The Goose Girl
The Goose Girl is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. Since the second edition published in 1819, The Goose Girl has been recorded as Tale no. 89.[1]
It was first published in 1815 as no. 3 in vol. 2 of the first edition of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales—Grimms' Fairy Tales). It was translated into English by Margaret Hunt in 1884. Andrew Lang included it in The Blue Fairy Book.
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[edit] Synopsis
A queen sends her daughter - who is betrothed to a prince in a far-off land - to her bridegroom. She sends her with a trousseau, a waiting-maid, and a horse for each of them; the princess's horse is named Falada and has the ability to speak. The queen takes a small knife and cuts herself, putting three drops of her blood onto a white handkerchief and bids her daughter to keep it with her, as it will aid her on her journey.
The princess and her waiting-maid travel for a time, then the princess grows thirsty. She asks the maid to go and fetch her some water, but the girl refuses, so the princess goes and drinks water from the stream from her goblet. The princess sighs and the drops of blood - hidden in the princess's bodice - reply, "If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two." The princess and the waiting-maid travel on, and the princess grows thirsty again. By that time, the princess had forgotten the waiting-maid's rude speech earlier and asks the waiting-maid again, "Waiting maid, please fetch me some water with my goblet for I have grown thirsty again." "No," she replies, "if you are thirsty, go and get it yourself. I shall not be your waiting maid any longer." The maid sounded stern and furious, so she stops and drops her goblet to be the same as everyone else. She drinks with her hands. The princess does not notice that her handkerchief with the drops of blood on it falls out of her bodice and into the stream.
Deprived of the magical protection of her mother's handkerchief and blood, the princess is defenseless when the maid makes her change places, including their horses and dresses. She is also forced to take an oath not to speak of the switch. When they reach their destination, the maid continues the charade, going so far as to have the horse Falada butchered, for fear he would reveal the secret. In addition, she informs the king that the princess is merely a peasant girl procured for the journey and now unneeded. He puts the princess to work.
The princess - now a goose girl - promises the butcher a piece of gold if he would give Falada a proper burial. The butcher hangs out Falada's head on the wall of the gate. Every morning, as she drives out the geese with Conrad, the goose herder, she sadly greets Falada's head and Falada's head repeats the same words previously spoken by the drops of blood: "If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two." Every day, she combs her hair in the pasture. Conrad always tries to steal some of the golden locks, and she charms the wind to blow his hat far away, so he can not return until she is finished. The prince comes to her pasture and falls in love with her.
Conrad goes to the king and declares he will not herd geese with the princess any longer because of the strange things that happen. The king tells him to do it one more time, and the king himself hides and watches. That evening, the king asks the princess to tell him her story. She explains that she took an oath not to tell. He tells her to tell her troubles to the iron stove and eavesdrops as she does so.
The king then has royal garments given to her as befits her station, and brings her to the prince's attention. At dinner later that evening, everyone eats and drinks and is quite merry. The princess and the waiting-maid are present, although the waiting-maid does not recognize the princess in her new finery. The king tells the princess's story, without naming any names, and asks the waiting-maid what the appropriate punishment would be. The waiting-maid answers that such a person should be put naked into a barrel lined with nails, which should be dragged by horses from street to street until the person is dead. The sentence is carried out on her, and the prince marries the true princess.
[edit] Variants
The story uses the false bride plot with a good-hearted princess being seized by her maid and turned into a common goose girl. It is Aarne-Thompson type 533. Another tale of this type is The Golden Bracelet.[2] These motifs are also found, centered on a male character, in Child ballad 271, The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward[3] and the chivalric romance Roswall and Lillian.[4]
[edit] Adaptations
Some more recent versions of this fairy tale include The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. Harold MacGrath also adapted it into a novel, which itself was developed into a 1915 film starring Marguerite Clark. In Germany, there are many film adaptions of the story.
[edit] References
- ^ Jacob and Wilheim Grimm, Household tales, "The Goose Girl"
- ^ Heidi Anne Heiner, "Tales Similar to the Goose Girl"
- ^ Helen Child Sargent, ed; George Lymn Kittredge, ed English and Scottish Popular Ballads: Cambridge Edition p 586 Houghton Mifflin Company Boston 1904
- ^ Laura A. Hibbard, Medieval Romance in England p292 New York Burt Franklin,1963
Adrienne Rich's poem The Fact of a Doorframe (1974) references the goose-girl. The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984. (London & New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1984).
[edit] External links
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