Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks | Page 6

a while. His jaws were
tired. His stomach seemed to be loaded with cannon-balls. He gasped
for breath.
But the fairies would not let him stop, for Dutch fairies never get tired.
Flying out of the sky--from the north, south, east and west--they came,
bringing cheeses. These they dropped down around him, until the piles
of the round masses threatened first to enclose him as with a wall, and
then to overtop him. There were the red balls from Edam, the pink and
yellow spheres from Gouda, and the gray loaf-shaped ones from
Leyden. Down through the vista of sand, in the pine woods, he looked,
and oh, horrors! There were the tallest and strongest of the fairies
rolling along the huge, round, flat cheeses from Friesland! Any one of
these was as big as a cart wheel, and would feed a regiment. The fairies

trundled the heavy discs along, as if they were playing with hoops.
They shouted hilariously, as, with a pine stick, they beat them forward
like boys at play. Farm cheese, factory cheese, Alkmaar cheese, and, to
crown all, cheese from Limburg--which Klaas never could bear,
because of its strong odor. Soon the cakes and balls were heaped so
high around him that the boy, as he looked up, felt like a frog in a well.
He groaned when he thought the high cheese walls were tottering to fall
on him. Then he screamed, but the fairies thought he was making music.
They, not being human, do not know how a boy feels.
At last, with a thick slice in one hand and a big hunk in the other, he
could eat no more cheese; though the fairies, led by their queen,
standing on one side, or hovering over his head, still urged him to take
more.
At this moment, while afraid that he would burst, Klaas saw the pile of
cheeses, as big as a house, topple over. The heavy mass fell inwards
upon him. With a scream of terror, he thought himself crushed as flat as
a Friesland cheese.
But he wasn't! Waking up and rubbing his eyes, he saw the red sun
rising on the sand-dunes. Birds were singing and the cocks were
crowing all around him, in chorus, as if saluting him. Just then also the
village clock chimed out the hour. He felt his clothes. They were wet
with dew. He sat up to look around. There were no fairies, but in his
mouth was a bunch of grass which he had been chewing lustily.
Klaas never would tell the story of his night with the fairies, nor has he
yet settled the question whether they left him because the cheese-house
of his dream had fallen, or because daylight had come.

THE PRINCESS WITH TWENTY PETTICOATS
Long, long ago, before ever a blue flax-flower bloomed in Holland, and
when Dutch mothers wore wolf-skin clothes, there was a little princess,
very much beloved by her father, who was a great king, or war chief.

She was very pretty and fond of seeing herself. There were no metal
mirrors in those days, nor any looking glass. So she went into the
woods and before the pools and the deep, quiet watercourses, made
reflection of her own lovely face. Of this pleasure she never seemed
weary.
Yet sometimes this little princess was very naughty. Then her temper
was not nearly so sweet as her face. She would play in the sand and roll
around in the woods among the leaves and bushes until her curls were
all tangled up. When her nurse combed out her hair with a stone
comb--for no other kinds were then known--she would fret and scold
and often stamp her foot. When very angry, she called her nurse or
governess an "aurochs,"--a big beast like a buffalo. At this, the maid
put up her hands to her face. "Me--an aurochs! Horrible!" Then she
would feel her forehead to see if horns were growing there.
The nurse--they called her "governess," as the years went on--grew
tired of the behavior of the bad young princess. Sometimes she went
and told her mother how naughty her daughter was, even to calling her
an aurochs. Then the little girl only showed her bad temper worse. She
rolled among the leaves all the more and mussed up her ringlets, so that
the governess could hardly comb them out smooth again.
It seemed useless to punish the perverse little maid by boxing her ears,
pinching her arm, or giving her a good spanking. They even tried to
improve her temper by taking away her dinner, but it did no good.
Then the governess and mother went together to her father. When they
complained of his daughter to the king, he was much worried. He could
fight strong