Christmas arts round up

[nineveh_uk]

Back home, after the end of the Christmas holidays. It’s been a slightly strange fortnight, with a very disjointed second week as one by one the household succumbed to plague*. I had a very enjoyable Christmas, receiving some excellent presents, and we managed to do quite a bit, but there were various things that didn’t get done and I am not

Comments

[sonetka]

I haven't either -- and rereading what I wrote last night, I was clearly not firing on all cylinders because while the originals of SB and SW feature kisses, they're not described as "true love's kiss" -- in fact, they're more a matter of timing than of emotion. The prince in SB happens to arrive at the deadly hedge as the hundred years of sleep is over (at least in the version I read, there are probably many of them) and when he finds Sleeping Beauty, he kisses her, but it's not clear if this is needed to wake her up or if she would have woken anyway. Again, probably varies by version. In SW, the prince kisses Snow White, which causes her to cough up the bit of poisoned apple that was still in her throat and wake up. (Of course, in "The Frog Princess" a kiss will undo the spell, but it has to be a kiss from a princess, not a true love). I'm not sure about the various fairy tale versions of "The Frog Prince" -- the joke is always about a princess kissing a frog to turn him into a prince, but whether it's "true love's kiss" -- I'm not sure those words are ever used, or if love is necessary. And in the version I remember reading, in a c. 1945 somewhat-expurgated fairytale book -- meaning that it had Rapunzel not getting pregnant among other things -- the princess wasn't asked to kiss the frog, but to bring him to her table and let him sleep in her bed, and when she did that, the spell was broken and he turned into a prince. A bit like in that song "King Henry" where the king has to take the evil monster to bed before she transforms.

There's also the Russian fairy tale of "The Frog Princess" but in that one, her suitor stupidly burns her frog skin when she steps out of it temporarily and then has to pursue her across hundreds of miles and rescue her from Koshchei Bessmertnii and kill him, so yes -- mere kisses seem to be regarded as weak sauce in the fairy tale world.

[sonetka]

And now looking it up, the Disney version of SB does say "And from this slumber you shall wake / When true love's kiss the spell shall break." And in Snow White, "The victim of the Sleeping Death can be revived only Love's First Kiss." Sorry, I meant to put that in the previous comment but got sidetracked. So "love's first kiss" was used in 1937 at least.