#mother holle

[adarkrainbow]

To conclude my series of posts about "Frau Holle" (honestly this character is so cool, why isn't there more of her alongside other "great archetypal fairytale witch-goddesses"? She's clearly equal to the likes of Baba Yaga), I will share some elements highlighted by Cyrille François in another article which focused on the brothers Grimm's edit of their fairytales... The article initially covers how the story of "Frau Holle" evolved from the Grimm's first collect/first edition to their final "product", the one we know today.

Because if you didn't know, yes the brothers Grimm collected faithfully all sorts of oral tales around them... But the fairytales we know today are edited versions of the text they collected. For example, when they collected several variations of a same fairytale, they tried to fuse them into one story (this is why the German "Little Red Riding Hood", or rather "Little Red Cap", has two wolves instead of one). They also were known to modify their tales to make them more "German" because their entire point was to collect and preserve purely German folklore. They notably removed all French elements from the fairytales - elements unavoidable since before them THE dominating continent of fairytales was the French one, but elements hated since the French were perceived as the enemies and invaders of Germany... This is why the first edition of the brothers Grimm fairytales contained German variations of purely French stories such as Puss in Boots, Blue-Beard or "The Orange Tree and the Bee", that the Grimms promptly removed upon identifying their French origin ; and this is also why in the first-edition version of several fairytales we can find terms of French origin ("Fee" for "fée", "fairy" or "Prinz" for "prince"), that the Grimms also promptly erased...

Here are some key points of the evolution of "Frau Holle", from the first edition to the last:

In the first edition, the good girl went to the well to fetch water. This made the story closer to its "ancestor" and French counterpart, Perrault's "Diamonds and Toads". By the second edition onward, the girl goes to the well to spin straw ; this was also made to highlight the presence of Frau Holle, which in German legends is a figure associated with spinsters and weaving. It also makes the story more cohesive.

Up until the 1837 version, the text is unclear and vague enough that a possibility is left open: the girl might have thrown herself into the well as an act of suicide, caused by despair. Of course, the Grimms couldn't have that - after all the heroine of a fairytale can't be rewarded for trying to kill herself - and so from 1840 onward it is explained that she jumps in the well to fetch back what fell at the bottom.

In the original version, there is no mention of anything between the moment the girl falls down the well and when she wakes up - later editions precise explicitely that she lost consciousness as she fell, to highlight how the transition went from one world to the next.

In later edition, the brothers Grimm decided to add a mention of the girl's courage and braveness when she accepts Frau Holle's other, as a way to highlight how spooky and threatening the character must look, and how counter-intuitive the choice to serve her is.

The brothers also added several details here and there for practical effect: for example they added that she removes the bread with a baker's shovel (before we didn't know how she removed it), or that she doesn't just pick the apples but also puts them neatly into a pile.

As usual, but it is no surprise to those who know the Grimms: just like in "Hansel and Gretel" or "Snow White", here the wicked stepmother used to be the girl's biological mother, similar to Perrault's "Diamonds and Toads". But the Grimms, due to their worship of the mother figure and the idealization of the family decided to turn the bad mother (such a horrible idea!) into a wicked stepmother (an outsider entering in the family to break it apart, now that's acceptable). [The text notably points out M. Tatar's chapter within her "The hard facts of the Grimm fairytales" called "From Nags to Witches: Stepmothers and other Ogres"]. The change from mother to stepmother also helps the Grimms "rationalize" the mother's favorotism, due to the bad sister being of her own blood.

Originally the character of the bad sister was more akin to the one of "The three little men in the forest", and her main crime was to answer in a bad and dishonest way to the various entities she met in the otherworld. The Grimms only decided later to highlight her main "crime" as sloth, by adding the element of her pricking her fingers to make it believe she spun thread until she bled, as her sister did.

Finally, the Grimms, still out of their desire to present family as some sort of fundamental and essentiel value, changed the passage where the girl wishes to return home. In the original text, it is just said that she grows sad living at Frau Holle's house, and thus demands to leave. In later editions the Grimms explicitely added that the reason for her melancholy was because she longed to return home and to her family: as such, they again point out that, in the moral system they developed, the faithfulness to the family, even if they treat you badly, is a virtue and a sign of goodness. (Again, we all know how fucked up this can be and how fucked up this entire moral ended up becoming in other centuries, but again, that was the Grimm's big thing... They were ALL about family, these two.)

[nordseehexe]

As a child my parents always read stories from this fairy tale book. It’s very fragile but I have kept it and one of the tales is about Mother Holle (Holda/Perchta) with beautiful, colorful drawings. So I decided to put it beside my christmas tree to honor Mother Holle during the wilde Jagd (wild hunt).

[lovelyllamasblog]

Maple Spinner

Parent's Story: Mother Holle (Frau Holle)

Powerful Qualities: Creative, Integrous, Optimistic

Roommate: Mildred Goldstraw

Secret Heart’s Desire: I would love to open my own bakery one day. I love baking bread and other sweets.

My “Magic” Touch: I can always tell when something is ready to be taken out of an oven. I know it doesn’t sound very cool, but it has saved a few loaves from being overbaked.

Storybook Romance Status: Marcel Prince is really sweet, but Ian Lear,… OH! You know what! Nevermind! It’s not important!

“Oh Curses!” Moment: I tend to say “Yes” even when I should “No.” I can’t help it! When someone asks for help, I have to help them!

Favorite Subject: Cooking Class-ic. I love learning new recipes!

Least Favorite Subject: Dance Class-ic. I have two left feet.

Best Friends Forever After: My sister Birch, Alanna Dale, Ivy Eden, and Ginger Breadhouse.

[fernthewhimsical]

Mood board for the Goddess Holle or Holda. She is a deity of hearth and home, of spinning, magic, snow, and winter. She is also the leader of the Wild Hunt and the Queen of witches and alves.

Sources: [X] [X] [X] [X] [X] [X] [X]

[princess-ibri]

What would be the backstory of Shuriki from Elena of Avalor, where did she come from, and why was she so intent on conquering Avalor

Ok so here's what I've come up with:

Her real name is Fran, and years ago in the Northern Isles she and her twin sister Nan were taken in as maids a strange old woman called Frau Holle, who turned out to be a sorceress. She blessed Nan for her industry and kindess but cursed Fran for her laziness and selfishness. Nan creates diamonds and pearls anytime she sings and eventually marries a king, while Fran has toads and snakes fall out of her mouth anytime she speaks and is understandablely shunned.

However she doesn't give into her curse and seeks out a way to change her fate, eventually coming to the attention of Frau Holle's twin sister Frau Trude, who's as wicked as her sister is good. Frau Trude trains the angry young girl in magic, breaking the toad spell, and helps her to spread chaos within her sister’s kingdom.

Eventually she is overcome by the forces of good, and Nan, now Queen, in mercy banishes her sister from the Northern Isles. Before she goes though Fran seeks to divine what new opportunities for power lie within her reach, and has Frau Trude divine her future.

The vision is hazy and Fran doesn't have time to hear all of it before th soldiers come to drive her out, but the old witch forsees that she will one day rule over a kingdom across the sea called Avalor, and will hold the powerful "Scepter of the Night" at one point.

Fran takes this as gospel and determines to build up her power again to accomplish this Destiny. And so she does.

Two little side things, part of the reason she bans music is that it reminds her of her sister's golden singing gift (and the cruel songs people would sing about her speaking toads).

And her chosen name "Shuriki" is a mispelled/misheard version of the old Maruvian word "Chiriqui" which means Valley of the Night, as she wanted a name that would point to her destiny to weild the Scepter of Night, and she didnt have enough respect for the culture of the land she took over to spell or pronounce it correctly

[comparativetarot]

The Hermit. Art by Nara Lesser, from Neurotic Owl’s Faerytale Tarot.

I had one false start before I realized the character would work better on a different card (vague vague super vague), but the only issue when I picked this character/trope/repeating theme is that she almost never gets a name.  Mother Holle in Grimm’s fairytales is one version, but a version that reads less hermit-y to me, so she’ll likely turn up elsewhere – maybe in the lesser arcana.  But in tons of different stories, the hero or heroine runs into a fairy in disguise.

Let’s go with a specific example that you’re likely to know – a cruel stepmother sends her sweet, hard-working stepdaughter out into the woods, where the girl meets an old woman staggering along under a huge bundle of sticks, or begging for food, or trying to draw water from a well.  The girl obviously helps her immediately, and she’s rewarded; when she speaks, pearls and diamonds drop from her lips.  (Which honestly sounds terrible to me but again, fairytale rewards are what they are and you just have to go with them.)  When the girl gets home with her fabulous new source of wealth, the stepmother immediately sends her lazy, bitchy daughter out to get rewarded the same way.  The girl is rude and dismissive to the secret fairy, so she comes home spitting out frogs and snakes instead of gems.  This, granted, seems worse, even though I’m generally pro-frog and snake and find them pretty cute.  Not in the mouth, though, please.

So that’s the basic idea -she wanders the wilderness testing travelers for virtue and rewarding or punishing accordingly.  

[rayalltheway]

Everyone needs a friend. Even Death himself.

Mother Earth/Mother Holle (OC)

And as one name suggests yes she is me making an SCU interpretation of the fairly tale/mythological figure Frau Holle cuz even though I couldn’t really find a concrete version of Mother Nature in fairy tales(I could be wrong though), she seems pretty close. I’m condensing the info I found out about her here but she’s given connections with nature, seasons(particularly winter), the cycle of life, agriculture, fertility AND death etc generally a nurturing yet also mysterious ancient figure. Seems like if anyone could be a counterpart to SCU Death it’d be a version of her. Not to mention she’s also a psychopomp

And I made her a sheep because. Wolf and sheep. Why the heck not right.

So yeah cool old sheep nature witch lady with a love of children, weaving, the snowfall and abusing her sole privilege of getting to make fun of Death to his face.

While she is pretty ancient herself she’s actually more mortal than Death is (She ages, can get hurt, etc). She will die one day - perhaps one of the last lives that Death claims, and they both know it. But old friends take care of each other until the end, don’t they?

[angeloftheodd]

Hildegard meeting The Rabbit 🐇🌸

Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics (1989) 🧚‍♀️📖🏰

Episode: Mother Holle ❄️🤍

[traumendesmadchen]

Now that our visual novel Chronotopia: Second Skin has been released, we’re starting an event called ✨Fairytale Friday✨. Every Friday, we’ll discuss a tale from the game’s archives! 😃

❄️Isn’t winter the perfect time to talk about Old Mother Frost?❄️

A wicked stepmother favors her own daughter and mistreats her stepdaughter. One day, the poor girl drops her spinning tool in the well and jumps after it to retrieve it 😱. Instead of just dying, she arrives in a magical place where she meets the titular character 🧙‍♀️.

Old Mother Frost makes the girl work for her & showers her with gold as a reward for her diligence 👑🚿. When she gets back home, the stepmother immediately gets jealous of her good fortune and convinces her own daughter to go into the well 😰.

But the biological daughter is lazy and botches the job, angering Old Mother Frost who sends her back home. This time she’s showered with tar...possibly for all her life 😬.

I like how this tale was adapted in Sound Horizon’s Märchen (a great album BTW).

💜You can buy Chronotopia on Steam💜

[szexmadrelinda]

Její matka moji matku nenávidí.Ta žena neustále hlídá náš dům, aby ji můj přítel neošukal.

[adarkrainbow]

Nobody seems to care about poor Frau Holle... But it won't stop me from posting about her :p I started exploring an article about the fairytale and the character here ; there's another set of information within the article I want to share with you. It is about the various analysises that can be performed about the heroine-girl's action.

If you don't recall, when the girl falls down the well into the world of Frau Holle, she encounters a talking oven which asks her to remove its bread before it will burn, and then a talking apple-tree which asks her to pick its ripe apples before they will rot. It is concluded by the girl encountering Frau Holle who tasks her with keeping up the house clan and shaking the pillows out of the window to cause the snow to form.

As the article points out, this entire passage is a "formation" passage, an "initiation" journey. The girl falls down the well into a mysterious land of abundance, eternal summer and talking inanimate objects: this is a traditional "entrance to the Otherworld" story. But the fall down the well also has a dual symbolism. The most famous one, very often reused, is the symbolism of death: falling down the well usually kills a person, it is also a descent into the underground, the original text of the Grimm implied that the fall might have been a form of suicide (more about this later), wells are traditionally associated with ghosts, and finally Frau Holle herself and her house have been analyzed as symbols of death. But that's just one reading - the other, closely associated to the first since remember Death and Sleep are twins, proposes to read the journey to Frau Holle as a dream. Falling down the well could represent someone literaly "falling asleep", or falling into the sleep ; especially since the bed is such a strong focus in this magical place where seasons are mixed and the up and down don't mean anything anymore. The return to the world of the humans would then mean the girl "waking up".

But what is even more interesting is to look at the specific tasks the girl undergoes. Yes, of course, we can just look at this as just "Oh it's the typical trope of the girl helping poor people in need"... But there's more to that.

The most obvious and highlighted symbolism of those tasks is what the article calls a "social moral". By performing these tasks, the girl isn't just helping random things in need: she is obeying to figures of authority giving her orders, she acts as an assistant and a servant, and thus "learns her place" within the world. This is especially obvious when you consider that the tasks the girl performs are... domestic chores. Not just any domestic chores: they are the jobs typically devoluted to girls and women in the rigidly-gendered society of the 19th century. The girl learns what all "good girls" must learn: taking care of the bread in the oven, picking up the apples in the orchard, cleaning the house, preparing the beds. Cleaning and cooking. This symbolism was probably insisted by the brothers Grimm themselves since we know they purposefully modified their fairytales so that they would be more "fit" for the education of young people...

But this is just one reading and one level of symbolism of the fairytale. If fairytales only meant one thing, they wouldn't be fairytales - and there's always deeper meaning beyond the obvious ones. In the case of Frau Holle, the article takes back ideas developed by Euge Drewermann: if we decide to look at the heroine's actions as made out of altruism rather than obediance, we fall back onto the traditional trope "the good hero helps those in need"... But we can dig deeper than that.

The girl isn't just helping people or performing social tasks... The girl answers necessities. She answers to pressing need linked to the way the world works. She removes the bread, because if the bread is not removed the fire will burn it - there is a pressing need to avoid that. The apples are to be picked because they are ripe and it is time: they are under threat of rotting away. And the pillows need to be shaken because snow needs to fall... There is a "cosmic need" at work here, tied to the very elements (fire, snow) and to a race against a force of nature or flow of time that cannot be stopped (the apples that will rot for example). As such Drewermann decided to highlight an opposition in the tale between Frau Holle and the wicked stepmother. Frau Holle is in this dichotomy, "Mother Nature" and the stepmother a "Mother Society": because the stepmother embodies by her cruelty and favoritism all the forms of unbalance, injustice and problems caused by the social life, and by a human society where greed, selfishness and personal gain rule - this is the bad "Mother Society". Frau Holle meanwhile is the "Mother Nature", of the natural world, as a goddess of the seasons, but as such she also embodies as a form of balance and harmony: as a spirit of cycles and elements, she also represents a form of cosmic justice and natural order, opposed to the disorder of a human society. As such, the heroine's kindness and altruism is actually part of a greater system where humanity is in cohesion with nature and the world around it - the girl answers to the cosmic and biological order, and is thus rewarded by it. We can almost go into a philosophical reading of the tale which teaches us that we will be rewarded if we simply approach the world under a benevolent angle and with an accepting mindset, and if we do our best to serve and help the universe around us. We might become submit to the whims and needs of other inhuman powers beyond our own consideration (such as a talking oven and a talking tree), but by doing so we actually not only get rewarded - we become able to literaly "go beyond despair", the same way the girl went beyond the well (symbol of her suffering and her family's cruelty) into the peaceful and heavenly realm of Frau Holle where everything is in balance and perfect.

This reading could almost be read as a form of ecology before its time - and as such, many modern retellings of the fairytale insist on this "ecological" aspect of the legend, of how the story of Frau Holle can be read not just as a girl learning to be a girl in a patriarchal society, but as someone learning how to respect and serve nature, and an illustration of the self-destruction that will be caused by those who disrespect or neglect nature and its needs.

[ibrithir-was-here]

Some of my fav things I've made this Christmas :]

Paper old timey citrus garlands

This little elf cap

Little Mother Holle doll to spread snowflakes around

This wreath and centerpeice using pine branches and cones from our tree out back

And finally this faux fire place!

(Now I have to collapse and get energy to do presents xD)

[lovelyllamasblog]

Birch Spinner

Parent's Story: Mother Holle (Frau Holle)

Powerful Qualities: Assertive, Confident, Intelligent

Roommate: Petra Pan

Secret Heart’s Desire: I love studying animals! Well, more like frogs, toads, and insects. I know not everyone likes them, but Hopper shares my interest.

My “Magic” Touch: I know most princesses can understand animals, but I can talk to frogs, toads, and bugs! I think it’s very unique.

Storybook Romance Status: Daring Charming, duh! He’s just the most handsome boy at Ever After! Well, Hopper’s cute too I guess.

“Oh Curses!” Moment: Everyone thinks I’m spoiled just because of how my story goes! I’m just assertive.

Favorite Subject: Geografairy. I love learning all about Ever After’s different environments and the animals that live there!

Least Favorite Subject: Swamp Swimming! I may like a day at the lake as much as the next girl, but in a swamp? No thank you!

Best Friends Forever After: Of course my sister, Maple, my roommate Petra Pan, and also Alanna Dale, Lily Bo Peep, and Hopper Croakington.

Pet: My pet toad, Hopscotch.

[adarkrainbow]

Love this!

Nachdem @adarkrainbow seine Posts über Frau Holle geschrieben hat, dachte ich mal, auch hier dieses Bild von ihr zu posten. Das ist von vor zwei Jahren, als ich zum ersten Mal Dario Argentos „Suspiria“ und „Drei Mütter Trilogie“ geschaut habe. Frau Holles Erscheinungsbild hier ist von Heinrich Pröhles „Harzsagen“ über den Sie-Dich-Im in St. Andreasberg, wo sie eher als Spukgestalt gekannnt war. Die Glocke erscheint in manchen Sagen um den Frau Holle Teich.

After @adarkrainbow‘s series of posts on Frau Holle, I thought to post this old piece here! This is from two years ago, when I was inspired by watching Dario Argento‘s „Suspiria“ and his „Three mothers trilogy“. Frau Holle‘s appearance here is based on Heinrich Pröhle‘s „Harzsagen“ around mount Sieh-Dich-Im (Look-Behind) in st. Andreasberg, where she was better known as a boogeyman. The bell appears in some legends about the Frau Holle Lake on the Meißner.

Dopo la serie di post da parte di @adarkrainbow su Madama Holle, ho pensato di postare anche qui questo vecchio disegno di lei. Questo è di sue anni fa, quando ho visto per la prima volta “Suspiria” e la trilogia delle “tre madri” di Dario Argento. Il suo aspetto qui è ispirato alle “harzsagen” di Heinrich Pröhle, riguardo al monte Sieh-Dich-Im, a st. Andreasberg, dove era vista come uno spauracchio per bambini. La sua campana appare in alcune leggende sullo stagno di Madama Holle sul Meißner.

[comparativetarot]

Knight of Pentacles. Art by Nara Lesser, from Neurotic Owl’s Faerytale Tarot.

This one is a really good answer to when I’m all ‘can’t art, not inspired’ because I had no strong feeling going in to this card and dicked around a ton with every part of it and now I really really dig it.

I recapped Mother Holle back on The World, so no need to do that again, I think.  For a card about dogged perseverance and hard work the virtuous daughter who finds a temporary loving home with Mother Holle and eventual great rewards by, basically, volunteering to do helpful chores seems ideal.