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Updated: May 13, 2025
But Pelle had explored the back quarters of every house; and there were sinks and traps there, with dense slimy growths, and stinking refuse-barrels, and one great dustbin with a drooping elder-tree over it. And the spaces between the cobble-stones were foul with the scales of herrings and the guts of codfish, and the lower portions of the walls were covered with patches of green moss.
He had been persecuted and despised for his ugliness, and now he heard them say he was the most beautiful of all the birds. Even the elder-tree bent down its bows into the water before him, and the sun shone warm and bright.
The professor was out of the room; the demonstrator sat aloft on his impromptu rostrum, reading the Q. Jour. Mi. Sci.; the rest of the examinees were busy, and with their backs to him. Should he own up to the accident now? He knew quite clearly what the thing was. It was a lenticel, a characteristic preparation from the elder-tree.
All the strange things he had seen at the elder-tree again started forth into his heart and thoughts; and again that unspeakable longing, that glowing desire, laid hold of him here, which had before agitated his bosom in painful spasms of rapture. "Ah! is it you again, my little golden snakes? Sing now, O sing! In your song let the kind, dear, dark-blue eyes again appear to me.
"Some call me Little Elder-tree Mother; others a Dryad; but my real name is 'Remembrance. It is I who sit in the tree which grows and grows. I can remember things and tell stories! But let's see if you have still got your flower." And the old man opened his prayer-book; the elder-blossom was still in it, and as fresh as if it had only just been put in.
Having hollowed out such a tree, they spread a skin over it, fastened down with little pegs; and on the centre of the skin is painted the sun, surrounded by figures of men, beasts, birds, and fishes, along with Christ and the holy Apostles. All this is done with the rind of the elder-tree, chewed first beneath their teeth.
The old building has, however, long since been removed, the present structure being merely part of a small farmsteading. Higher up the steep hill-side, on successive ledges of rock, are the ruins of various buildings, some of which may have been dwellings, and one, larger than the rest, on a broader plateau, with an elder-tree growing in the centre, may possibly have been the temple.
And the little boy looked at the teapot; the lid rose up gradually, the elder-tree blossoms sprang forth one by one, fresh and white; long boughs came forth; even out of the spout they grew up in all directions, and formed a bush nay, a large elder tree, which stretched its branches up to the bed and pushed the curtains aside; and there were so many blossoms and such a sweet fragrance!
And the little girl showed everything to the boy, and the elder-tree continued to breathe forth sweet perfume, while the red flag with the white cross was streaming in the wind; it was the flag under which the old sailor had served. The boy became a youth; he was to go out into the wide world, far away to the countries where the coffee grows.
She went and hid herself out of his sight, under the branches of the great elder-tree, which to her had always a strange charm, perhaps because it was the spot of all others where she was forbidden to stay. However, this day Hyldreda began to feel herself to be no longer a child, but a woman whose will was free. She sat under the dreamy darkness of the heavy foliage.
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