The Golden Bird (Der goldene Vogel) is a German Fairy Tale collected by The Brothers Grimm in Children's and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen). It is the 57th tale.
A king notices that his precious golden apples are being stolen by a nocturnal thief, so he tasks the royal gardener with guarding the tree. The gardener places his three sons to keep guard at night. For two nights, the gardener's elder sons fail, because they fall asleep during the vigil. Only the gardener's youngest son discovers the culprit: a golden bird with glowing feathers. The gardener's son shoot an arrow at the animal, plucking some golden feathers from its body. After showing the golden feathers to the king, the monarch decides to have the bird for himself.
Finding the bird leads to further adventures, including gaining a golden horse and a princess from a distant kingdom, called princess of the Golden Castle.
The tale is in the public doman and can be read in the Project Gutenberg
, SurLaLune site, World of Tales and here.
The tale is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther index as ATU 550, "Bird, Horse and Princess". Compare Russian tale Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird and the Gray Wolf and Canadian The Golden Phoenix.
The Golden Bird provides examples of:
- Abduction Is Love: The prince kidnaps the princess for the king who owns the horse, but she falls in love with the prince and wants to be with him.
- Chain of Deals: This is the main feature of the story (and its tale type). The hero quests for the titular golden bird first, but, in order to get it, the king who owns the bird orders the hero to find him a certain horse in another kingdom. Then, the owner of the horse orders the prince to bring him a princess. The hero gets the better of them and keeps the princess, the horse and the bird for himself.
- Cunning Like a Fox: The fox helper is the one giving instructions to the prince on how to get the golden bird, the golden horse and how to escape with the princess.
- Idiot Hero: In The White Dove, a variant of the same tale type originally published in the Grimm's collection, the hero is explicitly named Dummling, a German language word for foolish heroes.
- Living MacGuffin: The golden bird is treated as a normal bird that just happens to be golden-coloured. Similarly, the magical horse and the princess are also normal beings, and the princess even marries the hero at the end of the tale.
- Rule of Three: Three brothers, three nights' vigil, three objects of the quest (a golden bird, a horse and a princess).
- Shapeshifting: The fox helper is the princess's long-lost brother, cursed into vulpine shape.
- Sibling Rivalry: After getting the bird, the horse and the princess, the hero's elder brothers fear their father will favour him, so they decide to get rid of him.
- Talking Animal: The hero's helper is a talking fox that asks him for food.
- Youngest Child Wins: The third gardener's son (or prince) is the hero of the tale. He wins the bird, the horse and the princess and gains the throne.
