Fairy Tales
The Magical Lure

“A Fairy tale can come true, it can happen to you, if you’re young at heart.”

Fairy tales have a magical lure and way of coaxing the child in us to come out and play. Young or old, they enchant us with the promise of whisking us away from our every day lives.

From gingerbread wishes and magic wands, to tiny fairies and far away lands, our favorite stories and illustrators take us back to our innocence, back to a happy place where we originally learned all of life’s simplest lessons, wrapped up in the words of a fairy tale.

It is said that tales of fairies, fables , and stories were man’s first attempt to bring order to chaos. They especially are believed to be instrumental to a child’s development.

In it’s simplest form, it is a wonderful combination of entertainment, religion, history, and science all rolled into a story.

The tale usually involves bravery, magic, and symbolic characters who solve a particular problem, thus helping a child to sort things out in their own minds where they learn the very lessons of life and of growing up.

Although it is true that these tales are beneficial to children, they were not originally written for children at all.

With many dating back to 17th century France and beyond, most were written with cruel and gruesome twists.

Some had moralistic value and some were written by those who felt the oppression of their times and were acting out through the outlet of the written word.

According to history, the Grimm brothers compiled the folk tales of their German ancestors to make up their collection widely known today.

In German, the word for the folk tale is “marchen”, for which there is no satisfactory English translation. The closest meaning is “a wonderment” or “an enchantment,” which of course is very true of such tales.

The originators or “tellers” of the tales were generally women, although today the best known collections are that of Hans Christian Anderson Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm .

Women were the ones most oppressed by society, whether it was by forced marriages or the inability to speak their mind. Well, speak their mind they certainly did, in the form of well crafted folk tales which spoke openly about their cruel injustices.

Cinderella, one of the most famous tales with fairies as such, has over 340 versions and can be tracked back to early China.

In the earlier, more graphic versions, the wicked step sisters cut off their own toes in an effort to fit Cinderella’s glass slipper and doves which fly down from a hazel tree planted over the grave of Cinderella’s dead mother end up plucking the sister’s eyes out.

From Cinderella’s timeless tale, we glean the value of being patient in adverse situations, having a pleasant attitude, and a meek and kind spirit ultimately triumphing over the wicked.

Cinderella’s beauty, which shines even through her tattered rags, is symbolic of our inner selves being the reality of our being Do you see why these tales were passed down from generation to generation? The wisdom of the folk tale will live on “happily ever after."

© Copyright 2007-2011 Fairies-Fantasy-Art.com

Fairies in Art, fairy tales, the best folcklore
illustrations and illustrators, and so much more.