The princess with twenty petticoats

The princess with twenty petticoats

A long time ago, when dense oak forests still rustled in fairy-tale Holland, and the meadows only dreamed of the first blue flax flowers blooming, there lived a little princess.

Her father, the king, loved her more than anything. The princess was clever, brave, and wonderfully curious. She could spend hours watching clouds reflected in a pond, find the smoothest pebbles on the shore, and show you where the sweetest blackberries grew in the forest.

But she had one difficulty: whenever things did not go her way, her temper flared in an instant.

Mornings were especially difficult when she had to comb her long, curly hair.

In those days, there were no convenient brushes. Hair was detangled with combs made of stone or wood. If the curls clung to the teeth, the princess would get angry.

“I don’t want to! I won’t! Leave me alone!” she shouted.

Once, she even called her governess an old wild bull.

The governess took no offence. She sat beside the princess and said:

“When something hurts or feels unpleasant, you can say, ‘Please stop.’ But insulting words hurt someone else.”

The princess frowned.

“But I am angry!”

“It’s all right to feel angry,” the governess replied. “What matters is what you do with that anger.”

The princess thought for exactly three seconds, and then ran outside again.

The king was worried. Not because he wanted to make his daughter quiet and obedient. On the contrary, he liked that she had her own opinion. But one day the princess would have to make important decisions, listen to people and rule the country.

“A strong character is a fine thing,” he thought. “But true strength means more than insisting on your own way. It also means knowing when to stop.”

One day the king went to an old oak tree that grew in the forest near the palace.

This was no ordinary tree. Its trunk was so broad that three grown people holding hands could barely reach around it. The king had known the oak since childhood. He had cared for it, asked the foresters to spare its young branches, and always left water beneath it for woodland animals on hot days.

The king sat down at the roots and said quietly:

“If only I knew how to help my daughter make friends with her own temper.”

The leaves rustled, though there was no wind.

Sh-sh-sh-sh…

Then the rustling formed into words:

“You have taken care of this forest for many years. Now the forest will help you.”

The king raised his head.

“Who is speaking?”

“I, the old oak.”

The king was not very surprised. In fairy tale times, trees sometimes talked, but they did so rarely and only when they had something really important to say.

“Soon, one of my great branches will fall because it has grown old,” said the oak. “Ask your craftsmen to make a broad wooden skirt from it. It must be neither a punishment nor a joke. Let it remind the princess that when anger threatens to sweep her away like a gale, she can put it on, sit down, grow calm, and think about what she truly wants to say.”

“A wooden skirt?” asked the king. “It’s uncomfortable to walk in.”

“That is precisely why it is good for sitting and thinking,” the oak laughed, rustling its leaves.

An old aurochs stepped out of the bushes, a great wild bull with powerful horns. As a boy, the king had protected the bull’s family from hunters. The animal came close and lowered his head.

On the ground lay a smooth piece of old horn, which the aurochs had naturally shed.

“Take it,” the animal’s gaze seemed to say. “Let a craftsman make a fine comb from it, one that will not tug at her hair.”

The king thanked both the oak and the aurochs.

Before long, a storm broke a great dead branch from the old oak. The craftsmen carved it into a light, round wooden skirt, like a broad hoop, and made a smooth comb from the horn.

When the princess first saw the wooden skirt, she laughed.

“What is this, a little barrel?”

“Almost,” said the king. “But this is your skirt for taking a pause.”

“What for?”

“When you feel very angry, you may put it on and sit for a few minutes. Nobody will scold you or laugh. You will simply have time to think before your words run ahead of you.”

The princess snorted at first.

But the next day, while combing, one knot refused to come untangled.

“Why, I’ll…” she began.

Then she stopped.

“Give me my wooden skirt.”

She put it on, sat on a bench, and huffed angrily.

A minute.

Another.

On the third she said:

“It hurts when you tug my hair. Could you go more slowly?”

“Of course,” the governess replied.

Then they tried a new comb. It slid easily through the strands.

“Oh!” the princess exclaimed. “That is much better.”

With each passing week, she needed the wooden skirt less. She learned to notice when a little storm was beginning to brew inside her.

Sometimes she would say:

“I need a minute.”

Sometimes she would go out for a walk.

Sometimes she would just take a deep breath and try to start a sentence again.

One summer, the princess was walking near a place where young plants grew that no one had seen here before. Delicate blue flowers shimmered among the green stems.

“How beautiful!” she cried.

A traveler who was visiting the court explained:

“This is flax. Its stems yield fine fibres, and those fibres can be spun into strong thread.”

The princess was interested.

She asked the craftspeople to show her every step: harvesting and processing the flax, combing the fibres, spinning the thread, and weaving the cloth.

She liked the light linen fabric so much that she came up with a new light skirt herself.

“After the wooden one, this feels like a little cloud!” she said, twirling beside the mirror-smooth pond.

Soon a second linen skirt was sewn for her.

Then a third.

Then a fourth.

The princess loved to layer skirts of different lengths. One peeped out beneath another, and their hems could be trimmed with ribbons, embroidery, or lace.

And then one day she decided to joke.

“And how many skirts can I wear at once?”

Five.

Seven.

Ten.

By the twelfth, everyone was laughing.

By the sixteenth, the princess was walking with very small steps.

By the twentieth, she looked like a multi-colored bell.

“Twenty!” the princess announced triumphantly. “Now that is enough.”

Her friends liked it so much that the next holiday several of them also came in multi-layered skirts. Some wore three, some five, and one craftswoman managed to wear as many as eleven.

That, the tale says, was how the fashion for wearing many skirts began.

Of course, no one had to have exactly twenty. The princess was the first to say:

“Fashion should bring joy, not trouble. If you want one skirt, wear one. If you want seven, wear seven. We can save twenty for especially merry days.”

There was more and more flax in the country. Craftsmen learned to make fine linen and beautiful lace. In place of the dark thickets, green fields appeared, where thousands of small blue flowers swayed in the summer.

The princess grew up and became a wise ruler. She still had a strong character and could argue hotly if she considered something important. But now she knew how to listen.

For many years, she kept the old wooden skirt in her study.

When someone asked why the queen had such a strange thing, she would answer:

“It taught me my first great lesson. I once thought the strongest person was whoever spoke the loudest. Then I learned that sometimes the greatest strength is knowing when to pause.”

A smooth comb lay nearby, and in a vase there were blue flax flowers every summer.

The old people told children the amusing story of a princess who first learned to wear one awkward wooden skirt, then thought of putting on twenty light ones at once.

Was it really like that?

Who knows.

But fairy tales like to hide good advice in the strangest places—even between twenty skirts.

May this story leave a little light in your heart ✨