The Donkey (fairy tale)

"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]

Tale type

"The Ass", "The Donkey" or "The Little Donkey" (Das Eselein) cataloged KHM 144 (since the second edition of the Grimms' Fairy Tales).[2][3][4]

This tale not collected from oral recitation but was Wilhelm Grimm's reworking by of 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]

Synopsis

A king and queen long lamented their childlessness until the queen gave birth to a son who was a donkey. The queen was upset, but the king had him raised as a donkey. He was very fond of music and insisted on learning to play the lute, at which he grew skilled. One day, he saw his own reflection in a pool and grew so disturbed that he wandered the world. He tried to stay at the castle of a king with a single daughter. When they would not let him in, he played outside until the king heard his music and let him in. He insisted that his proper seat was with the king. After a time, he grew sad. The king questioned him about this until he learned that the donkey wished to marry his daughter. The king agreed, they married, and in the night, the king set a servant to watch the couple, to ensure the donkey would behave well. When the donkey went in the bedroom, he took off his donkey-skin and changed into a handsome youth. Even though he put on his skin again in the morning, the daughter assured her father that she was well pleased with her bridegroom. The servant told the king what had happened. The next night, the king stayed up and when the couple were asleep, he burned the donkey skin. This distressed the donkey, but the king persuaded him to stay by offering him half his kingdom. When the king died, he had the whole kingdom, and when his own father died, he had two kingdoms.

Further reading
  • Ziolkowski, Jan M. "The Beast and the Beauty: The Reorientation of "The Donkey" from the Middle Ages to the Brothers Grimm." The Journal of Medieval Latin 5 (1995): 53-94. www.jstor.org/stable/45019406.
  • Ziolkowski, Jan M. "The Reorientation of The Donkey Tale (ca. 1200)." In Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies, 200-30. ANN ARBOR: University of Michigan Press, 2007. www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.105158.11.
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See also

References
Citations
  1. Jacob and Wilheim Grimm, Household Tales, "The Donkey"
  2. Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. p. 100.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  3. Ziolkowski (2010), pp. 168, 341ff
  4. Ashliman, D.L., "The Little Donkey"
  5. Aarne, Antti (1987). Thompson, Stith (ed.). The Types of the Folk-tale: A Classification and Bibliography. FF communications 84. p. 145.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  6. Ziolkowski (2010), pp. 168, 200
Bibliography
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