Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2021 The Three Heads of the Well – Part One

July 28, 2021cjkiernan Leave a comment

Two Daughters

The hot July day has not intruded into the Magic Forest. High above Melissa and me, the dense foliage keeps out the intense sunlight. Branches of tall trees arch over the pond so that only one narrow shaft of light shoots through them, illuminating its center.

As we rest on our sitting stones at the pond’s edge, Melissa shifts impatiently while I puff on my pipe, focusing my mind’s imagination on Ultima.

“I thought you were thinking of me!” her voice startles us. “Oh, and you brought a friend.”

Melissa and I rise to greet her.

“Ultima, this is Melissa Serious. Melissa, Ultima Flossbottom.”

They shake hands and we resettle ourselves on the stones.

“Ultima,” Melissa starts immediately, “I have a problem with which I hope you can help. I can only visit this forest through his study.” She points to me. “But there must be other ways in. How did you find the forest?”

“Oh, through my dragon, of course. He knew it was here, but for reasons he has not explained, he cannot or will not visit it. However, being curious, he instructed me how to find my way in to check things out for him. I think it a delightful place.”

“And how do you get in?” Melissa leans forward.

Ultima contemplates a second. “I will trade with you for that knowledge.”

“Trade for what?” Melissa knits her brow.

“An explanation of the story The Three Heads of the Well. It’s the last story in the book I borrowed from the study.” Here she smiles at me and continues. “I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the story has stuck with me.”

“Remind us,” I say. “I know I must have read it.”

A king, whose wife has died, remarries to an old, ugly, hook-nosed woman, but one who is wealthy. This woman brings to the marriage her own, ill-natured daughter, and then sets about turning the king against his own daughter through false rumors.

Soon, the young princess begs her father to allow her to leave the court and make her way in the world. He allows this, and she leaves with a meager amount of food and little else. This food she shares with an old man who gives her a magic wand with which she passes unharmed through a thorn hedge to a well where three golden heads rise to the surface, asking her to wash and comb them and lay them on the bank to dry.

This she does, and she is granted the favors that she will charm a powerful prince, her voice will exceed that of a nightingale, and she will become a queen. All this comes to pass. When her new husband finds out that she is a king’s daughter, they return to that court. The father is amazed at her fortune, and he is told the truth of what has happened. The father is overjoyed, and much feasting and merriment follow before the happy couple returns home with a true dowry.

Mad with envy, the old, ugly hook-nosed queen and her ill-natured daughter contrive to follow the heroine’s example. The ill-natured daughter leaves to find her way in the world, with better provisions than the first and yet does not share them with the old man. She barely gets through the thorn hedge in one piece, and then bops the golden heads with a bottle.

For this, she is granted leprosy, a harsh voice, and condemned to marry a cobbler. It is the cobbler she meets who has the means to cure her leprosy and voice. For this, she must marry him.

They return to the king’s court, and when the hook-nosed queen finds her daughter has married a cobbler, she hangs herself in wrath. The king, glad to be rid of his queen so easily, offers the cobbler a hundred pounds if he will quit the court, taking his lady with him, and not come back. This the cobbler does, returning to mending shoes, his wife spinning the thread.

“Now tell me,” says Ultima with frustration in her voice, “what is that all about?”

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2021 The Three Heads of the Well – Part Two

Talking Heads

“Well,” I say, “the general category here is ‘talking heads.’ While this is an English fairy tale, the three golden heads is a Celtic influence, I am willing to bet. Severed heads are a popular thing in Celtic tales and myths. I remember part of a tale about the hero Cuchulainn returning from battle holding by the hair the heads of defeated enemies, nine in one hand and ten in the other.”

Ultima looks aghast.

“But,” I hasten to continue, “heads were not always trophies. A gigantic Welsh king, Bran the Blessed, as described in the Mabinogion—a collection of legends—is fighting in Ireland to reclaim his sister, Branwen, married to but rejected by an Irish king.

“As a result of the ensuing battle, just about everybody dies—these are Celtic tales after all—including Branwen. Bran is mortally wounded and instructs his few surviving companions to cut off his head and return with it to Wales, where for seven years the head continues to talk and entertain them.

“Then there is Conaire Mόr, High King of Ireland, who gets his head cut off, and afterwards takes a drink of water and recites a poem in honor of his friend who had tried to save him.”

“ I like,” says Melissa, “the singing head of Donn-Bo after the battle of Allen in the Fenian Cycle, but we should not forget the Corleck Head, which isn’t a severed head at all, but rather a head statue. What is remarkable about it is that it has three faces going around with no back of the head. Supposedly there was a similar head statue of Saint Brigid at one time. Nor should we forget Mimir.”

I object. “Mimir is Nordic, not Celtic.”

“They were neighbors with much back and forth, often violent mind you, but they influenced each other nonetheless. Mimir was a god of wisdom, associated with a well at which Odin sacrificed an eye to gain wisdom. Later, Mimir was beheaded by the Vanir during a war with Aesir. Odin preserved the head, with which he conferred when he needed Mimir’s advice and secret knowledge. I’ll suggest Mimir was the original talking head.”

“Oh, but what of the golden heads? Why gold?” Ultima puts in.

Melissa and I are a bit stopped by that.

“Well,” I conjecture, “they were not made of gold, but golden in color. They do have combable hair, apparently. The color indicates… ”

“Wealth?” Melissa suggests. “Wealth of knowledge? They are magical and did bestow boons and curses.”

I am thinking outloud. “It could be the orginal storyteller’s fancy with no more significance than that.”

Melissa has templed her fingers. “There is the Greek three golden apples. Apples are kind of head-shaped.”

“No, I am not buying it,” I declare.

“I do recall the story in Jacobs’ book,” she says. “His illustrator put crowns on the golden heads. The story does not state that they were the heads of kings, but I think there is something to that.”

“Could be,” I say.

Ultima snorts.

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2021 The Three Heads of the Well – Part Three

The Answer

“OK,” says Ultima, picking up a stone and skipping it across the pond, “let’s move on to the stepsisters. What is that conflict all about?”

Melissa answers while watching the ripples on the water. “One of the roles of a fairy tale is to pass on cultural values, especially to young listeners. In this case, the story illustrates the result of generous actions as opposed to selfish ones.

“The good princess, though she has little, shares her food with an old man, who turns out to be a magical helper. He gives her a wand and words of advice. Despite the odd nature of the heads, she treats them with respect and kindness. Her goodness leads to her good fortune.

“The ill-natured princess, though well-provisioned, does not share with the old man, who declares ill fortune will follow. She then treats the golden heads cruelly, who curse her, leading to her downfall and that of her mother.

“The cultural message is that good deeds bring good results, and bad deeds bring bad results.”

“Good versus evil,” I contribute, “is a common theme in fairy tales, populated with evil stepmothers and stepsisters, often at a ratio of three evil stepsisters to one heroine.”

“And evil stepbrothers, I assume,” concludes Ultima.

I hesitate. “Well, no.”

“No?” Ultima folds her arms.

“No evil stepbrothers, only evil stepsisters.”

Am I getting myself into hot water?

Melissa is smiling slyly. She wants to see me wiggle out of this one.

“There are evil brothers,” I observe. “Brothers usually come in sets of three. The youngest brother is almost always the hero. The elder brothers usually gang up on him, are selfish, and, on occasion, murderous.”

“And evil stepfathers?” Ultima probes.

“Well, no, none of them either that I can recall. Sometimes fathers, with great indiscretion, will want to marry their daughter, but that is about it.”

Ultima puts her fingers to her lips. Her eyes widen.

Melissa decides to bail me out. “There are certain accepted scenarios in the fairy-tale genre, to the exclusion of others for no apparent reason.

“For example, men in the stories might be a woodcutter, soldier, merchant, prince, or king, but never a barrel maker, dentist, ditchdigger, banker, or brewmaster; it just doesn’t happen. These patterns we call ‘tropes,’ and the fairy tales will use the same tropes over and over again, not trying to change the ‘scenery,’ as it may be.”

Ultima shakes her head slowly but appears satisfied. “Well, dear, about finding your way into the Magic Forest. My dragon had me drink a hot cup of dragonsleep before going to bed and recite to myself while going to sleep:

Is it a gate?

Is it a door?

What is the way

I am looking for?

Give me a clue.

Show me a sign.

I want a path,

A way that is mine.

“I don’t know if the words are magical. I think it is just to get you in the mood. The point is, you will dream about the way in.”

Melissa takes Ultima’s hand. “Can you get me some dragonsleep? I don’t think it is in our world.”

“Oh, surely it is. It’s most common. There’s probably some growing here about.” We follow Ultima as she wanders around until she exclaims, “Ha! Here.” In triumph, she uproots a plant.

Melissa touches the small daisy-like flowers and sniffs it.

“Ah, chamomile.”

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: June 2021 The Three Pennies – Part One

June 28, 2021cjkiernan Leave a comment

Three Cents

“My friend,” says Augustus, through the dense haze of our tobacco smoke, “let me tell you a story, for a change.”

I settle deeper into my comfy chair. “What story is that?”

Augustus draws deeply on his pipe, then exhales. “I have been delving into Aleksardr Afanas`er’s Russian Fairy Tales. These tales have a character quite different from the Grimm collection.”

“How so?”

“They tend to be blunt in message and yet fanciful in detail.”

“I think you are about to give me an example.”

“I am. The tale is called The Three Pennies.

A merchant has a worker who, at the end of a year, asks for his wages, but he takes only a penny, which he throws into a river, declaring the penny will float if he has served faithfully. The penny sinks. This happens three years running, but on the third attempt, all three pennies float on the water.

The worker takes the pennies, giving one to another merchant, asking him to buy a candle for him in the church, and light it before the icons.

“Icons?” I ask.

“Yes, holy paintings, very traditionally Russian.”

When the merchant takes out his pennies to buy candles in the church, the worker’s penny falls to the floor and bursts into flame. The surrounding worshippers light their candles from the penny’s flame.

The second penny is given to a third merchant to purchase something for the worker at the fair. The merchant purchases a cat from a little boy for the penny. The cat remains with the merchant when he sails to a foreign land overrun with rats. The cat is traded to the king of that land for three ships, which the merchant gives to the worker.

The worker sails to an island, climbs an oak tree, and hears the devil boasting to his comrades that he is about to steal the king’s daughter. The companions threaten to beat the devil with iron rods if he fails.

The worker goes to the king’s palace and lights his penny, which prevents the devil from stealing the princess. The devil receives his fate and, as well as being beaten, is thrown into a nameless place. The worker marries the princess.

“What nameless place?” I inquire.

“Those are the stories’ words.”

“Floating pennies that burst into flames,” I muse.

“Except for the one used to buy a cat,” Augustus corrects.

“I hope the boy who sold the cat didn’t get a surprise.”

Augustus and I puff silently for a while.

I break the silence, “I’m sensing the story is code for something. There are three pennies, three merchants, and three ships. There is no mention of a crew, I assume? He sails all three ships by himself?”

“No, no crew was mentioned, none whatsoever.”

“But code for what?” I wonder. “He can’t sail three ships without a crew, so the three ships mean something all of themselves, I suspect. They are planted in the story to stand for something.”

“What about the pennies?” says Augustus. “What do they stand for? Why does a burning penny ward off the devil? What about the cat that is worth a penny in one land and three ships in another? This story, for being short, is full of metaphors, I’ll suggest.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: June 2021 The Three Pennies – Part Two

Wild Guesses

“Was Afanas`ev the collector of these tales? Did he leave notes?” I ask.

“No, he only, personally, collected a handful of the six hundred or so tales in his work. Most of them came from other collections to which he had access. Unfortunately, he was not too concerned about when and from where the tales came. He left some notes, but I couldn’t find anything concerning The Three Pennies.”

“Too bad.” I relight my pipe.

“However, I am willing to make wild guesses.”

“Feel free. I am all ears,” I encourage.

“The story reflects what I consider the three driving forces of any individual; the mystical, the practical, and the fanciful.

“The worker’s first penny is spent on the mystical. When it burst into flame in the church, it provided the light for all of the other worshippers’ votive candles. It is a sort of communion, a notion dear to the church.

“The second penny is invested with a merchant with which he speculate. The penny is used to purchase a cat that culminates in a trade for three ships. Not a bad return, but in any case, a practical transaction.

“The third penny is used to trick the devil. The worker cheats him from taking the princess for his own and gets to marry her himself. A worker outwitting the devil and marrying a princess is pretty fanciful, I’ll suggest.”

“Have you any idea,” I ask, “how this second burning penny is used to ward off the devil?”

“None. The story is rather skeletal, which brings me to my second wild and unfounded thought that this is one of those tales collected in the twelfth century that hasn’t acquired any literary veneer to improve it.”

“I’ve noticed this twelfth-century thing about fairy tales before. Why the twelfth century?”

“Oh, one of my favorite centuries. It is part of the High Middle Ages. It was the time of the crusades—Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. They started to build the Tower of Pisa, leaning from the start, if not by design. The magnetic compass was invented. Windmills came into use. Thomas Becket was murdered at the altar in his cathedral. Towns became important centers of commerce. Troubadours became a big thing. Glass windows made the scene. Sugar was introduced into the European diet from the Middle East.

“But more to our point, literacy was on the rise. The old cathedral schools became universities and more secular in nature. That is when Oxford University started and the University of Paris among others.

“Greek, Roman, and Arabic works began to circulate, especially those of science. The time has been referred to as the Twelfth-Century Renaissance.

“In that atmosphere, some authors took notice of folk stories and legends. Then is when the earliest King Arthur stories appeared. Along with them, fairy tales were recorded.”

Augustus pauses to refill his pipe. “The downside is that by recording the fairy tales, the authors unwittingly halted their further evolution. Once recorded, these living, changing entities were fixed in print.”

I can’t help but give a sigh.

Fairy Tale of the Month: June 2021 The Three Pennies – Part Three

Melissa’s Request

Melissa is sitting behind the counter, reading as usual, as I enter her bookshop.

“My goodness,” she says, “here you are and it is not a Saturday.”

“I am on a bit of a mission. Do you have or can you order Afanas`ev’s Russian Fairy Tales?”

“Do you want the original, three-volume version in Russian?”

She is teasing me. She knows I cannot speak a word of another language. “English, please.”

“Actually, not all of his material has been translated, but Pantheon has a nice collection.”

I follow her as she moves from behind the counter, goes down one of the aisles, pulls a copy from its shelf but does not hand it to me. Rather she gestures to two of the cushioned reading chairs that populate her shop.

We sit down, she setting the book on the table in front of us and taking both my hands in hers.

I’m in trouble. I can never resist her.

“I need to make a request of you.” She hesitates and takes a deep breath. “I want to be able to go to the Magic Forest on my own. Is that possible? Can you arrange that?”

I am taken aback. “I don’t know. The Magic Forest simply appeared outside my exterior study door soon after my wife died. I did not call it into existence.”

She continues to hold my hands. “Might the nixie know a way?”

“We can certainly ask her or ask Old Rink Rank, but they are fey and I’ll guess a little secretive and indirect.”

“Do we have any other choice?” She releases my hands.

“Actually,” I say, as the thought comes to me, “yes, there is Ultima.”

“Who?”

“Have I not mentioned her to you? She, too, visits the Magic Forest. She may well have found her own way into the forest.”

“Where does she live?”

“Well, there is a sticking point; in another dimension.”

“What sort of dimension?”

“One where they still have dragons.”

Melissa’s eyes widen like an anime character. “How do we arrange a meeting?”

“I believe I only need to think of her, wish her there, for it to happen.”

“Can we try after I close the shop today?” She takes up my hands again.

“Of course.”

She kisses both of them. I feel myself blushing.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: April 2021 Dreams That Have No Moral – Part One

April 30, 2021cjkiernan Leave a comment

William Butler Yeats by John Yeats (father)

The Poet

“It is actually warm today,” Melissa says, “at least sitting here in the sun.”

Melissa and I sit, unmasked, in the courtyard of Café Van Gogh with Christ Church looming over us. We are determined to reinstate our Sunday-brunch tradition. Half of the cafés are still closed, but this one suits our purpose well.

The menu is limited; however, the Van Gosh veggie burger interests me. I’ve not tried a beetroot, chickpea, and pumpkin-seed burger before. Melissa contemplates the nut and butternut squash Wellington with parsley pesto.

“When we feel confident to eat indoors again, we must dine on their upper floor with the Starry Night ceiling.”

“Hmmm, if we ever do feel safe again,” I curmudge, then immediately relent. “Or am I talking foolishness?”

“Ah, what else can death be but the beginning of wisdom and power and beauty? And foolishness may be a kind of death.”

I peer at her in a bit of alarm.

Seeing my reaction, she says, “I’ve been reading Yeats.”

Oh, that explains it. “Ah, his poetry.”

“No, his prose.”

“He wrote prose? I only know him as a poet.”

“Let me tell you one of the Celtic tales he related.”

A king, when his wife did not bear children, was advised to have her eat a specific fish served in a specific way. The cook inadvertently tasted the fish, the queen ate it, the remains were thrown into the yard, and finished off by a mare and a greyhound. Both the cook and the queen had sons, who were identical; the mare had two foals, and the greyhound two pups.

The queen eventually sent the cook’s son away, although the two boys were like brothers. The cook’s son told the prince, if the water in the garden well turned into blood and honey, then harm had come to him. He left, taking one of the mare’s foals and one of the greyhound’s pups with him.

He became a cowherd for a king, but grazed the cows on a giant’s land. The giant confronted him, they battled all day, the lad cut off the giant’s head with the giant’s own sword, and cut the head in half, which the head informed him was a good thing for the lad, otherwise the head would have reattached itself to the giant’s body.

The same thing happened two more times with giants of an increasing number of heads, the lad getting for his booty a suit of invisibility and shoes of great speed, and the cows gave more and more milk every evening. All these achievements the lad kept to himself.

Now, it happened, that every seven years a sea serpent appeared in the kingdom demanding a king’s daughter to devour. The king, however, as stated in the story, had been ‘feeding a bully underground for seven years,’ who was intended to defend the princess. The bully proved unreliable, and it was the lad, unrecognized by the princess, who defended her for three days in a row from the serpent, using the magical devices procured from the giants.

On the third day, the princess secretly got a lock of his hair and one of his shoes before he destroyed the serpent and slipped away.

The princess declared she would marry no one but he who fits the shoe and whose hair matches the lock of hair she took from her defender.”

“A male Cinderella,” I say as our food arrives. “That is unusual.”

“Quite,” she says, digging into her nut and butternut Wellington. Here the story stalls awhile until we sate our appetites.

Fairy Tale of the Month: April 2021 Dreams That Have No Moral – Part Two

William Butler Yeats Photo by Alvin Langdon Coburn

Poetic Visitor

After a bit, Melissa picks up the story.

Two balls were given to locate the wearer of the shoe, but the lad did not come forward until the king said something derogatory about his cowherd. He got his sword but was dissuaded from killing his soon-to-be father-in-law.

Soon after the wedding, the lad went out hunting with his horse and greyhound, following a deer until they were lost. They came across a witch, the mother of the three giants. With deceit, knowing who he was, she turned the lad, horse, and hound into green stones.

The prince, from the start of the story, saw that the water in the well had turned to blood and honey, and he went off to find his mystical/identical brother. Everyone thought he was the lad, and the prince found his way to his brother’s wife, who thought he was her husband, who had disappeared three days ago.

The next day, the prince, horse, and hound followed the same deer to the witch’s house. This time the witch was defeated, and the prince used her wand to turn the green stones back into man, horse, and hound.

However, a dispute followed when the lad found out that the prince had spent a night with his wife. The prince ended up turning his brother back into a green stone. It took a while, but a sense of guilt caught up with the prince; he restored his brother, and things went on happily after that.

Melissa looks up from her nut and butternut squash, her fork poised in the air. “I would like to meet Yeats. Can that be arranged?”

“If I am not mistaken, you just arranged it. How Miss Cox knows these things, I cannot say, but I am sure we can go directly after our brunch.”

It’s not the twinkling of an eye, but very soon Melissa is lifting the cozy off the teapot set out by Miss Cox and fills two of the three cups sitting on the small, wrought-iron table in front of the bench. Hints of spring fill the garden, the tulips primary among them. Melissa’s eyes drift toward the gate. I do a little research on my cellphone.

Yeats’ place in literary history is that of a bridge between the Romantics and the Modernists. As a youth, he admired Shelley, and as an elder, he was admired by Pound. Yeats also admired Blake, as well as Irish folklore. His achievements included the Noble Prize for Literature in 1923, and he served in the Senate of the Irish Free State.

Outside of his poems, he is best known as a founding member of the Abbey Theatre, for his role in the Irish literary revival, and as a longtime member of the Golden Dawn.

Yeats appears at the gate. He is a stately man, his hair swept back, and with inquisitive eyes.

“Mr. Yeats,” I say, “please let me introduce to you, Melissa Serious.”

He takes her outstretched hand with an almost imperceptible, formal shake and seats himself on the bench with us as Melissa pours his cup of tea.

I think Melissa senses, as I do, there is no need for pleasantries; he’d rather she got to the point.

“On reading Celtic Twilight,” Melissa begins, “I was taken by the chapter Dreams that have no moral.”

Yeats gives a quick smile as Melissa continues.

“What you relate is a fairy tale, or maybe better stated, a wonder tale. It is an admirable one in either case, but I am curious as to why you call it a dream.”

Yeats focuses, not on us, but rather on the teapot, templing his fingers before he speaks.

Fairy Tale of the Month: April 2021 Dreams That Have No Moral – Part Three

William Butler Yeats Photo by Pirie MacDonald

Tale’s End

“There is an alchemy to folktales and poetry,” Yeats began. “In the same way that we occupy a moment in time but cannot see all of time, we can grasp an aspect of passion without understanding the whole of it. We are lifted up by the wind of emotion, then set down again, not always gently. If we are poets, we try to transmute that passion into words. Passion, itself, is wordless. It comes from a realm beyond our ability to comprehend.

“All of poetry, prose, art, theatre, music, and dance exist in the no-man’s-land between our noisy physical reality and the silent place of passion. Unbidden, passion sweeps down upon us, at least to those sensitive to its presence, leaving us to reimage our experience of the incomprehensible.

“If the wind of emotion transports us and we are not poets or the like, and particularly if we are illiterate, then the transmutation may crystalize in the form of a folktale, drawing from one’s passion, dreams, and imagination. The kernel of the passion’s wisdom, power, and beauty lives in the folktale’s motifs, the tale itself being a mere framework on which to hang these insights.

“Is a folktale a dream? No, but both come from the same source. If a folktale can be a dream, then a dream can be a folktale.”

Melissa frowns for a moment. “You said, ‘particularly if we are illiterate’ that the transmutation takes the form of a folktale. At least in the industrialized countries, there are now fewer illiterates than there were in the nineteenth century. Does that mean there are fewer folk and fairy tales to be created?”

Yeats sighs gently. “New fairy tales since Anderson have been mostly literary, not of the folk, but more to the point, I am not certain a true fairy tale can now be created. Its time has passed with the event of the Great War. In the war’s physical no-man’s-land the notions of romanticism, along with its vocabulary, died. Artists had a different voice after the war. A new, starker vocabulary, along with harsher images, overwrote what had gone before.

“Perhaps we romantics were never in touch with the world’s reality, but then was that not the point? Was romanticism not an alternative to the mundane and the unfair? Did it not hold hope for the future?

“The new vocabulary of the artist is used to inspect and dissect the world in which it exists and not rise above it. I will point to T.S. Elliot, whose writing career started during the Great War, as a prime example.”

“By ‘Great War’ I assume you mean World War I?” I say.

Yeats eyes me with concern. “Your label implies there was a second.”

“There was,” Melissa answers. “Three times worse than the first, catching China, Japan, and North Africa along with the original Allied and Axis powers in its web, consuming 3 percent of the world’s population. We live in dread of a third.”

“Then I suppose the folk and fairy tale will rise no more. They were the product of a more hopeful time. They have not the answers to the questions now asked. That is all the more reason that we should cherish these relics that held in their time what is now becoming mystic knowledge.”

We watch the sun setting over the western end of the garden. The day is cooling, and we say our goodbyes.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: March 2021 What Came of Picking Flowers – Part One

March 31, 2021cjkiernan Leave a comment

Hyde Park

It is good to be out in the open air once more. Duckworth and I settle on a walk in Hyde Park. The weather is a little cool and breezy but with a bright sun. Our masks keep our noses warm.

“At as Halia en eating?” I think Duckworth says through his double mask. I take a moment to decipher.

What has Thalia been reading.

“Ah, well, last night she read from the Grey Fairy Book to . . . me.” I almost said “us,” but Duckworth does not know about the crowd in my house.

Duckworth and I enter Hyde Park through the Victoria Gate and head for the path along the Serpentine Lake.

“The title was What Came Of Picking Flowers, a Portuguese tale if I recall.”

There were three sisters who disappear, one by one, while picking flowers in a meadow, much to the grief of their mother, who cries for them for years until their younger sibling, a brother, grows up and asks their mother what is the matter. Upon hearing the story, he sets out to find his sisters.

He comes across three brothers quarreling over the ownership of a pair of wishing boots, a key to all locks, and a cap of invisibility. He agrees to settle their argument but makes off with the magical devices instead.

Wishing the wishing boots to take him to where his eldest sister has gone brings him to the gates of a large castle. Using the key that opens all locks, he gains entrance and finds his sister.

She is married to an enchanted husband who, while in his enchanted form, is King of the Birds. The brother uses the cap of invisibility until the time comes to reveal himself to the husband.

He then goes to find his second sister and her enchanted husband—King of the Fishes—in the same manner.

Duckworth and I pause in our stroll as one of the park’s notably aggressive squirrels darts in front of us and stands on his haunches; a regular highwayman if he had pistols. Thoughtfully, I’ve brought along some peanuts in my pocket and roll one to him. He grabs it, stuffs it in his mouth, and dashes away.

“Hat a bot a onger otter?” Duckworth asks.

“What angry otter?”

Duckworth lifts his doubled mask a second. “Younger daughter.”

“Oh, well, she is a different matter.”

He finds the youngest daughter locked in a cavern by the monster who had kidnapped her and demands she consent to marry him. For all those years she has resisted, but the monster said he is deathless and can continue asking her forever.

The brother and sister hatch out the plan that she will consent to marry the monster if he will tell her how it is that he is deathless. Thinking she can never achieve the task, he tells her. She will need to carry up an iron chest from the bottom of the sea, capture the dove inside, find the egg it lays, and then smash it on his head, for him to die.

The brother, with the help of the King of the Fishes and the King of the Birds, retrieves the egg. Lulling the monster into laying his head in her lap, the youngest daughter smashes the egg on his skull.

The spell on the two husbands is broken, the youngest sister retains all the monster’s hoarded wealth, and everyone lives happily ever after.

“Ozn’t a ungest et arry?”

“Why on earth should she get hairy?” I ask in return.

Duckworth rolls his eyes.

I don’t think that is what he asked.

Fairy Tale of the Month: March 2021
What Came of Picking Flowers – Part Two

Charming Tale

“What I find charming about the story,” I tell Duckworth, “is that it is familiar and different at the same time.”

“Ow so?”

“Well, all the usual tropes are there, maidens in distress, enchanted husbands, magical devices stolen from quarreling dupes, the soul hidden in an egg; we’ve heard them all before.”

“Rue.”

“And yet, there are engaging differences from the norm.

“Most original might be the three sisters getting abducted, one after the other, while picking flowers with no one the wiser as to what happened to them.

“The usual trope is that only one sister, if there are sisters at all, gets carried away on the back of a bear—usually in Norway—or on the back of a bull—shades of Europa—or traded to a monster by her father—see Beauty and the Beast. In our tale, all three sisters are carried off; most unusual. “

Duckworth nods, not trying to say anything this time.

“Also, I am not sure I have run across a younger brother going off to find his sisters. It is usually a younger sister going off to find her enchanted brothers, such as in the Six Swans or The Seven Ravens.

“I guess there was bound to be a gender-switch on that theme—as has happened with Cinderella—and here it is.”

“Hat a but a ungest getin arry?”

There he goes again about someone getting hairy.

I pretend not the hear him.

“Charming to me, too, is the hero’s call upon his magical helpers to locate the monster’s iron chest and soul egg. You can expect there to be an eagle and/or a hound that comes to the hero’s aid, but in this tale, it is a whole community of fishes and birds who help him.

“Atypical is the treatment of the soul egg. When the egg is found, the acceptable method is to simple break it, and the monster, or giant, or sorcerer falls down dead in their tracks. In our tale, the youngest must smash the egg on the monster’s head.”

“Arming m ure,” Duckworth agrees. (I think.)

“Unusual, too, is the youngest sister getting all the wealth without a husband in sight.”

Duckworth raises a finger and marks the air.

Oh, that’s what he’s been asking about.

“Yes, that is unusual and out of step with the condition of the other sisters. Fairy–tale structure, if fanciful, is generally symmetrical.

“But here, the whole marriage setup is odd. Although the story does not specify, we are left to assume the monster stole all three sisters, giving the oldest to the King of the Birds, the second to the King of the Fishes, and tried to keep the youngest for himself.

“What were the monster’s motives for supplying wives to the two kings, who were presumably under the monster’s enchantment given that the enchantment ends when the monster dies? And then, after all that villainy, why does the monster hesitate, by waiting for the youngest to consent, before marrying her?

“I might suppose the monster is actually and truly in love with the girl, in a monstrous sort of way. If that is the case, he gets poor return for his affections.”

“Femme fatale,” concludes Duckworth.

I actually understood that. Are the French good at mumbling?

Fairy Tale of the Month: March 2021 What Came of Picking Flowers – Part Three

Poor Monster

Thalia sits in her favorite comfy chair, where we always sat when I read to her. I’m sure I can distract her from the homework she stares at.

“Thalia, dear, I’ve been thinking, last night’s story you read to us had that soul-hidden-in-an-egg thing. I am wondering where that comes from. Could you ask the oracle?”

She snaps her math book shut and pulls out her cell phone from her jeans.

“What’s the search word?”

“Hmmm,” I say, “Let’s try ‘soul egg.’”

She enters that.

“Looks like something videogamers are after. I’ll try ‘soul-egg fairy tale.’”

Immediately she frowns at her screen. “Koschei the Deathless.”

She scans. “Comes out of Russian folklore.” Silence. “What’s an archetypal?”

“Hmmm, a typical, almost original, of something.”

“Then this Koschei is one of those as a bad guy. And, yeah, his soul is in a needle, inside an egg, inside a duck that no one can catch. It says the origin of the tale is unknown, but comes out of the twelfth century.”

“Indeed? There is something about fairy tales and the twelfth century. Most of the fairy tales can be traced back to a literary source in the twelfth century. Same for Arthurian legends. The printing press comes in around 1450, so that can’t be the cause. Did you know the Chinese invented moveable type and the printing press?”

Thalia is not listening to me but going down a rabbit hole. I shouldn’t have said anything. She’ll never get back to her math book.

“Hey, did you know there is a Fairy Tale eggplant?” She doesn’t look up from her screen.

I wait, knowing she will come up with something soon.

“This looks serious,” she says. “It’s in Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough.”

“That’s it,” I say. “What does Frazer have to say?”

Thalia hands me her phone. “Long.”

I’m in Chapter 66, The External Soul in Folk Tales. Frazer, exhaustive as always, lists out variations on the theme that are from Norse, Hindoo, Cambodian, modern Greek, Transylvanian, German, Irish, Ancient Egyptian, Arabian, Tartarian, Sumatrian, and North American Indian sources. He claims the notion is common to all “primitive” people.

Reading through the examples, I find the monster in What Came of Picking Flowers is no different than his compatriots from other cultures and times. They all, through arrogance and/or love, tell the woman they have waylaid how it is they can be slain. Even the smashing of the egg somewhere on the body of the villain carries through many of the sources.

The soul-egg motif—and there is almost always an egg—tugs at my conscience. While the villain -little bit of tenderness he felt toward the woman, and the woman’s only defense was her power of deceit, not of her purity or honesty.

Thalia’s phone rings and I startle out of my research. She had retreated to her math work, but now she snaps the book closed, a second time, to talk to a friend. I am sure further attempts at the lessons are numbered.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: February 2021 The Black Horse – Part One

February 21, 2021cjkiernan Leave a comment

Another Horse

I’ve built up quite a nice fire in the hearth and pulled my comfy chair closer to it. This is the best defense against a February night. Also, against a touch of loneliness. My daughter has taken Thalia off to visit her late husband’s relatives in Glasgow, as she always does in February. I’d thought she had the sense to skip that trip this year, but not she.

Johannes pads his way over to the window seat and settles down. At the same moment that I hear the brownies rustling in a dark corner, the fairy flutters down, perching on the top edge of the book I am reading, with a pleading look in her eyes.

“Oh!” I say, “The evening read must be falling to me tonight. Well, well.”

As I turn the pages back to the table of contents, I startle the fairy into fluttering up for a moment before alighting down again.

“Your choice,” I suggest to her.

She walks across the open book, studying the entries, then touches one of the lines with her delicate foot.

“The Black Horse it is.”

Hmmm, another horse tale.

The fairy rises into the air and allows me to turn to the story before taking up her position on the book’s top edge.

The youngest son of the king gets for his inheritance an old, white, lame horse. He is talked into trading it for a mysterious black horse, with the promise that it will carry him to any place he thinks of. What comes to the prince’s mind is the Realm Underwaves, and he is there by the next morning.

He is no sooner there than the onus of stealing the daughter of the King of the Greeks to be the bride of the prince of that realm is put upon him.

His black horse instructs the prince how to accomplish the task and carries him to Greece in short order. Upon returning with the princess to the Realm Underwaves, our hero discovers the princess will not agree to marry until she has her grandmother’s silver cup used at her family’s weddings.

With the horse’s advice, again, the prince easily steals the cup. The next requirement is the family’s silver ring. This is in no way as easy as stealing the bride or the cup.

The fairy flitters up as I turn the page.

First, they pass over a snow mountain, ice mountain, and mountain of fire. Then the horse has the prince go to a smithy to have enough iron spikes made to be stuck into every bone in the horse’s body. The black horse then dives into a particular lake, the surface of which bursts into flames until the sun rises the next morning. The horse emerges from the lake, collapsing on the shore, with one spike remaining, on the end of which is the silver ring. The prince takes care of the black horse until it recovers.

Returning to the Realm Underwaves, they find the princess now demands a new castle to be built. That, for the black horse, is the easiest of the tasks; done in one night. The princess then has no more objections.

However, when they inspect the new castle, the prince of the realm, who calls himself the Son of Success, points out that there is no well inside the castle. That is soon remedied. But then the princess points out that there is a flaw in the well’s construction. When the prince of the realm leans over the edge of the well to inspect the flaw, the princess pushes him in, declaring she will marry the one who accomplished the tasks.

After three years of happy marriage, the prince remembers the black horse. The black horse is exactly where he left him. The creature teases the prince about his lack of faithfulness, but then lets the prince know that the time has come for the prince to cut off the horse’s head. This takes some persuasion, but when the deed is done, an enchantment is broken, and the horse transforms back into the princess’s brother, and they all go off to Greece for a second wedding.

The fairy looks at me with a perplexed expression.

“Well, this is a Celtic story,” I answer.

Fairy Tale of the Month: February 2021 The Black Horse – Part Two

More Horses

Finishing my morning coffee, I see the day stretching out before me, with no one in the house. As I carry my empty cup toward the kitchen, my eyes fall upon the hallway closet. Time to reorganize it.

Opening the closet door, I spot problematic item number one; a three-foot-tall, gaudy, golden, useless bowling trophy. Two and a half feet of its three-foot height is the figure of a man, rather featureless, one leg forward, one arm back, swinging a golden orb clutched with three fingers. I don’t bowl. No one in my family bowls. I only know it has dominated this hallway closet for at least two decades. Where did it come from?

But can I throw out a trophy? It was, once, someone’s momentary pride and joy. Can I dishonor that? But, I can relegate it to my third floor. Up the stairs I go, toting this thing half my size.

While lugging my load down the third-floor corridor, I see that the mysterious extra door is back again. It’s not always there. It comes and goes.

What is behind it this time?

Opening the door, I squint at the broad daylight. As my eyes adjust, I make out trees and a wide, forest path at my feet. Ridiculous of course, I’m on the third floor of my house. A black horse carrying two riders flashes past me, leaving me cringing in the doorway. I did catch a glimpse of a handsome young man and a lovely lady seated before him.

“Was that…?“

“It is whatever you imagined it was,” cackles a voice from above me. I step out into the road and turn around. My door is in a stone wall on top of which sits a dwarf with long, dangling legs.

“Rink Rank, is that you? What are you doing on my third floor?”

“Third floor? Nay. You’re in Tír fo Thuinn.”

“Then that must have been…”

“Of course it was. It’s your imagination.”

“Then I’ve laid eyes on a talking horse!” I exclaim.

“Don’t they all?” Rink Rank wrinkles his brow.

“Not unless you’re Mister Ed.”

“Who?”

“It’s an old sit-com, never mind.”

“A what?”

“Please forget I said anything. But, look, if that was the prince and the daughter of the King of Greece then this story is just starting.”

Rink Rank slaps his forehead. “You dolt. The story happens every time it is told, over and over.”

I ignore the insult. “You suggest that all horses talk?”

“If you—the collective you—wants them to, they are more than willing to oblige. Who’s your friend there?”

“Who?” Rink Rank is staring at the golden man on his little pedestal, which I still clutch. The golden ball has grown large, and the golden man is holding it on his back, bent over by the weight. I set it on the ground.

I force my mind to return to the subject of horses. “Let me inventory for a moment. There is the talking black horse, who we just saw, another talking black horse belonging to the King of the Waterfalls, then there’s the Magician’s Horse, also black. Was the Goose Girl’s Falada black? His severed head talked.”

“Ah, Falada. Poor fellow,” comments Rink Rank, not answering my question.

“Are they related in any way to the kelpies?”

“Oh, don’t think that!” Old Rink Rank is appalled. “Kelpies lure little children into the water and eat them. Kelpies are changlings too, often look like horses, but changlings nonetheless. Our talking horses are noble creatures always.”

Glancing at my bowling trophy, it now appears to be a frog swimming to a surface with a golden ball in its mouth.

Fairy Tale of the Month: February 2021 The Black Horse – Part Three

Plus Foals

“Well, kelpies or not,” I continue, “this black horse, of our story in progress, will jump into a lake and be underwater until dawn. That suggests something of the kelpie to me. And what about the iron points and the lake bursting into flames? What is that all about?”

“What? You expect me to answer that?” Rink Rank raises an eyebrow. “It’s not me who’s imagining it.”

Of course, I didn’t expect him to answer my question.

My bowling trophy has morphed into what looks like a Greek goddess. Instead of a ball, she holds a golden apple in her hand.

“And what of the Greek princess? Why Greece?” I persist.

Surprisingly, he answers. “No place so interesting as a land far, far away.”

Greece would be a land far away for the old Celts.

Rink Rank relents a little more. “Getting back to your horses, do you know of Dapplegrim?”

“No, I don’t,” I say.

“Maybe a cousin to your black horse, though he is a dapple as his name says. Like the black and his prince, the dapple and his master are questing to fulfill the demands of a wedding. The dapple must find a horse the equal of himself for the bride to ride on at the wedding day. Among other hardships, the dapple must battle with a horse, which, in every way, is identical to himself.

To do this, he instructs his master to cover him in ox hides studded with iron spikes, and, also, cover the field of battle with tar. Dapplegrim knows that the fiery breath of the other will set the field ablaze, a blaze in which he and the other will kick and bite. But Dapplegrim’s got the protection of the studded ox hides.”

“So, the other dapple can breathe fire,” I comment. “The magician’s roan horse also breathed fire. Also, the magician was magically sustained by fire, and in the end, he and the roan drowned in a river created from a riding whip. There must be a connection among these three stories. “

I notice the trophy is now a golden bird with an apple in its mouth.

“Oh,” says Rink Rank, “and then there’s the seven foals.”

“Seven?” I say. “Now we are getting into a herd.”

“A fellow named Cinderlad leaves his place by the hearth and goes off to attempt at what his brothers failed. They returned home with flesh stripped from their backs and salt rubbed into their wounds.

“What the brothers failed at was to herd the king’s seven foals and then tell the king what the foals eat that day. The reward was to marry the princess and get half the kingdom. The punishment is what the brothers got.

“Cinderlad is good to the task of chasing after the foals and doesn’t get waylaid by an old crone like his brothers did. After they pass the crone, the youngest horse tells him to ride on his back and often asks Cinderlad what he sees up ahead.

“They come to a white birch tree, inside of which is a rusty sword. On they go, crossing a river, and get to a church. In the church, the foals turn into men, receive communion, then turn back into foals, and race home the way they came.

“Now Cinderlad can tell the king that the foals had bread and wine to eat and gets to marry the princess. During the wedding feast, Cinderlad goes to the stable and, as instructed by the youngest horse, cuts off all their heads with the rusty sword. They’re restored to their human form as the seven sons of the king.

“The end,” Rink Rank smiles.

“There are,” I can’t help but say, “a plentiful number of severed horse heads in these tales. I see, too, if there is a severed horse head, there is also a marriage to a princess.”

“Fire and/or water is in the mix, too,” Rink Rank winks.

The trophy’s golden apple is now a sun beating down on a little man wrapped in a heavy coat.

I think I will leave the trophy here in Tír fo Thuinn. It’s having much more fun than it ever did in my hallway closet.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: December 2020 Hans’ Fortune – Part One

December 30, 2020cjkiernan Leave a comment

Some Fortune

We are gathering in the study for our Christmas Eve reading by Thalia. By gathering I mean, of course, the fairy, Johannes, the brownies, and myself. My cell is on speaker so that Melissa may listen in.

Thalia waits while I tend to the logs in the fireplace, the fairy perches on her shoulder, Johannes curls up on the window seat, the brownies settle into a dark corner, and Melissa is virtually propped up by some books on the study table. I settle into my comfy chair, noticing the book in Thalia’s hand, Folk and Fairy Tales of Denmark, Vol. 2. Thalia really has begun to explore the fairy-tale canon beyond Grimm.

“Tonight,” she says, “I will read to you Hans’ Fortune.”

I am a bit surprised. I know the tale and I don’t see anything Christmas-like about it.

Hans, a young man thought by others as simple, overhears a conversation about seizing one’s fortune with both hands. He contemplates this and soon declares to his parents that he will go off to seek his fortune.

He wanders aimlessly until one day a coach, carrying the local squire, passes by him and Hans lunges with both hands outstretched but fails to grasp anything, landing upon the ground scratched and bruised.

Curious, the squire tells his driver to turn around. Hans explains that he perceived the squire, coach, driver, and horses as the type of fortune he sought and tried to seize his fortune with both hands. In turn, somewhat inexplicably, the squire invites Hans into his employment. Besides tending to the squire’s cow herd, Hans was to accompany the squire on his trips to town and market.

During these trips, Hans proves to be talkative, and the squire learns from him many things of which he had not been aware. The squire surmises that Hans, though he appeared simple, was more clever and observant than he let on, was forthright with his opinions, and above all honest; a man to be trusted.

One day, at market, the squire proposes a little contest. He would select six horses to purchase and Hans would select another six and they would see, in the end, who made the better picks. The squire picks six fine-looking horses and Hans picks six underweight, ill-tended horses, but at a third of the price. After six months, the horses Hans had chosen—and due to tender care—are more valuable than the six the squire selected.

And so it went with every decision on the squire’s estate; Hans’ opinion was requested, followed, and turned out for the best. He rose in the squire’s esteem.

When the squire turns his thoughts toward marriage, he has in mind the two daughters of the church warden but doesn’t know which to marry. On one of his courting visits, he takes Hans with him to render an opinion. Hans feels neither would be a suitable wife for the squire, but rather the warden’s kitchen maid would be best. The squire resists the idea at first but could not get Hans’ advice out of his mind.

The squire proposes to the kitchen maid and leaves Hans to invite the guests. Hans invites the king and queen. To the squire’s surprise, the queen makes a great fuss over the bride, giving her a royal wedding gown in which to be married. The queen continues with her attention to the bride during the wedding feast until the king takes her aside. The queen confesses that, because the king had once ruled an unfaithful woman was to be punished by having one of her twin children killed, when the queen gave birth to twin daughters, she had one of them hidden away. That daughter is the kitchen maid.

The king immediately rescinds any implication of his ruling and the truth comes out, right there at the wedding feast. The newly acquired son-in-law and the newly discovered daughter are elevated to the level of duke and duchess and granted a dukedom.

Hans is given the old estate and marries one of the church warden’s daughters.

“Hans,” Thalia concludes, “had found his fortune.”

A muffled applause comes from the shadowy corner. Dimly, I can see the brownies are ecstatic about this story. Thalia smiles at them gently.

I must confess, Thalia knows her audience.

Fairy Tale of the Month: December 2020 Hans’ Fortune – Part Two

About Brownies

I’d not heard the term “video chat” before Melissa suggested it, but I realized what it was when she said it. Over the phone, she talks me through downloading the software—an app, she calls it—and I wait for her to “invite” me.

After a couple of messages and buttons to click there is Melissa on my screen.

“Good Lord,” I say, “where are you? There’s a palm tree and an ocean behind you!”

“I can’t hear you. Turn on your mic.”

“I don’t have a microphone.” I can see myself on the screen as well and how confused I look.

“My dear,” says Melissa, “you are such a Luddite. Click on the icon—the little picture of a microphone with a line through it in the lower-left corner.”

“Oh, there it is. Got it. Where are you?”

“Oh, I wish,” grins Melissa. “It’s just my background. I am not that fortunate to really be there.”

“We both could use a bit of Hans’ luck.”

“Thalia read very well. I believe I heard the brownie react to her.”

“I am sure,” I say, “she read the story with them in mind.”

“There was something brownie-like about Hans.”

“How’s that?”

“He never asks for anything, is always there to do the squire’s bidding, does not promote himself, and carries the aura of prosperity for the household or, in this case, the entire estate.”

“True,” I say, “that may be why my brownies were attracted to Hans and saw themselves in his story. However, I have read that brownies can be tricksters, even turn into boggarts.”

“Only if you offend them,” Melissa frowns. “I assume you treat them well.”

“Ever since I realized my floors and counters were spotlessly clean and it wasn’t me doing it, I have given them a bowl of milk in the kitchen every evening.”

“Wait,” says Melissa, her image stuttering a bit, “shouldn’t the traditional bowl of milk be set by the hearth?”

“I put it by the hot-air duct in the corner of the kitchen. That seems to suffice.”

“A modern adaptation, I guess,” she says. “By the way, why do you have more than one brownie? They are almost always solitary beings, one per household.”

“The exception proves the rule, I will suppose. They appear to me to be a family of four, but I am not sure of the number because they are shy and reclusive. I rarely see them outside of Thalia’s study readings. I have read they can be invisible if they wish.”

“And don’t give them any clothing,” Melissa warns while her image freezes.

“Quite right. Poorly dressed though they are, new clothes are a thing with them and they see it as an offense. Sounds a little like the Grimms’ Elves and the Shoemaker.”

“I think Wilhelm was conflating elves and brownies,” Melissa smiles.

“I am sure of it. I remember hashing this out years ago when Thalia and I first read the Grimm version.”

“But getting back to Hans,” she says, “and his brownie-like behavior; why does he appeal to us in this story?”

“Well,” I speculate, “it ends happily. That is one point in its favor, but let me suggest the tale has a purpose in having Hans (and we can apply this to brownies) serve as a role model of what a servant should be and how a servant (or brownie) should be treated.”

“Ah,” there is agreement in Melissa’s voice, “an object lesson. The squire does treat Hans well and Hans rewards him. In the end, Hans is rewarded for being an exemplary servant. But wait again, isn’t that an unrealistic goal for the serving class to be aspiring toward?”

“Melissa,” I admonish, “you are being coldly analytical, moving toward political correctness. We’re talking about fairy tales. They are all about unreasonable expectations. They are the stuff of our wildest daydreams coming at us from outside ourselves. That is their appeal.”

“Oh, of course,” Melissa smirks. “Forgive my lapse into truth and reality.”

“Forgiven.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: December 2020 Hans’ Fortune – Part Three

Feudal Fortune

Melissa and I take a little break to go find wine for ourselves. When we return, she proposes a toast to the Christmas season. We hold up our glasses to the computer screen. There is not the crystalline-clear clink of glass against glass to greet our salute. I miss that, but I am getting fonder of this video thing as a substitute for life.

“Now,” says Melissa, “about this wandering-off stuff to seek one’s fortune.”

“What about it?” I respond rhetorically. “They did that all the time.”

“Yes, they did that all the time in fairy tales, but did they, in fact?”

“Why shouldn’t they have?”

“Because they were serfs.”

“Oh, you’re right, the peasants anyway.”

“This thought occurred to me one night recently and it didn’t let me go back to sleep.”

“You’re sounding like the agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac who stayed up all night wondering if there really was a Dog.”

“Behave!” Melissa scolds but tries to hide her smile behind a sip of wine. “Seriously, my impression is that these fairy tales, in the form they have come down to us, developed around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, pretty much at the height of the feudal system.”

“Remind me about that institution.”

“It really wasn’t an organized system, but rather a similar response throughout the Western world after the fall of the Roman Empire when existing rule decentralized.

“A lord gave land to a vassal in return for his military aid, along with a promise from the lord to protect the vassal. The lords and vassals made up the nobility. The second tier of society was the clergy, some of whom had land granted to them to support abbeys and monasteries. The third tier was the peasants whose obliged labor supported the first two tiers. A small percentage of them were freemen, but most lived in some form of servitude.

“I think townspeople make up another tier, but historians never describe them that way.”

“Perhaps they fall under freemen,” I suggest.

“In any case,” she continues, “most people, particularly the listeners of these tales, were tied to the manor where they lived. If the manor passed into new ownership, the peasants’ obligations passed to the new lord. If a girl wished to marry someone outside of the manor, she had to pay the lord a fee for her release. If a freeman gave up his status and pledged himself to the lord of the manor, he pledged his progeny into servitude as well. Those who tilled the soil for the lord were his chattel. They didn’t pick up and go wandering off to seek their fortunes.”

I drink half my glass while she pontificates. “But didn’t this setup fall apart by the time of the Grimms’ writing?”

“Largely but not entirely. Interestingly, an element in its demise was due to the Black Plague that swept Europe in the fourteenth century, killing a third of the population, leaving the surviving laborers with greater bargaining power.

“Contrarily, serfdom didn’t end in Russia until a decree in 1861, well after the Grimms’ publications.”

I take another sip. “You’ve got me thinking now. We really don’t hear echoes of the feudal system in the tales. I don’t recall the phrase, ‘There once was a poor serf.’ There are plenty of poor people; lots of kings, queens, princes, and princesses; many witches, henwives, and sorcerers; occasionally judges and lawyers, but no one called a serf. The closest word is ‘servant’ but that does not carry with it the connotation of thralldom.

“I think you are right. Sons wandering off, leaving their parents behind to fend for themselves really does not ring true to beings tied to the land by birth.”

“Ha! Gotcha,” Melissa smiles again.

“How so?”

“The answer is that, for young men at least, this motif was their wildest daydreams coming back at them from outside themselves.”

“Ah, escapism,” I say.

“Let’s drink to it. We could use some of that ourselves.”

Melissa’s image freezes again as we raise our glasses. I think I hear the clink this time.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: November 2020 The Girl in the Bay Tree – Part One

November 29, 2020cjkiernan Leave a comment

No Villain

“I found it,” Thalia says triumphantly, storming into the kitchen.

“Found what, my dear?” I say, rolling out my dough.

“What you said I couldn’t find.” Thalia is gloating a bit.

“Well, if what you say is true, I’ll eat my pie.”

Thalia narrow-eyes me quizzically. “What kind of pie?”

“Pork pie.”

“You’d eat it any way.”

“True. It’s a punishment I can enjoy.”

Thalia rolls her eyes. “Dry, very dry.”

“What is it you found?” I query.

“A villain-less fairy tale,” she proclaims.

I recall a conversation with her about defining what is a fairy tale. I do remember a witch, evil stepmother, or rival being part of my definition. I clean my thumb and forefinger of flour dust onto a dish towel and pick up the edge of the book she has laid flat open on the table. Modern Greek Folk Tales, by R. M. Dawkins.

“The Girl in the Bay Tree,” says Thalia.

A childless woman prays for a child, even if it is only as small as a bayberry.

“Oh,” I say, “those fairy-tale characters ought to know by now to be more cautious when they make a wish.”

Thalia giggles.

The child she bears is as small as a bayberry, and one day, she loses the child by the river while washing clothes. A good time later, a prince is returning from a war and rests by that same spot on the river under a bay tree. He has his supper table and meal set before him but falls asleep before feasting. In the morning, all his food has been sampled.

Angry, he is determined to find the thief and repeats his actions of the day before but only pretends to sleep.

The bay tree opens up and out comes a most beautiful girl, who tastes a bite of everything on the table. The prince captures her by the hair and promises, if she will stay with him willingly, to marry her. To this, she agrees.

The prince promises to return for her shortly. She instructs him to let no one else kiss him or he will forget her. Upon returning to his home, the prince fends off his parents’ embraces and kisses, but that night his godfather visits and gives him a kiss while the prince slumbers.

Meanwhile, the bay tree will no longer open for the bay-tree girl and the prince does not return for her. She wanders, homeless, until she comes to the prince’s city. There she learns that the prince is wasting away due to an unknown grief.

She cuts her hair and disguises herself as a monk and presents herself as a doctor with a cure for lovesickness. When she reveals herself, by telling the prince their story, the prince’s memory returns and they marry.

After reading, Thalia looks up at me smiling.

“Hmmm,” I consider. “The bay tree wasn’t very cooperative.”

“But it is not a villain,” Thalia defends.

“True. Will you eat humble pork pie with me when it is done?”

“I think sooo,” Thalia stretches out that last word.

Part Two

Piero del Pollaiuolo, Apollo & Daphne, probably 1470-80

Daphne Maybe

“Daphne,” comments Melissa’s tinny, disembodied voice ringing through the study from my cell phone lying on the table. I do like the “speaker” feature on my cell, which just allowed me to hold my book with both hands and read The Girl in the Bay Tree to Melissa at the same time.

“Pardon?” I say.

“Daphne. The bay-tree girl is Daphne.” I can hear her washing dishes as we talk.

“As in the Greek nymphs?”

“One of the naiads, actually,” Melissa puts a point on it.

“Remind me,” I say.

“Daphne was a naiad, as I said, that is, a nymph of streams and other fresh waters, a daughter of a river god. Due to a prank played by Cupid, Apollo falls hopelessly in love with Daphne, who had pledged to remain virgin.

“Rather than be raped by Apollo, she, while in flight from the amorous god, calls out to her father, the river god, to save her. As Apollo is laying his hands on her, she turns into a laurel tree. The laurel tree, by another name, is a bay tree.”

“I am enlightened,” I say. “Daphne was, as it were, inside a laurel tree, just as the bay-tree girl lived inside a bay tree.”

“Apollo,” Melissa continues, “a little to his credit, never did forget Daphne and made the laurel tree one of his emblems. Hence, the laurel wreaths used to crown emperors and Olympians.”

My thoughts return to the story. “If you are right and our bay-tree girl is a naiad, then it is appropriate that her tree grows by the river and almost proves the connection.”

“I am going to take my thoughts a step further.” I hear a hollow-sounding metal door clang. “The naiads made up a greater part of Artemis’s hunting party, she being a virgin goddess and all her naiads following suit. Oh, and Apollo was Artemis’s twin brother, making his assault on Daphne all the more insensitive.”

I hear a soft padding noise. I suspect she is folding laundry.

“In any case,” she picks up on her train of thought again, “the naiads were fond of dancing at night in the forest.”

“Where are you going with this?” I ask.

“All I mean is, if you add wings to the naiads, we have the fairies. Artemis is the fairy queen, her hunting party The Wild Hunt, and her dancing naiads are the original occupants of the fairy circle.”

“A tempting idea,” I say.

“Has Thalia’s fairy ever said anything about her parentage?”

“From what Thalia has told me, the fairy is pretty secretive about such things. We don’t even know her name.”

“Ah, well,” says Melissa, “to know her name would be to have power over her. I am sure she does not want that.”

A random synapse in my brain fires off. “Wait, aren’t the tree spirits dryads?”

I tap on my computer tablet lying beside the phone and it comes to life. With a quick visit to Wiki, I have my not so clear answer.

“Yes, dryads are the tree nymphs, and the naiads the fresh water ones. But there are the Daphnaie, the nymphs of the laurel trees who are dryads, while Daphne, their namesake I take it, was a naiad. However, to support your idea, all the dryads spend most of their time sleeping behind the bark of their trees. They only come out to dance when the coast was clear.

“Then there are the Nereids, sea nymphs, and the Oreads, mountain nymphs, not to mention Oceanids, another type of sea nymph. Also, there are others nymphs specific to other trees. The list goes on forever.”

“Fairies all, I say.” I hear Melissa closing closet doors.

Part Three

Forgotten Bride

“I am pouring myself a glass of wine. Are you?” Melissa says.

“Good idea.” I wander toward the kitchen, my cell in my shirt pocket. “What about Thalia’s assertion that The Girl in the Bay Tree is a fairy tale without a villain?”

“Well,” I hear her say between sips, “certainly there is no villain as a character in this story. The tale’s challenge comes from fate and its vagaries that substitute for an antagonist.”

I find an open bottle of claret I can finish off. “Fate often plays a role in the tales.” I carry the bottle and a glass back to the study.

“Hmmm, let’s think about that,” Melissa muses. “It is fate that placed the prince under the bay tree to rest. In tales like Cinderella or Catskins, it is fate’s hand that created the conflict by the deaths of their mothers.

“On the other hand, with motifs such as the three brothers, it is the good actions and deeds of the youngest that determined the future.

“I am going to say the role of fate and the role of deeds is a fifty-fifty split.”

I’ve resettled myself in the study, the cell resting on the arm of the comfy chair. “I am not so sure. Magic is an integral part of a fairy tale, and doesn’t magic predetermine the story’s outcome at times?”

“No,” Melissa says, taking a long pause. “Magic is a device, an element. Let us call it a tool to be used or abused by the protagonist.”

“Nope, I can’t agree, at least not always,” I say. “Let’s take the kiss of forgetfulness. That was out of the control of either the prince or the girl. It was rather a tool used by fate in this case.”

“Ah, you mention the forgotten bride. Why is that such a popular motif? I don’t think there was ever a forgotten bridegroom.”

“There is the occasional bride with two husbands. I have found those, but you are right, never a forgotten bridegroom.”

Melissa contemplates. “The kiss is a device that allows for a dilemma without placing blame on the bridegroom. If he simply forgot, he wouldn’t be a candidate worth marrying. But that does not explain the forgotten-bride motif’s popularity.”

“Ultimately,” I say, “it’s romantic.”

“There. You have it,” she says. “And I concede to your argument about the role of magic. However, I will suggest a formula.”

“Which is?”

“In the fairy tale, fate plus deeds equals destiny.”

“That sounds pretty good, but you need to explain more about destiny.”

“There is probably some degree of fate that can be identified in any story and that fate propels the protagonist in one direction. However, the protagonist can alter that direction, defy or alter fate by their actions.

“I could say fate plus deeds equals outcome, but in the context of the fairy-tale genre what was fated and what actions are taken, determined by the nature of the protagonist, invariably leads to one result, which is usually, as in our tale, they get married and live happily ever after.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“How do we clink glasses?”

“Against our cells?”

“I guess so.”

I bring my glass and cell phone together.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: October 2020 Godfather Death – Part One

October 30, 2020cjkiernan 2 Comments

All Hallows

Among Thalia, Melissa, and myself, we decided to observe All Hallows Eve with our own party; in costume, of course. Melissa considered whether or not she should do her same-old, same-old costume as a witch. I suggested she pose as Lady Godiva, and she told me to behave myself.

Melissa is dressed as a witch and I as a sorcerer. Thalia has chosen to be an imp. I think the pointy rubber ears become her.

Our party table is replete with three bowls of sweets that I allowed Thalia to pick out at the grocery. One bowl is full of Lion Chocolate Bars and Lion White Bars. (Thalia could not decide which she likes better.) The second bowl is of Walkers Nonsuch Salted Caramel Toffees, and the third of Taveners’ Jelly Babies. Melissa brought brownies with white chocolate chunks, and I baked a pumpkin pie dusted with icing sugar. We have to run back and forth from the study to the refrigerator in the kitchen to make the pie à la mode. Instead of apple cider there is Cidona (the fizzy, non-alcoholic one) at Thalia’s request. For those of us who prefer a drier sort of drink, a bottle of Renegade London Syrah graces the table. A sip of the syrah sends Thalia’s face into sour mode and she returns to her apple soda.

The climax of our little party is Melissa’s reading from Grimm: Godfather Death.

A poor man, on the birth of his thirteenth child, a boy, is looking for a godfather. He refuses both God and the Devil, who offer their services, and chooses Death, because he treats the rich and the poor alike. When the boy is of age, Death teaches him how to cure people with an herb. Death also tells him, if he sees Death standing at the head of the bed, the cure will work. If Death stands at the foot of the bed, the cure will not work.

Armed with this knowledge, the godson becomes a great and wealthy physician. However, when the godson is summoned to cure the king, he sees Death at the foot of the bed. Instead of allowing Death to take the king, the physician turns the king around on his bed so that Death is standing at the king’s head.

Death allows his godson to get away with that trick once, but when the physician tries the same trick again to save the princess, who’s cure promises her marriage and the kingship to the physician, Godfather Death has had enough. He whisks his godson down into the underworld.

There, in a cave, are thousands of burning candles, one candle for every living person. Death points out the physician’s candle, a short stub with a flickering flame. The godson pleads with Death to extend his life with another candle so that he may marry the princess and become a king. Death, feigning to do so, actually snuffs out the candle, and the godson falls down dead.

Thalia, a half-eaten Lion Bar in hand, contemplates the image.

“Candles. Cool.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: October 2020 Godfather Death – Part Two

Fatal Flames

“Candles indeed,” says Melissa, as her hand hovers over the three sweets bowls in turn, then dives in for a toffee. “It brings to my mind the Catholics’ blessed candles.”

“Or the Jewish yahrzeit candles,” I reply, considering a handful of Taveners’.

“There is a difference.” Melissa knits her brow under her witch’s hat. “The blessed candles are lit when it is thought that a person is dying. I believe the yahrzeit is a memorial candle.”

“Yes,” I say, “lit in honor of someone on the anniversary of their death.”

“If I recall correctly,” Melissa takes a sip of her wine, “in both cases, the candles should be made of beeswax; at least the Catholics are pretty insistent that it be no less than 51 percent beeswax.”

While we talk, Thalia jumps up, turns off the overhead light and table lamps, and returns to where we are sitting with a single lit candle.

“Atmosphere,” Thalia grins.

“Good thought,” agrees Melissa. “But really, I think the candles in our story are corpse-candles.”

Thalia’s eyes widen. “What are corspe-candles?”

“Supposedly,” Melissa’s eyebrows arch, “the souls of the dead may appear as flickering flames floating above their graves. Or worse, they float about the marshlands at night to lure lost travelers from the path into treacherous bogs.

“A number of the tales are about a man, usually a blacksmith, who is nasty and a trickster. He is clever enough to even trick the Devil, who has come for him, into letting him live longer. The blacksmith manages to trick the Devil more than once.

“But, eventually, the blacksmith must die. When he does, he has been too bad to go to heaven, and the Devil won’t let him into hell. The Devil’s only concession is to give the blacksmith an ember, telling him to go make his own hell.

“The blacksmith takes the ember, puts it into a carved-out turnip to serve as a lantern, and wanders around in the wilderness luring, as I said, unwary travelers to their death. The blacksmith is often named Will or Jack, and his spirit form is “will-o’-the-wisp” or “jack-o’-lantern.”

Thalia’s eyes light up in recognition. “And now it’s a pumpkin!”

“Quite right.” Melissa nods.

“There is an argument,” I say, “that the blacksmith and the Devil, and the tricking of Death or the Devil is quite an old story. By old, I mean Bronze Age.”

“How could anyone know that?” protests Melissa, taking another sip of wine.

“I heard about it over the BBC. It is a little hard to follow, but it has to do with ideas borrowed from evolutionary biology. I think it’s called the phylogenetic method.”

“Pardon?” Melissa scowls.

“Well, it studies and compares things like population histories, languages, marriage practices, political institutions, material culture, and even music. When it comes to the tales, it’s the “tree” of Indo-European languages that shows traces of the tales. Actually, the idea that the tales can be traced going back through the Indo-European languages was first suggested by the Grimm brothers.”

“The Grimm brothers notwithstanding, I’m not buying any of it.” Melissa’s eyebrows fairly dance under her hat. “Phylogenetic, my foot.”

Thalia giggles.

Fairy Tale of the Month: October 2020 Godfather Death – Part Three

Cheating Death

The fairy flutters out of the dark, and perches on my granddaughter’s shoulder. Thalia holds her Lion Bar up to her. She sniffs it suspiciously, then glares sharply at Thalia.

“I guess not,” says our costumed imp.

Melissa can hardly take her eyes off the fairy. I don’t think Melissa has seen her since she invaded the bookstore, and Thalia had to come and retrieve her.

“While I can’t agree with your phylogenetic whoevers,” Melissa says, not averting her stare from the fairy, “the blacksmith and the Devil’s motif of cheating death is certainly a popular one in these tales.”

Melissa manages to pull her attention back to me, if only for a few seconds. “I do recall a Czechoslovakian version of Godfather Death, but in this case it is Godmother Death.”

“Oh, really,” I say.

“Yes, death is a woman, a bit nicer than Grimm’s godfather. The father of the son, for whom Death agrees to stand as godmother, is able to extend his own life by lighting a longer candle for himself. Death is not pleased, but lets him get away with it. She makes the father a physician. He plays the head-to-foot trick, and, again, gets away with it. However, this physician does not press his luck any further and lives a long life due to his trick with the candle.

“Godmother Death then causes his son, her godson, to also be a successful physician.”

All this while, Melissa and the fairy have been looking at each other. Melissa extends an index finger like a bird’s perch. The fairy takes the hint and flutters over to Melissa. It is Thalia’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

“I think she likes you.”

Melissa’s smile beams as the fairy cocks her head from side to side regarding the costumed witch.

“Returning to the thought of cheating death,” I say, not wanting to lose the thread of our conversation. “There are two things that come to me.”

I look into the candle flame to focus my thoughts. “First is that the impetus for wanting to cheat death is simply wishful thinking. Death has an unpleasant finality to it that we rather put off as long as possible. These story characters sometime succeed as we would like to do.

“Second, and conversely, I believe there is a rather abnormal amount of deaths in the fairy tales. Let us consider the count when you include mothers who die at the start, leaving the heroine an orphan; princes who were beheaded in the pursuit of the princess’s hand, even before the story starts; evil stepmothers’ punishment for their cruelty, witches’ punishment for their cruelty, and evil stepmothers who are also witches getting the same treatment; the occasional dragon and giant destroyed by the hero; and even kings who die of natural causes allowing the kingdom to pass to the hero and heroine.

“Really, I think that there are as many deaths as marriages in the tales.”

Looking up from the candle flame, I see Thalia and Melissa are both watching the fairy intently; she lounges on her new friend’s finger. They haven’t heard a word I said.

So much for costumed sorcerer’s pontifications.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: September 2020 The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples – Part One

September 30, 2020cjkiernan Leave a comment

A Pie

Thalia has retained her child-confidence as she moves toward young adulthood. Children usually lose this trait as they face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but not in Thalia’s case.

I say this as prelude to telling you she just announced to me that she is going to bake a pie. An apple pie.

“And I won’t need any help.” She closes the study door.

I rise to open it halfway to keep a wary ear on sounds from the kitchen, which lies a little way down the hall. Thalia has never baked a pie or boiled water from what I can recall. I know the inspiration comes from the yellow apples I got at market this morning and left setting on the kitchen counter. “Golden apples” I call them.

Apples have been a part of fairy tales for longer than fairies have, I believe. The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples springs to my mind and I reach for Andrew Lang’s The Violet Fairy Book.

In front of the emperor’s palace is a golden apple tree that blooms and bears fruit all in one night, but by morning the apples are gone. To find the thief, the emperor’s sons stand guard at night, but always fall asleep.

Only the youngest manages to wake up early enough to see nine pea-hens descending upon the golden apple tree. One of them flies down to him and transforms into a beautiful woman. Love springs between them instantly and when the pea-hens leave at dawn, she gives him two of the golden apples.

The emperor is delighted and the prince sleeps under the tree every night and visits with the pea-hen maiden. The jealous brothers employ a witch to discern what is happening and she cuts off a lock of the pea-hen maiden’s hair. She and her sisters fly up and never return to the golden apple tree.

The prince sets out to discover the home of the pea-hen maiden, who turns out to be an empress. They are reunited and marry.

One day, while exploring the empress’s palace, he enters a room that is forbidden and, through acts of kindness, inadvertently releases a dragon, who flies off with the empress. Again, the prince must venture out and find his bride. Along the way, he helps a fish, a fox, and a wolf, who give him tokens and promises of aid.

I hear a long, loud clattering of pots and pans coming from the kitchen, but nothing sounds as if it has broken.

Finding the empress again, the prince flees with her on horseback. When the dragon finds the empress missing, he confers with his talking horse, who assures the dragon they have plenty of time to catch up with the couple. The dragon takes his supper before going off to retrieve the empress.

Through her wiles, the empress finds out the only horse faster than the dragon’s is its brother, who is in the hands of a witch. The prince must earn the horse from the witch by tending to the witch’s mare and colt for three nights or lose his head.

Each night the mare turns herself and her colt into other creatures. The prince recovers the mare and colt with the aid of his animal helpers, the fish, fox, and wolf.

With the new horse, the prince and empress ride off again. This time, when the dragon’s horse catches up with the fleeing couple, their horse convinces its brother to throw off the dragon, who falls to its death upon rocks.

A loud, overwhelming “thunk” draws my attention. It is time to check on Thalia’s progress.

Fairy Tale of the Month: September 2020 The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples – Part Two

More Apples

The tableau that appears to me is Thalia, one hand steadying the apple on the cutting board, and her other hand raised high, brandishing a meat cleaver.

Quickly, she pulls the steadying hand away and down comes the meat cleaver, full force.

Clunk.

The apple, receiving a glancing blow, spins across the room, joining its companion in the corner.

“Ahumm,” I say emphatically.

I retrieve the errant apples, pluck the apple peeler from its hook, hold it up to Thalia, demonstrate how to peel an apple, then reach for the apple corer, press it into the flesh of the apple around the stem, slicing the apple into moon-crescent pieces. I then hand the new instrument of destruction to Thalia.

“Got it,” she says.

I retreat from the kitchen, slipping the meat cleaver out of sight under a pile of tea towels.

Back in the study, I search for and find Apples: History, Folklore, Horticulture, and Gastronomy, by Peter Wynne. I recall his two chapters on the notion that there had once been an apple goddess. He starts, of course, with the Garden of Eden, and the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

Interestingly, the Bible does not describe the fruit of these trees as apples. Archaeological evidence suggests the apple was unknown in the Middle East until later, according to Wynne. For Europeans, the fruit was identified as an apple from at least the start of the thirteenth century.

Going back in time, the author talks about how the apple has always been associated with women, particularly in mythology. He cites the contest between Hippomenes and Atalanta. Atalanta will marry no man but the one who can beat her in a foot race. Losers forfeit their lives—this story may be the origin of that motif. Hippomenes asks Aphrodite for help and is given three golden apples to roll in front of Atalanta to slow her down as she picks them up.

A second myth is the Judgment of Paris. At the wedding between Peleus and Thetis (parents of Achilles) the goddess Discord, who was not invited, throws a golden apple amongst the guests that is inscribed, “Fair One, make this your own.” (Shades of Sleeping Beauty.)

Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena all lay claim to the golden apple. They chose Paris, Prince of Troy, to settle the dispute. All three goddesses tempt and bribe Paris for his favor. He chooses Aphrodite, who promises him the most beautiful woman in the world. Unfortunately, she is Helen, already married to Menelaus, King of Sparta. Helen runs off with Paris, triggering the Trojan War.

According to Wynne, it appears the apple is sacred to Aphrodite and also her brother, Apollo. Other male gods that Wynne associates with the apple are Dionysus, Adonis, and Hercules. With Hercules, one may recall the Golden Apples of the Hesperides. That bit of myth does remind one of the Garden of Eden.

Nonetheless, the strongest associations of the apple are with the goddesses, and the author suggests the Greek gods evolved out of Bronze Age deities, one of whom was likely an apple goddess.

I have not heard from Thalia in a while. I wander down the hall to peek into the kitchen. Thalia looks up from her cookbook.

“What’s a ‘tbl’ and a ‘tsp’?”

Fairy Tale of the Month: September 2020 The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples – Part Three

Rather Curious

The third time I checked in on Thalia, she had moved on to the pie crust. She had the rolling pin in hand, and was rolling out the dough. I noted she had floured the top of the cutting board she was using, along with her person, the surrounding floor, and most of the other kitchen surfaces.

I go back to the study to hide and to contemplate. On the whole, I must conclude that The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples is an unusual and curious story in many respects.Lang’s wife translated the tale from a German collection of Serbian folktales. It is considered by folklorists to be of the Swan Maiden type of story. More accurately, it came out of Serbian epic poetry, but the storyline is drawn from a multitude of fairy-tale tropes.

The tale starts out a bit like the Grimms’ Golden Bird, except that the three brothers are the king’s gardener’s sons and it is a single golden bird stealing the apples.

After the witch sends the pea-hens fleeing, the prince sets out to find the Pea-hen Maiden. This is a strange moment in the story for a fairy-tale follower such as myself, in that the prince is drawn, without aid or travail, quickly to the capital city over which the Pen-hen Maiden is the empress. Perhaps this is done expediently to get on to the next fairy-tale trope: entering the forbidden room.

The prince knows the room is forbidden, the empress herself had warned him, but his curiosity gets the better of him. A dragon is released and carries off the empress. (I must note, dragons are fairly rare in these tales.)

What is really curious, in fairy-tale terms, is that it is the male who lets his curiosity rule him and not the female in the tale. Sprig of Rosemary jumps to my mind as an example of the usual format, but then any number of these Cupid and Psyche-inspired tales can serve as examples to which we may point.

Thalia comes into the study, her progress marked on the rug by ghostly white footprints, sits down on one of her favorite chairs instead of my comfy chair, which I occupy, and picks up a book.

“How long?” I ask.

“Thirty-five minutes, the cookbook says.”

I check my watch.

Back to my contemplation of the tale, there follows a second unusual event, in that the hero, for a second time, must find his bride. However, this time it takes months, which it should, if not years. During his travels, he comes to the aid of animals –a fish, a fox, and a wolf—who become his animal helpers. Here I can point to Child of the Sea and The Queen Bee as parallel examples.

From this point, the plot follows the usual trope of promises and tokens, and the pattern remains that the animal helpers are assigned to a hero, and not a heroine. The heroines, on these quests to find the lost husband, get their aid from celestial beings or inanimate objects. I can’t point to a single tale in which a hero asks aid of the sun, wind, or moon, even though in the Greek myths, to which so many fairy tales harken back, mortal men often plead with, even cajoled, the goddesses.

Then we come to the talking horses. Talking horses are also rare, but not unheard of. Falada in the Goose Girl is probably the most familiar. But two talking horses in the same story? I don’t recall another example.

Curiously (Again, this is a curious story.), in order to get his talking horse, the hero must tend to a mare and her colt for three nights. The theme of three is common enough, but more often than not, there are three different tasks, not the same task three times in a row. On the other hand, as expected, the animal helpers reveal the animal forms in which the mare and colt are hiding that conveniently happen to be that of fishes, foxes, and wolves.

When we get to the chase scene, there are only two attempts to escape, instead of the usual three, interrupted by the prince acquiring the horse brother of the dragon’s mount.

We also have an inconsistency with the dragon, who earlier flew off with the empress, but is now riding a horse. Also, what happened to the other eight pea-hen sisters? In total, all rather curious.

A whiff of smoke comes down the hall.

“I think your pie may be done early,” I say.

With a sharp “Oh!” Thalia dashes for the kitchen.

“Fire,” she announces.

I grab the extinguisher by the side of the hearth.

I hope she gets better at this.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2020 The Lambton Worm – Part One

July 27, 2020cjkiernan Leave a comment

Lambton_Worm c e Brock C E Brock

Slow Worm

Melissa, armed with a wicker basket; Thalia, turning over every stone along the path; and I, with my walking stick, wind our way up a path through Oxleas Wood. We are intent on our goal of picnicking at Severndroog Castle. It is not a real castle, rather a monument to Sir William James, built by his wife. Architecturally, it is called a folly, but it’s got a gate, rooms, and a parapet, nonetheless, and quite a view of London.

“I found one,” Thalia calls out.

“Found one what?” I ask.

She proffers her hand in which she holds a reptile.

“Thalia, put that down; it’s a snake.” I feel myself repelled.

Thalia tsk-tsks at me. “Oh, Grandfather, it’s not a snake. It’s a slow worm.”

“Worm? As in a dragon?” I am worried.

Melissa laughs lightly at my discomfort.

“No, Grandfather, as in a lizard.”

“I’m sure it’s a snake.”

“No. See.” Thalia thrusts its head so close to my face I fear it will sink its fangs into my nose. “Watch its eyes. They blink. Snakes don’t have eyelids. Only lizards blink.”

We come to the castle’s terrace where we settle down for our picnic. Melissa reaches into her basket, pulls out three books, then hands the basket to me.

“I didn’t know which story to read to us,” Melissa checks the book spines for the titles, “so I just grabbed books, but now I know I did bring the right book.” She holds up More English Fairy Tales.

Thalia grins at the prospect of a story while she sits on a wooden bench playing with her snake. She has gotten too old for me to read to her, but Melissa, for some reason, gets away with it. I lay out the picnic goodies while Melissa commences with the story, The Lambton Worm.

The young, wild son of the Lord of Lambton, not given to going to church, spent his Sundays fishing. He caught little on these Sundays, causing him to swear loudly, probably taking the Lord’s name in vain.

One Sunday he caught an unnatural creature, with nine holes along the sides of its head and a worm-like body.

An old man appeared by his side, declaring the catch an ill omen, but that the lad must keep it. Instead, the youth cast it down a well. It became known as the Well of the Worm when, after some little time, the creature emerged from it a full-grown dragon that proceeded to devastate the countryside.

It spent its days curled around a rock in the middle of the River Wear, and at night sucked the cows of their milk and ate the lambs. It crushed to death anyone who attacked it.

Meanwhile, the youth had repented of his ways, took up the cross, and went off to fight in the Holy Crusade.

As the worm’s evening ventures brought it closer and closer to Lambton Hall, every day the lord had the milk of nine cows poured into a trough. The dragon contented itself with this and was kept at bay for the most part, if not always.

Seven years later, the lord’s son returned to find farms and fields abandoned because of the worm. His father suggested the youth confer with the Wise Woman of Brugeford. From her, he confirmed that the worm was his fault and that only he could destroy it. The youth needed armor spiked with spear tips that would pierce the dragon when it tried to crush him. In addition, after the battle he must kill the first living creature that greeted him.

The youth arranged, with the signal of his hunting horn, that his hound should be the first to greet him. The battle took place and the youth killed the worm. At the signal, the forgetful father rushed forth ahead of the hound being released.

Still, the youth killed the hound instead of his father, but to no avail. For nine generations the men of Lambton Hall would not die in their beds.

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2020 The Lambton Worn – Part Two

Lambton John G by Thomas Phillips John George Lambton by Thomas Phillips

Radical Jack

Thalia’s little snake slithers from the fingers of one hand to the fingers of her other.

“Careful it doesn’t bite you,” I say.

“Slow worms don’t bite people,” she answers. “Slugs and things like that, but not people.”

I am dubious.

I turn to Melissa. “There are rather few dragons in fairy tales, almost as scarce as fairies. They don’t come near to the number of witches found there.”

“True,” says Melissa, “and we can hardly call this story a fairy tale. It is really a legend.”

“How so?”

“Fairy tales usually occur somewhere lost in time and place. This tale comes from county Durham and nowhere else.”

“How do you know that?”

“I ran across this story two years ago and made a small study of it.”

“Of course you did,” I say. “Tell me what you know.”

“The tale is fairly medieval in origin, but the serpent was the “Sockburn Worm” attached to the prominent Conyers family in Durham.

“However, over time, the fortunes of the Conyers diminished and their estate sold off around the start of the Industrial Age. Another old family in the area was on the rise. Owners of the Lambton estate profited from the coal trade.”

I venture to poke a finger at Thalia’s snake. She looks at me warily. “Don’t frighten it. It might drop off its tail if you do.”

“That,” I declare, “sounds like an old wives’ tale.”

“No,” says Melissa, “they will do that if frightened,” and returns to the Lambton history. “In 1812, John George Lambton became a member of Parliament. When his father-in-law, Earl Grey, became prime minister, John became the first Earl of Durham.”

“Wait,” I say, “Earl Grey as in Earl Grey tea?”

“The very same,” Melissa smiles. “Both Earl Grey and the Earl of Durham were reformers, supporters of the rights of the people. John Lambton earned the nickname, ‘Radical Jack’ for his efforts.”

“And those radical ideas were?” I ask.

“Oh, things like the secret ballot and universal suffrage.”

“Norms today,” I say.

“Radical then,” she replies. “The people loved him. Somehow, the romantic story of the ‘Sockburn Worm’ of the declining Conyers family got transferred to the favored Lambton family in the minds of the common people, the progenitors of this tale.”

“No one noticed the sleight of hand?”

“I’ll say no. Nor will I accuse the people of trickery. I think the transfer of the legend was subconscious. In any case, the term ‘fact-checking’ had not come into the lexicon.

“Historically, the curse of the lords not dying in their beds rather fits. The first generation, Robert Lambton, drowned. The second generation, Sir William, died in battle, as did the third generation, also a William. There is a gap in the family history, until Henry Lambton dies in his carriage crossing the bridge at Lambton in 1761, presumably ending the curse shortly before Radical Jack came on the scene. But even he died at the age of 48.

“If the shoe fits, wear it,” I say.

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2020 The Lambton Worn – Part Three

Lambton_Castle_Durham_Morris_edited Illustrator unknown

Saint George

“Remind me to introduce you to Ultima Flossbottom,” I say. “She knows more about dragons than the rest of our world put together.”

Melissa smiles at me with mild interest. “I am sure with a name like that she is notable.”

Thalia giggles.

We are well into our open-air feast. The cold, corn quiche Melissa made is particularly splendid.

“The milk of nine cows in the trough has an echo for me,” I muse.

“Yes, it comes up in The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh, collected in Jacobs’ English Fairy Tales, one of his other books.”

“Yes, right,” I say. “A similar tale?”

“Only in that there is a milk-filled trough, a worm, a body of water, and a hero involved. Outside of that they are very different stories.”

“Thalia,” I say, “stop stuffing yourself with crisps for a moment and hand over the merlot, two glasses, and a corkscrew from the wicker, please.”

Thalia obliges. I would have gotten them myself, but I saw her put her serpent into the basket for safekeeping while she ate.

“Then,” I continue, “there is Saint George and the dragon.”

“Well,” says Melissa, accepting the glass I offer, “here we get into the damsel-and-dragon pairing, which constitutes the majority of the dragon stories. That motif can be traced back to Perseus saving Andromeda from the sea serpent, Cetus, although the through-line between the two is not direct.

“Stories of George, Demetrius and Theodore, all soldier-saints, were circulated in Europe by the returning knights of the First Crusade. However, it was Saint Theodore to whom the dragon slaying was attributed. Saint George and Saint Theodore were sometimes depicted as riding together.

“Saint George’s reputation as the dragon slayer was solidified with the popular work The Golden Legend, a collection of saintly stories that appeared about 1260. In it a princess, dressed as a bride, is to be fed to a marauding dragon. She is saved by Saint George.”

“Dressed as a bride?” I say.

“Yes, isn’t that interesting, a very subtle sexual inference. Theodore never had the benefit of a damsel.”

“Transferring of the dragon slaying from Theodore to George does not sound much different than the transference from the Conyers to the Lambtons.”

Melissa nods, sipping her wine, and I continue.

“It occurs to me, we could categorize our dragon stories.”

“What categories do you propose?” Melissa samples a brownie that I baked and brought.

“Well, the Lambton Worm is of the wanton, destructive kind to be placated and eventually killed.”

“Let’s call him the Beowulf Dragon. That’s the earliest example of that kind I can think of,” Melissa suggests.

“Then there is the dragon possessing a maiden to be rescued.”

“The Perseus Dragon,” Melissa declares, raising a finger, “and the third category should be the Jason Dragon, the dragon protecting the Golden Fleece or some other treasure horde.”

“There weren’t any helpful dragons, were there?” I ask.

“Not in the fairy-tale genre that I know of,” Melissa concludes.

Glancing at Thalia, I see her take her pet from the basket to play with again.

“I think you should put the poor little thing back under its rock. And whatever you do, don’t throw it down a well.”

Thalia rolls her eyes. “Yes, Grandfather.”

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Fairy Tale of the Month

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