Page - 149 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

I only once received a proper thrashing. In front of the house was a young copse of larch—and fir-trees, which gradually grew up so high that it shut out the view of the mountains on that side. Now I loved this view and I thought that father would be sure to thank me if I—who was an enterprising lad in those days—cut down the little trees. And, true enough, one afternoon, when everyone was in the fields, I stole into the little wood with an axe and began to cut down young trees. Before long, my father appeared upon the scene; but the thanks which he gave me had a very queer look. “Lend me the hatchet, boy!” he said, quietly. I thought, “Now he’ll tackle to himself: so much the better”; and I passed him the axe. He used it to chop off a birch-switch and flattened it across my back. “Wait a bit!” he cried. “Do you want to do for the young wood? It has more rods for you, where this came from!” I had a thrashing just once from my mother too. I liked sitting by the hearth when mother was cooking; and, one day, I knocked over the stock-pot full of soup, half putting out the fire and nearly burning my little bare feet. My mother was not there at the moment; and, when she came running in at the sound of the mighty hissing, I cried out, crimson in the face: “The cat, the cat has upset the stock-pot!” “Yes, that same cat has two legs and tells lies!” mother retorted. And she took me and thrashed me for a long time with the rod. “If ever you tell me a lie again,” she cried, when she had done, “I’ll cut you to pieces with the flue-rake!” A serious threat! Thank goodness, it never had to be fulfilled. On the other hand, when I was good and obedient, I was rewarded. My reward took the form of songs which she sang to me, tales which she told me, when we walked through the forest together or when she sat by my bedside in the evening. All that is best in me I have from her. She had a worldful of poetry within her. When my brothers and sisters came one after the other, mother loved us all alike and favoured none. Afterwards, when two died in their childhood, I saw mother for the first time crying. We others cried with her and thenceforth always cried whenever we saw mother shedding tears. And this was quite often, from that time onwards. Father lay sick for two years on end. We had ill-luck in the farm and in the fields; hail and murrain