Showing results by narrator "Robin Nixon" in All Categories

There was once a king, whose queen had hair of the purest gold, and was so beautiful that her match was not to be met with on the whole face of the earth. But this beautiful queen fell ill, and when she felt that her end drew near she called the king to her and said, 'Promise me that you will never marry again, unless you meet with a wife who is as beautiful as I am, and who has golden hair like mine.' Then when the king in his grief promised all she asked, she shut her eyes and died.

Hans has been working hard for seven years but wishes to return to see his poor mother. His master pays him his wages which amounts to a lump of gold the size of his head. Hans puts the gold in a handkerchief and starts out on his journey jogging but soon becomes tired. He spots a rider on horseback and seeing the ease at which the horse travels he offers to exchange his lump of gold for the horse. Happy with the exchange, the man gives him the horse and Hans rides off. The horse bolts and Hans gets bucked off, whereupon he meets a shepherd who convinces Hans to trade his horse for a cow.

Frederick and Catherine were husband and wife. He left to do his work. She started to fry a sausage and thought she could get a beer while it cooked. In the cellar, drawing it, she realized the dog was loose and might eat the sausage, but the dog had already done so, and she chased it but could not catch it. Meanwhile, the keg of beer emptied itself into the cellar. To hide this, she used flour she bought at a fair to dry it. Frederick was furious hearing this.

Hansel and Gretel are a brother and sister abandoned in a forest, where they fall into the hands of a witch who lives in a house made of gingerbread, cake, and candy. The cannibalistic witch intends to fatten the children before eventually eating them, but Gretel outwits the witch and kills her. The two children then escape with their lives and return home with the witch's treasure.

Clever Gretel is a tale where a greedy but crafty servant outwits her master. It was first published in the second edition of Grimms' Fairy Tales in 1819.

A cat and a mouse, contrary to the custom of their kinds, become friends, such good friends that they decide to share a home. That they might have something to fall back on in time of need, they buy a pot of fat and hide it away in a nook of a church for safekeeping. After a short time, the cat tells her housemate that one of her relations has given birth and that the mouse's friend has been asked to be godmother. Instead of going to a christening, though, the cat goes to the nook of the church and eats the top layer of the fat in the pot.

Briar Rose is a classic fairy tale about a princess who is cursed to sleep for a hundred years by an evil fairy, to be awakened by a handsome prince at the end of them. The good fairy, realizing that the princess would be frightened if alone when she awakens, uses her wand to put every living person and animal in the palace asleep, to awaken when the princess does.

Clever Hans is a fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm about a boy who ruins his engagement with a girl through a variety of comedic events. The title is claimed by most people to be ironic.

Ashputtel is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world. The protagonist is a young woman living in forsaken circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune, with her ascension to the throne via marriage. The story of Rhodopis, recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo sometime between around 7 BC and AD 23, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt, is usually considered to be the earliest known variant of the Cinderella story.

A rich widow lived with her daughter and her stepdaughter. The widow favored her younger biological daughter, allowing her to become spoiled and idle while her older stepdaughter was left to do all the work. Every day the stepdaughter would sit outside the cottage and spin beside the well. One day, she pricked her finger on the point of the spindle. As she leaned over the well to wash the blood away, the spindle fell from her hand and sank out of sight. The stepdaughter feared that she would be punished for losing the spindle, and in panic she leapt into the well after it.

"Iron John" is about taking men back, through myth and legend, to the source of their masculinity, and finding a middle path between the greater awareness of the 'sensitive new age guy', and the power and vitality of the warrior. The Iron John story has been around in one form or another for thousands of years.

The German tale of four brothers who set out to learn their crafts in the big wide world. When they return home as skilled men; a thief, an astronomer, a hunter, and a tailor their skills are challenged by their father - I should like to try what each of you can do in this way.

When a princess refuses to marry any of the princes her father has lined up, he marries her to a poor musician who takes her to his hovel home and makes her work for her keep. But this poor musician seems to know a bit too much about the infamous King Grisly-Beard... and he keeps his face covered a lot of the time.

A rooster and hen go to eat nuts. They make a carriage of nutshells to come back in; the hen rides and the rooster draws it. The duck attacks them for eating nuts, but the rooster defeats him, and he lets himself be harnessed to the carriage instead. A pin and needle join them. They offer an innkeeper the hen's egg and the duck to let them stay, but in the morning, they eat the hen's egg, stick the needle in the innkeeper's chair and the pin in his towel. The duck also goes off. The innkeeper is pricked by both the needle and pin and the eggshell from the hen flies at his eyes.

The Brothers Grimm retold the story "Rumpelstiltskin" from folktales that they were told. This is the story of a miller who gets his daughter in hot water by falsely telling the King she can spin straw into gold. The king locks her in a room and forces her to prove her abilities or die.

"Little Red Cap" captures a formative experience in the speaker's transition from childhood to adulthood: her first sexual relationship. The poem alludes to the tale of "Little Red Riding Hood", in which a young girl is hoodwinked and eaten by a wolf.

"Sweetheart Roland" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm .A wicked witch had an evil daughter, whom she loved, and a good stepdaughter, whom she hated. One day, the witch decided she would kill the stepdaughter at night, and the daughter was told to make sure she lay by the wall, and her stepsister in the front of the bed. The stepdaughter overheard this and, after her stepsister slept, she shifted their places. The witch instead killed her own daughter, and the stepdaughter rose and went to her sweetheart Roland, telling what had happened, and that they had to flee.

"Rapunzel" is a fairy tale about the love between a young prince and a girl with long, blond hair that conquered all of the Witch's evil intentions. They were persistent in their intentions on being happy together, and the Witch was their biggest obstacle. Years passed by, and their love grew stronger.

At the beginning of the story, a queen sits sewing at an open window during a winter snowfall when she pricks her finger with her needle, causing three drops of red blood to drip onto the freshly fallen white snow on the black windowsill. Then, she says to herself, "How I wish that I had a daughter that had skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony." Sometime later, the queen gives birth to a baby daughter whom she names Snow White, but the queen dies in childbirth.

"The Bell" (1845): In the narrow streets of a large town people often heard in the evening, when the sun was setting, and his last rays gave a golden tint to the chimney-pots, a strange noise which resembled the sound of a church bell; it only lasted an instant, for it was lost in the continual roar of traffic and hum of voices which rose from the town. "The evening bell is ringing," people used to say; "the sun is setting!".