The queen is incredibly blase about this. I am gonna go with serious laudanum habit, because otherwise having packs of trolls and witches in the hallways is completely commonplace. “Not worth asking about. Just witches and trolls again. It’s Tuesday, you know that’s witch-and-troll-in-the-hallway day. Sheesh, go play with your brother the goat or something.”
So Tatterhood said that she would just go out and drive them away. In spite of all they could say, and however much they begged and asked her to leave the trolls alone, she just had to go out and drive the witches off.
She begged the queen to be careful and keep all the doors shut tight, so that not one of them would open the least bit.
Anyone who thinks the queen listens, raise your hand. Nobody? Good.
Having said this, off she went with her wooden spoon, and began to hunt out and drive away the hags.
The two-handed wooden Battlespoon is used to this day by an order of warrior nuns found only on a small island off the coast of Norway. The name is chock full of umlauts and is believed to have been the Viking word for “Just keep rowing, dude.” The nuns have artfully ragged habits and keep a flock of exceedingly handsome goats.
All the while there was such a commotion out in the gallery that the like of it had never before been heard. The whole palace creaked and groaned as if every joint and beam were going to be torn out of its place. Now I can’t say exactly what happened,
Oh, it was so totally the queen.
but somehow or other one door did open a little bit, and her twin sister just peeped out to see how things were going with Tatterhood, and put her head a tiny bit through the opening. But, pop! up came an old witch, and whipped off her head, and stuck a calf’s head on her shoulders instead; and so the princess ran back into the room on all fours, and began to “moo” like a calf.
The next time somebody pulls out that ancient astronaut crap about how primitive societies were so much more advanced than we are, I’m pointing to this story and claiming that the old Norse could do head transplants.
When Tatterhood came back and saw her sister, she scolded them all, and was very angry because they hadn’t kept better watch, and asked them what they thought of their carelessness now that her sister had been turned into a calf.
Great. Now my siblings are a goat and a calf — and I am still gonna be third in line to the throne. This family has issues, even leaving aside Mom’s increasing opium dependency.
“But I’ll see if I can’t set her free,” she said.
There’s only room for one farm animal in this family!
Then she asked the king for a ship with a full set of sails and good load of stores, but she would not have a captain or any sailors. No; she would sail away with her sister all alone. There was no holding her back, and at last they let her have her own way.
We will also never see the parents again. I would hope that they went back to their adopted daughter, but at this point, I think she’s well out of it. I like to think she ran off with the beggar girl and her mother and learned witchcraft.
Tatterhood sailed off, and steered her ship right up to the land where the witches lived. When she came to the landing place, she told her sister to stay quite still on board the ship; but she herself rode on her goat up to the witches’ castle.
C’mon, bro, let’s go get our sister’s head back …
When she got there, one of the windows in the gallery was open, and there she saw her sister’s head hung up on the window frame; so she jumped her goat through the window into the gallery, snapped up the head, and set off with it. The witches came after her to try to get the head back. They flocked around her as thick as a swarm of bees or a nest of ants.
I want Pixar to do this movie, just so I can see Tatterhood with a severed head under one arm, riding her war goat, beating the crap out of people with her spoon.
The goat snorted and puffed, and butted with his horns, and Tatterhood beat and banged them about with her wooden spoon and so the pack of witches had to give up.
We may be witches, but a goat AND a spoon? That’s just crazy talk.
So Tatterhood got back to her ship, took the calf’s head off her sister, and put her own on again, and then she became a girl as she had been before.
I like to think that they tacked the calf-head on the front of the ship as a figurehead. And then became pirates. “STAND AND DELIVER OR YOU GET THE GOAT AND THE SPOON!”
After that she sailed a long, long way, to a strange king’s realm.
Well, I’ve terrorized all the other pirates until they just hand me money as soon as we pull alongside. Now I’m bored and the deck is ankle deep in goat crap.
Now the king of this land was a widower, and had an only son. When he saw the strange sail, he sent messengers down to the beach to find out where it came from, and who owned it;but when the king’s men came down there, the only person they saw on board was Tatterhood, and there she was, riding around and around the deck on her goat at full speed, until her strands of hair streamed in the wind. The men from the palace were all amazed at this sight, and asked if more people were not on board. Yes,
