How children played slaughter with each other
How children played slaughter with each other is the title of two stories ( ATU 1343 *). In the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, they were only in the 1st edition of 1812 in place 22 (KHM 22a). There the title was written How children played slaughter with each other .
content
In Franeker in West Friesland , five- and six-year-old children play battles with different roles: butcher, cook, pig, cook, sub-cook. The butcher tears the sow down and cuts its throat, the under cook collects the blood in a bowl. A councilor sees this and takes the butcher with him. The council sits in court. On the advice of an old wise man, the judge holds out an apple and a guilder to the child. It takes the apple and is recognized as innocent.
Two children watch their father slaughter a pig. In the afternoon one of them tries to replay it on his brother and sticks the knife in his throat. The mother hears the screaming, pulls out the knife and thrusts it in the heart of the other child in anger. Meanwhile, her little child is drowning in the bathroom. She is heartbroken and hangs herself. The man comes home, sees it and shortly afterwards dies of grief.
criticism
Achim von Arnim criticized the texts as too cruel and seductive for children to imitate. Wilhelm Grimm defended his mother's fairy tale that it had just made him cautious and fearful when playing games, but left it off from the 2nd edition.
literature
- Dieter Richter: How children played slaughter with each other (AaTh 2401). About the protection and sparing of children - in and before a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. In: Fabula. Zeitschrift für Erzählforschung 27 (1986), H. 1/2, 1-11.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Heinz Rölleke: Origin and publication history of the Grimm fairy tales. In: Brothers Grimm: Children's and Household Tales . 19th edition. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf and Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-538-06943-3 , p. 857.