ungreatfulness is the salary of the world

Ingratitude is the world's reward is a fairy tale ( AaTh 130). It is in Ludwig Bechstein's New German Fairy Tale Book at position 35.

content

A journeyman baker has to go because he's too honest. On the way he meets a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster, all rejected in old age. He lets the dog ride the donkey, then the cat and finally the rooster. So they storm a wedding, the landlord flees, he sneaks in at night, but the animals chase him away. In the morning the baker apologizes to him, they live together in the inn.

origin

Bechstein compares Grimm's Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten . Hans-Jörg Uther sees structural similarities in Hans Sachs and Georg Rollenhagen . The text is full of proverbs - “Ingratitude is the world's wages!” The travelers agree. The donkey is first portrayed as an old man who introduces himself as a “poor old donkey”. The journeyman thinks the dog might be called "old Sultan" (as in The Old Sultan ) and knows a fairy tale The Grateful Animals . The donkey quotes Gottfried August Bürger's poem The donkeys and the nightingales :

“There are many donkeys who want
That nightingales should bear
The donkey's sacks back and forth;
I find it difficult to say whether rightly so.
I know this: nightingales want
Not that the donkeys should sing. "

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. 210-218, 294.

Web links

• Ingratitude is the world's reward in the Gutenberg-DE project

Individual evidence

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. 294.