Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (34 page)

FORTY-SEVEN

STRONG HANS

A man and his wife lived in a remote valley, all alone except for their little son. One day the wife went into the woods to gather some pine branches for the fire, and she took little Hans, who was only two years old. It was springtime, and since the little boy loved the bright colours of the flowers, she wandered with him further and further into the forest.

Suddenly two robbers sprang out of the bushes, seized the mother and child, and made off with them deep into the darkest part of the forest, where no innocent human being went from one year’s end to the next. The poor woman begged the robbers to set her and the child free, but she might as well have said nothing: they were deaf to her sobs and pleas, and drove her on without mercy through the briars and the brambles for two hours, until they came to a large rock with a door in it.

The robbers knocked, and the door opened. They made their way along a dark passage that led into a large cave, where a fire was burning on the hearth. On the walls hung swords and sabres and other deadly weapons, their blades glittering in the firelight, and in the middle of the cave there stood a black table where four other robbers sat playing dice. The chief robber sat at the head of the table, and when he saw the woman and her child, he stood up and spoke to her.

‘Stop crying,’ he said. ‘You’ve got nothing to fear as long as you do the housekeeping for us. You sweep the floor and keep everything neat and tidy, and we’ll treat you well enough.’

When he’d said this, he gave them some bread and meat, and showed her a bed where she and the child could sleep.

They stayed with the robbers for some years, and Hans grew big and strong. His mother told him stories and taught him to read with the help of an old book about knights and chivalry that she’d found in the cave.

When Hans was nine years old, he made himself a heavy club out of a pine branch that he’d stolen from the robbers’ woodpile. He hid it behind his bed, and then went to his mother and said, ‘Mama, I need to know, and you must tell me: who is my father?’

The woman said nothing. She didn’t want to tell him anything about their life before the cave, because he might become homesick, and she knew the robbers would never let him leave; but it broke her heart to think that Hans would never see his father.

That night, when the robbers returned from one of their criminal raids, Hans took out his club, went to the chief, and said, ‘Now I want to know who my father is. My mother won’t tell me, so I’m asking you, and if you don’t tell me, I’ll knock you down.’

The chief laughed, and gave Hans such a clout that he fell over and rolled under the table. He didn’t cry or make a sound; he just thought, ‘Let some time go by, and when I’m bigger, he’d better watch out.’

After a year had come and gone Hans took out his club, blew the dust off it, swung it this way and that, and thought, ‘Yes, it’s a good strong club.’

When the robbers came back early next morning, they were in a drinking mood. They drained so many jugs of wine that their heads began to droop. Hans was waiting for that, and he took his club and stood in front of the chief and asked him again: ‘Who’s my father?’

As he’d done before, the chief gave him a clout on the head, and once again Hans fell down. This time, though, he bounced up at once, took a tight grip of his club, and gave the chief and all the robbers a beating that left them so dazed and battered that they couldn’t move. His mother was watching from the corner of the cave, and she was amazed at his strength and his courage.

When he’d finished he turned to her and said, ‘You see, I’m serious about this. I want to know who my father is.’

‘Well, my brave Hans,’ said his mother, ‘let’s go and look for him.’

While she looked through the keys hanging from the chief’s belt, Hans filled a large flour sack with as much gold and silver and jewellery as it would hold. Then he swung it up on his back and followed his mother out of the cave.

And when he stepped out of the dark into the light of day and saw the trees, the flowers, the birds, the sun in the bright sky, Hans was amazed, and stood gaping around at everything as if he’d lost his wits. Meanwhile his mother was looking around to find the way home, and soon they set off; and after walking for a few hours they came back to their little house in the valley.

Hans’s father was sitting in the doorway, and when he learned that this woman was his wife and this strapping boy was his son he wept for joy, because he’d given them up for dead a long time before.

Young as he was, Hans was a head taller than his father, and much stronger by far. When they went into the house, Hans put the sack down on the bench by the fire, and at once there was the sound of cracking and breaking, and first the bench collapsed and then the floor gave way, and the sack plunged down into the cellar.

‘Good grief, boy, what have you done?’ said the father. ‘Are you going to demolish the whole house?’

‘You needn’t worry, father,’ said Hans. ‘There’s more than enough gold and treasure in that sack to build a whole new house.’

Sure enough, Hans and his father soon began to build a fine new house. What’s more, they bought some land around it, and some cattle, and set up a farm. When Hans walked behind the plough and pushed the blade deep into the soil, the oxen hardly needed to pull.

Next spring Hans said, ‘Father, I want to go and see the world. You keep all the money and have the blacksmith make me a walking staff that weighs a hundred pounds. Once I’ve got that I’ll set off.’

When his staff was ready, Hans left home. He set off briskly and soon arrived in a deep valley, where he heard an odd sound and stopped to listen. It was a tearing, crunching sort of noise, and when he looked around he saw a pine tree that was being twisted like a rope from top to bottom. Doing the twisting was a huge fellow who had the tree in both hands and was twisting it as easily as if it had been a bundle of rushes.

‘Hello there!’ Hans called up. ‘What are you up to?’

‘I cut some logs yesterday,’ the big man replied, ‘and I need a rope to carry them with.’

‘Well, this is my sort of fellow,’ thought Hans. ‘He’s no weakling.’ And he called up: ‘Leave your logs and come with me, and we’ll have a good time!’

The big man climbed down, and he turned out to be taller than Hans by a whole head, and Hans wasn’t small, either.

‘I’m going to call you Pine Twister,’ Hans told him. ‘Glad to meet you.’

They went on their way, and presently they heard a hammering and a pounding that made the very earth shake beneath their feet. When they turned a corner they saw the cause of it: a giant was standing in front of a cliff face, smashing great boulders off it with his fists.

‘Good day to you, mate,’ said Hans. ‘What are you doing that for?’

‘Well, I can’t sleep,’ said the giant. ‘I lie down and close my eyes, and five minutes later the bears and the wolves and the foxes come sniffing and prowling around, and I can’t get any rest. So I’m going to build a house, you see, so I can get a bit of peace and quiet.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Hans. ‘Well, I’ve got a better idea. Forget the house and come along with me and Pine Twister.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I don’t know. We’re looking for adventures.’

‘Good idea,’ said the giant.

‘And I’ll call you Rock Smasher,’ Hans added.

The giant agreed, and the three of them set off through the forest, terrifying all the animals wherever they went. In the evening they came to a deserted castle, where they lay down to sleep.

Next morning Hans got up and went to look at the garden, which was wild and overgrown with brambles. As he was looking around, a wild boar charged out of a bush and made straight for him, but Hans struck him a blow on the head with his staff, and the beast fell dead on the spot. Hans hoisted it up on his shoulders and carried it into the castle, where the companions put it on a spit and roasted it over the fire, and had a fine breakfast. They agreed that they would take turns hunting and cooking, two of them going out each day to hunt and the other staying home and cooking. They reckoned they could get by with nine pounds of meat per day for each of them.

On the first day it was Hans’s and Rock Smasher’s turn to hunt, while Pine Twister stayed in the castle to cook. He was busy making a sauce when a little shrivelled-up old man came into the kitchen.

‘Give us a bit of meat,’ he said.

‘Clear off, you old scrounger,’ said Pine Twister. ‘You don’t need any meat.’

At that the scrawny little man leaped at Pine Twister and gave him such a walloping that he couldn’t defend himself, and he fell down dazed. The little man didn’t stop thumping him, either, but kept on punching and kicking till he’d worked off all his anger. Pine Twister had never known anything like it.

By the time the other two came home from hunting, Pine Twister had recovered a bit, and he decided to say nothing about the little old man; after all, he himself hadn’t come out of the experience with much credit. Let’s see how
they
get on with the little monster, he thought.

Next day it was Rock Smasher’s turn to cook. The same thing happened to him: he refused to give the little man any meat, and he got a horrible drubbing in return. When the others got back Pine Twister looked closely at Rock Smasher’s face, and saw that he’d been through the same experience. But both of them kept quiet, because they were keen to see how Hans would get on.

On the following day the other two went off to hunt, and Hans stayed behind to cook. He was standing by the fire skimming off the fat from a big pot of stock when the little man came in and asked for a piece of meat.

‘He’s a poor little devil,’ thought Hans; ‘I’ll give him a bit of my share, so the other two won’t have to do without.’ He sliced off a decent piece of meat, which the little man gobbled up at once. As soon as that piece had gone, the little man demanded some more, and Hans in his good-natured way cut off another slice and said, ‘That’s a good helping. That ought to be enough for you.’

The little man devoured that too, and then said, ‘More! More!’

‘Now you’re getting cheeky,’ said Hans. ‘You’ve had enough.’

The little man sprang at him, but he’d picked the wrong man this time. Without exerting himself Hans gave him a back-hander that knocked him flat, and followed it up with a kick to the backside that sent the little man flying down the steps and into the hall. Hans chased after him, but tripped and fell, and by the time he’d picked himself up the little man was way ahead of him and scuttling off into the forest. Hans ran after him as fast as he could, and saw him squeeze himself into a hole in a big rock. Hans made a note of the spot, and then went back to skimming the stock.

When the others came back to the castle, they were surprised to find Hans in such good spirits. He told them what had happened, and they told their stories in return. Hans laughed heartily.

‘It serves you right for being so stingy,’ he said. ‘And you ought to be ashamed, big fellows like you, to let yourselves be beaten by a little monkey like him. Never mind, we’ll teach him a lesson.’

They found a basket and a rope and went to the rock in the forest where the little man had slipped away. The hole went a long way down. They tied the rope to the basket and let Hans and his hundred-pound staff down first.

At the bottom Hans found a door, and when he opened it the first thing that met his eyes was a maiden so lovely she seemed like a picture come alive. She was chained to the wall, and her expression was full of disgust and despair, because standing on a chair right next to her was the little man, leering and stroking her hair and her cheeks with his horny little fingers.

As soon as he saw Hans, he gave a shriek and bounded away like a monkey. Hans slammed the door so he couldn’t get away, and then tried to catch him, but the little man bounced off the walls and leaped this way and that, howling and gibbering, and Hans couldn’t touch him. It was like trying to hit a fly with a pencil. Finally Hans got him cornered, and whirled his staff over his head and dealt the little devil a blow that squashed him flat.

The moment the little man fell dead, the chains dropped away from the maiden, and she was free. Hans could hardly believe his eyes; he’d never seen anything or anyone so lovely. She was the daughter of a king, she told him.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Hans. ‘I could tell you were a princess. But how did you come to be chained up down here?’

‘A savage nobleman wanted to marry me, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer,’ she said. ‘I think it drove him mad. He kidnapped me and locked me down here with this creature to guard me. But the little man was getting more and more demanding himself. You saw how he was treating me. If you hadn’t come along . . .’

‘Yes, well, never mind that,’ said Hans. ‘We’ve still got to get you out of this cavern. I’ve got a basket out here, and two fellows on top to haul you up. In you get.’

He helped her into the basket and gave the rope a tug. Straight away the other two began to pull her up, and presently the basket came down again empty.

But Hans wasn’t sure he could trust his two companions. ‘They didn’t tell me about the little man beating them up,’ he thought; ‘I don’t know what they might be planning now.’ So instead of getting in the basket himself, he put his iron staff in and tugged the rope once more. Up it went, but when it was no more than halfway up, the other two let it fall with a crash to the bottom. If Hans had been sitting in it, he’d have been killed at once.

‘Well, I was right about those two,’ he thought, ‘but what am I going to do now?’

He walked round and round the little space at the bottom of the shaft, getting more and more desperate. He couldn’t think of any way to escape. ‘It’d be a miserable end to perish down this wretched hole,’ he thought. ‘I wasn’t born to end like this.’

Then he noticed that the little man had a ring on his finger that sparkled and glittered. ‘I wonder if that’s magic,’ he thought. ‘You never know.’

So he took the ring off the dead man’s finger and put it on his own. And at once he heard something whizzing and buzzing and whirling about in the air just above his head. He looked up, and saw a thousand or more little air-spirits hovering there. When they saw him looking at them they all bowed, and the biggest one said: ‘Master, here we are at your command. What would you like us to do?’