The Gnome (fairy tale)

Dat Erdmänneken is a fairy tale (ATU 301). It is in the Children's and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm in place 91 (KHM 91) in Low German.

Content

A wealthy king cursed the one who would take an apple from his tree. The youngest daughter says he 'll probably do not mean picking one and offers him her two sisters. As they sink into the earth. The king promises to a woman she would find. So three huntsmen come into a house where meals are always warm, they finally eat. You loose that always look for the two daughters during a stays around. The first two are doing beaten up by a male, which only asks for bread, and they then arises, if they want to pick it up. The youngest does not do it, but it spanks. Because it shows him a dry well into which he must condescend alone since his journeyman it dishonest mean by it. Below the king's daughters have three dragons scratch their heads, which he must refuse. He told the brethren that the down wind with the rope, but can pull up right back. The youngest, however, exempt the king's daughters. He lets them go up, he shall place himself a stone in the basket. The brothers cut the rope and be married by the King with the daughters that may reveal nothing. The youngest goes around the bottom until it finds a flute. When he blows, come meerkats that to carry him. When he comes to the castle, the daughters faint. The king leaves the oven betray her secret and she overheard. The evil brothers to be hanged, the youngest married to the youngest.

Origin and comparisons

Grimm's note quoted from the Paderborn 's (of Ludowine of Haxthausen ), and compares a variant from the region of Cologne on the Rhine (probably of the same ): The three princesses go at the feast in the garden walk at night lost, whoever finds it, they should get married. Three knights come in search of the forest into a beautiful but empty castle with only a raw piece of meat as food. The youngest fry it, while the other wine pick. He leaves a meerkat sitting at the fire and turn the roast that always nibbles at the broth until he grasps it by the beard and chased away. In the morning she ropes him into a hole. He frees the princesses by three dragons cuts off on the advice of her three male, seven and nine heads, which they had lausen. They pull the journeymen, wanting to let him down. He calls the Meerkat with a bell and a flute, they make him a staircase. At the top he proposes with a rod, they disappear. In a story from the Hanöverischen (probably by Georg August Friedrich Goldmann ) the princesses come away while bathing. The Third pinched the old beard with an ax in a wood. He pulls away, they follow the trail of blood to the burrow. On the flute blowing a handsome man brings the princesses dresses. The hero is journeyman tailor, to recognize him the youngest ordered the wedding dress. A version of Steinau in Hanauischen differs from the Paderborn 's only so far that the dragons are giant. Daughters hide the hero under the bed, he must lift a heavy pole and kill the giant drinking. The male shows him an underground stream as output, the princesses recognize him on their upper garments and gold rings. The two evil brothers are executed. The Brothers Grimm compare KHM 166 Strong Hans, Hungarian Gaal at No.5 and especially the Siegfried saga.

Among the three brothers with the despised youngest see, eg, KHM 63 The three springs. Your food parallelized here the fall of the three daughters ( cf. Genesis 3). For Josef Scene from the well as the input of the Netherworld ( Genesis 37) see KHM 24, 116, 127 to crawl the rockfish see KHM 129, the furnace confession KHM 89 For the final movement of the glass shoes see KHM 84, 70a.

Hans -Jörg Uther judge that fairy tales constitute in the popular motifs and Mythologismen stations of human maturation and would be well suited as a prototype for interpretations when the dialect version would have someone interested. That one is the staple bread and beg not to drop, speak for the strictly Christian concept of the Brothers Grimm, as well as in KHM 194, 205

See Three Musicians in Ludwig Bechstein's Deutsches storybook ( in the edition of 1845, the nun, the miner and blacksmith ) and the tiny, tiny little man in New German fairy tale.