Jesper Who Herded the Hares (Danish: Jesper Harehyrde) is a Scandinavian fairy tale, first recorded by Danish folktale collector Evald Tang Kristensen in the first volume of Æventyr fra Jylland.Kristensen, Evald Tang. Æventyr fra Jylland. Vol. I. Kjobehavn: Trykt hos Konrad Jorgensen i Kolding. 1881. pp. 73-83 (Tale nr. 10). Andrew Lang included it in The Violet Fairy Book.Andrew Lang, The Violet Fairy Book, "Jesper Who Herded the Hares"
The motif of herding hares is a common fairy tale theme. Another tale featuring it is The Three May Peaches. This tale, and The Griffin, also feature the test of truthfully telling what the character is carrying.
The tale and its variants are grouped under the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 570, "The Rabbit-Herd" or "The Sack of Lies".Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. University of California Press. 1977. pp. 154-155. .
Synopsis
A king of a kingdom so small he could see every border from the towers on his castle, still was proud of it. Having a single daughter, he wished her to marry a man fit to be king. He declared that whoever brought him twelve of the finest pearls (to ensure the wooer was rich) and could perform certain tasks would marry her. Many princes and merchants brought the pearls but failed the tasks, and many tried false pearls and were turned away more quickly.
A fisherman had three sons: Peter, Paul, and Jesper. One day he caught three dozen oysters, each of which had a fine pearl. It was decided that each son would have his chance to win the princess. On the way, Peter met the King of the Ants, who was battling the King of the Beetles and had been worsted; he asked for Peter's help, and Peter said he was too busy. Then he met an old woman, who asked what he was carrying; he said cinders, she said that, very well, it was cinders, and when he got to the castle, the pearls turned into cinders. He did not tell what had happened when he came home. Paul tried, and met the same fate. Jesper tried; he helped the king of the ants, who won the field with him, and told the old woman of his pearls. The old woman begged some food from him, since he could eat at the castle. He handed over his entire lunch. The old woman called him back and gave him a whistle that would bring back what he had lost.
The king was not pleased with such a son-in-law. He had a sack each of wheat, barley, oats, and rye mixed together and told Jesper he had to sort them in a day. The ants did it for him.
Then he was set to herd a hundred hares. Using the whistle, he kept them together. The king heard of it and resolved to stop him. A shabby girl begged for a hare to feed for guests; finally, Jesper agreed to give her one in return for a kiss, but then he whistled it back. A stout old woman, in peasant dress, came next. He agreed to give her one if she would tiptoe about him cackling like a hen, and then he whistled it back. A fat old man in a royal groom's livery came, and Jesper agreed to give him one if he stood on his head, and then whistled it back.
The next day, the king set out a tub and said that Jesper must fill it with undoubted truths, and he would judge when that was. Jesper told about the girl, and that she was the princess; then about the woman, and that she was the queen; then about the old man—and the king declared that the tub was full, so Jesper married the princess, and the king decided he would be a good king if he looked after the people as well as he looked after the hares.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 570, "The Rabbit-Herd": the humble protagonist offers to herd the king's hares (or some type of animal), which he does with the use of a magical instrument.Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. University of California Press. 1977. pp. 155-156. .Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 210.
Variants Distribution The tale is said to be found all over Europe, "from Iceland to the Caucasus".Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. University of California Press. 1977. p. 155. . It is reported that more than 200Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. University of California Press. 1977. p. 155. . or 400 variants have been recorded, specially from North and Central Europe:Dekker, Ton. "De konijnenhoeder". In: Van Aladdin tot Zwaan kleef aan. Lexicon van sprookjes: ontstaan, ontwikkeling, variaties. 1ste druk. Ton Dekker & Jurjen van der Kooi & Theo Meder. Kritak: Sun. 1997. pp. 188-189. 79 versions from Finland; 36 French versions, as noted by Paul Delarue; 53 from all over GermanyRanke, Kurt. Folktales of Germany. Routledge & K. Paul. 1966. p. 216. . and 25 in the Schleswig-Holstein region, according to Kurt Ranke.Dundes, Alan. Parsing Through Customs: Essays by a Freudian Folklorist. The University of Wisconsin Press. 1987. p. 172. .
The tale is also claimed by Jack Haney to be "little known outside Russia", but "common in Western Europe".Haney, Jack V. The Complete Russian Folktale: v. 4: Russian Wondertales 2 - Tales of Magic and the Supernatural. New York: Routledge. 2015 . p. 434. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315700076 Swedish scholar located variants across Romance-, Germanic-, Slavic-, Baltic- and Finno-Ugrian speaking areas.Liungman, Waldemar. Die Schwedischen Volksmärchen: Herkunft und Geschichte. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2022 . p. 177. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112618004-004
This geographic distribution seems to confirm professor Stith Thompson's analysis that the tale "is essentially European", instead of having an Eastern origin.Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. University of California Press. 1977. p. 155. . Liungmann also supposed that the tale originated in Europe, probably from a Germanic source.Liungman, Waldemar. Die Schwedischen Volksmärchen: Herkunft und Geschichte. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2022 . p. 177. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112618004-004
The tale has migrated to the Americas, being found in both North and South America, according to Kurt Ranke.Ranke, Kurt. Folktales of Germany. Routledge & K. Paul. 1966. pp. 215-216. . Variants are also found in Turkey, the Levant and in China.Dekker, Ton. "De konijnenhoeder". In: Van Aladdin tot Zwaan kleef aan. Lexicon van sprookjes: ontstaan, ontwikkeling, variaties. 1ste druk. Ton Dekker & Jurjen van der Kooi & Theo Meder. Kritak: Sun. 1997. pp. 188-189. Paul Delarue also commented that the tale type exists in Western Asia "as far as India", and in North Africa.Delarue, Paul Delarue. The Borzoi Book of French Folk-Tales. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1956. p. 359.
Predecessors The oldest attestation of the tale is considered to be a 1791 publication, unlike other European folktales with a long literary history. Scholarship supposes this happened due to the raciness of the tale.Dekker, Ton. "De konijnenhoeder". In: Van Aladdin tot Zwaan kleef aan. Lexicon van sprookjes: ontstaan, ontwikkeling, variaties. 1ste druk. Ton Dekker & Jurjen van der Kooi & Theo Meder. Kritak: Sun. 1997. p. 189.Lindahl, Carl. American Folktales: from the collections of the Library of Congress. New York and London: Routledge. 2004. pp. 341-342. Randolph, Vance. "Roll Me In Your Arms: "Unprintable" Ozark Folksongs and Folklore". Volume I: Folksongs and Music. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press. 1992. p. 350. For instance, folklorist Elsie Clews Parsons noted that the informant of a South Carolina variant omitted the details about the sexual encounter between the male protagonist and the women, which were referenced in the Cape Verde tales.Parsons, Elsie Worthington Clews. Folk-lore of the Sea Islands, South Carolina. Cambridge, Massachusetts: American folk-lore society, 1923. p. 102 (footnote nr. 4). William Bernard McCarthy, in the same vein, cited that a storyteller knew of two versions of the tale, one for general audiences and other for a male public.McCarthy, William Bernard. Cinderella in America: a book of folk and fairy tales. The University Press of Mississippi. 2007. p. 356.
Europe Scandinavia Benjamin Thorpe translated a Danish version with the title Temptations, where a poor cottager's son employs himself under a master who knows the black arts. The master owns a farm of hares that have to be herded by the boy.Thorpe, Benjamin. Yule-tide stories: a collection of Scandinavian and North German popular tales and traditions, from the Swedish, Danish, and German. London; New York: G. Bell. 1910. pp. 369-375. This tale was also published in a compilation of Norse folktales.Dasent, George Webbe. A collection of popular tales from the Norse and north German. London, New York [etc.]: Norrna Society. 1906. pp. 105-114. Louis Brueyre indicated that this story was actually the work of Carit Etlar.Brueyre, Loys. Contes Populaires de la Grande-Bretagne. Paris: Hachette, 1875. p. 61.
Illustrator Katherine Pyle published a story titled The Magic Pipe: A Norse Tale, where the hero's name is translated as Boots, who wants to offer his services to king to herd the royal hares.Pyle, Katharine. Tales of Folk And Fairies. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1919. pp. 201-220.
A version from Sweden is reported to have been collected and published with the name The King's Hares.Swedish folktales and legends. Ed. and Trans. Lone Thygesen Blecher and George Blecher. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. pp. 128 seq.Davidson, Hilda Ellis. "Helpers and Adversaries in Fairy Tales". In: A Companion to the Fairy Tale. Edited by Hilda Ellis Davidson and Anna Chaudhri. Cambridge: D. W. Brewer. 2006 . p. 104.
Norway Tale type ATU 570 is known in Norway with the title Gjete kongens harer ("Herding the King's Hares"), according to 's The Types of the Norwegian Folktale.Hodne, Ørnulf. The Types of the Norwegian Folktale. Universitetsforlaget, 1984. p. 137.
A version was collected by Peter Asbjornsen in the original Norwegian, named Gjæte Kongens Harer,Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen. Norske Folke- og Huldre-Eventyr. Kjobenhavn: Den Gyldendalske Boghandel (F. Hegel og Søn.). 1896. pp. 192-204. and later translated as The King's Hares. The note on the translation, by Klara Stroebe, mentioned a variation regarding a cauldron instead of a sack.Stroebe, Klara; Martens, Frederick Herman. The Norwegian fairy book. New York: Frederick A. Stokes company. pp. 202-212.
The Norwegian variant was given as Ashiepattle and the King's Hares in Round the Yule Log: Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales.Asbjørnson, Peter Christian. Round the Yule Log: Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales. Translated by H. L. Braekstad. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington. 1881. pp. 168-179.
A literary version of the tale was titled The King's Rabbit Keeper, whose source was given as a Norse legend in the summary.Skinner, Eleanor Louise and Ada Maria Skinner. Merry Tales. New York: American Book Company. 1915. pp. 7 and 62-71.
George Webbe Dasent translated the tale as Osborn's Pipe in his second compilation of Norse folktales (Tales from the Fjeld), where the hero's name was given as Osborn Boots.Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen; Dasent, George Webbe. Tales from the fjeld: a series of popular tales from the Norse of P. Ch. Asbjørnsen. London: Gibbings; New York: G.P. Putnam's. 1896. pp. 1-14.
Baltic Region Estonia The tale type is known in Estonia as Jänesekarjus ("The Hare Herder").Monumenta Estoniae antiquae V. Eesti muinasjutud. I: 2. Koostanud Risto Järv, Mairi Kaasik, Kärri Toomeos-Orglaan. Toimetanud Inge Annom, Risto Järv, Mairi Kaasik, Kärri Toomeos-Orglaan. Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseumi Teaduskirjastus, 2014. pp. 661-662, 722-723. .
Latvia The tale type is also registered in Latvia, with the title Zaķu gans ("The Rabbit-Herd").Arājs, Kārlis; Medne, A. Latviešu pasaku tipu rādītājs. Zinātne, 1977. p. 99.
Lithuania