Polis Reading Edition
The Yellow Fairy Book
edited by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford
Stories1894
- 1The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership6 MinA cat and mouse keep house together, and only one of them can be trusted near the pot of fat they are saving for winter.
- 2The Six Swans12 MinA king lost in a wood can find his way out only by marrying a witch’s daughter, and he already has seven children he fears she will harm.
- 3The Dragon of the North31 MinA monster that no weapon can hurt is eating men and animals wherever it settles, and the only way to learn how to kill it is written on a lost ring that nobody can read.
- 4Story of the Emperor’s New Clothes10 MinAn emperor who spends all his money on clothes meets two strangers who say they can weave a cloth that nobody stupid or unfit for his job can see.
- 5The Golden Crab13 MinA fisherman brings home a talking golden crab that wants to marry a king’s daughter.
- 6The Iron Stove13 MinA princess lost in a wood is offered her way home by a voice inside an iron stove.
- 7The Dragon and his Grandmother7 MinThree deserters are starving in a cornfield, with an army camped all round it and the gallows waiting for them if they come out.
- 8The Donkey Cabbage16 MinA hunter who gives his spare money to a hungry old woman is told how to win a wishing-cloak and a bird’s heart that will bring him gold every morning.
- 9The Little Green Frog25 MinA grieving king’s son finds a mirror in his room that shows him, instead of his own face, a girl he has never met.
- 10The Seven-headed Serpent10 MinThe survivors of a king’s voyage are warned by a talking lake that its master, a serpent with seven heads, is about to wake and find them in his garden.
- 11The Grateful Beasts23 MinA boy travelling with his two jealous elder brothers wakes to find his loaf gone, and they will not share theirs.
- 12The Giants and the Herd-boy7 MinA herd-boy with no family, out all night with another man’s sheep, finds a giant with a hurt foot crying at the edge of a wood.
- 13The Invisible Prince33 MinA fairy who rules the four elements raises her youngest son to hate women so that love can never hurt him, and forbids him to go beyond her grounds.
- 14The Crow5 MinA ruined castle stands half a mile from a palace, its garden still in full flower, and the youngest of three princesses walking there meets a black crow, torn and bleeding, that turns and speaks to her.
- 15How Six Men travelled through the Wide World12 MinA soldier discharged from the war with three farthings in his pocket swears that a king will yet give him all the treasure of a kingdom, if only he can find the right people.
- 16The Wizard King16 MinA queen carries her baby son in secret to her fairy godmother, because the baby’s father is a magician and fairies and wizards have always been enemies.
- 17The Nixy10 MinA miller who has lost everything walks by his mill-pond before dawn, and a white woman rises out of the water and asks him why he is so sad.
- 18The Glass Mountain9 MinA princess waits in a golden castle on a mountain of glass, and every knight who rides at it gets half-way up and slides back to the bottom.
- 19Alphege, or the Green Monkey13 MinA king whose first wife died giving birth to his heir marries again, and the new queen cannot bear that her own son stands second to his half-brother.
- 20Fairer-than-a-Fairy16 MinA king who waited years for a daughter names her Fairer-than-a-Fairy, and every fairy alive takes the name as a challenge.
- 21The Three Brothers8 MinA witch in the shape of a hawk breaks the windows of a village church every night, and two brothers who sit up with guns to shoot her fall asleep the moment she appears.
- 22The Boy and the Wolves, or the Broken Promise5 MinA hunter who took his family deep into the forest to get away from his own people is dying, and he wants one promise from his children first.
- 23The Glass Axe19 MinA dying Queen tells her husband that their son must never put his feet on the ground, and the boy grows up in a chair on wheels.
- 24The Dead Wife4 MinA hunter whose wife has died keeps a wooden doll dressed in her clothes sitting by the fire for company.
- 25In the Land of Souls7 MinA young chief whose bride died the night before their wedding feast remembers the old people of his tribe speaking of a path to the Land of Souls.
- 26The White Duck10 MinA young queen left alone while her husband is at war has promised him never to leave the castle and to beware of strange women.
- 27The Witch and her Servants39 MinA king owns three trees whose fruit is stolen by an invisible hand every year on the night it ripens.
- 28The Magic Ring30 MinA poor widow gives her son half the money her husband left and sends him into town to buy a year’s supply of meal.
- 29The Flower Queen’s Daughter13 MinA young prince riding across a wide meadow hears somebody crying at the bottom of a deep ditch.
- 30The Flying Ship17 MinWhen a king offers his daughter to whoever can build a flying ship, a village simpleton whose mother expects the wolves to eat him begs to try his luck.
- 31The Snow-daughter and the Fire-son8 MinA childless woman looks up at the icicles hanging from her roof and wishes aloud that she had as many children as there are icicles there.
- 32The Story of King Frost7 MinA peasant woman who cannot stand her step-daughter keeps telling her husband to drive the girl out into the fields and leave her to freeze.
- 33The Death of the Sun-hero7 MinA king and queen dream the same dream on the same night: the son their whole kingdom already calls the Sun-Hero will deserve the name only if he rides out and brings home a golden apple from the Tree of the Sun.
- 34The Witch11 MinA cruel step-mother sends her husband’s twins into a gloomy wood to wait on a ‘granny’ who she says lives in a little hut there.
- 35The Hazel-nut Child6 MinA couple who prayed for a child, even one no bigger than a hazel-nut, have a son exactly that size who never grows an inch.
- 36The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus26 MinTwo men in one village are both called Klaus, and the only thing that tells them apart is that one owns four horses and the other owns one.
- 37Prince Ring26 MinA king’s twelve-year-old son, never known for strength, is lost in a winter forest after chasing a hind with a gold ring on its horns.
- 38The Swineherd10 MinA poor prince sends an emperor’s daughter a nightingale and a rose from his father’s grave, hoping she will marry him.
- 39How to tell a True Princess2 MinA prince has been all over the world without finding a true princess, and a stranger soaked to the skin is knocking at a palace gate in a thunderstorm saying she is one.
- 40The Blue Mountains24 MinA Scotsman, an Englishman and an Irishman who have deserted from the army are lost and starving in a forest, sleeping in the trees for fear of wild beasts.
- 41The Tinder-box17 MinAn old witch on the high road offers a soldier home from the wars all the money he can carry from inside a hollow tree, and asks only that he bring her up an old tinder-box.
- 42The Witch in the Stone Boat12 MinA young king sailing home with his wife and small son is becalmed a day from harbour, and while he sleeps below, his wife sees a stone boat rowing towards the ship.
- 43Thumbelina25 MinA girl half a thumb high, grown from a witch’s barley-corn, sleeps in a walnut shell and rows about a bowl of water on a tulip petal.
- 44The Nightingale19 MinAn emperor of China reads in a book that the finest thing in his whole empire is a nightingale singing in the forest by his palace, and nobody at his court has ever heard of her.
- 45Hermod and Hadvor17 MinA king’s only daughter and his foster son have secretly promised to marry each other, and the dying queen makes the king swear to marry no one but the Queen of Hetland the Good.
- 46The Steadfast Tin-soldier10 MinOn a table of toys a tin soldier, cast a leg short because the tin ran out, watches a paper dancer standing in a cardboard castle doorway with one foot lifted so high that he cannot see it.
- 47Blockhead Hans9 MinA princess promises to marry the man who best knows how to choose his words, and a squire’s three sons set out to win her, two of them on horseback and one on a goat.
- 48A Story about a Darning-needle7 MinA darning-needle believes she is really an embroidery-needle, and much too fine for the common sewing she is being used for.