Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (16 page)

‘Steady now,’ said the ferryman as the king stepped on board. ‘Don’t rock the boat. Would you mind just holding this pole for me?’

Of course the king did so, and the ferryman jumped out at once. He laughed and sang and jumped for joy and ran away, and the king was compelled to stay in the boat for ever, ferrying people back and forth as a punishment for his sins.

***

Tale type:
ATU 930, ‘The Prophecy’, continuing as ATU 461, ‘Three Hairs from the Devil’s Beard’

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

Similar stories:
Alexander Afanasyev: ‘Marco the Rich and Vassily the Luckless’ (
Russian Fairy Tales
); Katharine M. Briggs: ‘Fairest of All Others’, ‘The Fish and the Ring’, ‘The Stepney Lady’ (
Folk Tales of Britain
); Italo Calvino: ‘The Feathered Ogre’, ‘The Ismailian Merchant’, ‘Mandorlinfiore’ (
Italian Folktales
); Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: ‘The Griffin’ (
Children’s and Household Tales
)

Like
‘The Three Snake Leaves’
, this story falls into two halves. In some of the related tales, the prophecy about the child (usually a girl) born to marry a rich man is followed by a test of a different sort: instead of acquiring three hairs from the Devil (or feathers from the ogre, or whatever), she has to find a ring that the unwilling bridegroom throws into the sea, and the wedding can’t take place till it turns up, which it duly does, in the stomach of a fish. I like the version here because the reward is for courage, not just for luck.

TWENTY

THE GIRL WITH NO HANDS

There was once a miller who sank little by little into poverty, until all he had left was his mill and a fine apple tree standing behind it. One day he’d just set off into the forest to gather some wood when an old man he’d never seen before appeared in front of him.

‘Why are you wearing yourself out chopping wood?’ said the old man. ‘Just promise to give me whatever’s standing behind your mill, and I’ll make you rich.’

‘What’s behind the mill?’ thought the miller. ‘It can only be the apple tree.’

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll do it.’

The old man wrote out a contract, and the miller signed it. The old man took it with a strange kind of laugh.

‘I’ll come back for it,’ he said, ‘in three years. Don’t you forget now.’

The miller hurried home, and his wife came out to meet him.

‘Oh, husband,’ she said, ‘you’ll never guess what’s happened! Boxes and chests of treasure all over the house – all at once – full to the brim – gold coins, all sorts of money and jewels and so forth – where can it have come from? Is the good Lord blessing us at last?’

‘He’s kept his side of the bargain then,’ said the miller, and he told his wife about the old man in the forest. ‘All I had to do was sign over whatever is standing behind the mill. This treasure’s worth an apple tree, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, husband! You don’t know what you’ve done! That must have been the Devil! He didn’t mean the apple tree. He meant our daughter! She was out there sweeping the path!’

The miller’s daughter, who was a lovely girl, lived the next three years worshipping God piously. When the time was up for the Evil One to come and get her, she washed herself from top to toe, put on her white dress, and drew a chalk circle around herself on the floor. The Devil turned up first thing in the morning, and found that he couldn’t get near her.

He said to the miller, ‘What did you let her wash herself for, you old fool? Don’t let her have any water, not a drop, or else I won’t be able to touch her.’

The miller was terrified. He did as the Devil told him, and didn’t let his daughter have a drop of water, no matter how thirsty she was. Next morning the Devil came back.

‘Look! Her hands are clean! Why did you let her wash her hands?’

It turned out that she’d wept all night, and her tears had washed her hands clean. The Devil was furious, because he still couldn’t touch her.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘now you’ll have to chop her hands off.’

The miller was horrified. ‘I can’t do that!’ he cried. ‘My own child – I can’t do that to her!’

‘Well, if you don’t,’ said the Devil, ‘I’ll just have to take you instead.’

That was too much for the miller. He went to the girl and said, ‘My dear daughter, I’ve got to chop your hands off or the Devil will have me, and I’m so afraid. Forgive me, my child! Help me with this, and forgive me!’

The girl said, ‘Father dear, I’m your daughter. You can do whatever you like to me.’ And she stretched out her hands and let her father chop them off.

The Devil came back once more, but the poor girl had wept again and covered her stumps with tears, so that they were perfectly clean. He had to give up then, because he’d tried three times, and that was the limit.

The miller said, ‘My dear, it’s all because of you that we’re as rich as we are. You won’t want for a thing – I’ll make sure you live in luxury all your life long.’

But she said, ‘I can’t live here any more. I’m going to go away. The kindness of strangers will provide everything I need.’

She asked them to tie her maimed arms to her back and off she went. She walked all day, and she didn’t stop till it was dark. The moon was shining, and by its light she saw across a river into a royal garden where the trees were covered with beautiful fruit. She longed for something to eat, but she couldn’t get there, because of the water.

She hadn’t had a bite to eat all day, and she was suffering badly from hunger. She thought, ‘Oh, if only I were in the garden! I could eat the fruit straight off the tree. If I can’t do that, I’ll perish.’

She knelt down and prayed. And straight away an angel appeared. He went to the river and closed a sluice gate, and the stream dried up, so that she could walk across.

She went into the garden, with the angel following. She saw a tree covered in beautiful ripe pears, which had all been numbered so that none could be stolen, but she couldn’t help that: she stepped up to the tree and ate from it, just one pear, enough to satisfy her hunger, but no more. After she’d eaten it she went to lie down in the bushes.

The gardener was watching, but he saw the angel with her and thought the girl was a spirit, too. He didn’t dare make a noise.

Next morning the king came and looked around. He saw at once that one of the pears had been eaten, and summoned the gardener.

‘Oh, your majesty! Last night a spirit came and walked across the stream and ate the pear right off the tree! It had no hands, your majesty!’

‘How did it walk across the stream?’

‘An angel came down and closed the sluice gate for it, and let the stream dry up. I was afraid, your majesty, so I didn’t call out and stop it. After the spirit had eaten the pear, it went away somewhere.’

‘That doesn’t sound very likely,’ said the king. ‘I’d better keep watch with you tonight in case it happens again.’

Next night the king came quietly to the garden, accompanied by a priest who was going to talk to the spirit if it appeared again. They sat down nearby and waited, and sure enough, at midnight the girl came out from hiding, stepped up to the tree, and ate a pear just with her mouth. Next to her an angel dressed in white was standing guard.

The priest went up to them and said, ‘Where do you come from, my child? From God, or from the world? Are you a spirit or a human being?’

‘I’m not a spirit,’ she said, ‘I’m a poor woman who’s been forsaken by everyone except God.’

The king heard what she said, and replied, ‘Even if the whole world has forsaken you, I shall not.’

He took her back to his castle. She was so beautiful and good that he fell in love with her, and took her as his wife, and had silver hands made for her. And they lived in happiness.

After a year, the king had to go to war. He left his young queen in the care of his mother. ‘If she has a baby,’ he said, ‘look after mother and child well, and write and tell me the news at once.’

A little later she gave birth to a beautiful son. The king’s mother wrote as he’d told her, telling him the joyful news.

But on his way to the king, the messenger stopped at a brook to rest. All this time the Devil had been watching over the girl, determined to destroy her happiness, and now he took the letter away and substituted one that said the queen had given birth to a monster.

When the king read this he was horrified and saddened, but he wrote back to say they should take good care of her till he came back. Once again the messenger lay down to sleep, and once again the Devil came and put a letter of his own in place of the one the messenger was carrying. This one said that they should kill the queen and her child.

The queen mother was shocked and frightened when she read this letter. She wrote to her son again, but got the same answer, because the Devil was watching and kept switching the letters around. The last letter even said that they should keep the queen’s eyes and tongue as proof. When the old queen read this, she wept bitterly at the shedding of such innocent blood, but then she had an idea, and had a doe slaughtered, and cut out it eyes and its tongue and kept them safe.

‘My dear,’ she said to the queen, ‘you can’t stay here. I don’t know why the king has sent this terrible command, but here it is, in his writing, and the only thing for you to do is to go away with the child out into the wide world, and never come back.’

The queen mother tied the baby on to his mother’s back, and the poor woman went away once more, weeping. She walked and walked till she came to a deep, dark forest, and there she knelt down to pray.

And an angel appeared to her, just as he had before, and this time he led her to a little house. A sign above the door said: ‘Here anyone is welcome, and all live free.’

Out of the house came a maiden as snow-white as the angel, and said, ‘Your majesty, come inside.’

She untied the little baby from her back and held him to the queen’s breast so she could suckle him, and then showed them a beautifully made bed.

‘How do you know that I’m a queen?’

‘I’m an angel, sent by heaven to take care of you. You needn’t worry about a thing.’

And for seven years she lived in the little house, and she and her son were looked after very well. And during that time, through the grace of heaven and because of her own piety, her hands grew back.

Finally the king came home from the war, and the first thing he wanted to do was to greet his dear wife and their child.

His old mother began to weep. ‘You wicked man! How can you say that, when you wanted them killed?’

The king was astonished, but she showed him the letters the Devil had forged. ‘And I did what you told me to!’ she said. ‘Here’s the proof: her eyes and her tongue.’

The king began to weep even more bitterly than his mother. Finally the old woman had mercy on him, and said, ‘Something wicked has been happening here. But there’s no need to weep, because your wife is still alive. These are the eyes and tongue of a doe. I tied the baby on his mother’s back and told her to go out into the world, and promise never to come back here, because you were so angry with her.’

‘You’re right,’ said the king. ‘This is the work of the Devil. But I’ll go out and look for her, and I’ll neither eat nor drink, nor sleep in a bed till I’ve found my dear wife and my child.’

The king travelled all over the world for nearly seven years, searching in every cave and hovel, every town and village, and found no sign of her, so he began to think that perhaps she had perished. As he had vowed, he ate and drank nothing all that time, but the favour of heaven kept him alive. Finally he came to a great forest, where he found a little house with a sign over the door saying: ‘Here anyone is welcome, and all live free.’

The snow-white angel came out and took him by the hand.

‘Welcome, your majesty! Where have you come from?’

‘I’ve been travelling about the world for nearly seven years,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for my wife and my child, but I can’t find them anywhere.’

The angel offered him some food and drink, but he refused, saying that all he wanted was to rest a little. He lay down and covered his face with a handkerchief.

The angel went into the next room, where the queen was sitting with her son, whom she had come to call Sorrowful.

The angel said, ‘Go into the parlour, and take your son. Your husband has come looking for you.’

She hurried to where he was lying, and the handkerchief fell from his face.

‘Pick up the cloth, Sorrowful,’ she said, ‘and put it back over your father’s face.’

The little boy picked it up and put it back over the king’s face. The king heard this in his sleep, and deliberately let the cloth fall once more.

Then the child grew impatient and said, ‘But mama, how can I cover my father’s face? You’ve told me I had no father in this world, only a father in heaven, the one I pray to when I say, “Our father, which art in heaven”. How can this wild man be my father?’

Hearing this, the king sat up and asked the woman who she was.

‘I’m your wife,’ she said, ‘and this is your son, Sorrowful.’

But he looked at her hands, and saw they were real living hands.

‘My wife had silver hands,’ he said.

She replied, ‘In his mercy, the dear Lord caused my hands to grow back.’

The angel brought the silver hands from the other room, and that convinced him. This was his beloved wife and his child, there was no doubt about it, and he kissed them and embraced them and said joyfully, ‘A heavy stone has fallen from my heart!’

The angel gave them all something to eat, and they went back home to his good old mother. When the news was heard throughout the kingdom, everyone was joyful. The king and queen celebrated their wedding once again, and they lived happily ever afterwards.

***

Tale type:
ATU 706, ‘The Maiden Without Hands’

Source:
stories told to the Grimm brothers by Marie Hassenpflug, Dorothea Viehmann and Johann H. B. Bauer

Similar stories:
Alexander Afanasyev: ‘The Armless Maiden’ (
Russian Fairy Tales
); Katharine M. Briggs: ‘The Cruel Stepmother’, ‘Daughter Doris’ (
Folk Tales of Britain
); Italo Calvino: ‘Olive’, ‘The Turkey Hen’ (
Italian Folktales
)

This is a widely dispersed story type. The elements are vivid and gruesome and the outcome satisfying, with the royal family restored, hands included. And the picture we’re given of the beautiful handless girl, dressed all in white and accompanied by an angel, nibbling her way through a pear in the moonlit garden, is very affecting and strange.

However, the tale itself is disgusting. The most repellent aspect is the cowardice of the miller, which goes quite unpunished. The tone of never-shaken piety is nauseating, and the restoration of the poor woman’s hands simply preposterous.

‘But aren’t fairy tales supposed to be full of preposterous things?’

No. The resurrection of the little boy in
‘The Juniper Tree’
, for example, feels truthful and right. This feels merely silly: instead of being struck by wonder, here we laugh. It’s ridiculous. This tale and others like it must have spoken very deeply to many audiences, though, for it to spread so widely, or perhaps a great many people like stories of maiming, cruelty and sentimental piety.