November 2, 2009

Here is my plot "summary" of Die drei Männlein im Walde from Brüder Grimm.

There was a man whose wife was dead, and a woman, whose husband was dead. They both had daughters who knew each other. Then the woman asked the man's daughter to have her father marry her, and then she would drink wine and bath in milk every morning, (don't ask; that's what I think it says) and then her daughter would drink water and bath in water. The man reluctantly agreed; there was a bit about him taking off his boots and filling it with water (don't know what that was about) and something about his boots having a hole in it. But they got married anyways, and they did what they were going to do about drinking and bathing; on the second morning, they both drank water and bathed in water, and then on the third morning (and thereafter) the man's daughter drank water and bathed in water and the other one drank wine and bathed in milk. Apparently, the woman was jealous about her daughter being ugly, and her stepdaughter being beautiful.
During winter, the stepmother made her stepdaughter go outside and fill a basket with strawberries while wearing clothes made of paper, and gave her a piece of hard bread (of course there aren't any strawberries in winter...). She found a little hut in the woods and went inside because it was warm. Three little men came by and asked for food; she gave them some of her bread, and told them she was looking for strawberries. They gave her a broom and told her to sweep away the snow from the back door. Then the three little men discussed what they should give the girl for helping them. One said to make her prettier every day. The second said to have her words turn to gold. The third said to have a king come and take her away to his castle (I guess it's a castle it was Gemahlin, but I thought a castle was a Schloß; don't really know).
The girl finished sweeping the snow and found deep red strawberries where she was sweeping. She filled her basket and went home. Then she found her words did turn into gold. The stepmother wanted the same thing to happen to her daughter, so she gave her butterbread and cakes and warm clothes (I suppose a Pelzrock is some sort of skirt made of some warm fur) and sent her to look for strawberries in the forest. She did find the three little men, but gave them nothing to eat, and didn't sweep the snow away from the backdoor. The three little men discussed what to give her; they said to make her uglier every day, and her words would turn into toads (I guess that's what Kröte amounts to I mean Schildkröte is a turtoise, so I thought maybe it was a compound word for an armored/shielded toad.), and the last one said she would die an unfortunate/unpleasant death. The girl couldn't find any strawberries, so she returned home and tried to tell her mother what happened, but toads came out of her mouth.
Of course, that made the mother angrier, since her daughter still wasn't any prettier, and her stepdaughter was prettier and her words turned into gold. She ended up taking a cauldron, and made the stepdaughter go outside with an axe and look for something in the river (Okay, I don't really know what Garn is exactly, but it said something about a frozen river and a hole in the river, so it was probably some sort of sea/freshwater creature.). A king happened to be passing by and saw the stepdaughter doing what her stepmother was making her do. He felt sorry for her (and partly because she was beautiful) and asked if she wanted to come with him; she said she did. Apparently, the stepmother and daughter found out what happened to her and visited her after a year. She already had a son. The stepmother and daughter threw her out her bedroom window and the daughter disguised herself under the bed covers, and as the king came by, the stepmother said she was sick and couldn't talk. He believed that until he tried to speak to her in the morning, and her words turned into toads. The stepmother said that she was simply very sick.
(Okay, now it gets wierd) A duck swam by and asked a young servant what her guests were doing, and what her child was doing, to which he replied they were sleeping. She transformed into her original form and gave him something to drink and put him to bed. She did this for three nights, and on the last, she told the boy to tell the king to take his sword and swing it over her three times. He did this, and she returned to her original form. The king immediately recognized her. Then the king asked the stepmother what to do with people who dragged people out of bed and threw them into the water. She replied that they should be placed in a barrel and rolled from a mountain into a river. The king then had this done to the stepmother and her daughter.