Panel Review

Hippocrene Books’ Folktale Series: A Panel Review

Folk Tales From Chile
by Brenda Hughes
Legends and Folk Tales of Holland
told by Adele Leeuw
Ukrainian Folk Tales
translated by Marie Halun Bloch
All published by Hippocrene Books, Inc (1999)

Our panel review of Jay O’Callahan’s The Great Auk proved to a favorite with many readers, so we have decided to make such panels a regular part of Works In Progress. This time around we gathered four panelists and gave them three classic collections of folktales, all recently reissued by Hippocrene Books. We asked each panelist to simply read and review all three for the first round of the review. Once all the reviews were in, we sent each panelist all four reviews and asked them simply, "what do you think now?" They were free to respond to anything in the first round, to defend their initial opinions, to change their minds, to agree or disagree with each other.

First Round:

Marie Winger:
Folk Tales of Chile offers an interesting blend of both the Spanish and Indian heritage of Chile. Some of the stories followed familiar plots —"The Magic Cow" reminded me of a Jack tale, "The Old Man and the Beanstalk" an obvious correlation and "The Story of the Chonchon" was reminiscent of the Iriquois story of the flying heads. Others had familiar themes such as a riddle tale or a cummulative one (sort of the Old Woman and the Pig meets God.) There did seem to be quite a bit of violence in the stories, but maybe we are just becoming too sensitive to this. Many of the stories also incorporate supernatural elements, witches both good and bad, that have become triggers for issues of censorship in recent years. Still the book is a source for tales from Chile, a country under-represented in other sources. There is a preface explaining a little of the historical background and giving very general information on the sources for the stories.

Legends and Folk Tales of Holland also offered some familiar plots in new guises—"The Shoemaker’s Dream" instead of the Peddlar of Swatham, "The Haunted House" another who-dares-to-spend-the-night-here tale, "The Poffertjes Pan" one of those last word stories. Others tell the origin of places, tales that are more historical in nature. They all have a nice tone and some are quite usuable. I especially liked "The Emperor’s Questions" and "The Two Wishes." There is no introduction, sources or pronunciation guide which would help with the unfamiliar Dutch names and words. But once again we have a source for stories from an under-represented country.

I found Ukranian Folk Tales to be the most attractive of these three largely due to the handsome woodcuts throughout. According to the translator’s brief note most of these tales are taken from a vast collection made in 1869 and 1870 by a Ukranian ethnographier in Kiev. This book may be an excellent example of the sin folklorists often warn against, pulling a tale out of it’s cultural context. I must confess I found most of the stories in this volume very unapproachable. Many seemed very odd with abrupt or confusing endings, odd plot twists and unexplained references. Perhaps some information on Ukranian culture would have helped the stories make more sense. I found it an interesting glimpse into a different cultural psyche, but not a very useful one.

So, what to say in general. Well, I applaud Hippocrene for publishing this series of titles. So much of what we get from August House, the two hundred pound gorilla of storytelling publishing, is indistinguishable. At least these volumes offer some fresh voices and some new choices for versions of familiar tales. I found Folk Tales from Chile and Legends and Folk Tales of Holland to be generally similar in tone and scope. Since they are aimed at children the language was not always as vivid as it might have been. All three were aesthetically pleasing. For me Legends and Folk Tales of Holland offered more stories I felt I could or would want to tell. I guess this is ultimately the criteria most tellers use in judging a collection. Hopefully tellers will do their homework and look to this series as additional source material.

Virginia L. H. Weeber:
These three folk tale books were delightful to read and piqued my curiosity about the cultures and history of these three very different countries. I particularly liked reading them one after another because of the contrast they present in their different views of life and the world. Let me explain. In the Dutch folk tales, I saw the world as an order to be preserved by virtue. The stories seemed to reinforce the importance of having certain qualities of character and avoiding other qualities of character. Both communally and individually, life was enjoyable when the person(s) are virtuous, hard working, thrifty, honest, generous, etc. If people were greedy, lazy, or proud, they suffered and their lives fell apart.

Animals were the main characters of the Ukrainian stories. The view of the world in these stories seemed to do with relationships between the animals as an example of how to pragmatically get along in the world. If animals (that realistically would kill or be killed by the other-like a fox and a rooster) could co-operate, they were able to get by, to survive, and to outwit their enemies. The world was a place to survive. Life is about survival, and therefore about getting along.

The stories from Chile were the most interesting to me because the culture is very different from my western scientific culture. Magic, the occult, God, religion, etc. were all part of the woven tapestry of life and the world. To live in the world required successfully learning to get along in such a world. The Dutch and Ukrainian stories had magic and magical characters in them, also. But in the Chilean stories, the view of magic and magical characters was that they were a normal part of reality. Being pragmatic and learning to get a long in the world were important virtues to learn.
Reading these stories gave me an enjoyable window into the history and cultures of Chile, Holland, and the Ukraine (as well as highlighting my ignorance of them!).

Clare Withers:
Folk Tales From Chile by Brenda Hughes
This selection of 15 tales alternately awed and annoyed me. Introductory notes explain the story sources—either the native Indians or those who entered the culture to spread Christianity. At its best, the collection contains stories revealing strong connections with nature. There’s an anthropomorphized Snow White—in a story with a dwarf, no less—in an etiological tale that unfolds quietly, almost magically. The prose style is different, somehow, with the western concept of balance off-kilter enough for so that anything might happen next; it invests the story (and the best of these tales) with an otherworldly quality that makes the reader forget, at least momentarily, about the other oh-so-dominant Snow White. Some of the stories were beautiful, poetic; there are sea fairies. There’s even a heroine who opts to remain close to nature once she’s succeeded in her quest; she define happily ever after as staying in the mountains instead of returning to the city. These tales explain erupting volcanoes, torrential rain leading to flooding, origins of a clear stream are exotic, compelling in their connection with the elements. In stark contrast are the stories with overtly moralistic overtones that hint heavily of colonialism/domination (Little Tenca and the Snowflake) and those that seemed to me to be curious amalgams. There’s a beanstalk leading not to a giant but to Saint Peter and then God himself who bestows a wishing ring, a cloth that spreads ample food, and sticks that beat. Many of these are fine stories, too, with lyrical turns of phrases. My favorite is from "Daughter of the Kalka" : "The fox was sly and clever, wore shiny leather boots, and rode a black horse that galloped like the wind." Striking visual images and more than serviceable tellings aside, however, I could not help but be annoyed when reading these. I could only think of the exotic stories of Borneo, with its oral tradition. I remember a few years back hearing a teller at the MAST Gathering hold an audience spellbound with a long and strangely beautiful tale from Borneo. The teller spoke of the stories disappearing now and forever as a result of encroaching missionary zeal. This reissued collection can serve as a reminder of the value of preserving the stories of a culture before co-option occurs.
Legends and Folk Tales of Holland told by Adele de Leeuw. As a storyteller, I’m a staunch advocate of quoting sources. I really like explanatory notes, bibliographies, citations, etc., with storytelling collections. In this collection, the absence of all the above is a real loss for the reader. All that is offered in this selection of 28 stories is a brief paragraph thanking four librarians from four specific libraries. This is an intriguing collection; there are legends and historical tales ("The Curse," "The Simple Maid of Hunsingoo"), Christian stories ("A Legend of Saint Nicholas," "The Golden Helmet," "The Miserly Miller"), as well as comical ones. In the latter vein, the councilmen in the "Stories From Kampen" were hilarious in their sage assessments. Reading this story and "The King’s Rice Pudding," I really wished for some trail to lead me to more stories.

Standing out in the collection are several dark tales of repayment of an evil deed. In these ("The Merman’s Revenge" and "The Rich Widow of Stavoren"), prosperous towns are brought to ruin by greed and envy. Again, perhaps some notes would reveal a bit more - the cities actually exist and went from good to bad at some point—it’d be nice to have the scholarship on it closer to hand. This collection contains lots of good stories and some serviceable variants of well-known tales, like "The Shoe maker’s Dream" and "The Haunted House.""

Ukrainian Folk Tales by Marie Halun Bloch
I read and reread many of the quirky tales in this collection. The accompanying woodcuts by J. Hnizdovsky were striking. While drawn to many of the tales, I spent so much time with this volume simply because I just didn’t connect with it much. I’m attributing this to me; I found the humor dark, some stories abrupt, and really didn’t feel grounded enough to get very familiar. And yet, I know I’ll pick it up again and again to see if something works next time around.

Note: As a public librarian, I checked to see how accessible the original collections were. There were several copies (but under five, I think) within a country-wide system. I suspect that many more readers will be introduced to these stories in these reissued volumes. They’re all broad and rich collections, waiting for the right reader, biding their time, ready to spark...

Alan Irvine:
Of the three books, I found Ukrainian Folk Tales the least appealing. The stories never quite felt right. The stories tend to be short (2-4 pages a piece,) and often pretty bare-boned, with little in the way of description and detail to flesh out the plot. Familiar plots suddenly take off in strange directions. They often feature odd combinations of animals (most of the stories are about animals, sometimes interacting with humans, but not always) and odd characterizations of those animals. A fox, for example, is likely to be the hero or, at least, sympathetic while cats and goats are often the villains. Of course, in western European stories the opposite tends to true, and that may be some of the problem here. The stories come from a different culture, but there is not enough here to help the reader get into that culture to appreciate the stories. With several of the stories, I could tell that they were supposed to be funny, that there was some great joke being told and I was supposed to be laughing, but I just did not get it.

Legends and Folk Tales of Holland proved a bit better. Here, at least, the plots, characters, and themes were more familiar. The stories tend to be straightforward, solid, respectable. There is not a lot of fantasy and fancy. The dragon of Utrecht, for example, does not dwell in some mountain cave or forest wilderness; it simply appears one day in the basement of a tavern. (And the big problem with the dragon is that it prevents anyone from going into the basement to fetch beer for the customers upstairs.) When magic does come into play, it works in a mechanical, simplistic fashion. (In at least three of the stories, someone says, "if I am lying, let X happen." And since they are lying, X immediately happens.) Perhaps because of this, I found the strongest stories to be those that avoided the fantastic and simply told of historical events, such as "The Ordeal of Leyden," which gives a wrenching reconstruction of the siege of Leyden. That story suggests another trait of the book. Holland’s history as a more or less middle-class republic of a nation definitely shapes these stories. There are very few nobles, knights, or kings in these pages, and when they do show up, they are inevitably the villains. Finally, the stories tend to be moralistic. Good behavior is always rewarded, bad behavior always immediately punished. The outcome is never in doubt, so much so that by the end of the book I found myself rooting for one of the villains to triumph just for a change of pace.

Folk Tales From Chile proved to be my favorite of the three. The short preface quickly recapped Chile’s history as part of the Inca Empire conquered by the Spanish, pointing out that Chilean folk tales come out of a blending of these two cultures. Throughout the book, I could see the two traditions interweaving in fascinating combinations. Several of the tales are set in early times, back in the beginning or close to it, and involve characters who were perhaps once Incan gods, dwindled down to folktale. Other tales followed familiar, European plotlines, but with different emphasis and mood. Indeed, the mood is probably what most distinguishes these tales, for they unfold in a gentle, almost mystical fashion. There is sadness and regret where we might expect tragedy and blood. Simple victory instead of epic heroism, winning of a comfortable amount of riches, not vast fortunes. Many of the conflicts end, not with victory by hero or villain, but in reconciliation of the two. We also encounter several unusual magical beings such as the chonchon, a sort of witch, whose head can leave her body and go flying off (using her ears as wings) for adventures in the night. With these stories I felt like I was truly getting a glimpse of a different culture, a different way of looking at the world, but, unlike with the Ukrainian tales, a glimpse that I could understand and savor.

Reading the three books one right after another proved a delightful experience as well, for it emphasized the differences between the tales, not so much the different stories, for many of the actual stories were similar from one book to another (although each book contains unique stories as well,) but in the feel of the tales, the mood they invoked, the way the tales unfold and resolve. Fortunately, the books are all of a size that makes it easy to read them as a set and compare them.

As with all these Hippocrene Press reissues, all three are filled with illustrations. Although all of the drawings were nice, and evocative of the mood and tales, none really jumped out at me the way those in other books in the series have.

And, of course, as storytellers always do, I could not help keeping my eye out for stories I wanted to take and tell myself. The final tally? None from the Ukrainian tales, one, maybe two from Holland, and at least three from Chile.

Second Round

Marie Winger:
One of the things I love most about telling is the hunt and eventual discovery. Exploring new "lands" in search of the elusive quarry, a great story I can’t wait to tell. Once I find the one I go searching for its siblings, cousins and grandchildren. I love to see how time and distance affect the story, thereby gaining an understanding of its basic "genetic code." The more collections there are out there the more my search is enriched.

I think this round of reviews has shown each of us reacting in much the same way to these three collections. Our culture and experience reflects how we were engaged by these stories. We each seemed to find the stories from Holland the most approachable (not surprising since we share a Western European heritage), the Chilean stories the most intriguing and the Ukrainian the most alien. But whether or not one finds that perfect story in a collection should not be the its soul criteria for value. Who can say what subtle effect a story has on us. As Clare says having these collections out there "biding their time, ready to spark..." that is there true value for us all.

Clare Withers:
Someday a storyteller with a knowledge of Ukrainian culture will come across the collection that we all panned (and will probably pan it, too) and will follow the few source notes to the original collection. So, while it’s not readily useful, at least it establishes a paper trail.

In reading the reviews of the three folk tale books, I continue to hold as my favorite stories the Chilean folk tales. I don’t look at these stories in terms of retelling. My criteria for this review is based on my general knowledge of folk tales and what I’ve read up to this point. Most of what I’ve read has been typically western culture-type fairy or folk tales. I judge my "favorite" of the three books based on what was most different to my experience. I believe that, as Alan Irvine says, the Chilean stories show a blending of two cultures. Rather than negatively judging some of the stories because they are "the result of encroaching missionary zeal" (see Clare Withers’ comment), I think the stories are a good reflection of the history and culture of the country. The stories give voice to the different views of the world. The stories together give a full flavor of the country. Marie Winger pointed out that Chile’s stories are under-represented within folk tale books.I think all of us reviewers felt the winsomeness of the Chilean culture through these folk tales.

I am not able to connect well with Marie Winger’s review because of her level of knowledge and detail about specific stories. I am not sure of her references to specific stories. But if I were more conversant with the stories, I’m sure I’d appreciate her review much more. I enjoy puzzling out for myself the cultural values and views of the country. My sense of folk tales is that they serve as windows into a culture, and a passing down of cultural values. We can pick up a great deal about the values of a people by the story itself. However, we can’t pick up as much information about the history of the country, which also informs the stories. So, I’m sure more background information would be helpful. I want to get right to the stories; so I’m more interested in the information after I’ve read the stories. (The stories whet my appetite for background information--sort of like what the American Girl stories do, with an historical section following the story).

Virginia L. H. Weeber:
Clare Withers’ categorization of the dutch tales is helpful in understanding the breadth of the stories and the particular focus of the stories. Alan Irvine’s analysis of Holland’s history ("as a more or less middle-class republic of a nation") shaping the stories is interesting. I also noticed that there were few (if any) stories of princes and princesses. The characters tend to be much more ordinary folks. I do not find myself rooting for the villians because I look at the stories as passing on the values of the dutch. And I can so much see the stories reflecting my stereotype of the dutch (at least from history if not current times) as being brave, hardworking, down-to-earth, etc. Maybe if I reread the stories I’d root for the villians.

I like the Ukrainian folk tales probably because I couldn’t "figure them out" very easily. I probably miss a lot of what was going on in the stories because of not knowing much about Ukrainian history or culture. I am fascinated by the use of animals and how differently they act in the stories in comparison to fairy/folk tales I’ve read. Again, I think it is helpful to consider what the stories reveal to us of the values of the culture. It would be nice to have an expert handy to answer our questions about Ukrainian history and culture. After reading some of the stories, I did find myself thinking, "Huh?" Part of the interest in reading them is in analyzing them for this review. I might feel differently about them if I read them purely for pleasure.

Once again, much of the pleasure in reading these stories is in reading them one after another. I recommend reading all of them, back to back. And thank you to the other reviewers for your insight into the stories.

Alan Irvine:
After reading over all of the first round responses, what struck me was how much we all agreed with each other concerning the content of the books and our assessment of the stories in each collection. We all seemed to find the same characteristics and themes. What we disagree on is our evaluations of these things, whether we like or dislike what we find. A number of comments sparked responses in me, and perhaps the easiest way to proceed is simply book by book.

So, let’s start with Folk Tales From Chile. Clair and I were both struck by the blending of traditions, the blending of native and Spanish. But while Clair found this annoying, I found this the most intriguing aspect of the stories. Clair makes the analogy to the loss of the tales of Borneo (and other such cultures) happening now, but I don’t think that is exactly fair. The wholesale extinction of cultures that we see happening today, when indigenous cultures suddnely come into contact with modern industrial/media culture represents the extreme of what happens when cultures come into contact, not the norm. Culture is never fixed and permanent. Any culture is always shifting and changing, the old ways always giving way or adapting to the new. Nor are cultures usually "pure," untainted by elements from anywhere or anyone else. People have always borrowed, stolen, adapted ideas, concepts, even stories from other cultures. These stories give us a glimpse of this process, of the Spanish and native cultures blending, each shifting and changing, leading to something new. It is the same process that created most of modern Latin American culture; Latin American music, for example, is a blending of European, native American, and African musical traditions. In particular, what we see in these tales is often familiar European plotlines infused with, even softened by a different sensibility, one accepting of magic and of the otherness of the world. Much of the harshness of the western stories is replaced by a gentleness. I think this is what Ginger is reacting to in the stories. I agree with her that these stories take us into a very different world than we are used to seeing.

In Legends and Folk Tales of Holland, Ginger saw a world based on order and virtue. I agree with her, but found that world too moralistic in a simplistic way. There was no room for ambiguity, for the grey areas of acts and motives. Everything was either completely good or completely bad, and reward or punishment followed automatically and immediately. I had a hard time entering into, or believing in, such a mechanical morality.

I found Ginger’s comments on the Ukrainian tales quite helpful, however. After reading her take on the stories, they made a lot more sense to me. We find such basic, pragmatic values running through many Eastern European cultures. The book would be much improved, however, by providing the reader with information on the culture, the values, the history of the Ukraine as Marie suggests. Such an introduction would provide the context to allow us to see the values that are driving the stories. (But even with Ginger’s clarification on what is going on in these stories, I still did not like them all that much.)

Finally, Marie’s comment that these collections are aimed at children caught my attention. While reading these tales, they never struck me as being particularly for children, nor did I think the books were necessarily children’s books. After reading Marie’s comments, however, I double checked, and, sure enough, each book is clearly labeled ages seven and up. Why? Nothing in the content struck me as being aimed more for that audience. (While most of the stories are suitable for children, many struck me as aimed at adults - as most folktales originally were.) I checked the other books recently issued by Hippocrene Press, and found a range of recommendations, some seven and up, some nine and up, some twelve and up. And while I have not yet read all of the books, of those I have read, I would be hard pressed to come up with anything in the content that distinguishes the seven and up from the twelve and up books. One distinction I do see is that the books for older readers tend to be longer, and contain some longer stories. The three books we are reviewing here are all short (I was able to read each book cover to cover in about an hour apiece,) with stories that range from two-four pages in length. Perhaps that is what earns them the seven and up designation.

—published in WIP Winter 2000.