The Blue Fairy Book
His servants obeyed him, and very soon in came an enchantingly handsome
young prince, dressed in rich silk, ornamented with pearls and diamonds.
“Young man,” said the King, “you are welcome, whoever you may be. Do me
the favor to be my guest as long as you remain in my capital.”
“Many thanks, sire,” replied the captain, “I accept your offer.”
“My daughter is about to be married,” said the King; “will you give her
away?”
“I shall be charmed, sire.”
Soon after came the Princess and her betrothed.
“Why, how is this?” cried the young captain; “would you marry this
charming princess to such a man as that?”
“But he is my prime minister’s son!”
“What does that matter? I cannot give your daughter away. The man she is
betrothed to is one of my servants.”
“Your servant?”
“Without doubt. I met him in a distant town reduced to carrying away
dust and rubbish from the houses. I had pity on him and engaged him as
one of my servants.”
“It is impossible!” cried the King.
“Do you wish me to prove what I say? This young man returned in a vessel
which I fitted out for him, an unseaworthy ship with a black battered
hull, and the sailors were infirm and crippled.”
“It is quite true,” said the King.
“It is false,” cried the minister’s son. “I do not know this man!”
“Sire,” said the young captain, “order your daughter’s betrothed to be
stripped, and see if the mark of my ring is not branded upon his back.”
The King was about to give this order, when the minister’s son, to save
himself from such an indignity, admitted that the story was true.
“And now, sire,” said the young captain, “do you not recognize me?”
“I recognize you,” said the Princess; “you are the gardener’s son whom I
have always loved, and it is you I wish to marry.”
“Young man, you shall be my son-in-law,” cried the King. “The marriage
festivities are already begun, so you shall marry my daughter this very
day.”
And so that very day the gardener’s son married the beautiful Princess.
Several months passed. The young couple were as happy as the day was
long, and the King was more and more pleased with himself for having
secured such a son-in-law.
But, presently, the captain of the golden ship found it necessary to
take a long voyage, and after embracing his wife tenderly he embarked.
Now in the outskirts of the capital there lived an old man, who had
spent his life in studying black arts--alchemy, astrology, magic,
and enchantment. This man found out that the gardener’s son had only
succeeded in marrying the Princess by the help of the genii who obeyed
the bronze ring.
“I will have that ring,” said he to himself. So he went down to the
sea-shore and caught some little red fishes. Really, they were
quite wonderfully pretty. Then he came back, and, passing before the
Princess’s window, he began to cry out:
“Who wants some pretty little red fishes?”
The Princess heard him, and sent out one of her slaves, who said to the
old peddler:
“What will you take for your fish?”
“A bronze ring.”
“A bronze ring, old simpleton! And where shall I find one?”
“Under the cushion in the Princess’s room.”
The slave went back to her mistress.
“The old madman will take neither gold nor silver,” said she.
“What does he want then?”
“A bronze ring that is hidden under a cushion.”
“Find the ring and give it to him,” said the Princess.
And at last the slave found the bronze ring, which the captain of the
golden ship had accidentally left behind and carried it to the man, who
made off with it instantly.
Hardly had he reached his own house when, taking the ring, he said,
“Bronze ring, obey thy master. I desire that the golden ship shall turn
to black wood, and the crew to hideous negroes; that St. Nicholas shall
leave the helm and that the only cargo shall be black cats.”
And the genii of the bronze ring obeyed him.
Finding himself upon the sea in this miserable condition, the young
captain understood that some one must have stolen the bronze ring from
him, and he lamented his misfortune loudly; but that did him no good.
“Alas!” he said to himself, “whoever has taken my ring has probably
taken my dear wife also. What good will it do me to go back to my own
country?” And he sailed about from island to island, and from shore to
shore, believing that wherever he went everybody was laughing at him,
and very soon his poverty was so great that he and his crew and the poor
black cats had nothing to eat but herbs and roots. After wandering about
a long time he reached an island inhabited by mice. The captain landed
upon the shore and began to explore the country. There were mice
everywhere, and nothing but mice. Some of the black cats had followed
him, and, not having been fed for several days, they were fearfully
hungry, and made terrible havoc among the mice.
Then the queen of the mice held a council.
“These cats will eat every one of us,” she said, “if the captain of the
ship does not shut the ferocious animals up. Let us send a deputation to
him of the bravest among us.”
Several mice offered themselves for this mission and set out to find the
young captain.
“Captain,” said they, “go away quickly from our island, or we shall
perish, every mouse of us.”
“Willingly,” replied the young captain, “upon one condition. That is
that you shall first bring me back a bronze ring which some clever
magician has stolen from me. If you do not do this I will land all my
cats upon your island, and you shall be exterminated.”
The mice withdrew in great dismay. “What is to be done?” said the Queen.
“How can we find this bronze ring?” She held a new council, calling in
mice from every quarter of the globe, but nobody knew where the bronze
ring was. Suddenly three mice arrived from a very distant country. One
was blind, the second lame, and the third had her ears cropped.
“Ho, ho, ho!” said the new-comers. “We come from a far distant country.”
“Do you know where the bronze ring is which the genii obey?”
“Ho, ho, ho! we know; an old sorcerer has taken possession of it, and
now he keeps it in his pocket by day and in his mouth by night.”
“Go and take it from him, and come back as soon as possible.”
So the three mice made themselves a boat and set sail for the magician’s
country. When they reached the capital they landed and ran to the
palace, leaving only the blind mouse on the shore to take care of the
boat. Then they waited till it was night. The wicked old man lay down in
bed and put the bronze ring into his mouth, and very soon he was asleep.
“Now, what shall we do?” said the two little animals to each other.
The mouse with the cropped ears found a lamp full of oil and a bottle
full of pepper. So she dipped her tail first in the oil and then in the
pepper, and held it to the sorcerer’s nose.
“Atisha! atisha!” sneezed the old man, but he did not wake, and the
shock made the bronze ring jump out of his mouth. Quick as thought the
lame mouse snatched up the precious talisman and carried it off to the
boat.
Imagine the despair of the magician when he awoke and the bronze ring
was nowhere to be found!
But by that time our three mice had set sail with their prize. A
favoring breeze was carrying them toward the island where the queen
of the mice was awaiting them. Naturally they began to talk about the
bronze ring.
“Which of us deserves the most credit?” they cried all at once.
“I do,” said the blind mouse, “for without my watchfulness our boat
would have drifted away to the open sea.”
“No, indeed,” cried the mouse with the cropped ears; “the credit is
mine. Did I not cause the ring to jump out of the man’s mouth?”
“No, it is mine,” cried the lame one, “for I ran off with the ring.”
And from high words they soon came to blows, and, alas! when the quarrel
was fiercest the bronze ring fell into the sea.
“How are we to face our queen,” said the three mice “when by our
folly we have lost the talisman and condemned our people to be utterly
exterminated? We cannot go back to our country; let us land on this
desert island and there end our miserable lives.” No sooner said than
done. The boat reached the island, and the mice landed.
The blind mouse was speedily deserted by her two sisters, who went off
to hunt flies, but as she wandered sadly along the shore she found a
dead fish, and was eating it, when she felt something very hard. At her
cries the other two mice ran up.
“It is the bronze ring! It is the talisman!” they cried joyfully, and,
getting into their boat again, they soon reached the mouse island. It
was time they did, for the captain was just going to land his cargo of
cats, when a deputation of mice brought him the precious bronze ring.
“Bronze ring,” commanded the young man, “obey thy master. Let my ship
appear as it was before.”
Immediately the genii of the ring set to work, and the old black vessel
became once more the wonderful golden ship with sails of brocade; the
handsome sailors ran to the silver masts and the silken ropes, and very
soon they set sail for the capital.
Ah! how merrily the sailors sang as they flew over the glassy sea!
At last the port was reached.
The captain landed and ran to the palace, where he found the wicked
old man asleep. The Princess clasped her husband in a long embrace. The
magician tried to escape, but he was seized and bound with strong cords.
The next day the sorcerer, tied to the tail of a savage mule loaded with
nuts, was broken into as many pieces as there were nuts upon the mule’s
back.(1)
(1) Traditions Populaires de l’Asie Mineure. Carnoy et Nicolaides.
Paris: Maisonneuve, 1889.
PRINCE HYACINTH AND THE DEAR LITTLE PRINCESS
Once upon a time there lived a king who was deeply in love with a
princess, but she could not marry anyone, because she was under an
enchantment. So the King set out to seek a fairy, and asked what he
could do to win the Princess’s love. The Fairy said to him:
“You know that the Princess has a great cat which she is very fond of.
Whoever is clever enough to tread on that cat’s tail is the man she is
destined to marry.”
The King said to himself that this would not be very difficult, and he
left the Fairy, determined to grind the cat’s tail to powder rather than
not tread on it at all.
You may imagine that it was not long before he went to see the Princess,
and puss, as usual, marched in before him, arching his back. The King
took a long step, and quite thought he had the tail under his foot, but
the cat turned round so sharply that he only trod on air. And so it went
on for eight days, till the King began to think that this fatal tail
must be full of quicksilver--it was never still for a moment.
At last, however, he was lucky enough to come upon puss fast asleep and
with his tail conveniently spread out. So the King, without losing a
moment, set his foot upon it heavily.
With one terrific yell the cat sprang up and instantly changed into a
tall man, who, fixing his angry eyes upon the King, said:
“You shall marry the Princess because you have been able to break the
enchantment, but I will have my revenge. You shall have a son, who will
never be happy until he finds out that his nose is too long, and if you
ever tell anyone what I have just said to you, you shall vanish away
instantly, and no one shall ever see you or hear of you again.”
Though the King was horribly afraid of the enchanter, he could not help
laughing at this threat.
“If my son has such a long nose as that,” he said to himself, “he
must always see it or feel it; at least, if he is not blind or without
hands.”
But, as the enchanter had vanished, he did not waste any more time in
thinking, but went to seek the Princess, who very soon consented to