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Little Hansworst

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By Staff Middle Land

October 2, 2024
2:49 pm
Los Angeles, CA

A Story Of The Dutch Puppet Show ANSWORST is a funny little fellow. Come, I shall tell you his story. Once in old days in Holland, a merry little bird laid a merry little egg in a merry little nest in a merry little bush. By and by there came a tipping, a tapping and a pecking from inside the merry little egg. All at once the shell went crack! And out of the eaa crawled what? Out crawled little Hansworst. No sooner did he see the light, than he cut a crazy caper, stood on his head and said, “I will be merry as long as I live’ Then he painted on his breast a very large red heart. “People shall know,” said he, ‘’that I am a

A Story Of The Dutch Puppet Show

ANSWORST is a funny little fellow. Come, I shall tell you his story. Once in old days in Holland, a merry little bird laid a merry little egg in a merry little nest in a merry little bush.
By and by there came a tipping, a tapping and a pecking from inside the merry little egg. All at once the shell went crack! And out of the eaa crawled what? Out crawled little Hansworst.
No sooner did he see the light, than he cut a crazy caper, stood on his head and said, “I will be merry as long as I live’ Then he painted on his breast a very large red heart.
“People shall know,” said he, ‘’that I am a brave boy, and my heart is in the right place!’ Down the dike ran Hans and over the green meadows! Sometimes he stood on his head; sometimes he turned handsprings or bounced like a rubber ball. Out dashed a little rabbit. A brave boy was I A Hansworst.Well anyhow, he said w he was! But still, when he saw that rabbit, Hans turned and ran away.

So very fast did Hans run that his legs scarcely touched the ground, the tails of his yellow jacket floated out in the wind like a pair of yellow wings, and he seemed to fly over the earth.
Just then along came a man, and what should he see but this yellow thing flying over the meadows? “Ha,” said the man to himself, “that s a nice kind of birdie!” And he reached out his great long arm, caught Hans by the seat of his breeches, and put him in his pocket. Then he took him on along home. A pretty little cottage it was to which the man took Hansworst, a neat, little, red-brick cot- tage with pretty green-and- white shutters. Hans peeped from the man’s pocket and saw it as they drew near.

He didn’t mind being taken into such a place as that! No, not at all! Why should he? He thought it would be great fun to climb on the shining brass teakettle over the charcoal teastove, and make out all the pictures that were painted on the blue-and-white plates in the rack on the wall above. But alack! If Master Hansworst thought the man-of-the-house was going to set him free to play such pranks as that, he was very much mistaken. The man took Hansworst to the window, and there above the geraniums hung a nice, little, wicker bird-cage. The man put Hansworst inside; then bang, he closed the door!
Well, how was that for Hansworst! The birds crowded round the newcomer, cheeping and chirping and fluttering. But, in no time at all, Hansworst was whistling and singsing and he and the birds were fast friends.

This was all very well, and Hans proved to be as merry inside the cage as out, but still, thing there was certainly one he did not like at all. He simply could not eat birdseed. It had no taste whatever.
And, when the bird- seed box was newly filled in the cage and the birds ate the seeds with delight, Hansworst was very miserable. One day the woman of the house laid the table for dinner, in the window below the cage. Then the man sat down at the table and the woman brought him a sausage, a nice fat sausage on a plate. Uni, but that sausage smelled good! And Hans was very hungry! Now it chanced that, just as the man was about to eat the sausage, the grandfather’s clock in the corner struck the hour of twelve; and the man paused—with fork in air—to watch the man-in-the moon, that was painted on the clock’s face, rise from behind a church steeple and go rolling across the sky to sink behind a townhall.

There lay the fat little sausage, unnoticed, on the plate, smiling, as it were, at Hans, and smelling, oh so good! Hans reached his little hand down through the wire of the cage and seized it. Oh, but it was good! He ate every single crumb.
When the man-of-the-house looked around, he found that his sausage had vanished. Good ‘lack, but he was astonished! Well, the same thing happened the next day and the next day and the next. Always his sausage vanished just as the clock struck twelve. Finally, on the fifth day, the man fell to wondering so much about what had happened to his sausages, that he left off watching the clock as soon as it struck two strokes, and he turned around just in time to see little Hansworst eating the last crumbs of his sausage.

Whoever heard the like! A bird eating sausage!” he cried. And he fell to scratching his head till a bright idea struck him. “If this bird eats meat, he can’t be a bird!” he cried and he stood up and looked in the cage. Sure enough, he saw that Hansworst was not a bird at all, never had been, and never would be! So he wasted not a moment, but opened the door of the cage and shouted, “Out you go!”
Hansworst took such a leap as he had never taken in all his life before. Out of the window he leapt, zipping along through the air, and he never came down to earth till he sailed in the window of a toyshop some distance up the street!
What a place that Hansworst was in now! Tin soldiers all about, and dolls and hobby horses, and all the animals of Noah’s Ark! That was what Hansworst liked! That was a merry crowd! He rode the hobby horses, he danced with the dolls, he marched with the soldiers, he ordered the animals in and out of Noah’s Ark, he climbed the wooden trees. There was no end to his fun.

But the next day there came to the toyshop a man with a little doll’s theatre. It was this man’s business to go from fair to fair, when the country people came into town, and to set up his little theatre in the market square, where he made all his wooden dolls play antics for the crowd.
“But,” said the man, looking sad, “my two chief actors are very bad dolls—Mr. and Mrs. John Klaasen. Day in and day out they quarrel and hit each other. It’s enough to bring tears to the eyes. They’re all banged up already. To bring me a little joy, I must buy some merry fellow. Pray you show me the merriest fellow you have in all your shop.”
Now, of course, the toy-seller knew Hansworst was the merriest fellow to be found in all the world.
So he took Hans off a toy elephant on which he had been riding and sold him to the man. Then the man took Hansworst away from all his fun in the toyshop. Perhaps you’d think this was enough to make even Hans-worst sad. John Klaasen and his wife were a sorry pair to travel with, always hitting and banging each other till they broke their wooden heads.

But the very first time Hansworst bounced out on the stage of that theatre and saw all the good folk waiting for him to make them laugh, he quite forgot everything else. He knew that at last he had found his right place in the world. He skipped, he hopped, he cracked jokes till the people held their sides for laughter.
“Hansworst! Hansworst!” they shouted. And the next time these good folk heard that Hansworst had come to town, they crowded from all ways to see him.
So it was that Hansworst became the most famous clown in Holland. Year in and year out, he played with John Klaasen and his wife in the little puppet show, and to this very day one has but to sayr “Hansworst,” and the faces of all jolly Dutchmen will blossom like magic with smiles.

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