Reading Notes: Reading B: English Fairy Tales

For the second part of this week’s reading of English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, I read through eight different tales. In the tale, Henny-Penny, a hen believes the sky is falling and wants to go tell the King. Like a similar story, the sky is actually not falling out. On the way, she runs into four other animals who follow her to go tell the King. However, the group runs into a very sly fox. The fox gets all of the animals to follow him into his burrow and eats all of them but Henny-Penny who is able to escape. This story also reminds me of the children’s books There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, that I discussed in Reading A. I think this tale could also be retold in the same way as the book. I would also like to change the ending to where the animals all find a way to escape the sly fox. In the tale, The Ass, The Table, and The Stick, a boy wants to prove that he can support a woman to be a wife. He falls in love with a woman who is very poor. In the end, he is able to get lots of money and still wants to be with the poor woman. What we do not learn about in the tale is how the two fell in love in the first place. I could create a story about how the two fell in love with each other. Another tale I could possible change is The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh. What I found weird about the tale is that the brother was the sister “knight in shiny armor” who came back to transform the sister back into a girl by kissing her three times even though she looked like a dragon. I know that back in medieval times it was nothing new to have sibling marry each other but now it just seems creepy. I could change the witch to prophesies a handsome stranger coming to save her, instead of her own brother.  

A sly fox that attack a hen. Source: Wikimedia Commons by Internet Archive Book Images