And the Talking Donkey?

Every time I watched a Shrek movie, I constantly wondered what fairy tale the talking donkey came from.  I mean, an ogre is a common monster in fantasy-type stuff.  It's an archetype.  But a talking donkey?


The only talking donkey from any story I could think of was Balaam's.  Which was a Bible story.  Surely that's not where they got it and are they demoting the story to just a fairy tale?  Surely DreamWorks wasn't brave enough to put that in their film!

"The Bremen Town Musicians" by the Grimms Brothers (I think it's attributed to them, anyway) features a talking, singing, clever donkey, the inspiration for Donkey's character.  Which, Donkey sings for his supper in the last film since it's a World Gone Wrong.


Quite frankly, I thought "The Bremen Town Musicains" was a stupid story.  It may have just been a bad translation, but I really didn't like it.


But that's where they got it.  Thank you, Google.