When Is A Fairy Fair? By Priya Sridhar

Editor’s note: I love this deep dive into the good and bad aspects of the “the Folk.” And since “Diamonds and Toads” is one of my all-time favorite fairy tales, this essay was especially appealing to me, and I hope you’ll love it too. KW

The "fairies'" within fairy tales are often fascinating. Some are inspired by the Folk, those from European and Celtic mythology. Their favor can win you a happy ending where the hero or heroine marries into royalty and becomes royalty, no strings attached. Yet some curses can leave you lurching, or begging for any end regardless of if you end up burned or executed. “Diamonds and Toads” has the favor for the lead, who ends up with jewels every time she speaks, and the curse for her stepsister, who ends up starving in the woods in some versions. 

Fairies aren't always the benevolent butterflies with human bodies. (This image became popular in the Victorian era, to the point that two girls convinced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that they had found fairies.) Instead, you have the luck of the draw. Some fairies will test you, with great rewards. Others won't care that your family insults them, and you receive the curse. The best solution is to be generous and polite. 

The Secret Test

Quite often, the fey in a tale will set certain tests. They will ask a child or an adult to do them a good deed. If the human succeeds, they will receive an award, usually gold. When a human is rude or selfish, however, they suffer a huge punishment. Obviously, the lesson is to be generous to strangers because you would rather avoid a curse if possible. 

The fascinating part is that the fairies tend to serve as a catalyst, rather than go through a character arc. When they give the blessing or cast the curse, the protagonist carries the weight of the story. The fairies tend to disappear, as the magic plays out within the established world.

Often, fairies disguise themselves as old beggars who are hungry or thirsty. They ask for a sip of water or a bite of food. The Fair Folk don't need food necessarily, but they want kindness. We never find out why, but the virtuous heroes never look a gift from a fairy in the mouth. (A sixth sense? KW) It's often best not to reject a fairy gift, or you may receive a curse in turn. Some Celtic folklore has tales of farmers being cursed when they don’t use a fairy gift. Always carry extra food, in case you meet a new friend on the road.

We see fairy tests most often with siblings and step-siblings. "The Golden Goose" features an old man that asks three woodcutters' sons for food when they have to go out. While the foolish third child is generous, his older brothers aren't. Both of them refuse to share their meal of bread and wine.

As a result, the brothers suffer serious injuries when trying to gather the necessary firewood. To add insult to injury, the third child is given sour milk and stale bread when he goes to chop up the lumber, but his food turns into a rich feast which he and the old man share. The old man also gives him a golden goose and warns him to take care of it. Then he vanishes into the dark.

The old man is a crucial catalyst for the story. He lets the youngest son set out with a reward, and fades into the cover of the trees. The youngest son carries the rest of the story, along with the goose, as numerous people try to take a feather or rescue those who subsequently get stuck to the bird. It's a choice that lies at the heart of the story. The old man didn’t care about the food. He wanted to see what someone would do in the darkness of the trees when no one else would see them.

Another wrinkle to the goose: anyone who touches it gets stuck to the feathers, and people who rescue them get stuck in turn. Either the fool doesn't notice the steadily growing line of people behind him or refuses to care. It’s certainly not a nice gift, for those unlucky enough to let the glinting gold tempt them. But Folk do not care if their gifts inconvenience others in the crossfire. 

Some versions of the tales go further. When a princess notices the youngest son, she laughs at the people stuck behind him and says she wants to marry him. Her father vetoes that since the boy is a woodcutter’s son and not nobility. The old man returns and says he’ll help the boy. When the king sets three impossible tasks—find a man who can eat a mountain’s worth of bread in a day, a thirsty person who will swallow enough wine to fill a cellar, and a boat that sails on water and land—the old man delivers on all three. He ensures that the king runs out of excuses to prevent the marriage.

Why does the old man come back? He says the boy was kind to him, and that it’s unfair of the king to set such conditions. The king got on the fairy’s bad side. He was lucky that the old man only fulfilled the tasks and didn’t go further. A little bit of kindness prevented more chaos from occurring.

On that note, some pragmatic people in fairy tales try to exploit this loophole. If they or a relative do a good deed for a fairy, the family can soon become rich. "Diamonds and Toads" as well as "Mother Holle" tackled this very issue when a greedy stepmother realizes that two girls with fairy rewards are more lucrative than one. Usually, she sets her blood daughter out to complete the same task that the stepchild accomplished, and the blood daughter ultimately cannot recognize a great task or do a kindness. This backfires horribly for her and her mother. 

"Diamonds and Toads" is the better-known of the two. The first girl speaks kindly and shares what she has with others. Her stepsister is rude and selfish, refusing to even give a stranger a sip of water. Both are asked by a strange lady or a soldier for a share of their water. The kind girl is blessed with diamonds, gold coins, and flowers coming out of her mouth, while the other releases hordes of frogs, snakes, and bugs when she speaks. One marries a prince, and the other tries to replace her, or dies alone in the woods. Either way, the tale doesn’t end well for the stepsister. 

The main difference is that the stepsister cannot be kind even for a selfish purpose. Her mother finds out about the girl receiving a gift and sends her outside, telling her explicitly to be nice and they’ll be rich for life. Yet the stepsister remains rude to an old woman when the latter asks for some water. She pays for it when the fairy vanishes—but promises that bugs and reptiles will come out of her mouth for every cruel world.

We get the contradiction of "moral deserts.”  Because the kind sister doesn't know she's getting a reward, her generosity is more meaningful since she expects and seemingly wants for nothing. Meanwhile, the selfish sister knows that she could receive a blessing of diamonds while refusing to consider that it may go the other way and leave her with snakes and frogs coming out of her mouth.   

Later versions would point out the problem with the blessing that the kind girl receives: anyone who can sprout jewels from her throat when she talks becomes a target for gold diggers. Flowers may also have poky stems and thorns. Her stepmother can confiscate the jewels and use them as currency, perhaps to buy tinctures or more water. This makes the girl more vulnerable than she was before, while her stepsister has often learned to be resourceful and use her gifts. 

The fairy at the well is a karma enforcer, but not a consistent one. She gives one girl a gift that is pretty on the surface but potentially consequential, and the other a curse that could lead to her death if others shun her. It is fairly arbitrary on a closer look, and a sign that not all tests have the same grades.

Curses Gone Wrong 

Then we have fairies on the other side who are not that nice. They don’t give the hero a chance to prove themselves because the said hero is a baby.

The most obvious cause would be “Sleeping Beauty.” In this story, the princess is only a baby when a fairy doesn’t get her proper invitation or hospitality at the christening. Other fairies are giving gifts, promising that she will be beautiful, musically gifted, and virtuous. This bad fairy decides to instill a curse that the princess will only live to be sixteen.

Doesn’t this seem to be harsh? If anything, the parents should be the ones cursed. They either forgot to send an invitation or failed to set out the proper silverware, depending on the versions that you read. Yet an innocent baby has to bear the burden that her parents failed with etiquette. 

Meanwhile, the good fairy left for her christening gift can’t undo the curse. She admits she is not powerful enough. Instead, death will become an enchanted sleep for one hundred years. It’s not good enough, but it will have to do. The good fairy watches over the princess, to protect her when the time comes. 

Later fairy tale rewrites and adaptations would justify why the good fairy could not remove the curse entirely. Robin McKinley had a bit to say about the subject, while Disney’s film established that Maleficent draws powers from the forces of evil while the good fairy magic can only be drawn from the heart. 

Then again, the wicked fairy is said to be unreasonable, especially as you go into later adaptations. You can’t break the curse, only meet your destiny on your terms. Sure enough, the princess does that. She finds an old woman weaving with a spindle, and desires to touch it. Cue the hundred years’ sleep.  

As soon as she casts the curse, the evil fairy disappears. She is once more a catalyst but still has a strong presence in the story. The kingdom fears what will happen when the curse comes to light, and the king orders all the spinning wheels burned to prevent that terrible fate. Her gift is not only mean, but it allows for no middle ground or amends. 

The good fairy also vanishes for a small portion of the story. Then she reappears after the princess touches the spindle, deciding to put the entire castle into an enchanted sleep until the curse is broken. She notes logically that everyone will outlive the princess otherwise. The decision has the added effect of ensuring a stable government is in place.

One concern emerges, however: no one in the castle consented to having an enchanted sleep. They didn’t do a good turn or a bad one to deserve it. Thus the injustice persists, that the good fairy’s motivation is about the princess’s comfort and not others wishes. 

If you are in a fairy tale, and you meet an old man or woman demanding water or food, it’s best to comply with them and abide by sacred hospitality. Share a meal with them, and accept their gifts. This will also protect any children you have, from potential curses. While the Folk are not fair, you at least have some warning on how to avoid disaster.

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Bio: A 2016 MBA graduate and published author, Priya Sridhar has been writing fantasy and science fiction for fifteen years, and counting. Capstone published the Powered series, and Alban Lake published her works Carousel and Neo-Mecha Mayhem. Priya lives in Miami, Florida with her family.

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Images, in order, are “The Golden Goose,” by Mabel

Lucie Atwell; “Toads and Diamonds,” by Gordon Laite; and “Sleeping Beauty,” by Arthur Rackham.

On Spindles and a Pet Peeve, By A.M. Offenwanger

Editor’s note: I loved the outraged tone in this post! I’m very much like that about my own peeves. (I won’t get started.) I also love how Angelika isn’t just outraged; she also teaches. I’ll never see spinning the same way. Enjoy!

Enchanted Conversation recently republished an older post by Elizabeth Creith, a highly informative article on flax that is aptly entitled "Straw Into Gold." As a fairly new convert to spinning, it caught my interest—and it reminded me of one of my pet peeves where "spinning and fairy tales" is concerned. 

Full disclosure: I let my fascination with "Sleeping Beauty"—my favorite fairy tale—led me down the garden path into learning to spin. First it was a drop spindle, then a little castle wheel, and now I own an old Ashford Traditional, which is one of those really classic items that look exactly like what you'd expect to see when you hear "spinning wheel." You know, a big flywheel; a treadle; a thing that whizzes around; sharp pointy bits sticking out at every angle for unwary princesses to prick their fingers on and fall into hundred-year sleeps... 

Actually, no. My spinning wheel, which is one of the earliest iterations of this model of wheel, has no pointy bits on it anywhere. None. Zero. Nada. It does have the flywheel and the treadle and the thing that whizzes around, though. The latter item is called the flyer, and it contains, right in its center, the spindle. Which, on this kind of wheel, is a hollow tube. Did I mention "no pointy bits"?

So what, then, did the princess prick her finger on?

That's the million-dollar question, isn't it. The princess pricked her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, and... Hold on. Where did you get that idea?

Let me guess: from a movie. For example, the 1959 Disney cartoon. Or the 2014 remake thereof, Maleficent. Or its 2019 sequel. All of which are prime examples of the aforementioned pet peeve of mine: the utter lack of research that seems to have gone into the "spinning" part of filming stories that are centered on, well, spinning. I can forgive the 1959 cartoonists - they didn't have the power of Google to assist them. But the 2014 film makers? Puh-lease. Five minutes on the Internet would have told them that a real spinning wheel does not have sharp spikes poking out of the top. I have no idea what that princess-pricking thing in the Disney films is supposed to be; obviously, we're dealing with a cursed magical object here, because it has no purpose whatsoever in real spinning.

Moreover, five minutes of reading the "original" versions of "Sleeping Beauty" (by which I mean the tales as they were originally written down by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm) would have told the filmmakers that the tales don't even mention a spinning wheel. "The princess should have her hand pierced with a spindle," they say, and in the Grimms, when the princess encounters the spinning old woman in the tower, she asks her, "What is that thing that is so merrily bouncing about?" Then she takes "hold of the spindle" and, well, you know the rest. All of which clearly says that the spindle in question is a hand spindle, not one set in a spinning wheel. 

"Rumpelstiltskin" films are no better on the spinning-research front. Rumpelstiltskin definitely uses a spinning wheel, not a hand spindle: the miller's daughter is given "a spinning wheel and a reel" for spinning straw into gold, and when the mannikin sits down to fulfil the task, the wheel goes "whir, whir, whir," and the bobbin is full (the original tellers of the tales knew exactly what a spinning wheel in full motion sounds like). However, in the films, once again nobody seems to bother doing any research on how spinning is actually done, not even enough to have the actors pretend convincingly. I've seen actors pull the yarn off the bobbin instead of feeding it on, have Rumpelstiltskin poking a piece of straw at the wheel as if he's trying to tickle the poor thing into submission, or just randomly pitch straw in the direction of the wheel where it precipitates out onto the bobbin as gold (no doubt occasioned by the static the turn of the flywheel generates). 

I mean, come on! How hard can it be to watch a few Youtube videos on what spinning looks like? Or figure out what the parts of a spinning wheel actually are and what they're used for? If you insist on having Sleeping Beauty prick her finger on a spinning wheel rather than a hand spindle, at least make it a wheel with a quill spindle instead of a flyer assembly. They're rare, but they do exist; I could even buy such a spindle for my Ashford Traditional, and a wicked-sharp-looking thing it is too.

Somehow, that lack of research into spinning seems to me an indication of a lack of respect for this ancient craft. For millennia, spinning was the driving force of civilization. Every inch of thread, every square centimeter of cloth originated from a woman's spindle or wheel (and yes, it was primarily women who did the spinning). Every piece of clothing, every blanket, every sail on every sailing ship exploring the high seas—they all started with spinning. Spinning, spinning, spinning, all day long and into the night. Is it any wonder that some of our most beloved stories, the ones that everyone knows, that are told over and over again, center around the craft of spinning? The least we could do is honor it when we're spinning a new yarn of a retelling of those fairy tales.

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All images by A.M. Offenwanger. The first one is of Angelika’s spinning wheel at rest. The second is of the wheel in action, and the third is of her flax distaff and spindle.

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Bio: Angelika is a reader, writer, blogger, and editor who has loved fairy tales and folklore from the time she was a little girl—so much so that when she was grown, she wrote a master’s thesis on them. Her favorite stories to read, write and study are those set in other worlds, whether that’s fantastical worlds full of magic, far-off places, or long-gone times.

Follow her blog at www.amovitam.ca or on Twitter @amoffenwanger 

Sleeping Beauty, By Ariel Villa

  Editor's Note: Our student author tells us, "My name is Ariel Tiana Villa. I am 17 years old, and a Junior in High School. I live in midtown Manhattan and I love the city. I am in love with poetry and photography."

First off, let me tell you something. That cute, romantic, “happily ever after” love, it doesn’t exist. I'm telling you as a guy with experience, it just does not exist. I've come to learn that people – especially women – can be very heartless. I don’t admit it out loud to my family or friends, but I’ve had my heart broken too many times now. It's because of women that real joy is difficult to find in life. Anyway, I was in my palace trying to enjoy my Saturday morning, and my cousin came over to tell me some insane story. I couldn't believe this guy. A princess, in a castle just an hour or two away from me by horse, asleep for 100 years?! Impossible. Absolutely impossible. What type of prince does he think I am, a stupid one?

“I don't believe you.” I said to my cousin as I rolled my eyes.

“I swear every word is true! When she was born, her parents were ecstatic. They had been longing for a child for so long, and finally the queen gave birth to a precious little girl. They had this huge celebration and invited everyone, except for this one fairy – ”

“A fairy?” I questioned. This guy was seriously taking me for a fool.

“Yes! This one fairy wasn't invited, and she put this wicked curse on the little girl. Once the princess turned 16, she would touch a spindle with her finger, and she would die. But you see cousin – I mean, my prince – the princess had fairies on her side. They managed to change the curse, so that when she would touch the spindle she would only go into a deep sleep for 100 years. After 100 years, a prince would come and kiss her, and she would awake and be saved. Once she turned 16, everything fell into place. She touched the spindle, and not only did she fall asleep but everyone in her castle did!” It was a little troubling to me that my cousin knew all about this story. He took it so seriously.

“100 years? Well I'm sure she's very attractive,” I said sarcastically. “Just out of curiosity, when did this all happen?” Suddenly my cousin looked away. He stared at the floor, at his feet, at my feet. He was looking everywhere but at me. I started getting irritated with him; he was acting so strange this morning!

“Spit it out already!” I yelled in frustration.

“Well, this is why I came to you my prince. You see, it happened 100 years ago.” he said quietly. I gasped as my eyes widened. 100 years ago? 100 years ago...Why was I suddenly so shocked, so curious, so confused?  I nervously laughed, and told my cousin that he better stop lying to me, and that he should just go home. He tried to tell me something, but I literally pushed him out of my palace. Once he left I began pacing the shiny marble floors back and forth. I knew exactly how to get to the place where this castle supposedly stood. I looked out my window, and all I saw was my horse staring right at me. I had to find out, I had to know that I wasn't going crazy. I ran out through the doors and jumped onto my horse. I was on a mission.

The wind blew through my hair and all the colors around me were a blur. The sun beamed down on me and sweat rolled down my face; there wasn’t a cloud in sight. In what seemed a short amount of time, I arrived right where the castle should be, but all I saw was grass. Grass that was taller than me, grass that would consume me – if I dared to walk through it. I looked back at the road, and I knew there was no way I could turn back.

I started climbing and crawling my way through the walls of green. It wasn't long until I couldn't see anything but grass around me. I started to panic, but there was no way I could stop. I had to find this castle, I knew it was here. As time went on I was becoming more afraid, and out of fear I started running. I kept running and running, gasping for some air, until I ran smack into a wall. All I remember is waking up and staring at the clear blue sky. I came back to reality, thanked God that no one was there to see that, and stood up. When I stood up, I almost fell right back down. My mouth was wide open, and I couldn't believe it. There in front of me was a giant castle. The stonewalls seemed to reach to the heavens, and the giant door was more intimidating than any guard I had ever seen. My palace wasn’t even this beautiful. Excitement quickly took over me and I opened the door and ran inside. I began admiring the old artwork on the windows, looking at all the ancient furniture; I was ready to explore the whole castle! But then I stopped.

‘The princess! The beautiful princess…she must be here. “

I've never ran up a flight of stairs so fast before in my life. Never had I had such feelings boiling inside my body. I ran past sleeping maids, butlers, and other people of royalty, until I reached this one door. It was made of maple wood, and I stared at it for a few minutes. Thoughts were galloping through my mind, would I really open the door? I placed my hand on the handle, and slowly went inside.

There she was. She was lying upon a small bed, with a lovely blue dress on. Her blond hair fell perfectly upon her face, and her lips – oh her lips. Her lips were ruby red. I walked towards her, and took in every enchanting detail. She was a princess, a treasure. I don't know what took over me, but the next thing I knew I was bending down, and holding her flawless face in my trembling hands.

“You're truly amazing...you're truly magnificent...not awake but still breath taking...you truly are a sleeping beauty.” and then I kissed her. Yes, I kissed her! I was never so happy before, never so in love. She opened her eyes, her beautiful ocean blue eyes, smiled at me, and I was sent into another world. Just a few hours earlier I was thinking that true love could never be found. That doors leading to happiness rarely ever opened. But here I was, with the most wonderful girl proving me wrong.

“You saved me.” she whispered as her soft hands held mine. I smiled back, and I knew this would be a new beginning.

“No,” I grinned, “You saved me.”

Image by E. F. Brewtnall.