Der goldene Vogel

The Golden Bird

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Every night a golden apple disappears from the king's tree. His two elder sons fall asleep on watch, but the youngest stays awake, sees a golden bird and shoots off one of its feathers. The king wants the whole bird. The eldest son sets out, shoots at a fox that gives him good advice, and stays in the merry inn of a village; the second son does the same. The youngest spares the fox, rides on its tail and takes its advice to sleep in the poor inn. The fox tells him where the bird hangs in a wooden cage, but he puts it into the golden cage; it screams and he is caught. To save his life he must fetch the golden horse; with the fox's help he finds it, but puts on the golden saddle and is caught again. Now he must bring the princess of the golden castle. He kisses her at the bathhouse, but lets her say goodbye to her father and is caught a third time. Her father sets him to dig away a mountain in eight days; the fox does it overnight, and he wins the princess. With the fox's tricks he keeps her, the golden horse and the golden bird. The fox asks to be shot and to have its head and paws cut off; the prince refuses, and the fox warns him: buy no gallows meat and never sit on the edge of a well. In the village he buys his two brothers free from the gallows; at a well in the forest they throw him in and take everything home. But the horse does not eat, the bird does not sing and the princess weeps. The fox pulls him out of the dry well; dressed as a poor man he comes to court, and the horse eats, the bird sings and the princess laughs. She tells the king everything; the brothers are punished and the youngest marries her. Long after, the prince does what the fox asks, and the fox becomes a man again: the princess's brother, freed from a spell.

Retold from Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, Band 1, 7. Auflage (Ausgabe letzter Hand, 1857), KHM 57 by Brüder Grimm (public domain).