Hi. Today I'd like to tell you the story of “The Devil's Grandmother,” also known as “Three Golden Hairs.”
This is a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm. My kids really enjoy it and today I'd like to share it with you.
Once upon a time a baby was born with a birthmark shaped like a crown.
And the old wise woman visiting the newborn and the parents said “Aha, a crown birthmark!
That means he's going to marry a princess!” The parents were very happy because they were very poor.
Now it happens that the king in this country was extremely wicked, and his wife had just had a baby girl.
And he wasn't about to let his baby daughter grow up to marry a commoner.
So he devised an evil plan: he disguised himself as a monk and he went to go visit the parents of the baby.
He said, “I hear you have a baby with a crown birthmark.”
The parents said, “Yes, we're very happy. He's going to marry a princess!”
And the king in disguise said, “He's going to need a special kind of education if he's
going to know courtly manners and be able to talk to the princess when the time comes.
You should send him with me so I can educate him so he can grow up into the right kind
of a man to marry a princess.” The parents said, “Well I don't know….”
The king said, “Also here is a huge sack of money.” So, other things being equal, the parents took the deal.
They entrusted their newborn son to the king, who they thought was a monk.
The king gave them the money and he left.
But the king did not take the baby back to the palace to raise him up in courtly manners.
Instead, the first bridge he came to outside of town, he threw the baby off the bridge into the river.
But the basket the baby was in did not sink; it floated.
It floated all the way down the stream until it came to rest against a mill dam.
And the miller, seeing the baby floating in the basket, went and fished it out with a long pole.
The miller and his wife were overjoyed because they had no children but devoutly wanted children.
And they named the boy Marco and raised him as their own son.
Eighteen years later the king was traveling through that part of the country and he stopped off with the millers.
And over wine and cheese he said to them, “That's a fine strong young son that you have there.”
And they say, “Yes, he's grown up into a great man.
It turns out that he's not even our own natural son: he arrived floating in a basket on the
river 18 years ago this week!” The king says, “Ah, is that so?”
So the king sees what has happened and devises another wicked plan immediately.
He says, “I'd like your fine strong young son to carry a message, an urgent message
for me to the queen.” And they said, “Oh, it would be an honor, Your Majesty!”
The king takes a pen and he takes a piece of paper and he writes a message.
He writes out, “This boy is trouble. I want him executed immediately.”
He folds the paper, seals it with the royal seal, and gives it to Marco.
He says, “Put this directly into the hands of the queen.”
Marco, who is good-natured and cheerful, says, “Absolutely I will, Sire!” And he sets off.
Now, the palace was more than a day's ride away, so Marco, when it came to be nightfall,
Marco was travelling through a forest, and being a naive and trusting young lad, he just
tied his horse to a tree and lay down by the side of the road to go to sleep.
It happens that this particular woods was home to a gang of robbers.
And these robbers were also mischief makers and when the gang of robbers came along and
saw Marco sleeping, they saw the insignia on his messenger’s bag and said,
“Aha, the king’s messenger! Let's see what he's up to!”
So they slipped the king’s message out of the bag without waking Marco.
They pried it open without disturbing the seal. They read the message.
“What a horrible trick!” said the robbers. “We’ll soon put this to rights!”
And so one of the robbers, who was a proficient forger, took a new piece of paper and wrote a new message.
He wrote, “This is the boy I have selected to marry the princess.
Have the wedding right away; don't wait for me! Signed, the King.”
They folded the paper up, they took the wax seal off the old message and attached it to
the new one, and slipped the message back into the bag without waking Marco at all.
And they snuck off, chuckling to themselves over the great trick they had just played.
Marco woke up the next morning and set off for the palace none the wiser.
He delivered the message into the queen's hands.
The queen looked up from the message and smiled, because Marco was a fine young man, and he
and the princess had fallen in love with each other at first sight.
So they had the wedding.
The king comes home from his tour of the kingdom that evening, to great dancing and rejoicing.
He says, “What's going on?”
They say, “Oh well, it's the wedding, the feast after the wedding, Your Majesty!
Everybody's happy that the princess has married that young man that you sent.”
The king tears his hair. He's furious. Something has happened, something's gone wrong.
But he thinks to himself, “The wedding hasn't been consummated yet, so there's still time.”
So he pulls Marco aside. He says, “Congratulations on marrying my daughter, young man.
But there's one more thing you must do before you can settle down with her.”
And Marco says, “Well, anything, Sire. What is it?”
The king says, “You must go retrieve three golden hairs from the devil's head and bring
them back to me to prove that you're worthy of life with my daughter.”
Marco, full of confidence, says, “That's where I'm gonna go then. I'll be right back!”
And he gets on his horse, he says goodbye to his princess, and he rides off in the direction of hell.
A few days later, Marco arrives at the edge of the river that runs round the rim of hell.
He gets off of his horse and he approaches the boatman.
There's a long, there's a shallow flat-bottomed boat that is poled across the river.
And he says to the boatman, “I'd like to go across the river to hell, please.”
The boatman says, “I'm sick of carrying people across the river!
I can't seem to give up this job as the boatman, but I'm disgusted with it, I'm sick of it,
I want to move on.” Marco says, “Well I can't solve your problem for you.
I'm trying to save my princess by going on this quest.
But I promise you: if you take me over now, while I'm on the other side I'll try to find
a solution to your problem as well.” The boatman says, “Really?”
Marco says, “Yes, absolutely! As soon as I've solved my problem I'll solve your problem too.”
“All right,” says the boatman, “Get in.”
So Marco got in and the boatman with his long pole pushed them both across the river
and left him at the banks of hell. Marco said, “I'll be back soon!”
The boatman said, “I'll be waiting for you.” So Marco looked around hell.
There was no growing plant, there were no growing plants at all. It was just blasted rock and scree.
Hell was a very unpleasant place and it was obvious why no one wanted to go there.
Marco looked around until he found the staircase going down.
And he walked down the stone stairs, a long spiral stone staircase, until he got to the bottom.
And he stepped out into a large room lit by an enormous fireplace at one end.
And sitting next to the fireplace in a rocking chair was an old woman.
Now, this was the devil's grandmother. And she looked up and said, “Oh!
You don't belong here!”
Marco said, walked towards her, he says, “Well I'm on a special quest.
I've come to get three golden hairs from the devil's head.”
And the grandmother said, “Oh, he's not gonna like losing any golden hairs.
There are very few of those left from the old days back in heaven!”
Marco says, “But I have to have them or I'm gonna lose my princess!”
The grandmother said, “Well we can't have that, can we. I'll see what I can do.”
Marco says, “Also, I promised the boatman I would find some way for him to stop being the boatman.”
The grandmother says, “Well, that's a trickier problem…”
And as they're thinking about it and talking they hear hoof steps on the stone stairs coming down.
“Quick, he’s coming!” says the grandmother. “You'd better hide!”
And she shrinks Marco down to one inch high using her magic and she puts him in the pocket of her apron.
A few seconds later the devil comes into the room.
And he's fuming, there's smoke pouring off of his head, wisps of flame coming out of his nostrils.
He's just been out tempting at the seminary and because of the excellent preaching of
the Deacon class he's had no takers, he's not attracted any sins to bring home with him.
So he's furious and he walks across, halfway across the room, and he stops and he sniffs.
He says, “I smell man!” And the grandmother says, “You smell your supper, is what you smell.
Sit down and I'll serve it to you.” The devil sits down at the table.
The grandmother serves him a big heaping bowl of… [pause] Well, I dare not describe what he ate.
But suffice to say he ate a lot of it, and we’ll pass over that.
After he ate, the devil was sleepy.
And he stretched out on the sofa with his head in his grandmother's lap, and he gradually
drifted off to sleep.
While he was asleep, the grandmother ran her fingers through his hair until she found three golden hairs.
She wrapped them around her pinky finger and taking a deep breath…
“Ouch!” The devil sat up and turned to face her. “What'd you do that for?!”
She said, “Oh, I'm sorry. I must have drifted off to sleep myself.
I dreamed that I was pulling the ferryman's hair because he kept pestering me to try to
do his job for him.”
The devil smiled and said, “That's a problem with an easy solution!
All he has to do is to put the pole in your hand and then it would stick to you.
You'd have to be the boatman and he'd be free to go.” “Imagine that,” said the grandmother.
So the devil sat up and stretched, and he said, “Well, it's time for my evening rounds.”
And he says, “Maybe I'll have better luck at the chancery.”
The grandmother says, “Oh yes, you're always so much happier when you come back from there!”
So the devil got his sack and his tools and clomped on up the stairs.
When he was gone the grandmother took Marco out of her pocket and restored him to normal size.
She gave him the three golden hairs, she told him the secret of the boatman's pole, and
she gave him two sacks of treasure: one for him and one for the princess, and she sent
him on his way. He said, “Thank you so much, grandmother!”
She said, “Well, just live your life in such a way that we never see you down here ever again.”
So with thanks Marco walks up the stairs with the three golden hairs and the two sacks of treasure.
He gets back up to the surface and goes to the boatman.
He explains to the boatman about the pole and the boatman says, “Fantastic! Here you go!”
And Marco says, “Oh no, no, not me! The next guy.”
The boatman says, “All right, that's fair: the next guy.
I'll take you across, but the next person to come by here is gonna have a new life's vocation!”
So he takes Marco back across the river around the edge of hell.
Marco gets on his horse and rides back to the palace.
When the king sees him from the palace walls his jaw drops open and he can scarcely believe it.
And he meets him at the castle gate, and he's still more astounded when Marco dumps out
a big sack of treasure at the princess’s feet. He says, “Where did you get that from?!”
Marco says, “Oh, somebody gave it to me on the other side of the river.
Maybe you can go get some yourself.” The king says, “I should say so!”
He jumps on his horse and he rides off in the direction that Marco has come from.
A year later, when he hadn't returned, Marco was declared king.
And he and the princess ruled the kingdom well with their many children for years to come.
They lived happily ever after. The king, however, did not live happily ever after.
A king no more, he's now the ferryman, and he’s stuck eternally ferrying people back
and forth across the river that runs around the edge of hell, with no idea at all of how to stop.
The End.