The Iron Stove

 From the Grimms, although I don’t recognize it, by way of the Yellow Fairy Book.

A prince is cursed to sit in a large iron stove in the woods. After many years, a princess gets lost in the woods, and comes across the stove. The prince inside offers to help her get home and to marry her if she promises to come back and get him out of the stove.

She agrees, he tells her to bring a knife when she comes back, and he summons a guide for her.

Back home, she explains to her father that she’s promised to marry a stove. Understandably, he has concerns. Less understandably, he sends the miller’s daughter back in her place.

The miller’s daughter, as instructed, scrapes at the stove with a knife all night, trying to make a hole in the iron. It doesn’t work, and he figures out she’s not the princess, and sends her away.

They try the same trick with the same results with the swineherd’s daughter, and then the princess has to go back and keep her word.

She works a small hole in the iron almost immediately, which is probably magic, and answers the question of why the guide the prince can apparently summon from inside the stove couldn’t get him out. On the other hand, it might have just been easy because two other girls put several hours into the project already.

The princess frees the prince, falls madly in love with him, and agrees to go home with him, but she needs to say goodbye to her father first.

She’s warned not to say more than three words to her father. Which of course doesn’t work out, because how on earth are you supposed to explain, “there was a handsome prince inside the stove and I freed him and now I’m going to go back to his kingdom and marry him, so please don’t worry if you never see me again,” in only three words?

As soon as she says word number four, the stove is sent away, over a mountain of glass and sharp swords. The prince is not in the stove, but apparently he disappears to somewhere, too.

The princess sets out in search. She winds up in a house full of toads, with a wonderful feast on the table. The toads invite her in, feed her, set her up in a nice bed, and give her instructions in the morning. She has to cross a glass mountain, three cutting swords, and a great lake to reach her prince. The toads give her three large needles, a plough wheel, and three nuts to help.

She uses the needles to climb over the mountain—I’ve never seen a needle I could drive through glass, but I’ve never seen a talking toad, either, so we’ll allow it. She rolls over the swords on her plough wheel, which to be honest is 100% of the reason we’re talking about this story; I wanted you all to see this image:

 

Apparently she doesn’t need any magical aid to cross the lake.

So the prince is here; apparently he travelled with the stove even though he was no longer trapped inside it. He’s set to marry another princess, apparently because he thought our princess was dead?

Dude, she went to talk to her dad. You knew this.

And we go through the usual thing. There are gowns in the nuts. She trades three gowns for three nights in the prince’s bedroom. The prince is drugged, but he doesn’t take the drugs on the third night. They reunite.

Then they steal a carriage, steal all the other princess’ clothes so she can’t follow them, and go back across the lake and the swords and the mountain, to the little toad house, which turns into a beautiful palace. All the toads turn into princes and princesses, and they stay there and live happily ever after.

So, like, is this the prince’s family? Is this the home he was trying to take the princess back to? Or did they just find a free palace and forget all about his family? It’s really not clear.

I always feel so bad for these second brides. Like, not the East of the Sun West of the Moon types who are, like, evil, but these random girls who get engaged not knowing these men had other girlfriends before, and then they just get screwed over. Like, okay, they usually drug the guys, which is not cool. But I think it’s to prevent any funny business, not to hide the first bride from them?

Still, the correct solution is to discuss this, like, hey, there’s this dress I want to wear to our wedding, but the girl who owns it won’t let me buy it unless I let her spend the night in your room. Yeah, I know it’s really weird. But I really like this dress. What are your thoughts on the situation?

So the drugging is a bad move. But, like, they stole all her clothes? So she couldn’t follow them? That was seriously unwarranted. And they called her the “false bride,” like give the girl a break, all she did was get engaged to a man who was, as far as she knew, available.

All her clothes. Yikes.

VISIT PATREON.COM/KONGLINDORM FOR EARLY ACCESS TO POSTS.