Foraging Through Folklore Ella Leith

Under the Skin Ella Leith

Thinking about thorns, my mind immediately catches on the bloodthirsty imagery of folktales and Grimms’ fairy-tales. I recall the forest of thorns surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle; of Snow White being scratched by thorn thickets as she flees from the huntsman; of Rapunzel’s prince falling from the tower to have his eyes ripped out on the thornbushes below. Even more compelling to me are two folktales that I was lucky enough to hear, when I was a child, from the Scottish Traveller storyteller, Duncan Williamson.

The first is the titular story transcribed in his published collection of tales, A Thorn in the King’s Foot (1989). For years, the only detail I could remember was that the thorn grows into a branch protruding from the king’s big toe— a horrifying image that I’ve never been able to shake. The other, which I knew as ‘Jack and the Moneylender’ , tells of a magic fiddle that forces those who hear it to dance unceasingly. Jack uses it first to punish an old man he has tricked into crawling under a thornbush; later, he plays his fiddle as his last request on the gallows to blackmail the hangmen into pardoning him. I was fascinated by this story, torn between relishing the juxtaposition of joyful dancing and bloodied skin, and being outraged on behalf of the moneylender who didn’t seem to have done anything particularly wrong. It left a worse taste in my mouth once I learnt that it’s a version of the anti-Semitic international tale often called ‘The Jew Among Thorns’. The oldest versions of the story seem to be anti-clerical rather than anti-Semitic (Haas, 2007: 787), but I can’t shake the uncomfortable connotations any more than I can shake a macabre delight in the imagery of a forced dance inside a thornbush. Metaphorically as literally, thorns get under the skin.

It’s not difficult to relate thorns to punishment in these tales. The forest of thorns punishes the princes for their audacity in attempting to reach the Sleeping Beauty (named Briar Rose— literally a rose amongst thorns) before the hundred years are up: the thorns held firmly together, as though they had hands, and the young men became stuck in them, could not free themselves, and died miserably. The thornbushes below Rapunzel’s tower punish the prince who dared penetrate the witch’s defences: when the witch tells him that, “The cat got her and will scratch your eyes out as well. … You will never see her again!”, it is not she but the thorns that carry out her threat of blinding him. In ‘A Thorn in the King’s Foot’, a thorn fulfils the curse of an old woman against a king who tried to have his hunchbacked son murdered: as she passes him, it embeds itself in his foot and grows there for an agonising fourteen years. And in ‘Jack and the Moneylender’, the thornbush enables Jack to punish the moneylender for… being a moneylender.

Thorns are associated with punishment elsewhere in folklore and early modern literature. The man in the moon, according to Chaucer, was exiled there as punishment for theft and given a thornbush to carry (Thiselton Dyer, 1883: 65). Supernatural destruction is wrought against those who cut down thorn trees themselves, as outlined in Margaret Baker’s Discovering the Folklore of Plants (1996). She cites examples of railway lines being rerouted and buildings redesigned to avoid disturbing a thorn tree, with dire consequences for those who cut them down without suitable reason or precaution.

But alongside punishment, thorns bring protection. A lone hawthorn tree, a ‘fairy thorn’, may guard an entrance to the fairy kingdom; it may also protect passers-by from lightning strikes. According to one informant, ‘‘hawthorn among your hedging plants wards off bad fairies’’ (Baker, 1996: 69). Indeed, the forest of thorns surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle are protective: whereas a sharp point found in the domestic sphere— a spindle —causes her harm, the thorny hedges defend her sleeping person against intruders. Of course, the prince-skewering thorns are really defending the prescribed duration of the magic rather than the princess herself; they melt away

after a hundred years to become ‘nothing but large, beautiful flowers that separated by themselves, allowing [the prince] to pass through without harm’. This is no tale of victory against supernatural powers, but of waiting for the right time.

The passage of time may let an enchantment run its course, or it may bring another form of healing. In ‘A Thorn in the King’s Foot’, for fourteen years the king feels guilt and sorrow for (he believes) murdering his son and causing the heartbroken death of his wife. He is wracked with pain from the sprouting thorn in his foot: The king offert rewards, he offert everything, he was in agony. People came from different countries, wisemen came an examint it, they cut the thorn off his foot, shaved hit, bathed hit, annoint’t it with oil – next day it wis back as far as ever –there’s no way in the world that the king cuid get any peace or any rest. He does not make the connection, however, between the literal and metaphorical thorn in his flesh. Only after fourteen years does the old woman who rescued the hunchbacked prince tell the boy: I think the time hes come … that you mus go an settle the problem between yir father, you an me. The son goes unrecognised to the palace and gently removes the thorn. The king calls it magic, but the boy says, No, it’s no magic, no magic in any way. If not magic, then what? Forgiveness, perhaps.

But it’s the end of the story I find particularly interesting. The forgiveness is not unconditional: the king must first wander and work amongst his subjects for two hundred days, leaving the humpbacked stranger to rule in his stead. The formerly selfish king learns to care about others and sees first-hand how benign governance enriches the lives he formerly despised. He comes back changed, and only then is it revealed that the hunchback is his believed-dead son. But neither does forgiveness lead to full reconciliation. The king offers his son the kingdom: An the hunchback said, ‘No, Father. Now you’re happy and free. An so am I. If ye ever want to find me, you can find me with ma mother in the forest, the only person that ever was good an kind to me.’ An the hunchback walkit away back to the forest tae his auld mother, and left the king to his own thoughts… Blood is not thicker than water here. It might be hoped this encounter stays under the king’s skin for even longer than the thorn did. For the hunchbacked son, however, the matter is laid to rest. He’s found the source of the pain, pulled out the thorn, and let it go.

References Baker, M. (1996) Discovering the Folklore of Plants, Shire Publications. Grimm, J. & W. (1812) Children’s and Household Tales. Trans. Ashliman, D. L. 1998-2020, www.pitt.edu/~grimmtales.html : 12. Rapunzel www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm012.html 50. Little Briar Rose www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm050.html 53. Little Snow White www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm053.html 110. The Jew In The Thorns –www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm110.html Haas, D., ed. (2007) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Publishing Thiselton Dyer, T. F. (1883) Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. Dover Publications. Williamson, D. & L. (1989) A Thorn in the King’s Foot: Folktales of the Scottish Travelling People. Penguin Folklore Library.

The

A Magical Flight Amanda Edmiston

As the year progresses, our movements are curtailed. Regardless of our personal position, our fears are various. Fears that sit and persist, oft supressed but omnipresent. We are lacking a vital nutrient. Whether we recognise it or not, we are missing the discovery of new stories. And we miss simply hearing the old ones— the ones we all need to know. We miss passing through different places and discovering what those stories, both new and old, have to tell us. We are having to find ways to adapt to greater repetition in the midst of greater stress, resulting from the pandemic and all its associated circumstance. Gone are the challenges and transitions demanded by activity, travel and connection with people and places; lacking are the usual opportunities to hear stories and engage first-hand with art, with music, with dance and culture— those things that help carry the mind — the works of the muses, sprung from the earth by the hooves of the winged horse, Pegasus.

We need to keep telling, to keep hearing stories. We need access to those wild places where incredible foods grow; foods that give our minds the nutrients needed to cope with stressors. We need to keep sharing stories. We need to allow stories to grow, to be kept alive. We need to use them to help explain the lands we live in, their history and our connection to them. Stories give us words that create safe places to look at complex and changing things, they gift us resolutions and outcomes packaged in mesmerising dreams, they teach us through their anecdote, metaphor, and rhythm. Even as society moves, adapts and changes, it is important for people to keep discovering and learning stories— of the new paths they may encounter, of the people who have walked similar paths before, of the patterns the land offers in its rituals, folklore, and legends. Stories used in this way gift us greater understanding. They encourage empathy, respect, and consideration, they nourish us and through them we learn to understand each other and the land we live in.

So, join me for a moment as we sit and sip an amber-hued infusion— a tea made from a berry hailed for thousands of years as a source of nutrients that help the body adapt to change and stress. With a note of bitterness from a leaf or two gracing the warm liquid, we travel back over 3,000 years to a glittering landscape, edged by azure oceans and dominated by the presence of Mount Olympus... … Imagine gliding from sun-drenched Corinth, freed from the golden cheek-plates of the bridle fastened to your face by Bellerophon. Imagine leaving behind the ice-cold water of the Periene spring, savouring the tart taste of juice from a berry that you accidentally grazed, alongside your favourite leaf. Soaring above the clouds yet beneath the stars, you catch a current under your shining, silvery wings and swoop down, hooves dipping into warm seawater as you cross the Aegean Sea. The sky your earth, wings carrying you as feet.

Now galloping across the land from Turkey, then crossing the Zagros mountains, your strong wings shadowing the shape of the earth beneath. The chariot, fastened to your flanks by Zeus himself, is laden with thunderbolts. Your shiny, omeganourished mane whips in the wind as you fly north over Turkmenistan and on to Nepal. Your path is marked by jewel-like orange berries, offering the perfect antidote to the thin oxygen of the higher altitudes. As you soar, the world spinning below, your dancing hooves open up springs of the sweetest water, nourishing the muses and gifting art, story and song. Child of Poseidon, dark God of the Sea and tamer of wild horses. Born from the neck of Medusa at the hand of Perseus. Carrier of heroes, slayer of Chimera. Your hooves dance lightly on the earth, wings lifting you ever upward until, cosmos-bound and glistening, you find eternity amongst the stars; your appearance bringing forth Spring and hailing thunderstorms in the country of your birth. Your favourite foodstuff— those berries —still offering an easier path upwards to the heights; they hold the key to help us cope with stress and altitude sickness.

This year, we may not be able to sip tea together and listen to tales of magical, winged horses, in a garden with a view of mountains, allowing the gifts of the muses to carry the weight of our minds— but we can still share a story here and enrich our brains with the food of the gods. Try a Sea Buckthorn berry or two and if Hippophae rhamnoides, the favourite food of Pegasus, inspires a song or a story, then do let me know. I'd love to hear it.

References Ovid (2000 edition) Book 3, 449 ff, in Fasti, eds & tr. A. Boyle and F. Woodward, Penguin Classics: London Hesiod (1914 edition) ‘Theogony’, in Hesiod. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, Tr. H. G. EvelynWhite, William Heinemann: New York. Apollodorus, of Athens (1975 edition) The Library of Greek Mythology. Tr. K. Aldrich. Conorado Press: Lawrence, Kansas Stobdan, T.; Chaurasia, O.; Korekar, G.; Mundra, S.; Ali, Z.; Yadav, A. & Singh, S. (2010) ‘Attributes of Seabuckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) to Meet Nutritional Requirements in High Altitude’, in Defence Science Journal, 60 (2): 226-230

Picture credit: Almanach des Muses, 1767