Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I thought I'd add one thing for lovers of fairy tales to check out. If you haven't seen it, in the early 20th century Bernard Sleigh, a lover of all things fairy tale, crafted An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland, Newly Discovered and Set Forth. You can see a large-size image file of this wonder in a few places:

An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland (Library of Congress)
An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland (David Rumsey Collection)

He accompanied it with A Guide to the Map of Fairyland, which you can see here:

A Guide to the Map of Fairyland (Cover)
A Guide to the Map of Fairyland (Interior)

As a fan of fairy tales, I will mention the other famous map of fairyland, which is The Land of Make-Believe by Jaro Hess.

The Land of Make-Believe

This one was apparently popular to paint on the walls of childrens' bedrooms in the 30s and 40s. I feel like it would be easier to paint this one on a wall than Bernard Sleigh's "mappe."

AlHazred Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As a fan of fairy tales, I will mention the other
> famous map of fairyland, which is The Land of
> Make-Believe by Jaro Hess.
>
> The Land of Make-Believe
>
> This one was apparently popular to paint on the
> walls of childrens' bedrooms in the 30s and 40s. I
> feel like it would be easier to paint this one on
> a wall than Bernard Sleigh's "mappe."


Thanks, AlHazred!

--Sawfish

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is there interest in reviving this thread?

Here's one possible way to move forward, if so: we could pick a book of folktales and read & discuss it. Ideally several people at least would be willing to participate.

Now, if EDfolk like the idea, which book should we pick?

A possibility would be to select one of the 15 volumes in the University of Chicago's Folktales of the World series, which ran for about 25 years. There were ten numbered volumes, as follows:

1.Germany
2.China
3.England
4.Ireland
5.Norway
6.Hungary
7.Japan
8.Israel
9.Mexico
10.Greece

A further five books were published: Folktales of Chile, Egypt, France, and India. These make 14 volumes. There was also Folktales Told Around the World.

The series was nice in that it followed a consistent format, with some accessible scholarly commentary that does not overwhelm the stories, which are the emphasis of the books. Each story comes with an explanation of how it was recorded. The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library was attractive, but from what I have seen it was less consistent than the Chicago series: some of the Pantheon volumes have little or no information about where, when, and by whom a given tale was recorded.

If, then, we found we really enjoyed the exploration of folktales, we'd have enough, with the Chicago series, to occupy us for years. We'd read a lot of stories and we'd also learn about the great folklorists of various countries.

If we go with the Chicago series, the next question is: which one to start with? One could simply begin with the first numbered one, Folktales of Germany. Or maybe someone here has a particular interest in Hungary or Egypt or whatever. On the other hand, there's been quite a lot of discussion here already about Scandinavian tales and some about Japanese -- so we could start with Norway or Japan.


Or someone might have a different suggestion -- or maybe there isn't sufficient interest in folktales, period.

I'd be up for resuming activity here at Chrons if EDfolk would like to go ahead with this. I will put my cards on the table again: I'm indifferent about Clark Ashton Smith, myself, so if some of you were finding parallels with some of his stories in the folktales, I wouldn't likely be able to get into that discussion (and so what!?). If the feeling is that a thread not focusing on CAS (or HPL, or Derleth, &c.) doesn't really belong at ED, naturally a veto could be made. Also, I'm a Lutheran, and there were some occasions on other threads in which I wrote in such a way that my Christianity was detectible. A member of this forum basically disinvited me, and I left, but it appears that he or she has not been active here for a year or so. If anyone's opinion is that it would be preferable for me not to write here, just say so. But that's no reason the folktale thread couldn't be revived. I think I'd like to be on board if it is.

I am currently reading:

A RELATION OF APPARITIONS OF SPIRITS IN THE PRINCIPALITY OF WALES (1780), by the Rev. Edmund Jones.

[books.google.com]

I was interested in Machen's little people stories, and one thing led to another, and I ended up reading Jones. I believe it is one of the earliest sources of Welsh folklore, though the Rev. Jones not so much a folklorist as he is a (decidedly credulous) believer. Still, he is more fun to read than the typical stuffy academic.

I've been tinkering with a list of stories, in English, about scary little people, which list includes much folklore.

I am interested in folktales, but not familiar with the series you mention.

Platypus, my earlier message sent today should have been better related to earlier messages posted in this thread (and perhaps other threads), since the thread has been dormant. I'd just reviewed it today so much of it was fresh in my mind.

My sense from the previous discussion (apart from a digression about electronic devices, of all things!) was that there was a fair degree of interest, on the part of several EDfolk, in folktales, not necessarily only those with a pronounced flavor of the weird. There'd been some discussion of collections in the genre. Someone mentioned Lafcadio Hearn's writing, although he was more a reteller than a folklorist.

Academic writing before 1975 can be stuffy, but I generally find it more palatable than a lot of what I've seen since. In any event, the books mentioned in this thread would not, I think, be too off-putting on that score. In fact, I think the biggest adjustment we may have to make is to the brevity of many of the tales: a story may lack some of its potential impact (for us) because the teller has not spun it out in the way a 20th-century writer, composing a story for magazine publication, would have handled it. Part of the reason for this is that the teller is often relating something that is told about a place in the vicinity. He or she doesn't conjure a sense of deep fir woods, cloudy weather, stark crags, etc. in Norway; all the listener had to do might be to open his eyes or to close them and think of what lies just on the other side of the window whose curtain was pulled across. The teller might not be quite certain that the event narrated happened, but he may well assume that some of the people in the valley do, or that the people who handed down the story did. As I think I mentioned in the thread, when I used to tell some such tales to my children, I'd review the story -- which might be but a few paragraphs in a book -- and I'd spin it out with improvised descriptions of my own and so on, so that more atmosphere could develop in the darkened room where, a moment ago, electric light had blazed.

Too, the presence of a story collector in many cases may have affected the presentation of the story. A storyteller might have given a summary version of a story when prompted. ("Joseph -- tell him the one about the troll and the moss-gatherers." "Oh, aye, that one. Well, it seems there were these men going up into the hills after edible moss, you see, and...") The teller can see the collector writing down the story. The dynamics would be different, I suppose, when a little group of cronies were gathered around a fire near a sheepfold, passing the wee hours of the night.

I'm not apologizing for the texts of folktales, just acknowledging an adjustment that one may have to make. The stories are easy to read rapidly, but if one does read them thus, the way one would read a blog posting, it's not the fault of the story if it doesn't get under our skins. Some people might want to read the stories more like reading a poetic reverie -- aloud.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 24 Feb 23 | 03:52PM by Dale Nelson.

PS Platypus, have you seen Andrew Lang's introduction to Kirk's Secret Commonwealth? It's a while since I looked at this, but at the time I wondered if Lang's remarks had influenced Machen, maybe even given him the idea for the Little People as "atavistic survivals."

[archive.org]

Dale Nelson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> PS Platypus, have you seen Andrew Lang's
> introduction to Kirk's Secret Commonwealth? It's
> a while since I looked at this, but at the time I
> wondered if Lang's remarks had influenced Machen,
> maybe even given him the idea for the Little
> People as "atavistic survivals."
>
> [archive.org]
> ves/page/n1/mode/2up

I've been trying to trace the origin of this idea, and it goes back rather further than Lang. In NORTHERN ANTIQUITIES (1770), P. Mallet speculates that certain fairy and dwarf legends are inspired by a people related to laplanders, or shorter stature, but more skilled in metals.

Later, in his LETTERS ON DEMONOLOGY (1830), Walter Scott writes

“there seems reason to conclude that these duergar were originally nothing else than the diminutive natives of the Lappish, Lettish, and Finnish nations, who, flying before the conquering weapons of the Asæ, sought the most retired regions of the North, and there endeavoured to hide themselves from their Eastern invaders. They were a little, diminutive race, but possessed of some skill probably in mining or smelting minerals, with which the country abounds. Perhaps also they might, from their acquaintance with the changes of the clouds, or meteorological phenomena, be judges of weather, and so enjoy another title to supernatural skill. At any rate, it has been plausibly supposed that these poor people, who sought caverns and hiding-places from the persecution of the Asæ, were in some respects compensated for inferiority in strength and stature by the art and power with which the superstition of the enemy invested them.”


And of course we know from the 1691 text of THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH, that flint arrowheads are associated with fairies in Scottish folklore, though a scientist would instead associate them with the real prehistoric inhabitants of Britain, whoever they were.

Later in the 19th century, these prehistoric inhabitants came to be identified with the "Turanians". Originally this was a theory of language, but with time came to be thought of as a racial category as well, with the Finns, Laps and Sami people, being classified as types of "Turanians".

Machen references "Turanians" a number of times in his fiction, so he is obviously familiar with these ideas. I don't think Andrew Lang ever used the term "Turanians", so I would say that Machen did not get his ideas exclusively from Lang.

Here is "The First Metallurgists" -- a rather elaborate, and I suspect, fanciful, development of the "Turanian" theory. I don't know if Machen ever read this specific article. It's from the WESTMINSTER REVIEW (1875) and starts at page 144. It associates Turanians with goldwork, copperwork, stone monoliths, and serpent worship.

[books.google.com]

Do you contemplate an essay, Platypus? This is intriguing.

If you want to post even an interim report of your work, you might consider Christopher Tompkins's Darkly Bright site, which has posted some Machen criticism as well as a lot of reprints of work by him with comments from Christopher and from readers. Sometimes it's nice to let others know what one's working on even before the final presentation thereof, which can both attract help and let others know they may as well avoid duplication of effort if they are just thinking of starting on a topic. Your material as it is has told me more than I knew about the "Turanians," though I've been reading Machen for over 50 years.

From the index, it appears that there is a little bit about Lapps & Lappish tradition in the University of Chicago Folktales of Norway book, ed. by Reidar Christiansen. The table of contents of that book (No. 5 in the series), by the way, shows these divisions of tales:

1.Historical Legends
2.Legends about Magic and Witchcraft
3.Legends about Ghosts, the Human Soul, and Shapeshifting
4.Legends about Spirits of the Sea, Lakes, and Rivers
5.Legends about Spirits of the Air
6.Legends about Spirits of Forest and Mountain
7.Legends about Household Spirits
8.Fictional Folktales

I'm just starting a reading. I think the idea is that the first seven deal with accounts that the storyteller believed to be true or that he/she believed had been believed, while the last group (marchen) are entertainments, typically longer, that are understood to be fairy tales.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 25 Feb 23 | 09:26AM by Dale Nelson.

Yes, I have taken a few notes, and should probably post something somewhere before I lose my notes. Thank you for the suggestion.

I think you have sold me on the Norwegian volume.

Platypus, if you decide to post the notes somewhere other than here or at Darkly Bright, please be sure to announce that -- I wouldn't want to miss what you have to say. I really thought Lang's edition of "The Secret Commonwwealth" might be Machen's inspiration -- and I suppose that's still possible, but you've found interesting things, for sure. I wonder how "Turanians" became the name used (by scholars?) for the Central Asians who theoretically were the ancestors of the Sami/Lapps, etc.

I don't know of a better edition of Norwegian folktales in English (only language I read) than Christiansen's "Folktales of Norway" in the Folktales of the World series from the University of Chicago, if you want some folkloristic background and plenty of stories too -- there are 82 numbered narratives.

In case it would be of interest, here's a review I wrote for "Beyond Bree," the monthly Tolkienian newsletter, two or three years or so ago, of a new translation of tales. This book, though, has just 60 stories and lacks the information about the collecting of specific stories that you get with the Christiansen book from the University of Chicago. The 1960 Viking Press book that I mention below is a treasure from my childhood, copiously and evocatively illustrated. But anyway, I thought the review might offer further enticement for the exploration of Norwegian folktales. I cite Machen, by the way!

THE ASH LAD AND THE HOBBIT:
A NEW TRANSLATION OF NORWEGIAN TALES SHOULD APPEAL TO DWELLERS IN TOLKIENDOM

by Dale Nelson

Reviewed here: Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales. Translated by Tiina Nunnally, with a foreword by Neil Gaiman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1-5179-0568-2. xxi + 320 pages. Hardcover. $34.95.

Humor and terror. Doesn’t that describe much of the appeal of The Hobbit? Three malevolent trolls are tired of mutton and thinking hobbit might be a pleasant change, when Gandalf sets them quarrelling and cuffing to our amusement. The Mirkwood spiders are persistent and nasty, and the dwarves are bound up tightly in their webs in an already suffocatingly dim forest, but Bilbo resourcefully concocts jeering, funny rhymes that infuriate the execrable creatures and lure them away from the hobbit’s companions. Comically flattering verbal resourcefulness marks burglar-Bilbo’s dialogue with the thoroughly wicked dragon in the depths of the Lonely Mountain.

Jørgen Moe (1813-1882) set himself to identify the characteristics of specifically Norwegian folktales and, according to Richard M. Dorson’s Foreword to Folktales of Norway (1964), “humor and terror” were the paired qualities that Moe settled on. “[Moe] spoke of the balance between humor and terror, arising from a self-assured people living on a harsh terrain.”

The Ash Lad – the unpromising youth who makes good, robbing the troll, swigging the magic drink that enables him to wield the sword with which to cut off the troll’s heads – “exemplified the confidence of the [peasant] in a mysterious power on high guiding his destiny.” Similarly, Bilbo learned to trust his luck as he journeyed through a wide world of deep forests and high mountains populated by dangerous inhabitants.

Thus, while one might not find abundant details in the Norwegian folktales that might otherwise have seemed to have been sources for Tolkien, the tales often convey, in their brief space, an atmosphere of humor and terror akin to that which pervades The Hobbit.

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812-1885) and Moe were to Norway what the Grimms were to Germany, and indeed Asbjørnsen met the brothers. The Grimms’ Children’s and Household Tales first appeared in 1812, while the Norwegians’ first collection was published in the next generation, in 1841. The Grimms’ seventh edition dates to 1857, and the fourth Asbjørnsen and Moe edition came out ten years later. It is that edition that Tiina Nunnally, praised for her translations of Sigrid Undset’s great Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, has rendered here, the only complete edition of the two collectors’ book in English.

The English version of Asbjørnsen and Moe that Tolkien knew was George Webbe Dasent’s translation, Popular Tales from the Norse (1859). Readers of Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories” will remember him quoting from its introduction. Nunnally found that Dasent’s versions of the tales showed an “uneven and inconsistent” style and an undue use of British terms, so that lefse becomes “bannock,” etc.

“Of greatest concern,” Nunnally found, was “the loss of the storytelling voice that Asbjørnsen and Moe were so careful to instill in the Norwegian, a “clear and deceptively simple narrative style that was meant to be read aloud….The stories are filled with humor, rhymes, and an abundance of detail.” Moe sought to convey “the pure epic narrative style whose sole purpose is the joy of observation.”

Here are “Katie Stave-Skirt” (“Katie Woodencloak” in Dasent), “Ragged Cap,” “The Maiden on the Glass Mountain,” “Ash Lad, Who Competed with the Troll,” “The Twelve Wild Ducks,” “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” “The Mill That Keeps Grinding at the Bottom of the Sea,” “The Master Maiden,” and more to the total of 60 tales (a few of them jocular and even impious or very brief). In his draft letter to Mr. Rang (#297), Tolkien wondered if the place-name Moria might derive from another of the Norwegian narratives, “Soria Moria Castle.” The tale itself, Tolkien said, “had no interest for me.” To which I am tempted to respond: bosh.

There is an essay by Arthur Machen in his book Dog and Duck that might give insight into the question of why folktales such as these seem to convey a sense of antiquity that isn’t merely a function of their coming from a bygone agrarian culture. Machen suggests that people -- he is thinking of Western people – once were well-acquainted with a quality of light-heartedness or mirth or joy. “It was not a thing that depended upon external good fortune or ill; people had hard times….in plenty in the Middle Ages.” Back then, the “notion of a joke was primitive and practical.” But the sense was that “the times were on the whole in joint, and not out of joint.”

But by the time of Shakespeare, we find less of that quality. Humor we may have indeed in Shakespeare and in Dickens and Machen’s contemporary W. W. Jacobs. But this humor “has nothing much to do with a light heart; its savour is not far removed from sadness,” because by now the world is “seen to be all wrong,” though “even its tragedies may have something wildly funny about them.”

Perhaps Machen was on to something. Asbjørnsen and Moe collected their stories from rural folk who may have belonged, imaginatively, to the older world. These stories may extend to us and our children, when known and loved, the chance of experiencing, at least to a degree, that older consciousness.
The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales includes the forewords to the second, third, and fourth Norwegian editions and part of the introduction to the second Norwegian edition, plus Notes on the Regional Collection Sites of the Tales.

This new book from the University of Minnesota is, then, a fine publication. However, I will also keep my copy of Norwegian Folk Tales as translated by Pat Shaw Iversen and Carl Norman (Viking Press, 1960). That book was generously illustrated by Erik Werenskiold and Theodor Kittelsen. Their late-19th-century pictures give us the definitive renderings of the tales’ trolls, forests, mountains, princesses, and the Ash Lad. Some stories not found in the Minnesota volume are included, though quite a few that are in the Minnesota volume are not included in the 1960 book. The Iversen-Norman selection was reprinted in paperback by Pantheon in 1982 and is still in print.

The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales, as a manufactured item, is of more than acceptable quality. It’s bound in full cloth of a hunter green color, although I believe this type of fabric is apt to show signs of wear if the book receives a lot of library use. The pages are not sewn in signatures, but glued to the spine. The book looks good and feels good in the hand but isn’t pricey. The dustjacket and two interior pages provide a glimpse of Kittelsen’s art.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 25 Feb 23 | 07:30PM by Dale Nelson.

You mention Dasent's translation, reminding me I have not yet read it.

Max Muller, a philologist, began popularizing the idea of a Turanian family of languages circa 1850. He derived it from the land of Turan, which is described in ancient zoroastrian texts as an enemy land northeast of Iran, occupied by nomadic tribes.

But how small the world is. Before I read Machen, I have no recollection of ever meeting this word. But now, as I glance at the intro to Dasent's 1859 volume, I find he mentions Max Muller, Turanians and Turan.

Muller never intended it as a racial classification, though nomadism was cited in the theory as a reason that Turanian language and religion became so widespread. This in turn led to a later association with vaguely Mongolian features. I think the Sami people of Scandinavia can also be vaguely linked by this unscientific association.

Down Syndrome children, whose features have been called "mongoloid", were I guess sometimes thought to be fairy changelings, as we know sometimes happened with "special" children in British folklore. But Wales also occasionally produces perfectly healthy people who seem to have a vaguely Asian or exotic appearance. Catherine Zeta Jones is an example.

And so in Machen's work, we have references to the almond eyes of Helen Vaughan and others. Evidence of Turanian and/or faun and/or goblin blood.

There is an article at britishfairies.wordpress.com, on Machen and Turanians, entitled "Not All Nymphs Are Nice ... [etc.]". It has a few interesting quotes and references.

I don't necessarily agree with some of his interpretations. For instance, I don't think the Turanians in "The Turanians" are merely slightly exotic humans. I think the implication of the story, when viewed together with his other work, is that the grotesque children might not actually be children, and that the beautiful faunlike youth might also be more than he appears. I think Machen is hinting, however subtly, at the fantastic. I also think he removes some of the mystery and terror from "The Shining Pyramid" by assuming the troglodytes there encountered are merely troglodytes, with no other fantastic or supernatural powers. Human sacrifice implies sorcery.

Machen imagined the "Little People" in varying ways depending on the story he wanted to tell. In a couple of stories they are troglodytes who are survivals of an evolutionary offshoot of the main branch represented by modern humans ("The Black Seal," "The Shining Pyramid"). In other stories he has gone on to a more elusive concept that links them to poltergeists (e.g. The Green Round; and see his obscure piece about Mt. Nephin), etc. This variant appeals to me more than the atavistic survival one even though I have loved the atmosphere built up, the evocation of the Welsh-English border, in "The Black Seal" for many years.

[fanac.org]