Sleepy John

You can't see them, but she's wearing dancing shoes. Twelve pairs.

This week, we turn to the Czech Republic for our tale. Sleepy John is a variant on the Twelve Dancing Princesses tale. In this story, there's just one queen dancing, but she wears out twelve pairs of shoes each night.

This whole tale was possible because of two very rude farmers. It was not wise of Sleepy John to fall asleep in a cart, but there was no reason the farmers had to leave him in the forest, inside of a beer cask. More than anything else, this story happens through Sleepy John being lucky. If he hadn't been left to die in the forest (and survived it), he wouldn't have met the hermit and gotten his wonders, which let him track the queen. Why was that man a poor hermit in the forest? He had three magical items and he even knew which day he was going to die, so he was clearly not an ordinary man. My assumption is that the hermit was actually a fairy who was trying to help Sleepy John for some reason. That's usually how these things work in fairy tales.

In any case, Sleepy John finds himself at the castle where they truly have a Dancing Queen. He decides that he will not be sleepy on this particular night and that he will stay awake to follow the queen and find out what she's been doing. So, forsaking his name, John stays awake, even though he pretends to be asleep, to follow the queen. I guess he was just lazy to earn his nickname since he could stay awake when he wanted to. Also, I'm not sure what kind of people the queen has been around, but I would wake up from a solid sleep if someone scorched the soles of my feet.

With the magic of his hat and stick, John manages to follow the queen without being found. The queen definitely noticed when he broke off a branch from each forest they went through, but was unable to find him. At the time, it seems like a dangerous gamble, but it proves to be the reason his story is believed. That makes me wonder how many others have successfully followed the queen, but were not believed. The king doesn't seem to really want to know what his wife has been up to every night, and the penalty for not finding out is to lose your head. It seems like the king was actually trying to hide what his wife was doing, even though he said he wanted someone to find out. Interesting. That makes me wonder what was going on in their marriage.

The moral of this story is that if you're going to be the main character in a fairy tale, you'd better hope you're lucky so that everything turns out well for you.