Dornröschen

Little Briar Rose

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A king and queen long for a child; a frog tells the queen in her bath that she will have a daughter within a year. At the christening feast the king can invite only twelve of the thirteen wise women, as he has only twelve golden plates. Eleven give the girl their gifts; the thirteenth bursts in and curses her to prick herself on a spindle in her fifteenth year and fall dead; the twelfth softens it to a hundred-year sleep. The king has every spindle burned. On her fifteenth birthday, alone in the castle, the girl climbs an old tower, finds an old woman spinning, touches the spindle, pricks her finger and falls asleep on the bed, and the whole castle sleeps with her: the king and queen, the court, the horses, dogs, doves, flies, the fire, the roast and the cook about to pull the kitchen boy's hair. A thorn hedge grows over the castle; many princes die in it. After a hundred years a prince hears the tale from an old man and will not be warned. The hedge turns to flowers and lets him through; he walks through the sleeping castle, finds Briar Rose in the tower and kisses her. She wakes, and with her the whole castle: the cook boxes the boy's ear, the maid finishes plucking the hen. The prince and Briar Rose marry and live happily to the end.

Retold from Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, Band 1, 7. Auflage (Ausgabe letzter Hand, 1857), KHM 50 by Brüder Grimm (public domain).