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rebus's review
4.25
Another fine volume from Russ Kick, and I'm quite thankful for all of the more obscure tales from the superstitious, illiterate, peasant class. Many of these tales speak of characters being greatly rewarded with wealth if they are noble and pure of heart, offering kindness to poor strangers while the wealthy turn their backs, often with some magical component, releasing people from spells that had turned them into animals. It's hard to say if this was the mere dream--for it never really came true and still doesn't in a society that is organized no differently or less fascistically than in those times--of the underclass or their projection of the fears of the ruling class. Nonetheless, Christian virtues and exhortations to stay on the path--both literally and figuratively in an age where it took 3 months to walk across Europe and it may have been in the forest darkness the entire way--abound, and one might speculate, that the literate establishment in preaching the bible to the peasants may have cowed them with the suggestion that they could be turned into other creatures and that demons and fairies and ogres existed. Even life may be restored after death, though that is more often reserved for the wealthy who have been unfairly treated, often by stepmothers or jealous step sisters (though I wonder if the inbreeding amongst the upper classes led to more similar looking people and they were also fooled into believing the upper classes were almost immortal based on daughters that looked like their mothers). It's also quite possible that Six Servants is truly the very first Super Hero story in human history.
I wonder perhaps if there weren't cases of people actually finding treasure and having to make up tales to justify that when the rightful owners tried to claim it, why the devil preventing people from proper hygiene as a test, why the rich tricked people by posing as poor (to avoid being robbed?), and how there could be so many princes and princesses to go around.
The editor in the introduction does miss a key point in suggesting that we idealize our childhoods: it is the upper class that had idyllic childhoods and the rest who felt almost nothing but terror.
Even today.
I wonder perhaps if there weren't cases of people actually finding treasure and having to make up tales to justify that when the rightful owners tried to claim it, why the devil preventing people from proper hygiene as a test, why the rich tricked people by posing as poor (to avoid being robbed?), and how there could be so many princes and princesses to go around.
The editor in the introduction does miss a key point in suggesting that we idealize our childhoods: it is the upper class that had idyllic childhoods and the rest who felt almost nothing but terror.
Even today.
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