it?" The toad replied, "Just put one of my little
toads in it." So he took one by chance from the circle and put it in the
yellow carriage, but hardly had she taken her seat when she became a
surpassingly beautiful maiden, the carrot a coach, and the six little
mice, horses. So he kissed the maiden, drove away with the horses and took
them to the king. His brothers came afterwards. They had not taken any
trouble to find a fair lady but had brought the first good looking peasant
woman. As the king looked at them he said, "The youngest gets the kingdom
after my death." But the two oldest deafened the king's ears with their
outcry: "We cannot allow the Simpleton to be king," and gained his consent
that the one whose woman should jump through a ring that hung in the
middle of the room should have the preference. They thought, "The peasant
women can do it easily, they are strong enough, but the delicate miss will
jump herself to death." The old king consented to this also. So the two
peasant women jumped, even jumped through the ring, but were so clumsy
that they fell and broke their awkward arms and legs. Then the beautiful
woman whom Simpleton had brought leaped through as easily as a roe, and
all opposition had to cease. So he received the crown and ruled long and
wisely.

I offer first a neat psychoanalytic interpretation of this narrative. Like
the dream, the fairy tale is regularly a phantastic fulfillment of wishes,
and, of such indeed, as we realize, but which life does not satisfy, as
well as of such as we are hardly aware of in consciousness, and would not
entertain if we knew them clearly. Reality denies much, especially to the
weak, or to those who feel themselves weak, or who have a smaller capacity
for work in the struggle for existence in relation to their fellow men.
The efficient person accomplishes in his life what he wishes, the wishes
of the weak remain unfulfilled, and for this reason the weak, or whoever
in comparison with the magnitude of his desires, thinks himself weak,
avails himself of the phantastic wish fulfillment. He desires to attain
the unattainable at least in imagination. This is the psychological reason
why so many fairy stories are composed from the standpoint of the weak, so
that the experiencing Ego of the fairy tale, the hero, is a simpleton, the
smallest or the weakest or the youngest one who is oppressed, etc. The
hero of the foregoing tale is a simpleton and the youngest. In his
pha