The robber and his sons
The robber and his sons is a fairy tale ( ATU 953, 1137). It was only in the 5th and 6th edition at 191 (KHM 191a) in the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and comes from Moriz Haupt's magazine Altdeutsche Blätter from 1836.
content
An old robber regrets his trade and gets better. His three sons want to become robbers again. He advises against them. But they steal the queen's horse by hiding the youngest in a bundle of grass that they sell to the stable master. You are caught. Because they are beautiful, the queen asks the father if he would like to solve them. When he says they are not worth it, all she wants to hear is the strangest story from his life as a robber.
He tells how he and a hundred men ransacked a giant's apartment. They captured ten giants and divided them up, so that each ate one in ten every day. When it was his last turn, he posed as a doctor who could heal his sick eyes and doused him with toxic liquid. When the blinded man lashed out furiously, he hid on the tap post and then between the sheep, which the giant let run through his legs into the pasture. Because he was bigger, the giant wanted to eat him, but he jumped away until the giant, exasperated, threw him out. Outside he mocked him. The giant gave him a ring in ostensible recognition, but it meant that he always had to shout "Here I am" . The giant had almost caught up with him when he bit his finger off and escaped.
The robber goes on to tell his second son how he finally found a house in the wilderness, in front of which three dead men were hanging from a branch. Inside was a stolen woman with her child, whom she had to cook for the monsters in the evening. He gives her one of the dead and hides. When the top monster has three meat samples taken after dinner to know that they really ate the child, the robber hangs himself on the spot and has his loins cut.
The robber continues to tell for his third son. He heard the colonel demand the man with the meat still fresh. He clung to the branch again and was about to be slaughtered when a storm drove the monsters away. He hiked the woman for forty days and brought her back to her family. The queen thinks that he has made good a lot of bad things and is releasing the sons.
origin
The Brothers Grimm had the story in a manuscript from the 15th century, the source of which may be slightly older from Moriz Haupt's magazine Altdeutsche Blätter (1836, Vol. 1, 119–128). They found the continuation of the legend of the giant Polyphemus from Homer's Odyssey excellent and independent of the representations of other peoples . Even in his 1857 treatise, Wilhelm Grimm still believed in a side-homeric narrative tradition of Polyphemus. In fact, like practically all versions, the text is based on Johannes de Alta Silvas Dolopathos . In the 7th edition they left out the magic fairy tale.
literature
- 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. 272, 513, 541-542. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Uther, Hans-Jörg: Handbook to the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm. Berlin 2008. pp. 482-484. (de Gruyter; ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 )
