It is now officially spring, regardless of whether any bears, badgers or groundhogs saw their shadows. I don’t have a new post, but I’ve updated my Candlemas post, with many small changes, a brand new section on ancient Greek and Roman spring holidays, and a “See also…” section.
(Actually, I’m still working on it… should be done in a couple days.)
Every now and then, on this blog, I will be posting a book recommendation, like this one. Admittedly, this is partly because I have an Amazon Associates account (meaning I get a small commission when you buy something from Amazon through one of my links), but these are all books I would have recommended anyway.
From the introduction:
There's a game we used to play when I was in school that kids still play, though it has various names. We called it Gossip. Somebody would whisper something to one person, who was supposed to whisper the same thing to the next person, who whispered it to the next, and so on until the last person said it out loud, at which point everyone would laugh because little by little along the way bits and pieces had been left out or misheard, other words had been added, details were lost, the sense changed—and the final message was usually totally different from the original.
That's the way it is with fairy tales. In the beginning they were told, not written down. And over time, as the stories were repeated by different people in different situations, they constantly shifted and changed—the way your story might shift and change, for example, if you were caught putting shaving cream on your cat. How you justified the situation to your parents might differ sharply from what you told your friends, which would probably be different from any explanation you might offer to the cat.
That's why we sometimes have completely different versions of the same story. But in some cases, so many details have been lost that the story stops making sense.
That's how I feel about the story of Rumpelstiltskin—it makes no sense.
The story starts with a poor miller telling the king, "My daughter can spin straw into gold."
We are not told how the miller has come to be talking with the king in the first place, or why the miller chooses to say such a thing. In any case, to my mind the reasonable answer for the king to come back with would be: "If your daughter can spin straw into gold, why are you a poor miller?" But the king doesn't say that; he says, "Then she shall come to my castle and spin straw into gold for me, and if she does, I'll make her my queen."
Now, no matter the reason the miller said what he did, you'd think that in reality he would have noticed that his daughter doesn't actually know how to spin straw into gold. (Unless she's lied to him. In which case you'd think that now would be the time for her to set things straight.) But still he brings her to the castle to show off a talent he knows she doesn't have—which doesn't sound to me like responsible parenting.
At the castle the king locks the girl into a room and tells her, "Spin this straw into gold, or tomorrow you shall die."
Not my idea of a promising first date.
The girl seems smarter than her father. She knows that she can't spin straw into gold, so she's worried. But what does she do? She starts crying. Not a very productive plan.
Still, along comes a little man who, by happy coincidence, knows how to do what everyone wants. "What will you give me to spin this straw into gold for you?" he asks her, and she offers him her gold ring.
Now think about this.
Here's someone who can spin an entire roomful of straw into gold. Why does he need her tiny gold ring? Sounds like a bad bargain to me.
And so on. (Why is she surprised when he shows back up to claim the baby? Why does he agree to the name-guessing contest—what does he get out of the bargain? Why does he give it away by dancing around a fire shouting his name? Etc.)
This is followed by six short stories, each telling different new version of the story.
Why do I particularly recommend this book? Because once, on a road trip, I started reading it to my nephew, who was about seven at the time, and he loved it (even though it was not written as a children's book). He seemed to be fascinated that you could tell so many different versions of the same story, and by the idea of stories changing through time. After this, he wanted to hear more and more fairy and folk tales, and he would point out to me the parts that didn't make sense, or the stories that were similar to each other and could have come from the same source.
So, if you want the children in your life to talk to you about folklore, read them this book. (Plus, it's just a light, entertaining, fun book.)
Incidentally, later on we read a story called "The Laziest Girl in Ireland" and we wondered whether something like that might be the origin of the Rumpelstiltskin story. Or maybe it's someone else's attempt at making the story make sense.
In this story, a woman is beating her daughter (who is the laziest girl in Ireland), when the Prince happens to pass by. The Prince falls in love with the girl, and asks why she is being beaten. The mother, seeing an opportunity to get the girl married off, says she's beating her because she works too much. The Prince thinks, "Just the sort of girl my mother wants me to marry!" and takes her with him.
When they get to the castle, the Prince presents the girl to his parents, and tells them the story. His mother is suspicious. She wants the girl to prove she's a good worker. So she locks her into a room with a spinning wheel and tells her to spin a certain amount of cloth by morning.
The girl cries, because she does want to marry the prince, but she doesn't know how to spin because she's been avoiding work all her life. An old fairy woman hears her crying and feels sorry for her, and does the spinning for her.
The same happens on the next two nights, with two other fairy women.
The Prince's mother is appeased, and the two are married. At the wedding, the three fairy women show up, one at a time, claiming to be the girl's relatives. The first one has an enormous foot, which, when asked, she says is due to a lifetime of using the pedal on her spinning wheel. The other two have other maladies that they blame on spinning. The Prince is alarmed at this, and declares that his wife is never going to work again. And they live happily ever after.
This story makes sense! We know why the mother lies, why the girl is being tested, why the helpers help (out of pity), and why she doesn't have to keep spinning after her initial trick. (In Rumpelstiltskin, it's not clear why the king is satisfied with three nights-worth of gold). We can also see why someone might have wanted to make changes: the moral "keep being lazy and the fairies will help you" is not particularly instructive.
The Name of the Helper, at Folktexts: A Library of Folktales, Folklore, Fairy Tales, and Mythology by D. L. Ashliman. Rumplestiltskin in an example of Aarne-Thompson tale type 500, The Name of the Helper. Here are many other tales of the same type.
Tales Similar to Rumplestiltskin at SurLaLune Fairy Tales. Another collection of Rumpstiltskin-esque stories.
Vivian Vande Velde. The author's web site. I notice that she's got another, similar book now about Little Red Riding Hood: Cloaked in Red, as well as many young adult fantasy novels.
It’s Pancake Day. (Or Shrove Tuesday, Carnival, or Mardi Gras). I didn't have time to prepare a post, which is unfortunate, because this is one of the holidays where we get processions of wild men.
But I did figure out how to make crepes that I can eat, without wheat or dairy. So here is the recipe! Even if you don’t have any dietary restrictions yourself, these crepes are as good as any I’ve ever had, and well worth trying.
| Ingredients | |
|---|---|
| 2 cups brown rice flour | 1 cup water |
| 5 eggs | 4 tablespoons coconut oil (melted), plus a little more later for cooking with. |
| 1 1/4 cup coconut milk (the watered-down meant for use as a milk substitute, not the thicker kind that comes in cans. I used Trader Joe's brand.) | a little salt |
Try to be in a warm room when you prepare it, or the coconut oil will start to re-solidify. Mix all the ingredients together in a big bowl. Spoon out about 1/4 cup at a time into a frying pan greased with coconut oil. Cook about 30 seconds per side.
This recipe makes thin, eggy crepes similar to those at IHOP. If you like more pancake-ish crepes, use only four eggs and 1 cup of coconut milk.
I ate mine with baked cinnamon apples.
