Franz Xaver von Schönwerth (1810–1886)

I found this pleasant enough to read although it's not a particularly stand out book unless you're SUPER into fairy tales. The writing is generally pretty close to a barebones oral retelling without elaboration or attempts to turn it into a "proper" story. This has its charms and is obviously valuable as a historical thing although there are quite a few stories which are kind of incoherent presumably because of all the oral changing. As you would expect most of the themes are pretty familiar if you've read much fairy tale stuff and there's some stories which are clearly the same but regional variation type thing but there's some changing up of things. The blurb suggests there's a bit more preservation of more impolite elements but it's not like a big thing. I forgot to read the introduction before returning it to the library (woops) but there's some helpful notes on each story and an appendix that links each story to the fairy tale classification thing I forget the name of.

One thing that interested me is how a decent proportion feature a noble treating the protagonist unbelievably badly, imprisoning them on a ridiculous pretext and threatening to kill them, and then the happy ending is them being like "oh ok actually you're fine" and then say marrying their daughter or whatever. Hard to explain but it's a weird theme.

There are a couple of stories in here that really seem out of step with the others. First one features a guy who really wants to marry a princess getting 3 magical items, losing each one to her individually because of his naivety, then recovering them through a trick, them seeming to reconcile... and then he murders them and burns down their city! And it just ends. It's a fascinating and weird reversal of the theme I just mentioned.

There's also one about a tailor who moves to a village with his mum. For some reason the rest of the villagers take a big disliking to them (vaguely implied cause they're rich and idle or something) and so the men collectively decide to murder the tailor. The tailor susses out their plan and lets his mum get murdered in his place, then does some shenanigans with the body. He then murders EVERY MAN IN THE VILLAGE through drowning them iirc. The story ends with him just going off to another village. It's so weirdly violent and amoral and there's no justification given at all.
Which is fascinating

I'd only recommend it if you're really interested in the wider history of fairy tales and their variations - it's very readable but there's only a few unusual tales here.… (mais)

I’m very grateful to Penguin Classics for the ARC I received via NetGalley.

Schönwerth’s collection of 500 unknown fairy tales was discovered in 2009 by Erika Eichenseer, herself a storyteller, folk tale scholar, and founder of the Franz Xaver von Schönwerth Society. The tales were gathering dust among his papers in an archive in Regensburg, but finally lived to see the light of day thanks to Eichenseer’s efforts and tireless championing of the fairy tale in general and of Schönwerth in particular. This lovely Penguin Classics translation moves Schönwerth’s world of wonder beyond the borders of the German-speaking world.

Unjustly lesser-known than the Grimm brothers, Perrault, or Andersen, Schönwerth collected his stories in the Bavarian Oberpfalz among people of varied social standing. What is most striking about his method is that he apparently almost completely refrained from interventions after writing down the stories, lending them a raw and authentic quality. The tales even lack an opening formula and instead provide the setting and introduce the characters straight away, e.g. “A wealthy merchant had a son named Karl, who was the silent type.” (The Beautiful Slave Girl); “Three huntsmen went in search of their sister, who had been abducted by a witch and hidden away in the woods” (Three Flowers). By the time we’ve read the first paragraph, so much has already happened, and we’re too far gone in the magical world to go back.

Many tales seem unfinished: either the heroes and heroines are frustrated in their quest to find happiness and there is no happy ending, or, more often, we don’t get proper closure or answers to most of our questions. However, the tales have a strange pull; the reader is drawn to turning the page in order to find out what happens next, questions and possible confusion notwithstanding.

Most of the tale types are already familiar to fans of Grimm, Perrault, and others. Enchanted castles, daring quests, envious stepmothers, talking animals, seductive merfolk, magical objects, the number three, and other familiar sights all inhabit these pages. However, both girls and boys are enchanted or need rescue in turn in a rather balanced measure, which delightfully subverts traditional gender roles: often boys are in distress, and girls use their wit and courage to save them.

The pagan or supernatural motifs in some of the tales are also often mixed with Christian symbolism (e.g. a girl prays to keep the mermaids away from her husband, or the Madonna appears in the role of a “fairy” godmother). Some of the tales are myths or legends, or Schönwerth’s takes on very famous stories, such as that of the Pied Piper.

My personal favourites are the so called “tall tales”, which feature the humorous exploits of ordinary people displaying extraordinary wit.

This volume appeals to casual readers and scholars alike. The former will appreciate the uninterrupted sequence of the stories themselves without any footnotes except Schönwerth’s own short remarks in two instances, and the latter will enjoy the commentary of each tale at the end, as well as the careful sources, German titles, and types of each story featured.

While many of the stories are brutal and raw, there is undoubtedly a solid number of them that I would select to read or tell to children, either for the humour or for the moral, but above all because every child and adult could profit from losing themselves in a world of wonder and enchantment.… (mais)

In her annotations to the Annotated Brothers Grimm, Maria Tatar mentioned that every story-teller probably adapted the story to their audience and situation. There isn't one true version. It struck me in reading some of these bare-bones plots that they offering jumping off points for the story-teller to expand the tale with other familiar motifs.

Consider the story "The Three Spindles," told in a page and a half. A pregnant girl is thrown out of her home by her angry parents. She comes to the aid of a wood sprite, who takes her into the home that she shares with two other sprites. The sprites spin moss into thread, which they trade for food. They care for the girl, and when her son is born, their greatest wish is that she leave him with them. She agrees, and as she leaves, the first sprite hands her three spindles of moss thread. She promises that if the girl hides these carefully in her house, she will never want for anything. If she is ever in real need, she should unspool some of the thread. There will never be less thread on the spindle, no matter how much she unwinds. The girl returns to her parents, who don't recognize her at first, since she is covered with moss. They take her back in, and thereafter, fortune favors them. The girl marries a wealthy farmer, but she never forgets her previously-unmentioned-promise to make a cake for the sprites every Saturday.

Think of the traditional bits of story-telling that could be added. After she moves into her husband's house, things don't go as well for her parents, and she winds some of the thread onto spindles for their house. Perhaps the husband discovers the spindles and their fortunes goes awry; the husband throws her out of the house in anger, and the sprites come to her aid again, She might miss giving the sprites the cake because she's giving birth on Saturday, and they demand the new baby, She could be reunited, or attempt to be reunited with her first child; her husband might be angry.

There are all kinds of ways to expand the story to fill a long evening.

I was also interested to note that the landlocked Bavarians have fresh-water mermaids; instead of having a fish tail, they merely have webbed feet.

I enjoyed reading the book, and I was fascinated by the insight it gave me into how a story could be varied with familiar motifs.… (mais)