ASHIEPATTLE:. OR HANS SEEKS HIS LUCK 75 



Take Die zwolf Briider, for example : here if the thir- 

 teenth child be a daughter, she will take the kingdom, if 

 a son, the brothers need not go out into the world. 1 Or 

 again, consider Die drei Sclilangenbldtter. The princess 

 conveys the kingdom under the, to us, unusual condition 

 that, if she dies first, her husband shall be buried alive 

 with her ; when she wearies of her husband, she offers 

 marriage and her father's crown to the lover who has 

 assisted her in killing her husband. The position of the 

 king is precarious ; as in Der Konig vom goldenen 

 Berge he has not only to win bride and kingdom by 

 the exercise of his strength, but to maintain them by 

 his strong arm. Most frequently he has not even any 

 claim of blood or birth to cast a halo round his person. 

 In this respect it will not be without interest to notice 

 the character of the hero in the cases in Grimm's 

 collection in which the princess and kingdom are won. 



Out of forty such cases we find the hero described 

 seven times 2 as the son of poor parents, of a poor man, 

 or of poor widow, etc., not including the cases in which 

 three brothers of the lowly hero also obtain princesses 

 as brides ; 3 in four cases the hero is a tailor, 4 in three 

 a peasant's son, 5 twice a hunter ; 6 once in each case, 



1 This appears to have been also the original theme of the Norse De tolv 

 Vildcender, and of the story of Lycaon, who, notwithstanding that he had many 

 sons, was succeeded, according to Pausanias, by the offspring of his only daughter 

 Callisto, a most surprising circumstance to the narrator. 



2 Die drei Schlangeriblatter, Der singende Knochen, Der Teufel mit den drei 

 goldenen Haaren, Der Gevatter Tod, Der Ranzen, das Hutlein, und das Hornlein, 

 Die vier kunstreichen JBriider, and Mdrchen von einem der auszog das Furchten zu 

 lernen. 3 Die vier kunstreichen Bruder. 



4 Das tapfere Schneiderlein, Die beiden Wanderer, Vom klugen Schneiderlein, 

 and Der gldserne Sarg. 



5 Hans mein Igel, Der Vogel Greif, and Der starke Hans. 



6 Dat Erdmdnneken and Der gelernte Jager. 



