Thursday’s Tale: The Smiling Rabbit

How about rabbit tales this month? With Easter on the 16th it seems like a good theme. An old man and his wife lived in a little house made of straw. They were very poor and all they owned were a rabbit and a young jaguar. When the old couple used up their last ear of corn, they decided to eat the rabbit and started heating water to cook him. When he saw that, the jaguar told the rabbit the couple were going to eat it. The rabbit replied that no, they were heating water to make hot chocolate. The jaguar disagreed at first, but eventually the rabbit convinced the jaguar to get into the rabbit's cage and people would give him the first hot chocolate. Of course, when the jaguar went into the cage, the rabbit closed it and ran off. The rabbit is a trickster after all. A long time went by and the jaguar tired of waiting for the old...
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Thursday’s Tale: Beauty and the Beast (2017)

We saw Beauty and the Beast at the theater on Sunday. We all know the story. Belle, a bright, beautiful and independent young woman, is taken prisoner by a beast in his castle. Despite her fears, she befriends the castle's enchanted staff and learns to look beyond the Beast's hideous exterior and realize the kind heart and soul of the true Prince within. This is a remake of the Disney animated film from the 90s. It's been ages since I saw that one and Amber actually remembers it better than I do, from watching it when she was little. Honestly, this movie doesn't add much to the story. It's truly a live-action remake. but "Be Our Guest" made me smile and "Gaston" was good too. I thought Lumiere and his friends might be creepy, but it was done really well. Emma Watson was perfect as Belle, especially since we know how much she values books in real life. Luke Evans was a great Gaston, who...
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Thursday’s Tale: The Hare with Many Friends

Just a quick fable today. This one is from Aesop. A Hare was very popular with the other beasts who all claimed to be her friends. But one day she heard the hounds approaching and hoped to escape them by the aid of her many friends. So, she went to the horse, and asked him to carry her away from the hounds on his back. But he declined, stating that he had important work to do for his master. "He felt sure," he said, "that all her other friends would come to her assistance." She then applied to the bull, and hoped that he would repel the hounds with his horns. The bull replied: "I am very sorry, but I have an appointment with a lady; but I feel sure that our friend the goat will do what you want." The goat, however, feared that his back might do her some harm if he took her upon it. The ram, he...
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Thursday’s Tale: Little Broomstick

With Beauty and the Beast coming out in theaters this weekend, I though I'd look at a variation of the story. "Little Broomstick" comes from Germany. The tale was told by Ludwig Bechstein in Deutsches Märchenbuch, 5th edition, 1847. I read D. L. Ashliman's translation on his website. According to Ashliman, Bechstein was Germany's most widely read collector and editor of folktales during the nineteenth century. In Germany, his popularity surpassed that of his more scholarly contemporaries, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The story starts with a merchant who had three daughters. The two older ones were proud and haughty. The younger one, however, was well-behaved and modest, although her beauty greatly surpassed that of her sisters. She dressed simply, and thus unconsciously enhanced her beauty more than her sisters were able to do with the most expensive clothing and jewelry. She was pretty much the standard fairy tale heroine. Her name was Nettchen. Nettchen had a dear friend who was very poor, but equally...
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Thursday’s Tale: The Little Mermaid by Metaphrog

I'm always a little worried about re-workings of The Little Mermaid. So many of us have seen the Disney version and expect the happy ending for the prince and the mermaid. Metaphrog isn't giving us a happy ending, they are sticking closer to the original by Hans Christian Andersen. Our Little Mermaid does fall in love with a human prince and does make a deal with a witch, but the witch is not scary. The Witch is helping and warning our mermaid, but the mermaid still wants to have legs and the witch obliges at the cost of the mermaid's voice. The mermaid does get to live in the prince's palace, but the prince marries someone else. In the end, the little mermaid jumps into the sea, dissolves into foam and will live forever in the water. It's a sad story really. Metaphrog does cut out the more religious aspects of the original, which should make it appeal to a larger audience....
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Thursday’s Tale: The Smith and the Fairies

I'm off a day this week. Maybe I should have title the post Friday's Tale instead. Anyway, "The Smith and the Fairies" comes from Scotland. It was retold by Sir George Douglas in Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales, 1901. Years ago there lived in Crossbrig a smith of the name of MacEachern. This man had an only child, a boy of about thirteen or fourteen years of age, cheerful, strong, and healthy. All of a sudden the boy fell ill, took to his bed, and moped whole days away. No one could tell what was the matter with him, and the boy himself could not, or would not, tell how he felt. He was wasting away quickly and his father and all his friends were afraid that he would die. At last one day, after the boy had been lying in this condition for a long time, getting neither better nor worse, always confined to bed, but with an extraordinary appetite, the smith...
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