The herb donkey
The Krautesel is a fairy tale ( ATU 567, 566). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm from the 2nd edition from 1819 at position 122 (KHM 122).
content
A young hunter receives the advice of an ugly mother in the forest for an alms and his kind heart to shoot nine birds that are fighting over a coat and swallow the bird's heart . The coat takes you everywhere and with your heart you find a gold piece every morning. He rests in a castle whose daughter he is in love with. But the witch's mother forces her to steal his bird's heart with an emetic drink and to lure him to the gemstones on the grenade hill with the magic cloak. There she leaves him sleeping. Three giants come and he hears them say that the clouds will carry him away if he climbed higher. So he gets into a herb garden. One type of lettuce turns him into a donkey and one back again. He goes back to the castle with tanned skin and says he is bringing the king the best salad. The witch and the maid eat it, then he brings it to his lover and drives the donkey to a miller. He should give the old one blows and feed once a day, the middle one to eat blows and three times, and the youngest to eat only three times. When the old woman soon dies, he takes pity and turns her back. The daughter confesses and wants to break the heart, but she is allowed to keep it and becomes his wife.
Origin and Notes
Grimm's note notes from German Bohemia and reports a folk tale based on Praetorius : A citizen's son from Brück in Saxony becomes engaged to the beautiful daughter of a poor widow in Silesia. When he leaves, the mother realizes that he wants to leave her daughter behind. So he turns into a donkey through a bush. But because he doesn't take part in any work, he continues to be sold to the city of his transformation. He hears the mother say to the daughter that he could become a person “when the lilies bloom and he eats of them” . He finds some in the pharmacy and becomes a naked person.
A fairy tale from Zwehrn follows (it corresponds to The Long Nose from the 1st edition, KHM 122a): Three old soldiers receive a wishing coat from a male in a red dress, a purse that does not become empty, and a horn that all peoples calls together. They free for a king's daughter, who one after the other takes the miracle gifts from them. One of them finds apples in the forest that make his nose grow, his companions find pears, with which they heal him. With that they force the princess to surrender.
They refer to the legend of Fortunat , KHM 36 little table deck you, gold donkey and stick out of the sack , KHM 54 the satchel, the little hat and the horn , Helwig's Jewish stories no.38 , Faust , in the Erfurt collection the little bird with the gold egg , Fortunatus and his sons by Thomas Decker .
Further motif comparisons
- on the gold pieces cf. KHM 60 The Two Brothers , KHM 85 The Gold Children
- on magic mantle and garnet mountain cf. Miraculous gifts and glass mountain in KHM 92 The King of the Golden Mountain , KHM 93 The Raven , KHM 133 The Dancing Shoes , KHM 193 The Drummer , KHM 197 The crystal ball ; Sindbad (2nd trip)
- on the salad see also Lebenskraut , KHM 12 Rapunzel , KHM 16 The three snake leaves , KHM 44 The godfather , KHM 60 The two brothers
- Cf. in Giambattista Basiles Pentameron IV, 1 Der Stein des Gockels
- See Goldhähnchen in Ludwig Bechstein's German book of fairy tales ; Wilhelm Hauffs The story of little Muck
interpretation
Wilhelm Salber observes the metamorphosis of the dear boy, who only comes through a constricting obsession to use the promised miraculous gifts decisively. In a culture of formal arbitrariness, many inner development promises only realize through external constraints and are exploited.
cartoon
- Gurimu Meisaku Gekijō , Japanese cartoon series 1987, episode 28: The Krautesel
literature
- Grimm, brothers. Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 580-586. 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. Pp. 213–217, p. 492. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )
Individual evidence
- ^ Wilhelm Salber: fairy tale analysis (= work edition Wilhelm Salber. Volume 12). 2nd Edition. Bouvier, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-416-02899-6 , pp. 120, 164-167.
