0 An Irish Fairy Tale for St. Patrick's Day: "Jamie Freel & the Young Lady"

Jamie Freel & the Young Lady by Kentaro Kawashima

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The Irish have so many fun stories and one of the unusual thing about their fairy tales is that they often have actual fairies (or faeries) or Fae in them too.

Another trait I love in Irish stories is of common people using their wits: farm girls become queens (and show their royal husbands how lucky they are) and ordinary boys trick faeries into giving up their secrets...

One of my favorites, which has a mix of other fairy tales I love too, is Jamie Freel & the Young Lady...

(Note: All illustrations shown through the tale are by Nilesh Mistry from The Illustrated Book of Fairy Tales Retold by Neil Philip. Also, I'm typing this up at midnight, which, although is a good time to tell fairy stories, is a little less kind to the quality of typing and writing...)

*******

It begins on Halloween where each year in an abandoned castle lights are seen dancing about and music of "the Wee Folk" is heard - something most people try to avoid as it rarely turns out well if one invites themselves to a faeries party.

But Jamie Freel, a poor widow's son, one Halloween decided tonight was the night he was going to go seek his fortune there. His mother wasn't too happy about it but Jamie was brave and determined and approached the castle in the moonlight.

When he finally got the courage to peer in, all the Wee Folk were wee indeed, with not one of them over the size of a child of five. Before long he was spotted and hailed with welcomes: "Jamie Freel, Jamie Freel! Welcome, welcome! We go tonight to Dublin to steal a young lady - will you ride with us?" Swallowing his nerves, Jamie boldly replied, "Yes, I will," and was mounted on a fairy horse that rode with great strides through and through the air.

His hosts whooped and swooped about him on their flying steeds, and they rode and rode over thatched roofs and hills, over dales and towns until the shining, shimmering Fae hoard stopped by a fine window of a fine house, where, there, a beautiful girl lay.

Jamie's eyes grew wide, then wider still as Folk swept into the room and stole her right from her bed. In her place they left a stick, which at once took her shape yet remained still, still as death, while the party galloped home through the air with their fair prize.

Tossed was she from rider to rider as they galloped and galloped until Jamie, once again seeing his mother's roof below, gathered his courage and boldly cried, "Do I not get a turn?" Laughing they gave her to him, but at once he leapt from his faery horse, and did his best to flee, girl in his arms, to the safety of his own threshold.

Before he could reach it, the Faeries, no longer laughing but yelling in a rage, turned the poor girl into a black dog, snarling and snapping, into a bar of hot iron, glowing and burning, into a sack of wool, loose and tangled, but Jamie held on and wouldn't let go. Finally, the smallest of the Folk cried, "Let him have her - I will make her no good. I will make her deaf and I will make her dumb!" and she threw some dust at the girl before the host rushed away into the darkness of the rest of the night.

Jamie, tired, took the girl inside but there was nought they could do but watch her cry. She could not hear and she could not speak and now there was one more mouth to feed...

A year passed and Jamie determined he'd pay another visit to the Fae to see what he might do. Just as he was about to enter the castle hall he heard the familiar voice of the smallest Fae say"If only Jamie Freel knew, three drops of my cup would unstop her ears and loosen her tongue!" Thinking fast, Jamie entered and, as before, was bid, "welcome, welcome!" when quick as a blink, he snatched the fairy glass and fled. By the time he reached home, only three drops left, but it was enough. He gave them to the girl and she was restored.

You might guess what happened next. The girl took Jamie to meet her mother and father, who, once they got over the shock of having buried a stick instead of a daughter, gave the young couple their blessing and brought Jamie and his mother into their fine home, where they all celebrated a very fine wedding.

And, I would like to think, that Jamie Freel never visited that castle again...

******

This story has much in common with Tam Lin, including  Halloween, the amount of time passing, and the rescuer having to hold on despite their intended changing from difficult form to difficult form. It also reminds me of Hans Andersen's The Tinder Box in which a sleeping girl is carried off by magical animals in the middle of the night. The changeling aspect is very fairy-like although this changeling is put in place of a grown girl and has no life except to replicate her form completely. As in Tam Lin, again, messing with the Fair Folk is akin to risking a curse of serious illness, possibly death, so all Jamie does is not done lightly. Irish people have traditionally been so seriously superstitious about this aspect of the Fae that it was considered unlucky to even tell stories about fairies during the daytime...

And there I will leave you.

Why don't you pop a saucer of milk outside the door, just in case, and may the luck of the Irish be there with you!

Note: My version is told between memory, a storybook and a glance or three at this text HERE. I have tried to condense my telling and even so a little Irish seems to ha' crept in, as it is wont to do...
My apologies for the low quality images. I couldn't find any from this story in this book online and my scanner isn't working at the moment so pictures it is - but I do love these illustrations by Nilesh Mistry - wonderful story-flowing images..

Detail: An Irish Fairy Tale for St. Patrick's Day: "Jamie Freel & the Young Lady"

0 Maleficent's Magical World - New Creature Concept art (aka Maleficent [& Fairy Tales] for Boys - 1 of 2)

I'm dedicating this particular post to my son, because, apart from the dragon, ("She's a DRAGON! Like Smaug!"*) he is completely enamored of the little creatures he catches glimpses of in the trailers and TV spots. Actually, it's going to be post 1 of 2, focusing on Maleficent for boys - this is the 'art' one and the other will be... well, you'll just have to tune in and see. ;)

(All this really means for you readers, is that you'll get another post of all the other Maleficent stuff that's been released this week very soon too.)

At the head of the post if one of the new character posters, featuring most of his favorite things about the movie (although I do believe he secretly finds Maleficent pretty awesome, what with her powerful wings and then showing serious magical clout).

The rest of the images are a whole lot of newly released concept art, all of which he's asked if they can come and live with us. I kind of wish they could too. About the only things missing merchandise-wise to date are creature sculpts/dolls/toys of these little critters, but more on that in part two...

The other thing my son is fascinated by? The best-buddy raven Diaval, and that he gets transformed into many different creatures (see the wolf above, although I don't know if there's a Diaval-wolf in the final movie), all keeping some of his bird aspects. I think he particularly likes that Diaval is annoyed at getting turned into a human, because he completely relates to that.

Why am I sharing this personal stuff? Because my son, despite having as balanced an upbringing regarding girls and boys things and fairy tales as I can manage (and it's been a priority of mine), he still has a very strong sense of "that's for girls" vs "that's for boys". What this movie is showing him, unlike much fairy tale marketing these days, is that there are aspects of fantasy and fairy tale stories (that aren't mainly focused on wars and knights) that are very appealing to boys. The creatures, the transformations, talking/communicating animals, the danger and the strength - he loves it all. He loves beautiful things too (most little boys I've met love beauty, especially natural/nature beauty), so has no problem with the pretty stuff, as long as there's balance. For example, in Adventure Time, he doesn't mind spending time with Princess Bubblegum story lines because, in his eyes, the candy kingdom is more a boys' idea of candy than the typical girl's representation of all-sugar-and-sweetness and Beemo, who is a very cute girl character, is awesome to him because she's tech savvy, creative, and rocks at video games.

He is not the only one enamored of these forest beings. I recently found a post by ex-Geeky Editor at Buzzfeed, Donna Dickens (@MildlyAmused on Twitter & currently blogging at HitFix HERE) I'm going to quote a ton of because the sentiments are so very similar in our house(emphasis in bold, and underlined and yelled, politely, in Disney's direction, is mine):

Ignore the right side of the banner. Pretend it isn't there. Yes yes, dark and gloomy. Spiky thorns. Spooky rocks. We've seen it all before. Instead, look at these super cute sentient woodland species! OH MY GOD THEY ARE ADORABLE with their little spines and big noses and rock chins and floppy ears. Who are these tiny, cuddly people? A type of fairy perhaps? Or just more mythological creatures? Doesn't matter, I'm sure they play a part in the big battle sequence implied in the trailers. 

Don't they look as if they'd be right at home in a remake of 'Labyrinth' or 'The Dark Crystal?' NOT that those need to be remade, Hollywood. Back off. Seriously. Even the little malformed ones are so cute and fluffy, which is no easy trick when you don't even have fur!. Look at those sweet doe eyes and weird but precious boomerang noses! And are those noble treants wearing loincloths? How thoughtful to remember the PG-13 rating. 

And then there's these little fellas. The one in the middle is probably grumpy because he got stuck with the two nudists. But maybe the lack of clothes means they're pets and not people? I want an elephant nosed, web-handed amorphous blob pet!. If Disney doesn't turn these two into stuffed animals, their marketing department is missing a huge squishable opportunity.

Read the whole (fantastic) post HERE.

Ah marketing. Disney would totally be taking ALL-MA-MONEH if these creatures were considered toyable. The begging and the big, giant anime eyes a kid of seven can aim in your direction, along with the double whammy of "..it's about fairy tales Mama!" is a recipe for "buy all the toys even though it means we're eating noodles for the next 3 months...". It's bad enough he's already begging me for this pricey little sweatshirt:

While I don't know much about how these creatures shownare represented in the film, apart from the battle scenes, I can tell you that my son realizing that the idea of "fairy" in fairy tales everywhere (ie not just the stories I choose to read to him but in general knowledge), doesn't just apply to pixies with wings but also to any non-human magical creatures (right through to very powerful representations like the ent-like warrior riding the forest hog), is one of those breakthrough things. Why? It has made him more open to reading ALL the tales. It's one thing for your fairy tale obsessed mother to constantly tell you fairy tales are as much for boys as they are for girls, but when he sees evidence of that in the media, it makes an impact and (get this) sends him back to me to read him more of what I've been reading to him all along.**

The media and advertising are so very powerful and loom large in influencing our kid's ideas of how they see the world. While my son's experience may be more unique because he's already had fairy tales in his life (thanks to me), it still takes the "outside world" to show him a glimpse of the same before he'll truly take it on board. It's taken something like the Maleficent trailers for him to realize that "Adventure Time is kind of like a bunch of fairy tale stuff mixed up with weird and crazy fun stuff.." and that "Star Wars would be kind of like a fairy tale if it had trolls and castles instead of aliens and space ships and light sabers and stuff..."Now he'll even catch sight of some of the images I scroll through on Pinterest, eg a guy with antlers, and spontaneously say, "Maybe that's one of those don't-mess-with-me fairies, like Maleficent is friends with".

I am so happy he is at a "wonder-ous" age for tales and can experience all this social buzz on a fairy tale in his formative years, especially in a way that opens the road to looking back on what he's already been exposed to with delight and the way forward to even more.

Addendum: For an interesting footnote to this riff on the importance of balance, I'll share something else on the "for boys" end of the scale that made me realize this even more. My son and I watched Jack the Giant Slayer together on the weekend (with my hands at the ready to over his eyes for any potential gore) and his comment about the giants was: "Why are they so stupid? You wouldn't think giants that big and that old would be so dumb." and "Where are the nice things the giants have? If they're hundreds of years old you think they would have had lots of time to build awesome stuff and make cool and weird looking houses and forests and stuff but everything is broken and nothing is alive..." Also interesting to note, he thought the Ewan McGregor character (Captain of the Guard?) was really heroic, whereas Jack didn't seem very smart. And we agreed that Jack would make a terrible king. "That's not the Jack you named me after, is it Mama? Because I know I'm smarter than that!" You are SO right kiddo.

*Gosh I hope he's right and she really IS a dragon and it's not just Diaval.
** These reasons, more than any others, have me crossing my fingers and toes that Maleficent will be good.

Detail: Maleficent's Magical World - New Creature Concept art (aka Maleficent [& Fairy Tales] for Boys - 1 of 2)