I’m rebooting my research blog, quillandqwerty.wordpress.com. Some of it (quite a bit of it, I think) will be reblogs from over here – no point in writing two posts on two sites, right? Anyway, quillandqwerty ho!
Category: fairy tales
On Princesses and the Unreality of Realism
For this year’s New Year’s Eve movie marathon, we watched Star Wars, the original three movies (on VHS, no less. Yup, we still have a VCR). I’m not a huge Star Wars aficionado, so I haven’t got these films memorised, verbally or visually; when I watch them, they’re always quite new-ish to me. And what struck me this time through is how utterly pristine Princess Leia’s appearance is.
I mean, the first time Luke Skywalker sees this woman, she’s just been through torture (so we’re told – not shown, thankfully), and now she’s imprisoned in a bare cell without even sheets on the bed – no place to hide a comb, let alone a shower or laundry facilities. Yet here she is, with not a hair in her elaborate coiffure out of place, wearing a spotless, unwrinkled white gown.
I used to have long hair when I was a kid, and I can tell you that with fairly straight hair like Carrie Fisher’s was then, pinned-up styles do not stay tidy long. They slip out of their hairpins very quickly, get straggly and messy (which is why I gave up fairly early on trying to put up my hair – I just can’t be bothered). Yet Princess Leia never, ever has even a single strand hanging loose – not even after she goes tobogganing down the garbage chute. And her gown – good grief, wearing white? With all she goes through, by rights she should look like she’s wearing Dobby the House Elf’s ragged kitchen towel.
But she doesn’t. She never looks like anything but – a princess.
Leia is a wonderful character. Carrie Fisher’s passing has brought out in countless tributes what a great inspiration and role model Princess Leia was and still is for now several generations of viewers – a woman of strength, of determination, of agency; a larger-than-life hero.
And part of that larger-than-life effect comes from having a hairdo that never sheds a single bobby pin.
Disney’s cartoon princesses don’t have anything on Leia. You see, in cartoons we know not to expect realism – we know it’s just a drawing, “just” a story. But in a live action film, we think that what we’re seeing is real. So when we see Cinderella’s flowing golden locks and the gown that just appears on her body with a wave of the fairy godmother’s wand, that’s one thing – but we never think that Leia’s glossy dark snail shells and her snowy robe come under the same heading, because, obviously, they’re real. We can see them with our own two eyes, can’t we? What we’re not seeing is the army at Leia’s (or rather Carrie’s) command, an army not of rebel soldiers, but of hairdressers, make-up artists and wardrobe staff, as befits a princess. (“Ah, Recruit Skywalker – you’re in wardrobe today. The princess spilt oatmeal on her dress this morning; go do your duty to the cause.” “What?!? What about flying a fighter plane?” “Never mind that, anyone can handle that. Go make your mark where it counts!”)
We need that army to make us believe in Leia the Princess. We need her to have the superpower of never-a-hair-out-of-place and never-a-spot-on-her-dress because she is a princess. And princesses are mythical creatures on the order of dragons, unicorns and superheroes. In cartoons, that’s easy to handle, but in “realistic” fiction, it takes a bit more doing. Yet when it’s done well, as it is in Star Wars, the impact is tremendous. Because we believe with all our hearts, informed by our disbelief-suspended senses, that what we are seeing is real, that it actually happened, we also believe in the power of The Princess to do what she has set out to do, which is to save the world.
And in that, there is hope.
Life, the Universe, and the Power of the Unreality of Realism. And here we thought she just had funny hair.
Wordless Wednesday: “And There Grew Up Around the Castle a Mighty Thorn Hedge…”
On Princes and Princesses
I’m still knee-deep in researching 19th-century Bavaria. It’s a little disconcerting when inside your head, you’re surrounded by ladies in towering hairdos or spaniel curls, wearing great big swoopy gowns; gentlemen in top hats and tail coats; steam trains and horse carriages – and then you look up, and the realities of 21st-century life are staring you in the face. The writer’s dichotomy…
But anyway, there was something I ran across in the course of my research rabbit-trailings. Have you ever wondered why there is such a proliferation of princes and princesses in fairy tales? I have. But I think I may have found the answer.
One of the things that I was looking up was the German titles of nobility, and to my surprise I found that “prince” is ranked below “duke”. In the English system, “prince” is the highest title you can possibly hold, short of “king” or “queen”, and princes and princesses are in quite short supply. As far as I can see, only the immediate offspring of the monarch get that title, and even then it seems to be restricted to the male line. According to Wikipedia, there’s all of seventeen British princes and princesses living today; and the list of all princes and princesses since 1714 is short enough to fit inside two Wikipedia articles (here and here).
In the German system, on the other hand, “prince” or “princess” doesn’t necessarily denote “child of king”. Yes, it does mean that, too, but it can also be a translation of “Fürst”, which is a lower-ranking title of ruling nobility than “Herzog”, i.e. “duke”. So a “prince” can be a ruler of a – wait for it – principality, a small realm that doesn’t qualify as a kingdom, so its ruler isn’t a “king”. Germany, up until 1871, was a patchwork of those small principalities and duchies (unlike England, which has been one large kingdom for more than a thousand years). Add to that the fact that among the German nobility, all children get the title – not just the eldest son – and you have more counts, baronesses, marchionesses, grand dukes and what-have-you than you can shake a stick at. And yes, princes and princesses too.
So, seeing that most of the well-known fairy tales of the Western tradition originate in mainland Europe, that would explain why we can have so many princes and princesses wandering in and out of fairy land. They were pretty normal, as far as blue-bloods go. And even when they were rulers, they didn’t necessarily reign over vast island nations like Our Gracious and Noble Queen, but maybe just a little postage-stamp realm, next door to another equally minute patch of principality.
That’s how you can get princes like the one from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Swine Herd”: “Once there was a poor Prince. He had a kingdom; it was very tiny. Still it was large enough to marry upon…” In fact, his kingdom is so tiny, at the end of the story “the Prince went home to his kingdom, and shut and barred the door.” That ending always tickled my fancy as a child – a kingdom so small, you can shut the door on it (and leave the bratty, stuck-up princess outside, as she deserves).
So there’s one mystery solved. You might get a prince – there’s enough of them around – but his kingdom could be kind of tiny. However, if you’re proper princess material, you won’t mind that. At least so long as there’s no peas under the mattress.
Life, the Universe, Princes and Princesses. Mine’s the one in the blue tunic, thank you.
The Fairy in the Pansy Flower
Meanwhile, back in the land of imagination…
Did you know there’s a fairy in every pansy flower? The wild pansies, not the big cultivated ones you buy at the garden centre. I didn’t know about this until just the other day, when one of the other members of my Writer’s Circle read us a story of how she was a little girl, and her grandmother told her that there were fairies in the flower garden. She showed one to her, picking the petals off a pansy flower and laying them in the little girl’s hand, until the girl could see the fairy’s tiny face, her beautiful yellow and purple skirt, and her big green petal bonnet.
I had never heard about that, so I had to go home and check – I have quite a few wild pansies in my garden (which in this case aren’t wild, but carefully grown from seed). And it’s true! See?
Isn’t she pretty? I’m not sure what her name is, but I think she and her sisters have been looking after my garden quite admirably. I’m pretty sure they’ve also been having conversations with the ladybugs that like to sit on the leaves of the marigolds. It would account for the whispering I sometimes hear when I’m up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, and step out on the balcony to look up at the stars.
Oh, and then I found out another neat thing I didn’t know. I was just looking up the flower, which is actually properly called viola (‘pansy’ is generally the term for the cultivar). The Viola tricolor has a whole raft of names, according to Wikipedia – Johnny Jump-up (that’s the name on the seed packet I grew mine from), heartsease, heart’s delight, tickle-my-fancy, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me, come-and-cuddle-me, three faces in a hood, and – drumroll! – love-in-idleness. That’s the one I hadn’t known (or if I did, I’d forgotten).
And it’s cool, because, of course, love-in-idleness is the flower in Midsummer Night’s Dream that Oberon and Puck use to enchant Titania, Lysander and Demetrius, making them fall in love with whomever or whatever they first set eyes on when they wake up:
OBERON: That very time I saw …
Cupid all arm’d: a certain aim he took …
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, …
Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew’d thee once:
The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.PUCK: I’ll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.A Midsummer Night’s Dream, II, 1
I hadn’t realised that Shakespeare is talking about the humble viola here. Which makes sense, that the flower that has a fairy in each of its blossoms would be ready to do the Fairy King’s bidding, doesn’t it? (The last few lines of that passage also tells you the top swimming speed of a leviathan: less than 1 league in 40 minutes – a league being 5.556km, that comes to 8.33 km/h, or 5.18 mph, which translates to 4.5 knots. Good to know, just in case I ever need to outrun a leviathan when I’m out sailing. Who says Shakespeare hasn’t his practical uses?)
So, apart from the fact that a viola is really pretty (as well as edible), it also has some significant mythical qualities. Between all the fairies in the pansy flowers, and the dragonsbane (tarragon) plant in the herb bed, my garden should be well protected against mythical intruders. At least the undesirable ones. I’m not sure how I’d feel about Puck, or Oberon himself, making an appearance – but we’ll have to see, won’t we.
(There’s also a frog in one of the flowerbeds – he croaks quite loudly sometimes – but so far I’ve been unable to spot him, never mind kiss him or chuck him against the wall. Besides, even though I am the youngest daughter in my family, I’m married already, prince or no prince. So it hardly matters. But if you’re in search of a prince, come on over – you can have a chat with all those pansy fairies, they might point you in the right direction.)
Life, the Universe, and the Fairies in the Pansy Flowers. I’m so glad I found out about them.
Castle Dreams
So Derek Murphy, otherwise known as Creativindie, is running yet another contest. A last-minute giveaway of a stay in one of two writing retreats, either a two-week stay in Portrush, Northern Ireland, or a couple of weeks in his NaNoWriMo Castle in Saint-Sylvestre-sur-Lot, France (in Aquitaine, apparently, which is the South of France – I had to google it).
Oh. My. Goodness. The way to enter this contest/giveaway is to post about it on your blog. Here. Doing it. And then you’re supposed to say which of the two you want to go to. Umm, YES. Yes please. Uh, you want me to choose? Sorry… just sorry, Derek, I can’t. Just pick me for either one, and I’ll be there with bells on. Because (and that’s condition #2, to say why you want to come), well, d’uh. Castle. Or Ireland. Ocean shore. British Isles. Europe. History. Stories woven into the very fabric of your surroundings. Wherever you look, there’s stories, tales just for the picking. You walk through a doorway, and your mind goes “I wonder who lived here a hundred years ago…”, and you see a lady with a tight corset crossing the hallway in front of you, her big hoop skirt swinging. And then you turn a corner and look out a window, and your mind skips on to “Did some noble lady ever sit on this window sill the way I do now, looking out for her knight to come back for her?” Or you get off the train (because, of course, you take the train to where you’re going – this is Europe, after all) and you think, “I wonder how it felt for a soldier in 1916 to come home to his family in this little town…” and “How long might this bakery have stood at that corner already, and did children sixty years ago have their noses pressed to the window just the way this little girl is doing now?”
Like I said, stories in every brick and stone, the very air you breathe suffused with inspiration. So of course I want to go on one of those retreats. Just looking at those websites had me spiralling off into dreams; I almost had my itinerary for how to get there all planned out…
Now, the third condition of entering this writing contest is to post a sample or outline of what you would be working on. Hmm. I don’t really like posting outlines or summaries in public before I’ve written the thing. My stories need to hatch in peace and quiet, not be dragged into the spotlight before they’re even able to open their eyes.
However, let’s just say I’d win the castle retreat [crosses fingers and toes, going “Please, please, please!”] [Yes, I can cross my toes. Can’t you?]. Of all the story ideas knocking about in my brain, I think it would be one of the fairy tale retellings that would take shape then, because, castle. That Château de Cadrès is the quintessential fairy tale castle, judging by the pictures. Sit back, close your eyes for a minute, open them again, and you don’t even have to bother imagining – you just describe what you see, people it with some characters, and bingo – story.
Now, as to what kind of story… As I said, a fairy tale. And like every good story, it always starts with a “What if…” In a fairy tale, the plot, the “what”, is already a given. So to turn a fairy tale into a full-length novel, what you want is a “what if…” of a different kind. Sometimes a “How come…” For example, have you ever wondered why the princess in the Grimms'”The Goose Girl” doesn’t try to defend herself when the wicked maid forces her to change places with her? How come she’s like that? Maybe she’s constitutionally shy or has a stammer which makes her afraid to speak up. Or, maybe, when she was growing up, her father and older brother were abusive bullies, and in consequence she’s terrified of men. So when she loses the handkerchief with her mother’s protective magic and the maid bullies her into trading places, she’s helpless, because she would never dare to actually tell the king that she is the real princess – even though she meets the prince in the stables where she’s been sent to sleep in the hay, and it turns out he’s really shy and stammer-y, too, and terrified of this “princess” he’s supposed to marry (because he can tell she’s a bully, and not very refined and ladylike to boot). Now the two of them, the princess and prince, have become really good friends (aka fallen in love), but she can’t say anything about her predicament because the wicked maid has put a spell on her. And then of course there’s Curdie, the gooseherd boy, who wants to pull out her hair because it’s so pretty and golden, and it’s the princess’ friendship with the prince (who, maybe, she doesn’t know is the prince, and just thinks is a nobleman?) which gives her the courage to stand up to Curdie and learn to not let herself be bullied. So when the king finally goes and hears her talking to her dead horse’s head under the bridge, which busts everything wide open, she’s actually got the courage to speak up and let the king know what really happened, and the ensuing happily-ever-after with her marrying the prince is really based on her learning to stand up for herself and have the courage to be who she really is.
There, that’s my outline – or a outline, anyway. It might not be good enough for a contest entry, but now I’ll have to go and actually write that book sometime.
Meanwhile, go and hop over to Creativindie’s site and have a look around (that’s his whole purpose for putting on these contests, to get exposure for his site). I’d love to go on one of those retreats, but if I can’t, I’ll just have to imagine I’m there, dream myself into the castle. I am, after all, a storysmith, mental images come easily.
Life, the Universe, and a Writing Retreat. Here’s hoping.
Lavender’s Blue, the Song
“Lavender’s Blue”, the Septimus Series Short Story that I posted the other day (if you haven’t read it yet, go here, or here and download yourself a copy to keep), started with a song – well, actually, with a movie. That’s right, the Cinderella movie that I love so much.
The lullabye “Lavender’s Blue” features quite prominently in the film, and so afterwards, I had the song stuck in my head. And as I kept singing it, and thinking about Cat and Guy and the world they live in, a story started taking shape in my head. Voilà, “Lavender’s Blue”.
And here is the song (well, one version of it – it’s a folk song, so there are lots of different versions. The one Cat sings has a slightly different last line).
https://youtu.be/Ow25lvYoKXo
Life, the Universe, and a Lullabye. Enjoy!
Sleeping Beauty and the Spindle
I found out all about spinning on the weekend. There was a Christmas crafts event in town, and a couple of ladies from the Spinners and Weavers Guild were doing a spinning demo. Actually, that demo was the main reason I went to the event – spinning is one of the old crafts I haven’t actually tried my hand at, not properly, anyway, and I’ve wanted to know for a while how it works.
And sure enough, my suspicions were confirmed: every last “Sleeping Beauty” movie has got it wrong.
You know how the story goes: the wicked fairy curses the princess to prick her finger on a spindle on her 16th birthday. To try to prevent it, the king bans/burns all spinning tools. But of course, as he ought to have known, that does nothing; she finger-pricks anyway, falls asleep, a century later prince shows up, etc.
So how does that look in the movies? Huge conflagration of spinning wheels, for the most part. Then the dimwitted (ahem – sorry) princess, in a trance, walks up to a wheel, which has a sharp thing sticking out of the top, goes and purposely jabs her finger on that sharp pointy thing, and on we go with the snoozing etc. etc.
Complete baloney. It’s pretty obvious the movie-makers have never seen a real spinning wheel in their lives. It’s mildly forgiveable in the film makers of the 1959 Disney movie, when research was a little more difficult to do; but in 2014, you’d think that the set designers of Maleficent could have done about ten seconds of googling, which would have told them that there are no sharp pointy things sticking out of spinning wheels. Spinners of the past would have been severely puzzled by those movie spinning wheels.
I can just picture it now. The scene: a Great 21st-Century Folklorist has been time-transported back to a 17th-century German Spinnstube (shpinn-shtoo-ba, spinning room), where the women of the village are gathered around the fire on a dark winter’s night with their spinning wheels. Folklorist rubs his hands – here’s his opportunity to tell the “Sleeping Beauty” story as he knows it, and really get it entrenched in the minds of these peasants. So there are Gretl, Liesl, Anna, Maria, Maria, and Anna Maria, all sitting in a circle, their spinning wheels humming. [No! Turn off those lights! The only illumination we have are the fire and a couple of rush lights. It’s dark, folks. Got that image in your mind now? Okay, good. Carry on.]
Folklorist: “…and on her 16th birthday, she shall prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel!”
Maria 1: “On what?”
Maria 2: “Maybe she had a poor-quality wheel; the wood might have been splintered.”
Gretl: “Oh, you mean she pricked her finger on a splinter?”
Folklorist: “No! She pricked it on a spindle! You know, that pointy thing!”
Liesl: “What pointy thing?”
Folklorist: “Well, that – um…”
Anna: “This makes no sense at all. If the bad fairy wanted the princess to kill herself with a spinning wheel, she’d have to find a better curse than that.”
Maria 2: “Yes; if she hasn’t got a splintered wheel. What about…”
[SCENE FADE OUT. FADE BACK IN. THE FIRE HAS BURNED DOWN A LOT, INDICATING THAT SOME TIME HAS PASSED.]
Anna Maria: “That makes more sense. I mean, who would believe anything so silly as someone pricking her finger on a spindle on a wheel? All right, Mr Storyteller, carry on, please!”
Folklorist, extremely reluctantly: “…so the wicked witch cast her curse. ‘On her 16th birthday,’ she said, ‘the princess shall club herself to death with the drive wheel of a spinning wheel…'”
The women: “Yes!” “That’s better!” “Now it makes sense.” “That’s so exciting!” “What happened next?”
[THE FOLKLORIST TURNS AWAY FROM THE WOMEN, SOBBING QUIETLY TO HIMSELF. FADE OUT.]
Anyway, that’s a more likely scenario than this poke-yourself-on-a-spinning-wheel one. Sorry, Mr. Disney.
The device that Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger on is, in fact, a hand spindle – and not a drop spindle, either, which might serve to poke out your eye or be used to inflict classic blunt-force head injuries, but isn’t really pointy. It seems that the most likely device for inducing century-long royal hypersomnia was what spinners call a Russian spindle, which is very pointy indeed. I’d love to learn how to use one sometime (for making yarn, not putting teen girls to sleep), but I wouldn’t sneeze at getting the hang of a spinning wheel, either.
Life, the Universe, and Tales of a Spindle. Or should that be Spinster?
Holiday Slide Show, Part 2
Okay, the second slide holder is in. Lights off, here we go (chick-chook):
Another slide holder change…
What I Did On My Holidays, or: A Visit to Storybrooke
On my holidays, I went to Storybrooke. Yes, the Once Upon a Time town. No, really!
As I mentioned before, I just spent a couple of weeks with family, and we went to the big city (aka Vancouver). And while we were there, I got a chance to go to Storybrooke. Yes, I know they tell you it’s in Maine, but actually, it’s in BC (the geographic location, British Columbia, not the time period, Before Christ). See?
On the map, it’s actually called Steveston (which, contrary to the opinion of a certain family member, is not named after a small stuffed bear). Steveston is a really cute fishing village on the outskirts of Greater Vancouver, with a nifty harbour and an old cannery just down the street from the relevant places.
So, here I am in front of Mr. Gold’s pawn shop:
And it really is proof that I was there myself – if I had photoshopped myself into the picture, I wouldn’t have chosen such a hideously unflattering shot of me. But because I like you, and need to show you that I was, indeed, there in the flesh, I’m letting you see this photo of me (take note of the Cinderella’s Coach pin on my shirt – I was even dressed appropriately).
This, I think, is Granny’s Diner.
There wasn’t a single werewolf in sight, though, nor indeed any Evil Queens, Princes (Charming or otherwise), Princesses, Pirates, Dwarfs, Fairies, or Bondsbailpersons in yellow VW beetles. And the only teenagers around were, alas, Not Henry. If I’d stuck around a few weeks or months, though, I might have been able to get a glimpse of one or two of them; apparently Season 5 is slated to start filming soon.
And here is me going into the Storybrooke Library.
Well, actually, it’s me pulling on the handle of the locked-up building which is falling apart and for sale. Anybody want to chip in to buy it?
Life, the Universe, and a Visit to Storybrooke. That’s what I did on my holidays.