I often find myself thinking the concept terrifying that a Creature-You-Think-Is-Your-Aunt is sucking up your sister’s brains at night and you’re asking her what the noise of slurping was and your sister is crying with pain but the Creature says it was just a mouse scuttling across the floor. Yes, that’s the exact same sound as knocking back someone’s brain.
Folktales are often unapologetically horrifying.
Sociology says that folktales are mediums of orally enforcing societal laws. Customs. Traditions. If you don’t want to be either one of the sisters in that dreadful tale, you should listen to your mother tell you which path to go. Also possibly look for family resemblances.
But I don’t know. The sisters in the above tale did follow their mother’s instructions. But the Creature just decided to waylay them anyway. Well, what else is a cannibal to do, right? I say ‘cannibal’ and it is disturbing that a cannibal should unassumingly enter the world of children’s stories but the real messed up part is that the creature does not even seem to be human. So… maybe not “technically” a cannibal if she’s not the same manner of being as the sisters. But the bigger question arises here: how do you figure that two human girls un-problematically accept a strange Creature as their aunt when clearly they are human and she – this brain-sucking creature – is not? Are non-human relatives that common?
But that is the craziness that is the world of folktales. You very un-problematically accept things that go far beyond the rules of nature: the uncomplicated manner in which a human child would think a Forest Creature and she are family relations, the easy way you welcome travel between the moon and earth via a ladder or a tall tree/bamboo, the simple manner you assume proper conversations happen between entirely different species, the forthright manner you accept that a man could be friends with a tiger…
And bear in mind: in tribal folktales, these are not anthropomorphized beings. No. They’re out and out undiluted versions of their own realities in our world. The moon is still the moon; still as far, still as distant. A shrimp is still a shrimp as a tiger is still a tiger as a goblin is still a goblin as a human is still a human. And these different species apparently coexist in this strange world that is so fluid that a human could be slave to a cat, goblins (or nymphs?) and humans regularly intermarry, the thumb of a deceased could become a bird and speak in words understandable to a human, skeletons in a grave could move at the sound of melodies…
In addition, apart from not being anthropomorphized, these beings do not even seem to conform to human moralities or sensibilities. The goblins would still operate as they do in their – I imagine – spectral world. Your little witness-to-murder thumb bird is still a thumb as it is a bird. (How does that even work?)
Not to mention that you may converse all you like with your tiger best friend but he is still a tiger and it does not matter how close you are, your tiger friend would still kill and eat your family. Or you, actually, if it comes to a fight. To be fair, you would also still eat the shrimp or the bird that you talk to. Because of course you do.
So I have to wonder what the purpose to these stories is. Metaphors are very well and fine. I enjoy good metaphors and immensely appreciate clever puns. Even Jesus taught in parables. But folktales fascinate me in ways other stories often do not. The parameters that weave fiction around reality in the construction of folktales are riveting because of how extremely fluid they are in parts and suddenly how conforming too!
I consider myself a structural-functionalist. I always think things and ideas have their places in society – good or bad – otherwise they’d be obsolete and replaced.
Folktales… big time head-scratchers!! Perhaps art? Art is as you do. Art is as special as you think. Art is an abstraction of society through an artist’s lens. As a form of art, what are folktales? A representation of society, only exaggerated for drama by the storyteller? Very possible. Or maybe more? Maybe I should rethink this again. It sounds promising.
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