One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes

May the 4th be with you, readers! If you’re looking for a more Star Wars themed post, you can check out a look at the mythology of the Force here.

Today we’re actually going to be looking at a fairy tale called One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes. The story is German in origin, and was collected by the Grimm brothers. A version of it called Little One Eye, Little Two Eyes, and Little Three Eyes appeared in The Green Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, which is the version I have. It’s an interesting tale, and I found a variety of pictures through Google that are just as interesting to go with it. I hope you enjoy - I’ll tell you some of what I like about the story after I’ve told it!

Once upon a time there lived a woman who had three daughters. The eldest of the daughters had only one eye, right in the middle of her forehead. The middle daughter had two eyes, like a normal person. The youngest daughter had three eyes, with two positioned as normal and a third in the middle of her forehead. They were named, accordingly, One Eye, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes.

The mother, One Eye, and Three Eyes quickly began to be cruel to Two Eyes - after all, she wasn’t special like her sisters were! They gave her all of the menial tasks and provided only the most meager of nourishment for her. The family was decently poor, which meant that Two Eyes often did not have enough to eat. They did have a goat, and it was Two Eyes’ job to take care of it every day.

 It’s a space goat. (I play a Draenei in WoW, so space goats have a special place in my heart.) It was totally necessary to include it in this post.  Don't ask me why they're aliens.

One day while Two Eyes was out letting her goat roam she began to cry. Her sisters had left her less than usual for breakfast, and she was starving. A wise old woman happened upon her as she wept and asked why she was crying. Two Eyes responded that she was immensely hungry. The woman looked at the goat and quickly gave Two Eyes a solution.

The old woman provided Two Eyes with a rhyme to say to the goat whenever she was hungry. The rhyme varies depending on which version of the story you have, but I like the one I found on Wikipedia best:

Little goat, if you are able

Pray deck out my table

Reciting this rhyme would cause the goat to magically summon a table full of food. When Two Eyes had finished her meal, she was to say
 

Little goat, when you’re able

Please remove my table

and the table would disappear.

As soon as the old woman left Two Eyes approached her goat and recited the first lines to it. A magical table appeared, and Two Eyes was able to eat her fill for the first time she could remember.

When she was finished Two Eyes recited the second rhyme and the table disappeared.

That night Two Eyes was still full, so she did not eat the meager scrapings her sisters had set out for her at home. This was true the next day, and the day after that - at which point her mother took notice.

The mother began to wonder why Two Eyes, who had always eaten everything they gave to her, was no longer starving. She surmised that Two Eyes must have been eating while out with the goat. The next morning she ordered One Eye to go to the fields with Two Eyes and find out where she was getting food.

One Eye was unaccustomed to work of any sort, and found herself exhausted by the long walk. Two Eyes sneakily began to sing to her, a song that asked:

One Eye, are you awake?
One Eye, are you asleep?

One Eye swiftly found herself lulled to sleep by the song. As soon as she was sure her sister was out, Two Eyes summoned the table from the goat, ate her fill, and then made it disappear. She then woke One Eye and the two walked back home.

Their mother was quite furious with One Eye for not having seen Two Eyes’ source of food. The next morning she sent Three Eyes with Two Eyes, with orders to keep a careful watch.

Three Eyes was also exhausted by the walk to the fields, and Two Eyes attempted to repeat her trick from the day before. Unfortunately, she messed up and sang these lines:

Three Eyes, are you awake?

Two Eyes, are you asleep?

Two of Three Eyes’ eyes fell asleep to this ditty, but the one in the middle of her head remained wide awake. It sneakily closed itself, but kept sneaking peeks to see what Two Eyes was up to.

Because of this, Three Eyes saw the goat produce a table filled with food - food that was better than what the girls and their mother ate at their cottage! When she reported all of this to their mother, she was filled with rage. She slaughtered the goat just to spite poor Two Eyes. (Seriously. WHY must so many animals in fairy tales die?!)

The next day Two Eyes went to the meadow and wept. She had been satisfied for the first time in her life, and now would have to go hungry again. As she cried, the old woman happened upon her once again, and asked why Two Eyes was crying. When she explained that her goat had been killed, the woman told her to ask for the heart of the goat and bury it outside of their cottage.

Two Eyes’ mother and sisters laughed at her when she asked for the goat’s heart, but they gave it to her since it wasn’t something good to eat. She buried it outside of the door and went to bed.

The next morning the family was shocked to find a tree with silver bark and gold apples growing outside of their door. Only Two Eyes knew that it was because of the goat, and she smiled to see it.

The mother swiftly ordered One Eye to climb the tree and pull off some of the gold apples. She tried, but every time she reached for one it twisted out of her grasp! One Eye eventually admitted defeat and climbed back down the tree.

Unwilling to give up, her mother sent Three Eyes up the tree, with the logic that three eyes would be better able to see the apples than one. Three Eyes was just as unable to grasp any of the apples, and finally climbed to the ground.

The mother was furious at their failure. She tried to pick the apples herself, but always found them just out of reach. She laughed scornfully when Two Eyes offered to try, but allowed her to climb the tree. Two Eyes was easily able to pick the apples, and climbed back down with a while skirt full of them to offer to her mother.

Unfortunately, this did not make her family like her any more. They were jealous that only Two Eyes could pick the apples, and so treated her even worse than they had before.

One day a knight happened to be riding past the cottage. When Two Eyes’ sisters saw him coming they hid her under an empty basket so he wouldn’t see her. The knight approached the tree and asked who owned it. The sisters claimed it as their own. The knight then asked them to break off a twig for him; if they could, he would give them whatever they wanted.

One Eye and Three Eyes were beside themselves at this offer, and attempted to grasp a twig to give to the knight - but, just as with the apples, they were unable to take hold of a twig. The knight remarked that it was strange that the tree’s owners were unable to do as he asked.

At this point Two Eyes became fed up with her sisters. There were several gold apples under the basket with her, and she rolled them under it in an attempt to catch the knight’s attention. He noticed them and asked if there was anyone else living at the cottage. The sisters were forced to admit that Two Eyes was there, but that they had hidden her because she only had two eyes, like normal people.

The knight demanded to see Two Eyes, who cheerfully came out from under the basket. She climbed the tree and easily broke off a twig with an apple attached.

When she presented it to the knight he asked her what she wanted in exchange. Two Eyes explained that her family was cruel to her and starved her, and that all she wanted was to be taken away from them.

The knight lifted Two Eyes onto the back of his horse and carried her off into the sunset. He took her to live at his family’s castle, where he gave her lovely clothing and as much food as she wanted. Two Eyes was quite happy there, and soon fell in love with the knight. They eventually married.

As for her family...well, they were furious that Two Eyes had been taken away to riches unknown, leaving them by themselves. The mother consoled herself with the knowledge that they would still have the tree. She planned to set it up as a sort of a tourist attraction that people from all around would come to see.

The tree had other ideas. When the mother awoke the next morning it was gone; it had flown away to live underneath Two Eyes’ window at the castle.

Years later, two poor women came to beg at the knight’s castle. Two Eyes recognized them as her sisters. Being kind, she invited them inside and made them welcome. They repented the way they had treated her, and became far nicer people.

That is the end of One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes! I hope you guys enjoyed this fairy tale. I wrote a post about it at the request of a reader, so I know at least one of you probably likes the story!

I love the fact that it is a knight who rescues Two Eyes instead of a prince. I also find it interesting that the story never mentions how many eyes the mother has, or what happens to her. Wouldn’t you think a two-eyed mother would love Two Eyes best? Strange.

What I love best about One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes is the table. A similar table appeared in one of my favorite books as a child, a story called The Two Princesses of Bamarre. (The author, Gail Carson Levine, also wrote Ella Enchanted - along with a number of other stories that I love. Everything she writes is fantastic. Go forth and read!) This table would continue to replenish its food until told to stop - which meant that the table could overflow with food if no one ever spoke the proper words to halt it.

Similar events are found in a number of fairy tales from around the world. Sweet Porridge is one, as is an old Norse version that is similar to a Greek one called Why the Sea is Salt. There is also a Chinese variant of the story; I’m not sure which culture had it first. In each, the “table” (which is sometimes a bowl or mill) is never properly told to stop because it leaves its owner who knows the words.

I’ll end my post with that! I’ll be back next week with Sleeping Beauty - mostly because an adaptation of that fairy tale is my favorite book of all time, and I want to talk about it! I’ll see you guys then.