Once upon a time....A discussion about Fairy tales from Dr Lionel Sims
A defining characteristic of fair tales is they contain magic – a frog speaks, a maiden’s first blood triggers a one hundred year sleep onto her castle culture, a dead mother sends gifts from the underworld to assist her daughter’s quest to marry a prince etc.. You would expect that if you were asked to tell a story in which you were allowed to break all physical laws by using magic in its telling, then the variety in the world’s collection of magical tales would be vast. Instead anthropology has found that all the world’s magical tales always use the same rules for their telling. For example, why does the King in the tale of Sleeping Beauty only have twelve golden plates and so cannot invite the thirteenth wise woman to the feast? And what is the real meaning of Cinderella’s two stepsisters cutting of their toe/heel for their feet to fit Cinderella’s golden slipper? The Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp showed in 1928 that all European folk tales use motifs like these so that in their overlapping just one infra-tale can be discerned. This fact, he claimed, must mean that they all emanate from a now lost European civilisation. If Stonehenge and Avebury are part of this lost civilisation, then can we find a battle between 12 and 13 at either? Can fairy tales help us understand how women’s oppression and general inequality emerge in prehistory?
By reaching back to debate our prehistoric roots we can hold up a mirror to what it is to be human to better equip us for what lies ahead. Fairy tales allow us to do that.
Lionel Sims