Ardizzone's English Fairy Tales
This collection of twelve fairy tales were particular favourites of Edward Ardizzone, who wanted to bring them together to share them with children, hoping that they would enjoy them also. The tales are taken from the collection of Joseph Jacobs, a folklorist who wanted children to read and enjoy English Fairy and Folk Tales as well as French and German tales by, for example, Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. Joseph Jacobs' collection of tales included folk tales, fables, legends etc. as well as fairy tales. I would find it difficult to choose my favourite twelve out of such a vast collection.
As well as choosing the tales for this book Edward Ardizzone also did the illustrations. His distinctive drawings compliment the tales beautifully. Sadly Edward Ardizzone died whilst working on the illustrations for a book of twenty-five folk tales, the illustrations for the eleven tales he had completed are used in this book. The remaining one, The Children in the Wood, uses illustrations which first appeared in 1972 in another edition of this poem published by The Bodley Head. My personal favourite in this book is the illustration at the start of The Old Woman and her Pig and, in particular, the dog looking up at the pig who is standing on the stile - is he saying 'you can do it' or 'get a move on!'?
Some of the titles are familiar to me, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, whilst with others I recognise the story but I know them by a different title. For example, Henny-Penny, to me, is Chicken Licken. Some of the others are very similar to well known tales - Cap o' Rushes is a Cinderella type story and Tom Tit Tot is not unlike Rumplestiltskin.
One of the tales I hadn't read before was The Three Sillies so I'll tell you a little more about it as, maybe, it's new to you too. It starts 'Once upon a time' (a good traditional opening line for a fairy tale), a farmer and his wife had a daughter who was courted by a gentleman. Each evening, when her suitor came to supper, the daughter would go down to the cellar to fetch beer. One evening she noticed a mallet stuck in the ceiling and had a terrible thought, what if she married, had a son and he came down the cellar to get beer and the mallet fell on his head and killed him! So upsetting was this thought that she sat down and cried. Her parents came down to the cellar, one by one, and then having heard her tale of woe also sat down with her and cried. Her suitor eventually came to see why no-one had come back upstairs. He listened to their fears then reached up to the ceiling and pulled the mallet down. He stated he had never met three such big sillies, now he was going travelling and if he met three sillier people he would come back and marry the daughter.
Not long after setting off on his travels the gentleman came to a cottage with a grass roof (early eco-friendly?), the owner of which had a cow. She was trying to push the cow up a ladder to eat the grass on the roof, despite the gentleman's suggestion that she should cut the grass and throw it down, she persisted and finally got the cow onto the roof. So that she would know if the cow fell off she tied a string around the cow's neck, fed the string down the chimney and tied the other end around her wrist. Soon the cow did fall off and was strangled by the string, meanwhile the woman was pulled up the chimney and suffocated! He had found his first 'silly'.
Further along his journey the gentleman stayed overnight at an inn where he had to share a room with a fellow traveller. In the morning the gentleman was amazed to see his companion hang his trousers over the knobs on a chest of drawers, run across the room and try to jump into them. Not surprisingly he wasn't having much success. The gentleman showed him how to put trousers on as any normal person would, his companion was very grateful and said he had never thought of doing it that way. He had met 'silly' number two.
Having travelled a little further the gentleman came to a village pond which was surrounded by people. They were all using rakes, brooms or pitchforks to reach into the pond. The gentleman asked them what they were trying to do. Their reply was that the moon had fallen into the water and they were trying to get it out. When he told them not to worry it was only the reflection and if they looked upwards they would see the moon they became abusive (pond rage?). He quickly left and decided that with all these sillies in the world he would return home and marry the daughter, which he did. Is that what you would call a happy ending? I'm not sure!
I found this book had a good mix of stories, not all with traditional happy endings, but all enhanced by Edward Ardizzone's excellent black and white illustrations.
Contributed by Lorna.
(Published on 4th Dec 2014 )