The Headless Dwarfs

When people hear "fairy tales," most think of gentle, sweet princesses and fairies, yet among the folk tales Andrew Lang collected are many grim, eerie pieces that make the back of your neck prickle, and "The Headless Dwarfs" is one of them. It first appeared as a story in The Violet Fairy Book and belongs to the European folk-tale tradition: a minister promises double wages to anyone who will ring the church bell at midnight, and every applicant disappears in the night; then "Clever Hans" takes the job, sits down to cards in the lit-up empty church, and climbs the tower kicking aside the headless dwarfs who block his way at each landing. The story's power lies in its restraint—it does not manufacture horror through gore but builds suspense layer by layer with the deserted bell tower, the sudden light, and the ghosts that vanish at cockcrow. For today's readers it is both an entertaining ghost story and an excellent specimen for understanding the folk-narrative structure of "taboo—trial—reward"; the dwarfs' final words, "despise no little creature," turn the whole tale into a parable of courage and kindness. It suits reading aloud at bedtime to older children as a "slightly scarier fairy tale," and repays close reading by students of literature and folklore as source material.