Iron Hans
A wild man found at the bottom of a pond, a boy whose hair turns to gold, and the cap he wears until the day it comes off
Page 1
Long ago there was a king whose castle stood at the edge of a great, dark forest. Inside that forest, deer and boar ran wild, but for years no hunter who went in ever came out again. One after another they went, and one after another they were never seen, until at last no one in the kingdom dared set foot among those trees, and the forest stood silent and empty and feared. Then one day a hunter came to the king and said he would go in and find out what had become of all the others. He took his best hound with him, a brave dog who had never been afraid of anything in his life, and together they walked down from the castle, past the last farms, and in at the edge of the dark trees, while the king and his people watched from the walls and said nothing at all.
Page 2
The hunter and his hound walked for a long day through the shadowy trees until they came to a still, dark pond hidden deep in the forest. The hound ran straight to the water's edge to drink — and a huge hand rose up out of the pond, seized him, and pulled him down out of sight. The hunter ran all the way home and told the king what he had seen. So the king sent men with buckets to empty the pond, every drop, until at last, lying in the mud at the very bottom, they found a wild, enormous man, as brown all over as rusty iron, his hair hanging down past his knees. The men bound him fast with ropes before he could move, and carried him back through the forest to the castle, to show the king what had been swallowing his hunters all along.
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Back at the castle, the king had a strong iron cage built in the middle of the courtyard, and had the wild man chained inside it where everyone could see him, as brown as rusty iron from head to foot, with hair falling past his knees. 'Whoever opens this cage and lets him out,' the king proclaimed to the whole court, 'shall die for it.' He kept the only key himself, and when he grew old he gave it into the queen's own keeping, for safety. Years went by, and the king's little son grew into a boy of eight, who loved nothing better than to play in the courtyard with a golden ball. One day, throwing it high, he lost it, and the ball rolled straight between the bars of the cage. The wild man picked it up. 'You shall have your ball back,' he said, 'the moment you open this door for me.' The boy shook his head and ran away.
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That night, lying awake and thinking of the golden ball, the boy came three times to his mother's door and three times turned back again, afraid. But on the third night he crept in while she slept, and found the great iron key under her pillow, just as he knew it would be. As he pulled it free, the door of the key-box swung shut on his finger, and in an instant the pinch turned his fingertip to solid gold. He ran all the way down to the courtyard, fitted the key to the lock with his gold-tipped finger trembling, and turned it. The cage door swung open. The wild man stepped out — and at once made to walk straight out of the castle gate and away. 'Wait!' the boy cried, catching at his arm. 'If you go, my father will surely kill me for it. Take me with you!' The wild man looked down at him a long moment, then lifted him up onto his great shoulders and carried him off toward the forest.
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Deep in the forest, Iron Hans set the boy down beside a clear, bright spring. 'This is the golden spring,' he said. 'Everything that falls into it turns to gold, and I have made you its guardian — nothing at all must fall in, or you will answer to me.' He sat the boy down beside the water and went off through the trees. All that first day the boy sat still and watched the spring, but his gilded finger ached so much that at last he dipped it in to cool it, and it came out shining solid gold. Iron Hans saw at once, but forgave him. The second day, leaning to look at the water, one hair fell from the boy's head into the spring, and that too turned to gold; again Iron Hans forgave him, but warned that a third time could not be forgiven. On the third day, the boy leaned too far trying to see his own face in the water, and all his long hair tumbled in at once and turned entirely, gleamingly gold. There was no hiding it now.
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Iron Hans told the boy that because his heart was good, even though he could not keep the spring, he would always help him if he called out his name at the edge of the forest. Then he sent the boy out into the world to learn what it was to be poor. The boy walked many days until he came to a great foreign city and asked for work at the king's own palace. Because he had no trade, the cook took him on in the kitchen, to carry wood and water and scrub out pots — the lowest work there was. But the cook noticed he kept a ragged cap pulled down tight over his head, even indoors, even by the fire. 'Take that off,' the cook told him more than once. 'I cannot,' the boy always answered. 'I have a bad scurf on my head.' So the cook let him keep it, and the boy worked on, hiding his hair and saying nothing more.
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One day the cook who usually served the king's own table was away, and the boy was sent up in his place to carry in the dishes. As he set a platter down before the king, his cap slipped a little, and a single strand of gleaming gold hair fell loose across his forehead before he could catch it. The king stared. 'Where does a kitchen boy come by hair like that?' he demanded. The boy bowed low and thought quickly. 'I found a gold ring in the gutter this morning, Your Majesty,' he said, 'and must have brushed some of its gilt onto my head without knowing.' The king said nothing more about it then, but he did not fully believe the answer, and the next day he sent the boy down out of his kitchens altogether, to work instead in the palace garden, under the gardener's eye.
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In the garden, the boy worked hard and said little, and kept his cap on always, even in the heat. But the king's daughter had a window that looked down over the garden, and she soon noticed the quiet new gardener's boy who never once uncovered his head. One day she called down to him and asked him to take it off. 'I cannot,' he said, 'I have scurf on my head,' just as he had told the cook. She would not let the matter rest, and called him up to her window again the next day, and the day after that, each time pressing a handful of gold coins into his hand if only he would show her. Each time he refused, and each time he carried the coins straight down to the gardener's own children and gave every one away, keeping none for himself. But on that third day, as he bowed to leave her window, a sudden gust caught his loose-tied cap and lifted it clean away, and his hair tumbled down shining gold in the sunlight for anyone to see.
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Soon after, war broke out, and a powerful enemy king marched against the kingdom with a great army. The boy, still hiding his golden hair as a gardener's boy, begged for a horse and weapons so he too might fight. The stable men laughed and gave him only an old three-legged horse that limped. He rode it to the edge of the dark forest and called out three times, 'Iron Hans!' At the third call, Iron Hans strode out from among the trees, bringing a magnificent coal-black warhorse, a full suit of shining armor, and a whole troop of iron-clad knights. 'Take these,' he said, 'and fight for your king.' The boy put on the armor, mounted the great horse, and rode at the head of the iron knights straight into the enemy's ranks, driving them back until they broke and fled the field. Before anyone could learn who he was, he led the knights quietly into the forest, returned every piece to Iron Hans, and rode home again on his old lame horse.
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The king held a great three-day feast, and each day a golden apple was thrown among the young men, with the rule that whoever caught it must bring it to the king himself. Each day a mystery knight came in different armor — red, then white, then black — caught the apple, and rode away before anyone could stop him; only on the third day was he chased so hard that he dropped the golden apple as he fled back to his gardener's hut. When the apple was found in his room, the king summoned him to explain, and the boy tried to deny everything — until the princess herself stepped forward and pulled the cap from his head. His hair tumbled down, pure shining gold, in front of the whole court, and everyone saw at once who their mystery knight had truly been. He confessed that he was a king's own son, and the king gave him the princess for his wife. At the wedding feast, a magnificent stranger arrived in royal robes — Iron Hans himself, freed at last from the enchantment that had made him wild, and he gave the young couple every piece of his great treasure.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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