Tales of Faerie

Harry Clarke

2012-02-14T11:23:00.000-08:00

Thumbelina

The Wild Swans

Bluebeard's Last Wife

Cinderella

The Little Mermaid

When I don't quite have the time to research, I'll just feature artwork of a certain artist. Harry Clarke (1889-1931) was an artist from Dublin.

Just Ella

2012-02-09T23:02:00.000-08:00

Margaret Peterson Haddix's Just Ella is a novel that reveals what happens after Cinderella's supposed "happily ever after" and how it wasn't quite so picture perfect after all. This Cinderella goes from being imprisoned by her stepmother to being virtually imprisoned by the rules and expectations of the Castle, and being engaged to a Prince she realizes she doensn't love, and doesn't love her. Haddix has some interesting things to say about beauty and ugliness, court life, and what happiness and love really are.

I've done a little reading on actual court life and that's one of those things where the truth really is stranger than fiction. One little example: there was a page in Marie Antoinette's court whose job it was to carry her train around. Yet when Antoinette moved from one section of the palace to another, that page had to relinquish the job to another. The rules and restrictions are unreal and often seemingly pointless. That said, I wonder how much research went into this book, because a lot of it didn't necessarily seem believable to me. Royalty and court life were complicated and are hard for modern Americans like myself to understand, but it's painted as basically evil in this book, whereas the truth is more complex than "people who practice intricate etiquette are shallow".

Still, I can imagine myself being shocked and fascinated if I were younger and this was one of my first exposures to challenging the notions of traditional fairy tales. I would definitely recommend this to young adults, although by now I've read enough modern versions of fairy tales that our post-Victorian ideals have become almost just as predictable as the Victorian passive beauty. This Ella is a bookworm! Athletic tomboy! She doesn't sit around and let people dictate life to her, but takes action! Not that these are bad things, but they're still a stereotype. I've alluded to this before, but I spent years of my childhood/adolescence trying to be a tomboy because I wanted to be like heroines in the fantasy books I read, only to discover later that I'm a total girly girl, the kind I used to scorn (although ironically have actually become more athlectic after this revelation of mine). And has anyone ever come across a book where the main character hates books? I'm pretty sure I never have...

Not to bash the book, it was an entertaining and quick read, so I'll let the words speak for themselves:
*"It didn't seem fair that I was now a princess and she would always be a servant, just because I looked a little prettier than her."

*"I felt a surge of exhilaration just thinking about that night [at the ball]...because I'd made something happen. I'd done something everybody had told me I couldn't. I'd changed my life all by myself. Having a fairy godmother would have ruined everything" (the book explains what "really" happened as well as how the rumors of the fairy godmother started, which I enjoyed. Speaking of research, I don't know if Haddix is familiar with the fairy tale other than the Disney version, because she references things in the rumors that are only found in Disney-being friends with the mice, and mice changing to horses while the horse is changed into something else-not in Perrault. But that may have been intentional, linking Disney with silly rumors)
*This Cinderella talks back to her stepmother all the time-"you are older than me. You have more power than me. But you are not my better...how many times do I have to tell you that?" yet I can't help wondering why she has the courage to sass her stepmother, yet never tried just refusing to do any work. They'd have to make their own food eventually.

Black and white illustrations by George Cruikshanks

The Enchanted Frog

2012-02-06T19:47:00.000-08:00

This German tale is an interesting (and at times disturbing...) combination of "Beauty and the Beast" with "The Frog Prince". From Carl and Theodor Colshorn (from Ashliman's Frog King page)

Once upon a time there was a merchant who had three daughters, but his wife was with God. Once he planned a journey across the ocean to a foreign land in order to bring back gold and other valuable things. He consoled his weeping children, saying, "I will bring back something beautiful for you. What do you want?"
The oldest asked for a silk dress, "and it must be made of three kinds of silk."
The second desired a feathered hat, "and it must have three kinds of feathers."
The youngest finally said, "Bring me a rose, dear father, and it must be fresh and have three colors."
The merchant promised to do this, kissed his daughters, and departed.

After arriving in the foreign land, he ordered the dress of three kinds of silk for his oldest daughter and the hat with three kinds of feathers for the second one. Both were soon finished, and of seldom splendor. Then he sent messengers throughout the entire country to seek a three-colored rose for his youngest and dearest daughter, but they all returned empty handed, even though the merchant had promised a high price, and even though there were more roses there than there are daisies here.

Sadly he set off for home and was downhearted the entire voyage. This side of the ocean he came to a large garden in which there was nothing but roses and roses. He went inside and looked, and behold, on a slender bush in the middle of the garden there was a three-colored rose. Filled with joy, he plucked it, and was about to leave, when he was magically frozen in place.
A voice behind him cried out, "What do you want in my garden?" He looked up. A large frog was sitting there on the bank of a clear pond staring at him with its goggle-eyes. It said, "You have broken my dear rose. This will cost you your life unless you give me your youngest daughter to wife."

The merchant was terrified. He begged and he pleaded, but all to no avail, and in the end he had to agree to marry his dearest daughter to the ugly frog. He could now move his feet, and he freely walked out of the garden. The frog called out after him, "In seven days I shall come for my wife!"

With great sorrow the merchant gave his youngest daughter the fresh rose and told her what had happened. When the terrible day arrived, she crept under her bed, for she did not at all want to go. At the hour of noon a stately carriage drove up. The frog sent his servants into the house, and they immediately went to the bedroom and dragged the screaming maiden from beneath her bed, then carried her to the carriage. The horses leaped forward, and a short time later they were in the blossoming rose garden. In the middle of the garden, immediately behind the clear pond, there stood a small house. They took the bride into the house and laid her on a soft bed. The frog, however, sprang into the water.

Darkness fell, and after the maiden had awakened from her unconsciousness, she heard the frog outside singing wonderfully sweet melodies. As midnight approached, he sang ever more sweetly, and came closer and closer to her. At midnight the bedroom door opened, and the frog jumped onto her bed. However, he had touched her with his sweet songs, and she took him into bed with her and warmly covered him up.
The next morning when she opened her eyes, behold, the ugly frog was now the handsomest prince in the world. He thanked her with all his heart, saying, "You have redeemed me and are now my wife!" And they lived long and happily together.

Image of rose from here, The Frog Prince by Charles Folkard

Fairy tales in English literature

2012-02-03T07:53:00.000-08:00

In her introduction to "The Classic Fairy Tales," Maria Tatar highlights authors that have been influenced by fairy tales, which then affects their work. Yet there are two different approaches to doing this, as illustrated by Dickens, verses Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre.

Dickens was enamored with fairy tales, and embraced all the traditional thought values of his time about them. "Like the Grimms, Dickens hailed the 'simplicity,' 'purity,' and 'innocent extravagance' of fairy tales, yet also praised the tales as powerful instruments of constructive socialization: 'It would be hard to estimate the amount of gentleness and mercy that has made its way among us through these slight channels. Forebearance, courtesy, consideration for the poor and the aged, kind treatment of animals, the love of nature, abhorrance of tyranny and brute force-many such good things have been first nourished in the child's heart by this powerful aid.'"

All of the above are wonderful qualities and I'm pretty sure I've been inspired to demonstrate the characteristics listed above because of reading fairy tales-however, fairy tales may also encourage other negative stereotypes Dickens didn't mention but that were prevalent in the Victorian age.

But this is no reason to throw out fairy tales altogether, or let the negative parts in their history take away from the positive. Charlotte Bronte took fairy tale themes, yet altered the outcomes-her character Jane did not react to her situations as the most passive versions of her fairy tale predecessors did.

In the opening of Jane Eyre, she is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, mocked and made to do menail tasks-much like Cinderella. Though Jane does go through a stage of self pity, which is only natural, she finds the courage to eventually confront her aunt. Rather than accepting her fate, she "rebels against the social reflexes of her world and writes herself out of the script."

In Rochester's house, Jane finds herself in another fairy tale world-the book references Bluebeard's castle, and the house does contain a secret room with a dark secret (SPOILER ALERT: though not a collection of corpses, it does contain a wife). Though Jane loves Rochester, she cannot marry a man who is already married, even if his first wife is mentally insane. Jane's life is not defined by sitting and waiting for a man to come and save her with his love-she leaves him and starts a new life, unlike fairy tale princesses who marry the first prince who comes their way. As I've pointed out before, Jane Eyre also has some allusions to Beauty and the Beast.

Once Upon a Time and Grimm: mid-season review

2012-01-30T08:54:00.000-08:00

I initially posted my reactions to the two major fairy tale tv shows (Once Upon a Time and Grimm) after watching a few episodes. I have to admit that, though I clearly have a bias for things with a fairy tale influence, I really haven't been drawn to either show this year. I follow them more out of a sense of obligation because I have this blog than anything else, although once I start watching either show I don't dislike it.

People who don't like Grimm tend to say it's because they don't like crime dramas. In general, I do, which is why I was initially most excited about this show. But as crime dramas go, it's not really that exceptional. I would have really loved if the clues to solving the crimes were somehow to be found in the plots of the fairy tales themselves, but instead the criminals happen to morph into animals which can be found in fairy tales but otherwise have little to do with fairy tales at all. The thing I like about crime dramas is being given enough clues so that you can try to guess who the criminal is, and at the end when it's revealed, it all makes sense. In this show, the viewer isn't really that involved.

I like Once Upon a Time better now than the first few episodes-it seems less cheesy and the fairy tale plots figure in to the story more than in Grimm. One of my initial biggest reservations about the show was it seemed like the huge curse was to take away their extravagant riches and make them live normal lives, which seemed hardly heart wrenching. But as the episodes progress it's clear that what the witch took away isn't necessarily their perfect "happily ever after" endings, but the memories of their past lives and relationships. Memories and relationships are probably the most important things in life so that's a legitimate curse.

Still, it's not like I look forward to either of these shows airing each week, they're kind of a "what to watch when I'm bored" option. I think I just haven't really connected with any of the characters. In Grimm especially they're all pretty devoid of personality, except for Monroe. What do you think, readers?

Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty

2012-01-28T08:46:00.000-08:00

My roommate just shared this with me. It's not the first modern Sleeping Beauty to interpret the sleep as sexual-in fact, going back in the tale's history, Basile's 1636 Sleeping Beauty figure Talia was raped in her sleep. I also remember liking Francesca Lia Block's short story in The Rose and The Beast. This film looks like it could be very interesting but often there's a fine line between a thoughtful, frank look into the horrors of sexual exploitation, and just pure sensual gratification. Or at least, people tend to see something dark and twisted and sexual and assume it must be deep (like the film Black Swan...)

Marina Warner on Hair

2012-01-25T06:35:00.000-08:00

I read another tale, the Romanian "How the Waterfall Came to the Thirsting Mountain," that also celebrated and almost deified a long head of female hair. In this tale the Old Man of the Mountain begs a Fairy to bring him a waterfall for a mountain. The fairy travels the world and finds a Princess who was about to give her long, beautiful hair to a Wizard in return for her father. The Fairy told the Princess not to surrender her hair to the evil Wizard, but helps her to free her father (the Wizard is powerless when he sees the Tear-maiden that was born of the Princess' weeping, for none who saw the tear maiden could be anything but melted with compassion). In thanks, the Princess offered the fairy a token of thanks, and the Fairy requested her hair, for the Fairy had seen "how the Princess' beautiful hair waved and sparkled in the sunlight, and when the wind blew a single thread away, it...turned into a strand of glistening dew drops." With the whole head of hair, then, the Fairy was able to give a waterfall to the Mountain.

This reminded of the Swedish story I posted not too long ago in which a single strand of the heroine's blonde hair shines so brightly that it stops the evil magician from keeping young women as captives. This reminded me of Marina Warner in From the Beast to the Blond: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. She has two chapters on the language of hair, and traces examples from mythology, church tradition, medeival literature, and beyond in which long blonde hair is coveted as the sign of pure beauty. Blondeness has associations not only with light and goodness and purity, as seen in "The Magician's Cape," but also of wealth because of its similarity to gold.

Not only that, but hair is also very symbolic of the duality between human and animal. Hair is a similarity between ourselves and animal fur, but can also be an expression of human individuality. In Warner's words, "It is hair's imperviousness as a natural substance that yields the deeper symbolic meanings and warrants the high place hair plays in the motif repertory of fairy tales and other legends...it can be cut and curled, sizzled with hot tongs, steeped in chemicals and dyes without apparant suffering, and will go on growing, and is not even stopped by death...such quasi-magical properties make is a symbol of invulnerability."

If someone mentions the subject of hair and fairy tales, the most obvious association is Rapunzel, but hair factors into other fairy tales as well. Snow White is the only traditionally dark-haired princess because of a specific wish of her mother's; in this case the dark hair serves as a contrast to her white skin and therefore keeps in the tradition of fair/light representing that which is desirable. Allerlieurah from the Grimms covers herself with fur, or animal hair, to hide herself after her father attempted to violate her, and it is while brushing her hair in her natural state that she is discovered by the prince. Then there's Goldilocks, and Warner reminds us that in the history of the story, the main character's transformation from old meddling woman to adorable, sympathetic child was simultaneous with her hair's progression to blonde-Goldilocks has to be good, Warner claims, to live up to her blonde hair.

Illustrators have assumed that fairy tale princesses with no given hair color are blonde throughout history as well. Cinderella especially is blonde except for a few very rare exceptions. Though some modern interpreters are starting to challenge the blonde stereotype, such as Disney's Belle, "their attempts lever feebly against the long weight of the tradition."

Rapunzel-Arthur Rackham; Goldilocks-Jessie Wilcox Smith; Furball-Margaret Evans Price; Disney's Cinderella

C.S. Lewis on Fairy Tales

2012-01-21T16:52:00.000-08:00

“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
― C.S. Lewis

I remember feeling a sense of embarrassment reading fantasy in grade school...I also remember hoping people would notice that I frequented the adult section of the library, and not the children's or young adult. And now I feel no shame in checking out children's books. Did anyone else have a similar experience?

Also C.S. Lewis:
“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
And:
“I wrote fairy tales because the Fairy Tale seemed the ideal Form for the stuff I had to say.
Then of course the Man in me began to have his turn. I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. As obligation to feel can freeze feelings." (from the essay Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said)

Swan Lake and gender perceptions

2012-01-17T20:37:00.000-08:00

I saw Swan Lake this weekend and it was enchanting. Got me thinking once again about the story. Though the plot pulled very loosely from a few existing tales, it was basically created for the ballet itself. Given that it reflected the values of a few men in 1895, the gender roles in the ballet are very cliche. In fact, I found myself bored with Odette and Siegfried's characters-Siegfried spends the vast majority of his time looking perplexed, or trying to find Odette, who looks scared and woeful the whole time. My favorite part was Odile, who has not only the flashiest moves but at least looks like she enjoys dancing.

From this site, by Aaron Green:

"We do know that Tchaikovsky had much control over the stories content. He and his colleagues both agreed that the swan represented womanhood in its purest form. The stories and legends of swan-maidens date as far back as ancient Greece; when the Greek god Apollos was born, flying swans circled above their heads. Legends of swan maidens can also be found in The Tales of the Thousand and One Nights, Sweet Mikhail Ivanovich the Rover and The Legend of the Children of Lir. "

So I guess according to Tchaikovsky and his colleagues, "womanhood in its purest form" is a fragile and powerless creature, with no real personality or depth, defined by being a victim (Ironically, Tchaikovsky was a pretty fragile creature himself-more on that here.)
This view of women is frowned upon by most people in Western culture today. The ballet has been reinterpreted by Matthew Bourne with a corps of male swans, challenging preconceived notions (this is the production Billy Elliot stars in, if you saw the movie). Bourne said, "The idea of a male swan makes complete sense to me. The strength, the beauty, the enormous wingspan of these creatures suggests to the musculature of a male dancer more readily than a ballerina in her white tutu." It's true that the power of the male dancer is extremely impressive-while the female can acheive the affect of defying gravity by dancing en pointe, the male can do so simply by the strength of his jumps, seeming to linger in the air for longer than humanly possible.

Then of course there's the Mercedes Lackey novel, Black Swan, which I've mentioned multiple times before, but I kept thinking of Lackey's compelling characters as I watched the ballet. Though the prisoners of Von Rothbart are still victims, Lackey's females have depth and dimension and her unique take on Odile's character is just wonderful.

The original ballet ended with a tragic ending, and each production comes up with its own. I think happy endings are the most prevalent these days. Although, listening to the music-the famous minor theme is major at the end, it seems hard to believe it could accompany the death of any of the main characters.

The White Dove: A French Bluebeard

2012-01-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

"A Prince and his lady lived in their palace with two children, a son and a daughter. When the young prince was twenty he got married and lived in the family castle, as is proper. The girl, on the other hand, had extravagant ideas. She systematically refused all marriage proposals, having sworn that she would marry no one save a prince who had a blue beard.

"Now, one day the trumpet of the guard announced the arrival of a magnificent carriage. It was a giant, who was reputed to be a great hunter, and this giant had a blue beard. He accepted hospitality, as was the custom. The girl was presented to him, and he pleased the capricious child. The marriage was celebrated the following day and the ather gave a hunting party in which the son-in-law distinguished himself.

"Then came the day for departure; the giant was taking his wife away to his distant castle.

"The mother, who loved her daughter a great deal, conided in her: 'What dowry can I give you, my child? Gold? But where you're going you'll have a castle and treasures. Horses? The giant has marvelous horses. I'm going to give you these three birds, the pride of my aviary, the black dove, the white dove, and the red dove. Thus we shall have news from you, for you will be far away. Listen carefully: when you are in good health and living compatibly with your husband, you will send the red one; when you are ill, you will send the white one; but if discord or misfortune should befall, send at once the black dove.'

"Of course the father and mother accompanied the young wife to her new domain, but they returned as is customary at the end of a few days. Bluebeard had but one occupation and but one passion: hunting, to which he devoted himself all day long.

"One day, taking leave of his wife, he gave her a bunch of keys. 'Wife, here are nine keys. Each of them opens one chamber. But I forbid you to use the ninth and go into the room at the end of the hall.'
'Good, my lord.'
He assembled his dogs and left on horseback. Meanwhile his wife made an inventory of the castle. All women are curious; the lady of the manor went into the eight chambers, but that didn't suffice her. Her fingers wanted to turn the ninth key in the lock. 'Anyhow, I'm going to visit the last chamber.'"

The wife discovered a large basin filled with blood, and raised her eyes. The key slipped from her hand as she saw eight corpses of women hanging by chains from hooks in the ceiling.

She took the key and left the chamber, but no matter how she scrubbed the key, she could not get rid of the bloodstain. When her husband came home, he demanded the keys. When he saw the bloodstain, he knew she had counted the corpses and demanded that she go upstairs to put on her loveliest robes, and in half an hour she would be hung on a hook with the others.

The woman went to her chamber and sent the black dove home. Downstairs her husband lit a fire and was boiling oil in an enormous cauldron. He kept calling for his wife to come down, and the wife kept stalling, saying she needed to put on yet another article of clothing-each time she asked the white dove what he saw out the window. For a while the dove saw nothing but the Sun and wind, but finally noticed dust on the road. The next time Bluebeard called, the dove saw two knights on the way.

Bluebeard was getting angry that his wife had not come down yet. The knights arrived and broke down the barricade in the door.

" 'You arrived in the nick of time,' replied the giant, without being discourntenanced. 'It's perfect. My wife is all dressed for dinner. Let's have a feast.'

"They enjoyed a hearty meal where meat and wine were not lacking. Finally Bluebeard fell into a deep sleep. Had he drunk too much? Or else had someone poured a sleeping powder into his wine? In any case, he fell to snoring with his mouth wide open. With the aid of a funnel his guests poured a big dipper of boiling oil into his throat. He choked to death. Then they washed the key with that oil, and the bloodstain disappeared.

"This done, all three took leave without delay. They inherited rightfully the domains of the deceased, so they had two castles. It's a very sad truth that in this world some have too much wealth whereas others, of which I am one, haven't enough.

"I've gone as far as my fields extend,
So my tale is at the end."

-Tale from The Borzoi Book of French Folk Tales, selected and edited by Paul Delarue
-Images by Arthur Rackham

What happened to the children of Hamelin?

2012-01-12T06:55:00.000-08:00

G.J. Pinwell

The story of the Pied Piper may actually have roots in historical fact. While the Pied Piper himself may be symbolic, a Death figure, town records in the town of Hamelin, Germany from the year 1384 say, "It is 100 years since our children left." Many have speculated on what it was that took the children away-a plague, the children being sold, a children's crusade, etc. The theories can be read about on wikipedia.

The brothers Grimm drew from eleven sources to create their tale, but I searched through my copy of complete Grimm fairy tales and couldn't find it. The Grimms published many works other than their Children and Household Tales, and again according to Wikipedia, this one was published in their "Deutsche Sagen"-which makes sense if this was believed not to be a fairy tale but based on actual events. Their version includes two children which were left behind because one was blind and one was lame.

Also, I realized that I had no idea what the word "pied" means, and it means "multi-colored," referring to the clothes he wore.

Elizabeth Greenaway

I also found this interesting: "Reportedly, there is a long-established law forbidding singing and music in one particular street of Hamelin, out of respect for the victims: the Bungelosenstrasse adjacent to the Pied Piper's House. During public parades which include music, including wedding processions, the band will stop playing upon reaching this street and resume upon reaching the other side."

No, the Pied Piper didn't live here, but there's an inscription on the side of the house about the event, which supposedly happened on June 26, 1284.

Face off: Fairy tales

2012-01-08T08:39:00.001-08:00

The latest episode of Face Off, a reality competition for makeup artists, featured fairy tales in "Twisted Tales," which can be seen on hulu.

Fairy tale necklaces from RingRingRing

2012-01-05T10:34:00.000-08:00

Fairy tale silhouette necklaces available in the etsy shop RingRingRing

Little Red Riding Hood throughout history

2012-01-04T10:35:00.000-08:00

After mentioning my latest reading to a friend, he asked me to give the nutshell version of the history of Little Red Riding Hood, which is really quite difficult to do. But in church ministry I've been told you don't really understand theology until you can explain it clearly to a five year old, and I think the same goes for pretty much any academic subject-if you can't explain it in layman's terms, you don't have a full understanding. So here's my very extremely nutshell version, which really applies to the history of any fairy tale:

Orally told tales: were humorous and often racy, meant purely for entertainment's sake
Literary tales: Oral tales written in literary form by Perrault and the Grimms-made didactic and given morals which often don't even make sense within the tale. Made more condescending towards women and children.
Modern interpretations: Reaction against Victorian era. Traditional morals and suppositions challenged; female characters empowered.

Real fairy tale critics and academics may find fault with this, but that's how I understand it at least.

Now for the slightly less condensed version:
There's a version of LRRH called "The Story of Grandmother" which was published in 1951 but believed to have been originally recorded in 1885 and orally cirulated before then. In this version there is no prohibition against straying from the path or talking to strangers, and no judgement given the protagonist (who does not actually have a red hood yet, she is merely "the little girl"). This girl ends up unknowingly (or knowingly? there is a cat who calls her a slut for doing this) eating and drinking the flesh and blood of her grandmother, which the wolf has already killed. Then the wolf tells her to undress, and for each item of clothing, she asks where she should put it, to which he replies, "throw it into the fire, my child. You won't be needing it any longer." After the usual "what big ____ you have," with the "the better to _____ you with" response, the girl escapes by claiming to need to relieve herself, and untying the rope the wolf put on her when she got outside.

Perrault's version of the tale from 1697 features a girl, "the prettiest you can imagine," who did not know it was dangerous to talk to wolves, who instead of escaping was gobbled up by the wolf. The tale ends there, with a moral comparing predatory gentlemen to wolves, and advising women to be cautious.

The Grimms (1812) give the heroine a prohibition against straying from the path, but the given reason is so that the bottle of wine for grandmother doesn't shatter. But shattering wine bottles have nothing to do with which path to take, and neither does telling a wolf where your grandmother lives, so the intended moral about obeying parents doesn't really make sense. But this Little Red fares better than Perrault's, for she and her grandmother are rescued from the belly of the wolf by a hunter.

Modern critics are very upset by the helplessness and stupidity of the females in the above two versions and love the heroine of the first one, who Jack Zipes calls "forthright, brave, and shrewd" and Maria Tatar says is "an expert at using her wits to escape danger." But let's be honest here: this version has nothing to do with women's empowerment. This heroine also drinks her grandmother's blood and eats her flesh (as if you wouldn't taste the difference), doesn't appear to notice that her grandmother is a wolf until he says his teeth are for eating her, and burns each of her articles of clothing before getting into her grandmother's bed. Yes, she does escape on her own, but this tale wasn't meant to prove a point or be consistent with the capabilities of any gender or tell a moral -it was just meant to be amusing, and I think it succeeds at that. I should point out that Tatar includes* an Italian and an Asian version where the heroine also uses her wits to escape, but both are dated after Grimms, so I don't know how authentic they are.

But as far as Perrault and the Grimms are concerned, I think Little Red Riding Hood's downgrading to foolish, helpless character has as much to do with age as gender. It was totally in keeping with Victorian children's literature to feature a child (of either gender) who is severely punished for disobeying their parents. The Victorian attitude towards children is really quite condescending-there was no consideration that a child could make the right choice on their own, but has to be terrified into obeying. In this tale it's the foolish child and the old woman who have to be rescued by the adult, not just the women who need to be rescued by the man. Feminism is a bigger deal right now than ageism so we tend to miss that aspect of it.

Many critics have read messages into Little Red Riding Hood, yet each reading seems to be completely different from, if not contraditing, each other. Eric Fromm finds the tale "the expression of a deep antagonism against men and sex," Susan Brownmiller finds it perpetuates "the notion that women are at once victims or male violence even as they must position themselves as beneficiaries of male protection." Yet Alan Dundes thinks it's mainly about children's anxieties about being devoured. While Angela Carter delighted in her grandmother's tickling and pretending to eat her as she told the story, Luciano Pavarotti recalls dreading Little Red's death and anxiously awaiting the arrival of the hunter (note that, even as a male, he "identified with Little Red Riding Hood" and had the same fears). Part of your interpretation of a tale depends a lot on which version you're going off of, and who knows which, if any, are "authentic" (how would we even define that? I won't get into that right now). It's almost as if the only thing anyone can know about fairy tales for sure is that we can't really know anything about fairy tales.

*Information from The Classic Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar. I used Surlalune's Library Essentials posts from last October to create my Christmas wishlist and this book was one of my presents. Thanks for doing that, Heidi!

Images by Walter Crane

The Magician's Cape

2012-01-01T17:41:00.000-08:00

This would be a good story to use if doing a study of the significance of blonde hair in fairy tales-also note the cleverness and self-sufficiency of the heroine. This is a Swedish tale by Anna Wahlenberg.

Once there was an evil magician who filled his palace with frightened young girls that he had taken from their families. He forced the girls to dance and sing for him, and as soon as one of them displeased him, he would shove her into the forest outside, which was full of bears and wolves, and many of the girls never found their way home again.

Once the magician had gotten rid of one girl, he would don his black flying cape and search the world for a pretty new victim. Once he found a maiden who pleased him, he would spread his cape at her feet, and one she stepped on it, he would have power over her and whisk her away to his palace. During one of his flights, he came across a smith's daughter, Alvida, sitting at a window and combing her yellow hair.

The magician spread his cape before her, claiming that she was too beautiful for her feet to touch the ground. She laughed, although a little frightened at first, and suggested the magician take better care of his cape. The magician followed, and blew a magic whistle to cause a ram to run for Alvida, hoping to force her to step into his cape that way-but Alvida ran behind a pine tree. Alvida tripped over a root, running from the ram, and the magician spread his cape, hoping to trap her, but she fell to the side, and the ram's horns caused a tear in the cape.

Alvida felt sorry that she should be the cause of a tear in such a lovely cape, so she made a needle from two thorns and took one of her golden hairs as a thread and mended the tear. The magician held the cape up to the light, as if to inspect the mend, and as Alvida stood, he lowered the cape to the ground and she stepped in it. The cape turned into a pair of wings and Alvida found herself being carried through the air as the magician's face changed-his eyes into balls of fire, his mouth in a grin full of fangs.

Alvida cried out for help, and as if in answer, the strand of yellow hair caught in the branch of a tree, and wouldn't break, no matter how hard the magician pulled. To free it, he had to let Alvida go, and she slipped down to the ground and ran home as fast as she had ever run in her life.

The magician flew back to the castle full of rage and shut himself up in his room. He lay in bed but could not sleep-he thought at first the moon was shining, but it was the yellow hair Alvida had sewn into his cape, "which shone out as brightly against the black cloth as a good deed shines against an evil one." The magician rolled up the cape so the seam was on the inside, but the radiance filled the room again. Angry, the magician took a knife, cut the seam out, and threw it out the window-but as soon as he closed his eyes, the seam was still in the cape, shining brightly. He tried bringing the cape to his deepest, darkest cellar, but no matter what he did, brightness filled the room.

As he could not sleep for several nights, the magician flew back to Alvida's village. He demanded that she undo the seam, but Alvida remembered that trolls and magicians never dare force their way into Christian homes, so Alvida was still and did not answer the magician. He offered her many wonderful things, to which she did not respond.

The magician thought that giving her a gift would make her grateful, so he picked the most luscious fruits from his garden and planted them all around Alvida's window. When the magician returned to bed, the golden thread only shone faintly, and he could sleep.

Alvida realized the magician was trying to persuade her to rip out her thread. She did not touch any of the fruit herself, but allowed travellers to take the fruit. Every evening the vines were bare, and in the morning they were full again.

The magician still could not sleep in peace, but Alvida would not take out the thread. He was forced to bring gifts to the tired and unhappy to dim the light of the thread. If he dared carry off another maiden, the golden seam shone so blindingly he did not get a moment's peace until he had brought her home where she belonged.

Images by John Bauer

Roald Dahl's The Three Little Pigs

2011-12-29T16:45:00.001-08:00

"If I can't blow it down," Wolf said,
I'll have to blow it up instead.
I'll come back in the dead of night
And blow it up with dynamite!"
Pig cried, "You brute! I might have known!"
Then, picking up the telephone,
He dialed as quickly as he could
The number of red Riding Hood.

"Hello," she said. "Who's speaking? Who?
Oh, hello, Piggy, how d'you do?"
Pig cried, "I need your help, Miss Hood!
Oh help me, please! D'you think you could?"
"I'll try of course," Miss Hood replied.
"What's on your mind...?" "A Wolf!" Pig cried.
"I know you've dealt with wolves before,
And now I've got one at my door!"

"My darling Pig," she said, "my sweet,
That's something really up my street.
I've just begun to wash my hair.
But when it's dry, I'll be right there."

-This is just an exerpt from Roald Dahl's "The Three Little Pigs"-the full poem can be read at AllPoetry. Such a natural thing to combine The Three Little Pigs with Little Red Riding Hood, when you think about it. As you might expect with Dahl, the retelling is humorous as well as a bit morbid.

Image by Leonard Leslie Brooke

Christmas Greetings from a Fairy to a Child

2011-12-25T08:46:00.000-08:00

Lady, dear, if Fairies may
For a moment lay aside
Cunning tricks and elfish play,
Tis at happy Christmas-tide.

We have heard the children say--
Gentle children, whom we love--
Long ago on Christmas Day,
Came a message from above.

Still, as Christmas-tide comes round,
They remember it again--
Echo still the joyful sound
"Peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Yet the hearts must childlike be
Where such heavenly guests abide;
Unto children, in their glee,
All the year is Christmas-tide!

Thus, forgetting tricks and play
For a moment, Lady dear,
We would wish you, if we may,
Merry Christmas, glad New Year

Lewis Carroll

Dumas' Nutcracker

2011-12-22T08:27:00.000-08:00

Image from here

Last year I did a post on the original E.T.A. Hoffman story that inspired the ballet The Nutcracker. This year I read the Dumas version, which I knew was based on the Hoffman, but excpected to see an evolution from the Hoffman to the Dumas to the ballet. I was surprised by how similar Dumas' version was to Hoffman's, and even wondered why he bothered to rewrite it in the first place if he wasn't going to change anything significant. This site says it was because Hoffman's tale was considered to morbid for kids so Dumas made it more family friendly. Wikipedia calls the Dumas story a "somewhat watered-down revision." Surlalune featured a book that includes both versions plus an introduction by Jack Zipes, which I would love to read, but unfortunately isn't available to me at the moment.

Westside Ballet School

I don't see Dumas' version as being any different in child-friendliness or morbidness, because the plot is the same, other than he did pare down some of the descriptions and extra details. The only interesting addition I found in Dumas was an explanation of how Drosselmeier lost his eye on his travels, attempting to find the nut Krakatuk, because Drosselmeier almost always has an eye patch in the ballet versions.

Pennsylvania Ballet

Here is the description of Marie finding the Nutcracker, first from Hoffman:

"Objection, considerable objection, might, perhaps, have been taken to him on the score of his figure, for his body was rather too tall and stout for his legs, which were short and slight; moreover, his head was a good deal too large. But much of this was atoned for by the elegance of his costume, which showed him to be a person of taaste and cultivation. He had on a very pretty violet hussar's jacket, knobs and braid all over, pantaloons of the same, and the loveliest little boots ever seen even on a hussar officer-fitting his little legs just as if they had been painted on them. It was funny, certainly, that dressed in this style as he was he had a little, rather absurd, short cloak on his shoulders, which looked almost as if it were made of wood, and on his head a cap like a miner's. But Marie remembered that Godpapa Drosselmeier often appeared in a terribly ugly morning jacket, and with a frightful-looking cap on his head, and yet was a very very darling godpapa."

Now from Dumas:

"His body was too long and big for the miserable little thin legs which supported it, and his head was so enormous that it was all out of proportion to the rest. He wore a braided frock-coat of violet-coloured velvet, all frogged and covered with buttons, and trousers of the same material, as well as shiny boots. But there were two things which seemed strange compared with the rest of his dress-one was an ugle narrow cloak made of wood which hung down rather like a pigtail from the nape of his neck to the middle of his back, and the other was a wretched little cap, such as some mountaineers wear, upon his head. But Marie, when she saw these two oddities which seemed so out of keeping with the rest of his dress, remembered that her godfather himself wore on top of his yellow frock-coat a collar of no better appearance than the wooden cloak belonging to the little man, and that the doctor often covered his own bald head with an ugly cap quite unlike all the other ugly caps in the world."

This is a good example of the difference between the versions. Minor detail and wording differences, but anything significant has been carried through both. In this instance Dumas' writing isn't even that much more simplified. So I don't really see why other sources are so insistent upon the fact that the ballet plot is taken from the Dumas-in terms of plot his and Hoffman's stories are nearly identical, and the ballet plot has definitely taken on its own characteristics which differ slightly from production to production but are, overall, universally the same.

The Legends of St. Nicholas

2011-12-18T09:58:00.000-08:00

St. Nicholas was a real man born in the third century, in what was then Greek but now part of Turkey. He was known for being exceedingly generous, giving all he had to the poor and expecting nothing in return, and is considered a saint of protecting children as well as sailors.

Over time, of course, legends have grown out of this man and I'm sure there's some truth to some of the stories about him but much has been exaggerated. You may have heard the story that is supposedly the origin of stockings-there was a poor man with three daughters and he had no money for their dowries. Because of this he would be forced to sell them into slavery, but on three occasions, a bag of gold was thrown in through the window, so his daughters were saved from slavery. One or more of these bags of gold landed in a stocking drying at the fireplace, and that's where the tradition came from (also, the balls of gold could be the origin of putting oranges in Christmas stocking, a tradition which my father had growing up but which I think has been largely lost, at least in America).

There are other lesser known stories about St. Nicholas-such as magically whisking an enslaved boy back to his parents on St. Nicholas' Day (December 6). Another story I heard in France earlier this year-we were staying very near a Cathedral dedicated to St. Nicholas, with an American who's been living in France, and she was shocked by the violence of this story, but it's really not too different from a lot of fairy tales. Anyway, three students (or children, in the French version) were murdered by an innkeeper, who hid their remains in a pickling tub. Nicholas stayed the night at the inn and dreamed the crime, and summoned the innkeeper. Nicholas prayed and brought the children back to life. I don't know what happened to the innkeeper-neither the story I was told nor this site has anything on it.

Images by Elisabeth Jvanosky and also from the link just above

Imaginaerum

2011-12-16T17:42:00.000-08:00

Nightwish's new album, Imaginaerum, won't officially be released in the US till January, but the music video for "Storytime" can be viewsed on youtube, and the lyrics for the whole album on their website.
I've always liked that songwriter Tuomas Holopainen references both fairy tales and Disney in his songs-(contrary to what is often thought, like by the makers of the show "Once Upon a Time", Disney and fairy tales are not one and the same, but Holopainen references both often). The above song references the power of tales and stories-something I think we can all relate to here.

The album, using a creepy carnival as inpiration, seems to be an adult searching for the wonder and awe of childhood, but at the same time very mindful of that primal fear that children experience as well. And while we adults tend to think we're too intelligent to get scared of things that go bump in the night, often we're just operating under the illusion of control-life is so uncertain and precarious. Not that we should be paranoid all the time, but I'm glad the album isn't one-sided and either idealizes childhood or views life as hopeless.

The album contains many other references to fairy tales and classic fantasy characters-Alice, mermaids, etc., and also some less obvious ones-one song (I Want my Tears Back) contains the line "the voice of Mary Costa." It takes a more hardcore Disney fan to recognize this as the woman who voiced Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

I've mentioned Nightwish before, and again, their music isn't for everyone-but if dark creepy carnival-inspired symphonic metal sounds like a good idea to you, you'll probably really like this album.

Disney for the involved parent

2011-12-14T18:41:00.000-08:00

Had a conversation with some friends today, and one of them has a professor who has a rule that his little girl is not allowed to watch Disney movies without him. He discovered that his daughter had seen Disney's Cinderella at a friend's house, and sat down to watch it with his daughter, "explaining" everything to her along the way.

For example, in the scene where the Stepmother locks Cinderella in the tower, the professor stopped the tape and said, "what are some ways Cinderella could get herself out of the tower?" and his daughter came up with several ideas (including tying bedsheets together and lowering herself out the window).

So though the older Disney movies have become, in some ways, obsolete in today's culture, there are still ways to interact with your child and learn from them without condoning everything in them-because let's face it, there's no way you can sheild your child from Disney, even if you were to attempt such an extreme. And really, I think parents and mentors should treat more media this way, because what movie is perfect on its own, or couldn't lend itself to good discussion and bonding with your child?

December Liturgy of the Dead

2011-12-12T21:12:00.000-08:00

Commenter Heidi shared on my recent post on storytelling at Christmastime the link to the story of the December Liturgy of the Dead. I believe this tale can also be found in Thomas Keightley's Fairy Mythology, but I had no idea it was still in circulation in other parts of the world. So in keeping with my own advice about balancing the warm and fuzzy holiday feelings with some chilling tales from our ancestors, here's the story for you all to enjoy:

Gladys Owen

"The story takes place in Oslo, where there lived a woman, a bit over her prime age. It was Christmas Eve and she had decided to go to church Christmas morning. During the night she woke up, her watch had stopped, so she did not know what time it was. She walked over to the window and looked toward the church. There was light in all the windows. She dressed herself, took the hymn book and went to church. It was empty in the streets and she saw noone. When she arrived the church, she sat down where she used to sit. She looked around and thought the people there looked so pale and strange. There was no one she knew, but there were many she thought she had seen before, she just did not remember quite where. When the priest arrived, he was someone she did not know, though she thought she had seen him before. He was a tall and pale man.

The priest preached beautifully, but it was quiet, and not coughing in the churchroom as she was accustomed to. It was so quiet that she almost got a little scared by it. When they began to sing, a woman, who sat next to her, bent towards her and whispered into her ear: Throw the coat loosely on your shoulders and leave this place. If you stay, this will be your end, because this is time for the dead. The wife was afraid, because when she heard her voice and looked at her, she realized that it was neighbor woman who had died long ago. She was really scared. She put on her coat, like the woman had said and left. As she walked, it was as if they grabbed her. Her legs trembled so that she thought she would fall. When she came out on the stairs, she felt how they hold her back in her coat, so she let go of the coat and she ran home as fast as she could. Back home, she collapsed of the anxiety.

Next morning, when people came to church, they found her coat on the stairs, torn apart into a thousand pieces."

Tell that one at your next Christmas party :)

Disney's BATB stained glass

2011-12-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

"Finding a way to show how the Beast fell under the curse provoked a memorable disagreement. Howard [Ashman] envisioned the prologue as a fully animated sequence in which the audience would see a seven-year-old prince rudely refuse to give shelter to an old woman during a storm. Revealing herself to be a beautiful enchantress, the woman would chase the boy through the castle hurling bolts of magic that would turn the servants into objects. Eventually her spell would change the prince into the Beast boy, who would press his face against one of the castle windows screaming, "Come back! Come back!" "

-Charles Solomon, in Tale as Old as Time: The Art and Making of Beauty and the Beast

Fortunately, Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, the directors, hated this idea. Why would you ever punish a seven year old with a curse that could only be broken by falling in love? The above suggestion would shift the blame for the curse away from the prince's selfishness and to the over-zealous enchantress. This curse would be completely random, as opposed to the Villeneuve version, which has a spiteful evil fairy cursing an innocent prince, or the way the Disney version turned out-a hopelessly selfish prince who needed a huge wake up call.

I like the stained glass opening-it sets up the tale in a unique but visually beautiful way.

The inscription on the bottom of the stained glass above, "vincit qui se vincit," translates as "He conquers who conquers himself."

Storytelling at Christmastime

2011-12-03T21:27:00.000-08:00

"There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago"-so goes the lyrics to a part of "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," a popular Christmas song being played on the radio and in businesses now. I had never really noticed these words before and thought of them as odd. I don't usually associate Christmas with telling ghost stories-in fact, Christmas stories are notorious fpr being especially cheesy.

But as we've seen with fairy tales, often dark and disturbing tales have, over time, been turned into cutesy, "child appropriate" stories which are hardly anything like their ancestors. A lot of things tend to go this direction-that which is truly terrifying loses its power and becomes tamed; vampires, pirates, why not Christmas traditions as well? After all, one of the most popular Christmas stories of all times, Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," features four ghosts-but we now know the happy resolution so well the ghosts don't tend to phase us much.

John Leech

Maybe this year we should tell a few scary stories to balance out the feel good holiday stories we're bound to hear as well (not that feel good holiday stories don't have their place...)

The Waters of Youth, Life, and Death

2011-11-28T18:38:00.000-08:00

In a certain kingdom lived a tsar with three sons. The tsar dreamed that beyong the thrice ninth land, in the thirtieth kingdom, was a beautiful maiden from whose hands and feet flowed rivers of youth.

The tsar's oldest son, Dmitri, volunteered to go in search of this maiden. He took with him one hundred thousand men and rode for months, asking for news of the maiden whose hands and feet produced the waters of youth. No one could help him until he finally reached an old man who knew what Dmitri wanted, but warned him he could not go there-the rivers that led to the kingdom with the maiden were to be crossed with ferries, and those who drove the ferries would demand first his right hand, then his left foot, and then his head. Discouraged, the prince returned home and claimed he had heard nothing of the maiden.

The second son, Vassili, went on the same search-taking again one hundred thousand men, he came to Baba-Yaga's hut. Baba-Yaga gave him the same information as the old man had given his brother, and he too left for home, unwilling to part with his limbs and head.
"Baba Yaga" by Ivan Bilibin

The youngest son was Ivan. He went on the same journey, but took with him only his good steed and sword. He found Baba-Yaga's hut and was again told of the ferrymen who would take his hand, foot, and head, but Ivan said "one head is not much," and ventured forth. He came to the first ferry and rode across the river. When the ferrymen demanded his hand, Ivan replied, "oh, I want that for myself!", struck the ferrymen down with his sword, and crossing the other rivers in the same way.

Ivan came across a giant who threatened him, and realizing he could not defeat the giant, took a different way through the forest, and came across a woman who gave him
magic herbs and a ball. The herbs caused the giant to sleep and the ball led Ivan to the Princess. The woman told him that the Princess would ride out with her maidens to green meadows to amuse herself for nine days, then return home and sleep the hero's sleep for nine days and nights.

Ivan found everything as the old woman had told him, and the Princess was so beautiful he could not take his eyes off of her. When the Princess and her maidens fell into the nine days' hero's sleep, he took a flask of her healing water and left. When the Princess awoke, she was furious and came after Ivan. When she overtook him, she struck him with her sword in the chest. But as the maiden looked on him, pity seized her, and she placed her hand on his wound, and the healing water closed the wound and Ivan was revived. The maiden asked for him to take her as a wife, to which he agreed, and sent him home for three years.

However, when Ivan returned home, his brothers stole the healing water, drugged him, and threw him in a pit. When Ivan revived, he made his way to an underground kingdom. He saw some young unprotected birds and sheltered them-in thanks, their mother offered to do anything for Ivan, and he asked that she bear him to the upper world. When Ivan finally returned home, his father believed the lies that his brothers had told him and exiled Ivan, who had to wait for the three years to pass.

Finally his princess returned and demanded that the man who stole the water be sent to her. Dmitri came first, and the Princess' children were waiting with her. "Is that our father?" they asked.
"No, that is your uncle."
"How shall we meet him?"
"Take each one a whip and flog him back home."
The same fate met Vassily when he came out, but when Ivan was summoned, the Princess told her sons to go meet their father and lead him to her, and there was much kissing and embracing. The tsar drove his eldest sons from the castle and lived with Ivan and his family.

*This is a Russian folktale. I was expecting there to be water of death because of the title, but I guess it makes you realize that even the waters of youth could not help the evil brothers when justice caught up to them.

Numbers and the Twelve Dancing Princesses

2011-11-26T18:41:00.000-08:00

Anne Anderson

On the Surlalune Annotate Twelve Dancing Princesses page, you can read the Grimms' notes from the versions they heard and used to create their own version. These tales are definitely different than the one we're familiar with-for example, either three sisters who wear out their shoes verses twelve, or one princess who wears out twelve pairs of shoes. Clearly numbers are a significant thing in folklore, but even from the above example you can see numbers seem to be especially prominent in this story's versions, particularly 3 and 12-sometimes you'll see 11 or 13, but these numbers are really meant to be one more or one less than the complete 12. Click through to read the older versions and see more instances of 3s and 12s.

From Heidi Anne Heiner's annotations:
"Three days and nights: The number and/or pattern of three often appears in fairy tales to provide rhythm and suspense. The pattern adds drama and suspense while making the story easy to remember and follow. The third event often signals a change and/or ending for the listener/reader. A third time also disallows coincidence such as two repetitive events would suggest.

The reasons and theories behind three's popularity are numerous and diverse. The number has been considered powerful across history in different cultures and religions, but not all of them. Christians have the Trinity, the Chinese have the Great Triad (man, heaven, earth), and the Buddhists have the Triple Jewel (Buddha, Dharma, Sanga). The Greeks had the Three Fates. Pythagoras considered three to be the perfect number because it represented everything: the beginning, middle, and end. Some cultures have different powerful numbers, often favoring seven, four and twelve. "

Elenore Abbott

I think I'd have to rank Twelve Dancing Princesses as my second favorite fairy tale, the first being Beauty and the Beast. The secret kingdom and the dancing are definitely elements I love, but I think a more subtle factor may be the ambiguity. Normally, good and evil are very black and white in fairy tales, which I don't necessarily dislike, it's an element of the genre. But the nature of the curse is unclear-if no one were beheaded because of it, would it even be a curse? To quote from Heidi Anne Heiner again: "The callousness displayed by the princesses is often troubling to many critics and readers. Are the princesses really that cruel or are they under an enchantment? The answer is left for your own interpretation"

The Wolves Within

2011-11-21T20:58:00.000-08:00

Two Wolves

A Cherokee Legend

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.
"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"
The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Text from here, image from here

The Enchanted Lake

2011-11-21T17:21:00.000-08:00

Liadov-"The Enchanted Lake-Fairy Tale Picture", Opus 62,

From this site:
"The composer referred to The Enchanted Lake (1908) as a "fable-tableau," and it was his favorite among his compositions: "How picturesque it is," he wrote to a friend, "how clear, the multitude of stars hovering over the mysteries of the deep. But above all no entreaties and no complaints [which he associates with the sounds of trumpets and trombones, which are banished]; only nature -- cold, malevolent, and fantastic as a fairy tale. One has to feel the change of the colors, the chiaroscuro, the incessantly changeable stillness and seeming immobility."

The piece is indeed a marvel of mystical serenity, the waters gently stirring under starry skies, in suggestively shifting major and minor thirds and ninth chords supported by deep pedal points, with the "enchanted" sounds of harp and celesta, and delicate flute traceries (all in the Rimsky manner)."

History of the Arabian Nights

2011-11-17T22:01:00.000-08:00

In my library there are several books on the brothers Grimm but none exclusively on the history of the Arabian Nights. The following information is taken from the chapter "The Splendor of the Arabian Nights" from Jack Zipes' When Dreams Come True: Classic Fairy Tales and their Tradition.

The Arabian Nights is more unique than just another culture's collection of folktales because of its framework story: that of Scheherezade heroically saving her own life and that of countless other women by telling stories to Shahryar, the king who was so incensed by the adultery of his first wife that he took to marrying and killing a different woman each night. This framework story was modeled after a Persian book called Hazar Afsaneh, or "A Thousand Tales", translated into Arabic in the ninth century.

The individual tales themselves differ from collection to collection. The tales as we know them today are mainly taken from Persian tenth century tales with some Indian elements, tenth century tales recorded in Baghdad, and Egyptian stories written down between the tenth and twelfth centuries. But, similar to other collections of fairy tales around the world, these were probably circulated orally for hundreds of years before being written down, and afterwards have become an important influence in Western stories. The Arabian Nights were translated into French by Antoine Galland between 1704 and 1717, whose literary talents made the tales popular and eventually were translated into multiple languages, with the most famous English translation by Richard Burton (who plagarized a lot from an earlier English translation by John Payne).

Due to the Scheherezade story, the tales have clear purposes-firstly, for Scheherezade to educate and recivilize Shahryar and show him that he can regain his trust in women. Secondly, Scheherezade's sister Dunazade is also an audience member, so the tales are Scheherezade's passing down of advice to her younger sister and enabling her to navigate through society. The readers themselves are the third audience, who become educated alongside Shahryar and Dunazade into values of the time and culture-justice, the importance of creativity and wit, and most of all, empowering the oppressed.

The power of story itself cannot be ignored either-through the ultimate happy ending that Scheherezade's determination brings about, as well as four other major tales that employ the same motif of people telling stories to save innocent lives. As an obvious lover of stories myself, that's the most intriguing part of the Arabian Nights to me.

I found this passage fascinating, as it's something I had wondered about myself: "Given the patriarchal nature of Arabic culture, it would seem strange that Scheherezade assumed the key role in the Nights. Yet, a woman exercised more power in Moslem culture during the Middle Ages in Baghdad and Cairo than is commonly known," including ultimate power over children and slaves, including children's educations, marriage, profession, and sexual initiation.

Interestingly, the title was originally One Thousand Nights, and no one knows how it became The Thousand and One Nights. Zipes speculates that it had something to do with the fact that odd numbers were considered lucky in Arabic culture. I personally find the perfectly even "one thousand" to be a little too practical, while "the thousand and one" adds a touch of whimsy and almost a hint of the eternal, as if no matter what the number, there's always one more to be heard the next night...(there are not literally one thousand tales in the collection. There are 42 "core" tales in Galland's translation, but apparantly the complete collection of Payne's collection included nine volumes).

Illustrations by Virginia Frances Sterret

Grimm

2011-11-13T21:09:00.000-08:00

Definitely like Grimm better than Once Upon a Time. The trailer gives you a good feel for the first episode-but especially in light of my post on the cultural misuse/misunderstanding of the phrase "fairy tale," I find this line very ironic: "This isn't a fairy tale. The stories are all true." Umm...don't you therefore mean, "this is a fairy tale, but maybe you need to readjust your thinking about them"?

It seems that every episode will feature a different fairy tale-it's fun to guess what the next one is. Confession: I had never read the Grimm tale "The Queen Bee" (or even heard about it) until tonight when I watched episode three. But it was kind of fun-much like the main character, I got out my ancient family tome (or, the Barnes and Noble edition I have of the Complete Grimm Fairy Tales) to search through and research what I was witnessing. And I'm glad they didn't just stick to well-known fairy tales-I enjoy learning new tales. Although I'm doubting the source of inspiration, since this time the storyline has nothing to do with the fairy tale -but according to Yahoo answers, no one else has a better answer...
But it just occured to me-the inspiration for the second episode was Goldilocks, which was NOT a Grimm fairy tale. (Read more on Goldilocks here).
But, for anyone who's curious, the tale "The Queen Bee" is an animal helper tale-the kind where the hero shows compassion on various animals and later they help him accomplish a series of impossible tasks. In this case, an anthill helped him find one thousand pearls, some ducks retrieved a key from the bottom of a lake, and the queen bee of a hive he saved sniffed honey off the breath of the youngest princess, enabling him to marry her. Full text can be read here.

Photographing Fairies and the Cottingley Fairy Hoax

2011-11-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

I found a couple of faerie-related books at a library book sale I had never heard of before.

The first was Photographing Fairies by Steve Szilagyi...which I also just found out has been made into a movie, which seems to have pretty good reviews.

The novel's inside flap promises to take the reader back in time to the 1920s and see the story of the Cottingley Fairies through the eyes of a young photographer. Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle figures in as a character- he was a believer in the photographs himself, and I like historical fiction that blends as much fact as possible in.

I assumed the novel would prove to us that the Cottingly Fairy hoax was actually true, and it was proved by this photographer, which seemed interesting enough, but the book actually skims over the Cottingley Fairies and concentrates on a competitive (fictional) set of photographs, which also happened to involve two girls in a garden. But I'm glad that the premise of the book was not to make the hoax true-although the pictures are pretty impressive considering that the fairies were drawn by a 16-year old and 10-year old girl, I agree with Szilagyi's assessment of them: "Your pictures are crude concoctions pandering to the popular idea of what a fairy is supposed to look like. Look, this fairy here is wearing a gown. Where did she get that? Are there fairy dress shops? Are there fairy mills where they weave the fabric? And who works in the mills and dress shops?...what I do know is that if there are fairies, they don't look like popular illustrations. They'll look how they look. Not how we want them to look."

Cottingley Fairy Photographs

The novel was entertaining but I especially enjoyed Szilagyi's interesting ideas on what a separate race of people could be and the implications of discovering such a thing. The fairies as we see them in the book are still diminuitive and we don't ever discover if they are a complex, powerful group of beings such as in true fairie lore or a simple-minded, cute garden adornment hardly any different than butterflies (or the Tinker Bell fairy of the popular imagination). At least Szilagyi leaves you to ponder the possibilities yourself.

I also really enjoyed this passage, from when the main character, Castle, is still unsure as to if the fairies actually exist or not and another character gets stung by a bee: "Templeton's sting was a rebuke from nature. While we search the garden for tiny, imaginary versions of ourselves, we miss entirely the more fantastic creatures that crowd there, more mysterious and impenetrable than any parallel universe of floating fays."

Interestingly, the year the movie for this book came out was the same year Fairy Tale: A True Story came out, a movie about the Cottingley Fairies, represented as a true story. My mom rented that movie for me once when I was sick and even being younger, I resented them misusing the phrase "True story", for I knew it wasn't true although I knew none of the details at that point. The story was "true" in that there really was an incident, but not in the sense that the fairies were real as the movie portrayed. However, for those who still want to believe, this is the final photograph that Frances insisted was genuine, even though Elsie claimed it was also a fake.

This interesting quote came from Frances at the end of her life: "I never even thought of it as being a fraud – it was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun and I can't understand to this day why they were taken in – they wanted to be taken in."

Edmund Dulac eye candy

2011-11-07T19:12:00.000-08:00

It's more difficult to find online information on fairy tale illustrators than authors. Edmund Dulac (1882-1953) is one of the most well known fairy tale illustrators, for good reason. Was he personally drawn to the source material, or did his style just happen to suit it well and he complied with commissions? It's hard to believe from these gorgeous images that he wasn't at least a little inspired by the stories. He started his career illustrating some other favorite literature of mine, Jane Eyre and Edgar Allen Poe poems. Later in his life he even designed banknotes and stamps for France.

My Take on ABC's Once Upon a Time

2011-11-03T21:42:00.000-07:00

There's only two episodes of Once Upon a Time up so far but I'm not too into it. The premise itself could be really interesting: regular people who are secretly fairy tale characters. I've been intrigued with this concept of fairy tales being somehow true-as accounts of past true tales, or prophecies of things to come, are themes I play around with in my own stories. I'm glad to see that in this age where fairy tales are usually either parodied or twisted, there is this increasingly popular approach to fairy tales that holds, it seems, a little more respect for the old stories.

However, it disappointed me that the tv show's idea of a storybook character is to reference aspect of stories which are exclusively Disney-Jiminy Cricket, Maleficent, a guy in jail whistling "Whistle While You Work..." makes me wonder if they did any research beyond watching Disney classics.

The script is kind of cheesy. The good characters are sort of bland and the bad characters not that evil-the only character I find interesting is Rumplestiltskin. This supposedly dark, evil curse that even the other witch is afraid of is...to make Snow White become a teacher in a cute American town. That's...my life and I think it's pretty great. All that talk about taking away everyone's happiness and all they hold dear-what is that, exactly? The most shallow idea of "happily ever after" that implies that nothing ever goes wrong again? That's all they really lost. Okay, and their memory of their past life. But still, not a very evil plot-making them live normal lives-compared to the history of villainous deeds the classic tales feature.

The beginning seemed a little too much like Enchanted for me-I couldn't take it seriously. The whole sending them to a place where "there are no happily ever afters" which turns out to be our world, and then the constant obvious offering of poisoned apples to the protagonist...and I love Enchanted, but that's a parody for kids, and this was, I thought, supposed to be a more serious exploration of fairy tale characters for adults.

Update-I wrote the above before finishing the second episode. I like the element where the Wicked Queen has to kill the heart of the thing she loves the most-an interesting twist on her ordering the heart of Snow White and adds depth and backstory to her character. I do plan on watching more episodes, and maybe my opinion will shift.

Trees and folklore?

2011-11-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

Reader Radha Pandey is doing a project on trees in folklore, myths, and legend, and we've started a discussion in the comments to my post on Juniper Tree, but I wanted to make you all aware of it so we could have more input. So far we've thought of, obviously, the Juniper Tree, as well as Cinderella variants where the tree is a way for Cinderella to communicate with her dead mother and receive gifts from her.

Also, I'm very glad that reader Dawn alerted me to the Grimm tale One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes because of my interest in beauty standards and society's treatment of people who don't measure up to them. In this tale, which is similar to Cinderella, the stepsisters have one and three eyes, respectively, and mistreat their sister who has two eyes "like regular people." Though it's unusual that Two-eyes is mistreated because she is normal, those who are different are still represented as evil, for ugliness and evil go hand in hand in so many tales. (Two-Eyes, of course, just happens to have great beauty.) But the tree is very significant in this tale as well, for after Two-Eyes' animal helper, a goat, has been killed by her mother, from the entrails springs a magical tree with golden apples. The tree is also the means by which Two-Eyes is made known to a knight that passes by, for the tree will only allow her to pluck fruit from its branches.

In both of these tales the tree is a means of preserving someone's spirit after they've died, and a way of giving help and gifts to the living.

In the Firebird, there is another tree with golden apples, which the Firebird steals. Ivan's catching of the Firebird in the garden kickstarts his adventures.

What else is out there? I may know a little about folklore but virtually nothing about myth and legend.

Godfather Death

2011-10-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

There once lived a very poor man with twelve children who had to work all day and night to feed them. When a thirteenth child was born, he desperately went out into the road to find a godfather. First he came across the Lord, who promised to take care of the child, but the man refused, because of the way the Lord gave to the rich and let the poor go hungry. The man came across the devil, but the man refused him as well because he deceives people and leads them astray. Lastly he came to Death, and the man accepted his offer because Death made no distinction between the rich and the poor.

Death followed through on his promise and gave his godson a gift-he would become a famous physician with the ability to tell if a patient would survive or not. If Death was standing by the head of the bed of the patient, the physician would be able to cure him with an herb that Death gave him-if Death stood by the foot of the bed, the patient would die. With this advantage, the physician became famous and rich.

But one day the physician was called to look in on the King, who was sick, and when he got there, he saw Death at the foot of the bed. Though he knew he would be risking Death's displeasure, the physician turned the bed so that Death was at the head and administered the healing herb. Death was upset and warned his godson he wouldn't be able to get away with any trickery again.

Ludwig Richter

Not long afterwards, the King's daughter fell ill, and the King proclaimed that if anyone could save her, he should marry her and inherit the crown. The physician was so dazzled by her beauty and the prospect of being a King that he ignored his godfather and turned the bed again, giving her the herb. But this time Death was so furious that he took the physician by the hand and down to a cavern filled with flickering candles of all sizes. Death explained that each human life had a candle, and as soon as the candle flickered out, their life was over. Death showed the physician his candle, which was just about to go out. The physician begged to be allowed to live and marry the princess, but Death could not light a new candle without snuffing out another one. Death pretended he was getting a new candle for his godson, but deliberately put the candle out because he wanted his revenge, and the physician fell down and his life was ended.

This morbid tale taps into two things that all people struggle with at some point, no matter what your faith-the unfairness and cruelty of the world, and the inevitability of death. Naturally it would have been completely controversial in Victorian times to accuse God of being unfair, so the Grimms threw in a little narration to save themselves: "The man said that because he did not know how wisely God distributes wealth and poverty." Even though I'm a Christian, I don't like this little addendum of theirs-it sounds like the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor. And poverty for this man wasn't just that he had to wait a while before getting the newest version of the Iphone-it meant real hunger and deprivation, and watching his children suffer as well.

But I don't see Death as being all that much fairer. Yes, death comes to all, but death comes to some who are young and some who are old, and some suffer in death and some go peacefully. In this tale, even though Death supposedly makes no distinction between wealth and poverty, he gives his godson a gift that allows him to be rich and successful, and has mercy on him after his first offense.

I find it interesting that so many cultures personified Death as a character. Sometimes this is done more humorously, as in Family Guy where Death is just a regular guy doing his job and trying to get a girl. But aside from parodies, stories that feature Death generally all point to the same conclusion-no one can escape or cheat death. The trickery that the physician tries probably would have been rewarded in most fairy tales, but here it proves to be his downfall. And the cavern full of flickering candles is so haunting-it reminds me of one of my favorite Ray Bradbury stories, "The Scythe," where a man is unwillingly made to be, essentially, Death, cutting down stalks of wheat which are each people's lives-and he, like the physician in this tale, discovers that he can't cheat the system or save the lives of people he loves.
Sorry to end on such a downer-hope you all have a magically wicked Halloween weekend!

In the Hall of the Mountain King

2011-10-24T07:37:00.001-07:00

The Woman in Green: Besides those rags you have other clothing?
Peer Gynt: Ah, you should see my Sunday garments!
WIG: My week-day garments are gold and silver.
PG: It looks to me more like tow and grasses.
WIM: Yes. There's just one thing to remember:
We mountain folk have an ancient custom;
All that we have has a double shape.
So when you come to my father's palace
It would not be in the least surprising
If you were inclined to think it merely
A heap of ugly stones and rubbish.
PG: That's just the same as it is with us!
You may think our gold all rust and mildew,
And mistake each glittering window-pane
For a bundle of worn-out clouts and stockings.
WIG: Black looks like white, and ugly like fair.
PG: Big looks like little, and filthy like clean.
WIG: Oh, Peer, I see we are splendidly suited!

This passage is from Ibsen's play "Peer Gynt," which is (loosely) based on Norwegian folklore. It strikes me for multiple reasons-the characters here are lying but it's a common aspect of Faerie lore that the enchanted person may see a beautiful palace full of riches, which in reality is a shack full of rags and broken utensils, or something to that affect. Yet, if there are two possible ways of perceiving, who's to say which version of the Faerie world is real? Even when the literal facts don't change, sometimes all it takes is a little imagination and contentment to make a situation enchanting for one person but miserable for another. The aspect of not judging by initial appearances of course brings to mind Beauty and the Beast, but the element of deception also has similarities to the Emperor's New Clothes.

After this part of the play, Peer goes to the Hall of the Mountain King to marry his new bride (the Woman in Green is really the Troll King's daughter), but is turned upon by the Trolls when he isn't willing to have his eyes gauged out so that she will seem beautiful to him. Don't feel too sorry for Peer though-he only wanted to marry her because he heard she was rich. Hence this very famous classical piece, which I bet you've heard even if you're not into classical music. Below is a metal version by Apocalyptica.

My favorite dark retellings of fairy tales

2011-10-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

...All happen to be collections of short stories. When I first discovered these, in my ignorance, I called this subgenre "dark, twisted fairy tales," which I guess are really "antitales," but my term gets the point across anyway.

Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer by Tanith Lee (This is probably the one I would most recommend out of all of these)

The Bloody Chamber: and Other Stories by Angela Carter

The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold by Francesca Lia Block

This series edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow:

Silver Birch, Blood Moon

Black Heart, Ivory Bones

Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears

Black Thorn, White Rose

Snow White, Blood Red

Black Swan, White Raven

How children played butcher with each other

2011-10-21T08:57:00.000-07:00

The Annotated Brothers Grimm by Maria Tatar has an Adult Tales section in the back, which is intruiguing, especially considering that morbid tales such as The Robber Bridegroom, Fitcher's Bird, and the Juniper Tree are in the regular section. The tales in the adult section aren't necessarily more violent than the above tales, but either racist ("The Jew in the Brambles") or violent in such a way that is condoned because it's a cautionary tale, but such that goes to extremes.

This was actually quite typical for Victorian children's stories, as can be evidenced by Struwwelpeter-a collection of German tales featuring children who suffer drastically for their mistakes, including: a girl who plays with matches and is burned to death, a boy whose thumb sucking results in his thumbs being cut off by giant scissors, a boy who goes outside during the storm and is carried off by the wind, "presumably to his doom"...you get the idea. Struwwelpeter himself is the cautionary tale about the importance of good grooming, the consequences of which are pretty severe, according to this picture:

So maybe it's not just the violence that makes this tale disturbing, but the matter of fact way it's told:
"A man once slaughtered a pig while his children were looking on. When they started playing in the afternoon, one child said to the other: "You be the little pig, and I'll be the butcher," whereupon he took an open blade and thrust it into his brother's neck. Their mother, who was upstairs in a room bathing the youngest child in a tub, heard the cries of her other child, quickly ran downstairs, and when she saw what had happened, drew the knife out of the child's neck, and in a rage, thrust it into the heart of the child who had been the butcher. She then rushed back to the house to see what her other child was doing in the tub, but in the meantime it had drowned in the bath. The woman was so horrified that she fell into a state of utter despair, refused to be consoled by the servants, and hanged herself. When her husband returned home from the fields and saw this, he was so distraught that he died shortly thereafter."

According to Tatar's notes, the Grimms got complaints that this tale was violent and defended it because of its valuable lesson, Wilhelm saying, "My mother used to tell the story about the butchering when I was young, and it made me careful and apprehensive about child's play." Despite this reasoning, the tale didn't make it to later editions of Children and Household Tales.

I have lots of experience watching children play, and I think they have a pretty good sense that their play is not real, and they use imagination and not literal imitations even when copying adult behavior. Yet the concept of the potential for children to be cruel to each other mixed with their ignorance does make this a chilling tale that could possibly be made into a horror film...I'd watch that, if it was made well.

There is another version of this tale also found in Grimms that reads more like a news story-more specific, including the town name and ages of the children, and at the end the child in question is asked to choose between an apple and a coin, and as he chooses an apple, he is deemed innocent. It seems almost more upsetting to let the child get off scot free for murder simply because he didn't know any better. This article by Donald Haase has an interesting interpretation I hadn't considered-some fairy tales were not meant for children but may express adults' fears about parenting and raising children. The choice of apple verses coin represents the division between concrete and abstract thinking-something I understand as a teacher of students with developtmental disabilities who, in general, never go on to abstract thinking. The article discusses other aspects of this tale and is very interesting reading, so I recommend clicking through.

More Pumpkin Coaches

2011-10-17T06:42:00.000-07:00

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Last year I also featured a few images of DIY Cinderella coaches using actual pumpkins. I rarely decorate pumpkins any more, but when I do, Cinderella's coach is the only thing I want to create!

Haunted Disneyland

2011-10-14T15:22:00.000-07:00

In this age of technology I'm very skeptical of video "proofs" of ghosts...however I think it's still fun to read/watch and entertain the notion enough to get a thrill.

The above two videos seem the most convincing to me out of the several supposed ghost sightings in Disneyland on Youtube. Others are floating around out there and I either don't see anything or it's obviously a special effect. Disneyland is, after all, a place of illusion...
This ideo below is one man's explanation for the most common ghost "sightings," although from the comments left on youtube this isn't a very popular explanation for the supposed ghosts. You can decide for yourself which explanation seems most likely.

Real Wicked Queens

2011-10-12T19:29:00.000-07:00

Everyone likes a really evil villain who gets punished at the end of the story, but I personally never found the wicked queens and stepmothers to be very convincing.

But as I learn more about royalty, I understand better why some of the wicked Queens in fairy tales behaved rather psychotic. A little jealousy is one thing, but to go to such extremes as Snow White's queen did, all the disguises and poisons, seems like too much just to hold a number one title that no one is even aware of except the mirror. But as royal people were raised, in general, they were told that they were inherently better than everyone else; that they deserved their royal position-it's a little hard for an American to understand when a presidency is fought for and held for only a relatively small amount of time. We (hopefully) respect our president but don't idolize him. But in an inherited monarchy, the Royal Family was basically one step under being God.

So their egos were totally inflated and royals were used to getting everything they wanted. Add to that the fact that royals were only allowed to marry other royals. That's really a small pool of people to choose from, and over time, royal families or local aristocratic families would intermarry several times and later generations would get a bit...unhinged.

The Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1614) was quite a colorful character-she was responsible for the torture and deaths of possibly over 600 young women. I mentioned her before after reading about her in a book. The wikipedia article makes it sound like many of the things in the book stated as fact are now more exaggerated legend, but according to The Truth About Dracula by Gabriel Ronay, she believed that bathing in the blood of young virgins would make her beautiful and had girls brought to her castle claiming to give them work, where she instead found pleasure in seeing them bleed under all kinds of torture, sometimes sucking their blood or sexually abusing them. Her desire for youth and beauty drove her far beyond the extremes of Snow White's mother/stepmother, and she was only caught once she decided to move from peasants' blood to more upper class blood, because again the law was so catered to the upper class Elizabeth could get away with nearly anything-and did for quite a while.

I learned recently of Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519) when reading Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire. He sets his novel retelling of Snow White in Italy and has her as the role of the Wicked Queen. He used some of the scandalous rumors about her-a possible incestuous relationship with her father, the Pope, and a fondness for poisons and murders make her a perfect candidate for the character. The facts about her life are not known for sure, but it makes you realize that even the exaggerated evil of the villains in fairy tales may not be all that far from the truth after all. (Technically my post title is a bit of a misnomer-it should have been "potentially real wicked queens" or something like that, but doesn't quite have the same ring to it...)

Panna a Netvor

2011-10-06T10:11:00.000-07:00

Not to repost from Surlalune, because I think you all follow Surlalune anyway (and if you don't, you should), but I just wanted to throw in my two cents about a movie that was discussed last month- a 1978 Czech version of Beauty and the Beast, Panna a Netvor. (On Surlalune, you can read a very thorough and tantalizing review by guest writer Megan Kearney). I've gotten to the point where, if there's a version of Beauty and the Beast I haven't even heard of yet, it's probably not that good...but this one really is good and I was ecstatic to watch it! Now it is a little bizarre, sort of in the tradition of the Cocteau, but it's richly symbolic and has good exploration of the characters, especially the Beast.

And it is pretty dark-people get murdered (not typical for BATB,) it's kind of like an old haunted house movie meets a vampire romance. Seriusly-if you like the concept of Twilight but are appalled by its lack of quality, this movie is for you. The plot is basically: a supernatural creature feared by man is tortured by his love for a woman verses his animalistic bloodlust for her as well. Sound familiar?? Only this version has good acting and scriptwriting! Possibly the only intelligent review I've ever found of Twilight has to be this one from The Oatmeal...seriously, you should click through and read it because it's so funny but so true...

The Juniper Tree

2011-10-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

Below is a summary of The Juniper Tree, a tale from the collection of the Brothers Grimm, full text can be read here. Look for the significance of food/eating, and the similarities between this tale and Snow White.

A long time ago, a man and his wife loved each other greatly but were sorrowful that they had no children and prayed fervently for one. One day when the woman was peeling an apple under the juniper tree in the garden, she cut her finger and blood dripped on the snow. She wished for a child as red as blood and as white as snow, and felt happy.

Spring came, and as the berries grew on the Juniper Tree, a child grew in her womb. The woman gorged herself on the berries from the Juniper Tree until she felt sick, and asked that if she die, she be buried under the Tree. The woman finally bore a son, as white as snow and as red as blood, and died of joy. The man was heartbroken and wept for days. After a time he felt better and was eventually ready to take a second wife.

The second wife gave birth to a daughter, and was concerned that her daughter receive the entire inheritance, and was harsh and cruel to the son.
One day her daughter asked her for an apple, and she gave her an apple from a chest with a big heavy lid. The girl asked if her brother could have an apple as well, and the woman, annoyed, said that the boy could have one when he got home from school. When he did, the wife acted as if possessed by the devil-she gave him a look of hate but asked sweetly if he would like an apple. He did, and as the little boy bent down into the chest, she slammed the lid down and his head flew off into the apples.

The wife realized with fear what she had done, and quickly fetched a scarf, propped the boy's body up, and tied the head on with the scarf. When his sister Marlene asked him a question and he did not answer, she became frightened of his stillness and pale face, and asked her mother about it. Her mother suggested that, if her brother did not answer her again, she slap his face. Marlene did this, and his head flew right off. Marlene ran crying to her mother, who said, "What a dreadful thing you've done! But don't breathe a word to a soul, for there's nothing we can do. We'll cook him up into a stew."

The mother chopped the little boy into pieces and cooked them into a stew which needed no salt because Marlene sat there and wept into it. When her father returned home, he asked where his son was, and his wife told him he had gone to stay with his uncle. The father was upset that his son had left so suddenly without saying goodbye, but he began eating the stew and thought it was delicious. He kept eating more and more, saying, "No one else can have any of it. Somehow I feel as if it's all for me."

Marlene sat crying through the meal. As her father threw the bones under the table, she collected them, tied them up in a silk handkerchief, and buried them under the Juniper Tree-only then did she feel better and stop crying. Just then a mist arose fom the tree, in which a flame was burning, and from the flame emerged a beautiful bird that began to sing. Marlene felt happy and returned home.

Kay Neilsen

The bird began to sing:
"My mother, she slew me,
My father, he ate me,
My sister, Marlene,
Gathered my bones,
Tied them in silk,
For the juniper tree.
Tweet, tweet, what a fine bird am I!"

The neighbors who heard the bird all came out and begged him to repeat his song for them, but the bird said he would not repeat his song for nothing. He received a gold chain from the goldsmith, red shoes from the shoemaker, and a millstone from the mill workers, in payment for singing his song to them. Then the bird returned to the house with the Juniper Tree and began to sing his song again. His father felt happier the more the bird sang, the mother more frightened, and Marlene continued to weep. But the bird dropped the gold chain around the father's neck, and the red shoes at Marlene's feet, and she was happy again. The mother went outside to see if she would feel better too, but the bird dropped the millstone on her head and she died. The bird vanished in a cloud of flames, and when they left, their brother and son was standing there, and they all went in to a meal together.

Warwick Goble

This macabre tale adds cannibalism to the list of unsavory events that happen in the fairy tale world. In this tale, I don't find the murder scene nearly as chilling as the dinner scene, with the father obsessed with the stew made of his son's meat-though he is portrayed as a good character, his emotions in this tale are dramatically different than Marlene, the real compassionate hero, who was told that her brother's death was her fault.

This tale is not a true folk tale, but from a text given to the Grimms by Philipp Otto Runge, which is why it is a bit more realistic than some fairy tales. The mother has many emotions, from annoyance with her stepson, and when she kills her stepson it isn't necessarily the natural result of her hate but the result of a moment of temporary insanity; afterwards she is plagued by fear and guilt and tries to cover up what she's done, unusual for evil stepmother characters.

Maria Tatar says that both P.L. Travers and J.R.R. Tolkein thought this was a beautiful tale, despite its gruesome aspects, and I agree. Though the Grimms' version ends with the boy returning, some versions keep him as a bird. Though I'm happy for the family reunion ending (which represents the ideal family as motherless, which is a whole other issue...) I might like the other ending better. Again, it's more realistic. The son has been deeply traumatized and will never be the same, but there is still hope when he is transformed into a different, beautiful creature who recounts his story through song.

Swan Lake Images

2011-10-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

I was looking for an image for my last post of Von Rothbart from Swan Lake, and found these images of Yolanda Sonnabend's designs for the Royal Ballet's Swan Lake, and they were all so spectacular I wanted to share them in a separate post.

A tale about the tale of Bluebeard

2011-10-03T18:55:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time...

Hermann Vogel

I was babysitting three girls and the oldest was going through a phase where she HATED Disney Princesses, she only liked villains. She only liked scary things and her favorite color was black. So when it came to story time, I tried telling Beauty and the Beast, my go-to, but it wasn't scary enough because there was no villain. I told them Swan Lake, and she liked that better because of Von Rothbart, but still wanted scarier. So finally I said, "Okay, you really want scary? Then I'll tell you the story of Bluebeard."

In retrospect this was pretty dumb. She was only 5 or 6 at the time and had two younger sisters there. Her parents had asked me a while before this to kind of ignore the subject of death if it came up-these parents also later made us mute the volume of Katy Perry's "Hot n' Cold" every time we played it on Wii dance when she sang "PMS" because they told them it was a swear word, so they're pretty protective-which is something I should have respected at the time. But anyway, I told it, and Caroline (the oldest) seemed to like it and I hope the younger two weren't traumatized.

It was later that night when her parents came home that I really regretted it. Caroline was very excited to tell her father the stories that I told them, including, "And THEN she told us about BLUEBEARD!" and I was like, oh no, oh no-what was I thinking telling the story of a serial killer to three innocent little girls? The parents are going to fire me and this is my favorite family to babysit!

In this instance, the relative obscurity of the fairy tale in America was my salvation. Her dad laughed and said, "Oh, you mean Redbeard the Pirate?" and thought no more about it.
None of the girls ever mentioned Bluebeard again, and they turned out fine, but I still shouldn't have told it with the younger two there, and not when the parents clearly wouldn't have wanted me to. Raising your own children is COMPLETELY different than taking care of someone else's, and as I've said before, as a teacher and a babysitter, what you say to kids really can come back to haunt you so you have to be really careful. But at times, children can surprise you with what they're ready for...

The Skeleton Fairies of Tessa Farmer

2011-10-01T09:40:00.000-07:00

In theory, I plan on October being a sort of morbid/creepy fairy tale month, in honor of Halloween. I may run out of creepy things and find lots of cutesy things instead so we'll see, but to start off, these images of fairies by Tessa Farmer that are definitely not the fairies we're used to seeing.

From her website:
"Tessa's miniscule sculptures reinvigorate a belief in fairies: not the sweet Tinkerbell image in popular conscience, but a biological, entomological, macabre species translating pastoral fable into nightmarish lore. Constructed from bits of organic material, such as roots, leaves, and dead insects, each of Tessa's figures stand barely 1 cm tall, their painstakingly intricate detail visible only through a magnifying glass.

Hovering with rarefied, jewel-like beauty, Tessa's tiny spectacles resound with a theurgist exotica: their specimen forms borrow from Victorian occultism to evolve as something alien and futuristic. Playing out apocalyptic narratives of a microscopic underworld, Tessa's manikin wonders rule with baneful fervour: harnessing mayflies, battling honey bees, attacking spindly spiders. Presented as wee preternatural discoveries, Tessa's sculptures conjure a superstitious premise, dismantling the mythos of fantasia with evidence of something much more gothic, sinister, and bewitching."

More images can be viewed here.

The cultural idea of fairy tales

2011-09-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

To the dismay of fairy tale lovers, the phrase "fairy tale" is mainly used in culture in a condescending, even accusatory way. Though, as we who love the genre are quick to point out, fairy tales include many gruesome and gory details such as murder, thievery, and incest, this doesn't stop others from seeing the fairy tale as a trite and insignificant world where nothing ever goes wrong and everything ends happily. Really, we shouldn't need violence and sex to make a story worth reading, but how has this view of fairy tales managed to be prevalent? Even I catch myself sometimes using the phrase as a negative thing, as if I've learned two different definitions: the actual tales I know and love, and the cultural definition of a story that doesn't come true.

I've paid attention to when the phrase is used most negatively, and it seems to come with the assumption that someone is basing hopes for their own life off of expectations that it will end just like a fairy tale and will ultimately be disappointed. It may be true that fairy tales help set up unrealistic expectations in a young person's mind, but really, how are they that different than most other entertainment sources? What family friendly film, chick flick, or action movie doesn't promote the same hopes and wish fulfillment that a fairy tale does? In some ways, the more "realistic" movies can be more dangerous because they are supposedly set in the real world, but the lifestyles and romance and beauty we see in many films and books are just as much a fantasy as a world with secret kingdoms and fairy godmothers.

Though you never hear the phrase, "don't get your hopes up, it's nothing but a chick flick" or "I'm too old to believe in Hollywood stories," you have probably heard variations on those using "fairy tale," which has sadly born the brunt of criticism.

Now there are of course more realistic movies and books, just like there are fairy tales that separate from the norm-and we always have to remember that traditional folk tales are a totally different genre and we should have different expectations of them. I think maybe it's the nature of the "happily ever after" that turns people off. We like stories with resolution where the main character gets the guy or girl and a solution to a main problem has been found, but in fairy tales the character not only ends up better than he/she was before, but usually married to a King or Queen and ruling the country with unbelievable wealth at their fingertips. But again, this is a method of exaggeration and extremities common in fairy tales, and the fact that the world of the tales is so stark and extreme really makes it hard to believe that the listener is expected to base their own life expectations around it.

Some examples: In Miracle on 34th St (at least the old 1947 version), the mother refuses to tell her child fairy tales because she wants her to have a realistic view of life. It's later revealed that the mother herself expected her first husband to be Prince Charming and when he left she became bitter. Ironically, the movie ends with Santa Claus being real and she gets a better man anyway, so according to it, fairy tales really are true, in a way.
From the song "When there was me and you," from High School Musical:

"I thought you were my fairytale
My dream when I'm not sleeping
A wish upon a star that's coming true

...Now I know you're not a fairy tale
And dreams were meant for sleeping
And wishes on a star just don't come true"

Now I just find this humorous. Disney itself, in one of its cheesiest and most unrealistic hits, references back to the films that made itself famous as if the world wise high school girl's maturity is reached when she realizes fairy tales don't come true. But oh wait-in the end she DOES get back together with the cute guy and everything is perfect as they get the leads in the play, win the basketball championship, and she sings and dances in a cute red dress with all of her unified friends. Maybe I'm noticing a pattern...those who claim that unrealistic expectations are "just a fairy tale" are the ones who go on to create an unrealistic ending themselves, but somehow a little cynicism in the middle is supposed to heighten drama and and realism.

Now these were just the first two examples that popped into my head. I also hear the phrase thrown around in conversation a lot but nothing I can quote. Anybody have any examples from books, movies, conversations, etc., where the phrase "fairy tale" was used and perhaps abused?

Gregory Maguire's Mirror Mirror

2011-09-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

It's nothing new, but this weekend on a trip I read Gregory Maguire's Mirror Mirror for the first time, which as you can probably guess from the title, is a novel retelling of Snow White. Maguire is most famous for authoring the book Wicked, on which the musical was based. I have an old post on the book vs. the musical which you can read, but essentially, both are good, you just have to have different expectations for each. One is an inspirational family-friendly musical with catchy tunes which reverses the black and white villains and heroes of the book Wizard of Oz, another is an adult book which has many flawed characters and was meant to give depth and history to the Wicked Witch. It can be kind of a shock to go from the musical to the book unless you realize they're quite different and for different audiences.

Mirror Mirror was along the same lines as Wicked the book, but with no other expectations to go by it stands on its own as a strong retelling. The essential elements of the story are there-wicked queen, mirror, apple-but all a little different, and all woven in to history, an element I really love, set in Italy in the early 16th century. Again, this is an adult book-the characters are very frank about bodily functions, but really this is more historically accurate anyway. From the Publisher's Weekly review of it: "Fairy tales in their original form are often brutal and disturbing; with his rich, idiosyncratic storytelling, Maguire restores the edge to an oft-told tale and imbues it with a strange, unsettling beauty." Actually, despite their phrase "restoring the edge" implying that the edge is usually lost, this is one of the things I like about Snow White-really no retelling has been able to make it "dumbed down". Without the murder attempts it's not the same tale, and who can forget the demand for Snow White's heart brought back to the Queen in a box? Even Disney has these gruesome details.

Back to Maguire-Dwarfs are said to be creatures of the earth. Maguire's dwarfs are literally stone creatures learning slowly to take on more human characteristics such as individuality and quicker thought processes. It's really an interesting philisophical way to ponder humanity as if viewed from outside-this is an aspect of what can make fantasy great literature: the ability to imagine a world different enough from our own that we realize the profundity of characteristics of our world in matters we usually don't even think about.
I really enjoyed the book. Coincidentally, I happened to be in Washington DC last weekend, just at the time that the National Book Fair was going on, and Gregory Maguire was a featured author there-but I didn't get a chance to see or hear him.

A house-cleaning playlist

2011-09-22T09:18:00.001-07:00

Disney princesses get a bad rap for doing domestic chores so often, but you know what? I do domestic chores too. I seriously listen to these songs every time I clean my floors:

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PICTURE IN THE WORLD

2011-09-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I may be a little biased...

This is a picture of me/Belle and the Beast. You can tell by the line drawn between our hands that we are holding hands. Naturally, we are surrounded by roses.

This was drawn by a very special friend of mine, Christy, whose artwork and reactions to Disney's Sleeping Beauty have been featured on the blog before. She's quite possibly the only person I know who loves fairy tales as much as I do...

Belle-Hey, Girl version

2011-09-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

You may have already seen this, but my roommate just shared this with me...the opening number of Disney's Beaty and the Beast but with Belle's voice replaced by a gay man's ("little town...full of queens and homos"). It's pretty funny (maybe not for young children though, there is mild language).

On Beauty and the Beast...

2011-09-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

Betsey Hearne: "Beauty's is the journey to the underworld, to existence beneath the surface appearances. Along the way, she faces the danger all heroes encounter, a monster representing-perhaps created by-her own fear. Beauty's triumph is a strength of perception that leads to reconciliation with self, mate, family, and society. Her good looks become irrelevant, an ironic context for her previous failure to see. As her inner vision clears, she refocuses the old adage: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is not what one sees but how one looks at it, not passively, artificially, but actively, probingly. Her vision becomes a "burning gaze." Beauty, like the Beast, is an inner force. In dissipating her fears, she dissipates the fearsome aspects of the Beast.

..."The Beast is neither archenemy nor traditional hero. He is a much more poignant and affecting figure than the prince who succeeds him because he is in conflict with himself, while the Prince is perfect. The Beast combines a forceful nature with a gently naivete, brute strength with painful yearning. The Beast wants a relationship with Beauty; he will lure her but will not force her into it. Instead of trying to eat Beauty, he feeds her. He is powerful, yet vulnerably at the mercy of his unrequited passion. He is terrifying and also magnetic."

From Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale. I can literally open this book up to any page and know I'll find something beautifully written and thought provoking...however, one little comment-why does Beauty always get accused of initally judging the Beast by appearances? I think she's actually more than decent to him initially, and if she shows fear or loathing it probably has something to do with the fact that he threatened to kill her father for no reason. Even if not, did we expect her to accept a marriage proposal on the first night of their acquaintance?

On the subject of the fairy tale and judging by appearances-remember the movie Beastly? I gave it a not so favorable review...found this interesting tidbit via The Grimm Tea Party (couldn't resist looking into a blog that referenced both the Grimms and tea in the title):
"And what about the beauty character in the book? “...our beauty is a shy, sweet, book smart, average looking girl named Lindy. Lindy's appearance is the only thing that separates her from “Beauties” of past. With her red hair, freckles, green eyes and crooked teeth, she would have never been the Beast's ideal in his past life.”

Wait a moment, that doesn’t quiet sound like the character Vanessa Hudgens is portraying in the film... Oh dear. Melina ends her review on this note, “There is a movie adaptation of Beastly coming out and since Vanessa Hudgens is playing Lindy, I guess the moral of the story was lost in production.”"

Interesting...not really surprising for Hollywood, but I am more interested in the book itself now. That's a theme that more recent versions of the story emphasize-the fact that, at the end when the Beast transforms, in terms of status and beauty, they really have swapped roles. Jane Eyre has been likened to a Beauty and the Beast story, and it sort of happens in reverse order in that book, but Robin McKinley's Beauty as well as the original Villeneuve more or less assume that once the Beast is a handsome prince he won't love her anymore, a mere farmer's daughter. So really both of them love for the right reasons in the end.

The Jealous Sisters

2011-09-16T18:06:00.000-07:00

Once the Sultan was out in his kingdom and he overheard three sisters talking. The eldest was saying she would love to marry the Sultan's baker, for then she could eat all the bread in the world. The next said she would rather marry the head cook, for then she could have all the food she wanted as well as bread. The youngest and most beautiful said that she would rather have the Sultan himself.

The Sultan was amused and decided to grant the girls' whims. He summoned the sisters before him the next day and told them their wishes would be granted. The young women were embarrassed and insisted they had no idea they would be overheard, and were not worthy of such special treatment, but the Sultan carried out his plan. The eldest two sisters were married to the Baker and Head Cook, and the youngest was given a royal wedding and made the Sultana.

Soon the wives of the Baker and Head Cook grew jealous of their younger sister, the Sultana. They would get together and complain and discuss how they wanted to be revenged. Finally an opportunity arrived-the Sultana was pregnant. The sisters came to live in the Palace and spent all their time with her, and when the baby was born, a beautiful boy, they took the baby, placed him in a basket, and sent him floating down the river. They told the Sultan that his wife had given birth to a dog and he was furious. The Prince was found by the Sultan's gardener, who himself had no children. He took the baby home to his wife, who was overjoyed, and they raised the boy as their own son.

The same thing happened when the Sultana gave birth to another son, and the Sultan was even more furious, but the Gardener found the baby. Finally the Sultana gave birth to a baby girl, but once again deceived by the sisters, the Sultan became so furious he wanted her dead. But the Sultana was so well loved by the Grand Vizier and all the subject, they pleaded for her life. The Sultan allowed her to live, only on the condition that she be forced to sit in a box outside the mosque in the coarsest of clothes and spat upon by all who passed her. The sisters delighted in seeing their sister so humiliated, but she handled herself with such dignity that she won over the hearts of the people as well.

Meanwhile, the three royal children were being raised unaware of their true identities. But their adopted parents had noticed that they conducted themselves as people of high birth and provided them with all the education befitting people of their stations. The Princes were named Bahman and Perviz, and the Princess Parizade. The Princess joined her brothers at their lessons and learned just as much and just as well as they did. The Gardener wished them to have a beautiful place to live, retired from the Sultan's service, and bought them a lavish country house. The Gardener and his wife died before they could tell the children the secret of their parentage.

One day a pious old woman was passing by and Parizade showed her around the house and gardens. The woman was very complementary, but said that the house was lacking three things that would make it perfect-the Golden Water, the Singing Tree, and the Talking Bird. The Princess became obsessed with the idea of owning such priceless treasures, and her brother Bahman volunteered to go get them for her. Parizade said she would rather not put her brother in danger, but he insisted and left on his journey.

His instructions were to ride for twenty days with no stopping and then ask the first person he saw for the directions. He did as told and found a dervish with a beard so thick he had to cut it in order to understand what he was saying.

The dervish told him the way to the treasures, but warned him that on his way he would be taunted and harassed by the voices of all who had gone before him but died and were turned into black stones. The Prince was confident and went on his way, but became distracted and frustrated by the voices and became a stone himself.

Before the Prince left, he gave his sister a knife that would turn bloody if he should perish, and Parizade and Perviz were dismayed when they saw that their brother was dead, and Perviz insisted on going in his place. He came across the same dervish and succumbed to the same fate, and Perizade put on men's clothing and went to save them herself.
She heard the warning from the dervish, and decided to put cotton in her ears to block out the voices. The dervish was impressed by her wisdom, for no one else who had attempted the journey had had the foresight to take such precautions. The cotton blocked out most of the sounds, and Perizade was able to prevail over what she did hear. She successfully found the Talking Bird, who gave her directions to the other treasures, and to release her brothers and all the other men who were enchanted.

The siblings made their way home with their new riches and added them to their garden.

Not long afterwards, the Sultan was passing through and noticed the handsome and polite brothers and saw how well they hunted. He invited them to live with him in his Palace, but they refused on account of their sister. The Sultan asked them to consult with their sister, but the men forgot two nights in a row, and only on the third night did they remember. Parizade was concerned that they not insult the Sultan and suggested they consult the Talking Bird. The Bird advised that the brothers accept the invitation but also invite the Sultan to their house, and that Parizade should serve him a dish of cucumbers served with pearl sauce. Though she was surprised, she and her brothers agreed that they should listen to the bird's advice.

The Sultan was very impressed with their house and treasures. When the cucumber and pearl dish was served, he expressed his surprise, but the bird replied, "Surely Your Highness cannot be so surprised at beholding a cucumber stuffed with pearls, when you believed without any difficulty that the sultana had presented you with a dog, a cat, and a log of wood instead of children." The bird revealed the whole truth about the deception of the jealous sisters and the identity of the three siblings. The Sultan send word for the sisters to be executed and his wife to be released from her punishment, and the children and the Talking Bird returned to the Palace with their father.

The above tale is probably my favorite Arabian Nights tale I've read so far-maybe it's no coincidence that (at least in my edition) this is the last story before the Sultan proposes marriage to Scheherezade.

When reading ancient fairy tales from other cultures, it's hard to know how to interpret things. Were some parts meant to be accepted naturally or as a fantastic element? Are we supposed to agree or find it ironic and humorous? For exampe, when I read about the animal substitutes for the babies, I wondered if that was a fear some women had of giving birth to creatures. Certainly some women have been blamed for giving birth to girls and not boys, as if they had any control over it-but I liked the part at the end when the bird points out that the Sultan was being foolish for believing the lies.
I am often surprised when reading fairy tales at how the genders aren't always stereotyped as much as we think they are-I've found tales where gender roles seem to be reversed, but the particular collection of fairy tales that are famous today tend to fit the same patterns. But even so I was amazed that this tale was so pro-women. It's not just in Middle Eastern cultures that women have either been denied education, or educated differently than men, limited to languages and arts, but the story made a point of describing how Parizade learned all that her brothers did, even shooting with a bow and arrow, and she could "throw a javelin with the same skill as they, and sometimes better" (finally, an Arabian Nights tale I actually believe is told by a woman...) and when Parizade is riding to rescue her brothers, not only does her wisdom outshine their overconfidence, but "as she had been accustomed to riding from her childhood, she managed to travel as many miles daily as her brothers had done..." and she is capable in all physical tasks as well as mental.

Another thing that struck me was the apparant belief in the innate superiority of people with royal blood. I know that at least in Russia the royalty truly believed in their own innate superiority (I'm reading a book on it right now...) and really I think it would be impossible to be born into such power and priviledge and not let it go to your head. The gardener in the tale recognized their identity as royals due to their "beauty and air of distinction...their manners had all the grace and ease proper to people of high birth." It just seems so funny that people really thought of royalty as being a different breed of human...

The images in this book were credited to "Edmund Dulac and others," so that's all I can tell you for sure (the color plates definitely look like Dulac).
On another note, Blogger hasn't been letting me comment under my account, so I would have liked to respond to comments but haven't been able to. I really do appreciate being able to hear from other people...thank you for your time and thoughts and hopefully I can figure it out.

The problems with trying to find morals in fairy tales

2011-09-13T19:40:00.000-07:00

In Maria Tatar's Off With Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood, she has a very interesting section on Beauties and Beasts, analyzing different types of Animal Bridegroom tales. Often, modern interpretations of tales such as Cupid and Psyche and Beauty and the Beast criticize the tales for what seem to be misogynist messages: "Never once do these stories show a heroine making a move in the direction of autonomy-the tales ceaselessly turn on the question of retargeting the object of the woman's devotion [from her father to her lover]." Tatar points out that women are expected to love because of duty and not passions, yet men rarely have the same standards applied to them.

Yet I have a very strong connection to the story of Beauty and the Beast and love the fact that Beauty learns to love someone despite how he looks-not because she's a woman, but because she's human. Many critics of the woman's expectation to accept whatever she's given are also under the impression that all Beasts are evil as well as ugly, a trend popularized by Disney, but this was never the case before (with the Marianna and Mercer Mayer picture book being the only exeption as far as I'm aware). As a single tale I think it's a beautiful, powerful, and challenging story, and yet if you look at the pattern of the tales told through history, you do notice disturbing trends. Cupid and Psyche especially is very condeming of feminine curiosity-Psyche is severely punished for looking upon Cupid, but who can blame a woman for wanting to look at her husband? Tatar points out that Psyche's act reveals she wants enlightenment-knowledge of her husband that goes beyond carnal (he's been visiting her every night and performing his husbandly duties under the mask of darkness). You would think this would be encouraged, but it proves to set off the chain of events that make Psyche miserable for years as she has to earn back her husband-another source of grief for modern people who loathe the implication that a woman's life should revolve around the man.

I'm still wrestling with the concept of how much you can condemn one tale for fitting into a pattern. Literary collections of tales, like Apuleius' "The Golden Asse", from which Cupid and Psyche comes, or the Grimms, have a direct source you can point to who had their own agenda. But folklore itself-those fairy tales that are supposedly handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth-have no one responsible for their messages and meanings other than collective humanity. It's just kind of sad that your appreciation of a tale can be diminished by knowing that it can be offensive, simply because it suggests things when studied alongside other similar tales.

But Tatar concludes with some very interesting observations that are important to keep in mind when studying fairy tales-you can't take fairy tales too seriously because even within one tale they will contradict themselves. Tatar says, "The many variants of 'The Search for the Lost Husband' remind us of the strength of children's fairy tales as moral magnets, picking up bits and pieces, if never entire blocks, of a value system. But since fairy tales seem to resist wholesale assimilation of a moral outlook or ethical orientation, they tend to offer mixed signals about the way to get ahead. One tale may impart a critique of dishonesty at the same time that it shows a boy defeating his enemies by cheating them. While it is tempting to look for a certain consistency in a tale's moral code (particularly since so many fairy tales have been pressed into service to provide behavioral models), it is rarely possible to find a story that does not encode competing moral claims."

Tatar uses the Grimms' The Frog King as an example. The heroine had to be forced to allow the frog to share her plate and bed even though she had given him her word, violently throws him against a wall, and ends up marrying the handsome Prince he becomes. Tatar's words: she is "selfish, greedy, ungrateful, and cruel, and in the end she does as well for herself as all the modest, obedient, magnanimous, and compassionate Beauties of 'The Search for the Lost Husband.'"' She contrasts this with a similar tale from England where the girl does obey each of the frog's requests, as her stepmother forces her to. The frog even asks that she chop off his head, and after hesitating she still obeys but still ends up with the same result. Tatar says that the tale could be meant to be humorous, as if obeying the commands of a villain would lead to a happy ending. In many fairy tales, whether you obey or violate a command, you get the same results.

Katharine Cameron

And remember that the fairy tales versions we are familiar with, especially from the Victorian period, were specifically written to be moral guidelines for children, therefore inserting messages in where they weren't before and sometimes contradict the actual facts of the story. But these messages we grew up with become embedded in the meaning of the tales in our minds and it's hard to see them as meaning anything different-but fairy tales can be read multiple ways. Though Tatar concludes that though Cupid and Psyche does have an unfortunate message of rewarding female self-sacrifice while condemning attempts at enlightenment, "it also celebrates the revelatory power of curiosity, the way in which the desire for knowledge of the beloved can deepen passion to turn it into love."

More on Dickens and the Fairy Tale

2011-09-12T17:54:00.000-07:00

I found some more on Dickens' use of the fairy tale:

"Dickens himself tended to incorporate fairy-tale motifs and plots primarily in his novels and particularly in his Christmas Books (1843-5). It is almost as though he did not want to tarnish the childlike innocence of the tales that he read as a young boy-tales which incidentally filled him with hope during his difficult childhood-by replacing them with new ones. But Dickens did use the fairy tale to make political and social statements, as in Prince Bull (1855) and The Thousand and One Humbugs (1855), and his regressive longings for the innocent bliss of fairyland are mad most evident in his essay A Christmas Tree (1850)...

"What was to be was Dickens' adult quest for fairy bliss in his novels, and it is not by chance that one of the last works he wrote toward the end of his life was "The Magic Fishbone" (1868)...Here Dickens parodied a helpless king as a salaried worker, who is accustomed to understanding everything with his reason. He becomes totally confused by the actions of his daughter Alicia, who receives a magic fishbone from a strange and brazen fairy named Grandmarina. Alicia does not use the fishbone when one would expect her to. Only when the king reveals to her that he can no longer provide for the family does Alicia make use of the magic fishbone. Suddenly Grandmarina arrives to bring about a comical ending in which the most preposterous changes occur. Nothing can be grasped through logic, and this is exactly Dickens' point: his droll tale-narrated from the viewpoint of a child-depends on the unusual deployment of fairy-tale motifs to question the conventional standards of society and to demonstrate that there is strength and soundness in the creativity of the younhg. The patriarchal figure of authority is at a loss to rule and provide, and the reversal of circumstances points to a need for change in social relations. The realm of genuine happiness that is glimpsed at the end of Dickens' fairy tale is a wish-fulfillment that he himself shared with many Victorians who were dissatisfied with social conditions in English society."

-Jack Zipes, from his introduction to Victorian Fairy Tales: The Revolt of the Fairies and Elves

Muppet Musicians of Bremen

2011-09-07T21:39:00.000-07:00

Just discovered that the Muppets did a version of The Musicians of Bremen, and I recently shared photos from the German town of Bremen, and I love the Muppets, so here we go-

"Adapted from the classic Grimm fairy tale, The Muppet Musicians of Bremen was the third and final television special filmed for the Tales From Muppetland series. In this version of the story, four barn animals fled their evil masters and became a traveling Dixieland band. Kermit, formerly an abstract character but now firmly identified as a frog, narrated the story. While by this time Kermit had a clear animal identity and “look” to him, many of the other classic Muppet characters had been designed as more abstracted versions of real animals, or did not necessarily resemble any particular animals at all. The designs of the puppets featured in The Muppet Musicians of Bremen – Leroy the Donkey, Rover Joe the Hound Dog, T.R. the Rooster and Catgut the Cat, along with additional animal characters – set the design standard for future Muppets that would more closely resemble realistic animals"
More on how this short film influenced the history of the Muppets here-I also just discovered henson.com and I'm pretty sure it will change my life.
For more fairy tale-related Muppetry on Tales of Faerie, click here

The Fairy Banquet

2011-09-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

"A man one time was led by invisible musicians for several miles together, and not being able to resist the harmony, followed till it conducted him to a large common, where were a great number of little people sitting round a table, and eating and drinking in a very jovial manner. Among them were some faces whom he thought he had formerly seen, but forbore taking any notice, or they of him, till the little people offering him drink, one of them, whose features seemed not unknown to him, plucked him by the coat, and borbade him whatever he did to taste anything he saw before him, "For if you do," added he, "you will be as I am, and return no more to your family." The poor man was much affrighted, but resolved to obey the injunction. Accordingly, a large silver cup, filled with some sort of liquor, being put into his hand, he found an opportunity to throw what it contained on the ground. Soon after, the music ceasing, all the company disappeared, leaving the cup in his hand, and he returned home, though much wearied and fatigued. He went the next day, and communicated to the minister of the parish all that had happened, and asked his advice, how he should dispose of the cup, to which the parson replied, he could not do better than to devote it to the service of the church, and this very cup, they say, is that which is now used to the consecrated wine in Kirk Merlugh."

Story from the Scottish Highlands, as found in Thomas Keightley's Fairy Mythology.

Image by John Anster Fitzgerald.

Disney Princess Designer collection

2011-09-01T17:35:00.001-07:00

Disney Princesses may not be your thing, but you might enjoy looking at the Disney Princess Designer collection-the classic Princess' dresses have been given a more sophisticated makeover.
I like Cinderella's the best-it's a completely new silhouette but still traceable to the classic dress.

The store is releasing dolls with these dresses each week through October 24-you can read more on the Disney Store website.

Fortunately for me, someone had already scanned these images, but you can pick up the little brochure yourself at the Disney Store.

Greetings from Bremen Town

2011-08-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

I've always liked the Grimms' tale "The Bremen Town Musicians", just because it has "musicians" in the title even though it really has nothing to do with music.

The link above will guide you to the full annotated text at Surlalune. The really really short version: a bunch of animals are about to get killed by their owners so they go to Bremen together and end up scaring off a bunch of robbers and enjoying the loot themselves.

Anyway, a friend of mine lives in Germany and mentioned that she was going to Bremen this summer and I was all excited and she promised to get some pictures for me. So here are the famous animals-donkey, dog, cat, and rooster (in the tale they stand on each other's backs the first time they scare the robbers).

This picture is from wikipedia, which says that it's supposedly good luck to rub the donkey's front legs, which is why they're all shiny.

Bill Lewis-"The Beast"

2011-08-23T15:59:00.000-07:00

The full text of Bill Lewis' poem "The Beast" can be found here. It's a rather heartbreaking poem, starting with these lines:
"The Beast sits by the telephone

Beauty doesn't call anymore."

Anyone who has ever felt lonely or rejected can relate to the Beast in this poem. What I love is how Lewis' Beast is still optimistic, and uses fairy tales themselves to comfort himself and give him hope for the future-
"He reads Angela Carter novels, fairy tales

and Mother Goose and hopes that wisdom

does not go stale over the centuries."

I had written a short story myself along these lines-not assuming that Beauty had left him, but set in the time before he meets Beauty, and doesn't know for sure that he ever will. In my story he has a beautiful romantic dinner set out for two and imagines the girl of his dreams is there, and for a while he even believes it, until the end when he has to acknowledge it's all in his imagination. Again, this is meant to be a universal theme that anyone could relate to-is hope a tool, or torture? Can our imagination satisfy temporarily the longings for things we don't have, or does it make disillusionment all the more cruel? The poem tends to assume the latter-
"He does not know that sentimentality

is an act of violence.

In the dark bedroom his good eye waters."

*I had the above image saved as "Bryan Alexander" so I assume that's the artist's name...don't remember where I got it from.

Isabella's Art

2011-08-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

Aladdin and the Magic Lamp

Alice and the Madhatter

The Snow Queen

Little Red Cap and the Big Wolf

The Sandman

Hansel and Gretel and Witch

Candy House

Isabella's Art is an etsy site that features shadow puppets and theaters, with folklore, mythology, and fantasy as inspiration. I found this via Kingdom of Style. Reminds me of the work of Lotte Reiniger...the first one especially makes me want to watch The Adventures of Prince Achmed again...

Basile's Petrosinella: A True Spunky Heroine

2011-08-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I read about the evolution of fairy tales and how the Cinderella characters have become more and more passive (like this article), and from the examples cited I don't see a huge difference. People will contrast older versions of Cinderella like to the Perrault/Disney and say that historical Cinderellas were so proactive and resourceful and got herself out of her mess. But really all she did was ask the spirit of her dead mother-whether a spirit or animal helper or fairy godmother or crew of singing mice, Cinderella doesn't ever actually make her own dress, she always has help. Can we really fault the Perrault/Disney Cinderella for not being aware that she had a magical helper?

Not that I support passive heroines or disagree with the above article I cited (although I always feel the need to point out that, historically, there was really no option for lower class females to ever end their servitude) or that Disney couldn't have made better choices in his version, but I think Cinderella isn't the best example of female characters who got dumbed down.

However, as I read through the earliest version of Rapunzel, Petrosinella, from Basile's Pentamerone (1634), I was really struck by what a clever and resourceful heroine Petrosinella is, in stark contrast to later versions of the tale. In this case, she really does use her instincts and wits to get her own happy ending.

Petrosinella's captivity is a little more traumatic than Rapunzel's-she isn't given over at birth. Her mother has the same cravings, steals the petrosinella, and makes the promise to an ogress that she can have her unborn child, as she is threatened with death if she doesn't. The child Petrosinella lives with her parents, but every day as she passes by on her way to school, an ogress whispers at her, "tell your mother to remember her promise." The unknowing daughter repeats this to her mother day after day, until finally her mother, with no other attempts to keep her daughter, tells her child to reply, "Take it!" When she does so, the poor girl is taken by the hair and locked in a tower in the woods. I tend to think of Rapunzel as someone who has always been sheltered from the world and doesn't know what's out there, but Petrosinella knows what it's like to have a family and friends and now has to lose everything for no apparant reason. (Really, I can't imagine the ogress's motivation here. Props to Disney for giving Mother Gothel a good reason to want a girl in a tower.)

Prince sees Petrosinella and instantly falls in love. Petrosinella, however, isn't stupid. She knows to give the ogress poppy juice that she and her lover may have trysts in the tower. The lovers are so clever the ogress doesn't discover their love until a gossipy friend of hers warns her that the couple are getting pretty serious.

Now, other versions have the witch temporarily victorious as the lovers are separated and have hardships and whatnot, and it's usually because Rapunzel is ignorant (she's pregnant and doesn't know why her belly is growing) or thoughtless (mentions one day that the witch is much harder to pull up than the Prince), but Petrosinella doesn't even let the ogress get the upper hand. Petrosinella "had her ears wide open" and was suspicious that the ogress would find out (very impressive coming from a girl who can't leave her tower) and arranges an escape before the ogress has a chance to punish them. Petrosinella is under a spell and cannot leave the tower-implying that she would have already left otherwise-unless she is holding three gallnuts in her hand which were hidden in a rafter in the kitchen.

But clever Petrosinella already knows about the spell and counterspell, so she has her Prince climb up and get the nuts, and they're off. The ogress starts to chase them, and every time she gets close Petrosinella throws a gallnut in her path and it turns into something. I imagine this part to be the 17th century version of an action sequence in a movie, as the witch has to cleverly distract all the fierce animals sent her way. In the end the last animal eats her and the free lovers are married in the Prince's Kingdom.

I noticed after drafting this post that I never mentioned the hair for which Rapunzel is so famous. It's there in Basile's story, but really this version could stand on its own without it. In other versions, the Prince meets the maiden by calling out the famous "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair" as the witch does, and she is startled when a young man appears instead of the witch. Again goes to show how later Rapunzel isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer since she can't even tell the difference between their voices, as opposed to Petrosinella who is fully aware when she allows the Prince to enter her tower.
By the way, Petrosinella is the Italian word for parsley, which I find funny because my mom is allergic to parsley.

Illlustrations: A. H. Watson, Anne Anderson, Arthur Rackham, Isobel Lilian Gloag

Rapunzel in Advertising

2011-08-21T09:29:00.001-07:00

So, it's not too mind-blowing to be referring to Rapunzel when advertising hair products. This is the back of my roommate's Herbal Essences "long term relationship" conditioner for long hair. Note also the references to "that's no fairy tale" and "longing for a happy ending?" all revolving around the same theme.

Figment Studios Journal Review

2011-08-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

A while ago I posted the fairy tale-themed journals at Figments Studios, and I am now the owner of the Once Upon a Time journal.

Now these are rather pricey-this one was $58.95 plus shipping. But a journal is a pretty special part of your life for a while, and then you (hopefully) keep it for the rest of your life, so I think it's worth it to splurge on a beatuful one like this (or you could just do what I did and request it for a birthday present).

The journal comes in a complementary gift box:

Then you open it to find a precious elfin seal guarding your treasure:

And there in the packaging lies your journal, just as ornate in person as the pictures indicate on the website.

I absolutely love it; my only complaint is the smell. It came with a very strong almost metallic scent-unfortunately it doesn't have that "old book" smell its appearance might suggest. At first when I took it out of its box my whole room smelled odd, but after spraying a little Febreeze and letting it sit in the sunlight it's not so bad.

So, if you're willing to deal with the smell, I would absolutely recommend any of the journals on the website. There are several pictures to choose from if you want a large frame journal, many of which are fairy-inspired, and you can also send in a picture to make a custom frame journal, which is a pretty neat feature.

Speaking of fairy journals, I've had my eye on this one on etsy for a while, made from vintage fairy tale book cover. Again it's fairly expensive, this one is $60. Hopefully it will still be around for me to request for Christmas...

Princess Shoes

2011-08-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

Beauty from Beauty and the Beast
Mai Lamore

The following three are from If Style Could Kill, designers unknown:

The Little Mermaid

Odile (The Black Swan)

Cinderella (her shoes weren't always glass, but some sort of precious metal)

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Urban Outfitters

Snow White

Modcloth

As worn on Rebecca of The Clothes Horse

Karen of The Red Shoes would need something classic but fabulous to wear day after day

Christian Louboutin

The Witch (any witch really, but I think Disney's Snow White's witch is most often associated with skulls)

Kermit Tesoro

Madame D'Aulnoy's Green Snake: Beauty, Ugliness, and Curiosity

2011-08-11T18:43:00.000-07:00

Green Snake (or "Green Serpent") by Madame D'Aulnoy is a fascinating tale. It reminds me a lot of C.S. Lewis' "Till We Have Faces" (a lesser known but my favorite of all his books) because they are both retellings of the Cupid and Psyche myth, but starring a rarity: an ugly female. There are some versions of Animal Bridegroom tales which are little known today, but Green Serpent features a human female who is cursed with ugliness (note that this is not an authentic folktale, but a fairy tale from the French salon period-I can't think of any actual folktales that have an ugly human female as the protagonist).

This story has dual Beast characters-more like "Beast and the Beast" than "Beauty and the Beast," if you will, because the Prince is also in disguise as the title character. D'Aulnoy explores the themes of beauty vs. ugliness in her tale, just as Lewis did in "Till We Have Faces"-especially the cruel reaction of culture to a person's ugliness, especially a woman's. (This is kind of a soap box of mine-read more here.)

First of all, the heroine, Laidronette (it's been translated as Dorugly, which contrasts her sister Dorabelle) is cursed by an offended evil fairy, not unlike Sleeping Beauty. However, Laidronette's fairy claims that she was not invited to the party because "you only want beauties with fine figures and fine dresses like my sisters here. As for me, I'm too ugly and old. Yet despite it all, I have just as much power as they." Earlier this fairy is defined as malicious, but we already see the theme of someone being judged, possibly, by their appearance. So poor Laidronette is given "perfect ugliness," but the other fairies prophesy that she will one day be very happy. The Queen is still concerned that her daughter become beautiful again, which the fairies can't promise.

When the princess was twelve, she begged her parents to be allowed to be shut up in a castle so that she "will no longer torment them with her ugliness." This was difficult for the Royal couple, because "despite her hideous appearance, they could not help being fond of her," but they allowed her to leave. This language implies an assumption that people's worth is found mainly in their appearance. Later, Laidronette returns to see her sister marry, but was received coldly by the Court and her family. She was glad to return to her forest home "where the trees, flowers, and springs she wandered among did not reproach her for her ugliness."

One day while the Princess was out, she came across a green snake who spoke to her, saying, "Look at my horrible form. And yet at birth I was even handsomer than you." This terrified Laidronette, who ran away. Later she explored a boat which took her out to sea and threatened to capsize. In her hour of terror she mused, "Alas, have I ever enjoyed any of life's pleasures so much that I should now feel regret at dying? My ugliness disgusts even my family...wouldn't it be better for me to perish than to drag out such a miserable existence?"

Hopefully, this whole "ugly people have no point in being alive" message is making you angry. Yet at the same time, it's the other people in Laidronette's life that are making her life so miserable. I think it's safe to assume that any woman today who is considered extremely ugly would also find life to be very difficult because of how she is treated.

Laidronette is offered help from the green snake, but she is still so horrified she would rather die than owe her life to him. Here, sadly, the one person who should have learned not to judge by appearances seems to be just as shallow as anyone else. The boat wrecks on a rock, but Laidronette wakes up to find herself in an enchanted land where she is waited on hand and foot by a hundred strange little creatures called pagods.

Laidronette enjoys the luxuries provided for her, and is shocked to find herself treated honorably with "no longer talk of her ugliness." (In the picture above, she wears a veil, just like Orual in Till We Have Faces...) This is the part that begins to parallel Cupid and Psyche-very intentionally, too, for as her invisible lover begins to win her over, she realizes she's following in Psyche's footsteps. Laidronette can't believe anyone could love someone so ugly, and here we have a refreshing change in attitude, for the invidible prince says that she "has sufficient qualities to merit my affection," for the first time alluding to the fact that people can have positive qualities other than their appearance. Yet Laidronette hasn't quite learned her lesson-she still wants to know from the pagods if their prince is handsome, and can't return the love of someone she cannot see.

Eventually, though, she is won over and agrees to be the bride of the invisible voice. She is told that he has been cursed by the same evil fairy that cursed her, and that two years of his curse remain, and should she succomb to curiosity like Psyche, his sentence will begin all over again.

Yet, even having read the story of Psyche over and over again to avoid making her mistakes, Laidronette once again listens to her mother and sister and decides to look on her husband, only to find he is the Green Snake and she must complete impossible tasks (with the help of a beneficient fairy) before she can earn her happy ending. D'Aulnoy repeats over and over again that Laidronette deserved what she got for her curiosity, it's all her fault, etc., etc., even with a poetic moral at the end about the evils of the womanly sin of curiosity. Keep in mind that D'Aulnoy was a feminist in her day, who, according to Jack Zipes, "did not like the manner in which women were treated and compelled to follow patriarchal codes, and...did not even stop short of aabetting execution or murder of men she considered unworthy or tyrannical." So I don't know if D'Aulnoy was just trying to parallel Cupid and Psyche, or if she really thought curiosity a terrible sin limited to the female race, but Laidronette is continually reprimanded for her act of curiosity.

owever, she apparantly eventually learns her lesson. Sent on an errand by the evil fairy to fetch water from the bottomless spring using a pitcher with a hole in the bottom and with a millstone tied around her neck, Laidronette decides to drink the water to make her wise before washing her face in it to make her beautiful. The good fairy likes this. Later we are introduced to a character who fell in love with a cruel woman only because she was beautiful who suffered for it. So, despite the appearance of the beginning of the tale, women are found to have worth aside from their looks. Of course, Laidronette still becomes beautiful in the end, and the Serpent becomes a handsome prince. Then there's the moral, which informs us that "too oft is curiosity the cause of fatal woe...it is a weakness of womankind."

I don't get it, myself. Feminism has come a long way since the late 1600s.

Beauty and the Beast by Nightwish

2011-08-03T19:46:00.000-07:00

Nightwish is a symphonic metal band from Finland. That particular combination tends to be disliked by some people anyway; this song is from their very first album and therefore even stranger. It's not my favorite music of theirs, but I love that Tuomas Holopainen, pianist and songwriter, is a huge fan of Disney and Beauty and the Beast. The lyrics are clearly influenced by Disney's version. So if you listen, be forgiving of the computerized sounds and the male singer (both singers have been replaced by now)-or you could just read the lyrics.

Beauty And The Beast (Angels Fall First)

Remember the first dance we shared?
Recall the night you melted my ugliness away?
The night you left with a kiss so kind
Only a send of beauty left behind

Ah dear friend I remember the night
The moon and the dreams we shared
Your trembling paw in my hand
Dreaming of that northern land
Touching me with a kiss of a beast

I know my dreams are made of you
Of you and only for you
Your ocean pulls me under
Your voice tears me asunder
Love me before the last petal falls

As a world without a glance
Of the ocean's fair expanse
Such the world would be
If no love did flow in thee
But as my heart is occupied
Your love for me now has to die
Forgive me I need more than you can offer me

Didn't you read the tale
Where happily ever after was to kiss a frog?
Don't you know this tale
In which all I ever wanted
I'll never have
For who could ever learn to love a beast?

However cold the wind and rain
I'll be there to ease your pain
However cruel the mirrors of sin
Remember beauty is found within

...Forever shall the wolf in me desire the sheep in you...

On Faerie

2011-08-03T18:55:00.000-07:00

There are many possible origins of our word "fairy," like the Persian "peri," and is ultimately believed to be derived from the Latin "fatum." The meaning and associations with the word have changed over time, as has the spelling.

According to wikipedia, the original word was "faie"; the "-erie" was added as a suffix to mean that which is associated with the Faie, thus becoming "faie-ery," like the word "theivery".

Art by Gustav Dore

Thomas Keightley has a section in his book Fairy Mythology on the origins of the word, and he discusses the different uses of the word Faerie.

1. Illusion and enchantment
2. The Land of the Faie
3. The people (in general) who live in Faerie
4. Individual people who live in Faerie-from what we consider to be fairies today, to the elves and other magical creatures.

Keightley says, "We find in most countries a popular belief in different classes of beings distinct from men, and from the higher orders of divinities. These beings are usually believed to inhabit, in the caverns of the earth, or the depths of the waters, a region of their own. They generally excel mankind in power and in knowledge, and like them are subject to the inevitable laws of eath, though after a more prolonged period of existence."

And, to bring the Fae folk into more relevant, modern life, these are some of the Fairy doors of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Beginning in April 2005, these tiny doors began appearing in various places in and around the town. My favorite (from the description; I've never seen these) is the one at the end of the Folklore and Fairytale section in the youth department of the Ann Arbor library. Every book lover knows instinctively that libraries are simply brimming with portals to other worlds...

Vintage Disneyland, Part II

2011-08-01T09:19:00.001-07:00

Disneyland postcards from the 60s-early 70s.

These are from a little picture book about It's a Small World. Small World was new in the 60s, as was the whole concept of Audio Animatronics (the mechanical dolls or people that move and speak on many Disney rides)

View the first Vintage Disneyland

Spike: A gothic failure?

2011-07-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

Saw this at Blockbuster and wondered why I hadn't heard of it before. I was planning on getting it through Netflix and writing a review of it here, but the reviews on Netflix were possibly the worst movie reviews I've ever read. So, I'd probably advise you not to waste money on it, although I'm still slightly curious as to how they actually treat the plot. Has anyone seen this?

Netflix's description: "Beauty and the Beast gets a grisly retelling in this phantasmagoric horror fable that begins when four young people crash their car deep in the forest and soon find themselves at the mercy of a human-beast hybrid with a gory agenda. The creature's motivations turn out to be more complex than simple bloodlust, but the terrified kids being stalked in the darkness only know that any one of them could be the next to die."

However, for a possibly awesome Beauty and the Beast movie in the works, I heard through Surlalune about a movie directed by Guillermo del Toro starring Emma Watson as Beauty. I literally let out a very loud gasp when I saw that post. Guillermo del Toro?? Writer and director of Pan's Labyrinth, and producer of one of my all-time favorite ghost stories, The Orphanage? And Emma Watson will be so much better than Vanessa Hudgens in Hollywood's last Beauty character, from Beastly...

Thoughts on Princess and the Pea

2011-07-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

It intrigues me to think of certain fairy tales that are well-loved in almost every time and culture, as opposed to other tales that fly under the radar, yet manage to survive in common knowledge. I'm almost awed by how well-loved Cinderella has been for centuries and among peoples from all over the globe. On the other hand, I've been thinking about Princess and the Pea lately, and it struck me that in the books and blogs I read I've come across very little on that tale. There are a few modern versions of it, but it doesn't hold a candle to some of the more standard fairy tales.

W. Heath Robinson

Why the lack of love? The most obvious reason seems to be that no one can relate to the heroine's task of being unable to sleep because of the presence of a pea underneath a sea of mattresses. Like many fairy tales, the specifics have been exaggerated and can in this case be found humorous, but the main character's only virtue is her inability to live a life other than that of utmost luxury. While we might pine for that kind of wealth ourselves, to have that as a moral standard makes me a bit indignant.

However, similar tales that came both before and after Hans Christian Andersen's famous version have the heroine successfully pass a test like this not because of actual royalty or sensitivity, but because of cunning or outside help. This kind of story makes the heroine more appealing while tending to villainize the queen who makes the ridiculous standards (in Andersen's version, the Prince himself desires to wed only a real princess).

Margaret Tarrant

But this take on the fairy tale hasn't skyrocketed its popularity. Even though, when you think about it, the princess' sensitivity to peas under a mattress is really just as unattainable as Cinderella's conveniently being far and away the most gorgeous woman in the whole kingdom and thus attracting the attention of the Prince. Yet most girls dream more of being a head-turning beauty than sleepless nights due to the slightest of different sleeping arrangements. Some similar tales, according to wikipedia, involve characters that really just have super sensitive skin-a hair that leaves a red mark and a jasmine petal causing a woman's foot to be bandaged. Obviously we're supposed to interpret this as exaggeration, symbolically representative of well-breeding and an appreciation of the finer things in life-but literally this sounds like an awful disease. If one hair leaves a red mark, what does your actual head of hair do to your neck and shoulders? Imagine what raindrops would do, or heaven forbid, an actual event that would cause an injury to a normal person?

But I think another reason this poor princess has never been really popular is that she's probably the only fairy tale heroine who never really suffers. Well, okay, she turns black and blue because of the peas, but nobody really feels that sorry for her for that. Other heroines are abused, many of them have attempts taken on their lives, they may be abandoned, lose a loved one, or go through other traumatic experiences. Many other princesses have to go through strange tests before their ultimate unveiling as the true princess-silence and nettle shirt making, journeys to the four winds and sun and moon, cooking things and leaving tokens in the food, etc.-but those princesses already have our sympathy because of all the evils they've suffered.

Kay Nielsen

Talk about unpopularity-I had no idea this fairy tale was originally from Hans Christian Andersen until I looked it up, because I have two collections of Andersen tales, and neither includes this one-despite the inclusion of other much lesser known tales such as "What the Old Man Does is Always Right" and "The Galoshes of Fortune." Yet, even those who don't claim to be fairy tale fans know the plot to this tale. I do have a bit of respect for any fairy tale that manages to stay alive despite its lack of Disneyfication-in this case, the only major media from this tale is the musical Once Upon a Mattress.

Do you like this tale? Why or why not?

Peter Pan at Pittburgh Ballet Theater

2011-07-22T20:11:00.000-07:00

Ballet and fairy tales are no strangers to each other (classifying Peter Pan as a fairy tale is rather liberal, but I include classic fantasy literature that is often thought of as a fairy tale in my personal definition). But the thought of pairing ballet, the dance form created to appear as if the dancers were defying gravity, with the flying of Peter Pan intrigues me. Showing in Pittsburgh this October.

By the way, I meant to post this a while ago and forgot, but for Midwesterners like myself, Peter Pan is showing in Chicago through August.

Historical Evidence for Mermaids?-Part II

2011-07-21T09:18:00.000-07:00

Like I said before, Surlalune has really inspired me to learn more about mermaids.

The thing about mermaids that fascinates me is that, more than any other fairy tale creature or story, throughout history people have believed, or tried to make others believe, that mermaids really do exist. Modern scientists would scoff at this idea, and there's no actual evidence to support their existence despite the many hoaxes claiming to prove otherwise, as I referenced in my original post, Historical Evidence for Mermaids. However, Christopher Columbus himself claimed he saw a mermaid. Christopher Columbus! If he claimed he saw anything else, we'd believe him without question.
The book Incredible Mysteries and Legends of the Sea by Edward Rowe Snow includes several accounts of supposed mermaid sightings. Snow himself admits he doesn't believe they exist, but it's fun to entertain the idea. And after reading so many detailed accounts, one begins to wonder...
I included most of the sightings found in chapter 10 of the book. I left out some that had less details or were more confusing to me, and honestly, I got tired after typing out so many...so for your reading or skimming pleasure:

-November 16, 1822-British publication, The Mirror, listed ten different mermaid appearances on the sea
-1531-Merman caught in the Baltic and presented to King Sigismund of Poland
-1610-Captain John Whitbourne reported sighting a mermaid in the harbor of St. John's, Newfoundland.
-1614-John Smith saw a mermaid, swimming "with grace," having large eyes, finely shaped nose that was "somewhat short," and "well-formed ears that were rather too long." Also "long green hair imparted to her an original character by no means unattractive."...had begus to experience "the first effect of love" until he realized that from the waist down, she was a fish.
-1673-John Jocelyn reported that his friend, Mr. Miller, had sighted a merman in Maine's Casco Bay. The merman put a hand over one side of his canoe, threatening to capsize it. Miller chopped off the hand with a hatchet, and the merman disappeared into the water, "dyeing the water purple with its blood."
-1730-A French ship's crew spotten a merman off Newfoundland, for several hours. This account was signed by all in the crew who could write and sent to the Compte de Maurepas.
-Unknown year-Gloucester, Massachusetts-mermaid boarded a fishing craft, clinging to taffrail with one hand, which was amputated much like the story from 1673. The mermaid was supposed to have heaved a "human" sigh before disappearing. The men examined the hand and found it to be exactly like that of a human woman's.

-Early 18th century-mermaid sighted off Nantucket Island from passing vessal.
-Date not given-fishing boat off the island of Yell got a mermaid entangled in its lines. Mermaid was reported to be three feet long, the face, forehead, and neck short and resembling those of a monkey, the arms small and folded across the breast, the fingers distinct (not webbed), with a few stiff bristles on top of the head and extending down to the shoulders, which could be erected at depressed at pleasure. The lower, fish-like part of the body was smooth and grey. The creature offered no resistance, but uttered a low sound. When released, she dove perpendicularly into the sea. No gills were observed, nor fins on the back or belly. Tail like a dogfish, breasts and mouth and lips resembling human features.
-Eric Pontopildon, in his Natural History of Norway-about a mile from the coast of Denmark, near Landscrone, three sailors came upon what they thought was a dead body, but then moved and came nearer to them. The creature appeared like a strong-limbed old man with broad shoulders, with short curled black hair and a black beard, and from the body downward was pointed like a fish.
-May 1, 1714-Francois Valentyn, captain of a ship, came upon what he believed to be a shipwrecked person, but saw a man with a "monstrous long tail" that dove into the ocean.
-1758-Mermaid featured at a fair in St. Germains, France
-1775-Mermaid exhibited in London with three sets of fins
-1797-Schoolmaster Willian Munro of Thurso, Scotland spotted a mermaid combing its hair. Same mermaid supposedly spotted later in 1809 in the parish of Reay in Caithness, Scotland.
-1822-Captain Dodge announced after he sailed into Boston Harbor that he had captured a mermaid and put her on an island where he intended to educate her in human ways. He claimed he would return with her, but when he returned without her, he claimed she had died. This incident sparked a local interest in historical accounts of mermaids, including those from Pliny and Pausanias, Theodore Gaza, 1403 in Holland (a mermaid supposedly succesfully converted to human culture), 1554 in Poland, the 11th century in Sicily, in 1712 in the Dutch East Indies (a mermaid taken captive, 59 inches tall and with green hair, refused to associate with the natives and died). Captain Dodge returned with the body of the mermaid in a glass coffin (whoa, Snow White reference) and refused to let anyone remove her from the coffin. He later took the body with him and no one knows what happened to the mermaid. (This one I had to look up online. This is a scan of the New York Mirror from 1824 that mentions Captain Dodge and the mermaid on page 375. This newspaper clearly thinks the so-called mermaid body was a construction of other animal and child corpses.)
-Antarctic explorer James Weddell, in a book published in 1825, told of a sailor hearing a musical voice, and finding a human form with long green hair and a tail resembling that of a seal, who disappeared the moment she realized she was being watched.
-1834-writer Hugh Miller tells of John Reid, a "shrewd, sensible, calculating" man who heard singing and then spotted a mermaid with long yellow hair. He caught her and forced her to grant him three wishes-that neither he nor his friends should perish in the sea, that he should be fortunate in his undertakings, and that he should be married to the fair Helen, his beloved.
-1881-Dr. Karl Blind, in the Contemporary Review, tells of the habits of mermen and women of the British Isles, who wear seal skins as disguise, but shed them and act like humans on land. Any human who obtains the skin has power over the creature.

-August 11, 1812-Mr. Toupin of Exmouth, Scotland spotted a singing mermaid a mile from Exmouth bar, whose neck, back and loins were covered with feathers.
-April 15, 1814-merman and mermaid sighted by fishermen near Portgordon, Scotland
-1819-Mermaid spotted off the coast of Ireland, size of a girl about age 10, but with "a bosom as prominent as a girl of sixteen. She had long dark hair, and full dark eyes." Dove into the ocean with a scream when a man tried to shoot her.
-1834-brig Yankee Doodle came across party of merpeople off the Riding Rocks in the West Indies
-Date not given-merman in Epirus, Greece would come ashore and hide in order to catch women. He was caught, but did not eat in captivity and died
-1870-Man conversed with mermaid under a great cliff off the Bullers of Buchan, Scotland

Images #1 and 2 by Warwick Goble, #3 from here

Politically Correct Bedtime Stories

2011-07-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

I found a copy of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner at a resale shop and snatched it up. It's great for an easy read and lots of laughs. Garner pokes fun at well-known fairy tales, as well as those who get too easily offended.

Book description: "Once upon a time, in the olden days, heavy-set middle-aged men would congregate in their elitist clubs, sit in overstuffed leather chairs, smoke air-choking cigars, and pitch story ideas and plots to each other. Problem was, these stories, many of which found their way into the general social consciousness, reflected the way in which these men lived and saw their world: that is, the stories were sexist, discriminatory, unfair, culturally biased, and in general, demeaning to witches, animals, goblins, and fairies everywhere.
Finally, after centuries of these abusive tales, which have been handed down-unknowingly-from one male-biased generation to the next, James Finn Garner has taken it upon himself (that's right, yet another man) to enlighten and liberate these classic bedtime stories and retell them in a way that is much more in keeping with the society in which we live today."

An exerpt from Garner's take on Rapunzel:
"Now, this witch was very kindness-impaired. (This is not meant to imply that all, or even some, witches are that way, nor to deny this particular witch her right to express whatever disposition came naturally to her. Far from it, her disposition was without doubt due to many factors of her upbringing and socialization, which, unfortunately, must be omitted here in the interest of brevity.)...the witch took the child deep into the woods and imrisoned her in a tall tower, the symbolism of which should be obvious. There Rapunzel grew to wommonhood. The tower had no doors or stairs, but it did boast a single window at the top. The only way for anyone to get to the window was for Rapunzel to let down her long, luxurious hair and climb it to the top, the symbolism of which should also be obvious."

Also by James Finn Garner:

Once Upon a More Enlightened Time: More Politically Correct Bedtime Stories

Politically Correct Holiday Stories: For an Enlightened Yuletide Season

The work of a fairy godmother?

2011-07-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine was showing me pictures of her recent trip to Portugal and I of course loved the pictures from the Carriages Museum-or Museu Nacional dos Coches in Lisbon. If Perrault's version were true, then perhaps Cinderella's magical pumpkin coach looked something like one of these-

The Dog Bride

2011-07-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

Kate over at Enchanted Conversations shared an Animal Bride tale, The Dog Bride. It's related to the group of selkie tales where creatures that are thought to be animals shed their skins and are really beautiful women, and men steal (or in this case burn) the skins and basically force them to become a bride. This tale is unusual in that, initially, the other villagers laugh at the man who wishes to marry a dog (he is the only one who knows the dog's secret). It may be disturbing that the other villagers eventually allow him to do so, but in other animal bride and bridegroom tales, marriage to animals seem to happen with little reaction from the outside world. Fathers give their daughters over to bears and other beasts with frighteningly little resistance in many Animal Bridegroom tales. Of course, that could also be due to the style of fairy tales themselves, which generally represent any emotion or inner conflict through action or symbol, as Max Luthi describes.

The story also ends with a friend of the main character's who marries a dog, hoping to get the same kind of surprise as his friend did-but he is only met with humiliation. So, the moral of the story is, don't marry a dog unless you know for sure she's secretly really hot.

Beauty and the Beast altered book

2011-07-11T21:32:00.000-07:00

What a fascinating art piece...part of me is enchanted and part of me is heartbroken that a book from 1897 had to be partially destroyed to create this. Available on etsy for $550...

Quiz at Dictionary.com

2011-07-10T21:09:00.001-07:00

Dictionary.com has a special Fairy Tale character feature, including a quiz you can take. It's pretty simple, especially for this audience, but there are some lesser known characters in there, like Anansi the Spider from a Caribbean tale (I only knew that one because it was featured in a Gargoyles episode...)

Image by Walter Crane

ABT's Swan Lake by Adult Beginner

2011-07-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

Came across this post on the blog Adult Beginner, written by a woman who started ballet later in life, which is a really difficult thing to do because ballet itself is very demanding and in order to become any good at it a girl is expected to start at a very young age, devote her entire life to it, and age out by her 30s.
Adult Beginner went to see ABT's version of Swan Lake, and even if you know the plot backwards and forwards it's a very funny read. But she also has some insights into the plot, such as Odile's character, included below, which is on everybody's mind thanks to Black Swan.
Excerpt:
"Started thinking about Odile. Why is this considered the sexy bad girl role? The music is not giving me any evil cues like it does for Rothbart. It’s fun lively music. Perky. Maybe this is an issue of how old the music is? Like maybe it’s kinda dated? Like when you watch Jaws and you expect heavy horror movie music but other than the dahDuh shark music it’s kinda bouncy like, hey! Two dudes on a boat! It’s a fishin’ movie!
It feels more like Odile is the confident, triumphant counterpart to Odette’s downtrodden earnestness. Odile is a sassy-sassafras. Love it when she burns Siegfried, pulls her hand away before he can kiss it. Seems like the music and choreography and performance were all in agreement that she’s not the sensual dark creature a post Black Swan audience has come to expect.
And for that matter, what is Odile? Is she Rothbart’s daughter? If so, why is she beautiful while he’s a swamp monster? And does she live with him in the lake? Or does she live with her mom in Long Island City?
Did Rothbart call and say, “hello my Princess! I have a job for you, sweetie!”
Or did he create her? Is she like The Flesh from Doctor Who? Did he make this sassy, full, real person, just to fulfill this one purpose and then throw away?
Found myself really feeling for Odile."

Click through to read the whole thing!

The Mariinsky Ballet's Ulya Lopatkina (image from here) seems to be exuding the same playful vibe Adult Beginner sensed and not the "I will lead you down a dark road that ends in insanity and murder" vibe from Black Swan the movie. (I've mentioned it before, but I can hardly recommend Mercedes Lackey's book Black Swan enough as a fascinating look into Odile's character...)

Starbucks Siren

2011-07-06T15:13:00.001-07:00

I have been very inspired by the mermaid posts happening at Surlalune this month and want to learn more about them. And I became curious about a well-known mermaid symbol, the Starbucks logo.
From wikipedia:
"In 2006, Valerie O'Neil, a Starbucks spokeswoman, said that the logo is an image of a "twin-tailed siren".[68] The logo has been significantly streamlined over the years. In the first version, which was based on a 17th-century "Norse" woodcut,[66] the Starbucks siren was topless and had a fully visible double fish tail.[69] The image also had a rough visual texture and has been likened to a melusine.[70] In the second version, which was used from 1987–92, her breasts were covered by her flowing hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly. In the third version, used between 1992 and 2011, her navel and breasts are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails. The original "woodcut" logo has been moved to the Starbucks' Headquarters in Seattle."

Original version

1987-2010

Current logo

These are the three images available on wikipedia-but according to the text, also from wikipedia, there should be two images from 1987-2010?

Definitions:

Sirens-enchantresses who haunt the seas and, by the beauty of their voice, lure men to destruction. Those who hear the sound of their voices cannot help but become obsessed with finding its source. (I seem to remember a story where sailors, knowing they were travelling dangerous waters, put in earplugs to save themselves from this fatal enchantment-but I don't remember the source of the story, does anyone know?)
Melusine-feminine water spirit

EDIT: Surlalune has expanded on the Starbucks Siren-read more here. Also, thank you to therealycats in the comments for identifying the above story as from the Odyssey. At some point I plan to look up that part and post more details about it.

Giselle

2011-07-03T20:12:00.000-07:00

In some cases, like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, traditional fairy tales have been made into successful ballets. In others, like Swan Lake, the ballet version gave it popular fairy tale status. Other ballets, however, have plots that are essentially fairy tales yet are only known to the ballet crowd and not as much in the fairy tale world.

Giselle begins in a small village tucked away in a forest, where a lovely girl loved to dance. She loved to dance so much that it worried her mother, who knew that Giselle was not very strong, and she did not want her daughter to become a Wili-the spirit of a girl who died of a broken heart. Each evening they rose and came to dance in their white dresses, and if any man came along their path, they surrounded him and forced him to dance until he dropped down dead.

But happy-go-lucky Giselle did not heed the warnings; she just loved to dance.

Giselle was in love with a young man who called himself Loys, but unbeknownst to Giselle, he was really the Count Albrecht in disguise as a peasant. He had fallen in love with Giselle, but was already engaged to someone else.

That did not stop the lovers from flirting. Albrecht pledged his love to Giselle, and to test it, she picked up a flower to play "he loves me, he loves me not"-and was dismayed when the last petal revealed "he loves me not." But Albrecht claimed she had made a mistake, and invited her to dance.

Their dance was watched, however, by another-Hilarion, who was also in love with Giselle, and jealous of Albrecht. As Albrecht took the liberty of kissing Giselle on the lips, Hilarion broke them up-just as the other villagers started to arrive, celebrating the harvest. They urged Giselle and Albrecht to join them in dancing, and Giselle was spinning and laughing, until she began to sway and stumble and fall. Albrecht caught her, and Giselle claimed she was fine and wanted to continue dancing, but her mother stopped her.

The village was joined by a hunting party from a nearby castle, including an exquisite lady named Bathilde, who was kind to Giselle, and Giselle was in awe of her riches. Giselle told her she loved to dance, and Bathilde asked her to dance for them. Giselle was only too happy to oblige-though her mother was not-and afterwards Bathilde rewarded her with her own necklace. Giselle was also crowned Queen of the Harvest, and urged to dance again for the villagers. Giselle begged her mother to oblige them, and her mother finally relented. Giselle danced, ending by taking Albrecht's hand-but Hilarion came forward to reveal that Albrecht was not like them. He had a nobleman's sword and hunting horn. It was then that Bathilde recognized him and revealed his true identity, and his betrothal to herself.

Giselle screamed and ripped off the necklace and stumbled into her mother's arms.

Then, she flung back her head, rose, stumbled, and laughed the joyless laugh of a madwoman. She slowly began to dance, imitating all the actions between herself and her lover earlier in the day. She fell down, exhausted, but surprised everyone by grabbing Albrecht's sword and trying to kill herself, but he grabbed it from her.

Giselle began to dance again, wildly, getting faster and faster. Finally she fell, and pointed to something in the distance. "How pretty they are in their long white dresses," she whispered. She died.

That evening, Hilarion placed a cross of wood at Giselle's grave, and hurried away before darkness fell. Shortly afterwards emerged Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, and she called the other Wilis out to greet their newest member. Giselle emerged, now one of them, and leapt across the clearing.

Albrecht came then, with lilies for Giselle's grave. Giselle stepped forward. Albrecht sensed something, but could not see her. But the other Wilis were returning, dragging in Hilarion and throwing him at Myrtha's feet, who ordered him to be danced to death. They encircled him, forcing him to dance until he was exhausted, but they forced him to dance still. Finally they herded him to a nearby lake and pushed him over.

The Wilis turned on Albrecht next. Giselle pleaded for him, but the other Wilis would not relent. Giselle lead Albrecht to the cross on her grave, which would protect him. Myrtha urged Giselle to dance, and then watched as the dance drew the lovers further from the cross. They danced together, and then Myrtha ordered him to dance alone, faster and faster until he too fell. Again Giselle pleaded for his life, but Myrtha had no mercy. Giselle urged Albrecht to last until sunrise, when the Wilis would scatter, but he could not. He fell, moments before morning bells rang out and the Wilis disappeared. But he was still alive, saved by Giselle's love.

Images from here, here, here, and here

This story was summarized using the book Of Swans, Sugarplums, and Satin Slippers by Violette Verdy, a former dancer.

Tales from the Igloo

2011-06-30T14:56:00.001-07:00

I love fairy tales not only for the story, but for the way they give you a glimpse into a totally different way of living. The book "Tales from the Igloo" appealed to me recently because of a heat wave we were having at the time in Chicago-and this is my first summer living in an apartment with no air conditioning.

The tale "Taligvak" is about a man with magical powers who is shunned by his community, until a harsh winter brings scarcity and they realize they need his help to get food. The following paragraph not only sheds light into what it might have been like to live as an Inuit, but provides the imagination with a pleasant break from the heat:

"...He was very poor, lacking nearly all necessities. No one wanted to give him a daughter for a wife and so Taligvak had no one to sew warm clothing for him. He did own a knife and with that he was able to build a snow house. But it was so small that he could not lie down inside it and instead had to remain in a sitting position even when trying to sleep. Moreover, as there was no stone lamp in his igloo, Taligvak suffered from the cold. When his mittens became frozen with frost he had to put them under his clothes, next to his skin, and as he slept the heat from his body would dry them."
Photo: Canadian Geological Survey-1929

The Singing, Soaring Lark

2011-06-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

The Grimms collection has no "Beauty and the Beast" tale per se, but "The Singing, Soaring Lark" is an animal bridegroom tale with clear parallels. It's got a little Cupid and Psyche, a lot of East of the Sun West of the Moon, a little of the Jephtha theme, and replaces the rose with a bird. The whole element of romance and the surprise of learning that the animal bridegroom is really a human is nearly eliminated, which is interesting because those are the elements that most appeal to me. Also, the sisters are not evil, but neither especially good, a rarity in fairy tales of any type.

"There once was a man who set out on a long journey, and before he left he asked his three daughters what he should bring them. The two eldest wished for pearls and diamonds, but the youngest wished for a singing, soaring lark. The father had no trouble finding the diamonds and pearls, but was distressed when he could not find the bird for his favorite daughter. But on his way through the forest, he saw a splendid castle, and on top of a nearby tree was a singing, soaring lark. The man was delighted and called for his servant to climb up thre tree and catch it.

Kay Nielsen (this is actually an illustration for Juniper Tree-pretend it's a lark.)

But as he does, a lion leaps from beneath the tree and roared, threatening to devour anyone who tried to steal his singing, soaring lark. The man apologized and asked for an opportunity to right his wrong, but to be spared his life. The lion allowed him to promise the first thing that greeted him on the way home. The man protested that it might be his favorite daughter who came to greet him, but the lion persuaded him to take the chance and make the bargain.
To the man's dismay, it was his youngest daughter who ran to greet him upon his return, and was overjoyed at the sight of the bird. The father told her the story, and begged her not to return to the lion, but the daughter insisted that she would go an soften the lion.
Now, the lion was enchanted and was only a lion by day, but resumed his true human form at night. The daughter was kindly received and led into the castle on her arrival, and married the man in a magnificent wedding. The couple stayed awake through the night and slept during the day.
One day, the lion-man told his wife that her eldest sister was to be married, and she could go join the festivities. She went, and her family was overjoyed to hear that she was alive.
Some time afterwards, the other sister was to be married. The lion's bride insisted he come along, but he did not wish to, for if a ray from a burning candle were to fall on him, he would become a dove for seven years. But the wife promised to protect him, and they went with their child to her sister's wedding. She had a chamber built strong and thick to keep out rays of light, but there was a small crack that no one noticed. After the wedding, there was a procession with candles that went right past the man's chamber, and he was transformed into a dove. He told his wife, "For seven years I must fly about the world, but at every seventh step that thou takest I will let fall a drop of red blood and a white feather, and these will show thee the way, and if thou followest the trace thou canst release me." His wife followed him, and found the drop of blood and white feather as he had said.

She travelled further and further, never looking about her or resting. Finally the seven years were almost over, and she rejoiced at the thought of being united again, but suddenly the drops of blood and feathers stopped appearing. She looked up, but the dove had disappeared. She climbed up to the sun, and asked him if he had seen a white dove. He had not, but gave her a casket to open in her greatest need. She went to the moon, who gave her an egg to be opened in her greatest need.
The east and west winds had seen nothing, but the south wind saw him at the Red Sea, transformed once again into a lion, and fighting with a dragon, which was really an enchanted Princess.

By DuneChampion

The night wind gave her instructions to break off the eleventh reed she found and strike the dragon with it, and the two animals would turn into their human forms. Then she was to swing her lover and herself onto the back of a griffin she would find. The night wind gave her a nut to drop into the sea, which would grow a tree for the griffin to rest on.
The wife found everything as the winds had told her, but the disenchanted dragon took the prince with her on the back of the griffin. The wife sat down and cried, but stood up and took courage and continued her search. She travelled a long way and came to the castle where the Princess was living with her husband, and she heard they were to be married the next day. The wife opened the casket from the sun, and found in it a dress as brilliant as the sun itself. She put it on, went into the castle, and everyone looked at her with astonishment. The Princess wanted the dress for her wedding gown, but the wife would only give it to her on the condition that she sleep in the chamber where the bridegroom slept. The Princess consented, but instructed the page to give the bridegroom a sleeping drought. So the wife pleaded with her husband all night long, but to no avail.

The poor wife went out to the meadow and wept, but remembered the egg the moon had given her. She opened it, and out came a clucking hen with twelve chickens all of gold, which all ran about chirping and then huddled under the chicken's wings. The Princess made the same bargain with the wife, but on this night, the Prince asked the page what the murmurings had been during the night, and the page told him the truth; the Prince instructed him to pour out the sleeping draught.
As the wife told him their story, he recognized her and the spell that the Princess had put on him was ended. They left the castle in secret and boarded the griffin, using the nut to allow the griffin to rest during the night. The came home and found their child, grown tall and beautiful, and "they lived thenceforth happily until their death."

Sadako and the Thousand Cranes

2011-06-24T15:34:00.000-07:00

It is an ancient Japanese belief that making one thousand paper cranes will grant the maker one wish, such as recovery from an illness or injury.

When I was in sixth grade, we read the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. It's about a girl who is sick and attempts to make the required thousand cranes. She was only able to complete 644 before she died, but friends and family finished them for her afterwards.

After I heard this story I was determined that I, too, would make one thousand paper cranes. I got a book on origami from the library and my mother and I pored over the diagrams, until we finally figured out how to create them. I would get sets of origami paper for each birthday and Christmas.

I never did finish a thousand, but it's a fun skill to have. This story always stuck in my memory, and I assumed it was a Japanese fairy tale-doesn't it seem like a story you might find in a fairy tale book? But Sadako really did live, make paper cranes, and die-she had liekemia due to radiation after the bombing of Hiroshima. It's a tragic story, and a reminder that sometimes real life can be just as touching as folklore.

Image from here

Max Luthi on Cinderella

2011-06-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

If they ever come out with another edition of "Cinderella: A Casebook," I think they should include Max Luthi's section on the tale-he has a lot of interesting insights.

George Cruikshank

Cinderella is rejected by the people around her and helped by animals and/or (depending on the version) the spirit of her dead mother. Luthi writes, "Human society, even the family, appears as an enemy, nature as a friend. The child who hears this story feels: 'No matter how much I may be slighted by others, I can strust in stronger and kinder forces."

Luthi's words are very inspiring-he talks about the hardships people are inevitably to face, yet the possibility of hope coming from a variety of sources-our own qualities as well as outside help. "Man is cast into suffering and want, evidently destined to endure privation, misunderstanding, and malice, and yet summoned to a regal existence."
Cinderella, much like Beauty and the Beast, reveals the rift between appearances and reality-the girl who first appears in rags and dirt is revealed to be the most noble of all. And as is common in fairy tales, Cinderella also focuses on the separation of good and evil-from the episode where Cinderella is told to separate the good from the bad lentils, to the judgement of the evil stepmother and sisters at the end in contrast to Cinderella's reward.

Anne Anderson

The ending of this tale, and the punishment of those evil characters, varies widely between versions. In the Grimms, doves-ironically a very gentle bird-peck out the sisters' eyes, "without the slightest protest on the part of Cinderella." Luthi points out that "the mutilation of the two stepsisters is in a way the answer to their self-mutilation: they cut off their toe and heel, and then their eyes are taken from them by the forces of retribution." Symbolically, this does make sense.
So what about versions like Perrault, where everyone is forgiven without the slightest hint of remorse? Both endings have upset readers-the first for being too violent, the latter for being unrealistic and not as satisfying. Luthi sees no problem with different tellers altering the ending, for it doesn't disrupt the point of the story. "The various needs of the times and of individual people are reflected in the styles of the storytellers and in the reactions of the hearers." Certainly, Cinderella has undergone many changes in the last couple thousand years since we have written records of the tale, yet it still charms and fascinates readers of all ages.

Happy Midsummer!

2011-06-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

Different cultures celebrate Midsummer on different days, as the actual summer solstice changes each year (this year it's on June 21.) From this article by Kala Kumar:
"Traditionally, Midsummer is the point when the veil between the fairy world and the mortal world lifts, and fairies and human are believed to mingle more during this period than at any other time of the year.
"Flowers, ferns, and herbs gathered on the solstice and blessed by the fairies, were believed to have special magical properties, including the ability to predict the future."
If you live in a place believed to be haunted by the faerie folk, keep your eyes peeled!

And since I'm a flutist, I have to share this too:

Max Luthi on Fairy Tales

2011-06-18T12:13:00.001-07:00

I find the book Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales by Max Luthi to be really helpful. He analyzes fairy tales from a literary standpoint, and explains fairy tales as a separate literary genre. Modern people are often familiar with fairy tales, but more modernized versions, like books and movies, which are meant to be more realistic. When the modern reader approaches the classic versions of fairy tales, if he or she didn't grow up with those versions, they can seem surprisingly stark, odd, and morbid. So it helps to approach them with different expectations than other literature, and to understand more about fairy tales as a whole.

Luthi lists several characteristics of fairy tales:

1) Concenctation on action-fairy tales are not big on descriptions, leaving characters and settings vague, but in such a way that the reader can fashion his own ideas into the story. Luthi notes that if we read descriptions such as a witch with a "long, crooked nose," it's most likely an addition of their own and not in their original notes.

2) Emphasis on extremes and contrasts-fairy tales are known for being black and white. Not only are the characters opposite in terms of complete good or complete evil, but fairy tales concern themselves with "dreadful punishments and splendid rewards, giants and dwarfs, mangy skull and golden hair, good and evil, handsome and ugly, black and white."

3)Preference for solid, unchangeable objects-gold, silver, glass, and crystal-in a way that forms an imperishable world. Yet significant fairy tale objects are also often those that have been fashioned by man-rings, swords, knives, and not just things found in nature.

4) The tendancy to show inner journeys through outwardly visible signs. Fairy tale characters do not wax poetic about their feelings at any time-their grief is represented by tears. Their love is represented by a symbol between two people, etc.

5) Delight in repetition. Events often occur in groups of threes, with the wording repeated exactly (in their original form) for each event. Other significant numbers in folklore include multiples of three (especially twelve), seven, and one hundred.

6) Danger is averted only at the last possible moment. This heightens the tension, but also "fulfills the fairy tale's great need for precision."

The effect of all these characteristics together is that of an imperishable world beyond that of our own, "a timeless world. In so doing, we by no means place a negative evaluation on the fairy tale." It is important to remember that differences in genre do not mean that the fairy tale is necessarily inferior to a novel-their purposes are different. The patterns in the fairy tale can be reassuring and even theraputic, and Luthi concludes that "every fairy tale is, in its own way, something of a dragon slayer."

Luthi also helps to show what a fairy tale is by comparing it to what it isn't: he uses the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty as a contrast to local legends and saint's legends that also deal with supernaturally long periods of sleep. The saints and local legends are centrally focused on the miracle that occurs in the long sleep, which is meant to fascinate/frighten. These versions are intended, on some level, to be believed in, and refer to specific dates and places to aid in their authenticity. Also, in these versions, once the sleepers wake and learn how much time is passed, they perish-time is still the unconquerable foe.

Yet in contrast, the miracles that occur in fairy tales, such as the hundred years' sleep, aren't regarded with extra attention at all-characters show no fear or suprise when encountered with talking beasts or any number of supernatural phenomenon. Sleeping Beauty isn't meant to be regarded as historical, although some tellers of the tale throughout history may have meant for it to be regarded as true. And the hundred year's sleep has no negative affects on the Princess-authors such as Perrault used the situation as a source of humor, but folktale versions display no problems with waking up after a century.

But again, these things are not problems with the genre-just a different way of telling stories. With more readings, one can grow to appreciate more authentic versions for what they are.

Bluebeard's Castle by Bartok

2011-06-13T17:49:00.001-07:00

I thoroughly enjoyed Surlalune's series of Bluebeard-themed posts last month. I don't remember the first time I read that fairy tale, but I do remember feeling a thrill in reading such morbid material-like I'd discovered a secret that adults wouldn't have wanted me to know about.
I'm certainly not as knowledgeable as Heidi, but as a musician, here's my contribution to versions of this tale: The opera "Bluebeard's Castle" by Bela Bartok, composed in 1911.
From wikipedia:
"The basic plot is loosely based on the folk tale "Bluebeard", but is given a heavily psychological reworking—some would say psychoanalytic or psychosexual, (see Bruno Bettelheim and The Uses of Enchantment).

Place: A huge, dark hall in a castle, with seven locked doors.
Time: Not defined.
Judith and Bluebeard arrive at his castle, which is all dark. Bluebeard asks Judith if she wants to stay and even offers her an opportunity to leave, but she decides to stay. Judith insists that all the doors be opened, to allow light to enter into the forbidding interior, insisting further that her demands are based on her love for Bluebeard. Bluebeard refuses, saying that they are private places not to be explored by others, and asking Judith to love him but ask no questions. Judith persists, and eventually prevails over his resistance.

The first door opens to reveal a torture chamber, stained with blood. Repelled, but then intrigued, Judith pushes on. Behind the second door is a storehouse of weapons, and behind the third a storehouse of riches. Bluebeard urges her on. Behind the fourth door is a secret garden of great beauty; behind the fifth, a window onto Bluebeard's vast kingdom. All is now sunlit, but blood has stained the riches, watered the garden, and grim clouds throw blood-red shadows over Bluebeard's kingdom.

Bluebeard pleads with her to stop: the castle is as bright as it can get, and will not get any brighter, but Judith refuses to be stopped after coming this far, and opens the penultimate sixth door, as a shadow passes over the castle. This is the first room that has not been somehow stained with blood; a silent silvery lake is all that lies within, "a lake of tears". Bluebeard begs Judith to simply love him, and ask no more questions. The last door must be shut forever. But she persists, asking him about his former wives, and then accusing him of having murdered them, suggesting that their blood was the blood everywhere, that their tears were those that filled the lake, and that their bodies lie behind the last door. At this, Bluebeard hands over the last key.

Behind the door are Bluebeard's three former wives, but still alive, dressed in crowns and jewellery. They emerge silently, and Bluebeard, overcome with emotion, prostrates himself before them and praises each in turn, finally turning to Judith and beginning to praise her as his fourth wife. She is horrified, begs him to stop, but it is too late. He dresses her in the jewellery they wear, which she finds exceedingly heavy. Her head drooping under the weight, she follows the other wives along a beam of moonlight through the seventh door. It closes behind her, and Bluebeard is left alone as all fades to total darkness."

Wikipedia has more information on it than just the synopsis, but I figured that was most applicable to this audience. I found this interesting as well: "The stage directions call also for occasional ghostly sighs that seemingly emanate from the castle itself when some of the doors are opened. These have been implemented differently by different productions, sometimes clearly instrumentally, sometimes vocally and sometimes not easily identifiable."

I'll be honest, I don't understand the significance of the changes to the story. A brief skim of online articles seems rather unhelpful-it's all very existential and tends to ignore the actual plot. Does anyone have any insights?

More helpful online links:
An English translation of the libretto
A blog with a few posts devoted to this opera-interesting information showing how the music and language represent the characters

Also-I've really enjoyed reading other interpretations for The Magic Drum in my last post. Please comment and share your thoughts, I'm really interested in seeing how different people read one fairy tale!

Interpretations

2011-06-11T11:11:00.000-07:00

I like getting familiar with how different scholars interpret fairy tales, but after a while you start to hear other voices in your head when you read and lose your own. Different branches of thought can help aid our understanding, but Francis Lee Utley reminds us, "and yet the human being who tells the story is quite as important to any ultimate hypothesis of archetype as a single folktale history is to the history of the genre. More so, indeed, if depth psychology is really interested in its proper subject matter, the living person."

I invite you to read this summary of a fairy tale, and think about what it means to you before you read any more:

The Magic Drum (an Eskimo tale)
Once there was a girl who did not want to marry. She had many suitors, but refused them all. One day two brothers came along, and the girl became attracted to them. She followed them outside, but the brothers put on the skins they had waiting-they were white bears. They forced her into the water through a hole in the ice, where she was dragged along for a while and then abandoned.
As she walked, tiny animals bit into her skin, tearing away her flesh until she was nothing but a skeleton. She finally found land, and discovered that through wishing, she had the power to provide herself food and shelter. One day she noticed other people hunting, and wished to go meet them, but as she approached, they fled in fear. The girl despaired, but the hunters went home an told their old father about the skeleton woman. He was not afraid, and went to meet her.
The girl asked the old man to make her a drum. He did so immediately, and when it was finished, the woman began to beat it and dance, reciting a magic incantation as she did so. Her dance restored herself to her former body, and the old man to his youth. The girl and the man decided to marry.

Before you go on, stop and reflect on your personal reactions to this tale.

According to Father Metayer (an Eskimo elder? a priest? the introduction to the book this story is in, by Al Purdy, doesn't clarify), "the girl of the story did not want to be loved by any of the young men of her group. Because she rejected love, her beauty, her very flesh, was destroyed. Only when somebody loved her...when she accepted him, was she 'born again' as a beautiful girl. And in turn her love gave back to the old man his lost youth. You see now the very impoartant message of this story: a woman is not fully a woman without the love of a man. And a man will never grow old as long as he has the love of a woman."

Al Purdy himself reminds the readers that "the myth itself is not didactice before interpretation." This is certainly true, because I didn't read the tale at all like Father Metayer!

To me, this tale was about empowerment. In a world of fairy tales where it seems that women automatically accept marriage from any man the moment it's offered, here we have someone with standards. I would see the mistreatment from the bears as a lesson against trusting strangers, not as a punishment for not accepting earlier marriage proposals. The female character learns to take care of herself. I find the ending beautiful-two people, both rejected by their cultures, who find frienship and eventually love with each other.

Now it's your turn. What were your thoughts as you read the tale? Please comment! Everyone's thoughts are valid. Everyone's unique experiences can help open other people's eyes to possible ways to see this tale (for example, I'm single and loving it, and I get extremely irritated by implications that there's something wrong with a single woman who isn't actively pursuing a husband. This clearly influences my reading of the tale).

My Take on Beastly

2011-06-07T07:59:00.001-07:00

I saw most of Beastly in piecemeal on my flight back from France. I had heard that this movie wasn't really quality, but sort of a fun guilty pleasure-watching flick. For me, any movie with a tortured disabled man in love with a woman is usually guaranteed to be a guilty pleasure, but I have to say this movie left me pretty unmoved.

In general, though, I dislike chick flicks, but there are a few that give me warm gushy feelings inside, especially any version ever of Beauty and the Beast. But to me this movie had nothing special to it-yes it's modern, the characters have dramatic backstories to keep it more realistic, but that's been done before. It had a lot of similarities to the Disney version, to the point where I wondered if the creators knew any other version of Beauty and the Beast (even down to specific lines-"You have to go to him/you must go to him" when Beauty's father is in trouble, and "It IS you!" after he transforms.)

The script is cheesy, the kind that tries to make the characters deep and witty, yet ends up feeling random. And like I've said before, I just really don't like Vanessa Hudgens. The movie might have been a completely different experience for me with someone else in the lead.

And like I've heard someone comment before, after all the talk about the Beast character being so gruesome, he really isn't. He looks like he really likes tattoos all over.

I should note that I haven't read the book, so I have no idea how faithful the movie was. I wasn't going to see it until I had read the book, but it was on the plane, I was bored, and there you go.

My take on Tangled

2011-06-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

Finally saw Tangled! I had only heard positive things about this movie, from the kids I babysit to adults who are way into fairy tales. I was still a little skeptical-I tend to be purist and don't like major changes to fairy tale plots. But, there's a difference between abusing a plot, and playing around with it, and I ended up really enjoying the movie. I liked the addition of the magic flower-I thought it gave an interesting and more plausible reason for why a witch would want to steal and raise someone else's baby and keep it confined to a tower.

It's silly, it's unrealistic (even aside from the whole magic hair thing), but it's lots of fun. It somehow manages to have all the stereotypical Disney Princess film elements which are sincere and yet at the same time gently poking fun at themselves.

If I were to get really picky, I would be suspicious about whether or not we can actually trust Flynn by the end of the movie. He's really a nasty person at the beginning-not only is he a theif but he abandons his partners-and the only redeeming thing he does is fall for the hot chick. But, I don't think we're supposed to take it that seriously.

One issue it made me think of-which is not only an issue in this version, but any Rapunzel story or story with evil parents-is, that children seeing this movie where Rapunzel is rightly rewarded for disobeying and escaping her manipulative false mother might think they're justified for refusing to listen to their parents as well (I'm a teacher-I can't help thinking of what's being communicated to and perceived by young people). I liked that this villain was more realistic than the traditional witch, and we've probably all met that type of person who insults you and is "just joking." That element of realism makes the story more applicable to more people, but most children at some point think that their parents are too controlling and "they won't let me do ANYthing," and seeing this movie would make it seem like any parent who denies their child anything is wrong.

But I'm not bashing this version, if there's any Disney movie that enforces horrible morals about disobeying your parents it's Little Mermaid. There's a difference between kidnapping/lying, and being strict-although that's harder for some people to discern. It's just human nature that we like to identify ourselves with the victim. Whenever I was a kid and had to do chores-perfectly fair chores-I would usually get all upset and then get secret satisfaction from comparing myself to Cinderella, although our situations were not at all the same. Likewise, it would be easy for a person to take a rule given by an authority figure and see themselves as the victim of a tyrant. In a way, that's part of the fun of fairy tales-turning minor real-life situations into games of pretend. You don't have to have been imprisoned all your life to feel understanding to Rapunzel's longing to be free.

Any thoughts/comments on the possibility of taking story applications too far? There's a story in "Cinderella: A Casebook" about a little girl in a perfectly healthy home life who accused her mother of treating her like Cinderella, I can look it up if anyone's interested.

Faerie Snippets

2011-06-07T06:21:00.000-07:00

I'm back! My trip was absolutely fantastic!

I love Europe. I always feel a little bit like I've stepped back in time when I go there. After our music trip was over, I stayed a few nights in a tiny, quaint German town that literally felt like a scene from a children's story book.

My friend and I hiked up a mountain to an old castle ruins, from the top of which you could look simultaneously into France and Switzerland.

And I did end up going to Disneyland Paris! Don't worry, I also saw the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and walked along the Seine and all that too. Overall, I do like the American Disneylands better, but I'm glad I went. There were some things in Paris I liked better. And, it's different enough from America that it's worth it for Disney Park fans to go just to see what's different.

Between Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida, though each park has its own unique rides, the rides that they share are pretty much identical on the inside. In general, the Parisian fantasyland dark rides were all pretty much the same. Other rides were altered slightly, and some were very different. I was so excited that they had the Indiana Jones ride-my friend had never been to Disneyland and I kept trying to explain how unbelievable this ride is. And then we got there, and it was just a roller coaster. (Really, you have to experience the California Indiana Jones ride to understand why a roller coaster is a disappointment).

Storybook Land!

Beauty and the Beast!

Back to Germany. These little garden gnomes are all over. Do you spot Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and a fairy in this window?

And...Little Red Riding Hood Camembert cheese!

Farewell for the present

2011-05-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I will be boarding an airplane and travelling to Europe on my own wonderful, magical adventure.

Due to my absence, there won't be posting here for about three weeks, but hopefully I will return with many new insights from the lands that hosted some of the most famous versions of the most well-loved fairy tales.

Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland Paris

The nature of my trip is rather unusual. I direct musical groups for adults with developmental disabilities at my church. We will be performing in several venues in France-showing what adults with disabilities are capable of, and helping local churches to start their own disability ministries.

I love the people I work with. Isn't it interesting that often the heroes of fairy tales are the lowest in society? The youngest child, the servant girl, the one who is thought to be the Fool? And yet they are the ones who overcome all judgement and prove themselves to be the most worthy at the end of the tales. And while my students don't have the highest IQs, they surpass most people I know in the qualities that really count, like love and compassion, and they certainly excel in humor! I hope that through our trip we are able to help overcome prejudice and fear of people with disabilities. For, as we learn in many fairy tales (especially Beauty and the Beast), appearances can be deceiving...

Tales of Faerie

Harry Clarke

Just Ella

The Enchanted Frog

Fairy tales in English literature

Once Upon a Time and Grimm: mid-season review

Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty

Marina Warner on Hair

C.S. Lewis on Fairy Tales

Swan Lake and gender perceptions

The White Dove: A French Bluebeard

What happened to the children of Hamelin?

Face off: Fairy tales

Fairy tale necklaces from RingRingRing

Little Red Riding Hood throughout history

The Magician's Cape

Roald Dahl's The Three Little Pigs

Christmas Greetings from a Fairy to a Child

Dumas' Nutcracker

The Legends of St. Nicholas

Imaginaerum

Disney for the involved parent

December Liturgy of the Dead

Disney's BATB stained glass

Storytelling at Christmastime

More Russian links

The Waters of Youth, Life, and Death

Numbers and the Twelve Dancing Princesses

The Wolves Within

The Enchanted Lake

History of the Arabian Nights

Grimm

Photographing Fairies and the Cottingley Fairy Hoax

Edmund Dulac eye candy

My Take on ABC's Once Upon a Time

Trees and folklore?

Godfather Death

In the Hall of the Mountain King

My favorite dark retellings of fairy tales

How children played butcher with each other

More Pumpkin Coaches

Haunted Disneyland

Real Wicked Queens

Panna a Netvor

The Juniper Tree

Swan Lake Images

A tale about the tale of Bluebeard

The Skeleton Fairies of Tessa Farmer

The cultural idea of fairy tales

Gregory Maguire's Mirror Mirror

A house-cleaning playlist

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PICTURE IN THE WORLD

Belle-Hey, Girl version

On Beauty and the Beast...

The Jealous Sisters

The problems with trying to find morals in fairy tales

More on Dickens and the Fairy Tale

Muppet Musicians of Bremen

The Fairy Banquet

Disney Princess Designer collection

Greetings from Bremen Town

Bill Lewis-"The Beast"

Isabella's Art

Basile's Petrosinella: A True Spunky Heroine

Rapunzel in Advertising

Figment Studios Journal Review

Princess Shoes

Madame D'Aulnoy's Green Snake: Beauty, Ugliness, and Curiosity

Beauty and the Beast by Nightwish

On Faerie

Vintage Disneyland, Part II

Spike: A gothic failure?

Thoughts on Princess and the Pea

Peter Pan at Pittburgh Ballet Theater

Historical Evidence for Mermaids?-Part II

Politically Correct Bedtime Stories

The work of a fairy godmother?

The Dog Bride

Beauty and the Beast altered book

Quiz at Dictionary.com