And after that Grethel became Hans’ wife.
King Thrush-beard
A certain king had a daughter who was beautiful above all belief, but withal so proud and haughty, that no suitor was good enough for her, and she not only turned back every one who came, but also made game of them all. Once the king proclaimed a great festival, and invited thereto from far and near all the marriageable young men. When they arrived they were all set in a row, according to their rank and standing: first the kings, then the princes, the dukes, the marquesses, the earls, and, last of all, the barons. Then the king’s daughter was led down the rows, but she found something to make game of it all. One was too fat. “The wine-tub!” said she. Another was too tall. “Long and lanky; has no grace,” she remarked. A third was too short and fat. “Too stout to have any wits,” said she. A fourth was too pale. “Like Death himself,” was her remark, and a fifth, who had a great deal of color, she called “a cockatoo.” The sixth was not straight enough, and him she called “a green log scorched in the oven!” And so she went on, nicknaming every one of the suitors, but she made particularly merry with a good young king whose chin had grown rather crooked. “Ha, ha!” laughed she, “he has a chin like a thrush’s beak”; and after that day he went by the name of Thrush-beard.
The old king, however, when he saw that his daughter did nothing but mock at and make sport of all the suitors who were collected, became very angry, and swore that she should take the first decent beggar for a husband who came to the gate.
A couple of days after this a player came beneath the windows to sing and earn some bounty if he could. As soon as the king saw him he ordered him to be called up, and presently he came into the room in all his dirty, ragged clothes, and sang before the king and princess, and when he had finished he begged for a slight recompense. The king said: “Thy song has pleased so much that I will give thee my daughter for a wife.”
The princess was terribly frightened, but the king said: “I have taken an oath, and mean to perform it, that I will give you to the first beggar.” All her remonstrances were in vain; the priest was called, and the princess was married in earnest to the player. When the ceremony was performed, the king said: “Now, it cannot be suffered that you should stop here with your husband, in my house; no! you must travel about the country with him.”
So the beggarman led her away, and she was forced to trudge along with him on foot. As they came to a large forest, she asked:
“To whom belongs this beautiful wood?”
The echo replied:
“King Thrush-beard the good!