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

The story doesn’t end there. The trouble is that my grandmother, who told it to me, is losing her memory, and she’s forgotten the rest.

But I think that the beautiful princess married the count, and they remained together and lived in happiness. As for the snow-white geese, some say that they were really girls that the old woman had taken into her care, and it’s likely that they regained their human form and stayed there to serve the young queen. I wouldn’t be surprised.

As for the old woman, she can’t have been a witch, as people thought, but a wise woman who meant well. Why did she treat the young count like that when he first came across her? Well, who knows? She might have seen into his character and found a seed or two of arrogance there. If so, she knew how to deal with it.

Finally, it’s almost certain that she was present at the birth of the princess, and gave her the gift of weeping pearls instead of tears. That doesn’t happen much any more. If it did, poor people would soon become rich.

Tale type:ATU 923, ‘Love Like Salt’

Source:‘D’Ganshiadarin’, an Austrian dialect story by Andreas Schumacher (1833)

Similar stories:Katharine M. Briggs: ‘Cap o’ Rushes’, ‘Sugar and Salt’ ( Folk Tales of Britain ); Italo Calvino: ‘Dear as Salt’, ‘The Old Woman’s Hide’ ( Italian Folktales ); William Shakespeare: King Lear

This is one of the most sophisticated of all the tales. At the heart of it is the old story of the princess who told her father she loved him as much as salt, and was punished for her honesty. There are many variations on this tale, including King Lear .

But look what this very literary telling does. Instead of beginning with the unfortunate honest princess, it hides her until much later in the story, and begins with another figure altogether, the witch or wise woman; and not with a single event, either, but with a sketch of what she usually did, what her habitual way of life led her to do, and the reaction that aroused in others. But is she a witch, or isn’t she? Fairy tales usually tell us directly; this one instead shows us what other people thought of her, and allows the question to remain equivocal, undetermined. The story-sprite here is flirting with modernism already, in which there is no voice with absolute authority, and we can have no view except one that passes through a particular pair of eyes (the father and his little son); but all human views are partial. The father might be right, or he might not.

Then we meet the count, and the events of the story begin. The old woman treats the young man with what seems like high-handed and meaningless harshness; he meets another woman younger than the first, but ugly, dull; the old woman gives him the present of a box containing something which, when the queen opens the box in the next city he visits, causes her to faint. The storyteller has given us a tale full of mystery and suspense, and still we haven’t got to the heart of it.

But now, in the words of the queen (the story-sprite again, making sure that we can only know something that someone in the story knows) comes the kernel of the tale, the story of the girl who told the truth about loving her father as much as salt. She wept tears that were pearls, says the queen, and in the box there is one of those very pearls. Now we can see the connections that the storyteller has established between these mysterious events, and from here the tale moves swiftly on towards the climax. The goose girl takes off her skin in the moonlight (and again, we can only see this because the count is observing it) and reveals her hidden beauty; the old woman, treating her with great tenderness, tells her to put on her silk dress; the participants come together, and the truth is revealed.

And then there’s another reminder of the partiality of knowledge: the storyteller says that the story doesn’t end there, but the old woman who originally told it is losing her memory and has forgotten the rest. Nevertheless, it might happen that… and so on. This marvellous tale shows how complex a structure can be built on the simplest of bases, and still remain immediately comprehensible.

There were once a miller and his wife who lived happily with enough money and a bit of land, comfortably getting a little richer every year. But misfortune comes even to people such as them, and they had one piece of bad luck after another, so that the wealth they had grew smaller and smaller until they barely owned the mill they lived in. The miller was in great distress; he couldn’t sleep, and all night long he tossed and turned while his anxieties grew and grew.

One morning, after a night of ceaseless worry, he got up very early and went outside, hoping the fresh air would lift his heart a little. As he was walking across the mill dam the first rays of the sun touched his eyes, and at the same moment he heard something disturbing the water.

He turned around to look, and saw a beautiful woman rising up out of the millpond. Her delicate hands were holding her hair away from her shoulders, but it was so long that it flowed down around her pale body like silk. He knew at once that she was the nixie of the pond. He was so frightened that he didn’t know whether to run away or to stay where he was, but then she spoke, and in a soft voice she called him by his name and asked him why he was so sad.

At first the miller couldn’t find his voice, but when he heard her speaking so sweetly, he took heart and told her how he’d once been rich, but that his fortune had diminished little by little and now he was so poor he didn’t know what to do.

‘Don’t worry,’ said the nixie. ‘I’ll make you happier and richer than you’ve ever been. All you have to do is promise me that you’ll give me what has just been born in your house.’

That can only be a puppy or a kitten, thought the miller, and he promised to do what she asked.

The nixie slipped back under the water, and the miller, feeling much better, hurried back to the mill; but he hadn’t even reached the door before the maid came out, smiling broadly, and said, ‘Congratulations! Your wife’s just given birth to a baby boy.’

The miller stood there as if he’d been struck by lightning. He realized at once that the nixie had tricked him. With his head low and his heart heavy he went to his wife’s bed. She said, ‘Why are you looking so sad? Isn’t he beautiful, our little boy?’

He told her what had happened, and how the nixie had deceived him.

‘I should have guessed!’ he said. ‘No good comes of trusting creatures like that. And what good is money, after all? What’s the use of gold and treasure, if we have to lose our child? But what can we do?’

Even the relatives who came to celebrate the birth didn’t know what advice to give him.

However, at exactly that time, the miller’s luck began to change. Every enterprise he undertook was successful; harvests were good, so there was plenty of grain to mill, and prices held up too; it seemed as if he could do nothing wrong, and his money-box filled up almost by itself, and his safe was full to bursting. Before long he was richer than he’d ever been.

But he couldn’t enjoy it. His bargain with the nixie tormented him; he didn’t like walking by the millpond in case she came to the surface and reminded him of his debt. And of course he never let his little son go anywhere near the water.

‘If you find yourself close to the edge,’ he told him, ‘be careful, and come away at once. There’s a bad spirit in there. You only have to touch the water and she’ll grab hold and pull you under.’