THE WALL
No kiss in the Grimms
In the 1857 text she throws him against the wall with all her might, and he falls down a prince. The kiss seems to have appeared first in English versions.
Pick a version
HOW A FAIRY TALE CHANGED
No kiss
for the frog.
The best-known frog prince was never kissed.
In the Brothers Grimm's Frog King, the princess loses her temper and throws the frog against the wall, and only then does he become a prince. The kiss came later, and the tale changed a good deal along the way.
TALE No. 1 in every Grimm edition
Pick a version- A ball in the well
- A promise to keep
- A frog at the wall
- One tale, many tellings
THE SHORT ANSWER
A wall, then a prince,
then a wedding.
Three things most people misremember.
Each is in the Grimms' own text.
THE BOOK
Always tale number one
From the first edition in 1812 to the last in their lifetime in 1857, The Frog King was number one in the Grimms' collection.
See the numbers
THE SERVANT
Iron Heinrich
The full title names a servant. Faithful Heinrich bound his heart with three iron bands in grief; they spring off when his master is free.
Meet Heinrich
FOUR WAYS TO READ AN OLD TALE
Read it
like a detective.
Fairy tales come in many editions. These habits help you see which one you are holding and what has been changed.
Check the date and edition
The Grimms revised their tales across editions from 1812 to 1857. A translation may follow any of them, or mix them.
Look at the ending
Endings change most. Wall, pillow or kiss tells you a lot about who retold the tale and for whom.
Look for the tale type
Folklorists file frog-suitor stories as Aarne-Thompson type 440, with versions from Germany, Scotland, England, Sri Lanka, Korea and China.
Read a side-by-side
Parallel texts, like Ashliman's 1812 and 1857 comparison, show line by line how a story was reshaped.
TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
First in the book,
and in no hurry.
One figure on the tale's place in the collection,
one on how the English version broke the spell.
No. 1
Its place in every Grimm edition, 1812 to 1857
A version was already in the Grimms' manuscript collection of 1810. In every edition published in their lifetime, The Frog King opened the book.
THE COLLECTION · ASHLIMAN
3 nights
Nights on the pillow in the first English version
Edgar Taylor gave his 1823 'Frog Prince' the start of the Grimms' Frog King and the ending of their 1815 Frog Prince, in which the spell breaks after three nights.
THE TRANSLATION · TAYLOR, 1823
Ashliman suggests Taylor judged that English readers of the 1820s would not accept a heroine who throws her bed companion against the wall.
PICK A VERSION
Which frog
are you reading?
Choose a telling to see how the frog becomes a prince. The bar shows how far it strays from the Grimms' first printed text of 1812.
Based on D. L. Ashliman's translations and notes (University of Pittsburgh), including his side-by-side comparison of the 1812 and 1857 texts.
MEET HEINRICH
The servant
in the title.
The German title is Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich: The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich. After the transformation, the prince's faithful servant Heinrich arrives in a carriage drawn by eight horses.
He had been so sad when his master became a frog that he put three iron bands around his heart to stop it bursting. On the road, the prince twice calls out that the carriage is breaking apart. It is the bands springing from Heinrich's heart, because his master is free.
Questions
Questions people ask
Does the princess kiss the frog in the Grimms' tale?
No. In the Grimms' Frog King she throws the frog against the wall and he becomes a prince. The kiss appears in modern versions and seems to have started in English translations.
Who was Iron Heinrich?
The prince's faithful servant, named in the tale's full title. He bound his heart with three iron bands in grief, and they burst off when the prince was freed.
Where did the Grimms get the story?
Their exact source is not known. It apparently came from an oral tradition of the Wild family in Kassel; Wilhelm Grimm married Dortchen Wild, a member of that family.
Why is it called The Frog Prince in English?
Edgar Taylor, the first English translator of the Grimms, used that title in 1823 and combined the start of The Frog King with the ending of another Grimm tale, The Frog Prince of 1815.
Is the story older than the Grimms?
Possibly. Folklorist Stith Thompson suggested the German tradition began with a 13th-century literary tale in Latin, and some scholars point to a line in Petronius' Satyricon, though that reading is disputed.
Sources
- D. L. Ashliman (University of Pittsburgh): The Frog King or Iron Heinrich, translation and notes
- D. L. Ashliman: The Frog King, a comparison of the versions of 1812 and 1857
- D. L. Ashliman: Frog Kings, folktales of type 440 (including Edgar Taylor's 1823 translation and the Grimms' 1815 Frog Prince)
- Wikipedia: The Frog Prince
Updated