The Grateful Prince (Estonian original: Tänulik Kuninga poeg) is an Estonian folk tale, usually associated with the English version collected by the fairy-tale editor Andrew Lang in The Violet Fairy Book; Lang notes that this English story was translated from an Estonian folk-tale collection gathered by Friedrich Kreutzwald, via F. Löwe's adapted German translation, Ehstnische Märchen. In tale-type terms it belongs to ATU 313, The Magic Flight: the protagonist falls into a villain's power, is forced to complete impossible tasks, passes them with the secret help of a girl at the villain's side, and finally the two escape and elude pursuit. The story usually unfolds as follows: a king loses his way in the forest and makes a pact with a strange old man to hand over whatever first comes out to meet him on his return; the first to emerge is the infant prince. To save his son, the king substitutes a farmer's baby girl and gives her to the old man as a princess. When the prince grows up and learns the truth, he is uneasy and unwilling to trade another's sacrifice for his throne, so he disguises himself as a wandering hired hand, returns to the forest with a bag of peas, deliberately loses his way, and is taken in by the old man as a servant. He scatters peas and leaves marks along the way, meets the girl who was once used as his substitute in the old man's house, and under her quiet guidance completes such trying tasks as feeding the horses and milking. Short as it is within the collection, the tale is complete in plot and vivid in imagery, a typical sample for understanding Nordic and Baltic folk-tale motifs.
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Andrew Lang is an important figure in editing and compiling fairy tales and folk stories, though detailed information about his life is limited in publicly available Chinese sources. Four of his works are included here: The Red Fairy Book and The Blue Fairy Book from his "coloured fairy book" series, as well as The Red Romance Book and Historical Mysteries. These works show that he was skilled at collecting and retelling folk legends and fairy tales from various regions, with clear and fluent narratives, accessible language, and attention to preserving the oral tradition and imaginative quality of the stories. His fairy-tale anthologies have circulated widely and are often classified as inspirational coming-of-age reading, exercising a lasting influence on children's literature and the dissemination of folk tales in the English-speaking world.
