List of Fairy Tale Characters

### **Adalmina's Pearl**

"Adalmina's Pearl" ("Adalmiinan helmi") is a Finnish fairy tale. One of the best known versions is by Sakari Topelius.

Adalmina is the only child of a king and queen, and gets gifts from her two Fairy Godmothers. One gives her a pearl with the power to make her more beautiful, more intelligent, and more rich by every day. The other promises that if she should ever lose the pearl, and with it all the beauty, wit and riches, she will gain a pure, loving heart in their place. Adalmina grows up to be spoiled rotten, and being so much smarter, prettier and richer than anyone else, she becomes an unbelievably proud, vain, selfish, cold-hearted little tyrant, and is generally a completely unbearable pain to everyone but her doting parents.

One day Adalmina grows bored enough to decide she wants to see the world beyond the castle walls, something she is not allowed to do in order to protect her pearl, now permanently set on a crown that magically grows to always fit her perfectly. Adalmina successfully escapes, and gets lost in a forest, where she finds a beautiful, clear pond, which reflects her face just perfectly. And there goes her crown. Immediately Adalmina turns into a plain peasant girl, her rich gown into rags, and she forgets everything about herself, wandering dumb deeper into the forest.

An old woman finds her, and out of pity, lets her live with her and herd her goats. Adalmina, now possessing a kind and loving heart, is grateful for what little the old lady can offer her, and is happy to live with her in a humble cottage.

Adalmina's parents of course are terrified to hear about the disappearance, and send out a message that should any prince or nobleman succeed in finding the princess, they will be rewarded with her hand and half of her father's kingdom. One prince, who has previously heard about Adalmina's divine beauty and matchless intelligence, has fallen in love with her from afar, and is determined to find her. He travels far and wide, and everyone he meets thinks the rotten princess may as well stay lost. Finally, after years, he finds the crown, and realizes finally that he has no interest in the princess any more. Tired and lost in the woods, he happens on the old goat woman's cottage, and stays for a few days before setting off to return the crown to Adalmina's parents.

The king and the queen are overjoyed to learn about the crown, and send out a message for every appropriately old girl in the kingdom to arrive to the castle to be fitted for the crown. As expected, the crown is passed from head to head but fits no one. The prince has now had enough of all of this, and says he will only stay until the sun sets, and if the princess is not found by then, return home. Yes, just as the sun is disappearing behind the horizon, the goat herder girl from the cottage shows up on the road to the town. The prince is happy to see the kind and humble girl from the cottage, and swears that promised or not, kingdom or no, should cruel Adalmina ever be found he won't accept her hand, but instead will marry the goat herder girl.

In the end the crown fits the girl, and she transforms back into the Adalmina everyone knew, with her memories and all her beauty, intelligence, and riches restored. Her heart however has permanently thawed, and she falls down on her knees teary-eyed to beg forgiveness for every cruel deed she has ever committed. The people rejoice, and the prince is happy to marry the princess.

## **Arabian Fables**

### **Sultan Harun Al Rashid**

The Sultan of Agrabah during many of the events of Arabia's mythical age. Rashid ruled over the brilliant city of Baghdad, but was troubled by the impermanence of its perfection, and offered Baghdad to Morpheus, if Morpheus would preserve it forever. After the deal is completed, Harun awoke in a far more dreary version of Baghdad, with no memory of its previous fantastical nature. His reign as Sultan lasted from 786-809. He was born in 763.

### **Ara the Handsome**

The tale begins with Queen Semiramis asking King Ara to marry her. She had heard of his beauty and would stop at nothing to have him, having even driven her husband away because of her lust. But Ara declined, because he already had a wife named Nvard. As a result, Semiramis declared war on Armenia, and sent her armies to attack the country and bring Ara back to her alive. However, the king was slain during the war, his body later found among the corpses of the Armenian soldiers.

In order to both calm the Armenian armies who now wanted to fight to avenge their king's death, and to fulfill her obsessive lust, Semiramis vowed to use black magic to resurrect Ara. She placed his body upon her castle and called upon the spirits of hounds to lick his wounds clean and heal him, but this was unsuccessful. Grief-stricken, she instead had him buried at the foot of a mountain and dressed one of her lovers as Ara to convince the Armenians that she had resurrected him, and the war was concluded.

In the aftermath, Semiramis had all but one of her sons, Ninuas, killed for mocking her lust over Ara. Eventually Ninuas grew up to kill her.

The tale is still quite popular in Armenia to this day, and is still a part of their folk history. Incidentally, the earliest written records of the tale were written by early Christians, who shunned ideas of magical resurrections (finding it too similar to the story of Jesus). There is evidence that in the original versions Semiramis *was* successful in resurrecting Ara. Ara was worshiped by the pagan Armenians as a War God and of rebirth. "Ara the Handsome" may or may not have been based on the Real Life King Aramu, the first king of Urartu, an empire from the 800's to 500's BC which comprised of much of modern day Turkey and Armenia. And Semiramis may have been based on the Real Life Queen of Assyria, Shammuramat, who was Aramu's contemporary.

**Stand ins:**

Asa the Handsome=Aram of Urartu(ruled 858–844 BC)

Semiramis=Shammuramat of Assyra

### **The Baker's Daughter**

There once lived a baker and his daughter who were known for their greed and dishonesty. At a time the daughter managed the store by herself, an elderly woman in rags entered and asked for some bread. Loathly, the daughter gave her a tiny ball of dough. The beggar then asked that she too would bake it in her oven and the daughter granted it. But out of the tiny ball of dough a full bread formed. Unwilling to part with it, the daughter claimed there was no bread and that the dough must have fallen through the grill. The beggar nodded and let the daughter bake her a new bread, this time from even less dough. Again a full bread formed from it, even bigger than the other one, and again the daughter claimed that there was no bread. Unfazed, the beggar accepted the offer of a new bread from barely any dough at all. When the daughter went to see if it was done, the bread was humongous. She turned around, stammering "Who...? Who...?" to the beggar who threw off her cloak to reveal herself as a fairy. Well aware of the tricks the daughter had tried to pull, the fairy turned her into an owl, explaining that for her selfish deceit, she'd be saying that and nothing more until her final breath. Through an open window, the now-owl flew off into the night, crying "Whooo-whooo!".

### **Bearskin**

A soldier can not return home after he leaves the army, and can not find a job. Desperation drives him to make a deal with the Devil, who makes a bet with him. For the next seven years, he will carry a purse of gold that's always full. However, he must wear a bearskin and neither pray nor wash nor cut his hair in all that time. If he survives, he can keep the purse, but if he dies, the Devil gets his soul.

The soldier spends several years Walking the Earth, giving away gold to the poor and asking them to pray for him. One night he rescues an old man from prison for debt, and the man promises the hand of one of his daughters in gratitude. The older two reject him, but the youngest agrees, knowing that only a good man would have rescued her father. He gives her half of a ring and tells her to wait three years for his return — or failure to return, in which case she is free to marry someone else.

He survives to the end of the term, gaining the gold purse, and cleans himself up before visiting the old man again. Everyone but the youngest daughter takes a keen interest in him, especially when he says he's come to seek a bride. The older girls go to pretty themselves up, letting him reveal himself to the youngest girl in private — by showing her the other half of the ring. They marry in great joy, but the older sisters are eaten alive with envy and finally kill themselves. The Devil is pleased: he got two souls instead of one.

### **The Black Thief And The Knight Of The Glen**

A king promises his dying wife that their three sons will never be under the power of another woman. When he remarries, he hides the sons from the stepmother, but she discovers them and, with a pack of cards she got from a henwife, wins a game with the two older ones that puts them in her power. She does not succeed in defeating the youngest, but when she orders the older ones to return with the Knight of the Glen's wild Steed of Bells, or else lose their heads, he goes with them.

They meet up with the Black Thief, who decides to go with them. When they try to steal the horse, it neighs and rings its bells, so they are caught. The knight decides to boil them all, the three princes in order of age, and then the thief. The thief tells him that he had once been nearer to death than the oldest prince, and escaped; the knight tells him that if that's true, he'll spare the oldest one. The thief recounts the time that he stole gold from witches and they chased him in animal form until they had him treed, whereupon one became iron, another an anvil, the third a hatchet and began cutting down the tree, but the cock crowed, forcing them to flee, and he survived. The knight pardoned the eldest, and stirred up the fire for the next. The thief recounted a time when he had been in even greater danger, having tried to rob a bishop's grave, only to find another thief there and kill him. The guards came and he escaped only by holding up the body to take the bullet and because the guards pushed by to see if there were confederates. So the knight pardoned the next prince and offered to spare the third if the thief had another tale with even more danger. The thief recounted how he had come upon a woman with a baby in the forest and the woman had told him how a giant had kidnapped them both, then ordered her to make a meal of the baby. The thief had killed a wild piglet and she used it instead, cutting off the baby's fingers and stewing them with it to convince the giant. The giant had returned while he was there and the thief had had to hide in the giant's larder of dead bodies, but the giant cut off part of his leg to eat. When the giant had eaten, the thief put a red-hot spit through his only eye, which blinded but did not kill him. The thief fled. The giant threw an enchanted ring at him and it leapt onto his toe and alerted the giant to him, so he cut the toe off and threw it in a pond. The giant followed the ring and drowned.

An old woman by the fire tells the knight that it was all true - she had been the woman in that tale, and he had been the baby, which is why his little finger is missing. The knight gratefully pardons the thief as well and gives them the horse. When they return to their father's kingdom, the stepmother is so enraged that she throws herself from a tower and dies.