Finger boy

In literature, Little Finger Boy first appears in the 16th-century English poem, Tumbe his life and death, and is also developed in Perrault's tale. The History of Tom Thumbe , a 40-page pamphlet published in London in 1621, is believed to be authored by Richard Johnson , the first published English fairy tale. ^[3]

The literary version of the plot of Charles Perrault's tale is believed to be inspired by the harsh climatic and social realities of France in the 17th century .

These stories differ from the common European folk options. The text from the collection of Afanasyev, close to the plot of the fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm and interesting description of the details of the Russian peasant life, in turn became the source for the tale of the same name by Alexei Tolstoy . Grigory Danilevsky crafted Ukrainian folk tale ("Shorty"). Russian and Ukrainian folk tales are characterized by a description of the Boy-and-Finger as a hero who sometimes chooses his weaponry ^[4] .

A childless couple wishes a boy, even if he is at least one inch tall. In the fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm, a woman gives birth to a tiny son seven months later, in the Russian version - she accidentally cuts off her finger when chopping cabbage, which turns into a smart child.

Once, Finger Boy sat in the horse’s ear and gave her commands. Passers-by (or lord) walking by, seeing this, offer their father to give them a crumb for money, which the father does. Soon, Finger-Boy runs away. Along the way, he meets thieves, to whom he stuffs himself into friends and offers to unlock the gate, crawling into the slot. When the thieves leave him, the wolf swallows the baby along with the cow's entrails. The finger-boy makes the wolf come to the house of his father, who kills the predator.

The Jewish version is very reminiscent of the European, but there are also its own characteristics. The woman wished a son, at least the size of a bean. Immediately, the bean turned into a Bebele boy (Fasolinka). When he ran away from the thieves and the cow swallowed him, he began (from inside the cow) to scold her for swallowing him, and the frightened owners killed the impudent animal, and threw out the entrails. She was picked up by a beggar, an old acquaintance of Bebele, and carried him home.

Story

Poverty and hunger reign in the country. The lumberjack and his wife have nothing more to feed their seven sons. One evening, while the children are sleeping, the parents decide to get them into the forest and leave them there. One of the boys, nicknamed for his little boy-and-finger, eavesdrops on the conversation and prudently stocks up white stones to throw them onto the road, and then find the way back home through them. The next day, the father enforces his sinister plan. But Little Finger Boy and his brothers are returning home thanks to pebbles. Parents were very happy about this, since during the absence of children the village head finally gave the lumberjacks the money that he owed them. But this happiness turned out to be short-lived.

When the need comes again, the parents again decide to leave the children in the forest, but before that they lock the Boy-with-a-finger so that he can’t pick up stones, so the brothers can’t return. Wandering through the forest, they find a hut and try to find shelter in it. The woman who opened the door tries to convince them to leave, because her husband is a cannibal who eats children. But seven brothers, more fearful of forest wolves, enter the house. In the evening, the cannibal comes, his wife hides the boys, but he finds them. The wife convinces the spouse to put off her terrible feast for tomorrow.

Fearing that the cannibal will attack them at night, Little Finger Boy, while his brothers are sleeping, exchanges their hats for the golden crowns of the seven daughters of the cannibal. The ogre enters the bedroom, and believing that the boys are sleeping in hats, kills his daughters. The kids, meanwhile, are fleeing, and a furious cannibal rushes in pursuit of them in their seven-mile boots-walkers. Tired, he rests on a stone, behind which the children hid. The finger-boy convinces the brothers to return to their parents' house, while he shoes his boots and runs to the cannibal’s hut. He tells the man-eater’s wife that the robbers took her husband prisoner, demanding a ransom, and that her husband ordered him to go get the money, and in confirmation of the order and for a quick move he gave his boots.

As a result, Finger Boy returns with great wealth to parents who accept their children with joy and relief.

Background

The version of Charles Perrault appears in the context of the great famine that reigned in the reign of Louis XIV and highlights the instability of peasant life and the situation of the children who were first sacrificed in the event of disasters.

Between the second half of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, the period during which Charles Perrault published the first edition of his tale (1697), Europe , and France in particular, were shocked by natural disasters. This was the height of the Lesser Ice Age , with the first climatic minimum in 1650 . Summer is rainy, extremely severe (Siberian) winters and local hunger, noted by historians in 1660, 1661, 1662, 1675. The winter of 1693 brought general hunger. In the winter of 1705, the sea ​​froze along the coast, in 1715 the Seine was completely frozen. The soil froze to a depth of 70 cm. Everything is lost: crops, fruits, wine. Even wild animals died, and wolves - a rare fact in the history of France - begin to attack people. It was necessary to make purchases of grain abroad, but the devastating wars of Louis XIV exhausted the state treasury.

The plot is partly based on the English poem "Tumbe his life and death", arose under the influence of legends about King Arthur and chivalric novels.

Story

Once the sorcerer Merlin , assuming the guise of a beggar, stopped for the night at a peasant whose wife was childless. Merlin was amused by the woman’s strong desire to have a child, even if he was the size of her husband’s thumb, and the sorcerer fulfilled her desire. When a tiny son was born to the peasant’s wife, the fairy queen herself flew out the window, wanting to look at the child. She kissed the newborn, called him Tom, and called the elves to make clothes for the boy. Elves dressed Boy-and-finger like an elven child. Further narrated about his adventures, which lie in line with the traditional European folk plot. After his wanderings, the Finger-Boy is referred to King Arthur and Queen Guinevere for the entertainment of the courtyard, where, thanks to his jokes, he becomes the favorite of the Knights of the Round Table . A little finger-boy goes hunting with the king, sits at a table opposite a royal plate at a chair, for him they built a special palace and a carriage, which harnessed six mice. So he spent his days in constant joy and fun.

In Japanese, the Finger-Boy is called Issumboshi (一寸 法師), a fairy tale with his participation is also adventurous, but has a local flavor, with the participation of devils.

Hans Christian Andersen in 1835 published " Thumbelina " - a version of a fairy tale about the adventures of a little girl.

In the theater

• The dance of the little finger-boy and his brothers in a divertissement of fairy tales from the ballet by P. I. Tchaikovsky “ Sleeping Beauty ”.
• Production of Mikhail Bartenev ’s play “ Little Finger and His Parents ” in the Khabarovsk Youth Theater

On the screen

• “ Little Finger ” - a 1938 Soviet cartoon based on the tale of Charles Perrault;
• “ Little Finger ” - 1958 Anglo-American film based on the fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm;
• “ Little Finger ” - a 1977 Soviet cartoon based on a Russian folk tale;
• “ Little Finger ” - 1985 Soviet-Czechoslovak feature film with its own plot;
• Finger Boy is a 2006 Russian cartoon from the Mountain of Gems series.

• Folk Russian fairy tales by A. N. Afanasyev in three volumes. Volume 2 (notes No. 408 to the tale No. 300) (inaccessible link)
• Budur N.V. Boy with a finger // Fairytale Encyclopedia / total. ed. N.V. Budur. - M .: Olma-Press, 2005 .-- S. 275—278 . - ISBN 5-224-04818-4 .
• Saintyves P. Les Contes de Perrault et les image image legend legend . - Paris, 1912, p. 319—349. (fr.)

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