At that moment the door opened. It was the maid, and so everyone stopped talking. No one said a word. But there wasn’t a pot who didn’t know what it could do and how dignified it was. ‘Well, if I had wanted it,’ they all thought, ‘it really would have been a merry evening!’

“The maid took the matches and made a fire with them—God bless us, how they sizzled and burned in flames!

“‘Now everyone can see,’ they thought, ‘that we are the best! What radiance we have! What light!’—and then they were burned out.”

“That was a lovely fairy tale,” the queen said. “I felt just like I was in the kitchen with the matches. You may certainly marry our daughter.”

“Of course,” the king agreed, “you’ll marry our daughter on Monday!” Now they said “du” to him, since he was going to be part of the family. 1

So the wedding day was decided, and the evening before the whole town was lit up. Rolls and pastries were thrown to the crowds. Street urchins stood on their toes, shouted hurrah, and whistled through their fingers. It was extremely splendid.

“Well, I’d better also do something,” the merchant’s son thought, and so he bought some rockets, caps, and all the fireworks you could think of, put them in his trunk, and flew up in the air with it.

Whoosh, how it went! And how it popped and puffed!

All the Turks jumped in the air at this so that their slippers flew around their ears. They had never seen such a sight in the sky before. Now they understood that it really was the Turkish God himself who was going to marry the princess.

As soon as the merchant’s son landed in the forest with his trunk, he thought, “I’ll just go into town to find out how that looked to everyone.” And it was understandable that he wanted to do that.

Well, how the people were talking! Every single one he asked about it had seen it in his own way, but it had been beautiful for all of them.

“I saw the Turkish God himself,” one said. “He had eyes like shining stars and a beard like foaming water.”

“He flew in a coat of fire,” another one said, “and the most gorgeous little angels peeked out from the folds.”

Yes, he heard lovely things, and the next day he was getting married.

Then he went back to the forest to put himself in his trunk—but where was it? The trunk had burned up. A spark from the fireworks had remained, had started a fire, and the trunk was in ashes. He couldn’t fly any longer and couldn’t get to his bride.

She stood all day on the roof waiting. She’s still waiting, but he’s wandering the world telling fairy tales. But they aren’t any longer so lighthearted as the one he told about the matches.

NOTE

 

1. Danish shares with many European languages formal and informal forms of direct address. “Du” is informal.

THE WILL-O’-THE-WISPS ARE IN TOWN

THERE WAS A MAN who at one time had known so many new fairy tales, but now they had come to an end, he said. The tale used to come by its own accord, but now it didn’t knock at his door anymore. And why didn’t it come? Well, it’s true enough that the man hadn’t thought about it for a whole year, had not expected it to come knocking, and it evidently hadn’t been around there either, since there was war without, and within the sorrow and distress that war carries with it.

The stork and the swallow returned from their long voyages. They didn’t think of any danger, but when they arrived their nests had been burned. People’s houses were burned, gates broken, or just entirely gone. The enemy’s horses trampled on the old graves. They were hard, dark times, but even those have an end.

And now it was over, they said, but the fairy tale still hadn’t come knocking, nor was it heard from.

“I guess it’s dead and gone along with many others,” said the man. But the fairy tale never dies!

And over a year passed, and he longed sorely for it.

“I wonder if the fairy tale will ever come knocking again?” And he remembered so vividly all the many shapes in which it had come to him. Sometimes young and beautiful, like spring itself, a lovely little girl with a wreath of woodruff in her hair and beech branches in her hand. Her eyes shone like deep forest lakes in the clear sunshine. Sometimes it had also come as a peddler, opened its pack of wares and let silk ribbons wave with verses and inscriptions from old memories.