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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
In 'The Blue Fairy Book,' Andrew Lang compiles a mesmerizing collection of fairy tales from diverse European traditions, characterized by his enchanting prose and adept storytelling. This anthology, the first in Lang's acclaimed series of colored fairy books, showcases timeless tales such as 'Cinderella,' 'The Frog Prince,' and 'Little Red Riding Hood,' weaving them together with delicate, lyrical language that captivates both young audiences and discerning readers. Lang's meticulous attention to the folkloric context creates a rich tapestry that reflects the cultural heritage of the stories, drawing inspiration from their origins while adding his own modern touch. Andrew Lang, a distinguished Scottish poet, novelist, and anthropologist of the 19th century, is celebrated for his passion for folklore and his belief in the power of storytelling. His deep interest in anthropology and history informed his approach to fairy tales, as he sought to preserve the oral traditions of various cultures. Lang's scholarly background, coupled with his poetic sensibility, provided him with a unique lens through which to curate these enchanting narratives, ultimately aiming to revive interest in folklore during a period heavily influenced by realism. For readers of all ages seeking a delightful escape into the world of fantasy and moral lessons, 'The Blue Fairy Book' is an essential addition to any literary collection. Lang's skillful retellings not only entertain but also offer profound insights into human nature and cultural traditions. This timeless anthology promises to delight both children and adults, inviting them to immerse themselves in the magic of imagination. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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The Blue Fairy Book
Table of Contents
Introduction
In The Blue Fairy Book, Andrew Lang gathers portals between the familiar and the marvelous, where courage, wit, and kindness meet enchantment, peril, and caprice, testing how human choices hold their ground against spells, bargains, and the wild logic of wonder; in these tales, forests, kitchens, and courts become thresholds, every threshold asks what price we pay to become ourselves, what debts we owe to others, and what hopes endure when rules bend or break, so that the journey into make-believe turns, again and again, into a study of character, fortune, and the meanings we give to home.
First published in 1889, this volume is an anthology of folk and fairy tales compiled and edited by Andrew Lang during the late Victorian era. It introduced what became known as the Coloured Fairy Books, a sequence of collections that brought traditional narratives into wide circulation for English-language readers. The settings range across imagined forests, royal courts, cottages, and distant realms, reflecting sources from several European traditions and beyond. While each story retains a distinctive atmosphere, the book as a whole belongs to children's literature and to the broader stream of nineteenth-century efforts to preserve, adapt, and share tales from earlier tellings.
Readers encounter a curated cabinet of wonders: short narratives shaped for clarity and momentum, retold in a measured, dignified voice that favors vivid incident over ornament. The collection moves briskly from peril to reprieve, from challenge to reward, with pauses for humor, menace, and awe. Characters often arrive as types—a brave youngest child, a wary wanderer, a canny helper—yet the retellings invite empathy for their predicaments and choices. Because the book assembles tales rather than a single plot, it invites reading in intervals, each piece complete yet resonant with others, building a mosaic of patterns that rewards both play and reflection.
Across its pages, recurring motifs organize experience into memorable questions: what courage costs, what loyalty demands, how gifts and bargains bind, and why a broken rule can carry a price. Transformations—of shape, fortune, and status—test the boundaries between chance and choice. Hospitality and reciprocity matter, as do honesty and restraint; the misuse of power exposes its hollowness, and unexpected kindness alters outcomes. Nature appears as both refuge and trial, the supernatural as a mirror held to human desire. Without prescribing tidy answers, the collection cultivates moral imagination, letting readers sense how virtues grow under pressure and how folly narrows the possible.
Historically, The Blue Fairy Book helped popularize fairy tales for a broad English-speaking audience, making versions of old narratives readily available in a single, approachable volume. Its success opened the way for further installments in the series and encouraged later editors, teachers, and publishers to treat folk literature as a shared cultural resource for young readers. At the same time, the selections and adaptations underscore that transmission is also transformation: retellings reflect their moment even as they preserve older matter. Approached as an anthology with a history, the book invites readers to notice sources, choices, and changes alongside the pleasures of story.
As a reading experience, the collection balances light and shadow with a steady hand, offering brisk plots, clear stakes, and images that linger. Younger readers may delight in the rhythm of trials and rewards, while older readers can trace patterns across tales, comparing how similar problems yield different outcomes. The prose favors forward motion, which makes the book well suited to reading aloud or to brief sessions that end satisfactorily. Because the stories vary in origin and texture, the anthology also invites curiosity beyond its covers, encouraging exploration of how tales travel across languages, regions, and generations without losing their bite.
Today, The Blue Fairy Book matters not only as a landmark of children's publishing but as a living invitation to think about inheritance: how communities pass values, warnings, hopes, and humor through compact narratives. Its variety supports many routes into reading—solitary discovery, family sharing, or classroom comparison—while its questions about fairness, courage, and desire remain immediate. Engaging with it can sharpen attention to language, pattern, and cultural context, and it can renew a sense that imagination is a form of knowledge. To open these stories is to rehearse resilience, practice empathy, and remember that wonder is a discipline as well as a delight.
Synopsis (Selection)
The Blue Fairy Book is the first of Andrew Lang’s Colored Fairy Books, published in 1889, compiling classic tales from French, German, Scandinavian, Arabic, and British traditions. Lang worked with translators like his wife, Nora, to render sources into accessible English. The anthology presents an array of motifs—enchanted objects, impossible tasks, bargains, transformations—balancing adventure, caution, and romance. It opens with stories that quickly establish the pattern of ordinary people drawn into magical tests. The sequence moves briskly from courtly settings to wild forests and distant kingdoms, linking diverse origins through recurring narrative shapes while preserving each tale’s concise momentum and memorable images.
Early selections set the rhythm of quest and consequence. The Bronze Ring follows a humble young man who gains a potent charm and discovers how luck can be won and lost when rivals interfere. Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess introduces a prince whose concealed weakness forces him into self-recognition and search. East of the Sun and West of the Moon sends a determined heroine across impossible distances to repair a broken promise and redeem an enchanted companion. These narratives establish bargaining scenes, secret conditions, and long journeys as central engines of plot without yet fixing final outcomes.
The Yellow Dwarf presents a perilous bargain made under duress, binding a princess to a capricious being and drawing kingdoms toward conflict. Little Red Riding Hood moves from household caution into a forest meeting that tests attentiveness to warnings. The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood pivots on a slight at a royal celebration that triggers a measured curse and a prolonged suspension of time. Together, these entries reinforce the collection’s focus on thresholds, prohibitions, and the costs of ignoring counsel, while letting tension accumulate through delayed revelations, hidden identities, and ritual moments that change the course of single lives and entire courts.
Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper, frames patient endurance and timely aid as a route from obscurity toward recognition, with a public festival serving as the decisive arena. Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp introduces commanding magical helpers and competing claims over power, as a youth negotiates dangers posed by a treacherous magician and the shifting rules of possession. The tale of the youth who set out to learn what fear was explores innocence confronting the unknown through a series of trials. Rumpelstiltskin condenses anxieties about obligation into a puzzle over a name. These pieces advance the book’s interplay of wit and peril.
Beauty and the Beast places reciprocal promises and appearances at the center of a household drama, balancing duty with compassion. The Master-Maid features a competent helper whose foresight and resourcefulness guide a prince through impossible labors and subsequent pursuit. Why the Sea Is Salt offers a compact origin myth in which a miraculous mill yields unintended consequences when used without restraint. The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots, turns audacity and clever staging into social elevation. Across these narratives, crucial turning points hinge on keeping vows, observing prohibitions, and recognizing when trickery serves survival rather than mere self-interest.
Several French courtly tales emphasize ornate tasks, enchanted animals, and the testing of patience. Felicia and the Pot of Pinks entwines kindness with secret assistance that must be protected from envy. The White Cat presents a mysterious feline benefactor setting challenges that conceal larger designs. The Water-Lily and the Gold-Spinners evoke maidens bound by magical compacts and the precision required to undo them. The Terrible Head adapts a classical adventure into a caution about seeing and not seeing. The Story of Pretty Goldilocks gathers quests for rare wonders into a study of service and fidelity amid shifting expectations.
Tales of enterprise and domestic cunning widen the book’s range. The History of Whittington links persistence, trade, and unexpected allies in a city’s bustling economy. The Forty Thieves recounts a discovery that entangles a household with a ruthless band, countered by quick thinking and guarded secrecy. Hansel and Grettel follows siblings into the hazards of wilderness temptation and calculated hospitality. Snow-White and Rose-Red portrays steady kindness toward a stranger with uncanny traits. These episodes underscore the dangers of greed and carelessness, the utility of everyday tools and knowledge, and the protective force of prudence within families and communities.
Questions of identity and obedience sharpen in later European tales. The Goose-Girl turns on a stolen place at court, exposing the divide between outward tokens and rightful status. Toads and Diamonds contrasts two sisters to map the moral consequences of speech and demeanor. Prince Darling and Blue Beard revolve around gifts and prohibitions that measure character under pressure, with keys, rooms, and talismans defining lines that should not be crossed. Trusty John explores loyalty pursued to its extreme cost. The Brave Little Tailor celebrates bravado and resourceful storytelling as a means to navigate giants, contests, and precarious royal favor.
The collection closes with feats and far journeys that reaffirm the power of chance joined to courage. A Long-Bow Story offers comic exaggeration; The Princess on the Glass Hill compacts a competitive quest into a display of endurance and timing; and the story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou returns to Eastern marvels where wondrous objects test judgment among siblings. By arranging sources from many traditions into a continuous rhythm of promises, trials, and recognitions, The Blue Fairy Book presents a portable map of the fairy-tale imagination, expressing lessons about prudence, perseverance, and tact without fixing a single moral or outcome.
Historical Context
Although its tales roam through imagined kingdoms, forests, and cottages across premodern Europe and beyond, The Blue Fairy Book (London, 1889) is a distinctly late Victorian artifact. Andrew Lang, a Scottish classicist and journalist working largely in London, assembled the volume at the height of Britain’s imperial reach and amid a robust print marketplace. Published by Longmans, Green, and Co., and illustrated by H. J. Ford and G. P. Jacomb-Hood, it reflects a milieu of mass literacy, moral didacticism, and fascination with folklore as cultural patrimony. The book’s settings evoke medieval courts, early modern villages, and “Oriental” bazaars, yet its organizing intelligence, editorial choices, and presentation are characteristic of 1880s Britain.
Compulsory education and rising literacy in Britain in the late nineteenth century created the social conditions for Lang’s project. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 established school boards; the 1880 Act made attendance compulsory for children aged 5–10; and the 1891 Act effectively made elementary education free in England and Wales. Railway bookstalls and circulating libraries broadened distribution, while affordable, illustrated gift books surged. The Blue Fairy Book capitalized on this enlarged juvenile readership and the expectation of morally legible yet entertaining narratives. Its careful editing and visual appeal align with an educational regime that sought to instruct through delight, situating the collection within a broader social movement toward child-centered, widely accessible reading.
The British Empire’s consolidation and the era’s Orientalist curiosity shaped which stories were deemed suitable and how they were framed. The Suez Canal opened in 1869, Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, and rule of India had shifted to the Crown in 1858; these developments intensified British encounters with Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures. French translator Antoine Galland’s Les Mille et Une Nuits (1704–1717), including the “orphan” tales of Aladdin and Ali Baba recorded from Hanna Diyab, and later English versions by Edward Lane (1838–1840) and Richard F. Burton (1885–1888), fed Victorian fascination. Lang’s inclusion of Aladdin and The Forty Thieves channels this imperial-era appetite, while adapting plots and diction to Victorian domestic sensibilities.
The professionalization of folklore and comparative mythology in Britain and Europe between the 1870s and 1890s decisively shaped Lang’s collecting and retelling. The Folklore Society was founded in London in 1878 to systematize the gathering of oral narratives; E. B. Tylor’s Primitive Culture (1871) sketched evolutionary models of myth and custom; and debates led by Friedrich Max Müller at Oxford proposed theories (such as “solar myths”) that sought linguistic origins for universal narratives. James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough appeared in 1890, codifying comparative ritual approaches. Lang stood at the intersection of these currents: before The Blue Fairy Book he published Custom and Myth (1884) and Myth, Ritual and Religion (1887), critiquing and refining prevailing theories while insisting on cross-cultural comparison anchored in evidence. This scholarly infrastructure influenced which variants he preferred, what he considered “authentic,” and how he annotated or silently reshaped motifs to suit a youthful audience without, in his view, destroying their anthropological interest. Crucially, the collection’s pan-European scope rests on nineteenth-century editorial traditions: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen (first ed. 1812; definitive 1857), Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe’s Norske Folkeeventyr (1841–1844), and the seventeenth-century French salon tales of Charles Perrault and Madame d’Aulnoy provided stabilized print sources. Lang and his wife, Leonora Blanche Lang—who translated and adapted many tales though often uncredited on title pages—worked from these canonical texts and from secondary translations. Their method reflects the period’s belief that folk narratives reveal deep structures of law, kinship, and belief. The Blue Fairy Book is thus inseparable from the late Victorian drive to classify, compare, and pedagogically deploy traditional narratives, embodying both the rigor and blind spots of contemporary folklore science.
Several tales derive from the aristocratic salon culture of late seventeenth-century France under Louis XIV (reigned 1643–1715). Charles Perrault’s Histoires ou contes du temps passé (Paris, 1697) and Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s collections (1697–1698) emerged from elite gatherings that used fairy narratives to negotiate power, manners, and gendered authority. Courtly etiquette, absolutist politics, and précieuses debates shaped stories like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Bluebeard, which encode anxieties about marriage contracts, inheritance, and patriarchal control. The Blue Fairy Book transmits these courtly parables into Victorian nurseries, retaining their historical social mechanics while pruning or euphemizing elements—thus preserving, in softened form, critiques of coercive authority and domestic vulnerability first forged in Louis XIV’s France.
German political fragmentation, Napoleonic occupation (1806–1813), and subsequent cultural nation-building inform the Grimm corpus on which Lang draws. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, philologists from Hesse, published the first volume of Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1812, revising through a seventh edition in 1857 that softened violence and standardized prose. Their project linked folklore to German identity, a strand later woven into the unification of the German Empire in 1871. The Blue Fairy Book includes Grimm-derived plots—Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Grettel, and Snow-White and Rose-Red—filtered through English translation and Victorian pedagogy. By importing these tales, Lang participates in transnational circulation of narratives once mobilized for cultural consolidation.
Nordic collections, especially Asbjørnsen and Moe’s Norske Folkeeventyr (1841–1844), arose amid Norway’s post-1814 constitutional nationhood and union with Sweden, emphasizing peasant speech and landscape. Tales such as East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Why the Sea Is Salt entered English through nineteenth-century translations that Lang mined, introducing British readers to North Sea cosmologies and agrarian social worlds. The collection also gestures to English civic legend through The History of Whittington: Richard Whittington (c. 1354–1423), a London mercer and thrice Lord Mayor (1397–99, 1406–07, 1419–20), embodies late medieval urban governance and mercantile ascent. Lang’s inclusion bridges continental folklore with English municipal mythmaking tied to commerce and charity.
As a Victorian compilation of earlier narratives, the book functions as social critique by refracting contemporary concerns through inherited plots. Its kings, stepmothers, and ogres stage authority, domestic peril, and class precarity; its clever youngest sons and industrious heroines model meritocratic ascent amid rigid hierarchies. In 1889, the Children’s Charter (Prevention of Cruelty to, and Protection of, Children Act) signaled new sensitivities that the book mirrors by punishing cruelty and rewarding care. The uncredited labor of Leonora Blanche Lang, contrasted with prominent male attribution, exposes gendered inequities in cultural production. Meanwhile, the exoticized “East” of Aladdin reflects imperial hierarchies the collection both indulges and, by humanizing outsiders, quietly complicates.
The Blue Fairy Book
THE BRONZE RING
Once upon a time in a certain country there lived a king whose palace was surrounded by a spacious garden. But, though the gardeners were many and the soil was good, this garden yielded neither flowers nor fruits, not even grass or shady trees.
The King was in despair about it, when a wise old man said to him:
“Your gardeners do not understand their business: but what can you expect of men whose fathers were cobblers and carpenters? How should they have learned to cultivate your garden?”
“You are quite right,” cried the King.
“Therefore,” continued the old man, “you should send for a gardener whose father and grandfather have been gardeners before him, and very soon your garden will be full of green grass and gay flowers, and you will enjoy its delicious fruit.”
So the King sent messengers to every town, village, and hamlet in his dominions, to look for a gardener whose forefathers had been gardeners also, and after forty days one was found.
“Come with us and be gardener to the King,” they said to him.
“How can I go to the King,” said the gardener, “a poor wretch like me?”
“That is of no consequence,” they answered. “Here are new clothes for you and your family.”
“But I owe money to several people.”
“We will pay your debts,” they said.
So the gardener allowed himself to be persuaded, and went away with the messengers, taking his wife and his son with him; and the King, delighted to have found a real gardener, entrusted him with the care of his garden. The man found no difficulty in making the royal garden produce flowers and fruit, and at the end of a year the park was not like the same place, and the King showered gifts upon his new servant.
The gardener, as you have heard already, had a son, who was a very handsome young man, with most agreeable manners, and every day he carried the best fruit of the garden to the King, and all the prettiest flowers to his daughter. Now this princess was wonderfully pretty and was just sixteen years old, and the King was beginning to think it was time that she should be married.
“My dear child,” said he, “you are of an age to take a husband, therefore I am thinking of marrying you to the son of my prime minister.
“Father,” replied the Princess, “I will never marry the son of the minister.”
“Why not?” asked the King.
“Because I love the gardener’s son,” answered the Princess.
On hearing this the King was at first very angry, and then he wept and sighed, and declared that such a husband was not worthy of his daughter; but the young Princess was not to be turned from her resolution to marry the gardener’s son.
Then the King consulted his ministers. “This is what you must do,” they said. “To get rid of the gardener you must send both suitors to a very distant country, and the one who returns first shall marry your daughter.”
The King followed this advice, and the minister’s son was presented with a splendid horse and a purse full of gold pieces, while the gardener’s son had only an old lame horse and a purse full of copper money, and every one thought he would never come back from his journey.
The day before they started the Princess met her lover and said to him:
“Be brave, and remember always that I love you. Take this purse full of jewels and make the best use you can of them for love of me, and come back quickly and demand my hand.”
The two suitors left the town together, but the minister’s son went off at a gallop on his good horse, and very soon was lost to sight behind the most distant hills. He traveled on for some days, and presently reached a fountain beside which an old woman all in rags sat upon a stone.
“Good-day to you, young traveler,” said she.
But the minister’s son made no reply.
“Have pity upon me, traveler,” she said again. “I am dying of hunger, as you see, and three days have I been here and no one has given me anything.”
“Let me alone, old witch,” cried the young man; “I can do nothing for you,” and so saying he went on his way.
That same evening the gardener’s son rode up to the fountain upon his lame gray horse.
“Good-day to you, young traveler,” said the beggar-woman.
“Good-day, good woman,” answered he.
“Young traveler, have pity upon me.”
“Take my purse, good woman,” said he, “and mount behind me, for your legs can’t be very strong.”
The old woman didn’t wait to be asked twice, but mounted behind him, and in this style they reached the chief city of a powerful kingdom. The minister’s son was lodged in a grand inn, the gardener’s son and the old woman dismounted at the inn for beggars.
The next day the gardener’s son heard a great noise in the street, and the King’s heralds passed, blowing all kinds of instruments, and crying:
“The King, our master, is old and infirm. He will give a great reward to whoever will cure him and give him back the strength of his youth.”
Then the old beggar-woman said to her benefactor:
“This is what you must do to obtain the reward which the King promises. Go out of the town by the south gate, and there you will find three little dogs of different colors; the first will be white, the second black, the third red. You must kill them and then burn them separately, and gather up the ashes. Put the ashes of each dog into a bag of its own color, then go before the door of the palace and cry out, ‘A celebrated physician has come from Janina in Albania. He alone can cure the King and give him back the strength of his youth.’ The King’s physicians will say, This is an impostor, and not a learned man,’ and they will make all sorts of difficulties, but you will overcome them all at last, and will present yourself before the sick King. You must then demand as much wood as three mules can carry, and a great cauldron, and must shut yourself up in a room with the Sultan, and when the cauldron boils you must throw him into it, and there leave him until his flesh is completely separated from his bones. Then arrange the bones in their proper places, and throw over them the ashes out of the three bags. The King will come back to life, and will be just as he was when he was twenty years old. For your reward you must demand the bronze ring which has the power to grant you everything you desire. Go, my son, and do not forget any of my instructions.”
The young man followed the old beggar-woman’s directions. On going out of the town he found the white, red, and black dogs, and killed and burnt them, gathering the ashes in three bags. Then he ran to the palace and cried:
“A celebrated physician has just come from Janina in Albania. He alone can cure the King and give him back the strength of his youth.”
The King’s physicians at first laughed at the unknown wayfarer, but the Sultan ordered that the stranger should be admitted. They brought the cauldron and the loads of wood, and very soon the King was boiling away. Toward mid-day the gardener’s son arranged the bones in their places, and he had hardly scattered the ashes over them before the old King revived, to find himself once more young and hearty.
“How can I reward you, my benefactor?” he cried. “Will you take half my treasures?”
“No,” said the gardener’s son.
“My daughter’s hand?”
“No.”
“Take half my kingdom.”
“No. Give me only the bronze ring which can instantly grant me anything I wish for.”
“Alas!” said the King, “I set great store by that marvelous ring; nevertheless, you shall have it.” And he gave it to him.
The gardener’s son went back to say good-by to the old beggar-woman; then he said to the bronze ring:
“Prepare a splendid ship in which I may continue my journey. Let the hull be of fine gold, the masts of silver, the sails of brocade; let the crew consist of twelve young men of noble appearance, dressed like kings. St. Nicholas will be at the helm. As to the cargo, let it be diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and carbuncles.”
And immediately a ship appeared upon the sea which resembled in every particular the description given by the gardener’s son, and, stepping on board, he continued his journey. Presently he arrived at a great town and established himself in a wonderful palace. After several days he met his rival, the minister’s son, who had spent all his money and was reduced to the disagreeable employment of a carrier of dust and rubbish. The gardener’s son said to him:
“What is your name, what is your family, and from what country do you come?”
“I am the son of the prime minister of a great nation, and yet see what a degrading occupation I am reduced to.”
“Listen to me; though I don’t know anything more about you, I am willing to help you. I will give you a ship to take you back to your own country upon one condition.”
“Whatever it may be, I accept it willingly.”
“Follow me to my palace.”
The minister’s son followed the rich stranger, whom he had not recognized. When they reached the palace the gardener’s son made a sign to his slaves, who completely undressed the new-comer.
“Make this ring red-hot,” commanded the master, “and mark the man with it upon his back.”
The slaves obeyed him.
“Now, young man,” said the rich stranger, “I am going to give you a vessel which will take you back to your own country.”
And, going out, he took the bronze ring and said:
“Bronze ring, obey thy master. Prepare me a ship of which the half-rotten timbers shall be painted black, let the sails be in rags, and the sailors infirm and sickly. One shall have lost a leg, another an arm, the third shall be a hunchback, another lame or club-footed or blind, and most of them shall be ugly and covered with scars. Go, and let my orders be executed.”
The minister’s son embarked in this old vessel, and thanks to favorable winds, at length reached his own country. In spite of the pitiable condition in which he returned they received him joyfully.
“I am the first to come back,” said he to the King; now fulfil your promise, and give me the princess in marriage.
So they at once began to prepare for the wedding festivities. As to the poor princess, she was sorrowful and angry enough about it.
The next morning, at daybreak, a wonderful ship with every sail set came to anchor before the town. The King happened at that moment to be at the palace window.
“What strange ship is this,” he cried, “that has a golden hull, silver masts, and silken sails, and who are the young men like princes who man it? And do I not see St. Nicholas at the helm? Go at once and invite the captain of the ship to come to the palace.”
His servants obeyed him, and very soon in came an enchantingly handsome young prince, dressed in rich silk, ornamented with pearls and diamonds.
“Young man,” said the King, “you are welcome, whoever you may be. Do me the favor to be my guest as long as you remain in my capital.”
“Many thanks, sire,” replied the captain, “I accept your offer.”
“My daughter is about to be married,” said the King; “will you give her away?”
“I shall be charmed, sire.”
Soon after came the Princess and her betrothed.
“Why, how is this?” cried the young captain; “would you marry this charming princess to such a man as that?”
“But he is my prime minister’s son!”
“What does that matter? I cannot give your daughter away. The man she is betrothed to is one of my servants.”
“Your servant?”
“Without doubt. I met him in a distant town reduced to carrying away dust and rubbish from the houses. I had pity on him and engaged him as one of my servants.”
“It is impossible!” cried the King.
“Do you wish me to prove what I say? This young man returned in a vessel which I fitted out for him, an unseaworthy ship with a black battered hull, and the sailors were infirm and crippled.”
“It is quite true,” said the King.
“It is false,” cried the minister’s son. “I do not know this man!”
“Sire,” said the young captain, “order your daughter’s betrothed to be stripped, and see if the mark of my ring is not branded upon his back.”
The King was about to give this order, when the minister’s son, to save himself from such an indignity, admitted that the story was true.
“And now, sire,” said the young captain, “do you not recognize me?”
“I recognize you,” said the Princess; “you are the gardener’s son whom I have always loved, and it is you I wish to marry.”
“Young man, you shall be my son-in-law,” cried the King. “The marriage festivities are already begun, so you shall marry my daughter this very day.”
And so that very day the gardener’s son married the beautiful Princess.
Several months passed. The young couple were as happy as the day was long, and the King was more and more pleased with himself for having secured such a son-in-law.
But, presently, the captain of the golden ship found it necessary to take a long voyage, and after embracing his wife tenderly he embarked.
Now in the outskirts of the capital there lived an old man, who had spent his life in studying black arts—alchemy, astrology, magic, and enchantment. This man found out that the gardener’s son had only succeeded in marrying the Princess by the help of the genii who obeyed the bronze ring.
“I will have that ring,” said he to himself. So he went down to the sea-shore and caught some little red fishes. Really, they were quite wonderfully pretty. Then he came back, and, passing before the Princess’s window, he began to cry out:
“Who wants some pretty little red fishes?”
The Princess heard him, and sent out one of her slaves, who said to the old peddler:
“What will you take for your fish?”
“A bronze ring.”
“A bronze ring, old simpleton! And where shall I find one?”
“Under the cushion in the Princess’s room.”
The slave went back to her mistress.
“The old madman will take neither gold nor silver,” said she.
“What does he want then?”
“A bronze ring that is hidden under a cushion.”
“Find the ring and give it to him,” said the Princess.
And at last the slave found the bronze ring, which the captain of the golden ship had accidentally left behind and carried it to the man, who made off with it instantly.
Hardly had he reached his own house when, taking the ring, he said, “Bronze ring, obey thy master. I desire that the golden ship shall turn to black wood, and the crew to hideous negroes; that St. Nicholas shall leave the helm and that the only cargo shall be black cats.”
And the genii of the bronze ring obeyed him.
Finding himself upon the sea in this miserable condition, the young captain understood that some one must have stolen the bronze ring from him, and he lamented his misfortune loudly; but that did him no good.
“Alas!” he said to himself, “whoever has taken my ring has probably taken my dear wife also. What good will it do me to go back to my own country?” And he sailed about from island to island, and from shore to shore, believing that wherever he went everybody was laughing at him, and very soon his poverty was so great that he and his crew and the poor black cats had nothing to eat but herbs and roots. After wandering about a long time he reached an island inhabited by mice. The captain landed upon the shore and began to explore the country. There were mice everywhere, and nothing but mice. Some of the black cats had followed him, and, not having been fed for several days, they were fearfully hungry, and made terrible havoc among the mice.
Then the queen of the mice held a council.
“These cats will eat every one of us,” she said, “if the captain of the ship does not shut the ferocious animals up. Let us send a deputation to him of the bravest among us.”
Several mice offered themselves for this mission and set out to find the young captain.
“Captain,” said they, “go away quickly from our island, or we shall perish, every mouse of us.”
“Willingly,” replied the young captain, “upon one condition. That is that you shall first bring me back a bronze ring which some clever magician has stolen from me. If you do not do this I will land all my cats upon your island, and you shall be exterminated.”
The mice withdrew in great dismay. “What is to be done?” said the Queen. “How can we find this bronze ring?” She held a new council, calling in mice from every quarter of the globe, but nobody knew where the bronze ring was. Suddenly three mice arrived from a very distant country. One was blind, the second lame, and the third had her ears cropped.
“Ho, ho, ho!” said the new-comers. “We come from a far distant country.”
“Do you know where the bronze ring is which the genii obey?”
“Ho, ho, ho! we know; an old sorcerer has taken possession of it, and now he keeps it in his pocket by day and in his mouth by night.”
“Go and take it from him, and come back as soon as possible.”
So the three mice made themselves a boat and set sail for the magician’s country. When they reached the capital they landed and ran to the palace, leaving only the blind mouse on the shore to take care of the boat. Then they waited till it was night. The wicked old man lay down in bed and put the bronze ring into his mouth, and very soon he was asleep.
“Now, what shall we do?” said the two little animals to each other.
The mouse with the cropped ears found a lamp full of oil and a bottle full of pepper. So she dipped her tail first in the oil and then in the pepper, and held it to the sorcerer’s nose.
“Atisha! atisha!” sneezed the old man, but he did not wake, and the shock made the bronze ring jump out of his mouth. Quick as thought the lame mouse snatched up the precious talisman and carried it off to the boat.
Imagine the despair of the magician when he awoke and the bronze ring was nowhere to be found!
But by that time our three mice had set sail with their prize. A favoring breeze was carrying them toward the island where the queen of the mice was awaiting them. Naturally they began to talk about the bronze ring.
“Which of us deserves the most credit?” they cried all at once.
“I do,” said the blind mouse, “for without my watchfulness our boat would have drifted away to the open sea.”
“No, indeed,” cried the mouse with the cropped ears; “the credit is mine. Did I not cause the ring to jump out of the man’s mouth?”
“No, it is mine,” cried the lame one, “for I ran off with the ring.”
And from high words they soon came to blows, and, alas! when the quarrel was fiercest the bronze ring fell into the sea.
“How are we to face our queen,” said the three mice “when by our folly we have lost the talisman and condemned our people to be utterly exterminated? We cannot go back to our country; let us land on this desert island and there end our miserable lives.” No sooner said than done. The boat reached the island, and the mice landed.
The blind mouse was speedily deserted by her two sisters, who went off to hunt flies, but as she wandered sadly along the shore she found a dead fish, and was eating it, when she felt something very hard. At her cries the other two mice ran up.
“It is the bronze ring! It is the talisman!” they cried joyfully, and, getting into their boat again, they soon reached the mouse island. It was time they did, for the captain was just going to land his cargo of cats, when a deputation of mice brought him the precious bronze ring.
“Bronze ring,” commanded the young man, “obey thy master. Let my ship appear as it was before.”
Immediately the genii of the ring set to work, and the old black vessel became once more the wonderful golden ship with sails of brocade; the handsome sailors ran to the silver masts and the silken ropes, and very soon they set sail for the capital.
Ah! how merrily the sailors sang as they flew over the glassy sea!
At last the port was reached.
The captain landed and ran to the palace, where he found the wicked old man asleep. The Princess clasped her husband in a long embrace. The magician tried to escape, but he was seized and bound with strong cords.
The next day the sorcerer, tied to the tail of a savage mule loaded with nuts, was broken into as many pieces as there were nuts upon the mule’s back.(1)
(1) Traditions Populaires de l’Asie Mineure. Carnoy et Nicolaides. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1889.
PRINCE HYACINTH AND THE DEAR LITTLE PRINCESS
Once upon a time there lived a king who was deeply in love with a princess, but she could not marry anyone, because she was under an enchantment. So the King set out to seek a fairy, and asked what he could do to win the Princess’s love. The Fairy said to him:
“You know that the Princess has a great cat which she is very fond of. Whoever is clever enough to tread on that cat’s tail is the man she is destined to marry.”
The King said to himself that this would not be very difficult, and he left the Fairy, determined to grind the cat’s tail to powder rather than not tread on it at all.
You may imagine that it was not long before he went to see the Princess, and puss, as usual, marched in before him, arching his back. The King took a long step, and quite thought he had the tail under his foot, but the cat turned round so sharply that he only trod on air. And so it went on for eight days, till the King began to think that this fatal tail must be full of quicksilver—it was never still for a moment.
At last, however, he was lucky enough to come upon puss fast asleep and with his tail conveniently spread out. So the King, without losing a moment, set his foot upon it heavily.
With one terrific yell the cat sprang up and instantly changed into a tall man, who, fixing his angry eyes upon the King, said:
“You shall marry the Princess because you have been able to break the enchantment, but I will have my revenge. You shall have a son, who will never be happy until he finds out that his nose is too long, and if you ever tell anyone what I have just said to you, you shall vanish away instantly, and no one shall ever see you or hear of you again.”
Though the King was horribly afraid of the enchanter, he could not help laughing at this threat.
“If my son has such a long nose as that,” he said to himself, “he must always see it or feel it; at least, if he is not blind or without hands.”
But, as the enchanter had vanished, he did not waste any more time in thinking, but went to seek the Princess, who very soon consented to marry him. But after all, they had not been married very long when the King died, and the Queen had nothing left to care for but her little son, who was called Hyacinth. The little Prince had large blue eyes, the prettiest eyes in the world, and a sweet little mouth, but, alas! his nose was so enormous that it covered half his face. The Queen was inconsolable when she saw this great nose, but her ladies assured her that it was not really as large as it looked; that it was a Roman nose, and you had only to open any history to see that every hero has a large nose. The Queen, who was devoted to her baby, was pleased with what they told her, and when she looked at Hyacinth again, his nose certainly did not seem to her quite so large.
The Prince was brought up with great care; and, as soon as he could speak, they told him all sorts of dreadful stories about people who had short noses. No one was allowed to come near him whose nose did not more or less resemble his own, and the courtiers, to get into favor with the Queen, took to pulling their babies’ noses several times every day to make them grow long. But, do what they would, they were nothing by comparison with the Prince’s.
When he grew sensible he learned history; and whenever any great prince or beautiful princess was spoken of, his teachers took care to tell him that they had long noses.
His room was hung with pictures, all of people with very large noses; and the Prince grew up so convinced that a long nose was a great beauty, that he would not on any account have had his own a single inch shorter!
When his twentieth birthday was passed the Queen thought it was time that he should be married, so she commanded that the portraits of several princesses should be brought for him to see, and among the others was a picture of the Dear Little Princess!
Now, she was the daughter of a great king, and would some day possess several kingdoms herself; but Prince Hyacinth had not a thought to spare for anything of that sort, he was so much struck with her beauty. The Princess, whom he thought quite charming, had, however, a little saucy nose, which, in her face, was the prettiest thing possible, but it was a cause of great embarrassment to the courtiers, who had got into such a habit of laughing at little noses that they sometimes found themselves laughing at hers before they had time to think; but this did not do at all before the Prince, who quite failed to see the joke, and actually banished two of his courtiers who had dared to mention disrespectfully the Dear Little Princess’s tiny nose!
The others, taking warning from this, learned to think twice before they spoke, and one even went so far as to tell the Prince that, though it was quite true that no man could be worth anything unless he had a long nose, still, a woman’s beauty was a different thing; and he knew a learned man who understood Greek and had read in some old manuscripts that the beautiful Cleopatra herself had a “tip-tilted” nose!
The Prince made him a splendid present as a reward for this good news, and at once sent ambassadors to ask the Dear Little Princess in marriage. The King, her father, gave his consent; and Prince Hyacinth, who, in his anxiety to see the Princess, had gone three leagues to meet her was just advancing to kiss her hand when, to the horror of all who stood by, the enchanter appeared as suddenly as a flash of lightning, and, snatching up the Dear Little Princess, whirled her away out of their sight!
The Prince was left quite unconsolable, and declared that nothing should induce him to go back to his kingdom until he had found her again, and refusing to allow any of his courtiers to follow him, he mounted his horse and rode sadly away, letting the animal choose his own path.
So it happened that he came presently to a great plain, across which he rode all day long without seeing a single house, and horse and rider were terribly hungry, when, as the night fell, the Prince caught sight of a light, which seemed to shine from a cavern.
He rode up to it, and saw a little old woman, who appeared to be at least a hundred years old.
She put on her spectacles to look at Prince Hyacinth, but it was quite a long time before she could fix them securely because her nose was so very short.
The Prince and the Fairy (for that was who she was) had no sooner looked at one another than they went into fits of laughter, and cried at the same moment, “Oh, what a funny nose!”
“Not so funny as your own,” said Prince Hyacinth to the Fairy; “but, madam, I beg you to leave the consideration of our noses—such as they are—and to be good enough to give me something to eat, for I am starving, and so is my poor horse.”
“With all my heart,” said the Fairy. “Though your nose is so ridiculous you are, nevertheless, the son of my best friend. I loved your father as if he had been my brother. Now he had a very handsome nose!”
“And pray what does mine lack?” said the Prince.
“Oh! it doesn’t lack anything,” replied the Fairy. “On the contrary quite, there is only too much of it. But never mind, one may be a very worthy man though his nose is too long[1q]. I was telling you that I was your father’s friend; he often came to see me in the old times, and you must know that I was very pretty in those days; at least, he used to say so. I should like to tell you of a conversation we had the last time I ever saw him.”
“Indeed,” said the Prince, “when I have supped it will give me the greatest pleasure to hear it; but consider, madam, I beg of you, that I have had nothing to eat to-day.”
“The poor boy is right,” said the Fairy; “I was forgetting. Come in, then, and I will give you some supper, and while you are eating I can tell you my story in a very few words—for I don’t like endless tales myself. Too long a tongue is worse than too long a nose, and I remember when I was young that I was so much admired for not being a great chatterer. They used to tell the Queen, my mother, that it was so. For though you see what I am now, I was the daughter of a great king. My father——”
“Your father, I dare say, got something to eat when he was hungry!” interrupted the Prince.
“Oh! certainly,” answered the Fairy, “and you also shall have supper directly. I only just wanted to tell you——”
“But I really cannot listen to anything until I have had something to eat,” cried the Prince, who was getting quite angry; but then, remembering that he had better be polite as he much needed the Fairy’s help, he added:
“I know that in the pleasure of listening to you I should quite forget my own hunger; but my horse, who cannot hear you, must really be fed!”
The Fairy was very much flattered by this compliment, and said, calling to her servants:
“You shall not wait another minute, you are so polite, and in spite of the enormous size of your nose you are really very agreeable.”
“Plague take the old lady! How she does go on about my nose!” said the Prince to himself. “One would almost think that mine had taken all the extra length that hers lacks! If I were not so hungry I would soon have done with this chatterpie who thinks she talks very little! How stupid people are not to see their own faults! That comes of being a princess: she has been spoiled by flatterers, who have made her believe that she is quite a moderate talker!”
Meanwhile the servants were putting the supper on the table, and the prince was much amused to hear the Fairy who asked them a thousand questions simply for the pleasure of hearing herself speak; especially he noticed one maid who, no matter what was being said, always contrived to praise her mistress’s wisdom.
“Well!” he thought, as he ate his supper, “I’m very glad I came here. This just shows me how sensible I have been in never listening to flatterers. People of that sort praise us to our faces without shame, and hide our faults or change them into virtues. For my part I never will be taken in by them. I know my own defects, I hope.”
Poor Prince Hyacinth! He really believed what he said, and hadn’t an idea that the people who had praised his nose were laughing at him, just as the Fairy’s maid was laughing at her; for the Prince had seen her laugh slyly when she could do so without the Fairy’s noticing her.
However, he said nothing, and presently, when his hunger began to be appeased, the Fairy said:
“My dear Prince, might I beg you to move a little more that way, for your nose casts such a shadow that I really cannot see what I have on my plate. Ah! thanks. Now let us speak of your father. When I went to his Court he was only a little boy, but that is forty years ago, and I have been in this desolate place ever since. Tell me what goes on nowadays; are the ladies as fond of amusement as ever? In my time one saw them at parties, theatres, balls, and promenades every day. Dear me! what a long nose you have! I cannot get used to it!”
“Really, madam,” said the Prince, “I wish you would leave off mentioning my nose. It cannot matter to you what it is like. I am quite satisfied with it, and have no wish to have it shorter. One must take what is given one.”
“Now you are angry with me, my poor Hyacinth,” said the Fairy, “and I assure you that I didn’t mean to vex you; on the contrary, I wished to do you a service. However, though I really cannot help your nose being a shock to me, I will try not to say anything about it. I will even try to think that you have an ordinary nose. To tell the truth, it would make three reasonable ones.”
The Prince, who was no longer hungry, grew so impatient at the Fairy’s continual remarks about his nose that at last he threw himself upon his horse and rode hastily away. But wherever he came in his journeyings he thought the people were mad, for they all talked of his nose, and yet he could not bring himself to admit that it was too long, he had been so used all his life to hear it called handsome.
The old Fairy, who wished to make him happy, at last hit upon a plan. She shut the Dear Little Princess up in a palace of crystal, and put this palace down where the Prince would not fail to find it. His joy at seeing the Princess again was extreme, and he set to work with all his might to try to break her prison; but in spite of all his efforts he failed utterly. In despair he thought at least that he would try to get near enough to speak to the Dear Little Princess, who, on her part, stretched out her hand that he might kiss it; but turn which way he might, he never could raise it to his lips, for his long nose always prevented it. For the first time he realized how long it really was, and exclaimed:
“Well, it must be admitted that my nose is too long!”
In an instant the crystal prison flew into a thousand splinters, and the old Fairy, taking the Dear Little Princess by the hand, said to the Prince:
“Now, say if you are not very much obliged to me. Much good it was for me to talk to you about your nose! You would never have found out how extraordinary it was if it hadn’t hindered you from doing what you wanted to. You see how self-love keeps us from knowing our own defects of mind and body. Our reason tries in vain to show them to us; we refuse to see them till we find them in the way of our interests.”
Prince Hyacinth, whose nose was now just like anyone’s else, did not fail to profit by the lesson he had received. He married the Dear Little Princess, and they lived happily ever after.(1)
(1) Le Prince Desir et la Princesse Mignonne. Par Madame Leprince de Beaumont.
EAST OF THE SUN AND WEST OF THE MOON
Once upon a time there was a poor husbandman who had many children and little to give them in the way either of food or clothing. They were all pretty, but the prettiest of all was the youngest daughter, who was so beautiful that there were no bounds to her beauty.
So once—it was late on a Thursday evening in autumn, and wild weather outside, terribly dark, and raining so heavily and blowing so hard that the walls of the cottage shook again—they were all sitting together by the fireside, each of them busy with something or other, when suddenly some one rapped three times against the window-pane. The man went out to see what could be the matter, and when he got out there stood a great big white bear.
“Good-evening to you,” said the White Bear.
“Good-evening,” said the man.
“Will you give me your youngest daughter?” said the White Bear; “if you will, you shall be as rich as you are now poor.”
Truly the man would have had no objection to be rich, but he thought to himself: “I must first ask my daughter about this[2q],” so he went in and told them that there was a great white bear outside who had faithfully promised to make them all rich if he might but have the youngest daughter.
She said no, and would not hear of it; so the man went out again, and settled with the White Bear that he should come again next Thursday evening, and get her answer. Then the man persuaded her, and talked so much to her about the wealth that they would have, and what a good thing it would be for herself, that at last she made up her mind to go, and washed and mended all her rags, made herself as smart as she could, and held herself in readiness to set out. Little enough had she to take away with her.
Next Thursday evening the White Bear came to fetch her. She seated herself on his back with her bundle, and thus they departed. When they had gone a great part of the way, the White Bear said: “Are you afraid?”
“No, that I am not,” said she.
“Keep tight hold of my fur, and then there is no danger,” said he.
And thus she rode far, far away, until they came to a great mountain. Then the White Bear knocked on it, and a door opened, and they went into a castle where there were many brilliantly lighted rooms which shone with gold and silver, likewise a large hall in which there was a well-spread table, and it was so magnificent that it would be hard to make anyone understand how splendid it was. The White Bear gave her a silver bell, and told her that when she needed anything she had but to ring this bell, and what she wanted would appear. So after she had eaten, and night was drawing near, she grew sleepy after her journey, and thought she would like to go to bed. She rang the bell, and scarcely had she touched it before she found herself in a chamber where a bed stood ready made for her, which was as pretty as anyone could wish to sleep in. It had pillows of silk, and curtains of silk fringed with gold, and everything that was in the room was of gold or silver, but when she had lain down and put out the light a man came and lay down beside her, and behold it was the White Bear, who cast off the form of a beast during the night. She never saw him, however, for he always came after she had put out her light, and went away before daylight appeared.
So all went well and happily for a time, but then she began to be very sad and sorrowful, for all day long she had to go about alone; and she did so wish to go home to her father and mother and brothers and sisters. Then the White Bear asked what it was that she wanted, and she told him that it was so dull there in the mountain, and that she had to go about all alone, and that in her parents’ house at home there were all her brothers and sisters, and it was because she could not go to them that she was so sorrowful.
