THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA

By Hans Christian Anderson

ONCE upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have to be a real princess. He travelled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted. There were princesses enough, but it was difficult to find out whether they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he would have liked very much to have a real princess.

One evening a terrible storm came on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.

It was a princess standing out there in front of the gate. But, good gracious! what a sight the rain and the wind had made her look. The water ran down from her hair and clothes; it ran down into the toes of her shoes and out again at the heels. And yet she said that she was a real princess.

"Well, we'll soon find that out," thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went into the bed-room, took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses.

On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept.

"Oh, very badly!" said she. "I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It's horrible!"

Now they knew that she was a real princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds.

Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that.

So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a real princess; and the pea was put in the museum, where it may still be seen, if no one has stolen it.

There, that is a true story.

THE END




Go Back to Selected List of Aesop's Fables

or click on a title below to jump straight to that poem

( The Angel) ( Anne Lisbeth) ( Beauty of Form and Beauty of Mind) ( The Beetle Who Went on His Travels) ( The Bell) ( The Bell-Deep) ( The Bird of Popular Song) ( The Bishop of Borglum and his Warriors) ( The Bottle Neck) ( The Brave Tin Soldier) ( The Buckwheat) ( The Butterfly) ( By the Almshouse Window) ( A Cheerful Temper) ( The Child in the Grave) ( Children's Prattle) ( The Conceited Apple Branch) ( The Daisy) ( The Darning Needle) ( Delaying is not Forgetting) ( The Dumb Book) ( The Drop of Water) ( The Dryad) ( The Elf of the Rose) ( The Elfin Hill) ( The Emperor's New Suit) ( Everything in the Right Place) ( The Farm-Yard Cock and the Weather-Cock) ( The Little Mermaid) ( The Nightingale) ( The Princess and The Pea) ( Thumbelina or Little Tiny) ( Two Brothers) ( The Ugly Duckling )








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