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Comment
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Randi
Unregistered User
(8/4/05 8:06 pm)
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Searching for a tale - can you help me find it?
Hey everyone --
My name is Randi. I've been trying to track down a story that I loved as a kid. I read it in the 1960's. For years, I had it in my mind that it was one of the Arabian nights, because I seem to recall reading it in an oversized, illustrated collection of Arabian Nights. But I've never found it in an Arabian Nights collection, and I've been told it sounds more like Grimm. Also, I did read several of the Andrew Lang collections as a kid (Blue Book, Red Book, Yellow Book, Green book maybe?) so maybe it came from one of those. Can't say. I'd love to find it so I can share it with my niece and my daughter, and also just to satisfy my own curiousity and hunger for it.
Anyway, here's the tale: A boy works with his mother selling vegetables in a market. One day an obnoxious, ugly old woman comes along and squeezes and scoffs at their vegetables. He calls her a name: calls her an "ugly old crone" or something like that. She gets really angry and tells him that someday he'll know what it feels like to be called ugly. Then, the old woman asks his mother if the boy can help her carry her vegetables home. The mother, feeling sorry that her son insulted the woman, and knowing insulting customers is bad for business, sends the boy on the errand with the old woman.
Once at her house, she encourages the boy to eat some delicious soup she's made. The soup is fragrant; it smells of some ineffable herb that he can't name. But it's so yummy, he eats it all. Instantly, he's turned into an ugly, hunched dwarf. The old woman (who turns out to be a witch) has cast a spell on him so he can know what it feels like to be ugly. She forces him to work for her for seven years. Over that time, he's trapped in the house with the witch, where she teaches him to do all her cooking for her. He becomes a great cook, though he's lonely and miserable.
Finally, the witch dies. The young man (now 18 or so) tries to return home. But when he knocks on his mother's door, and claims to be her son, she's so horrified by his misshapen appearance that she won't even speak to him. She yells at him for pretending to be her long-lost (and, she thinks, probably long-dead) son. So he's forced to go out and make his way in the world.
After some trials and tribulations, he gets a job as a chef for a king. One day, the king from a rival country challenges the young man's king to a cooking match. He says they'll compete to see which one can serve the best meals. The young chef has the job to make a sensational meal. He does. But the other king's chef makes an even better meal, including a wonderful soup flavored with that very same herb that was in the soup the witch served the man years before! The king, humiliated because the rival king beat him in the contest, demands that the young chef serve exactly the same soup -- or he'll lose his job and his life.
So the young man, with the help of a friend (who I seem to recall is a swan) goes searching high and low for the mystery herb. At last, he finds it. One whiff, and he's transformed from an ugly dwarf back into the handsome young man he really is. He makes the soup, and of course the king is so pleased that he invites the young man to marry his daughter. And of course the young man will never insult anyone's looks again.
I may have gotten some details wrong, but that's the thrust of it. So does anyone know the name of this story, its history, and where I can find it?
Thank you. This is a wonderful, fascinating discussion board.
Randi
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Lamplighter
Registered User
(8/5/05 4:34 am)
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The History of Dwarf Long Nose
The History of Dwarf Long Nose
The Violet Fairy Book - by Andrew Lang
www.readprint.com/chapter...ndrew-Lang
Try this rendition. There may be other links to the story's heritage.
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rglatzer
Registered User
(8/8/05 9:36 am)
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Re: The History of Dwarf Long Nose
(From Randi)
Thank you so much for tracking that down for me. I was thrilled to read the Andrew Lang version. I've been searching for that tale for years.
Turns out it was written by William Haupff, and that even though he was a German author and a contemporary of the Grimms, in some of the illustrated versions his characters where turbans a la Arabian Nights characters. Thus my confusion in remembering this as an Arabian Nights tale, but never being able to find it.
I even think I may have located the book I read it in as a child. Now I can go and find that book for my daughter.
Oh, to have her fall in love with the original fairy tales, and not the Disney versions! Maybe she'll love the illustrations as much as I did. There's even a Maurice-Sendak illustrated version of Dwarf Long Nose, but that's not the book I remember.
Thanks again.
Randi
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Lamplighter
Registered User
(8/9/05 3:30 am)
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Re: The History of Dwarf Long Nose
Your welcome, and thank you for reminding me of that old Lang book. I will look around for the original Haupff the next time I visit a copyright library.
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