Note 1: It is a known fact that public executions have been major influxes down through the ages. As late as 1826, an execution by beheading took place in Skælskør, which the then 21-year-old high school student H.C. Andersen and his schoolmates came to experience up close. Andersen tells the following about this in the Life Book (Third Section, III):

"At this time, three people were to be executed near Skælskør. A 17-year-old girl who, since her father was against her love, had her lover and servant kill him after she herself, in vain, had tried it with rat poison. - Upper class was given freedom to go down there to see it; we drove at night; outside Skælskør we got off and went to the town, I just got to the gate when the convicts drove out, so I have just looked in, but not been to this town. The girl was very beautiful, but pale, with a marvelous expression she stared at the crowd and the area around, she was lying in her boyfriend's arms, he was red and healthy to look at; the servant was pale yellow, with long black hair hanging over his face. Some servants shouted at him alive, he took off his hat and nodded. The three priests followed them up to the court; it was such a beautiful morning, they all sang 6 a hymn and I heard the girl's clear voice over all the others. - They kissed each other and the priests, finally she kissed her boyfriend once again. Only at the second blow did the head fall. Now followed the two others who laid their heads on the same bloody block; I had entered the circle, thought their gaze had stared at me, I was marvelous at fashion. The racketeers ate eel and drank brandy after the execution; now the girl's old grandmother came and cried, laid her body in a coffin, while both men's heads were put on the stake and the bodies left on steep slopes. - The peasants stood strangely insensitive around, talking about the good clothes that should now be lying there to no avail, which many one could benefit from. "Oh, those are the last to wear out!" said the more liberal. A tailor from Slagelse had composed a poem that could be bought; the words were put in the mouths of the executed, and it went on the melody: "I stranger here to the place came." - The whole scene seemed terrible to me; especially when I got home in my deserted room next to the garden. The vines struck the pane; it became a strong storm, the hoarding blew down, I lay without sleep and saw only the two pale heads on the poles, and the girl's marvelous gaze which I can never forget. - Her own mother was out there, but left before the execution took place. The tailor deserved so much by his show that he purely gave up his craft; one day his wife came to the priest Fuglsang, where I was just then, and wanted to divorce the man, for since he had begun to write poetry, he had gone completely mad, drank and beat her. "He had!" she said she deserved 11 Rdlr at the execution and got 7 Rdlr for a show about a midwife who drowned, it was quite different deserved than at the needle, but now there was nothing more to write about, and yet he was just crazy! ” However, they otherwise stayed together and the tailor was given the position of the bourgeoisie's well-deserved drummer. - ”

The events surrounding the above-mentioned execution actually had a lasting influence on H.C. Andersen as a poet, and he returned indirectly to the subject in several of his works, especially in some of his novel drafts and novels. Moreover, in several of his fairy tales and stories, but which will it lead too far to get into here.