Say, who can this manikin be?

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An old German children song goes like this:

Ein Männlein steht im Walde ganz still und stumm,
es hat von lauter Purpur ein Mäntlein um.
Sagt, wer mag das Männlein sein,
das da steht im Wald allein
mit dem purpurroten Mäntelein?

This is one translation I could find:

There stands a little man in the wood alone,
he wears a little mantle of reddish brown.
Say, who can the manikin be,
standing there beneath the tree,
in his little mantle of reddish brown?

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6 thoughts on “Say, who can this manikin be?

    1. 🙂 It’s an children’s song that almost any child here knows. It is also part of Humperdinck’s opera “Hänsel and Gretel”. There always have been two solutions to the riddle, either the fly agaric mushroom or the rose hip (in the opera it’s the rose hip).

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    1. Yes, they are. When I looked for an English translation of the song I came across some information that suggested that German children followed a soma-cult (i.e. that they licked the mushrooms to go into a kind of trance/ the story is not true – but … brrrrrr).

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