The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs

German fairy tale

"The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs" (Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen Haaren) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm (KHM 29). It falls under Aarne–Thompson classification types 461 ("three hairs from the devil"), and 930 ("prophecy that a poor boy will marry a rich girl"). The story was first translated into English as "The Giant and the Three Golden Hairs" to avoid offense, but the devil in the story does indeed act like a folklore giant. Ruth Manning Sanders included it, as "The Three Golden Hairs of the King of the Cave Giants", in A Book of Giants.

A poor woman gave birth to a son with a caul (where the amniotic sac is still intact at birth), which was interpreted to mean that he would marry the king's daughter at fourteen years of age. The wicked king, hearing of it, visited the family and persuaded them to allow him to bring the boy back and raise him in the castle. Instead, he put the boy in a box and threw the box into the water, so that he would drown and not grow up to marry his daughter. But rather than sink, it drifted down to a mill, where it was found by the miller and his wife. The two decided to raise the boy on their own. Fourteen years later, the king happened to visit the mill inadvertently. Upon seeing the boy, the king asked the miller if he was his father, who then explained the story of how he and his wife had come to raise the boy. Shocked, the king devised a way to rid himself of the boy once and for all. He gave the young man a sealed letter and instructed him to deliver it to the queen. Inside, the letter commanded that the boy be killed and buried once he arrived. On his way to deliver the letter, the boy sought shelter in an old woman's house for the night. Despite her warnings that robbers frequented the house, the boy fell asleep, claiming he could walk no further. When the bandits arrived, they read the letter and took pity on the boy. Without waking him, they put a new letter in its place, dictating that the boy should marry the king's daughter upon his arrival. When the morning came, they pointed him in the direction of the castle and he went on his way. The wedding proceeded, and when the king returned, he dispatched the boy to travel into Hell and return with three of the Devil's golden hairs, in yet another effort to rid himself of his new son in law. The boy is confronted with three questions on his journey, as he travels between two towns and across the river. When passing through each, he is asked his trade ("what he knows"). The boy responds thrice, "I know everything." He is then asked why the first town's well, which once sprung forth wine, no longer dispenses even water. In the second town, he is asked why a tree that once produced golden apples will not even sprout leaves. When being ferried across the river, the ferryman asks him why he must always row back and forth, and is not free to do otherwise. To each question he replies, "You shall know that, only when I come back." The boy finds the entrance to Hell on the other side of the river and, upon entering, finds only the Devil's grandmother. He tells her what he wants, and she promises to assist him how she can, turning him into an ant and hiding him in the folds of the clothing. The Devil returns and, despite smelling human flesh in the air, is convinced to sit down, eat, and drink. Once he has done so, he lays his head in his grandmother's lap and falls into an inebriated sleep. She plucks a golden hair from his head three times, causing him to awaken after every hair pulled. Having assumed the pain was part of his dreams, he recounts his visions to his grandmother a dried up well in a town square with a toad underneath blocking the flow of liquid, a tree that does not sprout fruit or leaves because of a mouse gnawing at its root, and a ferryman who can be freed merely by placing his oar in the hands of another man on the river's bank. The next morning, once the Devil had left the dwelling again, the boy was transformed back into his former self. Thanking the old woman, he took the three golden hairs and set off for home. Once again, he passed the river and two cities, disclosing the answers he had overheard the Devil speak of during the night. Each town gives him a pair of asses laden with gold, which he brings back with him to the castle. The king, pleased by the boy's return with such wealth, allows him to live in peace with his wife. He inquires on the source of the wealth he acquired, hoping to find some for himself. The boy tells him the gold was found across the river. The story ends with the king crossing the river with the ferryman, who hands him the oar upon reaching the other side, condemning him to a life of ferrying travellers back and forth forever.

Folklorist Stith Thompson commented that the first part of the tale (birth of boy predestined to marry princess/rich girl), classified as ATU 930, is often found coupled together with the second part, the impossible task of getting the hair from the Devil (or giant, ogre, etc.). Scholar Kurt Ranke stated that the tale type was a European combination of "two very old stories": the "child of fate" that appears as early as the 3rd century CE in Indian and Chinese literature, associated with the motif K978 ("Uriah letter"); and the hero's journey to the other world bearing questions, a narrative contained in the Avadana and in the Tutinama. Scholars Antti Aarne and Václav Tille, as cited by Thompson, concluded that both stories were separate tales that combined into one narrative in Europe a similar assessment made by folklorists Johannes Bolte and Jiri Polívka, in their notes to the Grimm's tales.

According to Thompson and Tille, tale type 930 shows 4 literary redactions: Indic (the oldest), Ethiopic, Western European and Turkish. In European tradition, the theme appears in the Middle Ages: in Godfrey of Viterbo (12th century); in Gesta Romanorum, with the story of the king and the forester's son; and in Le dit de l'empereur Constant (13th century). Professor Dov Noy stated that type 930 is "well known" in Eastern Europe.

Thompson stated that the tale type appears "all over Europe" and in Asia (China). Willem de Blécourt registers that the tale Li sette palommelle ("The Seven Doves"), on the Pentamerone, shows as its second part the heroine's quest to a creature named Chronos, the one who can give her the answers to rescue her brothers. He states that this sequence, "The Three Questions", was "incorporated" into the tale type "in late 18th century". In this tale type, after the lowly hero marries the princess, her father sends him to the Devil or another creature, on a dangerous quest designed to kill him. On his way to the other world, he is asked riddles and questions that he promises to ask the Devil. In many variants, the three questions pertain to a fountain that has dried up, a tree that does not yield fruits, and lastly about the ferryman.

The motif of the old man ferrying the poor boy/hero across the sea to the Devil (in Grimm's version; a giant, ogre, in other variants) parallels the mythological journey to "The Otherworld" (Hell) on the boat. Likewise, the figure of the devil fulfills the role of an oracular god. The motif of frogs blocking the flow of waters has several parallels studied by Andrew Lang. Lang suggests this motif may descend from the ancient Indo European myth of a hero or thunder god slaying a serpent or dragon that blocks the flow of waters.

In the story Emperor Conrad and the count's son (Gesta Romanorum), the protagonist is the son of the Count of Caln, who had offended Emperor Conrad II and thus fled to a hut in the Black Forest. The boy is adopted by Duke Herman of Swabia. When Conrad sent the youth to Aachen with a letter instructing the empress to kill him, it was the dean of the Speyer Cathedral who save the young count and changed the instruction, so Caln could marry the princess. When Conrad found out, he became reconciled with the events and made the count, now his son in law his co regent. Because the dean had prevented innocent blood to be shed, he was made chancellor and it was also because of this action, the imperial burial vault was constructed in Speyer. The Brothers Grimm collected a tale in the first edition of their compilation with the name Der Vogel Phönix (English: "The Phoenix Bird"), where the hero was found by a miller in a box cast into the water and he is tasked with getting three feathers from the "Phoenix Bird", who lives in a hut atop a mountain in the company of an old lady. In Slavic folktale compilations, the devil is replaced by a character called Old Vsevede or "Father Know All". Francis Hindes Groome collected a Transylvanian Romani variant with the title The Three Golden Hairs of the Sun King: the charcoal maker's son is prophesied by three ladies in white to marry the king's daughter. The king tries to get rid of his prospective son in law, but he is saved and named "Nameless". Then he is tasked with getting three hairs from Sun King, an entity that becomes a little child in the morning, a man by midday and at night comes home as a grey man. In a South Slavic variant collected in Kordun and published in 1927, the hero is a soldier, the antagonist is his captain and the rower who never rests his oar is a sentry holding a gun. Croatian folklorist Maja Bošković Stulli suggested that this variant may have been influenced by the military like way of life in the Military Frontier. In a Georgian variant translated into Hungarian with the title A megkövült fiú ("The Boy of Stone"), a king and queen have a son they love so much, they try to protect him from the evils of the world by locking him in a tower. Time passes, and the boy opens his window and sees the sun, and becomes fascinated by it. One day, the prince yawns at the sun, which he takes to be an offense, but tolerates it. Some time later, the sun curses the prince to be a stone by day, and normal by night. The prince meets a woman and fathers a son, but becomes stone permanently. His son grows up in hours. On one occasion, he asks his mother about his father and is told of the situation. So, he decides to visit the mother of the day to know if he can revert the curse on his father. On his journey, he is asked questions: why the harvesters cannot plow the land, why the shepherds's flocks of sheep are dying, and how the stag can shed its antlers. The youth promises to consult the mother of the day for answers.

"The Devil with The Three Golden Hairs" is noted to have been a possible influence for J. R. R. Tolkien's The Tale of Beren and Lúthien, in which the elf king Thingol sets an impossible task for his daughter's mortal suitor: to obtain one of the three Silmarils from the Iron Crown of Morgoth. Despite these similarities, however, the differences remain substantial: in Tolkien's version, the king's daughter attends the hero along the way, following him as a giant bat; there are no towns and no riddles, as well as no ferryman; once Beren has wrested a silmaril from the iron crown, he loses it by having his hand bitten off by a giant wolf, and ends up returning to the king with no jewels at all. The king at last allows Beren to wed his daughter, and ultimately obtains the silmaril by having his hunters track down and slay the wolf, cutting the burning jewel from its belly, a sequence which has no analogy in the German fairy tale. The king is later slain by dwarves he had employed to set the jewel into a necklace for him. The similarities which can be traced through both stories may be the result of themes common to many human stories as outlined in the book

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