Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm

by Philip Pullman

  ‘My mother cut my head off,

  My father swallowed me,

  My sister buried all my bones

  Under the juniper tree.

  Keewitt! Keewitt! You’ll never find

  A prettier bird than me!’

  Then he flew away, out of the town and along the river, and in his right claw he had the golden chain and in his left he had the slippers. He flew and he flew till he came to a mill, and the mill wheel was going clippety-clap, clippety-clap, clippety-clap. Outside the mill twenty apprentices were sitting down chiselling a new millstone, hick-hack, hick-hack, hick-hack, and the mill went clippety-clap, clippety-clap, clippety-clap.

  The bird flew round and perched on a linden tree that stood in front of the mill, and began to sing:

  ‘My mother cut my head off—’

  And one of the apprentices stopped working and looked up.

  ‘My father swallowed me—’

  Two more stopped working and listened.

  ‘My sister buried all my bones—’

  Four of them stopped.

  ‘Under the juniper tree—’

  And eight put their chisels down.

  ‘Keewitt! Keewitt! You’ll never find—’

  And now four more looked all around.

  ‘A prettier bird than me!’

  Finally the last apprentice heard, and dropped his chisel, and then all twenty burst into cheers and clapped and threw their hats in the air.

  ‘Bird,’ cried the last apprentice, ‘that’s the best song I’ve ever heard! But I only heard the last line. Sing it again for me!’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the bird, ‘I don’t sing twice for nothing. Give me that millstone you’re all working on, and I’ll sing you the song again.’

  ‘If it only belonged to me, you could have it like a shot!’ he said. ‘But . . .’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said the others. ‘If he sings again, he can have it and welcome.’

  So the twenty apprentices took a long beam and laid the end under the edge of the millstone and heaved it up: Heave-hup! Heave-hup! Heave-hup!

  The bird flew down and put his head through the hole in the middle, and wearing it like a collar he flew back up to the tree and sang again:

  ‘My mother cut my head off,

  My father swallowed me,

  My sister buried all my bones

  Under the juniper tree.

  Keewitt! Keewitt! You’ll never find

  A prettier bird than me!’

  When he’d finished the song he spread his wings and flew up in the air. In his right claw he had the golden chain, in his left claw he had the shoes, and around his neck was the millstone. He flew and he flew all the way back to his father’s house.

  Inside the house, father and mother and Marleenken were sitting at the table.

  Father said, ‘You know, I feel happy for some reason. I feel better than I’ve done for days.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you,’ said the wife. ‘I don’t feel well at all. I feel as if a bad storm were coming.’

  As for Marleenken, she just sat and wept.

  At that moment, the bird arrived. He flew around the house and settled on the roof, and as he did that, father said, ‘No, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so well. The sun’s shining outside, and I feel as if I’m going to see an old friend.’

  ‘Well, I feel terrible!’ said the woman. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I feel cold and hot all over. My teeth are chattering and my veins are filled with fire.’

  She tore open her bodice with trembling hands. Marleenken sat in the corner, weeping and weeping so much that her handkerchief was soaked right through.

  Then the bird left the roof and flew to the juniper tree, where they could all see him, and he sang:

  ‘My mother cut my head off—’

  The mother pressed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes tight shut. There was a roaring in her head, and behind her eyelids lightning burned and flashed.

  ‘My father swallowed me—’

  ‘Wife, look at this!’ cried the man. ‘You’ve never seen such a lovely bird! He’s singing like an angel, and the sun’s shining so warmly, and the air smells like cinnamon!’

  ‘My sister buried all my bones—’

  Marleenken laid her head on her knees sobbing and crying, but the father said, ‘I’m going out. I’ve got to see this bird close to!’

  ‘No! Don’t go!’ cried the wife. ‘I feel as if the whole house is shaking and burning!’

  But the father ran out into the sunshine and gazed up at the bird as he sang:

  ‘Under the juniper tree.

  Keewitt! Keewitt! You’ll never find

  A prettier bird than me!’

  As he sang the last note he dropped the golden chain, and it fell around the father’s neck and fitted him as if it had been made for him. The father ran in at once, and said, ‘What a beautiful bird! And see what he’s given me – look!’

  The woman was too terrified to look. She fell down on the floor, and her cap fell off her head and rolled away into the corner.

  Then the bird sang once more:

  ‘My mother cut my head off—’

  ‘No! I can’t bear it! I wish I were a thousand feet under the ground, so I wouldn’t have to hear that song!’

  ‘My father swallowed me—’

  And the wife fell down again as if she’d been stunned, and her fingernails were scratching at the floor.

  ‘My sister buried all my bones—’

  And Marleenken wiped her eyes and got up. ‘I’ll go and see if the bird will give me something,’ she said, and ran outside.

  ‘Under the juniper tree—’

  As he said that, the bird threw down the little red shoes.

  ‘Keewitt! Keewitt! You’ll never find

  A prettier bird than me!’

  Marleenken put on the shoes, and found they fitted her perfectly. She was delighted, and she danced and skipped into the house and said, ‘Oh, what a beautiful bird! I was so sad when I went out, and see what he’s given me! Mama, look at these lovely shoes!’

  ‘No! No!’ cried the woman. She jumped to her feet, and her hair stood out all round her head like flames of fire. ‘I can’t stand any more! I feel as if the world were coming to an end! I can’t stand it!’

  And she ran out of the door and out on to the grass, and – bam! The bird dropped the millstone on her head, and she was crushed to death.

  The father and Marleenken heard the crash and ran out. Smoke and flames and fire were rising from the spot, and then came a breath of wind and cleared them all away; and when they were gone, there was little brother standing there.

  And he took his father by one hand and Marleenken by the other, and all three of them were very happy; and so they went inside their house and sat down at the table and ate their supper.

  ***

  Tale type: ATU 720, ‘The Juniper Tree’

  Source: a story written by Philipp Otto Runge

  Similar stories: Katharine M. Briggs: ‘The Little Bird’, ‘The Milk-White Doo’, ‘Orange and Lemon’, ‘The Rose Tree’ (Folk Tales of Britain)

  For beauty, for horror, for perfection of form, this story has no equal. Like ‘The Fisherman and His Wife’, it is the work of the painter Philipp Otto Runge, and came to the Grimms in manuscript form and in the Pomeranian dialect of Plattdeutsch or Low German.

  A comparison with the several versions of the story in Katharine M. Briggs’s Folk Tales of Britain will show how much Runge improved the basic thread of the narrative. Her versions are thin and insubstantial: this is a masterpiece.

  The prelude, with its lovely evocation of the seasons changing as the wife’s pregnancy d
evelops, associates the child in her womb with the regenerative powers of nature, and especially with the juniper tree itself. After the mother’s death comes the first part of the story proper, the gruesome tale of the stepmother and the little boy up to the appearance of the bird, which would be simple Grand Guignol were it not for the unusual depths of malice shown in the character of the mother. The parallels with Greek drama (Atreus feeding Thyestes his own sons) and Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus feeding Tamora hers) are interesting too. The father’s eating the son is capable of many interpretations: a student of mine once suggested that the father is unconsciously aware of the threat posed to his son by the stepmother, and is putting him in a place where he’ll be perfectly safe. I thought that was ingenious.

  After the horror of the first part of the story proper, everything is sunshine and light. At first we can’t understand what the bird is doing, but the golden chain and the red slippers are pretty, and the comedy of the goldsmith running out of the house and losing his own slipper is diverting. Finally we come to the mill, and the second part of the story ends with the bird improbably but convincingly flying away with the millstone as well as the slippers and the chain. Then we begin to understand.

  The final part of the story is reminiscent of the climax of ‘The Fisherman and His Wife’, with the storm paralleling the climax of guilt and madness felt by the wife. This time, the storm is internal: the father and Marleenken feel nothing but delight and pleasure as the little boy is returned to them, while the mother is demented with terror.

  There is an interesting point connected with the actual telling of this story, which bears out its literary nature. It matters a great deal to remember exactly the sequence of events as the woman’s pregnancy develops, and the number of apprentices who stop chipping at the millstone with each line of the verse, and the precise way the mother’s terror is interlined with the bird’s singing and the gifts of the chain and the slippers. The precision of Runge’s narration deserves – and rewards – complete faithfulness.

  What a privilege it is to tell this story.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  BRIAR ROSE

  Once there were a king and queen who said to each other every day, ‘Wouldn’t it be good to have a child?’ But for all their wishing, all their praying, all their expensive medicine and special diets, no child came.

  Then one day, when the queen was bathing, a frog crept out of the water and sat on the bank and said to her, ‘Your wish will be granted. Before a year has passed, you’ll bring a daughter into the world.’

  The frog’s words came true. After a year the queen gave birth to a baby girl who was so beautiful that the king couldn’t contain his joy, and he ordered a great celebration to which he invited not only his royal relatives from every nearby country, but also friends and distinguished people of every kind. Among those were the thirteen Wise Women. The king wanted them there so that they’d be well disposed towards his daughter, but the trouble was that he only had twelve gold plates for them to eat off. One of the Wise Women would have to stay at home.

  The feasting and celebrating went on for some time, and it ended with the Wise Women presenting the new princess with special gifts. This one gave her virtue, that one gave her beauty, a third gave her wealth, and so on; everything anyone could wish for was hers.

  The eleventh one had just given her gift (patience) when there was a disturbance at the door. The guards were trying to keep someone out, but she swept them aside and came in anyway. It was the thirteenth Wise Woman.

  ‘So you didn’t think me worth inviting?’ she said to the king. ‘What a mistake that was! Here’s my answer to that insult: in her fifteenth year, the princess will prick her finger on a spindle and fall down dead.’

  And she turned on her heel and swept out.

  Everyone was shocked. But the twelfth Wise Woman, who hadn’t given her gift yet, stepped forward and said: ‘I can’t completely undo that evil wish, but I can soften it. The princess will not die, but fall asleep for a hundred years.’

  The king, wanting to protect his daughter, issued a command that every spindle in the land should be burned. As the princess grew up it was clear that all the Wise Women’s gifts were there in full abundance: never had anyone known a girl kinder, more beautiful, more clever or more sweet-tempered. She was loved by everyone who knew her.

  Now on the day when the princess turned fifteen, it happened that the king and the queen were away, and the girl was alone in the castle. She wandered about from one place to the next, looking into this room or that, into the cellar, up on the rooftop, going wherever she wanted; and at last she came to an old tower where she’d never been before. She climbed up the dusty spiral staircase and found a small door at the top with a rusty key in the lock.

  Curious, the princess turned the key and at once the door sprang open. In the little room sat an old woman with a spindle, busily spinning flax.

  ‘Good morning, old lady,’ said the princess. ‘What’s that you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m spinning,’ said the old woman.

  Of course, the princess had never seen anyone spinning before.

  ‘What’s that little thing bouncing around at the end of the thread?’ she said.

  The old woman offered to show her how to do it. The princess took hold of the spindle, and a second later she felt a prick in her finger – and down she fell on the bed that lay ready, fast asleep.

  The sleep was so deep that it spread through all the castle. The king and queen had just returned, and as soon as they walked into the hall they fell down where they stood. Their servants and attendants fell down too, like dominoes in a line, and so did the horses in the stables and the grooms looking after them, and the pigeons on the roof and the dogs in the courtyard. One dog was scratching himself: he fell asleep just like that, with his back paw behind his ear. The flies on the wall fell asleep. Down in the kitchen the very flames under the roasting ox fell asleep. A drop of fat that was about to fall from the sizzling carcass stayed where it was and didn’t move. The cook had been about to clout the kitchen boy; her hand fell still six inches from his ear, and his face remained screwed up waiting for the blow. Outside the wind stopped blowing; not a leaf stirred; the very ripples on the lake stayed as they were, as if made of glass.

  In all the castle and its grounds the only thing that moved was a thorny hedge. Every year it grew a little more, and it slowly grew and grew till it reached the castle walls, and then it climbed and climbed year by year till it covered the entire castle. Nothing of the building could be seen, not even the flag on the roof.

  Of course people wondered why this was happening, and where the king and queen and their beautiful daughter were. But there were a few people who’d been guests at the celebration of the princess’s birth, and who remembered the Wise Women and their gifts, and the curse of the one who’d been left out.

  ‘It’s all because the beautiful princess fell asleep,’ they said. ‘She must be in there still. Anyone who makes his way in and rescues her will marry her, you’ll see.’

  Naturally, as time passed, various young men came – princes, soldiers, farmers’ sons, beggars – all kinds of them, trying to cut their way in through the hedge and find the door of the castle. They were sure that once they were inside they’d find the princess and wake her up with a kiss and break the spell.

  But none of them managed it. The hedge was immensely thick, and the thorns so long and sharp that they dug into the clothes and the flesh of anyone trying to force his way through. All the young men got stuck. The more they struggled the deeper the thorns stabbed them, and they couldn’t go on and they couldn’t turn back and they couldn’t get free, and they all died helplessly in the hedge.

  Many, many years later, after the story of the sleeping princess had been almost forgotten, a young prince came to that country. He was travelling incognito, and
when he stayed at a humble inn not far from the castle, nobody knew who he was. One night he listened to an old man telling a story by the fire. It was a story about the great thorn hedge: inside the hedge there was a castle, and inside the castle was a tower, and inside the tower was a room where a lovely princess lay asleep.

  ‘And there’s many a brave young man has tried to get through the hedge,’ he said, ‘and not one of ’em made it. If you go up close you can see their skeletons, or bits of ’em that’s close enough to see. But no one’s seen the princess, and she’s lying there asleep to this day.’

  ‘I’ll try!’ said the young man. ‘My sword’s sharp enough to deal with thorns.’

  ‘Don’t do it, son!’ said the old man. ‘Once you get in that hedge, no power on earth will get you out. You’ll blunt your sword on a hundred thorns before you’ve gone a yard.’

  ‘No,’ declared the prince. ‘I’m going to do it, and that’s that. I’ll start in the morning.’

  As it happened, the very next day was the day when the hundred years were up. Of course the prince didn’t know about that, but he set off with a heart full of courage. He came to the great thorn hedge and found it not at all as the old man had said, because as well as thorns the hedge was bearing pretty pink flowers, thousands upon thousands of them. For all that, though, he could see the skeletons of many other young men tangled deep in the briars. A sweet fragrance like apples filled the air, and as the prince came close to the hedge, the branches pulled apart by themselves to let him through, closing up behind him afterwards.

  He came to the courtyard and saw the pigeons asleep, the dog still with its paw behind its neck, the flies asleep on the wall; he went down into the kitchen and saw the kitchen boy’s face still screwed up waiting for the clout from the cook’s hand, the flames standing quite still in the hearth, the drop of fat still about to drop from the roasting ox; he wandered through the rooms upstairs and saw servant after servant asleep in the middle of whatever they’d been doing, and the king and the queen asleep on the floor of the hall, exactly where they’d fallen.