The Juniper Tree: Grimm's Goriest Fairytale
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- Join me as I discuss the German Fairytale The Juniper Tree. I will recount the story, then discuss what we know if its origins, some themes in the story and where you may find references in modern stories!
Trigger Warning: This is a particularity graphic story. I give a more detailed warning before the story begins.
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Disclaimer
It is my belief that all material used on this video (except for my own commentary) falls within the fair use principles under Section 107 of the Copyright Act, which allows the unlicensed use of copyrighted materials for fair use purposes, such as commentary, criticism, teaching, and news reporting. I do not claim to own the rights to any of the art work used throughout this video. All credit must go to the talented artists. If I have not credited an artist, it is because I could not find an owner of the art. If any artists would like me to remove their artwork, or add anything additional to credit you, please contact me and I will sort it out straight away!
Thank you!
Image Links:
www.deviantart... www.deviantart... www.deviantart... www.deviantart... www.deviantart... www.deviantart... www.deviantart... www.deviantart... www.deviantart... The Juniper Tree - Kay Nielsen www.deviantart... The Juniper Tree by Louis Rhead The Juniper Tree by Helen Stratton www.behance.ne... “The Juniper Tree,” by Andrea Dezsö www.deviantart...
My mom was reading to my brother and I one night, we were probably 8? she selected The Juniper Tree from our Grimm’s collection, and started the story… realized it was not great for us, but we were ENTHRALLED and begged her to finish. We only turned out a little weird as adults 😂
One interesting part of the story, for me, is how the stepmother just wants to "feel better" after experiencing the results of her evilness, runs outside, and gets squashed. To me, it's a message about the inexorable wheel of karma, cause and effect.
Everyone got the gift they "deserved".
Agreed, 100%!
Here kitty kitty kitty ❤
He ended her misery. Good bird.
The cat is adorable “HI HUG TIME”
When he wants attention, there's nothing that will stop him :)
@@FolksyTales i have a cat like that! At some point she just stars headbutting me. :)
How funny!
@@Noisycatstephanie. . It
The cat was like why are you talking to yourself, are you lonely? Let me cuddle you ❤
That's exactly what it was! He was very confused and wanted to be involved :)
Kitty is loved. 💖
Juniper berries have a yeast covering and are used for sourdough and fermenting. Maybe this story is some kind of recipe.
Best yet is all gin needs juniper berries to distill.
I just gotta say that kitty cat is such a precious baby ❤️
My dog just as spoiled, he loves laying all over me but especially loves to be held like a baby lol 😊
Thank you :) He wants constant attention and doesn't believe in waiting until I'm not busy...but I can never say no to him!
Cats can be persistent when they want something. lol
@@FolksyTales i can see why. Such a precious cutie.
My question is: What did they EAT?! Leftover little boy stew?
Wife stew lol
I wondered that too! Was the wife planning on everyone eating it? What was the back-up meal??
@@spicybeantofu Must be nice and tenderized after getting that boulder dropped on her lmaoooo
Well it is a fairytale so maybe when the little boy came back the stew turned into beef stew or maybe that’s one of those things your supposed to imagine for yourself to make you think 🤔!
Waste of perfectly good meat
I think your cat was like "Oh no! She's talking to herself. She's probably really lonely." 😀
I have a complete book of their stories and this is by far my favorite, it's so messed up. Thank you for covering it and telling this tale! So many people I talk to have never heard of it even if they are Grimm fans...I'm showing them this video XD Very good video and your kitty is absolutely adorable! Also, I love that J. R .R Tolkien got mad whenever the story was edited to omit the stew part, saying that "children should not be spared it, unless they were spared the whole fairy tale." And I think that was the point of many of the Grimms tales, they were lessons for everyone, though nowadays everyone says they were either just for adults or they edit the stories so much the original meanings are lost.
Thank you for watching!! I also love the Tolkien connection, I think about it every time I see a fairy tale adaptation for kids. I agree that a lot is lost when so much is sanitized from the story.
Some elements in this story could be traced back to Völundarkvida, the Oldnorse lay of Weyland. There the sorcerer/ smith Völund takes revenge after being captured and hamstringed by king Angantyr. He lures his two young sons to a treasure chest and lets them look inside as he closes the lid and decapitates them. He does not feed them to their father, but makes drinking vessels from their skulls and broaches from their teeth. Some story patterns are very, very old.
Poor little girl to take blame for killing her brother
Agreed! To me, it's almost worse for the mother to let the daughter take the blame, than the actual murder itself.
This story is like a combination of Snow White, The giving Tree, and the Phoenix.
This story reminded me of an Irish folk song, a version of which is sung by Loreena McKennitt as "The Bonny Swans".
I love Loreena Mckennitt! I hadn't heard that song, but I will be checking it out now. Thank you for sharing!
@Talitha what does Loreena McKennit have to do with The Phantom Of The Opera? Serious question. I'm a fan of both and don't know of a connection.
Love the way your cat pantomimes the evil nature of greed seeping in and taking over, helping us to visualize it for ourselves!
It's interesting that the tree that bore the fruit that created the child was a juniper. Ancient cultures, including several tribes of Native Americans, drank it in tea form as an effective means of birth control.
This story reminds me of a Brazilian fairy tale named "The Girl and the Fig Tree". While not a variant of "The Juniper Tree", it is a much lighter take on the "stepchild gets killed by wicked stepmother, buried under a tree and is later revived" trope. When the little girl fails to stop the figs from being eaten by the birds, the stepmother beats her (to death, in some versions) and buries her under the fig tree. Later, the gardener goes to cut the grass in the garden and it sings him a beautiful song explaining the stepmother's crime. The gardener and the father dig until they find the girl alive. The stepmother is simply banished.
The Bone Flute!
Once there were two brothers. One, a musician, was very poor. The other, a farmer, was very rich. But because the poor brother was so talented and kind and friendly, everyone loved him, and the rich brother, who was cold and greedy, was very jealous.
One day, the wealthy brother called the poor brother to walk with him across the bridge over a nearby river. While they walked, he was overcome with rage, and he held his poor brother down in the river, and drowned him. Then he returned home, as if nothing had ever happened.
After some years, another poor musician was passing by, and happened to find the poor brother’s leg bone. Not knowing it was a human bone, the musician carved it into a flute. Ah, but when he played it, it sang a song of how the rich brother had murdered his poor brother.
The musician, not knowing what to do, took it to the people of the village. They listened to the song, and decreed it must be true. Then they took the older brother, hanged him from the bridge until he was so dead and decayed his own bones fell away into the river. The end.
Not as happy as your story, I’m afraid.
2:03 The cat probably likes gory stories, because - cat.
That's fair :) This is the story he was most interested in so far!
Your channel is something i didn’t know I wanted or needed! I’m so exited to be a part of your RUclips journey!
Thank you for watching! I really appreciate the support :)
Right? This is my first video of her's as well. I mean based of your comment I assume it's your first?
Your cat is adorable
Thank you :)
I remember this story from a set of kids books we had as kids. My sister and I were horrified when we read it.
First heard of this story via Tolkien, who mentioned its disagreeable elements in a work I read for a class 46 years ago. He recommended, at most, withholding it from kids "until their digestions are stronger." Never encountered it until now, however, & guessed I ought to hear it.
I loved this; I've always been a fan of the Grimm fairy tales but never really had an opportunity to explore them. I'm excited to sub to you and learn this way!
My dad would read to us from Grimm's Märchen at bedtime, every night. Fortunately, I think much of the German vocabulary was beyond our comprehension. Great research, wonderful job. Thank you :-)
I’m not even a minute into the video, and I already hit that subscribe button because of the cat ❤
@Folksy Tales BRAVA!! Your reading, your finding in the first place, is amazing. The Bros Grimm were Christian, but carried forward our Pagan Ancestors' values. I once wrote a similar story, never hearing this one, "The Apple Tree," where a widow had buried her husband beneath a tree they had planted together, and then mourned herself to death beneath its boughs, never tasting its fruit. Later, another woman, a wife, feared for her husband never returning from a war, so she gained pleasure, reading and singing beneath this tree She made pies and such from its fruits, gifting them widely. Her love, being gifted, ended up ending the war, bringing her husband home to her. Blessed Be.
Sad, but awesome :) Thank you for watching!
They heard what the bird was singing. They welcomed justice.
I am here after reading 40+ books and Juniper & Thorn is still my best book of the year, its a retelling of this fairytale ❤️
I read this as a kid, it was called The Almond Tree in the book I had. The book also had the story The Robber Bridegroom, that one idea just as brutal.
I, too am a story teller and collector of stories. Thank you for posting this. Oddly enough, I had never encountered it before. I will now subscribe.
I love your kitty too!
Thank you!
Very grim strory, for lack of a batter word, but also its a nice ending.
Subscribed! I've always loved fairy tales, even the grim (or Grimm) ones. It amazes me how so many of them find similar places in countries and cultures throughout the world. It's as if the stories are older than time, and only just gathered within the last few centuries, created long, long ago, to teach us the best ways to live.
Thank you! That's also part of the reason I love these stories so much. Tracing different versions through time and different places is so much fun and those deeper messages are truly universal :)
This is similar to Hansel & Gretel & the Brother & the Sister.
"...to seep in and take over."
Captain takes over his human.
(0:25-0:32)
Come for the stories, stay for the fluffy kitty.
TY for sharing. I got a hold of a book of Grimm's Tales. It is only 100 stories. I understand that they wrote over 400 Tales
My cat lies on me the same way. Then she reaches up with a soft paw and strokes my cheek, as if she is "petting me."
This was my favorite Grimm story. In the version of the song I had heard, the sister had a different name and it went "It was my mother who murdered me / It was my father who ate of me / It was my sister Marjory / Who all my bones and pieces bound them in a handkerchief she found / And buried me under the juniper tree / Keewit Keewit Keewit I cry / Oh what a beautiful bird am I?"
this version of the tale usually goes under the name 'the almond tree' why it's an almond tree and not a juniper tree is anybody's guess, the rest of the story is exactly the same.
i wonder why this version is the more prominent one? the rhyming song is better.
the keewit part is so cute
0:30 kitty say “I’m gonna seep in and take over… watch this” 😂😂😅
We cannot look at these stories with today's thinking. Times were different and difficult for many and finding a husband or wife again in times of scarcity was hard, because everone had an agenda. However, we often think these stories were realistic, but they're often also metaphors and were told for moral guidance and sometimes to keep girls on guard, women at home and men to make sure he keeps his family safe and together. During my studies I used Grimms fairytale "little red riding hood" as my study object and made a table puppet theater. I don't like the goriness, but it's authentic and needs to be kept this way. History should be true and not altered. Thanks for telling this story. ❤
these old fairy tales are hallucinogenic fever dreams.
Why would the man ignore his wife when she acts like a lunatic 😂? That's precious.
me as the bird takes the millstone: ¿all the apprentices were needed to lift the stone, but the bird had no problem carrying it?
me as the father receives the chain: i know who's gonna get the millstone and _how_ she's gonna get it.
That poor girl. Her mother made her believe she killed her brother and made her help dispose of the body in the most messed up way possible. Dad didn't even ask why she was crying blood. Then she told her mother go outside to see the bird that then killed her mom. Finally, the brother she still thought she killed came back to life from her mother's blood and ashes.
This fairytale isn't too far from crimes that actually do happen! That's the sickening part. 😪 The Grimm Brothers knew about the lack of humanity.
My goodness! I was in the middle of your story when my phone rang! I nearly had a heart attack! (My ringtone starts with an evil laugh)
The back yard was on fire…. It burned her into nothingness
This was actually one of my favorite fairy tales as a kid. 😅
The Robber’s Bridegroom sounds like it came straight from Stephen King’s works.
Love the critique of the fluff.
Awwww kitty at the start! so floofy!
Hooman:This is a graphic story.
Cat: Momma, hold me!
I never heard this one before, thanks 😊
This was read to me as a child, I remember it well.
i love unpopular grimms tales. its interesting that (disney) made it so certain tales are houshold names while others are unknown. i mean rumplestilskin, jack and the beanstalk, and the princess and the pea are all well known even without a disney movie. and i knew of the princess and the frog and rapunzel before the movies came out, but still, so many great stories are ignored for whatever reason. ive found that the most interesting tales are ones like these. this is definetly one of my favorites now that youve shared it, along with the twelve brothers which is my all time favorite ever.
I've subscribed and I see you've just started the channel. I've mentioned the twelve brothers and I'd love to see you talk about it because no one ever does. great stuff, I love folk beliefs and your content is right up my alley
Well Disney is notorious for sanitizing the stories. The Little Mermaid? She never won her prince. But most people don't know that because of Disney. It really stinks since the original stories are so much better.
Kitty kitty kitty!!! Also, great storytelling 🥰
just discovered this channel!!! as a massive grimm brothers and overall fairy tale fan, this channel is a goldmine! keep up the awesome work ❤️
I love your cat! Such a sweet baby.
Serious question, why do fairytales have so many evil stepmothers
Growing up, I had a book that had a full collection of Brother's Grimm stories. I remember this being the strangest and most gory story of them all. Yes, I heard The Juniper Tree when I was a child. I never forgot it.
Bizarre. Thanks for sharing this.
Really appreciate the comparison to similar stories in other countries. good research and well demonstrated.
So I am not the only one whose cat thinks it's a baby
What a great video!!! You just popped up on my recommended today, so hopefully the algorithm will do its thing because i cant wait to watch your channel grow!
2:15 no apologies needed for kitty luvin
2:09 The juniper tree is an evergreen perennial! - I just checked our German version, and like I supposed , it's different. There is no talk about the juniper tree in specific turning green, instead it says "everything became green" , to indicate that winter was over..
🐈 just found your cool channel, great story & very cuddly cat 😺
Thank you! 😊
I like this story it does not scare me for if you read the robber bridegroom is kind of the same story as this 1 it's by the Grimm Brothers
This has always been one of my secret favorites! Thanks for sharing it.
Thank you for this..I don't remember ever reading it before.
I don't know if I forgot the ending to this or if I read a weird version where the son didn't return at the end. But the son returning to his father and sister to eat was a surprise for me. Before listening to this, I remembered it ending with the death of the step-mother.
I like this iteration much better.
There is a version where the brother doesn't come back! I can't remember which one it is, but the story ends with the punishment of the step mother. I do like this version better too, because the idea of the poor victim staying dead is awful.
@@FolksyTales PHEW NOT MISREMEMBERING! But absolutely agreed-I think the victim returning also feels more consistent with the kind of magic in the story and poetic tbh. There’s room for pure horror endings too, but for this one everything is so dark already having the brother return feels right. Also feels more like an exchange in a way that meshes with the theme of not doing something for nothing. The death of the stepmother returns the son, just as the original mother’s death was the price bringing him into the world. Lots of life for life, blood for blood stuff.
I've never heard of this story thank you for telling it.
oh hey good video! i love grimm tales. thanks for telling this one!
I devoured (no pun intended) fairy tales as a kid. But, I don't recall this story.
Thank you for retelling it !
Loved the video and the story, thank you for putting this together! Your cat is so very sweet and a lovely animal!
I love the chart of similarities! Also your cat.
Little Johnny from Ireland also seems to be connected to this story
Well done.
Love the kitty!
Beautiful cat
"They went inside and ate". Ate what??!? The last of the boys' old body??
The part of the story with the chest lid comes from The History of the Franks. Queen Fredegund does it to her daughter Rigunth, only with a chest of jewels Gregory of Tours wrote that they were always fighting, "mostly on account of Rignuth's habit of sleeping with all and sundry," according to the Penguin Books translation
I’m sorry. I think I blacked out for a bit. I was so mesmerized watching your **beautiful** kitty I couldn’t focus on the story! 😊🐱🤎
This is a great channel!
I'm subscribed! 🐸
Well all the fairytales have witches and giants that eat kids
Very true! There's just something especially icky about it being his father.
I knew I recognized this story. I love it. Use to read this every night before bed to myself only I was reading from English fairy tails and the story was labeled "the rose tree" in that version the step mother is jealous of her step daughter. Plays out something similar to Cinderella to start. The ryme in that story from the little song bird it "mother nigh killed me, father nigh ate me, he whom I truly love sits below I sing above, stick stock stone dead.
I lost the book sadly due to infestation and replaced it with a story labeled Brier rose which is a telling much closer to this version. I suggest looking into other tellings because I love noticing the little differences.
This was wonderful. So glad I stumbled on your channels.
This is not a parable about greed it is the creation myth!
D’aaaaaw the cat wants to hear the story
reminds me a little of the cannibal scene inJason and the ARgonauts and Medea myth.
Weird that stories written for children always made sure they knew evil existed
00:14 Thumbs up for the cat already😊👍‼️
"Child abuse, murder, cannibalism" oh! She must mean : "Snow White". (Well, at least the last two were only intended)
This child is clearly a powerful sorcerer
I heard about this from a movie called ' The Moth Diaries '
NO NO. "They went inside, AND ATE" what were they eating?!
IT WAS THE WIFE!!!
You gained a subscriber. ❤
Glad I stopped by to watch this - super fun! I read The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen stories over and over when I was a kid, and loved them all, even though many were of the "bad kids get horrible fates" variety. Plus, adorable cat! Subscribed! And if you feel like doing one about the girl who was so horrible that once, crossing a swamp she fell down into basically purgatory where she was turned into a statue and all the flies she'd pulled the wings off of crawled on her face ... that stuck with me. That and the Dancing Shoes. But I don't know what the one about the mean girl is called or who wrote it. Anyone? Anyone? Ms. Folksy?
The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf was written by Hans Christian Anderson in 1859.
You told this so well. Thank you.
Thank you so much for watching!
The wife is horribly killed, and the dad, the daughter and the son are very happy. Yikes.
Is your fluffer named Evil Nature of Greed? I mean, come on, it was like almost on que! 👑 Take Over ✨️