Die Gänsemagd

The Goose Girl

An old widowed queen sends her beautiful daughter far away to marry a king's son. She packs a rich dowry, gives her a chambermaid to ride with her and a horse called Falada that can speak, and lets three drops of her own blood fall on a white cloth for her daughter to keep. On the way the princess is thirsty, but the maid will not fetch her water in the golden cup; twice the princess must kneel and drink from the stream, and the drops say: if your mother knew this, her heart would break. The second time the cloth falls into the river and floats away, and the princess becomes weak. The maid takes Falada, makes the princess change clothes with her and swear under the open sky to tell no one. At the castle the prince takes the maid for his bride; the old king sees the true princess in the yard and sends her to help the boy Kürdchen herd geese. The false bride has Falada's head cut off, but the princess pays the knacker to nail the head under the dark gate, and every morning she greets it and it answers. On the meadow she combs her golden hair, and when Kürdchen tries to pull some out she calls the wind to blow his hat away. Kürdchen complains to the old king, who watches all this himself. The princess may not tell anyone her sorrow, so the king tells her to tell it to the iron stove; she crawls in and tells everything while he listens at the pipe. She is dressed in royal clothes, the king tells his son, and at a great feast the old king asks the false bride what such a deceiver deserves. She names a cruel death, and it is her own sentence. The young king marries his true bride, and they rule their kingdom in peace and happiness.

Retold from Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, Band 2, 7. Auflage (Ausgabe letzter Hand, 1857), KHM 89 by Brüder Grimm (public domain).