In many fairy tales, the heroes often have certain magical items to aid them on their endeavors. They may be made from silver or gold. Or they may carry some magic enchantment that makes it do a mundane task on its own. Though these trinkets can also be exchanged for a night with your princely sweetheart. Anyway, in this installment, I bring you 10 more forgotten fairy tales. First is a French tale about a king’s golden wig followed by a Finnish story about some magician’s gifts and a Chinese yarn of 2 half-sisters who don’t get along. Second, we have a Serbian tale of a dragon and a prince along with Scottish stories depicting a Red Ettin, a sea maiden, and a young king. Third, we have an Irish story of 3 princesses followed by a Portuguese story of picking flowers, and a Grimm story of a highly unusual godfather.

191. King Fortunatus’ Golden Wig

The French fairy tale, King Fortunatus’ Golden Wig revolves around a young man who finds this king’s golden wig. He wears it to Mardi Gras and ends up in the king’s service.

From: France
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Colonel A. Troude and G. Milin in Le Conteur breton ou Contes bretons.
Best Known Version: The Troude and Milin version, naturally.
Synopsis: A couple has no children. The husband goes to a wise man, who offers him his choice apple from a tree. He picks a white one and eats it. The wise man tells him he’ll have a son within a year, but when he’s 15, he’d leave and take nothing. At that time, the man should tell the boy to take what he finds in a ruined hut at the path’s end. When the boy, Jean, is 15, like the wiseman said, his dad tells him just that. Jean find a bridled and saddled horse and rides off on it. Against the horse’s advice, Jean looks to see what quarreling the crows dropped. When he finds it’s King Fortunatus’ golden wig, he takes it to Mardi Gras, despite the horse warning him against it. It takes him to the king and stays in the forest inside a branch hut. While Jean goes to work for the king as a stable boy. The horses he cares for do so much better than others’ horses that he rouses their envy. Since he finds the wig glows, he uses that instead of candles.

When Mardi Gras comes, Jean wears the wig. The king takes him for a prince. But Jean admits to being a stable boy so the king takes the wig. The other stable boys tell the king that Jean said he could marry King Fortunatus’ daughter. The king demands Jean bring her. Jean goes to his horse in the forest. It tells him to get 3 ships carrying beef, millet, and oats. They sail up a river. First, they come across the land of lions where they throw out the beef. The grateful lion king gives him a hair to call on the lions. Second, they stumble upon the land of ants, where they throw out the millet. The grateful ant king gives Jean one of his hind legs. Third, they come to the land of geese where they throw out the oats and the geese king gives Jean a feather. They arrive at King Fortunatus’ lands. On hearing the mission, he sends them to rest before their tasks. But in the morning, the king sets Jean to sort all kinds of grain heaped together in a granary, in one day. Jean rests all day and summons the ants to do it, which they do so quickly that one ant has nothing to do. The next day, the king gives Jean a shell to empty a pool and sort out fish into large and small in 2 basins. Jean rests again and summons the geese who empty it. The king has Jean chop down the forest but he summons the lions who do it. The king agrees to let Jean take his daughter but she warns him that she’ll also set tasks. The princess then farewells to her castle and throws the keys in the sea. When they return, the princess demands her castle be brought. The horse has them return to the near the woman’s castle and have the lions summoned. These kill the lions guarding the castle and attach it to her ship. The princess then demands the keys to it. The horse has Jean set sail and fire the cannon. The fish king comes up complaining about the noise and Jean agrees to stop for the keys. When the princess gets the keys, she demands Jean be burned. Jean goes to the horse. It has him curry it and collect all the dust. Then Jean has to add water to it, dig a hole by the pole, and wash himself and the shirt he’s to be burned in with the water. When he does all this, the fire burns quickly, and Jean jumps out, alive and even more handsome. The princess says she’d be happy to marry the king if he’s as handsome as Jean. The king has himself burned and dies. The princess then says that Jean had done all the work and she marries him instead.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: A guy gets burned up, which is a very horrible way to die.
Trivia: N/A

192. The Gifts of the Magician

The Gifts of the Magician is a Finnish fairy tale of a guy who saves a magician from wolves. In return the magician bestows him with some gifts.

From: Finland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Andrew Lang for his The Crimson Fairy Book.
Best Known Version: The Lang version, obviously.
Synopsis: A widower forbids his son from shooting some birds. One day, he does so and chases after the bird he wounded until he gets lost in the forest. When night falls, he sees wolves chasing a magician. He shoots the largest wolf, which drives away all the rest. The magician gives the young man shelter during the night. But he can’t be woken the next morning. The magician goes out to hunt. The boy wakes up and talks to the magician’s maid who suggests he ask for the horse in the third stall as a reward. When he does, the magician tries persuading him otherwise but finally gives it to him along with zither, a fiddle, and a flute, telling him to play each one in turn when he’s in danger. The horse warns the boy not to go back to his dad, since he’ll just beat him. He rides the horse on to the king’s city where everyone admires the horse. The horse tells the boy to stable it with the royal horses so they’d grow as beautiful as it. This works but it only makes the old groom envy the boy more. He tells the king that boy claimed he could find the king’s old war-charger, which had been lost in the woods. The king orders the boy to find it in 3 days. The horse tells him to demand 100 dead oxen, cut to pieces, and they ride off. At the horse’s instructions, the boy bridles the third horse that comes to them, and then distracts the magician’s raven by throwing the meat behind them. The groom claims the boy can restore the king’s missing wife. The horse tells him to ride it to the river, where it would dive in and assume her true form, she’s the queen. This pleases the king. But the groom tells him that the boy’s threatening to take the throne and the King Moron sentences him to be hanged. The boy plays the zither and the hangmen dance all day. The next day, everyone comes to see the hanging. The boy plays the fiddle and turns the occasion into a dance party. The third day, the king wants to refuse letting the boy play the flute but the crowd persuades him. The king insists being tied to a tree first but he still dances until his back is raw and the magician appears. He destroys the gallows and kills the king. The people choose the boy as their new king and the old groom drowns himself, since the kid might’ve been poor all his life if it wasn’t for his interference.

Whatever task the king sends the young man, he completes them with the gifts the magician gave him. Finally, the magician shows up and kills the king.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Features suicide.
Trivia: N/A
193. Beauty and Pock Face

Beauty and Pock Face is a Chinese fairy tale about 2 half-sisters who hate each other. When Beauty marries a scholar, the real trouble begins.

From: China
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Wolfram Eberhard in Chinese Fairy Tales and Folk Tales.
Best Known Version: The Eberhard version, naturally.
Synopsis: A man marries 2 wives and each bears a baby girl. The first wife’s child is beautiful and thus, called Beauty. But her half-sister who’s a year younger than her and the second wife’s daughter has a pocked face and is thus called Pock Face. The wicked stepmother is jealous of her pretty stepdaughter so she abuses Beauty and makes her do all the chores in the house. Beauty’s mom dies in childbirth and returns as a yellow cow who does all the work for her. Until the stepmother finds out and has the cow killed. Beauty collects the bones and puts them in a pot. One day, there’s a festival in town. The stepmother clothes Pock but refuses to take the poor Beauty along with her. Out of rage, Beauty breaks everything in the house, including the pot. But when she does that, a horse, a dress, and a lovely pair of shoes come out. She dresses herself, rides the horse, and off she goes to the festival. She loses her lovely shoes in a ditch. Not wanting to get her clothes dirty, she asks 4 men to get the shoe. Each one agrees if she’d marry him. But she refuses a fishmonger for smelling of fish, a rich merchant for being covered in dust, and an oil trader for being greasy. But she consents with a wealthy scholar since he’s not smelly, dusty, or greasy, but just right.

3 days after the wedding, Beauty goes to pay respects to her parents. Pock Face lures her to a well, pushes her in, and sends word to the scholar that Beauty has caught smallpox. After a time, she goes herself and explains her looks by the illness. However, Beauty shapeshifts into a sparrow and comes to taunt Pock Face while she’s combing her hair. Pock Face taunts her back. The scholar hears Beauty and asks her to fly into a golden cage if she’s his wife. Pock Face kills the sparrow and buries it. Bamboo shoots up from the grave, which taste delicious to the scholar but give ulcers on Pock Face’s tongue. Pock Face cuts the bamboo down and has a bed made from it, which the scholar finds comfortable but pokes her with needles so she throws it out. An old woman takes it home and finds dinner cooked for her whenever she comes back. In time, she catches Beauty’s spirit at work. Beauty then has the old woman give her some magical ingredients: a bowl for her stomach, some chopsticks for her bones, and some juice for her blood. Thus, Beauty becomes flesh and blood again. Beauty gives the old woman a bag to sell by her husband’s mansion. When she does this, the scholar asks Beauty and brings her back home. Pock Face proposes tests to determine who’s the real wife. First, they walk on eggs. Beauty doesn’t break any. But Pock Face breaks them all but doesn’t admit it. Second, they climb a ladder of knives. Beauty doesn’t cut her feet. Pock Face does but she keeps that to herself. Finally, they jump into boiling oil. Beauty emerges alive but Pock Face dies. Beauty sends her body back to her stepmother, but she thinks it’s carp. When she sees her daughter, she falls down dead.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Involves death by boiling oil and cutting one’s feet with knives.
Trivia: N/A

194. The Dragon and the Prince

The Dragon and the Prince is a Serbian fairy tale about a prince who’s trying to kill a dragon. But it’s not as simple as they make it out to be on Game of Thrones.

From: Serbia
Earliest Appearance: Collected by A. H. Wratislaw in his Sixty Folk-Tales from Exclusively Slavonic Sources.
Best Known Version: The Andrew Lang version in his The Crimson Fairy Book.
Synopsis: An emperor has 3 sons. The oldest goes hunting and chases a hare. When it flees into a water mill, he follows. The same thing happens with the second. When the youngest goes out, he chases the hare but doesn’t go into the water mill. Instead, he searches for other game. When he returns to the mill, only an old lady sits there. She tells the prince of the dragon. He asks her to ask the dragon the secret behind its strength, and whenever it tells her, to kiss the spot it had mentioned. He leaves. When the dragon returns, the old woman asks it. When it tells her the fireplace, she begins kissing it. It laughs, saying it’s actually the tree in front of the house. When she begins kissing that, the dragon tells her of a distant empire with a lake, which holds a dragon, which holds a boar, which holds a pigeon, which holds its strength.

While trying to kill the first dragon at his home, the prince has to defeat another dragon in another empire so the other dragon can die. It’s quite confusing. But read on.

The prince sets out and finds the empire. He takes service as a shepherd with the emperor, who warns him to stay the hell away from the lake. Though sheep would go there if allowed. He sets out with the sheep, 2 hounds, a falcon, and a pair of bagpipes. He lets the sheep go to the lake at once. The prince challenges the dragon and it comes out of the lake. They fight. The dragon asks to let its face in the lake. He refuses, saying if the emperor’s daughter was there to kiss him, he’d toss it into the air. The dragon breaks off from the fight. The next day, the same happens, but the emperor sends 2 grooms to follow him and they report what had happened. The third day, the emperor sends his daughter to the lake with directions to kiss the prince when he says that. The fight as before. But the princess kisses him. The prince throws the dragon into the air, bursting when hitting the ground. A boar bursts out of it but the prince catches it with dogs. A pigeon bursts out of it, but he catches it with the falcon. The pigeon then tells him that behind the water mill, 3 wands grow. And if he cuts them and strikes their root, he’d find a prison filled with people. The prince then wrings the pigeon’s neck. The emperor marries him to his daughter. After the wedding reception, they go back and free all the prisoners. The prince then goes back to the water mill, finds the roots, and strikes them so hard his hands turn red. So when he goes back to the kingdom, he finds no one. The prince looks everywhere and then go to the prison, where he finds everyone there. He cries and goes back home telling his dad what happened. The next day, he, his dad, and his brothers, dig graves for everyone found there.

Other Versions: Included in Ruth Manning-Sanders’ A Book of Princes and Princesses.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Has a rather bittersweet ending involving defeating the dragon but burying the dead.
Trivia: N/A

195. The Red Ettin

The Scottish Red Ettin is about a young man who’s on a quest to save his brothers and a princess from a hideous monster. But he’ll have to face plenty before he goes against this guy.

From: Scotland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Joseph Jacobs.
Best Known Version: The Andrew Lang version in his The Blue Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A widow has 3 sons. One day, she tells the oldest to fetch water for a cake. Since it’s time for him to seek his fortune, and a cake is all she could give him. Since the can’s broken, he brings back little water so the cake is small. So his mom offers him all of it with her curse, or half of it with her blessing. The son takes the whole and leaves behind the knife, saying that if the blade grows rusty, he’s dead. He meets a shepherd, a swineherd, and a goatherd, each of them telling him the Red Ettin of Ireland had kidnapped the king of Scotland’s daughter, but he’s not the guy to rescue her. The shepherd also tells him to be wary of the beasts he’ll meet next, which have 2 heads with 4 horns on each head. The man flees them and hides in a castle. An old woman tells him it’s the Red Ettin’s castle, which has 3 heads and he should leave. But the oldest son begs her to hide him as best she could, for fear of beasts.

The Red Ettin is a giant 3 headed monster who speaks in riddles. Answer wrong and you’ll be turned to stone.

The Red Ettin returns, soon finds him, and asks him 3 riddles. When the young man can’t answer any of them, the Ettin turns him into stone. At home, his knife gets rusty. The second goes after the elder and meets the same fate. The youngest son sets out after them. First, a raven calls over his head to look out as he brings water. So he patches up the holes and brings back enough water for a large cake. He then leaves with half the cake and his mom’s blessing. He meets an old woman asking for a piece of his cake, which he gives to her. Being a fairy, she gives him a magic wand and a great deal of advice on what to do before vanishing. The shepherd, swineherd, and goatherd tell him of the Red Ettin and the king of Scotland’s daughter and proclaim him as the man who’ll defeat him. The youngest boldly walks through the beasts to the castle, striking one dead with a wand, and staying there. The Red Etting asks him his riddle, but the man answers and cuts off his 3 heads. He restores the stone and frees the women the Red Ettin held prisoner, and the king marries him to his daughter.

The hero boldly walks into the castle, strikes the beasts, answers the riddle, and slays the Red Ettin. He then saves the princess and marries her.

Other Versions: Some versions have 2 widows sharing a hut. One has 2 sons. The other has one.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

196. The Sea Maiden

The Sea Maiden is a Scottish fairy tale of a fisherman’s son whose promised to the water entity who saved his dad’s life. Though he marries princess the sea maiden still causes trouble.

From: Scotland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by John Francis Campbell in his Popular Tales of the West Highlands.
Best Known Version: The Campbell version obviously.
Synopsis: A mermaid offers a fisherman much fish in exchange for his son. But the fisherman claims he has none. She offers him grains: 3 for his wife, 3 for a mare, 3 for a dog, 3 to plant in the yard. Then there would be 3 sons, 3 foals, 3 puppies, and 3 trees. Then the mermaid should have one son when he’s 3. Though she lets the fisherman put it off until his firstborn is 20. By that time, the dad grows troubled. The oldest son worms the problem out of him and tells him to get a good sword. He sets out on horseback with a dog and comes across a dog, a falcon, and an otter fighting over a sheep carcass. The young man splits it up for him if they tag along and aid him.

While working as a royal cowherd, the young man fights off giants and monsters. Luckily, his animal friends are there to help.

The young man takes service with the king as a cowherd with pay according to the milk. Nearby, the grass is poor and so is the milk and his wages. Yet, he finds a green valley so he pastures the cows there. However, a giant challenges him for grazing in his valley so the young man kills him. Taking none of the treasure, he takes back the cows, which give good milk. The next day, he takes the cows further and has the fight another giant with the dog’s help. The third day after that, he takes them still further and meets a hag trying to trick him, but he kills her with the dog’s help. When the young man gets back, everyone’s crying. A 3-headed monster lives in the loch and gets someone every year.

Every year, a 3-headed monster at the loch takes a hostage to devour. This year it’s the princess.

This year the lot falls to the king’s daughter. The general promises to rescue her. The king promises to marry him to the princess if he does. The son goes to see. When the monster appears, the general runs off. The princess sees a doughty man appear on a black horse with a black dog. He fights the creature and chops off one head, drawing a sword through it. He gives it to the princess who gives him a ring. He goes back to his cows. The general threatens to kill the princess if she doesn’t say that he did it. The next day, the princess has to go back since there are 2 heads left. The son returns and sleeps, telling her to rouse him when the creature comes. She does putting her earring on his ear as he said. They fight and he cuts off the second head. The same thing happens the third time, and the creature dies.

The king sends for a priest to marry his daughter to the general. The princess says that the general must first take the heads from the withy. He can’t. But the cowherd does. The princess says the actual killer has her ring and earrings. He produces them. Displeased, the king orders him dressed in better clothes. The princess says he has good clothes and he dresses in the gold clothes from the giant’s castle to marry her. One day, they walk by the loch where the sea-maiden takes the prince. An old smith advises the princess to wear her jewelry and offer it to the sea-maiden for the prince. A soothsayer advises her to play music and not stop until the sea maiden gives her a sight of the prince, letting the prince call on a falcon and escape. But the princess gets captured.

The same person who advised the princess tells the prince of a white deer on an island. If caught, a hoodie crow would jump on it. Catch that a trout will spring from it. But there’s an egg in the trout’s mouth, which if broken, the sea maiden would die. The sea maiden sinks any boat within the island’s vicinity. But the prince’s horse and dog jump to it. The dog chases the deer. The prince calls on the dog from the sheep carcass and catches the deer with its aid. The hoodie springs out, and with the falcon from the sheep carcass’ aid, he catches it. The trout springs out and with the otter from the sheep carcass’ aid, he catches it. The sea maiden tells him she’ll do what he asks if he spares her. The prince demands his wife. When the sea maiden gives her back, he squeezes the egg and kills her.

Other Versions: Included in Joseph Jacobs’ Celtic Fairy Tales. In his version, the mermaid tells the fisherman that he’ll have a son and she’ll take him when he turns 20. Also, an old smith advises the princess to wear her jewelry and offer it to the sea-maiden for the prince, which she agrees to.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

197. The Three Daughters of King O’Hara
From: Ireland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Jeremiah Curtain in his Myths and Folk-lore of Ireland.
Best Known Version: The Curtain version, of course.
Synopsis: A king has 3 daughters. When he’s away one day, the oldest wishes to marry. She gets his cloak of darkness and wishes for the handsomest man in the world. He arrives in a golden coach with 4 horses to take her away. The second sister wishes for the next best man and he arrives in the same getup to take her away. Then the youngest wishes for the best white dog and it arrives in the same getup to take her away. The king returns and blows a fuse when his servants tell him of the dog. The older two’s husbands ask their wives how they want them during the day: as they are during the day or during the night. Both want them as they are during the day. So their husbands are both men during the day and seals during the night. The youngest’s husband also asks and receives the same answer so he’s a dog during the day and a handsome man at night.

The youngest princess gives birth to a son. Before going hunting, her husband warns her not to weep if anything happens to their kid. A gray crow takes the baby when he’s a week old but she doesn’t cry. It happens again with the second son. But with their third child, a daughter, she drops a tear she catches in a handkerchief. Her husband’s pissed. Soon after, the king invites his daughters and their husbands to his home. Late at night, the queen goes to look in their bedrooms and sees that her two older daughters have seals in their beds, but her youngest has a man. She finds and burns the dog’s skin. The husband angrily jumps up, saying that if he could stay 3 nights under his father-in-law’s roof, he could be a man 24/7. But now he has to leave her.

He sets out, but the princess chases after him, never letting him out of her sight. They come to a house, he sends her to spend the night inside. A little boy there calls her mother and a woman there gives her a pair of scissors that could turn rags into cloth and gold. The next day, the princess chases after her husband again. They come to another house where another little boy calls her mother and a woman gives her a comb that would turn a diseased head healthy, and give it golden hair. The third day, the princess still chases after her husband, and the third house holds a one-eyed little girl. The princess takes her handkerchief where she caught the tear and puts the eye back. The woman gives her a whistle that would summon all the birds in the world.

They go on, but the princess’ husband explains that the Queen of Tír na nÓg had cursed him. So now he has to go and marry her. She follows him into the lower kingdom and stays with a washerwoman, helping her. The princess sees a henwife’s daughter all in rags, and snips her rags with scissors so she wears cloth and gold. Her mom tells the queen who demands them. The princess asks for a night with her husband in return. The queen agrees but drugs the guy. The next day, the princess cures another henwife daughter with a comb, and the same exchange is made for it. The princess then blows the whistle summoning the birds who tell her that only her husband can kill the queen. Because a holly tree holds a wether, the wether holds a duck, the duck holds an egg, and the egg holds the queen’s heart and life. And only the princess’ husband can cut down the holly tree. The princess blows the whistle again, attracting a hawk and fox and catches them. She trades the whistle for another night with her husband, but leaves a letter with his servants, telling them all. Her husband reads the letter and meets her by the tree, which he cuts down. The wether escapes but the fox catches it. The duck escapes but the hawk catches it. The egg is crushed, killing the queen. The princess and her husband live happily in of Tír na nÓg.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

198. The Young King of Easaidh Rudh

The Young King of Easaidh Rudh is a Scottish fairy tale about a young king who’s trying to win a game with some kind of entity. Then his wife gets kidnapped by a giant living in a cave.

From: Scotland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by John Francis Campbell in his Popular Tales of the West Highlands.
Best Known Version: The Campbell version, naturally.
Synopsis: The young king of Easaidh Ruadh decides to amuse himself by playing a game with the Gruagach. But first, he seeks advice from a Seanagal, but doesn’t take his advice and not go. But the Seanagal tells the king to ask for a prize if he wins: the cropped rough-skinned maid behind the door. He goes and wins the game. When he wouldn’t be put off from his prize, they give him the maid who turns into a beautiful woman. He marries her. When the king goes to play again, his wife warns him that the Gruagach is her dad and that he should take only the dun shaggy filly with the stick saddle on her. He wins and gets the filly. He goes to play a third time, but this time, he loses. The Gruagach sets the stakes that he must get the Glaive of Light of the oak windows king or lose his head. He goes back to his wife who tells him he has the best queen and the second best horse so he needn’t fear. She saddles the horse herself. Though the saddle resembles wood, it’s full of gold and silver sparklings. She then tells her husband to listen to his horse.

The horse bores the king through the castle of the oak windows king and sends him to the guy’s chambers while the king eats, warning him to take it softly. The young king makes a soft sound and the horse tells him they must flee. A swarm of brown horses chase them, which they outrun, followed by a swarm of black horses including a white-faced one with a rider. The king’s horse tells him that the horse is her brother and the first best horse and faster. So he must cut off the head of his rider, the king. He does and his horse has him ride the black horse home. The king then brings the sword to the Gruagach, and as his wife warned him to do, stabs him to death in a mole. The young king comes home to find a giant had stolen his wife and the 2 horses. He sets out and meets a cu seang, a wild dog. They greet each other and the dog gives him meat. Having no way to get his wife and horses back, the king thinks about going home. But the dog encourages him and sends him on, promising aid. The next nights he meets a falcon and an otter who do the same. He then finds a cave where his wife and horses are. She cries, complaining he had journeyed hard to find her. The horses tell her to hide him before them all.

The giant returns and the queen persuades him that nobody had come. He goes to feed the horses but they won’t let him come near. He says if he had his soul in his body, they would’ve killed him. She asks where it is, he tells her in the Bonnach stone near the edge. When the giant leaves the next day, the queen pushes it so it’s steady on the ledge and tells him she’s afraid it would be hurt. He says his soul is in the threshold. She cleans it. And he tells her the soul’s under the threshold and a sheep under it. The sheep holds a duck, the duck holds an egg, and the egg holds his soul. The king and queen move the threshold and the stone. The sheep escapes. The king calls on the dog to catch it. The duck escapes. The king calls on the falcon to catch it. The egg rolls into the river and the king calls on the otter to retrieve it. The queen crushes it, killing the giant. They go home with the giant’s gold and silver, visiting the animal helpers along the way.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Lilac Fairy Book as “The King of the Waterfalls.”
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: This one is filled with a lot of Scottish terms that many won’t understand without footnotes.
Trivia: N/A

199. What Came of Picking Flowers

What Came of Picking Flowers begins when 3 sisters are kidnapped after picking a flower. Leaving their little brother to go after them.

From: Portugal
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Andrew Lang in his The Grey Fairy Book.
Best Known Version: The Lang version, obviously.
Synopsis: A woman has 3 daughters. One day, one picks a pink carnation and vanishes. The next day, the second, searching for her sister, picks a rose and disappears. The third day, the third picks some jessamine and goes missing. The woman cries over this for so long that her son who’s just a boy when his sisters disappear, grows up to be a man. He asks what happened. His mom tells him of his older sisters. He asks for her blessing and sets out to find them. On the way, the young man finds 3 big boys fighting over an inheritance: boots that let the wearer wish oneself anywhere, a key that could open every lock, and an invisibility cap. The son says he’ll throw a stone and whoever gets it first will get all 3. He throws it and steals the things, wishing himself where his oldest sister is. He finds himself in front of a strong mountain castle. His key unlocks all the doors, finding his sister richly dressed and having only one unhappiness: her husband’s under a curse until a man who can’t die bites the dust. Her husband returns, the son puts on his cap, and a bird flies in and becomes a man. He’s angry that his wife’s hiding someone from him, but the son takes off his cap, and the resemblance convinces him that they’re brother and sister. He gives his brother-in-law a feather that would let him call on him, the King of the Birds. The next day, he sees his second sister whose only trouble is the spell keeping her husband half a day as a fish. Her husband, King of Fish, gives him a scale to call him.

The first two sisters’ husbands turn into the animals they rule but they’re okay. The third sister’s is a different story, however.

The third day, the son sees his youngest sister, who had been carried off by a monster, weeps and thin from its cruelty because she doesn’t want to marry it. Her brother asks her to say she would marry it if it tells her how it could die. When she does, it tells her an iron casket at the seafloor contains a white dove and the dove’s egg dashed against its head would kill it. The brother has the fish king bring the box, using the key to open it. He then has the bird king bring him the dove after it flies off and carry off the egg. The youngest sister asks the monster to lay its head upon her lap. Her brother smashes the egg on its head and it does. His 2 brothers-in-law resume their shape and they send for their mother-in-law. The monster’s treasure makes the youngest sister rich for the rest of her life.

The young man and his brothers-in-law join forces to save the third sister. They give him tokens where he can summon their subjects.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

200. The Godfather

The Godfather is a Grimm fairy tale about a poor man trying to find a godparent for his new baby. Yet, the man who becomes the godfather is a quite unusual guy.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, naturally.
Synopsis: A poor man has so many kids that by the time he has another, he finds he’s already asked everyone in the world to be godparents for his previous children. Befuddled at how he’s supposed to find anyone to act as a godparent for his newly-born child, he withdraws in his room for the night. While fast asleep, the poor man has a dream telling him to leave his house and ask the first person he meets to be the kid’s godparent. As soon as he wakes up, he proceeds to do this. The man he meets and makes godparent of his newly born child hands the poor man a small bottle containing water that the man claims the poor guy can use to heal the sick, so long as the sickness stems from the head and not the feet. The poor man subsequently becomes both well-known and wealthy, thanks to the magic water. He has a certain bout with treating a king’s child, where he’s able to use the magic water on 2 successive occasions. But he can’t do so on the third occasion, thus, announcing to the king that his child will die.

Not too long after the king’s child dies, the man decides to visit the Godfather so as to tell him his efforts with the magic water. However, when he arrives at the Godfather’s house, everything there is in disarray. On the first stair, a brush and dustpan fight with each other. On the second stair, many fingers lie. On the third stair is a stack of bowls. On the fourth stair are fish cooking themselves. On the fifth stair is the Godfather’s room. When the man looks through the keyhole on the door to the Godfather, he sees the guy donning very long horns. As soon as the man opens the door, the Godfather retreats to his bed and cloaks himself. The man asks the Godfather about what the hell’s going on in his house. The Godfather brushes this off and counter-claims that the man’s seeing things. However, once the man brings up the self-cooking fish, the fish come in presenting themselves on a plate to the Godfather. Finally, the man brings up how when peeking through the keyhole in the door to his room, he sees the Godfather with long horns. At this, the Godfather bellows he’s lying. Frightened by this, the man bolts from the house.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: When we hear the title, we’re more likely to imagine Italian American mobsters and family betrayal. Also, the plot’s pretty sad and creepy.
Trivia: N/A

When it comes to fairy tales, we often have more positive perceptions of fairies and mermaids. Since we tend to see them akin to Tinkerbell and Ariel in Disney movies. But there’s much more to them than what’s commonly depicted. While fairies can be rather benevolent, they can also be tricksters and fiends. You may think mermaids are benevolent fish women with beautiful singing voices who save stranded sailors. But they can also demand the men they save a child from them or drown people. Anyway, in this installment, I give you another 10 forgotten fairy tales. First, are Italian tales pertaining to a king of love, a Yoda-like hermit, and a servant who goes on increasingly dangerous and impossible tasks. Second, is a Greek story of a princess who creates her own dream guy. Third, we find a Spanish tale revolving around a sprig of rosemary. After that, we come to a Norwegian story of a white bear king followed by 2 tales of a water nixie and 2 servants of the king with the same name but very different personalities. Then, there’s an Armenian story of a golden headed fish before we go to a Sami yarn of a boy and a mermaid.

181. The King of Love
From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Thomas Frederick Crane in his Italian Popular Tales.
Best Known Version: The Crane version, naturally.
Synopsis: A man takes his youngest daughter Rosella with him and she pulls a radish. A Turk appears, saying she must come to his master and be punished. He brings them underground. A green bird appears, washes in milk, and becomes a man. The Turk tells what happened. The dad says there’s no sign the radish belongs to him. The man marries Rosella and gives her dad a sack of gold. One day, when the man’s away, her sisters visit her. She tells them that her husband had forbidden her to ask who he is, but they persuade her to ask his name. He tells her he’s the King of Love and vanishes. Rosella wanders in search of him. She calls for him and an ogress appears, demanding to know why she called on her nephew. The ogress takes pity on her and lets her stay the night, telling her she’s one of 7 sister ogresses, and her mother-in-law’s the worst. Each day, Rosella meets another. On the seventh day, the King of Love’s sister tells Rosella to climb her hair into her house while their mom’s out. Then she and her sisters tell Rosella to seize their mom and pinch her until the ogress cries out to be left alone in her son’s name.

Rosella does this and the ogress wants to eat her. But the ogress’ daughters stop her. She then insists that Rosella carry a letter for her. In the wilderness, Rosella calls out for the King of Love again. He warns her to flatter things along the way: to drink from and praise 2 rivers, to eat and praise fruit from an orchard, to feed 2 dogs, to sweep a hall, and to polish a kite, razor, and scissors. Then she has to deliver the letter, seize a box from a table, and run. When she does this, the ogress calls after her for things to destroy her, but they refuse because of her kindness. Curious, she opens a box, musical instruments escape, and she has to call her husband again to get them back. The ogress wants to eat Rosella again but her daughters once again stop her. She orders her to fill a mattress from feathers of all the birds in the air. The King of Love gets the King of Birds to have the birds fill it. Then the ogress marries her son off to the King of Portugal’s daughter and has Rosella hold torches for the bridal chamber. But the king gets his bride to switch places with Rosella while the ground opens up and swallows the bride. The ogress declares that Rosella’s child won’t be born until she unclasps her hands. The King of Love has his body laid out as if he’s dead, and his sisters lament him. The ogress unclasps her hands, demanding to how he had died. Rosella’s son is born, enraging the ogress so much that she dies.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: A woman falls through the ground for no reason other than being a false bride.
Trivia: N/A

182. Master Semolina
From: Greece
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Irene Naumann-Mavrogordato in Es war einmal: Neugriechische Volksmärchen as “Mr Simigdáli.”
Best Known Version: The Georgios A. Megas version in Folktales of Greece.
Synopsis: A princess refuses all suitors. She then takes almonds, sugar, and groats (or semolina) and makes a figure of a man from them. She next prays for 40 days and God brings the figure to life. She calls him Mr. Simigdali (Mr. Groats or Master Semolina) and is very handsome. An evil queen hears of him and sends a golden ship to kidnap him. Everyone comes out to see it and the sailors capture Mr. Simigdali. The princess learns of how he’s been carried off, has 3 pairs of iron shoes made for herself, and sets out. She comes to the Moon’s mom who has her waiting until the Moon comes. But the Moon couldn’t say where Mr. Simigdali’s been taken to. After giving her an almond, he sends her to the Sun. The Sun and his mom give her a walnut and send her to the Stars. One star has seen him while they and their mom give her a hazelnut. She goes onto a castle where Mr. Simigdali is taken prisoner. Resembling a beggar, he doesn’t recognize the princess. So she begs a place with the geese.

The princess breaks the almond holding a golden spindle, reel, and wheel. The servants tell the queen who asks what she wants for her items. The princess opts to trade only for Mr. Simigdali to come to spend the night with her. The queen agrees but gives Mr. Simigdali a sleeping potion so the princess can’t wake him. The walnut contains a golden hen and chicks, and she tries but fails again. The hazelnut contains golden carnations. But that day, a tailor asks how Mr. Simigdali can sleep with the princess’ talk. Mr. Simigdali readies his horse and doesn’t drink the potion. When the princess starts talking to him, he rises and takes her with him on his horse. The next morning, the queen sends for Mr. Simigdali but he’s not there. She tries making her own man, but when the figure is done, she curses instead of praying. The princess and Mr. Simigdali return home and live happily.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

183. The Sprig of Rosemary

The Sprig of Rosemary is a Spanish fairy tale of a girl who marries a great lord only to destroy his castle after a mishap. She then goes searching for him.

From: Spain
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Dr. D. Francisco de S. Maspons y Labros in Cuentos Populars Catalans.
Best Known Version: The Andrew Lang version in The Pink Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A man makes his only daughter work very hard. One day after work, he sends her to collect firewood, which she does. While searching for the wood, she picks herself a sprig of rosemary as well. A handsome young man appears asking why she’s come to steal his firewood. She replies her dad sent her. The young man leads the girl to a castle, telling her he’s a great lord and wants to marry her. She agrees. They marry. While living there, the new wife meets an old woman looking after the castle. She gives the lady the keys, but warns if she uses one, the castle will fall to pieces. After a time, curiosity overcomes the new great lady and she opens a door, finding a snakeskin. Her husband, a magician, uses it to change shape. But because she used the keys, the castle collapses. The girl cries, breaks off a sprig of rosemary, and goes looking for him.

The great lady finds a straw house where the residents take her in service. However, she grows sadder by the day. When her mistress asks why, the daughter tells her story. Her mistress sends her to the Sun, Moon, and Wind to ask for help. The Sun can’t help her but gives her a nut and sends her to the Moon. The Moon can’t help her either but gives her an almond before sending her to the Wind. The Wind doesn’t know where her husband is but says he’ll look. He learns the guy’s hidden in a king’s palace and is to marry the princess the next day. The daughter implores the king to put it off if he can. After giving her a walnut, the Wind blows on the tailors sewing for the wedding dress and destroys their work. The daughter arrives and cracks the nut, finding a fine mantle. She sells it to the princess with a great gold sum. The almond holds petticoats, which she also sells. While the walnut holds a gown, and for this she demands to see the bridegroom. The princess finally agrees. When the daughter goes in, she touches him with a rosemary sprig, bringing his memory back. And they go back to her home.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

184. The White-Bear King Valemon

In the Norwegian tale The White Bear King of Valemon, a princess’ obsession with a wreath leads her into an arranged marriage with a big white bear. But when she tries to see who he is in human form, he rushes off.

From: Norway
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jorgen Moe in their Norske Folke-Eventyr. Ny Samling.
Best Known Version: The one collected by artist Arthur Schneider in 1870.
Synopsis: A king has 3 daughters. The older two are ugly and mean, while the youngest is pretty and gentle. One night, she dreams of a golden wreath. Her dad sends goldsmiths to make it, none of them match her dream. The princess then sees a white bear in the woods and it has the wreath. But he won’t give it to her unless she go away with him, giving her 3 days to prepare for the trip. However, the princess doesn’t care as long as she got the wreath. While her dad’s glad of her happiness and thinks he could keep the bear. But when it arrives, it attacks and defeats the king’s army, unscathed. The king sends out his oldest daughter. The bear takes her on its back and rushes off with her. But asks if she had ever sat on anything softer or seen clearer. She says she had on her mom’s lap, and at her dad’s court. So the white bear brings her back to the castle.

When the bear runs off, the princess seizes his fur and climbs on his back. But she gets tired and falls off.

The bear comes again the next Thursday. The king tries his second daughter, she also fails. The third Thursday, the king sends his youngest daughter. And she has never sat on a softer or seen clear. So it takes her to the castle. Every night, it turns into a man and comes to her bed in the dark. Every year, the princess has a child. But as soon as the baby is born, the bear rushes away with it. At the end of 3 years, she asks to visit her parents. There, her mom gives her a candle so she could see him. At night, she lights it and looks at him. But a drop of tallow falls on his forehead, waking him. He tells her that if she waited another month, he would’ve been free of an evil witch queen’s spell. But now he must go to the witch’s realm and become her husband. He rushes off. But the princess seizes his fur and rides him, though the branches batter her, until she’s so tired that she falls off. She searches the forest until she comes across a cottage where an old woman and her little girl dwell. The old woman tells her that the bear went by. The little girl has scissors that, whenever she cuts in the air, silk and velvet appear. But she says the woman needs more of it and gives them to her. The princess goes to another hut with another old woman and little girl. This time, the little girl gives her a flask that pours whatever one wishes and never empties. The princess next goes to a third hut with an old woman and little girl who gives her a cloth that could conjure up food. The fourth night, the princess comes to a hut where an old woman has many kids who have no food or clothes. After the princess feeds and clothes them. The old woman has her smith husband make her iron claws so she could climb the mountainside to the witch’s country.

The princess reaches the witch’s castle. She starts clipping out cloth. The witch offers to trade for the scissors. The princess insists on a night with her sweetheart. The witch agrees but drugs him so she can’t wake him. The next day, she bribes her way in with a flask. Again the witch drugs him, but a next door artisan hears her and tells the king. The third day, she bribes her way in with the cloth. The king doesn’t take the drink so they can talk, coming up with an idea to kill the witch. So the day arrives when the king’s set to marry the witch. Not surprisingly, more witches gather for the occasion. But the king has his carpenters put a trapdoor in a bridge over a deep chasm where the wedding procession would ride, and have it opened so that the witch-bride and her witch-bridesmaids all fall through it. They then take the treasures from the witch’s castle and return to his homeland for the real wedding. On the way, the princess takes the little girls, learning they’re her own daughters whom the king had taken so they can aid her in her quest.

Other Versions: Has a translation by George Webbe Dasent in his Tales from the Fjeld.
Adaptations: Adapted into a Norwegian film called The Polar Bear King.
Why Forgotten: Abducting your daughters so you can help your wife in her later quest doesn’t necessarily seem okay.
Trivia: N/A

185. The Water Nixie

The Water Nixie is a Grimm fairy tale of 2 kids who fall into a well only to have a nixie on their tail. The rest of it just has them trying to get away from the sea being.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, naturally.
Synopsis: A brother and sister fall into a well, where a nixie catches them and makes them work for her. While she’s at church one Sunday, they run away. The nixie chases them. The girl throws a bush, which becomes a mountain with thousands of spikes. But the nixie gets through it with great effort. The boy throws a comb behind them which become mountains with thousands of teeth. The nixie goes through them, though with great effort. The girl then throws a mirror, which becomes a mountain too slick for the nixie to climb. She goes back for an axe. But before she could chop through the mountain, they escape.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why. Then again, it’s pretty short.
Trivia: N/A

186. The Golden-Headed Fish

The Golden-Headed Fish is an Armenian fairy tale of a prince who’s tasked to find the said fish for his father but finds it too late to cure his failing eyes. So his mom sends him off to a distant island to save his life where he takes an Arab as a servant since he only takes a yearly salary.

From: Armenia
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Andrew Lang in his The Olive Fairy Book.
Best Known Version: The Lang version, of course.
Synopsis: A king is going blind. A traveler claims that if a golden-heated fish be found in the Great Sea brought to him within 100 days, he’d make an ointment with its blood that could restore the king’s sight. But he has to leave within 100 days. The prince takes men and fishes for it. When finally catches it, it’s too late to bring it back. Though he intends to do so in order to show his dad what he accomplished, he decides not to. Because doctors would try making the ointment and killing the fish would be useless. The king refuses to believe his son had tried and orders his execution. Servants warn the queen who gives her son common clothing and gold before sending him off to a distant island, warning him to take no man in his service who expects a monthly paycheck. At the island, the prince buys a house and rejects many servants wanting a monthly paycheck, and finally takes on an Arab expecting a yearly one.

With each impossible task, the Arab does on the prince’s behalf. He then has the prince marry a princess with too many failed marriages while he takes care of the entity causing her previous husbands to die.

A monster leaves half the island a wasteland, and whoever goes to fight it falls asleep. The Arab asks the governor what he’d give for killing it, the man offers half the land and his daughter. The Arab asks instead that he share in whatever he gains. The governor agrees. The Arab kills the monster and tells the prince to take the credit. The governor gives him a ship at his request, and secretly fills it with jewels. They sail to a far country. The Arab urges the prince to ask the king for his daughter. The king warns the prince that she had been married 190 times and all her bridegrooms didn’t last 12 hours. But the Arab urges the prince to marry her anyway. The prince and princess marry. But at night, he sees men digging a grave for him. A small black snake wiggles into the bridal chamber. But the Arab sees it and kills it. After that, the princess lives happily with her new husband. One day, the prince is summoned with the news of his dad’s death. He rules there. Eventually, the Arab tells him he’s been called home and must leave him. The new king wishes to reward him since he had saved his life. But the Arab refuses all because he’s the Golden-Headed Fish.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: A dad orders his son’s death for not finding a fish on time. Also, an Arab does all the work while the prince gets all the rewards.
Trivia: N/A

187. How the Hermit Helped to Win the King’s Daughter

How the Hermit Helped to Win the King’s Daughter is an Italian fairy tale about young man who takes on an old hermit to help him build an amphibious craft in order to win a princess. But that’s not the only thing he has to do in this story.

From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Laura Gonzenbach in Sicilianische Märchen
Best Known Version: The Andrew Lang version in his The Pink Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A rich man divides his property among his 3 sons when he dies. The king offers his daughter to whoever can build a ship that could travel over both land and sea. The oldest son tries, and when old men come begging for work, he sends them all away. He spends all his money on it and a squall destroys it. The second son tries after him, and ends up the same. The youngest thinks to try it as well, because he’s not as rich enough to support all 3 of them. He hires everyone, including a little white-bearded old man his brothers had rejected as overseer. Now this old man is a hermit. When the ship’s finished, he tells the youngest son to lay claim to the princess. The youngest son asks the hermit to stay with him and the hermit asks him for half of everything he’s got. The son agrees.

While traveling, they come across a man putting fog in a sack. At the hermit’s suggesting, the son asks the man to come with them. So with the man tearing up trees, a man drinking stream dry, a man shooting quail in the Underworld, and a man whose steps bestride an island. The king doesn’t want to give his daughter to a guy he knows nothing about. So he orders the son to take a message to the Underworld and back in an hour. The long-legged man gets it but falls asleep in the Underworld. So the shooter guy gives him a wake up shot. The king then demands the man who can drink half his cellar dry in a day. The man who could drink a stream does this. The king agrees to the marriage, but promises only as much dowry as one man could carry. Though it’s not fit for a princess. The strong man who can tear up trees, carries off every treasure the king has. When the king chases them, the man lets the fog from the sack, and they escape. The son divides the gold with the hermit, but the hermit points out he has the princess, too. The son draws his sword to cut her in pieces, but the hermit stops him and gives him back all the treasure, too, promising to come to his aid if he needs it.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: The male protagonist threatens to cut a princess to pieces.
Trivia: N/A

188. Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful

Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful is a Grimm fairy tale of 2 servants with the same name. One is loyal and goes above and beyond the call of duty to serve his king. The other isn’t. By the way this picture’s by Maurice Sendak.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, obviously.
Synopsis: A couple has no kids when they’re rich. But when they become poor, they have a son and the dad can’t find anyone for a godfather except a beggar. The beggar names the boy Ferdinand the Faithful, gives him nothing, and takes nothing. Yet, he gives the nurse a key saying when the boy is 14, he should go to a castle on the heath and unlock it. All it contains would be his. When the boy’s 7, all of the other boys boast of what their godfathers gave them. Ferdinand goes to his dad for his gift and hears of the key, but there’s no castle on the heath. When he’s 14, he goes again and finds the castle. Inside, there’s nothing but a white horse, but he takes the horse home and decides to travel. He sees a pen on the road, passes it, but he hears a voice telling him to take it so he picks it up. He then rescues a fish from the shore. The fish gives Ferdinand a flute to summon him and promises to get for him anything dropped in the water.

Ferdinand the Faithful meets Ferdinand the Unfaithful and they go to an inn. There, a girl falls for the former and suggest they get jobs at the castle.

Ferdinand then meets another man, Ferdinand the Unfaithful who’s learned everything about him by wicked magic and they go to an inn. A girl there falls in love with Ferdinand the Faithful and tells him he should stay and take service with the king. She next gets him a place as a postilion. Ferdinand the Unfaithful also gets her to get him a place, because she doesn’t trust him and wants to keep an eye on him. The king laments that he doesn’t have his love. Ferdinand the Unfaithful persuades him to send Ferdinand the Faithful for her. Ferdinand the Faithful thinks he can’t and whines, but the horse says he needs a ship full of bread and a ship full of meat and to get them from the king. When he does, Ferdinand the Faithful and the horse set out. He appeases the birds along the way with the bread and giants with meat. And with the giants’ help, he carries off the sleeping princess to the king.

Here Ferdinand the Faithful appeases the birds so he can get to a sleeping princess to the king. But the princess has other ideas.

The princess declares she can’t live without her magical writings from the castle. So the king send Ferdinand the Faithful for them. With the horse’s help, he gets them the same way. On the way back, he drops the pen into the water. The horse says it can no longer help him. So Ferdinand the Faithful plays the flute and has the fish bring back the pen. The princess marries the king and becomes queen, but she doesn’t love her husband. One day, she claims to know magical arts and can cut someone’s head off and put it back on again. Ferdinand the Unfaithful. She cuts off his head and puts it back on again. Then the king says she could do it on him as well, and she cuts of his head, pretends to put it back on, and marries Ferdinand the Faithful. The horse has Ferdinand the Faithful take it back to the castle and ride around it 3 times. It changes back into a king’s son.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Well, there are a couple beheadings.
Trivia: N/A

189. Corvetto

Corvetto is an Italian fairy tale of a guy who raids an ogre’s castle for a king. Each time he must escape with a horse, a tapestry, and a palace.

From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Giambattista Basile in his 1634 Pentamarone.
Best Known Version: The Basile version, naturally.
Synopsis: Corvetto loyally serves his king and is favored by him. Envious fellow servants try slandering him, but fail. An ogre lives nearby and has a magnificent horse. The servants encourage the king should send Corvetto to steal it. Corvetto goes and jumps on the horse. It shouts to its master, who chases after with wild animals (one of them a werewolf), but Corvetto rides it off. The king’s even more pleased. The other servants tell him to send Corvetto after the ogre’s tapestry. Corvetto goes, hides under the ogres’ bed, and during the night, steals both the tapestries and the counterpane from the bed. This causes the ogre and ogress to argue about who stole them. He drops them by the window and flees back to the king. The servants then persuade the king to send Corvetto for the entire palace. He goes and talks to the ogress, offering to help her. She asks him to split wood for her. He uses the ax to her neck. Then he digs a deep pit in the doorway and covers it. He lures the ogre and his friends into it, stones them to death, and gives the king the palace.

Here Corvetto makes off with the ogre’s tapestry. All while a woman handles a barrel.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: The end is incredibly violent.
Trivia: N/A

190. The Mermaid and the Boy

The Mermaid and the Boy is a Sami fairy tale of a king who’s saved by a mermaid and agrees to give her his son. Eventually the mermaid abducts him when he goes too close to the stream.

From: Sami and Scandinavia
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Josef Calasanz Poestion in Lapplandische Märchen.
Best Known Version: The Andrew Lang version in his The Brown Fairy Book.
Synopsis: Having been married a year, a king sets out to settle disputes among some distant subjects. His ship is caught in a storm and is about to founder on the rocks. A mermaid appears and promises to save him as long as he promises to give her his firstborn child. As the sea becomes more and more threatening, the king agrees. On his return to the kingdom, he finds out his firstborn son had been born and tells the queen what he promised. They raise their son. When the youth turns 16, the king and queen decide to have him leave home so the mermaid can’t find him when she comes to collect on that promise. The royal couple then send the prince into the world.

The Mermaid and the Boy is a Sami fairy tale of a king who’s saved by a mermaid and agrees to give her his son. This will not go well.

On his first night, the prince meets a hungry lion and shares his food with the beast. The lion repays the kindness by giving him its ear tip and tells him this gift would help him transform into a lion any time he wants to. The next time, the prince turns into a lion and travels that way until he tires of it and turns back into a man. That night, the same thing happens with a bear asking for food and repaying in kindness with its ear tip that would turn the prince into a bear whenever he wants to. The following day, after sharing food with a bumblebee, he receives hair from its wing that would transform the prince into a bumblebee so he could fly all day without tiring. The prince continues his adventure, arriving at a city where a young man-hating princess resides and permits no men in her presence. When everyone turns in for the night, the prince turns himself into a bee and flies into the princess’ room. He turns himself back into a man and the princess shrieks. But when guards run in to protect her, they find nothing. So they leave. Once again, the prince turns himself back into a man and the princess screams. The guards return, find nothing, and leave. This time, they decide she’s crazy and will ignore her future screams. So when the prince becomes a man once again, the guards don’t respond to the princess’ cries.

The prince woos the princess and she falls in love with him. She tells him that in 3 days, her dad will go to war and leave his sword behind. And whoever brings it to him will gain her hand. He agrees to do so, and tells her if he doesn’t return, she should play the violin on the beach loud enough to reach the sea floor. The prince leaves for war with the king. When the king discovers he forgot his sword, he promises his entourage whoever brings his sword back to him will have the princess’ hand and inherit the throne. The young prince and other knights take off for the city to retrieve the sword. The prince gets ahead by scaring off the other knights by transforming into a lion. Reaching the palace, the princess gives him the sword and breaks her ring into 2, giving him one ring and keeping the other to signify their betrothal. Leaving the palace, the prince meets the Red Knight who tries taking the sword from him by force but fails. However, soon afterwards, the prince stops to drink and the mermaid, realizing he’s the prince promised to her, grabs him and brings him with her to the bottom of the sea. The Red Knight finds the sword and carries it off to the king to claim is prize.

When stopping to take a drink, the mermaid abducts him. So he can’t return to the princess who gets engaged to the Red Knight instead.

Soon the war is over. The king returns to his kingdom and tells the princess she must marry the Red Knight. During the wedding feast, the princess, recalling what the prince had told her, goes to the shore and plays the violin. The mermaid hears her song but the prince claims not to hear it and asks her to raise him higher and higher in the sea so he can. On reaching the surface, the prince transforms himself into a bee and flies to the princess who carries him away. The princess brings the prince to the feast and challenges the Red Knight to turn himself into a lion, a bear, and a bee. He fails at all 3. She then asks the prince to do so and he does all 3. The princess tells her dad that it’s the prince who retrieved the sword and shows their matching rings. The king hangs the Red Knight while the princes and princess marry.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Sneaking into a woman’s room to get into her pants will get anyone arrested and no she will not fall in love with you.
Trivia: N/A

One of the popular variants of fairy tales pertains to Cinderella. You know the girl who’s stuck doing chores, wearing rags by day, and putting up with abuse from relatives until a magical entity pretties her up for a fancy dress event and wins her royal man after leaving part of her outfit. However, there doesn’t always have to be a wicked stepmom and stepsisters. Hell, some might even feature a girl fleeing from her dad who wants an incestuous relationship with her that she goes to hiding in the woods and eventually another castle to work as a servant. Sometimes the rags may be skins or moss. Sometimes the magical entity isn’t a fairy godmother. While the token left behind at the ball or festival may not be a glass slipper. Anyway, in this installment, I give you another 10 forgotten fairy tales. First, is a French tale of a princess with a star on her forehead. Second, we come to Grimm tales of 3 little birds and one about 3 young men who receive magical items after their professional training. Third, is a Spanish story of a truth telling bird followed by a Russian tale of wicked sisters. Next, we have 2 Romanian tales of boys with golden stars and a pair of golden twins. After that, is a Chinese story about a golden calf that doesn’t turn people away from God followed by an Italian story of a king’s magical triplets. Finally, we have an Irish tale of a brown bear from Norway.

171. Princess Belle-Etoile

Princess Belle-Etoile is a French fairy tale about 4 royal children who get whisked away when their grandma, aunt, and a maid plot to kill them. They’re later abducted by a pirate couple who raise them.

From: France
Earliest Appearance: Written by Madame d’Aulnoy as a rendition to an older Italian fairy tale called Ancilotto, King of Provino by Giovannia Francesco Straparola.
Best Known Version: There’s only one version.
Synopsis: A queen is reduced to poverty and sells sauces to support herself and her 3 daughters. One day, an old woman comes and begs they feed her a fine meal. They do so, and the woman being a fairy, promises the next time they wish something without thinking of her, it would come true. For a long time, they can’t do this. But one day, a king goes by. The oldest, Roussette, says if she married the king’s admiral, she’d make sails for all his ships. The second, Brunette, says if she married the king’s brother, she’d make him lace enough to fill a castle. While the third, Blondine, says that if she married the king, she’d bear him 2 sons and a daughter with golden chains on their necks, stars on their foreheads, and jewels falling from their hair. A favorite repeats these words to the king who summons the sisters and soon the marriages take course. A splendid wedding feast appears out of nowhere and the women realize it’s from the old woman. Roussette hides the dishes when they leave, but they’re turned to earthenware when she arrives.

One the 4 royal kids return to the castle, the maid suggests to Belle-Etoile to complete a series of nearly impossible tasks. Belle-Etoile passes it on to her cousin and boyfriend Cheri.

The queen mother is pissed to hear that her sons married such lowly women. Roussette is jealous of her sisters. Brunette gives birth to a son and dies. While Blondine gives birth to the 2 sons and daughter she wanted. But the queen mother and Roussette put 3 puppies in their place. They then take the kids (including Brunette’s son) and give them to a maid who scruples to kill them. But instead, puts them in a boat with necklaces that might pay for their support if someone finds them. The queen is sent back to her mom. The fairies guard the boat until it falls in with a pirate ship. The captain brings them to his childless wife. When they find that jewels fall from 3 of the kids’ hair, the captain gives up piracy since he’d be rich without it. They name the princess Belle-Etoile, her brothers Petit-Soleil and Heureux and their handsome cousin Cheri. As Belle Etoile and Cheri grow up, they fall in love. But believing themselves brother and sister, deeply regret it. One day, Belle-Etoile overhears the pirate and his wife talking and learns their true origins. She tells her brothers and cousin who tell the pirate and his wife that they wish to leave. The pirate implores they stay, but Heureux persuades him that they wondered too much of their birth to endure it. So they set sail on a marvelous ship, arriving at their dad’s castle where the king marvels over them. They ask only for a house in which to stay.

To get the dancing water, Cheri sets off. There he finds the spring and rescues a dove.

The queen mother realizes from the description that these are her grandchildren. She sends the maid who failed to drown them, and the woman tells Belle Etoile that she needs the dancing water, which would keep her from ever looking old. She tells the story and Cheri sets out at once, against her will. He finds a spring and rescues a dove from drowning, setting all sorts of burrowing animals to dig up the dancing water. And Cheri returns with it, freeing the dove and it flies rather sulkily. The maid comes back with a tale of a singing apple, and Cheri again sets out. This time, a reading stranger directs him to the apple, and by helping a wounded dove, he learns about the dragon guarding it and how he could use mirrors to frighten it off. After he does this, he returns with the apple. The maid comes back with a tale of an all-knowing green bird. Realizing it could tell who their parents are and where they came from, Belle-Etoile is deeply distressed. Cheri sets out again, but when he nearly reaches the bird, a rock opens, he falls into a hall, and gets turned into stone. Belle-Etoile falls ill from her distress at his absence. In turn, Petit-Soleil and Heureux do the same.

To get the singing apple, Cheri has to deal with a 3-headed dragon. Luckily a stranger suggested that he use a mirror.

Belle-Etoile sets out after them and rescues a dove from snow. Afterwards, it advises her not to climb the mountain where the bird perches, but to sing below it to lure it down. She does. The bird advises her on how to free her brothers and the rest of the prisoners. Meanwhile, the queen mother persuades the king to set aside his marriage to Blondine and remarry. Roussette persuades him to invite her to the wedding. The king invites the 4 children and leaves a gentleman to await their arrival. On their arrival, the gentleman tells their story. Belle-Etoile and her brothers arrive for the wedding, bringing their treasures, tell how they’re abandoned, and show them to the king. Finally, the king asks the green bird who the kids are, and where they came from. The bird replies they’re his kids and nephew. The queen mother, Roussette, and the maid are all punished. And instead of marrying himself, the king has Belle-Etoile and Cheri tie the knot instead.

After Cheri, Petit-Soleil, and Heureux end up prisoner after seeking a magic green bird, Belle-Etoile takes it upon herself to rescue them. She sings to the bird to lure it down and listens to its instructions on how to free her brothers and cousin.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: This one involves a romantic relationship between first cousins who see themselves as brother and sister. It would be if Jon Snow banged Sansa on Game of Thrones. And yes, we know the guy unknowingly banged his aunt and gets very freaked out about his feelings for her.
Trivia: N/A

172. The Three Little Birds

The Three Little Birds is a Grimm fairy tale about a set of royal triplets who search for a caged bird and a glass of water. On the way, the brothers get captured and the sister has to set out herself.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, obviously.
Synopsis: 3 sisters tend cows as a king and his company goes by. The oldest points at the king, saying she’ll marry him or no one. Her sisters point at ministers and say the same. Since they’re super hot, the king summons them before him. He marries the oldest, while his ministers wed the younger 2. One day, the king has to go on a journey and has her sisters attend the queen. The queen gives birth to a son with a red star on his forehead. Her sisters throw him into the water. A bird springs out of the water and sings of what they had told and terrifies them. But the sisters tell the king that the queen gave birth to a dog. But a fisherman fishes the boy out and raises him. The king says whatever God sent was good. However, when the sisters do the same with his second son. But when they do the same with the third child, a daughter, and say the queen has given birth to a cat, he tosses his wife into prison.

One day, the other boys wouldn’t let the oldest fish with them, since he’s a foundling. So he sets out to find his dad. He finds an old woman fishing, telling her she’d fish long before she gets anything. She tells him he’d search long before he finds his dad, and carries him over the water to do it. The next year, the second boy sets out searching for his brother, and he fares the same. The next year, the girl sets out. When she finds the woman, she says, “May God bless your fishing.” The old lady gives her a rod and tells her to go to the castle, bring back a caged bird and a glass of water. And on the way back, strike a black dog with a rod. She does, finds her brothers on the way, and when she strikes the dog, turns it into a handsome prince. They go back home to the fisherman. The second son goes hunting and plays a flute when he gets tired. The king hears this and finds him and doesn’t believe he’s the fisherman’s son. So the second son invites him home. There, the bird sings of what happened to them. The queen gets let out of prison, the false sisters are killed, and the daughter marries the prince.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

173. The Bird of Truth

The Spanish fairy tale, The Bird of Truth is about a pair of twins who overhear birds talking about castle intrigue that might involve them and seek the said bird to know who they are. But the castle it’s in doesn’t seem like a walk in the park.

From: Spain
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Cecilia Böhl de Faber in her Cuentos de encantamiento.
Best Known Version: The Andrew Lang version in his The Orange Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A fisherman finds a beautiful boy and girl in a cradle floating in the river and brings them to his wife to rise as their own. As the babies grow up, their older brothers are cruel to the boy and girl who often run away to the riverbank where they’d feed breadcrumbs to the birds. In gratitude, the birds teach them to speak their language. One day, the oldest boy taunts them for being orphans. So the 2 go out in the world seeking their fortunes. When they stop for rest along their journey, they overhear 2 birds gossiping. One bird says the king married a tailor’s youngest daughter over the nobles’ opposition. He’s obliged to go to war, and when he came back, his wife gave birth to stillborn twins. Missing her babies, the queen went mad that she’s shut up in a mountain tower where the fresh air might restore her. However, the babies didn’t really die but were taken to a gardener’s cottage, and that night the chamberlain put them in a river in a crystal cradle, which the kids recognize from the story of how the fisherman found them.

The bird goes on to say that only the Bird of Truth could convince that the children are really his. But it’s kept by a giant who only sleeps 15 minutes a day at the Come-and-Never-Go Castle. Only a witch could give directions to this castle and she won’t do it unless they give her water from the fountain of many colors. Furthermore, the Bird of Truth is surrounded by the Birds of Ill Faith. And only an owl could tell which is which. They go to the city, where they beg hospitality for the night, and are so helpful that the innkeeper asks them to stay. The girl does but her brother leaves on his quest. A dove directs him to go with the wind. By following it, he reaches the witch’s tower and asks the way to the Come-and-Never-Go Castle. The witch tries getting him to stay the night. But when he refuses, she demands a jug of many color waters, or she’d turn him into a lizard. She then directs the dog to lead him to the water.

At the castle, he hears the owl’s cry and seeks its advice. It tells him to fill a from another fountain and then find the white bird in the corner, not the brightly colored birds. He has 15 minutes to complete the task and succeeds. When he brings back the water, the witch throws it over him and tells him to become a parrot, but he becomes more handsome. While all the creatures around the hut throw themselves into the water and become human again. The witch flees. The courtiers responsible for abandoning the kids try preventing the king from learning about them. But they talk so much that the king overhears the commotion and becomes curious. When the bird flies to him, he listens. At once, the king embraces his kids and then all 3 free his wife, their mom, from the tower. The wicked courtiers are beheaded and the couple who raised these kids get riches and honor.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A
174. The Wicked Sisters
From: Russia
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki.
Best Known Version: Guess the Afanasyev version.
Synopsis: Prince Ivan has 3 beautiful sisters talking. The older 2 say if he married them, they’d sew him a marvelous shirt. The youngest says she’d bear 3 sons with the sun on their foreheads, the moon on the back in their heads, and stars to each side. Naturally, the prince goes with her. The older sisters envy her and bribe servants. When the youngest bears the sons she said she would, they kidnap and hide them in the garden arbor. Then they present the prince with a puppy, a kitty, and a seemingly ordinary child. The prince finally repudiates and demands justice for his wife lying to him. The chief justice sentences the princess to be blinded, put in a barrel with the ordinary child, and thrown out to sea. If guilty, she’d die. But if she’s innocent, she’d emerge. The substituted child grows by the hour, becomes reasonable, and commands the barrel to come ashore and burst. He then commands the bath house to appear, in which he restores princess’ sight. Next, a palace appears with an arbor. He has the princess bake 3 cakes, resulting the 3 princes to appear. They say that whoever brings them these cakes and tell them of their mom would be their brother. The princess lives there with her 3 sons and the child. One day, they have monks stay over. They go to Prince Ivan’s kingdom and tell him of them. He immediately goes to the palace and recognizes his wife and sons. The older sisters get thrown in barrels and thrown into sea. But this time, the barrels sink.

Other Versions: Included in Ruth Manning-Sanders’ book A Book of Kings and Queens.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Features trial by ordeal through potential drowning.
Trivia: N/A

175. The Boys with the Golden Stars

The Romaian fairy tale, The Boys with the Golden Stars revolves around a pair of twin boys with gold stars on their heads. And because of some evil stepmother, they go through hell but overcome their plight through shapeshifting.

From: Romania
Earliest Appearance: Collected in Rumänische Märchen
Best Known Version: Andrew Lang’s version in The Violet Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A herdsman has 3 daughters with the youngest being the prettiest. One day, the emperor passes by with his attendants. The oldest says if he married her, she’d bake him a loaf of bread that could make him young and brave forever. The second daughter says if he married her, she’d make him a shirt that could protect him any fight, even against a dragon, as well as heat and water. The youngest says if he married her, she’d bear him twin sons with golden stars on their foreheads. The emperor marries the youngest. While his friends marry the other 2. However, the emperor’s stepmother hates her stepson’s new wife because she wanted him to marry her daughter. So she gets her brother to declare war on him in an attempt to get him away from her. When the empress gives birth to twins, she kills and buries them in a garden corner before putting puppies in their place. When he gets back, the emperor punishes his wife to show what happens to anyone who lies to him.

After they’ve grown up, the boys go to the castle and force their way in. There, they tell their story, remove their caps, and the emperor has the stepmother punished and the empress restored.

2 aspens grow from the graves, putting on years’ growth in hours. The stepmother wants to chop them down. But the emperor forbids it. Finally, she convinces him on grounds she has beds made from the wood, one for him and one for her. In the night, the beds start talking to each other. The stepmother has 2 new beds made and burns the originals. While burning, the 2 brightest sparks fly off and fall into a river, becoming golden fish. When fisherman catch them, they want to take them alive to the emperor. But the fish tell them to let them swim in the dew instead, and then dry them out in the sun. When they do this, the fish turn back into babies, maturing in days. Wearing lambskin caps covering their hair and stars, they go to their dad’s castle and force their way in. Despite their refusal to remove their caps, the emperor listens to their story, only then taking off their caps. The emperor executes his stepmom and takes back his wife.

Here you can see the golden twins with their golden hair and other objects. They’re even dressed alike.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Features infanticide. Though the kids do get better.
Trivia: N/A

176. A String of Pearls Twined with Golden Flowers
From: Romania
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Petre Ispirescu in Legende sau basmele românilor.
Best Known Version: Well, the Ispirescu version, I guess.
Synopsis: Whenever he could leave his duties, a young and handsome king enjoys wandering the world. He passes by an emperor’s castle and hears his 3 daughters speak who all want to marry him. The oldest promises to keep the castle clean (despite he has servants for that). The second promises to make his castle like 2 golden apples. While the youngest promises to bear golden twins. He marries the third. She becomes pregnant. But his old favorite, a gypsy slave, envies the queen. So when the kids are due, the king has to go to war. He’s greeted back by 2 puppies he’s told the queen had borne. He makes the queen his slave and his gypsy girl his queen. In reality, the queen had borne 2 golden babies, but the gypsy girl killed and buried them in the vineyard. Two firs grow from their graves. At night, they turn into kids again and go to nurse from their mom, consoling her. The king likes the trees but the gypsy girl hates them and makes him cut them down. The king has 2 beds made from the trees. But at night, the beds talk to each other. The one carrying the gypsy doesn’t like it. But the one carrying the king likes it better. Anyway, the gypsy hears it and has them burned. However, 2 sparks fly into the bran which an ewe eats, resulting her to give birth to 2 lambs with golden fleeces. The king sees them and loves them. The gypsy girl has them killed and assigns the queen to clean their entrails.

A crow catches some of the entrails and won’t give it back without some cornmeal. The miller won’t give any cornmeal without a chicken. A hen won’t give her chick without corn. But a kind farmer gives her corn. The hen gives her chick. The miller gives the cornmeal. The crow gives back the piece. But more washes away when it does this, and it can’t retrieve the rest. Then entrails catch a snag. When the water retreats, they become a boy and girl. The boy cuts down oysters with his hatchet and the girl spins with her distaff. People come to admire their beauty. The king is so delighted that he takes them home, and the gypsy girl doesn’t dare do anything to them. One day, she breaks a pearl necklace that can’t be rethreaded so the pearls escape everyone’s fingers. The king asks the children to do it and they could. But while doing so, the boy tells the king their life story (with a refrain of “o, a string of pearls twined with golden flowers”). The king has the gypsy girl stoned to death and restores his queen.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Features infanticide. Though the kids do get better, but still. Also, is kind of derogatory to the Roma people.
Trivia: Also called, “The Golden Twins.”

177. The Pretty Little Calf
From: China
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Wolfram Eberhard in “Folktales of China.”
Best Known Version: The Eberhard version, of course.
Synopsis: A childless official leaves home to take a new post. His first wife promises gold on his return, the second silver, and the third a son. He’s pleased with his third wife, while the other 2 are jealous. When she bears a son, they claim she borne a lump of flesh. The first wife throws the baby in a pond, but he floats. The second wife has him wrapped in straw and grass and fed to a water buffalo. When the official returns, his first wife gives him gold. His second wife gives him silver. But when he hears his third wife had borne a horrid lump of flesh, he sends her to grind rice in a mill. The water buffalo gives birth to a beautiful calf with a golden hide. It was fond of its master who always gives it some food. One day, the official says that if it understands human speech, it should bring the dumplings. He gives it to its mom. The calf brings them, not to the water buffalo, but to the repudiated wife. The first 2 realize it’s the son. They claim sickness. The first wife says she needs the calf’s liver. The second says she needs the calf’s skin. The official lets the calf loose in the woods and brings another to kill.

A woman named Huang announces she’d throw a colored ball from her house, and whoever catches it would be her husband. The calf catches it on its horn. Huang realizes she has to marry it. She hangs the wedding robes on its horns and it rides off. She chases it and finds a young man in wedding robes by a pond. He tells her to come. She says she has to find her calf. But he reveals himself as the transformed calf. He goes back to his dad and tells him the truth. The official is ready to kill his first two wives. But his son persuades him to pardon them. Yet, he has his son bring back his mom from the mill.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: A baby gets fed to a water buffalo. Also, bestiality.
Trivia: N/A

178. Ancilotto, King of Provino
From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Written by Giovanni Francesco Straparola in The Facetious Nights of Straparola. Oldest known variant of its kind.
Best Known Version: Guess the Straparola version.
Synopsis: The King Ancilotto hears 3 sisters talking. The oldest, Brunora says if she marries the king’s majordomo, she’d give the entire court a drink from one glass of water. The second, Lionella says if she marries the king’s chamberlain, she’d turn one spindle of linen to give fine shifts to the entire court. The youngest, Chiaretta, says if she married the king, she’d give him triplets with fine hair of gold, a gold necklace, and a star on their foreheads. The king marries them off as they said. The queen mother is angry to have such a daughter-in-law. The king has to leave. While he’s gone, the queen gives birth to 2 sons and a daughter as she had described. 3 black puppies with white stars had also been born and Chiaretta’s sisters bring them to the queen. The queen mother substitutes them for the babies. And the babies are put into a box and thrown into the river. A miller named Marmiato finds them while his wife Gordiana names the boys Acquirino and Fluvio and the girl Serena. The king is grief-stricken by the story. But when the queen mother, midwife, and queen’s sisters all agree that his wife had given birth to puppies, he orders her kept in a dungeon.

Gordiana gives birth to a son, Borghino. Her and Marmiato then find out if they cut the triplets’ hair, gems fall out of it and they live prosperously. But when the triplets grow up, they learn of their foundling status and set out. They find Ancilotto’s land and meet him. He tells his mom he thinks they’re the children Chiaretta borne him. The queen mother sends the midwife after them and she tricks Serena into asking for dancing water. Aquirino and Fluvio go after it. A dove warns them of the danger and fills up a vial for them. Ancilotto sees them again and the queen mother hears of their survival. The midwife tricks Serena into asking for a singing apple. Acquirino and Fluvio go after it. On the way, their host warns them of the danger one night, giving them a robe of mirrors. This would trick the monster guarding it, when it sees its own reflection. Fluvio uses it and picks up the apple. Ancilotto sees them again and the queen learns they survived. The midwife tricks Serena into asking for the beautiful green bird that could only speak words of wisdom day and night. When Acquirino and Fluvio find the garden with the bird, they look at the marble statues in it, and are turned into statues themselves.

Serena anxiously waits for her brothers and eventually sets out after them. She reaches the garden, sneaks up on the bird, and catches it. It begs for its freedom, shows her how to turn her brothers back to life, and begs to be set free. Serena says she would free it only if it brings them to their mom and dad. They go to Ancilotto’s palace bringing the water, apple, and bird. The king and guests marvel at the water and apple. While the bird asks what punishment should be imposed on those who kill 2 brothers and a sister. The queen mother suggests death by burning and everyone agrees. The bird tells the story of Chiaretta’s children and the king has his mom, midwife, and her sisters burned.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: A bunch of people are burned to death.
Trivia: N/A

179. The Wishing Table, the Gold-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack

The Grimm fairy tale, The Wishing Table, the Gold-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack is about 3 brothers who get kicked out of their dad’s house and have to learn a trade. Once they do, they each receive a magical item.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, obviously.
Synopsis: A tailor has 3 sons all fed by their goat’s milk. The oldest is tasked with letting the animal graze in the finest grass fields. At the end of the day, the son asks the goat whether it had eaten enough and the animal confirms this. However, when they get home, the goat claims the opposite. As a result, the tailor gets upset and drives his son out of the house. The pattern repeats itself with the second and youngest son, too, who the goat also falsely blames for not feeding it enough. And as a result, get kicked out of the house as well. Only when the dad goes out to feed the goat himself and discovers that the creature still claims it hasn’t eaten enough does he realize he misjudged his sons. He takes his razor, shaves the goat bare, and uses a whip to drive it out of his house, leaving the tailor along in his house longing for his sons’ return.

The story follows each son individually from there. The oldest son goes to a furniture maker and learns the craft. After his service, his master gives him a magic table as a sign of gratitude. When he says, “Table, Deck Yourself,” the table decks itself with the finest food and wine. The son decides to return home and show his dad what he had earned. On his way, he visits a local inn, where he demonstrates the magic table’s power. At night, the innkeeper steals the table and switches it for a normal one, without the son’s awareness. When the son arrives home and tries to show the table’s powers to his dad, nothing happens. This upsets his dad once again. The second son goes to work for a miller. His master gives him a magical donkey that can produce gold out of its mouth and behind at the command of “Bricklebrit!” Like the oldest son, the second son decides to return home and happens to visit the same inn his brother did. Just like the oldest son, he demonstrates the donkey’s powers to the innkeeper. Once again, the asshole steals the animal at night and replaces it with a normal donkey, without the son’s awareness. When the son arrives home to show the donkey’s powers to his dad, instead of gold pieces landing on the cloth, it’s ordinary donkey droppings. Once again, his dad flips out.

After his older brothers have their items conned from them by an innkeeper and cause their dad to flip out, the youngest plays smart with the innkeeper when it comes to the cudgel in the sack. When the time is right, he uses the cudgel to beat the crap out of him and get his brothers’ stuff.

The third son goes working for a carpenter and receives a magic cudgel in a bag. Whenever someone’s unjust, the cudgel’s owner just needs to say, “Cudgel, out the sack!” and the object will start clobbering the wrongdoer. And only when the owner says, “Cudgel in the sack!” will it return in the bag. Just like his brothers, the son visits the same inn, because he learned from their letters what happened. Instead of demonstrating his possession’s powers, he remains deliberately vague about it, making the innkeeper curious enough to go out at night and tries to look what’s in the bag. Anticipating this, the son orders the cudgel to beat the innkeeper until he returns everything he stole. The son returns home with the table, donkey, and cudgel, he tells his dad what happened and demonstrates the objects’ powers. His dad makes peace with his sons and they all live a rich life ever after. As for the goat, the shaven animal goes hiding in a fox hole. When the fox returns, the goat’s eyes scare it away. The fox asks the bear for help, but it’s also too scared to go in. Finally, they take the bee along with them, who stings the goat, causing the animal to run away in pain. The story concludes that nobody knows where the goat is now.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: Objects featured at a Dutch theme park.

180. The Brown Bear of Norway

The Brown Bear of Norway is an Irish fairy tale bout a princess who ends up with the bear and let’s just say he’s a cursed prince and their kids get kidnapped. Then he leaves and she goes after him

From: Ireland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Patrick Kennedy in his Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts in 1866.
Best Known Version: The Andrew Lang version in his The Lilac Fairy Book.
Synopsis: An Irish king asks his daughters who they want to marry. The oldest wants the king of Ulster. The second wants the king of Munster. But the youngest wants the Brown Bear of Norway. That night, the youngest princess wakes to find herself in a grand hall, and a handsome prince on his knees before her, asking her to marry him. They marry at once and the prince explains that a witch had transformed him into a bear to get him to marry her daughter. Now that she married him, he’d be free if she endures 5 years of trials. They have 3 kids in succession, but an eagle, greyhound, and a lady take each one. After losing the last child, the princess tells her husband she wants to visit her family. He tells her that to return, she only has to wish it while lying down at night, and in the next morning, she’d wake up in her old bed. She tells her family her tale. While she doesn’t want to lose any more children, she’s sure it’s not her husband’s fault and she misses him. A woman recommends the princess burn his bear fur and then he’d be a man both night and day. She stops drinking the drink her husband gives her before she goes to bed, wakes up, and burns his fur. The man wakes telling her he now has to marry a witch’s daughter since. For it was the witch who gave the princess that advice.

The princess chases after her husband. Just as night falls, they both reach a little house. A little boy plays before the fireplace. Her husband tells her the boy is their son. The woman whose house it is was the eagle who carried the boy away. The woman welcomes them while her husband gives the princess a pair of scissors that would turn anything they cut into silk. The prince tells her he’ll forget her during the day but remember her at night. On the second night, the princess finds a house with their daughter and her husband gives her a comb that makes pearls and diamonds fall from her hair. During the third night, they find a house with their third child, and he gives her a hand-reel with never ending golden thread and half of their wedding ring. The prince tells her once he goes into the woods the next day, he’ll utterly forget her and their kids. Unless she reaches their home and put her ring half to his. The wood tries keeping her out, but she commands it, by the gifts she bears, to let her in, and finds a great house and a woodman’s cottage nearby. The princess goes there and persuades him and his wife to take her in as their servant, saying she’ll take no wages, but gives them silk, diamonds, and pearls. She hears the prince had gone to live at the witch’s castle.

The castle’s servants annoy the princess with their intentions. She invites the head footman, the most persistent, and asks him to pick her some honeysuckle. When he does, she uses the gifts she bore to give him horns and makes him sing back to the great house. His fellow servants mock him until the princess lets the charm drop. Hearing this, the prince looks at her and is puzzled by her sight. The witch’s daughter comes and sees the scissors. The princess offers to trade them for a night outside the prince’s bedroom. She takes the night but can’t wake the prince and the head footman ridicules her as he puts her out again. She tries again with the comb, to no greater success. The third day, the prince doesn’t merely look at her but stops to ask if he could do anything for her. She asks if he heard anything last night. He claims hearing singing in his dreams. She asks if he drank anything before he slept. When he says he did, she asks him not to drink anything. That night, the princess bargains for with the reel and sings, rousing the prince. The princess can put the half rings together and he regains his memory. The castle falls apart with the witch and her daughter vanishing. The prince and princess soon regain their kids and set out for their own castle.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

Although fairy tales often reflect the human condition, these were more or less meant to teach lessons in life. For instance, Beauty and the Beast and its many variants is supposed to help women adjust to arranged marriages. Little Red Riding Hood is meant to teach children about stranger danger, though you probably knew that. While Puss and Boots teaches kids how to be the ultimate wingman through any means necessary. Anyway, in this installment, I bring you another 10 forgotten fairy tales. First, is a tale about a bear which doesn’t have an exact origin. Second, is a French story of a dirty shepherdess followed by a Grimm one about a goose girl at a well. Third, are 2 Italian tales about a princess who gets banished over a comment pertaining to water and salt and a slave mother. Then we come to a Norwegian yarn of a girl who befriends and runs off with a dun bull. After that, is a Scottish tale about an enchanted crow. Next is a Japanese story of an old man who takes in a wounded sparrow followed by a Greek tale of an ill-fated princess and a Russian story of a prince and his mom stranded on a remote island.

161. The Bear
From: Unknown
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Andrew Lang in his The Green Fairy Book.
Best Known Version: The Lang version, naturally.
Synopsis: A king loves his daughter so much that he keeps her in rooms for fear harm would come to her. She complains to her nurse. But unbeknownst to her, the nurse is a witch. She tells her to get a wheelbarrow and a bearskin for the king. The king gives them to her. The nurse enchants them. When the princess puts on the skin, it disguises her. And when she gets in a wheelbarrow, it takes her wherever she wants to go. She has it take her to the forest. A prince hunts her. But when she calls out to him to call off his dogs, the prince is so astounded that he asks her to come home with him. She agrees and goes in the wheelbarrow. His mom’s surprised, and more when the bear starts doing housework as well as any servant (well, wouldn’t you?). One day, the prince has to go to a ball given by a neighboring prince. The bear wants to go and he kicks it. When he goes, she implores his mom for leave to just go and watch. With it, she goes to her wheelbarrow and uses her wand to turn her bearskin into a ballgown of moonbeams. At the ball, the prince falls in love with her, but she so she’d be back in time to hide herself. She’s pleased when he tells his mom of her because she had fooled them and laughs under the table. The princess attends the second ball in a sunlight gown and his attempts to follow her carriage don’t succeed.

The third time, the prince succeeds in getting a ring on her finger. When he comes home, he declares he’ll search for her. First, he wants some soup and for the bear to have nothing to do with it. Since every time he mentions his love, the bear mutters and laughs. The bear puts the ring in the soup. The prince asks her to take off her skin and she becomes a beautiful young woman. She tells the prince and his mom how her dad kept her imprisoned. The prince marries her.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

162. The Dirty Shepherdess

The French fairy tale, The Dirty Shepherdess is about a princess driven out of her castle by her dad and takes on work looking after sheep. Though she does dress in fine dresses by night.

From: France
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Paul Sebillot.
Best Known Version: Guess the one in Andrew Lang’s The Green Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A king asks his 2 daughters how much they love him (and if King Lear is anything to go by, this won’t go well). His older says he’s the apple of her eye. His younger says as much as the salt on her food. Not understanding the metaphor, the king orders her out of the kingdom. She goes with her dresses and jewels. The princess then makes herself ugly so a farmwife won’t be unready to lease her and wears beggar’s clothing. As a result, she’s leased as a shepherdess. One day, she dresses herself in her fine gowns just to remember her princess life. While hunting, the prince sees her and asks who the beautiful woman tending the sheep, attracting much ridicule. The prince falls ill with longing, saying only a loaf of bread the shepherdess bakes could cure him. She makes it and a ring falls into the dough. When the prince eats it, he finds the ring and declares he’d only marry the woman whose fingers it fits. When every other woman tries it, the prince insists the shepherdess try it as well and the ring fits her. The princess dresses herself in fine gowns and the king agrees to the wedding. She insists that they ask her dad’s permission and invite him to the wedding. She has his food cooked without salt and her dad realizes he misinterpreted the words.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

163. The Goose Girl at the Well

In the Grimm fairy tale, the Goose Girl at the Well, a count stumbles upon an old goose herder and a girl who turns out to be a princess. While she is ugly by day, she’s pretty once she washes her face at the well.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, obviously.
Synopsis: An old woman raises geese in the mountains. Speaking of her heavy burden one day, she persuades a count to carry it for her up the mountain. He finds it taxing, but she doesn’t let him rest. Arriving at the hut, there’s an ugly girl tending the old woman’s geese. But the old woman doesn’t let them stay together, lest “he may fall in love with her.” Before the old woman sends the count away, she gives him an emerald box as a thank you gift. The count wanders the woods for 3 days until stumbling upon a town reigned by a king and queen. He shows them the box. When the queen sees it, she collapses like she’s dead, leading the count to an indefinite dungeon stay. When the queen wakes up, she insists on speaking to him, telling him about her youngest daughter being a beautiful girl weeping pearls and jewels. But one day, when the king asked his 3 daughters how much they love him, the youngest said she loved him like salt. While the king divides his kingdom between the 2 older girls, and drives the youngest one out with only a sack of salt. The king regretted his decision afterwards, but the girl couldn’t be found again. When the queen opens the box, she finds a pearl just like her daughter’s jewel tears in it. The count tells them where he got the box. The king and queen resolve to speak with the old woman.

Meanwhile, in the mountains, the ugly girl washes in a well by night. She becomes a beautiful girl but sad. When the moonlight’s blocked, she returns to her usual form. When she returns to the hut, the old woman cleans despite it being late. She tells the girl that it’s been 3 years so they can’t stay together anymore. The girl’s upset and asks what’s going to happen to her. But the old woman replies that she’s disrupting her work and sends her to wait in her room. The count goes with the king and queen but becomes separated. He sees the ugly girl beautify herself and is entranced by her beauty. He follows her and meets with the king and queen in the hut. The old woman says to the them that they could spare themselves a walk if they hadn’t been so unjust to their daughter. She leads them in and tells their daughter to come out of the room and the family weeps to see each other again. The old woman disappears and the hut becomes a castle. The count marries the youngest princess and live there afterwards.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: Made into a musical in Germany.
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

164. Water and Salt
From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Thomas Crane in Italian Popular Tales.
Best Known Version: The Crane version, naturally.
Synopsis: A king with 3 beautiful daughters asks them how much they love their dad. The oldest daughter says, “I love you as bright as the sunshine.” The second daughter says, “I love you as wide as the ocean.” While the youngest daughter says, “Oh father, I love you as much as water and salt.” Not satisfied with his youngest daughter’s reply, the king sentences her to death (even King Lear wouldn’t do that). Her sisters instead give a small dog and one of their little sister’s garments to the executioners who cut out the dog’s tongue and show the king, claiming it’s the youngest princess. In reality, the executioners leave her in a cave.

A wizard finds her and takes her into his castle across from a palace. The prince from across the street falls in love with the princess and a match is soon agreed upon. But the day before the wedding, they kill and quarter the wizard, and the blood turns the castle into a palace. During the wedding day, the princess passes salt and water to everyone except the king. When asked why he’s not eating, the king explains he’s not feeling well. After the reception feast, everyone tells stories. The king tells of the daughter he executed. He’s devastated, but the princess puts on the same dress she wore when she told him she loved him as much as water and salt. She explains to him how it is to eat without either so they embrace.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Sentencing your daughter to death due to not understanding a metaphor will not make you parent of the year. Also, cruelty to animals and a wizard gets killed and torn apart.
Trivia: N/A

165. Katie Woodencloak

The Norwegian tale, Katie Woodencloak revolves around a princess befriending a dun bull who later decide to run away together. That is, until they go to a castle where she must get a job, wear a woodencloak, and slaughter the bull.

From: Norway
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in Norske Folkeeventyr.
Best Known Version: The Andrew Lang version in The Red Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A king with a daughter marries a widowed queen who also has a daughter. Unfortunately, the king has to go to war and the stepmother abuses and starves her stepdaughter. A dun bull helps the girl, telling her that she’d find cloth in his left ear. When she pulls out the cloth and spreads it out, she magically has all the food she needs. When the queen discovers this, and when the king returns, she fakes sick and bribes a doctor to say she needs the dun bull’s flesh to recover. Fearful for the bull’s life, the princess tells him of her stepmother’s plan. The bull decides they must flee together. They pass through a copper tree forest. Although the bull tells her not to break any branches, she breaks a leaf. Seeing this, the bull tells the princess not to lose it under any circumstances.

The bull and the princess come upon a troll roaring about them touching his wood. The troll picks a fight with the bull. The bull wins but sustains grave injuries. The princess has to cure him with a horn of ointment the troll carried. The same thing happens in the silver and gold forests. Soon the princess has a silver leaf and a golden apple, along with the copper leaf. The princess and the bull resume traveling until they come upon a castle. The bull gives the princess a wooden cloak and tells her to ask for work there as “Katie Woodencloak.” However, she must cut off the bull’s head, flay him, and put the hide away in a rock, along with the leaves and apple. Should she need anything, the bull tells the princess to knock on the stone. Though she initially refuses to kill the bull, she’s eventually persuaded.

Here Katie Woodencloak in her getup as a castle scullery maid. Whenever the prince summons her, he treats her like crap. So she goes to church in her nice dresses and he’s instantly smitten.

The princess goes into the castle and gets work in the scullery. One day, she’s told to carry water to the prince for bathing. Not wanting to use water from such a filthy creature, the prince throws it on her. Later, the princess goes to the rock and asks to be magnificently dressed in copper. She goes to church where the prince falls in love with her at once. She tells him she hails from Bath and uses a charm to keep him from following her, but he catches one of her gloves. A second time, she brings him a towel to the same treatment and she goes to church dressed in silver. She tells the princess she comes from Towelland and she drops her riding whip. The third time, she brings a comb, to the same treatment, and goes to church dressed in gold. She tells the prince she comes from Combland and he gets her golden shoe. Wanting to find the woman, the king has all the kingdom’s women try on the shoe and it fits Katie’s stepsister. But a bird warns the prince that the stepsister cut her foot to fit into the shoe and sings it’s actually Katie Woodencloak’s. Having disposed of the false bride, the king asks for Katie Woodencloak. Though he’s warned off, he insists. So they marry and live happily ever after.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: For one, there’s bodily mutilation. Also, the prince treats his scullery maid like shit.
Trivia: N/A

166. The Tale of the Hoodie
From: Scotland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands.
Best Known Version: The Campbell version, obviously.
Synopsis: A hoodie crow woos a farmer’s 3 daughters. The older 2 are repulsed since it’s ugly. But the youngest daughter says it’s pretty and accepts it. After they marry, the crow asks whether she’d have it be a crow by day and a man by night, or the other way around. She chooses a man by day. And during the day, he becomes a handsome man. The wife has a son. One night, after music puts everyone to sleep, the baby’s stolen. The next 2 years it happens again, with 2 more babies. The hoodie crow takes her, with her sisters, to another house. He asks if she’s forgetting anything. She forgot her coarse comb. The coach becomes a bundle of faggots (not my word choice, and no, they don’t mean gay men). While her husband becomes a crow again. He flies off but his wife chases him. Every night, she finds a house to stay in, in which a woman and little boy live. The third night, the woman advises that if the crow flies into her room before sunrise, she should catch him. The crow drops a ring on her hand. It wakes her, but she can only grab one feather.

The woman tells her crow flew over the hill of poison and she’ll need horseshoes to follow him. But if the wife cross dresses and goes to a smithy, she’ll learn how to make them. She does and she crosses the hill with the shoes. She arrives at a town to find that her husband’s engaged to a great gentleman’s daughter. A cook asks her to make a wedding feast, so he can see a race, and she agrees. The wife puts the ring and the feather in the broth. The wife’s husband finds them and demands to see the cook. He then declares he’ll marry her. They go back and retrieve their 3 sons from the houses where the wife had stayed.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why. Then again, the heroine agreeing to marry a crow might be pushing it.
Trivia: Has nothing to do with a magical hooded sweatshirt. The hoodie in this story is a crow.

167. The Slave Mother
From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Italo Calvino in his Italian Folktales.
Best Known Version: Guess the Calvino version, naturally.
Synopsis: A tenant farmer couple has 5 sons. One day, the woman hears an owl ask her whether she’d rather be rich while young or in old age. After consulting with her husband, the wife tells it in old age. Soon she goes out to get greens for a salad but pirates carry her off. The family mourns her but has to move on. 2 years later, they find treasure in the fields. They smuggle it, give up the farm, and go to the city to live a fine life. One day, the sons want to buy a beautiful young slave girl but the dad refuses, saying they should by an old slave woman who knew how to work. He sees one and buys her. They give her new clothes and put her in charge of the house. Still, she sighs every time she sees her 5 sons. One day, the old man asks her. She explains she once had 5 sons but pirates had kidnapped her while she gathered greens for a salad. The old man realizes she’s his wife and the family’s delighted to have her back. She then lives to an old age in wealth.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: It depicts slavery and human trafficking.
Trivia: N/A

168. Shita-kiri Suzume

Shita-kiri Suzume is a Japanese fairy tale about an old man tending to a wounded sparrow. While his elderly wife has other ideas.

From: Japan
Earliest Appearance: It’s a traditional Japanese fable translated as “Tongue-Cut Sparrow.”
Best Known Version: The Andrew Lang version in his The Pink Fairy Book as “The Sparrow with the Slit Tongue.”
Synopsis: A poor woodcutter and his wife live on woodcutting and fishing. The old man is honest and kind but his wife is greedy and arrogant. One morning, the old man goes to into the mountains to cut wood and sees an injured sparrow crying for help. Feeling sorry for the bird, the old man takes it back into his home and feeds it some rice to try to help it recover. His rude and greedy wife is annoyed her husband would waste precious food on such a small and insignificant little thing as a sparrow. However, the old man keeps caring for the bird. One day, the man has to return to the mountain, leaving the bird in the old woman’s care. But she doesn’t intend to feed it. After her husband leaves, she goes out fishing. While she’s gone, the sparrow gets into some starch left out and eventually eats it all. Angry upon her return, the old woman cuts the bird’s tongue and sends it back to the mountains from where it came.

Because of his kindness, the old man is led to a mountain sparrow village where they give him a small box as a reward. He then goes on his way back home from the mountains.

The old man goes searching for the bird. With other sparrows’ help, he finds his way to a bamboo grove where the sparrow’s inn’s located. A multitude of sparrows greet him and lead him to an old friend, the little sparrow he saved. The others bring him food as well as sing and dance for him. Upon his departure, they present him with a choice of a large basket or small basket as a present. Being an older man, he chooses the smaller basket since he supposes it’ll be the least heavy. When he gets home, he opens the basket and discovers a large amount of treasure inside. Learning of the larger basket’s existence, the wife runs to the sparrow’s inn in hope of getting more of the treasure for herself. She chooses the larger basket but is warned no to open it before she gets home. But the wife is so greedy that she can’t resist the temptation. To her surprise, the basket’s filled with deadly snakes and other monsters that startle her so much she tumbles all the way down the mountain, presumably to her death.

The old man opens his box and gets wonderful things. The old lady tries the same with the larger box and gets monsters startling her so much, she falls to her death.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Guess falling down a mountain after opening a basket of snakes and monsters was too much.
Trivia: N/A

169. The Ill-Fated Princess
From: Greece
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Georgios A. Megas in Folktales of Greece.
Best Known Version: The Megas version, naturally.
Synopsis: A queen can’t marry off her 3 daughters. A beggar woman instructs her to mark how they sleep. Since the youngest sleeps with her hands on her lap, she’s cursed and her fate prevents her sisters from getting married. Hearing this, the youngest daughter tells her mom to sew her dowry into her skirt hem, dresses herself as a nun, and leaves despite her mom’s pleas. She stays at a cloth-dealer’s but her fate comes tearing up the cloth that they throw her out. The princess pays for the damage from her dowry and goes on. She stays at a glass merchant’s, but her fate comes and smashes the glass. The princess pays for the damage and goes on. She then takes service with a queen, who realizes she has an evil fate and keeps her on. Yet, finally, the queen tells the princess to change it: she has to go to a mountain where they live and offer her some bread to change her fate. The princess does this and won’t leave until the fate takes the bread. The fate resists a long time even when other fates argue with her. But it finally gives her a silk thread and tells her to only give it away for its weight in gold.

A nearby king is getting married, and some silk’s missing to sew the bride’s dress. The princess brings her silk which is perfect and they set out to give her the gold. But nothing evens out the scale until the king steps on it. He then shows that she should have him and they marry.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

170. The Tale of Tsar Saltan

The Tale of Tsar Saltan is a Russian fairy tale of a tsarista and prince who end up stranded on a remote island. There a prince saves an enchanted swan.

From: Russia
Earliest Appearance: Written by Alexander Pushkin in verse in 1831.
Best Known Version: There’s only one version.
Synopsis: Tsar Saltan chooses the youngest of 3 sisters as his wife and orders her 2 older sisters to be his cook and weaver. Not surprisingly, the older sisters become jealous of their younger sister. When the tsar goes off to war, the tsaritsa gives birth to a son, Prince Gvidon. The older sisters arrange to have the tsaritsa and the child sealed in a barrel and thrown into the sea. Yet, the sea takes pity on them and casts them on a remote island Buyan’s shore. Since the son grew quickly in the barrel, he goes hunting. He ends up saving an enchanted swan from a kite bird.

Though the swan creates a city for the prince to rule, he’s homesick and wants to see his dad. So she brings on the shapeshifting.

The swan creates a city for Prince Gvidon to rule, but he’s homesick. So the swan turns him into a mosquito to help him (think this is a dumb idea). In this guise, he visits Tsar Saltan’s court where he stings his aunt in the eye and escapes. Back in the realm, the swan gives Gvidon a magic squirrel. But he keeps pining for home, so the swan transforms him into a fly. In this guise, Prince Gvidon visits Tsar Saltan’s court again and stings his older aunt in the eye. The third time, the prince is transformed into a bumblebee and stings his grandma in the nose. In the end, the prince expresses his desire for a bride instead of his old home, at which point the swan reveals herself as a beautiful princess, whom he marries. The Tsar visits him and is overjoyed to see his newly married son and his daughter-in-law.

After seeing his dad, the prince returns to the island and asks the swan for a bride. The bride turns into a beautiful princess and they marry.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: Made into an opera and 3 Russian films.
Why Forgotten: Not sure why. Though it seems well known in Russia.
Trivia: Full Title: “The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of His Son the Renowned and Mighty Bogatyr Prince Gvidon Saltanovich, and of the Beautiful Princess-Swan.”

In many ways, fairy tales and folk tales tend to overlap. After all, many of these fairy tales have been part of these cultures for years. And it could be centuries before any of them are written down. Though there are some fairy tales that are original literary creations like the ones by Hans Christen Andersen. Nonetheless, they certainly borrow elements from other tales like Andersen does with the Grimms. Anyway in this installment, I bring you another 10 forgotten fairy tales. First, is an English Romani tale about a king and his 3 sons. Second, we come to an Irish story of an Irish king hooking up with a queen of a lonesome island. Third are 2 Scottish tales about a soldier’s son and a king who wished to marry his daughter. After that are 2 American tales about princesses wearing outfits of catskin and rabbit skin. Then we find a Grimm tale about a princess who wears all kinds of fur. Next, is an Italian story about a prince and a very friendly she-bear. Finally, we get to 2 English stories about women who wear coats of moss and rags.

151. The King of England and His Three Sons

The Romani-English fairy tale, The King of England and His Three Sons is about 3 princes going to search for golden apples. Let’s just say, it mostly focuses on the youngest son.

From: Romani and England
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Francis Hindes Groome in his In Gypsy Tents.
Best Known Version: The Joseph Jacobs version in his More English Fairy Tales.
Synopsis: An old king can be cured only by golden apples from a far country. His 3 sons set out to find them and part ways at a crossroads. The youngest son finds a house in the forest where an old man greets him as a king’s son. He then tells the prince to put his horse and have something to eat. After the meal, the prince asks the old man how he knew he’s a king’s son (cause he doesn’t have shit all over him). The man replies he knows many things including what the prince is doing (creepy). He tells the prince he has to stay there for the night, though many snakes and toads would crawl over him, and if he stirs, would turn into one himself. Though the prince gets little sleep, he doesn’t stir. The next morning, the old man gives him breakfast, a horse, and a ball of yarn to throw between the horse’s ears. When the prince throws and chases it, he comes to the old man’s brother, who’s uglier than the first one. He receives the same hospitality and the same unpleasant night before the guy sends him off to a third and uglier brother.

At the third brother’s, the old man tells the prince he must go to a castle where he must tell swans to bear him over the lake to the building. Giants, lions, and dragons guard it, but they’d be asleep. So he must go in at 1 o’clock and come out again by 2. He must go through some grand rooms, go down into the kitchen, and then go out into the garden. There, he must pick the apples. He should go back the same way, and when riding off, never look back because they’d pursue him until he nearly reaches the old man’s house. The prince goes to bed and the brother assures him that nothing would disturb him and nothing does. The next morning, the old man warns him not to tarry because of a beautiful woman.

The prince reaches the castle by the swans and sees a beautiful woman there. He exchanges his garter, gold watch, and pocket-handkerchief for hers, and kisses her. He then gets the apples and has to flee at full speed since the hour’s nearly up. But he escapes. The old man brings him to a well and insists that the prince cut off his head and throw it in. This turns him into a young, handsome man, and the house into a palace. At the second brother’s, the prince receives a new bed without snakes or toads and cuts off his head off, and then the same with the first.

The prince meets up with his brothers who steal his apples, put others in their place, and go on before him. When he returns home, his apples aren’t as good as his brothers.’ His dad thinks they’re poisoned and tells his headsman to cut his head off. But the guy just takes the prince into the woods and leaves him there. A bear approaches. The prince climbs a tree until the bear persuades him to come down, brings him some tents, where they make him welcome, and changes into a handsome young man named Jubal. The prince stays with them and is happy. Though he loses the golden watch somewhere. One day, he sees it in the tree he climbed to hide from the bear. He climbs to get it again. Meanwhile, realizing that one of the princes has been there, sets out with an army. Reaching the king, she demands to see his sons. When the oldest comes, he lies about being at the castle. But when she throws down the handkerchief and he walks over it, he breaks his leg. The second prince does the same and receives the same injury. The princess demands of the king whether he has more sons. The king sends for the headsman who confesses to not killing the prince. The king says he must find him to save the king’s life. They find Jubal pointing to the tree where prince is before telling him that he must come down since a lady’s looking for him. And they bring Jubal with them. He doesn’t break his leg over the handkerchief so the princess knows he’s the prince. They marry and the prince goes back to her castle.

Other Versions: Included in The Red King and the Witch: Gypsy Folk and Fairy Tales by Ruth Manning Sanders as “An Old King and His Three Sons of England.”
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

152. The King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome Island

The Irish fairy tale, The King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome Island starts with brief fling resulting in the hero. Later, the hero date rapes a queen.

From: Ireland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Jeremiah Curtin in Myths and Folk-lore of Ireland.
Best Known Version: The Curtain version, obviously.
Synopsis: A king goes hunting but doesn’t see his first animal until it’s almost dusk, which is a black pig so he chases it. The pig swims out to sea and the king follows it. His horse drowns (obviously), but he swims and sees an island. On it, he finds a house with razors on the threshold and needles on the lintel. But he jumps between them and sits by the fire. A meal comes but the king doesn’t see anyone bring it and he eats anyway. At night, he senses a woman in the room but he can’t touch her. He tries leaving the next two days, but the woman uses her magic to keep the king from finding his way. On the third night, the woman appears and admits to being the pig. For she and her 2 sisters were captive there until their son should free them. Apparently, the king and the woman have sex (though I’m not sure whether it’s consensual on the king’s part). The next morning, she gives him a boat to get back. 9 months later, she has a son. When her son’s grown, the woman weeps. She explains that the King of Erin will die the next day due to the King of Spain bringing a great army against him. The son agrees to help if he’s there and his mom magically sends him. The young man asks the King of Spain for a day’s truce and goes to the King of Erin as a guest. The next day, he arrays himself as a champion and drives the King of Spain’s army from the field. Now the King of Erin has 2 sons who had hidden from the fight. But their mom tells the king that the champion is older than either of them. During the feast, the queen roofies the champion and pushes him from a window into the sea. But the young man swims for 4 days and nights until he comes to a rock where he lives for 3 months. Until a ship rescues him whose captain had tried to reach the Lonesome Island but failed due to fire. With the son, he succeeds. The son tell his mom what happened with the queen.

When the new King of Spain comes to avenge his dad’s death, the mom sends her son again. The queen makes the same claim about her older son. She then puts chicken blood in her mouth, claiming it as her heart’s blood and she needs water from Tubber Tintye to recover. The young man goes for it with her 2 sons. They meet a woman washing her hair in a golden basin. She calls the young man her nephew and tells him it’s too hard. They stay the night. The next morning, the queen’s older son claims illness and can’t go on. They go to the young man’s other aunt. At this house, she tells him that the people of Tubber Tintye sleep for 7 years, wake for 7 years, and learns from an eagle that they’ve gone to sleep. The queen’s younger son claims illness and can’t go on. The aunt gives her nephew a bridle, telling him to shake it before the stables and take whatever horse comes out. He takes the dirty, lean, shaggy little horse that comes and calls him the son of the King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome Island. This is the first time the young man hears of his dad. The horse leaps over the river of fire and the young man jumps from its back into a castle window. He finds many monsters and then a room with the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He goes on to 12 more rooms, each with a sleeping woman prettier the last, until at last he comes to a golden room where the queen sleeps with the well at her feet. He decides to stay there, which he does for 6 days and nights (where he rapes her). A table there has a bread loaf and a meat leg, and if every man in Erin eats from that table for a year, there would’ve been as much food left in the end. The young man leaves a letter to the queen, letting her know that he’s the guy who’d been there and takes the bread and meat. He springs from the window and back onto the horse’s back.

The horse carries him away and has the young man chop it into 4 quarters and strike it with a rod. This turns quarters back into 4 princes that they’d been before. He frees his 2 aunts from their spell and goes back with them and the queen’s sons. The queen’s older son steals the water and gives it to his mom. The son goes back with his aunts to the Lonesome Island. 7 years later, the Queen of Tubber Tintye wakes up and finds she has a 6-year-old son. Her sage claims only a hero could’ve made it there and would’ve left some sign. They find the letter, pleasing the queen. She brings her army to the King of Erin’s castle and demands the man who came to hers as she slept (i.e. her date rapist and baby daddy). The king summons the queen’s 2 sons in turn, each of whom claims doing it. But she demands each ride her horse, which throw and kills them. She then puts a belt on the Queen of Erin that magically tightens and forces her to admit to cheating on her husband with the gardener and the brewer. So the Tubber Tintye Queen has the King of Erin burn her. The King of Erin then marries the Queen of the Lonesome Island while his son marries the Queen of Tubber Tintye.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: This tale kicks off with a woman luring a guy into her house and keeping him prisoner just to have sex with him. Granted, she’s trying to break a curse and explained the whole deal. But I’m not sure if that’s necessarily okay. Also, the protagonist commits date rape and no one sees anything wrong with that. Not to mention, someone burns to death for cheating.
Trivia: N/A

153. The Rider of Grainaig, and Iain the Soldier’s Son
From: Scotland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by John Francis Campbell in his Popular Tales of the West Highlands.
Best Known Version: The Campbell version, naturally.
Synopsis: The knight of Grainaig has 3 daughters, but a mysterious beast carries them off. A soldier’s 3 sons are about to play a game at Christmas. The youngest son, Iain insists they do it on the knight’s lawn since it’s the smoothest. But as his brothers warn, this offends the knight because it reminded him of his daughters. Iain says he should give them a ship and they would find his daughters. The knight agrees. The brothers set out and find a place where men prepare for 3 daughters’ weddings to 3 giants. There’s a creel that could lift them to where the daughters are. Each brother tries in turn. A raven belabors the older two so they turn back. Facing the same raven, Iain calls them to hoist him faster. At the top, the raven asks him for tobacco. When Iain refuses, he tells him to go to the giant’s house, where he could find the oldest daughter. He goes. The oldest daughter tells him that rattling a chain would bring a giant, but only he, a soldier’s son could fight him. Iain rattles the chain and wrestles with the giant, wishing the raven was with him. The bird helps him win the fight and gives him a knife to cut off its head.

The raven tells Iain not to let the daughter put him off, but go on. It then asks him for tobacco and Iain offers him half. The raven tells him he has much left to do yet and shouldn’t offer him that much. It then sends Iain to anoint himself and bathe before he sleeps, so he’d be whole in the morning. He does this and goes on to rescue the second, and the youngest daughter. Then he takes the 3 daughters and the giants’ gold and silver and goes back. The raven warns to go first and have the daughters lowered after, but Iain lowers the daughters first, keeping the youngest’s cap. The creel doesn’t go back for him. So the raven tells Iain to spend the night at giant’s house. The next morning, it takes him to the stables with the constantly opening and shutting door. If he got through it, there’s a steed waiting for him. Iain asks the raven to go in first. It does and only loses a feather. Iain tries and gets killed but the raven revives him and tells him to walk and not wonder at anything he sees or touch anything. Iain comes to 3 dead men and pulls out their spears. The men sit up and make him come to the black fisherman’s cave. There, a hag turns them into stone. Iain defeats her but is sent to fetch the living water to bring back to the men. The raven sends Iain with the steed, which goes over land and sea. There, as the raven instructs, he puts the horse in the stable himself and drinks nothing but whey and water. But through the horse, the raven warns him against sleeping. Yet, the music enchants him and Iain dozes off. The horse breaks in and wakes him. They barely escape. He revives the men with the water.

The raven tells Iain to leave the cap with him and sends him off on the steed to interrupt the wedding. Because his 2 older brothers are to marry the older 2 daughters. While the men’s foremen preparing for the wedding, is set to wed the youngest. He rides off. When Iain arrives, the horse asks him to cut off its head. The horse explains she’s a young maiden and the raven a young man who dated her. But the giants changed them. Iain cuts off her head. At the castle, Iain hears that the youngest demands a cap such as her sisters. Iain wishes for the raven who brings him the cap, and Iain cuts off his head, turning him into a young man. They go to the dead horse where there’s a young woman and they go off together. Iain gives the cap to the smith. The youngest princess demands where he got it and the smith tells her. The youngest daughter marries Iain while the false bridegrooms are driven off.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Orange Fairy Book as “Iain the Soldier’s Son.”
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

154. Little Cat Skin
From: United States
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Marie Campbell in her Tales from the Cloud Walking Country.
Best Known Version: The Campbell version, naturally.
Synopsis: A man puts away his dead wife’s wedding gown, saying he won’t remarry a less pretty woman. His 2 older daughters mistreat the youngest until she has to patch her gowns with catskin. One day, she puts on her mom’s gown. Her dad begs her to tell him who she is. She demands and gets a dress the color of all the clouds going by and another of all the flowers blooming. She then tells him that she’s his daughter, Little Cat Skin. Her dad drives the girl away. She takes the dresses and works in the queen’s kitchen. The queen has a party and tells Little Cat Skin to come and even gives her an old dress. But Little Cat Skin wears a dress of clouds. She goes to another party in that dress and another in her dress of flowers. The prince gives her ring and falls sick in love with her. Little Cat Skin offers to cook something for him and she puts the ring in a dish. He sees her and thinks she looks like the girl. When he finds the ring, he knows who she is. They marry.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

155. Allerleirauh

Allerleirauh is a Grimm tale about a princess who flees her creepy dad and hides in a forest wearing furs. She later gets a job at another castle.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers. It’s basically Cinderella meets Game of Thrones.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version of course.
Synopsis: A king promises his dying wife that he won’t marry unless it’s to a woman as beautiful as she is. When he looks for a new wife, he realizes that the only woman who could match his dead wife’s beauty is his daughter. The princess tries making the wedding impossible by asking for 3 dresses: one as golden as the sun, one as silver as the moon, and one as dazzling as the stars along with a mantle made of fur of every kind of bird and animal in the kingdom. When her dad provides them, she takes them, with a gold ring, a spindle, and a gold reel. She runs from the castle the night before the wedding. She runs faraway to another kingdom and sleeps in a great forest there. But the young king and his dogs find her while on a hunting trip. She asks him to have pity on her and receives a place in the kitchen where she works. Because she gives no name, they call her, “All-Kinds-of-Fur.”

Here the princess dances with the prince at the ball in one of her dresses. She will put an item in his soup.

When the king holds a ball, the princess sneaks out and goes in her golden dress. The next morning, a cook sets her to make soup for the king and she puts a golden ring in it. The king finds it and asks the cook and then All-Kinds-of-Fur, but she reveals nothing. The next ball, the princess dresses in her silver dress and puts the golden spindle in his soup, and again, the king couldn’t discover anything. The third ball, the princess goes in her star dress and the king slips a golden ring on her finger without her notice. He then orders the last dance go longer than usual. So the princess can’t get away in time to change. So she can only throw on her fur mantle before she has to cook the soup. When the king asks her, he catches her hand and sees the ring. When she tries pulling it away, her mantle slips, revealing her starry dress. The king pulls off the mantle, revealing her, and they marry.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Green Fairy Book.
Adaptations: Adapted into a novel by Robin McKinley called Deerskin. Retold by Janet Yolen and Chantal Godury.
Why Forgotten: Incest, obviously.
Trivia: Also, known as “All Kinds of Furs.”

156. The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter
From: Scotland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by John Francis Campbell in his Popular Tales of the West Highlands.
Best Known Version: The Campbell version, obviously.
Synopsis: A king loses his wife a long time ago and declares he won’t marry anyone who doesn’t fit her clothes. One day, his daughter tries on her mom’s dress and finds it fits. Her creepy dad declares he’d marry her. At her foster-mom’s advice, the princess puts him off with clothing demands: a swan’s down dress, a moorland canach dress, a silk dress with gold and silver that could stand on its own, a gold shoe, a silver shoe, and a chest that could lock inside and out, and travel over land and sea. When she gets the chest, the princess puts her clothing in it and gets in herself. She then asks her dad to put it to sea, so she could see how well it works. It carries her off to another shore.

There, a herder boy would’ve broken it open, but she gets him to get his dad instead. She stays with his dad for a time and goes into service at the king’s house, in the kitchen. The princess refuses to go to the sermon since she has to bake bread and sneaks off to go dressed in her swan down dress and the prince falls in love with her. She goes again in a moorland canach dress, and then in a gold and silver dress with the shoe. But the third time, the prince sets the guard. The princess escapes, leaving a shoe behind. When the prince tries it on the women, a bird sings that it’s not that one but the kitchen maid. Every woman fails, and the prince falls ill. His mom goes into the kitchen to talk and asks the princess to try it. She persuades her son and it fits. They marry and live happily ever after.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: I think the title should make this story flagrantly obvious.
Trivia: N/A

157. The She-Bear
From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Giambattista Basile in the Pentamerone. Think of it as a reverse Beauty and the Beast meets Game of Thrones. Except the girl turns into a beast on her own volition.
Best Known Version: The Basile version, naturally.
Synopsis: A dying queen requires her husband only if his new bride is as beautiful as she is. Because the king only has a daughter (which isn’t an ideal situation), soon after her death, he decides to remarry. After inspecting many women, the king realizes that his daughter Preziosa could only match her mom’s beauty. Like any young woman would do in her situation, Preziosa goes to her bedroom in despair. An old woman gives her a wood chip which would change her into a bear if she puts it in her mouth. When her dad summons councilors to ask if he could marry his daughter (answer: Hell, no, your royal creepestry!), she uses it. While in the woods, she meets a prince and approaches him. Her gentleness astounds him and he takes her home as a pet. One day, wishing to comb her hair, she pulls out the wood. The prince sees her and falls sick from love. In his raving, he speaks of the bear and his mom thinks she had hurt him. So she orders her killed. But taken with her gentleness, the servants take her back in the woods instead. Discovering this, the prince gets up long enough to catch the bear once more. But when his pleas to her don’t make her human again, he takes ill again. His mom asks what he needs and he has the bear brought to his room to act as a servant. She does all that’s necessary, only making the prince love her more and become sicker. He begs for a kiss and she does. The wood comes out of her mouth and he catches her. She begs him not to hurt her honor. He then marries her with his mom’s blessing.

Other Versions: Included in Ruth Manning-Sanders’ A Book of Princes and Princesses. But her version has the heroine flee a threatened marriage with a suitor who’s too old for her, not her dad.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Contains instances of incest and bestiality.
Trivia: N/A

158. Mossycoat

The English fairy tale, Mossycoat is about a girl fleeing an unwanted suitor with her magic moss coat. She gets a job at a great house where she has to deal with a hostile work environment.

From: England
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Katherine M. Briggs and Ruth I. Tongue in Folktales of England.
Best Known Version: The Briggs and Tongue version, I suppose.
Synopsis: A hawker wants to marry a widow’s daughter, but she doesn’t want him. Spinning a coat for her, the widow tells her daughter to ask for a white satin with gold sprigs, which must fit her perfectly. The girl does so. 3 days later, the hawker brought it. At her mom’s instructions, the girl asks for a dress the color of all the birds in the air, that also must fit her perfectly. When he buys that, the girl asks for a pair of silver slippers that again, must perfectly fit her. Her mom then tells the suitor to come at ten the next day for her daughter’s answer. That morning, the girl’s mom gives her a coat she made out of moss and gold thread, and which would let her move somewhere else by wishing and also change herself into any form she’d like. She then sends her to the great hall to work. She tries getting a job as a cook. But since they have one. So the lady offers to hire her to help the cook as an undercook. The girl takes it but the servants can’t stand her. Since she’s so pretty and her getting such a position when she leaves the road. Instead, they make her clean dishes and hit her on the head with the skimmer.

A dance comes up, and the servants jeer the idea that the girl might go. Seeing how beautiful she is, the young master asks if she wants to go. But she says she’s too dirty, even when the master and mistress press her as well. That night, the girl magically puts all the servants asleep, washes, puts on her white satin dress, and uses the mossycoat to attend the ball. The young master falls in love with her, but she remarks how she comes from a place where people hit her over the head with a skimmer. When the ball’s over, she uses her mossycoat to go back. She next wakes up all the servants and hints she might have to tell her mistress about her sleeping, so they treat her better. When the story of the grand lady at the ball comes around, they go back to abusing her. Another ball comes, and the girl wears her other dress. The young master tries catching her, and perhaps touching her shoe. At any rate, it comes off. He makes every woman try putting on the shoe. When he learns that Mossycoat hasn’t yet, he sends for her, too. The shoe fits. The master and mistress turn off the servants for hitting her with a skimmer. While the young master and Mossycoat marry.

Other Versions: Also appears in Alan Garner’s A Book of British Fairy Tales.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Doesn’t portray poor people in a positive light at all.
Trivia: N/A

159. Tattercoats

Tattercoats is an English fairy tale of a noble girl who dresses in rags and hangs out with a gooseherd. When they go to a ball, the geese go with them.

From: England
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Joseph Jacobs in his More English Fairy Tales.
Best Known Version: The Jacobs version, naturally.
Synopsis: A great lord has no living relatives except a little granddaughter. Because her mom died in childbirth, he swears he’ll never look at her. As a result, the granddaughter grows up quite neglected and is called, “Tattercoats” for her ragged clothing. She spends her days in the fields with only a gooseherd as her companion. One day, her grandpa is invited to a royal ball. He has his hair sheared off since it bounded him to a chair and prepares to go. Tattercoats’ old nurse begs him to take her, but he refuses. Her gooseherd friend proposes they go and watch. He plays the pipe and they merrily dance along the way. A richly dressed young man asks them for directions to the city. Hearing they were going there, he walks along with them and asks Tattercoats to marry him. She tells him to choose a bride at the king’s ball. He tells her to come as she is around midnight so he can dance with her.

Tattercoats presents herself to the king as the prince’s bride. Obviously, the king is not pleased.

Tattercoats goes while the gooseherd goes with all his geese. Everyone stares but the finely dressed young prince rises up and tells his dad that this is the woman he wants to marry. The gooseherd plays his pipe and transforms all of Tattercoats’ rags into shining robes, and the geese into pages holding her train. Everyone approves and the prince marries her. The gooseherd disappears and is never seen again. Tattercoats’ grandfather, because he vowed never to look at her, goes back to his castle and is still mourning there.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not exactly sure why.
Trivia: N/A

160. The Princess That Wore a Rabbit Skin Dress
From: United States
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Marie Campbell in her Tales in the Cloud Walking Country. Informant was Uncle Tom Dixon from Kentucky.
Best Known Version: The Campbell version, naturally.
Synopsis: The king dies after his wife gives birth to a baby girl. The queen remarries, but the guy also dies. She marries a third time. But this husband is so cruel that she gets sick and dies. The last husband wants to marry her daughter, which she obviously doesn’t. The girl’s mare tells her to ask her stepdad for a silver dress, with some help from fairies. This takes a year and a half. She then asks for a golden dress, which takes 2 ½ years and a diamond and pearl dress, which takes 3 ½ years. The mare then gives her a rabbit skin dress and the princess rides off on her. Some hunters, including a prince, find her and take her to the castle, giving her a kitchen job. Her co-workers are rude, saying she only needs only the ears to be a rabbit. One day, the mare tells the princess that the prince’s going to a party. The mare carries her there and gives her a nut holding the silver dress. The next day, the princess goes in the gold dress. The third day, she dons the diamond and pearl dress, and the prince gives her a golden ring. The princess wears the ring after taking off the dress. The prince recognizes and marries her.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: A creepy and abusive stepdad wants to marry his stepdaughter.
Trivia: N/A

You might’ve noticed but a lot of these fairy tales seem rather similar to each other. Well, experts have also taken notice and that’s why they created the Aarne-Thompson classification system. This is an index used by folkorists to organize, classify, and analyze folklore narratives. Though it’s mainly based on folklore from Europe and western Asia. Now the Aarne-Thompson Index divides these fairy tales into sections with an AT number for each entry. It’s complicated. Anyway, in this installment, I bring you another 10 forgotten fairy tales. First, are Italian tales about months and 3 fairies. Second, is a Russian story about a frosty old man. Third, we come to a French tale of 2 sisters followed by a Romanian one of a girl in a tree. Then we look at Grimm tales about the Virgin Mother’s adopted daughter, 12 brothers, and water of life. After that, is a Danish tale of a young man going against giants and Swedish story of a prince searching for a bird name “Grip.”

141. The Months
From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Giambattista Basile in his 1634 Pentamerone.
Best Known Version: Guess the Basile version.
Synopsis: Cianne and Lise are brothers. Cianne is rich while Lise is poor. Lise sets out to wander the world. He meets 12 youths welcoming and asking him about the months. Lise replies that they each have their place and purpose and that people must be arrogant to want to rearrange them. One tells him the month of March is very burdensome since it advances to spring. The youth who’s the month of March gives Lise a casket granting wishes. With it, he has an easy journey and becomes prosperous. Naturally, Cianne is jealous of him. Lise tells him of an inn and the 12 youths, but not how they talked. Cianne goes there and receives a whip. When he tries using it, it whips him until his brother comes and uses the casket to stop him. Lise then shares his good fortune with Cianne.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Perhaps the magic whip. I don’t know.
Trivia: N/A

142. Father Frost

In the Russian fairy tale, Father Frost, a girl is driven into the frozen cold. When Father Frost shows up, she is polite and kind to her and he gives her a golden box full of wonderful things.

From: Russia
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki.
Best Known Version: The Afanasyev version, naturally.
Synopsis: A woman has a daughter she loves and a stepdaughter she hates. One day she orders her husband to take her stepdaughter out into the winter fields and leave her to die. He obeys. Morozko finds her there. She’s polite and kind for him. So he gives her a chest of beautiful things and fine garments. After awhile, the stepmother sends her husband for the girl’s body for burial. He obeys. But later, the family dog says, the girl’s coming back, and that’ she’s beautiful and happy. When the stepmother sees what the stepdaughter’s brought back, she orders her husband to take out her own daughter into the fields. Unlike before, this girl is rude to Morozko and he freezes her to death. When the husband goes out to bring her back, the family dog says the girl will be buried. When the dad brings back the body, the woman weeps.

Here’s the girl left out of her home to die thanks to her evil stepmother. Apparently, she seems at peace for some reason.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Yellow Fairy Book as “The Story of King Frost.” Also, in the Grimm version, the first girl is coated with gold and silver coins while the rude girl is coated with cement, flour, and tar.
Adaptations: Made into a movie Morozko in 1964.
Why Forgotten: Depicts a girl freezing to death for simply being rude. Still, it’s well known in Russia.
Trivia: N/A

143. The Three Fairies
From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Giambattista Basile for his 1634 Pentamerone.
Best Known Version: The Basile version, of course.
Synopsis: An envious widow, Caradonia has an ugly daughter, Grannizia. She marries a rich landowner with a lovely daughter, Cicella and jealously torments her stepdaughter. She badly dresses her, gives her poor food, and makes her work. One day, Cicella drops a basket over a cliff. Below, she sees a hideous ogre. She politely asks him to help her. He replies that if she climbed down, she’d get it. Cicella climbs down and finds 3 beautiful fairies at the cliff’s bottom. She’s politely with them, combs their hair, and claims to find rubies and pearls along with lice. They take her to their castle and show Cicella their treasures. She admires them but isn’t bedazzled. Finally, they shower her with rich clothes and ask her to choose a dress. Cicella opts for the cheap one. They ask how she wants to leave. Cicella replies that the stable door is good enough for her. They give her a splendid gown, dress her hair, and bring her to a golden door, telling her to look up when she goes through it. A star falls on her forehead.

Grannizia goes to the same place and is rude, complaining about the lice in the fairies’ hair. They bring her to the wardrobe and she grabs the fanciest dress. They don’t give it to her. But they send her out the stable door where a donkey testicle falls on Grannizia’s forehead. Fortunately for her, her angry mom takes Cicella’s clothes and gives it to her and sends Cicella to tend pigs. There, a nobleman named Cuosemo sees her and asks the stepmother for leave to marry her. Caradonia agrees, seals Cicella up in a barrel, and presents Grannizia as the bride instead. After the wedding night, he goes back to the house where a tabby cat tells him that Cicella’s in a barrel. He lets her out, puts Grannizia in her place, and flees with Cicella. Caradonia returns with wood, creates a fire, and boils water to scald Cicella to death. She then pours it in the barrel and Grannizia dies. Caradonia opens the barrel, sees her own daughter, and drowns herself in a well.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Think scalding someone to death might have something to do with it. Not to mention suicide.
Trivia: N/A

144. Auore and Aimee
From: France
Earliest Appearance: Written by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, best known for Beauty and the Beast.
Best Known Version: The Beaumont version, obviously.
Synopsis: A lady has 2 beautiful daughters: the older and good Auore and the younger and bad Aimee. When Auore is 16 and Aimee is 12, the lady starts losing her looks. Not wanting anyone to know she could have teenagers, she moves to another city, sends Auore to the country and claims that Aimee’s only 10 and that she had her at 15. Fearing that someone would discover the deception, the mom sends Auore to another country. But the person going with her abandons the girl in the forest. Auore hunts for a way out and finally finds a shepherdess’ cottage. She laments her fate and blames God. But the shepherdess urges that God permits misfortune only to benefit the unfortunate person, and offers to act like her mom. After some discussion on Auore’s fashionable but dull life, the shepherdess points out that age makes it less pleasant and that she herself could teach Auore to live without boredom. Auore agrees. The shepherdess sets her to a life divided into prayer, work, reading, and walks. Auore finds this life agreeable because it’s not dull.

One day, Prince Ingenu goes hunting. He’s a good guy but his brother King Fourbin is evil. Ingenu falls in love and woos Auore and she, properly, sends him to the shepherdess. He begs her to tell him whether it would make her unhappy if the shepherdess consents. The shepherdess praises the prince’s virtue and says that a daughter can’t be unhappy with a good husband. So she gives Auore her blessing, knowing Prince Ingenu would be a good husband before he leaves to return in 3 days. During that time, Auore falls into a thicket while gathering the sheep, resulting in her face dreadfully scratched. She laments this, but the shepherdess reminds her that God doubtlessly means it for good. But Auore reflects that if Ingenu rejects her over her looks being gone, he wouldn’t have made her happy.

Meanwhile, Ingenu tells his brother of his bride. Angry that his kid brother would marry without his permission, King Fourbin threatens to marry Auore himself if she’s as pretty as Ingenu claims. He comes with him. Seeing Auore’s marred face, Fourbin orders Ingenu to marry the girl at once and forbids the couple to come to court. But Ingenu’s perfectly fine with it and still wants to marry Auore. After Fourbin leaves, the shepherdess cures Auore’s injuries with special water. Back at court, Fourbin orders portraits of beautiful women brought to him. Enchanted by one of Aimee’s, he marries her.

A year later, Auore has a son, Beaujour. But one day, he disappears and she cries about it. But the shepherdess reminds her that everything happens for her own good. The next day, Fourbin’s soldiers arrive on orders to kill the king’s nephew. Not finding him, they put Auore, Ingenu, and the shepherdess on a boat to sea. They sail to a kingdom where a king is at war. Ingenu offers to fight for him, kills his enemies’ commander, and makes the army flee. Since the king is childless, he adopts Ingenu as his son. 4 years later, Fourbin dies of grief because of his wife’s wickedness. His people drive Aimee away and send for Ingenu to be king. They are shipwrecked on their way there. But this time, Auore holds. On the land, she finds a woman with her son, Beaujour. The woman explains herself as a pirate’s wife and that her husband abducted the boy. But they’ve been shipwrecked, too. Ships come looking for their bodies, bringing back Auore, Ingenu, and Beaujour back to the kingdom. And Auore never complains of any misfortune, knowing misfortunes often cause happiness.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: The message that misfortune occurs for a reason and can lead to happiness hasn’t aged well these days. Indeed, we all deal with our share of misfortune, but not in regards to shipwrecks, attempted murder, and child abduction.
Trivia: N/A

145. Little Wildrose

Little Wildrose is about a girl who grows up in an eagle’s nest. Yet, a prince wants her to climb down her tree.

From: Romania
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Andrew Lang in his The Crimson Fairy Book.
Best Known Version: The Lang version, naturally.
Synopsis: An old man goes in search of a child so someone would inherit his home. He finds a hermit in the dark woods. The hermit gives him an apple, telling him to eat half and give the other half to his wife. The old man gets thirst on the way home. And since there’s no water, he eats the whole apple. He then finds a beautiful baby girl and carries her home, laying her in a pail to call his wife nearby. An eagle carries the child for its eaglets to eat, but they nestle up to her instead. A lindworm comes to eat them but something kills it. So the eagle raises the girl with her chicks. One day, an emperor’s son sees her. But he can’t lure her down and grows sick of love. His dad asks him what’s wrong and, hearing of it, sends about for word of the maiden. An old woman promises to get them the girl. She starts a fire beneath the tree and does everything wrong. Little Wildrose tries telling her how to do it, but the old lady doesn’t take a hint. So Little Wildrose comes down to show her and the old woman carries her off. The emperor’s son marries her.

You have to wonder how a woman can manage to grow up in a tree for so long. Seriously, trees aren’t usually that strong to hold that much weight.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: The plot basically revolves around staging a kidnapping, and no one seems to see anything wrong with it.
Trivia: N/A

146. Mary’s Child

Mary’s Child is a Grimm fairy tale where the Virgin Mary takes in a little girl. Though I find her parenting techniques questionable in this one.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm brothers.
Best Known Version: Why the Grimm version.
Synopsis: A poor woodcutter has a 3-year-old daughter and can’t feed her. The Virgin Mary appears and promises to take care of the girl. She happily grows up in Heaven. One day, the Virgin has to go on a trip and gives the girl the keys, telling her she could open 12 doors but not the 13th. She opens the first 12 and finds the Apostles behind them. Then she opens the 13th door. Behind it is the Trinity, staining her finger with gold. She tries hiding it, lying 3 times, and the Virgin Mary says she can no longer remain for her disobedience and lying. The girl falls asleep and wakes up finding herself in the forest. Whining over her shitty circumstances, the girl lives in a hollow tree, eats wild plants, and tears all her clothes until she’s naked. One day, a king finds her looking beautiful but incapable of speech. So he takes her home and marries her. A year later, the queen has a son. The Virgin Mary appears and demands she confess to opening the door. Again, she lies so the Virgin takes her son while people whisper that the queen killed and ate her child. The next year, the queen has another son, and it goes the same as before. The third year, she has a daughter. The Virgin Mary takes her to Heaven and shows the queen her sons, but she wouldn’t confess. This time, the king can’t restrain his councilors who condemn the queen to death. When she’s brought to the stake, the queen relents and wishes she could confess before she dies. The Virgin Mary brings back her children, restores her power of speech, and gives her happiness for the rest of her life.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: The plot revolves around the Virgin Mary though the child in question is adopted. But it also has the Virgin Mother put her adopted daughter through a lot of shit after she refuses to confess her minor sins (which is typical childlike behavior). Now as a Catholic I believe that the Virgin Mary was immaculately conceived without sin, and let’s just say some of her actions in this story might qualify as sins like kidnapping and taking away speech, which almost leads to her burned at the stake. That’s not the Virgin Mary I know. Though to be fair, I don’t think this story is meant to offend Catholics. In fact, I think German Catholic parents told this story to get their kids to behave.
Trivia: N/A

147. The Twelve Brothers

The Twelve Brothers is a Grimm fairy tale about 12 princes turned into ravens. While the heroine is their little sister with a star on her head who seeks to find them.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, naturally.
Synopsis: A king wants to kill his 12 sons so if his 13th child is a girl, she could inherit the kingdom in one piece. The queen tells this to the youngest son, Benjamin and that she’ll give them a warning with a flag. After 12 days of waiting in the forest, the sons see a red flag, indicating a death sentence. Angry at their dad’s cruel betrayal, the boys swear revenge on every girl and move to an enchanted cottage deep in the forest, where they feed on animals. In the meantime, the queen gives birth to a beautiful baby girl with a star on her forehead. 10 years after hearing about their existence from her mom, the princess leaves to find them where the queen hid them for precaution. She first finds a now older Benjamin happily greeting her and then introduces her to the other brothers, convincing them to stop their revenge on girls. Together the siblings live in harmony. Sometime later, the sister rips out 12 white lilies out of ignorance, her brothers turn into ravens and fly away. At the behest of an old woman witnessing this, the girl decides not to speak or laugh for 7 years, in order to save her brothers.

To free her brothers, the princess decides not to speak for 7 years. Though she gets married to a king, she almost ends up burned at the stake for her silence. Luckily, her brothers save her in the nick of time.

A hunting king finds the princess and marries her. However, his mom slanders the girl’s silence and tries getting the king to burn her as a witch. The young king is torn as he loves his wife but ultimately gives in with tears in his eyes like a coward. As the pyre is lit, the 7 years pass and the 12 ravens arrive, recovering their human forms as soon as they touch the ground. They then put out the flames and free their sister so she’s now free to talk and explains to her husband what the hell’s going on. All live happily together save the cruel mother-in-law who’s put in a barrel with boiling oil and poisonous snakes.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Someone’s put in a barrel with boiling oil and poisonous snakes.
Trivia: N/A

148. The Water of Life

The Grimm fairy tale, The Water of Life revolves around a prince searching for the water of life to save his dying dad. All he needs to do is follow the dwarf’s directions.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, naturally.
Synopsis: A dying old king tells his sons that the water of life would save him. Each one sets out in turn. Setting out hopes of being their dad’s heir, the older ones are rude to the dwarf on the way and get trapped in ravines. When the youngest son goes, the dwarf asks him where he’s going and the prince tells him. The dwarf tells him it’s in a castle and gives him an iron wand to open the gates and 2 loaves of bread to feed the lions inside (excuse me?). Then he has to get the water before the clock strikes 12 when the gates would shut again. The prince opens the gate with the iron wand and feeds the bread loaves to the lions. He then comes to a hall where there are sleeping princes. He takes rings from their fingers as well as some bread and a sword from the table. He goes on and finds a beautiful princess who kisses him, tells him he’s freed her, and promises to marry him if he returns within a year. Then she lets him know where the spring is. The prince goes on. But he sees a bed and lies down to sleep. When he wakes up, it’s a quarter to 12. He springs up, gets the water, and escapes, with the closing gate taking off his boot heel.

Here’s the dying king with his 3 sons. Still, I think it would be easier if they just let the old man die.

The prince meets the dwarf telling him what happened to his brothers and at his imploring frees them, warning they have evil hearts. They come to a kingdom plagued with war and famine. The prince kills their foes with a sword and feeds them the loaf. They then come to 2 more kingdoms in the same situation, and they do the same. Next, they go to a ship to cross the sea and return home. The older brothers steal the water of life and fill the youngest prince’s bottle with sea water, which sickens the king. The older brothers accuse the youngest of trying to poison him and give him the water of life. The king decides to have his youngest son secretly killed by sending the huntsman with him into the woods. But the huntsman can’t bring himself to kill the prince and confesses the deed. The prince and the huntsman trade clothes and the prince flees. Treasure arrives from the 3 kingdoms the prince had saved. The king wonders about his guilt and regrets having his son killed. The huntsman confesses that he hadn’t killed him. The king issues a proclamation that the prince could freely return. The princess in the castle makes a golden road to it and tells her people that would bring the true groom to her and to admit no one who doesn’t ride straight up to it. Pretending to be the ones who freed her, the 2 older princes sees it and think it a shame to dirty it. So they ride alongside and the servants don’t admit them. The youngest thinks so constantly of the princess that he doesn’t notice it so he rides up it. He’s admitted and marries the princess. The prince goes back to his dad and tells the true story. The king wishes to punish the older brothers, but they board a ship and are never seen again.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: I’m not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

149. Niels and the Giants
From: Denmark
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Andrew Lang in his The Crimson Fairy Book.
Best Known Version: The Lang version, naturally.
Synopsis: A couple has 2 sons. The older is content to be a shepherd like his dad. But the younger, Niels, wants to be a hunter. So he gets a gun, practices with it, and becomes a good shot. One day, his mom decides to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. So the family sells everything and sets out with Niels bringing his gun. One night, they don’t stay at an inn because the heat slows them down by the day and the moon’s up. They come to a crossroads in the forest and don’t know which way to go. So they decide to stay there. During the first watch, the older son shoots a stag. Niels climbs a tree and sees 3 giants eating. By careful shots, he has them fight about knocking each other’s hands and making them prick themselves with forks. The third giant realizes he’s around and catches him. The giants then demand Niels a service. They want to carry off the king’s daughter and have everyone in the castle put to sleep save a little black dog. If Niels shoots the dog so it doesn’t bark and wake everyone, they’d spare his life. They throw him in and he lands on the grass. Niels shoots the dog and goes to the gate. But on the way, he sees an enormous sword, a drinking horn, and an inscription saying that whoever can drink from the horn can wield the sword. He then looks through the castle and finds the princess, taking half her handkerchief and one of her slippers. Niels next drains the horn so he could wield the sword, before going to the gate where there’s a small door and large door. He opens the small door, claims he’s too weak for the large one, and cuts off the giants’ heads as they come through. Niels then runs to rejoin his family with the sword. He shuts the door and with a bang the castle wakes astounded by the bodies. The princess declares they must find the giant-slayer since she’s honor-bound to marry him. She has a house built and puts over the door so whoever tells his life story could stay there for free.

Meanwhile, Niels and his family goes on toward Rome, but they meet a man showing them holes in their shoes and tells them they’d been new when he left the city. Discouraged, they turn back, coming upon the house where they decide to stay. The steward questions the dad and older son and tells the princess that nothing had happened to them, but admits he didn’t ask them all. The princess goes in herself. The older brother puts in that he forgot to tell that his brother had found the sword. Niels, who guesses this as a way to discover him, wants to escape. But they find the sword, search him, discovering the handkerchief and slipper. Niels is afraid they’d punish him. But the princess says they must wait until her dad returns. When he does, the princess marries Niels who’s king after the old man dies.
Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

150. The Bird “Grip”

The Bird “Grip” is a Swedish fairy tale about a prince searching for a bird that will restore his dad’s sight. Here he presents the bird to his father.

From: Sweden
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Andrew Lang for his The Pink Fairy Book.
Best Known Version: The Lang version, obviously.
Synopsis: A king goes blind. An old woman says the song of the bird “Grip” would restore his sight. The king’s oldest son offers to fetch the bird, from where it’s kept in another king’s cage. But he stays at a merry inn along the way. He enjoys himself so much there that he forgets about the journey. His 2 brothers follow. The second son also stays at the inn. While the youngest says he has to fetch the bird, “Grip” and continues on instead of remaining at the inn. He stays at a house in the woods hearing shrieks through the night. He asks about them the next morning. A girl tells him they come from a dead man whom the innkeeper had beat up and killed for being unable to pay a bill and whom he refused to bury for a funeral. The prince pays his bill but is afraid to stay longer so he asks the girl to help him escape in the night. She tells him the host keeps the stable keys under his pillow but she’ll help him if the prince takes her with him. He does so and gives her a place at a good inn before he goes on.

Here the prince comes with the princess, horse, and the bird “Grip.” And he got them all at the fox’s guidance.

The youngest son then meets a fox who opts to help him. When they go to the castle to where the bird is, the fox gives the prince 3 grains: one for the guardroom, one for the room with the cage, and one for the cage itself. Then the prince could take the bird but he mustn’t stroke it. He obeys with the grains. But when he decides to stroke the bird, it wakes and screams. The prince gets captured. In prison, the fox tells him to answer, “Yes” to everything at the trial. When asked whether he’s a master thief, the prince answers yes. The king offers him a pardon if he carries off the world’s most beautiful princess from the next kingdom. Once again, the fox gives him 3 grains: one for the guardroom, one for the princess’ bedroom, and one for her bed but warns him not to kiss her. Though the prince obeys with the grains, he fails again at the kiss. Again, at the trial he’s asked whether he’s a master thief and he answers yes. The king offers him a pardon if he carries off a horse with 4 golden shoes from the next kingdom. Again, the fox gives him 3 grains: for the guardroom, the stable, and the horse’s stall, but warns him against the golden saddle. And this time, the fox can’t help the prince if he fails. He does the grains. But when he sees the golden saddle, he reaches for it. But something strikes his arm and he leads the horse without it. The prince confesses it to the fox who admits to striking his arm. Returning to the princess’ castle, he confesses he’d gladly take her to his dad’s castle on the horse. So the fox gives him the grains again and he carries the princess off. He asks the fox if he could try the bird again. This time, he succeeds in catching it.

The fox then warns the prince against ransoming anyone with the money. The prince rides on and discovers his brothers had gone into debt at the inn and are set to be hanged. He pays the debt. But his jealous brothers throw him in a lions den and take the bird, the horse, and the princess. They threaten to kill the girl if she doesn’t say they had won them. They tell their dad that the youngest had been hanged for debt. But the bird doesn’t sing, the horse wouldn’t let anyone in the stall, and the princess won’t stop crying. Back in the lions’ den, the prince finds the fox. The lions don’t hurt him. The fox leads him out saying that would forget their dad would also betray their brother. The fox asks him to cut off his head. The prince tries to refuse, but the fox insists he’d kill him if he doesn’t. The prince relents and fox tells him he’s the dead man whose debts he had paid. Disguised as a horse-shoer, the prince slips into the castle. He puts 4 golden shoes on the horse and hearing the bird Grip couldn’t sing, declares it lacks something and if he could see it, he could learn what it is. He calls the bird by name. It begins to sing and causes the princess to smile. The king’s sight recovers and recognizes the horse-shoer as his youngest son. He banishes the older sons while the youngest marries the princess and lives happily ever after.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not really sure why.
Trivia: N/A

In fairy tales, you can have 2 types of old ladies. One is good, wise, and helpful. She could be magical but normally isn’t. Sometimes she may take the hero in when they have absolutely nowhere else to go. The other may seem nice but can also be a witch who curses someone for whatever reason. And breaking the spell will require some crazy quest to find an assortment of items or a worthy potential significant other. Both really don’t seem great if you really think about it. Anyway, in this installment, I’ll bring you 10 more forgotten fairy tales. First, is a Russian tale of a golden shoe. Second are Grimm tales of 2 different brides and a magical old lady. Third, is an Italian story about a dragon that runs more like a Game of Thrones episode. Then we come to an Icelandic tale of a witch in a stone boat. After that are 2 Scandinavian stories on a magical wreath and 2 caskets. Next, is a Danish tale of a Maiden Bright-Eye followed by a French story of fairies and an English tale of 3 heads in a well.

131. The Golden Slipper

The Golden Slipper is a Russian Cinderella story. Here the girl finds herself as chest of clothes for Mass so she could see the prince.

From: Russia
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki. A Russian version of Cinderella.
Best Known Version: The Afanasyev version, obviously.
Synopsis: An old man brings 2 fish home from market for his daughters. The older one eats hers, but the younger asks her fish what to do with it. It tells her to take it to the river and put it in the water so it might repay her. She puts it in the well. The old woman, their mom, likes the older daughter but hates the younger. She dresses the older for Mass and orders the younger to husk 2 bushels of rye while they’re gone. The girl weeps beside the well. The fish gives her fine clothing and sends her off while the rye husking vanishes. The mom comes back talking of the beauty they’ve seen at Mass. She takes the older girl again, leaving the younger to husk 3 measures of barley and the younger goes to Mass again with the fish’s aid. A prince sees her and catches her golden slipper with some tar. He finds the younger daughter and tries the shoe on her. When it fits, they marry.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why. Guest the magic fish has something to do with it.
Trivia: N/A

132. The White Bride and the Black Bride

The White and Black Bride is a Grimm fairy tale about a girl who’s set to marry a king getting replaced by her stepsister. Oh, and she ends up turning into an animal for awhile.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, naturally.
Synopsis: A woman and her daughter cut fodder when the lord arrives and asks for directions to the village. They refuse to help but the woman’s stepdaughter offers to show him. In return, the others turn black and ugly but the stepdaughter gets granted 3 wishes: beauty, an everlasting purse of gold, and a one-way ticket to Heaven upon her death. Her brother Reginer is a king’s coachman, asks for her portrait and hangs it in his room. The king sees it and resolves to marry her. Her brother sends for her while the stepmother and stepsister show up, too. The stepmother enchants the coachman so he’s half-blind and the bride so she’s half-deaf. The white bride doesn’t hear what the coachman says and instead follows her stepmother’s command to remove her dress and garments and look out the window where she’s pushed out. The king’s horrified by the black bride and throws the brother into a snake pit. But the stepmother persuades him to marry the black bride.

Transformed as a duck, the girl intercepts the castle through the kitchen. Here she is at the oven.

A white duck arrives to the kitchen and tells the kitchen boy to light the fire, and then asks for Reginer and the black bride. After a few days of this, the kitchen boy asks the king. The king cuts off the duck’s head, which transforms into the white bride. The king frees the brother from the snake pit and asks the stepmother what ought to be done to do what she did. She says that the person should be stripped and put in a barrel studded with nails, and a horse should drag it off. The king has it done to her and the black bride. He marries the white bride.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Racism, obviously.
Trivia: N/A

133. The Witch in the Stone Boat

In the Icelandic fairy tale, The Witch in the Stone Boat, a witch intercepts a ship carrying a new king and queen home. She then kidnaps the queen and takes her place. But the baby prince can’t stop crying.

From: Iceland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Jón Árnason. Translated into German by Poestion.
Best Known Version: Andrew Lang’s English translation in The Yellow Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A king tells his son Sigurd to marry, recommending another king’s daughter as a prospective wife. Sigurd travels to the kingdom and proposes to the princess. Her dad accepts on the condition he’d stay and help him as long as he could. Sigurd promises to remain, until he receives news of his dad’s death. He then sets sail for his homeland with his wife and 2-year-old son. The ship’s one day short of completing its journey when the wind dies down. Overcome with drowsiness, Sigurd leaves the queen and prince alone on the deck. A stone boat approaches carrying a frightening “witch” or “troll wife.” She boards the ship, snatches away the baby, and assumes the queen’s place by transforming into her shape and wearing her fine clothes she strips from the woman. The imposter puts the real queen on the stone boat and enchants the boat telling it to go to her brother in the underworld without straying. The boat shoots off and is soon out of the ship’s sight. The real mother’s disappearance makes the baby uncontrollably cry, and the witch tries to quiet it to no avail. So she goes below deck and scolds Sigurd for leaving her on deck alone. Though his wife usually never threw such temper tantrums, Sigurd let it slide since she had every right to be mad at him. But despite their efforts, neither could stop the boy from crying.

When they appear at the castle, the real queen appears on the course of 3 nights. On the last night, King Sigurd sees his wife at last.

Succeeding his dead father, Sigurd now rules his homeland as king. The once quiet little boy hardly stops crying since that day so he’s given and raised by a nurse, who’s one of the court ladies. Sigurd also notices his wife’s change in temperament as “haughty and stubborn, and difficult to deal with.” Fortunately, the fake queen’s identity soon unravels. Two young men playing chess next to the queen’s room eavesdrop and spy on her through a crack. They hear her say that the more widely she yawns, the more she transforms into a troll. And even as she speaks, she gives a huge yawn and reverts back into a troll. On her room’s floor, a 3-headed giant appears, bringing her a trough full of meat she devours. Meanwhile the boy-prince’s nurse witnesses the true queen’s supernatural appearance. The nurse lights a candle revealing rising floor planks and a woman dressed in linen underneath. Clasped around her waist is an iron belt with a chain leading to the ground below. The queen embraces the child for a moment and returns under the floor again. She appears again and the nurse hears the queen lamentfully says, “Two are gone, and one only is left,” which the nurse guess must mean that the third night might be her final appearance.

To free his wife, King Sigurd uses his sword to break her chains. He also kills the giantess witch with 3 heads.

The next night, King Sigurd is in the nurse’s room, sword drawn in his hand awaiting the apparition, whom he instantly recognizes as his own wife. He cuts the chain and great noises come from beneath the earth. The true queen tells her story. The 3-headed giant tries forcing her to marry him and only consented if she could see her son for 3 consecutive days. But the giant has to plummet to death, the crashing “caused by him in his death throes.” The real queen is restored to all her dignity and the king has the false queen captured and stoned to death and torn apart by horses.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: Retold by Mrs. Angus W. Hall titled, “The Giantess and the Granite Boat.”
Why Forgotten: Guess the stoning to death and being torn apart by horses might have something to do with it.
Trivia: N/A

134. The Dragon
From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Giambattista Basile in Pentamerone in 1635. It runs more like an episode from Game of Thrones though it has fairies. And a despicable character doesn’t experience any lasting consequences whatsoever like a horrific death scene.
Best Known Version: Perhaps the Thomas Keightley translation in Fairy Mythology.
Synopsis: A High Shore king loses his throne during his absence due to his tyrannical and cruel conduct and gets usurped by a sorceress. He consults his oracular wooden statue to learn that he’d regain his kingdom when the sorceress goes blind. But the well-guarded sorceress foils every agent he sends to do his bidding. Since she could instantly detect any harm-seeking intruder and metes out “dog justice” upon them. Frustrated, the king compensates by raping any woman he can lay his hands on and murdering them afterwards. Hundreds of victims later, the turn comes for the maiden Porziella whose beauty is described in poetic metaphor. Intending to kill her like the rest, the king raises his dagger after he’s had his way with her. But just that moment, a bird flies by and drops a root on his arm, causing him to tremble and drop the weapon. Because the bird is a fairy who Porziella saved from a lecherous satyr’s mischief by waking her up in time. Instead, the king decides to seal her up in the attic since, “it wasn’t necessary to bathe the instrument of death with the same blood with which he had bathed the instrument of life.” Porziella begins to starve, the bird brings a knife to drill into a floor corner, and breach a hole to the kitchen below for the bird to bring food.

Nine months later, Porziella gives birth to a son named Miuccio, she raises in the sealed chamber. Until as a grown boy, he’s surreptitiously lowered down by a rope to the kitchen. The cook discovers the boy who’s employed as the king’s page. The king appears to love the boy more than his own stepson, earning the queen’s enmity. So she hatches a series of schemes designed to bring upon Miuccio’s downfall. First, she leads the king to believe that Miuccio boasted he could build 3 castles hanging in the air. The king commands he do so. At first, Miuccio agonizes. But under the bird’s guidance, he accomplishes his task by building 3 huge cardboard castles that 3 griffins lift into the air the fairy-bird summons. The queen wracks her brain for the next plot. At her instigation, the king orders Miuccio to blind the sorceress so he can get his kingdom back and not be so reduced that he’s served by wretched 4-breadloaf wage menials. Miuccio moans so heavily that the bird sarcastically wonders out loud if her death could cause such grieving. Assuring him of success, the bird flies off into the woods to seek help. Chirping to gather a large flock of birds, she asks if any one of them can put out the sorceress’ eyes, offering a reward to protect against the hawks and other raptors as well as a free-pass “against muskets, bows, crossbows, and “bird-lime of the fowlers.” A swallow volunteers for the task, since she nests in the palace and is irritated by the sorceress’ puffs of magic. Realizing being blinded by the darting bird signifies her demise, the sorceress shriekingly departs the city and escapes to a cave, pounding her head against the wall until she dies.

With the sorceress gone, the king can reclaim his castle. Miuccio arrives simultaneously, and the bird’s prompting, tells the king he wishes to be left to his miserable lot and not be bothered with any more tasks placing him in harm’s way. The king embraces him while the queen fills with rage. She arranges for the Miuccio’s final perilous ordeal, which is to fight a fierce dragon dwelling within the vicinity. Born at the same hour as the queen, and in her own words, is her brother. So their lives are inextricably tied as the death of one means death to the other. And the queen can only be restored to life by smearing the dragon’s blood. So the king orders Miuccio to slay the dragon. Miuccio throws a comical and well-justified tantrum, saying this is no peeled pear ready for eating, but “a dragon, that tears with his claws, breaks to pieces with his head, crushes with his tail, craunches with his teeth, poisons with his eyes, and kills with his breath.” He even garners the courage to ask the king exactly which “son of the Devil” got such ideas into his head. The king shrugs off the insult but stands firm in his demand.

Again, the bird comes to Miuccio’s rescue by bearing a soporific herb in its beak, which when cast into the cave, would put the dragon to sleep. After using the herb to tranquilize the dragon, Miuccio takes a knife and starts nicking and hacking the beast. The queen feels a cutting pain in her heart and with her life slipping away, tells the king that it’s a sign that Miuccio has killed the dragon as astrologers predicted. The king blames the queen for her self-inflicted doom. The queen admits to underestimating Miuccio’s abilities but asks as a final favor to have her entire body anointed with dragon’s blood before she’s buried. The king orders Miuccio to retrieve the blood. But the bird stops him short, saying that it would revive the queen who’s been manipulating the king to give him such ordeals and the king should have long realized the page is his kin, being so naturally drawn by affection for him. The king, who’s tailed Muccio out of curiosity, overhears the conversation, learning that not only is Muccio is his true son but also that his mom Porziella has survived all these 14 years. In his condition, the king offers to forfeit his kingdom and his life to the fairy who protected Muccio and his mom all these years. Now transforming into a beautiful maiden, the fairy only requires taking Muccio as husband for services rendered. The dead queen is tossed into a burial mound. The king marries Poriziella as his new queen.

Other Versions: Bowlderized versions exist by the way.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Well, the king is a serial rapist and murderer who locks one of his victims in an attic for 14 years after failing to kill her. Oh, and did I say the woman locked in the attic ends up marrying the guy in the end because they have a kid together? Not to mention, he gets his kingdom restored and as well as never really experiences any lasting consequences. Also includes child marriage (hello, the kid is like a teenager).
Trivia: N/A

135. The Enchanted Wreath

The Enchanted Wreath is a Scandinavian fairy tale of a young woman who helps 3 miserable-looking doves. They appreciate her help that they make a magic wreath for her.

From: Scandinavia
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Benjamin Thorpe in Yule-Tide Stories: A Collection of Scandinavian and North German Popular Tales and Traditions.
Best Known Version: The Thorpe version obviously.
Synopsis: A man has a wife. Both have a daughter from a previous marriage. One day, the man takes his daughter to cut wood. When he returns, he realizes he forgot his ax. He tells his wife to send her daughter for it so it won’t get rusty. But the stepmother replies that his daughter’s already wet and is such a strong girl she could take a little wet and cold. Back on the spot, the girl finds 3 miserable-looking doves perched on the ax. She tells them to fly back home, where it would be warmer, but not before giving them crumbs from her bread. She takes the ax and leaves. Eating the crumbs makes the birds much better that they lay a wreath of roses on the girl’s head with tiny birds singing in it. When the stepmother pulls it off, the birds fly off and the roses wither. The next day, the dad goes alone and forgets his ax again. Delighted, the stepmother sends her own daughter. She finds the doves and orders them off as “dirty creatures.” They curse her so she could never say anything but that. The stepmother beats her stepdaughter and gets even angrier when the doves restore the wreath to its condition on the girl’s head.

On a ship to marry the prince, the girl’s stepmother pushes her off the boat and has her daughter take her place. Luckily, the prince sees through this scheme.

One day, a prince sees the girl and takes her off to marry her. The news makes the stepmother and stepdaughter quite ill. But they recover when the stepmother makes a plan. She has a witch make a mask of her stepdaughter’s face. Then she visits the princess bride, puts her in the water, and puts her daughter in her place, before setting out if the same witch could give her something to cure the doves’ curse on the girl. Her husband’s distraught by the change in her, but thinks it stems from an illness. Until he thinks he sees his bride in water, but she vanishes. He sees her twice more before catching her. She turns into various animals including a hare, a fish, a bird, and a snake. He cuts off the snake’s head and the bride becomes human again. The stepmother returns with the ointment that would work only if the princess really drowned. She puts it on her daughter’s tongue and it doesn’t do a thing. The prince finds them and declares they deserve to die. But the stepdaughter persuades them to merely abandon them on a deserted island instead.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Orange Fairy Book.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not exactly sure why.
Trivia: N/A

136. Maiden Bright-Eye

Maiden Bright-Eye is a Danish fairy tale of a young woman who helps out a dwarf. And she’s richly rewarded for it, too.

From: Denmark
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Andrew Lang in his The Pink Fairy Book.
Best Known Version: The Lang version, naturally.
Synopsis: A man has a son and a daughter, the latter named Maiden Bright-Eye. His wife dies and he marries another woman who’s got a daughter of her own. The stepmother is cruel to Bright-Eye. One day, she sends her stepdaughter to watch the sheep and pull heather. For dinner, the stepmother packs Maiden Bright-Eye pancakes with an ash-mixed flour. Maiden Bright-Eye pulls some heather and a little guy in a red cap appears from the ground to ask why she’s pulling the roof of his house. She apologizes and shares her dinner with him. For her kindness, he bestows her gifts of magic: she grows much more beautiful, a gold coin falls from her mouth when she opens it, after which her voice sounds like music, and he promises she’ll marry a young king. He also gives her a cap that can save her life when she puts it on. Maiden Bright-Eye tells her stepmother about meeting the little man, but not about sharing her dinner. The stepmother sends her daughter who’s rude to the little guy who gives her ugliness, causes a toad to fall from her mouth when she opens it, and promises a violent death.

Meanwhile the son enters the king’s service. Hearing tales of Maiden Bright-Eye’s beauty, the king asks her brother if these stories are true and has them confirmed. So he decides to marry the girl and sends a ship to fetch her. But the stepmother gives her daughter a mask and sends her off on the ship with her stepchildren. While the ship’s still sailing, her daughter pushes Maiden Bright-Eye overboard and pretends to be her stepsister for the king. But Maiden Bright-Eye puts on the cap and transforms into a duck so she could swim. The king marries the stepmother’s daughter but then sees her unmasked ugly face. So he throws Maiden Bright-Eye’s brother into a pit of snakes for lying about the girl’s beauty. As a duck, Maiden Bright-Eye swims to the king’s castle, waddles up the kitchen drain, and meets a little dog. She asks it after her brother and stepsister and it tells her their fates. She then announces she’ll only come twice more. Serving maids hear the talking duck and tell others. The next night a great number come to listen. The duck asks her questions again, says she’ll come once more, and escapes. The third night, a cook puts a net outside the drain and catches the duck. Since she has many gold feathers, they take good care of her.

The brother dreams that his sister has come to the castle as a duck and can change back. He tells someone and word gets back to the king. The king asks if he could produce his real sister, the pretty one. He says he can if someone produces a knife and the duck. He cuts the duck when they do and Maiden Bright-Eye regains her own form. The stepsister is put in a barrel with spikes around it and is dragged by horses. The king marries Maiden Bright-Eye.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Probably the fact the stepsister gets put in a barrel with spikes and gets dragged by horses.
Trivia: N/A

137. Frau Holle

The Grimm fairy tale Frau Holle revolves around a girl who falls through a well and does chores for this old magical woman. Frau Holle specifically instructs the girl to shake the feather pillows and coverlets.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers. Originated in Central Germany in what’s now known as Hesse, possibly from pre-Christian Germanic mythology since Frau Holle may have originally been a goddess named Hulda. Told by Henrietta Dorothea Wild who’s Wilhem Grimm’s wife.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, obviously.
Synopsis: A rich widow lives with her daughter and stepdaughter. Since she favors her younger biological daughter, she allows the girl to become spoiled and lazy. While the older stepdaughter has to do all the work and every day, she’d sit outside the cottage and spin beside the well. One day, she pricks her finger on the spindle point. Leaning over the well to wash the blood away, the spindle falls from her hand and sinks out of sight. Fearing she’d be punished for losing it, the panicky stepdaughter jumps into the well after it. But instead of drowning or getting stuck in it, the girl finds herself in a meadow where she comes upon an oven full of bread asking her to take it out before it burns. She then comes to an apple tree asking her to harvest its fruit. Finally, she arrives to a small cottage where an old woman lives, who allows the girl to stay if she helps with the housework. Identifying herself as Frau Holle, she cautions the girl to shake the featherbed pillows and coverlet well when she makes the bed, since that would make it snow in the girl’ world. The girl agrees and takes care to always shake the featherbed until the feather flew about like snowflakes.

It’s said that when it snows in Hesse, Frau Holle’s making her bed. Though I attribute this to freezing temperatures and the water cycle.

After a time, the girl becomes homesick and tells Frau Holle that it’s time she return home. Impressed by her kindness and hard work so much, a golden shower falls upon the girl when the old woman escorts her to the gate. She also gives the girl the spindle that fell into the well. With that, the gate closes and the girl finds herself back, not far from her stepmom’s house. Since the stepmother wishes the same good fortune on her biological daughter, she sends her to sit by the well and spin. But the girl deliberately throws the spindle into the well before jumping in herself. She comes to the oven but wouldn’t assist the bread nor would she help the apple tree. When she arrives at Frau Holle’s house, she also takes service there but before long, she falls into her lazy careless ways. Frau Holle soon dismisses her. As the lazy girl stands at the gate, a kettle of tar spills all over her. Frau Holle says, “This is what you have earned” and closes the gate.

Other Versions: Some versions have the first girl have a piece of gold fall from her mouth every time she speaks while the second has a toad.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: The golden shower reference might lead to a lot of misinterpretations despite that it’s gold raining on the girl, not pee. Also, the fact the second girl gets tar poured on her. Still, the title character is well remembered in Germany as a durable legendary figure from Pre-Christian times.
Trivia: It’s often said in Hesse that when it snows, Frau Holle must be making her bed.

138. The Fairies

The Fairies is a French fairy tale of a girl who helps an old woman at the well. The woman turns out to be a fairy and richly rewards her for her good deeds.

From: France
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Charles Perrault.
Best Known Version: Perhaps the Andrew Lang version in The Pink Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A bad-tempered old widow has 2 daughters. Older daughter Fanny is disagreeable and proud. But she looks and behaves like her mom so she’s the favorite. Younger daughter Rose is sweet, gentle, and beautiful but resembles her late dad. Jealous and bitter, the widow and her favorite daughter abuse and mistreat the younger girl. While drawing water from the well one day, an old woman asks Rose for a drink of water, which she politely consents. After giving it, Rose finds out that woman’s actually a fairy who disguises herself as an old crone to test mortals’ moral character (think of the enchantress from Beauty and the Beast who cursed the Beast and turned his staff into anthropomorphic household objects). Since Rose was so kind and compassionate toward her, the fairy blesses her with having a jewel, flower, or precious metal fall from her mouth whenever she speaks.

When the girl returns home, her mouth is spouting with jewels, precious metals, and flowers. She tells her mom about it and she sends her older sister on the same task.

Upon Rose arriving home and explaining why it took so long, the widow’s delighted at the sight of precious metals, jewels, and flowers falling from her younger daughter’s lips. But she desires her favored older daughter Fanny should have these gifts as well. Fanny protests, but the widow forcibly sends her to the well with instructions to act kindly toward an old beggar woman. Fanny sets off but the fairy appears to her as a fine princess and requests the girl draw her a drink from the well. Fanny is rude and insults the fairy. As a result, the fairy decrees that as punishment for her despicable attitude, either a toad or snake would fall from Fanny’s mouth whenever she speaks. When Fanny arrives home, she tells her story to her mom and disgusting toads and vipers fall from her mouth with each word. Furious, the widow drives her younger daughter out of the house. Fortunately, Rose meets a prince who falls in love with her and marries her. Meanwhile, the widow gets sickened by Fanny and eventually drives her out so she dies alone and miserable in the woods.

Instead of an old lady, the older sister meets a princess asking for water. The girl tells the woman to hit the bricks and gets cursed.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: I’m not sure why.
Trivia: Also titled, “Diamonds and Toads.”

139. The Three Heads in the Well

The Three Heads in the Well is an English fairy tale of a young woman who finds 3 golden heads in the well and does whatever they ask her. She is richly rewarded.

From: England
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Joseph Jacobs in his English Fairy Tales.
Best Known Version: The Jacobs version, naturally.
Synopsis: In the days before King Arthur, a king holds court in Colchester. He has a beautiful wife and a beautiful daughter. Unfortunately, his wife dies and he’s broke so he marries a rich hideous widow with a daughter of her own. His new wife sets him against his daughter. So his daughter begs to leave to go and seek her fortune, which the king permits. And his wife gives her brown bread, hard cheese, and a bottle of bear. She goes on her way and sees an old man sitting on a stone. He asks what she has. She tells him and offers him some. After they eat, he tells her how to get through the hedge and she’ll find 3 golden heads in a well there and should do whatever they tell her. The heads ask her to comb and wash them. After the girl does so, one says she shall be beautiful, the next says she’ll have a sweet voice, and the last proclaims that she’ll be fortunate and queen to the greatest prince who reigns. She goes on. A king sees her and falls in love with her. They marry and go back to visit her dad. He stepmother is furious that her stepdaughter and not her daughter. So she sends the girl on the same journey with rich dresses, sugar, almonds, sweetmeats, and a bottle of rich wine. But the daughter’s rude to the old man and slights the 3 heads. So they curse her with leprosy, a harsh voice, and marriage to a cobbler. She goes on. A cobbler offers to cure her leprosy and harsh voice if she marries him and she agrees. However, when her mom finds this out, she hangs herself. While the king pays off the cobbler to quit the court and live elsewhere.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Possibly because it features suicide.
Trivia: N/A

140. The Two Caskets

The Two Caskets has a girl transported to a magical world where she works for an old lady for a certain amount of time. At the end of her service she gets a modest casket with treasure to behold. Hers stepsister, on the other hand isn’t so lucky.

From: Scandinavia
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Benjamin Thorpe in his Yule-Tide Stories: A Collection of Scandinavian and North German Popular Tales and Traditions.
Best Known Version: Probably the Andrew Lang translation in The Orange Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A woman has a daughter and a stepdaughter. One day, she sets them to spin while sitting at a well’s edge, giving her daughter good flax and the stepdaughter coarse, unusable flax. She then declares that whoever’s thread breaks first would be thrown in. When the stepdaughter’s thread breaks, her stepmother throws her in. The girl falls to a wonderful land. She walks on and comes to a tumble-down fence, overgrown with vines. It pleads her not to hurt it, because it doesn’t have long to live. So she carefully jumps over it where there are less vines. She then finds an oven full of loaves and tells her to eat what she’d like but begs her not to hurt it. She eats a loaf, thanks it for such fine bread, and shuts its door. The girl next comes to a cow with a bucket on its horns saying she could milk it and drink but asks her not to hurt it or spill its milk. She agrees and when the last drop of milk is left, the cow tells her to throw it over its hooves and hang the bucket back up. She comes to a house. An old woman asks her to comb her hair. When she does, the old lady shows her a farm where she could take service. She takes good care of the cows, gives milk to the cats, and when she sieves corn, she gives some to the birds.

Here the girl tends an old lady’s farm. And it seems the animals all gather in her goodness.

One day, the girl’s mistress summons her and tells her to fill a sieve full of water and bring it back. The birds tell her to use ashes to stop up the holes. Another day, she has to wash some black yarn until it turns white and some white yarn until it turns black. Then the girl’s mistress has her weave them into a robe as smooth as a king’s by sunset. But the skeins tangle and break every moment. Fortunately, the cats weave it on her behalf. Later, the girl wants to leave and go home. Her mistress sends her to the attic and tells her to take whatever casket she’d like. She considers many beautiful ones. But the cats direct her to a black one, so she takes it and goes home. Her stepmother takes her wages but the casket is filled with marvelous treasures. The stepmother puts her own daughter at the well’s edge, to spin with the coarse stuff, and throws her down in the well when it breaks. The daughter proceeds as her sisters had but is rude to everyone at the wall and works very poorly on the farm, including on the three tasks her stepsister had done. At the end of the year, she goes on her way with a large red casket. But when the girl opens it at home, fire bursts out, burning her and her mom to death.

When her time with the old lady was up, she had her choice of casket. The girl chooses the modest one.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Well, it involves 2 people being burned to death after one opens a box.
Trivia: N/A

In fairy tales, you’re bound to come across some magical creatures. Some may be benevolent talking animals like birds, foxes, and what not. Some may be cursed princes and princesses who don’t appear as ideal mates (because most of us aren’t into bestiality). Some may be creatures. And if they’re dragons, ogres, or giants, they’re antagonists who want to kill or eat you. Anyway, in this installment, I give you another 10 forgotten fairy tales. First, we have a Russian tale about a bold knight, apples of youth, and water of life. Second, are 3 Grimm stories about a lamb and fish, a glass coffin, and a golden bird. Third, we come to a Finnish tale of a magic birch tree. Then, we come to a Romanian story of a golden stag followed by a Norwegian tale about a bushy bride, an Irish Cinderella story, a savvy French princess, and an Estonian story of a princess coming from an egg.

121. The Bold Knight, the Apples of Youth, and the Water of Life

The Bold Knight, the Apples of Youth, and the Water of Life is a Russian fairy tale about a prince sets out to find apples that can restore youth and water that can restore one’s eyesight. Let’s just say it’s a bumpy ride.

From: Russia
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki.
Best Known Version: The Afanasyev version, obviously.
Synopsis: An old king with failing sight hears of a garden with apples that could restore youth and water that could restore his eyesight. His oldest son sets out and comes to a pillar saying that on one road, his horse would be full but he’d go hungry, on the second he’ll lose his life, and on the third, he’d be full but his horse hungry. He takes the third and comes to a house where a widow welcomes him and offers him to spend the night with her daughter Dunia. He accepts and Dunia makes him fall into the cellar. The second son sets out and meets the same fate. Finally, despite his dad’s reluctance, the youngest son sets out. Though widow gives him the same offer, but says he must freshen up at the bath house first. Dunia leads him to it. The young prince beats her until she reveals his brothers. He frees them but the men are ashamed to return home. The youngest prince rides on and finds a pretty maiden weaving. She can’t direct him to the garden but sends him to her second sister instead. The second sister asks to leave his horse with her and send him to the third sister with a 2-winged horse. The third sister gives the prince a 4-winged horse and tells him to ensure that it jumps over the garden’s wall in a single bound or it makes bells ring and wake the witch guarding it. He tries obeying her, but the horse’s hoof just grazes the wall despite the sound being too soft to wake the witch. But in the morning, she chases after the prince on her 6-winged horse, only catching him when he’s near his own land and didn’t fear her. She curses him, saying nothing will save him from his brothers.

The prince finds his brothers sleeping and naps by them. They steal his apples and throw him over a cliff, falling to a dark kingdom. There, a dragon demands a beautiful maiden every year. This year, the lot falls on the princess. The knight says he’d save her if the king promises to do as he asks. The king not only agrees but also offers to marry him to the princess as well. They go where the dragon’s approaching and he falls asleep, telling the princess to wake him. The dragon arrives, she can’t wake the knight and begins to cry. A tear falls on his face waking him. He cuts off the dragon’s heads, puts them under a rock, and throws his body in the sea. Unfortunately, another man sneaks up behind the knight and cuts off his head and threatens to kill the princess if she didn’t say he killed the dragon. The king arranges the marriage, but the princess goes to sea with the fishermen. Each time they catch a fish, she has them throw it back. But finally, their nets catch the knight’s body and head, which she puts together with the water of life. He comforts her and sends her home, assuring he’ll come and make her situation right. When he comes to the king, he asks whether the alleged dragon slayer could find the dragon’s heads. The impostor can’t but the knight could. The knight then asks if he could return to his own country, not to marry the princess, but she doesn’t want to leave his side. She knows of a spoonbill that could carry them, as long as you feed it. They go off with a full ox but it wasn’t enough so the princess has to cut off part of her thigh. The bird carries them all the way and even comments on the last meat’s sweetness. She shows what she’s done and the bird spits the piece right out. The knight uses the water of life to restore the princess’ thigh. He goes back to his dad and tells him what his brothers have done. The brothers jump in a river while the knight marries the princess.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: The fact the widow procures her daughter to visiting young men might have something to do with it. Also, a male protagonist uses Jack Bauer interrogation techniques on that daughter. Not to mention, features a lot of decapitation, some body mutilation, and suicide.
Trivia: N/A

122. The Lambkin and the Little Fish

The Grimms’ fairy tale, The Lambkin and the Little Fish is about a stepmother who turns her stepkids into these animals and tries to serve them for dinner. And no, I’m not making this up.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, naturally.
Synopsis: A brother and sister have a stepmother who hates them. One day, they’re playing a counting-out game by a pool. Their stepmother turns the boy into a fish and the girl into a lamb. The guests come. The stepmother orders the cook to serve the lamb. The lamb and fish lament their fates to each other. The cook serves another animal and gives the lamb to the girl’s former nurse. Suspecting who the lamb is, she brings it to a wise woman who pronounces a blessing over the lamb and fish restoring their human forms. She then gives them a hut in the woods where the kids live happily ever after.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: The kids are turned into a fish and lamb with the lamb on the menu.
Trivia: N/A

123. The Wonderful Birch

The Wonderful Birch is a Finnish and Russian fairy tale that pretty much runs like Cinderella. Except that the girl’s fairy godmother is a tree.

From: Finland and Russia
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Andrew Lang in The Red Fairy Book. It’s a Russian version of Cinderella with shapeshifting. Also, it has a magic tree instead of a fairy godmother while the wicked stepmother is a real witch.
Best Known Version: The Lang version, of course.
Synopsis: A peasant woman meets a witch who threatens to transform her if she does something. She doesn’t do it but gets turned into a sheep anyway. The witch then assumes the peasant woman’s form and returns to her husband. After a time, she him a daughter she pampers while mistreating her stepdaughter by the peasant’s sheep-wife. The witch-stepmother orders her husband to slaughter the sheep before it runs away. He agrees, but the stepdaughter runs to the sheep crying. Her mom tells her not to eat anything from her body and bury her bones. She does and a birch tree grows on the grave. One day, a king gives a festival inviting everyone. The witch sends off her husband with her younger daughter, throws a potful of barleycorns in the hearth, and tells the older stepdaughter that if she doesn’t pick the barleycorns from ashes, it’ll be worse for her. The birch tells her to strike the hearth with one of her branches which sorts them, and then magically bathes and dresses her. It then tells her to go to the fields and whistle, for a horse, partly gold, partly silver, and the third partly something more precious will appear to take her to the castle. The girl then goes to the festival. The prince falls in love with her and has her sit beside him. But the witch’s daughter gnaws bones under the table. Thinking she’s a dog, the prince gives her such a kick, breaking her arm. He has the door latch smeared with tar, which catches the stepdaughter’s copper ring when she leaves. When the witch returns home, she tells her stepdaughter that the prince has fallen in love with her daughter and carries her about, only he had dropped her and broke her arm.

Whenever the king holds a great event, the witch stepmother pretties up her own daughter. And in the meantime, she gives the stepdaughter a chore to keep her busy so she won’t come.

The king holds another festival. The witch tries keeping her stepdaughter busy by throwing hemp-seed on the hearth. But with the birch’s aid, the stepdaughter goes to the festival as before. This time, the prince breaks the witch daughter’s leg. Again, he has the doorpost smeared with tar catching the stepdaughter’s silver circlet. The king holds a third festival. The witch tries keeping the stepdaughter busy by throwing milk on the hearth. But with the birch’s aid, the stepdaughter goes to the festival as before. This time, the prince kicks out the witch daughter’s eye. One again, he has the doorpost smeared with tar, catching one of the stepdaughter’s gold slippers. With the ring, circlet, and slipper, the prince sets out to discover who the maiden is. When he’s about to try them on the stepdaughter, the witch intervenes and gets them on her daughter. The prince takes both the daughter and stepdaughter. When they come to the river, the stepdaughter whispers to the prince not to rob her of her silver and gold. He throws the witch’s daughter over the river to serve as a bridge. The prince and the stepdaughter cross it and he takes her for his bride. They next visit the magical birch tree and receive treasures and gifts. While stretching as a bridge in her grief, the younger sister wishes that a hollow stalk grow out of her navel so her mom would recognize her. Immediately, a golden stalk grows out of the bridge.

In time, the older stepsister gives birth to a son while the prince’s dad dies. Hearing of this and believing the princess is her daughter, the witch goes to the castle. But on the way, she sees a golden stalk and is about to cut it until her daughter cries out not to cut out her navel and that she’s a bridge. The witch hurries to the castle and turns the older stepdaughter into a reindeer while her daughter replaces her. An old woman tells the young king that his wife’s in the forest in the shape of a reindeer and that the woman beside him is the witch’s daughter he once abused. He asks how he could get her back. The widow tells him to take their son into the forest. When she goes for the child, the witch objects. But the king insists on the widow taking the baby. In the forest, the widow sings to the reindeer, which comes and suckles the child and tells the woman to bring it again the next day. The next day, the witch objects again, but the widow takes the kid to the reindeer as before. The child becomes quite cute and his dad asks the widow if it’s possible for his wife could regain her human shape. Though she doesn’t know, the widow tells him to go into the forest and when the reindeer throws off her skin, he’s to burn it while she’s searching for his wife’s head. All this is done and the reindeer assumes her human form. But not wanting to appear naked, he turns into a spinning wheel, a washing-vat, and spindle. Her husband destroys all of it until she becomes human again. On their return to the castle, the king orders a huge fire made under a bath with tar and its approached covered with brown and blue cloth. He then invites the witch’s daughter to take a bath. She and her mom, in stepping over the cloth, fall a depth of 3 fathoms into the fire and tar to their death with the witch cursing all mankind.

Other Versions: In the Lang version, after the stepdaughter returns to human form and after being asked that she won’t be eaten up, the witch and her daughter run away and grow to a ripe old age if they didn’t stop. The prince, the older stepdaughter, and their son live happily ever after.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Let’s just say the prince doesn’t treat the witch’s daughter very well at all. Also, the prince lures the witch and her daughter into fire and tar pit where they suffer a most horrifying death.
Trivia: N/A

124. The Golden Stag
From: Romania
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Petre Ispirescu in Legende sau basmele românilor.
Best Known Version: The Ispirescu version naturally.
Synopsis: An old woman tells her husband to lose the kids from his first marriage, a son and a daughter. The first time, the boy’s playing in the ashes and the children come back. But the old man succeeds the second time. They can’t find water anywhere until they come to fox tracks where water’s welling. But the sister warns her brother that drinking it will turn him into a fox. At the bear’s tracks, she warns him again. And though she warns him once more at the stag’s tracks, the brother is too thirsty and drinks. He turns into a golden stag and carries off his sister in cradle in his antlers, makes a nest for her up a tree where she grows up. One day, a prince sees her and falls in love and promises a fortune to whoever wooed that girl for him. An old woman sees the golden stag and doesn’t know how to address it. So she lures the girl down by pretending to be foolish with her cook fire and carries her off to the prince. When the stag follows, the sister claims he’s her brother and the prince gives him a fine stable with plenty to eat. Everyone’s happy except a gypsy girl who had previously been the prince’s favorite. She lures the sister into the forest where she falls asleep before dressing up as the prince’s wife and disguising her face. But the stag’s not fooled. The prince and his followers retrieve the girl and has the gypsy girl stoned to death.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why. Perhaps the bad depiction of a gypsy and her being stoned to death.
Trivia: N/A

125. The Glass Coffin

The Glass Coffin is a Grimm fairy tale about a tailor’s apprentice who stumbles upon a castle. He finds a princess encased in a glass coffin who want him to free her.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, of course.
Synopsis: A tailor’s apprentice becomes lost in a forest. When night falls, he sees a shining light and follows it to a hut. An old man lives there, and after the tailor begs, allows him to stay for the night. The next morning, the tailor wakes up and witnesses a fight between a great stag and a bull. After the stag wins, it bounds up to him and carries him off in its antlers before setting him down near a stone wall and pushing him against a door within it, which opens. Inside the door, he’s told to stand on a stone which would bring him good fortune. He does and it sinks down into a great hall, where a voice directs him to a glass chest containing a beautiful maiden asking him to open it and free her, which he does. The maiden then tells her story. A daughter of a rich count, she was raised by her brother after her parents died. One day, a traveler stays over and tries using his magic to get her in the night and asks her to marry him. But she finds his magical ways repellent and rejects him. In revenge, the magician turns her brother into a stag, imprisons her in a coffin, and enchants all the lands around them. The tailor and the maiden emerge from the enchanted hall and find that the stag has been transformed back into her brother. The bull he had killed had been the magician. The tailor and the maiden marry.

Here the tailor enters the mysterious castle. And it seems he comes across the woman right away. But unlike in Snow White, the girl is totally conscious.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Green Fairy Book as The Crystal Coffin.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

126. The Golden Bird

The Golden Bird is a Grimm fairy tale pertains to a gardener’s son trying to catch a golden bird for the king. He’s aided by a fox but doesn’t seem to take adequate direction from him.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, naturally.
Synopsis: Every year, a king’s apple tree is robbed of one golden apple during the night. He sets his gardener’s sons to watch. The first 2 fall asleep but youngest sees that the thief is a golden bird. He tries shooting it, but knocks a feather off. The feather is so valuable that the king declares he must have it. He sends the gardener’s sons to capture the priceless golden bird. They each meet a talking fox who gives them advice for their quest: to choose the bad inn over a brightly lit and merry one. The first 2 sons ignore the advice, and in the pleasant in, they abandon their quest. But the third son obeys the fox who advises him to take the bird in its wooden cage from the castle where it lives, instead of putting it into the golden cage next to it. But he disobeys and the golden bird rouses the castle, resulting in his capture. He’s sent after a golden horse as a condition for sparing his life. The fox advises him to use the leather saddle over a golden one, but he fails again. He’s then sent after the princess in the golden castle. The fox advises him not to let her say goodbye to her parents, but the gardener’s son fails. And her dad orders him to remove a hill as the price of his life.

Over the course of the story, the gardener’s son obtains the golden bird, a horse, and a princess at the fox’s guidance. But he pays a steep price freeing his brothers from the gallows since they stab him in the back

The fox removes it. Then, as they set out, he advises the new prince how to keep all the things he’s won. It then asks the prince to shoot it and cut off its head. When the prince refuses, it warns against buying gallows’ flesh and sitting on the edge of rivers. Later, he finds that his carousing and sinful brothers are to be hanged on the gallows and he buys their liberty. When they find out what he’s done, the push him in the water while he’s sitting on the river’s edge. Next, they take his things and the princess and take them to their dad. However, the bird, the horse, and the princess all grieve for the youngest son so the fox rescues him. When he returns to his dad’s castle dressed in beggar clothes, the bird, the horse, and the princess all recognize him as the man who won them. His brothers are put to death and he marries the princess. Finally, the third son cuts off the fox’s head and feet at its request. He’s revealed to be a man, the princess’ brother.

Here we see the golden bird take a golden apple. And the king wants it badly.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Green Fairy Book. Has a French version collected by Paul Sébillot as The Golden Blackbird and a French-Canadian version collected by Marius Barbeau as The Golden Phoenix.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why. Maybe because it treats the princess as a prize to be won for some reason.
Trivia: N/A

127. Bushy Bride

In the Norwegian Bushy Bride, a girl washes 3 heads from the well and receives a fortune. But her stepsister who’s rude to them and is turned ugly.

From: Norway
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Asbjørnsen and Moe.
Best Known Version: The Asbjørnsen and Moe version, obviously.
Synopsis: A widower with a son and daughter marries a widow with a daughter. The stepmother mistreats the kids until the boy leaves home. One day, the stepmother sends the stepdaughter to the pool for water, 3 heads pop up to demand, in turn, that she wash, brush, and kiss them. When she does this, they talk among themselves and decree that she would be the most beautiful woman in the world, while gold would drop from her hair when she brushes it and from her mouth while she speaks. When the stepsister sees this, she wants to go as well. But she’s rude to the 3 heads and they decree that her nose will be 4 ells long, she would sport snout 3 ells long and a pine bush from her forehead, and ashes would drop as she speaks. Meanwhile, the stepson works as a groom for the king. Every day, he takes out a picture of his sister and prays for her. The other grooms tell the king who insists on seeing and declaring that no woman could be so beautiful and resolves to marry her. The brother comes to fetch her. The stepmother and her daughter come as well. At sea, her brother calls down as the journey goes on, and the stepmother persuades the sister to throw overboard the casket and a dog her mom had left her before jumping in herself.

Here the girl combs her hair to let the coins out to prove she’s the king’s intended bride. And there’s even a dog to catch some of them.

Not surprisingly, the king is outraged by the sight of the stepsister, thinking she was his promised bride. Though he keeps his word and marry her, he throws the brother into a snake pit. At the same time, a lovely woman comes into the kitchen who produces gold every time she brushes her hair and sings of the Bushy Bride’s wickedness. And she says she’ll come twice more. A kitchen maid tells the king, but the Bushy Bride sings him to sleep the next night. On the third night, he sends 2 men to keep him awake but they can’t do so. When the woman turns to leave, saying she’ll never come again, they put a knife in his hand and guide it to cut her finger. This frees her and wakes the king who takes her brother from the snake pit virtually unscathed and throws in the stepmother and the Bushy Bride. He then marries the true bride.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Guess throwing people in a snake pit might have something to do with it.
Trivia: N/A

128. Fair, Brown, and Trembling

The Irish fairy tale, Fair, Brown, and Trembling revolves around 3 princesses. Here we have Trembling show up at the church to catch a neighboring prince’s eye.

From: Ireland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Jeremiah Curtain in Myths and Folklore of Ireland and Joseph Jacobs in Celtic Fairy Tales. Basically, Irish Cinderella.
Best Known Version: Guess the Jacobs version.
Synopsis: King Hugh Cùrucha has 3 daughters: Fair, Brown, and Trembling. Since Trembling is the prettiest, her older sisters make her stay home, for fear she would marry before them. After 7 years, the son of the king of Emania falls in love with Fair. A henwife tells trembling that she go to church. When she objects on account of having no suitable dress, the henwife gives her one, a horse, a honey-finger, and a honey-bird and tells her to leave as soon as Mass is done. She obeys and gets away before any man comes near her. After 2 more times, the son of the king of Emania forgets about Fair for the woman who comes to church and runs after her, managing to get her shoe when she rides off. The prince looks for the woman whose foot the shoe fits. Although the other king’s sons warn him that he’d have to fight for her. They search all over and when they come to the house, they insist on trying Trembling as well. The prince at once says that she’s the woman. Trembling goes off and reappears in her church clothes and everyone else agrees. The other princes fight for her, but the hero prince defeats them all while the Irish king’s son declare that they won’t fight one of their own. The prince and Trembling marry and have a son. Her husband sends for Fair to help her. One day, when they walk along the seashore, Fair pushes Trembling in. A whale swallows her and Fair passes herself off as her sister. But the prince puts a sword in bed between them, declaring if she was his wife, it would grow warm. If not, it would grow cold. In the morning, it’s cold.

When Fair comes to visit, she pushes Trembling into the sea. Thankfully, Trempling gets swallowed by a whale and spat out on the shore.

A cowherd witnesses Fair push Trembling and sees the whale swallow her. The next day, he sees the whale spit her back up. She tells him that the whale would swallow and spit her out 3 times and she can’t leave the beach. Unless her husband rescues her by shooting the whale in a spot on its back, she wouldn’t go free. Her sister gives the cowherd that makes him forget the first time, but on the second, he tells the prince. The prince shoots the whale. They send word to her dad who says they can execute Fair if they want to. They tell him he can do as he pleased. So the king abandons the oldest sister on the sea in a barrel, with provisions. Their next child is a daughter who they marry off to the cowherd.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Perhaps leaving someone in a barrel at sea has something to do with it.
Trivia: N/A

129. Finette Cendron

The French fairy tale Finette Cendron is about a princess who’s a cross between Cinderella and Arya Stark. I mean she kills 2 ogres and goes to a fancy dress ball.

From: France
Earliest Appearance: Written by Madame d’Aulnoy. It’s basically Cinderella meets Game of Thrones.
Best Known Version: Well, the d’Aulnoy version, of course.
Synopsis: A king and queen lose their kingdom and have to sell everything they bring with them until they are poor. The queen resolves to make nets with which the king can use to catch birds and fish to support themselves. As for the 3 daughters, they’re useless. So the king should take them somewhere and leave them. The youngest, Finette, hears this and goes to her fairy godmother. She gets tired on the way and sits down to cry. A jennet appears before her and she begs it to carry her to her fairy godmother who gives her a ball of thread that, if she tie it to the house door, would lead her back and a bag of gold and silver dresses.

Here Finette and her sisters encounter an ogress at the castle. Looks more like Count Dracula than ogre Fiona from Shrek.

The next day, their mom leads them off and urges them to sleep in the meadow. Then she leaves. Though her sisters treat her like shit, Finette wakes them. The sisters promise her many things if she would lead them and they make their way back. The mom pretends she left to get something else. The sisters blame Finette, give her nothing they promised, and beat her. The queen resolves to lead them away even further so Finette visits her fairy godmother again, who instructs her to bring a sack of ashes and use it to make footprints. But she shouldn’t bring her sisters back and would never see her fairy godmother again if she does. The queen leads them off. The older sisters bewail their fate and Finette pities them. The king and queen plot a third time. The middle sister suggests they should create a trail of peas. But Finette brings her jewelry and clothing instead. When the queen abandons them, the pigeons eat the peas and they can’t go home again. Finette finds an acorn and refuses to let them eat it. Instead, they plant it. They eat cabbage and lettuce. The acorn grows into a tree which Finette climbs it. One day, her sisters look into her bag and find her jewelry, which they steal and put stones in their place. After this, Finette eventually sees a dazzling castle from a tree. Her sisters steal her jewelry and clothes which they replace with rags when they go to it. A hideous old woman tells them it’s an ogre’s castle and that she’ll let them live a few days. They try to flee but she catches them. The ogre returns and she hides them so she could eat the girls herself. He smells them and she persuades him to keep them and look after the castle so she could devour the sisters while he’s gone. While they’re at work, Finette tricks the ogre into an oven and burns him into cinders. She then persuades the ogress that if she let them dress and do their hair, she’d soon find a noble husband. While doing her own hair, she cuts off the ogre’s head.

Here is Finette with her sisters. She does all the work. Her sisters treat her like crap despite it.

The older sisters dress themselves in the castle’s treasures so they could find husbands, go off and show themselves off in the nearest town, and threaten to beat Finette if she doesn’t keep the castle perfect. They return with tales of dancing with a prince and keep going and leaving her behind. One day, Finette finds an old key that proves gold that opens a chest full of beautiful clothes. When the sisters leave, she dresses herself and follows them to the ball, calling herself Cendron and everyone pays court to her. This goes on for many days while the chest always produces new clothes. But once day, Finette leaves in a hurry since she had to get back to her sisters, leaving behind a red velvet slipper embroidered with pearls. The king’s oldest son finds it and falls ill and no doctor can cure him. Because he had fallen in love whose shoe it was. So they order all the women to appear and try it on. Her sisters go but Finette doesn’t know the way. She dresses herself and finds a jennet at her door again. She rides past her ungrateful sisters, splashing them with mud. When she puts on the slipper, the prince wants to marry her. But Finette insists the king (who conquered her parents’ kingdom) restore he parents’ former domain to them first. He agrees. She marries off her sisters and sends them back to the jennet with gifts for her fairy godmother.

Once the ogres are gone, Finette and her sisters move into the castle. But Finette gets stuck with doing all the chores.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Finette burning one ogre and decapitating another sure won’t earn a place among the Disney Princess canon. Game of Thrones, maybe.
Trivia: N/A

130. The Child Who Came From an Egg

The Estonian fairy tale, the Child Who Came from an Egg revolves around a princess named Dotterine. Hatched from an egg, she finds herself displaced after her mother dies and a war descends upon her dad’s kingdom.

From: Estonia
Earliest Appearance: Collected by collected by Dr. Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald in Eestirahwa Ennemuistesed jutud.
Best Known Version: The one in Andrew Lang’s The Violet Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A queen tells an old woman 2 griefs. First, her husband is at war. Second, they don’t have any kids. She gives her a basket with an egg and instructs the queen to put it some place warm. 3 months later, it would and let out a doll, which the queen is supposed to leave alone and it would become a baby girl. She’d even have a baby of her own, and she is supposed to put the girl with him and show them to the king. After that, the queen could raise her son by herself but entrust a daughter to a nurse. Furthermore, she must invite the old woman to the christening by throwing a wild goose feather up in the air. The queen obeys exactly. When the baptism arrives, a dazzlingly beautiful woman comes in a cream-colored carriage, and is dressed like the sun who decrees that the girl be named Dotterine. The kids grow up. Dotterine’s nurse loves her, but knows that a beautiful woman leans over her. She confides this to the queen and they decide to keep it secret. Unfortunately, when the twins are 2, the queen takes ill, confides the basket to the nurse for when Dotterine is 10, and dies.

Due to his ambition, the king remarries and his new wife hates the twins. One day, the stepmother beats Dotterine that she runs away to cry. She discovers a basket. Thinking she might find something that might amuse her, she only finds a feather that she throws out the window. A beautiful woman appears and reveals herself as the girl’s godmother. She talks to Dotterine, tells her how to use the basket to feed herself, and says that she only needs to throw a goose wing out the window to summon her. That time would come when the city is besieged and the beautiful woman carries Dotterine away. Meanwhile the king and his men get captured, the stepmother gets speared, and the prince miraculously escapes in confusion.

After the war, the new king holds a ball to choose a wife. And despite the fact they were raised together, Dotterine becomes his queen. But don’t worry, they’re not related by blood so it’s okay.

The lady disguises Dotterine as a peasant. The girl uses the basket to feed herself but takes a service peasant job for shelter. One day, a lady sees her and takes her into service. She hears the prince had raised an army and threw out the usurper who took the city, but the king had died in captivity. The new king holds a ball to choose his wife. Her godmother tells her to prepare her mistresses. But once they’re gone look into the basket. She finds all she needs and goes to the ball. All the women claim she’s the lost princess. At midnight, a dark cloud blinds them and Dotterine’s godmother appears. She tells the king that Dotterine isn’t related to him by birth but a princess from a neighboring kingdom entrusted to his mom to raise to protect her from an evil wizard. She vanishes and so does the basket. But Dotterine lives happily ever after with the king.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Contains some variant of incest. But it’s okay, since they’re not exactly blood relatives, but it’s kind of a cop-out.
Trivia: Also called, “The Egg-Born Princess.”

In some fairy tales, you’ll find a Beauty and the Beast or Frog Prince setup. Of course, the many of these tales exist is because of arranged marriages, especially among the upper classes. After all, back in the day, most people didn’t marry for love like we do today. So many of these tales were devised to get people used to the idea. And while we’re used to the beast figure, the beast in question can even be an animal who helps the beauty’s dad out and only demands a daughter for his services. By the way, these stories usually have a female beauty and a male beast dynamic. Anyway, in this installment, I give you another 10 forgotten fairy tales. First, are Romanian story of an enchanted pig and a prince and golden apples. Second, are 5 Grimm tales about a unique lark, two princes, a raven, 3 dogs, and a blue light. Third, is an Italian story of 3 sisters. Then we come to a Scottish tale of 3 princesses. And finally, we look into a Norwegian fairy tale of 3 princesses of Whiteland.

111. The Enchanted Pig

The Enchanted Pig is a Romania fairy tale in which a princess is wed to a pig to her dismay. He’s not bad but he’s actually a handsome man under a curse. And he could’ve been fine if she didn’t screw things up.

From: Romania
Earliest Appearance: Collected in Rumanische Märchen and by Petre Ispirescu in Legende sau basmele românilor
Best Known Version: The Marchen and Ispirescu version, obviously.
Synopsis: Before going to war, a king tells his daughters that they may go anywhere in the castle except one room. One day, they disobey and find an open book in it, saying that the oldest will marry a prince from the east, the second a prince from the west, and the youngest a pig from the north. Naturally, the youngest is horrified, but her sisters manage to convince her that it’s impossible. When the king returns and discovers what he had done from the youngest daughter’s unhappiness and resolves to face it the best he can. After her older sisters get married, the youngest becomes more distressed. A pig comes to woo her and when the king would’ve refused his consent, the city fills with pigs. The king tells his daughter there’s something strange about this pig and think magic’s at work. And if she agrees to marry the pig, it might be broken.

As part of the plan, she marries the pig and goes off with him. Fortunately, he’s a nice guy and turns into a man at night to avert any bestiality situations that he wins the princess’ heart. Eventually, she asks a witch what happened to her new husband. But the witch tells her to tie a thread to his foot to free him. When the young wife does so, her husband and tells her that the spell would’ve expired in 3 days but thanks to her, he must remain in this shape. And that she won’t find him without wearing out 3 pairs of iron shoes and blunting a steel staff. She sets out. She gets herself 3 pairs of iron shoes and a steel staff. She wanders far until she comes to the house of the Moon. The Moon’s mother lets her in and gives birth to a son during her stay. Unfortunately, the Moon doesn’t know where her husband is but she can go to the Sun. But the Moon’s mom gives her a chicken and instructs her to use all the bones. After pitching the first worn pair of iron shoes, the princess puts on another and goes to the Sun. The same things happens minus the childbirth and that the Sun’s mom sends her to the Wind. And at the Winds house, his mom tells her she lives in a wood where no axe can cut through it. She then gives her a chicken, tells her to save the bones, and sends her on her way. The princess goes on the Milky Way where she finds the castle where the pig lives and the bones stick together forming a ladder to let her in. When she’s one bone short, she cuts off her pinky. Her husband returns and the spell is broken. He reveals himself as a prince, that he killed the dragon and his witch mom who tied the string to keep him a pig. They set out for his dad’s kingdom and return to her dad’s place.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book.
Adaptations: Made into an opera by Jonathan Dove.
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

112. The Singing, Springing Lark

The Singing, Springing Lark is a Grimm fairy tale about a guy and servant who try to catch a lark for his daughter. But once a lion threatens to kill them over it, the guy agrees to give him the daughter who requested it.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers. It’s basically the German version of Beauty and the Beast with lions and possibly acid.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, naturally.
Synopsis: Before a man leaves on a journey, he asks each of his 3 daughters what they’d like him to bring back. The oldest wants diamonds, the second pearls, and the youngest a singing, springing lark. Though he finds the diamonds and pearls, he can’t locate the lark. On the way home, the man sees a lark in a tall tree and orders his servant to catch it. A lion springs out threatening to kill them both. In exchange for their lives and the lark, the lion demands that the man bring him the first thing to meet him when he returns home. The man fears it might be his daughter but his servant is like, “well, what are you going to do? Might as well go with the lion.” Unfortunately, once he gets home, his youngest daughter greets him first. When her dad reveals his promise, she consoles him and sets out the next morning to meet the lion. At the lions’ castle, other lions greet her, only to turn human at night. She marries the lion who gave her dad the lark and lives with him, sleeping by day. One night, the lion tells his wife that her oldest sister is getting married and offers to send her with his lions. She goes and her family’s happy to see her. When she returns, the lion tells her that her second sister’s marrying and says he must go with her and their kid. But lets her know that if any candlelight falls on him, he’ll turn into a dove for 7 years. The youngest daughter has a room built to protect him but she makes the mistake of including a green wood door which warps and makes a crack. So when her sister’s wedding procession goes by, candlelight falls on him, and the lion turns into a dove. He then tells his wife that every 7 steps she takes he’ll drop a feather and a drop of blood. Perhaps she can track him by that and he flies off.

When the 7 years are nearly up, the youngest daughter loses the trail. She climbs up to the Sun and asks of the white dove. It doesn’t know but gives her a casket. She asks the Moon who doesn’t know either but gives her an egg. She asks the Night Wind, but he can’t help but tells her to wait for the others. The East and West Wind can’t either. But the South Wind says that the dove is a lion again and is now fighting an enchanted princess dragon in the Red Sea. The Night Wind advises her to strike the lion and dragon with a certain reed to allow the former win and both creatures to regain their true form and then escape on a griffin’s back. It then gives her a nut that will grow a nut tree in the sea for the griffin to rest. The youngest daughter stops the fight but the princess also regains her true form, abducts the former lion, and stows away on the griffin (not cool). The daughter follows until she finds a castle where the princess and her husband are to be married. She opens the casket and finds a dazzling dress inside which she brings to the castle. The princess buys it from her in exchange she could spend the night in her husband’s bedroom. But it’s to no avail since the princess roofies him with a sleeping draught. Though the daughter pleads with him, the guy just thinks it’s the whistling wind. The next day, she opens the egg holding a chicken with 6 golden chicks. The princess buys them at the same price. But this time the husband asks the page of last night’s wind and the page confesses to the draught. He doesn’t drink the second night. So he and his wife flee on the griffin back home.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: Adapted into a musical. Retold by Patricia McKillip as “The Lion and the Lark” and as a picture story by Elle Skinner in Erstwhile.
Why Forgotten: The second half of this tale gets really weird.
Trivia: N/A

113. The Three Sisters

The Three Sisters is an Italian fairy tale of a young woman who marries a prince who she has to see in secret. Yet, once her sisters find out, they try to sabotage the girl’s happiness.

From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Giambattista Basile in the Pentamerone in 1634.
Best Known Version: The Basile version, naturally.
Synopsis: A woman has 3 daughters. Two are very unlucky but the youngest, Nella is quite fortunate. Except she marries a prince who has to hide her away from his wicked mom and visit her in secret when she throws powder in the fire, which turns into a crystal road. Her sisters discover this and break the road, fatally injuring the prince coming to her. His dad proclaims that whoever cures him will either marry him or get half the kingdom depending on gender. Nella hears this and sets out. Hiding in a tree, she hears an ogre discuss the illness with his wife and how only the fat from their bodies could cure the prince. Nelle climbs down and presents herself at the door as a beggar. Greedy of her flesh, the ogre persuades his wife to let her stay. But when they sleep, Nella kills them and takes their fat. She brings it to the king and cures the prince. However, the prince claims he can’t marry her because he already has a wife. Nella asks whether he’d want to marry the person responsible and the prince blames her sisters. Nella reveals herself as his wife. The sisters get thrown into the oven.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Well, it involves a princess killing 2 ogres and 2 women get thrown in an oven. So this isn’t Disney material.
Trivia: N/A

114. The Two Kings’ Children

The Two Kings’ Children is about a prince who ends up in another kingdom during a hunting trip. The king then has him complete a series of impossible tasks. If he does, he’ll get to marry a princess. If he doesn’t he’ll lose his head.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, naturally.
Synopsis: Once long ago, it’s foretold a king’s son will be killed by a stag at 16. When the prince reaches that age, he goes hunting and chases a stag. A great king sees this, carries the teenage prince off, and sets him to watch his 3 daughters: one each night. The king tells the boy he’d call on the prince each hour, he could marry his daughter. If not, he’d be killed (wait, I thought this king is supposed to be a great man). Fortunately, each princess enchants a statue of St. Christopher to answer in the prince’s place. Thus, saving him from getting killed. The king says that in order to marry one of his daughters, he has to cut down a whole forest in a day with a glass ax, a glass mallet, and a glass wedge. As expected, the tools break as soon as the prince arrives in the forest. The prince breaks down crying knowing he’ll get the ax any minute. Finally, feeling that he finally outwitted the prince, King Future-Father-In-Law From Hell asks his daughters to bring him some food. The youngest does and asks to let her comb his hair. After the king falls asleep, she conjures up Earth-workers to fell the forest. Astonished at what the prince seemingly done, the king orders him to clear a muddy pond and fill it with fish in a day. The prince tries but his hoe and shovel get stuck in the mud and break. Again, the youngest daughter uses the same set up to save the teenage prince’s ass. Next, the king orders the prince to clear a mountain of briars and put a castle on it. The prince’s glass hatchet breaks and the youngest princess saves his ass yet again.

On each task, the prince gets overwhelmed at their impossibility that youngest princess comes to aid him. Yet, when the tasks are done, the king declares that his youngest daughter can’t marry until her older sisters find husbands. So the couple decides to elope.

Finally, the king declares that his youngest daughter can’t marry until her older sisters are hitched. Hearing this, the couple run off into the night. Along the way, the princess hears her dad behind them. She turns herself into a rose and the prince into a briar. King returns home only for the queen to tell him that the kids were the briar and the rose. King chases after them again. Princess turns herself into a priest and the prince into a church where she preached the homily, which the king listens to. Only to get yelled at by the queen when he gets back that the priest and the church were the children. Tired of her husband, the queen goes after the couple. Knowing this, the princess changes into a duck and turns the prince into a pond. The queen tries drinking from the pool but falls ill and tells her daughter she could come back. The daughter does and the queen gives 3 walnuts to aid her.

The couple goes on. The prince has the princess stay while he goes out to get her a carriage to bring her back in due state. But his mom kisses him and he forgets about the girl entirely. So the princess has to work as a miller. One day a queen seeks a bride for her son. The princess cracks the first walnut and finds a splendid dress inside that she wears to the wedding. The bride declares that she won’t marry without a dress as fine. The princess refuses to give it up unless she spends a night outside the prince’s bedroom. The bride agrees but she has the servants give the prince a sleeping potion. She laments all night long but the prince is too knocked out to hear. But the servants do. In the morning the bride takes the dress and goes to the church with the prince. However, the princess cracks the second walnut which holds a more splendid dress. Once again, bride refuses to marry without one as fine and buys it for the same price. Bride agrees and gives the servants the same order. But the servant gets wind of it and gives the prince something to keep the guy awake. He hears the princess’ laments and is troubled by them. Yet, his mom had locked the door. In the morning, the prince begs her pardon. The princess cracks the third walnut and finds a still more splendid dress, which she wears as her wedding gown. The false bride and her mom get driven off.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Makes Meet the Parents seem mild in comparison. Then again, you can say a lot of fairy tales are like this. Also, gets pretty weird as the story goes on.
Trivia: N/A

115. The Raven

The Raven is Grimm fairy tale about a young man who finds a raven princess in the forest. After he couldn’t fall asleep that night, the raven takes off, leaving a ring, provisions, and a letter telling the guy to meet her in a golden castle.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, naturally.
Synopsis: A queen wishes her naughty daughter turn into a raven and fly away so she could have some peace. She gets her wish and the princess flies away into the forest. There, a man hears a raven tell him she’s an enchanted princess he could save if he goes to a certain nearby cottage and accepts no food from the old woman living there. The raven would drive by in a cage every day for 3 days. If he stayed awake, he’d break the spell. However, the old woman has him sip this drink. So by the time the raven shows up, he’s overcome by weariness and falls fast asleep. On the last day, the raven leaves him a bottle of wine, a loaf, and a piece of meat, all of which were inexhaustible and puts a gold ring with her name on his finger. She also gives him a letter informing him of another way to save her: by coming to the golden castle of Stromberg.

Here the man encounters a talking raven in the forest. He should be lucky she says more than “Nevermore.”

The man wanders searching for the castle and finds a giant threatening to devour him. But the man feeds him with his magical provisions. The giant brings out his map displaying all the towns, villages, and houses in the land but not the castle. He asks the man to wait until his brother came home who’s able to find the castle on an older map but it’s thousands of miles away. Fortunately, the brother agrees to carry the man within 100 leagues of the castle. The man walks the rest. As the man approaches the glass mountain on which the golden castle stands, he could see the princess drive her carriage around the castle and go in. But the glass hill is too slippery to climb. So he spends a year living at the mountain’s foot for a year. One day he meets 3 robbers fighting over 3 magical items: a door opening stick, an invisibility mantle, and a horse that could ride up the glass mountain. The man offers them a mysterious reward in exchange for these items but insists on first trying them out to see if they work as promised. After he mounts the horse, takes the stick, and puts on the invisibility cloak. He hits the robbers with the stick and rides up the glass mountain. He uses the stick and the mantle to get into the castle and throws his ring into the princess’ cup. Despite searching all over the castle, she couldn’t find her rescuer. Until the man finally reveals himself by throwing off his cloak. They later marry.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: Not to be confused with the Edgar Allan Poe poem.

116. The Three Dogs
From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Allegedly collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: Andrew Lang’s version in The Green Fairy Book.
Synopsis: A dying peasant tells his son and daughter that he had only his house to leave them. They could divide the assets as they wish but must not fight about it (that won’t happen). The brother asks his sister what she wanted and she picks the house. He tells her he’d take the sheep and seek his fortune. He meets a stranger offering to trade 3 dogs for his sheep: Salt, who’d bring him food, Pepper, who’d tear attackers to pieces, and Mustard, whose teeth can bite through iron and steel. The brother agrees and once the trade’s done, he asks Salt for food. Salt abides. He goes and finds a town draped in black. There, he learns of a dragon demanding a maiden every year. And this year’s designated human sacrifice victim is the princess. He goes where she’s left out and sets Pepper on the dragon who swallows it all except the teeth which the man pockets. The princess proposes marriage. But the man opts to spend 3 years traveling the world. When driven back, the coachman tells her that her rescuer’s gone and that he’d kill her if she didn’t admit he killed the dragon and she swears by it. The king declares he’ll marry her to him but puts off the marriage a year since she’s too young, anyway. She then begs him to put it off for a couple more years and a wedding date is set.

The man returns. But when he says he killed the dragon, he’s thrown into prison. He calls Mustard who eats through the bars. He sends Salt for food. Salt goes to the castle. The princess recognizes it, gives it food, and her royal handkerchief. She tells her dad the truth. The king sends a servant to follow the dog. The man produces the dragon’s teeth to prove the story. The coachman is thrown into prison. The man marries the princess. After some time, the man remembers his sister and sends for her. The dogs appear before him and tell him they’d been waiting to see if he remembered her. In turn, they turn into birds and fly up to heaven.

Other Versions: Included in Ruth Manning-Sanders’ A Book of Dragons.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Perhaps threatening to kill one’s girlfriend if she didn’t say he killed the dragon might be part of it.
Trivia: N/A

117. The Blue Light

In the Grimm fairy tale, The Blue Light, a soldier falls into a well where he finds a dwarf willing to fulfill his desires. It’s basically a variant of Aladdin.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version, naturally.
Synopsis: A soldier gets discharged from the king’s service due to his wounds. He leaves the castle and as night falls, he needs a place to stay. Stumbling upon a witch’s house, he asks for lodging. The witch agrees on the condition he spade her garden the next day. The soldier does but the job takes too long that he must stay another night. In return, she asks him to chop wood. Again, he abides and must stay another night. The following day, the witch requests the soldier go into a well and retrieve her a blue light. When he’s in the process of doing so, but eventually realizes the witch’s tricking him and trying to trap him into the well as soon as he gives it to her. So he keeps the light for himself, not knowing what he is. Yet, she leaves him in the well. The soldier then decides to use the blue light for one last smoke with his pipe. Fortunately, a dwarf comes to grant him whatever he wants. He firsts asks to get out of the well and for the witch to be jailed and hanged.

Indeed, the dwarf appears from the blue light every time a guy takes a smoke. Still, the main character in this fairy tale isn’t necessarily a nice guy.

Still upset about the king, the soldier asks the dwarf bring the princess so he could sleep with her (oh, God) just to anger his majesty. When she wakes up, the princess tells her mom of her strange “dream,” which the queen believes could’ve actually happened. She has the princess fill her pocket with peas and put a small hole in it so that if she gets abducted, they’ll be able to follow her path. However, the dwarf notices and spreads peas all over the city leading everywhere, making it impossible to pin any potential kidnapping on the soldier. The next night, the princess plans on hiding a shoe in the place she’s taken. The dwarf warns the soldier of this, but he doesn’t listen. The next day, the princess’ shoe is found in the soldier’s quarters and he’s put in jail. He sends his friend to fetch the blue light as a final request for a last smoke in his pipe. The dwarf appears and kills the henchmen. The soldier demands the king’s life but spares him when the guy pleads for mercy. He also marries the princess and takes the throne.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: The fact that a dwarf appears the moment the soldier decides to use the blue light for one last smoke might make you wonder what the hell was in that pipe. I’m sure it’s supposed to be tobacco. Also, the soldier wishes to have a witch be jailed and hanged. To be fair, she treated him like shit and was going to kill him, but still. Then there’s the soldier wishing the dwarf to bring the princess so he could sleep with her in an act of revenge against the king. Nonetheless, the protagonist in this tale is incredibly terrible, especially since he basically kidnaps a princess against her wishes.
Trivia: May have inspired Hans Christen Andersen’s “The Tinderbox.”

118. The King of Lochlin’s Three Daughters

The King of Lochlin’s Three Daughters is a Scottish fairy tale about a widow’s son who saves 3 princesses from 3 giants by recruiting special guys in his entourage. Though he spends quite a bit of time with the third giant and has to prove he killed the guys at the end.

From: Scotland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the Western Highlands.
Best Known Version: The Campbell version, obviously.
Synopsis: 3 giants carry off the king’s 3 daughters. According to the shenachy, the only way to get them is through a ship that could travel over sea and land. A widow’s oldest son asks her to bake him a bannock and roast a cock because he’d go cut the wood to build the ship. She offers him a small bannock with her blessing or a large one without it. He takes the large one but refuses to share some with a urusig. When he reaches the trees, every one he cuts down would reattach itself to its roots. His middle brother does the same with the same results. But the youngest took the smaller bannock and gives some to the urusig who tells him to go home but return within a year and a day. When he does, the boat’s floating there with a grew and gentlemen ready to marry the princesses. They meet a man drinking by the river and the youngest son brings him on board. He does the same with the man eating stots in the park and intending to devour them all, and a man who could hear the grass grow. The listener listens and claims this is the place where they keep the princesses. They descend on the creel. The first giant says that they shouldn’t have the king’s daughter until they send a man who can drink as much as he could. The drinker goes against him and the giant bursts before he’s full. The second giant says they shouldn’t have the king’s daughter until they send a man who can eat as much as he could. The stot eater goes up against him and that giant bursts before he’s full. The third giant says they shouldn’t have the king’s daughter until the youngest son agrees to spend a year and a day as his slave. The guy does and sends the servants, gentlemen, and the daughters back. The gentlemen takes them to the king and claim to have rescued them.

At the end of his servants, the giant gives the youngest son an eagle to fly out and meat to feed it. But the meat isn’t enough and the eagle turns back. The giant demands another year and a day. After that, he gives him the eagle and more meat but it’s still not enough. After a third year and a day, the giant sends him off with still more meat that’s still not enough. But the youngest son cuts some meat off with his thigh and the eagle completes its flight and gives him a whistle to summon it. The son goes to work for a smith as a gillie. The princesses demand that he make them crowns like they had as the giants’ prisoners. The smith doesn’t know what such crowns were. But the son has the eagle fetch them. The princesses are astounded and the king wants to know where he learned to learned to make such crowns. The smith confesses that his gillie had made them and the king sends for him. The smith’s gillies roughly throw the guy into the carriage, the youngest son blows the whistle, and has the eagle take him off and fill the carriage with stones so that the king is nearly crushed by their fall and those gillies are hanged. Another set comes who are just as rude and deliver a coach full of dirt. The king’s confidential servant goes, tells the son that the king sends for him and he should wash, and then puts him in the carriage. He blows the whistle to have the eagle fetch him gold and silver clothing from the giant’s castle. There, he tells the king his story. The gentlemen seeking to marry the princesses are hanged. The son marries the oldest daughter.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: I’m not sure why. Maybe because it has so many parts to it.
Trivia: N/A

119. The Three Princesses of Whiteland

In the Norwegian The Three Princesses of Whiteland, a fisherman’s son is transported to a magical land where he finds 3 princesses who are buried up to their necks in sand. To free them, he must let 3 trolls beat the living crap out of him with aid of a magic sword and ointment.

From: Norway
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe.
Best Known Version: The Asbjørnsen and Moe naturally.
Synopsis: After a fisherman spends an unproductive day, a head pops up from the water to bargain with him: fish for what his wife carries under her girdle. When he comes home, his wife announces she’s pregnant. So he offers the baby. The king hears of their story and offers to raise his son when he’s born for protection. But when the boy’s grown, he asks to go fishing with his dad for one day. And as soon as he sets foot on the boat, the vessel gets dragged off to a far-off land. He meets an old man telling him he had come to Whiteland. If he walks down to the shore, he’d come up to 3 princesses buried up to their necks in sand. If he passes by the first 2 and speaks to the third, the youngest, he’ll have good luck. He does. The youngest princess tells him that 3 trolls had imprisoned them there. If he goes up to the castle by the shore and let each troll beat him up, the princesses would be free. An ointment flask by the bed would cure all injuries he suffers and a sword would cut off all the trolls’ heads. The first troll has 3 heads and 3 rods. When he falls, the princesses stand in the sand up to their waists. The second has 6 heads and 6 rods. When he gets it, the princesses stand up to their knees. The third has 9 heads and 9 rods and beats the guy so severely that he couldn’t reach for the ointment. The troll throws him against a wall and flask breaks, spilling ointment all over him and he kills it, freeing the princesses entirely.

Armed with a sword and ointment, the fisherman’s son proceeds up to the castle to kill the giants. And it seems he’s traveling on cross country skis.

The young man marries the youngest and they live happily for several years. But eventually he wants to visit his parents. His wife initially agrees but tells him he must do whatever his dad asks, not what his mom wishes, and gives him a ring that would grant him 2 wishes, one to go home and one to return. He goes. His mom wants to show him to the king while his dad doesn’t. But in the end, his mom has her way. And while at the castle, he wishes his wife was there to compare to the king’s. Boom! His wife appears, takes the ring, knots it with her name on it in his hair, and wishes herself home again. The man decides to see if he could reach Whiteland again on his own and sets out. He comes to the king of all animals and asks if he knows the way. He doesn’t. Neither do all the animals he summons. So he lends the man a pair of snowshoes to reach his brother, the king of all the birds. That king doesn’t know either and neither do his birds but lends him a pair of snowshoes to reach his other brother, the king of all the fish. The king doesn’t know but an old pike, the last fish to arrive, does and that his wife is about to remarry the next day. The king sends him to a field where 3 brothers had fought for 100 years over a magical hat, cloak, and a pair of boots that would make the wearer invisible. He tricks the brothers into letting him try them and sets out to the Whiteland. He meets the North Wind along the way and it promises to storm the castle as if to blow it down when it reaches land after him. He arrives, the North Wind carries off the potential new bridegroom, and his wife recognizes him by the ring in his hair.

After some years with the youngest princess, the fisherman’s son wants to visit his parents. But he somehow summons his wife on the wishing ring. So he has to get home through the winds. When he gets home, his wife recognizes him with the ring she put in his hair.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

120. Prâslea the Brave and the Golden Apples
From: Romania
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Petre Ispirescu in Legende sau basmele românilor.
Best Known Version: Well, the Ispirescu version of course.
Synopsis: A king has a magnificent tree bearing golden apples. But he could never enjoy them since they’d get stolen as soon as they ripened every year. None of his guards could catch the thief. His 2 oldest sons try but they fall asleep before midnight. The next year, the youngest son, Prâslea, tries by setting up 2 stakes to prick him should he begin leaning during his sleep. At midnight, he hears a rustling and shoots an arrow that the next morning, a trail of blood leads away and the apples are ripe. This news pleases the king but Prâslea wants to track the thief. He and his brothers follow the blood into a ditch. The older 2 brothers try have the others lower each one of them, freak out, and come back up. Prâslea has them lower him and he finds a copper castle. There, a lovely maiden tells him she’s a princess and that the ogres (Zmeu) had kidnapped her and her sisters and want to marry them. But the sisters put them off with their demands. He fights with the resident ogre and kills him. He then goes to second castle made of silver and kills the resident ogre there and then the third made of gold, which is where the ogre thief lives. However, though Prâslea wrestles with him like the other 2, it’s a longer fight. Prâslea calls on a raven to drop some tallow on him in return for the 3 corpses. This strengthens him and he fights on. Then, both Prâslea and the ogre call on the princess for water. She gives it to Prâslea and he kills the ogre. The princesses show him the magic whip that makes the golden apples and they each take one. Prâslea brings the princesses back and sends them up. The older 2 tell the brothers they’d marry them. Then Prâslea sends up a stone with his cap. The older princes try to kill him by dropping it and marry the 2 older sisters.

Prâslea saves some eaglets and their mother from a dragon. In gratitude, they carry him to the other world. There, he found the youngest princess being pressed to accept a suitor. But she declares that she’ll accept only if she gets a golden self-spinning distaff and spindle since the ogre gave her one. Prâslea goes working for a silversmith tasked with the job and using the golden apple, brings out the one the ogre gave her. The princess then demands a golden hen with a golden chick. When he produces it, she insists he be brought before her because he had to have the golden apple. They recognize Prâslea. He and his brothers go outside and shoot arrows into the air. The brothers’ arrows hit and kill them. But Prâslea’s merely hits the ground.

Other Versions: A similar tale exists in Azerbaijani folklore.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not exactly sure why. Possibly the violence.
Trivia: N/A

You may recognize that in many of these fairy tales have close relatives trying to sabotage the protagonist’s goals. If the protagonist is a woman, it’ll be her mother, stepmother, stepsisters, sisters, or mother-in-law. Let’s just say, if you’re a woman who lives through fairy tales, you might have very bad ideas about female relatives. If the protagonist is male, it’ll be his older and less successful brothers who turn on him and try to kill him. Anyway, in this long-awaited for installment, I give you 10 more forgotten fairy tales. First, is a Grimm fairy tale about a dragon and his grandmother. Second, is an English story about a small-toothed dog. Third, are 4 Scottish tales about a princess of the skies, a crafty dad who’d do anything for his kids, a blue falcon, and a black bull. Then we come to a couple Italian tales revolving around a canary prince and an enchanted snake. After that, we come to a story on a greenish bird. And finally, is a Danish tale of a green knight.

101. The Dragon and His Grandmother

In the Grimms’ The Dragon and His Grandmother, a dragon carries off 3 AWOL soldiers to serve him for 7 years. But if they want to be released by that time, they’ll have to guess a certain riddle. One sees the dragon’s grandma to find the answer.

From: Germany
Earliest Appearance: Collected by the Grimm Brothers.
Best Known Version: The Grimm version of course.
Synopsis: 3 underpaid soldiers decide to go AWOL by hiding in a cornfield. But when the army doesn’t march away, they’re stuck between starving or the noose. However, a dragon flies by at this time and offers to save the 3 deserters in exchange for 7 years of service. Desperate, they agree and the dragon carries them off. But the dragon is actually the Devil. He gives them whips they could use for making money but warns them that when their 7 years are up, they were his. Unless they could guess a riddle.
When the 7 years are up, two of the soldiers dread thinking about their fate. An old woman advises them to go down to a cottage for help. Meanwhile, the third soldier ventures to that cottage and meets the Devil’s grandmother where he makes a favorable first impression. Pleased, the grandmother hides him under the cellar, she questions the Devil when he comes as the soldier learns the answers. When the Devil finds the men at their 7-year expiration date, he invites them for dinner in Hell, where they had to guess the meat, the silver spoon, and the wineglass used. The soldiers correctly answer with: a dead sea-cat in the North Sea, a whale rib, and an old horse’s hoof. Thanks to the whip they get to keep and no longer being in the Devil’s power, the soldiers live happily ever after.

Other Versions: Included in The Yellow Fairy Book by Andrew Lang and in A Book of Dragons by Ruth Manning-Sanders.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Maybe because it features 3 guys who go AWOL at the beginning. To be fair, they’re way underpaid, but still.
Trivia: Also known as “The Devil and His Grandmother.” Inspired a Hellboy comic storyline.

102. The Small-Tooth Dog

In the English tale, The Small-Tooth Dog, a dog save’s a merchant’s life in exchange for his daughter. The girl isn’t exactly thrilled with the idea but goes through it anyway.

From: England
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Sidney Oldall Addy in Household Tales and Other Traditional Remains. It’s the English version of Beauty and the Beast.
Best Known Version: The Addy version, naturally.
Synopsis: While attacked by robbers, a dog comes to a merchant’s aid and brings him home to recover. The merchant offers him many marvels in exchange. But the dog wants his daughter to the guy’s dismay. The merchant reluctantly agrees and goes home. A week later, the dog appears, has the girl get on his back, and takes her to his home. A month later, the girl misses her dad and requests to see him. The dog only allows her a 3-day visit but asks what she’d call him there. She replies with “A great, foul, small-tooth dog,” and he refuses to take her. So she begs that she’ll call him, “Sweet-as-a-Honeycomb.” So they set out. But when they come to a stile along the way, the girl breaks her promise at the first stile and the dog carries her back. They set out a week later. The girl makes good at the first stile but reverts to her old nickname at the second stile. Back to the doghouse she goes. The next week they set out a third time. The girl uses the “Sweet-as-a-Honeycomb” nickname at the first 2 stiles. But when they reach the merchant’s house, the dog asks again, she beings with, “A great-” but thinks about how he’d been to her “Sweeter-than-a-Honeycomb.” The dog stands up on its hind legs, sheds his coat, and becomes a handsome man. The two marry.

When the girl goes with the Small-Tooth Dog, she goes on his back. And she has to call him “Sweet-as-a-Honeycomb.”

Other Versions: Included in Ruth Manning-Sanders’ A Book of Magic Animals.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Resembles too much of Beauty and the Beast. Also the name stuff.
Trivia: N/A

103. The Daughter of the Skies
From: Scotland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands.
Best Known Version: The Campbell version obviously.
Synopsis: A man has daughters along with many cattle and sheep before they suddenly vanish and he can’t find them. Fortunately, a man offers to locate them in exchange for one of his daughters. Since fairy tales don’t seem to treat female offspring as freaking human beings or desperation, the dad agrees if the daughter consents (okay, he’s probably better than most fairy tale dads). He asks each of his girls and the youngest agrees. They marry, he takes her home, and turns out to be a decent husband. However, 9 months later, the woman asks to see her dad. The husband agrees as long as she doesn’t stay there until their child is born. She agrees but stays too long that one night, music puts everyone to sleep and a man kidnaps the woman’s child. This happens 2 more times. The last time, the woman’s husband that she’d have more difficulty at first and, after her dad threatens her, if she doesn‘t say what she did to the kids. The woman tries returning to her husband but her magical horse doesn’t show up so she decides to walk instead. But her mother-in-law informs her that he left. The woman sets out again and reaches a house where a housewife tells her that her husband’s set to marry the King of the Skies’ daughter, lets her bunk for the night, gives her self-cutting shears, and sends her on to the middle sister. The middle sister gives her a self-sewing needle, and sends her to the youngest who gives her self-threading thread and sends her into town.

Once there, the woman finds a place to stay and asks a henwife for something to sew. Although the princess is set to marry the next day and no one’s working but the wedding staff. The shears, needle, and thread get to work. A royal maid sees this and tells the princess who asks the price. The woman requests to sleep in her bedroom. The princess agrees but roofies her bridegroom with a sleeping draught and throws the woman out in the morning. The next night, she exchanges the needle, the sleeping draught works the same as before, but the oldest prince hears her tell the sleeping man that she’s his kids’ mother. On the third night, the woman exchanges the thread but the man throws out the sleeping drink and they talk. When the princess returns in an attempt to throw the woman out, the guy says he could go back up since she’s his wife.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: The fact the princess doesn’t get the guy in this one may be part of it.
Trivia: N/A

104. Conall Cra Bhuidhe

The Scottish Conall Cra Bhuidhe focuses on a father who goes out of his way to save his sons with one story at a time. Of course, they end up in that situation by trying to steal a horse.

From: Scotland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands.
Best Known Version: The Campbell version, naturally.
Synopsis: Conall Cra Bhuidhe is a royal tenant with 3 or 4 sons. One day, his sons get in a fight with some princes and the biggest one gets killed. The king tells Conall that he could save his sons if he stole the King of Lochlann’s brown horse. Conall agrees to please the king even if his kids weren’t in danger. While his wife laments that he’d rather not let the king kill their sons than endanger himself. So Conall sets off with his sons to Lochlann and tells them to seek the king’s miller. They stay with him and Conall bribes the guy to put him and his sons into in bran sacks and deliver them to the king. In the stables, Conall has his sons make hiding holes before they try stealing the horse. When they try, the horse keeps making such a noise that servants would come. They would hide. But soon the king gets wind of it that Conall and his boys eventually get caught. Conall explains his situation and because he couldn’t get out of stealing it, the king decides to hang his sons and spare his life. Yet, he tells Conall that if he shares a store when he’s in a worse situation than his sons, he’d spare his sons one by one starting with the youngest. Conall entertains the king with each subsequent tale with each putting him in a worse situation than the previous one. However, the king’s mother overhears Conall’s story about a woman trying to kill her baby and the giant. She then confides that she was the woman and the king had been the baby. So since Conall had saved his life, the king gives him the horse, the gold, and all his sons’ lives.

Other Versions: Included in Joseph Jacobs’ Celtic Fairy Tales and Andrew Lang’s The Blue Fairy Book.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: The kings kind of remind you of rulers from Game of Thrones.
Trivia: Also known as “Conall Yellowclaw.”

105. How Ian Direach Got the Blue Falcon

How Ian Direach Got the Blue Falcon is a Scottish fairy tale about a prince sent to capture a large blue bird of prey. And he goes on quite the journey to accomplish it.

From: Scotland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands.
Best Known Version: The Campbell version, naturally.
Synopsis: A king and queen have a son named Ian. When Ian’s in his teens, his mom dies and his dad remarries. One day, Ian goes hunting and shoots a blue falcon, knocking off a feather. His stepmother curses him until he finds her the falcon. He curses her to stand with one foot on the great hall and the other on the castle and always facing the wind until he returns. He leaves. On his journey, Ian meets with Gille Mairtean the fox who tells him that the blue falcon is kept by the Giant with Five Heads, Five Necks, and Five Humps. To seek advice, he must tend the animals there. He kindly treats the birds and the giant lets him care for the blue falcon and that he can steal it. As long as Ian doesn’t let any of its feathers touch anything in the house. The giant trusts him in time. But the falcon starts by the doorpost. The feather touching the post made it scream and brings back the giant who tells him that he may have the falcon if he brings back the White Sword of Light from the owned by the Big Women of Dhiurradh.

Ian and Gille kidnap the princess. But though she’s angry at being carried off on the ship, she’d rather stay with Ian. So Gille impersonates her.

Gille Mairtean transforms into a boat and carries Ian to the island of Dhiurradh and tells him to get a job there as a polisher, which will let him eventually steal the sword as long as he doesn’t let the sheath touch anything in the house. This succeeds until the sheath’s tip touches the door and shrieks. The Big Women tell Ian that he could have the sword if he brings the King of Erin’s bay colt. Once again, Gille Mairtean turns into a boat and transports Ian to the castle where he serves until he has the chance of stealing the colt which swishes against the door. The king tells him he can have the horse if he can bring him the King of the Franks’ daughter. Yet again, Gille Mairtean turns into a boat and takes Ian to France but runs himself into a cleft rock and sends Ian to say he’s been shipwrecked. When the royal court comes out to see the boat, music comes out of it. The princess says she must see the harp playing such music. Ian and Gille Mairtean carry her off. Pissed, the princess asks why. But after Ian explains, she proclaims she’d rather be with him. They return to the king and Gille turns himself into a beautiful woman and has Ian give him instead. After Ian receives the bay colt, Gille bites the king, knocks him unconscious, and escapes. When they return to the Big Women, Gille turns himself into a bay colt. Ian receives the sword, throws it at all the Big Women, and kills them. Reaching the Giant, Gille turns into a sword and once Ian gets the falcon, cuts the giant’s heads. Gille warns Ian how to carry what he brings back to the castle to keep his stepmom from turning him into a pile of sticks. He obeys and his stepmom gets turned into a stick pile instead. He burns her, marries the princess, and lives happily ever after.

Throughout the story, Ian has to find a blue falcon, a magic sword, a colt, and a princess. And his stepmom’s reduced to a pile of sticks.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Orange Fairy Book.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why.
Trivia: N/A

106. The Canary Prince

The Canary Prince is an Italian fairy tale about a prince who meets his princess in a tower. Until her evil stepmother puts pins on her windows sill.

From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Italo Calvino in Italian Folk Tales.
Best Known Version: The Calvino version, obviously.
Synopsis: A jealous queenly stepmother persuades her kingly husband to lock up his daughter in a forest castle tower. One day, a prince passes by the place while hunting and is astounded to see the seemingly abandoned castle in use. He sees the princess but they can’t talk to each other except through gestures. To help them, a witch tricks the ladies-in-waiting into giving the princess a book. When she ruffles the pages forward, her boyfriend turns into a canary. When she ruffles them back, he changes back to human form. After some time, the queen arrives seeing the young prince at the window so she puts pins on the sill, stabbing him in his canary form. Even when the princess restores him, the prince lies on the floor bleeding. So his companions must bring him back to his dad for medical attention. The princess cuts sheets and creates a makeshift rope to escape while overhearing witches discussing how to heal him. She does so and asks for a coat-of-arms, his standard, and his vest as her reward. The prince goes hunting, the princess turns him into a canary. When he flies into the room, she turns him back. He reproaches her for his injury. She produces her reward proving she saved him and lets him know her stepmother did it. They marry, and the princess reveals that despite locking her up in an abandoned tower, he dad’s not as bad as he seems. He’s just a coward who can’t stand up to his wife.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Calvino is a modern fairy tale collector so it’s not a big stretch as to why it’s been forgotten. Also, involves a guy getting real bloodied up.
Trivia: N/A

107. The Enchanted Snake

The Enchanted Snake is an Italian fairy tale of a snake wooing a princess. He also changes into a handsome young man and a bunch of other animals until a curse is broken.

From: Italy
Earliest Appearance: Collected Giambattista Basile in the Pentamerone
Best Known Version: The Basile version, naturally.
Synopsis: A poor woman longs for a child that she and her husband adopt a talking snake. When it grows up, the snake wants to marry, but not just any snake. But a princess. His dad goes to ask and the king allows it if the snake could turn all the orchard fruit into gold. The snake tells his dad to gather the pits and sow them in the orchard. When they spring up, the fruits are gold. The king next demands that his palace walls and paths be turned into precious stones. The snake has his dad gather broken crockery and throw it on the walls and paths, transforming them in to glittery and colorful gems. Then the king demands that the castle be turned into gold. The snake asks his dad rub the castle walls with an herb, transforming them.

The king tells his daughter, Grannonia that he tried to put off this reptilian suitor but failed. The princess agrees to obey him. The snake comes in a golden elephant-drawn cart, surprisingly freaking everyone out for some reason but Grannonia. The snake takes her in a room, sheds his skin, and becomes a handsome young man. Fearing his daughter being eaten, the king looks through the keyhole. He then sees the skin and burns it. The young man calls the king a fool, turns into a dove, and flies off. Grannonia sets out looking for him. She meets and tags along with a fox. When she remarks upon wondrous birdsongs, the fox replies if she knew what the birds say: that a prince had been cursed into a snake’s form for 7 years and that near the end, he fell in love and married a princess. But the snake skin had been burned and struck his head while fleeing. So he’s in the care of doctors. The fox then tells her that the birds’ blood will cure him and catches them for her. He then tells her that his blood was necessary so Grannonia persuades him to go with her and kills him. She goes to her father-in-law, promises to cure the prince if he’d marry her and the king agrees. She cures him. The prince refuses since he already pledged himself to another woman. But Grannonia claims she was the woman and they marry.

Other Versions: Included in Andrew Lang’s The Green Fairy Book.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: For the love of God, it features a snake as the main character.
Trivia: N/A

108. The Greenish Bird
From: Mexico
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Joel Gomez in La Encantada from a 74-year-old woman in Texas named Mrs. P.E.
Best Known Version: The Encantada version.
Synopsis: While her 2 older sisters hang out in bars, only Luisa sews. A princely greenish bird comes and woos her. Her sisters find out and put knives in the window injuring him. But he tells her that he lives in crystal towers on the plains of Merlin. After buying a pair of iron shoes, Luisa sets out. She finds the Sun’s horse where his mother warns that he’ll eat her. She hides until the Sun’s mother calms her son down. He doesn’t know the way but sends her to the Moon. Same thing happens with the Moon and then the Wind who can’t send her anywhere. She then finds a hermit who can summon animals and an elderly eagle who says that the Greenish Bird is engaged, except that he’s sick. And he could take her if she kills a cow. When they fly, he asks for meat, she gives him another leg. When she’s out Luisa offers to cut her own leg. But the eagle tells her it’s a test. At the prince’s she works as a kitchen maid and part-time guitarist, curing the prince. The prince says that every woman must make a cup of cocoa and he’ll marry who makes the one he drinks. Not caring whether it was bitter, he drinks Luisa’s and they marry.

Other Versions: N/A
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: I’m not sure why. Maybe the knives on the window sill thing.
Trivia: N/A

109. The Green Knight
From: Denmark
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Svend Grundtvig in Danish Fairy Tales and by Evald Tang Kristensen in Eventyr fra Jylland in 1881.
Best Known Version: Andrew Lang’s English translation of Kristensen’s version in The Olive Fairy Book is the best known.
Synopsis: Dying of cancer, a queen asks her to do whatever his daughter requests of him. A widowed countess and her daughter do everything to win the princess over. Only to tell the princess that she couldn’t stay unless she marry the king. The princess implores the king to do it despite his objections. As soon as the countess becomes her stepmother, bring on the abuse. Seeing this, the king sends the princess to a summer palace. While the king is there to bid his daughter farewell before departing for a tournament. The princess tells him to greet her to the Green Knight. But he doesn’t meet a Green Knight at the tournament. On the way home, he goes through the forest where he meets as swineherd. Asking about the pigs, he’s told they’re the Green Knight’s. He goes on to find a magnificent castle where the handsome young Green Knight lives. The king gives him his daughter’s greetings. But the Green Knight hasn’t heard of her. Nonetheless, he welcomes the king and bestows him a gift (either a book or casket with his portrait).

The king returns home. Depending on variant, one of 2 things happen. But the Green Knight starts secretly visiting the princess to avoid her stepmother. But she finds out and conspires to injure him and he stops visiting the princess. Not knowing why, the princess overhears 2 birds talking of his illness and that a snake with 9 young snakes in her dad’s stables could cure him. She gets the snakes, goes to the Green Knight’s castle, and gets a job in the kitchen. She persuades them to let her cook soup for him. For 3 days, she feeds him soup made from 3 of the young snakes and he recovers. They marry.

Other Versions: Some variants have the widowed countess and her daughter persuade the princess to let them stay in the castle. Some have the king build a summer palace for the princess. While others have the Green Knight claim the princess must’ve thought about the graveyard green. In one variant the king gives her a book which when she goes through the pages, he flies in as a bird and courts her. When the stepmother learns of it, she puts poisoned scissors in the window. In another variant, the king gives the princess a casket with the Green Knight’s portrait, she recognizes him as her dream guy and he comes to court her. But when the stepmother finds out, she puts a poisoned nail in the oar he uses to row out. In some versions, he either recognizes her or she asks to marry him and initially refuses until the princess cleans herself up.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Not sure why. Maybe the bloodshed.
Trivia: Not to be confused with the King Arthur story.

110. The Black Bull of Norroway

The Black Bull of Norroway is a Scottish fairy tale of a woman who goes off with a black bull who’s surprisingly kind and gentle. But she must wait for him until he takes care of a few things.

From: Scotland
Earliest Appearance: Collected by Robert Chambers in Popular Rhymes of Scotland in 1870.
Best Known Version: The Chambers version, naturally.
Synopsis: A washerwoman’s 3 daughters ask her to cook some food to take on their journeys to seek their fortunes, consulting a witch on how to seek one along the way. The woman advised them to look out the back door. On the third day, the oldest sees a coach and 6 come for her and delightedly leaves with it. The second daughter a coach and 4 and leaves. While the youngest finds a black bull that the witch tells her she must accompany. Terrified, the daughter goes off with the bull, who’s surprisingly kind and gentle. When she’s hungry, he tells her to eat out of his right ear and drink out of his left. On their first 3 nights, they arrive at the bull’s brothers’ castles where she receives a fruit that she’s instructed not to use until the great needs in her life. Eventually, she and the bull arrive at a valley of glass. Afterwards, the girl and the bull arrive to a valley of glass. The bull tells her to wait and keep still as he fights the devil ruling the valley so they could leave. If the sky is blue, he’s won. If red, he’s lost. He leaves the girl. After some time, the sky turns blue. But the girl gets too excited that she slightly shifts her position and the bull doesn’t return.

Unable to climb a glass hill, the girl works for a blacksmith for 7 years. In exchange she gets iron shoes to climb it in order to get to her black bull.

Unable to climb out of the valley by herself, the girl wanders alone before finding a blacksmith who tells her that if she serves him for 7 years, he’ll make her a pair of shoes. When her time’s up, the girl receives a pair of iron shoes and nails them to her feet. She’s able to climb out of the valley. The young woman eventually wanders back to the witch’s house. The witch offers her shelter if she’ll wash some bloody shirts that she and her daughter couldn’t clean. If she does, she could marry the gallant young knight staying with them. Since the shirts are his. The girl agrees and the bloodstains vanish as soon as they touch the soap while her feet heal as if they’ve never been bloodied or injured. Delighted, the witch brings in the knight’s shirts and convinces him that her own daughter cleaned them. So the knight and the witch’s daughter get engaged.

The girl finds out that her knight is engaged to be married to another woman. Here she uses the fruits in the great need in her life.

Desperate, the young woman realizes that she’s in a great need of her life. For 3 nights, she opens one of the fruits, which contain rich jewelry inside which she gives the witch’s daughter in exchange for being allowed to sing outside the knight’s room. But the witch gives her daughter a sleeping draught for the knight so she couldn’t wake him. So she sobs and sings: “Seven long years I served for thee/The glassy hill I clamb for thee,/Thy bloody clothes I wrang for thee;/And wilt thou not waken and turn to me?” On the third night, the knight accidentally knocks over the sleeping draught the witch’s daughter gives him. So he’s awake to hear the truth. The young woman marries the knight who’s been the bull all along. He has the witch and her daughter burned. And they all live happily ever after.

Other Versions: Included in Joseph Jacobs’ More English Fairy Tales. Included in Andrew Lang’s The Blue Fairy Book and in Ruth Manning Sanders’ Scottish Folktales.
Adaptations: N/A
Why Forgotten: Might have something to do with the witch and her daughter getting burned up.
Trivia: Cited by J.R.R. Tolkien in his essay “On Fairy Stories.”