The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 (50 page)

Our honest friend journeyed on his way too; and if he was merry before, he was now ten times more so. He had not gone far before he met an old miser: close by them stood a tree, and on the topmost twig sat a thrush singing away most joyfully. “Oh, what a pretty bird!” said the miser; “I would give a great deal of money to have such a one.”

“If that’s all,” said the countryman, “I will soon bring it down.” Then he took up his bow, and down fell the thrush into the bushes at the foot of the tree. The miser crept into the bush to find it; but directly he had got into the middle, his companion took up his fiddle and played away, and the miser began to dance and spring about, capering higher and higher in the air. The thorns soon began to tear his clothes till they all hung in rags about him, and he himself was all scratched and wounded, so that the blood ran down.

“Oh, for heaven's sake!” cried the miser, “Master! Master! Pray let the fiddle alone. What have I done to deserve this?”

“Thou hast shaved many a poor soul close enough,” said the other; “thou art only meeting thy reward.” So he played up another tune. Then the miser began to beg and promise, and offered money for his liberty; but he did not come up to the musician's price for some time, and he danced him along brisker and brisker, and the miser bid higher and higher, till at last he offered a round hundred of florins that he had in his purse, and had just gained by cheating some poor fellow. When the countryman saw so much money, he said, “I will agree to your proposal.” So he took the purse, put up his fiddle, and travelled on very pleased with his bargain.

Meanwhile the miser crept out of the bush half-naked and in a piteous plight, and began to ponder how he should take his revenge, and serve his late companion some trick. At last he went to the judge, and complained that a rascal had robbed him of his money, and beaten him into the bargain; and that the fellow who did it carried a bow at his back and a fiddle hung round his neck. Then the judge sent out his officers to bring up the accused wherever they should find him; and he was soon caught and brought up to be tried.

The miser began to tell his tale, and said he had been robbed of his money. “No, you gave it me for playing a tune to you,” said the countryman; but the judge told him that was not likely, and cut the matter short by ordering him off to the gallows.

So away he was taken; but as he stood on the steps he said, “My Lord Judge, grant me one last request.”

“Anything but thy life,” replied the other.

“No,” said he, “I do not ask my life; only to let me play upon my fiddle for the last time.”

The miser cried out, “Oh, no! No! For heaven's sake don't listen to him! Don't listen to him!”

But the judge said, “It is only this once, he will soon have done.” The fact was, he could not refuse the request, on account of the dwarf's third gift.

Then the miser said, “Bind me fast, bind me fast, for pity's sake.” But the countryman seized his fiddle, and struck up a tune, and at the first note judge, clerks, and jailer were in motion; all began capering, and no one could hold the miser. At the second note the hangman let his prisoner go, and danced also, and by the time he had played the first bar of the tune, all were dancing together—judge, court, and miser, and all the people who had followed to look on. At first the thing was merry and pleasant enough; but when it had gone on a while, and there seemed to be no end of playing or dancing, they began to cry out, and beg him to leave off; but he stopped not a whit the more for their entreaties, till the judge not only gave him his life, but promised to return him the hundred florins.

Then he called to the miser, and said, “Tell us now, you vagabond, where you got that gold, or I shall play on for your amusement only,”

“I stole it,” said the miser in the presence of all the people; “I acknowledge that I stole it, and that you earned it fairly.”

Then the countryman stopped his fiddle, and left the miser to take his place at the gallows.

[ii]
The Juniper Tree

By the Brothers Grimm

Long, long ago, there lived a rich man with a good and beautiful wife. They loved each other dearly, but sorrowed much that they had no children. So greatly did they desire to have one that the wife prayed for it day and night, but still they remained childless.

In front of the house there was a court in which grew a juniper-tree. One winter’s day the wife stood under the tree to peel some apples, and as she was peeling them, she cut her finger, and the blood fell on the snow. “Ah,” sighed the woman heavily, “if I had but a child, as red as blood and as white as snow,” and as she spoke the words, her heart grew light within her, and it seemed to her that her wish was granted, and she returned to the house feeling glad and comforted. A month passed, and the snow had all disappeared; then another month went by, and all the earth was green. So the months followed one another, and first the trees budded in the woods, and soon the green branches grew thickly intertwined, and then the blossoms began to fall. Once again the wife stood under the juniper-tree, and it was so full of sweet scent that her heart leaped for joy, and she was so overcome with her happiness that she fell on her knees. Presently the fruit became round and firm, and she was glad and at peace; but when they were fully ripe she picked the berries and ate eagerly of them, and then she grew sad and ill. A little while later she called her husband, and said to him, weeping. “If I die, bury me under the juniper-tree.” Then she felt comforted and happy again, and before another month had passed she had a little child, and when she saw that it was as white as snow and as red as blood, her joy was so great that she died.

Her husband buried her under the juniper-tree, and wept bitterly for her. By degrees, however, his sorrow grew less, and although at times he still grieved over his loss, he was able to go about as usual, and later on he married again.

He now had a little daughter born to him; the child of his first wife was a boy, who was as red as blood and as white as snow. The mother loved her daughter very much, and when she looked at her and then looked at the boy, it pierced her heart to think that he would always stand in the way of her own child, and she was continually thinking how she could get the whole of the property for her. This evil thought took possession of her more and more, and made her behave very unkindly to the boy. She drove him from place to place with cuffings and buffetings, so that the poor child went about in fear, and had no peace from the time he left school to the time he went back.

One day the little daughter came running to her mother in the store- room, and said, “Mother, give me an apple.”

“Yes, my child,” said the wife, and she gave her a beautiful apple out of the chest; the chest had a very heavy lid and a large iron lock.

“Mother,” said the little daughter again, “may not brother have one too?”

The mother was angry at this, but she answered, “Yes, when he comes out of school.”

Just then she looked out of the window and saw him coming, and it seemed as if an evil spirit entered into her, for she snatched the apple out of her little daughter’s hand, and said, “You shall not have one before your brother.” She threw the apple into the chest and shut it. The little boy now came in, and the evil spirit in the wife made her say kindly to him, “My son, will you have an apple?” but she gave him a wicked look.

“Mother,” said the boy, “how dreadful you look! Yes, give me an apple.”

The thought came to her that she would kill him. “Come with me,” she said, and she lifted up the lid of the chest; “take one out for yourself.” And as he bent over to do so, the evil spirit urged her, and crash! Down went the lid, and off went the little boy’s head. Then she was overwhelmed with fear at the thought of what she had done. “If only I can prevent anyone knowing that I did it,” she thought. So she went upstairs to her room, and took a white handkerchief out of her top drawer; then she set the boy’s head again on his shoulders, and bound it with the handkerchief so that nothing could be seen, and placed him on a chair by the door with an apple in his hand.

Soon after this, little Marleen came up to her mother who was stirring a pot of boiling water over the fire, and said, “Mother, brother is sitting by the door with an apple in his hand, and he looks so pale; and when I asked him to give me the apple, he did not answer, and that frightened me.”

“Go to him again,” said her mother, “and if he does not answer, give him a box on the ear.”

So little Marleen went, and said, “Brother, give me that apple,” but he did not say a word; then she gave him a box on the ear, and his head rolled off. She was so terrified at this that she ran crying and screaming to her mother. “Oh!” she said, “I have knocked off brother’s head,” and then she wept and wept, and nothing would stop her.

“What have you done!” said her mother. “No one must know about it, so you must keep silence; what is done can’t be undone; we will make him into puddings.” And she took the little boy and cut him up, made him into puddings, and put him in the pot. But Marleen stood looking on, and wept and wept, and her tears fell into the pot, so that there was no need of salt.

Presently the father came home and sat down to his dinner; he asked, “Where is my son?” The mother said nothing, but gave him a large dish of black pudding, and Marleen still wept without ceasing.

The father again asked, “Where is my son?”

“Oh,” answered the wife, “he is gone into the country to his mother’s great uncle; he is going to stay there some time.”

“What has he gone there for, and he never even said goodbye to me!”

“Well, he likes being there, and he told me he should be away quite six weeks; he is well looked after there.”

“I feel very unhappy about it,” said the husband, “in case it should not be all right, and he ought to have said goodbye to me.”

With this he went on with his dinner, and said, “Little Marleen, why do you weep? Brother will soon be back.” Then he asked his wife for more pudding, and as he ate, he threw the bones under the table.

Little Marleen went upstairs and took her best silk handkerchief out of her bottom drawer, and in it she wrapped all the bones from under the table and carried them outside, and all the time she did nothing but weep. Then she laid them in the green grass under the juniper- tree, and she had no sooner done so, then all her sadness seemed to leave her, and she wept no more. And now the juniper-tree began to move, and the branches waved backwards and forwards, first away from one another, and then together again, as it might be someone clapping their hands for joy. After this a mist came round the tree, and in the midst of it there was a burning as of fire, and out of the fire there flew a beautiful bird, that rose high into the air, singing magnificently, and when it could no more be seen, the juniper-tree stood there as before, and the silk handkerchief and the bones were gone.

Little Marleen now felt as lighthearted and happy as if her brother were still alive, and she went back to the house and sat down cheerfully to the table and ate.

The bird flew away and alighted on the house of a goldsmith and began to sing:

“My mother killed her little son;

My father grieved when I was gone;

My sister loved me best of all;

She laid her kerchief over me,

And took my bones that they might lie

Underneath the juniper-tree

Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!”

The goldsmith was in his workshop making a gold chain, when he heard the song of the bird on his roof. He thought it so beautiful that he got up and ran out, and as he crossed the threshold he lost one of his slippers. But he ran on into the middle of the street, with a slipper on one foot and a sock on the other; he still had on his apron, and still held the gold chain and the pincers in his hands, and so he stood gazing up at the bird, while the sun came shining brightly down on the street.

“Bird,” he said, “how beautifully you sing! Sing me that song again.”

“Nay,” said the bird, “I do not sing twice for nothing. Give that gold chain, and I will sing it you again.”

“Here is the chain, take it,” said the goldsmith. “Only sing me that again.”

The bird flew down and took the gold chain in his right claw, and then he alighted again in front of the goldsmith and sang:

“My mother killed her little son;

My father grieved when I was gone;

My sister loved me best of all;

She laid her kerchief over me,

And took my bones that they might lie

Underneath the juniper-tree

Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!”

Then he flew away, and settled on the roof of a shoemaker’s house and sang:

“My mother killed her little son;

My father grieved when I was gone;

My sister loved me best of all;

She laid her kerchief over me,

And took my bones that they might lie

Underneath the juniper-tree

Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!”

The shoemaker heard him, and he jumped up and ran out in his shirt- sleeves, and stood looking up at the bird on the roof with his hand over his eyes to keep himself from being blinded by the sun.