Produced by David Widger
PRINCE PRIGIO
From “His Own Fairy Book”
By Andrew Lang
TO CHILDREN.
The Author of this book is also the Editor of the Blue, Red, Greenland
Yellow Fairy Books. He has always felt rather an impostor, because so
many children seem to think that he made up these books out of his
own head. Now he only picked up a great many old fairy tales, told
in French, German, Greek, Chinese, Red Indian, Russian, and other
languages, and had them translated and printed, with pictures. He is
glad that children like them, but he must confess that they should be
grateful to old forgotten people, long ago, who first invented these
tales, and who knew more about fairies than we can hope to do.
_My Own Fairy Book_, which you now have in your hands, was made up
altogether out of his own head by the Author, of course with the help of
the Historical Papers in the kingdom of Pantouflia. About that ancient
kingdom very little is known. The natives speak German; but the Royal
Family, as usual, was of foreign origin. Just as England has had Norman,
Scottish, and, at present, a line of German monarchs, so the kings of
Pantouflia are descended from an old Greek family, the Hypnotidæ, who
came to Pantouflia during the Crusades. They wanted, they explained, not
to be troubled with the Crusades, which they thought very injudicious
and tiresome. The Crest of the regal house is a Dormouse, dormant,
proper, on a field vert, and the Motto, when translated out of the
original Greek, means, _Anything for a Quiet Life_.
It may surprise the young reader that princes like Prigio and Ricardo,
whose feet were ever in the stirrup, and whose lances were always in
rest, should have descended from the family of the Hypnotidæ, who were
remarkably lazy and peaceful. But these heroes doubtless inherited the
spirit of their great ancestress, whose story is necessary to be known.
On leaving his native realm during the Crusades, in search of some
secure asylum, the founder of the Pantouflian monarchy landed in the
island of Cyprus, where, during the noon-tide heat, he lay down to
sleep in a cave. Now in this cave dwelt a dragon of enormous size and
unamiable character. What was the horror of the exiled prince when he
was aroused from slumber by the fiery breath of the dragon, and felt its
scaly coils about him!
“Oh, hang your practical jokes!” exclaimed the prince, imagining that
some of his courtiers were playing a prank on him.
“Do you call _this_ a joke?” asked the dragon, twisting its forked tail
into a line with his royal highness’s eye.
“Do take that thing away,” said the prince, “and let a man have his nap
peacefully.’’
“Kiss me!” cried the dragon, which had already devoured many gallant
knights for declining to kiss it.
“Give you a kiss,” murmured the prince; “oh, certainly, if that’s all!
_Anything for a quiet life._”
So saying, he kissed the dragon, which instantly became a most beautiful
princess; for she had lain enchanted as a dragon, by a wicked magician,
till somebody should be bold enough to kiss her.
“My love! my hero! my lord! how long I have waited for thee; and now I
am eternally thine own!”
So murmured, in the most affectionate accents, the Lady Dragonissa, as
she was now called.
Though wedded to a bachelor life, the prince was much too well-bred to
make any remonstrance.
The Lady Dragonissa, a female of extraordinary spirit, energy, and
ambition, took command of him and of his followers, conducted them up
the Danube, seized a principality whose lord had gone crusading, set
her husband on the throne, and became in course of time the mother of a
little prince, who, again, was great, great, great, great-grandfather of
our Prince Prigio.
From this adventurous Lady Dragonissa, Prince Prigio derived his
character for gallantry. But her husband, it is said, was often heard to
remark, by a slight change of his family motto:
“_Anything for a Quiet Wife!_”
You now know as much as the Author does of the early history of
Pantouflia.
As to the story called _The Gold of Fairnilee_, such adventures were
extremely common in Scotland long ago, as may be read in many of
the works of Sir Walter Scott and of the learned in general. Indeed,
Fairnilee is the very place where the fairy queen appointed to meet her
lover, Thomas the Rhymer.
With these explanations, the Author leaves to the judgment of young
readers his _Own Fairy Book_.
PRINCE PRIGIO
By Andrew Lang
Adorned by Gordon Browne, T. Scott, and E. A. Lemann.
IS
Dedicated
TO
ALMA, THYRA, EDITH, ROSALIND, NORNA, CECILY, AND VIOLET
PREFACE.
In compiling the following History from the Archives of Pantouflia, the
Editor has incurred several obligations to the Learned. The Return of
Benson (chapter xii.) is the fruit of the research of the late Mr. Allen
Quatermain, while the final _wish_ of Prince Prigio was suggested by the
invention or erudition of a Lady.
A study of the _Firedrake_ in South Africa, where he is called the
_Nanaboulélé_, a difficult word-has been published in French (translated
from the Basuto language) by M. Paul Sébillot, in the _Revue des
Traditione Populaires_. For the _Rémora_, the Editor is indebted to the
_Voyage à la Lune_ of M. Cyrano de Bergérac.
[Illustration: Chapter One]
CHAPTER I.--_How the Fairies were not Invited to Court_
ONCE upon a time there reigned in Pantouflia a king and a queen. With
almost everything else to make them happy, they wanted one thing: they
had no children. This vexed the king even more than the queen, who was
very clever and learned, and who had hated dolls when she was a child.
However, she too, in spite of all the books she read and all the
pictures she painted, would have been glad enough to be the mother of
a little prince. The king was anxious to consult the fairies, but the
queen would not hear of such a thing. She did not believe in fairies:
she said that they had never existed; and that she maintained, though
_The History of the Royal Family_ was full of chapters about nothing
else.
Well, at long and at last they had a little boy, who was generally
regarded as the finest baby that had ever been seen. Even her majesty
herself remarked that, though she could never believe all the courtiers
told her, yet he certainly was a fine child--a very fine child.
Now, the time drew near for the christening party, and the king and
queen were sitting at breakfast in their summer parlour talking over
it. It was a splendid room, hung with portraits of the royal ancestors.
There was Cinderella, the grandmother of the reigning monarch, with her
little foot in her glass slipper thrust out before her. There was the
Marquis de Carabas, who, as everyone knows, was raised to the throne as
prince consort after his marriage with the daughter of the king of the
period. On the arm of the throne was seated his celebrated cat, wearing
boots. There, too, was a portrait of a beautiful lady, sound asleep:
this was Madame La Belle au Bois-dormant, also an ancestress of the
royal family. Many other pictures of celebrated persons were hanging on
the walls.
“You have asked all the right people, my dear?” said the king.
“Everyone who should be asked,” answered the queen.
“People are so touchy on these occasions,” said his majesty. “You have
not forgotten any of our aunts?”
“No; the old cats!” replied the queen; for the king’s aunts were
old-fashioned, and did not approve of her, and she knew it. “They are
very kind old ladies in their way,” said the king; “and were nice to me
when I was a boy.”
Then he waited a little, and remarked:
“The fairies, of course, you have invited? It has always been usual, in
our family, on an occasion like this; and I think we have neglected them
a little of late.”
“How _can_ you be so _absurd?_” cried the queen. “How often must I tell
you that there are _no_ fairies? And even if there were--but, no matter;
pray let us drop the subject.”
“They are very old friends of our family, my dear, that’s all,” said the
king timidly. “Often and often they have been godmothers to us. One, in
particular, was most kind and most serviceable to Cinderella I., my own
grandmother.”
“Your grandmother!” interrupted her majesty. “Fiddle-de-dee! If anyone
puts such nonsense into the head of my little Prigio----”
But here the baby was brought in by the nurse, and the queen almost
devoured it with kisses. And so the fairies were not invited! It was
an extraordinary thing, but none of the nobles could come to the
christening party when they learned that the fairies had not been asked.
Some were abroad; several were ill; a few were in prison among the
Saracens; others were captives in the dens of ogres. The end of it was
that the king and queen had to sit down alone, one at each end of a very
long table, arrayed with plates and glasses for a hundred guests--for a
hundred guests who never came!
“Any soup, my dear?” shouted the king, through a speaking-trumpet; when,
suddenly, the air was filled with a sound like the rustling of the wings
of birds.
_Flitter, flitter, flutter_, went the noise; and when the queen looked
up, lo and behold! on every seat was a lovely fairy, dressed in green,
each with a _most interesting-looking parcel_ in her hand. Don’t you
like opening parcels? The king did, and he was most friendly and polite
to the fairies. But the queen, though she saw them distinctly, took no
notice of them. You see, she did not believe in fairies, nor in her own
eyes, when she saw them. So she talked across the fairies to the king,
just as if they had not been there; but the king behaved as politely as
if they were _real_--which, of course, they were.
When dinner was over, and when the nurse had brought in the baby, all
the fairies gave him the most magnificent presents. One offered a purse
which could never be empty; and one a pair of seven-leagued boots; and
another a cap of darkness, that nobody might see the prince when he put
it on; and another a wishing-cap; and another a carpet, on which, when
he sat, he was carried wherever he wished to find himself. Another made
him beautiful for ever; and another, brave; and another, lucky: but the
last fairy of all, a cross old thing, crept up and said, “My child, you
shall be _too_ clever!”
This fairy’s gift would have pleased the queen, if she had believed in
it, more than anything else, because she was so clever herself. But she
took no notice at all; and the fairies went each to her own country, and
none of them stayed there at the palace, where nobody believed in them,
except the king, a little. But the queen tossed all their nice boots and
caps, carpets, purses, swords, and all, away into a dark lumber-room;
for, of course, she thought that they were _all nonsense_, and merely
old rubbish out of books, or pantomime “properties.”
[Illustration: Chapter Two]