"The Three Little Birds" (German: De drei Vügelkens) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 96.Jacob and Wilheim Grimm, Grimm's Fairy Tales, "The Three Little Birds"Grimm, Jacob, Wilhelm Grimm, JACK ZIPES, and ANDREA DEZSÖ. “THE THREE LITTLE BIRDS”. In: The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition. Princeton University Press, 2014. pp. 319-324. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wq18v.104. The story is originally written in Low German. It is Aarne-Thompson type 707, the dancing water, the singing apple, and the speaking bird.D.L. Ashliman, "The Grimm Brothers' Children's and Household Tales (Grimms' Fairy Tales)" The story resembles Ancilotto, King of Provino, by Giovanni Francesco Straparola, and The Sisters Envious of Their Cadette, the story of the 756th night of the Arabian Nights.
Synopsis
Three sisters were tending cows when a king and his company went by. The oldest pointed at the king and said she would marry him or no one; her sisters pointed at the ministers and said the same. The king summoned them before him, and then, because they were very beautiful, he married the oldest and his ministers married the youngest.
The King had to go on a journey, and had her sisters attend the queen. She gave birth to a son with a red star on his forehead. Her sisters threw the baby boy into the water, and a bird sprang out of the water singing of what they had done. Despite the bird terrifying them, the sisters told the king that the Queen had given birth to a dog. Little did everyone know, a fisherman fished the boy out of the water and raised him. The King said that whatever God had sent was good. It happened again with their second son, and sadly their third child, the King and Queen's daughter. However, instead of saying the Queen had given birth to a third dog, the sisters said that she had given birth to a cat. This forced the King's hand and he threw his wife into a prison as punishment.
One day, the other boys would not let the oldest fish with them, because he was a foundling. So he set out to find his father. He found an old woman fishing and told her she would fish long before she caught anything. She told him that he would search long before he found his father, and carried him over the water to do it. The next year, the second boy set out in search of the brother, and he fared the same as his brother had. The next year, the girl set out as well, and when she found the woman, she said "May God bless your fishing." The old woman gave her a rod and told her to go to a castle, bring back a caged bird and a glass of water, and on the way back, strike a black dog with the rod. She did it, found her brothers on the way, and when she struck the dog, turned it into a handsome prince. They went back home to the fisherman.
The second son went hunting and, when he grew tired, played a flute. The king heard this and found him. He did not believe he was the fisherman's son, so the second son invited him home. There, the bird sang the story of what happened to them. The queen was let out of prison, the lying sisters were killed, and the daughter was married to the prince.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children": three sisters comment on their marriage plans with the king or a prince, with the third promising children with wondrous qualities; the king/prince marries the third sister and she bears her promised wonder children who are taken from her by the elder sisters; years later, the children survive and are sent on a quest for miraculous items, especially a talking bird that reveals the truth.Ashliman, D. L. A Guide to Folktales in the English Language: Based on the Aarne-Thompson Classification System. Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature, vol. 11. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987. pp. 143, 144. .
The Brothers Grimm, commenting on this tale, suggested that the tale developed independently in Köterberg, due to Germanic localisms present in the text.Brothers Grimm. Kinder und Häusmarchen gesammelt durch die Brüder Grimm. Volume 3. Dieterich, 1856. p. 174.Dorson, Richard M. The British Folklorist: A History. History of British Folklore - Volume I. London; New York: Routledge. 2001 . p. 56. .
Motifs Commenting on a variant he collected, Ernst Meier claimed that the golden crosses on the woman's children were indicative of noble origin.Meier, Ernst. Deutsche Volksmärchen aus Schwaben. Stuttgart: 1852. p. 314.
Variants Germany Predecessors Portuguese folklorist Teófilo Braga, in his annotations, commented that variants of the tale could be found in many Germanic sources published until then.For a listing of past and present collections that attest the tale type in German sources, see: Uther, Hans-Jörg. Deutscher Märchenkatalog – Ein Typenverzeichnis. Deutscheland, Münster: Waxmann Verlag GmbH. 2015. p. 161. (e-book) The oldest German language variant is reported by scholarship to be the tale Der wahrredende Vogel ("The Truth-Speaking Bird"), published by author Justus Heinrich Saal in 1767.The Robber With a Witch's Head: More stories from the great treasury of Sicilian folk and fairy tales collected by Laura Gonzenbach. Translated and edited by Jack Zipes. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. p. 222. .Waters, W. G. “Dancing Water, Singing Apple, and the Truth-Speaking Bird”. In: The Pleasant Nights. Volume 1. Edited by Donald Beecher. University of Toronto Press, 2012. p. 598. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442699519.27 In Saal's story, three sisters talk about their marriage wishes, the youngest saying she wants to marry the king and bear him triplets, two boys and a girl, each with a star on the forehead. Years later, the triplets seek the singing apple, the dancing water and the bird of truth.Saal, Justus Heinrich. Abendstunden in lehrreichen und anmuthigen Erzählungen. Vol. 7. Breslau: 1767. pp. 353-366.
Franz Xaver von Schönwerth Folklorist Franz Xaver von Schönwerth collected in the 19th century a Bavarian variant titled Der redende Vogel, der singende Baum und die goldgelbe Quelle ("The Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Sparkling Stream") or Die armen Königskinder, published in the 21st century. In this tale, a nobleman's three daughters talk about their marriage wishes: the elder wants to marry the king's counselor, the middle one the king's chamberlain, and the youngest the king himself. The king overhears their conversation and fulfills their wishes. Some time later, he has to go to war, and leaves his wife under his mother's care. The woman gives birth to "beautiful" children (two boys and a girl) in three consecutive pregnancies, who are taken by the queen mother and cast in the water in a box. The middle child, the second boy, is the hero who obtains the magical objects.Schönwerth. Franz Xaver von. The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales. Edited by Erika Eichenseer. Translated by Maria Tatar. Penguin Books. 2015. pp. 71–72 (text), 252 (classification). .
Schönwerth collected a second variant titled The Mark of the Dog, Pig and Cat. In this tale, a good king marries an evil woman and they have a son, a prince. When the prince grows up, he chooses as his bride a woman "whose only dowry was virtue and beauty", to the queen's disgust. The prince's wife then gives birth to three children, each with an animal-shaped birthmark: a dog, a pig and a cat (the animals the evil queen will put in their place).Schönwerth. Franz Xaver von. The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales. Edited by Erika Eichenseer. Translated by Maria Tatar. Penguin Books. 2015. pp. 83–85 (text), 253 (classification). .
Ludwig Bechstein In a variant from Franconia, collected by Ludwig Bechstein, ("The Boys with the Golden Stars"),Bechstein, Ludwig. The Old Story-teller: Popular German Tales. London, 1854. pp. 233-237. a young count overhears three girls talking, the third promising to marry the count and bear him two children with golden stars on their chests. The count marries the girl and she bears the children. His mother casts the children in the water, but a servant rescues them. The wife is accused of giving birth to cats and is expelled from home. The servant gives back her children and they live in solitude. Years later, she decides to seek her husband out, in Portugal. She takes her children to a castle, whose lady asks for one of her children and in return gives her a golden spinning wheel. The same thing happens in a second castle: she gives up one of her children and receives another golden trinket. She uses both golden trinkets to buy two nights with her husband in Portugal.Bechstein, Ludwig. Ludwig Bechsteins Märchenbuch. Leipzig: Hesse & Becker Verlag. 1845. pp. 368-372.
Ernst Meier German orientalist Ernst Heinrich Meier published a tale from Swabia, collected in Bühl with the title Der König Auffahrer des Meers. In this tale, the titular king has a recurring dream about marrying a poor woman without a kreutzer to her name. These dreams persuade him to go look for a wife. He finds a poor cobbler and his poor but beautiful daughter. He marries the cobbler's daughter and takes her to his castle. When war erupts, the king has to fight the enemy army, and, in his absence, she gives birth to two boys and a girl, each with a golden cross on the back. The king's mother, however, despises his daughter-in-law and falsifies her letters to inform the king that she bore puppies. She takes her three grandchildren and cast them in barrel in the river, but they are saved by a miller, while the queen and the dogs are locked up in a tower for the next decade. Years pass, the three royal siblings leave the miller's home due to the miller's biological children's teasing and mocking. The children enter the forest and meet a witch, who directs them to a magic castle in the wood where a talking and wise blackbird lives in a cage. The witch warns them that one can only enter the castle between 11 and 12 hours; if they fail to leave the castle on time, its doors close and they are locked up inside. The elder brothers enter the castle to get the bird in its cage, but fail. The sister enters and leaves the castle on time, saving her brothers and disenchanting a lion and a bear. They also inherit the magic castle. The king, their father, learns of the wise blackbird and pays it a visit in the siblings' new castle. The blackbird reveals the whole truth to the king, who punished his mother and tries to reconcile with his wife. She forgives him, but decides to live with her children away from him.Meier, Ernst. Deutsche Volksmärchen aus Schwaben. Stuttgart: 1852. pp. 245-253. Meier also compared the tale to the Grimm's The Three Little Birds.Meier, Ernst. Deutsche Volksmärchen aus Schwaben. Stuttgart: 1852. p. 314.
Johann Wilhelm Wolf