Once upon a time, there lived a king whose daughter had a remarkable talent for telling stories. Unfortunately, she was not particularly interested in telling the truth. She could invent the most astonishing accounts, describe impossible adventures and make the most ridiculous claims without ever admitting that anything she said was untrue.
She was so skilled at this that nobody in the kingdom could outdo her. Anyone who tried to challenge her with an outrageous story would find that she simply responded with something even more unbelievable.
The king, perhaps tired of watching his daughter’s talent go unchallenged, eventually announced a remarkable prize. Whoever could tell a story so extraordinary that the princess finally exclaimed, “That’s a story!” would win her hand in marriage and receive half the kingdom.
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The announcement attracted many hopeful young men. The reward was generous, and plenty believed they had enough imagination to defeat the princess. Yet one after another, they failed. No matter how extravagant their claims became, the princess always had another tale ready to surpass them.
Among those who heard about the challenge were three brothers. The two elder brothers decided to try their luck first, but neither could make the princess admit that his story was unbelievable.
Finally, it was the youngest brother’s turn. He was known as Boots, and he set out to meet the princess, determined to succeed where everyone else had failed.
He found her in the farmyard.
“Good morning,” Boots greeted her, “and thank you for nothing.”
“Good morning,” replied the princess, “and the same to you.”
Without wasting time, she began boasting about the greatness of her father’s farm.
“You certainly haven’t seen a farmyard as magnificent as ours,” she declared. “It is so enormous that if two shepherds stand at opposite ends and blow their ram’s horns, neither can hear the other.”
Boots was not impressed.
“Is that supposed to be remarkable?” he asked. “Our farmyard is much bigger. When a cow begins carrying a calf at one end, she does not reach the other end before the time comes for her to give birth!”
The princess was unmoved.
“I dare say! But I doubt you have an ox as enormous as ours. Look at that one over there. It is so large that two men sitting on its horns cannot touch each other with a twenty-foot measuring rod.”
Boots laughed at the comparison.
“Is that all? We have an ox so gigantic that when two men sit on opposite horns and blow their great mountain trumpets, they cannot hear each other!”
The princess accepted this boast without hesitation. She was not ready to surrender, however, and quickly introduced another extraordinary claim.
“You may have large animals, but you certainly cannot match the amount of milk we produce. We milk our cows into enormous pails, carry the milk indoors and pour it into great tubs. From all that milk, we make cheeses of extraordinary size.”
Boots nodded as though he had heard something quite ordinary.
“Well, we do things on a much grander scale. We milk our cows into enormous tubs, load the milk into carts and carry it indoors. Then we pour everything into great brewing vats and make cheeses as large as houses.”
The princess listened, apparently willing to believe him.
Boots continued.
“We once had a dun-coloured mare whose job was to tread the cheese while it was being made. One day, the poor creature slipped and fell right into the enormous cheese. She disappeared completely, and we thought we had lost her.”
He paused briefly before revealing what happened next.
“Seven years passed while we ate our way through that cheese. Then, one day, we came upon the mare again, alive and kicking! She had been inside the cheese all that time.”
The princess still said nothing.
Boots carried on with an even stranger adventure.
“Some time afterwards, I decided to take that same mare to the mill. But while I was on my way, her backbone suddenly snapped in two. I wasn’t troubled for long. I found a spruce sapling, cut it to the right size and fitted it into her back as a replacement backbone. She managed perfectly well with it.”
He then explained that the sapling had continued growing inside the mare until it became an enormous tree.
“It grew so tall that I was able to climb all the way up it into heaven!”
At last, Boots had reached a place where even his imagination seemed to have no limits. Yet he was not finished.
“When I arrived in heaven,” he continued, “I found the Virgin Mary sitting there, spinning the foam of the sea into ropes made from pig’s bristles.”
The story became stranger still.
“Just as I was looking around, the spruce tree suddenly snapped beneath me. I was stranded in heaven with no way to climb back down. Fortunately, the Virgin Mary took pity on me. She lowered one of her ropes, and I held on as she let me slide all the way down.”
But Boots had not reached the end of his adventure.
“Down I went, until I landed straight inside a fox’s hole. And who do you think I found sitting there?”
The princess waited.
“My mother and your father! They were both busy cobbling shoes together. But the moment I stepped inside, my mother gave your father such a tremendous slap on the ear that his whiskers curled!”
For the first time, the princess could not let a story pass without challenging it.
“That’s a story!” she exclaimed. “My father never did any such thing in all his born days!”
Boots had finally succeeded. He had told a tale so outrageous that the princess herself had declared it impossible.
And because he had won the challenge, he married the princess and received half the kingdom, just as the king had promised.
Thus, the youngest brother accomplished what all the others had failed to do. With a little imagination, a remarkable collection of impossible adventures and a perfectly timed ending, Boots won both the princess and his share of the kingdom.
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Moral
Quick thinking and imagination can overcome challenges that seem impossible. Boots succeeds because he understands the princess’s approach and uses her own storytelling style against her. The tale also celebrates humour, creativity and the ability to think beyond ordinary expectations.
Knowledge Check
1. Why did the king announce a storytelling challenge?
Because his daughter was such an extraordinary storyteller that nobody could make her admit that a story was unbelievable.
2. What would the successful contestant receive?
The princess’s hand in marriage and half the kingdom.
3. Why did Boots’s elder brothers fail?
They could not tell stories that surpassed the princess’s extravagant claims.
4. What happened to the mare that fell into the enormous cheese?
She remained inside it for seven years before being discovered alive and kicking.
5. How did Boots finally defeat the princess?
He claimed that his mother and the princess’s father were cobbling shoes together in a fox’s hole, and that his mother had slapped the king so hard that his whiskers curled. The princess rejected this claim as impossible.
6. What kind of traditional narrative is this story?
It is a Norwegian folktale featuring humorous exaggeration and the clever youngest-brother character.
Source
The story is adapted from Boots Who Made the Princess Say, “That’s a Story”, Tale VII in Popular Tales from the Norse, translated by Sir George Webbe Dasent from the Norwegian collection Norske Folkeeventyr, gathered by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. The tale appears on page 48 of the 1859 second enlarged edition.
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