The singing bone
The singing bone is a fairy tale ( ATU 780). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm from the first edition of 1812 at position 28 (KHM 28).
Content according to the version from 1819
Two brothers answer the call of a king who promises his daughter to the one who will free the land from a wild boar. The younger one enters the forest from the east and meets a little man who gives him a black spear because of his good heart. With it he kills the wild boar. The older one, a cunning, haughty man, comes from the west. He goes to a house on the edge of the forest, where he drinks his courage. When the younger brother comes with the booty, he holds it out until evening and kills it on a bridge in the dark on the way home. He buries him under the bridge, brings the killed pig to the king and receives the king's daughter.
Years later, a shepherd finds a bone in the sand under the bridge and uses it to carve a mouthpiece for his horn. When he blows on it, the bone sings the truth to him:
- "Oh, you dear Hirtelein,
- you blow on my ankle
- my brother killed me
- buried under the bridge,
- about the wild pig,
- for the king's daughter. "
The shepherd is amazed at the singing bone and takes it to the king. The song sounds again. The king understands, has the body of the murdered excavated and buried with honor. The murderer, on the other hand, is sewn into a sack and drowned.
Origin and reception
In the first edition of Children's and Household Tales from 1812, there are three brothers, "of whom the oldest was cunning and clever, the second of common sense, but the third and youngest was innocent and stupid". However, details are still missing here, such as entering the forest from the west and east.
The basic structure is similar to other stupid fairy tales , in which the youngest and simplest brother always deserves the inheritance: KHM 54 The satchel, the little hat and the horn , KHM 57 The golden bird , KHM 62 The queen bee , KHM 63 The three feathers , KHM 64 The golden one Goose , KHM 97 The water of life , KHM 106 The poor miller's boy and the kitten , KHM 165 The bird griffin , KHM 64a The white dove . The biblical Cain and Abel motif is also taken up here.
According to their comment, the Brothers Grimm had the fairy tale from three places in Niederhessen . The second version begins like KHM 97 The Water of Life : The old king wants to give the crown to the son who catches a bear with a golden lock (or a wild boar). He sends the oldest with a horse, cake and wine, the youngest with only a stick, bread and water. The latter is friendly to the male under the tree and receives a rope with which he catches the bear. In the third the beginning is not carried out. You name another source at Colshorn No. 71, one from Wilhelm Wackernagel in Moriz Haupt's magazine Altdeutsche Blätter (boy kills girl who found the flower) and one from Karl Viktor Müllenhoff No. 49.
In a Scottish folk song in Scott Minstrelsy 2, 157-162 , a harp is built from the sternum of the murdered sister, in a Faroese in Geyer and Afzelius 1, 86 from the hair. Polish at Lewestam p. 105 . With H. Reus in the Estonian Folk Songs p. 56 . In a Serbian fairy tale in Muck No. 39, an elderberry pipe as a flute reveals the secret. (see also KHM 115 The clear sun brings it to light )
The fairy tale of the singing bone can also be found in a modified form in Ludwig Bechstein's New German Book of Fairy Tales as Das klagende Lied . There it is not a wild boar, but a scepter-shaped flower. Gustav Mahler used both fairy tales for the text and the composition of his first work, the cantata Das klagende Lied .
In Janosch's parody a boy finds the bone of a sacred bird, when he blows on it, all is suddenly good and true.
The Singing Bone was one of the three tales sequences of the American fantasy film The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm ( The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm ) and directed by Henry Levin and George Pal from the year 1962nd
literature
- Grimm, brothers. Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 189-191. 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. 67-68, 454-455. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )
- Uther, Hans-Jörg: Handbook to the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Berlin 2008. pp. 75-76. (de Gruyter; ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Janosch: The singing bone. In: Janosch tells Grimm's fairy tale. Fifty selected fairy tales, retold for today's children. With drawings by Janosch. 8th edition. Beltz and Gelberg, Weinheim and Basel 1983, ISBN 3-407-80213-7 , pp. 56-57.