The Juniper Tree (fairy tale)

German fairy tale

"The Juniper Tree" (also The Almond Tree; ) is a German fairy tale published in Low German by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1812 (KHM 47). The story contains themes of child abuse, murder, cannibalism and biblical symbolism and is one of the Brothers Grimm's darker and more mature fairy tales. The tale is of Aarne–Thompson type 720 ("The Juniper Tree"). Another such tale is the English The Rose Tree, although it reverses the sexes from The Juniper Tree; The Juniper Tree follows the more common pattern of having the dead child be a boy.

The tale was published by the Brothers Grimm in the first edition of Kinder und Hausmärchen in 1812. A somewhat different version appeared a few months earlier Johann Gustav Büsching's Volks Sagen, Märchen und Legenden (1812). It was believed until the early 1870s that the Brothers Grimm re adapted various oral recountings and fables heard from local peasants and townspeople in order to write their well known fairy tales. However, various critics including Vanessa Joosen argue that this assumption is false, based on an overwhelming amount of disputing evidence. The Grimm brothers themselves wrote in the appendix to the 1812 first edition of the KHM that the text was supplied by Philipp Otto Runge.

A wealthy and pious couple pray every day for God to grant them a child. One winter, under the juniper tree in the courtyard, the wife peels an apple. She cuts her finger and drops of blood fall onto the snow. This leads her to wish for a child to be as white as snow and as red as blood. Six months later, the wife becomes gravely ill from eating juniper berries and asks her husband to bury her beneath the juniper tree if she dies. A month later, she gives birth to a baby boy as white as snow and as red as blood. She dies of happiness. Keeping his promise, the husband buries her beneath the juniper tree. He eventually marries again and he and his new wife have a daughter named Marlinchen (in some versions Marlene, Marjory or Ann Marie). The new wife loves Marlinchen but despises her stepson. She abuses him every day, claiming that she wishes Marlinchen to inherit her father's wealth instead of her stepson. One afternoon after school, the stepmother plans to lure her stepson into an empty room containing a chest of apples. Marlinchen sees the chest and asks for an apple, which the stepmother gracefully offers. However, when the boy enters the room and reaches down the chest for an apple, the stepmother slams the lid onto his neck, decapitating him. The stepmother binds his head with the rest of his body with a bandage and props his body onto a chair outside, with an apple on his lap. Marlinchen, unaware of the situation, asks her stepbrother for an apple. Hearing no response, she is forced by her mother to box him in the ear, causing his head to roll onto the ground. Marlinchen profusely cries throughout the day whilst the stepmother dismembers the stepson's body and cooks him into a "blood soup" (Black Puddings Sauer/Suur) for dinner. She later deceives her husband by telling him that his son stayed at the mother's great uncle's house. The husband unwittingly eats the "blood soup" during dinner and proclaims it to be delicious. Marlinchen gathers the bones from the dinner and buries them beneath the juniper tree with a handkerchief. Suddenly, a mist emerges from the juniper tree and a beautiful bird flies out. The bird visits the local townspeople and sings about its brutal murder at the hands of its stepmother. Captivated by its lullaby, a goldsmith, a shoemaker and a miller offer the bird a gold chain, a pair of red shoes and a millstone in return for the bird singing its song again. The bird returns home to give the gold chain to the husband while giving Marlinchen the red shoes. Meanwhile, the stepmother complains about the "raging fires within her arteries", revealed to be the real cause of her anger and hatred towards her stepson. She goes outside for relief but the bird drops the millstone onto her head, killing her instantly. Surrounded by smoke and flames, the son, revealed to be the bird, emerges and reunites with his family. They celebrate and head inside for lunch, and live happily ever after.

There are many themes, such as cannibalism, death, and food, that play an important role in the short story, The Juniper Tree. These overall themes are listed below.

Some argue that The Juniper Tree draws cues from the short story Hansel and Gretel. Following the death of the main character, the mother (in an attempt to cover up his death) literally "chopped him in pieces, put him into the pan and [cooked him up in blood soup/black puddings]. The husband then eats the blood soup/black pudding, saying how “delicious [the] food is," and even asks for the wife to "give [him] some more.” is a tool typically used to grind corn.

Critics suggest that the character of the mother in "The Juniper Tree" is used to represent a guardian spirit. This theme of guardianship is shown throughout other Grimm fairy tales such as Cinderella, Briar Rose, and Snow White. In all of these stories, there is some object (normally represented through nature) that watches after the main character. In the case of "Briar Rose," "the briar hedge is the symbol of nature guarding her rose: the princess who sleeps inside the castle."

When the son becomes a bird, he requests gifts such as a gold chain from a goldsmith and a pair of shoes for his sister. In addition, he asks for a millstone from a group of millers, which he drops on the wife's head leading to her swift death. Critics argue that while the chain may represent power (to leave the wife), the shoes may also allude to freedom.

The devil makes an appearance in many Grimms' tales, often in “various disguises.” He takes many identities including anything from a “little man,” to an “old goat.” Another example could include a child “surrounded by affection.” Using the Grimm theory, the child then must be “pursued by an offense committed prior to his birth, generally by one of his family.” Drawing a connection between beauty ideals consistently being a major factor in female character development to Grimm, while transformations playing a significant role in the development of mostly male characters. She concludes that female characters are usually described with a focus on their physical attributes such as small, petite, wicked, beautiful, and ugly compared to the adjectives used in male transformations that overall relate strictly to age and size. Specifically, in The Juniper Tree, Jorgensen uses Miriam's depiction of sorrow as a representation of the fact that in several of Grimm's tales "suffering is written on women’s bodies in a way that naturalizes their pain and almost leads us to expect women to cry in fairy tales." Roberta Markman believes that this is the case among all of the Grimm fairy tales because the creative process' "transformative power[s]" can change social norms. As a result, literature and other creative art forms have the power to change someone's personal attitude regarding their economic and social situations. This is especially prevalent in Grimm fairy tales where normally the character's social and economic situation is poor at best. For example, in the Grimm's Cinderella, Cinderella's social situation is contingent upon her servitude to her stepmother. As an audience member, when one reads this they are reminded of how good their social situation is in comparison.

There is an apparent parallel between Grimm's The Juniper Tree and his previous works, familial drama. Critic Walter Scherf in a study of the introductions of children's literature, noted that out of 176 texts, 169 of them started with a basic family conflict. In comparison to the Stepmother in The Juniper Tree who wanted her daughter to inherit everything from the Father, killing the Son in order to guarantee this possibility.

The Juniper Tree is both the title of the collection and a piece of prose within the book. The collection of short stories was not written by the Grimm brothers, but instead collected from “various sources many of which were the original authors.” In total, there are twenty seven short stories spanning three hundred and thirty three pages. The Grimm brothers also used illustrations to add to the overall work. According to Grimm, the "illustrations [used are] delicate in detail, imaginative in concept, and truly beautiful." The millstone in the story would have had biblical connotations for the readers of the Grimms' days, especially as the verse Luke 17:2 says that anyone who causes a child to sin would be better off being thrown into the sea with a millstone about his neck; both refer to a millstone as a punishment for those who harm the young and innocent. Another biblical connotation could be the offering of the apple from the stepmother, possessed by the devil, to the son, which parallels the devil, disguised as a serpent, offering the forbidden fruit (traditionally an apple) to Eve.

In his essay "On Fairy Stories", J. R. R. Tolkien cited The Juniper Tree as an example of the evils of censorship for children; many versions in his day omitted the stew, and Tolkien thought children should not be spared it, unless they were spared the whole fairy tale.

Throughout the centuries, the Grimm Brothers fairy tales have been retold and adapted by an abundance of sources. The story was adapted:

For the book Grimm Fairy Tales. The story goes: an evil stepmother kills her stepson and makes her daughter think that she killed him. The stepmother than cooks him for dinner for the rest of the family. Her daughter finds her stepbrother's bones and puts them underneath the juniper tree. A. K
By Barbara Comyns Carr in her novel, The Juniper Tree, published by Methuen in 1985. In Comyns Carr's adaptation the stepmother is a sympathetic character and the son's death an accident. Whereas in Grimm's fairy tale it is Marlene (the daughter) who buries the bones of the son, Comyns Carr makes Marlene ignorant of the death and has the stepmother, desperate to prevent her husband from finding out and in the throes of a nervous breakdown, bury the little boy under the juniper tree. At the end of the adaptation, the stepmother does not die but is treated and begins a new life. The Juniper Tree was Barbara Comyns Carr's first novel after an 18 year hiatus in her work and was described in The Financial Times, at the time of publication, as "delicate, tough, quick moving haunting". As The Juniper Tree, an opera in two acts by Philip Glass & Robert Moran, (1985); libretto by Arthur Yorinks. For BBC Radio 3 by Peter Redgrove in 1987 and directed by Brian Miller as part of a series of plays drawn from the Grimm fairy tales, with Jennifer Piercey, Deborah Makepeace, Michael McStay and Abigail Docherty. As the 1990 Icelandic film The Juniper Tree, based on the Grimm Brothers' tale, starring Björk as a visionary young girl whose mother has been put to death as a witch. Micheline Lanctôt's 2003 film Juniper Tree (Le piège d'Issoudun) juxtaposes a straight dramatization of the fairy tale with an original dramatic story exploring some of the same themes in a realistic contemporary setting. The story "The Crabapple Tree", by Robert Coover, appearing in the January 12, 2015, issue of The New Yorker, is based on the fairy tale. English folk singer Emily Portman composed a song titled "Stick Stock" based on the story, and recorded it on her album The Glamoury. The book The Grimm Conclusion (by Adam Gidwitz) was based on this fairy tale. For a collection of fairy tales created by Lore Segal and Maurice Sendak entitled The Juniper Tree. The fantasy novel Juniper and Thorn (2022) by the American writer Ava Reid was inspired by the fairy tale.