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

The king began to weep even more bitterly than his mother. Finally the old woman had mercy on him, and said, ‘Something wicked has been happening here. But there’s no need to weep, because your wife is still alive. These are the eyes and tongue of a doe. I tied the baby on his mother’s back and told her to go out into the world, and promise never to come back here, because you were so angry with her.’

‘You’re right,’ said the king. ‘This is the work of the Devil. But I’ll go out and look for her, and I’ll neither eat nor drink, nor sleep in a bed till I’ve found my dear wife and my child.’

The king travelled all over the world for nearly seven years, searching in every cave and hovel, every town and village, and found no sign of her, so he began to think that perhaps she had perished. As he had vowed, he ate and drank nothing all that time, but the favour of heaven kept him alive. Finally he came to a great forest, where he found a little house with a sign over the door saying: ‘Here anyone is welcome, and all live free.’

The snow-white angel came out and took him by the hand.

‘Welcome, your majesty! Where have you come from?’

‘I’ve been travelling about the world for nearly seven years,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for my wife and my child, but I can’t find them anywhere.’

The angel offered him some food and drink, but he refused, saying that all he wanted was to rest a little. He lay down and covered his face with a handkerchief.

The angel went into the next room, where the queen was sitting with her son, whom she had come to call Sorrowful.

The angel said, ‘Go into the parlour, and take your son. Your husband has come looking for you.’

She hurried to where he was lying, and the handkerchief fell from his face.

‘Pick up the cloth, Sorrowful,’ she said, ‘and put it back over your father’s face.’

The little boy picked it up and put it back over the king’s face. The king heard this in his sleep, and deliberately let the cloth fall once more.

Then the child grew impatient and said, ‘But mama, how can I cover my father’s face? You’ve told me I had no father in this world, only a father in heaven, the one I pray to when I say, “Our father, which art in heaven”. How can this wild man be my father?’

Hearing this, the king sat up and asked the woman who she was.

‘I’m your wife,’ she said, ‘and this is your son, Sorrowful.’

But he looked at her hands, and saw they were real living hands.

‘My wife had silver hands,’ he said.

She replied, ‘In his mercy, the dear Lord caused my hands to grow back.’

The angel brought the silver hands from the other room, and that convinced him. This was his beloved wife and his child, there was no doubt about it, and he kissed them and embraced them and said joyfully, ‘A heavy stone has fallen from my heart!’

The angel gave them all something to eat, and they went back home to his good old mother. When the news was heard throughout the kingdom, everyone was joyful. The king and queen celebrated their wedding once again, and they lived happily ever afterwards.

Tale type:ATU 706, ‘The Maiden Without Hands’

Source:stories told to the Grimm brothers by Marie Hassenpflug, Dorothea Viehmann and Johann H. B. Bauer

Similar stories:Alexander Afanasyev: ‘The Armless Maiden’ ( Russian Fairy Tales ); Katharine M. Briggs: ‘The Cruel Stepmother’, ‘Daughter Doris’ ( Folk Tales of Britain ); Italo Calvino: ‘Olive’, ‘The Turkey Hen’ ( Italian Folktales )

This is a widely dispersed story type. The elements are vivid and gruesome and the outcome satisfying, with the royal family restored, hands included. And the picture we’re given of the beautiful handless girl, dressed all in white and accompanied by an angel, nibbling her way through a pear in the moonlit garden, is very affecting and strange.

However, the tale itself is disgusting. The most repellent aspect is the cowardice of the miller, which goes quite unpunished. The tone of never-shaken piety is nauseating, and the restoration of the poor woman’s hands simply preposterous.

‘But aren’t fairy tales supposed to be full of preposterous things?’

No. The resurrection of the little boy in ‘The Juniper Tree’, for example, feels truthful and right. This feels merely silly: instead of being struck by wonder, here we laugh. It’s ridiculous. This tale and others like it must have spoken very deeply to many audiences, though, for it to spread so widely, or perhaps a great many people like stories of maiming, cruelty and sentimental piety.

There was once a shoemaker who had become so poor (through no fault of his own) that he had hardly any leather left — only enough to make one pair of shoes, in fact. He cut them out in the evening, intending to start work on them in the morning, and then went to bed. He had a clear conscience, so he said his prayers and then slept peacefully.

Next morning he woke up, had a bite of dry bread, and sat down at his bench, only to find the shoes completed already. He was astonished. He picked them up and looked at them closely from all angles. Every stitch was neat and tight; nothing was out of place. He couldn’t have done better himself.

A customer soon came in, looking for shoes of just that size, and liked them so much he bought them at once for a good price.

That gave the shoemaker enough money to buy leather for two pairs of shoes. So he did that, and as before he cut them out in the evening, meaning to carry on in the morning in good heart. But he had no need to: when he got up, the shoes were already made, just as before, stitched as if by a master craftsman. He soon found customers for them, and that left him enough profit to buy leather for four pairs; and next morning they were finished, and he sold them, and so it went on. Each evening he cut the shoes out, next morning they were finished, so that pretty soon he was making a good income, and not much later he was a wealthy man.

One evening not long before Christmas, he cut out a number of shoes as usual, and then said to his wife just as they were going to bed: ‘Why don’t we stay up a bit tonight and see if we can find out who’s been helping us?’

His wife thought that was a good idea, and they lit the lamp and hid behind a rail of clothes hanging up in the corner of the workroom.

At midnight two little naked men squeezed in under the door and jumped up to the workbench, where they set to work at once, sewing together the cut-out shoes at a speed the shoemaker could hardly believe. They worked until they’d finished every one, and then they put the shoes on the bench and went out under the door.

In the morning the shoemaker’s wife said, ‘I think we should do something in return for those two little men. After all, they’ve made us rich, and there they are, running about in the cold with nothing on. I’m going to sew them some shirts and jackets, and some underwear and some trousers, and knit a pair of stockings for each of them as well. And you can make them each a little pair of shoes.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ said the shoemaker, and they set to work.

That evening they set the clothes out on the bench instead of the cut-out shoes, and hid again to see what the little men would do. At midnight they came in and leaped up to the bench as before, intending to start work, and then they stopped, looking at the clothes and scratching their heads in puzzlement. Then they realized what they were for, and jumped for joy, put them on at once, and preened themselves, singing: