Robber Bridegroom and Rapunzel

Folklore

One great thing about folklore is how it weaves fantasy into the stories. Cinderella and Rapunzel both are stories that feature some fantastic elements but that end with happy endings. There is some conflict in each, and there is also a prince involved in each. The idea of a prince rescuing a maiden is a popular one in folklore. The prince is a hero figure, while the maiden is the figure that the reader sympathizes with. It is the way in which the maiden and the prince interact to overcome some obstacle that usually makes the story interesting. However, in Cinderella and Rapunzel, there is not much that the characters can really do for themselves. They are supported by some fantastic power outside themselves. This fantasy element contrasts sharply with the realism of a story like “The Robber Bridegroom.” Here is a horrific story that is full of murder and deception. The violence is not hinted at but is actually described in detail, including the cutting up into pieces of a young girl who is abducted by a gang of robbers. The story seems to be about evil doings being punished. Yet it, too, can be contrasted with a story like “Cat and Mouse in Partnership,” wherein the cat eats the mouse and is not punished for its lies and selfishness; instead the reader is warned to beware the way of the world, which the cat represents. So in all these folklore tales there are many different elements—fantasy elements, realism, and warnings. Taken together they indicate something grand about life, which is that the powers of good and evil are all around and one must not stop watching or hoping or praying.

To explain how these themes of good and evil occur in the folklore tales described above, it is helpful to take a look at the one by one to see what is in each one. First, there is Rapunzel, who is locked away in a tower because of a deal made between her father and an enchantress. The father had snuck into the enchantress’s garden to get some rampion for his wife who was eaten up with greed for it. Instead of convincing his wife to give up this desire for rampion, the father gave into it—but in the end he instead gave up his daughter to the enchantress because he was afraid the enchantress might kill him otherwise. So the lesson here is that greed gets one into trouble. But of course there is much more to this story. It flashes forward and the enchantress takes the daughter and she grows into a beautiful woman with long hair. A prince discovers Rapunzel in her tower, attracted by her singing. He climbs in and asks her to marry him. Rapunzel agrees but then tells the enchantress that the prince has been coming to see her. The enchantress is jealous and banishes Rapunzel to the desert where the princess gives birth to twins. The prince meanwhile is blinded by thorns in an attempt to get away from the enchantress. However, there is a happy ending because after wandering around blind for years, he hears the singing of Rapunzel once more. She recognizes him and weeps tears of happiness, and the tears open the eyes of the blinded prince. Now that he can see, he leads his long lost family back home to his father’s kingdom where they live happily ever after.

The story of Rapunzel is full of pain and suffering. It is also full of desire. There is bad desire that gets the father into trouble in the first place because his wife is intemperate and will not be satisfied until she has the salad from the enchantress’s garden. But there is good desire between the prince and Rapunzel for they want a happy union and they have children. But the enchantress does not want them to be happy. She represents the evil that exists in the world. The good people have to suffer a lot before they are reunited, but in their suffering they are able to overcome the obstacles. He is purified by her tears. He can see once more. She is purified by his devotion, and is taken to a real home. There is a lot of virtue in what they do for one another. They may be said to represent the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity. The story teaches the reader that one should not despair because good can still come from suffering.

It is also interesting to note that there is a repetitious style in some of these stories. For instance, in Rapunzel there is the refrain, 'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair to me.' (23). This same style of repetition is seen in Cinderella, Cat and Mouse in Partnership, and The Robber Bridegroom. In Cinderella it is seen in the way the girl goes to the tree with her problems. In Cat and Mouse in Partnership it is seen in the way the Cat tells a variation on the same story about going to a baptism in order to hide that he has been sneaking out of the house to eat the cream. In The Robber Bridegroom, it is the bird warning the girl that she is in a murderer’s house, and then the girl later repeats the story at the wedding. Repetition is used in folklore to help create a sense of rhythm and music in the stories, which were probably read aloud for entertainment for people and perhaps acted out. The repetition of lines and themes is what helps to create instant familiarity.

This familiarity is important because a lot of what happens in stories is so strange that the audience needs something familiar to latch onto. So the repetition helps with that. But the strangeness of the stories is also interesting because it includes this fantastic element that is taken for granted. For example, in Rapunzel, it is the enchantress that is fantastic but accepted as commonplace. No one knows an enchantress in real life but in folklore it is accepted as existing. Why is this? The reason is that the enchantress represents something diabolical that we experience in our everyday lives but have no language for. The same is true in The Robber Bridegroom. The bird warns the girl where she is, but birds usually do not talk—unless they are parrots. The fantastic element of the story comes with its intense realism, however. The robbers come and their murder of another woman is described in great detail. Reading it, one is forced to ask, “Is this a children’s story?” because it is so brutal. But in the end, the murderers are caught thanks to some help from an old woman who wants to save the young girl. Again, the lesson here is that goodness can come along to help a person escape the evil that is in the world. But it has to come from outside. In this case, it is an old woman. But it is the same thing in Cinderella where Cinderella is given help from tree where she goes to cry over her mother’s grave. The idea with these stories is that there is a special grace watching over people and if they are good they may escape the bad.

Yet there is another story that shows bad winning out and going unpunished, and the moral of the story is that one should not be naïve about the way of the world. This story is called Cat and Mouse in Partnership, and as the title suggests it is not a good idea for two things that are natural enemies to align themselves. The story is about why that should not be so. The mouse should have known better than to take up friendship with the cat, but one does not suspect a literal deception because after all this is a folktale and strange things happen in folktales all the time. Why should it seem strange that a cat and a mouse get together to be friends? But it is strange and the reader is supposed to remember that in this world there is always going to be someone who wants to take advantage of another person, so one has to be on one’s guard.

The same point is made in The Robber Bridegroom: the girl has a sense that the bridegroom is a bad man for she does not feel any good feeling toward him. She does not want to be married to him, but the father insists. The bridegroom asks her to visit, and she reluctantly does, but she is smart about it and to keep from getting lost in the woods, she drops beans and lentils along the way so she can follow them and go back home when she needs to. The bridegroom of course has been sneaky and has used ashes as a trail to find the house deep in the woods. The idea that the house is deep in the woods is the first clue that he is up to no good. But she goes and discovers that the house is a place where murder takes place. The bridegroom has deceived everyone. But it is even worse than that: he is not just a robber but a person he cuts up people and then eats their flesh. It is a house of cannibals. This is quite a shocking twist for a children’s story and it is very frightening. Plus, the finger of the murdered woman is said to end up in the bosom of the girl when it is hacked off the murdered girl’s dead hand. This finger becomes the proof of what the bridegroom has done to his victim, and the whole town later sets upon him and his friends and they are executed. But this is a story that combines realism with fantasy. Cinderella is similar in that there is great cruelty on the part of Cinderella’s family toward her, but the prince is kind and sees great beauty in her. It is fantasy and realism.