The Golden Goose is about a kind but not very clever young man who one day shares his food with a hungry old man. The old man tells him where to find a goose that has feathers of gold. The goose has a strange power. Those who touch it, and any who touch them, cannot remove their hands. A king, who has a daughter that has never laughed, has promised that she will marry the first man to make do so. The man and goose, with seven people running behind stuck fast to them, look silly enough to do this.
Our source for the story was Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm, translated by British writer Margaret Hunt. The book, which was first published in 1884, contains all 200 Grimm folktales plus 10 legends. This is tale No. 64. The Grimms’ listed their source as Gretchen Wilde from Kassel (Wilhelm’s future sister-in-law) in 1808.
The ending to The Golden Goose is an example of how folktales can change over time. In Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book version, published in 1890, three additional tasks are required for Dummling to be able to marry the princess. Similar endings occur in a number of other folktales first published around the same time. It is unclear whether these came from a different version of the folktale, or were added to make the story more appealing for children.
Original Text / PDF (1,088 words)