A Hedge of Rampion, By Kiyomi Appleton Gaines

Editor's Note:  Rarely understood are those that follow their own path. Perspective is everything in a tale, and Kiyomi Appleton Gaines' story offers a different view on a classic. Enjoy!

I never meant to be a witch. You should know that from the start. You don't notice at first, and by the time you realize what you are, it's too late.

I never wanted to be a mother. I always assumed it would happen one way or another. When you're young, you never imagine your life will look very different from others. Yet I was different even then. Odd. We married so young in those days, and I didn't want to marry just any man. Silly as they were, once girls were Mistress Baker or Goodwife Smith, they were no longer children. Girls my age started becoming mothers before we even knew what it was to be women.

I didn't want that. I didn't want any of those things. My father, resentful of my lingering, said I must earn my keep, so I tended the midwife and learned from her how to ease pains and treat minor ailments. I never kept a garden well. Strange, since that is what I am now best known for. But I know a little of plants and children, birthing and dying. And living.

I was old for a bride when I married my tinker. He came through with tales of distant places, and I dared to ask why I couldn't have that life too? Eventually, we settled in a place, a village not so different from this one. He offered services making repairs and traveled out every few months to bring goods from elsewhere. I had my garden and my knowledge of herbs, and so we made our way. The women there did not trust me, though, I with no small ones clutching at skirt and breast. They still came to me for those other things, to soothe a headache or a sour stomach, to heal a wound. But they did not trust me, and I knew what might come, and then knew that it would. I urged my husband to leave, but he didn't believe the threat in those evil looks. I left before their fears became dangerous.

I met my tinker again later. Our little home was burned, and he was chased out after me. He returned to tinkering. I went to another place.

The people came, though how they knew I could help, I don't know. I charged them nothing, hoping for goodwill, hoping to be left alone. You will understand my dismay when one evening I found a man digging in my garden, stealing ramps.

I grabbed a rake and brandished it, demanded his account.

He startled and had the grace to look ashamed. "Please, mistress," he said, "it's my wife. There's a little one coming. She says she must have ramps, or she'll die."

"And you can find them nowhere else but my garden?" I asked.

He looked down at his little pile of plants, "None like these, mistress."

I lowered the rake. I would have to spend the next day repairing my garden, but I did not want to take to the road again. "Take them and begone then, if she'll die," I snapped at him. "And don't let me find you stealing from me again."

He scrambled to his feet, mumbling apologies and gratitude, and left. He returned a few days later bearing a hen and begged more of my vegetables. I kept the woman in ramps for months.

You think you know what comes next, but you're wrong.

They brought the child to me whenever it became ill, and I did what I could. It was a sickly baby. I wanted nothing to do with it. If it did not thrive, who would they blame? But they begged me to help, so what could I do?

When she was a little older, she took a fever. I put her in a cot by the fire and tended her. For days I sat by that little cot. Her parents visited often at first, then less so. The fever passed, but she was still weak when her parents told me they had "happy news" once more. She was not their first nor only child. That isn't to say they didn't care for her. They just stopped coming. I called her my little Rampion, for the ramps that had brought us together. I taught her everything I could, and she grew up.

I did not keep her prisoner. I wanted to protect her. I didn't want her to be stuck in the life I had fled, nor did I want her to pursue my path, which had produced its own dangers. I wanted something better for her. When I learned a young nobleman would be passing through the town, I took her there and put her in his way, again and again, for the duration of his stay. That was my mistake. When he left, she said he would never have gone without her, that he loved her, that I had trapped her. It was some few months later, when her condition was just showing, that she ran away.

I searched for her. I went to the town. I begged at the castle for any hint of her. I went to the tinkers. I would not stray far or for long from my home in case she came back, but I asked them to look for her. They found her, with her child. When she came back to me, she was frail and sick, and never recovered. I laid her in the garden, and let the ramps go to flower over her. And I have raised her daughter, whom I have called like her mother, my Rapunzel.

I own my mistakes, Sister, I will not see them repeated. She must be safe, warm, educated. I know well what you do to ones like me, who are odd, we witches. Yet here is my confession. Do with me as you will, only take her as a novice.

Kiyomi Appleton Gaines loves folklore and fairy tales for what they teach us about what it means to be human.  Her writing can be found at workofheartkag.wordpress.com.  She lives in New Orleans with her husband, a one-eyed cat, and a snake.

Cover Design: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

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THE HISTORY OF OUR SURVIVAL by Kiyomi Appleton Gaines

This was not the first winter of the wolf.
I know the history of our dark times,
of our hunger...

The village was hungry. It was deep winter, and stores were low. The harvest had not been as bountiful as hoped in any case. The wolves were getting bolder, too. Sheep were carried off, and then a little girl went missing. Illness followed the hunger, and slowly we were all succumbing to starvation or cold or fever. The ground was too hard to dig, so the dead were laid in coffins behind the church. This brought more wolves. We might not have lasted to spring.

As the death toll climbed, the remaining villagers gathered in the church. We would send the young and strongest in pairs in each direction, to find help if they could. This depleted us further, of their youth and strength, and of the scant provisions we sent with them for the journey. They set out early and quickly disappeared from view.

"Will they come back?" my husband asked.

"I wouldn't," I answered.

This was not the first winter of the wolf we had come through, and the villagers remembered the stories. My grandmother had been midwife for as long as she lived, and now that duty fell to me, along with the other necessary things. I know the history of our survival, of our dark times, of our hunger. Those stories were also passed to me of where to go, what to collect, when to sacrifice.

I could see the desperation in the eyes of those around me, I shared their hunger and their fear. One mother's eyes were dead as she mindlessly stroked the hair of a child. She wouldn't last the week if nothing changed.

"What else can we do?" one woman asked me breathlessly. She meant, "Tell us what must be done."

I demurred, and shook my head. "We wait. We pray."

A man stepped forward, "Our traps are empty!" His voice was sharp. "The hunters return empty-handed, there is nothing in these woods but wolves, and they hunt us!"

"Yes, tell us what to do," a younger man joined in, "Or else we are lost."

"You know what this entails," I said, shrinking into myself, feeling the resistance tighten in my chest. "This isn't something to take lightly."

"Lightly!" the first man yelled. The others jumped at the sound. He lowered his voice, leaning close to me. I could see the tears standing in his eyes, "Better to lose one, than not any survive."

The mother with the dead eyes roused herself, rubbed her temple with chapped fingers. "It is time, midwife. I remember the story. Make the count."

"Make the count," the breathless woman echoed, and the others repeated it.

Make the count.

It was their will. It was mine, too.

"Send me the children," I said, and I walked out into the cold and back to my own home.

They started to arrive soon after. My husband asked no questions, just directed the children to the fireside. When they were all gathered, I counted them up. The greatest number of boys were aged ten, and the girls were aged four. I sent the other children back home, pulled broom straws, and held one hand to the boys and one to the girls. They each drew.

"Who has the short straws?" I asked.

A boy with dark hair that flopped into his eyes, and a small girl with golden curls held up their luck. I sent the others home. I felt ill.

My husband busied himself building up the fire. I pulled the children into my arms and tried to push what strength and protection I could offer into them. Then I let them go and forced myself to smile. "You've been chosen to save our village," I explained. "We're going on a journey, and you'll have to be very brave. But first you'll eat."

There was a knock at the door and my neighbors began to arrive, each bearing a dish of whatever provisions remained to them. We spread the table, and they each left in turn, some pausing to stroke the children's hair, or press some small gift into their hands. Some did not acknowledge them at all. It was easier that way, they had lost so much already.

"Eat," I said, helping the children to fill their plates.

"This is for us?" the boy asked.

I nodded. "Eat as much as you like." I settled them both at the table, then went to the corner where my chest was. I pulled out extra cloaks and blankets, and from my midwifery supplies, two small, sharp blades.

"Are we going like the others did?" the boy asked, "To get help?"

"Something like that," I answered.

The little girl held up her plate, her face smeared with food. I wiped her cheeks and chin clean and gave her a second portion.

Once they were fed and full, I tucked them into bed, and went to sit beside the fire with my husband.

"It's for the best," he said after a long while. We didn't sleep that night.

In the morning, I packed up the last of the food. We walked a long way, deep into the forest. We stopped to eat at midday. I fed the children well, and my husband and I took only what we needed to continue. The little girl grew tired and my husband carried her while she slept on his shoulder. Eventually, we came to the place I sought. The trees opened up in a circular clearing, and stones marked out another circle within. It felt warmer here.

I took the children's hands and brought them to the center of the circle. "This is where you must be brave," I said. "This is where you will save the village."

"What do we do?" the boy asked, and the little girl began to cry.

"You just sit." I made a pallet of blankets and bundled them together. "Just close your eyes," I said. I kissed each small head. I set the blades on either side of them as I'd been taught, and I walked away.

I reached the treeline and began quickly back up the path. My husband lingered behind, watching the children for a moment longer.

"We can't wait here," I said.

"I just... I don't want to forget..." he said, but turned and followed after me. I put my hand on his arm and moved him to walk in front of me.

"Are you leaving us?" I heard the boy's voice. It was at a distance, he was staying in the circle. He was a good boy. "Don't leave us!"

The little girl screamed her protest, cried for her mother.

My husband's shoulders shook, but he made no sound. We walked away.

Then I heard the thing described to me by my grandmother; a thing I had never convinced myself wasn't a tale just to frighten me as a child. It was a voice, ancient, like cracking ice and swaying tree branches. "Children," it said. That was all. Yet terror gripped me and turned to ice in my veins.

I clutched my husband's arm and swallowed to wet my dry throat. "Come," I breathed, "Come away. Quickly."

We returned more quickly than we had gone. It was easier with only two of us, and we knew that when night fell we would be easy prey for the wolves if we were outside. When we broke through the trees, we ran.

The village seemed abandoned after that. The last of our food had been given to our small saviors, and no one wanted see who was missing. There were so many gone already.

After two more days a buck walked into the middle of the village. It was taken down swiftly, and the whole village came out into the square. We butchered the meat. We feasted. We celebrated. We ate, and for the first time in long months, were not hungry. We nursed our ill, and a hunting party found more of the herd. In another week, maybe two, two of the young couples returned with supplies. We would survive this winter.

I returned to the clearing after that, once I knew we would make it to spring, and the blankets were folded in a neat pile, with my blades on top. There was nothing else. The only disruption in the snow was made by my own footprints. I collected my things and carried them home. As I laid them back in the chest, I found a golden hair tangled in the fibers of a blanket. We would survive this winter.

When the ground thawed, we would bury our dead. In the spring, the priest would come through, and we would have him say a blessing. We wouldn't mention the children. Not ever. But I am the one who keeps our history. I am the one who remembers their names.

Kiyomi Appleton Gaines is a writer of fairy tales and other fantastical things. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, a one-eyed cat, and a snake. Her writing can be found at workofheartkag.wordpress.com. Find her on Twitter @ThatKiyomi

Cover: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

SATURDAY TALE - The Woodcutter's Daughter by Kiyomi Appleton Gaines

She howled and wailed as if she suffered a great pain,

and it made him weep to bring her such sadness...

There was an old woodcutter and his wife who, more than anything, wanted a child to call their own, to love and raise, to care for them in their old age, which was fast approaching, and to carry their name and line into the next generation. One day while he was in the forest, the woodcutter heard a high, small mewling and he followed the sound to the hollowed out trunk of a tree he had felled the year before. Inside he found a tiny baby girl - left to exposure, he and his wife would assume, no doubt because she was a girl - yet they had for so long wanted a child that the woodcutter brought her home. That is the account he gave his wife when he passed the child into her arms. The woman put the child to her barren breast to soothe her, and in the morning sent her husband to buy a goat. And though she fed the child on milk and porridge, still she pressed the small girl to her breast, though whether for the child's comfort or her own became less clear.

The child grew in stature and strength, and the wife grew frail and ill. In time the woodcutter's wife lay down to rest and her spirit left in the way of all dreams and did not return again. The woodcutter mourned her briefly, yet was soon consumed with caring for his daughter. She was the most beautiful child he had ever seen. She was perfect in every way, and he told her so often. She seemed to grow more vibrant with his praise, and he found he could not be parted from her. He took her with him into the woods. She ran and played while he worked. When he saw her lips cornered with red, he chose not to notice further. Blood meal in sausage, blood meal in soup, it made a body strong, he reasoned. When he found her with a bird, feathers scattered around her, it's small broken body in her teeth, he resolved not to take her to the woods again, and he brought her chicken from the market, cooked fresh and delicious.

When he left again to his work, she howled and wailed as if she suffered a great pain, and it made him weep to bring her such sadness. He raced back to the house and comforted and soothed her with apologies and promises not to leave her again, his perfect, precious daughter, who was the greatest gift of his life. He had been wrong to think to leave her, he realized. Instead he should not venture so deep into the woods, though this increased his labor mightily.

He took her with him also into town to sell his wood. He drew the attention of everyone who stopped to the beauty and sweetness of his daughter. She was as good and pure as fresh milk, as new snow, as water from a mountain stream. And each visitor would ask after his health, his strength, his business, with concern. They did not see the delights in the girl that he did, and this angered him. She had become his everything, and the fault was their own if they did not see why.

The girl wanted a toy, she wanted food, she wanted a drink, she wanted some sweet, a ribbon, to be held, he must sing her a song, he must tell her a story. She always needed more, and was never satisfied, and her cries would sound through the whole market if the woodcutter delayed at all. He ran in every direction to bring her what she wanted. He found he had no time for his neighbors, for his own best interests.

He needs a break, some of the villagers said; since he lost his wife, he has no one to help him. They clucked their tongues and went in turn to care for the child and let the man rest and see to his health and his livelihood. Yet he sent them each on their way. The moment he left her, the girl started up her howling, and he knew the truth, that no one could ever care for her as he could, because in their envy they did not see her goodness and beauty as he did. His business waned as did his health, yet his only thought was that the girl would be satisfied.

"What is it you want, my pet, my beauty," he asked her, "tell your old father what you need. Anything you say will be yours."

She had been waiting for him to ask, and the girl's brushy red tail twitched from beneath her skirt. "Mother's heart made ninety-nine," she said, "and yours shall be the final."

And the woodcutter, like a man compelled, opened up his shirt, "My heart is already yours, most precious one," he said.

The fox pounced and as he felt his heart rend from chest, the woodcutter seemed to recall that misty day when he had found her, the stories of catching a fox by its tail, and of wishes granted, the bargain struck and how eager he had been to pay her price, any price. And with a quick snap of her jaws, the fox gained her immortality.

She bore the name of the woodcutter and carried it on. That family lives here still to this day.

Kiyomi Appleton Gaines is a contributing editor at Enchanted Conversation Magazine who writes stories and articles inspired by folklore and fairy tales.

Find more of her writing at A Work of Heart

and follow her on Twitter @ThatKiyomi

Cover: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

SATURDAY TALE - Hamelintown by Kiyomi Appleton Gaines

He wore a patchwork cape and carried a flute.

He would help us, but his price was high...

“It is 100 years since our children left.”

Hamelin Town Chronicles, 1384

“Where did the children go? Where did he take them?” my great-grandmother asked. She was in one of her fretful moods, and we would try to calm her, but she would work herself up into a state for the lost children. Why did no one go to find them? Where were they taken?

We were all familiar with her queries and the best that could be done was to try to keep her in bed and stroke her hand until she eventually cried herself to sleep. Sometimes she would get up and start for the door, or we’d find her in the kitchen, packing food into a sack already stuffed with a change of clothes, a thin and faded old nightgown, a sharp letter opener. “Gran,” we’d say, “where are you going?” She would start on about the children again, always the children. Why had no one gone to find them? Where had they been taken? An entire village of children did not simply disappear.

Gran’s young brother had been among the lost ones. There were two other brothers and a sister who were lost as well, as I recalled, but this particular brother had been her favorite. She had cared for him as a baby, her mother never fully recovering from this, the last and most difficult of nine births. Or was it seven? It was hard to say, as so many records of that time had been lost, or destroyed. Records of the lives of the lost ones. Gran was young at the time, fourteen or fifteen, and she had a sister just a few years younger, and an older brother who also survived. Had there been another sister? Nobody knew anymore.

They came from a small milling town up in the mountains. The man had come. There was a famine, and the goats were dying. Or maybe it was a drought? They were hungry, she said, when the man came. The village stores were low, and illness was high. The rats were everywhere, in the grain, crawling over the sick, sometimes attacking the very ill before they expired.

“I woke in the night, I couldn’t breathe. There was a heavy weight on my chest, pressing the life out of me, and when I opened my eyes, there was the beast. A rat,” here she would spread her hands wide to the size of a house cat, “standing on my chest, pressing my breath out, staring into my eyes! With no fear! It tried to smother me, that animal. My sister knocked it off of me with a skillet.”

Straw mattresses were dragged outside and burned. Thatching was replaced on roofs. Holes were patched in walls and floorboards. Still the rats came. Still they remained.

“People were dying. People were dying,” she would murmur, almost consoling herself.

The man came to town. He was older than Gran at the time, though not as old as her father. He wore a patchwork cape, and carried a flute; all the accounts agree on these points. “We were desperate,” she’d say, her voice pleading. The man came. He would get rid of the rats. His price was high. More gold than the whole village had. There was the gold in the church, the candlesticks and chalice and plates and censers, the gold flake on the saints, but that was not to be considered.

Where did the man come from? Gran would wave her hand and give no other answer

He set right to his work. The elders told him to get rid of the rats, and he set right to his work. Before long he was strolling down the street with a staff strung with rats, and whatever plague had summoned them seemed to pass; they stopped coming. He sat in the middle of the square, where he made camp each night, refusing the hospitality of any of the villagers, and would flay and spit and roast the rats, and tear the flesh from tiny bones with fingers and teeth. Then he would sit and play his flute into the night, beautiful lilting melodies.

Was he a stranger? Had he come from a far off land? Again, the dismissive wave. As though it hardly mattered.

There was something disturbing and almost sensual in the way he ate the vermin, savoring every bite and licking his fingers when he was through. And, just as terrible, young Gran sometimes felt her stomach rumbling at the scent of the roasting meat. She never ate it! No, she never ate it!

When the rats were gone, eaten or chased off, it came time to render payment. The man, as he told them, was ready to continue on his way, and would have what was owed. The villagers gave him what they had, every scrap of gold, save a wedding band secreted here, or a chain passed down through the family, or perhaps just a few coins pocketed against future calamity. The rats were gone, and the village would give all they could, and that would have to be enough. But it was not the price demanded, nor what was agreed.

“He would give us a week,” Gran whispered, her voice trembling.

The man seemed to disappear then, though no one saw him leave town. Instead, he would be spotted, just in the corner of one’s eye, staring out of the shadows when daily chores were done, or following along on the lane, close enough to hear his steps, too far for any proper greeting.

When the week had passed, he went again to the elders. Again they offered him all the collected wealth of the village, though not the full price set for his services.

“His face went strange like a demon,” she said, “that’s what my father said. A face like a demon. And when he left, the church bell rang once, though there was no one to pull the cord.”

The next day, when the villagers had finished their church services, the children were gone. All of them had disappeared, all of those weaned and walking, and so had the man. There were no signs of struggle, no tiny footprints in the dirt, no dropped toy or scrap of cloth. The village was in the mountains, yet no one saw that lone man leading an army of children down to the valley. The man was never seen again. Nor were the children.  One hundred and thirty children.

“We must find them,” Gran would struggle against our restraining embraces. “Where are the children?”

“Hush now, hush. They’re gone. Best to forget, Gran. They’re gone.”

Kiyomi Appleton Gaines is a contributing editor at Enchanted Conversation Magazine who writes stories and articles inspired by folklore and fairy tales. 

Find more of her writing at A Work of Heart

and follow her on Twitter @ThatKiyomi

Art: 1868 Wood Engraving, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" by John LaFarge, Wikimedia Commons

Cover Layout: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

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ON DEATH: ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION and the STORIES WE TELL by Kiyomi Appleton Gaines

How do stories using the personification of Death help us make peace with mortality?

EC's contributing editor, Kiyomi Appleton Gaines, 
shares her thoughts on the topic in this week's article:

The first story in which I remember reading about a personified Death, and one I still love, is The Appointment in Samarra (or Samarkand). It's a very old tale, said to be from Mesopotamia, and is included in the Talmud and collections of Sufi wisdom, and is sometimes also called When Death Came to Baghdad. In it, a man sends his servant on a long journey to avoid Death, only to find that Death had expected him there, in that other place, all along. I remember feeling that there was a certain injustice in that – if only the man had stayed home! How unfair that the man's fear of dying drove him to flee straight to the place of his death. Yet, how foolish to try to run away, only to spend his final days on a long journey to a distant land, far from all that he knew and loved. That is where Death brings us in the end anyway.

The Reaper - Crane

In many old stories, Death is portrayed as a neutral, or even benevolent figure. Not frightening or evil, but someone who is just doing a job. These stories represent a way for us to make peace with mortality. Not to say that we shouldn't cling to the beauty and joy and connection presented by a life well lived, or mourn the finality of separation from our loved ones. Rather Death represents everything that is unknown, and our complete inability to return to what was before – that is to say, death, (with a little 'd') in a very literal sense, or any process of change or transition. Not bad, and maybe not good, but inevitable just the same.

Another favorite personification (and where the title of this blog comes from) is Terry Pratchett's Death. His attempts to understand, and compassion for humanity are endearing, and his matter-of-fact dealings with the business of an ended life, often comical. I'm sorry that we won't have any new stories of that particular character, yet the stories we have told, and those told about us, also present a kind of continued connection with those we leave behind. I am already eagerly looking forward to my annual viewing of The Hogfather, with a dinner of pork pies and sherry, on the eve of the winter solstice! I like to think that when Sir Terry Pratchett left, Death greeted him as a friend. May we all be so lucky!

Death in The Tale of the Three Brothers, of the Harry Potter stories, always reminds me of Death in both the Appointment in Samarra, and in the Discworld. The story of The Three Brothers is beautifully rendered in the movie. I especially love that the art is reminiscent of the sculpture and reliefs on the Passion facade of Sagrada Familia. Death will not be thwarted by pride, or swayed by love, but must ultimately be accepted, and even – just maybe – welcomed after a long and good life.

Death Tarot - Visconti Sforza

There's something about passing into the dark time of the year that makes us look back on those who came before us, and reflect on what it means to lead a life well-lived. In September, the Japanese festival of Obon was celebrated. It's a time when the ancestors are believed to return and visit their living relatives. Graves are visited and cleaned, offerings are made, and at the end of three days, beautiful paper lanterns are set afloat on a river to lead the dead back to the other world.

At the end of October and early November, of course, western tradition holds to much the same idea. We come together as a community, we tell stories of our people, general and specific, and celebrate with our loved ones. This time of year is known by people around the world and throughout history for the “thinning of the veil” between our everyday world and other world, and annually this is a time to reconnect, and to remember our dead - to tell their stories. Interestingly, it wasn't the ghosts of relatives that the ancients feared on these days, but the other things that would come across with them! Following the winter the solstice, at the end of the dark half of the year and the beginning of the return to light, the Alpine demigod Perchta would hunt down all the beasties that came across throughout the fall and winter months and drag them back from whence they came, in order to make way for the coming spring.

Death with a little 'd' is always scary and terrible, and no matter how old a person is, always feels like an injustice. Because no matter how long we have to prepare, we never feel ready for it. So we tell stories about a person in a cloak who can help guide us through; so we comfort ourselves that our loved ones are not alone on that journey, and neither will we be.

Waiting - Kepple

Much of human history has been a story about death, about those impossible transitions from one place of existence into another, about travel from one land into the next; and because we are a uniquely and irrationally hopeful species, also about new life and new beginnings. Terry Pratchett in the Hogfather says, the very oldest stories are, sooner or later, about blood. I think that's true, but blood, in our old stories, is always about death, and our first stories were. We have evidence of very early burials where bodies were covered in flowers. Putting flowers over bodies is not innate behavior to humans. What mattered, of course, were not the flowers, but the reason behind the flowers – the story being told about what had happened to those people, and what it meant.

Our stories are how we make sense of the world. When throughout so much of our history, life was brutal and short, and if we made it through the year, many of our loved ones would likely not, our stories were how we made it bearable; how we gave meaning to our experiences, and how we made sense of those things that are impossible to understand, like death.

A version of this article was originally posted

on a work of heart on October 14, 2017

Kiyomi Appleton Gaines is a contributing editor at Enchanted Conversation Magazine who writes stories and articles inspired by folklore and fairy tales. 

Find more of her writing at A Work of Heart

and follow her on Twitter @ThatKiyomi

Cover: Amanda Bergloff 

Thanks for reading, and please share your thoughts about Kiyomi's article in the comments section below. We'd love to hear from you!

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EVER-CHANGING FAIRY TALES by Kiyomi Appleton Gaines

Do fairy tales always remain the same or do they change to suit each generation?

EC's contributing editor, Kiyomi Appleton Gaines, shares her thoughts on the topic in this week's article:

Some people have been very upset recently about the results of a survey that found that parents are changing fairy tales in order to make them more gentle tales for their children. Changing these classic tales, many an argument goes, is nothing but political correctness run rampant.

Yet fairy tales have always been retold, embellished, and otherwise changed to suit the mores and preferences of the current generation. Our current standards of child-rearing, begun with and passed down from the Victorians, is that children should be coddled and protected. What should we expect but that it should include the stories we tuck little ones into bed with? And why not? They're small and it's definitely better than the workhouses of yore! However, very few children, even among those parents and grandparents now bemoaning the loss of the "good old days," ever actually heard the original versions of fairy tales while being put down to bed as tots to begin with.

Red Riding Hood ranked as the tale most often changed for younger ears. The Perrault version of Red Riding Hood, one of the oldest written versions, was in fact drafted as a warning against young women engaging in sexual activity in the age of Louis XIV's notoriously libertinous court. Sure you don't want to edit that a little bit before sharing it with a youngster?

Fairy tales were never initially intended as stories for children, let alone bedtime stories to fall asleep to. Fairy tales were not meant as moral injunctions to "scare kids straight," as it were, but were often primarily stories women would tell each other to pass the time of spinning and weaving - this is why we talk about "spinning" a tale, "weaving" a good story, or telling a "yarn."

That's why so many of these old stories feature young women in unlikely situations, and resolve with reinforcing culturally prescribed behaviors for wifehood and motherhood.

Perhaps parents are too cautious. Crime statistics show that we're living in one of the safest times to grow up in the developed world, yet parents are literally charged with child endangerment for leaving their child to play unsupervised in the park or walk to and from home - things many of us wiled away many hours doing.

We also may very well underestimate what children, even young children, are able to handle. I re-watch movies I saw as a young child and thought nothing of at the time, and now am horrified by the degree of loss, violence, threat, and general darkness that permeates even old Disney standards. This gives me pause to reevaluate my perspective, because as a child, I wasn't upset by it.

But changing stories to suit current need and preference is nothing new. The old versions of stories are not being done away with, and are still tucked in libraries, bookstores, or are just a query away on the internet for curious young readers to explore. Parents are doing their best in a time when they themselves face considerable real world uncertainty and insecurity. If that means giving Sleeping Beauty consent in that wake-up kiss rather than diving into #MeToo with their five-year-old, I say good job, parents, of claiming your place in the long parade of oral tradition!

But those parents themselves might benefit from digging into their own favorite remembered stories to gain inspiration, hope, and courage from the heroes that reside and triumph in the trying and uncertain circumstances there.

Kiyomi Appleton Gaines is a contributing editor at Enchanted Conversation Magazine who writes stories and articles inspired by folklore and fairy tales. 

Find more of her writing at A Work of Heart

and follow her on Twitter @ThatKiyomi

Cover: Amanda Bergloff 

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