Stories for Telling: The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf

The girl’s name was Inge; she was a poor child, but proud and presumptuous.

With years she grew worse rather than better.

She was sent into the country, in service, in the house of a rich people who kept her as their own child, and dressed her in corresponding style. She looked well, and her presumption increased.

When she had been there about a year, her mistress said to her, “You ought once to visit your parents, Inge.

“I’ll make you a present of a great wheaten loaf that you may give to them; they will certainly be glad to see you again.”

And Inge put on her best clothes, and her new shoes, and drew her skirts around her, and set out, stepping very carefully that she might be clean and neat about the feet; and there was no harm in that. But when she came to the place where the footway led across the moor, and where there were mud and puddles, she threw the loaf into the mud, and trod upon it to pass over without wetting her feet.

But as she stood there with one foot upon the loaf and the other uplifted to step farther, the loaf sank with her, deeper and deeper, till she disappeared altogether, and only a great puddle, from which the bubbles rose, remained where she had been.

Whither did Inge go? She sank into the moor ground, and went down to the Moor Woman, who is always brewing there. The Moor Woman is cousin to the Elf Maidens, who are well enough known, of whom songs are sung, and whose pictures are painted; but concerning the Moor Woman it is only known that when the meadows steam in summer-time, it is because she is brewing. Into the Moor Woman’s place did Inge sink down; and no one can endure that place long.

A box of mud is a palace compared with the Moor Woman’s brewery. Every barrel there has an odor that almost takes away one’s senses; and the barrels stand close to each other; and wherever there is a little opening among them, through which one might push one’s way, the passage becomes impracticable from the number of damp toads and fat snakes who sit out their time there. Among this company did Inge fall! and she shuddered and became stark and stiff.

She continued fastened to the loaf and the loaf drew her down as an amber button draws a fragment of straw.

That was a never ending antechamber where Inge found herself. There was a whole crowd of sinful people there, too. Great, fat, waddling spiders spun webs of a thousand years over the people’s feet, webs that cut like wire and bound them like bronze fetters. Inge felt a terrible pain while she had to stand there as a statue, for she was tied fast to the loaf. Her clothes had been soiled with mud in coming down to the Moor Woman’s place; a snake was fastened in her hair and out of each fold in her muddy frock a great toad looked forth, croaking.

The worst of all was the terrible hunger that tormented her. But could she not stoop and break off a piece of the loaf on which she stood? No, her back was too stiff, her hands and arms were benumbed, and her whole body was like a pillar of stone; only she was able to turn her eyes in her head, to turn them quite round, so that she could see backwards.

“If this lasts much longer,” she said, “I shall not be able to bear it.”

But she had to bear it, and it lasted on and on.

Her mother and all on earth knew of the sin she had committed; knew that she had trodden upon the loaf, and had sunk and disappeared; for the cowherd had seen it from the hill beside the moor.

And then she heard how her story was told to the little children, and the little ones said that she was so naughty and ugly that she must be well punished.

But one day when Inge was very hungry, she heard her name mentioned and her story was told to an innocent child. The little girl burst into tears at the tale of the haughty, vain Inge.

“But will Inge never come up here again?” asked the little girl.

And the reply was, “She will never come up again.”

“But if she were to say she was sorry, and to beg pardon, and say she would never do so again?”

“Yes, then she might come,” was the reply, and the words penetrated to Inge’s heart and did her good, and a tear of penitence dropped down on the loaf.

Again time went on—a long, bitter time, but at last Inge heard some one call her name and she saw two bright stars that seemed gleaming above her. The little girl who had been sorry for Inge was now an old woman and had gone to Heaven. She was calling to Inge. She was still sorry for her.

And a wonderful thing happened. A beam of light shot radiantly down into the depths of the Moor Woman’s place with all the force of the sunbeam which melts the snow man the boys have built. More quickly than the snowflake turns to water, the stony form of Inge was changed to mist, and a little bird soared with the speed of lightning upward into the world of men. But the bird was timid and shy towards all things around; he was ashamed of himself, ashamed to encounter any living thing, and hurriedly sought to conceal himself in a dark hole in an old crumbling wall; there he sat cowering, trembling through his whole frame.

Then, presently, it was the blessed Christmas time. The peasant who dwelt near set up a pole by the old wall with some ears of corn bound to the top, that the birds of heaven might have a good meal, and rejoice in the happy, blessed time.

And on Christmas morning the sun arose and shone upon the ears of corn, which were surrounded by a number of twittering birds. Then out of the hole in the wall streamed forth the voice of another bird, and the bird soared forth from his hiding-place; and in heaven it was well known what bird this was.

It was a hard winter. The ponds were covered with ice, and the beasts of the field and the birds of the air were stinted for food. Our little bird soared away over the high road, and in the ruts of the sledges he found here and there a grain of corn, and at the halting-places some crumbs. Of these he ate only a few, but he called all the other hungry sparrows around him, that they, too, might have some food. He flew into the towns, and looked round about; and wherever a kind hand had strewn bread on the window-sill for the birds, he only ate a single crumb himself, and gave all the rest to the other birds.

In the course of the winter, the bird had collected so many bread-crumbs, and given them to the other birds, that they equalled the weight of the loaf on which Inge had trod to keep her shoes clean; and when the last bread-crumb had been found and given, the gray wings of the bird became white, and spread far out.

“Yonder is a sea-swallow, flying away across the water,” said the children, when they saw the white bird. Now it dived into the sea, and now it rose again into the clear sunlight. It gleamed white; but no one could tell whither it went, though some asserted that it flew straight into the sun.