The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (the best novels to read txt) 📕

A father had two sons, of whom the eldest was clever and bright, and always knew what he was about; but the youngest was stupid, and couldn’t learn or understand anything. So much so that those who saw him exclaimed: “What a burden he’ll be to his father!” Now when there was anything to be done, the eldest had always to do it; but if something was required later or in the night-time, and the way led through the churchyard or some such ghostly place, he always replied: “Oh! no, father: nothing will induce me to go there, it makes me shudder!” for he was afraid. Or, when they sat of an evening around the fire telling stories which made one’s flesh creep, the listeners sometimes said: “Oh! it makes one shudder,” the youngest sat in a corner, heard the exclamation, and could not understand what it meant. “They are always saying it makes one shudder! it makes one shudder! Nothing makes me shudder. It’s probably an art quite beyond me.”

Now it happened that his father said to him one day: “Hearken, you there in the corner; you are growing big and strong, and you must learn to earn your own bread. Look at your brother, what pains he takes; but all the money I’ve spent on your education is thrown away.” “My dear father,” he replied, “I will gladly learn—in fact, if it were possible I should like to learn to shudder; I don’t understand that a bit yet.” The eldest laughed when he heard this, and thought to himself: “Good heavens! what a ninny my brother is! he’ll never come to any good; as the twig is bent, so is the tree inclined.” The father sighed, and answered him: “You’ll soon learn to shudder; but that won’t help you to make a living.”

Shortly after this, when the sexton came to pay them a visit, the father broke out to him, and told him what a bad hand his youngest son was at everything: he knew nothing and learned nothing. “Only think! when I asked him how he purposed gaining a livelihood, he actually asked to be taught to shudder.” “If that’s all he wants,” said the sexton, “I can teach him that; just you send him to me, I’ll soon polish him up.” The father was quite pleased with the proposal, because he thought: “It will be a good discipline for the youth.” And so the sexton took him into his house, and his duty was to toll the bell. After a few days he woke him at midnight, and bade him rise and climb into the tower and toll. “Now, my friend, I’ll teach you to shudder,” thought he. He stole forth secretly in front, and when the youth was up above, and had turned round to grasp the bell-rope, he saw, standing opposite the hole of the belfry, a white figure. “Who’s there?” he called out, but the figure gave no answer, and neither stirred nor moved. “Answer,” cried the youth, “or begone; you have no business here at this hour of the night.” But the sexton remained motionless, so that the youth might think that it was a ghost. The youth called out the second time: “What do you want here? Speak if you are an honest fellow, or I’ll knock you down the stairs.” The sexton thought: “He can’t mean that in earnest,” so gave forth no sound, and stood as though he were made of stone. Then the youth shouted out to him the third time, and as that too had no effect, he made a dash at the spectre and knocked it down the stairs, so that it fell about ten steps and remained lying in a corner. Thereupon he tolled the bell, went home to bed without saying a word, and fell asleep. The sexton’s wife waited a long time for her husband, but he never appeared. At last she became anxious, and woke the youth, and asked: “Don’t you know where my husband is? He went up to the tower in front of you.” “No,” answered the youth; “but someone stood on the stairs up there just opposite the trap-door in the belfry, and because he wouldn’t answer me, or go away, I took him for a rogue and knocked him down. You’d better go and see if it was he; I should be much distressed if it were.” The wife ran and found her husband who was lying groaning in a corner, with his leg broken.

She carried him down, and then hurried with loud protestations to the youth’s father. “Your son has been the cause of a pretty misfortune,” she cried; “he threw my husband downstairs so that he broke his leg. Take the good-for-nothing wretch out of our house.” The father was horrified, hurried to the youth, and gave him a scolding.

“What unholy pranks are these? The evil one must have put them into your head.” “Father,” he replied, “only listen to me; I am quite guiltless. He stood there in the night, like one who meant harm. I didn’t know who it was, and warned him three times to speak or begone.” “Oh!” groaned the father, “you’ll bring me nothing but misfortune; get out of my sight, I won’t have anything more to do with you.” “Yes, father, willingly; only wait till daylight, then I’ll set out and learn to shudder, and in that way I shall be master of an art which will gain me a living.” “Learn what you will,” said the father, “it’s all one to me. Here are fifty dollars for you, set forth into the wide world with them; but see you tell no one where you come from or who your father is, for I am ashamed of you.” “Yes, father, whatever you wish; and if that’s all you ask, I can easily keep it in mind.”

When day broke the youth put the fifty dollars into his pocket, set out on the hard high road, and kept muttering to himself: “If I could only shudder! if I could only shudder!” Just at this moment a man came by who heard the youth speaking to himself, and when they had gone on a bit and were in sight of the gallows the man said to him: “Look! there is the tree where seven people have been hanged, and are now learning to fly; sit down under it and wait till nightfall, and then you’ll pretty soon learn to shudder.” “If that’s all I have to do,” answered the youth, “it’s easily done; but if I learn to shudder so quickly, then you shall have my fifty dollars. Just come back to me to-morrow morning early.” Then the youth went to the gallows-tree and sat down underneath it, and waited for the evening; and because he felt cold he lit himself a fire. But at midnight it got so chill that in spite of the fire he couldn’t keep warm. And as the wind blew the corpses one against the other, tossing them to and fro, he thought to himself: “If you are perishing down here by the fire, how those poor things up there must be shaking and shivering!” And because he had a tender heart, he put up a ladder, which he climbed unhooked one body after the other, and took down all the seven. Then he stirred the fire, blew it up, and placed them all round in a circle, that they might warm themselves. But they sat there and did not move, and the fire caught their clothes. Then he spoke: “Take care, or I’ll hang you up again.” But the dead men did not hear and let their rags go on burning. Then he got angry, and said: “If you aren’t careful yourselves, then I can’t help you, and I don’t mean to burn with you”; and he hung them up again in a row. Then he sat down at his fire and fell asleep. On the following morning the man came to him, and, wishing to get his fifty dollars, said: “Now you know what it is to shudder.” “No,” he answered, “how should I? Those fellows up there never opened their mouths, and were so stupid that they let those few old tatters they have on their bodies