In the preface of The Violet Fairy Book, Andrew Lang's seventh in the series, he seems quite annoyed at certain "ladies" who persist in the belief that he is the author, rather than editor of the stories. Before you get too excited that means he will for once provide thorough credit for his sources, he continues: These stories are as old as anything that men have invented. They are narrated by naked savage women to naked savage children. They have been inherited by our earliest civilised ancestors, who really believed that beasts and trees and stones can talk if they choose, and behave kindly or unkindly. [...] As people grew more civilised and had kings and queens, princes and princesses, these exalted persons generally were chosen as heroes and heroines. But originally the characters were just `a man,' and `a woman,' and `a boy,' and `a girl,' with crowds of beasts, birds, and fishes, all behaving like human beings. When the nobles and other people became rich and educated, they forgot the old stories, but the country people did not, and handed them down, with changes at pleasure, from generation to generation. Then learned men collected and printed the country people's stories, and these we have translated, to amuse children. Their tastes remain like the tastes of their naked ancestors, thousands of years ago, and they seem to like fairy tales better than history, poetry, geography, or arithmetic, just as grown-up people like novels better than anything else.Sigh. I don't have time to unpack the whole "savages" thing or the rampant cultural imperialism/class hierarchy in the image of "learned men" swooping down to collect these found tales. I will however, will point out that this simplified image is almost certainly disingenuous. For one, the Fairy Books frequently contain adaptations of tales of a very well known literary origin (see those from Marie d'Aulnoy or Hans Christian Andersen). Even those stories from the Grimm's, which they themselves considered true German "folk" tales may have a complicated authorship than suggested by this description. I recently read an article titled "On the Origin of Hansel and Gretel" [Willem Blecourt, Fabula (2008)], which examines the origins of a number of similiar Magic Flight stories (AT 313) in the early Grimm brothers' collections that were provided by young, single female acquaintances of the brothers who they met in small gatherings at their house. The article concludes that rather than being passive reciters of these "found" stories, the Wild and Hassenpflug sisters composed these tales from literary sources and their own imagination.Ultimately these stories arose from an atmosphere of collaboration and rivalry between a small group of educated, and perhaps more importantly: eligible youths. ("Hansel and Gretel" in particular can be credited to Marie Hassenpflug and Dortchen Wild. Dortchen married Wilhelm in 1825. The only Grimm sister, Lotte, married a Hassenpflug brother in 1822.) The image of literary salon as middle-class courtship ritual is decidedly more Jane Austen than Joseph Conrad, to say the least.What does this mean for Lang's "learned men"? Well for one, some of them were women. Not long-ago, far-off women, but female contemporaries whose contributions were unreported or minimized as that of mere facilitators. For instance, one Leonora Blanche Lang, who is credited only offhandedly in this volume ("Mrs. Lang") as the translator of a full two-thirds of the stories. In fact, it was not until the twelfth and final Lilac Fairy Book that he says -- The fairy books have been almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang, who has translated and adapted them from the French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, and other languages.My part has been that of Adam, according to Mark Twain, in the Garden of Eden. Eve worked, Adam superintended. I also superintend. I find out where the stories are, and advise, and, in short, superintend."-- before launching into a less wrong-headed version of the "stories are ancient!" line. (Little consolation: "Mrs. Lang" still does not appear anywhere on the title page, and one has a devil of a time trying to track down who exactly the "Miss Blackley" who translates three of the Violet tales is supposed to be.)It also means that we have to consider the political, social, and cultural contexts of Lang's "learned" men and women. That while the motifs and themes may be universal, their method of presentation are reflective of certain motives (conscious or unconscious) of their presenters, both at the stages of writing and editing. As such, Lang's authorial erasure, and continued insistence then that these stories are suitable only for children may be an attempted neutralization of their social aims. A not small number of the stories in this volume come from contributors of the Romantic nationalist vein, including Vuk Karadzic ("major reformer of the Serbian language") and Friedrich Kreutzwald ("father of national literature of his country")*. "Folk culture", as presented by these 19th century writers, served as a validation of native culture and national character. What is more political than laying a claim of continuity of imagination of a people?Or perhaps, Lang's pose is a kind of subterfuge. Lang's commodification of folk culture for children was following no less than the lead of the Grimm's, who started out with scholarly ambition before realizing the greater commercial (and cultural) possibilities of creating volumes for children. Which is its own form of brilliance: The indoctrination must begin early and often. And all the more easy to deliver under the appearance of authorless, unsophisticated, "naked", innocuous entertainments.Nah, us "civilised" people would never fall for those kind of "savage" methods, would we?*More on major contributors I could find information on:- Besides his linguistic work, Vuk Karadzic is also considered the "father of the study of Serbian folklore" for his work collecting Serbian songs, riddles and fairy tales (four of which appear in this volume). Naturally, the majority of his folkloric work was banned under the rule of Prince Milos of Serbia (which at the time was a principality of the Ottoman Empire), who felt "the content of some of the works, although purely poetic in nature, was capable of creating a certain sense of patriotism and a desire for freedom and independence, which very likely might have driven the populace to take up arms against the Turks."- Friedrich Kreutzwald, who provides six Estonian tales, was a leader in the Estonian national awakening (movement towards Estonian self-rule, rather than Russian rule). Considered the author of the first original Estonian book, he also composed the national epic Kalevipoeg based on old Estonian legends of a giant who battled other giants and enemies of the land.- German-born Mite Kremnitz, the source of three Romanian tales, was a close literary collaborator of and maid-of-honor to "Carmen Sylva" AKA Elisabeth of Wied, queen consort of Romania. Kremnitz's husband became a doctor of the royal Romanian family during the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78), the very war that precipitated independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878 and the declaration of Carol I as the first king of independent Romania in 1881. Mite Kremmnitz's Romanian Tales was published in 1882. Kremnitz also wrote biographies of both monarchs. ("Carmen Sylva" is fascinating literary figure in her own right, but that's a story for another day.)- Edward Steere, who features three Swahili tales, was an English-born "colonial bishop [who worked] to abolish slavery in Zanzibar." ____________________________________________On to the actual stories, the focus of The Violet Fairy Book appears to be on the Eastern European, with the Estonian, Serbian, and Romanian making heavy showings, as well as a handful of Swahili and Japanese tales. If there are only a handful of truly memorable tales, there are plenty of interesting ones. And as I read more of these Fairy Books, certain repeated motifs do seem to stand out to me all the more. Rating: 3 stars- On quests: No less than three stories in the Violet are centered around the youngest son accomplishing the father-king's quest after his elder brothers have failed. In particular, the Serbian The Nine Peahens and the Golden Apples (Vuk Karadzic) and the Swahili The Nunda (Steere) begin with the same episode of the king asking the sons to discover what bird is eating the fruit of his tree. From there, Peahens becomes a Swan-Maiden search for the lost bride [AT 400], while Nunda briefly becomes a "Firebird" quest [AT 550] turned monster hunt.The Fairy of the Dawn (Romanian - Mite Kremnitz) is the third story of this triumvirate, with the son seeking the water from the spring of the fairy of the dawn to heal his father, who cries out of one eye and laughs out of the other.This turns out to be the longest story in the collection, spanning an epic quest that has elements of both the aforementioned "Firebird" [AT550] and "Water of Life" [AT 551] quests, but takes on its own distinctly pagan images. Which include travels through the realms of the goddesses of Mercury/Wednesday, Jupiter/Thursday, and Venus/Friday, and before he arrives at the palace of the fairy of the dawn, where he eats the bread of strength and the wine of youth and steals three kisses before obtaining the water of her well as she sleeps."The Fairy of the Dawn" abounds in vivid imagery, though I particularly like the episode of the Welwa. A goblin of wind and air who is first described as having "not exactly a head" with the mane of a horse, horns of a deer, face of a bear, eyes of a polecat, and the body of "something of each" -- and then: ... something came to him--WHAT I cannot tell you. Perhaps, in his dreams, a man may see a creature which has what it has not got, and has not got what it has. At least, that was what the Welwa seemed like to Petru. She flew with her feet, and walked with her wings; her head was in her back, and her tail was on top of her body; her eyes were in her neck, and her neck in her forehead, and how to describe her further I do not know. Shivers.- On transformation chases: I've always been fond of the part of Cinderella variant "Tam and Cam" in which the heroine comes back again and again as a supernatural helper after each time she is killed by her stepsister. Two filial versions appear here. In The Boy With the Golden Stars (Romanian, Kremnitz), the king's sons become trees, beds, and fishes before they can return to reclaim their mother's rightful place. (The king is sort of a douche though, burying his wife alive or whatever.)It's more touchingly applied in "The Envious Neighbor" (Japanese, Karl Alberti), better known as Hanasaka Jiisan, in which a dog returns as a tree, a mortar, and cherry blossoms in order to bless the old couple who took in the dog in. Surprisingly, the dog does not return itself. The ending is not a restoration, only a reminder. The beauty of the cherry blossom is in the ephemerality of the thing; so too, the impermanence of filial duty that touches the sentimental nerveThe Prince Who Wanted to See the World (Portuguese) and The Grateful Prince (Estonian, Kreutzwald) features the more tradition style of transformation chase. Specifically both are tales of Aarne-Thomspson type 313, in which the heroine helps the hero's escape, first to perform the three tasks before they flee together by means of a magic flight. This is a story type at least as old as Jason and Medea, and the basic, yet highly flexible formula of three tasks + three transformations (+ optional "hero forgets the heroine" episode) explains its enduring popularity."The Grateful Prince" is really very charming variant of the tale, which works because of the depth of characterization. For once, the hero is good-humored enough that we actually buy that the heroine would want to help him at all. Unlike their progenitors, the hero and heroine actually seem well-matched, and Kreutzwald provides an interesting twist by foregrounding the psycho-social subtext. The farm under the ground is essentially an uncanny reflection of the upper world, and so the impossible tasks set before the hero are only harder versions of normal farm chores (feeding a horse, milking a cow, stacking the hay). - On genderbenders: The Lute Player (Russian) is a sweet fable of a king who is bored and starts a war with a heathen prince and gets captured for the trouble, and his awesome wife, who disguises herself a boy and sings so sweetly that the heathen prince promises to give her anything she desires. Make music not war. Naturally, the king does not appreciate her for it. (I would have stuck with the heathen prince.)But if I only have eyes for one, it's The Girl Who Pretended To Be A Boy (Romanian, Jules Brun/Leo Bachelin), which is one of the most delightful fairy tales I've read in the last few years. It's a story of guises and appearances. The father guised as wolf (permissive enough to let his daughters try, but protective enough to test them first), the daughter guised as son. The deceptiveness of beauty and the usefulness of old things. And of course, the mutability of gender. Note that Fet-Fruners is equally skilled at sword rights and cooking, is fond of both flowers and practical weapons -- and only plays upon a fake hyper-masculinity in order to take advantage of other's rigid gender expectations. Golden-haired Iliana does the same with a pretended hyper-femininity, playing the part of the fickle and empty-headed damsel, and effectively saving her own damned self from two unwanted marriages.
This was the first anthology by Andrew Lang I read, and after doing so I was hooked. I marvelled at how uniquely told all of the tales within this collection are, some are known and others much more obscure. I find this more of an adult fascination that arose in me for the need that was hardly taken care of in children's fantasy literature, which Lang takes care of. I realize that some of the stories are much more gruesomely told even more so, than Grimm's depiction of other similar tales. I loved the artwork and I now wish to read through all of the collection of his anthology I now own, hunting for my favorite illustration and blow it up, and put it in my room. Somehow, I noticed it was quite easier for me to get drawn in and read the Violet Fairy Book without having to work at it, than it was for me to really get into the Red and I wonder if that had anything to do with when the works were written? Because I know Lang compiled the Red as his second collection, which came following the Blue, and within a span of time later on, did the Violet.
What do You think about The Violet Fairy Book (1966)?
I've never read so many fairy tales from so many cultures one after the other. While the stories on their own are rich and engaging (the illustrations are marvelous, as well), it's being able to read 35 stories together and learn about the similarities and differences among different countries' story-telling styles that I found the most interesting part of this book. Things I learned:* the number three (and multiples of), as well as the number seven, are heavily recurring themes* the youngest brother/sister is always the most intelligent/clever/resourceful* animals as guides/saviors/dispensers of wisdom is another universal theme, particularly if they're saved/rescued first* if the boy does exactly what he's told, he always gets the girl* things are rarely as they seem* magic is everywhereThis was definitely worth the read, and I will happily place it on my fantasy shelf with my other favorites.
—Lindsay
My first recommendation is not to read this via a Kindle. The stories themselves weren't stellar, though like any collection there are a few you'll really enjoy and some you really won't. I think I'd have been able to rate this higher in physical book form with illustrations, and I suspect that added dimension would heighten the enjoyment of the fairy tales much more. However, I read the Kindle version, and I found it to be 'just ok' as a whole. Some I enjoyed:Stan BolovanJesper Who Herded The HaresThe Girl Who Pretended To Be A BoyThe History Of Dwarf LongnoseThe Frog Virgilius The Sorcerer
—Stephanie
I haven't read all of the stories, but this book is quite good. I love the diverse sources and the pretty illustrations. I especially liked the Romanian, Serbian, and Japanese stories. (Another bonus is that the cover is my favorite color!)My favorite stories:- The Goat's Ears of the Emperor Trojan- The Nine Peahens and the Golden Apples (my favorite story in the collection!)- The Fairy of the Dawn (this one is beautifully written - and long!)- The Nunda, Eater of People- The Maiden with the Wooden Helmet- The Monkey and the Jellyfish- The Boys with the Golden Stars- The Princess Who Was Hidden UndergroundA few of them weren't that great. I was kind of weirded out by Virgilius the Sorcerer and Mogarzea and his Son, the two final stories in the book. The Headless Dwarfs was kind of strange too. Otherwise, the book was great.
—Erik
