Once upon a time there was a King and a Queen who could not have children. Finally, thanks to the prayers to their gods, the Queen managed to have a child. She wanted to know her daughter’s fate, she called twelve astrologers: eleven of them received a golden telescope as a gift, and the twelfth, who was the oldest of them all, got only a silver telescope.
The astrologers gathered around the daughter, and who said she would be beautiful, who said she would be good, who virtuous, in short, the usual things. Only the oldest was silent.
“I want to know also your opinion” said the king, and the astrologer, who got angry for the silver telescope, replied that all the others had said was fine, but the girl would have in love with the first man she would have heard of.
“And what can we do to prevent it?” asked the King.
“ We must build a palace united to this, – explained the astrologer, – with all that may be needed for the daughter of a King, and there she will have to stay with nurses and maids. But it must be a palace without even a window, except a window at the top.”
So the palace was built as the astrologer said.
The King went to visit his daughter once a month and saw her grow and become more and more beautiful, as had been predicted by the astrologers, but the more she grew, the more she understood that she could not remain eternally closed there, and that there must be another world, different from the one in which she was a prisoner.
One day when her maids were in the garden, the girl went under that window high up and began to make a tower of tables and tables and chairs on top of each other until she managed to reach the windowsill. From there she could see the sky with the sun and the clouds, but not the earth, from where she heard sounds and words. She heard the voices of two young men passing by on the street. One said:” What is this palace next to that of the King?”
“Oh you do not know? There is the daughter of the King inside, who keeps her closed because they have predicted that she will fall in love with the first man she will hear about.”
“Is she beautiful?”
“ They say she is, but no one has ever seen her.”
“She may be as beautiful as she wants, but as beautiful as the son of the King of Denmark will not be for sure. Do you know that the son of the world is so beautiful that he has to wear seven veils on his face? And he will not get married until he finds a beautiful girl like him.”
The daughter of the King, hearing those words, was seized with folly and fell to the ground. Her bridesmaids run there and found her crying desperately:“ I want to go out of here, out of here!” “Have patience,” said the bridesmaids, “wait for your father to come back and tell him.”
At the end of the month her father came to see her as usual, and she burst into tears and told him she was imprisoned without reason, and that she wanted to leave. The King then sent her to his palace, with the order that no man was ever appointed to her. But the girl had already the King of Denmark in mind and she was always melancholy. Her father always asked her what she had, and everytime she replied: “Nothing, nothing!”
When finally one day she took courage, went into her father’s study, threw herself on her knees and told him about the son of the King of Denmark. “ My father, I beg you, send a question if he wants me in marriage.
“Stand up and be quiet,” the King told her. “Now I will send the ambassadors. I am more powerful than the king of Denmark, and he will not tell me no.”
The ambassadors arrived from the King of Denmark. The King of Denmark called his son. The son came, with the seven veils over his face, and his father said that he was wanted as groom, so he lifted the first veil and asked the ambassadors:” Is she as beautiful as I am?”
And the ambassadors answered him:” Holy Majesty, yes.”
He lifted the second veil: “ Is she beautiful as I am?” “Holy Majesty, yes.”
And so he lifted up all the veils one after the other and when only the last one was left he asked:” Is she beautiful as I am?”
The ambassadors bowed their heads and answered:” Holy Majesty, no.”
“Then tell her I do not want her. ”
“ But she said,” the ambassadors insisted, “that if you do not want her, she will hang herself.”
The son of the king of Denmark threw a rope to the ambassadors saying:” Take this rope and tell her to hang herself.”
The ambassadors returned with the rope in their hands, and the King raged.
The girl cried and sighed and prayed her father so much that the King sent his the ambassadors back to the King of Denmark. And for the second time the son of the king of Denmark raised all his veils to the last, and asked:“ Is she as beautiful as I am?”
“Holy Majesty, no.”
“Then tell her I do not want her.”
“She said that she will take a knife and kill herself.”
“ Hold this knife and tell it to kill herself.”
They returned with the knife and the king declared war on Denmark, but the daughter with her prayers and supplications calmed him and after a few months persuaded him once again to send the ambassadors. The prince of Denmark asked the same questions. “Holy Majesty, no,” replied the ambassadors when he lifted the last veil, “but if she is rejected once again, she says she will take a gun and shoot herself.”
“Hold this gun and let her shoot herself.”
They returned with the gun. And the King got angry again and the daughter started crying again. “Please, my father,” she said, “give me an iron barrel, lock me in and let me go to the sea.”
The father did not want to hear about this, but the daughter with her prayers convinced her father and so she got into a barrel. She got dressed as a princess, with the crown on her head, with the rope, the knife and the gun, and some food for the trip. And off to the sea.
After floating days and days, the sea took her to an island, where there was a palace of a Queen. The bridesmaids in the morning opened the balconies, and saw the barrel on the beach. “Ah, Holy Majesty!” they said. “ If only you see which beautiful little barrel they threw into the sea”
The Queen gave orders to pull up the barrel. They opened it in her presence and that beautiful young woman came out.
“Why do you go so far in the sea?” the Queen asked her, and she told her. “Nothing, nothing, do not bother yourself,” so the Queen of the island said:“ The son of the King of Denmark is my brother. And every month he comes to visit me and to drink a glass of sea water. In a few days it should come.”
So the son of the King of Denmark came. The Queen his sister, instead of letting the usual damsel to bring him the glass of sea water, let this young woman enter. And he, seeing her, fell in love all at once.
”Who is this beautiful lady?” he asked his sister.
“ My friend.” she replied
“ My sister, do you know what I tell you? That from now on instead of every month I will come to see you every two weeks.”
After fifteen days he returned, and the young woman brought him the glass of sea water.
“My sister, do you know what I tell you?” he said “ Instead of every two weeks, I will come every eight days.”
After eight days he returned, but this time the glass of water was brought by the maid of before. The son of the King of Denmark did not want to drink.
“But that beautiful young woman,” he asked, “is not there?”
“She is sick”
“I want to go and see her in her room.”
The young woman was in bed and on the sheet she had the rope, the knife and the gun. But he only looked at her, and did not care.
She said to him, “So, what should I do with these three things?”
He did not understand, and then she explained to him that she was the daughter of that King who had sent ambassadors to him.
“ I was fooled!” he said “If I had known you were so beautiful, I would have said yes immediately!” Then the young man got up and wrote to her father: “I am in the house of that Queen and here is also the son of the King of Denmark, and wants to marry me”.
His father was happy, he went to get her, they all went to the King of Denmark and there they married.