Once upon a time, there was a king who had one daughter. She was exceedingly beautiful and famed for that quality, so that suitors came from far and wide to win her hand in marriage. But the princess was stubborn and conceited and felt that none was good enough for her. The suitors assembled by her father, the king, included the highest calibre of men, wealthy and powerful princes, but the princess was very insulting, found fault with all of them, laughed at them and called them names.
The king lost patience with her, and was determined that she should marry. He was happy to find a young prince who fitted the bill to perfection, but his daughter ridiculed him, insulted him and mockingly called him “King Thrushbeard” because of the style and appearance of his beard. The suitor withdrew in hurt and humiliation, but the king was most angry and saw this as the last straw. He declared that she would marry the next man who came along regardless of who he was.
This next man to appear on the street was a poor wandering peasant, but the king called him into the palace and ordered the wedding. The princess was then sent off in tears with her husband. She was not allowed any luxuries and travelled the common road in growing unhappiness. Soon she began to express her regret at refusing King Thrushbeard. To make things worse, they passed great lands and fields and when she asked to whom they belonged, she was told “King Thrushbeard”. They passed fine castles, and farms, gardens and lakes and when she asked, she was told they all belonged to King Thrushbeard.
Eventually they arrived at a woeful old cottage that she was sorry to find was her new home. She had to get rid of her fine clothes because they were not fit for work, and of course, there were no servants. Her husband tried to teach her many things, but her efforts began in failure. As she grew more miserable, she lamented that she should really have married King Thrushbeard, to which her husband agreed, saying that she was useless, unfit for work and no help to him.
But he was patient and taught her as much as he could, since he explained to her that they had to earn money to live. She could not spin, she failed at selling in the market. One day a drunken knight on his horse galloped through the market, knocking down and breaking up all her goods. Her husband was distraught, and she was very saddened.
Then one day the peasant came home from his work and said there was a vacancy for a maid in the kitchen at the king’s palace and he had managed to secure the job for her. She discovered that it was the palace of King Thrushbeard. It worked well for a while and she was able to bring home left-over food from the palace table. Then one morning as she was about to leave home her husband complained of feeling ill. She wanted to stay with him, but he said, “Oh no, you can’t; if you are absent from work they might fire you, and where would that leave us? I’ll soon be better”.
But a series of calamities in the kitchen soon heaped upon her the wrath of the head cook and she was fired anyway. As she was heading home in disgrace and shame wondering what she would say to her husband, King Thrushbeard saw her and said gleefully “Ah, I have a job for you. I am about to marry a foreign princess and we are preparing for the wedding. But she has been delayed in travelling and has not yet arrived. We need someone to fit in with the preparations. You happen to be the same size as her; we need you to try on the dresses and come to the rehearsals”. She was glad for that because at last her husband would be proud of her.
She was dressed in the lovely gowns and placed to sit in the grand carriage with the King. As they were driving along they passed the old cottage where she lived, and she saw that it was on fire. She cried out in alarm and asked the King to stop the carriage. He refused, as they had important things to do. But she insisted, saying her husband was at home sick and the cottage was burning. King Thrushbeard said, “That poverty stricken shack is your home? Let it burn, I’ve learnt that the foreign princess can’t come to the wedding, and I have decided to marry you, instead”.
But she said, “I can’t marry you. I cannot leave my dear husband in that burning house, I must go to him,” and attempted to jump out of the carriage.
Whereupon King Thrushbeard stopped and said, “Let the cottage burn. There’s no one in there. I am your husband. I was disguised as a poor peasant all along in order to teach you a lesson. I have always loved you and was hurt when you spurned me as a suitor. I deliberately put you through all those disasters in order to make you learn. For example, I was the drunken knight who broke up the wares in the marketplace. We are preparing for a wedding, but there was never any foreign princess. You are the one I am preparing to marry”.
Her father came to the wedding and they were married again; King Thrushbeard ruled long with her as his queen, and they lived happily ever after.
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That story belongs to the very famous and popular type of folk tale known throughout Europe as the fairy tale. It is also known by the German word “marchen”. It is a complex form of oral literature with many more attributes and features than the way it is generally perceived as a simple story, and as most people see it, a story for children. But the genre has not always been associated with children, and is by no means simple.
The form is ancient, and the origins have never properly been pinned down, although references are made to the Aesop fables in the 6th century BC – the classical era. But several of the characteristics of the type have developed through the centuries, including the Mediaeval Ages. There is also a mixture because while fairy tales belong to the oral tradition and are passed on through generations by oral transmission, there have been literary fairy tales.
One interesting factor about them is the fact that the fairy tales or marchen are not always about fairies and quite as often no fairies appear in them. But they are wonder tales characterised by magic, fantasy, the supernatural, superhuman beings, and animals who generally have the qualities and powers of humans, but most often have superhuman or supernatural powers. Sometimes they contain fairies, most often a benevolent fairy godmother, or fairies who can be ill-tempered or evil, witches, elves, goblins, gnomes, dragons, giants and ogres. There are, too, humans who have the gift of magic or extra powers.
The main characters, however, are humans who are assisted by magic through donor characters in possession of magical or supernatural powers or rare knowledge. These donor characters, who have been identified by Russian analyst Vladimir Propp, come along to help the heroes out of trouble, or to achieve feats in order to gain wealth or power or to defeat powerful foes and save their lives and the lives of others. The donors in some stories are fairies, but are often talking animals or other humans.
The name fairy tale might have come from those qualities, but quite likely from the ubiquitous presence of magic, fantasy and other-worldliness. They developed in societies that believed in them. Adults in the Middle Ages, and in Europe through the centuries when fairy tales were collected, believed in fairies and accompanying spirits and these became reflected in the folk tales that they created. When Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he was incorporating the spiritual beliefs of the Elizabethans. The Brothers Grimm of Germany collected oral narratives and created stories in the 19th century reflecting the beliefs of the folk, just as Hans Christian Anderson of Scandinavia, also in the same century, recorded the contemporary world picture of his society.
Yet, it is this same quality of fantasy, a wonder world, and friendly animals that talk that most likely led these tales to appeal to children or to be seen as stories that appeal to children’s imagination. The Grimm brothers were partly responsible for this, and they even edited and changed tales to suit an audience of children. That was because, unlike how they are regarded today, they were not originally children’s literature and had much adult content. Several sexual references and a good deal of violence exist in fairy tales, most of which have been sanitised in publications with children as the audience. It may be noted, however, that while the sex has been edited out, much of the violence still remains.
Space does not permit thorough analysis of the fairy tale here, except to mention some characteristics appearing in the story of King Thrushbeard, summarised above. Fairy tales promote wholesome values, such as the triumph of good over evil. They are success stories, tales of rags to riches, always with a happy ending. Note how the princess had to learn to be a better human being before she was rewarded in the end. She had to learn to overcome her conceit and pride. She had to learn to appreciate another human being, as seen in the way she came to love her husband when she believed he was a poverty-stricken peasant.
King Thrushbeard taught her these things before he rewarded her. In the popular world picture of the fairy tale, reward and success meant marriage to a wonderful prince. She was willing to give up the offer of marriage from the same prince whom she had regretted not marrying in order to save the poor man she thought was her husband. The reward in this story comes after hard won human growth.
