The Twelve Dancing Princesses

7-9 min read
16 pages

The twelve dancing princesses, the Brothers Grimm tale to read aloud. Their shoes are worn through every morning, and the doors were locked.

A king had twelve daughters, and every one of them was beautiful, and every morning their twelve pairs of dancing shoes were worn right through the soles.

They slept in one long room, and the king locked and bolted the door himself each night. In the morning the door was still locked and the shoes were in holes.

He announced that whoever could find out where they went would marry one of them and have the kingdom after him. Whoever tried and failed after three nights would lose his head.

A good many king's sons tried. Each was put in a room next to theirs with the door open, and each of them fell asleep by midnight and woke to find twelve pairs of ruined shoes and nothing explained. Several did not go home.

Then an old soldier came along the road, wounded out of the army and with no work, and on the way he met an old woman who asked him where he was going.

«I hardly know,» he said, and told her, and she said: «That is not difficult. Do not drink the wine they bring you in the evening, and pretend to be fast asleep.» And she gave him a short cloak. «Put this on and they will not see you.»

That evening the eldest princess brought him a cup of wine. He had tied a sponge under his chin, and the wine ran into it, and he lay down and began to snore.

They laughed and got up and dressed themselves, and the eldest knocked on the floor. A trapdoor opened, and the twelve of them went down one after another. The soldier put on the cloak and followed.

On the stairs he trod on the youngest one's dress. «Somebody has hold of my dress,» she said. «Don't be silly,» said the eldest, «you caught it on a nail.»

At the bottom there was an avenue of trees with leaves of silver, and then one with leaves of gold, and then one with leaves of diamond. The soldier broke a twig from each, and each one cracked like a gunshot, and each time the youngest said so and was told not to be silly.

Then there was a lake, and twelve boats with twelve princes waiting in them, and each prince rowed a princess across. The soldier got into the youngest one's boat, and her prince complained that the boat was heavier than usual and that he could not understand it.

On the other side was a castle with the lights on and music going, and the twelve of them danced until three in the morning, when their shoes were through. The soldier drank out of the same cup as one of them, invisibly, and she found it empty each time she raised it.

He went back up ahead of them and was snoring in his bed when they came in.

He said nothing for two more nights, to be sure. On the third night he brought back a cup from the castle as well as the twigs.

Then he went to the king and laid the silver twig, the gold twig, the diamond twig and the cup on the table, and told him everything, and the twelve princesses were called in and did not deny a word of it.

He chose the eldest, because he was not a young man himself and said he would rather have somebody sensible. And the twelve princes under the lake were left waiting for a boat that nobody rowed any more.

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Text source: Plot by the Brothers Grimm (1812), public domain. The text was written anew for Marytale — it is not a reprint of anyone else's version.

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The Twelve Dancing Princesses

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