Once upon a time there was an old farm and, on that farm, lived a family of ducks. Mother Duck had been sitting on a clutch of new eggs for weeks until finally one morning, the eggs hatched open and out popped six chirpy ducklings all crying “Peep! Peep!”

But one egg was bigger than the rest, and it didn’t hatch like all the others. “Oh, dear,” mother duck said to herself, “I’m so tired of sitting on eggs! I wonder how much longer this one is going to take to hatch.” But being a good mother, she sat on the nest again and continued to wait…

And wait and wait a bit longer until finally the big egg cracked and broke open. Slowly out came two big feet and a head. But it wasn’t a soft little yellow head like the other ducklings.

This one was big and grey with a long scrawny neck and a fuzzy body. “My, my!” said Mother Duck when she saw him. “He certainly doesn’t look like any of my other children. I wonder how he got to look so…. different?”

“He’s ugly!” quacked the other ducklings. “He doesn’t look a bit like us, and we don’t want to play with him.” “Now, now” said Mother Duck, “He’s your brother and you will be nice to him” but the other ducklings did not want to have anything to do with him and ran away to play by themselves.

Well, the grey duckling certainly wasn’t pretty, and since he ate far more than his brothers, he was getting bigger than them very quickly.

As the days went by, the poor ugly duckling became more and more unhappy. His brothers didn’t want to play with him, he was so clumsy, and all the farmyard animals simply laughed at him wherever he went. He felt very sad and lonely.

Mother Duck did her best to comfort him, but it was no use. “Poor little ugly duckling!” she would say. “Why are you so different from all the others?”

But this just made the ugly duckling feel worse than ever. Every night he cried himself to sleep. He felt that nobody wanted him. “Nobody loves me, they all tease me! Why am I different from my brothers?”

The ugly duckling had also followed them down to the pond. “I’ll bet that ugly grey brother of ours can’t swim!” shouted one of the little yellow ducklings. Seeing all the other ducklings swimming about he jumped into the water and had a go himself. Under the water he went with a big splash until suddenly he reappeared and started to swim, in fact much better than most of his brothers! “On my word!” said Mother Duck. “He certainly can swim. He must be my own child after all!”

But as the days went by, the poor ugly duckling became more and more unhappy. His brothers still didn’t want to play with him because he was so big and different. He felt sad and lonely and while Mother Duck did her best to comfort him the ugly duckling felt worse than ever. “Nobody loves me” he said, “they all tease me! Why am I different from my brothers?”

One day the ugly duckling decided that he could take no more teasing and at sunrise, he ran away from the farmyard.

He stopped at a pond and began to question all the other birds he could find. “Do you know of any ducklings with grey feathers like mine?” he asked but everyone shook their heads.

“We don’t know anyone as ugly as you”, the other birds said but the ugly duckling did not lose heart and kept on asking all the other birds. He went to another pond, where a pair of large geese gave him the same answer to his question.

What’s more, they warned him: “Don’t stay here! Go away! It’s dangerous. There are men with guns!” Just then he heard the BANG! BANG! Of a gun and ran for his life. The duckling was sorry he had ever left the farmyard.

After walking some more, it started to rain and at last he came to a miserable little shack that only seemed to remain standing because it didn’t know which way to tumble down.

The door hung open crookedly, and the duckling slipped inside to get out of the rain. Inside he found a corner to rest in and fell asleep for the night.

In the morning he woke to find an old woman lived there with her cat and her hen. They saw the duckling and decided to allow him to stay with them as long as he lay eggs to sell.

However, the duckling could not do this, and the cat and the hen made fun of him whenever the old woman was not looking. The Hen said to the ugly duckling “If you don’t lay eggs, the old woman will wring your neck and pop you into the pot!” And the cat chipped in: “Hee! Hee! I hope the old woman cooks you, then I can eat your bones!”

The poor ugly duckling was so scared that he lost his appetite, though the old woman kept stuffing him with food and grumbling: “If you won’t lay eggs to sell, at least hurry up and get fat so I can make you into a nice meal!”

So, one night he decided it was time to leave, and he quietly escaped from the miserable little shack. Once again, he was all alone. He fled as far away as he could, and at daybreak, he found himself in a thick bed of reeds by the water. “If nobody wants me, I’ll hide here forever.” There was plenty of food, and the duckling began to feel a little happier, although he was still very lonely.

Then one day at sunrise, he saw some beautiful birds fly overhead. They were white, with long slender necks, yellow beaks and large wings. “Oh, if only I could look like them, just for a day!” said the duckling.

Winter came and the water in the reed bed froze over. The poor duckling left home to seek food in the snow, but it was very tiring, and he could not find anything to eat. Finally, he was so exhausted he dropped to the ground. But luckily a farmer found him and put him in his big jacket pocket. “I’ll take him home to my children; they’ll look after him. Poor thing, he’s frozen!”

The duckling was showered with kindly care at the farmer’s house and because of this kindness the ugly duckling was able to live through the very cold winter.

However, by springtime, he had grown so big that the farmer decided to set him free by the pond. Outside the weather was warm and sunny and birds sang as flowers bloomed. Suddenly the duckling found that he could flap his wings and fly. He took to the air and looked for somewhere to call home.

In no time at all he found himself in a beautiful garden when from nowhere three glorious white birds appeared. They were the same birds he had seen fly off to warmer homes just before the winter. They were called swans and as they appeared they ruffled their feathers as they swam lightly across the water.

The ugly duckling was amazed at the beautiful birds and thought to himself, “If I dare go near them, they will laugh at me because I am so ugly. But I don’t care. Better to be laughed at by these beautiful creatures than to be teased by ducks and hens or kicked by children or starve in the winter.”

So, he dived into the water and swam out to the swans. “Laugh at me!” cried the poor creature, bending his head down to the water. But what was this he saw reflected in the clear water? It was his own image! For the first time he saw himself as he really was. And, to his utter amazement, he saw that he was not an ugly duckling anymore or a duckling at all, but a swan, a beautiful white swan!