I mentioned "Talia, Sun, and Moon" last week when talking about Sleeping Beauty. It was a written by Giambattista Basile, an Italian, in his 1634 work Il Pentamerone. Il Pentamerone is a collection of 50 stories, told within a frame story of a deceitful queen who has demanded that her husband tell her stories, and he in turn hired a group of ten female storytellers who each tell five stories over five days. Two other stories I've looked at from this collection are "Penta with Maimed Hands" and "Verde Prato."
After the birth of a great lord's daughter, Talia, wise men and astrologers cast the child's horoscope and told the lord that Talia would be later endangered by a splinter of flax. To protect his daughter, the father commands that no flax would ever be brought into his house. Years later, Talia sees an old woman spinning flax on a spindle. She asks the woman if she can stretch the flax herself, but...
Title: Maleficent
Director: Robert Stromberg
Writer: Linda Woolverton
In theaters: May 30, 2014 from Walt Disney Pictures
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: PG
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Maleficent explores the untold story of Disney's most iconic villain from the classic Sleeping Beauty and the elements of her betrayal that ultimately turn her pure heart to stone. Driven by revenge and a fierce desire to protect the moors over which she presides, Maleficent cruelly places an irrevocable curse upon the human king's newborn infant Aurora. As the child grows, Aurora is caught in the middle of the seething conflict between the forest kingdom she has grown to love and the human kingdom that holds her legacy. Maleficent realizes that Aurora may hold the key to peace in the land and is forced to take drastic actions that will change both worlds forever.
I'm a fairy tale lover and while Maleficent is a re-make of Disney's own re-make of Sleeping Beauty, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a gorgeous movie, from...
I admit it, I picked today's story based on the title. "Kate Crackernuts" just made me smile. It's a story from Scotland collected by Andrew Lang in the Orkney Islands and published in Longman's Magazine in 1889. Joseph Jacobs edited and republished the tale in his English Fairy Tales (1890).
A king had a daughter named Anne, and his queen had a daughter named Kate, who was less beautiful. The queen was jealous of Anne, but Kate loved her. I'm sure no one's surprised that the queen is turns out to be an evil step-mother, this is a fairy tale. The queen consulted with a henwife to ruin Anne's beauty, and after three tries, they enchanted Anne's head into a sheep's head. Kate wrapped Anne's head in a cloth, and they went out to seek their fortunes. The sisters are surprisingly close in this story. Siblings in fairy tales don't usually stick together quite like that. And it's usually the boys...
I felt like a dragon tale today, probably because of all the How to Train Your Dragon 2 commercials I've been seeing, but came up with "How the Dragon Was Tricked" when I did a quick search. It wasn't quite what I had in mind, but a clever boy's never a wrong choice. It's is a Greek fairy tale collected by J. G. von Hahn in Griechische und Albanesische Märchen. The version I read was the one Andrew Lang included it in The Pink Fairy Book, 1897.
An older brother was jealous of his younger brother and one day tied him to a tree to be rid of him. An old, humpbacked shepherd saw him and asked him why; the younger brother said it was to straighten out his back, and persuaded the shepherd to be tied there in his place, then drove off the sheep. He also persuaded a horse boy and a driver of oxen to come with him. He...
How about one of Aesop's fables today? "The Stag at the Pool" is about a stag who learns a lesson the hard way.
A stag stopped at a spring to get a drink. He saw his shadow in the water and admired the size of his horns but felt angry with himself because his feet were so slender and weak. While he was looking at his reflections, a lion appeared and crouched, ready to attack the stag. The stag immediately started running at top speed and as long as the plain was smooth and open, he kept a safe distance from the lion. But then the stag entered a wood and got his horns entangled in the trees. The lion caught him. Too late, the stag realized that his feet which he disliked could have saved him, but his beautiful horns caused his death.
Morale: What is most truly valuable is often underrated.
Hmmm - I wonder if I'm underrating my height? I'd probably fit...
I thought I'd feature another of the Jataka Tales retold by Ellen C. Babbitt, 1912. As I learned last week, the Jataka Tales are Hindu. The Jatakas form one of the sacred books of the Buddhists and relate to the adventures of the Buddha in his former existences, the best character in any story being identified with the Master.
In the "The Merchant of Seri," there merchant travels from town to town with another man, each selling brass and tinware. They get to a town and split the roads. The other man is greedy, always trying to get as much as he can while giving away as little as possible. This greedy man comes to the house of a widow and young girl. All they have to offer in trade is a bowl, one that holds sentimental value for them but they don't realize is actually made of gold. The greedy merchant scratches it, realizes it is gold, but throws it on the...