[TOMMELISE.]
Once upon a time, a beggar woman went to the house of a poor peasant, and asked for something to eat. The peasant's wife gave her some bread and milk. When she had eaten it, she took a barley-corn out of her pocket, and said—"This will I give thee; set it in a flower-pot, and see what will come out of it."
The woman set the barley-corn in an old flower-pot, and the next day the most beautiful plant had shot up, which looked just like a tulip, but the leaves were shut close together, as if it still were in bud.
"What a pretty flower it is!" said the woman, and kissed the small red and yellow leaves; and just as she had kissed them, the flower gave a great crack, and opened itself. It was a real tulip, only one could see that in the middle of the flower there sat upon the pintail a little tiny girl, so delicate and lovely, and not half so big as my thumb, and, therefore, woman called her Tommelise.
A pretty polished walnut-shell was her cradle, blue violet leaves were her mattress, and a rose leaf was her coverlet; here she slept at night, but in the day she played upon the table, where the woman had set a plate, around which she placed quite a garland of flowers, the stalks of which were put in water. A large tulip-leaf floated on the water. Tommelise seated herself on this, and sailed from one end of the plate to the other; she had two white horse-hairs to row her little boat with. It looked quite lovely; and then she sang—Oh! so beautifully, as nobody ever had heard!
One night, as she lay in her nice little bed, there came a fat, yellow frog hopping in at the window, in which there was a broken pane. The frog was very large and heavy, but it hopped easily on the table where Tommelise lay and slept under the red rose leaf.
"This would be a beautiful wife for my son!" said the frog; and so she took up the walnut-shell in which Tommelise lay, and hopped away with it, through the broken pane, down into the garden.
Here there ran a large, broad river; but just at its banks it was marshy and muddy: the frog lived here, with her son. Uh! he also was all spotted with green and yellow, and was very like his mother. "Koax, koax, brekke-ke-kex!" that was all that he could say when he saw the pretty little maiden in the walnut-shell.
"Don't make such a noise, or else you will waken her," said the old frog; "and if you frighten her, she may run away from us, for she is as light as swan's down! We will take her out on the river, and set her on a waterlily leaf; to her who is so light, it will be like an island; she cannot get away from us there, and we will then go and get ready the house in the mud, where you two shall live together."