The Tale of the Three Brothers

I wrote in a previous blog about two children's stories - The Napping House and Bears In the Night - and how they are similar to memory palaces (and therefore are connected to Pale Fire). I recently reread a third children's story, Beedle the Bard's The Tale of the Three Brothers, and found remarkable connections with Pale Fire's own connection with The Erlking.

The most basic and obvious similarity between Pale Fire, The Erlking, and The Tale of the Three Brothers is that we once again have someone trying to escape death. After escaping death, the oldest brother tries to taunt Death by asking for the most powerful wand in the world. Death makes the wand from the wood of a nearby elder (or alder) tree. This brother then uses the wand to bring death to others, in much the same way that the Alder King brings death to the child in the alder wood. Shade mentions The Erlking in his poem in the first place because he sees himself as the father and Hazel as the child. Hazel, the child, and the oldest brother all die.

The second brother wants to taunt Death even further by asking for the power to bring back people from the dead, so Death picks up a stone and instructs the brother to turn it in his hand and he will be able to bring back whomever he chooses from the dead. He brings back his late fiance, but she is more a ghost than a real person. This ghost figure is similar to the ghost in the barn that Hazel wants to see. In the same way that Gradus comes to life through the poem, in a way Hazel comes back to life because Shade writes quite a bit about her and brings her back to life as a character. The second brother also dies because he lives in despair with his ghost-like betrothed.

The third brother is neither arrogant nor believes himself invincible, so he wants to become invisible to Death. Death gives the brother his Cloak of Invisibility, and the third brother evades death until he is old and ready to die. The brother was able to avoid an untimely death by hiding, just as Kinbote tries to do by leaving Zembla, then eventually going into hiding in Utana. Both Hazel and John Shade do not live their lives in hiding, so both die of unnatural causes.

While escaping from Zembla, Kinbote continuously recites the first two lines from The Erlking: Who rides to late in the night and the wind?/It is the father with his child. Kinbote uses this mantra as his own Cloak of Invisibility to hide from the political extremists, Gradus in particular. Kinbote sees himself as riding through the night to escape death, and carries himself to safety as the father is trying to carry his child to safety.