Once upon a time a wild boar came to a country. It trampled on cultivated land, bit and killed livestock, and bit people with its sharp tusks, and the people suffered terribly. The king declared that if anyone could save the kingdom from this disaster, he would reward him greatly. But the boar was so big and powerful that no one dared approach the forest where it hid. At last the king declared that whoever could capture or kill the boar would marry the king's only daughter.
In the countryside there lived two brothers, the children of a poor family. The oldest was cunning and shrewd but lacked courage; the younger was simple and kind-hearted. The two brothers said they were willing to accept this life-threatening mission. The king said to them, "In order that you may indeed find the beast, you must both go into the forest in two directions." So the elder brother went from the west and the younger brother entered from the east.
The younger brother had not gone far when he met a small man. He held a black spear in his hand, and said to his brother, "I give you this spear, for you are pure and good-hearted; take this spear, and go only boldly to fight the boar, and the spear will help you."
The younger brother thanked the little man, shouldered the spear, and continued his journey without fear.
Soon he saw the boar and aimed his spear at the beast that was coming at him. The boar was furious, and it charged too fast and too hard, with the result that the spear cut its heart in two. The brother shouldered the huge beast and walked back.
At the other end of the forest, at the entrance, there was a house where people drank and danced and made merry. When the younger brother arrived there, his older brother was already sitting inside, and he thought that the boar would not be able to escape from him anyway, so he drank some wine first to strengthen his courage. When he saw his brother returning from the forest with the spoils of war, his evil heart was filled with jealousy and could not be appeased. He cried out to his brother, "Come in, dear brother, and have a drink and rest."
From the unsuspecting brother went in and told his brother how the good man had given him the spear and how he himself had subdued the boar with it.
The elder brother kept the younger brother drinking with him until it was getting late, and then together they left the hut and hurried on in the darkness. When they came to a bridge over a small river, the elder brother let his younger brother walk in front of him, and when they reached the center of the bridge, the elder brother aimed a blow at the back of his head, and the younger brother fell down dead. The brother buried his brother under the bridge and carried the boar himself to the king to collect his reward, as if he had hunted it. He took the king's only daughter as his wife. When he was asked why the brother did not return, he said, "It is certain that the boar has eaten him." And the people believed it.
But nothing can be hidden from God's 'eyes', and this sin will come to light one day.
A few years later, a shepherd was driving his sheep across a bridge when he saw a white bone under the sand. He thought it would make a good material for a mouth-blowing instrument, so he climbed down from the bridge and picked up the bone. He used the bone to make a mouthpiece for his horn. But the first time he used it to blow his horn, he was surprised, because the bone mouthpiece sang a ditty:
"Ah, my friend, you're blowing on my bone,
I've been sleeping by the side of this river for a long time.
My brother killed me and took the boar,
And married a wife who was a king's daughter."
"What a horn!" The shepherd said, "to think that it can sing a ditty by itself! I must offer it to His Majesty the King." So he offered the horn to the king, and it sang the same ditty again.
The king understood as soon as he heard it, and sent men under the bridge to dig up the bones of the murdered man. The guilty brother could not deny what he had done, so he was sewn into a sack and sunk in the river. The victim's bones were buried in a beautiful mound in the churchyard.
The Singing White Bones
The Brothers Grimm: Jakob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm
They were both collectors and compilers of German folklore. They came from official families, both studied law at the University of Marburg, worked in the Kassel Library and were professors at the University of G?ttingen, and both became members of the Grimm Academy of Sciences in 1841. Both of them **** compiled the "Collection of Fairy Tales for Children and Families" (the last edition was published in 1857, 216 stories ****). Among them, "Cinderella", "Snow White", "Little Red Riding Hood", "The Brave Little Tailor" ...... and other masterpieces have become the favorite masterpieces of children all over the world. In addition, the Brothers Grimm began to collect German folklore from 1808 and published two volumes of German Legends, ****585 pieces. They also wrote academic works such as German Grammar (1819-1837), History of the German Language (1848) and the first four volumes of the German Dictionary (1852), contributing to the development of Germanic linguistics.