Oh Deer, I Won!

(No, it's not a spelling mistake!)

This has been a tough week for me in many ways, computer crash included. Yesterday, however, in spite of "only" having my laptop... I made an attempt at the Blog Anniversary contest at Dan's blog Wood and Pixels, which he generously kept running for four days (Tuesday-Friday). And I WON! Three other people also came out winners, on the other days. For an extra special reason, though, I am especially happy that Thursday got to be my lucky day. The special reason has nothing to do with the prize, because we will each get a photo print of our own choice. Which of course would make me happy any day! :)  No - the extra special thing for me about Thursday had to do with the picture to which the clues were pointing on that day - a white deer. (Click on the I WON link above to see Dan's photo.)

Dan provides a link to the Native American folklore about the white deer. However, the white deer or stag is also special in Celtic folklore, which I have been interested in ever since my first visits to Britain in my early teens.  In Celtic mythology it represents a closeness to the Otherworld. For example, "the white stag or hart often appears in the forests around King Arthur’s court, sending the knights on adventures against gods and fairies". The deer is also used in Christian /Biblical symbolism, to represent the human soul's longing for God. Modern fantasy writers have made use of the deer/stag symbolism, too. Two examples:

In C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, what brings Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy - by then grown up and Kings and Queens of Narnia - back to England at the end of the story, is the rumour that a White Stag has been seen in the Western Woods of Narnia. They go on a hunt and they see the stag and they follow it. This brings them back to the lamp post, and from there back to the wardrobe, and their life in this world.

In J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter books, a white stag, and towards the end also a white deer, also have very important guiding roles to play.

As I said in my comment on Dan's congratulations post:
Some things in life can really make you wonder about coincidence vs "meaning".

And as it happens, that very topic has been appearing in different shapes to me more than once over the past couple of weeks. Now here it was again, through the white deer...

Quotation of the Week (23/09)

To one as young as you, I'm sure it seems incredible, but --- it really is like going to bed after a very, very long day. After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
(Dumbledore to Harry)

I'm very touched by all the comments I received on my post "Life Is Fragile" last week. Since then, the little energy I have has been split between funeral arrangements for my mother (the funeral will be next Thursday) and organizing a "new life" for my father, who is also not well.

Nail Soup

In the previous post, I said that The Tales of Beedle the Bard reminded me of stories I read as a child in an old reader that had been my grandfather's, printed in 1910. Many of these stories exist in slightly different versions in different countries, and belong to the inheritance of folk tales and fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm (German: Die Brüder Grimm); link to English Wikipedia article.

One of the stories I have in mind is called Nail Soup; in other countries also known as for example Stone Soup or Button Soup.

This is the storyline in short:

A tramp knocks on the door of a house. And old woman opens. The tramp asks for shelter for the night and some food. The woman says no, her husband is away, she can't take him in, and besides she has no food to offer. The tramp begs her to let him stay anyway, and suggests they help each other, and he will provide the food. The woman is sceptical, but curious and greedy, and agrees to let him in.

The tramp asks for a pot, and some water, and when the water is boiling he pulls a nail out of his pocket, turns it three times in his hand, and puts it into the pot. The woman asks what he intends to do, and he says he is making Nail Soup. The woman is astonished, she has never heard of such a thing, and she would like to know how it is done.

"Oh," says the tramp, "it ususally comes out very good, but the thing is, I've been using the same nail all week, so it wouldn't hurt to put in som extra flour."
"Well," says the woman, "I might have a pinch of flour left."
So he puts the flour into the pot, stirs and tastes the soup, and says: "Oh, this is a very good soup indeed! Why, if I just had a couple of potatoes and a bit of meat to add to it, it would even be good enough for gentlefolks!" So the woman gives him potatoes and meat, and he puts them in the pot, and stirs and tastes again. Then he adds that now, if he also had some milk and some groats, the soup would be good enough for the king himself. It turns out, of course, that the woman has milk and groats as well.

Finally, the tramp takes the nail out of the pot, and declares the soup is ready. But at the king's castle, they would of course also have bread with the soup, and a cloth on the table...

The woman puts all she has in her larder on the table - bread and butter and cheese etc, and they end up having a proper feast together; the woman still amazed at how much can be done with just a common nail!

In other versions of the story, a whole village becomes involved in the making of the soup.

A question to discuss: Was the nail necessary for the soup or not?

It was actually not just one but two stories in The Tales of Beedle the Bard that brought my mind back to this particular folk tale. One was The Wizard and the Hopping Pot, the other The Fountain of Fair Fortune. One theme that these three stories share is (in my interpretation), that sometimes the solution to a problem is both more complicated and at the same time simpler than we realize.

For those who haven't read Beedle the Bard and just want a short summary of the tales, here is a "spoiler warning" link to the Wikipedia article.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

The Tales of Beedle the Bard played an important role in the last of the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, The Deathly Hallows, where the title was presented as being a storybook well known to children in the Wizarding world.

After the publication of The Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling produced seven handwritten and illustrated copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Six she gave to people who had been helping her in different ways with the Harry Potter series. The seventh was offered for auction and bought for £1.95 million by Amazon.com, the highest price ever at an auction for a modern literary manuscript. The money was donated to The Children's Voice charity campaign.

I found out just before Christmas 2008 that the book had now also been published for the general public, the proceeds going to the Children's High Level Group. Since I've been a Harry Potter fan ever since I first started reading the books in 2001, of course I bought it as a Christmas gift for myself!

My first impression of The Tales of Beedle the Bard was that they reminded me a lot "in general" of old folk tales, like the ones I used to read in my childhood in an old book at my grandfather's house - an old (Swedish) reader printed in 1910 that my grandfather (born in 1904) used in school. There weren't all that many children's book in their house, so I used to return to that old reader every now and then. I still have it, and I sometimes still return to it in search of certain old stories, fables and myths.

I think Rowling has caught the style of old fairy tales very well, but also as ususal managed to add her own twist. Just a bit school-mistressy perhaps that she thinks she needs to point that out herself in the Introduction... ;)

In Muggle fairy tales, magic tends to lie at the root of the hero or heroine's troubles - the wicked witch has poisoned the apple, or put the princess into a hundred year's sleep, or turned the prince into a hideous beast. In The Tales of Beedle the Bard, on the other hand, we meet heroes and heroines who can perform magic themselves, and yet find it just as hard to solve their problems as we do.
J.K. Rowling, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Introduction

I enjoyed the stories though, including Professor Dumbledore's Notes, which follows each of the five stories. I'm glad it was decided the book should be made available for all readers!

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