SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 18, 2021] “The Travelling Companion”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
I have mixed feelings about including a Hans Christian Andersen story here. On the one hand, I don’t think I have ever actually read an HCA story (of course I know many of them). So on the one hand it was interesting to do so. But, as with Homer, there was no from the last century and a half in Denmark worthy of inclusion here?
In this story a Poor John’s father dies immediately. So Poor John sets off with his few belongings to seek his fortune.
The first night he slept under the stars and in the morning gave some coins to a beggar. Later that night, he happened upon a church and made to sleep there for the night as the weather was worsening.
When he awoke in the middle of the night there was a casket in the middle of the room and three ruffians were there to “do him a mischief and not let him lie in his coffin, but throw him out in front of the church door.”
When Poor John asked what they were doing, they said he owed them money. So Poor John gave them all of his money. They laughed at him and sauntered off.
Poor John had nothing but he was still happy and decent and he made his way along. Soon he was caught up by a travelling companion who was very jolly and nice to be with.
The stranger had some strange behaviors. He had an ointment that cured an old woman of her lameness. In payment he asked for the lady’s walking stick. Then when they saw a dead swan, he took the bird’s wings.
All of this action leads to a princess, of course. The princess is unbelievably beautiful. And the King of the region is super nice and friendly. But the princess had made a rule for her suitors–he must guess what she is thinking three nights in a row. If he fails–he is killed.
When Poor John arrives at the gates of the kingdom, the king is super nice to him but tells him not to try for her hand because she’ll just have him killed.
But John is smitten. And on that night the travelling companion flies on the swan wings and follows the princess as she travels to an old Troll who has clearly possessed her. On the journey, and this was quite shocking to read, the travelling companion took out the rods and “whipped the Princess with his rod so that the blood actually came at every blow.” She thinks this is hail (because the companion is invisible), but still.
Anyhow, the companion hears what the Troll says and tells Poor John what to say. But still, she’s a wicked nasty creature, no? Well, maybe there’s something that the travelling companion can do about that. And just who was this mysterious companion anyway?
This story was pretty entertaining, if not a little long winded.
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