The sea rabbit

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The sea rabbit is a fairy tale ( ATU 329). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm from the 7th edition from 1857 on at position 191 (KHM 191) and comes from Josef Haltrich's collection of German folk tales from the Sachsenland in Transylvania from 1856 (No. 39: From the king's daughter, the saw everything in her realm from her castle ).

content

A proud king's daughter has a tower with twelve windows, where she sees through one more clearly than through the other, in the end everything above and below the ground. Only those who can hide from her are allowed to marry her, but whoever tries in vain will be beheaded. After no one has reported for a long time, three brothers come. The two older ones hide in a lime hole and in the castle cellar; she can already see them through the first window and has their heads stuck on the ninety-eighth and ninety-ninth stakes in front of the castle. The youngest asks himself a day to think about it and three attempts. He gains the gratitude of a raven, a fish, and a fox by not shooting them and by pulling a thorn out of the fox's foot. The raven hides him in his egg and the fish at the bottom of the lake in his belly, but the king's daughter sees him through the eleventh and twelfth windows. On the third attempt, the fox leads him to a spring, where they come out again as animal traders and sea bunnies. The fox shows the animal in the city. When the king's daughter buys it, he advises him to hide under her braid. She can't find him, smashes the windows in fear and anger and chases the sea rabbit away. When the young man comes back she gives in because she thinks he can do more than she can.

origin

The fairy tale is contained in Josef Haltrich's collection of German folk tales from Saxony in Transylvania (1856) as No. 39 From the King's Daughter, who saw everything in her realm from her castle . Wilhelm Grimm took it over in the children's and house tales from the 7th edition (1857) instead of The Robber and His Sons , which reminded too much of Polyphemus . That the king's daughter grants the youngest the three attempts because of his beauty is Wilhelm's interpretation. Otherwise the text was only smoothed out linguistically. He is with Grimm without comment. Sea rabbit is Transylvanian-Saxon for rabbit . To determine the age of the fairy tale, Hans-Jörg Uther is working on a dissertation by Ingrid Hartmann, which most likely suspects that it originated in south-eastern Europe in the middle of the 19th century. Only the Faroese ballad Lokka táttur is older : Loki hides a son from a giant after Odin and Hönir fail.

Motives and interpretation

The riddle princess is reminiscent of Brünhild , see also KHM 22 The riddle , KHM 71 Sixes come through the whole world , KHM 114 From the clever little tailor , KHM 134 The six servants , KHM 85b Princess with the louse . The fact that she will marry him last because she thinks he can do more than her sounds like viola from Basile's Pentameron . Animal helpers are common in fairy tales (KHM 17 , 33 , 57 , 60 , 62 , 126 , 169 , 16a , 74a , 104a ), as are three brothers in Grimm's (e.g. KHM 63 ). The source is evidently a general magic place here. The hero takes advantage of the fact that the haughty one cannot see through herself as the only one.

Wilhelm Salber sees the core of this as an ambivalence between wanting to get involved and overcontrol. As an example, he cites a woman in her mid-thirties with bulimia who begins and ends relationships with older men, in which she simultaneously liberates and punishes herself. Finding the balance here can also be transferred to management consulting, the creation and impact of art.

literature

Brothers Grimm

  • Grimm, brothers. Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 772-775. Düsseldorf and Zurich, 19th edition 1999. (Artemis & Winkler Verlag; Patmos Verlag; ISBN 3-538-06943-3 )
  • Grimm, brothers. Children's and Household Tales. Last hand edition with the original notes by the Brothers Grimm. With an appendix of all fairy tales and certificates of origin, not published in all editions, published by Heinz Rölleke. Volume 3: Original Notes, Guarantees of Origin, Afterword. 513. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )

variant

  • The story of a wise hero who talks to a learned emperor's daughter. In: Romanian folk tales. Edited by Felix Karlinger and Ovidiu Bîrlea. 1st edition 1969, Düsseldorf, Cologne. Pp. 5-14. (Eugen Diederichs Verlag)

Secondary literature

  • Rölleke, Heinz (Ed.): Grimm's fairy tales and their sources. The literary models of the Grimm fairy tales are presented synoptically and commented on. 2., verb. Edition, Trier 2004. pp. 478–485, 581. (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier; series of literature studies, vol. 35; ISBN 3-88476-717-8 )
  • Uther, Hans-Jörg: Handbook to the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Berlin 2008. pp. 389-391. (de Gruyter; ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 )
  • Neumann, Siegfried: Riddle Tales. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 11. pp. 280-285. Berlin, New York, 2004.
  • Goldberg, Christine: Riddle Princess. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 11. pp. 286-294. Berlin, New York, 2004.

Web links

Wikisource: The Sea Rabbit  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Haltrich, Josef: Saxon folk tales from Transylvania. Edited by Hanni Markel. 3rd edition, Bucharest 1973. pp. 198-202.
  2. ^ Haltrich, Joseph: Negative idiotisms of the Transylvanian-Saxon vernacular. In: Friedrich Müller, program of the Protestant grammar school in Schässburg , Buchdruckerei S. Filtsch, Hermannstadt 1866, p. 31.
  3. ^ Wilhelm Salber: fairy tale analysis (= work edition Wilhelm Salber. Volume 12). 2nd Edition. Bouvier, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-416-02899-6 , pp. 152, 159, 179.