The old beggar woman
The old beggar woman is a short story. It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm at position 150 (KHM 150) and comes from Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling's autobiography Heinrich Stillings Jünglingsjahre (1778).
content
An old beggar comes to a boy who invites her in. She gets too close to the fire and her rags start to burn.
The narrator closes with the following sentences: The boy stood and saw that, shouldn't he have deleted it? Shouldn't he have deleted it? And if he hadn't had any water, then he should have cried out all the water in his body to his eyes, that would have given two pretty streams to extinguish.
origin
Jung-Stilling , whose name is Henrich in his autobiography , is told the story by Anna, the daughter of his landlady. She imitates the old woman's walk and compares Henrich with the boy. She is alluding to her love for him, which Henrich did not notice and which offended her.
The Brothers Grimm took over the story word for word, only omitting the framework story in their children's and household tales from the second part of the first edition in 1815. Their comment describes the piece as confused. They suspect that the beggar woman avenges herself by a curse, as in other sagas. They also refer to The Begging Woman of Locarno by Heinrich von Kleist and the Germanic god Odin , who comes as Grimnir to two young men in the King's Hall. One brings him something to drink, but the other left him sitting among the flames. He notices the pilgrim's divinity too late and tries to pull him out of the flame, but falls into his own sword.
The narrative researcher Hans-Jörg Uther notes that the mythological comparison is too far-fetched and rather reveals something about Jacob Grimm's way of working. His brother left its derivations unchanged in later revisions of the annotation volume. With the episode, the narrator demonstrates his split between affection and reluctance, which leads to passivity and guilt. Also by Jung-Stilling come Grimm's fairy tales No. 69 Jorinde and Joringel (from Heinrich Stilling's youth ) and No. 78 The old grandfather and the grandson (from Heinrich Stilling's youth ).
literature
- Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Henrich Stilling's youth, adolescence, wandering and domestic life. Bibliographically amended edition. S. 137. Stuttgart 1997. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-000662-7 )
- Grimm, brothers. Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 660-661. 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. 245, 500. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )
- Rölleke, Heinz (Ed.): Grimm's fairy tales and their sources. The literary models of the Grimm fairy tales are presented synoptically and commented on. 2., verb. Edition, Trier 2004. pp. 228–229, 565. (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier; series of literature studies, vol. 35; ISBN 3-88476-717-8 )
- Uther, Hans-Jörg: Handbook to the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Berlin 2008. pp. 313-315. (de Gruyter; ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 )
