Prevod

On the last house in a little town stood a stork’s nest. The mother stork sat in the nest with her four little ones, who poked out their heads with their little black beaks, for these had not yet turned red. A short way off, on the ridge of the roof, stood the father stork, very stiff and upright. He had drawn one leg up beneath him, just to give himself a little trouble as he stood guard. You would have thought he was carved out of wood, so still he stood. “It must look rather grand for my wife to have a sentry by her nest!” he thought. “They cannot know that I am her husband; no doubt they think I have been ordered to stand here. It looks so dashing!” And so he went on standing on one leg.

Down in the street a whole troop of children were playing, and when they saw the storks, one of the boldest boys began to sing the old verse about them, and then all the others joined in. But they sang it just as he remembered it:

“Stork, stork, fly away, Home to your own without delay! Your wife is lying in her nest With four big chicks beneath her breast. One shall be hanged, Another run through, The third shall be burned, The fourth turned upside down!”

“Just listen to what the boys are singing!” said the little storks. “They say we are to be hanged and burned!” “You must not trouble yourselves about that!” said the mother stork. “Just pay no attention, and it will do you no harm!”

But the boys went on singing and pointing their fingers at the storks. Only one boy, whose name was Peter, said it was cruel to make fun of the animals, and would have nothing to do with it. The mother stork comforted her little ones too. “Never mind them,” she said. “Just look how calmly your father stands, and on one leg at that!”

“We are so frightened!” said the little ones, drawing their heads deep down into the nest. The next day, when the children gathered to play again and saw the storks, they began their song:

“One shall be hanged, Another shall be burned!—” “Surely we shall not be hanged and burned?” asked the little storks. “Of course not!” said their mother. “You are going to learn to fly, and I shall put you through your drills! Then we shall go out into the meadow and pay a visit to the frogs. They will bow to us in the water and sing, ‘Croak, croak!’ And then we shall eat them up. What a pleasure that will be!”

“And what then?” asked the little storks. “Then all the storks in the whole country will gather, and the autumn manoeuvres will begin. You must be able to fly well then; it is most important, for anyone who cannot fly will be stabbed to death by the general with his beak. So be sure to learn all you can when the drills begin!”

“Then we shall be run through after all, just as the boys said! And listen, now they are singing it again!” “Listen to me, not to them,” said the mother stork. “After the great manoeuvres, we fly to the warm countries, oh, so far away from here, over mountains and forests. We fly to Egypt, where there are triangular stone houses that rise to a point above the clouds. They are called pyramids, and they are older than any stork can imagine. There is a river there that overflows its banks, turning the land to mud. You walk about in the mud and eat frogs.”

“Oh!” said all the little ones. “Yes! It is so lovely there! You do nothing but eat all day long, and while we are having such a wonderful time, there is not a green leaf left on the trees in this country. It is so cold here that the clouds freeze to pieces and fall down in little white shreds!” She meant the snow, of course, but she could not explain it any more clearly.

“Do the naughty boys freeze to pieces too?” asked the little storks. “No, they do not freeze to pieces! But they very nearly do, and they have to sit indoors in a dark room, moping, while you can fly about in a foreign land where there are flowers and warm sunshine!”

Some time had now passed, and the little ones were so big that they could stand up in the nest and look far around them. Every day the father stork came flying home with fine frogs, little grass snakes, and all the stork delicacies he could find. Oh, how funny he looked as he performed tricks for them! He bent his head right back onto his tail, clattered his beak like a little rattle, and then told them stories, all of them about the marsh.

“Now listen, you must learn to fly!” said the mother stork one day, and all four little ones had to come out onto the ridge of the roof. Oh, how they wobbled! How they balanced themselves with their wings, and still they were on the very point of falling off!

“Now watch me!” said their mother. “This is how you must hold your heads! This is how you must place your legs! One, two! One, two! This is what will help you make your way in the world!” Then she flew a little way, and the young ones gave a little clumsy hop. Bump! There they lay, for their bodies were heavy.

“I will not fly!” said one of the little ones, scrambling back into the nest. “I do not care about going to the warm countries!” “Then do you want to freeze to death here when winter comes? Shall the boys come and hang you and burn you and run you through? I shall call them now!”

“Oh, no!” said the little stork, and it hopped out onto the roof again like the others. By the third day they could really fly a little, and then they thought they could sit and rest on the air as well. They tried, but bump! Down they dropped, and had to start moving their wings again. Now the boys came along the street below and sang their song:

“Stork, stork, fly away!” “Shall we fly down and peck their eyes out?” said the little ones. “No, leave them alone!” said their mother. “Just listen to me; that is more important! One, two, three! Now we fly to the right! One, two, three! Now to the left, round the chimney!—There, that was very good! That last stroke of your wings was so graceful and correct that you shall be allowed to come to the marsh with me tomorrow! Several nice stork families will be there with their children. Let me see that mine are the best-behaved, and be sure to hold your heads high. It looks well and earns you respect!”

“But are we not going to have our revenge on the naughty boys?” asked the little storks. “Let them shout whatever they please! You will be flying up towards the clouds and going to the land of the pyramids, while they must freeze and have neither a green leaf nor a sweet apple!”

“Yes, we will have our revenge!” they whispered to one another, and then the drills began again. Of all the boys in the street, none was worse at singing the mocking song than the very boy who had started it, and he was quite a little fellow, probably no more than six years old. The young storks, however, thought he must be a hundred, for he was so much bigger than their mother and father, and what did they know about how old children and grown people might be? All their revenge was to fall upon that boy, for he had begun it, and he never stopped. The young storks were so annoyed, and the bigger they grew, the less willing they were to put up with it. At last their mother had to promise that they should indeed have their revenge, but she would not take it until their very last day in the country.

“First we must see how you manage at the great manoeuvres! If you do badly and the general drives his beak into your breasts, then the boys will have been right after all, at least in a way! We shall see!”

“Yes, you shall!” said the little ones, and they took particular pains. They practised every day and flew so gracefully and lightly that it was a joy to see. Now autumn came, and all the storks began gathering to fly away to the warm countries while we have winter. What manoeuvres there were! They had to fly over forests and towns, just to see how well they could fly, for a great journey lay ahead. The young storks did so well that they were awarded the highest marks, with a frog and a snake. That was the very best grade, and they could eat the frog and the snake, which they did.

“Now we shall have our revenge!” they said. “Yes, indeed!” said the mother stork. “The plan I have thought of is just the thing! I know where the pond is in which all the little human babies lie until the stork comes to fetch them for their parents. The lovely little babies sleep and dream more sweetly than they ever will again. All parents would like to have such a little child, and all children want a sister or a brother. Now we shall fly to the pond and fetch one for each of the children who did not sing that wicked song and make fun of the storks. Those who did shall have none at all!”

“But the one who began the singing, that wicked, horrid boy!” cried the young storks. “What shall we do to him?” “There is a little dead baby lying in the pond; it has dreamed itself to death. We shall take it to him, and then he will have to cry because we have brought him a dead little brother. But that good boy—you have not forgotten him, have you?—the one who said, ‘It is cruel to make fun of the animals!’ We shall bring him both a brother and a sister. And since that boy was called Peter, you shall all be called Peter too!”

And what she said came to pass, and so all the storks were called Peter, and that is what they are called to this day.