Array The Brothers Grimm - Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm - A New English Version

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.’