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Updated: May 29, 2025
"It's falling to pieces," screamed the bass, and spread out a fin, ready to turn. And now the boards fell off, the box was open, and one could see what it was like inside; and that was the prettiest sight of all. "It's a trap! Don't go too near!" said the eel-mother. "It's a hand-loom!" said the stickleback, who builds a nest for itself and understands the art of weaving.
As a rule only the silly bass and red-eyes take the bait. There! Now you know all about it." The forest of seaweed with its shells and snails began to rock; a plashing and drumming could be heard and a huge red whale passed like a flash over their heads; he had a tail-fin like a cork-screw, and that was what he worked with. "That's a steamer," said the eel-mother; "make room!"
On leaving the sand-hills, they passed over heaths and boggy lands, until they came to the green meadows where Skjærumaa winds its way the river with the numerous eels, where the eel-mother with her daughters lived, those whom the cruel man speared and cut in pieces, though there were men who had scarcely treated their fellow-men better.
"Just look at him!" said the eel-mother, "there you have an example of the malice and cunning of the world . ... Watch him! He is holding a whip in his hand; he throws out the whip-lash there it is! attached to it is a weight which makes it sink there's the weight! and below the weight is the hook with the worm. Don't take it in your mouth, whatever you do, for if you do, you are caught.
'Impossible, for he ate them. 'They will come again, still persisted the eel-mother. 'But he drank brandy after he had eaten them, said the daughter. 'Did he? Oh! oh! then they will never come again, howled the mother. 'Brandy buries eels. "And therefore one must always drink a little brandy after that dish," said the eel-man.
"But they went very far, and of eight daughters only three returned to their mother, and these came wailing, 'We only went a short way from the door, when the terrible eel-spearer came and killed our five sisters. 'They will come back again, said the eel-mother. 'No, said the daughters, 'for he skinned them, cut them in pieces, and fried them. 'They will come again, repeated the mother.
First it sounded as if sixty piles of wood were all being sawn at the same time; then a cleft opened in the water which went down to the bottom of the sea, and there, wedged between three stones, stood a black box, which sang and played and tinkled and jingled, close to the eel-mother and her son, who hastily disappeared in the lowest depths of the ocean. Then a voice up above shouted:
And this story made a great impression on little Jörgen, and partly influenced his life. He took the tinsel for the gold. He also wished to go "a little way up the stream" that is to say, to go away in a ship to see the world and his mother said as the eel-mother had done. "There are many bad men eel-spearers."
Here it is: "The eels went into the bay; and the mother-eel said to her daughters, who begged leave to go a little way up the bay, 'Don't go too far: the ugly eel spearer might come and snap you all up. But they went too far; and of eight daughters only three came back to the eel-mother, and these wept and said, 'We only went a little way before the door, and the ugly eel spearer came directly, and stabbed five of our party to death. 'They'll come again, said the mother-eel.
Then a great bass came and lay flat on the pedal; but immediately there arose such a rumbling in the box that all the fishes hastily swam away. They got no further on that day. At night it blew half a gale, and the musical box went thump, thump, thump, like a pavier's beetle, until sunrise. When the eel-mother and all the rest of them returned, they found that it had undergone a change.
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