Tag Archives: fairy-tales

Capital R, Ring

11 Wednesday Nov 2026

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Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

Having grown up reading or being read to from fairy tale books like that by George Dasent (Popular Tales from the Norse, 1859—and here’s a copy for you:    https://archive.org/details/populartalesfr00asbj/page/n3/mode/2up     )

and Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books,

(You can start with the first here:  https://dn760108.eu.archive.org/0/items/bluefairybook00langiala/bluefairybook00langiala.pdf )

it’s not surprising that Tolkien’s first adventure book, The Hobbit,

should, in many ways, resemble such books.

One of the features of fairy tales is the use of magic, including magic objects, like rings,

(You can read more about such rings here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_ring )

and, of course, such a ring appears in The Hobbit, the magic being that it allows a person wearing it to become invisible, which then allows the hero, Bilbo, to escape from goblins,

(Alan Lee)

fight giant spiders,

(Oleksiy Lipatov—you can see more of his work here:  https://www.artstation.com/oleksiylipatov8 )

and even chat with a fearsome dragon.

(JRRT)

Where it came from and what other powers it might have are not explained, only that Bilbo picked it up on the floor of a goblin tunnel and that it was clearly the property—the “precious” –of the creepy Gollum, from whom Bilbo escaped after a riddling contest, using that same ring.

(Alan Lee)

But then the book was so successful that the publisher asked for a sequel and, as Tolkien wrote to W. H. Auden:

“But if you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think that the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link.  If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear.”  (letter to W.H.Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 315)

Thinking about the Ring recently, I wondered about both its original purpose, and the effect that it had upon other wearers or potential wearers.   In an earlier letter, Tolkien had explained that original purpose:

“The Elves of Eregion made Three supremely beautiful and powerful rings…But secretly in the subterranean Fire, in his own Black Land, Sauron made One Ring, the Ruling Ring that contained the powers of all the others, and controlled them, so that its wearer could see the thoughts of all those that used the lesser rings, could govern all that they did, and in the end could utterly enslave them.”  (letter to Milton Waldman, late 1951, Letters 212-213)

Along with that controlling force, the Ring—and, as JRRT writes, the other rings– had another potential:

“The chief power (of all the rings alike) was the prevention or slowing of decay (i.e. ‘change’ viewed as a regrettable thing), the preservation of what is desired or loved, or its resemblance—this is more or less an Elvish motive.”

And there is something more:

“But also they enhanced the natural powers of a possessor—thus approaching ‘magic’, a motive easily corruptible into evil, a lust for domination.  And finally they had other powers, more directly derived from Sauron…such as rendering invisible the material body, and making things of the invisible world visible.”   (letter to Milton Waldman, “probably late 1951”, Letters 212-213)

That invisibility appeared in The Hobbit, but that “prevention or slowing of decay” was something new and we see that first in Gollum, who had taken the Ring from its finder, his cousin, Deagol.

Isildur had lost the Ring in the Anduin—or, rather, the Ring had abandoned him–in SA 3436.  Deagol had brought it to the surface in TA2463, Bilbo had found it in TA 2940, and Gollum is still alive at the time of The Lord of the Rings, in TA3018, making him over 550 years old. 

This slowing of age is then a give-away to Gandalf about Bilbo and his Ring, as Bilbo, among long-lived Hobbits, seems even longer-lived (eventually going off to the Grey Havens at 131).  As Gandalf said of Gollum:

“ ‘And I learned also that he had possessed it long.  Many lives of his small kind.  The power of the ring had lengthened his years far beyond their span; but that power only the Great Rings wield.’ “  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

But here we see another effect of possessing the Ring:  it may lengthen life, but Bilbo says of himself:

“ ‘I am old, Gandalf.  I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts.  Well-preserved indeed!…Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean:  like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.  That can’t be right…”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

We can wonder, then, if Bilbo had possessed the Ring for about 60 years and felt odd, what must Gollum have felt like at 550+?  Gandalf gives us something of that:

“ ‘He is thin and tough still.  But the thing was eating up his mind, of course, and the torment had become almost unbearable.’ “  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

What is this torment?  I would guess that it’s a combination of things:  first, that the Ring, as we know from Gandalf, always wants to return to its maker/master, even to falling off a wearer’s finger:

“ ‘The Ring was trying to get back to its master.  It had slipped off Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Deagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him.  It could make no further use of him:  he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his deep pool again.  So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

Thus, the Ring could combine a pressure to release it with its terrible attraction and fear of losing it, which could drive even decent people to shocking behavior, as it had many years ago with Smeagol, and as Frodo feels, when, in Rivendell, Bilbo asks to see it:

“Slowly he drew it out.  Bilbo put out his hand.  But Frodo quickly drew back the Ring.  To his distress and amazement he found that he was no longer looking at Bilbo; a shadow seemed to have fallen between them, and through it he found himself eyeing a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands.  He felt a desire to strike him,”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 1, “Many Meetings”)

(from the Jackson film, although more fiendlike, I think, than Tolkien intended)

It may also be that, for someone unequipped to wear it, the power enclosed within the Ring would simply overwhelm that person, as Elrond says:

“ ‘We cannot use the Ruling Ring.  That we now know too well.  It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone, and is altogether evil.  Its strength, Boromir, is too great for anyone to wield at will, save only those who have already a great power of their own.  But for them it holds an even deadlier peril.  The very desire of it corrupts the heart.  Consider Saruman.  If any of the Wise should with this Ring overthrow the Lord of Mordor, using his own arts, he would then set himself up on Sauron’s throne, and yet another Dark Lord would appear.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

If even someone as powerful as Saruman would be overwhelmed by that power—and perhaps by that pressure to return it to its rightful owner, as well—then it’s not surprising that Gollum, and Bilbo, would be worn down under it, as he tells Gandalf:

“ ‘I am sorry…But I felt so queer.  And yet it would be a relief in a way not to be bothered with it any more.  It has been so growing on my mind lately.  Sometimes I have felt it was like an eye looking at me.  And I am always wanting to put it on and disappear, don’t you know; or wondering if it is safe, and pulling it out to make sure.  I tried locking it up, but I found that I couldn’t rest without it in my pocket…’ ”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

Such power delays decay, can make a holder invisible, and corrupts, as Elrond has said, but there’s another side to this as well:  such power can also weaken.  Sauron:

“rules a growing empire from the great dark tower of Barad-dur in Mordor, near to the Mountain of Fire, wielding the One Ring.

But to achieve this he had been obliged to let a great part of his own inherent power (a frequent and very significant motive in myth and fairy-story) pass into the One Ring.  While he wore it, his power on earth was actually enhanced.  But even if he did not wear it, that power existed and was in ‘rapport’ with himself:  he was not ‘diminished’.  Unless some other seized it and became possessed of it.  If that happened, the new possessor could (if sufficiently strong and heroic by nature) challenge Sauron, become master of all he had learned and done since the making of the One Ring, and so overthrow him and usurp his place.  This was the essential weakness he had introduced into his situation in his effort (largely unsuccessful) to enslave the Elves, and in his desire to establish a control over the minds and wills of his servants.  There was another weakness:  if the One Ring was actually unmade, annihilated, then its power would be dissolved, Sauron’s own being would be diminished to vanishing point, and he would be reduced to a shadow, a mere memory of malicious will.”  (Letter to Milton Waldman, “probably written late in 1951”, Letters, 214)

Even Sauron, in fact, deceived himself about the Ring:

“It was indissoluble in any fire, save the undying subterranean fire where it was made—and that was unapproachable, in Mordor.  Also so great was the Ring’s power of lust, that anyone who used it became mastered by it; it was beyond the strength of any will (even his own) to injure it, cast it away, or neglect it.  So he thought.  It was in any case on his finger.”  (Letter to Milton Waldman, “probably written late in 1951”, Letters, 214)

And then it wasn’t on his finger, passing through a number of hands until, on the last, it—and its wearer—were “unmade”—

(Marta Nael—visit her spectacular gallery here:  https://martanael.com/projects )

and, with it, so was Sauron.

(Ted Nasmith)

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Avoid the temptation to try to dominate the world—even Napoleon ended up an aging exile on a tiny volcanic island—

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Hair Today

30 Wednesday Apr 2025

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

I often pass by a very unusual house, one which I would find hard to describe—perhaps something the Munchkins might build,

combined with a gingerbread house,

in the spotty colors and patterns of a Seurat pointillismist painting.

(Seurat, “La Tour Eiffel” , 1889—if you like the look of this, see:  https://www.georgesseurat.net/  for lots more—and, for more about this painting:  https://artincontext.org/the-eiffel-tower-by-georges-seurat/ )

All of that might make you slam on the brakes and drive as slowly as possible past, but there’s an added detail—for the past year, there has been a ladder propped from the ground to a closed window on the second floor.  It’s not anything exotic, just a plain aluminum extension ladder.

When I first spotted it, I probably thought:  fixing a storm window or painting trim and didn’t think about it again. 

But, after seeing it for a year, and remembering what the house looks like, I began to consider other possibilities—and I’m sure that, with that combination, you’re considering them, too. 

Dismissing fire drills, it struck me that, as the house has a fairy tale look, it must have something to do with such stories,

First, ir could be something Romeo and Julietesque—but, instead of standing under her balcony

and then scaling it,

Romeo stopped by the local hardware store and properly equipped himself.    (They eloped, as planned, this time, without the tragic ending, where everyone’s been stabbed or poisoned.)

Or—not Romeo and Juliet, but Rapunzel and her (fill in name here—“Charming” being a common place-holder) Prince, who is, for a change, a little more considerate than the usual prince in the story..

After all, have you ever had your hair pulled?  Granted, if you’ve got fifteen feet or more of it—but wait—let’s go back a bit.

(Although, in an interesting variant of this theme, from Ferdowsi’s  10th/11th-century epic poem “Shahnameh”, a prince, Zal, when offered a princess, Rudaba’s,, hair as a means of escalade, takes a lariat from a retainer, instead.  See:  https://archive.org/details/shahnama01firduoft/page/270/mode/2up  )

It all seems to begin with a late Renaissance story collection, Giambattista Basile’s (1583-1632 )

 Pentamerone.

(so far the earliest printing I can find—as you can see, it’s dated 1749—but it gives away a secret:  Giambattista Basile was actually Gian Alesio Abbattutis—although “abbattuto” in modern Italian means “depressed”—so was his work, like Thomas d’Urfey’s subtitle to his “Wit and Mirth”—“ or Pills to Purge Melancholy”,  an eventual 6-volume collection of poems and songs, published between 1698 and 1720, an attempt to relieve despair?  You can see all six of d’Urfey’s volumes here:  https://archive.org/details/imslp-and-mirth-or-pills-to-purge-melancholy-durfey-thomas/PMLP144559-Vol._1/page/n5/mode/2up  Don’t be confused by the spelling of the subtitle of the Basile, by the way:  this is the southern Italian/Sicilian spelling of “conto”—“story”, so it means “the story of stories”, meaning “the very best of stories” .)

published posthumously by his sister, Adriana, in two volumes, in 1634 and 1636.

Its title means something like “Five Days” and the title comes from the framing story—which you can read about here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentamerone  In sum, ten story-tellers are hired each to tell one story a day for five days, making a total of fifty stories.

The first story on the second day is “Petrosinella”—“Parsley”, the title coming from the name of the main character.  (The modern Italian word is “prezzemolo” so I’m assuming that this is dialectal/archaic or both.  Pliny, in his Natural History, Book XX, Chapter 47, mentions “petroselinon”—the Latin form being “petroselinum”—“rock (petra) parsley”, so I’m guessing that “Petrosinella” is what is called a metathetic form, where part of the word has been transposed with another, like “calvary” for “cavalry”.  Maybe also confused with the Italian diminutive ending “-ella”, as if the meaning is “Little Parsley”.  If you’d like to read what Pliny has to say about it—including being useful for snake bite, see:   https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D20%3Achapter%3D47 )

A brief summary of the plot:

A pregnant woman repeatedly visits the garden of an orca (ogress—now, however, a killer whale—not what Basile had in mind, I’m sure)) to steal parsley,   The ogress catches her, but lets her go on condition that the ogress  gets the child.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  Eventually, she gets the child, whom she puts into a tower with only one high window and visits her by using the girl’s hair.

And, if you know “Rapunzel”, you know what happens next—prince, etc—but then the story becomes quite different, with Petrosinella and the prince escaping and the ogress eventually being killed.  (Here’s the whole story for you in  J.E. Taylor’s  1847 translation in a 1911 illustrated reprinting:  https://archive.org/details/31383047427094/page/82/mode/2up )

Well, until the later part of the story, this looks more or less familiar, but, if this is the Rapunzel story, why is the main character called “Parsley”?

For that, we need to move to its next incarnation, “Persinette”, by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force, who published her version of the story, which she claimed was original, in a volume the title of which suggests that she had, in fact, read Basile:  Les Contes des Contes (1698), making a slight change by pluralizing that first story in Basile’s subtitle, not to mention the fact that her heroine is named “Little Parsley” (“Persinette”—although one might expect “Persilette”, as the French word for parsley is “persil”).

A major difference between this and Basile’s text is that de Caumont’s is much more elaborate—including the detail that parsley was not available at that time and that the Fairy (no longer an ogress) has had to have it imported from India!  Much of the basic story we read in Basile is there—the hair, the tower, but more has been added, beginning with it being Persinette’s father-to-be who steals the parsley, rather than her mother, the fact that the Fairy causes the tower to appear by magic, that, finding Persinette to be pregnant, the Fairy isolates her in a cottage by the sea, that Persinette has twins there, that the Fairy tricks the prince, who leaps from the tower and is blinded—so much more of which fits in with the familiar Rapunzel story.  (Here’s a summary:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persinette  but, for the complete story, so far I’ve only managed to find a 1785 French version, which, if you have some French—with 18th-century spelling conventions—you can read here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persinette )

But, although there are lots more familiar details here, we’re still in the land of parsley—how did we move  to “rapunzel”—which isn’t parsley, but something called “rampion”?

This is an edible plant, once commonly grown and eaten, but now seems to have lost its popularity (for more, see here:  https://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/r/rampio03.html  And a more scientific description here:  https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?taxonid=278824 )

The answer to the question of name change is:  we move from Italian to French to German, as rampion replaces parsley in Friedrich Schulz’ 1790 collection Kleine Romane, “Little Novels”, in which he included his translation of de Caumont (available here in a transcription from the Fraktur (old German script) of the original:  https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ssd?id=chi.81388905;page=ssd;view=plaintext;seq=281;num=271#seq281  and pages beyond–I’ve done a quick survey of the text, which sticks  pretty closely to the French—except for that “rapunzel”, which is noted to be a rare plant, just as the parsley is in de Caumont, although the Fairy doesn’t get it from India.) 

This, in turn, was used by the Grimm brothers in the first edition of Kinder und Hausmaerchen (something like “Children’s and Domestic Wonder-tales”) in 1812.

But one more but—how does the story come into English?

The first “translation” of the Grimm brothers’ work is the two volumes by Edgar Taylor, published in 1823 and 1826.

This is, in fact, only a selection, and doesn’t include “Rapunzel”, possibly because of Rapunzel’s pregnancy out of wedlock.  As far as I can currently determine, the first English translation to include the story is the Edward H. Wehnert Household Stories, 1853, in two volumes, “Rapunzel” being in the first, and you can read it here:  https://archive.org/details/householdstorie01grimgoog/page/n6/mode/2up?view=theater

From there we can move to  Margaret Hunt’s 1884 translation in 2 volumes (here:  https://archive.org/details/grimmshouseholdt01grim/page/n3/mode/2up?view=theater  for volume 1 and here:  https://archive.org/details/grimmshouseholdt2grim/page/n7/mode/2up for volume 2.  This translation is noted in particular as it includes the Grimms’ editiorial notes, the first edition to do so.)

And, interesting–this edition had an introduction by Andrew Lang, who then included it in his 1890 The Red Fairy Book (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/540/540-h/540-h.htm ), where JRRT probably read it, as we know he knew other stories from the volume.

So, why is that ladder there?  An updated fairy tale?   Or just an absent-minded repairman?  I’d prefer to think the former, although, in comparison with that long column of golden hair in the old stories

an aluminum extension ladder seems awfully drab.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

If you’re acrophobic, best to seek adventure among dwarves,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

The change from “parsley” to “rampion”—and even which plant is “rampion”—has been the subject of scholarly discussion.  See:   https://writinginmargins.weebly.com/home/what-is-the-plant-in-rapunzel  .Edward Taylor, in his 1846 collection, The Fairy Ring, even decided that either name was inappropriate for his British readers and changed her name to “Violet”!  You can read his version here:  https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ssd?id=uc1.31158001207546;page=ssd;view=plaintext;seq=367;num=321#seq367  

PPS

If you would like to compare various English translations, from 1823 to 1927, see:  https://archive.org/details/householdstorie01grimgoog/page/n6/mode/2up?view=theate

Spinning a Tale

11 Wednesday Dec 2024

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As ever, dear readers, welcome.

“Cependant les fées commencèrent à faire leurs dons à la princesse. La plus jeune lui donna pour don qu’elle serait la plus belle personne du monde ; celle d’après, qu’elle aurait de l’esprit comme un ange ; la troisième, qu’elle aurait une grâce admirable à tout ce qu’elle ferait ; la quatrième, qu’elle danserait parfaitement bien ; la cinquième, qu’elle chanterait comme un rossignol ; et la sixième, qu’elle jouerait de toutes sortes d’instruments dans la dernière perfection. Le rang de la vieille fée étant venu, elle dit, en branlant la tête encore plus de dépit que de vieillesse, que la princesse se percerait la main d’un fuseau, et qu’elle en mourrait.”

“Nevertheless the fairies began to make their gifts to the princess.  The youngest gave her as a gift that she would be the most beautiful person in the world.  The next, that she would have the soul of an angel.  The third, that she would have an admirable grace in everything which she would do.  The fourth that she would play all manner of instruments to the utmost perfection.  The turn of the old fairy being come, she said, shaking her head more in spite than from age, that the princess would pierce her hand on a spindle and that she would die of it.”  (My translation, as with all of the text in this posting, based upon Feron’s 1902 edition of the Les Contes de Perrault which you can read here:  https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Contes_de_Perrault_(%C3%A9d._1902)/La_Belle_au_Bois_dormant )

You know this story—although you may know it by its English name, “Sleeping Beauty” and not by its original name “La Belle au Bois Dormant”—the “Beautiful Girl in the Sleeping Forest”—although that translation is wonderfully—and a little testily–argued over here:  https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/la-belle-au-bois-dormant.3158165/  For all that people joust over whether that present participle/adjective, “dormant” can modify “Belle”, I prefer the idea that, as Beauty has fallen asleep, so the whole world around her has joined in the enchantment, as the story says—and so even the woods are drowsing till the prince arrives.)

 This story first appeared in Charles Perrault’s (1628-1703)

 1697 collection Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé, avec des moralites—“Stories or Tales of Past Time, with Morals”, which sounds pretty dry—until you reach the subtitle:  Les Contes de ma Mere L’Oye—“The Tales of My Mother Goose” and suddenly we’ve passed into another Time Past entirely.

(As you can see, an early edition—1742—but not a first)

I’ve always loved the story, but, when I was small, there was one thing which I didn’t understand—  what was a “fuseau”—a “spindle”?

In my last posting, we had been briefly in Sam Gamgee’s uncle Andy’s rope walk

where we had been talking about how rope

 is made, with likening the twisting of the fibers

 to that of making thread.

(If you’d like to know more about making rope, have a look at this very informative WikiHow feature: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Rope )

The simplest way to do this is to use a drop spindle—and here’s that “fuseau”–which allows gravity to do much of the work for you—

(Here’s the whole spindle)

(And here’s a WikiHow on spinning thread—which includes both a drop spindle and a spinning wheel:  https://www.wikihow.com/Spin-Wool  And there’s a YouTube video imbedded to make the process clearer.)

This is only a later part of the process of making cloth, which begins, of course, with shearing a sheep.

Then the fleece needs to be cleaned and the fibers need to be organized, with a pair of carding combs—

but here’s the whole process, in an 18th-century setting.

It’s a very labor-intensive process, as you can imagine, and you can see why the Industrial Revolution had, among its earliest inventions, the “Spinning Jenny”, which allowed one person to use a simple machine to produce numerous spools of thread at the same time, where a previous spinster (meaning someone who spins, not an unmarried woman, necessarily) could only produce one spool at a time and, at the time, it was said that it took five spinsters to keep a weaver busy.

(There was no “Jenny” by the way—it’s really “ginny”—18th-century Northeast English for “engine”—that is, in period technology, “machine”.)

In the story:

“Le roi, pour tâcher d’éviter le malheur annoncé par la vieille, fit publier aussitôt un édit par lequel il défendait à toutes personnes de filer au fuseau, ni d’avoir des fuseaux chez soi, sur peine de vie.”

“The king, to try to avoid the curse pronounced by the old fairy, immediately had an edict published by which he forbade anyone from spinning with a spindle, nor to have spindles in the home, on pain of death.” 

But, inevitably—this is a fairy tale, after all—when she is 15 or 16, the princess, exploring a family country house, discovers a room in which an old woman is using a spindle (and, surprisingly, unlike that which our suspicious modern minds would expect, the old woman is an innocent, as the text says that she simply hadn’t heard of the king’s proclamation) and, piercing her hand, the princess simply falls victim to the curse—and the counter-spell which puts her to sleep.

Why a spindle?  I’m sure that there are all sorts of Freudian explanations for this, but what I imagine Perrault—or whoever may have told the tale which he had once heard—if there ever was a real “ma Mere L’Oye”—thought was that, in the world of royalty, where clothes magically appeared in the hands of your servants,

(a much later image, but you get the idea)

a spindle might have seemed like a pretty—and novel—toy, as the princess exclaims, seeing the old woman at work:

“ ‘Ah ! que cela est joli !’ reprit la princesse ; ‘comment faites-vous ? donnez-moi que je voie si j’en ferais bien autant.’ “

“ ‘How pretty that is!…’How do you do it?  Give it to me so that I may see if I may do it as well.’ “

And, reaching for it, as she’s a little “etourdie”—“scatterbrained” (or, more gently, “thoughtless”)—

“elle s’en perça la main et tomba évanouie.”—“she pierced her hand and fainted.”

Now as the youngest fairy, who has hidden behind a curtain, sensing trouble when the old fairy appears, has decreed, a century will pass, and the country house and all in and around it—including the forest which surrounds it– will sleep.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Avoid antagonizing elderly fairies,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

In this season of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker”, don’t forget that he also wrote a “Sleeping Beauty” ballet, which has its own wonderful music, which you can hear—and see–here:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7qLg1lOfrw

Wolfing

11 Wednesday Sep 2024

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

“All of a sudden they heard a howl away down hill, a long shuddering howl.  It was answered by another away to the right and a good deal nearer to them; then by another not far away to the left.  It was wolves howling at the moon, wolves gathering together!”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 6, “Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire”)

(Alan Lee)

In his invaluable The Annotated Hobbit,

Douglas Anderson points to a letter by Tolkien suggesting an influence, if not inspiration, for this scene of wargs (i.e. wolves) vs treed dwarves (and hobbit), as JRRT tells us:

“Though the episode of the ‘wargs’ is in part derived from a scene in S.R. Crockett’s The Black Douglas, probably his best romance and anyway one that deeply impressed me in school-days, though I have never looked back again.  It includes Gil de Rez as a Satanist.” (“from a letter to Michael Tolkien…sometime after Aug.25, 1967”, Letters, 550)

Published in 1899, The Black Douglas,

Is one of a series of Scots historical novels by S(amuel).R(utherford). Crockett (1859-1914),

based upon actual events—in this case, it has, as a basis, the short life and judicial murder of William, the 6th Earl of Douglas and his younger brother, David, in 1440.  It also has supernatural elements, however, including the sinister (but historical) figure of Gilles de Rais (c.1405-1440–Tolkien was clearly spelling from memory), one-time companion of Joan of Arc, who appears to be a werewolf, and, it’s a scene where the protagonists are attacked by werewolves

to which JRRT was referring—although the three don’t climb trees, but put their backs to them to fight on the ground, killing many of their attackers (and not being rescued by eagles—it’s Chapter XLIX and you can read it here:  https://dn790000.ca.archive.org/0/items/blackdouglas00croc/blackdouglas00croc.pdf ).

Wolves—or wargs—as we see in The Hobbit, are pack animals.

Crockett imagined even werewolves as behaving like the wolves they turn into and this led me to a question which occurred when, recently, as part of an exercise in story-telling, I asked a class to tell me the story of “The Three Little Pigs”. 

I’m sure that you know it, with its typical for Western fairy tales pattern of 3s:   porcine architecture—straw,

sticks, bricks–attempts by the wolf to enter, replies by the pigs, subsequent action by the wolf and his parboiled demise.

 Because of its simplicity and that pattern, it’s very useful as a subject for helping students to learn how stories work and how even such a simple story is built upon such basic narrative principles as foreshadowing and repetition to build tension.

But, the 3 pigs sing mockingly in the 1933 Disney version,

“Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf,

Big, bad wolf,

Big, bad wolf?

Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?

Tra la la la la!”

(There’s actually a much longer song and you can read it here:  https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/27101857/Disney/Who%27s+Afraid+of+the+Big+Bad+Wolf and hear and see it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leAh00n3hno )

and that made me notice something odd:  not “Big, bad wolves”—what happened to the pack?

The idea of the “lone wolf” turns up in other fairy tales—think of “Little Red Riding Hood” for example,

(Perhaps my favorite illustration, by Gustave Dore—LRR seems to have a rather skeptical look—perhaps because in the version Dore illustrated, the last line of the story is:  “Et en disant ces mots, le méchant loup se jeta sur le petit Chaperon rouge, et la mangea.”—“And, in saying these words, the wicked wolf threw himself upon Little Red Riding Hood and ate her.”)

where a single wolf meets Red, and the perhaps less familiar “The Wolf and the Seven Kids”.

(This is by a well-known Victorian illustrator, Walter Crane, 1845-1915, from an 1882 collection of the Grimm fairy tales which you can see here:  https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Household_stories_from_the_collection_of_the_Bros_Grimm_(L_%26_W_Crane)/The_Wolf_and_the_Seven_Little_Goats  You can also read a translation at this site, which is specifically devoted to the works of the Grimms:  https://www.grimmstories.com/en/grimm_fairy-tales/the_wolf_and_the_seven_little_goats )

Traditional fairy tales all have variants—sometimes numerous ones—and some appear even on a world-wide basis, like “Cinderella” (see an ancient Chinese version here:   https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-myths-legends/fish-wish-your-heart-makes-2200-year-old-tale-chinese-cinderella-003506 ), but a little preliminary research has suggested another possibility. 

Unlike other fairy tales, although scholars believe “The Three Little Pigs” to be an old story, I was surprised to learn that its first citation is only to an 1853 volume with a title which would not suggest that such a story would be included:  English Forests and Forest Trees, Historical, Legendary, and Descriptive.  It’s to be found in Chapter IX, “Dartmoor Forest” and, even more surprising, the characters aren’t pigs, but pixies, the villain of the piece isn’t a wolf, but a fox, and the houses are made of wood, stone, and iron.   You can read it here:  https://ia601307.us.archive.org/13/items/englishforestsa01unkngoog/englishforestsa01unkngoog.pdf on pages 189-190.

The version familiar to most of us first appears in the fifth edition of James Halliwell-Phillipps’ The Nursery Rhymes of England (1886), in which the third little pig (who survives, as his two brothers do not) has a lot more to do than in what must have been the simplified version I knew as a child—and this actually closely matches the Dartmoor version (except for the pixies and the fox).  You can read it here:  https://archive.org/details/nurseryrhymesofe00hall/page/36/mode/2up on pages 37-41.  (For an entertaining essay on Halliwell-Phillipps and his work, see:  https://reactormag.com/questionable-scholars-and-rhyming-pigs-j-o-halliwell-phillipps-the-three-little-pigs/  )

It’s admittedly just a guess on my part, Halliwell-Phillipps doesn’t credit a source, and, instead of a fox as the villain, there’s a wolf, but both stories, have the same pattern of threes, although building materials differ, and the three pixies have a different identity, but what we see here is the same story, which made me wonder:

  1. Did “pixies” become (possibly through mishearing of an oral telling) “pigsies”—that is, “little pigs”?
  2. Did the fox become a wolf because wolves can be quite large

(by NatsumeWolf—you can see more of her art here:  https://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/natsumewolf/ )

and therefore more menacing in a story than a diminutive, but tricky, fox?

As well, that wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood” appears in Charles Perrault’s late-17th century story collection, Histoires ou Contes du Temps passe, first translated into English in the early 18th century, appearing, as well, along with “The Wolf and the Seven Kids”, in the Grimms’ early 19th century Kinder und Hausmaerchen, first translated into English in the 1820s, both being, therefore, readily available.  So, could that frightening wolf from other stories perhaps have been leaning over Halliwell-Phillipps’ shoulder, pushing him to replace the fox, even as he turned pixies into pigsies?  After all, he had nothing to lose but his pack…

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

If threatened by a wolf, try to out-fox him,

And remember that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

PS

For another, rather eerie story with—well, no spoiler alert, just read it: https://ia601303.us.archive.org/8/items/thetoysofpeacean01477gut/1477-h/1477-h.htm

This is by HH Munro, 1870-1916, who used the pen name “Saki”.  I’ve mentioned him before, but I’m sure to mention him and his witty and sometimes weird short stories again in the future.