The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was

The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was
The "ghost" in the bell tower
Folk tale
Name	The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was
Also known as	Märchen von einem, der auszog das Fürchten zu lernen
Data
Aarne-Thompson grouping	326
Country	Germany
Published in	Grimms' Fairy Tales, Vol. I

"The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was" or "The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear" is a German folktale collected by the Brothers Grimm. It is tale number 4 in the collection. It was also included by Andrew Lang in The Blue Fairy Book (1889).

The Grimms' first, 1812 edition contained a much shorter version, "Good Bowling and Card Playing".

It is classified as its own Aarne–Thompson index type 326 of a male protagonist's unsuccessful attempts to learn fear, which eventually leads to his awareness of mortality.

This tale type did not appear in any early literary collection but is heavily influenced by the medieval adventure of Sir Lancelot du Lac called , where he spends a night in a haunted castle and undergoes almost the same ordeals as the youth.

A father had two sons. The younger, when asked by his father what he would like to learn to support himself, said he would like to learn to shudder. A sexton told the father that he could teach the boy. After teaching him to ring the church bell, he sent him one midnight to ring it and came after him, dressed as a ghost. The boy demanded an explanation. When the sexton did not answer, the boy, unafraid, pushed him down the stairs, breaking his leg.

His horrified father turned him out of house, so the boy set out to learn how to shudder. He complained whenever he could, "If only I could shudder!" One man advised him to stay the night beneath the gallows, where seven hanged men were still hanging. He did so, and set a fire for the night. When the hanged bodies shook in the wind, he thought they must be cold. He cut them down and sat them close to his fire, but they did not stir even when their clothing caught on fire. The boy, annoyed at their carelessness, hung them back up in the gallows.

After the incident at the gallows, he began traveling with a waggoner. When one night they arrived at an inn, the inn-keeper told him that if he wanted to know how to shudder, he should visit the haunted castle nearby. If he could manage to stay there for three nights in a row, he could learn how to shudder, as well as win the king's daughter and all of the rich treasures of the castle. Many men had tried, but none had succeeded.