Scrape the trunk

Sgraffito in the inner courtyard of the house at Czerningasse 7a in Vienna

Schab the trunk is a fairy tale ( AaTh 361). It is in Ludwig Bechstein's New German Fairy Tale Book at position 29.

content

A beggar goes away empty-handed despite a large crowd, because he wants to beg the devil. He comes in a hunter's dress, makes a pact with him, and gives him a rasp. He always scrapes his mouth with it in the morning and says "Scrape the trunk", and pieces of gold fall out. It makes him very sore and is constantly bandaged. If someone mocks him, the rasp moves, "Scrape the trunk", over his mouth. People soon think that he has a gold mouth that he scrapes off, he is so rich. He is building a house, and above the entrance it says "To the Schab den Rüssel". After seven years the devil comes and wants to get him, according to the pact, but he rasps his mouth until he surrenders the pact.

origin

Bechstein notes on Schab the trunk : “The name of a house in Vienna, hence the vernacular there; Hints of the fairy-tale element in: Emil: Romantic-historical sketches from Austria's pre-world, Vienna, 1837, but there extremely poor, dull and without point. ”According to Hans-Jörg Uther , the source cannot be determined. The narrator traces the word "shabby" for a stingy rich man back to history. The devil in the hunter's costume seems to be influenced by Grimm's fairy tale Der Bärenhäuter , which Bechstein also adopted as Rupert the Bärenhäuter in German Fairy Tale Book . The rasp looks rather out of place. A drinking brother thinks he must have "kissed the devil's grandmother", as in the title of Grimm's fairy tale The Devil and His Grandmother . The red feather may come from Der Grabhügel , the "Hungarian Wine" from The Poor Boy in the Grave .

literature

Hans-Jörg Uther (Ed.): Ludwig Bechstein. New German fairy tale book. After the edition of 1856, text-critically revised and indexed. Diederichs, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-424-01372-2 , pp. 172-179, 292.

Web links

Scrape the trunk in the Gutenberg-DE project

Individual evidence

^ Hans-Jörg Uther (Ed.): Ludwig Bechstein. New German fairy tale book. After the edition of 1856, text-critically revised and indexed. Diederichs, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-424-01372-2 , p. 292.

[1] Hans-Jörg Uther (Ed.): Ludwig Bechstein. New German fairy tale book. After the edition of 1856, text-critically revised and indexed. Diederichs, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-424-01372-2 , p. 292.