Grimm

• kateshrewsday

What one needs, when the going gets tough, is a jolly good fairy story.

It’s like whistling in the dark; it keeps those chins up, chaps, even at the darkest hour. What’s the use in worrying? It never was worthwhile.

But if, by fairy story, you think I mean pretty dresses worthy of Ascot, and compliant princes a million miles away from those bartering real-life partners of ours, you are mistaken.

Because my favourite fairy stories are the strange ones. The Scratch-A-Fairy-Tale-And–Find-A-Chiller variety. The ones whose chief weapon is surprise.

Like this one.

Once there was a father with two sons. One was clever and accomplished, the other clearly a dolt. Let us call this last unassuming chap Benno, though the Grimms did not dignify him with a name.

In one respect only, the second son had his uses.

Occasionally, a night errand would need to be done, and the clever son would protest and avoid, and do anything rather than go out into the dark corners of the village. “Don’t make me go, Father,” he would wail disconsolately: “it makes me shudder so!”

But Benno would trot off on the errand, impervious to fear.

And when the villagers gathered round the fire to tell spine tingling tales of wraiths and werewolves, they would shiver violently at the very thought: all except Benno.

Benno was puzzled, for he could not seem to feel fear. His clever brother did; surely it must be a desirable asset, this shuddering?

And so he began to look for a way to master this illusive, involuntary movement, this thinking man’s neurosis.

When Benno reached manhood, his father took him aside. “Benno,” he said, “You are a man now. It is time to learn a skill: something with which you can earn your keep from now on.”

Benno nodded earnestly. He did have a few ideas in that direction.

“Actually, Father, ” he confided happily, “I do have a skill I would like very much to learn. I would love to learn to shudder: I don’t get that at all.”

His brother could be heard howling with mirth in the next room as his father explained that Son, you can’t earn your bread by shuddering.

The local Sexton offered to help. This wisest of holy men taught Benno to ring the church bell, and instructed him one night to ring it out at midnight.

The Sexton got his best white vestments and whited up his face, and stood on the stairs doing an Oscar-winning impression of a ghost.

Benno called him three times to answer. When he didn’t (because he was busy being a ghost) Benno threw him downstairs, where he lay with a broken leg. Benno apologised to the Sexton’s wife profusely when the ghost was unmasked, but he had blotted his copy book. His father threw him out onto the street, and he began a series of Grimmly eventful travels.

He loped along the road, muttering to himself: “If only I could shudder! If only I could shudder!”

Until at last a helpful stranger fell in step with him and offered to assist. “Just wait here at the bottom of this gibbet,” he said, “until dark falls. Then you’ll learn to shudder, no problem at all.”

Benno was pathetically grateful. He settled down, and it grew dark and cold. He made a fire and began to feel excessively sorry for the seven gentlemen who were suspended, swinging in varying stages of decay above him.

Being a well-mannered chap, he took them down and put them round the fire to warm. But they weren’t very sociable, and their clothes would keep on catching fire. In the end, Benno just put them back where he found them.

“I couldn’t learn shuddering from those fellows!” he told the traveller the next morning.”They were so stupid they even let their own clothes burn!”

So he continued along the road, where a cart driver found him bewailing his fate.

“I think I know a haunted castle where you might learn to shudder”, the cart driver told him.

The King at the castle allowed him to stay three nights. On the first night, Benno lay down to sleep, and the bed began to float and took him on a tour of the castle.

But still, Benno could feel no fear.

The second night saw half-corpses falling down the chimney, only to reunite as grotesque whole figures. Benno played bowls with them using rounded skulls; he lost some money; but still he could not seem to shudder.

The third night, a corpse was wheeled in, complete with coffin, and Benno tried to warm him up by taking him into his bed. It was an eventful night: but still, no shuddering.

Three nights meant Benno had redeemed the castle, and earned the Princess’s hand. He may not be able to shudder but his other skills had earned him riches and power beyond the dreams of most men.

But on his wedding night he was still on about shuddering. “Oh, ” he wailed to his beautiful, accomplished, moneyed bride, “I am not a complete man, for I cannot shudder!”

Whereupon a sassy servant girl told the princess:”It’s all right. I know exactly how to make him shudder.”

She went to the moat and drew out a bucket of freezing cold water filled with minnows. After a night of delights, when the young King Benno was asleep, she tipped the whole shebang down his nightshirt.

And that was the night the young King Benno learnt, finally, to shudder.

THE END.

Anyone who fancies reading the whole Grimm version can find it here

43 thoughts on “Grimm”

      1. Thanks for that, Kate – it cracked me up – for a couple of reasons: #1, I noticed that the new, yet-to-be uniformed recruits are given (what look to me at least) toy wooden guns. Then near the end comes #2, in which you see a line of soldiers marching with real guns, followed by a couple of rows of men carrying the “toy guns.” They were marching in front of the band musicians! Must have given the musicians an idea of their own worth – which must be why they look so grim(m) – *shudder.*

        I’ve decided to do a parody – Weird Al Yancovick-style – of that song. I think I’m going to have some fun this weekend1 😀

  6. I, however, shuddered through this grim Grimm tale.

    Is this your own book pictured above, Kate? I am always interested in illustrations, especially in childrens’ books.

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  7. I love your wording ‘Scratch-A-Fairytale-And-A-Find-Chiller variety. The brothers Grimm were born with such an appropriate surname.

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  9. An unusual offering from the brothers. Never came across that one in my wanderings through magical forests with them.

    Have you or your kids ever read the Sisters Grimm series? Two girls in New York discover they are descendants of the brothers and that all the tales are actually true….

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    1. Yup. Look at most of the politicians around….I know one very prominent Benno ensconced in Westminster….but his heart is in the right place. Nothing a bucket of cold slithery minnows wouldn’t put right.

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  11. How I love the Brothers Grimm and the old Germanic marchen! A faerie tale should be dark and bloody, filled with ambiguous characters willing to endow you with riches or eat you, as the case may be, not the simpering Disney characters waltzing and singing toward their ubiquitous happy endings. Even as a child, I loved the old uncensored tales best (for as children, we know better than most adults about the shadowy world of faerie). I love the peerless work of Angela Carter.

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    1. Elizabeth, you are a woman after my own heart. Dark and bloody it should be. Must go and find Angela Carter: I have never read her stuff, although I believe she started, at the end of her life, to write a sequel to Jane Eyre based on the life of Adele. The only thing that survived was the plot line. If she is the writer I think she is, that is a considerable loss.

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  14. I’d not heard of this tale. I loved the Grimm stories when I was a child, but I never understood why the men were always intent on marrying princesses who treated them with such contempt. The concept of marrying for money and power hadn’t reached me yet, I guess.

    Perhaps the minnows were really bottom-feeding catfish. A nightshirt full of their evil fins would bring on plenty of shuddering.

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      2. There are times when I yearn to be out there on the great wide open plains, watching the hogs graze contentedly, sharing a meal with you all.

        However I might have to pass, politely, on the catfish…

  15. Grimm and weird! As is the case with most fairytales from my generation’s childhood – in adulthood, my favourite fairy-teller is Roald Dahl 🙂 I love the pic – is that a very old book?

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