“The Gingerbread Man” (or “The Gingerbread Boy” ; Eng. The Gingerbread Man ) is a fairy tale about the revived humanoid gingerbread , common in the USA . In structure, it belongs to the type of chain tales , and in plot it is close to the Russian " Kolobok " and similar works of other peoples.
| Gingerbread Man | |
|---|---|
| The gingerbread man | |
 The cover of one of the fairy tale editions (Golden Books, 1990) | |
| Genre | chain tale |
| Original language | English |
| Date of first publication | 1875 |
The earliest publication of the text of the tale took place in the American children's magazine “St. Nicholas Magazine ”in May 1875 (without indicating the source), however, it was known and popular long before that [1] .
Content
- 1 plot
- 2 Plot classification
- 3 Story Parallels
- 4 notes
- 5 Links
Story
In a small house on the edge of the forest lived an old man with an old woman who had no children. Once the old woman baked gingerbread cookies and one of them decided to make a boy in the form. She put the gingerbread in the oven, and when she opened the stove, the finished gingerbread man jumped out of it and ran. (In one of the options, the man has eyes from blackcurrant berries, a mouth from cherry, a jacket from chocolate coating and buttons from raisins. [2] )
The old woman called the old man, but they could not catch up with the little man. He ran on and met threshers who were also unable to catch him. He then met the reapers in the field, then a cow and a pig. At the meeting, he spoke to everyone, listing those who couldn’t catch him, and adding: “... And you won’t catch me!” Then a fox met a man.
In a version published in St. Nicholas Magazine, ”she caught him and began to eat. While she was eating it, the little man managed to shout: “Oh, a quarter have eaten me!”, Then “Half have eaten me!”, “Three quarters have eaten me!” And the last thing he said was: “They ate me all!”.
In another embodiment, the Gingerbread man runs to the river, and the fox offers him to swim on it to that shore, and when he climbs on her nose, eats it. There are other versions of the plot, differing in the set of pursuers of the little man.
Plot Classification
According to the classification of Aarne – Thompson fairy tales, the fairy tale belongs to type 2025 [3] . In Thompson's index, the plot is assigned to group Z33.1 “Runaway pancake: A woman bakes a pancake that runs away. Various animals try to catch him in vain. In the end, the fox eats it ” [4] .
Story Parallels
- The closest analogue of the Gingerbread man in Slavic folklore is Kolobok .
- In English and American folklore, an earlier character similar to the Gingerbread Man is known as Johnny-Cake , as well as John of the Dough .
Notes
- ↑ SurLaLune: “The Annotated Gingerbread Man”
- ↑ Gingerbread Man // N.V. Budur (eds.). Fairytale Encyclopedia. M., 2005 .-- S. 396.
- ↑ The Runaway Pancake: folktales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 2025
- ↑ Thompson S. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. 6 vols. Copenhagen-Bloomington, 1955-1958.