The Twelve Dancing Princesses

This story was from the Brothers' Grimm, and it tells the story of a frustrated king and his young, rebellious daughters.

Every night, the twelve princesses were locked into their rooms, with their brand new dance slippers, but by the morning, the slippers were completely worn through.  This frustrated the king, and he decided to make a competition of it.  He made a competition that said if anyone could figure out where his daughters were going in three days and three nights he would let the man marry the daughter of his choosing.  However, if the man failed, he would be put to death.

Princes from around the land come to the castle and try to determine where the girls are.  They failed every time, and each prince was put to death.

Eventually, an ex soldier comes to try his hand at the mystery.  An old woman warned him before he came not to accept any wine given to him by the princesses, and she also gave him an invisibility cloak so he could follow the ladies in secret.  That night, when the princesses bring him wine, he does not drink it.  He instead fakes sleep, and the girls put on their finery, safe in the knowledge that he is asleep.  They traveled down a secret passageway to an underworld.  The soldier followed the girls while wearing his invisibility cloak.

In this underworld, there is a beautiful forest of silver.  The soldier follows the girls through the forest, and wanting to be able to prove that the land exists, snaps a silver twig from the tree.  One of the younger princesses is confused by the sound she hears, but they continue without too much interruption.

They then arrive at a beautiful lake and waiting there are twelve princes and twelve boats.  The soldier hops into one of the boats, and is taken to a beautiful party.  The girls dance the night away with their 12 princes.  The soldier danced as well (presumably by himself) and drank the wine that was placed for the princesses.

When the girls shoes were worn through, the princesses went back to their rooms.  The soldier went as well and faked sleep, so the girls would think nothing was amiss with their plans.

He let this continue for his remaining two nights before the soldier would be put to death, but on the third night, he took a goblet with him as further proof of the land. He then told the king all that he knew, producing the twig and the goblet as proof.

Overjoyed that he finally knew the cause of his daughters' worn out slippers, he told the soldier to pick whichever princess he fancied.  The soldier chose the oldest one because she was the closest to his age, and everyone lived happily ever after.


This story is full of really odd moments, like the fact that the girls are so willing to allow their suitors to die night after night. And to examine adaptations of it, we will have to look at both book and movie adaptations next week.

A Nordic Tale's stories

This Nordic tale is ripe for the telling, and the two most well known versions of the story are Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, and East.  The two stories are very different though, even though they were based on the same base fairy tale.  The first of the stories is much closer to the original tale, so it is the first one we should probably talk about.

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow-- By Jessica Day George

The author Jessica Day George has written a number of fairy tale adaptations, and although this is the first one we are talking about, it is far from the last. This adaptation is very close to the original story. The main character is simply called pika or lass, depending on who is talking to her, because her mother refused to name her (she was angry that she had given birth to yet another daughter).  She did have several sons, including Hans Peter, a man who had come back after several years of sailing severely changed.  The lass is closest to him and wants to understand what is making him so sad.

The lass met a white reindeer when she was a little child, and the reindeer granted her a name.  After this encounter, the lass is now able to talk to animals.  By the time she is a teenager, the pika is well-known to have a way with animals, rumored to even be able to converse with them.  So the Isbjorn (ice bear) seeks her out.

The girl is taken away to his palace (voluntarily) and grows used to life there.  She even meets the servants, including a faun named Erasmus.  She is given a diary through which she can talk to her family back home, and learns to love the palace.

She eventually returns home, however, after hearing that her father is extremely ill.  In that time, her mother gives her the candle and flint that would prove to be the girl's undoing.  The story follows the fairy tale through it all.  It does change it so the three old crones who provide the lass with the items she uses to bargain time with her beloved to be in a single spot.  This is really nice actually, because that section would be extremely repetitive to read otherwise.

The story continues, with her riding on the backs of each of the winds, until the lass has reached the palace that is East of Sun, West of Moon.  She bargains away her things for time with the prince, and on the third night, when he is conscious, they make the necessary plans so he can trick the troll.

When the troll fails to wash out the tallow, but the lass is able to, the palace comes crashing down.  They escape with the human prisoners, and make their way south in search of civilization.  The girl and her isbjorn marry, and everyone in the story lives happily ever after.

East--Edith Pattou

This story centers around a girl named Ebba Rose.  Actually, her name is Nyamh Rose, but that is beside the point.  Her mother was superstitious, and believed that the "birth direction"  of the child indicated some of the personality traits that the kid would have.  She wanted one child born for each of the directions on the compass rose (7 of them--she included South-East, South-West, etc), except for North, because she North borns are the hardest to deal with.  She also had a prediction from a soothsayer that indicated that any north-born child of hers would die painfully.  So when her last daughter was born with an ambiguous birth direction, her mother convinced herself that her daughter was born an East.

Because Rose was a North born, she love to explore the world around her.  But when she was a teenager, everything on her family's farm went wrong, to the point that they were being foreclosed upon.  In the nick of time, an Ice Bear who had been protecting her all her life came back into it.  From here, the story follows the actual fairy tale fairly closely, with only minor addendums, until we get to the point where Rose makes the crucial mistake.  She looks at the prince with the candle given to her by her mother, drops the wax, and the prince is whirled away to marry the troll-queen.

She is able, through much struggling, to book passage onto a ship headed north, believing that to be the way to the land East of Sun and West of Moon, and through much hardship, makes it to Gronland (Greenland), where she meets a tribe of Inuit people who are more than willing to help her.  Rose is guided through the icy land by a village Shaman who speaks her language.

Finally, Rose reaches the palace that is East of Sun, West of Moon, only to discover that they are in the midst of wedding preparations.  She disguises herself as a servant, and, with the help of a troll friend that she made in her time with the ice bear, Tuki, Rose is able to get the prince to stop taking the potion.  She attends the wedding disguised as a troll, and she meets her prince on the first, preliminary night of the wedding.  By the second day, the prince decides that his queen must wash the shirt before she can marry him, seemingly out of the blue.

The story ends happily ever after, with the prince and Rose going off to get married.



Both of these novels are really quite good and very entertaining, and they can be found in the YA section of your local library or bookstore.



Next week, we shall pick up our dancing slippers and learn about the 12 girls who danced every night--the Twelve Dancing Princesses.

East of Sun, West of Moon

This is honestly one of my favorite fairy stories, but it is, unfortunately, not a very popular one. It's sorta like a weird version of Beauty and the Beast, but not quite.  It's completely unique, and that is why I think you all should know about it.

This is an old Nordic tale, so of course, it features a giant bear.


In the story, there is a poor farmer who has a number of children.  A large white polar bear comes to the man one day and requests that his youngest daughter go live with him for a year in exchange for riches.  The girl doesn't want to go, so her father tells the bear to return in three days, in which time he hopes to convince his daughter to go with the bear.

Long story short, he talks his daughter into going with the giant bear.  She rides on the back of the bear for seemingly forever, and when the bear finally stops, she sees that they have come to a flat, icy plane with a giant palace.

She is waited on by invisible servants every night, and she spends her days either in solitude or with the polar bear.  But her nights are spent very differently.

After she goes to bed each night, a man climbs into her bed and sleeps beside her.  She is terrified and confused the first time this happens, but when he does no harm to her, she eventually grows used to the constant presence of the man when she sleeps.  Eventually, the girl grows homesick, and she asks the bear if there is anyway she could go home for a short time to be with her family.  He agrees, but with one caveat--she has to promise never to be alone with her mother.  The girl agrees, and she is allowed to visit her family.

Throughout her visit home, the girl's mother tries to be alone with her daughter, but the girl is successfully able to evade it throughout the trip, until the very last day.  Then, the mother gets the story out of her daughter about the man who has been sleeping next to her.  Jumping to conclusions, the mother assumes that the man must be a troll.

So she does the only logical thing.  She gives her daughter candles and matches so that she can see the man in the darkness.

When the girl returns to the ice palace, she is reluctant to look at the man at night.  Eventually she does, and what she sees shocks her.

The man who has been sleeping next to her is beautiful and regal.  She leans over him, and as she does so, three drops of tallow from the candle drop onto his shirt, effectively waking him up.  He starts awake and stares at her in horror.  He explains that if she had lived with him for a year and a day, bear by day, man by night, he would have been free, but because she didn't his horrible step-mother will come and take him to the palace that is east of sun and west of moon.  He will now be forced to marry her daughter, who is, quite literally, a troll.

He is then whisked away by his stepmother off to the palace, and the girl is left alone.  Stranded.  She feels incredibly guilty and in love with the prince who just got dragged away, so she decides to follow him.

She finally reaches a mountain, and in front of it she sees an impossibly old woman who is holding a golden apple.  She asks the old crone whether she knows the way to the palace that is east of sun and west of moon, and the woman says no, she doesn't, but that she thinks her neighbor might know.  She lends the girl a horse to reach the neighbor and gives her the apple.  The youngest daughter thanks her and goes on her way.

The youngest daughter then reaches the neighbor--another impossibly old woman, who is this time holding a golden hair comb.  The young girl asks the neighbor is he knows the way to the palace that is east of sun and west of moon, and the old woman says no, but that she thinks her neighbor might know.  Again, the girl is lent a horse, and this time is given the hair comb.

The young girl then rides to third neighbor, yet another impossibly old woman, who this time is spinning on a golden spinning wheel.  She asks the woman if she knows the way to the palace that is east of sun and west of moon, and the woman says that she doesn't.  But, she says, she thinks that the East Wind knows the way there.  She lends the girl a horse to get there and gives her the spinning wheel.

The daughter then rides out to the site of the East Wind, and when she asks if he knows the way, he replies that he has never blown that far.  But perhaps his brother, the West Wind, has blown that distance.  He agrees to take her there, and so she is flown to the West Wind.

But the West Wind has never been there either.  He thinks that maybe the Southern Wind has, so the West Wind agrees to take the girl to his lair.  She is then flown to the Southern Wind's home.

But the South Wind has also never dared blow to the palace east of sun west of moon, so he tells her that he can blow her to his brother, the oldest of all the winds, the North Wind.

When she reaches the North Wind, he tells her that he did indeed, once blow a single leaf there, and although he was exhausted after doing that, agrees to take her there.  She is flown to the palace at once.

Once she reaches the palace, she immediately shows the apple to the troll-princess who the bear-prince is meant to marry.  The princess immediately wants it, but the girl only agrees to give it to her if she can spend the night with the prince.  The troll-princess agrees, and the girl is ecstatic.  However, the troll-princess gives the prince a sleeping draft so the prince does not wake while the girl is there.

The next day, the girl tries again, this time bartering the hair comb for time with the prince.  The troll-princess again agrees, and again gives the prince a sleeping draft.

The girl sobs about this for a long time, and some of the prisoners who were locked away by the cruel troll-royalty tell the prince that the girl is there in the morning.  The girl trades her final bounty, the spinning wheel, in exchange for another night with the prince.

Because he now knows about the sleeping draught, the prince doesn't drink it when the troll-princess gives it to him.  This time, he is wide-awake when the girl comes to him.

They hatch a plan together to get him out of the marriage to the troll-princess.  He will declare that he will only marry a woman who can wash his stained shirt (you know--the one that started this whole mess with the three tallow spots).

The troll-princess, is, well, a troll, and can't do as the prince asks.  So the prince turns to the daughter, whom he had long ago fallen in love with, and asks if she can complete the task and marry him.  The girl does it perfectly, and the trolls burst into a fit of pure rage.

The newly engaged couple quickly escape with the former prisoners of the trolls, and make it back to civilization, where they are promptly married, and live happily ever after.



I don't know why I love this fairy tale so much, but I have thought it was a fascinating one since the first time I read an adaptation of the story.  So next week, we will talk about two different novel adaptations of the story--Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, and East.

Cinderella Stories

So the first adaptation that we'll talk about is the most recent of them.  The 2015 version.

Cinderella- Directed by Kenneth Brannagh

This movie is probably the closest version to the original story that I have seen.  It even includes the little detail about Ella begging her father to bring her the branch that touched his shoulder (though here she asks for the first that he meets on the road and in the original its the first that brushes him on the way back, it's really close).  I also really liked that it killed off the dad in this, because its really weird in the original story.  He does nothing to help his daughter in that version despite the cruel treatment which he is no doubt a witness too.  The movie also includes the detail about the stepsisters providing the name Cinderella.  Obviously, it also diverges in fairy god mother versus dead tree mother, but that also makes more sense from a cinematic angle.  It also is less bloody (no stepsister toes were harmed in the making of this movie) but that also makes a certain amount of sense--it is a children's movie, after all.

But before this movie was envisioned, before most of its actors were born, there was another movie made by Walt Disney.
Cinderella-1950 Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson and produced by Walt Disney

This is an adorable movie, one that we all grew up watching. Cinderella has her cute little mice friends, like Gus Gus. It is more markedly different from the fairy tale than the more recent one, but it is still very cute.  Her name is Cinderella from the beginning, and she has a fairy god mother.  It differs from the story in all the ways the newer one did, and more, but I think the biggest change that the story made was in the ending.  Lady Tremaine trips the footman who was going to bring the shoe to Cinderella for her to try on, but Cinderella still has the other shoe.  She shows that shoe to the footman and the duke and tries it on.  When it fits perfectly, Cinderella gets to go off with Prince Charming and live happily ever after.


Those are the most famous versions of Cinderella, one of the most famous fairy tales.  But next week we will cover a much less well known one by Hans Christian Anderson--East of Sun, West of Moon.

Cinderella

Cinderella.  It is one of the most iconic fairy tales today, so I thought that it was only fitting to start with the girl who lost her glass slipper--or should I say--gold slipper.

The Brothers' Grimm version of this tale is very different than the one many of us grew up with.  There is no charming little Gus-Gus to lighten the story, and the story itself is much darker than the Disney version most of us grew up with.  

The story starts in a way similar to most of the modern versions we know; the girl's mother dies, leaving her father alone.  The story implies that he rushed into the next marriage with the wicked stepmother.  She had 2 fair daughters, but they were very cruel to their stepsister.  The two stepsisters go so far as to nickname their stepsister Cinderella.  

Shortly after they christen her Cinderella, her father decides to go to a fair and asks the girls what he should bring back to them.  The stepsisters ask for gowns, jewels, and pearls, but Cinderella asks for just the sprig of a tree that brushes her father's hat on his way back home.  He brings it back, and Cinderella takes it to her mother's grave and plants it there, watering it with her tears.  The tree grew into a great tree.

Soon after, the prince holds a three day festival-ball-thing and declares his intentions to marry one of the ladies in attendance.  The stepsisters receive invitations.  Cinderella wants to join them, and the stepmother agrees that she can join them, if only she were to dig out all the peas from the ashes of the hearth.  Cinderella calls upon the birds to help her, and they make quick work of the task.  The stepmother insists that she doesn't have clothing or anything that would be needed to go to the dance, so she tells her that she can't go.  Cinderella is persistent though, and through her constant nagging gets the stepmother to set another task with the condition that if she does it she can go to the ball.  She has to pick out two more full dishes of peas out of the ashes, so again, Cinderella calls her bird friends to get the job done.  They do, but the step mother again refuses to actually take poor Cinderella to the ball. The stepmother and the stepsisters leave for the feast, and they leave Cinderella alone.  

She goes to her mother's grave with the tear-tree and begs for a dress, and is given a beautiful gold and silver number with little gold slippers.  She goes to the ball, and the prince spends the whole night dancing with her (which was a big breach of etiquette, so it is kind of a big deal that he does it).  She then runs out late into the night so that she will be home when her step-family arrives.  She is wearing her soot covered clothes once more, so they don't suspect a thing.  

The second night quickly comes, and Cinderella goes back to the tree and gets another dress, even finer than the first.  It has the same gold slippers.  Once again, the prince dances the night away with Cinderella, and again, she runs off at the end of it.  

This happens a third time, but this time, in her frantic run away from the revelries, she loses one of her golden shoes.  She doesn't go back for it, and the prince is left with just the shoe to find her with.  

The prince goes to his father and says he will marry the girl who can fit her foot into the shoe.  The stepsisters are sure they will get their feet in, but discover that the shoe is too small for them.  The first of them, on advice from her mother, cuts off her big toe and the shoe fits.  The prince rides off with her in a carriage, completely oblivious to the blood flowing freely out of her shoe.  A little bird flies by, though, and calls for the prince to look at the blood coming out of the shoe.  

Only after he gets a hint from the bird does the prince look down and realize that her shoe is bloody.  He returns her to her home and lets the other sister try on the shoe.  The other sister finds that all but her heel fits in the shoe, so again on advice of her mother, cuts off a part of her heel.  The prince is once again completely oblivious. It again takes a bird for him to notice the blood.

He then returns the stepsister to her home, and asks if there is perhaps, another daughter in the house.  Before the stepmother can deny the existence of any third girl, Cinderella comes out.  She tried the shoe on, and the prince looked at her and realized that this girl is his bride.  They ride off into the sunset to get married, and the bird flies by, saying, "prince! take home thy bride, for she is the true one who sits by your side!"

While this is a quite good story, it is very different from the one that most of us remember.  There is no fairy godmother.  There are no "Bibbity-Bobbity-Boos!"  The ball takes place over three nights.  The father is... somewhere? for most of the story.  He doesn't die, but it is unclear where, exactly, he is for the duration of it.  That's a question the adaptations of the story are more than ready to answer.  

Next week, we will cover two of the most famous retellings of the story: the Disney ones.