The Tinder Box
Encyclopedia
"The Tinderbox" is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a soldier who acquires a magic tinderbox
capable of summoning three powerful dogs to do his bidding. When the soldier has one of the dogs transport a sleeping princess to his room, he is sentenced to death but cunningly summons the dogs to save his life.
It is Aarne-Thompson type 562, The Spirit in the Blue Light. Other tales of this type include The Three Dogs
and The Blue Light
.
The tale has its source in a Scandinavian folk tale Andersen learned in his childhood, but similarities with "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp
" and other tales have been noted. The story was one of Andersen's first fairy tales, and was published by C. A. Reitzel in Copenhagen, Denmark on 8 May 1835 in an inexpensive booklet with three other tales by Andersen. The four tales were not favorably received by Danish critics who disliked their informal, chatty style and lack of morals. In 1946, "The Tinderbox" was the source material for Denmark's first animated film, and, in 2007, a ballet with costumes and scenery designed by Queen Margrethe II.
In the following scene, the soldier enters a large city and buys himself splendid clothing. He makes many friends, and lives in a magnificent apartment. He learns of a princess kept in a tower after a prophecy foretold her marriage to a common soldier; his interest is piqued and he wants to see her but realizes his whim cannot be satisfied. Eventually, the soldier's money is depleted and he is forced to live in a dark attic. He strikes the tinderbox to light the room, and one of the dogs appears before him. The soldier then discovers he can summon all three dogs and order them to bring him money from their subterrarean dwelling. Again, he lives splendidly.
One night, he recalls the story of the princess in the locked tower, and desires to see her. He strikes the tinderbox and sends one of the dogs to bring her to his apartment. The soldier is overwhelmed with her beauty, kisses her and orders the dog to return her to the tower. The following morning, the princess tells her parents she has had a strange dream and relates the night's adventure. The royal couple then watch her closely. When the princess is carried away again, they unsuccessfully use a trail of flour and chalk marks on neighborhood doors to find where she spends her nights. Eventually, her whereabouts are discovered and the soldier is clapped in prison and sentenced to death.
On the day of execution, the soldier sends a boy for his tinderbox, and, at the scaffold, asks to have a last smoke. He then strikes the tinderbox and the three monstrous dogs appear. They toss the judge and the councilors, the King and Queen into the air. All are dashed to pieces when they fall to earth. The soldier and the princess are united, and the dogs join the wedding feast.
Andersen knew The Arabian Nights, and "The Tinderbox” bears some similarities with "Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp
". Both tales feature a supernatural being inveigling a mortal to enter an enchanted area on promise of rich reward; both tales feature three chambers filled with riches; both tales have heroes refusing to part with a magic luminant and then winning a princess through its use.
The story of Aladdin had a special emotional significance for Andersen. As a poor grammar school student in Copenhagen, he was invited to stay with a prominent Copenhagen family in the Amalienborg Palace
. There, he was given a Danish translation of Shakespeare, and wrote in his diary on 12 December 1825:
Andersen was familiar with and widely read in folk and fairy lore. The princess locked in a tower in "The Tinderbox" has its counterpart in "Rapunzel
"; the trail of flour mirrors the trail of grain in "Hansel and Gretel
"; and the doors marked with chalk recall those from "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" – another tale from The Arabian Nights.
: "I have started some 'Fairy Tales Told for Children' and believe I have succeeded. I have told a couple of tales which as a child I was happy about,The three tales are "The Tinderbox", "Little Claus and Big Claus", and "The Princess and the Pea
". The fourth tale in the collection, "Little Ida's Flowers", is completely original with Andersen. and which I do not believe are known, and have written them exactly the way I would tell them to a child." Andersen completed the tales by March 1835 and told Admiral Wulff's daughter, Henriette: "I have also written some fairy tales for children; Ørsted says about them that if The Improvisatore
makes me famous than these will make me immortal, for they are the most perfect things I have written; but I myself do not think so." On 26 March, he observed that "they [the fairy tales] will be published in April, and people will say: the work of my immortality! Of course I shan't enjoy the experience in this world."
with "Little Claus and Big Claus", "The Princess and the Pea
", and "Little Ida's Flowers". The booklet cost 24 shillings (the equivalent of 25 Dkr. or approximately US$5 in 2009) and the publisher paid Andersen 30 rixdollars (US$450 in 2009) for the manuscript. The booklet was republished in a second edition in 1842, and a third in 1845.
"The Tinderbox" was reprinted in Fairy Tales, a five volume collected edition of Andersen’s fairy tales published between August and December 1849 with 125 drawings by Vilhelm Pedersen
, Andersen's favorite illustrator. The tale was published again in the first volume of Fairy Tales and Stories on 15 December 1862.
In his "Remarks" to the tales in the second volume of Fairy Tales and Stories in 1863, Andersen wrote, "The style should be such that one hears the narrator. Therefore, the language had to be similar to the spoken word; the stories are for children, but adults too should be able to listen in. The first three fairy tales are ones I heard during childhood, in the spinning room and during the harvesting of the hops; "Little Ida's Flowers" on the other hand, came into being one day while visiting the poet Thiele, when I was telling his daughter Ida about the flowers at the botanical gardens; I kept and adapted a few of the child's remarks when I later wrote the fairy-tale down."
translation rather than the Danish original. He missed the earthy, joking style of "The Tinderbox" in preference for the embellished, stilted literary diction of the period, and translated the king's, "We will not ... ", for example, to "We are not graciously pleased." Boner's translation was published as "The Tinder Box" in A Danish Story-Book in 1846.
", "Jack and the Beanstalk
"—whose young hero overcomes adversity and ends a contented, successful adult."
Andersen grew up poor and uneducated, and was subject to many slights, snubs, and humiliations. Wullschlager notes, "[...] the fairy tale was a form in which [Andersen] could express forbidden emotions and thoughts without, as it were, being caught. It's no accident that of the first three folktales he chose to adapt, two ["The Tinderbox" and "Little Claus and Big Claus"] are fantasies of social revenge."
Andersen personalizes "The Tinderbox" with humor and detail. When the soldier finds gold in a chamber beneath the hollow tree, for example, he realizes he can buy "all of the tin-soldiers and whips and rocking-horses in the world.” The author's characteristic social satire marks the moment when the soldier loses all of his riches and his fair-weather friends no longer visit because there are too many stairs to climb to his attic dwelling.
For Wullschlager, "The style [of the tale ...] draws the teller and listener together, sharing jokes against the pompous and powerful, engaging the cunning tricks that allow the poor and weak to triumph, and providing an outlet for Andersen’s rage against the bourgeois society that tried to make him conform."
Fairy and folk tale scholar Jack Zipes
views "The Tinderbox" as Andersen's way of dealing with his anger at his superiors. In Andersen's early tales the rich and powerful are either overthrown or exposed as conceited, stupid, and arrogant. On another note, he observes, "Psychologically, Andersen’s hatred for his own class (his mother) and the Danish nobility (the king and queen) are played out bluntly when the soldier kills the witch and has the king and queen eliminated by the dogs. The wedding celebration at the end of the story is basically a celebration of the solidification of power by the bourgeois class in the nineteenth century: the unification of a middle-class soldier with a royal princess."
In fashioning his tale, Andersen subconsciously touched upon the sociopolitical formula for bourgeoisie progress and success in the nineteenth century: use one’s talents to acquire money and perhaps a wife, establish a means (here, the tinderbox and dogs) to continually renew one’s money and power, and employ that money and power to maintain social and political hegemony. Zipes writes that "the soldier is justified in his use of power and money because he is essentially better than anyone else – chosen to rule. The king and queen are dethroned, and the soldier rises to assume control of society through the application of his innate talents and good fortune.”
The tale can be read as the social and sexual maturation of a young man in a brutal world. The soldier has his knapsack (mind and talents) and his sword (power and phallus), and learns not to deplete them wastefully but to control them and direct them for personal happiness and success. The psychological thrust of the tale is connected to Andersen’s criticism of the artificiality, hypocrisy, and injustice of the aristocracy and its eventual overthrow by the "true nobility" of the young, lower-class soldier.
The soldier in Andersen's tale shares the brutal, greedy, and impetuous traits with the many soldier-heroes of the Grimms and other European collectors. He is not much of a role model for children, but tales of returning warriors were usually directed toward adults. Andersen softens the story with enough magic and whimsy to make it appealing to both adults and children.
Tales similar to "The Tinderbox" include "The Blue Light
" from the Grimm collections; "Hagop’s Wish", an Armenian tale; "Lars, My Lad!", a Swedish tale; and "Soldier of the Blue Light", an American tale from Kentucky.
Tinderbox
A tinderbox is a small container containing flint, firesteel, and tinder , used together to help kindle a fire....
capable of summoning three powerful dogs to do his bidding. When the soldier has one of the dogs transport a sleeping princess to his room, he is sentenced to death but cunningly summons the dogs to save his life.
It is Aarne-Thompson type 562, The Spirit in the Blue Light. Other tales of this type include The Three Dogs
The Three Dogs
The Three Dogs is a German fairy tale. Andrew Lang included it in The Green Fairy Book, listing his source as the Brothers Grimm. A version of this tale appears in A Book of Dragons by Ruth Manning-Sanders....
and The Blue Light
The Blue Light
"The Blue Light" is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Many of the features from Hans Christian Andersen's later work "The Tinder Box" and from the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp originate with this version....
.
The tale has its source in a Scandinavian folk tale Andersen learned in his childhood, but similarities with "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp
Aladdin
Aladdin is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , and one of the most famous, although it was actually added to the collection by Antoine Galland ....
" and other tales have been noted. The story was one of Andersen's first fairy tales, and was published by C. A. Reitzel in Copenhagen, Denmark on 8 May 1835 in an inexpensive booklet with three other tales by Andersen. The four tales were not favorably received by Danish critics who disliked their informal, chatty style and lack of morals. In 1946, "The Tinderbox" was the source material for Denmark's first animated film, and, in 2007, a ballet with costumes and scenery designed by Queen Margrethe II.
Plot
The story opens with a soldier climbing into a hollow tree to retrieve a magic tinderbox at the behest of a witch. In the tree, he finds three chambers filled with precious coins guarded by three monstrous dogs. He fills his pockets with money, finds the tinderbox, and returns to the witch. When she demands the tinderbox without giving a reason, the soldier lops off her head with his sword.In the following scene, the soldier enters a large city and buys himself splendid clothing. He makes many friends, and lives in a magnificent apartment. He learns of a princess kept in a tower after a prophecy foretold her marriage to a common soldier; his interest is piqued and he wants to see her but realizes his whim cannot be satisfied. Eventually, the soldier's money is depleted and he is forced to live in a dark attic. He strikes the tinderbox to light the room, and one of the dogs appears before him. The soldier then discovers he can summon all three dogs and order them to bring him money from their subterrarean dwelling. Again, he lives splendidly.
One night, he recalls the story of the princess in the locked tower, and desires to see her. He strikes the tinderbox and sends one of the dogs to bring her to his apartment. The soldier is overwhelmed with her beauty, kisses her and orders the dog to return her to the tower. The following morning, the princess tells her parents she has had a strange dream and relates the night's adventure. The royal couple then watch her closely. When the princess is carried away again, they unsuccessfully use a trail of flour and chalk marks on neighborhood doors to find where she spends her nights. Eventually, her whereabouts are discovered and the soldier is clapped in prison and sentenced to death.
On the day of execution, the soldier sends a boy for his tinderbox, and, at the scaffold, asks to have a last smoke. He then strikes the tinderbox and the three monstrous dogs appear. They toss the judge and the councilors, the King and Queen into the air. All are dashed to pieces when they fall to earth. The soldier and the princess are united, and the dogs join the wedding feast.
Sources and influences
Andersen based “The Tinderbox" on the Scandinavian folk tale "The Spirit in the Candle". In the folk tale, a soldier acquires a magic candle which has the power to summon an iron man to do his bidding. The soldier uses the candle to visit a princess, and summons the iron man to save his life when he is sent to the stake for doing so. In the preface to the second volume of Fairy Tales and Stories (1863), Andersen indicates he heard the tale as a child "in the spinning room, and during the harvesting of the hops."As a child, Andersen was the favorite of the pauper women in the spinning room of an asylum where his grandmother worked. The women entertained him with tales, and he, in turn, entertained them with sketches of human anatomy on the walls. He recalled, "...the stories told by these old ladies, and the insane figures I saw around me in the asylum, operated in the mean time so powerfully upon me, that when it grew dark, I scarcely dared to go out of the house."Andersen knew The Arabian Nights, and "The Tinderbox” bears some similarities with "Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp
Aladdin
Aladdin is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , and one of the most famous, although it was actually added to the collection by Antoine Galland ....
". Both tales feature a supernatural being inveigling a mortal to enter an enchanted area on promise of rich reward; both tales feature three chambers filled with riches; both tales have heroes refusing to part with a magic luminant and then winning a princess through its use.
The story of Aladdin had a special emotional significance for Andersen. As a poor grammar school student in Copenhagen, he was invited to stay with a prominent Copenhagen family in the Amalienborg Palace
Amalienborg Palace
Amalienborg Palace is the winter home of the Danish royal family, and is located in Copenhagen, Denmark. It consists of four identical classicizing palace façades with rococo interiors around an octagonal courtyard ; in the centre of the square is a monumental equestrian statue of Amalienborg's...
. There, he was given a Danish translation of Shakespeare, and wrote in his diary on 12 December 1825:
"It's going for me as it did for Aladdin, who says at the close of the workAdam Gottlob OehlenschlägerAdam Gottlob OehlenschlägerAdam Gottlob Oehlenschläger was a Danish poet and playwright. He introduced romanticism into Danish literature.-Biography:He was born in Vesterbro, then a suburb of Copenhagen, on 14 November 1779...
put forth the theory in his 1805 drama Aladdin that certain people are chosen by God, or the gods, or nature to achieve greatness no matter how weak, ill, or unsuited they may be. The theory had special significance in Denmark after 1814 and especially for Andersen. Oehlenschlager‘s Aladdin was based on the author‘s life, and, in the drama, the lamp symbolizes intuitive poetic genius. as he stands at a window of the palace:
- Down there I walked when just a lad
- Each Sunday, if I was but allowed
- And gazed with wonder at the Sultan's palace.
Five or six years ago, I, too, was walking around on the streets down there, didn't know a soul here in town, and now I am gloating over my Shakespeare in the home of a kind and respected family. O Lord, I could kiss you!"
Andersen was familiar with and widely read in folk and fairy lore. The princess locked in a tower in "The Tinderbox" has its counterpart in "Rapunzel
Rapunzel
"Rapunzel" is a German fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales. The Grimm Brothers' story is an adaptation of the fairy tale Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force originally published in 1698...
"; the trail of flour mirrors the trail of grain in "Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel
"Hansel and Gretel" is a well-known fairy tale of German origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a cannibalistic hag living deep in the forest in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The two children...
"; and the doors marked with chalk recall those from "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" – another tale from The Arabian Nights.
Composition
On New Year's Day 1835, Andersen wrote his friend Henriette Hanck: "I am now starting on some 'fairy tales for children.' I am going to win over future generations, you may want to know", and, in a letter dated February 1835 he wrote the poet, Bernhard Severin IngemannBernhard Severin Ingemann
Bernhard Severin Ingemann was a Danish novelist and poet.Ingemann was born in Thorkildstrup, on the island of Falster, Denmark. The son of a vicar, he was left fatherless in his youth. While a student at the University of Copenhagen he published his first collection of poems Bernhard Severin...
: "I have started some 'Fairy Tales Told for Children' and believe I have succeeded. I have told a couple of tales which as a child I was happy about,The three tales are "The Tinderbox", "Little Claus and Big Claus", and "The Princess and the Pea
The Princess and the Pea
"The Princess and the Pea" is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a young woman whose royal identity is established by a test of her physical sensitivity. The tale was first published with three others by Andersen in an inexpensive booklet on 8 May 1835 in Copenhagen by C.A...
". The fourth tale in the collection, "Little Ida's Flowers", is completely original with Andersen. and which I do not believe are known, and have written them exactly the way I would tell them to a child." Andersen completed the tales by March 1835 and told Admiral Wulff's daughter, Henriette: "I have also written some fairy tales for children; Ørsted says about them that if The Improvisatore
The Improvisatore
The Improvisatore is an autobiographical novel by Hans Christian Andersen . First published in 1835, it was an immediate success and is considered to be Andersen's breakthrough...
makes me famous than these will make me immortal, for they are the most perfect things I have written; but I myself do not think so." On 26 March, he observed that "they [the fairy tales] will be published in April, and people will say: the work of my immortality! Of course I shan't enjoy the experience in this world."
Publication
"The Tinderbox" is one of Andersen's first fairy tales. It was published in Copenhagen, Denmark by C. A. Reitzel on 8 May 1835 in an unbound 61-page booklet as the first installment of the first collection of Andersen's Fairy Tales Told for ChildrenFairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection.
Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection. consists of nine fairy tales written by Hans Christian Andersen. The tales were published in a series of three installments by C. A...
with "Little Claus and Big Claus", "The Princess and the Pea
The Princess and the Pea
"The Princess and the Pea" is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a young woman whose royal identity is established by a test of her physical sensitivity. The tale was first published with three others by Andersen in an inexpensive booklet on 8 May 1835 in Copenhagen by C.A...
", and "Little Ida's Flowers". The booklet cost 24 shillings (the equivalent of 25 Dkr. or approximately US$5 in 2009) and the publisher paid Andersen 30 rixdollars (US$450 in 2009) for the manuscript. The booklet was republished in a second edition in 1842, and a third in 1845.
"The Tinderbox" was reprinted in Fairy Tales, a five volume collected edition of Andersen’s fairy tales published between August and December 1849 with 125 drawings by Vilhelm Pedersen
Vilhelm Pedersen
Thomas Vilhelm Pedersen was a Danish artist best known for being the first artist to illustrate the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen....
, Andersen's favorite illustrator. The tale was published again in the first volume of Fairy Tales and Stories on 15 December 1862.
In his "Remarks" to the tales in the second volume of Fairy Tales and Stories in 1863, Andersen wrote, "The style should be such that one hears the narrator. Therefore, the language had to be similar to the spoken word; the stories are for children, but adults too should be able to listen in. The first three fairy tales are ones I heard during childhood, in the spinning room and during the harvesting of the hops; "Little Ida's Flowers" on the other hand, came into being one day while visiting the poet Thiele, when I was telling his daughter Ida about the flowers at the botanical gardens; I kept and adapted a few of the child's remarks when I later wrote the fairy-tale down."
Danish critical responses, 1836
The first reviews of Andersen's tales appeared in 1836 and were unenthusiastic. Critics disliked the informal, chatty style of the tales and their lack of morals. The critic Carsten Hauch objected to the moral indifference of "The Tinderbox" but admired the delicate nobility of the Queen in "The Princess and the Pea". Andersen was offered no encouragment from the critics. One literary journal never mentioned the tales at all while another advised Andersen not to waste his time writing fairy tales. He was told he "lacked the usual form of that kind of poetry [...]and would not study models." Andersen felt he was working against their preconceived notions about fairy tales and returned to novel-writing, believing it was his true calling.First English translation, 1846
Charles Boner was the first to translate "The Tinderbox" into English, working from a GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
translation rather than the Danish original. He missed the earthy, joking style of "The Tinderbox" in preference for the embellished, stilted literary diction of the period, and translated the king's, "We will not ... ", for example, to "We are not graciously pleased." Boner's translation was published as "The Tinder Box" in A Danish Story-Book in 1846.
Commentaries
Andersen biographer Jackie Wullschlager writes, "["The Tinderbox"] is a confident, young man's tale—jaunty, brisk, and exhilarating. It celebrates youth over age and it has the energy and hope and satisfaction of a traditional folk tale—"Aladdin", "Puss in BootsPuss in Boots
'Puss' is a character in the fairy tale "The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots" by Charles Perrault. The tale was published in 1697 in his Histoires ou Contes du temps passé...
", "Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack and the Beanstalk is a folktale said by English historian Francis Palgrave to be an oral legend that arrived in England with the Vikings. The tale is closely associated with the tale of Jack the Giant-killer. It is known under a number of versions...
"—whose young hero overcomes adversity and ends a contented, successful adult."
Andersen grew up poor and uneducated, and was subject to many slights, snubs, and humiliations. Wullschlager notes, "[...] the fairy tale was a form in which [Andersen] could express forbidden emotions and thoughts without, as it were, being caught. It's no accident that of the first three folktales he chose to adapt, two ["The Tinderbox" and "Little Claus and Big Claus"] are fantasies of social revenge."
Andersen personalizes "The Tinderbox" with humor and detail. When the soldier finds gold in a chamber beneath the hollow tree, for example, he realizes he can buy "all of the tin-soldiers and whips and rocking-horses in the world.” The author's characteristic social satire marks the moment when the soldier loses all of his riches and his fair-weather friends no longer visit because there are too many stairs to climb to his attic dwelling.
For Wullschlager, "The style [of the tale ...] draws the teller and listener together, sharing jokes against the pompous and powerful, engaging the cunning tricks that allow the poor and weak to triumph, and providing an outlet for Andersen’s rage against the bourgeois society that tried to make him conform."
Fairy and folk tale scholar Jack Zipes
Jack Zipes
Jack David Zipes is an American retired Professor of German at the University of Minnesota, who has published and lectured on the subject of fairy tales, their evolution, and their social and political role in civilizing processes...
views "The Tinderbox" as Andersen's way of dealing with his anger at his superiors. In Andersen's early tales the rich and powerful are either overthrown or exposed as conceited, stupid, and arrogant. On another note, he observes, "Psychologically, Andersen’s hatred for his own class (his mother) and the Danish nobility (the king and queen) are played out bluntly when the soldier kills the witch and has the king and queen eliminated by the dogs. The wedding celebration at the end of the story is basically a celebration of the solidification of power by the bourgeois class in the nineteenth century: the unification of a middle-class soldier with a royal princess."
In fashioning his tale, Andersen subconsciously touched upon the sociopolitical formula for bourgeoisie progress and success in the nineteenth century: use one’s talents to acquire money and perhaps a wife, establish a means (here, the tinderbox and dogs) to continually renew one’s money and power, and employ that money and power to maintain social and political hegemony. Zipes writes that "the soldier is justified in his use of power and money because he is essentially better than anyone else – chosen to rule. The king and queen are dethroned, and the soldier rises to assume control of society through the application of his innate talents and good fortune.”
The tale can be read as the social and sexual maturation of a young man in a brutal world. The soldier has his knapsack (mind and talents) and his sword (power and phallus), and learns not to deplete them wastefully but to control them and direct them for personal happiness and success. The psychological thrust of the tale is connected to Andersen’s criticism of the artificiality, hypocrisy, and injustice of the aristocracy and its eventual overthrow by the "true nobility" of the young, lower-class soldier.
The soldier in Andersen's tale shares the brutal, greedy, and impetuous traits with the many soldier-heroes of the Grimms and other European collectors. He is not much of a role model for children, but tales of returning warriors were usually directed toward adults. Andersen softens the story with enough magic and whimsy to make it appealing to both adults and children.
Adaptations and similar tales
"The Tinderbox" was the subject of the first Danish animated feature film in 1946 directed by Svend Methling and animated by Børge Ring. In 2007, "The Tinderbox" was adapted into a 30-minute ballet with sets and costumes designed by Queen Margrethe II. The ballet opened in the Pantomime Theatre of Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens in July 2007. It was the third time the monarch designed a ballet for Tivoli based on Andersen's works.Tales similar to "The Tinderbox" include "The Blue Light
The Blue Light
"The Blue Light" is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Many of the features from Hans Christian Andersen's later work "The Tinder Box" and from the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp originate with this version....
" from the Grimm collections; "Hagop’s Wish", an Armenian tale; "Lars, My Lad!", a Swedish tale; and "Soldier of the Blue Light", an American tale from Kentucky.
External links
- "Fyrtøiet". Original Danish text.
- "The Tinder Box". English translation by Jean HersholtJean HersholtJean Pierre Hersholt was a Danish-born actor who lived in the United States, where he was a leading film and radio talent, best known for his 17 years starring on radio in Dr. Christian and for playing Shirley Temple's grandfather in Heidi...
.