(If you are Jan Ziolkowski? Hey, call me, let’s talk fairy tales!) I humbly bow to anyone else’s greater knowledge or experience.
By no means am I an Opie or Zipes or Ziolkowski, and I by no means claim to be anywhere near their level here. Also, I want to put in a few caveats here: a) I’m just musing here based on what I’ve noticed and strikes me as curious, so forgive me for the lack of footnotes or proper research b) My credentials? Um… well, I read a lot of fairy tales and have spent many years doing so. Let me stop you right now: Yes, I am generalizing so badly that they’re going to call me up any minute now and revoke my academic permit, I know this, so bear with me a while longer. To put it as plainly as possible: three sons are familiar to us, but the precise words they use are not. What I mean here is that, in fairy tales, tropes remain consistent from tale to tale, whereas language can change radically between retellings. As I said, however, what fascinates me is that while both literature groups have become so familiar to us, the Bible’s language seems to have had a profound effect on the words we use, whereas in folk and fairy tales it’s the tropes which have achieved that level of familiarity.
And (shhh… don’t tell God) I think I’m even crazier about fairy tale infiltration of our word-world than the Bible’s, pretty as that often is (try this: “Many waters cannot quench love,” from Song of Songs– lovely, right?). The way we use them might be, shall we say, frequently divorced from the original context, but, Lord Almighty, the Bible has permeated our daily speech to the point that we talk about our “daily bread” even when we’re on a carbs-free or gluten-free diet.įairy tales have also made their way into the collective fabric of our thought (sorry about the grandiose language there), but more through tropes than through language: everything comes in groups of threes if you lose a shoe, it’s made of glass if you kill a giant, your name’s probably Jack. Yes, Little Red Riding Hood: it’s become automatic, hasn’t it? It’s as much a part of our language as the King James translation of the Bible: “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings,” “Be strong and of good courage,” and so on. “The better to hear you with, my dear.” (transcribed from a conversation with the Changeling)
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