Dumb Othmar by Mary de Morgan — Read

Once upon a time there was a village on the top of a mountain, where during the winter months the villagers saw no one but each other, for the mountain was so steep and the path so narrow that, when it was blocked with ice, it was dangerous to ascend: so during the winter months the people lived by themselves, and cheered themselves as they might in the long dreary evenings, with games and dancing and singing and playing on pipes, for they were cheerful folk, joyous and lighthearted. The sweetest singer in the village was a lad named Othmar; his voice was as sweet as a nightingale's before the dawn, and also he was the handsomest young fellow in all the country round. Strangers turned to look after him as he went by; he was tall and straight, and had curly brown hair, and big brown eyes, and lips that always smiled. He lived with his old mother, who was a widow, and he worked for them both in the fields and on the farms. When he was a boy he learned the notes of all the birds, and could imitate them so exactly that they would fly down to him and settle on his shoulders. When the farmers had sown their fields, and the birds would have come to pick up the grain, they sent for Othmar, and he sang and whistled till they all left the field and flew after him. So often he was called the bird-boy.

One evening before the winter had set in, or the roads were blocked with ice, there came along the high road into the village, a dwarf in a yellow cap leading a donkey, on whose back were fastened numberless musical instruments. Fiddles of all sorts, and viols, horns, trumpets, and pipes, and a big drum, and a small one with triangles and cymbals. In the middle of the village the little man stopped and looked about him. "Who would like to hear my music? " he cried, and then as the villagers came crowding around him, he bade them all sit down while he unpacked his mule, but he forbade any of them to help him, or to touch one of the instruments. "For mine is no common music," he quoth; "all these I have made myself, and in each is a machine which makes it go on playing by itself, if once I start it. See here! " and he took up a long pipe and began to blow, and there came forth the sweetest notes that had ever been heard from any pipe. The little man paused for a minute, with the pipe in his hand, and then laid it down on the ground, when, wonderful to relate, it went on playing of itself.