Told to the Brothers Grimm by Marie Hassenpflug, ‘Der Räuberbräutigam’ is closely related to another tale from Kinder‐ und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), ‘Fitchers Vogel’ (‘Fitcher's Bird’), as well as to Perrault's ‘Barbe bleue’ (‘Bluebeard’). In addition, the 1812 volume of the first edition of the Grimms' tales included ‘Das Mordschloss’ (‘The Castle of Murder’, omitted in subsequent editions), which reads as an amalgam of ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ and ‘Fitcher's Bird’.
In the version of ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ which appears in Children's and Household Tales, a rich but slightly unnerving suitor becomes engaged to a miller's daughter at her father's behest. Invited to the forest home of her husband‐to‐be, the girl warily marks her tracks with peas and lentils. On arriving at the forbidding, seemingly deserted house she is warned by a caged bird that she should turn back, as the house belongs to murderers. In the cellar she comes across an old woman who confirms the bird's warning: the house is a cannibals' den, and the young girl is to be their victim. Hidden behind a barrel, she then watches as the murderous crew, including her future husband, return home with their latest catch. As they chop her up, a finger flies into the young heroine's lap. However, having had their drinks spiked by the old woman, the murderers are soon asleep, and the girl is able to escape.
At the wedding feast a round of storytelling is proposed. Asked by her bridegroom to contribute, the young girl proceeds to recount a dream, which turns out to be the tale of her trip to the murderers' den. Reaching the point in the story at which the chopped finger landed in her lap, she miraculously produces the real thing. The robber and his gang are duly arrested.
A particularly gruesome tale, ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ is also relatively lacking in fairy‐tale magic (as is ‘Bluebeard’), which is the reason why, in terms of tale type, it has been categorized as a novella. Variants have been recorded throughout Europe, notably the witty and poetic English tale, ‘Mr Fox’, in which the eponymous villain is merely a murderer rather than a cannibal, acting alone, and which includes the notable refrains ‘Be bold, be bold, but not too bold’, and ‘It is not so, nor it was not so’.
The Grimms' tale has served as the source for a novel by Eudora Welty (The Robber Bridegroom, 1942). More recently, the elements it shares with ‘Bluebeard’—including dismembered female victims and a cunning female heroine—have been explored in fiction by Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood, the latter of whom has given ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ a late 20th‐century twist in the form of her novel The Robber Bride (1993).
— Stephen Benson
