The Blue Light & The Twelve Huntsmen by The Brothers Grimm

Number of pages: 24
Audiobook length: 0:17:23
EBook series:
Collection: Sinkronigo learner
Age Group: Youth literature
Read aloud type: Word-by-word
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eBook description:

"The Blue Light" is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Many of the features from Hans Christian Andersen's later work "The Tinder Box" and from the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp originate with this version. A wounded soldier is discharged with no pay, so he begs food from an old woman who puts him to work. The problem is, she's actually a witch, and he's more than a little suspicious when the last thing she does is lower him down a dry well so he can retrieve her blue light. He uses the blue light to light his pipe, and a dwarf emerges to do his bidding. The soldier gets revenge on the king by asking the dwarf to steal the king's daughter away in her sleep to make her do housework for the soldier. The king cleverly finds out what's happening, and is about to punish the soldier with death when the solider uses the blue light to have the dwarf punish everyone in sight. The king asks for mercy and gives the soldier his daughter as a wife. The Twelve Huntsmen is another German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. A princess is betrothed to a prince who has to go home to his father's deathbed. The father wants him to marry someone else, so he can't go back to the maiden. She grieves, then asks her father to give her eleven young women as companions who look just like her. Her ladies in waiting all dress in drag and go to her betrothed's kingdom, offering their services as huntsmen. The king has a rather discerning lion who determines that the huntsmen are actually women, so they set a bunch of tests: whether they'll walk firmly over peas or trip up like women and whether they'll ooh and ah over spinning wheels like women or ignore them like men. The "huntsmen" pass all the tests. When the disguised princess learns that the wedding is about to take place, she swoons, causing the king to examine her closely enough to recognize her. He renounces his new betrothed and takes her back. The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859), were born in the German state of Hesse. They were universally known for the collection of over two hundred folk tales they made from oral sources and published in two volumes of 'Nursery and Household Tales' in 1812 and 1814. Although their intention was to preserve such material as part of German cultural and literary history, and their collection was first published with scholarly notes and no illustration, the tales soon came into the possession of young readers. This was in part due to Edgar Taylor, who made the first English translation of part of the tales in 1823. (Summary from Wikipedia and Shmoop, adapted by Sinkronigo)