The Blue Fairy Book
two poor maidens who helped you in your distress? Must they spin gold
flax for ever? Have no pity on the old witch. The three maidens are
princesses, whom she stole away when they were children together, with
all the silver utensils, which she turned into gold flax. Poison were
her fittest punishment.”
The Prince was ashamed of having forgotten his promise and set out at
once, and by great good fortune reached the hut when the old woman was
away. The maidens had dreamed that he was coming, and were ready to go
with him, but first they made a cake in which they put poison, and
left it on a table where the old woman was likely to see it when she
returned. She _did_ see it, and thought it looked so tempting that she
greedily ate it up and at once died.
In the secret chamber were found fifty wagon-loads of gold flax, and as
much more was discovered buried. The hut was razed to the ground, and
the Prince and his bride and her two sisters lived happily ever after.
THE TERRIBLE HEAD
Once upon a time there was a king whose only child was a girl. Now the
King had been very anxious to have a son, or at least a grandson, to
come after him, but he was told by a prophet whom he consulted that his
own daughter’s son should kill him. This news terrified him so much that
he determined never to let his daughter be married, for he thought it
was better to have no grandson at all than to be killed by his grandson.
He therefore called his workmen together, and bade them dig a deep round
hole in the earth, and then he had a prison of brass built in the hole,
and then, when it was finished, he locked up his daughter. No man ever
saw her, and she never saw even the fields and the sea, but only the sky
and the sun, for there was a wide open window in the roof of the house
of brass. So the Princess would sit looking up at the sky, and watching
the clouds float across, and wondering whether she should ever get out
of her prison. Now one day it seemed to her that the sky opened above
her, and a great shower of shining gold fell through the window in the
roof, and lay glittering in her room. Not very long after, the Princess
had a baby, a little boy, but when the King her father heard of it he
was very angry and afraid, for now the child was born that should be his
death. Yet, cowardly as he was, he had not quite the heart to kill
the Princess and her baby outright, but he had them put in a huge
brass-bound chest and thrust out to sea, that they might either be
drowned or starved, or perhaps come to a country where they would be out
of his way.
So the Princess and the baby floated and drifted in the chest on the sea
all day and night, but the baby was not afraid of the waves nor of the
wind, for he did not know that they could hurt him, and he slept quite
soundly. And the Princess sang a song over him, and this was her song:
“Child, my child, how sound you sleep!
Though your mother’s care is deep,
You can lie with heart at rest
In the narrow brass-bound chest;
In the starless night and drear
You can sleep, and never hear
Billows breaking, and the cry
Of the night-wind wandering by;
In soft purple mantle sleeping
With your little face on mine,
Hearing not your mother weeping
And the breaking of the brine.”
Well, the daylight came at last, and the great chest was driven by the
waves against the shore of an island. There the brass-bound chest lay,
with the Princess and her baby in it, till a man of that country came
past, and saw it, and dragged it on to the beach, and when he had broken
it open, behold! there was a beautiful lady and a little boy. So he took
them home, and was very kind to them, and brought up the boy till he was
a young man. Now when the boy had come to his full strength the King of
that country fell in love with his mother, and wanted to marry her, but
he knew that she would never part from her boy. So he thought of a plan
to get rid of the boy, and this was his plan: A great Queen of a country
not far off was going to be married, and this king said that all his
subjects must bring him wedding presents to give her. And he made a
feast to which he invited them all, and they all brought their presents;
some brought gold cups, and some brought necklaces of gold and amber,
and some brought beautiful horses; but the boy had nothing, though he
was the son of a princess, for his mother had nothing to give him. Then
the rest of the company began to laugh at him, and the King said: “If
you have nothing else to give, at least you might go and fetch the
Terrible Head.”
The boy was proud, and spoke without thinking:
“Then I swear that I _will_ bring the Terrible Head, if it may be
brought by a living man. But of what head you speak I know not.”
Then they told him that somewhere, a long way off, there dwelt three
dreadful sisters, monstrous ogrish women, with golden wings and claws
of brass, and with serpents growing on their heads instead of hair. Now
these women were so awful to look on that whoever saw them was turned
at once into stone. And two of them could not be put to death, but the
youngest, whose face was very beautiful, could be killed, and it was
_her_ head that the boy had promised to bring. You may imagine it was no
easy adventure.
When he heard all this he was perhaps sorry that he had sworn to bring
the Terrible Head, but he was determined to keep his oath. So he went
out from the feast, where they all sat drinking and making merry, and
he walked alone beside the sea in the dusk of the evening, at the place
where the great chest, with himself and his mother in it, had been cast
ashore.
There he went and sat down on a rock, looking toward the sea, and
wondering how he should begin to fulfill his vow. Then he felt some one
touch him on the shoulder; and he turned, and saw a young man like a
king’s son, having with him a tall and beautiful lady, whose blue eyes
shone like stars. They were taller than mortal men, and the young man
had a staff in his hand with golden wings on it, and two golden serpents
twisted round it, and he had wings on his cap and on his shoes. He spoke
to the boy, and asked him why he was so unhappy; and the boy told him
how he had sworn to bring the Terrible Head, and knew not how to begin
to set about the adventure.
Then the beautiful lady also spoke, and said that “it was a foolish oath
and a hasty, but it might be kept if a brave man had sworn it.” Then the
boy answered that he was not afraid, if only he knew the way.
Then the lady said that to kill the dreadful woman with the golden wings
and the brass claws, and to cut off her head, he needed three things:
first, a Cap of Darkness, which would make him invisible when he wore
it; next, a Sword of Sharpness, which would cleave iron at one blow; and
last, the Shoes of Swiftness, with which he might fly in the air.
The boy answered that he knew not where such things were to be procured,
and that, wanting them, he could only try and fail. Then the young man,
taking off his own shoes, said: “First, you shall use these shoes till
you have taken the Terrible Head, and then you must give them back to
me. And with these shoes you will fly as fleet as a bird, or a thought,
over the land or over the waves of the sea, wherever the shoes know the
way. But there are ways which they do not know, roads beyond the borders
of the world. And these roads have you to travel. Now first you must
go to the Three Gray Sisters, who live far off in the north, and are so
very cold that they have only one eye and one tooth among the three. You
must creep up close to them, and as one of them passes the eye to the
other you must seize it, and refuse to give it up till they have told
you the way to the Three Fairies of the Garden, and _they_ will give you
the Cap of Darkness and the Sword of Sharpness, and show you how to wing
beyond this world to the land of the Terrible Head.”
Then the beautiful lady said: “Go forth at once, and do not return to
say good-by to your mother, for these things must be done quickly, and
the Shoes of Swiftness themselves will carry you to the land of the
Three Gray Sisters--for they know the measure of that way.”
So the boy thanked her, and he fastened on the Shoes of Swiftness, and
turned to say good-by to the young man and the lady. But, behold! they
had vanished, he knew not how or where! Then he leaped in the air to try
the Shoes of Swiftness, and they carried him more swiftly than the wind,
over the warm blue sea, over the happy lands of the south, over the
northern peoples who drank mare’s milk and lived in great wagons,
wandering after their flocks. Across the wide rivers, where the wild
fowl rose and fled before him, and over the plains and the cold North
Sea he went, over the fields of snow and the hills of ice, to a place
where the world ends, and all water is frozen, and there are no men, nor
beasts, nor any green grass. There in a blue cave of the ice he found
the Three Gray Sisters, the oldest of living things. Their hair was as
white as the snow, and their flesh of an icy blue, and they mumbled and
nodded in a kind of dream, and their frozen breath hung round them like
a cloud. Now the opening of the cave in the ice was narrow, and it
was not easy to pass in without touching one of the Gray Sisters. But,
floating on the Shoes of Swiftness, the boy just managed to steal in,
and waited till one of the sisters said to another, who had their one
eye:
“Sister, what do you see? do you see old times coming back?”
“No, sister.”
“Then give _me_ the eye, for perhaps I can see farther than you.”
Then the first sister passed the eye to the second, but as the second
groped for it the boy caught it cleverly out of her hand.
“Where is the eye, sister?” said the second gray woman.
“You have taken it yourself, sister,” said the first gray woman.
“Have you lost the eye, sister? have you lost the eye?” said the third
gray woman; “shall we _never_ find it again, and see old times coming
back?”
Then the boy slipped from behind them out of the cold cave into the air,
and he laughed aloud.
When the gray women heard that laugh they began to weep, for now they
knew that a stranger had robbed them, and that they could not help
themselves, and their tears froze as they fell from the hollows where no
eyes were, and rattled on the icy ground of the cave. Then they began to
implore the boy to give them their eye back again, and he could not help
being sorry for them, they were so pitiful. But he said he would never
give them the eye till they told him the way to the Fairies of the
Garden.
Then they wrung their hands miserably, for they guessed why he had come,
and how he was going to try to win the Terrible Head. Now the Dreadful
Women were akin to the Three Gray Sisters, and it was hard for them to
tell the boy the way. But at last they told him to keep always south,
and with the land on his left and the sea on his right, till he reached
the Island of the Fairies of the Garden. Then he gave them back the
eye, and they began to look out once more for the old times coming back
again. But the boy flew south between sea and land, keeping the land
always on his left hand, till he saw a beautiful island crowned with
flowering trees. There he alighted, and there he found the Three Fairies
of the Garden. They were like three very beautiful young women, dressed
one in green, one in white, and one in red, and they were dancing and
singing round an apple tree with apples of gold, and this was their
song:
THE SONG OF THE WESTERN FAIRIES
Round and round the apples of gold,
Round and round dance we;
Thus do we dance from the days of old
About the enchanted tree;
Round, and round, and round we go,