Reading Notes: English Fairy Tales, Part A

Photo by Marek Piwnicki


READING A:

- a stepmother to a little girl hated the girl and sent her off to buy candles. 
- the girl had to buy candles over and over again because a dog kept running off with them
- the stepmother acted like she didn't mind and faked consoling the girl by combing her hair
- the stepmother became jealous of the little girl's hair and she then chopped off her head
- the stepmother then took out the girls organs and cooked her for supper
- the little brother understood what happened and wept over his sister, burying her under a tree where roses began to grow
- but the stepmother ended up dying
- an old woman finds some money and decides to buy a pig
- on the way home the pig won't listen so she asks a dog to bite it, a stick to beat it, a fire to burn it, and an ox to help her and they wouldn't
- the woman even asks a butcher to kill the ox for not helping her and he refuses
- she asks a rope to hang the butcher but it wouldn't 
- she kept asking several things and animals for help and they refused. 
- they ended up helping her once she got them the things they wanted 
- two sisters of a king go out one day to a stream and one sister pushes the other in because she wants to be the heir to all the land. so the sister in the water floats downstream struggling to stay up
- a man and his daughter find her and pull her out of the stream but she had died. The man then made a harp out of her hair and breast bone and then he traveled and put her to rest. 
- he played a song for the king and they mourned her 

- a cinderella type story where a father has three daughters and he sends one away because he doesn't think she loves him. 
- the daughter finds a place to be a maid and ends up attending dances in disguise where a wonderful young master falls for her over and over again at three separate dances but no one knows that the mystery girl is the maid in disguise. 
- The maid eventually reveals herself to the master and marry him. 
- the maid's father realizes she loved him all along.  
- a story of three pig siblings 
- one pig builds a straw house and a wolf comes and blows it down and eat him
- the next pig builds a house out of furzes and then the wolf came along and had a bit my trouble but he eventually blew the house down and ate the pig
- the third pig made a house of bricks so the wolf couldn't blow the house down
- the wild tried to deceive the pig by getting him to come out of the house but he didn't come out
- eventually, the wolf tried to climb down the chimney to get the pig but the pig caught him in a big pot and cooked him and ate him.


Source: English Fairy Tales, by Joseph Jacobs, illustration by John Batton, 1890

















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