The twelve hunters
The twelve hunters is a fairy tale ( ATU 884, 313). It is in the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm in place 67 (KHM 67). In the first edition it was called The King with the Lion .
content
A king's son gives his bride a souvenir ring when he has to ride to his dying father. He makes him promise to marry someone else. The first bride lets her father put eleven virgins at her side, who are completely like her, and rides with them in hunter's clothes to her lover. He takes them into service because he likes them. His wise lion sees through the disguise and has him throw peas into the anteroom to prove it and set up twelve spinning wheels. But a servant reveals it to the bride, and she instructs the girls to step firmly on the peas and not look at the spinning wheels, so that the king no longer believes the lion. When they hunt together and it is said that the king's bride is coming, the real bride passes out from her horse. The king wants to help, takes off her glove, sees the ring, recognizes her, kisses her and promises her loyalty: "You are mine and I am yours, and no one in the world can change that." He lets the other bride say, "He already has a wife, and whoever has found an old key does not need the new one."
origin
In the 1st edition from 1812 the fairy tale was called The King with the Lion , from the 2nd edition from 1819 it is under the current title with a few changes. It is assumed that it comes from Jeanette Hassenpflug , as Wilhelm Grimm noted in his personal copy. The saying that it “almost turned the heart off of the first bride” originates from legal practice. “You are mine and I am yours” is an engagement formula that is frequent in medieval and later folk literature (cf. KHM 94 , 127 ). The key parable is reminiscent of the Middle High German opening poem to Des Minnesang's Spring .
Grimm's comment notes on the origin “from Hesse” and mentions the motif of the forgotten first bride, for whose frequent occurrence in legends “the reason lies deep”, the children's and house fairy tales The Dearest Roland and the singing jumping lion , “Shower manta forgets the Sacontala und Sigurd die Brünhild ”, in Basiles Pentameron 3,6 The Garlic Forest . Further examples would be Grimm's De Zwei Künigeskinner , The Iron Stove , The Drummer , The True Bride , Prince Swan , and The Mermaid in the Pond , in Ludwig Bechstein's Siebenschön .
symbolism
The ring as an eternal promise of marriage or identification also occurs in The Seven Ravens , The Raven , The Bearskin , and indirectly in The Robber Bridegroom , The Three Feathers , Jorinde and Joringel , The Old Woman in the Forest . The hunter is deeply psychologically sexually interpretable (as in The trained hunter , The mermaid in the pond ), sown peas symbol for fertility . For the anthroposophist Rudolf Meyer , virgins are undisguised soul forces that have to approach as deceptive forms, what the lion, the wisdom of the heart's forces, sees through. The spinning wheel , perhaps a sign of domesticity, indicated according Friedel Lenz on a thought process.
literature
- Grimm, Brothers: Children's and Household Tales . Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 377-380. 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. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. p. 129, p. 472. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )
- Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbook to the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 , pp. 161-162.
- Heinz Rölleke, Albert Schindehütte: Once upon a time…. The true fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and who told them. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-8218-6247-7 , p. 306.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbook on the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm. de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 , pp. 161-162.
- ↑ Heinz Rölleke, Albert Schindehütte: Once upon a time…. The true fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and who told them. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-8218-6247-7 , p. 306.
- ↑ Lothar Bluhm and Heinz Rölleke: “Popular speeches that I always listen to”. Fairy tale - proverb - saying. On the folk-poetic design of children's and house fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. New edition. S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-7776-0733-9 , p. 94.
- ^ Rudolf Meyer: The wisdom of German folk tales. Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1963, pp. 114–115.
- ^ Friedel Lenz: Visual language of fairy tales. 8th edition. Free Spiritual Life and Urachhaus publishing house, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-87838-148-4 , p. 253.