Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (4 page)

‘You’re alive! I never thought I’d see you again. Did you get the shivers?’

‘No, not once. I hope someone can give me the shivers tonight.’

The second night he went up to the castle, lit his fire, and sat down again.

‘Oh!’ he said. ‘I wish someone could give me the shivers.’

As midnight approached he heard a commotion up in the chimney. Banging and shouting, scuffling, screaming, and finally, with a loud yell, the lower half of a man fell down into the fireplace.

‘What are you doing?’ said the boy. ‘Where’s your other half?’

But the half-man, not having eyes or ears, couldn’t hear him or see where anything was, and it ran around the room knocking into things and falling over and scrambling up again.

Then there was more noise from the chimney, and in a cloud of soot the missing top half fell down, and scrambled away from the fire.

‘Not hot enough for you?’ said the boy.

‘Legs! Legs! This way! Over here!’ called the top half, but the bottom half couldn’t hear and kept on blundering around till the boy grabbed him around the knees and hung on. The top half leaped on board, and they became one man again at once. He was hideous. He sat down on the boy’s bench next to the fire, and wouldn’t give way, so the boy knocked him off and sat down himself.

Then there was yet more commotion, and half a dozen dead men fell down the chimney, one after the other. They had nine thigh-bones and two skulls with them, and set them up to play skittles.

‘Can I play too?’ asked the boy.

‘Well, have you got any money?’

‘Plenty,’ he said. ‘But your bowling balls aren’t round enough.’

He took the skulls, put them on the lathe, and turned them till they were round.

‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now they’ll roll properly. This will be fun!’

He played with the dead men for a while and lost some of his money. Finally, at midnight, the clock struck twelve and they all vanished, every one of them. The boy lay down peacefully and went to sleep.

Next morning the king came in again to see how he’d got on.

‘How did you do this time?’ he said.

‘I had a game of skittles,’ said the boy. ‘I lost some money, too.’

‘And did you get the shivers?’

‘Not a bit of it,’ he replied. ‘I enjoyed the game, but that was it. If only I could get the shivers!’

On the third night he sat down again on his bench by the fire and sighed. ‘Only one night left,’ he said. ‘I hope this is the night I’ll get the shivers.’

When it was nearly midnight, he heard a heavy tread coming slowly towards the room, and in came six huge men carrying a coffin.

‘Oh, so someone’s dead?’ the boy said. ‘I expect it’s my cousin. He died a few days ago.’

He whistled and beckoned, saying, ‘Come on out, cousin! Come and say hello!’

The six men put the coffin down and walked out. The boy opened the lid and looked at the dead man lying inside. He felt the dead face, but of course it was as cold as ice.

‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘I’ll warm you up.’

He warmed his hands by the fire and held them to the dead man’s cheeks, but the face stayed cold.

Then he took the body out, laid it by the fire with the dead man’s head on his lap, and rubbed his arms to get the circulation going. That didn’t work either.

‘I know!’ he said. ‘When two people lie together, they warm each other up. I’ll take you to bed with me, that’s what I’ll do.’

So he put the dead man in his bed and got in beside him, pulling the covers over them both. After a few minutes the dead man began to move.

‘That’s it!’ said the boy, to encourage him. ‘Come on, cousin! You’re nearly alive again.’

But the dead man suddenly sat up and roared out, ‘Who are you? Eh? I’ll strangle you, you dirty devil!’

And he reached for the boy’s neck, but the boy was too quick for him, and after a struggle he soon had him back in his coffin.

‘Fine thanks I get from you,’ he said, banging in the nails to keep the lid down.

As soon as the lid was fixed, the six men appeared again. They picked up the coffin and carried it slowly out.

‘Oh, it’s no good,’ said the boy, in despair. ‘I’m never going to learn about the shivers here.’

As he said that, an old man stepped out of the darkness in the corner of the room. He was even bigger than the men who carried the coffin, and he had a long white beard and eyes that glowed with evil.

‘You miserable worm,’ he said. ‘You shall soon learn what the shivers are. Tonight you’re going to die.’

‘You think so? You’ll have to catch me first,’ said the boy.

‘You won’t get away from me, no matter how fast you run!’

‘I’m as strong as you are, and probably stronger,’ said the boy.

‘We’ll see about that,’ said the old man. ‘If you turn out to be stronger than me, I’ll let you go. But you won’t. Now come along this way.’

The old man led the boy through the castle, along dark corridors and down dark stairways, till they came to a smithy deep in the bowels of the earth.

‘Now let’s see who’s stronger,’ he said, and he took an axe and with one blow drove an anvil into the ground.

‘I can do better than that,’ said the boy. He took the axe and struck the other anvil in such a way that it split wide open for a moment, and in that moment the boy seized the old man’s beard and wedged it in the anvil. The anvil closed up, and there was the old man, caught.

‘I’ve got you,’ said the boy. ‘Now you’ll see who’s going to die.’

And he took an iron bar and beat the old man mercilessly, raining blows on him till he whimpered and moaned and cried, ‘All right! Stop! I give in!’

And he promised to give the boy great riches if only he’d let him go. The boy twisted the axe in the crack and released his beard, and the old man led him to another cellar deep under the castle, and showed him three chests full of gold.

‘One of these is for the poor,’ he explained, ‘one is for the king, and the third is yours.’

At that moment midnight struck, and the old man disappeared, leaving the boy in the dark.

‘Well, so much for that,’ he said. ‘I can find my own way back.’

Groping along the walls, he made his way back to the bedroom and fell asleep by the fire.

In the morning the king came in.

‘You must have learned how to shudder by now,’ he said.

‘No,’ said the boy. ‘I wonder what they can be, these shivers? I lay down with my dead cousin, and then an old man with a long beard came and showed me some treasure, but no one showed me how to shiver.’

They brought the gold up and shared it out, and then the boy and the princess were married. In due course he inherited the kingdom. But no matter how much he loved his wife, or how happy he was, the young king kept on saying, ‘If only I could get the shivers! If only I knew what it meant to get the shivers!’

In the end it got on the young queen’s nerves. She told her chambermaid, who said, ‘Leave it to me, your majesty. I’ll give him the shivers all right.’

The maid went down to the brook and caught a bucketful of minnows. That night when the young king was sleeping, the maid told the queen to pull the covers off and pour the bucket over him.

So that was what she did. The young king felt first the cold water and then the little fish wriggling and flipping about all over him.

‘Oh, oh, oh!’ he cried. ‘Ooh! What’s making me shiver? Ooh! Ow! Yes, I’m shivering! I’ve got the shivers at last! Bless you, dear wife! You did what no one else could do. I’ve got the shivers!’

***

Tale type:
ATU 326, ‘The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What Fear Is’

Source:
A shorter version of this was published in the Grimms’ first edition of 1812, but the story as it is here was published in their second edition of 1819, following a written version sent to them by Ferdinand Siebert of Treysa, near Kassel.

Similar stories:
Alexander Afanasyev: ‘The Man Who Did Not Know Fear’ (
Russian Fairy Tales
); Katharine M. Briggs: ‘The Boy Who Feared Nothing’, ‘The Dauntless Girl’, ‘A Wager Won’ (
Folk Tales of Britain
); Italo Calvino: ‘Dauntless Little John’, ‘The Dead Man’s Arm’, ‘Fearless Simpleton’, ‘The Queen of the Three Mountains of Gold’ (
Italian Folktales
)

A widespread tale, another version of which was included in the Grimms’ volume of annotations to the
Children’s and Household Tales
that they published in 1856. Calvino’s ‘The Dead Man’s Arm’ is the most lively and amusing of his four versions, but as its hero does not specifically set out to learn fear, he doesn’t need the final lesson from the bucket of minnows. Neither does the heroine of Briggs’s ‘The Dauntless Girl’, a fine story from Norfolk, which does share with this one the unfortunate fate of the sexton and the ghost’s revealing of the treasure in the cellar. I think the Grimms’ version is the best of all.

High spirits colour most of the variants of this tale; the ghosts and dead men are comic rather than terrifying. Marina Warner, in
From the Beast to the Blonde
, suggests a sexual interpretation of the bucket of minnows.

FOUR

FAITHFUL JOHANNES

Once upon a time there was an old king who fell ill, and as he was lying in pain he thought, ‘This bed I’m lying on will be my deathbed.’ And he said, ‘Send for Faithful Johannes – I want to speak to him.’

Faithful Johannes was his favourite servant. He had that name because he’d been true and loyal to the king all his life long. When he came into the king’s bedroom the king beckoned him close to the bed, and said, ‘My good and faithful Johannes, I’m not long for this world. The only thing that troubles me is my son. He’s a good lad, but he’s young, and he doesn’t always know what’s best for him. I won’t be able to close my eyes in peace unless you promise to be like a foster father to him, and teach him all he ought to know.’

Faithful Johannes said, ‘I’ll do that gladly. I won’t forsake him, and I’ll serve him faithfully even if it costs me my life.’

‘That’s a comfort to me,’ said the king. ‘I can die peacefully now. When I’ve gone, this is what you must do: show him over the whole castle, all the vaults, the chambers, the halls, and all the treasure they contain. But keep him away from the last room in the long gallery. There’s a portrait of the Princess of the Golden Roof in there, and if he sees that picture, he’ll fall in love with her. You’ll know if that’s happened, because he’ll fall down unconscious. And then he’ll put himself into all kinds of dangers for her sake. Keep him away from all that, Johannes: that’s the last thing I ask of you.’

Faithful Johannes gave his promise, and the old king lay back on his pillow and died.

After the funeral, Faithful Johannes said to the young king, ‘It’s time you saw all your possessions, your majesty. Your father asked me to show you over the castle. It belongs to you now, and you need to know about all the treasures it holds.’

Johannes took him everywhere, upstairs and downstairs, up in the attics and way below ground in the cellars. All the magnificent rooms were open to him – all but one, that is, because Faithful Johannes kept the young king away from the last room in the long gallery, where the portrait of the Princess of the Golden Roof was hung. The picture was displayed in such a way that anyone entering the room would see it at once, and it was painted so well and so vividly that the princess seemed to live and breathe. No one could imagine anything in the world more beautiful.

The king noticed that Faithful Johannes always ushered him past that door, or tried to distract him when they were near it, and said, ‘Come on, Johannes, I can see you’re trying to stop me going in there. Why do you never open this door?’

‘There’s something horrifying in there, your majesty. You don’t want to see it.’

‘I certainly do! I’ve seen the whole castle now, and this is the last room. I want to know what’s in it!’

And he tried to open the door by force, but Faithful Johannes held him back. ‘I promised the king your father that I wouldn’t let you see inside this room,’ he said. ‘It will bring nothing but bad luck for both of us.’

‘Well, you’re wrong about that,’ said the young king. ‘I’m so curious to see what’s inside, it’ll be bad luck if I can’t. I shall have no peace, day or night, till I know what’s in there. Johannes, open the door!’

Faithful Johannes saw that he had no choice. With a heavy heart and sighing deeply, he took the key from the ring and opened the door. He went in first, thinking that he might block the portrait from the young king’s eyes, but that didn’t work: the king stood on tiptoes and looked over his shoulder. And it happened just as the old king had said it would: the young man saw the portrait, and at once he fell unconscious to the floor.

Faithful Johannes picked him up and carried him to his room. ‘Oh, Lord,’ he thought, ‘this is a bad start to his reign. What bad luck will come to us now?’

The king soon came back to his senses, however, and said, ‘What a beautiful picture! What a beautiful girl! Who is she?’

‘She’s the Princess of the Golden Roof,’ said Faithful Johannes.

‘Oh, I’m in love, Johannes! I love her so much that if all the leaves on all the trees were tongues, they couldn’t express it. I’d risk my life to win her love. Johannes, my faithful servant, you must help me! How can we reach her?’

Faithful Johannes thought hard about this. It was well known that the princess was a reclusive character. However, he soon thought of a plan, and went to tell the king.

‘Everything she has around her is gold,’ he explained, ‘tables, chairs, dishes, sofas, knives and forks, all solid gold. Now among your treasures, your majesty, as you’ll no doubt remember, are five tons of gold. What I suggest is to get the royal goldsmiths to take, say, a ton of it and make all manner of pretty things, birds and beasts and strange animals and the like. They might take her fancy, and we could try our luck.’

The king summoned all the goldsmiths and told them what he wanted. They worked night and day and produced a large number of pieces so beautiful that the young king was sure the princess would never have seen the like.

They loaded everything on board a ship, and Faithful Johannes and the king disguised themselves as merchants so that they were quite unrecognizable. Then they weighed anchor, and they sailed across the sea until they came to the city of the Princess of the Golden Roof.

Faithful Johannes said to the king, ‘I think you should wait on the ship, your majesty. I’ll go ashore and see if I can interest the princess in our gold. What you’d best do is set some things out for her to look at. Decorate the ship a bit.’

The king set to eagerly, and Faithful Johannes went ashore with some of the smaller gold objects in his apron, and went straight to the palace. In the courtyard he found a beautiful girl drawing water from two wells with two golden buckets, one for plain water and one for sparkling. She was about to turn and go in when she saw Faithful Johannes and asked who he was.

‘I’m a merchant,’ he said. ‘I’ve come from a far land to see if anyone’s interested in our gold.’

He opened his apron to show her.

‘Oh, what lovely things!’ she said, putting the buckets down and taking up the gold pieces one after the other. ‘I must tell the princess about them. She loves gold, you know, and I’m sure she’d buy everything you’ve got.’

She took Faithful Johannes by the hand, and led him upstairs, for she was the princess’s own chambermaid. When the princess saw the golden objects she was delighted.

‘I’ve never seen such beautifully made things,’ she said. ‘I can’t resist them. Name your price! I’ll buy them all.’

Faithful Johannes said, ‘Well, your royal highness, I’m only the servant really. My master is the merchant – he usually deals with that side of things. And these little samples of mine aren’t to be compared with what he’s got on the ship. They’re the most beautiful things that have ever been made in gold.’

‘Bring them all here!’ she said.

‘Ah, well, I’d like to oblige you, but there’s so many of them. It would take days to bring them all up here, and besides, it would need so much space to set all the pieces out that I don’t think your palace has got enough rooms, big and splendid though it is.’ He thought that would make her curious, and he was right, because she said, ‘Then I’ll come to your ship. Take me there now, and I’ll look at all your master’s treasures.’

Faithful Johannes led her to the ship, feeling very pleased. When the young king saw the princess on the quayside, he realized that she was even more beautiful than her portrait, and his heart nearly burst. But he escorted her on board and led her below, while Faithful Johannes remained on deck. ‘Cast off and set all the sail you have,’ he told the bosun. ‘Fly like a bird in the air.’

Meanwhile below decks the king was showing the princess the golden vessels and all the other beautiful objects, the birds, the animals, the trees and flowers, both realistic and fantastical. Hours went by, and she didn’t notice that they were sailing. When she’d seen everything she gave a little sigh of contentment.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘What a beautiful collection! I’ve never seen anything like it. Truly exquisite! But it’s time I went home.’

And then she looked through the porthole, and saw that they were on the high seas.

‘What are you doing?’ she cried. ‘Where are we? I’ve been betrayed! To fall into the hands of a merchant – but you can’t be a merchant! You must be a pirate! Have you kidnapped me? Oh, I’d rather die!’

The king took her hand and said, ‘I’m not a merchant. I’m a king, just as well born as you are. If I tricked you into coming on board, it’s only because I was overpowered by love. When I saw your portrait in my palace, I fell to the ground unconscious.’

The Princess of the Golden Roof was reassured by his gentle manner, and presently her heart was moved, and she agreed to become his wife.

Now as the ship sailed onwards, Faithful Johannes happened to be sitting in the bows, playing the fiddle. While he was doing that, three ravens flew around the ship and settled on the bowsprit, and he stopped playing and listened to what they were saying, for he knew the language of the birds.

The first said, ‘
Kraak!
Look! That’s the Princess of the Golden Roof! He’s taking her home with him!’

The second one said, ‘Yes, but he hasn’t got her yet.’

The third one said, ‘Yes, he has!
Kraak!
There she is, sitting next to him on the deck.’

‘That won’t do him any good,’ said the first one. ‘As soon as they step ashore, a chestnut horse will run up to greet them, and the prince will try and mount it.
Kraak!
But if he does, the horse will leap into the air and carry him away, and he’ll never see her again.’

‘
Kraak!
’ said the second. ‘Isn’t there any way of preventing that?’

‘Yes, of course there is, but they don’t know it. If someone else jumps in the saddle, takes the pistol from the holster and shoots the horse dead, the king will be safe.
Kraak!
But whoever does that must never tell the king why he did it, because if he does, he’ll be turned to stone up to his knees.’

‘I know more than that,’ said the second raven. ‘Even if the horse is killed, the king isn’t safe. When they go into the palace, they’ll find a beautiful wedding robe laid out for him on a golden tray. It’ll seem to be made of gold and silver, but really it’s made of sulphur and pitch, and if he puts it on it’ll burn his flesh away right down to the marrow.
Kraak!
’

‘Surely they won’t be able to save him from that,’ said the third.

‘Oh, yes, it’s easy, but they don’t know how. Someone wearing gloves will have to take the robe and throw it on the fire, and then it’ll burn up safely and the king won’t be harmed.
Kraak!
But if he tells the king why he did it, he’ll be turned to stone from his knees to his heart.’

‘What a fate!’ said the third. ‘And the dangers don’t end there, either. Even if the robe burns up, I don’t think this king is destined to have his bride. After the ceremony, when the dancing begins, the young queen will suddenly turn pale and fall down as though dead.’

‘And can she be saved?’ said the first.

‘With the greatest of ease, if anyone knew. All they have to do is lift her up, bite her right breast, draw three drops of blood from it and spit them out. Then she’ll come to life again. But if they tell the king why they’ve done it, their entire body will turn to stone, from the crown of their head to the soles of their feet.
Kraak!
’

And then the ravens flew away. Faithful Johannes had understood every word, and from then on he grew silent and sorrowful. If he didn’t do what the ravens had said, his master would die, and yet if he explained to the king why he’d done these strange things, he would be turned to stone.

But finally he said to himself, ‘Well, he’s my master, and I’ll save his life even if I have to give up my life in doing so.’

When they landed, it happened exactly as the raven had said it would. A magnificent chestnut horse came galloping up, saddled and bridled in gold.

‘A good omen!’ said the king. ‘He can carry me to the palace.’

And he was about to climb into the saddle when Faithful Johannes pushed him aside and leaped up himself. A moment later he’d pulled out the pistol from the saddle holster and shot the horse dead.

The king’s other servants didn’t care much for Johannes, and they said, ‘What a shame to kill such a beautiful horse! And to shove the king aside like that, what’s more, just as it was going to carry him to the palace.’

‘Hold your tongues,’ said the king. ‘This is Faithful Johannes you’re talking about. I’m sure he had a good reason for it.’

They went into the palace, and there in the hall was a beautiful robe laid out on a golden tray, just as the raven had said. Faithful Johannes was watching closely, and as soon as the king moved to pick it up, Johannes pulled his gloves on, snatched the robe away, and threw it on the fire. It blazed up fiercely.

The other servants whispered together again: ‘See that? See what he did? He burned the king’s wedding robe!’

But the young king said, ‘Enough of that! I’m sure Johannes had a good reason. Leave him alone.’

Then the wedding took place. After the service the dancing began, and Faithful Johannes stood at the edge of the ballroom, never taking his eyes off the queen. Suddenly she turned pale and fell to the floor. At once Johannes ran to her, picked her up, and carried her to the royal bedchamber. He laid her down, and then knelt and first bit her right breast and then sucked out three drops of blood, and spat them out. Instantly she opened her eyes and looked around, and then sat up, breathing easily, perfectly well again.

The king had seen everything, and not understanding why Johannes had behaved like that, became angry and ordered the guards to take him to prison at once.

Next morning Faithful Johannes was condemned to death and led to the gallows. As he stood on the scaffold with the noose around his neck he said, ‘Everyone condemned to die is allowed to say one last thing. Do I also have the right?’

‘Yes,’ said the king. ‘You have that right.’

‘I’ve been unjustly condemned,’ said Faithful Johannes. ‘I’ve always been loyal to you, your majesty, just as I was to your father.’ And he told all about the conversation between the ravens on the bowsprit, and how he had to do these strange things in order to save the king and queen from death.