Prevod

Beside the wealthy manor house lay a beautiful, well-kept garden, full of rare trees and flowers. The guests at the house spoke of them with delight, and on Sundays and holidays people from the surrounding countryside and market towns came to ask permission to see the garden; even whole schools arrived on such visits.

Outside the garden, beside the fence along the field road, stood an enormous thistle. It was so large, branching out from the root and spreading so widely, that it might well have been called a thistle bush. No one looked at it except the old donkey that pulled the milkmaids’ milk cart. It stretched its neck towards the thistle and said, “You are lovely! I could eat you!” But its tether was not long enough for it to reach the thistle and eat it.

There was a large gathering at the manor: noble families from the capital, and pretty young girls, among them a young lady from far away. She came from Scotland, was of high birth, and rich in lands and gold—a bride well worth winning, said more than one young gentleman, and the mothers too.

The young people romped about on the lawn and played croquet. They walked among the flowers, and each of the young girls picked a blossom and put it in one of the young gentlemen’s buttonholes. But the young Scottish lady looked about her for a long time, rejecting one flower after another; none seemed to please her. Then she looked over the fence. There stood the great thistle bush with its rich, reddish-purple flowers. She saw them, smiled, and asked the son of the house to pick her one.

“It is Scotland’s flower!” she said. “It shines in our country’s coat of arms. Give it to me!” And he fetched the finest one, pricking his fingers as though it grew on the sharpest of rosebushes.

She put the thistle flower in the young man’s buttonhole, and he felt greatly honoured. Every one of the other young gentlemen would gladly have given up his splendid blossom to wear this one, bestowed by the Scottish lady’s delicate hands. And if the son of the house felt honoured, how much more so did the thistle bush! It was as though dew and sunshine were flowing through it.

“I am more important than I think!” it said to itself. “Surely I really belong inside the fence, not outside it. How strangely one is placed in this world! But now, at least, I have one of my own beyond the fence, and in a buttonhole at that!”

It told this story to every bud that appeared and unfolded. Before many days had passed, the thistle bush heard—not from people, nor from the twittering of birds, but from the air itself, which holds and carries sounds far and wide, all the way from the innermost garden walks and the rooms of the manor, where doors and windows stood open—that the young gentleman who had received the thistle flower from the elegant Scottish lady’s hand had now been given her hand and heart as well. They were a handsome couple, and an excellent match.

“I brought them together!” thought the thistle bush, remembering the flower it had given for the buttonhole. Every blossom that appeared was told the story.

“Surely I shall be planted in the garden!” thought the thistle. “Perhaps put in a pot, though it pinches; that must be the greatest honour of all!” And the thistle bush dwelt on the thought so vividly that it said with complete conviction, “I am going into a pot!”

It promised every little thistle flower that appeared that it, too, would be put in a pot, perhaps even in a buttonhole—the highest distinction it could attain. But none went into a pot, let alone a buttonhole. They drank in air and light, lapped up sunshine by day and dew by night, bloomed, and received visits from bees and horseflies in search of their dowry, the honey in the flower. They took the honey and left the flower standing. “Those robbers!” said the thistle bush. “If only I could impale them! But I cannot.”

The flowers drooped their heads and withered away, but new ones came again. “You arrive as though you had been summoned!” said the thistle bush. “Every moment I expect us to be taken over the fence.”

A couple of innocent daisies and a tall, slender plantain stood listening in deep admiration, believing everything it said. The old donkey from the milk cart cast sidelong glances from the roadside at the flowering thistle bush, but its tether was too short to reach it.

And the thistle thought so long about the Scottish thistle, to whose family it considered itself to belong, that at last it believed it had come from Scotland, and that its own parents had grown into the kingdom’s coat of arms. It was a grand thought, but a grand thistle may surely have grand thoughts.

“One often comes of such a noble family that one hardly dares to know it!” said the nettle growing close by. It, too, had a sort of notion that it might become nettle cloth if only it were properly treated.

And summer passed, and autumn passed. The leaves fell from the trees; the flowers grew brighter in colour and fainter in scent. The gardener’s apprentice sang in the garden, his voice carrying over the fence:

“Uphill, downhill—that is the whole year’s round!” The young fir trees in the wood were beginning to long for Christmas, but Christmas was still a long way off. “Here I stand yet!” said the thistle. “It seems no one gives me a thought, though I made the match. They became engaged, and they have had their wedding; that was a week ago now. Well, I shall not take a single step, for I cannot.”

A few more weeks passed. The thistle stood with its one last flower, large and full, which had sprung up close to the root. The wind blew cold over it; its colour faded, its splendour vanished, and the flower cup, as large as an artichoke blossom, appeared like a silvered sunflower.

Then the young couple, now husband and wife, came into the garden. They walked along the fence, and the young wife looked over it. “There is the great thistle still!” she said. “Now it has no flowers left!”

“Yes, there is the ghost of the last one!” he said, pointing to the silvery remnant of the blossom, itself a flower. “But how lovely it is!” she said. “We must have one like that carved into the frame of our portrait!”

And once again the young man had to climb over the fence and break off the thistle cup. It pricked his fingers; after all, he had called it a “ghost.” And it came into the garden, up to the manor, and into the drawing room. There stood a portrait of the newly married couple. In the bridegroom’s buttonhole a thistle flower had been painted. They spoke of this, and they spoke of the flower cup they had brought in, the last thistle blossom, now gleaming silver, which was to be copied in the carving of the frame.

And the air carried their words far and wide. “What things one lives to see!” said the thistle bush. “My firstborn went into a buttonhole, my lastborn into a frame! Where shall I go?”

And the donkey stood by the roadside, casting sidelong glances at it. “Come to me, my delicious darling! I cannot come to you; my tether is not long enough!” But the thistle bush did not answer. It stood ever more thoughtful; it thought and thought, right up towards Christmas, and then its thought burst into flower.

“Once her children are safely inside, a mother is content to stand outside the fence!” “That is an honourable thought!” said the sunbeam. “You shall have a good place too!”

“In a pot or in a frame?” asked the thistle. “In a fairy tale!” said the sunbeam. And here it is!