The Golden-haired Twins

Once upon a time, a long, long while ago, there lived a young king who

wished very much to marry, but could not decide where he had better

look for a wife.

One evening as he was walking disguised through the streets of his

capital, as it was his frequent custom to do, he stopped to listen

near an open window where he heard three young girls chatting gaily

together.

The girls were talking about a report which had been lately spread

through the city, that the king intended soon to marry.

One of the girls exclaimed, 'If the king would marry me I would give

him a son who should be the greatest hero in the world.'

The second girl said, 'And if I were to be his wife I would present

him with two sons at once. Two twins with golden hair.'

And the third girl declared that were the king to marry _her_ she

would give him a daughter so beautiful that there should not be her

equal in the whole wide world!

The young king listened to all this, and for some time thought over

their words, and tried to make up his mind which of the three girls

he should choose for his wife. At last he decided that he would marry

the one who had said she would bring him twins with golden hair.

Having once settled this in his own mind, he ordered that all

preparations for his marriage should be made forthwith, and shortly

after, when all was ready, he married the second girl of the three.

Several months after his marriage, the young king, who was at war with

one of the neighbouring princes, received tidings of the defeat of his

army, and heard that his presence was immediately required in the

camp. He accordingly left his capital and went to his army, leaving

the young queen in his palace to the care of his stepmother.

Now the king's stepmother hated her daughter-in-law very much indeed,

so when the young queen was near her confinement, the old queen told

her that it was always customary in the royal family for the heirs to

the throne to be born in a garret.

The young queen (who knew nothing about the customs in royal families

except what she had learnt from hearing or seeing since her marriage

to the king) believed implicitly what her mother-in-law told her,

although she thought it a great pity to leave her splendid apartments

and go up into a miserable attic.

Now when the golden-haired twins were born, the old queen contrived to

steal them out of their cradle, and put in their place two ugly little

dogs. She then caused the two beautiful golden-haired boys to be

buried alive in an out-of-the-way spot in the palace gardens, and then

sent word to the king that the young queen had given him two little

dogs instead of the heirs he was hoping for. The wicked stepmother

said in her letter to the king that she herself was not surprised at

this, though she was very sorry for his disappointment. As to herself,

she had a long time suspected the young queen of having too great a

friendship for goblins and elves, and all kinds of evil spirits.

When the king received this letter, he fell into a frightful rage,

because he had only married the young girl in order to have the

golden-haired twins she had promised him as heirs to his throne.

So he sent word back to the old queen that his wife should be put at

once into the dampest dungeon in the castle, an order which the wicked

woman took good care to see carried out without delay. Accordingly the

poor young queen was thrown into a miserably dark dungeon under the

palace, and kept on bread and water.

Now there was only a very small hole in this prison--hardly large

enough to let in light and air--yet the old queen managed to cause a

great many people to pass by this hole, and whoever passed was ordered

to spit at and abuse the unhappy young queen, calling out to her, 'Are

you really the queen? Are you the girl who cheated the king in order

to be a queen? Where are your golden-haired twins? You cheated the

king and your friends, and now the witches have cheated you!'

But the young king, though terribly angry and mortified at his great

disappointment, was, at the same time, too sad and troubled to be

willing to return to his palace. So he remained away for fully nine

years. When he at last consented to return, the first thing he noticed

in the palace gardens were two fine young trees, exactly the same size

and the same shape.

These trees had both golden leaves and golden blossoms, and had grown

up of themselves from the very spot where the stepmother of the king

had buried the two golden-haired boys she had stolen from their

cradle.

The king admired these two trees exceedingly, and was never weary of

looking at them. This, however, did not at all please the old queen,

for she knew that the two young princes were buried just where the

trees grew, and she always feared that by some means what she had done

would come to the king's ears. She therefore pretended that she was

very sick, and declared that she was sure she should die unless her

stepson, the king, ordered the two golden-leaved trees to be cut down,

and a bed made for her out of their wood.

As the king was not willing to be the cause of her death, he ordered

that her wishes should be attended to, notwithstanding he was

exceedingly sorry to lose his favourite trees.

A bed was soon made from the two trees, and the seemingly sick old

queen was laid on it as she desired. She was quite delighted that the

golden-leaved trees had disappeared from the garden; but when midnight

came, she could not sleep a bit, for it seemed to her that she heard

the boards of which her bed was made in conversation with each other!

At last it seemed to her, that one board said, quite plainly, 'How

are you, my brother?' And the other board answered, 'Thank you, I am

very well; how are you?' 'Oh, I am all right,' returned the first

board; 'but I wonder how our poor mother is in her dark dungeon!

Perhaps she is hungry and thirsty!'

The wicked old queen could not sleep a minute all night, after hearing

this conversation between the boards of her new bed; so next morning

she got up very early and went to see the king. She thanked him for

attending to her wish, and said she already was much better, but she

felt quite sure she would never recover thoroughly unless the boards

of her new bed were cut up and thrown into a fire. The king was sorry

to lose entirely even the boards made out of his two favourite trees,

nevertheless he could not refuse to use the means pointed out for his

stepmother's perfect recovery.

So the new bed was cut to pieces and thrown into the fire. But whilst

the boards were blazing and crackling, two sparks from the fire flew

into the courtyard, and in the next moment two beautiful lambs with

golden fleeces and golden horns were seen gambolling about the yard.

The king admired them greatly, and made many inquiries who had sent

them there, and to whom they belonged. He even sent the public crier

many times through the city, calling on the owners of the

golden-fleeced lambs to appear and claim them; but no one came, so at

length he thought he might fairly take them as his own property.

The king took very great care of these two beautiful lambs, and every

day directed that they should be well fed and attended to; this,

however, did not at all please his stepmother. She could not endure

even to look on the lambs with their golden fleeces and golden horns,

for they always reminded her of the golden-haired twins. So, in a

little while she pretended again to be dangerously sick, and declared

she felt sure she should soon die unless the two lambs were killed and

cooked for her.

The king was even fonder of his golden-fleeced lambs than he had been

of the golden-leaved trees, but he could not long resist the tears and

prayers of the old queen, especially as she seemed to be very ill.

Accordingly, the lambs were killed, and a servant was ordered to carry

their golden fleeces down to the river and to wash the blood well out

of them. But whilst the servant held them under the water, they

slipped, in some way or another, out of his fingers, and floated down

the stream, which just at that place flowed very rapidly. Now it

happened that a hunter was passing near the river a little lower down,

and, as he chanced to look in the water, he saw something strange in

it. So he stepped into the stream, and soon fished out a small box

which he carried to his house, and there opened it. To his unspeakably

great surprise, he found in the box two golden-haired boys. Now the

hunter had no children of his own; he therefore adopted the twins he

had fished out of the river, and brought them up just as if they had

been his own sons. When the twins were grown up into handsome young

men, one of them said to his foster-father, 'Make us two suits of

beggar's clothes, and let us go and wander a little about the world!'

The hunter, however, replied and said, 'No, I will have a fine suit

made for each of you, such as is fitting for two such noble-looking

young men.' But as the twins begged hard that he should not spend his

money uselessly in buying fine clothes, telling him that they wished

to travel about as beggars, the hunter--who always liked to do as his

two handsome foster-sons wished--did as they desired, and ordered two

suits of clothes, like those worn by beggars, to be prepared for them.

The two sons then dressed themselves up as beggars, and as well as

they could hid their beautiful golden locks, and then set out to see

the world. They took with them a gusle[33] and a cymbal, and

maintained themselves with their singing and playing.

[33] 'Gusle,' one-stringed instrument on which the Servian

bards accompany their recitation of ballads.

They had wandered about in this way some time when one day they came

to the king's palace. As the afternoon was already pretty far

advanced, the young musicians begged to be allowed to pass the night

in one of the outbuildings belonging to the court, as they were poor

men, and quite strangers in the city. The old queen, however, who

happened to be just then in the courtyard saw them, and hearing their

request, said sharply that beggars could not be permitted to enter any

part of the king's palace. The two travellers said they had hoped to

pay for their night's lodging by their songs and music, as one of

them played and sung to the gusle, and the other to the cymbal.

The old queen, however, was not moved by this, but insisted on their

going away at once. Happily for the two brothers the king himself came

out into the courtyard just as his stepmother angrily ordered them to

go away, and at once directed his servants to find a place for the

musicians to sleep in, and ordered them to provide the brothers with a

good supper. After they had supped, the king commanded them to be

brought before him that he might judge of their skill as musicians,

and that their singing might help him to pass the time more

pleasantly.

Accordingly, after the two young men had taken the refreshment

provided for them, the servants took them into the king's presence,

and they began to sing this ballad:--

'The pretty bird, the swallow, built her nest with care, in the palace

of the king. In the nest she reared up happily two of her little ones.

A black, ugly-looking bird, however, came to the swallow's nest to mar

her happiness, and to kill her two little ones. And the ugly black

bird succeeded in destroying the happiness of the poor little swallow;

the little ones, however, although yet weak and unfledged, were saved,

and, when they were grown up and able to fly, they came to look at the

palace where their mother, the pretty swallow, had built her nest.'

This strange song the two minstrels sung so very sweetly that the king

was quite charmed, and asked them the meaning of the words.

Whereupon the two meanly dressed young men took off their hats, so

that the rich tresses of their golden hair fell down over their

shoulders, and the light glanced so brightly upon it that the whole

hall was illuminated by the shining. They then stepped forward

together, and told the king all that had happened to them and to their

mother, and convinced him that they were really his own sons.

The king was exceedingly angry when he heard all the cruel things his

stepmother had done, and he gave orders that she should be burnt to

death. He then went with the two golden-haired princes to the

miserable dungeon wherein his unfortunate wife had been confined so

many years, and brought her once more into her beautiful palace.

There, looking on her golden-haired sons, and seeing how much the

king, their father, loved them, she soon forgot all her long years of

misery. As to the king, he felt that he could never do enough to make

amends for all the misfortunes his queen had lived through, and all

the dangers to which his twins sons had been exposed. He felt that he

had too easily believed the stories of the old queen, because he would

not trouble himself to inquire more particularly into the truth or

falsehood of the strange things she had told him.

After all this mortification, and trouble, and misery, everything came

right at last. So the king and his wife, with their golden-haired

twins, lived together long and happily.