The three snake leaves

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The three snake leaves is a fairy tale ( ATU 612). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm from the 2nd edition from 1819 in place 16 (KHM 16).

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Because his father can no longer feed him, a young man goes into military service and wins the favor of the king through his bravery. He marries the beautiful but strange king's daughter, who makes it a condition that when one dies, the other is buried alive. When she becomes ill and dies, he sits next to her in the burial chamber at a table with four lights, four loaves of bread and four bottles of wine, which he keeps alive. When a snake approaches the corpse, he cuts it into three pieces. A second snake comes and heals the first with three leaves. He puts the leaves on his wife's mouth and eyes, she wakes up and both loudly announce that the king will free her.

A servant receives the three snake leaves for safekeeping. Since her awakening, the woman no longer seems to love her husband. On a boat trip to his father, she and the skipper throw the man overboard. The faithful servant follows him in a small ship and wakes him up with the leaves. They arrive before the others at the king, who hides them, to hear his daughter lying to him about her husband's whereabouts. As a punishment, she has to drift into the sea with the skipper in a pierced ship.

origin

According to Grimm's comment, the text follows two stories that differ only in insignificant ways from Hoof in Hesse and from a village in Paderborn . It is assumed that they come from Wachtmeister Krause or the von Haxthausen family . They also mention the Greek saga of Polyidos and Glaucus , a Hungarian tale about Taurus , Marie de Frances Lai Eliduc , the Nordic saga of Asmund and Aswit and 1001 Nights 2, 137. The change in woman's character apparently originally only shows that she is her forgot her past life.

According to Rudolf Schenda , the healing magic herb that humans get to know through an animal is first found in medieval encyclopedias and Marie de Frances Lai Eliduc . The resuscitation is similar to that of Glaucos by the seer Polyeidos in Greek myth. The living burial with food is reminiscent of the fourth voyage from Sindbad the Navigator in 1001 Nights , but also of the execution of unchaste vestals in ancient Rome.

In a Flensburg legend, catching a blue snake even leads to immortality, which proceeds from a crown worn by the blue snake, or to wealth if the crown were passed on to the king. Not far from Flensburg is Broager , where the legend of the snake leaf also exists, which was recorded by Gustav Friedrich Meyer and appeared in one of his books in 1929. This legend shows even more similarity to the fairy tale. The snakes are described much more dangerous in the legend.

interpretation

The king's daughter's strange request seems to mean that she wants her husband all to herself. Grimm's fairy tales know snakes as jealous and devious ( The King of the Golden Mountain , Snow White ). The righteous protagonist can, however, use their medicinal properties for good ( the white snake ). With her molting, she was also credited with the ability to rebirth and transform (see Jorinde and Joringel ). When comparing to remember also that the snake is often identical to Toad , dragon or serpent : Tale of the toad , The Three Little Men in the Wood , the singing, springing lark , The White Bride and the Black One . In The Two Brothers , the head of a dragon slayer is cut off by an ungodly person, later he himself cuts off the head of his faithful brother out of jealousy, whereby both are healed by a root.

Verena Kast interprets husband and wife as one-sidedly committed to paternal ideals of loyalty, which makes him naive and them ambivalent. Her possessive oath of love contains fearful thirst for revenge, marriage is an emotional grave. In the womb-like cave and force to life as the ambiguous snake symbol with the lay life herb and the shift from the number four (of bread, wine and candles. See Supper ) for dynamic Three of the snake pieces expresses the woman found in Schiffer probably one more natural partner. Unfortunately the decision is made in favor of law over relationship. The abandonment in a rudderless, leaky boat is the old Germanic punishment for the parricide (Bolte / Polivka, Notes on the KHM, Vol. I, 1963, p. 127). The psychotherapist Jobst Finke sees an outwardly harmonious relationship with a lot of pressure to commit, and one partner often falls ill psychosomatically. She is revived, but no longer loves him, maybe an affair could also revive the couple dynamic. The homeopath Martin Bomhardt compares the fairy tale with the drug picture of Vipera berus ( Adder ).

The literary scholar Michael Maar is surprised at the illogic that you need three sheets of paper for the snake cut in two places. Perhaps a new snake originally grew out of each piece, as in the hydra .

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. 126-129. 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. S. 38–39, S. 448. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )

Interpretations

  • Kast, Verena: Man and woman in fairy tales. A psychological interpretation. 2nd edition, Munich 1988. pp. 57-76. (dtv; ISBN 3-530-42101-4 )
  • Jobst Finke: dreams, fairy tales, imaginations. Person-centered psychotherapy and counseling with images and symbols. Reinhardt, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-497-02371-4 , pp. 206-207.

Web links

Wikisource: The Three Snake Leaves  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Giambattista Basile: The fairy tale of fairy tales. The pentameron. Edited by Rudolf Schenda. CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46764-4 , p. 524 (based on the Neapolitan text of 1634/36, completely and newly translated).
  2. ^ Röhrich, Lutz: Fairy tale - myth - legend. In: Siegmund, Wolfdietrich (ed.): Ancient myth in our fairy tales. Kassel 1984. p. 15. (Publications of the European Fairy Tale Society Vol. 6; ISBN 3-87680-335-7 )
  3. ↑ Gustav Friedrich Meyer : Schleswig-Holsteiner Sagen , Eugen Diederichs, Jena, 1929, page 61
  4. ↑ Kast, Verena: Man and woman in fairy tales. A psychological interpretation. Munich, 2nd edition, 1988. pp. 57-76. (dtv; ISBN 3-423-15038-6 )
  5. ^ Jobst Finke: Dreams, Fairy Tales, Imaginations. Person-centered psychotherapy and counseling with images and symbols. Reinhardt, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-497-02371-4 , pp. 206-207.
  6. ^ Martin Bomhardt: Symbolic Materia Medica. 3. Edition. Verlag Homeopathie + Symbol, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-9804662-3-X , p. 1407.
  7. ↑ http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/verarbeitung-von-grauenhaben-menschheitserfahrungen.954.de.html?dram:article_id=231769