The Juniper-Tree

Long ago a rich man and his kind wife longed for a child. In the courtyard stood a juniper-tree. One winter day, peeling apples beneath it, the wife cut her finger; blood fell on the snow. “Ah,” she sighed, “if only I had a child as red as blood and as white as snow!” Her heart lightened as if the wish were already granted.

Month by month the seasons turned—snow gone, earth green, woods in bud, then the green branches thickly intertwined, and blossoms falling. She stood again under the juniper; its sweet scent so filled her that her heart leaped and she sank to her knees. When the berries ripened she ate of them eagerly, then grew sad and ill. Weeping, she told her husband, “If I die, bury me under the juniper-tree.” Comfort returned, and before another month ended she bore a boy white as snow and red as blood. Her joy was so great that she died. The husband buried her beneath the juniper and mourned; in time he married again.

The second wife bore a daughter. The first wife’s son—red as blood, white as snow—stood, she feared, between her child and the inheritance. Spite took root more and more. She drove the boy from place to place with cuffings until the poor child went about in dread from the time he left school to the time he went back.

One day little Marleen ran to the store-room asking for an apple. Her mother gave her a fine one from a chest with a heavy lid and iron lock. “May brother have one too?” the girl asked. Angered, the woman said he might when he came from school—then saw him approaching. An evil urge seized her. She snatched the apple back, tossed it into the chest, and shut the lid. When the boy entered she spoke softly. “My son, will you have an apple?” Yet her look was wicked. “Mother,” he said, “how dreadful you look! Yes, give me an apple.” “Come,” she said, lifting the lid, “take one yourself.” As he bent over, crash—the lid fell and struck off his head.

Terror followed the deed. She fetched a white handkerchief, set the head on the shoulders again, bound it so nothing showed, sat him by the door with the apple in his hand, and went to stir a pot of boiling water.

Marleen came. “Mother, brother sits by the door with an apple and looks so pale. When I asked for it he did not answer, and that frightened me.” “Go again,” said the mother, “and if he still says nothing, box his ear.” Marleen asked once more; silence. She boxed his ear—and the head rolled off. Screaming, she ran back. “I have knocked off brother’s head!” She wept without end. “What have you done!” cried the mother. “But no one must know. What is done cannot be undone; we will make him into puddings.” She cut up the boy, made puddings, and set them in the pot. Marleen stood by weeping; her tears fell in, so there was no need of salt.

The father came home to dinner. “Where is my son?” Twice he asked. The wife set a great dish of black pudding before him and said the boy had gone to his mother’s great-uncle in the country for some weeks and was well cared for. The father was unhappy that the child had not said goodbye, yet he ate on, tossing bones under the table, and told Marleen not to weep—brother would soon return.

Marleen took her best silk handkerchief, gathered every bone from under the table, and carried them, still weeping, to the green grass beneath the juniper. The moment she laid them there, sadness left her. The tree began to move—branches waving apart and together as if clapping for joy. Mist wrapped it, fire burned within, and from the fire flew a magnificent bird that rose singing into the air. When it vanished, the juniper stood as before; handkerchief and bones were gone. Marleen went in lighthearted and ate cheerfully.

The bird alighted on a goldsmith’s roof and sang:

My mother killed her little son;
My father grieved when I was gone;
My sister loved me best of all;
She laid her kerchief over me,
And took my bones that they might lie
Underneath the juniper-tree.
Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!

The goldsmith was making a gold chain. The song so delighted him that he ran out, losing a slipper on the threshold, and stood in the street with one slipper, one sock, apron still on, chain and pincers in hand, staring up while the sun shone. “Bird,” he cried, “how beautifully you sing! Sing that again.” “Nay,” said the bird, “I do not sing twice for nothing. Give me that gold chain.” “Here, take it—only sing again.” The bird took the chain in its right claw, settled before him, and sang the song once more, then flew away.

Next it settled on a shoemaker’s roof and sang the same verses. The shoemaker rushed out in his shirt-sleeves, hand over his eyes against the sun, called his wife, children, and apprentices; all gazed at the splendid bird—red and green feathers, neck like burnished gold, eyes like stars. “Sing again,” said the shoemaker. “Not twice for nothing,” answered the bird. “Wife,” said the shoemaker, “fetch the red shoes from the garret shelf.” She brought them; the bird took the shoes in its left claw, sang again from the roof, and flew on—chain in the right claw, shoes in the left.

It came to a mill that went click-clack. Twenty miller’s men were hewing a stone—hick-hack—while the mill clicked. The bird settled on a lime-tree and began the song. Line by line the men stopped work until the last looked up. “What a beautiful song! Sing it again!” “Not twice for nothing; give me that millstone.” “If it were mine alone,” said one. “Yes, yes,” cried the others, “if he will sing again, he may have it.” All twenty lifted the stone with a beam; the bird put its head through the hole, wore the stone like a collar, sang the verses once more from the tree, then flew toward its father’s house with chain, shoes, and millstone.

Father, stepmother, and Marleen were at dinner. “How lighthearted I feel,” said the father. “I feel uneasy, as if a storm were coming,” said the wife. Marleen sat weeping. The bird settled on the roof. “How beautifully the sun shines—as if I were about to meet an old friend,” said the man. “Distress fills me; my teeth chatter; I feel fire in my veins,” said the wife, tearing open her dress. Marleen’s plate grew wet with tears.

The bird flew to the juniper and sang. The mother shut eyes and ears, yet roaring filled her hearing and lightning flashed in her sight. “Look at that magnificent bird,” said the husband, “and the warm sun, and the scent of spice!” Marleen sobbed with her head on her knees. “I must go out and see it nearer,” said the man. “Do not go!” cried the wife. “I feel as if the house were in flames!” He went out all the same. When the song ended, the bird let the gold chain fall exactly round his neck. He came in delighted. “See what a splendid bird! It has given me this chain!” The wife collapsed; her cap fell from her head.

The bird sang again. “Ah me,” cried the wife, “if I were a thousand feet under the earth, that I might not hear that song!” And she fell as if dead. “Well,” said Marleen, “I will go out too and see if the bird will give me anything.” She went; the bird threw down the red shoes. She put them on, danced, and felt her misery gone. “That is indeed a splendid bird,” she said.

The wife sprang up, hair standing out like flames. “Then I will go out too, and see if it will lighten my misery. I feel as if the world were ending.” As she crossed the threshold, crash!—the bird flung the millstone on her head and crushed her to death. Father and Marleen ran out; they saw only mist, flame, and fire. When that passed, there stood the little brother. He took father and Marleen by the hand; the three rejoiced, went inside, and sat down to their dinner together.

Where this story comes from

“The Juniper-Tree” is one of the darkest tales the Brothers Grimm printed, and it is German, not Indian. In Margaret Hunt’s 1884 translation it is number 47, under its Low German title Von dem Machandelboom. The English text used here is the Project Gutenberg version drawn from Taylor and Edwardes.

The Grimms’ note says the painter Runge wrote it down from oral tradition. A version from the Pfalz, sent to them by Mone, has the sister lift the lid of the boiling pot and see her brother’s hand reach out to her; others say she threaded the bones and hung them in the loft.

This condensed retelling preserves the source edition’s child murder, cannibalism and fatal revenge. Its song describes the father’s grief, although the prose also shows him unknowingly eating his son; the difference is already present in the linked English edition.

Read the original: Grimms’ Fairy Tales, tr. Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes (Project Gutenberg #2591, The Juniper-Tree)

For older readers who choose to engage with a disturbing tale: child abuse, decapitation, a child falsely blamed for killing her brother, unwitting cannibalism and death by crushing. Read with space to stop and discuss; the magical return does not make these scenes harmless.

Reading the story closely

The stepmother tries to control the explanation of the death twice: first by making Marleen believe she caused it, then by telling the father that the boy is away. Marleen’s care for the bones counters that concealment without making her responsible for undoing an adult’s crime. The bird turns the hidden event into a public song, although its first listeners seem more interested in performance than in investigating what happened.

Draw the three exchanges between singer and listeners, then connect each collected object to its final recipient. The chain, shoes and stone transform the same repeated song into three different outcomes. Compare the family’s first dinner with the last: who is present, who knows the truth, and whose place is empty? The restoration is a fantasy resolution, not a promise that love can reverse death in life.

Talk about it

• Why does the bird ask for a gift each time someone wants to hear the song again?
• Marleen feels better as soon as she lays the bones under the juniper. Why do you think that is?
• The strangers admire the song’s beauty while hearing an account of murder. What do they respond to, and what do they fail to ask?

Related stories

• Snowdrop — another Grimm stepmother whose jealousy leads her to try to kill a child
• Hansel and Gretel — two Grimm children abandoned by a stepmother who escape a terrible fate
• The Six Swans — a loyal Grimm sister who suffers in silence to save her brothers