Thursday, July 2, 2009

Andra's Senior Project: "The Girl Without Hands"

There once was a poor man and woman who had a beautiful and pious daughter. The Devil came along one day and promised them riches if they would give him what stood behind the mill. The Father assumed it was their apple tree and quickly agreed. When the Father told the Mother, she was heart-broken for she knew he meant their daughter.
When the Devil comes to claim the girl, she is too clean and pure to be touched. The Devil tells the Father to keep her from water so that she may not clean herself, but she cries so much on her hands that they are clean and the Devil still cannot have her. The Devil tells the Father to cut her hands off, and being scared for his life, the Father does so. The girl cries so much onto her stubs, however, that she is still clean and the Devil cannot take her. She, being traumatized by the event, leaves her parents and wanders through the forest alone.

The girl travelled far and became very hungry. She came to a mote which surrouned a royal garden, but she could not cross it. She prayed for help and an angel came and blocked the mote so that she could cross over. The King saw the girl in his garden and had compassion on her.


The King had pitty on the girl, and he loved her dearly. He married her and had silver hands made for her and they were happy.



The King went off to war, and during his absence, the queen had their baby. When the King's mother wrote him of this news, the Devil intersepted the letter and wrote that the Queen had had a monster. The King was worried, and wrote back that his mother was to take care of the child until his return. The letter was intersepted again by the Devil, and he wrote that the King's mother should kill the Queen and the child. The Queen couldn't shed innocent blood, so she banished the Queen from the castle. The Queen and her child found refuge in a cabin in the woods.




After searching for many years, the King finally comes across the same cabin in which his wife and child reside. Because of the queen's purity, her hands grow back, and after seeing the silver hands still in her posession, the King knows that it is his wife and child, and they live happily ever after.