Fairy Tale Fridays: Mother Holle, Mother Holle: Commentary (part I)


Princesses—the role of the heroine

In Basile’s The Three Fairies, Cicella and Grannizia are differentiated only by their appearance. Sometimes, as in the Grimms’ version of Mother Holle, the beautiful sister is also the better person, though this is by no means always the case. So what is it about fairy tales and beauty? Why is the heroine always the most beautiful girl, but not always the cleverest or the bravest or the kindest?

First, let us consider the motivations within a fairy tale: why does the heroine do what she does? What are her reasons? Oftentimes, nothing of note—she wants a singing, springing lark, she wishes to test a suitor, she wants to seek her fortune. But what about the individual reasons? Why is the heroine the way she is? What about her upbringing? Does she like white roses or red? Is she a shoe girl, or is she more into embroidery?

Although there is a current trend toward exploring such individual fairy tale motivations (see Shannon Hale’s Book Of A Thousand Days, The Goose Girl, or Gregory MacGuire’s The Ugly Stepsister for examples), fairy tales tend to play on archetypes, letting readers sketch in the appropriate motivation as needed. In this way, they possess cross-cultural appeal: anyone can read about the heroine and make the appropriate assumptions. But where does this leave us in terms of beauty?

Because fairy tales are working within a given set of rules, they play to what we, as humans, expect: outer beauty is a reflection of inner beauty, outer ugliness is a reflection of inner ugliness. In short, the beautiful girl always wins.

But there is still more: the beautiful girl is a peasant, is she not? Yes. Like Cinderella, Beauty, and the lesser-known Rose Red, the heroine is a poor girl, with little save her beauty and good heart to her name. But how then does she always contrive to marry the prince? (Even in Mother Holle, where there is no prince figure, the gold showered upon the beautiful girl indicates that a good marriage is the logical conclusion to the girl’s story.)

Interestingly, fairy tales often equate beauty with nobility—a beautiful girl is, in essence, a born princess, a girl with all the qualities cherished by princes and peasants alike. Mother Holle’s function, aside from helping the girl transition into womanhood, is to bring her born rank in line with her economic one[1]. In some cases, this is accomplished in tandem with marrying the prince.

Mythology

Nehalennia
A goddess known around what is now Zeeland and the Netherlands, Nehalennia worship peaked circa the second and third centuries C.E. She may have been a regional goddess, though sources differ.

It appears that she was a goddess of travellers and, possibly, domestic duties. According to Hilda Davidson:

Nehalennia, a Germanic goddess worshipped at the point where travellers crossed the North Sea from the Netherlands, is shown on many carved stones holding loaves and apples like a Mother Goddess, sometimes with a prow of a ship beside her, but also frequently with an attendant dog which sits looking up at her.

[2]

As previously discussed, apples and bread both have life and fertility symbolism. Bread is a symbol of the fecundity of the earth, and even the process of making it, of loading, baking, and unloading can be linked to the process of copulation, pregnancy, and child birth.

In his Teutonic Mythology, Jacob Grimm discusses the possible origins of the name Nehalennia, noting that:

In inscriptions found on the lower part of the Rhine there are compounds, whose termination (-nehis, -nehabus, dat. plurals fem.) seems to contain the same word that forms the first half of Nehalennia; their plural number appears to indicate nymphs rather than a goddess, yet there also hangs about them the notion of a mother.[3]

In the Rhineland, the suffix –ennia may denote the role of a triple goddess (see more on matrones), though it is possible the suffix originates elsewhere. From both a proto-Celtic and proto-Germanic view, it is possible that the name has ties to destructive forces and, mayhap, the underworld.

So here we have some interesting parallels to our story—like Mother Holle, Nehalennia can be seen as a mother goddess; a goddess who helps guide travellers and, perhaps transition; a goddess of the underworld and so possibly associated with change and seasons; and her symbols are loaves and apples, such as the beautiful girl encounters in the meadow. Does this mean that Nehalennia and Mother Holle are one in the same? No. But the information presented above is certainly an interesting study and perhaps one worth considering. It is important to remember, however, that the etymology of the name Nehalennia is uncertain, and that there are many possible roots. As such, it is unwise to draw conclusions from etymology and phoenetic comparison alone.


Tomorrow: Hel, Hulda, and Frigg.

Fairy Tale Fridays: Mother Holle, Mother Holle: Commentary (part 1)

Footnotes:

[1] Tatar, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, p. 131.
[2] Davidson, Roles of the Northern Goddesses.
[3] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Chapter 13.

References:
Davidson, Hilda, Roles of the Northern Goddesses, Routledge and Kegan Paul,1998.
Grimm, Jacob, Teutonic Mythology, Chapter 13, online version provided by Northvegr, http://www.northvegr.org/lore/grimmst/index.php
Ragan, Kathleen (ed.) Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World, W.W. Norton and Company, 2000.
Tatar, Maria, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, W.W. Norton and Company, 2004.

Gustave Dore: The Snow Queen

Fairy Tale Fridays: Mother Holle

History

The most well-known version of this story was collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in their 1812 Children’s and Household Tales. It was first told to them by, Henrietta Dorothea Wild[1] (who later married Wilhelm Grimm). It has since been included in a number of anthologies, and the oral telling of the tale persists in parts of Germany, most notably Hesse.

Despite the continuing popularity of this fairy tale, it’s difficult to trace its origins. Etymology suggests a link to Norse mythology, in particular the goddesses Frigg and Hel. This will be discussed further below.

Classification and Variations

Like our earlier tale, Kate Crackernuts, Mother Holle is a ‘tale of kind and unkind girls[2]’. Unlike Kate Crackernuts, however, there are several extant variations on Mother Holle. In the Pentamerone, Basile tells of Cicella and Grannizia in The Three Fairies; the Grimms’ collected Three Little Men in the Wood, also in Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book; Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen; and The Old Witch, in Joseph Jacobs’ More English Fairy Tales. Sometimes it is known as Frau Holle, or Mother Hulda--even Grandmother Winter.

For a reversal of the kind grandmother role, see Hansel and Gretel, and some of the Baba Yaga tales.

Symbolism

Depending on the perspective, Mother Holle can be considered both rich and poor in symbolism. Here, we will focus on only a few possible elements: spindle; apples; bread; and rooster.

Spindle
The spindle has long been a symbol of domesticity—spinning is a woman’s province and, in earlier times, one of the few ways in which poorer women could support themselves. The distaff and drop spindle are also symbols of the Nordic goddess Frigg, who has been linked with Mother Holle (we will discuss this more below).

Why does the beautiful girl jump in the well? Ostensibly, it’s because her stepmother has ordered her to fetch the spindle she has dropped. And why has she dropped it? Because she has bled upon the spindle, then attempted to wash it clean[3]. Now, I don’t want to get into the sexual symbolism of fairy tales—it’s a tricky area to navigate, and I’ve never been much for psychology, but, In this context, it’s likely the bloody spindle is representative of the girl’s entering menses, i.e. of the girl reaching sexual maturity. Why is this important?

Let us consider the situation for a moment: the beautiful girl has been kept in reduced circumstances for the better part of her life; she is afraid of her stepmother; and now she has dropped a spindle and expects punishment from the aforementioned stepmother. Considering this, why doesn’t she run away? We know she is industrious and hard-working, we know she is skilled, we know she is kind-hearted and beautiful. Any one set of these qualities assures of her work elsewhere and yet the idea of leaving never enters the beautiful girl’s head.

Why?

Because she’s unready. The blood on the spindle is the reason she leaps into the well beginning her transformation, the catalyst for change. Running away accomplishes nothing—the girl would remain the same, dependent creature she has always been.

Bread
In her journey throughout the well-world, the beautiful girl encounters an oven full of bread, begging to be taken from the oven.

Like Persephone, the beautiful girl has been carried away to an underworld to bide her time. In fairy tales—consider Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella—this time of hibernation is the unconscious period in which the heroine gathers the necessary information and energy she needs to move into a new stage in her life.

Bread is an old, old symbol of domesticity and fertility. Until recent times, bread was made in house. And by whom? Wives. Mothers. Here is a test of the girl’s domestic skill, and her readiness for keeping a household of her own.

Finally, the girl’s encounter with the oven and, later, the apple tree, is a call to the girl’s compassion. In some stories the heroine helps inanimate objects on her way; on her return, said objects protect her from the giant, witch, or other creature in pursuit. These stories are somewhat unknown to most people—perhaps more familiar are the talking animal set in which the protagonist helps a colony of ants, a fish, a hive of bees[4], or some other distressed creature.


Apples
Now taken for granted in most parts of the world apples have, at times, been considered quite precious. In the UK, they were believed to be fruit of the good folk; the fabled Isle of Avalon is actually the Isle of Apples. It was also believed that harming an apple tree caused offense to the fairies and, as such, brought ill fortune, while apple blossoms have been thought to bring good luck to a new marriage.

Apples are also featured in a variety of myths, most notably: the Biblical story of Adam and Eve[5]; in Greek mythology, golden apples were much sought after and, indirectly, the cause of the Trojan War; and in Teutonic mythology it is associated with beauty and youthfulness. Most relevant to this story, though, is Nordic mythology, in which apples were sacred, and oftentimes buried with the dead (see discussion of Hel and Nehalennia below).

How does all this relate to our story? Like the encounter with the bread, the apple tree is asking for the beautiful’s girls compassion. But the fruit, like the girl herself, is in a stage of transition . Finally, apples are sacred and associated with death—the girl is in, for all intents and purposes, an underworld and one part of her life is dying, falling away.

Interestingly, apple trees are heterozygous—that is to say that, like people, the seeds give rise a new individual, rather than a clone of the parent ; mayhap the tree is representative of motherhood, fertility, and childhood.

Rooster
The presence of the rooster is one of the stranger elements of Mother Holle. Its role is unclear, though Maria Tatar suggests that it is symbolic of the recognition of a male. Perhaps the original setup of the story—stepmother and two daughters—did not allow for a male figure, and the rooster acts as substitute.

Tomorrow: fairy tale princesses, Mother Holle in mythology.

Footnotes:

[1] Paradiz, Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales
[2] Tatar, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, p. 128
[3] See also the role of the spindle in Sleeping Beauty.
[4] See The Queen Bee, Children’s and Household Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
[5] Familiar strains of apples, like the red delicious, are the product of grafted trees.

References:

Tatar, Maria, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, W.W. Norton and Company, 2004.
Gould, Joan, Spinning Straw Into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About The Transformations In A Woman’s Life, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006.
Paradiz, Valerie, Clever Maids: The Secret History of The Grimm Fairy Tales, Basic Books, 2005.
Ragan, Kathleen (ed.) Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World, W.W. Norton and Company, 2000.
Alexander, Marc, The Sutton Companion to Folklore, Myths and Customs in Britain, Sutton Publishing, 2006.
Zipes, Jack, et al., The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm All-New Third Edition, Bantam, 2003.

Fairy Tale Fridays: Mother Holle