Myths, Legends and Fairy Tales

The one about Jesus

The ones where seemingly heterosexual married men really really want gay sex.

This is a slightly off-topic reply but for anyone interested in this subject matter I highly recommend reading Bruno Bettelheim's THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT - he analyzes the psychological underpinnings of fairy tales and explains why they resonate with children in symbolic form.

R3 yaas gurl, serving your required college elective class credit realness. Tell us about that ethical implications of children's literature course you took 2 years ago mawma. Werk bitch, academic fish.

[R4] Idiot.

My favorite fable was that of Ferdinand the Bull. I still relate to it.

As a child, I loved reading about the Greek and Roman mythologies. My favorite was the story about the beautiful, young Spartan prince Hyacinthus, who drew the amourous attentions of the gods Apollo and Zephyrus, the West Wind. Hyancinthus chose the dazzling Apollo as his lover, and while the two were playing a game of quoits (discus tossing game), the jealous Zephyrus blew at the discus thrown by Apollo, which struck Hyacinthus in the head, killing him. The grieving Apollo would not allow Hades to claim him, so he turned Hyacinthus into a flower at the spot where his blood spilled, and Apollo's tears stained the petals with the sign of his grief.

r7 That's so beautiful. Thanks for that x

Snow White was always my favorite. Take out the magical elements and you have a very vain, insecure woman trying to kill her stepdaughter (or as in the original version, her OWN daughter) because she's attracting more men than her. The girl has to escape and live with 7 physically undesirable men so that she can learn that friendship and goodness are more important than beauty so that she won't turn out like the crazy ass bitch out to kill her.

I just think it's a great story. I've always wanted to see a modern, magic free version of the tale (kinda like Ever After was to Cinderella). I think it could still be very relevant.

I liked the Snow Queen (or Ice Queen) where she put an icicle in the boy's heart which makes him cruel and cold to everyone until the heroine melts it and he is cured. Also loved the Greek myths - Theseus, Perseus and the Gorgons, Jason and the Argonauts, the Trojan War. Even as a kid I thought it was a 'nice touch' how the gods and goddesses would have their favorite mortals and intervene on their behalf and how they would bicker among themselves and had their own rivalries and jealousies.

I LOVE Bluebeard's Castle--Have no idea why i'm so drawn to that one.

The original Grimm's fairy tales are so much better. Genuinely frightening and bizarre.

*better than later versions of them, I mean

"...And for all I know, he is still there, under the cork tree, sitting just quietly, smelling the flowers."

The Town Musicians of Bremen.

Great thread, OP.

Have you read Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber R11? It's a collection of re-tellings of well-known folk and fairy tales. The title story is the Bluebeard tale and another, The Company of Wolves, was made into a good 80s movie by Neil Jordan. They are great - so lush and rich that it's hard to devour them all in one sitting.

So many fairy tales were about little kids being eaten.

Bluebeard could actually be a pretty great modern thriller about a bachelor who just can't find the right girl...because they've all been chopped up into pieces in his basement. Maybe he could be some sort of holy roller religious freak who has an obsession with the "perfect moral wife."

There are certainly worse ideas for a movie, R18.

Anyway! My favorite fairy tale is the Grimm Bros "The robber Bridegroom". A girl is about to marry a handsome local guy, but she finds out he's part of a gang of cannibal highway robbers, and she reveals all at her wedding ceremony and gets him lynched. I live it because it's so insanely inappropriate for children!

r16 I haven't read The Bloody Chamber, but I do have this which is wonderful...

As a young girl, I was fascinated by Andrew Lang’s “The Pink Fairy Book”, a compilation of fairy tales from around the world. They were sometimes gruesome and scary, sometimes funny, and educational. Later discovered there’s a whole rainbow of these books (“The Blue Fairy Book”, “The Green Fairy Book”, etc.)

Sometimes you can see the moral of the story, but sometimes they’re just sheer fantasy.

I remember the Andrew Lang books. I loved those and they were usually the unedited versions as well, which I liked. It was so strange that I was such a scaredy cat as a kid that I couldn't even go into the horror section of the video store, but I loved the darker fairy tales. I became a huge horror fan later on, so maybe these stories helped. I used to get so mad if I was bought a storybook by a family member and it was toned down from the original.

This has a good, new translation of the original first few editions of Grimm's Fairy Tales. When they first came out, they were intended as historical records, not tales for children, so the first few editions of the work had the original tales as they were, warts and all. After the book became popular among children, they started changing the tales, and took out a bunch and added some more, but they were toned down and made more appropriate for kids (they took out a lot of sex and violence, and paupers overthrowing princes, that sort of thing).

[quote] Even as a kid I thought it was a 'nice touch' how the gods and goddesses would have their favorite mortals and intervene on their behalf and how they would bicker among themselves and had their own rivalries and jealousies.

It’s the same with many other pantheons beside the Greek. Look into Norse mythology, Native American...

You might enjoy The Mabinogion for more of the same, R10. The Gods & Goddesses of Wales have out their grievances over land, livestock and love and usually drag their entire families into it. They have little contact with mortals but their actions do affect the world of Men (I.e. a God in a rage causes a storm). I am hoping to become a devotee to one of the Gods in several years, and right now I’m courting the favour of a few (Blodeuwedd, Manawydan, Arawn, King Lludd and Dylan ail Ton) to find out who I best fit with.

I’m thinking of volunteering to read a few Branches to the kids at the local Catholic school just to give them a taste of a different spirituality (under the guise of ‘literature’, of course) and make sure these stores are remembered and passed down orally, as they were originally meant to be.

[quote] I liked the Snow Queen (or Ice Queen) where she put an icicle in the boy's heart which makes him cruel and cold to everyone

Didn't she also get a splinter from her shattered looking glass into the boy's eye, so that he saw only the wicked and evil in everything and everyone?

I feel negative people are like that.

r25 if you set them on fire, will that cause the ice in their hearts to melt?

There was a really great Russian animated version of The Snow Queen I loved as a kid. I caught it on TV one day and fell in love. They also did one for The Wild Swans that I adored, too. I love those two stories, because they're so epic in scope. You can't adapt them into some neat and tidy 10 minute short.

That rings a bell R25. Think you might be right - after he is bewitched and goes to live with her or something like that? I'll see if I can find it online.

Here we go - it was hearts AND eyes. And it was a lot more involved than I remember it to be plus I don't recall the Hans Christianity aspect at all. I must have had a simple pagan version.

I loved this version of The Snow Queen as a kid, r10.

Oh, I didn't realize at the time that the Snow Queen was voiced by Miss June Foray!

[quote]The ones where seemingly heterosexual married men really really want gay sex.

???

...that's not a myth bitch. It's called history. You may want to pick up a book about ancient history.

THat's the Russian version I was speaking of. How lovely to see it again. You gotta love YouTube.

I do, I do, r33!

Of the “written” tales, I like Hans Christen Anderson. He’s very dark, and he “gets” childhood. The Girl Who Trod On A Loaf is all kinds of weird.

On a tangent, For some reason I have never fathomed, I completely hate those post-Victorian tales Peter Pan, Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard Of Oz. Loathe them. I find them too clever and tricky and not about light and dark and primal impulses, and the idea of being trapped in some psychedelic world babysitting a bunch of Lost Boys or Scarecrows or White Rabbits fills me with dread.

"Alice in Wonderland" is not post-VIctorian, R34, honey.

If you're going to hate something, maybe you should not only try to "fathom" the reason - you pretend to be a victim to your hatred, twatto, which is prevaricatingly obnoxious - and get your dates right.

Anderson often is excruciatingly sentimental and a bit of a creep. Like someone who would have the kiddies sit on his lap while he's regaling them with his stories of things that die, and then hate himself over it afterwards.

r36 - die, cunty.

R36, girls, girls, they’re ALL pedophiles, kay?

Long before the days of surprise anal, I wanted to be Jack in Jack and Beanstalk. You know, just sitting around my quaint little village when all of a sudden a HUGE beanstalk shoots out of the earth underneath me, up my bumhole, tickling me and hoisting me high into the air. I know, a silly fantasy.

[quote] The ones where seemingly heterosexual married men really really want gay sex.???...that's not a myth bitch. It's called history. You may want to pick up a book about ancient history.

And get out more. Happens all the time everywhere. In fact it's the dominant way of being gay in the world and not the were gay proud queer get used to it gay marriage thing.

I’m pretty sure this was the book I read as a child.

Thanks R29. The version I read was pretty long and convoluted as I recall. Loved it all though, I remember enjoying being unsettled by it.

The simplicity of fairy tales however is not only their charm but their power though some like The Snow Queen are longer narratives. Not surprised, as there must be so many tellings in the fairy tale, more than in any other form.

I think I read it several times, in simpler versions first, and longer when I was a little older. Funny, I can still picture a page of it in my minds eye.

Here, James Merrill, memorably, in his The Changing Light at Sandover:

Fed Up so long and variously by Our age's fancy narrative concoctions, I yearned for the kind of unseasoned telling found In legends, fairy tales, a tone licked clean Over the centuries by mild old tongues, Grandam to cub, serene, anonymous.

… So my narrative Wanted to be limpid, unfragmented; My characters, conventional stock figures Afflicted to a minimal degree With personality and past experience – A witch, a hermit, innocent young lovers, The kinds of being we recall from Grimm, Jung, Verdi, and the commedia dell'arte.

Ugh. Sorry. Here as he wrote it:

Fed

Up so long and variously by

Our age's fancy narrative concoctions,

I yearned for the kind of unseasoned telling found

In legends, fairy tales, a tone licked clean

Over the centuries by mild old tongues,

Grandam to cub, serene, anonymous.

… So my narrative

Wanted to be limpid, unfragmented;

My characters, conventional stock figures

Afflicted to a minimal degree

With personality and past experience –

A witch, a hermit, innocent young lovers,

The kinds of being we recall from Grimm,

Jung, Verdi, and the commedia dell'arte.

I always liked "The LIttle Mermaid." It was an incredibly dark story of true love, sacrifice and physical agony. I also liked "The Red Shoes", the heroine in that one is also subjected to unimaginable physical and psychological torment. The tales had what might be called a silver lining but even so are filled with violence and suffering. Those old fairy tales have so much depth and substance that they hold up to this day. I still love reading them.

THE WILD HUNT. FUCKING MASSIVE SWARM OF GIANT MURDER HOUNDS.

The original Little Mermaid came as quite a shock to young me. I'd only known the story from the Disney version and I was stunned and heartbroken when I read the original story. It really is a beautiful (and relatable) story.

R35, for Wizard and Alice, it might be explained by the fact that they are not purely fairy tales, but allegories about mathematics ans anti unionism.

The rimes in Alice were mnemotechnic tricks to understand, grasp and remember different mathematics notions. Carroll was a mathemtician, after all...

... as for the Wizard of Oz, it first was an allegory about economic and political situation in the 1890s US.

Not much hidden psyche in those two stories.

Sorry for the two postes, as I don't know how to link more than one page per post.

You need to put h ttp : // before the links, R47-48.

Eeps !

Here we go.

So yes, this could be why R35 had a feeling of clever hidden message in these stories, rather than wonder or mystery.