Today I tell the story The Twelve Dancing Princesses otherwise known
as The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces or The Invisible Shepherd Boy. Between
those three titles you can pretty much guess what will happen but I’m going to
recount it for you anyway (with pictures of course).
Once upon a time someplace European and pseudo-medieval there was a
young man, a star gazer, shepherd, wounded soldier or other such profession unsuitable to
snobby princesses.
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| By H. J. Ford 1890 |
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| By Adrienne Adam, 1966 |
In some versions of the tale he was visited by a golden
woman in a dream and told to go to a castle, in others he just happened upon it
but in either case he came to a castle.
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| By A. H. Watson, 1927 |
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| By Errol Le Cain, 1981 |
There he heard tales of twelve
princesses who disappeared every night and in the morning their shoes were
completely worn out. The King was at his wits end. He had offered any prince
who could discover the princesses secret one of their hands in marriage. All
had failed and the king either imprisoned them or didn’t mess about and killed
them.
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| By Kay Nielsen 1913 |
This is where the stories most divide. Sometimes the young man
becomes a castle gardener and grows two laurel trees one that produces a flower
which, when put in his button hole, renders him invisible.
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| By Margaret Evans Price, 1921. |
Other times an old woman in tells him of the princesses, warns him not to drink their sleeping draft and gives him an
invisibility cloak. He then offers his services to the King.
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| By Errol Le Cain, 1981 |
Now our invisible hero follows the princesses.
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| By A. H. Watson, 1927 |
He tails them through
a trap door and down a flight of stairs. At one point he accidentally steps on the youngest princesses dress but her sisters tell her she just got it caught.
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| By Kay Nielsen 1913 |
He then follows them through three groves or forests, one silver, one gold, and
one diamond.
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| By Arthur Rackham, 1909 |
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| By Anne Anderson 1934 |
They come to a lake where twelve princes in twelve boats are
awaiting them. The young man gets in the boat with the youngest daughter whom,
naturally, he fancies.
The Prince must assume at this point that the princess
is putting on weight while she equally assumes the prince has become quite
chubby as their boat moves much slower through the water.
They come to a great ball.
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| By Kay Nielsen 1913 |
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| From the The Children’s Encyclopedia, Edited by Arthur Mee and Holland Thompson |
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| By Elenore Abbot, 1920 |
There is a crazy amount of dancing and
the poor lonely young man wishes he could dance too (think Perks of Being a
Wallflower only nobody does notice him).
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| By Hellen Stratton, 1903 |
Depending on how many times he follows them on various trips he
breaks off a branch from each of the different trees. He is heard by some of
the princesses but dismissed as something else.
In some versions he now presents his findings to the king and wins
the hand of the youngest princess (he should totally pick the eldest so he gets
the kingdom, but I suppose his humble beginnings don’t allow him to reach that
far). In a much more romantic version of the tale the princesses discover he knows
about their trips and decide to curse him like they have the other princes to
only love dancing and nothing else.
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| By Kay Nielsen 1913 |
He overhears this plot and decides to go
along willingly because he would rather be with the youngest princess in this
way than not at all. At the last second she stops them yelling, “I would rather
marry a gardener!”
And they all live happily ever after, except the eleven
other princesses and original twelve princes.
The End
And one for good luck, the book that introduced to these twelve rebellious ladies...
