The Princess Long Curls

Short tale: The Princess Long Curls

The story goes that a long time ago, there lived in a faraway kingdom a king and queen, who decided to pamper and spoil their daughter (The Princess Long Curls) with all the whims of this world. As expected, the little princess grew up over the years and became a spoiled child who would not say thank you or apologize for anything.

So selfish and rude was the child, that the palace servants had to do everything she wanted without complaint. The princess’s whims ranged from asking for sweets to be baked for her in the middle of the night to forcing the guards to chase away all the birds that roamed the palace because she simply hated them.

And her father, the king? The king did nothing but laugh at his beloved daughter’s misbehavior, and whoever did not obey was immediately imprisoned forever.

However, one fine day, while the princess was sleeping peacefully in her bedchamber, a magical fairy appeared at the window disguised as an owl. “You are not a good girl and must learn the gift of politeness. I curse you for the rest of your life until you know how to thank and respect everyone around you,” and with that said, the fairy departed.

The next morning, the princess awoke, and to her surprise, her hair had grown enormously. The poor girl’s blonde curls stretched all over the bed to the floor, and from the floor to the door of the bedchamber. With the first screams of fright from the princess, three royal guards, two servants and, of course, the king and queen appeared in the room.

The girl kept sobbing and wailing over the terrible curse. “Someone will pay for this,” shouted the king angrily, while the queen tried to pick up the giant locks of hair that were scattered all over the floor. During that day, hundreds of healers and sorcerers came to the palace, trying their best to undo the princess’s spell.

Some prepared secret concoctions that the princess drank in desperation, while others recited magic incantations aloud while waving their arms. Unfortunately, nothing could stop the incantation, and the girl’s hair grew and grew until it reached the outskirts of the palace.

At night, tired of crying so much, the princess fell fast asleep, but when she awoke in the morning her sadness was much greater. Her hair had not only flooded the castle, but also spread through all the houses of the kingdom until it reached the forest. The king, angry, sent for all the palace guards and the surrounding peasants.

Thousands of men with scissors, knives and scythes began to cut the girl’s immense hair. However, by the arrival of evening, the men were exhausted from cutting and cutting, and the princess’s hair kept growing and growing and growing, and so did her sadness. The queen locked herself in her bedchamber to weep in silence, while the king paced up and down the palace trying to find a solution.

Within a few weeks, the princess’s curls filled the streets of the kingdom, reached the ocean and tangled around the tops of the mountains. The little girl didn’t want to play or talk to anyone, but one afternoon, when offered a freshly baked cake, the princess replied in a soft voice, “No, thank you.”

All the maids in the room were astonished at her words, for it was the first time the little girl had ever said “thank you”. Some time later, one of the guards tried to enter the room and tripped over the huge hair, to which the girl exclaimed, “Please excuse me.”

Little by little, the princess began to be kind to everyone, from the palace gardeners to the cooks. Whenever she asked for something, she did it politely and kept saying “please”, “thank you”, “excuse me”. Then, one fine evening, the magical fairy who had bewitched her appeared again.

“You have become a kind and good girl. You have finally learned your lesson and will no longer have to suffer your punishment,” and so it was that the magic fairy removed the spell from the princess. When she awoke with the first rays of the sun, the girl discovered that her hair no longer overflowed the windows of the palace or reached the ends of the world.

From that day on, the princess was no longer rude or insulting to people, and as time went by, she managed to become a fair and caring queen to all the inhabitants of her kingdom.

END

Source: chiquipedia