Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: National Tell a Fairy Tale Day (Buddhist stories)

Monday, March 8, 2021

National Tell a Fairy Tale Day (Buddhist stories)

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; nationaldaycalendar.com; rhymes.org.uk

Humans remember: Some fairy tales may be 6,000 years old (AAAS/sciencemag.org)

Fairy tales are really scary tales (New Scientist)

Every February 26th, have a happily-ever-after kind of future. It's National Tell a Fairy Tale Day.

What were once oral histories, myths [a word which used to mean true accounts], and legends retold around the fire or by traveling storytellers, have been written down and become known the world over as fairy tales.

Origins of Fairy Tales

[For the Buddhist origins of these popular European and Middle Eastern stories, see below.*]

Most fairy tales would fail today’s standards as set by the Association of Fairy Tales. They tell unseemly tales inappropriate for children.

Most traveling storytellers told stories about fairies with dramatic detail to make children behave, teach a moral lesson, or pass the time, much like ghost [hungry ghost stories, in Buddhism, or petavatthu] stories around a campfire today.

Many of the stories have some basis in truth.

For example, some believe Margarete von Waldeck, the daughter of the 16th century Count of Waldeck, inspired the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The area of Germany where the family lived was known for mining. Some of the tunnels were so tight they had to use children – or small people such as dwarfs – to work the mines.

I told jataka tales of the distant past.

Margarete’s beauty is well documented, and her stepmother sent her away. Margarete fell in love with a prince but mysteriously died before she could have her happily ever after.

As the tales evolved, they took on a more magical quality with characters such as fairies (Buddhist woodland-devis), giants (Buddhist asuras), mermaids (Buddhist sea nymphs as in MN 50), and gnomes (Buddhist kumbhandas) and sometimes gruesome story plots:

Toes cut off to fit into a slipper, a wooden boy killing his cricket, or instead of kissing that frog to make him a prince his head must be cut off. But those are the unrated versions.

Buddhist origins: retold by Brothers Grimm, Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen

Rhys Davids' Buddhist Birth-Stories (reprint)

[*It is a little known fact, realized almost a century and a half ago by European scholars, that the Buddha was the source of many Western fables and stories, particularly some of Aesop's Fables. They are known in Buddhism as Jataka Tales. See T. W. Rhys Davids' 1880 British Jataka translation, Buddhist Birth-Stories (Jataka Tales), where this realization is documented in the commentarial introduction of the Jataka called "The Story of the Lineage" or Nidana Katha].

The brothers Grimm collected and published some of the better known tales most of us are familiar with today. Jakob and brother Wilhelm set out on a quest to preserve these tales at a time in history when the tradition of oral storytelling was fading.

In 1812, they published their first volume of stories titled Household Tales. Their stories’ darker qualities were clearly meant for an adult audience.

Giants are real (Steve Quayle)
Rumpelstiltskin is one of the tales they collected. Several other versions exist and the little man in it claiming many different names across Europe. From Trit-a-trot(?) in Ireland to Whuppity Stoorie in Scotland, Rumpelstiltskin makes him difficult for historians to identify.

While some storytellers have a long and sometimes ancient history such as Aesop (The Fox and the Goose, The Ant and the Grasshopper), others are more recent, like the brothers Grimm.

Hans Christian Andersen, first published in 1829, brought us written versions of the Princess and the Pea, The Ugly Duckling, The Little Mermaid, and many more. Where Grimm’s tales could take on a darker cast, unmistakably written with adults in mind, Andersen’s stories are sweet and warm. More: