The Riddle (fairy tale)

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The Riddle (German: Das Rätsel) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 22. It is Aarne-Thompson type 851, winning the princess with a riddle. Andrew Lang included it in The Green Fairy Book.

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A king's son travelled with only one servant. In a dark forest, he came to a small house, where a maiden warned him that her stepmother was a witch who disliked strangers, but there was nowhere else for shelter. In the morning, the witch gave them a parting draught, but the servant spilled it, and it killed the horse instead of the prince. When he told the prince and they came to the dead horse, a raven was already eating the corpse, so the servant killed the bird, not knowing if they would find anything else. They reached an inn and the servant gave the innkeeper the raven to make food of it. But the inn was really a robbers' den. The robbers returned and ate before killing the travelers; the raven held poison that it had eaten, and they died. The inn-keeper's honest daughter told him the truth and showed him the treasure, and he rode on.

He came to a town where a princess would marry any man who set her a riddle she could not guess. He asked, "One slew none, and yet slew twelve." The princess could not guess it. She sent first her maid and then her maid-in-waiting to listen to him in his sleep, but the servant slept in his master's bed to protect him from that, and stole their mantles and beat them. Finally, the prince slept in his own bed, and the princess herself came in. He told her the answer to the riddle but caught her mantle.

She told the answer. He told that she had not guessed it but gotten it from him. The judges asked for proof, and the prince showed the mantles. The judges ordered the princess's to be embroidered with gold and silver, and be her wedding mantle.