A HAPPY BOY
BY
BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORSE
BY
RASMUS B. ANDERSON
AUTHOR'S EDITION
PUBLISHER'S NOTE.
The present edition of Bjornstjerne Bjornson's works is published by
special arrangement with the author. Mr. Bjornson has designated Prof.
Rasmus B. Anderson as his American translator, cooperates with him, and
revises each work before it is translated, thus giving his personal
attention to this edition.
PREFACE.
"A Happy Boy" was written in 1859 and 1860. It is, in my estimation,
Bjornson's best story of peasant life. In it the author has succeeded
in drawing the characters with _remarkable distinctness_, while his
profound psychological insight, his perfectly artless simplicity of
style, and his thorough sympathy with the hero and his surroundings are
nowhere more apparent. This view is sustained by the great popularity
of "A Happy Boy" throughout Scandinavia.
It is proper to add, that in the present edition of Bjornson's stories,
previous translations have been consulted, and that in this manner a
few happy words and phrases have been found and adopted.
This volume will be followed by "The Fisher Maiden," in which Bjornson
makes a new departure, and exhibits his powers in a somewhat different
vein of story-telling.
RASMUS B. ANDERSON.
ASGARD, MADISON, WISCONSIN,
November, 1881.
A HAPPY BOY.
CHAPTER I.
His name was Oyvind, and he cried when he was born. But no sooner did
he sit up on his mother's lap than he laughed, and when the candle was
lit in the evening the room rang with his laughter, but he cried when
he was not allowed to reach it.
"Something remarkable will come of that boy!" said the mother.
A barren cliff, not a very high one, though, overhung the house where
he was born; fir and birch looked down upon the roof, the bird-cherry
strewed flowers over it. And on the roof was a little goat belonging
to Oyvind; it was kept there that it might not wander away, and Oyvind
bore leaves and grass up to it. One fine day the goat leaped down and
was off to the cliff; it went straight up and soon stood where it had
never been before. Oyvind did not see the goat when he came out in the
afternoon, and thought at once of the fox. He grew hot all over, and
gazing about him, cried,--
"Killy-killy-killy-killy-goat!"
"Ba-a-a-a!" answered the goat, from the brow of the hill, putting its
head on one side and peering down.
At the side of the goat there was kneeling a little girl.
"Is this goat yours?" asked she.
Oyvind opened wide his mouth and eyes, thrust both hands into his pants
and said,--
"Who are you?"
"I am Marit, mother's young one, father's fiddle, the hulder of the
house, granddaughter to Ola Nordistuen of the Heidegards, four years
old in the autumn, two days after the frost nights--I am!"
"Is that who you are?" cried he, drawing a long breath, for he had not
ventured to take one while she was speaking.
"Is this goat yours?" she again inquired.
"Ye-es!" replied he, raising his eyes.
"I have taken such a liking to the goat;--you will not give it to me?"
"No, indeed I will not."
She lay kicking up her heels and staring down at him, and presently she
said: "But if I give you a twisted bun for the goat, can I have it
then?"
Oyvind was the son of poor people; he had tasted twisted bun only once
in his life, that was when grandfather came to his house, and he had
never eaten anything equal to it before or since. He fixed his eyes on
the girl.
"Let me see the bun first?" said he.
She was not slow in producing a large twisted bun that she held in her
hand.
"Here it is!" cried she, and tossed it down to him.
"Oh! it broke in pieces!" exclaimed the boy, picking up every fragment
with the utmost care. He could not help tasting of the very smallest
morsel, and it was so good that he had to try another piece, and before
he knew it himself he had devoured the whole bun.
"Now the goat belongs to me," said the girl.
The boy paused with the last morsel in his mouth; the girl lay there
laughing, and the goat stood by her side, with its white breast and
shining brown hair, giving sidelong glances down.
"Could you not wait a while," begged the boy,--his heart beginning to
throb. Then the girl laughed more than ever, and hurriedly got up on
her knees.
"No, the goat is mine," said she, and threw her arms about it, then
loosening one of her garters she fastened it around its neck. Oyvind
watched her. She rose to her feet and began to tug at the goat; it
would not go along with her, and stretched its neck over the edge of
the cliff toward Oyvind.
"Ba-a-a-a!" said the goat.
Then the little girl took hold of its hair with one hand, pulled at the
garter with the other, and said prettily: "Come, now, goat, you shall
go into the sitting-room and eat from mother's dish and my apron."
And then she sang,--
"Come, boy's pretty goatie,
Come, calf, my delight,
Come here, mewing pussie,
In shoes snowy white,
Yellow ducks, from your shelter,
Come forth, helter-skelter.
Come, doves, ever beaming,
With soft feathers gleaming!
The grass is still wet,
But sun 't will soon get;
Now call, though early 't is in the summer,
And autumn will be the new-comer."[1]
[Footnote 1: Auber Forestier's translation.]
There the boy stood.
He had taken care of the goat ever since winter, when it was born, and
it had never occurred to him that he could lose it; but now it was gone
in an instant, and he would never see it again.
The mother came trolling up from the beach, with some wooden pails she
had been scouring; she saw the boy sitting on the grass, with his legs
crossed under him, crying, and went to him.
"What makes you cry?"
"Oh, my goat--my goat!"
"Why, where is the goat?" asked the mother, glancing up at the roof.
"It will never come back any more," said the boy.
"Dear me! how can _that_ be?"
Oyvind would not confess at once.
"Has the fox carried it off?"
"Oh, I wish it were the fox!"
"You must have lost your senses!" cried the mother. "What has become
of the goat?"
"Oh--oh--oh! I was so unlucky. I sold it for a twisted bun!"
The moment he uttered the words he realized what it was to sell the
goat for a bun; he had not thought about it before. The mother said,--
"What do you imagine the little goat thinks of you now, since you were
willing to sell it for a twisted bun?"
The boy reflected upon this himself, and felt perfectly sure that he
never could know happiness more in _this_ world--nor in heaven either,
he thought, afterwards.
He was so overwhelmed with sorrow that he promised himself that he
would never do anything wrong again,--neither cut the cord of the
spinning-wheel, nor let the sheep loose, nor go down to the sea alone.
He fell asleep lying there, and he dreamed that the goat had reached
heaven. There the Lord was sitting, with a long beard, as in the
Catechism, and the goat stood munching at the leaves of a shining tree;
but Oyvind sat alone on the roof, and, could get no higher. Then
something wet was thrust right against his ear, and he started up.
"Ba-a-a-a!" he heard, and it was the goat that had returned to him.
"What! have you come back again?" With these words he sprang up,
seized it by the two fore-legs, and danced about with it as if it were
a brother. He pulled it by the beard, and was on the point of going in
to his mother with it, when he heard some one behind him, and saw the
little girl sitting on the greensward beside him. Now he understood
the whole thing, and he let go of the goat.
"Is it you who have brought the goat?"
She sat tearing up the grass with her hands, and said, "I was not
allowed to keep it; grandfather is up there waiting."
While the boy stood staring at her, a sharp voice from the road above
called, "Well!"
Then she remembered what she had to do: she rose, walked up to Oyvind,
thrust one of her dirt-covered hands into his, and, turning her face
away, said, "I beg your pardon."
But then her courage forsook her, and, flinging herself on the goat,
she burst into tears.
"I believe you had better keep the goat," faltered Oyvind, looking
away.
"Make haste, now!" said her grandfather, from the hill; and Marit got
up and walked, with hesitating feet, upward.
"You have forgotten your garter," Oyvind shouted after her. She turned
and bestowed a glance, first on the garter, then on him. Finally she
formed a great resolve, and replied, in a choked voice, "You may keep
it."
He walked up to her, took her by the hand, and said, "I thank you!"
"Oh, there is nothing to thank me for," she answered, and, drawing a
piteous sigh, went on.
Oyvind sat down on the grass again, the goat roaming about near him;
but he was no longer as happy with it as before.