Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time long, long ago, someone told a story while sitting around a fire. Of course, we have no idea exactly when story telling began or who that first story teller was. It doesn’t matter who the storyteller was, or who all the forgotten storytellers who followed were. It was an attempt to make sense of the world.

The beginning stories; myths, folktales and fairy tales, usually had elements of magic like dragons, wizards, witches, talking animals or magic objects like magic mirrors, a magic ring and even beans as in Jack in the Beanstalk. The number three was often important in those stories, too, like in The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Three Wishes, and The Three Billy Goats Gruff to name a few. The number three carries on with three main characters; victim, villain and the hero who goes on a quest to save the victim or thwart the bad guy and often has to fulfill three challenges to reach his goal. The only heroine I can think of offhand in those early tales was Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, who killed the evil witch and saved Hansel.

Over the years the stories have been altered and changed, but many sill followed the same motif of good conquering evil with a happy ending as in The Chronicles of Narnia and The Harry Potter series. This is not true with more modern literary works, but it still holds true with most mysteries, albeit with an absence of magic except in some paranormal mysteries.

I have always enjoyed reading folktales and took a class in college about folktales. It was one of my favorite classes. Folk tales have been told all over the world. Much of the fairy tales originated in folk tales like Cinderella which comes from France as does Puss in Boots and  Beauty and the Beast and others. The Fisherman and his Wife, Little Red Riding Hood, and many, many others came from Germany. In North America there was People Who Could Fly, The Wonderful Tar Baby Story (Uncle Remus) and Paul Bunyan’s Cornstalk, and many more told by American Indians.

Some authors have picked up on the fairytale or folklore theme and altered them like Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and others written from the point of view of one of the characters from a fairytale. The same was done even earlier with children’s books like The True story of the 3 Little Pigs! By A. Wolf as told to Jon Scieszka. One of my favorite children’s picture books was An Undone Fairy Tale by Ian Lendler in which the princess locked in the tower by her wicked step-father in the end rescues Sir Wilber, who comes to rescue her. It’s a delightfully funny tale immensely enjoyed by all the classes I’ve read it to both in my own classes and in the many classes I substituted for later.

Because we live in a world often filled with violence, dishonesty, and unfairness, we still hope for the happy ever after ending portrayed in many fairy tales even though deep in our minds, we know it can’t always be that way. Of course, some fairy tales are cautionary tales like The Fisherman and His Wife or The Emperor’s New Clothes, but most mysteries, other than noir, and especially in cozies, do follow the fairy tale motif ending of: “and they lived happily ever after,” unless it’s part of a series where we’re only given hints that if we keep reading the series it eventually will be with a happy ever after ending.

Of course it’s rarely the same joyful tripping down the path of happiness we envisioned when Cinderella was romanced by the handsome Prince Charming, and they went off to live in his castle where her life then became perfect; no quarrels, no problems, no dirty diapers, no sickness, and all was love and laughter, Sigh.

No, mysteries are more realistic than that. However, we do have the same motif; victim, villain, and hero/heroine. The heroes or heroines may be flawed. In fact, that makes them more interesting if they are. The reader may not know who the villain of the story is in advance, but will follow with the hero/heroine’s quest to bring the villain to justice, trying to figure it out as they read along, either who the villain is or how the villain will be uncloaked. Usually the hero or heroine has a friend or sidekick, although not seven dwarfs like Cinderella had, but someone to bounce ideas off of and help them when necessary. There may not be a Cinderella ending, but it almost always brings satisfaction to the reader because justice, at least in mysteries is served. And that’s what makes mysteries so popular. It brings a sense of justice to the reader. At least it does until they pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV.

Do you like happy endings in your mysteries?

Do you like folk tales or Fairy Tales?

URBAN LEGENDS

Just a few of my many books on folklore and myths.

In the early 1980s I took one of my favorite classes while earning a degree in elementary education. It was a class in Folklore taught by one of my favorite professors, Vivian Pemberton, who became a friend of mine. I found all aspects of the class interesting, but the one I’m writing about here is urban legends. They often derive from earlier legends that have been changed through the year with each telling. A few years after I’d graduated, a column appeared in my local tribune called “Urban Legends,” written by Professor Jan Harold Brunvand. I have no idea which college she taught at, or what her specialty was, but I clipped out those articles and still have them almost thirty years later.

The first I’m going to tell is about a Doberman’s meal, in which a young woman who lived alone returned home to find her Doberman choking violently. She immediately drove the dog to her local veterinarian. The vet informed her that the dog would have to be sedated, and it could be several hours to correct the problem and release the dog. He told her to return home, and he would telephone her later. Her telephone was ringing when she unlocked her door, and it was the veterinarian. In a barely controlled voice, he told her to leave the house immediately. No questions – just leave. The police arrived a few moments later, for the vet had also called them. They searched the house and found a burly, mean burglar hiding in the hall closet, passed out from loss of blood. The Doberman had been choking on three of the burglars’ fingers, which it had bitten off.

The professor wrote that this could be true, but was more than likely passed down from the ancestor of this story. In the original story, the hero, Prince Llewellyn, returns home where he has left his hunting dog guarding the baby. He discovers the dog, covered with blood, cringing at the open front door. Then he sees the baby’s crib inside, overturned and empty. Assuming that the dog has attacked the child, the prince kills the animal, only to find when he enters the home, that the baby is safe and a huge wolf that the dog had fought off is lying dead on the floor. I’ve heard the same story about a husky in Alaska, that killed a wolf, but unfortunately the owner thought his dog had killed the baby so he shot his dog.

 

My friend Laura goes along with any crazy idea I  suggest.

Once upon a time I heard another story that turned out to be an urban legend. A woman was driving along and saw a dead cat beside the road. Being an animal lover, she put the cat in a plastic bag planning to bury it when she returned home. She put it in her trunk, and drove to the local mall where she was heading. She went inside and did her shopping and when she returned with her bags, she put the bags in the trunk, and the bagged dead cat on the trunk as she headed to another store in the mall to buy one last thing. As she came out, she saw a woman furtively looking around and then snatched the bag with the dead cat in it, and headed for her own car.

The woman who had picked up the dead cat was curious and followed the woman to a nearby restaurant. The thieving woman took the package she’d stolen into the restaurant where she met a friend. The animal lover took a booth nearby where she could watch the woman when she opened the package. When she did, she let out a scream and passed out. The story said she died of a heart attack.

And then there’s the story I told my brother Jerry, and our cousins Norman and Dolores when we camped out one night in a tent on our grandparents’ farm close to our houses. The story goes:

A young boy was given money by his mother to go to the store to buy liver for supper. However, the boy bought candy instead (Or depending on who tells this, maybe a bigger kids stole the money.) and realized his mother would be very angry with him. He didn’t know what to do, but as he passed a graveyard on his way home with a fresh grave, he dug up the body, and removed the man’s liver and headed home and gave it to his mother. That night when he’s upstairs in bed, he hears a heavy footstep on the stairs, and a voice says “One step, give me back my liver.” And then he hears, “Two steps, give me back my liver.” The boy is terrified and huddles down under his blankets, then he hears another step and the deep voice say “Three steps give me back my liver.” And that’s when I grab the person’s arm next to me and shout “I got cha!” And, of course, the screams rang out. I did the same thing with my Cub Scouts and my Girl Scouts.  

The whole story is ridiculous. I mean a young kid digs up a grave that to my knowledge has always been six feet deep? But it’s all in the telling and the setting at the time. Usually around a campfire at night.

 

In my second book, I have my main character locked in a trunk, and the old legend of a young girl who sinks into a coma for some reason goes through her mind. The doctor pronounced the girl dead, and she was buried on top of a hill in the family cemetery on the family farm. Her parents grieved for her as does the dog. For several nights they heard their dog howling mournfully. The wife insisted they dig up the coffin, although the husband thought she’d gone crazy with grief, went along with it. When they dug up the coffin and opened it they saw the inside satin of the lid torn into pieces with some still in their dead daughter’s hands. She had been buried alive and had been trying to get out. Did this actually happen once upon a long time ago? Maybe.

Before television, movies, radio, and even the written word, people told tales. It was partly to entertain and partly to pass true stories on to future generations. It’s more than likely that even if there was some truth in the original story, a good story teller embellished the facts with fiction.

What urban or other legends do you remember?