Nell Bell, faerie elder

Can you find the waterfall spirits?

Faerie Report of our visit to Nell Bell 

On 19th December 2014, three storytellers visited Australian doyen of storytelling, Nell Bell,  Westgarth Aged Care Facility. It was the season of Little Red Riding Hood for The Australian Fairy Tale Society, which I call basket bunting: dressing up in berry red & bonnet white, bringing cheer to the elderly. It needn’t be as literal as donning a red cape or cap. Or a splash of gold glitter, if we’re into Lang’s lupine fire-branding Golden Hood. It’s the spirit of giving, of visiting, that sparks the child’s journey to her grandmother. We three visitors were: Anne E Stewart, JB Rowley and me, Louisa John-Krol. Despite our punctuality, Nell was waiting by the entrance. We asked if we’d derailed her time with Happy Hour that filled the centre with raucous carolling. But Nell gleefully waved us past. Her walking frame had become a propeller. 

We wanted to know how Nell became a co-founder of Australia’s first state storytelling guild. Or the second. Nell thinks Western Australia might have pipped Victoria to the post. 

According to The Children’s Book Council, which awarded her the Leila St John medal, Nell Bell is defined by generosity of spirit and love for children. Born in the 1920s, her contribution to children's literature began in the 1940s when, as Assistant Matron of Sydney’s Ashfield Foundlings Home, she pioneered the first story time for 3–5 year olds and ran it regularly. 

Her interest in stories led to further training. In 1975, as a librarian at Preston East Technical School, Nell taught Introduction to History of Literature and Books. That year she toured schools and libraries in China and, in years to follow, visited New Zealand and America. Qualifying for her Secondary Teachers Certificate the next year, Nell started a Children's Book Club, introducing students to literature via storytelling in the classroom. She published an article—The Importance of Oral Literature—in the Education Department magazine.

Nell recalls a literature conference in Frankston in 1978 where she met Monty Kelly and enjoyed inspiring discussions about stories across both written and oral traditions. After that came a gathering at Erskine House, Lorne, where the idea of the Storytelling Guild surfaced. It was also Monty Kelly and Nell Bell who designed the Guild logo, a harp. They wanted to make a connection with the bards of old.

In the 1980s, Nell obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Children's Literature at the University of Melbourne, as well as a Graduate Diploma in Children's Literature at Toorak Teachers' College (in her essay it’s called Victoria College - Toorak campus). For copies of this essay entitled “Witch Stories in Children’s Literature” dated 15th November 1982, contact me: Louisa John-Krol; its typed format is too faint for scanning but for now can be photocopied & posted via surface mail until I retype it for the web. 

As part of the 1988 Bicentenary, Nell joined a delegation of Artists in Education sponsored by the Australian Federal Government and the JF Kennedy Cultural Centre in Washington sent to America as representatives of Australia. From the 1970’s to 1990’s, Nell mentored many storytellers including the visitors in this report. Anne E Stewart had begun storytelling in 1977; JB Rowley a decade later – first connecting with the storytelling guild circa 1989 – and me, Louisa John-Krol, circa 1990 in Wonderwings Fairy Shop in Richmond, run by “the other fairy Annie”, Anne Atkins. Both Anne E Stewart and I were among its pioneer fairy storytellers. JB Rowley recalls: “Nell and others used to meet in private homes, such as Julie Halpin's, and we would exchange stories, usually based on a theme. Nell was very encouraging of new 'talent' and I recall going out to a school with her to see her in action.”

Nell was the first storyteller to perform at Dromkeen and was Artist in Residence introducing students to literature via storytelling at Methodist Ladies College, Richmond Girls High School and Presbyterian Ladies College. She’s been involved in the Victorian Branch of the Children's Book Council and Victorian Committee for UNICEF. In 1995 she participated in the launch of Children's Week at National Gallery of Victoria. She worked as a storyteller at Camp Quality, Melbourne Children's Hospital and Radio of the Air School in the Northern Territory. To quote “The Harper” (Newsletter of The Storytelling Guild of Vic, Autumn 1997): “Nell has a great love of people and a strong belief that story can show how all aspects of life form a continuing cycle to be celebrated and shared”.

That is how, in 2005, the Children’s Book Council awarded Nell Bell the Leila St John medal for her services to children’s literature. (Presentation did not occur until 2011, when she travelled with her daughters to receive the award in person.)

Another fascinating segment of Nell’s history as a folklorist came to life with a Melbourne journal “Swag of Yarns”, edited by June Barnes-Rowley in some 30 volumes starting 1997, then seasonally between 1998 and 2006, except for two years (2002-2003), when its editors were Peter Dargin and Pat Dargin. Swag's weblink is old and does not evoke the enjoyment of sliding that smooth magazine from its sheath, opening its pages and reading those columns, which carried a wealth of folklore from many sources and times. 

Recently, at the Westgarth Aged Care Facility, Nell participated in Bridging The Gap Through Art. She was pictured in a news report sharing memorabilia with a boy, glasses perched on her pert nose, mouth in full fletch releasing a volley of words. The caption read: “Generation gaps don’t come much bigger than the gulf between elderly citizens in primary care and primary school students”. 

Could those little visitors guess how communication had changed across this woman’s life? How we receive stories has altered irrevocably. Nothing replaces face-to-face, eye-to-eye, mouth-to-ear storytelling that happens orally, sometimes with the warmth of a handshake, or crawling onto a knee, or cresting in the curve of a well crafted phrase, resting in a pause, knowing we can’t press stop,  rewind or fast-forward. It’s tit for tat, since the storyteller has no luxury of revising those moments. Trust on both sides.

Returning to Little Red Riding Hood, reminiscing on our visit to our Grand Mother of Storytelling: the wolf as deceiver or devourer constituted misrepresentation of wolves, as folklorists have addressed. There have also been gender switches, as in the TV series “Once”, where Little Red Riding Hood herself turns out to be a werewolf. Yet, setting aside species and simply contemplating a beastly presence, it’s possible to interpret the threat as another danger, like greed; a fixation on “keeping the wolves from the door”. Could we make do with less material gain, to foster more intangible richness? In childhood I recall the magical conjoining of dreaming and time as one word, Dreamtime. A friend cautions me that it’s a bit dated, which is the case for most of what I love. Indeed ‘The Dreaming’ is a beautiful term, too. Yet Time and Dreaming still form a natural pairing, for without time - or rather its shadow, timelessness - how can we ever dream?

Old to young, our tale's begun

Web-spun, spindle run

Fire drum, the wolf is done!

(Louisa John-Krol)

Hardest part of visiting my fairy storyteller at her great age was not confronting mortality, but trying to comprehend how such a vibrant life could be compressed into that tiny room. How do we honour our elderly? Chronicle their lives? Continue their legacy? Visit?

“I carry inside my heart,

As in a chest too full to shut,

All the places where I’ve been,

All the ports at which I’ve called,

All the sights I’ve seen through windows and portholes

And from quarterdecks, dreaming.”

(Fernando Pessoa)

Visiting Nell Bell, storyteller & faerie elder:

Louisa John-Krol, Jb Rowley, Nell Bell, Anne E Stewart

We tip our hats to storyteller Susan Pepper, who purveys the highly effective “story-catching” with elderly people. With a background in Arts Therapy, Susan was integral to the My Story project at five Uniting AgeWell aged care facilities that employed 30 volunteers as well as two staff members in collecting and collating stories from residents. You can read about her inspiring work here

Related links:

June Barnes-Rowley (JB), storyteller, educator, author

Report of our visit by storyteller Anne E. Stewart

Nell, Louisa, Annie and JB are mentioned in this article at Wiki

This report, above, by Louisa John-Krol

Fairy academic Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario

Fey Events:

The Monash Fairy Tale Salon

13th June, Glen Eira Storytelling Festival

Celebrating 150th Anniversary of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Glen Eira Town Hall, Hawthorn Road, Caulfield, Melbourne 
Info

The Australian Fairy Tale Society annual conference 

Sunday 21st June 2015, Winter Solstice

“Transformations: spinning straw into green and gold”

NSW Writers Centre, 
Garry Owen House, Callan Park, Balmain Road, Rozelle, Sydney
Info

Interview: 

Interviewee: 

Dr Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario 

author & one of Australia’s leading fairy tale academics

Interviewer: 

Louisa John-Krol

singer, writer, faerie storyteller

L: We met at Monash University through The Monash Fairy Tale Salon. 
How or why did this group form? What are the salon’s origins, in fairy tale history?

R: When I started working at Monash, I looked at introducing reading groups as a way to bring together academics, postdocs, postgraduates and Honours students. I wanted to build a sense of community – a way for people to support each other at each stage of the academic journey. The Sidhe Literary Collective was the first group and we ran a few symposiums including ‘Vamps, Vampires and Va-va-voom’ and ‘Tights and Tiaras.’ This was a way to have fun with popular culture and to reach out to the community, while still examining the issues through a scholarly lens. I really wanted to create a group focused on fairy tale, though, so I discussed this with my then student, Belinda Calderone, and she kindly agreed to take the lead. We were both, by that point, really interested in the fairy tales of the ancient regime period and so we liked the idea of creating a ‘salon’ atmosphere. It’s a little difficult when most of our meetings take place in the Menzies Building, which isn’t very baroque at all! But it’s the spirit of the thing! We’ve also been so excited that the salon is open to the public and other storytellers and artists, like yourself. We do like a nice ivory tower (from which to hang our braids!), but we’d far rather welcome people into our tower than to shut them out. Everyone has given so much to our understanding of fairy tale and helped us to evolve as lovers of fairy tale. It wouldn’t be possible to do the things we do now without the support of fairy tale lovers within and without the tower!

L: As a founding member of the Australian Fairy Tale Society, and panel chair at the launch of the Griffith Review’s volume Once Upon a Time in Oz, you are engaging with public life in a meaningful way. Who are some of your own contemporary mentors?

R: I wish I had more time to focus on public speaking, because I think there’s an active, interesting debate out there about the role of fairy tale in our society and it tends to occur in a vacuum of knowledge about the longer traditions of fairy tale. That’s where people like yourself and myself can help! We should know our fairy tale history! I’ve never met Marina Warner, but the moment I read From the Beast to the Blonde, I knew I wanted to follow in her footsteps. The way she is able to communicate her love for storytelling through scholarship inspires me and even today, she’s writing about the real problems facing the future of academic institutions and continues to make me think deeply about the systems within which I operate. My PhD supervisor, Peter Fitzpatrick, is also a huge influence. He’s such a warm, enthusiastic scholar, writer, and director. He taught me how to be honest and open when teaching and how to confidently handle criticism. And it has to be said, my Mum has always encouraged me and she’s lead such an amazing life helping others. She mentors me every single day.

L: Your blog’s title, Doc in Boots, heralds a love of costume. Your presentation about bonnets at a 2013 Monash Fairy Tale Salon symposium in the university’s Rare Books collection, saw you sporting a Mother Goose cap. What is your theatrical background, e.g. in London’s music halls? How does this segue with fairy tales?

R: Oh, I will never live down that cap! It was fun to play with the actual fashion, though. I was – and still am – a bit of a musical theatre geek. I wasn’t a performer, myself, but I loved that world and I got involved with the scene. My Masters and PhD theses are both based in musical theatre and, of course, Disney grew out of musicals. I basically came into the fairy tale fold through Disney! I had the most fun and I’ll still defend Disney against its most scathing critics. Disney is far from perfect, but it does get a lot right, too. I always advise people to just watch Lilo & Stitch, which is a loose variation of “The Ugly Duckling.” I think I have a very visual interest in fairy tales, too, which is partly informed by my theatrical and film interests, so I find the fashion, in particular, fascinating. 

L: You question why fairy tales carry less description of men’s attire than that of female characters. You’ve also noted that a man can wear the same suit and shoes for a year, or at least duplicates. On the upside, women enjoy more diversity of fashion; on the downside, more scrutiny. Waiting in a doctor’s reception, if I reach for a well-thumbed popular magazine, I encounter a barrage of photos with bitchy captions about celebrity fashion bloopers. Objects of attack are nearly always female. Any insights on this phenomenon? 

R: I think this has a long history. Regardless of what we might like to think, what we wear does ‘speak.’ I don’t think people have to be interested in what they wear, but clothes will always give away something about the personality, status, wealth, and aspirations of the wearer. I used to worry about those bitchy captions, but after flicking through just a few commentaries on, for example, Oscar gowns, it’s amazing how one critic will love a dress and another will hate it. Each critic is caught up in their own web of social and cultural values and so will think about fashion in a different way. In fairy tales, clothing is a tool, even a gift. A glass slipper can make all the difference. Particularly when women had little access to patriarchal power structures, they would manipulate public discourse through fashion. I find that fascinating.

L: How have fairy depictions evolved in post-colonial Australian illustration?

R: Our early fairy tales coincided with the Edwardian fairy movement, so our fairies looked a lot like, for instance, the Cottingley fairies, only they would be talking to koalas or riding kookaburras. There was a real consciousness of Australia’s difference from ‘the Mother Country,’  yet a yearning to reconcile that difference. Illustrators like May Gibbs started to play with a more Australian vision, born from flora and fauna, but it was still a White vision. I think our fairy depictions are slowly growing more diverse and certainly more strange. I particularly love the illustrations of Shaun Tan. They aren’t ‘pure’ fairy tales, but there is something of the fairy about them!

L: Your expertise includes children’s literature. Would it be fair to say that you are also an avid reader of YA (young adult) fiction, particularly fantasy? How about science fiction, magic-realism, comic books, gothic or murder mysteries?

R: It’s odd – I really didn’t read a lot of children’s literature as a child. Although Anne of Green Gables was a huge influence, it’s true. I have been reading a lot of YA literature, though I’m a little behind at the moment, since I haven’t even finished The Hunger Games! I read a lot of different fiction. Recently I’ve been dabbling in early twentieth century women’s writing – if you get a chance, Stella Benson’s Living Alone is a quirky, amazing gem. I’ve also been re-reading Terry Pratchett, because I’m sad about his death and he’s one of the most amazing storytellers I’ve ever had the privilege of reading.

L: Why does the literati distinguish between “literary fiction” and “genre fiction”? It saves the most lucrative awards, critical media commentary and prestige for the former. Surely fantasy, with its rich metaphors and inventiveness, is more adept at enduring the test of time? Some trendy prize-winners (I suggest) pretend to be true to life, yet really just pump out platitudes, patriotism, pop-psychology or hackneyed cluster phrases, reflecting back the accepted wisdom of our era. I find this quite deceptive. How about you?

R: Completely deceptive! I think part of the problem, too, is that we devalue humour. Joss Whedon once said, “Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.” So often, ‘serious’ literary fiction is grim, grim, grim. Life has humour. The wisest, most amazing things have been said with humour. The most serious issues have been made plain with humour, too. The other issue I have with a lot of ‘literary fiction’ is that it often isn’t… fun. I always worry when people read a book without really enjoying it. That’s surely the point of storytelling? To entertain? It’s a deeply unfashionable thing to say, perhaps, but I believe it’s important. You can say vital, difficult, unpleasant things and still be entertaining.

L: Over the past century or so, the visual art world debunked hierarchies of painting, wherein landscape had been regarded as an inferior subject to portraiture. We also saw proliferation and democratization of music genres. Could the 21st century signal liberation of literature from categorical shackles? As someone trained in casting analysis across modes, how do you think the literary world can learn from its sister arts? 

R: I think it’s starting to learn, but there’s many barriers to pull down. The genre areas of literature are far happier to engage, I think, but we’re getting there! It’s learning to be less defensive of one’s discipline boundaries. I’ve been cheekily trying to get Greenberg’s graphic novel of Hamlet taught beside Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I think Shakespeare would have been all for that, the old thief!

L: Some disciplines are magnets of buzz words such as “sustainability” or “public good”. Our institutions still use managerial jargon, despite the Global Economic Crash that discredited its gurus. Since education swung away from the Humanities, depression has risen. It reminds me of an old Sufi tale where a dervish is looking for his key in the street “because the light is stronger out here”, knowing full well he lost it indoors. Many people seem adverse to seeking wisdom in places where it is most likely to be found. In which subjects would you like to see more funding, and why?

R: I think we just need more reasonable funding models and better communication of those models. I still talk to people who think it’s ludicrous to give a grant of a million to a philosophy project till I explain what that million pays for – that it pays for teaching relief and scholarships and conferences and such – that it isn’t just a lump sum given to the academic, but a sum of money that makes it possible to extend and communicate knowledge. We also need to stop thinking of universities solely as training grounds for employment. I really don’t know what job you’ll get with a major in Literary Studies and that’s the wonderful thing about it – you can do anything! And I think the value of study to our lives beyond work, beyond job prospects, is sorely overlooked. I’m not naïve – there is absolutely an urgency for people to be employed and that should be on our minds when we design degrees. But even the best business degree is no guarantee of employment and often the degrees that offer more flexibility pay off in the end.

L: We attended Kate Forsyth’s session Respinning the Magic at the Victorian Writers Centre in November 2014. How do you see Australia’s fairy tale heirs faring in the global literary fray? In addition to being a celebrated fairy tale researcher, you are a writer. What currently enthrals you?

R: I’m currently enthralled by age! I love writing about, and researching about, older characters. There’s so little room in our storytelling for the adventures of older characters – why should the young have all the fun? I think Australia’s fairy tale heirs are doing really well. It’s a vibrant market and I love seeing the successes of Kate Forsyth, Danielle Wood and others and I really love introducing them to my students. Nothing makes me happier than when I spot a student with an Australian novel or short story! If I just had more reading time myself!

Dr Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario at Monash University

Her blog, Doc in Boots

Rebecca-Anne’s original story entitled “The Death of Glinda, the Good Witch”, was published in the magazine Aurealis, volume #77 and illustrated by Matt Bissett-Johnson.

Review by Louisa John-Krol:

Glinda charms us with her refusal to join water aerobics, earning herself the distinction of being a “witch” rather one of the “biddies” or “bats”. Perhaps it’s not so much the swimming itself she’s rejected, but the hoopla surrounding it, from ear-plugs to gyrations in swimwear. I like the fact that she’s kept her hair long (in contrast to the convention of clipping locks as if conceding loss of power). Glinda piles her hair atop her head, with one rebellious magenta strand, heralding adventurousness.

Depictions of the physical effects of old age are affectionate, with neither pity nor parsimony, as in this description of Em: “She was all tendons and nubbly joints, all of which she carefully folded up into a wicker chair near the mail boxes.” With gentle humour, Rebecca-Anne contrasts the body’s inevitable organic fermentation and creaking, with the more ethereal nature of memory, tenderness, puckish humour and persistence of magic.

Use of metaphor is appealing, as in the suggestion that some humans are like peas from bean pods, “hard little seeds placed into tidy envelopes marked with the month, year and variety”, a fate against which Glinda has rebelled throughout her life. Yet that hasn't stopped her encounters with death from stacking up. She's lost a lot of loved ones.

Alliteration pops up effectively in such phrases as the “shamble of shame” - the humiliation of shuffling across a room in front of onlookers, from an empty mailbox to one’s quarters.

A strong writer can make something as simple as orange juice poignant, in this case through an unnaturally bright hue, a long cry from the juice of golden orbs that Glinda had once grown. Her light floral scent hints at that lost oasis. Or perhaps its continuance?

Mr Straw’s remark that the outside world is “all going to weed” (or “pot”, as Glinda corrects him) rings true of a mentality that I’ve often encountered among the elderly, as well as middle-aged peers: that life could not possibly be so great for the young. Enter doom-porn. Easy to become addicted to the notion that we had it better than anyone. The ego doesn’t mind letting go of life’s reins, if it thinks the next rider isn’t going anywhere interesting - better still, racing to disaster! It’s like muttering, “Any party I’m missing will be a doozy.”

Em overthrows this gloomy egotism when she remarks later, “Things are going to keep growing after we’re toes up, Glinda the Good. There’s a reason they say we’re pushin’ up daisies after we’re gone.” It is no coincidence, then, that both daisies and poppies feature abundantly among the flowers of this tale. They are dancers between life and death: double-dealing flowers, concerned as much with shrivelling into seeds as they are with spreading them.

There’s a lovely interplay of the “locks” motif, from coiling hair (once red-gold, like that of fairy tale heroines such as Rapunzel or Little Red Riding Hood), to padlocks, signifying the binding or protection of secret knowledge: “Don’t need a fancy book covered in locks to keep out the curious” says Em, speaking of the Great Book of Records, which seems to be a kind of modern Grimoire or Book of Shadows, with instructions on spells, amulets, talismans, divination and so forth. For me it also hints at the Akashic Records; the concept of a timeless compendium in which our histories, poetry, music and other musings are recorded and stored, beyond mortality. For Glinda’s fellow residents, such a book might seem to fall behind the internet, losing some of its mystery or clout. Yet there is an air of hopefulness in the penultimate paragraph; of inspiration blown onward toward fresh germination, through Glinda’s final dream and memory of her mother: “She liked to grow poppies, casting seeds to the winds as she sang.” They echo the dead, dried poppies in the opening paragraph, “heads ready to burst with seed”, thus forming bookends for the story, like sentry-witches. 

No other flower evokes, so clearly as a poppy, the meadows of The Wizard of Oz, to which we find other allusions in this tale including erstwhile Dorothy, the Tin Man (Old Nick), Mr Straw, pig-tails, a clicking of heels, a Kansas storm, a rainbow (even if on cloth over a chair), checkered aprons, lace, golden ringlets (not unlike a lion mane) and, of course, Oz. 

Something ancient lurks beneath all this. Mr Tok might be Father Time; The Tin Man / Old Nick could represent Death, Change, Alchemy, Transformation; while Miss Cuttenclip - cutting out figures from wrapping paper - embodies a Spinner, one of the Fates or Norns, who snips the thread of life.

In many respects this story is an extended metaphor in which a home for the aged is a seed-pod, a vase, or garden of drying flowers. Whilst physical capacity for breeding is long gone, the elderly may still bear seeds that potentially nourish life. Some carry a culture’s memories and dreams.

So we need a new verb. Glindering.

To read "The Death of Glinda, the Good Witch":

AUREALIS #77

Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

Edited by Michael Pryor

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2015

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-33-4

ISSN 2200-307X (electronic)

Hard copy back issues of Aurealis can be obtained from the Aurealis website.

Let Down Your Hair: Fiona Price

Fey News, Events:

Jackie Kerin with Kamishibai

* * * * * * * *

“I could see will-o’-the-wisps winking on and off like ten thousand fireflies, as their light threaded through the high grass and willow trees that grew in the small island in the stream.”

(Shen Fu, The Old Man of the Moon, 1809)

* * * * * * * *

The Monash Fairy Tale Salon 

13th June, Glen Eira Storytelling Festival

Celebrating 150th Anniversary of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Glen Eira Town Hall, Caulfield 

More info

“And your cards are all blowing away in a Marmalade Parade”

(Louisa John-Krol, from the song “Alice in the Garden of Live Flowers”)

2000 (sold out) Prikosnovenie, French fairy label

“So they had to fall a long way...” So says the Gryphon, after the Mock Turtle has sung the Lobster Quadrille for Alice. 

“Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly...” From the first chapter, 'Down the Rabbit- Hole', as Alice tumbles into Wonderland. 

(Tributes to Lewis Carroll)

And while we're on the theme of falling, let's envisage some very long hair tumbling down a very tall tower indeed...

Let Down Your Hair 

Review of Let Down Your Hair

novel by Fiona Price
review by Louisa John-Krol

(Readers are also invited to visit post #2 of this fairy tale blog for my interview with the author.)

Let Down Your Hair by Fiona Price is crisp, cheeky, savvy, daring, wiry, perky and exceedingly clever. A worthy successor to the legacy of one of my favourite fairy tales, it bears an unapologetic, ruthless grace, like a blade slicing through platitudes. 

Sage Rampion’s name hints at the herbs of Rapunzel, as in Giambattista Basile’s Petrosinella (little parsley) of the 1600’s, re-spun as Persinette in 1697 by Charlotte-Rose de La Force, inspiring generations of retelling, e.g. recently by Kate Forsyth in Bitter Greens. In this story space we glimpse a line of herb-gathering hags and incarcerated maidens, who struggle to reconcile intellectual freedom (and its claimants, such as a feminist intelligentsia) with voluptuous sensual bliss, itself a paradox of roses and thorns; and beyond this, reaches boldly for shades of doubt in between, those secret paths or little-trod lanes of depiction, in which gender self-consciousness seeks liberation from its own pre-conceived identity: “I waded through the feathery weeds” (chapter 27), a contemporary mire of doubt and suspicion like the “whiff of fennel” in the salon (chapter 33). Woodland fairy tale foliage later turns up as moss and ferns (chapter 42, Watershed). 

In chapter 1, the protagonist leans out of a window in response to a man who has been posing naked in a life-drawing class. Her gesture is prompted by a complex mixture of curiosity, warning and regret, for having inadvertently set her grandmother Andrea - an academic feminist tartar - upon him. He, Ryan Prince, glances up at her and their eyes meet. In that moment, at the closing line of this first chapter, we see the book title playing out with unmistakeable Rapunzel credentials: “The hairnet holding my bun together came free, and my hair spilled out the window, rippling in the wind like a long, pale scarf made of silk.” References to hair are sprinkled throughout the book, centred upon Sage’s own - “though I might let it grow” (chapter 3); “I twisted it into a rope” (chapter 20) - there is also a rope-off function room (chapter 34) - extending to the more wiry hair of Ryan, plus wigs, extensions and hairpieces (chapter 20 and the salon of chapter 33, cheekily entitled “By Extension”), dreadlocks, retro curls, pinned braids, a disembodied ponytail and even the fake beard of Santa. 

At times, hair and tears converge within a metaphor, as when Sage’s hair pours onto the futon “like a sea of spilt champagne (chapter 9); “My new hair rippled like a sheet of golden water” (chapter 33).

Speaking of gold: allusions to the golden hue of fairy tale hair recur throughout the book through lavish command of colour: a ginger cat, burning caramel, a mouth that gapes like a goldfish, a gold star in a notebook, the gold brass of a lock and a carved number 1, gold nameplates, gold embossed handwriting, bubbly champagne, a gold coin, a brass pole for dancing, the softer blonde broken halo of her mother’s Emmeline’s hair and the translucent gold of her fingernails.

Pristine references to the classic motif of Healing Tears abound: a rubber band “landed in my palm like a rain drop” (chapter 2); “I pressed my fingers into my welling eyes and fumed” (chapter 3); “the strange ache flooded up my throat and spilled down my face in an unexpected wash of tears” (chapter 6); “pain welled again, like hot liquid poison trickling down the walls of my stomach” (chapter 40); abundant descriptions of eyelashes, eyelids, blinking, lenses, glasses, even safety goggles (a joke about the can of mace that Andrea sprays into Ryan’s eyes); “peripheral vision” (chapter 9); and the tinkling of paint-brushes in a water-glass (chapter 42). The optical theme is expanded to include concentration - “I forced my eyes to focus” (chapter 15) - as well as betrayal: “a treacherous sea of history”; also  a spin on frames in the sense of how we perceive reality: “So did he choose the frames, or you?” (chapter 16); “a loud wave of music” (chapter 35); and an ever-increasing need to avoid the watching eye of Andrea. 

Briars and brambles of the fairy tale forest are invoked in a contemporary context by the “busy, gnarled trees” of the library lawns (chapter 8), which become “spiky purple shadows” - like thorns - in the subsequent chapter.

Several fairy tale creatures appear, as similes or poetic metaphors, such as “a cake tin in the shape of a frog” (chapter 45) and “the leather couches were hunched like ogres against a tapestry of stars” (chapter 36). There is also a charming allusion to the French children’s novel The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. And it would be remiss not to mention the inclusion of pregnancy and birth, no less with twins: another reference to Rapunzel, particularly in the independence with which the heroine delivers them before reuniting with her prince.

By part IV, Sage has come into her own, instructing young women in an art class on the transience and misconceptions of beauty. In chapter 45 Ryan Prince recognises her as “sagacious”. The castle he lovingly builds her is made of fruit with cantaloupe bricks, figs like edible minarets, moats of blueberries, honey-dew grass and apple-slice cobblestones. It is also in this segment of the book that its female protagonists strive for a meeting of minds, a compromise or reconciliation, if not perfect resolution. There remain, by the author’s intention, questions for mothers to ask as to how to raise their daughters amidst competing pressures: on the one hand, the rigorous demands of post-feminist academia; on the other, lurid objectification of female bodies. Fiona Price has successfully ramped up both extremes in this story to illustrate this polarity. Both forces are rampant. Therein lies the magical tension in Sage Rampion’s name.

I enjoy the symmetry of structure: four parts marked by Roman numerals I to IV, each title commencing with the definite article that highlights their solidity: The Ivory Tower; The Golden Tower; The Wilderness; The Castle. They signal variant forms of imprisonment - even wilderness, for being lost is a limitation, where boundlessness becomes the ultimate boundary, manifesting in unbridled relativism; as Terry Eagleton has argued in The Illusions of Postmodernism, once we dismiss all morality as merely relative, we can abdicate from any moral responsibility for anything, thus may permit atrocity without condemnation. Yet this novel is not didactic. It is questioning. That haunting, gnawing anxiety is one of its many attributes.

There are many witty, memorable lines that I won't quote, since part of their charm is their unexpectedness and speed. 

By contrast, it took me a while to resolve a technical glitch with Kindle Cloud. Now I can't stop. Way to drag me into a brave new century! My eyeballs are grateful for enlargeable font. That being said, I still love printed books, so if someone publishes it in that form, I’ll gladly buy it all over again. Meanwhile, I’ll be ramping up sage sprigs for many a brew.

Publisher’s website

Fiona's blog

Fairy post #4 - Midsummer Faerie Rade

Sirens - Oceanides - by Gustave Dore

Midsummer Faerie Rade 2015

by Golden Owl Events

Rave Rade Review

by Louisa John-Krol

The Midsummer Faerie Rade 2015 by Golden Owl Events

Hundreds of fairies swarmed the streets and gardens of Melbourne on Sunday 18th January 2015. We spanned all ages and styles of magical personae: sylvan damsels in diaphanous gowns and garlands; elderly mages bearing staves, wiccan women, gallant elf kings guiding their host with pride, a gangle of pirates, a spangle of gypsies, dogs with wings, healers with rainbow dreddies, greenmen, steampunk pixies, goths, toddlers with dino tails - or were they caterpillars? - also giant moths, and a charge of flower fairies in tutus, rainbow wigs & wings, from buffeting fluff to full pelting branches. Other costumery included mirror faces, necromancer capes and peacock feather fantails. I wore a carnival hat and long embroidered silk coat. There were tiaras, leafy crowns, body-hugging lycra with moonboots, and revellers in romanesque togas, touting tattooed tummies. Dancing through streets with us were a side of morris dancers, Brandragon (Northwest Clog Morris). 

After assembling in Treasury Gardens we flocked to the steps of Parliament. We filled them. Pics below: courtesy of Burton Imagery (thanks Andre Burton for permission to beam). 

A Parliament of Fairies - Midsummer Faerie Rade 2015 - above & below by Burton Imagery

Yes, the collective noun is a Parliament of Owls; well it's a Golden Owl Event, so... 

...purple fairy, front row with yellow bubble-wand, told me sweet charitable ideas... 

We frolicked down Bourke St to the old post office, tipping buskers and parading for tourists who leapt into our midst to photograph a Melbourne custom. Next, we slanted through an Arcade - passing one of my favourite witchy stores, Spellcraft - and swept back up the hill, this time on Collins St, trailing our fingers through leaf bespeckled waterfall-walls, peeping at baby birds under benches, jigging with pied pipers, stomping with bell-beribboned dancers, and parting for taxis that our elf-king called “yellow steads”.

Once back in the park, following a picnic and raffle (with donations from Fable Workshop & other magical contributors), we encountered such artistry as Mermaid Music (voices, chimes, table harps), crystal ball juggling from Ruccis, creative cupcakes, hoola hoops and - by my request - fairy storytelling. Roslyn Quin gave us stories of wild whimsy. 

Roslyn Quin, photo by Judith Gray

Treasury Gardens, photo by Judith Gray

I’d recommended Roslyn, having heard her storytelling at The Monash Fairy Tale Salon and Words on the Wind via Storytelling Australia Victoria. Already Faerie Rade royalty, she was a boon for fairy tales.

The photo of Roslyn Quin below will be enlarged with permission & removed if such is requested. It's a superb picture, from Roslyn's Facebook, posted by its photographer Snap Happy Ian.

Roslyn Quin by Snap Happy Ian

Origins of most fantasy characters are stories... from books, dreams, mouths or memories of ancestors, long before cameras, film, internet, video games or mobile phones. What is a fairy without a tale? The shift from oral to visual focus since Shakespeare's time might have reached a feverish pitch; but the dilemma has provenance. Consider Byron’s lines, in praise of the Medici Venus sculpture:

“Away! - there need no words, nor terms precise,

The paltry jargon of the marble mart,

Where pedantry gulls Folly - we have eyes.”

(Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, circa 1812, by Byron)

Wordsworth disagreed, suggesting the sculptor (if not the poet) had turned his back on Venus. Later, the great historian Kenneth Clark took Wordsworth’s side, remarking that Byron wasn’t using his eyes at all and “like most of his class and temperament, had himself been gulled by fashion”. 

In the late 19th century, Yeats hinted at perception beyond seeing:

“How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”
(When you are old, circa 1892, by Yeats)

Perhaps artistic sensibility is an ever-shifting dialectical current? Faeries, Muses, Graces - natural allies of the Arts - spring from an alchemy that defies mortality. As William Blake declared, “Energy is eternal delight”. But what kind of energy? Perhaps both sensual and the heat of philosophic-poetic expression? Somewhere in the middle, Fairy and Tale meet.

Golden Owl Events, especially Olivia, deserve commendation for treating Melbourne to this annual picnic-rade, now spangling to its 5th year. With fairy tales entering the mix, I call upon the storytelling community, folklorists and fantasy authors, to join the next Rade, Sun 17th January 2016.

In keeping with the owl theme, I’ve included in this post (below) two paintings by Australian singer/illustrator Kristine Allan

Boobook Owl print by Kristine Allan

Boobook Owl by Australian singer-illustrator Kristine Allan

Can you spot my unicorn glove puppet, Ever-Sage? Peeping out near my blue wonderland hat. (She's since fallen in with sunflowers in a garden of minstrels, befriended an owl and slapped a lobster by a lava lamp. Faeries!)

Andre of Burton Imagery

Golden Owl Events are viewable on Facebook or their Website

or cybergalleries, such as Burton Imagery & Hummingbird Pictures 
(Log into Client Galleries, Click Mystical Art folder); or by googling Midsummer Faerie Rade, or... coming along!

Fey thanks to Liv, Roslyn & their Raders - Louisa John-Krol

Bitter Greens: Kate Forsyth

Bitter Greens & Golden Memes: review of Re-spinning the Magic

Re-spinning the Magic, with fantasy author Kate Forsyth, ran at Writers Victoria in 2014: scholarship, anecdotes, illustration, discussion, pre-Raphaelite shawl flowing over a podium; and authentic storytelling (telling without reading): a dramatic performance of a Scottish tale about a ring-stone worn hollow by elements, through which the protagonist saw/heard visions. Kate drew the gem from a miniature hut, alerting us to her new book The Puzzle Ring.

Kate has loved reading and writing fairy tales since childhood. Her focus is fantasy (for various ages), exploring terror and isolation of incarceration, prompting a seven-year journey of writing Bitter Greens, a dark, sexy novel from the viewpoint of Rapunzel, on which Kate wrote a PhD thesis. Her research included maiden towers, French vegetative myths (e.g. Florece & Blanc Fleur); Greek myths Danae & The Golden Shower and Cupid (Eros) & Psyche; Till we have Faces by C.S. Lewis; and Stuart Gray’s The Stone Cage: Rapunzel from the perspective of a witch’s cat. 

Seeking a seat beside a brilliant young fairy tale academic, Dr Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario (blog: Doc in Boots), whom I met through the Monash Fairy Tale Salon, I mentioned how I’d just discovered Kate’s books in WV’s e-news and bought The Impossible Quest in Readings by our State Library. Rebecca-Anne had read Kate’s Rapunzel retelling, Bitter Greens. I misheard. Amid hushed chatter, it sounded like “Better eat your greens”. Linguistic curls bounce well with fairy tales. And Kate has a musical ear for language. A rationalist might wonder if early optical injuries prompted compensatory auditory advancement. (Kate Forsyth is the first Australian to receive an artificial tear-duct.) Or fey magic, honed by passion for reading? There’s rhythm and rhyme, a skip and a hop in fairy tale phrasing; or as Kate elaborates: memorable poetic devices such as repetition, alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia. “Bitter greens” can be - well, onomatopoeic. 

Other features of fairy tales that Kate spelled out include abstract style (e.g. golden bird); numbers and patterns; pure distillation of plot; and binary opposition with scope for imagination. Moreover, fairy tale language is archaic. Is this why so much fantasy stands a strong chance of longevity? It isn’t strapped to faddishness of pulp fiction, shambling shoe-gaze of street-credibility, or self-consciousness of the literati. It also clears other hurdles, like tendentiousness of the polemicist, or pride of the patriot. Even if there is a moral to the tale - say, a wishing well favouring the least greedy of three sisters - fairy tales encompass a larger space than other genres. We’re given a wide berth and a long rein to deal with taboos at our own pace, in our own way, thanks to metaphors. A gift of distance and time. Like the effort of digesting a nourishing vegetable. She hints at this in her character Quinn’s appraisal of riddles: “Riddles make us think harder and deeper and stronger. They make us look at the world aslant” (p.158, The Impossible Quest). 

In a tribute to anthropologist Joseph Campbell, Kate described the fairy story as “the one shapeshifting yet ever constant tale that we tell”, helping to explain the current boom in fairy tale scholarship. Apparently the past 25 years brought a renewed respect for fairy tales. Let’s hope the next 25 elevate fantasy to status of literary fiction. Long overdue.

Half a century ago, Rapunzel ostensibly exemplified passive womanhood - languishing, awaiting rescue by a prince. Deeper studies debunk this. Rapunzel’s creator, Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force, belonged to a movement of proto-feminists, living in a convent, inventing fairy tales for each other. Charlotte rescued a lover 11 years her junior, who was locked in a tower. Disguising herself in a bearskin, she slipped in with a troupe of minstrels and plotted his escape. Although later punished for seducing him, she had the last word by publishing Rapunzel in 1697. 

A listener asked: “If fairy tales reflect the times in which they’re told, might matriarchalism of some revivals indicate emergent feminism?” Films Frozen and Maleficent were cited. (I love Kate’s quip that Disney’s latest Aurora’s sleep was “more of a nap”. Alas, yes! I’d railed against this in my review a few weeks ago. The Long Dream is surely Sleeping Beauty’s sine qua non.) Kate distinguishes between three narrative strands of Rapunzel that possibly equates with a pagan trinity of maiden-mother-crone. She also notes how, in the film Tangle, the protagonist is not a peasant but a princess, swinging on vines of a palatial gym. Where is the claustrophobia of incarceration? Yet her enthusiasm is palpable. Like an architect of a cathedral or castle, Kate learned to construct plot stone by stone, from one counterweight to the next. And like Rapunzel, she became a powerful rescuer, indeed a self-rescuer, having survived a canine mauling, drawing power unto herself.

Kate’s presentation included a fairy tale timeline:

100-200 A.D., ancient Greece: Cupid and Pysche written by Apuleius.

850-860 A.D., China: first known version of Cinderella is written.

C. 1300: Troubadours spread tales across Europe. 

C. 1500: One Thousand and One Arabian Nights is first recorded.

1550 - 1553, Italy: Gianfrancesco Straparola publishes Le piacevoli notti (The pleasant nights).

1600s: Giambattista Basile’s Il Pentamerone (The Tale of Tales) presents The Healing Tears, with Petrosinella (little parsley); our heroine is born with a little parsley birthmark on her breast, earliest known version of Rapunzel. Straparola has been called the ‘grandfather of fairy tales’.

1690-1710: French Salons thrive, with Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy, known as Countess d'Aulnoy, who invents the term ‘conte de fées’.

1697, France: Charles Perrault publishes Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé (Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals), subtitled Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye (Tales of Mother Goose).

1697: Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force (1654–1724) - Mademoiselle de La Force - publishes Persinette, who becomes the 1698 Rapunzel of brothers Grimm.

1740: Gabrielle-Suzanne Bardot de Villeneuve publishes Beauty and the Beast, drawing on earlier folklore.

1756, France: Jean-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont republishes an abridged version of it for children.

1812, Germany: Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm publish Volume 1 of Childhood and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen). The red volume that Kate loved, looks like my 1973 edition: Crown Publishers, with black & white plate of Rapunzel on page 33, hair aswirl about her prince, his entreaty scrolling below: “O Rapunzel, Rapunzel, / Let down thine hair”.

1823: Edgar Taylor publishes the first English translation of these fairytales, featuring illustrations by George Cruikshank. (Kate displayed his picture of The Golden Root.)

1889: Andrew Lang publishes The Blue Fairy Book, first of a series of colour-identifiable volumes.

Kate highlighted a paradox in fairy tales. They are both Anywhere and Nowhere. (Aside from me: Sufis say “Once upon a time” means “Once and for all time”. Neverland is also here and now, and hints at the Arabic phrase “Alam Al Mithal”: The Land of Nonwhere.)

You can find the rest of this timeline up to the present, in Kate’s blog.

Paradoxically, fairy tales are both mimetic and relevant. They repeat and invent. Their champions deserve our support, when tertiary funding demands cutting-edge relevance or groundbreaking innovation, which literalists and materialists claim as their turf. Fairy tales deal in symbolic, archetypal language. Kate’s observation that Disney’s revival of another fairy heroine  (Snow White) echoed post-war regeneration, makes sense. Tell a tale, tell the time.

Kate mentioned Rudabeh, whom I’d read about in Abolqasem Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, the Persian book of Kings. Here we have a woman whose name begins with R, dangling her plait of hair down to her lover, who impregnates her. Is Rudabeh a prototype for Rapunzel? Not so, Kate argues. A crucial motif is Healing Tears, rooted in the Mediterranean - classical and medieval Europe. I pointed out that Ferdowsi makes abundant reference to roses, rosewater and rivers flowing with rosewater as a restorative purifier, or for sooth-telling. For Rapunzel it’s rose briars that tear the prince’s eyes. True to the paradoxical nature of fairy tales, roses also symbolise passion or fertility; it is by these vines that Rapunzel’s regenerative tears flow. Could there be a clue in the word “tear” as a verb: “to tear”, to rip? Are roses the missing link? The same vines that bring thorns, also bring flowers. (As Kate, resplendent in her rose gown, spoke of how roses and thorns abound in her work, how could I not ask about rosewater?) Yet I defer to her scholarship, and note how she avouches that her focus on Tears that Heal never dispelled her interest in the motif of abundant golden hair, as demonstrated superbly in in the Scottish tale she performed, and in her displaying a picture of St Barbara: the first time red-gold hair appears in art.

We discussed the weeping for Tammuz, whom I equate with Tamuzi/Dumuzid/Dumuzi, consort of Inanna (who in the Sumerian liturgy circa 3000 BC, died to Ereshkigal before returning from the underworld). Kate adduces that Charlotte-Rose, as a Huguenot, was more likely to know of this figure through the Bible. Basile might have known about the Mesopotamian myth, since he worked for the Venetian Republic at the centre of trade with the East; but it was Charlotte-Rose who introduced the Healing Tears: evidence perhaps of matriarchal mythology in Gascony, through a memeplex or chain of motifs. Kate notes that The Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) has long cast an influence on fairy tales. She’s employed its story-within-a-story narrative (a Russian grandmother doll structure) in her Rapunzel retelling, Bitter Greens, for an adult readership.  

In my collection there’s an old blue book by F.H. Lee entitled Folk Tales of All Nations in which he wrote: “Folktales may represent degraded mythology or… mythology in the making” (vi).  Kate prefers to call them “disguised myths”, providing distinctions (here with my embellishments):

1. Myths: narratives of immortal or supernatural protagonists (e.g. gods, goddesses);
2. Legends: narratives of extraordinary protagonists (knights, bards, sultans, mages, emperors, paladins, sibyls, seers, grande dames);
3. Fairy Tales: ordinary folk (a peasant on his/her way to market, fishing, chopping wood, etc);
4. Fables: narratives with animal protagonists conveying a moral (e.g. talking beasts).

Affectionately quoting Mircea Eliade’s description of fairy tales as “the easy doublet of myth”, Kate reminds us how fairy tales are rooted in ancient storytelling traditions. I like how she aims for the “quality of arresting strangeness”. She outlined contemporary fairy tale retelling forms: 

(i) Pastiche: new tales in an old style, e.g. fairy tales of Oscar Wilde or Hans Christian Anderson.

(ii) Spin-offs: further development of a particular thread, e.g. writing by Gregory McGurion.

(iii) Allusion & Contextuality: drawing on little-known tales, as in Kate’s book The Puzzle Ring.

Emphasizing “personal transformation”, revelation of truth disguised, or “magic and metamorphosis”, she cites Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose and Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest, among others. When someone asked about Thumbelina, Kate replied that it’s the mother in that tale who transforms. She recommends The Snow Child. In The Impossible Quest, Kate’s Grand Teller (albeit not necessarily an authorial voice) advises: “If you are brave of heart, sharp of wit, strong of spirit and steadfast of purpose, there is nothing you cannot achieve” (p.93). A tincture of noble Narnian chivalry? Despite loving such ideals as one who breathed the wild sweet air of Narnia, I suspect that fairy tales aren’t about internal magic alone. What about circumstance, chance, luck, fate, fortune? Faerie comes from the French Fay/Fey, with Latin Fatae (classical Fates) replacing the old English elf during the Tudor period. Magic-realist Jorge Luis Borges elucidates in The Book of Imaginary Beings (p.60) that the Latin Fatum (fate, destiny), relates to Faery folk. If we take another path, would we still find that token, charm, rune or guide? Perhaps some magic inhabits the world independently of us? Do fey folk always reward mortals for being good, brave or clever? They can be capricious. Whimsical. Amoral. Perhaps they play into an ageless struggle between harming and healing. Thorns and petals. Tearing, restoring, regenerating.

“I dwell in possibility”, wrote Emily Dickinson. In fairy tales, impossible things happen. Not merely from reversal of fortune, or subversion of norms; but through currents between binaries. Once upon a time, a little girl lost a tear duct to a savage hound. She faced life-threatening infection. That girl loved Rapunzel’s healing tears, and wrote Bitter Greens. Could there be a greater way to overcome bitterness than to spin loss into love, like hay into gold? Tears that Heal.

Kate Forsyth has many acclaimed novels under her silken sash. Here's another:

Available at Booktopia

Interview with Kate 

Kate’s homepage

Review by Louisa John-Krol, November-December 2014