Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm

by Philip Pullman

  One day a king came riding past. He had lost his way in the forest, and he was amazed to hear such lovely music, so he stopped to listen to it. He had no idea where it was coming from, so he sent a servant to find the musician. The servant looked around and finally came back to the king.

  ‘There’s a strange little animal sitting up in that tree, your majesty,’ he said. ‘It looks like a cockerel with a hedgehog sitting on it. And the hedgehog’s playing the bagpipes.’

  ‘Well, go and ask it the way!’ said the king.

  The servant went and called up into the tree, and Hans-my-Hedgehog stopped playing and climbed down to the ground. He bowed to the king and said, ‘What can I do for you, your majesty?’

  ‘You can tell me the way to my kingdom. I’m lost.’

  ‘With pleasure, your majesty. I’ll tell you the way if you promise in writing to give me the first thing that greets you when you arrive home.’

  The king looked at him, and thought, ‘That’s easy enough to promise. This monster won’t be able to read, so I can write anything.’

  So he took pen and ink and wrote a few words on a piece of paper. Hans-my-Hedgehog took it and showed him the way, and the king set off and was soon home again.

  Now the king had a daughter, and when she saw him coming back, she was overjoyed and ran down to greet him and kiss him. She was the first person he met on the way in, and of course the king thought about Hans-my-Hedgehog, and told his daughter how he had nearly had to promise her to a strange animal that sat on a cockerel and played the bagpipes.

  ‘But don’t you worry, my dear,’ he said. ‘I wrote something quite different. That hedgehog creature won’t be able to read.’

  ‘That’s a good thing, because I wouldn’t have gone with him anyway,’ said the princess.

  Meanwhile, Hans-my-Hedgehog stayed in the forest enjoying himself, tending his pigs and playing his bagpipes. The forest happened to be very large, and not long afterwards another king came by, with all his servants and messengers, and he too was lost. Like the first king, he heard the beautiful music and sent a messenger to find out where it was coming from.

  The messenger saw Hans-my-Hedgehog up in the tree playing the bagpipes, and called up to ask what he was doing.

  ‘I’m keeping an eye on my pigs,’ Hans-my-Hedgehog called down. ‘What do you want?’

  The messenger explained, and Hans-my-Hedgehog came down and told the old king that he’d tell him the way in exchange for a promise, and it was the same promise as before: the king must give him the first creature that greeted him when he got home. The king agreed, and signed a paper saying so.

  Once that was done, Hans-my-Hedgehog rode ahead on the cockerel to show them the way to the edge of the forest, where he said goodbye to the king and went back to his pigs; and so the king came home safely, to the joy of all his courtiers. This king too had an only daughter, who was very beautiful, and she was the first to run out and welcome her beloved father.

  She threw her arms around him and kissed him, and asked him where he’d been and why he’d taken so long.

  ‘We lost our way, my love,’ he said. ‘But in the depths of the forest we came upon the strangest thing: a half-hedgehog, half-boy sitting on a cockerel and playing the bagpipes. Playing them remarkably well, too. He showed us the way, you see, and . . . Well, my dear, I had to promise to give him whoever came out to greet me first. Oh, my darling, I’m so terribly sorry.’

  But the princess loved her father, and said that she wouldn’t make him break his promise; she would go with Hans-my-Hedgehog whenever he came for her.

  Meanwhile, back in the forest, Hans-my-Hedgehog looked after his pigs. And those pigs had more pigs, and then those pigs had more pigs, until there were so many that the forest was full of pigs from one end to the other. At that point Hans-my-Hedgehog decided that he’d spent all the time he wanted to in the forest. He sent a message to his father, saying that they should empty all the pigsties in the village, because he was coming with such a large herd of pigs that anyone who wanted some pork or bacon could join in and help themselves.

  His father was a bit put out to hear this. He thought Hans-my-Hedgehog was dead and gone. But then along came his son driving all those pigs in front of him, and the village had such a slaughter that they could hear the noise two miles away.

  When it was all over Hans-my-Hedgehog said, ‘Papa, my cockerel needs new shoes. If you take him to the blacksmith and have him shod again, I’ll ride away and never come back as long as I live.’

  So the farmer did that, and was relieved to think that he’d seen the back of Hans-my-Hedgehog at last.

  When the cockerel was ready, Hans-my-Hedgehog jumped on his back and rode away. He rode and rode till he came to the kingdom of the first king, the king of the broken promise. The king had given strict orders that if anyone approached the palace playing the bagpipes and riding on a cockerel, they should be shot, stabbed, bombed, knocked down, blown up, strangled, anything to prevent them from entering.

  So when Hans-my-Hedgehog appeared, the brigade of guards was ordered out to charge at him with their bayonets. But he was too quick for them. He spurred the cockerel up into the air and flew right over the top of the soldiers, over the palace wall and up to the king’s window.

  He perched there on the sill and shouted out that he’d come for what he’d been promised, and that if the king tried to weasel out of it he’d pay for it with his life, and so would the princess.

  The king told his daughter that she’d better do what Hans-my-Hedgehog wanted. She put on a white dress, and the king hastily ordered a carriage with six fine horses to be made ready, and piled gold and silver and the deeds to several fine farms and forests into it, and ordered two dozen of his best servants to go with it.

  The horses were harnessed, the servants were all lined up, the princess climbed in, and then Hans-my-Hedgehog took his place beside her with the cockerel on his knee and the bagpipes on his lap. They said goodbye and off they went. The king thought he’d never see his daughter again.

  He was wrong about that, though. As soon as they were out of the city, Hans-my-Hedgehog ordered the princess out of the carriage, and told the servants to take several paces backwards and look the other way. Then he tore the princess’s white dress into shreds and stuck her all over with his prickles until she was covered in blood.

  ‘That’s what you get for trying to deceive me,’ he said. ‘Now clear off. Go home. You’re no good to me, and I don’t want you.’

  And she went home with the servants and the gold and the carriage and all, disgraced. So much for her.

  As for Hans-my-Hedgehog, he took his bagpipes and jumped on the cockerel and rode away to the second kingdom, whose king had behaved very differently from the first one. He had given orders that if anyone arrived in the kingdom looking like a hedgehog and riding a cockerel, he should be saluted, given a cavalry escort, greeted with crowds cheering and waving flags, and brought with honour to the royal palace.

  The king had told his daughter what Hans-my-Hedgehog looked like, of course, but when she saw him she was shocked all the same. However, there was nothing to be done about it; her father had given his word, and she had given hers. She bade Hans-my-Hedgehog welcome, with all her heart, and they were married at once, and sat next to each other at the banquet.

  And then it was time to go to bed. He could see she was afraid of his prickles.

  ‘You mustn’t be frightened,’ he said. ‘I’d do anything rather than hurt you.’

  He told the old king to have a large fire made in the fireplace on the landing, and to have four men ready outside the bedroom door.

  ‘I’m going to take off my hedgehog skin as soon as I go into the bedroom,’ he explained. ‘The men must seize it at once and throw it on the fire, and stay there till it’s all burnt to ash.’

 
When the clock struck eleven, Hans-my-Hedgehog went into the bedroom, took off his skin, and laid it down by the bed. Immediately the four men rushed in, seized the prickly skin, flung it on the fire and stood around watching till it had all burned up, and the moment the last prickle was consumed by the last flame, Hans was free.

  He lay down on the bed like a human being at last. However, he was scorched and charred all over, as if he himself had been in the fire. The king sent at once for the royal physician, who cleaned him up and tended to his skin with special balms and ointments, and soon he looked like an ordinary young man, though more handsome than most. The princess was overjoyed.

  Next morning they both rose from the royal bed full of happiness, and when they had eaten breakfast they celebrated their wedding again; and in time Hans-my-Hedgehog succeeded the old king, and inherited the kingdom.

  Some years later he took his wife all the way back to see his father. Of course the old farmer had no idea who he was.

  ‘I’m your son,’ said Hans-my-Hedgehog.

  ‘Oh, no, no, that can’t be right,’ said the farmer. ‘I did have a son, but he was like a hedgehog, all covered in prickles, and he went off to see the world a long time ago.’

  But Hans said that he was the one, and told so many details about his life that the farmer was finally convinced; and the old man wept for joy, and returned with his son to his kingdom.

  ***

  Tale type: ATU 441, ‘Hans My Hedgehog’

  Source: a story told to the Grimm brothers by Dorothea Viehmann

  Similar stories: Italo Calvino: ‘King Crin’ (Italian Folktales); Giovanni Francesco Straparola: ‘The Pig Prince’ (The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, ed. Jack Zipes)

  This tale is a very distant descendant of the ancient story of Cupid and Psyche, as the two Italian variants make plain. This version, though, has acquired a lot of intriguing details on the way to the Grimms’ collection. It has Dorothea Viehmann’s characteristic swiftness and economy of movement (see the note to ‘The Riddle’), and a wonderfully absurd hero whose gallantry, patience and charm, not to mention musical talent, make him one of the most memorable characters in the whole collection.

  THIRTY-NINE

  THE LITTLE SHROUD

  There was once a little boy, seven years old, so sweet and beautiful that no one could look at him without loving him, and as for his mother, she loved him more than anything else in the world. One day without any warning he fell ill and died; nothing could console his mother, and she wept day and night.

  Soon afterwards, not long after he was buried, the child began to appear every night in the places where he used to sit and play when he was alive. If his mother cried, he cried as well, and when morning came, he disappeared.

  But his mother would not stop crying, and one night the child appeared in the white shroud in which he’d been buried, and with the little wreath on his head that had been placed in the coffin with him.

  He sat on her bed and said, ‘Oh, mother, please stop crying, or else I won’t be able to fall asleep! My shroud’s all wet from the tears you keep dropping on it.’

  That startled the mother, and she stopped crying.

  Next night the child came to her bed again, holding a little light in his hand. He said, ‘See, my shroud’s nearly dry now. I’ll be able to rest in my grave.’

  His mother offered her grief to God and bore it patiently and quietly; and the child never came again, but slept in his little bed under the earth.

  ***

  Tale type: unclassified

  Source: a story from Bavaria, told to the Grimm brothers by an unknown informant

  See my note to the following story.

  FORTY

  THE STOLEN PENNIES

  Once a father and his wife and their children were sitting around the table for their midday meal, and a good friend of the family, who had come to visit, was sitting with them. While they were sitting there the clock struck twelve, and just then the visitor saw the door open and a deathly-pale child, dressed in snow-white clothes, come into the room. He didn’t look around or say a word, but went straight into the next room. A few moments later he came out, still saying nothing, and went out of the door again.

  Next day, and the next, the child came back in the same way. Finally the visitor asked the father who this beautiful child was who came in and went into the next room at noon every day.

  ‘I didn’t see him,’ said the father. ‘I’ve got no idea who he can be.’

  Next day, when the child came again, the visitor pointed him out, but neither father nor mother nor the other children could see a thing. The visitor got up and went to the door of the next room, and opened it a little way. There he saw the child sitting on the floor, probing the cracks between the floorboards with his fingers; but as soon as he saw the visitor, he disappeared.

  The visitor told the family what he’d seen and described the child exactly. The mother recognized him at once, and said, ‘Oh, it’s my dear son, who died four weeks ago.’

  They lifted the floorboards and found two pennies that the mother had given the child to give to a poor man. However, the child had thought, ‘I can buy myself a cake with that,’ and hidden the pennies under the floor.

  That was why he had had no peace in his grave, and came every day at noon to look for them. The parents gave the money to a poor man, and after that the child was never seen again.

  ***

  Tale type: ATU 769, ‘The Child’s Grave’

  Source: a story told to the Grimm brothers by Gretchen Wild

  I’ve put the notes to this and ‘The Little Shroud’ together because of their obvious similarity. ‘The Little Shroud’ is unclassified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther index, and the only tale listed there to exemplify this type is this tale itself, under the title of ‘The Child’s Grave’.

  Each of these tales is straightforward and pious. They are pure ghost stories, but their intention is not to make us shiver so much as to point a simple moral. The belief system they come from is almost pre-Christian: the dead deserve their rest, and the living can help them find it; excessive grief is self-indulgent; sin must be atoned for. Once the human action has been taken, the supernatural withdraws.

  The effect is to give them the character of ghost stories of the traditional ‘true’ type, such as those gathered in the well-known Lord Halifax’s Ghost Book (1934), or more recently in Peter Ackroyd’s The English Ghost (2010). All that would be needed to make them identical to that sort of story is names for the characters concerned and for the places where the events took place. To complete the illusion, a source cunningly disguised by means of an initial and a dash could be invented, thus: ‘Herr A—, a highly respected official of the town of D—, was travelling in the Duchy of H— when he heard the following story . . .’

  FORTY-ONE

  THE DONKEY CABBAGE

  There was once a young hunter who went out to his hide in the forest. He was happy and light-hearted, and he whistled on a blade of grass as he went along.

  All at once he came across a poor old woman. She said, ‘Good morning, my fine young hunter. I can see you’re in a good mood, but I’m hungry and thirsty. Can you spare me any change?’

  The hunter felt sorry for the old woman, so he put his hand in his pocket and gave her the few coins he had. He was about to go on his way when the old woman clutched his arm.

  ‘Listen, my good hunter,’ she said. ‘You’ve been kind to me, so I’m going to give you a gift. Carry straight on, and in a little while you’ll come to a tree with nine birds sitting in it. They’ll have a cloak in their claws, and they’ll be fighting over it. Take your gun and shoot right into the middle of them. They’ll drop the cloak all right, and one of the birds will fall dead at your feet. Take the cloak with you, because it’s a wishing cloak. Onc
e you throw it round your shoulders, all you’ve got to do is wish yourself somewhere, and you’ll be there in a flash. And you should take the heart from the dead bird, too. Cut it out and then swallow it whole. If you do that, you’ll find a gold coin under your pillow every morning of your life.’

  The hunter thanked the wise woman and thought to himself: ‘These are certainly fine gifts she’s giving me; I hope she’s telling the truth.’

  He’d gone no further than a hundred yards when he heard a great squawking and flapping in the branches above him. He looked up and saw a flock of birds all tearing at a piece of cloth with their claws and beaks, as if each one wanted it for itself.

  ‘Well,’ said the hunter, ‘this is odd. It’s happening just as the old girl said it would.’

  He took his gun and fired a shot right into the middle of the birds. Most of them shrieked and flew away at once, but one fell to the ground dead, and the cloak fell too. The hunter did just as the old woman had advised. He cut the bird open with his knife, took out the heart and swallowed it, and went home with the cloak.

  When he woke up next morning, the first thing he thought of was the old woman’s promise. He felt under his pillow, and sure enough, there was a gleaming gold coin. Next day he found another one, and then another, and so it went on each time he woke up. Quite soon he had a fine heap of gold, and then he thought, ‘It’s all very well collecting this, but what use is it to me here? I think I’ll go out and see the world.’

  He said goodbye to his parents, slung his gun and his knapsack over his shoulders, and set off. After walking for a few days, he was just coming out of a dense forest when he saw a beautiful castle standing in the open country beyond the trees. He went closer, and saw two people standing at one of the windows, looking down at him.

  One of them was an old woman, and she was a witch. She said to the other, who was her daughter, ‘That man who’s just coming out of the forest has got a great treasure inside him. We must get it for ourselves, my honey, because we can make much better use of it than he’s doing. You see, he swallowed the heart of a particular bird, and as a result he finds a gold coin under his pillow every morning.’ She went on to tell her daughter the whole story of the hunter and the wise woman, and she finished by saying, ‘And if you don’t do exactly as I tell you, my dear, you’ll be sorry.’