«When a man’s father dies, he realizes that the one man who truly wanted him to be better than him is gone.»
Steve Harvey
Using the Margaret Hunt translation and doing some moderate changes, a rather inane «hope for the best» Grimm fairy tale turns into an excellent father-and-son and prudence story.
The Spirit in the Bottle
There was once a poor woodcutter who toiled from early morning till late at night. When at last he had laid by some money, he said to his boy:
«You are my only child. I will spend the money I have earned with the sweat of my brow on your education. If you learn some honest trade, you will have a better life than I have had. You will also be able to support me in my old age, when my limbs have grown stiff and I am obliged to stay at home.»
The son went to the city and diligently applied himself to useful studies. But they took longer than his father had reckoned they would. After two years, his father could send no more money. Though the son knew how hard his father worked for every coin and lived as frugally as he could, he was soon forced to return home. The house seemed barer than he remembered it.
«Ah,» said the father sorrowfully, «I can give you no more. I can no longer earn even a farthing beyond what will suffice for our daily bread.»
The son looked at his father, who sat with averted eyes and hunched shoulders. He seemed much older than when the boy had last seen him. A nasty cough shook him, and there was a rasp in his breath. He had always worked hard and often beyond his strength, but now a wasting sickness had taken hold of him and was advancing faster than either of them had expected. That pained the son more than leaving his studies, deeply though he regretted them. Yet it seemed that his unfinished studies pained the father even more.
«Dear father,» answered the son, «don’t trouble yourself about it. I shall make the best of what must be and soon accustom myself to it.»
The father said nothing, but prepared the supper, apologizing for the smallness of the meal. Afterward he said:
«I can still work on some days, and tomorrow seems such a day. So I will go to the woods and fell some trees.»
«I will go with you and help you,» replied the son.
«Nay, my son,» said the father, «that would be hard for you. You are not accustomed to rough work and will not be able to bear it. Besides, I have only one axe and no money left wherewith to buy another.»
«Just go to the neighbor,» answered the son. «He will lend you his axe until I have earned one for myself.»
The father then borrowed an axe from the neighbor, and next morning at break of day they went out into the forest together. The son helped his father, and though it pained him to see how often his father lost his breath, he tried to be merry and brisk about the work. But when the sun stood directly over their heads, the father sat down beneath a tree they were preparing to fell and said:
«We will rest and have our dinner, and then we shall work all the better.»
The son took his bread in his hands. He had watched his father labor for breath all morning, and he was glad for a little while to turn his eyes elsewhere.
«Just you rest, father. I am not tired. I will walk up and down a little in the forest and look for birds’ nests.»
«Oh, son,» said the father, «why should you want to run about there? Afterward you will be tired and no longer able to lift your arm. Stay here and sit down beside me.»
The son, however, went into the forest, ate his bread, and peered among the green branches to see whether he could discover a bird’s nest anywhere. So he went up and down until at last he came to a great, dangerous-looking oak. It must already have stood there for many hundreds of years, and five men could not have spanned its trunk.
He stood still and looked at it, and thought:
‹Many a bird must have built its nest in that.›
Then he thought he heard a voice. He listened, and presently heard someone crying in a muffled voice:
«Let me out, let me out!»
He looked around, but could discover nothing. Nevertheless, he fancied that the voice came out of the ground. Then he cried:
«Where are you?»
The voice answered:
«I am down here amongst the roots of the oak-tree. Let me out! Let me out!»
The son began to loosen the earth beneath the tree and search among the roots until at last he found a glass bottle in a little hollow. One of the roots seemed to have forced it upward from deeper in the earth. The bottle was very old, with scratched letters he could not decipher, a silver stopper bearing an old seal, and black iron bands crossing it from side to side. Yet although it had lain underground, there was not a speck of rust upon them.
He lifted the bottle and held it against the light. Inside he saw a tiny man made of smoke, springing up and down.
«Have pity. I have lain here longer than your grandfather’s grandfather lived. Let me see the sun again.»
«Who are you?» asked the son.
«One who has suffered for a long time,» replied the spirit.
‹It is not right that someone should suffer so,› thought the son, and drew the stopper from the bottle.
Immediately a spirit ascended from it and began to grow. He grew so fast that in a few moments he stood before the son, a terrible fellow half as tall as the oak beside him. He stretched himself, visibly glad to be free, but then his face hardened, and he looked down at the son.
«You have broken the seal,» thundered the spirit. «By the laws laid upon me, I owe you three wishes. Few have ever been so fortunate. Speak them, and when the third is fulfilled, my debt to you is ended.»
«I wish my father cured of the sickness that is wasting him,» said the son immediately.
«So it is done,» said the spirit. «Now your second wish.»
The son hesitated. He wanted to continue his studies, but how? He thought of the pleasure there was in understanding something he had labored to learn, and of the use he might one day make of it. To wish himself learned would take much of the worth out of it. Then he looked back toward the place where his father sat. Even felling a tree had its satisfaction when the tree fell just as it should.
‹What is it that I actually want?› he thought. ‹I want my father to be able to support me again.›
Then he smiled and said:
«I wish that within the hour my father find enough ownerless silver that he need fear neither the coming winters nor old age, and that I may finish my studies.»
The spirit gave him an unbelieving look.
«Your father shall find it, not you?»
The son nodded.
«So it is done. You have learned to use a great many words, scholar.»
«You seem to listen to every one of them,» replied the son.
Now the son fell silent and considered what his last wish should be.
«Come now,» said the spirit at last. «You have been modest enough. For the last, ask like a man.»
The son looked at him questioningly.
«What do you really want, lad?» the spirit continued. «A palace made of gold? A table always decked with the finest foods and drinks? Or servants who will fulfill your every impulse, so that you need never lift a hand for yourself? Or that whatever you desire shall be yours, and no one else shall have what you want?»
He leaned down closer, almost whispering.
«Your enemies struck dead and your rivals ruined? That any man who stands in your way be brought beneath your hand? A charm to make any woman submit to your desires? Or perhaps that you become a famous scholar and doctor, praised by all for your wisdom and the wonders you perform?»
The son looked long at the spirit, then lowered his eyes.
«Come now, come,» repeated the spirit. «Choose quickly. I can almost taste the air beyond this wood. One more wish, and we are both free of our bargain.»
But the son was deep in thought.
‹He cared little what I asked while two wishes remained. Now he would give me half the earth merely to hear me ask for anything at all. Enemies killed, rivals ruined, having what others are not allowed to have, and people made unable to refuse — that is a particular kind of power. It grows by making other people less free.›
He looked at the bottle, which was still in his hand, while the spirit drew very close without touching him.
‹Someone put the creature there,› he thought. ‹Someone sealed it and hid it beneath the roots of an oak. I should have asked why before ever I drew the stopper. Even afterward, I might have used my first wish to ask. But now I have only one. If I spend it learning why he was bound, and the answer is what I fear, I shall have nothing left with which to mend my mistake. His suffering gave me reason to pity him. It gave me no reason to break the seal.›
The son drew a breath, raised his eyes, and looked up into the spirit’s face.
«For my third wish, return at once into the bottle from which I freed you, with the old seal made whole again, and remain within until one wiser than I in such matters, knowing what you are and why you were bound, freely judges that you may safely be released.»
With a scream so loud that the son shut his eyes and stood frozen in place, the spirit was sucked back into the bottle. The stopper fastened itself, and the old seal became whole again.
Only when a little while had passed, with no sound but the singing of birds and the wind moving through the forest, did the son open his eyes.
He looked at the bottle. Inside it, the spirit, once more a tiny man made of smoke, hammered with his little fists against the glass. But no matter how hard he struck or how loudly he screamed, it was in vain.
The son drew a deep breath and began to put the bottle back into the hollow. Then he looked up at the old oak. Some woodcutter might fell such a tree one day, and anything buried amongst its roots might come again to light.
So he walked until he came to a place where a broad slab of rock lay half sunk in the earth. Nothing grew there but moss, and no one had any reason to dig there. He took out his knife and dug a deep hole, put the bottle into it, and covered it with earth and stone. Then he took a branch and brushed it over the ground until no trace of the digging remained.
Meanwhile, the father had finished his rest and found that he could take his first full breath in months. Delighted, he rose and walked up and down as quickly as he could, until he stumbled and fell. Cursing, he looked to see what had caught his foot and discovered the edge of an old chest buried in the ground.
He dug around it and opened it. The chest was filled with silver coins bearing the mark of a kingdom long vanished.
‹I can send my boy back,› the father thought as he let the coins run through his fingers, and two tears ran down his cheeks.
The sun was low in the sky when the son returned to his father. For all his joy over his renewed health and the silver, the father had begun to fear for his son. When the son tried to apologize for being away so long, his father interrupted him, though not unkindly.
«I am just glad that you are back. I feel better than I have in months. If this lasts, I might be able to work again. And look, we have enough silver for you to finish your studies. You can go back to your books after all.»
The son smiled and picked up the chest.
«Let me carry that for you, father, so you don’t have to.»
Then he nodded toward the tree beneath which his father had been resting.
«What about the tree? Shall we not cut it?»
«No, son,» replied the father. «That tree we won’t cut. Tomorrow I shall find another.»
So they returned home, and before long the son went back to the city and took up his books once more. In time he finished his studies and became a renowned doctor and scholar.
Yet he never told anyone about the spirit in the bottle.