The Four Brothers

In the days of long ago, there was a farmer who had four sons. His was not a big farm; he had only a small flock of sheep, a few cows, and not much plough or meadow land. But he was well content. His sons had always been with him, either on his own farm or nearabout, and he had grown to love them more and more. Never man had better sons than he had.

For this reason he grew ill at ease at the thought of what they were giving up for his sake; and at last one day he called them together and said to them: “There will be little left, when I am gone, to divide up amongst four. Journey off, then, my dear sons, into the great world; seek your fortunes, and see what you can do for yourselves. Find each of you as honest and profitable a trade as he can; come back to me in four years’ time, and we shall see how you have all prospered. And God’s blessing go with you!”

So his four sons cut themselves cudgels out of the hedge, made up their bundles, and off they went. After waving their father goodbye at the gate, they trudged along the high-road together till they came to cross-roads, where four ways met. Here they parted one from another, since on any road there is more room for one than for four. Then off each went again, whistling into the morning.

They trudged along the high-road.

After he had gone a few miles, the first and eldest of them met a stranger who asked him where he was bound for. “By the looks of you,” he said, “you might be in sight of the Spice Islands.” He told him he was off to try his luck in the world.

“Well,” said the stranger, “come along with me, and I will teach you to be nimble with your fingers. Nimble of fingers is nimble of wits. And I’ll warrant when I’ve done with you, you’ll be able to snipple-snupple away any mortal thing you have an eye to, and nobody so much as guess it’s gone.”

“Not me,” said the other. “That’s thieving. Old Master Take-What-He-Wanted was hanged on a gallows. And there, for all I care, he hangs still.”

“Ay,” said the old man, “that he were. But that old Master Take-What-He-Wanted you are talking of was a villainous rogue and a rascal. But supposing you’re only after borrowing its lamp from a glow-worm, or a loaf of bread from a busy bee, what then? Follow along now; you shall see!”

So off they went together. And very well they did.

The second son had not gone far when he chanced on an old man sitting under a flowering bush and eating bread and cheese and an onion with a jack-knife. The old man said to him, “Good-morning, my friend. What makes you so happy?”

He said, “I am off to seek my fortune.”

“Ah,” said the old man, “then come along with me; for one’s fortune is with the stars, and I am an astronomer, and a star-gazer.” In a bag beside him, this old pilgrim showed the young man a set of glasses for spying out the stars, glasses that had come from Arabia and those parts. After looking through the glasses, the young man needed no persuasion and went along with him. And very well they did.

The third brother, having turned off into the greenwood, soon met a jolly huntsman with a horn and a quiver full of arrows on his shoulder. The huntsman liked the fine fresh look of the lad. He promised to teach him his ancient art and skill with the bow; so they went along together. And very well they did.

The youngest brother tramped on many a mile before he met anybody, and he was resting under a tree listening to the birds and enjoying a morsel of food out of his bundle, when a tailor came along, with crooked legs and one eye. And the tailor said to him, “Plenty to do, but nothing doing!”

The boy laughed, and said, “I have been walking all morning, having just left my dear old father for the first time. Now I am resting a moment, for I am off into the world to get my living and to see if I can bring him back something worth having; and if I don’t, then may my fingers grow thumbs!”

And the tailor, prettily taken by his way of speaking, said, “If you are wishful to learn a craft, young man, come along with me.” So off they went together. And very well they did.

Now, after four years to the very day, the four brothers met again at the cross-roads and returned to their father. A pleasant meeting it was. For though their old father was getting on in years, he had worked on alone at the farm with a good heart, feeling sure that his sons were doing well in the world and making their way. That night when they were all, as in old times, sitting together at supper—two of his sons on either side of him, and himself in the middle—he said to them: “Now, good sons all, tell me your adventures, and what you’ve been doing these long years past. And I promise you it will be well worth hearing.”

The four brothers looked at one another, and the eldest said: “Ay, so we will, father, if you’ll wait till to-morrow. Then we will do whatever you ask us, to show we have learned our trades and not been idle. Think over tonight what you’d like us to do in the morning, and we’ll all be ready.”

The old man’s one fear that night as he lay in bed thinking of the morrow was lest he might give his sons too hard a thing to do. But before he could think of anything that seemed not too hard yet not too easy, he fell asleep.

The next morning, after the five of them had gobbled up their breakfast, they went out into the fields together. Then the old man said:

“Up in the branches of that tree, my sons, is a chaffinch’s nest, and there the little hen is sitting. Now could any one of you tell me how many eggs she has under her?” For he thought the youngest would climb into the tree, scare off the bird, and count them.

But nothing so simple as that. “Why, yes, father,” said the second son, and taking out of his pocket a certain optic glass his master had given him as a parting present, he put it to his best eye, looked up, squinnied through it, and said, “Five.”

At this the old man was exceedingly pleased, for he knew he told him the truth.

“Now,” says he, “could one of you get those eggs for me, and maybe without alarming the mother-bird overmuch? Eh? What about that?”

There and then the eldest son, who had been taught by his master every trick there is for nimble fingers, shinned up into the tree, and dealt with the little bird so gently that he took all her five eggs into the hollow of his hand without disturbing even the littlest and downiest of her feathers in the nest.

The old man marvelled and said, “Better and better! But now, see here,” he went on, gently laying the five eggs on a flat patch of mossy turf, and turning to the son who had gone off with the huntsman—“now, shoot me all these, my son, with one arrow. My faith, ’twould be a master stroke!”

His son went off a full fifty paces, and drawing the little black bow made of sinew (which his master had bought from the Tartars), with a tiny twang of its string he loosed a needle-sharp arrow that, one after the other, pierced all five eggs as neatly as a squirrel cracks nuts.

“Ha, ha!” cried the old man, almost dumbfounded, and prouder than ever of them all, then turned to his youngest son, “Ay, and can you, my son, put them together again?” But this he meant only in jest.

With that, the youngest son sat down at the foot of the tree and there and then, and they all watching, with the needle and thread which had once been his master’s he sewed the shells togther so deftly that even with his second son’s magic glass his old father could scarcely see the stitches. This being done, the eggs were put back into the nest again, and the mother-bird sat out her time. Moreover, the only thing strange in her five nestlings when they were all safely hatched out of their shells was that each had a fine crimson thread of silk neatly stitched round its neck—which made her as vain and proud of her brood as the old father was of his four sons.

“Now stay with me for a time,” he entreated them. “There is plenty to eat and drink, and there are a few little odd jobs you might do for me while you are with me. Never man had better sons, and a joy it is beyond words to have you all safely home again.”

So they said they would stay with their old father as long as he wished.

However, they had scarcely been a week at home when news came that a Dragon which had been prowling near one of the King’s castles that was built at the edge of a vast fen, or bogland, had carried off the Princess, his only daughter. The whole realm was in grief and dread at this news, and the King in despair had decreed that anyone who should discover the Dragon and bring back the Princess should have her for wife. After pondering this news awhile the old farmer said to his sons:

“Now, my lads, here’s a chance indeed. Not that I’m saying it’s good for a man, as I think, to marry anybody he has no mind to. But to save any manner of human creature from a cruel foul Dragon—who wouldn’t have a try?”

So the four brothers set out at once to the Castle, and were taken before the King. They asked the King where the Dragon was. And the King groaned, “Who knows?”

So the Star-gazer put up his spy-glass to his eye, and peered long through its tube—north, east, south, then west. And he said at last, “I see him, sire, a full day’s sailing away. He is coiled up grisly on a rock with his wings folded, at least a league to sea, and his hooked great clanking tail curled round him. Ay, and I see the Princess too, no bigger than my little finger in size, beside him. She’s been crying, by the looks of her. And the Dragon is keeping mighty sly guard over her, for one of his eyes is an inch ajar.”

The King greatly wondered, and sent word to the Queen who was in a chamber apart; and he gave the four brothers a ship, and they sailed away in the King’s ship until they neared the island and the rock. In great caution they then took in sail, drifting slowly in. When they were come near and in green water under the rock, they saw that the Princess was now asleep, worn out with grief and despair, and that her head lay so close to the Dragon that her hair was spread out like yellow silk upon its horny scales.

“Shoot I dare not,” said the huntsman, “for, by Nimrod, I might pierce the heart of the Princess.”

So first the nimble-fingered brother swam ashore, and creeping up behind the Dragon, stole and withdrew the Princess away with such ease and cunning that the monster thought only a gentle breeze had wafted upon its coils with its wings. Stealthy as a seal he slipped into the sea again and swam back to the ship, the Princess lying cradled in the water nearby him, for, though she could not swim herself, she rode almost as light on the water as a sea-bird. Then the four brothers hoisted sail and with all haste sailed away.

They saw that the Princess was now asleep . . . and that her head lay so close to the Dragon that her hair was spread out like yellow silk upon its horny scales.

But the ship had hardly sailed a league and a league when the Dragon, turning softly in his drowsiness, became aware that a fragrance had gone out of the morning. And when he found that his captive was lost to him he raised his head with so lamentable a cry the very rocks resounded beneath the screaming of the sea-birds; then writhing his neck this way and that, he descried the white sails of the ship on the horizon like a bubble in the air. Whereupon he spread his vast, bat-like wings and, soaring into the heavens, pursued the ship across the sea.

The four brothers heard from afar the dreadful clanging of his scales, but waited till he was near at hand. When at last he was circling overhead, his hooked and horny wings darkening the very light of the sun, the huntsman, with one mighty twang of his bowstring, let fly an arrow, and the arrow sped clean through the Dragon from tip of snout to utmost barb of tail, and he fell like a millstone. So close, however, in his flight had he approached the ship, that his huge carcase crashed flat upon it in the sea and shattered it to pieces.

But by marvellous good fortune the Dragon fell on that half of the ship which is between bowsprit and mainmast, so that neither the Princess nor the four brothers came to any harm (for they were in the parts abaft the mainmast), except that one and all were flung helter-skelter into the sea. There they would certainly have drowned but for the tailor son, who at once straddled a baulk of timber, and, drawing in every plank within reach as it came floating by, speedily stitched up a raft with his magic needle. Soon all the other three brothers had clambered up out of the sea on to the raft, and having lifted the Princess as gently as might be after them, they came at last safely ashore.

There, sitting on the sunny shingle of the beach, they dried their clothes in the sun, and the Princess sleeked her hair, and when she had refreshed herself with a morsel of honeycomb which the Stargazer found in the heart of a hollow tree, the four brothers led her safely back to the Palace; and great were the rejoicings.

The King, having listened to their story, marvelled, and bade that a great feast should be prepared. A little before the hour fixed for this feast, he sent for these brothers, and they stood beside his chair.

“Now, which of you,” he said, “is to have the Princess to wife? For each did wondrous well: the spying out, the stealing away, the death-wound, and the rafting. Her life is yours, but she cannot be cut into quarters,” and he smiled at them all. “Still, a King is as good as his word; and no man can do better. Do you decide.”

Then the four brothers withdrew a little and talked together in a corner of the great hall. Then they came back to the King, and the eldest thanked the King for them all, and said:

“We are, Liege, sons of one dear father, who is a farmer. If of your graciousness your Majesty would see that he is never in want, and that he prospers howsoever long he lives, and even though he live to be an old, old man and can work no more, we shall be your happy and contented subjects to the end of our days. You see, we might die, your Majesty, and then our poor old father would have to live alone with none to help him.”

The King stroked his beard and smiled on them.

“Besides, your Majesty,” he went on, “never was Princess more beautiful than she we have brought back in safety, but a dragon dead is dead for ever, and no pretty maid we ever heard of, high or low, but wished to choose a husband for herself, whatever dragons there might be to prevent her.”

At this the King laughed aloud, and the Queen bade the four brothers come and sit on either side of her at the banquet, two by two, and the Princess kissed each of them on the cheek. Then they showed their marvels and their skill; and there was music and delight until the stars in the heavens showed it to be two in the morning.

Next day the four brothers set out together for home, with twelve fen horses, which have long manes and tails and are of a rusty red, and each of these horses was laden with two sacks one on either side, and each sack was bulging full of gifts for the four brothers and for their old father. And a pleasant journey home that was.