Syncretism or Superimposition: An Analysis of the Devil in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm Tiffany Stachnik Honors 498: Directed Study, Grimm’s Fairy Tales April 8, 2018 1 Abstract Since their first full publication in 1815, the folk and fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm have provided a means of studying the rich oral traditions of Germany. The Grimm brothers indicated time and time again in their personal notes that the oral traditions found in their folk and fairy tales included symbols, characters, and themes belonging to pre-Christian Germanic culture, as well as to the firmly Christian German states from which they collected their folk and fairy tales. The blending of pre-Christian Germanic culture with Christian, German traditions is particularly salient in the figure of the devil, despite the fact that the devil is arguably one of the most popular Christian figures to date. Through an exploration of the phylogenetic analyses of the Grimm’s tales featuring the devil, connections between the devil in the Grimm’s tales and other German or Germanic tales, and Christian and Germanic symbolism, this study demonstrates that the devil in the Grimm’s tales is an embodiment of syncretism between Christian and pre-Christian traditions. This syncretic devil is not only consistent with the history of religious transformation in Germany, which involved the slow blending of elements of Germanic paganism and Christianity, but also points to a greater theme of syncretism between the cultural traditions of Germany and other nations worldwide. 2 Table of Contents Introduction 3 Definitions of Key Terms 4 Part One: Phylogenetically Dated Tales 5 Volume 1, Number 29: “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” 5 Volume 1, Number 81: “The Blacksmith and the Devil” 8 Volume 2, Number 14: “The Devil’s Sooty Brother” 10 Volume 2, Number 15: “The Devil in the Green Coat” 12 Part Two: Tales without Phylogenetic Dates 14 Volume 1, Number 31: “Maiden without Hands” 14 Volume 2, Number 34: “The Three Journeymen” 17 Volume 2, Number 39: “The Devil and his Grandmother” 20 Volume 2, Number 62: “The Animals of the Lord and the Devil” 23 Discussion: The Syncretic Devil 25 Bibliography 30 3 Introduction After many years of traveling around German-speaking states in Europe and compiling folktales from the oral traditions of various German families and the oral traditions recorded by scholars, the well-known philologists and students of literature, Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, published the first complete edition of their Children’s and Household Tales in 1815 CE (Zipes 2002). The Brothers Grimm hoped primarily to preserve the culture and language of the German states through their folktales, and published seven increasingly popular editions of the Children’s and Household Tales during their lifetime (Zipes 2002). Unfortunately, the first edition, containing the original 156 tales collected by the Brothers Grimm in two volumes, fell to the wayside, and was never published in English until folklorist Jack Zipes’ 2014 translation, titled The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (Grimm and Grimm 2014). These 156 tales are less verbose and sophisticated than those tales featured in subsequent editions of the Children’s and Household Tales, but for this reason have an arguably greater degree of folkloristic integrity—namely, they likely are less edited from their original versions that stem from old German oral and written traditions (Grimm and Grimm 2014). When reading the original, unrefined 156 tales, any Germanist will notice a great deal of Germanic symbols, characters, and themes intertwined with those belonging to German culture. That is, the pre-Christian, pagan culture of the Germanic tribes blends with the Christian, German culture of their descendants to create a product that is a combination of the two cultures: in other words, a syncretic product. The Brothers Grimm themselves noticed this trend, and made note of it time and time again in their extended studies of German folklore (Thompson 1977). 4 What is most curious about this syncretic trend in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm is that it is particularly salient in the tales featuring the devil, a character normally regarded in Europe as Christian. This raises the question of whether the devil in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm can, in fact, be regarded as a Christian figure. Through an exploration of the eight tales featuring the devil in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, focusing on the phylogenetic analyses available for four of the tales, connections between the devil in the Grimm’s tales and other German or Germanic tales, and Christian and Germanic symbolism, this paper aims to explore the origin and characterization of the devil in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, hypothesizing that the devil in the Grimm’s tales is an embodiment of syncretism between Christian and pre-Christian traditions. Definitions of Key Terms This investigation spells the word “devil” with the lowercase ‘d’ for two reasons. First, whether the devil in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm is the Christian devil is the principal question this study aims to explore. Thus, spelling the word “devil” with an uppercase ‘d’ would be inappropriate, as spelling “devil” with an uppercase ‘d’ refers almost exclusively to the Christian devil. Secondly, the English translation of The Original Folk and Fairy Tales used in this paper always spells the word “devil” with the lowercase ‘d’; for the sake of consistency with the translation, it is imperative that this paper also spells the word “devil” with the lowercase ‘d’. In order to investigate the origin and characterization of the devil in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, this paper relies heavily on both phylogenetic analysis and the Aarne-Thompson Uther Index. Simply defined, phylogenetic analysis is a method of 5 analyzing the relationships between linguistic, spatial, and genetic patterns using a combination of evolutionary science and mathematics (da Silva and Tehrani 2016). Phylogenetic analysis is used most extensively in evolutionary biology, but recently has also been used to discover dates of origin for various folk tales by calculating the probability that linguistic patterns found in folktales exist in certain known, dated language families (da Silva and Tehrani 2016).1 The phylogenetic analysis of folktales relies heavily on the Aarne-Thompson Uther Index for organizing the tales being analyzed. The Aarne-Thompson Uther Index is a numbered catalogue of over two thousand types of folktales, meticulously organized by common theme and applied internationally and cross-culturally (da Silva and Tehrani 2016). For example, a tale in which a boy steals treasure from an ogre or giant, no matter where it originates geographically, would be categorized as Aarne-Thompson type 328, “Boy Steals Ogre’s Treasure” (Thompson 1977). Part One: Phylogenetically Dated Tales Volume 1, Number 29: “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” provides perhaps the most thought-provoking evidence that the Grimm’s devil originates in part in pre-Christian traditions. In this tale, a lowly woodcutter must embark on a journey to hell to collect three golden hairs from the head of the devil to achieve his goal of winning the hand of the princess whom he loves. On his way to the devil, the woodcutter encounters three towns with seemingly unsolvable problems, and promises to remedy each of them after returning from his journey. Upon arriving at the devil’s dark, filthy home, the woodcutter meets the devil’s wife, who takes pity on the woodcutter because he is so young and decides to help him gain the three hairs and solve the three problems from his 1 For a more detailed description of phylogenetic analysis as it is related to folktales, see da Silva and Tehrani’s 2016 study, Comparative Phylogenetic Analyses Uncover the Ancient Roots of Indo-European Folktales. 6 journey. She waits for the devil to return to hell, ensures he falls asleep despite his protests that he smells the flesh of men, and pulls out the three hairs herself, risking personal injury. The devil’s wife also manages to glean the solutions to the three problems from the devil before sending the woodcutter on his merry way. Of course, everything ends happily, with the woodcutter handsomely rewarded for finding the solutions to the towns’ problems and winning the hand of the princess for successfully collecting the three golden hairs. Similarities between “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” and pre-Christian Germanic lore are immediately evident, which the Grimm brothers themselves admitted to. In their notes to the second edition of Children’s and Household Tales, the Grimm brothers wrote that elements of “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” were similar to both “Jack and the Beanstalk” and the tales of Thorkill at Utgard in Saxo Grammaticus’ The History of the Danes (Grimm and Grimm 1884b). The kindness of the devil’s wife towards the woodcutter is similar to the kindness Jack experiences from the giant’s wife in “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and both the giant in “Jack and the Beanstalk” and the devil in “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” complain of the smell of man-flesh in their homes as their wives attempt to calm them down (Anonymous 1807). Furthermore, in “Book Eight” of Saxo Grammaticus’ The History of the Danes, which recounts tales from Norse mythology, the hero Thorkill encounters Utgard-Loki, a fearsome giant, on his journey within the realm Utgard, which Saxo Grammaticus describes as a shadowy place filled with a variety of monstrous beings.