"After Ever Happily"

Like the title suggests this isn't your ordinary Fairy Tale. See if you can figure out the story correctly. Were they laughing at the squashed chamberlain or the woodcutters 'ands? Who splashed in the puddles? The King, Queen, and Chamberlain?


"After Ever Happily"
or The Princess and the Woodcutter


And they both lived happily ever after...
The wedding was held in the palace. Laughter
rang to the roof as a loosened rafter
Crashed down and squashed the chamberlain flat--
And how the wedding guests laughed at that!
"You with your horny indelicate hands,
Who drop your haitches and call them 'ands,
Who cannot afford to buy her a dress,
How dare you presume to pinch our princess--
Miserable woodcutter, uncombed, unwashed!"
Were the chamberlains last words (before he was squashed).
"Take her", said the Queen, who had a soft spot
For wood cutters. "He's strong and he's handsome. Why not?"
"What rot", said the King, but he dare not object;
The Queen wore the trousers -- that's as you'd expect.
Said the chamberlain, usually meek and inscrutable,
"A princess and a woodcutter? The match is unsuitable."
Her dog barked its welcome again and again,
As they splashed to the palace through puddles of rain.
And the princess sighed, "Till the end of my life!"
"Darling", said the woodcutter, "Will you be my wife?"
He knew all his days he could love no other
So he nursed her to health with some help from his mother,
And lifted her horribly hurt, from her tumble.
A woodcutter, watching saw the horse stumble.
As she rode through the woods, a princess in her prime
On a dapple-grey horse...Now, to finish my rhyme,
I'll start it properly: Once upon a time--

by Ian Serraillier
From the Oxford Book Of Story Poems