Vasilisa front

Vasilisa side

Marusia front

Marusia side

Baba Yaga front

Baba Yaga side

Building Reference and Pics

Dissertation Draft

An investigation into the roles of folk tales and myths, and how similarly themed tales characters and landscapes have been adapted to make them more universally accessible and acceptable.

1-Introduction

From an early age I have always been entertained by stories of courage and hardship that were undertaken by heroic and pure characters as they go on crusades to save cities, kingdoms or in some cases themselves from the threat posed by the most frightening fantastical monsters. I think it is understandable that when we are first peering out at the world around us and trying to make sense of our existence, and our place in the grand scheme of the reality around us. That we try to in reflection get an understanding of the past this will give us an important grounding for the present and a key insight into the possibilities of the future.

For me this is where the role of folk tales is so important as they manage to encompass a wide and unique body of stories from differing cultures that can help deal with the endless stream of questions and thoughts that are a characteristic of our lives and human existence.

When we delve beneath the surface of each folk story that we have heard there are the many characters and settings, which will differ slightly in each version of tale. As folk tales by nature are very much prone to evolve from generation to generation due to the first record of them, which was of them being passed orally. However the main constant is that in every one are the many facets of human beings, and we are shown them through each character be it our strengths, flaws, fears, and hopes.

Through the course of my Dissertation I am going to be researching and investigating into Fables and folk stories and looking into aspects that make them universal or not. Another aspect I will be delving into is how folk tales from different cultures that are similar to familiar folktales, and looking at how they have been adapted and the historical and commercial reasons that could have led to this.

Textual Comparison

2 - Hansel and Gretel

As I said previously the origins of folk tales is from the past where they used to be orally circulated before they were recorded and printed for universal reading. However for the use in my comparison I will be focusing solely on folk tales that are available to be read from a book.

A folk tale that I will be using to compare across cultures will be the familiar tale of “Hansel and Gretel” this is a German folk tale that was published by the “Brothers Grimm”.

In this story the two children called Hansel and Gretel are living with their father a poor woodcutter and their stepmother. Fearing starvation the stepmother convinces their father to lead them into the forest and abandon them there. The two children hear the plan and collect small pebbles from the garden to leave their selves a trail back home. When they return the stepmother furiously convinces her husband to abandon them again further in the forest so they can’t find their way back home this time. The Two children can’t prepare for the second attempt, and are only able to leave a trail of breadcrumbs from the bread they have for lunch. Unfortunately, the hungry birds in the forest eat their trail of breadcrumbs leaving them stranded and lost. Whilst lost in the forest looking for a way home they find a house made of ginger bread, with sugar windows and a cake roof. Hungry and exhausted, they begin to eat it. A witch to entice children, so that she can fatten them up and eat them, has built the house. She invites Hansel and Gretel in and prepares a feast for them. Then she locks Hansel in a cage, and makes Gretel her servant. The witch orders Gretel to feed Hansel to fatten him up for her to eat. Gretel weeps bitterly, but does as she is told.

Meanwhile stuck in the cage, Hansel shows the witch a thin bone instead of his finger. The old woman has poor eyesight and cannot realize the trick and is angry as she thinks Hansel hasn’t fattened. After a while the witch gets very impatient and decides to eat Hansel. She tells Gretel to climb into an oven to be sure it is ready to bake, but Gretel tricks the witch into climbing into the oven instead, and closes it behind her. Hansel is freed and the children take jewels from the witch's house and set off for home with the help of a white swan. They reunite with their father and their stepmother has died, and they all live happily ever after.

This is a very universally accessible tale, and although it first originated from Germany. I am confident to say that it if you were talking to someone from a different cultural background and remarked about the tale of two children who eat a witches gingerbread house. That they would have a basic understanding of the events that occur in the tale, which leads to my question why are some more accessible than others?

“ In Quest of the Folktale” storyteller and folklorist, Doug Lipman notes:

. . . Folklorists have published at least 40 authentic versions of “Snow White’ in English. The bad news: of the 40, only one has been used as the basis for a children’s book.

(Doug Lipman, “In Quest of the Folktale,” Yarnspinner, vol. 14, no. 4, June 1990)

After reading a statement like this from a respectable folklorist like Doug Lipman. I think it is reasonable to conclude that someone other than ourselves as the general populous determines the versions of many of the folk tales that we encounter. Book publishers and promoters are the most likely as they are people with the authority to select the versions of the tale, and the stories to which the general public will have the easiest access. It is their job to screen, and then a select few of these tales to publish, which they can then promote as being “suitable” for young children and the general population. The rest for cultural or political reasons never get to be told on the same scale, perhaps due to the content contained within in them not being viewed as being universally accessible for a world wide and varying audience.

3 - The Lost Children

This is where my next comparison comes in as I feel it is a perfect example of this selection. “The Lost Children” is a French fairy tale that was collected by Antoinette Bon. This tale is very similar to Hansel and Gretel in its content and plot but is definitely not as widely known. I feel obliged to point out that the first time I heard this tale was in the course of my research, but as I am sure you will notice during the tale there are definite similarities.

In the beginning of this tale there was a couple that were very stingy. Their two children Jean and Jeanette suffered because of this, and after a period of time they decide that they want to lose their children in the forest. Their mother took them out and left them there. Lost Jean climbed a tree and saw a white house and a red house. They went to the red one. The woman inside let them in, but told them to be quiet or her husband would eat them. Hearing her husband coming back she hid them, but her husband was the devil and could smell them because they were Christians. He beat his wife and put Jean into the barn to fatten him up before he would eat him, then made Jeanette his servant to bring her brother the food.

The devil would ask for updates from Jeanette and she had to bring the tip of his finger so the devil would know how fat her brother was getting. However Jeannette tricked the devil and would bring him a rat’s tail instead. On the third occasion the devil noticed the trick and pulled Jean out of the barn. Then made a sawhorse to lay Jean on to bleed, and went for a walk. Jeannette had Jean pretend to not understand how he was to be put on the saw hors. The Devil’s wife showed them, and then Jean tied her on and cut her throat.

The two children took the Devil’s gold and silver with them, before fleeing using his carriage. The devil came back saw what they had done, and realizing that they had escaped he chased after them. On his way he met various people a laborer, a shepherd, a beadle, and some laundresses. He asked each one whether they had seen the children. The first time he asked them they each pretended to not hear his question, but they told him they hadn’t except for the laundresses who told him they saw them cross the river. The devil could not cross it, so one of the laundresses offered to cut her hair to let him cross on it. However when he was in the middle they dropped it so he would drown. The children made their way home and took care of the parents in spite of what they had done.

This tale is very similar to Hansel and Gretel, not just in narrative content and theme, but it is filled with similar events that the tales both share. The parents background, the fact they feel like they need to abandon their offspring as they are unable to feed them, the fact that the children find a house in a forrest containing a monster and make good to escape the outcome of them being eaten by the beast. Although the characters are different in both of the stories the actions that they perform and the outcomes themselves are not. The main difference is that in Hansel and Gretel certain things are alluded to, but do not actually occur. Whereas in the Lost Children there is more of a graphic nature to the acts which are performed, which might be a reason for the story not being as universally accessible to children or the general public, and in part which would explain it being screened by book publishers and promoters.

4 - Hop O’My Thumb

Another tale that is similar to both the previous tales is called Hop O’ My Thumb (French-Le Petit Poucet) this is a literary fair tale by Charles Perrault.

In this tale there is poor couples that live in a village near a wood where they work, but as they have a large family of seven boys it was hard for them to get enough food for to survive. There came a bad year, and consequently a great famine spread through the village. The couple decided that because they could not feed their children and rather than watch them starve before them they should leave them in the forest. The smallest boy called Hop O my Thumb heard them talking.

So the following day he got up really early and filled his pockets with pebbles, and when they were in the wood he dropped them one by one to mark the way back home. The next time they were left in the woods he could not drop any pebbles as he had been locked up all night, so he used his lunch bread instead which the ravenous birds ate up. The children were lost but for fear that they would perish they walked on until they saw a light coming from a huge house. They knocked on the door and were greeted by a pleasant-looking dame. They told her about their story, and she warned them to leave immediately as her husband was an ogre that was fond of eating children and he would be home at any minute. The children begged and pleaded so much though that at last she let them in. The poor wife barely had enough time to hide them before the ogre burst in, and ordered her to bring some food out for him to eat. Just as he was about to sit down he shouted, “I smell child’s flesh!” The wife tried to tell him it was his dinner, but he was not to be put off and he found the boys hidden underneath the bed. The ogre was overjoyed when he found them but decided that he should fatten them up before he ate them, as they were all very scrawny. So he put them to bed in the same room as his daughters. Hop O my thumb was very wary and noticed that the ogres daughters had crowns on their heads, so he changed those for the nightcaps worn by his brothers. In the middle of the night the ogre came up with a great knife and cut the throats of his own children instead. At the dawn of day Hop O my thumb got up and made his brothers follow him.

After they were gone the Ogre grinning savagely went up to his daughters’ bedroom, but he was devastated when he found he had killed his daughters and the little boys were all gone. The ogre put on some magical boots with whom he could take seven leagues a stride and set off in pursuit. However Hop O my thumb had made them all hide in a hole under a rock. The ogre not finding them came back tired and threw himself on this very rock to sleep. A kind fairy appeared to the children and gave Hop O my thumb a nut to crack as soon as he should reach the ogres house, but he was told to first take off the ogre’s boots and send his brothers home and afterwards put the boots on himself and make his way to the ogres’ house. After great effort he took off the ogres boots and reached his house wearing them, he cracked open the nut and read out what it said

“GO UNTO THE OGRE’S DOOR.

THESE WORDS SPEAK AND NOTHING MORE;

OGRESS, OGRE CANNOT COME

GREAT KEY GIVE IT TO HOP O’ MY THUMB.

After speaking the magic words, she gave him the key of the gold chest and he took as much gold as he could take on several journeys. With Hop O my thumb busy with the gold the beast awoke and let out a shrill at the events, and his tired limbs. Hop O my thumb took the gold to court where the king accepted his generous present and appointed him chief forester, and over time he was promoted to be a chief councilor to the king.

I think by now you will be noticing a pattern, arising in these stories that makes them similar to the “Hansel and Gretel” story. They all begin with poor malnourished families that are encountering troubles due to the amount of members in their family. To survive they have to make the difficult choice of leaving their children alone to fend for themselves, because they can’t afford to feed them. One of the children overhears the plan from their parents to get rid of them and consequently starts to plan a way of finding their way home, the first time their plan is successful and they find a way home to the dismay of their parents. However the second time due to a lack of preparation they end up being lost, and wandering in the forest until they reach a friendly and inviting house that does not seem as it looks. They then have a series of trials that they survive by relying on their wits and eventually escape the hidden monster in each of the houses, making their way back home to their a lot more rich after taking the treasure from each of the monsters back with them. Then show great generosity in sharing the money they find, and not just hoarding it for themselves and their fellow brothers or sisters.

These stories each follow that set pattern and closely resemble the main events that are outlined in the “Hansel and Gretel” story. However there are stories that are similar to the Grimm brother’s tale but do not follow the plot as closely stories such as “Vasilisa the beautiful’, “Frau Trude”, “The Witch”, “The Golden Stag” and “Buttercup”.

5 - Vasilisa the beautiful

I will start by looking at Vasilisa the beautiful this is a tale collected by “Alexander Afanasyev” this is a Russian folk tale which uses the Slavic character of a witch named “Baba Yaga” and the tale appears in “Narodnye russkie skazki”.

This tale begins when a merchant had, by his first wife a single daughter who was known to everyone who met her as Vasilisa the beautiful. When she was eight years old her mother died and on her deathbed, she gave Vasilisa a tiny wooden doll with instructions to give it a little to eat and a little to drink if she was in need, and then it would help her. As soon as her mother died, Vasilisa gave it a little to drink and a little to eat, and it comforted her.

After a time, her father was told by the townspeople that he should remarry, and he selected a woman with two daughters. Now her stepmother was very cruel to her, but with the help of the doll, Vasilisa was able to perform all the tasks imposed on her. When young men came around to woo her, the stepmother rejected them all because it was not proper for the younger child to marry before the older women, and none of the would be suitors wished to marry any of Vasilisa's stepsisters.

One day the merchant had to embark on a journey. His wife sold the house and moved them all to a gloomy hut by the forest, and she gave each of the girls a task and put out all the fires except a single candle. Her older daughter sneakily put out the candle, so they sent Vasilisa to fetch light from Baba Yagas hut. The doll advised her to go, and she went. While she was walking, a mysterious man rode by her in the hours before dawn dressed all in white, riding a white horse whose equipment was all white; then a similar rider dressed all in red. Eventually she came to a house that stood on chicken legs and was walled by a fence made of human bones. A black rider, like the white and red riders, rode past her, and night fell, whereupon the eye sockets of all the skulls on the top of the wall became luminous. Vasilisa was too frightened to run away, and so Baba Yaga found her when she finally arrived down in her mortar and carrying her pestle.

The witch said that she must perform tasks to earn the fire, or she would be eaten. For the first task she was told to clean the house and yard, cook supper, and pick out black grains and wild peas from a quarter measure of wheat. Baba Yaga left the house to allow her to begin, and Vasilisa cooked, while the doll did everything else. At dawn, the white rider passed, and just before noon, the red when it came time for the black rider to come past, Baba Yaga returned and could complain of nothing. She bade three pairs of disembodied hands seize the grain to grind it, and set Vasilisa the same tasks for the next day, with the addition of cleaning poppy seeds that had been mixed with dirt. Again, the doll did all except cooking the meal and Baba Yaga ordered three pairs of hands to press the oil from the poppy seeds.

Vasilisa asked about the riders' identities and was told that the white one was Day, the red one the Sun, and the black one Night. Other details are not explained, on the grounds that Baba Yaga preferred to keep them secret. In return, Baba Yaga inquired into the cause of Vasilisa's success. On hearing the answer "by my mother's blessing", Baba Yaga sent Vasilisa home. With her was sent a luminously eyed skull, to provide light for her in-laws, who had suffered living with no light or fire in their home as punishment for their cruelty. The light burned Vasilisa's stepmother and stepsisters to ashes, and then Vasilisa buried the skull as per its instructions so no person would ever be harmed by it.

Later, Vasilisa became an assistant to a maker of cloth in Russia's capital city, where she became so skilled at her work that the czar himself noticed her skill. He later married her.

I find this story very similar in premise to the Hansel and Gretel story although the narrative is not a closely linked as the previous stories have been. There is a definitely a pattern arising in the idea of a child being sent away by one or both of the parents to be ridden of in a forest nearby. Wherein they encounter a monster that is interested in tricking them so that they are its next meal, the innocent child is able to outsmart them and poignantly returns back home to the house where it began and either overlooks their parents previous discretions as the first stories show, or alternatively.

As you have seen in this tale the child either inadvertently or knowingly takes them back an item they have requested which in turn leads to the demise of the treacherous step-mother. Now the idea of a innocent child willingly taking back something that destroys their albeit bad intentioned step-mother is not something that I am sure would make this story universally accessible to someone who wished to publish this to children. This leads me to believe that it definitely reflects Slavic and Russian culture and their views in general as this is a very well known from where this story originated.

6 - Frau Trude

“Frau Trude” is another folk tale by the brothers Grimm and is the last Tale I will compare is very similar to the others I have previously written about but differs in the way that the events occur.

In this tale a willful little girl will not obey her parents and in fact whenever they told her to do one thing she purposely decided to do the opposite. One day having taken it into her head that she wants to see Frau Trude she tells her parents, who warned and forbade her but not listening to them and still curious she goes in spite of all their warnings. She arrives terrified, and Frau Trude questions her. She tells of seeing a black man on her steps, he’s a charcoal burner Frau Trude replies. A green man, oh he’s a huntsman says the witch, a blood-red man that’s just a butcher. Finally she says that it frightened her the most when looking through her window, she saw the devil with a flaming head of hair instead of Frau Trude. “Aha!” Frau Trude says “so you saw the witch in her proper attire. I have been waiting for you and waiting a long time. Light the way for me now!” When she had finished speaking she turned the little girl into a block of wood and threw her onto the fire, and then warmed herself by it, commenting on how bright the block made the fire.

The tale is unusual in that the evil witch triumphs in the end; the child is defeated and subsequently eaten. This may be because the child is shown as being naughty in disrespecting their parents wishes continually or willful in that she always decides to pursue it from her point of view. However contained within there are a lot of similarities between this tale and the rest in the events that occur, even though in this instance the child is the main protagonist of the majority of them. _­

After looking at these folktales against each other I am sure you are surprised by the similarities between all of them. The tales as a group may or may not emerge from a religious tradition, but nether the less speak to deep psychological issues. The manifest purpose of the tale may primarily be one of mundane instruction regarding forest safety or secondarily a cautionary tale about the dangers of famine threatening larger families, but its latest meaning may evoke a strong emotional response due to the widely understood themes and motifs such as “The Terrible Mother”, “Death,” and “Atonement with the Father.”

These themes are present in all of the tales that I have compared above, although as I have pointed out the events contained alongside them are the major difference. As these are reflecting the culture and place from where they have originated, and what is deemed acceptable in one culture may not be deemed in the same way in another. However there is one that bears less of the identity of its culture in this instance “Hansel and Gretel” and it does this whilst only alluding to and not containing any controversial material and in my opinion this has contributed to this story being more universal than the other stories I have compared.

Historical Insight from Different cultures

In this section I will be looking into the varying historical and cultural factors that have led to folk tales to be differing from one another.

Conclusion

References

Wikipedia

Folktales the mirror of humanity- by Synia Carroll McQuillan

Doug Lipman, “In Quest of the Folktale,” Yarnspinner, vol. 14, no. 4, June 1990

Dr. Andriy Nahachewsky

The Brothers Grimm

Alexander Afanasyev - Narodnye russkie skazki

Hop O’ My Thumb (French-Le Petit Poucet) -Charles Perrault

The Lost Children -Antoinette Bon.

Polish Research

Just thought I would provide a brief summary about the pictures I am about to be showing you, these were gathered by me during a research trip up to some Polish mountains nearby I was staying, the area shown is a national park and as you can see from the pictures it was on a very foggy and creepy day.

I feel like I have benefited from gathering this research as I have found a lot of things that will be useful and relevant, but I will allow you to have a look and make up your own mind.