The Man and the Girl at the Underground Mansion (Danish: Karlen og pigen i den underjordiske herregård) is a Danish folktale collected by theologue Nikolaj Christensen in the 19th century, but published in the 20th century by Danish folklorist Laurits Bodker.
It is related to the cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom and distantly related to the Graeco-Roman myth of Cupid and Psyche, in that the heroine is forced to perform difficult tasks for a witch.
Summary A man and a girl work at a farm. The man gifts the girl a black ribbon, which is stolen by a fox. The man pursues the fox into a country mansion. The girl hangs some clothes on the hanger at the farm, which are snatched by the same fox. The girl chases after the animal and arrives at the same mansion. The girl becomes a servant and is made to unload a dung heap and to wash a black cloth white as part of her tasks.
A man offers to help her in exchange for romance. The girl declines, but he helps her via a magic wand. Next, the girl learns the man is set marry the farmer's daughter, and the girl is ordered to get jewels for the upcoming wedding. The man warns her that the jewel box belongs to a witch, and on the way there, she must fix a broken plank of a bridge, milk a cow, give water to a bull, shake a tree, enter the witch's house and accept the food she will offer (a milk bowl), but give it to the dog. The girl follows the instructions to the letter and gets the jewel box from the witch. The girl escapes, despite the witch commanding the dog, the cow, the bull, the tree and the bridge to stop her. At a safe distance, the girl opens the box and a bird flies out of it, which the man forces back into the box with his wand.
Lastly, the girl is set to hold a torch near the married couple. The girl holds the torch until it nearly burns her fingers, but the man puts the torch out and, in the dark, kills his bride and her mother. He marries the girl and they live in the mansion.Christensen, Nikolaj. Folkeeventyr fra Kær herred. Udgivet af Laurits Bodker. Kobenhavn: Akademisk forlag, 1963-1967. pp. 218-220 (text for tale nr. 110), 304 (source).
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type AaTh 428, "The Wolf": the heroine works for a witch and is forced to perform impossible tasks (such as washing a black object white and vice versa), but she prevails with the aid of a wolf. One of the heroine's tasks is to go to another witch (the first witch's sister) and get from her a box with songs or a bridal dowry for the first witch.Liungman, Waldemar. Die Schwedischen Volksmärchen: Herkunft und Geschichte. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2022 . pp. 97-98. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112618004-004 In some variants, the heroine is sent with a letter to a second witch, who is to get the letter and kill the heroine.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Third Printing. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 . p. 143.
However, tale type AaTh 428 is considered by scholars as a fragmentary version of the tale of Cupid and Psyche, lacking the initial part about the animal husband and corresponding to the part of the witch's tasks.Anderson, Walter. "IV. Besprechungen". In: Fabula 1, no. 2 (1958): 284. https://doi.org/10.1515/fabl.1958.1.2.283Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. p. 379.Liungman, Waldemar. Die Schwedischen Volksmärchen: Herkunft und Geschichte. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2022 . p. 98. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112618004-004 Accordingly, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther revised the international classification system and subsumed previous type AaTh 428, "The Wolf", under the new type ATU 425B, "Son of the Witch".Uther, Hans-Jörg. The types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography, based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. Volume 1: Animal tales, tales of magic, religious tales, and realistic tales, with an introduction. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia-Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004. p. 250. .
Motifs The heroine's helper According to Danish scholar Inger Margrethe Boberg, the heroine's helper in type 428 may be a young man cursed to be an animal in Northern Europe, while in variants from Southern Europe her helper is the witch's own son, who falls in love with the heroine. Similarly, according to Russian folklorist , in type 428, the heroine's helper may be a wolf (like in Russian or in Serbo-Croatian texts), a cat or a dog; the animal helper then turns into a human male that marries the heroine.
Variants The second revision of the folktale index, published in 1961 by Stith Thompson, located variants in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and among the Finnish-Swedish.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 . p. 145. Thompson and Swedish scholar listed variants of the type in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Iceland and Russia. In another work, Liungman noted that type AaTh 428 appeared mainly in the coastal countries of Europe.
Denmark The Bride of the Hound In a Danish tale from Vedersø and published in magazine Skattegraveren with the title Hundebruden ("The Bride of the Hound"), a couple have a son named Jens Peter. After his mother dies, his father remarries, but Jens Peter's stepmother, a witch, turns him into a poodle hound. One day, a girl comes to work for the stepmother, and she orders her to milk four she-goats, then to winnow a pile of grains with a bottomless sieve, and finally to go to the witch's sister's house in a remote farm and ask for bread. The poodle hound helps the girl in all tasks, with the condition that the girl gives him three kisses and calls him "rosenmund" ("rosy-mouth"). They also throw the witch stepmother in an oven and kill her. At the end of the tale, the girl decapitates the dog, as per his request, and turns him back to Jens Peter.Skattegraveren. Volume 11. Januar-Juni 1889. pp. 188-192 (Tale nr. 553).
Little Per and Little Maren Danish scholars Axel Olrik and Inger Margrethe Boberg summarized a Danish tale collected by philologist Ida Falbe-Hansen from Funen, with the title Lille Per og lille Maren ("Little Per and Little Maren"). In this tale, the titular Per and Maren follow a ball to the lair of a hill-woman ("Bjergkonen", in the original), and work for her. Maren is forced to wash a piece of black wool white. Per helps her in this first task by commanding the wool to turn white. Maren gives the wool to the hill-woman, who orders the girl to wash it black again. Next, Maren is tasked with cleaning heaps of dung. Thirdly, she is ordered by the witch to go to Hell ("Helvede"), to the witch's sister's house (called "Helvedkonen", in the original) and fetch ballads for the witch's daughter's wedding. Per intercepts Maren before she travels to Hell, and advises her: Maren is to oil gate hinges, shake a pear tree, turn loaves of bread inside an oven, milk a cow and give ladles to servants and groats to chicken. While in Hell, she must not eat anything, get the ballads and escape. Maren follows his warnings and escapes out of Hell with a basket full of ballads, the hill-woman's sister commanding her servants to stop Maren, to no avail. On the road back, Maren peeps into the basket and the ballads fly out of it. Per appears and brings them back into the basket. Lastly, Maren is made to hold candles next to the witch's daughter and Per, but the boy asks the bride to trade places with Maren and hold them. The candles burn the witch's daughter. Per and Maren kill the witch, the lair becomes a castle and they live there.Olrik, Axel. Kilderne til Sakses oldhistorie: en literaturhistorisk undersøgelse. Volume 2: Sakses oldhistorie, norrøne sagaer og Danske sagn. Copenhagen: Wroblewski, 1894. pp. 237-238. .Boberg, I. M. (1938). "The Tale of Cupid and Psyche". In: Classica et Medievalia 1: 196-197.
The Girl and the Dog In an archival tale titled The Girl and the Dog, the heroine, an orphan girl, finds work with a dwarf woman and is given three hard tasks: to milk ferocious goats and to carry water in a sieve. She cries at their difficulty, when a little dog appears to her and offers to help in exchange for a kiss. She kisses the dog, which helps her in both tasks. Next, the dwarf woman orders the girl to go to Hell to get a cake. The little dog warns her not to eat anything when she arrives in Hell, and gives her advice on how to proceed: she is to feed the chicken and the cats, place firewood in a fire, and use a hook to hang some scythes to keep them from falling. She reaches Hell and enters a witch's house, where she is offered some porridge to eat, but she does not eat it and hides the dish in her clothes. She gets the cake and escapes, and the witch orders the animals and objects on the way to stop her, to no avail. The girl is released from the dwarf woman's employment and goes on her way. She then meets the same dog who helped her, which asks the girl to cut off its head. The girl follows its request; a man appears before her. They marry.Holbek, Bengt. Interpretation of Fairy Tales: Danish Folklore in a European Perspective. Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1987. pp. 528, 584.
Sweden Waldemar Liungman named tale type 428 in Sweden as Det spelande skrinet eller uppdraget hos häxans syster, translated to German as Der musizierende Schrein oder Der Auftrag bei der Schwester der Hexe ("The Music-playing Wooden Box or the Orders from the Witch's Sister").
In a Finnish-Swedish tale collected by G. A. Åberg from Strömfors with the title Te trölla prinsn, a girl finds work with an old woman. The first task is to wash black wool white. The girl cries over the impossibility, until a wolf appears to her with a magic wand. With the wolf's help, the girl accomplishes the task. The old woman, then, orders her to wash the white wool back into black. As the third task, the old woman gives the girl a letter and orders her to deliver it to her sister, who lives across the lake. The wolf gives another magic wand to the girl to create a dry passageway across the lake, and bread, firewood and two breadspades. The girl walks to the old woman's sister and gives the bread to two oxen, throws the firewood in a bonfire and gives the breadspade to two women by a stove. The girl gives the letter to the old woman's sister, who invites her in to eat some sausages. The girl accepts the food, but hides it in her clothing to trick the old woman. At the end of the tale, the girl disenchants her wolf helper, who was a prince under a curse.Äberg, G. A. Nyländska folksagor. Helsingfors: Tidnings- & Tryckeri-Aktiebolagets Tryckeri. 1887. pp. 280-282 (Tale nr. 230).Hackman, O. Finlands svenska folkdiktning. Skrifter / utgivna av Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland. Helsingfors. 1917. pp. 159-160 (summary); 520 (classification).