The house of joy

A long time ago there lived a King and a Queen, who had an only son. As soon as he was born his mother gave him to the forester’s wife to be nursed; for she herself had to wear...

“Mary Maudlin,” the gardener would say, as he washed the blight off a favourite rose, “to be sure, you are very beautiful, but did I not love you so, you were more trouble than...

By and by, however, the family Fairy came again, saying: “Now, I have a plan by which your child may enjoy the delights of seeing, and no ill come of it.” And she caused to be m...

In the Court they were known as the “Feather-pates”; nothing could they be taught at all. When they were rebuked they would stand on one leg and sigh with their heads on one sid...

Soon after daybreak, when Lubin had but just opened his shutters and sat himself down to work, in came the traveller, limping upon bare feet, with the shoe’s fellow pointing its...

He gathered up all her hair with one hand, and the cloth of gold with the other, and went quietly away. Then, hiding the shears in a safe place, first he burnt the Princess Roya...

The Princess wondered to hear him. “Is there,” he went on, “no such thing as a spade for me to dig with?” Then she led him to a shed, where lay all the needed implements for gar...

The ferryman and his wife looked, and saw youth in each other’s faces beginning to peep out through the furrows of age; each step they took made them grow younger and stronger;...