诗翁彼豆故事集（11）
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A Note on the Footnotes
关于脚注的说明
Professor Dumbledore appears to have been writing for a wizarding audience, so I have occasionally inserted an explanation of a term or fact that might need clarification for Muggle readers.
邓布利多教授的笔记似乎是写给巫师读者看的，因此我偶尔会针对麻瓜读者不易理解的某个词语或事实，插进一些解释。
JKR
搬运工说：每个故事后都有一篇邓校长的点评、脚注，以及部份罗琳的脚注，本搬运工会将这些注解放在每篇点评后，供各位巫师和麻瓜理解。😉
Albus Dumbledore on
“The Tale of the Three Brothers”
阿不思·邓布利多点评
三兄弟的传说
1. This story made a profound impression on me as a boy. I heard it first from my mother, and it soon became the tale I requested more often than any other at bedtime. This frequently led to arguments with my younger brother, Aberforth, whose favourite story was “Grumble the Grubby Goat”.
我小时候，这个故事给我留下了深刻的印象。第一次我是听母亲讲的，很快，它就成为我睡觉前央求她讲得最多的一个故事。弟弟阿不福思经常为此跟我发生争吵，他最喜欢的故事是《脏山羊克朗布》。
2. The moral of “The Tale of the Three Brothers” could not be any clearer: human efforts to evade or overcome death are always doomed to disappointment. The third brother in the story (“the humblest and also the wisest”) is the only one who understands that, having narrowly escaped Death once, the best he can hope for is to postpone their next meeting for as long as possible. This youngest brother knows that taunting Death – by engaging in violence, like the first brother, or by meddling in the shadowy art of necromancy,[19]like the second brother - means pitting oneself against a wily enemy who cannot lose.
《三兄弟的传说》的寓意再明显不过：人类想要躲避或征服死神的努力注定不会成功。只有故事里的老三（“最谦虚也是最聪明的”）懂得，侥幸逃脱死神一次之后，他最多只能希望尽量延迟与死神的下一次见面。这位最小的弟弟明白，奚落死神——像老大那样动武，或像老二那样玩弄神秘莫测的招魂术[19]——意味着跟一位诡计多端、只赢不输的劲敌较量。
3. The irony is that a curious legend has grown up around this story, which precisely contradicts the message of the original. This legend holds that the gifts Death gives the brothers – an unbeatable wand, a stone that can bring back the dead, and an Invisibility Cloak that endures for ever – are genuine objects that exist in the real world. The legend goes further: if any person becomes the rightful owner of all three, then he or she will become “master of Death”, which has usually been understood to mean that they will be invulnerable, even immortal.
具有讽刺意味的是，围绕这个故事生出了一个奇怪的传言，跟故事原来的寓意正好相反。传言认为，死神送给三兄弟的礼物——一根不可战胜的魔杖，一块能够起死回生的石头，还有一件永不磨损的隐形衣——都是确确实实存在于世界上的东西。传言还说：如果一个人合法拥有了这三样东西，他（或她）就会成为“死神的主人”，这句话通常被认为是指他（或她）是不可战胜的，甚至是长生不老的。
4. We may smile, a little sadly, at what this tells us about human nature. The kindest interpretation would be: “Hope springs eternal”.[20] In spite of the fact that, according to Beedle, two of the three objects are highly dangerous, in spite of the clear message that Death comes for us all in the end, a tiny minority of the wizarding community persists in believing that Beedle was sending them a coded message, which is the exact reverse of the one set down in ink, and that they alone are clever enough to understand it.
看到这则传言向我们揭示的人之本性，我们或许会露出略含忧伤的微笑。最仁慈的解释是：“希望是永恒的。”[20]尽管如彼豆所说，那三件东西里有两件极端危险，而且故事的寓意很清楚：死神最终都会带走我们。但是巫师界有一小部分人仍始终坚信，彼豆向他们传递了一个隐秘的信息，这个信息与白纸黑字写的正好相反，只有他们才有足够的智慧能够参透。
5. Their theory (or perhaps “desperate hope” might be a more accurate term) is supported by little actual evidence. True Invisibility Cloaks, though rare, exist in this world of ours; however, the story makes it clear that Death’s Cloak is of a uniquely durable nature.[21]Through all the centuries that have intervened between Beedle’s day and our own, nobody has ever claimed to have found Death’s Cloak. This is explained away by true believers thus: either the third brother’s descendants do not know where their Cloak came from, or they know and are determined to show their ancestor’s wisdom by not trumpeting the fact.
他们的理论（也许用“迫切的希望”更为准确）背后并没有多少实际的证据。真正的隐形衣，尽管稀罕，确实存在于我们的世界上，但是故事里说得很清楚，死神的隐形衣具有独特的耐久性[21]。从彼豆讲故事的年代到我们今天，多少个世纪过去了，没有一个人声称找到了死神的隐形衣。诚笃的信徒是这样辩解的：老三的后人并不知道他们的隐形衣是从哪里来的，或者，他们决定表现出先人的智慧，不事张扬。