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

‘Oh, this is too much,’ said the count. ‘This is outrageous!’

He tried to throw off the bundle, but he just couldn’t dislodge it. It clung to his back as if it were growing there. He squirmed and twisted this way and that, and the old woman laughed at him and jumped up and down with her crutch.

‘No point in losing your temper, young sir,’ she said. ‘You’re as red in the face as a turkey cock. Carry your burden patiently, and when we get home, I might give you a tip.’

What could he do? He had to stumble on after the old woman as well as he could. The odd thing was that while his load seemed to be getting heavier and heavier, she seemed to getting more and more nimble.

Then all of a sudden she gave a skip and landed right on top of the pack on his back and stayed there. She was as thin as a stick, but she weighed more than the stoutest peasant girl. The young man’s legs wobbled, all his muscles trembled with effort and blazed with pain, and whenever he tried to stop for a moment, the old woman lashed him with a bunch of stinging nettles. He groaned, he sobbed, he struggled on, and when he was sure he was going to collapse, they turned a corner in the path and there was the old woman’s house.

When the geese saw her, they stretched out their necks and their wings and ran towards her, cackling. After them came another old woman, carrying a stick. This one wasn’t as old as the first one, but she was big and strong with a heavy, dull, ugly face.

‘Where’ve you been, mother?’ she said to the old woman. ‘You’ve been gone so long I thought something must have happened to you.’

‘Oh, no, my pretty one,’ said the old woman. ‘I met this kind gentleman and he offered to carry my bundle for me. And look, he even offered to take me on his back when I got tired. We had such a nice conversation that the journey passed in no time.’

Finally the old woman slid off the young count’s back and took the bundle and the baskets.

‘There we are, sir,’ she said, ‘you sit yourself down and have a breather. You’ve earned your little reward, and you shall have it. As for you, my beautiful treasure,’ she said to the other woman, ‘you better go inside. It wouldn’t be proper for you to stay alone with a lusty young fellow like this. I know what young men are like. He might fall in love with you.’

The count didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry; even if she were thirty years younger, he thought, this treasure would never prompt a flicker in his heart.

The old woman fussed over her geese as if they were children before going inside after her daughter. The young man stretched himself out on a bench under an apple tree. It was a beautiful morning; the sun shone warmly, the air was mild, and all around him stretched a green meadow covered with cowslips and wild thyme and a thousand other flowers. A clear stream twinkled in the sunlight as it ran through the middle of the meadow, and the white geese waddled here and there or paddled in the stream.

‘What a lovely place,’ the young man thought. ‘But I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open. I think I’ll take a nap for a few minutes. I just hope the wind doesn’t blow my legs away; they’re as weak as tinder.’

The next thing he knew, the old woman was shaking his arm.

‘Wakey wakey,’ she said, ‘you can’t stay here. I admit I gave you a hard time, but you’re still alive, and here’s your reward. I said I’d give you something, didn’t I? You don’t need money or land, so here’s something else. Look after it well and it’ll bring you luck.’

What she gave him was a little box carved out of a single emerald. The count jumped up, feeling refreshed by his sleep, and thanked her for the gift. Then he set out on his way without once looking back for the beautiful treasure. For a long way down the path he could still hear the happy noise of the geese.

He wandered in the forest for at least three days before he found his way out. Eventually he came to a large city, where the custom was that every stranger had to be brought before the king and queen; so he was taken to the palace, where the king and queen were sitting on their thrones.

The young count knelt politely, and since he had nothing else to offer, he took the emerald box from his pocket, opened it and set it down before the queen. She beckoned to him to bring the box closer so that she could look inside it, but no sooner had she seen what was there than she fell into a dead faint. The bodyguards seized the young man at once and were about to drag him off to prison when the queen opened her eyes.

‘Release him!’ she cried. ‘Everyone must leave the throne room. I want to speak to this young man in private.’

When they were alone, the queen began to cry bitterly.

‘What use is all the splendour of this palace?’ she said. ‘Every morning when I wake up, sorrow rushes in on me like a flood. I once had three daughters, and the third was so beautiful that everyone thought she was a miracle. She was as white as snow and as pink as apple blossoms, and her hair shone like the beams of the sun. When she wept, it wasn’t tears that flowed down her cheeks but pearls and precious stones.

‘On her fifteenth birthday, the king called all three daughters to his throne. You can’t imagine how everyone blinked when the third daughter came in — it was just as if the sun had come out.

‘The king said, “My daughters, since I don’t know when my last day will arrive, I’m going to decide today what each of you shall receive after my death. You all love me, but whoever loves me most shall have the largest part of the kingdom.”

‘Each of the girls said she loved him most of all, but he wanted more than that.

‘“Tell me exactly how much you love me,” he said. “Then I’ll know just what you mean.”

‘The oldest daughter said, “I love you as much as the sweetest sugar.” The second daughter said, “I love you as much as I love my prettiest dress.”

‘But the third daughter didn’t say a word. So her father said, “And you, darling, how much do you love me?”

‘And she said, “I don’t know. I can’t compare my love with anything.”

‘But he kept on and on demanding an answer until she found something to compare her love to, and she said, “No matter how good the food, it won’t taste of anything without salt. So I love my father as much as I love salt.”

‘When the king heard this, he became furious and said, “If that’s how you love me, then that’s how your love will be rewarded.”

‘And he divided his kingdom between the two eldest daughters, and he ordered the youngest to have a sack of salt bound to her back, and then two servants were to lead her out into the depths of the forest. We all begged and pleaded for mercy, but he wouldn’t change his mind. Oh, how she wept when she was forced to leave! The path she’d trodden was covered with pearls. Not long afterwards, the king regretted what he’d done, and had the forest searched from end to end; but she was never found.

‘When I think that wild animals may have eaten her, I can hardly bear the pain. Sometimes I comfort myself by thinking that she’s found shelter in a cave, or she’s being looked after by kind people, but…

‘So you can imagine the shock when I opened the emerald box and saw a pearl just like the ones my daughter wept. And you can imagine how my heart was stirred. And now you must tell me: where did you get this? How does it come to be in your possession?’

The young count told her how it had been given to him by the old woman in the forest, who he believed must be a witch, because everything about her had made him feel uneasy. However, he said, this was the first he had heard about the queen’s daughter. Accordingly, the king and queen decided to set out at once to find the old woman, in the hope that she might be able to give them some news about their child.