The Golden Bird

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"The Golden Bird" is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, number 57, about the pursuit of a golden bird by a king's three sons.

A French version, collected by Paul Sébillot, is called The Golden Blackbird. Andrew Lang included that variant in The Green Fairy Book.

It is Aarne-Thompson folktale type 550, the golden bird.

1 Synopsis
2 Variants
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Every year, a king's apple tree is robbed of an apple during the night. He sets his sons to watch, and though the first two fall asleep, the youngest stays awake to see a golden bird stealing it, and his attempt to shoot it knocks a feather off.

The feather is so valuable that the king decides he must have the bird and sends his three sons, one after another, to capture a priceless golden bird. The sons each meet a talking fox, who gives them advice on their quest: to choose a bad inn over a brightly lit and merry one. The first two sons don't heed the advice and, in the pleasant inn, abandon their quest.

The third son obeys the fox about the inn, but when the fox advises him to take the golden bird in a wooden cage rather than a golden one, he disobeys, and the golden bird rouses the castle, resulting in his capture. He is sent after the golden horse as a condition of his life. The fox advises him about a wooden rather than a golden saddle, but he fails again and is sent after the princess from the golden castle. The fox advises him not to let her say farewell to her parents, but he disobeys, and the princess's father orders him to remove a hill as the price of his life.

The fox removes it, and then, as they set out, he advises the prince how to keep all the things he won. It then asks the prince to shoot it and cut off its head. When the prince refuses, it warns him against buying gallowsflesh and sitting on the edge of wells.

He finds that his brothers are to be hanged (on the gallows) and buys their liberty. They find out what he has done and, when he sits on a well's edge, push him in. They take the things and the princess and bring them to their father, but the horse, the bird, and the princess all grieve for the prince. The fox rescues the prince, and when he returns to his father's castle, the bird, the horse, and the princess all recognize him as the man who won them, and become cheerful. His brothers are put to death, and he marries the princess.

Finally, the third son cuts off the fox's head and feet at the creature's request. The fox is revealed as a man, the brother of the princess.

[edit] Variants

In The Golden Blackbird, the king's son set out because the doctors have prescribed the golden blackbird for their ill father. The two older brothers are allured into the inn without any warning, and the youngest meets the talking hare that aids him only after he passes it by. The horse is featured only as a purchase, and he did not have to perform two tasks to win the Porcelain Maiden, the princess figure. Also, the hare is not transformed at the end of the tale.