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And as I wanted to be inspired I stopped reading a little while ago and wrote a story. I like to base what I write on something existing, so for this story I used the mother with three daughters idea, which frequently shows up in fairy tales. However, typically the youngest, who is the heroine, is dazzlingly beautiful while the two older sisters are usually ugly… So I decided to write this story with it the opposite way. So I hope you enjoy this fairy tale! And the moral too:)

Plain Jane
By Elizabeth Von Fange

Once upon a time there was a widow who had three daughters. The two eldest were dazzlingly beautiful and they were the pride of their mothers heart. The youngest daughter, however, was plain to the point of being ugly and her name was Jane.

The mother could not bear the sight of Jane so she sent her out to tend the sheep while her other two sisters sat around the house and enjoyed themselves since their mother felt that housework might mar their beauty. Jane didn’t like being the plain one of the family and often sat and wished that she was beautiful while the sheep wandered off and found out whether or not the grass was greener on the other side of the fence. As she was punished each time the sheep got away from her, Jane soon learned that sitting and wishing for beauty only brought sadness and despair, so one day, she decided that she was not going to wish to be beautiful any more.

Like many good intentions made during the end of the month of December, it didn’t last long, for about a week later as she sat and the sheep seemed to be behaving themselves perfectly she couldn’t help wishing that she was as beautiful as her sisters. And as usual the sheep scattered in every direction but as Jane was paying a bit more attention to them than usual, she saw the last sheep running off and getting up, she ran to chase it.

The sheep decided that it’s new duty in life was to run as fast as it possibly could in any direction it chose to, except towards home, and as Jane was a bit too plump to be any great runner, she could not catch up with the sheep. In fact, it was a good thing the sheep was quite plump too, or else it would have quickly left her behind.

After quite some time of running the sheep finally got tired and as Jane was already tired, they both sat down for a rest with Jane keeping a tight hold on the sheep. As though she seemed incapable of learning of her lesson Jane was about to go into a long period of wishing that she was tall and slim like her sisters when she suddenly heard a loud crash, and then cries for help.

Her sheep heard them too and decided to run in the opposite direction while Jane decided that if followed, the sheep would head in the opposite direction of home, where as, if ignored, the sheep might just wander back closer to home. So she quickly ran in the direction of the cries for help.
As she ran towards the sound Jane couldn’t help wondering who was making them, for the voice that was calling for help was one she had never heard before. When she finally saw who it was she was quite surprised, for it was a handsome prince! His horse, as near as she could tell, had just gone underneath a branch which was just the perfect height off the ground to unhorse it’s rider.

Jane was wondering why the prince had not gotten up off the ground, and was rather worried that he was hurt as she walked over and offered her assistance in helping him off the ground. He accepted gladly and after he stood on his feet he asked her if she could see his horse anywhere around.

Since the horse was standing directly in front of them with a self satisfied smirk on its face, Jane wondered if their was something wrong with the prince’s eyes. On pointing out the horse the prince informed her that he was blind. As he couldn’t notice whether she was pretty or not Jane felt as though this was her lucky day, and it was. For the as the prince listened to the melodious sound of her voice he fell in love with her. As Jane was really hoping that this would happen she gave him quite a bit to listen to as she tried to take the long cut back to the road. Since she had no idea as were it was anyway she succeeded in her object of it taking quite a long time to get anywhere and they probably would have been wandering around in the woods for hours more if they hadn’t met up with the prince’s attendants, who were quite glad to finally see the prince as they had been looking for him for hours. As by this time the prince was madly in love with Jane he invited her to return to his castle with him where they got married and lived happily ever after.

As for Jane’s two beautiful sisters, well, they never had the fortune to run across any handsome princes so they had to settle for lesser men. However as one of the sisters of later became a Duchess, and the other became a Countess, they can hardly be pitied.

MORAL: Beauty isn’t everything, and you don’t want to have anything to do with sheep if you can help it because in 999,999,999,999,999 cases out of 1,000,000,000,000,000 they won’t go running in the direction of a handsome prince.