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

One of them was an old woman, and she was a witch. She said to the other, who was her daughter, ‘That man who’s just coming out of the forest has got a great treasure inside him. We must get it for ourselves, my honey, because we can make much better use of it than he’s doing. You see, he swallowed the heart of a particular bird, and as a result he finds a gold coin under his pillow every morning.’ She went on to tell her daughter the whole story of the hunter and the wise woman, and she finished by saying, ‘And if you don’t do exactly as I tell you, my dear, you’ll be sorry.’

As the hunter came closer to the castle he saw them more clearly, and thought, ‘I’ve been wandering about for quite a while now, and I’ve got plenty of money. Maybe I’ll stop at this castle for a day or two and have a rest.’

Of course, the real reason was that the girl was very beautiful.

He went into the castle, where they welcomed him and looked after him generously. Before long he was in love with the witch’s daughter, so much so that he could think of nothing else; he had eyes only for her, and whatever she wanted him to do, he did. In fact he was besotted.

Seeing this, the old woman said to the girl, ‘This is the time to act. We’ve got to get that bird’s heart. He won’t even notice it’s gone.’

She prepared a potion, and poured it into a cup for the girl to hand to the young man.

‘My dearest one,’ she said to him, ‘won’t you drink to my health?’

He drank it all down in one, and almost immediately he was so sick that he vomited up the bird’s heart. The girl helped him to lie down, with many soft words of concern, and then went straight back, found the heart, rinsed it in clean water and swallowed it herself.

From then on the hunter found no more gold coins under his pillow. He had no idea that they were appearing under the girl’s, and that the witch collected them every morning and hid them away. He was so infatuated that all he wanted to do was spend time with her daughter.

The witch said, ‘We’ve got the heart, but that isn’t enough. We must have the wishing cloak too.’

‘Can’t we leave him that?’ said the daughter. ‘After all, the poor man’s lost his fortune.’

‘Don’t you be so soft!’ said the witch. ‘A cloak like that is worth millions. There aren’t many of them about, I can tell you. I must have it, and I will have it.’

She told her daughter what to do and said that if she didn’t obey, she’d regret it. So the girl did as the witch said: she stood at the window gazing out as if she were very sad.

The hunter said, ‘Why are you standing there looking so sad?’

‘Ah, my treasure,’ said the girl, ‘out there lies Mount Garnet, where the most precious jewels grow. When I think of them I want them so much that I can’t help feeling sad… But who can go there and gather them? Only the birds, who can fly. I’m sure a human being could never get there.’

‘If that’s all that’s troubling you,’ said the hunter, ‘leave it to me. I’ll soon cheer you up.’

He took his cloak and swung it around his shoulders, and over her as well, so it enfolded both of them. Then he wished to be on Mount Garnet. The blink of an eye later, they were sitting near the top of it. Precious stones of every kind sparkled brilliantly all around them; they had never seen anything so lovely.

However, the witch had cast a spell to make the hunter sleepy, and he said to the girl, ‘Let’s sit down and rest a while. I’m so tired my legs can’t keep me up.’

They sat down, he laid his head in her lap, and a moment later his eyes began to close. As soon as he was fast asleep, she took the cloak from around his shoulders and wrapped it around herself, before gathering as many garnets and other jewels as she could carry and wishing herself back home.

When the hunter awoke and found himself alone on the wild mountain, and that his cloak had gone too, he realized that his beloved had deceived him.

‘Oh,’ he sighed, ‘I didn’t know the world was so full of treachery!’

He sat there too distressed to move. He couldn’t think what to do.

Now the mountain happened to belong to some ferocious giants, great thundering brutes, and it wasn’t long before the hunter heard three of them coming. He lay down quickly and pretended to be fast asleep.

The first giant prodded him with his toe and said, ‘What’s this earthworm doing here?’

‘Squash him,’ said the second. ‘I would.’

But the third one said, ‘Don’t bother. There’s nothing here for him to live on, so he’ll be dead soon in any case. Besides, if he climbs to the top, the clouds will carry him away.’

They left him alone and carried on talking as they walked off. The hunter had heard everything they’d said, and as soon as they were out of sight, he got to his feet and clambered up the mountain to the peak, which was surrounded by clouds.

He sat down on the jewelled pinnacle, while clouds came and bumped into him, and finally one of them grabbed him and tossed him on board. It floated around the sky for some time, and very comfortable it was too, and the hunter saw many interesting things as he peered over the side; but eventually it began to sink towards the ground, and soon enough he was deposited in someone’s kitchen garden, which had high walls around it.

The cloud floated up again and left him standing between the cabbages and the onions.

‘Pity there’s no fruit,’ he said to himself. ‘I wouldn’t mind a nice apple or a pear, and I’m so hungry. Still, I can always have a mouthful of cabbage. It doesn’t taste wonderful, but it’ll keep me going.’

There were two kinds of cabbages growing in the garden, pointed ones and round ones, and to begin with the hunter pulled a few leaves off a pointed one and started to chew. It tasted good enough, but when he’d only had a few bites, he felt the strangest sensation: his skin tickled all over as long hairs sprouted out of it, his spine bent forward and his arms lengthened and turned into hairy legs with hooves on the ends of them, his neck thickened and grew longer, his face lengthened and two long ears shot up from the sides of his head, and before he knew what was happening, he was a donkey.

Needless to say, that made the cabbage taste much better. He went on eating it with relish, and then moved on to a round cabbage. He’d only had a couple of bites when he found it all happening again, but in reverse, and in less time than it takes to tell it, he was a human being again.

‘Well,’ he said to himself, ‘how about that? Now I can get back what belongs to me.’

So he picked a head of the pointed cabbage and a head of the round one, put them safely in his knapsack, and climbed the wall and got away. He soon discovered where he was, and set off back to the castle where the witch lived. After some days’ walking he found it again, and kept out of sight while he dyed his face so brown that even his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him.

Then he knocked at the door. The witch herself opened it.

‘Can you give me shelter for the night?’ the young man said. ‘I’m worn out, and I can’t go any further.’

‘Who are you, my dear?’ said the witch. ‘What brings you out this way?’

‘I’m a royal messenger, and the king sent me specially to look for the most delicious cabbage in the world. I was lucky enough to find it, and it really is delicious, but the weather’s been so hot that it’s beginning to wilt. I don’t think I’ll get it back in time.’

When the witch heard about this delicious cabbage, she couldn’t wait to try it herself.

‘Have you got a little bit my daughter and I could taste?’ she said.

‘I brought two heads of it. I don’t see why you shouldn’t have one of them, since you’re being kind enough to let me stay the night.’