Fairy Tales: The Old House

Bedtime stories and fairy tales are enjoyed by both children and their parents. One beloved bedtime tale is "The Old House."

 

In the street, up there, was a very old house. It was almost 300 years old; the year was carved on a large beam. The one story stood forward way over the other with projecting windows, and directly under the eaves was a lead spout with a dragon's head. The rain-water should have run out of the mouth, but it ran out of the belly because there was a hole in the spout.

 

All the other houses in the street were so new and so neat, with large window panes and smooth walls, you could easily see that they would have nothing to do with the old house. They certainly thought, "How long is that old decayed thing going to stand here as a spectacle in the street? "

 

On the other side of the street were also new and neat houses and they thought the same way the others did, but at the window opposite the old house sat a little boy with fresh rosy cheeks and bright beaming eyes. He certainly liked the old house best, both in sunshine and moonshine. When he looked across at the wall where the mortar had fallen out, he could find out about the strangest figures imaginable; he could see soldiers and spouts where the water ran, like dragons and serpents.

 

An old man lived there, who wore plush breeches and a coat with large brass buttons and a wig that you could see was a real wig. Every morning an old fellow came to him to straighten up his rooms and do errands. Otherwise, the old man in the plush breeches was very alone in the old house. Now and then he came to the window and looked out, and the little boy nodded to him, and the old man nodded again. So they became acquaintances, and then they were friends, although they had never spoken to each other. That made no difference.

 

The following Sunday, the little boy took something and wrapped it up in a piece of paper, went downstairs, and stood in the doorway. When the man who went on errands came past, he said to him, "I say, mister, will you give this to the old man across the way from me? I have two pewter soldiers. This is one of them, and I want him to have it because I know he is so very, very lonely."

 

The old errand man looked very pleased, nodded, and took the pewter soldier over to the old house. Then a message came. It was to ask if the little boy himself would like to come over and visit. So he got permission from his parents and then went over to the old house.

 

And the brass balls on the iron railings shone much brighter than ever. You would have thought they were polished because of the visit. Also, it was as if the carved-out trumpeters blew with all their strength, their cheeks looked so much rounder than before. Yes, they blew, "Trateratra! The little boy comes!

 

Trateratra!" Then the door opened.

 

The whole passage was hung with portraits of knights in armor, and ladies in silken gowns; and the armor rattled, and the silken gowns rustled! And then there was a flight of stairs which went a good way upwards.

 

And then they entered a room where the walls were covered with hog's leather and printed with gold flowers.

 

"The gilding decays, but hog's leather stays!" said the walls.

 

And then the little boy came into the room where the projecting windows were, and where the old man sat.

 

"I thank you for the pewter soldier, my little friend!" said the old man. "And I thank you because you came over to me."

 

In the middle of the wall hung a picture representing a beautiful lady, so young, so glad, but dressed as in former times. She looked with her mild eyes at the little boy, who directly asked the old man, "Where did you get her?"

 

"Over at the broker's," said the old man, "where there are so many pictures hanging. No one knows or cares about them because they are all buried, but I knew her in by-gone days, and now she has been dead and gone for fifty years!"

 

"They say at home," said the little boy, "that you are so very, very lonely!"

 

"Oh!" said he. "The old thoughts, with what they may bring with them, come and visit me, and now you also come! I am very well off!"

 

Then he took a book with pictures in it down from the shelf; there were whole long processions and pageants, with the strangest characters that you never see now-a-days; soldiers, citizens with waving flags, the tailors with a pair of shears held by two lions and the shoemakers without boots, but with an eagle that had two heads.

 

The old man now went into the other room to get preserves, apples, and nuts. Yes, it was delightful over there in the old house.

 

"I cannot stand it any longer!" said the pewter soldier, who sat on the drawers. "It is so lonely and depressing here! But when you have been in a family circle, you cannot get used to this life! I cannot bear it any longer! The whole day is so long, and the evenings are still longer! Here it is not at all like it is across the way at your home, where your father and mother spoke so pleasantly, and where you and all the sweet children made such a delightful noise. How lonely the old man is. I can't stand it any longer!"

 

"You must not let it bother you so much," said the little boy. "I find it so very delightful here, and then all the old thoughts, with what they may bring with them, they come and visit here."

 

"Yes, it's all very well, but I see nothing of them, and I don't know them!" said the pewter soldier. "I cannot stand it!"

 

"But you must!" said the little boy.

 

Then in came the old man with the most pleased and happy face, the most delicious preserves, apples and nuts, and so the little boy didn't think anymore about the pewter soldier.

 

The little boy returned home happy and pleased, and weeks and days passed away, and nods were made to the old house, and from the old house, and then the little boy went over there again.

 

The carved trumpeters blew, "Trateratra! There is the little boy! Trateratra!" It was exactly like the first time, for over there one day and hour was just like another.

 

"I cannot bear it!" said the pewter soldier. "I have shed pewter tears! It is too depressing! I'd rather you let me go to the wars and lose arms and legs! It would at least be a change. I can't stand it any longer! Now, I know what it is to have a visit from one's old thoughts, with what they may bring with them! I have had a visit from mine, and you may be sure it is no pleasant thing in the end. I was finally about to jump down from the drawers.

 

"Tell me if you still sing on Sundays? Tell me something about little Mary! And about how my comrade, the other pewter soldier, lives! Yes, he is happy enough, that's for sure! I can't stand it any longer!"

 

"You were given away as a present!" said the little boy. "You must stay. Can't you understand that?"

 

The old man now came with a drawer, in which there was a lot to see like old cards, so large and so gilded, that no one ever sees now. And several drawers were opened, and the piano was opened. It had landscapes on the inside of the lid, and it was so hoarse when the old man played on it, and then he hummed a song.

 

"Yes, she could sing that!" said he, and nodded to the portrait, which he had bought at the broker's, and the old man's eyes shone so bright!

 

"I will go to the wars! I will go to the wars!" shouted the pewter soldier as loud as he could, and threw himself off the drawers right down on the floor. Where did he go? The old man looked, and the little boy looked.

 

"I will find him!" said the old man, but he never found him. The floor was too open. The pewter soldier had fallen through a crack, and there he lay like in an open tomb.

 

That day passed and the little boy went home, and several weeks passed. The windows were frozen, so the little boy had to sit and breathe on them to get a peep-hole over to the old house. There the snow had been blown into all the carved work and inscriptions. It lay up over the steps, just as if nobody was home, and there was no one at home. The old man was dead!

 

In the evening there was a hearse seen in front of the door, the old man's coffin was put into it, and the old man was now to go out into the country, to lie in his grave. He was driven out there, but no one followed; all his friends were dead, and the little boy kissed his hand to the coffin as it was driven away.

 

Several days after, there was an auction at the old house, and the little boy saw from his window how they carried the old things from the house.

 

In the spring they pulled the house down, because, as people said, it was a ruin. You could see from the street right into the room with the hog's-leather hanging, which was slashed and torn; and the green grass and leaves about the balcony hung wildly around the falling beams.

 

"That was a relief," said the neighboring houses.

 

A fine house was built there, with large windows and smooth white walls, but in front of it, where the old house had stood, a little garden was planted.

 

Many years passed and the little boy had grown up to a man and he had just been married. With his little wife, he came to live in the house here, where the garden was. He stood by his wife while she planted flowers. She planted it with her little hand, and pressed the earth around it with her fingers. Oh, what was that? She had stuck herself. There sat something pointed, straight out of the soft mud.

 

It was the pewter soldier that was lost up at the old man's, and had tumbled and turned among the timber and the rubbish, and had at last laid for many years in the ground.

 

The young wife wiped the dirt off the soldier with her fine handkerchief that had such a delightful smell, that was to the pewter soldier just as if he had awaked from a trance.

 

"Let me see him," said the young man. He laughed, and then shook his head. "No, it can't be him." And then he told his wife about the old house and the old man, and about the pewter soldier that he sent over to him because he was so very, very lonely. The tears came into the eyes of his young wife.

 

"It may possibly be the same pewter soldier!" she said. "I will take care of it, and remember all you have told me, but you must show me the old man's grave!"

 

"But I don't know where it is," he said, "and no one knows! All his friends are dead, no one took care of it, and I was a little boy then!"

 

"How very, very lonely he must have been!" she said.

 

"Very, very lonely!" said the pewter soldier. "But it is delightful not to be forgotten!"

 

"Delightful!" shouted something close by; but no one, except the pewter soldier, saw that it was a piece of the hog's-leather hangings. It had lost all its gilding and it looked like a piece of wet clay, but it had an opinion, and it gave it:

 

"The gilding decays, but hog's leather stays!"

 

This the pewter soldier did not believe.

Nursery Rhymes Resources