A Story from the Sand Dunes

It was a woman, and surely she was dead! A couple of women who quickly gathered around her believed she showed signs of life, and carried her over the dunes to the fisherman's cottage. How beautiful and dainty she was! - no doubt a lady of rank.

They laid her in the fisherman's humble bed; there was no linen to wrap her in, only a woolen blanket; but at least this was warm and comfortable. She breathed, but she was in a high fever. She had no idea where she was or what had happened; perhaps this was just as well, for all that was dear to her now lay at the bottom of the ocean; they had met the same fate as those sung of in the ballad about "The King of England's Son":

A sorrowful sight it was to all;

The ship was broken into pieces small!

Many bits of the wreck were driven ashore, but the lady alone survived of all the voyagers. Still the wind howled and wailed along the coast.

For a few minutes she seemed to rest, but then came screams of pain and fear. Her beautiful eyes opened, and she spoke a few words, but no one could understand her. At last, after hours of suffering and struggles, there nestled in her arms a tiny, newborn child.

That child was to have rested under silken curtains in a beautiful home, was to have been welcomed to a life full of this world's riches; but our Lord had willed that he should be born in this humble hut; and not so much as one kiss was he to receive from the lips of his mother!

The fisherman's wife placed the baby against its mother's heart, a heart that beat no longer - she was dead. And the child who was to have been brought up in luxury and pleasure had been hurled headlong into life, tossed by the sea among the sand dunes, there to experience the lot of a poor man, and weary and dark days.

And always the old song comes to our mind:

On the King's son's cheek there was a tear

"Pray, Christ, I reach Bovbjerg; then I shan't fear!

If only I had come to Herr Bugge's Strand;

Then no knight nor squire of any band

Would have dared against me lift a hand.