Four remembered stories…

Girls reading, a painting by Henri Lebasque (1865-1937) (Source:Wikimedia Commons)

Once upon a training course we were asked to think back to the earliest stories we could remember. Some people recalled true stories, some recalled fairy stories. When we revealed our most persistent memories we realised they seemed to say something about ourselves and what drives us.

One woman was a very nurturing type of person and her memory was of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I wonder what your stories would be? Here are a few of mine…

Pear Blossom

Pear Blossom is helped to clear weeds from the paddy field by a big, black bull – an illustration by Ruth Heller from The Korean Cinderella by Shirley Climo

I read Pear Blossom as a picture story in a girls’ annual during one of my childhood illnesses, sitting in bed in my “Auntie” Margaret’s warm house. She owned the village shop and had central heating – we didn’t.

I remember it as a Japanese story, but I know now that it is a Korean version of Cinderella. I didn’t recognise the similarity at the time.

Pear Blossom has a cruel stepmother and stepsister and they are constantly trying to get rid of her by setting her up to fail in seemingly impossible tasks. But each time she comes through thanks to magical creatures.

As in most fairy tales, the tasks come in threes. A flock of sparrows help her sort the grains from the chaff when a sack of rice is scattered on the floor and a big, black bull helps her clear the weeds from the rice paddy fields. She also has to fetch water in a cracked jar. I recall a little fire goblin coming to help her, by mending the earthenware pot, but in some versions a fat frog jumps into the jar to block the hole.

Finally, tasks done, Pear Blossom manages to go to town to see the big parade. I remember her admiring a handsome prince in a palanquin, and “he saw her standing there in the crowd”, but I hadn’t recalled that she had a stone in her sandal, climbed a tree and accidentally dropped the shoe on to the parade. Clearly a Cinderella link there.

Of course she gets the prince and they live happily ever after – although traditionally I think the prince is a magistrate, which doesn’t sound quite so romantic.

What does this story tell me? I believe in miracles? Someone will rescue me? All will be well? Certainly I think of this tale every time I am doing a seemingly endless task like sweeping fallen leaves from the lawn.

Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel looking for the breadcrumb trail – an image by Alexander Zick (1845-1907)

Another fairy story – this time by the Brothers Grimm. And interestingly another wicked stepmother. This time little Hansel and Gretel are taken to the middle of the forest and abandoned by their woodcutter father after his new wife convinces him they can’t afford to feed them.

The aspect of this story that resonates with me is the fact that Hansel knows what’s afoot and collects a pocketful of white pebble in advance. He drops these on the way and later the children find their way home by following the shiny trail in the moonlight.

Their father regrets his actions and welcomes them back. But soon they are starving again and they will again be abandoned. This time the stepmother locks them in, so they have no chance to pick up stones before they are taken into the woods. Instead they drop a trail of breadcrumbs. And of course these are eaten by the birds (so, unlike in the previous tale, nature isn’t always on your side).

Lost in the woods, the children are taken in by a witch with a gingerbread house, who fattens up Hansel in a cage, to eat him. When she asks to feel his finger to see how fat he is, he sticks a chicken bone out every time, so she thinks him still skinny. Finally she decides to eat him anyway. She asks Gretel to check how hot the oven is, but Gretel pretends she doesn’t understand so the witch demonstrates – and Gretel pushes her into the oven and slams the door.

The children find treasure and take it home to their grateful father – and the wicked stepmother has mysteriously died, so that’s OK.

I know why this story appeals to my character – it’s because it’s all about troubleshooting and problem-solving. I love the way the children work out solutions to each situation they find themselves in.

Alice in Wonderland

A scene from Alice in Wonderland illustrated by Nadia Sultan – I think the original was on Elfwood.com but the link no longer seems to work

I read Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland many times when I was a child. I had one version that was illustrated with photographs of a girl wearing those shiny black patent Mary Jane shoes that fasten with a little black bead. We all had such shoes, didn’t we?

I remember the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and the caterpillar with a hookah, sitting on a mushroom, but one particular scene often comes to mind.

Do you recall when Alice finds a corridor with a cute little door in the wall and on a glass table she finds a golden key to open it? She is too big to go through the door. So she drinks from the bottle labelled “Drink Me” and shrinks. But then, of course, she finds she has left the key on the table and can’t now reach it. She cries a river and is swept away to another adventure.

I think of this scene every time I go to fetch something I need from another room and then realise I have left behind the other essential thing. I call them my Alice in Wonderland moments…

The party dress

An apple-green party dress…

I have no idea who wrote this story but I think I read it in a women’s magazine when I was a child.

An ungrateful little girl sees an expensive apple-green party desk in a shop window and tells her mother she simply must have it for her upcoming birthday party. Of course they are poor, so the mother can’t afford it.

Instead the mother buys a grotty old cream silk dress from a second-hand shop. The girl suspects this as when she sees her present all wrapped up she knows it’s not the dress she wants as that one is still in the window of the first shop. She gets angry and says horrible things to her (eternally patient) mother.

Then when the girl opens the package she finds her mother has dyed the old dress apple green and refashioned it into the most wonderful frilly frock, much better than the one she thought she wanted. And made with a mother’s love, the story probably said.

The message from this tale is to appreciate the efforts of those who love you. I was a stroppy little child and probably didn’t.

So, have you thought about your childhood story memories yet?