Fairy tales are weird · 4:21pm May 13th, 2014
Looking for more fairy tales for Bad Horse's Bedtime Stories, a lot of them already seem like they were written by Bad Horse. Like Jack and the Beanstalk, or the original Three Little Pigs.
But some are just weird. Like this one: Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse. (You can skip most of the big long repetitive paragraphs, but read the last one.)
Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse both lived in a house,
Titty Mouse went a leasing and Tatty Mouse went a leasing,
So they both went a leasing.
Titty Mouse leased an ear of corn, and Tatty Mouse leased an ear of corn,
So they both leased an ear of corn.
Titty Mouse made a pudding, and Tatty Mouse made a pudding,
So they both made a pudding.
And Tatty Mouse put her pudding into the pot to boil,
But when Titty went to put hers in, the pot tumbled over, and scalded her to death.
Then Tatty sat down and wept; then a three-legged stool said: “Tatty, why do you weep?” “Titty’s dead,” said Tatty, “and so I weep;” “then," said the stool, “I’ll hop,” so the stool hopped.
Then a broom in the corner of the room said, “Stool, why do you hop?" “Oh!” said the stool, “Titty’s dead, and Tatty weeps, and so I hop;" “then,” said the broom, “I’ll sweep,” so the broom began to sweep.
“Then,” said the door, “Broom, why do you sweep?” “Oh!” said the broom, “Titty’s dead, and Tatty weeps, and the stool hops, and so I sweep;" “Then,” said the door, “I’ll jar,” so the door jarred.
“Then,” said the window, “Door, why do you jar?” “Oh!” said the door, “Titty’s dead, and Tatty weeps, and the stool hops, and the broom sweeps, and so I jar.”
“Then,” said the window, “I’ll creak,” so the window creaked. Now there was an old form outside the house, and when the window creaked, the form said: “Window, why do you creak?” “Oh!” said the window, “Titty’s dead, and Tatty weeps, and the stool hops, and the broom sweeps, the door jars, and so I creak.”
“Then,” said the old form, “I’ll run round the house;” then the old form ran round the house. Now there was a fine large walnut-tree growing by the cottage, and the tree said to the form: “Form, why do you run round the house?” “Oh!” said the form, “Titty’s dead, and Tatty weeps, and the stool hops, and the broom sweeps, the door jars, and the window creaks, and so I run round the house.”
“Then,” said the walnut-tree, “I’ll shed my leaves,” so the walnut- tree shed all its beautiful green leaves. Now there was a little bird perched on one of the boughs of the tree, and when all the leaves fell, it said: “Walnut-tree, why do you shed your leaves?” “Oh!” said the tree, “Titty’s dead, and Tatty weeps, the stool hops, and the broom sweeps, the door jars, and the window creaks, the old form runs round the house, and so I shed my leaves.”
“Then,” said the little bird, “I’ll moult all my feathers,” so he moulted all his pretty feathers. Now there was a little girl walking below, carrying a jug of milk for her brothers and sisters’ supper, and when she saw the poor little bird moult all its feathers, she said: “Little bird, why do you moult all your feathers?” “Oh!” said the little bird, “Titty’s dead, and Tatty weeps, the stool hops, and the broom sweeps, the door jars, and the window creaks, the old form runs round the house, the walnut-tree sheds its leaves, and so I moult all my feathers.”
“Then,” said the little girl, “I’ll spill the milk,” so she dropt the pitcher and spilt the milk. Now there was an old man just by on the top of a ladder thatching a rick, and when he saw the little girl spill the milk, he said: “Little girl, what do you mean by spilling the milk, your little brothers and sisters must go without their supper.” Then said the little girl: “Titty’s dead, and Tatty weeps, the stool hops, and the broom sweeps, the door jars, and the window creaks, the old form runs round the house, the walnut-tree sheds all its leaves, the little bird moults all its feathers, and so I spill the milk.”
“Oh!” said the old man, “then I’ll tumble off the ladder and break my neck,” so he tumbled off the ladder and broke his neck; and when the old man broke his neck, the great walnut-tree fell down with a crash, and upset the old form and house, and the house falling knocked the window out, and the window knocked the door down, and the door upset the broom, and the broom upset the stool, and poor little Tatty Mouse was buried beneath the ruins.
WHUT.
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... is what came to mind.
the fact that one of them was named Titty Mouse just makes that whole story for me.
Okay, that's definitely a weird one. Speaking of odd tales for children involving bad horses though, check this one out: The Horse And The Donkey
Old storytellers did some weird shit.
Oh, that's nothing try, oh I can't remember what it's called, but it was about a bird, a mouse, and a living sausage. I believe they all die in the end. The worst thing about those fairy tales though, is having to read things like
over and over and over.
2108125 They made a book for kids out of that?
No wonder we're all so messed up.
The original story makes sense, but the way they condensed it for the storybook makes it surreal, almost dadaist children's literature.
Bad horse, you need to work that *brilliant* story structure into one of your own works somehow.
Pinkie's probably your best bet.
Also: Titty Mouse.
So you're saying the door is a jar?
2108125
That was a bad horse, indeed. He wasn't to bright, though. I remember reading books like that in grade 1 or whatever. I wondered if they forgot to put in an ending sometimes. If I gave that little book to my younger self, he would probably wonder where the ending was and if they forgot a few pages where the donkey beats up the bad men.
What I got from Titty and Tatty: careful what you say, lest others hear. It's quite a cautionary tale for young lasses. Don't you dare spread gossip or others will not shut up and fuck your shit up without even trying. Tatty was crying wolf; making a mountain out of a molehill. Titty ain't dead, ya tw@. You didn't shut up, and now you dead. NOW YOU DEAD!!!
Alternatively, it could be a tale about why you shouldn't kill yourself. Titty, in her unrevealed grief was like, "Fuck my life and fuck this pudding. This is fucking oats n shit. How is this motherfucking shit motherfucking pudding??!! Fuck my life and fuck this pudding. I'm gonna fucking kill myself and maybe get some Jell-O pudding. Bill Cosby is one fine n-[Jackie Chan, please never repeat what Chris Tucker says]."
She promptly An Herocided on the boiling water "accidentally". Unfortunately, she was very much alive to watch Tatty commit to starting a drama daisy chain inadvertently caused by being too talkative and far fetched, which ended up with them both suffering death by comprised structural integrity.
So... umm... keep to the status quo and shut up is the moral or you make your house implode, I guess. Enjoy your crap oats pudding and forget about Jell-O brand goodness.
...Blood pudding is pretty tasty, while we're on the topic of pudding. Although, I dunno if it's actually pudding.
May I venture to suggest drawing on Struwwelpeter for the maximum impact on young impressionable minds?
"...But mind now, Conrad, what I say,
Don't suck your thumb while I'm away.
The great tall tailor always comes
To little boys who suck their thumbs;
And ere they dream what he's about,
He takes his great sharp scissors out..."
I think it was about not wasting time weeping... but that's probably wrong.
I'm pretty sure the moral of the story is "Don't talk to inanimate objects".
2108125
WHY?!?
2108125
That's just special.
Incidentally, I think I figured out the real moral of this story:
There's no use crying over spilled dairy products.
why would anyone write this
what the actual fuck
2108336 That reminds me of a book of German children's stories we had when I was a kid called "Max und Moritz". Max and Moritz were two naughty German boys. In the end they're ground up in a mill, sprayed out onto the ground in meat-chunk outlines of two little boys, and eaten by ducks.
2108455
2108458
I just realized. This little book is A Friend in Deed circa [grandpa book age]. Except with a wild twist in that it opens up the peals of reality and shows you what the fandom wanted to do with a small pink horse that didn't know how to stop making happy mouth noises.
I, for one, loved it because Pinkie was super fucking annoying and learned things through her ADD powers. My brother choked me as the episode rolled along, seething with totally justifiable hatred.
Obviously, the little storybook is telling us how to deal with Pinkie Pie. In any Pinkie related situation. Pinkie Pies must be shot with supreme prejudice. It will make Rhinox happy. Just as Nestor, the donkey in the story, is happy that the bad horse is now dead. Yes, I named his Nestor. It's a donkey name, like the donkey who took Jesus to Ninneveh.
Gee willikers, Bad Horse. These malefic interpretations of ABSOLUTE SERIOUSNESS!!! have taken up all my clopping time. It is like you plan these blog entries this way, so the mind can clop, while horse radishes don't clop.
God, I want to get high right now. I'm pretty sure it would calm me down so I don't end up like the little pink horse in the little children's book.
2108600
From what I hear, many of the original versions of today's fairy tales ended with the child that misbehaved or disobeyed his or her parents meeting a bloody, and often painful, death. The intent was to scare the children from ever attempting something of the kind.
If you watched it, think about the stories told by Grug in the animation The Croods, which were always about someone dying when doing something that Grug wanted to discourage his children from doing.
2108125
Ssssshhh. That's actually Bad Horse's secret origin story. He just tore out the pages where he beat the men to death with the donkey's leg and then fed them their own shotgun.
Normally there is some moral in these stories emphasized by the violence and death , but this just seems more like a dark poem for children than anything meant to instruct or educate.
The way I understand it, stories like this are meant for relatively young children[1] and they amuse not with plot, but with repetitive structure. In my experience young children really like this[2], because the patterns are simple enough for them to complete on their own and they can experience the tension between knowing how the next paragraph is going to turn out (some inanimate object will turn out to be not quite so inanimate, Tatty mouse will weep &c) and not knowing all the details (which inanimate object?). This tension is a part of why people like fixed-form art, I think, and this is the suitably simplified version.
[1] Who used to be told the most grisly bloody tales back in the day, sometimes to inspire a lively terror, sometimes because that's how Ye Olden Days rolled.
[2] And young children do like repetition, in general. They like to be told the same stories. They like to do the same things at the same times.
.__.
2108437
Or be freaking careful around boiling pudding.
Titty (male) and Tatty (female) were married, and they did everything together. Titty's mistake was trying to cook with Tatty, because men shouldn't be cooking. His punishment was death. When Titty died, Tatty started neglecting her chores, to the point where chaos began to run amok. God tried to send her a sign by killing everything around her. Tatty was blind to the signs, and things had gotten to the point where her infectious spirit of anarchy had spread to The Children. The wise old man saw the signs and sacrificed himself to stop the madness. By then it was too late: The Children had turned from God, and they could never be saved.
The story has several morals. First, and most importantly, men shouldn't cook. Second, women shouldn't neglect their chores. Third, always keep a watchful eye for signs from above. Fourth, sin is contagious. Fifth, old men are wise. Sixth, wisdom is the ability to read signs from God. Seventh, always be willing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good. Eighth, sin cannot be cleansed. Ninth, the effects of God's wrath are permanent (the bird's feathers were never restored).
EDIT: Tenth, Women shouldn't be tempting men into doing unmanly things. Eleventh, women are the cause of sin. Twelfth, men and women (not Wise Old Men or The Children) are but mice before God. Thirteenth, animals are sinners and do not go to heaven.
2108985
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly...
Admittedly, that one still amuses me to this very day.
Bad Horse, I assume you're already familiar with Struwwelpeter?
Edit: Why'd you take "Impressionable Young" out of the title? I liked that...
While 2108985 's explanation is probably the accurate one, I thought it was commenting on how humans respond to the actions of others, without really thinking about those actions or our own responses and whether or not any of it is really connected (other than causally) or makes any logical sense. Tatty wept, and so the stool hops; it doesn't help Tatty one iota, but the stool apparently thinks it does, or perhaps it doesn't care, so long as it can have a reason to hop. It doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to, because so much of human action doesn't make sense, when you get down to it. We're temperamental and contradictory creatures.
And the final consequence is that we all bounce illogically and stupidly off of each other until our collective unreason brings the whole house down and causes us pain and probably death.
That's what I thought it was about, anyway.
Oh my god that is the best thing ever. I never saw that one though and I used to read a lot of fairy tailes.
Most farytails are dark fantasy which is why I like that genre today.
A whole chain of "Wut?" there
-Somebody got paid to write it.
-Somebody got paid to publish it.
-Some bookstore somewhere sold it.
-Some people somewhere bought it.
2108336 Oh yes, my mom and her siblings had a copy of that when they where little, given to them by a German friend, so she bought a copy of it for me and my siblings. It was truly terrifying.
2109707 That's a great analysis.
2110680 This was from an anthology of folk tales, and the book's writers were just reporting what stories folk were telling in the field. Nobody got paid to create that story.
2114829 They subjected themselves to that for *free*? Oh, those poor, poor people.
Titty Mouse. Tatty Mouse.
Tit for tat.
There you go.
2109681 I used to know Struwwelpeter, but forgot about it. Now that's educational.
I wavered on "Impressionable Young"--it seemed like it was stepping out of character, like the narrator had more self-insight than he's supposed to. But I put it back. Thanks for the feedback.
2118506 That makes both perfect sense and no sense at all.
2108985
Wait... wait... are you saying that Bronystories could make an excellent children's book author? He certainly spams his alliteration to just the right amount that it isn't completely overbearing as like that one scene in V for Vendetta where Hugo Weaving voices various "V" verbs to the very vexed vixen Natalie Portman. It was very good dialog, either way.
Really, all that Bronystories would have to do is get his head out of the gutter for but a few moments and he could create something a mother would pay for to read to their child at night. And he is a nice enough guy that it could happen.
...Although, I do prefer his alliterative innuendos of sexual organs to anything else. In my eyes, he should keep his head in the gutter and force it down further, for there is smutty gold in there, perhaps even platinum and diamonds and Tarmogoyfs. Smutty, sinful Tarmogoyfs.
But yeah, if only Bronystories put his mind to it, he could be this generations Dr. Seuss or something.
Also, when
I was a kidteenageryoung adultI still watch Angela Anaconda when it's on, it's pretty damn attention grabbing? I think it's kinda successful. As you've said, children like repetition. Angela's way with words is spectacularly spectacular in the most redundantly redundant of ways.Jacob Two Two[1] comes to mind, too. He sometimes repeats himself in the show. God, I wish that YTV would rerun stuff like this instead of the fecal matter that is their new cartoons.
Does the repetition these shows delve into hold them up? Nah. I like to think that Angela's hyper imagination and utter loathing of a hoser French girl from Quebec and Jacob's absurd adventures in Montreal and his love of hockey are enough to hold up their shows. Although, their repetition does prolly help a crapton.
As people get older, they tend to dislike the repetition and it comes off as annoying. They have clearly never watched Angela Anaconda or Jacob Two Two and are therefore bad or whatever.
[1]The Jacob Two Two show is based off a book series by the same name, written by Mordecai Richler. He wrote The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz in his earlier years, a book that made me question how much deeper greed and materialism are than love in a man's heart and made me resolve to never be like Duddy. So far, I'd say I've been between somewhat successful. Hey, I haven't stolen money off a disabled person yet. That has to count for something.
If Bronystories writes a child friendly fiction, I will compare him to Mordecai Richler.
It will be beyond amusing to find out if Bronystories is Jewish, making the comparison more complete.
2123799
Pick one or the other or I'll skin you alive and then kill you.