Hans Christian Andersen

‘Ask the Market-Dame’!

There was this carrot, as old as old,

So knobbly, so heavy and stout,

That nevertheless was so frightfully bold,

Would wed a young carrot no more than a sprout,

So sweet, her beauty scarcely in bud,

A root of the finest pure blood.

– The wedding day came.

The food and drink, priceless, lived up to its name

It cost not a single pound sterling;

They all lapped up moonlight and dined on dew,

Sniffed flower-scent too

That from field and meadow came swirling.

– Old carrot he greeted them all with a bow,

His speech like a clock went on whirring,

The words they ticked away tickety-tock;

Young carrot she sat there silent in shock,

With neither a smile nor a sigh, just a stare,

Young and fair.

If this you’d disclaim,

Ask the market-dame!

A large red cabbage performed the rite,

White turnips wore bridesmaid’s attire;

Cucumber and sparrowgrass made a fine sight,

Potatoes comprised the whole choir.

The guests all joined in when the dancing came.

Ask the market-dame!

Old carrot without shoes and stockings he pranced,

Cer-rack! he split down the middle,

Was dead on the spot, he should never have danced,

Young carrot, entranced,

Found this turn of good fortune a riddle.

She was a widow now, happy was she,

Now she could be what she wanted to be,

She could swim young and fair in a soup tureen,

Quite serene.

If this you’d disclaim,

Ask the market-dame!

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This translation by John Irons was published in 2022. It is based on the version edited by the team headed by Klaus P. Mortensen and published by the Danish Society for Language and Literature. For further details on the first publication of the Danish source text, see the Danish version.

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Hans Christian Andersen: ‘Ask the Market-Dame’. Translated by John Irons, edited by Jacob Bøggild & Mads Sohl Jessen. Published by The Hans Christian Andersen Centre, University of Southern Denmark, Odense. Version 1.0. Published 2024-10-02. Digitized by Holger Berg for the website hcandersen.dk, version 1.0, 2024-10-02

This version of the text is published under the following license: Creative Commons, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0). Images are not included in this license and may be subject to copyright.