Vyhľadávanie
Musical number 8. Sleep, My Baby Queen:
Sleep, my baby
Lands of my woe
Are full of snow!
Sleep, my baby!
Sandman is calling!
Sleep, my baby
Time doesn’t flow
The song is slow!
Sleep my baby!
Night is now falling! Falling!
(recitative)
Loving and sorrow – time is at hand!
The silent land, today, tomorrow!
Don’t forget, dearest, the ebb and flow!
My flowers growing, all white as snow.
Sleep, my baby!
Old Father Frost
Is never lost
Sleep, my baby!
Jingle bells ringing!
Sleep, my baby,
Time doesn’t flow
This song is slow!
Sleep, my baby!
Night softly singing! Singing!
Musical number 14. – How beautiful is getting old
Gerda: How beautiful is getting old,
when we’re just 16 years!
Kaj: We seek a rod with which to scold
So that time disappears!
Queen: Time lazy as a flowing stream
when it becomes cold ice.
Trio: How beautiful is getting old
How beautiful is getting old – an easy price
Kaj: How saddening is getting old
When we stop to take stock,
Gerda: We seek a rod with which to scold
If we could stop the clock!
Queen: Let’s stop it now, the flowing stream,
And turn it to cold ice
Trio: How saddening is getting old!
How saddening is getting old!
How saddening is getting old – a heavy price!
Queen: Whitest snoooooowwwwwwww
Gerda+Kaj: That time, it’s crazy
Queen: Love in us will grow
Gerda+Kaj: In youth so lazy
Queen: I know!
Trio: When you wait for him who loves you so. Loves you so!
Gerda: How beautiful is getting old,
when we’re just 16 years!
Kaj: We seek a rod with which to scold
So that time disappears!
Queen: Time lazy as a flowing stream
when it becomes cold ice.
Trio: The fool would have this stupid dream!
The fool would have this stupid dream!
The fool would have this stupid dream – a heavy price!
Queen: I am whitest snoooooowwwwwwww
Gerda+Kaj: In youth so lazy
Queen: Love, the most deeearr
Gerda+Kaj: Time, it’s crazy
Trio: When you wait for him who loves you so. Loves you so!
Translated by Ľubomír Feldek and Nick Miller
DOTTY DUCK
There was once a family of ducks. The father – Donald Duck. The mother – Donaldina Duck. And the daughter – Dotty Duck. Donald Duck and Donaldina Duck were very worried lest anything should happen to their one and only daughter, Dotty, but they were very sensible and they knew that the best way of protecting her from danger was to teach her to look after herself. They took her, for example, to the middle of the stream, left her there and swam back to the bank, watching to see what would happen. In the middle of the stream Dotty Duck began to quack for help.
“It’s all right!” called her parents from the bank. “We’re here, nothing can happen to you.”
When Dotty Duck heard that her parents were nearby and that nothing could happen to her, she stopped squawking for help and began to move her feet. Somehow or other she got to the bank. She had discovered how to swim. Much sooner than other ducks of her age. Some people said that Dotty Duck’s parents were very good at bringing up their offspring and that they should write a book “On the Art of Parenthood”, so that others could learn from their experience.
It is easy to guess what followed. Donald Duck and Donaldina Duck really did set to writing a book. There’s plenty of blank paper flying around in the air and it’s not hard to find a drop or two of ink swirling down the stream. Gertie Goose presented them with a quill. They had all they needed. Donald Duck said that he would dictate, Donaldina that she would write. Donald Duck began to walk up and down with his wings behind his back and he dictated:
“There is probably no more rewarding a task in the world than bringing up children…”
Donaldina Duck settled down on a flat stone and on another, a rough one, she spread out a piece of paper and wrote: There is probably no more rewarding a task in the world than bringing up children…
They quite forgot about Dotty Duck.
Meanwhile Dotty Duck swam up and down the stream. When she swam upstream, she looked to the left. And what did she see? A funny hole. When she swam downstream, she looked to the right. And what did she see? The same funny hole. She swam right up to the funny hole and saw that the hole led into a kind of passageway, full of water. Just a passageway, she thought to herself, I’ll swim back.
But you know what it’s like. A duck thinks one thing and does another. Dotty was no exception. Before she knew what was happening, she found herself in the passageway. She swam down the passageway, on and on, until she came to a point where four passages led off, each in a different direction. At that point there was a whirlpool. The whirlpool sent Dotty Duck whirling round in circles. She had a job to stop. But when she did, she no longer knew which passage she had come down. Any other duck in her situation would have been scared stiff. But Dotty Duck said to herself, “I am Dotty Duck. Ever since I was a little duckling my parents have been bringing me up to look after myself and now they are writing a book about how they brought me up, I just can’t let them down. I must manage this alone. I’ll swim on and on and I must get somewhere in the end.”
Dotty Duck swam on and on, she swam along one of the four passages until she came to the end of it. At the end of that passage there was a kind of chimney leading upwards. What now? To go back or go up the chimney? Dotty Duck decided that she would go up the chimney. Dotty Duck went up the chimney, up and up and up, until the chimney suddenly got narrower. It was no longer a chimney, just a narrow little pipe. If Dotty Duck had been bigger, she wouldn’t have been able to squeeze through it. But Dotty Duck was still very small and it was an easy matter for Dotty Duck to squeeze through such a narrow little pipe. So she went on and on, up and up, but then – what now? It wasn’t possible to go any further up the narrow little pipe. It was plugged up with some kind of plug. Dotty Duck pushed the plug up with her head and swoosh! – water began to pour down on her head. That water would easily have swept her away, down the pipe and down the chimney, Dotty Duck would have fallen under that rush of water, fallen and maybe have been killed, if she had not caught hold of the plug. But happily to say, Dotty Duck did catch hold of the plug and a hand caught hold of the plug she was holding and lifted it out of the water. Then Dotty Duck saw that she was in something like a tiny little lake and in that little lake sat a little girl with nothing on and that girl with nothing on was holding her in her hand, looking her over and over and laughing and squealing: “Oooo! My little toy duck! I’ve been looking for you all over the place! And you were hidden in the bath under the plug!”
I’m sure you’ve guessed what had happened. The passageway into which Dotty Duck had swum was no passageway, but a municipal drainpipe, which led into the stream. Dotty Duck had paddled along that pipe, paddled on and on until she had paddled into the drainpipe of a house and she had pushed her way up the pipe into the drainpipe of one of the flats. But what did Dotty Duck know about pipes? What did she know about flats?
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?!” she scolded the little girl. “Swimming in the lake with nothing on! What if some boys should pass by?”
“Ooooo!” squealed the girl a second time. “My little toy duck has come to life while it was hidden! It’s learned to talk! And it’s talking nonsense, because it doesn’t know that a bath is not a little lake and a little lake is not a bath!”
But what did Dotty Duck know about baths?
“Put your swimming costume on at once!” she scolded the little girl a second time. “Or has some little scamp hidden it? I’ll have a look for it along the bank.”
Saying this, Dotty Duck slipped out of the girl’s hands and jumped out of the bath onto the bathroom floor. In the bathroom floor there was a round grating. Dotty Duck fell straight onto this grating. Not just onto it – she fell through it. She fell and fell. First through the narrow little pipe. Then through the chimney. And at the bottom of the chimney Dotty Duck wasn’t killed, but splosh! She splashed into the water and the water began to carry her away.
“Oh, how silly I am!” cried Dotty Duck, when she noticed that the water was carrying her away and that it was carrying her away through the same passageway she had swum along not long before until she had come to the chimney and that it was now carrying her away in just the opposite direction.
“Oh, how silly I am! If I had let the water carry me along before instead of swimming upstream, I shouldn’t have lost my way in the first place and the water would have carried me back to the stream!”
Dotty Duck was now wiser – she let the water carry her along and it brought her back to the stream.
As soon as Dotty Duck was back in the stream she began to swim and she swam to the bank. And as soon as she had reached the bank, she waddled out of the water and began to poke among the bushes in search of the swimming costume belonging to the little girl with nothing on.
“Here it is!” she cried out in delight, when she really did find a swimming costume of some kind behind one of the bushes. Snatch! – she snatched it up in her beak and made off to go back.
“Stop!” a voice was heard behind her. “Leave that alone, you thief!”
Suddenly Dotty Duck felt a strong hand grasping her. Oh dear! The swimming costume she was holding in her beak didn’t belong to the girl with nothing on, it belonged to an old man. The old man was already dressed, but he had spread his bathing trunks out to dry for a while on the grass. And he had very nearly lost them.
What more is there to tell? The old man dragged Dotty Duck off to her parents and told them what a badly brought up daughter they had. He talked, he shouted and he stormed off. Donald Duck lost his temper on hearing this news and Donaldina Duck wept. They stopped writing their book, “On the Art of Parenthood”, and have never started it again to this very day.
Translated by Heather Trebatická
