"The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers”: From Basile to the Brothers Grimm

By Danielle Sondgeroth

Reading in the garden. https://unsplash.com/photos/ziWMqRTdGXc, via Unsplash, photo by Liana Mikah.

The European fairy tale tradition began with oral folktales from different regions throughout the continent. Writers like Giambattista Basile (1566 – 1632) of Naples and the German brothers Jacob (1785 – 1863) and Wilhelm (1786 – 1859) Grimm were some of the first to compile stories from Western Europe into anthologies, spreading these folk and fairy tales to a wider audience and bolstering widespread interest in them over the next several centuries. Basile and the Grimms wrote tales corresponding to the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folk tale “The Brothers Who Were Turned into Birds” indexed with the number 451. These tales appeared throughout Europe and even in other parts of the world, although there is not much information surrounding their origin. Basile’s tale, The Seven Doves, and the Grimms’ story, The Seven Ravens, are both prime examples of this tale type, which has an almost formulaic structure allowing the authors to create unique versions of the same story with strikingly different imagery and symbolism. The Grimms and Basile sought to appeal to different audiences, thus influencing their emphasis of specific elements of their tales — the Grimms aimed to attract a German-Christian audience through the inclusion of morals in their stories, while Basile’s stories, compiled from a Neapolitan oral tradition, were more vulgar and highly exaggerated for an everyday audience, without adhering to implicit religious guidelines. Ultimately, the differences in their audiences informed the Grimms’ and Basile’s diction and plot choices, creating two distinct stories within the ATU 451 fairy tale type.

Basile and the Brothers Grimm have several tale types in common, one of which is ATU 451. ATU 451 is known by a number of different names and is described in a slew of ways, but the stories all adhere to a certain formula and set of themes. To begin, the brothers in the story wish for a younger sister. Once she is born, they disappear, either turned into birds by the scorn from a parent, (typically a father or stepmother), or they run away from home only to be turned into birds later, but always as a result of the sister’s actions. These actions are often related to nature, for example picking the wrong type of flowers or herbs. Subsequently, the sister goes in search of her brothers and encounters a celestial body or supernatural figure, like the sun or Father Time. A sacrifice is always involved in the brothers’ rescue on the part of the sister — she must give up something in exchange for her brothers to become human again. In several versions of the story, the sister must stay silent for a certain period of time for the curse to be lifted.

Giambattista Basile was a poet and writer who compiled fairy tales from the Italian oral tradition into an anthology of 50 stories, written in the Neapolitan dialect. The anthology, Lo Cunto de li Cunti, Pentamerone, or The Tale of Tales, was originally written under the pseudonym “Gian Alesio Abbatutis,” and was published posthumously in 1634 with a second edition released in 1936. It is widely known for being the first collection of European fairy tales. The Tale of Tales is structured as a main narrative interspersed with stories from the Neapolitan oral tradition set over the course of five separate days, mirroring Giovanni Boccaccio’s collection of tales, Decameron. . The stories told throughout The Tale of Tales were told completely in the Neapolitan dialect and were left untranslated from standard Italian to maintain their original integrity. Since the Neapolitan dialect is quite different from standard Italian, translating the stories would have left some words or phrases Some scholars argue that Basile’s edits to the tales only made their folk origins clearer. Benedetto Croce asserts, “Basile managed, by a kind of artistic coherence, to make the Neapolitan dialect even more Neapolitan than it really is; he excluded many forms in common with Italian and gives strange inflections to purely Italian words.” This exaggerated version of the Neapolitan dialect was actually meant to be performed during social gatherings. Along with his aggressive use of dialect, Basile is also well-known for both his strange metaphors and his vulgar imagery and vocabulary, which Croce refers to as “burlesque or uncouth.” Despite, or because of this, Basile was heralded across Europe as a great storyteller. 

Castle Near Trees during Day, https://www.pexels.com/photo/castle-near-trees-during-day-3526085/, via Pexels, photo by Mark Neal

As centuries passed, Basile’s work was noticed throughout the continent, largely due to his influence on the Grimms. The brothers were inspired by The Tale of Tales and began to collect fairy tales of their own. In the Grimms’ fairy tale anthology, Kinder-und Hausmärchen, or, Children’s and Household Tales, the brothers refer to Basile’s anthology fondly. “’This collection,’ writes Grimm, ‘was for a long time the best and richest that had been found by any nation. Not only were the traditions at that time more complete in themselves, but the author had a special talent for collecting them, and besides that an intimate knowledge of the dialect’.” The Grimms sought to almost emulate Basile’s writing, claims Maggi, stating, 

“The Grimms insisted on the natural and spontaneous character of their Children’s and Household Tales, as is their book had composed itself without their authorial intervention. It is thus evident that The Tale of Tales and Children’s and Household Tales share some important traits, despite their significant cultural differences. Both books lie at the intersection between oral transmission and literary manipulation.”

The Grimms placed less importance on maintaining the integrity of their tales, opting instead to edit the stories to reflect Christian, and more specifically German family values. some of the stories were heavily altered between editions. The Seven Ravens was initially published as The Three Ravens in the first edition of Children’s and Household Tales in 1812, but was later retitled and almost completely rewritten for the second edition in 1819. Along with their significant edits between first and second editions, the Grimms also published “German adaptations” of all Basile’s stories from Tale of Tales in 1822. These adaptations were heavily doctored by the brothers to appeal to a German audience. Their edits removed much of the vulgar and sexual imagery used in Basile’s stories, and changed some of Basile’s storylines to reflect morals and lessons, since according to Maggi, “Basile’s tales often depict a bleak and desperate reality devoid of all moral concern.” Ironically, the Grimms claimed in the preface to the 1812 edition of Children’s and Household Tales that “no details have been added or embellished or changed.” Ultimately, the Grimms’ revisions of Basile’s work aimed to express that Basile’s stories mirrored their own and that fairy tales had a universal artistic style, no matter the author. However, despite Basile’s deep influence on the Grimms, the brothers went about collecting stories not from a long-held oral tradition of the German peasantry, but from middle and upper-class families including the Hassenpflugs , a middle-class family with French origins who supplied The Seven Ravens. According to Zipes, “Not one of the tales emanated directly from the peasantry.” Despite this, the Grimms aimed to compile stories that would bolster German nationalism and pride during the reign of Napoleon. Neumann claims, “They also felt that by collecting and publishing surviving forms of ‘Old Germanic’ literature and folk poetry they were fostering national self-reflection.” 

The Wild Swans (The Twelve Brothers Turned Into Swans), 1928 Arthur Joseph Gaskin. https://unsplash.com/photos/vK8JWr6j15c, via Unsplash. By permission of the Birmingham Museums Trust.

Basile’s The Seven Doves provides us with a fascinating, albeit confusing version of the ATU 451 tale type. Translations of the tale differ dramatically, evidenced by one of the first lines. Ashliman’s translation reads, “And when they had changed their first teeth, they said to Jannetella their mother…” while Zipes’ translation says, “As soon as the sons had grown and lost their first set of ears, they said to their mother Jannetella…”. Zipes argues that reference Basile makes to ears is not an error in translation, but an ironic reference, “implying that children lose ears the way they lose teeth.” It is unclear which translation is more accurate, although Zipes’ makes a valid point. By using ears instead of teeth, Basile could be implying that children begin to disobey their parents as they get older and stop listening to them, as if they had lost their ears. Following this, and throughout the tale, Basile uses figurative language to describe outdoor scenes and natural wonders. When the seven brothers run away to the forest for instance, Basile writes, “They set out on their way and continued traveling for three years until they arrived at a forest, where the trees danced the Imperticata with sticks and leaves to the sound of a river which played the counterpoint on the stones.” The imperticata is a traditional dance performed during Carnival in southern Italy using “sticks and poles garlanded with flowers.” Later in the story, the sister Cianna becomes the cause of her brothers’ curse by picking rosemary from an ogre’s grave to help a wounded man. Once the herb was picked, the brothers promptly turned into doves, sending Cianna on a mission to reverse the curse. In line with the formula for ATU 451 tales, the sister becomes the cause of her brothers’ transformation, and as a result must go on a quest to save them. Here, Cianna goes to find Mother Time to find out how to save her brothers, and along the way encounters a whale, a mouse, an ant, and a tree, all of which ask her for favors. It seems that each of these creatures believe Cianna to be an easy target, seeking to take advantage of her as she seeks Mother Time. They may have seen an innocent young woman and simply assumed that she’d be willing to help, which in fact, she was. For the extra effort Cianna puts in to grant those favors however, the creatures repay her in full by helping her and her brothers escape from robbers and return to their homeland. Here, Basile makes the moral of the story quite clear: helping others will reap a reward. Cianna went out of her way to help the creatures she met, and in turn they repaid the favor. Basile even states at the very end of the story, “Good things happen to those who forget the good they’ve done.” 

Blackbird, https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-bird-2024898/ , via Pexels, photo by Zack Jarosz.

It is not clear whether the Grimms’ The Seven Ravens is a revision of The Seven Doves, especially since their story differs drastically despite similarities in plot formula and theme. This version of ATU 451 holds different symbolism, opting for less descriptive language to tell the story. Unlike in Basile’s tale, the brothers in The Seven Ravens are transformed into birds as a result of their father scorning them by no explicit fault of the sister, though the transformation ultimately seems to be ‘the sister’s fault’ since it was her baptism that caused the brothers to leave their home in the first place. Christian themes are prevalent throughout the Grimms’ tale, with baptism being the most obvious. The number of brothers, seven, contains Biblical significance — in the book of Genesis, God is said to have created the world in seven days, with the seventh used as a day of rest. Thus, the number seven signifies completeness. In the eyes of a German-Christian audience, it was only natural that a girl would be born after seven brothers, since it seems that the brothers were “complete.” The Seven Ravens was originally published as The Three Ravens, which may have been a reference to the trinity. Along with the significance of numbers in the tale, Bettelheim argues that there are explicit Christian themes throughout it, stating that The Seven Ravens may be an allegory for the birth of Christianity in the face of paganism: 

“It is possible to view the seven brothers as representing that which had to disappear for Christianity to come into being If so, they represent the pre-Christian, pagan world in which the seven planets stood for the sky gods of antiquity. The newborn girl is then the new religion, which can succeed only if the old creed does not interfere with its development.”

To further his claim, Bettelheim points out that the brothers are housed on a glass mountain, signifying some heavenly place as if the seven brothers are truly gods or other celestial beings. Perhaps one of the most evident Christian themes throughout the tale is sacrifice. The sister must complete a quest to save her brothers, forcing her to cut off her finger to save them. This could be a reference to the Christian idea of sacrifice to enter heaven or be favored by God. However, Jorgensen sees the motif of sacrifice differently, claiming that it is a “symbolic disempowerment… seen as an equivalent to castration.” Here, a different reading of the tale could be that the sister is used as a scapegoat for her brothers’ transformation just because she is a young woman. As a result, she must sacrifice something important to her in order to rescue the men in her life, who are deemed more important than the sister's well-being, evidenced by her quest full of dangerous creatures and ending in her being forced to self-mutilate. At the very end of the story, the sister doesn’t have to do much else than simply appear to her brothers for them to turn human again. While it may seem that the sister’s quest was done only to restore power to the male figures in her life, the Grimms place paramount importance on her, as the only way her brothers could have been saved was by her presence. Williams furthers this claim, stating, “’The Seven Ravens,’ like so many of the ‘Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers’ tales, does show a preference for a daughter, (the representation of Christianity in Bettelheim's interpretation) and a necessary sacrifice on her part.” In this way, the sister’s simple presence at the end of the story is evidence that she is a symbol for the birth and growth of Christianity. Her appearance to her brothers, and their subsequent return to human forms, symbolizes the fall of pagan religions once Christianity appeared on the scene, even if the analogy isn’t completely historically accurate. This clearly matches the Grimms’ intentions for their stories, as they wanted their fairy tales to appeal to a 19th century German audience with more conservative and religious sensibilities. 

As a result, Basile and the Grimms have starkly different interpretations of ATU 451 and the formulaic themes within it. Basile opted for a more authentic approach, transcribing the tale into the Neapolitan dialect from that of the average person, which led to many idioms and the use of descriptive language throughout the piece, The Grimms on the other hand tried to bolster German nationalism through their version, turning The Seven Ravens into a religious allegory for the birth and development of Christianity. Perhaps the most different part of the story comes with the cause of the brothers’ transformation. Basile writes that it is directly Cianna’s fault, citing her picking rosemary that she was not meant to touch as the root cause, while the Grimms placed the blame on the father who cursed his sons after failing to complete a task. While explicit blame is placed on the father in the case of The Seven Ravens, it is still implicitly the sister’s fault simply because of her birth and immediate frailty due to illness. Basile’s blame of Cianna may be indicative of the views of women in society in 17th century southern Italy. As a result, when Cianna tried to save a man by healing him with herbs, she caused her brothers to be usurped and transformed into doves, emasculating them by becoming a seemingly dainty and peaceful species. Conversely, the Grimms portray the sister as a strong figure who is willing to go on a grand adventure to protect those she loves, emulating a more masculine sense of strength while maintaining a feminine sense of familial responsibility.

Overall, Basile and the Grimms managed to create versions of ATU 451 that were entirely autonomous and unique, showing that even with a seemingly specific theme and plot formula, they were able to create something new. Each tale has many readings and interpretations associated with it, making it difficult to determine just one particular meaning. However, the themes of a feminine savior and sacrifice are present in both The Seven Doves and The Seven Ravens. It is possible that the Grimms were inspired by Basile’s story to write and edit their own, based on their admiration for the famed Italian folklorist, but the similarities between the stories seem to begin and end with the tale type. Basile’s version of the tale may be more authentic to Italian oral tradition due to his method of transcribing stories directly in the Neapolitan dialect, but the Grimms’ version gives the reader a sense of the morality and views of a more contemporary German audience. Both tales are full of rich symbolism, especially the Grimms’, but both strived to tell the story of a young girl whose only wish is to save her brothers from a treacherous curse.

Endnotes

1 Ashliman calls it “The Brothers Who Were Turned into Birds,” while Zipes refers to it as “Faithful Sisters” in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition. The tales in this tale type may seem to be extremely varied on the surface, especially seeing as authors tended to write multiple renditions. The Grimms wrote three separate versions of tale type 451: The Seven Ravens, The Six Swans, and The Twelve Brothers. Over the past century however, Jorgensen notes that scholars have begun to look at the tale type through a feminist lens,  opting to call it, “The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers.” 

2 Armando Maggi, “Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales in the Hands of the Brothers Grimm.,” in New Approaches to Teaching Folk and Fairy Tales, ed. Christa C Jones and Claudia Schwabe (Utah State University Press, 2016), 148.

3 David Blamires, “Clemens Bretano's Fairytales,” in Telling Tales: The Impact of Germany on English Children’s Books 1780-1918 (London: Open Book Publishers, 2009), 265.

4 Benedetto Croce, “The Fantastic Accomplishment of Giambattista Basile and His Tale of Tales.,” in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ed. Jack Zipes (New York, NY: WW Norton & Company).

5 Armando Maggi, “Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales in the Hands of the Brothers Grimm.,” in New Approaches to Teaching Folk and Fairy Tales, ed. Christa C Jones and Claudia Schwabe (Utah State University Press, 2016), 149.

6 Benedetto Croce, “The Fantastic Accomplishment of Giambattista Basile and His Tale of Tales.,” in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ed. Jack Zipes (New York, NY: WW Norton & Company, 2001), 891.

7 Croce, “The Fantastic Accomplishment,” 898.

8 Armando Maggi, “Giambattista Basile’s ‘The Tale of Tales in the Hands of the Brothers Grimm,’” in New Approaches to Teaching Folk and Fairy Tales, ed. Christa C Jones and Claudia Schwabe (Utah State University Press, 2016), 149.

9 Maggi, “Giambattista Basile’s ‘The Tale’, 147.

10 Maggi, “Giambattista Basile’s ‘The Tale’, 150.

11 Siegfried Neumann, “The Brothers Grimm as Collectors and Editors of German Folktales,” in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ed. Jack Zipes (New York, NY: WW Norton & Company, 2001), 971.

12 Jack David Zipes, The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 74.

13 Zipes, The Brothers Grimm.

14 Siegfried Neumann, “The Brothers Grimm as Collectors and Editors of German Folktales,” in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ed. Jack Zipes (New York, NY: WW Norton & Company, 2001), 970.

15 Giambattista Basile, “The Seven Doves,” in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ed. Jack Zipes (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), 642.

16 Basile, “The Seven Doves.”

17 Basile, “The Seven Doves.”

18 IBasile, “The Seven Doves.”

19 Basile, “The Seven Doves, “ 649.

20 Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Vintage Books, 2010), 13.

21 Jeana Jorgensen, “Queering Kinship in ‘The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers,” in Transgressive Tales: Queering the Brothers Grimm (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012), 75.

22 Christy Williams, “The Silent Struggle: Autonomy for the Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers,” The Comparatist 30, no. 1 (2006): 87.

23 Pagan religions have been maintained even following the advent of Christianity. Unlike in the story, there was no complete “fall” of pagan religions. Rather, the “fall” in question was a relatively gradual one in which Christianity became the dominant faith, certainly not the only faith.

Author Bio

Danielle Sondgeroth is an art history and studio art educator. She is currently pursuing a Master's Degree in art history at Rutgers University with a focus on queering museum studies, curation, and heritage.