The Halcyon Fairy Book

human condition if you are logical and understand how people think?
So that day passed; but she could not help herself, she had to open the remaining door, the wooden one. And there lay the deer on a pile of straw, and she asked him why he lay there. He said he had to lie there until some Christian soul took pity on him, and wiped the mud from his back. She took a handful of straw and wiped off the mud. And as she was doing it, he was changed into as handsome a prince as one would wish to see.
Well played, enchanted deer. Well played, indeed.
He explained to her that he and the whole castle had been enchanted; but that now all was well and they would celebrate their wedding. And a fine wedding it was, lasting several days.
Before we go any farther, I would like to take a minute to speculate on what might have happened if this girl had a little more imagination. I mean, the deer talks, so I’m not entirely sure if it’s bestiality at that point, or just … err … xenophilia. And he apparently propositioned her twice in the woods (leaving aside the “mount on my back, little girl” bit, ahem ahem).
Is this the standard fairy tale wait-for-door-number-three thing? If she’d had a freaky talking deer fetish, would he have brought her home and married her? Would he have gone “Goddamnit, she’ll like me better as a deer, so we’re having none of that!” Did he not want to buy the cow when the euphemisms were free?
Hell, maybe he liked being a deer, and was checking to see if she was into it before deciding that reverting to human was the only option.
This just strikes me as a peculiar sequence of events, as if he went “Basic human curiosity about doors, not a problem. But if she loves me for my mind, I’m outta here.”
Now when some time had passed, the prince asked his wife whether she would not like to invite her stepmother and stepsister to visit her. She said she would like to do so very much.
Wait, what? Why? Are you crazy? Those people were horrible to you!
… unless this is one of those “By the way, I married an enchanted prince and check out my bitchin’ castle” visit, in which case you are probably allowed a certain degree of gloating, although given that it’s a fairy tale, I don’t necessarily recommend it.
So the prince told her, that when they came, he himself would not be with them at first, but that when she offered them wine, she was to spill a drop on her shoe. Then he would appear and dry it for her. And she must take care not to give her stepmother any one thing or three different things, but only a quantity of something, such as corn.
Okay, I retract my previous objections. This is the sort of stuff that screams “Element that might have made sense when first added but five generations later is completely nonsensical.”
So when the stepmother and stepsister arrived, the princess for of course she was a princess now —
Marrying into royalty turns one into a paragon of virtue. Well-known fact.
— was very kind to them. And when she poured the wine for them, she let fall a drop on her golden shoe, and that very moment the prince appeared and dried the spot with his handkerchief; and if the others had not already had eyes and mouth wide open, you may be sure they had when they saw the prince come in.
Then they went out into the garden, and the stepmother insisted on having an apple, though the princess would give her none. The stepmother, however, kept on insisting that she must have some apples, even though she had no more than three. But no, the princess merely said that when the apples were ripe her stepmother could have any number of them. Thereupon the stepmother grew furiously angry —
I will bet you a nickel that there was something that used to go here — maybe something like the “Spit in the sheath of my knife” thing from the one Russian Cinderella story — where some cultural element fit here and this made a lot more sense. Perhaps giving single items laid one open to witchcraft in some fashion, whereas giving a bushel basket didn’t.
If that WAS it (and without a Danish folklorist in the audience, I’m not sure if we’ll ever know) then boy, clever way to ward off the stingies, huh? “Sorry, you have to give me at least four or the Evil Eye gets you. Hey, I don’t make the rules.”
— and as she went off with her daughter, she was filled with envy to think that such good fortune had not come the latter’s way. And she could not resist telling her it was her own fault.
The daughter gave a saucy answer, and as usually happens, one word leading to another, they were soon quarreling violently, and in the end both of them burst into pebbles. And that is the reason that there are so many pebbles under foot.
Okay, that is a far better closer than “Happily Ever After.” I don’t know if you could work it into a modern fantasy novel, but that’s pretty marvelous nonetheless.

Two Cinderellas
Yet another installment of Ursula Comments On Peculiar Fairy Tales. This time, since they’re both short, we’re doing two versions of Cinderella. One is Greek and one is from Georgia (Not the one with Atlanta.) They both have some very odd moments, but since neither is very long, it’d be a short commentary on either one on their own.
The Greek one is from Folk-Lore of Modern Greece by Edmund Martin Geldart (London: W. Swan Sonnenschein and Company, 1884). The Georgian one is from Georgian Folk Tales by Marjory Wardrop (London: David Nutt, 1894).
Little Saddleslut
And hey, let’s just stop right here