visit him no longer came and knocked at his door. Why had it stopped coming? Yes, it is true that for a long time the man
did not think of it, nor did he expect it to knock at his door, and it did not come, for there was war outside, and in the house there was sorrow and worry brought on by the war
.
The stork and the swallow had returned from a long journey, and they thought nothing of danger. When they came, the areoles were
burned down, and the dwellings of mankind were burned down, and the doors were down, and some of them were simply gone; and the horses of the enemy trampled upon the old graves
tomb. It was a hard and dark time, but such times must one day come to an end as well.
In fact it is over now. But the fairy tale has not yet come knocking at the door, nor has it delivered any news.
"It must have died, wiped out with something else," the man said. But fairy tales never die!
A whole year passed again. He missed the fairy tale very much!
"I wonder, will Fairytale ever knock on my door again?"
He could vividly remember that Fairy Tales used to visit him in all sorts of different guises: sometimes it was as young and
moving as the spring, and sometimes it was like a beautiful girl, with a wreath of chevron on her head, and in her hand a branch of beech
and her eyes as bright as a lake in the deep woods that shone in the light of the bright sun. Sometimes it arrives pretending to be a peddler. It opens
its knapsack and lets the silver ribbons float out - with poems and words full of memories written on them. But when it arrives pretending to be an old
grandmother, it has to be the loveliest of all. Her hair was silver-white, and her pair of eyes were large and intelligent
Bright. She could tell stories of ancient times - more
ancient than the time when princesses spun yarn with golden spindles and giant dragons stood guard outside the palace gates. She told them so vividly that those who listened to her felt as if black dots were dancing before their eyes, as if the ground were blackened
with human blood. It was horrifying to see such a scene and hear such a story, but at the same time it was fun because it took place in
such an ancient time.
"She won't come knocking on my door again!" The man said. So he gazed at the door, only to have black dots reappear in front of his eyes and on the ground
again. He wondered if it was blood, or the black veil used on the mourning garments of those hard dark times.
As he sat like this, he remembered if the fairy tale was hidden away like the princesses in those old fairy tales and
needed someone to find it out? If it was found, then it could shine with a new luster, more beautiful than before.
"Who knows? Maybe it's hidden in a random blade of grass that someone threw at the well. Pay attention! Attention! Maybe it's hidden in
a shriveled flower - a flower wedged in that big book on the shelf."
To find out, the man opened one of the newest books; but there wasn't a flower in it. Here he read the story of Holger the Dane,1 and at the same time he read that the story had been invented by a French monk, and that it was a saga "translated and printed in Danish," so that Holger the Dane never really existed, and at the same time will never
be the same as the one we celebrate. Holger the Dane, like Wilhelm Tell,
is nothing but an oral tradition, and is not to be relied on at all, though it was written down with a great deal of research.
①This story is found in the fifth fascicle of the Complete Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
② VilhelmTell, the legendary Swiss national hero, rebelled against the Austrian lords who ruled
Switzerland at the time and was twice arrested. The German poet Schiller wrote about him in a poetic drama called "Wilhelm Tell".
"Well, I'm going to believe what I believe," the man said, "and the road won't widen where the feet haven't stepped on it
."
So he closed the book, and put it on the shelf, and went to the fresh flowers by the window; and the fairy tale might be hidden in
the red tulips with their yellow rims, or in the fresh roses, or in the brightly colored camellias. Between the petals
there is sun, but no fairy tale.
"Flowers that grow in times of much trouble are always beautiful. But they were all cut down, wreathed and put in coffins
and covered with flags! Perhaps the fairy tale was buried with these flowers. If so, the flowers should
have known it, and the coffin should have known it, and the dirt should have known it, and every blade of grass that grew out of the earth should have been able to tell a truth
. Fairy tales never die.
"Perhaps it came here once, knocking at the door - but who would have heard and thought of it then? People came with gloomy
depressed, heavy, almost angry looks at the spring sun, the murmuring birds, and all the pleasant green things. Tongues do not even sing the
old, happy folk-songs; they are buried in coffins with our most beloved things. The fairy tale may come knocking at the door as much as
it likes, but no one will hear it. No one welcomes it, and so it goes.
"I'm going to find it!"
"Go to the countryside and look for it! Go to the woods and look for it! Go to the wide beaches and look for it!"
There was an old manor in the countryside. It had red walls and spiky, mountainous walls; and a flag flew from the top of the tower. The nightingales sang among the leaves of the
beech, whose borders were very fine, and looked at the apple-trees that bloomed in the garden, and thought that it was roses
that they were blooming. Here the bees are busy at work in the summer sunbeams, buzzing and chanting around their queen. The storms of the fall would
tell many stories of the wild hunt, of the falling leaves of the woods and of men of the past. At Christmas time the wild swans
sang on a stretch of water; and in that old garden the people sat by the fireside listening to the songs and the legends of long ago.
In an old corner of the garden there was a great pathway covered with wild chestnut trees, which lured people toward its shade.
The man went in search of the fairy tale, where the winds had whispered to him the story of "A nobleman and his daughters". Here the tree spirit - she was the fairy-tale mother herself - had told him of "the dream of the old mistletoe". When Grandmother was alive, there were neatly trimmed hedges here; but now there were only crocus and nettles growing here - and they covered up the broken ancient statues that had been abandoned there.
These statues had grown eyes. Moss has grown in the eyes of these statues, but they can still see as they did before - and the man who comes looking for the fairy tale cannot see it, because he has not seen it. Where have the fairy tales gone
to?
1 This is also the name of a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.
Thousands of crows flew over his head, over some old trees, all the while cawing, "There it is! It's right there
in there!"
He walked out of the garden, out of the walled river outside the garden, and inside the alder grove. Here was a hexagonal hut
with a chicken and duck farm attached. In the center of the house sat an old woman. She ran everything
here; every egg that was laid, every chick that crawled out of it, she knew everything about it. But she was not the fairy tale this man
was looking for: of that she could produce that certificate of baptism and that certificate of having planted smallpox as proof.
Both were kept in a drawer.
Outside, not far from the house, there was a mound covered with red hawthorn and golden chain flowers. Here lay an old
gravestone. It had been removed from a churchyard in a country market town; it was a monument to a reputable senator in the town.
His wife and five daughters, all with arched hands and crewnecks, stood around his stone statue. One could watch them
for a long time, until one had observed it so that it acted on the thought, while the thought reacted on the stone statue, so that it could tell
about ancient times - the least that the man who had looked for the fairy tale had thought. When he came here, he found
a live butterfly had landed on the forehead of this stone senator. The butterfly flapped its wings, flew forward for a moment, and then landed
near the tombstone, as if to point out all the things that grew here. Here grew clover with four leaves; a
** There were seven of them, in a row. Fortune never comes alone. He picked the clover leaves and put them in his coat pocket. The man
thought, Luck is as good as ready money; but wonderful new fairy tales are better than that. But he found no fairy tales here.
The sun, red and big, went down, and smoke rose from the meadow; and the swamp woman was making wine.
It was night. He stood alone in the house, looking up toward the sea, the grass, the marsh, and the beach. The moonlight was bright, and the grass
was shrouded in smoke as if it were a great lake. Like the legend said, it had indeed once been a great lake - a rumor
that was now proven in the moonlight. The man remembered the story he had read when he lived in town: that William Tell and the Dane Holger
never existed. But, like this lake that served as proof of the legend, they lived in folklore.
Yes, Holger the Dane will be back again!
While he was standing deep in thought, there was a rather heavy tapping on the window. Was it a finch, a bat, or an
Owl? If it was something of that sort, there was no need to open the door. But the window opened of its own accord, and an old woman looked toward this
person.
"What?" He said. "What is she? She's looking directly up toward the second story. Is she standing on a ladder?"
"You have a clover with four leaves in your coat pocket," she said. "Yes, you have seven, and one of them has
six more leaves."
"May I ask who you are?" The man asked again.
"Swamp Woman!" She replied. "Brewing swamp woman. I am making wine. The keg had a bung installed, but a
mischievous swamp brat pulled the bung out and threw it toward the yard, hitting the window. Now the beer is pouring straight out of the
barrel, and it's not doing any good to anything."
"Please go on!" The man said.
"Ah, please wait!" The swamp woman said. "I have one other thing to do at the moment." And so she went.
The man was about to close the window when the swamp woman suddenly reappeared.
"Now I'm done!" She said. "But I'll save the other half of the beer for tomorrow if it's a nice day to
brew. Well, what is it you have to ask me about? I'm back now, because I'm a man of my word ah. In your coat pocket
there are seven clovers with four leaves, and one of them has six leaves. This evokes respect, for it is an ornament that grows by the side of the great
road, though it is not for everyone to find. What is it that you have to ask me? Don't stand
like a dullard, O, for I must go at once to my cork and barrel!"
So the man asked about the fairy tale, and asked if she had seen it on the road.
"Hey, may God bless my big barrel!" The swamp woman said, "Haven't you known enough fairy tales? I
do believe that you know enough. You should care about other things, pay attention to other things. Even children don't
want fairy tales anymore. Give a boy a cigar and a girl a new dress; they will like these things better. Listen to
what fairy tales! Hey, there are plenty of things that should be done, and there are more important things!"
"What do you mean by that?" The man asked. "What do you know about worldly matters? All you see are frogs and ghostly fires!"
"Yes, please, beware of the ghost fires," the swamp woman said, "They are already out! They have slipped away! That is
just
one of the things we are going to talk about! Come with me to the swamp, I must be present, and I can tell you the whole thing
. When your seven clovers with four leaves - one of them with six leaves - are still fresh, and
when the moon is still high, come quickly!"
So the swamp woman was gone.
The clock on the church struck twelve; before the last stroke had been struck, the man had gone out of the house into the garden and was standing
on the grass. The smoke had cleared. The swamp woman had stopped brewing.
"It took you so long to arrive!" Swamp Woman said. "Witches travel much faster than people. I am glad that I
was born a witch!"
"What can you tell me now?" The man asked. "Does this have anything to do with fairy tales?"
"Can't you ask something else?" The swamp woman said.
"Wouldn't you like to talk to me a little bit about the poem of the future?" The man asked again.
"Please don't show off your knowledge!" The swamp woman said. "Let me answer you. You keep thinking of poetry in your heart, while your mouth
asks about fairy tales, as if they were the queen of all arts. She is one of the oldest, though she looks
the youngest. I know a great deal about her! There was a time when I was young, too, and it was no childish disease. There was a time
when I was quite a pretty demon girl, too; and I've danced with others under the moon, and listened to nightingale tunes, and been in the
forest, and met the fairy girl-who was always running around there. One moment she runs into a half-bloomed tulip
or a common wildflower, and the next moment she sneaks into the church and wraps herself up in the black mourning cloth that hangs over the altar candles and goes to sleep
Go!"
"You are so well informed!" The man said.
"I should know at least as much as you do!" The swamp woman said. "Fairy tales and poems - good, they're like two pieces of cloth woven from the same
material. They can just lie down anywhere. What they do and say, one can
make up as much as one likes, and make it up good and cheap. You can get them from me for nothing. I have a whole cabinet
of bottled poetry. It's poetry essence, the best part of poetry - it's sweet and bitter herb. Whatever aspect of poetry people
ask for, I have in my bottle. At festivals I sprinkle a little of it onto my handkerchief and smell it from time to time."
"That is a marvelous thing you have said!" The man said. Do you have the poem in a bottle?"
"More than you can take in!" The swamp woman said. "You know, the
story of 'The Girl Who Walked on Bread'1? She did it for fear of getting her new shoes dirty. The story was written down and it was printed
upon."
1 This is the name of a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.
"I told this story myself." The man said.
"Yes, then you should know it." The swamp woman said, "As you know, the girl immediately sank to the ground
to the swamp woman - the devilish old woman who was visiting at this time, in order to inspect the distillery. As soon as she saw the
girl sink she demanded to have her as a souvenir of her visit. She got the child, and I got
a useless gift. It was a traveling medicine cabinet - a whole cabinet full of bottled poems. The old lady told me where the cabinet
should be placed - and it's still standing there. Please go and look at it once! You have seven clover
clovers with four leaves in your coat pocket - one of them with six leaves - so you should be able to see it."
And indeed, there was a thick alder trunk in the center of the swamp. It was the old woman's cupboard. The swamp woman said that the cupboard
was open to her and to any man of any age in any country, and that all one had to do was to know where it was. Its front
front, back, every side and every corner could be opened - truly a complete work of art, but it looked like an
alder trunk. Poets of all nations, and especially of our own country, have been made here. Their spirits were considered, tasted, refurbished and purified before they were put into the bottle. Grandmother, with her "great instinct" - a word one does not want to use when saying "genius" - took the scent of this or that poet. -mixed the scent of this or that poet, with a little bit of genius, and sealed it in a bottle for the future.
"I beg you to let me see it!" The man said.
"Yes, there are more important things to come!" The swamp woman said.
"But now we're by the cabinet!" The man said, while looking in. "There are all sorts of different sized
bottles in here. What's in this one? What's in that one?"
"It's what they call May-scent," said the swamp woman. "I haven't used it myself, but I do know that if
you spill a drop of it on the ground, a beautiful little lake full of water lilies, water lilies, and wild mint will immediately appear. You only have to
splash a couple of drops onto an old exercise book - even one from the lowest grade in elementary school - and the book can become a fragrant
script. It can be staged, or it can call you to sleep, because its aroma is that strong. The bottle is labeled
with this sign: 'Produced by Swamp Woman' - the intention being to compliment me.
"This is a 'rumor bottle'. It contains what appears to be only the dirtiest water. It does contain the dirtiest water, but
it contains the baking powder of street gossip, three taels of lies, and two pennies of truth. These ingredients were churned up by a birchwood branch - not the kind of branch that had been soaked in
salty water for a long time and was specifically used to beat the bleeding backs of prisoners, or the kind of branch used by elementary school teachers
but a branch drawn from a ditch-sweeper's broom.
"It is a bottle filled with pious poems written to the tune of hymns. Each drop is capable of making that rattling sound like the gates of hell
. It is made of penal blood and sweat. Some say it is nothing more than a bit of dove's bile. But pigeons
are the most pious of creatures, and have no bile; so say those who know nothing of museums.
"This is the largest bottle, it takes up half the cupboard - the bottle filled with 'everyday stories'. It is
wrapped in bladder and pigskin because its power cannot be vaporized. Each nation can make its own soup according to the way it shakes the bottle
. Here is the old German blood soup with robber meatballs in it. Here is the thin peasant soup, in which the real Privy Counselor sinks to the bottom like a bean, while philosophical fat eyes float on the surface. There is English
stewardess soup and French 'chicken soup' made from chicken and sparrow legs - this is called 'cancan soup'1 in Danish. No
The best soup ever made was 'Copenhagen soup'. That's what everyone in the family says.
①Kankan is a crazy four-person dance popularized in Paris in the mid-19th century.
"It's a champagne bottle filled with 'tragedy'. It can pop, and it should. Comedy is like fine sand that can hit
in the eye - which is to say, the more subtle comedy. There are coarser comedies in the bottle, too, but they're still just
some titles of plays to be used - some of them very famous ones, such as "Don't You Dare Spit Into the Machine," "A Slap in the Face," "The Lovely Donkey," and "She Got Drunk."
The man heard these words and sank into fantasy. But the swamp woman thought a little further ahead; she wanted to get things
over with.
"You've been looking at this old cabinet for quite a while!" She said, "You already know what's in it. But
There's something more important you should know that you don't yet. Ghostfire is coming to town now! This is much more important
than poems and fairy tales. I should indeed keep my mouth shut, but there's probably some force, some fate, some inescapable thing stuffed in my throat
that keeps coming out. The ghostly fires have entered the city! They're on the rampage! Beware, you people!"
"I don't understand even half of what you're saying!" The man said.
"Please, please, please sit on the counter." She said, "But please be careful you don't sit down and collapse and break the bottles - you know
what they contain. There is one great thing I must tell. It happened yesterday; it didn't happen
very long ago. It has an expiration date of 364 days left. I suppose you know how many days there are in a year?"
Here's what the Swamp Woman said:
"Yesterday there was a great hustle and bustle in the swamp! It was a child's pageant! A little ghost fire was born-
In fact they had a dozen born at the same time. They were given license: they could run away into the human world if they wished, and also
were free to move about and give orders as if they had been born human. This was a great event in the swamp, and therefore the ghosts
fired, and in the swamps and prairies, like bright lights, the men and women danced - for a few of them were of the female
sex, though they did not generally speak of it. I sat on that counter and held these twelve newborn ghost fires in my lap. They
emitted bright lights like fireflies. They had begun to jump, and they were growing in size every second, so that not
till a quarter of an hour they looked as big as their fathers and uncles. According to an old rule and special
right recognized by all, if the moon shines exactly as it did yesterday, and the wind blows exactly as it did yesterday, all the ghosts
fires born at that moment have the right to become men, and each of them, within the time limit of one year, may exercise their right. If each ghost
fire were not afraid to fall into the sea or to be blown out by a great storm, he could run all over the country and all over the world. He could attach himself to
a person, speak on his behalf, and act at will. A ghostly fire may appear in any form he pleases; he may be a man or a woman
and may act in accordance with their spirits, but must go to his own extremes and do all that he wishes. But he
has to lead 365 people astray on a large scale in the course of a year: to lead them away from the path of truth and right. Only in this
way can a demonic fire reach its highest peak - to become a runner in front of the devil's special car. In this way, he can put on his dark yellow
clothes and breathe fire from his throat. That's enough to satisfy an average demon fire. But there was something sinister
in there, too. An aspiring ghostfire would have to run into some trouble trying to accomplish such a brilliant task. If one's eyes could
see what was in front of them and blow the ghostfire away with a single breath, then the ghostfire was done for, and it had no choice but to come back to the swamp
again. Likewise, if the ghostly fires come home to visit and abandon their work before the end of the year, then he is finished,
and can no longer shine very brightly, and he will soon be extinguished, and will not be able to burn any more. And when the year is ended, if he has not
directed 365 men astray from the truth and from all that is good, then he shall be imprisoned in a piece of rotten wood
and shall lie there glowing and glittering, and shall not be able to move a muscle. This is a punishment that could not be more severe for a living ghostly flame
. I know all about it. At the same time I told it to the twelve Ghostfires I held in my lap. They were happy
to hear it. I told them that the safest and easiest thing to do was to give up this honor and do nothing. But
it was the little ghostly flames who disagreed with this. They had already imagined themselves dressed in deep yellow and spewing fire from their throats. 'Live with
us!' A few of the older Ghostfires said. 'Go joke with people,' said a few others. 'The people have filtered my
meadows dry! They are already draining it. How will our descendants live?' "'We will send out
fire! Send forth the light of fire!' The newborn ghost fire said. And that was how things were affirmed.
"A dance party began - it was only a second long; it couldn't have been shorter. The demon-girls turned
three circles with the other demon-girls, in order not to appear proud; they were generally just willing to dance with themselves. Then the promoter of the dance dispersed
gifts: 'hit the water' - that was the name of the gift. The gifts flew over the water of the swamp like silica. Each
Girl gives each other another small piece of veil. 'Take this!' They said, 'Then you will dance the more advanced dances - those
indispensable more difficult twirls and twists. Then you will have proper poise, and you will be able to express yourselves in high society
.' Nightdew taught each young ghostfire to say, 'Good - good - good.' And it teaches them on what occasions it is most appropriate to say
. This is one of the greatest gifts that can be given to you. The owl and the stork also made some comments - no
over they said that none of it was worth talking about, so we will leave it. King Valdemar was at this time coming to wild
hunt in the marshes. When these nobles heard of the fete, they presented a pair of beautiful hounds as a gift. They chased east
west as fast as the wind, and at the same time were able to carry from one to three ghostly fires on their backs. Two old dream devils - who spent their days
subs by flying on things - also came to the event. They immediately taught the art of drilling keyholes, making all doors equal to nothing
. These two old dream-devils also suggested that the little ghost-fires be taken to the city, as it was familiar to them. They generally
flew through the air on their manes, and always tied them in a knot, for they liked to sit on hard seats. But they were now
sitting on their hounds with crossed legs, holding these young ghostly fires-who intended to go to town and lead men astray-in their arms
and so with a hush they were gone.
"This all happened last night. Now the ghostly fire has come to town and begun to do its work - but how
? Alas! Are you able to tell me? I have a weather wire in my big toe. It always tells me something."
"That's a complete fairy tale then." The man said.
"Yes, but it is only the beginning of a fairy tale," the swamp woman said. "What can you tell me about how the ghostly fires act and
do what they do? What forms do they take to lead people down evil paths?"
"I believe," the man said, "that one could write a Ghostfire saga, divided into twelve volumes, each volume talking about a Ghost
Fire. Perhaps even better would be to write it as a popular play."
"You write it," said the swamp woman, "but it's best to let it go."
"Yes, that would certainly be easier and more comfortable," the man said. "Because then we'd be free from the constraints of newspapers
. Being bound by newspapers is no more uncomfortable than a ghostly fire glowing in a rotting log and not daring to say a word."
"It has nothing to do with me," said the swamp woman. "Let other people--those who can write and those who can't--
write! I'll give you an old stopper from my barrel. It will open that cabinet where the poetry bottle is open, and you can take
what you need from there. But you, dear friend, your hands seem black enough with ink. You seem to have reached the age where you
know better than to have to run east and west every year in search of fairy tales. There are more important things in the world that you should especially do. You
already know what's happening now, don't you?"
"Ghostfire is in town now!" The man said. "I have heard of this, and I know of it! But what do you think I should
do? If I were to say to people, 'Behold, the ghostly fire moves about in solemn garb!' People would surely give me
a good thrashing."
"They move about in dresses sometimes, too!" Swamp Woman said, "A Ghostfire can appear in all forms, anywhere
. He goes to church, not to go to worship, but to be attached to the priest. He speaks at election time
not for the good of the country, but for himself. He was a painter and could have been an actor. But after he has taken
power into his hands, its paint box can be empty! I rambled on for a long while, but I had to pull what was jammed down my
throat, and couldn't care less even if it wasn't good for my family. Now I have to get a lot of people out! This isn't
because it's out of kindness, or to get a medal. I'm going to do the craziest thing I can, and I'm going to tell this
to a poet; it's the only way the whole city will know right away."
"The city will not care a bit," the man said. "No one will be alarmed. When I tell them with extreme seriousness
that the Swamp Woman has said that the Ghostfire has come into the city. Beware ye