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Glass Slippers, Fur Slippers! Cinderella's Shoes.
There are extraordinary numbers of superstitions about shoes - though most are now unfamiliar to us 21st century mortals. According to Iona Opie and Moira Tatem’s ‘Dictionary of Superstitions’, an old...
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Our Craft or Sullen Art
IN MY CRAFT OR SULLEN ARTIn my craft or sullen artExercised in the still nightWhen only the moon ragesAnd the lovers lie abedWith all their griefs in their arms,I labour by singing lightNot for...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines: a series!
In 2013 Disney released the story of two princesses: Elsa, with power over ice and snow, and her young sister Anna. When Elsa’s magic accidentally strikes frost into her sister’s heart, the film plays...
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Strong Fairy Tale heroines #1: SIMON AND MARGARET
SIMON AND MARGARETThis tale was told in the 1880s by Gaelic-speaking Michael Faherty of Renvyle in Connemara, Co Galway to William Hartpole Lecky, who wrote it down verbatim; it was then translated by...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #2: THE THREE SISTERS
THE THREE SISTERSThis haunting story is a Romany tale collected and translated by John Sampson (1862 – 1931). Sampson was a self-taught linguist, scholar and printer, and librarian of University...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #3: THE PRINCESS IN ARMOUR, or Iliane of the...
This wonderful Romanian fairy tale plays all kinds of deliberate tricks with sexuality and gender stereotypes. It was collected (and perhaps enhanced, who knows?) by the Romanian folkorist Petre...
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Fairy Tale Heroines #4: THE GROAC’H OF THE ISLE OF LOK
This lively fairy tale comes from Brittany (the Isle du Loch is a real island off the Brittany coast, and as the name suggests, it has a lake) and it's another traditional story in which a young man...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #5: THE THREE PRINCESSES
THE THREE PRINCESSESThis Hungarian story, in which the spirited third daughter of an impoverished king is abandoned in the forest with her two elder sisters, comes from ‘The Folk-Tales of the Magyars’...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #6: GILLA OF THE ENCHANTMENTS
GILLA OF THE ENCHANTMENTSTold in the 1880s by Patrick McGrale of Dugort, Achil, County Mayo, to William Larminie (“West Irish Folk-Tales”, Camden Library, 1893). Larminie says of this tale that it...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #7: THE MASTERMAID
This fast-moving Norwegian fairy tale from Asbjørnsen and Moe was translated into English by Sir George Dasent in ‘Popular Tales from the Norse’ (1859). Nineteenth century translations can feel a...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #8: ASCHENPUTTEL
Aschenputtel: The Cinderella of the Brothers GrimmThe most familiar of fairytales can seem strange when we read a different version from the one we’re used to. Most of us know the one generally...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #9: EDERLAND THE POULTRY-MAID
This light-hearted story comes from 'Danish Fairy Tales', collected by Svendt Grundtvig, (1824-1883) and is a good follow up to last week's tough Cinderella, employing several of the same motifs to...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #10: WHUPPITY STOORIE
Illustration by Kate Leiper: www.kateleiper.co.uk/Instagram:kate_leiper_artistThis Scottish tale is included in Robert Chambers’ ‘Popular Rhymes of Scotland’ (1841 edition) and comes from the...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #11: FUNDEVOGEL
FUNDEVOGEL, or BIRD-FOUNDLINGThis sweet story is one of the Grimms’ ‘Children’s and Household Tales’. translated by Margaret Hunt in 1884. The Grimms note that it comes “from the district of Schwalm in...
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Strong Fairytale Heroines #12: THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO HELL
The next three fairy tales in the series take a darker turn. This story of a young woman who goes down into the underworld to save her lover was narrated in Gaelic some time around 1885 by Patrick...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #13: THE NETTLE SPINNER
THE NETTLE SPINNERAnother dark fairy tale: this is a Flemish story, 'La Fileuse d’Orties', from ‘Contes du roi Cambrinus’ (1872) collected by Charles Deulin. The English translation was madeby Leonora...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #14: MR FOX
MR FOXThis is one of my top ten favourite fairy tales. It is old – perhaps the oldest known version of the ‘Bluebeard’ story, though as I wrote in my book of essays on fairy tales, ‘Seven Miles of...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #15: TATTERHOOD
Art by Yoshi Yoshitani This wonderfully vigorous story from Norway was collected in 'Norske Folkeeventyr', by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, and translated into English by Sir George W...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #16: THE WELL AT THE WORLD'S END
This is another story from Robert Chambers’ ‘Popular Rhymes of Scotland’. It's told in Scots and the original spelling of the title is ‘The Wal at the Warld’s End’. It likely dates back to at least the...
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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #17: THE WATER KING AND VASILISSA THE WISE
This very long Russian fairy tale was collected by Alexander Afanasiev and translated by W.R.S. Ralston in ‘Russian Folk-Tales’ Smith, Elder, 1873. A 1945 translation by Norbert Guterman gives the...
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