Give a basket
The idioms " get a basket " , "get a basket" , "give someone a basket" or "fall through the basket" means that someone will be turned away if they propose to be in love or to marry .
middle Ages
The phrase “to fall through the basket” has its origins in the following medieval custom : A lady courted by a suitor often pulled her up to the window in a basket after the request. She was able to demonstrate her negative attitude to him by lowering a basket with a loose base. This broke when pulled up. The motif of the loving suitor, who lets himself be pulled up by his beloved in a basket, was widespread in many songs and stories in the Middle Ages and always ends the same way: the person being courted promises to hear the suitor and let him into bed - but mentions the condition that he can be pulled up to her window in a basket. Either the loosened ground then breaks and the suitor falls to the ground or the beloved lets him fall back in the basket from a great height - as described, for example, in the folk song “Der werbende Schreiber” from the 16th century ( Uhland , Volkslieder ).
In a further variation of the motif, the wooed lady lets the basket with her suitors hang halfway up her window, whereupon it becomes a mockery of the people the next morning. This is where the saying "let someone hang (in the air)" is based.
“Falling through the basket” for being turned away by a suitor is a saying already familiar to the medieval mastersinger Hans Sachs (1494–1576), who praised the process described above as follows:
"But if he thinks he is standing firmly / take them to the Eh / than then he fell through the basket spot-white in front of all Gantz / (...)."
In Sachs, the form for the female gender would mean “falling through the sieve”.
Modern times
The dictionary of the Brothers Grimm , begun in the 19th century, describes the origin of the idiom “give the basket”, “get the basket” and the associated verb “baskets” as follows:
“For 'give the basket', get the basket, get the basket; (...) in the Eifel, baskets are carried out as a popular honor punishment for those who do not marry their beloved but another girl; 'You take a basket from which the floor has been removed, and the boys drag the girl, the girls the young man, who has missed his bridal item, through it by sticking the basket over his head'. "
Meyers Konversationslexikon in the 4th edition (1885-1892) locates the origin of the saying “give someone a basket” from the earlier custom of girls to give their negative answer in the form of a basket. The phrase probably originated from the return of the "Corbeille de mariage" to the groom. According to Meyers Konversationslexikon, “Corbeille de mariage” can be translated as “bride present”, which the groom presented as a decorated basket with the corresponding content, according to French custom.
regional customs
Another alternative to the origin of the idiom may come from another old custom described by the writer Karl Immermann (1796–1840) at least similarly for Westphalia, which is often documented with slight modifications for other areas of Germany: a man wanted to set off make a courtship, he had this course and its probable date indicated by a middleman with the bride's father. This gave the bride's father's family time to deliberate on the potential applicant. If the bride's father did not want him to be his son-in-law, he placed a woven basket in a suitable place on the house or at the entrance to the courtyard. If the suitor saw this basket from a distance, he knew that his courtship would be hopeless; he had "got a basket" and was able to immediately go home without losing face. In the Dithmarschen region, a shovel was used as a symbol instead of a basket; consequently, the saying “ get a shovel” / “get a shovel” was passed down as an alternative until the early 20th century .
In a broadcast in April 2008, Deutschlandradio Kultur derives the origin of the expression from the “basket dance” in Low German, in which a girl willing to dance sits on a chair with a basket in her lap. If it is nice enough, there are easily two applicants. She offers one of them the basket, the other her hand to dance. After all, the rejected person is allowed to sit down and wait with the basket: for two maids.
Jumping through the basket was also an honor penalty for lighter offenses and has been handed down , for example, for the Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg .
The same applies to the punishment of fraudsters in Switzerland. Already in the Chronicon Helveticum of Aegidius Tschudi states: In such a basket to put people who others had cheated and gave them neither food nor drink. The Pfister Wackerbold was accused of this offense and set in the city of Zurich in a hurry, which was a basket that was pulled up and under which there was an "unsubre desolate puddle of water". If he jumped or fell out of there, everyone could see by his dirty clothes that he had "fucked up". In revenge for the ridicule of the bystanders, Wackerbold is said to have set fire to the city and left. As a punishment, people were placed in an often bottomless basket and hung over a river so that they had to jump into the water to free themselves. "[...] with a basket in which you put someone, to whom you show grace and still want to punish. you read the same thing as at the Galtbrunnen (draw well) popping up in a basket ... then someone has to jump into the water if he wants to get out of the basket differently. […] Elsewhere the basket was set up with a floor that fell through or without a floor […] should a garden vermin either with the basket falling through or with the reference "
Others
Failure to pass an exam also means “failing” is a shortening of “failing”.
Individual evidence
- ↑ basket. In: E. Götzinger (Ed.): Reallexicon of German antiquities. Leipzig 1885, pp. 526-527 ( zeno.org ).
- ^ The collection of proverbs of Friedrich Peters. In: Anzeiger für customer of the German prehistory. Sp. 373 ( Text Archive - Internet Archive ).
- ↑ basket 4) idioms lead to the moral history with basket a). In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 11 : K - (V). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1873, Sp. 1800–1803 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
- ↑ give basket . In: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon . 6th edition. Volume 11, Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig / Vienna 1907, p. 481 .
- ^ Johann Georg Theodor Grasse : Jump through the basket . In: The legends of the Kingdom of Saxony . tape 2 . Schönfeld, Dresden 1874, p. 372 .
- ↑ Aegidius Tschudi : Chronicon Helveticum Lib. 4, ad ann. 1285, p. 188.
- ↑ basket 4) b). In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 11 : K - (V). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1873, Sp. 1803 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).