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fairy tale lobby, fairy tales, george macdonald, mary grace ketner, megan hicks, princess and curdie, princess and the goblin, storytell listserve, storyteller, storytelling
The Simpletons’ public library had set up a little annex in the far corner of the Fairy Tale Lobby, sort of like one of those kiosks they used to put in malls, only cozy. Here the two of them sat side by side, poring over the tea, the prose and the pictures laid out on the table in front of them.
It was an old-fashioned library, with circulation cards and card pockets. When Simplia’s attention wandered and she flipped open the cover of her book in order to look for familiar names on the circulation card, she found no card in the pocket. Instead, there was a folded sheet of onionskin paper that crinkled when she flattened it out.
“I was wondering how the next question would arrive,” she said.
Sagacia was so rapt in her book that she barely looked up as she asked, “Yeah? What is it this time?”
Simplia read:
Dear Vasilisa the Wise —
I’m sitting here in the library, among the 398’s — my favorite section. And I’m looking at all these books full of fairy tales. Some of them are crusty old volumes with torn spine covers and brittle pages. Some of them are slick and new, retellings written and illustrated by the current batch of children’s book artists. The thing is, though, all these books — even the crusty old ones — are retellings of old, old stories.
Vasilisa, you hang out with archetypes. Maybe you can tell me: Are there any new fairy tales bubbling forth? If so, where do they come from? Do the motif indices ever need to be updated to accommodate new stories? And this business of freezing folk tales (originally oral in transmission) in the silence of print — isn’t that sort of like killing a butterfly in order to study it?
Pondering in Pomona
Sagacia merely responded with a distracted, “Hmm. Interesting.” And she went back to her book.
Simplia tacked Pondering in Pomona’s letter to the bulletin board by the front door of the Fairy Tale Lobby. She read the notices of cottages for rent and talking donkeys for sale that their magical friends had recently put up. She scritched the cat and sang to the canary. Gave the geraniums in the window box a drink of water. And when she finally returned to the table, Sagacia was still buried in her book.
“Whatcha reading?” Simplia asked.
Her friend didn’t even look up. “The Princess and the Goblin,” she said.
“Hmm,” said Simplia. “The cover says it was written by George MacDonald. So it’s not a real fairy tale.”
“Whatever,” her friend said, still not taking her eyes off the page.
Editors’ note: It’s obvious that Sagacia is too absorbed in her story, and by now it should be apparent that Simplia just doesn’t have the intellectual oomph to be much help with Pondering in Pomona’s question. We’re hoping their Magical Friends will drop by the Fairy Tale Lobby and shed some light on the matter. You are invited to leave your comments here on the blog, on the Storytell listserve, and on Facebook (Storytellers or Fairy Tale Lobby).
Fairy Tale Lobby 
Dear Pondering,
I agree with so many of those who have already added their comments, but I want to point out something no one else has so far. To do that, I have to generate a new fairy tale:
Once upon a time, a long time ago, high up in the Musconetcong mountains of northwestern New Jersey, there lived a little girl in a little yellow house on a street lined with apple trees that perfumed the air every spring with their blossoms. And every year, an old woman would come to the house for eight weeks. She had multicolored eyes behind her glasses that could not see, and a cloud of white wavy hair like rooted thistledown, and skilled gentle soothing hands. Her voice was a blend of a Highland burr and a Welsh lilt. Most grownups thought that she was poor, having only a purse, a winter coat, a suitcase,and a train case, moving every two months among her children’s families. But in reality, she possessed untold riches, an immense legacy from her grandparents, of Scottish and Welsh folklore, folktales, legends, myths, ballads, poetry, prayers, incantations, hymns, and proverbs. She knew and talked about kings and queens, kelpies and brownies, silkies and giants and merfolk, lads and lasses who sought their futures and traveied through perils and wonders and adventures, mistakes and learning. She had learned about all these from a long family bardic tradition, and wove them into life with her voice and hands and harp-strings.
Many years later, her youngest granddaughter had grown up and lived in a city far away, and after many adventures was deeply unhappy because she didn’t know what to do in her life. She had tried quite a few things, but none of them satisfied her to the soul. One day someone asked, “If you could choose any job in the world, what would it be?” And from the depths of her being, she answered, “I’d be a bard.”
It is a wonderful thing to find one’s place and role. But then it has to be lived! She decided to work on the storytelling part first. “I can tell the ones I learned from Granny!” she said happily….and then began to realize she had a problem. She didn’t know all the stories! Some she didn’t remember very well. Some she thought she’d heard mentioned, parts and fragments, but not all of them. Some she knew her granny had not told her because of disliking that kind of tale, or because she felt they weren’t really appropriate for a little girl to hear, or perhaps because she had forgotten them herself in her long life.
But the granddaughter was lucky enough to live in a city with several fine libraries, and she went to them, finding collections and anthologies. She met other storytellers, both in her city and in cyberspace, who were happy to trade and talk about tales. And she began to go on quests, seeking out the tales she thought she *almost* remembered, even the one that began, “There were three brothers. The oldest would eat from the top of the pot to the middle, and the next brother ate from the middle to the bottom of the pot, and the youngest ate the scrapings from the sides of the pot….” and gradually, she was able to piece together clues from this place and that person, until she had the entire tale back again. At the core was her granny’s voice, and as she lived with the tale before she told it herself, she also blended it with those other voices and her own, until she could share it in a way that lit the eyes and hearts of those who listened–sometimes only one other person’s.
Many storytellers speak passionately about trapping stories in the rigid print of books. The granddaughter thought that they are more like threads in a vast tapestry. The sunlight of time may fade them; you can see an apple-tree in a tapestry but not smell the scent of the apples or blossoms, yet it gives a sketch, a picture of the tree and its leaves. And that is what happens to tales in books. They are there, ready to remind us of the real tree, apples, blossoms, scents. So is another tapestry/book, only perhaps it shows a different variety of apple-tree, or a different kind of tree.
Books are only one example. Some tales live in ballads, or even in children’s counting-songs, or nursery rhymes. “Five, six, pick up sticks; seven, eight, lay them straight,” is actually about patterning lace. There are stories in quilts, in churns, in so many things.
And the granddaughter began to realize that passing on the tales she loved could be done in other ways and media, although first and best and closest to her heart is using her voice and hands and, sometimes, her harp-strings. But she would not have all the tales to share that she does without books and other media, and she is glad to share them in whatever ways she can, for fear that they will be lost if no one tells the unwritten tale. What story is completely told? What story is completely finished?
–Barra the Bard
Friends, you can now see Barra’s new tale above illustrated on her blog, Adventures in Barding. Barra, I love knowing that what began as a comment here grew into a full-fledged tale worthy of appearing on your own blog!
Thanks, Mary Grace!
Dear Pondering,
Yes, I believe there are new fairy tales (but of course it all goes back to your definition). Robert Munsch comes to mind in The Paper Bag Princess. It has a prince, a princess, a dragon and magic. I think it qualifies. Recently, at the Fairy Tale Swap at the NSN Conference, I told and original tale, “The Princess and the Storytelling Frog.” I wrote it last year (so it is new) and I believe it contains the elements of a traditional fairy tale. Look at the StoryCrafters, I believe they have also created new fairy tales to go along with the re-worked old tales they tell. Just think, 100 years from now, people will be looking at those tales as “old.”
The question regarding book pockets and the illustration above reminded me of the great artist, Maxfield Parrish (http://parrish.artpassions.net/). He was once asked if he had created a book plate. His self-deprecating reply:
Dear Sir,
I thank you for your kind note…but I regret to tell you that I never had any prints made of the book plates I once made. I have only made three or four, and the less said of them the better, and you miss nothing at all in not having copies of them.
Your storytelling frog story is a perfect example, Mark! An adventure in fracturing fairy tales, too, but without taking the magic out, so it qualifies! (More about the FTL swap later!)
Fairy tale by definition does not mean it has to be folklore. Some fairy tales have authors, like Andersen. I personally do have favorite fairy tale authors. Madame D’Aulnoy had some very pretty ones (Prince Ariel would be my favorite). Of course that does not qualify as “new”, but you get the point: people write stories, and some of those stories are fairy tales. Even today.
I once read somewhere that “modern folktales don’t start with ‘once upon a time’; they start with ‘so I read on the Internet…'” :)
And do they end with “Logging out…”?
Dear Pondering,
Yes, Of Course, there are new fairy tales being created all the time. They come from the creative minds of the people that tell them and/or write them down. Not all of those people are story collectors, folklorists or Storytellers, though, so that seems to confuse the issue for people who worry about that type of thing. Not me. Here’s what I can pass on to you: Some of the new fairy tales are long like the old Norse sagas, and some of them are shorter lengths, called ‘novellas’ or ‘short stories’. Many are not illustrated. Many do not fit into the children’s section of the library where most fairy tale books are kept, so they often wind up in the YA or adult fiction areas. Some people feel the need to put a label on books spines so the books can be categorized in a particular way. You may need to look for labels such as “Fantasy” or “Science Fiction” or simply “Fiction”
Yes, writing down a story does freeze it in a certain way. And drawing it freezes it in another. Unless the teller/author gives someone else permission to re-tell the written story in a different way or in a different format, the story will stay frozen. Fortunately, many of the tellers/authors do allow their stories to be told.
You will find many people who will discuss at length and at nauseum about the merits/demerits of categorizing these stories in a certain way, or assigning them a space on the shelf by a certain number. I leave that to those who enjoy those discussions. It has never made much sense to me to put fictional stories in the non-fiction section, anyway. But I have accepted it, and learned to live with it. Just because I believe they are true stories does not mean that the general public sees them as non-fiction. Are those categorization numbers made with the people who use them in mind or the people who categorize them in mind? Ah, but I digress –
When reading the summaries of books available to you, how do you know you have found a new fairy tale? Because its summary will tell you it includes magic, fairies, elves, witches, a battle of good vs evil or nice vs mean or another meaningful message, talking animals, items with power, and other similar iconic fairy tale motifs.
To close, I will recommend a book of fairy tales for you to read, although it is not brand new: Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien. Oh! and PiP – not all tellers of new fairy tales like to write them down, so they are still passing them along by word of mouth.
The Librarian says this about categorizing books in the library: The 390’s are social customs. 398 and all the 398.2’s are the stories that tell about social customs through story. That’s the simplistic explanation I used to give 4th and 5th graders. Joke books are in non-fiction section and so are comic books. And all the 800’s are Literature. So when Mr. Dewey made it a bit easier to find what you were looking for without the help of the librarian who had worked there forever, he put everything in the “non-fiction.”
oh, yes, Julie… I know the whys and wherefores… and literary collections, Shakespeareann plays, etc are all in non-fiction. It’s just not the way I would have done it…. Mr Dewey’s system works quite well. It just ain’t perfect.
Something interesting for me to think about: the art also freezes the story, too. Thanks, Camille!
Julie, my explanation for kids is that folk and fairy tales are in non-fiction because, though the tales are not true, they are the tales that people truly tell.
Fairy tales were intended to be oral presentations for live audiences until those Grimm boys and their henchmen captured them and pressed them (with certain biased modifications) into books. These “dead butterflies” can occasionally soar again when voiced by inspired storytellers, but they are surely not the same as they were in their own time and cultural context. When strung together like beads on a string they became the long-form stories which our libraries are full of and which they still insist are produced by “storytellers” (not story writers, but don’t get me started on that old rant!)
The technology of literacy was so transformative that we gave it a birthday and classify everything that happened as “before” or “after”. These stories, histories, and herstories that have be so well “documented” by historians are often mistaken for the truth. “Real” fairy tales are ancient wisdom, not the flash in pan stuff of modern culture. Yeah, right.
As libraries struggle to remain relevant in this digital age, we must understand that we are facing a technological shift that is truly equivalent to the development of writing. We are entering the post-literate age (he types ironically to his hyper-literate audience.) As everything becomes increasingly digitized we must face the reality that the next generation will not need to read. There. I said it. The ultimate heresy to those who love the written word, and I am truly among that subset.
As everything becomes Kindleized and Nooked I predict that soon our children will see the foolishness of having to decode the inherently meaningless symbols on the screen. The technology already exists. “Siri, read me a fairy tale about dragons. “Siri tell me about the Roman Empire. Siri, tell me about the olden days when children were incarcerated in “schools” and forcibly programmed to decode ancient symbols.”
The Post-literate Age is here. We are carrying it around in our pockets.
As storytellers, librarians, authors, and keepers of the truth, it is our duty to reinvent the library as an oral storehouse. We must revisualize what it means to “tell” a story. We must not leave the reinvention of libraries to those corporations with a vested interest in the Pre-digital Age. We have a moral obligation to direct the evolution of this post-literate society toward the Truth (with a capital T).
Keepers of the Torch of Truth, Unite! (Sorry, as you can tell I am a bit passionate about this.)
Hear! Hear!
Lead on, Gene!
Apologies for passion not required!
Actually, all of the libraries in my area file Hans Christian Andersen under fairy tales, just as they include the works of other older “known” creators, from Aesop to Perrault, in that same section.
George MacDonald isn’t there, partly because his stories were largely book length, rather than short fairy tales. So, his books are filed along with the books of Baum, Barrie and Nesbit, rather than with fairy tales. I believe that he and other more “modern” creators of fairy tales have simply not maintained the “market share” that the tales of Andersen and Perrault, or those collected by the Brothers Grimm, have maintained in the reading marketplace. Jane Yolen is simply so prolific that no one story of hers is as well-known, even though they are remarkable modern fairy tales.
Also, modern copyright law works against the popularizing of original fairy tales. A hundred years ago, when beautifully illustrated versions of folk tales and fairy tales were sold in every bookstore and put on the shelf of every library, the tales of the Grimms and Andersen were in the public domain. Under current copyright law, they would still have been under copyright, controlled by their heirs.
So, a collection of modern fairy tales, unless they’re written for that collection, can involve an amazing amount of detective work, just to get the rights to reprint each story. I suspect that this will mean fewer different books with any given Jane Yolen story than there were of books with Andersen’s “Little Match Girl,” for example.
That sounds like a great challenge for an aspiring anthologist! Anyone?
Many modern fantasies map onto traditional fairy tales fairly well — Lord of the Rings comes readily to mind, or the Chronicles of Narnia, and even the Harry Potter books. Frank L. Baum set out deliberately to create an American (U.S. American) fairy tale when he wrote The Wizard of Oz. They may not *be* fairy tales, if you exclude any work deliberated created, possibly in print, by a known author; still, the elements from these written stories go on to live a life of their own, and get re-used in other contexts, so one could say they will help *generate* new fairy tales. And what are we to make of stories like Bill Willingham’s Fables series of comics/graphic novels, which re-imagine fairy tale characters — as well as some literary fiction characters, such as Mowgli — in a modern setting?
Simon Brooks may also be onto something by suggesting urban legends, certainly insofar as they are (or can be) cautionary tales in the same way Little Red Riding Hood is. Never talk to a wolf if you’re in the woods alone, and never put your miniature canine into a microwave … I’d give that a “yes” vote, definitely.
Thanks for itemizing such good examples, Mario. They may show up again somewhere! (Heh heh!)
The new stories are there…whispers in the wind of creativity, awaiting the gift of time to transform them from mere written short stories to bedtime tales filled with expectation, to nostalgic retellings to grandchildren, until they become part of the culture, language, and memory of generations. I think they will look differently than those found in the crinkled old books, but they will speak to those future peoples just the same. I think there is a whisper of something new at http://www.shauntan.net/books/suburbia.html. I love the pictures, but they don’t all have to have the pictures to tell amazing stories.
Eric — Thanks for throwing Shaun Tan into this conversation. His work holds, for me, that sense of wonder (with the possibility of sharp teeth and claws) that a good fairy tale carries.
I wonder if urban myths are new ‘fairy’ tales? My favourite library section is 398.2. Maybe, if there are new and growing tales, a new section would open up as 398.3 or 4 or 5! I don’t have a copy of the Dewey Decimal Classification book to hand to help me, but…
300’s are social sciences and within that it breaks down to:
398.2 Social Sciences > Customs and folklore > Folklore > Legends, tales, traditions
The British storyteller Mike o’Leary began his book of folk tales from his local area with an urban myth. He said he’d been told it on the street in Portsmouth, which made it a local tale.
Yes, I do believe new fairy tales are created every day. Hans Christian Anderson did it. Jane Yolen does it. Because they are the known authors their books get cataloged under the author name rather than in the Fairy Tale Section. There’s gold in them there stacks.
On a side note, a few libraries, when they computerized their collections, instead of throwing out their old catalog cards, sent them to authors to sign, then they auctioned them off. I saw some on ebay but was not lucky enough to get one. How’s that for making gold out of straw? A card catalog signed by Ray Bradbury would be a pretty nifty thing to have.
Have you read Discards by Nicholson Baker? It was his grand article on card catalogs published in the New Yorker Magazine April 1994, and in his book The Size of Thoughts. I also loved his book Doublefold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper though even I have to admit no library, no matter how big, can keep every book that comes through its door. The question then becomes, which ones are the most important to keep?
At the library I worked at, and I am sure that it is the same or similar in most libraries, is those books that circulate the most stay and those that have not been read for 10 years are those that get – er, recycled! When working at the Latham library I would replace some of the older, falling apart books in the 398 section so they remained on the shelves! Sometimes I would discard the old copy and donate my new copy! So I have an early 1900’s copy of Bain’s Turkish Fairy Tales and Yeats’ Irish Fairy and Folk Tales (although I photocopied the ‘forward’ from my donated Modern Library Classic 2003 edition by Paul Muldoon which, obviously were absent in the 1900’s version)!
Ah, yes, Simon. I well recall the pain of “weeding” the 398s at the library where I worked. I personally gained many a fabulous title so I could still tell from it. Whenever new fresh copies existed, they were replaced. In the 398s I tried to find fellow lovers of the section to borrow on a schedule to keep those books available. Alas, our library didn’t even have a 10 year safety zone!
If you love these books, borrow them for future readers — even if you have your own copy.
For my own part I try to haunt library book sales and antiquarian bookstores. I have copies of Index to Fairy Tales — real gold in the first 2 volumes as they are Public Domain (vol. 2 isn’t 100% safe) keeping them alive. (Don’t get me started ranting on changes in copyright to confuse tellers of those newer tales about their availability!) Those motif indices and the Storytellers Sourcebooks continue helping find tales often in those old safe indices. Let’s also hear it for digital editions at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere keeping the Public Domain accessible wherever the internet is available.
Me, too, Lois! I once had occasion to realize that a book I had used often was in a library sale. I bought it, of course, but, more importantly, I changed my library habits. Now, if I use a 398.2 in any way, such as to compare a variant or to photocopy one story from it, I check it out. It is easy enough to drop it in the book drop on the way *out* of the library! The idea of deaccessioning fairy tale books seems to me like stealing from our grandchildren!
There are new stories using old motifs and fresh views (or fresh motifs and old views) being created all the time. Same as it ever was–there are so many variations on tales because the old tellers did not repeat word-for-word anymore than most of us do, and they were willing to change the tale as they saw fit. A tale with a known author might not be a folktale, but it can certainly be a fairy tale.
I like thinking about “old motifs and fresh views” vs. “fresh motifs and old views,” Cathy Jo.