The Puffin Book of Christmas Stories by Wendy Cooling

Author:Wendy Cooling
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241380420
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

Schnitzle, Schnotzle, Schnootzle

RUTH SAWYER

The Tirol straddles the Alps and reaches one hand into Italy and another into Austria. There are more mountains in the Tirol than you can count and every Alp has its story.

Long ago, some say on the Brenner-Alp, some say on the Mitterwald-Alp, there lived the king of all the goblins of the Tirol, and his name was Laurin. King Laurin. His kingdom was under the earth, and all the gold and silver of the mountains he owned. He had a daughter, very young and very lovely, not at all like her father, who had a bulbous nose, big ears and a squat figure, and looked as old as the mountains. She loved flowers and was sad that none grew inside her father’s kingdom.

‘I want a garden of roses – red roses, pink roses, blush roses, flame roses, shell roses, roses like the sunrise and the sunset.’ This she said one day to her father. And the king laughed and said she should have just such a garden. They would roof it with crystal, so that the sun would pour into the depths of the kingdom and make the roses grow lovely and fragrant. The garden was planted and every rare and exquisite rose bloomed in it. And so much colour spread upwards on the mountains around that the snow caught it and the mortals living in the valley pointed at it with wonder. ‘What is it that makes our Alps so rosy, so glowing?’ they asked. And they spoke of it ever after as the alpen-glow.

I have told you this that you might know what kind of goblin King Laurin was. He was merry, and he liked to play pranks and have fun. He liked to do abroad into the valleys where the mortals lived, or pop into a herdsman’s hut halfway up the mountain. There were two men who said they had seen him – that small squat figure with a bulbous nose and big ears, gambolling with the goats on a summer day. And now I begin my story. It is an old one that Tirolèse mothers like to tell to their children.

Long ago there lived in one of the valleys a very poor cobbler indeed. His wife had died and left him with three children, little boys all of them – Fritzl, Franzl, and Hansl. They lived in a hut so small there was only one room in it, and in that room was the cobbler’s bench, a hearth for cooking, a big bed full of straw, and on the wall racks for a few dishes, and, of course, there was a table with a settle and some stools. They needed few dishes or pans, for there was never much to cook or eat. Sometimes the cobbler would mend the Sunday shoes of a farmer, and then there was good goat’s milk to drink. Sometimes he would mend the holiday shoes of the baker, and then there was the good long crusty loaf of bread to eat.

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