"The Goose Girl" (german:
Die Gänsemagd) is a German
fairy tale
A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic (paranormal), magic, incantation, enchantments, and mythical ...
collected by the
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among the ...
and first published in ''
Grimm's Fairy Tales
''Grimms' Fairy Tales'', originally known as the ''Children's and Household Tales'' (german: Kinder- und Hausmärchen, lead=yes, ), is a German collection of fairy tales by the Grimm brothers or "Brothers Grimm", Jacob and Wilhelm, first publis ...
'' in 1815 (KHM 89). It is of
Aarne-Thompson type 533.
The story was first translated into English by
Edgar Taylor in 1826, then by many others, e.g. by an anonymous community of translators in 1865, by Lucy Crane in 1881, by LucMargaret Hunt in 1884, etc.
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University ...
included it in ''
The Blue Fairy Book
''The Langs' Fairy Books'' are a series of 25 collections of true and fictional stories for children published between 1889 and 1913 by Andrew Lang and his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne. The best known books of the series are the 12 collectio ...
'' in 1889.
Origin
The tale was first published by the Brothers Grimm in the first edition of ''
Kinder- und Hausmärchen
''Grimms' Fairy Tales'', originally known as the ''Children's and Household Tales'' (german: Kinder- und Hausmärchen, lead=yes, ), is a German collection of fairy tales by the Grimm brothers or "Brothers Grimm", Jacob and Wilhelm, first publis ...
'', vol. 2, in 1815, as number 3. It appears as no. 89 since the second edition (1819). Grimm's source for the story is the German storyteller
Dorothea Viehmann
Dorothea Viehmann (November 8, 1755 – November 17, 1816) was a German storyteller. Her stories were an important source for the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. Most of Dorothea Viehmann's tales were published in the second vol ...
(1755–1815).
Summary
A widowed queen sends her daughter to a faraway land to marry. Accompanying the princess are her magical horse Falada, who can speak, and a waiting maid. The queen gives the princess a special charm that will protect her as long as she wears it.
The princess and her servant travel for a time, and eventually the princess grows thirsty. She asks the maid to go and fetch her some water, but the maid simply says: "If you want water, get it for yourself. I do not want to be your servant any longer." So the princess has to fetch herself water from the nearby stream. She wails softly: "What will become of me?" The charm answers: "Alas, alas, if your mother knew, her loving heart would break in two." After a while, the princess gets thirsty again. So she asks her maid once more to get her some water. But again the evil servant says, "I will not serve you any longer, no matter what you or your mother say." The servant leaves the poor princess to drink from the river by her dainty little hands. When she bends to the water her charm falls out of her bosom and floats away.
The maid takes advantage of the princess's vulnerability. She orders the princess to change clothes with her and the horses as well. She threatens to kill the princess if she doesn't swear never to say a word about this reversal of roles to any living being. Sadly, the princess takes the oath. The maid servant then rides off on Falada, while the princess has to mount the maid's nag. At the palace, the maid poses as princess and the "princess servant" is ordered to guard the geese with a little boy called Conrad. The false bride orders Falada to be killed, as she fears he might talk. The real princess hears of this and begs the slaughterer to nail Falada's head above the doorway where she passes with her geese every morning.
The next morning the goose girl addresses Falada's head over the doorway: "Falada, Falada, thou art dead, and all the joy in my life has fled", and Falada answers " Alas, Alas, if your mother knew, her loving heart would break in two." On the goose meadow, Conrad watches the princess comb her beautiful hair and he becomes greedy to pluck one or two of her golden locks. But the goose girl sees this and says a charm: "Blow wind, blow, I say, take Conrad's hat away. Do not let him come back today until my hair is combed today." And so the wind takes his hat away, and he cannot return before the goose girl has finished brushing and plaiting her hair.
Meanwhile, Conrad goes to the king and declares he will not herd geese with this girl any longer because of the strange things that happen. The king tells him to do it one more time, and the next morning hides and watches. He finds everything as Conrad has told. That evening, he asks the princess to tell him her story. But she refuses to say anything because of her oath. The king suggests that she might tell everything to the iron stove. She agrees, climbs into the stove and tells her story while the king listens from outside.
As the king is convinced she has told the truth, he has the goose girl clad in royal clothes. He then tricks the false princess into "choosing her own punishment". While each choice is different in each version of the story, in the classic version, she tells the king that a false servant should be dragged through town naked in a barrel with internal spikes. As a result, she is punished that way until she dies.
After that, the prince and the true princess are married and reign over their kingdom for many years.
Variants
The story uses the false bride plot with a good-hearted princess being seized by her
maid
A maid, or housemaid or maidservant, is a female domestic worker. In the Victorian era domestic service was the second largest category of employment in England and Wales, after agricultural work. In developed Western nations, full-time maids ...
and turned into a common goose girl. It is similar to other
AT-533 tales like the American "
The Golden Bracelet". These motifs are also found, centered on a male character, in ''
The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward
The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward or The Lord of Lorn and the Flas Steward or The Lord of Lorn is Child ballad number 271 (Roud 113).
A ballad, ''Lord of Lorn and the False Steward'', was entered in the Stationers' Register in 1580, with a no ...
'' (
Child ballad
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as '' ...
271) and the
chivalric romance
As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalric k ...
''
Roswall and Lillian ''Roswall and Lillian'' is a medieval Scottish chivalric romance.Laura A. Hibbard, ''Medieval Romance in England'' p290 New York Burt Franklin,1963 A late appearing tale, it nevertheless draws heavily on folkloric motifs for its account of an exile ...
''.
In the 13th century, the tale became attached to
Bertrada of Laon
Bertrada of Laon (born between 710 and 727 – 12 July 783), also known as Bertrada the Younger or Bertha Broadfoot (cf. Latin: ''Regina pede aucae'' i.e. the queen with the goose-foot), was a Frankish queen. She was the wife of Pepin the Short and ...
, the mother of
Charlemagne
Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first Holy ...
.
Adaptations
Despite the story being viewed as obscure, there have been many film versions, from countries ranging from Germany to even America. Falada is often restored to life in film versions, or even spared entirely. While the Queen is implied to have died in the original story, many versions also have her survive to expose the false bride at the wedding. The false bride's motive for suggesting such a cruel punishment varies by retelling; in some, she is simply too ignorant to recognize herself, others have her play along to keep the charade, and others imply she has believed the king is talking about the true bride. Such film versions include:
*
Harold MacGrath
Harold MacGrath (September 4, 1871 – October 30, 1932) was a bestselling and prolific American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He sometimes completed more than one novel per year for the mass market, covering romance, spies, my ...
adapted the story into a novel, which was then developed into a 1915 American silent film starring
Marguerite Clark
Helen Marguerite Clark (February 22, 1883 – September 25, 1940) was an American stage and silent film actress. As a movie actress, at one time, Clark was second only to Mary Pickford in popularity. All but five of her films are considered ...
. In this version, the princess is stolen at birth and raised as a goose-girl, by a courtier who places his own daughter in her stead. The king she was engaged to at birth falls in love with her without knowing who she is. The courtier's daughter, Hildegarde, is ignorant of the truth and portrayed sympathetically in the original novel, but the film version restores her role as a villainess, where she is raised by her father and is only presented as the princess when she has come of age. The film is believed to be lost.
** The plot was reworked into 2002's ''
The Princess and the Pea
"The Princess and the Pea" ( da, "Prinsessen paa Ærten"; direct translation: "The Princess on the Pea") is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a young woman whose royal ancestry is established by a test of her sensitivity. ...
'', combining it with
another fairy tale.
* The fairy tale was shown in the 1960s television show ''
Jackanory
''Jackanory'' is a BBC children's television series which was originally broadcast between 1965 and 1996. It was designed to stimulate an interest in reading. The show was first transmitted on 13 December 1965, and the first story was the fairy-t ...
'' during Season 1, Episode 38 and was read by
Dilys Hamlett
Dilys Hamlett (31 March 1928, South Tidworth, Hampshire – 7 July 2002, Cupar, Fife) was a British actress.
Early life
Dilys Hamlett was born on 31 March 1928 in South Tidworth, Hampshire (now in Wiltshire), and developed an early interest ...
.
* In 1985,
Tom Davenport adapted the story into a short film as one of his "From the Brothers Grimm" series. While visibly set in the American Appalachia, the narration refers to the characters as princesses, princes, and kings, implying that the story retained its European setting. This version is more faithful to Grimm, as Falada is not restored and the false bride is put to death.
* Titled "The Goose Maiden" in this version, the tale was loosely adapted into a 1999 German short animated episode with slight differences from the source material. This episode was a part of the series ''
SimsalaGrimm
''Simsala Grimm'' is a German animated children's television series, consisting of stories based on fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and other notable authors. The series was created by André Sikojev, Stefan Beiten and ...
.'' While Falada is still beheaded, this version has him restored to life. There is no prince, but the king himself is the betrothed. Another change is that the princess has been bewitched into forgetting who she is, rather than being forced into posing as the goose-girl.
Literature:
* ''
The Goose Girl
"The Goose Girl" (german: Die Gänsemagd) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and first published in ''Grimm's Fairy Tales'' in 1815 (KHM 89). It is of Aarne-Thompson type 533.
The story was first translated into English b ...
'' by Shannon Hale is an adaptation of the tale in the form of a novel.
* ''Bloodleaf'', the first of a young adult fantasy trilogy by Crystal Smith, is a gothic retelling of "The Goose Girl." It was published by HMHTeen in 2019.
* "The Goose Girl" was one of the many folktales used in
Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue (born 24 October 1969) is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel ''Room'' was a finalist for the Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Donoghue's 1995 novel ''Hood'' w ...
's novel ''Kissing The Witch''. The tale was titled "The Tale of The Handkerchief".
* Author
Alethea Kontis
Alethea Kontis is an American writer of Teen & Young Adult Books, picture books and speculative fiction, primarily for children. She lived in Ashburn, Virginia and then in Titusville, FL.
Selected works
Novels
* ''Enchanted'' The Woodcutter Sis ...
adapted this tale together with
The Wild Swans
The Wild Swans (Danish: ''De vilde svaner'') is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a princess who rescues her 11 brothers from a spell cast by an evil queen. The tale was first published on 2 October 1838 in Andersen's '' ...
in the form of a novel titled ''Dearest''.
*
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich ( ; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "th ...
's 1974 poem "The Fact of a Doorframe" references the Goose Girl.
* The tale was retold into a short children's book by
Eric A. Kimmel
Eric A. Kimmel (born 1946) is an American author of more than 50 children's books. His works include Caldecott Medal, Caldecott Honor Book ''Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins'' (illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman), Sydney Taylor Book Award winners ...
.
* In the
shōjo manga
is an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting an audience of adolescent females and young adult women. It is, along with manga (targeting adolescent boys), manga (targeting young adult and adult men), and manga (targeting adul ...
Ludwig Revolution
is a Japanese manga series by Kaori Yuki. It debuted in the January 1999 issue of the '' shōjo'' (targeted towards girls) manga magazine '' Melody'', before being transferred to ''Hana to Yume Step'', ''Hana to Yume'', and finally ''Bessats ...
(ルードヴィッヒ革命 Rūdovihhi Kakumei) the story tells about Prince Ludwig who is ordered by his father to find himself a wife more suitable than the women he often brings into the castle. Along with his servant Wilhelm, they travel across the land in search of fair maidens from classic stories in hopes of finding Ludwig a wife. It includes the tale of "The Goose Girl" among other tales from the Brothers Grimm.
* "Falada: the Goose Girl's Horse" is a short story adaption by author
Nancy Farmer
Nancy Farmer is an American author of children's and young adult books and science fiction. She has written three Newbery Honor Books and won the U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for ''The House of the Scorpion'', published ...
. This version tells the classic tale from Falada's point of view.
* The Canadian poet
Jay Macpherson
Jean Jay Macpherson (June 13, 1931 – March 21, 2012) was a Canadian lyric poet and scholar. '' The Encyclopædia Britannica'' calls her "a member of 'the mythopoeic school of poetry,' who expressed serious religious and philosophical themes in ...
references the story of the Goose Girl in her poems "Poor Child" and "What Falada Said," both reprinted in ''Poems Twice Told: The Boatman and Welcoming Disaster.''
* The Scottish comic book writer
Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison, MBE (born 31 January 1960) is a Scottish comic book writer, screenwriter, and producer. Their work is known for its nonlinear narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, w ...
references the story in
Doom Patrol
Doom Patrol is a superhero team from DC Comics. The original Doom Patrol first appeared in ''My Greatest Adventure'' #80 (June 1963), and was created by writers Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, along with artist Bruno Premiani. Doom Patrol has appe ...
issue 31, "The Word Made Flesh," when
Baphomet
Baphomet is a deity allegedly worshipped by the Knights Templar. that subsequently became incorporated into various occult and Western esoteric traditions. The name ''Baphomet'' appeared in trial transcripts for the Inquisition of the Knights ...
takes the form of Falada's head.
* Intisar Khanani, author of the Sunbolt Chronicles, wrote a fantasy retelling of the Goose Girl, titled "Thorn". The novel was independently published in 2012 and re-published by HarperCollins in 2020.
* "Feathers of Snow: A Goose Girl Retelling" by Alice Ivinya is a book based on the fairy tale.
* Though
Eudora Welty
Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American short story writer, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Her novel ''The Optimist's Daughter'' won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numero ...
's novella
''The Robber Bridegroom'' is named after and largely follows the plot of a different Brothers Grimm fairy tale, much of the action derives from "The Goose Girl."
* "Little Thieves" by Margeret Owen is a YA fantasy novel retelling the story of the Goose Girl from the perspective of the princess' maid. It was published in 2021 by
Henry Holt and Co
Henry Holt and Company is an American book-publishing company based in New York City. One of the oldest publishers in the United States, it was founded in 1866 by Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt. Currently, the company publishes in the fields ...
.
Other:
* Although an original story, the German opera ''
Königskinder
' (German for ''King's Children'' or “Royal Children”) is a stage work by Engelbert Humperdinck that exists in two versions: as a melodrama and as an opera or more precisely a '' Märchenoper''. The libretto was written by Ernst Rosmer (pen n ...
'' by
Engelbert Humperdinck was inspired by Brothers Grimm fairy tales, particularly "The Goose Girl."
* In the ''
Doom Patrol
Doom Patrol is a superhero team from DC Comics. The original Doom Patrol first appeared in ''My Greatest Adventure'' #80 (June 1963), and was created by writers Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, along with artist Bruno Premiani. Doom Patrol has appe ...
'' comics and
live-action series, Baphomet, a magical
oracle
An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination.
Description
The word '' ...
able to appear in any guise she chooses, in the ''Unwritten Book'' storyline, chose to appear in the guise of Falada the magic horse, from ''The Goose Girl''.
References
External links
*
*
*
''The Goose Girl''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goose Girl, The
Grimms' Fairy Tales
Female characters in fairy tales
Fictional princesses
Fictional servants
European fairy tales
European folklore characters
Horses in culture
ATU 500-559
False hero