Part Six of Folk Tales of Denmark brings together two tellings from two collectors: a Jutland tale from Evald Tang Kristensen, and a Zealand tale from Svend Grundtvig's second gathering of Gamle danske Minder i Folkemunde. (The Danish tales are read here part by part, tale by tale — this is not the whole of either collector's great gathering, and no completeness is claimed beyond what is read here.)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Peter Redhat (in Danish, Per Redhat) — the princess of England is beautiful, and proud beyond measure, and she scorns the Danish prince who crosses the sea to court her. So he stays behind, puts on the rags of the lowest tramp in London — great broad-brimmed red hat and all — and sits spinning in the king's garden on a distaff of gold. For the distaff, for the golden reel, and for the golden yarn-winder, the proud princess pays his price three nights running; and when the watch sleeps and scandal follows, she is banished from the land, and the road home strips her pride away mile by mile — until, a scullery-maid at a Danish castle with a little pot of soup tied under her skirts, she dances in the great hall and finds her sweetheart at last.
The Patient Woman (in Danish, Den taalmodige Kvinde) — a king weds his porter's daughter, and she promises him she will never weep and never look sour, whatever goes against her. Then the tests come: she is told that her newborn son must be put to death, and then her daughter; she answers quietly, and keeps her promise and her cheerful face. Fourteen years on she is sent home to her old father — and is summoned back to order the dishes for the king's new wedding, and to stand and watch it. The tale is read here as written: the death-demands are the king's spoken tests, no child is harmed in the telling, and both children stand alive at its end, exactly as the Zealand telling has it.
Chapters:
00:15 — Peter Redhat
14:54 — The Patient Woman
Source: Evald Tang Kristensen, Æventyr fra Jylland (Jyske Folkeminder, vol. V, 1881), no. 13, "Per Redhat"; and Svend Grundtvig, Gamle danske Minder i Folkemunde (Old Danish Memories in the Mouths of the Folk), vol. II (Copenhagen, 1857), no. 310, "Den taalmodige Kvinde" — told from the Præstø district and recorded by Baronesse Jeanina Stampe. The English here is our own translation from the Danish, made for this shelf. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.
Thank you for listening — Part 7 of the Danish tales follows on this shelf.
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