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Updated: June 25, 2025
The Raven-mother took delight in observing that the fortress she was set to guard showed no signs of surrendering; for so the comfortable existence up at the Rauchfuss farm might prolong itself a while longer. On Sunday afternoons and evenings they had the most of their visitors.
"Well," said the Raven-mother, "is he a proper sort of a person?" "Oh yes!" The stable-girl brought her hand down on her thigh in emphatic assurance. "He's certainly a gentleman, even if he is wet through." All laughed loudly. The sudden burst of laughter rose up as unexpectedly as a covey of birds startled by a pedestrian in a quiet stubble-field.
But he scarcely noticed her, and went on arguing in his curt, pugnacious way with the suitors, who looked at him as if he were some mad animal. When the party began to break up, she said to the Raven-mother firmly and audibly, so that they all heard it, "Herr Kosch will stay here. It is too late now for him to go down into Weimar to find an inn. Have the guest-room got ready for him."
She reached the churchyard; but the dark crosses above the graves, and the dark ravens, seemed to mingle together before her eyes. The ravens screeched as they had screeched in the daytime; but she now understood what they said, and each cried, "I am a raven-mother; I am a raven-mother!" And Anne Lisbeth thought that they were taunting her.
"Well, but ..." said the Raven-mother, considerably disconcerted, looking around at the other faces. She saw a merry twinkle in the eyes of old Frau Kummerfelden. The Kirsten girls looked very roguish, because they had got launched on a good laugh and had not yet been able to give it free course. Their young comrades gazed with interest on the man who had emerged like a pike from the floods.
Beate was not to be seen. The Raven-mother told him that he was always welcome at meal-times, but was not to put any constraint on himself. "A sly little creature, that pretty hostess of mine!" he said to himself. In the afternoon he met her, but outside the garden. It struck him that she did not blush, but simply looked pleased. Her whole being had something free and light about it.
The ravens croaked, as the raven had done that she saw in the daytime, but now she understood what they said. "I am the raven-mother! I am the raven-mother!" each raven croaked, and Anne Lisbeth now understood that the name also applied to her; and she fancied she should be transformed into a black bird, and be obliged to cry what they cried if she did not dig the grave.
The old Sperbers began to be overburdened by the multitude of young people who developed a desire to visit them; and the nephew in particular grew tired of it. So they decided to give Beate Frau Kummerfelden's old friend, the Raven-mother, as a chaperon.
How much merrier and more amusing were the farm men and maids among themselves than her suitors! What sort of things had she herself heard among them? They were not strong on ceremony, and said what they thought. The Raven-mother came back into the room. "Quite a respectable man," she said with some excitement; "yes, really." "Is he coming in, then?" cried the Kirsten girls.
When the Raven-mother had conducted him to his room, he came to the conclusion, as he stood by the snow-white bed, that he had not fallen badly.
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