The Twelve Dancing Princesses

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The Twelve Dancing Princesses or The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes or The Shoes that were Danced to Pieces is a German fairy tale originally published by the Brothers Grimm in Children's and Household Tales as tale number 133. Charles Deulin collected another, French version in his Contes du Roi Cambinus (1874), which he credited to the Grimm version.^[1] Alexander Afanasyev collected a Russian variant, The Secret Ball, in Narodnye russkie skazki.

It was retold in Walter de la Mare's Told Again and Tales Told Again and in Robin McKinley's The Door in the Hedge.

It is Aarne-Thompson type 306, the danced-out shoes. Its closest analogue is the Scottish Kate Crackernuts, where it is a prince who is obliged to dance every night.^[2]

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Variants 3 Adaptations 4 External links and references 4.1 Texts and recordings

[edit] Synopsis

Twelve beautiful princesses slept in twelve beds in the same room; every night their doors were securely locked, but in the morning their shoes were found to be worn through as if they had been dancing all night.

The king, perplexed, promised his kingdom and a daughter to any man who could discover the princesses' secret within three days and three nights, but those who failed within the set time limit would be put to death.

An old soldier returned from war came to the king's call after several princes had failed in the endeavour to discover the princesses' secret. Whilst traveling through a wood he came upon an old woman, who gave him an invisibility cloak and told him not to eat or drink anything given to him by one of the princesses who would come to him in the evening, and to pretend to be fast asleep after the princess left.

The soldier was well received at the palace just as the others had been and indeed, in the evening, the eldest princess came to his chamber and offered him a cup of wine. The soldier, remembering the old woman's advice, threw it away secretly and began to snore very loudly as if asleep.

The princesses, sure that the soldier was asleep, dressed themselves in fine clothes and escaped from their room by a trap door in the floor. The soldier, seeing this, donned his invisibility cloak and followed them down. He trod on the gown of the youngest princess, whose cry to her sisters that all was not right was rebuffed by the eldest. The passageway led them to three groves of trees; the first having leaves of silver, the second of gold, and the third of diamonds. The soldier, wishing for a token, broke off a branch from each grove; only the youngest princess heard the noises made, and voiced concerns that the eldest princess again ignored.

They walked on until they came upon a great lake. Twelve boats with twelve princes in them were waiting. Each princess went into one, and the soldier stepped into the same boat as the youngest. The young prince in the boat rowed slowly, unaware that the soldier was causing the boat to be heavy. The youngest princess complained that the prince was not rowing fast enough, not knowing the soldier was in the boat. On the other side of the lake was a castle, into which all the princesses went into and danced the night away.

The princesses danced until their shoes were worn through and they were obliged to leave. This strange adventure went on the second and third nights, and everything happened just as before, except that on the third night the soldier carried away a golden cup as a token of where he had been. When it came time for him to declare the princesses' secret, he went before the king with the three branches and the golden cup, and told the king all he had seen. The princesses saw there was no use to deny the truth, and confessed. The soldier chose the eldest princess as his bride for he was not a very young man, and was made the king's heir.

[edit] Variants

In another Hessian variant noted by the Grimms, there is only a single princess who dances out twelve shoes every night. The hero was not a soldier but the youngest apprentice of the shoemaker who had to replace the shoes; he learns she is enchanted by twelve princes.^[3]

In the variant Deulin collected the hero is not an old soldier, but a young cowherd turned gardener's boy, named Michael, and he marries not the oldest but the youngest princess. Andrew Lang included that variant in The Red Fairy Book.^[4]

Alexander Afanasyev's variant features an impoverished nobleman as the hero, and again marries him to the youngest princess.

Kate Crackernuts, collected by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales, reverses the role, in that the heroine goes after the dancing prince, and also the tone: the princesses in The Twelve Dancing Princesses are depicted as enjoying the dances, while in the much darker Kate Crackernuts, the prince is forced by the fairies to dance to exhaustion, and is an invalid by day.^[5]

[edit] Adaptations

Jeanette Winterson varies and adds to this tale in Sexing the Cherry, in which the old soldier is a prince with 11 brothers, each of which marries a sister except the youngest, who escapes before her wedding to the prince .

Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses in which Barbie plays the role of the 7th sister, Genevieve. The plot was changed extensively. The twelve princesses visit a magic garden to dance by themselves, and they are only able to go there three times. Meanwhile, a cousin, brought in by the king to supervise their upbringing, is plotting to kill the king, and attempts to trap the princesses in their dancing garden. The hero is not an old soldier, but a cobbler who has been making their dancing shoes, and who follows them to their garden to warn them of their cousin's plot. He marries the 7th sister, Genevieve.

[edit] External links and references

[edit] Texts and recordings

• The Twelve Dancing Princesses SurLaLune's annotated (German) version
• The Twelve Dancing Princesses, French version
• SurLaLune's list of variants
• The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces Another translation of the German
• Grimm's Fairy Tales, available at Project Gutenberg.
• Grimm's household tales with the author's notes, available at Project Gutenberg.. Translated by Margaret Hunt.