| The Donkey | |
|---|---|
| Folk tale | |
| Name | The Donkey |
| Also known as | The Ass; The Little Donkey |
| Aarne–Thompson grouping | 430 |
| Country | Germany |
| Published in | Grimms' Fairy Tales |
"The Ass", "The Donkey", or "The Little Donkey" (German : Das Eselein) is a German fairy tale collected by Brothers Grimm compiled in the Grimm's Fairy Tales . [1]
"The Ass", "The Donkey" or "The Little Donkey" (Das Eselein) is cataloged as KHM 144 (since the second edition of the Grimms' Fairy Tales ), in the compilation of the Brothers Grimm. [2] [3] [4]
This tale was not collected from oral recitation but was reworked by Wilhelm Grimm from the fourteenth-century Latin tale Asinarius. [5] [6]
The piece is representative of the Aarne-Thompson tale type 430 "The Ass" [5] [2] (or "The Donkey Bridegroom" [4] ), and exhibits the motif D721.3 "Disenchantment by destroying skin (covering)". [5]
A king and queen had everything they wished for but no children. Eventually, the queen gave birth, but to a young donkey. They were disappointed but the king decided to raise the donkey as his son and heir. The donkey requested to learn to play the lute and became an accomplished player. Seeing the reflection of himself in the mirror one day, he became sad and decided to travel outside of the kingdom.
He eventually arrived to a kingdom that was ruled by an old king who had a beautiful daughter. When he knocked on the gate the gatekeeper did not give him admittance, but when he played his lute, the gatekeeper ran to the king and told him. Initially mocked by the king's attendance, the donkey insists on being treated as a nobleman and the king lets the donkey sit beside his daughter and he behaves like a gentleman.
After many days, the donkey grew sad and the king offered him many things to make him happy, as the king liked him a great deal. The donkey would only accept the king's beautiful daughter as his wife, and they married. After the wedding, the king sent a servant to watch their bedroom to see that the donkey behaved himself. The servant observed the donkey take off his skin and underneath he was a handsome young man. He related this to the king, who observed for himself later and threw the donkey skin away in the night. When the young man awoke, he panicked and decided to run away. On his way out, the king found him and told him to stay and offered to make him his heir. The young man accepted, and when the old king died the next year, he became king and had a glorious life.
The "Town Musicians of Bremen" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in Grimms' Fairy Tales in 1819.
"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 Devil with the Three Golden Hairs" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. It falls under Aarne–Thompson classification types 461, and 930.
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The Lute Player, The Tsaritsa Harpist or The Tsaritsa who Played the Gusli, is a Russian fairy tale. It was published by Alexander Afanasyev in his collection Russian Fairy Tales, as number 338. Andrew Lang included it in The Violet Fairy Book (1901).
Penta of the Chopped-off Hands or The Girl With the Maimed Hands is an Italian literary fairy tale written by Giambattista Basile in his 1634 work, the Pentamerone.
"The Peasant's Wise Daughter", "The Peasant's Clever Daughter" or "The Clever Lass" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales as tale number 94. It has also spread into Bohemia and Božena Němcová included it into her collection of Czech national folk tales in 1846.
"The King of the Golden Mountain" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales.
"The Turnip" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales.
The Facetious Nights of Straparola, also known as The Nights of Straparola, is a two-volume collection of 75 stories by Italian author and fairy-tale collector Giovanni Francesco Straparola. Modeled after Boccaccio's Decameron, it is significant as often being called the first European storybook to contain fairy-tales; it would influence later fairy-tale authors like Charles Perrault and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
"The Gnome" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales, tale number 91.
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.
