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rushthatspeaksI wanted to read this because it is an important book to my housemate Thrud. If one spends much time around Thrud, eventually there will be some kind of lull, and in that lull she will tell some kind of story. Thrud collects stupid folktales to retell-- stories in which the motivations don't make sense even for folktales, the plot has less suspense than usual, the logic isn't, and the general effect is of utter confusion, but which are nonetheless genuine folktales that have actually been passed down from traditional sources. She has several in her repertoire, almost all of them wince-worthy, and many with details that entirely pass understanding.
Giants and Witches and a Dragon or Two is the sourcebook for her two stupidest folktales, so I wanted to read it, especially as I am now in the same house with it, which has not previously been the case.
It turns out to be a compilation from 1943 of various previously written retellings involving, as the title says, primarily giants. It has selections from Howard Pyle. It has a hilarious Andrew Lang segment in which the prose text has been entirely rewritten by the editor but every so often everyone lapses into bad doggerel all of which Lang was responsible for, and it has several pieces from an Irish collection I am considering tracking down because everything from it is mind-bogglingly incomprehensible. It also has a Russian bit by Arthur Ransome. The criteria for inclusion appear to have been twofold: a) giants; b) clever, beautiful, or interesting language. You will note that making sense does not appear among those criteria, and as many of the stories are very obscure, sense does not appear to be among their priorities either.
The thing is, the language actually is clever, interesting, and beautiful, and the sheer absurdity is extremely readable. It being 1943, the stories are sexist as all get out, and there is one terrifyingly, shudderingly Orientalist Western-attempt-to-fake-a-Chinese-story-except-not-really which I stared at in total incredulous horror. If you're not hypnotized by this book when it is good, it is certainly hypnotic on the many occasions on which it is terrible. It is terrible in ways one just doesn't encounter nowadays. It is a real example of how much things have changed in children's literature.
Thrud's two stories are 'Molly Whuppie', which I was interested to note that she tells verbatim, and 'The King and the Quince Tree', which saddened me, as it actually makes sense, and Thrud appears to have simply forgotten the plot point that makes it do so. But 'Molly Whuppie' is fairly impressive, mostly because of the dialogue between Molly and the ogre, in which after she outsmarts him he exclaims "Woe werth ye, Molly Whuppie, never you come again," and she says back "Three times (or two, or one), carle, I'll return again to Spain," at which point you sit there going, okay, so, one, nobody else in the entire fairy tale talks like this; two, carle? Bzuh? Ogre does not equal house servant why is it spelled with an e buh what?; three, this is a Scottish fairy tale which has been represented entirely as taking place in Scotland, which is nowhere near Spain, and more than that, it never has been. Woe werth ye? I mean the rest of the story is in modern English, and then you get this repeated dialogue from Pseudo-Past Dimension X, and this really is the standard version of this story (though not, sadly, the one you'll get on Wikipedia). I can see why Thrud memorized it. It makes a good party trick.
I may try to memorize the one about the bull's blood with the reverse male Cinderella bit and the totally inexplicable rivers of milk, if I ever decide I need a party trick.
I cannot in good conscience recommend this collection, even though the prose is uniformly delightful when it is not going into woe werth ye, Molly Whuppie, but this is certainly not a book that I think it is remotely possible to find boring, so people who enjoy being vaguely appalled in a whole collection of directions might well like it.
Giants and Witches and a Dragon or Two is the sourcebook for her two stupidest folktales, so I wanted to read it, especially as I am now in the same house with it, which has not previously been the case.
It turns out to be a compilation from 1943 of various previously written retellings involving, as the title says, primarily giants. It has selections from Howard Pyle. It has a hilarious Andrew Lang segment in which the prose text has been entirely rewritten by the editor but every so often everyone lapses into bad doggerel all of which Lang was responsible for, and it has several pieces from an Irish collection I am considering tracking down because everything from it is mind-bogglingly incomprehensible. It also has a Russian bit by Arthur Ransome. The criteria for inclusion appear to have been twofold: a) giants; b) clever, beautiful, or interesting language. You will note that making sense does not appear among those criteria, and as many of the stories are very obscure, sense does not appear to be among their priorities either.
The thing is, the language actually is clever, interesting, and beautiful, and the sheer absurdity is extremely readable. It being 1943, the stories are sexist as all get out, and there is one terrifyingly, shudderingly Orientalist Western-attempt-to-fake-a-Chinese-story-except-not-really which I stared at in total incredulous horror. If you're not hypnotized by this book when it is good, it is certainly hypnotic on the many occasions on which it is terrible. It is terrible in ways one just doesn't encounter nowadays. It is a real example of how much things have changed in children's literature.
Thrud's two stories are 'Molly Whuppie', which I was interested to note that she tells verbatim, and 'The King and the Quince Tree', which saddened me, as it actually makes sense, and Thrud appears to have simply forgotten the plot point that makes it do so. But 'Molly Whuppie' is fairly impressive, mostly because of the dialogue between Molly and the ogre, in which after she outsmarts him he exclaims "Woe werth ye, Molly Whuppie, never you come again," and she says back "Three times (or two, or one), carle, I'll return again to Spain," at which point you sit there going, okay, so, one, nobody else in the entire fairy tale talks like this; two, carle? Bzuh? Ogre does not equal house servant why is it spelled with an e buh what?; three, this is a Scottish fairy tale which has been represented entirely as taking place in Scotland, which is nowhere near Spain, and more than that, it never has been. Woe werth ye? I mean the rest of the story is in modern English, and then you get this repeated dialogue from Pseudo-Past Dimension X, and this really is the standard version of this story (though not, sadly, the one you'll get on Wikipedia). I can see why Thrud memorized it. It makes a good party trick.
I may try to memorize the one about the bull's blood with the reverse male Cinderella bit and the totally inexplicable rivers of milk, if I ever decide I need a party trick.
I cannot in good conscience recommend this collection, even though the prose is uniformly delightful when it is not going into woe werth ye, Molly Whuppie, but this is certainly not a book that I think it is remotely possible to find boring, so people who enjoy being vaguely appalled in a whole collection of directions might well like it.
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Date: 2010-09-04 07:54 am (UTC)Yep. I read that story in first or second grade, probably in the same version. (The title of this collection rings no bells, but I was mainlining so much folklore in elementary and middle school, I'd have to see the cover and the table of contents to be sure. I still know stories I have no idea where I got them from.) I couldn't tell it verbatim, but that exchange is never getting out of my head.
I may try to memorize the one about the bull's blood with the reverse male Cinderella bit and the totally inexplicable rivers of milk, if I ever decide I need a party trick.
. . . this is "Billy Beg and His Bull," isn't it? Oh, God. I may have read this book after all.
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Date: 2010-09-04 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 12:07 pm (UTC)This is why we need unions...
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Date: 2010-09-04 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 03:21 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 2010-09-04 07:19 pm (UTC)That's the most marvelous recommendation I've read in a long time. And useful, too: I think I would probably enjoy this.
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Date: 2010-09-04 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 08:50 pm (UTC)As for "carle"--well, I can't explain the extra e, but Hamlet does call himself a rogue and peasant slave. "Carle" seems like a decent insult on the lines of "bum", to me. It even comes up in the Child Ballads, though I can't cite chapter and verse off the top of my head.
Strong feelings about fairy tales? Who, me?
(Though I ought not to come down so hard in favor of "Molly Whuppie", which I don't really like because there's another story, "Smallhead and the King's Son" which is pretty much the same only better. I'm a fan of "Celtic Fairy Tales" and "More Celtic Fairy Tales", collected by Joseph Jacobs. "Smallhead" is in the latter.)
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Date: 2010-09-07 04:05 am (UTC)