The Duration of Life (fairy tale)

The life time is a farce (ATU 173). He stands in the Children's and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm from the 4th edition of 1840 in place of 176 (KHM 176).

Content

God gives donkey, dog, monkey and man every thirty year life time. But the donkey must carry heavy loads, the dog teeth fall out and the circus have to do always fun. You ask eighteen, twelve and ten years discount. The get the person who wants more. Therefore, he now has to wear for his human years other loads, then he is toothless, including the children ridicule.

Origin

The parable told loud Grimm's remark " a farmer from Zwehrn in Kassel on the field in 1838 " ( submitter was Carl Friedrich Münscher; Dr. Wilhelm Müller in 1841 perhaps from the same source ). A version in Babrius, No. 74 (probably 2nd century ) was illogical: horse, bull and dog may get warm when people in the house and get barley, legumes, and food scraps. For this they give him life years. That is why man is only cocky as the horse, then -working like a bull, then surly in old age. Furthermore, comparable Yehuda Levy Krakow Ben SEFs Hebrew poem in the king berger magazine Hamasef 1788. 2, 388

Posthumously published in 1865 a study of Wilhelm Grimm to the Greek and Jewish tradition of the substance. Earliest German-language document is Klara Hätzlerins Songbook 1471 (No. 100). Allegorical equating human stages of life with animals is widespread. Iconography, it occurs as a life stairs, under whose levels are animals. They differ in the 19th century the idea of ​​the ups and downs of life.