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358
FREDERIKSBORG.
Chap. XXIV.
made his appearance, not under the blue canopy of
heaven, but under a hawthorn-tree, which of course
happened to come into full flower just one month before
its usual period of blooming,—a very graceful
compliment on the part of Dame Nature to the new-born
princeling.*
It is astonishing the sort of way in which great ladies
did lie-in in former days—here, there, and everywhere.
Francis I. made his first appearance under a
walnut-tree near the brandy-burning city of Cognac, and his
rival, the Emperor Charles V., in a strange place in
the palace of Ghent; and now Christian IV. first sees
the light in an open field under a hawthorn-tree. I am
afraid arithmetic was at a very low ebb ; ladies might
know that two and two made four, but beyond that
their powers of calculation were very limited.
Well, great was the joy of the whole nation at the
birth of the wished-for heir, but the hilarity of the
court was somewhat disturbed by a second visit from
the aged peasant of Samsø, with a message from the
mermaid to the king, telling him that, if he did not
at once cease from his habits of inebriety, he would
never live to see his son a grown man; at which
Frederic became exceeding wroth, and dismissed the
messenger this time with no presents, but with threats
and menaces.
Frederic believed the warning to be true, for he was the
most superstitious of men, and had a terrible fear of omens
and apparitions. Some years before his death “ two
crowned herrings” (I can find no better description of
* This thorn was destroyed towards the commencement of the
present century.
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