Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version by Philip Pullman Page A

indeed grown even uglier every day. When the king came back, the woman explained that the queen had a fever. ‘She must be quiet,’ she said. ‘No conversation. Mustn’t speak at all. You must let her rest.’
    The king murmured some tender words to the daughter under the blankets, and left. Next morning he came to see her again, and before the woman could stop her, the daughter answered him when he spoke. Out jumped a toad.
    ‘Good Lord,’ he said, ‘what’s that?’
    ‘I can’t help it,’ said the daughter, as another toad came out, ‘it’s not
my
fault,’ and another.
    ‘What’s going on?’ said the king. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’
    ‘She’s got toad flu,’ said the woman. ‘It’s very infectious. But she’ll soon get over it, as long as she’s not disturbed.’
    ‘I do hope so,’ said the king.
    That night, the kitchen boy was wiping the last of the pots and pans when he saw a white duck swimming up the drain that led out of the scullery into the stream.
    The duck said:
    ‘The king’s asleep, and I must weep.’
    The kitchen boy didn’t know what to say. Then the duck spoke again:
    ‘And what of my guests?’
    ‘They’re taking their rest,’ said the kitchen boy.
    ‘And my sweet little baby?’
    ‘He’s sleeping too,’ said the boy, ‘maybe.’
    Then the duck shimmered and her form changed into that of the queen. She went upstairs to the baby’s cradle, and took him out and nursed him, and then she laid him down tenderly and tucked him in and kissed him. Finally she floated back to the kitchen, changed back into the form of the duck, and swam down the gutter and back to the stream.
    The kitchen boy had followed her, and seen everything.
    Next night she came again, and the same thing happened. On the third night, the ghost said to the boy: ‘Go and tell the king what you’ve seen. Tell him to bring his sword and pass it over my head three times, and then cut my head off.’
    The kitchen boy ran to the king and told him everything. The king was horrified. He tiptoed into the queen’s bedchamber, lifted the blankets from her head, and gasped at the sight of the ugly daughter lying there snoring, with a toad for company.
    ‘Take me to the ghost!’ he said, strapping on his sword.
    When they got to the kitchen the queen’s ghost stood in front of him, and the king waved his sword three times over her head. At once her form shimmered and changed into that of the white duck, and immediately the king swung his sword and cut her head off. A moment later the duck vanished, and in her place stood the real queen, alive again.
    They greeted each other joyfully. But the king had a plan, and the queen agreed to hide in a different bedchamber till the following Sunday, when the baby was going to be baptized. At the baptism the false queen stood there heavily veiled, with her mother close, both pretending that she was too ill to speak.
    The king said, ‘What punishment should someone receive who drags an innocent victim out of bed and throws her into the river to drown?’
    The stepmother said at once, ‘That’s a dreadful crime. The murderer should be put into a barrel studded with nails, and rolled downhill into the water.’
    ‘Then that is what we shall do,’ said the king.
    He ordered such a barrel made, and as soon as it was ready, the woman and her daughter were put inside and the top was nailed down. The barrel was rolled downhill till it fell into the river, and that was the end of them.
    ***
    Tale type: ATU 403, ‘The Black and the White Bride’
    Source: a story told to the Grimm brothers by Dortchen Wild
    Similar stories: Italo Calvino: ‘Belmiele and Belsole’, ‘The King of the Peacocks’ (
Italian Folktales
); Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: ‘Little Brother and Little Sister’, ‘The White Bride and the Black Bride’ (
Children’s and Household Tales
)
    The second part of this story is similar to ‘Little Brother and Little Sister’ , but the first half, with the