Franz Xaver von Schönwerth - White as Milk, Red as Blood: The Forgotten Fairy Tales of Franz Xaver von Schönwerth

Published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada

Translation copyright 2018 Shelley Tanaka

Illustrations copyright 2018 Willow Dawson

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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Published in 2018 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Distributed in Canada and the United States of America by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Schnwerth, Franz Xaver von, 18091886

[Works. Selections. English]

White as milk, red as blood : The forgotten fairy tales / of Franz Xaver von Schnwerth; Willow Dawson, illustrator; Shelley Tanaka, translator.

Translated from the German.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 9780345812179

eBook ISBN 9780345812186

1. FolkloreGermanyBavaria. 2. Fairy talesGermanyBavaria.

3. Folk tales. 4. Fairy tales. I. Dawson, Willow, illustrator II. Tanaka, Shelley, translator III. Title. IV. Title: Works. Selections. English.

GR167.B3S35313 2018 398.209433 C2016-908264-4

Book design by Jennifer Lum

v5.2

a

For my little nestlings, W+A, whose German blood runs thick.
And for my own mother, who breastfed me a sizable dose of
fairy tales and fear. W D.

Contents

Foreword

by Philip Pullman

ntil 2012, I had never heard of Franz Xaver von Schnwerth. In that year, like many other admirers of the fairy tale, I was astounded to hear of the discovery of five hundred unknown stories in a German archive, and was at once impatient to read them. And now, here they areor some of the best of them, illustrated with wonderful freedom and zestful inventiveness by Willow Dawson.

I knew the Grimm brothers famous collection fairly well, and what I admired about it was the brothers direct and unmodulated way of telling their tales. The Grimms were working with material from a number of sources, and the best of the stories have the almost unselfconscious immediacy of oral storytelling (although Wilhelm Grimm did enlarge and embroider the tales more and more in later editions). Because I like that way of telling a tale so much, I was a little apprehensive when I first opened this collection, in case von Schnwerths tales turned out to be something I have less taste for: the so-called literary fairy tale, most examples of which are (to my mind) whimsical, affected, sentimental, with all the tensile strength of a piece of well-boiled spaghetti.

I neednt have worried. These tales of von Schnwerth are ferocious. And funny, and moving, and delightful. Punishments are properly bloody, passions are immediate and volcanic, and most important of all, the style is brisk, vivid, and colourfuland those colours, as the title of this book exemplifies, are primary and full of life. Some of the tales here are familiar from other anthologies, or from our own dimly-remembered childhoods, when all stories seemed to come from our grandparents and other people half as old as time; but they are stories that can always bear telling again, and the voice in these, whether its von Schnwerths own or a faithful transcription, is fresh and confident.

Whats more, the tales contain some images that are so vivid they are hard to forget, such as the witch removing her own head in order to de-louse it. A useful talent, no doubt, although one that is bound to create a certain unease in anyone watching. I also like the idea of the young man Jodl reluctantly but dutifully getting into bed with a toad, then waking to find the creature turned into a beautiful princess: a nice reversal of the Frog Prince story we know from Grimm.

The fact that these stories seem not to have been intended for publication may account for their unadorned quality. It looks as though von Schnwerth gathered them for his own pleasure. Good for him! There are many collections of folk tales, in all the languages of the worldand no doubt, many that havent been discovered yet, lying quietly in archives or libraries, or gathering dust in attics. But theres always room for another, especially when its as crisp and vigorous as this. Franz Xaver von Schnwerth, I salute you!

Introduction

by Willow Dawson

his book is not for children. This book is for adults. Or for adults to frighten children into behavingwhichever you prefer.

White as Milk, Red as Blood offers a brief glimpse at a vanishing moment in European history, when oral storytelling completed its almost total migration towards the written word, forever changing how we pass on knowledge and culture.

The lower classes, often illiterate, kept the oral tradition alive while new information and education circulated thanks to Gutenbergs printing press. Print offered opportunities to challenge spiritualism and religion, the class system and wealth distribution, cultural and scientific information and more. As scientific study flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many commonly held beliefs were dismissed as old-fashioned, superstitious or simply wrong, and a hierarchy began to emerge between fact and fiction. It would only be a matter of time before these types of fictional stories were dismissed as fanciful and childish, further infantilizing the poorer classes for their antiquated and fantastical beliefs. As the remaining storytellers grew old, the oral histories and folk and fairy tales that occupied the imaginations of the working class, labourers and servants were threatened with disappearance.