Allerleirauh - Commentary

Commentary

Among variants of this tale, the threat of enforced marriage to her own father, as here, is the usual motive for the heroine's flight, as in The She-Bear, Donkeyskin and The King who Wished to Marry His Daughter, or the legend of Saint Dymphna, but others are possible. Catskin fled because her father, who wanted a son, was marrying her off to the first prospect. Cap O' Rushes was thrown out because her father interpreted her words to mean she did not love him. The Child who came from an Egg fled because her (apparent) father had been conquered by another army. The Bear flees because her father is too fond of her and keeps her prisoner to keep her safe.

The motif of a father who tries to marry his own daughter is overwhelmingly found in fairy tales of this variety, ending with the three balls, but it also appears in variants of The Girl Without Hands. The oldest known variant is the medieval Vitae Duorum Offarum; it appears in chivalric romance in Nicholas Trivet's Chronique Anglo-Normane, the source of both Chaucer's The Man of Law's Tale and John Gower's variant in Confessio Amantis, and in Emaré. It also became attached to Henry the Fowler.

When the motive is the enforced marriage, many modern tales soften it, by representing the daughter as adopted (as in Andrew Lang's version of Donkeyskin for The Grey Fairy Book), the marriage as put forth and urged by the king's councillors rather than the king himself, or the entire notion being a fit of madness from which he recovers in time to attend the wedding. Alternately, the undesired marriage may be to an ogre or monster.

Variants of Cinderella, in which the heroine is persecuted by her stepmother, include Katie Woodencloak, where the heroine is driven off by the persecutions and must, like Allerleirauh, seek service in a kitchen.

The heroine does not always have to flee persecution; Tattercoats is denied permission to go to the ball because her grandfather had sworn never to look at her, but he has not driven her off.