The Juniper-Tree Page #2

								


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
								Rate this book:
0.0 / 0 votes