I have a book of English fairy tales. Aptly enough it's called English Fairy Tales. How I got it I'm not 100% sure, but it's never been new while I've owned it so it seems like book swap or library sale is the most likely route. The most notable thing about it is probably the illustrations by Arthur Rackham. These are very simple line drawings, not the detailed paintings he's best known for, but Rackham delivered regardless of the format.
I reread a few today, including this one. That final "and they lived happily ever after," traditional as it is, seems especially rich in this context. I'm pretty sure the girl would have some ongoing trust issues, at the very least.
I reread a few today, including this one. That final "and they lived happily ever after," traditional as it is, seems especially rich in this context. I'm pretty sure the girl would have some ongoing trust issues, at the very least.
2 comments:
That was a very good story of its type and I can well understand how the girl might not be interested in maintaining cordial relations with her family after the experience. I wonder what happened to the other sister since she wasn't among the family members who came to watch the execution?
While we know old fairy tales were often supposed to teach moral behaviour to those who listened to them, and it's very unlikely they were composed just for children, it's often very difficult to determine what that lesson might be. In this case I guess it was don't toss your special golden ball just anywhere.
The fairy tales that made their way to print were almost always greatly softened because by then they were being read to children. Nevertheless, most never went so far as the Disney versions. I remember first reading a lot of the early ones as they'd originally been transcribed by the Brothers Grimm (also Hans Christian Anderson and Aesop) in the 17th volume of the Five Foot Collection of Classics my parents had been given.
They were mostly very strange indeed. For instance, Sleeping Beauty was raped by the Prince, gave birth to twins while she was still asleep and it was one of the babies sucking her thumb that woke her. What a surprise that must have been. Another was the Cinderella story that ended with her horrible stepsisters putting on the slipper by one cutting off a toe and the other her heel. The Prince was alerted to the mutilations by doves who later on plucked both girl's eyes out. Hard lessons, eh?
Thinking about those stories leads me to recall several others that you may have read yourself by now. It's neat you have a book with similar stories illustrated by Arthur Rackham. He really was one of the great Golden Age book illustrators and it's easy to see in his renditions some of those much darker aspects of the tales.
The other sister was the lucky one, or seemed to be. But you're right, since she didn't show up for the execution she fades out of sight. You could call it incompleteness or you could call it economy of storytelling. In any case it seems to be a common feature of fairy tales as they've been passed down to us.
The lesson of being careful where you throw your golden ball is pretty remote to us. Guess maybe it meant more to the British people of the time? I guess if there's one way she lucked out it's that it's not a Grimm fairy tale. Those German folktales did contain some cruel twists of fate.
Disney of course is famous for softening the fairy tales they adapted. In a charming way, in some cases. (And it's odd to note that the company wasn't even close to being in the imperial phase it is now as recently as the mid-1980s.) Of course a lot of the audiences were used to some level of softening. I wonder how many adults going to these movies were familiar with the originals.
Being a prince did mean that you could have someone's eyes put out if they really annoyed you. Kind of unusual to have doves do it, though.
It's nearly impossible to mistake Rackham's work with anyone else's. Even working on a small scale he's very distinctive.
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