Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (7 page)

‘How is my child? How is my deer?

I’ve come for the last time – I must disappear . . .’

The king tried to embrace her, but she faded into smoke and drifted out of his arms and mingled with the air.

The deer tugged the king’s sleeve, and pulled him to the place where the tapestry hung. Then he tugged the tapestry down and butted the wall with his little horns. The king understood, and ordered his servants to knock the wall down. In all the disturbance the false queen got out of bed without anyone noticing and tiptoed away. When the wall was down they discovered the bathroom all blackened with soot, and the queen’s body lying clean and pale and fresh in the bath.

The king cried, ‘My wife! My dear wife!’

He bent to embrace her body, and by the grace of God she came alive again. She told him about the dreadful crime that had been committed, and the king sent his swiftest messenger to the palace gates, just in time to tell the watchmen to arrest the witch and her daughter as they tried to creep out.

The two of them were brought before the court. Judgement was pronounced: the daughter was to be led into the woods where the wild beasts would eat her, and the witch was to be burned. As soon as the old woman was reduced to ashes, her spell lost its power over the deer and he was transformed into Little Brother, human again. And he and Little Sister lived happily together for the rest of their lives.

***

Tale type:
ATU 450, ‘Little Brother and Little Sister’

Source:
a story told to the Grimm brothers by the Hassenpflug family

Similar stories:
Alexander Afanasyev: ‘Sister Alionushka, Brother Ivanushka’ (
Russian Fairy Tales
); Giambattista Basile: ‘Ninnillo and Nennella’ (
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition
, ed. Jack Zipes); Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: ‘The Little Lamb and the Little Fish’, ‘The Three Little Men in the Woods’ (
Children’s and Household Tales
); Arthur Ransome: ‘Alenoushka and Her Brother’ (
Old Peter’s Russian Tales
)

One of the few ghost stories in the collection, and similar in that way to
‘The Three Little Men in the Woods’
.

According to David Luke, in his introduction to
Brothers Grimm: Selected Tales
, the first transcription of the story in 1812 only had one bewitched stream, so that the brother was changed into a deer at once, but Wilhelm Grimm in a later edition added the other two for the sake of the fairy-tale three-ness.

The tale as the Grimms have it begins well and tails off limply. The final section has several unhelpful gaps and transitions which leave this reader at least puzzling: if the witch and her daughter murdered Little Sister in the queen’s bathroom, what happened to the body? Why didn’t the deer speak up when he saw her ghost? In fact, why hasn’t the deer got anything to do at all? Why did the nurse not say anything about the apparition of the queen until ‘many nights’ had passed? Did the witch’s daughter remain in bed all that time?

These are not just the sort of thing that fairy tales don’t bother with, and to which it’s silly to expect answers; they are more than that: they are clumsy storytelling. I thought it was possible to deal with them and improve the story.

SEVEN

RAPUNZEL

There once lived a husband and wife who longed to have a child, but they longed in vain for quite some time. At last, however, the wife noticed unmistakable signs that God had granted their wish.

Now in the wall of their house there was a little window that overlooked a magnificent garden full of every kind of fruit and vegetable. There was a high wall around that garden, and no one dared go into it, because it was the property of a very powerful witch who was feared by everyone. One day the woman was standing at that window, and she saw a bed of lamb’s lettuce, or rapunzel. It looked so fresh and so green that she longed to taste some, and this longing grew stronger every day, so that eventually she became really ill.

Her husband was alarmed at her condition, and said, ‘My dear wife, what is the matter?’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘if I can’t have any of that rapunzel in the garden behind our house, I’ll die.’

The man loved his wife dearly, and he thought, ‘Rather than let her die, I must get her some of that rapunzel. I don’t care what it costs.’

So as night was falling he climbed over the high wall and got into the witch’s garden, where he pulled up a handful of rapunzel. He scrambled back hastily and took it to his wife, who made it into a salad at once, and ate it hungrily.

It tasted good. In fact it tasted so good that her desire for it grew stronger and stronger, and she begged her husband to go and get some more. So once again, just as it was getting dark, he set off and climbed the wall. But when he set foot on the ground and turned to go to the bed of rapunzel, he had a shock, for there was the witch standing in front of him.

‘So you’re the wretch who’s been stealing my rapunzel!’ she said, glaring at him. ‘You’ll pay for this, let me tell you.’

‘That’s fair,’ said the man. ‘I can’t argue with that, but let me plead for mercy. I had to do this. My wife saw your rapunzel from our window up there, and she felt a craving – you know how it is; it was so strong she thought she might die if she couldn’t have some. So I had no choice.’

The witch understood the reason. The anger went out of her expression, and she nodded.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Well, if that’s the case, you can have as much rapunzel as you want. But there’s a condition: the child your wife is bearing shall belong to me. It will be perfectly safe; I shall look after it like a mother.’

In his fear the man agreed to this, and hurried back home with the rapunzel. And when in due course the wife gave birth, the witch appeared by her bed and took up the little girl in her arms.

‘I name this child Rapunzel,’ she said, and vanished with her.

Rapunzel grew up to become the most beautiful child the sun had ever shone on. When she was twelve years old, the witch took her into the depths of the forest and shut her in a tower that had no door, no stairs and no windows except one very small one in a room right at the top. When the witch wanted to go in she would call:

‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,

Let down your hair.’

Rapunzel had beautiful hair, as fine as spun gold, and of the same lustrous colour. When she heard the witch calling, she untied her hair and fastened it around the window hook before letting down its full length all the way to the ground, twenty yards down, whereupon the witch climbed up it to her little room.

After she had been in the tower for some years, it happened that the king’s son was riding through the forest. As he came near the tower he heard a song so lovely that he had to stop and listen to it. Of course it was the lonely Rapunzel, singing to pass the time, and she had a sweet voice, too.

The prince wanted to go up to her, but there was no door to be found. He was baffled, and he rode home determined to come again and see if there was another way to get up the tower.

Next day he came back, but with no more success. Such a beautiful song, and no singer to be seen! But while he was pondering, he heard someone coming and hid behind a tree. It was the witch. When she was at the base of the tower, the prince heard her call out:

‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,

Let down your hair.’

To his astonishment, down from the window tumbled a length of golden hair. The witch seized hold and climbed all the way up, and clambered in through the window.

‘Well,’ thought the prince, ‘if that’s the way up, I’ll try my luck with it.’

So the following day, as darkness was falling, he went to the tower and called out:

‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,

Let down your hair.’

Down came the hair, and the prince took its fragrant thickness into his hands and climbed up and jumped in through the window.

At first Rapunzel was terrified. She had never seen a man before. He was nothing like the witch, so he was strange and unfamiliar to her, but he was so handsome that she was confused and didn’t know what to say. However, a prince is never lost for words, and he begged her not to be frightened. He explained how he’d heard her lovely voice singing from the tower, and how he couldn’t rest until he found the singer; and how, now that he’d seen her, he found her face even more beautiful than her voice.

Rapunzel was charmed by this, and soon lost her fear. Instead she felt delight in the young prince’s company, and eagerly agreed to let him visit her again. Before many days had gone by their friendship had developed into love, and when the prince asked her to marry him, Rapunzel consented at once.

As for the witch, she suspected nothing at first. But one day Rapunzel said to her, ‘You know, it’s funny, but my clothes no longer fit me. Every dress I have is too tight.’

The witch knew at once what that meant.

‘You wicked girl!’ she said. ‘You’ve deceived me! All this time you’ve been entertaining a lover, and now we see the consequences! Well, I shall put an end to that.’

She took Rapunzel’s beautiful hair in her left hand and snatched up some scissors with her right, and
snip-snap!
and down fell the lustrous strands up which the prince had climbed.

The witch then transported Rapunzel by magic to a wild place far away. There the poor young woman suffered greatly and, after a few months, gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. They lived like tramps: they had no money, no home, and only what they could beg from passers-by who heard Rapunzel sing. They were often hungry: in the winter they nearly perished of the cold, and in the summer they were scorched by the burning sun.

But back to the tower.

On the evening of the day when Rapunzel’s hair was cut off, the prince came to the tower as usual and called:

‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,

Let down your hair.’

The witch was lying in wait. She had tied Rapunzel’s hair to the window hook, and when she heard him call, she threw it down as the girl had done. The prince climbed up, but instead of his beloved Rapunzel, at the window he found an ugly old woman, demented with anger, whose eyes flashed with fury as she railed at him:

‘You’re her fancy-boy, are you? You worm your way into the tower, you worm your way into her affections, you worm your way into her bed, you rogue, you leech, you lounge-lizard, you high-born mongrel! Well, the bird’s not in her nest any more! The cat got her. What d’you think of that, eh? And the cat’ll scratch your pretty eyes out too before she’s finished. Rapunzel’s gone, you understand? You’ll never see her again!’

And the witch forced the prince backwards and backwards until he fell out of the window. A thorn bush broke his fall, but at the terrible cost of piercing his eyes. Blinded in body and broken in spirit, the prince wandered away.

He lived as a beggar for some time, not knowing which country he was in. But one day he heard a familiar voice, a voice that he loved, and stumbled towards it. And as he did so he heard two more voices joining in, the voices of children – and suddenly they stopped singing, for their mother Rapunzel had recognized the prince and was running towards him.

They embraced, both of them crying with joy; and then two of Rapunzel’s tears fell into the prince’s eyes, and his vision became clear once more. He saw his dear Rapunzel, and he saw his two children for the first time.

So, reunited, they travelled back to the prince’s kingdom, where they were welcomed; and there they lived for the rest of their long and happy lives.

***

Tale type:
ATU 310, ‘The Maiden in the Tower’

Source:
a story told to the Grimm brothers by Friedrich Schultz, based on Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force’s ‘Persinette’ from
Les Contes des contes
(
Tales of Tales
; 1698)

Similar stories:
Giambattista Basile: ‘Petrosinella’ (
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition
, ed. Jack Zipes); Italo Calvino: ‘Prezzemolina’ (
Italian Folktales
)

Like
‘The Frog King’
, ‘Rapunzel’ survives in the popular mind as a single event rather than a connected narrative. The image of the yards of hair tumbling down from the window in the tower is unforgettable. But what happens before and after the hair episode is often forgotten. What about her poor parents, for example? They long for years to have a child, and then she’s born, and the witch takes her away, and then we hear no more about them. This is one way, of course, in which fairy tales are different from novels.

In later versions of the Grimm brothers’ tales, Wilhelm Grimm bowdlerized the exchange between Rapunzel and the witch that had existed in all previous versions, and indeed in the Grimms’ own first edition of 1812. Instead of revealing her pregnancy by saying that her clothes no longer fit, Rapunzel asks the witch why she is so much harder to pull up than the young prince. This is not an improvement: it makes her stupid instead of innocent. Besides, the story is preoccupied with pregnancy: according to Marina Warner, in
From the Beast to the Blonde
, the particular plant longed for by the wife, which was originally parsley, was a well-known abortifacient. What’s more, ‘Persinette’, the title of the de La Force story on which ‘Rapunzel’ is based, means ‘Little Parsley’.

EIGHT

THE THREE LITTLE MEN IN THE WOODS

Once there was a man whose wife died, and a woman whose husband died; and the man had a daughter, and so did the woman. The girls knew each other, and one day they went for a walk together, and they came to the woman’s house.

The woman took the man’s daughter aside, and when her own daughter wasn’t listening, she said, ‘You know, I’d like to marry your father. Tell him that, and see what he says. If he says yes, I promise you’ll have milk to wash your face in every day, it’s very good for your complexion, and wine to drink. And my daughter will only have water. That’s how much I’d like to marry him.’

The girl went home and told her father what the woman had said.

The man said, ‘Marry her? Oh, good grief. What shall I do? Marriage is delightful, but it can be a torment as well, you know.’

He couldn’t make up his mind. Finally, he pulled off his boot and said to his daughter, ‘Here, take this boot. It’s got a hole in the sole. Hang it up in the attic, and then fill it up with water. If it holds the water, I’ll take a wife, but if the water runs away then I won’t.’

The girl did as she was told. The water made the leather swell and squeeze the hole shut, so that when she filled up the boot, all the water stayed in it. The girl told her father, and he went up to the attic to see.

‘Well, fancy that! I shall have to marry her, then,’ he said. ‘You can’t go back once you’ve made a vow.’

He put his best suit on and went to woo the widow, and presently they were married.

Next morning when the two girls got up, the man’s daughter found there was milk for her to wash her face in and wine for her to drink. The woman’s daughter only had water.

On the second morning, both girls had water for washing and water to drink.

On the third morning, the man’s daughter had water, but the woman’s daughter had milk to wash in and wine to drink, and so it was on every morning after that.

The fact was that the woman hated her stepdaughter, and every day she thought of new ways to torment her. At the root of her hatred was bitter envy, because her stepdaughter was beautiful and sweet-tempered, whereas her own daughter was ugly and selfish, and not even full-cream milk made her complexion any nicer.

One winter’s day, when everything was frozen hard, the woman made a dress out of paper. She called her stepdaughter and said, ‘Here, put this on. Then go into the woods and gather some strawberries for me. I want some, and nothing else will do.’

‘But strawberries don’t grow in the winter,’ said the girl. ‘Everything’s covered in snow, and the ground’s as hard as iron. And why must I wear this dress made of paper? The wind will blow through it, and the brambles will tear it to pieces.’

‘Don’t you dare argue with me!’ said the stepmother. ‘Be on your way, and don’t come back till you’ve filled the basket with strawberries.’ Then she gave the girl a piece of bread as hard as wood. ‘Here’s your food,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to make it last all day, we’re not made of money.’

Secretly she thought, ‘If the cold doesn’t kill her, the hunger will, and I’ll never have to see her again.’

The girl did as she was told. She put on the flimsy paper dress and went out with the basket. Of course there was snow everywhere, with not a green leaf to be seen, far less a strawberry. She didn’t know where to look, so she went into the woods along a path she didn’t know, and soon she came to a little house that was about as high as her head. Sitting on a bench outside it smoking their pipes were three little men, each about as tall as her knee, as she saw when they all got up and bowed.

‘Good morning,’ she said.

‘What a nice girl!’ one of them said.

‘Well mannered,’ said a second.

‘Ask her in,’ said the third. ‘It’s cold.’

‘She’s wearing paper,’ said the first.

‘Fashionable, I expect,’ said the second.

‘Chilly, though,’ said the third.

‘Would you like to come inside, miss?’ they all said together.

‘How kind of you,’ she said. ‘Yes, I would.’

They knocked out their pipes before opening the door.

‘Mustn’t smoke near paper,’ said one.

‘Catch fire in a moment,’ said the second.

‘Terrible danger,’ said the third.

They gave her a little chair to sit on, and all three of them sat on a bench next to the fire. She felt hungry, so she took out her piece of bread.

‘Do you mind if I eat my breakfast?’ she said.

‘What is it?’

‘Just a piece of bread.’

‘Can we have a bit?’

‘Of course,’ she said, and broke it in two. It was so hard she had to knock it on the edge of the little table. She gave the little men the bigger bit, and started to gnaw the smaller one.

‘What are you doing out here in the wild woods?’ they said.

‘I’m supposed to gather strawberries,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where I’m going to find any, but I’m not allowed to go home till I’ve filled my basket.’

The first little man whispered something to the second, and the second whispered to the third, and then the third whispered to the first. Then they all looked at her.

‘Will you sweep the path for us?’ they said. ‘There’s a broom in the corner. Just clear the path a bit next to the back door.’

‘Yes, I’d be glad to,’ she said, and she took the broom and went out.

When she’d gone they said, ‘What shall we give her? Such a polite girl. Shared her bread with us, and it was all she had! Gave us the biggest bit! Kindly as well as polite. What shall we give her?’

And the first one said, ‘I’ll make sure she grows more and more beautiful each day.’

The second one said, ‘I’ll make sure that every time she speaks, a gold piece will fall from her mouth.’

The third one said, ‘I’ll make sure that a king will come along and marry her.’

Meanwhile, the girl was brushing away the snow from the path, and what did she find there but strawberries, dozens of them, as red and ripe as if it were summer. She looked back at the house, and she saw the three little men all looking from the back window. Yes, they nodded, go ahead, pick as many as you want.

She filled the basket, and went to thank the little men. They all lined up to bow and shake her hand.

‘Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye!’

She went home and gave the basket to her stepmother.

‘Where did you get these?’ the woman snapped.

‘I found a little house—’ she began, but a gold piece fell out of her mouth. As she continued to speak, more and more gold pieces fell to the floor, till they were heaped around her ankles.

‘Look at her showing off!’ said her stepsister. ‘I could do that if I wanted. It’s not that clever.’

Of course, the stepsister was really wild with envy, and as soon as they were alone she said to her mother: ‘Let me go to the woods and pick strawberries! I want to! I really want to!’

‘No, darling,’ said her mother, ‘it’s too cold. You could freeze to death.’

‘Oh, go on! Please! I’ll give you half the gold coins that fall out of my mouth! Go
on
!’

Finally the mother gave in. She took her best fur coat and altered it so it fitted the girl, and gave her chicken-liver pâté sandwiches and a big piece of chocolate cake for the journey.

The stepsister went into the woods and found the little house. The three little men were inside, looking through the window, but she didn’t see them, and she opened the door and went straight in.

‘Move out the way,’ she said. ‘I want to sit next to the fire.’

The three little men sat on their bench and watched as she took out her chicken-liver pâté sandwiches.

‘What’s that?’ they said.

‘My lunch,’ she said with her mouth full.

‘Can we have some?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘What about that cake? It’s a big piece. Do you want all of it?’

‘There’s hardly enough for me. Get your own cake.’

When she’d finished eating they said, ‘You can sweep the path now.’

‘I’m not sweeping any path,’ she said. ‘D’you think I’m your servant? What a nerve.’

They just smoked their pipes and looked at her, and since they obviously weren’t going to give her anything, she left and looked around for strawberries.

‘What a rude girl!’ said the first little man.

‘Selfish, too,’ said the second.

‘Not as good as the last one, by a long way,’ said the third. ‘What shall we give her?’

‘I’ll make sure that she gets uglier every day.’

‘I’ll make sure that every time she speaks, a toad jumps out of her mouth.’

‘I’ll make sure she dies an uncomfortable death.’

The girl couldn’t find any strawberries, so she went home to complain. Every time she opened her mouth a toad jumped out, and soon the floor was covered in the crawling, squatting, flopping things, and even her mother found her repellent.

After that the stepmother became obsessed. It was as if she had a worm gnawing in her brain. The only thing she thought about was how to make her stepdaughter’s life a misery, and to add to her torment, the girl was growing more and more beautiful each day.

Finally the woman boiled a skein of yarn and hung it over the girl’s shoulder.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘take the axe and go and chop a hole in the ice on the river. Rinse this yarn, and don’t take all day about it.’

She hoped the girl would fall in and drown, of course.

Her stepdaughter did what she was told. She took the axe and the yarn to the river, and she was just about to step on to the ice when a passing carriage drew to a halt. In the carriage there happened to be a king.

‘Stop! What are you doing?’ he called. ‘That ice isn’t safe!’

‘I’ve got to rinse this yarn,’ the girl explained.

The king saw how beautiful she was, and opened the carriage door.

‘Would you like to come with me?’ he said.

‘Yes, I would,’ she said, ‘gladly,’ because she was happy to get away from the woman and her daughter.

So she got in and the carriage drove away.

‘Now I happen to be looking for a wife,’ the king said. ‘My advisers have told me it’s time I got married. You’re not married, are you?’

‘No,’ said the girl, and neatly dropped the gold piece into her pocket.

The king was fascinated.

‘What a clever trick!’ he said. ‘Will you marry me?’

She agreed, and their wedding was celebrated as soon as possible. So it all came about as the little men had promised.

A year later the young queen gave birth to a baby boy. The whole country rejoiced, and it was reported in all the newspapers. The stepmother heard about it, and she and her daughter went to the palace, pretending to pay the queen a friendly visit. The king happened to be out, and when no one else was around, the woman and her daughter got hold of the queen and threw her out of the window into the stream running below, where she drowned at once. Her body sank to the bottom and was hidden by the water-weeds.

‘Now you lie down in her bed,’ the woman said to her daughter. ‘Don’t say anything, whatever you do.’

‘Why not?’

‘Toads,’ said the woman, picking up the one that had just jumped out, and throwing it out of the window after the queen. ‘Now just lie there. Do as I say.’

The woman covered her daughter’s head, because quite apart from the toads she had indeed grown even uglier every day. When the king came back, the woman explained that the queen had a fever. ‘She must be quiet,’ she said. ‘No conversation. Mustn’t speak at all. You must let her rest.’

The king murmured some tender words to the daughter under the blankets, and left. Next morning he came to see her again, and before the woman could stop her, the daughter answered him when he spoke. Out jumped a toad.

‘Good Lord,’ he said, ‘what’s that?’

‘I can’t help it,’ said the daughter, as another toad came out, ‘it’s not
my
fault,’ and another.

‘What’s going on?’ said the king. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

‘She’s got toad flu,’ said the woman. ‘It’s very infectious. But she’ll soon get over it, as long as she’s not disturbed.’

‘I do hope so,’ said the king.

That night, the kitchen boy was wiping the last of the pots and pans when he saw a white duck swimming up the drain that led out of the scullery into the stream.

The duck said:

‘The king’s asleep, and I must weep.’

The kitchen boy didn’t know what to say. Then the duck spoke again:

‘And what of my guests?’

‘They’re taking their rest,’ said the kitchen boy.

‘And my sweet little baby?’

‘He’s sleeping too,’ said the boy, ‘maybe.’

Then the duck shimmered and her form changed into that of the queen. She went upstairs to the baby’s cradle, and took him out and nursed him, and then she laid him down tenderly and tucked him in and kissed him. Finally she floated back to the kitchen, changed back into the form of the duck, and swam down the gutter and back to the stream.

The kitchen boy had followed her, and seen everything.

Next night she came again, and the same thing happened. On the third night, the ghost said to the boy: ‘Go and tell the king what you’ve seen. Tell him to bring his sword and pass it over my head three times, and then cut my head off.’

The kitchen boy ran to the king and told him everything. The king was horrified. He tiptoed into the queen’s bedchamber, lifted the blankets from her head, and gasped at the sight of the ugly daughter lying there snoring, with a toad for company.

‘Take me to the ghost!’ he said, strapping on his sword.

When they got to the kitchen the queen’s ghost stood in front of him, and the king waved his sword three times over her head. At once her form shimmered and changed into that of the white duck, and immediately the king swung his sword and cut her head off. A moment later the duck vanished, and in her place stood the real queen, alive again.

They greeted each other joyfully. But the king had a plan, and the queen agreed to hide in a different bedchamber till the following Sunday, when the baby was going to be baptized. At the baptism the false queen stood there heavily veiled, with her mother close, both pretending that she was too ill to speak.