The "Town Musicians of Bremen" () is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in Grimms' Fairy Tales in 1819 (KHM 27).

Origin

The Brothers Grimm first published this tale in the second edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1819, based on the account of the German storyteller Dorothea Viehmann (1755–1815).

Analysis

Tale type

The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 130, "The Animals in Night Quarters (Bremen Town Musicians)". Folklorists Stith Thompson and Barre Toelken see a deep relation between this type and type ATU 210, "Cock (Rooster), Hen, Duck, Pin, and Needle on a Journey".

Folklorist Antti Aarne proposed an Asian origin for the tale type ATU 130, "Die Tiere auf der Wanderschaft" ("Wandering Animals and Objects").

French folklorist Paul Delarue identified two forms of the tale type: a Western one, wherein the animals in exile are always domestic animals (represented by Grimm's tale), and an Eastern one, wherein the characters are "inferior animals". This second form is popular in Japan, China, Korea, Melanesia and Indonesia.

Similar stories

thumb|Illustration by [[Walter Crane]]

The story is similar to other AT-130 tales like the German/Swiss "The Robber and the Farm Animals", the Norwegian "The Sheep and the Pig Who Set Up House", the Finnish "The Animals and the Devil", the Flemish "The Choristers of St. Gudule", the Scottish "The Story of the White Pet", the English "The Bull, the Tup, the Cock, and the Steg", the Irish "Jack and His Comrades", the Spanish "Benibaire", the American "How Jack Went to Seek His Fortune" and "The Dog, the Cat, the Ass, and the Cock", and the South African "The World's Reward". and the English "How Jack went to seek his fortune". Variants also appears in American folktale collections, and in Scottish Traveller repertoires.

See also

  • Jack and His Comrades (Irish fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs)
  • Ub Iwerks' ComiColor Cartoon The Bremen Town Musicians (1935 film)
  • The Bremen Town Musicians (1969 Soviet musical cartoon)
  • The Four harmonious animals - one of the Jātaka tales in Buddhist mythology

<!-- * Bremen Town Musicians in Riga, Latvia https://www.liveriga.com/en/3123-bremen-town-musicians -->

References

Bibliography

  • Boggs, Ralph Steele. Index of Spanish folktales, classified according to Antti Aarne's "Types of the folktale." Chicago: University of Chicago. 1930. p.&nbsp;33.
  • Bolte, Johannes, Polívka, Jiri. Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- u. hausmärchen der brüder Grimm. Erster Band (NR. 1-60). Germany, Leipzig: Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. 1913. pp.&nbsp;237–259.
  • "Children's Stories in Sculpture: Bremen Town Musicians in Bremen." The Elementary School Journal 64, no. 5 (1964): pp.&nbsp;246–47. www.jstor.org/stable/999783.
  • Golden Books 1954 version
  • Illustrations of the fairy tale
  • Folktales of ATU type 130 by D. L. Ashliman

Some of the best known adaptations are:

  • Disney 1922 animated version
  • Russian animated version
  • Brazilian musical free adaptation of the tale
  • 1989 Spanish animated movie version
  • 1997 German edition, also released in English under the title "The Fearless Four"
  • The Muppet Musicians of Bremen
  • The Disney version of The Four Musicians of Bremen at The Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts
  • Skulptures of the Musicians of Bremen, limited edition (German)