A news story and some fairy stories

Last week my eye was caught by a newspaper article about a collection of 500 previously unknown fairy tales discovered in a German archive. The story was picked up in various countries and on Radio 4's Today Programme, so I was a bit surprised not to find any mention of it in the German press. It turned out that the discovery was actually made a couple of years ago and the tales were published in Germany in 2010; it was the prospect of an imminent English translation which had sparked media interest here.

Still, it was news to me and I'd never heard of the man who originally collected these tales in the 19th century, but Franz Xaver von Schönwerth deserves to be better known. No less an authority than Jacob Grimm praised for the "care, richness and gentle intuition" of Schönwerth's folklore collecting. 

Schönwerth did publish some of the material he collected in his own lifetime: Aus der Oberpfalz: Sitten und Sagen [BL shelfmark 12431.d.18], which appeared in three volumes between 1857 and 1859, is a collection of the dialects and folklore of his native region, the Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz) in Bavaria.

Schönwerth's introduction speaks of a "return of the German spirit", reflecting the rising sense of nationalism in 19th-century Europe (a factor which motivated many folklore collectors of the time). But his real interest is not so much national as local, and when he dedicates the book to "My homeland", he means not Germany but the Upper Palatinate, which he describes as "forgotten … in a corner near the Bohemian forests … as dear to all its children as green Erin is to the Irishman," – and from the evidence of Schönwerth’s work, as rich in folklore.

The three volumes are divided into sections covering the stages of human life, the social world of the house, farm and village, and the natural and supernatural worlds. Open it at any page and you will find something to intrigue or amuse. Some random examples give an idea of the range of stories and superstitions included:

• The people of Neuenhammer believed that eating bilberries on St James's Day (25 July) would prevent stomach aches for the rest of the year.
• No farmer in Tännesberg would remove a calf from its mother on a Thursday.
• In a meadow in Waldthurn you can see twelve ghosts mowing at midnight.

Finally, since this Sunday is Mother's Day in Britain (though not in Germany), a tale Schönwerth collected from Fronau, about the strength of maternal love: A pregnant woman was could not rid herself of the belief that she was bound to kill her child when it was born. She kept confessing these thoughts to the priest, but they would not go away. So the priest told her that she could kill the child as long as she kissed it first. As soon as the baby was born she kissed it as the priest commanded. This kiss awakened the mother’s love, and from then on the child was the dearest thing in the world to her.

SR