Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales

Twenty Tales Illustrated by Harry Clarke

Hans Christian Andersen, Harry Clarke

• Publisher: Gill Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780717156597
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Folklore & Mythology
• Index: Social Sciences

This classic collection of Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales, illustrated by Harry Clarke, was first published in 1916. This modern version includes reproductions of Harry Clarke's stunning work, taken from the unique collection at the National Gallery of Ireland.

Including timeless and essential tales such as The Ugly Duckling, Thumbelina and The Snow Queen, this is a wonderful read for people of all ages and a gorgeous addition to anyone's collection.

THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER

The storks tell their little ones many stories about the moor and the marsh where they live. The younger ones enjoy little stories such as “Kribble-krabble, plurry-murry,” while the older ones prefer more exciting stories about the adventures of their family. Of the two oldest and longest stories that have been handed down, we know the one about Moses, who was left on the bank of the river Nile and was found by the king’s daughter. As we know, Moses became a great man and a prophet.

But you might not have heard the second story. It has been handed down from mother stork to baby stork for thousands of years and each time it has been told it has become better and better. Now we’ll tell it best of all.

The first pair of storks to tell the story made their summer nest on the roof of a wooden castle owned by a Viking. The castle was built next to the wild moor of Wendyssel. The moor was in the circle of Hjörring, high up in Skagen, in the north of Jutland. Legend has it that, many years before, the land was covered by the sea, but that the seabed rose up and formed the moor. The moor stretched for miles and miles in all directions and was surrounded by wet marshland, swamps and rough land covered with blueberries and stunted trees. The moor is still there today and is called the “wild moor” because it is always misty. Until seventy years ago wolves still roamed the land.

The land looked the same thousands of years ago as it does today. The reeds were just as tall and had the same long leaves and bluish-brown feathery plumes. The birch tree stood with its white bark and its loosely hanging leaves. Even the creatures that lived there dressed the same; the fly in its dark, velvety cloak, and the stork in its black and white outfit with bright red stockings. The people dressed differently, but they met the same fate if they dared step onto the marsh; they would sink down into the great kingdom below, ruled by the Marsh King. We know very little about the Marsh King’s rule, but maybe that is for the best.

The Viking’s castle was three storeys tall and it had watertight stone cellars. On the roof, the mother stork was hatching her eggs and looking forward to the arrival of her young ones.

One night, the father stork came home very worried. “I’ve got something terrible to tell you,” he said to the mother stork.

“Don’t worry me, I have to keep calm while I’m hatching the eggs or something bad might happen to them.”

“I have to tell you,” he said. “The princess – the daughter of our host in Egypt – has travelled here to the moor, but she has disappeared.”

“Oh, tell me what happened, quickly – don’t keep me in suspense when I’m hatching.”

“Well, she thought that the flowers on the moor would heal her sick father, so she flew here dressed in swan’s feathers. She came with two of the other princesses who fly here every year in swan’s feathers to renew their youth and beauty in the sacred water.”

“You’re babbling!” exclaimed the mother stork. “The eggs will get cold, stop keeping me in suspense.”

“I was keeping watch,” said the father stork, “and tonight when I went into the reeds I saw three swans. But there was something strange about them – they weren’t real swans, they were just swan’s feathers!”

“Enough about feathers! What about the princess?”

“Well, you know the lake in the middle of the moor?” continued the father stork. “The three swans were sitting on the tree stump near the reeds. Suddenly, one of them threw off her feathers and I saw that it was the princess from the house we nest on in Egypt. I heard her tell the others to look after the feathers while she dived under the water to find the flower. The others picked up the feathers, but then they flew off with them! As they flew away they cried, ‘Dive down into the water! You’ll never see Egypt again!’ and they tore the feathers into a thousand pieces and let them flutter to the ground like snow. Then the two cruel princesses were gone.”

“That’s terrible!” said the mother stork. “I can’t bear to listen! What happened next?”

“The princess wept and her tears fell onto the tree stump. But it wasn’t a tree stump after all – it started to move. It was the Marsh King who rules under the moor. He rose from the ground and I saw that his arms were like long, thin branches. The poor princess was terrified. She tried to run away across the slimy ground, but it wouldn’t take her weight and she sank down and down until big black bubbles rose from the slime. As the bubbles burst, both the princess and the Marsh King disappeared. Now the princess is buried deep in the wild moor and she’ll never return to Egypt with the flower!”

“Stop telling me such terrible things!” cried the mother stork, “I’m sure the princess will escape, or someone will come to find her.”

“But I’ll go every day to see if anything happens,” said the father stork. And he did.

A long time passed. One day, the father stork saw a green stalk shooting up from the moor ground. After a little while, a leaf unfolded and grew bigger and bigger until a bud appeared. As he flew overhead one morning, the bud burst open and in the centre there was a beautiful little girl. She looked just like the Egyptian princess, and the father stork realised that it must be the Marsh King’s daughter.

“I can’t leave her lying there,” he thought, “but my nest is full already. The Viking’s wife would love to have a child, though ... I know! People always say that storks bring children, so that’s what I’ll do. She’ll be so happy!”

So the father stork picked up the child and flew to the castle. He placed the baby gently next to the Viking woman as she slept, and then he hurried home to tell his family what had happened.

“...So, the princess isn’t dead because she must have given birth to the child,” he said.

“Okay, that’s wonderful. Now think about your own family,” said the mother stork, “we need to start preparing for our flight to Egypt – the cuckoos and nightingales have already set off. The young ones have been practising their flying and I think they’re ready.”

When the Viking’s wife woke up she was overjoyed to find a baby girl beside her. She cuddled it but the baby cried violently and struggled until she had cried herself to sleep. When the baby was sleeping she looked beautiful and tranquil, and the Viking’s wife was happy.

The Viking’s wife knew that her husband would be returning home soon, so she started to prepare the house. The maids hung up the tapestries, polished the shields and arranged the cushions. They built a fire in the hearth, ready to be lit when the Viking returned. By nightfall, the Viking’s wife was very tired and she quickly fell asleep.

When she awoke, the baby had vanished. She searched the room for the child, but all she found was a great big ugly frog. She was so horrified that she grabbed a heavy stick and was just about to hit it when she noticed that it was looking at her with large, mournful eyes. She could not bring herself to harm it, so she opened the window to let it out. But at that moment a golden ray of sunshine fell on the frog, and, before the woman’s eyes, its ugly great mouth shrunk to a small red one and its limbs stretched to become beautifully symmetrical. It was no longer an ugly frog, but the beautiful baby girl.

“Am I dreaming?” asked the woman.

She kissed and hugged the baby, but it struggled and fought like a wild cat.

Meanwhile, the Viking was on his way home. But the wind was blowing against him and so his journey was long and slow.

After a few nights, the Viking’s wife decided that a terrible spell must have been cast upon the child. In the day, she was as beautiful as an angel of light, but her temper was savage and wild. But at night she became an ugly frog with large sorrowful eyes. You see, by day the girl had the body of the Egyptian princess but the Marsh King’s temper, and by night she had the body of the Marsh King but the kind heart of the Egyptian princess.

“THEY WERE RETURNING HOME, RICHLY LADEN WITH SPOIL, FROM THE GALLIC COAST”

The Viking’s wife longed to find someone who could break the spell. She spent her days weeping with sorrow, and yet she still cared for the child. She feared that her husband might find out the terrible secret and leave the baby out on the road to die, and she knew in her heart that she could not allow it. She decided that the Viking must only ever see the child in daylight.

One morning, the Viking woman heard a rushing noise overhead. She saw above her that the storks had started their journey south. The young storks had practised hard and they flew as lightly as the wind.

At that very moment the sound of trumpets rolled across the moor; the Viking and his warriors had landed and were returning home. They brought with them hoards of treasure from the French coast, where the villagers sang, “Save us from the wild Northmen!”

The men came home in high spirits. The fire was lit and a great feast began. Many guests were invited and each received a gift. The minstrel sang a song, which praised the men’s warlike deeds and bravery. Every line of the song ended with these words:

“Goods and gold, friends and foes will die;

Every man must one day die.

But a famous name will never die!”

And with that the men would hit their shields and hammer the table.

The Viking’s wife wore a silk dress and beautiful golden bracelets, covered in amber beads. The minstrel sang that she had brought the richest treasure of all to her husband in the form of a beautiful daughter. The Viking was delighted with the girl, especially with her savage ways. He declared that she might grow up to be a heroine of the land, as strong and determined as any man that ever lived. She would be so brave that she would not even flinch if her eyebrows were cut off with a sword.

The feast was magnificent and continued through the night.

Later that year, the Viking set sail again. His wife stayed at home with the girl, and soon she began to love the frog with its gentle eyes and sorrowful sighs more than she loved the pretty child that bit her and beat her all day.

The thick autumn mists that covered and devoured the leaves of the forest had descended on the moor. Winter was fast approaching. Snow flew down and covered the land in its thick blanket, and the sparrows took up home in the empty storks’ nest.

The storks were now in Egypt, where the sun shone every day and the flowers bloomed all year round. Stork-pairs sat resting on the slender towers of the many Egyptian temples. They built their nests in the fallen pillars and temple arches of long-forgotten cities. Palm trees lifted their leaves like sunshades and the great pyramids cast their mighty shadows over the vast desert, where the ostrich ran and the great marble sphinx lay half buried in the sand. The water of the Nile had receded and the muddy river bed was covered in frogs. It was such as glorious sight that the young storks thought they must be dreaming.

“Yes, it’s wonderful. It’s always like this in Egypt,” said the mother stork.

The young storks were so excited that they wanted to explore.

“There’s nothing else to see,” said the stork mother. “Beyond here there is lush green forest, but the branches are so intertwined that only an elephant can force its way through. The snakes there are too big and fast for us. If you go into the desert you’ll get sand in your eyes and you might get caught in a storm. It’s best to stay here with me where there are frogs and locusts to eat.”

So they stayed. The parents rested in their nests and cleaned their feathers. The young female storks pranced around in the reeds, peeking at the other storks and making friends. Meanwhile, the young male storks fought in the mud. The days were hot and sunny and full of fun. But inside the Egyptian’s palace life was not as happy.

The rich lord of the palace was lying on his divan in the luxurious great hall. The walls were so brightly coloured that he looked as if he was lying in the centre of a tulip. His limbs were so stiff and weak that he looked like a mummy. He was on the verge of death. All his friends and family had gathered, and they were worried that his beautiful young daughter, who had flown off in the swan’s feathers, had not arrived home with the moor flower to heal him. “She’s dead!” the two cruel princesses had cried when they returned home without her. They had made up a long story about what had happened:

“We flew high up in the air, but a hunter spotted us and shot an arrow at us. It struck her and she sank to the ground, singing her farewell song as she went. She sank down, a dying swan, into the woodland lake. We laid her under a weeping birch tree by the shore of the lake. Then we had our revenge: we lit a fire in the swallow’s nest that sat under the hunter’s thatched roof. The house burned to the ground and the hunter was taken by the flames. The glare of the fire shone across the sea near the weeping birch under which she sleeps.”

Then the two girls wept. When the father stork heard their story he clapped his beak with anger.

“Lies!” he cried, “I’d like to peck them with my beak!”

“But then they would hurt you,” said the mother stork. “Think of yourself and of your family, and forget everything else.”

“Tomorrow I’ll sit and listen when the wise men gather to discuss the Egyptian’s health. Maybe they’ll uncover the truth.”

The wise men gathered and talked for hours about the Egyptian man. But the father stork could barely understand a word they said.

But there was one thing the father stork could understand: everyone in the land, wealthy or poor, thought that it was a great tragedy that the man was dying, and everyone hoped that he would recover. The people had searched and searched for the flower that would cure him, but none of them had found it. They had read books, consulted the twinkling stars in the night sky, and they had read the weather and the wind for signs. All that the wise men could say was, “Love creates life and will restore a father’s life,” which even they did not understand. They said it again and again, until it became simply, “Love creates life.” They tried to turn it into a recipe, but they did not know how. Finally, they decided that only the princess could have helped her dying father, because it was her that loved him most. It was her that a year ago had entered one of the great pyramids and visited the tomb of a great pharaoh. It was there that she had had a vision that she must restore her father’s health by bringing home a lotus flower from the bottom of the deep lake in the north. Eventually, they decided that, as the princess would not return, all they could do was wait to see what happened.

“I’d like to take those two feather cloaks away from the cruel princesses,” said the father stork that night, “so that they can’t fly to the moor and cause any more trouble. I’ll hide the cloaks so that the princesses can’t find them and I’ll wait until there’s a good time to use them.”

“Where will you hide them?” asked the mother stork.

“In our nest in the moor,” he answered. “We’ll take turns carrying them on our journey home. One of the feather cloaks should be enough for the princess, but it’s better to have two iust in case.”

“You won’t get any reward,” said the mother stork. “But, you’re in charge, so we’ll do what you say.”

In the Viking’s castle on the moor, the little girl had been name...