#on fairy tales

[luthienne]

George Seferis, from Collected Poems; "Last Stop" (tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

[galahadwilder]

Once upon a time.

You just recoiled a little bit, didn’t you. “Once upon a time.” It’s possibly the most-used opening line in any English or German story, passed down to us from generations of families sitting around the fire and telling each other fairy tales.

But it’s old. And everyone’s heard it. So maybe, you think, it’s overused.

You’re not exactly wrong.

But! But. There’s something important, about that phrase. You see, a fairy tale is a fantasy story, but not all fantasy stories are fairy tales. A fairy tale is a TYPE of fantasy story, and it’s too easy to fall into the trap of thinking, “if there’s fairies in it, it’s a fairy tale.”

No. That is not how it works.

There is a difference, between the first lines of The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

“When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”

What’s the difference? Immediacy. Fellowship opens by telling us exactly who these people are, what they are doing, when they are doing it, and what the location they are doing it is. Hobbit opens with two pieces of information: there is a hole in the ground, and something called a Hobbit lives inside it.

Hobbit is a fairy tale. Fellowship is high fantasy. There’s a difference.

The characters are the same, or of the same families. The setting is the same. But they are completely different genres.

A fairy tale is something that could have happened at any time, in any place, to any person. It doesn’t matter when or where. It doesn’t matter who. It deals in vagueries, in archetypes. Not so much in characters.

Once, upon a time, there lived a man. Not “at 2 pm Tuesday, Harold was having lunch.” Once upon a time.

If you’re writing a fairy tale and you don’t have the cadence of it yet, don’t be afraid of Once upon a time. Is it cliche? Yes. But it helps you establish the voice, the sense of the wonder and the Other. Do not deal in specifics. Not yet. The specifics can come later.

And if you get the cadence down? Eventually, you’ll be able to drop Once upon a time. You’ll be able to move beyond it, so see the horizons past where it will take you.

But you have to start somewhere.

Start once, upon a time.

I promise, if you lose your fear of it, you’ll be able to learn how a fairy tale ticks.

[the-most-sublime-fool]

“Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us. They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can plunge a family into conflict. They believe that the hands of a human beast will smoke when he slays a victim, and that this will cause the beast shame when a young maiden takes up residence in his home. They believe a thousand other simple things. I ask of you a little of this childlike simplicity, and, to bring us luck, let me speak four truly magic words, childhood's Open Sesame:

Once upon a time…”

—Jean Cocteau, opening screen to Beauty and the Beast (1946)

[florilegium-archive]

Layla May Ehsan; Library, Fleet; and Collections, Special, "Fairytales" (2015). 1st Student Artists' Book Contest 2015. 11. https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/specialcollections_bookcontest1st2015/11

[friendrat]

On fairy tales: If you don't have to explain something like indentured servitude to your kid, you are probably telling it wrong.

[frivolous-pastel]

Japanese: "Long, long ago, in olden days..." (昔々)

“once upon a time” in other languages

korean: “back when tigers used to smoke” (호랑이 담배 피우던 시절에) [x]

czech: “beyond seven mountain ranges, beyond seven rivers” (za sedmero horami a sedmero řekami)

georgian: “there was, and there was not, there was…” (იყო და არა იყო რა, იყო…)

hausa: “a story, a story. let it go, let it come.” [x]

romanian: “there once was, (as never before)… because if there wasn’t, it wouldn’t have been to told” (A fost odată, ca niciodată că dacă n-ar fi fost, nu s-ar mai povesti…)

lithuanian: “beyond nine seas, beyond nine lagoons: (už devynių jūrų, už devynių marių)

catalan: “see it here that in that time in which beasts spoke and people were silent…” (vet aquí que en aquell temps que les bèsties parlaven i les persones callaven…) [x]

turkish: “Once there was, and once there wasn’t. In the long-distant days of yore, when haystacks winnowed sieves, when genies played jereed in the old bathhouse, [when] fleas were barbers, [when] camels were town criers, [and when] I softly rocked my baby grandmother to sleep in her creaking cradle, there was/lived, in an exotic land, far, far away, a/an…* (Bir varmış, bir yokmuş. Evvel zaman içinde, kalbur saman içinde, cinler cirit oynar iken eski hamam içinde, pireler berber [iken], develer tellal [iken], ben ninemin beşiğini tıngır mıngır sallar iken, uzak diyarların birinde…)

[thestuffedalligator]

“Are you the witch who turned eleven princes into swans?”

The old woman stared at the figure on the front step of her cottage and considered her options. It was the kind of question usually backed up by a mob with meaningful torches, and the kind of question she tried to avoid.

Coming from a single dusty, tired housewife, it should’ve held no terrors.

“You a cop?”

The housewife twisted the hem of her apron. “No,” she muttered. “I’m a swan.”

A raven croaked somewhere in the woods. Wind whispered in the autumn leaves.

Then: “I think I can guess,” the old woman said slowly. “Husband stole your swan skin and forced you to marry him?”

A nod.

“And you can’t turn back into a swan until you find your skin again.”

A nod.

“But I reckon he’s hidden it, or burned it, or keeps it locked up so you can’t touch it.”

A tiny, miserable nod.

“And then you hear that old Granny Rothbart who lives out in the woods is really a batty old witch whose father taught her how to turn princes into swans,” the old woman sighed. “And you think, ‘Hey, stuff the old skin, I can just turn into a swan again this way.’

“But even if that was true – which I haven’t said if it is or if it isn’t – I’d say that I can only do it to make people miserable. I’m an awful person. I can’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. I have no goodness. I can’t use magic to make you feel better. I only wish I could.”

Another pause. “If I was a witch,” she added.

The housewife chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she drew herself up and, for the first time, looked the old woman in the eyes.

“Can you do it to make my husband miserable?”

The old woman considered her options. Then she pulled the wand out from the umbrella stand by the door. It was long, and silver, and a tiny glass swan with open wings stood perched on the tip.

“I can work with that,” said the witch.

[julnites]

Red riding hood comic collab with the wonderful @yeehawpim (go check out their blog for loads of great comics!) 🌷 See the layouts he did here!

[thecollectibles]

Art by 冯伟 Feng Wei（c12）

[fairydropart]

Bumblebee Pup

[mysharona1987]

[luthienne]

Jack Gilbert, from Collected Poems; "Myself Considered as the Monster in the Background"

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Dunno how to put it properly into words but lately I find myself thinking more about that particular innocence of fairy tales, for lack of better word. Where a traveller in the middle of a field comes across an old woman with a scythe who is very clearly Death, but he treats her as any other auntie from the village. Or meeting a strange green-skinned man by the lake and sharing your loaf of bread with him when he asks because even though he's clearly not human, your mother's last words before you left home were to be kind to everyone. Where the old man in the forest rewards you for your help with nothing but a dove feather, and when you accept even such a seemingly useless reward with gratitude, on your way home you learn that it's turned to solid gold. Where supernatural beings never harm a person directly and every action against humans is a test of character, and every supernatural punishment is the result of a person bringing on their own demise through their own actions they could have avoided had they changed their ways. Where the hero wins for no other reason than that they were a good person. I don't have the braincells to describe this better right now but I wish modern fairy tales did this more instead of trying to be fantasy action movies.

[moonscape]

[amanitahouses]

Fairy Frogmother, watercolor, 2024 (ig/kofi)