The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (43 page)

Prince Johannes

This is a tale about his melancholy and nostalgic wanderings, about his flight with the spirit, about the red castle, about his numerous trials and tribulations until he was finally allowed to glimpse the beautiful princess of the sun.

The Good Cloth

Two daughters of a seamstress inherited a good old cloth, and whenever anything was wrapped in it, the cloth turned the object into gold. This cloth provided them with enough to live on, and they also did some sewing to earn a little extra money. One sister was very smart, the other very stupid. One day the oldest went to church, and a Jew came down the street calling, “Beautiful new cloth for sale! Beautiful cloth to trade for old cloth! Anyone want to trade?”

When the stupid sister heard that, she ran out to him and traded the good old cloth for a new cloth. This was exactly what the Jew had wanted, for he knew all about the power of the old cloth. When the older sister came home, she said, “We're doing poorly with our sewing. I've got to get some money. Where's our cloth?”

“It's good that I've done what I've done,” said the stupid sister. “While you were gone, I made a trade for a brand-new cloth.”

[
After this the Jew is turned into a dog, the two maidens into hens. Eventually, the hens regain their human form and beat the dog to death.
]

86

THE FOX AND THE GEESE

Once the fox came to a meadow where there was a flock of nice, plump geese. Then he laughed and said, “Ho, I've come just at the right moment. You're sitting there together so nicely that all I have to do is eat you up one by one.”

The geese began cackling in fright and jumped up. They screamed for mercy and begged piteously for their lives. However, the fox said: “No mercy! You've got to die.”

Finally, one of the geese plucked up her courage and said, “Well, if we poor geese must surrender our innocent young lives, then show us some mercy by granting us one last prayer so that we won't have to die with our sins. After that we'll line up in a row so that you'll continually be able to pick out the fattest among us.”

“All right,” said the fox. “That's a fair and pious request. I'll wait until you're done.”

So the first goose began a good long prayer and kept saying, “
Ga! Ga!
” Since she refused to end her prayer, the second didn't wait for her turn and also began saying, “
Ga! Ga!
” (And when they all will have finished praying, the tale will be continued to be told, but in the meantime they're still saying their prayers.)

VOLUME II

PREFACE TO VOLUME II

Despite the strong and pressing demands of time, we produced this additional collection of household tales faster and more easily than the first. In part this was due to the fact that, by itself, our collection had gained friends who supported it, and in part because those who would have liked to have supported it earlier saw now clearly what we had intended and how we had intended to work. Moreover, we were finally favored by that sort of luck that appears to be coincidence but is actually the result of the usual diligent perseverance of collectors: after one first becomes accustomed to paying attention to similar kinds of things, one then encounters them more frequently than one might otherwise expect. Indeed, this is generally the case with folk customs, certain qualities, sayings, and jokes.

We are especially grateful for the kindness of friends from the duchies of Paderborn and Münster, who provided the tales in Low German. Their familiarity with this dialect is particularly beneficial with regard to the internal integrity of the tales. In these regions, traditionally famous for their German freedom, the tales have been preserved in many places as an almost regular Sunday pastime. In the mountains the shepherds told their own stories, also known in the Harz region and probably in other large mountainous areas, about the Emperor Redbeard, who lives there with his treasures, and also about the race of giants (the Hühnen) and how they throw their hammers to each other from mountain tops that are many
miles apart from one other. We are thinking about publishing these tales elsewhere. Indeed, this region is still rich in traditional customs and songs.

One of our lucky coincidences involved making the acquaintance of a peasant woman from the village of Zwehrn near Kassel. It was through her that we received a considerable number of the tales published here that can be called genuinely Hessian and are also supplements to the first volume. This woman, still active and not much over fifty years old, is called Viehmann, and she has a firmly set and pleasant face with bright, clear eyes and had probably been beautiful in her youth. She has retained these old stories firmly in her memory, a gift that she says is not granted to everyone. Indeed, many people can't even retain any tales, while she narrates in a manner that is thoughtful, steady, and unusually lively. Moreover, she takes great pleasure in it. At the beginning she speaks very freely, and then, if one wishes, she will repeat the tale slowly so that, with a little practice, one can copy down what she says. In this way we were able to retain much of what she said literally, and the story's true essence will be easily recognized. Whoever believes that the transcription of such storytelling results in easy falsification, carelessness in the preservation of the tales, and, therefore, the impossibility of recording long narratives as a rule, ought to hear how exactly she always repeats each tale and how eager she is to get it right. She never changes anything when she retells a story and corrects mistakes as soon as she notices them even right in the middle of the telling. The attachment to tradition is much stronger among people who resolutely follow the same way of life than we who have a fondness for change can understand. This is exactly the reason why such storytelling that has been put to test has a certain insistent intimacy and an internal efficiency that other things do not easily attain, even though they can seem more lustrous on the outside. The epic source of folk narratives resembles the color green that one finds throughout nature in many different shades; it satisfies and soothes without ever causing fatigue.

The essential value of these tales is indeed to be held in great esteem, for they shed a new and particular light on our ancient heroic poetry in a way that nobody has ever managed to bring about. Briar Rose, who is pricked by a spindle that puts her to sleep, is actually Brunhilde, pricked by a thorn
that puts her to sleep, not the one in the
Niberlungenlied
, but the one in the Old Norse tradition. Snow White slumbers in a glowing vivid red color, as did Snäfridr, the most beautiful woman of all, while Harald the Fair-Haired sits at her coffin for three years, similar to the faithful dwarfs, who keep watch and protect the living-dead maiden. However, the piece of apple in her mouth is a magic sleeping tablet or apple. The tale about the golden feather, which the bird drops and thus causes the king to send out his men all over the world to search for it, is nothing other than the tale of King Mark in
Tristan
, to whom a bird brings the golden hair of a princess, for whom he now begins to yearn. We understand much better why Loki remains stuck to a gigantic eagle through reading the tale about the golden goose in which young women and men stick to the goose when they touch it. Who doesn't recognize Sigurd's own story depicted in the character of the evil goldsmith, the talking bird, and the eating of the heart? The present volume conveys other enormous and outstanding episodes about Sigurd and his youth that are partly in the songs about him that we know, and these episodes help us in the difficult task of interpreting the incident about the treasure that is to be divided. Nothing is more valuable and at the same time more certain than that which flows from two sources that were separated early on and later join each other in their own riverbed. There is nothing but primeval German mythos buried in these folk tales that was thought to have been lost, and we are firmly convinced that if one were now to begin searching in all the blessed parts of our fatherland, this research would lead to neglected treasures that would transform themselves into incredible treasures and would help found the scientific study of the origins of our poetry. It is exactly the same with the numerous dialects of our language in which the majority of the words and peculiarities that have long been considered extinct continue to live without being recognized.

Our collection was not merely intended to serve the history of poetry but also to bring out the poetry itself that lives in it and make it effective: enabling it to bring pleasure wherever it can and also therefore, enabling it to become an actual educational primer. Objections have been raised against this last point because this or that might be embarrassing and
would be unsuitable for children or offensive (when the tales might touch on certain situations and relations—even the mentioning of the bad things that the devil does) and that parents might not want to put the book into the hands of children. That concern might be legitimate in certain cases, and then one can easily make selections. On the whole it is certainly not necessary. Nature itself provides our best evidence, for it has allowed these and those flowers and leaves to grow in their own colors and shapes. If they are not beneficial for any person or personal needs, something that the flowers and leaves are unaware of, then that person can walk right by them, but the individual cannot demand that they be colored and cut according to his or her needs. Or, in other words, rain and dew provide a benefit for everything on earth. Whoever is afraid to put plants outside because they might be too delicate and could be harmed and would rather water them inside cannot demand to put an end to the rain and the dew. Everything that is natural can also become beneficial. And that is what our aim should be. Incidentally, we are not aware of a single salutary and powerful book that has edified the people in which such dubious matters don't appear to a great extent, even if we place the Bible at the top of the list. Making the right use of a book doesn't result in finding evil, but rather, as an appealing saying puts it, evidence of our hearts. Children read the stars without fear, while others, according to folk belief, insult angels by doing this.

Once again we have published diverse versions of the tales along with all kinds of relevant notes in the appendix.
¹
Those readers who feel indifferent about such things will find it easier to skip over them than we would have found to omit them. They belong to the book insofar as it is a contribution to the history of German folk literature. All the variants seem more noteworthy to us than they do to those who see in them nothing more than alterations or distortions of a once extant primeval prototype. In contrast, we think they are perhaps only attempts to approach the actual spirit of the prototype in many different inexhaustible ways. The repetitions of single sentences, features, and introductory passages are to be regarded as epic lines that reoccur continually as soon as the tone is struck that sets them off, and actually they should not be understood in any other way. Everything that has been collected here from oral transmission (perhaps
with the exception of “Puss in Boots”) is purely German in its origins as well as in its development and has not been borrowed from any place, as one can easily prove on the basis of externals if one wanted to dispute this for individual cases. The reasons that are usually brought forth to argue that the tales have been borrowed from Italian, French, or Oriental books, which are not read by the people, especially if they live in the country, are exactly like those attempts to prove the tales stem from recent literature in which soldiers, apprentices, cannons, tobacco pipes, and other new things appear. But these things, just like the words of our contemporary language, are exactly the things that were reshaped by the lips of storytellers, and one can certainly rely on the fact that the storytellers in the sixteenth century used country troopers and shotguns instead of soldiers and cannons in their tales just as the magic helmet was used in the age of chivalry and knights, not the hat that makes people invisible.

We suspended the translation of
The Pentamerone
, initially promised for this volume, as well as the selection of those tales from the
Gesta Romanorum
, because we wanted to make space for our indigenous tales.

Kassel, September 30, 1814

Note

1
. These notes are in the section “Notes to Volumes I and II” in this book.

1

THE POOR MAN AND THE RICH MAN

In olden times, when the dear Lord himself was still wandering the earth among mortals, he happened to grow tired one evening, and night descended before he could reach an inn. Then he saw two houses right in front of him, just opposite one another. One house was large and beautiful and belonged to a rich man, and the other was small and shabby and belonged to a poor man. Our dear Lord thought, “I'm sure I won't be a burden to the rich man,” and he knocked at the door. All at once the rich man opened the window and asked what he wanted.

“A night's lodging.”

The rich man examined the traveler from head to toe, and since the dear Lord was dressed very simply and didn't look like he had much money in his pockets, the rich man shook his head and said, “I can't put you up. My rooms are full of seeds. If I were to put up all the people who knocked at my door, then I'd soon have to go out begging for myself. Look for a place somewhere else.”

With that he slammed the window shut and left the dear Lord standing there. So the dear Lord turned around and went across the street to the small house. No sooner had he knocked than the poor man already had the door open and asked the traveler to enter and spend the night in his house.

“It's already dark,” he said, “and you won't be able to go much farther tonight.”

The Lord was pleased to hear that, and he entered the house. The poor man's wife welcomed him by shaking his hand. She told him to make himself feel at home and to feel free to use anything they had, even though they didn't have much. Whatever they had, he could gladly have. Then she put potatoes on the fire, and while they were cooking, she milked the goat so that they would at least have a little milk with the meal. When the table had been set, the dear Lord sat down and ate with them, and he enjoyed the meager repast because there were grateful faces around him. When they had eaten and it was time to go to bed, the wife whispered to her
husband, “Listen, dear husband, let's make up a bed of straw for ourselves tonight so that the poor traveler can sleep in our bed and rest. He's been traveling the whole day and is probably very tired.”