Catherine and her Fate is a story that barely fleshes out its central idea: do you want to be happy in early life if you know you'll be sad later? Or would you rather get the sadness out of the way now if you know for sure that means you'll be happy later? Basically, if dinner is a meal that lasts your whole life, do you start with the pudding and then go on to the dubious vegetable mash, or is vegetable mash first and pudding last?
Catherine says she'll start with the sorrow, please. That stuck with me all through childhood: the idea that we had a choice about what we waded through. Of course, in the fairy tale, Catherine knows for certain that her happier days are coming if she slogs through the sorrow first. The story is only instructive because Catherine lives to claim her reward. As an adult, I know that's not always the case. Sometimes it's worthwhile to take your joy first in a life where there are no guarantees. But as a kid, I think I needed Catherine's story.
Note: I couldn't remember anything about this story, which has always stuck with me, but a Google search for "fairy offers a girl a choice about whether she'll be happy in youth or in old age" brought it right up. I love living in the modern age. There are versions online from Thomas Crane and from Andrew Lang's Pink Fairy Book.
Showing posts with label Andrew Lang. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andrew Lang. Show all posts
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Monday, September 23, 2013
Reader's Digest Anthologized Andrew Lang for Me
Reader's Digest (yes, they of the Condensed Books) put together a two volume anthology of The World's Best Fairy Tales, originally in 1967, though the copy sitting around my house was almost definitely the 1977 edition. My hazy recollections from library school are that the 1960s were a boom time for folklore anthologies for children, with an emphasis on collections of tales from one country, region, or culture. Reader's Digest was probably going along with that trend when they snagged a bunch of stories from the Andrew Lang colored fairy books, and then added in some Andersen and some Grimm and a smattering of other things. The pictures were by Fritz Kredel again.
I tend to think I didn't have much exposure to the Andrew Lang collections as a kid, and it's true, I didn't read the colored fairy books directly, but I read a number of stories from them via Reader's Digest, and enjoyed them very much. Since Lang did his anthologizing in the later 1800 and early 1900s, and there was a surge of interest in comparative folklore for children in the U.S. in the 1960s, I'm tempted to believe this sort of thing is cyclical. If so, I hope that we're ready for a new upswing of interest in folklore from cultures around the world, perhaps this time with a bit less bowlderization and more of the original content and context. My sense from watching library collections get weeded is that many of the 1960s era collections of folklore and fairy tales from many lands have been pulled from general collections. They were older, and didn't circulate well. I'd love to see something new and stunning take their place.
In the meantime, if you don't happen to stumble on a copy of the Reader's digest collection in a thrift store somewhere, and want to read the stories online, I enjoyed the Bronze Ring (from the Blue Fairy Book), Five Wise Words (from the Olive Fairy Book), and The Boy Who Kept a Secret and the Colony of Cats (from the Crimson Fairy Book).
I tend to think I didn't have much exposure to the Andrew Lang collections as a kid, and it's true, I didn't read the colored fairy books directly, but I read a number of stories from them via Reader's Digest, and enjoyed them very much. Since Lang did his anthologizing in the later 1800 and early 1900s, and there was a surge of interest in comparative folklore for children in the U.S. in the 1960s, I'm tempted to believe this sort of thing is cyclical. If so, I hope that we're ready for a new upswing of interest in folklore from cultures around the world, perhaps this time with a bit less bowlderization and more of the original content and context. My sense from watching library collections get weeded is that many of the 1960s era collections of folklore and fairy tales from many lands have been pulled from general collections. They were older, and didn't circulate well. I'd love to see something new and stunning take their place.
In the meantime, if you don't happen to stumble on a copy of the Reader's digest collection in a thrift store somewhere, and want to read the stories online, I enjoyed the Bronze Ring (from the Blue Fairy Book), Five Wise Words (from the Olive Fairy Book), and The Boy Who Kept a Secret and the Colony of Cats (from the Crimson Fairy Book).
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