Original
The Grey Fairy Book
edited by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford
Stories1900
- 1Donkey Skin23 MinA king who keeps a row of white Arab horses in marble stalls gives the grandest stall of all to a donkey with large drooping ears, and strangers who come to see his treasures cannot tell why.
- 2The Goblin Pony4 MinOn Hallowe’en an old woman tells her grandchildren to stay by the fire, because goblins are out in all sorts of disguises.
- 3An Impossible Enchantment28 MinA king who has never wanted to marry promises his subjects he will try, and sets out through one country after another to see whether anyone can make him fall in love.
- 4The Story of Dschemil and Dschemila35 MinA girl who is soon to marry her cousin finds an iron mortar in a wood and will not go home without it, although night is falling and her friends are leaving.
- 5Janni and the Draken10 MinAn orphaned brother and sister set out to seek their fortune with their last three sheep, and a stranger on the road offers them three dogs in exchange.
- 6The Partnership of the Thief and the Liar12 MinAn out-of-work thief walking the sea-shore meets a stranger who swears he once saw a stone swim and then fly.
- 7Fortunatus and his Purse16 MinA rich man in Cyprus who soon tires of everything he owns has spent every penny by the time his son is ten.
- 8The Goat-faced Girl13 MinA peasant who cannot feed his twelve daughters meets a lizard as big as a crocodile at the mouth of a cave, and the lizard asks for the youngest, whom he is certain she means to eat.
- 9What came of picking Flowers13 MinA mother has wept for years over three daughters who each vanished while picking a flower in the same water-meadow, and her son, a small boy when they went, is now grown.
- 10The Story of Bensurdatu17 MinA king has lost his three daughters to a dark cloud in his own garden, and has promised one of them, and his crown after him, to whoever brings them back.
- 11The Magician's Horse21 MinA king’s youngest son, lost for four days in a forest, comes to a palace with nobody in it and a table laid with food in the great hall.
- 12The Little Gray Man9 MinA nun, a countryman and a blacksmith keep house by turns in a ruined castle, and one day a little gray man opens the door and says how cold he is.
- 13Herr Lazarus and the Draken7 MinA cobbler who once killed forty flies with one blow sets out into the world carrying a sword that reads ‘With one blow I have slain forty’.
- 14The Story of the Queen of the Flowery Isles15 MinA widowed queen must take her elder daughter, fifteen and very beautiful, to bow before a jealous queen who believes she is the most beautiful woman in the world.
- 15Udea and her Seven Brothers23 MinA girl has been called all her life, without knowing what it means, the girl who drove her seven brothers into strange lands.
- 16The White Wolf16 MinA king has found presents for his two elder daughters, but the only wreath of wild flowers for his youngest is on the head of a white wolf squatting beside his road home.
- 17Mohammed with the Magic Finger34 MinA woman has moved her son and daughter to a town where, she has heard, nobody ever dies, and she can find no churchyard anywhere in it.
- 18Bobino11 MinA rich merchant who paid for his only son to learn foreign languages finds that the boy has come home knowing the language of animals instead.
- 19The Dog and the Sparrow9 MinA sheep-dog starved and beaten by his master runs off down the road, and the first creature he meets is a sparrow who calls him brother and offers to get him a dinner in the town.
- 20The Story of the Three Sons of Hali55 MinA young man is sent to Constantinople to choose a profession, and the first stranger who takes him in gives him a glass of wine and the portrait of a girl he has never met.
- 21The Story of the Fair Circassians34 MinTwo sisters in Circassia have been chosen for the Sultan's palace and are to leave in the morning, when two young men lose their way and knock at the door.
- 22The Jackal and the Spring7 MinIn a drought, a group of animals who have dug a well together must choose a guard to keep away a jackal who refused to dig.
- 23The Bear11 MinA king is so afraid of losing his only daughter that he keeps her shut inside her own rooms, and the nurse she has begun to complain to about it is a witch he knows nothing of.
- 24The Sunchild7 MinA childless woman asks the sun for a daughter and names the price herself: twelve years, and then he may take her back.
- 25The Daughter of Buk Ettemsuch21 MinSeven sisters are left alone with three years of food and one rule about the door, and from the roof they can see the market.
- 26Laughing Eye and Weeping Eye, or the Limping Fox9 MinA man's right eye always laughs and his left eye always weeps, and his three sons, two of them clever and one a fool, want to know why.
- 27The Unlooked-for Prince18 MinA king who has left home to stop grieving for the son he never had drinks from a newly dug well in the desert and finds his beard held fast under the water.
- 28The Simpleton11 MinA rich man, tired of an only son who can barely add two and two, gives him a purse of gold and sends him abroad to seek his fortune.
- 29The Street Musicians9 MinAn old donkey whose master has decided to shoot him sets off for the nearest town to earn his living as a street musician.
- 30The Twin Brothers16 MinA childless fisherman’s wife is told by an old woman that her husband must catch a little gold-fish and cut it into six pieces if they are ever to have children.
- 31Cannetella15 MinAn old king whose only daughter was born late in his life tells her she may choose any husband she likes, and she answers that she would rather not marry at all.
- 32The Ogre15 MinA simple boy, beaten by his mother, runs until dark and comes to a cave with a hideous ogre sitting at its mouth.
- 33A Fairy's Blunder27 MinA fairy with the kindest heart in the world and very little sense hears the children of her island wishing they were grown and the old people wishing they were young, and decides to enchant the spring they all drink from.
- 34Long, Broad, and Quickeye23 MinAn old king who wants to see his son married before he dies gives him a golden key and tells him to climb to the top of his tower and come back and say which he likes best of what he finds there.
- 35Prunella11 MinA seven-year-old on her way to school picks one ripe plum every morning from a wild plum tree, and does not know that the orchard it stands in belongs to a witch.