The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn
What Fear Was
The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth
to Learn What Fear Was or The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear
is a German fairy tale
collected by the Brothers Grimm. It is tale number
The Grimms'
first, 1812 edition contained a much shorter version, Good Bowling and Card
Playing.
It is Aarne-Thompson
type 326.
This tale type did not appear in any
early literary collection.
A father had two sons, the younger,
when his father asked him what he would like to learn, to support himself, he said he would like to learn to shudder. A sexton told the
father that he could teach the boy. Having taught him to ring the church bell,
he sent him one midnight to ring it, and then came after him, dressed as a
ghost. The boy demands what he's about. When the sexton doesn't answer, the
boy, unafraid, pushes him down the stairs, breaking his leg.
His horrified father turns him out of
house, and the boy sets out to learn how to shudder and complaining whenever he
can, "If only I could shudder!" One man advises him to stay the night
beneath a gallows, where seven hanged men were still hanging. He does so, and
sets a fire. When the hanged bodies shake in the wind, he thinks they must be
cold, so he cuts them down. Their clothing catches on fire, and the boy, annoyed
at their carelessness, hangs them back up again.
He travels with a waggoner,
and at an inn, an inn-keeper tells him he knows how he can learn to shudder:
there is a haunted castle nearby. If he stays in it three nights, he will learn
how to shudder, and win the king's daughter and all the rich treasure of the
castle, but many men have tried and never come out again.
The boy goes to the king, who tells
him he may bring three things that are not living into the castle. He asks for
a fire, a turning lathe, and a cutting board with a knife.
The first night, he hears a complaint
of how cold they are from a corner, and tells them they are fools not to warm
themselves. Two black cats bound out. They propose a card game, and he tricks
them into being trapped in the cutting board. Black cats and black dogs emerge
everywhere, until he drives them off, or kills them, with the knife. A bed
appears, and he lies down in it, and it starts to move all over the castle. He
urges it to move faster, and it turns upside down on him, but he throws it off
and sleeps by the fire until morning.
The second night, half a man falls
down the chimney. He shouts that another half is needed. It comes down, and
reunites. Other men follow, and bring human skulls and dead men's legs to play
nine-pins with. The boy uses the lathe to make the skulls better balls, and
plays with them until midnight, when they vanish.
The third night, six men bring in a
coffin. The boy, thinking it's his dead cousin, tries to warm the body; when he
succeeds, it rouses and threatens to strangle him, so the boy closes the coffin
on him again, for his ingratitude. An old man comes after and brings him to the
basement, and shows him that he can knock an anvil into the ground. The boy
splits an anvil, trapping the old man's beard in it, and beats him with an iron
rod. For mercy, the old man shows him all the treasure of the castle.
The next morning, the king tells him
that he can marry his daughter, and the boy agrees, even though he has not
learned how to shudder.
His complaints about this annoy his
wife, who one day sends for a bucketful of stream water, filled with gudgeons,
and throws it over him while he is sleeping. He wakes up, shuddering, and
exclaims that now he knows what it is to shudder-but not to fear.
In Good Bowling and Card Playing,
the story begins with the king's offer to marry his daughter to whoever stayed
three nights in the castle. The hero is not a fool but merely a bold young man
who, being very poor, wishes to try it.
Although the hero of this story is a youngest son,
he does not fit the usual character of such a son, who normally achieves his
goals with the aid of magical helpers. Accomplishing his task with
his own skill and courage, he fits more in the mold of a heroic character. The
act of cutting down the corpses to let them warm themselves is similar to the
test of compassion that many fairy tale heroes face, but where the act
typically wins the hero a gift or a magical helper, here it is merely an
incident, perhaps a parody of the more typical plot.
In his opera Siegfried,
Richard Wagner
has his title character Siegfried begin fearless, and express his wish to learn
fear to his foster father Mime, who says the wise learn fear quickly, but the stupid
find it more difficult. Later, when he discovers the sleeping Brünnhilde,
he is struck with fear. In a letter to his friend Theodor Uhlig,
Wagner recounts the fairy tale and points out that the youth and Siegfried are
the same character. Parzival is another figure in
German legend that combines naïveté with courage.
This information is provided from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_the_Youth_Who_Went_Forth_to_Learn_What_Fear_Was
If you would like to read the story
you can visit this website: http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms/4youthfear.html
This is another website where you can
read the story: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm004.html