Upon the last house in a little town there stood a stork's nest. The
stork-mother sat in the nest, with her four young ones, which stuck out
their heads, with their little black beaks, for their beaks had not yet
become red. Not far off, upon the ridge of the house roof, stood the
stork-father, as stiffly and proudly as possible; he had tucked up one
leg under him, for though that was rather inconvenient, still he was
standing as sentinel. One might have fancied that he was carved out of
wood, he stood so stock still.
"It looks, certainly, very consequential," thought he to himself, "that
my wife should have a sentinel to her nest! Nobody need know that I am
her husband; they will think, of course, that I commanded the sentinel
to stand here. It looks so very proper!" And having thus thought, he
continued to stand on one leg.
A troop of little boys were playing down in the street below, and when
they saw the storks, the boldest lad amongst them began to sing, and
at last they all sang together, that old rhyme about the storks, which
the children in Denmark sing; but they sang it now, because it had just
come into their heads:--
"Stork, stork on one leg,
Fly home to thy egg;
Mrs. Stork she sits at home,
With four great, big young ones;
The eldest shall be hung,
The second have its neck wrung;
The third shall be burned to death,
The fourth shall be murdered!"
"Only hear what those lads sing!" said the little storks; "they sing
that we shall be hanged and burned!"
"Do not vex yourselves about that," said the stork-mother; "don't
listen to them, and then it does not matter."
But the boys continued to sing, and they pointed with their fingers
to the stork; there was one boy, however, among them, and his name was
Peter, and he said that it was a sin to make fun of the storks, and he
would not do it.
The stork-mother consoled her young ones thus: "Don't annoy yourselves
about that. Look how funnily your father stands on one leg!"
"We are so frightened!" said the young ones, and buried their heads
down in the nest.
The next day, when the children assembled again to play, they saw the
storks, and they began their verse:--
"The second have its neck wrung;
The third shall be burned to death!"
"Shall we be hanged and burned?" asked the young storks.
"No, certainly not!" said the mother. "You will learn to fly; I will
exercise you; and so we shall take you out into the meadows, and go a
visiting to the frogs, that make courtesies to us in the water; they
sing--'koax! koax!' and so we eat them up; that is a delight!"
"And how so?" asked the young storks.
"All the storks which are in the whole country assemble," said the
mother, "and so the autumn manoeuvres begin; every one must be clever
at flying; that is of great importance, for those that cannot fly are
pecked to death by the general, with his beak; and, therefore, it is
well to learn something before the exercise begins."
"And so we really may be murdered! as the boys said; and hark! now they
are singing it again."
"Listen to me, and not to them!" said the stork-mother. "After the
great manoeuvre, we fly away to the warm countries--O, such a long
way off, over mountains and woods! We fly to Egypt, where there are
three-cornered stone houses, which go up in a point above the clouds;
they are called pyramids, and are older than any stork can tell. There
is a river which overflows its banks, and so the country becomes all
mud. One goes in the mud, and eats frogs."
"O!" said all the young ones.
"Yes, that is so delightful! One does nothing at all but eat, all day
long; and whilst we are so well off, in this country there is not a
single green leaf upon the trees; here it is, then, so cold; and the
very clouds freeze into pieces, and fall down in little white rags!"
That was the snow which she meant, but she could not explain it more
intelligibly.
"Will it freeze the naughty boys into bits?" asked the young ones.
"No, it will not freeze them into bits, but it will pretty nearly do
so; and they will be obliged to sit in dark rooms and cough. You, on
the contrary, all that time, can be flying about in the warm countries,
where there are flowers and warm sunshine!"
Some time had now passed, and the young ones were so large that they
could stand up in the nest and look about them, and the stork-father
came flying every day with nice little frogs and snails, and all the
stork-delicacies which he could find. O, it was extraordinary what
delicious morsels he got for them. He stretched out his head, clattered
with his beak, as if it had been a little rattle, and thus he told them
tales about the marshes.
"Listen to me; now you must learn to fly," said the stork-mother, one
day; and so all the four young ones were obliged to get out of the
nest upon the ridge of the house; and how dizzy they were; how they
balanced themselves with their wings, and for all that were very near
falling!
"Look at me," said the mother, "you must hold your heads thus! and thus
must you set your wings! Now! one, two! one, two! This it is which must
help you out into the world!"
With this she flew a little way, and the young ones made a little
clumsy hop--bump!--there lay they, for their bodies were heavy.
"I cannot fly!" said one of the young ones; "it's no use my trying!"
and crept up to the nest again.
"Wilt thou be frozen to death here, when winter comes?" asked the
mother. "Shall the boys come and hang thee, and burn thee, and wring
thy neck? Shall I go and call them?"
"O, no!" said the young stork; and so hopped again on the roof, like
the others.
On the third day after that it could regularly fly a little, and so
they thought that they could now rest awhile in the air. They tried to
do so, but--bump!--there they tumbled, and so they were obliged to
flutter their wings again.