In the past, when I’ve read Andersen’s Fairy Tales, I was reading from collections of “retellings.” I thought it would be interesting to read direct translations of some of the more famous stories. I’ve done that now. They’re strange.

►The Mermaid
You know the story. A fish-girl falls in love with a handsome prince. A witch turns her into a human girl, but deprives her of her tongue — cuts it out, actually. Although the prince is struck by her beauty and grace, he decides to marry another girl. But he’s not totally cold and cruel. He allows the now-human mermaid to sleep on a mat outside his bedroom door. So she’s got that going for her.

But if she can’t get the prince to marry her, she will turn into sea foam and never get a soul. Or so she is told. When the prince in fact marries another, our girl does indeed turn to foam. But the story doesn’t stop there. She meets with “beauteous ethereal beings” who were required “for three hundred years … do all the good in our power.” They would then gain an undying soul. If, during those 300 years, they smile at a good child, a year gets knocked off their probation. On the other hand, if they see a naughty child and cry in sorrow because of his or her misdeeds, a day gets added to their time.

And so the story ends. We never learn how many years and days it takes our mermaid to gain her soul. Nor was I able to figure out if there was a point to this story. A statue of Andersen’s Mermaid sits on a rock in Copenhagen harbor, but if they can’t come up with a better story than this for their national identity, they’re in sorry shape.

►The Real Princess
A short, simple story. A prince wants a bride, but finds a reason to reject all the girls he looks at. Then, one dark and stormy night, a disheveled babe comes wandering by. The Queen puts her to bed on a stack of 20 mattresses and 20 feather beds — after placing a single pea at the bottom of the stack. In the morning, the girl complains about the lump in the bed and so the prince marries her.

For me, this story has way too many unanswered questions:
• Why was this princess (if that’s what she really was) wandering about in the storm?
• What did she think when the Queen showed her to her room and she found a bed with 20 mattresses and 20 feather beds awaiting her?
• How did she get into bed? Wouldn’t the stack have been top-heavy and unstable?
• Is it possible that, after the Queen left the room, the girl started pulling mattresses off the bed so she could sleep with out having to worry about tipping over? Furthermore, is it possible that she found the pea and figured out what was going on? I smell a scam.
• And what was going on with this prince? He rejected a series of eligible girls but married this one when all he knew about her was that she wandered around in the night and could feel a pea beneath a stack of mattresses. What was it he was looking for in a wife, exactly?
• And why can princesses feel peas anyway? Is it due to heredity? Training?

►Thumbelisa (not Thumbelina)
A woman wants a child, but is unaware of the usual means of getting one, so she visits a witch. The witch gives her a barley corn which grows into a tulip. (Already I’m confused.) The lady kisses the tulip (something I’ve never been compelled to do) and it opens to reveal a one-inch-tall girl sitting on a stool. (Was the stool part of the flower? Was it inside the barley corn?) The lady puts the girl on a table and lets her paddle around on a water-filled plate in a tiny leaf boat.

But one fateful day, a toad hops in the window, sees our heroine and takes her home to be a bride for her toad son. Mrs. Toad puts her daughter-in-law-to-be on a lily pad until the wedding preparations are complete. Some sympathetic fish swim by, bit through the stem and set Thumbelisa afloat on the canal. After a long journey, a bird grabs her and takes her to its tree, but soon lets go when the other birds decide our girl is ugly. Thumbelisa wanders about the woods until winter comes. She takes refuge with a field mouse who immediately determines to marry her off to the mole that lives next door. (Presumably so the mouse won’t have to marry him.)

Here’s where the story gets weird. This mole has a dead swallow in its tunnel. He doesn’t know how the bird got there, but he tells Thumbelisa to just ignore it. This she won’t do — not our plucky little gal. She makes the dead bird a bed and keeps it warm and … surprise, surprise, it wasn’t really dead after all. It takes off in the spring but returns just in time to rescue Thumbelisa from her wedding to the mole. The swallow carries her to a castle and deposits her in a flower where she finds a tiny little man, the king of the flower angels. Our heroine is given some fly’s wings to strap on, and she married the diminutive king. The swallow then flew to Denmark and told the story to Mr. Andersen.

This story raises, but doesn’t resolve the whole issue of inter-species marriage — human-toad, human-mole and human-flower fairy. We never find out what happened to the scorned toad and mole, and we never found out how a live swallow got into the mole’s tunnel to begin with.

►The Steadfast Tin Soldier
This one read pretty much the way I’ve always heard it. The tiny soldier with one leg stands and stares at the paper ballerina. The gremlin in the jack-in-the-box gets jealous and knocks him out the window. A boy finds him and puts him in a boat. He drifts to the canal and gets eaten by a fish that is in turn caught and returned to the very house. When it is cut open, the soldier is found and returned to the toy room. But a mischievous boy throws him in the fire. A breeze comes along and knocks the ballerina in with him and the two burn down into a tin heart.

►The Little Match Girl
A lovely story of death. It’s New Years Eve. A young, barefoot girl tries to sell matches. She’s afraid to go home because she hasn’t sold a thing all day. She huddles in a corner and lights her matches to keep warm. In the flames she sees visions. With her final match, she sees her grandmother come and take her to heaven. The girl’s body is found the next day with a smile on her face.

Straightforward enough. But here’s the thing. Earlier in this fateful day, the girl ran across a street to keep from getting run over by a cart. Her shoes flew off. One could never be found. The other one was picked up by an enterprising, forward-looking boy who decided to keep it to use as a cradle when he had children of his own. What a clever lad he was. But the question that comes to my mind is this: Just how large were these shoes? It’s no wonder they fell off when the girl ran across the street.

►The Snow Queen
Story one — A demon creates a mirror that makes everything look bad. He tries to carry it to heaven, but it drops and shatters. The pieces spread over the world and cause mayhem.
Story two — Two neighbor children are friends. The boy, Kay sees the Snow Queen and shortly after gets a piece of the mirror in his eye. He starts being mean to Gerda. Kay goes outside to play in the snow and gets led away by the Snow Queen.
Story three — Gerda puts on her red shoes and goes to look for Kay. She gets in a boat to throw her shoes in the river and is carried away. Gerda is rescued by a witch who determines to keep her. She stays there for a long time until a rose reminds her of Kay. She asks the flowers if they know where Kay is, and the Tiger Lily says, “Do you hear the drum? Rub-a-dub, it has only two notes, rub-a-dub, always the same. The wailing of women and the cry of the preacher. The Hindu woman in her long red garment stands on the pile, while the flames surround her and her dead husband. But the woman is only thinking of the living man in the circle round, whose eyes burn with a fiercer fire than that of the flames which consume the body. Do the flames of the heart die in the fire?” (Which I thought was a strange thing for a flower to say in that context.)The other flowers tell stories equally strange, so Gerda runs off to look for Kay.
Story four — Gerda meets a crow who tells her about a princess who wanted to get married. A crowd of suitors come, and among them is a boy who looks like Kay who came to hear the princess’s wisdom. The crow takes Gerda to the palace, but it isn’t Kay; it’s a prince. Gerda tells the prince and princess her story. They set her up with clothes, food and a chariot.
Story five — Gerda is waylaid by robbers. An old woman robber is about to kill her to eat her when her small daughter intervenes and saves Gerda for a playmate. The robber girl’s pigeons tell Gerda they’ve seen Kay in Lapland. The robber girl sends Gerda there on her pet reindeer.
Story six — Gerda and the reindeer meet a Finn woman who tells the reindeer that Gerda has power within herself to get the mirror piece out of Kay’s eye and rescue him from the Snow Queen. The reindeer leaves Gerda in the snow, and she is attacked by the Snow Queen’s snowflakes. She says the Lord’s Prayer and her breath turns into angels that chase away the snowflakes.
Story seven — The Snow Queen’s palace is huge and cold. Kay spends his time arranging chunks of ice to form the word “eternity.” If he manages to do this, the Queen said says she’ll give him the whole world AND a new pair of skates. The Snow Queen leaves to look at volcanoes, and Kay sits stiff with cold. Gerda walks in saying prayers and finds Kay. She cries and her tears thaw him out and wash away the bit of mirror. The children go outside and find Gerda’s reindeer with another one full of milk. They kiss this one on the mouth. They travel south until they get home, only to discover that they are now grown up and capable of understanding the old hymn: “Where roses deck the flowery vale, there, Infant Jesus, we thee hail.”

►The Emperor’s New Clothes
A vain, stupid emperor was obsessed with clothes. Two swindlers said they could make him a fine outfit that was invisible to fools. The emperor gave them a lot of gold and jewelry. Afraid to be confirmed as a fool, the emperor sent two ministers to see the clothes. They came back and told him the clothes were excellent. The emperor went to see for himself and pretended he could see. He put on his new clothes and went out in a procession. Everyone pretended they could see the clothes until a small boy spoke the truth.

►The Tinder Box
A soldier meets a witch. She makes a deal. She’ll let him down on a rope into a hollow tree. Below, he’ll find a series of rooms full of treasure guarded by dogs with giant eyes. He can put the dogs in the witch’s apron and take as much treasure as he wants if he’ll only find the witch’s tinder box and return it to her. He fills his pockets with gold and gets the tinder box. When the witch pulls him out of the tree, he wants to know why she wants the box. She won’t tell him, so he cut off her head and headed to town where there is a princess locked up in a castle to prevent her from marrying a common soldier as had been prophesied. He soon spent all his money. He opened the tinder box and struck it and one of the dogs popped out. The soldier soon learned he could summon the dogs at will and have them run errands or get money for him. He sends the dog to get the princess, and when the soldier saw her he fell in love. The next night he sent the dog back again. The princess’s maid followed the dog and marked the soldier’s door with an X. The dog saw the X and marked all the doors in town so the soldier couldn’t be found. The queen tied a bag of seeds to the princess and put a hole in the bag. That night when the dog brought the princess to the soldier, the seeds poured out. The soldier was seized and thrown in the dungeon and sentenced to be hung. The soldier sent a boy to get his tinder box. On the scaffold, the soldier asked to have a last smoke. He struck the tinder box and the dogs popped out. They saved the soldier and grabbed the king and queen and tossed them to their deaths. The people shouted that they wanted the soldier to marry the princess and be their king. The princess became queen and was very happy about this.

►The Ugly Duckling
A duck has a brood of beautiful ducklings and one large, gray, ugly one. All the other ducks comment on how ugly the one was and picked on him every chance they got. The mother was loyal to the ugly one at first, but in time even she got tired of him. He ran away to a marsh. The wild ducks also called him ugly but said he could stay as long as he didn’t marry into their families. Some hunters came. The ugly duckling hid out, then wandered around the world, living alone most of the time. Winter came and he had to swim in circles to keep the water from freezing. Eventually he tired and was frozen in place. A peasant found him and took him home, but a house is no place for a duckling and he was soon in trouble. He fled again and wandered until spring. One warm day, he met three swans. He was hesitant to approach because of his ugliness, but by this time he hoped to die, so he swam toward them. Then he caught sight of his reflection in the water and realized he was a beautiful swan.