3 The Rose-Elf Features: Murder, beheading, quite-possibly-incestuous domestic abuse, ‘mild’ necrophilia, death by flowers. A young woman’s lover is stabbed to death, beheaded, and buried, by her wicked and possessive brother. After committing the murder, the brother is described as ‘entering the beautiful, blooming girl’s bedroom as she lies dreaming of her lover, and bending over her, laughing hideously as only a fiend can laugh as he does so’. This could mean he just stands at the foot of her bed and laughs, but it could also represent something a lot more sinister.As the brother was burying the corpse, a dry leaf settled in his hair. A tiny elf, who witnessed the brutal act, hid under this leaf, which then settled on the girl’s bed as her brother ‘bent over her’. The elf climbs into the girl’s ear, tells her of her lover’s murder, and informs her where the body lies. The girl wakes up, broken-hearted, and goes into the woods to dig up her lover’s head. She shakes the earth out of his hair, kisses his cold, dead lips, and carries the severed head home with her. She puts the head in a large flower pot, covers it in earth, and plants a twig of jasmine over it.She weeps over the pot day and night, and the jasmine twig begins to grow beautiful flowers. Seeing his sister constantly kissing these flowers, the brother is furious, thinking she is going mad.The girl eventually dies a quiet death. The elf hides in her ear and whispers sweet stories about her lover to comfort the girl as she dies. The brother carries the flower pot into his bedroom, and as he sleeps, tiny spirits come out of the flowers and kill him with spears to avenge the dead lovers. The murdered man’s skull is later discovered in the flower-pot, and the evil deed is uncovered. Weird huh? -(Hans Christian Anderson – Fairy Tales 1839)
Posted on: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 00:04:41 +0000
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