Illustration from Lucy Crane's 1886 edition

The Elves and the Cobbler, or conversely The Shoemaker and the Elves is an often copied and re-made story about a poor shoemaker who receives much-needed help from elves.

The original story is the first of three fairy tales, contained as entry 39 in the German Grimm's Fairy Tales under the common title "Die Wichtelmänner". In her translation of 1884 Margaret Hunt chose The Elves as title for these three stories.^[1]

The theme is a well-known one throughout European folklore. There are many warning stories about what should happen if the recipient of faerie help should offer clothes to his or her benefactor. According to the tales, pixies and faeries alike consider clothing to be a form of bondage, and see any kind offers or new clothes as a way to enslave the faerie.

[edit] In Popular Culture

Tex Avery adapted the story for his 1950 MGM cartoon short The Peachy Cobbler.

The 1956 Looney Tunes cartoon short Yankee Dood It, is based on this fairy tale, with Elmer Fudd as the King of industrial Elves. 150 years after this fairy tale took place, he visits the shoemaker to retrieve the elves he has employed, while also imparting the virtues of mass production capitalism to him.

This was the inspiration for the elf Dobby in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Dobby is a servant and is freed when given a sock.

[edit] External links

{{wikisource}tretreeee}

• KIDOONS presents The Shoemaker and the Elves

[edit] References

1. ^ "Household Tales by brothers Grimm" at gutenberg.org

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