#schonwerth

(All these links go to Patreon, but they are free and public access.)

Changelings and Good Mothers - There are plenty of stories in which human parents love changeling children as their own. But we see very little from the perspective of the fairies in this situation.

Tam Lin - Maidens are warned to stay away from Carterhaugh, because that is the domain of Tam Lin, who will demand from you a token—either a ring, a green mantle, or your maidenhead. Yes, you can either surrender an accessory, or you can sleep with him. No indication in the text as to what woman usually choose.

The Soul Cages - When sailors die, the merrow finds their souls in the sea, and worries about them being cold down there, so he puts them in lobster pots to keep them warm and safe.

The Three Sisters - We begin with a king who gambles away his entire kingdom, forcing himself, his wife, and their three daughters to move to a ramshackle old castle in the middle of the woods, where they have nothing to eat but potatoes.

Okerlo - Why are there so many cannibals in folklore? Was this a significant issue in Europe? Enough people running around eating each other that it was immortalized in several different stories from all over the continent? I can’t recall any actual historical accounts of cannibalism in Europe.

Snow White, Variants - My favorite thing about Mirror the Dog is that it’s a variation where you can really see the real people who were involved in spreading stories orally for generations before we started writing them down. Why did someone, at some point, choose to make the mirror a dog? Was the story being circulated in a poor area where mirrors weren’t really a thing? Was a parent dealing with a dog-obsessed small child who was complaining about the lack of puppies in her stories? Did a family get a new dog and decide it would be fun to incorporate?

Finette Cendron - The queen, who sucks a lot, decides Hansel and Gretel style that the best way to survive their new lifestyle is to ditch the kids. She tells the king they must take them far from home on some errand, and then abandon them. He weeps about it, but doesn’t actually refuse, so. Not exactly father of the year.

Richilda - Richilda is the story of Snow White’s wicked stepmother, from her birth until Snow White’s marriage. And it was written thirty years before the Grimms first recorded Snow White, making it the earliest recorded German Snow White story.

The Identical Sisters - Like many foolish men in folklore, he assumes that anything he doesn’t know he has can be easily spared, agrees, and goes home to learn his wife is pregnant. They plan to keep the child from water and dedicate him to God. He grows up and tries to go into the priesthood, but apparently he can’t be given to God when the mermaid has dibs, because he is unable to conduct a mass.

(This month I am reposting relevant blogs in preparation for the release of my upcoming short story collection - every blog shared is about a fairy tale that inspired one of the stories.)

So we’ve got a king. This king is the father of a rambunctious little boy. He’s also the owner of a magic flying trunk. You see where this is going, right? Insert prince in trunk, insert trunk in tree halfway across the world.

Now for all his rambunctiousness, our prince is apparently quite a sensible little boy, because the first thing he does, upon finding himself alone in a strange land, is climb down from the tree and go to learn a trade. He becomes a cobbler, which is convenient as he can continue to replace the fantastic red shoes he arrived in as his feet get larger.

In this new kingdom, there is also a king. He has a daughter, and because he sucks, she gets to spend her life locked up in a tower, Rapunzel-style.

But our boy has a flying suitcase, so visiting is not a problem. At least not until the king notices his daughter is a lot happier than someone in complete solitude should be, and tars up the windowsill, Cinderella-style.

(Whoever gave this man a fairy tale collection should be shot.)

Naturally, one of the distinctive red shoes gets stuck on the sill and left behind. And proving once and for all that he is a despicable sneak, the king announces that he’s had a change of heart and is going to let his daughter marry whoever was clever enough to get up into her tower.

Then, when our shoemaker prince comes forward to claim his footwear, the king preps to have him and the princess burned at the stake.

(Have I mentioned that he sucks?)

Well, you can probably guess what happens next. Deus ex luggage! The trunk flies in, grabs the kids, and whisks them away, back to the prince’s parents. After a decade or two, they’re pretty glad to see him, and everyone lives happily ever after.

14/10. Ridiculous. Magnificent.  Great work, Schönwerth. Excellent first impression.

Almost exactly three years, I wrote about the discovery of a collection of previously unknown fairy tales by Franz Xaver von Schonwerth. At the time, a small collection had been published in German but there was no word on when an English translation would become available. But I just found out a paperback collection of 72 of the tales was published this past February and it is now available to…