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Jacob Grimm Household Tales UNDER CONSTRUCTION! Note: While Hunt's translation of the Grimms' Household Tales appears in many places on the web, SurLaLune is the first and only site to present the entire text from the 1884 edition, including Hunt's preface, Andrew Lang's introduction, and the extensive notes from the Grimms, translated by Hunt. Hunt has been one of the few translators to offer the notes in English in almost two centuries of English translations. The notes for each tale appear at the bottom of the individual tale's page. They also appear in the Notes section in their entirety. 1 The Frog King, or Iron Henry 2 Cat and Mouse in Partnership 4 The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was 5 The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids 11 Little Brother and Little Sister 13 The Three Little Men in the Forest 18 The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean 23 The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage 29 The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs 36 The Wishing-table, the Gold-ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack 54 The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn 70 The Three Children of Fortune 71 How Six Men Got On in the World 78 The Old Man and His Grandson 80 The Death of the Little Hen 87 The Poor Man and the Rich Man 88 The Singing, Springing Lark 92 The King of the Golden Mountain 94 The Peasant's Clever Daughter 102 The Willow-Wren and the Bear 106 The Poor Miller's Boy and the Cat 115 The Bright Sun Brings It to Light 121 The King's Son Who Feared Nothing 125 The Devil and His Grandmother 130 One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes 131 Fair Katrinelje and Pif Paf Poltrie 133 The Shoes that Were Danced to Pieces 135 The White Bride and the Black One 137 The Three Black Princesses 141 The Lambkin and the Little Fish 147 The Old Man Made Young Again 148 The Lord's Animals and the Devil's 151 (A) The Twelve Idle Servants 157 The Sparrow and His Four Children 158 The Story of Schlauraffen Land 159 The Ditmarsh Tale of Wonders 179 The Goose-Girl at the Well 181 The Nixie of the Mill-Pond 182 The Little Folks' Presents 188 The Spindle, the Shuttle, and the Needle 199 The Boot of Buffalo Leather Children's Legends Legend 1 St. Joseph in the Forest Legend 4 Poverty and Humility Lead to Heaven Legend 6 The Three Green Twigs Legend 7 Our Lady's Little Glass Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Household Tales. Margaret Hunt, translator. London: George Bell, 1884, 1892. 2 volumes. About the Grimms Many scholars continued to collect and study folktales between the time of Charles Perrault and the 1800s. They laid the groundwork for the fairy tale renaissance in the 19th century. The renaissance was led by two brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, who solidified the popularity of fairy tale collecting and publishing with their Kinder- und Haus-märchen (Children's and Household Tales) in 1812-15. Today, the Grimms' collection of fairy tales remain popular in countless editions, making it one of the all time bestselling books in the German and English languages. Many of the today's most popular fairy tales come from the Grimms, including The Frog King, Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Bremen Town Musicians, Hansel and Gretel and Rapunzel. The collection also contains tales similar to those recorded by Charles Perrault, especially Aschenputtel (like Cinderella) and Briar Rose (like Sleeping Beauty). The Grimms' collection went through seven editions during their lifetime. The seventh and final edition of 1857 includes 200 numbered stories plus ten "Children's Legends." The brothers edited the tales for subsequent editions after seeing the book embraced by children and adults. Their translators also edited the tales so that many editions of the tales in English, German and other languages are considerably different from the tales originally collected by the brothers. Recommended further reading about the Grimms' collecting and editing methods can be found in The Brothers Grimm by Jack Zipes, The Reception of the Grimms' Fairy Tales edited by Donald Haase, The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar and The Classic Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar. There are many more excellent articles and books about the Grimms, but these are some of the best and most readily available to most readers. D. L. Ashliman also has an excellent section devoted to the Grimms on his Grimm Brothers' Home Page. The first translation of Grimms into English came as German Popular Tales in 1823, translated by Edgar Taylor and illustrated by George Cruikshank. Taylor took great liberties with the text and only offered a selection of tales, not the complete collection published in German. Of the early translations of the tales, Margaret Hunt provides what is the most accurate and complete early translation of the Grimms into English (1884). Hunt also translated the Grimms' extensive notes to the tales. Hunt still took liberties with the text, however, changing content of the tales and the notes when she disagreed with the original text. Her changes are minimal compared to the other translations available at the time since Hunt had a scholarly intent with her translation. Still, of all the translations from the 19th century, hers is the most complete and overall the most accurate. Her work is also out of copyright and available on the web, although the notes haven't been included with most internet versions or print editions of her translation. SurLaLune is the first website to offer the notes along with the tales. In my experience, the greatest percentage of unattributed English translations in print and on the web are either direct reprints of Hunt's translation or edited derivatives of her original work. The remaining most significant translation of Grimms from the 19th century was done by Lucy Crane to accompany her brother Walter Crane's illustrations of the tales in Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm (1886). (An online edition is also available through Project Gutenberg). The Cranes' edition contains only a selection of the tales, but Lucy Crane's translation is charming and captures the spirit of the tales along with her brother's illustrations. For further reading on 19th century translations including commentary on the translators' source materials, I recommend reading Martin Sutton's The Sin-Complex: A Critical Study of English Versions of the Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen in the Nineteenth Century. While difficult to purchase, this book is available in many academic libraries and should be attainable through interlibrary loan services. For the curious, I also recommend Grimm's Grimmest which contains 19 early versions of the Grimms' tales before they were edited and cleaned-up for younger audiences by the brothers. The accompanying modern illustrations emphasize the gruesome aspects, so this edition is not recommended for youngest readers. It isn't a scholarly work; it is intended for general audiences, especially those interested in horror stories. In the 21st century, two of the most accurate and best translations of the Grimms' tales are by Ralph Manheim and Jack Zipes. The Zipes translation, currently in a third edition, includes extra fragments and earlier manuscripts, but many readers prefer Manheim's translations. The choice is aesthetic and should be decided by the individual reader. However, if you are looking for a reliable English translation, I recommend selecting either one or both of these translations. Note: Many scholars prefer to use the Grimms' term märchen (translation: wonder tales or magic tales) to refer to fairy tales, considering the term to be more accurate with less problematic connotations. Haase, Donald, editor. The Reception of Grimms' Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions. Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1993. Hettinga, Donald R. The Brothers Grimm: Two Lives, One Legacy. New York: Clarion Books, 2001. Sutton, Martin. The Sin-Complex: A Critical Study of English Versions of the Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen in the Nineteenth Century. Kassel: BrGrimm-Gesellschaft e.V., 1996. Opie, Iona and Peter. The Classic Fairy Tales. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Paradiz, Valerie. Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Tatar, Maria M. The Annotated Brothers Grimm. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. Tatar, Maria M., ed. The Classic Fairy Tales. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Tatar, Maria M. The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales. Princeton: Princeton University, 1987. Warner, Marina. From Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. London: Chatto & Windus, 1994. Zipes, Jack. The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Zipes, Jack, ed. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. |
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Anne Heiner, SurLaLune Fairy Tales E-mail: heidi@surlalunefairytales.com Page created 6/20/07; Last updated 10/11/07 www.surlalunefairytales.com |
