The Golden Key by Philip Pullman

Author:Philip Pullman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

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Source: ‘D’Ganshiadarin’, an Austrian dialect story by Andreas Schumacher (1833)

Similar stories: Katharine M. Briggs: ‘Cap o’ Rushes’, ‘Sugar and Salt’ (Folk Tales of Britain); Italo Calvino: ‘Dear as Salt’, ‘The Old Woman’s Hide’ (Italian Folktales); William Shakespeare: King Lear

This is one of the most sophisticated of all the tales. At the heart of it is the old story of the princess who told her father she loved him as much as salt, and was punished for her honesty. There are many variations on this tale, including King Lear.

But look what this very literary telling does. Instead of beginning with the unfortunate honest princess, it hides her until much later in the story, and begins with another figure altogether, the witch or wise woman; and not with a single event, either, but with a sketch of what she usually did, what her habitual way of life led her to do, and the reaction that aroused in others. But is she a witch, or isn’t she? Fairy tales usually tell us directly; this one instead shows us what other people thought of her, and allows the question to remain equivocal, undetermined. The story-sprite here is flirting with modernism already, in which there is no voice with absolute authority, and we can have no view except one that passes through a particular pair of eyes (the father and his little son); but all human views are partial. The father might be right, or he might not.

Then we meet the count, and the events of the story begin. The old woman treats the young man with what seems like high-handed and meaningless harshness; he meets another woman younger than the first, but ugly, dull; the old woman gives him the present of a box containing something which, when the queen opens the box in the next city he visits, causes her to faint. The storyteller has given us a tale full of mystery and suspense, and still we haven’t got to the heart of it.

But now, in the words of the queen (the story-sprite again, making sure that we can only know something that someone in the story knows) comes the kernel of the tale, the story of the girl who told the truth about loving her father as much as salt. She wept tears that were pearls, says the queen, and in the box there is one of those very pearls. Now we can see the connections that the storyteller has established between these mysterious events, and from here the tale moves swiftly on towards the climax. The goose girl takes off her skin in the moonlight (and again, we can only see this because the count is observing it) and reveals her hidden beauty; the old woman, treating her with great tenderness, tells her to put on her silk dress; the participants come together, and the truth is revealed.

And then there’s another reminder of the partiality of knowledge: the storyteller says that the story doesn’t end there, but the old woman who originally told it is losing her memory and has forgotten the rest.

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