The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales (Penguin Classics) (18 page)

A hunter had three sons. On his deathbed, he asked them to hold a vigil, one at a time, at his grave and to tend a fire while they were there.

After his death, the eldest of the three was the first to keep watch. At midnight, a man dressed in black appeared with a pick and shovel, and he started digging around the grave. The son shot an arrow at his head and then threw him over the wall of the cemetery. The next morning he buried him but did not say a word about it.

The following evening the second son had the same adventure. And he, too, did not say a word about it at home.

When the youngest son took over the vigil on the third night, three dark men appeared at the grave site and were planning to dig up the body. But the boy shot down all three of them and, just as his brothers had done, he tossed the bodies over the wall. In the meantime the fire had gone out. The boy climbed up a tree and saw a small fire in the woods. On his way over to it, he met a little man who seemed in a big hurry. Hans asked why he was running so fast and when he heard him say, “I am Night and behind me you will see Day, and I can’t let him catch up with me,” he tied the little man to a tree.

A little while later he met a second man, who was running just as fast, and it was Day. He tied him to a tree as well, walked a little farther down, and found the fire. Five giants were gathered around it and were roasting an ox. Hans amused himself by shooting away each piece of the ox just as it was
about to go down the gullet of one of the giants. When he tired of this little activity, which was deeply annoying to the giants, he emerged from the darkness and sat down to have a meal with them.

The giants were quite happy to play host to a sharpshooter. They told him about a princess who lived nearby and how she was guarded by a dog with huge, gaping jaws. They were hoping that Hans would kill it and clear the way for them. The giants left the campfire and escorted him to an underground passage leading to the castle. The young man walked down it and found the dog right at the end of it. After he killed it, he became curious about the princess. He was determined to find her, and he passed by various sleeping sentries and then entered her chamber. She was lost in dreams, and she looked beautiful lying on her bed fast asleep.

A sword was hanging from the wall but he could not reach it. Right below it was a bottle with the words: “Whoever drinks me can wield the sword.”

The hunter drank the potion, and the sword dropped right down into his hands. He then took one of the slippers under the bed, along with half of a silk kerchief, and returned the way he had come, tiptoeing past the sleeping sentries up to the entrance. There he called the giants by name, and when each of the fellows, curious to see what was happening, poked his head out, he chopped it off. After that, he slipped back into the forest, released Day and Night (for it had been dark the entire time), and returned home to his mother. He left the sword behind.

The lead sentry discovered the heads of the giants the next morning and declared himself to be the great rescuer who had earned the hand of the princess. But the princess was suspicious and demanded to have her slipper and kerchief. Next she asked to have seven years to think it over.

During that time she ran a tavern in the woods with a sign:
THE RICH CAN PAY WITH COINS, THE PO
OR PAY NOTHING
. She ran the tavern herself as a way of finding out who had rescued her.

The brave sharpshooter was so poor that he had to give up
his house. He and his mother were without a home and had to move from place to place. The old woman was exhausted and could hardly put one foot in front of the other. When she read the sign on the tavern door, she walked right in. The princess, whom the son recognized immediately, asked about the young man’s adventures. She quickly recognized him as well, and he showed her the two mementos he had taken with him as proof that he had been there. She was thrilled, and she took the hunter to her father and presented him as the true rescuer. Her father agreed to give him her hand in marriage.

A soldier who had once moved as fast as lightning was aging and decided to give up the military life. He tossed away his lance and traveled across the country back to his home. When he returned home, he found that he did not know a soul. During the war, his village had been destroyed, along with the old castle that had once stood there. Only a few houses were left standing.

Things went well for him as long as his leather money belt, which he had fed like a proper little hamster while looting and pillaging, remained full. He even found himself a wife. He discovered a hideout in the corner of the castle ruins, right near an old oven, which was still standing. It took almost no effort to put a roof over his head and settle in.

His wife told him again and again that he would be better off taking on a trade or working in some kind of business. Then she would no longer be called a soldier’s wife, something that irritated her no end. But the soldier had no interest in work or in haggling. He preferred to nap on his bed of straw near the hearth. When he would make faces at the wall, the roughly chiseled face of a little man in the charred stones would grin back at him and thumb his nose at him.

Pretty soon the soldier’s leather money belt turned into a flabby pouch, and the soldier exchanged it for a loaf of bread. Hunger settled down on his house, and his wife began to bicker and nag like a spiny hedgehog. When it was suppertime, she would bang on the cold oven, run off, and leave the soldier alone in the freezing kitchen. He began to notice that
the little man in the wall would twitch and twist, as if someone were beating him, whenever his wife banged on the oven. The soldier tried to get to the bottom of things.

One day his wife was away longer than usual. The afternoon passed and before long it was evening. Time was on the soldier’s hands, and he began poking at the crumbling concrete until the stones were free of it. The little man started to stretch and bend like a bunny in clover. Suddenly blue smoke poured out of the stove, and it threw a light as strong as a lantern.

The soldier jumped up, for he knew that some kind of treasure must be buried around there. The little man on the wall was protecting it and pointing him to it. In a flash he took the entire stove apart and discovered a copper pot, larger than a helmet, filled right up to the top with big gold coins. Skilled in the art of looting, he put his hand above it and chanted:

“The cock crows and the spell breaks,

I’ll speak my piece whatever it takes.

First I’ll saddle the dragon of gold,

Then spit at the devil until he’s out cold.”

Just then the soldier’s wife screeched: “Turn around! Turn around!” In a fright he turned around, went over to the door, and looked out, but no one was there. A ruckus broke out in the ruins, and strange beaks began poking their way out of the rocks and crowing and screeching. When he ran over to the stove, he saw that the little round opening where the pot had been was still there, but the pot was gone and the stony little man on the wall had vanished, never to return.

One evening the devil came to see a charcoal burner who was keeping watch at his kiln. “Come join me,” the devil said. “Let’s try to find some work together.” The man went with him, and before long the two reached an inn. “Go on in,” the devil said, “and ask if there is any work for us!”

The innkeeper told the charcoal burner: “I could use someone to help with the threshing, but I really need six men, not two.”

“We can thresh as much grain as six men,” the devil replied. And the innkeeper went ahead and hired the two men.

The two worked hard and soon finished the job. But the innkeeper was not completely satisfied because the grain was not as clean as it could have been. “I’m not going to pay you until it’s completely clean!” he said. The devil began to blow on the grain, and it was soon clean as a whistle.

“How much are you going to pay us?” The innkeeper hesitated for a moment. “Give us as much grain as we can carry on our backs!” the devil proposed. The innkeeper thought that was fine, but when he saw that the two were carrying off the entire pile of grain, he was outraged.

The innkeeper told a farmhand to let one of the bulls out of the stable, and it chased after the two fellows in a fury. The devil grabbed the bull by the tail and threw it over his shoulder, and the two arrived safely back at the charcoal burner’s hut.

The devil took his leave and said: “Tomorrow I’ll return with a horn. Whoever can blow the loudest on it will have everything in sight.” The next day he arrived with the horn and
blew so hard on it that the trees all around began shaking. The charcoal burner took some roots and wrapped them around the horn so that it would not explode when he started to blow on it. The devil let out a loud shriek: “Give it back. If the horn isn’t in one piece, I won’t be able to return to hell. I’m going to go get a stone instead and throw it so far that it will disappear.” And he took a stone and actually did throw it so far that they could no longer see it.

The charcoal burner was supposed to fetch the stone, but he said: “Anyone who can throw that far has to fetch the stone himself!” And so the stupid devil was the one who had to run that errand. The charcoal burner picked up the stone and said: “I’m going to throw it at the sun.”

“No!” the devil shrieked. “I need that stone to get back to hell. I can’t just let you throw it away. I’ll come back tomorrow, and we’ll see who has the longest claws.”

That was just fine with the charcoal burner. He said to his wife: “When the devil returns, tell him that I went to the blacksmith’s to have my claws sharpened.”

When the devil returned the next day, he saw that he had been beaten at his own game again, and said: “I’m done with that fellow. No wonder they say that you should never tangle with a charcoal burner.”

A powerful man and his wife once ruled over the land, and they were both adepts in the magical arts. Even the elements obeyed their commands. He was named Woud, and she was called Freid.

The king was a powerful man with a long, flowing beard. His eyes flashed with fires that could blind you if you looked into them too long. He usually wore only a loincloth to cover his nakedness. The cloth was fastened with a belt of infinite length, and the king’s power was dependent on that belt. As long as he kept the belt on, he would remain the sole ruler. It was impossible to remove the belt because his hips and shoulders were so broad that it could never be lifted over them. Sometimes he wore a cape that covered it completely.

His wife was the most beautiful woman imaginable. She wore a sarong around her hips, like her husband, and her hair was so thick and long that she was completely covered by it. She drank water from a single stream, and her husband drank only a certain type of wine. If Freid leaned over to scoop water into her hand from the stream, her hair would sparkle in the sunlight, and her arm looked like pure snow.

This beauty was also a very jealous woman, for she was always afraid that she would not be enough for her fiery husband. To find out how to ease her pain, she once consulted dwarfs who practiced magic. They fashioned for her a necklace that had the power to win the heart of anyone who set eyes on her and that would also keep her beloved from ever
wavering in his devotion. The dwarfs demanded her love in exchange for the necklace.

Freid wore the jewels, and her husband was enthralled. But when Woud discovered the price she had paid for the jewels, he abandoned her. Freid woke up in the morning and reached across the bed to touch her husband. He was gone. She touched her hand to her neck and found that the necklace was missing. She was already overwhelmed with despair, and the loss of the jewels only deepened her passion for Woud. She did her best to catch up with her husband, pursuing him across continents, year after year. In the evening, exhausted by her travels, she would sit down, put her head in her lap, and weep. Each tear transformed itself into a precious pearl.

Finally, when time had run its course, she found Woud and told him about her anguish. She showed him the pearls she had wept for his sake. Woud counted each pearl. There were exactly as many pearls as there were precious stones on the necklace. He was willing to forgive her, and he gave her back the jewels as a peace offering. He had traveled all over the world, but in all that time he had never found anyone as beautiful. He had remained faithful to her.