Fairy Tales

Introduction

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Louise Bennett

0:30Hello. One of the biggest treats in my life was to have the chance to work with the great Jamaican storyteller, singer, actor and folklorist, Louise Bennett. I met her several times, both working in BBC Schools Radio and in the early days of Channel 4, when I had a children's programme I used to work on called Everybody Here. Some of the stories she told are what usually get called Anansi stories. Anansi, in the Jamaican tradition, is an ambiguous, sly, tricky trickster figure who's miraculously both a spider and a man.

1:08He breaks out of his spider world, engages with the real world, playing tricks on animals or people, trying to get the better of anyone and everyone, and when they catch up with him, he slips back to being a spider. At the end of the stories, Louise Bennett would call out, please excuse my accent, meaning, she said, that Anansi's morals were no better and no worse than those he tricked. And we're left to figure out what would be or should be the right way to behave.

1:39Please, let me recommend that you do a bit of burrowing about on the internet to find some recordings of Louise Bennett telling these stories. In the 1970s, I was working in a school in South London, and one girl, Judith, went home with a tape recorder and recorded her mother telling Anansi stories. Judith brought the tape into school and delighted the class with what was a, yes, a slightly rude and risque story, as I remember it. But let me stop there, because with Anansi, as with all traditional stories, there's a story of the story.

Story Retentions

2:12Whenever people migrate, linguists and anthropologists pour over what they call retentions. That's to say, what have the people in the new place retained from the old place? Louise Bennett was a great scholar of this, and even as she told the stories and sung the songs, she reminded her audience of the African retentions in what she was saying, none less than Anansi himself. After all, where did Anansi come from? West Africa. There, in Ghana, Anansi the spider collects all the wisdom and stories in the world from the sky god.

2:48But after collecting them in a calabash, he tries to climb to the top of a tall tree, but drops the pot. The wisdom and stories scatter across the earth, so they spread out for all of us to use and tell. Incredibly and marvellously, Anansi survived the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade from Africa to the Caribbean, changed and flourished in Jamaica, and then later came to London with, amongst others, the mother of Judith, the school student I was teaching.

3:18This story of stories can be told a million times about any or all of the stories we variously call traditional or folk or fairy tales. When you or I might say, I know the story of Cinderella, we are in fact saying, I know one version of Cinderella. And indeed, we might not know what the other versions are, nor where the one I know comes from, or what roads it travelled along, or who added what, or who changed what.

3:48Today, we're going to look into some of this, coinciding with a great exhibition on at this very moment in the British Library in London.

Jamie Terrani Interview

3:56And with me to walk some of these storytelling roads is Jamie Terrani, Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Durham University. Welcome to the programme, Jamie. Thank you, Michael. Now, am I right in thinking with your name, Terrani, that you might have been told some Iranian fairy tales when you were a child? Yes. I mean, I actually left Iran when I was a very young child and grew up in Dubai, mostly. But I loved fairy tales and myths and knew lots of stories from all over the place, including from Iran.

4:32So I'm actually named after a character in the Iranian national epic, the Shahnameh, which is a blend of historical legend, pre-Islamic mythology, folklore and fairy tales. And my brother is also named after a character from the Shahnameh, Zal. And he has a particularly lovely story. So Zal was abandoned as a baby by his father on account of him having this really white hair that his father thought there was something wrong,

5:06so left him to die. But he was rescued by this magical, mythical bird called the Simurgh, who took Zal initially to her nest to feed her young. But Zal got on quite well with these young Simurgh and with the Simurgh and ended up being raised by the Simurgh until the time came for Zal to return to human civilization. And the Simurgh gave Zal a plume of magical golden feathers that he was told to burn whenever he needed help.

5:43So throughout the course of his life, Zal goes on to become this great warrior, this great lover, a great sage, a great ruler. And from time to time, he has to burn one of these feathers to get him out of some scrape or another. And, you know, it really echoes, I think, the story of Zal, many themes that we find in folklore and fairy tales and mythology around the world. So the foundling hero, you know, the child that's abandoned, but then rises to greatness, the child raised by animals.

6:13So if you think of, say, Romulus and Remus is a famous example, the magical helper, like the Simurgh, we find time and time and again throughout fairy tales and mythology. Being given three wishes, all that kind of stuff, I think we find in that in that story of Zal. So, yeah, we were raised really with some of these stories, like ones from the Sharnameh. And, yeah, I've always loved those stories. And the key thing is, does Zal like it? Because he's carrying quite a burden, isn't he?

6:44Well, he is. I think both of us have a lot to live up to because Jamshed was was also this great legendary king. And that's your name. And that's my real name. Yeah. So everybody calls me Jamie, but my actual name is Jamshed. So, yeah, we've both got quite a lot to live up to. Yes, I like that. Now, at this point, perhaps I should ask you to help us define some terms here. I said folk, traditional, fairy. Sometimes people call them magic tales, wonder tales. Where do you stand on this? What term do you like to call them?

7:16I mean, the stories you just described there, I would have quietly slotted those into the category myth. But, I mean, it's quite flexible, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I think the boundaries between myths, fairy tales, legends, fables are very fuzzy. And stories often migrate across those boundaries. So I think that we don't want to get too hung up on categorizing a story as being a fairy tale or a legend, because in one culture it might be a fairy tale.

7:49In another culture, it might be a myth. I think a really good example of that, one that fascinated the Grimm's, is the tale of Sleeping Beauty, which we know as a fairy tale. This, you know, woman who, you know, goes into this enchanted sleep until she's rescued by Prince Charming, battles this forest of thorns and, you know, gives her the, you know, loves true kiss or whatever it is and wakes her up. Now, the Brothers Grimm were interested in this story because, to them, it seems to have echoes of the story of Brunhilde.

8:29The kind of great Germanic and Norse myth of a Valkyrie who was put into an enchanted sleep by the god Odin and placed in this ring of fire that's a bit like the kind of forest of thorns until Siegfried has to go and rescue her, has to get through the ring and wake her up. So that would be an example where you have a very similar kind of story, one that's categorised as a myth, one that's called a fairy tale.

9:01And so I don't think that we should, particularly if we want to study these stories across cultures and across centuries and across different periods of time, I don't think we really want to get stuck on saying, is this a fairy tale? Is this a myth?

Defining Folk Tales

9:18So, let's come to your research, because this is your area of expertise. Can you tell us what your research on these tales, we won't have to define it too closely then, what your research on these tales is actually about? Yeah, certainly. So I think the kinds of questions that I'm interested in are ones that, well, in some ways exemplified, actually, by the Anansi tales that you started with and the story of Zal with its parallels in various other traditions around the world.

9:50So what I'm really interested in is why and how do certain plots, characters, narrative concepts pop up time and time again in different times and places? Where do these stories come from and how have they spread around the world? Now, I'm an anthropologist rather than a literary scholar, so what I'm particularly interested in is the sort of cross-cultural relationships among these narrative traditions

10:21and the extent to which these traditions can be linked to geographical, linguistic and genetic patterns. I use an approach that's known as cultural evolution. Oral traditions represent a kind of really fascinating natural laboratory, because if you think of folktales and stories, every telling of a story, every telling of a folktale is slightly different from another one. So stories kind of literally mutate as they get told and retold, because you'll get some versions of a story that are more successful than others.

11:01They kind of catch on more. Somebody introduces something into a story. An example of it. People like that. So, I mean, I think you asked for an example of that. I think quite a good one is the glass slipper in Cinderella, which now we think of as being an absolutely essential part of the Cinderella story. But it's not there in most of the kind of, you know, oral versions of Cinderella around the world. It's probably a fairly recent, early modern introduction. So I'm interested in things like how far do similarities in folktale traditions reflect common cultural ancestries among peoples and track the expansion and migration of ancestral peoples through time?

11:48What does your fieldwork look like? I mean, I've done some fieldwork collecting stories from London school children, London school students. And basically, it was me at the back of the classroom going, do you know any stories? And there was one, I want to describe the Judith encounter, but it was a lovely boy from Cyprus who told me a version of the juniper tree, really. It was that famous story, the Grimm story, but it was set more in Cyprus than it was in the Germanic territory. And I said, who told you the story?

12:19He said, my mum. And I said, in what sort of situation? Was it bedtime? He said, no, it's when she's sewing because she does outwork for a factory. So when she's pumping away on the sewing machine, she tells me stories. And he told me this quite difficult story, the juniper tree story, because it involves sort of cannibalism. But it was so powerful. And there I was just sitting at the back of the class. That was my fieldwork. What's yours like? Well, I mean, your fieldwork sounds quite a lot more fun than mine. Mine is mostly done in libraries and on computer screens.

12:55I mostly work with archival materials. So, you know, particularly large corpora of narratives of different types of tales, different motifs that are contained within those tales. And doing basically largely statistical analyses of the patterns that we find in these motifs and tales across cultures. So, surprise me. I mean, where can you take me to way, way back?

13:26I mean, if I take a story that is known in various forms, like Little Red Riding Hood or perhaps another one, where can you take me? Can you take me back 2,000 years old, 3,000, 4,000? Where can you take me? I mean, there are certainly some stories that can be traced back at least that far. So, Little Red Riding Hood is a story that has spread substantially beyond the Indo-European language family. In fact, we find it in many different parts of the world.

13:57Well, the version that we're familiar with today is one that really comes to us from Charles Perrault, who published it in the late 17th century. And I'm sure everyone listening to this program, again, because, you know, most of us will share at least this particular aspect of our culture. That's where I'll just dive in there. Well, she's where she's called, I think, Petit Chaperon Rouge in Stories from Past Times, came out 1697, I think. That's Perrault.

14:27Yes, that's right. Yes. Tales of Mother Goose. And, you know, if you read that version from Perrault, it will be extremely familiar to us because it features this little girl wearing a red hood, which, incidentally, isn't always the case in many of the oral versions of Little Red Riding Hood. There's no mention of any kind of red hood, red cape, red cap or anything like that. But, of course, that's the version that we're familiar with. And that seems to be Perrault's innovation. And also a sly aside from Perrault, isn't there, where he says at the end, you know, sometimes men are wolves, which, if you like, relays the sexual content of the story long before Freud.

15:11Well, yes, very much so. And I think that one of the surprising elements, I think, to modern readers in the Perrault version is that, you know, we tend to think, oh, but, you know, at the end, the wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood up. But luckily, she's rescued by a passing woodcutter or, you know, some other figure. But in the Perrault version, she doesn't get rescued. She gets eaten by the wolf and that's it. She dies, basically, at the end. And Perrault then blames her for it. I mean, there's a lot of there's a great deal of victim blaming in some of Perrault's stories, not least Little Red Riding Hood.

15:45And he basically says, essentially, silly girl didn't follow her mother's instructions to stay to the path, not talk to strangers. And this is what happens to you now. And some have said, haven't they, is that one of the functions of not just the stories, but the storytelling process largely carried out by mothers or carers were as warning tales. So we've talked about fairy tales, folk tales, magic tales, wonder tales. You could even wisdom tales I've heard used. You could say some of these are warning tales. Absolutely. I mean, I think that many folk tales have a an implicit or explicit moral message.

16:23Perrault makes the message very explicit. But usually there will be some kind of message contained within a story. And that's really what gives it its meaning, I think. So we talked about things like the glass slipper. You get these striking images that, you know, help a story to become quite catchy. But really, I think what engages us with a story and makes it meaningful is is there is some sort of lesson embedded within it. I prefer the stories that make that message more implicit than explicit, because I think that, you know, it's nice to go hear a story and go away and think about it.

17:01Think about what what it means rather than to be told. Well, this is what this is what the message of the story is. Yes. I mean, you can take some of the classic stories and it's hard to think, isn't it? I mean, if you think Hansel and Gretel, this is a story of abandonment. Sometimes it gets sugared and you sugar coated and you miss this.

Hansel and Gretel Analysis

17:20But the point is the parents. The word is often translated from the German is dearth, a time of famine. Yeah. And then the parents cannot afford to bring up their children. So they abandon them. You know, the most horrific thing that could possibly happen to a child is the fear that you'd be abandoned left. Like Zarl. Yes. And where in the woods where you could be eaten. Yeah. You know, there were wolves and wild animals of one sort or another. Anyway, you haven't got any food. And so you're abandoned. And, you know, it's difficult to think of a moral story.

17:51I mean, the Grimm's changed it as they went through their processes of changing between 1812 and 1857, softening the blow, making the mother more explicitly a stepmother. So somehow or other, a mother wasn't blamed as much. And then the father is forgiven at the end, in a sense, everything is all right. And they come back with lots of dosh that they've nicked from the wicked witch in the wood who might be the stepmother anyway. All of that. But then you think, moral as such? Probably not.

18:22But there is still a sense, even in that story, that how do they defeat the witch in the end? It's by Hansel and Gretel working together and Gretel essentially rescuing her brother. And I think that... Shoving her into the oven. Shoving her into the oven to save her brother. And I think that this is one of the things that... One of the messages that comes across in a lot of stories is that how do you beat the monster, the witch, is by working together. And so just, again, thinking of Little Red Riding Hood, putting Shabbat on Rouge,

18:55has she got relatives in the Middle East, in India? Are there people telling stories of little girls in woods and being threatened by jackals and coyotes and things? Little Red Riding Hood has a very large family tree. She has many ancestors in Europe and she has many relatives in other parts of the world. So there are lots of interesting versions that have been recorded, particularly in France and Italy,

19:29where Little Red Riding Hood is not called Little Red Riding Hood. In fact, there's no Red Cap, Red Hood or anything like that. And the plot is basically the same. A wolf disguises as her grandmother, who she's going to visit with a basket of goodies, and gets tricked into getting into bed with the wolf. And what's interesting about many of these oral versions of the story is that the wolf doesn't eat Little Red Riding Hood, and nor does Little Red Riding Hood need a man to come and rescue her.

20:01She actually figures out for herself, through the course of that famous dialogue, oh, your ears are so big, your teeth are so big. She figures out that the wolf is, you know, not actually her grandmother. And so she makes an excuse. She says, oh, can I, I actually need to get out of bed for a moment. I need to go to the loo. And the wolf reluctantly agrees, ties a little string around her ankle, and she goes out into the woods, cuts the string, ties it around a tree branch,

20:31and then flees off into the woods and makes her escape. Now, we find remarkably similar stories in other parts of the world, and there's a really fascinating one that is quite common in China, in Japan, Korea, and other parts of East Asia. And this story is often called The Tiger Grandmother, and it's quite similar in many respects to Little Red Riding Hood. But as you'll have gathered from the title, instead of featuring a wolf,

21:03it features a tiger, which is a kind of relevant predator in that part of the world that wouldn't be so relevant in Europe. And what happens in this story is that rather than Little Red Riding Hood going out to visit her grandmother, it's actually her mother who goes to see the girl's grandmother. And the girl has usually a couple of siblings, like younger sisters, and the mother tells her daughters, I need to go and see Granny because Granny's not well,

21:35and I'm going to take this basket of goodies, and I'm going to cross the mountain. But while I'm away, make sure you don't open the door because there's a tiger in the mountains and the tiger eats children. So you must absolutely, under no circumstances, let any stranger into the house. The mother goes out into the mountains, and unfortunately for her, she encounters the tiger, who eats the contents of her basket and then ends up eating the mother. The mother is still not satisfied, so makes her way to the house

22:09where the mother has left her daughters and disguises herself as the children's grandmother. And the children say, well, Granny, what are you doing here? Because Mummy's gone to go and visit you. And the grandmother, inverted commas, the tiger, says, oh, well, there must have been a misunderstanding because I was coming to visit you. Won't you let Granny in after this long journey? I'm so tired. And the children eventually let the grandmother wolf,

22:41the grandmother tiger, into the house, and the grandmother blows out all the candles, so it's completely dark, and gets into the bed and says to the children, won't you come and give Granny a cuddle in bed? I'm so tired. You know, it's been such a long journey. Granny, and they get into bed, and the youngest sort of strokes Granny and feels the sort of fur and says, Granny, why are you so hairy? And Granny says, oh, well, you know, I'm quite old. And as you get older, hair starts to grow in odd places.

23:14Things like this. And they have basically a very similar dialogue to the Little Red Riding Hood story. And during the night, the eldest daughters are woken up by the sound of crunching, and they realise to their horror that the tiger is eating the youngest sibling. So they make an excuse to get out of the bed, and they say, Granny, we need to go to the toilet. So will you let us out of the house? And reluctantly, the tiger lets the other children

23:45go out into the garden, and they escape up a tree. So there's really kind of interesting similarity with the oral versions of Little Red Riding Hood that I described earlier. So that's sort of seen as, like, one of Little Red Riding Hood's potential relatives. And I was just going to say that, I mean, we talked about various elements in these stories and whether they're iconic or not. I mean, several times, as you were telling that, I clenched my teeth. And then when it got to the point

24:16where that youngest one is eaten, I mean, this is a horror story, isn't it? And if we think of Bluebeard, and we think of many other stories, there's a very, well, even Hansel and Gretel that I've mentioned, I mean, there are powerful, horrific moments of danger quite often for children in these stories. Absolutely. And, you know, quite often we think of fairy stories. Oh, they're all lovely, sweet things. It's all about sort of skipping through the forest or something. But, I mean, there's real horror at the heart of many of these stories.

24:46Isn't it? Absolutely. And many of the horrific themes are quite similar. They kind of recur. So things like the vulnerability of children that are separated from their parents, of young children separated from their parents. And their resourcefulness. And their resourcefulness to get away. Yes. I mean, you talked about sort of solidarity between people in order to overcome the difficulty. But also it's this praise of resourcefulness. I'm thinking of Jack and the Beanstalk, for example,

25:17what a clever little fellow he is to deal with the scary giant and put in boots dealing with the ogre. Yeah. You know, that we have these, the smaller character being clever enough to overcome the big person without necessarily using muscles. Absolutely. Brains over brawn is a major theme and meaning of many folktales. And this suggests a lineage and an age as well, doesn't it? So I might be telling a story,

25:48you might tell a story, and behind it are these layers and layers and layers of storytelling going back hundreds, thousands of years. So how do we know, this must be a part of your work, how do we know that a tale that you've read or told is in fact, say, 1,000 years old, 2,000, 3,000 years old? How do we know that? Well, I think this is where the kinds of evolutionary techniques that I use can be useful because they weren't written down until fairly recently.

26:21And many of these stories likely go back much further than the earliest written record that we have. So what I've been doing is essentially borrowing these techniques from evolutionary biology that have been designed to trace lineages of transmission and apply them to the variation that we see in the folktale record to try and make inferences about, well, what were the common ancestors of these stories? How far do they go back? To what extent do these patterns of variation that we observe correlate with things like language histories

26:56or our genetic histories? And by triangulating those various sources of evidence, we can start to make some, or at least we can ascertain some interesting clues about pathways of inheritance, how these stories have been transmitted, how old they are likely to be. Or at least we can generate some interesting theories that go beyond the actual written evidence that's available to us. Pop quiz.

27:27What's in your kid's lunchbox? At Whole Foods Market, they've already done the studying. Over 300 food ingredients are banned from their shelves. No hydronated fats in the peanut butter and no high fructose corn syrup in the cookies. And for sandwiches, there are no synthetic nitrates or nitrites in any of their deli meat. So you can pack lunchboxes with peace of mind. Get back to school ready at Whole Foods Market. And I must say, to find out more about children's stories

27:59and why they often feature magical creatures and overcoming the big ones, the dangerous ones, you can explore a short read from The Open University. All you have to do is visit the BBC Radio for Word of Mouth programme page and follow the links to The Open University. So that leaves me to say to you, many thanks, Professor Jamie Tirani. And they all lived happily ever after.