Norse Tales and Sketches

by Alexander Lange Kielland

'Oh! then you had better ask my wife.'

'So she understands birds, does she?' exclaimed the lady, much mollified.

'Yes, she is mad with them, they do so much mischief among the cherries.'

With this my lady had to go. But the story is not yet finished; the worst is to come.

For when, indignant at the countryman's ignorance of the bird-world, she told all this in town, there was one very solemn gentleman who said:

'Are you sure that it was not a gull?'

This went beyond all bounds, thought my lady, and she came and complained bitterly to me.

When wild-geese fly in good order, as they do when in the air for days and nights together, the lines generally form the well-known plough, with one bird at the point, and the two next ones on either side of him a little way behind.

Hitherto I have always been content with the explanation that we received and gave one another as boys, viz., that the birds chose this formation in order to cleave the air, like a snow-plough clearing a way.

But it suddenly occurred to me the other day that this was pure nonsense—an association of ideas called forth by the resemblance to a plough, which moves in earth or snow, but which has no meaning up in the air.