#the fairytales of broca street

[adarkrainbow]

Tales from Broca Street: Prince Blub and the mermaid

Now we move into some of the lesser-known tales of Gripari's Broca Street. This one, while still modernized, is a more traditional fairytale with no actual Parisian landscape involved. Note that this whole tale can actually be read as quite a twist on Andersen's Little Mermaid. (Which honestly isn't surprising at all given... well you know, Gripari was openly gay, Andersen's Little Mermaid is a famous gay allegory...)

Once upon a time there was an old king who ruled over a beautiful tropical island in the middle of the ocean. He had a young son whose full name was Henri Marie François Guy Pierre Antoine, but it was a name so long that when people asked him, as a king, how he was called, he preferred to say "Blub", and so everybody started calling him Blub. Since there was no winter on this tropical island, instead of washing himself in a bathroom the prince went every morning to wash himself in the sea by a little private beach next to the palace, belonging only to him - and there, every day, he met a mermaid. The mermaid was a good friend of the little prince Blub - she carried him on her back to go around the island, she plunged with him in the water to collect seashells, fishes, crabs and coral, she told him by the sand all of the wonderful tales of the ocean...

One day, young prince Blub declared that when he would be old enough he would marry the mermaid. The mermaid simply laughed at this idea, saying he would marry a human princess with two legs instead, as his fate was to inherit his father's throne. But the child-prince insisted, and the mermaid decided that they would only speak of this again when the prince would be fifteen of age.

The prince finally turned fifteen, and was a handsome young man. And on his fifteen birthday, he told the mermaid that he was still in love with her and still wanted to marry her. The mermaid answered that she did not doubt his feelings, but that he clearly didn't know the consequences of what he was saying: she told him that, since she could not live on land like humans, if he married her she would have to follow her to her father's Realm of Waters, where he would become an ondin (male form of "undine"), his legs turning into a fish tail. Blub is all like "Perfect, let's do this!" and the mermaid answers "No, it is not perfect!". She tells him of how these kind of weddings usually go, because Blub wouldn't be the first human man to marry a mermaid - but even putting aside the men who only marry mermaids out of interest (because turning into an ondin means gaining immortality), most of the time these new ondin come to regret their old legs and their life on land, and they are doomed to eternal boredom and endless sorrow... Blub still claimed he didn't care, and the mermaid said "When you're twenty, we shall talk of this again".

... Problem is, the young prince refused to wait anymore.

Prince Blub went to his father and told him everything about his marriage plan to the mermaid. The king at first is amused, believing mermaids do not exist, but in front of his son's insistence, he calls the priest of his court to know about these sea-maidens. And the priest tells his version of what mermaids are: according to him the mermaids and ondins are demons. His logic is: they are immortal, since they are immortal they cannot die, since they cannot die they can't go to Heaven, and since they can't go to Heaven they should be sad ; but instead they are all merry and joyful. So the only conclusion possible s that they are demons.

Blub of course refuses to believe his mermaid is a demon and claims the priest is lying ; the priest meanwhile is horrified of learning about the prince's love, and he frightens the king by pointing out how, if his son becomes an ondin (I'm going to call it a "merman" for simplicity), he won't be able to inherit the throne... The king decided it was time to split the mermaid and the prince, and asked his son to organize a meeting between him and the mermaid. When Blub announced this to his love, thinking his father would approve of the union, the mermaid simply answered: "Your father is clever, and it is all a trap! But it doesn't matter: he shall come, and I shall be there. And you, do not fear, because I am immortal, and even if we are separated, I will always know how to find you." She proceeds to explain to prince Blub how if he ever wants to see her, all he has to do is find a bit of water (any water, since all the waters in the world are actually one and the same, and the mermaid's father rules over all), and if he sings "Un et un font un / Sirène ma mie / Je suis votre ondin / Vous êtes ma vie", she shall appear. (One and one make one / Siren my love / I am your ondin / You are my life)

The following day, the meeting the king had asked turned out indeed to be a trap, as he had brought with him policemen, and fishermen, and fish-sellers, all armed with ropes and nets and revolvers, and they captured the mermaid. Prince Blub, who tried to save her, was bound in ropes and taken aay. The king ordered the mermaid to be taken by fishermen, for her tail to be cut into slices and sold as regular fish ; while his son as to be sent by an airplane to the king's cousin, the emperor of Russia.

The mermaid was sent to the largest fish-shop of the capital-city, and there a man with a large knife cut off her tail. Mind you, the mermaid didn't seem to care - she was all smiling and calm, on the cutting table. The man turned around to put the fish tail somewhere else, but when he returned, what a surprise! Not only has the mermaid a new fish tail, it also changed color. From pink it turned green, and the smile of the mermaid became a creepy grin. The fisherman, troubled but determined, cut the green tail, but the moment he turned his back, the mermaid grew a third tail. She was green now, and her face was grimacing. The fisherman was afraid but he tried one last time: he cut off the tail, put it alongside the others, then turned back... A new tail had grown, entirely black, and the face of the mermaid had turned so ugly that the fisherman ran away in terror and went to the palace to report the strange events. The king followed the fisherman to his shop... only to discover the mermaid missing. The tails were still there however: three tails, a pink, a green, a blue.

Meanwhile the prince is living in a private apartment at the Kremlin in Moscow, unable to get out and spied on by the Russian Emperor's servants. As soon as he was alone, the prince poured water in his bathtub and sang the magical song: immediately the water boiled and the mermaid appeared. She asked him if he still loved her, he said yes. He asked her to marry him, but she only answered "Wait a bit, your trials just begun." One of the servants had spied the scene through the keyhole. He reported all to the Russian Emperor, who immediately forbid the prince Blub to use the bathroom. He was just given a bowl of water to wash his face and hands - but Blub still sang the song and a miniature mermaid appeared within the bowl. The same dialogue as before happened, except the mermaid said "You are in the middle of your trials". The spies however reported this, and so the Emperor forbade Blub from ever washing himself. However they could not forbid Blub from drinking - and the prince used a cup of water to summon a tiny little mermaid, who ended up their usual dialogue with "Wait a bit more, for your trials are over." (Also, since by this time Blub had understood all the servants were spies, for this third encounter he asked actually his servant to stay in the room while he summoned the mermaid, and once she was gone he threw the water in the servant's face saying "Now, traitor, do your job").

The Russian Emperor (whose name is just revealed, Nikita the First, Emperor of the Russian Union) ends up sending back Blub to his father, explaining he can't just have the prince dying of thirst. The king, despaired, asked the priest for help, and the priest decided to undertake a drastic measure. Use magic to turn the prince into a stamp, and stick it in the driest part of the palace. The king agreed, and sent his son to the priest, who recited a comical magical formula to first turn Blub flat, then small, then into paper, finally into sticking paper and tadaa! Prince Blub was now a sentient stamp of 30 cents, printed in three colors. The king asked the prince if he still wanted to marry the mermaid, the stamp answered yes, and so the king had the stamp stuck with glue on a wall of his office, leaving it there until Blub changed his mind. The priest explicitely said to not bring any water near the stamp.

But things would not go well...

It was a terrible year. There was an earthquake, followed by a tsunami, which destroyed a part of the island. Hopefully the castle was strong and in the heights, so it was spared. The following year, there was a war, as the President of the neighboring Republic decided to attack the tropical monarchy and sent airplanes to bomb the castle. The royal family escaped the bombs by going into their sheletered basement, but then a fire started spreading out. The King, realizing his son was still in the office and would die, ran through the crumbling, smoking, flaming palace until he was in his office. Unable to turn back the stamp into a boy, he decided that only the mermaid could save him, and realized his mistake. He kissed the stamp saying "Be happy, my son", and got a glass of water to throw it on the wall... Only to discover the stamp was gone when he turned back. As he kissed his transformed son, a tear fell from his eye onto the stamp - enough water to summon the mermaid... Blub had now joined the seafolk under the sea.

Immediately, a heavy rain fell onto the palace, stopping the fire. The old king, who had passed out, was saved and healed. As soon as he healthy again that an alarm announced how the neighboring Republic had sent its war-ships to attack the island. The king summoned a war council but it all was grim: the enemy's boats were more numerous and had more powerful weapons. It was likely the island would be defeated. The king went to the beach and cried for his missing son, saying "Look, my son, in which state you leave your country!". But as soon as he said this, his son appeared - he was in the faces, entirely naked, his two legs turned into a beautiful fish tail. The merman comforted his father: "Do not cry, father. You saved my life, and you learned you should favor my happiness over your wrath. Be at peace, for you shall not regret it". Prince Blub proceeded to use his new powers as a prince of the sea to summon an army of sea monsters that destroyed the enemy's fleet in a chaos of maws and jaws and tentacles and maelstroms. In half an hour, the sea was empty and quiet again...

The mermaid joined her husband before the king, and the latter apologized to her. The king asked the mermaid if she would ever have children, only to be told immortal species do not care or want children precisely because of their long life. The king was quite troubled by this answer, and so was prince Blub, because they realized the throne was without any heir. The mermaid then said "Don't worry, I will solve everything". She asked the king to go take a swim by the sea the following day with his wife the queen, and to allow a little silver fish to play around them. If they did so, they would have an heir. The old king and the old queen did as they were told, and indeed, one week after encountering the silver fish, they had a young human prince...

All of this happened a very long time ago, but the prince Blub and his wife are still alive by the sea. Blub's parents are dead, of course, and it is currently their grand-children who are ruling over the island - and no enemy dares to attack it, knowing it is protected by the forces of the sea.

[mask131]

Les Contes de la Rue Broca, or those weird French fairytales

Les Contes de la Rue Broca. In English, the Fairytales of Broca Street (or so I guess, I don’t know if they were ever translated). 

For you, it probably means nothing, but nearly all of the little French children know this name. 

The Fairytales of Broca Street is a very popular childhood book in France. It was written by Pierre Gripari (1925-1990) and published in 1967. Since then it had numerous adaptations (televisual adaptations nobody remembers, a very famous cartoon series, a theater play that comes back from time to time, and even a mini-opera). Nowadays, you can find a copy of this book in every library and bookshop. Even primary schools tend to make children study these tales (I myself participated in a puppet theater adaptation of some of them when I was young). 

So, what are the Fairytales of Broca Street? Well, like the title says, fairytales for children. But they are not typical fairytales - TV Tropes would refer to them as “Fractured Fairytales”. Gripari took all of the typical fairytales characters, situations and cliché, and interverted them, played with them, twisted them, modernized them into brand new retellings. 

Now, these tales are weird. As in... already, the idea of fractured fairytales are weird. But there’s also the fact that they nearly are all modernized tales, taking place in the 60s, and a lot of them in Paris. (Because, “Broca Street” is a real street in Paris). So, for example, it is no surprise to see witches use computers, kings collaborate with the police or princes ride on bicycles. It’s basically the witches and fairies of the old, traditional fairytale world, living alongside the policemen and French presidents of a modern (but nowadays quite old fashioned) world. Oh, and there’s also religion in there. Angels, devils, demons and God, with the big G. But the way they are depicted is not at all faithful to the teachings of the diverse monotheistic religions. These angels and demons are rather from the regional legends, from the religious folklore, and from popular culture in general. 

There is also the fact that most of these stories are told in a very humoristic and ironic way - Gripari was a very ironic person. And this humor and irony is to the point that some people like to see, under the cute, innocent, humoristic tales, much more darker and sour meanings. 

And all the stories seem to take place in a same universe (sharing characters and events, that appears as cameos). Oh,the narrator also breaks the fourth wall from time to time, and sometimes like to act as if he was part of the story, when in fact he is not. 

It’s quite weird, but children love it. 

Now, Pierre Gripari in himself is an interesting man. 

He is an author, well-known for his books for children. Les Contes de la Rue Broca is his most well-known book, his best-seller, but he wrote many others fairytales and children book. Outside of that, he also wrote a lot of stuff for adult - less known and more obscure that his work for children. They are all kind of dark and absurd, between philosophy and science-fiction. Gripari was deeply interested in cultures and folklores - he spent his life studying mythologies, legends and fairy tales from all over the world. 

And... well, there are a lot of things about him you can’t guess based on his works, especially if you only know him for his children work. 

Pierre Gripari was a proud homosexual, which was something that could be problematic in the 60s in France. He was also a very pessimistic man, partly due to his homosexuality. 

He wasn’t a very religious man. He used religious figures in his works, but only as folkloric and fairytales characters. In fact, he liked to criticize and mock Christians whenever he had the opportunity, and he had a strong dislike for Judaism, which he deemed as “too strict” and “tyrannical”. 

And he was an extremist. Of both sides. In his youth he was a fervent communist, and a support of Stalin. But then, as he matured, he turned to the extreme-right. And when he became a famous author... he just stopped all political activities. He still spoke about politics but never got involved in them. He said once a very famous quote:  “Fascism is a very good idea. People took this good idea and poorly reused it, only taking the name and putting under it their own shaggy plans and ideas. Anyway, they were just fighting against each others. True fascism should have a chance. I’m sure it could work.”

Given that he quickly gave up political activities upon becoming a known author, and taking into account that he kept switching between left and right of the political spectrum, some people tend to interpret him as never having really been interested in politics. For them, he was just a true anarchist at heart, and it was all just a demonstration of his “taste for provocation”. Because Gripari was known to hate everything that was the “norm” and “good-thinking”, and thus always tried to provoke and shock people. Hence his support for both sides of political extremism. Hence his irreverent, if not blasphemous, take on religion. Hence why he lived his homosexuality without shame. 

Anyway, I’m not here to talk about the man, but about his work. So prepare yourself for some posts about weird French fairytales. 

[adarkrainbow]

Tales from Broca street: The water-tap fairy

This story, "La fée du robinet", is one of the most famous stories of Pierre Gripari, most notably because it is, to this day, the most well-known parody of Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Les fées" (The fairies), also known in English as "Diamonds and toads" (or "Toads and diamonds"? I can never recall the order).

Once upon a time, in Ancient Gaul, there was a tiny good fairy who lived in a spring, and the people of Gaul regularly brought her offerings of flowers, cakes and fruits, and danced around her domain during celebrations. However, one day Gaul was Christianized, and a priest came to the area: he told everybody to stop giving offerings and dances to the fairy, he claimed she was a soul-stealing devil. The villagers knew this was a lie, but they feared the priest: so they mostly stopped... outside for the oldest of them all who continued their practices in secret. When the priest discovered this, he became mad with anger: he had a huge cross of stone built over the spring, and he used Latin magical formulas to banish the fairy. And everybody believed it worked, because the fairy stopped appearing, and that for 15 centuries!

However the fairy was still there: she was trapped in her spring, due to the cross of stone. But since she could not appear anymore, slowly everybody forgot about her existence... The fairy was however very patient: she knew that the time of the Christians would eventually pass, just like the time of the fairy ended, and she knew that one day the cross-stone would fall into pieces and she would be free. [Note: I know this all sounds like some serious modern epic fiction but trust me, it is a very simply-written children story of the 60s].

One day, two engineers passed by the area, discovered the spring, and immediately decided to use it to bring fresh water to the town nearby. So they destroyed the cross, and placed pipes that sucked the water... and the fairy. The poor tiny fairy wandered for a very long time in the endless maze of dark pipes, wondering "What is going on? Where am I? How did I get there?" But finally she reached the end of the tunnel... a water-tap in a kitchen.

[Gripari humourosly notes that the fairy was quite lucky she didn't end up in a toilet, and that as such our story wasn't the one of the "Toilet fairy"]

The kitchen was part of a flat in which lived a low-class workers. There was a mother and a father, who worked very hard all day long, and two daughters who went to school for most of the day. As such, they usually were all asleep by 10 PM and didn't use the tap of the kitchen during the night... which prevented their encounter with the fairy, since fairies never appear during the day, but always at night, usually after midnight.

As I said, there were two daughters. One, named Martine, was a gluttonous, lazy and very rude girl. One night, around two in the morning, she got up to steal food from the fridge - a piece of chicken meat, a tangerine, some jam... Feeling thirsty she opened the water-tap to drink some water when, surprise! The fairy appeared. A tiny, tiny woman with a mauve dress and dragonfly wings, holding a wand with a golden star at the tip. With a musical voice, the fairy said hello to Martine (already knowing her name) and asked her for a bit of jam. Martine, seeing that she was a "well-dressed lady", and knowing you must always be polite with well-dressed ladies to get out of trouble, immediately gave her the jam. The fairy, to reward her kindness, gave her the gift of spitting a pearl for each word she said.

The following day her parents discovered the gift. Immediately they tried to have her spit larger pearls. They thought that by having her say the longest words possible they would have bigger pearls, so they tried to have her tell the longest word of the French language (anticonstitutionnellement), but it only created a twisted and crooked pearl. Forgetting this idea, her parents simply had her speak all day long in front of a bowl to make their fortune. Martine, who loved to gossip and hated to work, was delighted with this new life... Until she realized she was fed up with being all alone, sitting all day long. So, after three days of this new life, she started cussing... And suddenly the pearls she was spitting were MUCH larger.

As such the parents discovered how to make her create big pearls. This is a French pun: in French, cuss words, "dirty words" and other swear words and insults are called, in a neutral (if not a tad bit childish) way "gros mots" (large words/big words). As such, when the girl says "big words"... she creates "big pearls". Now Martine was told to insult and swear and curse all day long, and she loved this even more than before... But after one week of being scolded by her parents every time she stopped cussing or swearing, she got fed up and ran away.

She wandered in the streets of Paris (because yes, we are in Paris), but by the evening she was tired, hungry and homeless. As she stopped by a bench to cry, a beautiful, sweet-faced, curly-haired, white-handed young man asked her what was wrong. She told him her story (while spitting a lot of pearls) and the man declared he was in love with her, and wanted to take her home to live with her... Except that the young man turned out to be a greedy abuser: he locked Martine up in his house, and forced her to spit a salad-bowl full of pearls every day. If she didn't... he would beat her up. Thus began a very sad life for Martine...

But let's return to the flat, and let's take a look at Martine's sister Marie. Marie was the younger sister, and the opposite of Martine. She was kind, well-behaved, polite, very wise. She had also been deeply affected by what happened to her sister, so when her parents tried to have her open the water-tap at night to receive so she could "replace" Martine, Marie refused. Her parents had to use of all sorts of tricks to force her to open the water-tap, including giving her a LOT of salty food before going to bed. Eventually, she HAD to go fetch some water past midnight... and of course the fairy appeared.

The fairy asked for some jam... And Marie straight up went "No! You did the misfortune of my sister, this is not going to happen to me too! And anyway, I can't just take food out of the fridge while my parents are asleep: it is forbidden!". The fairy was quite angry at this answer (and as the narrator says, she had been cut off from humanity since 1500 years, and wasn't really in-tune with modern civilization). So, disappointed, she cursed the girl: spitting a snake for every word she would say.

After trying to speak and spitting a grass-snake, Marie had to tell her night adventures to her parents by writing it down. Her parents immediately brought her to a doctor who lived two floors above them, in the same building. The doctor was a young and kind man who had a promising career in front of him. He asked Marie to come to the bathroom, and to speak above his bath-tub, so as to perform some tests. He asked her to say a random word: "Mother" created a grass-snake. He asked her to say "a big word", and Marie was a bit shy, since she was a nice girl, but she whispered a cuss word - and a young boa was created. Then the doctor asked for a "nasty word", or "wicked word", and she had to force herself to come up with something since she was not used to say mean things. Ultimately, "Dirty cow" created two small vipers. The doctor's conclusions: "big words" create large snakes, and mean words create venomous snakes.

The doctor's solution? To marry him! The parents, confused, ask him if this will cure her. The doctor answer is "No, and I do hope she will never be cured!". He explains that he works for the Pasteur Institute, and that they are in dire need of snakes to create anti-venom serums. A snake-spitting girl like Marie would be a treasure for the advance of science. So the parents married Marie to the doctor, who proved to be a very kind and gentle husband to her. They had a very happy marriage, even thought she often had to say truly horrible things to him to create cobras, vipers or other coral-snakes. But he didn't mind, and Marie stayed a very simple, modest and kind woman.

Now, the story does not end here, far from it. The fairy in the water-tap was wondering what happened to the two girls, so a Saturday night, after midnight, she appeared in front of the two parents (they just returned from the movie-theater and had a late-night snack). She asked them what had been the fate of the two daughters, and the fairy was VERY surprised and confused by the answers. Not only did she learn that she had cursed the good girl and gifted the bad one... but that ultimately the gift caused disasters and the curse happiness. The fairy, disappointed, declared that she is lost into this modern world, and is not accustomed to how things work anymore: she has a false judgement on things, and doesn't prepare the consequences of her actions. Her solution? (Beware, slight 60s misogyny here) She needs to find an enchanter wiser than her, so she would marry him and obey him. (Yep, casual 60s France... Women were only allowed to have their own bank account, separate from their husband's, in 1965. Mind you, the rest of the tale does nuance the misogyny as you will see, but still)

However, where to find an enchanter in modern-day? Simple! The fairy will just create him. She flew into the street, and then quickly ended up... Yes, in Broca street, by the épicerie-buvette of Papa Saïd, as papa Saïd was closing the shop. The fairy flew in discreetly, and found there the large notebook and the color crayons that belonged to Bachir. She ripped a page out of Bachir's notebook, took a black crayon (the narrator points out two things: 1) this is the reason Bachir's notebook has so many ripped pages an 2) Fairies have such good eyes they see colors even in the dark) and draw an enchanter with a large pointy black hat and a black houppelande, before reciting the rhyme: "Enchanteur noir, Couleur du soir, Je t'ai dessiné, Veux-tu m'épouser?" (Black enchanter, Color of evening, I drew you, Do you want to marry me?). The drawing comes to life, but the enchanter refuses, saying the fairy is too fat. In anger, the fairy removes his life, and he turns back into a simple drawing.

She repeats the process using the brown crayon (and in the rhyme it is "Enchanteur brun, Couleur de rien", Brown enchanter, Color of nothing). But the brown enchanter claims she is too skinny - so he too loses his sort-of-life. Having only one last attempt, she rips a third page, uses the last crayon, a blue one, and once she is done, she is quite happy with the result because he is more beautiful than the other two. "Enchanteur bleu, couleur des cieux, Je t'ai dessiné, Veux-tu m'épouser?" (Blue enchanter, color of the heavens, I drew you, Do you want to marry me?)

The enchanter agreed, the fairy took him out of the paper so he would become a real enchanter.

Immediately, the enchanter said they had to remove the spells on Marie and Martine. With one magical formula, Martine stopped spitting pearls - and after being beaten up one last time by her abusive tormenter, she was kicked out in the street. She returned to her parents, but the experience had turned her sweet and nice, having lost all of her flaws. Marie also lost her talent at creating snakes, but it didn't change anything, since her doctor of a husband had grown very fond of her, and they had developed a mutual love.

The enchanter and the fairy disappeared: nobody knows where they went, though they are still alive. They are very, very careful with their magic, and in general refuse to make themselves noticed in any way.

And the following day, madame Saïd, Bachir's mother, scolded him for how the shop as filled with ripped paper pages, used crayons and enchanters drawings. Bachir told her it wasn't his fault... But nobody believed him.

[adarkrainbow]

About "La sorcière de la rue Mouffetard", the illustrator Jonathan Bousmar shared on his website several of the illustrations he did for a recent re-edition of the tale. You can find them all here.

[adarkrainbow]

Tales from Broca street: The Mouffetard street witch

Let me begin with the first Broca street fairytale I ever encountered, as well as one of the most famous of the lot: "La sorcière de la rue Mouffetard", "The witch of Mouffetard street".

Once upon a time, in the Mouffetard street, in the aptly named Goblin neighborhood, lived a very old and very ugly witch who wanted to become young and pretty. [La rue Mouffetard is a real street, located near Broca street, in fact Mouffetard street is one of the oldest Parisian streets ; and the neighborhood is really called le quartier des Gobelins, because there is a famous manufecture there called "Les Gobelins"].

One day, as she was checking the Witches Newspaper, she discovered an ad that revealed the secret to turn old and ugly women into young and pretty girls: all that is needed is to eat a little girl, with tomato sauce. There is a caveat however: the little girl must have a name beginning with N. Immediately the witch is settled: she knows a little girl with an N-name... Nadia, one of the daughters of papa Saïd from the Broca street nearby.

As Nadia was coming back from the baker with some bread, the witch stopped her and, pretending to be a harmless old woman, asked her to go fetch a box of tomato sauce from her father's shop to bring it to her. Nadia, kind-hearted, agrees, not knowing she will be bringing by herself the sauce with which the witch will eat her. However, when her father sees what she is doing he tells her: "No. If this old woman wants something, she should come by herself to the shop, don't bring anything to her." The following day the witch goes to Nadia after she made the groceries, asking her why she didn't bring the sauce: when Nadia explains why, the witch decides it is safer to go buy the tomato sauce herself.

So the witch goes to Papa Saïd's shop, and tries to ask him for a tomato sauce box - however she keeps revealing by mistake her real intentions, much to the confusion of papa Saïd ("What do you want? / I want Nadia! / What? / No, I meant a box of tomato sauce! / Okay, small or big? / Big, it's for Nadia! / What? / No, I meant... big it's for pasta! / Oh, so you want to buy pasta with it? / No, I already have Nadia! / What!"

Hopefully papa Saïd clearly isn't bright enough to understand the old woman is a child-eating witch. The witch tries to have papa Saïd send his daughter Nadia to deliver the box at her house, or at least help her carrying it, pretending it is quite heavy... But papa Saïd, simple-minded, down-to-earth merchant that he is, dryly answers "We don't do deliveries, and my daughter has more important things to do: if this box is too heavy for you, leave it here!"

The witch is disappointed, but at least now she has the sauce.

To catch Nadia she designs a new plan: since Nadia regularly goes to the market of Mouffetard street to buy food for her family, she will disguise herself as one of the market' merchants to capture her. But again the witch has no real luck. The first time she becomes a butcher-woman, only for Nadia to come to buy chicken. The next market day she turns herself in a chicken-seller... but Nadia is here to buy meat from the butcher. So the third market day the witch decides to disguise herself as a merchant of both white and red meat... Only for Nadia to buy fish.

Deeply angry at the situation, the witch then decides to use her magic to become ALL OF THE MERCHANTS OF THE MOUFFETARD MARKET! And so she turns into all of them (267 in total). When Nadia goes to buy vegetables the next market day, the witch seizes her by the arm, and locks her within her cash drawer.

Hopefully, Nadia had a brave little brother named Bachir who, upon seeing his sister not coming home from the market, understood the witch had captured her. He took his guitar, disguised himself as a blind musician, and went to the market. There he started singing a song to "earn a few coins", despite the 267 merchant-witches not liking this very much and trying to dissuade him from doing so: the song was "Nadia, where are you?" (basically just him asking "Nadia, where are you, answer me, I don't see you, I need to hear you"). Nadia screams for help from the cash-drawer, only for the witch to realize it isn't a blind musician who is singing... They try to capture him, but Bachir knocks out cold one of the merchants with his guitar, which makes all the other market-vendors drop (since they are all one and the same, the witch).

Bachir goes to the vegetable vendor's cash-drawer and tries to open it, but he is not strong enough. While he is attempting to free his sister, the witch(es) wakes up, but doesn't stand up and keeps her eyes half-closed. Slowly, slowly, the 267 fake vendors creep on the ground, sliding closer and closer to Bachir in complete silence...

Hopefully, a strong sailor happens to pass by. Bachir asks him for help, to get the drawer unstuck and free his sister. The sailor is not sure: "What would I gain out of this?". Bachir simply answers: "When the drawer is unstuck, I'll take my sister, you'll take the money." The sailor is "Deal!" and promptly uses his strength to try to open the drawer - right as the witch pounces on Bachir.

In the confusion, the VERY heavy cash-drawer drops onto the skull of the witch, which cracks open with her brain spilling everywhere (it wouldn't be a good fairytale without some gore). And this also happens to her 266 copies across the market. Under the shock the drawer gets unstuck and Nadia is set free.

And it is an happy ending, as the children return home alive... and the sailors picks up all the money he can get. Gripari adds the quite gruesome detail that the sailor picks up the coins right out of the witch's blood.

The end.

[adarkrainbow]

Tales from Broca street: The witch of the broom-closet

There are two witch-based fairytales in the Tales of Broca Street, and this one is even more famous than The Witch of Mouffetard Street ; in fact, this fairytale is probably the most famous fairytale of the Broca Street collection: La sorcière du placard aux balais. The Witch of the broom-closet.

The story is actually told in the first person as it is mister Pierre himself who is the hero of the adventure. It all began when, looking in his pockets, he found a coin of cinq francs (the "franc" was the currency of France before the arrival of the euro). Thinking himself wealthy with this coin, he decided to go buy a house and went to a notary to find one. The man mistakes his offer for him having five hundred francs, only for mister Pierre to insist: he just have five francs, what house can he buy with it? And the notary is of course appaled (know that the franc was even lesser than a euro, so to have five francs is not even to have five euros). The notary is clear, the smallest amount for a house is two million francs.

But since mister Pierre insists the notary suddenly remembers something... a house he describes as a "small villa located on a big street, with a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, a living-room, a pipi-room, and a broom closet". (The "pipi-room" is actually a joke. The "living-room" part is written in English in the original text, because at the time people thought it was fancier to use the English term "living-room" than the French salon, and so for the toilets Gripari wrote a mock-fancy term, "pipi-room"). And this house is only worth... three francs and a half, but with the notary's own fees, it becomes five francs exactly. Mister Pierre immediately buys the house, but he notices that the notary keeps laughing - the kind of laugh one has after playing a nasty trick... So he asks "Is the house real? Is it solid? There's no problem with it, right?" and the notary says the house is fine.

With the key in hand, mister Pierre visits the house, which indeeds turns out to be a nice, regular little house. He then goes to salute his neighbors, but on one side he only meets a man who shuts his door into his face, and on the other an old lady who keeps wailing and crying "What a misery for someone so young! But maybe you shall escape it, who knows? But it is still so sad to see someone like you undergo something like that." and she refuses to explains herself. Mister Pierre, angry with the situation, returns to the notary's office and threatens him with breaking his head if he refuses to tell him the secret of the house. And so the notary accepts the reveal the truth...

The house is haunted. But not by a ghost... by a witch. The witch of the broom-closet. Mister Pierre otes that he just saw the broom-closet and it was empty ; the notary explains the witch only comes there at night. He explains that most of the time the witch just stands quietly in her closet, not harming anybody. But if anybody sings "Sorcière, sorcière, Prends garde à ton derrière!" (Witch, witch / Beware for your bum!"), the witch will come out and the unfortunate victim wll never be seen again... Mister Pierre, who was already angry at the crooked notary for selling him the house without warning him of the witch's presence, is even angrier, pointing out if the man hadn't sung the song, mister Pierre would have been unable to sing it in turn and everything would have been fine... The notary only answers that he sung the rhyme on purpose to trick mister Pierre, but he escapes before the angry narrator can strangle him.

The rhyme is not one that goes away or is forgotten - but after living one year and a half in the house, very careful of never singing the words, mister Pierre starts to grow comfortable with the situation. He starts singing it in the street, where the witch cannot hear him ; and then in the day, while the witch is not there. After a certain time he grows bolder and starts singing the rhyme at night - but always stopping before pronouncing the last words. The door of the broom-closet shivers, creak, but the witch never comes out. However, one Christmas night, after celebrating with his friends, mister Pierre comes home slightly drunk at four in the morning. And, carelessly, he sings the full rhyme while in the house...

Immediately the broom-closet opens and the witch appears, holding one of mister Pierre's brooms in her hand. She gloats because she has been waiting for two years to punish him, patiently waiting for the day where he would finish the rhyme. Mister Pierre begs her with all he can think about: he pretends he didn't want to offend her, he carelessly sung it, that he has very good friends who are witches, that his late mother used to be a witch, that it is Christmas night and out of the goodness of her heart she can't harm him... The witch finds no pity in her, but she is amused by mister Pierre and so she gives him a trial. She leaves him three days: during these three days he shall ask her three different things, and if she is unable to give them one of these things, he will be spared and she will go forever. However if she brings him all three requests, she will "take him away"... Then the witch disappears and mister Pierre is left quite anxious for his life.

Unable to find any idea, mister Pierre goes to visit his good friend Bachir, who lives rue Broca and owns two magical goldfishes. Bachir brings his fishes (one red, another yellow with black dots), but it is impossible for regular humans to talk to the fishes directly, so Bachir has to summon a helpful mouse with a rhyme ("Petite souris / Petite amie / Viens par ici / Parle avec mes petits poissons / Et tu auras du saucisson") (Small mouse, small friend, come here, talk to my fishes, and you shall have some saucisson). A small gray mouse comes out, starts talking to the fishes with little "hip! hip! hip", and then talks to Bachir who in turn translates for mister Pierre. After mister Pierre told to the fishes all of his story through the mouse, fishes answer (po - po - po) to the mouse, and Bachir translates: mister Pierre shall has the witch for rubber jewels that will shine and glimmer like real jewels. Bachir then feeds both the fishes and the mouse, and mister Pierre returns home.

In the evening the witch appears, and mister Pierre asks her for the jewels. The witch notes that the idea isn't from mister Pierre, but she doesn't care: she gets out of her "corsage" two bracelets, three rings and a necklace, each shining like gold and glittering like diamons, but soft like rubber. The witch mocks him, saying tomorrow he should be more clever, and leaves.

Mister Pierre visits a chemist friend of his in his laboratory to study the jewels and he is amazed to find out that indeed, despite looking like gold and diamonds, these things are made of rubber! Mister Pierre then return to Bachir. The mouse against has to translate for the fishes (pipi pirrippi hippi hip), and the idea this time is: to ask the witch for a branch of the macaroni tree, to plant in his garden. In the evening the witch gloats again that the idea isn't from mister Pierre but she doesn't care - and she against takes out of her corsage a beautiful flowery branch... a tree-branch on which grows macaroni, with leaves made of noodles, flowers made of coquilettes, and little seeds in the shape of alphabet-pasta. Immediately mister Pierre plants the branch in his garden, because he aske for a branc that would grow into a tree and he hopes that if it fails to do so he can escape the witch... Unfortunately by the following day, the branch had turned into an huge pasta tree with vermicelle roots...

Despaired, mister Pierre goes to Bachir to tell him farewell, he will be taken away by the witch. But Bachir refuses to give up: he summons against the mouse and brings out his fishes, and they all talk for a very, very long time. The result is a careful plan mister Pierre must follow to the letter. He must ask the witch to give him "the frog with hair". But she will be stuck, because the witch IS the frog with hair. The "witch of the broom-closet" is just the human shape of the frog with hair. So either she will refuse to give the frog to him, and thus mister Pierre won... Either she will turn into the frog to offer himself to him and win the bet. If this is the latter case, mister Pierre but tie the frog up solidly, to prevent her from growing back into the witch, and then shave all of the frog's hair. Because her magic power is located in it, and once shaved the frog will become just an ordinary animal. Bachir even sells mister Pierre a roll of string to tie up solidly the frog.

When in the evening the witch appears, mister Pierre demands the frog with hair. The witch is furious upon hearing this and asks for something else, getting very mad at mister Pierre, claiming he has "no right" to ask her for this... But mister Pierre insists, and the witch, very angry, decides to show him the frog. The witch starts shrinking and deflating and crumbling onto herself, until she becomes a large green frog with a head full of hair. Immediately mister Pierre captures the frog, ties up very tightly the beast, and shaves all of the hair.

The following day, mister Pierre brings the frog to Bachir as a gift - even adding a tiny ladder so that the frog would act as a barometer. Ever since the frog was brought in the fishes and the frog keep talking to each other (Coap coap / Po po). Curious, Bachir and mister Pierre summoned the little mouse to translate... But she refused, saying that the supernatural animals were just exchanging insults all day long. And the story concludes by mister Pierre saying that if you ever come by his house, you will be free to sing as much as you like "Witch, witch / Beware your bum!"

[adarkrainbow]

Tales from Broca Street: Intro (2)

So, for some setting explanation...

I) Why "Broca Street" tales?

The Fairy Tales of Broca street are what made said street extremely famous today. The poor street literaly had nothing to it whatsoever. It has a historical past, as it is located in the old 13th arrondissement of Paris and it exists from at least the 12th century (though it was only named "rue Broca" in 1890, after the French doctor and anthropologist Pierre Paul Broca).

And yet, Pierre Gripari, when writing his modern fairytales, his pastiches and parodies of fairy-stories, decided to name the book after what was just back then a tiny, poor, unknown, dirty street, and to have the street regularly appear as a place in Paris the characters regularly go to. (Not all the fairytales take place in Broca street, some are in distant lands out of time and space... but some take place right at the heart of Paris)

Why? To understand that, we must look at another recurring element of the book: a little building at the 69 of Broca Street, that every character that crosses the Broca street end up arriving at, one way or another. It is what in French we call an "épicerie-buvette" ; épicerie being a small shop mainly about food but with some unedible every-day items also sold, buvette being a tiny place that is not a full-time bar, restaurant or pub but where you can still drink and have light meals (usually adjacent to a theater/train station).

The "épicerie" is/was an entire institution in France, as it was the sort of tiny grocery store of the neighborhood where you got most of your light everyday items - before supermarkets and hypermarkets started rolling in and killing "petits commerçants", "small merchants" as we call them in France. Now, in the Parisian area (but I think it is true for most of France), the "épicerie" in the post-1950s world is usually referred to as the "Arab", due to how for quite a long time most épiceries were owned and taken care of by families of "Arabian" descent, from the Middle-East or Northern Africa. The Broca street épicerie is no different, as it is owned by papa Saïd, who has four children (three girls, one boy). Papa Saïd and his children regularly appear throughout the tales because every time the Broca street is involved, they are in the story, sometimes as secondary characters, sometimes as protagonists.

The interesting thing is that Pierre Gripari did not invent papa Saïd and his kids. They were a real family that held a real épicerie in Broca street in the 60s, and that Gripari regularly visited and was friends with. The Broca Street tales? They were originally created by Gripari for the children of papa Saïd, hence why they appear as characters quite a lot. And this is also why Broca Street is such a central location that apparently every supernatural character of Paris ends up crossing at one point or another: the very introduction of the book is about how Broca street is a "wonder" in itself because, if you look at a map of Paris it is said to cross the Port-Royal boulevard. However, when you go by the Port-Royal boulevard you do not encounter the Broca street, and reverse if you cross the Broca street you see the Port-Royal boulevard nowhere... Because the map is in 2D, and in actually the Port-Royal boulevard was built on a bridge that goes over the Broca street.

It is a little detail, but Pierre Gripari takes this detail and turns into into a long, fascinating explanation as to why Broca street is such a bizarre, unique, and weird street of Paris - and why all sorts of wonders await there...

II) The other fairytales of Gripari

Pierre Gripari did not stop writing fairytales with his "Tales of Broca street" book. Oh, no, he wrote many more collections - though nterestingly they tend to be confused or mixed with th Broca street Tales due to how popular they were.

The most famous of these confusions is with his 1983 fairytale collection "Les Contes de la Folie Méricourt", a sort of unofficial "sequel" to the Broca street Tales, this time without Papa Saïd's family, but still mixing modern "fractured" fairytales and more traditional folktale pastiches centered around the Folie-Méricourt street (11th arrondissement). He also published in 1990, the year of his death "Contes d'ailleurs et d'autre part", his last large collection of fairytales. Though he also published single fairytales as short children novellas (Histoire du prince Pipo in 1976, Nanasse et Gigantet in 1978, etc), and he also had some fun writing parodies or deconstructions of the traditional Charles Perrault fairytales.

And that is because Gripari was obsessed with fairytales. He was in his own words a "conteur" (fairytale storyteller), and he found a deep joy in writing these stories for kids. Already during his studies he had turned towards the folktales and mythologies of the world, and this always shaped his approach to everything. For example, Gripari was known to be an a-religious person, who disliked the Church, hated Christianity and had in general a very bad relationship with religion as a whole... However he was deeply fascinated and intrigued by the Christian "mythology", all the myths and legends surrounding the religion, as well as a collector of the Christianized folktales of France. As a result, he has in his own fairytales the appearance of characters such as angels and demons, God and the devil, the pope or the Virgin Mary appear... Despite him also writing texts about why the Church should be abolished.

Pierre Gripari had two major influences when it came to his fairytale style. One was the literary fairytales of Charles Perrault: Gripari admired the work of the man, and he wanted to be considered as the "heir" of Perrault - in fact, he regularly references Perrault's classics in his various literary productions. The second was the world of Russian folktales: Gripari was in love with the world of Russian fairytales and legends, to the point he entirely rewrote several of them in his fairytale collections. A third, smaller influence, is the one of Greek fairytales: his father was a Greek man, and so his whole childhood was filled with Greek fairytales (some of which he also rewrote in his fairytale collections).

III) A few more things to know

About Pierre Gripari himself... He was a quite complex man, so to say. A true "non-conformist". Especially since he was an openly homosexual man, who also very openly hated the Catholic Church, in an old France deeply homophobic and Christian. He was a dual man, always with feet in two worlds: deeply fascinated by French culture and constantly paying homage to it, while also never leaving his roots and interest for more Eastern cultures, from Greece to Russia.

He was a rebellious man whose very political ideas reflected his non-conformism: he was on the extreme-left in the 50s back when all of France was deep in the right (he was then a Communist support Stalin) ; in the 60s when the left became "in fashion" and the "popular" movement he joined the extreme-right (he participated in the racist group Europe-Action), then, clearly not finding what he wanted in any of the political extremes he became a full anarchist... before by the 80s just completely giving up on politics altogether. Gripari simply had a big problem with the "authority" so to speak, be it religious or political, and he always wanted to be on the fringe, in the extremes, where he would shock - he described himself as a Martian having a lot of fun observing the curious humans around him.

He also had a very hard time being discovered and recognized as an author - even when he was alive, he only could scarcely live off his texts, and beyond his one true peak of glory with children literature (and even then, it came quite late), his many other texts (children theater, adult short-stories, little novels) were quickly forgotten and never much talked about. As such he had a LOT of different odd jobs throughout his life, explaining his broad approach to life - as he worked as a library assistant, as a sender of letters for a notary, as a syndicate representative, as a voluntary member of aerial forces, even as a pianist for television advertisement, and many more... It is however quite a shame that he only was ever truly celebrated and famous past his death, in 1990.

Not about Gripari himself, but about the Broca street Tales: their most famous and notorious adaptation (it is not the only one, but it is the major one) is a series of cartoons (dessin-animés as we call them in French) from the mid 1990s, which not only adapted all of the Broca Street Tales, but also added several of the Folie Méricourt Tales (hence why the two are often confused as one in peoples' minds ; doesn't help that they were published with illustrations by the same artist, Claude Lapointe, who was a frequent Gripari collaborator, and the man whose style inspired the one of the cartoon adaptation).

[adarkrainbow]

Tales from Broca Street: Intro (1)

A long time ago I started a series of posts about the Fairy Tales of Broca Street. I never got very far with them but now that time has passed, I want to give it a new try, because these modern-day fairy tales are a big part of the current French fairytale heritage.

In 1967, a not-so-well-known author named Pierre Gripari published a collection of humoristic fairy tales he had written himself called "Les Contes de la rue Broca" (The Tales/Fairytales of Broca street). Some were traditional fairytales retold in a new way, others were modern-day parodies of classic folktales, and others were pure inventions of Gripari.

To publish such a book was not at all a sure key to success, because in the France of the 60s and 70s, fairy tales were knowing their "dark age". Authorities thought of them as useless or ridicule (worse: they promoted monarchy, something unacceptable in a day of democracy and Republic!) ; parents thought of them as outdated and absurd, too old and uninteresting for their kids to enjoy ; and in term of media, Disney movies were basically the main thing we had around. Long story short: fairy tales were little obscure things that was on its way to disappear from mainstream culture... Until the 80s arrived and with them came Bruno Bettelheim's "The Psychanalysis of Fairy Tales" (the French name of his book The Uses of Enchantment).

I talked about this before in a post you can find right here, but for all the flaws and problems Bettelheim's study of fairytales might have had, they are what "saved" fairytales in France, as it proved to the political authorities in charge of the culture, and to the parents buying stuff for their kids, that fairytales could be "useful" and "meaningful" (in this case, as psychological tools for growth and development). That's the fairytale boom: suddenly every buys fairytale books for their kids, fairytales are put on the national school program... and the Tales of Broca Street are re-discovered.

The Tales of Broca Street were already doing quite well before, but from the 80s onward they became a cult classic - and then a classic, period. They were re-edited (and still have recent re-edition from the 2010s) ; several authors imitated their style or tried to do their own take on it ; they can still be found today in every kids section of bookshops ; they have been for several decades on school programs (to the point I myself performed in a puppet-theater performance of Broca Street Tales organized by my school, when I was a kid) ; they have been adapted several times for the television, AND they are regularly leading to stage adaptations and other children musicals...

Long story short: they are a dominating part of the late 20th century children literature in France, and they are a milestone in the modern manifestation of fairy tales in France. Most French kids heard about them one way or another, wether they saw it stores or on TV, borrowed it at the library, or were forced to study it in school.

And given this is a blog about fairy tales... Well you know, I'm going to be sharing and talking about them.

[adarkrainbow]

Masterpost 11: End of summer

This masterpost will be quite heavy compared to the previous ones, but since I hadn't made a masterpost in a long time I had a lot to put in here.

Ogre illustrations: Gustave Doré - Sleeping Beauty - Madame d'Aulnoy

Self-reblogs: Magical summer (Beginning and End) - Fantasy read-list (classical fairytales and more classical fantasy works) - Fantasy sights (Walter Crane - William Heath Robinson) -

Some fairytale movies (lost or to come): A Japanese trailer - Lost SyFy movies - The Scary Tales documentary (part 1 - part 2)

My opinion on Zenescope's Grimm Fairytales - The list of Zenescope's references

A French fairytale

Some thoughts and talks about the unreleased Disney's Snow White live-action: A video that started it all - Some posts about the Critical Drinker's flawed approach to fantasy - A first post about the movie - My answer to a sentence in the previous post - My second post about the movie - What I consider "bad woke" plus my answer to someone's discutable words

Some fairytale thoughts: The American corpus - Jacobs' Europa Fairy Book - The Russian propaganda's use of fairytales - About ball outfits in Perrault's Cinderella - Some thoughts about Jack Zipes - A document - Andersen hated being called a children author - The French origins of the Grimm fairytales - About the time period of fairytales

The Tales of Broca Street (old reblogs): Intro - The witch of Mouffetard street - Its cartoon episode - The giant with red socks - Its cartoon episode - The good little devil

Aulnoy's famous fairytales: The White Doe (part 1 - part 2)

Little Red Riding Hood (self reblog): The Perrault version - The Grimm version - The dark roots

Fables, the Ultimate Catalogue (incomplete): Part A - Part C

Some fairytale illustrations: A first post - A second post - A third post - A fourth post - A fifth post

An interesting video about "Into the Woods"

Hansel and Gretel: Why was Hansel to be the meal? - The "wolf in the house" variation - Analysis of the fairytale - Why I don't think the story of antisemitic - More variations - Johnnie and Grizzle - About the character dynamics - Neil Gaiman's Hansel and Gretel - An upcoming book - The Onion joke - Stephen King's It's Hansel and Gretel - A final important post

The Land of Make Believe map - England Under the White Witch - Tangled's conflicting Mother Gothel - Disney's The Princess and the Frog is NOT what you think

[mask131]

Tales of Broca Street: The Witch of Mouffetard Street

It is one of the three most famous Tales from Broca Street, alongside “The Nice Little Devil” and “The Witch of the Broom-Closet”, and the first of the book.

The tale starts with a witch that lives in the Quartier des Gobelins, Paris. (Le Quartier des Gobelins is “The Neighborhood of the Goblins” in English. No link to the little creature, it is just a famous manufactory with the same name, a perfect coincidence for the tale). This witch was a very old and ugly woman, whose only wish was to be the most beautiful girl of the entire world. One day, while reading the Witches’ Newspaper, she sees an article claiming that a way to turn old and ugly witches into young and beautiful ladies was found. The only thing the hags have to do is to eat a little girl with tomato sauce. But there’s         a catch: the name of the little girl must begin with N, else the spell can’t work. Hopefully for the witch, she knows a little girl named Nadia, who is the daughter of Papa Saïd.

I’d like to take a pause here to study the character of Papa Saïd (literally, Daddy Saïd), who is a central character of the tales. He is the owner of a grocery store-pump room, in Broca street, and he is… well, you can say that he is the archetype of the “Arabian grocer”. It’s a think in France: usually, grocery stores are owned by people of Arabian descent. This led to the creation of this archetype (which, I guess, was reinforced by the Tales): if you have a grocer with a small shop in an urban suburb or in a big city, he will be an Arabian man with a strong accent. This held quite strongly up to the beginning of the 21st century. I remember that in my town, when I was a child, I knew three different grocery stores, and they were all held by Arabian people. They still are. But nowadays, this archetype fades away. Now its Hindu or Asian people that are more often seen at grocery stores, cigarette shops, newspaper stands and other pubs. Anyway, for more about Papa Saïd, see the “Preface” post I’ll make later.

So, the witch decides that Nadia will become her meal.

The next day, she meets her in the street. Playing the tired old granny, she asks Nadia to go to her father’s shop and to bring her a can of tomato sauce. Like that, Nadia would bring herself the sauce of her doom. While Nadia is kind enough to accept, Papa Saïd isn’t the kind to let his kids bring free food to people in the street. He tells Nadia that, if this old granny wants something, she will just have to come and get it herself.

The following day, Nadia explains that to the witch, who agrees to go buy the can herself. At the grocery store, she keeps making slip-ups: instead of asking for a can of tomato sauce, she asks a can of Nadia; when Papa Saïd asks her “Big or small?”, she answers “Small, it’s for Nadia”, etc… Papa Saïd thinks she is just a weird old lady, and doesn’t think much of that. However, when the witch complains that the small can is too heavy for her and asks if Nadia could deliver it at her house, Papa refuses. His shop doesn’t do deliveries and if a small can is too heavy for her, well she can just leave it and go somewhere else. (Yes, Papa isn’t the kindest man in town.)

The witch, foiled again, returns home and prepares a new plan: since Nadia goes every day to the Mouffetard street market to shop for her family, that’s where the witch will catch her.

The following day, she disguises herself as a butcher, in hope of catching Nadia when she comes near her stand. But this day, Nadia goes to buy a chicken. So, the next day, the witch disguises herself as a poulterer. But today, Nadia wants red meat. Irritated, the witch decides that next time, she will be a butcher and a poulterer at the same time (yes, because the witch has the power to duplicate herself apparently). But this day, Nadia wants fish.

The witch is clearly enraged. Three days, three transformations, three failures. She then decides to go for a big, crazy idea. She decides that, next day, she will replace all of the sellers and vendors of the Mouffetard market. And there are 267 of them.

This time, the witch plan works. When Nadia buy vegetables, the witch takes her by the arm and locks her inside her cash drawer (which, I guess, is magical?). You can imagine how happy she is: she finally got the secret of youth and beauty!

However, there are people who notice Nadia’s absence. No, not Papa Saïd, he never noticed she was gone. It’s Nadia’s little brother, Bachir. And when he sees that she is not home, he just says “Well, the witch must have taken her. I have to go save her.” I’m not simplifying that, it is literally the first and only thing he says. So… Bachir knew all along that Nadia was threatened by a witch? And, seeing his sister in mortal danger, just says “Well, time to save the day”? Is he used to his sister being kidnapped by witches? How many times he rescued her before? Because apparently, he is quite experimented when it comes to rescue missions.

To come back to the sorry, Bachir takes his guitar and goes to the Mouffetard market. There, the 267 witches single out Bachir and say, all at once, “Hey, where are you going, Bachir?” (yes, because the witches know Bachir too). Bachir pretends that he is a blind guitarist, (even though the witches clearly recognized him earlier), just by closing his eyes, and he claims that he wants to gain some money with his songs. However, the song he chooses to sing is “Nadia where are you?”. The witches try to stop him, but it’s too late: Nadia, from the cash-drawer, is singing back to her brother “Bachir, I’m here”. The boy opens his eyes, the witches realize that he faked blindness, and they attack him. But Bachir is a brave boy, so what does he do?

He knocks one of the witches unconscious with his guitar. Because that’s how we do things in France. You don’t like the music? We’ll smack you on the head with it! Luckily for him, when one witch is knocked out, all of the others are (because they are one and the same, remember?). Bachir can now go freely in all the shops and stands, singing his song, trying to locate his sister. When he finally finds the cash-drawer/prison, the witches start to wake up. Bachir knocks them unconscious, again, and tries to open the drawer, but it’s stuck (That’s a good lesson, kids. When you go to the market, knock the vendors out and steal what’s inside of their cash-drawers!).

Bachir is so busy opening the drawer that he doesn’t notice the witches waking up again. They don’t open their eyes, to not be noticed by the boy, and they slowly crawl towards him, all 267 of them, ready to kill…

Hopefully for Bachir, there is a Deus Ex Machina. Or rather a sailor ex machine. The boy spots a young and beefy sailor walking down the Mouffetard street, apparently not disturbed by all the bodies lying on the ground. Bachir calls him and asks him if he would help him bring the heavy cash-drawer at his home, so he can get tools to open it. The sailor is a bit reluctant, even knowing that Bachir’s sister is in the drawer, but he finally agrees when Bachir offers him all of the cash inside the drawer. (Yep. There is no good will and free help in France. It’s all just money.)

The sailor and Bachir lift up the heavy cash-drawer, but at the same time one of the witches catches Bachir by the leg. The boy, startled, drops the cash-drawer, which falls on the witch’s head. And kills her. Have I mentioned that it was very heavy? Apparently heavy enough to crack a skull open and to smash one’s brain all over the floor (I’m not kidding, that’s how Gripari describes it. And he says that it happened simultaneously to all of the 266 other witches in the market).

At least, the collision was powerful enough to open the crash-drawer, and release Nadia. The two kids happily go home, and… I’ll translate the last line: “As the sailor picked up the witch’s money from the blood on the ground.”

So… I said before that the Broca tales were often innocent-lookin, if not weird, stories with apparently more adult meanings behind them.

Well, not all of them are. Some of them are just bloody and grizzly mess told in a very fun way.

I think the Witch of the Mouffetard Street must be the bloodiest of the Broca tales (and it is probably why it became so popular).

And yes, before you ask, Mouffetard Street is another real street in Paris.

Edit: In fact, we never know what happens to the vendors and sellers of the Mouffetard Market, the original ones I mean. We know that the witch “replaces them”, but whatever happened to them? She kidnapped them? She killed them? She erased them from existence? She possesses them? What happened to them?

[mask131]

I thought of making posts about “Les contes de la rue Broca” by Pierre Gripari. You can translate it as the “Fairytales of Broca Street”. I don’t know if these were ever translated in English... But they are certainly really popular in France. Have you heard of them? 

[mask131]

Tales of Broca Street: The Giant with Red Socks

And our second tale from Broca street. Le Géant aux Chaussettes Rouges, or “The Giant with Red Socks”.

This is not my favorite tale of the book, but I guess I’ll have to cover it anyway.

And also… remember, this was written in the French 60s. You’ll see why I’m reminding you of that.

 The story begins with Mireille, a young girl that loves boiled eggs. One morning, as she wants to crack open her egg, her house shivers and shakes every time she hits the egg with her spoon. At first, she thinks that she has just gotten very strong and that she better not go on, fearing to destroy her house. But she is too hungry and decides that, well, the egg is more important than the house, so she breaks it open. And her house explodes.

The end.

No, I’m kidding. In fact, what Mireille doesn’t know is that there was a giant lying under her house, a three-stories high giant with red socks. And he decided to went out in the world in order to end his celibacy. Once woken up, he brushes his hair, and finds Mireille there. Upon realizing that she is a young girl, and not some sort of lice, he asks her to marry him. Mireille agrees to answer him if he puts her on the ground (because she is in his hand). He agrees, but as soon as she is on the ground, she runs away screaming. The giant doesn’t really understand what’s going on.

That’s when the town’s mayor and the town’s priest appear. They start slating him for appearing in the middle of an agglomeration and destroying random houses. The giant, apologizing, explains that “buildings are his party”, and, using the magic in his red socks (because they are magic), he rebuilds Mireille’s house entirely. Everything comes back to normal: there’s even another boiled egg waiting for her. Realizing that the giant is not a threat, the town’s representatives kindly ask him to leave. But the giant is determined to marry Mireille. The priest objects: he is too tall to enter in the church, so there can’t be any wedding. The giant thinks of huffing inside the church, in order to make it bigger, but the priest refuses, saying that it would be “cheating”. It is the giant that needs to become smaller.

The giant being unable to make himself smaller, the priest gives him the address of a friend of his that could help him: the great Chinese sorcerer, living in China. (It makes us wonder what kind of priest he is for being friend with sorcerers). And the priest adds a random time limit, just to really be annoying: the giant needs to get back in town before one year. After one year, Mireille won’t wait anymore and the giant will have to find another bride (notice how nobody asks Mireille’s opinion, and people just randomly decide what she thinks).

The giant takes three months to go to China, and there he needs three more months to find the sorcerer (because, you know, China is big and full of people, even for a giant). And during this time, he learns the Chinese language and… beware, that’s where it shows that this was France in the 60s. In this tale, the Chinese language is just one sentence, that can mean anything if you change the accent and the intonations. And this sentence is “Yong tchotchotcho kong kong ngo”. Yep.

Anyway, the sorcerer agrees to give the giant a potion to make him small. At first he gives him a glass of the potion, but it is too small for the giant’s fingers. So, the Chinese sorcerer gives him an entire bottle of potion. It is still too small. Only an entire barrel of potion is big enough for his hand. However, the sorcerer mixed up the potions: this one just make the giant’s socks green. The giant is very angry, and the sorcerer gives him another barrel of potion to turn his socks red again. But after that, he claims to not have any more potion left. But he has a very good friend that can help the giant: the great Breton sorcerer, who lives in Brittany.

(You know, this tale is just the story of a naïve young man that gets trapped into the schemes of crooks. You know, it is the typical scam “I can help you. Pay. Oh, wait, I can’t really help you. But I know someone who can help you, a friend of mine. He will say he can help you, you’ll pay him, he’ll end up not doing anything useful, but he will know a friend of his who will help…”. Except here there’s no money.)

So, the giant takes three other months to go back to France, Brittany, and three other months to find the Breton sorcerer. (Because, you know, Brittany is… quite small in fact) (Like I said earlier, Brittany is a really special region of France. It has its own language, its own culture, its own folklore and fairytales, its own costumes and dances, its own food and alcohols, and wanted independence several times in French history. The best comparison I can make is that Brittany is to France what Ireland is to the British Isles).

Upon finding the Breton sorcerer, the giant first talks to him in Chinese, before remembering that he is in France and re-using French. The Breton sorcerer claims that he can make him smaller, and gives him a barrel of potion (there is no glass-bottle thing this time). But the potion makes him grow taller, and the giant ends up twice his original size. The Breton explains he mixed up the potions, and he gives the giant the potion to make him smaller, but it just reduces him to his original height. Again, the Breton sorcerer claims to not have any more potion, and he asks the giant to come see him in six months, when his stocks will be replenished. The giant explaining that he doesn’t have the time, the Breton sorcerer gives him the address of a good friend of his: the Pope of Roma! (Yep. THE Pope.)

This time, the giant only takes one month to go to Italy, and fifteen days to find the Pope. There, he begs the Pope to make him small, but the Pope refuses, saying that he is no sorcerer and doesn’t do magic. However, when the giant explains that it is to fit inside a church for his wedding, the Pope decides to help. He goes over to his phone, and types “SVM”.

Now, this is an old joke that the narrator has to explain. In the 60s, in France, if you typed “SVP” on a phone (SVP for S’il vous Plaît, Please), you get to the Information Services. However, here, it’s “SVM”, for “Sainte Vierge Marie”, Holy Virgin Mary. (And the narrator actually encourages the kid to try contacting the Holy Mary at home). So, the Pope has the Holy Virgin over on the phone, and she already knows everything about the situation (because she’s omniscient, you know?). She tells the Pope (and thus the Pope tells the giant), to take off his red socks and to give them to a nearby laundry. Then he has to dip his feet in the sea, and to invoke Mary’s name. That’s when a miracle should happen. The Holy Mary also foretells that, afterward, the giant will have some troubles, so she grants him three wishes he can use as he sees fit.

The giant does everything the Virgin Mary said, and he ends up the size of a man. After that, he goes to the laundry to take back his socks (that the employee believes to be sleeping bags). Realizing that now his socks don’t fit him, he goes into a great anguish, because without his socks “he is nobody”. His first wish is for the socks to shrunk and fit him again. Also, since he has fifteen days to go back to the village of Mireille, and since he is not a giant anymore, his second wish is to be teleported in Mireille’s house.

At the time, Mireille was, again, opening a boiled egg (you can see some sort of meaning behind that, if you have a twisted mind), and upon seeing the giant, she rushes towards him, saying that the priest explained everything to her and that she is ready to marry him… but in six months. The giant, unwilling to wait, decides to use his last wish to speed up time, and thus they wed. Mireille had many children, and the giant started a business of magically constructing houses with the power of his red socks.

 The end.

 (And yes, there is no link to the Broca Street here. However, the characters of the Pope and the Holy Virgin Mary will reappear later).

[mask131]

Here is the 1995 cartoon adaptation of “The witch of Mouffetard Street”.

# In the cartoon, the witch actually lives Mouffetard Street, instead of just setting her trap there.

# She is not really that old-looking in the cartoon, even though people still call her “grandma”.

# I can’t help it, but the design of the witch reminds me of those caricatury of a butch and masculine lesbian. 

# There is an interesting moment, where the witch tries to buy the Witches’ Newspaper as subtly as possible, whispering to the man in the newspaper stand as to not attract attention. We can deduce that in this world, the existence of witches is known to the public, even though people seem to highly disapprove their presence near them. 

# Seriously, can’t Nadia tell something is fishy with all those market merchants looking exactly the same? At least, in the tale there was no description, but here it is quite obvious that there’s WITCHES EVERYWHERE. 

# The sailor appears earlier than he does in the story. Right after Nadia was imprisonned in the drawer, he buys an apple from the witch (subtle reference), and when she claims that she doesn’t have change because her cash-drawer is stuck, he tries to help her. To which the witch answers by screaming hellishly to his face. 

# This time Papa Saïd notices that Nadia is not back home in time. But he just thinks that she is hanging out with friends of her, and his main concern is that he is hungry and food isn’t there.

# The fight scene with the witch is much longer and funny, instead of just being hit on the head twice. 

# The sailor this time reacts to Bachir’s situation with a bit more surprise than his book counterpart, asking for example, how the hell did Nadia got in the cash-drawer in the first place ?

# It is the sailor that has the idea to get a tool, and he leaves Bachir alone, only to never reappear again in the episode

# Of course, the whole “bashing the witch’s brain out” was cut. Now, she is just hit in the face by the opened cash-drawer, and then she cracks like a porcelain doll and turns into dust. 

[mask131]

Here is the 1995 cartoon adaptation of “The Giant with Red Socks”. 

Of course, this cartoon being made nearly 30 years after the original tale was published, some details were changed. Here are the things I can highlight for this adaptation :

# When the giant releases Mireille from his hand, at one point she falls in the air, and she tries to keep her skirt down as it is lifted by the wind, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. 

# The mayor doesn’t seem to really know why the giant couldn’t marry Mireille. It is the priest that is the most against the wedding.

# This time, the wedding is not just impossible because the giant is too big to enter the church, but also because he is too big to enter in the town hall. 

# It is quite funny: in Mireille’s town there seems to be only three buildings, her house, the church and the town hall. 

# I forgot to put it in the tale recap, but the priests mentions at one point that he will try to convince Mireille to accep the wedding during the year the giant is away. 

# Here, if the priests and sorcerers keep sending the giant away to people living on the other side of the planet, it is clearly to get rid of him because they think of him as annoying. 

# This time, the narrator, Mister Pierre, clearly says that the “chinese language” presented in the story is not the real one. He answers to Nadia, impressed to hear that the giant learned Chinese in only three months “It is a story, and in this story, chinese if an easy language to learn. Because, in this story, it is just one sentence...” etc. So, at least, this is called out. 

# When the giant goes into the sea, he doesn’t need to invoke Mary’s name. He just has to go in the water, so the aspect “miracle” of his transformation is less present. It’s more “one of those weird supernatural things only other supernatural beings know of”. 

# I would like to point out here that the giant is a chubby and large man, so that’s some sort of body positivity. 

# When the giant realizes that he is now too small to get back to Mireille on foot, he adds “And I don’t have any money to take the train”. 

# The ending precises that Mireille and the giant have together ten children

# Finally, there is something else I forgot to explain in the original tale. When Mireille see the giant back and says that the priest explained everything to her, she mentions “everything you had to go through for me”. So, that means the Chinese sorcerer, the Breton sorcerer and the Pope. Which confirms that indeed, the priest, the Chinese sorcerer, the Breton sorcerer and the Pope are friends and keep some sort of correspondance. 

[mask131]

Tales of Broca Street: The Good Little Devil

The Good Little Devil

 It is one of the two most famous tales of the « Fairytales from Broca Street”, alongside the “Witch from Mouffetard Street”. In fact, this tale is often studied in primary school (I was given a work about it myself when I was a pupil).

Here is the story.

Once upon a time, there was a cute little devil, red with two black horns and two bat wings. His father was a green devil, his mother a black devil and they lived in Hell “at the center of the earth”. In Hell, everything is the opposite of Earth, meaning everything good is considered bad and everything bad is considered good. That is why the devils are stupid, wicked and evil, because for them to it is good to be stupid, wicked and evil.

However, the Little Devil only wish for one thing: to be good. He goes to school, does his homework, learns his lessons, has good grades. It saddens his parents, who shout at him and punish him for being a good little student while all of the other little devils are unruly brats and pranksters.

One day, the father, asking himself why did “Earth” cursed him with such a child (a joke given Earthlings rather curse “Heaven” for their troubles), and chastising his son for not caring about the “bad education” his parents try to give him, asks the Little Devil what he wants to be later. “I want to be good.” His mother cries, his father punishes him severely and then takes a drastic measure.

“Since I can’t make you into someone, I will pull you out of school, and send you to an apprenticeship. You will never be a great, big, wicked devil, you’ll always be a small imp, only good at heating boilers and furnaces. But you brought that upon yourself!”.

Thus the Little Devil stopped going to school was sent to work at the Great Central Furnace, where he was tasked with keeping the fire lit under the great cauldrons where the damned were boiling.

 However, the Little Devil quickly disappointed his bosses: he befriended the damned, talked with them, made them laugh with jokes, and dimmed the flames so that the cauldrons wouldn’t be too hot. The damned shared with him their stories, about how they were sent to Hell for thievery and murder. The Little Devil suggested that they should “think really hard of the Good God”. The damned mock him, explaining that Hell is for all of eternity and you can’t escape it. But the Little Devil answers that it doesn’t hurt to think of God and that they should do it while the cauldron isn’t too hot. As a result, some damned started thinking about God, whenever the Little Devil lowered the flames to make them more comfortable, and some of them ended up popping in the air like sopa bubbles – because they had been forgiven by the Good God.

[ Note: I’ll explain why I talk of the “Good God” and not God. In French, you have God, “Dieu” and “The Good God”, “Le Bon Dieu”. The Good God is a folkloric, familiar, popular way of calling the Christian God. It is how the peasants, the old grandmothers, the small children, and the non-liturgic prayers call him. A sort of nickname to make him less scary/imposing and more benevolent.]

However, one day the Great Inspector of the Central Furnace checks on the Little Devil’s cauldrons, now near cold and with a lot of damned missing. The Great Inspector fires the Little Devil (no pun intended) and declares that, since he is unable to take care of the boilers, he will be sent to the mines to fetch coal.

This time, the Little Devil does his job right, and pleases his bosses. Because, while he knows that the coal is used to burn the damned in the furnaces, the Little Devil is still an obedient, hard-working little fella that isn’t the kind to do a sloppy or unfinished work. So, he worked extremely well, became a very good miner, and had a promising career in the mines.

 Until one day… The Little Devil dug too much, and found a breach leading to an underground room filled with lights and humans: a subway station! The Little Devil was delighted to meet humans, hoping that they would help him become good. But when the humans saw the Little Devil, they fled in horror, causing a riot. The narration even describes babies being smothered and women trampled down. The Little Devil tries to calm them, but they scream too loudly to hear him. Ten minutes later the station is empty “except for the wounded and the dead”. The Little Devil gets out of the station, but in the street some firemen use their water hose on him. He tries to flee, but street policemen arrive armed with “big sticks” to hit him. The Little Devil tries to fly away, but helicopters are approaching. So, he decides to hide in the sewers.

He spent all of his day exploring the underground tunnels filled with dirty water, and only dared to come out at around midnight, in a dark and empty Paris.

He wondered how he could make people understand that he was a good little devil, and as he was wondering so a little old lady arrived in the street. The Little Devil asked for her help, and at first she thought he was a little boy, saying that it was time for him to go to bed and that he shouldn’t be here. But once she put her glasses on, she realized who exactly she was talking to and she fled in horror, screaming “God, don’t punish me, I won’t do it, I won’t do it anymore!”. The Little Devil, confused, tried his luck with someone else.

The Little Devil soon arrives at Broca Street, and he meets Papa Saïd who is about to close his shop. The Little Devil knocks on the door and explains his quest on how to be good, but Papa Saïd doesn’t care the slightest about what the Little Devil says: “We’re closed!” he says “Come back tomorrow!”. He doesn’t even realize he is speaking to a devil.

The Little Devil, now desperate, starts wondering if he shouldn’t just go back to Hell and learn how to be bad. That’s when he sees another human come nearby and he says to himself “Okay, that’s my last chance. All for nothing.”

He is puzzled by this third human, that is “like a woman” but “walked like a soldier”. The narration explains that the Little Devil doesn’t recognize a priest in his robe. When the priest sees the devil, he shouts prayers, exorcism rituals, and other stuff. The Little Devil, “since he was polite”, waits for the priest to finish before speaking to him. He explains his quest to become good. The priest, confused and not knowing if he should trust the Little Devil, says “To be good, you have to obey your parents”. The Little Devil answers that his parents want him to be bad. The priest, considering the extremely unusual peculiarity of this situation, decides that he isn’t one able to judge such a case, and advice the Little Devil to go see the only one who can sort out such a moral dilemma: the Pope, in Roma.

 The Little Devil flies all night long, and arrives at the Vatican in the morning. He finds the Pope in his garden, praying. He tries to talk to the Pope, only to be answered “Go away, you’re not the one I asked for.” The Little Devil explains once more his quest to become good, but the Pope doesn’t believe him, thinking the demon is here to tempt him. The Little Devil convinces the Pope to help him by saying “Why are you rejecting me before even knowing me? And what would you lose at giving me an advice?”. The Pope decides to hear the Little Devil’s full story, and by its end he has tears in his eyes, thinking that all of it is “too beautiful to be true”. The Pope also realizes that he doesn’t have enough power to help the Little Devil – as he says, “I am but a man, and I take care of men”. Since the Little Devil is not a man, he suggest that he goes to fetch the help of God himself, in Heaven. To access Heaven, he teaches him a little song, a short and simple song that only the Pope knows and that is called “the song that makes one find Heaven”. Even the narrator doesn’t know the song because the Pope whispered it into the Little Devil’s ear (as the narrator mentions, “If I knew about the song, I wouldn’t be here telling the story to you, I would already be in Heaven”). Now, the Little Devil only has to fly away in the sky, as high as he can, while singing the little song – and he should find Heaven.

The Little Devil, used to learn poems and songs, sings the little song perfectly as he flies away in the sky – and after singing it three times in a row, he finds himself in Heaven!

 Well, not exactly. He is in front of a great white door, with an old bearded man wearing a blue toga, keys at his belt, and an aureole on his head. It is Saint Peter. At first the saint refuses to let the Little Devil in, until he hears that the Pope sent him; Saint Peter mumbles a very funny line, that could be translated in English as “The pope, the pope… Who does he think he is?” or “What’s his problem?” or “Why does he has to meddle with everything?” or even “He’s really nosy”. Saint Peter decides to let the Little Devil pass “the exam”, asking him if he knows how to “write and read”. The Little Devil says yes, Saint Peter thinks he lies, because devils don’t go to school, and he asks him what’s two plus two. When the Little Devil answers correctly, Saint Peter thinks it’s just pure luck, but he lets him enter in the “great yard”. He tells him to go to the “first door on the right”, that is the office of the Little Jesus, where he will pass the “reading exam”.

[ Note: Just like how the Good God is an alternative, common, familiar name for “God”, in French you have “Le petit Jésus”, “The Little Jesus” or “The Small Jesus” for, well, Jesus.]

 The Little Devil passes a great porch and enters a great yard that looks like a school playground. Behind some arcades, there are green glassed doors (an obvious reference to the French elementary schools of the 60s).

The first door has a copper nameplate saying “LITTLE JESUS / Son of God / Enter without knocking”. In it, a room with the little Jesus sitting on a pulpit, a blond child with a big aureole “more beautiful than that of Saint Peter”. The reading exam is simple: the Little Jesus hands the Little Devil a book and asks him to read the text. However, there is nothing in the book. The Little Devil says “But there is nothing written! These are just white pages!”, and as he says so, his words are magically written into the book. When the Little Jesus takes back the book, he declares that the Little Devil knows how to read, and passed the first trial.

He is then sent in the next room, to Little Jesus’ father. There, a silver nameplate say : “GOOD GOD / Open at every hour / Enter without knocking”. Behind the door, a room bigger than the previous one, with the Good God, a beautiful old man with a red coat, a long white beard and two aureoles piled up on his head. There, the Little Devil has to pass the writing exam, which seems simpler: it is a normal dictation. However, when the Good God speaks, no sound or word comes out of his lips. The Little Devil, puzzled, decides to write what he feels:

“Dear Good God, I am sad because I cannot hear what you are saying. However, since I have to write something, I want to tell you that I love you very much, that I want to be good, to stay by your side, even if I have to be only the lowest and smallest of your angels. – Little Red Devil.”

When the Good God reads the Little Devil’s sheet, he laughs and says he passed the test. However he has one more exam: the mathematic one. It’s in the next room, and hosted by the Good God’s mother. “She is very strict”, the Good God warns him.

The next door has a golden nameplate saying “VIRGIN MARY / Mother of God / Queen of Heaven / Knock before entering.”. Behind the door, not a bigger, but rather a smaller room, in fact so tiny it can only house one desk and the Virgin Mary herself, wearing a blue dress and with three aureoles piled up on her head. The Little Devil is quite afraid to see such an impressive figure. She gives him a sheet, with all sorts of pens and asks him to find “A number of three digits, that can be divided by three, that has blue eyes and a leg shorter than the other”. The Little Devil makes the list of all the numbers of three digits that can be divided by three, and realizes that a good number could be 189, because 1 and 9 could be the number’s legs, one shorter than the other, while the 8 could be a head on a belly. So, he draws on his sheet a stylized 189, with the 8 higher than the others and given a tiny face. When the Virgin Mary takes the sheet, she shakes it and the number comes alive before running outside of the classroom, “for Heaven hosts everything: men, animals, objects… and even numbers!”. The Virgin Mary announces that the Little Devil passed the entrance test, and thus begins his makeover session.

 The Virgin Mary takes the Little Devil to a shower, where he is washed of his “small sins”. After that, he goes to a shop to exchange his bat wings for beautiful swan wings. A hairdresser tries to cut his horns, without any success, so he just puts a “brand-new aureole, as white as milk” on top of them. Once the Little Devil is ready, the Virgin Mary introduces him to all the other angels in Heaven.

Upon seeing him, an old and pink angel comes forward, saying “You can’t have a red-skinned angel with horns! It never happened, never was before!”. The Virgin Mary simply points out that it’s not because something never happened before that it can’t happen now, and that it is not the first time they saw something they never saw before. The old angel, realizing the silliness of his words, backs up as the Little Devil is welcomed in Heaven.  

The narrator explains that the Little Devil is now an inhabitant of Heaven, “and if heaven wasn’t heaven, the other angels would have envied him because of his red skin and black horns”.

When the father of the Little Devil heard about that, he merely said “I knew it would happen! Being so silly and stupid, he went to God! Well, too bad for him! That will teach him! I don’t want to hear from him again!” [Once more, a joke about how usually parents threaten their disobedient children by saying “You’ll end up in Hell!” or “You’ll be caught by the devil!”).

The narrator ends his tale with: “If you ever go in Hell, don’t speak of the little red devil! He is considered a bad example for the youths, and if you speak of him, they will quickly make sure you won’t speak any more”.

[mask131]

I’ll soon make some other posts about the Fairytales from Broca Street. I probably won’t finish them all soon, but at least there will be a few more up there :P