| Maid Maleen | |
|---|---|
 Arthur Rackham, 1917 | |
| Folk tale | |
| Name | Maid Maleen |
| Aarne–Thompson grouping | ATU 870 |
| Country | Germany |
| Published in | Grimms' Fairy Tales |
"Maid Maleen" (German : Jungfrau Maleen) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, number 198. [1]
It is Aarne–Thompson type 870, "The Princess Confined in the Mound." [2]
The tale was originally published by author Karl Mullenhoff with the title Jungfer Maleen, in the fourth book of his compilation of German legends and folktales. [3]
Once there was a princess named Maid Maleen who fell in love with a prince, but her father refused his suit. When Maid Maleen said she would marry no other, the king had her and her maidservant locked up in tower, with food that would be enough to feed them for seven years.
After seven long years, the food eventually ran out, but no one came to release them or deliver more food. The princess and her maidservant then decided to escape from the tower using a simple knife. When they finally managed to break free of the tower, they found the kingdom destroyed and the king long gone from since. Without knowing where to go, they finally arrived at the country of Maleen's lover, and sought work in the royal kitchen.
Since Maleen's imprisonment, the prince had been betrothed by his father to another princess. This princess, lacking of confidence in herself, did not think that she would be good enough for the prince. Thus, she would not leave her room and let him see her. On her wedding day, not wishing to be seen, the princess sent Maid Maleen in her place.
At the wedding, the prince put a golden necklace around Maid Maleen's neck as proof of their marriage. Later that night, the prince went to the wedding chamber where the princess was waiting, but he did not see the golden necklace around her neck. Immediately, he knew that the princess was not the one he was married to. Meanwhile, the princess had sent out an assassin to kill Maid Maleen. The prince, who left the wedding chamber to look for his true bride, was guided by the shine of the golden necklace and came in time to save her. With the golden necklace as the proof of marriage, they were married, the princess was executed for her wickedness and the prince and Maleen lived happily ever after with laughter in their hearts.
The tale is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 870, "The Princess Confined in the Mound". [4] [5]
Swedish scholar Waldemar Liungman , in his study on the tale type, argued that the tale originated in Jutland as a local legend. [6] [7] [8] On the other hand, German scholar Hans-Jörg Uther indicates that Mullenhoff's tale is the oldest attestation of the tale type. [9]
Stith Thompson claimed that the tale type is "essentially Scandinavian", since most of its variants are collected there. [10] Further studies by Hans-Jörg Uther and Waldemar Liungman confirm Thompson's assessment, since the tale can be found in Norway (with the title Kongsdatteren i haugen, or "The King's Daughter in the Mound"), [11] Iceland, Sweden and Finland, as well as in northwest Germany. [12] [13]
Uther recognizes that the story contains old folktale motifs, such as the accused bride and the imprisonment in a tower. [14] The motif of the tower imprisonment, as in Rapunzel , is here only as a prison, and while they work in a kitchen, as in Catskin or Katie Woodencloak , the contempt springs only from the false bride.
In other variations of type 870, the false heroine's motive to substitute the heroine for herself is not ugliness, but to conceal that she is pregnant, as in Little Annie the Goose-Girl or Gil Brenton . [15] [16] In either variant, the false bride is unusual in that she stands in no relationship to the real one. In many more fairy tales, the true bride's place is taken by her sister or stepsister - which is another tale type altogether. [17]
In other Scandinavian variants, such as from Iceland, the false bride is a troll or an ogre. [18] [19]
A retelling of this story is told by Shannon Hale in the 2007 young adult novel Book of a Thousand Days .
Another retelling is in the 1999-2007 manga Ludwig Revolution .
The 2015 television film Prinzessin Maleen is based on the fairy-tale.
The poet Anya Silver rewrites this story in her sonnet "Maid Maleen" published in 2015.
In Stephen King's 2022 novel Fairy Tale , an underground prison is called "the Deep Maleen".
"Snow-White and Rose-Red" is a German fairy tale. The best-known version is the one collected by the Brothers Grimm in 1837 in the third edition of their collection Grimm's Fairy Tales. It was first published by Wilhelm Grimm in 1827 in Wilhelm Hauff's Märchen-Almanach. An older, somewhat shorter version, "The Ungrateful Dwarf", was written by Caroline Stahl (1776–1837). Indeed, that appears to be the oldest variant; no previous oral version is known, although several have been collected since its publication in 1818. Oral versions are very limited regionally. The tale is of Aarne-Thompson type 426.
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"The Frog Prince; or, Iron Henry" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 in Grimm's Fairy Tales. Traditionally, it is the first story in their folktale collection. The tale is classified as Aarne-Thompson type 440.
The Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index is a catalogue of folktale types used in folklore studies. The ATU index is the product of a series of revisions and expansions by an international group of scholars: Originally published in German by Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne (1910), the index was translated into English, revised, and expanded by American folklorist Stith Thompson, and later further revised and expanded by German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther (2004). The ATU index is an essential tool for folklorists, used along with the Thompson (1932)Motif-Index of Folk-Literature.
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"Hans My Hedgehog" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. The tale was translated as Jack My Hedgehog by Andrew Lang and published in The Green Fairy Book. It is of Aarne-Thompson type 441.
The Iron Stove is a fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, as tale number 127. It is Aarne–Thompson type 425A, "The Animal (Monster) as Bridegroom". Dorothea Viehmann prepared the story for the Grimms' collection.
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"Thirteenth" is an Italian fairy tale originally collected by Sicilian folklorist Giuseppe Pitrè and published by Thomas Frederick Crane in Italian Popular Tales. It is Aarne-Thompson type 328, "The Boy Steals the Giant's Treasures".
"The Old Woman in the Wood" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 123. It is Aarne-Thompson type 442.
"The Pig King" or "King Pig" is an Italian literary fairy tale written by Giovanni Francesco Straparola in his The Facetious Nights of Straparola. Madame d'Aulnoy wrote a French, also literary, variant, titled Prince Marcassin.
"The King of the Golden Mountain" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales.
Grateful dead is both a motif and a group of related folktales present in many cultures throughout the world.
"Puss in Boots" is a European fairy tale about an anthropomorphic cat who uses trickery and deceit to gain power, wealth, and the hand in marriage of a princess for his penniless and low-born master.
"The Three Snake-Leaves" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 16. It is Aarne-Thompson type 612, "The Three Snake-Leaves".
"The Three Feathers" is a story by the Brothers Grimm, in their Kinder- und Hausmärchen. It is KHM nr. 63. It is classified as Aarne–Thompson–Uther ATU 402, "The Animal Bride". It appeared in the first edition in 1812, and was slightly reworked for the second edition in 1819. A second variant of the tale also collected by the Brothers Grimm is "The Poor Miller's Boy and the Cat", listed as KHM 106.
Hans-Jörg Uther is a German literary scholar and folklorist.
The Calumniated Wife is a motif in traditional narratives, numbered K2110.1 in Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. It entails a wife being falsely accused of, and often punished for, some crime or sin. This motif is at the centre of a number of traditional plots, being associated with tale-types 705–712 in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index of tale-types.
In folkloristics, "The Animal as Bridegroom" refers to a group of folk and fairy tales about a human woman marrying or being betrothed to an animal. The animal is revealed to be a human prince in disguise or under a curse. Most of these tales are grouped in the international system of Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index under type ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband". Some subtypes exist in the international classification as independent stories, but they sometimes don't adhere to a fixed typing.
Maid Lena is a Danish folktale collected by author Svend Grundtvig. It features versions of the swan maiden, a mythic female character that alternates between human and animal shapes.
The full text of Maid Maleen at Wikisource
