英語閱讀《沼澤王的女兒》

英語閱讀《沼澤王的女兒》

　　《沼澤王的女兒》是安徒生童話作品中最長的童話，講述了赫爾伽由海盜女孩被青年教父所指導，而步入正軌的故事。

　　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.

　　however, people dressed very differently from the fashion of today. but if any of them-thrall or huntsman, it mattered not-set foot in the quagmire, they fared the same a thousand years ago as they would fare today. in they would fall, and down they would sink to him whom they call the marsh king, who rules below throughout the entire marsh land. they also call him king ot the quicksands, but we like the name marsh king better, and that was what the storks called him. little or nothing is known about his rule, but perhaps that is just as well.

　　near the marsh and close to the liim fiord, lay wooden castle of the vikings, three stories high from its watertight stone cellars to the tower on its roof. the storks had built their nest on this roof, and there the mother stork sat hatching her eggs. she was certain they would be hatched.

　　one evening the father stork stayed out rather late, and when he got home he looked ruffled and flurried.

　　"i have something simply dreadful to tell you," he said to the mother stork.

　　"then you had better keep it to yourself," she told him. "remember, i am hatching eggs! if you frighten me it might have a very bad effect on them."

　　"but i must tell you," he insisted. "the daughter of our egyptian host has come here. she has ventured to take this long journey, and-she's lost!"

　　"she who comes of fairy stock? speak up. you know that i must not be kept in suspense while i'm on my eggs."

　　"it's this way, mother. just as you told me, she must have believed the doctor's advice. she believed that the swamp flowers up here would cure her sick father, and she has flown here in the guise of a swan, together with two other princesses who put on swan plumage and fly north every year, to take the baths that keep them young. she has come, and she is lost."

　　"you make your story too long-winded," the mother stork protested. "my eggs are apt to catch cold. i can't bear such suspense at a time like this."

　　"i have been keeping my eyes open," said the father stork, "and this evening i went among the reeds where the quagmire will barely support me. there i saw three swans flying my way. there was something about their flight that warned me, 'see here! these are not real swans. these creatures are merely disguised in swan feathers!' you know as well as i do, mother, that one feels instinctly whether a thing is true or false."

　　"to be sure, i do," said she. "but tell me about the princess. i am tired of hearing about swan feathers."

　　"well," the father stork said, "as you know, in the middle of the marsh there is a sort of pool. you can catch a glimpse of it from here if you will rise up a trifle. there, between the reeds and the green scum of the pool, a large alder stump juts up. on it the three swans alighted, flapped their wings and looked about them. one of them threw off her swan plumage and immediately i could see that she was the princess from our home in egypt. there she sat with no other cloak than her own long hair. i heard her ask the others to take good care of her swan feathers, while she dived down in the water to pluck the swamp flower which she fancied she saw there. they nodded, and held their heads high as they picked up her empty plumage.

　　" 'what are they going to do with it?' i wondered, and she must have wondered too. our answer came soon enough, for they flew up in the air with her feather garment.

　　" 'dive away,' they cried. 'never more shall you fly about as a swan. never more shall you see the land of egypt. you may have your swamp forever.' they tore her swan guise into a hundred pieces, so that feathers whirled around like a flurry of snow. then away they flew, those two deceitful princesses."

　　"why, that's dreadful," the mother stork said. "i can't bear to listen. tell me what happened next."

　　"the princess sobbed and lamented. her tears sprinkled down on the alder stump, and the stump moved, for it was the marsh king himself, who lives under the quagmire. i saw the stump turn, and this was no longer a tree stump that stretched out its two muddy, branch-like arms toward the poor girl. she was so frightened that she jumped out on the green scum which cannot bear my weight, much less hers. she was instantly swallowed up, and it was the alder stump, which plunged in after her, that dragged her down. big black bubbles rose, and these were the last traces of them. she is now buried in the wild marsh and never will she get back home to egypt with the flowers she came to find. mother, you could not have endured the sights i saw."

　　"you ought not to tell me such a tale at a time like this. our eggs may be the worse for it. the princess can look out for herself. someone will surely help her. now if it had been i, or you, or any of our family, it would have been all over with us."

　　"i shall look out for her, every day," said the father stork, and he did so.

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