I sat and watched this episode last night and thought that 'French & Saunders' were amazing as the two bad sisters of Sapsorrow.
Forgive me if I'm wrong but this story tells just like Cinderella, The 3 dresses, the two sisters, the 3 balls where she danced with the prince, and finally the slipper.
So which story came first Sapsorrow or Cinderella???
I'll trade with anyone who has a jaccuzzi!!!!
I think it was Cinderella. I'm not sure now that you've mentioned it.
"HOPSCOTCH!"
Actually, 'Sapsorrow' was the combined stories of 'Cinderella' and 'Allerleirauh.'
In one of the most common variations of 'Allerleirauh,' a king promised his dying queen he would not remarry unless his new bride matched the queen's beauty. Misfortune would have it that his own daughter was the only one to have beauty that matched the dead queen's.
The king told his counselors about how he desired his own child and would wed her, much to the horror of the counselors. The counselors told the princess of her father's plans to marry her and she devised a way to stall the king. She demanded three dresses: the first as golden as the sun, the second as silvery as the moon, and the third as sparkly as the stars. In addition to the dresses, she demanded a fur coat made from a thousand different furs -- a piece from each animal in the kingdom. The king commissioned and gifted to her the demanded garments and gave to her three wedding gifts: a golden ring, a tiny golden spinning wheel and a tiny golden hook.
Time for stalling was up and the princess ran away, taking her special garments with her and blacked her skin with soot. She slept in a hollow tree and soon after, huntsmen of the king found her thinking she was an animal. They brought her to the palace and called her "Allerleirauh," which means 'all kinds of fur,' and forced her to work in the kitchens. The king abused and beat her constantly since his own daughter had fled and threw boots at her head.
Over the course of three nights, the princess attended the balls threw by the king, wearing each of her fancy dresses, and danced with the king all night. She would then run off and get back into her disguise and cover herself with soot. The afternoon after each ball, she would drop one of the golden wedding gifts the king had given her into his soup and he would discover it. He would question Allerleirauh about the soup and she would deny she did it. After the third ball, after fleeing the king, she neglected to cover one hand with soot and was discovered by the king and he exposed her as his daughter and intended bride.
Their wedding was celebrated and they lived as husband and wife the rest of their days.
The end.
I have no idea what the moral of the story was for 'Allerleirauh' ... In fact, that story has always creeped me out.
"Hysteria is only possible with an audience."
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'Allerleirauh' was recorded by the Brothers Grimm. Since the second edition published in 1819, it has been recorded as Tale no. 65. Andrew Lang included it in The Green Fairy Book.
It is Aarne-Thompson folktale type 510B, the persecuted heroine. Others of this type include 'Cap O' Rushes,' 'Donkeyskin,' 'Catskin,' 'Little Cat Skin,' 'The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter,' 'The She-Bear,' 'Mossycoat,' 'Tattercoats,' 'The Princess That Wore A Rabbit-Skin Dress,' and 'The Bear.' Indeed, some English translators of 'Allerleirauh' titled that story 'Catskin' despite the differences between the German and English tales.
"Hysteria is only possible with an audience."
3 ravens and this story sucked, why the hell would she put the ring on her finger for "safe keeping", stupid..
shareYou're wrong about Allerleirauh marrying her own father in the end. In most versions, including Grimm's, she marries the king/prince of another kingdom. Now, it's very much possible there is a version in which she does marry her father, but it's not the case in the most common variations of the fairy tale, like Perrault's Donkeyskin.
shareI have the original text, in German, here in my home and as I am fluent in German, I can assure you that Allerleirauh marries her father in the end. The original Grimm's -- in German -- did have her marrying her father as well -- Revised versions do not.
"Hysteria is only possible with an audience."
Well, I didn't say that version didn't exist, although I have multiple versions and none of them mention that. But if the original version published by the Grimm brothers does have her marry her father than this would be an exception to the tale. Perrault's older and similar story Donkeyskin and other variations have the girl marry someone else than her father. So I'm still of the opinion that you're wrong by saying this happens 'in the most common variations of Allerleirauh'. It is just one version of the fairy tale, and a rather obscure one. And seeing the similarities with other, older variations I consider the possibility that this ending of Grimm's Allerleirauh may have come about due to changes of the story in oral tradition. Also, Allerleirauh isn't an exclusive Grimm fairy tale, so I myself wouldn't consider either of the Grimm versions to be the 'correct' one.
shareI read the original text again and now I'm 100% convinced there's no ambiguity whatsoever. The father and the fiancé are NOT the same person. The fiancé first gets introduced when the three gifts are mentioned. We know she did not get those from her father as only the three dresses are mentioned earlier on.
Then she flees to a forest where she KNOWS she is safe. That wouldn't make sense if it's her father's forest. The fiancé captures her and puts her to work in his palace. She's basically a prisoner and decides to leave his gifts as hints to communicate to him who she really is. He recognizes them and understands she is the princess he's engaged to. They marry and everybody lives happily ever after.
It makes complete sense. In later versions it actually make less sense why the prince would make such a fuss about the presents. I hope you got a low grade for your thesis, you definitely deserved it.
Allerleirah does not marry her father in ANY of the versions by Grimm. She married another king, so you must have misread the German.
sharepondhawkdragonfly claims to be fluent in German and have written his/her German Lit thesis on this subject/fairytale (?), but that's why it surprises me that s/he insists that it's clean-cut in the first edition of Allerleirauh that the princess marries her own father.
Here's a link to the English tanslation of the first edition:
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0510b.html#grimm
Unlike the later edition, this version doesn't include the differentiation between the king, her father, and the king, lord of the forest. But if we were to assume her fiancé is truly her own father then it raises some interesting questions. If the two characters are one and the same, why the sudden change in his relationship with the princess from king-daughter to fiancé-bride? Why, if the daughter disguises herself and flees to avoid marrying her father, does she return to leave clues to her true identity? Why would they live "happily until they died" if the father's intentions were presented as "godless" with the daughter being horrified and with even his councilors trying to dissuade him? If the three gifts from her fiancé the princess took with her were actually from her father, why weren't they mentioned before, like the three dresses? And if she's the king's daughter then why didn't anyone at the castle recognize her? Even the fiancé didn't immediately notice who she was. Surely her own father who wanted to marry her because she resembled his late wife would have no problem recognizing her?
Sorry, but it's not that clean-cut that the princess marries her own father, even scholars can't definitely agree on that. To me it seems like the Grimm brothers or their original source failed in making clear there were in fact two different kings, or the fairy tale consists of two different stories spliced together, which is probably more likely.
Actually, the first recorded Cinderella story is from egypt and was recorded in the first century B.C. by a greek historian named Strabo: The heroine is a greek slave named Rhodopis, the sisters are servants to Rhodopis's master, and the shoe is red leather gilded with rose gold. While Rhodopis is washing clothes at the river, a falcon snatches one of her shoes and drops it into the lap of the Pharaoh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodopis
Every culture and country throughout history has a Cinderella story.
Sapsorrow and Cinderella are from the same time period, but from different countries. Sapsorrow is german, and Cinderella is French.
I wouldn't call Sapsorrow the German version of Cinderella. The Grimm brothers recorded their own version of Cinderella named 'Aschenputtel', which is not the same story as Sapsorrow (Allerleirauh in German). And the German fairy tale of Sapsorrow doesn't completely resemble the version told in 'The Storyteller', which borrows elements from Cinderella (the shoe on the steps). I'm also not sure if Cinderella is really French since Perrault based his story on a fairy tale written by the Italian Giambattista Basile and he basically just added some elements.
share