Here are my favorite stories from the first half of the Turkish Fairy Tales reading unit:
Fear: After I got into the story a little bit, I realized this was very similar to a story that I'd read before written by the brothers Grimm, something about a boy who goes searching to figure out what fear is. I don't remember the Grimm version very well, but this version of the tale is creepy yet funny. This guy really isn't afraid of anything at first. An arm grabs him in a graveyard asking for the food he's making and he's just like, "Get your hand away from my food." I would have freaked out! Then a creepy ghost girl stands on his shoulders to try to make some other creepy ghost kid stop crying and almost strangles him with her feet, but the hero just falls over and takes her bracelet that fell on the floor. Then he jumps into the sea and beats up a sea witch terrorizing a ship with no qualms. And what ends up scaring this guy? A bird flying out into his face! Seriously?!
The Wizard-Dervish: This story also reminded me of something I had previously read, a story from the Indian Fairy Tales unit I read last week called The Prince and the Fakir. Both stories involve a king making a deal with a man who can do magic so that he can have a son (or two). The magic man helps the king but says he'll be back to take the son when he is a certain age. The magic man makes good on his promise and the boy is taken away. However, I found The Wizard-Dervish to be funnier and more of a kids story. I can just imagine a group of kids giggling each time the dervish's daughter changes herself and the prince into different things, people, or animals and tricking her mom (a witch who wasn't asked her permission for the two to get married). I also noticed a similarity between the first two stories of the unit that would actually show up in all the readings: shape-shifting bird-ladies. In all the stories, there is at least one woman who shape-shifts from some kind of animal into a woman, and in the last 3 stories she ends up marrying the main character.
The Fish-Peri: This time the shape-shifting woman takes the form of a fish. She is caught by the hero, put in a well he made, and turns into a woman while he is gone fishing to take care of his house. He catches her in her human form and burns the fish skin she shed so she can't transform back. Though she says he shouldn't have done that, she doesn't seem upset at all. In fact, the careless boy does several things she tells him not to do, but each time there really aren't any consequences for his actions. In most fairy tales, the inability to follow instructions leads to the failure of a character's task or the breaking of some sort of spell or agreement, ending with the main character being sad. Overall, this story was a little odd or different, but in a good way. The main guy marries a fish lady, there are donkeys hatching from eggs, a talking baby slapping a king, and an Arab who lives in the ocean, seems like a genie, and provides the talking baby as well as other impossible, magical feats.
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| Baby slapping the padishah (great king) from Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos and illustrated byWilly Pogany (1913) |
The Crow-Peri: This story and The Fish-Peri have a few similarities. The main characters are both males, have a shape-shifting guide that they end up marrying, and must complete impossible tasks (which they do successfully thanks to their guides). In this story, we have another shape-shifting bird-lady; what is it with Turkish fairy tales and shape-shifting bird-ladies? Also, what's with the 40 day time limit on impossible tasks? (The shah sets the same kind of time limit for some of the tasks in The Fish-Peri, too.) This one was probably my favorite story of all because more than one person gets a happy ending. The hero marries his bird-lady, the shah marries the peri queen, and the queen is reunited with her pet bird and ex-servant. Everybody wins, except for the greedy lala (court official). Just the way things should be!
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