Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/349



were once two cocks, one of them stood on a dunghill, the other on the roof. Both were conceited, but the question is, which of the two was the most useful? A wooden partition divided the poultry-yard from another yard in which lay a heap of manure sheltering a cucumber bed. In this bed grew a large cucumber, which was fully conscious of being a plant that required to be reared in a hotbed. “It is the privilege of birth,” said the cucumber to herself; “all cannot be born cucumbers, there must be other kinds as well. The fowls, the ducks, and the cattle in the next yard are all different creatures, and there is the yard-cock, I can look up to him when he is on the wooden partition. He is certainly of much greater importance than the weather-cock, who is so highly placed, and who can’t even creak, much less crow; and besides, he has neither hens nor chickens, and thinks only of himself, and perspires verdigris. But the yard-cock is something like a cock. His gait is like a dance, and his crowing is music, and wherever he goes it is known instantly. What a trumpeter he is! If he would only come in here, even if he were to eat me up, stalk and all, it would be a pleasant death:” so said the cucumber.

During the night the weather became very bad; hens, chickens, and even the cock himself sought shelter. The wind blew down the partition between the two yards with a crash; the tiles came tumbling from the roof, but the weather-cock stood firm. He did not even turn round; in fact he could not, although he was fresh and newly cast. He had been born fullgrown, and did not at all resemble the birds that fly beneath the vault of heaven, such as the sparrows and swallows. He despised them, and looked upon them as little twittering birds of small size, who were only made to sing. The pigeons he owned were large, and shone in the sun like mother-of-pearl. They had some resemblance to weather-cocks, but then they were fat and stupid, and all they thought of was to stuff themselves with food, “Besides,” said the weather-cock, “they are very tiresome things to converse with.”