This Forgotten Fairy Tale Includes a Stolen Voice and the Horror of Music! Dumb Othmar by De Morgan

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:01]Have you ever heard music so beautiful that the world around you seems to fade away and disappear? This is the story of a boy who falls in love with music and it costs him and those who love him dearly.

[00:00:13]>> [music] [music] >> Hello everyone and welcome to another video by Falling Down the Rabbit Hole.

[00:00:32]Today we're going to be traveling to England to hear the story Dumb Othmar by Mary De Morgan. Stick around afterwards to hear more about Mary De Morgan, but for now let's jump into the story.

[00:00:46]Once upon a time there was a village way up on the top of a mountain and during the winter months it was isolated from the rest of the world because the trails to it were so steep that once they were clogged with ice and snow they were uncrossable.

[00:01:00]So, the village would see only each other during the winter months. So, it became necessary that they would entertain each other. So, they would have parties and they would sing and they would dance. And one of the best singers in town was a young man named Othmar. And Othmar lived with his old widowed mother and since he was very, very young he learned to imitate the birds. He would imitate all the notes that the birds made and it taught him to be an absolutely beautiful singer. That and the fact that he was the most handsome lad in the town made him quite popular and people started calling him bird boy because his voice was so beautiful.

[00:01:43]One evening just before the winter months had set in, the town received a visitor. A dwarf in a yellow cap followed by a donkey that was loaded up with tons and tons of instruments.

[00:01:56]Fiddles and trumpets and drums and cymbals, all types of instruments were loaded on the back of this donkey. And the dwarf stopped in the middle of town and started talking to all the villagers.

[00:02:11]And he said, I have here something to show you that will absolutely [clears throat] blow your minds.

[00:02:18]All of these instruments through my mechanical genius are able to play themselves. Would you like me to show you these self-playing instruments? And of course the town folk are like, absolutely yes, we would love to see these instruments. So he takes up a flute and he blows into it and starts playing and then lays it down and it continues playing. And the town people are absolutely shocked and a lot of them cross themselves and yell that it's magic. Uh and then he continues to do this with each instrument. He'll start playing it and then set it down and it will continue to play itself. And the music that is created by these self-playing instruments is strange, like nothing anybody has ever heard before.

[00:03:06]>> [music] >> And to Othmar, it is absolutely beautiful. He is completely taken in by this music, so much so that the world seems to fade around him and all he can do is just follow the abs and flows of this odd new music.

[00:03:33]Standing just behind Othmar was a young woman named Hulda.

[00:03:37]And Hulda had been playing with Othmar since they were little kids. Hulda is an orphan who lives with an older woman who pays her to do errands and take care of the house, clean up the house and whatnot. And she uh, very, very taken with Othmar, and she's hearing this same music, and she's seeing it entrance Othmar, [music] but it's not having the same effect on her. To her, the music sounds kind of awful. She's not really a fan. And it's the first time that she's ever found something that Othmar loves that she doesn't really care for, and it makes her very sad. But the music just doesn't move her. Well, eventually the dwarf stops the the music and says, "Okay, now that I've played for you, why don't you all play for me?" Uh, and the town's like, "Oh, okay, yeah, we can we can do some music for you." So, the town picks amongst itselves the three best singers, and they make sure that Othmar is going to go last because they know he's the best. And they all line up, and the first two singers sing, and it's good, uh, but the dwarf doesn't seem to really care about their singing at all. And then Othmar sings, and his singing is absolutely beautiful.

[00:04:52]And [snorts] Hulda is entranced by it, and the rest of the town's people are so proud, and even the dwarf seems super impressed. And he says, "Well, that is wonderful. You have an incredible voice." And the dwarf says, "We have to go, but would you, Othmar, like to walk us, uh, out of town a little bit and talk about music before we go?" And Othmar is like, "Absolutely." And this strikes Hulda as very weird. Something feels off about this. And she tells Othmar this, but Othmar's like, "Hey, I'll I'll I'll be honest. I'm going to I'm going to walk with this dwarf as long as he'll let me with the hope that I can hear that music once again." And Hulda accepts [snorts] that, but she says, "Hey, be very, very careful, please.

[00:05:37]Something feels wrong." So, Othmar and the dwarf walk out of town, and they don't talk at all. They're both silent, and they just walk, and they walk, and eventually the dwarf comes to a little clearing, and he stops the mule, and he says, "Okay, this is where I'm going to stay the night. Um but before you walk back to town, would you like to hear the music once again? And this time, would you like to hear it as no one else does?" And Othmar is like, "Absolutely, yes, please play the music for me again." And the dwarf unpacks all the instruments from the back of the donkey, and he lays them all on the ground, and he says, "Okay, my children, now show him."

[00:06:20]And all of the instruments start to move and bubble and transform and grow, and slowly limbs come out of them until they are all people standing there.

[00:06:33]And they all are similar in attributes to the instruments that they were. So, the flute is a tall, skinny man. The violins are all beautiful women, and so on and so forth. There are 13 people standing in front of him. And the dwarf says, "Now sing, my children, and let's see who Othmar loves the best and will give his precious gift, his kiss, to."

[00:06:58]And all of the 13 people start singing, and it is absolutely [music] beautiful, and Othmar sits and kind of becomes entranced by this music.

[00:07:14]And it seems a few minutes that he can feel and hear nothing, and it seems like there's words in the music, but he can't really pin down the words. It's the most otherworldly, enlightening experience he's ever felt hearing this music.

[00:07:31]And all of a sudden, he's listening, and he blinks a little bit, and he realizes that the music has stopped, and the dwarf is like, "Oh my gosh, it's almost sunrise.

[00:07:42]And he's been sitting there all evening listening to this music and he didn't even realize it. It felt like a few minutes.

[00:07:51]And the dwarf stands him up and says, "Now you have to bestow the gift of your kiss onto the musician that you loved the most." And all the people line up and he sees this beautiful woman amongst them and he walks up to her and takes her hand and she says, "See Othmar," she cried, "before we go on and leave you, let us try to sing one song together.

[00:08:16]Sing you as I do." And Othmar sang with her as she sang in a clear voice like a bird's. Ere the sun shines in the sky, we will sing together, my love and I.

[00:08:27]But none shall hear him sing again 'neath moon or sun in shine or rain.

[00:08:36]And then ere the last notes had left Othmar's mouth, she bent forward and clasped him in her slender arms and kissed him on the lips while still they were open to sing. "Goodbye, [music] Othmar," she cried, "and that will be your last note for many a year long, for surely you will have no need to sing after I am gone." And at that, all the strange folks standing near gave a laugh that was more a chord of music than a laugh. And when her lips touched Othmar's, he quivered all over as a fiddle string does when the bow is drawn across it. And he gave a cry which was like the sweet sound of a bell. "Mine, mine," cried the girl as he fell back from her frightened. "Now my voice will be the sweetest and best of all, for I have got Othmar's too. No one will hear Othmar now, Othmar who sang like the birds and never will he call the birds again, but I can sing as he sang and all who hear me will think that Othmar sings too. Rejoice, my sisters, sing and rejoice." But at that moment the dwarf started up crying out, "The dawn, the dawn my children. See the sun. Beware, beware its rays." Then came a great burst of sound like a chord from all the music folk followed by a flash of light like lightning and when it had cleared away the singing men and girls had gone and in their places there lay upon the ground all the musical instruments, fiddles, viols, pipes, horns, and cymbals. Othmar stood staring as if he had been turned to stone and watched as if he were in a dream while the little man quietly packed the instruments onto the mule and went away leading it by the bridle as he had come.

[00:10:24]Othmar's voice has been stolen by this kiss and he stands there dumb for a minute and falls to the ground and tries to speak and realizes that he can't and while he was singing with the the woman that stole his voice, a lot of animals had collected to hear these sounds because the singing was so beautiful and now all the animals stand around looking at Othmar grieving with him.

[00:10:55]And from these animals there is the call of a raven and the raven starts to speak and he says, "Poor Othmar, poor Othmar, he'll never call the birds again."

[00:11:09]And Othmar gets up weeping and starts walking towards the village and we stay with the raven for a moment and he tells his story and he says, "Many, many centuries ago I could sing as well but the dwarf came and took my voice. He told me that he would teach me to sing so that I could call the worms right out of the earth and as I sing, he put my beak up to his lips as if he was blowing a flute, and I've never been able to sing again. He stole my voice, but he left me my call because it was too ugly and not a musical sound. So, now this is all I can do.

[00:11:50]>> [snorts] >> So, this dwarf is centuries old.

[00:11:55]>> [music] >> And when he walks into the village, Holda's in the road waiting for him, and she's like, "Where have you been?

[00:12:04]Uh the village is out looking for you.

[00:12:07]We got so afraid that you had fallen into a ravine or something. What happened to you?" And of course, Othmar can't speak, and Hilda soon realizes that his voice has been stolen.

[00:12:21]And she tries to comfort him, but he really can't be comforted. He He has lost to him what was most important, his music.

[00:12:32]And time goes on, and the village life continues, and a few years passed. And Othmar is >> [snorts] >> no longer the center of the village's attention. When there's parties and things, he sits aside and does not participate. Of course, he never sings, and he can't talk, and people stop calling him bird boy because he can no longer call the birds, and they start calling him dumb Othmar. So, it's a summer night, and the village is having a gathering, and Holda has been so worried about Othmar that she decides that she has to do something about it. So, Othmar's sitting aside, not part of the party, and she goes to him and says, "Okay, I am going to go get your voice back. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to go do it. And Othmar is like, "No, don't do that." He he he tries to stop her, but but she shuts him down and says, "No, this is happening.

[00:13:35]I'm I'm going to go do this." So, she says, "I'm going to go, and it may be a few years that it takes me to do this that I won't see you. So, I need you to to do a couple of things for me."

[00:13:49]"First, you must give me a long curl of your brown hair that I may lay it next to my heart and wear it day and night not to forget you. Then, you must kiss me on my lips to say goodbye, and then you must promise that my name shall be the first words your lips say when they again can speak." Then, Othmar took his knife and cut from his head the longest, brightest curl of his hair, and drew her to him and kissed her thrice upon the lips. Then, he took her hand and with it wrote upon his lips her name, Holda, as a promise that her name should be the first thing they said. "Goodbye, Othmar," she said. "You will wait for me." Then, she turned away and started alone to go down the mountainside, and she looked back as she went and called back, "Goodbye, Othmar," as long as he could see or hear her.

[00:14:36]So, she walks down the mountain with no idea what she's going to do. And as she's walking, she's like, "Okay, what I need to do is I need to find the a very very wise person, the wisest person that knows all about dwarves and witches and fairies that can tell me what I need to do." So, uh she's walking along and she's about to enter a village, and she sees a shepherd out herding his sheep. And she asks him, "Hey, who is the wisest person around here that would know about dwarves and fairies and so on?"

[00:15:08]And he thinks and thinks, and he says, "Okay, there's a man that lives on a hut just on the other side of the village that uh cured some of my sheep when they got sick. I think he is probably the wisest man around here."

[00:15:25]And [snorts] she's like, "Okay, I got to go see this person." So, she goes across the village and finds this person, knocks on his door. And he opens his door and she says, "Hey, I am looking for the wisest person and I talked to the shepherd down there and he said that you cured his sheep when they were very, very sick. I need to know about a dwarf that travels with a bunch of instruments that stole somebody's voice."

[00:15:51]And he looks at her very confused and he says, "I I can take care of animals if you need me to, but I don't know anything about dwarfs that steal people's voices. That that I don't know anything about that."

[00:16:06]And she says, "Well, who is the wisest person you know in this village that would be able to tell me about stuff like that?"

[00:16:12]And he says, "Perhaps the schoolmaster.

[00:16:16]He teaches all the children and is probably the wisest person in the village." So, [snorts] she goes to the schoolmaster. And she waits until the classes are out and she goes into the school and says, uh "I need to talk to somebody that can tell me about dwarfs and fairies and witches and" So, he says, "I can teach you to read and write, but I can't tell you about uh fairies and and dwarfs and stealing voices. It is only untaught folks and fools that think about that kind of stuff."

[00:16:51]And [snorts] Hulda is at this point starting to cry. She's very frustrated and she she says, "Well, then maybe I don't need a wise man. Maybe I don't need the wise. Maybe I need the uh untaught, the ignorant and the fools."

[00:17:06]And she storms out. So, she walks down the street and the first person she comes to is a baker.

[00:17:12]And she's like, "Hey, who is the most ignorant and foolish person in town. And the baker seems kind of angry. He says it's got to be the the cake maker. He's the most ignorant person in town I know.

[00:17:27]So, she goes to the cake maker. She goes into his shop and buys a cake and sits down and she says, "Who is the most ignorant and foolish person in town?" And he says, "That's a great question.

[00:17:40]Uh the town's full of them. The entire town is is foolish and ignorant, much different from where I grew up." He said, "This is This town is is ignorant from the mayor all the way down to Tommy the fool."

[00:17:54]And she says, "Who is Tommy the fool?"

[00:17:56]He says, "Tommy's a weird fellow. He lives with his mother and he's constantly trying to catch a bird that he will never catch."

[00:18:04]And she says, "Thank you so much for telling me about him." And leaves. And she goes to find Tommy. And when she comes upon Tommy, he is his mother is sitting out on the lawn and he is wearing this cloak made out of feathers and weeds and he is running around and jumping uh and dancing around this tree.

[00:18:28]And she comes up to him and says, "Do you know anything about a dwarf that carries around a bunch of instruments and stole somebody's voice?"

[00:18:39]And Tommy kind of stares at her dumbfounded and then up above them a raven squawks.

[00:18:46]And Tommy says, "Follow the raven. Do what the raven does."

[00:18:53]And she tries to ask him more, but he just starts dancing again.

[00:18:58]And so, she's like, "Uh I can't tell if this is just something he said to say something or if this is really sound advice, but I'm going to go follow this raven." And the raven flies off.

[00:19:12]And she follows the raven, and he flies and flies, and he seems to be flying kind of slow so that she can keep up.

[00:19:19]And she follows the raven right to where the dwarf is.

[00:19:24]And she finds the dwarf asleep. And they've kind of snuck up on him. So, she's about to jump up and go confront this dwarf when the raven calls, and she is suddenly reminded of Tommy's advice.

[00:19:37]Follow the raven. Do as the raven does.

[00:19:40]And she looks down, and the raven is digging at the ground uh with his beak as if looking for a worm. So, she gets down on her knees and starts digging in the earth, pulling out handfuls of dirt.

[00:19:54]And the raven eventually pulls up a worm and holds it in its beak, and she continues to dig down into this hole, and she eventually uncovers a green snake.

[00:20:07]And she's terrified, but she's like, I got to do what the raven does. So, she reaches in and grabs the snake by the neck and holds it up. And then the raven jumps behind a bush. So, she goes and hides behind this bush, and the dwarf jumps up and says, "Hey, it's almost dawn. Let's get a little practice in."

[00:20:26]And all the instruments on the ground bubble and transform and grow limbs and turn into people. And they all start singing, and then the dwarf says, uh "Let's hear the uh Othmar's voice. In fact, let's see how my daughter has learned to use it and what she's done with it. And [music] uh the this beautiful woman steps forward and starts singing, and it makes Holda want to scream because she can hear Othmar in there.

[00:20:59]Um but she keeps herself as calm as she can, and the looks over at the raven, and the raven drops the worm on the ground. So, she drops the snake on the ground and the snake shoots forward and all of the instrument people start screaming, "Snake, snake, snake." And the dwarf is trying to figure out where the snake is and it wraps around the ankle of the young woman that was singing. Uh and then it slides up her body and wraps around her neck. And as Holda watches, it squeezes and squeezes her neck until her head falls and she is no more. And the dwarf, once he sees what's happened to his youngest daughter, uh lets out a scream that is absolutely terrifying of a great beast screaming. And then in fear, as the snake is still wrapped there around his daughter's throat, he loads up the instruments as quick as he can on the donkey and they they move on.

[00:22:00]And the raven picks back up his worm.

[00:22:04]So, Holda goes over and grabs the snake off the neck of the daughter and pulls the snake up and starts walking.

[00:22:13]And they go back the way they came with the raven leading all along. And she is very sad and confused because she doesn't know if anything she's doing is right.

[00:22:28]She feels like she might just be doing the weirdest things. But then she's like, "Wait, the the raven led me to the dwarf, so uh Tommy must be right." But she's constantly questioning herself. But she makes it to town and she's walking through town with the snake pinched in her hand. And she comes across the cake maker. And the cake maker's like, "What are you doing?"

[00:22:56]And she says, "I'm doing what Tommy told me, which was to do what the raven told me and uh and so I've got this snake and he's like, "Uh that is a poisonous snake and you need to put it down."

[00:23:09]And he starts talking like, "You're mad.

[00:23:12]You're listening to Tommy the fool and you're talking about fairies and dwarves that steal voices and now you're walking around with a snake." And he's like, "Let me Let me kill this snake so that it doesn't hurt you." And he goes into his house and he pulls out a poker and she just runs because she wants to do what the raven is doing. And eventually she comes across the baker and the baker has the same reaction. He's like, "You are mad." And she tries to run but he grabs her by her skirt and he he starts yelling for the whole town like, "Come Come help There's this mad woman that's holding this snake and she's going to let it go and it's going to bite our children. So we need to We need to figure out what we're going to do. She won't let go of the snake and if I try to pry it out of her hand, it'll bite me." So they all decide the best thing they can do is lock her in the schoolhouse until they can get somebody that can come and get her and uh and kill this snake or get it out of her hand. So they all throw her into the schoolroom and lock it.

[00:24:16]And she's in there weeping because she can't do what the raven does. And the raven calls and she looks up and very high up there is a window that is open and it is controlled with a rope that's hanging down. And she's like, "Hey, I could climb up that rope and get out that window and then use the rope on the other side to climb back down." She's like, "But I better wait till till nightfall." So the sun goes down and she realizes that she can't climb the rope with the snake. So she doesn't know what to do with the snake and she's trying to figure it out and she's like, "Forget it." And she just ties the snake in a knot.

[00:24:51]That's the best thing she can think of.

[00:24:52]That's to keep it from wrapping around her. But then she puts it in her bosom and she's like, "I hope it doesn't bite me." And as she's putting it in her bosom, she feels the hair that had been given to her by Othmar. So, she takes a strand of it and ties it around the jaws of the snake because she knows that Othmar's love for her is so true that the snake would never be able to break this hair.

[00:25:14]So, she ties it around and sticks the snake in her shirt and climbs up the rope. And then she goes down the other side with the rope and continues on with her journey. So, she finally gets to her village and stands in front of Othmar's house and waits for him to wake up, but she she just can't wait very long. She gets too excited. So, she screams his name and he comes out and she starts apologizing because she says, "I've I've done everything the raven does, but I don't I don't know how this helps anything. I don't know what this does.

[00:25:50]I have this snake.

[00:25:51]And unfortunately, the snake has done vengeance for you and killed the woman that took your voice, but this is the best I could do. My name will never cross your lips," she says sadly. And he leans down and mouths her name over the snake and the snake begins to expand and bubble and its jaws grow and it breaks the hair tied around its jaws and the snake turns into a trumpet.

[00:26:20]And she's like, "Quick, blow into the trumpet." And he puts the trumpet to his mouth and screams her name and the trumpet sounds and sounds her name very loudly and all the village wakes up and comes to see and he drops the trumpet to the ground and takes Holda into his arms and says her name over and over again. And as he says her name, the trumpet falls apart and eventually turns to dust, this golden pile of dust. And the entire village rejoiced and Othmar married Hulda and never lost his voice again. And many, many, many years as he went through his life, every time anybody complimented him on his beautiful voice, he would say, "But it is not my voice.

[00:27:14]It is my wife Hulda's voice because I would never have it if she wouldn't have gone out and gotten it for me."

[00:27:22]And that is the tale of Don Othmar.

[00:27:27]>> [music] [music] >> Today's fairy tale was written by Mary Augusta De Morgan, who was born in 1850 in London and died in 1907 of tuberculosis. She released three books of literary fairy tales in her lifetime and we read one from her collection called The Wind Fairies, which was published in 1900. My copy is an ex-library bound copy from 1907.

[00:28:05]And the illustrations you saw on screen are from this book. It is illustrated by Olive Cockerell.

[00:28:11]>> [snorts] >> Mary Augusta De Morgan is considered by scholars to be the first feminist fairy tale writer, which is very interesting and I and you can see a lot of interesting inversions that occur in her fairy tales that I really enjoy. And what I mean by that, the very obvious one, of course, is that the damsel in distress in this story is Othmar who loses his voice and the hero who goes to save the distressed Othmar is Hulda. While this is very exciting for modern readers, I don't think that this inversion is as rare as we think it is. There are many, many fairy tales with strong female hero adventurers.

[00:29:04]But this isn't the only inversion that we see and I think that Mary de Morgan does really interesting stuff with her fairy tales beyond just writing very strong female characters, which is awesome that she does. But the inversions go many, many, many layers in. De Morgan was a woman suffragist and a socialist and was very good friends with William Morris, who of course is a very important person in the Arts and Crafts movement, had his own press.

[00:29:39]For me, most importantly, William Morris was a wonderful writer of fantasy novels.

[00:29:48]And he was writing his fantasy novels about the same time De Morgan was writing her fairy tale collections. And when he was dying of tuberculosis, De Morgan was the one who sat at his bedside and nursed him through to his death. And she died of tuberculosis. I don't know if those two things are connected. I couldn't find any information of that. But she died later into of tuberculosis the year that my copy of this book was printed, 1907. So let's talk about some of these inversions.

[00:30:18]First off, it was wonderful to see Otmar, who is a very sensitive, artistic man. I really enjoyed his character in this, that he was lured by art to his losing his own creative spark, the thing that made him happy in who he was, his his voice.

[00:30:42]So, he loses that and it incapacitates him. He doesn't know what to do to solve this problem. And then we see the very strong Holda decide to go out with no idea what she's doing and just try to solve the problem.

[00:30:58]So, we have that first kind of gender inversion, gender expectation inversion. And then she goes and tries to find the wisest person she can to tell her what to do.

[00:31:12]And this is a brilliant move. This is very smart because she sets out with no idea how to solve this problem. And she's fighting against a monster that is generations old. This this exact dwarf stole the voice of the raven centuries ago. So, this is she is fighting something very very difficult. So, she goes from person to person trying to find the wisest person in town and nobody can tell her anything that she's looking to know.

[00:31:51]And finally, she hears somebody say, "The type of stuff you're talking about is for the untaught and the ignorant."

[00:31:59]And [snorts] she says, "Well, maybe that's the people that I need to talk to, the fools."

[00:32:05]And I loved this inversion. This This to me was really really forward thinking, this idea that what she needed was not wisdom but magic. She needed to speak to people that could give her advice that would seem in a social context to be completely insane. And this is how she finds Tommy the fool. And I love the character of Tommy the Fool because, of course, in town everybody thinks of him as just slow, right? Um but in reality, Tommy has his fingers on the pulse of the magic that's going on here.

[00:32:55]Uh and he is the one that gives her the advice that she needs to follow the raven and do as the raven does. I really uh really loved that. Yeah, this is an interesting fairy tale from 1900.

[00:33:10]Uh we've jumped way far up in the timeline here. So, it's about 126 years old. And as far as literary tales go, uh you can see a an influence from Hans Christian Andersen on De Morgan. And I do love Hans Christian Andersen, but I see I see De Morgan make choices that I don't see Hans Christian Andersen make that I really love uh De Morgan's voice and some of the really interesting ways that she would uh make people question certain social aspects of of their lives. I think that's that's really cool for for early 1900.

[00:33:54]Yeah, weird tale. Lot about music. I love music. I love listening to new music. I love listening to music that is different than the norm. Music that will take you and transport you to other places is so fun and I and I feel like this book describes that beautifully.

[00:34:13]So, yes, there are three fairy tale collections by De Morgan. Uh there's also, I think Gollancz in the UK put out a book of the complete fairy tales of De Morgan. So, her stuff is out there. If you try to look for the old stuff, it's it's very costly.

[00:34:31]Um it's weird because I don't see a lot of people talking about her, but still her books are priced very high. Uh, I think right now fairy tale books in general are just very pricey. Uh, I think a lot of people are looking for them, so they just go for a lot. I have a new background here. I moved all the library around. Uh, I used to have my antiquarian fairy tales in a shelf over here to my right. Uh, and then I had my modern fairy tale books in another room.

[00:35:06]Now I've put them all together. My modern are over here and my antiquarian fairy tale books are all behind me. So, here is the new setup. I hope everybody likes it and [music] thank you very much for watching today and we'll see you in a week.

[00:35:22]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Hey.