“Long live Queen Miranda!”
Personally, my first order would be to send him into immediate exile. You’re obviously dealing with an unstable personality here, and tomorrow you just know he’s going to wake up and start the civil war.
All the Court cried: “Long live Queen Miranda!” after him, and the young Queen’s two sisters came running up, and threw their arms round her neck, and kissed her a thousand times, and then there was such a laughing and crying, talking and kissing, all at once, and Miranda thanked her father, and began to ask after everyone — particularly the Captain of the Guard, to whom she owed so much; but, to her great sorrow, she heard that he was dead.
Gee, if you’d thought of it, you could have trapped him in a horrible undeath too!
Presently they sat down to the banquet, and the King asked Miranda to tell them all that had happened to her since the terrible morning when he had sent the Captain of the Guard to fetch her. This she did with so much spirit that all the guests listened with breathless interest. But while she was thus enjoying herself with the King and her sisters, the King of the Sheep was waiting impatiently for the time of her return, and when it came and went, and no Princess appeared, his anxiety became so great that he could bear it no longer.
“She is not coming back any more,” he cried. “My miserable sheep’s face displeases her, and without Miranda what is left to me, wretched creature that I am! Oh! cruel Ragotte my punishment is complete.”
Y’know, I might — just might — have gone “Oh, crap! Her father, who already tried to kill her once, figured out what was up and decided to finish the job! Maybe I should lay siege to the palace with my awesome SHEEP ARMY and figure out what’s going on before I automatically assume that she hates me because I’m a sheep!”
I have different self-esteem issues than an enchanted sheep, though. I guess that’s a good thing.
For a long time he bewailed his sad fate like this, and then, seeing that it was growing dark, and that still there was no sign of the Princess, he set out as fast as he could in the direction of the town. When he reached the palace he asked for Miranda, but by this time everyone had heard the story of her adventures, and did not want her to go back again to the King of the Sheep, so they refused sternly to let him see her.
People are dicks. On the other hands, the sheep’s sort of a bastard, so maybe they’ve got the right idea.
In vain he begged and prayed them to let him in; though his entreaties might have melted hearts of stone they did not move the guards of the palace, and at last, quite broken-hearted, he fell dead at their feet.
Unexpected. Presumably he’ll be raised from the dead, right?
In the meantime the King, who had not the least idea of the sad thing that was happening outside the gate of his palace, proposed to Miranda that she should be driven in her chariot all round the town, which was to be illuminated with thousands and thousands of torches, placed in windows and balconies, and in all the grand squares.
No fire hazard is too great for my little princess!
But what a sight met her eyes at the very entrance of the palace! There lay her dear, kind sheep, silent and motionless, upon the pavement!
She threw herself out of the chariot and ran to him, crying bitterly, for she realized that her broken promise had cost him his life, and for a long, long time she was so unhappy that they thought she would have died too.
… wait a minute, he’s actually dead-dead?
So you see that even a princess is not always happy — especially if she forgets to keep her word; and the greatest misfortunes often happen to people just as they think they have obtained their heart’s desires!
Dude.
Dude.
That’s a rather astonishing fuck-you to the audience at the end of the story, isn’t it? I mean, on the one hand, you figure with all those Beauty-and-the-Beast-esque endings where Beauty ALMOST doesn’t return in time, there’d have to be a case where she never did return at all, but still! Dude!
My only theory is that the author didn’t much like Miranda either by the end, and decided to crush her.
And I still want to know about Goblin Land, which you note never comes up again, and why the monkey was looking to make a name for herself. It’s such a weird aside that doesn’t go anywhere.
Rains of lobster-patties. What a world.
The Wonderful Birch
Here we go, yet another one! I admit, however, that this is not so deeply bizarre as “The Wonderful Sheep,” but it still is … err … wonderful! And has sheep!
This is a Russian version of the Cinderella story, and naturally has some bits that would never make the Disney cut, but also a few lines that I find surprisingly charming, and a weirdly sympathetic character who isn’t the heroine (to no one’s great surprise).
This is from Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1890).
ONCE upon a time there were a man and a woman, who had an only daughter. Now it happened that one of their sheep went astray, and they set out to look for it, and searched and searched, each in a different part of the wood. Then the good wife met a witch, who said to her, “If you spit, you miserable creature, if you spit into the sheath of my knife, or if you run between my legs, I shall change you into a black sheep.”
See, this is how you know it’s a fairy tale. Real fairy tales,
