The Princess and the Pea

Contents

1. The Princess and the Pea (Denmark, Hans Christian Andersen).

2. The Most Sensitive Woman (Italy, Christian Schneller).

The Princess and the Pea

Denmark

Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to find a princess, but she would have to be a real princess. So he traveled all around the world to find one, but there was always something wrong. There were princesses enough, but he could never be sure that they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not quite right. So he came home again and was sad, for he so much wanted to have a real princess.

One evening there was a terrible storm. It thundered and lightninged! The rain poured down! It was horrible! Then there was a knock at the city gate, and the old king went out to open it.

A princess was standing outside. But my goodness, how she looked from the rain and the weather! Water ran down from her hair and her clothes. It ran into the toes of her shoes and out at the heels. And yet she said that she was a real princess.

"Well, we shall soon find that out," thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went into the bedroom, took off all the bedding and laid a pea on the bottom of the bed. Then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty featherbeds of eiderdown on top of the mattresses.

That was where the princess was to sleep for the night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept.

"Oh, horribly!" she said. "I hardly closed my eyes all night. Goodness knows what there was in the bed! I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It is horrible!"

Now they could see that she was a real princess, because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty featherbeds. Nobody but a real princess could be that sensitive.

So the prince took her for his wife, because now he knew that he had a real princess. And the pea was put in the art gallery where it can still be seen, unless someone has taken it.

Now see, that was a real story!

• Source: Hans Christian Andersen, Prinsessen på ærten (1835).

• The final sentence, "Now see, that was a real story!" draws attention to the tale's self-conscious fictitiousness. Note that the following story uses a similar device as a concluding statement.

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The Most Sensitive Woman

Italy

The parents of a prince wanted him to marry, but he said, "I will marry only such a woman about whom I can say with good conscience that she is the most sensitive woman in the world."

His parents answered, "Then go and find her!"

He went forth and came to a woman whose head was all bandaged up and who appeared to be suffering. "What is the matter with you?" he asked.

"Oh," she said, "this morning my maid was combing my hair, and she pulled one out, which is causing me great pain."

But the prince thought to himself, "She isn't the right one. I will seek further."

He went on his way and found another woman. Her entire body was wrapped with the finest linen, and she looked very sad. "What is the matter with you?" he asked.

"Oh," she said, "last night while I was in bed there was a little wrinkle in the sheet I was lying on, and it has made me sick."

But the prince thought, "She is not the most sensitive one either. There must be a better one."

He continued on his way and came to a third woman. She was sitting in an easy chair and had a bandaged foot. She was crying bright tears and was distorting her pretty face until one had to feel sorry for her. "What is the matter with you?" asked the prince.

"Oh," she groaned, "this morning while I was strolling in the garden a little breeze came up and blew the petal of a jasmine blossom onto my foot."

The prince thought about this a little while, and then said, "You are the right one, for there cannot be a more sensitive woman than you!" And he married her.

Did he do the right thing? Unfortunately the storyteller does not know, for she has run out of yarn.

• Source: Christian Schneller, "Die Empfindlichste" (La più delicata), Märchen und Sagen aus Wälschtirol (Innsbruck: Verlag der Wagner'schen Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1867), no. 45, pp. 128-129.

• This story is from South Tyrol, an alpine region in northern Italy but with historical and cultural ties to Austria.

• The story's final sentence, claiming that the storyteller has run out yarn, is wonderfully ambiguous, referring both to yarn as a raw material for storytelling and as the product of a principal activity of traditional European storytellers: spinning.

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Revised November 26, 1999.