The Glass Mountain (fairy tale)

"The Glass Mountain" (Aarne–Thompson type 530[1]) is a Polish fairy tale collected by Hermann Kletke. Andrew Lang included it in The Yellow Fairy Book.

The name also appears as a mythical location in a different story, Old Rinkrank, one of the original Brothers Grimm fairytales, "Glassberg" or "Glasberg" in the original German.

Synopsis

The Polish story begins with: On a glass mountain grew a tree with golden apples. An apple would let the picker into the golden castle where an enchanted princess lived. Many knights had tried and failed, so that many bodies lay about the mountain.

A knight in golden armor tried. One day, he made it halfway up and calmly went down again. The second day, he tried for the top, and was climbing steadily when an eagle attacked him. He and his horse fell to their deaths.

A schoolboy killed a lynx and climbed with its claws attached to his feet and hands. Weary, he rested on the slope. The eagle thought he was carrion and flew down to eat him. The boy grabbed it, and it, trying to shake him off, carried him the rest of the way. He cut off its feet and fell into the apple tree. The peels of the apples cured his wounds, and he picked more, to let him into the castle. He married the princess.

The blood of the eagle restored to life everyone who had died trying to climb the mountain.

Origin

John Th. Honti speculated that the fairy tale has its roots in an 11th-century Egyptian story, the "Tale of the Predestined Prince".[2] Other scholars have asserted the tale comes from India.

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References
  1. Zipes, Jack (2019). "Speaking the Truth with Folk and Fairy Tales: The Power of the Powerless". The Journal of American Folklore. 132 (525): 243–259. doi:10.5406/jamerfolk.132.525.0243. JSTOR 10.5406/jamerfolk.132.525.0243.
  2. John Th., Honti (June 1936). "Celtic Studies and European Folk-Tale Research". Béaloideas. 6 (1): 33–39. doi:10.2307/20521905. JSTOR 20521905.
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