Source: Unknown

"The Blue Mountains.” The Yellow Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang, London, New York, Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906, pp. 256-264.

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 13:38:47 +0000

"The Blue Mountains.” The Yellow Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang, London, New York, Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906, pp. 256-264. Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/01/2024 - 07:38

Tale Summary

There was once a Scotsman, an Englishman, and an Irishman who were serving in the army, and ran away at the first chance they had. They wandered without food or drink for two days in a great forest filled with wild beasts, and the next morning the Scotsman climbed a tree and saw a castle on a hill far away and left for it without telling his companions. He reached the castle that night and was disappointed to find locked doors and no smoke coming from the chimneys, when a window opened and a beautiful woman appeared. She let him in, and he entered a large room with many men lying asleep. She fed him and he slipped into a slumber with the others. That night, surrounded by wild beasts, the Englishman also saw the castle in the distance, and the same thing happened to him as it did to the Scotsman. The next day, the Irishman also made it to the same place, but when he was given food and drink he refused to touch it until he learned who the woman was. She revealed that she was an enchanted Princess, and that her father had promised that the first man who released her from her spell would have a third of his kingdom, and all of it when he died, as well as her hand in marriage. She had been there sixteen years and no man had ever asked her name, and they all were asleep in the big room. She told him that if she could get a man to stay in a certain room from ten o’clock until midnight for three nights, she would be freed, and the Irishman willingly agreed to this. He was not there long when he heard knocking on the door but he would not open it, and so it was broken down and those outside came in and gave him a horrible beating until midnight. In the morning the princess appeared and rubbed him with something from a bottle that healed him, but he was unwilling to do the same thing a second night. She convinced him to stay, and he received an even worse beating. The next night she pleaded with him to stay, and he received the worst beating yet, but in the morning he was healed by the princess and released her from her spell. She told him that she must leave but that she would be back in several days in a carriage drawn by four gray horses. Although he protested, she disappeared before his eyes after she gave him a rod that would wake the sleeping men. A little lad who was the princess’s servant arrived to wait on him, and told the Irishman that the princess would come the next morning at nine o’clock, but when he went out to greet her the lad stuck a pin in his back which made him fall asleep. He told the princess that the Irishman was still sleeping and so she said he must meet her the next day. The lad took the pin out of the man’s back and he woke up, and was very sorry and confused that he missed her. The same thing happened the next morning, and the princess warned that he would never see her again if he did not show up on time. Again, the next morning the lad pricked the Irishman, and the princess was very sad, and gave the lad a sword to give to the man. This he did, and then vanished. The man was heartbroken, and used the rod to wake his two companions, giving them riches before sending them on their way and awakening the rest of the men. He then resolved to search the world for the princess, and so traveled for three years, at the end of which he was so downtrodden that he drew out the sword to kill himself. He noticed an inscription which read “you can find me in the Blue Mountains” and so he took heart and searched for someone who could tell him the way. He came across a little house, and the old man inside said that he had lived there for three hundred years, and in that time the Irishman was the only human he had seen. He spent the night there while the old man scoured a book which contained the history of the world to learn about the Blue Mountains, but he could not find it and instead sent the Irishman to see his brother, who lived nine hundred miles away. He blew a whistle, and the Irishman found himself there. The exact same events transpired, and he was whistled away to another brother’s house, who said that he was the master of all the birds in the world and would ask if they knew the location of the Blue Mountains. He called them all together and asked each one, but no one had heard of it until a giant Eagle showed up and apologized for being late, but that she flew a long way from the Blue Mountains. She told them that a marriage was being prepared for the princess, who had refused to marry for three years because she had not given up hope on the Irishman. The bird said that she would carry him, but that her price would be threescore cattle, cut into quarters which he must feed her every time she looked over her shoulder. The Irishman and the old man killed and quartered that many by evening and then the man mounted the Eagle and set off. As they came to the borders of the kingdom, however, he ran out of meat and threw a stone at the bird which sent them tumbling down, but he was lucky enough to land in the bay in front of the palace. He was reunited with the princess just in time, and they had a great wedding feast that lasted for a year and a day.

Fairy Tale Title

The Blue Mountains

Fairy Tale Author(s)/Editor(s)

Andrew Lang

Fairy Tale Illustrator(s)

Henry Justice Ford

Common Tale Type

The Man on a Quest for the Lost Wife, The Eagle as helper

Tale Classification

ATU 400, ATU 537

Page Range of Tale

pp. 256-264

Full Citation of Tale

"The Blue Mountains.” The Yellow Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang, London, New York, Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906, pp. 256-264.

Original Source of the Tale

Tale Notes

AV��ʪ and Curation

Kaeli Waggener, 2024

Book Title

The Yellow Fairy Book

Book Author/Editor(s)

Andrew Lang

Illustrator(s)

Henry Justice Ford

Publisher

Longmans, Green, and Co.

Date Published

1906

Decade Published

1900-1909

Publisher City

London
New York
Bombay

Publisher Country

United Kingdom
United States
India

Language

English

Rights

Public Domain

Digital Copy

Available at the Internet Archive

Book Notes

Though this book is written in prose with more difficult language than other books of fairy tales in the collection, the Preface says this book is written for children.

Traditional

White

“The Invisible Prince.” The Yellow Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang, London, New York, Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906, pp. 78-91.

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 21:25:01 +0000

“The Invisible Prince.” The Yellow Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang, London, New York, Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906, pp. 78-91. Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/09/2024 - 15:25

Andrew Lang

Tale Summary

Once upon a time there was a fairy who had power over all the elements, and had four sons which ruled over each. The first was Lord of Fire,the second was Governor of the Earth, the Third was King of the Seas, and the youngest was Prince of the Air. The prince was the fairy’s favorite, but she worried about his erratic passions and temper, and foresaw that he would have much pain through love. She instilled in him a hatred of love and women from a young age, and supported his pastime, which was hunting. He became tired of her constant preachings, and one day when she was out, he left the castle grounds and went to a neighboring sovereign. This was the Island of Roses, home to a lovely princess named Rosalie, who he fell immediately in love with and had carried off by his attendant spirits of the air. Another prince had also fallen in love with the girl several months previously and was promised her hand in marriage if he was able to bring her home. The youth was the only son of the King of the Golden Isle and was foretold to have a life of adventure. This worried his parents, and a fairy who protected him gave him a little pebble that would make him invisible if he kept it in his mouth. While searching for the princess, he found a palace in the middle of a thick forest. He rushed through and tried every door but had no luck until he came to a small garden, in the middle of which was a tiny hall of orange trees, with four small rooms opening out of the corners. In the last of these rooms, he saw the Prince of the Air at Rosalie’s feet, asking for her to love him. She refused and went to her chamber, where he snuck in after night fell to put a poem on her bed. He decided to take advantage of the visit which the Prince of the Air made once a year to his mother and brothers in order to rescue her. One day, the princess saw a pen get up and write by itself on a sheet of paper, and read a note that she was loved by someone who would rescue her. She told of her woes, and how she had fallen in love with a prince before being kidnapped and could think of nothing else, and at this the prince took the pebble from his mouth. They were overjoyed to be with each other, and soon started making a plan. Rosalie told the prince to go back to his father’s court to ask the fairy who protected him, who was visiting, for another stone with the same power of invisibility, and to bring it back so that she could escape. He returned home to do this, but missed the fairy by several days and would have to wait three more months to see her. One day while invisible in the woods, he saw a huge oak open up to let out two princes in conversation. He heard one, who was the Prince of Gnomes, say that he was very in love with princess Argentine–the invisible prince’s sister–and that he had a cabinet of years, which reflected the past, the present, and the future. He returned to his father’s castle and was given another magic pebble by the fairy, and traveled back to where he had found Rosalie, but she was no longer there. He went to the huge oak tree and managed to open it, and there found the mirrors which showed him that presently, his princess was weeping on the floor surrounded by genii who guarded her night and day. He resolved to search the world for her, but once he set sail, a horrible storm destroyed his ship and he floated to a strange island. He heard sounds of distress alongside sweet songs, and advanced until he came to two dragons guarding the gate of a forest. Invisible, the prince slipped in, and wandered around a labyrinth without seeing anyone but a circle of human hands stuck in the ground, each with a gold bracelet with a name written on it. He then found two corpses, each with a scarlet cord around his neck and a bracelet with their own names and the names of two princesses. He recognized the two men as Kings of two nearby islands and buried them, but as soon as they were in the ground their hands stuck out of the earth like the others. A little ways on he found two miserable men who embraced and then died in front of him, and so he buried them as well. He came to a beautiful park full of men and maidens, and listened in on a conversation held by two of them. The man explained that the Fairy Despair ruled over half the island, and carried off any man who was rejected by his mistress and wished to die and placed him in a labyrinth with a cord around his neck and a bracelet on his arm, condemned to walk forever until he found someone as miserable as he, and at this point the two would die and be buried by the first passerby. The prince went to the seashore and the waves rose suddenly and a screaming woman came up from the ocean, followed by a furious giant. The prince took the stone from his mouth and defended her, but the giant–who was the King of the Seas–touched him with a ring which immobilized him. He grabbed the woman and returned to the sea, and the prince was bound with chains and was carried in the water by tritons. The ring he was touched with allowed him to live underwater, but only because the King of the Seas wanted to watch him suffer. There were other prisoners which he made to fight each other, but as soon as the prince was untied he placed the stone in his mouth and swam to the shore. He saw a mountain which he recognized from the cabinet of years and made his way to the top, where he found a palace. Inside he found a crystal room which housed Rosalie, guarded by the genii, without door or window. She noticed that the crystal was fogging up wherever she moved around the room, and suspected that her invisible lover was back. She sweet-talked the Prince of the Air into letting her walk for one hour down the hall, and he agreed, but immediately the magical stone was slipped into her mouth and she escaped with her lover. The spirits of the air were commanded to look all over the earth to find Rosalie, and meanwhile she and the invisible prince reached a terrace in the gardens hand-in-hand, when a monster accidentally ran into the princess and she lost her grip. The two felt around in the hope that they would again find each other, but it was in vain. The princess rested by the edge of a fountain, and wrote a note on a tree which told her prince, if he ever saw it, that she would spend her days there. A genii read these words and told its master, who made himself invisible and went to the fountain. The princess took his hand when she felt it, but a cord was tied around her and she was thrown into a deep pit. At the same moment, the prince arrived and saw what had happened, and decided to go back to the cabinet of years. After some time of walking through the forest, he arrived at the gate of a temple guarded by two lions and entered invisibly. In the temple was an altar, behind which were curtains and on which was a book with the names of all the lovers in the world. In it he read that the only way to reach Rosalie was by the Fountain of Gold. Outside the temple he found six paths through the wood, and coming towards him on the one furthest to the right, he recognized the Prince of Gnomes and his friend. Curious to have some news about his sister, he followed them, and heard the Prince of Gnomes say that because he did not think Argentine cared for him, and that she might have another lover, he would put himself out of his pain at the Golden Fountain. There, he said, a single drop of water would trace the name of his rival into her heart. The prince accompanied them to the fountain, where Prince of Gnomes fainted because the name of his brother, Prince Flame, was written in the sand. Because the prince had the power to survive underwater thanks to the ring he was touched with, he lept in and found a door leading into the mountain, and at the foot of the mountain was a high rock on which was an iron ring with a cord, which was attached to the princess. He cut it with his sword and felt the invisible princess’s hand in his and they crossed the mountain together, but she could not go through the fountain like he had. The Prince of Air was so angry that he caused a massive storm, and lightning struck nearby, burning up the forest. The water in the fountain dried up and the two made it across safely and returned back to the Golden Isle.

Fairy Tale Title

The Invisible Prince

Fairy Tale Author(s)/Editor(s)

Andrew Lang

Fairy Tale Illustrator(s)

Henry Justice Ford

Common Tale Type

Tale Classification

Page Range of Tale

pp. 78-91

Full Citation of Tale

“The Invisible Prince.” The Yellow Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang, London, New York, Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906, pp. 78-91.

Original Source of the Tale

Tale Notes

AV��ʪ and Curation

Kaeli Waggener, 2024

Book Title

The Yellow Fairy Book

Book Author/Editor(s)

Andrew Lang

Illustrator(s)

Henry Justice Ford

Publisher

Longmans, Green, and Co.

Date Published

1906

Decade Published

1900-1909

Publisher City

London
New York
Bombay

Publisher Country

United Kingdom
United States
India

Language

English

Rights

Public Domain

Digital Copy

Available at the Internet Archive

Book Notes

Though this book is written in prose with more difficult language than other books of fairy tales in the collection, the Preface says this book is written for children.

Traditional

White