Array The Brothers Grimm - Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm - A New English Version

Now in that country there were two brothers, the sons of a poor man, and they declared that they would take on this fearful task. The older brother, who was cunning and clever, did so out of arrogance, but the younger, who was simple and innocent, was moved only by the goodness of his heart.

The king said, ‘If you want to be sure of finding the beast, you should go into the forest from opposite sides.’

Taking his advice, the older brother entered the forest from the west, and his younger brother from the east.

The younger had not walked for very long when a little man appeared on the path, carrying a black spear. He said, ‘I’m going to give you this spear because you’ve got an innocent heart. You can use it to kill the wild boar, and you can be sure it’ll work. It won’t do any harm to you.’

The younger brother thanked the little man and walked further into the forest, carrying the spear on his shoulder. And quite soon he came across the great beast itself. It charged at him, but he held the spear firmly, and in its blind rage the boar ran right on to the spear with such force that the spear-point cut its heart in two.

The young man hauled the monster up on to his back and set off, intending to take it to the king; but when he reached the edge of the forest, he came to a tavern where people were having a good time drinking and dancing. Among them was his elder brother. That scoundrel hadn’t been brave enough to go into the forest, and reckoning that the boar wasn’t going anywhere else in a hurry, he’d decided to drink some wine to give himself a bit of courage. When he saw his younger brother coming out of the trees with the boar over his shoulder, his wicked envious heart began to tempt him.

He called out: ‘Brother! What a great deed you’ve done! Congratulations! Now come in and sit down, and let’s drink to your victory.’

The young man, in his simplicity, suspected nothing. He told his elder brother about the little man and the black spear with which he’d killed the boar.

They stayed there till evening came, and then they set off together. When it was dark they came to a bridge over a stream.

‘You go first,’ said the elder.

The younger brother went ahead. When he had reached the middle of the bridge, the elder struck him so hard on the head that he fell dead on the spot. The murderer buried him on the bank beneath the bridge, lifted the boar up on his own shoulders, and took it to the king.

‘I killed it,’ he said, ‘but I haven’t seen my poor brother. I hope he’s safe.’

The king kept his word, and the elder brother married the princess. After a little time had gone by and his brother still hadn’t returned, he said, ‘I’m afraid the boar must have ripped him apart. Oh, my poor brother!’

Everyone believed him, and they thought that was the end of the matter.

But nothing is hidden from the eye of God. After many years, a shepherd was driving his sheep across the bridge when he saw something glinting white down on the bank below. He thought he might be able to do something with it, and he went down to pick it up, finding a snow-white bone, which he took home and carved into a mouthpiece for his horn.

But to his amazement, when he blew into it the bone began to sing by itself:

‘What a wonderful mouthpiece!’ said the shepherd. ‘It makes my horn sing all by itself. I must take it to the king.’

When he brought it to the king the horn began to sing again, just as before. The king was no fool: he understood at once what must have happened, and he had the earth beneath the bridge dug up. The whole skeleton of the dead man was lying there, all but one bone.

The wicked brother couldn’t deny it. By order of the king, he was sewn into a sack and drowned in the same stream beside which his brother’s body had been lying. As for the younger brother, his bones were laid to rest in a beautiful grave in the churchyard.

Tale type:ATU 780, ‘The Singing Bone’

Source:a story told to the Grimm brothers by Dortchen Wild

Similar stories:Alexander Afanasyev: ‘The Miraculous Pipe’ ( Russian Fairy Tales ); Katharine M. Briggs: ‘Binnorie’ ( Folk Tales of Britain ); Italo Calvino: ‘The Peacock Feather’ ( Italian Folktales )

Take out the story’s only supernatural elements, the little man who gives the younger brother the boar-killing spear and the bone that sings, and this could easily be one of the homely tales in Johann Peter Hebel’s enormously popular anthology Schatzkästlein des Rheinischen Hausfreundes ( The Treasure Chest ), published in 1811, a year before the Grimms’ first edition. Hebel’s speciality was tales of everyday life with an amusing or sensational or moral character, and the murder that comes to light by chance figures in more than one of his anecdotes.

But the supernatural character of this tale is important, and widespread. Sometimes the magic instrument that sings the truth is made from a bone, sometimes from a reed, and sometimes it’s a harp made from the victim’s breastbone and hair, as in the British ‘Binnorie’; but the truth always comes out.

There was once a poor woman who bore a son, and the baby had a caul on his head. That’s a sign of good luck, and when the village fortune-teller heard about it, she prophesied that when he was fourteen years old the boy would marry the king’s daughter.

A few days later the king himself came to the village. He was travelling incognito, so no one recognized him, and when he asked what had been happening, was there any news, what were people talking about in the village, and so on, they told him that a child had been born with a caul. Apparently, they said, that meant he was going to be lucky, and marry the king’s daughter when he was fourteen.

Now the king was a wicked man, and this prophecy didn’t please him at all. He went to the parents and said, ‘My friends, you’ve got a lucky boy there, and I’m a rich man. Here’s the first sign of his luck: entrust your child to me, and I’ll take good care of him.’

At first they refused, but when the stranger offered them a good deal of gold they saw the merit of his proposition, and said, ‘Well, he’s a lucky child, after all, and things are bound to turn out all right for him’; so in the end they agreed, and gave him the child.

The king put the baby in a box and rode away until he came to a deep river. He threw the box in the water, and thought: ‘That’s a good day’s work done. I’ve saved my daughter from an unwelcome suitor.’

Then he rode off home. If he’d stayed to watch he’d have seen that the box didn’t sink, as he’d hoped, but floated like a little boat, and not a drop of water got inside. It floated down the river to within two miles of the capital city, to a spot where there happened to be a mill, and there it got caught in the weir. The miller’s apprentice was fishing there at the time, and he pulled it out with a boathook, thinking that he’d found a great treasure. When he opened the box, though, he was astonished to find a little baby, fresh and rosy-cheeked. Having no use for a baby himself, he took it to the miller and his wife. They were delighted with this little child, because they had no children of their own. ‘God must have given him to us,’ they said.

So they took him in and looked after him. They brought the luck-child up well, and taught him to mind his manners and always be good and honest.