The prince who is not afraid of anything

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The prince who is afraid of nothing is a fairy tale ( ATU 590). From the second edition of 1819 it is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm at position 121 (KHM 121). There, the title written on the 3rd edition without decimal The king's son is afraid of nothing .

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A prince wanders into the world and plays with man-sized skittles in front of a giant's house. He tells him to fetch an apple from the tree of life for his bride. The prince finds the garden with the tree. The wild animals guarding him do nothing to him. When he breaks off the apple, the ring closes around his arm, through which one has to reach, which gives him great strength. A lion wakes up and follows him as his master. He brings the apple to the giant, but his bride is not satisfied if he does not show her the ring too. The giant tries unsuccessfully to take it from the prince in battle, then he steals it when they are bathing in the river, but the lion brings him back. The giant stabs the prince's eyes out and then leads the blind man to a slope twice so that he may fall to his death, but the lion prevents it both times and rushes the giant down. The lion leads the king's son to a brook, the water of which gives him back his eyesight . The king's son wanders on and meets a black maiden in an enchanted castle, who asks him to redeem her. To do this, he spends three nights in the castle and lets himself be tormented by little devils there without being afraid or making a sound. The devils come every time at midnight, initially take no notice of him, play and talk about his presence before they attack him. In the morning the Virgin comes and heals him with the water of life, whereby her black color disappears from time to time. Finally the castle is redeemed and the prince and the princess, who has turned snow-white, are married.

origin

Grimm's note noted from the Paderbörnische (from the von Haxthausen family ), but the tradition is already confused or clouded. For comparison you mention Hercules , a fairy tale by Emil Friedrich Julius Sommer p. 122 and one by Karl Viktor Müllenhoff No. 11. A fragmentary text from Grimm's estate with the annotation Anna v. Haxthausen about the prince's son who is not afraid also contains three nights of torment with gradual redemption of the princess.

Comparisons

literature

  • Grimm, Brothers: Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 574-579. 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. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. pp. 212–213, pp. 491–492. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Rölleke, Heinz (ed.): Fairy tales from the estate of the Brothers Grimm. 5th improved and supplemented edition. Trier 2001. pp. 35-37, 107-108. (WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier; ISBN 3-88476-471-3 )