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Folk Tales and Perception
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| Anticipating things well is a task of wisdom. |
Contents
Supporting "well medleys" are presupposed
throughout:What Fairy Tales Are Best?
In a letter to the fairy tale collector and narrator Peter Chr. Asbjørnsen of May 4, 1852, Jacob Grimm praises Asbjørnsen's and Jørgen Moe's collections of Norwegian folk tales and declares that "Die Norske Folkeeventyr sind die besten Märchen, die es gibt. (The Norwegian folk tales are the best fairy tales that exist.)" Even though this seems flattering, think twice.- Jacob Grimm did not know all the tales that were current in other cultures and languages: His platform was limited.
- Tastes differ also.
- Most "Norwegian folk tales" are not exclusive Norwegian, not even exclusive Scandinavian tales. There are counterparts in Sweden, Denmark, and so on, to nearly all of them. The International Fairy Tale Catalogue shows that point very nicely - a point that is well known among Norwegian folklorists too.
Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
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| Dylan Thomas reading one of his essays for BBC radio |
This sea town was my world."
Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughsAbout the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The
sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On
to the fields of praise.
And honored among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I
ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor
that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time
held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
First published in Deaths and Entrances (1946)
