Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version [S.S. Col.] [Fairy Tales col.] by Pullman Philip

Author:Pullman, Philip [Pullman, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fairy Tales, Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, Children's literature
ISBN: 9781101601037
Publisher: Viking / Penguin
Published: 2012-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

As he said that, the bird threw down the little red shoes.

‘Keewitt! Keewitt! You’ll never find

A prettier bird than me!’

Marleenken put on the shoes, and found they fitted her perfectly. She was delighted, and she danced and skipped into the house and said, ‘Oh, what a beautiful bird! I was so sad when I went out, and see what he’s given me! Mama, look at these lovely shoes!’

‘No! No!’ cried the woman. She jumped to her feet, and her hair stood out all round her head like flames of fire. ‘I can’t stand any more! I feel as if the world were coming to an end! I can’t stand it!’

And she ran out of the door and out on to the grass, and – bam! The bird dropped the millstone on her head, and she was crushed to death.

The father and Marleenken heard the crash and ran out. Smoke and flames and fire were rising from the spot, and then came a breath of wind and cleared them all away; and when they were gone, there was little brother standing there.

And he took his father by one hand and Marleenken by the other, and all three of them were very happy; and so they went inside their house and sat down at the table and ate their supper.

***

Tale type: ATU 720, ‘The Juniper Tree’

Source: a story written by Philipp Otto Runge

Similar stories: Katharine M. Briggs: ‘The Little Bird’, ‘The Milk-White Doo’, ‘Orange and Lemon’, ‘The Rose Tree’ (Folk Tales of Britain)

For beauty, for horror, for perfection of form, this story has no equal. Like ‘The Fisherman and His Wife’, it is the work of the painter Philipp Otto Runge, and came to the Grimms in manuscript form and in the Pomeranian dialect of Plattdeutsch or Low German.

A comparison with the several versions of the story in Katharine M. Briggs’s Folk Tales of Britain will show how much Runge improved the basic thread of the narrative. Her versions are thin and insubstantial: this is a masterpiece.

The prelude, with its lovely evocation of the seasons changing as the wife’s pregnancy develops, associates the child in her womb with the regenerative powers of nature, and especially with the juniper tree itself. After the mother’s death comes the first part of the story proper, the gruesome tale of the stepmother and the little boy up to the appearance of the bird, which would be simple Grand Guignol were it not for the unusual depths of malice shown in the character of the mother. The parallels with Greek drama (Atreus feeding Thyestes his own sons) and Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus feeding Tamora hers) are interesting too. The father’s eating the son is capable of many interpretations: a student of mine once suggested that the father is unconsciously aware of the threat posed to his son by the stepmother, and is putting him in a place where he’ll be perfectly safe. I thought that was ingenious.

After the horror of the first part of the story proper, everything is sunshine and light.

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