The King’s daughter was beautiful, but she was very vain. Whenever someone asked to marry her, she would mock him. One day, when a handsome prince with a golden beard came to the palace, she laughed at him and named him ‘Prince Grisly-Beard!’ The King was so angry that he announced, “The Princess will marry the next man who enters the palace, even if he was a beggar!”
The next morning, a fiddler came to entertain the King. He played enchanting melodies. The King rewarded him and gave him the hand of his daughter in marriage. The Princess wept and pleaded, but the King was firm.
“This is your husband and you must go with him now,” said the King.
Weeping unhappily, the Princess left the palace with her husband, the fiddler. They walked a long way and reached the woods. When she asked the fiddler whose woods these were, he replied, “They belong to the prince you called Prince Grisly-Beard!.”
“If only I had married him!” wept the Princess.
They came to a beautiful meadow and the fiddler said, “This too belongs to Prince Grisly-Beard!” And the Princess wept again. He took the Princess to his little cottage. She looked around at the poor house. There were no servants.
“You must do all the work now,” said the fiddler, “Make a fire and cook the dinner and in the morning you must clean the house.”
One day, the fiddler asked his wife to weave baskets to sell them in the town. But she found her hands were feeling sore handling the straw. Then he suggested that she should sell pots and pans in the marketplace. Many customers came to her stall. But one unfortunate day, a horseman knocked down the pots and pans and broke them.
“How silly of you to keep the stall at a corner!” said the fiddler, “I think you had better work as a kitchen-maid in the palace. They will also give enough food to take home.”
The Princess felt very ashamed but she began to work in the palace kitchen.
One evening, as she was leaving the palace, she saw Prince Grisly-Beard riding past. He stopped, for he recognised her. He pulled her into the palace saying he would dance with her. She tried to drag herself away, but Prince Grisly-Beard would not listen.
Then he told her, “I’m the fiddler. I have cured your pride and rudeness.”
The Princess was a changed person, and more beautiful because she had become polite and hard-working too. Now, she lived happily with her fiddler-prince.
