The Changeling

                               

This video was made on May 18, 2009 at the newly opened Rhone Plaza in Central Square, Cambridge.  The occasion was our monthly MouthOff, hosted by MassMouth, a Massachusetts-based Storytelling organization.  Stu Mendelson, Norah Dooley and I came up with the theme of "Working Mothers" as a good theme for the month of May, in honor of Mothers Day and International Workers' Day.

I have long been drawn to the story of the Changeling: a counterfeit child left by the Faerie folk in exchange for a human baby who is stolen to replenish the dwindling ranks of that secret and magical race.  The Celtic peoples in particular tell many tales in which small children - especially those who have not yet been named or baptized - are stolen away while their mothers are not looking, and replaced by a supernatural substitute.  Such stories invariably end with the restoration of the "real" child, usually after the determined mother tricks the Changeling to betray its true nature and threatens it with physical harm.  The threatened Faerie being gives back the child, who is none the worse for wear, and all is well.

(from "Labyrinth", my favorite Jim Henson flick)

Or is it?

Stories about healthy children who are spirited away and replaced by sickly inhuman monsters, draw upon a deep and elemental terror that lurks in the heart of nearly every parent: the fear of losing a child.  But there is a subtext - and a sub-fear - to the story of the Changeling, which beneath its frightening surface narrative of kidnapping and restoration, presents us with the equally terrifying idea that a baby who seems normal and healthy can drastically and mysteriously change in some dreadful way, with little warning or explanation.  Thus, the concept of the magical Changeling is rooted in a harsh human reality: a child who seems "normal" at first, but then shows signs of "inhuman" abnormality.  Perhaps some parents - confronted by the sad truth that something was wrong with their child - were comforted by the notion that "this isn't really my child".  And so the story of the Changeling was born.

Interestingly, but cruelly, these stories also imply that the terrible transformation/ailment of the Changeling is due to some form of negligence on the part of the mother: she left the child alone for a moment, she forgot to hang rowan berries over its cradle, she didn't baptize the child in the Christian faith, etc.  The loss - or transformation - of her offspring is thus presented as a punishment for maternal misdeeds. It naturally follows that she must somehow redeem herself in the eyes of some supernatural authority before she is considered worthy to have her "true" (i.e. healthy) child restored to her.  She must perform a mysterious nonsensical ritual, and then - in a parallel of the story of Abraham and Isaac - she must threaten her "child" with violence or even death.  Only then will she be rewarded by the return of her little one.

The moral of this story? Be a good mother, or else.

"A Fairy flew off with the Changeling" by Arthur Rackham

Dawn of a Literary Friendship

Dawn of a Literary Friendship (<- this is a live link, go ahead and click!)

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My late grandfather, Robert Phelps, was a very different kind of storyteller than yours truly, but there is no doubt that he had a way with words, especially when he took the time to write them down.  Arguably, his true and preferred mode of expression was epistolary, and it is a testament to his particular genius that, decades after his passing, his friends (in this case, Jim Salter) and relatives have kept and treasured his letters.  They are each gems of his own unique brand of distilled wit and wistful wisdom; well worth reading, and re-reading.  

In our brave new world of Twitter, blogs, e-mail, facebook, and instant messages, a good old-fashioned letter has a compelling beauty that has the power to connect us with another human being in a way that is increasingly rare and precious.

Vardiello

You've read about it (see below, for my previous blog posting), now you can watch it!  Last night, I performed "Vardiello" at our April MouthOff, hosted by MassMouth and the ever-gracious staff of Toscanini's, in Central Square, Cambridge, MA.  To enjoy the other storytelling performances, please click here (my MassMouth video page)!

Fooling Around

"Loudly sing cuckoo!"  So said a wise man once.  April is a wonderful time to explore tales of Fools, Numbskulls, and Noodleheads, and I recently had the pleasure of performing one such story.  Known as Tale #4 of the Neapolitan Giambattista Basile's famous collection of elegantly re-worked folktales called "Il Pentamerone", it is subtitled "Vardiello".

The hero of our tale - the eponymous Vardiello - is a silly fellow who lives alone with his mother, a sensible and intelligent woman, except where her son is concerned.  The fun begins when she leaves him home alone to babysit her valuable chicken, currently brooding over a clutch of eggs.  Her proactive attempts to protect the hen and its offspring from her son's well-meant "help" result in one absurd household disaster after another.  Upon her return, she finds the hen gone, the eggs crushed, her wine spilled, her carefully hoarded supply of walnuts devoured, and her foolish son hiding in the oven after a failed suicide

 attempt.  And that right there would have been an appropriate ending to this silly tale of woe, but Vardiello was only getting warmed up!

Why his mother gave him a second chance, we'll never know; her persistent albeit unfounded belief in Vardiello's mental capacity is the underlying engine upon which this story runs.  This time, she tries sending him out of the house, with the goal of selling an expensive bolt of cloth (see image above).  Fearing that he will be easily swindled by some clever fast-talker, she warns her son to avoid buyers who talk too much.  Which results in Vardiello selling the cloth to a statue.

The poor mother's frustration can only be imagined, however Vardiello is not finished!  Returning to his customer, with the innocent expectation of being paid for the cloth which he had left at the taciturn fellow's feet the day before, Vardiello is shocked and outraged when no payment or explanation is forthcoming.  In a fit of uncharacteristic rage, the poor fool crushes the "man" with a rock, only to find that his client is hollow and contains a large quantity of gold coins!!

Gratified as his put-upon mother is to receive this unexpected but very welcome treasure, she is left with the problem of how to deal with Vardiello.  He can't possibly be trusted to keep his mouth shut about all that gold, and what will the neighbors say then?  Vardiello's mother now proves herself to be something of a genius: she tricks her son into believing that it is raining figs and raisins; thus, when he inevitably blabs about finding treasure to all who will listen, he explains that his good fortune occurred on the day when fruit fell from the sky.  Pitying him as a supposed madman, a concerned judge sends Vardiello away to a madhouse, leaving his mother - with the gold - in peace at last.

                                                                  

What fascinates me about this complex and episodic story is the connections it has to other tales and tale-telling traditions.  For instance, Vardiello's mother attempts to prevent him from eating her carefully saved stash of pickled walnuts, by telling him that they are poisonous. Ironically, her precaution backfires when Vardiello decides to take his own life for fear of facing his mother's wrath, having killed her chicken, crushed its precious eggs (in an attempt to keep them warm by sitting on them), and inadvertently poured the contents of an entire keg of wine on the flour.  Despondently, he eats her all of her walnuts and placidly waits for death's release in his mother's oven.

The motif of the fool who purposely eats hoarded food disguised as poison as an attempt at suicide is found in Isaac Bashevis Singer's lovely collection of Yiddish folktales "Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories" in the story of Shlemiel.  Shlemiel is a classic fool in the Yiddish tradition; he tries and tries but simply cannot get anything right!  When his wife leaves him to take care of their baby and rooster, he similarly goofs up, although thankfully in this tale there are no fatalities, human or avian.  But like Vardiello, Shlemiel fears female retribution when his misdeeds are found out, so he eats his wife's delicious "poison".  We, the Readers, chortle knowingly, enjoying the fruits of Shlemiel's "logical" thinking.

Similarly, when Vardiello is tricked into thinking - and then telling - how food has fallen like rain from the sky, there are cognates in other traditions.  A wonderful German folk tale called "The Blabbermouths" features a wife who successfully prompts her husband to convince a magistrate of his own supposed madness, when he describes how donuts fell the day he dug up treasure.

The moral of these silly tales?  Fooling fools is a complex yet lucrative business for enterprising wives and mothers! 

                                                                   

A Pottle o' Brains

Today I went on a story-ramble through a nice old pile of library books and - wouldn't you know - I found a hidden gem: a story that made me smile, and made me think.  Actually, it made me downright puzzled for a while.  What on earth is a "pottle"????

                                                                           

A pottle, you ask?  First off, if you have to ask, you obviously are neither a) from Lincolnshire, England, nor b) extremely elderly.  If you were, you'd know right away that a pottle is a unit of measurement, referring specifically to a measure of volume of about 2 quarts - about the amount which could be contained in an old-fashioned tankard of beer, such as you'd see in one of those quaint old prints of English country life.  (Take a moment to enjoy "The Sea Captain John Oxenham Enjoying a Tankard of Sack with His Fellow Sailors" by N. C. Wyeth.  For more on John Oxenham, read chapter 7 of "On the Spanish Main" by John Masefield)

                                     

Note the tankards.

Still with me?  Wondering what on earth I found so entertaining about an obscure antiquated English form of measurement?  Turns out, it is a crucial detail in a very interesting and entertaining little tale, which features, among other things, a noodlehead.  Here goes:

                                                                          

A young fool, tired of his own stupidity, decided one day to remedy the situation.  He went to a wise old woman, known for her herbal remedies and general cleverness, and asked her if she could give him - wait for it - a "pottle o' brains". Unfazed by this unusual request, the woman instructed him to bring her the heart of whatever he loved most, and she'd see what she could do.  Hey, how hard can it be to fix a dimwit?

   Brain          +         Pottle           = Smartypants

               

Filled with hope, the idiot went home to his mother, with whom he lived, and thought for a while, before deciding that there was nothing for it but to slaughter his mother's fattest hog, since he could think of nothing that he loved more than bacon.  The next day, he brought the dead hog's heart to the wise woman, and she posed him a riddle: What runs without feet? The poor young dolt thought and thought, but had no answer.  The wise woman determined by this that he hadn't brought the right heart and sent him home to try again.

The despondent dummy cried all the way home, and on his way a young woman stopped him and asked him what the trouble was.  He explained and - here's where the story really gets interesting - she offered to marry him!?!   

                           

Now, before you go and assume that we now have TWO numbskulls to contend with, consider this: before she proposed to the dope, this smart gal asked him a) if he could cook, clean and mend her clothing, and b) whether he would mind if she was the wage-earner for their household.  Amazingly, our village idiot revealed himself to be a regular Martha Stewart in the home, and moreover, he was elated at the prospect of not having to try to make a living as the other men in his community did.  The two decided to get hitched the very next day, eager to enjoy the benefits of a non-traditional marriage arrangement.

         

However, when the dimwit went home to announce his engagement to his mother, she became so upset at the prospect of her son marrying a woman who did men's work and refused to keep house that she DIED.

 

Right there, on the spot, finis.  One can only imagine how the poor idiot wept at the sudden shocking demise of his only parent.  Thinking back on how tenderly she had cared for him, fed him, clothed him, tolerated his incurable stupidity, the fool wailed and sobbed and mourned his terrible loss.  When suddenly it occurred to him that his mother was the one he loved best in all the world - even more than bacon - and he had another shot at getting his "pottle o' brains"!

                                            

Don't worry, there is no Frankenstein scene; the idiot decided to simply bring his dead mother - heart and all - to the wise woman and attempt to get his pottle.  Whereupon she asked him another riddle: what is shiny and yellow but is not gold?  Not surprisingly, the moron had no clue, and left as empty-headed as before.

After burying his mother, the idiot married his sweetheart and the two were very happy together.  He happily cooked and cleaned, while she cheerfully went out to work and earned a very good living.

All was well, except that the fool still secretly yearned to be smart.  One evening, gazing at his wife, he realized with a start that she was the one whom he loved best.  Taking a risk, he admitted to her that he still craved brains (sorry, couldn't resist), but loved her so much that he wasn't sure how he'd ever get them, since he couldn't bear the thought of killing her to get a pottle for himself.  The wife suggested that they visit the wise woman together and see what they could do, but her moron husband doubted she could solve the wise woman's riddles, and told her the two puzzlers she'd already posed him.  His wife, to his amazement, immediately answered them.

What runs without feet?  Water!

What's shiny and yellow but not gold?  The Sun!               

Impressed by his wife's intelligence, the dork agreed to go again to the wise woman and try for his pottle.  He presented his wife - heart included - to the wise woman, who asked him a third riddle: What has no legs at first, then two, and then four?  The dummy turned to his wife hopefully, who told him the answer, which he then told to the wise woman.

A tadpole!                  

The wise woman asked him if he knew the answers to her other riddles; the idiot grinned at his wife and proudly told the answers.  The wise woman grinned at the cute couple, and informed the dummy that he now had his pottle o' brains, which were being kept safe in his wife's head, where they belonged.  The moron and his wife went home, and lived happily ever after.               

                                                                      

So, what's the moral(s) of this peculiar little tale?  Here are a few ideas.

1) In marriage, it doesn't matter so much who does what, simply that the important stuff gets done.

2) Being smart is nice, but love is even nicer.

3) A man who can vacuum is worth his weight in gold.

(With apologies to my very dear and VERY smart husband, who happens to be an artist with a vacuum.)

First Night 2009, featuring "Stories From The Stoop"

For First Night 2009, Andrea Lovett and I along with Norah Dooley and Laura Lovett put together and filmed a series of performances by children from the Franklin Park Tenants Association of Dorchester (we call this troupe "Stories From the Stoop") and teenagers from the Prospect Hill Academy, where Norah teaches. 

Here are several of the stories that Andrea and I have been teaching our kids for the last couple of months. We had a really good time, and I think the kids did, too. Thank you so much, Norah, for videotaping this terrific event.  Happy New Year!

This Persian-Iranian story is called "No Doubt About It".  Stanley, Nikhia and Khy-Asia helped me to tell this tale of a boy, his parrot, and a simpleton.

Eric and Stanley helped me tell this Scandinavian pourquoi tale called "Why Bear Has a Short Stumpy Tail", in which sly Fox has some fun at Dopey Bear's expense.

Andrea and the kids told their favorite story of all, "Baby Louise and the Ghost with One Black Eye".  This popular American ghost story has been told in various guises for years, and our troupe really made it their own!

Stories from the Stoop rehearses for First Night 2009