The Halcyon Fairy Book by T. Kingfisher

Author:T. Kingfisher [Kingfisher, T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781610373173
Publisher: NESFA Press
Published: 2017-06-16T11:41:39+00:00

The King of Love

Sometimes you read a story and you’re not sure if the problem is the story or the guy translating it. With this one, the story is a complicated jumble, made more complicated by the fact that the translator couldn’t tell a good story if his life depended on it.

This is another story from Italian Popular Tales by Crane, and I sure hope they didn’t rely on Crane to make them popular. At several points, he commits such a crime against the story that I am forced to intercede to attempt to save it. I am certain that he was a lovely man who undoubtedly did much for the folklore of Italy, but this has issues.

It wants to be a version of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” but it’s not very good at it. (Alas, possibly the best of all possible versions, “The Hog Bridegroom,” could not be included in this volume for copyright reasons. It had twenty-four headed otters. This version is sorely lacking in otters, regardless of the number of heads.) It keeps throwing in other elements, but in a particularly graceless manner, as if the storyteller is losing his place.

Also, it’s called “The King of Love.”

ONCE upon a time there was a man with three daughters, who earned his living by gathering wild herbs. One day he took his youngest daughter with him. They came to a garden, and began to gather vegetables.

Never go into strange people’s gardens and start picking things. It’s only polite.

The daughter saw a fine radish, and began to pull it up, when suddenly a Turk appeared, and said: “Why have you opened my master’s door? You must come in now, and he will decide on your punishment.”

Those of us who have grown suspicious of things in folk songs being euphemisms for other things are giving this radish the side-eye right now.

Although, um, apparently his door is a radish? That doesn’t even need a euphemism. That’s just peculiar. That is a very small door, or else a radish for the ages.

The Turk will appear for about three lines then vanish forever, and was probably thrown in because the storyteller read the Arabian Nights at some point. He was gonna do a whole subplot with carpets, but it kinda fell by the way wayside.

They went down into the ground, more dead than alive;

Radish pulling can be extremely taxing.

and when they were seated they saw a green bird come in and bathe in a pan of milk, then dry itself, and become a handsome youth.

Crane has omitted all the details I want to know, like “What is the bird wearing?” Does he have on green feather cloths or is this a naked man in a pan of milk? Is the daughter averting her eyes or going “Check out the radish on that bird!”?

How one reacts to surprise handsome men in pans of milk tells us a lot about a person’s character, dammit.

He said to the Turk: “What do these persons want?”

“Your worship, they pulled up a radish, and opened the door of the cave.

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