Fairy Tales

to help him. After enabling the protagonist to acquire a fortune or marry a princess, the dead man reveals his true identity to the young hero and often disappears. Andersen adapted a Fyn folk tale, “The Dead Man’s Help,” and published it as “The Ghost: A Fairy Tale from Fyn” in 1829. When he rewrote it in 1835 for his second pamphlet of fairy tales, he transformed it into a Christian tale that spells out his religious beliefs and that reveals his misogynist traits, which also appear in other tales, including “The Little Mermaid” and “The Red Shoes.” The folk tale was very well known in the European tradition, as Bent Holbek points out in his essay “Hans Christian Andersen’s Use of Folktales” (see “For Further Reading”). The Brothers Grimm also published a variant, “The Grateful Dead Man and the Princess Rescued from Slavery,” in their annotations of 1856; they had received a dialect version from the Haxthausen family some time between 1814 and 1816. The motif concerning the Princess Turandot, who would marry only the man who could guess her thoughts, has its origins in The Thousand and One Nights; it served as the basis for eighteenth-century plays about Turandot by Carlo Gozzi and Friedrich Schiller. Simon Meisling, Andersen’s headmaster, translated the Gozzi play in 1825, and Andersen undoubtedly knew his version.

THE WILD SWANS (DE VILDE SVANER, 1838)

One of the most popular motifs in the European oral and literary tradition is the innocent sister who seeks to become acquainted with and/or rescue her brothers, who were banished from her family upon her birth. Andersen probably knew a Danish folk variant and may have known one of the Grimms’ versions. The Grimms were familiar with the Italian Giambattista Basile’s “The Seven Doves” (1634) and published three tales in Children’s and Household Tales that dealt with this theme—“The Six Swans,” “The Twelve Brothers,” and “The Seven Ravens”; they retained the pattern of Basile’s tale and a German oral tale they heard while preparing their collection. Wilhelm Grimm’s reworking of the narrative emphasizes two elements: the dedication of the sister and brothers to one another, and the establishment of a common, orderly household in the forest, where they live peacefully together. It is not clear whether Andersen knew the different German versions. He may have been more familiar with Mathias Winther’s “The Eleven Swans,” published in Danske Folkeventyr (Danish Folk Tales, 1823). After Andersen and the Brothers Grimm made this tale popular, the well-known German writer Ludwig Bechstein included versions of “The Seven Ravens” and “The Seven Swans” in his German Fairy Tale Book (1845).

The underlying social issue in these tales concerns the legacy of a family and the right of succession and inheritance. If such rights were based on ultimogeniture (inheritance by the youngest) rather than primogeniture (inheritance by the oldest child), the older children might be sent away so that the youngest could inherit the family property. It is also possible that the tale arose in societies that were based on matrilineal rites.

THE SWINEHERD (SVINEDRENGEN, 1842)

The taming of a proud princess or aristocratic woman who thinks she is too good to marry any man—especially one who is or appears to be beneath her in social rank, such as a gardener, a fool, a lower-class man, or a prince disguised as a beggar or peasant—became an important didactic motif in the medieval oral and literary tradition. In a thirteenth-century erotic tale written in middle high German verse, “Diu halbe Bir” or “Die halbe Birne” (“Half a Pear”), a mighty king offers his daughter in marriage to a knight who shows his valor and wins a tournament. When a knight named Arnold wins the tournament, he is invited to a feast where pears are served, one for every two people. He cuts a pear in half without peeling it. After he eats his half, he offers the princess the other half, and she is so insulted because he has not peeled it for her that she berates him before all the guests. Enraged, Arnold departs, swearing revenge. He returns later as a court jester and is allowed to enter the salon of the princess to entertain her and her ladies. She becomes so aroused by his antics that she yields to his amorous advances. When Arnold leaves and returns to the court as a knight, the princess begins to mock him as the one who had offered her half a pear. He responds with a retort that makes her aware that he was the one she had been with the night before. Consequently, he compels her to become his wife.

A similar version can be found in the fourteenth-century Icelandic saga “Clarus,” attributed to Jon Halldorsson. Shakespeare used the motif in The Taming of the Shrew (early 1590s), and Luigi Allemanni’s novella Bianca, Daughter of the Count of Tolouse (1531) had a direct influence on Giambattista Basile’s “Pride Punished” (1634) and the Grimms’ “King Thrush-beard” (1812). The popularity of literary tales had a strong influence on the oral tradition, and the development of different versions led to Andersen’s “The Swineherd” (1842) and Ludwig Bechstein’s “Vom Zornbraten” (“About the Angry Roast,” 1857). For the most part, tales about so-called shrews represented a patriarchal viewpoint of how women, particularly courtly women, were to order their lives according to the dictates and demands of their fathers or husbands. In addition, the women fulfill the wish-dreams of men’s imaginations. The sadism of such tales is often concealed by the humorous manner in which a haughty woman learns “humility.”

MOTHER ELDERBERRY (HYLDEMOER, 1844)

Andersen based this tale on Danish folklore. According to folk belief, there was an “elder woman” who made her home in the elder tree, and if anyone harmed the tree she would take revenge. Andersen heard a tale about a man who chopped down an elder tree and died soon after the event; it was probably based on a legend that appeared in volume 2 of Just Mathias Thiele’s Danmarks Folkesagen II (Danish Legends II, 1818-1823). Andersen’s version was first published in the magazine Gaea.

THE HILL OF THE ELVES (ELVERHOR I, 1845)

This tale is based on an old Danish folk tale. Like many writers of his time, including J. L. Heiberg, Andersen had a strong interest in elves; in 1830 he had written a poem that dealt with them. He was also influenced by the poet Just Mathias Thiele (see the note directly above).

CLOD HANS (KLODS-HANS, 1855)

The naive and innocent hero who competes with his two older brothers for the hand of a princess is a common character in European folklore, and this tale type was widespread in the late Middle Ages. Andersen’s humorous version is intended to poke fun at the marriage rituals of the upper classes.

WHAT FATHER DOES IS ALWAYS RIGHT (HVAD FATTER GOR, DET ER ALTID DET RIGTIGE, 1861)

Andersen heard a folk version of this tale as a child. The story of two peasants who manage to make their way through life despite their stupidity was a common tale type in European folklore. The characters are appealing because they are so good-natured, and because of their good hearts, fortune inevitably shines on them.

ORIGINAL FAIRY TALES

THE SHADOW (SKYGGEN, 1847)

The major source for this tale is Adelbert Chamisso’s fairy-tale novella Peter Schlemihl (1813), about a young man who sells his shadow to the devil and wanders the world in search of salvation. E. T. A. Hoffmann also dealt with the Doppelganger motif in his remarkable stories “Die Abenteuer der Sylvester Nacht” (“The New Year’s Adventure,” 1819) and “Die Doppeltganger” (“The Doubles,” 1821). Andersen was familiar with these stories; he even makes reference to