THE AMERICAN-SCANDIN AVIAN REVIEW 
115 
Books 
Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Chris¬ 
tian ANDERSEN. Prefaced by Francis 
Hackett. Edited by Signe Toksvig. Illus¬ 
trated by Eric Pape. The Macmillan 
Company, New York. 1921. 
“To know Hans Christian 
Andersen/’ writes Mr. 
Hackett in a preface which 
is the first fairy tale of the 
book and yet is a true story 
and has in it the real creak 
of Hans Christian’s boots, 
—“to know Hans Christian 
Andersen you must read 
‘The Ugly Duckling’.” 
And who did not know the 
Ugly Duckling almost be¬ 
fore he could waddle ? 
That may have been many 
years ago, and yet it can not be so long ago 
that we have forgotten her Grace the Spanish 
duck, who was a duchess in the barnyard, and 
the hen and the cat who thought laying of 
eggs and purring the .only sensible accom¬ 
plishments, and the duckling who was truly a 
swan. We knew the Ugly Duckling and Hans 
Christian Andersen even before we knew there 
was a Denmark. To open this little book 
of Miss Toksvig’s is to turn back to the first 
chapters of our autobiographies. Not an epi¬ 
sode has changed. There is the same old 
Tinderbox! You come to the end of the page 
that tells of the dog that sits guard in the first 
room—“his eyes,” and before you turn the 
page you remember with a tickle of delight 
that the next words must be “were as big as 
saucers.” 
Some worker in the vineyard of scholar¬ 
ship has no doubt earned the penny which is 
his day’s hire by tracing out and prodding 
up the roots of these delicate stories, and I 
know he must have discovered that the episode 
of the detected parish clerk in Little Claus 
and Big Claus is a twelfth century fabliau 
out of France. But who would have thought 
that a fabliau could become so innocent a 
thing? It has suddenly become as clean as 
an Odense kitchen without losing a particle 
of the joke. 
Miss Toksvig’s version of the tales is in¬ 
comparably better than any other I have read. 
They are told as children would have them 
told, skillfully. It is almost as though Hans 
Christian were telling them himself, and his 
own silhouettes, as he cut them out of paper 
for a child’s scrap book, are there to illus¬ 
trate them. But I found one cause for regret. 
When I first knew Little Claus he measured 
strange foreign coins in his tarred basket, but 
now only “dimes” stick fast to the tar. Per¬ 
haps we must charge the shrinkage to that new 
mystery of the bankers’ guild, foreign ex¬ 
change. J. C. 
God and Woman (Dyrendal). By Johan 
Bojer. Translated from the Norwegian by 
A. R. Shelander. New York: Moffat, Yard 
and Company. 1921. 
Dyrendal, for after all the book should be 
called Dyrendal and nothing else, was my 
first Bojer book, and the publishers’ proud 
announcement of its predecessors did not dis¬ 
turb me. A new novel, like a younger son, 
must stand alone and not look to its older 
brothers for support. Dyrendal can! Its 
English twin, though its speech may have less 
of the barnyard in it, can also stand alone. 
When I had finished the book, I sat thinking 
about it just as Knut, herd-boy of Dyrendal, 
prime minister of that little principality of a 
farm, had pondered over a Bjornson story of 
peasant life; and I took his thoughts for my 
own—- 
“The strange thing about this book was 
that it dealt with plain people and everyday 
life, and yet it seemed greater and more beau¬ 
tiful than many things which were written 
about kings and emperors in the history of the 
world.” 
And this was the story. Martha, drudge of 
a farm-yard and, in the estimate of her broth¬ 
ers, something cheaper than a servant, defied 
them for one free day at a fair, defied them 
again to champion and even to marry a 
boisterous, low trader of horses. Together 
they worked a scrawny farm of rock and bog, 
while she dreamed of children that were de¬ 
nied to her, and he longed for the old fun of 
staking everything on one fine gamble. At 
last he placed his stake and won Dyrendal, 
the district’s largest farm with its stately 
house and garden, its strip of timber, and its 
six tenants who learned to touch their caps 
to the new master, slowly groomed for his 
place of dignity by the firm hand of the new 
mistress. But even so, there was no heir 
to Dyrendal. And the woman looked into 
the future and grew cold, and tried to even 
her score against the Giver of Gifts by a petty 
sin, thieving of small silver and cord wood. 
This was the mistress of Dyrendal! The} 7 
