Monday, October 16, 2006

Widdershins

I have always loved fairy tales. I do not mean the insipid heavily-edited baby-tales, the Disney-fied versions; I am speaking of the real thing: stories full of blood and guts and red-hot spikes and death and endings-that-are-not-always-happy and the accidental lunching on one's infant and the horrendous consequences of not following directions or keeping oneself moral.

Mom had a large thick book of fairy tales when we were kids. One of my favorites was a tale not as popular as Cinderella, or Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty, etc. One of my favorites was the story of Burd Ellen, and her brothers.

I loved this story on so many levels. . . . but one of those levels was the vocabulary. It was full of many-syllabic wonders: words that the second and third grade world would have shortened and made politically correct in a whipstitch.

My favorite word in this story was "widdershins."

Its meaning wasn't explained within the story, and I liked that, too. It meant that I got to pull down the absolutely immense dictionary and look it up. And while I had the dictionary down, I got to look at the shiny slick pages of world flags, and jewels, but I digress.

Widdershins. Burd Ellen was snatched up by evil elves and taken to fairyland because she went widdershins around the church. I was lost in fascination by this word and by this concept. She and her brothers were caught up in playing and forgot the warning and she went widdershins around the church, chasing the ball.

Please, take your children to the library and check out a big thick book of UNABRIDGED fairy tales. Don't waste your time with anything that's been edited; you want the real thing, the genuine unadulterated scary bloody real thing.

Some "experts" claim that scary stories traumatize children. I do not believe that. This is not to say that your five-year-old would do fine with Steven King, no, not at all. But a good satisfying scary fairy tale? Go for it. I can still remember sitting with that huge book, projecting myself into the illustrations, and grooving on the musicality of the language. I can remember coming to the end of a story and closing the book, thinking satisfactorily that since the wicked stepmother is dead, she's not OUT THERE any more, and not only is Cinderella safe from her grasping hands, but so am I!!!

Whereas the Disney stepmother was forgiven, which means she's still OUT THERE, and no little child is safe.

The little mermaid died, too, but it was the only honorable way out for her.

I love Disney animated movies, don't get me wrong, but those are not the real stories. I wish parents and teachers would expose children to the real thing, in print, and refuse to allow those sissy censored edited changed and WRONG WRONG WRONG booksof these stories to grace the bookshelves of our schools and homes. Let the kids experience the wonder and satisfactory retributions and blood and guts and weeping and punishments and VOCABULARY of these stories, exactly as the authors and re-tellers put them down in the first place. It creates opportunities for comparison/contrast, too. Run with it.

I can close my eyes and remember those illustrations. There weren't very many, because too many pictures in a good book is an unpleasant distraction, but those pictures that were there, were, to quote Spencer Tracy on Katherine Hepburn, "cherce."

Widdershins. Burd Ellen. I hadn't thought of this story in years, but I thought of it this afternoon whilst chatting (shhhhh) with a dear friend during MidTerms. I remembered how much I loved it.

What? You don't know the story of Burd Ellen and her brothers, and what happened to them all when she went widdershins around the church? Shame on you. Go HERE, and become enlightenened at once. Do not skip the big words. That is what your dictionary is for.

And contrary to what a select few elementary teachers (not the good ones) might think, small children LOVE big words. There is no need to dumb a story down for them. No need at all.

Condescension is never a good thing.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly