The three lucky children
The three lucky children is a Schwank ( ATU 1650, 1202, 1281, 1651). From the second edition of 1819 onwards, it is at position 70 (KHM 70) in the children's and house tales by the Brothers Grimm .
content
A father inherits a rooster, a scythe and a cat to his three sons. That doesn't seem worth much, but they just have to look for a country where such things are still unknown. Each of the three is unsuccessful until he comes to an island. On the first, people don't know the time at night, the second try to harvest their grain with cannons that they set up next to the fields, and the third suffer from a mouse infestation. Each brother returns home with a donkey, horse or mule laden with gold.
After the departure of the third brother, people are frightened by the screams of the cat, thirsty from catching mice. The councilors send a noble boy to herald as a herald to ask them to vacate the castle or to show that violence is used against them. He misinterprets the cat's 'meow, meow' as 'absolutely, not at all'. The castle is set on fire, the cat escapes.
Explanations
The plot of the not wealthy but confident guy who makes his fortune is common to many fairy tales. Here, however, superficially wonderful or magical elements are missing. Instead, it's about the shrewdness of the brothers and above all about the stupidity of the people. They know cannons, but no scythe. Not only the price paid is greater with one than the other, but also their military rituals . Like many children's and house tales, it is a swank . At the same time, the last part characterizes the cat , which appears as a witch animal in other fairy tales (e.g. Jorinde and Joringel ). The swank fairy tale The Owl , but also The Moon , is very similar here.
The children's and house tales contain a whole series of short fabulous or inconsistent texts that seem to serve to characterize individual fairy tale creatures : the dog and the sparrow , the wolf and man , the fox and the cat , the fox and the geese , Tale of the toad , The fox and the horse .
origin
Grimm's remark quoted from the Pader Börni's (of family of Haxthausen ) and noticed the similarity with the mouse dog by the Lalenbürgern (Ch. 44) that eats what you beut her and they understand livestock and Leut . Furthermore, they quote a Latin passage from the Chronic of Albertus von Stade about a poor man who surpasses his rich merchant brother by selling two cats dearly in the right country. You also mention Serbian at Wus No. 7 and a similar English story by Wittington and his cat. ( The Famous and Remarkable History of Sir Richard Whittington ; Johann Eckenstein's Richard Whittington and his cat, or the virtue rewarded )
Hans-Jörg Uther names the earliest source for the sale of cocks, scythe and cats as Le Grand parangon des nouvelles nouvelles by Nicolas de Troyes (1535, no. 103). Then it occurs in various German Schwankbuch, z. B. Valentin Schumann's little night book .
literature
- Grimm, brothers. Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 384-387. 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. 131–132, 473. 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. 168-169. (de Gruyter; ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 )
