Heinrich Kaufringer, Suche nach dem glücklichen Ehepaar (ca. 1400)
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Maere and Novellas
Heinrich Kaufringer, Suche nach dem glücklichen Ehepaar (ca. 1400)
Euling, K. (ed.): Heinrich Kaufringers Gedichte. (=StLV 182) Tübingen 1888. Vol. 8, p. 99–112
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In a good marriage husband and wife are one heart and one soul. A man has a beautiful and virtuous wife who is praised in the whole town. Because of his wife’s extraordinary miserliness the husband is tortured by the thought that his marriage is only apparently happy.
Motif References:
W 153 Miserliness
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Pretending to go on a business journey he leaves his wife on the quest for the happy couple. Five years he travels around without any success.
Motif References:
H 1220 Quests voluntarily undertaken
H 1300 Quests for the unique
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He finds a citizen who obviously lives in a good relationship with his wife. He reveals the purpose of his journey and he is invited to stay at their house. There he learns that the wife has to drink from the skull of her killed lover, a minister. The minister has been killed by her husband.
Motif References:
U 110 Appearances deceive
U 115 The skeleton in the closet. An apparently happy man lets another see the actual misery of his existence.
U 115.1 Apparently happy woman discloses the skeleton of her slain paramour
Q 241 Adultery punished
Q 478.1.2 Adulteress made to drink from paramour’s skull
Q 491.5 Skull used as drinking cup
F 866.4 Cup made of skulls
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The man continues his journey and finally after a long quest he finds another couple. When the host asks for the aim of his journey he leads him to the basement where a strong peasant is chained who serves the wife as lover.
Motif References:
R 51.2 Prisoners confined in chains
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Once she had been slandered as adulteress. Now she has the peasant for those occasions when she is lusting after illicit love. She is praised because of her virtue but the husband sadly points at the children who have been fathered by the peasant.
Motif References:
J 221.1.1 Senator overlooks wife’s adultery rather than impair his reputation
K 2050 Pretended virtue
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The host advises him to return home and suffer his small inconvenience. The man takes the host’s advice and with his last money he returns home. From this moment on he suffers his wife’s avarice and is grateful that not a greater vice harms their relationship. Epimythion: A good man has to overlook small faults of his wife.
Motif References:
J 210 Choice between evils
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