Section 1
Once upon a time there was a farmer who had a very comfortable life. Although he was wealthy and owned land, he lacked the children that would have brought his happiness to a full stop. When he encountered other farmers in the closest market town, they would frequently tease him by enquiring as to how he managed to remain childless. He eventually got to the point of being so furious that he yelled, "I must and will have a child of some sort or kind, even if it is only a hedgehog!"
Shortly after, his wife gave birth to a child, but from the waist up, the newborn looked more like a hedgehog than a boy, so when the child's mother first saw him, she was rather alarmed and told her husband, "There now, you have cursed the child yourself." “What's the point of raising a fuss?”, the farmer asked. “The creature obviously needs to be baptized, but how are we supposed to find sponsors for him and what are we supposed to call him?”
“Hans my Hedgehog is the only name we can think of for him”, the wife said.
They took him to be baptised, and the pastor predicted, “because of his prickles, you will never be able to put the infant in a decent bed.” Despite the fact that this was the case, they placed him behind the stove and left him there for eight years. His father grew quite sick of him and frequently wished him dead, yet he continued to live there year after year instead of passing away.
The farmer planned to visit a large fair in the market town one day, so he asked his wife what he should get her from it. "Some meat and a couple of big loaves for the house," she said. The maid responded with a pair of slippers and some stockings when he next asked her what she wanted. "Well, Hans my Hedgehog, and what do you want me to bring you?" he concluded.
He answered, “Dad I want a bagpipe.” The farmer handed his wife and housekeeper the items they had requested when he got home, and after that, he walked behind the stove and gave Hans my Hedgehog the bagpipes.
Hans said to his father after receiving his bagpipes, "Daddy, do go to the blacksmith and have the house cock polished for me; then I'll take away and bother you no more." When the cock was ready, Hans my Hedgehog mounted it and rode off into the forest, followed by all the pigs and asses he had promised to care for. His father, who was thrilled at the idea of getting rid of him, had the cock shod.
After arriving in the forest, he forced the cock to fly up to the top of a very tall tree with him, where he sat watching over his pigs and donkeys for several years until he had amassed quite a large herd. Throughout this entire time, however, his father was completely unaware of his whereabouts.
He played his pipes while seated in his tree and created the most beautiful melody with them. When a King happened to pass by while he was playing one day and heard the music, he was very shocked and rushed one of his servants to find out where it came from. The man looked around, but all he could make out was a small, perched-up in a tree object that resembled a cock with a hedgehog on top. The unusual thing was sitting there, and the King asked his servant to inquire as to its purpose and whether it knew the shortest path to his realm.
Upon hearing this, Hans, my hedgehog, descended from his branch and offered to show the King the way back home in exchange for a signed guarantee from the King to give him whatever he encounters on his way back.
“That's simple enough to promise,” the King thought, “because the creature won't get a word of it, I am free to write whatever I want.”
He wrote something down using a pen and ink, and when he was finished, Hans my Hedgehog led the King home safely.
The King's daughter was so excited to see her father coming back that she hurried to meet him and threw herself into his arms. The King then thought of Hans my Hedgehog and explained to his daughter how he had been required to write down a guarantee to give whatever he found upon returning home to a remarkable creature who had showed him the way. He claimed that although the creature made beautiful music and rode on a cock like a horse, it was unable to read, so he had just written that he would —not— give it anything at all. The Princess expressed her satisfaction at her father's cunning maneuver and noted that, of course, nothing would have persuaded her to leave with Hans my Hedgehog.
