Lost in the Rabbit Hole - PART TWO: Getting Lost, Being Found

PART TWO: Getting Lost, Being Found

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12/05/20 • 24 min

Lost in the Rabbit Hole

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Are you ready for PART TWO, where we continue the tale of the abandoned children, "Little Brother and Little Sister", aka Hansel and Gretel?
"Tale Types: Abandoned Children
What’s always so fun about these tales is to see how they are often mash-ups of other sorts of tales, but with a core narrative running through. For many of these abandoned children tales, we have three recurrent patterns:

the children are lost in some manner in a forest,
they meet an ogre,
there’s a “show me how” moment within the tale, and
the children return home."

Versions Referenced in this episode:

"Little Brother and Little Sister" aka "Hansel and Gretel" (Germany, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 1812-1840)
"Ninnillo and Nennella" (Italy, Giambattista Basile, 1635) also here
"Little Thumb" aka "Hop on my Thumb" (France, Charles Perrault, 1697)
"Jan and Hanna" (Poland, author unknown, 1863)
"Finette Cedron" aka Cunning Cinders, (France, Marie-Catherine D'Aulnoy, 1967)
"Little Earth Cow" (Alsace, Martin Montanus, 1557)

Reference Materials
The Golden Age of Folk and Fairy Tales: From the Brothers Grimm to Andrew Lang by Jack Zipes
The Classic Fairytales, Iona and Peter Opie
The Third Horseman A STORY OF WEATHER, WAR, AND THE FAMINE HISTORY FORGOT By William Rosen

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the children are lost in some manner in a forest,
they meet an ogre,
there’s a “show me how” moment within the tale, and
the children return home."

Versions Referenced in this episode:

"Little Brother and Little Sister" aka "Hansel and Gretel" (Germany, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 1812-1840)
"Ninnillo and Nennella" (Italy, Giambattista Basile, 1635) also here
"Little Thumb" aka "Hop on my Thumb" (France, Charles Perrault, 1697)
"Jan and Hanna" (Poland, author unknown, 1863)
"Finette Cedron" aka Cunning Cinders, (France, Marie-Catherine D'Aulnoy, 1967)
"Little Earth Cow" (Alsace, Martin Montanus, 1557)

Previous Episode

Here, In the Dappled Shadows

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In this episode we are lost in the dark woods, the enchanted forests, and we come upon the sleeping beauty.

How many times have we walked through a small grove or copse of trees and been startled from a rattle just off to our right? Was it a little bird, or maybe a squirrel? But when you looked, nothing else moved. Except the shadows; shadows don’t make any noise. Do they?

Angela Carter tells us how “The woods enclosed. Like a net, like a cage.” She says, “There is no way through the wood any more...Once you are inside it, you must stay there until it lets you out again...”

And we see in our folktales that these woods hide secrets, we lose our sense of self, and our identities are hidden. There’s a different kind of beating heart deep in the woods, with a blood stream literal streams pumping life to the dark center. The lungs are high overhead, rattling a leafy canopy, and we know all around, the woods are alive.

Folktales, fairytales, myths, legends, medieval romances, plays, and even today in contemporary works of literature and movies, forests and woods and even just clumps of trees in the distance manifest as representations of...something...something big, something small, something dark, something needed.

Episode Notes
For more information on all of the stories and authors and themes
VARIATIONS of Sleeping Beauty tales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 410
translated and/or edited by D. L. Ashliman
Disney's, Sleeping Beauty
Andrew Lang's, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood (1891, The Blue Fairy Book)
The Grimms, Little Briar Rose
Charles Perrault's, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood
Giambattista Basile's, The Sun, The Moon, and Talia
References Used