Tattercoats
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Read The Tale Of Tattercoats
In a great palace by the sea, there lived a very rich old lord. Old Lord neither had wife nor children alive, but only one little granddaughter, whose face he had never seen in all her life.
Old lord didn’t like his granddaughter much, because at her birth his favorite daughter died.
So he turned his back, and sat by his window looking out over the sea. He kept on weeping for his lost daughter, till his white hair and beard grew down over his shoulders and twined round his chair and crept into the chinks of the floor. His tears dropped and ran away in a little river to the great sea.
Meanwhile, his granddaughter grew up with no one to care for her, except an old nurse, who would sometimes give her a dish of scraps from the kitchen, or a torn petticoat from the rag-bag; while the other servants of the palace would drive her from the house with blows and mocking words, calling her “Tattercoats,” and pointing to her bare feet and shoulders, till she ran away, crying, to hide among the bushes.
So she grew up, with little to eat or to wear, spending her days out of doors, her only companion was a crippled gooseherd. The gooseherd was a merry little chap, and when she was hungry, or cold, or tired, he would play to her so happily on his little musical pipe, that she forgot all her troubles, and would fall to dancing with his flock of noisy geese for partners.
Now one day people told that the King was travelling through the land. The King was to give a large formal party to all the lords and ladies of the country in the town nearby, and that the Prince, his only son, was to choose a wife from amongst the young girls in the party. In due time one of the royal invitations to the party was brought to the Palace and the servants carried it up to the old lord, who still sat by his window, wrapped in his long white hair and weeping into the little river that was fed by his tears.
But when he heard the King’s command, he dried his eyes and asked his servants to bring a large pair of scissors to cut him loose, for his hair had bound him a fast prisoner, and he could not move. And then he sent them for rich clothes, and jewels, which he put on; and he ordered them to saddle the white horse, with gold and silk, that he might ride to meet the King; but he quite forgot he had a granddaughter to take to the party.
Meanwhile Tattercoats sat by the kitchen-door weeping, because she could not go to see the grand doings. And when the old nurse heard her crying she went to the Lord of the Palace, and begged him to take his granddaughter with him to the King’s party.
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But he only frowned and told her to be silent; while the servants laughed and said, “Tattercoats is happy playing with the gooseherd! Let her be—it is all she is fit for.”
A second, and then a third time, the old nurse begged him to let the girl go with him, but she was answered only by black looks and fierce words, till she was driven from the room by the other servants, with blows and mocking words.
Weeping over her ill-success, the old nurse went to look for Tattercoats; but the girl had been turned from the door by the cook, and had run away to tell her friend the gooseherd how unhappy she was because she could not go to the King’s party.
Now when the gooseherd had listened to her story, he bade her to cheer up, and proposed that they should go together into the town to see the King, and all the fine things; and when she looked sorrowfully down at her bare feet he played a note or two upon his musical pipe, so melodiously that she forgot all about her tears and her troubles, and before she well knew, the gooseherd had taken her by the hand, and both of them started dancing.
“Even cripples can dance when they choose,” said the gooseherd.
Before they had gone very far a handsome young man, splendidly dressed, riding up, stopped to ask the way to the castle where the King was staying, and when he found that they too were going there, he got off his horse and walked beside them along the road.
“You seem merry folk,” he said, “and will be good company.”
“Good company, indeed,” said the gooseherd, and played a new tune that was not a dance.
It was a curious tune, and it made the strange young man stare at Tattercoats till he couldn’t see her shabby clothes—till he couldn’t, see anything but her beautiful face.
Then he said, “You are the most beautiful girl in the world. Will you marry me?”
Then the gooseherd smiled to himself, and played sweeter than ever.
But Tattercoats laughed. “Not I,” said she; “you would be finely put to shame, and so would I be, if you took a goose-girl for your wife! Go and ask one of the great ladies you will see to-night at the King’s party, and do not flout poor Tattercoats.”
But the more she refused him the sweeter the pipe played, and the deeper the young man fell in love; till at last he begged her to come that night at twelve to the King’s party, just as she was, with the gooseherd and his geese, in her torn clothes and bare feet, and see if he wouldn’t dance with her before the King and the lords and ladies, and present her to them all, as his dear and honored bride.
Now at first Tattercoats said she would not; but the gooseherd said, “Take fortune when it comes, little one.”
So when night came, and the hall in the castle was full of light and music, and the lords and ladies were dancing before the King, just as the clock struck twelve, Tattercoats and the gooseherd, entered at the great doors, and walked straight up the ball-room, while on either side the ladies whispered, the lords laughed, and the King seated at the far end stared in amazement.
But as they came in front of the throne Tattercoats’ lover rose from beside the King, and came to meet her. Taking her by the hand, he kissed her thrice before them all, and turned to the King.
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“Father!” he said—for it was the Prince himself—”I have made my choice, and here is my bride, the loveliest girl in all the land, and the sweetest as well!”
Before he had finished speaking, the gooseherd had put his musical pipe to his lips and played a few notes that sounded like a bird singing far off in the forest; and as he played Tattercoats’ shabby clothes were changed to shining robes sewn with glittering jewels, a golden crown lay upon her golden hair.
And as the King rose to greet her as his daughter the trumpets sounded loudly in honor of the new Princess, and the people outside in the street said to each other:
“Ah! Now the Prince has chosen for his wife the loveliest girl in all the land!”
But the gooseherd was never seen again, and no one knew what became of him; while the old lord went home once more to his Palace by the sea, for he could not stay at Court, when he had sworn never to look on his granddaughter’s face.
So there he still sits by his window weeping more bitterly than ever and the river of his tears runs away to the great sea.
