Master and Pupil

"Master and Pupil" is a Danish fairy tale. Andrew Lang included it in The Pink Fairy Book.^[1]

It is Aarne-Thompson type 325, "The Magician and His Pupil".

Synopsis

A boy tried to get himself hired. A man asked him if he could read, and rejected him because he could, when all his duties would have been dusting the man's books. So the boy ran ahead of him on the road and asked for a place again, this time claiming he could not read. He dusted and read them, and because his master was a wizard, he learned magic, and to change himself into the shape of any animal.

After that, he ran away, to his parents. He would change himself into a horse, have his father sell him, and escape again. The wizard heard of this and went to buy him. The first thing he started to do was lead it away to get a red-hot nail driven into the horse's mouth, which would stop him from changing. The boy turned into dove, and the wizard into a hawk to chase him. The boy turned into a golden ring and dropped into a girl's lap. The wizard wanted to buy it, but the girl did not want to sell a ring that had fallen from heaven. Still, the wizard offered more and more money, until the boy, frightened, turned to a barley grain. The wizard became a hen to eat it, but the boy became a pole-cat to bite its head off.

He married the girl and did no more magic.

Commentary

While "Farmer Weathersky" and "The Thief and His Master" include the transformation chase of a pupil from his master, in those tales, the boy is actually a pupil, and not learning on the sly as in this one.

See also

• The Magic Book
• Maestro Lattantio and His Apprentice Dionigi

References