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 4 in the collection. It was included by Andrew Lang in "The Blue Fairy Book".

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. [Stith Thompson, "The Folktale", p 105, University of California Press, Berkeley Los Angeles London, 1977]

ynopsis

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.

First edition

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. [Jack Zipes, "The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World", p 46, ISBN 0-312-29380-1]

Commentary

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. [Maria Tatar, "The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales", p97, ISBN 0-691-06722-8] 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. [Maria Tatar, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, p 20 ISBN 0-393-05848-4]

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. [Maria Tatar, "The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales", p104, ISBN 0-691-06722-8] Parzival is another figure in German legend that combines naïveté with courage. [Maria Tatar, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, p 15 ISBN 0-393-05848-4]

Adaptations

The character of The Boy from "No Rest for the Wicked" is based on the protagonist of this story. [" [http://www.forthewicked.net/char.html Characters] "]

The Television series "Jim Henson's The Storyteller" features an adaptation of the tale in the episode "Fearnot".

The television show "Faerie Tale Theatre" did an adaption of this story but renamed it "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers".

The episodic games of American McGee's Grimm on Gametap debuted with "A Boy Learns What Fear Is" on July 31, 2008.

ee also

*The Girl and the Dead Man
*The Boy Who Found Fear At Last

References

External links

* [http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms/4youthfear.html Sur La Lune "The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was"]
* [http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm004.html "The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear"]