Chapter 9: The Fairy in the Cuckoo Clock

As a rule, and certainly with most fairies, mortals are considered to be very stupid. In fairyland, the reputation of human beings, as dull witted and slow, is a fixed tradition.

Before doing a new thing, men and women have to think it out. They talk a good deal about “cause and effect”; whereas, with fairies, there are no causes, but things, and events just happen. If they do not, the fairies make them.

Some situations, like the sun and moon, the earth and sky, the summer and winter, cannot be changed. Yet fairies can bring to pass lots of wonders that surprise men. They can play tricks that puzzle them beyond measure.

A hundred years ago, before the days of tourists, alpenstocks, hotels, electric railroads, and other foolish novelties, the guides, and all village folk, believed in the fairies. They felt as sure of giants and dwarfs, elves, and dragons, as folk of today, that never saw a dodo, or a pterodactyl, or an auroch, or a five-toed horse, believe these were once plentiful on the earth.

In fact, there was once a time, when men had no clocks or wrist-watches, and girls did not carry at their waist the pretty gold or nickel time-keepers of today. Nor did the big bells in the towers boom out the hours, nor were the huge clock-faces or dials seen, by day or by night. In the castles of Switzerland, where rich men or nobles lived, they knew nothing about marking the hours and minutes by anything, with a round face, having figures on it. One way to announce the hours was to have a candle, with two little brass balls, on opposite sides of the wax, and tied together with a string. When the flame burned, say, an inch, or other measured space, the balls dropped down into a brass basin. This made a loud, ringing noise, which sounded out the hours. Or, a little hammer struck a bell, and that is the reason why a clock, as its name was at first, was called a klok, or bell. On ships, the bells sounded every hour, and half hour, and this is still the method, to which sailors are accustomed; “eight bells” marking the end of one of the three periods of four hours each, into which the day is divided.

The fairies could always tell the time, as well as men, by the sun, but they were more interested in the moon and stars, for night was their joy time. The common people had no word for a minute, or a second, or anything less than an hour. They knew when the sun rose and set, and they guessed the time of day from the place of the sun in the sky—at the east, as it rose in the morning, and during the afternoon, as it sank in the west.

After the Alpen glow, or rosy light, that flushed the mountains like a maiden’s blush, the fairies came out to dance in the meadows. They always went away and disappeared at sunrise, for the dancing fairies would be turned into stone, if the sun’s rays struck them. It was even worse for them, than for mortals, who, even amid the ice and snow, when climbing high mountains, might be sunstruck and die. One family of the flowers they named Four o’Clocks.

But by and bye, men learned that they could set two sticks in a line north and south, and the shadow line from one stick would touch the other. They called this time twelve o’clock, or noon. The old men also took notice that, in the long days of summer, the sun lengthened and, in cold winter, shortened its shadows. They were thus able to count the days before the flowers would bloom in the springtime. Then the yodel music would sound and the cows be driven to pasture up in the high mountains.