Plot
A man, the youngest of 12 children, decides to wander off from his rich parents' house. Upon his return, he finds his parents have died and his brothers have shared all the lands among themselves, thinking he was dead. They offer him 12 mares as compensation, and when he goes to check them he finds all of them have a foal, and that one has yet another foal, a very sleek dapple-gray one. When he praises the beauty of the foal, it replies back and tells him that he'll be more splendid if the young man would go and kill all the other foals and let him feed on all the mares' milk for a year. The young man decides to heed to this advice and finds him a year later being quite large and sleeker. The colt tells him that he would be even more splendid if the young man were to go again and kill the 12 foals that have been born since, which the young man agrees to do. Yet again he returns the next year, finding the horse being huge and incredibly sleek, and yet again the horse asks him to kill the new foals and let him have the mares' milk for one more year, to which the young man agrees again. At last, he returns a year later to find the horse impossibly large and radiant, and the horse decides then to go with him.
The brothers are surprised that he has such a horse, and on the horse advice, they give him horseshoes and a golden saddle and a golden bridle, in exchange for the 12 mares and their new foals. Then, the man rides the horse, whose name is Dapplegrim, to the kingdom's capital. The king's daughter had been kidnapped by a troll and the king had promised her hand and half his kingdom to whoever could rescue her. Dapplegrim promises the man that he'll help, but the man needs to request the best food and stables for the horse. The king, upon seeing the man riding in such superb horse agrees. Envious knights urge the king to send the man to rescue the princess or else he should be killed, to which the man reluctantly agrees. Dapplegrim asks him to request for iron and silver horseshoes, and after obtaining them takes him to the troll's cave on top of an almost vertical stone wall on a hill, and manages to ride up, the man putting the princess on top of the horse before the troll can even stand up.
Upon his triumphant return with the princess, however, the ill-advised king asks him that in order to marry the princess he needs to get rid of the ridge that prevents the sun from shining in his hall. Dapplegrim again says he can help, but the man needs to request even heavier silver and iron horseshoes. Then the horse jumps on top of the ridge until it finally sinks. Once again, however, the king asks something else: the man needs to procure an equally splendid horse for the bride, or else he will be killed. Dapplegrim agrees to help again, and this time demands for even larger horseshoes, as well as an assortment of things, for they must go to hell where another horse like it lies. After a number of adventures, Dapplegrim fights the hellish horse and defeats it, at which point the man puts the bridle on it and they return together, the second horse happening to be identical to Dapplegrim in every single detail.
Yet, the king has still one more trial for the man: the princess must hide twice and be found, and then the man must hide twice and the princess be unable to find him. The princess transforms first into a duck, and then into a loaf of bread, but on both occasions Dapplegrim told the man, so he finds her. When it is his turn, the man, transforms into a tick and hides in Dapplegrim's nostril, and the second time into a clump of dirt hiding in between the horse's hooves and its horseshoes. The princess is unable to find him, due to Dapplegrim not allowing her to come close. At last, the man and the princess ride in their horses to the church to get married.
Translations
The tale was published in a compilation of world folktales, by illustrator Katharine Pyle.[1] The tale was also translated and published by George Webbe Dasent.[2]
The tale was translated into French with the title Le Cheval Prodige ("The Prodigious Horse").[3]
Joseph Jacobs inserted the horse Dapplegrim as the giant's mount in his reconstructed protoform of the Norwegian tale "The Master Maid", published in Europa's Fairy Book.[4]
Analysis
Tale type
Grimsborken is the name of tale type 531, in Norwegian sources, according to scholar Ørnulf Hodne [no]'s The Types of the Norwegian Folktale. The type registers 39 variants across Norwegian sources.[5]
The Aarne–Thompson–Uther tales types ATU 530, 531 (The Clever Horse) and 533 (The Speaking Horsehead) fall under the umbrella of Supernatural Helper in the folk/fairy tale index and pertain to a cycle of stories in which a magical horse helps the hero or heroine by giving advice and/or instructing him/her.[6]
Motifs
George Webbe Dasent stated that the character of Dapplegrim is reminiscent of sagas and tales where hero and steed share a bond of trust.[7]
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe collected a second Norwegian variant of the ATU 531 tale type, titled Gullslottet som hang i luften (English: "The Golden Castle that Hung in the Air").
