“Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.” Histories or Tales of Past Times Written for Children Told By Mother Goose with Morals, Charles Perrault, edited by J. Saxon Childers, London: The Nonesuch Press., 1925, pp. 41-61.

Tale Summary

There was once a King and Queen who finally bear a daughter after desperately trying to have a child for years. They invite all the fairies they can find within their kingdom to be godmothers, and they all (7) attend the girl’s christening and later celebrations. One, very old, fairy who was not invited because she was thought to be elsewhere, shows up during the feast, feeling slighted by the King and Queen. Another of the fairies fears she will cast a curse upon the child, so she hides behind a curtain to see what can be done. Each fairy takes turns bestowing gifts of beauty and grace upon the princess until the old fairy declares that the child’s hand will be pierced by a spindle and that she will die of the wound. The fairy who was hiding now appears to counteract this, making it so that the girl will only sleep for one hundred years, at the end of which, a king’s son will wake her. The King orders all spindles destroyed, however, when she is 15 or 16 years old, the princess meets an old woman who had never heard of this ban, pricks her hand on her spindle, and falls into a deep sleep. The fairy who counteracted the curse hears the news and arrives by dragon-drawn chariot, touching everyone in the castle, save the king and queen, with her magic wand to put them in a deep sleep as well, so that when the princess awakens she will not be alone. The King and Queen now leave the castle and put out a proclamation that no one is to go near it, and within a quarter of an hour, a vast number of trees grow up all around it. One day, after 100 years have passed, a prince was hunting nearby and asked the countrymen the story of the place, and one tells him how a beautiful princess has been asleep for one hundred years and waited for a king’s son to wake her. He goes there, and the thicket parts way for him to enter the castle, where he finds everyone, including the princess, asleep. He finds her to be very beautiful, and when she wakes up, they immediately fall in love and are married after supper (now that everyone else is awake, too). The next day, the prince returns to his father and tells him that he got lost, and so for two years, he lies to his parents even though he now has two children by the princess. His mother, the Queen, suspects that he has a lover, but the prince fears telling her the truth. This is because she is an Ogress, whom his father married for her riches, and she has the inclination to eat children. It is only when his father dies and he becomes lord and master that he openly declares his marriage. One summer, the king goes off to war and leaves the kingdom and the care of his wife and children to his mother, who brings them to a country house. She says to the clerk of the kitchen that she would like to eat the older child, named Morning, for dinner. The man is unable to kill the child and instead hides her, instead serving the Ogress a lamb. Eight days afterward, the Ogress demands the younger child, named Day. The clerk hides the little boy just like his sister. One evening, the Ogress says she would like to eat the young Queen. The clerk does not know how to deceive her, and approaches the Queen with a dagger, explaining what her mother-in-law requested. The young Queen encouraged him to do it so that she might again see her children, whom she thought must have died. The clerk explains that they are still alive and well-hid and that she will indeed see them again. Once again he deceives the Ogress. One evening, however, she overhears the children and their mother, and, figuring out she has been tricked, orders a large tub to be filled with toads, vipers, snakes, and other serpents, for the Queen, her children, the clerk, his wife, and his maid, to be thrown into. Just before their execution, the King returns home, and his Ogress mother throws herself headfirst into the tub.