Return of the husband

A narrative type ( Aarne-Thompson -Uther 974) is referred to as the homecoming of the husband , the focus of which is the unexpected return of the missing husband who (often miraculously) returns from a foreign country, identifies himself and the marriage of the wife with another can avert.

Both in the so-called folk tradition and in world literature , this material is extremely widespread - especially based on the homecoming of Odysseus ( Homer , Odyssey , 23). Uvo Hölscher sees it as an ancient world fairy tale .

This narrative scheme , wrote Ivan Tolstoy, occurs both in magical tales and in legends of a novelistic character, now in the form of a prosaic story, now in song form, in simple popular genres and at the same time in literary works of art .

The term Return Song has established itself for the narrative scheme - mainly influenced by the work of Albert B. Lord and John M. Foley .

Examples

• Caesarius von Heisterbach , Exempel VIII, 59.
• Ballad vom Moringer (first reprinted in modern form in 1794)
• Boccaccio , Decamerone : Day 10, 9th story: Saladin, disguised as a merchant, is generously entertained by Messer Torello. The crusade takes place. Messer Torello asks his wife a period before which she should not remarry. He's taken prisoner. By training falcons, the Sultan hears from him, who recognizes him and, after he has also revealed himself, does him the highest honors. Messer Torello falls ill and is transported by magical arts over the course of one night to Pavia, where his wife's wedding is being celebrated. He is recognized by her and returns home with her.
• Story of the Nebelmännle from Bodman
• Brothers Grimm , Deutsche Sagen No. 444 Carl's homecoming from Ungerland (after Jans der Enikel )

Representation in Schambach / Müller

In their Lower Saxony sagas , published in 1855 , Georg Schambach and Wilhelm Müller gave a description of the subject, whose mythologizing speculations are useless today, but which summarizes some important evidence. Abstract:

II. The journey to the east.

Several German legends tell of a hero who spends a long time in a distant country, usually in the Orient. His wife, who has been left behind, considers him dead and is about to marry someone else; then the husband, believed dead, returns quickly in a wonderful way and reveals himself to her as alive. Among the legends that belong here, the well-known of Heinrich the Lion, the sources of which Gödeke last discussed in his Reinfried von Braunschweig (p. 75), occupies the first place because of its completeness. We share it with the old poem by Michel Wyssenhere, printed in Maßmanns Denkmälern, p. 122, which, of course, speaks only in general terms of a Prince of Brunswick, not of Henry the Lion. This prince once dreamed that he should visit the holy grave. His wife tries in vain to dissuade him from this undertaking. He says goodbye to her and leaves her half of his ring as a souvenir. After many adventures in the distant Orient, which we pass over here, he comes under the angry army, where the evil spirits have their home. He implores one of them who meets him to tell him how things are at home with his wife and children. The ghost replies: "Braunschweig, you should know that your wife wants to take another husband." Then the prince implores him to bring him and his lion to his castle. The spirit agrees on the condition that the prince should belong to him if he finds him sleeping as soon as he brings the lion after him. He then leads the prince quickly through the air in front of his castle; when he comes with the lion, he finds him asleep. But the animal roars so loudly that the prince wakes up. When he comes to his own, he stands there with long hair draped around his neck, as if he were a wild man. Nobody recognizes him, not even his wife. When she offers him something to drink at the wedding supper, he drops half the ring into the glass, whereupon she recognizes him again and asks for forgiveness.

That is the main content of the strange legend with which Wackernagel and Gödeke already put together the even older poem by Reinfried von Braunschweig. There, too, the hero goes to the Orient and leaves half of a ring to his wife beforehand. But the poem is unfinished, so that we can only guess at a similar conclusion. However, we recognize the main features of the legend in several other stories, which differ almost only through links to other people and places, as well as through a few secondary circumstances.

First of all, the legend of Gerhard von Holenbach comes into consideration, which Caesarius von Heisterbach (8, 59) tells. He venerated the apostle Thomas so that he would not refuse any poor person who asked him for a gift in his name. One day the devil asks him in the form of a pilgrim in the name of the apostle for a hospitable reception. He grants it and gives the stranger a coat for the night, with which he disappeared the following day. Later Gerhard decides to go to India to see St. Thomas. At the farewell he gives his wife half of a ring and, if he has not returned in five years, allows her to remarry. The last day of the deadline has already appeared and Gerhard is still in India. Then he sees the demon he had taken in earlier in his cloak. The latter informed him that he had been ordered to bring him home before going to bed, because his wife was about to marry someone else. He then brought him back to Germany on the same day. Gerhard enters his house looking wild (sicut barbarus), throws half of the ring into her cup for his wife, who is eating with the second husband, whereupon she recognizes him and dismisses the new fiancé.

This is followed by the legend of the noble Möringer, which agrees very much with the previous one. Only the Möringer stays away for seven years and returns in a different way than his wife is about to marry Herr von Neufen, whose care she was recommended. An angel informs the Möringer of this danger in a dream; when he wakes up he is near his castle.

In Swabia there is another form of the legend (Meier M. 61), which has turned into a fairy tale. A Lord of Bodman travels to the end of the world after asking his wife to wait for him for seven years. At last he comes to a place in a great desert that is surrounded by a high wall. He lets his servant climb up, but when he can see the land behind the wall, he only waves his hand and disappears. His coachman does it that way because behind the wall was the paradise garden. The gentleman now remains behind alone and comes to a small house in which an ogre known as the fog man lives. This announces to him that his wife is about to hold a wedding with someone else and takes him home in one night through the air. When he comes to his castle, nobody recognizes him, not even his wife, until he reveals himself through his wedding ring. This is true of the legend that Gottschalk tells in his German folk tales (1, p. 136) about a Swabian gentleman, Kuno von Falkenstein. Only this is carried away by the devil, who has assumed the form of a lion. If he falls asleep on the way, he should belong to the devil, but he is kept awake by a hawk. In the form in which Meier (N. 362) gives the same legend, neither the ring scene nor the wall of paradise occurs.

In other legends, Hungary takes the place of the most distant countries in the Orient. So initially again in a Swabian (Meier 373. DS 525). Count Ulrich von Buchhorn, of the family of Charlemagne and married to a niece of Heinrich the Vogelstellers, goes to war with the Hungarians, but is captured by the enemy and taken to Hungary. His wife, who thinks he is dead, goes to a monastery. Ulrich returns as a beggar in ragged clothes until he is recognized and reunited with his wife. But the legend was not only attached to one of Karl's descendants, but also to himself. When Karl moves to Hungary, he vows to his wife that he will return home in ten years; if he were not there after this time, she should consider his death to be certain. But if he will send his golden ring through a messenger, then may she trust in everything that he has delivered to her through this. When he stayed away for nine years, the greats of the country talk to the empress until she promises to take another husband. The wedding is about to be celebrated in three days when an angel announces to the emperor how things are at home. He is now riding two strong horses from Hungary to Aachen. There he sits down in the cathedral, where his appearance first arouses terror, but is soon recognized2. In the Spanish saga, which Grimm (D. Mythol. 980) cites, Karl rides a devil who has turned into a horse, one night from the Orient to France.

A Swabian legend that still belongs here (DS 524. Meier 369) differs in some points from the other stories. A Count Hubert von Calw leaves his wife, goes to Switzerland in bad clothes and becomes a shepherd in a village. Although the cattle thrive under his supervision, the peasants drop him off because it annoys them that he always grazes on the same mountain. He goes back to Calw, where his wife is having a wedding with someone else. He asks her for a cup of wine, drops his golden wedding ring into it and then returns to his village, where the cattle are entrusted to him again.

On the other hand, we find legends outside of Germany which agree in the main features with the others. Bosquet p. 463. 469 gives three corresponding stories from Normandy. One that we particularly emphasize tells of a gentleman from Baqueville who goes on a crusade and is captured by the Saracens. After spending nearly seven years in slavery, he vows to build a church for St. Julian if he would rescue him from misery. He falls asleep on it. When he woke up after a few hours, he found himself in front of his castle, where his wife, who thought he was dead, was about to marry again. He reveals himself to her by half of a ring, the other one he had left behind for her when he left. Then in the Decameron Boccaccio tells of an Italian nobleman who is quickly brought back from the Orient by a black artist to Pavia, where his wife is about to marry someone else. Here, too, the person thought to be dead can be recognized by a ring.

That all these stories, regardless of the changing locations, regardless of the different carriers of the events and the different design in detail, are correct in the main points and point to a common origin, is so clear that we do not need to prove it in detail.

To the ring motif

A ring is often used as a distinguishing mark.

Francis James Child , in his edition of English and Scottish Ballads, gave very detailed references to the ballad Hind Horn (No. 17).

literature

The order is chronologically descending.

• Walter Puchner: The Folklore of Southeast Europe . Vienna u. a. 2016, p. 49f. OAPEN .
• Walter Puchner: Three Greek Folk Ballads in their Balkan Context . In: Modern Greek Studies Online 2 (2016), S. A 67-90 moderngreek.org.uk .
• Hans-Jörg Uther: German fairy tale catalog . Münster 2015, p. 269.
• Jonathan L. Ready: ATU 974 The Homecoming Husband, the Returns of Odysseus, and the End of Odyssey 21 . In: Arethusa 47 (2014), pp. 265–285 | doi : 10.1353 / are.2014.0015 (license required ) = Academia.edu .
• Sabir Badalkhan: Lord of the Iron Bow ": The Return Pattern Motif in the Fifteenth-Century Baloch Epic Hero Sey Murid . In: Oral Tradition 19 (2004), pp. 253-298 Academia.edu .
• William Hansen: Ariadne's Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature . Itaca / London 2002, pp. 201-211 ("Homecoming Husband").
• Margaret Beissinger: Gender and Power in the Balkan Return Song. In: The Slavic and East European Journal 45. (2001), pp. 403-430.
• Otto Holzapfel : The husband's return home . In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales 6 (1990), Sp. 702-707.
• Uvo Hölscher: The last adventure. Reflections on the Odyssey. In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 60 (1986), pp. 521–542, especially pp. 524–528.
• Mary Coote: Lying in Passages. In: Canadian-American Slavic Studies 15 (1981), pp. 5-23
• Hinrich Siuts : folk ballads - folk tales. Motif and type register. In: Fabula 5 (1962), pp. 72-89, here p. 79.
• Leopold Kretzenbacher: Coming home from the pilgrimage. In: Fabula 1 (1958), pp. 214-227, here pp. 219f.
• Ivan Tolstoy: Some fairy tale parallels to the homecoming of Odysseus . In: Philologus 89 (1934), pp. 261-274.
• Gédéon Huet: Le retour merveilleux du mari. In: Revue des traditions populaires 32 (1917), pp. 97-109, 145-163 Gallica .
• Arthur L. Jellinek: The motif of the returning husband in German poetry . Handwritten Vienna dissertation 1903 Phaidra .
• Willy Splettstösser: The returning husband and his wife in world literature. Berlin 1898 Internet Archive . Additions by Jakob Minor: ALO .
• Marcus Landau: The sources of the decameron . Stuttgart 1884, pp. 193-204 Internet Archive .

Web links

• Reference by Felix Liebrecht to modern Greek folk song
• Ballad list, see heading Heimkehr
• Notes from Uhland in Germania 4, 1859, p. 73, see also p. 79

Individual evidence

1. ↑ p. 528.
2. ↑ p. 261
3. ↑ Quotation from physiologus.de ( Memento ).
4. ↑ https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Carls_Heimkehr_aus_Ungerland .
5. ↑ https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Graf_Hubert_von_Calw .
6. ↑ Schambach: Lower Saxony legends and fairy tales. ( Memento of the original from December 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Deutsche Märchen und Sagen, p. 41688 (see Schambach-Sagen, p. 389 ff. Google Books ). 
7. ↑ Text on sacred-texts.com and ff explanations p.194. . Younger German representation: Paul Leidig: Studies on King Horn . Dissertation Munich 1927, Borna-Leipzig 1927, pp. 56-100. The article Ring by Klaus Graf in the Enzyklopädie des Märchens Vol. 11 (2004), Sp. 691, extended online version contains further material .