"The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs" (German: Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen Haaren) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm (KHM 29). It is classified under Aarne–Thompson types 461 ("three hairs from the devil") and 930 ("prophecy that a poor boy will marry a rich girl").

The story was first translated into English as "The Giant and the Three Golden Hairs" to avoid causing offense. However, the devil in the story behaves like a giant in folklore. Ruth Manning-Sanders included it in her book A Book of Giants, using the title "The Three Golden Hairs of the King of the Cave Giants."

Synopsis

A poor woman has a baby boy with a caul, which is a membrane around the baby. People believe this means the boy will marry the king's daughter when he is fourteen. The evil king, hearing about this, visits the family and tries to convince them to let him take the boy to live in the castle. Instead, he puts the boy in a box and throws it into the water to drown him. The box floats to a mill, where the miller and his wife find it. They decide to raise the boy themselves.

Fourteen years later, the king visits the mill by accident. When he sees the boy, he asks the miller if he is his father. The miller explains how he and his wife raised the boy. Shocked, the king gives the boy a sealed letter and tells him to deliver it to the queen. Inside, the letter says the boy must be killed and buried when he arrives.

On his way to deliver the letter, the boy stays at an old woman's house for the night. She warns him that robbers often visit the house, but the boy says he is too tired to walk further. When the robbers arrive, they read the letter and feel sorry for the boy. They replace the letter with a new one, saying the boy should marry the king's daughter.

The queen follows the letter's instructions and starts wedding preparations. The king returns and tries to get rid of the boy by giving him

Analysis

Folklorist Stith Thompson noted that the first part of the tale, which involves a boy destined to marry a princess or wealthy girl, is classified as ATU 930. This part is often paired with the second part, where the hero must complete an impossible task, such as retrieving hair from the Devil, a giant, or an ogre.

Scholar Kurt Ranke explained that this tale type combines two very old stories. One is the "child of fate," which appears in Indian and Chinese literature as early as the 3rd century CE and is linked to the motif K978 ("Uriah letter"). The other is a hero's journey to another world to answer questions, found in the Avadana and Tutinama collections. Scholars Antti Aarne and Václav Tille, as noted by Thompson, concluded that these two stories were originally separate but later combined in Europe. Folklorists Johannes Bolte and Jiri Polívka also observed this in their notes on the Grimm's tales.

According to Thompson and Tille, tale type 930 has four literary versions: Indic (the oldest), Ethiopic, Western European, and Turkish. In Europe, the story appears during the Middle Ages in works like Godfrey of Viterbo (12th century), Gesta Romanorum (which includes a story about a king and a forester’s son), and Le dit de l'empereur Constant (13th century).

Professor Dov Noy stated that type 930 is "well known" in Eastern Europe. Thompson added that the tale is found "all over Europe" and in Asia, including China.

Willem de Blécourt noted that the story "Li sette palommelle" ("The Seven Doves") in the Pentamerone includes a second part where the heroine seeks answers from a creature named Chronos. He wrote that this sequence, "The Three Questions," was added to the tale type in the late 18th century.

In this tale type, after the lowly hero marries the princess, her father sends him on a dangerous quest to the Devil or another creature, intending to kill him. On the journey, the hero is asked riddles and promises to ask the Devil the same questions. In many versions, the three questions involve a dried-up fountain, a fruitless tree, and a ferryman.

The motif of an old man ferrying the hero to the Devil (as in the Grimm's version) or a giant or ogre in other versions mirrors the mythological journey to "The Otherworld" (Hell) on a boat. The Devil also acts as an oracular god, providing answers.

The motif of frogs blocking water flow has parallels studied by Andrew Lang. He suggested this might originate from an ancient Indo-European myth about a hero or thunder god killing a serpent or dragon that blocks water.

In the story "Emperor Conrad and the count's son" from Gesta Romanorum, the protagonist is the son of a count who had offended Emperor Conrad II. The boy is adopted by Duke Herman of Swabia. When Conrad sent the youth to Aachen with a letter ordering the empress to kill him, the dean of the Speyer Cathedral changed the letter, allowing the count to marry the princess. Conrad later reconciled with the boy, made him his co-regent, and the dean became chancellor. The imperial burial vault in Speyer was built in recognition of this act.

The Brothers Grimm collected a tale titled "Der Vogel Phönix" ("The Phoenix Bird") in their first compilation. In this story, a hero is found by a miller in a box cast into the water. He is tasked with retrieving three feathers from the Phoenix Bird, who lives in a mountain hut with an old lady.

In Slavic folktales, the Devil is often replaced by a character named Old Vsevede or "Father Know-All."

Francis Hindes Groome collected a Transylvanian-Romani version titled "The Three Golden Hairs of the Sun-King." In this story, a charcoal-maker's son is prophesied by three white-clad women to marry the king's daughter. The king tries to eliminate the boy but fails. The boy is named "Nameless" and must retrieve three hairs from the Sun-King, an entity that changes form throughout the day.

In a South Slavic variant from Kordun (1927), the hero is a soldier, the antagonist is his captain, and the rower who never rests his oar is a sentry with a gun. Croatian folklorist Maja Bošković-Stulli suggested this version may reflect the military lifestyle of the Military Frontier.

In a Georgian variant titled "A megkövült fiú" ("The Boy of Stone"), a king and queen lock their beloved son in a tower to protect him. The boy sees the sun and yawns at it, which angers the sun. The sun curses him to be stone during the day and normal at night. He meets a woman and fathers a son, who grows rapidly. The boy later seeks answers to reverse his father's curse, promising to ask the "mother of the day" about three questions: why harvesters cannot plow, why sheep die, and how a stag sheds its antlers.

Influence

"The Devil with The Three Golden Hairs" may have influenced J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien." In this story, the elf-king Thingol gives a very difficult task to Beren, a mortal who wishes to marry his daughter. The task is to get one of the three Silmarils from Morgoth's Iron Crown.