Why do we collate collections of folk tales by country?

And is this unifying or separating us from each other?

Although the Grimms were not the first to collate collections of folktales from their area, they were to do so with a nationalist mindset when they published Children's and Household Tales in 1812. Other countries followed and now it’s rare to find a collection of tales that are not bound to one country or another.

According to Donald Hasse, whose excellent article “Yours, Mine or Ours? Perrault, The Brothers Grimm, and the Ownership of Fairy Tales” states:

As the product of the German folk, the tales were

thought to contain the scattered fragments of ancient Ger-

manic myth, which - when collected - would provide the

German people with a magic mirror in which they could

discern and thus reassert their national identity. In this way,

Grimms' collection of folktales was conscripted into nation-

alistic service and became a political weapon in the

Grimms' intellectual resistance to the Napoleonic occupation

of their beloved Hessian homeland.

To define the folk in nationalistic terms establishes fairy

tales as national property. They are either yours, or they are

mine.”

For a person, such as myself, where nationalism is not something that seeps into my consciousness, I wonder what the effect of having national stories does to our psyche. On one hand, there’s a strong sense of belonging to ‘our’ stories or stories of ‘our ancestors’, but surely if we go back far enough, we are all related as the same species? On the other hand, when we separate ourselves into these expanded, almost tribal groupings, are we not merely perpetuating a spiritual and physical separation?

Admittedly, as an amateur researcher who loves looking for origins of stories, having collections in regions is most definitely an advantage but I wonder what the longer-term narrative is doing in separating us from each other, reinforcing borders, the nation-state and moving us away from each other and this world we share.

I often wonder about John Lennon’s wisdom in ‘Imagine’,

“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do’

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too.” John Lennon, Imagine

And I think that perhaps we’ve stopped imagining the possibility of a world without borders. Our stories, whether we like it or not, set our values, beliefs and influence us - whether they are visual stories, the music we listen to, or the people we interact with. Folk tales are powerful medicine and wisdom from the past. The stories we tell influence us, whether we are conscious of them or not. What will happen to us if we stop telling our collective stories?

Of course, the ATU index bypasses this national separation and categorises stories based on themes and motifs, but why do we feel this need to separate and designate categories for things that are organic and ever-changing, particularly in the oral tradition? And even in the written form, how many fairy tale adaptations are there for Cinderella, Rapunzel, or Red Riding Hood? Many of these stories have their origins in known ancient communities and have become a coverall for the fairy tale genre. They no longer belong to a nation-state, they belong to all of us, reflecting the ever-universal or indeed diverse human experience of life. And to that end, do stories ‘belong’ to a people? For those of us who have worked with stories on a spiritual level, we know they are their own distinct entities and find ways to speak to and through us. We are currently in a world where groups of people ‘own’ stories. And storytellers across the world are asking themselves IF they can tell a folk or fairy tale that has floated into their conscious awareness. I’m not saying we SHOULD tell stories of people who have been recently displaced by a dominant culture. I’m inviting an intelligent discussion about why this is such a polarising debate and why stories are all of a sudden fixed and unmutable. The complete opposite of the natural process of life.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

I don’t have any answers. But I am one to ask questions and to critique the status quo. And I am a student of deep history. Many times I wonder if I should study archaeology (today I almost applied to uni to do so) because of my deep love and curiosity of 3 million years of human history. And writing our stories down is only a relatively recent innovation. But if the ancient artwork or the oral stories we already know are anything to go by, humans have been telling stories since early in our evolution.

I’m ecstatic when I find a thematic collection, such as Zipes’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: An Anthology of Magical Tales or even Lisa Schneidau’s beautiful Botanical Tales series. But I wonder how much more inclusive and expansive it might be if the collections of tales came from more innovative ways than human-constructed borders. What about story collections that build peace, love, share connection, collective knowledge and wisdom?

I’m not saying not to celebrate people’s ancestral cultures, but as one who is without any firm attachment to any culture, I wonder why we continue to perpetuate this nationalist sentiment at this time and what story are we telling ourselves as a species by doing so? What is the price we will pay for continued nationalism on a single planet?

If we return to my previous post about landscapes, folk and fairy tales are oozing with the landscapes they were told in. But what of the stories that travelled, like Yexian, which is a northern Vietnamese story, which was possibly influenced by the tale of Rhodopis from Ancient Egypt (I’m not convinced), but travelled to Europe to become the French version of Cinderella we know today. That story, Cinderella, with it’s 700+ variants does not belong to any one country. It belongs to all of us. Stories have always changed with the teller, with the environment and with the culture it lands in. So, why now do we continue to fix stories as a set entity with no movement to change or re-form into something new? If we were only brave enough to put down our imaginary borders on this single blue planet that harbours the only life that is known to exist in the universe. Can you imagine? So many questions.

Hasse’s article ends with this:

“If the fairy tale needs saving and if we are to save it, then

we need to abandon the untenable views of its ownership

that put us in its power. We must take possession of it on

our own terms. Saving the fairy tale in this way is nothing

less than saving our very selves.

References:

Haase, D. (1993). YOURS, MINE, OR OURS? PERRAULT, THE BROTHERS GRIMM, AND THE OWNERSHIP OF FAIRY TALES. Merveilles & Contes, 7(2), 383–402. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41390373