De tre bukkene Bruse

Folk tales have lives of their own. Not literally but by word of mouth, by image of eye, by cultural diffusion. Translation into different languages may alter some details. Besides that, where did they come from to begin with? From on high, from an inspired tall tale teller or what?  Hard to tell specifically because most such tales began as oral stories long before being transcribed in print.

Let's take a Norwegian folk tale (or fairy tale* if you prefer), De tre bukkene Bruse / The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

How far back this one goes, I haven't been able to figure out yet. It appears in printed Norwegian collections by the mid-1800s, and quickly comes into English translation just before the American Civil War. I don't know if the Norwegian words "bukken" and "bukkene" have the connotation of billy goat in the original, because going by machine translation, they come across strictly as "goat" and "goats" respectively. At any rate, the nickname "billy goat" didn't pop up in written English until the first part of the 1800s; presumably the same is true of "nanny goat," the female equivalent. 

How about "Gruff?" This word floats into view in English by the late 1600s or early 1700s. In the Norwegian fairy tale, "Bruse" is the goats' family name -- they are brothers. "Bruse" means, in English, "Gruff." 

In Norwegian, the tale opens thusly:

Det var engang tre bukker som skulle gå til seters og gjøre seg fete, og alle tre så hette de Bukken Bruse. På veien var det en bro over en foss, som de skulle over, og under den broen bodde et stort, fælt troll, med øyne som tinntallerkener, og nese så lang som et riveskaft.

This translates into American English (roughly) as:

There were once three goats that would go to the mountain to fatten up, and all three were named the Goat Gruff. On the way there was a bridge over a waterfall that they must travel over, and under the bridge lived a big, ugly troll, with eyes like tin plates, and a nose as long as a rake handle.

The original English translation (by George Webbe Dasent in 1859) goes like this:

Once on a time there were three Billy-goats, who were to go up to the hill-side to make themselves fat, and the name of all three was "Gruff." On the way up was a bridge over a burn they had to cross; and under the bridge lived a great ugly Troll, with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker.

Three goats, a bridge and a troll. Beyond the variable details in each telling, pretty good ingredients for a tiny tale, eh? 

Today's Rune: Journey.  *Nowadays, these are sometimes compressed into single words -- folktale and fairytale.