The Rose-Tree

The Rose-Tree is an English fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in "English Fairy Tales". [Joseph Jacobs, "English Fairy Tales", [http://www.authorama.com/english-fairy-tales-5.html "The Rose-Tree"] ]

It is Aarne-Thompson type 720, my mother slew me; my father ate me. Another of this type is "The Juniper Tree", where the dead child is the boy; "The Rose Tree" is an unusual variant of this tale in that the main character is a girl. [Maria Tatar, "The Annotated Brothers Grimm", p 209 W. W. Norton & company, London, New York, 2004 ISBN 0-393-05848-4]

ynopsis

A man had two children, a daughter by his first wife and a son by his second. His daughter was very beautiful, and her brother loved her but his mother hated her.

The stepmother sent the daughter to the store to buy candles. Three times, the girl put down the candles to climb a stile, and a dog stole them.

The stepmother told her to come and let her comb her hair. She claimed she could not comb it on her knee, or with the comb, and sent the girl for a piece of wood and an axe, and cut off her head.

She stewed her heart and liver, and her husband tasted them and said they tasted strangely. The brother did not eat but buried his sister under a rose-tree. Every day he wept under it.

One day, the rose-tree flowered, and a white bird appeared. It sang to a cobbler and received a pair of red shoes; it sang to a watchmaker and received a gold watch and chain; it sang to three millers and received a millstone. Then it flew home and rattled the millstone against the eaves. The stepmother said that it thundered, and the boy ran out, and the bird dropped the shoes at his feet. It rattled the millstone again, the stepmother said that it thundered, the father went out, and the bird dropped the watch and chain at his feet. It rattled the millstone a third time, and the stepmother went out, and the bird dropped the millstone on her head.

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