Illustration by Arthur Rackham from The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Mrs. Edgar Lucas, translator. London: Constable & Company Ltd, 1909.

The princess in “King Thrushbeard” is a bit unusual for the heroine in a Grimm tale. She’s beautiful, naturally, but not good and kind. She was proud and haughty and no matter how many suitors her father the King presented to her, she found fault with each one, ridiculing them and mocking them. She was exceptionally mean to one good king who had a slightly crooked chin, saying his chin looked like a thrush’s beak, of course earning him the nickname King Thrushbeard.

Finally the King is so angry that he vows to marry her off to the first beggar who shows at his door. A few days later, a fiddler comes and plays under a window, begging for alms. The King holds true to his word, forces his daughter to marry the beggar and then to leave the palace to go and live with her husband.

On the trip to the beggar’s home, the couple passes through a beautiful wood and meadow which, according to the beggar, belong to King Thrushbeard. Finally, they get to the beggar’s cottage, which is of course tiny, and the man makes his new wife do chores and attempt to earn a living. It turns out she’s pretty useless at most things she tries and so she is finally sent to the King’s palace to work as a kitchen maid.

At a wedding of the King’s eldest son, she sneaks to a doorway to watch the festivities ad is surprised to see the man getting married is King Thrushbeard. He sees her and wants to dance with her, but she is ashamed of how low she has fallen and runs away. I bet you can guess what happens next.

On the stairs a man caught her and brought her back; and when she looked at him it was King Thrushbeard again. He said to her kindly, “Do not be afraid, I and the fiddler who has been living with you in that wretched hovel are one. For love of you I disguised myself so; and I also was the hussar who rode through your crockery. This was all done to humble your proud spirit, and to punish you for the insolence with which you mocked me.”

She cries, goes on about how wrong she was and how she doesn’t deserve to be his wife. He forgives her and they celebrate their wedding again and live happily ever after.

Notice she only gets her happy ending after she conforms to society’s expectations of women. Not only does she have to be married, she has to be humble and subservient to her husband.

I like to think though, that her father and Thrushbeard had it all planned out, that the King knew the fiddler was Thrushbeard and knew his plan to teach her a lesson, but that in the end she would be royalty again, content and loved.

Since it is Shakespeare Reading Month, hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey, I wanted to mention that several sources say this tale is similar to Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. I haven’t read the play yet, although it’s on my “possibles” list for this month.

Thursday’s Tales is a weekly event here at Carol’s Notebook. Fairy tales, folktales, tall tales, even re-tellings, I love them all.

13 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.