Storytelling: Briar Rose

"Daddy, will you tell us the story again? Please?!" The two little brown-haired, green-eyed girls squealed as they clambered into bed.

"OK, I'll tell you the story. Settle down now," Prince Phillip chuckled as he tucked the giggling princesses into bed. "Here we go....."

~Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who ruled a land where fairies still resided. They had plenty of material things, but they had been married many years and were still childless. This made them very sad.

One day the queen was walking in her garden next to the river when she saw a poor fish that had thrown itself out of the water. The queen felt sorry for the fish and threw it back into the water. The fish was grateful to the kind queen and told her that soon her wish to have a child would be fulfilled.

The fish's promise soon came true and the queen gave birth to a beautiful daughter named Briar Rose. The king was so filled with joy that he decided to hold a magnificent feast to celebrate. He invited all of the citizens of his land.

The queen decided to invite the fairies as well. There were thirteen fairies in their kingdom, but they only had enough room for twelve. So, they had to leave out one of the fairies. The twelve fairies that were invited came to the joyful event and took turns blessing Briar Rose with lovely gifts. One gave her a kind heart, one gave her beauty, and so on until she had everything good in the world.

The eleventh fairy had just finished blessing Briar Rose, when a noise echoed through the ballroom. Whispers quickly started to spread that the thirteenth fairy had arrived. She was not pleasant like the other fairies. She entered the ballroom and scolded the king and queen for not inviting her. She was so mad that she cursed the child to die from a wound inflicted by a spinning wheel on her fifteenth birthday.

The king and queen were heartbroken. The twelfth fairy had not blessed Briar Rose yet and told them that even though the curse had to be fulfilled, she could soften the consequences to a deep slumber of one hundred years instead of death. So, this was the gift she gave to Briar Rose.

The king and queen still hoped they could avoid the curse and ordered that all of the spinning wheels in the kingdom be rounded up and burned. In the meantime, the princess grew up and all of the other gifts were fulfilled. She was so beautiful and kind-hearted and everyone who knew her loved her dearly.

On her fifteenth birthday, her parents were away and she was left alone in the palace. She went exploring and found an old tower with an old door that had a small golden key in the knob. She slowly turned the key and gently pushed the door open. In the middle of the room sat a spinning wheel. She had never seen one before and set to inspecting the strange object. Briar Rose ran her finger across the spindle and pricked her finger. The curse was fulfilled and she fell lifeless to the floor.

~"Oh no!" the girls cried.

"Don't worry," Phillip reassured them. "She's just asleep, remember?"

"Oh yeah!" they said simultaneously. "Keep going, Daddy!"

"Alright," he continued.

~Briar Rose was not the only one who fell asleep. Her entire kingdom had fallen under the spell, including her parents who had arrived home just as the curse was taking place. While the kingdom fell into the deep slumber, a thick hedge of thorns grew around the palace. Every year it grew taller and thicker until the palace was completely hidden from view. However, word spread throughout the lands of the beautiful princess and her sleeping kingdom. Every so often a king's son would try to make his way through the hedge to the palace, but they always got stuck in the thorns and never made it out.

Many years later, a young prince came into the land and an old man told him the story of Briar Rose and the palace hidden amidst the thorns. The man also told the prince of the countless princes who tried in vain to seek her out. This did not frighten the prince. So he set out to try his luck despite the old man's objections.

It just so happened that it had been exactly one hundred years since the curse fell and so when the prince came to the hedge all he saw were beautiful flowering shrubs, which he easily made his way through. Then he made his way to the palace. He entered the palace and saw the sleeping court.
He continued on until he finally reached the tower. He pushed open the door and saw Briar Rose fast asleep on the floor. He was so enchanted by her beauty that he stooped down and gently kissed her.

As soon as the prince kissed her, she opened her eyes and smiled at him. They made their way down from the tower to find the rest of the kingdom waking up as well. The two wed soon after and they lived happily ever after.

~"The end," said Phillip. "Goodnight, girls, I love you."

"Goodnight, Daddy," the little princesses said.

Phillip put out the light and gently shut the girls' door. He made his way to his room where his wife was waiting.

"The same story again, huh?" she asked.

"Yeah, but I never get tired of it. I could tell the story of us a thousand times," Phillip replied.

Briar Rose smiled at him and he smiled at her. They knew the ending to the story was true, they were definitely living happily ever after.

Author's Note: My story is very similar to the original story of Briar Rose. The plot is exactly the same, but retold in my own words. I wanted to keep the original intact, but add a new flare to it. I thought it would be cute to have it being told as a bedtime story. I thought it would be fun to have the prince from the story being the one retelling the story and it made it even sweeter that he was telling it to his daughters. I liked the idea that Briar Rose and Phillip went on to have children and they loved each other so much that they shared their enchanting story with their eager daughters. The girls having such a strong interest in the story makes it even sweeter because they love listening to how their parents met and the fascinating circumstances that led to their encounter. It was a challenge trying to figure out how to flip back and forth between the dialogue of Phillip and the girls and the actual story itself. I wanted to make it clear without having to add a lot to the story. I named the prince Phillip because that was the prince's name from Disney's Sleeping Beauty which is very similar to the story of Briar Rose. The story still has the fairy tale theme of love, it is just much more subtle.

Image Information: "Take the Fair Face of Woman, and Gently Suspending, With Butterflies, Flowers, and Jewels Attending, Thus Your Fairy is Made of Most Beautiful Things" by Sophie Gengembre Anderson (Wikimedia Commons)
-Photo of a Schacht Reeves spinning wheel crafted by the Reeves Family taken from http://heritagespinning.com/wheels/
-"The Council Chamber" from the "Legend of Briar Rose" by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (Wikimedia Commons)

Bibliography: Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm; Mythology and Folklore Untextbook