The cunning little fuchsbau
Once upon a time, there were three fuchsbau who traveled around the world together. Two were old and thought themselves to be wise, the third was young and impulsive. One day, they arrived in a large city. In the city lived a king who had just one daughter, who had promised to marry the man who could solve her riddle on his first try. The tree fuchsbau soon agreed to try to solve the riddle, fort hey had often encountered riddles on their travels, and they had always managed to solve them.
And so, the next day, they went to the princess, and asked her to tell them the riddle. The princess was young and beautiful, and wore a bright blue headkerchief. 'You are here to try and solve my riddle and marry me?' she asked, 'I will tell it you now, and we will see. Under this kerchief, I have hair in two colours. What colours are they? The question is yours…' After a few minutes of thinking, the oldest of the three stepped forward, and said: 'Black and white is your hair, like pepper and salt.' 'No, that is not what the colours of my hair are called.' Another minute passed before the second-oldest said: 'If not black and white, it is brown and red.' 'No, the colour of my hair is not that.' The youngest fuchsbau thought long and deep. After a while he spoke: 'Princess, at day your hair is as gold so bright, and it is like silver when it's dark, at night.' Slowly, the princess got up, and removed the headkerchief. And indeed, her hair was briljant like gold. 'Indeed, what you said is true. But I have another test before I can marry you.' She said this because the fuchsbau was not very handsome, and she didn't want to marry him. She led him down into the dungeon, and halted at a large, wooden door. 'In here, there is a dangerous bear. I will marry you when you survive a day in there.'
When the fuchsbau went in, there indeed was a bear. But not just any bear, but a fully woged jägerbär. She growled and showed him her teeth, and got ready to jump. 'Stop it, put yourself at ease!' he exclaimed, 'Can't we talk about this, please?' And he woged too. This calmed the jägerbär down. 'Thank god, have you come to set me free? I'll repay you in any way that's available to me.' The jägerbär woman then turned into a human again, and told him how the king had captured and bound her as a cruel way to execute his enemies. As the night passed, she told him about other crimes the king and his daughter and committed. When she at last finished, the fuchsbau had made up his mind. 'I will set you free, and from this wretched place we'll flee.' They started struggling with her bonds, and after some time, they managed to wriggle her free. Then they rested, waiting for the princess to return.
When the princess opened the door, the two of them quickly ran out, and fled from the castle so quick, that they had already gone by the time the guards realized that an outbreak had taken place. Soon, they told anybody who wanted to hear it about the things the king and his daughter had done to their subjects. Some believed them, and some didn't.
The princess never got married, and the king kept looking around for the rest of his days, to check if the jägerbär was not sneaking up on him. But the fuchsbau and the jägerbär were far away, in a better country, and lived happily ever after.
Based on the OTHER story about the cunning little tailor. Seriously, all tailors seem to be based of fuchsbau in grimms' fairytales.
I somehow have the urge to capitalize German nouns in my writing, like fuchsbau or jägerbär. (quick note: most of the time, I keep to the spelling of the grimm wikia wiki. But with the word jägerbär, there is no reason to put an umlaut on the first a and not on the second one, because there is one in both of the german words that it is based on) Anyway. Weird.
And I really need to get a hang of this 'starting on time' thing. Seriously.