Briar-Rose

Long ago there lived a king and a queen who said every day, “Oh, if only we had a child!” and still no child came to them. Then one day, while the queen was sitting in her bath, a frog crawled out of the water onto the land and said to her, “Your wish shall be granted. Before a year has gone by, you will bring a daughter into the world.”

What the frog had said came true. The queen gave birth to a little girl so lovely that the king hardly knew what to do with his joy, and he ordered a great feast. He invited not only his family, his friends and everyone he knew, but the wise women as well, so that they would look kindly on the child. There were thirteen of them in his kingdom, but he had only twelve golden plates for them to eat from, so one of them had to be left at home.

The feast was held with all splendor, and when it came to an end the wise women gave the child their magic gifts. One gave her virtue, another beauty, a third riches, and so on with everything in the world that anyone could wish for.

When eleven of them had spoken their blessings, the thirteenth suddenly came in. She wanted her revenge for not having been invited, and without greeting anyone, without so much as a glance at anyone, she cried out in a loud voice, “In her fifteenth year the king’s daughter shall prick herself on a spindle and fall down dead.” Then, without another word, she turned around and left the hall.

Everyone stood there in horror. But the twelfth wise woman still had her wish in hand, and since she could not lift the wicked sentence, only soften it, she said, “It shall not be death. The king’s daughter shall fall into a deep sleep of a hundred years.”

The king, who wanted with all his heart to keep his dear child from harm, gave the order that every spindle in the whole kingdom was to be burned. As for the girl, the gifts of the wise women came true in her, every one of them, for she was so beautiful, so modest, so kind and so wise that nobody who saw her could help loving her.

Now it happened that on the very day she turned fifteen, the king and queen were away from home and the girl was left in the castle quite alone. So she wandered wherever she pleased, looking into the rooms and the chambers as the fancy took her, and at last she came to an old tower. She climbed the narrow winding stairs and reached a little door. A rusty key was standing in the lock, and when she turned it the door sprang open, and there in a small room sat an old woman with a spindle, busily spinning her flax.

“Good day, old mother,” said the king’s daughter. “What are you doing there?”

“I am spinning,” said the old woman, and nodded her head.

“What sort of thing is that, that skips about so merrily?” said the girl, and she took the spindle and wanted to spin as well. But she had hardly touched it when the magic words came true, and she pricked her finger.

At the very moment she felt the prick, she sank down on the bed that stood there and lay in a deep sleep. And that sleep spread over the whole castle. The king and queen, who had just come home and stepped into the great hall, began to fall asleep, and the whole court with them. The horses fell asleep in the stable, the dogs in the yard, the pigeons on the roof, the flies on the wall. Even the fire that was flickering on the hearth grew still and slept, and the roast stopped sizzling, and the cook, who was reaching to pull the kitchen boy’s hair because he had got something wrong, stopped with his hand in the air and slept. The wind dropped, and on the trees in front of the castle not one leaf stirred again.

Round about the castle a hedge of thorns began to grow. Every year it grew higher, until at last it closed over the whole castle and rose above it, so that nothing of the place could be seen at all, not even the flag on the roof. But the story of the beautiful sleeping Briar-Rose went around the country, for that was what the king’s daughter was called, and from time to time kings’ sons came and wanted to force their way through the hedge into the castle. They could not do it, for the thorns held fast to one another as though they had hands, and the young men were caught in them and could not get free again, and died a wretched death.

After long, long years another king’s son came into that country, and heard an old man tell of the hedge of thorns. A castle was said to stand behind it, and in it a wonderfully beautiful princess called Briar-Rose, who had been asleep for a hundred years, and with her the king and the queen and the whole court. The old man knew from his grandfather too that many kings’ sons had already come and tried to break through the hedge of thorns, and that they had hung there in the branches and died a sorry death. Then the young man said, “I am not afraid. I am going to see the beautiful Briar-Rose.”

The good old man did his best to talk him out of it, but the prince would not listen to a word of it.

Now the hundred years had just run out, and the day had come when Briar-Rose was to wake again. When the king’s son came up to the hedge of thorns, it was nothing but great beautiful flowers, and they opened of their own accord and let him through unhurt, and grew together into a hedge again behind him. In the castle yard he saw the horses and the spotted hunting dogs lying asleep; on the roof the pigeons sat with their heads under their wings. And when he came into the house, the flies were asleep on the wall, the cook in the kitchen still had his hand out as though to grab the boy, and the maid sat in front of the black hen she was about to pluck.

He went on further, and in the great hall he saw the whole court lying asleep, and up beside the throne lay the king and the queen.

He went on further still, and everything was so quiet that a person could hear his own breath, and at last he came to the tower and opened the door of the little room where Briar-Rose lay sleeping. There she was, so beautiful that he could not turn his eyes away, and he bent down and gave her a kiss. And the moment his kiss touched her, Briar-Rose opened her eyes and woke, and looked at him with the sweetest face.

Then they went down together, and the king woke, and the queen, and the whole court, and they stared at one another with round eyes. The horses in the yard got up and shook themselves. The hunting dogs jumped about and wagged their tails. The pigeons on the roof pulled their heads out from under their wings, looked around and flew off over the fields. The flies on the walls crawled on. The fire in the kitchen rose up and flickered and cooked the dinner. The roast began to sizzle again, and the cook gave the boy such a box on the ear that he yelled, and the maid finished plucking the hen.

And then the wedding of the king’s son and Briar-Rose was celebrated with all splendor, and they lived happily to the end of their days.