The Goose-Girl at the Well
The goose-girl at the well is a fairy tale (ATU 923 ). It is in the Children's and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm from the 5th edition of 1843 instead 179 (KHM 179) and is based on Andreas Schuhmacher The Gänselhüterin in Hermann Kletkes Almanac German folk tales of 1840.
Content
An old woman lives in a cottage in the wilderness. They supplied their wacker goose and is friendly to everyone, but people do not particularly like and keep them for a witch. A young Earl met her when she has collected in the forest grass and fruit, and she lets it carry him to her house. She makes fun of him because he is harder to do than first thought, sets himself on sling and pummeling him with nettles to her feet. As a reward he is allowed to rest on the bench outside her door in the lovely surroundings. He just does not understand why the old man thinks he can fall in love with their ugly old daughter, but leaves it refreshed with a little box of emerald, which the old woman gives him as a gift.
After three days he finds out of the wilderness in a city where he is led into the castle. When submitting to the Queen, the little box she faints, and he shall be discharged. But she wakes up and tells him in private of their youngest and most beautiful daughter, who fell even when crying beads as the tears from his eyes. Thus, a tear was in the little box. The king had cast her out, as she had on the question of how she loved him, replied that she had loved him like salt. The count should lead the royal couple to the witch.
The daughter of the witch sitting with her in the house and weaves. On the three-time hoot of an owl, they must go to a well under three old oak trees. She takes off her ugly skin of the face, wash and skin that makes them dry, and cries. As under the Earl, who observed a branch crack, she is frightened and disappears. The Old sweep the house and lets them create their skin off and her old dress as a princess. The daughter is frightened that she wants to leave her. But the witch explains the incoming parents everything, then it disappears, and the house is a castle with servants.
Stylistic features
In the course of the narrative repeatedly shifts the perspective, which would be very uncharacteristic of a folk tale. It starts with the witch. The majority then appears to be told from the perspective of the young Count. Towards the end the narrator jumps to the king's daughter, to then turn himself: But I must tell of the young Count again.
Also, the poem of the witch against the start seems a bit redundant in its brevity, simplicity and disharmony, especially since it remains the only one:
Your next sentence is, " Will you help me?", As if it would have the young Count enchanted with it ( as in Jorinda and Joringel ).
Interpretation
The central motif is the misunderstood love of the princess, who compares it with salt. Instead of tears she weeps pearls and precious stones. The old woman speaks of "pearls, beautiful as they are found in the sea " ( to match the emerald green little box ), which like the fountain where she cries, great depth indicates.
At the same time the stone tears or the beads have a high hardness per se. This combination of hardness and depth is symbolized by the salt that occur during drying of sea water. The old woman is presented in the first sentence as a very old woman, rushing to the Counts in the hot sun up the hill, where it roll away the stones under his feet. Beads have been in many Bible passages to do with wisdom and salt with cursing, see especially 1.Mose 19.26.
This motif of ambivalence or misunderstood runs through the entire narrative. The surroundings of the house in the desert turns out to be " quite charming" out. The king's daughter hiding during the day under the ugly skin its beauty that it shows only at night. It owls cry and moonlight match the witches sticking what the people at the old woman see their sickle suggests the moon in shape. Even the " young master " is considered at the cottage and in the city with friendly suspicion.
Sigmund Freud shows, in comparison with the choice of Paris ( Iliad ), Cupid and Psyche, Cinderella, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, King Lear and The goose-girl at the well that the third daughter with her quiet is the gift of the goddess of the dead, but for the love goddess is transfigured. The unfounded guilt and social withdrawal are also symptoms of depression, which compares homeopathic literature with the drug Natrum mur (sea salt). The geese are an attribute of the mother archetype and resemble the duck in KHM 13 The three little men in the wood and KHM 135 The white bride and the black, to serve in humility cf. KHM 24 Mother Holle.
Origin and variants
The tale is included in the Children's and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm since the 5th edition of 1843 instead of 179. They write in their observations only: Based on a story by Andreas Schuhmacher in Vienna in Kletkes Almanac No. 2 The local text as a whole is longer, more vivid and psychologically insightful. There, however, the poem, which is applied only content in about dialog is missing. The change of perspective are less conspicuous, the end is not open. It may be mentioned staff, but without connection to the geese. The plot is the same. Yet appeared before the tale of Andreas Schumacher in 1833 in Vienna as D ' Ganshiadarin.
For the same fairytale princess type belongs mouse skin from the first edition of Grimm's fairy tales. Regardless, there are numerous other variants oral and written versions. Here's an important variant salt is more precious than gold, a Slovakian fairy tale known from the collections of Pavol Dobšinský and Bozena Nemcova. A further salt fairy tale is The most valuable objects. They usually end up that the outcast daughter initially undetected goes to the court of his father, where he recognizes the importance of salt in the food. See also KHM 31 The girl without hands, KHM 65 Allerleirauh, KHM 94 The wise farmer's daughter, KHM 54a Hans Dumm.
Closely interwoven with the salt fairy tale is the literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen: The wind tells of Waldemar Daa and his daughters. Here, however, the gold has become king fell from the fairy tale to a haughty father who sacrifices the happiness of his family of the alchemical quest for gold. Also salt and love motif samples are pushed into the background at Andersen. The youngest daughter angered the father because she wants to stop the felling of a forest. Jean -François Bladé handed the southern French fairy tale The Putenmagd: Here the salt fairy tale has become a framework for action for a Aschenputtelmärchen. Joseph Jacobs also presented in his collection English Fairy Tales Fairy Tales salt: Cap o 'Rushes: Similar to Bladé the protagonist experienced in Cap o' Rushes, the three encounters with the loved ones in the fleeing kind of Cinderella and Allerleirauh. The design is similar existential Salznot stunted in Jacob Grimm's fairy tales such as in goose. Here, the lack of taste of food is only complains. The origin of the salt subject is clearly in the Slovak fairy tales by Pavol Dobšinský and Bozena Nemcova. In William Shakespeare the salt motif is completely gone - Lear's question about the Love settlement is not for Cordelia in principle unanswerable. See further The most indispensable in Ludwig Bechstein's New German fairy tale.
Pictures
The image of the goose-girl at the well shaped the outstanding illustrations of Ignatius Taschner. He created his illustration program to the fairy tale of the Art Deco book series Gerlach 's Jugendbücherei: The Gänshirtinillustraionen include two large-format color images square, four smaller color illustrations and five black -and-white vignettes of different sizes. The two main square images address the central fairy tale situations: 1.The young prince wears the cheerful old man on his back and 2.The goose Princess sits at the well edge. Among the smaller Farbillustrionen impressed with the image where the golden-haired princess of soldiers of her father continues.
Film and theater
The goose-girl at the well was filmed in 1979 (directed by Ursula Schmenger; DDR). The Slovak version of the tale, salt is more precious than gold or The Salt Prince, 1982 directed by Martin Hollý as a 85- minute film with Libuse Šafránková was as Maruska filmed for a version of this tale of Bozena Nemcova ( Germany, Czechoslovakia ). Even earlier, namely in 1955 was also issued by the Slovak fairy tales salt is more precious than gold to the Czech fairy tale There was once a king with Milena Dvorská as Maruska. In the animated series SimsalaGrimm ( Germany 1999), The goose-girl at the well episode 11 of season two.
There are, inter alia, stage plays by Uwe Hoppe (premiered in 2000 in Bayreuth ), Robert Bürkner (premiered 1947). The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales Festival in Hanau The goose-girl at the well was in 2001 in the program.