Beschrijving
Immortality Won through Betrayal of Death. This tale exists in two different forms:
(1) An old soldier becomes the doorkeeper for heaven. Death asks him several times whom he should take next. God wants death to take the old people (then people in the middle of their life, then young people in succession). However, the doorkeeper wants to save his parents (wife, children), so he tells death instead to fell firs (beech-trees, oaks). God discovers this deception and shows death whom he should take next. Thus the soldier and his relatives are reunited in heaven. (In some variants, the soldier is banished to hell. Here he delivers a number of souls from purgatory and is chased away. Cf. Type 475.)
(2) A prince wants to gain immortality. He travels through three different kingdoms, in which the rulers have to perform tasks which must be finished within 600 (800, 1000) years (pulling out a tree, carrying off a mountain, wearing out thousands of sewing needles). During this time death has lost his power. Each time the prince is given magic objects and asked to stay, but he travels on. Finally he arrives at the empire of immortality.
After a thousand years he goes to look for his parents. The queen of immortality gives him water of life which he uses to resuscitate the deceased rulers of the three kingdoms. The prince, finding no trace of his former home and family, returns. Pursued by death, he reaches the border of the empire of immortality. In a contest with death, the queen of immortality wins the prince and they live together forever.
(1) An old soldier becomes the doorkeeper for heaven. Death asks him several times whom he should take next. God wants death to take the old people (then people in the middle of their life, then young people in succession). However, the doorkeeper wants to save his parents (wife, children), so he tells death instead to fell firs (beech-trees, oaks). God discovers this deception and shows death whom he should take next. Thus the soldier and his relatives are reunited in heaven. (In some variants, the soldier is banished to hell. Here he delivers a number of souls from purgatory and is chased away. Cf. Type 475.)
(2) A prince wants to gain immortality. He travels through three different kingdoms, in which the rulers have to perform tasks which must be finished within 600 (800, 1000) years (pulling out a tree, carrying off a mountain, wearing out thousands of sewing needles). During this time death has lost his power. Each time the prince is given magic objects and asked to stay, but he travels on. Finally he arrives at the empire of immortality.
After a thousand years he goes to look for his parents. The queen of immortality gives him water of life which he uses to resuscitate the deceased rulers of the three kingdoms. The prince, finding no trace of his former home and family, returns. Pursued by death, he reaches the border of the empire of immortality. In a contest with death, the queen of immortality wins the prince and they live together forever.
Motief
Z111
J486
D1825.3.1
K557
K551.1
E765.1.3
K551.9
Oorspronkelijk Verhaaltype
332C*
Subgenre
sprookje