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Updated: June 29, 2025
That is what they all said, and the learned men said it was very cleverly and beautifully spoken. "That is a beautiful thought!" stork-papa said immediately. "I don't quite understand it," stork-mamma replied: "and that's not my fault, but the fault of the thought. But let it be as it will, I've something else to think of."
"That is a mistake," said the stork, "you must have dreamed all this." "No, no," she exclaimed. Then she reminded him of the Viking's castle, of the great lake, and of the journey across the ocean. Then stork-papa winked his eyes, and said, "Why that's an old story which happened in the time of my grandfather.
"I cannot quite remember the words I heard when I listened on the roof," said stork-papa, while relating the story to his family; "all I know is, that what the wise men said was so complicated and so learned, that they received not only rank, but presents; even the head cook at the great house was honored with a mark of distinction, most likely for the soup."
"Yes, certainly," she replied; "but tell me about the princess. I'm sick of hearing of the swan's feathers." "Well, you know that in the middle of the moor there is something like a lake," continued stork-papa. "You can see one corner of it if you raise yourself a little.
"I should like to take away the swan's feathers from the two faithless princesses," said the stork-papa; "then, at any rate, they will not be able to fly up again to the wild moor and do mischief. I'll hide the two swan-feather suits up there, till somebody has occasion for them." "But where do you intend to hide them?" asked stork-mamma. "Up in our nest in the moor," answered he.
Meanwhile, the stork-papa told the story to his family in his own way; but not till they had eaten and were satisfied; otherwise they would have had something else to do than to listen to stories. "Well," said the stork-mamma, when she had heard it, "you will be made something of at last; I suppose they can do nothing less."
And now the learned men had spoken of love to this one and that one, and of the difference between the love of one's neighbour and love between parents and children, of the love of plants for the light, when the sunbeam kisses the ground and the germ springs forth from it, everything was so fully and elaborately explained that it was quite impossible for stork-papa to take it in, much less to repeat it.
And then the two wept. And when stork-papa heard the story, he clapped with his beak so that it could be heard a long way off. "Treachery and lies!" he cried. "I should like to run my beak deep into their chests." "And perhaps break it off," interposed the stork-mamma; "and then you would look well. Think first of yourself, and then of your family, and all the rest does not concern you."
Then he returned to the mother and daughter, and threw the swan's plumage over them; the feathers immediately closed around them, and they rose up from the earth in the form of two white swans. "And now we can converse with pleasure," said the stork-papa; "we can understand one another, although the beaks of birds are so different in shape. It is very fortunate that you came to-night.
"I have kept watch," said the stork-papa; "and to-night, when I went into the reeds there where the marsh ground will bear me three swans came. Something in their flight seemed to say to me, 'Look out! That's not altogether swan; it's only swan's feathers! Yes, mother, you have a feeling of intuition just as I have; you know whether a thing is right or wrong."
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