Commentary: Maiden of Brakel
A short,simple tale collected by the von Haxthausen family, The Maiden of Brakel gives us a feisty heroine who not only knows what she wants, but is willing to do something to get it. When she is put down, by a voice she thinks is the Virgin Mary no less, the maiden is not afraid to stand up and claim her place.
The patron saint of Brakel, Saint Anne is, in Christian tradition, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Gospel tells us that she and her husband, Joachim, were childless for many years when, one day, an angel appeared and informed the couple that they would soon conceive—and so Mary[1] was born. Unsurprisingly, Saint Anne is also the patron saint of women in labour, pregnant women, housewives, mothers, and childless women[2].
There are several ways to depict Saint Anne, but one of the most recognisable images is of her holding Mary, who in turn holds Christ. The triple depiction, usually reserved for persons of the same gender, is particularly interesting.
Now, let us return to the story: with her knowledge of Christianity, the maiden of Brakel makes a pilgrimage to ask help from Saint Anne, a woman whom she knows has been through the marriage, sex, and childbirth, all of which the maiden clearly wants.
"Oh, holy Saint Anne!
Help me soon to a man.
Thou know'st him right well,
By Suttmer gate does he dwell,
His hair it is golden,
Thou know'st him right well."
The tone is saucy, almost knowing; in describing the man she wants to the Saint, the maiden also describes what she is attracted to; in asking for help to a man, we see the maiden presenting herself as ready to move on to the next stage of her life.
The clerk, however, was standing behind the altar and heard that, so he cried in a very gruff voice, "Thou shalt not have him! Thou shalt not have him!"
I have also read of the clerk’s voice being high-pitched and shrill, which is perhaps more fitting. The gruffness of the voice described here gives it a masculine tone which, although appropriate from the clerk, does not fit with the idea of the cry coming from the child Mary. The maiden of Brakel is no fool—if the voice were recgonisably male, she would know it was not from a supernatural source.
Why is this cry important? Hearing the maiden so clearly state her desire is too much for the clerk, and in shouting out thusly he is deriding her sexuality, her ability to raise herself out of poverty[3], and her self-worth. The maiden, however, is prepared to ---, returning, “Fiddle de dee, conceited thing, hold your tongue, and let your mother speak!"
Sometimes “fiddle de dee” is replaced with “tra la la”, but this is most likely a regional and/or translation issue. But the important thing to note here is the maiden’s response—unlike the more traditional female protagonists, the maiden of Brakel is not afraid of sex, not afraid of change, not afraid of her consciousness. She is no Sleeping Beauty, snoozing through sex and childbirth, only to awake to motherhood and infants’ suckling, missing the change, being thrust into a new life. No, the maiden of Brakel is actively seeking her destiny.
Finally: although the Maiden of Brakel was first published in a fairy tale anthology, it was later published as a legend in the aptly named German Legends. What’s the difference? The OED defines a legend as “a traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but unauthenticated[4]”, while Wikipedia suggests that a legend is “a meme that propagates through a culture[5]”. In contrast, a fairy tale is “a children's story about magical and imaginary beings and lands[6]” while Katharine Briggs has defined fairy tales as “narratives containing or hinging upon supernatural happenings[7]”. Re-reading the Maiden of Brakel, it becomes immediately apparent that the story is a cleaner fit in the first category than the second, and, as Valerie Paradiz points out, we can almost imagine the story—an easily believable story, moreover—eliciting “rebellious peals of laughter from young women of the age who saw the dark humour of it”.
Footnotes:
[1]In the mid seventeenth century, the Church rejected the belief that Anne was married three times, and had a daughter, Mary, by each husband.
[2] Paradiz, p. 135
[3] Paradiz, p. 136
[4] Oxford English Dictionary, p. 517
[5] Wikipedia Entry: Legend, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend
[6] Oxford English Dictionary, p. 321
[7] Briggs, p. 1
[8] Paradiz, p. 136
References:
The Patron Saints Index, http://saints.sqpn.com/sainta03.htm
Paradiz, Valerie, Clever Maids: The Secret History of The Grimm Fairy Tales, Basic Books, 2005.
Wikipedia Entry: Legend, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend
Briggs, Katherine. A Dictionary of British Folk-tales in the English Language, Indiana University Press, 1970.