fairy tales

Fairy Tale of the Month: January 2025 The Squire’s Bride – Part One

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E. Werenskiold

Cold Day

It being a cold January afternoon, I bundle up wearing my warmest socks, long johns, heaviest coat, and fluffiest scarf. I stand at the French doors of my study looking out over the lawn, flecked with flakes of snow, toward the Magic Forest.

Wait, why am I going out? This isn’t my idea. It’s cold.

I am about to take my coat off when it hits me.

Ultima is calling me.

I put on my gloves, put my head down, and forge my way outside into the weather.

Entering the forest, the temperature softens considerably. I have noticed before that the weather is usually nicer here. As I expected, Ultima waits for me by the edge of the pond. I take a sitting stone beside her.

“Oh, so good to see you again,” she gushes, handing me a book. It is Fairy Tales from the Far North, by P.C. Asbjornsen—from my library.

So,” I say, “that’s where it went.”

“As always,” she continues, “the customs of your world confuse me. What is this ‘marriage’ thing all about?”

“For example?” I ask.

She takes back the book and returns it to me with her finger on the title page of the story The Squire’s Bride.

There was an old, widowed squire who wished to remarry and chose a pretty, young lass of a poor family, thinking she would be eager to marry him. That proved not to be the case, and the more she refused his advances, the more determined he became.

Going to her father, he struck a deal, but the father fared no better at convincing his daughter to marry the squire. The squire grew impatient and demanded the daughter from her father, and they conspired to entrap the girl. The squire would prepared for an elaborate wedding and then, under false pretenses, would call for the maid.

When all was set, the squire, in his usual brusque manner, sent a lad as messenger—without much explanation and to make haste—with the instructions to tell the father to deliver what he promised. The maid saw through the ruse and gave the lad a bay mare to be delivered.

When the lad told the squire that “she” was waiting at the door, the squire informed the lad to take “her” upstairs and call for the women to dress the bride for the wedding and not forget the traditional wreath and crown. The lad’s hesitation merely annoyed the squire, who sent the lad off to do his bidding.

 The lad, with great trouble and much manpower, got the horse into the dressing room where the women did the best they could to decorate the mare. Then the squire instructed them to bring “her” down to the parlor for the wedding.

Again, with much trouble, the lad overcame all obstacles, and in the end the horse trotted into the wedding, much to the chagrin of the squire and the amusement of the wedding guests. It is said the squire never went courting again.

“I do get that she tricked the squire,” Ulitima laughs, “but what was the fuss about? What is this marriage thing?”

Fairy Tale of the Month: January 2025 The Squire’s Bride – Part Two

F. Hendriksen

About Marriage

“To answer that question, I will need some context,” I say. “Am I safe to assume you have children in your world?”

“Well, of course we have children! How else would we have a future?”

“Do you have children outside of marriage?” I ask rhetorically.

Ultima pauses before answering. “Yes. We have children. I don’t know what you are talking about when you say ‘marriage.’ Perforce, marriage has nothing to do with our children.”

I press on. “Do you have the word ‘marriage’ in your vocabulary?”

“Yes,” says Ultima cautiously, “but it is a technical term. For example, we marry tin with copper to make bronze.”

That is the opening I am looking for. “In my world, a man and a woman are married together, like tin and copper, to make children, our bronze. The union of tin and copper—a man and a woman—is permanent, like bronze. Well, at least, ideally,” I qualify.

Ultima blinks rapidly, then squints. “My turn to ask questions. Are you telling me that in your world you do not . . .” I see her struggling to find the right words, “have multiple partners?”

I sigh. “Are you familiar with the terms ‘etic’ and ‘emic?’”

“No.”

“To oversimplify, the etic is what people say they do or think they should do. The emic is what they actually do.

“In this case, the etic is that we have only one partner at a time, and it is best if we have that partner for life. In the emic, that does not always happen. Having multiple partners can be seen as scandalous.”

Ultima scratches her cheek. “You mean you’re not supposed to have multiple partners, and yet you all do?”

“Oh, not I. I was faithful to my wife.”

“Faithful,” Ultima echoes, contemplating the concept. “Exclusive?”

“You could say that,” I answer, “but see here, what is the role of fathers?”

“Why, to be our partners when we ask them to.”

“Do they help raise children?”

“Oh, goodness no. That’s between the women and the dragons, particularly the infant’s dragon.”

“How is the infant’s dragon chosen?”

That stops Ultima. “Chosen? No, they just appear, as they should.”

“You have no choice in the matter?” I ask.

“Why should I? It’s the infant’s dragon.”

That doesn’t make sense to me, but another thought enters my head.

“In our way of thinking,” I say, “you are married to your dragons rather than to the fathers of your children. They are your life partners.”

Ultima laughs. “That is an amusing way of thinking about it, but I won’t fault you.”

I don’t see the humor in what I said, but it is a marker of how much we don’t understand each other. I take one more shot.

“Despite the emic stuff,” I say, “the marriage between a man and a woman is considered as sacred. What is sacred for you?”

Ultima’s brows knit. “I think we are battling over the definition of words. Nonetheless, in my world chocolate is sacred.”

I will not disagree.

Fairy Tale of the Month: January 2025 The Squire’s Bride – Part Three

P.C. Asbjornsen

No Dragons

“Alright,” says Ultima, “I think I have a better grasp of this marriage thing. It comes up a lot in your fairy tales.”

“It does,” I agree. “What comes up in your fairy tales if marriage is not a thing?”

Ultima glances away from me in a show of embarrassment. “We don’t have fairy tales, which, I guess, is why I am fascinated with yours.”

“A world without fairy tales? Certainly you have myths and legends?” I am shocked.

Ultima ignores my question to present her own. “In our story, the maid does not want to marry the squire. I see there is an age difference, but she could be moving up in status. Is it the age difference that put a stop to it for her?”

I contemplate. “The story doesn’t say. She could be objecting to the age difference, or she may not find him attractive at any age, or she may simply not want to be in the state of wedlock.”

“Wedlock?” Ultima’s eyes widen.

“It is another name for marriage,” I say.

“As in locked into the state of being wed? No wonder she objects. She would be a prisoner!”

“No, no. You are not quite getting it,” I say, hoping she is not right. “Marriage is—well—complex.”

Ultima lets me wallow in my confusion and waits patiently for me to finish my answer.

“I won’t defend the state of marriage in my culture but cut to the chase of fairy-tale marriages. In the tales, marriage is a reward. Almost invariably—there is always an exception to the rule, and there may be an exception to that rule—in a fairy-tale marriage, one of them is of royalty and the other is marrying up. Even in stories like Beauty and the Beast, the Beast is actually an enchanted prince.  

“In cases like The Goose Girl or Snow White, the heroine was of royalty, lost her status, but regains it through marriage. In either case, they marry up.

“Our story is one of those exceptions. A marriage is proposed but does not happen, with humorous results. The squire, at least, does not live happily ever after.”

Ultima nods with understanding. “That sounds to me,” she says, “like wish fulfillment by a lower class that one could rise from being a pauper to being a king or queen.”

“Exactly.”

“Is that a reasonable goal?”

“Well, no, not really, but the fairy tales are not meant to be guiding lights.”

“No, no, not guiding lights,” Ultima says thoughtfully. “More like flickering candles in the dark. The tales make some rather wild suggestions.

“You asked if we have myths and legends. We do, and we consider them part of our history. While I so enjoy your fairy tales, my world does not need them. Instead, we have the wisdom and counsel of dragons.

“Simply stated, you have fairy tales. We have dragons. My heart goes out to you for that lack from which you must suffer. A world without dragons, dear me.” Ultima shakes her head.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: December 2024 How Cormac Mac Art Went to Faery – Part One

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John D. Batten

At Melissa’s

I have never been in Melissa’s rooms above her store before. They are what I should have expected if I thought about it. A little spartan, no clutter (unlike my place) but full of Victorian touches. There is not a piece of furniture I would call modern. I am amused to see no bookshelves.

In her small dining room, she promises to lay out a Christmas Eve supper for me, Thalia, and Jini. Oddly, it is lasagna. “My family tradition,” she explains.

While the lasagna is baking in the oven, filling her apartment with an encouraging aroma, we settle in her parlor with drinks—appropriate to our ages—and cookies.

“Tonight, it is I who has a story to read to you,” Melissa says. “It is Celtic and has to do with the giving of gifts.” I see her pick up a copy of More Celtic Fairy Tales, and she continues. “The story is called How Cormac Mac Art Went to Faery.”

Cormac Mac Art, son of Art, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles, King of Ireland, who resided in Tara, purchased a fairy branch with nine apples hanging from its limbs from a youth for whatever the asking price. The price turned out to be his wife, son, and daughter. All protests Cormac quelled by shaking the fairy branch, which uttered music so dear that it tempered everyone’s fears, casting an aura of peace upon all.

After a year, Cormac decided to see if he could not reclaim his wife and children, and he followed the path the youth had taken. In his travels, he came upon three curious sights. The first was a house being thatched with feathers by warriors. After they had feathered on one side, they rode off to find more feathers. When they returned, the feathers they had thatched were gone.

The second sight was a young man consigning a tree to fire. But before he could find another tree, the first would be consumed completely. Again, the labor appeared endless.

The third was of three wells. From the first flowed three streams, from the second two streams, and from the third one stream.

Traveling over the plain he had entered, he came upon a dwelling where a couple dressed in multicolored robes greeted him and offered him shelter for the night.

When it came to the evening meal, Cormac was given a boar and a log and told to cook a meal for himself. He told his host that he did not see how that could be done. The host explained that Cormac must quarter the boar, quarter the log, then place the meat over the log, and then tell a true story. The log would burst into flames and cook the meat.  

Cormac then asked his host to demonstrate. The host told the story of the boar they were about to eat. He had seven boars with which he could feed the world. When one of the boars was slaughtered, they need only throw the bones back into its stall, and in the morning the boar would be whole again. As the host finished the story, his quarter of the boar was cooked.

Cormac asked the mistress for her story. She said she had seven white cows that gave enough milk to feed the world if they were present. Soon the second serving of meat was cooked. Cormac told the story of the fairy branch and the disappearance of his wife and children.

Although the meat was cooked, Cormac hesitated to feast with so few friends in the room. The host brought Cormac’s wife and children into the room and took on his true form, that of the god Manannan Mac Lir.

We hear the beeping from the kitchen. The lasagna is ready.

Fairy Tale of the Month: December 2024 How Cormac Mac Art Went to Faery

John D. Batten

True Story

I am into my second serving of lasagna when Melissa, more easily sated than I and the girls, picks up her story again.

“Cormac,” said Manannan, “I was the youth that lured you into buying the fairy branch at the expense of your family, knowing you would follow me to faery and be here tonight. Now you and I can feast.”

“Feast I will,” said Cormac, “when I have heard the meaning of the three things I saw today.”

“That I will tell you,” Manannan said.

The god told Cormac that the warriors thatching the house with feathers were the like of those that go forth into the world seeking riches and fortune, but when they return home, they find it bare and must venture out again.

The young man dragging up the trees to make a fire is the likeness of those who labor for others and never get to warm themselves by the fire they made.

The wells represent the three types of men. There are those who give as freely as they get. Then there are others who get little but still give freely. And lastly, despite what they get, give little.

Now Cormac agreed to feast. Manannan spread before his company a tablecloth, declaring it a special thing. All they need do was to think of a food or drink, and it would manifest before them for their pleasure.

Then Manannan set down a goblet, saying that the goblet would shatter when a false story was told and mend when it heard a true one. These objects, along with the fairy branch, he gave to Cormac Mac Art.

At the courtesy of the tablecloth, they all feasted. When the feast ended, they took to their beds. In the morning Cormac, his wife, and children found themselves waking up in
Tara, still in possession of the tablecloth, goblet, and fairy branch.

We all drop our forks and applaud.

“Did they have lasagna?” I say.

“Only if they knew to ask for it,” Melissa smiles.

“Wait,” says Jini, “I’m doing the math. What happened to the fourth quarter of the boar?”

“I’ve thought of that.” Melissa blinks. “It could be the Celts didn’t bother to count, but I think the fourth quarter belongs to the listeners of this tale. But we would have to tell a true tale.”

 Thalia and Jini exchange furtive glances. I am sure they have their own little secrets. Secrets old men should not hear.

“I can tell a true story,” I say.

They look at me expectantly.

“I ate too much.” I pat my belly.

“That is not a story,” Melissa laughs. “Although it is true. But I am thinking I have some truth to explore. Yet, it, too, is not a story.

“This tale dwells on true stories. The meat will not be cooked without a true story. The goblet will break at the sound of a false story and mend only by a true one. What is the truth of fairy tales?

‘We, here in this room, live in the presence of magic because of you.” Melissa looks directly at me. “Fairy tales flitter about our everyday lives. They move between the mundane and our dreams, and we cannot tell which is which.

“Again, I ask, what is the truth of fairy tales?”

Fairy Tale of the Month: December 2024 How Cormac Mac Art Went to Faery

Arthur Rackham

Truer Tale

“Oh good,” I say with a touch of sarcasm. “First you lead me into an Italian food-induced coma, with a bit of wine, and then ask me to think clearly.”

Melissa wags a finger at me. “I didn’t force you to overindulge.” The girls giggle.

“Well,” I continue, “your question brings to my mind a storyteller’s adage I once heard. ‘Every story I tell is true, whether it happened or not.’”

I see calculations going on behind Thalia’s eyes. “Hmmm,” she says. “It seems to me stories make more sense than real life, no matter how fanciful they are.”

“I agree.” Melissa gestures with a hand. “Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In real life, the beginning is our birth, the ending is our death, and the middle is hopefully long, but in any case, confusing. A listener or reader may get bored and lost by the incoherent middle of that long tale.”

“Does that mean,” Jini asks, a little wide-eyed, “stories break down our lives into smaller pieces so that we can understand it?”

“That is probably a good way of describing it,” Melissa answers with a bit of hesitation in her voice. I pick up on her hesitation.

“I think we are now talking about story in its broadest sense, that is, from nursery rhymes to the great works of literature. They are all story, from the Itsy-Bitsy Spider to The Iliad. But Melissa’s question regards the truth of fairy tales. I will suggest its stock in trade is with the passing on of morals and with wish fulfillment if we allow ourselves to call these truths.”

Melissa taps her fingertips together. “Give us an example.”

I take a deep breath and consider.

“The Goose Girl,” I say.

“I know it,” says Melissa. Thalia nods. Jini looks perplexed.

“To keep it in context,” I explain, looking at Jini, “the goose girl is really a princess whose role—let’s call it identity theft—has been taken over by a maid-in-waiting. The real princess is demoted to being a goose girl. The maid-in-waiting has forced the real princess to swear in the name of God not to reveal the exchange of status.

“Because this is a fairy tale, there is a royal marriage involved. The false princess is to marry a king’s son. However, the goose girl uses magic, which royalty in fairy tales are entitled to, in her everyday dealings. A peasant boy observes her doings so, which eventually leads to the king learning of her true nature and that she was meant to marry his son.”

“The moral?” asks Melissa.

“That the true princess should keep her vow to God, even though given under duress with the threat of death, and trust that the truth will out.”

“And the wish fulfillment?”

“That even a goose girl can rise to be a queen when her true nature is recognized.”

“Rise to be a queen!” exclaims Thalia. “That’s us.” She points between herself and Jini, who buries her face in her hands.

“Your point is taken and demonstrated,” says Melissa with a hint of mirth.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: November 2024 Peter Bull – Part One

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Microsoft Image Generator

Staying Afloat

There is something about the plunge of an oar into the water and the glide of the boat propelled by men’s muscles that is soothing to the soul. Duckworth and I have taken to the Isis, our upper part of the Thames, to do a bit of rowing before the weather becomes too brisk.

Duckworth always humors me by asking about what fairy tale I am delving into. I doubt he concerns himself with the tales outside of my presence. I am his sole source on the topic, and he humors me now.

“So . . .” He hardly needs to ask.

“A tale called Peter Bull,” I respond as we continue to pull on the oars.

A well-to-do Danish farmer and his wife lived happily but for one thing. They had no children. Because of that, they became attached to one of their bull calves, which they named Peter. The husband speculated that perhaps the church clerk, known as an educated and clever man, might be able to teach Peter how to speak, and his wife agreed.

The clerk, seeing an opportunity, consented to educating Peter under certain conditions. First, the education must be done in secrecy, especially hidden from the priest, since it was forbidden. Second, there would be a cost because the books required to educate the calf were expensive.

Gleefully, the farmer turned Peter over to the clerk and gave him a hundred dalers. After a week, the farmer visited the clerk to see how things were going. The clerk reported that Peter was making progress, but the farmer could not see him. Peter loved the farmer and his wife so much, he would want to go back home and interrupt his learning. The farmer understood this and left another hundred dalers for the necessary books at the clerk’s request.

This sort of thing went on for some time. The visits from the farmer became less frequent in that they cost him a hundred dalers each time. Eventually, when the calf was fat enough, the clerk slaughtered it for a number of excellent veal meals.

“No, wait,” Duckworth exclaims. “Are you kidding?”

“Stay with me,” I say. “The tomfoolery gets worse.”

Soon after the clerk slaughtered the calf, he went to visit the farmer, declaring Peter’s education was complete and that Peter wished to return home. In fact, they had started out together, but the clerk returned home for his walking stick. Setting off again, he realized Peter had not waited for him, and the clerk asked the farmer if the calf hadn’t gotten there before him? They inquired around the neighborhood for the lost Peter, but it bore no results.

Sometime later, the clerk came across an article in a newspaper that referred to a Mr. Peter Bull, a young, struggling merchant. The clerk cut out the article and presented it to the farmer, suggesting that this might be their son. The farmer took off immediately for a few days’ journey, arriving at his destination early in the morning, invading poor Mr. Bull’s bedroom. Peter Bull was a bullish-looking fellow, and the farmer felt he recognized his Peter in him. Peter Bull dealt with the lunatic cautiously until he understood that the farmer intended to make him heir, at which point Peter warmed up to him and agreed to call him “father.”

In the end, the farmer sold his possessions, gave the clerk another two hundred dalers for his good services, and he and his wife moved in with the merchant, making him wealthy, and in return the merchant took good care of them for the rest of their happy lives.

Duckworth gives me a dubious glance, but he can’t suppress his grin.

Fairy Tale of the Month: November 2024 Peter Bull – Part Two

Microsoft Image Generator

Correct Me

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t fairy tales supposed to have a moral?”

“I am happy to correct you, Duckworth. You are wrong.”

“Explain.”

“I will speculate that the notion that fairy tales should have a moral comes from two sources. First is Aesop, that admirable Greek slave, whose formula for storytelling did have a moral at the end. Second are the Grimm Brothers, who were appealing to a Protestant, bourgeois audience and therefore implied a moral at the end of many of their tales.

“But they were not as consistent as Aesop in moralizing. For example, one of my favorite Grimm tales is The Three Spinners. It is similar to their Rumpelstiltskin, with some significant differences.

“In the story, a mother, rather than admit that her daughter—although pretty—was a wastrel, declared the girl could spin flax into gold. The queen took the girl up to the castle, relieving the mother of a useless daughter. On pain of death, the girl was to spin rooms of flax into gold.

“Three ugly fairy women appear, and for two nights, accomplish the task for mere trinkets. On the third night of this endeavor, the poor girl runs out of trinkets. Then the fairies request she invite them to her wedding to the queen’s son, which they know will happen.

“This small request the girl remembered to make when the wedding plans were made. She described them as cousins. When the wedding feast began, the three ugly fairies entered the hall to the notice of everyone.

“The prince, the girl’s new husband, approached the fairy women, rather rudely, and asked about their deformities. One had a huge foot from running the treadle, the second a gargantuan thumb from rubbing the thread, and the third a large drooping lip from wetting the thread. The prince looked at the three women, then his beautiful bride, and declared she would never again spin flax.”

Duckworth drops his oars and applauds.

“And,” I continue, “I can think of another lacking-a-moral Grimm tale called The Master Thief, a Robinhood sort of figure who, on a dare, for example, steals the bedsheet of a lord during the night.”

“Clever,” remarks Duckworth.

“Yes, clever,” I say. “There is also The Clever Farmer’s Daughter, who wins a king because of her cleverness, loses him because of her cleverness, then wins him back again through cleverness.

“Ah, but then there is Clever Else, who is not so clever and fools herself into thinking she is not herself. Clever Hans doesn’t do any better, and neither do the characters in The Clever People. “

“I think I see a pattern emerging.” Duckworth grins at me. “You are suggested there are many stories in the Grimm collection with the themes of cleverness or its opposite, beside those with a moral.”

“I still have to mention The Clever Little Tailor, The Clever Servant, and Clever Gretel.

“Well, now you have,” he returned.

“But then there’s Doctor Know-It-All.”

“Enough!” Duckworth shook his head at me.

I guess I made my point.

Fairy Tale of the Month: November 2024 Peter Bull – Part Three

Microsoft Image Generator

But Seriously


“But seriously, now,” Duckworth speaks after a short while, “you have pointed out to me that there are different kinds of fairy tales, but what makes a fairy tale a fairy tale?”

“Oh, you want me to pontificate, don’t you?”

“I want to see if you will run out of breath before we finish rowing,” Duckworth jests.

 “Well,” I begin, “it comes out of the oral tradition along with its companions, myths and legends. That is another way of saying the oral tradition is not literary. Myths, legends, and fairy tales have been written down, but they do not have an author.”

“Wait,” Duckworth interrupts, “didn’t Hans Christian Andersen write fairy tales?”

“No, he did not. He wrote literary fairy tales; he made them up. He was the author. He borrowed from fairy-tale structure, which made them sound like fairy tales.

“But this is the point where distinctions get cloudy. The Brothers Grimm collected their fairy tales, often from secondary sources, and put them closer to literary standards than the material they collected. However, they did manage not to overstep the genré rules for these tales.”

“And those rules are, may I ask?”

I think Duckworth is actually interested.

“I will start with the observation that few characters have names. Typically, they are identified by their position—king, queen, youngest son, old soldier. Often, it is the minor characters that have names.

“Followed by the convention that descriptions are sparse. We are told little about how things look.

“Next, the tales are in the third-person objective. We never get inside the characters’ heads.

“Also, the tales are not dialog driven. Dialog is used to highlight parts of the story. There is more telling than showing. Showing is a wordier process than telling. Telling is succinct, as are the tales.

“There is a propensity for the number ‘three.’ For example, in The Goose Girl, we see three drops of blood. Later on in the story, there are three streams to cross and three passages through the dark gateway.

“Royalty has magical powers. This is always assumed, perhaps a reflection of the times.

“Animals can talk, and not simply animals talking to animals, but also animals talking to humans.

“Evil, of the magical sort, must be punished and good rewarded. Naughtiness and deception, as in the clever tales, not necessary so.  Typically, evil is destroyed in rather graphic terms.

“The story usually ends happily. You can have a fairy tale without fairies, but happy endings are the rule. However, there are cautionary tales that do not end so happily.”

“That is a pretty extensive list,” Duckworth argues. “Can you make it more concise?”

“Yes. Fairy tales make bad literature. Really, they violate most of the rules of good literature. They stick to one POV, third-person objective. They ‘tell’ don’t ‘show.’ There are no beautiful, florid, or even accurate descriptions. And what is with the number ‘three’ all the time? It is more overused than ‘clever.’”

I get a chuckle from Duckworth.

“But seriously,” I say, “for me, the fairy tales are the stuff of dreams. Not those things we strive for, but those things that come to us, unbidden, in the night. There is a good reason for the tales to end happily. Theirs is the resolution that protects us from witches, demons, and the devil himself we encounter in the tales. All those things that make us uneasy while we sleep.”

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: September 2024 The Three Black Princesses – Part One

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Source not found (Russian?)

Crystal Pyramid

I am returning from an evening stroll in the Magic Forest. I went to the pond and lingered there awhile watching the reflections in the water before going back to my study. It is pleasant to know that every visit to the forest need not end in some sort of drama.

However, as I enter my study through the French doors, there sits on my table by my comfy chair a crystal pyramid about three inches tall. I sit down to inspect it more closely.

Thalia and Jini are away tonight doing who knows what. Melissa, whom I had invited over for dinner, is off to some meeting instead. Duckworth is out of town on some business. Who would have dropped off an odd bauble and left without a word?

Beyond me and the bauble is a table lamp. The light it casts through the pyramid appears as a shifting, shadowy pattern on my side of the tabletop.

Why does the pattern move?

I pick up the pyramid, placing it in the palm of my hand, and peer into its facets, trying to discover the cause.

I now stand in a somewhat exotic, town setting, its architecture not familiar to me. There is panic in the air; soldiers and civilians appear to be scurrying about, but the scenario is frozen.

Without being told, I know what is happening. They prepare to battle; unless they can come up with six hundred thalers for ransom, their enemy would attack. Despite the promise of being made the mayor of the town to anyone who would pay the ransom, no one has come forward. What I am seeing dissolves before my eyes.

Now I am standing by a lake. The tableau in front of me is of soldiers restraining a raggedly dressed youth, as one soldier places coins in the hat of another man who is looking sadly at the youth.

Again, I know what is happening. The enemy has seized a young fisherman, but at his father’s pleading to let his son go, the captain compensates the father with six hundred thalers.

Another scene change, and I am at the back of a crowd gathered around a raised platform on which stand the town dignitaries and the elder fisherman. The scene informs me that the fisherman contributed the six hundred thalers to satisfy the ransom and is being declared the mayor. Further, it is declared that the fisherman will henceforth be addressed as “Lord Mayor” and no other title on pain of being hung from the gallows.

In the next image, I stand behind the young fisherman who is staring at the side of a mountain, which has opened up, revealing an ominous castle. At this point, he has escaped his capturers and has wandered to this spot to witness the miracle before him.

After this scene fades, he and I are inside the castle, in a room where all the furniture is draped in black cloth. Before us stand three princesses, dressed in black and of dark complexion except for a white spot on each of their faces.

I understand they mean him no harm and wish for him to release them from enchantment. He asks how and is informed he must not address them or look at them for a year. If he needs anything, he only needs to ask aloud, and if they are permitted, they will provide. After a time, he wishes to visit his family. He is transported back to his home in East India.

East India?

I now see the young man surround by guards holding spears toward him, along with a group of elderly men pointing their fingers at him.

Upon returning to his hometown, he asks after the fisherman and is told not to use that title for the Lord Mayor, but he persists. The lords of the city are about to take him to the gallows for this offense when he is allowed to visit his childhood home where he dons his old clothing and is recognized by the lords for who he is.

I then see him with his family—dressed in his poor clothing, his father, the Lord Mayor, in rich robes—the father and son embracing one another.

He then relates his story to all. However, his mother warns him against the black princesses and tells him to drip hot wax on them from a consecrated candle.

In the next image, he holds a candle above the sleeping black princesses. I know he is nervous and accidentally lets hot wax drip on the princesses. What I see next is more intense. The images flip rapidly, illustrating the actions of the princesses as they turn half white and rise up exclaiming—and I can’t tell you if I heard the words or read them—“You accursed dog, our blood shall cry for vengeance on you! Now there is no man born in the world, nor will any ever be born who can set us free! We have still three brothers who are bound by seven chains, and they shall tear you to pieces.”

In the last scene, the youth has escaped through a window, breaking his leg as the castle crashes into the ground and the mountain closes. There the images stop, my “understanding” ends, and I sit once again in my study staring at the pyramid.

Fairy Tales of the Month: September 2024 The Three Black Princesses – Part Two

AI Art

On Reflection

My shock increases when I look up and see myself seated across from me in a mirror-image comfy chair.

“What are you doing there?”

“I was about to ask you the same.”

“Well, this is most unusual. I don’t know what to think. I am—permit me to say—beside myself.”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

We regard ourselves for a while until I say, “Well, this is the pyramid’s doing. I’ll suppose it is its way of getting me to think about the story to myself.”

“Agreed,” myself returns. “What do we think about the story?”

“First,” I say, “we know it is the Grimms’ The Three Black Princesses.”

Myself nods. “Certainly one of the lesser tales, but it was in the first edition and not booted out like some of the others.”

“True,” I say. “Perhaps the pyramid wants us to reconsider the tale. I believe we dismissed it when we first read it.”

“True again,” says myself. “Let us tear it apart. We start with a town under siege, the deliverance from which is six hundred thalers.”

“A tidy sum,” I agree, “but if they had passed around the hat, I would think a town full of people, under attack, could easily ante up that amount of money, but that is not the case.”

“Instead,” myself picks up my thread, “the mayoral position is offered up as a bribe, but still to no effect until the fisherman arrives on the scene.”

“And he,” I continue, “acquired the money from the same enemy that had taken his son prisoner but felt somehow obliged to compensate the father with the same amount of money needed to lift the siege.”

“You are thinking what I am thinking,” myself says to me.

“Yes, the economics of this story stink.”

“But let us not be too harsh on this lack of logic. We both know that the fairy tales are not based on logical thinking. In fact, they wallow in defying it.”

“True, again,” I say to myself. “The fisherman becomes the Lord Mayor and is to be addressed by no other title. I can’t help but notice the passive tense of the declaration. The story does not tell us who—the active character—made the pronouncement. It is just there. Subsequently, it is implied that the word is enforced by the ‘lords’ of the town.”

“Good point,” myself nods, “which is a setup for later on in the story.”

“Correct, of course.” On impulse, I reach for my pipe and tobacco and see in my peripheral vision myself doing the same. The study is soon filled with the scent of Angel’s Glory, a blend I keep in reserve for special occasions.

“We now turn our attention,” I say, “to the young fisherman, who has escaped his capturers—they, therefore, gaining nothing for their efforts—and for no apparent reason, is admitted into an enchanted castle.”

“Let’s stop there and linger,” myself declares. “Why does the mountain open up for him?”

“Oh,” I say, “because he is us, or—as we experienced in the pyramid—we stand right behind him. We want the mountain to allow us into the enchanted castle. The fairy tales are always about us, a source of wish fulfillment.”

“I knew that,” says myself, “but I will never tire of hearing it.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: September 2024 The Three Black Princesses – Part Three

Psyche at the Couch of Cupid — Gayley, 1893

By Myself

“Next,” I say, “is actually the interesting part of the story: the three black princesses. I love all the furniture draped in black and the princesses themselves dressed in black. That suggests to us that there is some state of mourning going on, but we see no corpse.”

I puff on my pipe before speaking again. “The white spot on their faces, what can that stigmata signify?”

Myself ponders. “Black is the color of evil, but I don’t think white represents only good in our story’s images. I believe white is what widows wear in India among the Hindus and not black as in the West, and does this story have its actual origins in India, as the story itself suggests? What of the wax of the consecrated candle dripping on them and turning them half white?”

“We are getting ahead of our story,” I say. “At this point, he agrees to help them break a spell by not speaking to them or looking at them for a year. That is a pretty namby-pamby challenge. No herculean, impossible task, no suffering on his part. And yet, he can’t achieve it.”

“Again, we get ahead of our story,” myself reprimands.

I smile to myself. “Ok, back on track. The youth wishes to visit his family. Here we enter into the Beauty-and-the-Beast/Psyche-and-Cupid motif with a bit of gender reversal.”

“You know,” myself relights his pipe, “the clothing thing is inserted at this point, which reminds me of a Nassardim story.”

“Yes,” I say in delight, and we tell each other the tale in tandem.

“Nassardim, invited to a feast, shows up poorly dressed.”

“He is not allowed entrance and returns home to put on better clothing.”

“Now, with respect, he is accepted into the company.”

“To his host’s distress, Nassardim stuffs food up his sleeves, saying, ‘Eat, eat.’”

“’Nassardim,’ says the host, ‘what are you doing?’”

“’Well,’ says Nassardim, ‘when I appeared poorly dressed, I was sent away. When I reappeared well dressed, I was escorted in. Therefore, this feast is not for me but for my clothing.’”

We laugh at our own joke.

“Seriously though,” I say, “this story’s treatment of the motif in question is unusual.”

“There is,” myself contemplates, “the clumsy handling of the candle wax. First, a consecrated candle occurs in no other story that we know of. This is one of those Christian insertions for which the Grimms were open to, given their bourgeois audience.”

“What bothers us,” I say, “is that his mother instructs him to drop the candle wax on the princesses but with no indication as to why or for what purpose. When he does drip the wax, it is described in the story as an accident. Not to mention he is looking at the princesses in violation of his promise to save them.”

“Clumsy, as we agreed,” concludes myself.

“Let me press our point about how unusual this is,” I say. “Psyche drips the wax on the sleeping Cupid, then has to pursue her flown lover through the rest of the story. In our version of the motif, the dripping of the wax causes the sudden, closing apocalypse.”

“Yes,” says myself, “while he suffers a broken leg, what happened to the princesses’ blood calling out for revenge and their three chained brothers tearing him apart?”

“Not much,” I frown. “If I recall, we searched for a story about three chained brothers at the time we first read this but came up with nothing.”

“Now,” myself says, tapping out our pipe, “that we are at the end of the story, where the wax has turned the princesses half white; does that bring up the notion of yin and yang, especially with the previous white spot on their faces?”

“We both know that is a stretch,” I say. “The symbol of yin and yang does not appear in the Hindu representations.  It is more of a Taoist thing, but not unknown to Buddhists, but there are not that many Buddhists in India despite the religion’s origins. However, the notion tempts us.”

“A given,” myself agrees. “Therefore, overall, what do we think of this tale?”

“Despite the pyramid’s efforts,” I say, picking the crystal up again and looking into its facets, “and regardless of some enticing images, I’ll guess the story’s significance will continue to ellude us.”

I set the pyramid back down on the table. I see that I am alone in my study.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tales of the Month: August 2024 The Jewel Mountain and the Dove Maiden- Part One

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Dove Maiden Feeding the Doves – Claudio Rinaldi

Usual Crowd

The usual weekday crowd has gathered: Thalia and myself in our comfy chairs, Johannes on the window-seat pillow, the fairy on Thalia’s shoulder, and the brownies lurking in the dark corners for the post-supperial entertainment. (Don’t try looking that up.  You won’t find it. It means post-supper with an inference of being superior.)

In our study/sanctuary, Thalia fingers my copy of Modern Greek Folktales, by R. M. Dawkins.

“Tonight’s reading is The Mountain of Jewels and the Dove Maiden.”

A young woodcutter, who worked morning till night to support himself and his widowed mother, fell in with a merchant with a scheme to acquire great wealth. Taking to sea with his fleet, the merchant brought them to an island dominated by a lofty mountain, its peak in the clouds.

The merchant gave the youth a sword, sewed him into an animal skin, and told him an eagle would carry him to the mountain’s top. The merchant instructed the lad to cut himself out of the animal-skin bag and throw down to him whatever he found.

All this happened, and the young man found the mountain top cluttered with diamonds, gold, pearls, and sapphires. These he threw over the mountain’s cliff to the merchant below. When the merchant’s ships were filled, he sailed away, abandoning the youth on the mountaintop.

Desperate, the lad searched for escape and found a subterranean staircase into a palace. There dwelt a blind ogre. Although at first frightened, the youth befriended the ogre, who doted upon him, giving him the forty keys to the palace rooms, but with the instruction not to enter the fortieth room.

Needless to say, the fortieth room was entered, where the youth found a magnificent garden, in which he saw a marble-lined cistern, into which descended three doves that removed their plumage, transforming into beautiful girls. The three splashed about in the water as he fell in love with the youngest. As quickly as they had come, they put back on their feathers and flew away.

Brokenhearted, the youth returned to the ogre and confessed what he had done. The ogre, rather than being angry, sympathized and told him to steal the plumage of the youngest, and she would become his wife.

This the youth did. After some time, and two children, the ogre allowed the family to return to the lad’s widowed mother. All went well until the dove maiden rediscovered her plumage. Before flying off, she told the widow how the husband could find her in the place that is all green, all red, with five white towers.

The youth returned to the ogre for help in his search, and the ogre assisted him by giving him iron shoes and an iron staff. During his wanderings, he came across two men arguing over the possession of three magical devices: a hat of invisibility, a flying carpet, and an invincible sword. These items soon belonged to the lad, if by deceit. He wished himself to the place that is all green, all red, with five white towers.

He found his wife demoted, living in the stable of her father, the king. In order for him to reclaim her, they needed her father’s permission. The father would rather destroy the youth, but because of the hat of invisibility, he could not find him. Instead, he set the condition that the lad needed to turn a mountain into a garden overnight.

The dove maiden gave her husband a tile to be thrown down a particular well, from which would emerge thousands of men to do his bidding. By morning, the mountain had become a garden.

The father then demanded that the garden become the sea. With another tile, the youth accomplished the task.

The father then demanded to see the husband of his daughter. When he revealed himself, both the king and the queen rushed forward to devour him, but with the invincible sword, he slew them.

Reunited, the husband and wife returned to the ogre’s palace, where, in gratitude, the dove maiden restored the ogre’s sight, for it was she and her sisters who had stolen his eyes and hid them in a cave.

Thereafter, all lived in good health.

Huh. This is one for Augustus to interpret.

Fairy Tale of the Month: August 2024 The Jewel Mountain and the Dove Maiden – Part Two

John D. Batten

Augustus Interprets

“Not Elfish Gold?” Augustus exclaims with mock shock.

“I suppose my tastes have taken a turn toward the dark side. Black Dwarf and Fairies’ Delight will fill the bill this time.”

Augustus considers. “Toward the dark side, eh? Then let me tempt you with a bowl of Raven Black.”

“Raven Black; I think I had that once.”

“You did, but I have changed the blend a bit, I think for the better.”

We are already stepping into his testing room, he carrying a small canister. When our pipes are packed, we settle in.

“You have, I assume,” says Augustus, “a story to share.”

“Have you heard of The Jewel Mountain and the Dove Maiden?”

“I have not.”

“Greek,” I say and tell him the story.

When I finish, he contemplates for a while.

“I have not heard this story before,” he says, “and yet I have.”

I nod in agreement. “It is made up of well-known tropes.”

“And yet,  there is something fresh about it. Well, let’s pick it apart.”

He blows a couple of smoke rings before continuing.

“The theme of the woodcutter and his widowed mother is as old as it gets. The lad being waylaid by a merchant rings of Aladdin and the Lamp, which does not surprise me. There is only the Aegean Sea between Greece and the Middle East.

“The subterranean palace I know from A Sprig of Rosemary if nowhere else.”

“The Twelve Dancing Princesses has a subterranean palace as well,” I comment.

“Ah!” Augustus gestures with his pipe. “A blind ogre, that is new, and a sympathetic, friendly ogre as well. The Greek tales are filled with ogres, but not too many are friendly.”

“Now,” I say, “we come to the forbidden-room motif. A hero, yet more often a heroine, is given the keys to the castle and told not to use a certain one.”

Augustus frowns. “I think you are conflating two rather distinct motifs. In our story, it is the hero—and not a heroine—who gets the keys to the forty rooms of the palace and told not to enter the fortieth room. It shares similarities with another Greek tale, The Quest for the Fair One of the World—notice how long some of these Greek titles are—not to mention that part of the world’s obsession with the number forty.”

I skip over the number-forty obsession and focus on the gender question just raised.

“In the European tales,” I reflect as I speak, “when the heroine opens the forbidden door, there is something awful behind it. In the Greek tradition, when the hero opens the forbidden door, there  is a marvel, dangerous, but a marvel.”

“Have you . . .” Augustus hesitates for a second. “Have you ever had a dream about being in a house, a house you know very well, but you should not be there?”

I am a little stunned. “There is a third floor to my house,” I confess, “that appears to me a little uncanny.”

“In my dream,” Augustus goes on, “I am in my great-grandmother’s dining room, hiding under her table. All about me is the high-Victorian décor and its mysteries. I fear being overwhelmed.”

Are dreams and fairy tales our way of dealing with our invented realities?” I wonder.

Fairy Tale of the Month: August 2024 The Jewel Mountian and the Dove Maiden – Part Three

AI – Google Gemini

Wonder Tales

I pick up the thread of our conversation. “Next up is stealing the dove maiden’s plumage to oblige her to be his wife.”

“Again,” says Agustus, relighting his pipe, “another well-known trope. With mermaids it is their fishtails, with swan maidens their feathered robes. Invariably, they get their accoutrements back again. They cannot resist them when back in their hands, even to the point of abandoning their children by their forced marriages.

“However, I cannot help noticing that the dove maiden says, before flying away, ‘Look for me in the place where . . .’ instead of the usual, ‘You will never find me until . . .’ She appears to be encouraging her husband to find her.”

“And he does find her,” I say between puffs, “with the help of the ogre and three magical devices.”

“Yes, yes, the magical devices. Notice that one of them is a flying carpet instead of the seven-league boots, a nod to its Middle East influences.

“I find it a bit interesting in this fairy-tale motif that our heroes are not above trickery to acquire the devices, yet we don’t think any less of them for it, but rather how clever they are.”

I tap out my pipe and refill it with more Raven Black. “Add an ounce of this to my order, please.”

Augustus smiles. “The dove maiden’s predicament, I did not expect. Her father, the king, consigned her to the stable in punishment for . . . “ Augustus trails off.

“In punishment for marrying a human?” I suggest.

“Possible, even though that was not her fault; she was being humiliated.”

“It is also apparent,” I put in, “her husband cannot simply put her on the magic carpet and make an escape. There are three ordeals to face.”

“Which he does,” Augustus climes in, “with the help of magic, including his wife’s magic. This scene in the story has the freshness I mentioned before. Not only the dove maiden dilemma, but I am not sure I have run across the impossible tasks of turning a mountain into a garden and then the garden into the sea. And she aids her husband with a tile to be thrown into a well to produce an army for men to do the tasks. Where does that come from?”

“A sort of wishing well, with tiles instead of coins?” I speculate.

“Maybe.”

“The third task,” I continue, “is a bit different than the first two. The youth has been hiding beneath the hat of invisibility, and the king demands to see him.”

“Right, and as soon as he does, the king and queen attack to eat him. This event comes at the end of the story, but it is the first clue we have that they, too, are ogres.”

“And dispatched with the invincible sword,” I add. “Making good use of the magic available to him.”

“I think,” Augustus taps out his pipe, “the craziest thing about this story is the surprise ending where the dove maiden restores the eyes of the blind ogre that she and her sisters had stolen.

“This hints of an entirely other tale. I imagine the ogre seeing the bathing dove maidens, just like the lad did, but was found out and punished by them by having his sight taken away.”

“Hmmm,” I say, “you could be right. The ogre had access to that world through the fortieth door and warned the youth against opening it. But where was that world; all green, all red, with five white towers?”

“That, I am convinced, is a riddle, my answer to which is an apple.”

“An apple.” I echo.

“The unripe fruit is all green, the ripe fruit all red, and the towers are the five white petals of the apple blooms.”

“I like it,” I say. “All we need do is imagine a world inside an apple.”

“And that, my friend,” concludes Augustus, “is why ‘fairy tales’ should be called ‘wonder tales.’”

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2024 The Girl-Fish – Part One

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H J Ford

Green Tea

“Look what Jini brought,” Thalia says as she and Jini march into the kitchen, setting on the table a pink-and-green aluminum can, while they grab three glasses and fill them with ice from the fridge. In bold letters on the can is the label “Nixie.” Further, I read that it is pomegranate green tea sparkling water.

“Courtesy of my cousin in America. This is his favorite drink,” Jini explains. “Well, non-alcoholic.”

Thalia giggles.

“Fitting,” I say, “naming a drink after a water spirit.”

We all take a sip. Pleasant. Sweet, but not too sweet.

“This is a little serendipitous, you know,” says Thalia. “Last night I read The Girl-Fish.”

“Oh?” Jini and I chorus. That’s all the encouragement Thalia needs to relate the tale.

There was a willful girl—pretty—but willful. Though dearly loved by her parents, she would do nothing to try to please them. Until, one day, her mother was so weary that even the girl could not ignore it, asked what she might do to help, and was sent down to the river to mend her father’s fishing net. She no sooner finished the repairs when she heard a fish splashing in the water. She cast the net and caught it.

However, the fish warned her, if she ate it, she would turn into a fish herself. The girl’s willfulness returned, and thinking that the fish held no power over her, she had her mother cook the fish for her. As predicted, she turned into a fish and managed to flop into the river.

Carried downstream to the sea, she met other once-human fish who took her to their queen. The fish-queen’s story was that she had once been an earthly queen, but soon after her son was born, a giant seized her crown as well as herself and her ladies-in-waiting, replacing them with his daughter and her minions, and placed a glamour upon the interlopers so that the king would never notice.

In despair, the real queen and her ladies threw themselves into the sea and transformed into fish. That was many years ago. Since then, the false queen died, returning the crown to her father, the giant. If the crown could be regained, they all could return to  their human form. The queen gave the girl-fish the ability to transform herself into any creature she called for to aid in getting the crown from the giant’s castle on a high mountain.

The first transformation was into a deer so that she could travel quickly. However, a prince was out hunting and cornered her. She pled with him, in her human voice, to spare her. Dumbfounded, he let her escape, and, belatedly, decided she must have been an enchanted maid and that he would marry no one else.

By turns, transforming into an ant, a monkey, and a parrot, she gained access to the giant’s castle and demanded the return of the crown. The giant bargained with her and requested a collar made up of precious blue stones from the Arch of St. Martin. This she achieved in the form of an eagle with a strong beak. Not contented, the giant asked for a crown made of stars in exchange for the fish-queen’s crown.

In the form of a frog, she collected the light of the stars reflected in a pond and wove the reflected light into a crown. The giant accepted this crown, fearing the girl’s powers might be greater than his own. With the queen’s crown returned, all the fish-people took on their human form.

They returned to the queen’s earthly home but found much had changed. The queen’s husband had also died, and their son was now king. The new king was delighted to find his real mother still lived, but she sensed in him a great sadness. He revealed to her that he was hopelessly in love with an enchanted maid in the form of a deer. With the queen’s help, the new king and the girl-fish were soon married.

“Wow, what a story,” Jini grins.

Thalia fingers the label of the sparkling-water can. “I’m thinking of asking our nixie about this tale.”

Jini’s eyes widen. “You have a nixie?”

“In the Magic Forest,” Thalia nods.

“Does she drown young men?”

“I hope not.” Thalia looks concerned.

“Maybe,” I say.

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2024 The Girl-Fish – Part Two

AI art

More Popcorn

I have armed the girls with a paper bag of popcorn. I can’t recall when I realized the nixie loves popcorn, but it has been a staple in my interactions with her ever since. I sit high on the bank and toss popped kernels to her down below. I am safe from being dragged down into the water by her, and the popcorn is an incentive for her to entertain my presence.

However, today, as we enter the Magic Forest and come near the nixie’s pond, a siren song is carried on the air.

“Oh, how pretty!” Thalia exclaims.

“Pretty” is not the word for it.

I feel it pulling at my soul.

When we come into view of the pond, there is Melissa sitting at the water’s edge, not three feet from the nixie, whose serenading has just ended, releasing me from its spell.

“Oh, how lovely,” says Melissa, then, looking up, sees the girls and smilingly motions them to come and sit beside her. The girls prance down the bank, settling themselves on either side of her.

What have I done?

When the nixie glances curiously at Jini, the girl hands over the bag of popcorn, which the nixie takes with delight.

No! That’s not how it’s done.”

I collapse to the ground, high up on the bank, out of reach.

“I have a story.” Thalia’s tone is formal, infused with respect for the nixie. “About which I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

The nixie nods, lying back into the water until only her face, haloed by floating green hair, and her hands, holding the popcorn bag, are above the surface. As Thalia tells the tale, the nixie lazily drops the treats into her mouth. I have never before noticed how sharp her teeth appear.

“I do remember her,” the nixie says when Thalia ends the tale. “Why she didn’t want to remain queen of the fishes, I don’t understand. What is this attraction to the land? Some of the mermaids have it. I don’t see what lures them.”

“Well,” says Thalia, “the fish-queen and girl-fish were born on land. I guess that’s a bond hard to break. One’s first home, I mean.”

The nixie nods her consent as Jini picks up the thread of the discussion. “But what of the girl-fish’s willfulness? Ultimately, she is rewarded. Why should willfulness be rewarded?”

The nixie rises from the water, half her length, trying to contain her laughter. It, nonetheless, comes out as a frightening cackle. “Willful? She? Oh, you mortals do not grasp willfulness. We immortals are willful by our existence. Seldom do you who die retain your willfulness much beyond infancy. No, for me, this is a story of a girl losing hers.

“She starts out having her way. Then, for a moment, she has pity for her mother. After that, all is lost.”

“But didn’t her willful nature lead her to ignore the fish’s warning?” Jini points out.

“You might wish to see it that way,” the nixie responds. “But I can’t see becoming a fish as tragic as the story implies. The tragedy comes in the girl-fish falling into subservience to the queen, and all traces of her precious willfulness disappear.”

“Well,” Melissa suggests, “she does get to marry a prince.”

“All the more subservient,” the nixie pouts, settling back into the water and her popcorn.

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2024 The Girl-Fish – Part Three

AI art

Popcorn Bag

“I see this as a story of transitions.” Melissa taps a finger on her chin. “The heroine is first changed into a fish, against her will. Then she is given the ability to transform into whatever she calls for to reach her goals.”

“Oh, the frog,” says Jini. “That was my favorite. In that form, she collects starlight to make a crown. So cool.”

“That was my favorite as well,” says the nixie. “Collecting reflected starlight; I am going to have to try that. Probably on winter solstice when the night is longest.”

“I like the deer,” Thalia chimes in. “Deer are so elegant looking. I can just see her leaping away from the prince, his mouth hanging open.”

“My admiration,” Melissa smiles, “goes to her choice of becoming an ant to scale the giant’s castle wall.”

Both Jini and Thalia nod their agreement, and Melissa continues. “But the ultimate transformation, or more correctly transition, is the heroine’s change from the person she was at the start of the story to the person she becomes by the end.” Melissa turns to the nixie and adds, “For better or for worse.”

The girls giggle. The nixie rolls her eyes.

“What about the giant?” Jini asks. “I thought his ideas for the tasks were odd. He wanted jewelry. What giant wears precious stones and a starry crown?”

“And only two tasks,” adds Thalia, “not three.”

“Never liked that giant,” the nixie sniffs. “Not bright, but most giants usually aren’t.”

“Could be,” Melissa contemplates, “he was trying to think of difficult or impossible tasks. The first task wasn’t all that hard, but by the time she returned, he had come up with, what he thought to be, an impossible one.”

“But why not a third task?” Thalia presses.

“Because,” Melissa conjectures, “when he realized she could do the impossible, he became afraid of her power and surrendered the queen’s crown as he had promised.”

“Well,” says the nixie, “he is a coward, and, although he has had his moments, usually he can’t come up with more than two thoughts.”

There is another round of giggles from the girls.

The evening is coming on, and I don’t think it wise to be in the Magic Forest by nightfall.

“We should be going soon,” I call down the suggestion to them.

“OK,” the girls say together, then turn their attention back to the nixie. The nixie glances up and gives me an evil smile.

I know the nixie has the reputation for drowning young men, and while I am not youthful, she is immortal, which makes me look comparatively young. I creep a few more feet up the bank.

Now I can no longer hear what they are talking about. It goes on far too long for me, but eventually they stir; Melissa, Thalia, and Jini rising to their feet. The girls give the nixie an enthusiastic hand-waving, then turn to climb up the bank toward me.

What a relief. I am trying not to be obvious that I think this is an escape as I usher them down the path toward home, when I realize Melissa is not with us.

Turning around, I see her kneeling beside the pond’s edge. The long, slender fingers of her pale hand touch the tips of the nixie’s green, webbed fingers. The nixie speaks to her, then slips beneath the water’s surface. Melissa retrieves the floating, empty popcorn bag. I know her body language. She is deep in thought.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: June 2024 Bird Dauntless – Part One

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Twelve Heads

We don’t have as many evening reads as we did when Thalia was little. In fact, the pattern has settled into readings on Sunday nights. A good way to start a week. Thalia, some time ago, took over the duties of being the reader. I enjoy being read to, and Thalia has such a soothing, yet articulate voice.

We have all gathered as usual, Thalia and I in our comfy chairs, Johannes curled up on the window seat, the fairy on Thalia’s shoulder, and the brownies lurking in a dark corner.

Thalia holds a new acquisition in her hand from Melissa’s bookshop. “Fairy Tales From the Far North, by P. C. Asbjornsen,” she announces. “From which I will read Bird Dauntless.”

There is a king with twelve daughters, of whom he thinks the world, but one day they disappear. Word of this strange event comes to a realm whose king has twelve sons. The brothers determine to find and marry the twelve princesses. Their father gives them a ship with Knight Redbeard to command and steer.

They search for seven years until they encounter a storm that lasts for three days. At the end of it, all are so exhausted that they fall asleep, except for the youngest prince. He sees a dog on an island and lowers a boat to rescue it. The dog leads him to a castle, and turns into a beautiful maid, with her father, a fearsome troll, sitting beside her.

From the troll, the prince learns that the twelve princesses were stolen away by the troll’s master/king to scratch his twelve heads. The troll gives the prince a sword with which to slay his master/king, allowing the troll friend to be the new king. The troll says there is still another seven-year journey before them in order to get to their destination. The troll also warns that Knight Redbeard hates the prince and will kill him if given the chance.

After seven years, the pattern of the three days of storm repeats, and the youngest prince slips away from the ship as the others sleep, enters the castle of the twelve-headed troll, and finds him asleep as his friend, the troll, had predicted. He waves the princesses to stand back and quickly slays the king troll.

Having already started their return voyage, the princesses realize they have forgotten their crowns. The youngest prince offers to return for them while the rest remain at sea. The Knight Redbeard takes the opportunity to abandon the prince with threats of death for anyone who defies him. The prince is left stranded on the old troll king’s island.

To the prince’s aid comes the Bird Dauntless, an apparent resident of the old troll king’s palace. It flies him back to the new troll king’s palace—the prince’s friend—with magical speed.

Seven years later, after a three-day storm, the sleeping crew comes to the new troll king’s island. The youngest prince boards the ship, reclaims the sword of the new troll king for him, and sees that the youngest princess sleeps with a naked sword by her side and that the Knight Redbeard sleeps at her feet.

Another seven years pass as the crew travels back to the kingdom of the twelve princesses’ father. Toward the end of the seven years, the new troll king gives the prince an iron boat that will take him back and return by itself. When the prince comes in sight of his brothers’ ship, he raises an iron club to evoke a storm that allows him to pass by them unnoticed.

Pretending to be a storm-tossed sailor, the prince creates the rumor (however true) that the princesses are returning. When they do return, there is much joy except for the youngest princess, who is now obliged to marry the Knight Redbeard.

The prince, now pretending to be a beggar, offers up the crowns. Seeing this, the youngest princess reveals the deceit of the Knight Redbeard. The king has Knight Redbeard executed before he can do any more harm.

“And all, as you may suspect,” says Thalia, “live happily ever after.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: June 2024 Bird Dauntless – Part Two

Twenty-eight Years

“Twenty-eight years!” Melissa marvels. “Seven to the troll’s island, seven more to the king troll’s island, and fourteen more returning. What a patient people they must have been.”

I smile at her quip. “This is the stuff of fairy tales.”

We are sitting, again, on Melissa’s reading-space couch. She has generously provided a full teapot and cups.

“Obviously, you know the story,” I say.

“I read the book before I sold it to Thalia. That is one of the perks of being a bookseller. I read them before I sell them to my profit.”

“Very good,” I say. “But what are your thoughts on this tale?”

“Well, first is the twenty-eight-year saga.” Melissa holds her teacup to her mouth but does not drink, frozen in thought. “There is a cultural context to this tale that came out of the Middle Ages. The peasantry was tied to the land. They existed pretty much from hand to mouth. It was a mark of privilege to have the ability to travel. Besides religious pilgrimages, there were the Crusades. That men of royalty would go off for extended periods of time seemed to have been expected. Twenty-eight years is still excessive, but for the listeners of the time, not unimaginable.”

She finishes taking a sip of tea and continues.

“Then there is the strong suggestion that none of the characters age.”

“No, wait!” I exclaim. “The story does not say that.”

“You are right; it does not, but it is implied. Note that the heroes and heroines get married and live happily ever after. ‘Ever after,’ not ‘for the rest of their lives.’

“Death in the fairy tales is reserved for three categories of characters: witches, trolls, giants, and all other evildoers; kings that are old when the story starts so that the hero can inherit the kingdom; and mothers so that their progeny can have an evil stepmother. There is the caveat that if the king gives half his kingdom to the hero, he can avoid mention of his demise. Even taking an axe and cutting off the head of a fox may produce the enchanted brother of the heroine. Death is a bit elusive in the tales.”

“I am going to suggest you are exaggerating.” I sip my tea.

“Let’s take our tale,” Melissa persists, pouring herself another cup. “Our heroes and heroines return on the cramped quarters of a ship for fourteen years, at the end of which there is no mention of children being born during that time.”

Oh, she may have a point here.

Melissa takes another sip of tea. “They don’t get grumpy, there is no mention of graying hair, there are no medical issues. Why? Because they are suspended in time.”

“Now there is a notion I have not entertained before.” I set down my teacup. “Time often moves differently in the Celtic fairy world than it does in our world. Why shouldn’t it not move strangely in other tales as well? I will buy into your analysis.”

Melissa smiles. She has her little victory.

Fairy Tale of the month: June 2024 Bird Dauntless – Part Three

Peter Christen Asbjornsen

 So Many

“There is also quite a cast of characters.” Melissa absently rotates her teacup with her fingers. “This tale starts with twelve princesses, twelve princes, and their two fathers.”

“That’s twenty-six,” I say.

“Then there is the Knight Redbeard, two trolls, one troll daughter, and the Bird Dauntless.”

“Making an uneven thirty-one,” I calculate. “Unless we count the king troll’s twelve individual heads.”

“No, don’t.” Melissa smiles and takes another sip of tea. “Eleven of the princesses and eleven of the princes are a sort of corps de ballet, dancing around in the background, not coming front and center. Only the youngest prince and princess do we actually see.”

“Hmmm, a form of crowd control?” I say.

Melissa ignores my quip. “Out of the thirty-one characters, only two have names: the Knight Redbeard and the Bird Dauntless.”

I raise a finger. “Knight Redbeard I recognize. In the Danish folk tales with which I am familiar, he is the Red Knight, the stock villain. He is in the story to cause trouble, sometimes only for the sake of causing trouble.”

“I recognized him too. He is the one to be punished by death at the end of the tale and is brought back again in another tale to be killed once again. I must wonder if this was not a running joke among the tellers to recycle the bad guy.

“What I found most curious was the Bird Dauntless, starting with that curious name. Asbjornsen thought it important enough to name the story after it. The bird is a necessary component of the tale. The young prince would otherwise remain abandoned. Nonetheless, the bird only has a brief appearance and then disappears from the tale.”

“I have,” I say, “run across large birds rescuing heroes before. What jumps to my mind, for example, is The Underworld Adventure. In that story, the hero is abandoned by his two brothers when they are looking for missing ladies in an underworld. It is a huge bird that flies back to the upperworld, similar in feel to our tale. There, too, the bird serves its purpose and then is gone.”

Melissa considers this while drumming her fingers. “I suppose it is not unusual for characters to disappear from these tales. Besides the Bird Dauntless coming and going, the princes’ father gives them a ship, and then the story is done with him. We don’t even hear him being invited to the wedding. I also think the troll’s daughter got left behind—a beautiful maiden and shape-shifter—the story could have done more with her for my liking.”

“For myself,” I say, “I found the use of the three-day storm an interesting device. Every time the ship comes to one of the troll islands, their arrival is preceded by a storm, after which the crew falls asleep except for the youngest prince, who forwards the story.

“On the return trip, he raises an iron club, given to him by his troll friend, to create a storm so that he could slip by them unnoticed. I don’t recall ever seeing a troll/storm  relationship before.”

“Let me return to the character of the bird,” says Melissa. “What of the name ‘Bird Dauntless?’”

“I did Google search that,” I say. “I came up with nothing.”

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: May 2024 The Prince and the Tiger Girl – Part One

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Tiger Family, Korean – Joseon Dynasty

Unnatural Child

I am alone this evening—sort of. Thalia and Jini are in the kitchen, along with the fairy, making themselves a late-night snack. I am making myself scarce per Thalia’s instructions. Well, there is nothing I could add to the young girls’ sleepover prattle.

Along with a bit of whiskey, I entertain myself with the trick of running my finger across the spines of books on my shelves, picking one out on impulse, closing my eyes, and opening to a page.

The book I choose is Folk and Fairy Tales from Denmark: Stories Collected by Evald Tang Kristensen, Vol. 1, edited by Stephen Badman. In bold letters is the title, The Prince and the Tiger Child. I settle into my comfy chair and take a sip of whiskey.

There is a husband and wife who have no children and blame each other. The wife goes to the wise woman, who gives her the odd advice to go home, pretend to be ill, and send her husband to her for the cure.

This is done, and the husband is given a small, covered pot, with the instructions not to look inside. He, of course, does and sees three small, cooked fish that he knows as smelts. A bit peckish, he eats one of the smelts. Nine months later, his wife gives birth to a child, and so does he.

When his wife goes into labor, he hides in the woods and gives birth to a daughter, whom he abandons, mortified at what has happened to him. She is discovered by a wyvern that takes the child into its mouth, but before it can consume the babe it is attacked by a tigress. The tigress, having recently lost her cubs to hunters, takes the child as her own and nurses it.

Years later, the “tiger girl” is discovered by a young king out hunting when his horse paws at the entrance to the girl’s hiding place. The young king marries the girl, much to his mother’s distress. The old queen insists the girl is little more than a wild animal.

When the young king is obliged to go off to war just before his child is born, his mother takes advantage. She steals the child, gives it to her maidservant to be drowned, smears the girl’s mouth with blood, and declares the mother has eaten her own child.

Upon returning from war, the young king refuses to believe what he hears. Two more times his wife bears a child; each time the baby is spirited away, given over to be drowned, and the old queen insists the girl has eaten her children.

However, the maidservant, whose duty it was to drown the infants, did not have the heart to do so. Rather, she put each child in a watertight box and floated the poor being down the river toward its fate. Each time, a different miller and his wife find the floating box and adopt the child as their own.

Meanwhile, the old queen keeps up her campaign, declaring the girl should be burnt. The young king cannot bring himself to that justice. Instead, he sends his queen from the court to tour the kingdom, never to return. She leaves, well provided for, in a carriage drawn by six horses.

As soon as they pass through the gate of the capital city, the young queen finds her voice. Immediately, she instructs her driver to go to the mill where her eldest son now lives. She is well received, and after dinner, as is customary, they play a riddle game. However, the queen demands high stakes if they cannot guess her riddle. She wants another carriage with six horses, a coachman, and their child—her child—as a servant.

The riddle is, “My father is a fish, my mother is a man, a wyvern bore me in its mouth, and I was brought up by a tigress; a horse gave me a husband. I bore my husband three healthy children, all of them died, but all three are still alive.” The miller and his wife, of course, are clueless.

The queen repeats this quest two more times until she has all of her children. When she eventually returns to her husband’s capital city, she enters the castle courtyard with four sets of carriages, one for herself and three for her sons. She is, also, unrecognized by the king or the old queen.

After dinner, the riddle game commences. This time, the young king knows enough about the clues to guess that this is his wife, and all is revealed. The evil old queen is consigned to the punishment she wished upon her daughter-in-law.

“Oh, nice,” I say aloud. “I can confound poor, logical Duckworth with this one when we take our walk tomorrow.”

I empty my whiskey glass.

Fairy Tale of the month: May 2024 The Prince and the Tiger Girl – Part Two

Tiger in the Jungle 1893
Paul Elie Ranson

Hill Garden

Duckworth and I wander about Hill Garden and its winding, multilevel pergola at Hampstead Heath, often described as a “secret garden.” Built by Lord Leverhulme as a place to entertain guests in good weather, it had fallen into near ruins but then restored by the City of London Corporation. It makes for a marvelous ramble up and down stairs and through the gardens on a spring day. Especially with the wisteria hanging from the pergola rafters.

I have just finished relating The Prince and the Tiger Girl to Duckworth, and I try not to smile at his bemused expression.

“Let me get this straight,” he gestures with a finger in the air. “A tiger in Denmark?”

“It was there to attack the wyvern,” I say. “Or in other words, they both were exotic beasts to this story’s listeners, on a par with dragons and unicorns.”

“Okay,” says Duckworth. “I’ll let you get away with that one and move on to a more serious story offense.”

“And what might that be?”

“Things like a prince out hunting finding a beautiful woman hiding in some wood; having an evil queen abducting children and rubbing blood on the heroine’s mouth—as improbable as these things are—I understand that these are familiar tropes in the fairy-tale canon.

“However, having the heroine pass through the gate of the city and suddenly be able to talk and know where her children are—knowledge she can’t possibly possess—goes too far beyond logic.”

“Duckworth! I’m ashamed of you,” I declare, suppressing my mirth and pretending to be annoyed. “How often have I told you that one cannot apply logic to fairy tales?”

“Well,” he grumbles, “if not logic, what reason can you apply to explain her sudden insights?”

We come to a bench under one of the pergola and breathe in the scent of the wisteria.

Presently I say, “That she was passing through a gateway is significant. She was leaving her old world into another. Her purpose in the new world was to find her way back to her old world with all the injustices foisted upon her corrected. That is to say, to reclaim her children.”

“Good,” says Duckworth, “as far as it goes, but what about her unaccountable knowledge? Where does she get that from?”

I put my hands to my chest dramatically. “Why, from us, the listener/reader. In the theatre, I think it is called the fourth wall. This is the breaking of the fourth wall, if only for a moment, and the heroine now knows what we know.”

“Oh, poppycock!”

“No, listen. How do we know, you and I, sitting here, on this bench, smelling the wisteria, are not, in fact, the imagination of some writer scribbling us down? What thoughts could that writer put into our brains?”

“Double poppycock!”

I see I will not convince him and take my argument no further. With no signal between us, we rise and continue our amble.

“Here is another thing that bothers me,” Duckworth picks up the conversation. “Not just in this tale but in others as well, the characters inexplicably do not recognize each other, even if, as in this case, they are husband and wife. I recognize long-ago friends from public school, for heaven’s sakes.”

“Ah, here I can give you a possible, logical—which you so adore—explanation. She wore a veil.”

Duckworth cocks his head to indicate I should continue.

“In medieval times and beyond, women of worth wore veils in public to indicate their modesty and high station. Our young queen would certainly have worn a veil and had reason to hide her identity until she had proven herself.”

Duckworth knits his brow. “I thought that was an Islamic thing.”

“No, no. Muslims are newcomers to the religious world. They took the veil from Jewish and Christian traditions of the time. Young girls, serving maids, and prostitutes did not wear the veil. Prostitutes, in particular, could be severely punished for the effrontery of wearing it.”

“Well,” says Duckworth, “you won two out of three arguments, but really, we being figments of someone’s imagination takes the cake.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: May 2024 The Prince and the Tiger Girl – Part Three

1832 Antoine-Louis Barye

A Metaphor

“It is clearly metaphorical,” Melissa says with her usual certainty, taking a sip of tea.

“Metaphorical of . . .” I ask.

“Of women’s journey.”

We sit in the reading area of Melissa’s bookstore, each with a cup in our hands and the teapot in its cozy on the table in front of us, along with a copy of Folk and Fairy Tales of Denmark from which I have just finished reading aloud. Two customers wander through the store. From where we sit, Melissa can keep an eye on the register.

“Really?” I say. “I wasn’t seeing that and am not sure that I do, at least not in terms of metaphor. Her birth, for example, I thought of as something of a joke that worked into her riddle later on. How is that metaphorical?”

“At the time this story was collected—and in some cases still today—a male child was more valued than a female child. The male child was the one to carry on the family name. The male child would receive a higher education or be apprenticed out to learn a trade. For a man to ‘have’ a daughter could be a disappointment.”

“And her abandonment?” I ask. “Little girls aren’t usually left in the woods.”

“Well,” Melissa says, becoming a little unfocused. “In a way, they can be. Again, a girl’s brother may be given the greater share of a family’s resources and attention, and she rather left behind. The tigers and wyverns? These are the good and bad influences that come in and out of a girl’s unstructured career pretty much at random, as opposed to the careful grooming of a brother’s path to success.”

I sense this story is hitting close to home—not my intention—and I alter the trajectory.

“Then enters the prince to change everything?” I suggest.

“Change everything, “Melissa echoes. “Not really.”

So much for a new trajectory.

“He is simply another male figure,” she continues. “However, there is a change. Instead of abandoning the girl, he takes control of her through marriage.”

I know Melissa is divorced. I am going to pour myself a cup of tea and pretend I don’t notice the parallel.

Melissa takes another sip of her tea, then says, “In the context of this story, the prince tries to take control, with all benevolent intentions, but is unable or skillful enough to do so. Another actor, with their own agenda, thwarts his efforts. His own mother.

“I will sympathize. Had it been an advisor, stranger, or friend, he should have been—and rightly so—skeptical of their opinions. But his own mother? That is a special bond hard to break. Yet, he resists.

“In the end, after a campaign of lies and deceit and the claim that the young queen should be burnt, he sends her away from court. The ‘he’ abandons her all over again.”

Ouch.

I will try to divert. “What of the passing through the gateway? What of her suddenly knowing the unknown?” I take Duckworth’s position at this point.

“Yes, that is the transformation. We have often talked about transformations in fairy tales. Endlessly, actually, and here is another.

“When she passes through the gateway, she is liberated from her past. She comes into her own. When that happened to me, I understood things I had not been told. I simply knew as she did.

“Our heroine goes forth and reclaims her life. She takes back, through riddles, her children, all males. I wish there had been a daughter, but that’s just me.

“Myself? I made other choices. I had no children. I abandon the men in my life as they have abandoned me. You, my friend, are a bit of an exception.”

One of her customers comes to the counter, and Melissa rises to attend, ending our conversation.

Thank goodness.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: April 2024 The White Cat – Part One

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G P Jacomb Hood

White Cat

“Only if I can read a story,” I say.

Thalia and Jini look at me a little curiously.

“OK,” says Thalia cautiously.

“I ran across a story last night,” I explain, “that I think all three of you will enjoy.”

“Three?” Jini asks with a frown.

“He is talking about Ultima,” Thalia fills in.

“Who?” Jini’s perplexed look I find entertaining.

Jini has not been to the Enchanted Forest, our destination for an April picnic that we are planning. The weather is always fine there.

“Ultima,” Thalia explains, “always knows when we are coming, and she will be there.”

“I wonder if she will bring her dragon this time?” I offer.

Jini’s eyes widen.

The story I plan to read is The White Cat, by Contessa d’Aulnoy, or, in other words, a French tale.

There was a king who feared his three clever sons might take away his kingdom for themselves before he intended to let it go. To divert them, he asked that they find him a petite dog to entertain him in his retirement, for which he had no plans.

With goodwill, the three brothers agreed to meet at a certain place in a year’s time and from there return to their father.

Following the adventures of the youngest son, we find him, drenched to the bone, at the door of a mysterious castle, knocking with a deer’s hoof that hung on a diamond-studded chain. Disembodied hands conducted him into the castle and royally dressed him. He was entertained by musicians, all of whom were cats, until the queen of the cats, a white cat, arrived to greet him.

In like manner, the white cat pleased him with all sorts of diversions for a year, at the end of which, she reminded him of his quest. Alarmed at his forgetfulness (He was under a spell.), he pleaded for help, freely given in the form of an acorn in which was the most petite of all dogs.

The young prince was clearly the winner over his brothers. However, the king, unwilling to relinquish the throne, proposed another challenge. He wished for muslin that was so fine that it could pass through the eye of a needle. Off went the brothers on their new quest.

The young prince returned to his white cat and was joyfully received for another year’s stay, at the end of which he was given a walnut, which he assumed held fine muslin. But when he opened it in the presence of his brothers and the king, inside was a hazelnut. Inside the hazelnut was a cherry stone. Inside the cherry stone is its own kernel. Inside the kernel is a wheat grain, and inside the wheat grain is a millet seed.

The young prince began to wonder if the white cat had played a trick on him, but inside the millet seed was a piece of muslin four hundred ells long, woven with wonderful colors and patterns. It did, of course, pass through the eye of a needle.

Once more, the king staved off the inevitable, declaring the sons must go off once again and find brides before one of them could take the throne.

Returning to his white cat, the young prince was appalled when, at the end of a year’s time, she instructed him to cut off her head. With extreme reluctance, he does so, and she transformed into a beautiful princess, the other cats turned into her court, and the disembodied hands into servants.

She then explained the history of her curse. As a child, she had been abducted from her royal parents by the fairies, and they arranged she should marry the king of the dwarves. However, one day, from her tower-prison window, she spied a young prince out hunting. They became friends, then lovers, and at the point of escape, the prince was eaten by the fairies’ dragon.

Furious at her deceit, the fairies returned her to her father’s court, turning them all into cats and hands. The only way to break the spell was to have another prince, identical to her lover, also fall in love with her. And that was what happened.

The young prince returned to his father’s court with his bride. Not only was she clearly the loveliest, but she also told them she had six kingdoms and would give the king one of them, and one for each of the brothers, still retaining three for herself and her new husband.

And so, all ended happily.

Fairy Tale of the Month: April 2024 The White Cat – Part Two

G P Jacomb Hood

So French

“French!” declares Thalia as I finish the story. We sit along the bank of the Enchanted Forest’s pond. Ultima’s brows knit. “You mean the Franks?” She sits with her back resting against the curled-up bulk of her napping dragon.

“Well,” I say, “in our world, the Franks are the ancestors of the French, the people of France.”

“Are we talking about a province of the Holy Roman Empire?” Ultima quizzes.

“Oh,” says Thalia, “we got rid of them a long time ago.”

“Got rid of?” Ultima’s eyes goggle. “Who would do such a thing?”

“Nationalists,” I reply.

“Well, whatever religion they may be, our dragons would never allow such chaos. I think that’s the trouble with your world; no dragons to keep the order.”

I will not argue the point.

“This tale,” I say, diverting us from anything political, “is really a literary fairy tale by Madame d’Aulnoy, a contemporary of Charles Perrault, a woman not known for fidelity.”

I observe my listeners. Ultima has a raised eyebrow. Thalia is smirking. Jini is staring at the dragon, not hearing a word of my exposition.

I continue.

“Her infidelity was not entirely her fault, I will argue. Her father married her off at fifteen to the Baron d’Aulnoy, thirty years her elder.”

Thalia’s expression dissolves into empathetic distress.

I forge on.

“The baron was accused of treason by two men, both of whom were Madame d’Aulnoy’s lovers. The baron spent three years in the Bastille.”

Thalia’s smirk returns. Ultima’s eyebrow remains raised. Jini continues to be oblivious to everything except the dragon.

“The baron eventually convinced the court that he was innocent and turned the tables on his accusers, who were executed in his stead. Madame d’Aulnoy avoided her arrest warrant by slipping out of a window and hiding in a church. She and her mother, who was also complicit in the scheme, fled the country.

“Her history gets a little murky at this point. She traveled to Spain, Holland, and
England, a hiatus of fifteen years, then was allowed to return to Paris, possibly as repayment for being a spy.

“On returning to Paris, she became a hostess for the salon scene, the gathering of intellectuals and social elites of the day. That was until a close friend was beheaded for trying to murder her abusive husband, she also a victim of an arranged marriage, not unlike Madame d’Aulnoy’s. Accused of being involved, Madame d’Aulnoy escaped being prosecuted, but for the next twenty years, withdrew herself from the Parisian social scene.

“During all this hectic life, she managed to have six children, arguably none of whom were the baron’s, and wrote twelve books of history, fiction (these two categories not clearly distinct in her mind), and fairy tales.

“Her best-remembered works are Contes de fées (1697), which translates into Fairy Tales and Les Contes nouveaux ou les fées à la mode (1698) which translates into New Tales, or the Fancy of the Fairies, similar in style to that of Charles Perrault but laced with her own sardonic touches.”

Ultima’s dragon stirs and looks around sleepily.

Fairy Tale of the Month: April 2024 The White Cat – Part Three

Can I . . .

“Can I touch him?” I hear a hint of fear in Jini’s voice.

“Oh, of course, dearie,” Ultima smiles. “Scratch him behind one of his horns; he likes that.”

As Jini does so, the dragon leans into it, nearly knocking her over.

“What’s his name?” Thalia asks.

“Cedric,” Ultima replies. “But tell me, your white cat does not sound feral.”

“Cats in our world,” I say, “are domesticated. A feral cat is simply homeless.”

Ultima raises a finger in the air. “So I have come to suppose from the evidence in this tale. I think of cats as nasty creatures, but d’Aulnoy’s white cat is all about grace and manners. That was a hard thing for me to swallow.”

“Fairy tales,” I say, “involve the Coleridge adage about ‘the willing suspension of disbelief.’ If you think an element of a story can’t be true, then you miss the truth of the story.”

I see that Jini, totally focused on Cedric, has willingly suspended her disbelief as she strokes his massive snout, now resting on her lap. I am a little nervous for her physical safety—he is so big—but all appears under control.

“The disembodied hands grabbed me. Pun intended,” Ultima winks. “That is a surreal image that sticks in the imagination. A tad frightening, really.”

“I agree.” Anything unnaturally disembodied makes me uneasy.

Ultima’s blank stare indicates contemplation. “I found unusual d’Aulnoy’s treatment of the three brothers. They were always civil with each other. They didn’t fall into murderous sibling rivalry, the expected trope for fairy-tale brothers.”

“Yes,” I say. “None of the biblical Joseph and the many-colored cloak business.”

“A little bit of a shame,” she returns. “It would have added some much-needed tension to the story.”

“Tension?” I query.

“All stories,” Ultima insists, “spoken or written, ought to have some tension in there to keep things interesting.”

I feel my brows automatically frown. “Shouldn’t intellectual content and insight be of enough interest?”

“Nope, sorry, give me tension.”

I sigh. I hear Thalia giggle at my distress.

“The only tension,” Ultima continues, “is the beheading; yet, what is that all about? Gratuitous violence to close out the story? OK, I know it is another trope, but then there is nothing in this story that is not a trope, except the disembodied hand and the kindly brothers.”

“Isn’t that enough to make it unique?”

“Nope.”

I sigh again. Thalia giggles.

“So what about the beheading?” Ultima cocks her head.

This is hard to explain.

“Beheading is an ancient practice to end an antagonist’s existence without honor, held in public. In the fairy tale, the beheading is between two protagonists, in private, for the purpose of transitioning one of them from a spell-state back to their original form, their true being. I think it may be the fairy-tale version of the Christian death and resurrection. The fairy tale, if nothing else, is about transition.”

I see Cedric has gone back to snoozing, his snout still in Jini’s lap, tears of joy streaking down her cheeks.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tales of the Month: March 2024 Nix Naught Nothing – Part One

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Nix Naught Nothing – John D Batten

Big Talk

“Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an . . . Englishwoman?”

I lumber forward, confident in my ignorance. I have strength. I need not listen to intellect. I am . . .

“What am I? I’m not me. I’m a giant! What is going on?”

I crest the rise of a hill. Below me is a fair damsel, gowned in purple velvet, seated on a dais. As she rises, raising her arms into the air, I recognize her.

“Giant, I put upon you a geis. I demand you tell me . . . “

“Melissa,” I say, my voice booming, “it’s me.”

“Oh, no.” She collapses back down onto her throne. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to transform you again.”

“Last time it was an owl. This time a giant. What are you doing?” I rumble.

I sit down on the ground, causing a tremor that nearly jolts Melissa from her throne.

“Well, taking my cue from Maria Louise von Franz when she said, ‘Fairy tales are the purest and simplest expression of the collective unconscious . . .’ or, in other words, our dreams, I decided to dream of fairy tales, consciously, to better understand them. The results have been variable.”

“What fairy tale is this?”

“Nix, Naught, Nothing.”

I probe my memory. “I have read this. Remind me.”

Melissa straightens herself on her throne and proceeds.

A queen gives birth to a son while the king is far away. She declares she will not name and christen the boy until his father returns. In the meantime, they will call him Nix Nought Nothing. Unfortunately, the king does not return for a number of years.

During his travels, when the king does return, a giant does him a favor, seemingly for no payment, saying he would take nix, naught, nothing. Upon arriving home, the king finds that is his son’s name.

The king and queen try to substitute the henwife’s son and then the gardener’s son, but in each case the giant discovers the ruse, kills the unfortunate lads in his rage, and returns for Nix Naught Nothing.

The giant raises the boy until he is a man. Then the giant gives Nix Naught Nothing the task of cleaning out the stable that is seven miles long, seven miles wide, and has not been cleaned in seven years. He is allowed only one day to accomplish the feat or become the giant’s supper that night. Our hero is helped by the giant’s daughter, who calls upon all the animals and birds to aid him.

The next task is to drain a lake that is seven miles wide, seven miles across, and seven miles deep. The daughter calls upon all the fish in the sea to drink up the water.

The third trial is to climb a tree seven miles tall with no branches until the top, where there is a nest with seven eggs. The daughter cuts off her fingers and toes to use the bones as pegs for him to climb the tree.

However, one of the eggs breaks, and they must flee with the giant in hot pursuit. They throw down her comb and hair dagger, which turn into briars and hedges to slow down the giant. They then throw down her flask, which turns into a wave that drowns the giant.

They arrive, unbeknownst to them, at Nix Naught Nothing’s father’s kingdom. He leaves his love, who is too tired to go on, to find shelter. He comes across the henwife, whose son was killed for his sake, and she puts him under a sleeping spell. She then contrives with the gardener’s daughter that only this girl can wake the sleeping stranger and will do so if she can marry him.

Through good fortune, the giant’s daughter shows up in time to reveal that the sleeping stranger is Nix Naught Nothing. The gardener’s daughter is forced to break the spell, the henwife is put to death, and the remainder live happily ever after.

“Rarely totally kind, these fairy-tale endings,” I muse, my comment echoing off of the hills.

Fairy Tale of the Month: March 2024 Nix Naught Nothing – Part Two

Jack the Giant Killer – John D. Batten

Big Thoughts

“If I recall,” I say, straining the capacity of giant thinking, “this version was concocted by Joseph Jacobs, borrowed from Andrew Lang, who collected it somewhere in Scotland, but it is pretty clear that much of the story leans on Greek mythology.”

“I agree,” Melissa nods. “What are your insights?”

“The name ‘Nix Naught Nothing’ reminds me of Odysseus and the Cyclops in that the name becomes a trick. Odysseus told Polyphemus his name was ‘Nobody.’ When Odysseus and his men put out Polyphemus’s lone eye, the screams of agony brought the cyclops’s neighbors. From beyond the stone that blocked Polyphemus’s cave entrance, they asked what the matter was. He answered that nobody had harmed him, so they went back to their homes.”

Melissa smiles and I continue. “But I think this tale mostly reflects Jason and the Argonauts. In that legend, Jason had tasks to perform in order to get the Golden Fleece from King Aeȅtes. He had to yoke the fire-breathing oxen and plow a field, sowing it with dragon’s teeth that sprang up as warriors and might have turned against him. With her sorcery, Medea, the king’s daughter, aided Jason just as the giant’s daughter aided Nix Naught Nothing.”

Melissa knits her brow. “But the tasks are different. The thing with the stable that was seven miles long and seven miles wide and had not been cleaned in seven years is similar to one of the Herculean tasks. Although all of them are imbued with the number seven, I am not sure where the other two tasks came from.”

I am thinking I do know. Something is tickling my memory, and I scratch my massive head with a thick finger. Melissa goes on. “And you’re right about the similarity to Jason and Medea, right to the end of the story. In both cases, there was a pursuit of the lovers by the father, at whom they threw obstacles in his path to slow him down. In Medea’s case, pieces of her brother, whom she had killed, which the king stopped to retrieve for proper burial.

“But, ah!” I see realization in her eyes. “The marriages at the conclusions are very different; in fact, opposites.”

My sluggish giant brain is almost remembering something, but not quite as Melissa continues. “In Nix Naught Nothing, he ‘forgets’ his bride for a time, until she is restored to him, and then they live happily ever after. With Jason and Medea, they were married, but after ten years he left her for another woman. Medea had her revenge, ending the legend in tragedy. That may be the difference between legends and fairy tales. Fairy tales end well for the main characters, and legends do not.”

“Talking about endings, in Nix’s story, the giant was drowned. I think I heard that before.” There is that tickling again. “But isn’t the usual death we giants get is having our heads cut off and our tongues taken as a receipt?”

Melissa smiles benignly. “You giants don’t get to be the heroes, do you?”

I am starting to feel sorry for myself.

Fairy Tale of the Month: March 2024 Nix Naught Nothing – Part Three

Battle of the Birds – John D. Batten

Big Deal

“Battle of the Birds!” I hear myself bellow. Melissa startles. “That’s what’s been tickling my brain. It’s the Celtic version of Nix Naught Nothing.

“Oh, the story starts out very differently. The beasts and birds have a battle, over a trivial matter between a wren and a mouse. The prince of Tethertown aids a raven during its fight with a snake. The raven rewards the prince, after a long journey, with a mysterious bundle that the prince is not to open until he is at the place he wishes to dwell.

“Of course, he peeps into the bag far too soon, and a castle, surrounded by gardens and an orchard, pops out. A giant offers to stuff them all back in if the prince gives him his firstborn son. The prince, not having a son, agrees.

“Returning home, the prince unpacks the castle, which comes with a maiden, whom he marries. Seven years later, the giant appears to collect his due. The prince and his wife substitute the cook’s son and then the butler’s son, with the same disastrous results as in Nix. The giant raises the lad until manhood, then offers him his choice of one of his two eldest daughters. The youngest daughter is pledged to the son of the king of the Green City, but the prince and the youngest daughter, Auburn Mary, have already fallen in love.”

“Wait,” says Melissa. “Auburn Mary? She has a name?”

“Yes. Nobody else does. The prince of Tethertown is invariably called ‘king’s son,’ even by Auburn Mary.

“King’s son’s choice of Auburn Mary angers the giant. He puts upon him the tasks of cleaning the stable, thatching its roof with down feathers, and climbing a tree for magpie eggs. Auburn Mary aids him. Extreme is having the king’s son kill her, strip her flesh, and use her bones as pegs to climb the tree for the eggs. He then reassembles her by her instructions but loses her little-finger bone. That becomes useful when the giant again tries to deceive him by having him choose between the three identically clothed sisters. His bride is the one with nine fingers.

“Auburn Mary realizes her father plans to kill them, and they flee, aided by a hoodie. The talismans that become barriers come out of the ear of the blue-grey filly they ride. The last is a water bladder that turns into a lough in which the giant drowns.

“Returning to his father’s kingdom, Auburn Mary sends king’s son on ahead to reunite with his parents and let them know about her. She warns him to let no one kiss him, or he will forget all about her. His old greyhound greets him with a lick on the face, and forgetfulness falls upon him.

“A shoemaker finds her and gives her shelter until the day he is to deliver the shoes for the royal wedding about to take place. Auburn Mary follows him, ending up at the wedding feast, where she is given a glass of wine.

“Flames spring up from the wine, out of which flutter a golden pigeon and a silver pigeon. Three times, three grains of barley fall to the floor. Each time the silver pigeon devours them, the golden pigeon admonishes him for not sharing and reminds him of when she cleaned the stable, thatched the roof, and sacrificed her little finger for him. The king’s son remembers his true bride, and they are married.”

Melissa blinks. “There are certainly a lot of birds in this version: a wren, raven, hoodie, and pigeons, not to mention down feathers and magpie eggs.”

I am about to comment when a mounted, armored knight with drawn sword comes to sally forth.

“Oh dear,” Melissa regrets. “It’s my Prince Charming come to rescue me.”

“Aren’t I supposed to be drowned in this story?”

“He’s following the wrong script. I’d better dismiss you from my dream.” She raises a hand in the air and mutters what must be a spell.

“Well, hurry,” I say.

Prince Charming’s horse has leapt into my lap and starts up my belly as if it were a steep hill. I see the sun glinting off the edge of the blade as it reaches its zenith and descends toward my throat.

I sit straight up in bed, clutching my neck.

Nope. Still there. Melissa cut that awfully close.

Your thoughts?