Scary Fairy Tales: The Silver Saucer and the Transparent Apple

In an earlier post in this series, Ozfan95 mentioned this Russian tale in the comments, and also pointed out that you could consider "Juniper Tree" a ghost story, as the murdered boy's spirit takes the form of a bird. It got me thinking about all the other well-known fairy tales in which there might be ghosts, even if we don't think of them as ghosts, and the first thing that popped into my head was "Cinderella." With the exception of Perrault's Fairy Godmother, it's almost always the spirit of Cinderella's dead mother who helps her-in the form of a tree, a fish, a doll, etc.

Anyway, the story of "The Silver Saucer and the Transparent Apple" is an interesting combination of a Cinderella tale with "The Singing Bone." It begins with the classic scene in which a father offers to buy gifts for his daughters; the eldest request dresses and jewels, and the youngest has a more unusual request. This youngest daughter is, of course, the most beautiful, and we are told over and over that she is good and she does all of the chores. She is called "Little Stupid" by her sisters (and even her father!)-sometimes we're so used to the name Cinderella we forget that name was also supposed to be an insult, more along the lines of "Dirty Ella."

Little Stupid requested a silver saucer and a transparent apple. No one else understands why, and they attribute the desire to her stupidity, but once she gets the items and spins the apple in the saucer, she is able to see anything she wants to, all over the world, in it. Her sisters become jealous, take Little Stupid into the woods, and kill her with an ax.

image-Patricia Ludlow-(Thanks Ozfan95!)

That spring, a reed is growing in the forest where the dead sister lay, and a shepherd comes by and uses it to make a flute. The flute begins singing all by itself, and tells him the story of how she was murdered. The flute is eventually taken to the girls' father, and he finds his daughter's body, and is able to bring her back to life with holy water from the Tsar. After that follows a more unsatisfactory ending (in my opinion) where she marries the Tsar and forgives her family, although the shepherd who originally found the reed is in love with her and I was rooting for him. In fact, the children who are being told the story felt the same way I did, and the narrator, Old Peter, explains that it was actually good because if he had married Little Stupid, he would have had to live with her whole nasty family. So...that's one way to look at it?

The Grimms' "Singing Bone" is a much shorter tale; a man is murdered by his brothers and his bone tells the story. Only in this one, the ending is more bittersweet, because while the bone allows the murdered man justice and his brothers are punished, he is not brought back to life. He is, however, given a proper burial. This tale somehow seems more satisfying to me; the ending of the other tale seems a bit forced. I normally don't mind too much the versions where Cinderella forgives her sisters (depending on how that part is worded), but at least they don't usually try to kill her! It hardly seems like a happy ending for her to live with her abusive family forever while the poor shepherd who actually rescued her doesn't get the girl. In fact, in none of the other related Singing Bone tales on Ashliman's site does the murdered person come back to life (although it does happen in other tales-see the comments for more discussion!), or are the murderers forgiven (although sometimes the remains don't sing, but bleed-it was widely believed in Medieval Europe that a murdered corpse would bleed in the presence of its murderer.)

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The Singing Bone: Nature as Truth Teller

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The Singing Bone is a lovely little Grimm fairy tale-I especially like it as a flute player. In the story, two brothers go to find and kill a wild boar that has been terrorizing the kingdom. The younger is rewarded for his kind heart when a fairy appears and gives him a spear. He finds the boar and kills it.

But later, his brother sees him carrying the boar home, and decides to kill his brother, take the boar for himself, and tell the King it was he who courageously killed the boar. He does so, and gains the Princess, which was the reward. But a few years later, a herdsmen found one of the bones of the murdered brother and made a flute out of it. Only the flute, when played, sang the words that told of the victim's story:

"Ah! dear shepherd, you are blowing your horn
With one of my bones, which night and morn
Lie still unburied, beneath the wave
Where I was thrown in a sandy grave.
I killed the wild boar, and my brother slew me,
And gained the Princess by pretending 'twas he."

Bone Flutes

This is one of those bittwersweet fairy tales. Justice is done, as the murdered brother's bones are recovered and given a proper burial, and the older brother is punished with death. But in this tale, the innocent dead man does not come back to life and gain the Princess.

Hello Kitty's "The Singing Bone" from McDonalds

 Often in fairy tales, the characters are prevented from telling the truth, and Nature sometimes interferes by revealing the evil deeds that the villains almost get away with. In "Juniper Tree" and "Cinderella", birds tell the truth (the spirit of the murdered boy, in the form of a bird, proclaims "my mother she slew me/my father he ate me" as he rewards the good and punishes the mother; the birds in Grimms' "Aschenputtel" tell the Prince of the blood on the shoes of the false brides).

Artist??-Source

 In "Snow White", it is the Mirror (or, sometimes the Sun or Moon) that fearlessly tells the Queen who is really the fairest in the land. In some stories, such as "Goose Girl", the main character may be bound by a promise not to tell the truth of what happened to them; but by telling their story to an inanimate object, so as not to break their word.

"The Goose Girl," Arthur Rackham

And here, the bones of the victim beg for justice-which is often what symbolically happens in murder mysteries, but here what literally happens. For as the tale says, "these dark deeds are not often concealed, for something happens to bring them to light."