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Main > Fairy tale > All authors > Andersen Hans Christian > Fairy tale "The Will-o'-the-Wisps Are in Town"

The Will-o'-the-Wisps Are in Town

The fairy tale never dies!

"Perhaps it was here and knocked, but who at that time had ears for it or would have thought of it? Then people looked darkly, gloomily, almost angrily, at the spring sunshine, the singing birds, and all the cheerful greenery; yes, and their tongues wouldn't even repeat the merry old folk songs, and they were laid in the coffin with so much else that our heart cherished. The fairy tale may well have knocked but not been heard, and with no one to bid it welcome, it may have departed.

"I shall go out and seek it! In the country - in the woods - on the open beaches"

Out in the country stands an old manor house with red walls, pointed gables, and a flag waving from the tower. The nightingale sings under the fringed beech leaves while it gazes at the blooming apple trees in the garden and thinks they are rose trees. Here the bees labor busily in the summertime, hovering around their queen with humming song. Here the autumn storm tells much of the wild chase, of the falling leaves, and of the generations of men that pass away. At Christmastime the wild swans sing on the open water, while in the old manor house the guests beside the fire are happy to hear the ancient songs and legends.

Down into the old part of the garden, where the great avenue of old chestnut trees invites the wanderer to pause in their shade, went the man who was seeking the fairy tale. Here the wind had once told him of "Valdemar Daae and His Daughters"; here the dryad in the tree - the fairy-tale mother herself - had told him "The Old Oak Tree's Last Dream." In our grandmother's time clipped hedges stood here; now there grow only ferns and stinging nettles, hiding the broken fragments of old figures sculptured in stone; moss grows in their very eyes, but still they can see as well as ever, which the man seeking the fairy tale couldn't, for he didn't see it. Where could it be?

Hundreds of crows flew over him and the old trees, crying, "Caw! Caw!"

Then he left the garden and crossed the rampart surrounding the manor, into the alder grove.

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