It’s been awhile since I’ve posted so here’s a reminder: I’ve been going through the Grimm’s 1812 volume of fairytales, one after the other for a few years. I’ll finish eventually, I promise.
[CW: murder, dismemberment]
Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index type 955: The Robber Bridegroom. This one is related to type 312: Bluebeard and type 311: How the Devil Married Three Sisters and Fitcher’s Bird.
Hello, friends, and welcome to another episode of “Unwilling Fairytale Brides Facing Certain Death with Grace and Honor.”
In the original 1812 Grimm story, a princess has been promised to a prince (business as usual, am I right?) and he keeps harassing her about visiting him at his home. She does not want to visit him at his home, ostensibly because she would have to pass through a rather large forest to get there which is a great excuse because, can you blame her for not wanting to visit him?
However, eventually, she feels that she has run out of excuses and so she sets off. The prince has helpfully tied ribbons to trees as a way to guide her through this ridiculous forest, which takes an entire day to traverse. She finds a large house at the end of this journey and an old woman waiting outside the door.
When the princess inquires about her bridegroom, the old woman pretty much lays it all on the line:
“It’s good, my child, that you have come now,” responded the woman, “because the prince is not at home. Before your arrival I had to fetch water and pour it into a large kettle. They want to kill you, and afterward they’ll cook and eat you.”
So, yea, it seems that the princess was right to be nervous about visiting the prince at his home, though I’m guessing cannibalism hadn’t been her primary concern.
This random old woman, who’s presence is never explained but who is totally familiar with the prince’s cannibalistic activities, takes pity on the princess due to her youth and beauty and hides her behind a barrel in the cellar. Unfortunately, the old woman is the next to be dragged down the stairs and killed, all while the princess hides. The robbers strip the rings from the old woman’s fingers but one won’t come off so they just chop off her finger. But, as is the way in fairy tales, the dismembered finger goes flying through the air, ring and all, and lands in the lap of the hiding princess.
The prince and his merry band of people-eaters conduct a half-hearted search for the ring and then decide to take a nap and look for it again in the morning. This gives the princess the opportunity to sneak out and follow the ribbons all the way back home. Once back home, she tells her father, the king, what happened. He, in turn, calls up a regiment to surround the castle in anticipation of the prince, who, of course, shows up, looking for his missing betrothed.
She, however, was not having any of his shit. She proceeds to tell him that she had a weird dream and then she describes everything that she experienced at his home and ends this story with…
So one of the robbers grabbed a hatchet and chopped off the finger, which flew into the air and fell behind the barrel right into my lap, and here is the finger!”
She then shoves the finger into his face, at which point he attempts to flee by going out the window but he, and his men, are immediately captured and, well, you can probably guess what happened next…
Now, the story changed considerably between this first version and the one that was released in later editions. The princess became a miller’s daughter and the bridegroom is no longer a prince but simply a rich suitor. In that version, while the miller’s daughter is hiding behind the barrel the cannibal robbers bring another young woman downstairs and kill her, all while the old woman stands by. We get the flying finger again, and then the old woman drugs the robbers’ wine and flees with the miller’s daughter.
They reach her home, the robber shows up to wed her, and that’s when she tells her story and shows him the finger, at which point he and his band are sentenced to death by the courts.
So, what’s the lesson here? How are we going to unpack this? Well, this is one of those rare stories where the woman who exists purely as a commodity is actually allowed some agency, meager as it may be. She was expected to marry this man, and bullied into going to his home even before they were married, with no chaperone in attendance. But still, when her life was on the actual line, she was able to bring him down and stop him from luring other young women into his corpse cottage.
And maybe that’s the lesson. Much like Little Red Riding Hood is basically a warning to young women to not let themselves be seduced by sexy wolf-dudes, maybe this story is supposed to teach young women to not go into a man’s home, alone, even if they have kindly old women working for them, especially since that old woman could be murdered herself for trying to shield the heroine.
Or maybe it’s really just a story about a dude who likes to kill women. I mean, in either version of the story another woman dies in exchange for the heroine’s life. But the heroine uses that violent reprieve to bring the robber bridegroom to justice. Of course, we don’t know what happened to the heroine after the story ended but at least for a little bit she was a brave young woman who thwarted a violent man and had a glorious Final Girl moment.
Works Cited:
Grimm, Jacob, et al. The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition. Translated by Jack Zipes, Princeton University Press, 2016.
“Multilingual Folk Tale Database.” MFTD, http://www.mftd.org/index.php?action=home. Accessed 16 Sept. 2025.
Mummert, Hannah. “Libguides: US IB English-Grimms’ Tales for Young and Old: The Complete Stories: Folklore Studies Indexes.” Folklore Studies Indexes – US IB English-Grimms’ Tales for Young and Old: The Complete Stories – LibGuides at American School of Madrid, 2020, asmadrid.libguides.com/c.php?g=684010&p=4883954.
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