The Deep Dark WoodsA finger saves a would-be bride from death.
School of Humans.
This episode discusses sensitive topics. Please listen with care. My name is Miranda Hawkins. Welcome to the Deep Dark Woods. Today's episode is ATU nine fifty five or the Robber Bridegroom.
Once upon a time there was a miller who had a beautiful daughter. When she came of age, he wished that she was provided for and well married. He thought, if a respectable suitor comes and asks for her hand in marriage, I will give her to him. Not long afterwards, a suitor came who appeared to be very rich. And because the girl, however, did not like him as much as a bride should like her bride, she did not trust him, and whenever she saw him or thought about him, she felt within her heart a sense of horror. One time he said to her, you are engaged to marry me, but you have never once paid me a visit. The girl replied, I don't know where your house is. Then the bridegroom said, my house is out in the dark woods. Looking for an excuse, she said she would not be able to find the way there. The bridegroom said, next Sunday you must come out to me. I have already invited guests. I will make a trail of ashes so that you can find your way through the woods. When Sunday came and it was time for the girl to start on her way, she became frightened, although she herself did not know exactly why. In order to mark the path, she filled both her pockets full of peas and lentils. At the entrance of the forest, there was a trail of ashes, which she followed, but at every step she threw a couple of peas on to the ground to the right and to the left. She walked almost the whole day until she came to the middle of the woods, where it was the darkest, and there stood a solitary house. She did not like it because it looked so dark and sinister. She went inside, but no one was there. It was totally quiet. Suddenly a voice called out, turn back, turn back, you, young bride. You are in a murderer's house. The girl looked up and saw that the voice came from the bird, which was hanging in a cage on the wall. It cried out again, turn back, turn back, you, young bride, You are in a murderer's house. The beautiful bride went from one room to another, walking through the whole house, but it was empty, not a human soul to be found. Finally she came to a cellar. A very old woman was sitting there, shaking her head. Could you tell me, said the girl, if my bridegroom lives here? Oh you poor child, replied the old woman, Where did you come from?
You are in a murderer's den.
You think you are a bride soon to be married, but it is death that you will be marrying. Look, they made me put a large kettle of water on the fire. When they have captured you, they will chop you to pieces without mercy, cook you and eat you, for they are cannibals. If I do not show you compassion and save you, you are doomed with this. The old woman led her behind a large barrel where she could not be seen. Be quiet as a mouse, she said, do not make a sound or move, or all will be over for you. Tonight, when the robbers are asleep, we will escape. I have long waited for an opportunity. This had scarcely happened. When the godless band came home, they were dragging with them another maiden. They were drunk and paid no attention to her screams and sobs. They gave her wine to drink, three glasses full, one glass of white, one glass of red, and one glass of yellow, which caused her heart to break. Then they ripped off her fine clothes, laid her on the table, chopped her beautiful body in pieces, and sprinkled salt on it. The poor bride behind the barrel trembled and shook, for she saw well what fate the robbers had planned for her. One of them noticed a gold ring on the murdered girl's little finger. Because it did not come off, he took an axe and chopped the finger off, but it flew into the air and over the barrel, falling right into bride's lap. The robber took a light and looked for it, but could not find it. Then another one said, did you look behind the large barrel, But the old woman cried out, come and eat. You can continue looking in the morning. That finger won't run away from you. Then the robbers said the old woman's right. They gave up their search and they sat down to eat. The old woman poured a sleeping potion into their wine, so that they soon lay down in the cellar and fell asleep snoring. When the bride heard them snoring, she came out from behind the barrel and had to step over the sleepers, for they lay all in rows on the ground. She was afraid that she might awaken one of them, but God helped her and she got through safely. The old woman went upstairs with her, opened the door, and they hurried out of the murderers down as fast as they could. The wind had blown away the trail of ashes, but the peas and lentils had sprouted and grown up and showed them the way in the moonlight. They walked all night, arriving at the mill the next morning. Then the girl told her father everything just as it had happened. When the wedding day came, the bridegroom appeared. The miller had invited all his relatives and acquaintances. As they sat at the table, each one was asked to tell something. The bride sat still and said nothing. Then the bridegroom said to the bride, come, sweetheart, don't you know anything? Tell us something like the others have done. She answered, then I will tell about a dream. I was walking alone through the woods when finally I came to a house inside there was not a single human soul. But on the wall there was a bird in a cage. It cried out, turn back, turn back, you young bride, You are in a murderer's house. Then it cried out the same thing again, Darling, it was only a dream. Then I went through all the rooms. They were all empty, and there was something so eerie in there. Finally I went down into the cellar, and there sat a very old woman, shaking her head. She answered, alas, poor child, you have gotten into a murderer's den. Your bridegroom does live here, but he intends to chop you to pieces and kill you. And then he intends to cook you and eat you. Darling, it was only a dream. After that, the old woman hid me behind a large barrel. I had scarcely hidden myself there. When the robbers came home, dragging a girl with them. They gave her three kinds of wine to drink, white, red, and yellow, which caused her heart to stop beating. Darling, it was only a dream. After that, they took off her fine clothes and chopped her beautiful body to pieces on a table, then sprinkled salt on it. Darling, it was only a dream. Then one of the robbers saw that there was still a ring on her finger. Because it was hard to get the ring off, he took an axe and chopped off the finger. The finger flew through the air behind the large barrel and fell into my lap. And here is the finger with the ring. With these words, she pulled out the finger and showed it to every one who was there. The robber, who had during this story become white as chalk, jumped up and tried to escape, but the guests held him fast and turned him over to the ports. Then he and his whole band were executed for their shameful deeds.
The Robber Bridegroom isn't as well known as the other tales we've talked about in the show. It was never picked up by Walt Disney or rewritten for a younger audience. In fact, it wasn't even popular during the Grimm's time. This story wasn't included in their eighteen twenty five collection that was the year their tales began to gain popularity, and this story hasn't been found in collections targeted at children past nineteen sixty. Although the underlying theme is about marriage, some folklorists don't view The Robber Bridegroom as a fairy tale, but rather as a horror story. The Robber Bridegroom is one of the most violent tales by the Grim Brothers, which is impressive considering all of the violence we've already encountered from Cinderella's stepsisters cutting off their feet, Rumpelstilskin splitting in half, Little Red and her grandmother getting devoured by a wolf.
And if you are.
Reading this grim story in a book, it becomes even more horrific with the illustrations.
Fairy tales come with illustrations, and we often see that moment where all the characters are together being chosen as an illustrative moment, the moment to illustrate in a story.
This is folklorist doctor Len McNeil.
And when we think about this scene in the house in the middle of the woods, our young heroine is hiding behind some boxes and there is just straight up butchery and debauchery happening in the same room as her. A woman is being murdered, she's being chopped up. Body parts are literally flying around the room. We can picture the bloody scene and the moment they go looking and the old woman comes in and says no, no, no, no, Come and eat like everyone's there together, right, and we have it all encapsulated, the violence, these bad people, the victim, the girl hiding, the tension, woman trying to distract them. Like that moment just brings all of these things together, and it's really visceral.
Clearly, the robber bridegroom is incredibly violent, with a gruesome murder and cannibalism, and doctor McNeil says there's a specific reason why the Grims did that. It was to make it extremely obvious that these men, including the future husband, are evil.
Fairy tales, by definition, are understood to be fairly simplistic structurally. These are some of the defining characteristics of these tales is that they don't have long, ornate passages that describe in detail various things. So if you want something to have an impact, you have to make it pretty stark. We need our readers or listeners to know that these bad guys are bad, like they are not oh ambiguously bad, They're not just sort of selfish and mean. These are the worst of the worst. That story has been being told for literal thousands of years about whoever it is that we want to be able to hate without nuance, and it's really interesting to see that motif crop up, so that we don't have to think, we don't have to complicate these people, we can just hate them.
Another element that increases the suspense and horror of the story is that the merchant's daughter has to march into her fate, despite the feeling of an ease she has. She has to marry this man her father found for her, and she has to go see her future husband's house. Similarly to how she couldn't escape without the old woman's help, she can't escape the will of the men in her life.
One of the tropes that we see here is how powerless women are at the hands of men. So her father encouraging her towards this marriage that she just does not feel good about, and then her husband to be encouraging her to make choices that her gut tells her do not feel good. Yeah, my house is in the middle of the woods. You should see it before we get married. Walk there alone at night through the forest. It'll be fine. All of these things are going against instinct. I think that we know historically that men making deals with other men about marriage is an incredibly common practice around the world, so a woman's father and a woman's future husband would often negotiate the terms of her marriage without her involvement at all, so that's not particularly surprising. Here we do have the fairy tale elements of come into the woods, go against your instinct, put yourself in danger, and clearly he has no good intent here at all. We get sort of that tension of a woman ostensibly behaving in a societally appropriate way, but knowing something is wrong.
The Robbert Bridegroom is a disturbing indeed, and some people even consider it a Gothic story instead of a simple fairy tale. In the time of Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe, the word German evoked feelings of darkness and ominousness, and that's when the Robber Bridegroom entered the world. But let's look at the fairy tales. The Robber Bridegroom is one of many stories that features a murderous husband, and in one tale type, he's a serial killer. As with their other stories. The brothers Grim heard the Robber Bridegroom from Marie Hasenflug, one of the sisters who was a descendant of French Huguenots.
One tale that.
Is closely related to the Robber Bridegroom is Bluebeard. It's a different tale type ATU three twelve, but it could have possibly better the inspiration for the Robber Bridegroom. The Grims wrote their own version of blue Beard and included it in their first edition, but then they decided that the tale was too French and not authentically German enough for them to include in future editions. It was very similar to the tale by Charles Perraut, which was published in sixteen ninety seven. There's a rich man who is unlucky to have a blue beard, which makes him so ugly that.
All the ladies run from him.
But one of his neighbors has two beautiful daughters, and he asks to have one of them as his bride. The two sisters sent him back and forth between the two, neither one wanting him for his ugliness. Another reason neither sister wants to marry him is they know he has been previously married several times, but no one knows what's happened to those wives.
To win their.
Affection, Bluebeard decides to host the mother daughters and some of their friends and other neighbors at one of his country homes. The time is filled with parties, hunting, fishing, dancing, mirth, and feasting.
Everything goes so well.
The youngest daughter decides a blue Beard isn't so bad after all.
And that he is quite the gentleman.
When everyone returns home, blue Beard and the youngest daughter are married. A month later, blue Beard announces he has to leave for six weeks to attend to important business. He tells her to keep herself entertained while he's gone by inviting her friends to the country house. He hands her a.
Set of keys.
One key unlocks great wardrobes where he keeps his best furniture, Another unlocks where he keeps his gold and silver plates, another to his gold, silver, and jewels, and finally the smallest key, which opens a little closet on the ground floor. He tells her she can open anything she wants except for the small closet. If she does, she should expect his just anger. She promises to do as he says. Then he gets into his coach and leaves.
Her.
Neighbors and friends didn't wait for an invite to go to the country.
House with the new wife.
They had been waiting for her husband to leave before visiting because they were still.
Frightened of his beard.
As a new wife begins unlocking everything, everyone is beside themselves with the treasures for each finery surpasses the one before it, but the new bride can't wait and heads to the little door before the rest of the party. She thinks a moment about her husband's warning, but the temptation is too strong. She opens the door. It takes a minute because all the windows are shut, but after a few moments she realizes the floors are covered in clotted blood. The room is filled with the bodies of Bluebeard's previous wives. Terrified, she drops the key. After somewhat recovering, she picks the key back up and locks the door again. The new wife notices there is blood on the key, but no matter how much she tries to wipe it off, the blood remains, for it's a magical key. Bluebeard returns from his journey that same evening. He had received letters while on the road informing him his business matters were concluded to his advantage. His new wife does all she can to convince him she's happy of his early return. The next morning, he asks for the keys, her hands tremble so much he already knows she didn't obey. He asks why the small key isn't among the rest. She replies she does not know. He then pushes her to retrieve the key.
Which she does.
When he asks why there's blood on the key, she cries, paler than death. I do not know, you do not know, replies blue Beard. I very well know you went into the closet, did you not?
Very well? Madam?
You shall go back and take your place among the ladies you saw there. The new wife begs blue Beard to spare her, but he refuses. Pirot writes, she would have melted a rock, so beautiful and sorrowful was she, But blue Beard had a heart harder.
Than any rock.
The new wife convinces blue Beard to give her time to pray before he kills her. He concedes and gives her half a quarter of an hour. The new wife calls up to her sister Anne, who is still at the country house. She asks Anne to climb to the top of the tower to see if her brothers are coming. They had made plans to arrive that day, and if Anne does see them, to give them a sign to make haste. Three times is Anne and see a cloud of dust, and three times it's not her brother's. On the fourth look, Anne sees two horsemen, but there's still a.
Great way off.
Blue Beard has no more patience and balls so loudly that his distressed wife comes down and throws herself at his feet. He uses one hand to grab her hair and hold her head back, while the other hand holds a sword poise to strike her head off. As he's about to kill her, there's such a loud knocking at the gate that Bluebeard stops. The gate opens and the two horsemen enter. Blue Beard recognizes it's his wife's two brothers, one who is a dragoon and the other a musketeer, and so he turns to flee to safe himself. But do two brothers catch him and run their swords through him, leaving his body where he dies. Since blue Beard has no heirs or mistress, all his fortune goes to his new wife. She uses part of it to marry her sister Anne to a young gentleman who has been in love with Anne for a while now. She uses another part to buy captain's commissions for her brothers, and the rest she uses to marry herself to a worthy gentleman, who in time makes her forget blue Beard. Perrot's morals are a bit heavy handed in this tale. He writes, curiosity, in spite of its appeal, often leads to deep regret, to the displeasure of many a maiden, Its enjoyment.
Is short lived.
Once satisfied, it ceases to exist, and always costs dearly. Apply logic to this grim story, and you will ascertain that it took place many years ago. No husband of our age would be so terrible as to demand the impossible for his wife, nor would he be such a jealous malcontent. For whatever the color of her husband's beard, the wife of today will let.
Him know who the master is.
On one hand, Perrot scolds women for their curiosity. On the other hand, he warns against controlling jealous husbands. Robbers with colorful beards aren't unusual, though, and appear in several other tales. Switching back to at U nine fifty five, there's a Lithuanian tale published in eighteen fifty seven titled green Beard in the City. There is a wealthy merchant with a beautiful daughter. The girl says she will only marry a man with a green beard. In the woods surrounding the city, twenty four robbers live together. The handsome captain says he wants to marry this girl, so he finds the dye to turn his beard green. After coloring his beard, the captain rides into the city and courts the merchant's daughter. She likes him so much that he spends the night. The next day, plans are made for her to visit him at his large mansion in the woods. He gives her directions, which she follows on horseback. The path becomes too narrow, so she dismounts her horse and continues on foot. Soon she comes upon a small house with two lions chained.
Near the door. When she realizes.
They're not doing anything, she goes inside.
She enters her.
Room with beds and flint locks hanging on the walls. Flintlocks are guns that use the striking of flint to fire. In the next room is a table with a bird in a cage hanging from the rafter. The little bird asks how she got in and tells her that robbers live there. The bird also warns if she tries to leave now, the lions will eat her, so she needs to hide under the bed until the robbers get drunk and pass out. Then as she leaves, she can throw a piece of cake to each.
Lion and run away.
The girl follows the bird's advice and crawls under the bed. When the robbers come home, one says it smells of human flesh, but the bird makes excuses and the robbers stop asking questions. The robbers have brought home a girl with them. First they eat dinner, then they chop the other girl into pieces, starting with her fingers. The finger with the ring flies out of the carnage and lands beside the girl hiding under the bed. She puts it in her pocket. After the robbers drink themselves to sleep, the girl comes out from under the bed, feeds the bird some sugar, then feeds the lions the cake as she flees. But no sooner had she started running than the lions begin to roar, waking up the robbers. Knowing it's the merchant's daughter, they take after her, but she's already reached her horse and is riding safely home. Green Beard cuts off his beard and devises the plan. He orders large wagons with large barrels for his men to hide in. He tells his men to stay they hidden until he gives them a sign. Green Beard goes to the merchant's house, pretending to be someone else. While the two are talking, one of the servants overhears the men whispering and the barrels and goes to tell the merchant. The merchant then forces green Beard to sit with the guard on each side while other men prepare to catch the hidden robbers. The merchant's daughter calms down and shows her father and green Beard the dead girl's finger with the ring. Green Beard, knowing he's been caught, tries to run, but the guards hold him down. He and all his men are caught. The girl then leads people to the robber's house. She keeps the little bird, the merchant keeps the lions. The rest is divided among the poor, and the house is burnt down. The robbers all die in prison, and the merchant's daughter no longer has a desire to marry a man with a green beard. One of the morals is to warn women to not be so picky about who they marry, But not all of these tales are about marriage.
One of my favorites, and.
Perhaps the Saddest Story Ran Across from this tell type is a Romanian story written by Moses Gastor published in nineteen fifteen. A poor orphan girl works as a servant for a rich man. Her dearest companions a little dog her parents had given her before they died. One day, the head of a robber band disguises himself as a servant and asks her to marry him. Feeling something sinister about the man, the girl refuses. The chieftain has his fellow robbers kidnapped the girl and her dog, but although she is trapped in his home, the girl still refuses to marry him. Fed Up, the head of the robbers sells her to an innkeeper. This innkeeper robs and kills travelers and then serves their flesh to his other customers. Terrorizes the girl by showing her the stolen valuables, the room where he murders people, and the weapons he uses for his violent crimes. Later, he brings her a little boy who he has captured. He cuts the little boy's head off before cutting the rest of him to pieces. The innkeeper then forces the girl to cook the boy's flesh and serve it to the guests. Sometime later, an old, wrinkled, ugly woman shows up. She's nothing but skin and bones, maybe wanting to fatten her up to eat, The innkeeper locks her in the room with the girl. Turns out it's the innkeeper's mother who has come to punish him for his wickedness. She tells a girl that to escape, she has to eat a piece of her dog's heart, which the girl does. Then the woman rubs ointment all over the girl's body, which transforms her into a duck. A little later, when the man opens the door, the girl flies out to safety. The innkeeper runs from room to room looking for the girl. Meanwhile, his mother mutters a magic curse that causes the end to collapse, killing the man at once. The girl turns around and sees the ruins. She's free, but since the witch never told her how to become human again, the story says, she remains a duck to this very day. While each story has commonalities, there are different levels of violence to them. But what about the brother's grim story? As it turns out, they didn't shy away from the darkness. The version of the robber bridegroom you heard at the beginning of the episode was from eighteen nineteen, but that's not the first time they published the story. The first one, published in eighteen twelve, is very different, and while most of the time the Grim Brothers sanitize their stories to be more appropriate for children, they didn't do that for the robber bridegroom in the eighteen twelve version. Instead of a merchant's daughter, there's a princess and she is set to marry a prince. The prince tells her to visit him in the castle in the woods. The princess says she was afraid of losing her way, but the prince says he would tie a ribbon to the trees to help her find her way. When she runs out of excuses, the princess agrees. The princess comes upon a large house the evening. She goes to visit the prince and an old woman sits outside. The woman says it is a good thing the princess has arrived while no one else is home, because the prince and his robber gang are planning on eating her. The old woman tells the princess to go hide behind the large barrel in the cellar. Just then, the prince and robbers arrive with another old woman. This woman is the princess's grandmother. The murder her. After the grandmother is dead, they take off her rings, but the ring on her ring finger refuses to come off, so they take a knife and hack it off. The finger flies behind the barrel into the princess's lap. The prince and robbers decide to look for it. The next morning, after everyone falls asleep, the princess sneaks out of the prince's castle and uses the ribbons to find her way home in the dark. She then tells her father everything. He immediately orders an entire regiment to surround the castle. The prince comes to visit the next day to ask the princess why she didn't come to visit like she promised. Like the eighteen nineteen version, she tells him about her bad dream, reveals a finger, and then he and his band of.
Robbers are put to death.
Unlike other stories such as Little Red, Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty, the Brother's Graham did something a bit different with this tale. They actually leaned into the elements that made the robber bridegroom more horrific. That's according to a paper written by a late German Studies professor in folklorist Linda Krause Warley. For example, Warley argued, it's awful to see your own flesh and blood be murdered, like when the bride's grandmother was killed in the earlier version of the story. But then when the young woman sees another young woman, it's worse in the sense that it's like looking into a mirror. She's seeing her own fate. Another argument would be the omens of death, like the suitor using ash to mark the path through the woods, and even another argument is that the change from princess to Miller's daughter is significant because in folk tales, Miller's were usually perceived as devious and distrustful. The Robber Bridegroom has been adapted numerous times since the brother's grum. Two of the most well known versions are a novella by e Dora Wealthy and a novel by Margaret Atwood. Eudora Welty's novella The Robber Bridegroom was also adapted into a Broadway play, which was staged for the first time in nineteen seventy five. Margaret Atwood's nineteen ninety three novel The Robber Bride turns the tail on its head. She asks the question, is a bad marriage better than not being married? Doctor McNeil says this theme has carried its way through time.
A woman has been intentionally luring three other women's husbands away from them, and the implication is that she's motivated by thinking maybe she's sparing them from bad marriages. The fact that these men could be lured away shows that their bad husbands are bad partners, and she's doing these women a favor by dispatching these men from their lives.
And so we.
Start to get fairly deep questions that really do stem from this original tail type nine fifty five. What is the value of a bad marriage in a time when women could not own property? Widows could, but women unmarried can't. So I don't know. Maybe a bad marriage where you managed to work some poisonous mushrooms into a soup, maybe that's better. I don't know. I'm not advocating that as a plan of action in any way. But the ways that we see women extracting power from these systems that disempower them are often in the background, with the help of other women, and sometimes with the help of the supernatural, which, of course was often an accusation turned against women in turn.
When I talked to doctor McNeil about this tale, another way to look at the change from princess to merchant's daughter is perhaps less significant.
Sometimes it's a merchant's daughter, which maybe changes the class nature of this, because sometimes it's a princess, and a princess who might be clever and able to save herself, still has more resources than a merchant's daughter. But a merchant's daughter still has more resources than someone living in poverty. And this seems to be a story that we tell about people above the poverty line. And that's somewhat interesting that the majority of the versions would set it in those two settings, either among royalty or among the merchant class, because it's getting at a particular type of womanhood where it's not just hey, take what you can get. You are at the mercy of everyone. There is this sense of choice, there is this sense of agency, there is this sense of negotiation. Right there's her father wants to make her a good match. He believes that this guy, whether he's a prince or a bandit or another merchant or whatever, is going to be a good match. And then suddenly we get the battle between culture and personal emotion, gut instinct, all of that stuff. So we're really hearing something about a level of society that has the luxury of making this negotiation. If this woman were slightly lower on the socioeconomic scale, the bandits would have done to her what they did to their first victim, whose finger flies off with the ring on it.
What is also different about the Robert bridegroom story from other Graham tales is that it shows women looking out for other women. We talked about a safety net and little red riding hood when the brothers Grim added the huntsmen. I think the old woman could also be viewed as that same societal safety net.
What I love about this story is that we have an equally strong theme of clever and intelligent women looking out for women. The old woman in the house who encourages the young girl to hide, helps her stay hidden. When the men go looking for the body part that flies off, she calls them back to the table and is like, but don't worry about it, you can get it later. Come eat dinners ready, And we see them believing her, and we see the way that works out. Sometimes that old woman's role is filled by a bird, which I think is also really interesting. We see a strong tie between women and birds as messengers of goodness and things like that. And the young woman succeeds her, they allow her to tell the story of her dream, dismissing whatever she might be saying as meaningless until it's too late for it to be meaningless. So we have two opposing messages about the power of women in the story, and I think that's one of the things that has made it stick around so long despite being so bizarre.
The Robber Bridegroom a horror story or a fairy tale in the end, maybe it's a little bit of both. Next time, the end is in sight as we visit the absolute darkest tale of the Brother's grim in the final The Deep Dark Woods is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It was created, written, and hosted by me Miranda Hawkins. This episode was produced by mikeyl June with senior producer Gabby Watts. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, el C Crowley, and Maya Howard. Stories were voiced by Julia Christgau. Theme song was composed by Jesse Niswanger, This episode was sound designed and mixed.
By Chris Childs.
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