Content warning: Violence and death.

**Please use your own judgement before sharing these stories with children. Although I do my best to keep the language friendly, the content may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Summary

When their parents leave to travel, they tell their seven daughters not to leave the house or open the door to anyone for three years. After the six eldest daughters do not listen and are eaten by a witch, the youngest is adopted by an ogre.

She is well taken care of and given the keys to six rooms in his castle. Determined to find out what is in the mysterious seventh room she devises a plan and steals the key. In the mostly bare room she finds a window overlooking the neighboring prince’s garden. Caring for the garden is an ox who tells the girl that her father, the ogre, plans to eat her. Upset by this, the girl tells her father and he teaches her how to respond- with a spell that incapacitates the ox for seven days.

Untended, the prince’s garden falls to shambles. Displeased, he kills the ox and replaces it with another. The scenario repeats, but this time the ox begs for his life, and tells the prince about the girl in the ogre’s castle.

The prince is intrigued, and hides in a tree where he is able to observe the next exchange between the ox and the girl. He is immediately smitten and makes a plan to ask the ogre for her hand.

The ogre consents, but as the girl is leaving he tells her she must not speak to the prince unless he swears “by the head of Buk Ettemsuch”. She agrees.

Frustrated by his wife’s silence, the prince takes a series of new brides, whom she tricks into killing themselves.

Finally, the prince discovers the key to his wife’s silence and they live happily to the end of their days.

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Book

The Grey Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

Music

"Princess (Instrumental Version)" by Josh Woodward.

Free download: https://www.joshwoodward.com/