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The Drummer (fairy tale)

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The Drummer (German: Der Trommler) (ATU Index 400, 518, 313) is a fairy tale. It appears as the 193rd tale the Grimms' Fairy Tales (Children's and Household Tales) of the Brothers Grimm published in 1843.

Story

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A young drummer finds three pieces of fine linen by a lake, one of which he takes with him without thinking about it any more. As he falls asleep, a king's daughter appears to him who has been banished to the Glass Mountain by a witch. Without her shirt, she cannot fly away from the lake in which they were bathing like her two sisters. He gives it to her and promises to help her. All she can say is that the Glass Mountain lies behind the forest of cannibals. He goes into the forest and uses his drum to wake a giant, telling him that this is a signal to many others who are coming to kill him. They jump away when he tries to catch them, but when he is asleep, they climb up him and smash his skull with iron hammers. The giant promises to leave her alone in future and carries him and two others to the Glass Mountain, but not all the way to the top.

Two men are fighting over a magic saddle that can be used to wish for anywhere. The drummer steals it from them through cunning and wishes himself to the top of the glass mountain. He asks an old woman with a brown face, long nose and sharp red eyes for shelter. In return, he has to empty the fish pond in front of the house the next day with a thimble, and the day after that he has to cut down the forest behind it with tools made of lead and sheet metal that don't hold. Both times a girl comes to his aid at midday. He lays his head in her lap, and when he wakes up, all the fish have been caught and all the wood is in order. Only one fish and a branch are lying alone. He hits the old woman with them when she asks for them. On the third day he has to burn all the wood in a pile. He also fearlessly climbs into the flames when she lets him get a block of wood that doesn't burn. Then the block turns into the king's daughter. He throws the old woman into the fire when she tries to grab him.

The princess offers him her hand and wishes them both to be outside the city gate with a wishing ring. When he visits his parents and kisses her on the right cheek despite his bride's warning, he forgets her. They build a princely palace out of the precious stones from the witch's house and arrange a marriage. The sad princess, who has since lived alone in a forest cottage, wishes for a dress like the sun, then like the moon, then like the stars. With this she buys the bride three times to be allowed to sleep outside the groom's chamber. But only the people in the house hear her calling because the bride has a sleeping potion poured into his wine, and they tell him. The third time he pours the sleeping potion behind the bed. When he hears her voice, he remembers, regrets it and immediately takes her to his parents so that they can get married. The other bride is happy with the clothes.

Origin

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Jacob Grimm received the fairy tale in 1838 by letter from Karl Goedeke, who noted that he had heard it from his aunt, "a simple middle-class woman", who in turn had it from a rag collector in Eichsfeld. This manuscript has survived as an exception and was revised by Wilhelm for the print, mainly in terms of style. Grimm's note mentions another "fairy tale in Kühn and Schwarz no. 11, p. 347" and explains the shirt on the bank as the dress of a swan maiden. Wilhelm further embellished the text for the 6th edition. The giant now explains: "I squeeze the throats of wolves and bears, but I cannot protect myself from earthworms"; the fairy..." but if you are afraid, the fire will seize you and consume you" (from Mother Trudy). The 7th edition hardly differs, “linen” is now more understandably “linen”, the wood is “clay-faced” instead of “clay-clad” (in contrast, the shirt in The Star Money (Die Sterntaler) is still “made of the finest linen”).

Lutz Röhrich compares the sequence of motifs of the swan maiden and the marriage of the Mahrten with Greek tales of Neraids. Hans-Jörg Uther believes that the text was first conceived in the 19th century from well-known epic and fairy tale motifs. The length of the text is the result of combining the motifs of the cursed maiden (AaTh 400), the magical escape (AaTh 313) and the false bride. The opening motifs of the lake and the forest are repeated in other fairy tales, such as the glass mountain found in Grimm's The King of the Golden Mountain, The Crystal Ball and The Raven and the Sleeping Potion; with the red eyed witch found in Jorinde and Joringel; for the bridal nights found in Cinderella, The Iron Stove, The Singing and Leaping Lark, Allerleirauh, The Two King's Skinners, The True Bride, Three Tasks of the Witch, Giambattista Basile's Pentameron II, The Dove, Rosella, Pinto Smauto. The Three Nuts in Ludwig Bechstein's German Fairy Tale Book of 1845, The Princess of Tiefenthal in Johann Wilhelm Wolf's German Household Tales, No. 1 The Gold Spinning in Ulrich Jahn's Folk Tales from Pomerania and Rügen.

Interpretation

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The drummer's characteristic is consistent, and his impulsive assertiveness is reflected in his (military) instrument. He puts the linen away, only to forget it again immediately; he reacts immediately to the threat of the giant and the witch with a punch in the face, and goes straight to his parents' bed at night to marry the forgotten bride. All of the decisive turning points in the plot take place in the evening after dark, with passion being compared to fire. Homeopaths compare the fairy tale with the symptom picture of Belladonna, which fits with the head reference, impulsiveness and hallucinations. [ 4 ] Günter Grass ' novel The Tin Drum could also have been inspired by this fairy tale.

For the anthroposophist Edzard Storck, the impenetrability of the forest suits the clumsy giant, emptying the pond is bringing to light something pure, felling the forest is a test of will. The embers of the lower world of desire become the fire of the spirit – it is about the "excitement of the real self through the ideal self" (Novalis ).

Psychiatrist Wolfdietrich Siegmund calls this a real fairy tale for patients who have become discouraged or complacent. Neurotics, inhibited by opposing drives, find relief through fairy tale helpers who say something like: "Put your head in my lap and sleep a little, and when you wake up, everything will be done!" [ 6 ]

Eugen Drewermann analyses the Oedipus conflict of the hero, who can only dream of love and not live it, and so the plot oscillates between dream and life. Similar to The Golden Bird, mythological motifs are psychologically linked. The beauty in the lake is a reminder of the love between the moon and the sun, here as a drummer, his round instrument imitating the pulse of the (world) mother. He takes exactly one shirt with him, so he is already expecting her. Instead of a sun chariot, giants carry him, i.e. his instincts, through stages of maturation; otherwise giants carry the vault of heaven. The saddle flight can be interpreted as intuition or, according to Freud, as a sexual fantasy. The fact that he does not ask the old woman about the girl, or about the type of task she has to do, exposes his courage as a fantasy of omnipotence born of fear of the woman or fear of failure, which is also suggested by the pond and the spoon. Only when he realizes that it is impossible to tolerate her in the house, i.e. The right to exist on earth, to earn one's own way (Fundevogel), makes one receptive to the light of love. It is not hard work that makes the tasks disappear, but an attitude of trusting calm. The old woman becomes a young girl, and with her afternoon nap the initial dream vision is reversed. At home it is all about externals, in a reversal of the opening scene the woman asks the drummer to recognize who she is without pomp and clothes - the existential question of love.

Further reading

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  • Grimm, Brothers: Children's and Household Tales . Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 782–791. Düsseldorf and Zurich, 19th edition 1999. (Artemis & Winkler Verlag; Patmos Verlag; ISBN 3-538-06943-3 )
  • Brothers Grimm: Children's and Household Tales. Final edition with the original notes of the Brothers Grimm. With an appendix of all the fairy tales not published in all editions and proofs of origin, edited by Heinz Rölleke. Volume 3: Original notes, proofs of origin, afterword. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-15-003193-1, p. 273, p. 514.
  • Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbook of the Children's and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm. de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8, pp. 395–397.
  • Ward, Donald: Glasberg. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 5. pp. 1265–1270. Berlin/New York 1987.
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