On a Pincushion · Siegfrid and Handa (1/2)

Siegfrid and Handa

On the border of a large forest there once stood a little village, where all the people were happy, for they were all good and industrious and honest. It was the pleasantest little village in the world. No fevers or illnesses ever came near it. The people died only of old age, and all the children were well grown and strong. The villagers never quarrelled with each other, but lived as peacefully as the flowers in the forest. Now, there was an old proverb about the place, which said that as long as the people were honest and hardworking, and never quarrelled or were greedy or avaricious, no troubles should come near them, but that heavy misfortune would fall on them directly they forgot to behave well. The children in this village were as happy as their parents, but perhaps the happiest child of all was little Siegfrid, the shoemaker’s little son. He had no brothers or sisters, but he never felt lonely, for he played with the miller’s little daughter Handa, who was just his own age, and as pretty a little maiden as you would wish to see. Siegfrid’s father, Ralph, was the only shoemaker in the village, and made shoes and boots for all the people. Once a year each one would come to him and say, “Ralph, I want a new pair of shoes, and be sure you make them as good as the last.” So Ralph had plenty to do, but he took a long time making each pair, for he always wanted them to be well made, and would have been ashamed if he had been told that they had worn out before their time or did not fit well.

His father meant to teach little Siegfrid his trade, and that he should be village shoemaker after him; and when he was grown up Siegfrid meant to marry Handa, and already the villagers, when they saw the children walking hand in hand to and from school, as they did every day, laughed and said, “There go Siegfrid and his little wife.”

The forest near was full of birds and animals, and as the villagers never hunted or hurt them in any way, they had grown quite tame. The birds would fly down from the branches and sit upon the shoulders of the passersby, or flutter round their heads singing. The squirrels sat still and let anyone stroke them, and even the timid hares came and gently rubbed themselves against the children’s legs and feet, with no more fear of them than a pussy cat would have had; in fact, the animals in the forest were as peaceful and happy as the men and women in the village.

One day there came along the high road a queer little old man⁠—an ugly-looking man⁠—with small eyes and a peaked cap on his head. On his back he carried a heavy pack like a pedlar’s. When he got into the village he stopped and began to undo it, whilst all the children stood round him staring. Everyone who passed stopped and looked at him, for it was very unusual for any stranger to come to the village. Then the old man took some poles and a board, which he had carried on his back also, and with them he made a stall, which he placed by the roadside. Then he undid his pack and took from it a number of boots and shoes, which he placed on the stall, and then sat down himself on a little stool behind it.

All the children gathered round the stall to look, for never had they seen such a number of boots and shoes together before. There were big ones and little ones, blue, green, red, yellow, violet, every colour⁠—some with bows and rosettes, others quite plain. And all had their prices marked on them; and oh! how cheap they were! The boots and shoes Ralph made cost three times as much.

After a time the old man began to sing:⁠—

“Come, buy! come, buy!

Shoes for all.

Who’ll try? who’ll try?”

“Red shoes and blue shoes,

Black shoes and white shoes,

Thick shoes and thin shoes,

Strong shoes and light shoes.”

But the villagers all passed on, and only laughed as they looked back at the stall, and said, “We don’t want him here. We have Ralph to make our boots and shoes, and he does quite well for us.” So no customers came to the old man that day, and when night came he quietly packed up his wares and took his stall to pieces, and went his way. But the first thing next morning there he was again putting up his stall and covering it with boots and shoes. Every day for many weeks he came and sat by the roadside, in exactly the same spot, singing the same rhyme, and still no one went near him to buy his goods, and the children grew so used to him that they no longer stopped to stare at him.

But one day a young girl named Lisbeth, the daughter of the baker, came near the stall, and looked at a pair of red shoes, with pretty buckles, and the old man looked at her, but did not say a word. Then she turned away, but she felt the money in her pocket as she walked, and she looked back at the shoes, and the old man nodded and chuckled to himself as he watched her. Next morning she came again, but this time she took up the shoes in her hand, and examined them well; she turned them about a little, and then she put them down and walked away as before; but in the evening she came back, and took them up again, and this time she did not lay them down, but took out her money, and paid the old man for them, and then ran away, hiding the shoes under her apron, for she was rather afraid of being laughed at for having bought shoes of the old man. At once she took them to her greatest friend, who was a girl named Alys. “Look at these pretty pink shoes,” she said. “I have just bought them of the old man at the stall, and they only cost five silver pennies. See how pretty they are!” Alys looked at them and said, “It is true they are very pretty, but I don’t think they will wear well; however, as they are so very cheap, that does not much matter. I wonder if he has another pair just like them, that I could buy.”

So Lisbeth and Alys went back to the stall, and Alys bought a pair of shoes just like Lisbeth’s; and then they both went to show them to the other young girls in the village, and one by one each said she would have a pair for herself, till there was not a girl who was not wearing the old man’s shoes. Then the women began. If they were so cheap, they said, why should they not buy them too? They were not bound to buy only Ralph’s goods. So after a time all the women had bought boots for themselves, and shoes for their little ones, from the old man, and then they began to persuade their husbands to go and buy of him also. At first all the men refused, saying that Ralph had made their boots all his life, and it was unfair to give him up now; but the women went on persuading, and one by one the men consented; till at last there was no one in the village, except Ralph and his son, little Siegfrid, who was not wearing the old man’s boots and shoes. At first Ralph only laughed, and said that they would soon come back to his little shop when they found what the old man’s boots were worth, for no one could sell good things at such a price. But the boots wore out, and still all the people went back again to the old man’s stall for more, though they knew that they would not last for long.

Then Ralph looked very grave, and began to say to everyone that if they did not change, and return to buy his boots and shoes, as before, he would have to leave the village and go elsewhere, where his goods would find customers, for he could not live there if he sold nothing.

But strange to say, just at this time, though the spring was well advanced, there was one night a bitter black frost, and in the morning the farmers found that all the young green corn was nipped and killed. Such a thing had never been known to happen before, and much it frightened the people, for what would they do if they had no corn with which to make their bread?

Then there fell over everything a terrible blight, and it killed all the young fruit, which fell from the trees. This alarmed the people even more, for it would indeed be bad if they had neither fruit nor bread to eat.

Then the weather turned very hot⁠—so hot that no one could endure it⁠—and all the grass was dried up, and the cows had nothing to eat, so that there was no milk to be had; and then the wells and streams began to dry up, and the people began to fear there would soon be no water either. The rains did not come, and then, worst of all, a bad fever broke out in the village, and many persons fell sick. Still, no one thought that all these misfortunes had anything to do with the old shoemaker, who still sat by the roadside, selling his shoes and singing his queer rhymes. At last, one day, one of the men remembered the old saying, that the people of that village should always be prosperous as long as they were honest and industrious, and neither cruel nor greedy.

“But it is not our conduct,” said they, “which has brought all this trouble on us, for we have been neither cruel, nor dishonest, nor greedy.”

But little Handa shook her head and said, “You are very cruel, you are letting poor Ralph starve, because you will all buy your boots and shoes of the new old man. Ralph has worked well for you all his life, and now you all leave him and buy boots from the old man, just because he is new, though you know they are not half as good as Ralph’s.”

“You are talking of what you don’t understand, Handa,” said her father, the miller, angrily. “Of course it is right for us to buy everything as cheaply as we can. Be quiet, child!” And everyone was angry with Handa for speaking; but she thought just the same, and she cried when she saw Ralph, or his wife, or Siegfrid.

The fever in the village spread, and Ralph caught it, and was very ill, and had to lie in bed all day. He could not now have made boots, if anyone had come to buy them of him. At last he and his wife grew so poor that she had to sell all their furniture, to buy bread for them to eat. When that was gone she began to sell all the clothes they could do without, even to the boots from their feet, so that little Siegfrid and she had to go about barefoot. The famine in the village grew worse, and the men began to trap and kill the animals in the forest to eat. At last there came a worse misfortune than all. A little girl named Frieda, the daughter of a farmer, disappeared, and could not be found anywhere. They sought for her far and near, in the village and in the forest, but she was nowhere to be found, and everyone made up their minds that she had been stolen. But next day another little girl was missing, and it was vain to search for either. The next day another went, and then another, and another, till five little girls had disappeared; and on the sixth day little Handa went also. Then the people all sallied forth in a body, with swords and sticks; and they walked for miles around the village, and sought in every corner of the forest, but no trace of the children could be seen. Still, Handa’s father would not rest, but walked about looking for her both day and night, whilst poor Siegfrid sought till his feet were blistered, and cut, and he was so weary that he could go no farther.

No one, who had known it in its old days, would have recognized the little village again. Instead of the villagers looking healthy, and happy, and rosy, they were worn, and sad, and pale, whilst the women’s eyes were red with crying for the lost children. The houses were tumbling down, and none of the people seemed to have strength or care to build them up again.

Over all the place hung a hot thick mist, and each day the fever grew worse, and more were ill.

The second evening after Handa had disappeared, Siegfrid wandered into the forest to cry by himself. Even that was changed; no birds sang sweetly in the branches as of yore. The leaves on the trees were turning brown, and falling before their time, and the animals darted away at the sound of footsteps, afraid lest they might be caught and killed.

As Siegfrid walked along he kicked something with his foot, and found it was a trap in which a poor little Hare had been caught, and was held by one leg.

“Poor Hare,” said Siegfrid, “perhaps you used to play about us when I walked here with Handa, I will let you go, and then another time you will be careful not to be caught;” so he undid the trap, and the Hare sprang from it, but instead of running away, as Siegfrid had expected, it sat quite still in front of him, looking into his face.

“I saw Handa last night,” it said at last, in a wheezy voice.

Siegfrid stared, but he was so overjoyed at hearing again of Handa, that he quite got over his surprise at hearing a Hare speak.

“Saw Handa!” he cried. “Oh, where? Is she alive? Oh, tell me.”

“She is in a cavern underground,” said the Hare. “She and all the other little girls are sitting there in a row, and they cannot move or speak, because on their feet are magic shoes that the old shoemaker made for them, which hold them as still as marble. He waited for them one by one near the village, and gave to each a pair of pretty yellow shoes, and when she had put them on, they ran away with her, and she could not stop try what she might; and the shoes took her right into the middle of the forest. Then the ground opened, and the shoes ran right down into the cavern underground, and the earth closed up again; and there sit poor Handa and the other five little girls, who were all brought there in the same way; and they will never move till someone pulls the shoes from their feet. Now the old man is waiting till tonight, when he will steal another little girl, and that will make seven, and then he will take them away and kill them. In reality he is a kind of gnome, and very cruel and wicked. He has disguised himself as a shoemaker, that he may steal these little girls. He belongs to a kind which only lives three hundred years, and then they begin to grow small, and gradually become less and less, till at last they vanish quite into air, unless they can steal seven little girls from whose bones they make a dreadful charm, which gives them life for another hundred years. I cannot tell you how many children this old man has killed, for he is nearly two thousand years old; but now the time has come for him to kill seven more children, and if he cannot do it, he will shrivel and shrink, and at last vanish away.”

Then Siegfrid clapped his hands. “That will be capital!” he cried. “I will go and pull the shoes off their feet at once, and then when he comes he will find them gone, and he will not be able to get more in time, so that he will shrink and vanish.”

The Hare shook its head. “You are going too fast,” it said. “The shoes cannot be drawn from the children’s feet as long as a single person in the village is wearing the boots and shoes made by the old man. So the first thing you must do will be to get all the shoes from everyone in the village, and put them all into a heap, and burn them all together.”

“But how can I do that?” asked Siegfrid. “The people will never give me their boots to burn, and if I tell them all you tell me they will not believe me.”

“Let us go and ask the Owl,” said the Hare. “He flies about at night when there is no one to see. Perhaps he would steal them for you and bring them here.” So Siegfrid and the Hare started off together to find the Owl. He was sitting on a bough half asleep, for it was yet light, so he had not quite waked up, and Siegfrid had to throw a bit of wood at him to wake him. He looked very cross when he opened his eyes and heard what they wanted, but he said⁠—

“I will do it for you if you will pay me. If you will give me one of your eyes, I will bring you everyone’s boots from the village tonight, after they are all in bed.”

“But why do you want my eye?” said Siegfrid. “It can be of no use to you. You will not be able to see with my eye; and perhaps Handa will not love me if I have only one eye.”