Dapplegrim

Dapplegrim (Norwegian: Grimsborken) is a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr. Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book (1890).

== Plot == A man, the youngest of twelve children, decides to wander off from his rich parents' house. Upon his return, he finds his parents have died and his brothers have shared all the lands among themselves, thinking he was dead. They offer him twelve mares as compensation, and when he goes to check them he finds all of them have a foal, and that one has yet another foal, a very sleek dapple-gray one. When he praises the beauty of the foal, it replies back and tells him that he'll be more splendid if the young man would go and kill all the other foals and let him feed on all the mares' milk for a year. The young man decides to heed to this advice and finds him a year later being quite large and sleeker. The colt tells him that he would be even more splendid if the young man were to go again and kill the twelve foals that have been born since, which the young man agrees to do. Yet again he returns the next year, finding the horse being huge and incredibly sleek, and yet again the horse asks him to kill the new foals and let him have the mares' milk for one more year, to which the young man agrees again. At last, he returns a year later to find the horse impossibly large and radiant, and the horse decides then to go with him.