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

He helped her into the basket and gave the rope a tug. Straight away the other two began to pull her up, and presently the basket came down again empty.

But Hans wasn’t sure he could trust his two companions. ‘They didn’t tell me about the little man beating them up,’ he thought; ‘I don’t know what they might be planning now.’ So instead of getting in the basket himself, he put his iron staff in and tugged the rope once more. Up it went, but when it was no more than halfway up, the other two let it fall with a crash to the bottom. If Hans had been sitting in it, he’d have been killed at once.

‘Well, I was right about those two,’ he thought, ‘but what am I going to do now?’

He walked round and round the little space at the bottom of the shaft, getting more and more desperate. He couldn’t think of any way to escape. ‘It’d be a miserable end to perish down this wretched hole,’ he thought. ‘I wasn’t born to end like this.’

Then he noticed that the little man had a ring on his finger that sparkled and glittered. ‘I wonder if that’s magic,’ he thought. ‘You never know.’

So he took the ring off the dead man’s finger and put it on his own. And at once he heard something whizzing and buzzing and whirling about in the air just above his head. He looked up, and saw a thousand or more little air-spirits hovering there. When they saw him looking at them they all bowed, and the biggest one said: ‘Master, here we are at your command. What would you like us to do?’

Hans was flabbergasted, but he collected his wits and said, ‘You can take me up to the top of this ruddy hole, that’s what you can do.’

‘Immediately, master!’

Each of the air-spirits seized one of the hairs on his head, and then they began to fly upwards. It seemed to him as if he was floating up all by himself. After only about ten seconds he was standing on the forest floor looking all around. There was no sign of Rock Smasher or Pine Twister, or of the maiden either.

‘Where have those scoundrels gone?’ he said.

The air-spirits all shot into the sky, and after a minute or so they all came diving back down, to hover in front of him like a cloud of friendly midges.

‘They’ve taken ship, master,’ said the chief spirit.

‘Already? And is the maiden with them?’

‘Yes, master, she is, and they’ve got her tied up in case she throws herself overboard.’

‘Oh, that poor girl! What she’s gone through! Well, I’ll soon deal with those wretches. Which way is the sea?’

‘Over there, master.’

Hans set off, running as fast as he could, and before long he reached the seashore. Standing on tiptoe on the top of a sand-dune and shading his eyes against the setting sun, Hans could just make out the dark shape of a little ship.

‘Is that them?’

‘That’s right, master.’

‘Grrr! I’ll teach them to betray their friend!’

And full of righteous indignation, Hans charged at the water, meaning to swim out and overtake the ship. He might have managed it, too, but his hundred-pound staff weighed him down. In fact it dragged him right to the bottom of the sea, causing a great stir among the starfishes and the octopuses.

‘ Bubbllbubblldebub! ’ yelled Hans, but nothing happened till he remembered the ring. He twiddled it with his other hand, and at once a shower of bubbles shot down to find him as the air-spirits obeyed his call. They hoisted him to the surface and then pulled him through the water so quickly that he sent sheets of spray flying out to left and right.

Only a few seconds later he was standing on the deck of the ship, and Rock Smasher and Pine Twister were scrambling to get away. Pine Twister shot up the mainmast like a squirrel, and Rock Smasher tried to hide among the cargo in the hold; but Hans hauled him out and whacked him senseless with the staff, and then shook the mainmast till Pine Twister fell down and landed on a sharp corner of the wheelhouse. Hans threw them overboard, and that was the end of them.

Then he set the beautiful maiden free.

‘Which way’s your father’s kingdom?’ he said.

‘South-west,’ she told him, and Hans told the air-spirits to blow on the sails. With the fine fair wind they provided, the ship soon reached the harbour, where Hans restored the princess to her father and mother.

She explained all about Hans’s bravery, and of course there was nothing else to be done but for him to marry her. The king and queen were delighted with their son-in-law, and they all lived happily ever after.

Tale type:ATU 301, ‘The Three Stolen Princesses’

Source:a story told to the Grimm brothers by Wilhelm Wackernagel

Similar stories:Katharine M. Briggs: ‘The Little Red Hairy Man’, ‘Tom and the Giant Blunderbuss’, ‘Tom Hickathrift’ ( Folk Tales of Britain ); Italo Calvino: ‘The Golden Ball’ ( Italian Folktales ); Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: ‘The Gnome’ ( Children’s and Household Tales )

This is a story made up of bits and pieces, not very tidily strung together. The robbers in their cave exist only to be escaped from; Pine Twister and Rock Smasher, the gifted companions, never have a chance to use their particular gifts; and as for the savage nobleman who kidnapped the princess, he appears in this tale only as the agent who puts the princess in the cave, and is never heard of again. Did he forget about her? Was he killed while on some other savage business? Couldn’t he reappear, so that Hans could win a tremendous fight and become even more of a hero?

Alternatively, why doesn’t the story make the evil little man her captor instead of just her guard? That would have been the simplest way to clear up the matter.

And then there is the ring that summons the air-spirits. Finding something like that in a cave from which there’s no means of escape sounds remarkably like ‘Aladdin’. And why doesn’t the evil little man use it to help defeat Hans?

And so on. Once you start ‘improving’ a tale like this, it can easily come apart in your hands.

A very long time ago there was a country where the night was always dark. After sunset the sky covered the world like a black cloth, because the moon never rose, and not one star twinkled in the darkness. A long time before, when the world was created, everything used to glow gently and give enough light to see by, but later that faded.

One day four young men from that country set out on a journey and came to another kingdom just as the sun was setting behind the mountains. When the sun had gone completely, they stood still in amazement, because a gleaming ball appeared at the top of an oak tree and cast a soft light all around. It wasn’t as bright as the sun, but it gave enough light to see by and to tell one thing from another. The four travellers had never seen anything like it, so they stopped a farmer who happened to be driving past in his wagon, and asked him what it was.

‘Oh, that’s the moon, that is,’ he told them. ‘Our mayor bought it. He paid three talers for it. He’s got to pour oil into it every day and keep it clean so it always shines nice and bright, and we pay him a taler a week for his trouble.’

When the farmer had driven away one of the young men said, ‘You know what, we could use this moon thing at home. My dad’s got an oak tree about as big as this in his front garden. I bet he’d let us hang it there. Wouldn’t it be good not to have to blunder about in the dark any more?’

‘That’s a good idea,’ said the second. ‘Let’s get hold of a wagon and a horse and carry this moon away. They can always buy another.’