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

The messenger saw Hans-my-Hedgehog up in the tree playing the bagpipes, and called up to ask what he was doing.

‘I’m keeping an eye on my pigs,’ Hans-my-Hedgehog called down. ‘What do you want?’

The messenger explained, and Hans-my-Hedgehog came down and told the old king that he’d tell him the way in exchange for a promise, and it was the same promise as before: the king must give him the first creature that greeted him when he got home. The king agreed, and signed a paper saying so.

Once that was done, Hans-my-Hedgehog rode ahead on the cockerel to show them the way to the edge of the forest, where he said goodbye to the king and went back to his pigs; and so the king came home safely, to the joy of all his courtiers. This king too had an only daughter, who was very beautiful, and she was the first to run out and welcome her beloved father.

She threw her arms around him and kissed him, and asked him where he’d been and why he’d taken so long.

‘We lost our way, my love,’ he said. ‘But in the depths of the forest we came upon the strangest thing: a half-hedgehog, half-boy sitting on a cockerel and playing the bagpipes. Playing them remarkably well, too. He showed us the way, you see, and… Well, my dear, I had to promise to give him whoever came out to greet me first. Oh, my darling, I’m so terribly sorry.’

But the princess loved her father, and said that she wouldn’t make him break his promise; she would go with Hans-my-Hedgehog whenever he came for her.

Meanwhile, back in the forest, Hans-my-Hedgehog looked after his pigs. And those pigs had more pigs, and then those pigs had more pigs, until there were so many that the forest was full of pigs from one end to the other. At that point Hans-my-Hedgehog decided that he’d spent all the time he wanted to in the forest. He sent a message to his father, saying that they should empty all the pigsties in the village, because he was coming with such a large herd of pigs that anyone who wanted some pork or bacon could join in and help themselves.

His father was a bit put out to hear this. He thought Hans-my-Hedgehog was dead and gone. But then along came his son driving all those pigs in front of him, and the village had such a slaughter that they could hear the noise two miles away.

When it was all over Hans-my-Hedgehog said, ‘Papa, my cockerel needs new shoes. If you take him to the blacksmith and have him shod again, I’ll ride away and never come back as long as I live.’

So the farmer did that, and was relieved to think that he’d seen the back of Hans-my-Hedgehog at last.

When the cockerel was ready, Hans-my-Hedgehog jumped on his back and rode away. He rode and rode till he came to the kingdom of the first king, the king of the broken promise. The king had given strict orders that if anyone approached the palace playing the bagpipes and riding on a cockerel, they should be shot, stabbed, bombed, knocked down, blown up, strangled, anything to prevent them from entering.

So when Hans-my-Hedgehog appeared, the brigade of guards was ordered out to charge at him with their bayonets. But he was too quick for them. He spurred the cockerel up into the air and flew right over the top of the soldiers, over the palace wall and up to the king’s window.

He perched there on the sill and shouted out that he’d come for what he’d been promised, and that if the king tried to weasel out of it he’d pay for it with his life, and so would the princess.

The king told his daughter that she’d better do what Hans-my-Hedgehog wanted. She put on a white dress, and the king hastily ordered a carriage with six fine horses to be made ready, and piled gold and silver and the deeds to several fine farms and forests into it, and ordered two dozen of his best servants to go with it.

The horses were harnessed, the servants were all lined up, the princess climbed in, and then Hans-my-Hedgehog took his place beside her with the cockerel on his knee and the bagpipes on his lap. They said goodbye and off they went. The king thought he’d never see his daughter again.

He was wrong about that, though. As soon as they were out of the city, Hans-my-Hedgehog ordered the princess out of the carriage, and told the servants to take several paces backwards and look the other way. Then he tore the princess’s white dress into shreds and stuck her all over with his prickles until she was covered in blood.

‘That’s what you get for trying to deceive me,’ he said. ‘Now clear off. Go home. You’re no good to me, and I don’t want you.’

And she went home with the servants and the gold and the carriage and all, disgraced. So much for her.

As for Hans-my-Hedgehog, he took his bagpipes and jumped on the cockerel and rode away to the second kingdom, whose king had behaved very differently from the first one. He had given orders that if anyone arrived in the kingdom looking like a hedgehog and riding a cockerel, he should be saluted, given a cavalry escort, greeted with crowds cheering and waving flags, and brought with honour to the royal palace.

The king had told his daughter what Hans-my-Hedgehog looked like, of course, but when she saw him she was shocked all the same. However, there was nothing to be done about it; her father had given his word, and she had given hers. She bade Hans-my-Hedgehog welcome, with all her heart, and they were married at once, and sat next to each other at the banquet.

And then it was time to go to bed. He could see she was afraid of his prickles.

‘You mustn’t be frightened,’ he said. ‘I’d do anything rather than hurt you.’

He told the old king to have a large fire made in the fireplace on the landing, and to have four men ready outside the bedroom door.

‘I’m going to take off my hedgehog skin as soon as I go into the bedroom,’ he explained. ‘The men must seize it at once and throw it on the fire, and stay there till it’s all burnt to ash.’

When the clock struck eleven, Hans-my-Hedgehog went into the bedroom, took off his skin, and laid it down by the bed. Immediately the four men rushed in, seized the prickly skin, flung it on the fire and stood around watching till it had all burned up, and the moment the last prickle was consumed by the last flame, Hans was free.

He lay down on the bed like a human being at last. However, he was scorched and charred all over, as if he himself had been in the fire. The king sent at once for the royal physician, who cleaned him up and tended to his skin with special balms and ointments, and soon he looked like an ordinary young man, though more handsome than most. The princess was overjoyed.

Next morning they both rose from the royal bed full of happiness, and when they had eaten breakfast they celebrated their wedding again; and in time Hans-my-Hedgehog succeeded the old king, and inherited the kingdom.

Some years later he took his wife all the way back to see his father. Of course the old farmer had no idea who he was.

‘I’m your son,’ said Hans-my-Hedgehog.

‘Oh, no, no, that can’t be right,’ said the farmer. ‘I did have a son, but he was like a hedgehog, all covered in prickles, and he went off to see the world a long time ago.’

But Hans said that he was the one, and told so many details about his life that the farmer was finally convinced; and the old man wept for joy, and returned with his son to his kingdom.

Tale type:ATU 441, ‘Hans My Hedgehog’

Source:a story told to the Grimm brothers by Dorothea Viehmann

Similar stories:Italo Calvino: ‘King Crin’ ( Italian Folktales ); Giovanni Francesco Straparola: ‘The Pig Prince’ ( The Great Fairy Tale Tradition , ed. Jack Zipes)

This tale is a very distant descendant of the ancient story of Cupid and Psyche, as the two Italian variants make plain. This version, though, has acquired a lot of intriguing details on the way to the Grimms’ collection. It has Dorothea Viehmann’s characteristic swiftness and economy of movement (see the note to ‘The Riddle’), and a wonderfully absurd hero whose gallantry, patience and charm, not to mention musical talent, make him one of the most memorable characters in the whole collection.