Thimble
Thimble is a fairy tale . It is included in third place in the Irish fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm , which they translated from Fairy legends and traditions of the South of Ireland by Thomas Crofton Croker in 1825 .
content
The poor, good-natured straw weaver, called thimble, who has a terrible hump on his back, rests at night on the way from Cahir to Cappagh at the barrow of the mythical place Knockgrafton. Then he hears the elves' singing, which he finally complements in a pause. The elves entertain him at their party, take his hump and give him new clothes. People hardly recognize him. An old woman asks him for advice for her godmother's malicious, hunchbacked son, and carts him to the place. He shouts two additions to the elves' song. The evil elves give him a thimble, and he soon dies.
annotation
According to Grimm: Knockgraffan was a house of the kings of Munster . The song Dia Luain, Dia Mairt, agus Dia Ceadaoine is called Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, for which a melody is handed down. With thimble is meant the plant that u. a. to resemble the hats of the elves.
The text corresponds to the normal form for the legend-like fairy tale type AaTh 503 Gaben der Small Volk , which is documented 383 times , especially in the Celtic language area , in Ireland alone, but also across the Orient to Japan. Cf. KHM 182 The Gifts of the Little People .
The band Adas set the fairy tale to music as The Legend of Knockgrafton .
literature
- Irish fairy tales. In the broadcast by the Brothers Grimm. Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig, first edition 1987. pp. 111-117, 250-251. (Insel Verlag; ISBN 978-3-458-32688-5 ; The text follows the edition: Irische Elfenmärchen. Translated by the Brothers Grimm. Friedrich Fleischer, Leipzig 1826. Orthography and punctuation were slightly normalized.)
- Uther, Hans-Jörg: Gifts of the small people. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 5. pp. 637-642. Berlin, New York, 1987.
Web links
(Version 1882)
- Zeno.org: "Thimble" (version 1892)
- Zeno.org: "Thimble Explanations"