Poultry Meg's Family Page #4

"Poultry Meg's Family" by Hans Christian Andersen is a heartwarming tale revolving around the main character, Poultry Meg, who is known throughout the entire town for her chicken farm. This story takes readers on a journey through Meg's life, from the joys of caring for her chickens to the hardships and trials she endures in her personal life. It explores themes of love, community spirit, resilience, and the universal human experience, showing how a seemingly insignificant life can have a profound impact on those around them.

• Children

								

heard of Kai Lykke, who caused a church to be pulled down, and when
the clergyman, Master Martin, thundered from the pulpit about it, he
had him put in irons, and sat in judgment upon him, and condemned
him to death? Yes, and the clergyman was obliged to bow his head to
the stroke. And yet Kai Lykke went scot-free."

"He had a right to do as he did in those times," said Holberg;
"but now we have left those times behind us."

"You may get a fool to believe that," cried Mother Soren; and
she got up and went into the room where the child lay. She lifted up
the child, and laid it down more comfortably. Then she arranged the
bed-place of the student. He had the green coverlet, for he felt the
cold more than she, though he was born in Norway.

On New Year's morning it was a bright sunshiny day. The frost
had been so strong, and was still so strong, that the fallen snow
had become a hard mass, and one could walk upon it. The bells of the
little town were tolling for church. Student Holberg wrapped himself
up in his woollen cloak, and wanted to go to the town.

Over the ferry-house the crows and daws were flying with loud
cries; one could hardly hear the church bells for their screaming.
Mother Soren stood in front of the house, filling a brass pot with
snow, which she was going to put on the fire to get drinking water.
She looked up to the crowd of birds, and thought her own thoughts.

Student Holberg went to church. On his way there and on his return
he passed by the house of tax-collector Sivert, by the town-gate. Here
he was invited to take a mug of brown beer with treacle and sugar. The
discourse fell upon Mother Soren, but the tax collector did not know
much about her, and, indeed, few knew much about her. She did not
belong to the island of Falster, he said; she had a little property of
her own at one time. Her husband was a common sailor, a fellow of a
very hot temper, and had killed a sailor of Dragor; and he beat his
wife, and yet she defended him.

"I should not endure such treatment," said the tax-collector's
wife. "I am come of more respectable people. My father was
stocking-weaver to the Court."

"And consequently you have married a governmental official,"
said Holberg, and made a bow to her and to the collector.

It was on Twelfth Night, the evening of the festival of the
Three Kings, Mother Soren lit up for Holberg a three-king candle, that
is, a tallow candle with three wicks, which she had herself prepared.

"A light for each man," said Holberg.

"For each man?" repeated the woman, looking sharply at him.

"For each of the wise men from the East," said Holberg.

"You mean it that way," said she, and then she was silent for a
long time. But on this evening he learned more about her than he had
yet known.

"You speak very affectionately of your husband," observed Holberg,
"and yet the people say that he ill-uses you every day."

"That's no one's business but mine," she replied. "The blows might
have done me good when I was a child; now, I suppose, I get them for
my sins. But I know what good he has done me," and she rose up.
"When I lay sick upon the desolate heath, and no one would have pity
on me, and no one would have anything to do with me, except the
crows and daws, which came to peck me to bits, he carried me in his
arms, and had to bear hard words because of the burden he brought on
board ship. It's not in my nature to be sick, and so I got well. Every
man has his own way, and Soren has his; but the horse must not be
judged by the halter. Taking one thing with another, I have lived more
agreeably with him than with the man whom they called the most noble
and gallant of the King's subjects. I have had the Stadtholder
Gyldenlowe, the King's half-brother, for my husband; and afterwards
I took Palle Dyre. One is as good as another, each in his own way, and
I in mine. That was a long gossip, but now you know all about me."

And with those words she left the room.


It was Marie Grubbe! so strangely had fate played with her. She
did not live to see many anniversaries of the festival of the Three
Kings; Holberg has recorded that she died in June, 1716; but he has
not written down, for he did not know, that a number of great black
birds circled over the ferry-house, when Mother Soren, as she was
called, was lying there a corpse. They did not scream, as if they knew
that at a burial silence should be observed. So soon as she lay in the
earth, the birds disappeared; but on the same evening in Jutland, at
the old manor house, an enormous number of crows and choughs were
seen; they all cried as loud as they could, as if they had some
announcement to make. Perhaps they talked of him who, as a little boy,
had taken away their eggs and their young; of the peasant's son, who
had to wear an iron garter, and of the noble young lady, who ended
by being a ferryman's wife.

"Brave! brave!" they cried.

And the whole family cried, "Brave! brave!" when the old house was
pulled down.

"They are still crying, and yet there's nothing to cry about,"
said the clerk, when he told the story. "The family is extinct, the
house has been pulled down, and where it stood is now the stately
poultry-house, with gilded weathercocks, and the old Poultry Meg.
She rejoices greatly in her beautiful dwelling. If she had not come
here," the old clerk added, "she would have had to go into the
work-house."

The pigeons cooed over her, the turkey-cocks gobbled, and the
ducks quacked.

"Nobody knew her," they said; "she belongs to no family. It's pure
charity that she is here at all. She has neither a drake father nor
a hen mother, and has no descendants."

She came of a great family, for all that; but she did not know it,
and the old clerk did not know it, though he had so much written down;
but one of the old crows knew about it, and told about it. She had
heard from her own mother and grandmother about Poultry Meg's mother
and grandmother. And we know the grandmother too. We saw her ride,
as child, over the bridge, looking proudly around her, as if the whole
world belonged to her, and all the birds' nests in it; and we saw
her on the heath, by the sand-dunes; and, last of all, in the
ferry-house. The granddaughter, the last of her race, had come back to
the old home, where the old castle had stood, where the black wild
birds were screaming; but she sat among the tame birds, and these knew
her and were fond of her. Poultry Meg had nothing left to wish for;
she looked forward with pleasure to her death, and she was old
enough to die.

"Grave, grave!" cried the crows.

And Poultry Meg has a good grave, which nobody knew except the old
crow, if the old crow is not dead already.

And now we know the story of the old manor house, of its old
proprietors, and of all Poultry Meg's family.
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes