Excerpt from Persuasion, by Jane Austen -- first published 1818:
Chapter 17
While Sir Walter and Elizabeth were assiduously pushing their good fortune in Laura Place, Anne was renewing an acquaintance of a very different description.
She had called on her former governess, and had heard from her of there being an old school-fellow in Bath, who had the two strong claims on her attention of past kindness and present suffering. Miss Hamilton, now Mrs Smith, had shewn her kindness in one of those periods of her life when it had been most valuable. Anne had gone unhappy to school, grieving for the loss of a mother whom she had dearly loved, feeling her separation from home, and suffering as a girl of fourteen, of strong sensibility and not high spirits, must suffer at such a time;
and Miss Hamilton, three years older than herself, but still from the want of near relations and a settled home, remaining another year at school, had been useful and good to her in a way which had considerably lessened her misery, and could never be remembered with indifference.
Miss Hamilton had left school, had married not long afterwards, was said to have married a man of fortune, and this was all that Anne had known of her, till now that their governess's account brought her situation forward in a more decided but very different form.
She was a widow and poor. Her husband had been extravagant; and at his death, about two years before, had left his affairs dreadfully involved. She had had difficulties of every sort to contend with, and in addition to these distresses had been afflicted with a severe rheumatic fever, which, finally settling in her legs, had made her for the present a cripple. She had come to Bath on that account, and was now in lodgings near the hot baths, living in a very humble way, unable even to afford herself the comfort of a servant, and of course almost excluded from society.
Their mutual friend answered for the satisfaction which a visit from Miss Elliot would give Mrs Smith, and Anne therefore lost no time in going. She mentioned nothing of what she had heard, or what she intended, at home. It would excite no proper interest there. She only consulted Lady Russell, who entered thoroughly into her sentiments, and was most happy to convey her as near to Mrs Smith's lodgings in Westgate Buildings, as Anne chose to be taken.
The visit was paid, their acquaintance re-established, their interest in each other more than re-kindled. The first ten minutes had its awkwardness and its emotion. Twelve years were gone since they had parted, and each presented a somewhat different person from what the other had imagined. Twelve years had changed Anne from the blooming, silent, unformed girl of fifteen, to the elegant
little woman of seven-and-twenty, with every beauty except bloom, and with manners as consciously right as they were invariably gentle; and twelve years had transformed the fine-looking, well-grown Miss Hamilton, in all the glow of health and confidence of superiority, into a poor, infirm, helpless widow, receiving the visit of her former protegee as a favour; but all that was uncomfortable in the meeting had soon passed away, and left only the interesting charm of remembering former partialities and talking over old times.
Anne found in Mrs Smith the good sense and agreeable manners which she had almost ventured to depend on, and a disposition to converse and be cheerful beyond her expectation. Neither the dissipations of the past--and she had lived very much in the world--nor the restrictions of the present, neither sickness nor sorrow seemed to have closed her heart or ruined her spirits.
In the course of a second visit she talked with great openness, and Anne's astonishment increased. She could scarcely imagine a more cheerless situation in itself than Mrs Smith's. She had been very fond of her husband: she had buried him. She had been used to affluence: it was gone. She had no child to connect her with life and happiness again, no relations to assist in the arrangement of perplexed affairs, no health to make all the rest supportable. Her accommodations were limited to a noisy parlour, and a dark bedroom behind, with no possibility of moving from one to the other without assistance, which there was only one servant in the house to afford, and she never quitted the house but to be conveyed into the warm bath. Yet, in spite of all this, Anne had reason to believe that she had moments only of languor and depression, to hours of occupation and enjoyment. How could it be? She watched, observed, reflected, and finally determined that this was not a case of fortitude
or of resignation only. A submissive spirit might be patient, a strong understanding would supply resolution, but here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone. It was the choicest gift of Heaven; and Anne viewed her friend as one of those instances in which, by a merciful appointment, it seems designed to counterbalance almost every other want.
There had been a time, Mrs Smith told her, when her spirits had nearly failed. She could not call herself an invalid now, compared with her state on first reaching Bath. Then she had, indeed, been a pitiable object; for she had caught cold on the journey, and had hardly taken possession of her lodgings before she was again confined to her bed and suffering under severe and constant pain;
and all this among strangers, with the absolute necessity of having a regular nurse, and finances at that moment particularly unfit to meet any extraordinary expense. She had weathered it, however, and could truly say that it had done her good. It had increased her comforts by making her feel herself to be in good hands. She had seen too much of the world, to expect sudden or disinterested
attachment anywhere, but her illness had proved to her that her landlady
had a character to preserve, and would not use her ill; and she had been
particularly fortunate in her nurse, as a sister of her landlady, a nurse by profession, and who had always a home in that house when unemployed, chanced to be at liberty just in time to attend her. "And she," said Mrs Smith, "besides nursing me most admirably, has really proved an invaluable acquaintance. As soon as I could use my hands she taught me to knit, which has been a great amusement; and she put me in the way of making these little thread-cases, pin-cushions and card-racks, which you always find me so busy about, and which supply me with the means of doing a little good
to one or two very poor families in this neighbourhood. She had a large acquaintance, of course professionally, among those who can afford to buy, and she disposes of my merchandise. She always takes the right time for applying. Everybody's heart is open, you know, when they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the blessing of health, and Nurse Rooke thoroughly understands when to speak. She is a shrewd, intelligent, sensible woman. Hers is a line for seeing human nature; and she has a fund of good sense and observation, which, as a companion, make her infinitely superior to thousands of those who having only received `the best education in the world,' know nothing worth attending to. Call it gossip, if you will, but when Nurse Rooke has half an hour's leisure to bestow on me, she is sure to have something to relate that is entertaining and profitable: something that makes one
know one's species better. One likes to hear what is going on, to be au fait as to the newest modes of being trifling and silly. To me, who live so much alone, her conversation, I assure you, is a treat."
Anne, far from wishing to cavil at the pleasure, replied, "I can easily believe it. Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they are intelligent may be well worth listening to. Such varieties of human nature as they are in the habit of witnessing! And it is not merely in its follies, that they are well read; for they see it occasionally under every circumstance that can be most interesting or affecting. What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation: of all the conflicts and all the sacrifices that ennoble us most. A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes."
"Yes," said Mrs Smith more doubtingly, "sometimes it may, though I fear its lessons are not often in the elevated style you describe. Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial; but generally speaking, it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber: it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. There is so little real friendship in the world! and unfortunately" (speaking low and tremulously) "there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late."
Anne saw the misery of such feelings. The husband had not been what he ought, and the wife had been led among that part of mankind which made her think worse of the world than she hoped it deserved. It was but a passing emotion however with Mrs Smith; she shook it off, and soon added in a different tone--
"I do not suppose the situation my friend Mrs Rooke is in at present, will furnish much either to interest or edify me. She is only nursing Mrs Wallis of Marlborough Buildings; a mere pretty, silly, expensive, fashionable woman, I believe; and of course will have nothing to report but of lace and finery. I mean to make my profit of Mrs Wallis, however. She has plenty of money, and I intend she shall buy all the high-priced things I have in hand now."
I first read Persuasion several years ago, and had almost forgotten about the character of Mrs. Smith, and the role her disability plays as a turning point in the plot, until I was just finishing up my last entry on The Squirrel and the Fox, and contemplating how Jack's blindness gave him access to crucial information that he would not have otherwise.
By virtue of his blindness, Jack has the opportunity to eavesdrop on an entire year of news from a wealthy town, from the suffering of ordinary citizens to that of the Lord Mayor and even the royal family. Mrs. Smith, by virtue of her arthritic legs, is likewise given an opportunity to meet and befriend Nurse Rooke -- a woman who, if Mrs. Smith still had money, health. and social privilege, would have been beneath her notice. And it is through the gossip of Nurse Rooke that Mrs. Smith is able to pass on crucial information to Anne which ultimately informs her decisions about the future course of her life.
Jane Austen's overarching theme in Persuasion is the contrast between being a member of the 'correct' social class, and having a correct, and strong, inner character. And she uses Mrs. Smith's rhumatism to highlight just how arbitrary and fleeting social status and privilege can be. The rich and poor alike fall ill, regardless of their "proper" breeding, and thus will enventually need the services of someone like Nurse Rooke. Though Austen is also quick to point out, through the voice of Mrs. Smith, that illness, itself, does not make one noble or patient, but only highlights a person's true character, for better or worse.
As was often said by activists lobbying for the cause, as the Americans with Disabilities Act was being crafted, and making its way through Congress:
"'Disability' is the one minority group everyone will join -- if they're lucky."
*This was excerpted from the Project Gutenberg etext edition:
Title: Persuasion
Author: Jane Austen
February, 1994 [Etext #105]
[Date last updated: April 15, 2005]
Edition: 11
Language: English
The full text is available for download, in a variety of formats, here: Persuasion by Jane Austen
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Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Friday, July 15, 2011
The Squirrel and the Fox -- Awe and fear in the face of Disability
Before I share this story, a few comments on my "process."
I've known most of the stories here for many years. And, for the folktales, at least, I've read several different translations and versions. They fit my mind the way old fuzzy slippers fit my feet. As such, I feel as comfortable claiming them as "mine," and retelling them in my own words, as I would telling a remembered event in my own childhood.
This story is new to me. It was recommended to me for this blog by a friend, this spring, and I only got a chance to read it last month, in 1984 paperback reprint of a volume originally published in 1933.* The story was originally collected and translated by the linquist John Sampson at the end of the Nineteenth Century.
Folktales, at that time, were presented to the reading public unadulterated, ancient, and authentic And the role of the good folklorist was seen to be a mute and faithful recorder. I'm highly dubious of this claim, especially since the portrayals of the gypsy heroes in these tales conform to the privileged biases of the dominant culture, and show them to be simultaneously exotic, heroic, unsophisticated and slightly untrustworthy.
However, I have an even greater distrust of my own biases. And so, to ensure that I do not twist the tale, and give it meanings it was never intended to have, I present it here word-for-word from the book at hand; the only changes I've made are to substitute line breaks for pilcrows and the word "and" for ampersands.
THE SQUIRREL AND THE FOX
(A Welsh-Romany folktale, collected and translated by John Sampson)
There was a little village down in England, and two brothers living there. They were poor as poor could be: they knew not what to do.
They went seek for work, but no work could they find. Said one to the other: "There is a little old woman who lives down yonder in a small cave. Let us go thither. The old woman will tell us whether there is good fortune before us." "Yes, let us go," replied the other.
They came to the little dwelling, and hallooed to the old woman. The old woman knew they were coming and what they wanted. There was a great stone before the door. The old woman bade them drag away the stone. They dragged away the stone. "Carry me outside and set me on the stone, and I will tell you everything." The old woman had neither arms nor legs: thus she had been born.
"Hearken both of you to what I am going to tell you." Then quoth the armless one to Jack: "Here is a little stone for thee." (It was no bigger than a halfpenny.) "Keep this, and do not take it out of the handkerchief until thou comest to three roads."
The two brothers journeyed on. They reached these three cross-roads. They halted and Jack pulled the stone out of the handkerchief. He looked at it. One side was yellow as gold and the other side was back as coal.
"What are we to do with this stone?" he asked of his brother. No sooner was the word utteredthan he heard something whisper in his ear: "Spit upon it and toss it high in the air. If the stone fall at thy feet with the golden side uppermost, take the road on thy right hand; and if it fall with the black side uppermost, take the road on thy left hand."
He tossed the stone high into the air, and it fell at his feet with the golden side uppermost. Jack said to his brother: "Thou art to take the road on the left, and I will take the road on the right."
Now the two sat down and had a little talk together. "I go whither I go," quoth Jack. "Do thou remember to here to these three cross-roads in a year and a day; and if thou arrive before me wait here for me, and if I arrive before thee I will wait for thee, if I am still alive."
They set off. It was a hot summer's day. Jack tramped mile after mile. He could see no house, and night set in. He walked all night until morning broke. Now he hears dogs barking: he stood still to listen again.
He went on a little farther. He beheld a giant beside a tree, and heard a young woman weeping. She was crying out: "Stop, father! Leave me alone! do not treat me thus!" She was the giant's daughter. The giant was about to put a rope around her neck; he meant to hang her. The giant wished her to marry a certain man, but the young woman did not love him.
What did Jack do? Jack took the stone and threw it, and it struck the giant on the head and killed him.
What said the young woman to Jack? "If thou bury my father somewhere in a secret place where none may find him, I will give thee as much gold as you can carry away with thee." "Good!" quoth Jack, "I will lay him where none may find him.
He was about to bury him, when he found the little stone in the giant's head. He heard something whisper in his ear: "Leave him where he is, and place the stone at his left foot, and he will never be seen again."
Now they both went to the giant's house. The young woman opened a cupboard: in it were the giant's bags of gold. She gave one of them to Jack, who put it on his shoulder and departed.
Lo! he travels now over lofty mountains until he reaches the sea. He was weary, and the bag that he carried was heavy. He sat down and slept for three or four hours. He awoke and saw a man coming towards him with a great sack on his back.
The man came up to him. He recognized him. He stated to him: "Good God, thou art my brother!" "Yes, I am thy brother, and I am weary." He sat down and opened his great sack. "I am hungry. See, I am going to eat!" "And I am hungry, too," replied Jack. "Why dost thou not eat, then?" quoth the other. "I have naught to eat." "What is in thy sack?" "I have no food," said Jack, "I have nothing but gold." "Then if thou hast gold, buy thy food." "Gladly," quoth Jack, "give me my bellyful." "I will give thee thy bellyful if thou give me a hatful of gold."Jack opened his sack and filled his brother's hat with sovereigns. His brother gave him a little bread and meat.
The two tramped for miles and miles. They met no one; they grew hungry again. They sat down to eat. Jack was obliged to give his brother another hatful of gold before he would give him anything to eat.
And thus they went on until they rested again. They had not much food left. The brother would not give Jack anything to eat. "Thou hast all my money," quoth poor Jack, "I have no more; and if thou wilt not give me a morsel of food, I shall die of hunger." "No, I have told thee, I will give thee nothing except for thou pay for it." "I have nothing left to give thee." "I will tell thee what I will do will do with thee," quoth his brother. "Give me one of thine eyes and I will give thee a little food."
Jack plucked out one of his eyes and gave it to him. His brother gave him a litttle food. They finished their meal, and went on their way again.
Another day passed; Jack grew hungry once more. He was afraid to ask his brother to give him something to eat. Jack grew hungrier and hungrier. He asked his brother to give him a morsel of food. "Not I," quoth the brother, "I have not much left. If thou wantest any more, pluck out thine other eye and give it to me." He plucked out the other eye and gave it to his brother. His brother gave him a tiny morsel of food.
Poor Jack was blind now. The other brother took all the gold and left Jack alone. Jack knew not what to do. He crawled along on his hands and knees. He knew not whether it was day or whether it was night. He crept under a big tree. He did not care whether he lived or died. "If I am to die, I will die here."
Presently, he heard creatures talking in the tree above his head. And who were they? A Squirrel and a Fox talking together. These two were in the habit of meeting here once a twelvemonth to tell each other the chief discoveries they had made during the year.
Said the Fox to the Squirrel: "There is a great city four miles on the other side of the mountain, and all the people are dying of thirst. The water is dried up. And if they only knew it," continued the Fox, "were they to dig a well near the great clock they would find enough water to serve for three towns."
"And hast though heard, thou old Goose-stealer, that the mayor of that place lost his sight last week?" "Not I," quoth the Fox, "I have heard naught of it." The fox plucked a leaf. "Dost thou see this leaf, White-tail?" "Yes," quoth the squirrel. "What fools the people of those parts are! If they were just to rub his eyes with this leaf, he would recover his sight."
"Wait a minute, Sir Fox, I will tell you something." "Let me hear it," quoth the Fox. "In the same town there is a princess with two horns growing out of her forehead." "Well," quoth the Fox. "If they were to give her oranges, the horns would dwindle away. There is a reward offered by the queen to whomsoever rids her of them."
And the poor blind fellow beneath the three was listening to everything they said. Then the Fox leaped down and the Squirrel scampered after him.
Poor Jack arose and took a few of the leaves, and rubbed his eyes with them. As soon as he rubbed them, lo! he recovered his sight. He was astonished. "Well, I will be off to the city now."
He crossed the mountain and came to the hall where the blind lord dwelt. He knocked on the door and was invited inside. "I am a doctor come to restore the lord's eyesight."
He went upstairs. There was the lord seated in his easy-chair. Jack drew near to examine the lord's eyes. He boiled the leaves and bottled them, dipped a feather in the bottle, and passed it twice across the mayor's eyes. The lord regained his sight. His spirits rose, he did not know how to reward the doctor sufficiently. "What is thy fee, doctor?" quoth the mayor. He gave Jack what he asked.
"Wait a minute," quoth Jack, there is one other thing I should like to do before I leave the hall. I understand, my lord, that the water in your town is dried up." "In truth, it is dried up." "Come with me, and I will show you where there is plenty of water." As soon as the mayor heard this, he ran up to Jack and clasped him to his breast. "If thou find water for us, I will give thee three bags of gold pieces."
They went forth, and Jack led him toward the town clock. "Seest thou this spot? Bring thy men hither." "I will bring them at once." He brought them. "Now then," quoth Jack, "dig down here." The men stripped for the job. They dug down a little way. They found enough water for three towns. The mayor paid Jack, and Jack departed with the reward. He shrugged his shoulders. "I am doing well in this town, and I have still the king's daughter to deal with."
Then he bought a basketful of apples and a basketful of oranges, and set them down close by the gate of the palace. He waited there for three days. On the third day the old king and queen and their daughter came forth in their chariot. And the girl had two horns growing out of her head.
The young lady cast her eye on the apples. "Stay, mother, look at those beautiful apples over yonder!" "Would you like a few of them, daughter? "Yes," quoth the young lady. They bought a few. The young lady ate two or three that day. She arose in the morning. She looked in her mirror. The horns had grown bigger. The king's daughter was horrified.
Jack disguised himself again as a doctor, and went to visit her a day or two afterwards. "Welcome, doctor, I am rejoiced to see thee," quoth the princess. "Thou seest these horns on my forehead; dost thou know of aught that will reduce them?" "Yes." quoth Jack, "but though must give me such and such a sum of money." "Thou shalt have it," quoth the young lady.
Jack pulled an orange out of his pocket, cut a slice from it with his knife, and went up to the princess. "Open thy mouth, my lady, put out thy tongue." He placed the slice on the lady's tongue. "Swallow that. I will return to-morrow morning." The doctor took his leave.
Now it was morn. The young lady arose and looked in the mirror. Both horns seemed smaller. The doctor paid her another visit. The lady sprang up and gave him her hand. "The horns have shrunk a little, doctor." He gave her a slice of orange. "I shall come for my fee, your highness, in the morning."
She awoke in the morning and looked in her mirror. The horns had disappeared. The king and queen heard how the horns had been removed by the doctor. They gave him as much money as he could carry.
Jack took his money and went back to the three roads, where he was to meet his brother. It was midnight: he fell asleep under the hedge. In the morning he saw his brother approaching. "Who comes there?" "It is I," quoth his brother; "so thou art here before me, eh?" "What sort of luck hast thou had, my boy?" "I have gained naught, I am destitute, I have lost all my money. And how didst thou reach here, being blind?" "I have had better luck than thou," quoth Jack, "I have got new eyes, and a bag of money twice as big as the one though didst take when thou madest me blind."
So now the two brothers set off together to the cave to visit the old woman, the armless and legless one. They found her and rewarded her with a few gold pieces. And the thwo brothers went to their own little village and built a new house there. And there they live together with a little maid-servant, and now, they never fall out with one another.
That is all I know of about these two brothers. Find out more for yourselves if ye would.
There are two primary instances of disability in this tale: the old woman, who was born with neither arms nor legs, and the hero Jack, who is compelled to inflict blindness on himself. The princess with horns is a third instance, but the consequences of her affliction are not explored, outside the reward bestowed on Jack for the cure.
The old woman takes the ancient Roman idea of monstrum -- a creature born with missing or extra limbs, and seen as a bad omen -- one step further. She is more than a "sign" to be interpreted by seers; she is the seer. And while she is presented in the context of good luck, rather than bad, she is still kept away from human society, sealed away in the cave. In many ways, she is the personification of the Earth, itself, rather than a human -- like the stone on which she sits when first giving her prophecy to the brothers, and like the gold and black pebble through which she advises Jack.
Jack's trial with blindness is more a reflection of sighted society's fears than actual, lived, experience -- such as not knowing whether it is day or night without his eyes, and how being left alone and blind is equated with being left for dead. And the cure Jack learns of -- rubbing an herb over his eyes, when he no longer had eyes -- belies the sighted society's attitude that sight is more a spiritual than physical sense, thus making it easier to attribute moral and/or spiritual meaning to the state of blindness, itself.
However, I can't help but recognize one truth of life with a disability that's reflected in Jack's adventure: the fact that having a disability seems to cast a "Cloak of Invisability" over your shoulders, so those around you (like the Squirrel and Fox of the title) speak as freely as if you weren't there at all.
Since this is such a new story in my personal collection, I don't have deeper thoughts than that, at the moment. But I welcome your insights.
*Published in the United States by Salem House, 1984. A member of the Merrimack Publishers' Circle, 47 Pelham Road, Salem, N.H. 03079
I've known most of the stories here for many years. And, for the folktales, at least, I've read several different translations and versions. They fit my mind the way old fuzzy slippers fit my feet. As such, I feel as comfortable claiming them as "mine," and retelling them in my own words, as I would telling a remembered event in my own childhood.
This story is new to me. It was recommended to me for this blog by a friend, this spring, and I only got a chance to read it last month, in 1984 paperback reprint of a volume originally published in 1933.* The story was originally collected and translated by the linquist John Sampson at the end of the Nineteenth Century.
Folktales, at that time, were presented to the reading public unadulterated, ancient, and authentic And the role of the good folklorist was seen to be a mute and faithful recorder. I'm highly dubious of this claim, especially since the portrayals of the gypsy heroes in these tales conform to the privileged biases of the dominant culture, and show them to be simultaneously exotic, heroic, unsophisticated and slightly untrustworthy.
However, I have an even greater distrust of my own biases. And so, to ensure that I do not twist the tale, and give it meanings it was never intended to have, I present it here word-for-word from the book at hand; the only changes I've made are to substitute line breaks for pilcrows and the word "and" for ampersands.
THE SQUIRREL AND THE FOX
(A Welsh-Romany folktale, collected and translated by John Sampson)
There was a little village down in England, and two brothers living there. They were poor as poor could be: they knew not what to do.
They went seek for work, but no work could they find. Said one to the other: "There is a little old woman who lives down yonder in a small cave. Let us go thither. The old woman will tell us whether there is good fortune before us." "Yes, let us go," replied the other.
They came to the little dwelling, and hallooed to the old woman. The old woman knew they were coming and what they wanted. There was a great stone before the door. The old woman bade them drag away the stone. They dragged away the stone. "Carry me outside and set me on the stone, and I will tell you everything." The old woman had neither arms nor legs: thus she had been born.
"Hearken both of you to what I am going to tell you." Then quoth the armless one to Jack: "Here is a little stone for thee." (It was no bigger than a halfpenny.) "Keep this, and do not take it out of the handkerchief until thou comest to three roads."
The two brothers journeyed on. They reached these three cross-roads. They halted and Jack pulled the stone out of the handkerchief. He looked at it. One side was yellow as gold and the other side was back as coal.
"What are we to do with this stone?" he asked of his brother. No sooner was the word utteredthan he heard something whisper in his ear: "Spit upon it and toss it high in the air. If the stone fall at thy feet with the golden side uppermost, take the road on thy right hand; and if it fall with the black side uppermost, take the road on thy left hand."
He tossed the stone high into the air, and it fell at his feet with the golden side uppermost. Jack said to his brother: "Thou art to take the road on the left, and I will take the road on the right."
Now the two sat down and had a little talk together. "I go whither I go," quoth Jack. "Do thou remember to here to these three cross-roads in a year and a day; and if thou arrive before me wait here for me, and if I arrive before thee I will wait for thee, if I am still alive."
They set off. It was a hot summer's day. Jack tramped mile after mile. He could see no house, and night set in. He walked all night until morning broke. Now he hears dogs barking: he stood still to listen again.
He went on a little farther. He beheld a giant beside a tree, and heard a young woman weeping. She was crying out: "Stop, father! Leave me alone! do not treat me thus!" She was the giant's daughter. The giant was about to put a rope around her neck; he meant to hang her. The giant wished her to marry a certain man, but the young woman did not love him.
What did Jack do? Jack took the stone and threw it, and it struck the giant on the head and killed him.
What said the young woman to Jack? "If thou bury my father somewhere in a secret place where none may find him, I will give thee as much gold as you can carry away with thee." "Good!" quoth Jack, "I will lay him where none may find him.
He was about to bury him, when he found the little stone in the giant's head. He heard something whisper in his ear: "Leave him where he is, and place the stone at his left foot, and he will never be seen again."
Now they both went to the giant's house. The young woman opened a cupboard: in it were the giant's bags of gold. She gave one of them to Jack, who put it on his shoulder and departed.
Lo! he travels now over lofty mountains until he reaches the sea. He was weary, and the bag that he carried was heavy. He sat down and slept for three or four hours. He awoke and saw a man coming towards him with a great sack on his back.
The man came up to him. He recognized him. He stated to him: "Good God, thou art my brother!" "Yes, I am thy brother, and I am weary." He sat down and opened his great sack. "I am hungry. See, I am going to eat!" "And I am hungry, too," replied Jack. "Why dost thou not eat, then?" quoth the other. "I have naught to eat." "What is in thy sack?" "I have no food," said Jack, "I have nothing but gold." "Then if thou hast gold, buy thy food." "Gladly," quoth Jack, "give me my bellyful." "I will give thee thy bellyful if thou give me a hatful of gold."Jack opened his sack and filled his brother's hat with sovereigns. His brother gave him a little bread and meat.
The two tramped for miles and miles. They met no one; they grew hungry again. They sat down to eat. Jack was obliged to give his brother another hatful of gold before he would give him anything to eat.
And thus they went on until they rested again. They had not much food left. The brother would not give Jack anything to eat. "Thou hast all my money," quoth poor Jack, "I have no more; and if thou wilt not give me a morsel of food, I shall die of hunger." "No, I have told thee, I will give thee nothing except for thou pay for it." "I have nothing left to give thee." "I will tell thee what I will do will do with thee," quoth his brother. "Give me one of thine eyes and I will give thee a little food."
Jack plucked out one of his eyes and gave it to him. His brother gave him a litttle food. They finished their meal, and went on their way again.
Another day passed; Jack grew hungry once more. He was afraid to ask his brother to give him something to eat. Jack grew hungrier and hungrier. He asked his brother to give him a morsel of food. "Not I," quoth the brother, "I have not much left. If thou wantest any more, pluck out thine other eye and give it to me." He plucked out the other eye and gave it to his brother. His brother gave him a tiny morsel of food.
Poor Jack was blind now. The other brother took all the gold and left Jack alone. Jack knew not what to do. He crawled along on his hands and knees. He knew not whether it was day or whether it was night. He crept under a big tree. He did not care whether he lived or died. "If I am to die, I will die here."
Presently, he heard creatures talking in the tree above his head. And who were they? A Squirrel and a Fox talking together. These two were in the habit of meeting here once a twelvemonth to tell each other the chief discoveries they had made during the year.
Said the Fox to the Squirrel: "There is a great city four miles on the other side of the mountain, and all the people are dying of thirst. The water is dried up. And if they only knew it," continued the Fox, "were they to dig a well near the great clock they would find enough water to serve for three towns."
"And hast though heard, thou old Goose-stealer, that the mayor of that place lost his sight last week?" "Not I," quoth the Fox, "I have heard naught of it." The fox plucked a leaf. "Dost thou see this leaf, White-tail?" "Yes," quoth the squirrel. "What fools the people of those parts are! If they were just to rub his eyes with this leaf, he would recover his sight."
"Wait a minute, Sir Fox, I will tell you something." "Let me hear it," quoth the Fox. "In the same town there is a princess with two horns growing out of her forehead." "Well," quoth the Fox. "If they were to give her oranges, the horns would dwindle away. There is a reward offered by the queen to whomsoever rids her of them."
And the poor blind fellow beneath the three was listening to everything they said. Then the Fox leaped down and the Squirrel scampered after him.
Poor Jack arose and took a few of the leaves, and rubbed his eyes with them. As soon as he rubbed them, lo! he recovered his sight. He was astonished. "Well, I will be off to the city now."
He crossed the mountain and came to the hall where the blind lord dwelt. He knocked on the door and was invited inside. "I am a doctor come to restore the lord's eyesight."
He went upstairs. There was the lord seated in his easy-chair. Jack drew near to examine the lord's eyes. He boiled the leaves and bottled them, dipped a feather in the bottle, and passed it twice across the mayor's eyes. The lord regained his sight. His spirits rose, he did not know how to reward the doctor sufficiently. "What is thy fee, doctor?" quoth the mayor. He gave Jack what he asked.
"Wait a minute," quoth Jack, there is one other thing I should like to do before I leave the hall. I understand, my lord, that the water in your town is dried up." "In truth, it is dried up." "Come with me, and I will show you where there is plenty of water." As soon as the mayor heard this, he ran up to Jack and clasped him to his breast. "If thou find water for us, I will give thee three bags of gold pieces."
They went forth, and Jack led him toward the town clock. "Seest thou this spot? Bring thy men hither." "I will bring them at once." He brought them. "Now then," quoth Jack, "dig down here." The men stripped for the job. They dug down a little way. They found enough water for three towns. The mayor paid Jack, and Jack departed with the reward. He shrugged his shoulders. "I am doing well in this town, and I have still the king's daughter to deal with."
Then he bought a basketful of apples and a basketful of oranges, and set them down close by the gate of the palace. He waited there for three days. On the third day the old king and queen and their daughter came forth in their chariot. And the girl had two horns growing out of her head.
The young lady cast her eye on the apples. "Stay, mother, look at those beautiful apples over yonder!" "Would you like a few of them, daughter? "Yes," quoth the young lady. They bought a few. The young lady ate two or three that day. She arose in the morning. She looked in her mirror. The horns had grown bigger. The king's daughter was horrified.
Jack disguised himself again as a doctor, and went to visit her a day or two afterwards. "Welcome, doctor, I am rejoiced to see thee," quoth the princess. "Thou seest these horns on my forehead; dost thou know of aught that will reduce them?" "Yes." quoth Jack, "but though must give me such and such a sum of money." "Thou shalt have it," quoth the young lady.
Jack pulled an orange out of his pocket, cut a slice from it with his knife, and went up to the princess. "Open thy mouth, my lady, put out thy tongue." He placed the slice on the lady's tongue. "Swallow that. I will return to-morrow morning." The doctor took his leave.
Now it was morn. The young lady arose and looked in the mirror. Both horns seemed smaller. The doctor paid her another visit. The lady sprang up and gave him her hand. "The horns have shrunk a little, doctor." He gave her a slice of orange. "I shall come for my fee, your highness, in the morning."
She awoke in the morning and looked in her mirror. The horns had disappeared. The king and queen heard how the horns had been removed by the doctor. They gave him as much money as he could carry.
Jack took his money and went back to the three roads, where he was to meet his brother. It was midnight: he fell asleep under the hedge. In the morning he saw his brother approaching. "Who comes there?" "It is I," quoth his brother; "so thou art here before me, eh?" "What sort of luck hast thou had, my boy?" "I have gained naught, I am destitute, I have lost all my money. And how didst thou reach here, being blind?" "I have had better luck than thou," quoth Jack, "I have got new eyes, and a bag of money twice as big as the one though didst take when thou madest me blind."
So now the two brothers set off together to the cave to visit the old woman, the armless and legless one. They found her and rewarded her with a few gold pieces. And the thwo brothers went to their own little village and built a new house there. And there they live together with a little maid-servant, and now, they never fall out with one another.
That is all I know of about these two brothers. Find out more for yourselves if ye would.
There are two primary instances of disability in this tale: the old woman, who was born with neither arms nor legs, and the hero Jack, who is compelled to inflict blindness on himself. The princess with horns is a third instance, but the consequences of her affliction are not explored, outside the reward bestowed on Jack for the cure.
The old woman takes the ancient Roman idea of monstrum -- a creature born with missing or extra limbs, and seen as a bad omen -- one step further. She is more than a "sign" to be interpreted by seers; she is the seer. And while she is presented in the context of good luck, rather than bad, she is still kept away from human society, sealed away in the cave. In many ways, she is the personification of the Earth, itself, rather than a human -- like the stone on which she sits when first giving her prophecy to the brothers, and like the gold and black pebble through which she advises Jack.
Jack's trial with blindness is more a reflection of sighted society's fears than actual, lived, experience -- such as not knowing whether it is day or night without his eyes, and how being left alone and blind is equated with being left for dead. And the cure Jack learns of -- rubbing an herb over his eyes, when he no longer had eyes -- belies the sighted society's attitude that sight is more a spiritual than physical sense, thus making it easier to attribute moral and/or spiritual meaning to the state of blindness, itself.
However, I can't help but recognize one truth of life with a disability that's reflected in Jack's adventure: the fact that having a disability seems to cast a "Cloak of Invisability" over your shoulders, so those around you (like the Squirrel and Fox of the title) speak as freely as if you weren't there at all.
Since this is such a new story in my personal collection, I don't have deeper thoughts than that, at the moment. But I welcome your insights.
*Published in the United States by Salem House, 1984. A member of the Merrimack Publishers' Circle, 47 Pelham Road, Salem, N.H. 03079
Thursday, June 30, 2011
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:
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 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.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
"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:
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.
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.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
"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
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
Sunday, May 29, 2011
"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:
*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:
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
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."
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
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:
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.
(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.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
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.
[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.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
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:
From Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Little, Brown, and Company: Boston, Toronto. 1968. Page 94.
Aesop:
*(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
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
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
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
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
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