Those are definately dark. I always marvel at the creepyniess of misleadingly simple ballads and tales. And moreover, how much Disney or whoever the adapting agent is.
Snow white was throttled to death by a comb and a corset before she choked on the apple, and then her step-mother was forced to dance at her wedding in shoes made of iron that were heated red-hot in the fire first.
Red Riding Hood ate her mother's flesh and drank her mother's blood, a symbolic defilement that allowed the wolf's rape to occur. He couldn't touch her when she was pure...
And the little mermaid was set to murder the wife of the prince she loved, before she cast herself into the sea and her body dissolved into foam.
There's just so much that people willingly overlook in contemporary myths and fables.
I sang a song once in choir, and was appalled once that my teacher didn't recognize the line:
"With lightsome heart I plucked a rose from off it's thorny tree, and my false lover stole my rose and left the thorn with me."
Clearly she was raped and left with child.
I think one of the more poignant stories I've heard like this is the Ballad of Tam Lin, which I love to pieces and am trying to work into a novel right now, called "The In-Laws." (A twentith century girl falls in love with a rougish Irish boy, only to learn after she agrees to marry him, that he is the Tam Lin of legend.)
http://tam-lin.org/
It's a bit poor at translating the original intent of the Olde Englishe, but it's a very interesting myth that I don't often see echoed in folktales of other cultures.
Often you hear tales of maidens winning free thier knights, or more often the men freeing thier captive ladies. Rarely do you hear tell of such a bawdy and strong woman, daring first to lay with a man simply because she WANTS to, then defying her father and telling him that she won't take a marriage of convenience just to hide the shame of being pregnant out of wedlock, and then taking ont he Queen of the frikkin' Faeries to get her lover back.
Especially when I don't see Tam Lin as being all that concerned with her to begin with. I think he saw her as an out, not so much as a lover. I wonder how thier married life was... I wonder if they even got married or if he just flaked out and took off...
no subject
Snow white was throttled to death by a comb and a corset before she choked on the apple, and then her step-mother was forced to dance at her wedding in shoes made of iron that were heated red-hot in the fire first.
Red Riding Hood ate her mother's flesh and drank her mother's blood, a symbolic defilement that allowed the wolf's rape to occur. He couldn't touch her when she was pure...
And the little mermaid was set to murder the wife of the prince she loved, before she cast herself into the sea and her body dissolved into foam.
There's just so much that people willingly overlook in contemporary myths and fables.
I sang a song once in choir, and was appalled once that my teacher didn't recognize the line:
"With lightsome heart I plucked a rose from off it's thorny tree, and my false lover stole my rose and left the thorn with me."
Clearly she was raped and left with child.
I think one of the more poignant stories I've heard like this is the Ballad of Tam Lin, which I love to pieces and am trying to work into a novel right now, called "The In-Laws." (A twentith century girl falls in love with a rougish Irish boy, only to learn after she agrees to marry him, that he is the Tam Lin of legend.)
http://tam-lin.org/
It's a bit poor at translating the original intent of the Olde Englishe, but it's a very interesting myth that I don't often see echoed in folktales of other cultures.
Often you hear tales of maidens winning free thier knights, or more often the men freeing thier captive ladies. Rarely do you hear tell of such a bawdy and strong woman, daring first to lay with a man simply because she WANTS to, then defying her father and telling him that she won't take a marriage of convenience just to hide the shame of being pregnant out of wedlock, and then taking ont he Queen of the frikkin' Faeries to get her lover back.
Especially when I don't see Tam Lin as being all that concerned with her to begin with. I think he saw her as an out, not so much as a lover. I wonder how thier married life was... I wonder if they even got married or if he just flaked out and took off...
Hm.