Page - 33 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

nice and quiet and go to sleep again!” Then my parents lighted a lantern, extinguished the light in the room, and left the house. I heard the outer door close, and saw the gleam of light go glimmering past the window, and I heard the crunching of footsteps in the snow and the rattling of the house-dog’s chain. Then, save for the regular throb of the threshers at work, all was once more quiet and I fell asleep again. My father and mother were going to the Rorate[3] at the parish church, nearly three hours away. I followed them in my dream. I could hear the church bell, and the sound of the organ and the Advent song, “Hail Mary, thou bright morning star!” I saw, too, the lights on the high altar; and the little angels that stood above it spread out their golden wings and flew about the church, and the one with the trumpet, standing over the pulpit, passed out over the heath and into the forests and blew throughout the whole world that the coming of the Saviour was near at hand. When I awoke the sun had long been shining into the windows; outside the snow glittered and shimmered, and indoors my mother went about again in workaday clothes and did her household tasks. Grandmother’s bed, next mine, was already made, and she herself now came in from the kitchen and helped me to put on my breeches, and washed my face with cold water, that stung me so that I was ready to laugh and cry at the same moment. That over I knelt on my stool and prayed with grandmother the morning prayer: In Gottes Namen aufstehen Gegen Gott gehen, Gegen Gott treten, Zum Himmlischen Vater beten, Dass er uns verleih Lieb Engelein drei: Der erste, der uns weist, Der Zweite, der uns speist, Der dritt’ der uns behüt’ und bewahrt, Dass uns an Leib und Seel’ nichts widerfahrt.[4] After these devotions I received my morning soup, and then came grandmother with a tub full of turnips which we were to peel together. I sat close beside it on my stool. But in the matter of peeling turnips I could never quite satisfy grandmother: I constantly cut the rind too thick, or here and there even left it whole upon the turnip. When, moreover, I cut my finger and instantly began to cry, my grandmother said, very crossly, “You’re a regular nuisance, it would be a good thing to pitch you right out into the snow!” All the while she was binding up my wound with unspeakable love and care. So passed the Advent season, and grandmother and I talked more and more often about Christmas Eve and of the Christchild who would so soon be coming among men.