Page - 35 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol
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been done me and that I could never go home again.
But I had not reached the forest when I heard a shrill whistle behind me.
That was the whistle my grandmother made when she put two fingers in her
mouth, pointed her tongue, and blew. “Where are you going, you stupid
child?” she cried. “Take care; if you run about in the forest like that, Moss-
Maggie will catch you! Look out!”
At this word I instantly turned round, for I feared Moss-Maggie
unspeakably. But I did not go home yet. I hung about in the farmyard, where
my father and two of our men had just killed a pig. Watching them I forgot
what had happened to myself, and when my father set about skinning it in the
outhouse I stood by holding the ends of the skin, which with his big knife he
gradually detached from the carcase. When later on the intestines had been
taken out and my mother was pouring water into the basin, she said to me,
“Run away or you’ll get splashed.”
From the way in which she spoke I could tell that my mother was once
more reconciled with me and all was right again; and when I went into the
dwelling-room to warm myself a bit, everything was back in its own place.
Floor and walls were still moist, but scrubbed clean, and the Black Forest
clock was once more hanging on the wall and ticking. And it ticked much
louder and clearer than before through the freshly ordered room.
At last the washing and scrubbing and polishing came to an end, the house
grew peacefuller, almost silent, and the Sacred Vigil was upon us. On
Christmas Eve we used not to have our dinner in the living-room, but in the
kitchen, where we made the large pastry-board our table, and sat round it and
ate the simple fasting fare silently, but with uplifted hearts.
The table in the dwelling-room was covered with a snow-white cloth, and
beside it stood my stool, upon which, when the twilight fell, my grandmother
knelt and prayed silently.
The maids went quietly about the house and got their holiday clothes ready,
and mother put pieces of meat in a big pot and poured water on them and set
it on the open fire. I stole softly about the room on tiptoe and heard only the
jolly crackling of the kitchen fire. I gazed at my Sunday breeches and coat
and the little black felt hat which were ready hanging on a nail in the wall,
and then I looked through the window out at the oncoming dusk. If no rough
weather set in I was to be allowed to go with the head farm-servant, Sepp, to
the midnight Mass. And the weather was quiet, and moreover, according to
my father, it was not going to be very cold, because the mist lay upon the
hills.
Just before the “censing,” in which, following ancient custom, house and
The Forest Farm
Tales of the Austrian Tyrol
- Title
- The Forest Farm
- Subtitle
- Tales of the Austrian Tyrol
- Author
- Peter Rosegger
- Publisher
- The Vineyard Press
- Location
- London
- Date
- 1912
- Language
- English
- License
- PD
- Size
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Pages
- 169
- Categories
- Geographie, Land und Leute
- International