Read Online From the Forest by Sara Maitland - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sara Maitland
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the time the demotic fairy stories were being collected they had incorporated elements drawn from literary romance – sometimes satirically. 18
Before Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began their project, writers did retell fairy stories, but they did so in a literary and conscious manner; they did not try to replicate the rhythms, forms or morals of the oral tradition. Charles Perrault (1628 – 1703) is often treated as one of the earliest ‘collectors’ of fairytales, but he did not see his own work in that light. He was throughout his life a committed ‘modernist’, arguing the superiority of French contemporary literature over the classics (‘Even Homer nods’ was a catch phrase of his). He saw himself as laying the foundations for a new literary genre, French rather than Greek. Although his fairy stories were drawn from pre-existing oral tales, he developed them for sophisticated court-based readers in a highly literary manner. The great innovation that the Grimm brothers introduced was the attempt to replicate the form and language and rhythm (rather than the narrative content) of oral fairy stories. This is why it is slightly odd that they are so criticised now for editing and altering the stories to make them accessible to a new group of readers – bourgeois children whose reading materials were strictly mediated by adults. This is what, to the best of our knowledge, the tellers of stories within the oral tradition have always done.
I am suggesting that we walk in all the forests with a double map: a rich, carefully researched but still incomplete map of the history (economic, social and natural) of woodland that spans not just centuries but millennia; and a second map which relocates the forest in our imaginations and was drawn up when we were children from fairy stories and other tales. To make everything even more difficult, the first map is a palimpsest: the older history has been scraped off by biological scientists over and over again and rewritten in the light of new discoveries – with details like ‘beech trees were . . . were not . . . were indigenous’. The second map is a magic map, which shifts and changes every time you try to use it to find out where you are, where you came from and where you might be going.
And to add to the already heady mixture, it is so very pretty in Saltridge beech wood in the springtime. The light shifts and dances; although it is too early in the year for real butterflies, the pairs of freshly emerged beech leaves look like butterfly wings, and quiver on the wind like green butterflies. There is so much to look at, so much to learn, and yet at the same time it is all supposedly ‘natural’ and easy and our home and heritage. It feels hardly surprising that Hansel and Gretel got lost.
Suddenly, as we walked, chatting comfortably, a very bad thing happened, just like in a fairy story: a vicious dog, not very large, but necessarily a great deal larger than Solly, hurled itself down the track, growling, and for no reason whatsoever attacked the poor puppy. In the ensuing melee, including a reckless but heroic rescue in the finest traditions of medieval romance by my friend, there was a good deal of human and dog blood shed, a great deal of noise, and a real sense of shock. The attacking dog was no wolf, and no doubt his owners were not witches – although we felt they were wickedly casual about the whole episode – but the abrupt ferocity and the unexpected change of mood from golden to wild and threatening added to the confusion that the walk was making me feel.
Soon, though, the aggressor and his useless owners disappeared into the wood. We calmed ourselves and continued. We came out of the wood and dropped down from the ridge, past the cricket field which Laurie Lee, the author of Cider with Rosie , 19 donated to the village. Even apart from its donor, this cricket pitch has to be one of the most romantic community amenities in the country – poised high above the
Before Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began their project, writers did retell fairy stories, but they did so in a literary and conscious manner; they did not try to replicate the rhythms, forms or morals of the oral tradition. Charles Perrault (1628 – 1703) is often treated as one of the earliest ‘collectors’ of fairytales, but he did not see his own work in that light. He was throughout his life a committed ‘modernist’, arguing the superiority of French contemporary literature over the classics (‘Even Homer nods’ was a catch phrase of his). He saw himself as laying the foundations for a new literary genre, French rather than Greek. Although his fairy stories were drawn from pre-existing oral tales, he developed them for sophisticated court-based readers in a highly literary manner. The great innovation that the Grimm brothers introduced was the attempt to replicate the form and language and rhythm (rather than the narrative content) of oral fairy stories. This is why it is slightly odd that they are so criticised now for editing and altering the stories to make them accessible to a new group of readers – bourgeois children whose reading materials were strictly mediated by adults. This is what, to the best of our knowledge, the tellers of stories within the oral tradition have always done.
I am suggesting that we walk in all the forests with a double map: a rich, carefully researched but still incomplete map of the history (economic, social and natural) of woodland that spans not just centuries but millennia; and a second map which relocates the forest in our imaginations and was drawn up when we were children from fairy stories and other tales. To make everything even more difficult, the first map is a palimpsest: the older history has been scraped off by biological scientists over and over again and rewritten in the light of new discoveries – with details like ‘beech trees were . . . were not . . . were indigenous’. The second map is a magic map, which shifts and changes every time you try to use it to find out where you are, where you came from and where you might be going.
And to add to the already heady mixture, it is so very pretty in Saltridge beech wood in the springtime. The light shifts and dances; although it is too early in the year for real butterflies, the pairs of freshly emerged beech leaves look like butterfly wings, and quiver on the wind like green butterflies. There is so much to look at, so much to learn, and yet at the same time it is all supposedly ‘natural’ and easy and our home and heritage. It feels hardly surprising that Hansel and Gretel got lost.
Suddenly, as we walked, chatting comfortably, a very bad thing happened, just like in a fairy story: a vicious dog, not very large, but necessarily a great deal larger than Solly, hurled itself down the track, growling, and for no reason whatsoever attacked the poor puppy. In the ensuing melee, including a reckless but heroic rescue in the finest traditions of medieval romance by my friend, there was a good deal of human and dog blood shed, a great deal of noise, and a real sense of shock. The attacking dog was no wolf, and no doubt his owners were not witches – although we felt they were wickedly casual about the whole episode – but the abrupt ferocity and the unexpected change of mood from golden to wild and threatening added to the confusion that the walk was making me feel.
Soon, though, the aggressor and his useless owners disappeared into the wood. We calmed ourselves and continued. We came out of the wood and dropped down from the ridge, past the cricket field which Laurie Lee, the author of Cider with Rosie , 19 donated to the village. Even apart from its donor, this cricket pitch has to be one of the most romantic community amenities in the country – poised high above the
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