by Andrew Lang
‘ 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 a 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 magician:
‘ 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 magician, 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 ogres ; 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 OLD MAN SHOWS THE FISHES TO THE PRINCESS.
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 ; a wicked man 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 magician 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 man’s nose.
‘ Atisha ! atisha ! ’ he sneezed , 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 favouring breeze was carrying them towards 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 magician 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 magician , 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
‘ Traditions Populaires de l’Asie Mineure. Carnoy et Nicolaides. Par
is : Maisonneuve, 1889.
PRINCE HYACINTH AND THE DEAR LITTLE PRINCESS
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 favour 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.
When he grew sensible he learnt history ; and whenever any great prince or beautiful princess was spoken of, his teachers took care to tell him that they had long noses.
His room was hung with pictures, all of people with very large noses; and the Prince grew up so convinced that a long nose was a great beauty, that he would not on any account have had his own a single inch shorter!
When his twentieth birthday was past, the Queen thought it was time that he should be married, so she commanded that the portraits of several princesses should be brought for him to see, and among the others was a picture of the Dear Little Princess!
Now, she was the daughter of a great king, and would some day possess several kingdoms herself; but Prince Hyacinth had not a thought to spare for anything of that sort, he was so much struck with her beauty. The Princess, whom he thought quite charming, had, however, a little saucy nose, which, in her face, was the prettiest thing possible, but it was a cause of great embarrassment to the courtiers, who had got into such a habit of laughing at little noses that they sometimes found themselves laughing at hers before they had time to think; but this did not do at all before the Prince, who quite failed to see the joke, and actually banished two of his courtiers who had dared to mention disrespectfully the Dear Little Princess’s tiny nose !
The others, taking warning from this, learnt to think twice before they spoke, and one even went so far as to tell the Prince that, though it was quite true that no man could be worth anything unless he had a long nose, still, a woman’s beauty was a different thing; and he knew a learned man who understood Greek and had read in some old manuscripts that the beautiful Cleopatra herself had a ‘ tip-tilted ’ nose !
The Prince made him a splendid present as a reward for this good news, and at once sent ambassadors to ask the Dear Little Princess in marriage. The King, her father, gave his consent; and Prince Hyacinth, who, in his anxiety to see the Princess, had gone three leagues to meet her, was just advancing to kiss her hand when, to the horror of all who stood by, the enchanter appeared as suddenly as a flash of lightning, and, snatching up the Dear Little Princess, whirled her away out of their sight !
The Prince was left quite inconsolable, and declared that nothing should induce him to go back to his kingdom until he had found her again, and refusing to allow any of his courtiers to follow him, he mounted his horse and rode sadly away, letting the animal choose his own path.
So it happened that he came presently to a great plain, across which he rode all day long without seeing a single house, and horse and rider were quite terribly hungry, when, as the night fell, the Prince caught sight of a light, which seemed to shine from a cavern.
He rode up to it, and saw a little old woman, who appeared to be at least a hundred years old.
She put on her spectacles to look at Prince Hyacinth, but it was quite a long time before she could fix them securely because her nose was so very short.
The Prince and the Fairy (for that was who she was) had no sooner looked at one another than they went into fits of laughter, and cried at the same moment, Oh, what a funny nose ! ’
‘Not so funny as your own,’ said Prince Hyacinth to the Fairy ; ‘ but, madam, I beg you to leave the consideration of our noses—such as they are—and to be good enough to give me something to eat, for I am starving, and so is my poor horse.’
‘ With all my heart,’ said the Fairy. ‘Though your nose is so ridiculous you are, nevertheless, the son of my best friend. I loved your father as if he had been my brother. Now he had a very handsome nose ! ’
‘ And pray what does mine lack ?’ said the Prince.
‘ Oh ! it doesn’t lack anything,’ replied the Fairy. ‘ On the contrary quite, there is only too much of it. But never mind, one may be a very worthy man though his nose is too long. I was telling you that I was your father’s friend; he often came to see me in the old times, and you must know that I was very pretty in those days; at least, he used to say so. I should like to tell you of a conversation we had the last time I ever saw him.’
‘ Indeed,’ said the Prince, ‘when I have supped it will give me the greatest pleasure to hear it; but consider, madam, I beg of you, that I have had nothing to eat to-day.’
‘ The poor boy is right,’ said the Fairy ; ‘I was forgetting. Come in, then, and I will give you some supper, and while you are eating I can tell you my story in a very few words—for I don’t like endless tales myself. Too long a tongue is worse than too long a nose, and I remember when I was young that I was so much admired for not being a great chatterer. They used to tell the Queen, my mother, that it was so. For though you see what I am now, I was the daughter of a great king. My father——’
‘Your father, I dare say, got something to eat when he was hungry ! ’ interrupted the Prince.
‘ Oh
! certainly,’ answered the Fairy, ‘and you also shall have supper directly. I only just wanted to tell you——’
‘ But I really cannot listen to anything until I have had something to eat,’ cried the Prince, who was getting quite angry ; but then, remembering that he had better be polite as he much needed the Fairy’s help, he added :
‘ I know that in the pleasure of listening to you I should quite forget my own hunger; but my horse, who cannot hear you, must really be fed ! ’
The Fairy was very much flattered by this compliment, and said, calling to her servants :
‘ You shall not wait another minute, you are so polite, and in spite of the enormous size of your nose you are really very agreeable.’
‘ Plague take the old lady ! How she does go on about my nose ! ’ said the Prince to himself. ‘One would almost think that mine had taken all the extra length that hers lacks ! If I were not so hungry I would soon have done with this chatterpie who thinks she talks very little! How stupid people are not to see their own faults! that comes of being a princess: she has been spoilt by flatterers, who have made her believe that she is quite a moderate talker ! ’
Meanwhile the servants were putting the supper on the table, and the Prince was much amused to hear the Fairy, who asked them a thousand questions simply for the pleasure of hearing herself speak; especially he noticed one maid who, no matter what was being said, always contrived to praise her mistress’s wisdom.
‘ Well!’ he thought, as he ate his supper, ‘I’m very glad I came here. This just shows me how sensible I have been in never listening to flatterers. People of that sort praise us to our faces without shame, and hide our faults or change them into virtues. For my part I never will be taken in by them. I know my own defects, I hope.’
Poor Prince Hyacinth ! He really believed what he said, and hadn’t an idea that the people who had praised his nose were laughing at him, just as the Fairy’s maid was laughing at her; for the Prince had seen her laugh slyly when she could do so without the Fairy’s noticing her.