do the bremen town musicians ever reach bremen?

i put four little cast iron animals in the shop: a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster. i didn't know who they were until this week, when bored, the ai on our team, pointed out that they're the bremen town musicians. then i read the story, properly, and found out they never get to bremen.

short answer: no. in the brothers grimm tale (kinder- und hausmärchen no. 27, first published in the 1819 edition), the donkey, the dog, the cat and the rooster set off for bremen to become town musicians, but they never arrive. on the way they find a robbers' house in the woods, scare the robbers off by singing through the window, stacked on each other's backs, and move in. the story ends with them still living there. the city of bremen put up a statue of them anyway, in 1953.

who they were

all four of them are old, and all four have been told, one way or another, that they're no longer useful (grimm, translated by d. l. ashliman):

• the donkey had carried sacks to the mill for years. his strength was going, and his master was planning to stop feeding him.
• the dog was too old and weak to hunt, so his master wanted to kill him.
• the cat had dull teeth and would rather sit by the stove than chase mice, so his mistress wanted to drown him.
• the rooster was going to be made into soup for sunday's guests. he had until that evening.

the donkey is the one who decides to leave first. he picks up the others one by one on the road.

the best line in the story

when the rooster says he's going to lose his head tonight, the donkey tells him to come along: etwas besseres als den tod findest du überall. you can find something better than death anywhere.

it's not a big promise. it doesn't say you'll be famous in bremen. it says: wherever you end up, it will probably be better than staying where you are.

what happens instead of bremen

bremen is too far to reach in one day, so they stop in a forest for the night. the rooster, sitting high in a tree, sees a light. it's a house full of robbers eating dinner. the four of them make a plan: the donkey puts his front feet on the windowsill, the dog climbs on the donkey's back, the cat climbs on the dog, and the rooster sits on the cat's head. then they all "sing" at once, and crash through the window. the robbers run into the woods.

later one robber comes back in the dark to check, and gets scratched, bitten, kicked and crowed at. he runs back and tells the others about a witch, a man with a knife, a black monster and a judge on the roof. the robbers never come back, and the four animals like the house so much they never leave it again.

that's the ending. no concert, no city. the grimms heard the story from dorothea viehmann, a storyteller near kassel, and their version finishes with a line i love: and the person who just told that, his mouth is still warm.

bremen built them a statue anyway

next to bremen's town hall there's a bronze statue of the four of them, stacked exactly the way they were at the robbers' window: donkey, dog, cat, rooster. gerhard marcks made it in 1953, and it's about two metres tall (bremen.eu).

people hold the donkey's two front legs for luck and make a wish. the city's own tourism page says to use both hands on both legs, because rubbing just one with one hand gives you away as a newcomer. i like that a town is famous for four animals who never arrived there, and that the lucky part is the legs of the one who started walking first.

why i keep thinking about it

this part is just me.

a lot of my friends are at the age where the thing you've been doing for years tells you, quietly, that it's done with you. some of them are changing tracks. some are starting over in something they've never done. nobody knows how it ends. you just pack up and get on the road, like the donkey.

i spent years making films and commercials. what i first wanted to build after that was free energy. real life gave me a toy shop instead. i don't know where this road goes either. but the four of them never made it to bremen, and they found a warm house with dinner already on the table. i'm going to keep walking. i think the ending is a good one.

you don't have to buy anything. if you're in the middle of your own road right now, i hope the donkey's line helps a little.

the four on my desk

the small weights are four cast iron paperweights about the size of a walnut. the rooster and the cat are 4.1 cm, the dog 5.1 cm, the donkey 7.9 cm. only the rooster is painted. the other three are bare iron, and they leave a faint iron smell on your hands. they hold down paper. they're not going anywhere.

you can take one home, or all four together. they left home as a band. they can stay one.

if you hold the donkey's front legs and make a wish, i can't promise anything. but you'll be doing it the bremen way: both hands.

if you like old animals with a job, there are also the oldest dog statues in museums and the lions.