Hans my Hedgehog went on herding his pigs, and the pigs had piglets until there were so many that the forest was full of them. Then Hans my Hedgehog didn’t want to stay in the forest any longer, and he sent a message to his father saying they must clear out all the stables and sheds in the village, because he was coming back with such a huge herd of pigs that anyone who wanted could slaughter one. His father was upset to hear this, because he thought Hans my Hedgehog would have died long ago. However, Hans my Hedgehog mounted his rooster, drove the pigs ahead of him into the village and had them slaughtered. What a scene of butchery that was! You could hear the noise of it two hours’ ride away. After that Hans my Hedgehog said, “Father, get the smith to shoe my rooster again, and then I will ride away and never come back.”
Hans my Hedgehog rode away to the first kingdom, where the king had given orders that if someone came riding a rooster and carrying a set of bagpipes, they were all to shoot, at him, hack him and strike him down, to keep him from coming into the castle. When Hans my Hedgehog came riding up they fixed their bayonets and made for him, but he spurred on the rooster, who flew up into the air and over the gate, and came down outside the king’s window. Hans my Hedgehog called to the king, asking him to make good his promise, or he and his daughter would lose their lives. The king spoke words of comfort to his daughter, asking her to go out to the creature to save both their lives. So she dressed herself in white, and her father gave her a carriage with six horses and magnificently dressed servants, along with money and property. She sat in the carriage, and Hans my Hedgehog with his rooster and his bagpipes sat beside her.
Then they said goodbye, and drove away, and the king thought he would never see them again. However, it didn’t turn out like that, for when they were a little way outside the town, Hans my Hedgehog took the beautiful clothes off the king’s daughter and pricked her with his hedgehog spines until she bled. “That’s what you get for playing me false,” he said. “Away with you, I don’t want you.” And he chased her away home, and no one had a good word for her all the rest of her days.
However, Hans my Hedgehog mounted his rooster and rode on with his bagpipes to the second kingdom, whose king he had also helped to find the way home. This second king had given orders that if someone looking like Hans my Hedgehog came along, his guards were to present arms in a salute, let him in with loud cheers, and take him to the king’s castle. When the king’s daughter saw him she was startled, because he looked so strange, but she thought there was nothing for it, she had given her father her word. So she welcomed Hans my Hedgehog, and they were married. He had to sit at the royal table, and she sat down at his side, and they ate and drank. When evening came, and they were going to bed, she was afraid of his spines. But he told her to have no fear, no harm would come to her, and he told the old king to station four men outside the bedchamber, and to light a great fire. When he went into the bedchamber and was going to lie down in bed, he said, he would slip out of his hedgehog skin and leave it on the floor beside the bed. Then the men must run in and throw it in the fire, and wait until the flames had consumed it entirely. When the clock struck eleven, he went into the bedchamber, stripped off his hedgehog skin, and left it beside the bed. Then the men came in, seized it swiftly and threw it on the fire, and when the fire had consumed it he was released, and lay in bed as a normal man, but charred black as if by burning. The king sent for his physician, who washed him with good salves and rubbed balm into him, his skin was made clean, and now he was a handsome young gentleman. When the king’s daughter saw that, she was glad, and next morning they rose joyfully, ate and drank, and now their wedding was really celebrated. The old king handed the kingdom over to Hans my Hedgehog,
After several years, he and his wife went to see his father, and he told the old farmer that he was his son. His father said he had no son, he had had only one child who came into the world with the spines of a hedgehog and had gone away to seek his fortune. Then the young king revealed his identity, and his old father rejoiced and went back to his kingdom with him.
THE CHILDREN OF HAMELIN
In the year 1284 a man of very strange appearance was seen in the town of Hamelin. He wore a coat made of cloth of different colors, and he said that he was a rat-catcher. In return for a certain sum of money, he told the citizens, he could promise to rid the town of the many rats and mice that plagued it. The townspeople came to an agreement with him, and assured him that he would be paid a proper fee. At that the rat-catcher took out a little pipe and played music on it. The rats and mice immediately came scurrying out of all the houses and gathered around him. When he thought there were none left in the town he went out of Hamelin, followed by all the rats and mice. He led them down to the river Weser, where he hitched up his clothes and waded into the water, whereupon all the vermin followed him, fell into the river, and were drowned.
However, once the people of Hamelin were rid of their plague of rats and mice, they regretted promising the man a fee, and kept refusing to pay it on one pretext or another, so that in the end he went away angry and embittered. He came back on June the 26th, the feast day of St. John and St. Paul, at seven in the morning, or according to some versions of the story at mid-day, this time in the form of a huntsman with a fearsome face, wearing a strange red hat, and he began playing his pipe in the streets. This time, out came not rats and mice but children, great numbers of boys and girls four years old and over, including the mayor’s grown-up daughter. The whole crowd followed the Piper, and he led them out to a mountain, into which he disappeared with them.
A nursemaid who had been carrying a baby and following the procession at a distance saw what happened, and she turned round and brought the news back to town. The parents of the boys and girls all ran out of doors, searching for their children in great distress, and the mothers set up a pitiful weeping and wailing. From then on, messengers were sent by land and water to all the places round about, asking whether the children of Hamelin, or even just some of them, had been seen there, but in vain. In all, a hundred and thirty children had been lost.
Some people say that two children who had been lagging behind came home, but one of them was blind and the other a deaf mute, so that the blind child could not show anyone the place where the children had disappeared, although he could tell the tale of how they had followed the piper, while the deaf mute could point to the place but had heard nothing. One little boy had run after the rest of them in his shirt, but turned back to fetch his coat, and so he had escaped the fate of the rest, for when he returned to join them they had disappeared into an opening in a hill that is still pointed out today.
The street along which the children went out of the town gate was known until the middle of the 18th century (and probably to this day) as Silent Street, because no one was allowed to dance or play stringed instruments there. If a bride was being escorted to church for her wedding with music, the musicians had to fall silent while they were in that street. The mountain near Hamelin where the children disappeared is called the Poppenberg (or sometimes Koppenberg) and two stones in the form of a cross have been set up to right and left of it. Some say that the children were led into a cave and came out in Transylvania.
The following titles were illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger, and have appeared in Michael Neugebauer Editions:
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN’S FAIRY TALES
THE LITTLE MERMAID • H.C. Andersen
THE LITTLE MERMAID • H.C. Andersen, MINI-MINEDITION
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS • Clement Clarke Moore
THE BREMEN TOWN MUSICIANS • The Brothers Grimm
NOAH’S ARK • Heinz Janisch
THE SWINEHERD • Hans Christian Andersen
THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN • The Brothers Grimm
THE SELFISH GIANT • Oscar Wilde, MINI-MINEDITION
LISBETH ZWERGER • THE WORLD OF IMAGINATION
Learn more about Lisbeth Zwerger and her books at: www.minedition.com
The illustrator L
isbeth Zwerger has won high international esteem and respect over a long period for her extensive body of artistic work, which has won major awards, including the Hans Christian Andersen Prize. She has been awarded these distinctions because she always finds attractive, often moving pictorial language for the texts that she chooses to illustrate. We all have certain images in our minds of some of the tales and their characters; Lisbeth Zwerger re-interprets them, showing us what is hidden under the surface of the old tales, and what a tenuous border there is between the everyday world that we think we know and a realm of exuberant fantasy. Her art appeals to children and adults alike, because as an artist she succeeds perfectly in transporting us to a place where, without our realizing it, the laws of reality are suspended.
Jacket art © 2012 by Lisbeth Zwerger
Reinforced binding
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Tales from the Brothers Grimm: Selected and Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger Page 6