After the meal the fairies gave their magical gifts to the princess, they blessed her with beauty, intelligence, grace, and gave her the gifts of music, dance and song. The eldest shook her head in spite and said that the princess would pierce her hand on a spindle and die. The court cried out in horror when they heard the old fairies words, but the youngest fairy came out from behind the tapestry. She said `Fear not your majesties, she will not die but sleep for a hundred years until the day when a prince will awake her.'

Determined to protect his daughter the King ordered that every spindle in the kingdom should be destroyed and that anyone found using one would be punished by death. Sixteen years passed and one day while the King and Queen had left for one of their country estates, the princess decided to explore the castle. On climbing one of the many towers she found a room belonging to the King's old nurse. The old woman was now almost completely deaf and had consequently not heard about the royal ban on spindles. She was merrily spinning away with her distaff in one hand and her spindle in the other. The curious princess asked, somewhat loudly, if she could try to spin with the old nurse's tools, which of course she had never seen. But when she tried to turn the spindle in her hand the point slipped and cut her hand. The princess fell immediately into a deep sleep.

When the King returned he remembered the young fairy's words and arranged for the princess to be carried to her bed. The young fairy arrived and cast a spell over the whole castle so that the whole court was locked in sleep and the castle walls surrounded by an impenetrable wood.

A hundred years passed and a young prince happened to be passing the enchanted wood and saw turrets peeping out about the trees. He asked some local farmers about the hidden castle and they each gave him a different answer, the eldest however had heard of a sleeping princess from his father and this tale fired the princes sense of adventure. He rode up to the outskirts of the wood and the trees parted to let him through. The castle was unnaturally quiet with all the servants and guards asleep. The prince wandered through many rooms of sleeping courtiers until he found the princess, asleep on her bed with its cloth of gold draperies. She woke as he knelt down beside her and they talked for many hours. The spell was now broken and the royal court awoke after its hundred year sleep. The King insisted that they should be married that very evening and a great celebration was held.

Source:
Tales from Perrault,
translated by Ann Lawrence
Oxford University Press, 1988.