Girl killer

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Girl Murderer is a German folk ballad that works on an exciting, horrific story with the international narrative of the Knight Bluebeard .

Text start of two variants

1. A butcher probably wants to cross the lake;
what does he start: a new song,
a little song in a clear voice, it
should sound over mountains and valleys.

2. That belongs to the king his little daughter
in her father's little castle.
"Oh, I can only sing like that [that?],
If I were all maidens' s the same."

3. "Young lady, will you go with me,
out there in the woods I stand seven locks,
there I will teach you sing, it
should sound over mountains and valleys. "
[...]

12 stanzas, sung by Charles Kuhn, Weisweiler, Saargemünd (Lorraine, France), 1936.

1. Heinrich wants to go for a walk,
Radinchen also wants to go with him.

2. And when Heinrich came into the forest,
Radinchen came towards him.

3. Heinrich took off his coat,
Radinchen lay down on it.
[...]

14 stanzas, recorded as a play song among German-speaking settlers from Volhynia (Russia), 1944.

Plot of the folk ballad

Action elements of different variants are in round brackets (compare variability (folk poetry) ), explanatory additions in square brackets. - The king's daughter (Helena, Fridburg, Anneli, Radinchen) would like to go with Mr. Halewijn (Gert Olbert, Schön Heinrich) (with a robber "across the Rhine" [into a foreign land]; the rider Ulinger (a butcher) sings at the shutter Song with three voices [magical, beguiling song]).

Father, mother and sister advise against [dialogues are an important stylistic element of the folk ballad], the brother is reminiscent of the maiden wreath. But she puts on her best clothes, arranges her hair and rides off. (He swings her on his horse, rides her “across the heath” [kidnapping formula] or “took her by her snow-white hand”, grabs her by the belt [and similar epic kidnapping formulas ]).

In the middle of the forest she finds Mr. Halewijn (warn pigeons and blood-red spring water). They come to the gallows forest, where women are hung up (they rest, he spreads his coat). Before she dies, she is supposed to take off her beautiful dress; on the other hand it tries to buy time. She wants to blow the horn, wash his hair (louse), do three screams [retarding tension-increasing moments] (the brother comes and confronts the murderer, he kills the girl murderer [to be added in part; astonishingly, such a detail is for many Texts apparently unimportant] and saves them).

She is saved and returns [illogically] to the castle, where Halewijn's mother (Mrs. Jutte) is amazed at the severed head that the bride has on her lap. The head is shown at the table. - (The girl killer kills her; the killer is fried like a fish [archaic formula for a macabre punishment].)

Lore

The active tradition of this folk ballad extends from the 16th to the 19th century. There are printed song pamphlets (see leaflet ) from Augsburg and Nuremberg around 1560/1570 "Es rytt gut Reuter through the Ried ..." and from Basel around 1570/1605 "Gut Reuter, who rides through the Ried, he sang a beautiful day song ..."

In Low German one sang, among other things, "Wel will met Gert Olbert utriden gon, the mot sick dress in velvet and silk ..." (compare Ludwig Uhland 1842); the submission to Herder in 1777 is also in Low German. In Bökendorf, Westphalia, in 1813 they sang "A margrave wants to ride out ...", in 1879 ( Alexander Reifferscheid No. 16 to 18) "Proud Syburg, he wants to go free ...", "And when I came across green Haide ..." and "A rider went well across the Rhine ..."

International parallels

This folk ballad is widespread and in German, Low German and Dutch (song type: van Duyse No. 1) has been passed down frequently since the 16th century and also in many cases internationally (song type: European Folk Ballads No. 3). In France it is called "Renaud le Tueur de Femmes" (song type: Doncieux No. 30) and there, too, is reminiscent of the bluebeard theme. In English we know the parallel "Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight" (song type: Child No. 4), and here too the murderer has traits of an unearthly demon (he sings simultaneously with different voices or "from a clear voice", see above) that the king's daughter even thinks it is a woman).

Much has been written about this folk ballad; it is widely published and belongs to the song types widespread throughout Europe (also Italian song type: Nigra No. 13, Spanish, Slovenian song type: Kumer No. 169 and Slovenske ljudske pesmi No. 64, Hungarian song type: Vargyas No. 3 and more often) . In Dutch it is called "Heer Halewijn", German also "Ulinger", "Schön Heinrich", "Mariechen sat on a stone ..." (as child's play) and similar. The plot is divided into several scenes, which result in a highly dramatic sequence.

Different German language versions and variants

“A knight rode through the reed, Juchhe! He probably started a new song ... “is documented by Briegleb as a student song repertoire around 1830; the song was taken from the area of ​​the Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection (Volume 1, 1806, p. 274 “Ulrich once rode out for a walk ...”), where it is from the Herder collection in 1778/1779. The variant noted by the Brothers Grimm , "It sits well knight and rode ..." (cf. Grimm, Volkslieder, Volume 1, 1985, pp. 71–73) is referred to as "Vienna 1815", but can possibly be backdated in Bohemia around 1775.

According to Georg Amft in 1911, people in Silesia sang "A couple in love went ...". Hans Breuer's Zupfgeigenhansl , 1913/1930, p. 65 f., Probably reprints it after Georg Scherer (1868). It is in the Kaiserliederbuch (1915) as a “Nassau folk song”. In the Lautenlied (1931, 1939) the text begins with “Es ritt ein Reiter…” and also in other song books from the Wandervogel and the Bündische Jugend (there also: “There were three singers who crossed the Rhine. They sang a funny little song… ").

Attempts are made to divide the list of traditions into the Dutch-Low German form 1783 and the version from Westphalia in 1813 with "Halewijn", into an older German form based on song pamphlets around 1550 and finally into an overflowing, over-rich landscape tradition with different focuses (e.g. three screams , the girl will be saved). Another, more recent German form has come down to us in 1777 and also leads to an extensive landscape tradition (three screams, the girl is killed). Then there are the after-effects in children's games (also: Berta im Walde).

The landscape allocation of individual variants ( variability ), the tracking of rows of prints and generally the identification of individual versions is a puzzle game with many unknowns.

Mariechen sat on a stone

"Mariechen sat on a stone ...", "Anna sat on a wide stone ...", "As the beautiful Anna ...", "Bertha im Walde ..." and similar is the beginning of the song of a widespread and very often handed down children's game, its connection to the folk ballad of the girl killer is loose, but still clear. It is not uncommon for a children's song to be found at the end of the chain of tradition of a folk ballad. In the 1890s, this song was made into the fairy tale song Sleeping Beauty Was a Beautiful Child .

In his novel Disorder and Early Suffering (1926), which describes the situation in the Mann family with their teenage children in an autobiographical manner, Thomas Mann ironically quoted “the terribly tidy ballad of Mariechen, who sat on a stone, a stone, a stone and herself combed her golden hair, golden hair, golden hair. And Rudolf, who pulled out a knife, knife out, knife out, and with whom it came to a terrible end. "

The song "Mariechen sat on a stone ..." also plays an important role in the detective novel The Promise by Friedrich Dürrenmatt .

Notes on interpretation

Text sense and wording

The aim is not a philological-Germanistic interpretation that has the narrow wording of a single, authorized text as its content. In a folkloristic (compare folklore , folklore ) explanation of the type of song, the multitude of variants ( variability (folk poetry) ) must be taken into account, each with the same basic structure representing their story with very different details. Compared to the wording, the sense of the text is in the foreground.

This is about seduction and attempted murder, even if this is no longer apparent from some short forms that were broken during the apparently long tradition. Much is contradicting itself, some is told in a downright sophisticated way. Since the knight is sorry for the beautiful dress, she should take it off. When he politely looks to the side, she draws his sword. In another variant, she is actually murdered; thus the (alleged) narrative core is “completely missed”, as one interpreter thinks. However, folk ballads are hardly logically comprehensible. Feelings of fear and horror should be conveyed here (and thus perhaps also processed) more than facts.

One variant has a special character through the chorus-like repetition of the line "It should sound over mountain and valley". For example, you can sing a happy hunter's song, and much of the demonic tone of older recordings can no longer be felt here. Another variant from Lorraine is “bourgeoisie”, the murderer is a butcher. The fact that in Lorraine one should not trust someone who comes “from the Rhine” can have a regional contrast to the background. But it is probably just a strange butcher "from afar" with whom one should rather not go into the forest. The murderer story gets the moralizing aftertaste of an everyday instruction.

Repetition and ritual

Even if it's mainly a murder story, it makes sense to let the girl die too. “Life” or “being dead” is “played” as a ritual (in the nursery rhyme). Subliminally to the learning of morally respected norms, this probably means that individual life is not worth much. The otherwise sympathetically weeping and finally rescued girl, called “Radinchen” in the text of German-speaking settlers from Volhynia (Russia) in 1944, hangs “dead on the oak tree”. This is how it was "played"! It is typical of the folk ballad in general in this variant that in stanza 13, after the screams of stanza 12, it anticipates in a punch-killing manner, so to speak, that Radinchen is already "hanging on the gallows". The folk ballad builds tension by other means.

Repetition is a basic principle of folk poetry. It is not the surprisingly new that is valued, but the recognition of traditional forms and familiar contents. Poetry is ritualized and thus an experience that creates community.

The gruesome plot itself is known to everyone and does not need to be tightened; Instead of a surprising representation, the folk ballad offers the ritual game of repeating known facts. These are tragic enough in themselves, and the fact that they cannot be prevented, that one cannot fall into the spokes of fate, is the “moral” lesson that one had to draw from them. Something like that was probably mentality-forming: Do not defend yourself, suffer your fate in silence.

Mentality and staging

The text reflects underlying mentalities . The fateful belief in an anonymous power, to which one feels defenseless, runs through the centuries. In this sense it is timeless and probably closely linked to the human psyche, where it does not seem emancipated by modern forms of Christian faith. The word comes from the Roman poet Horace (65–8 BC): “We fidget like jumping jacks on strange wires…” The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) coined the expression: “We don't go; we are pushed like driftwood, now gently, now violently, depending on whether the water is excited or flows smoothly. "

The folk ballad has a lot in common with the staging of a play on stage. Dialogues are recited by heart and stiffly. The characters act like marionettes, step by step they have to play their part. In addition, there is a high degree of stylization of the narrative content and a strong formalization through the strophic and scenic structure and through the stereotypical language (compare epic formula ). Form and content correspond; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was rightly fascinated by this coherence of epic, lyric and drama. All of this also seems to be particularly characteristic of a certain epoch of the late Middle Ages about which Johan Huizinga wrote ( Autumn of the Middle Ages , 1919/1941). Fate becomes a game, a game becomes a story: the folk ballad with the story of the girl murderer is just one example of this; it touched adults and children.

Ritualized game

The played song story is repeated in a modified form in the popular and formerly traditional children's play song of "Mariechen sat on a stone ..." It has been considered a special sign of an "ancient" ballad when it has developed "to a children's song". In any case, it has undergone a remarkable development before it underwent such a milieu and functional change. Only the wide-ranging comparison of variants makes the connection between the extremely different texts understandable. In the ritualized children's game, the plot becomes even drier and less emotional. The weeping girl “died long ago”. There is no mention of the supernatural power of the knight Bluebeard, but the game remains a warning against the black man, who is here associated with an ensign (otherwise regarded as exemplary at the time).

Literature (selection)

  • Anton Anderluh : Carinthia's treasure of folk songs , Volume II / 1, Klagenfurt 1966, song no. 4 (with extensive information) and no. 5 (Mariechen sat on a stone ..; compare Gert Glaser: Die Kärntner Volksballade , Klagenfurt 1975, pp. 71-83, "A knight rode over the reed ..." with commentary).
  • Otto Holzapfel: Folk motto and folk ballad. The neighborhood of German and Scandinavian texts , Munich 1976 (pp. 54 and 58; Danish song type DgF 183, Scandinavian song type TSB D 411).
  • For the Spanish parallels compare the song type: Armistead O 2 “Rico Franco” and Samuel G. Armistead, Joseph H. Silverman, The Judeo-Spanish Ballad Chapbooks of Yacob Abraham Yoná , Berkeley / CA 1971, pp. 252-254.
  • Helmut Glagla: The Low German Song Book , Munich 1982, No. 42.
  • Hans-Jörg Uther (on the prose versions of the Bluebeard story). In: Swiss Archives for Folklore 84 (1988), pp. 35–54 (Perrault, Grimm, Bechstein, Wieland, Musäus and so on).
  • Otto Holzapfel : The great German folk ballad book , Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2000, pp. 230–240 (with commentary).
  • Hans-Jörg Uther: The Types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography , Vol. 1-3, Helsinki 2004 (FFC 284-286), No. 312 (Maiden-Killer, Bluebeard).
  • Monika Szczepaniak: Men in Blue. Bluebeard Pictures in German-Language Literature , Böhlau, Cologne 2005.
  • Otto Holzapfel: Liedverzeichnis , Volume 1–2, Olms, Hildesheim 2006 (entries on “A knight probably rode through the Ried, Juchhe!…”, “Three singers probably crossed the Rhine…”, “Mariechen was sitting on a stone ... "," Wel will met Gert Olbert utriden gon ... "with further information; ISBN 3-487-13100-5 ) = Otto Holzapfel : Song index : The older German-language popular song tradition . Online version since January 2018 on the homepage of the Volksmusikarchiv des Bezirks Oberbayern (in PDF format; further updates planned), see song file “Wel will mit Gert Olbert utriden ...” and references there; see. Lexicon file "Girl murderer Hiasl".