I wish I could say more about this ...

In 1697, Charles Perrault published a small volume of folktales polished into fine literary form.

The frontespiece featured an illustration of an old woman sitting in front of a roaring fire with her distaff and spindle telling a story to a man, woman and child. On the wall above her, a plaque reads: "Contes de ma Mere L'oye" (Tales of my Mother Goose).

Andrew Lang (Famous for his 'Color' series of fairy tale books) translated Perrault's tales into English, and they were published in 1888. In his biographical introduction, he claims that the figure of Mother Goose was first mentioned in verse in 1650, and that that's what Perrault's frontespiece refers to (Here is his footnote on the subject, via Project Gutenberg's etext: footnote 14).

And ever since then, perhaps, people have been around trying to attatch the name, somehow, to an historical woman.

The most intriguing candidate, at least, in context of this blog, is: "Queen Bertha, of France."

In an article published on the Web (Dated July, 1997): The History of Nursery Rhymes & Mother Goose, Vikki Harris (Waterloo University, Ontario, Canada) wrote:

(Quote)
The first possibility is the French Queen Bertha, wife of Pepin. She was "known as ‘Queen Goose-foot’ or ‘Goose-footed Bertha’, possibly because of the size and shape of her foot which was said to be both large and webbed…The other was Queen Bertha, wife of Robert II, also of France… It was rumoured that the close blood-tie [with her husband] had caused her to give birth to a child with the head of a goose" (Delamar, 3). In each case the Queen has been represented, and is often depicted by the image of a child’s storyteller.
(Unquote)

Both of these "Queen Berthas" are thus linked with the "monstrosity" of disability -- one, through herself, and the other through the son she supposedly bore.

Ever since I've come across this paragraph, I've been trying to find out more about either of these legendary figures. But all I find are these same tidbits of "information," along with the sober reminder that none of it is historically accurate. But I don't care about historical accuracy.

What intriques me is the link, in the social imagination, between the figure of the storyteller and disability, especially since Aesop was also pictured as deformed (Dwarfish, with a severe hunchback, and ugly face); I'm starting to wonder if this is A Thing; A Motif.

So I'm putting this out there, in case any of my readers may know more of the story, or has an idea where to look.

"The Lame Man, the Blind Man, and the Donkey" -- a Fable on the Birth of a Fable

This is a story I learned from my mother. My memories of her telling it go back at least forty years. She would retell it often, to the point where just mentioning it would make us giggle. She mentioned, once or twice, that it was from the Bible -- a parable. That was something I never once thought to question.

When I got to college, I'd refer to the story to my friends, as we'd walk along, and they'd nod and chuckle, too. As if they knew the story from their mothers (or fathers, or cousins, or grandparents), too. It was one of those jokes that you didn't need to tell, anymore, because everyone knew the punchline. But it was still funny.

This is the story my mother told:

Once upon a time, there was a blind man and a lame man, who had but one donkey between them. So, one day, they decided to travel to the city. The blind man rode the donkey, and the lame man walked, leaning on the donkey for support. And this worked out very well.

Until they met a man coming the other way. The man scolded the rider: "How dare you," he said, "with two good legs, ride in comfort, while you force the lame man to walk?"

After the stranger had passed, the two of them thought maybe he made a good point, so they switched places. It was a little bit trickier, because the lame man had to remember to call out whenever there was a stone or sudden dip in the road. But after a while, they got the hang of it, and were going along quite comfortably.

Until they met another stranger, who scolded the rider: "How dare you, with two good eyes, ride in comfort while you force the blind man to walk?"

So, again -- they switched places.

But for whichever was riding the donkey, their impairment -- whether blindness or lameness -- disappeared in the eyes of any stranger they met coming the other way. So they spent all their time switching places, in order to avoid censure, that they never did get to the city.

The lesson, my mother said, was "to find your own way through the world, and if it works, stick to it, and don't let yourself be swayed by strangers who think they know the situation, but don't.

It wasn't until this last spring, when I was starting to collect stories for this blog, that I thought of finding my mother's original source, so I could talk about its meaning in context.

And that's when I came upon the following surprise: apparently, this story doesn't exist.

I tried Googling "Lame Leading the Blind" and "Bible," and got zero (0) hits. There were many references to "The Blind Leading the Blind" (Mathew 15: 14) but that's about sinners looking to other sinners for advice, because they like what they hear, and both of them wandering into ditches and trouble. And its take-away messege is exactly the opposite of the one my mother taught me -- that you should trust your own experience. It also equates "blindness" with helplessness and sin, rather than perfectly capable, as long as you have the tools you need. Taking "Bible" out of the search term, I got several more hits. Nearly all of them, however, were from modern articles, written about the modern state of affairs in the Disability Advocacy movement, without a single mention of a donkey.

But what about all those other people -- friends of mine -- who would nod knowingly and chuckle when I'd say: "here we are, the lame leading the blind." (often, each were, in fact, visually impaired, and following the sound of my motorized wheelchair as we went together from one place to another, on campus) ? Why did not one of them say: "Wait a minute -- what are you talking about?" Were they just being polite, while I put my foot in my mouth? How could an artifact of such common social currency just disappear?

Late at night, frustrated to the point of pulling my hair, I posted a retelling of Mother's story to my personal journal. Two well-read friends, from different sides of the globe, each recognized motifs of stories they'd seen before. Anna recognized this one: The Blind Man and the Lame Man (this is most likely the story my college friends thought I was referring to); Paul recognized another The Man, His Son, and His Donkey.

Both stories are available as etexts on exactly the same site (i.e. a Web version of a single book): Aesop's Fables, by J. (Jenny) H. Stickney, originally published in 1915. There are 21 stories listed between the one and the other -- so, in a paper-printed book, less than a dozen pages between them.

My mother was born in 1934. I would not be at all surprised if Aesop's Fables were on her family bookshelf, or perhaps she borrowed it, once, from the the local library (either schoolhouse or public), and mother, in her youth, wolfed down several stories in one sitting, the way you do, when the stories are short and witty. Years later, I came along, J. H. Stickney's anthology had long been out of her reach, and she could not go back and disentangle the two of them from the knot they had formed in her memory.

Technically, I suppose, this story (as I learned it) is beyond the perview of this blog, since it is neither a traditional folktale nor has its origins before the start of World War I. But I'm including it as an illustration of how lived experience (especially the lived experience of Disability) shapes the formation of our stories, and how we then use those stories to support and give meaning to our experiences.

No parent expects to be confronted with the prospect of raising a disabled child -- certainly not back in the 1960s, before the existance of prenatal testing. So here was my mother, raising me, facing down doctors, and therapists, and psychologists who were all too ready to tell her all the things I couldn't do, and all the things she should do, for my good.

One hospital-appointed psychologist was ready, when I was two years old, to label me as "Profoundly retarded," and was going to recommend that I be placed in an asylum. And then, there was the occupational therapist, who recommended that Mother keep a sandbox in the house for me to play in, to help develop my fine-motor skills, disregarding the fact that we had four housecats. (...) These professional experts were like the strangers on the road to the city, who, in the original Aesop tale The Man, His Son, and His Donkey, were ready to tell us we were doing everything wrong, even though they only saw us for a brief moment, and knew nothing of the road we'd traveled before we met them.

Meanwhile, at home, my mother saw that I was far from helpless -- she recognized that, as in The Blind Man and the Lame Man, the only thing I could not do was walk, and that if I had help with that, there was a lot I could do to help others.

And, looking back now, I can see how it was her own experience, and powers of observation, that gave new purpose and meaning to the donkey in her story that never existed in either of her sources: the power of aids and assistive devices to effectively "erase" the appearance of disability. Give me an alternative way to get up the stairs, and let me have a desk I could roll my wheelchair up to, and there was absolutely no reason why I couldn't go to a regular school with the other children in my neighborhood. I can also see how, as she argued with experts and fought to maintain her composure while pleading my case, this new wrinkle would become the most important part of the story, and the hinge-pin on which the moral turned. And because the two fables, taken together, reflected a truth she recognized so deeply in her day-to-day life, she mistakenly thought it was a truth that many people had shared, going all the way back (at least) to the writing down of the Bible.

But I'm convinced this is a case of reverse Cryptomnesia. Usually, people read something written by someone else, and when, after many years of being nearly forgotten, experience brings the memory back, they think it was theiir own, original, idea. My mother invented her own story, and attributed it to something she read in a book of wisdom, long ago (even though she was a bit fuzzy on which book it was).

There is no mention of cerebral palsy, or hospital corridors, or meetings with teachers and principals before the start of a new school year, but that, ultimately, is what my mother's version of "The Lame Leading the Blind" is all about. And so, I believe, it is with so many stories of the outcasts and the odd that appear in folktales through the years. Sometimes, though, the telling details get blurred, without the lens of personal experience to bring them into focus.

"The Girl Without Hands." Physical disability as a "Divine mark" -- monstrosity versus humanity.

Once upon a time, there was a miller who'd fallen on hard times, and the only thing he had to support him was his mill and the apple tree that grew behind the barn. A mill isn't much good if no one comes to grind their grain, and a single apple tree will leave you hungry, in the end. And so the miller had to resort to being a woodcutter, and try to earn his bread that way.

One day while he was out in the forest, he met a strange man who said to him: "I'll give you all the wealth you'll ever need, if you just promise to give me what's standing behind your mill in three years' time."

The miller thought to himself: "That's nothing but the old apple tree." And so he readily agreed, thinking the bargain more than fair.

When he got home at the end of the day, his wife met him at the door. "When I came into the kitchen, this afternoon, there was a bag of gold coins on the table. How did they get there?"

And so the miller told her about the man he'd met in the forest, and about the bargain he had struck.

"You fool!" his wife said. "That was the Devil you bargained with -- and it was our daughter behind the mill -- sweeping the yard!"

And so, for the next three years, the girl prayed to God every day, and lived entirely without sin. And on the night that the Devil came for her, she washed herself well, and drew a chalk circle around her, on the floor, so that he could not touch her.

The Devil was furious, and he ordered the miller to remove all water from the house, so that the girl could not bathe, and he would be back for her the next night.

Terrified, the miller did as he was ordered. But the girl wept into her hands, and so they were again clean, and again, the Devil could not touch her.

This time, he ordered the father to chop off his daughter's hands.

At first, the miller refused -- there was no way he could do that to his own daughter. But then the Devil said that if he did not, it would be the miller himself that the Devil would drag off to Hell.

When the miller told his daughter what the Devil had said, she replied: "I am your child, do with me what you will." And she put her hands on the chopping block, and let her father chop them off.

But still, she wept onto her stumps, and washed them clean, and so, that third night, when the Devil came for her, he could not touch her. And after that, he had no more power over her. And he went away empty handed.

After that, the miller said to his daughter: "You have saved my life and my soul. And because of you, I have great wealth. From here on, I will make sure that you live the rest of your life in splendor, and have everything you desire."

But the girl said: "No. I cannot live with you any longer. Bind my arms behind me, and I will go forth into the world. I shall rely on strangers to give me just what I need."

And so, her arms were bound behind her, and she went into the world.

She walked all the long day, and when the evening fell, she came to a king's orchard, filled with beautiful fruit trees. But the orchard was surrounded by a moat of flowing water, and she could not enter. She had been walking all day without a single bite to eat, and she felt that if she could not have some of that fruit, she would die of hunger.

So she fell on her knees, and prayed to God. And an angel of the Lord appeared beside her, and closed the head gate, which stopped the moat from flowing, and she was able to cross over and into the orchard. She ate a pear straight from the tree with her mouth, while the angel stood by her. And when she had finished eating the pear, and was full, she crawled into the brush, and fell asleep.

The royal gardener was keeping watch, for all the pears had been counted, and were ready for harvest in the morning. But because the angel was with her, he thought the girl must be a spirit, and was afraid to call out to her.

The next morning, when the king came down to oversee the harvest of the pears, he noticed that one was missing, and he asked the gardener what had happened. So the gardener told him how the angel of the Lord had come down, and closed the head gate, to stop the moat from flowing, how the girl who seemed to have no arms ate the pear off the tree with her mouth, and how he'd been afraid to call out or talk to her, as she might be a spirit.

The king was intrigued. He called for the harvest to be postponed, and that night, he joined the gardener to watch and see if pear-eater appeared again. He brought the royal priest with him, to speak with her, in case it was a spirit, and the three of them sat down under the pear tree.

When darkness fell, the girl again came out from the brush, and the angel of the Lord was with her, and closed the head gate.

As she approached the tree, the priest spoke up and asked her: "Are you a spirit? Or a being of this mortal Earth?"

"I am a mere mortal," the girl replied, "abandoned by all the world, but not God."

When the king heard that, he said: "Although the world has abandoned you, I shall never abandon you." And he took her to his palace, and had silver hands made for her. And because she was beautiful and good, he fell in love with her, and made her his wife.

After a year, when she was with child, the king was called away by royal duties to travel over the world. He gave orders to his mother to look after her well, and send him news by messenger when the baby was delivered, and let him know whether or not all was well.

In due time, his wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. And the king's mother sent the news by messenger to the king.

But the journey was a long one, and after a time, the messenger stopped to rest under a tree. And he fell asleep. That is when the Devil (who was still trying to get his hands on the girl) took the true note from the messenger's pocket and replaced it with another that said his wife had given birth to a monster.

When the king received that note, he was deeply troubled, but he wrote a reply that they should both be looked after well until he returned.

But the journey back to the palace was still a long one, and the messenger fell asleep in the same spot. And again, the Devil replaced the true note with a false one, demanding that both the child and his wife be killed.

The king's mother was horrified when she read the reply. She immediately sent another note, asking if that was his true desire. But because the Devil always substituted a false reply for the true one, the message came back that the order stands -- and further more, that his wife's tongue and eyes should be kept as proof of the deed.

The king's mother was terrified of disobeying the king. But she could not allow such innocent blood to be shed. So she ordered a wild doe to be killed in the girl's place, and its eyes and tongue be kept.

Then she said to the girl: "It is no longer safe for you here. You must leave this place forever." And she strapped the baby to the girl's back. And the girl ran away into the forest.

She wandered a long time until she came to small hut in the center of the darkest part of the forest, with a sign above the door: "All who approach may freely enter here." An angel of the Lord was there, and welcomed the two of them in, and he gave them food, and held the babe up to the girl's breast, so she could nurse.

Meanwhile, the king returned home, and his mother brought him the tongue and eyes, as proof that his order had been carried out.

When the king cried out: "What have you done?!" his mother realized that the order she'd received had been a false one. And she consoled him, saying that she could not bring herself to really kill the girl, but killed a doe in her place, and sent mother and child into the world.

The king left immediately to search for them, vowing touch neither food nor drink until he found them, or died trying. And though he kept that vow, it was with the power of God that he was kept alive and searching.

Seven years passed, and the girl and her child (whom she named "Sorrowful") continued to live in the hut in the forest with the angel of the Lord. And in due time, because of her purity and devotion to God, the girl's natural hands grew back.

Then, one day, the king stumbled upon the hut, and saw the sign that read: "All who approach may freely enter here," and he went in. The angel of the Lord appeared before him, and offered him food and drink. But the king declined, saying that he only wanted to rest a moment, because he was so tired. And he lay down on a bench, turned his face to the wall, and draped his handkerchief over his face.

And the angel went into the other room, and said to the woman and her son: "Go into the other room, for your husband and father is here."

So she and Sorrowful went into the other room, and saw the king lying there, as if asleep. But the handkerchief had fallen from his face. "Sorrowful," she said, "pick up the handkerchief and cover your father's face again."

But the boy grew impatient. "How can I?" he asked. "You taught me to pray: 'Our Father, who art in Heaven...' And you've told me I have no father on this Earth. How am I supposed to know this wild man as my father?"

The king heard this and sat up. "Who are you?" he asked.

And she answered: "I am your woman, and this is your son."

The king shook his head. "But my wife had silver hands," he said. "I had them made for her myself."

"By the Grace of God," she said, "My natural hands have grown back again.

Whereupon the angel brought him the silver hands he'd had made for her, as proof that she was speaking the truth.

And he rejoiced, and kissed her, and proclaimed: "A heavy stone has fallen from my heart."

Then they ate and drank together, and he brought her home to his elderly mother. There was much rejoicing throughout the land, and they had a second wedding.

And they lived together happily, until their happy deaths.

---

Although this story is of Germanic, northern European, origin, it nontheless reflects the ancient Roman belief that those with missing or abnormal limbs were oracles sent by the gods (monstrum, in Latin) .¹ I have not done research on this point, but it would not surprise me if this belief traces back to the Indo-European root culture of both the Romans and the Norse.

The heroine of the story is not born with her deformity, yet she is still marked by it, and thus, made a pawn of Cosmic Forces. This tale also reflects the belief, perhaps a survival from our Indo-European anscesters, that physical deformity is the mark of sin -- if not of the child's sin, then sin by the parents. Nor was she fully embraced by her society, and welcomed back as fully human, until her own, flesh and blood, hands had grown back (at first, the story says, merely, that the King "took her as his wife;" it wasn't until he brought her, healed, back from the wilderness, that there was any mention of public celebration of their wedding).

And this is not simply "an old superstition." Even today, in this modern, urban-centric culture, those with visible disabilities are routinely approached by strangers, and exhorted to pray to God for a cure; I, myself, am among that number.

It is perhaps too easy, with the Devil and the angels so central to this story (and life sustained without food or water, and magical regeneration), to see the entire narrative as dreamlike and symbolic, and not relating to real-world experience at all. But I cannot help but be struck by the dilemma faced by the king's mother: torn between Government decrees that deformed infants and children be abandoned (or put into institutions) so as not to be "a burden on the State," and a love of family members, and the innate knowledge that they have done no wrong.²

---

Citation links and footnotes:

This is my own interpretation from Google's auto-translate of the original German (here: 31. Das Mädchen ohne Hände ). There is also an English translation by D. L. Ashliman, here: The Girl Without Hands

¹I discussed the origin of the word "monster," and how it relates to our narratives about Disability, back in April, here: Monsters: a key motif, and a symbol of disability

²For more on this topic this blog article is a good place to start: Researching Disability in Ancient Greece

"I was sad, for I had no shoes" -- Distorted views through the Pity Lens.

From The Gulistan of Sa'di (1258 C.E. -- Persia):

Chapter 3: On the Excellence of Contentment:

(Quote)

Story 19

I never lamented about the vicissitudes of time or complained of the turns of fortune except on the occasion when I was barefooted and unable to procure slippers. But when I entered the great mosque of Kufah with a sore heart and beheld a man without feet I offered thanks to the bounty of God, consoled myself for my want of shoes and recited:

'A roast fowl is to the sight of a satiated man
Less valuable than a blade of fresh grass on the table
And to him who has no means nor power
A burnt turnip is a roasted fowl.'

(Unquote)

*Sigh*

Every time I hear, or come across, some variation of: "I was sad, for I had no shoes..." I cannot help but imagine the same vignette from the other side. So here is my attempt at a response:

(Begin)

As I sat in the great masque of Kufah, I lamented that I had no feet, and had to rely on companions and strangers to carry me whither I needed to go. But as I sat in prayer, I beheld a man enter walking who was poor, and had no slippers, and whose feet were blue from cold, and bruised by the hard stones of his path. And I offered thanks to the bounty of God that I had companions and strangers to carry me, and that I could fold the ends of my robes around the stubs of my legs, and thus keep warm and comfortable.

(End)

The biggest problem with viewing disability from the outside, of course, is that it is far too easy to view everything through the filter of pity. The person who is expressing the pity may think they're giving comfort. But it's a cold, heavy, wet blanket to the person on the receiving end. When Society at Large just assumes your life is devoid of value, then you are denied opportunities to contribute anything of value to Society at Large.

Most of the images of disablity that will come up in this blog will, as in this example, be viewed from "the outside" -- from the able-bodied perspective. This is, in large part, because those with physical disabilities have had far less access to education or to the means to tell their own stories. This has just started to change in the last few generations, but we still have a long way to go.

And, of course, when the creators of these pitying or horrifying images also happen to be generally wise or skilled in their art, everything they've passed down to us is accepted as a Great Truth... Even when it's not. So I've learned to see even the skewed, "monstrous" images of disability as evidence of, if nothing else, the long survival of disabled people in a world that is unfriendly to their existence. And from that, I take great hope.

---

When discussing the Wisdom, or the Foolishness, of others, my mother often reminded me to: "Consider the source." And unattributed translations make me antsy. So -- here are the sources for my source, as best as I can figure:

I'm quoting the Gulistan posted at The Internet Classics Archive, where the translator is listed as "anonymous." Their source is the Project Gutenberg ebook Persian Literature, comprising: The Sháh Námeh the Rubiyát the Divan and the Gulistan (in two volumes), Revised Edition, 1909. According to Wikipedia, the Gulistan was translated into English several times, starting with "Selections" in 1774 by Stephen Sullivan. The two English translations closest to the 1909 publication of Persian Literature were done by Sir Edwin Arnold in 1899, and Laucelot Alfred Cramer-Byng in 1905, so my best guess is that the words you've read here came from either one of them.

That's so lame!

(Quote)
CELIA: Didst thou hear these verses?

ROSALIND: O, yes, I heard them all, and more too; for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear.

CELIA: That's no matter: the feet might bear the verses.

ROSALIND: Ay, but the feet were lame and could not bear themselves without the verse and therefore stood lamely in the verse. (unquote)

As You Like It, Act 3, scene 2 (William Shakespeare, circa 1600).

Usually, when I hear "lame" used as an insult these days (as in: "That TV show is so lame, I can't believe you watch it!"), I flinch inside, even though I sometimes catch myself thinking it.

I'm familiar with the arguments, and perhaps you are, too, that its original meaning is totally obsolete (except maybe when people are talking about horses or other animals), and that no one really thinks of mobility impaired humans when they hear the word, anymore. So no one should seriously consider it a derogatory slur, in the same way that the N word is used. Personally, I find that argument unconvincing. And back in December of 2010, a blogger who goes by the screen name "lauradhel" gathered an archive of modern usage that refutes that argument, here: "I don't even THINK about disability when I say or hear 'lame!' No one does!"

But even without such contemporary evidence, the word 'lame' is still heard regularly in common passages from the Bible, and, yes, in folklore. So that original meaning is a part of our cultural context. And, yes, it does reinforce the idea that anything (or anyone) described as 'lame' is unworthy of even a moment's consideration.

But 'lame' does not bother me as much in the passage I cited, above. In the context of poetry writing, "foot" and "feet" have a specific meaning, and therefore, this exchange works both as an extended pun and a personification. And, frankly, I'm a sucker for a good (or bad) pun.

A "foot" in a line of verse is the smallest unit of rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables, just as a "bit" is the smallest unit of ones and zeros in a line of computer code. The term comes to us from the ancient Greeks (yup, them again), since choral dancers would dance to the rhythm of spoken or sung line -- tapping with their toes on the short syllables, and stamping with their heels on the long syllables. English doesn't have such a clear delineation between "short" and "long," so for us, it's stressed and unstressed.

For example, if ancient choral dancers chanted this:

"'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house"

Their accompanying footwork would go like this:

Toe-toe-heel, toe-toe-heel, toe-toe-heel, toe-toe-heel

Or, to:

"Hi-ho! Hi-ho! It's off to work we go!"

This:

Toe-heel, toe-heel, toe-heel, toe-heel, toe-heel.


So when Shakespeare (in the voice of Rosalind) remarks that: "...the feet were lame, and could not bear themselves without the verse," he is making double comparison.

The first is a comparison between the uneven rhythm of a poetic line and the uneven rhythm of a lame person's walk -- with heels and toes dragging and stumbling along. The second comparison is between a line of verse and a crutch -- which (I find) is a striking visual. A line of poetry is straight, crafted from ink, and stretches horizontally across a page; a crutch is straight, carved from wood, and supports a person's weight vertically.

So this use of "lame" acknowledges the fact that lame people exist, and that members of his audience would recognize how a lame person's walk differs from that of the able-bodied. Using "lame" to put down a TV show, or someone's fashion sense (or whatever) -- what does that even mean -- other than: "it's boring," or "I don't like it"?

Perhaps that's another reason the modern use of 'lame' as an insult grates on my nerves: it's lazy. If you can't be bothered to put any more thought into your criticism than that, perhaps you should remain quiet on the subject. As my mother oft said: "If you complain of being bored, maybe it's because you're boring."

An Aesop fable, presented without a moral (because questions are more interesting than answers)

THE BLIND OLD WOMAN AND THE PHYSICIAN

(Retold from this version by the Rev. George Fyler Townsend (1867))

There was once an old woman who had become totally blind. She hired a physician who promised he could cure her, and in front of witnesses, made the following agreement: If he succeeded in curing her, and restoring her sight, she would pay him a set fee, but she would only pay him after the cure was complete.

The physician made several visits to her house, and applied his ointment to her eyes each time. But then, before he left, he would quietly steal one item from her house, until, at last, he had stolen everything she owned.

Then, he came for a last treatment, applying the ointment to her eyes, and removing the bandages.

The old woman looked around her house, and said nothing.

The physician demanded his payment.

The old woman refused.

The physician brought her before a judge, and told his story, to compel her to pay his fee.

Before the judge rendered his verdict, however, he asked the old woman for her side of the story.

"Well," she said, "This doctor claims to have cured me. But he hasn't."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes. I know for a fact that my house is full of valuable things; I remember everything I own, from before I went blind. The doctor's cure is not complete yet, because I still can't see a single one of them."

[*rim-shot*]

***

This fable reminds me of the "Logic puzzle" that was fairly well-known when I was growing up in the 1970s, and the first time I heard it, when I was about 10 or 12, I was completely stumped:

(Quote) A doctor and his son were in a car crash. The doctor was killed, and the boy was rushed to the hospital. The attending surgeon in the emergency room looks down at the boy on the operating table and announces that another doctor must perform the operation, "Because this is my son." How is this possible? (Unquote)

The answer, of course, is that the ER surgeon is the boy's mother. This story is only a "puzzle" because of the cultural bias we have that all doctors are men.

The "twist" in this fable only works if, like the physician in tale, you assume that the elderly and blind are helpless and clueless about what is going on around them -- that an old, blind, woman can only sit in the middle of her house and wait to be cured, that it's even possible for the doctor to "quietly steal" all her worldly possessions, over an extended period of time, and she'd know nothing about it until the blindness was removed from her eyes.

Now, go back and read that story again. And this time, assume that she knows the physician is stealing from her from the first time he slips that silver teaspoon into his pocket.

Why would she decide to remain silent, and pretend to be ignorant until she's brought before a judge as a defendant? Could it be that she's afraid the cure would be withheld? Or maybe that she wouldn't be believed, because it would be the word of an old blind woman against that of a successful male doctor? And what about the assumption that a cure for blindness is so desirable that she'd put up with such a long, drawn-out thievery in the first place?

***

This story may have had its two thousand years ago, but all these questions are still being wrestled with by the disabled and the elderly who have to wade through a medical-judicial-economic system.

The Lame Smith God, and the Two Sides of "Myth"

Blogging Against Disablism Day, 2011 -- growing archive (click to see what others are writing).

[Author's note: in this article, I am citing ancient Greek myth and epithets, so I'm primarily using the terms "crippled" and "Lame," rather than "physically disabled" or "mobility impaired."]

There are two primary meanings of the word "myth." The first meaning is: "a sacred and ancient story that reflects a deep truth about the world and our place in it." The second is: "a falsehood that we deeply wish to be true." Often, those two meanings overlap, and the false myths we tell about ouselves can skew our understanding of the sacred myths of those who came before.

And this is what typically happens around the myths of Hephaestus, the ancient Greek god of metalwork, the forge, and craftsmanship ("Vulcan" to the Romans), who was also "The lame one," and "of Crooked Feet". Wayland, the Norse god of the forge was also lame, and this attribute of both the gods may trace back to their common Indo-European roots. But for this article, I will focus on Hephaestus.

The sacred story myths of Hephaestus overlap with the wishful thinking myth of our own time, namely that the "Issue of Disability" is a modern phenomenon, and something we've only started to confront in the last few generations. In ancient times, we tell ourselves, disability as we understand it just didn't exist. Any infant who was born too early or too small was taken out to the wilderness and left to die. The same was true of the elderly, or those grievously wounded by accident.

Sure, it may be less than ideal that we put our disabled into institutions, or deny them access to jobs or schooling, but at least we give them food and shelter and medical care. The ancient Greeks may have been the pinnacle of civilization for their age. But we're even better, more filled with Christian Charity than they were in this regard. They may have called one of their gods "lame" and "crippled," but that just meant that he walked a little bit funny, and was less graceful or handsome than Apollo or Zeus. It certainly didn't mean that he was actually impaired. He couldn't have been. He was a god.

The Greek Gods. Just the mention of them conjures up images of physical perfection, strength and beauty. They are, in modern Western culture, the archetypes of archetypes: understood as the rootstock of literature and psychology.

So imagine my surprise, when, in high school, I was reading through an illustrated encyclopedia of mythology for young readers, and I came across the story of Hephaestus -- the god of metalworking, the forge, and crafts. In the version of the story I read, he came between his parents, Zeus and Hera, during one of their frequent fights, and sided with his mother.

Zeus, the ruler of the gods, did not take this well, and threw Hephaestus off Olympus, who was then falling for a whole day and night, and when he landed, he became crippled, and unable to walk from then on. He used his skills as a metalworker to build himself four golden handmaidens support him as he walked, and to help him in his workshop (Perhaps the first example of "robots" in the Western Tradition).

It has been many years, now, since I first encountered this story, so I can't recall with one hundred percent accuracy, but I may have giggled as I read it -- or at least, grinned like the Cheshire Cat. This was a god -- a Greek god, to boot -- who was far from perfect, who needed to build himself automaton maidens to help him walk, and who, (it would seem, from this version of the story) suffered and survived the very mortal accident of a spinal chord injury, with its very mortal consequences. Here, at last, was an archetypal representation for me, nestled in among the archetypes of perfect humanity.

Sometime later, I read a second Hephaestus myth: that he had no father -- that Hera, jealous that Zeus had birthed the goddess Athena without her, decided to birth a child without him. Her anger, bitterness and jealousy infected her son, and he was born deformed. In shame and disgust, it was Hera who threw him off the mountain as unfit to live on Olympus. This version of the myth corresponds more closely with my own experience on the one hand, since Hephaestus was born disabled, but on the other, his level of disability is more ambiguous -- he was simply "too imperfect" to be in the company of the other gods, and was therefore rejected.

This is the version that corresponds to our modern concept that the ancient past was barbaric and cruel: a mother who would throw her own child to his supposed death. We don't do that, we tell ourselves (except, sometimes, we do).

So, which interpretation of the myth was correct? Was it my first reaction, as a teenager, that took "crippled" at face value to mean the same thing way back then as it does today? Or was it the more jaded view, that says life back then was so brutish and short that it couldn't possibly mean the same -- that anyone who fell short of an athletic, "Olympic", ideal was labeled as defective?

A couple of years ago, armed with Google Search, I decided scratch that curiosity itch. Most of the images that came back, for the first few pages, seemed to confirm the second interpretation. All the statues of Hephaestus looked as hale and hardy as any of his divine siblings; the only visible nod to his mythic lameness might be that he was shown putting less weight on one foot than the other. Or else, even though perfectly formed, he was shown working at his forge while sitting on a bench or chair.

And then, I came upon the photo of a painting from an archaic drinking vessel, dating to somewhere in the sixth century B.C. It showed Hephaestus in a winged chair with wheels. What struck me immediately was how like a modern wheelchair this vehicle was in its proportions (not counting the massive wings sprouting from each wheel, or the matching bird's tail feathers counterbalancing the rear).

Image:

(caption: Black and white image of Hephaestus in a winged, wheelchair-like chariot, adorned with crane motifs, within a white circle; from circa 525 B.C.E)

Now, in context, paintings on these types of vessels (called Kylix) were often meant to be laughed at by drunken humans: Zeus getting caught in one of his many affairs with mortal women was a common motif, for example. So this image of a god riding in a chair with wheels was meant to be an image of mockery and derision. But the artist who painted that image was able, at least, to imagine what sort of assistive technology a person (or god) would need if they really, actually, could not walk.

And recently, I found another image of Hephaestus, from roughly the same period, depicting the scene where he is being led back to Olympus on a donkey. It's a commonly painted scene; in most such scenes, the god looks perfectly able-bodied, if a little tipsy from Dionysus's wine. But in this particular image, his deformity is striking: his lower legs are severely shrunken, his feet are half-formed, seem to be missing several toes, and they are turned around backward at the ankles. There is no way someone with legs like that could walk with nothing more than an "unsightly limp." Such a being would need canes, crutches, or if he had the power to create them, automaton handmaidens to support him on each side as he walked, or a golden, flying wheelchair to carry him to the top of a mountain.

Image:

(caption: Color photo of an archaic water jar detail: painted image of Hephaestus riding on a donkey. Both lower legs are depicted as shrunken and deformed. Circa 530 B.C.E.)

These images are in the minority in the archaeological record, as far as I know. But depictions of the disabled are relatively rare in our own day, too, and for much the same reasons; if you have difficulty standing for long periods of time, you are not likely to work as a model in a sculptor's studio. And if, for this reason, you are an artist who is only familiar with "ideal" bodies, you're probably going to guesstimate what a crippled body should look like. If there is a social taboo around the existence of disability, you may be reluctant to fully depict what you can imagine, especially when a god is the subject. But if you happen to have disability as part of your lived experience (either directly, or through life with a disabled family member), you will more likely show that in your art.

In relatively recent years, as the fields of archeology, multicultural studies, and modern medicine cross, there's been a trend of looking at all the instances of lame smith gods, and asking if there was something about the ancient craft that causes the disability -- lead and arsenic poisoning seem to be the leading hypotheses (See the Google Scholar results page Ancient metallurgy and Lameness for examples).

This is a step in the right direction. But this approach still presumes that any impairment or disability in ancient times was acquired -- not something anyone lived with and adapted to from the start. And there are no symptoms of Hephaestus being otherwise sickly or poisoned in his myths -- simply that he cannot walk far without assistance. It could be that working at a forge was something a person could do while seated, with a workshop full of apprentices, should you need extra help -- as Hephaestus was depicted in so many vase paintings, frescoes and murals.

And I know, from personal experience, that living in a mobility-impaired body leads you to inventive thinking, and building new tools on the spot ("Oop! Dropped my pencil, let me get my grabber... Darn! dropped my grabber. What can I reach? And how can I use that cobble something together to get the things I can't?"). It's not hard to imagine that the first hammer was invented by someone who lacked the hand or arm strength to smash open a marrow bone or nut with a rock alone... And then, others in the clan kept finding reason to borrow it, and make their own. Seen in this way, all technology is assistive technology. And maybe, even in our advanced civilization, we need diverse ways to move through the world as much as we need a diverse genome.

So maybe the ancients did mean the same thing as we do, when they spoke of someone being "crippled" and "lame." Maybe it's time to acknowledge that disability has been a part of human culture from the beginning. Maybe it's time to discard the notion acknowledging the disabled is enough. Maybe, after twenty-five centuries, it's time to raise the bar.

---

For more details on the Hephaestus myths, quotes from literature, and a gallery of Hephaestus images, go here: Hephaistos pages at www.theoi.com.

The tale of Thumbling: Making your way through a world that doesn't fit

This is my own retelling of the story, based on Google's Auto-Translate from the German, here: Daumesdick (warning: if you hover your mouse too long over a passage, a bubble pops up with the original language, and asks if you can provide a better translation).

Thumbling (Also Known As: "Tom Thumb")

Once upon a time, an old woodsman and his wife sat by the fire one evening; he puffed on his pipe, and poked at the fire while she sat at her spinning wheel and spun.

The old man sighed. "How quiet and lonely it is here! We sit alone in the evenings while our neighbors' houses have children running around, playing and bringing laughter to their families."

"It's true," his wife said, turning her wheel. "I wish for nothing more than a child of my own. Even if it were tiny and no bigger than my thumb, I would love it dearly, and cherish it."

And what do you know -- isn't it odd? Seven months later, the woman fell ill, and gave birth to a tiny baby boy. And the child was no bigger than her thumb.

"Well," the parents said, "it is just exactly what we wished for." They named him Thumbling, and loved him and cared for him as they had promised in their wish.

And though they fed him well, and he thrived, he never grew any bigger than he was the moment he was born. Still, his eyes were bright and his mind was nimble, and he was healthy and as strong as you could wish.

One day, when his father was about to go out into the forest to cut wood for the day, he said: "How I wish I had someone to meet me out there with the horse and cart, to help me bring the wood back."

"I can do it, Father," Thumbling piped up.

His father chuckled. "But you can't even reach the halter," he said. "How could you drive the cart?"

"Well, Mother can hitch up the horse for me, and I can ride in its ear, and tell it just how to go, just as well as you can."

His parents thought that was a very clever plan, and agreed they could try it. His father started out ahead, and then, a little while later, his mother hitched the horse to the cart, and helped Thumbling up into the horse's ear.

And so there he sat -- calling "Gee!" and "Haw!" and "Move up!" and "Whoa!" And the horse moved along and followed direction just as well as if someone had been pulling on the reins.

It just so happened that as they came 'round the corner of the town road, they met two strangers walking the other way, and they happened to pass each other just as Thumbling was calling out: "Gently! "Gently!"

The two men looked at each other. They could clearly see the horse; they could clearly hear someone. But it seemed as if the driver were invisible.

"What strangeness is this?" one man asked the other. "Let's follow along behind, and see what is going on. I'm sure we'll find something remarkable." And so the two turned around and followed behind the horse and cart.

Soon, Thumbling came up to his father in the woods. "Here I am, Father," he called out, "safe and sound! I told you I could do it."

And his father reached up and took his son from the horse's ear, and sat him down on a straw, which for Thumbling, was quite comfortable.

The two strangers stared at all of this in wonder. Then one whispered to the other. "We could make a fortune, if we had an imp like that -- we could put on a traveling show, and sell tickets; we'd make a fortune."

So they went up to the father and offered to buy Thumbling. "He'd be better off," they said to him. "We could give him a better life than you could."

But his father refused. "I love Thumbling as I love my own eyes," he said. "He's not for sale -- not for all the gold in the world."

But Thumbling climbed up the folds of his father's coat and whispered in his ear: "Go ahead and sell me. But charge a high price. I'll get away from these two and come back home again. I know I can."

So at last, his father agreed, and he traded Thumbling for a purse heavy with gold. And Thumbling went away with the two men.

"What shall I do with you?" the leader of the two asked him.

"Put me on the brim of your hat," Thumbling said. "I can walk around up there, and get a good view of the countryside as we go along."

So that's what the man did. And they walked the whole day until sunset.

"Let me down," Thumbling said. "I have to relieve myself."

"Oh, just do your business up there," the man said. "Birds poop on my hat all the time, and I never even notice. So just go ahead."

"No," Thumbling insisted. "I'm not an animal. "I know what's right. Put me down."

So, finally, the man let Thumbling off the brim the brim of his hat, and put him on the ground. As soon as he was free, Thumbling darted off, and dove into a mouse hole.

The two men, furious, grabbed sticks and tried to force him out, but Thumbling just scampered deeper where the sticks couldn't reach. By then, it was growing dark, and the men had to give up. They had no choice but to return home without their gold, and without their main attraction.

Thumbling crawled out from the hole. "The ground here is treacherous going," he said to himself. "I could fall off a clod of earth and break my neck in the dark. I'd better find someplace to sleep until light."

Luckily, not too far off, he spotted an abandoned snail shell, gleaming palely in the moonlight, and he curled up inside it, and settled down to sleep.

Just then, two thieves came walking along, discussing how they might rob the rich parson's house, just down the road.

"I know how you could do it!"

"Who said that?" one of the thieves asked.

"Down here, at your feet!" Thumbling called out.

The thief squatted down, to get a closer look. When he saw how small Thumbling was, he burst out laughing. "How could you help us?" he asked.

"Well," Thumbling said, "I could fit through the iron bars over the parson's windows, and just hand the goods out to you."

After a moment's thought, the thieves realized that was a pretty good plan, so they scooped him up and took him along.

When they got to the parson's house, they held Thumbling up to the parlor window, and he slipped in between the bars. Once inside, he called out to them, as loud as he could: "What do you want me to give you?"

The thieves tried to shush him. "Be quiet!" they said, "or you'll wake the people up -- just hand us whatever you can reach."

But Thumbling continued, as if he hadn't heard them correctly. "What do you want?"

The thieves were starting to panic. "Be quiet, please!" they begged him.

Sure enough, the housemaid was sleeping in the next room, and woke up, thinking she'd heard something.

"Okay, okay," Thumbling said, "Just hold your hands up to the window."

And so the thieves did.

"My!" Thumbling said, in his full voice again, "this house is full of nice things! I will steal all of them!"

The housemaid definitely heard that, and hurried from her room into the parlor.
The two thieves ran off into the night, as the Wild Hunt were after them.

The housemaid looked around the parlor, but couldn't see where the voice had been coming from. "I must have been sleepwalking again," she said to herself, "and dreamed the whole thing."

Meanwhile, Thumbling slipped out the parlor door, and headed to the barn. There, he crawled into the hay bale, where it was warm and dry, and went to sleep. He was still sound asleep when the housemaid went out to feed the cow, and took up a great load of hay (with Thumbling in the middle of it), and put it in the manger.
And the cow took him up in her first mouthful.

"Oh, my!" Thumbling said, "how did I get caught in the mill?" Then, he realized where he was, and, dodging the teeth to avoid getting ground to bits, he dove down her throat, and into her stomach.

"This is a very dark room," he said. "They forgot to put in any windows. I could do with a candle."

The cow kept eating, and the hay kept coming down, and Thumbling was feeling rather crowded.

"No more hay!" he called out to the cow, "No more hay!"

(If the cow heard him, she paid no attention)

The maid, meanwhile, was milking the cow. And she heard Thumbling calling out: "No more hay! Please -- No more hay!"

The maid was so astonished that she jumped off her stool, and knocked over the milk bucket, too. She ran to the parson and exclaimed: "The cow's talking! "

At first, the parson didn't believe her, and said she must be crazy. But in the end, the maid convinced him to come to the barn and see for himself. When he did, he declared that the cow must be possessed by demons, and should be killed on the spot. And so the cow was slaughtered, and the entrails (with Thumbling still inside) were thrown on the dung heap.

Thumbling then started to crawl his way out. And he'd almost made it when a lone wolf came along and swallowed the cow's stomach whole, Thumbling and all.

So now, he was in the wolf's stomach. "Perhaps I could talk reason with this wolf," Thumbling thought to himself, and so he spoke up: "That cow's stomach made a poor breakfast, I venture," he said.

And the wolf agreed that it had.

"If you're still hungry," Thumbling suggested, "I know where you can get a fine meal." And he described the way to his own house. "Its cellar is full of ham and mutton, and jellies, and cakes; you could have a great feast, there!"

The wolf scoffed. "And how am I to get in?" he asked. "It's not like they'll open the front door to me."

"Oh, you don't need the front door," Thumbling said. "There's a window right at ground level, where there's a gutter alongside the house. You could slip in there, and no one inside would be the wiser."

So, the wolf hurried off to the house Thumbling described. He found little window, slipped inside, and found all the food Thumbling had described, too. And he began to eat, and eat, and eat, until he was full.

That's when Thumbling started to jump, and dance, and shout inside the wolf's belly.

"Oh, be quiet, please!" the wolf said, "or you'll wake the people!"

"No," said Thumbling. "You've had your chance to feast and party -- now, it's my turn!" And he jumped and shouted even more.

The wolf panicked, and tried to climb back out the window. But he'd eaten too much, and was now too fat.

The sound of the wolf thrashing around in the cellar alerted the woodsman and his wife. And when he peeked through the door and saw that a wolf had gotten in, he grabbed the ax, and handed his wife the scythe. "I'll go for its head," he said to her, and if I don't kill it, you use the scythe, just to be sure."

But as they were coming down the stairs, Thumbling called out: "I'm here! I'm inside the wolf!"

So the woodsman waved his wife aside. He'd have to make sure to kill the wolf in one blow, so as not to harm his son inside. And with one blow he cut off the wolf's head.

Then they very carefully cut open its stomach, and let Thumbling out.

"See, Father?" the boy said. "I told you I'd come home safe again."

"Where have you been?" his parents asked him. "You have no idea how sick we were with worry for you, all night long."

"I've been all around the world," he said: "I've been down a mouse hole, and in snail shell, and a cow's stomach, and then a wolf's stomach. But I'm done with traveling, and I'll stay home."

Then, he had a big breakfast, and a bath. And his mother made him a new set of clothes, because the ones he'd been wearing were spoiled beyond repair.

The End

---

Looked at from a somewhat literal perspective, this story can be seen (if you'll pardon the idiom) as a tall tale about living life with dwarfism. But as an allegory, it can speak to the lived experience of children growing up with all sorts of physical impairments, including cerebral palsy (and the detail that he was born two months premature is certainly suggestive of CP).

It starts with the negotiation around chores, and figuring out ways to fully participate in family life. At first, Thumbling's parents see him only as someone to be doted on and protected, but with just a little bit of help with the things he absolutely cannot do, and an unconventional approach to the rest, Thumbling is able to be a full partner in his father's work.

At first glance, it may seem that the triggering event of the plot -- Thumbling's negotiation of his own sale into slavery -- is a barbaric practice of olden times. But these are issues families of the disabled have to face on a regular basis even today: whether or not to sign the release form allowing your child to be on a poster for a charity event (which you know will end up being pity-porn, but help raise money for adaptive equipment you can't afford, otherwise), just for one example.

The "running joke" of Thumbling's supposed invisibility is also part of the lived experience of disabled people. I have often been right beside some people, talking to them in full voice, only to have them talk over my head to the able-bodied person who happened to be standing near me. Or I've been dressed in a skirt and blouse, and still referred to as "he," because of a person's squeamishness at the possibility of actually looking at me.

Thumbling uses this "invisibility" to escape those who would abuse him. And, at first, he fains "simplicity" in not understanding (and thus, ignoring) others' demands for him to be quiet. And such so-called 'trickery' is still needed, sometimes, when people with disabilities are in an abusive or threatening situation, and can't fight back or run away. But his moment of freedom comes when Thumbling refuses to be quiet, and says: "It's my turn, now!" And so it is for those of us in the real world: Our time of being invisible is coming to an end.

The "Aesop Romance," the Blogger, and the Internet

Once upon a time, a blogger wanted to write a collection of essays about stories featuring disabled characters. She started her research with Aesop, who (she remembered learning in her youth) was hunchbacked, bandy-legged, and ugly. But she could not remember very many details, and wanted to double-check her memories, starting with Wikipedia.

It was there that she learned of the existence of The Aesop Romance, a story perhaps recorded between the first and second centuries C.E., that embedded the fables attributed to Aesop into the story of his life -- how he had once been mute, but was granted the power of speech as reward for kindness to a priestess of Isis, and how he became a slave to the philosopher Xanthus, and how he often helped or confounded his master by the use of his wit.

Excited by the prospect of a new story to learn, full of adventure and double-dealing, she then searched for "Aesop Romance" and "Book of Xanthus." Surely, she thought, such an old and influential tale must be available in translation as an e-text, somewhere.

Sadly, each hit that came back from these searches only made mention of the tale, but were not the tale itself. And each of those reviews of the story were careful to point out that it couldn't possibly be accurate. ... as if factual accuracy were the only thing that mattered.

Moral: Those who wish to study the past are often limited by what others think is important.

---

Plato Vs. Aesop:

Yes, I know Plato lived at least a hundred years after the time Aesop is believed to, and so these two passages are not really direct rebuttals of each other. But each, I think, illustrate two opposing values: the philosopher on one hand, who likes to believe he contemplates the lofty realms of theology and pure thought, and the fabulist on the other, who believes that the small is as worthy of consideration as the great.

Plato:

(Quote) [The philosopher's] mind, disdaining the littleness and nothingness of human beings, is "flying all abroad" as Pindar says , measuring earth and heaven . . . but not condescending to anything within reach. -- Dialogues, Theatetus (End Quote)

From Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Little, Brown, and Company: Boston, Toronto. 1968. Page 94.

Aesop:

(Quote) The Philosopher, the Ants, and Hermes*

A philosopher standing on the shore witnessed a terrible shipwreck where all the passengers and crew were drowned. In his mind, he cursed the gods, who, because a criminal might have been on board, had caused the death of so many innocent people.

As he was indulging in these thoughts he found himself surrounded by an army of ants, whose nest he was standing beside. One of the ants climbed up his leg, and bit him. So he trampled them all.

Hermes appeared before him, then, and struck the philosopher with his wand, saying: "And you stand here, judging the actions of the gods, while treating these ants in the same fashion?" (End Quote)

[Moral: is left for the Reader to discern]

*(This is my own retelling from the version here Aesopfables.com: The Philosopher, the Ants and Mercury. This version was translated into English by Rev. George Fyler Townsend in the 19th century. In his translation, Rev. Townsend refers to the god as "Mercury," who was Roman, not Greek, and has the philosopher cursing "Providence," which, to me, feels like a Christian redaction).

---

And here's that Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop

Monsters: a key motif, and a symbol of disability

Monsters. They're a central motif in stories from around the world and throughout time. In modern storytelling, when the monster shows up (whether Godzilla, zombies, a giant shark, or a serial killer), there's no question -- it's time to run. The monster is, itself, a carrier of evil intent, and means to do us harm. Today, monsters seem to lie toward the opposite end of the emotional spectrum from the disabled population, portrayed as helpless sufferers who deserve our pity and outpourings of charity.

But feelings of horror and feelings of pity are just two halves of a double-edged sword. Both cause us to recoil from the object of our attention. And both emotions mark who is a companion and who is an outsider. It's more comfortable, for many people, to donate money to a telethon in support of "the homebound," than it is to see a disabled person sitting at the table next to them in a restaurant.

And, according to The Online Etymology Dictionary, when "Monster" first entered written English (circa 1300) it originally meant a "malformed creature, afflicted with a birth defect." It came into English from Old French, and it came into the French from the Latin monstrum: an omen or portent, from monere: to warn (the same root that gives us "monitor" and "demonstrate").

To the ancient Roman priests and soothsayers, monsters were not, themselves, full of wrath or hatred, the way they are for us. Instead, malformed offspring were seen as a sign that the gods were angry, warning us to prepare for divine punishment.

Human psychology being what it is, however, such transference is predictable. Ostracizing the disabled, and denying our existence within a society, probably stems from a desire to deflect Divine Wrath:

"We're not the people who're sinning... no, nope. You warned us -- sent us an omen, Jove? You sure? 'Cause no such monster was born around here. You must be looking for that other village, over in the next valley."

*whistle*
*eye-dart*

If the creature insists on trying to return to the village, after being sent away, then clearly, it does harbor us ill-will, and wants Jove, or God, to strike us with lightning or pestilence. And thus, we come to the modern sense of monster, and all the stories where the hero must fight off the supernatural carrier of doom.

Just as often, though (and perhaps more often), the hero of the story is the "marked" child him or herself, shunned and outcast from the family, who must find their way back to the village, to overturn society, and begin a new era.

And sometimes, these "omens and portents," these "malformed creatures" come to us in the guise of the storytellers themselves.

---

"Monster" entry at the Online Etymology Dictionary, (c) 2001 - 2010, Douglas Harper: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=monster&searchmode=none

Wherein I introduce myself, and this blog

I am an adult woman with cerebral palsy, or CP. This means that, for my entire life, I've moved through the world in a noticeably different way, and the world has responded to my presence in a noticeably different way.

I am also a woman who loves traditional folk- and fairy tales, and have, on occasion, written stories in that style, on commission.

The storyteller in me wants these two facts to be connected: maybe I'm so fond of alternate realities because I move through the world in an alternate way, looking at everything from a slightly different angle. Or maybe it's because my imagination gives me more freedom than my body does. Or maybe... or maybe... All of the reasons I can imagine are probably true, on some level. But the simplest truth may be that these two facts are just co-incidents.

Whatever the reason, these two facets about me -- one of my body, and the other, my mind, are often bumping up against each other, creating sparks and frictions and insights. Which leads to the creation of this blog.

Several years ago, I was commissioned to write a tale for a young man who also happened to have cerebral palsy. On the day I met with him to discuss the story, and learn a bit about what he wanted, he told me, straight out, that he did not want the hero of the story to be disabled, or have CP like him. I understood exactly what he meant. When you have a disability, well meaning strangers want to make that the center of everything. And his life was full enough with well-meaning strangers. But even as I was agreeing with him wholeheartedly, his reasoning stung: that "cerebral palsy doesn't belong in fairy tales."

Folk and fairy tales have been passed down through generations, shaped by lived experiences the way a river stone is shaped by the forces of the tide. They're peopled with princes and paupers, men, women, and children, farmers, merchants, craftsmen and thieves. These stories have been studied by psychologists, ethnologists, and college professors as mirrors of human existence. Why were we, this young man and I, both so willing to erase our reflections from these mirrors? The truth is, we were wrong. The disabled have always been a part of human society, so we've always appeared in stories. And I will use this space to prove that.

I've chosen the philosopher Plato to represent the denial of disability -- the idea that only the "Ideal Human" is a fit subject for stories. And I've chosen Aesop, who legend says was himself, disabled, to represent the desire to see our real selves in our tales.

This blog's central focus will be the exploration of traditional tales and fables that deal explicitly with disabled characters (including both cognitive and physical disabilities). But I will also venture out along the spectrum of where the subject of stories and the subject of disability meet, to include disability's appearence in proverbs and platitudes, "High" literary works, such as the plays of Shakespeare, literary wondertales, and more modern fantasy novels such as those by Mark Twain and George MacDonald.

My bright boundary line shall be the start of the Great War (now known as "World War I"), since my feeling is that after the turmoil of war, the Issue of Disability in Stories became capitalized, and self consciously "A Thing to Write About," and thus an issue (and an invention) of the modern world.