The Halcyon Fairy Book

that both the foxes and wolves are in the earth. It doesn’t build in the standard way with the fish and whatnot.
Might just be me.
And the king’s son did so, and instantly the mare came again and stood with the foal beside him. So he bridled her, and galloped home, and the foal followed. When he arrived the old woman gave him his breakfast, but she led the mare into the stable and beat her with the poker, crying, “To the wolves, I said, miserable one!”
And the mare answered, “I have been to the wolves, but they are his friends, and told him all about me!”
Then the old woman came out of the stable, and the king’s son said to her, “Eh! grandmother, I have served you honestly. Now give me what you promised me.”
And the old woman answered, “My son, what is promised must be fulfilled. So look here. Here are the twelve horses. Choose which you like!”
And the prince said, “Why should I be too particular? Give me only that leprous horse in the corner! Fine horses are not fitting for me!”
But the old woman tried to persuade him to choose another horse, saying, “How can you be so foolish as to choose that leprous thing whilst there are such very fine horses here?”
But he remained firm by his first choice, and said to the old woman, “You ought to give me which I choose, for so you promised.”
Open sores are the new racing stripes!
So, when the old woman found she could not make him change his mind, she gave him the scabby horse, and he took leave of her, and went away, leading the horse by the halter.
The talking stake and the mare got very drunk that night and cried on each other’s shoulders. The old woman sulked and polished her heads.
When he came to a forest he curried and rubbed down the horse, when it shone as bright as gold. He then mounted, and the horse flew as quickly as a bird, and in a few seconds brought him to the dragon’s palace.
The king’s son went in and said to the queen, “Get ready as soon as possible!” She was soon ready, when they both mounted the horse, and began their journey home. Soon after, the dragon came home, and when he saw the queen had disappeared, said to his horse, “What shall we do? Shall we eat and drink first, or shall we pursue them at once?”
I won’t lie, I could really go for a little lentil soup.
The horse answered, “Whether we eat and drink or not, it is all one. We shall never reach them.”
When the dragon heard that, he got quickly on his horse and galloped after them. When they saw the dragon following them, they pushed on quicker, but their horse said, “Do not be afraid! There is no need to run away.”
In a very few moments the dragon came very near to them, and his horse said to their horse, “For God’s sake, my brother, wait a moment! I shall kill myself running after you!”
Their horse answered, “Why are you so stupid as to carry that monster? Fling your heels up and throw him off, and come along with me!”
When the dragon’s horse heard that, he shook his head angrily and flung his feet high in the air, so that the dragon fell off and brake in pieces, and his horse came up to them.
Then the queen mounted him and returned with the king’s son happily to her kingdom, where they reigned together in great prosperity until the day of their death.
… hmm.
You know, this feels a bit anticlimactic. You go to all this trouble for the enchanted horse, and then the horse talks the other horse into throwing off the dragon?
There’s a couple of win-the-magic-horse stories out there, and this is the only one I can think of where the horse, rather than epic chases and battles and mountains of glass and fire and whatnot, basically makes a Diplomacy roll and ends the story right there.
It’s not bad, but it’s no twenty-four headed otter, if you know what I mean. Still, the phrase “brake into pieces” does appeal to me, and bonus points for a clear-eyed “AND THEN THEY DIED” ending, rather than trying to disguise the basic mortality of mankind.
But y’know, this one left a lot of loose ends. In the Firebird stories, usually somebody’s enchanted and curse breaking is involved. In this one, apparently this woman just happens to be a were-peahen. No curses, no enchantment, just lives in the peahen city and occasionally slips out for a snack with her eight … handmaidens? (They never show up again, you notice.) And nowhere does it say they transform.
Maybe they’re regular peahens and the queen just hangs around with them for fun.
Why does a dragon who can fly ride a horse, anyhow? And how did he get in that barrel?
I guess this is how you tell that fairy tales are the real deal and not conventional fiction, since fiction has to make sense, and fairy tales tend to just be jumbles of elements thrown together — the old woman with the horse had some Baba Yaga in her background, I’m betting — that wind up somewhere. While the good ones get at some basic truth, some of them just seem to be a kind of mythological magnetic poetry kit. This is obviously one of the magnetic poetry kit ones.
It’d be a hard one to retell, frankly. Just making sense of the various elements would get tricky, unless you cut some of them. (The barrel. I do not see the barrel working out well.) You could do some fun things with peacock masks and masquerades, maybe, although it does seem criminal to ditch an honest-to-god were-peahen, and you’d HAVE to keep the talking stake in, or what’s the point?

The Deer Prince
This one is short and sweet, and has a nice twist on some of the