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

She made him lie down at the foot of her bed. But still he said, ‘Let me up! Let me up! I’m just as tired as you.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ she said, and picked him up and put him at the far end of her pillow.

‘Closer! Closer!’ he said.

But that was too much. In a flash of anger she scooped up the frog and threw him against the wall. But when he fell back into the bed, what a surprise! He wasn’t a frog any more. In fact he’d become a young man — a prince — with beautiful smiling eyes.

And she loved him and accepted him as her companion, just as the king would have wished. The prince told her that an evil witch had put a spell on him, and that only she, the princess, could have rescued him from the well. What’s more, on the following day a carriage would come to take them to the prince’s kingdom. Then they fell asleep side by side.

And next morning no sooner had the sun awoken them than a carriage drew up outside the palace, just as the prince had said. It was pulled by eight horses with ostrich plumes nodding on their heads and golden chains shining among their harness. At the back of the coach was Faithful Heinrich. He was the prince’s servant, and when he’d learned that his master had been changed into a frog, he was so dismayed that he went straight to the blacksmith and ordered three iron bands to put around his heart to stop it bursting with grief.

Faithful Heinrich helped them into the carriage and took his place at the back. He was overjoyed to see the prince again.

When they’d gone a little way, the prince heard a loud crack from behind. He turned around and called out: ‘Heinrich, the coach is breaking!’

‘No, no, my lord, it’s just my heart. When you were living in the well, when you were a frog, I suffered such great pain that I bound my heart with iron bands to stop it breaking, for iron is stronger than grief. But love is stronger than iron, and now you’re human again the iron bands are falling off.’

And twice more they heard the same cracking noise, and each time they thought it was the carriage, but each time they were wrong: it was an iron band breaking away from Faithful Heinrich’s heart, because his master was safe again.

Tale type:ATU 440, ‘The Frog King’

Source:a story told to the Grimm brothers by the Wild family

Similar stories:Katharine M. Briggs: ‘The Frog’, ‘The Frog Prince’, ‘The Frog Sweetheart’, ‘The Paddo’ ( Folk Tales of Britain )

One of the best-known tales of all. The central notion of the repulsive frog changing into a prince is so appealing and so full of moral implication that it’s become a metaphor for a central human experience. The common memory is that the frog becomes a prince when the princess kisses him. Grimm’s storyteller knows otherwise, and so do the tellers of the versions in Briggs, where the frog has to be beheaded by the maiden before changing his form. The kiss has a lot to be said for it, however. It is, after all, by now another piece of folklore itself, and what else is the implication of his wishing to share the princess’s bed?

There’s no doubt that the frog becomes a prince ( ein Königssohn ) although the title of the story calls him a king (‘Der Froschkönig’). Perhaps, having once been a frog, he retained the frog association when he inherited his kingdom. It’s not the sort of thing that anyone would forget.

The figure of Iron Heinrich appears at the end of the tale out of nowhere, and has so little connection with the rest of it that he is nearly always forgotten, although he must have been thought important enough to share the title. His iron bands are so striking an image that they almost deserve a story to themselves.

Once there was a cat who struck up a friendship with a mouse. He went on at such length about the warmth of the affection he felt for her, how kind she was, how prudent, how neatly she twirled her tail, and so on, that the mouse finally agreed to set up house with him.

‘But we must make provision for the winter,’ said the cat. ‘If we don’t, we’ll go hungry just when we need food most of all. And a little mouse like you can’t go out foraging in the cold. Even if you didn’t die of exposure, you’d be sure to get caught in a trap.’

The mouse thought this advice was excellent, and they put their money together and bought a pot of fat. The next question was where to put it. They discussed the problem at great length, and finally the cat said, ‘You know, I don’t think there’s anywhere safer than the church. No one would dare to steal anything from there. We can put it under the altar, and we won’t touch it till we really need it.’

So they hid the pot in the church. But it wasn’t long before the cat felt a craving for the delicious fat, so he said to the mouse, ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you: my cousin has just given birth to a little boy kitten, white all over with brown spots.’

‘Oh, how lovely!’ said the mouse.

‘Yes, and they’ve asked me to be godfather. Do you mind if I leave the housekeeping to you for a day and go and hold him at the font?’

‘No, of course not,’ said the mouse. ‘There’s sure to be some nice food afterwards. If you get a tasty mouthful, think of me. I’d love to taste that sweet red christening wine.’

Of course, the cat’s story was a pack of lies. He had no cousin at all, and no one who knew him would dream of asking him to be a godfather. What he did was to go straight to the church, creep under the altar, open the pot of fat and lick the skin off the top.

Then he strolled out as calm as you please and went up to his usual haunt on the rooftops. There he lay in the sun licking his whiskers and enjoying the memory of the fat. It was evening before he went home.

‘Welcome home!’ said the mouse. ‘Did you have a nice day? What did they call the child?’

‘Top Off,’ said the cat very coolly, inspecting his claws.

‘Top Off? That’s a strange thing to call a kitten,’ said the mouse. ‘Is it an old family name?’

‘I can’t see anything strange about it,’ said the cat. ‘It’s no odder than Crumb Thief, which is what each of your godchildren is called.’

Not long afterwards the cat felt a yearning for the fat again, and said to the mouse, ‘My dear friend, can I ask a favour? I’ve been asked to be godfather to another kitten, and since he has a white ring around his throat, it would be wrong to refuse. Can you keep house alone once more? I’ll be back this evening.’

The good mouse said yes, she didn’t mind at all, and wished the kitten well. The cat set off at once, and crept along behind the town wall to the church, where he slunk inside and licked up half the pot of fat.

‘Nothing tastes as good as what you eat by yourself,’ he thought.

When he got home the mouse said, ‘And what did they call the child?’

‘Half Gone,’ said the cat.

‘ Half Gone? What sort of name is that? I’ve never heard of such a thing. I’m sure it’s not in the almanac of saints.’

The fat had tasted so rich and unctuous that the cat’s mouth was soon watering again.

‘All good things come in threes,’ he said to the mouse. ‘What do you think? I’ve been asked to be godfather yet again. This time the child is totally black — there’s not a white hair on his body apart from his paws. That’s very rare, you know, it only happens once every few years. You will let me go, won’t you?’

‘Top Off? Half Gone?’ said the mouse. ‘Such odd names they have in your family! They make me wonder, they really do.’