No, actually I’m pretty sure kidnapping and throwing boots at the princess for revenge counts as wrong, and there’s still the question of the possibly innocent witch, since I am growing increasingly suspicious of the accuracy of soldier telepathy. Frankly, maybe the witch was the telepathic one and realized what a jerk you are and decided to drop you down the well for a reason.
As he was being led out, he asked the king for one last wish. “What sort of a wish?” asked the king.
“That I might smoke one more pipe on the way.”
“You can smoke three,” answered the king, “but do not think that I will let you live.”
Never, ever, ever grant the last wishes of people with known magical associates.
Then the soldier pulled out his pipe and lit it with the blue light. As soon as a few rings of smoke had risen, the dwarf was standing there. He had a cudgel in his hand and said, “What does my master command?”
“Strike the false judges and their henchmen to the ground for me. And don’t spare the king either, who has treated me so badly.”
I will give you that the king was a dick about the pensions, and if you want to strike him down, I’m willing to turn a blind eye. But the judges nailing you for kidnapping really don’t qualify as “false” and let me point out that you thought they were good enough for the witch (who increasingly has my sympathy.)
Then the dwarf took off like lightning, zip-zap, back and forth, and everyone he even touched with his cudgel fell to the ground and did not dare to move. The king became afraid. He begged for mercy, and in order to save his life, he gave to the soldier his kingdom as well as his daughter for a wife
I bet she was thrilled.
The Master-maid
Okay, I had fun with the last one, and apparently people enjoyed it, so without further ado, “The Master-maid.” This one is from The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1889) and was collected in Norway in the mid 1800s. It’s one of Aarne-Thompson Type 313 (which is broadly tales of magical flight from a supernatural opponent).
ONCE upon a time there was a king who had many sons. I do not exactly know how many there were, but the youngest of them could not stay quietly at home, and was determined to go out into the world and try his luck, and after a long time the King was forced to give him leave to go.
Well, that’s a pretty standard opening, although I do like the “I do not know how many there were,” rather than a bald number.
When he had traveled about for several days, he came to a giant’s house, and hired himself to the giant as a servant.
This is a bad move. Giants are always bad. Fairies can go either way, dwarves can go either way, but witches and giants are always bad. Once in a blue moon you might get a helpful Baba Yaga, but only if you’re not a dumbass.
In the morning the giant had to go out to pasture his goats, and as he was leaving the house he told the King’s son that he must clean out the stable. “And after you have done that,” he said, “you need not do any more work today, for you have come to a kind master, and that you shall find. But what I set you to do must be done both well and thoroughly, and you must on no account go into any of the rooms which lead out of the room in which you slept last night. If you do, I will take your life.”
“Well to be sure, he is an easy master!” said the Prince to himself as he walked up and down the room humming and singing, for he thought there would be plenty of time left to clean out the stable, “but it would be amusing to steal a glance into his other rooms as well,” thought the Prince, “for there must be something that he is afraid of my seeing, as I am not allowed to enter them.”
The fact that the giant just told him that he’d kill him if he went into the other rooms and the Prince still thinks he’s an easy master without irony kinda makes me wonder what the Prince’s home life was like. That’s seriously not normal.
So he went into the first room. A cauldron was hanging from the walls; it was boiling, but the Prince could see no fire under it. “I wonder what is inside it,” he thought, and dipped a lock of his hair in, and the hair became just as if it were all made of copper. “That’s a nice kind of soup. If anyone were to taste that his throat would be gilded,” said the youth, and then he went into the next chamber.
Personally I always sample soup with my hair first.
There, too, a cauldron was hanging from the wall, bubbling and boiling, but there was no fire under this either. “I will just try what this is like too,” said the Prince, thrusting another lock of his hair into it, and it came out silvered over. “Such costly soup is not to be had in my father’s palace,” said the Prince, “but everything depends on how it tastes,” and then he went into the third room. There, too, a cauldron was hanging from the wall, boiling, exactly the same as in the two other rooms, and the Prince took pleasure in trying this also, so he dipped a lock of hair in, and it came out so brightly gilded that it shone again. “Some talk about going from bad to worse,” said the Prince, “but this is better and better. If he boils gold here, what can he boil in there?”
As this is never mentioned again anywhere in
