Junior Vocab
The Princess and the Pea is one of Hans Christian Andersen’s shortest and most loved fairy tales, first printed in 1835. It tells of a prince who searches the world for a real princess to marry but cannot find one he is sure about. When a soaked and ragged young woman appears at the palace gate during a storm, saying she is a princess, the queen comes up with a simple test to settle the matter once and for all.
There was once a prince who wished to marry a princess. But she had to be a true princess, you understand. So he journeyed all over the world looking for one, yet everywhere something went wrong. It was not that there were no princesses; there were plenty. But he could never be certain they were real princesses, for there was always something just a little unsatisfactory.
At last he went back home again, very disappointed, because he so dearly wanted to marry a real princess. One evening a dreadful storm broke out. There was thunder and lightning, and the rain came down in torrents; it was truly frightening. In the middle of this wild weather, someone knocked at the town gate, and the old king went out to open it.
Outside stood a princess. But goodness, what a sight she was after the rain and the storm! Water dripped from her hair and clothes, ran in at the toes of her shoes and out at the heels; yet she firmly declared that she was a real princess. “Very well,” thought the old queen, “we shall soon find out.” She said nothing aloud, but went into the bedroom, removed all the bedding from the bed, and placed a single pea on the bedstead.
Then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on top of the pea, and on top of the mattresses she stacked twenty duvets. The princess was to sleep on this bed all night. In the morning they asked her how she had slept.
“Oh, terribly badly!” she replied. “I scarcely shut my eyes all night long. I cannot imagine what was in the bed. I was lying on something so hard that I am black and blue all over. It is awful!”
Now it was perfectly clear that she was a real princess, for she had felt the pea through twenty mattresses and twenty duvets. No one but a true princess could be so sensitive. So the prince married her, because he now knew she was a genuine princess. And the pea was kept in the cabinet of curiosities, where it may still be seen, unless someone has taken it. And this, you should know, is a true story.
