In the evening, I walk alone by the sea. When I come to the brass chest, I sit and remember how I came to this country. When I was an infant, the brass chest carried my mother and me over the sea. We came ashore at this very place. I will never forget the song she sang to put me to sleep:

Child, my child, how sound you sleep!
Though your mother’s care is deep,
You can lie with heart at rest,
In the narrow brass-bound chest….

That song put us both to sleep. It even did the same for the wind and the sea.

Son of the Brass Princess, The Terrible Head, Blue Fairy Book. Illustration by Arthur Rackham.