The Boy Who Wanted More Cheese, Netherlands (fairy tale) - Το αγόρι που ήθελε περισσότερο τυρί (παραμύθι) Ολλανδία [κείμενο στα αγγλικά] - Il ragazzo che voleva più formaggio, Paesi Bassi (fiaba) - Мальчик, который хотел еще сыра, Нидерланды (сказка)
Kees van Bommel
was a boy from Holland, 12 years old, who lived where cows were plentiful. He
was over 5 feet high, weighed a hundred pounds, and had rosy cheeks. His
appetite was always good and his mother declared his stomach had no bottom. His
hair was of a color half-way between a carrot and a sweet potato. It was as
thick as reeds in a swamp and was cut level, from under one ear to another.
Kees stood in a
pair of timber shoes, that made an awful rattle when he ran fast to catch a
rabbit, or scuffed slowly along to school over the brick road of his village.
In summer Kees was dressed in a rough, blue linen blouse. In winter he wore
woollen breeches as wide as coffee bags. They were called bell trousers, and in
shape were like a couple of cow-bells turned upwards. These were buttoned on to
a thick warm jacket. Until he was five years old, Kees was dressed like his
sisters. Then, on his birthday, he had boy’s clothes, with two pockets in them,
of which he was proud enough.
Kees was a
farmer’s boy. He had rye bread and fresh milk for breakfast. At dinner time,
beside cheese and bread, he was given a plate heaped with boiled potatoes. Into
these he first plunged a fork and then dipped each round, white ball into a
bowl of hot melted butter. Very quickly then did potato and butter disappear
“down the red lane.” At supper, he had bread and skim milk, left after the
cream had been taken off, with a saucer, to make butter. Twice a week the
children enjoyed a bowl of bonnyclabber or curds, with a little brown sugar
sprinkled on the top. But at every meal there was cheese, usually in thin
slices, which the boy thought not thick enough. When Kees went to bed he
usually fell asleep as soon as his shock of yellow hair touched the pillow. In
summer time he slept till the birds began to sing, at dawn. In winter, when the
bed felt warm and Jack Frost was lively, he often heard the cows talking, in
their way, before he jumped out of his bag of straw, which served for a
mattress. The Van Bommels were not rich, but everything was shining clean.
There was always
plenty to eat at the Van Bommels’ house. Stacks of rye bread, a yard long and
thicker than a man’s arm, stood on end in the corner of the cool, stone-lined
basement. The loaves of dough were put in the oven once a week. Baking time was
a great event at the Van Bommels’ and no men-folks were allowed in the kitchen
on that day, unless they were called in to help. As for the milk-pails and
pans, filled or emptied, scrubbed or set in the sun every day to dry, and the
cheeses, piled up in the pantry, they seemed sometimes enough to feed a small
army.
But Kees always
wanted more cheese. In other ways, he was a good boy, obedient at home, always
ready to work on the cow-farm, and diligent in school. But at the table he
never had enough. Sometimes his father laughed and asked him if he had a well,
or a cave, under his jacket.
Kees had three
younger sisters, Kaatje, Anneke and Saartje; which is Dutch for Kate, Annie and
Sallie. These, their fond mother, who loved them dearly, called her “orange
blossoms”; but when at dinner, Kees would keep on, dipping his potatoes into
the hot butter, while others were all through, his mother would laugh and call
him her Buttercup. But always Kees wanted more cheese. When unusually greedy,
she twitted him as a boy “worse than Butter-and-Eggs”; that is, as troublesome
as the yellow and white plant, called toad-flax, is to the farmer – very pretty,
but nothing but a weed.
One summer’s
evening, after a good scolding, which he deserved well, Kees moped and, almost
crying, went to bed in bad humor. He had teased each one of his sisters to give
him her bit of cheese, and this, added to his own slice, made his stomach feel
as heavy as lead.
Kees’s bed was up
in the garret. When the house was first built, one of the red tiles of the roof
had been taken out and another one, made of glass, was put in its place. In the
morning, this gave the boy light to put on his clothes. At night, in fair
weather, it supplied air to his room.
A gentle breeze
was blowing from the pine woods on the sandy slope, not far away. So Kees
climbed up on the stool to sniff the sweet piny odors. He thought he saw lights
dancing under the tree. One beam seemed to approach his roof hole, and coming
nearer played round the chimney. Then it passed to and fro in front of him. It
seemed to whisper in his ear, as it moved by. It looked very much as if a
hundred fire-flies had united their cold light into one lamp. Then Kees thought
that the strange beams bore the shape of a lovely girl, but he only laughed at
himself at the idea. Pretty soon, however, he thought the whisper became a
voice. Again, he laughed so heartily, that he forgot his moping and the
scolding his mother had given him. In fact, his eyes twinkled with delight,
when the voice gave this invitation:
“There’s plenty
of cheese. Come with us.”
To make sure of
it, the sleepy boy now rubbed his eyes and cocked his ears. Again, the
light-bearer spoke to him: “Come.”
Could it be? He
had heard old people tell of the ladies of the wood, that whispered and warned
travellers. In fact, he himself had often seen the “fairies’ ring” in the pine
woods. To this, the flame-lady was inviting him.
Again and again
the moving, cold light circled round the red tile roof, which the moon, then
rising and peeping over the chimneys, seemed to turn into silver plates. As the
disc rose higher in the sky, he could hardly see the moving light, that had
looked like a lady; but the voice, no longer a whisper, as at first, was now
even plainer:
“There’s plenty
of cheese. Come with us.”
“I’ll see what it
is, anyhow,” said Kees, as he drew on his thick woolen stockings and prepared
to go down-stairs and out, without waking a soul. At the door he stepped into
his wooden shoes. Just then the cat purred and rubbed up against his shins. He
jumped, for he was scared; but looking down, for a moment, he saw the two balls
of yellow fire in her head and knew what they were. Then he sped to the pine woods
and towards the fairy ring.
What an odd
sight! At first Kees thought it was a circle of big fire-flies. Then he saw
clearly that there were dozens of pretty creatures, hardly as large as dolls,
but as lively as crickets. They were as full of light, as if lamps had wings.
Hand in hand, they flitted and danced around the ring of grass, as if this was
fun.
Hardly had Kees
got over his first surprise, than of a sudden he felt himself surrounded by the
fairies. Some of the strongest among them had left the main party in the circle
and come to him. He felt himself pulled by their dainty fingers. One of them, the
loveliest of all, whispered in his ear:
“Come, you must
dance with us.”
Then a dozen of
the pretty creatures murmured in chorus:
“Plenty of cheese
here. Plenty of cheese here. Come, come!”
Upon this, the
heels of Kees seemed as light as a feather. In a moment, with both hands
clasped in those of the fairies, he was dancing in high glee. It was as much
fun as if he were at the kermiss, with a row of boys and girls, hand in hand,
swinging along the streets, as Dutch maids and youth do, during kermiss week.
Kees had not time
to look hard at the fairies, for he was too full of the fun. He danced and
danced, all night and until the sky in the east began to turn, first gray and
then rosy. Then he tumbled down, tired out, and fell asleep. His head lay on
the inner curve of the fairy ring, with his feet in the centre.
Kees felt very
happy, for he had no sense of being tired, and he did not know he was asleep.
He thought his fairy partners, who had danced with him, were now waiting on him
to bring him cheeses. With a golden knife, they sliced them off and fed him out
of their own hands. How good it tasted! He thought now he could, and would, eat
all the cheese he had longed for all his life. There was no mother to scold
him, or daddy to shake his finger at him. How delightful!
But by and by, he
wanted to stop eating and rest 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 Kees 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, Kees 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.
Kees 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.
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