The trained hunter
The trained hunter is a fairy tale ( ATU 304). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm at number 111 (KHM 111).
content
A young wandering locksmith is trained to be a hunter and receives a rifle from his master that always hits. At night in a large forest he finds three giants roasting an ox on a fire. He shoots the mouthful three times, whereupon they offer him to go with them and steal the king's daughter from the tower behind the lake for her. He crosses over with a ship, shoots the watchdog before it can bark and goes in alone. In the first room he finds a silver saber with which one can kill anything, in the second the sleeping king's daughter. He takes the right half of her scarf and her right slipper, which, like the saber, bear a gold star and her father's name, and a piece of her shirt. He calls the giants to crawl in through a hole and in the process cuts off their heads and then the tongues, which he keeps. When the king asks who killed the giants, an ugly one-eyed captain answers and is supposed to marry the daughter. When she refuses, she has to go out in peasant clothes and sell dishes for a potter. The king orders farm wagons, which break it, but she goes back to the potter, and when he doesn't want to give her any more, she tells her father that she wants to go out into the world. She has to sit outside in the forest in a little house that says “free today, for money tomorrow” and cook for everyone. Even the hunter who has no money hears about it. There they recognize themselves by the landmarks they have taken with them, with which they also prove it to their father. At the feast he unwittingly lets the captain choose his own judgment, after which he is torn into four pieces. The king's daughter and the hunter are married and live happily.
Origin and processing
Grimm's note noted "After two stories from Zwehrn" (one by Dorothea Viehmann ). The second (according to unknown informers) begins differently so that the shooter gives the sentry a sleeping draft and first finds two maidens, then the naked king's daughter sleeping. He takes the gold collar, ring and handkerchief and lies down with it. When she does not know who she is pregnant with, she has to go to jail and to the tavern because of the servant who claims it was. In a third “from Hof am Habichtswald ” (from Wachtmeister Krause ) the hunter has to drink from a goblet at the sleeping woman's place in order to use the sword and finds her after three years in the inn with the inscription “Here you eat for free, but you have to own yours Tell a CV ”. In a fourth Hessian, the hunter shoots the giant right in the thumb. Grimms compare to shooting An Bogsweigr ("Sagenbibliothek 2, 542"), Brünhild to cut clothes , cutting out the tongue is common, the captain is Truchseß in Tristan , Grimms German sagas No. 255 , 256 , 257 , finally KHM 52 King Drosselbart .
The plot hardly changed between the first and last edition, and many of the language forms remained somewhat original. From the 2nd edition onwards, it is three times the same giant that the hero shoots the flesh out of his hand, which, as in KHM 20 The Brave Little Tailor, motivates a brief argument between the giants. While crawling through, the hero grabs her hair to behead it, and from the 6th edition says: "How can I bring an innocent virgin into the power of the wild giants, who have evil in mind."
Motive comparisons
Many motifs and language details are very similar in other Grimms fairy tales. At the beginning the hunter and finally the princess asks the boy "where he came from and wanted to go", cf. KHM 9 The twelve brothers . The light in the forest encounters later in KHM 163 The Glass Coffin , similar giants in KHM 126 Ferenand Tru and Ferenand Untroubled . If he wants to go with them, he should be fine, they say, like the dwarfs in KHM 53 Snow White . Infallible rifle and saber resemble the miraculous gifts in KHM 92 The King of the Golden Mountain and KHM 97 The Water of Life , the tongues that have been cut out, dragon fights as in KHM 60 The Two Brothers , the humiliation of the princess with broken dishes KHM 52 King Thrushbeard . She wants to “go as far as my legs can carry” (cf. KHM 17 ), a phrase known from literary fairy tale tradition. Lutz Röhrich names the four-part division here and in KHM 76 The Carnation as an example of cruel punishments in fairy tales that come from real legal life, where fairy tales know neither love nor hate, a child does not think of cruel details. A somewhat similar fairy tale is Bechstein's The Wandering Journeyman .
Christine Shojaei Kawan counts about 250 variants, of which 38 are German, 25 in Hungary, otherwise in Europe, the Near and Middle East, the Caucasus, North Africa, some in America and Africa. Grimm's text is probably the oldest datable evidence, but it had little influence on the others. Central is the raid forced by giants, robbers or otherworldly, which connects with other episodes. Fraudsters and taverns are often missing, but telling the life story brings excitement. Many variants point to an origin as a dragon battle tale. This is supported by the fact that the hero almost always kills the fiends with a saber or the like, even if he is a hunter like here, which he is only in a few German and Czech versions. According to Walter Scherf , “wind gun” probably means blowpipe. He compares Josef Haltrich's Der Hünentöter , Grimm's The Crystal Ball and The Three Sisters , Aleksandr Nikolaevič Afanas'evs The Immortal Koščej , Johann Georg von Hahn's The Three Brothers Looking for Their Stolen Sister , Ignaz and Josef Zingerles The Brave Knight's Son , Karl Haidings The Giant Killer , Felix Karlingers The Brave Soldier .
literature
Primary literature
- Grimm, Brothers: Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 542-547. 19th edition, Artemis & Winkler Verlag, Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf and Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-538-06943-3 )
- Brothers Grimm: 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. Reclam, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-15-003193-1 , pp. 204-205, 489.
Analyzes
- Christine Shojaei Kawan: Hunter: The learned J. In: Encyclopedia of fairy tales. Volume 7. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1993, ISBN 3-11-013478-0 , pp. 411-420.
- Walter Scherf: The fairy tale dictionary. Volume 1. CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3-406-51995-6 , pp. 409-413.
- Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbook to the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 , pp. 250-251.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lothar Bluhm and Heinz Rölleke: “Popular speeches that I always listen to”. Fairy tale - proverb - saying. On the folk-poetic design of children's and house fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. New edition. S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-7776-0733-9 , pp. 126-127.
- ^ Lutz Röhrich: Fairy tales and reality. 3. Edition. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1974, ISBN 3-515-01901-4 , pp. 143-144, 152.
- ↑ Christine Shojaei Kawan: Jäger: Der learned J. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchen. Volume 7. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1993, ISBN 3-11-013478-0 , pp. 411-420.
- ↑ Walter Scherf: The fairy tale dictionary. Volume 1. CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3-406-51995-6 , pp. 409-413.
