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Comment
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Tempestas
Registered User
(2/24/06 2:30 am)
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Looking for a fairy tale about a princess and a humpback
I'm preparing a thesis on Finnish writer Arvid Järnefelt. He published two collections of fairy tales and stories in 1900 and 1908. Some of the fairy tales are easy to recognize, for example the paraphrases of well-known stories, such as Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and the Russian fairy tale "Snowmaiden". Others are not so widely known. The problem is that the origin of the stories is not mentioned in the books and I should somehow find out, if Järnefelt has written the stories himself or if they have a literary background.
The fairy tale I'm looking for is about a beautiful and rich princess called Niina or Punakukka, "Red Flower". Everybody in the city bows down to her, except a humpback. The princess gets angry because of that and tries to get the humpback to bow down to her by showing her 1) beauty, 2) riches and 3) wisdom to him. It does not help. When the princess asks why, he answers: "Because you do not deserved it."
Then famine comes to the country and children are crying for food in front of the castle. The princess hears it and gives them bread. The next day there is a bigger crowd begging for food. The princess gives them all food, and the same happens day after day. So she has to sell all her jewelry and dresses to pay for the food, and she becomes a poor girl and nobody bows down to her - except the humpback, whom she meets while she is giving bread for the poor people in the streets. The princess asks, why he bows down to her. He answers: "Because you deserve it. You have a big heart."
I am very grateful, if somebody can help me tracking this (fairy?) tale to its origin. I have searched the web and found nothing.
I'm not a native English-speaker, so please forgive my mistakes .:D
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princessterribel
Registered User
(2/26/06 4:40 am)
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humpback
I'm afraid that I do not know this story, but we tend to call them 'hunchback's' in English. As in 'the hunchback of Notre dame'
Sorry I can't b of any help...although if you can get hold of a book called the Aarne-Thompson type index. It is a large index containing the themes and motifs of many fairy tales, if you can find trends in there it might be a good starting point for research.
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Tempestas
Registered User
(2/26/06 8:02 am)
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Re: Looking for a fairy tale about a princess and a humpback
Thank you for the tip. I suppose the fairy tale I am looking for is a literary fairy tale, because I have not found it in any collection of traditional fairy tales or folk tales. And the lesson the fairy tale gives hints to that direction, too.
I have a feeling that the Russian writers could have written such fairy tales in the end of the nineteenth century. Lev Tolstoy?
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