Whereupon the stone started speaking and said, “Yes, you can bring me back to life again, if you will sacrifice your nearest and dearest.”
Then the king cried, “Everything I have in the world I would give for you.”
Said the stone, “If with your own two hands you will hack off your children’s heads and rub their blood on me, I will come back to life again.”
The king took fright upon hearing that he was to kill his dearly beloved children with his own hands, but then he thought of the dead man’s great fidelity and how Faithful Johannes had died for him. He pulled out his sword, and with his own hand hacked his children’s heads off. And no sooner did he rub their blood on the stone than it came back to life, and Faithful Johannes stood there before him alive and well. He said to the king, “Your fidelity should not go unrewarded,” and took the children’s heads, set them back on their shoulders, rubbed them with their blood, whereupon they instantly leapt back to life, jumped around, and went on playing as though nothing had happened.
Now the king was overjoyed, and when he saw the queen coming he hid Faithful Johannes and the two children in a big cupboard. When she came in he said to her, “Did you pray in church?”
“Yes,” she said, “but I couldn’t stop thinking of Faithful Johannes, that we caused him such misery.”
To which he replied, “Dear wife, we can bring him back to life again, but it will cost us our two little sons. We must sacrifice them.”
The queen went pale and felt her heart break, but she said, “We owe him that, on account of his great fidelity.”
Whereupon the king was well-pleased, for they were of one mind, and he went over and unlocked the cupboard, pulled out the children and Faithful Johannes, and said, “Praise God, he is saved, and we have our sons back,” and he told her all that had happened. And they lived happily together until their dying day.
HANS MY HEDGEHOG
There once was a plowman who had money and land aplenty, but prosperous as he was, there was something missing in his life without which he could not be happy – he and his wife had no children. Oftentimes when he went to town with other farmers they kidded him and asked why he had no children. That made him angrier and angrier, and when he got home he would burst out: “I want to have a child, even if it’s a hedgehog.”
Then his wife gave birth to a child who was a hedgehog on the top and a boy on the bottom, and when she saw the child, she took fright and said, “You see, you brought a curse on us.”
To which the man replied, “There’s no use complaining. The boy must be baptized, but we’ll never find a godfather.”
Then the woman said, “What else can we name him but Hans My Hedgehog?”
Once the boy was baptized, the pastor said, “With his prickly quills, such a child can’t sleep in a regular bed.”
So they strew a tuft of straw behind the oven and placed Hans My Hedgehog on it. He could not suckle at his mother’s breast, since he would have pricked her. So he lay there behind the oven for eight years, and his father grew tired of him and thought, If only he would die. But he did not die, he just kept lying there. Then it so happened that there was a market in town and the plowman wanted to go, so he asked his wife what he could bring her.
“A little meat and a couple of rolls for dinner,” she said.
Then he asked the maid, who wanted a pair of slippers and a pair of embroidered stockings.
Finally he said to his son, “Hans My Hedgehog, what would you like?”
“Dearest Dad,” the son replied, “bring me back a bagpipe.”
And when the father returned from the market, he gave his wife the meat and rolls he’d bought for her, then he gave the maid the slippers and embroidered stockings, and finally he went behind the oven and gave Hans My Hedgehog his bagpipe. And when Hans My Hedgehog had the bagpipe in hand, he said, “Dearest Dad, go to the blacksmith and have him hammer horseshoes for the cock, then I’ll ride away and never come back.”
His father was glad to be rid of him, so he had the cock shod. When it was done, Hans My Hedgehog sat himself upon its back and rode off, also taking along some pigs and a donkey to watch over in the woods. And once they reached the woods, the cock with Hans My Hedgehog on its back fluttered up a tall tree, and there they sat for many years until the herd of pigs grew plentiful, and the father had no contact with his son. But when he sat perched in the tree, Hans my Hedgehog blew on his bagpipe and made music that was very beautiful to hear.
Once, a king who had lost his way came riding by and heard the music. Surprised by the sound of it, he sent a servant to have a look around and see where the music was coming from. The servant looked around, yet he saw nothing but a small creature perched up in a tree, which looked like a weather-cock with a hedgehog seated on his back playing a bagpipe. Then the king told his servant to inquire why he sat there and if he could tell him the way back to his kingdom.