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Some fairy tales thousands of years old

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Lisa
Bibliophile
Posts: 1153
Joined: August 2012
Favourite HF book: Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman
Preferred HF: Any time period/location. Timeslip, usually prefer female POV. Also love Gothic melodrama.
Location: Northeast Scotland

Some fairy tales thousands of years old

Post by Lisa » Wed January 20th, 2016, 11:49 am

The article doesn't give too much info and I'd like to know more; I'll research it in more detail later when I have a chance. I'm not surprised that some of these tales date back thousands of years, I wonder how long ago the folklore in my local area dates back to?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35358487

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MLE (Emily Cotton)
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Interest in HF: started in childhood with the classics, which, IMHO are HF even if they were contemporary when written.
Favourite HF book: Prince of Foxes, by Samuel Shellabarger
Preferred HF: Currently prefer 1600 and earlier, but I'll read anything that keeps me turning the page.
Location: California Bay Area

Re: Some fairy tales thousands of years old

Post by MLE (Emily Cotton) » Wed January 20th, 2016, 9:41 pm

I'm not surprised. I've always considered the fairy tale the basic format for what people want in a story, because they are so similar across all cultures and eras, and they express, in outline, the underlying 'moral code' humankind seems to have built-in.

My favorite fairy tale, when I was a kid, was Sheherizade and the thousand and one Arabian nights--although I don't think my young self got it that what the sultan was actually doing was screwing a different woman every night and then offing her. I just liked that she could come up with something so fascinating that he had to hear more. Incipient storyteller, I guess. :D

Anybody? what was yours, and why?

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fljustice
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Re: Some fairy tales thousands of years old

Post by fljustice » Sun January 24th, 2016, 9:15 pm

I love fairy and folk tales and have collected them for years. I'm working on a writing project where I'm retelling some of my favorites from around the world. First up is Tokoyo based on a Japanese folktale from the 1300's.
Faith L. Justice, Author Website
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DianeL
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Re: Some fairy tales thousands of years old

Post by DianeL » Mon January 25th, 2016, 2:02 pm

Lisa, thanks for sharing the link!

Like MLE, this doesn't surprise me either; fairy tales deal in archetypes, and human beings tell the same stories across cultures and millennia. The example of Beauty and the Beast is great - when I was a kid, I learned the story of Cupid and Psyche before I ever ran across B&B, with the result that the latter seemed a drab retellng stripped of all the depths of the mythic era.
"To be the queen, she agreed to be the widow!"

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The pre-modern world was willing to attribute charisma to women well before it was willing to attribute sustained rationality to them.
---Medieval Kingship, Henry A. Myers

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