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Parker Fillmore – The Forest Bride: The story of a little Mouse Who Was a Princess
Dragos HOJDA
“The Forest Bride: The story of a little Mouse who was a Princess” is a Finnish fairy tale by Parker Fillmore. Parker Fillmore edited lots of fairy tales from the world, including Czechoslovak, Yugo Slovak, Finnish and Croatian. This Fairy tale was published in “Mighty Mikko:A book of Finnish Fairy Tales Old Folk Tales” (1922). “My own excursions into the Finnish have made possible through the kindness and endless patience of my friend, Lydia Tulonen. With her as a native guide I have been wandering some time through the byways of Finnish folklore...The stories as I offer them are not translations but my own versions. Literal translations from the Finnish would make small appeal to the general reader. To English ears the Finnish is stiff, bald and monotonous”, says Fillmore in the Note from “Finnish Fairy Tales”.
It is a very interesting story; it begins with a farmer who wants his three boys to get married. So he tells them to go out in search of brides. Each of the three sons has to chop down a tree and then take the direction in which the fallen tree points.
So the three sons chop out the trees the next day, the oldest son’s tree fell pointing north, the tree of the second son pointed south. The tree of the youngest son, Veikko, pointed straight to the forest. Of course, the older brothers laughed, thinking that Veikko will have to go courting one of the Wolf girls or one of the Foxes!
But, of course, Veikko took his chance and went into the forest in search of his bride, thinking “How can I find a bride in a place where there are no human creatures at all”.
Finally Veikko finds a little hut where he found a little mouse sitting on the table. Thinking that there is no one in the hut,Veikko wants to leave, when the mouse spoke to Veikko, telling him that he can count. Veikko tells the mouse that he was hoping to find a sweetheart, but he did not.
Then the mouse asks Veikko to take him as his sweetheart and he does so. Then she sang Veikko a pretty little song and the song cheered him so much that he forgot his disappointment at not finding a human sweetheart.
All three brothers returned to their father telling him about their sweethearts. The sweetheart of the oldest brother has the rosiest reddest cheeks you ever saw, the second announced has long yellow hair. Veikko said about his sweetheart that she is a gentle dainty little thing gowned in velvet.
After a few days, the farmer wants to know what those sweethearts are able to do. He puts them to three tests: the first test is to bake a loaf of bread so he can see whether they are good housewives, the second test is about sending a sample of their weaving, and the third test is eye to eye contact.
Here we must say that the princess had some help from hundreds of mice, which helped her to pass the tests. The day when the three sweethearts must appear in front of the farmer comes and Veikko thinks that his brothers will laugh when they will see his sweetheart. But then he thinks that she has been a good little sweetheart to him and he is not going to be ashamed of her.
When they left the forest they came to a river which was spanned by a foot bridge. When they reached the middle of the bridge, a man met them coming from opposite direction. The man put out his foot and pushed the coach, the little mouse and her servants into the water. Veikko is desperate for losing his sweetheart, he looked down into the water saying “How sorry I am that you are drowned and nowthat you are gone I know how much I love you”.
But as he spoke he saw a beautiful coach of gold lace held the reins, in which was the most beautiful girl in the world. Her skin was as red as a berry and as white as snow. Of course, the princess was the little mouse, and was under an evil enchantment which could never have been broken if he had not taken her for a sweetheart and if another human being had not drowned her.
So they went to the farmer’s house, as planned and there his brothers and his brother’s sweethearts saw the Princess coach stopping at their gate. Veikko explained to his father that he found the princess out in the forest where his tree pointed.
“After they had got the farmer’s blessing they rode home to the Princess kingdom and were married and they were happy as they should have been for they were good and true to each other and they loved each other dearly” – this is how the fairy tales ends.
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