I don't know why I haven't gotten around to looking at "Rumpelstiltskin" by the Brothers Grimm before now. I did read The Girl Who Spun Gold by Virginia Hamilton, a West Indian version of the tale, a couple of years ago but somehow missed this most famous version of the tales of little men who help women spin thread or straw into gold.
In this story, the beautiful young woman is a miller's daughter. Notice she's still beautiful, even if it doesn't actually matter in the story. Her father is the one who starts all the trouble, bragging to the King that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The King says prove it. The girl is brought to the palace the next day, shut into a room full of straw, given a spinning wheel and spindle, and instructed to spin it all into gold by the next morning or she would be killed. She has given up all hope, when a...
"The Twelve Dancing Princesses" is a story collected by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm and included in their Household Tales, first published in 1812.
Twelve princesses, each more beautiful than the last, sleep in twelve beds in the same room; every night their door is securely locked, but in the morning their shoes are found to be worn through as if they had been dancing all night. The king, perplexed, promises his kingdom and a daughter to any man who can discover the princesses' secret within three days and three nights, but those who fail within the set time limit will be put to death. Notice the magical three again. Many princes take up the King's challenge, but each fails and has his head chopped off.
A poor wounded soldier comes to the palace after several men have failed. While traveling through a wood he meets an old woman, the helper in this fairy tale, who gives him an invisibility cloak and tells him not...
Last week, as part of the giveaway, I asked folks to tell me their favorite fairy tale character. One person mentioned the happy prince from Oscar Wilde's story, a character I had never heard of, so of course I had to read the story. I really should have been warned that it would make me cry.
The story is from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde, first published in May 1888, and you can find all five sotires included in the collection on-line here. The Happy Prince is a statue that stands high over the city. He is covered in gold leaf, has sapphire eyes and holds a sword with a ruby in its hilt. Everyone in the city admires his beauty and happy attitude. A swallow who has put off migrating to Egypt land at the statues feet when he is looking for a safe place to rest and feels drops of rain that he quickly discovers are actually...
Today's Thursday Tale is actually about a specific character, not a specific story. I've mentioned Baba Yaga before, when Vasilissa the Beautiful encountered her, but today I wanted to talk a little more about the witch herself. She is one of my favorite fairy tale characters, even though she doesn't usually have a story of her own, just appears in others' tales.
Baba Yaga is a strong, powerful, frightening woman who comes to us from Slavic folklore. She is far from your "typical" witch. Whenever she appears on the scene, a wild wind begins to blow, the trees around creak and groan and leaves whirl through the air. Shrieking and wailing, a host of spirits often accompany her on her way. She flies around on a giant mortar, kidnaps and presumably eats small children, and lives in a hut that either stands on chicken legs, and is sometimes surrounded by a fence with a skull on each pole. Sometimes the hut has...
"The Queen Bee" is one of Grimm's tales that I hadn't heard of until the Grimm episode "Beeware" back in November. The TV show really had little to do with the Grimm story though.
Two king's sons went out to seek their fortune, but fell into a wild, disorderly way of living. The youngest, Simpleton, went out to find them, but they only laughed at him, to think that he, who was so young and simple, should try to travel through the world, when they, who were so much wiser, had been unable to get on. The three traveled on together, and Simpleton prevented his brothers from destroying an ant hill, killing some ducks, and suffocating a bee hive with smoke, each time saying, "Leave the creatures in peace; I will not allow you to disturb them." Then they came to a castle with stone horses in the stable, and no sign of anyone. They hunted through the castle and found a...
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Today's tale comes from Korea, first written down 300 years ago. It seems to be a well-known story in Korea, one every child is told.
Heungbu and Nolbu are brothers. Nolbu, the older, is a mean nasty man, greedy and vicious, but very rich. Heungbu, the younger, was a hard worker, kind and generous, but poor and he, his wife and children were always hungry.
One day whem Heungbu returns home from work, he finds a snake devouring a nest full of swallows. Only one swallow escapes being killed, but it's leg was injured in the fall from the nest. Heungbu takes care of the little bird's leg, covering it with ointment and then wrappig it. The swallow heals and flies south in winter. The following spring, however it returns to Heungbo's and drops a gourd seed on the ground. Heungbo of course plants the seed.
Soon the plant grows and produces five unusually large gourds. Heungbo and his wife cut them open. The...
