The Dog and the Sparrow

I’m back to the animal tales, but this is a really interesting one. I hope you enjoy it!

"Dog and Sparrow"
Walter Crane

The Tale:

The story starts with animal abuse. A poor dog is not taken care of by his master and often left starving. When he can bare it no longer, the dog leaves in a very sullen and miserable state. Along the way he meets a sparrow,  who, upon hearing the dog's story, takes him to a nearby town. There the sparrow takes a bit of meat from one butchers shop and a bit of meat from another, two loaves from one baker's shop and two loaves from another. They set off again and soon the dog claims he is tired and decides to take a nap- right in the middle of the road. The sparrow stands watch over him.

A carter comes by the road. The sparrows calls out to him and tells him: “Stop! Stop! Mr Carter or it shall be worse for you!”

The carter ignores these cries, believing that the sparrow wont manage to make bad things happen to him. He continues driving... and runs over the dog, crushing him to death. The sparrow informs the carter that this deed of murdering the sparrow's friend shall “cost thee all thou art worth”. The carter once again shows his disbelief that the sparrow can do anything to him.

The sparrow starts her vendetta. First she open the carter's wine-filled barrel and all the wine spills out. Then she bothers the horses and the carter attempts to kill the sparrow with a hatchet, but she flies out of reach and the carter ends up killing all three horses. The carter, after each of these attacks, cries out something along the lines of “unlucky wretch that I am!”, and each time the sparrow replies “not wretch enough yet!”

The sparrow arrived at the carter's house, where she immediately starts wrecking havoc. She calls in birds to finish the carter's stock of corn. Now the carter has lost all that he has, but the sparrow determines with a chilling cry; “thy cruelty shall cost thee thy life!”

"The Dog and the Sparrow"
http://www.grimmstories.com/en/grimm_fairy-tales/the_dog_and_the_sparrow

And so it does. In a scene reminiscent of Tom and Jerry (or perhaps more aptly Tweety and Sylvester), the sparrow flies around the room, driving the carter mad in an attempt to catch her and he and his wife end up breaking most the objects in his house. Finally, they catch the bird, and the carter decides that he will not merely kill her, but he will eat her as well, thus making her punishment crueler. The sparrow cries out one more time that the carter's actions will cost him his life, which removes the bit of sense and reason the carter had left. He decides to hold the bird while his wife kills it with a hatchet. The wife takes aim, strikes... and hits the carter on the head, completely missing the bird. Then the sparrow “flew home quietly to her nest.”

Discussion points:

The sparrow's loyalty to the dog is astounding to me. From the moment she met him, she decided he was her friend. She stole from others (albeit never too much) to feed him, offered to watch over him, and when she failed this, she risked her life restlessly and relentlessly to bring justice down on his murderer. Why does she care so much about the dog? Is this a thirst for friendship? Pity for a poor soul? Plain pureness of heart? In a way, this powerful, pure loyalty seems more fantastical to me than the talking animals. The sparrow didn't get anything out of her merciless vendetta other than perhaps a way to get rid of her guilt. She helped the dog even though she didn't owe him anything, and her selflessness, which we really don't see a lot of in our daily lives, is what makes us root for her till the end. It places her as the good guy as the carter's anger makes him the bad guy.

"The Dog and the Sparrow"
Gennova

The sparrow's character is fascinating. On one hand, she is pure and kind, doing everything she can for the dog. But she shows a very different side to the carter. She targets him ruthlessly, intent on ruining him completely before she causes his death. The moment the carter showed his true nature right from the start, ignoring and scoffing at the warning (another statement about underestimating the power of the small. These tales seem to be full of them) and running over the dog determined his fate.This double personality, the kind and the mean together in one creature reminds me in a way of Robin Hood. The whole “taking from the rich to give to the poor” is very similar to the sparrow's; “take care of the pitiful and punish the cruel”.

I also want to point out that it that the carter's ultimate undoing is his anger and stupidity. He himself handed his wife the hatched that she would mistakenly use to end his life. In this way, the sparrow ultimately is left unblemished in the reader's eyes, even though he instigated the murder.

There is also an interesting difference between the Dog and the Donkey from a previous tale in the book,"The Travelling Musicians" . Both were abused by their masters and decide to leave. But the Donkey leaves with a plan, with hopes of finding and making a better future for himself. The dog is much more passive. He flees because he can't bear his situation any longer, and would have died of hunger and thirst if not for the kind- hearted sparrow. 

The thing that most confuses me, however, is why the dog felt such a great desire to sleep in the *middle* of the road. He would have solved many problems if he had slept to the side of it.

As to the moral of the tale, I'll leave that up for you to decide. Post what you think in the comments!