Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/186

 And as the drummer’s wife contemplated all this she wished in her heart that if she should ever have a child, it might be like that little angel, at least with the radiant golden hair of the little angel on the altar piece.

And by-and-by she really had a little child, and the father held it in his arms to show it to her. It was exactly like the angel in the church. The hair was golden, with the glittering brightness of sunshine, when the sun is setting.

“My golden treasure! my riches! my sunny heaven!” cried she, and kissed the shining locks, and there was the sound of music and song in the home of the drummer, as well as life, joy, and great excitement.

The drummer beat a whirligig on his drum—a joyful whirligig, and all the drums, little and big, joined in the turmoil.

“Red Hair!”—The little one has red hair! “Believe the beat of the alarm drum, not what the mother says:” Drum-a-tum-tum—drum-a-tum-tum.

And so all the townspeople believed what the alarm drum had said.

The little one was taken to the church to be baptized, but as no name had been chosen for him they called him “Peter.” The whole of the townspeople, except the drummer, called him “Peter, the drummer’s boy with the red hair.” The mother, however, kissed the red hair, and called him her “Golden Treasure.”

For the whole distance down the slope to the town the soil was clay and often very soft, and in that neighbourhood, the child’s name was not likely to be forgotten, the father took care of that.

“To be well known is always something,” said the drummer, so he wrote his own and his son’s name in the clay soil.

And the swallows arrived after a long journey. They had, however, hewn out an account of what they had seen, on the steep rocks, and on the walls of heathen temples, in Hindoostan, and also of the great deeds of mighty kings. Immortal names of so long ago that no one can read or speak of them any more.

“One name is something. To have many names has its importance,” thought the drummer, but down in the hollow where he had written the names, the ground swallows had made holes for their nests. The rain and the mists had softened the ground and turned it into mud and slime, and so the names of the drummer and his son had soon disappeared.

“Peter’s name will no doubt remain for the next half-year,” said his father.

“Folly,” thought the alarm drum, but he only said Dum-dum-dum-a-lum.

The drummer’s son was a lively frolicsome youngster, and he had a wonderful voice. He could sing so well, that people who heard him singing in the open air said it sounded like the music of birds in the grove. There was melody in the voice, but it wanted cultivation.

“He must be a chorister,” said his mother, “and sing in church, and when he stands under the lovely gilded angel you will see the likeness.”