Allerleirauh

A couple of weeks ago in Berlin we went down to where the square ladies shop.  There are a lot of square ladies in Berlin; small, veiled Turkish women who appear as wide as they are tall. These square ladies know their onions, so we shop where they shop to get the best and the freshest in fruit and vegetables. It was a bitterly cold day, cusping the harsh winter and the tentative beginning of spring, and would be, therefore, my last chance this season to don my gilet of multi-coloured fur.

As it was lunchtime, we went to the backshop, chose our cheese and spinach pastries, our tri-corn chocolate nut cookies and our milchcafes and as the café was crowded, took them outside, to sit in the cane chairs, wrapped in the fleece blankets provided, on the pavement in front of the shop. (When we first started going to Berlin I thought the Prussians must have a lot of lumbar problems to warrant so many shops purportedly selling back pain alleviating equipment.  Then I saw the loaves in the window and smelled the warm yeast smell.) We were sitting happily eating, watching the (mainly Turkish) world go by, when one young fellow laughed to his friend and said "es ist Allerleirauh!" I only caught it as he passed, and didn't get a chance to jump up and hug him for recognizing my winter persona as an ancient fairytale princess.

My reincarnation began last year on the feast of St André.  Every year on the first Tuesday of December the centre of the city of Annecy in the Haute Savoie is taken over by a huge market.   There are stalls on every street and the shops put counters of sale stock outside their doors. Dealers arrive from all over the country in trucks full of cheap Asian clothing and white porcelain from Limoges.  Amongst the whittled wood Alpine artifacts and red and white table linens of the Savoie are the ubiquitous South American pan pipers dressed in chamois and feathers.  Music also plays from the loudspeakers of CD vendors and the air is full of the smell of roasting meat and chestnuts, melting cheese, boiling fat for frites.... and as darkness falls, the warm spicy aroma of vin chaud.  The favoured snack is a large baguette filled with a scoop from the bubbling centre of a half moon of Reblochon, cooking on a spit.  Into the elastic liquid is pressed a shoveling of pommes frites and the whole is sandwiched together for eating on the hoof.

On many stalls last year were scarves of bobbled rabbit fur and dresses and coats in synthetics and wool shoddy labelled "Tendence Desigual," cheap designs based on the designs of the Spanish fashion company which uses patches of brightly coloured materials, strange collages and stitched narrative. There was also a stall selling fur clothing, no doubt from China and brought up along the spine of the Alps in a van from Provence. It was there I saw a sleeveless jacket, hip length, zipped, made from a patchwork of small pieces of multi-coloured fox fur.  I bought the jacket and when I put it on, instantly become the princess Allerleirauh "A Thousand Skins." 

Once upon a time there was a king who promised his wife on her deathbed he would only re-marry a woman as beautiful as she. Bereaved, for a long time he had no thoughts of taking a new wife, but was counselled that the kingdom needed a queen.  Messengers were sent to look for a woman whose beauty equalled that of his wife, but in the entire world, none was found.

The king had a daughter, just as beautiful as her dead mother, and in time she grew up and one day the king looked at the young woman and had an idea.  He told his councillors "I will marry my daughter." The councillors were shocked and warned that such a deed was against God and a crime from which no good would come.  The daughter was still more shocked when she learned of her father's resolve. In an effort to stave off the evil day, she said that before the wedding could take place, she would need a dress as gold as the sun, a dress as silver as the moon, a dress as bright as the stars and a mantle of one thousand different furs woven together; one skin from every type of animal in the kingdom. The king sent out his hunters and summoned his cleverest seamstresses to create the clothing. When they were all ready, the king declared the wedding for the next day.

The princess saw she there was no way out of the marriage except escape, so that night, she folded the three dresses into a nutshell, put on her coat of a thousand furs, blackened her face and hands with soot and commending herself to God, sneaked out of the silent palace.  She walked all night long until at daybreak she reached a great forest where she fell asleep, hidden in a hollowed tree. 

It so happened that the king of this particular forest was out hunting and when his dogs came to the tree, they ran around it, sniffing and barking. The king ordered his huntsmen to investigate what kind of animal was hiding there.  The huntsmen returned saying they had found a wondrous beast with fur of a thousand different kinds and were told to catch the beast. The princess woke in terror and crying that she was just a poor deserted child, begged that they would take pity on her and not harm her. "Allerleiruah" they said "thou wilt be useful in the kitchen, come with us and thou canst sweep up the ashes. " They put her at the back of the carriage and took her to their palace where they showed her a closet under the stairs and said "Hairy animal, here canst thou live and sleep." So the beautiful princess became Allerleiruah "a thousand skins" and for a long time she lived in great wretchedness, working in the kitchen, carrying wood and water, sweeping the hearth, plucking fowls, cleaning vegetables for the cook.

Beautiful princesses who run away for the sake of their virtue do not continue to live in wretchedness all their lives....but you must read the story of Allerleiruah yourself to discover the ending..........

Meanwhile, back in the twenty first century on the last season of the "Ugly Betty" television series about a New York fashion magazine, their most stylish character appeared in a long, belted version of my patchwork fur and I saw the same in a Berlin shop for €2,000.   Throughout the winter I wear my gilet and the persona of the princess, and as the Gulf Stream changes course, I am snug and warm in my coat of a thousand furs. That was why I was not annoyed but rather delighted, to be recognized on the streets of Berlin as Allerleiruah "A Thousand Furs."