Writing Prompt 46: Fairy Tale
Keep away from the bog. It's riddled with unspeakable things.
It stinks of death. There are bogles and rotting corpses; dark, nauseous shapes that weave in and out of the mud like worms.
There are fleshless, grasping hands out there, and disembodied mouths that gape open and suck everything into them.
There are ghosts and creeping goblins, witches on cat-back, and treacherous, flickering will-o'-the-wisps.
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The Dead Moon from English Fairy Tales & Legends
Fairy tales are often thought of as children's stories. I'm wondering who would read the above tale to their wide-eyed five-year-old just before they went to sleep? No princesses or kings here in the bogs and mud of Lincolnshire. Only a wise woman, a traveller and a captured moon.
I look in the dictionary we have at home. I find no reference to fairy tale only 'fairy story'. Same thing I guess. The definition is short and succinct: a story about fairies; a lie.
If I'm reading this correctly, the intention behind a fairy story is one of deception. Many of these stories are old and some have taken on a mythical status. Humans have told these stories for many generations; to warn, to teach and to terrify.
"In the manner of fairy tales and legends everywhere, the traditional stories of England are set in a parallel world: fantastical, often illogical, outside normal time and beyond the edges of reality, imbued with supernatural elements and a dream-like quality. Typically, their plots centre on a problem or a challenge...The stories tend towards an optimistic moral structure, with justice fairly done, wickedness punished and goodness rewarded...Displaying weak, oppressed characters overcoming more powerful ones, and exploring major emotional issues, such as parental rejection and the need to 'prove' oneself', they have a natural appeal to children."
English Fairy Tales and Legends - Rosalind Kerven
Is There a Formula to a Fairy Tale?
The princess has a problem. She receives a solution which often involves a sacrifice she must make. Often, there is magic involved.
Or, there lives a hero, a prince, a knight, a soldier, who must make a treacherous journey or is sent away on a dangerous quest.
We might find a moral message in these stories. Evil is punished and good is rewarded. Sometimes.
Many authors have used the framework of a fairy tale to tell their own story. In The Snow Child, author Eowyn Ivey tells the story of a couple, living in Alaska in the 1920s, who make a child out of snow. The next day the snow child has disappeared and the couple see a human girl running through the trees. Ivey's inspiration came through researching the Russian story, The Snow Maiden. I'm wondering too, if there's a metaphor here about the difficulties of infertility and the desperate promise of new life.
Angela Carter's short stories in The Bloody Chamber use the structure of fairy tales and turn them on their head to explore feminist ideas through familiar stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast.
What Might a Fairy Tale Mean Now?
You could argue the beasts and monsters of today stalk the vulnerable through social media. The trolls of old fairy tales are prevalent in the comments of our feeds. There are bots scraping data like imps and goblins who then send fake news and false science into the world through a digital network of our own making.
It needn't be so bleak and depressing. Like a fairy godmother, digital networks can also help you keep in contact with loved ones at the click of a button.
What I'm trying to suggest is a modern fairy tale is not just about switching around the roles in a Disney movie fashion. Does this week’s picture give you any ideas or clues? I'm wondering what modern fairy tale there is to tell now?
I'll leave that up to you.
Happy writing!
The Hollow Tree
There's often an old woman wise or evil and a young carefree girl.
The cavernous mouth will eat the girl, take her in whole in one big gulp. All that's left is empty space in the centre of the dead hollow tree.
The sun sprinkles its light here and there and about the forest floor dust sprites float and drift in the sunbeams, the soft moss underfoot absorbs the spring rainfall. All as if nothing has happened.
No one saw the girl again until so much time had passed the parents of the girl had died and her memory had become a myth. A man is passing through the forest. He knows the story of The Hollow Tree, the legend of the girl that disappeared. He stops by the tree. Stops and waits as if the tree might answer all his questions. He whistles long and low a tune his mother taught him, a lullaby to help him sleep. The tune causes the sky to darken and the wind to pick up and whip around him.
Through the whirl of leaves and dust, the man sees the girl lying embedded in the bark of the tree. The whirlwind ceases and the tree reveals all its secrets, the bodies of the disappeared, the young and the old reaching up the tree feeling for an escape. The man steps back his heart thudding deeply in his chest.
Story first posted in January 2021 // Photo: William Notman 1897. The Hollow Tree in Stanley Park, Vancouver.
