#faerie tale
Two identical infants lay in the cradle. “One you bore, the other is a Changeling. Choose wisely,” the Fae’s voice echoed from the shadows. “I’m taking both my children,” the mother said defiantly.
Once upon a time there was a peasant woman who was unhappy because she had no children. She was happy in all other things – her husband was kind and loving, and they owned their farm and had food and money enough. But she longed for children.
She went to church and prayed for a child every Sunday, but no child came. She went to every midwife and wise woman for miles around, and followed all their advice, but no child came.
So at last, though she knew of the dangers, she drew her brown woolen shawl over her head and on Midsummer’s Eve she went out to the forest, to a certain clearing, and dropped a copper penny and a lock of her hair into the old well there, and she wished for a child.
“You know,” a voice said behind her, a low and cunning voice, a voice that had a coax and a wheedle and a sly laugh all mixed up in it together, “that there will be a price to pay later.”
She did not turn to look at the creature. She knew better. “I know it,” she said, still staring into the well. “And I also know that I may set conditions.”
“That is true,” the creature said, after a moment, and there was less laugh in its voice now. It wasn’t pleased that she knew that. “What condition do you set? A boy child? A lucky one?”
“That the child will come to no harm,” she said, lifting her head to stare into the woods. “Whether I succeed in paying your price, or passing your test, or not, the child will not suffer. It will not die, or be hurt, or cursed with ill luck or any other thing. No harm of any kind.”
“Ahhhhh.” The sound was long and low, between a sigh and a hum. “Yes. That is a fair condition. Whatever price there is, whatever test there is, it will be for you and you alone.” A long, slender hand extended into her sight, almost human save for the skin, as pale a green as a new leaf. The hand held a pear, ripe and sweet, though the pears were nowhere ripe yet. “Eat this,” the voice said, and she trembled with the effort of keeping her eyes straight ahead. “All of it, on your way home. Before you enter your own gate, plant the core of it beside the gate, where the ground is soft and rich. You will have what you ask for.”
“In the stories discussed above, we have already seen elements or tinges of jealous passion intruding occasionally into otherwise innocent feelings of paternal devotion. There are, however, certain tales in which the father’s feelings about the daughter, or his actions in connection with her role as bride, exceed the bounds of propriety. This is perhaps most evident in those stories in which the father one way or another becomes involved in what transpires in the bridal chamber on the wedding night. To be sure, in “Hans My Hedgehog” (KHM 108) this involvement occurs at the bridegroom’s request: he tells the old king that he should have four men stand guard before the door and make a large fire, in which they are to burn the skin the hedgehog will shed just before he climbs into the marriage bed.
Once this has happened and Hans is lying in the bed “completely in human form, but … black as coal as though he had been burned,” the king calls for his physician, who washes the bridegroom “with good salves and covers him with ointments” so that he is transformed into a handsome young man, very much to the daughter’s delight. In “The Two Royal Children” (KHM 113), though, a father’s jealous love of his daughters, and accompanying envy of the suitor as prospective bridegroom, is indicated by his condition that if the young prince is to have one of the daughters to wife, he must remain awake in her bedroom for nine hours–from nine in the evening to six in the morning–without falling asleep.
The– ironic–implication of the father’s odd demand may be that he imagines that in this way the young man will be prevented from “sleeping” with the daughter and will thus have to suffer the torments of unfulfilled desire. As it happens, the eldest daughter and the two younger ones after her trick the father by having the statues of St. Christopher standing in their rooms answer each hour for the young man, who thereby passes the test despite having fallen asleep in the girls’ bedrooms (there is no indication that he engages in any intimacy with them, except the laconic reports that he “laid himself on the threshold”).
