parents slept in peace and woke to find their own good happy baby in the
cradle.
What are the cradle-songs this Baby will hear in the cabin where she
first saw the gray light of December? Verses from the old Kingos
Psalm-book, ballads of the Long Serpent and King Olaf, of Queen Dagmar's
death, the Whale Song, stories from the Iceland Sagas and the
Nibelungenlied. Little verses, too, Mother Goosey jingles; one that is
sung in Norwegian to babies in all the Scandinavian lands:--
Row, row to the fishing ground,
How many fishes have you found?
One for Father,
One for Mother,
One for Sister,
One for Brother,
One for him that drew the nets,
One for my little Baby.
Here is a little Faroe verse:--
Down comes the Puffin to the sea,
With his head carried high.
'Little Gray-titlark, lend me thy boat?'
'Small is my boat, short are my legs--
But come thee on board';
And the oars rattle in the oarlocks.
When the Baby grows a little bigger, she will not be taught that 'the
Bossy-cow says, "Mo-o-o," the Pussy-cat says, "Me-ow."' No, she will
learn what the _birds_ say:--
The Puffin says, _'Ur-r! UR-R! UR-R!'_
The Raven says, _'Kronk! KRONK! KRONK!'_
The Crow says, _'Kra! KRA! KRA!'_
The Eider-duck says, _'Ah-oo! AH-OO! AH-OO!'_
The Wheatear says, _'Tck! TCK! TCK! None so pretty as I!'_
and so on through a long list of the birds of fjeld and sea.
Summer and winter the birds will be the Baby's neighbors. From her
father's cabin she can hear the eider-ducks cooing softly as they rise
and fall just beyond the white crest of the breakers. Starlings bubble
and chortle on the grassy house-roof; from the dark cliffs sounds the
raven's clarion cry, and there are always sea-gulls near. With spring
come all the sea-fowl to the bird-cliffs, and curlew, golden plover, and
Arctic jaegers, 'plaintive creatures that pity themselves on moorlands.'
All through the long dark winter the wren and titlark sing cheerfully.
The 'mouse's brother' the Baby will call the Faroe wren, and she will
know one fact of which grave scientists are ignorant, that the 'mouse's
brother' and the titlark sing a bird-translation of a verse from the old
Kingos Psalm-book. She will know, too, how the eider-duck won her down,
the story of the naughty shag and the Apostle Peter, why the cormorant
has no tongue, and that the great black-backed gull once struck our Lord
upon the Cross and thenceforth bore a blood-red spot on his bill. Well
can the Baby say in the words of the Kalevala, 'The birds of Heaven, the
waves of the sea, have spoken and sung to me; the music of many waters
has been my master.'
Few will the Baby's pleasures be. She will never have a Christmas tree,
nor hang up her stocking, nor have other presents than a pair of mittens
or a woolen kerchief for her head. The day before Christmas she will
help her mother to scrub everything that can be scrubbed, indoors and
out, working far into 'Jola-Natt,' so that all shall be sweet and clean
for the birthday of our Lord. And next morning, in the sod-roofed church
where never was a fire made, she will sit with her mother on the
women's side, waiting meekly after service until the last man and the
last boy have left their seats. She will dance lightly on the sea-rocks,
her fair hair blowing in the wind, retreating as the big waves crash
down, and singing something which sounds like '_Ala kan eje taka mej!_'
(The wave cannot catch me!) She sings it to the same little tune I sang
as a child when dancing back and forth across the danger-line of Taffy's
land, mocking the rushes of an agile Taffy.
From seven to fourteen years she will go to school two weeks out of
every six (the schoolmaster must be shared between three hamlets), and
when fourteen years old, she will be confirmed, if she has learned
enough Danish to pass the examinations and to say the prayers and creed.
On that morning of confirmation she will turn up her hair, and wear a
dress skirt that will flap about her little heels. And that afternoon
there will be chocolate and cakes in her father's cabin, with friends
coming and going.
She will know suspense and fear and sickening dread when 'the boats are
out,' and the great gales burst without warning. From every hamlet the
sea has taken many; not one home has been spared. She cannot escape the
common lot; of grief she shall have her share.
* * * * *
Three days of storm passed and the Baby was not thriving. She needed her
mother, and a consultation was held, the old sea-dogs of the hamlet
advising. The gale was surely lessening, and with nine picked men, eight
to row and one to steer, it could and should be done. The passage was to
be made to Thorshavn to bring the Pastor home. So off they went in the
early morning.
I was in my room, upstairs, about eleven o'clock, when I noticed that
the roar of the wind and the creaking and groaning of the timbers
overhead had ceased. I went to the window in time to see a great mass of
snow gathered up from the ground and hurled against the house. In that
short pause the wind had changed, and now blew from the west with
redoubled fury. I hurried downstairs, and one glance at the Pastorinde's
face confirmed my fears. She knew only too well where the returning boat
was at that hour: far out, off the worst place on the coast, in fierce
sea-currents, and in the full sweep of this new off-shore gale. The men
were in dire peril. Many boats the Pastorinde had known to 'go away' in
such a storm, after hours of desperate struggle to hold the boat in
place and make some headway toward land. Then, as strength failed, there
would be a slipping seaward, faster and faster, till men and boat went
under, overwhelmed by a mighty cross-sea--'the drowning wave.'
Hour after hour went by; the Pastorinde paced the rooms, pale and
silent. Under the shelter of walls and boat-houses were groups of men
looking seaward. At last a shout, and men pointing; out in a smother of
flying foam a dark spot had been seen, then lost, then seen again far
away under the cliffs of distant Stromoe. The boat was slowly making its
way to a point due west, where it could blow in with the gale. All the
men and boys who could stand on their legs were down in the surf to meet
it, and with a rush the boat was borne up on land.
All was ready in the parsonage. The rug in the dining-room rolled up,
hot coffee made, food on the table; and the Pastorinde was standing in
the doorway as the men toiled feebly up, their clothes streaming with
sea-water. _Nine_ men only! Where was the _tenth_--where was the Pastor?
And, all together, the tale was told. The Pastor, they had found, was
_not_ in Thorshavn; two days ago the Danish gun-boat had carried him off
to Trangisvaag on some church affair, and nothing had been seen of him
since. Higher and higher rose the voices, trembling with the irritation
and unreasoning anger of utter exhaustion. The storm had struck them at
the worst place; for four hours they had struggled just to hold their
own, and were drifting seaward, when a short lull came, and with hope
renewed they fought again and at last reached the sheltering cliffs of
Stromoe. Their eyes were wild and glassy, their hair matted, their hands
swollen and bleeding from straining at the oars. The Pastorinde--wise
woman--wasted no words of sympathy: she poured coffee, hot fragrant
coffee with plenty of cream in it. The men drank and the talking
quieted to grateful mumbles, and the cups were filled again, while their
clothes dripped sea-water and the floor was all afloat.
Two mornings later, before dawn, I heard a knock on my door, and the
Pastorinde's voice calling, 'The storm has ceased and they are going to
take the Baby to Thorshavn, to be baptized by the Thorshavn pastor. They
will take you, too, if you can be ready in half an hour.'
We were ready, all the baptismal party, plus myself and the borrowed
'maternal font.' One of the men came for me with a lantern, and I
clutched his strong hand and slipped and slid over the icy rocks. Lights
flared here and there, and land, sea, and sky were all one blackness;
only a faint gray line showed where the sea was breaking. The surf was
still high, covering the usual landing-place. One by one, we women were
carried to a group of rocks that rose above the surf. Beyond, the boat
was pitching and tossing, two men in the rowing-seats keeping the high
sharp prow pointing toward the land. It was no easy matter to get on
board, but we stood not upon the order of our going but jumped at once.
At one moment I was on top of two godmothers, the next moment five
godfathers scrambled over me to their places at the oars. Muffled
shrieks arose and ejaculations: '_Ak Gud bevare os!_' '_Ak Herre Jesu!_'
The boat swept out into the darkness, and we women-folk picked
ourselves up and sorted ourselves out.
It was bitterly cold, and it rained--oh, how it rained! But we didn't
care, we were going to Thorshavn at last, and there was a good sea. The
change of wind, the down-pour, had flattened the broken surges. Only the
great ground-swells swept landward, rank on rank, crashing along the
coast. We mounted slowly to their summits and glided down the outer
slopes with the motion of a bird in flight. Gayly rose the talk in the
boat, and there was a lighting of little pipes, one at a time, so that
the rowing need not be hindered. Now a faint yellow gleam on the
southern horizon beyond the down-dropping veils of mist; then, dimly
seen, the snow-crowned heights of Naalsoe rising eighteen hundred feet
from the sea. The danger-point on Stromoe passed, and then in the
distance twinkling lights, and a breath from shore bearing the fragrance
of peat-smoke.--'So he bringeth them to their desired haven.'
Out on the fjord the Danish gun-boat rose and fell, and on the wet
shore-rocks was a lonely figure gazing out to sea, like the pictures of
Napoleon on Elba. It had a familiar look--it was--yes, it was the
Pastor!
They laid hands on the Pastor, as though they expected him to vanish
from their sight. The Baby would be baptized then and there. Scant time
was given to the godmothers to change their shoes, skirts, and
stockings, and to prink.
_Clang, Clang! Clang!_ rang the church-bell in treble staccato notes.
There was a clattering of pattens in the stony lanes as children hurried
to the Baptism. The Pastor, a dignified priestly figure in his long
black robes and Elizabethan ruff, left the Thorshavn parsonage, passed
through the side gate to the church-portal, and the bell-ringing died
away.
* * * * *
I was down at the landing an hour later to say 'farvel' to the Pastor
and the baptismal party. And as the boat left shore I turned away to my
little cabin-home with a sigh of relief. The Baby--_Karin Marin Malene
Elsebet Jakobina Jakobson_--was baptized.
THE END
Biographical Notes
=Henry C. Merwin= has practiced law in Boston for a generation. A tireless
and enthusiastic worker in the cause of kindness to dumb animals, he
organized, many years ago, and still largely manages, the Decoration-Day
Workhorse Parade--an institution which has been extraordinarily
beneficent in its results.
=William Beebe= is Curator of Ornithology at the New York Zoological Park,
and has traveled far and wide, especially in tropical countries, in
study or search of every bird that flies.
=Jane Addams=, a pioneer among those Americans who have spent their lives
in ameliorating the conditions which breed poverty in our great cities,
has been for nearly thirty years the head of Hull-House, Chicago, which
she founded in 1889.
=Reverend Samuel McChord Crothers= is the minister of the First Church
(Unitarian) at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The most individual among our
essayists, he is known wherever the essay is read.
=Professor Robert M. Gay= fills the chair of English at Goucher College
for Women in Baltimore.
=Jean Kenyon Mackenzie= is an American missionary to Southwest Africa,
where she has long lived with the black folk on terms of sympathy and
understanding.
=Edgar J. Goodspeed= is a professor of Chicago University, where he
teaches biblical and patristic lore.
=William T. Foster= has been, since its establishment, President of Reed
College, Oregon, where his policy of opposition to intercollegiate
athletics is creating a new tradition of college sport.
=Lida F. Baldwin= is a teacher of Youngstown, Ohio, and a lover and
observer of all natural things.
=Fannie Stearns Gifford= is a frequent contributor of both prose and verse
to the _Atlantic Monthly_ from her home in Pittsfield, Mass.
=John Jay Chapman= is an essayist of uncompromising vigor and independence
of thought. The author of many books, including a memoir of William
Lloyd Garrison, he has also published, with a notable introduction, the
letters of his son Victor, who was killed in the flying service on the
Western Front.
=Lucy M. Donnelly= is a lecturer in English in Bryn Mawr College.
=Sharlot Mabridth Hall= is a writer and traveler, with a very considerable
and specialized knowledge of Southwestern America.
=Richard Rowland Kimball=, a resident of Adamsville, R. I., is a pleasant
essayist, and a true lover of dogs.
=Laura Spencer Portor=, one of the editors of a well-known woman's paper
in New York, is a writer of versatile and temperamental charm.
=Mrs. Anne C. E. Allinson=, wife of a professor at Brown University, is an
enthusiastic and informed devotee of Greek history, art, and literature.
Before her marriage Mrs. Allinson was Dean of Women in the University of
Wisconsin.
=Elizabeth Taylor= still lives in the Faroe Islands, with whose customs
and mode of life she has the familiarity of a native, with more than a
native's appreciation.