Minorandom #3: Fairy-tale 1

So I wanted to be a fairy when I was younger.

I'm not kidding.

I really really did.

It all started when a few years ago, I picked up a book called Fire & Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones. At my tender age, a few years ago is a notable amount of time. *What I'm really saying here is that the book is a kid's book, and I was a kid back then*. So no snickering if any of you actually pick up the book after reading this entry.

I don't even remember the storyline well anymore. But I remember the feeling when I read it. The story was twisted, in a very illogical yet logical way. The faeries in the book were depicted as beautiful and cunning creatures, yet truly truly wicked. Full of malice. And they are bound to unconventional rules, which make their practices even more intriguing.

I was entranced. I was enthralled. They were like nothing I have ever read about before. Before that, my idea of faeries is the prototypical pretty, mini green dress-wearing, long-haired woman. With wings. Oh and maybe a wand. Sort of like Disney's Tinkerbell. I wasn't even sure about the size. Humanoid? Probably. Because Tinkerbell is supposed to be a pixie. So faeries MUST be large, right? If not, what would be the difference between a faerie and a pixie?

I wanted to know more about this new, err... I guess you can call it archetype?, of fairies. So I started looking up on the legend behind which the whole book is based on.

It is the legend of Tam Lin. To put it shortly, Tam Lin is a Scottish folklore ballad, and who knows when it was first sang? I sure don't. But the whole story behind it is well..twisted?

So summarising the story of Tam Lin:
Most variants starts with warning maidens *virgins especially*, to stay away from a place called Carterhaugh because it is inhabited by a man called Tam Lin. This Tam Lin person demands payment of maidens who pass through Carterhough, in the form of belongings. Or their maidenhood. *Why only women though? Gosh. Such blatant discrimination. I couldn't believe this type of stuff was what entertained children, when I first came across it.*

Anyhow. The ballad then focuses on a woman *named Janet in the version I have* that goes to Carterhaugh because her father supposedly owned it. Also as a sign of rebellion against the silly warnings that people have given about Tam Lin and Carterhaugh. From what I can deduce, she went to Carterhaugh to show everyone you can go there a virgin and come out the same. There's a superwoman right there. But in Carterhaugh, she met Tam Lin.

And he "took her without her leave"

Thus she goes home, all melancholic and showing signs of...

Pregnancy. *what IS this ballad teaching kids, really?*

She then tells her father about what happened in the forests of Carterhaugh:
She was taken away by Tam Lin, and brought to meet the Fey people and their Queen. And a beautiful lot they were. She also mentions to her father that her lover, Tam Lin, is elven.

9 months passed, and she went to Carterhaugh again, finding Tam Lin. He explains to her that he is not an elf/elven, that he is mortal. But he is bound to the Queen, and might be made as a human sacrifice for the faeries' tithe to hell.

It kinda goes without saying that they both dig each other.

Thus he tells Janet that if he were to be set free from the faeries, she will have to go through a test to win him. He gives her detailed instructions on how to do so, somewhere along the lines of pulling him down his horse when the faeries make their way to the tithe-offering on Halloween night *or something like that*.

She will then have to hold on to him no matter what. He changed into all sorts of beasts in her arms, but she was not to let go.

That night, she succeeded in her task, and somehow the Queen seemed helpless to do anything although she was MIGHTILY displeased.

This is what I meant by the unconventional rules. We humans would've probably hurt Janet or something like that, but the feys didn't even lay a finger on her.

I am very curious why this is so. Though I don't think I'll get an answer to it. Ever. Ah well.

So there you go. My very first encounter with your not-so-friendly, but much-more-beautiful faeries. Well, literary encounter, at least.

Afterwards, I started researching on original faerie tales, as told by the brothers Grimm.

It would seem that most of them have a VERY black theme to them. I'd probably do another entry on them.

But if this piqued your interests a bit, you should look into buying a book that's full of folklores from the UK & Ireland, called:

the magic lands: folk tales of britain and ireland.


I have a copy.

Bottomline of today's post is?

Fairy-tales are quite scary sometimes. And it also shows the type of stories people in the Dark Ages indulged in and recounted to their children. Not a happy time. Not at all.

I'm glad fairy-tales have developed into what it is today:

Bittersweet, but always with a happy ending =)

But I secretly still want to be a fairy. *not so much a secret now, is it?* ^.^