Take Care Out There

Transformation is often used as a punishment. The White Cat, in the French folktale of the same name, is originally a princess who has been given to the fairies by her mother as payment for some enchanted fruit (well that’s the currency you buy your enchanted fruit with isn’t it?). Everything ticks along nicely until the princess tries to escape whereupon the fairies turn her in to a white cat, making all her subjects feline too. Her restoration depends on a prince falling in love with her for her personality, which she keeps along with her ability to speak. Naturally, even though she now lives in a secluded palace hidden in a dense forest, the youngest of three king’s sons turns up on a quest. The White Cat has also been given some magic abilities and is able to help the prince out by providing the small dog he has been sent to get. It’s not enough of course and he is soon back for some cloth so fine it can pass through the eye of a needle. The third time he turns up she helps him out by once more becoming her beautiful human self so they can get married. Not much of a punishment really.

Prince Dung Beetle does less well. We meet him in his insect form when a poor girl who is running to the doctors to get medicine for her ailing mother slips and nearly crushes him. Since she sprains her ankle avoiding this rather sudden end to the story he helps her out saying “climb on my back” (notice he retains his speech as well) then flying her to the doctors and back home with the necessary medicaments. The mother is instantly cured and suggests the girl should feed her “little horse” but he is nowhere to be seen. Moments later the restored prince turns up and explains that he had been turned in to a dung beetle to do penance for being cruel to helpless creatures in his youth and had spent many years suffering, only to be freed if someone was kind to him. Since the girl had affected his cure he naturally offered to marry her and make her family wealthy as well. So that turned out all right too.

They don’t all end happily ever after. When an old woman in rags came in to the bakery asking for just a little bit of bread the bakers daughter at first refused to give her any. After some additional pleading from the beggar woman the baker said “Tear off a bit of dough and make her a roll.” The daughter tore off a tiny little piece and left it to prove with the rest. When she came back she found the dough had risen enough to be a whole loaf. She ignored the good fortune that luck had bestowed on the old lady and tore off an even smaller bit than before then put it back down for a second proving. Once more the tiny piece of dough gained the size of a full loaf so she tore off an even smaller bit and put it in to bake. Those of you who know your folk tales will not be surprised to hear that when they took the bread out of the oven there was no small roll but only full sized loaves. Still the baker’s daughter tore off a chunk from the end of one and handed it to the old woman saying “I don’t know what’s going on here but that’s all you are getting”. The old woman began to change, growing taller and more beautiful, and revealed herself to be a fairy. “You had many chances to be kind with no loss to yourself” she said, “but you chose to be mean. Now I curse you to live in darkness and feast on vermin!” and with that she waved her wand. The baker’s daughter began to shrink, feathers sprouted from her skin, her eyes grew wide and a mournful hooting escaped the beak that grew where her lips had been. She spread her new wings and flew away to the woods. There she lives still, only coming out at night to hunt for rats and mice. So always be kind, even to the lowliest creature they may be a prince or a fairy, after all the owl was a baker’s daughter.

…here’s to living happily ever after, until the next adventure.

The Travelling Talesman www.thetravellingtalesman.co.uk

Giants and Revenge

As I explained in December I am researching for my spring and autumn tours at the same time, themed “Giants” and “Revenge” respectively. All very straight forward… until you come across a story that sits in the part of the Venn diagram where the two circles overlap and could be used in either set. The most surprising of these is probably the most well known story of the big people going.

This tale is turned in to pantomimes on a regular basis and is a staple of children’s literature. As with any well known trope from olden times it has started coming under fire from modern ethical watchdogs. It’s easy to see why too. The problem being that the protagonist, one “Jack”, who is established early on as somewhat easily led, can appear as rather racist. After a giantess lets him in to her husband’s castle and feeds him, the ungrateful simpleton repays this kindness by stealing from the giants not once, but three times! Whilst trying to escape justice after his third larceny he brings about the death of his understandably enraged victim. It is presented as un-premeditated but I think it would still attract a charge of murder if it came to court. One would hope that even UKIP supporters would see that this is a bad way to treat people from other lands who are a bit different from us and most definitely not the model for a foreign policy.

So where, I hear you ask, does the overlap with the revenge theme come in? Well, in my usual fashion I have been hunting through my library, comparing different versions and digging out the earliest manuscripts. In the case of Jack And The Beanstalk (which in case you hadn’t realised is the story in question) this takes us back to 1807. At this time the story contained an encounter with a fairy when Jack reaches the top of the beanstalk. This fairy tells a chilling story of Jack’s kind and generous father who was tricked, robbed and murdered. The perpetrator of the deed, whilst burning down their manor, spared the infant Jack and his mother on the condition that she never tell Jack about his father. The wicked murderer come arsonist is, of course, the giant and the fairy points out quite distinctly that the giant’s wealth was taken from Jack’s father and is rightfully his.

This episode, which is conspicuous by its absence from the majority of later re-tellings of the tale, casts Jack’s behaviour in a very different light. No longer a wayward, sizeist, thug, Jack is the true avenger, reclaiming his ancestral rights and handing out the ultimate punishment to the original villain of the piece. The worrying bit is not just that the story has been reproduced so often without this justification for Jack’s criminal spree, but that doing so has done nothing to harm it’s popularity, many of us falling into despising the giant based on heresay and rooting for his downfall with no hard evidence that he has done wrong to anyone.

Fascinatingly the fairy also admits that she was influencing Jack when he exchanged his cow for a handful of beans, which explains how he goes from being laughably gullible at the beginning of the yarn to a cool master of negotiation, concealment and escape by his first encounter with the giants.

So, it always pays to do your research, even when you think you know the story, possibly especially then… and I had better get back to mine, there are giants and avengers to sort out and they keep getting mixed up!

…here’s to living happily ever after, until the next adventure.

Of Woodland Glades and Hollow Hills

Whoever we are and however we seek peace, solace or a connection with something beyond the mundane, for the majority of us there is a place where we find something that refreshes our soul, or at least feels closer to doing so than the highways and byways of our everyday life. The spiritually developed person who sees the divine in everything will still regularly be drawn to a certain garden or hilltop. Even the Buddha, refined through many lifetimes to have no attachment to things in the physical world, chose a specific sacred fig tree under which to sit and meditate his way to enlightenment.

Some places just have something about them that resonates with us in a way that other places do not. In an animist culture the assumption would be that a being of some sort lived there, a spirit or spirits specific to that place. If the spirit was friendly and the place popular the spirit might be credited with influence beyond their personal rock, dell or circle of trees, often involving the well-being of plants and animals in the general vicinity.

It seems to me that a good number of the fairy folk started life as spirits of place, particularly the diminutive winged types found in sylvan glades who are clearly connected to the fertility of the forest. Thus they do not posses the power of invisibility, it is their natural state. The power they posses is that of visibility, allowing themselves to be seen by those who are open to their existence.

The link between the small woodland fairies and their human sized namesakes comes about because the Tuatha De Danann and others of their ilk can also be considered as spirits of place. Connected with the hill forts, stone circles or hills they occupied while present in this world or the burial mounds they retreated in to, the large and powerful fairies are a mix of gods and ancestral spirits who attained a wide enough sphere of influence to become autonomous from their place of origin. It is easy to see how a smith of great skill in the early days of metalwork might be buried with great honour in a barrow., then, in a culture where ancestors were revered and their soul contacted and consulted, they would maintain their importance long after their physical presence had moved on.

Though connected at a theoretical level it is still strange that these two kinds of being, with very different appearances and behaviours should share a name and even be found together according to many eye witness reports. My personal opinion is that the small fairies tag along with their larger brethren in much the same way that jackdaws hang around with rooks.

If you want these denizens of the Otherworld to show themselves to you then there are obvious places to start. The good folk are fond of trees and especially thorns. Anywhere with the combination of oak, ash and thorn is likely. Of course, fairy rings indicate a favoured dancing spot and any barrow, burial mound or particularly well rounded hill should be worth a look. The best place however, may be just that place you go to yourself that has something indefinable about it that makes you happy, for the fairies who live there already know you.

If all else fails then you could look in The Tavelling Talesman’s tour dates for “Away With The Fairies” at http://www.thetravellingtalesman.co.uk/giglist.shtml

Fairy time

Fairies as such, are fairly limited in Geographic scope, being primarily a European phenomenon. Their name and characteristics can vary significantly across this area too, but there is a type of fairy encounter which is common throughout the lands, widely different in the specifics yet exactly the same in it’s outcome, and so prolific one has to wonder if there is some truth behind this tale type.

As is often the case with close encounters of the fairy kind the person, whether young lad, maiden or wandering drunk, who features in the story is captivated by faint musical, magical sounds. Following the entrancing harmony they come upon the Good Folk dancing, singing and making merry. Often they will watch unobserved from behind a tree or rock at first but soon the music will pull them into the whirling dance. It may be that they stay for a couple of hours, nights, weeks, or even three months. At the absolute maximum it might be seven years. It would seem that this period is full of intoxicating joy and pleasantness. Nevertheless, at some point they decide to head for home. On arriving back in their village, or castle they find many things changed and unfamiliar, all the people they knew are gone and their home is occupied by strangers. On further enquiry they find that their family are long dead and there is only a faint memory of a story about someone by their name having vanished without trace more than a lifetime or two ago. As they struggle to come to grips with this news they age rapidly and crumble to dust.

Sometimes the plot may have a longer set up. King Herla goes to a far land to witness the wedding of a fairy king; Oisin is wooed by a beautiful princess from the land of youth. In each case they return to discover hundreds of years have passed. Interestingly, in both of these cases a change of epic proportions has fallen upon the land. In Herla’s case he leaves a British King and returns to a land long under Saxon rule. The Irish Oisin leaves a pagan Eire and comes back to tell the tales of Finn mac Cumhal to a fascinated Saint Patrick.

Curiously it is by no means guaranteed that a sojourn in the Otherworld will lead to a powdery demise. Pwyll Prince of Dyfed manages to count off a year and a day in Annwyvn
with exactitude before coming home the same year and a day later in his own land. Many others come and go between the lands with less loss of time than I encounter whilst eating breakfast. Certainly the fairies themselves have no problem reconciling time between our two plains, happily making and keeping appointments accurately to the hour.

So are these tales based in fact? Possibly it was common for people to leave home without warning, maybe falling in with Romanies or other nomads in a rush of excitement after accidentally joining them for a few nights revels, then losing track of time before coming home to find their family had died in their absence. It is easy to see how the tale might be elaborated and exaggerated by re-telling until it spans hundreds of years.

…and yet, the rapid onset of the time spent in the land of youth and the ensuing sudden de-hydration are less easy to see being the creation of so many different storytellers in so many assorted places. So if you are out in the forest or on the moors of a night and your ears are assailed by the most delectable melodies you have ever heard, take thought before you let your feet follow the captivating rhythm: your life may never be the same again.

Away With The Fairies

NOT A FAIRY.
“Changeling” by Robin Stevenson
More by him at https://www.pinterest.com/pin/142496775681932380/

I don’t use the term “fairytale” very often. It is odd that somehow the title “fairytale” has become a blanket term for any story involving magic. For me it is only a fairytale if it actually has a fairy in it. So how do we identify a fairy? Oh, Now we have entered a realm of confusion! I have several books purporting to be specifically about fairies (or faeries, we can’t even reach consensus on the spelling). These contain descriptions and tales of the wee folk by the various names of Spriggans, Pixies, Piskies, Sidhe (pronounced “shee”), Good Folk (I could go on but we’ve barely scratched the surface and haven’t even left the British Isles), but also feature Trow, Trolls, Koboldoi, Gnomes, Brownies, Nixen, Knockers and a host of other supernatural beings. It’s a bit like buying a textbook on humans and finding chapters on marmosets and grizzlies.

Let’s start at the beginning. The Irish Book Of Invasions tells us that at one time the land of Éire was in possession of the tall, fair skinned Tuatha De Danann. Long lived and wielding powerful magic the Tuatha De held truth and fairness in high esteem and many stories are told of their time. Then the Milesians, whose descendants are the current Irish, turned up, fought the Tuatha De for the land, won, and banished the Tuatha De Danann in to the ancient burial mounds that litter the country where they still live as the Sidhe or faery host.

Since their banishment the Fair Folk have interacted with humans in a variety of ways. Women and men from each race have fallen in love with, seduced or abducted and married someone from the other; items have been stolen by each from each and favours, trades and deals have been done leading to both lasting happiness and deep sorrow.

One of the oddest things about The Ever Living Ones is that they appear to be shrinking. The Tuatha De were considered tall against humans. A few hundred years ago elves were generally perceived as around three or four feet tall. The modern apprehension of the size of a fairy is probably between ten and twenty centimetres. What they have lost in stature they have made up in utility, having apparently grown wings along the way. However, just incase you thought you were getting a handle on them, some can switch from small to large if they wish.

Probably the most consistent thing about fairies is that they are attractive to human senses: they are beautiful to gaze upon, their music and voices are sweet to the ear and the smell of their food ravishing to the nostrils. Whether short or tall, a glimpse of the Good Folk fills the mortal observer with wonder, delight and curiosity, but beware, they are very choosy about the humans they will share their wonders with and many who have blundered excitedly in to the revels of the Fae have suffered for it afterwards.

Now it seems your humble Talesman has fallen under their spell, for my spring tour will be “Away With The Fairies” and I shall be reading everything I can about them over the next three months, so no doubt you will hear a little more about them too.

May Eve Mayhem

What better time to start Folk Tales Corner than May Eve – the date with more stories attached to it than any other in the calendar.  Some of the FTCs will be tied to the tales of the time of year, others spun around singular stories. Some introduce us to particular characters but all welcome us to the wonderful world of storytelling.

May Eve tales are traditionally tales of magic and enchantment, more often than not they involve a trip to fairy land, usually an involuntary one.  For all that halloween is reputed to be laden with access to the other world and folks from “the other side” visiting us,  folk tales tell us that its opposite, May Eve is when we’re most likely to be kidnapped off beyond.  Although anyone who ventures abroad is at risk of being abducted by the fey, the highest insurance group would surely be for children and beautiful young maidens, all very likely, if wandering out on April 30th, to find themselves transported or transformed.

Now if just going out is risky, walking into or around stone circles, fairy rings of mushrooms, into woodland or anywhere slightly misty and vaguely unfamiliar, almost guarantees an adventure.  Though for Tiernan in The story of Pwyll and Rhiannon even staying at home is troublesome as he loses a new foal every May eve until he sits guard in the stables over it with his sword.

If you do find yourself spirited away remember to be civil to the fairy folk, they make very bad enemies, but do not eat or drink anything whilst there, in many tales this is how you get permanently connected and find it harder to come back (unlike Persephone who got an unusual pro rata deal).  If you make a bargain to get home, be very sure you know what you’re promising and be exact in the wording.   If you have folks who love you here, and know you well then your chances of getting back are improved:  Loved ones can recognise your distinguishing marks (missing fingers or toes are particularly useful), and pick you out of the line-up of fifty other identical maidens, or swans if you have been transformed, that they are presented with. In some cases it requires sheer determination and brute force, holding onto you as you go through weird transformations.  All in all you will probably come back wiser, possibly with a debt owed. Broken promises have dire results so do remember to pay back any debt.  When you do get back also be prepared for time to have passed oddly, more often than not a short evening passed in fairy is many years in our own world, so often children stolen away come back to find all their friends have grown, and died of old age!

If you’re luck enough to be out and about on May Eve or Morn and aren’t whisked away then take the opportunity to listen well, especially if you are near a gibbet, in several tales it’s the magical moment you can understand the language of the birds, who’s conversation is surprisingly often about the location of buried treasure.

So you survived through to May morn; now is the time to sing, dance, decorate maypoles and wells, welcome in the May, bring meadowsweet, broom and hawthorn, celebrate, and leave a little offering out for the ‘good folk’.  But remember don’t bring the may blossom into the house – that just invites the fairies in with you and as the stories tell us that is a whole new host of trouble.

If you are out early, remember Cormac Mac Art who on successive May Morns, first makes a new friend; then looses his son, then his daughter, his wife, and finally a whole army, but after some very bizarre and unsettling experiences has all of them, and some magical gifts, returned to him, all in exchange for….  why in exchange for a story of course!

Here’s to living happily ever after… until the next adventure.