A Fairytale of the Brothers Grimm
A peasant has seven sons and no daughter. Finally a daughter is born, but is sickly. The father sends his sons to fetch water for her, in the German version to be baptized, in the Greek version to take water from a healing spring. In their haste, they drop the jug in the well. When they do not return, their father thinks that they have gone off to play and curses them and so they turn into ravens.
When the sister is grown, she sets out in search of her brothers. She attempts to get help first from the sun, which is too hot, then the moon, which craves human flesh, and then the morning star. The star helps her by giving her a chicken bone (in the German) or a bat's foot (in the Greek) and tells her she will need it to save her brothers. She finds them on the Glass Mountain. In the Greek version, she opens it with the bat's foot, in the German, she has lost the bone, and chops off a finger to use as a key, (or she opens it with chicken bone). She goes into the mountain, where a dwarf tells her that her brothers will return. She takes some of their food and drink and leaves in the last cup a ring from home.
When her brothers return, she hides. They turn back into human form and ask who has been at their food. The youngest brother finds the ring, and hopes it is their sister, in which case they are saved. She emerges, and they return home.
Read by:
© Poornima Weerasingha
Poornima Weerasinghe is an Educationalist by profession. She enjoys her life as a storyteller, author, poet, and a foodie. Poornima is a BSc graduate in Biology (University of Delhi), Masters Graduate in Conservation and Heritage Management (DIHRM, India) and currently conduct her PhD research in Storytelling in Education with LUC Malaysia. She is trained in cultural science in many countries including at Smithsonian Institution, USA on a State Department Scholarship.
Currently she is a full-timer in education management with a premium tertiary education brand in Sri Lanka. Poornima is a member of Pick-A-Book reading club. She performs not only as a storyteller, but also as a book presenter. Conducting storytelling sessions for the children with Sri Lankan origin but living abroad, is a passionate line she is active on.
Telling a story is shedding Sunlight.
Please register at 0117 201 299
Back
