Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 3 Number 3, December 2002

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The Town Musicians of Bremen

by

Michael Larrass

 

The following article is the story of a personal experience and the ensuing reflections and conclusions. Its main intention is to share a practical observation with other creative writers and artists.

One of the probably oldest and most popular fairy tales in German-speaking countries is that of the Musicians of Bremen. I myself have never got tired of reading or listening to it. One question, especially, intrigued me: Why did the four musicians never get to Bremen? Or, rather, why does the story have this seemingly misleading title?

I. The story

A man had an ass, which for many years had faithfully carried the sacks to the mill. At last, however, his strength began to fail, and he became more and more unfit for work. So the master thought of making an end of him. But the ass, seeing that there was an ill wind blowing, ran away and started on the road to Bremen. There, he thought, he might become one of the town musicians. He had travelled some distance, when he came across a dog, who was lying on the road yelping as if tired by a long run.

"What are you yelping in that way for, Growler?" asked the ass. "Ah," said the dog, "because I am old and growing weaker every day I cannot go out hunting any more and my master wants to kill me. So I left him. But how shall I earn my living?" " I tell you what," said the ass. "I am going to Bremen and shall become a town musician there. Won't you come with me and take your part in the music? I'll play the lute and you can beat the drum."

The dog agreed and they went on together. When they had gone a little way, they saw a cat sitting by the roadside, with a face as long as a wet week. "Well, why are you so cross, Whiskers?" asked the ass. "Who can be cheerful when he is afraid of his head?" answered the cat. " I am getting on in years and my teeth are not so sharp as they used to be and I prefer to sit behind the stove and purr rather than run after mice. Just because of that, my mistress wants to drown me. I managed to get clear away, but now I don't know where to go." " Come with us to Bremen, said the ass. " You are good at serenading, so you can become a town musician." The cat thought the advice was good and joined them.

Soon afterwards the three runaways came to a farmyard. A cock was sitting in front of the gate crowing with all his might. "You're crying loud enough to split our ears," said the ass. "What's the matter with you?" "The mistress has no pity because there are guests coming tomorrow for the Sunday's dinner; she has told the cook to make me into soup. And I'm to have my neck wrung this evening. So I am crowing with all my might while I can." " I'll tell you what, Red-comb," said the ass. " You had better go with us to Bremen. You're sure to find something better than death. You have a good voice, and if we give a concert together, it's sure to be a good one." The cock approved of the suggestion and they all four went off together.

They could not reach the town of Bremen in one day, and in the evening they came to a wood, where they decided to pass the night. The ass and the dog lay down under a big tree, the cat and the cock climbed up into its branches, and the cock even flew up to the very top, which was the safest place for him. Before going to sleep the cock looked round once more in every direction, and he thought he saw a light shining in the distance. He called out to his friends below that there must be a house not far off, for he saw a light.

"Then," said the ass, "let us set out and make our way toward it, for the accommodation here is very bad." The dog agreed, thinking that a few bones with a little meat on them would do him no harm. So they set off in the direction of the light. They soon saw it shining more clearly. As they drew nearer, the light grew bigger and bigger till they found themselves in front of a house belonging to some robbers. It was brightly lighted. The ass, being the tallest, walked up to the window and looked in.

"What do you see, old Jackass?" asked the cock. "What do I see?" answered the ass. "Why, I see a table covered with delicious food and drink, and some robbers are sitting around it enjoying themselves." "That would be just the thing for us!" cried the cock. "Yes, certainly," said the ass. "Ah, if we were only there!" Then the animals took counsel as to how to set about driving the robbers out. At last they hit upon a plan.

First of all, the ass stood up with his forefeet upon the window sill; then the dog jumped upon his back; the cat climbed up onto the dog's back; and last of all the cock flew up and perched upon the cat's head. When they were arranged in this way, at a given signal they all began to play the music. The ass brayed, the dog barked, the cat meowed, and the cock crowed. Then they dashed through the window, so that the panes came crushing down. The robbers jumped up at the terrible noise. They thought that the devil was coming in upon them and fled into the wood in the greatest terror. Then the four musicians sat down to the table and helped themselves. They ate as if they were going to fast for weeks thereafter.

When they had finished, they put out the light and looked for a sleeping place, each according to his nature and his idea of comfort. The ass lay down on a pile of straw; the dog coiled himself behind the door; the cat lay down on the hearth near the warm ashes; and the cock flew up to one of the beams. As they were tired from the long journey, they soon went to sleep.

When midnight was past, and the robbers saw from a distance that the light was no longer burning and that everything seemed quiet, the captain said, "We ought not to have been frightened by a false alarm." And he sent one of his men to examine the house.

The messenger found everything quiet. So he went into the kitchen, and wanted to light a candle. Mistaking the cat's glowing fiery eyes for live coals, he held a match close to them, thinking it would catch fire. But the cat could not stand the joke, but flew at his face, spat and scratched. He was terribly frightened and ran away. He tried to get out by the back door; but the dog, who was lying there, jumped up and bit him in the leg. As he ran across the pile of straw in front of the house, the ass gave him a good sound kick with his hind legs; and the cock, at the noise, woke up fresh and fay, and cried out from his beam, "Cock-a-doodle-doo."

The robber ran back as fast as he could to his captain, and said, "Oh, captain! There's a frightful witch in our house; she breathed on me and scratched my face with her long fingernails. Behind the door there's a man with a knife, who stabbed me in the leg. And in the yard there lies a black monster, who struck me with a club. And among the beams of the roof, the judge is seated, and he called out, ‘Hook that hoodlum, too!’ So I made the best of my way off."

From that day the robbers never dared to come back to the house. But the four musicians of Bremen found it so comfortable that they never wished to leave it again.

II. What I saw

One day when I was thinking of the story again, two things struck me all of a sudden: I heard the sound of the four animals as they were breaking through the window and I understood why the story is called the Musicians of Bremen although - at least in the story - they never reach the geographical point where this German seaport city is located.

 

From this sudden flash of understanding, a multitude of details fell into place: there were the four animals, the donkey, the dog, the cat, and the rooster, all of them old, failing in their different useful functions and doomed to be slaughtered or drowned. They appeared to me to be the images of the human body and mind, with the donkey and its proverbial resilience and stubbornness representing the vital force, the dog the “guts”, the cat the emotions, and the winged, loud-voiced rooster the intellect. Overcoming their individual weakness and ailments in the intention of going to Bremen and becoming musicians, they set off on a road that lead them back to life’s original wholeness and health (both words go back to the same origin).

 

There was the perfect sequence of events: it is the donkey who sets out on the quest first. From a psychophysiological point of view, the impulse towards self-healing does not come from the cortical area, but arises from the deeper layers of the brain. At that time, the impulse is not yet oriented as to time and space. But the impulse is “on the road” so to speak. It now travels through the intermediate layers of the brain, gathering the other elements represented by the dog, the cat, and the rooster. At nightfall, the animals gather under a tree, at a loss where to go in the forest. The tree with its vertical axis is a symbol of transcendence and unity. In its presence, the newly established unity of the four animals manifests for the first time in a practical manner: the rooster representing the cognitive powers decides to fly on the top of the tree and sees the light of a house in the woods. The other animals follow his directions. At that time, guided by the intellect, the journey begins to be specifically oriented. It is a revelation to see fairy tales in terms of precision, no less than a scientific paper on the evolution of the human brain physiology.

 

There were many more things I understood: I understood that singing is Being. I did not hear any cacophony in the four animals’ united voices. This may have rather been the robbers’ perception. What I heard was a sound which rose beyond the individual voices and, filling the house with its presence of consonance and unity, pushed out the disease represented by the robbers. ‘Asteya’ - non-stealing - is one of the conditions laid down in classical Vedic philosophy for attaining enlightenment - the state of Brahman. Later, looking back at my sudden insight, other observations (of a more theoretical kind) fell into place, the first being that enlightenment is described here in two ways - by what it is, i.e. taking full possession of the house as a symbol of the human body, and by what it is not: the deluded state of the robbers. This state is exemplified by their belief in witches, monsters, and judges and their subconscious self-destructive agenda that turns harmless cock-a-doodle-doo into a judgement call. The second observation was that modern medical science has confirmed that exaggerated attachment to possessions (and the excessive use of "I", "me", and "mine"), aggressiveness and egocentricity are major factors in the history of numerous physical and mental diseases and premature ageing.

 

And I finally understood why the four musicians never went on to Bremen.? Their journey which ends mysteriously in a den of robbers in the dark Germanic forests is by no means a dead end adventure. The very success of the story with the readers stems from the fact that it speaks of the success of its protagonists. But why did they stay once they had evicted the robbers? Was it self-complacency? Was it the robbers’ abundant table and their well-filled larder and treasure house?

 

The answer is that they arrived in Bremen the moment they entered the house. The title contains a truth which is not confined to the geographical location: wherever man attains health and wholeness, whenever he chases the agents of egotism and decay, he attains Brahman, the perfection of Being, the balanced state of a perfect mind and body. Of course, there is no archeological or archivarial proof. But the presence of the universal in the particular is undeniable, and Stonehenge, Jerusalem or the historical battlefield of Kurukshetra in northern India are there to be visited by the secular tourist just as they can be perceived in their transcendental reality by the seeker of the Self. To get started on this path, there must be a goal, however far it may be: Bremen, Uttar Kashi, Mecca... To reach it, the goal must be lost. It must be absorbed by the omnipresence of the path. Otherwise, we will only touch the image of the Divine.

 

Fortunately, there are still forests on this globe. And the musicians of Brahman are still walking through them on their quest for that which is beyond the limits of finite reason, space and age.

 

II. What I understood

 

The most important thing I realized, however, occurred to me the moment I started writing down my sudden insight. I was in a phase of increased search for personal health. It suddenly appeared to me that the structure I was about to put to paper and to project into my environment for others to read and enjoy, was the structure of my own inner event. To project it outward at this point was to disperse and weaken the healing impulse. What I did was to feed the impulse back into its transcendental source. The feeling of loss stopped immediately. I continued this self-referral mode of awareness for several days and felt I was enlivening the self-healing structures described in the story of the musicians. When I finally wrote down the whole article, I was in a position to confirm that my approach had been very successful. The direct experience also confirmed to me that fairy tales have a nourishing influence on children and adults alike.

 

We seem to have a definite choice at the moment a pre-conceptual impulse emerges on the level of cognition. We can either support it on its way towards expression or feed it back into the transcendental pre-conceptual field. In the specific case described, doing the first would probably have given me some kind of immediate personal satisfaction, but would have hindered my progress towards a higher state of health. This observation reminded me that often highly sensitive and creative people suffer from poor health: the culture of self-awareness is not generally part of modern artistic behaviour. In fact, the conditioned self-projection reflex may contribute to reduced mental and physical health.

 

Conversely, modern self-referral techniques have proven to be highly efficient in cultivating the awareness of one’s psychophysiological state. I leave it to the reader to judge whether my sacrifice of the initial creative impulse has had a detrimental effects on the interpretation of the Town Musicians of Bremen or on the reflections on the creative process, self-referral, and health.

 

There is yet another experience I had when I was invited to tell the story to a French audience. My French not being very fluent, I learned the story by heart, a thing I had never done before. What I learned, during my “recital“, on the secrets of storytelling was quite unexpected, but this secret I will keep for another time - there should be some suspense, shouldn‘t there?