#readfairytales

[fairytalesandfolklore]

The Flying Trunk

“The Flying Trunk,” by Hans Christian Andersen, from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Marte Hvam Hult. Read online.

This man’s biggest problem is that he’s a major showoff. That costs him everything. Twice. 

His father leaves him a vast inheritance, which he promptly fritters away, mainly by doing stupid things like making kites out of money and skipping gold coins like stones on the water. When he is down to nothing, he is given a gift of an empty trunk, which turns out to be a magic flying trunk. He flies off to Turkey, finds a princess in a castle turret, convinces her he is a god, and asks her to marry him. Things are looking up. He will be married to a princess and live in the castle and be wealthy once more. During the pre-wedding celebrations, though, he decides to show off once more. He uses his flying trunk to go up in the air above the village and set off a massive fireworks display just to impress everyone and to convince them all that he is a god. Unfortunately, when he comes back down again, a spark from his fireworks catches his magic trunk on fire and burns it up. He has no way to get back to castle and his princess. He is forced to wander the world telling fairy tales, probably about unfortunately young men who have lost their way in the world.

There’s definitely a theme of “pride goes before a fall” here. Even in the tale he tells to his intended bride’s parents to impress them, the little matches are so proud of their stately origins from the big tree that they believe they are too good for the other occupants of the kitchen. They revel in their own pride right up to the point that they are burned up to make a fire for the kitchen oven.

[kerstiewalthall]

Reading Cornish Tales 🌊👻💀 #cornishtales #fairytales #giants #mermaidofzennor #pixies #witchcraft #readfairytales

[liesela]

Fairytales. @theindiansage 😆💜😘🙊 #happinessdelight #artistatheart #peace #fairytale #children #readfairytales #drawingtime #creativity

[fairytalesandfolklore]

Little White-Thorn and the Talking Bird

“Little White-Thorn and the Talking Bird,” from Celtic Tales (Chronicle Books). Also from Folk Tales of Brittany by Elsie Masson. Read online. 

Image from Folk Tales of Brittany by Elsie Masson.

If “The Kildore Pooka” is a story about sloth, this is a story about greed, so we seem to be making our way through the seven deadly sins.

White-Thorn and her widowed mother are shuffled off to a ramshackle cottage after the death of her wealthy grandfather. The mother’s greedy brothers take everything and leave their sister and her child to fend for themselves and half starve. Little White-Thorn is not fated to die a pauper, though. She meets and enchanted bird, is gifted with an enchanted cow, and through the machinations of the bird and the cow, she and her mother are restored to their rightful inheritance while the greedy uncles face their punishment.

It’s a lovely tale to offer a little hope to the downtrodden, and White-Thorn does sound a lot like another variation on Snow White--there’s no prince and no dwarf, but there is an innocent girl who has an affinity for animals and who is protected by them because of her kindness and her interest in the natural world.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

The Waiting Maid’s Parrot

“The Waiting Maid’s Parrot” by Hao Ko Tzu, from Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (Pantheon Folklore Series), translated by Moss Roberts.

A young girl is serving as a maid in a great household, and the master favors her, which is bad news for her because it means that he plans to make her his concubine. She feels shame over this but has no power to escape the fate.

She’s given the job of caring for a prize parrot, though, and it turns out this parrot is no ordinary parrot. It makes promises, and it promises this young maid a proper husband.

The bird escapes and goes out searching the countryside for a husband. She finds just the right guy and starts passing messages back and forth between him and the young maid. Meanwhile, there’s much jealousy on the part of the other maids, and they start to spread petty gossip about her being involved with a man.

The master beats the girl nearly to death and buries her still alive. The bird gets killed trying to deliver messages. The lover sees a vision in his dream and finds out that the bird is the sister of the young maid from a former lifetime. He also finds out that his love is still alive, and he goes to rescue her and somehow he manages to both marry her and keep her hidden from her former master with murderous intentions.

It’s a Chinese version of a princess story with past lives and visionary dreams and animal communion and all sorts of wonders.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

The Cricket

“The Cricket” by P’u Sung Ling, from Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (Pantheon Folklore Series), translated by Moss Roberts. 

In this story, cricket fighting is popular in the court, and the people have to provide the crickets. The story itself is a fantasy, but cricket fighting is real. The system of oppression of the people depicted here is also real.

The story is about a local official named Make-good who was unable to meet his cricket quota. He was unwilling to use the same brutal tactics that other officials used of raiding people’s homes and forcing others to hunt crickets for him. He tried to do his own cricket hunting, but he wasn’t very successful.

From there we enter the realm of fantasy when Make-good’s wife consults a fortune teller. Make-good finds a prime fighting cricket, loses the cricket, almost loses his son who falls into a coma for a long time, finds another cricket, enters that cricket into fights that lead all the way to the palace and to prosperity for the family, and finally ends with the son waking up to tell about his dreams of being the champion cricket while he was in the coma.

This is such a beautiful tale. There’s a lot of reality in it. We get a pretty good glimpse of what life is like for the common people who are oppressed for the sake of the entertainment of the wealthy. But then we are also shown the fantasy in which the humble are rewarded.

By society’s standards Make-good is not making good. He is not tough enough, ambitious enough, or assertive enough to make good. Yet in the fantasy he is rewarded for his lack of cruelty and his persistence and faith.

It’s pretty to believe that the meek shall inherit the earth.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

The Fairies

“The Fairies” by Charles Perrault, from The Complete Fairy Tales, Charles Perrault, Oxford World’s Classics. Read online.

It’s another “bad mother” tale. There were two daughters. The mother preferred the oldest and treated the youngest like a servant. She sent the youngest out to fetch water. While the girl was at the well she met an old woman who asked for water. She very kindly provided the water. The woman turned out to be a fairy, and she rewarded the girl for her kindness by tell her that whenever she spoke flowers and jewels would fall from her mouth. The mother wanted her oldest daughter to have this gift, so she sent her to the well with instructions to be nice to the old lady who asked for water. This daughter was disagreeable by nature, though, and when the fairy appeared to her in a different form, she did not recognize her. She was rude, and as a result she was cursed with having frogs and vipers fall from her mouth whenever she spoke. The youngest daughter prospered and married a prince. The oldest daughter died alone and homeless.

I personally don’t think having gems and flowers fall from you mouth is a very good reward. Why couldn’t they just appear? Having a mouth full of pearls and roses all the time sounds pretty painful. We’re not really supposed to ask these things, though. Fairy tales operate on our ability to suspend our disbelief.

Perrault says the moral is that a “a gentle word is worth more than all the gems on earth.”

What interests me, though, is the psychology of what makes a kid a decent person. Harry Potter is based on the same principal of child rearing. The spoiled child (Dudley, Draco, etc) is a disagreeable brat incapable of getting along in the world, whereas the neglected and abused child (Harry) is a beacon heroism and human decency. No doubt Dumbledore (and JK Rowling) had read a lot of fairy tales before the decision was made to place baby Harry with the Dursleys.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

The Twelve Brothers

“The Twelve Brothers” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, from The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes. Read online.

There’s so much happening in this tale. Parts of it overlap with “White as Milk, Red as Blood” from the von Schönwerth tales. Other parts are almost Oedipal in nature with a father ordering the executions of his sons.

A king has 12 sons and decrees that if the 13th child is a daughter, all 12 of his sons will be killed. There seems to be some discrepancy on the motivation of the kind from version to version. In Jack Zipes’ translation in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, the king doesn’t want a daughter and seems to be ordering the deaths of his sons to spite his wife if she so contrary as to produce a daughter. However, in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, another version which was also translated by Jack Zipes’ says that the king wants his sons killed so that his daughter will inherit everything. It seems the Brothers Grimm themselves changed this tale somewhat from edition to edition of their collected tales.

Regardless, the brothers flee to the forest where they live either in a cave or in an enchanted cottage depending on which version you read. They agree to slaughter any girl that shows up because all of their troubles have been caused by a girl. One day, though, little sister finds out about their existence and goes out looking for them. She finds only the youngest brother at home, and she convinces him to both spare her life and to let her live with her brothers and keep house for them. This works for a time, but then she picks 12 flowers from the forest, and that turns her 12 brothers into ravens. She is told that the only way to change them back is to not say a word for 12 years (or a mere 7 years in the later version).

The commits to the plan to save her brothers. Meanwhile, a king comes along and falls in love with her, takes her home with him and marries her, silent treatment and all. The king had a cruel mother, though, who spoke ill of little sister on every occasion and eventually wore the king down into believing that his wife was guilty of some treachery. Luckily, by the time he decided to have her put to death for her imagined crimes, her 12 years were up. Her brothers transformed back into themselves and showed up at the last minute to rescue her. She was able to to finally speak up for herself.

And the wicking mother-in-law was boiled in oil, of course.

The differences between the two versions of the tale are interesting. In the later version, the youngest brother is named Benjamin, which draws a clear parallel between this story and the Biblical tale of Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. Is the sister a Joseph figure? Perhaps partially. She does restore her brothers to their former lives in time, but instead of being wronged by them as a child, she is the reason for their displacement twice. She then has to pay penance over time in order to save them.

The tale has its share of true villains but the lesson here is in the importance of paying penance for the harm done to other inadvertently or unintentionally. This is one of life’s difficult tests that few people could pass.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

The Nightingale

“The Nightingale,” by Hans Christian Andersen, from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Marte Hvam Hult. Read online.

This is a charming story about a Nightingale that sang so beautifully it became legendary far and wide until finally coming to the attention of the Emperor. Like all rare and beautiful things, those in power first tried to enslave it to claim it entirely for themselves. When it escaped, they replaced it with a mechanical copy that was encrusted with jewels and said to be worth a lot more than the real thing. The little bird had a true heart, though, and when the Emperor was dying, it came back and sang so beautifully outside his window that the Emperor’s spirit and therefore life were restored. The nightingale didn’t want payment. It only wanted freedom and the joy of knowing that its song was heard and appreciated.

After having been tied up and put into a cage and kept in captivity, maybe it should have asked for a little more recompense, but the material goods that mean so much to humankind were only a prison for the little bird. It needed the trees and the wind and the sky instead, and those were things even the wealthiest Emperor could not give.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

The Moon and the Maiden

“The Moon and the Maiden,” by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, from White as Milk, Red as Blood, translated by Shelley Tanaka.

In this tiny little tale a young woman is supposed to marry a rich man’s son, but the intended does not have honorable intentions. He just wants to seduce her. Lucky for her, the moon is in love with her beauty and decides to protect her virtue. The spoiled rich brat of a no-good boyfriend is told that he can only come into her bedroom when it is completely dark out and no one can see him. He comes back night after night, and each night the moon is shining brightly right into her bedroom. Finally, out of sheer frustration, rich brat boyfriend is forced to marry the girl the moon loved.

The only thing wrong with this tale is that the boyfriend was not eaten by an ogre so that she could marry his much nicer brother, but it still manages to convey to girls who lived in a time when their very survival depended on marriage the importance of protecting their virtue--and of pushing dishonorable young men into doing the right thing.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

Cassandrino the Thief

“Cassandrino the Thief” by Giovan Francesco Straparola, from The Great Fairy Tale Tradition (Norton Critical Edition), translated by Jack Zipes.

From The Facetious Nights of Straparola, this tale is about a thief who is so clever and charming that he gets away with everything. Everyone knows he is a thief, but the magistrate likes him and wants to help him. The magistrate gives Cassandrino a series of tests to find out just how talented he is as a thief. If he fails, he will pay for his crimes. If he passes all three tests, he will be given a cash reward. The tests seem impossible, but Cassandrino is indeed clever, and he manages to pull off every one of them. He is given gold, escorted out of the city, and told to never return.

This is a sort of lovable rascal character. He’s not good, but he’s not evil either, and we want him to be successful even if he is operating on the shady side of the law.

I suppose this is why we love pirates. We don’t want to be fleeced by a pirate, but we sure do admire their style.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

What One Can Think Up

“What One Can Think Up” by Hans Christian Andersen, from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Marte Hvam Hult. Read online.

Another HCC story throwing shade at critics in which a young man wants to be a writer but laments the fact that all of the good stories had already been told. He goes to see a wise woman. She shows him that there are still plenty of stories in the world, but she also says that she can’t help him to become a writer because imagination can’t be taught. She suggests he become a critic instead since critics don’t require an imagination.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

Something

“Something” by Hans Christian Andersen, from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Marte Hvam Hult. Read online.

I get the feeling HCC was not all that fond of critics. In this tale, there are five brothers, each with an escalating sense of ambition. They all want to be “something.” The first wants to be a simple brick maker. The second wants to be a mason. The third wants to be a builder. The fourth wants to be an architect. The fifth wants to be a critic.

The fifth brother believes he is a genius and is superior to all of his other brothers, and he does seem to prosper in life because he outlives all of his brothers. When he reaches the Pearly Gates, however, there’s some question about letting him in because he has not accomplished “something” in life.

Criticism doesn’t count as something in Heaven. Everyone else made a contribution to the world and to the people around him.

Finally, the snooty brother is admitted into Heaven based on the good deeds of the poorest of his brothers, the lowly brick maker. It’s the lesson of the widow’s mite. The world might value clever superiority, but Heaven is another matter.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

The Nightingale and the Blindworm

“The Nightingale and the Blindworm” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, from The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes. Read online. 

A story of greed and vengeance, this one is similar to “Companionship of the Cat and Mouse.” The nightingale has one eye, and the blindworm has one eye. One day the nightingale asks to borrow the blindworm’s eye for a party. The blindworm agrees. The catch comes when the nightingale decides not to return the eye. Ever since nightingales have had two eyes while blindworms have remained without any eyes, but ever since blindworms have also attempted to feed on the eggs of the nightingale.

Vengeance is a dish best served cold, they say, and this is one cold dish by now, but it is still being served.

This is a little different from the other Grimm’s tales I’ve read so far because it is an origin tale, explaining why something is the way it is in nature. At any rate, it has the structure of an origin tale, though this one is pure fantasy. The only thing I’ve been able to find so far that is called a blindworm is actually a lizard, and it does have eyes. They are just tiny.

Oh, well. The tale itself still works to illustrate the consequences of greed. Maybe you don’t pay immediately, but it’s possible that your children’s children’s children will still be paying for your sin. How very Old Testament.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

The Pixie and the Gardener’s Wife

“The Pixie and the Gardener’s Wife,” by Hans Christian Andersen, from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Marte Hvam Hult. Read online (in a different translation).

The gardener’s wife is a poet, and she and her cousin the seminarian Mr Kisserup (Ha!) love to hear themselves talk. They fall so deeply in conversation that Madame is not paying attention to her household chores. The pixie dislikes her, thinking that she disrespects and neglects pixie-kind. The pixie decides to teach her a lesson and sets out to cause all kinds of chaos in the house--burning the food, putting holes in socks, etc. Later the pixie overhears Madame and her cousin reading and discussing one of her poems, which is about the pixie. The pixie takes it as complimentary and changes his mind about the gardener’s wife altogether.

The tale ends with an observation that the pixie is very much like a human to have changed his mind after hearing something he perceived to be flattery directed toward himself.

How very human indeed.

[fairytalesandfolklore]

Bluebeard

“Bluebeard,” by Charles Perrault, from The Complete Fairy Tales, Charles Perrault, Oxford World’s Classics.  Read online. 

Bluebeard is a serial killer of the chop them up and leave the parts in a secret room in your house variety. Mostly, he seems to kill his own wives.

In the tale, the youngest sister (it’s always the youngest) who marries him barely escapes the same fate as her predecessors, and she only does that because she has two brothers on their way already, and she is clever enough to delay the execution until they arrive.

There are some disturbing similarities between this tale and the Grimm’s tale “The Virgin Mary’s Child.” In both tales, a young woman is tested by being given the keys to a room she’s forbidden to enter and left alone to see what she will do. In both tales, there’s a magical tell tale sign that gives her away when she transgresses.

Still, there are major differences. We can assume the Virgin Mary is good even if she does take people’s children away. She takes them them to Heaven. She is an agent of Heaven. Also, in her tale the forbidden room houses the Holy Trinity.

Bluebeard is not good. Bluebeard is your basic psycho ax murderer. Bluebeard’s forbidden room contains the chopped up parts of his former wives. Blue beard is definitely evil.

That’s why Charles Perrault’s moral at the end of the tale is so messed up, especially from the point of view of a 21st century woman.

Curiosity, in spite of its appeal, often leads to deep regret. To the displeasure of many a maiden, its enjoyment is short lived. Once satisfied, it ceases to exist, and always costs dearly.

Really, Perrault? The man is a serial killer, and the moral of the tale is that women shouldn’t be too curious and shouldn’t interfere in the affairs of men? I don’t think so.

He must have known that his moral was somewhat incongruous with the nature of the tale because he added a second moral--and somehow managed to make things even worse.

Apply logic to this grim story, and you will ascertain that it took place many years ago. No husband of our age would be so terrible as to demand the impossible of his wife, nor would he be such a jealous malcontent. For, whatever the color of her husband's beard, the wife of today will let him know who the master is.

No, Perrault. The moral of the story is not that modern men are too soft on their wives.

Let’s try this again.

Moral

If you suspect a man has a creepy and possibly violent past, don’t let his money blind you to the fact that you should probably proceed with an excess of caution before deciding to marry him and make yourself vulnerable to his violent behavior.