Once upon a time was a Prince who wished to marry a Princess, but she had to be a real Princess. He travelled all over the world in hope of finding such a lady but there was always something wrong.

The prince found plenty of ladies who said they were Princesses but whether they were real Princesses was impossible for him to tell because there always seemed to be something not quite right about them.

After searching for a long time, he finally returned to his palace quite upset because he wanted so much to have a real Princess for his wife.

One evening a big storm hit the castle. Outside there was thunder and lightning and rain poured down from the sky like buckets of water.

Suddenly there was a loud knocking at the door. Who could that be visiting in weather like this the prince thought to himself. Curious, the old King himself, the prince’s father, went to look.

He opened the door to see a Princess standing there. With the rain and the wind blowing as hard as it could the young girl looked in a sorry state; the water trickled down from her hair and her clothes clung to her body.

But she said she was a real Princess.

“Ah! we shall soon see about that!” thought the old Queen mother; however, she didn’t say a word of what she was going to do to see if she was telling the truth. Quietly she went into the bedroom, took all the bedclothes off the bed and put three little peas on the bedstead.

She then laid twenty mattresses, one upon another over the three peas and put twenty feather beds over the mattresses. This was the bed the Princess was to spend the night sleeping on.

The next morning the Queen mother asked the Princess how she had slept. “Oh, very badly indeed!” she replied. “I have hardly closed my eyes all night. I don’t know what was in my bed, but I had something hard under me and now I am black and blue all over it has hurt me so much!”

And then it was clear to see that the lady must be a real Princess, since she had been able to feel the three little peas through the twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. No one but a real Princess could have had such a delicate sense of feeling.

The prince then made her his wife being convinced that he had now found a real Princess and they lived happily ever after.

The end

To watch the animated video of this Fairy Tale on the Oxbridge Baby YouTube Channel click here (please note these links take you to an external website).