An Annotated Fairy Tale

[ursulav]

I frequently find myself on-line reading fairy tales. And being me, I frequently find myself maintaining a sort of mental running commentary about said fairy tales, and since I am spending today recuperating from Con-mode, I have nothing better to do than inflict it upon you!

The Blue Light is a folktale of Aaren-Thompson type 562. There’s a half-

Comments

[rabid_bookwyrm]

The version I'm familiar with indeed had dogs with eyes the size of very large round things, and (if I recall correctly) chests of copper, silver, and gold to go along with them. (Obviously, eye size is linked to value of chest). I believe the young woman was under some duress, or perhaps was just socially out of reach, but the soldier didn't throw boots at her, instead he had her to tea and they had lovely conversations (or whatever). But her parents or guardians get suspicious and tie a bag of flower to her ankle, and cut a little hole in it, and so they follow her to the soldier's lodgings. The soldier doesn't have any warning, and is carried off without his magic tinderbox. He does pay an urchin to go get it, and I don't honestly remember what happens after that - he might just have the dogs magic him and his girl off to the furthest Indies.

Which comes out to - not all versions are quite so iffy on the character of the soldier, but being a magical familiar is probably thankless work no matter whether you're a dog with eyes the size of millponds or a small black dwarf.

[nancylebov]

Not to nitpick, but I think you meant a bag of flour, much as I prefer the image of the princess leaving a trail of petals.

[rabid_bookwyrm]

I believe you might be right. :)

[rabid_bookwyrm]

That's the version I know too. The princess is locked in a tower because her fairy godmother or someone prophesied at her birth that she would marry a common soldier and the king didn't like that idea. The soldier hears that she's beautiful, so he gets the dogs to bring her so he can see her and she's so cute he kisses her. No bootblacking.

Then when he marries the princess he invites the dogs to the wedding and gives them good spots at the banquet table, and they freak out the guests by staring with their huge round eyes.

[rabid_bookwyrm]

YES! Did you have a fairy tale book that had a kind of... pastel cover, quite thick, lots of really lovely illustrations..... I'm sorry, this is a pretty vague description. Anyway, the wedding, the dogs at the wedding, yes.

[lurkerlynne]

Not a dog I'd care to meet in bright day, either.

[aella_irene]

My sister and I had a book with illustrations, and the dogs and their enormous eyes gave us nightmares.

[rabid_bookwyrm]

Oh no! I don't remember whether my version illustrated the dogs. I definitely remember the soldier in his jail cell, and I can't imagine how they could have got out of illustrating the three rooms with the three chests and the three dogs, but maybe they skipped it.