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Barra the Bard, fairy tale lobby, Hugh Waterhouse, Julie Moss Herrera, Marilyn Kinsella, mary grace ketner, megan hicks, Priscilla Howe, storytelling
Simplia muttered the statement under her breath, but Sagacia’s hearing was remarkably acute.
“A whiner?!” she exclaimed. “I’m shocked, Simplia. Shocked! You were the third child in your family. How can you not feel sympathy for poor Frustrated’s plight?”
Simplia pushed her chin out, balled her hands into fists inside her apron pockets and said, “Because I can’t picture his mom and dad ever taking him deep into the forest and leaving him there, like poor Molly Whuppie. Do you know one fairy tale where that happens to a boy?”
“Hansel and Gretel,” Sagacia replied without an instant’s hesitation.
“They had a wicked step-mother. It was a boy and a girl. And anyway I’m talking about a real mom and a real dad. If that had been Hansel and Gretel’s real mom, there wouldn’t even be a story about them.”
“Watch what you say about step-mothers,” warned Sagacia, who loved her father’s second wife, who moonlighted as a good fairy godmother.
Simplia apologized and decided she wasn’t smart enough to have an argument with Sagacia. But that didn’t alter the way she felt about Frustrated in Fresno. Just let him spend a whole day trying to play and do his chores in a dress and petticoats, she thought to herself. He doesn’t know what hardship is.
,
“Neither does she,” said a telepathic goose, who had collapsed at the edge of the road, exhausted from trying to walk around with a body full of impossibly heavy golden eggs.
Simplia and Sagacia soon arrived at the Fairy Tale Lobby, where they pinned Frustrated in Fresno’s question to the message board in hopes that their magical friends would notice it and respond to him with words of hope or wisdom.
They had barely sat themselves down to a light repast of milk and ashcake before they heard the first responses.
Barra the Bard started her answer with a question:
Do all flowers bloom at the same time? No! It’s the same with people; some take longer than others to find out what they’re uniquely good at doing. Don’t try to compete with what your brothers do; after all, your brothers have years longer to attain their expertise.
Instead, pay attention to what they DON’T do. …(I)f you are nice to everyone, no matter how old, ugly, small or of a different species, you’ll be surprised at how far you may go!
Upon hearing what Hugh Waterhouse had to say to Frustrated, Simplia felt vindicated:
Speaking as an eldest son, I think it’s a bit rich for Jack, or Ivan, or whatever he is calling himself at the moment, to whitter on about his downtrodden life, his disadvantages and his disappointments, the unfairness of it all.
Consider the unfairness of knowing that by accident of birth, you are condemned to be the first to get the spell wrong, to snub the witch, or fail to help some animal in distress, and thus end up as donkeys, door-knobs or dead.
Priscilla Howe countered “Never mind about those ‘accomplishments’ of your older sibs. They’ve always been too big for their britches and that will be their downfall. Just remember to offer the old woman half your bread, be kind to the little animals who will help you later, and remember that your inner spark is bright enough to light your way. As Dame Julian of Norwich said, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
Julie Moss Herrera took the long view: “First, third, second; eldest, youngest, middle… Never mind, unbeknownest to others most everyone tends to feel they are less accomplished, that others are mocking them. So believe in yourself, and set your spirit free from fretting about measuring up, Frustrated. You are/will become what you believe you are/will be. Go forth and change your world for you cannot really change anyone else’s.”
And Marilyn Kinsella said: You only have to prove yourself … to Humans! They don’t know what hardship is!
“Wow!” said Sagacia. “I’m going to cross stitch that into a sampler to hang over the fireplace.”
“We don’t have a fireplace,” Simplia reminded her. “That’s just one more reason why we hang out here at the Fairy Tale Lobby. We can always warm ourselves at the hearth.”
“…and listen in on great conversations.” said Sagacia. “Let’s not go home just yet. Someone else may come in with words of wisdom for Frustrated in Fresno.”
Fairy Tale Lobby 
I remember reading in Marie Louise Van Franz’s books on Fairytales ( not to be missed, by the way).. that 3 is the number that leaves open for something to happen.. a number of action and moving towards fulfillment.. at least in the west?
Remember that old ’90s TV show, “Herman’s Head?” Herman had 4 characters in his head, angel, animal, wimp and hypchondriac, and whenever something happened to him, the characters reacted, or whenever he had to make a decision, the characters argued amongst themselves as to what he should do. I think that’s what dreams and fairy tales do; they let us see several outcomes out there in “faery,” and maybe when we are challenged in similar ways, we’ll have some vision about the possibilities. Dreams are private and individual, but fairy tales are shared; they draw from universal, or at least broader-than-individual experience.
Dear Simplia,
I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but the original mother in Hansel and Gretel was the children’s biological mother. As was the ‘evil’ queen in Snow White.
“The Grimms, in an effort to preserve the sanctity of motherhood, were forever turning biological mothers into step-mothers.” – Maria Tatar ‘The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales’
Step-mothers get a bad wrap because Jacob and Wilhelm could not stand the idea of a cruel mother.
All the best,
Reilly.
Dear Frustrated,
Your position in the family as third (or youngest) son is truly an honoured one. The fairy realm is filled with tales of youngest sons who triumphed where their brothers could not. I advise you find a storyteller, buy her/him a large jug of ale, find a cosy seat by the hearth in your nearest tavern, and ask about ‘The Magic Table, the Gold Donkey, and the Club in the Sack’, ‘A Fairy Tale About a Boy Who Left Home to Learn About Fear’, ‘The Three Brothers’, ‘Tom Thumb’, ‘The Frog Princess’, and ‘The Singing Bone’…though you don’t want the kind of triumph the hero finds in this last one!
Be patient and enjoy your youth. Your time will come.
All the best,
Reilly.
I think this is where the saying ‘try, try, try again” comes from. It rarely works the first time. Everything comes in threes. I am the eldest of two plus two, so maybe not everything! One regular sibling and a couple of half siblings. Can’t remember which half they are, the left or the right, top or the bottom, but I will be seeing some of them in a week or so.
Anyway. I have been kind to animals (only once did I try to shoot a bird and I missed. But returning a branch swung and caught me in my ‘site’ eye, so I never did THAT again). I always offer food to strangers (and sometimes regretted it) when I have it to share. When I smoked, cigarettes too! And we know how some grannys like smoking! But I still get in trouble. I watch others too, to try to learn from their mistakes. But I still get in trouble. Maybe because I AM habituated. Darn!
My youngest sibling is by far the most successful of all four of us. Although to say she is “innocent, more fundamentally good or untarnished” is pushing it a bit! On a positive note, I have never been left in the woods but my evil step-father tried to send me to boarding school! He knew, however, that I would run away until I got kicked out of the school! I have been stuck between a rock and a hard place more But all those times I have found myself wedged in canyons, being chased by evil people, or dragons, or found myself talking my way out of trouble, has given me more of those real experiences to put into my tales and made me a better storyteller for it! So I am happy to have been the first born with all of it’s grief and growing!
Peace, Simon
http://www.simonbrooksstoryteller.com
Growing up as the oldest you are always expected to be the perfect child, but in reality you are the test child. Your parents try out all of their ideas on you and learn that some of their techniques are flawed, so they try something new with the next child. So stop whining Fresno by the time they get to you they have worked out most of the kinks an you have a much easier time living. As to your older siblings —we are just taking our frustration out on the one who didn’t have to be their parents guinea pig.
Oh yes, how the eldest breaks ground for those who come behind determines everything.
I love fairytales and have spent forty five years studying their journey and meaning and love love to tell them to adults as well as children..
For me the beauty and the challenge of telling fairytales, that very special brand of symbolic story, is that for me they are not literal tales. The storyteller is in a very potent position of creating an atmosphere of grounded relationship to audience, and “suspended belief” to arouse imaginative response with their audiences. The first two brothers or sisters are usually those aspects of ourselves that are less “fresh” “tarnished by habitual patterns of greed, conventional fear and reactions, etc.” While the third son or daughter is our innocent, more fundamentally good or untarnished aspect.. not habituated. The storyteller gives us a chance to feel the contrast.. the older brothers might get stuck in a narrow road or turned to stone. or retireve fame and a princess with deception only to lose out in the end to the third youngest – whose natural kindness is becoming genuine conscious compassion through the journey of the story. That is how I feel about and approach fairytales and three siblings… When I say “once upon a time” I surrender into the knowing that it is a waking dream unfolding for myself and listeners and that they are having a chance to not only travel the road with a hero or heroine, but gain access to the consequences of either foolish or downright horrible intentions. Each person who hears the story is imagining.. becoming.. each part of the story within themselves If the storyteller has the skill to not tell the tale as if it is a literal event only, the listener has a chance to experience the entire journey… and uncover and tender their capacity for discernment, love and kindess. best , laura
The idea of a “waking dream” reminds me of how I interpret sleeping dreams: every character in the dream is some aspect of my self.
true, true!
I believe Laura’s concept of the siblings as “aspects of self” is absolutely true. I wonder, though, if there are not other truths represented in the siblings. After all, 3 is such a loaded number; Almost as loaded as familial relationships.
Hmmm…. Two points is a line, and though a line is endless, we visualize a segment of a line and see extremes, poles, opposites: beautiful and ugly, black and white, good and bad brothers, kind and unkind sisters,… (Those are great stories, too.) Three begins to form a shape. And more than three is just detail! 7 dwarfs, 12 dancing princesses,….
Against that backdrop, the uniqueness of one stands out not as an opposite but as unique; not as odd, but as more of the same: more determined, more persevering, more generous, having more integrity, more fully human. Could that be part of the explanation to your interesting proposal?