The Grimm Reader

by Maria Tatar

  As in the Grimms’ tale, the hero uses his instrument to stage a violent display of burlesque comedy, one that operates with a double economy resulting in the punishment of the enemy and the release of the hero. But “The Jew in the Brambles” adds a third element: the extraction of a “confession” from the Jew: “I stole it! I stole it!” the Jew shouts, desperate to stop dancing. “And you earned it honestly.” With those self-incriminating words, the Jew is taken to the gallows and hanged as a thief, even though it is the “rich” master in the tale’s introduction who is described as a “skinflint” and who cheats the “honest” servant out of three years’ wages. That the Jew becomes the scapegoat for the master’s miserliness and swindling of his servant is evident, yet it seems equally clear that “The Jew in the Brambles” fails to offer a critique of that scapegoating and instead legitimizes it in its final tableau. In its repeated use of the attribute “good” to describe the servant, the false accusations ring true as a global accusation of all Jews as thieves. The Jew in the story is never seen as victim but as the deserving target of punishment.

  Illustrations for the story, even when they were included in editions clearly intended for children, focus on the scene of punishment, providing stereotypical images of the Jew and unabashedly presenting the scene of torture as a carnivalesque spectacle provoking laughter rather than pity.

  This tale was included in many English editions of the tale for audiences of children and appeared as late as 1936 under the title “The Magic Riddle,” in Grimms’ Fairy Tales: A New Translation by Mrs. H. B. Paul, Specially Adapted and Arranged for Young People.

  MOTHER TRUDY

  nce upon a time there lived a little girl who was stubborn and inquisitive, and whenever her parents told her to do something, she refused. How could things possibly go well for her? One day she said to her parents: “I’ve heard so much about Mother Trudy. I’d like to go visit her. They say that her house is quite strange and that odd things happen there. That’s made me really curious about her.”

  The girl’s parents gave her strict orders not to go near the house, and they told her: “Mother Trudy is an evil woman, who does wicked things. If you go to see her, you’re no longer our daughter.”

  But the child paid no attention to what her parents said and went to see Mother Trudy anyway. When she arrived at the house, Mother Trudy asked her: “Why are you so pale?”

  “I saw something that really scared me.”

  “What did you see?”

  “On your staircase I saw a black man.”

  “That was just the charcoal burner.”

  “Then I saw a green man.”

  “That was just a huntsman.”

  “And then I saw a blood red man.”

  “That was just the butcher.”

  “Oh, Mother Trudy, I was so scared. I looked through the window and couldn’t see you, but I did see a devil with a fiery head.”

  “Aha!” she said. “Then you saw the witch in all her finery. I’ve been hoping that you would come here, and I’ve been waiting for a long time. You can provide me with some light.”

  And with that, she turned the girl into a block of wood and threw it on the fire. And when it was blazing, she sat down beside it, warmed herself up, and said: “Now that really does give off a nice bright light.”

  In this cautionary tale warning of the consequences of stubbornness and curiosity, the parents and Mother Trudy, although not allied with each other, triumph over the child. Failure to heed parental warnings leads to the girl’s incineration, and Mother Trudy cheerfully warms herself at the blazing fire. The three figures—a black man, a green man, and a red man—are probably kinsmen of the three horsemen that the Russian folklore heroine meets in tales about the witch Baba Yaga. But in the German tale, the girl does not return from her escapade, and she perishes at the home of the witch.

  THE HAND WITH

  THE KNIFE

  here once lived a girl who had three brothers. The boys meant everything to their mother, and the girl was always put at a disadvantage and treated badly. Every day she had to go out to a barren heath to dig peat, which was used for cooking and heating. A dull old tool was all she had for that nasty work.

  The little girl had an admirer, an elf who lived in a hill near her mother’s house. Whenever she passed by that hill, the elf would stretch his hand out of a boulder and hold out a very sharp knife that had special powers and could cut through anything. She was able to dig out the peat quickly with that knife, go home with the required amount, and when she got to the boulder, she tapped on it twice. The hand would then reach out to take back the knife.

  When the mother began to notice how quickly and effortlessly the girl brought home the peat, she told the brothers that someone else had to be helping her with the work, otherwise it wouldn’t be possible. The brothers stealthily followed her and saw how she got the magical knife, then caught up with her and forced her to give it to them. They headed back, struck the rock as the girl had done, and when the good elf stretched his hand out, they cut it off with his own knife. The bloody arm pulled back, and because the elf believed that his beloved had betrayed him, he was never seen again.

  Published as the eighth tale in the first edition of the stories, this story was excised from the collection by 1819, when the second edition was released. Jacob Grimm translated the tale, which had Scottish origins and had appeared in a volume on the superstitions of Scotland, with the following commentary: “One of these (stories) which I have heard sung by children at a very early age, and which is just to them the Babes in the Wood, I can never forget. The affecting simplicity of the tune, the strange wild imagery and the marks of remote antiquity in the little narrative, gave it the greatest interest to me, who delights in tracing back poetry to its infancy.”

  The story begins like many of the fairy tales in the Grimms’ collection, with a disadvantaged child who is sent out to perform impossible labors. The violent act of the brothers, carried out against a figure who is clearly benevolent, does not square with the rules of other tales in the collection.

  HOW CHILDREN

  PLAYED BUTCHER

  WITH EACH OTHER

  FIRST VERSION

  n a city called Franecker located in West Friesland, it happened that young children aged five and six, both boys and girls, were playing together. And they decided that one boy should be the butcher, another boy should be the cook, and a third should be the pig. Next they decided that one little girl should play the cook, another was to be the assistant to the cook. The assistant was supposed to catch the blood from the pig in a little basin so that they could make sausages from it. The butcher, as had been agreed, chased after the boy who was playing the pig, pulled him down to the ground, and cut his throat with a little knife. The assistant to the cook caught the blood in her little basin. A councilor who happens to be passing by sees the whole miserable spectacle. He dashes off with the butcher, takes him up to the house of the mayor, who immediately calls a meeting of all councilors. They deliberated at length on the matter and had no idea what to do, for they realized that it had all been child’s play. One of them, a wise old man, ventured the opinion that the chief judge should put a nice red apple in one hand and a guilder in the other and that he call the child in and stretch both hands out to him. If the child took the apple, he would be declared innocent. If he took the guilder, he would be killed. This was done: the child, laughing, reached out for the apple and was therefore not subjected to any kind of punishment.

  SECOND VERSION

  A man once slaughtered a pig while his children were looking on. When they started playing in the afternoon, one child said to the other: “You be the little pig, and I’ll be the butcher,” whereupon he took an open blade and thrust it into his brother’s neck. Their mother, who was upstairs in a room bathing the youngest child in a tub, heard the cries of her other child,
quickly ran downstairs, and when she saw what had happened, drew the knife out of the child’s neck, and in a rage, thrust it into the heart of the child who had been the butcher. She then rushed back to the house to see what her other child was doing in the tub, but in the meantime it had drowned in the bath. The woman was so horrified that she fell into a state of utter despair, refused to be consoled by the servants, and hanged herself. When her husband returned home from the fields and saw this, he was so distraught that he died shortly thereafter.

  These tales may seem to deviate dramatically from the form of the fairy tale, but bearing in mind that the German term for fairy tales (Märchen) is a diminutive form of the word for “news,” these two reports, which read almost like newspaper accounts, conform to the nature of the genre.

  The first of the two accounts appeared in the Berliner Abendblätter, a short-lived newspaper edited by the writer Heinrich von Kleist. The incident was based on a published report from 1555 and interested Kleist because of the test at the end of the narrative, with the child declared innocent because he has not yet attained an understanding of symbolic thinking. The second account was first published in 1600 in a volume in Latin. The two tales were published only in the first edition of the Children’s Stories and Household Tales. Achim von Arnim, a friend and collaborator, wrote to the Grimms: “I’ve already heard one mother complaining that the piece about the child who slaughters another child is in [your collection], and for that reason she won’t let her children read it.” Wilhelm Grimm defended himself by insisting that the tale had an important cautionary function: “My mother used to tell the story about the butchering when I was young, and it made me careful and apprehensive about child’s play.” The second of the two versions reads like an anti-Märchen, a tale that recounts a chain of events leading from one disaster to another.

  HANS DUMM

  nce there was a king who lived happily with a daughter who was his only child. This princess unexpectedly gave birth to a child, and no one knew who the father was. The king had no idea what to do. Finally he ordered the princess to go to church with the child. There the child was to be given a lemon, and the person to whom it handed the lemon would be declared father of the child and husband of the princess. So it came to pass, but orders were given that no one but good-looking people should be admitted to the church.

  Now in this city there lived a short, misshapen, hunchbacked fellow who was not terribly bright and who was therefore called Hans Dumm. Somehow he pressed himself into the crowd and managed to make his way unseen into the church. When the child was supposed to give away the lemon, it handed it to Hans Dumm. The princess was in shock. The king was so outraged that he put his daughter and the child, along with Hans Dumm, out to sea in a sealed cask. The cask floated on the waters, and once they were alone the princess started complaining and said: “You think you’re so clever, you disgusting hunchback, but you’re to blame for my misfortune. Why did you force your way into the church? You can’t possibly have anything to do with the child.”

  “Oh yes I do,” Hans Dumm replied. “I sure do have something to do with it. After all, I once wished that you would have a child, and whatever I wish for comes true.”

  “If that’s really the case, then why don’t you wish us something to eat?”

  “Happy to oblige,” Hans Dumm replied. But he ended up wishing for a bowl piled high with potatoes.

  Once they had eaten their fill, Hans Dumm said: “Now I’m going to wish us a beautiful ship!” and as soon as the words were out of his mouth, they found themselves in a fabulous ship. Everything they could want was there in abundance. The pilot steered straight for land, and when they got out, Hans Dumm said: “Now I want a castle right over there.” Suddenly a magnificent castle appeared, with servants in golden uniforms who led the princess and her child into the castle. When they got to the middle of the hall, Hans Dumm said: “Now I’m going to wish that I were a smart young prince!” All at once his hump was gone, and he turned into a handsome, tall, and amiable young man. He greatly pleased the princess and became her husband.

  For a long time they lived happily. Then one day the old king rode out into the woods, lost his way, and arrived at the castle. He was quite astonished by it, for he had never seen it before, and rode through the gates. The princess recognized her father immediately, but he didn’t recognize her. After all, he thought that she had perished at sea a long time ago. She was a fabulous hostess, and when he made plans to go home, she secretly put a goblet of gold in one of his bags. Once he had ridden off, she sent a couple of servants after him. They stopped him and searched him. When they found the goblet of gold in his bag, they took him back with them. He swore to the princess that he had not stolen it and that he had no idea how it had ended up in his bag.

  “As you can see,” she said, “you shouldn’t jump to conclusions about a person’s guilt.” And she revealed that she was his daughter. The king was overjoyed, and they all lived happily together. After his death, Hans Dumm became king.

  The Grimms noted that this tale had appeared in two Italian collections of fairy tales, and they may also have been aware of a literary version based on a French tale. But it was surely more than the literary nature and foreign origins of the tale that discouraged them from including it in the second edition of the Children’s Stories and Household Tales. Hans Dumm, with his extraordinary magical powers and ability to make all his wishes come true, may be a cheerful young man, but he is every young woman’s nightmare. The princess, first the victim of Hans Dumm, then of a rancorous father, serves as the voice of reason in the tale, teaching her father a lesson about justice even as she ends up living happily ever after with the man who impregnated her simply by wishing her with child.

  THE EVIL MOTHER-IN-LAW

  nce upon a time there lived a king and a queen, and the queen had a wicked and evil mother-in-law. When the king went off to war, the old queen had her daughter-in-law locked up in a musty room in the cellar, and her two little boys were locked up with her. One day she thought: “I would love to eat one of the two children,” whereupon she summoned the cook and had him go down to the cellar to get one of the little boys and slaughter him and prepare him for cooking.

  “What kind of sauce should I prepare?” asked the cook.

  “A brown one,” the old queen replied.

  The cook went down to the cellar and said: “Oh my queen, the old queen wants me to slaughter and cook your son tonight.”

  The young queen was distraught and said: “Why can’t you just take a baby pig instead? You can cook it up just as she wanted and tell her that it’s my child.”

  The cook did as she instructed and presented the roasted suckling in a brown sauce: “Here’s the child.” And the old queen ate it up with a hearty appetite.

  Soon the old woman thought: “The flesh of that child was just so delicate and tasty, I’ll just have to eat the other one too.” She summoned the cook, sent him to the cellar, and had him slaughter the second son.

  “In what kind of sauce should I cook him?”

  “A white one,” the old queen replied.

  The cook went downstairs and said: “Now the old queen has ordered me to slaughter and cook your second little son.” The young queen said: “Take a suckling pig and cook it the way she likes.”

  The cook did just that and presented the suckling pig to the old woman in a white sauce, and she ate it with an even heartier appetite.

  Finally, the old woman thought: “Now the children are in my body, and I can eat the young queen herself.” She summoned the cook and ordered him to prepare the young queen.—

  (Fragment: The third time the cook slaughters a young hind. But now the young queen has a lot of trouble keeping her children from crying, and the old woman will realize that they are still alive, etc.)

  This episode was included among the fragments at the end of the collection a
nd appeared in the first edition of the tales. We do not have to read long and far in other folklore collections to learn how the queen and her children fare. In Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty,” we find that the story of the wicked mother-in-law begins at the point where most latter-day versions of the story end. Perrault’s mother-in-law comes from “a race of ogres,” and she has “the greatest difficulty in the world keeping herself from pouncing” on her grandchildren. After devouring what she believes to be the two grandchildren and their mother, she prowls around the castle one day in search of human flesh and hears her grandchildren weeping. Enraged, she fills

  a huge vat with vipers, toads, and serpents and is about to throw her kin and the cook-accomplice into the vat when the king returns. The mother-in-law ends up in the vat and is devoured by the reptiles in it. If the king regrets her death (“after all she was his mother”), he finds ample consolation in his wife and children. A similar episode is found in Giambattista Basile’s seventeenth-century collection of Neapolitan tales.

  It is not difficult to understand why the Grimms did not make the effort to find a fuller version of this tale or to reconstruct the fragment and turn it into a sequel to their “Briar Rose.” The unsavory subject matter was clearly not appropriate for a volume that was turning into a book for children, and the fact that the tale existed in a fuller version in French and Italian stories did not add to the appeal. “The Evil Mother-in-Law” went the way of “Bluebeard,” “Puss-in-Boots,” and other stories that bore too close a resemblance to French literary sources.