Three Little Horses

Let me tell you a story of The Three Little Horses. The strangest children’s book I have ever read.

It goes back to when I was a child. My grandmother Irma gave me this book to read because she noticed it had horses in it and I liked horses. Appreciating her rationale, I took the book. I never saw her purchase this book for me so I think she must have had it prior to me being born in 1982. The book “Three Little Horses” was published in 1958; my grandmother immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1957. This book was written by Piet Worm and was probably the most bizarrely illustrated and strangely written children’s book I had ever encountered in my young years. It told me a lot about how secretly odd grandma was.

So we open with these three little horses playing in a field and minding their own business. Two of the horses Blackie and Whitie are competitive and jumping over a chair. They are hating on Brownie because he is the clumsiest of the little horses. Brownie is just not into it and the other horses are being major jerks. The horses are growing bored with their game and Brownie’s complaining when all of a sudden something catches their attention.

The horses notice that a nearby tree is making noises. Not normal noises trees make but something weird and curious. So naturally they go to investigate what it is going on with this tree and to their surprise it’s not a real tree at all! It is a man dressed up in a tree costume. He has a hole in the front of the tree where he can show his face which he does. He’s been wearing the costume and basically spying on these horses for God knows how long. The story doesn’t specify but based on illustrations it was probably hours.

Now the horses are startled and run off so of course this guy undoes his tree costume to make the horses feel better. He proceeds to tell these frightened horses his name is Peter and he is an artist. He seems friendly enough so the horses indulge him and warm up faster than anticipated. I thought they were nuts. They should have run off and not come back. People wearing trees. Come on now.

Right off the bat Peter is in love with these horses. Peter is overly in love. It’s really extra hence the extra emphasis here. You can sense Peter may be a little slick though and have some artist thing up his sleeve. He has a lot of artist type of ideas that the horses are just not prepared to mentally handle.

Turns out Peter is slick. He tells the horses that the town is expecting this big proceeding for three princesses. There’s parades, clowns, motorcar ride, giraffes, you name it. The horses talk about how nice it would be to go to town and see the processions but oh no. Peter has a different idea.

Peter convinces the horses that he can dress them up like princesses. The horses can wear a dress, mask, and walk on their hind legs. The three horses think this is excellent and they are down for an adventure so they allow Peter to ready them up and they go to town. They do not know any better because they are horses after all but they are bored so they give it a go.

Low and behold back in town the mayor gets a telegraph that the real human princesses will be late; they are ill you see and cannot travel. So the mayor is a little panicked thinking all the fanfare scheduled would be wasted. There’s a parade, marching band, you name it. The mayor was pretty low and about to cancel everything until he saw the dressed up horses and Peter! He thought they were the real princesses! He excitedly got the processions to commence and there was celebration all over town. The horses just tried to maintain standing upright. They did somehow manage to oddly sit in the back of a motorcar and drive down the main road. They didn’t have anything to say to people because they did not want to blow cover. They were in too deep. Meanwhile Peter never addresses the fact that the princesses are just horses in costumes. Peter is all for the art of what he is doing and not very honest. He does not realize his fun could hurt someone.

Surprise! The actual princesses show up earlier than expected. They were feeling better and did not want to disappoint the townspeople who came far and wide to see them. The mayor is appalled. He’s flabbergasted. All this celebration for fake princess horses and not the real princesses? The mayor promptly punishes Peter and the horses for their chicanery. Peter is in jail for his actions and the horses are stabled up.

After much debate in town the princesses are just sick with guilt so they decide that the little horses do not deserve poor treatment because of what Peter had them do. Of course each princess picks her horse and the princesses and their horses live happily ever after. Peter is let of out jail but he’s left to watch from afar because he is a little weird.

This concludes the oddity of this story. I honestly can say that this story stuck with me forever. I got a tattoo commemorating parts of this book. I think this book opened me up to the weird in life. The bizarre. It also showed the importance of honesty. Despite Peter thinking he’s making art he actually uses these creatures for his own gain and hope for prowess. He was sort of a predator from the get go because of his manipulation for the sack of gain and creepily watching them in his tree costume. I think it helped me to avoid scenario’s where one could be easily taken advantage of even if it seems innocent.