CHAPTER III
The Wish Structure of the Fairy Tale. Fairy Tales as Wish Structures
There are countless fairy tales which when submitted to analysis and taken as a whole are found to represent the most splendid wish structures. Innumerable fairy tales, as well as myths and legends, tell us about magic gifts, objects and qualities, which the human wish-phantasy has created.
In the "Bekenntnissen einer schönen Seele" (Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Book VI) this conception of the fairy tales is very beautifully presented:
"What would I not have given to possess a creature that played a very important role in one of my aunt's fairy tales. It was a little lamb that had come to a peasant maid in the woods and had been fed; but in this pretty little animal there was an enchanted prince, who finally appeared again as a beautiful young man and rewarded his benefactress by his hand. Such a lamb I would have loved to possess." The story of the "Nun of the Temple of Armida" gives us an opportunity to enter upon a group of fairy tales of which the story of "The Little Tear Jug" serves as a good example.[1]
Three days and nights a mother watched, cried and prayed at the sick bed of her only beloved child without whom she could not live. The child died. The mother was seized with a nameless pain, she did not eat or drink and wept three long days and nights without ceasing and cried out after the child. Then the door softly opened and before her stood her dead child who (in the present wording of the tale) had become a holy angel and smiled in glory. He carried in his hands a little jug that was almost running over. He said: "O dear little mother, weep no more for me! See! in this jug are your tears which you have shed for me. One more and the little jug will overflow and then I will no longer have any rest in the grave or any blessedness in heaven. Then
- ↑ Ludwig Bechstein's "Märchenbuch," II. Illustrierte Ausgabe, Leipzig, G. Wigand, 1857.
