Reading Notes: Brothers Grimm (LibriVox), Part B

The Twelve Huntsmen

from Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm

translated by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes

I thought this story was really interesting and fun to read. 

The story starts off with a prince who is with his beloved maiden. One day he is called to his father's deathbed. The king says that you have to promise that you will marry whoever I name. So the prince agrees to it and afterwards he is crowned as the new king. Then after he was done mourning, he had to go marry the princess that the king wanted him to marry. 

When the first maiden found out about, she gets scared and asks her dad to find her eleven other girls that look like her. When the girls were found, she made them all dress up as huntsmen including herself and then she went to her lover and asked him if he wanted huntsmen. The prince doesn't realize that it's his first girl but he still agrees to keep them all.

The king had a lion that knew all the secrets. He told the king one day that the huntsmen were actually all girls but the king didn't believe him so the lion says I'll prove it to you.

He tells the king that he will lay peas all of the floor. When men walk, the peas will crush because they have a firm. But when women walk, they trip, skip and drag their feet so the peas will just roll. The maiden heard this so she tells the girls to all walk firmly and crush the peas. When they do, the king tells the lion that he lied.

The lion says the women were informed somehow and he will try something else, and says to put spinning wheels and the women will go straight to them because no man ever will. The maiden heard again and told her girls to ignore the spinning wheels. Once again, the king says you have lied and then doesn't listen to the lion after that.

The day comes when the king's new bride is coming and when she heard this, the first bride faints from grief. The king rushes to her and takes her glove off only to see the ring he had given her. He finally recognizes her and tells her that he is only hers and won't marry anyone else. 

So in the end, he ends up marrying the first maiden, and he also ends up listening to the lion again because after all, he was telling the truth all along. 

The King and The Lion. Source: One-Eleven Books2.