The Red Fairy Book
Editor Andrew Lang

This was the second book of Lang’s historic collection of fairy tales from around the world. It is evident from the brief preface that Lang considered it an afterthought—not up to the standards of the Blue Fairy Book, but filled with good stories that readers would enjoy, even if they were not as well-known. Well, clearly, being well-known isn’t the only test of a great story. And just as clearly, some stories that were well-known in 1890 and others that weren’t, have changed places by now. It seems that Lang’s vision for his collections changed, for by the end of twelve “fairy books of many colors,” he had brought together an astounding wealth of folklore, along with hundreds of splendid illustrations by H. J. Ford.

This book alone contains nearly a hundred of those illustrations, plus 37 stories which, in spite of Lang’s reservations about how well-known they were, include some of your favorites. And if they aren’t your favorites now, wait until you have read this book!

It has an offensive moment here and there—but anything worthwhile is bound to be controversial! After all, it dates from 1890, when it was not considered wrong to characterize people of color as “ugly as monkeys and as stupid as owls,” or to tell children stories in which such phrases as “dirty slut” could be found. Now that you have been forewarned, if you think these wrinkles will be an insurmountable barrier to your enjoyment of these stories, you might as well stop here and look for a different book. But, if you want to be caught up in a peerless world of romance, magic, horror, tragedy, humor, and adventure, this book is sure to give satisfaction. At least one of the stories in this book may even evoke tears.

I have tried to do something different with each of my reviews of these fairy books. This time, I would like to share with you a quote from each story, to whet your appetite.

The Red Fairy Book begins with the (I think) Belgian story of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," in which a gardener’s boy captures the heart of a princess, the youngest of twelve sisters. But the sisters have made a pact to give a potion to everyone who woos them, turning them into living puppets. This sets up the following excerpt:

He gave his arm to the eldest sister, danced with each in turn, and was so graceful that everyone was delighted with him. At last the time came for him to dance with the little Princess. She found him the best partner in the world, but he did not dare to speak a single word to her.

When he was taking her back to her place she said to him in a mocking voice:

"Here you are at the summit of your wishes: you are being treated like a prince."

"Don’t be afraid," replied the Star Gazer gently. "You shall never be a gardener’s wife."

The little Princess stared at him with a frightened face, and he left her without waiting for an answer.

Next comes "The Princess Mayblossom," Madame d’Aulnoy’s tale of a princess who, due to a fairy’s curse, is imprisoned in a tower until her twentieth birthday, and then makes the understandable error of falling in love with the first man she sees...who, unfortunately, is the ambassador sent by a neighboring king to ask for her hand in marriage. The result is one of the most squirm-inducing, hilariously true-to-life fairy tales ever written, depicting a flight of romance that goes down hard:

"Pray, madam, how long do you mean to stay here? I see nothing to eat, and though you may be very charming, the sight of you does not prevent me from famishing."

"What! Fanfaronade," said the Princess, sitting up and rubbing her eyes, "is it possible that when I am here with you you can want anything else? You ought to be thinking all the time how happy you are."

"Happy!" cried he; "say rather unhappy. I wish with all my heart that you were back in your dark tower again."

In P. C. Asbjørnsen’s tale of "Soria Moria Castle," a strong youth named Halvor rescues three princesses from three trolls, each troll having a successively larger number of heads for Halvor to cut off. In a “How do you like me now?” moment, Halvor returns home and meets the girls who used to tease him:

"We shall see that he is just the same ragamuffin that he was before," said the girls, tossing their heads.

At that same moment Halvor entered, and the girls were so astonished that they left their kirtles lying in the chimney corner, and ran away in nothing but their petticoats. When they came in again they were so shamefaced that they hardly dared to look at Halvor, towards whom they had always been so proud and haughty before.

The Russian tradition brings us "The Death of Koshchei the Deathless," in which the hero (Prince Ivan) is in the interesting position of having to rescue his wife from a demon who owes him a life-debt:

"Why stumblest thou, sorry jade? Scentest thou some ill?"

The steed replied:

"Prince Ivan has come and carried of Marya Morevna."

"Is it possible to catch them?"

"It is possible to sow wheat, to wait till it grows up, to reap it and thresh it, to grind it to flour, to make five pies of it, to eat those pies, and then to start in pursuit—and even then to be in time."

In "The Black Thief and the Knight of the Glen," an old thief saves the lives of three doomed princes, merely by telling their captor about his own scrapes with death. What a capital idea! A good enough story can save lives! And here is the Thief of Sloan’s modest way of describing his professional activities:

"My way of living, sir," says the Black Thief, "was not good, as I told you before; and being at a certain time fairly run out of cash, and meeting with no enterprise worthy of notice, I was reduced to great straits. At length a rich bishop died in the neighbourhood I was then in, and I heard he was interred with a great deal of jewels and rich robes upon him, all which I intended in a short time to be master of...”

"The Master Thief," from Asbjørnsen, appropriately comes next. Fans of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series would appreciate the concept of a thief who views his business as an honest trade, of which a man must prove his mastery, like any other. Here is a teaser from my favorite bit of this story:

"Couldn’t you play off a really good trick on the Priest? for he is sitting there and calling me a fool for having let myself be taken in by such a fellow as you."

"Well, it wouldn’t be very hard to do that," said the Master Thief. So he dressed himself up like a bird, and threw a great white sheet over himself; broke off a goose’s wings, and set them on his back; and in this attire climbed into a great maple tree which stood in the Priest’s garden. So when the Priest returned home in the evening the youth began to cry, "Father Lawrence! Father Lawrence!" for the Priest was called Father Lawrence.

"Who is calling me?" said the Priest.

"I am an angel sent to announce to thee that because of thy piety thou shalt be taken away alive into heaven," said the Master Thief....

"Brother and Sister," from Grimm, is the haunting story of a queen, whose brother has been turned into a deer, and who herself has been murdered and replaced by an impostor. Yet her ghost comes back night after night:

When midnight came and everyone in the palace was sound asleep, the nurse who alone watched by the baby’s cradle in the nursery saw the door open gently, and who should come in but the real Queen. She lifted the child from its cradle, laid it on her arm, and nursed it for some time. Then she carefully shook up the pillows of the little bed, laid the baby down and tucked the coverlet in all round him. She did not forget the little Roe either, but went to the corner where it lay, and gently stroked its back. Then she silently left the room, and next morning when the nurse asked the sentries if they had seen anyone go into the castle that night, they all said, "No, we saw no one at all."

Princess Rosette decides, early in life, that she will marry no one but the "King of the Peacocks." By chance her brothers, the King and the Prince, find such a person, who puts them in prison until Rosette can be fetched, because he refuses to believe that so beautiful a woman can truly exist. Imagine their horror when a really ugly impostor arrives in her place, while Rosette finds herself afloat in the ocean with nobody by her but a little green dog:

When day broke she and Frisk were equally astonished at finding themselves alone upon the sea, with no boat and no one to help them. The Princess cried and cried until even the fishes were sorry for her.

"The Enchanted Pig" is the Romanian version of a tale you may have read elsewhere as “Jack My Hedgehog,” “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” or the myth of “Cupid and Psyche.” C. S. Lewis even wrote a novel-length version of it, called Till We Have Faces. In this variant, a princess is at first horrified when she learns that she is fated to marry a pig. But later, having loved and lost her husband (who is really a man under an enchantment), she wears out three pairs of iron shoes searching for him. In the midst of this tale of enduring love comes this interesting exchange:

"But how in the world is it possible for the Sun to be angry? He is so beautiful and so good to mortals."

"This is how it happens," replied the Sun’s mother. "In the morning when he stands at the gates of paradise he is happy, and smiles on the whole world, but during the day he gets cross, because he sees all the evil deeds of men, and that is why his heat becomes so scorching; but in the evening he is both sad and angry, for he stands at the gates of death; that is his usual course. From there he comes back here."

"The Norka," from the Russian, features another Prince Ivan who rescues three princesses from a great monster:

And when the Prince came to the blue sea, he looked—there slept the Norka on a stone in the middle of the sea; and when it snored, the water was agitated for seven miles around. The Prince crossed himself, went up to it, and smote it on the head with his sword. The head jumped off, saying the while, "Well, I’m done for now!" and rolled far away into the sea.

"The Wonderful Birch" grows out of a mother’s grave, and provides assistance to a girl whose stepmother hates her in this Russo-Finnish story. The story turns out to be somewhat of a variant of Cinderella, in which an enchanted tree (not a fairy godmother) gives a lass her chance to dance with the King’s son. But this is only the half of a story that also involves a true bride being replaced by an impostor and turned into a reindeer:

So the widow woman took the child to the wood. She came to the edge of a marsh, and seeing a herd of reindeer there, she began all at once to sing—

"Little Bright-eyes, little Redskin,
Come nurse the child you bore!
That bloodthirsty monster,
That man-eater grim,
Shall nurse him, shall tend him no more.
They may threaten and force as they will,
He turns from her, shrinks from her still..."

"Jack and the Beanstalk" needs very little introduction. It is wonderful to imagine what the world of 1890 must have been like, for Lang to consider this one of the less well-known fairy tales! And perhaps the editor here tries a little too hard to justify Jack’s actions as he plunders a giant of a magic hen, a talking harp, and more. What more can I say, except:

"Fe, fa, fi-fo-fum,
I smell the breath of an Englishman.
Let him be alive or let him be dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread."

"The Little Good Mouse" is really a fairy, who comforts a Queen who is being held captive by the conqueror of her kingdom. The story also tells of a turkey-maiden who is really a princess:

"Good-day, my pretty one! You have a fine flock of turkeys there."

The young turkey-maiden turned her gentle eyes upon the old woman, and answered:

"Yet they wish me to leave them to become a miserable Queen! What is your advice upon the matter?"

"My child," said the Fairy, "a crown is a very pretty thing, but you know neither the price nor the weight of it."

"Graciosa and Percinet" tells of a princess whose father’s ridiculous love of money ensnares him in the designs of a wicked witch, who proves to be a cruel stepmother, and of the fairy prince who remains unwaveringly loyal to Graciosa, though she is afraid to commit her heart to him:

"This is like being buried alive," she said with a shudder. "Oh, Percinet! if you only knew how I am suffering for my want of trust in you! But how could I be sure that you would not be like other men and tire of me from the moment you were sure I loved you?"

"The Three Princesses of Whiteland" has a great deal in common with “Soria Moria Castle,” in which a heroic young fisherman receives these instructions from a Princess who is buried up to her neck in the earth:

"When thou goest in...two lions will stand by the doorway, but if thou only goest straight between them they will do thee no harm; go straight forward into a small dark chamber; there thou shalt lie down. Then the Troll will come and beat thee, but thou shalt take the flask which is hanging on the wall, and anoint thyself wheresoever he has wounded thee, after which thou shalt be as well as before. Then lay hold of the sword which is hanging by the side of the flask, and smite the Troll dead."

The macabre Romanian tale of "The Voice of Death" tells of a country in which, instead of dying as in most other places, the citizens, one by one, answer a call from a voice no one else can hear, and are never seen again.

...One day, while they were all sitting together round the table, his wife suddenly started up, exclaiming in a loud voice:

"I am coming! I am coming!"

"The Six Sillies" is a giggle-inducing tall story about a suitor who is so astonished at the foolishness of his intended and her parents, that he vows not to marry her until he can find three people more foolish than they. It does not take him long:

Some way further along the road he came upon a man who had never worn any trousers, and who was trying to put on a pair. So he had fastened them to a tree and was jumping with all his might up in the air so that he should hit the two legs of the trousers as he came down.

"It would be much better if you held them in your hands," said the young man, "and then put your legs one after the other in each hole."

"Dear me to be sure! You are sharper than I am, for that never occurred to me."

"Kari Woodengown" is another unusual rendition of Cinderella, in which a troll-fighting bull takes the place of the fairy godmother, and the Prince himself scorns the servant girl, not realizing that she is the same woman who (differently dressed) has captured his heart:

When she was going upstairs her wooden gown made such a clatter that the Prince came out and said, "What sort of a creature may you be?"

"I was to take this water to you," said Kari.

"Do you suppose that I will have any water that you bring?" said the Prince, and emptied it over her.

[Later...]

Then she went away and mounted her horse again; the Prince again followed her, and asked her whence she came.

"Oh! I am from Bathland," said Kari.

"Drakestail" is the silly story of a money-lending duck who avenges himself on a king who refuses to pay his debts. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to carry reinforcements in your gizzard?

"This way, this way," says the porter. "One step further....There, there you are."

"How? what? in the poultry yard?"

Fancy how vexed Drakestail was!

"The Ratcatcher" is the tale of horror more widely known as “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” In this version, the fateful bagpiper saves the German city of Hamel from a plague of rats, but when the town council refuses to pay him, he exacts a gruesome revenge.

At last, dragging himself with difficulty, came a big rat, white with age, and stopped on the bank.

It was the king of the band.

"Are they all there, friend Blanchet?" asked the bagpiper.

"They are all there," replied friend Blanchet.

"And how many were they?"

"Nine hundred and ninety thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine."

"Well reckoned?"

"Well reckoned."

"Then go and join them, old sire, and au revoir."

"The True History of Little Golden-Hood" is an attempt to “set the record straight” on the famous tale of “Little Red Riding-Hood” (see The Blue Fairy Book).

"Oh! What hairy arms you’ve got, Grandmother!"

"All the better to hug you, child."

"Oh! What a big tongue you’ve got, Grandmother!"

"All the better for answering, child."

"Oh! What a mouthful of great white teeth you have, Grandmother!"

"That’s for crunching little children with!" And the Wolf opened his jaws wide...

"The Golden Branch," from Madame d’Aulnoy, features a King Grumpy, a Prince Curlicue, and a Princess Cabbage-Stalk. (Look for the illustration in which the king’s throne is decorated with the legend REX FLOREAT GRVMPES.) A prince and princess learn to see beyond the surface of things, and so become worthy of each other’s love.

"Am I to understand that you are not pleased?" he said very sharply.

"No, sire," replied the Prince. "How could I be pleased to marry an ugly, lame Princess?"

"Certainly it is becoming in you to object to that," said King Grumpy, "since you are ugly enough to frighten anyone yourself."

"That is the very reason," said the Prince, "that I wish to marry someone who is not ugly. I am quite tired enough of seeing myself."

"Dapplegrim" is the name of a famous horse that enabled his master to scale a glass mountain, to save a Princess from a Troll, and to accomplish several other tasks in order to win the Princess’s hand in marriage:

So he went down to Dapplegrim again and told him what the King desired, and Dapplegrim thought that it might easily be done; but first of all he must have new shoes, and ten pounds of iron and twelve pounds of steel must go to the making of them, and two smiths were also necessary, one to hammer and one to hold, and then it would be very easy to make the sun shine into the King’s palace.

"The Enchanted Canary" is a Belgian tale about a Prince named Désiré, who wants a golden princess for his bride. To free her from the orange peel in which a witch has imprisoned her, he must brave many dangers, not least of which is an ugly gypsy girl named (ahem) Titty:

Just as she was stooping to fill [the pitcher at the well], she saw reflected in the water the lovely image of the Princess.

"What a pretty face!" she exclaimed. "Why, it must be mine! How in the world can they call me ugly? I am certainly much too pretty to be their water-carrier!"

So saying, she broke her pitcher and went home.

"The Twelve Brothers," from Grimm, features a Princess who dares not utter a word for seven years in order to save her brothers from an evil enchantment. Imagine the trouble a vow of silence can get a girl into!

When they had lived a few years happily together, the King’s mother, who was a wicked old woman, began to slander the young Queen, and said to the King:

"She is only a low-born beggar maid that you have married; who knows what mischief she is up to? If she is deaf and can’t speak, she might at least laugh; depend upon it, those who don’t laugh have a bad conscience."

"Rapunzel," naturally from Grimm, is as well-known as “Jack and the Bean Stalk” these days. You remember the story: the prince hears the girl singing from the top of her tower, where the witch keeps her, and falls in love with the sound of her voice. Everybody join in now:

"Rapunuzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your golden hair."

And then there is "The Nettle Spinner," from Belgium. Sigh. What can I tell you about this story? If it isn’t the only fairy tale that has ever made me cry, it is one of a very few. It is full of spookiness and foreboding, but it is also seriously tragic. Here is the fateful exchange that sets the story in motion:

"What are you spinning?" he asked in a rough voice.

"My wedding shift, my lord."

"You are going to be married, then?"

"Yes, my lord, by your leave."

For at that time no peasant could marry without the leave of his master.

"I will give you leave on one condition. Do you see those tall nettles that grow on the tombs in the churchyard? Go and gather them, and spin them into two fine shifts. One shall be your bridal shift, and the other shall be my shroud. For you shall be married the day that I am laid in my grave." And the Count turned away with a mocking laugh.

"Farmer Weatherbeard" is much like the story of “The Clever Student and the Master of Black Arts” from Pyle’s Wonder Clock.

When the time came for the fair the youth turned himself into a light-coloured horse, and bade his father go to the market with him. "If anyone should come who wants to buy me," said he, "you are to tell him that you want a hundred dollars for me; but you must not forget to take off the halter, for if you do I shall never be able to get away from Farmer Weatherbeard, for he is the man who will come and bargain for me."

"Mother Holle" is likewise similar to Pyle’s “Mother Hildegard.”

She rose up and wandered through this enchanted place, till she came to a baker’s oven full of bread, and the bread called out to her as she passed:

"Oh! take me out, take me out, or I shall be burnt to a cinder. I am quite done enough."

"Minnikin" is about the adventures of a boy who goes out to seek his fortune on the day he is born (!). After extorting magical gifts from three old hags, Minnikin saves a princess from three successive trolls (who have a total of 20 heads), though a cowardly knight tries to steal the glory and the princess’s hand—see “Bearskin” in Pyle.

"Fire!" roared the Troll.

"Fire yourself!" said Minnikin.

"Can you fight?" screamed the Troll.

"If not, I can learn," said Minnikin.

"I will teach you," yelled the Troll, and struck at him with his iron club so that the earth flew up fifteen yards high into the air.

"Fie!" said Minnikin. "That was not much of a blow. Now I will let you see one of my blows."

"Bushy Bride" is similar to “Brother and Sister,” seen earlier in this book. In this one, two stepsisters receive different blessings (or curses, as the case may be) from three ugly heads that rise up out of the river. The one who is given the gift of gold coins falling out of her mouth marries the King, but the one who has ashes coming out of hers tries to pull a bridal-substitution trick.

"Out on thee, ugly Bushy Bride,
Sleeping so soft by the young King’s side,
On sand and stones my bed I make,
And my brother sleeps with the cold snake,
Unpitied and unwept."

"Snowdrop" is none other than the original Grimm version of the fairy tale that, in these post-Disney days, we call "Snow White."

"Mirror, mirror, hanging there,
Who in all the land’s most fair?"

and the mirror replied:

"My Lady Queen, you are fair, ‘tis true,
But Snowdrop is fairer far than you.
Snowdrop, who dwells with the seven little men,
Is as fair as you, as fair again."

"The Golden Goose" features a classic fairy-tale character type: the youngest of three sons, who is considered dull-witted by those who know him, but who proves more successful than his brothers in seeking his fortune. In this particular tale, Dullhead succeeds by making a grave princess laugh, with the aid of a little grey man and a golden goose.

Then Dullhead asked once more for his bride, but the King felt vexed at the idea of a stupid fellow whom people called "Dullhead" carrying off his daughter, so he began to make fresh conditions.

"The Seven Foals," which like “The Golden Goose” is a story that I would swear that I had read somewhere else, features another youngest-of-three who succeeds where his brothers have failed. In this case, he discovers exactly what the King’s seven foals eat and drink.

"Canst thou wield the sword?" asked the Foal.

Cinderlad tried, but could not do it; so he had to take a draught from the pitcher, and then one more, and after that another, and then he was able to wield the sword with perfect ease.

"Good," said the Foal; "and now thou must take the sword away with thee, and with it shalt thou cut off the heads of all seven of us on thy wedding day, and then we shall become princes again as we were before..."

"The Marvellous Musician" pits the wits of a wandering fiddler against a wolf, a fox, and a hare.

"Now, my friend," he said, "give me your right paw."

This he bound to the other branch, and having carefully seen that his knots were all secure, he stepped off the ends of the branches, and they sprang back, leaving the poor Fox suspended in mid-air.

"Just you wait where you are till I return," said the Musician, and he went on his way again.

"The Story of Sigurd," from the Danish Volsunga Saga, is a tragic legend that has been heavily condensed (for a much larger version see Richard Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen cycle of operas).

...When they were brought before the King, he thought the maid looked like a Queen, and the Queen like a maid. So he asked the Queen, "How do you know in the dark of night whether the hours are wearing to the morning?"

And she said:

"I know because, when I was younger, I used to have to rise and light the fires, and still I waken at the same time."

"A strange Queen to light the fires," thought the King.

Then he asked the Queen, who was dressed like a maid, "How do you know in the dark of night whether the hours are wearing near the dawn?"

"My father gave me a gold ring," said she, "and always, ere the dawning, it grows cold on my finger."

"A rich house where the maids wore gold," said the King. "Truly you are no maid, but a King’s daughter."

Gruesome to the last, this version of the Sigurd legend probably suffers from being condensed too much, but there is much else in this book that hits the perfect pacing, neither too slow and detailed, nor too abrupt and dense. Laugh, gasp, shiver, and perhaps even weep as you read this book, but don’t complain to me if you find it too “politically incorrect.” I warned you!

Recommended Age: 6+ (4+ if read to you)

3/9/2005

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