ASHIEPATTLE: OR HANS SEEKS HIS LUCK 67 



the bride herself will not be above washing clothes or 

 tending cattle, even if later ages, with other ideas of royal 

 dignity, have added kingly robes and state chariots. 

 What Homer has done for the petty kings of Greece, 

 who in truth had neatherds for friends and the pig-sties 

 against their front doors, that mediaeval tradition has 

 done for the Smaakonge of the Mdrchen. It has given 

 to them much of the royal trappings of a far more 

 developed civilisation, and decked them in the barbaric 

 splendour of oriental monarchs. 1 A kingdom of at most 

 a few square miles, a wife who is not immeasurably 

 raised above the spinning and cattle - tending occupa- 

 tions of her handmaidens, these are what Hans sets out 

 to win. 



The mediaeval peasant in preserving the Mdrchen 

 for us has not soiled the royal dignity by associating it 

 with millers' lads and goose-girls, but, on the contrary, 

 he has perverted the primitive simplicity of king and 

 queen by adding to tradition some of his experience of 

 the glories of Holy Roman emperors, dukes, and princes. 

 In those tales wherein we find the splendour of the 

 mediaeval courts, we may be fairly certain that the 

 descent will be patriarchal, and that the bridal couple 

 will go to church. 2 But the primitive association of 



1 Even in this respect it is well to bear in mind the weight of silver and 

 silver-gilt ornaments that the wealthy peasants of both sexes of such a district 

 as, say, the Upper Saetersdal, will still carry on their persons, even into the 

 harvest-field. 



2 Take the tale Der treue Johannes, with its account of ships and merchan- 

 dise, of gold and silver and wrought metals, where we find the son inherits from 

 the father and goes to church with his bride. In the later forms of Aschen- 

 puttel to be discussed more at length below we find much royal grandeur, the 

 king's son inherits and the bride goes to his home and to church. In Das 

 Madchen ohne Hdnde, the descent is again patriarchal ; the king takes the bride 



