ahead, and she wanted an end to it.

“You’ve looked long enough at that junk box,” she said. “Now you know what’s here, but you still don’t know the most important thing you should know! The will-o’-the-wisps are in town! That’s more important than poetry or fairy tales. I shouldn’t say anything about it, but there must be some guidance, a fate, something that has overtaken me. Something has stuck in my throat the wrong way and must come out! The will-o’ -the-wisps are in town! They are on the loose! Just watch out, people!”

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying,” said the man.

“Please sit down there on the cupboard,” she said. “But don’t fall in and break the bottles. You know what’s in them. I’ll tell you about the great event; it just happened yesterday, and it’s happened before. There are still three hundred and sixty four days to go. Well, I guess you know how many days are in a year?”

And the bog witch told the following:

“There was great excitement in the swamp yesterday! A big celebration! A little will-o‘-the-wisp was born. Actually twelve of them were born, by that brood of will-o’-the-wisps who have the ability, if they wish, to appear as people, and act and rule among them as if they were born human beings. That’s a big event in the swamp, and that’s why all the will-o‘-the-wisp males and females danced as little lights over the bog and meadows. There are female ones you see, but we’re not talking about them. I sat on the cupboard there and had all twelve little newborns on my lap. They were shining like glowworms and had already begun to hop around. They grew bigger by the minute, so that before a quarter hour had passed, they were as big as their father or uncle. It’s an old innate law and privilege that when the moon is in the precise position it was last night, and the wind blows as it blew