The Buckwheat

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The buckwheat Often, in passing by a field of buckwheat

after a thunderstorm, we see it all look quite black and drooping.

We might almost think a flame of fire had swept over it, and it is then that the farmer

is used to say, ah, the lightning has done all that to it.

But why has the lightning done all this, will be asked, perhaps by some solitary traveller,

who seeks a natural cause, or at least a simple reason, for all that nature does?

I will now tell you what the house sparrow told me about it.

The house sparrow had it from an old willow tree that once stood, and indeed is now standing,

close by just such a field of buckwheat.

It is a large grave willow tree, malt and rich in years, that seems to have burst in

the middle, and from whose gaping clefts grow the grass and the bramble, and seem quite

at home there.

Its trunk bends over very much as if it wanted a prop, and its branches hang down to the

ground, like long green hair.

On all the fields round about grew beautiful grain, rye and barley and oats.

Yes, the pretty oats, which, when they are quite ripe, look just like a flight of little

canary birds on a bow.

The growth of the corn had been blessed, and the heavy-aid was, the more humbly the good

plant bowed its slowly head.

But there was a field of buckwheat too, and this field stretched itself out on one side

till it reached the old willow tree.

The buckwheat did not bow its head at all, like the other sorts of corn, but towered

up in the air as proudly and stiffly as it could.

I am as rich as the greatest of them, it said, and much prettier too.

My flowers are as beautiful as the rosy apple blossom, and the delightful treat it is to

look at me and my companions.

Do you know of anything more beautiful, more noble, or in short anything that can

vie with us, you old dreamy willow tree?

And the mulled ring stem nodded its mossy head as if to say, oh yes indeed, that I do.

But the buckwheat tossed up its head in pure disdain and said, the foolish tree, he

is so old that grass and weeds are creeping out of his body.

In the meanwhile a very heavy storm came on.

All the flowers of the field folded their leaves together, or modestly bowed their tender

little heads to the ground, whilst the wind whizzled over them.

The buckwheat was the only one that stood saucily erect in its pride.

Bend down as we do, whispered the other kind flowers.

What need have I to do that, said the buckwheat, who would not easily be taught?

Bend down as we do, cried the corn.

The angel of the storm is coming.

He has rings that reach from the highest cloud to the bottom of the lowliest veil, and

he will dash you down before you can ask him to have pity on you.

Once for all I will not make so little of myself, and set the buckwheat.

Shut up your flowers and draw in your leaves, said the cautious old willow tree.

Look not up at the lightning when the cloud opens.

Even men dare not do so, for when it lightens they can see quite through into heaven, though

the light strikes them blind.

What then would not before us the herbs of the field, if we in our littleness dare to

do so?

In our littleness echoed the buckwheat mockingly, no indeed I will look straight through into

heaven.

And he did so in his guilty pride.

It lightened so brightly that the whole world seemed to be in flames.

As soon as the storm had raged its last, the flowers and the corn were seen standing in

the still pure air, refreshed with the rain, and happy as the spring.

But the buckwheat, the poor buckwheat, had been burned as black as a coal in the lightning.

It was nothing more now than a dead useless wheat of the field.

And the old willow tree waved its branches in the wind, and large drops of water fell

from the green leaves as if the tree were weeping, and the sparrow said, why do you weep?

It is so beautiful here.

Look how the sun is shining and the clouds sailing along.

Do not you breathe the sweet scent of the flowers and the bushes?

Why do you weep then, you old willow tree?

And the willow tree told of the pride and the hortiness of the buckwheat and of the punishment

which, soon or later, always follows upon crime.

I, who now tell this story over again, headed from the chattering sparrows, they twittered

it to me one evening when I asked them for some pretty tale.

End of the buckwheat by Hans Christian Andersen