I read several of Lang's Fairy Books when I was little, and I can remember seeing a whole set of the various colored books on a bookstore shelf, and wishing that I could have them all. Buying them all was expensive, and I never remembered to try the library and look them up. However now all of them are free ebooks. Handy thing, that. [Free Gutenberg ebook link for this one.]One thing I've always loved about fairy tales is that, when an odd being comes to you repeatedly in a dream, it's perfectly ok to listen to them and do whatever they say. It's not at all a sign that you're perhaps going insane, or taking too much [insert whatever might cause people to hallucinate here]. Also people don't often get burned at the stake for witchcraft in fairy tales, which you'd think would happen quite a bit, given the history of people's reaction to magical type happenings.Random ponderings about the stories (and there are spoilers so beware):The Twelve Dancing Princesses (one of my favorites)- That the hero is a "cow-boy" and not a cow herder makes it hard for me not to giggle. Having always had Texans in the family my brain translates cowboy with a certain mental image. Except that everyone calls him Star Gazer, which my brain feels is very 1960s Psychedelia-ish. - Hero is a cow-boy, yet also feels dismissive of the village girls: "The fact was he thought them very ugly, with their sun-burnt necks, their great red hands, their coarse petticoats and their wooden shoes. He had heard that somewhere in the world there were girls whose necks were white and whose hands were small, who were always dressed in the finest silks and laces, and were called princesses, and while his companions round the fire saw nothing in the flames but common everyday fancies, he dreamed that he had the happiness to marry a princess."So while he's been out communing with the herd all day - and probably getting a sun-burnt neck - he's somehow learned to become a snob and take up weird concepts of beauty that should be foreign to him. Odd kid.- How is it that the daughters are Princesses, but their father is a Duke? Must be a localthing.- Hero, invisible, hides himself under a bed and thus can see nothing of the princesses changing into their ball gowns. ...Uh huh, like I believe that of a boy who's just been granted the power to become invisible. Suspicious:"Michael could see nothing from his hiding-place, but he could hear everything, and he listened to the princesses laughing and jumping with pleasure."Sorry, I don't believe he could hear them jumping. Moving around maybe, but jumping is awfully specific.- Something tells me we don't get to hear how these boys ended up at the magic castle:"When the cock crowed the third time the fiddles stopped, and a delicious supper was served by negro boys..."- Sending people to the tower: "For this was the way that in old times beautiful princesses got rid of people who knew too much." - from which we learn that princess aren't nice. (Yet another example.)- Wait, when/how did the cow-boy learn how to dance? It's never mentioned and then suddenly once he's dressed up is able to dance gracefully.- So this is a scene worth more than one sentence:" The rest of the princes fell likewise at the knees of the princesses, each of whom chose a husband and raised him to her side.That's 50 guys falling at the feet of 11 women, because hero gets the 12th. That took a lot of sorting out, I'll bet. Hmmm. 50/11 = 4.55, so some of the sisters didn't get an even amount of suitors. (Fairy tales and math problems - why didn't my teachers try that?!)- Enchanted castle crumbles to the ground, presumably with the "negro boy" pages inside?!?!?! (Definitely do not remember this from the version I read as a kid.)- Hero's wife, the princess, has him tell her how he discovered the secret, and once he does she has him chop down the laurel trees that helped him. Again, princesses aren't nice.The Princess Mayblossom- Multiple nurse deaths- Lock a girl in a tower and do not be surprised when she falls in love with an ambassador. This is also what happens if ambassadors dress too well.Soria Moria Castle- Sitting at home in the fireplace ashes ("grubbing" in them) is actually a way to job hunt, because then sea captains will appear offering jobs. - This is a first - not only does our hero kill the evil giant troll(s), he stays afterwards to clean up the dead body before moving on to the next killing. Which is really considerate. Seriously, I can't remember another story where the hero stops to clean up.The Death Of Koshchei The Deathless- In some stories guardians of girls are insanely picky over whom they are allowed to marry. Meanwhile in this story, the brother allows his sisters to marry birds. Who turn into men. Interesting.The Black Thief and Knight of the Glen- I've heard the word henwife but for some reason imagine the scene she's in as the queen having a discussion with a giant chicken.- A fixed card game!- Scheherazade strategy!The Master Thief- The exclamation "Hutetu" is used here, as in some of the other tales. All I can find out about it is that it's old Norse.- Odd moments in costuming:"So he dressed himself up like a bird, and threw a great white sheet over himself; broke off a goose's wings, and set them on his back; and in this attire climbed into a great maple tree which stood in the Priest's garden.And then he tells the priest that he's an angel. Because the Master Thief is that good at practical jokes.- Dead body theft!Brother And Sister- Cruel stepmother is a witch in disguise.- Beware of talking water.- Where did this girl get a "golden garter" - no mention that they're royals...- Don't let someone lock you into a bathroom. Problem is they'll pick a moment when you're weak, like when you've just given birth.- Witch burned at the stake, so it does happen sometimes.Princess Rosette- Two princes go off in search of the King of the Peacocks and leave their sister, who has been raised in a tower away from the world, to rule the kingdom. (And none of the ministers said "wait, um, stop for a minute and let's think about this" - ????)- I have now learned that the Kingdom of the Cockchafer is really all about the may beetle. Or may bug, mitchamador, billy witch, or spang beetle. Fairy tales: teaching you about entomology when you least expect it.- Phoenix feathers are a great thing to stuff mattress with as they will always float upon water. And you never know when that might be helpful.- I still feel this would have been a better story if we'd just been told where the princess found her green dog.The Enchanted Pig (oddly not listed in the contents)- If anyone is ever told "don't go/look into room X" - you know someone will go/look into it. Also there's rarely ever a reason NOT to tell them why they shouldn't check that room out, especially if there's something/someone dangerous inside. (view spoiler)[(Inside this room? A book.) (hide spoiler)]
I took notes on my Kindle as I read these, so I'll just copy and expand them out here and hope that it sort of works as a review! Since it was last month, and it's hard to get an overall impression of a book of fairy tales.The Princess Mayblossom: I've read this template before. Usually there's better bad luck. But I like the agency of the heroine.Soria Moria Castle: Like East of the Sun West of the Moon but less epic and with a boy doing boy things. [What did that mean? I may have to re-read to find out.]The Death of Koschchei the Deathless: I like the prince for respecting his sisters! [And, later,] THIS IS AN AWESOME STORY!The Black Thief and Knight of the Glen: I like this one though gruesome and bad gender politics.Brother and Sister: Sister loyal to transformed brother even after married to king. [I must have had some thoughts that that was supposed to remind me of, but I've lost them now!]The Enchanted Pig: This is East of the Sun West of the Moon. Plus an unnecessary bit of Bluebeard and a more sympathetic mistake and less housekeeping at the end.[I seem to notice EotSWotM quite a lot! In general, I wish I had that one awesome compendium of fairy tale plot points/characters, so I could label everything on my own! NERD ALERT.]The Twelve Brothers: F'ed up but classic. I like it!And that's all the notes I took. Whoops. Oh, well. Fairy tales: I love them.
What do You think about The Red Fairy Book (1966)?
This was a "suggested reading" book for the Charlotte Mason curriculum we are using. It is a collection of fairy tales and there are other books by the same author such as "The Blue Fairy Book". What I liked: there were many fairy tales that I had never heard of and it was fun to read the new stories. Another element that I liked was that it didn't "dumb down" the stories for children or take out the sad or scary parts. I don't like the disney type stories that infantilize children by always creating a happy ending or leaving out everything that might possibly be scary. A few examples from this book - trolls with nine heads, cutting off limbs, blood, etc. What I didn't like about the book was that all the "fair maidens" were described as astonishingly beautiful, the most pretty, etc etc. And the evil stepmothers were always ugly. I just really dislike the emphasis on outward appearances. Not sure if I'll read it to my kids yet. Or maybe I'll read it to them and sneakily omit the parts about looks.
—Alice
‘Mirror, mirror, hanging there, Who in all the land’s most fair?’‘You are most fair, my Lady Queen, None fairer in the land, I ween.’Then she was quite happy, for she knew the mirror always spoke the truth.But Snowdrop was growing prettier and prettier every day, and when she was seven years old she was as beautiful as she could be, and fairer even than the Queen herself. One day when the latter asked her mirror the usual question, it replied: ‘My Lady Queen, you are fair, ’tis true, But Snowdrop is fairer far than you.’Grimm - SnowdropMerah.. 189003/23/13
—Michiyo 'jia' Fujiwara
I'm sure I read all of Lang's fairy books when I was a child, but there are some delightful things here that I don't remember. For example, in the version of "Jack and the Beanstalk" told in this book, the giant's castle isn't up on a cloud, but rather at the top of a tall cliff that overhangs the cottage. And Jack isn't merely a peasant boy, but the son of the king who owned the castle before the giant invaded. Consequently, rather than being a thief, Jack is an exiled prince taking back his own rightful possessions.There's also a variation on the Cinderella tale called "The Wonderful Birch" that gives an interesting explanation for the "stepmother": rather than the father remarrying, a witch turns the real mother into a sheep and takes on the mother's shape. The magical tree (which in the traditional tale is the source of Cinderella's magical things), grows up from the spot where the girl buries the bones of the sheep that was her real mother. Interestingly, the tale continues on beyond the "happy ending," with the witch transforming the girl into a reindeer and substituting her own daughter, with the result that the prince has another problem to solve. While most of the stories in this book are conglomerations of the various fairy tale elements--some interesting, some less so--there was one I encountered that I don't remember ever seeing before: a story called "The Good Little Mouse." In this tale, a grouchy king invades a neighboring kingdom simply because the people are happy there. The happy queen and her baby daughter are taken prisoner, saved from execution only by the possibility that the princess, who will be the right age to marry the grouchy king's son, may grow up to be beautiful. But a good fairy takes the shape of a mouse to test whether the queen is kind and compassionate, and she gives them help throughout the story (I won't spoil it, since it isn't a commonly known tale). Perhaps the most amusing thing in the whole book (at least to me, with my quirky sense of humor) is the preface to a short (and frankly not very interesting) retelling of the story of Sigurd (the Ring of the Nibelungs' Siegfried). The preface notes that the story is very old and was known by the Danes who fought in King Alfred's time. "Because it is so old and so beautiful, the story is told here again, but it has a sad ending--indeed, it is all sad, and all about fighting and killing, as might be expected from the Danes." *snerk*
—Verity Brown
