The Twelve Brothers

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The Twelve Brothers (German: Die zwölf Brüder) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 9.^[1] Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book.^[2]

It is Aarne-Thompson type 451, the brothers who were turned into birds. Other variants of the Aarne-Thompson type include The Six Swans, The Twelve Wild Ducks, Udea and her Seven Brothers, The Wild Swans, The Seven Ravens, and The Magic Swan Geese.^[3]

[edit] Synopsis

A king and queen had twelve sons, and the queen was expecting another. The king said that if it were a girl, all her brothers would die; he had coffins made. In the Grimms' first edition, this was out of distaste for the idea of a girl, so that he would not suffer having a girl among his sons; in the second and later edition, it was so the daughter's inheritance would be larger.^[4] This grieved the queen, and she was so sad that her youngest son asked what was wrong. Finally, she showed him the coffins. He promised they would run away. She said that if she bore a daughter, she would raise a red flag, and if a son, a white one.

The sons ran away to the woods and kept watch. Finally, the youngest saw it was a red flag, and they resolved to kill a girl who fell into their hands in revenge. They went further into the woods, and found an enchanted hut. The youngest kept it in order, and the older ones hunted.

One day their sister saw her brothers' shirts and realized they were too small for her father. Her mother told her of her brothers, and she set out to find them. She found the hut. Her youngest brother hid her and persuaded their brother not to kill the first girl who fell into their hands after all. They were delighted to see her and she kept house with the youngest.

There were twelve lilies in the garden next to the house. One day, the princess picked them, intending to give her brothers pleasure, but when she did, they turned to ravens. An old woman told her that to turn them back, she would have to remain silent for seven years, neither speaking nor laughing. If she spoke, her brothers would die. She climbed into a tree and spun there, silently.

A king found her and asked her to marry him. She nodded to agree. They were married, but her mother-in-law slandered her, and finally she was sentenced to death. But as the fire was lit to burn her, the seven years were up. Her brothers landed in the courtyard and beat out the fire, and she could defend herself. Her wicked mother-in-law was thrown in to a barrel of boiling oil and poisonous snakes.

[edit] Commentary

This tale, like The Six Swans, The Seven Ravens, and Brother and Sister, features a woman rescuing her brothers. In the era and region in which it was collected, many men were drafted by kings for soldiers, to be sent aboard as mercenaries. As a consequence, many men made their daughters their heirs; however, they also exerted more control over them and their marriages as a consequence. The stories have been interpreted as a wish by women for the return of their brothers, freeing them from this control.^[5] However, the issues of when the stories were collected are unclear, and stories of this type have been found in many other cultures, where this issue cannot have inspired them.^[6]

Some folklorists connect this tale to the more general practice of ultimogeniture, in which the youngest child would inherit.^[7]

[edit] References