Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version by Philip Pullman

Author:Philip Pullman [Pullman, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2012-11-08T06:00:00+00:00

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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. At first we can’t understand what the bird is doing, but the golden chain and the red slippers are pretty, and the comedy of the goldsmith running out of the house and losing his own slipper is diverting. Finally we come to the mill, and the second part of the story ends with the bird improbably but convincingly flying away with the millstone as well as the slippers and the chain. Then we begin to understand.

The final part of the story is reminiscent of the climax of ‘The Fisherman and His Wife’, with the storm paralleling the climax of guilt and madness felt by the wife. This time, the storm is internal: the father and Marleenken feel nothing but delight and pleasure as the little boy is returned to them, while the mother is demented with terror.

There is an interesting point connected with the actual telling of this story, which bears out its literary nature. It matters a great deal to remember exactly the sequence of events as the woman’s pregnancy develops, and the number of apprentices who stop chipping at the millstone with each line of the verse, and the precise way the mother’s terror is interlined with the bird’s singing and the gifts of the chain and the slippers. The precision of Runge’s narration deserves – and rewards – complete faithfulness.

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