Week 14, Reading A: The Seven Ravens

This story was everything you want a fairytale to be - strange, magical, a little dark, and of course, possessing a happy ending. I had never heard it before, unlike some of the stories in this unit, which were a little more familiar, which is why I decided to write my reading notes over it. 

Ravens 

- a couple has seven sons but is still sad because they have always wanted a daughter

- the wife gives birth to a daughter, but the baby is sickly and small

- the parents thought the baby was going to die so they wanted to give her an emergency baptism 

- they sent the 7 sons to bring back water, but the sons spilled the water

- the father wished, in anger, that the sons would turn into ravens

- he looked up and saw 7 ravens fly overhead, his wish had come true

- the daughter recovered and grew strong and healthy, but they never told her what had happened to her brothers

- one day, the daughter overheard people talking about it and she confronted her parents who had to tell her

- she took a ring from her parents and some provisions and a little chair and set out to find her brothers

- she traveled to the end of the world, but the sun threatened to eat her up

- she traveled to the other end, but the moon was also hungry

- she sat among the stars on her little chair, and they gave her a chicken bone and told her that it was the key to let her into a glass mountain, where her brothers lived

- when she got the the glass mountain, she discovered she had lost the chicken bone

- she cut off one of her own fingers and used that to pick the lock

- a dwarf told her that her brothers were out but showed her where they stayed

- she drank from their cups and ate off their plates, and put her ring in one of the cups

- when the brothers came back, she hid, and they realized that their sister had returned

- they were ecstatic because now they could be free, when she saw how happy they were she came out of hiding

- the ravens became human again and they all embraced

Story Source: : "The Seven Ravens," The Grimm Brothers' Children's and Household Tales translated by D. L. Ashliman (1998-2013).