The Halcyon Fairy Book

as various people have pointed out, often have completely nonsensical elements. How many of us are really worried about random strangers spitting into the sheath of our knife, or running between our legs? I mean, sure, it would be unpleasant, but the issue just does not arise. It’s such a weird thing to warn somebody against.
The woman neither spat, nor did she run between her legs, but yet the witch changed her into a sheep.
The witch is totally not playing fair here. I’m all for people suffering horrible fates if they break the rules in a fairy tale, but when you don’t break the rules and they get you anyway, it’s dirty pool.
Then she made herself look exactly like the woman, and called out to the good man, “Ho, old man, halloa! I have found the sheep already!”
The man thought the witch was really his wife, and he did not know that his wife was the sheep; so he went home with her, glad at heart because his sheep was found. When they were safe at home the witch said to the man, “Look here, old man, we must really kill that sheep lest it run away to the wood again.”
That’ll teach it!
The man, who was a peaceable quiet sort of fellow, made no objections, but simply said, “Good, let us do so.”
The daughter, however, had overheard their talk, and she ran to the flock and lamented aloud, “Oh, dear little mother, they are going to slaughter you!”
“Well, then, if they do slaughter me,” was the black sheep’s answer, “eat you neither the meat nor the broth that is made of me, but gather all my bones, and bury them by the edge of the field.”
Okay, okay, hold on. First off, how did the daughter know? Was she watching the sheep get changed? Did the witch not notice her? This is a really big oversight! If I am going around turning people into sheep, I want the witnesses to be transheepified as well!
Second, the sheep talks.
Now, if I am this hypothetical daughter, I might think “There is no way that Dad will believe Mom is really a sheep and this is an imposter, and if I bring it up, the witch may kill me.” This would be quite understandable. But damnit, I have a talking sheep. This is proof! I just have to wait until the witch pops out to the corner store for a six-pack, get Dad out to the flock, and have the talking sheep say her piece!
Furthermore, the witch’s work is REALLY shoddy if she leaves her victims the power of speech. That’s just crap witchery right there.
The only thing that settles this for me is that perhaps there is something very gratifying about being a sheep, and Mom much prefers standing in a field with her brethren all day. Her speech is certainly philosophical. She has attained the Zen of sheepdom. Why fret? Today’s lambs are tomorrow’s mutton. The wool groweth and the wool is shearedeth away. Life, death, it’s all one in the great wheel of sheep.
Shortly after this they took the black sheep from the flock and slaughtered it. The witch made pease-soup of it, and set it before the daughter. But the girl remembered her mother’s warning.
Joseph Campbell said once that there was only one consistent rule in fairy tales —“Anyone that animals like, or whom they assist in any way, wins.” (Exceptions are made for a few classes of animals, I believe — wolves can go either way, and there’s a lot of freaky domestic animals belonging to giants and whatnot.) And this is mostly true. You can’t even go with “Be kind” or “Be polite” because now and again that bites you in the ass (and I’ll post one about that sometime here soon.)
I would argue, however, that there may actually be one more —“Cannibalism Always Ends Badly.”
The bit about animals made a great impression on me when I was young, and anyway, as my father always said, “If dogs don’t like him, don’t date him.” But I have also avoided dating cannibals, just on the off chance.
She did not touch the soup, but she carried the bones to the edge of the field and buried them there; and there sprang up on the spot a birch tree — a very lovely birch tree.
Some time had passed away — who can tell how long they might have been living there? — when the witch, to whom a child had been born in the meantime, began to take an ill-will to the man’s daughter, and to torment her in all sorts of ways.
Now it happened that a great festival was to be held at the palace, and the king had commanded that all the people should be invited, and that this proclamation should be made:
Come, people all!
Poor and wretched, one and all!
Blind and crippled though ye be,
Mount your steeds or come by sea.
And so they drove into the king’s feast all the outcasts, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.
The poor and the wretched appear to be able to afford horses and/or boats. The medieval Russian economy was certainly smokin’.
In the good man’s house, too, preparations were made to go to the palace. The witch said to the man, “Go you on in front, old man, with our youngest. I will give the elder girl work to keep her from being dull in our absence.”
So the man took the child and set out. But the witch kindled a fire on the hearth, threw a potful of barley-corns among the cinders, and said to the girl, “If you have not picked the barley out of the ashes, and put it all back in the pot before nightfall, I shall eat you up!”
It always comes back to cannibalism with this woman.
Then she hastened after the others, and the poor girl stayed at home and wept. She tried to be sure to pick up the grains of barley, but she soon saw how