The Spirit in the Bottle
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Spirit in the Bottle (Template:Lang-de) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 99. It is Aarne-Thompson type 331.
Synopsis
Once upon a time, there was an old woodcutter and his young son. The woodcutter always wanted his son to go to school and become a doctor, but his son did not want to study. The son insisted on going to the woods and instead of cutting down a tree, he found a bottle with a demon in it. Instead of letting the demon stay in the bottle, the young lad decided to release the demon. He opened it, and a spirit sprang out and declared it would break his neck and kill him. The young woodcutter then declared that the spirit/demon did not have the ability to get back inside the bottle. So the spirit, to show that he really could do whatever he wanted, re-entered the bottle to show the boy how strong he was, and the boy stopped the bottle up again. The demon, shocked, began begging the woodcutter's son to open the bottle again, but he refused unless the spirit promised to benefit the boy. The spirit pleaded with him and offered to make him rich. The boy decided it was worth the risk and released the demon. The spirit gave him a cloth that would turn any object into pure silver. He cut a tree with his axe, then turned the axe to silver with the cloth, and the axe bent on the tree.
The boy told his father that he did not need to work any more because the young son was rich due to the cloth, but his father advised him to go school and be a doctor and depend on his own hands and hard work. While the woodcutter's son was gambling and spending his money, his father was working so hard that he became ill. The old woodcutter on his deathbed told his son that he had to throw away the cloth and depend only on hard work. The next day, the young woodcutter, while mourning his father's death, decided to burn the magic cloth, but then remembered the money and power the cloth had given to him. As the cloth burned, the woodcutter's son said, "I'm a fool for throwing this cloth away." The son returned to the forest to ask the demon for a new magic cloth, but to his surprise and horror, he fell into the ground. The young woodcutter paid for all his sins by becoming stuck in the same bottle as the demon.
