Favorite Fairy Tales

by Unknown

And the winter was so cold, so cold, the Duckling was obliged to swim round and round in the water to keep it from freezing. But every night the opening in which he swam became smaller and smaller. It froze so that the crust of ice crackled and the Duckling was obliged to make good use of his legs to prevent the water from freezing entirely. At last, wearied out, he lay stiff and cold in the ice.

Early in the morning there passed by a peasant who saw him, broke the ice in pieces with his wooden shoe, and brought him home to his wife.

The poor Duckling soon revived. The children would have played with him, but he thought they wished to tease him, and in his terror jumped into the milk-pail, so that the milk was spilled about the room. The good woman screamed and clapped her hands. He flew from there into the pan where the butter was kept, and thence into the meal-barrel, and out again, and then how strange he looked!

The woman screamed, and struck at him with the tongs, the children ran races with each other trying to catch him, and laughed and screamed likewise. It was well for him that the door stood open. He jumped out among the bushes into the new-fallen snow, and there he lay as in a dream.

But it would be too sad to tell all the trouble and misery that he had to suffer from the frost, and snow and storms of the winter. He was lying on a moor among the reeds, when the sun began to shine warmly again; the larks sang, and beautiful spring had returned.

Once more he shook his wings. They were stronger than formerly and bore him forward quickly, and before he was well aware of it he was in a large garden where the apple-trees stood in full bloom, where the syringas sent forth their fragrance and hung their long green branches down into the winding canal. Oh! everything was so lovely, so full of the freshness of spring! And out of the thicket came three beautiful white Swans. They displayed their feathers so proudly and swam so lightly, so lightly! The Duckling knew the glorious creatures, and was seized with a strange sadness.

"I will fly to them, those kingly birds!" said he. "They will kill me, because I, ugly as I am, have dared to approach them. But it matters not. Better to be killed by them than to be bitten by the Ducks, pecked by the Hens, kicked by the girl who feeds the poultry, and to have so much to suffer during the winter!"

He flew into the water and swam towards the beautiful creatures. They saw him and shot forward to meet him. "Only kill me," said the poor creature, and he bowed his head low, expecting death. But what did he see in the water? He saw beneath him his own form, no longer that of a plump, ugly grey bird—it was that of a Swan.

It matters not to have been born in a duck-yard, if one has been hatched from a Swan's egg. And now the Swan began to see the good of all the trouble he had been through. He would never have known how happy he was if he had not first had all his sorrow and unhappiness to bear.