Andrew Lang_Fairy Book 01 (2 page)

The minister's son embarked in this old vessel, and
thanks to favorable winds, at length reached his own
country. In spite of the pitiable condition in which he
returned they received him joyfully.

"I am the first to come back," said he to the King;
now fulfil your promise, and give me the princess in
marriage.

So they at once began to prepare for the wedding
festivities. As to the poor princess, she was sorrowful and
angry enough about it.

The next morning, at daybreak, a wonderful ship with
every sail set came to anchor before the town. The King
happened at that moment to be at the palace window.

"What strange ship is this," he cried, "that has a
golden hull, silver masts, and silken sails, and who are the
young men like princes who man it? And do I not see St.
Nicholas at the helm? Go at once and invite the captain
of the ship to come to the palace."

His servants obeyed him, and very soon in came an
enchantingly handsome young prince, dressed in rich
silk, ornamented with pearls and diamonds.

"Young man," said the King, "you are welcome,
whoever you may be. Do me the favor to be my guest as long
as you remain in my capital."

"Many thanks, sire," replied the captain, "I accept
your offer."

"My daughter is about to be married," said the King;
"will you give her away?"

"I shall be charmed, sire."

Soon after came the Princess and her betrothed.

"Why, how is this?" cried the young captain; "would
you marry this charming princess to such a man as that?"

"But he is my prime minister's son!"

"What does that matter? I cannot give your daughter
away. The man she is betrothed to is one of my servants."

"Your servant?"

"Without doubt. I met him in a distant town reduced
to carrying away dust and rubbish from the houses. I
had pity on him and engaged him as one of my servants."

"It is impossible!" cried the King.

"Do you wish me to prove what I say? This young man
returned in a vessel which I fitted out for him, an
unseaworthy ship with a black battered hull, and the sailors
were infirm and crippled."

"It is quite true," said the King.

"It is false," cried the minister's son. "I do not know
this man!"

"Sire," said the young captain, "order your daughter's
betrothed to be stripped, and see if the mark of my ring
is not branded upon his back."

The King was about to give this order, when the
minister's son, to save himself from such an indignity,
admitted that the story was true.

"And now, sire," said the young captain, "do you not
recognize me?"

"I recognize you," said the Princess; "you are the
gardener's son whom I have always loved, and it is you
I wish to marry."

"Young man, you shall be my son-in-law," cried the
King. "The marriage festivities are already begun, so you
shall marry my daughter this very day."

And so that very day the gardener's son married the
beautiful Princess.

Several months passed. The young couple were as
happy as the day was long, and the King was more and
more pleased with himself for having secured such a
son-in-law.

But, presently, the captain of the golden ship found it
necessary to take a long voyage, and after embracing his
wife tenderly he embarked.

Now in the outskirts of the capital there lived an old
man, who had spent his life in studying black arts—alchemy,
astrology, magic, and enchantment. This man found out that
the gardener's son had only succeeded in marrying the
Princess by the help of the genii who obeyed the bronze ring.

"I will have that ring," said he to himself. So he went
down to the sea-shore and caught some little red fishes.
Really, they were quite wonderfully pretty. Then he came
back, and, passing before the Princess's window, he began
to cry out:

"Who wants some pretty little red fishes?"

The Princess heard him, and sent out one of her slaves,
who said to the old peddler:

"What will you take for your fish?"

"A bronze ring."

"A bronze ring, old simpleton! And where shall I find
one?"

"Under the cushion in the Princess's room."

The slave went back to her mistress.

"The old madman will take neither gold nor silver,"
said she.

"What does he want then?"

"A bronze ring that is hidden under a cushion."

"Find the ring and give it to him," said the Princess.

And at last the slave found the bronze ring, which the
captain of the golden ship had accidentally left behind
and carried it to the man, who made off with it instantly.

Hardly had he reached his own house when, taking the
ring, he said, "Bronze ring, obey thy master. I desire that
the golden ship shall turn to black wood, and the crew to
hideous negroes; that St. Nicholas shall leave the helm
and that the only cargo shall be black cats."

And the genii of the bronze ring obeyed him.

Finding himself upon the sea in this miserable
condition, the young captain understood that some one must
have stolen the bronze ring from him, and he lamented
his misfortune loudly; but that did him no good.

"Alas!" he said to himself, "whoever has taken my ring
has probably taken my dear wife also. What good will it
do me to go back to my own country?" And he sailed
about from island to island, and from shore to shore,
believing that wherever he went everybody was laughing at
him, and very soon his poverty was so great that he and
his crew and the poor black cats had nothing to eat but
herbs and roots. After wandering about a long time he
reached an island inhabited by mice. The captain landed
upon the shore and began to explore the country. There
were mice everywhere, and nothing but mice. Some of
the black cats had followed him, and, not having been fed
for several days, they were fearfully hungry, and made
terrible havoc among the mice.

Then the queen of the mice held a council.

"These cats will eat every one of us," she said, "if the
captain of the ship does not shut the ferocious animals up.
Let us send a deputation to him of the bravest among us."

Several mice offered themselves for this mission and set
out to find the young captain.

"Captain," said they, "go away quickly from our island,
or we shall perish, every mouse of us."

"Willingly," replied the young captain, "upon one
condition. That is that you shall first bring me back a bronze
ring which some clever magician has stolen from me. If
you do not do this I will land all my cats upon your
island, and you shall be exterminated."

The mice withdrew in great dismay. "What is to be
done?" said the Queen. "How can we find this bronze
ring?" She held a new council, calling in mice from every
quarter of the globe, but nobody knew where the bronze
ring was. Suddenly three mice arrived from a very distant
country. One was blind, the second lame, and the
third had her ears cropped.

"Ho, ho, ho!" said the new-comers. "We come from a
far distant country."

"Do you know where the bronze ring is which the genii
obey?"

"Ho, ho, ho! we know; an old sorcerer has taken
possession of it, and now he keeps it in his pocket by day and in
his mouth by night."

"Go and take it from him, and come back as soon as
possible."

So the three mice made themselves a boat and set sail
for the magician's country. When they reached the capital
they landed and ran to the palace, leaving only the
blind mouse on the shore to take care of the boat. Then
they waited till it was night. The wicked old man lay
down in bed and put the bronze ring into his mouth, and
very soon he was asleep.

"Now, what shall we do?" said the two little animals to
each other.

The mouse with the cropped ears found a lamp full of
oil and a bottle full of pepper. So she dipped her tail first
in the oil and then in the pepper, and held it to the
sorcerer's nose.

"Atisha! atisha!" sneezed the old man, but he did not
wake, and the shock made the bronze ring jump out of his
mouth. Quick as thought the lame mouse snatched up the
precious talisman and carried it off to the boat.

Imagine the despair of the magician when he awoke and
the bronze ring was nowhere to be found!

But by that time our three mice had set sail with their
prize. A favoring breeze was carrying them toward the
island where the queen of the mice was awaiting them.
Naturally they began to talk about the bronze ring.

"Which of us deserves the most credit?" they cried all
at once.

"I do," said the blind mouse, "for without my
watchfulness our boat would have drifted away to the open sea."

"No, indeed," cried the mouse with the cropped ears;
"the credit is mine. Did I not cause the ring to jump out
of the man's mouth?"

"No, it is mine," cried the lame one, "for I ran off with
the ring."

And from high words they soon came to blows, and,
alas! when the quarrel was fiercest the bronze ring fell into
the sea.

"How are we to face our queen," said the three mice
"when by our folly we have lost the talisman and condemned
our people to be utterly exterminated? We cannot
go back to our country; let us land on this desert
island and there end our miserable lives." No sooner said
than done. The boat reached the island, and the mice
landed.

The blind mouse was speedily deserted by her two
sisters, who went off to hunt flies, but as she wandered
sadly along the shore she found a dead fish, and was eating
it, when she felt something very hard. At her cries the
other two mice ran up.

"It is the bronze ring! It is the talisman!" they cried
joyfully, and, getting into their boat again, they soon
reached the mouse island. It was time they did, for the
captain was just going to land his cargo of cats, when a
deputation of mice brought him the precious bronze ring.

"Bronze ring," commanded the young man, "obey thy
master. Let my ship appear as it was before."

Immediately the genii of the ring set to work, and the
old black vessel became once more the wonderful golden
ship with sails of brocade; the handsome sailors ran to the
silver masts and the silken ropes, and very soon they set
sail for the capital.

Ah! how merrily the sailors sang as they flew over the
glassy sea!

At last the port was reached.

The captain landed and ran to the palace, where he
found the wicked old man asleep. The Princess clasped
her husband in a long embrace. The magician tried to
escape, but he was seized and bound with strong cords.

The next day the sorcerer, tied to the tail of a savage
mule loaded with nuts, was broken into as many pieces as
there were nuts upon the mule's back.
[1]

Once upon a time there lived a king who was deeply in
love with a princess, but she could not marry anyone,
because she was under an enchantment. So the King set out
to seek a fairy, and asked what he could do to win the
Princess's love. The Fairy said to him:

"You know that the Princess has a great cat which she
is very fond of. Whoever is clever enough to tread on
that cat's tail is the man she is destined to marry."

The King said to himself that this would not be very
difficult, and he left the Fairy, determined to grind the
cat's tail to powder rather than not tread on it at all.

You may imagine that it was not long before he went
to see the Princess, and puss, as usual, marched in before
him, arching his back. The King took a long step, and
quite thought he had the tail under his foot, but the cat
turned round so sharply that he only trod on air. And so
it went on for eight days, till the King began to think that
this fatal tail must be full of quicksilver—it was never
still for a moment.

At last, however, he was lucky enough to come upon
puss fast asleep and with his tail conveniently spread out.
So the King, without losing a moment, set his foot upon it
heavily.

With one terrific yell the cat sprang up and instantly
changed into a tall man, who, fixing his angry eyes upon
the King, said:

"You shall marry the Princess because you have been
able to break the enchantment, but I will have my
revenge. You shall have a son, who will never be happy
until he finds out that his nose is too long, and if you ever
tell anyone what I have just said to you, you shall vanish
away instantly, and no one shall ever see you or hear of
you again."

Though the King was horribly afraid of the enchanter,
he could not help laughing at this threat.

"If my son has such a long nose as that," he said to
himself, "he must always see it or feel it; at least, if he is
not blind or without hands."

But, as the enchanter had vanished, he did not waste
any more time in thinking, but went to seek the Princess,
who very soon consented to marry him. But after all,
they had not been married very long when the King died,
and the Queen had nothing left to care for but her little
son, who was called Hyacinth. The little Prince had large
blue eyes, the prettiest eyes in the world, and a sweet
little mouth, but, alas! his nose was so enormous that it
covered half his face. The Queen was inconsolable when
she saw this great nose, but her ladies assured her that it
was not really as large as it looked; that it was a Roman
nose, and you had only to open any history to see that
every hero has a large nose. The Queen, who was devoted
to her baby, was pleased with what they told her, and
when she looked at Hyacinth again, his nose certainly did
not seem to her
quite
so large.

The Prince was brought up with great care; and, as
soon as he could speak, they told him all sorts of dreadful
stories about people who had short noses. No one was
allowed to come near him whose nose did not more or less
resemble his own, and the courtiers, to get into favor with
the Queen, took to pulling their babies' noses several
times every day to make them grow long. But, do what
they would, they were nothing by comparison with the
Prince's.