Alas, my friends, Beauty and the Beast Month is coming to a close. And there are so many other places I could have taken this because there are so many other takes on “Beauty and the Beast”. I still haven’t touched on the ‘80s soap opera version starring Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton. Nor have I reviewed the low-budget Cannon Films version (which I actually own on DVD). Or Alex Flinn's Beastly, either in book or film form. But I thought that in order to wind up the month, I should really go back to the story itself and its many variants. “Beauty and the Beast” is one of those stories that has wound itself in and out of both folk and literary culture. The most standard versions may have been purposefully written by certain upper-class French women, but that didn’t stop the story from travelling elsewhere. So, with the help of D.L. Ashliman’s Folktexts site and my own experience, I decided to do a bit of a literature review and pick five noteworthy versions and post some thoughts on them. Note that this isn’t a “Top Seven”. There’s no ranking involved.
So, here we go:
) “The Springing, Singing Lark” (Germany)
This one is a Grimm story from their rather
sizable collection of German folk tales.
The story starts out like “Beauty and the Beast”, with the merchant
going off on business and asking his daughters what they want him to bring
back. In this case, the youngest doesn’t
ask for a rose but for a “springing, singing lark” (hence the title of the
story). He then finds out that the lark
belongs to a lion who threatens to eat him if he doesn’t bring him the first
thing to meet him when he gets home. But
after that part, the story takes certain turns that turn it into a completely
different type of fairy tale. That’s the
thing that I find so noteworthy about this tale. The interesting thing about this story is that
it uses what I like to call “modular storytelling”. It’s something that can be used in fairy
tales but very few other types of stories.
You see, in certain situations, you can take different fairy tale motifs
and fit them together as sort of “storytelling Legos” to form other
stories. “The Springing, Singing Lark”
starts off as a “Beauty and the Beast” type of story and then turns into a
completely different sort of Animal Bridegroom tale that’s more like “East of
the Sun, West of the Moon” in which the heroine has to search for her
beloved. Then, when that’s over it turns
into a “True Bride” tale. And all of it
really does work together.
2 “The Singing Rose” (Austria)
This one is interesting because the “Beauty”
herself is the one who goes searching for the rose. It starts with a king telling his three
daughters that his successor will be whichever of them can bring him back a
singing rose. So, right away we have
young women embarking on adventures and potentially being placed in a position
of power without having to marry into it.
A pretty refreshing start for a European tale. The youngest princess eventually finds the
singing rose in a castle garden deep in a pine forest. However, in order to get the singing rose,
she has to make a deal with the master of the castle who is an old man with a
long grey beard. The deal is that in
seven years he will come take her away to live there in his castle with
him. So, it happens just this way with
the Beast part being played by the old man.
But the princess’s stay in the castle is punctuated by slightly
different events with different conditions attached to them. Also, the ending is different from any “Beauty
and the Beast” type of tale I’ve seen before.
“Beauty and the Horse” (Denmark)
This Danish story sticks out because of
just what animal the beast is. There are
many different animals taking the Beast role in these stories. There are bears and frogs and dogs and
serpents. One story even made a point of
noting that the dog in question was a poodle.
But this one I think takes the cake.
The Beast is a horse. It doesn’t
specify if it’s a wild horse or a tame horse.
Or even what color the horse is.
I’m not going to lie, I had thoughts of both Mr. Ed and Nell’s
relationship with Dudley’s horse in the Dudley Do-Right cartoons while reading
this story. The rest of the story
follows most of the “Beauty and the Beast” motifs with some slight tweaks to
them. But it just sticks out because the
Beast is a horse . . . of course, of course.
“The Fairy Serpent” (China)
By now, people should know that I have a
soft spot for tales from China and Japan.
I can’t explain it too much, seeing as I’ve never been to either
country. Maybe it’s some of my otaku
tendencies shining through. Anyway, this
follows many of the same “Beauty and the Beast” motifs with certain
tweaks. The father in this case was not
asked to pick any flowers but sought them out himself so his daughters could
use them as patterns for their embroidery.
Also, the serpent who plays the Beast here seems more upset about the
trespassing than any theft (Huh. Kind of
like the Beast in the animated movie). Also,
all three daughters are offered the option of being the serpent’s bride. Another interesting thing is that the family
kind of drags its feet in bringing the youngest daughter to the serpent, so
that the serpent has to send a swarm of wasps to convince them. There’s more to it, but I won’t list it all
here. It’s just interesting that these
motifs and archetypes extend that far beyond Europe.
“A Rosy Story” (Scoharie, New York)
This is my own contribution and a story
that you’re not going to find on the internet.
I may have mentioned this in another post before. It comes from an old book entitled Folk Lore of the Scoharie Hills that I
found in the local history section of a local library. For those who don’t know, Scoharie is part of
Upstate New York (in other words, my own stomping grounds). The interesting thing about this story other
than its location and seeming rarity is that it splits the Beast’s role in
two. The being that demands the merchant’s
daughter return to the house/castle is depicted as a ghostly headless man who
confronts the merchant when he steals the rose.
However, the cursed prince himself is depicted as a giant toad who acts
as a servant in the castle. If the two
characters were meant to be one and the same, it’s never stated in the
story. But then, the story itself was
pretty rough in the form I found it. I
had to polish it a good deal before I made it into a decent storytelling performance.
So, that’s it. There’s a good chance I haven’t done these
stories any justice here, so check out the Folktexts website. Heck, check out Sur La Lune’s “Beauty and the Beast” page too while you’re at it.
Also, you might want to check out the Facebook group Fairy-tale
Forum. They just launched and they’re
having a big Beauty and the Beast giveaway.
This ends Beauty and the Beast Month, but I’ve got some more big stuff
planned so stay tuned.
You may be interested, if you aren't already aware of it, of the story 'Princess Feroza and the Horse Prince', which I read in 'Tales of the Bazaars', a book of folk tales retold by Amina Shah. In that tale, the prince was turned into a horse because he "spoke arrogantly to a sorcerer", but there's no captivity for the Beauty figure; Princess Feroza and the horse are instead partners in a heroic adventure. The horse even serves as Feroza's steed, which sounds like something just waiting for an "edgy" adult rewrite! Ahem.
ReplyDeleteAnother fun one from that book is 'The Princess, the Vizier and the Ape', although it gets even further away from Beauty and the Beast as we know it. A creepy vizier contrives a plan to abduct a princess, which involves locking her in a chest. However, her beloved prince rescues her and leaves an ape in the chest instead. The vizier opens the chest and is aghast to see that the princess has been trasnsformed into an ape; but he resolves to stay with the ape and serve it patiently until 'she' turns back into the princess. Ha!
Have you ever run across the German "The Enchanted Frog"? I found it on Ashliman's page when I was researching both B&B and The Frog Prince. It's a mashup of the two stories, which I found rather interesting: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/frog.html#colshorn
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