Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    What Sami sings with the Birds
    What Sami sings with the Birds
    What Sami sings with the Birds
    Ebook80 pages1 hour

    What Sami sings with the Birds

    By Hans Christian Andersen

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Johanna Louise Spyri was a Swiss-born author of novels, notably children's stories, and is best known for her book Heidi. Born in the rural area of Hirzel, Switzerland, as a child she spent several summers in the area around Chur in Graubünden, the setting she later would use in her novels.
    LanguageEnglish
    Publisheranboco
    Release dateSep 8, 2016
    ISBN9783736415133
    What Sami sings with the Birds
    Author

    Hans Christian Andersen

    Hans Christian Andersen (1805 - 1875) was a Danish author and poet, most famous for his fairy tales. Among his best-known stories are The Snow Queen, The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Little Match Girl, The Ugly Duckling and The Red Shoes. During Andersen's lifetime he was feted by royalty and acclaimed for having brought joy to children across Europe. His fairy tales have been translated into over 150 languages and continue to be published in millions of copies all over the world and inspired many other works.

    Read more from Hans Christian Andersen

    Related to What Sami sings with the Birds

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Wise old Mrs Merrow

      Jul 27, 2020

      Littlesea was everything the description said: a white stone cottage with beams and higgledy-piggledy walls and steps away from a tiny quay in a private bay. It would have been the perfect spot for honeymooners had it not had just the one single bed

      8 min read

    • Article

      Elsi, The Strange Maid

      Aug 29, 2018

      Elsi, The Strange Maid
      17 min read

    • Article

      The Singing Seamstress

      Mar 4, 2020

      The Singing Seamstress
      3 min read

    • Article

      Cornwall CALLING

      May 4, 2022

      Cornwall CALLING
      9 min read

    • Article

      By the RIVER’S EDGE

      Mar 29, 2023

      By the RIVER’S EDGE
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Writing On THE WALL

      Apr 6, 2021

      The Writing On THE WALL
      6 min read

    • Article

      By the RIVER’S EDGE

      Mar 22, 2023

      By the RIVER’S EDGE
      9 min read

    • Article

      By the RIVER’S EDGE

      Apr 5, 2023

      By the RIVER’S EDGE
      9 min read

    • Article

      Love In The Time Of Treason

      May 6, 2021

      Love In The Time Of Treason
      17 min read

    • Article

      Barilla’s Lilies

      Feb 1, 2024

      Barilla’s Lilies
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cornwall CALLING

      Apr 27, 2022

      Cornwall CALLING
      9 min read

    • Article

      FOREVER Friends

      May 31, 2023

      FOREVER Friends
      6 min read

    • Article

      Malyon and Mayana

      Feb 1, 2024

      Malyon and Mayana
      7 min read

    • Article

      A House Called Carmen

      Sep 25, 2017

      WORDS MAXINE CASE “ALL HOUSES SHOULD HAVE A NAME,” MA SAID. THE NAME OF HER HOUSE WAS CARNEN. Though most people used the street address, Ma and I knew the true name of the house. “Is it a secret, then, Ma?”I’d ask. “No, my girl,” Ma would answer. “P

      3 min read

    • Article

      Aligogoro

      Jun 22, 2020

      Aligogoro
      4 min read

    • Article

      Giving Up Paradise: Lies, high heels, and piety.

      Jun 13, 2013

      For millions of refugees, life is nothing if not uncertain. They come to a new world with two purposes: escaping one set of realities, and building a new set. This story is about a family who fled Somalia during the Civil War of the 1990s. They settl

      13 min read

    • Article

      LOST Summers

      Jun 14, 2023

      LOST Summers
      3 min read

    • Article

      Damson JAM

      Jan 17, 2024

      Damson JAM
      10 min read

    • Article

      FIRST Steps

      Sep 26, 2023

      FIRST Steps
      6 min read

    • Article

      MOVING On

      Apr 26, 2023

      MOVING On
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Hampstead MYSTERY

      Oct 19, 2022

      A Hampstead MYSTERY
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Silent One

      Mar 1, 2023

      In the spring of the year 960, on the twenty-third day of the third month, a brilliant light shone in the northwest, and a baby girl was born to a fisherman’s family in Fujian Province. The girl was such a quiet, watchful child, her parents called he

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Silent One

      Mar 1, 2023

      In the spring of the year 960, on the twenty-third day of the third month, a brilliant light shone in the northwest, and a baby girl was born to a fisherman’s family in Fujian Province. The girl was such a quiet, watchful child, her parents called he

      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘In the Country of Women’: Featured Nonfiction from Susan Straight

      Nov 19, 2019

      In our latest edition of featured nonfiction, we present an excerpt from National Book Award finalist Susan Straight’s new novel, In the Country of Women, out now from Catapult. The post ‘In the Country of Women’: Featured Nonfiction from Susan Strai

      8 min read

    • Article

      Drawn to THE MOORS

      Feb 8, 2022

      Drawn to THE MOORS
      11 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for What Sami sings with the Birds

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      What Sami sings with the Birds - Hans Christian Andersen

      BIRDS

      BY

      JOHANNA SPYRI

      TRANSLATED BY HELEN B. DOLE

      WHAT SAMI SINGS WITH THE BIRDS

      CHAPTER FIRST

      OLD MARY ANN

      For three days the Spring sun had been shining out of a clear sky and casting a gleaming, golden coverlet over the blue waters of Lake Geneva. Storm and rain had ceased. The breeze murmured softly and pleasantly up in the ash-trees, and all around in the green fields the yellow buttercups and snow-white daisies glistened in the bright sunshine. Under the ash-trees, the clear brook was running with the cool mountain water and feeding the gaily nodding primroses and pink anemones on the hillside, as they grew and bloomed down close to the water.

      On the low wall by the brook, in the shadow of the ash-trees, an old woman was sitting. She was called Old Mary Ann throughout the whole neighborhood. Her big basket, the weight of which had become a little heavy, she had put down beside her. She was on her way back from La Tour, the little old town, with the vine-covered church tower and the ruined castle, the high turrets of which rose far across the blue lake. Old Mary Ann had taken her work there. This consisted in all kinds of mending which did not need to be done particularly well, for the woman was no longer able to do fine work, and never could do it.

      Old Mary Ann had had a very changeable life. The place where she now found herself was not her home. The language of the country was not her own. From the shady seat on the low wall, she now looked contentedly at the sunny fields, then across the murmuring brook to the hillside where the big yellow primroses nodded, while the birds piped and sang in the green ash-trees above her, as if they had the greatest festival to celebrate.

      Every Spring, people think it never was so beautiful before, when they have already seen so many, she now said half aloud to herself, and as she gazed at the fields so rich in flowers, many of the past years rose up and passed before her, with all that she had experienced in them.

      As a child she had lived far beyond the mountains. She knew so well how it must look over there now at her father's house, which stood in a field among white-blooming pear-trees. Over yonder the large village with its many houses could be seen. It was called Zweisimmen. Everybody called their house the sergeant's house, although her father quite peacefully tilled his fields. But that came from her grandfather. When quite a young fellow, he had gone over the mountains to Lake Geneva and then still farther to Savoy. Under a Duke of Savoy he had taken part in all sorts of military expeditions and had not returned home until he was an old man. He always wore an old uniform and allowed himself to be called sergeant. Then he married and Mary Ann's father was his only child. The old man lived to be a hundred years old, and every child in all the region round knew the old sergeant.

      Mary Ann had three brothers, but as soon as one of them grew up he disappeared, she knew not where. Only this much she understood, that her mother mourned over them, but her father said quite resignedly every time: We can't help it, they will go over the mountains; they take it from their grandfather. She had never heard anything more about her brothers.

      When Mary Ann grew up and married, her young husband also came into the house among the pear-trees, for her father was old and could no longer do his work alone. But after a few years Mary Ann buried her young husband; a burning fever had taken him off. Then came hard times for the widow. She had her child, little Sami, to care for, besides her old, infirm parents to look after, and moreover there was all the work to be done in the house and in the fields which until now her husband had attended to. She did what she could, but it was of no use, the land had to be given up to a cousin. The house was mortgaged, and Mary Ann hardly knew how to keep her old parents from want. Gradually young Sami grew up and was able to help the cousin in the fields. Then the old parents died about the same time, and Mary Ann hoped now by hard work and her son's help little by little to pay up her debts and once more take possession of her fields and house. But as soon as her father and mother were buried, her son Sami, who was now eighteen years old,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1