The Sand-Hills of Jutland

by H. C. Andersen

She turned round to look for the moon, which was behind her: it was like a pale disc, without any rays. Something seemed to hang heavily about her limbs as she attempted to hurry on. She thought of the apparition; and, turning again, she beheld the white moon as if close to her, while the mist seemed to hang like a mantle over her shoulders. "Hold on—hold on! Give me Christian burial!" she expected every moment to hear; and she did hear a hollow, terrific sound, which seemed to cry hoarsely, "Bury me—bury me!" Yes, it must be the spectre of her child—her child who was lying at the bottom of the sea, and who would not rest quietly until the corpse was carried to the churchyard, and placed like a Christian in consecrated ground. She would go there—she would dig his grave herself; and she went in the direction in which the church lay, and as she proceeded she felt her invisible burden become lighter—it left her; and again she returned to the shore to reach her home as speedily as possible. But no sooner did her foot tread the sands than the wild sound seemed to moan around her, and it seemed ever to repeat, "Bury me—bury me!"

The fog was cold and damp; her hands and her face were cold and damp. She shivered in her fright. Without, space seemed to close up around her; within her there seemed to be endless room for thoughts that had never before entered her mind.

During one spring night here in the north the beech groves can sprout, and the next day's early sun can shine on them in all their fresh young beauty. In one single second within us can the germ of sin bud forth, swelling by degrees into thoughts, words, and deeds, though all remorse for them lies dormant. It is quickened and unfolds itself in one single second, when conscience awakens; and our Lord awakens that when we least expect it. Then there is nothing to be excused; deeds stand forth and bear witness, thoughts find words, and words ring out over the world. We are shocked at what we have permitted to dwell within us, and not stifled; shocked at what, in our thoughtlessness or our presumption, we have scattered abroad. The heart is the depository of all virtues, but also of all vices; and these can thrive in the most barren ground.

Anne Lisbeth reviewed in thought what we have expressed in words. She was overwhelmed with it all. She sank to the ground, and crawled a little way over it. "Bury me—bury me!" she still seemed to hear. She would rather have buried herself, if the grave could be an eternal forgetfulness of everything. It was the awakening hour of serious thought, of terrible thoughts, that made her shudder. Superstition came, too, by turns heating and chilling her blood; and things she would scarcely have ventured to mention rushed on her mind. Noiseless as the clouds that crossed the sky in the clear moonlight floated past her a vision she had heard of. Immediately before her sped four foaming horses, flames flashing from their eyes and from their distended nostrils; they drew a fiery chariot, in which sat the evil lord of the manor, who, more than a hundred years before, had dwelt in that neighbourhood. Every night, it is said, he drives to his former home, and then instantly turns back again. He was not white, as the dead are said to be: no, he was as black as a coal—a burnt-out coal. He nodded to Anne Lisbeth, and beckoned to her: "Hold on—hold on! So mayst thou again drive in a nobleman's carriage, and forget thine own child!"

In still greater terror, and with still greater precipitation than before, she fled in the direction of the church. She reached the churchyard; but the dark crosses above the graves, and the dark ravens, seemed to mingle together before her eyes. The ravens screeched as they had screeched in the daytime; but she now understood what they said, and each cried, "I am a raven-mother; I am a raven-mother!" And Anne Lisbeth thought that they were taunting her. She fancied that she might, perhaps, be changed into such a dark bird, and might have to screech like them, if she could not get the grave demanded of her dug.

And she threw herself down upon the ground, and she dug a grave with her hands in the hard earth, so that blood sprang from her fingers.

"Bury me—bury me!" resounded still about her. She dreaded the crowing of the cock, and the first red streak in the east, because, if they came before her labours were ended, she would be lost. And the cock crowed, and in the east it began to be light. The grave was but half dug. An ice-cold hand glided over her head and her face, down to where her heart was. "Only half a grave!" sighed a voice near her; and something seemed to vanish away—vanish into the deep sea. It was "the apparition of the beach." Anne Lisbeth sank, terror-stricken and benumbed, on the ground. She had lost feeling and consciousness.

It was broad daylight when she came to herself. Two young men lifted her up. She was lying, not in the churchyard, but down on the shore; and she had dug there a deep hole in the sand, and cut her fingers till they bled with a broken glass, the stem of which was stuck into a piece of wood painted blue. Anne Lisbeth was ill. Conscience had mingled in Superstition's game, and had imbued her with the idea that she had only half a soul—that her child had taken the other half away with him down to the bottom of the sea. Never could she ascend upwards towards the mercy-seat, until she had again the half soul that was imprisoned in the depths of the ocean. Anne Lisbeth was taken to her home, but she never was the same as she had formerly been. Her thoughts were disordered like tangled yarn; one thread alone was straight—that was to let "the apparition of the beach" see that a grave was dug for him in the churchyard, and thus to win back her entire soul.

Many a night she was missed from her home, and she was always found on the seashore, where she waited for the spectre of the dead. Thus passed a whole year. Then she disappeared one night, and was not to be found. The whole of the next day they searched for her in vain.

Towards the evening, when the bell-ringer entered the church to ring the evening chimes, he saw Anne Lisbeth lying before the altar. She had been there from a very early hour in the morning; her strength was almost exhausted, but her eyes sparkled, her face glowed with a sort of rosy tint. The departing rays of the sun shone in on her, and streamed over the altar-piece, and on the silver clasps of the Bible, that lay open at the words of the prophet Joel: "Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God." "It was a strange occurrence," people said—as if everything were chance.