“Bahram Gur in the Yellow Pavilion” from the Khamseh of Nizami.
The Simpleton’s posted Bewildered in Bakersfield’s question in the Fairy Tale Lobby, and just like that–(snap!)–some magical friends gathered around the hearth for tea and conversation.
“So, do you do it? And, if so, how?” Sagacia asked. “Change a story, I mean. And what story? And how?”
Csenge Zalka put down her teacup.
The example that comes to my mind is from Nizami’s Seven Wise Princesses (not a folktale, but a tales-within-tales kind of situation like the Arabian Nights, based on folktales). There is a story in it (told by the Yellow Princess) about a king that amuses himself with slave girls every day because he is afraid of being betrayed by a wife (very Shahriar of him). Finally he falls in love with a slave girl who declines all his approaches and won’t even let him touch her. He finally decides on a new approach: he sits down with her and actually asks her what is wrong (I know, very novel, right?!). She tells him that she loves him too, but in her family every woman dies in childbirth, and she is too afraid to be with anyone.
Csenge took another sip of tea and looked around the parlor. The assembled company were listening attentively, except for Murzik, who purred happily next to Sagacia. Csenge went on.
Now, the first time I read this in an abridged version, the king confessed his love and said he was fine without having children, and it was a very cute ending that highlighted the importance of honesty, communication, and alternate family models. But when I read the original text, I was horrified. The original story ends with the king having sex with another hot woman in front of the love of his life to incite her jealousy and drive her into his arms anyway.
Murzik’s eyes ripped open in astonishment. He was listening, all right! Csenge concluded:
No way I am telling the story that way, and I don’t think modern audiences would be okay with it either. So I stick to the abridged version, because I think it gets out an important message about relationships that people need to hear. If the audience is appropriate (adult & interested in historical approaches) I might talk to them after the fact about how I changed the story and why.
“So,” said Sagacia, petting the cat back into comfort. “In that case, you simply made a choice to tell the version you first fell in love with.”
“Is that skirting the rules?” Simplia asked. “Like T.H.E. Cat, that old TV series? But getting the desired results? Like T.H.E. Cat?”
“Maybe, but talking about it later to anyone interested makes it not skirting any rules,” Sagacia said. “No matter which rules you’re talking about. TO change or NOT to change.”
“Of course, both the original and the revised version are ‘recorded,'” Sagacia said in her dismissive pedantic way. “Both are versions listeners might find in a library without ever knowing there is another, just like Csenge did at first.”
“The thing is, though, they might think the attitudes and actions in whichever version they read reflect the original Persian cultures,” Simplia noted. “I’m so confused! My brain wants a straight answer!”
“There is no straight answer, Dear,” Sagacia said, patting her friend’s knee. “Besides that, people who conclude that there is probably have no clear view of what that culture even is, neither ancient Persia nor modern Iran,” she sniffed.
Simplia heaved a sigh. Charles Kiernan, standing by the fireplace, was lighting his pipe, which meant he had something to say.
Storytellers often bemoan that when a story is written down it becomes part of the strata of oral history, now fixed in its potential development forever, no longer an evolving entity.
Let me present the other edge of that sword.
He gave a puff, then transferred the pipe to his other hand.
Recording a story, which in the 19th century context meant writing it down, preserved the tale until it could be heard once again.
Here is my example. Stephen Badman, to the service of us who have not bothered to learn to speak or read the Danish language, has translated some of the voluminous folklore collection of Evald Tang Kristensen. One of these tales is “The Princess Who Became a Man.” Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. Why Kristensen had the courage to write it down is the tribute to his non-judgmental approach to collecting what he heard. Had he not done so, this story would certainly have been lost, given the following century of homophobic insecurity. You can find this tale in “Odds and Sods,” available at Amazon (of course).
This is not a tale for the faint-hearted. There are brutal aspects to it, but the true nature of love comes through. “Love” is one of those four lettered words that demand we deal with them at our risk.
Csenge sprang from the Chesterfield.
Whoa! Thanks! I have collected a couple of versions of this story, but I was not familiar with the Danish variant. Cheers! :)
“So,” said Simplia, looking back at Charles. “You’re just grateful that the story was saved to await a generation where it might be appreciated?
Charles gave a puff and a nod that Simplia took to mean he concurred.
“Or listeners who may be heartened by it,” Sagacia chimed in. “Anyone who doesn’t like it can just let the book gather dust, . . .”
“Or leave it untranslated . . . ” Simplia interjected.
“. . . until the cows come home!” Sagacia added snappily.
“Moo-oo!” Simplia nodded.
Murzik gave her that what-the-heck-was-that-all-about look.
So, what the heck was it all about, Magical Friends? What have you done to preserve or change a story, and do you make any explanation about it to your listeners? That’s what Murzik wants to know.
Fairy Tale Lobby 
We told an old story that is new to our tongues the other day. Traditionally, it ends with death for the nasty character. Because our audience for that piece is younger, we don’t go off on the brutalities of that (no dancing to death in iron hot shoes or soaking in tar or anything); yet we honor the intent of the traditional work. We give a gentle picture of her circumstances (becoming lost in a storm) and say that she was ‘never seen again.’ A euphemism perhaps, but one that fed our bifurcated need to honor the little ones in the room and the cultural tradition. It also honors the literature that indicates how important it is psychologically for young listeners to know that the story world is cleansed of all evil.
So, a wise young one in the front row, upon hearing that the ‘witch’ was never seen again cried out, “She was really gone, wasn’t she?” Yes, indeed she was. So all that psychological research was borne out in one child’s triumphant realization that the story evil was truly vanquished.
Death in such stories is symbolic. And symbols work wonders.
I’ve been giving the ‘ner do wells in many a story life sentences in the dungeon recently- commuting their death sentences… “Off with his head” has become a disturbing an all to real image lately and I don’t want to in any way normalize it.
Capital punishment in Fairy Tales too harsh or just deserts in realms of the imagination?
Depends on the audience. A lot of psychologists say that kids need closure, and until it is sure the villain will never ever come back (is dead), they will feel anxiety after the story ends. They also say that kids don’t imagine or process the villain dying as adults do (they don’t imagine the gore or the reality of it, just like with Little Red being devoured). I have had kids complain to me after a story that the wicked witch should have died, because what if she comes back? With that said, I can see where you are coming from and I am struggling with this too. In Hungarian folktales there are endings that say “the wicked queen was so angry that her plan failed that she dropped dead.” (or popped like a balloon, which kids find endlessly funny). Sometimes “no one ever saw the queen again” (exile) also works as long as you press the point that she never reappeared. Ultimately it’s up to the storyteller, and depends on the audience :) Closure is the important thing.
I actually have an example of the opposite, for kicks :) I have been researching versions of the Irish folktale called “the Black Thief.” I found about a dozen of them from Scotland, Ireland, England and some other countries like Italy, most of them recorded in the late 19th century. There is an episode (sometimes more than one) in this tale where the hero hides in a giant’s pantry among the dead bodies of previous victims. The giant reaches in, cuts off a part of him to eat, but he is so scared he keeps silent, and gets away in the end.
Now, in most recorded versions, the giant cuts off the hero’s “hip.” Anatomically, there is not much on a hip that can be cut off, really. After reading many versions, I started to suspect that the original telling probably featured our friend the Thief having half his butt cut off – only, these tales were recorded in the Victorian era, there was no way that was going to stand. There are other medieval legends and folkales that do feature someone losing half a butt (also, Voltaire’s Candide, to the endless delight of my high school class). So, after some consideration, I decided to use butt instead of hip whenever I felt like I needed to play up the comedic effect.
(Similar reverse examples could be people telling the gory “original Grimm tales” instead of the Disneyfied versions)
I think there is room for both. It is good for some storytellers to re-work stories to help modern people connect to them. Some people need that. It is also good for storytellers to tell the old stories the old way. Other people need that. I count myself more among the latter. To each their own.
When I was about 10 years old, I went with my parents to see a production of Macbeth which turned out to be particularly gruesome. But not long into the play, I suddenly realised I knew the story. I’d been told a fairly mild version of it by my teacher. Knowing what was happening next made it safe for me to watch the play without getting too scared.
This is still my justification for telling ‘watered down’ versions of stories to young children. They hear the story of Cap o’Rushes being turned out of the house for not protesting her love: then as adults they hear the horrific version of the same story involving incest and rape and are more able to get a handle on the emotions involved. They hear a little cut-down story of Rama and Sita with puppets and minimal violence: it prepares them for the richness of the full version later.
The first time I read “The Vicious Fairies” in Eddie Lenihan’s “Meeting the Other Crowd” (a traditional Irish tale), I was appalled. In it, the Fair Folk are told that on the Day of Judgment, they will only see the face of God if one drop of blood can be found in their veins. But they have no blood, as such; they are cursed forever, not for their actions but for their identity, for what they are, not who they are. I couldn’t accept that this was considered a “Christian” story; it wasn’t the way I was raised to understand the religion.
So I wrote a new ending–the human, realizing what he thought was good news was really a curse, cuts his own hand and offers it “blood brother” style–offering that ‘drop of blood’ as he feels Jesus would. And yes, I tell my listeners what I changed and why.
Maybe because I consider myself a writer as well as a storyteller, I feel comfortable taking the old wine and putting it into new skins. But I do tell my listeners that they have heard an original twist on an old tale. I hope that satisfies both the traditionalist and Muse.
I like your new version :-) Some say that the intermarriage of fairy and human was also an attempt to put our blood in their veins as well as vice versa
When I first read that story, I actually thought that was how it was going to end :) Good to see I wasn’t the only one…
(I need to explain that I am a rather well spoken English woman.) I came across a story online which was set in mid-west America: it was amusing with a terrific punch line and it tickled my funny bone, but there was no way I could tell it as it stood. I took the bones out of it and fed it on haggis and dressed it in tartan – now I tell my version as if it had happened to my great grandfather in Scotland. It goes down well, and afterwards I talk about the source and why I changed it and how much of my version is based on fact. I only have to say (in my most refined BBC accent) ‘Honestly, do I SOUND like an American cowboy?!’ for my audience to understand perfectly why I made the changes I did.
I did the same thing, Fiona, with a Mideastern story about pickles, changing it to a village in the Highlands, because i was invited to a dinner in honor of a pair of new parents, and was asked to tell “something funny about being pregnant.” So the wife of the man keeping the barrel of pickles for his absent friend has a craving in the middle of the night for pickles and (fill in the blank; I used the things I knew that young woman had craved that the couple were laughing about)…and he opens the barrel to get the pickles, intending and forgetting to replace them later. Each time the wife is pregnant, he goes back to the barrel…until finally he finds the gold his friend had hidden in the bottom of the brine. Horrified, he hurries out the next day and buys replacement pickles. Now, the year that his friend planned to be away has become several, and eventually, he decides that the older man must be dead…and when he has some business reverses, he takes some of the gold, again intending to replace it. When the owner comes home, he is given the barrel, apparently untouched–until he opens it and tastes the top pickle. As a renowned pickler, he knows they aren’t his, checks that the gold is gone, and takes him to court. Two other master pickle-makers are called as witnesses; the better of the two deduces that not only are these inferior pickels, but they have a metallic overtaste….Eventually, the truth comes out, and the two old friends are reconciled. It’s a fun story, in any culture.