European Folk and Fairy Tales (Literature)

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Cover art by John D. Batten

"Do tell us a fairy tale, ganpa."
"Well, will you be good and quiet if I do?"
"Of course we will; we are always good when you are telling us fairy tales."
"Well, here goes.—Once upon a time, though it wasn't in my time, and it wasn't in your time, and it wasn't in anybody else's time, there was a——"
"But that would be no time at all."
"That's fairy tale time."

— Introduction

European Folk and Fairy Tales (also known as Europa's Fairy Book) is a compilation book by Australian folklorist Joseph Jacobs, published in 1916. As Jacobs stated in his notes, it was his attempt to assemble all available variants of famous European Fairy Tales in order to recreate their Ur-Texts, following the example of scholars trying to restore the Ur-texts by combining different manuscripts.

The book contains the following fairy tale reconstructions:

Cinder-Maid - a reconstruction of variants of Cinderella;
All Change
The King of the Fishes - a reconstruction of variants of The Twins or Blood Brothers;
Scissors
Beauty and the Beast - a reconstruction of variants of Beauty and the Beast;
Reynard and Bruin - a reconstruction of stories of the Fox and its rival, the Bear or the Wolf;
The Dancing Water, Singing Apple, and Speaking Bird - a reconstruction of variants of The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird;
The Language of Animals;
The Three Soldiers - a reconstruction of variants from oral tradition of Fortunatus (an Early Modern Germanic novel from 1509);
A Dozen at a Blow - a reconstruction of variants of The Brave Little Tailor;
The Earl of Cattenborough - a reconstruction of variants of Puss in Boots;
The Swan Maidens - a reconstruction of The Swan Maiden tales;
Androcles and the Lion - a reconstruction of variants of Androcles and the Lion;
Day Dreaming
Keep Cool
The Master Thief - a reconstruction of variants of The Master Thief (Grimm's "Der Meisterdieb");
The Unseen Bridegroom - a reconstruction of Cupid And Psyche and related tales;
The Master-Maid - a reconstruction of variants of The Magic Flight/Girl Helps the Hero Flee;
A Visitor from Paradise
Inside Again - reconstructions of variants of The Ungrateful Serpent (Animal) Returned to Captivity, or Ingratitude Is the World's Reward.
John the True - a reconstruction of variants of Faithful Johannes;
Johnnie and Grizzle - a reconstruction of variants of Hansel and Gretel;
The Clever Lass - a reconstruction of variants of The Clever Peasant Girl (a.k.a., The Farmer's Clever Daughter);
Thumbkin - a reconstruction of variants of Tom Thumb;
Snowwhite - a reconstruction of variants of Snow White.

It can be read here and here.

Tropes featured in Joseph Jacobs's reconstructions:

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General tropes

Adaptation Distillation: In his notes to the tales, Jacobs stated that he had to work with many variants of the same tale, and attempted to "restore" them to their "original forms", by assembling their common traits in a formula.
Adapted Out:
- In Snowwhite, Jacobs reduced the number of dwarves from seven to three.
- In Cinder-Maid, Jacobs removed the Fairy Godmother (which appears in Perrault's tale), but replaced her for a tree on Cinder-Maid's mother's grave.
Arranged Marriage:
- In The Master-Maid, after Edgar returns home and his mother kisses him, he forgets all about the Master-Maid. Some time later, his parents betroth him to a princess from a neighbouring kingdom.
- In John The True, John the True's king has been betrothed to the Princess of the Golden Horde, but, due to war, neither can reach the other.
Cosmic Motifs: Two instances:
- In The Dancing Water ..., the male twin is born with a solar birthmark, while the female twin has a lunar birthmark on her forehead.
- In The King of the Fishes, each of the male twins has a star on their forehead.
Cunning Like a Fox:
- In Reynard and Bruin, Reynard, the talking fox, tricks the Bear and steals the food the latter found for himself.
- In Inside Again, a fox helps a man in return for a payment of two chickens, and tricks a snake into returning to its entrapment, the same ordeal it found itself in at the beginning of the tale.
Family-Unfriendly Violence: In Cinder-Maid, the step-sisters cut off a toe and part of their heels to make their feet fit the golden shoe.
Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables:
- In Cinder-Maid, the hazel tree on Cinder-Maid's mother's grave yields nuts that contain the dresses inside.
- In The Three Soldiers, the sergeant finds a fig tree: black figs make horns grow on one's head, and the white ones make the horns fall.^note
Forbidden Fruit:
- In The Unseen Bridegroom, Anima receives a casket from the Queen of the Nether-World and brings back to the Queen. On the way there, she opens the box and a cadre of small dolls leap out of the box.
- In The King of the Fishes, one night, the princess warns her husband, George, about not going to the illuminated castle in the distance. Guess what he does the next morning?
Forced Transformation:
- In Beauty and Beast, after being released from his curse, the prince explains a magician enchanted him into his beastly form.
- In The Three Soldiers, the sergeant sends a basket of horn-growing black figs to the card-playing princess anonymously, and, just as he expected, the princess eats the figs and horns grow on her head.
Good Princess, Evil Queen:
- Downplayed in The Unseen Bridegroom. Anima, the princess protagonist, marries her invisible husband, who does not want to show her his face for fear of his mother. When she betrays her husband, Anima has to journey to her mother-in-law, the Queen, who derides Anima as a "low-born mortal". Though the latter is less of a villain and more of an obnoxious in-law.
- Straight example in Snowwhite. Snowwhite's father, the King, marries a vain princess, making the latter into a Queen. Later, when the King dies, the vain Queen begins to hound her step-daughter, princess Snowwhite.
Graceful Loser:
- In The Master Thief, the unnamed lord recognizes Will as a Master Thief.
- In The Unseen Bridegroom, at the end of the story, the unnamed Queen, Anima's mother-in-law, laughs aloud and admits defeat, finally recognizing Anima as her son's wife.
Guile Hero:
- In The Master-Thief, while "hero" is a bit of a misnomer, since the protagonist is a thief, the titular Master-Thief tricks the lord and his soldiers, the lord's wife, a priest and the lord (again!) to prove he is indeed a "master thief".
- In A Dozen at a Blow, a simple tailor manages to trick some giants and a king, and uses brains instead of brawn to capture a wild boar and a wild unicorn.
- In The Earl of Cattenborough, Miss Puss enters an Ogre's castle and lies to him that the king is soon to invade the castle, so the Ogre, frightened at the prospect of battle with the king, turns into a little mouse which Miss Puss eats.
Heroic Sacrifice:
- In Beauty and the Beast, the merchant plucks a rose from the Beast's garden, and the Beast threatens to kill him, but makes a deal with him: his youngest daughter for the rose. When the merchant returns home and explains the situation to Bella, the girl offers to go to the Beast.
- John The True is essentially this: John the True learns of three perils coming his king's way, and goes through great lengths to protect both his monarch and his future bride. After he explains his reasons to the king, the ravens' curse kicks in and he becomes a statue. Some years later, the queen, who married the king in the meantime, agrees to sacrifice her twin children to bring John back.
Impossible Task:
- In The Master-Maid, the giant gives prince Edgar three tasks, but with a catch: to empty the stable of all the straw (if done the normal way, the amount of straw grows larger), to cut down a clump of trees (with a glass axe), and to steal the eggs from a bird's nest on top of a tall tree (that has no branches to allow climbing).
- In The Unseen Bridegroom, the Queen forces princess Anima on three hard tasks: 1. to separate an entire barn of mixed grains (wheats, oats, and rice); 2. fill mattresses with bird feathers (four of swans, four of geese, four of eider ducks); 3. take a letter and a flask to the Queen of the Nether-World, her mother-in-law's sister, and trade them for a casket.
Inexplicably Awesome:
- In The Three Soldiers, the mysterious old lady appears one night to each of the soldiers, gifts each of them a magical object, then vanishes just as quickly. The text does not mention an origin for this character, although, in a related tale, Fortunatus, the goddess of fortune is the one to provide the magic purse.
- In The Master-Maid, the titular character has magic powers she uses to help in Edgar's tasks and to create obstacles to stop the giant when he comes after them. Any in-story reason is not given for her powers.^note
Land, Sea, Sky:
- In Cinder-Maid, each of Cinder-Maid's dresses she wears to the prince's ball symbolizes an element: the first is a dress blue as the heavens and embroidered with stars, the second of a golden brown colour "like the earth" and decorated with flowers, and the third green as the sea with waves.
- In The Language of Animals, the boy is sent to school three times and learns the meaning of the sounds dogs (land), frogs (lake, therefore, water), and birds (sky) make.
- In The Swan Maidens, the nameless hunter meets the King of the Beasts, the King of the Birds, and the King of the Fishes, who help him in his quest for his wife.
Liminal Time:
- In The Dancing Water..., the third sister marries the king and gives birth to her promised twin children; her elder sisters bribe a nurse to replace the children for puppies and abandon them in the wilderness.
- In The Clever Lass, the king wants to test the farmer's daughter's supposed wisdom, and orders her to present herself to him "clothed, yet unclothed, neither walking, nor driving, nor riding, neither in shadow nor in sun, and with a gift which is no gift".
Named by the Adaptation: Of a sort. In many of the tales Jacobs used as basis, the protagonists do not have a name. However, he gave names to some of the protagonists of his versions. To wit:
- Twins George and Albert, in The King of the Fishes.
- Prince Edgar, the hero of The Master-Maid, and Dapplegrim, the giant's horse's name.
- Anima, the Psyche-like princess of The Unseen Bridegroom.
- Bella, the "Beauty" of Beauty and the Beast.
- Will, the name of the titular Master-Thief.
- Jack, the young protagonist of The Language of Animals.
- John, the youngest son of the miller, and his elder brothers Charles and Sam, in The Earl of Cattenborough.
- Tom and Joan, the bickering couple of Scissors.
Nameless Narrative: Jacobs retained the nameless narrative of some of the tales contained in this volume. Characters are thus known just by their gender (e.g., the man, the woman), or species (e.g., a fox, a snake).
Our Giants Are Bigger:
- The antagonist in The Master-Maid is a giant, who forces impossible tasks on the human prince.
Pimped-Out Dress:
- In Cinder-Maid, the hazel tree provides Cinder-Maid with splendid dresses: the first a silk blue dress embroidered with stars, the second of a golden brown colour and decorated with flowers, and the third silk green with waves.
- In The Master-Maid, the titular protagonist wears a dress of "rich silk", one of silver, and a third "shining like gold", which she uses to bribe the princess for a night in prince Edgar's chambers.
Princess Protagonist: Since the book is a compilation of fairy tales, some of the protagonists of the tales are princesses. To wit:
- In The King of the Fishes, a princess is delivered to a dragon as a sacrifice, but is saved by one of the twins and tries to delay her marriage to the false hero in order to buy time for her true saviour to appear. When her husband goes missing, her brother-in-law, her husband's twin brother, learns from her about the tower in the distance.
- In The Dancing Water..., a king marries a poor maiden and she bears him twins, a boy and a girl. The female twin, a princess, asks her brother to fetch the titular Dancing Water, Singing Apple, and Speaking Bird, and goes to rescue her brother when he falls to the Speaking Bird's petrification spell.
- In The Three Soldiers, the card-playing princess is the antagonist: by cheating at cards, she wins the magic objects the sergeant got from the old lady.
- In The Unseen Bridegroom, Anima is the third daughter of a king and queen (a princess), who meets her husband, loses him, then goes in search for him. On her quest, she meets her husband's aunts, who give her directions and objects she can use later. Finally, she goes to meet her mother-in-law, the Queen, and works for her in order to regain her husband.
- In The Master-Maid, an unnamed princess is an obstacle for the Master-Maid's meeting with Edgar. The girl is not a true antagonist, simply a princess Edgar's father betrothed him to when he forgot about his love, the Master-Maid.
- In Snowwhite, princess Snowwhite has to escape her stepmother's attempts against her: first by using the hunter to kill her and take out her heart; then, the poisoned comb, ribbon and apple.
The Quest: Also doubles as Searching for the Lost Relative, since the protagonist in some of the tales is searching for their missing spouse.
- In The Swan Maidens, after his swan maiden departs back to her kingdom, the hunter goes after her in a long quest.^note
- In The Unseen Bridegroom, Anima betrays her husband, who vanishes after she discovers his true face, taking their palace and riches with him. Anima then begins wandering until she finds her husband's aunts, who guide her to the Queen's palace.^note
Rags to Royalty: A staple of traditional fairy tales, which he kept for his versions: humble heroes rise from their lowly station by marrying princesses; fallen princesses regain their position by wedding princes. To wit:
- In Cinder-Maid, Cinder-Maid becomes a lowly servant to her own step-family, but marries the prince.
- In The Earl of Cattenborough, the poor miller's youngest son ascends to royalty due to the actions of his pet cat.
- In The Clever Lass, the heroine, a poor farmer's daughter, marries the king.
- In The Dancing Water ..., the three sisters are daughters of a poor herb-gatherer, and the youngest marries the king.
- In The Three Soldiers, the sergeant marries the card-playing princess.
- In The King of the Fishes, the twin heroes are sons of a poor fisherman and his wife, and end up marrying princesses.
- In The Master-Maid, the titular master-maid is described as the giant's maid who works for him, but helps prince Edgar. At the end of the tale, she marries Edgar.
- In The Language of Animals, Jack, son of a poor couple, is expelled from home. Years later, he becomes the new pope of Rome, and takes on a new name: Pope Sylvester.
- In A Dozen at a Blow, the humble tailor marries the princess.
- Subverted in The Swan Maidens: the hunter marries the youngest of seven maidens who are described as daughters of a King from a faraway kingdom, but the hunter does not become king, and returns to his humble life with his wife.
Raven Hair, Ivory Skin:
- This is how the princess of the Golden Horde is described in John The True.
- Surprisingly, not Snowwhite, since, as Jacobs wrote in his notes, the formula "hair as ebony, red cheeks and white skin" he already used in John The True.
Rhymes on a Dime: All over the place:
- In Cinder-Maid, the titular Cinder-Maid asks the tree on her mother's grave for dresses with a rhyming couplet. She later escapes the ball by uttering two verses that summon a mist to block the soldiers' path. Also, at the end of the tale, the little bird reveals with a rhyming couplet the step-sisters' plot to fool the prince.
- The famous rhyming couplet the Queen uses in front of the Magic Mirror to ask who is the fairest one of all.
- In Johnnie and Grizzle, after they escape from the witch's house, Grizzle pleads for a duck in the lake to help them with a rhyming scheme.
Rule of Three: Another staple of traditional fairy tales. In this book:
- In Cinder-Maid, the girl's three dresses, the three dances, and Cinder-Maid and her two stepsisters.
- Bella and her two sisters in Beauty and the Beast.
- The titular objects of The Dancing Water, Singing Apple, and Speaking Bird, and the three sisters.
- In The Language of Animals, the three species of animals (dogs, frogs and birds) and the three occasions when Jack uses his abilities: dogs warn about an upcoming attack to a castle; frogs reveal the reason for a lord's daughter's disease, and the birds' prediction about the future Pope of Rome.
- The titular Three Soldiers who gain three magic objects by the mysterious woman in the woods, and the sergeant's three games with the card-playing princess.
- In A Dozen at a Blow, the king orders the tailor (whose real identity the king does not know) to kill a wild boar, capture a wild unicorn and defeat two giants that have been menacing the kingdom.
- In The Earl of Cattenborough, the three sons of the miller, and their inheritances: the mill, a donkey, and the cat.
- The three kings (of the beasts, of the birds, and of the fishes) in The Swan Maidens.
- In The Unseen Bridegroom, Anima's three tasks, the three types of grains in the first task, and the three species of birds in the second task.
- In The Master-Maid, the giant is tricked twice (with a herdboy and a shepherd boy), but takes the prince on his third attempt; the three tasks the giant imposes prince Edgar, the three obstacles the Master-Maid uses to deter the giant's pursuit (twigs, glass axe and a bottle of water), the Master-Maid's three attempts to talk to a sleeping and oblivious Edgar; the three dresses she uses as a bribe to the princess.
- In John The True, the three ravens that John eavesdrops on while on his voyage home, and the three perils the king and his bride will suffer (a runaway horse, a goblet with poisoned wine, and a dragon in their bedchambers).
- In Johnnie and Grizzle, siblings Johnnie and Grizzle are taken to the woods to be abandoned there three times; twice Johnnie uses pebbles to mark the trail; on the third time, he is forced to replace the pebbles for breadcrumbs, and they get lost.
- In The Clever Lass, the two old peasants are brought to the king and each is asked three questions: "What is the most beautiful thing", "What is the strongest", and "What is the richest". The way the second peasant answers tips the king off that the man had help from someone wise.
- In Snowwhite, the Queen's three attempts on Snowwhite's life (with a comb, a ribbon and the famous apple), and the three helpful dwarves.
Significant Name Overlap: The titular "King of the Fishes" is a talking fish, while the homonymous character from The Swan Maiden is an old man that rules the fishes of the sea.
Speaks Fluent Animal:
- This is the premise of The Language of Animals: Jack goes to school to learn what mean the frogs' croaking, the dogs' barking and the birds' chirping.
- Somehow, John, the titular John The True, can understand the conversation between three ravens.
Talking Animal:
- In Cinder-Maid, the little bird perched on the tree advises Cinder-Maid to return home from the ball before midnight.
- As with variants of "Puss in Boots", the helpful Miss Puss of The Earl of Cattenborough is able to talk like a normal person.
- The titular King of the Fishes is a talking fish.
- In John The True, John overhears three ravens talking about three upcoming threats to the king and his bride.
Taken for Granite:
- In The King of the Fishes, twin George is given a potion by the "old dame" and turns to stone after drinking it.
- In John The True, John, the king's servant, has to protect the king in silence and not reveal the truth behind his actions, lest he slowly turns to stone.
- In The Dancing Water ..., the elder brother is warned against interacting with the talking bird, but does so and is turned into a statue.
Wicked Stepmother:
- In Jacobs's reconstruction of "Cinderella", Cinder-Maid, obviously.
- In Snowwhite, a vain and envious princess marries Snowwhite's father, the king, and becomes the girl's step-mother. After the king dies and she becomes queen, she tries to get rid of her step-daughter for being more beautiful than her.

Cinder-Maid

Bride and Switch: In The Cinder-Maid, Cinder-Maid's two stepsisters try on the slipper, but cut off their toes to make the shoe fit, in order to trick the prince. However, the birds coo to reveal the deception.
Chase Scene: In Cinder-Maid, after each ball, the titular heroine escapes the ball before midnight; the Prince tries to stop her with his soldiers, but she summons a mist to cloud their vision and cover her escape. On the second night, the Prince orders the soldiers to spread honey on the steps to deter her, but she simply leaps some steps and reaches her carriage. On the third night, the soldiers spread tar on the steps, which sticks to one of her shoes.
Dances and Balls: In Cinder-Maid, since it is a reconstruction of "Cinderella". Interestingly, the Prince, at the beginning of the tale, only holds one ball. After Cinder-Maid comes to the first ball and impresses the Prince, he decides to hold two more balls in hopes of seeing her again.
The Girl Who Fits This Slipper: As is traditional with "Cinderella" variants, Cinder-Maid wears three pairs of shoes to the dances (one copper, another silver, and third gold), and loses one of her golden shoes. The Prince then announces he will marry the one that fits the golden shoe.
Glass Slipper: In Cinder-Maid, the heroine wears shoes ('shoons') of a metallic colour: the first pair of copper, the second of silver, and the third of gold. Jacobs stated in his notes that he dismissed the glass material since he believed that the motif was derived from Perrault's version, and most of the oral variants use gold as the material of the shoes.
Gorgeous Garment Generation: In Cinder-Maid, the heroine goes to the hazel tree on her mother's grave and gains three nuts from the tree, each revealing a beautiful dress.
Riches to Rags: In Cinder-Maid, the heroine's father is said to be one of the nobles of the King's court, thus making her of noble background. When her father marries again, the stepmother gives Cinder-Maid's the cast-off clothes of her step-sisters and forces her to sleep in among the cinders of the scullery.
Step Servant: In Cinder-Maid, Cinder-Maid's father marries another woman with her own two daughters. The woman makes her step-daughter do "all the drudgery of the house".
When the Clock Strikes Twelve: In Cinder-Maid, each time the heroine fetches the dresses from the tree, the little bird warns her to come back before midnight. After the third ball, Cinder-Maid loses track of time, escapes the ball and, on the twelfth chime, the magic dissipates.

All Change

The King of the Fishes

Always Identical Twins: In The King of the Fishes, male twins are born to the fisherman and his wife after she eats the fish's meat. Each of the twins has a star on the forehead, and their being identical is actually a plot point at the end of the tale: the princess and the kingdom mistake one twin for the other.
Chaste Separating Sword: Although, according to scholars, the sword of chastity motif is a feature of tale type ATU 303 (to which The King of the Fishes belongs to), Jacobs's version omits the motif of the twin placing the sword on his sister-in-law's bed and has the character simply talk to her.
Dragons Prefer Princesses: In The King of the Fishes, twin George reaches the kingdom of Middlegard, where every month a maiden is given to the dragon as sacrifice, and now it's the princess's turn.
Lighter and Softer: Jacobs softened the ending sequence of The King of the Fishes for a fortuitous mistaking of one twin for the other, and the second twin rescuing the other from petrification. In other variants, there is a sequence where the second twin places a "sword of chastity" on his sister-in-law's bed, but, after saving his brother, he thinks his twin slept with his wife and kills him. The mistake is rectified and everyone lives happily ever after, though.
Miles Gloriosus: In The King of the Fishes, the Marshal takes the credit for killing the dragon and saving the princess from being sacrificed. It is obviously all a lie.
A Year and a Day: In The King of the Fishes, the princess tries to delay the marriage to the false hero, the marshal, by wanting to marry after "a year and a day".

Scissors

Black Comedy: In Scissors, the wife begins to drown, while the husband walks upstream. A neighbour takes notice of this, and the husband shrugs it off saying his wife Joan always did anything contrarywise.
I Shall Taunt You: In Scissors, just as Joan falls in the river, she still has enough strength to lift her hand in a scissoring motion to taunt her husband.
Like an Old Married Couple: This is the premise of Scissors. A married couple simply argue about anything, so much so they can qualify as each other's Commander Contrarian: whatever one wanted, the other wanted the opposite.

Beauty and the Beast

Anguished Declaration of Love: In Beauty and the Beast, as the Beast lies dying in the garden, Bella declares she loves him. This serves to break the Beast's curse.
Beast and Beauty: Like its namesake, Beauty and the Beast has a merchant's beautiful third daughter, named Bella (doubles as a Meaningful Name), fall in love with a prince cursed to be an ugly beast.
Curse Escape Clause: In Beauty and the Beast, after the Beast is released from the curse, he explains he could only be freed if a maiden declared her love for him.
Disproportionate Retribution: As with other versions of Beauty and the Beast, in Jacobs's version Beauty's father plucks a rose from the Beast's garden; the Beast appears to him and accuses him of stealing, and promises to punish him with his life.

Reynard and Bruin

Butt-Monkey: In Reynard and Bruin (and other stories of the cycle), the fox's rival (bear or wolf) ends up on the receiving end of a series of punishments that were reserved for the fox. Everything Played for Laughs, of course.
A Dog Named "Dog": In Reynard and Bruin, Jacobs's version names the fox animal Reynard (French for 'fox') and its rival Bruin (Germanic for 'bear').^note

The Dancing Water, Singing Apple, and Speaking Bird

Compressed Adaptation: Despite trying to restore as much as possible of the "original tales", Jacobs's version of The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird reduces the number of siblings to twins, instead of the three children of the tale he used as a basis.
Exact Eavesdropping: In The Dancing Water..., a king who eavesdropped on his subjects listened to the conversation between three sisters about their skills.
Living MacGuffin: In The Dancing Water..., the twins are sent on a quest for the titular Speaking Bird, who can petrify people if one talks to it.
Solar and Lunar: In The Dancing Water ..., the third sister promises to give birth to twins, a boy with a sun, and a girl with the moon on the front.
Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born: In The Dancing Water..., the third sister promises to bear the king twin children, a son and a daughter. The king marries her and she gives birth to her promised children.

The Language of Animals

Awesome Moment of Crowning: In The Language of Animals, humble hero Jack, now a man, passes by an arch where a bell is tied to and where two doves are perched on. The bell rings and the doves land on his shoulders, marking him as the new pope.
Book Dumb: In The Language of Animals, Jack is described as "very simple in mind and backward in his thought".

The Three Soldiers

Absurdly High-Stakes Game: In The Three Soldiers, the sergeant bets with the card-playing princess the three magic objects he and his companions gained from the old woman in the woods: the purse, the tablecloth and the whistle.
Fixing the Game: The card-playing princess in The Three Soldiers cheats at cards by setting a mirror behind the sergeant.
Infinite Supplies: In The Three Soldiers, one of the three soldiers is given an inexhaustible bag that always provides him with money.
Miracle Food: In The Three Soldiers, the mysterious old lady gifts the corporal with a magic tablecloth that provides "the finest dinner" upon command.

A Dozen at a Blow

The Earl of Cattenborough

Fake Aristocrat: In The Earl of Cattenborough, the female Miss Puss helps her owner, the third miller's son, in pretending to be the titular earl.
Faking the Dead: At the end of The Earl of Cattenborough, Miss Puss pretends to be dead to force a Secret Test of Character on her master.
Gender Flip: In The Earl of Cattenborough, the helpful cat's gender is female, and the animal is referred as Miss Puss.
Mock Millionaire: In The Earl of Cattenborough, the female Miss Puss helps her owner, the third miller's son, in tricking the king into believing the ogre's lands and possessions are the Earl's.
Ungrateful Bastard: At the end of The Earl of Cattenborough, Miss Puss pretends to be dead to test her master's gratitude. He simply tells the servant to toss her body on a dunghill, despite everything she did to help him.

The Swan Maidens

Artistic License – Marine Biology: In The Swan Maidens, the hunter pays a visit to the King of the Fishes, who summons "all the fishes of the sea". This includes a dolphin (which, in Real Life, is a mammal, not a fish), who knows the location of the kingdom where the hunter's Swan Maiden wife lives.
Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: In The Swan Maidens, seven swan maidens fly to a lake to take a bath and leave their clothes on the shore. Unlike other variants, in Jacobs's the swan maidens are not shapeshifting women who wear a swan skin, but simply are able to soar in the sky with the use of a cloak and a feather robe.
Rule of Seven: In The Swan Maidens, the nameless hunter sights the titular swan maidens in the lake, which number seven.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In The Swan Maidens, years into their marriage, the hunter and the Swan Maiden have two children, a boy and girl. When the siblings are playing hide-and-seek, the girl finds her mother's missing feather robe, which she puts on and flies back to her home kingdom. When the hunter returns home, he learns his wife vanished and goes after her.

Androcles and the Lion

Androcles' Lion: A version of the Trope Namer appears in this book, under Androcles and the Lion. As usual, a slave named Androcles removes a thorn from a lion's paw, and later is spared by the same lion he saved.
Gladiator Games: The Roman Emperor throws Androcles and some criminals in a large arena, so that they are mauled by wild beasts. The people also attend the circus to enjoy the carnage.

Day Dreaming

Acting Out a Daydream: In Day Dreaming, while in his reverie, the protagonist imagines himself spurning a lover with his foot. In reality, he has simply kicked his tray of glassware into the ground, breaking everything.
Imagine Spot: This is the essence of the story Day Dreaming: a glass seller simply places his wares on sale, and begins to imagine a situation where he is rich and has servants on his beck and call.

Keep Cool

The Master Thief

Impossible Theft: The premise of The Master-Thief: William sees some robbers and becomes interested in becoming one. Some years later, he proclaims himself to be a "Master Thief", but a local lord sets tests to see his abilities: to steal the lord's horse in the stables, his bedsheet, the priest, and the horse again (while the lord is mounted on it).

The Unseen Bridegroom

Bedmate Reveal: In The Unseen Bridegroom, Anima disobeys her husband's request not to be seen and brings a candle to their bed. She finds that he is actually handsome, with a "strong and well-made body".
Beneath the Earth: In The Unseen Bridegroom, Anima finds a hole in the ground that leads to a vast country under the earth. Down there, she finds a palace where her mysterious husband dwells.
To Hell and Back: In The Unseen Bridegroom, Anima is tasked by her mother-in-law in reaching the Queen of the Nether-World, another of her husband's aunts, by herself.
The Voice: In The Unseen Bridegroom, Anima meets a mysterious person in the underground palace who does not wish to be seen, and only communicates his presence with their voice.

The Master-Maid

Amnesiac Lover: In The Master-Maid, after they escape the giant's lands, prince Edgar is kissed by his mother, despite the Master-Maid's warning, and forgets about his adventures.
Composite Character: In The Master-Maid, Jacobs named the horse that the giant rides on "Dapplegrim", who is actually the horse's name from a Norse fairy tale that has nothing to do with this tale.
Implausible Deniability: In The Master-Maid, the giant gives prince Edgar tasks that are impossible for him to do, but not for the giant's maid, who seems to possess magical powers. After each task is done, the giant questions Edgar if he got in contact with the maid, and the prince simply shrugs it off.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: In The Master-Maid, prince Edgar is kissed by his mother and forgets "all memory of the Master-Maid", who was the one that helped him to return to his home kingdom in the first place.

A Visitor from Paradise

Idiot Hero: The protagonist couple of A Visitor from Paradise. In the first part of the story, they are tricked by a tramp and lose their horse. In the second part of the tale, they know that there are robbers nearby, so they take the door to the house with them, so they robbers cannot get inside their house.
Kindhearted Simpleton: In A Visitor From Paradise, the female half of the couple is described as "good, but simple", and so is her second husband. They mean well and help a tramp with some provisions and a horse, despite falling for his tricks.
Mistaken for Undead: Played for humour. In A Visitor from Paradise, the naïve peasant couple is visited by a tramp, whom they mistake for a soul who has just come from "Paradise" (a misheard "Paris"). The tramp keeps the charade until he asks for some things he can take with him back to Heaven. The couple give him some provisions and lend him their horse. Later, after the male half of the couple says he will go looking for their horse, since they need it, the tramp hides the animal behind some bushes and tells the man he just saw a person on a horse fly back to Heaven.

Inside Again

John the True

A Friend in Need: This is the premise of John The True: the titular character risks life and limb to protect his sovereign and his bride from three perils, then takes the brunt of a petrifying curse after he reveals the reason for his strange actions. In return, the king and his bride sacrifice their children to bring John back.
Back from the Dead: At the end of John The True, John becomes a statue, but is restored to life by the sacrifice of his king's children. John, in gratitude, uses some of the blood of a dragon he injured in the royal chambers to bring the little princes back.
Blood Magic: The twin princes' blood restores John The True back to life from his petrified state and, in return, John uses the dragon's blood (which he injured in the king's bedchambers years ago) to revive the princes.
Not What It Looks Like: Played for Drama. In John The True, the king's servant, John, protects his master, the king, against the dangers predicted to take his life. The courtiers believe him mad, but the king trusts him wholeheartedly.

Johnnie and Grizzle

Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: In Johnnie and Grizzle, Jacobs softened the children's abandonment by having the father state that their situation is so dire, he plans to abandon there in the woods in hopes they are found by someone. Another option is for the children to die in the forest, since the father worries that, if he and his wife die, the siblings will be all alone.
Gingerbread House: In Johnnie and Grizzle. However, only the roof is made of gingerbread, the rest of the "building materials" are lollypops, butterscotch, chocolate cream and sugar candy.
Kill It with Fire: In Johnnie and Grizzle, Grizzle tricks the witch into checking the oven and shoves her in. Later, when the siblings are near the lake, they look behind them and find that the witch is still alive, having escaped the oven "by some means or other".
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Johnnie and Grizzle, Johnnie uses pebbles to mark the trail back home. His sister Grizzle accidentally reveals the trick to their parents. Thus, during the night, their father locks the doors so Johnnie does not exit the house to fetch some more.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: In Johnnie and Grizzle, the man-eating witch is described as having red eyes.
Related in the Adaptation: In Johnnie and Grizzle, Jacobs removed the stepmother from Grimm's tale and established her as the children's mother.
Sweets of Temptation: In Johnnie and Grizzle, the titular siblings are abandoned in the forest and get hungrier with time, until they sight the gingerbread house, unaware that there dwells a child-eating witch.

The Clever Lass

Double Meaning: In The Clever Lass, she gives an answer to the king's riddle, requesting him to "forgive the pheasant for the sake of the partridge". The use is not literal, as the king correctly deduces: the "pheasant" meant the servant (which ate some food he was not supposed to) and the "patridge" refers to the farmer's daughter.
Farmer's Daughter: The heroine of The Clever Lass is described as the daughter of a farmer. Different from other usages of the trope, she is quite wise, and draws the attention of the local king.
Riddle: Riddles feature prominently in The Clever Lass (and its variants). A particularly famous one is when the king asks the farmer's daughter to come meet him "clothed and unclothed, not walking nor riding, and with a gift that is not a gift".

Thumbkin

Getting Eaten Is Harmless: In Thumbkin, the protagonist is swallowed whole by two animals, and is rescued unscathed from their bellies.
Swallowed Whole: In Thumbkin, the little boy is so diminute he is swallowed whole by a cow and later by a wolf.

Snowwhite

Driven to Suicide: At the end of Snowwhite, the envious Queen consults with the mirror to see who is the fairest, and the mirror answers "Snowwhite". In a fit of fury, she throws herself out of a window.
Magic Mirror: In Snowwhite, the vain queen has her own mirror who answers her questions. Jacobs's text, however, does not refer to it as a "magic" one.
Poison Is Evil: In Snowwhite, the Queen uses a comb, a ribbon and an apple, all laced with poison.
World's Most Beautiful Woman: In Snowwhite, the Queen marries Snowwhite's father when the girl is still young. Whenever she asked the mirror the most beautiful of them all, it answered the Queen she was. When Snowwhite grows up, one day the mirror gives the Queen another answer: her step-daughter.

Wonder Child: In Thumbkin, a childless old woman sees a bowl of beans and wishes to have a child as big as a bean or as big as a thumb. As answer to her prayers, the beans become little boys; most of them drown, but one survives.
Would Hurt a Child: In John The True, the king's wife, after John sacrifices himself, has a dream where she learns the way to bring John back to life: by killing her own twin children and smearing John's statue with their blood. The queen and her husband agree to do it.

Literature / European Folk and Fairy Tales

Tropes featured in Joseph Jacobs's reconstructions:

Alternative Title(s): Europas Fairy Book

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Literature / European Folk and Fairy Tales

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Tropes featured in Joseph Jacobs's reconstructions:

Alternative Title(s): Europas Fairy Book

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