FOLK TALES
Odds and gods
K. CROSSLEY-HOLLAND
A young Armenian volinist once told me, In clipped English, a delightful anecdote about a haircut. His uncle had been to the barber one morning ; the barber was busy and apologetically asked the uncle to come back later. 'Oh! That's all right,' said the uncle. I'll leave my head. When shall I collect it?' Give me an hour,' said the barber. The uncle borrowed a cut-throat razor and removed his head; and in due course the barber trimmed its hair. The uncle was back on the hour. He put on his head again, thanked the barber courteously, settled his bill, and walked out of the shop.
This is very much of a piece with the highly entertaining Armenian folk and fairy tales in Mischa Kudian's Three Apples fell
from Heaven (Hart-Davis, 25s), where the ordinary and extraordinary walk hand in hand, and where the mood is brisk, spirited, often gay. From the opening page on which a fly, a cat, a dog and a shopkeeper meet separate, violent ends, the book is packed with a great variety of characters and events—kings disguised as poor men, poor men made rich, performing sticks, maidens and demons, fiery horses, shady deals. Mr Kudian's style is astringent, his dialogue entirely convincing, his sense of humour razor-sharp.
One story, 'The Monastery of the Doves', stands apart. It is a moving folk-memory of how a Christ-like monk miraculously saved the lives of many fellow Armenians oppressed by Tamerlane, captives who 'were turned into doves and flew out of the window to the freedom of their mountains once more'. It is a pertinent story too. Mr Kudian should round things off by present- ing a copy of this fine book to the Kremlin.
Several of the motifs in Three Apples fell from Heaven crop up again in Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman (Hamish Hamilton, 21s), a collection of Chinese stories, but here the mood is reserved and formal. We seem to be peering through a pane of glass at scenes based on familiar morals and proverbs yet entirely alien in their expression. Perhaps the most striking story is about the seven shen themselves, the demons of the sea: six are now imprisoned in a jade bottle ; catch the seventh and you will have drawn the sea's teeth for ever. But here, too, you will encounter Ah Mee, the inventor of printing, and Ah Tcha who gives his name to char (Indian blend), tay, tea. Shen of the Sea took the Newbery Medal in 1925 and certainly these stories are told with great charm and conviction. But their language has dated considerably, and at times it is inconsistent too: you can't have 'gumption' and 'out of pocket' alongside such delightful endearments as 'Ah Fun, my pearl, my jade, my orange tree.' The silhouette illustrations by Else Hasselriis, redolent of shadow-puppets, Chinese cameos, boudoirs, are enchanting, a true complement and compliment to the text.
In Farewell, the Little People ((RIP, 28s), Victor Pohl draws on a profound knowledge of behaviour and environment to present a picture of the Bushmen peoples at their zenith, three hundred years ago. He depicts a time of peace and plenty in the imposing and beautiful Drakensberg mountains. Here, the 'black men' and 'yellow men' and 'white men', subsequently to drive the Bushmen into the Kalahari desert, have never been heard of ; Bushman and baboon are close allies ; veldcraft is the first, almost the only prerequisite. And here we see myth in the making, religious beliefs and lore as an integral part of day-to-day life: sun- worship, reverence for Kaggen, the praying mantis, creator of all things and chief of the gods ; terror of Gaya, the evil one. This is, however, rather a fragmentary book ; it is cast in episodic form, and when the central character suddenly disappears half way through, one fears that the interest of child- ren many disappear with him.
In Old European Fairy Tales (Muller 25s), Irma Kaplan attempts to cram a good deal into one volume: Perrault, Bros Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen are represented here ; Finland and Hungary, France and Russia rub shoulders. Yet, curiously enough, there are no stories from England or Wales or Scotland or, of all places, Ireland, the richest repository of all. And, as it happens,
the German story here of the two hump_ backed fiddlers caught up in a witches' sab. bath has an altogether more beguiling Irish equivalent. Mrs Kaplan is rather too ver. bose ; and she inclines to oscillate between the colloquial and archaic, for example, 'But it wasn't too easy to conjure forth fish'. The national flavour of these stories, so immedi. ately distinctive, yet so elusive, seems to have escaped her.
Olwen Bowen's Tales from the Mahino. gion (Gollancz, 25s), packed with action. virtually devoid of characterisation, has left me punch drunk, so my comments on it must be viewed with suspicion. Magic, savagery, trickery, humour, love and above all staggering feats of arms seethe in this mediaeval Welsh cauldron. Mrs Bowen is surely right not to have played up such highly dramatic stories ; but perhaps she should have tried to slow them down, for in the end there is a real danger that the reader's sense of wonder and of fear will simply be suspended.
Finally, a salute to Edward Blishen's Miscellany Six (ouP, 30s), which this year has a very fair quota of the folkloric and historic. Odin does his part in seeing a boat- load of voracious, rapacious Danes safely on to the English shore in Jill Paton Walsh's fine story, 'Thief' ; and Andrew Salkey's `Anansi and the Ghost-Wrestlers' is a tour de force: 'You not going to believe me when tell you the heads rolling all over the land like red garden cabbage, and the eyes blink- ing a last look-see, white, black and red: It is good to be able to write without the least hesitation that Miscellany Six is a first- class advertisement for its editor, its contributors and its publishers.
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