安徒生童話：The Marsh King’S Daughter 沼澤王的女兒
the storks tell many, many stories to their young ones, all about the bogs and marshes. in general each story is suited to the age and sense of the little storks. while the youngest ones are satisfied with, "kribble-krabble, plurry-murry," and think it a very fine story, the older ones demand something with more sense to it, or at least something about the family.
of the two oldest stories which have been handed down among the storks, we all know the one about moses, who was put by his mother on the banks of the nile, where a king's daughter found him. how well she brought him up, how he became a great man, and how no one knows where he lies buried, are things that we all have heard.
the other tale is not widely known, perhaps because it is almost a family story. this tale has been handed down from one mother stork to another for a thousand years, and each succeding story teller has told it better and better, and now we shall tell it best of all.
the first pair of storks who told this tale and who themselves played a part in it, had their summer home on the roof of the viking's wooden castle up by the wild marsh in vendsyssel. if we must be precise about our knowledge, this is in the country of hjorring, high up near skagen in jutland. there is still a big marsh there, which we can read about in the official reports of that district. it is said that the place once lay under the sea, but the land has risen somewhat, and is now a wilderness extending for many a mile. one is surrounded on all sides by marshy meadows, quagmires, and peat bogs, overgrown by cloud berries and stunted trees. dank mists almost always hang over the place, and about seventy years ago wolves still made their homes there. well may it be called the wild marsh. think how desolate it was, and how much swamp and water there must have been among all those marshes and ponds a thousand years ago! yet in most matters it must have looked then as it looks now. the reeds grew just as high, and had the same long leaves and feathery tips of a purplish-brown tint that they have now. birch trees grew there with the same white bark and the same airily dangling leaves. as for the living creatures, the flies have not changed the cut of their gauzy apparel, and the favorite colors of the storks were white trimmed with black, and long red stockings.
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