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"Okay," said Alice. "Every hedgehog in England knows this story. It's a great one."
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"Once upon a time, a hedgehog was born to a human couple who desperately wanted a child. The woman who bore him and her husband were terribly frightened that they had brought a spiny hedgehog child into the world instead of a nice, smooth plump human baby. They thought he was a demon and tried to kill him at his birth, but God favored the hedgehog and he escaped into the forest.
He lived in the forest for eight years alone, foraging for food and sheltering in trees. On his eighth birthday, he arrived on the doorstep of the house where he was born. His parents were shocked to see him again.
"Hans," his mother said, for that was the name she had picked out while he slept in her womb, "we thought you were dead. Here, please come inside."
So Hans slept indoors for a while, all the time knowing that his mother and father resented him for being alive. He kept an uneasy existence with them. One day, his father left to go to the fair passing through town. Feeling pity on Hans for the hard life he'd been given, his father asked him, "Hans, is there anything I can bring back for you from the fair?"
"Yes," Hans replied. "If you could, please bring me some bagpipes."
The father thought this request quite strange, but did as his hedgehog son asked and brought him back a brand new set of bagpipes.
As he was examining his new instrument, Hans told his father, "Father, if you get me an animal to ride, I'll leave you and mother and never come back."
His father jumped on the chance to get rid of the cursed creature forever, and had his rooster shod by the blacksmith. Outfitted with a tiny bridle and saddle, Hans rode the rooster out of town into the forest where he grew up. As soon as he reached the tallest tree in the forest, he tethered his steed to the trunk, climbed up the tree, and began to play his bagpipes.
One day, as Hans sat high above the ground playing his songs on his bagpipes, a human king and his retinue were traveling through the forest. As the king's carriage approached Hans' tree, the king began to hear the most brilliant, haunting tunes he had heard in all of his years of court feasts and entertainments.
"Stop!" the king cried. "I have to know where such beautiful music comes from! Search the forest until you find the player of this song."
The king's men searched all throughout the forest, but all they found was a rooster wearing a saddle tied to a tall tree. They returned to the king and told him that the musician was nowhere to be found. Hans watched this all from above, taking a break from his music to discern the goings-on down below.
The king cried into the forest, "I would give my daughter's hand in marriage to know where that music was coming from and to have it for my own!"
With that, Hans jumped down from the tree.
"Your majesty, I believe what you're looking for is this," he said softly. He then began to play the enchanting music that the king had longed for, and the king broke out into a huge smile.
"Your music is incredible, I've never heard anything so wonderful in all my years. You surely must be a good creature sent from God to be able to share this gift on earth. Come back to my castle and marry my daughter, and if you play your music for us, the kingdom will be yours."
Tired of a life in the forest, and happy at the prospect of having his own family and belonging to one, Hans happily agreed. He rode his rooster behind the king's carriage back to his kingdom, married the kind princess, and had many happy years of playing the bagpipes for his new family.
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"Wow, that's a great story!" said Walter.
"Yeah," said Alice, "you hear it all the time growing up. It's nice to have a national legend like that to relate to."
Elizabeth asked, "Walter, there's going to be an American film festival at the library next weekend. Would you like to go with us? You can explain all of the pop culture references. After there's going to be a party at our friend Alfie's house if you'd like to go."
Walter beamed. "That sounds awesome. Are they going to show Rocky? Cause you know, that's an American classic. . . "
The hedgehogs chatted as they made their way back to their dormitories. As they parted, Walter silently thanked Hans the hedgehog for helping him to make new friends in England. He looked forward to this last semester of study abroad and thought about all of the new stories he would have to tell his friends back in Oklahoma.
Hans the hedgehog riding his rooster. Websource.
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Author's Note: I almost completely changed the story of Hans the Hedgehog (or Hans My Hedgehog as it is sometimes known) because the original story is quite dark and gloomy and I wanted to end on a happy note. In the original, Hans is half human and half hedgehog, but I changed it to all hedgehog so that the little hedgies could relate better to the story. Also, I personally think it's way weirder for a human to have a hedgehog instead of a half hedgehog-half human.
The king in the original was mean-hearted and didn't care anything for Hans' music. What he really wanted from Hans was a way back to his kingdom after being lost in the forest. Hans agrees to this in return for the first thing he sees in the courtyard in exchange. Of course, the first thing he sees is the princess. It ends in the princess agreeing to marry him for fear of losing her life, and in the course of their marriage she discovers that his hedgehog exterior can be thrown in the fire and Hans made into a man. I changed the story to focus on the value of Hans' music and his worth as a hedgehog.
The stories that Alice and Elizabeth have told have achieved Walter's purpose: he makes new friends. Storytelling has many purposes in many different cultures, and storytelling as a way of inter-cultural dialogue and building relationships is the happy outcome of this situation.