The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen

by Hans Christian Andersen

  By the time the sun set, the magnificent royal city with all its churches and domes lay before them. The king took Elisa into his palace, where water was splashing in grand fountains in enormous marble halls, and where both walls and ceilings were decorated with paintings. But she had no eyes for any of these things. All she could do was cry and grieve. Without resisting, she let the women dress her in royal garments, weave strings of pearls into her hair, and pull fine gloves over her blistered fingers.

  She was so dazzlingly beautiful in her finery that the whole court bowed even more deeply than before. And the king chose her as his bride, even though the archbishop was shaking his head31 and whispering that this lovely maid from the woods must be a sorceress who had bewitched the court and stolen the king’s heart.

  The king refused to listen. He gave commands and music was played, sumptuous dishes were served, and lovely girls began dancing. Elisa was escorted through fragrant gardens into magnificent halls, but nothing could bring a smile to her lips or make her eyes sparkle. Sorrow had set its seal upon them as if that were her eternal destiny. At length the king opened the door to a little chamber adjoining her bedroom. It was covered with splendid green tapestries and looked exactly like the cave in which she had been living. On the floor lay the bundle of flax she had spun from the nettles, and from the ceiling hung the shirt of mail she had already woven. One of the hunters had decided to bring back these curiosities.

  “Here you can dream yourself back to your old home,” the king told her. “This is the work that kept you occupied. Now, in the midst of all this splendor, it may amuse you to think back to that time.”

  When Elisa discovered all the things that were so precious to her, a smile came to her lips, and the color came back into her cheeks. Overjoyed at the thought of her brothers’ salvation, she kissed the king’s hand. He pressed her to his heart and ordered that all the church bells ring in honor of the wedding celebration. The beautiful mute girl from the forest was crowned queen.

  The archbishop continued muttering evil things into the king’s ear, but they could not reach his heart. The wedding took place,32 and the archbishop himself had to place the crown on her head. Out of malice, he pressed the tight circlet so low down on her forehead that it began to hurt. But an even heavier band gripped her heart. The sorrow she felt for her brothers kept her from feeling any pain in her body. Her lips were sealed, for a single word would spell the death of her brothers. In her eyes shone a deep love for the kind, handsome king who was doing everything in his power to make her happy. Every day she grew fonder of him, with all her heart. Oh, if only she dared confide in him and tell him of her torment. But she had to remain mute and finish her task in silence. At night she would steal away from the king’s side and retreat to her own little room, which was furnished like the cave. She finished knitting one shirt of mail after another, but just as she was about to begin the seventh shirt, she ran out of flax.

  She knew that the nettles for the shirt were growing in the churchyard, and she had to pick them herself. How could she possibly get there?

  “What is the pain in my fingers compared with the anguish I feel in my heart!” she thought. “I have to risk it, and I know God will not abandon me.”

  With fear in her heart, as if she were about to commit some kind of evil deed, she tiptoed out into the garden by the light of the moon. She walked down avenues out into the deserted streets toward the churchyard. There she saw, seated in a circle on one of the largest tombstones, a group of hideous ghouls33—horrid witches. They were taking off their rags as if they were about to bathe, but then they buried their long, gaunt fingers in the new graves, snatched the bodies out of them, and began to eat their flesh. Elisa had to pass right by them, and they fixed their evil eyes on her, but she recited a prayer while she was picking the nettles that were stinging her and carried them back home to the palace.

  One person had seen her—the archbishop, who had remained awake while everyone else was sleeping. He finally had proof for what he had long suspected. Something was not quite right about the queen. She must be a witch, and that was how she had managed to fool the king and all his subjects.

  In the confessional, the archbishop told the king what he had seen and reported everything that he feared. As the harsh words escaped his lips, the carved images of the saints shook their heads34 as if to say: “That’s not true. Elisa is innocent!” The archbishop, however, had a different explanation. He claimed that they were bearing witness against her and that they were shaking their heads at her wickedness. Two big tears rolled down the king’s cheeks. He returned home with doubt in his heart. That night he did not sleep at all, but he pretended to be asleep when Elisa got up. Night after night she arose, and each time he followed her without making any noise and saw her disappear into the little room.

  Every day the king’s countenance grew darker. Elisa noticed, but she had no idea what it meant. It made her worry and added to the pain she was already feeling about her brothers. Hot tears rolled down upon her royal robes of purple velvet. They glittered like diamonds, and everyone who saw this precious splendor wanted to be queen. Before long Elisa would be finished with her task. She had just one more shirt of mail to finish, but she ran out of flax again, and there was not a single nettle left. Once more, now for the last time, she would have to go to the churchyard and pick a few more handfuls. She was filled with dread at the thought of that lonely walk and of those ghastly witches, but her will was as firm as her faith in God.

  Elisa went out, and both the king and archbishop followed her. They watched her disappear through the wrought-iron gates of the churchyard, and as soon as they entered, they saw the very same hideous demons sitting on a gravestone that Elisa had seen. The king turned away, for he imagined that Elisa—whose head had rested on his heart that very evening—was one of them.

  “Let the people judge her,” he said. And the people did judge her and condemned her to burn at the stake.

  Elisa was taken from the splendid royal halls to a dark, dank dungeon, where the wind whistled through the bars of the window. Instead of silk and velvet, she was given the bundle of nettles she had gathered as a place to rest her head. The harsh, stinging shirts of mail she had woven were her comforter and coverlet. Nothing they could have given her would have been more precious. She started her work again and prayed to God. Outdoors she could hear boys in the street mocking her with their songs. Not a soul came to comfort her with a kind word.

  Toward evening a swan’s wing whooshed past the grating on Elisa’s window. It was the youngest of the brothers. He had found his sister, who sobbed aloud with joy, even though she knew that the coming night might be her last. Now her work was almost finished, and the brothers were there.

  The archbishop arrived to pass the final hour with her, as he had promised the king. But Elisa shook her head, begging him with her eyes and with gestures to leave. Tonight she must finish her task or it would all be in vain—the pain, the tears, and the sleepless nights. The archbishop left, uttering cruel words about her, but poor Elisa knew that she was innocent and continued with her work.

  Tiny mice ran across the floor,35 bringing nettles right to her feet and doing everything they could to help. A thrush perched near the bars of her window and sang all night long, as cheerfully as possible, so that she would not lose her courage.

  In the early hours of the dawn, an hour before sunrise, the eleven brothers arrived at the palace gate, demanding an audience with the king. That was impossible, they were told. After all, it was still nighttime. The king was fast asleep, and no one dared wake him up. They pleaded and made threats until the guards turned out and even the king came out to find out what was wrong. Then suddenly the sun rose, and the eleven brothers vanished, but eleven swans could be seen flying over the palace.

  Everyone in town was streaming through the gates, for they were all eager to watch the witch burn. A decrepit old horse was pulling the cart in which Elisa was seated. She was dresse
d in a smock made of coarse sackcloth. Her lovely, long hair was hanging loosely around her beautiful face. Her cheeks were deathly pale, and her lips were moving while her fingers were twisting the green flax. Even on the way to her death she would not stop the work she had begun. Ten shirts of mail lay at her feet, and she was working hard on the eleventh. The mob jeered at her.

  “Look at the witch! See how she’s muttering under her breath. She doesn’t even have a prayer book in her hands. There she sits, with her revolting handiwork. Let’s take it away from her and tear it into a thousand pieces!”

  The crowds surged toward her, trying to tear her work to bits. Suddenly eleven swans appeared, flapping their wings and making a circle around her. The mob drew back in terror.

  “It’s a sign from heaven. She must be innocent,” many whispered, but no one dared to say it out loud.

  The executioner grabbed her by the arm. In haste, she threw the eleven shirts over the swans, and instantly they turned into eleven handsome princes. The youngest had a swan’s wing in place of an arm, because his shirt of mail was missing a sleeve.36 Elisa had not quite managed to finish it. “Now I can speak,” she declared. “I am innocent.”

  Everyone who had witnessed what had happened bowed down before her as if she were a saint. The strain, the anguish, and the pain were too much for her, and she sank lifeless into her brothers’ arms.

  “She is indeed innocent,” the eldest brother proclaimed, and he told them everything that had happened. While he was speaking, the aroma of millions of roses began to spread,37 for every piece of wood piled on the fire had taken root and grown branches. An enormous hedge had spread out,38 dense with fragrant red roses. At the very top was a single blossom, gleaming white and shining like a star. The king broke it off and placed it on Elisa’s chest. She woke up, feeling peace and happiness in her heart.

  All the church bells began to ring of their own accord, and birds appeared in great flocks. 39 A wedding procession headed back toward the palace40—one grander than any king had ever seen.

  The Eleven Swans

  by Matthias Winther

  Once there lived a king with eleven sons and one daughter. When they were growing up, the queen died. The king spent so much time grieving over her that he believed he would never recover. But when the twelve children were grown up, he married again, but this wife was an evil witch. She could not stand the twelve children, and she sent the daughter out to work as a servant and transformed the eleven sons so that they were swans in the daytime and humans at night. They would fly far away, and the father was left all alone with the evil woman, sighing, and thinking often of the good wife who had died. When a year had passed, the sister returned home and asked about her eleven brothers, but she was not given an answer. She wondered where they could be, and she wept all the time, for she wanted to be with her brothers. She asked her father for money, took all her brothers’ clothes as well as their eleven silver spoons and went out into the wide world to find them.

  She had walked for many days when she reached a great, dark forest. She wandered around for a long time until she reached a hut where an old woman was sitting and spinning. She asked whether she had seen the eleven boys, one older than the next, but the witch replied that she had only seen eleven beautiful swans floating on the river. The sister went to the river with hope in her heart and found a little straw hut. In it were eleven beds and eleven pots, with eleven wooden spoons in them. She took the wooden spoons out of the pots and put the eleven silver spoons in their place. And then she left. Towards evening, eleven snow-white swans came swimming up the river, and when they came to the hut, they turned into human beings. They were her brothers. When they went inside, they recognized their spoons, thought of their sister, and looked for her. The next day they turned again into beautiful swans and flew away over the tree-tops. But the sister had, in the meantime, made three nets, and when she finally found the eleven swans lying among the reeds, she threw nets over them and caught every single one of them. She asked how she could save them, but they could not tell her. She wept bitter tears and went with them through the woods to their hut. When thorns and bushes were in their way, she lifted the swans with care to prevent injury. She stayed with them at night, and the eleven swans put their heads on her lap and fell asleep. They turned human only in the middle of the night. During the day, the oldest brother dreamed that there was a way to save them. While remaining silent, their sister would have to go out in the morning and gather thistles in the field, then turn them into flax, spin and weave it, and sew eleven shirts from the cloth.

  She went into the field to gather with her soft hands the thistles growing there. Then she turned them into flax and spun busily so that her brothers could return to their human form. One day the weather was so beautiful that she picked up the spinning wheel and took it outside into the woods. She was sitting under a tree and spinning, while the birds all around were singing to her. Her brothers were swans again and were floating far away on the river. As she sat there spinning, a king came riding past, and when he saw her, he thought that he had never seen a more beautiful woman. He took her home and married her. The old king had died just recently.

  One day a message arrived for the king. He had to go to war. While he was away, the queen gave birth to two lovely children. The old queen took them away and ordered a servant to kill them. She put two motley pups in their place. Meanwhile the young queen continued spinning and weaving, thinking about her brothers and worrying about where they might be. When the king returned and heard that his wife had given birth to two pups, he became so angry that he ordered her to be murdered. By then she had finished all the shirts, except for one sleeve in the eleventh. She wept bitter tears once again, wishing that she had been able to finish her work. When the coach took her to the place of execution, eleven snow-white swans followed. They flew in circles around the queen and finally settled on the coach, fluttering their white wings. The queen threw one shirt after another on them, and, when the shirts landed on them, they turned into human beings. But the eleventh, who had the shirt with only one sleeve, kept one swan wing. The queen told the king everything that had happened. One of the servants was summoned. Out of pity, he had hidden the two princes instead of killing them. The second stepmother was put into a barrel with spikes and rolled down a hill to her death.

  1. where the swallows fly when it’s winter here. Although the folktale being recast has its origins in Scandinavian countries and German-speaking countries, Andersen chose to set it in southern climes, in a domain where birds settle to escape the harsh winter climate of northern countries.

  2. one daughter named Elisa. Elisa is a shortened form for Elisabeth, from the Hebrew Elisheba, which signifies that God is “satisfaction,” “perfection,” or “plenitude.” Unwavering in her mission to liberate her brothers from the spell that keeps them in animal form, Elisa becomes a figure who enacts the meaning of faith and devotion.

  3. a little stool made of mirror glass. Fairy tales famously use gold to express beauty, but glass also appears frequently—in the form of slippers, coaches, coffins, axes, and mountains—symbolizing not only beauty but also clarity and rarity. To be sure, there is something absurd about a stool made of glass, but glass, like gold, is connected with delicate radiance.

  4. look at a picture book that cost half the kingdom. Half the kingdom is a measure frequently used as the reward for princes and young men who rescue princesses. The value attached to pictures in this context reflects the degree to which the beauty of images is—especially for children—incalculable.

  5. he married an evil queen who was not at all kind to the poor children. Like the stepmothers of Cinderella, Snow White, and Hansel and Gretel, this second wife withholds love and tries to banish the children from the safe enclosure of family life. The ghoulish creatures that appear later in the story embody her evil character, giving it physical force.

  6. the children played at entertaining guests. “Company’s coming” wa
s a common children’s game in Andersen’s time, and it is also played by the princess in “The Swineherd.”

  7. “Fly away like great big birds without voices.” The curses and spells in fairy tales have been seen as bearing witness “to an early and perhaps continuous belief—or at least continuous reference to—a peculiarly female ability to control, direct or affect natural powers” (Bottigheimer, 43). The evil queen is initially described as a human, but her identity as a witch is quickly revealed, first by her ability to transform humans into birds, then by the term used to designate her in the bathing scene. The transformation of the boys into birds is accompanied by a loss of voice, anticipating the vow of silence Elisa will take. Margaret Atwood recalls the special attraction to her as a child of humans transformed into birds: “Now, in real life birds were birds. They cawed, hooted, quacked and chirped, and, if they were loons, made eerie sounds at night that caused the hair to stand up on your arms. But in fairy tales, birds were either messengers that led you deeper into the forest on some quest, or brought you news or help, or warned you, like the bird at the robbers’ house in ‘The Robber Bridegroom,’ or meted out vengeance, like the eye-pecking doves at the end of ‘Cinderella’; or else they were something you could be transformed into. These last were my kind of birds” (“Of Souls as Birds,” 25).

  8. “Who could be more beautiful than you?” The rose and the hymnal, by combining beauty with piety, suggest that more is at stake than in the traditional folktale, where beauty alone is sufficient to mark the heroine’s magnetic quality. Note how Andersen adds a layer of Christian morality to a tale with pagan origins. The beauty of nature (as symbolized by the rose) and the beauty of the word (as symbolized by the hymnal) pale before Elisa, who becomes “the fairest of all,” but who remains unreadable because she cannot speak.