The Marsh King's Daughter Page #9

"The Marsh King's Daughter" is a captivating story by Hans Christian Andersen that draws the reader into a world of Norse mythology and ancient Egypt. The story revolves around a Marsh King who kidnaps a princess and has a child with her named Helga. Helga, who is beautiful by day but horrible at night, sets upon a journey of transformation. With compelling themes of love and redemption, the story encapsulates the struggle of good versus evil through the life of Helga and her journey to find her true self. It is a tale filled with symbolism, fantasy, and vivid imagery characteristic of Hans Christian Andersen's works.

• Children

								

the grave, and held it aloft, and now they rode through the air over
the rustling trees, over the hills where warriors lay buried each by
his dead war-horse; and the brazen monumental figures rose up and
galloped forth, and stationed themselves on the summits of the
hills. The golden crescent on their foreheads, fastened with golden
knots, glittered in the moonlight, and their mantles floated in the
wind. The dragon, that guards buried treasure, lifted his head and
gazed after them. The goblins and the satyrs peeped out from beneath
the hills, and flitted to and fro in the fields, waving blue, red, and
green torches, like the glowing sparks in burning paper. Over woodland
and heath, flood and fen, they flew on, till they reached the wild
moor, over which they hovered in broad circles. The Christian priest
held the cross aloft, and it glittered like gold, while from his
lips sounded pious prayers. Beautiful Helga's voice joined with his in
the hymns he sung, as a child joins in her mother's song. She swung
the censer, and a wonderful fragrance of incense arose from it; so
powerful, that the reeds and rushes of the moor burst forth into
blossom. Each germ came forth from the deep ground: all that had
life raised itself. Blooming water-lilies spread themselves forth like
a carpet of wrought flowers, and upon them lay a slumbering woman,
young and beautiful. Helga fancied that it was her own image she saw
reflected in the still water. But it was her mother she beheld, the
wife of the Marsh King, the princess from the land of the Nile.

The dead Christian priest desired that the sleeping woman should
be lifted on the horse, but the horse sank beneath the load, as if
he had been a funeral pall fluttering in the wind. But the sign of the
cross made the airy phantom strong, and then the three rode away
from the marsh to firm ground.

At the same moment the cock crew in the Viking's castle, and the
dream figures dissolved and floated away in the air, but mother and
daughter stood opposite to each other.

"Am I looking at my own image in the deep water?" said the mother.

"Is it myself that I see represented on a white shield?" cried the
daughter.

Then they came nearer to each other in a fond embrace. The
mother's heart beat quickly, and she understood the quickened
pulses. "My child!" she exclaimed, "the flower of my heart--my lotus
flower of the deep water!" and she embraced her child again and
wept, and the tears were as a baptism of new life and love for
Helga. "In swan's plumage I came here," said the mother, "and here I
threw off my feather dress. Then I sank down through the wavering
ground, deep into the marsh beneath, which closed like a wall around
me; I found myself after a while in fresher water; still a power
drew me down deeper and deeper. I felt the weight of sleep upon my
eyelids. Then I slept, and dreams hovered round me. It seemed to me as
if I were again in the pyramids of Egypt, and yet the waving elder
trunk that had frightened me on the moor stood ever before me. I
observed the clefts and wrinkles in the stem; they shone forth in
strange colors, and took the form of hieroglyphics. It was the mummy
case on which I gazed. At last it burst, and forth stepped the
thousand years' old king, the mummy form, black as pitch, black as the
shining wood-snail, or the slimy mud of the swamp. Whether it was
really the mummy or the Marsh King I know not. He seized me in his
arms, and I felt as if I must die. When I recovered myself, I found in
my bosom a little bird, flapping its wings, twittering and fluttering.
The bird flew away from my bosom, upwards towards the dark, heavy
canopy above me, but a long, green band kept it fastened to me. I
heard and understood the tenor of its longings. Freedom! sunlight!
to my father! Then I thought of my father, and the sunny land of my
birth, my life, and my love. Then I loosened the band, and let the
bird fly away to its home--to a father. Since that hour I have
ceased to dream; my sleep has been long and heavy, till in this very
hour, harmony and fragrance awoke me, and set me free."

The green band which fastened the wings of the bird to the
mother's heart, where did it flutter now? whither had it been
wafted? The stork only had seen it. The band was the green stalk,
the cup of the flower the cradle in which lay the child, that now in
blooming beauty had been folded to the mother's heart.

And while the two were resting in each other's arms, the old stork
flew round and round them in narrowing circles, till at length he flew
away swiftly to his nest, and fetched away the two suits of swan's
feathers, which he had preserved there for many years. Then he
returned to the mother and daughter, and threw the swan's plumage over
them; the feathers immediately closed around them, and they rose up
from the earth in the form of two white swans.

"And now we can converse with pleasure," said the stork-papa;
"we can understand one another, although the beaks of birds are so
different in shape. It is very fortunate that you came to-night.
To-morrow we should have been gone. The mother, myself and the
little ones, we're about to fly to the south. Look at me now: I am
an old friend from the Nile, and a mother's heart contains more than
her beak. She always said that the princess would know how to help
herself. I and the young ones carried the swan's feathers over here,
and I am glad of it now, and how lucky it is that I am here still.
When the day dawns we shall start with a great company of other
storks. We'll fly first, and you can follow in our track, so that
you cannot miss your way. I and the young ones will have an eye upon
you."

"And the lotus-flower which I was to take with me," said the
Egyptian princess, "is flying here by my side, clothed in swan's
feathers. The flower of my heart will travel with me; and so the
riddle is solved. Now for home! now for home!"

But Helga said she could not leave the Danish land without once
more seeing her foster-mother, the loving wife of the Viking. Each
pleasing recollection, each kind word, every tear from the heart which
her foster-mother had wept for her, rose in her mind, and at that
moment she felt as if she loved this mother the best.

"Yes, we must go to the Viking's castle," said the stork;
"mother and the young ones are waiting for me there. How they will
open their eyes and flap their wings! My wife, you see, does not say
much; she is short and abrupt in her manner; but she means well, for
all that. I will flap my wings at once, that they may hear us coming."
Then stork-papa flapped his wings in first-rate style, and he and
the swans flew away to the Viking's castle.

In the castle, every one was in a deep sleep. It had been late
in the evening before the Viking's wife retired to rest. She was
anxious about Helga, who, three days before, had vanished with the
Christian priest. Helga must have helped him in his flight, for it was
her horse that was missed from the stable; but by what power had all
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