Collected Folk Tales. Alan Garner

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СКАЧАТЬ in Britain, traditional stories of the fantastic and the supernatural came under attack: directly from the Church, for being either lies or the work of the Devil; indirectly from the educated and the literate, who followed the new sceptical materialism; and incidentally from the growth of towns and cities, which obliterated the oral traditions that a settled rural community may sustain, but an urban society of strangers does not. The result was, by the middle of the nineteenth century, that stories that have existed in all times and in all places, as the common property of all, had been removed from their tellers and their audience and delivered up to child-minders and to scholars.

      In the nursery, printed folk tales became tracts to support authority, with moral lessons inserted and the wilder elements tamed so that children should not be exposed to unseemly events. And in the academic world, the duty of the folklorist was to rescue and record the stories that had survived, without concern for a popular audience. On the one hand, the texts were made literary and trite; and on the other, remote and unattractive, since the accurate transcription of spoken words carries with it little of the performance, in which the vitality lies.

      By nature, folk tale addresses itself to the ear rather than to the eye. Its first appeal is to a listener, and, since a listener is unable to stop and consider as a reader may, the form of the tale is direct. Plot evolves through physical action, and other concerns are kept in the listener’s head by repetition. When literary styles, based on reason, try to make sense of folk tale, they render it mundane. The real meaning is in the music; it is in the language: not phonetics, grammar or syntax, but pitch and cadence, and the colour of the word.

      In this selection I have tried to get back, through the written word, a sense of the spoken. I have worked to recreate the moment of the telling, so that the printed word may sing.

      Alan Garner

      

      here was a hill that ate people. The Rabbit’s grandmother told him never to go near it.

      So the Rabbit went to the hill, and shouted, “Gobbleknoll, swallow me! Come, devour me!”

      But Gobbleknoll knew the Rabbit, and took no notice.

      Later that day, a group of travellers came by, looking for a place to shelter from the rain, and Gobbleknoll opened his green and ferny lips, and the travellers thought that they had found a cave. They went in, and the Rabbit slipped close behind them. But the hill felt hairy pads on his tunnels, and before the Rabbit could reach the middle, Gobbleknoll threw him out, and the grass shut.

      The Rabbit went and hid behind a tree, and a few days later a hunting party arrived at the hill just before night, and Gobbleknoll opened again. This time the Rabbit used magic art, and took the shape of a man, except for his ears, which he tucked down his shirt, so that they would not brush against the roof and make Gobbleknoll sneeze.

      He went down long and horrid passages, until he came to the hill’s stomach, and there were the remains of all the victims, and some who were not yet dead.

      “Hey hey hey!” shouted the Rabbit. “Why don’t you eat? You leave the best! Here’s a delicious heart. What’s wrong with that?”

      Gobbleknoll set up a dismal howling, for it was his own heart that the Rabbit had seen. And the Rabbit knew this, and took out a knife, and stabbed the hill dead. The ground split, and the blue sky lit the deep hollows, and the living came out and wept before the Rabbit, and wanted to give him power and riches. But all the Rabbit would take was Gobbleknoll’s fat, and he went home with it on his back, and he and his grandmother were fit to burst from it for many a day.

      

      ong, long ago, when the world had just been made, and the blue sky was being put up over it, Shick-Shack lived with a fox in a wilderness place.

      One day, the fox said that he would go hunting.

      “Then go to the hill,” said Shick-Shack. “Do not go to the lake.”

      Well, the fox was away all that day, and at night he did not come home. And the next day, too, he did not come back.

      “That fox,” said Shick-Shack, “has gone to the lake. And now I shall have to find him.”

      So Shick-Shack went to the lake to look for the fox, but all he could see was a brown bird on a branch over the water.

      “Brown bird,” said Shick-Shack, “why are you sitting there and staring down so at the water?”

      The brown bird said nothing.

      “Brown bird,” said Shick-Shack, “why won’t you speak?”

      The brown bird said nothing.

      “Brown bird,” said Shick-Shack, “if you’ll tell me why you are staring down so at the water, I’ll paint you with bright colours.”

      “If you’ll paint me with bright colours,” said the brown bird, “I’ll tell you why I’m staring down so at the water.”

      “Well, I’ll do that,” said Shick-Shack. And he painted the brown bird with bright colours.

      Then the bird said, “The truth of why I’m staring down so at the water is that a fox came here the day before now; and the snake that lives in the lake has eaten the fox, and is down there, sleeping.”

      “Hah,” said Shick-Shack. And he sat on the shore of the lake, and turned himself into a tree stump.

      By and by, the snake came out of the water. And when it saw the stump, it said, “That’s no tree stump.” And the snake wound all its lubber length about the stump, and squeezed. The stump split, and said nothing.

      “It is like a stump,” said the snake, “but it is Shick-Shack.”

      Just then, a dog came along, and the snake said, “Dog, bite that stump with your teeth.” So the dog bit the stump with its teeth. And the stump said nothing.

      “It is like a stump,” said the dog, and went away.

      Next, a bear came along.

      “Bear,” said the snake, “rip that stump with your claws.”

      So the bear ripped the stump with its claws. And the stump said nothing.

      “It is like a stump,” said the bear, and went away.

      “It is a stump,” said the snake. “It is not Shick-Shack.” And it lay down on the shore, and went back to sleep.

      The next thing was that Shick-Shack turned back from a stump into himself, and he throttled that snake, and threw it into the lake.

      Now the water didn’t like that, and it came up out of the lake to drown Shick-Shack.

      Shick-Shack ran, and the water came after. He ran to the hill, and ran up it. СКАЧАТЬ