Hans My Hedgehog

 This is another story I could have sworn I already wrote about, but again, no evidence.

A man and a woman have no children. Their friends make fun of them for this, which means they have crappy friends, and one day the man announces his determination to have a child, even if it was a hedgehog.

It is unclear why he would suggest such a thing, or what made it actually happen, but shortly after, his wife gives birth to a baby whose top half was hedgehog, and whose bottom half was human.

They name him Hans, because all male characters in Grimm brothers stories are always named Hans.

When Hans is eight, he requests some bagpipes, which his father buys for him. He then requests that his rooster be shod, so that he can ride away on it and never come back.

Hans’ parents do not enjoy having a strange hedgehog son, and are glad to be rid of him, even though he is a small child and should not be alone in the world. And when I say he is a small child, I mean both that he is only eight years old, and that he is able to ride a chicken like a horse. He may have half a human body, but apparently it is not human sized. He should make friends with Thumbelina.

Also. Not clear on why the rooster needs to be shod. I don’t really see the benefit of horseshoes for that type of foot.

Anyway. Hans, his bagpipes, and his rooster set off into the woods, along with some pigs and donkeys. Over the years, these pigs and donkeys grow into a large herd, and Hans sits in a tree with his rooster, watching over them and playing his bagpipes.

A king becomes lost in the forest, and asks Hans for help getting home. Hans agrees on the condition that he be given the first thing that greets the king when he gets there. The king agrees, even offering to put it in writing—his reasoning for this is that surely the hedgehog man can’t read, which is a strange assumption to make when you already know the hedgehog man can talk and play the bagpipes.

However, it turns out he was correct about the reading, because the king just writes whatever he feels like, and Hans doesn’t catch it.

I’m sure it will come as a surprise to no one that the king is immediately greeted by his daughter.

However. A second king gets lost in the forest, and makes the same deal with Hans, and also is greeted by his daughter. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t think to draw up a fake contract. He actually does sign away his daughter.

Hans has been too busy with his pigs and donkeys to collect his princesses so far. But now he goes back to his father, has all the pigs slaughtered, takes his earnings from the butcher, has his rooster re-shod, and is off again. He promises his father he’ll never come back—a promise he's already broken once by coming back this time, but whatever. I support breaking promises to people who abandon their eight ear olds.

He goes to claim his first princess. When the king’s men see him coming they open fire, per the king’s instructions, but Hans on his rooster flies over them to collect the princess. Apparently it doesn’t matter that the contract was fake, because the king lets Hans take her.

However, Hans is mad that the king tried to cheat him, and that the princess doesn’t want him. He sticks her all over with his quills in retaliation, and sends her back home.

At the second kingdom, Hans is welcomed in, and although she’s a little freaked out by his appearance, the princess is determined to keep her father’s promise, and marries him.

On his wedding night, Hans removes his hedgehog skin, revealing himself to be an ordinary young man beneath it—and presumably a young man of ordinary size. This raises some logistical questions which will sadly never be addressed.

He has the skin thrown into a fire. This does result in his body, despite being no longer attached to the skin, being burned badly, but the burns are treated, and he is forever after an ordinary young man.

Also, he reunites with his dad again and invites him to live in the palace. No mention of mom. Hans and his princess live happily ever after.

I have. So many questions.

Why was he born half hedgehog? Could he have taken off this skin at any time? Had he ever taken it off before? How did he know it was removable? How did he know burning it would free him? How was an entire man’s body contained in the skin of a creature small enough to ride a rooster like a horse? How did a rooster survive for so many years? Why did the rooster need to be shod? Why were Hans’ parents so awful? Why did he wait so long to do this? Was he just, like, fine with being a hedgehog man until he met a girl he didn’t want to stab with his quills?

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Born a Monster

While animal bridegrooms are an extremely popular folktale motif, it’s fairly rare to encounter bridegrooms who were originally born non-human. (This is particularly interesting as it is much more common for brides to be born nonhuman—see “The Little Mermaid,” anything about selkies, “Undine,” “Melusine”—there’s also a distinct aquatic theme here, but I’m getting off-topic.)

There are only two other stories like this that come to mind: “The Pig King” (Italian and French) and “Hans My Hedgehog.” (German) (I am sure there are other stories out there that fit into this category, but there are hundreds of thousands of fairy tales in the world, and I can only read a small percentage of them, and can remember even less.)

“Prince Lindworm” differs from these other two born-a-monster stories in that his reason for being a monster is slightly more traditional. Monster bridegrooms are generally turned into monsters as a punishment—usually for a fairly minor offense, such as general rudeness or turning down romantic advances. The lindworm is a lindworm because of his mother’s minor offense of eating too many flowers. There’s no punishment involved in Hans’ or the Pig King’s monstrousness; their parents wanted desperately to have children, and someone magical heard their pleas and said yeah, okay, sure—but with a fun little twist. (Although Hans’ dad totally brought it on himself by saying “I want a kid so bad I wouldn’t even care if he was a hedgehog.”)

All three stories involve the beast marrying before his transformation. But while Hans and both versions of the Pig King remain beasts at least part-time for some time after their marriage (we’re talking months, here), the lindworm is transformed on their wedding night. Hans and French pig are the types of characters that can only be permanently freed from their animal forms when the animal skins are destroyed. Which their wives handle, having become extremely fed up with this whole bestiality situation. The terms of transformation for the Italian pig are just that he be married three times. (Which, by the way, no one actually knew about. The terms and conditions were totally secret in this situation. And personally, if I didn’t know about the 3 weddings deal, I probably wouldn’t have kept getting married after multiple spouses attempted to kill me, but whatever, you do you.)

Prince Lindworm just feels more like an enchanted bridegroom story than the others—partly because of the consequences-for-your-actions element of his lindworm-iness, but mostly I think because of the transformation sequence? And the role the main girl plays.

Hans’ bride comes off more like a Brave Little Tailor girl than an enchanted bridegroom girl; you don’t really get the sense that she’s saving him from enchantment. He won the right to marry her through tailor-typical feats, and their relationship is something that she endures until she figures out she can make it a little more bearable by trashing his hedgehog skin.

The pig king’s bride lying with him every night when he’s not wearing an animal skin is actually pretty common in folklore, with the best example being “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”—and of course there’s “Cupid and Psyche” there, too. But I do feel that a fundamental part of those stories is the journey that the girl goes on after seeing his face. “The Pig King” just feels—I don’t know.

I think an important part of enchanted bridegroom stories is the step where the girl does something to save the beast—whether that’s going on a journey to find him, initiating a bizarro transformation sequence, or searching frantically through the palace to find him and marry him before he dies of sorrow.

I don’t know. I just think that "Prince Lindworm" is better than the other born-enchanted stories I’ve encountered. It just feels right.

I can’t think of a good ending, here. Whatever. Remind me to come back to that whole girls-more-commonly-start-out-non-human thing sometime when I have the energy to spare for anything non-Lindworm related. (Even when bridegrooms are born monsters, they’re still distinctly enchanted, born from normal humans. Brides are more likely to be just naturally nonhuman, which is—there’s something significant in that, I’m sure, and I actually meant it to be a part of my seminar paper five years ago, but the professor made me narrow my focus, which was probably a good idea as the paper was still like 25 pages long.) 

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