Excerpts from
The Three Festival Eves
By Steen Steensen Blicher
Easter Eve
If you, dear reader, have ever been to Snab Hill, where the assizes used to be held in olden days, a little towards the south you would have been able to see a tiny straggling village by the name of Wannet. Here none other than peasants live, or have probably ever lived.
And here, a couple of hundred years ago, there once lived a man called Ib. What his wife´s name was, I have never been able to discover. But this much I do know: he had an only daughter called Maren, commonly known as Ma-Ib´s. She is said to have been neat and comely, this young woman, and wherever she went the young men stole a glance at her out of the corner of their eyes. But she had no eyes for anyone but Sejer; he was also an only child, and his father too lived in Wannet.
Whitsun Eve
...Sejer sits watching all this; and now and again he smirks at all the fuss they are making. The master notices this, and says, "What are you sitting there grinning for?"
"I was thinking", he says, "that the load is no heavier than that I could pull it alone."
"Hey there! Unharness the horses!" his lordship shouts at the driver. And when that was done he says to Sejer, "Get to work, then, and if you can pull the cart I´ll give you what´s on it. But if you can´t, you shall up and have a ride on the wooden horse." Then the lad began to make excuses and said that he was only joking. But the master said that he would teach him to joke in his presence, and it was to be either one thing or the other.
"Well", said Sejer, "if I have to, I have to," whereupon he went up to the cart, removed the pole and got hold of the traces, bent over forwards and heaved - and after him followed the cart. But he trod so heavily on the ground that his wooden shoes went to pieces.
"You´re no weakling." said his lordship. And he was no weakling himself either, for people still relate that when he rode out of the gate he could grab hold of an iron ring on the lintel and raise his horse off the ground with his legs. "Take the log, then, and find out for yourself how to get it home. And as far as the lease is concerned we´ll see how things go."
If anyone was happy, it was Sejer! And he thanked his master, toppled the log onto the ground and sat down on it, looking out for his Maren through the gate....
First published in Dansk Folkekalender for 1841
Steen Steensen Blicher: The Diary of a Parish Clerk and other Stories, Athlone 1996
Translated by Paula Hostrup-Jessen
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