Today's story from the Brothers Grimm is a little different from the others we've looked at lately. "The Four Skilful Brothers" is about going out in to the world to seek your fortune. Have you noticed that sons do this way more often than daughters? The brothers are also labeled "clever" or "artful."
A poor man has four sons and, when they are grown, he sends them out into the world to learn trades as he has nothing to give them. So the four head out, splitting up when they come to a crossroads. They agree to meet back at the crossroads in four years. Each of the brothers meets a man who teaches him his trade. The eldest becomes an honest thief who steals only what no one else can get ahold of and is never caught. The second becomes an astronomer and receives a gift, a telescope through which he can see anything that happens on earth or in the heavens. The...
Another Grimm tale today. "The Star Talers" tells of a poor, unfortunate girl who is rewarded for her selflessness. A taler, by the way, was a silver coin first minted in 1519.
A little orphan girl was so poor all she had was a crust of bread and the clothes on her back, no room, no bed, nothing. But, of course, the girl is good and devout and trusted in God and headed out into the countryside. Notice it's not the woods, rather the countryside. Maybe she won't run into any of the trouble that comes to children who wander into the Grimms' woods.
First she meets a poor, hungry man and she gives him all her bread. Then she meets a child whose head is cold, so she gives the child her hat. A second child is freezing so she gives the child her jacket. She gives another child her dress.It's dark when she runs into a final child who asks...
Another Grimm tale today. This one is from the "Tales for Adults" section of The Annotated Brothers Grimm. "The Hand with the Knife" was the eighth tale in the first edition of the Grimms' stories, but was left out of later editions.
Its a simple story and starts in a standard fairy tale way. We have a girl with three brothers. The mother loved the boys will all her heart, but was mean to the girl and treated her badly. Every day the girl had to go out with nothing but an old dull tool and dig peat for cooking and heating. Happily for her, an elf who live near their home, admired her and everyday, when she passed by his hill, he would reach out of a boulder and give her a magical sharp knife that would cut anything. It allowed her to do her work quickly, and every day on the way she would tap twice on the boulder. The elf...
One of my Christmas presents was The Annotated Brothers Grimm Bicentennial Edition and I am loving it. The introduction and prefact have some great insights into why we love fairytales, why they have such lasting power. I've already looked at several Grimm tales over the couple of years I've been doing this feature, but there are so many more, so I thought I'd look some of those in this collection over the next month or so.
Today's story, "The Three Little Men in the Woods," is a farily typical story. It's one of those stories with two girls, one good and kind who is rewarded and one mean and selfish who is punished. There's also a requisite evil step-mother. It's also a very watery tale, with water being an important part of the turning points.
A woman offered marriage to a widower with a daughter, saying that her own daughter would drink water and wash in water, while the man's daughter would drink...
Today's tale, a French Canadian folktale, takes place on New Year's Day long ago in Quebec. According to the legend, a group of lumberjacks was deep in the middle of a forest, felling huge trees and working hard day after day. They are lonely, though, missing their wives and girlfriends.
On this particular New Year's Day, it was snowing so hard and the wind was blowing so fiercely that the lumberjacks could not work, so they were all huddled in the camp, wishing they could go home for the day. Baptiste finally stated what they were all thinking, "I wish to go home today and see my girl!" One of the others, Jean, agreed but protested that the weather was too bad. Baptiste responded that they could take his canoe. Baptiste, you see, had made a deal with the devil to run a chasse-galerie, a flying canoe. The devil would make the canoe fly wherever Baptiste wanted, as long as Baptiste did not say the...
Today's story isn't really a Christmas tale, but one of the major events does occur on Christmas Eve, so I'm counting it. "Tatterhood" was collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe and included in East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, published in 1888.
A king and queen had no children, a situation that seems to occur often in fairytale land, which grieved the queen greatly, so to alleviate the queen's loneliness, they adopted a girl to raise as their own. One day, when the queen saw her adopted daughter playing with a beggar girl, she scolded her adopted daughter and tried to drive the other girl off. However, the beggar girl mentioned that her mother knew a way for the queen to have children of her own.
When the queen approached the beggar woman, the woman denied having such knowledge. The queen treated the woman to as much wine as the woman pleased until the woman was drunk. When the...
