The crows
The crows is a fairy tale ( ATU 613). In the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm, it was only in place 107 (KHM 107a) up to the 4th edition of 1840.
content
Two evil comrades rob a good soldier of his savings, poke his eyes out and tie him to a gallows. At night he overheard the conversation of two crows about a toad whose ashes can heal the sick king's daughter with water, about the dew under the gallows that makes the blind see again and about a spring under the market square. So the soldier regains his eyesight and heals the king's daughter. Because he looks poor, the king, contrary to his promise, does not give her to him as a wife until he gets water for the city. When the happily married couple meets his two comrades again and graciously welcomes them, they hope to hear something under the gallows. The crows, who noticed that they were overheard, peck out their eyes and beat them with their beaks until they are dead.
origin
The magic fairy tale was in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm from the second part of the first edition, which appeared in 1815, to the fourth edition of 1840 as No. 107 (or No. 21 of the second part). It came from a letter sent by August von Haxthausen and is reminiscent of The fortune telling birds in Feen-Mährchen (Braunschweig, 1801). From the fifth edition of 1843, it was replaced by the longer and more versatile The Two Wanderers .
Explanations
The fairy tale illustrates the ambivalent role of the crow in fairy tales as a threatening corpse bat and hopeful healer, sky bird and hell driver. It practically corresponds to the raven in fairy tales like The Seven Ravens , The Raven . The toad ( fairy tale of the toad ), which was used in witch ointments, is similarly double-edged .
The raven is also a typical bearer of the water of life , which allows the blind to see again (see The water of life , the king's son who was afraid of nothing ), which also has in common with the remedy for the king's daughter and the water source for the city yields. At the same time, with the toad from the water, the dew from the air, the source from the earth and the blinding of sinners, all four elements are represented. In Jorinde and Joringel , salvation comes in the form of a flower with a drop of dew.
The plot of the righteous, whom two wicked want to exclude, is similar, among other things. a. the fool's tales (e.g. The Three Feathers , The Queen Bee ). The two following sections, the winning of the king's daughter through her healing despite being delayed by the father-in-law (as in The White Snake , The Golden Goose ) and the punishment of the evildoer without the help of the hero (as in Simeliberg , The Golden Bird , The Goose Maid ) are similar the common pattern (see Röhrich ).
literature
- Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbook to the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. de Gruyter, Berlin 2008. pp. 475-477, ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 .
- Werner Bies: Raven . In: Rolf W. Bedrich u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of fairy tales . De Gruyter, Berlin 1990 ff.
- 11. 2004, ISBN 3-11-017565-7 , pp. 119-131.
- Claude Lecouteux: Water of Life . In: Rolf W. Bedrich u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of fairy tales . De Gruyter, Berlin 1990 ff.
- 8. 1996, ISBN 3-11-014339-9 , pp. 838-841.
- Lutz Röhrich : Fairy tales and reality . Schneider-Verlag, Baltmannsweiler, 2001, ISBN 3-89676-380-6 , p. 148.
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Heinz Rölleke (ed.): Children's and house fairy 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 .
- 3: Original notes, guarantees of origin, afterword . Reclam, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-15-003193-1 , pp. 536-537.
