by Maria Tatar
“My sister, Marlene . . .”
“Oh,” said Little Marlene. “I want to go outside and see if the bird will give me something too.” And she went out.
“Gathered my bones,
Tied them in silk . . .”
And the bird tossed her the shoes.
“Gathered my bones,
Tied them in silk,
“For the juniper tree.
Tweet, tweet, what a fine bird am I!”
Little Marlene felt lighthearted and happy. She put on the new red shoes and came dancing and skipping into the house.
“Oh,” Little Marlene said. “I was so sad when I went out, and now I feel so cheerful. What a fine bird that is out there. It gave me a pair of red shoes.”
The woman jumped to her feet, and her hair stood straight on end like tongues of flame. “It’s as if the world were coming to an end. If I go outside, maybe I’ll feel better too.”
The woman went over to the door and bam! The bird dropped the millstone on her head and crushed her to death. The father and Little Marlene heard the crash and went outside. Smoke, flames, and fire were rising up from the spot, and when they vanished, little brother was back, standing right there. He took his father and Little Marlene by the hand, and the three of them were filled with joy. Then they went back in the house, sat down at the table, and dined.
THE SIX SWANS
king went hunting one day out in a vast forest. He was so intent on pursuing his quarry at one point that none of his men could keep up with him. When it began to grow dark, he reined in his horse and stopped to look around. He realized then that he was lost. He looked hard for a way out of the forest, but he couldn’t find one anywhere. While he was searching, he encountered a doddering old woman who shook her head from side to side as she walked up to him: she was a witch.
“Good woman,” he said, “can you show me the way out of this forest?”
“Of course I can, Your Highness,” she replied. “I can let you know how to get out, but there’s one little condition that goes with it. If you don’t satisfy it, you’ll never leave this forest, and you’ll die of hunger.”
“What’s the condition?” the king asked.
“I have a daughter,” the old woman said. “She’s as beautiful as any woman on earth and deserves to be your wife. If you decide to make her your queen, I will show you the way out of these woods.”
The king agreed to the condition, for he feared for his life, and the old woman sent him into her hut, where her daughter was sitting by the hearth. She welcomed the king as if she had been expecting him. He could see that she was very beautiful, but for some reason he didn’t like her, and he couldn’t look at her without cringing. But he went ahead and got on his horse with the daughter, and the old woman showed him the path out of the woods. When the king arrived at his royal palace, the wedding was celebrated.
The king had been married once before, and he had seven children from his first wife, six boys and a girl, whom he loved more than anything else in the world. He was afraid that the new stepmother might treat them badly or even harm them, and so he sent all of them out to a solitary castle deep in the woods. It was so remote and the path to it was so hard to find that he would have had trouble finding it himself if a Wise Woman had not given him a ball of yarn with magical properties. When he tossed the ball to the ground, it unwound on its own and showed him the path.
The king had been spending so much time with his beloved children that the queen began taking note of his long absences. She was curious and wanted to find out what he was doing out there all alone in the woods. She bribed the servants with money, and they not only disclosed his secret, they also told her about the ball of yarn that you needed to find the path.
The queen could find no peace until she had found out where the king was hiding the yarn. She then sewed little white shirts of silk, and since she had learned witchcraft from her mother, she stitched a magic spell into them.
One day when the king went out hunting, she took the little shirts and went into the woods. The ball of yarn showed her the path through the forest to the house. The children, who could see someone approaching from the distance, believed that their father was on his way, and filled with joy, they ran to meet him. Suddenly the queen threw a shirt over each one of them, and when it touched them, they turned into swans and flew high up over the trees.
The queen went back home, filled with glee, thinking that she had gotten rid of the stepchildren. But as it turned out, the girl had not left the house with her brothers, and the queen didn’t know that she existed.
The next day the king went into the forest to visit his children, but only the girl was there. “Where are your brothers?” the king asked.
“Dear Father,” she replied, “they’ve all gone away and left me here alone.” And she told him how she had stood at the window and watched her brothers fly away high up over the trees. She even showed him the feathers that she had found in the yard, which she had picked up after they left. The king was distraught, but it never dawned on him that his wife was responsible for this wicked deed. He was afraid that the girl would be taken from him as well, and he was planning to take her back home with him. But the daughter was terrified of the stepmother and asked the king if he would stay just this one night in the castle.
The poor girl was thinking: “I can’t live here any longer. I’ve got to go out and find my brothers.” At nightfall she left and fled straight into the woods. She walked all night long, and the next day as well, until she was too worn out to go on. When she found a little hut, she entered it and discovered a room with six little beds in it. She didn’t dare get into any one of them but crawled underneath one and was hoping to spend the night stretched out on the hard ground.
Just about the time that the sun was setting, she heard a whirring of wings and saw six swans come flying in through the window. They settled on the ground and huffed and puffed until all their feathers dropped to the ground, and then their swan skins came off as if they were nothing but shirts. The girl took a good look at them, and suddenly she realized that they were her brothers. She was overjoyed to see them and came crawling out from under the bed. The brothers were just as excited to see their little sister, but their joy was short-lived.
“You can’t stay here for long,” they told her. “This is a robber’s den. If they come back and find you, they’ll kill you.”
“Can’t you protect me from them?” their sister asked.
“No,” they replied. “We only get to remove our swan skins for a quarter of an hour in the evening. For that short time we take on our human form, but then we’re turned back into swans.”
The sister wept and said: “Can’t anyone break the spell?”
“Oh, yes,” they replied, “there’s a way to do it, but it’s just too hard. For six years you would have to go without speaking or laughing. You would have to spend all that time sewing six shirts for us from star flowers. If a single word came out of your mouth, all your work would be for nothing.”
Just as the brothers finished explaining what had to be done, their quarter of an hour was up, and they returned to their shape as swans and flew out the window.
The girl had decided to set her brothers free no matter what, even at the cost of her life. She left the little hut, went deep into the woods, climbed up a tree, and slept there all night long. The next morning she went into the woods to collect star flowers, and she began sewing. She didn’t have anyone to talk to, and she had no desire to laugh. All she did was sit there and attend to her work.
One day, after she had spent a lot of time in the woods, the king of the land was hunting in the forest, and some of his men discovered the tree where the girl had been spending her time. They called out to her and asked: “Who are you?” But she didn’t reply.
“Come down here to us,”
they said. “We won’t hurt you.”
The girl just shook her head. They kept asking questions until finally she threw her golden necklace down to them, thinking that it would satisfy them. But they wouldn’t stop and so she tossed down her belt, and when that did no good, her garters, until finally she had gotten rid of everything that she could manage to do without. She was left there with nothing on but her shift.
The huntsmen refused to make any kind of trade, and they ended up climbing the tree, carrying the girl down, and taking her to the king. The king asked her: “Who are you and what were you doing in that tree?”
The girl refused to answer. The king asked her the same question in every language he knew, but she remained as mute as a stone. He was greatly moved by her beauty, and he felt overwhelmed by a deep love for her. Putting his cloak around her, he mounted his horse and rode off with her to his castle. He dressed the girl in royal garments that made her beauty shine like the sun, but he still couldn’t get a word out of her. He seated her next to him at the table, and he was so enamored of her modest manner and good breeding that he declared: “I want to marry this woman alone, and I’m not interested in any other woman on earth.” A few days later, their marriage was celebrated.
The king’s mother was an evil woman, and she was not at all happy with the marriage. She never missed a chance to speak ill of the young queen. “Who knows where that little hussy came from!” she would say. “How can someone who can’t even talk be good enough to marry a king?”
A year later, when the queen gave birth to her first child, the old woman took it away and smeared blood on the queen’s mouth while she was sleeping. Then she went straight to the king and accused the mother of eating her baby. The king refused to believe what she said and wouldn’t let anyone touch his wife.
For her part, the queen would sit quietly sewing her shirts, paying attention to nothing else. When she gave birth again, this time to a beautiful baby boy, the treacherous mother-in-law played the same trick, but the king still refused to believe what she claimed.
“She is just far too good and too kind to do a thing like that,” he said. “If she could talk and were able to defend herself, it would be plain as day that she’s innocent.”
When the old woman stole the newborn baby a third time and accused the queen of killing it, and when the queen still failed to utter a word to defend herself, the king had no choice but to turn her over to a judge, who sentenced her to death by fire.
The day on which the sentence was to be carried out was exactly the last day of the six years during which she had not been able to speak or laugh and had devoted herself to breaking the magic spell cast on her dear brothers. The six shirts were finished, and all that was missing was the left sleeve on one of them.
When the queen was led to the stake, she had the shirts over her arm. She was already up there at the stake and someone was just coming to light the fire, when she looked up and saw the six swans flying through the air toward her. She knew that they would soon be freed, and her heart swelled with joy. The swans flew right over to her and landed close enough so that she could toss the shirts on them. At the moment when the shirts touched them, the swan skins vanished and there were her brothers standing right before her: strong, fit, and handsome. Only the youngest was missing an arm, and in its place there was a swan’s wing.
The queen and her brothers couldn’t stop hugging and kissing. Finally the queen spoke to the king, who was utterly confused by what was happening. “Dear husband,” she said, “now I can finally speak and let you know that I am entirely innocent and that all those accusations were false.” She told him about how the old woman had stolen away the children and kept them in hiding. To the king’s great joy, the children were brought back, and the evil mother-in-law was sentenced to death at the stake. She burned to ashes.
The king and the queen lived in peace and happiness for the rest of their days with the six brothers of the queen.
BRIAR ROSE
ong, long ago there lived a king and a queen. Day after day they said to each other: “Oh, if only we could have a child!” But nothing ever happened. One day, while the queen was bathing, a frog crawled out of the water, crept ashore, and said to her: “Your wish shall be fulfilled. Before a year goes by, you will give birth to a daughter.”
The frog’s prediction came true, and the queen gave birth to a girl who was so beautiful that the king was beside himself with joy and arranged a great feast. He invited relatives, friends, and acquaintances, and he also sent for the Wise Women of the kingdom, for he wanted to be sure that they would be kindly disposed toward his child. There were thirteen Wise Women in all, but since the king had only twelve golden plates for them to dine on, one of the women had to stay home.
The feast was celebrated with great splendor, and when it drew to a close, the Wise Women bestowed their magic gifts on the girl. One conferred virtue on her, a second gave her beauty, a third wealth, and on it went until the girl had everything in the world you could ever want. Just as the eleventh woman was presenting her gift, the thirteenth in the group appeared out of nowhere. She had not been invited, and now she wanted her revenge. Without so much as a greeting or even a glance at anyone there, she cried out in a loud voice: “When the daughter of the king turns fifteen, she will prick her finger on a spindle and fall down dead.” And without another word, she turned her back on those assembled and left the hall.
Everyone was horrified, but just in the nick of time the twelfth of the Wise Women stepped forward. She had not yet made her wish. Although she could not lift the evil spell, she could temper it, and so she said: “The princess will not die, but she will fall into a deep sleep that will last for a hundred years.” The king, who was intent on preventing any harm from coming to his child, sent out an order that every spindle in the entire kingdom was to be burned to ashes.
As for the girl, all the wishes made by the Wise Women came true, for she was so beautiful, kind, charming, and sensible that everyone who set eyes on her could not help but love her. On the very day that the princess turned fifteen, the king and the queen happened to be away from home, and the girl was left all alone. She wandered around in the castle, poking her head into one room after another, and eventually she came to the foot of an old tower. After climbing up a narrow, winding staircase in the tower, she ended up in front of a little door with a rusty old key in its lock. As she turned the key, the door burst open to reveal a tiny little room, in which an old woman was sitting with her spindle, busily spinning flax.
“Good afternoon, Granny,” said the princess. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m spinning flax,” the old woman replied, and she nodded to the girl.
“What is that thing bobbing about so oddly?” asked the girl, and she put her hand on the spindle, for she too wanted to spin. The magic spell began to take effect at once, for she had pricked her finger on the spindle.
The instant she felt the prick on her finger, she slumped down on the bed that was in the room, and a deep sleep came over her. The sleep spread through the entire castle. The king and the queen, who had just returned home and were entering the hall, fell asleep, and their attendants along with them. The horses fell asleep in the stables, the dogs in the courtyard, the doves on the roof, the flies on the walls, and yes indeed, even the fire flickering in the hearth died down and fell asleep, and the roast stopped sizzling, and the cook, who was about to pull the hair of the kitchen boy because he had done something stupid, let go and fell asleep. The wind also died down so that not a leaf was stirring on the trees outside the castle.
Soon a hedge of briars began to grow all around the castle. Every year it grew higher until one day it surrounded the entire place. It had grown so thick that you could not even see the banner on the turret of the castle. Throughout the land, stories circulated about the beautiful Briar Rose, for that was the name given to the slumb
ering princess. From time to time a prince would try to force his way through the hedge to get to the castle. But no one ever succeeded, because the briars clasped each other as if they were holding hands, and the young men who tried got caught in them and couldn’t pry themselves loose. They died an agonizing death.
After many, many years had passed, another prince appeared in the land. He heard an old man talking about a briar hedge that was said to conceal a castle, where a wondrously beautiful princess named Briar Rose had been sleeping for a hundred years, and with her the king, the queen, and the entire court. The old man had learned from his grandfather that many other princes had tried to make their way through the briar hedge, but they had gotten caught on the briars and perished in horrible ways. The young man said: “I am not afraid. I am going to find that castle so that I can see the beautiful Briar Rose.” The kind old man did his best to discourage the prince, but he refused to listen.
It so happened that the term of one hundred years had just ended, and the day on which Briar Rose was to awaken had arrived. When the prince approached the briar hedge, he found nothing but big, beautiful flowers. They opened to make a path for him and to let him pass unharmed; then they closed behind him to form a hedge.
In the courtyard the horses and the spotted hounds were lying in the same place fast asleep, and the doves were roosting with their little heads tucked under their wings. The prince made his way into the castle and saw how the flies were fast asleep on the walls. The cook was still in the kitchen, with his hand up in the air as if he were about to grab the kitchen boy, and the maid was still sitting at a table with a black hen that she was about to pluck.
The prince walked along a little farther, over to the great hall, where he saw the entire court fast asleep, with the king and the queen sleeping right next to their thrones. He continued on his way, and everything was so quiet that he could hear his own breath. Finally he got to the tower, and he opened up the door to the little room in which Briar Rose was sleeping. There she lay, so beautiful that he could not take his eyes off her, and he bent down to kiss her.
