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The Borzoi Book of French Folk Tales
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 27, 2020
Most of us have, at some time or another, become acquainted with Grimm's Fairy Tales, the classic collection of Germanic folk tales. The general characteristics are:
1) some sort of magic (wishing ring, talking animals, etc.)
2) the protagonists are peasants rather than knights or princesses (at the beginning of the tale, anyway)
3) lots of things occur in threes
4) Messed. Up.
This is rather similar, except that they are French instead of German. The similarity isn't that surprising, since there are some in here which are pretty clearly related to Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, etc. One main difference is that there's a lot more action in villages, and a lot less in the darkest corners of the woods; France's forests must have been cleared centuries before Germany's. The place-names, when they are given, are also French, but it's pretty clear that peasants all across Europe were mostly interested in having enough to eat, not being eaten, and not having to work so hard all the time. It paints a rather dire portrait of what life as a peasant must have been like when these tales were in general circulation, told by parent to child and neighbor to neighbor.
Or, in the case of "John-of-the-Bear", the tale itself is wrapped in an imagined scenario in a soldiers' barracks, to give an idea of how these tales lived before they were pinned down in print, in books:
"When the laughter [at a prank against one of their number] has calmed down, it is necessary to search for a way to spend the long hours of the evening. Invitations pass from one to another to talk and to tell one of these new and marvelous stories in which the hero is always an old soldier who ends up marrying a princess. The right to speak is given unanimously to the one who knows 'John-of-the-Bear', a tale that he has narrated at least thirty times, and one that the whole quarters knows by heart. It is the best of his repertoire and no one knows better than he how to interlace in his discourse the flowers of rhetoric which blossom in the heart of the barracks. Everybody agrees that he should talk.
First took place the usual introduction of which each word is repeated by the teller and by the listeners, who give him this proof of attention:
The narrator: 'Cric!'
Listeners: 'Crac!'
The narrator: 'Wooden shoe!'
Listeners: 'Spoon in the pot!'
The narrator: 'Legging strap!'
Listeners: 'Walk with it!'
The narrator: 'Walk today, walk tomorrow; by dint of walking you go a long way. I go through a forest where there is no wood, through a river where there is no water, through a village where there is no house. I knock at a door and everybody answers me. The more I tell you, the more I shall lie to you. I'm not paid to tell you the truth.'"
Indeed, the teller of a folk tale is not paid to tell the truth. The protagonists of these tales start where the listeners were, in a position of little power or wealth, and little chance of much better in the future. But, they (through luck, or some virtuous act to the right beggar who turns out to be a fairy in disguise) happen upon some magical route to fame, fortune, and Happy Ever After. These were not tales to tell the listener the Truth, for they already knew the truth (tomorrow would be much like today). These were tales for daydreaming about an escape from that.
Having said that, for the modern reader, they have a different appeal; they are so crude. I mean this in the literal sense: they are short, simple, and utterly unlike the polished stories we are presented with today. TV and movies (and their internet equivalents) may present us magic, but they delight also in presenting baroque and multifarious backstabbing and betrayal, deep character personalities that ring true, and worldbuilding that is complex and self-consistent, made to satisfy an internet-enabled fan base that has the leisure time to chew endlessly on each scene. These tales, by lacking all of that (and being short, besides), have a charm not unlike a rough-hewn piece of wooden furniture, compared to elegant, smooth steel, or molded plastic. There were quite a few where, after finishing it, I shook my head and thought, "what was that?" They are often violent, and not uncommonly the protagonist does not (by modern standards anyway) entirely come across as "the good guy". But they are, without a doubt, different than the ultra-polished, professional, screen-tested and focus-grouped tales of our modern tale-telling industries. They are folk tales, and their very crudeness is a large part of their appeal. After spending much of our lives with expert manipulators appealing all-too-expertly to our modern hopes and fears and biases, it is somewhat of a relief to read stories made for a very different audience, by a very different kind of storyteller.
There's nowhere else in this review where it makes sense to mention this, so I'll just put it here at the last: the black ink illustrations, by Warren Chappell, are excellent.
1) some sort of magic (wishing ring, talking animals, etc.)
2) the protagonists are peasants rather than knights or princesses (at the beginning of the tale, anyway)
3) lots of things occur in threes
4) Messed. Up.
This is rather similar, except that they are French instead of German. The similarity isn't that surprising, since there are some in here which are pretty clearly related to Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, etc. One main difference is that there's a lot more action in villages, and a lot less in the darkest corners of the woods; France's forests must have been cleared centuries before Germany's. The place-names, when they are given, are also French, but it's pretty clear that peasants all across Europe were mostly interested in having enough to eat, not being eaten, and not having to work so hard all the time. It paints a rather dire portrait of what life as a peasant must have been like when these tales were in general circulation, told by parent to child and neighbor to neighbor.
Or, in the case of "John-of-the-Bear", the tale itself is wrapped in an imagined scenario in a soldiers' barracks, to give an idea of how these tales lived before they were pinned down in print, in books:
"When the laughter [at a prank against one of their number] has calmed down, it is necessary to search for a way to spend the long hours of the evening. Invitations pass from one to another to talk and to tell one of these new and marvelous stories in which the hero is always an old soldier who ends up marrying a princess. The right to speak is given unanimously to the one who knows 'John-of-the-Bear', a tale that he has narrated at least thirty times, and one that the whole quarters knows by heart. It is the best of his repertoire and no one knows better than he how to interlace in his discourse the flowers of rhetoric which blossom in the heart of the barracks. Everybody agrees that he should talk.
First took place the usual introduction of which each word is repeated by the teller and by the listeners, who give him this proof of attention:
The narrator: 'Cric!'
Listeners: 'Crac!'
The narrator: 'Wooden shoe!'
Listeners: 'Spoon in the pot!'
The narrator: 'Legging strap!'
Listeners: 'Walk with it!'
The narrator: 'Walk today, walk tomorrow; by dint of walking you go a long way. I go through a forest where there is no wood, through a river where there is no water, through a village where there is no house. I knock at a door and everybody answers me. The more I tell you, the more I shall lie to you. I'm not paid to tell you the truth.'"
Indeed, the teller of a folk tale is not paid to tell the truth. The protagonists of these tales start where the listeners were, in a position of little power or wealth, and little chance of much better in the future. But, they (through luck, or some virtuous act to the right beggar who turns out to be a fairy in disguise) happen upon some magical route to fame, fortune, and Happy Ever After. These were not tales to tell the listener the Truth, for they already knew the truth (tomorrow would be much like today). These were tales for daydreaming about an escape from that.
Having said that, for the modern reader, they have a different appeal; they are so crude. I mean this in the literal sense: they are short, simple, and utterly unlike the polished stories we are presented with today. TV and movies (and their internet equivalents) may present us magic, but they delight also in presenting baroque and multifarious backstabbing and betrayal, deep character personalities that ring true, and worldbuilding that is complex and self-consistent, made to satisfy an internet-enabled fan base that has the leisure time to chew endlessly on each scene. These tales, by lacking all of that (and being short, besides), have a charm not unlike a rough-hewn piece of wooden furniture, compared to elegant, smooth steel, or molded plastic. There were quite a few where, after finishing it, I shook my head and thought, "what was that?" They are often violent, and not uncommonly the protagonist does not (by modern standards anyway) entirely come across as "the good guy". But they are, without a doubt, different than the ultra-polished, professional, screen-tested and focus-grouped tales of our modern tale-telling industries. They are folk tales, and their very crudeness is a large part of their appeal. After spending much of our lives with expert manipulators appealing all-too-expertly to our modern hopes and fears and biases, it is somewhat of a relief to read stories made for a very different audience, by a very different kind of storyteller.
There's nowhere else in this review where it makes sense to mention this, so I'll just put it here at the last: the black ink illustrations, by Warren Chappell, are excellent.
January 23, 2015
French fairy tales are some of the hardest because Perrault dominates the field so much. Even international collections of fairy tales often use his when they use no other literary tales.
This is not a collection of literary tales, not at all. It has a folkloric version of Little Red Riding Hood -- easily recognized because she doesn't have a red hat of any kind, and escapes on her own. It has a version of Rapunzel, one with an unhappy ending.
Then it has some tales I recognize the type of, but wide reading in the fairy tale area would be needed for that. "Jean, the Soldier, and Eulalie the Devil's Daughter" is the girl helps the hero flee, like "Master Maid"; "The Three May Peaches" is like "Jesper who Herded Rabbits"; there are two different variants of the kind and unkind girls, and two variants of "Faithful Johannes."
And some that combine some familar motifs in new ways, and one "La Ramee and the Phantom" that was new to me entirely.
Also some humorous tales and animals tales, which are less my cuppa, but mostly fairy tales.
This is not a collection of literary tales, not at all. It has a folkloric version of Little Red Riding Hood -- easily recognized because she doesn't have a red hat of any kind, and escapes on her own. It has a version of Rapunzel, one with an unhappy ending.
Then it has some tales I recognize the type of, but wide reading in the fairy tale area would be needed for that. "Jean, the Soldier, and Eulalie the Devil's Daughter" is the girl helps the hero flee, like "Master Maid"; "The Three May Peaches" is like "Jesper who Herded Rabbits"; there are two different variants of the kind and unkind girls, and two variants of "Faithful Johannes."
And some that combine some familar motifs in new ways, and one "La Ramee and the Phantom" that was new to me entirely.
Also some humorous tales and animals tales, which are less my cuppa, but mostly fairy tales.
November 3, 2023
This is no doubt a treasure for folklorists, with its regional variations on famous fairy tales. But for a reader seeking something like Andrew Lang's colored Fairy Books, The Borzoi Book of French Folk Tales may not fully satisfy. I did enjoy a few of the stories, and I don't mind reading variants of tales I already know, but there were too many repetitions for my liking. My favorites were:
-The Three May Peaches
-Father Roquelaure
-The Love of Three Oranges
-The Miraculous Doctor
-The Mole of Jarnages
-Simple-Minded Jeanne(I've read a version in one of Lang's collections, but it's so silly and fun I was happy to read it again)
Other than these, the stories are either decent but forgettable. This includes versions of "The Fisherman and His Wife"(The Little Sardine) and "The Musicians of Bremen"(The Journey to Toulouse), two of my own favorite fairy tales. As told here, they were just unsatisfying and lacked the richness and magic of the best-known versions.
Some of the variations were interesting though. There is a Hansel and Gretel story where both parents ditch their kids in the woods, because they are too cheap to take care of them. Also a Rapunzel story where and get no mention of a happily-ever-after. Most disturbing is a Red Riding Hood variant with cannibalism, and a wolf who is obviously a predator in both senses of the term.
This anthology was a little disappointing, but I wouldn't count it as a bad book at all. It is simply meant to preserve some folklore of a specific place, and this is laudable in itself. It's just better suited to folklore research than nostalgic entertainment.
-The Three May Peaches
-Father Roquelaure
-The Love of Three Oranges
-The Miraculous Doctor
-The Mole of Jarnages
-Simple-Minded Jeanne(I've read a version in one of Lang's collections, but it's so silly and fun I was happy to read it again)
Other than these, the stories are either decent but forgettable. This includes versions of "The Fisherman and His Wife"(The Little Sardine) and "The Musicians of Bremen"(The Journey to Toulouse), two of my own favorite fairy tales. As told here, they were just unsatisfying and lacked the richness and magic of the best-known versions.
Some of the variations were interesting though. There is a Hansel and Gretel story where both parents ditch their kids in the woods, because they are too cheap to take care of them. Also a Rapunzel story where and get no mention of a happily-ever-after. Most disturbing is a Red Riding Hood variant with cannibalism, and a wolf who is obviously a predator in both senses of the term.
This anthology was a little disappointing, but I wouldn't count it as a bad book at all. It is simply meant to preserve some folklore of a specific place, and this is laudable in itself. It's just better suited to folklore research than nostalgic entertainment.
October 27, 2025
A fantastic collection of French folk tales and fairy stories. Some of them are reminiscent of Grimm, but all are charming in their own way.
March 27, 2019
Reviewing: The Godchild of the Fairy in the Tower
*SPOILERS*
This is another one of Rapunzel fairy tale. In This the mother steal cabbage from the fairy's garden. After being caught, as a way of paying her back, fairy is called to be the godmother of the child. She gifts the young girl - golden hair. She grows up to be a beautiful girl and the fairy takes her away to educate her... I'll leave the rest to the readers.
*First Rapunzel version where "the witch" is a fairy who becomes the godmother and gifts her something at the christening.
*There is also no mention of the girl's hair being especially long, but golden.
* The fairy seems a little more sympathetic in this version.
*The ending seems so sudden and not memorable
*SPOILERS*
This is another one of Rapunzel fairy tale. In This the mother steal cabbage from the fairy's garden. After being caught, as a way of paying her back, fairy is called to be the godmother of the child. She gifts the young girl - golden hair. She grows up to be a beautiful girl and the fairy takes her away to educate her... I'll leave the rest to the readers.
*First Rapunzel version where "the witch" is a fairy who becomes the godmother and gifts her something at the christening.
*There is also no mention of the girl's hair being especially long, but golden.
* The fairy seems a little more sympathetic in this version.
*The ending seems so sudden and not memorable
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews