Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo: Fairies (and Frogs, and Fishes, and Trees...) Godmothers

The Fairy Godmother is arguably one of the most important characters in Charles Perrault's Cinderella or the Little Glass Slipper. Without her Cinderella couldn't have gone to the ball and would have never met the prince. She'll probably be still stuck with her stepmother and her stepsisters. But despite how relevant she is, to many people would probably be surprised about how in many stories around the globe there's not a Fairy Godmother in the story at all, or the one who helps Cinderella is not a fairy.

We'll start with those versions in which Cinderella's helper is explicitely a fairy. Or in the case of Achille Millien's Cinderella (La Cendrillon), fairies. Millien's Cinderella has to take care of the sheep while she spins the flax. One day while she's spinning her spindle falls and rolls untill it reaches a groot, where Cinderella meets a group of fairies, who invite her to sit with them. Cinderella befriends those fairies, who will help her latter to go to mass when her stepmother doesn't allow her. Another French version with a fairy godmother is Henri Pourrat's Mary-in-the-Ashes, in which he uses her magic not only to help her go to the mass, but also pick from the ashes the peas enchanted by the heroine's stepmother, that multiple everytime she picks one. From Corsica we got a version collected by Geneviève Massignon called Genderella, in which our Cinderella is back here to having just one Fairy Godmother, who gives her a magic walnut, a magic hazelnut and a magic almond, from which she takes the dresses after she recites a specific spell her Gomother teaches her. We see again the magic walnut on the northern Italian version La Sendraroeula, collected by Caterina Pigorini Beri. This time are not fairies the ones who give her the magic walnut, but good witches, alongside a wand with she needs with to strike the walnut, so she can take not only the dresses from it, but also the carriage, the horses and the coachman. Also, this story gives a niece explanation to the "be back before midnight" rule. She needs to return before midnight because everything she takes from the nut will disappear at the exact same hour the witches gave her the nut and the wand, that happens to  be midnight.

The helper is not always explicitely a fairy, being in many versions an ambiguous figure, taking the form of an old lady, that we don't know if she's a fairy on disguise or a good witch. Such is the case in Domenico Comparetti's La Cenerentola, the henwife in Jermiah Curtin's Fair, Brown and Trembling or Francesc Maspons i Labrós La ventafochs. In the Appalachian version Ashpet, collected by Richard Chase, the titular heroine is helped by an old woman who lives in a gorge, that Ashpet had to go one time she needed to borrow some fire. Performing acts of kidness is a good way for the heroine to gain the help she needs, like is the case in the Portuguese tale The Hearth-Cat, collected by Zófimo Consiglieri Pedroso, in which despite the heroine already getting the magic wand that will get her the dresses to go not to a ball but to see the horse ride from the stomach of a friendly cow her stepmother got killed, she also gets magical gifts from three fairies after she cleaned up their house; or the case in the Georgian tale collected by Marjory Wardrop Conkiajgharuna the Little Rag Girl, in which after deworming a devi's head the girl is sent to a spring, with whose waters she must wash her hair when those turn golden. In the Japanese Benizara and Kakezara, collected by Seki Keigo, not only the heroine gets a magic box, that everytime she strikes three times she gets what she needs, but also a way to trick the onis in case that in her way back home she encounters them, so they wouldn't wanna eat her.

Sometimes Cinderella's helper takes a male form, like it's the case with the white dwarf that gives her the magic golden wand in the Swabian tale Aschengrittel collected by Ernst Meier. We can find a less kind example in the Danish Pisk-I-Aske, collected by Evald Tang Kristensen, closer to Rumpelstiltskin than to Perrault's Fairy Godmother. Here the titular character is helped by a mysterious grey man, who offers his help in exchange for the children she'll have in the future. Our heroine only accepts because she doesn't believe she's gonna have any children. Sometimes the male helper is more accidental, not being a magical being, but just the girl's father fulfilling his daughter's odd requests, that normally consists in giving her the first thing that hits him on his way back home, as it's the case with Grimm's version, The Three Sisters and O Popelušce, both collected by Božena Němcová, or The Three Pigeons, collected by Pavol Dobšinský. Sometimes the first branch that hits the father on his way back home turns out ot be the magic wand that the heroine will use to get the dresses and go to the ball, like in Antonio Rodríguez Almodóvar's Estrellita de Oro. Or a magic date tree from where maidens will come out and dressed the heroine, like in Giuseppe Pitrè's Gràttula-Beddàttula. In James Bruyn Andrews' Catarina the titular heroine only asks her father to carry greetings to her aunt, and Catarina's aunt does the rest, sending the nut that contains the dress and the almond that contains the magic slippers. More specific is the heroine in Léon Pineau's La Cendrouse, that directly asks for nuts, in spite of being teased by her sisters because of it.

But Cinderella's helper doesn't have to be always an antropomorphic figure. Such was the case with what it's consider one of the first Cinderella stories ever told, Ye Xian, in which the titular heroine got the dress and the shoes to go to the festival after praying to his deceased fish friend's bones. A fish is also the heroine's helper in the Russian tale collected by Afanasiev The Golden Slipper and the Iraqi The Little Red Fish and the Clog of Gold, but unlike Ye Xian's helper in these versions the fish survives. Other aquatic creatures that we see as Cinderella's helpers are a crab, in Filipino version collected by Dean S. Fansler Maria and the Golden Slipper, who unfortunately for him suffers the same fate as Ye Xian's fish, getting killed by the heroine's stepfamily and buried by the heroine, to latter keep helping her from the grave; and a frog in the African folktale The Maiden, the Frog and the Chief's Son, that swallows whole the heroine to latter expel her from his stomach with new clothes. Cows, bulls and calfs are pretty common in folklore too, such is the case with the Scottish Rushen Coatie, the Norwegian Katie Woodencloak or the French The Blue Bull. Birds are also pretty common, with examples like the two pigeons that help Masha in Afanasiev's Chernushka, the titular Three Pigeons in the already mentioned Slovak version collected by Dobšinský, the stork that helps Klêting Kunning in the Javanese story Andé Andé Lumut, or the little bird Verdeli in Vittorio Imbriani's Cinderella. Between the tales with animal helpers it's worth mentioning the tale from Madagascar collected by Gabriel Ferrand The Three Princesses and Andria Mohamona, in which our heroine is helped by a cute endearing little mouse. Even magic inanimate objects can fullfil that role, like the titular Magic Jar in the Egyptian tale collected by Yacoub Artin-Pacha, that will be later included in Joseph Charles Mardrus' translation of One Thousand and One Nights under the titles The Tale of the Anklet.

We already mention a couple of version in which Cinderella's helper is dead, but keep on helping her from the grave. Of course we got the magic tree that magically grow from the mother's grave like in the Spanish tale La fregona, collected by Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Jr., or the magic hazel tree that grows after Cinderella watered the hazel branch with her own tears like in Grimm's. In the Chinese tale Beauty and Pock Face, collected by Wolfram Eberhard, the heroine Beauty gets the dress and the horse to go to the theatre after she breaks the vessel that contains the bones of a yellow cow, frustrated because her stepmother won't let her go to the teathre with her stepsister and her. Sometimes that decesead helper is the heroine's own mother that was turned into an animal before her death, like in the Serbian Pepelyouga, where the heroine is helped by her mother's buried bones, after she was turned into a cow because her daughter accidentally let her spindle fall on a gorge, or the Finnish The Wonderful Birch, in which the mother is trasformed in a sheep and supplanted by an evil witch, who latter convices the husband to slaughter his own wife without knowing it. The daughter will latter bury her mother's bones, from where the titular magic tree will grow. If you find that disturbing don't worry, because in the Greek Little Saddleslut they didn't bother to turn the mother into a cow or any other animal before killing and eating her, just because she became too old and too much of a burden to the heroine's eldest sisters. The youngest daughter is the only one who doesn't eat her meat and pays tribute to her after her death.

Only the prince's true love could wash away the blood from his shirt

In the Norwegian tale East of the Sun & West of the Moon, collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, the heroine lights a candle to see what aspect the bear has when lies beside her on her bed every night, and discovers he's actually a handsome prince. Unfortunately, some drops of candel wax fall on the prince's shirt and he wakes up. Both the castle and the prince disappear, and to see her prince again the girl must search for a castle east of the Sun and West of the Moon.

When she finally arrives, after some adventures to help him remenber her, the prince says he would only marry the maiden who can wash away the candlewax from the shirt. Only the heroine can do it.  This episode, the heroine proving to be the prince's true love because she's the only one capable of washing away the stains on the prince's shirt is a pretty extended episode in the tales belonging to the Aarne-Thompson type 425, the search for the animal bridegroom. But in some of these version, the stains are not of candelwax, but of the heroine's own blood.

In the French folktale The Beast (La Bête), collected by Geneviève Massignon, the prince has to go after the heroine's envious sisters spill water over the beast hide. Before he goes away the heroine lets three drops of blood stain the princess' shirt, saying she would be the only one capable of washing them away. So, unlike in East of the Sun and West of the Moon, where the cause of the wax stains on the shirt are accidental, beyond the heroine's control and initiative, here we have a heroine who create the situation on purpose.  That way, when she finally reaches the castle where her prince lives now and it's gonna get married to a princess chosen by his parents, and gets a job at the palace as a turkey herd, she can let the prince now she has come for him, when he sees someone has finally managed to get rid of the blood stains. The prince also plays here an active role, saying he'd only wear at his wedding the blood stained shirt once cleaned, creating a chance for the heroine to prove she has arrived.

More accidental, so then closer to East of the Sun and West of the Moon, it's the beautiful Appalachian tale Whitebear Whittington, collected by Richard Chase. The moment when the prince's shirt is stained is not when the heroine breaks the taboo and loses the prince for the first time, like in the two previous tales, but when she accepts to go with the animal bridegroom. While mounting the bear's back for the first time, the heroine has a noseblood (Bettleheim would love to interpret the sexual connotations of this scene), and three drops of blood fall on the animal's back. Later the prince has three blood stains on his shirt, and the heroine is the only one who manage to wash them away, but another woman pretends to be the one who did it, so the heroine goes to the typical routine to recover her lost husband, exchanging three wonderful objects for spending three nights at the prince's bedroom. The tale has of course a happy ending. We got a similar episode of the false bride pretending to be the one who washed away the shirt in the Scottish tale The Black Bull of Norroway, but in this one it's not the heroine's blood, but the animal bridegroom's.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

Snow White is a tale with many iconic elements, but I think we can agree the most iconic, besides the poisoned apple, is the magic mirror the Evil Queen asks who's the fairest of them all. But, like any oher element on a fairy tale, once we start exploring similar tales from different countries and cultures, we discover that the villains asks that question to all kinds of people, animals, objects and even the Sun and the Moon.

First we'll start with the versions that keep the magic mirror. Sometimes the mirror not only tells the (step)mother that she's no longer the most beautiful, but also is able to predict that her own daughter will be able to surpass her when she's still pregnant, like in the case of the Hungarian tale The World's Beautiful Woman, although the heroine's mother decides to spare her life until she's thirteen. Something similar happens in a tale from Mozambique collected by Henri Alexandre Junod, titled The Unnatural Mother and the Girl with a Star on her Forehead. Although here the mirror uses such enigmatic language that the mother of the heroine, who has a crescent moon on her forehead, doesn't realise what her mirror actually told her untill it explains it to her latter, when her daughter, who has a star on her forehead, has already been born. Furious the mother breaks the mirror, and after checking tha most people think that what the mirror told her is truth, decides to kill her own daughter. She latter discovers her daughter is still alive because of a servant boy who had encountered her. In most American versions the mirror is also kept too, like in the Chilean version Blanca Rosa and the Forty Thieves, collected by Yolando Pino Saavedra, in which the mirror didn't belong initially to the stepmother, but to Blanca Rosa herself, because the mirror was a gift of her deceased mother. 

Despite being such an iconic element to the story, sometimes the mirror is not introduced in the story untill much latter, when the heroine has already run away from home and is living with her benefactors. Such it's the case, ironically, with the Russian version titled The Magic Mirror, collected by Alexander N. Afanasiev, in which the mirror and the stepmother are not intriduced in the story untill the heroine, here a merchant's daughter instead of a king's, have run away from home and is living in a castle with two bogatyrs. The reason why the heroine run away from home here it's not her stepmother's jealousy, but her own father wanting her dead after believing the rumors about her the girl's uncle spread as a revenge for humilliating him and thwarting his attempted rape. And before you ask yes, Afanasiev's The Magic Mirror is one of the most disturbing and fucked up versions of Snow White I've ever read. In the cajun version Snow Bella, collected by Calvin Claudel, the stepmother buys the mirror to a peddler, whom latter will sell her the poisoned necklace, comb and apple with she'll try to kill her stepdaughter.

But the stepmother doesn't asks always a mirror who's the fairest. Instead she asks that question to other objects like bowls in the Danish tale The Pretty Girl and the Crystal Bowls, collected by Evald Tang Kristensen.

It's also pretty common for the villains in these kind of stories to ask living creatures, and even people, who's the prettiest. In the Scotthish version Gold Tree and Silver Tree the queen asks a trout; in the Italian Bella Venezia, collected by Antonio De Nino and latter included by Italo Clavino on his collection Italian Folktales, the mother is an innkeeper who asks her customers if they have saw a woman prettier than her, if they say no she only charges them half the prize, but if they say yes she doubles the price; in another Italian version collected by Angelo De Gubernatis, The Cruel Stepmother, people comment how much prettier the stepdaughter Caterina is than the stepmother when they go to mass; in the French version collected by Paul Sébillot The Enchanted Stockings marching soldiers tell the Queen that her daughter is more beautiful than her; in the Turkish The Magic Needle, collected by Ignác Kúnos, the padishah's wife asks her slave, who tells her everyday she's the fairest untill he sees Nar-tanesi the padishah's daughter; and in the Egyptian tale Romana, collected by Howard Schwartz, the same wizard that helped the princess's stepmother seduces the king with an enchanted cake tells her that her stepdaughter is more beautiful that her own daughter Laymuna.

Celestial bodies are also a common substitute for the mirror in many versions. The Sun is consulted in the Swedish tale The Little Gold Bird, the Albanian Marigo of the Forty Dragons collected by Johann Georg von Hahn and the Greek versions Marietta and the Witch, her Stepmother, collected by Henri Carnoy and Jean Nicolaides, and Myrsina collected by Georgios A. Megas, while the Moon fullfils that role in the Italian Giricoccola, in which the Moon also fulfills the dwarves' role in the story latter on; the Armenian Nourie Hadig, the Moroccan The Jealous Mother and the Iraqi Hajir.

There's even sometimes the villain of the story doesn't need someone or something else to tell her that her daughter surpass her beauty, like in the French version La petite Toute-Belle, the second one collected by Paul Sébillot that we mention in this post; The Three Sisters, collected by Christian Schneller; or the Sicilian version Maria, the Wicked Stepmother and the Seven Robbers, collected by Laura Gonzenbach.

Favorite folktales from Germany: Beyond Grimm

Germany is probably one of the most influential countries in what concerns fairy tales and folk tales, alongside Italy, France and the United Kingdom. But despite how much I love the fairy tales by the brothers Grimm, and how much I'm the first to admit their work is a huge part of what made Germany so influential, I always think the folk tales collected by other authors get unjustly overshadowed. So I'll try to give some spotlight to those underappreciated collectors and some of the gems they collected.

We should start with Ludwig Bechstein (1801-1860), whom in his native Germany doesn't get too overshadowed by the brothers Grimm. Internationally... well, that's another tune. My absolute favorite folk tale collected by him is Little Broomstick (Besenstielchen), first published in 1845 in the first edition of his collection The Book of German Tales (Deutsches Märchenbuch), although in the next editions the tales got omitted. It's a Beauty and the Beast tale, in which Beauty, called here Nettchen, has a broom maker's daughter for a best friend. When it's time for Nettchen to go with the Beast, her father thinks he can cheat the Beast giving him his daughter's best friend, but the Beast discovers the scheme, and in the end Nettchen has to go live with the Beast. The spell is broken before Nettchen returns home, and she does it no tonly because her father is sick, but because in the prince's garden there's a plant whose sap is the only medicine that can cure him. In this version Beauty's sisters are definetely next level nasty, because instead of plotting to make Nettchen stay longer thinking that the Beast will get mad at her and kill her, they downight kill her sister, drowing her in the bathtub. Luckily a sorceress, the same one that bewitched the prince, brings her back to life, and because she judges the two sisters to be too dangerous to keep alive, but Nettchen asks her not to kill them, she turns them into stone.

Another one of my favorite tales collected by Bechstein, that unlike the previous one he kept it on the next editions of The Book of German Tales is The Golden Roebuck (Der goldene Rehbock). It tells the story of two orphaned siblings, called Hans and Gretchen, who end up as servants in a house owned by a cannibal and his wife. Everyday they must sweep the floors of eleven of the twelve rooms the house has, while they're forbid to enter the twelfth room. But one day while the cannibals are not at home Gretchen takes a quick peep by the keyhole, and sees inside the titular golden roebuck with a golden carriage. The siblings escape with the roebuck, but the cannibal and his wife go after them. Initially Gretchen deceives them turning herself, her brother and the roebuck in rosebush, and latter they encounter an oven, a pear tree and a grapevine, who ask them to take the bread out, shake its branches so its fruits would fall and pick its grapes respectively. Finally the siblings get rid of the cannibal and his wife with the help of some ducks in a pond. One thing I like about this tales it's that regards female curiosity instead of punishing it. Other tales I love from Bechstein's first collection are The Enchantress Princess (similar to Grimm's Queen Bee, but with two brothers instead of three, and sons of a craftsman instead of a king), The Magic Swan (similar to Grimm's Golden Goose, but with the donor being female instead of male, and explicitely saying that the hero, called here Gottfried, goes intentionally to make the princess laugh), Gold-Maria and Pitch-Maria (similar to Grimm's Frau Holle, but with a male donor instead of a female one), The Boys with the Little Gold Stars, Casting Spells and The Old Wizard and his Children.

Like I previously mentioned, like the brothers Grimm did Bechstein changed some things in his first collection in the next editions, omitting some tales, but also adding new ones. Most of the new ones weren't originally collected by Bechstein himself, but instead by Karl Müllenhoff (1818-1884). Müllenhoff's tales came from Mecklenburg, in northern Germany. Of the new additions my favourites are The Man Without a Heart (Der Mann ohne Herz), that most people probably know because it was included in Andrew Lang's Pink Fairy Book, that tells the story of how the youngest of seven brothers kills the warlock that turned his elder brothers to stone with the help of a bull, a boar and a griffin; and As-Pretty-as-Seven (Siebenschön), a star-crossed love story between a prince and a commoner's daughter with a happy ending. 

The Book of German Tales wasn't the only collection Bechstein's published, because some years later, in 1856, he published The New Book of German Tales (Neues Deutsches Märchenbuch). That new book incluede even more tales that weren't originally collected by Bechstein, but instead they were already published in other author's collections. One of my favorites in this one is Cinder Blower with the Wishing Wand (Aschenpüster with the Wishing Wand), a Donkey Skin/All-Kinds-of-Fur variant in which the heroine doesn't runaway from home because her own father wants to marry her, but instead her father before dying lost all of his fortune to gave her everything she wants, included a magic wand. After her father's death the heroine has to work at the palace's kitchen, and she uses the magic wand her father gaver her before he died to go to the ball where the prince falls in love with her. My second favorite is Angela of the Ducats (Das Dukaten-Angele), a tale abou three orphaned sisters, a magic doll that poop coins and the envious married couple the sisters have for neighbours. This is also one of those rare ocasions in which the main character is not the youngest sister and not even the eldest, but the middle one. I can recount many tales in which that's the case besides this one. Can you?

One thing that always noticed of the tales collected by Johann Wilhelm Wolf (1817-1855) is ho few of them have female leads. On his collection you won't find any Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Donkey Skin, The Wild Swans or Kind and Unkind Girls stories. And I think the lack of female lead stories is exactly what has made his folk tales less known than Grimm's. But that doesn't mind there isn't still some worth checking ones, like The Youth On Fire and the Three Golden Feathers (Der Jüngling im Feuer und die drei goldnen Federn), a story that would be familiar to anyone who has read Grimm's The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs.

Next we go to Hannover, a region in Northeastern Germany bordering with Polland. This region has its own brothers Grimm, called Carl (1812-1855) and Theodor Colshorn (1821-1896). These two brothers collected oral tales exclusively from this region, and some of them don't have anything to be jealous of the Grimm's tales. Like Aschenpöling, the story about a girl who's adopted by a witch that lives in the woods. One day when the girl is grown up the witch leaves her alone at home, forbidding her to open a chamber. The girl does it, of course, and she sees a magic mirror that shows the image of a beautiful maiden with a golden crown at the top of her head. Because she entered the forbidden chamber the witch throws the girl out and she ends up as a scullery maid at the palace's kitchen. The rest of the story is pretty similar to All-Kinds-of-Fur, but at the end, when the girl has married the king, she looks herself in the mirror and discovers that the image she saw in the mirror of the forbidden chamber was her future. My other favourite tale collected by them is a Beauty and the Beast tale, The Clinking Clanking Lowesleaf (Vom klinkesklanken Lowesblatt). In this story is a king and not a merchant the one who asks his three daughters what they want him to brought them from his trip. The youngest daughter asks for a clinking clanking lowesleaf, that the king can't find anywhere, untill a black poddle promises to give him one if the king in exchange agress to give to the poddle the first living creature that greets the king when he arrives at his castle. That first living creature turn out to be his youngest daughter, and by suggestion of the queen the king tries to deceive the poddle, giving him daughters of commoners pretending to be the princess, but the poddle always discovers the truth because he brings the girls under a willow tree where everyone can only say the truth. Finally the king has to let the poddle take his daughter away. The princess is taken to a hut in the middle of the forest, where she feels so alone that wishes for company, even if it's an old beggar woman. Such old beggar woman appears in that exact instant, and in exchange for inviting her to the princess' wedding and letting her sit by her side and drink from her cup the old lady tells the princess how to break the spell. After the spell is broken, at the princess' wedding day the old beggar woman goes to the wedding, where the princess let her sit by her side and drink from her cup. As you can see, this is a Beauty and the Beast story in which the heroine needs to look beyond external appearance when it concerns enchanted princes.

From Northeastern Germany we go to Southwestern Germany. To the region of Swabia to be more specific. Ernst Meier (1813-1866) collected tales from that region, and between my favourites we can found The Three Ravens (Die drei Räben), a story that starts like Grimm's tale of the same name, with a mother cursing her disobedient kids to be turned into ravens, and her sisters goes to search for them. Once she found them the story becomes more similar to The Twelve Brothers and The Six Swans, with the sister having to keep silence for seven years to disenchant her brothers. She's found by a hunter this time instead of a king who marries her, and here the one who gets rid of her newborn children because she hates the heroine is a midwife instead of her mother-in-law. Like in most versions everything turns out okay in the end, with the brothers disenchanted and the sister's innocence proven, but unlike in most of them the sister's husband is judged not to be good enough for her because he beleived the midwife's lies, and she leaves him. Meier also collected a Bluebeard tale, titled King Bluebeard (König Blaubart), in which like its title says Bluebeard is a king; and not just one but two Cinderella tales. In the first one, Aschengrittel, the heroine is given a golden magic wand that will grant her every wish she has when she strikes it against the well's edge, by a white dwarf who gave it to her after seeing the good she had when he offered to grant her six wishes, three good ones and three bad ones, and she rejected her bad ones to be granted.

I suppose I can't end this post without talking about Franz Xaver von Schönwerth's (1811-1886) tales, specially because I own a physical copy of The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales. I must say that I kinda agree with what Jack Zipes said in an interview, that the media at the time overhyped the collection, and that there's still a lot of great European collections of folktales that haven't got yet the attention they deserve, like the ones by Giuseppe Pitrè or Emmanuel Cosquin, despite some of them being published for centuries by now. But despite that, the collection still has some tales that are worth reading, like The Enchanted Quill (Die Zauberfeder), The Flying Trunk (Das fliegende Kästchen), King Goldenlocks (König Goldhaar), similar to Grimm's Iron Hans; Ashfeathers (Aschenflügel), Schönwerth's own version of Cinderella; The Snake Sister (Schwester Schlange), a tale similar, and I think better than Grimm's White Bride and the Black Bride; The Iron Shoes (Die Eisneschuhe), The Girl and the Cow (Die Prinzessin und die Kuh), The Scorned Princess (Die verschmähte Prinzessin), Three Flowers (Die drei Blumen), The Weasel (Das Wiesel), The Burning Trough (Der feurige Backtrog) and The Talking Bird, the Singing Tree and the Sparkling Stream (Der redende Vogel, der singende Baum und die goldgelbe Quelle).