Fairy Tale of the Month: March 2023 Tinker of Tamlacht – Part One

March 30, 2023cjkiernan Leave a comment

A Visitor

We are making ourselves comfortable in the study after celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day with a feast. For the menu, Melissa and Thalia had settled on corned beef and cabbage, colcannon, leek soup, and soda bread. Now, Melissa and I cradle glasses of Guinness in our hands, while the girls have warm cider.

Yes, girls. Jini is with us, having been sworn to secrecy. She and Thalia decided best friends cannot have secrets from one another.

We have given her the somewhat overstuffed Queen Anne’s chair. To her delight and my surprise, Johannes has jumped into her lap and curled up. She pets him gently as her eyes try to penetrate the dark corners of the room where the brownies are scuttling about.

I watch her closely. Sure enough, as I hear the fairy fluttering through the study’s archway, her eyes go anime.

“Ah, she can see our fairy. I don’t think everyone can.”

Thalia hardly notices the fairy alight on her shoulder as she opens her book, Hibernian Nights, and announces the story, The Tinker of Tamlacht.

There lived in Donegal, in the village of Tamlacht, a poor tinker, who one day finds himself in a bog after trying to take a shortcut. He declares, “May the devil take me if I ever come this way again.”

When he gets back on the proper road, three beggars meet him in turn, to whom he gives what little money he has. The three beggars turn out to be an angel, and the angel gives him three wishes.

First, the tinker wishes for a full meal chest; second, that what goes into his workbag stays there until he lets or takes it out; and third, those who take the apples from his tree will stick there until he releases them.

Sometime after that, he again tries the bog shortcut and meets the devil, who reminds the tinker of the vow he made. Fortunately for the tinker, the road to hell leads through Tamlacht. The tinker convinces the unpopular devil to hide inside the workbag while they go through the village.

The poor, unsuspecting devil ends up being placed upon an anvil and beaten with hammers until he disappears in a column of fire.

The tinker returns home from that adventure to find his wife has had a baby. He goes out to find a godfather. He rejects the landlord, who takes advantage of the poor; he rejects God, who lets the landlord get away with his greed; but accepts Death as the godfather because he treats everyone equally.

Death rewards the tinker with a bottle of “The Ointment of Health,” which can cure anyone, providing that Death is not standing at the head of the bed but rather at the foot. By this device, the tinker became a wealthy doctor, curing many of the sick.

One day, in a moment of softheartedness, he tricks Death by having the bed turned around, putting Death at the foot of the bed. Death now taps the tinker on the shoulder and tells him to follow. The road, again, takes them through Tamlacht. The tinker asks Death to pick him an apple from his tree as a memento. The moment Death touches the apple he is stuck.

The tinker leaves Death there for a hundred years—during which no one dies—before taking pity on him. Death agrees to leave the tinker alone for another hundred years, which was well since Death had a lot of catching up to do.

However, when the tinker’s allotment comes due, he asks for the time it would take his burning candle stub to gutter out to make his will. Death agrees and the tinker blows out the candle so that it will never gutter out.

It takes Death another hundred years to find the candle, relight it, and watch it gutter out. Once more, the tinker asks for time to utter a pater-and-ave. This Death grants and the tinker refuses to say one.

A hundred years pass until Death in the disguise of a lost soul, tricks the tinker into saying a pater-and-ave for him. Death takes the tinker to heaven, but God will not allow him in for having refused him as godfather. The devil will not let him into hell, saying the tinker will make it too hot for him.

Death and the tinker settle on Death turning him into a salmon in the river Erne, where, to this day, he taunts and eludes sports fishermen.

“Ha! Clever,” says Johannes.

Jini, whose stare had been fixed on the fairy, now peers down, wide-eyed, at the cat curled in her lap.

Fairy Tale of the Month: March 2023 Tinker of Tamlacht – Part Two

More Guinness

I put another log on the hearth fire, then return to my second glass of Guinness. The girls have gone off to Thalia’s bedroom—a young girl’s inner sanctum—with the fairy perched atop Thalia’s head and Johannes nestled in Jini’s arms. I can’t get over Johannes glomming onto Jini as he has.

“Thalia picked an appropriate tale for the evening,” Melissa comments, raising her glass. “Very Irish.”

“Long for one thing,” I say.

“And full of trickery.” Melissa swirled the stout in her glass. “At the start, the tinker tricks the devil. In the next part, he chooses Death as a godfather after insulting God. He soon proceeds to trick Death for hundreds of years. Death finally gets his bony hands on the tinker only to find he can’t get rid of him.”

I take a sip of my Guinness before answering. “It feels rather like more than one story stuck together except that the end is set up during the story. Death can’t get rid of the tinker because of what the tinker did earlier in the tale. It all holds together very well. Maybe a little too well. Might there be some literary influence by the editor?”

Melissa roots around in her purse for her cell phone. “If I recall the biography of Seamus MacManus, that is an arguable point.” Her fingers scan her phone. “It says he was an Irish dramatist, a poet, a prolific writer of popular stories, and important in the rise of Irish national literature.

“It doesn’t say anything about him being a collector or editor. This site goes on to list fifty books by MacManus. Story of the Irish Race seems to be the big one. It also seems that he was deep into the Irish Republican Movement.”

I sip my Guinness while she pokes around on her phone before she continues. “Yes, he married Ethna Carbery, daughter of a well-known leader of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. She was a poet and writer like himself, whose real name was Anna Bella Johnston. She and a few other women started the Shan Van Vocht, a national monthly on literature, history, and commentary. Very popular. MacManus was a contributor. I’ll guess that is how they met.

“Oh dear,” Melissa gasps, “she died a few months after they got married. How sad. It was MacManus who then published most of her poetry, also very popular. He had at least one play produced and wrote others. Oh! He was also a founding member of Sinn Féin!”

‘”Right,” I say. “You don’t get much deeper into Irish nationalism.”

“However,” Melissa goes on, “it does not look like he was in Ireland for the Easter Rising. In 1908 he is in America lecturing in literature at Notre Dame University, Indiana, getting remarried in 1911 in New York, and getting a doctorate of law conferred on him by the University in 1917.”

“When was the Easter Rising?” I ask.

“1916.”

“Who did he remarry?”

Melissa scrolls backward. “Catalina Violante Páez, a writer and granddaughter of the first president of Venezuela.

“Oh dear!” Melissa’s eyebrows rise.

“Oh dear again?” I say.

“He died in 1960 at the age of 92, falling out of a seventh-story window at a nursing home.”

“Now, that sounds a little suspicious,” I can’t help saying.

“Nonetheless,” Melissa insists, sipping her stout, “back to our original discussion. There is the claim that he was the last of the traditional shanachies but obviously well educated. Can one be well educated and a shanachie at the same time? I always think of the old storytellers as illiterate or semiliterate, not lecturing at a university.”

“Well,” I say, “maybe we should let him defend himself.”

Melissa looks at me blankly for a moment, then says, “Oh, Miss Cox’s garden.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: March 2023 Tinker of Tamlacht – Part Three

Seamus MacManus

Melissa and I have deposited ourselves on a wrought-iron bench with a small wrought-iron table in front of us and another bench on the other side; a new seating arrangement in the garden. The teapot in its cozy awaited us when we entered.

It is not long before a distinguished-looking gentleman enters through the gate, and we rise to greet him. He is trim in build, handsome with a long, pointed beard. Most animated is his expressive face.

I introduce Ms. Serious and myself, and Melissa pours out a round of tea. Seamus’s manner is easy and friendly as if we’ve known each other before this meeting.

“Mr. MacManus . . . “Melissa starts.

“Call me Seamus, please.”

“Mr. Seamus,” Melissa grins with a little deviltry, “I am curious how you came to collect such a large number of Irish tales?”

“Easily answered. By being a boy in old Donegal that hadn’t noticed that the world was changing. I grew up cutting peat bricks out of the bogs, herding sheep, and hearing stories. None of these are the occupations of lads today. It is still the smell of peat burning on the hearth that goes along with the stories in my memory.

“By a hundred happy hearths on a thousand golden nights, then I, with my fellows, enthroned me under the chimney brace, or in circle, hunkered on the floor in the fire glow, heartening to the recital, and spellbound by the magic of the loved tales so lovingly told by fear-a’tighe (man-of-the-house) or bean-a-tighe (woman-of-the-house). Not many women could be termed shanachie, but she was a poor mother who had not at least a dozen or twenty tales on which to bring up her children.”

Seamus takes a sip of tea under Melissa’s admiring eyes.

“Thus and so, we Donegal children learnt the folk stories and the telling of them. Thus and so it was that we in turn propagated them. Thus and so it was that these fascinating tales through the long, long ages, gave to millions after millions, entertainment, happiness, joy, as well as the awakening and development in them of that beautiful imagination and sense of wonder that lightened, brightened and gilded lives that through near-hunger, hard labor and perpetual struggle with fate might well be expected to leave been sore and sour to bitterness.

“But the circumstances hard or otherwise, storytelling was ever a propagator of joy. The advent of printing and growth of reading it was that began the decline and finally the practical extinction of the hallowed art. Yet no multiplication of books and mushrooming of readers could compensate the world for the sad loss incurred. The read story never did, never will come near the benefiting quality of the told story. Two of the essential good qualities of the latter, the former never can capture. The read story may be said to be a dead story, prone on the printed page, entombed between boards, while the told story is a very much alive story, glowing, appealing, and dancing with energetic vitality—the personality and inspiration that the good storyteller can always command into the tale he tells. While the read story may possess the value of the story alone, the told story carries, superimposed on it, the golden worth of a good storyteller’s captivating art and enhancing personality—trebling in wealth.”

“Well,” says Melissa, “I do believe you may be the last of the shanachies.”

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: February 2023 The Poor Miller’s Apprentice and the Cat

February 28, 2023cjkiernan 1 Comment

Good Bread

“We’re here for the bread,” Melissa states.

“And a glass of wine?” I suggest.

“And a glass of wine.”

We are entering Noble Rot, the Lamb’s Conduit Street location. I know they also have a shop in Soho. The place is quite inviting; dimly lit in a cozy way, wooden floors, dark green wainscoting, which runs around most of the room, and each table has a tea light in its center. We take a table near the crackling fireplace. It is February after all.

“A bread plate each is all we need,” Melissa tells the waiter.

I am looking at the menu. “And, perhaps, the slip sole,” I add.

Melissa rolls her eyes.

“And a splash of wine?” the waiter asks.

“Oh, yes,” I say, picking up the wine list.

My lord, it’s the size of a novella!

Thirty-two pages. I am overwhelmed.

“I guess white wine with bread.” I venture.

“And German,” says Melissa.

“By the glass?”

We nod.

“Then it will be the Stein Palmbury Reisling.”

“Excellent,” I say. As the waiter leaves, I ask Melissa, “Why German? You’re being thematic, I will guess.”

“I am. I’ve been rather curious about a Grimm tale, The Poor Miller’s Apprentice and the Cat.”

“Delightful. Refresh my memory.”

Actually, I don’t think I ever read it.

“It is something of a Puss and Boots and The White Cat variant.”

An old miller, with no wife or child, neared his retirement; a time, he said, when he wished to sit by the stove. He told his three apprentices that he would give the mill to one of them, providing that the new owner would sustain him in his old age. The contest would be decided by who could venture out and bring back the best horse.

The three apprentices started out together, but the elder two soon found a way to abandon Hans, the youngest. Wandering about, with no direction, he was approached by a multicolored she-cat that offered to give him a horse—the cat already knowing his need—if he would be her servant for seven years.

He agreed and was taken to her castle, where all the servants were kittens. They served Hans and the cat their dinner, during which the kittens played on a double bass, a fiddle, and a trumpet for their entertainment. When the meal was over, the cat asked Hans if he would dance with her. He refused, saying he did not dance with pussycats. She then instructed the kittens to take him to his bed. The kittens tucked him in and then in the morning they woke him, washed him, dried him with their tails, and got him dressed.

After that, he proceeded to be the cat’s servant, for the most part chopping wood with tools made of silver. He also mowed her meadow with a sliver scythe and built a silver cottage with silver tools.

When the seven years were up, the spotted cat showed him his fine horse, told him to return to the mill, and said, in three days, she would come with the horse. Unfortunately for Hans, during the seven years, she had not given him any new clothes. Ragged as he was, the miller and the other two apprentices laughed at him and would not let him eat or sleep in the mill. He had to content himself by sleeping in the goose house. Since he did not return with a horse, they mocked him. They, at least, returned with horses, although one was blind and the other lame.

However, on the third day, a princess arrived in a coach pulled by six fine horses with a servant leading a seventh horse, the likes of which had never graced the miller’s yard before. The princess had her faithful Hans washed up and nobly dressed, and he appeared to be as handsome a lord as any. She told the miller he could keep his mill as well as the horse.

She and Hans returned to the silver cottage he had built, which had become a huge silver and gold castle. The marriage followed and Hans never wanted for more.

Our waiter returns with the plates of bread. The delectable aroma alone is worth the sojourn to Noble Rot.

Fairy Tale of the Month: February 2023 The Poor Miller’s Apprentice and The Cat

An Insertion

On the plate are three kinds of bread, two pieces of each kind: soda bread, focaccia, and sourdough, plus a pat of butter. The waiter sets down the glasses of riesling to complete the picture. Knife in hand, I apply the butter to a piece of soda bread as a starter.

“I rather like the bit about the kitten servants drying Hans off with their tails,” I say.

“I did too.” Melissa takes a sip of wine. “Which is why I have half a mind to call Wilhelm to Miss Cox’s garden and scold him.”

“Whatever for?”

“When I came to the part about the spotted cat wining and dining Hans, who then refused to dance with her, that struck me as a significant moment in the story.”

The soda bread might be my favorite, even though I haven’t tried the other two.

“However, she does not seem to take offense. The next day, Hans appears to take up his duties as a servant and the events go on from there.

“I’d not run across this refusal-to-dance motif before. I racked my brain to think of a parallel. What could this signify in the folk mind in which these tales arose? Out of caution, I went back to the 1815 version of the tales in Jack Zipe’s book, The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. I discovered that the stuff about the kittens, the music, the wining and dining, and tail drying were not there. At all. The 1815 story goes from Hans agreeing to be the spotted cat’s servant to a description of his duties for the next seven years.

“Here I’d gone off, mistakenly, into thinking the refusal-to-dance might be an unrecognized story element, perhaps steeped in Germanic folklore. Instead, it turns out to be Wilhelm’s fanciful insertion.”

I laugh gently while sampling my focaccia. “I know the Grimms did alter the stories when they realized they had a younger audience than for which the first edition had been intended. They removed sexual content, replaced pagan elements with Christian subjects, and turned evil mothers into stepmothers.”

“True,” Melissa frowns. “But this change does not qualify for any of those reasons. I assume Wilhelm attempted to appeal to his bourgeois audience. He simply upped the storyline a little. It makes me wonder how often he allowed his German Romanticism to creep into these reputedly folk-inspired fairy tales.”

No, the focaccia might be my favorite.

“I guess,” I muse, “we should have been suspicious when the story gave too much visual description; the double bass, the fiddle, and the trumpet, not to mention the delightful thing about the tails used for drying. Details like that are sparingly given unless necessary for the storyline.”

Melissa nods, nibbling her sourdough. “After I saw what must have happened, it became clear to me that the tone of the section with the kittens differed from what went before and what followed. On consideration, I conclude it was a rather clumsy, somewhat confusing, unnecessary thing for Wilhelm to have done.”

Oh my, the sourdough is as good as the other two.

Fairy Tale of the Month: February 2023 The Poor Miller’s Apprentice and The Cat

Something More

The slip sole arrives, a small flatfish fillet with a smoky, honey glaze that creates an olfactory sensation.

“I tried,” Melissa continues, “checking the Grimm notes in Margaret Hunt’s book to see if there might be some enlightenment. All I got was an even crazier version of the tale. Are you ready for this one?”

“Carry on,” I say. I am happy to let her chatter while my epicurean soul delights in the aquatic sole.

A miller sends his three sons out to find the best horse and claim the mill. The youngest meets a little gray man, whom the lad serves as a woodcutter for a year in return for a good horse. The lad meets his brothers on the way home. Their horses are either lame or blind. In jealousy, they throw their younger brother into a lime pit. The little gray man pulls him out, restores the lad to life, and retrieves the horse.

For reasons unexplained, the father decides the mill will go to the son who can bring him the best shirt. The lad gets the best shirt, meets up again with his brothers, who tie him to a tree and shoot him dead. Again, the little gray man appears and brings him back to life.

When the lad returns to the mill the second time after dying, the elder brothers convince their father that the younger is in league with the devil. (Which from their point of view was arguably true given they had left him for dead twice). The father proposes a third test; this time one of them must bring back the best loaf of bread, since, as the story states, “. . . the devil has no power over bread.”

The lad, on his quest, shares his food with an old woman in the forest, who gives him a wishing-rod. When he uses it, a little tortoise comes to him declaring, “Take me with you.” He puts the tortoise in his pocket, and the next time he puts his hand in, there is the tortoise and lots of money.

He sets the tortoise up in the best room at an inn and travels on from there for a year, unsuccessfully searching for the best loaf of bread. (The arrangements for the tortoise to live at the inn in the meantime are not well explained.) Upon returning to the inn, the lad sees that the tortoise has two, pretty, white feet. That evening, he sees a shadowy figure kneading bread. In the morning, there is a perfect loaf of bread. Taking the loaf home, he can no longer be denied ownership of the mill.

On his return again to the inn, there in the bed is a princess as well as the tortoise. She explains that he has broken the spell over her, and they can now marry. But first, he must return home and wait for her. She tells him that when he hears the first cannon, she will be getting dressed. When he hears the second cannon, she will be getting into a carriage. When he hears the third, he should look for a carriage being pulled by six white horses.

Afterward, they are married and might have lived happily ever after except that he let the tortoise fall into the fire. Outraged, the princess spits in his face. Devastated, he goes off, digs a deep cave for himself, over which is carved the inscription, “Here none shall find me, save God alone.” There he lives and prays for many years.

Eventually, an old king, having fallen ill, travels the country looking for a physician to cure him but without success. He comes by accident to the cave and is miraculously cured. Seeing the inscription, he instructs his people to “dig down” until they find the hermit.

When the king finds out that this hermit is his son-in-law, he brings about reconciliation between his daughter and the hermit, and they all live long and happily.

“Good grief,” is all I can say.

“Yes, well,” Melissa smiles, sipping the last of her glass, “I think our bread and wine was the perfect little repast.”

I agree, but I am fingering the menu, and my eyes fall upon the dessert section.

Basque Cheesecake and Rhubarb.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: January 2023 The Iron Shoes – Part One

January 31, 2023cjkiernan Leave a comment

Iron Shoes

It’s good to have Thalia back again, she having been stolen away from me during Christmas. As the winter doldrums set in, her presence is a continuing comfort. While the correct order of things has been restored, nothing stays quite the same. Shifts are usually subtle and minute.

Thalia sits in her comfy chair, a book on her lap, and the household tribe has gathered. I in my comfy chair, Johannes curled up on the window seat, the brownies in the shadows, and the fairy on Thalia’s shoulder.

But . . . the book on her lap is The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales. Not Grimm. Not Lang. Not Jacobs. But rather Schönwerth. She must have plucked the book from my library, a volume I had almost forgotten about. I am struck by the irony. The world almost forgot Schönwerth.

The scholar Erika Eichenseer came across hundreds of stories that Schönwerth collected in Bavaria in the late nineteenth century, stored in a German municipal archive. She dusted them off and published a good number of them that now lay on Thalia’s lap.

“The Iron Shoes,” Thalia proclaims.

Hans, a ne’er-do-well son, is kicked out of his home by his father, to make his way in the world. In his wanderings, he stumbles onto an abandoned castle, taking refuge in one of its rooms. A woman, dressed in black, appears, lays food on a table, points to a bed, and wordlessly leaves.

At midnight, a man comes into the room and tries to choke Hans and otherwise torture the lad. The next morning the woman reappears, dressed in grey, again silently leaving him food. That night two men come to torture Hans.

By morning, Hans has had quite enough and prepares to leave. The woman, now dressed in white, asks him to stay one more night. For her sake he does, and three men show up to abuse him.

In the midst of this pummeling of the lad, the woman interrupts, accompanied by thunder and lightning, and drives the abusers off. What Hans achieved was breaking a spell over a princess, who gives Hans her hand in marriage.

Now, awash in wealth, he desires to visit his father to prove his success. The princess allows this, giving him a ring, which he need only turn on his finger for her to come to him. However, he must only do this in true distress.

His father, who works as the king’s groundskeeper, does not (could not, would not?) recognize his son. Hans ends up introducing himself to the king, who orders a feast to honor his guest.

The other noble guests, jealous of the lad’s handsome looks, challenge him to prove that his wife is as beautiful as he boasted. Hans turns the ring on his finger, and carriages roll up, from one of which steps his radiant princess.

Unfortunately for Hans, the next morning his old traveling clothing are laid out on the bed, a pair of iron shoes are on the floor, and a note states, “I am punishing you by leaving. Don’t try to find me. You will never discover where I am, even if you wear out these iron shoes.”

Undaunted, he searches for her, even though he cannot find their castle, where he met her. After some time, he comes across three fellows arguing over the ownership of three magical treasures: an unending bag of gold coins, a cloak of invisibility, and a pair of hundred-league boots. He agrees to settle their dispute but claims he needs to verify the magical validity of the items. Testing the cloak of invisibility, he steals the bag and the boots.

While fleeing rapidly, thanks to the boots, he sees a little man beside him, keeping pace. It is the wind, off to a certain town to dry the clothing of a princess who plans to marry that day. It turns out to be his wife. Hans crashes the wedding in his cloak, knocking the good book from the parson’s hands, and clobbering the bridegroom every time he tries to say, “I do.”

The marriage is given up, yet all go off to the wedding feast. Hans sits among the beggars, invisibly stealing food intended for the guests, and sharing it with his fellows. During his antics, he loses his ring. A servant finds it, and because it bears the princess’s initials, it is returned to her.

Realizing that Hans has found her, she calls for him, they are reconciled, and the real marriage takes place.

Thalia closes the book and smiles.

Fairy Tale of the Month: January 2023 The Iron Shoes – Part Two

Franz Schönwerth

As I enter Augustus’s tobacco shop, the familiar, ever-welcoming tinkle of the bell above his door . . . is missing! I stop in my tracks and look up. The bracket is there. The coiled metal spring is there. The bell is missing.

“It fell off,” Augustus explains, standing behind the counter.

“You will repair it, won’t you?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

Oh, but you must. We can’t let the world slowly fall into disorder.”

Augustus smiles at me. “I don’t know that my missing bell qualifies as falling into disorder. Haven’t you been listening to the news? That is disorder.”

“Of course I haven’t. I make it a point not to listen. Oh, I did in my youth, avidly. Then I realized it wasn’t going to make me happy. So, I gave it up.”

“Admirable,” Augustus concedes. “I will make sure to repair the bell.”

I am content.

“Are you familiar with Franz Schönwerth?” I ask.

“Yes, a competent fellow at whatever he did.”

“I know him as a folklorist,” I say.

Augustus sits on his stool on his side of the counter and I sit on one on my side.

“He was a servant of the Bavarian state, trusted by the royal family. He became the private secretary to the Crown Prince Maximillian and was entrusted with managing the prince’s and his wife’s personal wealth.

“Schönwerth proved his loyalty when, during the revolutions of 1848, he transferred the royal family’s wealth to Nymphenberg Palace for safekeeping. He did this by disguising himself as a common workingman, loading three million thalers worth of cash, securities, and valuables onto a handcart and wheeling it through the streets of Munich, filled with the very rebels who would have otherwise plundered it.”

“Remarkable,” I say. “I hope he was rewarded for such a thing.”

“Oh, yes. He became ennobled, always rising in the soon-to-be king’s estimation. Schönwerth had the privilege of guiding the king in the patronage of the arts and sciences.”

“Excellent, but how did he get involved with folklore studies?”

“I suspect as he rose in stature he ended up with more free time to pursue his interests. Both he and his wife, Maria, were native Bavarians. Like other intellectuals of the nineteenth century, he saw his world going through upheaval and rapid change. The old ways of his beloved Bavaria were being lost and forgotten.

“He started collecting information from his wife, a person knowledgeable about folkways, then moved on to his housekeeper. His housekeeper introduced him to her acquaintances, leading him to make collecting tours through the countryside. He apparently had a knack for getting commoners to open up to him through the application of much coffee and cigars.

“And, he collected everything: legends, fairy tales, comic stories, children’s games, nursery rhymes, children’s songs, proverbs, how people lived, everyday-life details, customs, and traditional dress. Much of this material he published in a three-volume work, From the Upper Palatinate—Customs and Legends. The Grimms’ considered him heir to what they were accomplishing. They recognized his competence and skill as a folklorist.”

“Yet,” I say, “the better part of his work ended up collecting dust in that vault in Regensburg.”

“Well, for him it was a hobby. Also a passion, but he wasn’t trying to make a living at it as the Grimms were.

Fairy Tale of the Month: January 2023 The Iron Shoes – Part Three

Turn About

“Why, though,” inquires Augustus, “are you asking me about Schönwerth?”

“Ah, Thalia has taken an interest in him. She read The Iron Shoes . . . last night.” (I almost said “to us,” which would have needed an explanation.)

“Iron shoes,” murmured Augustus. “There is more than one story with iron shoes in it. There is the Grimms’ Little Snow White, where the witch/queen is danced to death in red-hot iron shoes. Then there’s The Enchanted Pig. In that the heroine must wear out three pairs of iron shoes looking for her husband.”

“You’re getting warmer,” I say.

“Now I remember. The Schönwerth version is where the Psyche-looking-for-her-husband motif gets turned on its head. The hero . . .”

“Hans,” I interject.

August rolls his eyes. “Of course it’s Hans. This is a German story. Hans is the one looking for his bride after violating some rule set up by the spouse, as is always the case in this motif. Let me find my copy of Schönwerth.”

I fill my pipe with Fairies’ Delight from the courtesy canister on the counter. As I light up, Augustus returns with book in hand, reading as he walks.

“Right. Hans is a delightful rogue, not the usual hero who starts out being portrayed as a simpleton but then shows unexpected wisdom. Hans stays something of a rogue straight through. He gets kicked out of his home by an irate father for being useless. He never does get reconciled with his father, but on the other hand, he bears no ill will toward anyone. He is happy-go-lucky.

“His luck is in finding the enchanted castle and its occupant, putting up with beatings for food, and almost unintentionally breaking the spell over the princess. Then he blows it all by not listening closely to his wife’s instructions about the ring. He calls her to him to show her off to the other nobles, not out of dire necessity.”

I pick up the thread of his thinking and say, “Roguishly, he steals the three magical gifts from the quarreling fellows. With the magical boots he can travel with the wind, which leads him to find the princess.

“But wait.” I ponder for a moment. “Hasn’t he exchanged the iron shoes for the magical boots? Is there some symbolic significance in that? Some act of transformation?”

Augustus is lighting his pipe and takes some time to reply. “Nope. Not likely. Not unless you decide to shoehorn a metaphor into the tale. When Schönwerth collected these stories, he was actually formulating for himself methods later used by professional folklorists. He did not allow his thoughts and opinions to creep into what he collected. With the tales, he recorded what he heard.

“Had the Grimms collected this tale, they would have edited it for their bourgeois audience. Being romantics, they might have found a connection between the iron shoes and the magical boots and put that into the story. For the teller that Schönwerth recorded, the iron shoes were a challenge by the princess, thrown at Hans’s feet—notice my pun, please—for him to go find her. Having served that purpose, he could give them up for a better pair of footwear to help him.”

“I loved the bit about him punching the suitor in the mouth before he could say, ‘I do.’”

Augustus grins. “A loveable rogue, as I said.”

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: October 2022 The Three Army Surgeons – Part One

October 27, 2022cjkiernan Leave a comment

Another Halloween

The usual crowd gathers for Thalia’s Halloween-night story: Melissa, Johannes, the fairy, the brownies, and myself. However, the story is being told early—the sun is not yet set—because Thalia will be going off to a Halloween party with Jini.

To Johannes’s amusement, I think, Thalia wears a black cat costume. It is made up of black leggings and a black jumper replete with a tail. Pointy ears and painted-on whiskers do the rest. When Jini and her mother come, she’ll be ready to go.

She waits until I get the fire in the hearth going, then announces, “The Three Army Surgeons.” She is holding her old, battered copy of Grimm’s fairy tales.

One evening, three army surgeons were at an inn where they intended to stay for the night. The friendly innkeeper asked them where they were going and what they did. They told him they traveled the world practicing their profession. This led to boasting. The first surgeon said he would cut off his hand that evening and restore it in the morning. The second said he would do the same with his heart, and the third said he would too with his eyes.

No one else knew that these surgeons had a magic salve that could heal anything.

Before the surgeons went to bed, they cut out their assigned body parts, the innkeeper put them on a platter, and the maid put them in a cupboard for safekeeping.

Unfortunately for all, this maid had a soldier/sweetheart who showed up after everyone else was asleep, and the maid brought out food for him, leaving the cupboard door open. In came the cat, who made a meal of the surgeons’ body parts. When the maid found out what had happened, she declared all was lost.

The clever soldier had other ideas. Borrowing a butcher knife, he popped out and returned with the hand of a thief he’d seen hanging from the gallows. Then he grabbed a cat and poked out its eyes.

“What!” objects Johannes. He rises from his window seat, his tail straight in the air, and, with indignation, strides from the study.

“Oh drat,” Thalia frowns. “I think I’ve offended him. He’s so touchy.”

“Well, my dear,” Melissa says, “he is a cat.”

“A cat-sìth, actually,” I say, “but still a cat.”

The brownies titter, Thalia sighs, and she continues.

The heart of a pig, butchered that day, made up for the last of the losses. In the morning, the surgeons restored the substituted body parts with the magic salve, much to the praise of the innkeeper.

The three surgeons traveled on their way, but the surgeon with the pig’s heart delayed their travel by rooting through whatever garbage he could find, while the others tried to drag him back by his coattails.

That evening, in the next inn, the surgeon with the thief’s hand, stole money from an unwary patron. After they had gone the bed, the surgeon with the cat’s eyes could see in the dark and commented upon all the mice in their room that the others could not see. They then concluded they didn’t have their original body parts, and it was the fault of the previous innkeeper.

They return, accusing the innocent man of cheating them. He—rightly so—accuses the maid. But the maid, seeing the surgeons coming, ducked out the back door never to be seen again. The surgeons demanded as much money as the innkeeper had or they would burn down his house. They got a goodly sum, but it was in no way a replacement for their lost body parts.

The doorbell rings.

“It’s them. Bye.” Thalia darts out the study door, leaving the fairy, previously settled on her shoulder, fluttering in mid-air.

Fairy Tale of the Month: October 2022 The Three Army Surgeons – Part Two

Some Riffraff

A little to our surprise, the fairy settles into Melissa’s lap and curls up to nap.

“I think I’ve been honored,” Melissa smiles, “but now I can’t get up. Will you pour me some more wine?”

I pour her half a glass.

“Oh,” she says, “you are remembering last year.”

“Yes, and not to mention we have started drinking early and on empty stomachs. However, I have made some pumpkin soup and squash toast for us to dine on.”

“That sounds much better than candy. What is squash toast?”

“You will see.”

I leave for the kitchen and soon return with steaming mugs of soup and small plates of squash toast. “It appears we will dine in the study since you are anchored by Thalia’s fairy.”

“Off to a Halloween party. My, but she’s growing up,” Melissa reflects.

We settle into sipping our soup by the hearth.

“What an odd Grimm tale,” she muses. “Not their usual fare.”

“Well,” I say, “there are a number of what I call ‘foolish tales’ in the Grimm collection, such as Riffraff.”

“I don’t recall that one.” Melissa samples the squash toast. “Oh, this is good!”

“As I recall, the story starts out with a rooster and his hen going up a hill to eat nuts before the squirrels get them all. After eating their fill, they don’t feel like walking home. Instead, the rooster builds a coach out of nutshells, then waylays a duck, with whom he has an argument, to pull the coach.

In this way, they journey until they come upon two other travelers.”

“Wait a moment,” Melissa says with laughter in her voice, “I thought they were just up a hill.”

“Home seems to be getting inexplicably farther away, but wait, it gets worse.

“The two travelers are a needle and a pin who had drunk too much beer at the Tailor’s Tavern—I am sure that was meant to be some sort of pun—and could not find their way home. The rooster allows them into the carriage since they did not take up much room.

“When they come to an inn, they decide not to travel any farther.”

“Oh dear,” Melissa smirks, “this coming back down the hill has gotten rather surreal.”

“Hasn’t it though. A foolish tale, as I said.

“Well, the innkeeper raises objections to their spending the night, but the rooster promises him the egg the hen laid along the way, plus he can keep the duck. After settling that, they have a merry evening.

“However, the rooster and the hen rise early, crack open the egg, and devour it. . .”

“Wait. What? That was cannibalistic of them,” she says.

“. . . then they take the still sleeping pin and needle, putting the pin in the innkeeper’s towel and the needle in his comfy chair, and fly off. The duck, seeing them escape, does the same.

“The innkeeper, of course, scratches his face with the pin and sits on the needle, declaring he’ll never allow riffraff like them again at his inn.”

“I see your point. Your foolish tales are those filled with absurdities rather than princes, princesses, and magic.”

“There is the magic salve in The Three Army Surgeons, but it is more of a prop than anything else.”

Melissa nods. “I can just hear these two tales being told at an inn along with much drinking. By the way, instead of more wine, can you get me more of this toast?”

That I am glad to do.

Fairy Tale of the Month: October 2022 The Three Army Surgeons – Part Three

About Gallows

I return with more squash toast to find the fairy still curled up in Melissa’s lap.

“I hope Johannes is not too upset about the cat in the story.” Melissa nibbles.

“He’ll get over it.”

“The poor pig was already done for,” Melissa goes on, “but the image that got to me the most is that of the thief’s hand.”

“And why is that?”

“I’m not sure. The Grimms were a bit more descriptive about this soldier going to the gallows and cutting off the hand than they were about the demise of the animals. “

“Ahh,” I say, “the gallows. That is bound to engage the imagination. I think the Grimms knew that and referred to them numerous times in the tales.”

“Do they figure in other stories?” she asks.

“Well, let me think. There is The Two Travelers, in which one of the travelers has his eyes gouged out by the other as a matter of spite. The victim ends up falling asleep under a gallows. During the night, he hears two hanging corpses talking to each other and learns that the dew on the grass beneath them will restore a man’s sight.

As the story goes on, he acquires animal helpers and eventually ends up in the employment of a king who also employs his previous fellow traveler. The spiteful fellow causes trouble for our hero, but he is saved by his animal friends, and the villain is eventually banished. The villain ends up sleeping under the very same gallows as before. Crows, resting on the corpses, fly down and peek out his eyes.”

“Oh, how delightful,” Melissa can’t help saying.

“I recall another.” I hold up a finger. “Let me remember. A Tale About the Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was.”

Melissa applauds my memory.

“In this tale, whose hero is rather dense, the lad has never felt fear, which he calls

‘the creeps.’ In part of the tale, he is assigned to spend a cold night under the gallows. The winter wind knocks the bodies together, and the lad feels sorry for them. He brings them down and sets them around his fire to warm them up a bit. They prove to be boring company; he can’t get a word out of them. In disappointment, he hangs them all back up again.”

I get another round of applause.

“Oh, how could I have forgotten,” I remember, “The Master Thief. A count has challenged a master thief to prove himself. One of the tasks is to steal the bedsheet from under him and his wife. One night the master thief cuts down a corpse from the gallows, sets a ladder up against the count’s bedroom window, and pushes the corpse ahead of him up the ladder.

“The count, expecting such a move, is ready with a pistol. When the corpse’s head appears in the window, the count fires. The master thief lets the corpse drop. The count rushes out to see what he has done, and the thief slips in, pretending, in the dark, to be the count, and tells the wife he has killed the man and needs the bedsheets in which to wrap the body. She, of course, complies. “

“Oh, how gruesome,” Melissa exclaims.

Her raised voice awakens the fairy, who yawns, stretches, flutters up, and leaves the study.

“Sorry,” Melissa calls after her. “Well, at least I can now get my own wine.”

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tales of the Month: September 2022 The Red Ettin – Part One

September 29, 2022cjkiernan Leave a comment

A What?

The traditional evening gathering is at hand. Thalia has taken her position on her comfy chair closest to the hearth. The weather is cool enough for me to have lit a fire. I in my comfy chair, the fairy on Thalia’s shoulder, Johannes on the window pretending not to be listening, and the brownie lurking in the shadows despite how familiar we are with each other, have all gathered for the evening read in my study.

“Tonight,” Thalia announces, “I shall read from the English Fairy Tales, The Red Ettin.”

An old widow sends the older of her two sons off into the world to find his fortune. First, however, she instructs him to bring her water in a can for her to bake him a cake. The can leaks most of the water and, therefore, the cake is small. Then he has to choose if he will take half the cake with his mother’s blessings or the whole cake with her curse. The cake, being so small, he takes it whole.

Before leaving, he gives his brother a knife, telling him if the knife grows rusty then he, the elder brother, has met with trouble.

He soon comes across a shepherd, who, in these words, warns him of the Red Ettin, a three-headed monster:

The Red Ettin of Ireland

Once lived in Ballygan,

And stole King Malcolm’s daughter

The king of fair Scotland.

He beats her, he binds her,

He lays her on a band;

And every day he strikes her

With a bright silver wand.

Like Julian the Roman,

He’s one that fears no man.

It’s said there’s one predestinate

To be his mortal foe;

But that man is yet unborn,

And long may it be so.

The shepherd also warns him of the strange beasts he will soon encounter.

As the shepherd foretold, he comes across rampaging beasts with two heads and four horns on each. Terrified, he flees to a castle for shelter. Despite an old woman’s efforts, the Red Ettin, whose castle this is, discovers him but offers him that he can still save his life if he can answer three riddles.

The first head asks, “What is a thing without end?”

The second head says, “The smaller the more dangerous. What’s that?”

The third head asks, “When does the dead carry the living? Riddle me that.”

The young man cannot answer any of them, and the Ettin turns him into a stone pillar.

His brother sees the knife given to him covered in rust and tells his mother it is time for him to travel. She sends him with the leaky can to fetch water. A raven warns him that the water is being lost and he stops the leak.

The mother bakes a larger cake for him than she had for his brother but with the same conditions. He too chooses the larger cake with her curse.

He shares his cake with an old woman, actually a fairy, who gives him a magic wand and advice. He meets the shepherd, who repeats the verses but with one change. The last stanza is:

But now I fear his end is near,

And destiny at hand;

And you’re to be, I plainly see,

The heir of all his land.

He then confronts the rampaging beasts, and with the magic wand, he kills one of them, then goes off to the castle. The brother is warned by the old woman of the castle, but he does not attempt to hide from the Red Ettin.

The Ettin asks him the three riddles.

The first head asks, “What is a thing without end?” The brother, who has been given the answers by the fairy, answers, “A bowl.”

The second head says, “The smaller the more dangerous. What’s that?” The brother answers, “A bridge.”

The third head asks, “When does the dead carry the living? Riddle me that.” And the brother answers, “When a ship sails the sea with men inside her.”

The Red Ettin’s powers are undone, and the brother kills him with an axe. The old woman aids the brother, showing him where the king’s daughter is held along with many other ladies captured by the Red Ettin. With the magic wand, he also restores his brother back to life.

A happy entourage returns to the king’s castle, where the younger brother marries the king’s daughter and the older brother is wedded to a nobleman’s daughter. All ends in happily-ever-after.

“A red what?” I say. Thalia shrugs her shoulders, and the fairy flutters up.

Fairy Tale of the Month: September 2022 The Red Ettin – Part Two

A Breakfast

I set the eggy bread and kippers on the breakfast table between Thalia and me. She forks herself an eggy bread without taking her eyes off her cell phone.

“This Red Ettin thing gets complicated.” She eats one-handedly, the other busy holding what I call her oracle. It has the answers to everything.

This is a conversation that would have taken place last evening except that Jini rang her up, and the rest of the night was gone.

“First, what is an ettin?” I dig into my kipper. Its smokey scent tickles my nose.

‘Well, besides being a character in Dungeons and Dragons, it’s the same as a Nordic jötunn.”

“That does not help.”

Thalia giggles. “There is a lot of gibberish here about what happened to the word as it moved from proto-German to Old English. Anyway, it more or less means ‘giant.’ The ettin is also a bogle, but there are different sorts of those; he’s just one kind.”

“Anything about the ‘red’ part of his name?” I ask.

“Not seeing anything.”

“What jumps to my mind is ‘redcap,’ a murderous goblin, who soaks his cap in his victim’s blood.”

“Cool.”

“My point being, ‘red’ can indicate malevolence.”

“Works for me. Anyway, the story’s got a variant.”

“All the fairy tales have a variant, but go on.” I finish my kipper and start on the eggy bread.

“Well, there’s a Lang version that starts with two widows with three sons between them, which is kind of weird. The rusty knife is still there and the leaky can, but besides the shepherd, there is also a swineherd and a goatherd, all telling him the same stuff.”

Thalia pauses to take more eggy bread.

“When we get to the riddles, they are different and aren’t riddles. They are . . .” Thalia scans the information on her cell. “Which was inhabited first, Scotland or Ireland; was man made first or woman; and was man or brute made first. I think those are stupid riddles, but then the story doesn’t even give the answers, it just says the fairy woman told him everything.

“The only thing that makes sense was the third brother, who gets the bigger cake, only took half and got his mother’s blessing. Outside of that, I didn’t like the Lang version at all. Is there still some tea?”

I pour tea for her, then go find my copy of English Fairy Tales and check the “notes and references” for our story. Jacobs informs us he edited and simplified the story and found better riddles. Both he and Lang used Popular Rhymes of Scotland, by Robert Chambers, as their source. I also found that Lang reproduced his version word for word from Chambers, making Lang the more accurate folklorist. I point this out to Thalia.

“It’s still stupid,” she says.

I decide to play devil’s advocate. “Should not we try to stick to the oldest versions of these tales, the ones closest to their origins?”

“Not if they’re stupid.”

“Perhaps this is a question for the Magic Forest.”

Thalia looks at me sideways.

“Would you like to visit the Magic Forest?”

Thalia’s eyes glow.

Fairy Tales of the Month: September 2022 The Red Ettin – Part Three

Thalia’s Visit

Thalia and I cross the back garden and enter the Magic Forest. We take the trail past the pond and head for the Glass Mountain, Thalia’s wide eyes taking in everything.

There, as I knew he would be, sitting on the edge of a glass cliff, just out of reach, is Old Rinkrank.

“Thought I smelled you coming,” he sneers.

“Good to see you again,” I say.

“And who’s this with ya?” he expresses a little interest.

“This is my granddaughter, Thalia.”

She smiles and curtsies.

“Good,” approves Rinkrank, “she has manners.”

Wait, she’s wearing a dress. She never wears dresses anymore. She planned on this.

We take our seats on smooth glass boulders at his feet, so to speak. Actually, we sit below his long dangling legs.

“We are here,” I announce, “to ask about the importance of finding a story’s origin.”

“I suppose I can’t stop ya,” he grumbles.

“You don’t think it is important?”

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

I try again.

“To be specific, Thalia has read to me The Red Ettin.”

“Nasty fellow. Deserved what he got.”

It crosses my mind that Rinkrank’s fate in his story was no better, but I won’t go there.

“Thalia’s story was collected by Joseph Jacobs, but we found another collected by Andrew Lang, each quite different. They both cited Robert Chambers as their source, but only Lang was faithful to the source.

“Therefore, is not Lang’s version better than Jacob’s?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Rinkrank waves his bony-fingered hand in the air. “They’re all rumors. None of them were there when it happened, not even me.

“The rumor I heard from some fellow, I forget his name, there were two widows each with a son. One goes off to find his fortune, and later the other goes off to find the unfortunate. They both meet the Red Ettin’s herders, who tell them, in rhyme, the man has not been born who will kill the Red Ettin.

“Well, these sons of widows should’ve taken warning, but, no, on they go to get turned into stone pillars.

“Eventually, one of the two widows has another son,” Rinkrank chuckles. “Think about that for a moment.”

Thalia’s eyebrows rise and Rinkrank continues.

“He grows up and goes off on his adventure. The herders tell him he’s the one to kill the ettin, not to mention the magic wand the fairy gave him. He can’t lose.

“That’s the rumor I heard.”

“Ah,” I say, “the rhyme; that explains the inconsistency. I thought maybe there was some poetic license going on.”

“I noticed that too,” Thalia nods.

“Therefore,” I say, “I now declare this earlier version to be the better.”

“Nooo,” pouts Thalia.

“Why should that be?” Rinkrank shouts me down. “Just because it’s older? Bah! If ya want a rumor to keep going ya got to make it better, more interesting. Everyone who spreads a rumor puts their own touches on it. It’s their right to do so.

“Old, bah, I’m old, do you think I’m better for it?”

He’s got a point there.

I catch him winking at Thalia. Why do I talk to him? He’s so contrary.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: August 2022 The Three Oranges – PartOne

August 26, 2022cjkiernan Leave a comment

A Friend

Duckworth and I put our backs to the oars, propelling us smoothly up the Isis with our passengers—Thalia and her friend Jini, or BFF as she calls her—seated at the bow. Jini is a dark-haired girl, as thin as Thalia, and from what Thalia has told me, just as bookish.

As our picnic spot comes into sight, I tuck my oars and let Duckworth glide us to the river bank. He and I are soon settling back with our tobacco pipes as the girls put out the picnic they organized.

Actually, Jini will set out the picnic because Thaila has taken up my copy of Modern Greek Folktales and announces, “The Three Oranges,” and commences to reads aloud to us.

A child prince drops a golden apple from a balcony, smashing the cooking pot of an old woman below, who curses in anger that he shall marry no one but the girl bare in her shift. The queen makes quite a fuss over the strange curse, but the words were spoken and cannot be unspoken.

The prince grows to manhood, becomes king, and is hunting with two friends one day. They come to rest and refresh by a pond where grows a lemon tree. They each pluck a lemon, and later that day, after they have feasted, one of the friends takes his lemon and cuts it open.

Out jumps a lovely girl demanding water. They have no water and she dies. This happens a second time with the other friend. The young king gets some water before cutting into his lemon.

Out jumps a girl, fair as the sun, but dressed only in her shift. After giving her water, the king expresses his wish to marry her. She agrees but tells him to put her back in the lemon tree (her mother) and get her appropriate clothing.

When the queen hears the tale, she remembers the old woman’s curse, and for a week she refuses to allow her son to marry the lemon tree girl. In the meantime, an ogress comes to the lemon tree pond to fetch water, sees the reflection of the girl in the water, and thinks it is her own. The ogress decides she is far too beautiful to be doing humble chores, smashes the water pitcher, and goes home.

A second ogress sister comes for water to the same effect. The third and youngest sister does the same, but this time the girl speaks up and reveals the ogress’s foolishness. The ogress demands she come down and be devoured and to be quick about it since there is the kneading of bread to be done. The lemon tree girl tells her to go and do the kneading first, then come back and devour her. Later, the girl sends the ogress back to attend to the heating of the oven, and later still, to attend to the baking of the bread.

On the fourth return, there are no more tasks to be done. The ogress climbs into the tree to get the girl, who jumps into the pond and turns into a golden eel. At that moment, the king returns with clothing. The ogress tricks him into thinking her looks will be restored in time. Under that ruse, he marries her.

One day, the king sends a servant to fetch water from the lemon tree pond, and the golden eel slips into the pitcher. The king is delighted with this novelty, but the ogress knows what it is and insists on eating it and that every bone must be thrown into the sea. As the bones are taken away, one drops out by the garden gate. It grows into a splendid tree that, one day, tries to scratch out the ogress queen’s eyes.

The ogress has the tree cut down and taken away to be completely burnt. However, an old woman asks the workmen for the wood. When she splits open the trunk, she finds the girl and adopts her as a daughter.

The daughter proves skillful at embroidery and they sell her wares in the market. One day, the girl has the old woman buy her silk and satin, and she embroiders the story of her life into the cloth. She then asks the old woman to take it to the palace and offer it to the king to buy.

When the king sees it, he understands what is meant by it and invites the old woman and her daughter to dine with him the next day, during which the truth is revealed, the ogress sent away, and the king and the lemon tree girl are married.

Fariy Tale of the Month: August 2022 The
Three Oranges – Part Two

Sour Oranges

Jini cocks her head (rather charmingly) asking, “Why is the story called The Three Oranges when there are only lemons?”

“I don’t know,” Thalia scowls.

“Well,” I say, “I’ve run across such a thing before. In various translations of the Grimms’ The Juniper Tree, it is titled The Lemon Tree.”

I couldn’t help noticing Duckworth tapping away on his phone the moment Jini asked the question.

“According to Wiki,” he says, “sweet oranges were introduced into Europe from India in the fifteenth century. Before then there were only ‘sour oranges.’”

“Ah,” I say, “typically, fairy tales took their shape in the twelfth century. At the time this tale was probably being put together, the sour orange was the familiar fruit.”

“There certainly is enough broken crockery in this story,” Duckworth observes.

I take my paper plate and delve into the curried-chicken pasta, Jini’s contribution to the feast.

“The first to go was the cooking pot of the old woman,” Thalia muses. “The prince’s dropping of the golden apple is the start of the story.”

“Golden apple,” Jini repeats.

“Oh,” Thalia waves her hand in the air, “the Greek tales are full of golden apples. It’s their thing. I’m guessing it turned into the golden ball in Europe, which is kind of stupid. A golden ball is way too heavy to play with. Rubber is much better.

“But, as grandfather says,” she points to me, “fairy tales are not about logic.”

She is catching on.

Jini dishes herself some quinoa kale salad. “I’m horrified by the first two maidens jumping out of their lemons and dying.”

“That is disturbing,” I say, “but it makes the survival of the third that much more important.”

Jini contemplates that but does not appear happy with my excuse.

“There is that fairy-tale trope of the pattern of three,” Duckworth puts in, eyeing the Wiltshire ham. “There are the three lemon tree maidens, the three ogresses, the three times the girl tricks the ogress, and the three transformations to eel, to tree, and back to girl.”

“Yes!” I say. “The transformations are the heart of the story.”

“How’s that?” Thalia asks, nibbling a bit of Jarlsberg.

“I think the transformations from girl to eel, to tree, and back again to girl are more like reincarnations. As the lemon tree girl, she is tied to her mother, the tree itself. It appears she cannot easily leave her mother even when the ogress threatens to eat her. Only at the last moment does she leave her mother to become an eel, now confined to the water. She comes back into the king’s presence, which feels fated to happen, but the condition and time are not right. Another reincarnation is needed.

“One of the eel bones is transformed into a tree. We are not told what kind of tree, but it harkens back to her mother. Again, through the agency of the ogress, though not through her goodwill, the final reincarnation takes place. The girl is now, I believe, a real girl, able to control her fate with her art, that is to say, her talent at embroidery.”

Thalia and Jini applaud my analysis along with giggles. I accept it graciously and crunch down on the pumpernickel breadstick that I had been waving around like a baton during my exposition.

Fairy Tale of the Month: August 2022 The Three Oranges – Part Three

The Women

“I am wondering,” Duckworth says, who has given in to a goodly portion of the Wiltshire ham, “might the old woman at the start of the story be the same old woman at the end of the story?”

“No,” says Thalia. “Don’t think so.”

“Not quite the same old woman,” I suggest, “but an old woman nonetheless.”

“Meaning . . . ?” Duckworth prompts.

“Well, I see the old women, who populate many a fairy tale, as a type of character. They appear in the tale to perform a service to the story—sometimes as a helper, sometimes not—then disappear. She might give the hero a magic cloak for sharing food with her, then the story goes on without her.

“In our case, an old woman utters a strange curse that propels the rest of the story. Toward the end of the story, an old woman frees the girl from the tree’s trunk and adopts her. There is no reason to think it is the very same old woman, but it is significant that an old woman performs the task.”

“What sort of woman-types are there in the tales?” Jini questions, opening a container of strawberries.

“The heroine, certainly,” says Thalia, spearing a berry with her fork.

“Evil stepmother,” I add.

“A witch,” Duckworth offers. “Though, in our story, I think the ogress stands in for the witch.”

“Yeah, well,” Thalia knits her brow, “ogresses are kind of a Greek witch but more brutish than magical. Not quite the same.”

“Oh, the fairy godmother!” Jini says brightly.

“Then there is the witch queen,” Duckworth goes on in a measured tone.

“Wait,” Jini emanates despair, “aren’t there any ‘good mothers’ in the tales?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” I say. “But they are obliged to die at the start of the stories to make way for the evil stepmothers.”

Jini slaps her forehead.

“Not always,” Thalia says carefully. “What about the mother in the Goose Girl?”

“I’ll argue,” I say, loading my fork with a couple of berries at once, “she fills the old woman role. At the start, she tries to provide for her daughter but is unsuccessful, even disastrous, then she disappears and is of no support in her daughter’s time of need. Not unlike that of the old woman’s curse on the young prince.

“Note too,” I start to pontificate again, “there aren’t any elderly heroines. Heroines are always young.”

“And get married.” Thalia scowls a little.

“Usually.” I reach for more berries. “There are heroines like Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, but these are being paired with a brother to share in the limelight.”

Both Thalia and Jini look grumpy.

Hold on. Is that Melissa’s voice echoing in the back of my head? I think she has indoctrinated me. I’d best change the subject.

“Duckworth, you didn’t try the quinoa kale salad.”

“I’m not a salad person, more of a meat and potatoes fellow.”

Shock crosses Jini’s face. “Potato salad. I forgot to put out the potato salad!” She roots through the picnic basket.

Potato salad? I love potato salad. Do I have room in my stomach for potato salad?

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tales of the Month: July 2022 The Magic Box – Part One

July 29, 2022cjkiernan Leave a comment

That Box

It’s three in the morning. Sleep, on gossamer wings, flitters above but will not alight on me. Folk and Fairy Tales of Denmark lies in my lap. I cannot read more.

My eyes fall on a little wooden box cluttering one of my bookshelves. It’s been there long before my wife died. Before my daughter was born? I don’t remember where it came from.

Picking it up, I remember again that I don’t have a key. I shake it. I hear nothing. But is it really empty?

Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment.

My finding out what is in the box will alter what is in the box. There may be something in the box, but if I break it open, nothing will be there, and I will have destroyed the box. I need to get it out of my hands and out of sight before I let the cat out of the bag, to mix a metaphor. Well, it is three in the morning.

I am up the stairs and on the third-floor landing, when I hear, “Ohhh, you have the box.”

I should have known—actually, I do know—not to go to my third floor at night, but I am on a mission. A wizened old man sits on the windowsill at the end of the hall.

“Let me tell you the long story of that box.”

I approach the old man and offer him the item in question. Its brass fittings glow when he takes it into his hands and begins the tale.

A poor farmer, in exchange for his three infant daughters when they turn three years of age, is given a magic box by an old man. This magician explains that the farmer only needs to rap his knuckles on the box for it to give him whatever he wishes. When the farmer does so, a giant appears before him and grants the farmer’s wish for wealth.

He and his family live in great style for three years until the old man collects the three sisters. The mother and father soon die of grief, leaving behind their son, Hans the Daft. Through his inattention and the dishonesty of others, his inheritance is dissipated. He leaves with only an old barley-twist walking stick and a sheepskin coat, but in the pocket of the coat rests the box.

Discovering this boon and the giant/genie, he wishes for a violin, the music of which would make people dance for joy. In this way, Hans always found food, shelter, and good company.

One day, in his travels, he comes to a kingdom where lives a princess of such beauty that Hans falls in love. He takes the position of a shepherd, so that he might chance to gaze upon her every day.

However, as he herds the sheep, he plays his violin, and the sheep dance. The princess, highly amused by this entertainment, promises to marry Hans if he makes the sheep dance for her, a promise she never intended to keep.

The king, finding out her misbehavior, forces her to keep her promise, then banishes the couple from his castle. Hans simply has the giant build another castle, but this does not satisfy the princess. Hans consoles himself by going out hunting every day. During his absence, the princess entertains a young gentleman and they plot against Hans.

The princess pretends to warm up to Hans, to his delight. She wheedles out of him the secret of the box, which he gives into her keeping.

When Hans returns from his hunt the next day, the princess and her lover have purloined the box and transported the castle to be hung by four golden chains over the middle of the Red Sea, leaving Hans to wander aimlessly and homeless.

After many months, Hans blunders into the presence of one of his lost sisters, who takes him to the cave of her bear-husband, an enchanted prince. Hans hears the story that the old man, who had given his father the box, intended to keep the sisters as his wives, but they were discovered by three prince brothers and rescued. In revenge, the old magician cursed the brothers with the animal forms of a bear, an eagle, and a fish.

The brothers give Hans tokens and aid. He recovers his castle and the box and destroys the princess and her lover. Hans returns to his old ways of a daily hunt and for three years forgets about his sisters and his brothers-in-law.

Upon rediscovering the tokens given to him, he calls up the giant to take him to the Waters of Life, where sits the queen/mother of the princes in the form of a hag with a white cat in her lap—the queen’s daughter. By placing the tokens in the hag’s lap, he breaks the curse and all are restored to their human form.

Hans gets to marry the queen’s daughter, and in a last act of grace—and at the giant’s request—he releases the genie from his curse and existence by throwing the box into the flames.

The old man hands the box back to me, and the glow of the brass fittings fades.

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2022 The Magic Box – Part Two

But Wait

“But wait,” I say, “how can this be the box if it was burnt up?”

“It is burnt up every time the story is told,” is the reply. “Over and over again. Yes, that very box you hold was destroyed just now when I told you the story.”

I try to wrap my head around that thought, when a voice says, “That’s fine and all, but what is your moral?”

I look down to see Johannes padding up to us. I know he likes to prowl at night, but I didn’t know he followed me up the stairs. A little to my surprise, the fairy rides on the tip of his tail. She flutters up to the box, settling there, setting the brass fittings aglow again.

“Moral?” protests the magician. “I am not a moral being.”

Johannes scoffs, “Although you are of fairy-tale material, you are mortal, unlike the fairy and me. All mortals are intertwined with their morals. While we immortals are immoral, mortals have morals. Only the letter ‘T’ separates one from the other. I ask you again, what is the moral of your story?”

“I don’t know that I have one.” The old man crosses his arms on his chest.

“Well then, let’s find it,” Johannes instructs. “The farmer exchanges wealth for his own flesh and blood. After a short stint of luxury, this exchange proves fatal. Certainly there is a moral here, but the story is far from over.”

The old man nods in agreement, and Johannes continues.

“The moral will revolve around Hans the Daft. He is not a person of promising character. Through his indifference, all is lost to him but for a walking stick, a coat, and the box.

“On the other paw,” Johannes gestures, “his wealth came at the cost of his sisters. Should he feel much attachment to it?”

Again, the old man nods and continues to listen.

“When he finds the box, rather than following his father’s lead, he wishes for something much more modest if a little magical—the violin. In that satisfying little world of music and dance that he created for himself, he may have stayed if he had not fallen into the morass of love at first sight.

“Here, Hans’s daftness reasserted itself. As foolishly as his father wished for wealth, he wished for the princess to be his bride. Like his father, he gets his wish but to no benefit. Even worse than his father, he is cuckolded and goes through an emotional death.”

The old man’s eyebrows rise, as so do mine, as we see Johannes’s direction.

“Hans is reborn when he stumbles upon one of his lost sisters, and a family relationship is reestablished. Not to Hans’s credit, he participates in revenge, causing the death of the princess and her lover, then descends into three years of forgetfulness.

“To his credit, emerging from his doldrums, perhaps necessary for him to incorporate all of his experiences, he acts immediately to end the curse upon his family and release the giant from his bondage.”

“Thank you,’ says the magician. “You have put Hans into a different light than I would have ever allowed myself to think.”

“And now,” says Johannes, “the moral.”

The old man thinks. “Be careful what you wish for?”

“I think we can move beyond the ‘trite but true.’ Let me suggest something more along the lines of, ‘The struggle toward knowing one’s self might be worth the effort.’”

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2022 The Magic Box – Part Three

Magical Talk

Now the fairy pipes up. I love the sound of her voice; it’s that of tinkling bells.

“Oh wise and evil one, how came you by a genie in a box; should not his prison be a lamp?”

The magician sniffs. “Not at all. A genie’s spirit can be captured in almost anything. However, most common are rings and brass vessels. King Solomon, the first to control the jinn—as some call them—used brass vessels with his seal over its mouth. Whatever the item,” the old man gestures to the box, “it’s Solomon’s Seal that retains the spirit.”

I see on the box’s lid glowing brass filigree embedded in the wood in the shape of a pentagram.

“When God created beings with language, he chose first to create the heavenly host, some of whom, after the war in heaven, became the fallen angels. Next came us who he formed out of earth. Last—and not recorded in the Bible, strangely—were the jinn whom he created from fire, a smokeless flame to be specific.

“While the jinn were granted much magical power and long life, they are not as substantial as man, being made of fire and not earth. Therefore, they are more easily imprisoned. It does not take a jail to hold them.

“As for the origin of my genie trapped in a box, I cannot tell you. I come from a great line of magicians and inherited the box. I suspect one of my ancestors had the cleverness to trap a genie. However, my father warned me to never use the power of the box. Whatever the genie would grant would lead to misfortune.

“Oh, I was tempted. Certainly, I would not fall for the tricks of the genie. Instead, I traded it for something else that I wanted, taking the temptation out of my hands and passing it to another’s.

“I see now, the genie played no tricks, rather we were all in the hands of fate that dealt out to us the grace or punishment it felt we deserved by whatever inscrutable scale of justice it held.”

“Answer also,” rings the fairy’s voice, “how chose you the form of your revenge on the princes?”

“I was angry, yet I saw the sisters’ affections were never to be mine. Although I had raised them from the age of three, with a firm hand, I had not counted on the rebelliousness of youth.

“Nonetheless, punishment was in order. I could not bring myself to harm the sisters. Instead, I chose to turn the princes into beasts, one of the earth, one of the air, and one of the water. There are no beasts of fire, except, perhaps, the salamander, but I am doubtful of those claims. Only the jinn are of that nature.

“Nor could my magic be complete. The princes returned to their human form every day for a few hours and there needed to be a way to break the spell. For every magical curse there must be a benefit, that is, a way out of the spell. We magicians can only push the natural order of things so far before it does a pendulum swing back again.

“Ah, speaking of the pendulum swing.” The magician holds up his hand, which becomes transparent as he fades. “The story calls me back again into itself. I enjoyed our conversation. I don’t get out very often.”

With no more to be said, Johannes turns and pads back down the hallway with the fairy again riding on the tip of his tail. They leave me standing alone with the box still in my hands.

Should . . . should I tap on it?

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: May 2022 The Seven Ravens – Part One

May 30, 2022cjkiernan 2 Comments

The Smokiest

Our tobacco smoke has rendered Augustus a dim outline of a person sitting in a comfy chair. I know in his hands is Jack Zipes’ The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, through which he pages briskly.

“Well, I know the story The Seven Ravens is in here.” He turns to the table of contents. “Ahh, The Three Ravens. In the Grimms’ first version, the story is different. The Grimms did that you know,” Augustus says, looking up, then returns his eyes to the book.

“If I remember,” he continues, “in The Seven Ravens, the father curses his seven sons, who failed to return home with baptismal water for the infant daughter, turning them into ravens. In this earlier version, there are three brothers playing cards on Sunday and they are cursed by their mother for their lack of morality.”

He peruses the pages. “That appears to be the major change between the two versions. I wonder why the Grimms—probably Wilhelm—felt the need to make this alteration.”

Augustus relates the tale.

The sister of the raven brothers decides to go find and rescue them. She takes little with her other than a stool to rest upon, traveling to the end of the world. She flees from the sun and the moon, both known to eat little children. She finds the stars—each sitting on its own little stool—to be friendly.

The Evening Star gives her a chicken drumstick bone (in The Three Ravens it’s a little gammy leg) telling her she will need it to open the locked door to the Glass Mountain where her raven brothers now live.

Although she wrapped the bone in a cloth, when she gets to the doorway to the Glass Mountain the bone has vanished. Each of the two versions declare she lost the bone. Taking a knife, she cuts off her little finger, using it as the key to unlock the door.

She is greeted by a dwarf, who tells her the raven lords have not yet returned home for the day. Places are set at a table for the ravens’ meal. She eats a little from each plate and sips a little from each mug, dropping a ring that she knows the brothers will recognize into the mug of the youngest brother.

When the ravens arrive, they declare someone has eaten from their plates and drunk from their mugs. When the youngest finds the ring, the sister reveals herself, the brothers are restored to their human shape, and all return home.

“Hmmm,” I say, “that last bit sounds like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In this case, the three ravens from the first version.”

“That is tempting, but I will discredit your notion immediately.”

I hear a smile in his voice, though I can’t really see his expression through the haze.

He continues. “Goldilocks and the Three Bears is pretty much an early nineteenth century invention, credited to the poet Robert Southey. However, his version has a nasty, dirty old woman invade the cottage of three ‘bachelor’ bears of different sizes. Another version, by Eleanor Mure, improved upon the punishment of the little old woman by having her impaled upon the steeple of St Paul’s Cathedral.

A decade or so later, Joseph Cundall did his version of the tale, only he changed the old woman into a young girl named Silverhair. After that, multiple authors played with the tale until a consensus was reached.

“There are similar stories that might be older than Goldilocks, such as Scrapefoot, about a fox intruding into the home of three bears.

“I’ll suggest Goldilocks and the ravens drew upon earlier sources, not the ravens drawing on Goldilocks.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: May 2022 The Seven Ravens – Part Two

Dense Smoke

I take a moment to tamp and relight my pipe, sending out a great plume of smoke.

“Well then, the next image to strike me is the sister, traveling to find her brothers, carrying a stool.”

“Yes,” Augustus hesitates. “That is an odd detail, but the fairy tales are filled with such things.”

“I note,” pursuing my point,” the stars are all sitting on stools.”

“True,” says Augustus. “And the significance you put upon that?”

“It does put her in the company of the stars. I am thinking back to The Twelve Brothers and the sister born with a star on her forehead.”

“Ahh, yes,” Augustus puffs harder on his pipe in concentration. “Let’s consider the through-line of stars in fairy tales. I’m not going to call the stars a motif but a reoccurring element.”

“What comes to my mind,” I say, “is the fairy-tale bride looking for her lost husband, going to the celestial bodies, who can’t answer her question, but give her useful gifts.”

“Yes, however,” Augustus puffs harder, “the celestial bodies in this tale are chancier. Only the stars are helpful.”

“The Evening Star,” I say, “gives her a bone for a key.”

“Which she loses,” Augustus finishes.

“That bothers me,” I return. “Both stories—the three and the seven ravens—are a little accusatory. She carefully wrapped it in a cloth, but still it vanishes. Might there be another force at play?”

Augustus considers a moment. “None but the story itself that requires her to make a sacrifice of some sort. The hero or heroine giving up some of their flesh is a common enough thing.

“But,” Augustus raises a finger, “back to the stars. We have characters with stars on their foreheads, stars as magical helpers, and also heroes and heroines who turn into stars. I am thinking of the Greek story The Little Boy and His Elder Sister, where the protagonists escape their fate by becoming the Star of Dawn and the Pleiad.”

Relighting my pipe again, I question, “Are the three items really related, other than having to do with stars? I want to think so, but the first is a token, the second a helper, and the third a transformation. Can they be said to reflect on each other?”

I realize Augustus is not listening to me. “Asters,” he says, leaving the room again and shortly returning with a few more volumes, the titles of which I cannot read through our dense tobacco smoke.

“In The Six Swans, the heroine must sew six shirts out of aster flowers. The word ‘aster’ in Greek means ‘star.’”

“In that case,” I speculate, “we might be able to make connections among brothers, sisters, birds and stars outside of these stories. Are there any bird constellations with mythic connections?”

“My thoughts exactly.” Augustus picks up another book. After a bit he says, “Well, here is the Raven Constellation. Actually, the Corvus Constellation. The raven was Apollo’s bird, whom he set to watch over one of his lovers. The raven watched as she fell in love with someone else and said nothing to Apollo until it was too late. Apollo’s cursing scorched the raven’s feathers forever.”

“Not,” I suggest, “the origin of our tale.”

Augustus searches on.

Fairy Tale of the Month: May 2022 The Seven Ravens – Part Three

Holy Smokes

“Next up in our constellation search is the Swan or Cygnus. It appears we have a selection of myths relating to this group of stars. Notable is Zeus coming to Leda in the form of a swan in order to seduce her.”

“Does not sound promising,” I say.

“Well, Leda does have two sets of twins, one set by Zeus, which is Pollux and Helen (as in Helen of Troy), and Castor and Clytemnestra by her mortal husband. Castor and Pollux become great friends, but if I recall my Iliad this dysfunctional family has more to do with murder than sibling support.”

“What are our other choices?” I realize my pipe has gone out again as Augustus scans the tome in his hands.

“Well, there are associations with Orpheus; Cycnus, son of Poseidon; and Cycnus, son of Ares. More prominent is the story of the friendship between the immortal Cycnus and the mortal Phaeton. In a race across the sky, they come too close to the sun and Phaeton perishes, falling into the river Eridanus. Cycnus asks Zeus to turn him into a swan—a mortal creature—so that he can dive into the river to retrieve his friend’s body for burial.”

“No sister retrieving her brothers?” I ask the wall of smoke. I cannot see Augustus anymore.

“No,” comes a disembodied voice from the gloom. “I recall Electra, who sacrifices to give her brother a decent burial, but that is not the same as a sister seeking her brothers. I think our search for a mythic origin has failed.”

“We haven’t addressed the Glass Mountain,” I say. “Is there a hint there?”

“Of the three stories we are considering, the ‘Six,’ the ‘Twelve,’ and the ‘Seven,’ only the last one has the Glass Mountain. In the ‘Six,’ the brothers live in a house of thieves; in the “Twelve,’ an enchanted cottage.”

I knit my brow. “These three stories have a sister searching for her brothers and end the same with the brothers being restored after becoming birds, but the details beyond that vary greatly.”

“Let us do another comparison,” Augustus instructs. “In the ‘Seven,’ the brothers turn into ravens and fly away. In the ‘Six,’ it is not until the evil queen finds them are the brothers transformed. In the ‘Twelve,’ the brothers flee their father and it is not until their sister finds them and picks the lilies are they changed.

“Further, in the ‘Seven,’ the sister sacrifices a little finger in order to get into the Glass Mountain.”

I interrupt Augustus. “I couldn’t help noting she does not climb the Glass Mountain but enters it like a house.”

“True, true,” Augustus continues. “In the ‘Six,’ she must remain silent for six years and sew six shirts of asters. In the ‘Twelve,’ she must remain silent for seven years but without the burden of sewing. Nothing like the silent treatment or the marriage to kings out hunting comes up in the ‘Seven.’ The sister simply appears and the spell is broken.”

“I must conclude,” I say, “these three stories are obviously the same story, but are so different in detail any one of them does not appear to be drawing off of one of the others. Yet we cannot find a common mythic origin.”

Augustus and I hear a commotion from the shop.

“That’s a noisy customer!” says Augustus.

I see him pass in front of me. In the archway between the testing room and the shop, Augustus bumps into a fireman clutching the end of a canvas hose with a shiny brass nozzle pointed in our direction.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: April 2022 The Twelve Brothers – Part One

April 27, 2022cjkiernan Leave a comment

A Smoke

The bell over Augustus’s door to the tobacco shop rings as I enter. What an inviting sound. It has been a while since I visited to improve my stock of the good leaf.

“Ho, stranger,” Augustus acknowledges my entry.

“Good to see you again,” I say.

“Let me suppose,” he says as he reaches for a canister, “you’ll be wanting some Elfish Gold, Angel’s Glory, and a bit of Fairies’ Delight?”

“That will do nicely, along with some Black Dwarf. Have you a new blend to test?”

“I have been messing with Raven Black.”

We are soon in the testing room settling into our comfy chairs and tamping our pipes.

“And what,” Augustus says between puffs, “fairy-tale conundrum have you brought with you today?”

“I’ve been knitting my brow over The Twelve Brothers.”

“I’ve read that one, certainly, but I keep conflating it with The Six Swans. Sort it out for me.”

“It is well you should mix them up. The difference between the two is really what I’d like to talk about.”

A king has twelve sons but declares he will put them to death in preference for a daughter. The queen, when pregnant, confesses to the youngest son, Benjamin, what the king plans and shows him the twelve coffins that have been constructed.

The twelve brothers hide in the woods and wait for a signal from their mother: a white flag if it is a boy and a red for a girl. The red flag is raised and the brothers flee. They find a cottage in the forest that, unbeknownst to them, is enchanted. Here they live for ten years, Benjamin keeping house while the elder brothers go hunting.

By then, their sister, who was born with a star on her forehead, has grown into a beautiful, young lady. One day she finds her brothers’ shirts and asks her mother, the queen, about them. The story is revealed, and the princess goes off to find her brothers. They are reunited and live together happily.

One day, in the bewitched cottage’s garden, she picks twelve lilies—also called students—one for each brother. When she does, the brothers are turned into ravens that fly away, and the cottage and garden disappear. Beside her stands an old woman who scolds her for picking the lilies. To reclaim her brothers, she must now not speak nor laugh for seven years.

She climbs a tree and sits there spinning until discovered by the greyhound of a king who is out hunting. The princess, with a nod, consents to marry the king.

The king’s mother dislikes her and spreads false rumors until the king is obliged to have her burnt at the stake. The fire is lit just as the seven years expire. Twelve ravens fly in, turning into their human form as they touch the ground, and rescue her.

All live in happiness after the evil mother is put into a barrel of boiling oil and poisonous snakes.

“A barrel of boiling oil and poisonous snakes,” Augustus declares. “Really. I’d forgotten that. The Grimms outdid themselves on that bit of punishment.”

“Yes, rather,” I agree.

Fairy Tale of the Month: April 2022 The Twelve Brothers – Part Two

More Smoke

“Let’s compare the ‘Twelve’ and the ‘Six’ blow by blow,” Augustus suggests as he rises and leaves the testing room but soon returns with his well-thumbed copy of Jack Zipes’ The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.

“My,” I say, “your copy looks as battered as Thalia’s.”

Augustus smiles and pages through the volume, putting in bookmarkers at the start of the two stories.

“Now then,” he starts the proceedings, “in the ‘Twelve’ the king proposes to murder his twelve sons for the sake of a daughter.”

“That sounds terribly un-German to me,” I say.

“It’s terribly un-any-culture that I know of,” Augustus responds. He pages to the back of his book to the notes. “The Grimms cite Julia and Charlotte Ramus as the source for the ‘Twelve’ and mention Basile’s The Seven Little Doves.”

He pages some more. “For the ‘Six’ they cite their source as Henriette Dorothea Wild—whom Wilhelm married by the way—but refer back to Greco-Roman myths, because of the swans I’ll guess.

“Now, if I recall, Julia and Charlotte Ramus were daughters of a French pastor. Since their last names never changed, I am guessing they never married and held a more feminine-centric view on life. I suggest the murder plot of the boys was the sisters’ invention. The Basile tale that the Grimms referred to didn’t have that element but did have the baby girl/baby boy signal device.”

“Very well,” I say. “The beginning of the ‘Six’ has a king out hunting who is waylaid by a witch who forces him to marry her daughter. Fearing that the new queen will harm them, the king hides his six sons and daughter by his former wife. Quite a different start of the story from the ‘Twelve.’”

“Oh yes, the magical ball of string,” Augustus grins. “The children are so well hidden, even the king cannot find them without the ball of string he throws on the ground and then follows it as it unrolls to the hiding place. A reverse of Ariadne’s thread.”

“However,” I say, tamping my pipe, “the evil queen discovers the ruse and purloins the ball of string. She throws white, silk shirts with a magical spell woven into them onto the six brothers, turning them into swans.”

“She didn’t know about the daughter,” Augustus recalls.

“Correct.”

“But listen,” he says. “Shirts appear in both stories but are used for entirely different purposes. In the ‘Twelve’ the shirts are not magical, but rather used as a device for discovery. In the ‘Six’ the sister has to knit shirts made of aster flowers while remaining silent for six years to reverse the spell.”

“Hmmm,” I contemplate. “In the ‘Six’ the evil queen turns the brothers into swans. In the ‘Twelve’ it is when the sister picks the lilies that the brothers are transformed.”

“And yet,” Augustus points his pipe at me, “it is the point in both stories that the sister falls silent in order to break the spell, which,” Augustus refers back to his book, “is Aarne-Thompson tale type 451.”

“Oh,” I say, “it has its own category.”

“Yes indeed.”

“Let me backtrack for a moment.” My pipe has gone out, and I refill it while saying, “What about the star on the princess’s forehead in the ‘Twelve?’”

“That is only a confirmation that she is of royalty and is special. I’ve come across it in such stories as Princess Belle-Etoile, which I rather like, but it is French, florid, and goes on a bit too long.”

“Ah, the French do that,” I agree.

Fairy Tale of the Month: April 2022 The Twelve Brothers – Part Three

Very Smoky

“Alright then,” Augustus collects his thoughts. “We now have both princesses up in their respective trees, one spinning and the other knitting asters, both about to be discovered by a king out hunting. The stories at this point start to run parallel.”

“Let me interject a ‘however,’” I say through our tobacco fog. “Two points jump to my mind. First, the ‘Six’ starts with a king out hunting who returns with a wife. Halfway through the story another king is out hunting and returns with a wife. Talk about parallel.

“Second, the princess in the ‘Six’ is profitably engaged knitting aster-flower shirts. The princess in the ‘Twelve’ is spinning to no particular end. What is that about?”

“First,” echoes Augustus, “the spinning must be with a drop spindle. The image of a spinning wheel up a tree is too much to bear.

“Second, I suspect this princess spinning is a vestige of the magical shirts being dropped or forgotten from the story by a teller unknown.”

“I’ll accept that as possible. So, the shirts come and go, but the years of silence remain. I find that an interesting challenge for our heroines.”

“A test of patience and will as opposed to a test of strength and courage usually reserved for heroes,” Augustus acknowledges. “The next parallel in the stories is the king’s evil, disagreeable mother, who is dead set against the silent beauty.”

I re-tamp my pipe. “It doesn’t burn well.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed.” Disappointment edges his remark.

“In both stories it is a mother,” I point out, “not the usual evil stepmother who is the villain. The ‘Twelve’ is vague about the mother’s accusations, but the ‘Six’ is detailed about the mother stealing the newborn children, smearing the heroine’s mouth with blood, and accusing her of eating her own children.”

“Rather repulsive,” Augustus picks up the thread, “The princess is condemned to be burnt at the stake, a usual punishment for witches. Dramatically, the burning and the end of the many years’ wait coincide. The brothers return in their bird form to be immediately transformed into their human shape and rescue their sister. Again, parallel.”

“Also parallel,” I conclude, “the evil mother is killed in the princess’s stead. In the ‘Six’ she takes the princess’s place at the stake. In the ‘Twelve’, well, we know what happens. Might that be the origin of ‘snake oil’?”

“Don’t be silly,” Augustus snaps. “I believe we are suggesting that these are obviously the same story. A princess goes out to find her brothers, she must endure years of silence, marries a king, is threatened by the king’s mother, is at the point of death when her efforts pay off, the brothers are restored, and the evil mother pays with her life.

“And yet the story details are very different: a star on the forehead, a magical ball of string, aster-flower shirts, swans, ravens—Oh, ravens!” Augustus slaps his brow.

“What?”

“The Seven Ravens. We must talk about that Grimm story as well.”

This conversation is not done.

(To be continued.)

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: March 2022 Fair, Brown, and Trembling – Part One

March 31, 2022cjkiernan Leave a comment

A Trade

Melissa and I wait patiently by the pond in the Magic Forest. I am feeling sorry for Melissa and her hopeless search for her own gateway into this place. She has spent much time roaming through public spaces looking for the entrance she saw in her dream. Ultima advised us before, and we hope she can again.

“Ah,” says Melissa pleasantly, “there she is.”

Ultima comes down the path waving her hand vigorously. “Hello, hello, so good to see you. I felt the summons.” She takes her seat next to us on one of the stones that surround the pond.

“I can see, my dear,” she says, “a question burning your eyes out.”

“Yes, there is,” Melissa confesses.

“What will you trade for an answer?”

Melissa and I have become familiar with this tradition of her world. Nothing is freely given, always traded to keep things in balance.

Melissa is prepared. “A story.”

Ultima clasps her hands in delight, leaning forward to listen.

“Since it is still March,” Melissa begins, “and we are not far past Saint Patrick’s Day, I will tell an Irish story. Do you have Saint Patrick in your world?”

“Oh yes, Saint Patrick of the Snakes.”

“Snakes?” Melissa echoes.

“Oh yes, Saint Patrick and his dragon were great friends to the serpents.”

“Riiiight,” Melissa replies with hesitance. “Handled a little differently at our end, but never mind. The story is Fair, Brown, and Trembling.”

King Aedh Cúrucha had three daughters, Fair, Brown, and Trembling. Trembling was the youngest and prettiest. Her elder sisters consigned her to all the housework and would not let her go to church, lest she bemarried before them.

A prince appeared to be in love with Fair. However, one Sunday, when Fair and Brown were at church, the old henwife came to Trembling and through her magic—a cloak of darkness—Trembling goes to church magnificently dressed, including a honey-bird sitting on her right shoulder, a honey-finger on her left, and mounted on a fine mare with a songbird between its ears. However, she cannot go into the church but must remain in the churchyard and ride away the moment mass is ended. She is, nonetheless, noticed by all.

This happens three times. Once she is dressed in white, then black, and then red. She and her horse are resplendent in elaborate fittings. But no one knows who the mysterious lady is, not even her sisters. Yet, she wins the hearts of every male, including the prince.

On her third visit to the church, the prince grabs her shoe before she flees. The shoe makes the rounds to find its owner until it comes to Trembling, whom her sisters tried to lock away in a closet.

She marries the prince, but not before he has to battle with other princes to keep his claim on her, and they have a son. Fair comes to care for Trembling but, instead, throws her sister into the sea and tries to pretend she is Trembling, they looking similar.

The prince is suspicious and places a sword between them in bed, declaring if she is Trembling, the sword will be warm by morning, if not it will be cold. Cold it is.

Meanwhile, Trembling has been swallowed by a whale who regurgitates her the next day on the shore, where the lad who herds the prince’s cattle finds her. She explains she is under a spell of the whale and that the prince must come within the next three days and shoot the whale with a silver bullet to break the spell.

The lad goes to tell the prince but is served a drink of forgetfulness by Fair. However, the next night the lad is successful, and the prince kills the whale in time to save Trembling from the spell.

The lad is rewarded by being educated and married to their first daughter. Fair is punished by being put into a barrel and cast out to sea. This cruel punishment is tempered by having ample provisions in the barrel to last her for seven years. How there is room in the barrel for her is not explained.

Trembling and the prince live happily ever after, having fourteen children in all.

“Good heavens,” exclaims Ultima. “We must talk about this.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: March 2022 Fair, Brown, and Trembling – Part Two

Odd Names

“Let’s start with the title.” Ultima scratches her head. “What sort of names are those?”

“First, I must tell you,” Melissa raises a finger, “the collector of this tale was Jeremiah Curtin, an American born of Irish parents, which gave him his interest in these tales. He had a varied career as an ethnographer, folklorist, and translator, fluent in a number of languages but not Gaelic. Nonetheless, he felt strongly that the Irish tales would be closest to their origins in that language. Therefore, he used translators. This is the filter through which the details of our story come to us.”

“I’ll guess you’re right,” Ultima frowns. “But, still, those aren’t proper names. The names really sound like the description of something.

“The first half is a lot like Cinderella, and in that case the story is called Cinderella after the heroine. Why isn’t this story called Trembling?Brown is hardly in the story. What is her name doing in the title? No, no, I say it’s a description of something.”

“Well, then,” Melissa takes up the point, “what is fair to look upon, is the color brown, and trembles?”

We look at each other in silence.

“A riddle for another day perhaps,” Ultima goes on. “What on earth is a honey-bird and a honey-finger?”

Melissa sighs. “I am guessing that since these are given to Trembling by the henwife, who puts a songbird between the mare’s ears, they are both birds and not things made of honey. Or was the implication in Gaelic quite something different? Curtin gives us no indication despite being an ethnographer.”

“Now,” Ultima squints as she asks this, “tell me again what Trembling wore on the third Sunday.”

“Well, it was the ultimate. She asked the henwife for a dress of rose red from the waist down and snow white from the waist up, with a cape of green; a hat with red, white, and green feathers; and shoes with red toes, white middle, and back and heels of green. The henwife also clips a few hairs from Trembling’s head, turning all her hair into tumbling golden locks.”

“OK, forget the hair. Blondes get too much credit in these tales, but the colors of her dress almost sound like the Irish tricolor, except it should be green, white, and orange. Tell me again about the horse.”

“The horse is white with blue and gold diamond shapes all over its body.”

“Now, doesn’t that sound like a heraldic pattern? There is some sort of inside joke going on in this story. I just feel it.”

“I like that notion,” I say. “It would explain a lot.”

“Blue and gold is a popular heraldic combination.” Melissa temples her fingers. “Diamond patterns are also common. This is an interesting thought.”

“There is also a lot of white, red, and black,” I suggest. “The colors of the alchemist.”

“I won’t buy that,’ Melissa considers. “The tale is clouded by too many other colors for that to be a theme. There is a green cape, blue diamonds, gold and silver bridles and saddles.

“What I find also perplexing in this perplexing story is the cloak of darkness that the henwife uses to create the gowns, mares, and accoutrements. I question the naming of things in this story like Ultima does. Why is it not a “wishing cloak?” Why a cloak of darkness, giving the henwife, who plays the role of a fairy godmother, a more ominous feel?”

Ominous indeed. This tale is more complex than it first appears.

Fairy Tale of the Month: March 2022 Fair, Brown, and Trembling – Part Three

The Henwife

“About that henwife,” Ultima’s frown continues, “with that cloak she could have set herself up as a sorceress. What’s going on there?”

“In my observations,” Melissa collects her thoughts, “there are four types of women with magical powers in the tales. I’ll start with the ‘old woman in the wood.’ This is a woman with wisdom, insight, prophesy, and magic devices, which she freely hands out to deserving heroes and heroines. Closely related, and I put them in the same category, is the spaewife, who is a member of the community, a force for good, and a healer with knowledge of magic.

“Next follows our henwife. As the name suggests, her primary job is attending to fowl. That is thought to be a position particularly low in social status, but one that carries, for no obvious reason, knowledge of magic, which she practices as she sees fit. Like the spaewife, she is a member of the community.

“The witch is defined as the embodiment of evil. She appears, like the henwife, to be poor, although she may horde wealth she does not use—as a dragon does—and, more importantly, is a recluse. She has no husband, although occasionally she has a daughter, who generally helps or warns the hero or heroine against her mother.

“What they have in common is being old women. There simply isn’t a young, attractive witch with whom a prince may fall in love. That is true until we come to the fourth type of woman with magical powers, which is the evil queen, who is allowed to be beautiful, at least in appearance. She may also be described as a sorceress. In the tales, sorceresses are always of noble blood, which is why a henwife could never parlay her way into being above her station.

“In the spirit of full disclosure, the tales consider that all royalty are familiar with magic. Even the downtrodden princess in The Goose Girl could raise a wind to blow off the cap of her companion so that he had to go chase after it and leave her to braid up her hair without his pestering.

“However, it was only the evil queen who used her powers maliciously.

“That they are all poor, with the notable exception of royalty, had, I feel, to do with the medieval culture’s low estimate of women. They were, after all, the daughters of Eve. The ills of man come to rest on their conscience; they are not able to make good, high moral decisions. Poor in spirit, poor in condition.”

“Nonsense!” objects Ultima.

“”Well, of course, but that was their world.” I hear a sigh in Melissa’s tone.

“And the royal balls? What happened to the royal balls in this story? There ought to be some dancing.”

Melissa smiles broadly. “That’s a French thing. Among the Celts it is the fairies that do the dancing. The Celts feasted and went to church. The poor did not get to feast that much, but everyone, from high to low, went to church. That was the one level playing field in the culture. To the church, they were all sinners in the eyes of God. Among the parishioners, it was the time to check in on every member of the community, supplying gossip for the rest of the week.”

Ultima clasps her hands.

Now,” says Melissa, “my question to you. Where, or how, can I find my door?”

Ultima looks at Melissa blankly.

“I’ve looked,” Melissa continues, “everywhere I imagine it might be. I know what it should appear to be, but I have not found it.”

“Oh, my dear,” Ultima puts a hand to her lips, “you can’t find your door. It’s your door. Put it wherever you want it to be.”

I’ve known Melissa for a good long time, but I’d never seen her do a face-plant before.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month

Reflections and Delusions

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