The story of Rhodopis, recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo around 7 BCE, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt, is usually considered one of the earliest known variants of Cinderella. The first literary European version of the story was published by Giambattista Basile in his Il Pentamerone: Lo cunto de li cunti, also known as The Tale of Tales (1634-36); the most popular version was included in Charles Perrault Histoires ou contes du temps passé (1697), and a later variant was popularised by the Brothers Grimm.

Although the story’s title and main character’s name change in different languages, in English-language folklore Cinderella is the most common name given to the tale’s protagonist. The word ‘Cinderella’ has, by analogy, come to mean one whose attributes were unrecognised, or one who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity and neglect. The still-popular story of Cinderella continues to influence popular culture internationally, lending plot elements, allusions, and tropes to a wide variety of media.

The Aarne–Thompson-Uther system classifies Cinderella as Tale Type 510A The Persecuted Heroine. Others of this type include ‘The Sharp Grey Sheep’; ‘The Golden Slipper’; ‘The Story of Tam and Cam’; ‘Rushen Coatie’; ‘The Wonderful Birch’; ‘Fair, Brown and Trembling’; and ‘Katie Woodencloak’.

Aschenputtel

[translated from the Brothers Grimm variant, first published in the 1812 edition of the Kinder -und Hausmärchen]

A rich man’s wife became sick, and when she felt that her end was drawing near, she called her only daughter to her bedside and said, ‘Dear child, remain pious1 and good, and then our dear God will always protect you, and I will look down on you from heaven and be near you.’ With this she closed her eyes and died.

The girl went out to her mother’s grave every day and wept, and she remained pious and good. When winter came the snow spread a white2 cloth over the grave, and when the spring sun had removed it again, the man took himself another wife3.

This wife brought two daughters into the house with her4. They were beautiful, with fair faces, but evil and dark hearts. Times soon grew very bad for the poor stepchild.

‘Why should that stupid goose sit in the parlor with us?’ they said. ‘If she wants to eat bread, then she will have to earn it. Out with this kitchen maid!’

They took her beautiful clothes away from her, dressed her in an old gray smock, and gave her wooden5 shoes. ‘Just look at the proud princess! How decked out she is!’ they shouted and laughed as they led her into the kitchen.

There she had to do hard work from morning until evening, get up before daybreak, carry water, make the fires, cook, and wash. Besides this, the sisters did everything imaginable to hurt her. They made fun of her, scattered peas and lentils6 into the ashes for her, so that she had to sit and pick them out again. In the evening when she had worked herself weary, there was no bed for her. Instead she had to sleep by the hearth in the ashes7. And because she always looked dusty and dirty, they called her Cinderella.

One day it happened that the father8 was going to the fair, and he asked his two stepdaughters what he should bring back for them.

‘Beautiful dresses,’ said the one.

‘Pearls and jewels,’ said the other.

‘And you, Cinderella,’ he said, ‘what do you want?’

‘Father, break off for me the first twig that brushes against your hat on your way home.’

So he bought beautiful dresses, pearls, and jewels for his two stepdaughters. On his way home, as he was riding through a green thicket, a hazel9 twig brushed against him and knocked off his hat. Then he broke off the twig and took it with him. Arriving home, he gave his stepdaughters the things that they had asked for, and he gave Cinderella the twig from the hazel bush.

Cinderella thanked him, went to her mother’s grave, and planted the branch on it, and she wept so much that her tears fell upon it and watered it. It grew and became a beautiful tree.

Cinderella went to this tree three10 times every day, and beneath it she wept and prayed. A white bird11 came to the tree every time, and whenever she expressed a wish, the bird would throw down to her what she had wished for.

Now it happened that the king proclaimed a festival that was to last three days. All the beautiful young girls in the land were invited, so that his son could select a bride for himself. When the two stepsisters heard that they too had been invited, they were in high spirits.

They called Cinderella, saying, ‘Comb our hair for us. Brush our shoes and fasten our buckles. We are going to the festival at the king’s castle.’

Cinderella obeyed, but wept, because she too would have liked to go to the dance with them. She begged her stepmother to allow her to go.

‘You, Cinderella?’ she said. ‘You, all covered with dust and dirt, and you want to go to the festival?. You have neither clothes nor shoes, and yet you want to dance!’

However, because Cinderella kept asking, the stepmother finally said, ‘I have scattered a bowl of lentils into the ashes for you. If you can pick them out again in two hours, then you may go with us12.’

The girl went through the back door into the garden, and called out, ‘You tame pigeons, you turtledoves, and all you birds13 beneath the sky, come and help me to gather:

The good ones go into the pot,
The bad ones go into your crop.

Two white pigeons14 came in through the kitchen window, and then the turtledoves15, and finally all the birds beneath the sky came whirring and swarming in, and lit around the ashes. The pigeons nodded their heads and began to pick, pick, pick, pick. And the others also began to pick, pick, pick, pick. They gathered all the good grains into the bowl. Hardly one hour had passed before they were finished, and they all flew out again.

The girl took the bowl to her stepmother, and was happy, thinking that now she would be allowed to go to the festival with them.

But the stepmother said, ‘No, Cinderella, you have no clothes, and you don’t know how to dance. Everyone would only laugh at you.’

Cinderella began to cry, and then the stepmother said, ‘You may go if you are able to pick two bowls of lentils out of the ashes for me in one hour,’ thinking to herself: she will never be able to do that.

The girl went through the back door into the garden, and called out, ‘You tame pigeons, you turtledoves, and all you birds beneath the sky, come and help me to gather:

The good ones go into the pot,
The bad ones go into your crop.

Two white pigeons came in through the kitchen window, and then the turtledoves, and finally all the birds beneath the sky came whirring and swarming in, and lit around the ashes. The pigeons nodded their heads and began to pick, pick, pick, pick. And the others also began to pick, pick, pick, pick. They gathered all the good grains into the bowls. Before a half hour had passed they were finished, and they all flew out again.

The girl took the bowls to her stepmother, and was happy, thinking that now she would be allowed to go to the festival with them.

But the stepmother said, ‘It’s no use. You are not coming with us, for you have no clothes, and you don’t know how to dance. We would be ashamed of you.’ With this she turned her back on Cinderella, and hurried away with her two proud daughters.

Now that no one else was at home, Cinderella went to her mother’s grave beneath the hazel tree, and cried out:

Shake and quiver, little tree,
Throw gold and silver down to me.

Then the bird threw a gold and silver16 dress down to her, and slippers embroidered with silk and silver. She quickly put on the dress and went to the festival.

Her stepsisters and her stepmother did not recognize her. They thought she must be a foreign princess, for she looked so beautiful in the golden dress. They never once thought it was Cinderella, for they thought that she was sitting at home in the dirt, looking for lentils in the ashes.

The prince approached her, took her by the hand, and danced with her. Furthermore, he would dance with no one else. He never let go of her hand, and whenever anyone else came and asked her to dance, he would say, ‘She is my dance partner.’

She danced until evening, and then she wanted to go home. But the prince said, ‘I will go along and escort you,’ for he wanted to see to whom the beautiful girl belonged. However, she eluded him and jumped into the pigeon coop. The prince waited until her father came, and then he told him that the unknown girl had jumped into the pigeon coop.

The old man thought, ‘Could it be Cinderella?’

He had them bring him an ax and a pick so that he could break the pigeon coop apart, but no one was inside. When they got home Cinderella was lying in the ashes, dressed in her dirty clothes. A dim little oil-lamp was burning in the fireplace. Cinderella had quickly jumped down from the back of the pigeon coop and had run to the hazel tree. There she had taken off her beautiful clothes and laid them on the grave, and the bird had taken them away again. Then, dressed in her gray smock, she had returned to the ashes in the kitchen.

The next day when the festival began anew, and her parents and her stepsisters had gone again, Cinderella went to the hazel tree and said:

Shake and quiver, little tree,
Throw gold and silver down to me.

Then the bird threw down an even more magnificent dress than on the preceding day. When Cinderella appeared at the festival in this dress, everyone was astonished at her beauty. The prince had waited until she came, then immediately took her by the hand, and danced only with her. When others came and asked her to dance with them, he said, ‘She is my dance partner.’

When evening came she wanted to leave, and the prince followed her, wanting to see into which house she went. But she ran away from him and into the garden behind the house. A beautiful tall tree stood there, on which hung the most magnificent pears. She climbed as nimbly as a squirrel into the branches, and the prince did not know where she had gone. He waited until her father came, then said to him, ‘The unknown girl has eluded me, and I believe she has climbed up the pear tree.’

The father thought, Could it be Cinderella? He had an ax17 brought to him and cut down the tree, but no one was in it. When they came to the kitchen, Cinderella was lying there in the ashes as usual, for she had jumped down from the other side of the tree, had taken the beautiful dress back to the bird in the hazel tree, and had put on her gray smock.

On the third day, when her parents and sisters had gone away, Cinderella went again to her mother’s grave and said to the tree:

Shake and quiver, little tree,
Throw gold and silver down to me.

This time the bird threw down to her a dress that was more splendid and magnificent than any she had yet had, and the slippers were of pure gold. When she arrived at the festival in this dress, everyone was so astonished that they did not know what to say. The prince danced only with her, and whenever anyone else asked her to dance, he would say, ‘She is my dance partner.’

When evening came Cinderella wanted to leave, and the prince tried to escort her, but she ran away from him so quickly that he could not follow her. The prince, however, had set a trap. He had had the entire stairway smeared with pitch. When she ran down the stairs, her left slipper stuck in the pitch. The prince picked it up. It was small and dainty, and of pure gold.

The next morning, he went with it to the man, and said to him, ‘No one shall be my wife except for the one whose foot fits this golden shoe.’

The two sisters were happy to hear this, for they had pretty feet. With her mother standing by, the older one took the shoe into her bedroom to try it on. She could not get her big toe into it, for the shoe was too small for her. Then her mother gave her a knife and said, ‘Cut off your toe. When you are queen you will no longer have to go on foot.’

The girl cut off her toe, forced her foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the prince. He took her on his horse as his bride and rode away with her. However, they had to ride past the grave, and there, on the hazel tree, sat the two pigeons, crying out:

Rook di goo, rook di goo!
There’s blood in the shoe.
The shoe is too tight,
This bride is not right!

Then he looked at her foot and saw how the blood was running from it. He turned his horse around and took the false bride home again, saying that she was not the right one, and that the other sister should try on the shoe. She went into her bedroom, and got her toes into the shoe all right, but her heel was too large.

Then her mother gave her a knife, and said, ‘Cut a piece off your heel. When you are queen you will no longer have to go on foot.’

The girl cut a piece off her heel, forced her foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the prince. He took her on his horse as his bride and rode away with her. When they passed the hazel tree, the two pigeons were sitting in it, and they cried out:

Rook di goo, rook di goo!
There’s blood in the shoe.
The shoe is too tight,
This bride is not right!

He looked down at her foot and saw how the blood was running out of her shoe, and how it had stained her white stocking all red. Then he turned his horse around and took the false bride home again.

‘This is not the right one, either,’ he said. ‘Don’t you have another daughter?’

‘No,’ said the man. ‘There is only a deformed little Cinderella from my first wife, but she cannot possibly be the bride.’

The prince told him to send her to him, but the mother answered, ‘Oh, no, she is much too dirty. She cannot be seen.’

But the prince insisted on it, and they had to call Cinderella. She first washed her hands and face clean, and then went and bowed down before the prince, who gave her the golden shoe. She sat down on a stool, pulled her foot out of the heavy wooden shoe, and put it into the slipper, and it fitted her perfectly.

When she stood up the prince looked into her face, and he recognized the beautiful girl who had danced with him. He cried out, ‘She is my true bride.’

The stepmother and the two sisters were horrified and turned pale with anger. The prince, however, took Cinderella onto his horse and rode away with her. As they passed by the hazel tree, the two white pigeons cried out:

Rook di goo, rook di goo!
No blood’s in the shoe.
The shoe’s not too tight,
This bride is right!

After they had cried this out, they both flew down and lit on Cinderella’s shoulders, one on the right, the other on the left, and remained sitting there.

When the wedding with the prince was to be held, the two false sisters came, wanting to gain favor with Cinderella and to share her good fortune. When the bridal couple walked into the church, the older sister walked on their right side and the younger on their left side, and the pigeons pecked out one eye from each of them. Afterwards, as they came out of the church, the older one was on the left side, and the younger one on the right side, and then the pigeons pecked out the other eye from each of them. And thus, for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness as long as they lived18.

Discussion questions

According to Jane Yolen:

Beyond the cultural accoutrements, the detritus of centuries, Cinderella speaks to all of us in whatever skin we inhabit: the child mistreated, a princess or highborn lady in disguise bearing her trials with patience, fortitude, and determination. Cinderella makes intelligent decisions, for she knows that wishing solves nothing without concomitant action. We have each been that child. (Even boys and men share thatdream, as evidenced by the many Ash-boy variants.) It is the longing of any youngster sent supperless to bed or given less than a full share at Christmas. And of course it is the adolescent dream.

To make Cinderella less than she is, an ill-treated but passive princess awaiting rescue, cheapens our most cherished dreams and makes mockery of the magic inside us all—ability to change our own lives, the ability to control our own destinies (Yolen 2005).

• When a fairy-tale heroine is passive—waiting for rescue, silent in the face of cruelty, dependent on magical intervention she did nothing to earn—what is the story actually communicating to its audience? Is passivity ever a form of power or strategy in these tales, or is it always an erasure of the heroine's agency? What is lost—or gained—when a reteller chooses to restore that agency?

  

The father is a mystery to me. Is he so besotted with his new wife that he cannot see how his daughter is soiled with kitchen refuse and filthy from her ashy bed and always hard at work? If he sensed there was a drama in hand, he was content to leave the entire production to the women for, absent as he might be, always remember that it is his house where Ashputtle sleeps on the cinders, and he is the invisible link that binds both sets of mothers and daughters in their violent equation (Carter 1995).

• ‘Aschenputtel’ opens with the dramatic death of the mother and the second wedding of the father. The story emphasises the bond between mother and daughter, contrasted strongly with the familial strife that arises with the introduction of the stepmother and her daughter. The evil stepmother has become an easily recognisable trope, emphasising the competition between women within a family or household: the good mother versus the evil second wife, a mother redirecting family resources to her natural-born daughters instead of her new husband’s first issue, young women attempting to displace their rivals. How does this tale type shape reflect or shape reader’s ideas about domestic relationships between women, and what might happen if those expectations were subverted?

Writing prompts

• In the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm version ‘Aschenputtel’ (1812), the stepmother hacks off a toe and then a heel in her efforts to force her own daughters’ feet into the infamous slipper. In this variant, the stepmother and stepsisters are then blinded by the ghost of Cinderella’s dead mother in bird form. Change the main character and tell this tale from the perspective of one of the stepsisters. Another option would be to write a retelling from the dead mother’s point-of-view.

• There are several ancient myths and stories which include a few Cinderella motifs, but there are not many easily recognisable Cinderellas in the mix. At this time, one of the best published discussions about Cinderella in antiquity can be found in Graham Anderson’s book, Fairytale in the Ancient World (2000). One of the earliest variants is ‘Rhodopis’, first recorded by the Greek historian Strabo and later published in Aelian’s Varia Historia. The tale was popularised as an Egyptian Cinderella during the 19th century with several literary retellings. Retell one of these older versions in a wildly different genre such as space opera or solarpunk. What elements can be reimagined in unique and alternative ways?

References

Carter, Angela 1995 ‘Ashputtle, or the mother’s ghost: three versions of one story’, Burning your boats: the collected short stories, Henry Holt & Co, New York.

Yolen, Jane 2005, Once upon a time (she said), NESFA Press.

Introduction to Hänsel and Grethel (Hansel and Gretel) by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

‘Hansel and Gretel’ is an example of tale type ATU327A, which falls under the broader category of ATU327 (the children and the ogre). Tales with similar elements and themes include ‘Nennillo and Nennella’ and ‘Little Thumb’. This popular folktale also has similarities to Made d’Aulnoy’s ‘Finette Cendron’, a Cinderella story where the heroine leaves a trail of peas, which is eaten by birds; like Gretel, she also burns up her foe (a giant) in an oven.

• ‘Nennillo and Nennella’ (The Pentamerone: day 5, tale 8) by Giambattista Basile (1575-1632).

• ‘Little Thumb’ collected in The blue fairy book (1889) by Andrew Lang (based on the Perrault version published in his Histoires ou contes du temps passé)

• ‘Johnnie and Grizzle’ collected by Joseph Jacobs in European Folk and Fairy Tales (New York, GP Putnam’s Sons, 1916).

• ‘The two children and the Witch’ collected by Consiglieri Pedroso in Portuguese Folk-Tales (Folk lore society publications, Volume 9. Miss Henrietta Monteiro, translator. New York, Folk lore society publications, 1882).

• ‘Finette Cendron’ (The fairy tales of Madame d’Aulnoy) by Marie Catherine Baronne D’Aulnoy, translated by Miss Annie Macdonell and Miss Lee (London, Lawrence and Bullen, 1892).

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Hansel and Gretel: story and annotations

‘Hansel and Gretel’ was originally published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 as tale #15 in the first edition of Kinder- und hausmärchen (Children’s and household tales). The source for this story was their next door neighbor’s daughter, Dortchen Wild, who married Wilhelm Grimm, the younger of the two folklorist brothers, in 1825.

The 1857 Grimms’ variant of this tale combines several significant motifs including the wicked stepmother (a change from the evil mother figure in the Grimms’ 1812 version of the same tale), the abandonment of children, the trail of crumbs (or peas) consumed by birds, the edible house (similar to the candy houses in the Land of Cockaigne, the mythical medieval land of plenty), and the cannibalistic witch (or ogre) who is tricked into climbing into their own oven.

• ‘Hansel and Grethel’ was included in the English edition of Household tales, a selection of tales from the KHM, translated by Margaret Hunt and published in London by George Bell.

• ‘Hansel and Grettel’ was later re-translated and condensed into a slightly different version, by Miss May Sellar, for Andrew Lang’s The blue fairy book (1889).

• DL Ashliman offers a translation and comparison of the Grimms’ first edition (1812) of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and their final version of the tale, published in the seventh edition of the KHM in 1857.

Next to a great forest1 there lived a poor woodcutter2 with his wife and his two children. The boy’s name was Hansel and the girl’s name was Gretel3. He had but little to eat, and once, when a great famine4 came to the land, he could no longer provide even their daily bread5.

One evening as he was lying in bed worrying about his problems, he sighed and said to his wife, ‘What is to become of us? How can we feed our children when we have nothing for ourselves?’

‘Man, do you know what?’ answered the woman. ‘Early tomorrow morning we will take the two children out into the thickest part of the woods, make a fire for them, and give each of them a little piece of bread, then leave them by themselves6 and go off to our work. They will not find their way back home, and we will be rid of them7.’

‘No, woman,’ said the man. ‘I will not do that. How could I bring myself to abandon8 my own children alone in the woods? Wild animals would soon come and tear them to pieces.’

‘Oh, you fool’, she said, “then all four of us will starve. All you can do is to plane the boards for our coffins’. And she gave him no peace until he agreed.

‘But I do feel sorry for the poor children’, said the man.

The two children had not been able to fall asleep because of their hunger, and they heard what the stepmother had said to the father.

Gretel cried bitter tears and said to Hansel, ‘It is over with us!’

‘Be quiet, Gretel,’ said Hansel, ‘and don’t worry. I know what to do.’

And as soon as the adults had fallen asleep, he got up, pulled on his jacket, opened the lower door, and crept outside. The moon9 was shining brightly, and the white pebbles10 in front of the house were glistening like silver coins11. Hansel bent over and filled his jacket pockets with them, as many as would fit.

Then he went back into the house and said, ‘Don’t worry, Gretel. Sleep well. God will not forsake us’. Then he went back to bed.

At daybreak, even before sunrise, the woman came and woke the two children. ‘Get up, you lazybones. We are going into the woods to fetch wood’. Then she gave each one a little piece of bread, saying, ‘Here is something for midday. Don’t eat it any sooner, for you’ll not get any more.’

Gretel put the bread under her apron, because Hansel’s pockets were full of stones. Then all together they set forth into the woods. After they had walked a little way, Hansel began stopping again and again and looking back toward the house.

The father said, ‘Hansel, why are you stopping and looking back? Pay attention now, and don’t forget your legs.’

‘Oh, father,’ said Hansel, ‘I am looking at my white cat12 that is sitting on the roof and wants to say good-bye to me.’

The woman said, ‘You fool, that isn’t your cat. That’s the morning sun shining on the chimney.’

However, Hansel had not been looking at his cat but instead had been dropping the shiny pebbles from his pocket onto the path.

When they arrived in the middle of the woods, the father said, ‘You children gather some wood, and I will make a fire so you won’t freeze.’

Hansel and Gretel gathered together some twigs, a pile as high as a small mountain

The twigs were set afire, and when the flames were burning well, the woman said, ‘Lie down by the fire and rest. We will go into the woods to cut wood. When we are finished, we will come back and get you’.

Hansel and Gretel sat by the fire. When midday came each one ate his little piece of bread. Because they could hear the blows of an ax, they thought that the father was nearby. However, it was not an ax. It was a branch that he had tied to a dead tree and that the wind was beating back and forth. After they had sat there a long time, their eyes grew weary and closed, and they fell sound sleep.

When they finally awoke, it was dark at night. Gretel began to cry and said, ‘How will we get out of woods?’

Hansel comforted her, ‘Wait a little until the moon comes up, and then we’ll find the way.’

After the full moon had come up, Hansel took his little sister by the hand. They followed the pebbles that glistened there like newly minted coins, showing them the way. They walked throughout the entire night, and as morning was breaking, they arrived at the father’s house.

They knocked on the door, and when the woman opened it and saw that it was Hansel and Gretel, she said, ‘You wicked children, why did you sleep so long in the woods? We thought that you did not want to come back.’

But the father was overjoyed when he saw his children once more, for he had not wanted to leave them alone13.

Not long afterward there was once again great need everywhere, and one evening the children heard the mother say to the father, ‘We have again eaten up everything. We have only a half loaf of bread, and then the song will be over. We must get rid of the children. We will take them deeper into the woods, so they will not find their way out. Otherwise there will be no help for us.’

The man was very disheartened, and he thought, ‘It would be better to share the last bit with the children.’

But the woman would not listen to him, scolded him, and criticised him. He who says A must also say B, and because he had given in the first time, he had to do so the second time as well.

The children were still awake and had overheard the conversation. When the adults were asleep, Hansel got up again and wanted to gather pebbles as he had done before, but the woman had locked the door, and Hansel could not get out. But he comforted his little sister and said, ‘Don’t cry, Gretel. Sleep well. God will help us.’

Early the next morning the woman came and got the children from their beds. They received their little pieces of bread, even less than the last time. On the way to the woods, Hansel crumbled his piece in his pocket, then often stood still, and threw crumbs14 onto the ground.

‘Hansel, why are you always stopping and looking around?’ said his father. ‘Keep walking straight ahead.’

‘I can see my pigeon sitting on the roof. It wants to say good-bye to me.’

‘Fool’, said the woman, ‘that isn’t your pigeon15. That’s the morning sun shining on the chimney.’

But little by little Hansel dropped all the crumbs onto the path. The woman took them deeper into the woods than they had ever been in their whole lifetime.

Once again a large fire was made, and the mother said, ‘Sit here, children. If you get tired you can sleep a little. We are going into the woods to cut wood. We will come and get you in the evening when we are finished.’

When it was midday Gretel shared her bread with Hansel, who had scattered his piece along the path. Then they fell asleep, and evening passed, but no one came to get the poor children.

It was dark at night when they awoke, and Hansel comforted Gretel and said, ‘Wait, when the moon comes up I will be able to see the crumbs of bread that I scattered, and they will show us the way back home.’

When the moon appeared they got up, but they could not find any crumbs, for the many thousands of birds that fly about in the woods and in the fields had pecked them up16.

Hansel said to Gretel, ‘We will find our way,’ but they did not find it.

They walked through the entire night and the next day from morning until evening, but they did not find their way out of the woods. They were terribly hungry, for they had eaten only a few small berries that were growing on the ground. And because they were so tired that their legs would no longer carry them, they lay down under a tree and fell asleep. It was already the third morning since they had left the father’s house. They started walking again, but managed only to go deeper and deeper into the woods. If help did not come soon, they would perish. At midday they saw a little snow-white bird17 sitting on a branch. It sang so beautifully that they stopped to listen. When it was finished it stretched its wings and flew in front of them. They followed it until they came to a little house. The bird sat on the roof, and when they came closer, they saw that the little house was built entirely from bread with a roof made of cake18, and the windows were made of clear sugar.

‘Let’s help ourselves to a good meal19,’ said Hansel. ‘I’ll eat a piece of the roof, and Gretel, you eat from the window. That will be sweet.’

Hansel reached up and broke off a little of the roof to see how it tasted, while Gretel stood next to the windowpanes and was nibbling at them. Then a gentle voice called out from inside20:

Nibble, nibble, little mouse,
Who is nibbling at my house?

The children answered:

The wind, the wind,
The heavenly child.

They continued to eat, without being distracted. Hansel, who very much like the taste of the roof, tore down another large piece, and Gretel poked out an entire round windowpane. Suddenly the door opened, and a woman, as old as the hills and leaning on a crutch, came creeping out. Hansel and Gretel were so frightened that they dropped what they were holding in their hands.

But the old woman shook her head and said, ‘Oh, you dear children, who brought you here? Just come in and stay with me. No harm will come to you.’

She took them by the hand and led them into her house. Then she served them a good meal: milk and pancakes with sugar, apples, and nuts. Afterward she made two nice beds for them, decked in white21. Hansel and Gretel went to bed, thinking they were in heaven. But the old woman had only pretended to be friendly. She was a wicked witch22 who was lying in wait there for children. She had built her house of bread only in order to lure them to her, and if she captured one, she would kill him, cook him, and eat him; and for her that was a day to celebrate.

Witches have red eyes23 and cannot see very far, but they have a sense of smell24 like animals, and know when humans are approaching.

When Hansel and Gretel came near to her, she laughed wickedly and spoke scornfully, ‘Now I have them. They will not get away from me again.’

Early the next morning, before they awoke, she got up, went to their beds, and looked at the two of them lying there so peacefully, with their full red cheeks. ‘They will be a good mouthful’, she mumbled to herself. Then she grabbed Hansel with her withered hand and carried him to a little stall, where she locked him behind a cage door. Cry as he might, there was no help for him.

Then she shook Gretel and cried, ‘Get up, lazybones! Fetch water and cook something good for your brother. He is locked outside in the stall and is to be fattened up. When he is fat I am going to eat him.’

Gretel began to cry, but it was all for nothing. She had to do what the witch demanded. Now Hansel was given the best things to eat every day, but Gretel received nothing but crayfish shells.

Every morning the old woman crept out to the stall and shouted, ‘Hansel, stick out your finger, so I can feel if you are fat yet.’

But Hansel stuck out a little bone25, and the old woman, who had bad eyes and could not see the bone, thought it was Hansel’s finger, and she wondered why he didn’t get fat.

When four weeks had passed and Hansel was still thin, impatience overcame her, and she would wait no longer. ‘Hey, Gretel!’ she shouted to the girl, ‘Hurry up and fetch some water. Whether Hansel is fat or thin, tomorrow I am going to slaughter him and boil him.’

Oh, how the poor little sister sobbed as she was forced to carry the water, and how the tears streamed down her cheeks! ‘Dear God26, please help us,’ she cried. ‘If only the wild animals had devoured us in the woods, then we would have died together.’

‘Save your slobbering,’ said the old woman. ‘It doesn’t help you at all.’

The next morning Gretel had to get up early, hang up the kettle with water, and make a fire.

‘First we are going to bake,’ said the old woman. ‘I have already made a fire in the oven and kneaded the dough.’

She pushed poor Gretel outside to the oven27, from which fiery flames were leaping. ‘Climb in,’ said the witch, ‘and see if it is hot enough to put the bread in yet.’ And when Gretel was inside, she intended to close the oven, and bake her, and eat her as well.

But Gretel saw what she had in mind, so she said, ‘I don’t know how to do that. How can I get inside28?’

‘Stupid goose,’ said the old woman. ‘The opening is big enough. See, I myself could get in.’ And she crawled up stuck her head into the oven.

Then Gretel gave her a shove, causing her to fall in. Then she closed the iron29 door and secured it with a bar. The old woman began to howl frightfully. But Gretel ran away, and the godless witch burned up miserably. Gretel ran straight to Hansel, unlocked his stall, and cried, ‘Hansel, we are saved. The old witch is dead.’

Then Hansel jumped out, like a bird from its cage when someone opens its door. How happy they were! They threw their arms around each other’s necks, jumped with joy, and kissed one another. Because they now had nothing to fear, they went into the witch’s house. In every corner were chests of pearls30 and precious stones.

‘These are better than pebbles,’ said Hansel, filling his pockets.

Gretel said, ‘I will take some home with me as well,’ and she filled her apron full.

‘But now we must leave’, said Hansel, ‘and get out of these witch-woods.’

After walking a few hours they arrived at a large body of water31. ‘We cannot get across,’ said Hansel. ‘I cannot see a walkway or a bridge.’

‘There are no boats here,’ answered Gretel, ‘but there is a white duck swimming. If I ask it, it will help us across.’

Then she called out:

Duckling, duckling,
Here stand Gretel and Hansel.
Neither a walkway nor a bridge,
Take us onto your white back.

The duckling came up to them, and Hansel climbed onto it, then asked his little sister to sit down next to him.

‘No,’ answered Gretel. ‘That would be too heavy for the duckling. It should take us across one at a time.’

That is what the good animal did, and when they were safely on the other side, and had walked on a little while, the woods grew more and more familiar to them, and finally they saw the father’s house in the distance. They began to run, rushed inside, and threw their arms around the father’s neck.

The man had not had even one happy hour since he had left the children in the woods. However, the woman had died32. Gretel shook out her apron, scattering pearls and precious stones around the room, and Hansel added to them by throwing one handful after the other from his pockets.

Now all their cares were at an end, and they lived happily together.

My tale is done,
A mouse has run.
And whoever catches it can make for himself from it a large, large fur cap.

Discussion prompt

As Robert Darton has pointed out … “To eat one’s fill, eat until the exhaustion of the appetite (manager à sa faim), was the pleasure principle that the peasants dangled before their imaginations, and one that they rarely realized in their lives”. The same could be said about small children. While many folktales take us into the rugged and often brutal world of peasant life, where survival depends on getting your next meal, fairy tales often take us squarely into the household, where everyone seems to be anxious both about what’s for dinner and about who’s for dinner. The peasants of folktales may have to worry about famines, but children in fairy tales live perpetually under the double threat of starvation and cannibalism. (Tatar 1999).

• In The classic fairy tales, Maria Tatar examines the way food—both its absence and presence—shapes fairy tales. In ‘Hansel and Gretel’, we see the threat of both starvation and cannibalism: the threat of starvation prompts the parents to abandon their children in the forest, and the witch attempts to fatten up the children so that she may eat them. In this tale, starvation and cannibalism are two sides of the same coin. The food references are especially impactful as the events in ‘Hansel and Gretel’ are often said to have been written about and widely shared during a time of famine. What other fairy tales feature the fact, or threat, of cannibalism and starvation? How do you interpret or understand the imagery of lack and abundance of food in this traditional tale?

• Ready and even excess consumption is a key feature of late-stage capitalism. How might this fairy tale shift if the focus, instead of being on food, were on a different ‘double threat’, or tension, between lack and excess? What if, for example, we reconceived the tale as about the desire for good health, connection, or financial security?

Writing prompt

• The orange & bee has published several pieces connected to food and ‘Hansel and Gretel’ including ‘Gingerbread’ by Stephanie M. Wytovich and ‘Tasting Notes’ by Cislyn Smith. Both Wytovich’s poem and Smith’s flash use evocative language to amplify the ingredients: ‘I’ll eat pearls with my porridge,/ roast their apples in sweet cream’ (Wytovich); ‘A pinch of ground cloves, bitter and hot on the tongue’ (Smith). In another offering of The orange & bee—’Dark bread recipe suitable for regular use’—Tristan Beiter explores the language of love expressed in food in the form of a recipe (an element also at play in Smith’s story).

• Make a list of your greatest desires. Pick one, and write a recipe.

References

Ashliman, DL 2023, ‘Hansel and Gretel’, viewed 3 December 2025, <https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm015.html>.

Bettelheim, B 1976, The uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales. Thames &Hudson, London.

Cooper, JC 1978, An illustrated encyclopedia of traditional symbols, Thames & Hudson, New York.

Heiner, HA 2021, ‘Hansel and Gretel’, viewed 5 December 2025, <https://surlalunefairytales.com/h-r/hansel-gretel/hansel-gretel-tale.html>.

Tatar, M 1999, The classic fairy tales, WW Norton & company, New York.

Tatar, M 2003, The hard facts of the Brothers Grimm, Princeton university press, Princeton.

Warner, M 1994, From the beast to the blonde: on fairy tales and their tellers, Noonday press, New York.

Warner, M 2014, Once upon a time: a short history of fairy tales, Oxford university press, Oxford.

Zipes, J (ed) 2000, The Oxford companion to fairy tales: the western fairy tale tradition from medieval to modern, Oxford university press, New York & Oxford.

This tale comes from one of the coloured fairy-tale books edited and published by Andrew Lang, though Lang did acknowledge the significant ‘contribution’ of his wife, Leonora Lang (nee Alleyne)1, to the work of selecting, translating, editing, and retelling the series in the preface to the The lilac fairy book, where he writes:

The fairy books have been almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang, who has translated and adapted them from the French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, and other languages.

I’ve chosen to share this tale with you because, just recently, beautiful illustrated hardcover editions of both The green fairy book, and The lilac fairy book came into my possession. As if by magic!

I was at the op shop in the small beachside town where I live, looking for teacups. My wife and I were still unpacking into our new house, and had not yet found any teacups. When I went up to purchase the set of five cups we selected, I spied two books in hard slip-cases lying underneath some of the jewellery displayed in the glass-top counter. Imagine my supreme delight when I found out that there were not one, but two, coloured fairy books for sale. Reader, I bought both.

The Lang coloured fairy books were published between 1889 and 1913. There are 25 books in the complete collection, though the twelve ‘fairy books’ are the most well-known, and perhaps best loved, of these. As with all of the coloured fairy books, Lang follows a quite explicit and consistent set of editorial principles:

• In aiming to demonstrate the international nature of folklore, and particularly the broad international distribution of similar tales or tale types, Lang includes many tales from non-English cultures and traditions.

• All the tales are translated and edited (sometimes substantially retold) in a voice, style, and structure that is accessible to children and—by Victorian standards—suitable for them to read. This meant removing bawdiness, eliminating most religious references, and abridging the tales into short, pithy narratives, often told in a by-then familiar style and voice still strongly associated with fairy tales.

• The Langs take a very loose and inclusive view of what might be included in their books of fairy tales: many of the tales in the books are more properly fables, myths, and/or animal tales.

The tale I’ve chosen to share with you is a translation/adaptation of Paul Sébillot’s ‘The enchanted watch’2. This is one of four tales from Brittany collected by Sébillot, and included in The green fairy book. Sébillot was a French folklorist, famous in his time both for his expansive four-volume Le folklore de France (1906), and as the founder of the French folklore organisation Société des Traditions Populaires. The Langs included four of the tales he had collected and published in The green fairy book, including ‘The snuff-box’, ‘The dirty shepherdess’, and ‘The golden blackbird’.

The enchanted watch

Once upon a time there lived a rich man who had three sons. When they grew up, he sent the eldest to travel and see the world, and three years passed before his family saw him again. Then he returned, magnificently dressed, and his father was so delighted with his behaviour, that he gave a great feast in his honour, to which all the relations and friends were invited.

When the rejoicings were ended, the second son begged leave of his father to go in his turn to travel and mix with the world. The father was enchanted at the request, and gave him plenty of money for his expenses, saying, ‘If you behave as well as your brother, I will do honour to you as I did to him.’ The young man promised to do his best, and his conduct during three years was all that it should be. Then he went home, and his father was so pleased with him that his feast of welcome was even more splendid than the one before.

The third brother, whose name was Jenik, or Johnnie, was considered the most foolish of the three. He never did anything at home except sit over the stove and dirty himself with the ashes; but he also begged his father’s leave to travel for three years. ‘Go if you like, you idiot; but what good will it do you?’

The youth paid no heed to his father’s observations as long as he obtained permission to go. The father saw him depart with joy, glad to get rid of him, and gave him a handsome sum of money for his needs.

Once, as he was making one of his journeys, Jenik chanced to cross a meadow where some shepherds were just about to kill a dog. He entreated them to spare it, and to give it to him instead which they willingly did, and he went on his way, followed by the dog. A little further on he came upon a cat, which someone was going to put to death. He implored its life, and the cat followed him. Finally, in another place, he saved a serpent, which was also handed over to him and now they made a party of four—the dog behind Jenik, the cat behind the dog, and the serpent behind the cat.

Then the serpent said to Jenik, ‘Go wherever you see me go,’ for in the autumn, when all the serpents hide themselves in their holes, this serpent was going in search of his king, who was king of all the snakes.

Then he added: ‘My king will scold me for my long absence, everyone else is housed for the winter, and I am very late. I shall have to tell him what danger I have been in, and how, without your help, I should certainly have lost my life. The king will ask what you would like in return, and be sure you beg for the watch which hangs on the wall. It has all sorts of wonderful properties, you only need to rub it to get whatever you like.’

No sooner said than done. Jenik became the master of the watch, and the moment he got out he wished to put its virtues to the proof. He was hungry, and thought it would be delightful to eat in the meadow a loaf of new bread and a steak of good beef washed down by a flask of wine, so he scratched the watch, and in an instant it was all before him. Imagine his joy!

Evening soon came, and Jenik rubbed his watch, and thought it would be very pleasant to have a room with a comfortable bed and a good supper. In an instant they were all before him. After supper he went to bed and slept till morning, as every honest man ought to do. Then he set forth for his father’s house, his mind dwelling on the feast that would be awaiting him. But as he returned in the same old clothes in which he went away, his father flew into a great rage, and refused to do anything for him. Jenik went to his old place near the stove, and dirtied himself in the ashes without anybody minding.

The third day, feeling rather dull, he thought it would be nice to see a three-story house filled with beautiful furniture, and with vessels of silver and gold. So he rubbed the watch, and there it all was. Jenik went to look for his father, and said to him: ‘You offered me no feast of welcome, but permit me to give one to you, and come and let me show you my plate.’

The father was much astonished, and longed to know where his son had got all this wealth. Jenik did not reply, but begged him to invite all their relations and friends to a grand banquet.

So the father invited all the world, and everyone was amazed to see such splendid things, so much plate, and so many fine dishes on the table. After the first course Jenik prayed his father to invite the King, and his daughter the Princess. He rubbed his watch and wished for a carriage ornamented with gold and silver, and drawn by six horses, with harness glittering with precious stones. The father did not dare to sit in this gorgeous coach, but went to the palace on foot. The King and his daughter were immensely surprised with the beauty of the carriage, and mounted the steps at once to go to Jenik’s banquet. Then Jenik rubbed his watch afresh, and wished that for six miles the way to the house should be paved with marble. Who ever felt so astonished as the King? Never had he travelled over such a gorgeous road.

When Jenik heard the wheels of the carriage, he rubbed his watch and wished for a still more beautiful house, four stories high, and hung with gold, silver, and damask; filled with wonderful tables, covered with dishes such as no king had ever eaten before. The King, the Queen, and the Princess were speechless with surprise. Never had they seen such a splendid palace, nor such a high feast! At dessert the King asked Jenik’s father to give him the young man for a son-in-law. No sooner said than done! The marriage took place at once, and the King returned to his own palace, and left Jenik with his wife in the enchanted house.

Now Jenik was not a very clever man, and at the end of a very short time he began to bore his wife. She inquired how he managed to build palaces and to get so many precious things. He told her all about the watch, and she never rested till she had stolen the precious talisman. One night she took the watch, rubbed it, and wished for a carriage drawn by four horses; and in this carriage she at once set out for her father’s palace. There she called to her own attendants, bade them follow her into the carriage, and drove straight to the sea-side. Then she rubbed her watch, and wished that the sea might be crossed by a bridge, and that a magnificent palace might arise in the middle of the sea. No sooner said than done. The Princess entered the house, rubbed her watch, and in an instant the bridge was gone.

Left alone, Jenik felt very miserable. His father, mother, and brothers, and, indeed, everybody else, all laughed at him. Nothing remained to him but the cat and dog whose lives he had once saved. He took them with him and went far away, for he could no longer live with his family. He reached at last a great desert, and saw some crows flying towards a mountain. One of them was a long way behind, and when he arrived his brothers inquired what had made him so late. ‘Winter is here,’ they said, ‘and it is time to fly to other countries.’ He told them that he had seen in the middle of the sea the most wonderful house that ever was built.

On hearing this, Jenik at once concluded that this must be the hiding-place of his wife. So he proceeded directly to the shore with his dog and his cat. When he arrived on the beach, he said to the dog: ‘You are an excellent swimmer, and you, little one, are very light; jump on the dog’s back and he will take you to the palace. Once there, he will hide himself near the door, and you must steal secretly in and try to get hold of my watch.’

No sooner said than done. The two animals crossed the sea; the dog hid near the house, and the cat stole into the chamber. The Princess recognised him, and guessed why he had come; and she took the watch down to the cellar and locked it in a box. But the cat wriggled its way into the cellar, and the moment the Princess turned her back, he scratched and scratched till he had made a hole in the box. Then he took the watch between his teeth, and waited quietly till the Princess came back. Scarcely had she opened the door when the cat was outside, and the watch into the bargain.

The cat was no sooner beyond the gates than she said to the dog: ‘We are going to cross the sea; be very careful not to speak to me.’

The dog laid this to heart and said nothing; but when they approached the shore he could not help asking, ‘Have you got the watch?’

The cat did not answer—he was afraid that he might let the talisman fall. When they touched the shore the dog repeated his question.

‘Yes,’ said the cat.

And the watch fell into the sea. Then our two friends began each to accuse the other, and both looked sorrowfully at the place where their treasure had fallen in. Suddenly a fish appeared near the edge of the sea. The cat seized it, and thought it would make them a good supper.

‘I have nine little children,’ cried the fish. ‘Spare the father of a family!’

‘Granted,’ replied the cat; ‘but on condition that you find our watch.’

The fish executed his commission, and they brought the treasure back to their master. Jenik rubbed the watch and wished that the palace, with the Princess and all its inhabitants, should be swallowed up in the sea. No sooner said than done. Jenik returned to his parents, and he and his watch, his cat and his dog, lived together happily to the end of their days.

Discussion questions

• We often think of fairy tales as focusing on women and girls, but this is a story about a young man, Jenik. What other fairy tales (or other folklore narratives) do you know about young men? Is this story similar to the others you know in any significant way?

• Ruth Bottigheimer has famously asserted that fairy tales can be sorted into two categories: rise tales (in which the main character rises in class and/or wealth during the tale: ATU545 tales like Puss in Boots are good examples), and restoration tales (in which the protagonist first falls from grace, but is eventually restored (examples include ATU510 tales, such as Peau d’Anne/Donkeyskin, and Cinderella). Is ‘The enchanted watch’ a rise tale, or a restoration tale? What other changes in class, wealth, or status are featured in this story?

Writing prompts

• Can you rewrite the tale, changing it from a rise tale to a restoration tale, or from a restoration tale into a rise tale?

• A watch is a somewhat unusual enchanted object to encounter in a traditional fairy tale (though sugar-spun cottages, talking fish, and giants are rife!). Consider an ordinary, everyday object from your life, perhaps something you are wearing right now, or that is in your handbag or on your table. Can you spin a story in which it is an enchanted object? What magical qualities might it have?

In this issue of The Orange & Bee, we are exploring ‘Rumpelstiltskin,’ which Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm originally published as ‘Rumpelstiltzkin’ in Kinder- und hausmärchen (Children's and household tales) in 1812. Although the Grimms’ story is the best known version of this tale, there are several other variants in existence, most of which are European in origin. The Grimms’ tale actually draws from three different oral variants ‘in which the girl’s predicament lies in her inability to spin anything but gold’ (Zipes 2000, p. 429). In this case, the protagonist needs help to fulfill the domestic task in order to win a bid for marriage. Grimms’ ‘Rumpelstiltzkin’ twists this with the dwarf spinning straw into gold. They also included the name-guessing motif, which can be found in numerous legends such the Norwegian story of ‘King Olaf and the Giant’, which Jacob Grimm related in his 1835 treatise Deutsche Mythologie (Teutonic Mythology).

Introduction to the Brothers Grimm Rumpelstilzchen (Rumpelstiltskin)

‘Rumpelstiltskin’ is an example of tale type ATU 500, The name of the supernatural helper, which falls within the range of supernatural helpers tales (500 to 559) within the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index (ATU Index).

Examples of ATU500 tale type include: 

• ‘Tom Tit Tot’ collected by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales (London: David Nutt, 1898).

• ‘The girl who could spin gold from clay and long straw’ collected by Benjamin Thorpe in Yule-Tide Stories: A Collection of Scandinavian and North German Popular Tales and Traditions, from the Swedish, Danish, and German (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853).

• ‘Duffy and the devil’ collected by Robert Hunt in Popular Romances of the West of England; or, The Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions of Old Cornwall (London: John Camden Hotten, 1871).

• ‘Whuppity Stoorie’ collected by John Rhys in Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1901).

A study published by Royal Society Open Science claims that although stories classified as ATU 500 ‘The name of the supernatural helper’ (‘Rumplestiltskin’) were first written down in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this tale type can be ‘traced back to the emergence of the major western Indo-European subfamilies as distinct lineages between 2500 and 6000 years ago’ (Silva and Tehrani, 2016).

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Rumpelstiltskin: story and annotations

• ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ was translated by Edgar Taylor for an English edition of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimms’ Household tales first published in 1823. You can find a digitised version of this translation at Project Gutenberg. A simplified version of this tale was collected by Andrew Lang in The blue fairy book first published in 1889. For those of you looking for a print version, we suggest that you check out The original folk and fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm: The complete first edition (2014), edited and translated by Jack Zipes.

By the side of a wood, in a country a long way off, ran a fine stream of water; and upon the stream there stood a mill. The miller’s house was close by, and the miller1, you must know, had a very beautiful daughter. She was, moreover, very shrewd and clever; and the miller was so proud of her, that he one day told the king of the land, who used to come and hunt in the wood, that his daughter could spin gold2 out of straw.

Now this king was very fond of money. When he heard the miller’s boast, the king’s greediness was raised, and he sent for the girl to be brought before him. Then he led her to a chamber in his palace where there was a great heap of straw, and gave her a spinning wheel3, and said, ‘All this must be spun into gold before morning, as you love your life.’

It was in vain that the poor maiden said that it was only a silly boast of her father, for that she could do no such thing as spin straw into gold: the chamber door was locked, and she was left alone.

She sat down in one corner of the room, and began to bewail her hard fate; when on a sudden the door opened, and a droll-looking little man hobbled in, and said, ‘Good morrow to you, my good lass; what are you weeping for?’

‘Alas!’ said she, ‘I must spin this straw into gold, and I know not how.’4

‘What will you give me,’ said the hobgoblin5, ‘to do it for you?’

‘My necklace6,’ replied the maiden.

He took her at her word, and sat himself down to the wheel, and whistled and sang:

‘Round about, round about,
Lo and behold!
Reel away, reel away,
Straw into gold!’

And round about the wheel went merrily; the work was quickly done, and the straw was all spun into gold.

When the king came and saw this, he was greatly astonished and pleased; but his heart grew still more greedy of gain, and he shut up the poor miller’s daughter again with a fresh task.

Then she knew not what to do, and sat down once more to weep; but the dwarf7 soon opened the door, and said, ‘What will you give me to do your task?’

‘The ring8 on my finger,’ said she.

So her little friend took the ring, and began to work at the wheel again, and whistled and sang:

‘Round about, round about,
Lo and behold!
Reel away, reel away,
Straw into gold!’

till, long before morning, all was done again.

The king was greatly delighted to see all this glittering treasure; but still he had not enough: so he took the miller’s daughter to a yet larger heap, and said, ‘All this must be spun tonight9; and if it is, you shall be my queen.’

As soon as she was alone that dwarf came in, and said, ‘What will you give me to spin gold for you this third time?’

‘I have nothing left,’ said she.

‘Then say you will give me,’ said the little man, ‘the first little child10 that you may have when you are queen.’

‘That may never be,’ thought the miller’s daughter: and as she knew no other way to get her task done, she said she would do what he asked.

Round went the wheel again to the old song, and the manikin11 once more spun the heap into gold. The king came in the morning, and, finding all he wanted, was forced to keep his word; so he married the miller’s daughter, and she really became queen.

At the birth of her first little child she was very glad, and forgot the dwarf, and what she had said. But one day he came into her room, where she was sitting playing with her baby, and put her in mind of it. Then she grieved sorely at her misfortune, and said she would give him all the wealth of the kingdom if he would let her off, but in vain; till at last her tears softened him, and he said, ‘I will give you three12 days’ grace, and if during that time you tell me my name13, you shall keep your child.’

Now the queen lay awake all night, thinking of all the odd names that she had ever heard; and she sent messengers all over the land to find out new ones. The next day the little man came, and she began with TIMOTHY, ICHABOD, BENJAMIN, JEREMIAH, and all the names she could remember; but to all and each of them he said, ‘Madam, that is not my name.’

The second day she began with all the comical names she could hear of, BANDY-LEGS, HUNCHBACK, CROOK-SHANKS, and so on; but the little gentleman still said to every one of them, ‘Madam, that is not my name.’

The third day one of the messengers came back, and said, ‘I have travelled two days without hearing of any other names; but yesterday, as I was climbing a high hill, among the trees of the forest where the fox and the hare bid each other good night, I saw a little hut; and before the hut burnt a fire; and round about the fire a funny little dwarf was dancing upon one leg, and singing:

‘Merrily the feast I’ll make.
Today I’ll brew, tomorrow bake;
Merrily I’ll dance and sing,
For next day will a stranger bring.
Little does my lady dream
Rumpelstiltskin is my name!’

When the queen heard this she jumped for joy, and as soon as her little friend came she sat down upon her throne, and called all her court round to enjoy the fun; and the nurse stood by her side with the baby in her arms, as if it was quite ready to be given up. Then the little man began to chuckle at the thought of having the poor child, to take home with him to his hut in the woods; and he cried out, ‘Now, lady, what is my name14?’

‘Is it JOHN?’ asked she.

‘No, madam!’

‘Is it TOM?’

‘No, madam!’

‘Is it JEMMY?’

‘It is not.’

‘Can your name be RUMPELSTILTSKIN15?’ said the lady slyly.

‘Some witch told you that!—some witch told you that!’ cried the little man, and dashed his right foot in a rage so deep into the floor, that he was forced to lay hold of it with both hands to pull it out.

Then he made the best of his way off, while the nurse laughed and the baby crowed; and all the court jeered at him for having had so much trouble for nothing, and said, ‘We wish you a very good morning, and a merry feast, Mr RUMPLESTILTSKIN!’

Discussion questions

• Rumpelstiltskin belongs to the ATU tale type 500: the name of the helper. And it’s as varied as you might expect. In addition to Rumpelstiltskin, other names found categorized under this tale type include Batzibitzili, Doppeltürk, Holzrührlein Bonneführlein, Nägendümer, Panzimanzi, Purzinigele, Tarandandò, Titeliture, Whuppity Stoorie, Winterkölbl, Zirkzirk ... and the list goes on. ‘Whether he makes an appearance as Ricdin-Ricdin in a French tale or as Tom Tit Tom in an English tale, his essence and function remain much the same’ (Tatar 124). The binding power of naming plays a central part of the plot in these tales, hence the name of the tale type. (For those of you interested in doing a deep dive on names, we highly recommend reading ‘Naming and identity in myths, legends, fairy tales & fantasy’ by Katherine Langrish posted at her delightful blog Seven miles of steel thistles.) Consider some of your favorite (and despised) fairy tales characters. What are your thoughts about the power of names? What do names suggest about the degree of freedom and agency characters experience within their stories?

• In Disability, deformity, and disease in the Grimms’ fairy tales, Ann Schmiesing notes that ‘disability and deformity are of course markers not only of the outcast underdog but also of wicked characters’ (140). This is evident in the descriptions of Rumpelstiltskin as a little man, a hobgoblin, a dwarf, and a manikin. On the second day of guessing, the queen turns to ‘comical’ names, all of which indicate physical disabilities: BANDY-LEGS, HUNCHBACK, and CROOK-SHANKS, which ‘suggests a fear that he is an agent of disease who will deform or kill her child’ (Schmiesing 142). How does the meaning of this story shift when viewing ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ through an ableist lens? How does the narrative construct difference as disability?

Writing prompt

In the thought-provoking essay ‘ The problem with justice’—included in the new book Just wonder: shifting perspectives in tradition, edited by Pauline Greenhill and Jennifer Orme—Veronica Schanoes explores the concept of justice in fairy tales. She poses the question of what justice might ‘look like for Jews in the European fairy-tale tradition’ (Schanoes 2024, 61), something she explores in her ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ retelling ‘Burning Girls’.

‘With respect to feminist rewritings of fairy tales … revision not only reemphasizes the earlier tale from which it is born, it actually depends on it to develop meaning. Perhaps keeping the older stories in consciousness is part of the process of justice’, writes Schanoes (62-63). ‘It is long past time we look unflinchingly at the ways fairy tales and folktales affect and are inflected by discourses of race, religion, and sovereignty, the roles they plat in constructing mainstream representations of marginalized communities’ (65).

What other fairy tales can you identify that could use a recasting of justice? Dig deeper, lean into the meaning of the original tale, and then rewrite the selection with with a mindful and inclusive approach geared towards the world we live in today.

References

Ashliman, D. L. 2022, ‘The name of the helper: Folktales of type 500, and related tales,
in which a mysterious and threatening helper is defeated when the hero or heroine discovers his name’, University of Pittsburgh, viewed 22 May 2025, <https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type0500.html>.

Briggs, K 1976, An encyclopedia of fairies: hobgoblins, brownies, bogies, and other supernatural creatures, Pantheon Books, New York.

Cloud, E 1898, Tom Tit Tot; an essay on savage philosophy in folk-tale, Duckworth and co., London.

Cooper, J. C. 1987, An illustrated encyclopedia of traditional symbols, Thames & Hudson, New York.

Cunningham, M 2015, ‘Little man’, The New Yorker, viewed 22 May 2025, <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/little-man>.

Graça da Silva, S and Tehrani, JJ 2016 ‘Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales, Royal Society Open Science, Vol. 20, No. 3, viewed 15 May 2025, < https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150645>.

Grimm, J and W1823, Grimm’s household tales, Edgar Taylor (trans.), C. Baldwyn, London, viewed 15 May 2025, <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2591/2591-h/2591-h.htm#link2H_4_0027>.

Heiner, H A 2021, ‘Rumpelstiltskin: annotated tale’, viewed 15 May 2025, <https://surlalunefairytales.com/h-r/rumplestiltskin/rumplestiltskin-tale.html>.

Langrish, K 2023, ‘Naming and identity in myths, legends, fairy tales & fantasy’, Seven miles of steel thistles, viewed 23 May 2025, <https://steelthistles.blogspot.com/2023/04/naming-and-identity-in-myths-legends.html>.

Room, A (rev.) 1995, Brewer’s dictionary of phrase and fable: 15th edition, Harper Collins, New York.

Schanoes, V 2021, ‘Burning girls’, Burning girls and other stories, A Tom Doherty Associates Book, New York.

Schanoes, V 2024, ‘The problem with justice’, Just wonder: shifting perspectives in tradition, Greenhill, P and Orme, J (eds.), Utah Sate University Press, Logan.

Schmiesing, A 4014, Disability, deformity, and disease in the Grimms’ fairy tales, Wayne State University Press, Detroit.

Tatar, M 1987, The hard facts of the Brothers Grimm, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Zipes, J (trans) 2014, The original folk and fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm: the complete first edition, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

In January, 1862, five-year-old Catherine Stow (Katie) and two of her sisters fell into the Darling River. Her sisters, Jane and Henrietta, both drowned but Katie was rescued by their nurse, Miola, a Ualarai woman. Later, as a young married woman, she went to live on the lands of the Ualarai, on Bangate Station: a property that stretched over 200,000 acres. Over the two decades while she lived there, Katie developed strong friendships with the local Indigenous people, especially the women. She became moderately fluent in the local language, and, through a process she describes as strongly iterative, transcribed, translated, and published several books of the stories they shared with her under the name Katie Langloh Parker.

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The stories, as Parker acknowledges in her introduction to the first collection, Australian legendary tales (1896) were collected ‘from the Narran tribe, known among themselves as Noongahburrahs’ (1896, p. x). The introduction also includes a brief description of her process of transcription and translation, and an acknowledgement of her:

… great indebtedness to the blacks, who, when once they understood what I wanted to know, were most ready to repeat to me the legends — repeating with the utmost patience, time after time, not only the legends, but the names, that I might manage to spell them so as to be understood when repeated. In particular I should like to mention -my indebtedness to Peter Hippi, king of the Noongahburrahs ; and to Hippitha, Matah, Barahgurrie, and Beemunny.

I have dedicated my booklet to Peter Hippi, in grateful recognition of his long and faithful service to myself and my husband, which has extended, with few intervals, over a period of twenty years. He, too, is probably the last king of the Noongahburrahs, who are fast dying out, and soon their weapons, bartered by them for tobacco or whisky, alone will prove that they ever existed. It seemed to me a pity that some attempt should not be made to collect the folk-lore of the quickly disappearing tribe—a folk-lore embodying, probably, the thoughts, fancies, and beliefs of the genuine aboriginal race, and which, as such, deserves to be, indeed, as Max Muller says, “might be and ought to be, collected in every part of the world” (p. xi).

‘Goonar the woman doctor’ was included in the first of Langloh Parker’s collections, Australian legendary tales, which was originally published in 1896, and included an introduction by Andrew Lang: the English folklore enthusiast most well-known for his ‘coloured’ fairy books. This and the second edition (published two years later, in 1898) included illustrations by Tommy Macrae, who may have been the first Indigenous person to have his illustrations included in a published book.

The second collection includes a lively and engaging introduction by Parker, in which she includes some small portraits of herself learning from the local people. This one, in which she learns about a bright fungus, is particularly delightful:

While walking through the bush after heavy rain, I came across some very brilliant fungi, growing on to dead trees. I picked off a piece, and on my return, going out to speak to some of the Blacks, I carried this fungus in my hand. A little black child, seeing its bright colour, came towards me as if to get it, but his mother quickly interposed, saying in an alarmed tone : ‘Don't let him touch it. It is way-way. Don't let him touch it.’ Then she told me that all fungi growing on trees were the bread of ghosts, and if a child touched any he would be spirited away by the ghosts. She said these fungi were luminous at night so that the ghosts could see them (1898, p. xi).

These two books, as well as her third, The Euahlayi tribe: A study of Aboriginal life in Australia (first published in 1905), were well received by the international, white scholarly community. Marcie Muir cites several favourable reviews of her work, including an article in the Australian Anthropological Journal (April 1897), which praised Parker’s rigorous methodology for ‘obtaining from the elders of the tribes what they could furnish, when their confidence was secured by one who knew their language, and could thus understand what they said’. Further noting that ‘It is all the better … that the materials as printed have not been altered by additions of her own imagination, but have been translated as strictly as possible in a true and unaltered manner from the versions given in the Aboriginal speeches by the elders of the tribe’. A reviewer in the periodical Science of Man recommended More Australian legendary tales to the ‘non-scientific’ reader but also suggested that ‘to anthropologists, who have studied similar compositions of other peoples they represent far more interesting characteristics than mere amusement, or fairy tales’.

Here, then, is an example of one of the tales published by Katie Langloh Parker: a story relayed by the Noongaburrah people through a process of iterative translation and transcription to a white woman settler and, perhaps, friend. Nevertheless, as with all well-intentioned works of collection, translation, and publication by settler-colonists of colonised people’s lives and stories, Parker’s work is not without its flaws. As summarised eloquently by Julie Evans:

Tanya Dalziell, for example, views Parker’s publications as irredeemably bound up in the discourses and practices of colonial ethnography and condemns what she terms the analytical trope of ‘the sympathetic white woman’ as similarly repressive in fostering a simple binary of complicity or resistance. As I have discussed elsewhere … there are clearly multiple complexities in utilising a white woman’s writings as sources for understanding Aboriginal cultural practices and beliefs; in the case of Parker’s publications, Yuwalaraay women’s experiences were represented to readers through the lens of a settler woman’s interests and perceptions. Nevertheless … given the paucity of other literary sources for the period, Parker’s writings warrant serious attention for the insight they offer into Yuwalaraay women’s continued care of their land and maintenance of the cultural practices so closely related to it

…

Goodall’s [analysis] … highlights the embeddedness of Parker’s stories ‘in the landforms of Yuwalaraay people’s country’: Story after story tells of ancestral journeys from named place to named place along the Narran and Barwon rivers, explaining why and how each watercourse and its surrounding landforms were created, and the powers each place continues to embody. These stories also explain the connections between kin groups of people, other species and the land, linking them all inextricably … They give us a faint glimpse of the enlivened land, the “speaking land” that south-eastern Aboriginal people saw when they looked around their country before invasion began. Such a glimpse allows us to see how the experiences of the invasion would be drawn into this web of meaning around place (Evans 2011, p. 21).

Goonur, the woman doctor

Goonur was a clever old woman-doctor, who lived with her son, Goonur, and his two wives. The wives were Guddah the red lizard, and Beereeun the small, prickly lizard. One day the two wives had done something to anger Goonur, their husband, and he gave them both a great beating. After their beating they went away by themselves. They said to each other that they could stand their present life no longer, and yet there was no escape unless they killed their husband. They decided they would do that. But how? That was the question. It must be by cunning.

At last they decided on a plan. They dug a big hole in the sand near the creek, filled it with water, and covered the hole over with boughs, leaves, and grass.

‘Now we will go,’ they said, ‘and tell our husband that we have found a big bandicoot’s nest.’

Back they went to the camp, and told Goonur that they had seen a big nest of bandicoots near the creek; that if he sneaked up he would be able to surprise them and get the lot.

Off went Goonur in great haste. He sneaked up to within a couple of feet of the nest, then gave a spring on to the top of it. And only when he felt the bough top give in with him, and he sank down into the water, did he realise that he had been tricked. Too late then to save himself, for he was drowning and could not escape. His wives had watched the success of their strategem from a distance. When they were certain that they had effectually disposed of their hated husband, they went back to the camp. Goonur, the mother, soon missed her son, made inquiries of his wives, but gained no information from them. Two or three days passed, and yet Goonur, the son, returned not. Seriously alarmed at his long absence without having given her notice of his intention, the mother determined to follow his track. She took up his trail where she had last seen him leave the camp. This she followed until she reached the so-called bandicoot’s nest. Here his tracks disappeared, and nowhere could she find a sign of his having returned from this place. She felt in the hole with her yam stick, and soon felt that there was something large there in the water. She cut a forked stick and tried to raise the body and get it out, for she felt sure it must be her son. But she could not raise it; stick after stick broke in the effort. At least she cut a midjee stick and tried with that, and then she was successful. When she brought out the body she found it was indeed her son. She dragged the body to an ant bed, and watched intently to see if the stings of the ants brought any sign of returning life. Soon her hope was realised, and after a violent twitching of the muscles her son regained consciousness. As soon as he was able to do so, he told her of the trick his wives had played on him.

Goonur, the mother, was furious. ‘No more shall they have you as a husband. You shall live hidden in my dardurr1. When we get near the camp you can get into this long, big comebee2, and I will take you in. when you want to go hunting I will take you from the camp in this comebee, and when we are out of sight you can get out and hunt as of old.’

And thus they managed for some time to keep his return a secret; and little the wives knew that their husband was alive and in his mother’s camp. But as day after day Goonur, the mother, returned from hunting loaded with spoils, they began to think she must have help from some one; for surely, they said, no old woman could be so successful in hunting. There was a mystery they were sure, and they were determined to find it out.

‘See,’ they said, ‘she goes out alone. She is old, and yet she brings home more than we two do together, and we are young. To-day she brought opossums, piggiebillahs3, honey yams, quatha4, and many things. We got little, yet we went far. We will watch her.’

The next time old Goonur went out, carrying her big comebee, the wives watched her.

‘Look,’ they said, ‘how slowly she goes. She could not climb trees for opossums—she is too old and weak; look how she staggers.’

They went cautiously after her, and saw when she was some distance from the camp that she put down her comebee . And out of it, to their amazement, stepped Goonur, their husband.

‘Ah,’ they said, ‘this is her secret. She must have found him, and, as she is a great doctor, she was able to bring him to life again. We must wait until she leaves him, and then go to him, and beg to know where he has been, and pretend joy that he is back, or else surely now he is alive again he will sometimes kill us.’

Accordingly, when Goonur was alone the two wives ran to him, and said:

‘Why, Goonur, our husband, did you leave us? Where have you been all the time that we, your wives, have mourned for you? Long has the time been without you, and we, your wives, have been sad that you came no more to our dardurr.’

Goonur, the husband, affected to believe their sorrow was genuine, and that they did not know when they directed him to the bandicoot’s nest that it was a trap. Which trap, but for his mother, might have been his grave.

They all went hunting together, and when they had killed enough for food they returned to the camp. As they cam near to the camp, Goonur, the mother, saw them coming, and cried out:

‘Would you again be tricked by your wives? Did I save you from death only that you might again be killed? I spared them, but I would I had slain them, if again they are to have a chance of killing you, my son. Many are the wiles of women, and another time I might not be able to save you. Let them live if you will it so, my son, but not with you. They tried to lure you to death; you are no longer theirs, mine only now, for did I not bring you back from the dead?’

But Goonur the husband said, ‘In truth did you save me, my mother, and these my wives rejoice that you did. They too, as I was, were deceived by the bandicoot’s nest, the work of an enemy yet to be found. See, my mother, do not the looks of love in their eyes, and words of love on their lips vouch for their truth? We will be as we have been, my mother, and live again in peace.’

And thus craftily did Goonur the husband deceive his wives and make them believe that he trusted them wholly, while in reality his mind was even then plotting vengeance. In a few days he had his plans ready. Having cut and pointed sharply two stakes, he stuck them firmly in the creek, then he placed two logs on the bank, in front of the sticks, which were underneath the water, and invisible. Having made his preparations, he invited his wives to come for a bathe. He said when they reached the creek:

‘See those two logs on the bank, you jump in each from one and see which can dive the furthers. I will go first to see you as you come up.’ And in he jumped, carefully avoiding the pointed stakes. ‘Right,’ he called, ‘All clear here, jump in.’

Then the two wives ran down the bank each to a log and jumped from it. Well had Goonur calculated the distance, for both jumped right on to the stakes placed in the water to catch them, and which stuck firmly into them, holding them under the water.

‘Well am I avenged,’ said Goonur. ‘No more will my wives lay traps to catch me.’ And he walked off to the camp.

His mother asked him where his wives were. ‘They left me,’ he said, ‘to get bees’ nests.’

But as day by day passed and the wives returned not, the old woman began to suspect that her son knew more than he said. She asked him no more, but quietly watched her opportunity, when her son was away hunting, and then followed the tracks of his wives. She tracked them to the creek, and as she saw no tracks of their return, she went into the creek, felt about, and there found the two bodies fast on the stakes. She managed to get them off and out of the creek, for she was angry that her son had not told her what he had done, but had deceived her as well as his wives. She rubbed the women with some of her medicines, dressed the wounds made by the stakes, and then dragged them both on to ants’ nests and watched their bodies as the ants crawled over them, biting them. She had not long to wait; soon they began to move and come to life again.

As soon as they were restored Goonur took them back to the camp and said to Goonur her son, ‘Now once did I use my knowledge to restore life to you, and again have I used it to restore life to your wives. You are all mine now, and I desire that you live in peace and never more deceive me, or never again shall I use my skill for you.’

And they lived for a long while together, and when the Mother Doctor died there was a beautiful, dazzlingly bright falling star, followed by a sound as of a sharp clap of thunder, and all the tribes round when they saw and heard this said, ‘A great doctor must have died, for that is the sign.’ And when the wives dies, they were taken up to the sky, where are now known as Gwaibillah5, the red star, so called from its bright red colour, owing, the legend says, to the red marks left by the stakes on the bodies of the two women, and which nothing could efface.

References

Evans, Julie 2011, ‘Katie Langloh Parker and the beginnings of ethnography in Australia’, in Fiona Davis, Nell Musgrove, and Judith Smart, eds, Founders, Firsts and Feminists: Women Leaders in Twentieth-century Australia, eScholarship research centre, University of Melbourne, pp. 13-26.

Muir, Marcie 1982, My bush book: K. Langloh Parker's 1890s story of outback station life / with background and biography by Marcie Muir, Rigby, Adelaide.

Parker, Katie Langloh (collector, translator) 1896 Australian legendary tales: folk-lore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies, David Nutt.

Parker, Katie Langloh (collector, translator) 1898 More Australian legendary tales: collected from various tribes, David Nutt.

Introduction to Charles Perrault’s La Barbe bleüe (Bluebeard)

‘Bluebeard’ is an example of tale type ATU312, which is dedicated to the tale sometimes referred to as the maiden-killer. There are several variants of ATU312, which falls under the range of tales with supernatural adversaries (ATU 300-399) including ATU312a The brother rescues his sister from the tiger, 312b Two sisters carried off by a diabolic being, 312c Devil’s bride rescued by a brother, and 312d Brother saves his sister and brothers from the dragon. Similar tales include those classified as ATU311 including ‘Fitcher's bird’ and ‘How the devil married three sisters’.

• ‘Barbe-Bleue: Légende d'Auvergne’ (Bluebeard: a legend from Auvergne) collected by Antoinette Bon in Revue des traditions populaires, vol. 2 (Paris 1898).

• ‘The white dove’ collected by Gaston Maugard in Contes des Pyrénées. An English translation of the Maugard’s ‘The white dove’ was also included in Andrew Lang’s The pink fairy book (1897).

• ‘Don Firriulieddu’ collected by Thomas Frederick Crane in Italian Popular Tales (London: Macmillan and Company 1885).

• ‘Asphurtzela’ collected and translated by Marjory Wardrop in Georgian Folk Tales (London: David Nutt 1894).

• ‘Childe Rowland’ (ATU312D) collected by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales (1890).

• ‘The Brahman girl that married a tiger’ collected by Mrs Howard Kingscote and Pandit Natêsá Sástrî in Tales of the sun; or, folklore of southern India (London: W. H. Allen and Company 1890).

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La Barbe bleüe (Bluebeard): story and annotations

‘La Barbe bleüe’ (Bluebeard) made its literary debut in 1697 with the publication of Charles Perrault’s collection of fairy tales in Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités (Stories or tales of past times). The man with the bold blue beard marries a young woman and removes her from the safety of her childhood home to his opulent (and remote) estate. Before long, he leaves his new bride with a set of keys that will open every room in his mansion. He encourages her to enjoy the wealth displayed behind each door. The only restriction is the room behind a small door at the end of a long hall on the ground floor. This room is reserved for him. After all, shouldn’t every man have his private pleasures? However instead of taking the key to that forbidden chamber, he leaves it on the ring in her safekeeping.

He leaves. She opens the door. And quickly discovers some secrets are better left undisturbed. For her aristocratic husband is revealed as a mass murderer, his dead wives hanging from the walls, their blood clotted on the floor. The living bride drops the key, which magically absorbs the blood—a tell-tale stain that cannot be removed by any means. Bluebeard returns home and demands the key and the damning evidence of her disobedience. The price for her transgression is execution. However, she is saved at the last moment when her brothers arrive and cut down the killer with their sharp swords.

Other French tales featuring murderous bridegrooms include ‘Fitcher’s Bird’(ATU311: the heroine rescues herself and her sisters) and the ‘Robber Bridegroom’ (ATU955: the robber bridegroom), both of which were recorded by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (Zipes 56). The Grimm Brothers also included ‘Blaubart’ (Bluebeard) in the first edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and household tales), but they removed it from later versions ‘due to its obviously close relationship to Perrault's tale’ (Heiner, SurLaLune fairy tales).

• ‘Bluebeard’ was translated from French and collected in Andrew Lang’s The blue fairy book (1889).

• An English version of ‘Bluebeard', famously illustrated by Harry Clarke and introduced by Thomas Bodkin, is included in The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1922).

• Angela Carter translated ‘Bluebeard’ in The fairy tales of Charles Perrault (Victor Gollancz 1977). These translations were rereleased with an introduction by Jack Zipes in Angela Carter: Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and other classic tales of Charles Perrault (Penguin Books 2008).

Translating is not a mechanical art. Perrault inspired Carter to delve more deeply into the origins and meanings of fairy tales, but she had to misread him or reinterpret him to make his tales more palatable to her feminist and political sensitivity. Clearly she sensed the problematic aspects of Perrault’s style and ideology, which she purposely glossed over in her translation, and this may have made her so dissatisfied that she was ‘driven’ to revisit Perrault’s tales in a dramatically and radically different way in The Bloody Chamber, while she was translating Perrault’s tales (Zipes 2008).

There was a man who had fine houses, both in town and country, a deal of silver and gold plate, embroidered furniture, and coaches gilded all over with gold. But this man was so unlucky as to have a blue beard1, which made him so frightfully ugly that all the women and girls ran away from him.

One of his neighbors, a lady of quality, had two daughters who were perfect beauties. He desired one of them in marriage, leaving her to choose which of the two she would bestow on him. They would neither of them have him and sent him backward and forward from one another, not being able to bear the thoughts of marrying a man who had a blue2 beard3, and what besides gave them disgust and aversion was his having already been married to several wives4, and nobody ever knew what became of them.

Bluebeard, to engage their affection, took them, with the lady their mother and three or four ladies of their acquaintance, along with other young people of the neighborhood, to one of his country seats5, where they stayed a whole week.

There was nothing then to be seen but parties of pleasure, hunting, fishing, dancing, mirth, and feasting. Nobody went to bed but all passed the night in rallying and joking with each other. In short, everything succeeded so well that the youngest daughter began to think the master of the house not to have a beard so very blue, and that he was a mighty civil gentleman.

As soon as they returned home, the marriage was concluded. About a month afterward, Bluebeard told his wife that he was obliged to take a country journey for six weeks at least, about affairs of very great consequence, desiring her to divert herself in his absence, to send for her friends and acquaintances, to carry them into the country, if she pleased, and to make good cheer wherever she was.

‘Here,’ he said, ‘are the keys6 of the two great wardrobes, wherein I have my best furniture; these are of my silver and gold plate, which is not every day in use; these open my strong boxes, which hold my money, both gold and silver; these my caskets of jewels; and this is the master-key to all my apartments. But for this little one here, it is the key of the closet at the end of the great gallery on the ground floor. Open them all; go into all and every one of them, except that little closet, which I forbid you, and forbid it in such a manner that, if you happen to open it, there’s nothing but what you may expect from my just anger and resentment.’

She promised to observe, very exactly, whatever he had ordered; when he, after having embraced her, got into his coach and proceeded on his journey.

Her neighbours and good friends did not stay to be sent for by the new married lady, so great was their impatience to see all the rich furniture of her house, not daring to come while her husband was there, because of his blue beard, which frightened them. They ran through all the rooms, closets, and wardrobes, which were all so fine and rich that they seemed to surpass one another.

After that they went up into the two great rooms, where was the best and richest furniture; they could not sufficiently admire the number and beauty of the tapestry, beds, couches, cabinets, stands, tables, and looking-glasses, in which you might see yourself from head to foot; some of them were framed with glass, others with silver, plain and gilded, the finest and most magnificent ever were seen.

They ceased not to extol and envy the happiness of their friend, who in the meantime in no way diverted herself in looking upon all these rich things, because of the impatience she had to go and open the closet on the ground floor. She was so much pressed by her curiosity7 that, without considering that it was very uncivil to leave her company, she went down a little back staircase, and with such excessive haste that she had twice or thrice like to have broken her neck.

Coming to the closet-door, she made a stop for some time, thinking upon her husband’s orders, and considering what unhappiness might attend her if she was disobedient; but the temptation was so strong she could not overcome it. She then took the little key, and opened it, trembling, but could not at first see anything plainly, because the windows were shut. After some moments she began to perceive that the floor was all covered over with clotted blood, on which lay the bodies of several dead women, ranged against the walls. (These were all the wives whom Bluebeard had married and murdered, one after another.) She thought she should have died for fear, and the key, which she pulled out of the lock, fell out of her hand.

After having somewhat recovered her surprise, she took up the key, locked the door, and went upstairs into her chamber to recover herself; but she could not, she was so much frightened. Having observed that the key of the closet was stained with blood8, she tried two or three times to wipe it off, but the blood would not come out; in vain did she wash it, and even rub it with soap and sand; the blood still remained, for the key was magical and she could never make it quite clean; when the blood was gone off from one side, it came again on the other.

Bluebeard returned from his journey the same evening, and said he had received letters upon the road, informing him that the affair he went about was ended to his advantage. His wife did all she could to convince him she was extremely glad of his speedy return.

Next morning he asked her for the keys, which she gave him, but with such a trembling hand that he easily guessed what had happened.

‘What!’ said he, ‘is not the key of my closet among the rest?’

‘I must certainly have left it above upon the table,’ said she.

‘Fail not to bring it to me presently,’ said Bluebeard.

After several goings backward and forward she was forced to bring him the key. Bluebeard, having very attentively considered it, said to his wife,

‘How comes this blood9 upon the key?’

‘I do not know,’ cried the poor woman, paler than death.

‘You do not know!’ replied Bluebeard. ‘I very well know. You were resolved to go into the closet, were you not? Mighty well, madam; you shall go in, and take your place among the ladies you saw there.’

Upon this she threw herself at her husband’s feet and begged his pardon with all the signs of true repentance, vowing that she would never more be disobedient. She would have melted a rock, so beautiful and sorrowful was she; but Bluebeard had a heart harder than any rock!

‘You must die, madam,’ said he, ‘and that presently.’

‘Since I must die,’ answered she (looking upon him with her eyes all bathed in tears), ‘give me some little time to say my prayers.’

‘I give you,’ replied Bluebeard, ‘half a quarter of an hour, but not one moment more.’

When she was alone, she called out to her sister, and said to her: ‘Sister Anne,’10 (for that was her name), ‘go up, I beg you, upon the top of the tower, and look if my brothers are not coming over; they promised me that they would come to-day, and if you see them, give them a sign to make haste.’

Her sister Anne went up upon the top of the tower, and the poor afflicted wife cried out from time to time:

‘Anne, sister Anne, do you see anyone coming?’

And sister Anne said: ‘I see nothing but the sun, which makes a dust, and the grass, which looks green.’

In the meanwhile, Bluebeard, holding a great sabre11 in his hand, cried out as loud as he could bawl to his wife: ‘Come down instantly, or I shall come up to you.’

‘One moment longer, if you please,’ said his wife, and then she cried out very softly, ‘Anne, sister Anne, dost thou see anybody coming?’

And sister Anne answered: ‘I see nothing but the sun, which makes a dust, and the grass, which is green.’

‘Come down quickly,’ cried Bluebeard, ‘or I will come up to you.’

‘I am coming,’ answered his wife; and then she cried, ‘Anne, sister Anne, dost thou not see anyone coming?’

“I see,” replied sister Anne, “a great dust, which comes on this side here.”

‘Are they my brothers?’

‘Alas! no, my dear sister, I see a flock of sheep.’

‘Will you not come down?’ cried Bluebeard

‘One moment longer,’ said his wife, and then she cried out: ‘Anne, sister Anne, dost thou see nobody coming?’

‘I see,’ said she, ‘two horsemen, but they are yet a great way off.’

‘God be praised,’ replied the poor wife joyfully; ‘they are my brothers; I will make them a sign, as well as I can, for them to make haste.’

Then Bluebeard bawled out so loud that he made the whole house tremble. The distressed wife came down, and threw herself at his feet, all in tears, with her hair about her shoulders.

‘This signifies nothing,’ says Bluebeard; ‘you must die’; then, taking hold of her hair with one hand and lifting up the sword with the other, he was going to take off her head. The poor lady, turning about to him, and looking at him with dying eyes, desired him to afford her one little moment to recollect herself.

‘No, no,’ said he, ‘recommend thyself to God,’ and was just ready to strike...

At this very instant there was such a loud knocking at the gate that Bluebeard made a sudden stop. The gate was opened, and presently entered two horsemen, who, drawing their swords, ran directly to Bluebeard. He knew them to be his wife’s brothers, one a dragoon12, the other a musketeer13, so that he ran away immediately to save himself; but the two brothers pursued so close that they overtook him before he could get to the steps of the porch, when they ran their swords through his body and left him dead. The poor wife was almost as dead as her husband and had not strength enough to rise and welcome her brothers.

Bluebeard had no heirs, and so his wife became mistress of all his estate. She made use of one part of it to marry her sister Anne to a young gentleman who had loved her a long while; another part to buy captains commissions for her brothers, and the rest to marry herself to a very worthy gentleman, who made her forget the ill time she had passed with Bluebeard.

Moral

Curiosity, in spite of its appeal,
May often cost a horrendous deal.
A thousand new cases arise each day,
With due respect, oh ladies, the thrill is slight:
As soon as you quench it, it goes away.
In truth, the price one pays is never right.14

Another Moral

Provided one has common sense
And learned to grasp complex texts,
This story bears evidence
Of taking place in the past tense.

No longer are husbands terrible to see,
No longer do they demand the untarnished key.
Though he may be jealous and dissatisfied,
A husband tried to do as he’s obliged.
And whatever colour his beard may be,
It’s difficult to know who the master may be.

Discussion prompt

Zipes reminds readers that the reading of the bloody key as a marker of disobedience and infidelity is ‘wilfully wrong-headed in its effort to vilify Bluebeard’s wife’ (56). Perrault’s tongue-in-cheek commentary on the evils of female curiosity is so prevalent, later editions and illustrated tellings were often labelled with a subtitle, ‘the effects of female curiosity’ or ‘the fatal effects of curiosity’. As such, ‘Bluebeard’ falls ‘in line with cautionary tales about women’s innate wickedness: with Pandora who opened the forbidden casket as well as Eve who ate the forbidden fruit’ (Warner 244). Although the story never justifies Bluebeard’s violence, the ‘cardinal sin’ of the heroine’s curiosity is inflated, as is the consequence (death by execution), compare to the simple misstep: ‘the bloodbath is simply too sensational a spectacle for so minor a transgression’ (Tater 164).

Nevertheless, though it’s often read as a story warning women not to be curious or disobedient, the story is clearly one in which the foreigner husband/murderer is the monstrous Other, and the courageous and curious bride the sympathetic (and surviving) heroine. In this sense, the story can as easily be read as a critique of gender-based control and violence.

Is it, do you think, a feminist fairy tale, or a celebration of outdated ideas about women’s curiosity? Or a little of both?

In a recent interview with The Rumpus, Kelly Link comments on the use of satire in representing the upper class:

What I do know is that fairy tales are a populist form—they grant power and wealth to deserving characters, sometimes, and they punish characters who are greedy, or who behave poorly. The happy ending of a fairy tale just as often reasserts the typical order, with a new king instead of looking toward a world in which there are no kings. Is the fairytale regressive or is it revolutionary or is it both?

Writing prompt

• In Issue one, we featured Jeana Jorgensen’s poem ‘Bluebeard’. This is an example of a concrete poem, which uses an arrangement of words, letters, colors, and typefaces to create a graphic representation of a physical object. In Jorgensen’s case, she used the shape of an ornate key to create added connections to her text. How might the narrative change depending on the type of key/s being depicted? For those of you interested in putting a poetic spin on ‘Bluebeard’, you might want to try your hand at a found poem, which is a type of literary collage. Take words and phrases from Perrault’s tale and/or other versions such as Angela Carter’s ‘The bloody chamber’. You can also draw from additional texts such as medical journals, historical accounts, and newspaper articles. Splice and paste, change it up with white space and line breaks, add and subtract words and images. Do whatever you want, but make sure to keep a sense of play in the foreground as you transform the old into something new.

  Most intellectual development depends upon new readings of old texts. I am all for putting new wine in old bottles, especially if the pressure of the new wine makes the bottles explode. (Angela Carter, ‘Notes from the Front Line’, On Gender and Writing, 1983, p. 69)

• For a different take on this story, pick a different perspective. (Dorian Wolfe takes this approach in ‘The letter K’, a fabulous piece of flash fiction featured in Issue three of The Orange & Bee.) How might ‘Bluebeard’ look if it was told from the husband’s point of view? Another option might be Anne (the only other named character in the story). How does she view the situation? If you want to push the tale type even further, try telling the story from the point of view of someone unexpected. For instance, what happened to Bluebeard’s first wife? (Catherynne M. Valente took this approach in a Bluebeard/Garden of Eden mashup featured in the novella Comfort Me With Apples.) What other characters can you interview? What about the housekeeper or the next-door neighbor or the murderer’s mother? You might be surprised at what you discover.

  

References

Ashliman, DL 2023, ‘Bluebeard’, viewed 5 December 2024, <https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type0312.html#bon>.

Carter A, introduction by Zipes J 2008, Angela Carter: Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and other classic tales of Charles Perrault, Penguin Books, New York.

Chevalier, J and Gheerbrant A 1997, The Penguin dictionary of symbols, Penguin books, New York.

Cooper, JC 1978, An illustrated encyclopedia of traditional symbols, Thames & Hudson, Inc., New York.

Davis S 2023, ‘They are the bones: a conversation with Kelly Link’, viewed 5 December 2024, <https://therumpus.net/2023/05/08/222038/>.

Heiner, HA 2021, ‘Bluebeard’, viewed 5 December 2024, <https://www.surlalunefairytales.com/a-g/bluebeard/bluebeard-tale.html>.

Tatar, M 1999, The classic fairy tales, WW Norton & Company, Inc., New York.

Tatar, M 2003, The hard facts of the Brothers Grimm, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Warner, M 1994, From the beast to the blonde: on fairy tales and their tellers, Noonday press, New York.

Warner, M 2014, Once upon a time: a short history of fairy tales, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Zipes, J (ed) 2000, The Oxford companion to fairy tales: the western fairy tale tradition from medieval to modern, Oxford university press, New York & Oxford.

8

Zipes notes that the bloody key ‘points to double transgression, one that is both moral and sexual’ (p. 56). Warner adds, ‘In many illustrated tellings of the story, the key looms very large indeed, a gigantic forbidden fruit, so engorged and positioned that the allusion can hardly be missed’ (1994, p. 244).

12

Dragoons were a class of military who fought on foot, but travelled by horse, though from around the seventeenth century they were also often hired as conventional cavalry. They were cheaper than cavalry, but more expensive (and more mobile) than foot regiments.

13

A mousquetaire (musketeer), as the name suggests, was a class of soldier armed with a musket (a long, muzzle-loaded gun). The Musketeers of the Guard were a military branch of the royal household, created by Louis XIII in 1622. Unlike many other regiments of the time, the musketeers were open to men from the lower classes of the French nobility, and younger, or less favoured, sons. As so many of them were young teenagers, the musketeers had, at the time of Perrault’s writing, a reputation for … let’s say for being high-spririted.

Perhaps the most famous of the musketeers, at least for modern readers, was d’Artagnan (Charles de Batz de Castelmore, 1611-1673), who joined the musketeers in 1632 and served with them—rising to the highest rank (the next highest was the king) in 1667—until his death on the battlefield at the Siege of Maastricht. This larger-than-life real-life figure has been the basis of many creative works, but perhaps none so well-known today as Alexandre Dumas’s d’Artagnan romances (The Three Musketeers [1844], Twenty Years After [1845] and The Vicomte de Bragelonne [1847-1850]).

This story was added to the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and household Tales) in the second volume of the first edition, published in 1817. It’s not clear who their source was for the tale, though the Grimms note that the story was a Hessian tale. Their annotation for the tale reads:.

Hessian. The hand growing out of the grave is a widespread superstition, and not only concerns thieves, but also trespassers on consecrated trees (see Schiller’s [Wilhelm] Tell, Act 3, Scene 3)2, and parricides (Wunderhorn, 1. 226). In Pauli’s Schimpf und Ernst3 there is another story of an arm stretched out of a grave. When a flower or a written paper grows out of the grave, from the mouth of a buried man, as a token of his guilt or innocence, it is but another form of the same idea.

It is also said and believed that the hand of any who strikes their parents will grow out of the earth; thus the Fuchsthurm, on the Hausberg, near Jena, is the little finger of a giant who had beaten his mother.

Because the tale is so short—two small paragraphs—I’ve provided both the original German first, and then my translation.

Von einem eigensinnige Kind

Es war einmal ein Kind eigensinnig und tat nicht, was seine Mutter haben wollte. Da hatte der liebe Gott kein Wohlgefallen an ihm und es ward krank, und kein Arzt konnt’ ihm helfen und bald lag es auf dem Todtenbettchen. Als es ins Grab versenkt war, und Erde darüber gedeckt, so kam auf einmal sein Aermchen wieder hervor und reichte in die Höhe, und wenn sie es hineinlegten und frische Erde darüber legten, so half das nicht, er kam immer wieder heraus. Da mußte die Mutter selber zum Grab gehen und mit der Ruthe aufs das Aermchen schlagen, und wie sie das getan hatte, zog es sich hinein und das Kind hatte nun erst Ruh unter der Erde.

From one eigensinnige child

Once upon a time there was a child who was so eigensinnig that they did not do what their mother wanted. God was not pleased with the child, who became ill. No doctor could help them and so soon they lay on their deathbed.

When the child was lowered into their grave and covered with earth, their little arm suddenly reached out. When the arm was pressed down, and covered with fresh earth, it didn't help. The child’s arm came out again and again. The mother had to go to the grave herself and strike the little arm with a rod. When she had done that, the arm withdrew, and the child rested peacefully beneath the earth.

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The very slight changes to this tale between the first and final editions of the KHM reflect Wilhelm’s ideological editorial intention to ensure the tales were told in a compact and simplified style. A voice that was intended to represent the voice of the somewhat mythical peasant class of oral storytellers that the brothers suggested their tales were gathered from (despite the fact that the majority of the Grimms’ sources were neither peasants, nor oral narratives).

In the Grimms’ German, the gender of the child is indeterminate, an ambiguity I have retained in the translation provided above. Most translations into English, however, render the child either male or female. The classic Margaret Hunt translation of 1884 renders the child a girl, and uses the term ‘wilful’ to describe her. Zipes’s more recent translation of the first edition renders the child a boy, and uses the term ‘stubborn’.

What’s in a word?

You’ll have noticed, perhaps, that I’ve retained the German word eigensinnig/e in my translation’s title and opening sentence. This is because one of the things that most interests me about this story relates to the meaning of this word. As the contemporary German writer Enzensberger says:

Eigensinn is a word that doesn't translate very well into English … It's not selfishness. It's not obstinacy. It's not intransigence.

I would add that eigensinn is not wilfulness, with, in English, it’s negative connotations of inappropriate or unwarranted disobedience, particularly in children, women, queers, and other infantilised Others.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger goes on, trying to explain to an English critic the meaning of the word eigensinn, which he uses in the title of his experimental historical novel about Kurt von Hammersmith, the last commander of the Reichswehr before the Nazi takeover. (The title of his book is Hammerstein, oder der Eigensinn.) Enzensberger says:

You might say it’s a sense of having your own value system. That's a quality that I find very interesting, because it's almost beyond a person’s control. When I first came to England after the war, people used to speak of someone being a “man of character”: that might be a good translation. In spite of the pressures within his milieu, Hammerstein somehow didn't budge. He couldn't. It saved him from the opportunism of the other generals (Enzensberger, cited in Oltermann).

You can see how important this notion of a person’s moral character is in the context of a novel about the actions of Germans during the Second World War, and particularly in relation to the Holocaust. For Enzensberger, then, the word eigensinn refers to a person with a strong internal moral compass.

My family are Dutch, and in Dutch we have a very similar word: eigenwijs. Eigen, meaning ‘own’ and wijs meaning ‘wise’. A person who is eigenwijs is someone who stays true to their own wisdom, their own sense of what is good and right. While it is sometimes used negatively, my Dutch relatives use it mostly to describe people they admire: such as the 300,000 Amsterdammers who took to the streets to protest the pogroms during the mass strike of February, 1941.

My oma also frequently used it to refer to herself when she was being admirably wicked and subversive. When having a cigarette after summiting a particularly steep mountain, for example, or after weeding out a particularly neglected corner of the garden.

Or, flatteringly, to refer to me when I was true to myself. Ah, she said, when I came out as queer, Jij bent eigenwijs. Ik ook. (You’re eigenwijs. Me too.)

Sara Ahmed’s Willful subjects

The feminist philosopher Sara Ahmed uses ‘The wilful child’ in the introduction to her 2014 book, Willful subjects, a book that interrogates the history of wilfulness as an accusation made by some people against others. The translation she provides (Margaret Hunt’s version, dating from the late 1800s) genders the child as female, which is perhaps key to the ways that Ahmed links accusations of wilfulness to women and girls, as well as to other marginalised folk.

In a blog post reflecting on the importance of the image of the child’s arm projecting from the earth to her exploration and inhabitation of wilfulness, Ahmed writes:

To become feminist can often mean looking for company; looking for others who share that becoming. This search for feminist companionship began for me through books; I withdrew into my room with books. It was willful girls who caught my attention. In writing my book Willful Subjects I formalized my pursuit of willful girls into a research trajectory. Once I began to follow the figure of a willful girl, I found she turned up all over the place. It was by following this figure that I came to encounter new texts, ones that had a ghostly familiarity, even if I had not read them before. One of these texts was titled ‘The willful child.’

… What is striking about this story is how willfulness persists even after death: displaced onto an arm, from a body onto a body part. The arm inherits the willfulness of the child insofar as it will not be kept down, insofar as it keeps coming up, acquiring a life of its own, even after the death of the body of which it is a part. Note that the rod, as that which embodies the will of the parent, of the sovereign, is not deemed willful. The rod becomes the means to eliminate willfulness from the child. One will judges the other wills as willful wills. One will assumes the right to eliminate the others.

We might note here how the very judgment of willfulness is a crucial part of the disciplinary apparatus. It is this judgment that allows violence (even murder) to be understood as care as well as discipline. The rod becomes a technique for straightening out the willful child with her wayward arm.

This Grimm story forms part of a tradition of educational writing that Alice Miller (1987) in For Your Own Good calls ‘poisonous pedagogy’4, a tradition that assumes the child as stained by original sin, and which insists on violence as moral correction, as being for the child. Just consider that in this story the only time that the child is at rest is when she is beneath the ground. By implication, when the child gives up or gives up her will, when she stops struggling against those she must obey (her mother, God) when she is willing to obey, she will be at ease.

A little later in the same essay, she writes:

Willfulness: persistence in the face of having been brought down … even after the willful child has been brought down, something, some spark, some kind of energy, persists. The arm gives flesh to this persistence. The arm has to disturb the ground, to reach up, to reach out of the grave, that tomb, that burial.

We can twist the morbid ending into a feminist plot. The arm is at rest not because she has been beaten but in order that she return to her work; so that she can come up again.

Discussion questions

• In my introduction and framing of the tale, I’ve noted that in the Grimms’ German-language version of the tale, the gender of the child is ambiguous, or undeclared, while Hunt’s 1884 translation makes them a ‘girl’, and Zipes’s more recent translation renders them a ‘boy’. How does the gender of the child influence your response to the story? What might have influenced these two translators (among many others!) in choosing to gender the child, and/or to gender them either male or female?

• I’ve talked a bit in the introduction/framing of this tale about the notion of wilfulness, or eigensinn/eigenwijs, including by introducing Sara Ahmed’s interest in wilfulness (willfulness) in relation to political and personal forms of resistance. What do you make of the idea that the child in this story is wilful, and that wilfulness is their main moral flaw: the reason that they fall sick and die? What alternative word or words might you have used to translate the Grimms’ eigensinnig/e, rather than ‘stubborn’ or ‘wilful’?

• Have you ever been called wilful, either in a positive or negative sense? Have you ever been punished or ostracised for acting wilfully? Alternatively, have you ever embraced wilfulness as a form of resistance, or celebrated the wilful resistance of another? What wilful characters (historical or fictional) do you admire?

• This tale (an example of ATU779) does not fall within the ATU Index entries for tales of magic, or fairy tales (300 to 749), but instead within the range of religious tales (750 to 849). What do you think makes this story like or unlike a fairy tale?

Writing prompts

The image of a hand shooting up from a grave is a vivid and memorable one. In this tale, it is partly used to reinforce the idea that the child is so wilful that their will is still being exerted on their body after death.

The Grimms noted that this image was, during their lifetime, associated with thieves, trespassers, parricides (children who kill their parents), and children who strike their parents. They also describe the way that some legends are inscribed on the landscape, so that you can point to the Fuchsturm (literally, fox tower) in Jena as evidence of the legend’s veracity.

A variant of the tale from Kuhn and Schwartz’s Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche (1812-1881) is very similar to the Grimms’ tale, but focuses much more on the hand as local legend, and relic:

In the church at Lunow5, three quarters of a mile from Oderberg, there is a chopped off, dried-up hand on display. It is clenched into a fist and holds a switch between its fingers. It comes from a son who, in a godless manner, once struck his father. God himself punished him, for when the son died and was buried, his hand emerged from the grave. However often they reburied it, it always reappeared. Finally they beat it with a switch, thinking that it would then return beneath the earth, but that did not help. So they chopped off the hand, put the switch in its fist, and placed it in the church at Lunow as an eternal warning to godless children.

The hand of Lunow is a real historical object, and has—in recent years—been examined by scientists to determine the gender of the person it once belonged to. Not quite a sacred relic—not like a fragment of the True Cross—it’s easy to imagine the hand, shriveled and dark, eternally wilful, being shown to a child whose wilfulness its parents hope to curb.

Prompt #1: Consider the landscape, including the built environment, around where you live. Is there a structure or landform that strikes you as particularly compelling or peculiar? As the relic of a forgotten legend?

Write a short narrative in which you tell the story (perhaps a legend, or urban legend) behind the structure/landform. You could make it a cautionary tale, or perhaps the tale of a long-lost heroic figure.

Prompt #2: Write a list of character traits that you’ve been told you have, either in the past or more recently. Is there one that bothers or interests you more than the others? One that you strongly want to either deny, or embrace?

Write a legend or fairy tale style of story in which it is the defining characteristic of the main character.

Prompt #3: Combine these two ideas by writing about a character with a defining characteristic you share, and how their story led to the formation of a particular feature of the landscape, or built environment.

References

Ahmed, S 2016, ‘A feminist army’, at feministkilljoys, 19 October, <https://feministkilljoys.com/2016/10/19/a-feminist-army/>.

Oltermann, Philip 2010, ‘A life in writing: Hans Magnus Enzensberger’ in The Guardian, 15 May, <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/may/15/hans-magnus-enzensberger-interview>.

Zipes, Jack (trans.) 2014, The complete first edition: The original folk & fairy tales of the Brother Grimm, Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford.

Zornado, JL 2001, Inventing the child: Culture, ideology and the story of childhood, Garland Science, New York & London.

In this issue of The Orange & Bee, we are exploring ‘Maid Maleen,’ which was first published as ‘Jungfer Maleen’ by Karl Müllenhoff in Sagen, Märchen und Lieder der Herzoghümer Schleswig, Holstein und Lauenburg (1845). Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were aware of this story—Müllenhoff had been Wilhelm’s student—and acknowledged this literary source in their notes for their own version of the tale, writing: ‘This is an excellent tale, both as regards matter and completeness. The oft-told recognition of the true bride is beautifully described’ (qtd in Hunt). The Grimms added the tale to the second volume of the sixth edition of the KHM, which was first published in 1850. According to Katherine Langrish, the Grimms added depth to the trauma caused Maleen’s abandonment and interment in their variant.

Introduction to the Brothers Grimm Jungfrau Maleen (Maid Maleen)

‘Maid Maleen’ is an example of tale type ATU870 The princess confined in the mound, which falls within the range of realistic tales (850 to 899) within the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index (ATU Index). Interestingly, these tales fall outside of the range of tales of magic (fairy tales!). There is one sub-variant of ATU870, which is ATU870A the goose girl (neighbour’s daughter) as suitor (previously described, in the AT Index, as The little goose girl).

Examples of ATU870 tale type include: 

• ‘The princess who was hidden underground’ translated from German and collected in Andrew Lang’s The violet fairy book (1901).

• ‘Die Gänsemagd’ (The goose girl) collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and included in their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and household tales), first published in 1816 as #89). An English translation of the Grimms’ ‘The goose girl’ was also included in Andrew Lang’s The blue fairy book (1889).

• ‘Vesle Åse Gåsepike’ (Little Annie the goose-girl) was collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in Norske folkeeventyr (Norwegian folktales), published between 1842 and 1852. And English translation—‘Little Lucy Goosey Girl’—was included in Reidar Thorwalf Christiansen’s Folktales of Norway (1964).

• ‘Destined girl wins her place as the prince’s bride’ was collected by RM Dawkins in Modern Greek folktales (1953).

Like many traditional fairy tales, ‘Maid Maleen’ focuses on the female protagonists’ loyalty to her beloved through significant trials and suffering, and over many years.

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Maid Maleen: story and annotations

• ‘Maid Maleen’ was translated (and edited) by Margaret Hunt for an English edition of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimms’ Household Tales first published in 1884. You can find a digitised version of this translation at SurLaLune. For those of you seeking a print copy, or a translation that is more faithful to the Grimms’ version, Jack Zipes included a new translation of ‘Maid Maleen’ in The original folk and fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: the complete first edition (2014).

There was once a King who had a son who asked to marry the daughter of another mighty King. She was called Maid Maleen1, and was very beautiful. As her father wished to give her to another, the prince was rejected; but as they both loved each other with all their hearts, they would not give each other up, and Maid Maleen said to her father, ‘I can and will take no other for my husband.’

Then the King flew into a passion, and ordered a dark tower2 be built, into which no ray of sunlight or moonlight should enter. When it was finished, he said, ‘Therein you shall be imprisoned for seven years3, and then I will come and see if your perverse spirit is broken.’

Meat and drink for the seven years were carried into the tower, and then Maid Maleen and her waiting-woman were led into it and walled up4, and thus cut off from the sky and from the earth. There they sat in the darkness, and knew not when day or night began. The King’s son often went round and round the tower, and called their names, but no sound from without pierced through the thick walls. What else could they do but lament and complain?

Meanwhile the time passed, and by the diminution of the food and drink they knew that the seven years were coming to an end. They thought the moment of their deliverance was come; but no stroke of the hammer was heard, no stone fell out of the wall, and it seemed to Maid Maleen that her father had forgotten her. As they only had food for a short time longer, and saw a miserable death awaiting them, Maid Maleen said, ‘We must try our last chance, and see if we can break through the wall.’5

She took the breadknife, and picked and bored at the mortar of a stone, and when she was tired, the waiting-maid took her turn. With great labour they succeeded in getting out one stone, and then a second, and a third, and when three days6 were over the first ray of light fell on their darkness, and at last the opening was so large that they could look out.

The sky was blue, and a fresh breeze played on their faces; but how melancholy everything looked all around! Her father's castle lay in ruins, the town and the villages were, so far as could be seen, destroyed by fire, the fields far and wide laid to waste, and no human being was visible.

When the opening in the wall was large enough for them to slip through, the waiting-maid sprang down first, and then Maid Maleen followed. But where were they to go? The enemy had ravaged the whole kingdom, driven away the King, and slain all the inhabitants. They wandered forth to seek another country, but nowhere did they find a shelter, or a human being to give them a mouthful of bread, and their need was so great that they were forced to appease their hunger with nettles7. When, after long journeying, they came into another country, they tried to get work but wherever they knocked they were turned away, and no one would have pity on them. At last they arrived in a large city and went to the royal palace. There also they were ordered to go away, but at last the cook said that they might stay in the kitchen and be scullions8.

The son of the King in whose kingdom they had arrived was the very man who had wanted to marry Maid Maleen. His father had chosen another bride for him, whose face was as ugly as her heart was wicked. The wedding was fixed, and the maiden had already arrived. Because of her great ugliness, however, she shut herself in her room, and allowed no one to see her9. Maid Maleen had to take her her meals from the kitchen. When the day came for the bride and the bridegroom to go to church, she was ashamed of her ugliness, and afraid that if she showed herself in the streets, she would be mocked and laughed at by the people.

Then said she to Maid Maleen, ‘A great piece of luck has befallen you. I have sprained my foot, and cannot well walk through the streets; you shall put on my wedding-clothes and take my place; a greater honour than that you cannot have!’

Maid Maleen, however, refused, and said, ‘I wish for no honour which is not suitable for me.’

It was in vain, too, that the bride offered her gold. At last she said angrily, ‘If you do not obey me, it will cost you your life. I have but to speak the word, and your head will lie at your feet.’

Maid Maleen, thus forced to obey, put on the bride's magnificent clothes and all her jewels. When she entered the royal hall, everyone was amazed at her great beauty, and the King said to his son, ‘This is the bride I have chosen for you, and whom you must lead to church.’

The bridegroom was astonished, and thought, She is like my Maid Maleen, and I should believe that it was her, but she is either still shut up in the tower, or she is dead.

He took the bride by the hand and led her to church. On the way was a nettle-plant1011, and she said:

     ‘Oh, nettle-plant,
      Little nettle-plant,
      What dost thou here alone?
      I have known the time
      When I ate thee unboiled,
      When I ate thee unroasted.’

‘What are you saying?’ asked the King's son.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘I was only thinking of Maid Maleen.’

He was surprised that she knew about her, but kept silence. When they came to the footbridge12 into the churchyard, she said:

     ‘Footbridge, do not break,
      I am not the true bride.’ 

‘What are you saying there?’ asked the King's son.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘I was only thinking of Maid Maleen.’

‘Do you know Maid Maleen?’

‘No,’ she answered. ‘How should I know her? I have only heard of her.’

When they came to the church door13, she said:

     ‘Church door, break not,
      I am not the true bride.’

‘What are you saying there?’ asked he.

‘Ah,’ she answered, ‘I was only thinking of Maid Maleen.’

Then he took out a precious chain, put it round her neck, and fastened the clasp14. Thereupon they entered the church, and the priest joined their hands together before the altar, and married them. He led her home, but she did not speak a single word the whole way. When they got back to the royal palace, she hurried into the bride’s chamber, put off the magnificent clothes and the jewels, dressed herself in her grey gown, and kept nothing but the jewel on her neck, which she had received from the bridegroom.

When night came, and the bride was to be led into the prince’s apartment, she let her veil fall over her face, that he might not observe the deception. As soon as everyone had gone away, he said to her, ‘What did you say to the nettle-plant which was growing by the wayside?’

‘To which nettle-plant?’ asked she. ‘I don't talk to nettle-plants.’

‘If you did not do it, then you are not the true bride,’ said he.

So she thought to herself, and then said, ‘I must go out unto my maid, who keeps my thoughts for me.'

She went out and sought Maid Maleen. ‘Girl, what have you been saying to the nettle?’

Maid Maleen replied, ‘I said nothing but:

     Oh, nettle-plant,
      Little nettle-plant,
      What dost thou here alone?
      I have known the time
      When I ate thee unboiled,
      When I ate thee unroasted.’

The bride ran back into the chamber, and said, ‘I know now what I said to the nettle,’ and repeated the words which she had just heard.

‘But what did you say to the footbridge when we went over it?’ asked the King's son.

‘To the footbridge?’ she answered. ‘I don't talk to footbridges.’

‘Then you are not the true bride.’

She again said, ‘I must go out unto my maid, ho keeps my thoughts for me,’ and ran out and found Maid Maleen. ‘Girl, what did you say to the footbridge?’

Maid Maleen replied, ‘I said nothing but:

     Footbridge, do not break,
     I am not the true bride.’

‘That costs you your life!’ cried the bride, but she hurried into the room where the bridegroom waited, and said, ‘I know now what I said to the footbridge,’ and she repeated Maid Maleen’s words.

‘But what did you say to the church door?’

‘To the church door?’ she replied. ‘I don't talk to church doors.’

‘Then you are not the true bride.’

She went out and found Maid Maleen, and said, ‘Girl, what did you say to the church door?’

Maid Maleen replied, ‘I said nothing but:

     Church door, break not,
     I am not the true bride.’

‘That will break your neck for you!’ cried the bride, and flew into a terrible passion, but she hastened back into the room, and said, ‘I know now what I said to the church door,’ and she repeated the words.

‘But where is the jewel I gave you at the church door?15’

‘What jewel?’ she answered. ‘You did not give me any jewel.’

‘I myself put it round your neck, and I myself fastened it; if you do not know that, you art not the true bride.’ He drew the veil from her face, and when he saw her immeasurable ugliness, he sprang back, terrified, and said, ‘How did you get here? Who are you?’16

‘I am thy betrothed bride, but because I feared the people would mock me when they saw me out of doors, I commanded the scullery maid to dress herself in my clothes, and to go to church instead of me.’

‘Where is the girl?’ said he. ‘I want to see her. Go and bring her here.’

She went out and told the servants that the scullery maid was an impostor, and that they must take her out into the courtyard and strike off her head. The servants laid hold of Maid Maleen and wanted to drag her out, but she screamed so loudly for help, that the King’s son heard her voice, hurried out of his chamber, and ordered them to set the maiden free instantly. Lights were brought, and then he saw on her neck the gold chain which he had given her at the church door.

‘You are the true bride,’ said he, ‘who went with me to church; come with me now to my room.’

When they were alone, he said, ‘On the way to the church you spoke of Maid Maleen, who was my betrothed bride; if I could believe it possible, I should think she was standing before me—you are like her in every respect.’

She answered, ‘I am Maid Maleen, who for your sake was imprisoned seven years in the darkness, who suffered hunger and thirst, and has lived so long in want and poverty. Today, however, the sun is shining on me once more. I was married to you in the church, and I am your lawful wife.’

Then they kissed each other, and were happy all the days of their lives. The false bride was rewarded for what she had done by having her head cut off.

The tower in which Maid Maleen had been imprisoned remained standing for a long time, and when the children passed by it they sang17:

     Kling, klang, gloria.
     Who sits within this tower?
     A King's daughter, she sits within,
     A sight of her I cannot win,
     The wall it will not break.
     The stone cannot be pierced.
     Little Hans, with your coat so gay,
     Follow me, follow me, fast as you may.

Discussion questions

• Maid Maleen is far from the only figure from folklore and fairy tale to be imprisoned in a tower. One of the most familiar to contemporary readers is Rapunzel (ATU 310 The maiden in the tower). In Rapunzel’s case she is locked away as a possession to be protected, whereas Maid Maleen was entombed as a punishment for disobeying her father. Maid Maleen embraces love over parental acceptance. She rejects her prescribed role as an object to be bought and sold. The imprisonment of women for refusing to marry can also be seen in depictions of the lives of saints. For instance, Saint Barbara was imprisoned in a tower by her father to keep her safe from suitors and Saint Catherine was locked away by her father when she refused a royal marriage. What role does this imposed isolation by a parental figure play in the development of fairy tale heroines? Can a character take an active role in their own story when confined by such physical restraints?

• When Maid Maleen finally finds herself working in the kitchen of the court of her prince, she discovers that he has been betrothed to another woman. Chosen by the king, this false bride is described as ugly and wicked, two characteristics commonly attributed to female, fairy-tale antagonists. Ashamed of her ugliness, she forces Maid Maleen to attend the wedding in her stead. On her way to the chapel, Maid Maleen disavows herself as the true bride. Katherine Langrish writers that ‘She is afraid that the honest world will reject her, the foot-bridge break under her step, the church door split as she passes through … In Maid Maleen, the heroine and the false bride mirror one so another so strikingly in their low self-esteem, that on a psychological level the ugly false bride may even be Maid Maleen’ (Langrish 2019). How does the complexity of trauma (abandonment, isolation, and poverty) enhance the disassociation experienced by Maid Maleen? How might this parallel the false bride’s concerns with forced marriage, social estrangement, and/or fear of rejection?

• This tale (an example of ATU870) does not fall within the ATU Index entries for tales of magic, or fairy tales (300 to 749), but instead within the range of realistic tales (850 to 999). What is it, do you think, that makes this story like or unlike a fairy tale?

  • The ATU index (Aarne-Thompson-Uther index) is divided into seven sections (there’s that magical number again!):

    • 1 to 299 Animal tales

    • 300 to 749 Tales of magic (Fairy tales!)

    • 750 to 849 Religious tales

    • 850 to 999 Realistic tales (novelle)

    • 1000 to 1199 Tales of the stupid ogre (or giant, or devil)

    • 1200 to 1999 Anecdotes and jokes

    • 2000 to 2399 Formula tales

Writing prompt

When Maid Maleen and her serving woman are walled up in the dark tower, they are provided with seven years of food and water, which signals the length of their prescribed sentence. It isn’t until the end of those seven years that the women finally attempt to escape (a feat they accomplish in just three days!) with the aid of a simple bread knife.

For this writing exercise, we will be exploring the concept of isolation and the passing of time, broken into two segments: reflection and renewal. To start off, set a timer for three minutes and write about a time when you experienced isolation. For example, you might write about a time of spiritual self-isolation, or a medically based period of isolation (such as a childhood experience with chicken pox or a dreaded teen encounter with the kissing disease), or even something as familiar and recent as a government-enforced quarantine due to a global pandemic. Write down everything that comes to mind. There is only one rule: don’t stop until the timer goes off!

Once you have completed your first task, reward yourself. Stretch your legs. Shake out your fingers. Pour yourself a drink. Do whatever you want as long as you step away from that fresh piece of writing. You need a few minutes to reset. When you return, scan your writing until you find a word or concept that grabs your attention. Think of this as your bread knife, the tool that will break you out of the darkness of the past. Sharpen those pencils and turn the page. Or open a new document. Set the timer for another three minutes and free-write with your chosen word or concept as your new launching point. When the buzzer rings STOP! And then, to honour the rule of threes, repeat the process one more time. Often, you will discover that you only need a little separation to change perspective from feeling stuck in the past to finding freedom in the moment.

References

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm 1884, Grimm’s Household Tales: Volume two, Margaret R Hunt (trans.), George Bell & Sons, London, viewed 14 April 2024, <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_Household_Tales,_Volume_2/Maid_Maleen>.

Heiner, Heidi Anne 2021, ‘Maid Maleen: Annotated Tale’, viewed 24 May 2024, <https://www.surlalunefairytales.com/h-r/maid-maleen/maid-maleen-tale.html>.

Langrish, K 2019, ‘“Maid Maleen”: A fairy-tale study of trauma’, Seven miles of steel thistles, blog post, 18 June, viewed 14 April 2024, <https://steelthistles.blogspot.com/2019/06/maid-maleen-fairytale-study-of-trauma.html>.

Jones, SS 1993 ‘The innocent persecuted heroine genre: An analysis of its structure and themes’, Western folklore, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 13-41.

Tatar, M 2003, The hard facts of the Brothers Grimm, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Windling, T 2019, ‘The Folklore of Nettles’, Myth & moor, weblog, viewed 1 June 2024, <https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2019/06/the-folklore-of-nettles.html>.

Zipes, J (trans) 2014, The original folk and fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: the complete first edition, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Zipes, J (ed, trans) 2001, The great fairy-tale tradition: from Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, WW Norton & Co, New York & London.

7

Known by the scientific name Urtica dioica, this herbaceous plant has jagged leaves and stinging hairs. Historically, it has been used as a source of food, traditional medicine, and fibre arts. According to Terri Windling ‘nettles have long been associated with women’s domestic magic: with inner strength and fortitude, with healing and also self-healing, with protection and also self-protection’ (2019).

Introduction to Mme d’Aulnoy’s L'Oranger et l'Abeille (The orange tree and the bee)

‘The orange tree and the bee’ is an example of tale type ATU313 The Magic Flight, falling firmly into the range of the ATU for tales of magic, or fairy tales (ATU300 to ATU749). Other ATU313 tales include:

• ‘Mestermø’ (The master maid) was collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, and included in their Norske Folkeeventyr (Norwegian folktales), first published between 1842 and 1852. Fifty-eight tales from the first edition of their collection were translated into English by Sir George Webb Dasent and published as Popular tales from the Norse in 1859.

• ‘Nix nought nothing’, which Joseph Jacobs included in his English Fairy Tales (first published in 1898): it was originally collected by Andrew Lang from a Scottish woman storyteller.

• ‘La belle Eulalie’. A French tale translated into English as ‘Jean, the Soldier, and Eulalie, the Devil's Daughter’. The story is included in Delarue’s The Borzoi book of French folk tales (1956), where he notes that it was collected by Achille Millen from Marie Moreau ‘whose married name is Balet, called la Mère Balette’ (Delarue 1956, p. 359), and first published by Millen in March 1909. According to Delarue, there were more than 120 versions of the tale current in France by the 1950s. He described the story as ‘one of the most popular, one of the longest, one of the most complex, and one of the loveliest in international folklore’ (Delarue 1956, p. 360)

• There are also at least three ATU313 tales in the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM): ‘Foundling-bird’ (#51), ‘The water nixie’ (#79), and ‘The two kings’ children’ (#113).

Like many of d’Aulnoy’s tales, ‘The orange tree and the bee’ features the (temporary) transformation of humans into animals, as well as the perhaps less remarked-upon temporary transformation of a princess into a homeless, stateless woman who ‘could not read, write, or speak in any language but the jargon of the ogres’ but instead lives ‘in perfect ignorance of all worldly matters’. The scholar Patricia Hannon observes that:

Aulnoy’s enchanted bodies become a theater for self-discovery as well as a conduit for knowledge. Because the world is explored and thus known through the ever-changing body, the latter plays an active role in the quest for knowledge and truth. The fluid boundaries of the metamorphosed self enable the journeys away into forests and countrysides of counter-identities (Fabulous identities: Women’s fairy tales in seventheenth-century France, 1998, p. 79).

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L'Oranger et l'Abeille (The orange tree and the bee): story and annotations

As Paul Delarue notes, this is a long fairy tale. The version provided here is based on Annie Macdonnell’s translation, The fairy tales of Madame d’Aulnoy, newly done into English, which was first published by Lawrence and Bullen in 1892. If you’d like to read a more modern translation, we highly recommend The island of happiness: tales of Madame d’Aulnoy, translated and introduced by Jack Zipes and deliciously illustrated by Natalie Frank.

• Alternatively, you can access a digitised version of Macdonald’s translation at the Internet Archive (sadly lacking the evocative illustrations by Clinton Peters)

Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen who lacked but one thing to make them happy, and that was to have children. The queen was already old, and had given up all hope of having any, when she gave birth to the prettiest little girl that ever was seen. Great was the joy in the royal household. Everyone began to seek for the princess a name which should express their love for her. At last she was called Aimée, and the queen had these words, Aimée1, daughter of the King of Happy Isle, engraved on a turquoise heart, which she hung round the princess’s neck, thinking it would bring her luck, as turquoises are supposed to do. But the rule did not hold good, for one day when they had taken her on the sea to give the nurse a holiday in the most beautiful summer weather, suddenly a terrific tempest arose, so that it was impossible to land; and as the vessel was a small one only for use near the shore, it was soon shattered to pieces. The nurse and all the sailors perished. The little princess, asleep in her cradle, floated on the water, and at last she was cast up on the shore of a beautiful country, where, however, very few people dwelt since the ogre Ravagio and his wife Tourmentine2 had gone to live there—for they ate up everybody. Ogres are terrible people. When once they have tasted raw human flesh they will hardly eat anything else, and Tourmentine always knew how to make some body come their way, for she was half a fairy.

She smelt the poor little princess a mile off, and ran to the shore to find her before Ravagio should have reached her. One was as greedy as the other, and never were such hideous creatures seen, each with one squint eye in the middle of their foreheads, their mouths as big as ovens, their large flat noses, their long asses’ ears, their hair all standing on end, and their humps in front and behind. Yet when the ogress saw Aimée in her beautiful cradle, swaddled in golden brocade, and playing with her little hands, her cheeks like roses white and red, her tiny cherry mouth, laughing and half open as if smiling to the hideous monster who was coming to devour her, moved by a feeling of pity which she had never felt before, Tourmentine determined to nurse her and not to eat her yet at all events. She took her in her arms, tying the cradle on her back, and in this fashion she returned to her cavern.

“See, Ravagio,” she said to her husband, “here is raw flesh, fine and plump and fat, but, by my head, I declare you shall not put your teeth in it. It is a pretty little girl, and I am going to nurse her. We shall marry her to our young ogre, and their little ogres will one day be curiosities to see. They will amuse us in our old age.”

“Very well,” said Ravagio. “You are very clever even for your size. Let me see this child; she seems wonderfully pretty.”

“Well, do not eat it,” said Tourmentine, giving him the little one into his great paws.

“No, no,” said he, “I would rather die of hunger.” And thereupon Ravagio, Tourmentine and the little ogre began caressing Aimée in such a human fashion that it was a wonder to see them.

But the poor child, who only saw these hideous creatures round her, and not a sign of her nurse, began to screw up her little face and then to cry as loud as ever she could, till Ravagio's cavern rang again. Tourmentine, fearing lest this should annoy him, took her and carried her into the woods, the little ogres following after. There were six of them, each one uglier than the other. As I have already told you, the ogress was a kind of fairy, her power being contained in an ivory wand, which she held in her hand when she wished for anything. So now she took the wand and said: “In the name of the royal Fairy Trusio, I command the most beautiful hind of our forests to come here this very minute. Let it be meek and gentle, and let it leave its fawn and come and suckle this little darling that fortune has sent me.” At that moment a hind appeared, to the great delight of the little ogres. Coming near, it gave the princess of its milk, after which Tourmentine took her back to the cave, the hind running after with leaps and bounds, the little one looking and caressing it. When she cried in her cradle there was the hind always ready to feed her, and there the little ogres to rock her to sleep.

It was in this way the king's daughter was brought up, while night and day her parents wept for her, and while her father, thinking her at the bottom of the sea, was making up his mind to choose another heir. When the king spoke of this matter to the queen she told him to do what seemed right, for her dear Aimée was dead, and she could hope for no more children. He had waited long enough, she said, and after the fifteen years that had passed since she had lost her, it would be out of the question to expect ever to see her again. The king, therefore, determined to ask his brother to choose from among his sons the one most worthy of reigning, and to send him the prince at once. The ambassadors, being given their letters of state and all the necessary instructions, set out on their way. They had a long distance to go, but their good ships and a favourable wind brought them speedily to the king's brother, who ruled over a great kingdom. He received them very well, and when they asked him to let them take one of his sons home with them to be their master's heir, he wept for joy. He told them that since his brother had left the choice to him, he would send his second son, the one he would have chosen to succeed himself, whose character so well befitted his high birth that every desirable quality was found in him in perfection.

Prince Aimé (for so was he called) was sent for, and though the ambassadors had been led to expect great things of him, when they saw him they were astonished. He was eighteen years old, and Love, the tender god himself, was less fair to look upon. But his was a beauty which in no way took away from the noble martial bearing which wins respect and affection. He was made aware of his royal uncle’s strong desire to have him at his court, and his father’s intention to send him off forthwith. So his equipage being got ready, he said farewell, went on board, and set out on the open sea.

Leave him there awhile, and may good fortune be his guide. Let us go back to Ravagio and see what our young princess has been doing. She grew in beauty every year, and of her it may be truly said that the charms of the graces and the goddesses together were not as hers. And when she was in that deep cavern with Ravagio, Tourmentine, and the little ogres, it seemed as if the sun and the stars and the skies had come down to visit it. The cruelty she saw among these monsters only served to make her the more gentle, and since she had become aware of their terrible appetite for human flesh, her whole mind was given to saving any poor creature that might fall into their hands. Indeed, in this way, for their sakes she often ran the risk of drawing down all the ogres’ rage upon herself. And this would have happened one day or another if the young ogre had not loved her as the apple of his eye. What will a strong affection not bring about? For this little monster had grown quite gentle from looking on the fair princess and loving her.

But, alas, what was her sorrow when she thought that she must marry this hideous lover! Though she knew nothing of her birth, she felt sure from the richness of her swaddling clothes, the golden chain and the turquoise, that she came of a good stock, and the feelings of her heart told her this still more plainly. She did not know how to read or write, nor was she learned in languages. She spoke the ogres’ jargon, and lived in absolute ignorance of everything; yet, nevertheless, her principles were as good and her manners and temper as sweet as if she had lived all her life in the most refined court in the whole world.

She had made herself a dress out of a tiger-skin, leaving her arms half bare. She carried a quiver and arrows on her shoulder, and a bow at her girdle. Her fair hair was tied with a bit of sea-weed, and floated at will in the wind over her throat and down her back. Her sandals were of sea-rushes too. Thus attired, she haunted the woods like a second Diana, and she would never have known her own beauty if the crystal streams had not served her as natural mirrors, in which she gazed, yet grew no vainer, nor more disposed to look on her own face with favour. The sun had done with her complexion as it does with wax—whitened it; nor could the air of the sea make it tawny. Her only food was the fruits of her hunt or her fishing, and such expeditions were a pretext many a time for leaving the terrible cavern and the sight of more hideous things than could any where else be found. “Ah, heaven!” she said, shedding tears, “what have I done that this cruel ogre should be my fate? Why didst thou not rather let me perish in the sea? Why didst thou save a life which must pass so miserably? Wilt thou have no pity on my sorrow?” So would she entreat the gods, praying to them for help.

When the weather was very stormy, and she thought the sea might have cast some poor creatures on the shore, thither she went to care for them tenderly, and to prevent their coming in the way of the ogres’ cave. One night it happened that a tremendous storm was raging. As soon as it was light she rose and ran to the sea-shore. There she saw a man holding on to a plank and struggling to gain the shore in spite of the force of the waves that ever drove him back. The princess, wishing to help him, pointed out by signs the easiest landing-place, but he neither saw nor heard her.

Sometimes he was so near that there seemed only a step between him and the land, when a wall of water covered him, and he disappeared from sight. At length he was driven on the sand, and there he lay motionless.

Aimée drew near, and in spite of his pale face, which seemed to betoken death, she used every means she knew of to bring him back to life. She used always to carry with her certain herbs, the scent of which was so powerful that it roused people from the longest swoons, and these she pressed now into his hands, and rubbed his lips and his temples with them.

When he opened his eyes he was so astonished at the beauty and at the dress of the princess, that he hardly knew whether it was a dream or real. It was he who spoke first.

She answered, but they did not understand each other in the least, and looked one at the other attentively, half in astonishment, half in pleasure. The only men the princess had ever seen were poor fishers whom the ogres had caught, and whom she had saved as I have already said. What could she think then when she saw the comeliest and most magnificent man in the whole world? For of course it was Prince Aimé, her cousin, whose fleet, shattered by a furious tempest, had struck upon the rocks. Driven about helplessly by the winds, all the crew had perished, or had reached some unknown shore.

The young prince was struck with astonishment that in such savage garments and in a country which seemed a wilderness, so beautiful a damsel could be found, and his recent impressions of the princes and ladies he had seen only served the more to persuade him that this lady he saw before him had not her equal anywhere. In their mutual astonishment they still went on talking without understanding each other’s words, their eyes and their gestures being the interpreters of their thoughts.

The princess after a few moments suddenly called to mind the danger which this stranger was exposed to. She became so very sad and disheartened that her feelings showed themselves on her face.

The prince, fearing she was ill, hastened to help her, and would have taken hold of her hands, but she repulsed him, making signs as well as she could for him to go away. Then she set off running before him, and coming back signed to him to do the same thing. So he ran away and returned. But when he had come back she got angry, and taking her arrows aimed them at his heart as if to show him he would be killed. He thought she meant to take his life, and kneeling on the ground he awaited the stroke. When she saw this she was at her wit’s end what to do and how to express her meaning. Looking at him tenderly, she said: “Ah, must you then the victim of the terrible ogres? Must I with these eyes that now have the joy of looking on you, see you torn to pieces and pitilessly devoured?”

She wept, and the prince in sad confusion understood not a word of what she was saying.

However, one thing she made him understand, that she did not wish him to follow her. Taking him by the hand she led him into a very deep cave with an opening looking towards the sea. She used often to go and lament her misfortunes there, and would sleep there when the sun was too scorching for her to return to the ogres’ cave, and as she was very deft and skilful with her hands, she had hung it round with a tissue of butterfly wings of different colours, and on interlaced reeds forming a kind of couch she had spread a covering of sea-weed. She had put branches of flowers in great deep shells which served as vases and which she filled with water to keep the bouquets fresh. There were all kinds of other pretty things that she had made, some with fish and shells, others with sea-weed and reeds, and about all these trifles, in spite of their simplicity, there was something so graceful that it was easy to see from them the good taste and the skill of the princess.

The prince was so astonished at all this elegance that he thought this cave must be her home. He was delighted to be with her, and though he was not fortunate enough to make her understand the admiration she filled him with, he already felt that he should prefer to see her and to live near her to all the crowns to which his birth and the desires of his family called him. She made him sit down, and then to show that she wished him to stay there till she had brought him something to eat, she undid the rush that fastened a part of her hair, and tied one end of it to the princes arm and the other to the little bed. Then she left him. He was dying to follow her, but he was afraid of displeasing her, and he gave himself up to the thoughts which the presence of the princess had driven away.

“Where am I?” he said. “Into what country has fortune led me? My ships are lost, my men are drowned. Everything fails me. Instead of the crown which was offered to me, I find a miserable cave where I am forced to seek shelter. What will become of me here? What sort of people shall I find here? To judge by the damsel who came to my aid, they are gods, but the fear she had lest I should follow her, that hard and barbarous language which sounds so harshly in her beautiful mouth, lead me to dread some adventure still more terrible than what has already happened.”

Then he went over very carefully in his mind all the incomparable points of beauty in the young barbarian. His heart took fire. He longed impatiently for her return, and her absence seemed the greatest evil of all. Yet she came back with all the speed possible. The prince had not been out of her mind a single instant, and love was such a new experience to her that she did not fear it, but thanked heaven for having saved the prince from the perils of the sea, and begged that he might be preserved from the dangers with which the ogres threatened him. She was so laden and she had walked so quickly that when she got back she felt somewhat faint under the great tiger-skin that served her for mantle. She sat down, and the prince was at her feet in great distress at her suffering, for in truth he felt worse than she did. After a little she recovered, and showed him all the little dishes she had brought him, amongst which were four parrots and six squirrels cooked in the sun, strawberries, cherries, raspberries and other fruits. The plates were of cedar and calambac3 wood, the knife was of stone, the napkins of large leaves of trees, very soft and pliable. She had brought two shells, one containing clear water and the other to drink out of.

The prince showed his gratitude by every sign of head and hands he could think of, and she, with a gentle smile, let him see that all he did was pleasing to her. But the hour for parting having come, she made him clearly understand that she was going away. Both began to sigh, and both to weep tenderly, yet each to hide their tears from the other. The princess got up and made for the entrance, but the prince uttered a loud cry and threw himself at her feet, begging her to remain. She knew well enough what he meant, but she put him aside, assuming a severe manner, and let him see that he must early learn the habit of obedience to her.

In truth, he passed a terrible night. And the princess no less so, for when she reached the cavern and found herself in the midst of the ogres and their little ones, and looked at the hideous young ogre, the monster who was to be her husband, and thought of the charms of the stranger whom she had just left, she was on the point of throwing herself head foremost into the sea. Besides, she was in terror lest Ravagio or Tourmentine should smell human flesh, and should go straight to the cave and devour Prince Aimé. All these terrors kept her awake the whole night.

At dawn she rose and took the road to the shore. She ran, she flew, laden with parrots, monkeys, a bustard4, fruits, milk, and all the best things she could find.

The prince had not undressed. He had undergone so much fatigue on the sea, and he had slept so little during the night that towards day he fell into a light slumber.

“What!” she said, waking him, “I have been thinking of you since ever I left you. I have not even shut my eyes but you can sleep!”

The prince looked at her, and listened without understanding. Then he said, kissing her hands: “What joy, dear child; what joy to see you again! It seems an age since you left the cave.” He spoke to her for long without remembering that she could not know what he was saying. When he remembered he sighed deeply and was silent.

Then she spoke, saying she was terribly anxious lest Ravagio and Tourmentine should discover him; that she dared not hope that he might remain safely in this cave and that if he went away she would die, but that she would see him go rather than see him devoured, and so she begged him to make his escape. Here her eyes filled with tears, and she clasped her hands before her in a piteous fashion. He could not understand what she meant, and in desperation he threw himself at her feet. At last she pointed out the road to him so many times that he understood some part of her signs, and he made it clear, in his turn, that he would die rather than leave her. So keenly did she feel this proof of the prince's friendship that to show him how sensible of it she was, she took off the gold chain and turquoise heart which the queen, her mother, had fastened round her neck, and put it on the prince's arm with the utmost grace. Though overpowered by this favour he could not help seeing the inscription engraved on the turquoise. Looking carefully at this he read:—

Aimée, daughter of the King of Happy Isle.

Never was anyone so astonished. He knew that the name of the little princess that had been lost was Aimée. He did not doubt but that this heart had been hers, but he was not yet sure if this beautiful savage were the princess, or if the sea had cast up the jewel on the sand. He looked at Aimée with keen glances, and the more he looked at her the more he seemed to see a certain family likeness in her manner and in certain features, but it was more especially the feelings of tenderness within his soul that assured him that this barbarian was indeed his cousin.

She looked on with astonishment at all he did, while he raised his eyes to heaven as if to give thanks, gazing at her and weeping, taking her hands and kissing them fervently; then thanking her for all the gifts she had brought him, and giving them back to her again as if to make her understand that a lock of her hair would be more precious to him. And this he asked of her, but it was not easy for him to obtain the boon.

Four days passed away in this manner. Every morning the princess brought him what he needed in the way of food. She stayed with him as long as possible, and the hours went by very quickly, though the pleasure of conversing with each other was debarred them.

One evening, when she was late returning home, and feared she would be scolded by the terrible Tourmentine, she was much surprised to receive a most friendly welcome, and to find a table laden with fruits. When she asked permission to take some, Ravagio told her they were there specially for her; that the young ogre had gone to gather them; that at last the time had come to make him happy, and that in three days he wished to marry her.

This was indeed news for her. Could anything be more terrible for this lovely princess? She all but died of fright and grief but, hiding her pain, she answered that she would willingly obey if only they would give her a little more time. Ravagio became angry, and cried out: “There is nothing to prevent my eating you!”

The poor princess fell senseless with fright into the clutches of Tourmentine and the young ogre, who loved her so well that he entreated Ravagio, so that his anger was softened.

Aimée did not sleep a wink that night. She waited for the day impatiently, and as soon as it appeared she ran to the cave. When she saw the prince she wept aloud piteously, shedding floods of tears. As for him, he could hardly move. His affection for fair Aimée had made more progress in four days than is usually the case in the same number of years. He was dying to ask her what was the matter, and though she knew this quite well she could not explain her meaning. At last she took down her long hair, and put a crown of flowers on her head. Taking Aimé’s hand in her own, she made it clear to him by signs that she would soon be doing the same thing to another than himself, till at last he understood the unhappy fate that awaited him, and that she was going to be married.

He thought he must die at her feet.

He knew neither the roads nor the means of escape, nor did she. They wept, they looked at each other, and made signs to each other that they would rather die together than be apart. She remained with him till evening, hut night came on sooner than they expected. Full of thought, she paid little attention to the paths she was treading, and took a little-used road through a wood, and there a great thorn pierced her foot through and through. Happily she was not very far from the cavern, but she found it difficult to reach it with her bleeding foot. Ravagio, Tourmentine, and the little ogres came to her aid. It hurt her very much when the thorn was taken out, but they pounded herbs and applied them to the wound.

She went to bed in the greatest possible anxiety about her clear prince. “Alas!” she said, “I shall not be able to walk tomorrow. What will he think when he does not see me? I let him know that my marriage was arranged, and he will think I have had to give in to it. Who will bring him food? Whatever he does he must die, for if he comes in search of me he is lost, and if I send a little ogre to him Ravagio will hear of it.” She burst into tears, and sobbed.

She wished to rise early, but it was impossible for her to walk; her wound was too bad, and Tourmentine, who saw her go out, stopped her, and said that if she went another step she would eat her up.

Meanwhile, the prince, who saw the hour pass by when she was in the habit of coming, began to be uneasy and full of fear. And as the time went on he grew still more afraid. Any punishment in the world would have been easier to bear than the anxieties to which his love made him a victim. He forced himself to wait in patience, but the more he waited the less was his hope. At last, ready to die if need be, he set out resolved to seek his dear princess. He walked on without knowing where he was going, and followed a beaten path he found at the entrance of the wood. After having walked for an hour he heard a noise and, seeing the cavern, from whence a thick smoke was rising, he thought he might learn some news of her there.

Scarcely had he set his foot inside when he saw Ravagio, who, taking hold of him with violence, was just going to devour him when the cries he uttered in his struggles reached the ears of his dear princess. At that voice she felt as if nothing could stop her, and coming out of her own hole she rushed into the one where Ravagio was holding the poor prince. She was all pale and trembling, as if she had been going to be the victim. Throwing herself before the ogre, she begged him to keep this human flesh for the day of her wedding with the young ogre, promising that she herself would eat of it. Hearing this, Ravagio was so pleased to think that the princess was falling in with his habits that he let the prince go, and shut him up in the hole where the little ogres slept. Aimée asked leave to feed him well, so that he might be fat and do honour to the feast, and the ogre gave her leave. So she brought the prince the best she could find of everything. When he saw her come in, the joy he felt comforted him in his wretchedness, but when she showed the wound on her foot his grief broke out anew. They wept for long together. The prince could not eat, and his dear mistress cut little morsels with her delicate hands and gave them to him with such grace that it was impossible to refuse them. She bade the little ogres bring fresh moss, which she covered over with birds’ feathers, and then she signed to the prince that his bed was there. Tourmentine calling her, she could say no other farewell but by giving him her hand, which he kissed with such tenderness as cannot be described, while she let her eyes express all her thoughts.

Ravagio, Tourmentine, and the princess slept in one of the recesses of the cavern, while the young ogre and the five little ogres slept in the other. Now in Ogreland it is the custom every night for the ogre, the ogress, and the little ones to put on their heads fine golden crowns in which they sleep. This is their only kind of splendour; but they would rather be hanged or strangled than fail to do it. When they had all fallen asleep, the princess, whose thoughts were with her clear lover, began to reflect that in spite of the promises of Ravagio and Tourmentine not to eat him, if they were hungry during the night, as they nearly always were when there was human flesh about, all hope for him was gone; and her anxiety on his account became so violent that she all but died of terror. After thinking the matter over for some time she got up, put on her tiger-skin in haste, and groping her way noiselessly along, she reached the cavern where the little ogres were sleeping. Taking the crown from the first one that came in her way, she placed it on the prince's head, who was wide awake, but who did not dare to seem so, not knowing who was performing this ceremony. Then the princess went back to her own little bed.

Hardly had she got into it, when Ravagio, thinking what a fine meal the prince would make, and growing hungrier every minute at the thought, got up and went to the hole where the little ogres slept. As he did not see clearly, for fear of taking the wrong one, he felt with his hand, and seizing the one that had no crown, munched him up like a chicken. The poor princess, hearing the noise which Ravagio made in munching the bones of the unfortunate little ogre, fainted and nearly died of fear lest it should be her lover; while as for the prince, who was still nearer, he felt all the terrors of his situation.

Day brought a great relief to the princess. She ran to see the prince, and let him understand by signs her fears and her impatience to see him out of reach of the murderous teeth of these monsters. She spoke kindly to him, and he would have poured out kind words to her had not the ogress, coming to see her children, noticed the blood with which the cavern was full, and found out that the little baby ogre was missing. The shrieks she uttered were terrible, and Ravagio realised the harm he had done—but too late to remedy it. He whispered in her ear that being hungry he had chosen the wrong victim, thinking he was eating human flesh. Tourmentine pretended to be consoled, for Ravagio was cruel, and if she had not taken his excuses in good part, she would perhaps have been eaten up herself.

But, alas what terrible anxiety did the princess suffer. Never for a moment did she give up searching for some means of saving the prince. And as for him, what were his thoughts with respect to the terrible home of this charming maiden? He could not make up his mind to go away while she was here, for death would have seemed sweeter than such a separation. And this he made her understand, when by repeated signs she begged him to flee and to take steps to save himself. They mingled their tears, and taking each other by the hand, each in their own tongue swore faithfulness and everlasting love one to the other. She could not help showing him the clothes she had worn when Tourmentine found her, and the cradle in which she had lain, and the prince recognised on them the arms and the device of the King of Happy Isle. This sight delighted him, and his joy was so evident that the princess guessed that the cradle had told him something of importance. She was dying to hear what it might be, but however hard he tried, how could he make her understand whose daughter she was, and the kinship between them? All she understood was that she had reason to be very happy. The hour for retiring came, and they went to bed as they had done the night before. The princess, a prey to the same fears, rose quietly, went to the cavern where the prince was, gently took the crown from one of the little ogres, and put it on her lover's head. He dared not detain her, however much he wished to, for the respect he felt for her and his fear of displeasing her restrained him. The princess had never had a happier thought than putting the crown on Aimé's head. Without this precaution all would have been lost, for the cruel Tourmentine, starting out of her sleep and remembering the prince she had thought as beautiful as the day and so very appetising, began to be much afraid that Ravagio would go and eat him all by himself. So she thought the best plan was to be beforehand with him. She slipped away, without a word, to the little ogres' hole, where she passed over quietly those that had crowns on--among whom was the prince--and in three mouthfuls the little uncrowned ogre was gobbled up. Aimé and his princess heard everything, trembling with fear; but Tourmentine having made this expedition now wished for nothing but sleep, and they were safe for the rest of the night. "Heaven help us!" said the princess. "Inspire us with what we should do in such a terrible extremity." And the prince prayed no less fervently. At times he thought of attacking these two monsters and fighting with them. But how could he hope to win in the struggle? They were tall as giants, and their skin was pistol proof; so that very sensibly he came to the conclusion that only ingenuity could bring them out of this terrible place.

As soon as it was day and Tourmentine had found the bones of her little ogre, she set up a frightful howling, and Ravagio was no less distressed. A hundred times they were on the point of throwing themselves on the prince and princess and killing them mercilessly. They were both hidden in a little dark corner, but the cannibals knew only too well where they were, and of all the dangers they had met with this one seemed the most imminent. Aimée set a-thinking and racking her brains, and all at once she bethought herself of the ivory wand which Tourmentine used, and which did wonders, though the ogress herself did not know how.

“If, in spite of her ignorance,” said the princess, “most astonishing things come to pass, why should there not be as much power in my words?”

Full of this idea she ran to the cavern where Tourmentine slept and searched for the wand, which was hidden at the bottom of a hole. When she had it in her hands she cried: “In the name of the royal Fairy Trusio, I desire to speak the tongue that is spoken by him whom I love.”

And she would have wished for other things, but Ravagio came in at the moment. So the princess was silent and, putting the wand in its place, came back very quietly to the prince. “Dear stranger,” she said, “your sorrows give me more pain than my own.”

At these words the prince was all astonishment and confusion. “Adorable princess,” he said, “I understand you. You speak my language, and surely I may hope that you also understand that my suffering is less for myself than for you, and that you are clearer to me than my life, dearer than light or than all that is loveliest in nature.”

“My words are simpler,” answered the princess, “but they are nonetheless sincere. I feel as if I would give all that I have in my sea-cave, my sheep, my lambs, in short, everything I possess only for the pleasure of looking on you.”

The prince thanked her a thousand times for her goodness to him, and begged her to tell him who had taught her in such a short time all the terms and all the refinements of a language which had till now been unknown to her. So she told him of the power of the enchanted wand, while he in his turn made known to her her birth and their kinship. The princess was overpowered with joy, and as naturally she had great mental gifts, everything she said was so subtle and so well expressed that the prince felt his affection for her growing more and more.

They had no time to arrange their plans. The first thing to be thought of was to flee from those angry monsters, and to seek as soon as possible a shelter where they might he free to love each other, which they vowed to do for ever, and to wed as soon as they could. The princess told her lover that as soon as she saw Ravagio and Tourmentine asleep she would go and fetch their great camel, and that they would mount on it and ride away wherever heaven should please to lead them. The prince was so glad that he could hardly contain his delight, and though there was reason enough for terror, still the hopeful prospect before them made their present ills easier to bear.

The night so longed for came at last. The princess took some flour, and with her white hands she kneaded a cake into which she put a bean. Then holding the ivory wand in her hand, she said: “Bean, little bean, in the name of the royal Fairy Trusio, I command you to speak when it may be necessary, until you are cooked.”

She put this cake under the hot cinders, and went to the prince who was waiting for her impatiently in the little ogres wretched hole. “Come away,” said she, “the camel is tied in the wood.”

“May love and good fortune be our guides!” answered the young prince in a low voice. “Come, Come, my Aimée come seek a happy, peaceful home.” She had not forgotten to take with her the ivory wand when in the moonlight they set out. Finding the camel, they took the road without knowing where they were going.

Meanwhile Tourmentine, who could not forget her sorrow, turned over and over in her bed without being able to sleep. She stretched out her arm to feel whether the princess was already in her little bed, and not finding her, she cried, in a voice like thunder: “Where are you then, child?”

“Here I am, near the fire,” answered the bean.

“Will you go to bed?” said Tourmentine.

“Very soon,” replied the bean. “Go to sleep, go to sleep.”

Tourmentine was afraid to awake her Ravagio, and was silent; but after two hours again she groped in Aimée's little bed, crying: “What, you little jade, you will not go to bed?”

“I am warming myself as fast as I can,” answered the bean.”

“I wish you were roasting in the middle of the fire for your trouble,” said the ogress.

“So I am,” said the bean; “I couldn't be more so.” And so they went on talking, the bean keeping up the conversation very cleverly till, towards daybreak, Tourmentine again calling the princess, the bean, now thoroughly cooked, did not answer. This silence made the ogress uneasy, so she got up in a great state, looked, called, and searched all round in much alarm. Princess, prince, and little wand, all gone! Then she cried aloud, so that the woods and the valleys rang again: “Awake, my dear one, awake, my brave Ravagio, your Tourmentine has been deceived, and our two human prisoners have taken their flight.”

Ravagio opened his eye, leaped into the middle of the cavern like a lion, roaring, bellowing, howling, and foaming at the mouth. “Come!” said he, “come, my seven-league boots bring hither my seven league boots, till I pursue the runaways! I'll have their blood before they have gone far.” And he put on the boots, which enabled one of his legs to take a seven-league step. Alas! how could the fugitives go fast enough to escape such a pursuer?

You will be astonished to hear that, having the ivory wand, they did not go faster than he, but the fair princess was new to the fairy art. She did not know how much she could do with such a wand, and it was only in great distress that light dawned on her. The pleasure of being together, and able to speak to each other, and the hope that they might be allowed to escape, quieted their fears as they went on their way. It was the princess who first saw the terrible Ravagio. “Prince,” she cried, “we are lost. See this hideous monster coming on us like a thunderbolt!”

“What can we do?” said the prince. “What will become of us? Ah, if I were but alone I should not regret my life, but yours, dear mistress, is in danger !”

“I am in despair. If the wand does not come to our aid,” said Aim weeping, “we must make up our minds to die. In the name of the royal Fairy Trusio, I desire that our camel become a pond, the prince a boat, and myself an old boatwoman to guide it.”

And at the moment the pond, the boat, and the boatwoman took shape.

When Ravagio reached the water's edge, he cried out: “Holloa there! Ho! old Mother Everlasting Haven't you seen a camel, a young man, and a maiden pass by?”

The old woman, standing in the middle of the pond, put her spectacles on, and, looking at Ravagio, signed to him that she had seen them, and that they had gone into the meadow. The ogre, believing her, took the road to the left. The princess then wishing to appear in her own shape again, touched herself with the wand three times, and struck the boat and the pond with it. She was young and beautiful again in a moment, and so was the prince. Mounting the camel, they turned to the right in order not to meet their enemy.

While they were going on their way in all haste, in hopes of finding some one of whom they might ask the road to Happy Isle, they lived on the wild fruits and drank of the water of the streams, and slept under trees in terror all the while lest the wild beasts should come and devour them. But the princess had her bow and arrows, with which she would have tried to defend herself, and the danger did not frighten them so much as to prevent them from realising the happiness of having escaped from the cavern and of being together. Since they had been able to speak the same language, they said the prettiest things in the world to each other, for love is wont to sharpen intelligence, and indeed they had no need of this help, for nature had given them both much grace of mind and a lively wit. The prince told the princess how very impatient he was to reach his father's home or hers without delay, since she had promised that, provided their parents gave their consent, she would marry him. What perhaps will not be easily believed is that, till that happy day should come, they lived alone together in the woods behaving towards each other so respectfully and so sensibly, though he was in a position to do what he liked, that never was so much affection and goodness found together.

After Ravagio had scoured the mountains, forests, and plains, he returned to his cavern, where Tourmentine and the little ogres waited for him impatiently. He came home laden with five or six persons who had unhappily fallen into his clutches. “Well,” cried Tourmentine, “have you found them and eaten them, the runaways, the thieves, the carrion? Haven't you kept a scrap for me?”

“I think they must have flown,” answered Ravagio. “I have hunted on every side like a wolf, and have not seen them—only an old woman in a boat on a pond, who gave me news of them.”

“And what did she say to you?” said the impatient Tourmentine.

“That they had gone to the left,” said Ravagio.

“By my head,” said she, “but you have been made a fool of. I feel sure that it was to their very selves you talked. Go back again, and if you catch them have no mercy.”

So Ravagio greased his seven-league boots, and set off again like a madman. Our young lovers were just coming out of the wood, where they had passed the night; when they saw him they were both afraid.

“My Aimée,” said the prince, “here is our enemy. I feel I could fight him. Are you brave enough to escape by yourself?”

“No,” she cried. “I shall not leave you. Cruel one, do you doubt my affection? But let us not lose a moment. Perhaps the wand may be of help to us. In the name of the royal Fairy Trusio,” she cried, “I desire that the prince be changed into a portrait, the camel into a pillar, and myself into a dwarf.” The change took place, and the dwarf began to blow a horn.

Ravagio, who was coming on with great strides, said: “Tell me, you unnatural imp, have you seen a pretty boy, a little maid, and a camel pass by?”

“Now will I tell you,” said the dwarf. “It is known to me that you are in quest of a gentle youth, a fair lady, and the animal on which they ride. I saw them yesterday at this hour ambling along in joy and contentment. The gentle knight received the praise and guerdon5 of the jousts and tournaments which were being held in honour of Melusine6, whose living picture here you see. Many fine gentlemen and brave knights broke lances there on hauberk7, helmet, or buckler. The conflict was rude, and the reward a very beautiful golden clasp, adorned with pearls and diamonds. As I was taking my departure the unknown lady said to me 'Dwarf, my friend, without more words I ask a boon of you for the sake of your dearest friend'. 'If it be in my power it will not be denied, anti I will grant it,' said I. 'In case, then, she said, 'that you should see the great and wonderful giant with the eye in the middle of his forehead, beg him very courteously to go on his way in peace and leave us to do the same.' Then she pricked her palfrey8, and they went away.”

“In which direction?” said Ravagio. “Towards that green meadow on the edge of the wood,” said the dwarf.

“If you are not telling the truth,” said the ogre, “be assured, you hideous imp, that I shall eat you up and your pillar and your picture of Merlusine and all.”

“There is no villainy or falsehood in me,” said the dwarf; “my mouth is no lying one, and no living man has ever been deceived by me. But make haste if you would kill them before the sun sets.”

The ogre went away. The dwarf assumed her own shape, and, touching the pillar and the portrait, they too took their own forms again.

What joy for the lover and his mistress! “Nay,” said the prince, “but I have never before felt such keen alarm, dear Aimée. As my affection for you every moment grows stronger, so do my anxieties increase when you are in danger.”

“And as for me,” she replied, “I don't think I was in the least afraid, for Ravagio does not eat pictures; I alone was exposed to his fury, and I would give my life to save yours.”

Ravagio ran, but all in vain, for he found neither lover nor mistress. Tired out like a dog he returned to the cavern.

“What, you come back without our prisoners?” cried Tourmentine, tearing her bristling hair. “Do not come near me or I shall strangle you.”

“I have met nobody,” said he, “but a dwarf with a pillar and a picture.”

“By my head,” she replied, “it was they. What a fool I am to leave my revenge to you, as if I were not big enough to look after it myself! Well, well, I am off. I shall put the boots on this time, and I shall go with no less speed than you.” So she put on the seven-league boots, and went away.

How could the prince and princess go fast enough to escape these monsters with their accursed seven league boots? They saw Tourmentine coming, clad in a wonderful serpent's skin of motley colours. Over her shoulder she carried a bar of iron, enormously heavy, and looking round carefully on every side as she did, she must have seen the prince and princess if at that moment they had not been in the depths of a wood. “The case is hopeless,” said Aimée, weeping. “Here is that cruel Tourmentine, whose very look freezes my blood. She is cleverer than Ravagio. If either of us speaks to her she will recognise us, and without more ado will eat us up. Our end is coming, I assure you.”

“O God of Love,” cried the prince, “do not abandon us! Hast thou beneath thy rule any hearts more tender, any affections purer than ours? Ah, my dear Aimée,” he went on, taking her hands and kissing them fervently, “is it fated you should die in so cruel a way?”

“No,” she answered. “No; I feel within me a courage and a resolution which give me hope. Come, little wand, do your duty. In the name of the royal Fairy Trusio, I desire the camel to be a box, my dear prince a beautiful orange tree, while I, turned into a bee, fly round him.” According to her custom, she gave each of them three taps, and the change took place soon enough for Tourmentine, who came up just then, not to see it happening.

The hideous fury was quite out of breath, and sat down under the orange tree, where Princess Bee took pleasure in stinging her all over; and though the ogress’s skin was tough enough, the bee pierced it, and made her cry out. As Tourmentine lay rolling and struggling on the grass, she looked like some bull or young lion attacked by flies, for this bee was as bad as a hundred such; anti Prince Orange-tree was in deadly fright lest the princess should allow herself to be caught and killed. At last Tourmentine went away all bleeding, and the princess was just about to take her own shape again, when unhappily some travellers passing through the wood, and seeing the ivory wand which was very pretty to look at, picked it up and carried it off. Nothing more unfortunate could have happened. The prince and princess had not lost the power of speech, but that was very poor comfort in their present condition. The prince, overcome with grief, uttered his laments aloud, which added greatly to the sorrow of his dear Aimée. Sometimes he would say:—

Long had I waited, and when hope at last                           
     Was mine, and joy had come in sight,                     
All my clear sky was sudden overcast,                            
     All my fair season with a deadly blight.                  
O God of Love whose power is greater still                    
     Than Fortune's cruel intent to bereave me,                         
Watch o'er my mistress's heart, and form her will                     
     That she may ever love, and never leave me.

“Ah, how unhappy I am!” he went on. “Here I am pent up under this bark. Here I am an orange tree. I cannot move, and what will become of me if you leave me, dear little bee? But,” he added, “why should you leave me? You will find on my flowers delicious dew, and a liquor sweeter than honey, on which you can feed. My leaves will serve you for a bed of rest, where you will have nothing to fear from the malice of spiders.” As soon as the orange tree ended his lament, the bee answered him:—

My love is fixed. No wavering to and fro                              
     Thou hast to fear.                           
My heart thou madest thine: it resteth so,                     
     Thy weariness to cheer.

And then she added: “Do not be afraid that I shall ever leave you. Neither lilies, nor jasmines, nor roses, nor any of the flowers in the most beautiful gardens could tempt me to such faithlessness. You will see me flying round you ceaselessly, and you will know that the orange tree is no less dear to the bee than the prince was to Princess Aimée.” And then she shut herself into one of the largest flowers as into a palace, and true affection, which finds resources every where, did not fail in its comfort here.

The wood where the orange tree grew was the favourite walk of a princess who lived in a magnificent palace. She was young and beautiful and clever, and her name was Linda. She had no wish to marry, for she feared that any one whom she might take for a husband would not always love her. And as she was very rich she had a splendid castle built, where she received only ladies and old men, who were more learned than gallant. And no other knights might approach her.

The heat of the day having kept her in her room rather longer than she would have liked, she went out in the evening with her ladies to walk in the woods. The scent of the orange blossom astonished her, for she had never seen the tree before, and was delighted to find it. No one knew by what chance it had come there, and it was quickly surrounded by all this great company. Linda would not let them pick a single flower, and they took it into her garden, where the faithful bee followed. Linda, delighted with its delicious scent, sat down under it, and just as she was picking some flowers before going into the palace, the watchful bee came out buzzing from under the leaves where she had placed herself as sentinel and stung the princess with such a force that she all but fainted. There was no more question of plucking the flowers from the orange tree, and Linda went home very ill.

When the prince was free to speak to Aimée, he said: “What spite have you, dear bee, against young Linda? You have stung her cruelly.”

“How can you ask me such a question?” she answered. “Have you not delicacy enough to see that you should feel affection for none but me, that the whole of you belongs to me, and that I am defending my property when I defend your flowers?”

“But,” said he, “you see them falling, and it does not trouble you. Would it not be the same if the princess decked herself with them, put them in her hair, or wore them in her bosom?”

“No,” said the bee, in a somewhat vexed tone, “it is not at all the same thing. I know, you ungrateful creature, that you care more for her than for me. There is of course a great difference between a lady, refined and richly clad, of high rank, and an unfortunate princess whom you have seen dressed in tiger-skin, in the midst of monsters that have only taught her harsh and savage manners, and whose beauty is not dazzling enough to strike you.” Here she wept as much as a bee is capable of weeping, and some of the flowers of the tender orange tree were wet with her tears.

Aimé was so sorry to have wounded his princess that all his leaves grew yellow, several of his branches withered, and he was like to die. “What have I done then,” he cried, “beautiful bee? What have I done to draw down your wrath on me? Ah, you doubtless wish to leave me. You are already tired of being attached to an unfortunate creature like myself.”

They spent the night reproaching one another, but at dawn, a gentle zephyr9 that had been listening to them, induced them to make up their quarrel, and it could not have done them a better turn.

Meanwhile Linda, who was dying to have a bunch of orange blossom, rose very early in the morning, and went to her garden to pluck some. But as soon as she put out her hand, she felt herself stung so violently by the jealous bee that her courage failed her. She returned to her own room in a very bad temper.

“I do not understand,” she said, “what kind of tree this is that we have found, but as soon as I wish to pluck the tiniest bud from it, the bees that guard it attack me with their stings.”

One of her maidens, a quick-witted, merry girl, said to her, laughing: “I am of the opinion, madam, that you should arm yourself like an amazon, and like Jason10 when he went to capture the Golden Fleece, go boldly, and take the finest flowers of this pretty tree.”

Linda liked this idea, and at once gave orders for a helmet covered with feathers, a light cuirass, and gauntlets to be made for her, and at the sound of trumpets, timbrels, fifes, and hautboys11, she entered her garden, followed by all her ladies, armed like herself. They called this sport the War of the Flies and the Amazons.

Linda drew her sword with much grace, and then striking the finest branch of the orange tree, she cried: “Come out then, terrible bees, come on. I defy you! Are you Valiant enough to defend what you love?”

But what did Linda and those who were with her think when they heard a piteous “Alas!” followed by a deep sigh, proceeding from the trunk of the tree, and saw blood flowing from the branch that had been cut? What a wonder was this!

Taking the bleeding branch, she in vain placed the parts together to join them, and she was seized with terror and horrible anxiety. The poor little bee, in despair at the sad adventure of her clear orange tree, was on the point of rushing to seek her death by the same fatal sword, to avenge her dear prince, but she bethought herself it would be better to live for him, and thinking what remedy he stood in need of, she asked his consent to let her fly to Araby to bring him balm. And after he had at last consented, and they had said a tender and touching adieu to each other, she set out for that part of the world, with only her instinct to guide her. But in truth it was Love brought her there, and as he goes faster than the swiftest flies, by his aid she made a speedy journey, and brought back wonderful balm on her wings and at the end of her little feet, with which she cured the prince. It is true that the cure was due less to the excellence of the balm than to his pleasure in seeing the Princess Bee take so much care of his hurt.

Every day she applied balm to it, and it had need, for the branch that had been cut was one of his fingers, and indeed had he suffered a little more of the treatment Linda had given him, neither arms nor legs would have remained. Oh how keenly did the bee feel the sufferings of the orange tree, and how she reproached herself with being the cause of them, by her over-eagerness in defending its flowers.

Linda, in terror at what she had seen, neither slept nor ate. At last she determined to send for the fairies, to try to get some enlightenment on a matter that seemed to her so extraordinary. So she sent off ambassadors, and loaded them with presents, to request the fairies to come to her court. Among the first to come to Linda's palace was Queen Trusio. There never was any one so learned in the fairy art. She examined the branch and the orange tree, smelt the flowers, and distinguished a human odour that surprised her. Not a charm was there but she tried, and all the most powerful ones too, so that all at once, the orange tree disappearing, they saw the prince, the handsomest, the comeliest alive.

At this sight Linda was struck motionless with admiration, and by some still keener feeling. She was already becoming more than indifferent to him, when the young prince, all whose thoughts were of his dear bee, threw himself at Trusio's feet. “Great queen!” he said, “I owe you everything. You give me back life itself in restoring me my own shape, but if you wish me to be your debtor for all my peace and joy, which is more even than the light you call me back to, give me my princess.” And as he said these words he took up in his hands the little bee, on which he always kept his eyes.

“I shall do as you wish,” replied kind Trusio. And she began her ceremonies again, and Princess Aimée appeared, so charming that not a lady was there but was envious of her.

Linda was secretly hesitating whether to feel joy or disappointment at so extraordinary an occurrence, and more especially at the change of the bee into human shape. But at last reason got the better of an affection which as yet was only in the bud, and she caressed Aimée over and over again, while Trusio begged her to tell her story. Aimée was too good-natured to delay satisfying them on this point, and the grace and the air of distinction with which she talked interested all who were present. When she told Trusio what wonders she had done in her name, and by her wand, a cry of joy arose in the hall, and each one begged the fairy to complete her great work.

Trusio, on her side, felt extreme pleasure at all she heard, and folded the princess closely in her arms. “Since I have been so useful to you without knowing it, you may think, dear Aimée, how glad I am to do you a service now that I do know you. I am a friend of your father, the king, and your mother, the queen. Let us be off at once then in my flying carriage to Happy Isle, where both of you will receive the welcome you deserve.”

Linda begged them to remain for a day with her, during which she presented them with rich gifts, and Princess Aimée cast off her tiger-skin and put on garments of exquisite beauty. Imagine now the joy of those tender lovers. Yes, if you can. But to do so you would have had to undergo the same mishaps, to have been among the ogres, and been changed into all sorts of different shapes.

At last they set off. Trusio drove them through the air to Happy Isle, where they were received by the king and the queen as became those whose presence could least be expected and yet was most longed for. Aimée's beauty and goodness, together with her bright wit, made her the admiration of her age, and her dear mother loved her to distraction. The fine qualities of Prince Aimé charmed no less than his handsome face. When their marriage took place it was celebrated with great splendour. The Graces came in their festive attire. The Loves were there without even having been asked and, by special order of theirs, the eldest son of the prince and princess was called Faithful Love. Since then he has had many different names given him, and among them all it is very difficult to distinguish him as Prince Faithful Love, the fruit of this charming, happy marriage. Happy they who really do meet with him!

Discussion questions

• Since at least the early nineteenth century, critics and scholars have often argued that fairy tales are partly defined by their compactness and simplicity. D’Aulnoy’s story, however, is representative of whole other tradition of fairy-tale writing: what Elizabeth Wanning Harries has called a ‘complex’ form, featuring a richly allusive and literary voice, digressive and exploratory narrative structures or stories, and complex characters. What pleasures are there in reading complex works, versus compact works? What have been the consequences of this schism in the tradition of the fairy tale?

• One of the most striking elements of this tale is its focus on the challenges of communicating across various barriers: species barriers, and (human) language barriers. Various characters engage in non-verbal communication, using signing, gestures, scents, and more. What do you make of this focus on language as a barrier to understanding? Why do you think d’Aulnoy’s tale makes explicit the difficulties the characters face in communicating with each other.

• This tale features one of the most common motifs in fairy tales: that of a human transformed into an animal. Why do you think this motif is so common in fairy tales and other forms of folklore? What is the appeal, or the storytelling usefulness, of this motif?

Writing prompt

In the discussion questions above we noted that this fairy tale includes a common and recurring motif: that of a human transformed into an animal, at least for a time.

For this little writing experiment, choose an animal and first do a little research about it: what is its habitat? what does it eat? is it solitary, or does it live in groups, etc? Drawing on your understanding of the animal, write a scene in which either a real historic character (William Shakespeare? Henry VIII? Mme de Maintenon? Emma Goldman?), a fictional character, or you (yes, you!) are transformed into that form of animal.

For more interesting results, you may find it useful to avoid the obvious in terms of gender alignment, and ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ animals. Often, in our writing, the first few ideas that arise are obvious or cliché: push past them to find something fresher and more surprising.

References

Delarue, P (ed.) 1956, The Borzoi book of French Folk Tales, Alfred A Knopf, New York.

Macdonnall, A & Lee (trans.) 2009 (first published 1892), The fairy tales of Madame d’Aulnoy, newly done into English, Lawrence & Bullen, London, digitised copy, viewed 31 October 2023, <https://archive.org/details/fairytalesmadam00dgoog/page/140/mode/2up>.

Zipes, J (trans.) 2021, The island of happiness: tales of Madame d’Aulnoy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

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A bustard is a bird of the Otididae family. They are large birds who lay their eggs in nests on the ground, and prefer to walk rather than fly. They have long, strong legs, thick toes, and 'fingered’ wingtips. Image is of a male great bustard (Otis tarda)