>> From The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Betsy Peterson: Hello everyone.
I'm Betsy Peterson, Director of the American Folklife Center here
at the Library of Congress.
And I want to welcome you to our latest presentation
in the Benjamin Botkin Lecture Series.
The Botkin series serves a dual purpose
for the American Folklife Center.
First of all, it allows us to present some of the best
and most current scholarship
and folklorythm musicology and oral history.
And it also allows us to enrich our collection.
We record all of these lectures and they soon find their way
onto our website and into our archives.
So, with that reminder of recording,
if you have your cell phone on, please turn it off now.
That would be most appreciated.
Now, folklorists are seeing lately that there is an incredible revival
of interest in folktales.
And this year actually marks the anniversary of, in fact,
the 2 hundredth year anniversary of The Brothers Grimm household tales
or I'll try to butcher this [inaudible] [Chuckles] something
like that.
But folktales, of course, are older than the Grimm's
but their publication in 1812 really captured the imagination of people
at the dawn of the romantic era.
And through their work, folktales, such as Hansel and Gretel,
Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and The Frog Prince and many others;
became part of the shared cultural heritage
of all Western Europeans and Northern Americans.
And of course, Disney did quite a bit to further that.
One of the most popular tales in this collection is Cinderella.
The subject of today's Botkin lecture.
But the traditional story is, I think we will find out,
is much older, a bit darker, and a lot more complex
than its recent portrayal over the last 50 years in modern media.
Today I have the honor of presenting Dr. Margaret Yocom.
One of the world's leading scholars of both folktales
and of the work of the Grimm brothers.
She will introduce us to the real Cinderella today.
Professor Yocom is a dedicated and innovative teacher.
She has been an active member of the English Department
of George Mason University since 1977,
where over the years she has started the folklore studies program,
which is now celebrating its 35th year anniversary this year.
She is established in the English department, a folklore mythology
and literature concentration.
A folklore mythology minor.
And she directs the Northern Virginia Folklife Archive.
She holds graduate degrees from UMass Amherst,
in English in folklore and has done landmark research
on numerous topics including family folklore,
craft and community in Western Maine.
Eskimo heritage, feminist folklore.
And folklore in creative writing.
And it's just I just want to for a moment say Thank you to Dr. Yocom
for starting the folklore studies program.
This is also an anniversary of sorts for Dr. Yocom,
because this is the year that she is going to retire.
And so we're very fortunate to have her this year.
And I just want to say on behalf of the American Folklore Center staff
and I'm sure I speak for many colleagues
in the Washington, D.C. area.
We really thank her for her years of service and vision and creativity
in starting the program at George Mason.
And For her work with the American Folklore Society.
And we wish her all the best.
[Applause] but, today we come back
to the Grimm Brothers and Cinderella.
That's the work that we're going to highlight today.
And so, I just want to turn it over to Peggy and let her tell us
about The Cinderella That No One Knows.
Dr. Yocom.
[Applause]
>> Margaret Yocom: Thank you so much, Betsy.
And thanks to all my colleagues, The Library of Congress
and the Smithsonian, you have helped make our folklore studies
program possible.
The internships, the summer work at the festival.
Our program is alive and well because of your help.
I thank Benjamin Botkin who showed us the way.
My George Mason colleagues, Debra Laton Chutica [phonetic],
Jodie Fraser, who are here with our wonderful students.
Thank you so much for coming.
I'd like to thank my husband John Slack, geologist,
who has taken the day off to come, that's very very sweet of him.
And I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my teachers
because we always stand on the shoulders of our teachers.
Samuel Bayard at Penn State University.
And at the University of Massachusetts,
Marie Campbell, Reina Green.
And especially my teacher, my lifelong friend,
George Carey of Tenants Harbor.
I don't feel strongly about any of these people, do I?
So, yes. So, think with me a little bit
about when you first encountered fairy tales.
This is my first book my parents bought me.
Look familiar to anybody, yes?
Cinderella is a lot of peoples favorites.
And it along are a lot of other tales
that we call fairy tales have been re scripted so many times
into films, novels, poems, movies, TV shows.
These Cinderella stories we know well are usually the versions
of the tales that major publishing houses and corporate film makers,
such as Disney, brought to us and edited.
But what are the other Cinderella?
Today I want to talk with you about Cinderella,
the tale we think we know, the tale that few of us know at all.
Cinderella's cousin, Allerleirauh.
All kinds of fur.
To begin, with like what Betsy was saying,
that Disney gave us Cinderella based on a version published
by Frenchman Charles Perrault in 1697.
Oh, it was saucy, teasing version meant for the ears
of aristocratic ladies and their daughters.
Perrault's version and Disney's has the fairy God mother,
the pumpkin turned carriage, those clocks striking midnight,
the common struggle to get feet into small shoes.
The triumphant marriage and forgiveness of one's step sisters.
What did Disney not use?
He did not use A Brothers Grimm, published 201 years ago, 1812.
This one has a magic tree that seems like the soul
of Cinderella's dead mother.
This is the one where in the there is absolutely no forgiveness.
Cinderella's birds peck out her step sister's eyes.
One eye each before the wedding.
The other eye after the wedding.
[Chuckles] by the beginning of the 20th century,
Grimm's tales for children in the home, was second only to the bible
as a best seller in Germany.
The Grimm Brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm turned out seven editions
of the tales between 1812 and 1857,
constantly adding and deleting stories.
So by 1857, the tales held 210 stories.
54, more tales than in the 1812 edition.
Now the Grimms had their own editing practices.
They upped the violence and they reduced the sex.
In 1812, their Rapunzel, for example,
learns about the prince's visit when Rapunzel asks, "Oh,
why has my dress become so tight?"
[Chuckles] in later versions,
the Grimm's removes this illusion to pregnancy.
Rapunzel sounds careless, almost stupid when she asks the witch,
"Why are you so slow coming up the ladder,
when the prince is so quick?"
Also, the Grimm's de emphasized magic.
Also they changed mothers into step mothers.
So, Hansel and Gretel mother becomes a stepmother in the second
to the 18th, 19th edition.
And finally, the Grimm's shortened the speaking parts of their heroins
and increased the roles of men in the tales.
Today when folklorist, like those of us who are working at the University
or The Library of Congress, we make very few changes in the texts
of the stories we collect.
However, like other writers of their time, who assemble collections
of folktales, the Grimm's freely edited the stories
that they heard from the story tellers.
Why? Well, there's two brief examples.
First, the tales appeared the midst of turbulence of the Napoleonic wars
of the French occupation of German principalities.
The French presence really upset the Grimms who were in favor
of the unification
of the [inaudible] German speaking principalities.
So, with the tales the Grimm's worked
to articulate what it meant to be German.
Like others, they believed that the tales had been changed
by the corrupting influences of progress modernity.
So they wanted to edit and thus restore the tales
to their earlier beauty, to the authentic German roots.
Also, the Grimm's were creating a moral educational manual
for children.
And they hoped to sell their collection through educated middle
and upper class German speaking citizens.
So they knew they needed to change the tales language
to suit those sensibilities.
Also the Grimm's were not wealthy.
They hoped the books would support them financially.
Where did the Grimm's find these tales that have proven
so alluring to us even today?
The Grimm's heard most of their tales from young women.
Educated members of the middle and aristocratic classes,
who had read the tales in books
and who may have read oral versions of them too.
The Grimm's put several sources together
to make their final 1857 Cinderella.
For example, they collected one version from a women
in the Elizabeth hospital in Malburg.
And her version was strongly influenced by that
of Charles Perrault's French version.
The Grimm's also mixed in a version told
to them Dorothy Avalon [phonetic].
A major informative of theirs who gave them 34 other tales.
She was the widow of a tailor.
And like several other of their informants,
[inaudible] was of mixed ethnic stock.
Her mother was German.
Her father, French Huguenot.
So the Grimm seeking to collect folk literature
of the German soul often relied on decidedly hybrid texts.
And where did the women, such as Dorothy Avalon,
get the oral tales they told?
No one can say with absolute certainty
where these marvelous tales come from.
These are international wonder tales.
Tales of some length with multiple episodes,
that in distant unspecified time and place, filled with transformation.
Magical characters and journeys.
But based on the earliest known text and the geographical distribution
of those texts, many folklore scholars are willing to name Asia
as a major source area for the tales.
And trade roots as the methods of that distribution.
We know from 19th and 20th century field work,
especially by folklorist, Linda Degh in Europe, that tailors, tinkers,
soldiers and other travelers passed these stories along.
The oldest Cinderella version that folklorists have been able
to find comes from the 9th century from 850 AD in China
about [inaudible] complete with evil stepmother and marriage.
But it also includes a magic fish and more.
As the tales traveled, they changed of course.
And the Cinderella story developed into two major variance.
One about the step mother's persecution of a young woman.
The other about a father who wants to marry his daughter.
The variant that world cultures emphasize is Cinderella.
The one that demonizes the stepmother.
And then there's Cinderalla's cousin.
The Cinderella who rarely appears in books of selected tales.
The Cinderella a lot of people have never known, Allerleirauh.
Donkey skin, cat skin,[inaudible] Julidah [phonetic],
All Kinds of Fur.
Here's their story as the Grimm's tell it.
A dying queen makes her husband promise
to marry only a woman as beautiful as she is.
Years later, the king declares his intent to marry his daughter.
The daughter demands three dresses and a mantel made of a piece of fur
from each animals in his kingdom.
Thinking her father will never find these items.
But he does.
She takes three of her treasured possessions.
Puts her three dresses in a nutshell.
Wraps herself in a mantel of rough furs and runs into the forest.
A king's hunter finds her, name her Allerleirauh and take her
to the cook in the castle, where she works dirty tasks for years.
When the king holds three balls,
she attends wearing gowns then disappears
and puts her fur mantel back on and returns to the kitchen.
After each ball, the cook tells her
to make the king's soup instead of sweeping the ashes.
She puts her treasures one at a time into the soup bowl.
Each time the king finds a gold object
in his soup he has her called before him and asks, "Who are you?"
The third time, the king sees on her finger the ring he slipped
on the beautiful woman's hand when they danced at the third ball.
He opens her fur mantel, sees her star dress,
declares her to be the beautiful woman at the ball and marries her.
Given the instance, you can perhaps understand
that this story has left out of many anthologies.
And a few scholars have written about it.
I've been drawn to this story though for a very long time.
As I researched it, I saw that most Grimm scholars focus on the incest
and on who the daughter eventually marries.
Was it her father?
Was it a second king?
Regardless of what the Grimm's intended,
their 1857 text allows this ambiguity to flourish.
And my students regularly disagree
on just whom All Kinds of Fur marries.
Myself I think she marries a second younger king.
But I delight in these ambiguities because they will allow us
as readers and listeners
to hear multiple possibilities undercurrents scholar [inaudible]
calls them.
These productive ambiguities engage us and allow us
to find our own story within a fairy tales text.
My focus here though today is not on whom she marries
but on the heroin herself.
On her journey through the gender sexually redolent landscape
of the tale's provocative middle section,
framed by heterosexual marriage proposals.
In Grimm's tale, along with the many versions known around the world,
spends most of its time detailing that minimal middle ground.
Here, the heroin dawns gender bending disguises
and escapes her father or brother.
Wanders to places of intrigue
and meets creatures both familiar and strange.
Some see in Allerleirauh the story as I do an undercurrent
that carries the experiences of incest survivors who move back
and forth among different perceptions of themselves
and their bodies, as journey toward a renewed life.
Another undercurrent of the tale explores the experiences of queer,
transgendered, transsexual and inter-sexed persons
who find themselves too between bodies.
And often hiding in their own bodies.
And yet another undercurrent speaks to all of us
who have ever felt encased in a strange skin.
Unable to live as the person we feel ourselves to be.
It is not the marriage at the end of All Kinds of Fur or Cinderella,
really, that draws people to the story.
I would say that it is this journeying middle ground.
Listen to these stories from across the world
and consider Allerleirauh's journeys.
Her hidden bodies in this middle section.
And to better discuss these versions,
I have divided the tale into sections.
First of all, first part of the story in these international tales,
a beautiful young woman's journey is set into motion by her father's
or brother's demand that she marry him.
Usually the man falls suddenly madly in love with her.
Often her mother dies early unexpectedly after asking
or requiring that the king marry no one else unless she can match the
dead queen's beautiful body in some way.
The candidate should fit into the same dresses or shoes or rings.
Or bare the same star on her forehead
or have the same gleaming gold or golden silver hair.
No one else can be found.
When the daughter tries her mother's clothing or a ring on by accident.
And her father sees her.
In Scotland, she shows her father how well her mother's dress fits.
Among Romanians, her brother sees her combing her hair.
And that's all it takes.
[Chuckles] Second, she stalls her pursuer
by countering his incestual demand with request of her own,
often for objects identified with the feminine gender or female body,
made of strikingly unusual materials.
And in so doing, she acquires the wondrous items she will need
for the challenges ahead.
In Scotland, her mother who has reincarnated as a little brown cat,
advises her to ask for gowns and shoes and chests.
Gowns of swans down, [inaudible] or bog cotton.
In Russia, she creates several dolls who help her.
They split the earth open for her and she escapes
into a marvelous underground kingdom.
Third, one item she gets before
or during this journey is an unattractive skin
or covering for her body.
In this disguise, this second skin,
she appears to others sometimes male, sometimes female.
Sometimes a spirit world being, a thing,
a living entity who's characteristics cannot be discerned.
Sometimes, as in Palestine, she wraps herself
in a tight fitting sack cloth and appears
to be a weird old man or a [inaudible].
Sometimes, as in Sudan, she removes the skin from an old man
and covers herself with it.
Or has a carpenter fashioned her a dress from the dawn palm.
In Japan, she receives a frogs skin.
In Slavic countries, a mouse skin dress.
In Norway, a wooden cloak.
Or a crow skin cloak.
In Russia, a hood made of pig's skin.
For Romanians, she turns herself into sea foam.
Fourth, given the multiple skins of her ambiguous body,
she sometimes disgusts but often intrigues those who see her.
Making use of her many layers of identity she answers their questions
with riddles about bodies.
They either bring her back to their castles right away
or open their kitchen doors to her knock.
In a bask story, a king fishing
in the mountains invites a furry woman riding
on a donkey to be his kitchen maid.
As soon as he hears her quick saucy answers to his questions,
"What kind of creature are you?"
he asks. Are you an animal or are you a person?
She says, "Human am I, a no animal.
That handsome youth believe.
Under this husk lies a kernel many young men would crave.
In Egypt, when a slave girl sees what she thinks is a heap of skins
with two bright eyes staring out, she says to her queen, "My lady,
there is something monstrous crouching under our window.
I have seen it.
And it looks like nothing less than any in a freak."
When the queen sees Julidah,
she comments on this astonishing creature and asks "What is it?
Who are you?"
The queen decides, "We shall keep her to amuse us."
Under the gaze of others, the girl becomes it.
Both monstrous and astonishing.
Her body, like a riddle, gets red over and over again.
Fifth, hidden behind her body disguise of rags, soot,
animal skins she works as a domestic servant, usually in the kitchen.
In India, her face hidden behind a mask.
Her gold hair tied tight.
She is an expert cook.
Especially of sweet rice.
Sometimes as in Egypt, she's recognized as a wounded creature
in placed especially under the care of the cook.
"Mistress Cook" the queen says.
"Take this broken winged soul into your kitchen."
In Sudan, the girl cares for pigeons.
Sometimes geese.
Six, after working for years,
she begins to remove her unattractive skin at times.
Dressing in beautiful cloths and jewelry made with unusual materials.
She goes to one or several balls, work, church services,
wedding celebrations, Horse races or feasts.
Then she puts her skin back on.
She often hides her beautiful cloths in places associated
with spirit world beings in the mounds of the hidden people,
the fairy people in Norway.
Or in an oak in Russia.
Seventh, during this time she interacts with a young man
of high degree, who falls madly in love with her.
He tries to discover her identity by asking if she bares any relationship
to the strange ugly servant in his household.
In an African's tale from South Africa, he searches for her
when the ring he gave her appears in his soup.
Finally, he follows the sound of a wondrous harp playing
to the dungeon, where he finds her dressed in cliff badger fur.
Often she and the young man compete with each other
through teasing riddles, contests and games.
Voyeurism, and male to female cross dressing happen here.
In Sudan, he suggested they play Mancala,
a game that resembles chess.
Often as in Italy, the young man watches the girl undress.
In Palestine, he dresses as a woman so he can go
with his mother to the women only dance.
And watch the beautiful unknown girl.
Very often, the young man hurls personal items of his at the girl.
His boots, his walking sticks, combs, handkerchiefs, towels.
He loses most of the competitions.
He cannot solve the riddle.
He loses the race.
He sees but he doesn't understand the creature he watches
through the peek hole love sick.
He often takes to his bed.
Eighth, during this time she continues to work often
in the kitchen while her co workers
and the cook play a very special role in her transformations.
Usually, they appreciate and protect her.
In Russia, one of her fellow servants hides her
by giving [inaudible] son a place name riddle instead
of the true place where she lives.
Finally, she puts aside or has torn
from her skin disguise for the last time.
And even though she stands in glory, radiant in a dress of sun
or diamonds, someone usually the young man, asks the question
that never disappears, "Who are you?
Finally, I found you.
The love of my heart" the prince says in Sweden
as he sees her in her diamond dress.
"But who are you really?"
The question invites her to tell her story.
And in a powerful act of ascertain and identity, she does so.
In Italy, she gives a long detailed report
on what she went through, incest and all.
In India, the young man's mother takes her to an inner chamber,
asks questions and listens to her strange story.
The 'who are you?'
question, however, suggests that even though she is
about to be married to a royal man, she trails suspicion.
This tale of the other Cinderella of Allerleirauh,
with all its versions, is one of immense scope.
The undercurrence of its major middle section enables the story
to speak to incest survivors, transgender persons,
and any of us who have ever imagined that we are living,
even hiding in a strange skin.
The story asks, "What is it like to be human?
To inhabit multiple skins."
To see more of the tales possibility, I want to invite you
to turn with me briefly to two other issues.
Two translations of the tale, and to interpretations
of several resonant objects in the tale.
This work of mine on Allerleirauh deepened with German lessons
that I started a number of years ago.
And as part of my lessons with my University colleague,
Dr. Irmgard Vogner [phonetic], I wanted to translate Allerleirauh.
I didn't know for sure what I would learn, but I sat out.
And one morning, working at my computer, I discovered something
that totally surprised me.
I'd always seen the word 'girl' used in English translations
to refer to All Kinds of Fur.
But there was the German word 'knit' child.
The German word for 'girl' madchen, was not in the text.
Now in Grimm's text, using child and not girl makes a big difference
because child shows Allerleirauh protecting herself.
She uses this verbal strategy to unsex herself.
To turn herself into a sexless genderless child.
This act of self-transformation through language takes on greater
and greater significance as the tale proceeds.
So, in my translation I use 'child' here and not 'girl'.
A second issue of translation choice influencing how we receive the tale
of All Kinds of Fur, surrounds the word [inaudible] Chut King's
[phonetic] daughter.
In the Grimm's early text, they use [inaudible]in this section
and princess everywhere else.
French loan word.
And then they shifted to [inaudible].
King's daughter.
Which to use?
King's daughter or princess?
When you translate what kind of choice to make,
most translations use princess.
What happens if you use king's daughter?
I thought this was very important
because using king's daughter intensify several different ideas
that are not available when you use princess.
It reminds us of the perpetrator of incest, for example.
Emphasizes the relationship to the father who committed the incest.
Makes the tale quite different.
A third translation issue has to do with pronoun choice.
And I'm just going to mention it here.
But if you'd like to read more, my essay was just published along
with other wonderful essays
in the book's transgressive tales, queering the Grimm's.
Simply put, some places in the text
where the Grimm's could have used either the feminine
or the nuder pronoun in German to refer to All Kinds of Fur.
They used the nuder S. They make this choice especially in sections
when All Kinds of Fur wears her rough fur mantle.
So I've put it in my translation, rather than the usual she
in those places to emphasize All Kinds of Fur's many transformations.
It, she, it, she.
In addition to this closer look at translation, I'd like to tell you
about several objects in this tale.
Objects we can easily overlook thinking, "Oh, it's just a kitchen.
Oh, it's just a spinning wheel."
But if we consider them to be resonant, symbolic objects.
New perspectives on detail open up to us.
The kitchen is not just domestic space, it's a space of magic,
transformation and power.
And so are the people who labor there.
In mythology, medieval romances and more kitchens are sites of tricks,
disguise, sanctuary, changing identity.
And transformation, not only in food but of people.
In kitchens, people who have been wronged can right themselves.
So in the [inaudible] saga,
[inaudible] sayings all this powerful cook [inaudible].
Overseas magical utensils and animals.
And in his pot he boils the boar sovereign here,
who has eaten every night by the warrior heroes of Bahala [phonetic]
and every day the boar comes to life again.
In the late 13th and 14th century, English romance.
[Inaudible], the orphan prince escapes from his enemies
and becomes helper to the cook of the url of corn wall.
Pavalok [phonetic] performs many lowly tasks.
Carries water strips of turf.
The cook is so pleased that he feeds Pavalok well
and gives him new cloths.
When Pavalok takes off his only piece of clothing,
a foul course cloak and puts on new; his beauty shines forth.
Pavalok wins as contest by moving a great stone, marries a princess,
and rules both England and Denmark.
And then there's [inaudible].
In print, throughout German speaking areas from the 16th century on,
a poor hungry young man fools those who abuse him.
Often [inaudible] presents himself to the gullible rich
as a cook or a cook's helper.
And the kitchen becomes a site for disguise and trickery,
as people of different genders
and classes struggle for power and respect.
Now the dangers in the kitchen,
especially a medieval kitchen, are clear.
And Wendy Wall, a scholar of early kitchen's cook books and medieval
and renaissance drama suggest that instead of thinking tame
when we see the word domestic, we should think
of the aggressive energies circulating in the kitchen.
The power of the cook in the kitchen,
these aggressive energies can easily be seen in recipes from England
and Germany in the 1500's.
And listen to a few, right?
Take a red cock, pluck him live.
Slit him down the back.
Take out his in entrails.
Cut him in quarters.
Bruise him in a mortar with his head, legs, heart, liver,
gizzards put him in an ordinary still with a puddle of sack.
And from a 1553 German cook book for roast chicken?
Afterwards when they are dead, take them and beat them like a partridge.
Eviscerate them.
Do not let them get wet with water or anything else and lard them well.
Stick him on a spit until the fat runs out.
Cooks and their helpers were experts on carnage, on killing.
This 1500's kitchen shows the racks and chains.
Implements that still whisper about the work and power
of the kitchen cook and helpers.
So, the kitchen and the cook are uncanny, strange, knowing.
The kitchen and Allerleirauh becomes a sight of ritually charged power
that emboldens All Kinds of Fur toward transformation.
And the cook, a wise man or woman skilled in ritual
as well as all things culinary.
If we can see new possibilities in the kitchen, we can do the same
for the tiny gold objects that All Kinds
of Fur puts in her kitchen soup.
Certainly as other scholars have written The Spinning Wheel
and reels show us that All Kinds of Fur is skilled
in certain domestic tasks.
But I have always thought that these objects suggest much much more.
And through my research I've learned how spinning wheels
and reels were very connected to farm villagers courtship
and sexuality in German, France, and elsewhere.
In evening gatherings known as [inaudible],
German women would spin and sow.
And later, young men would come for food and for games.
Especially kissing games.
And some of the games were games of magic, divination.
Designed to show which young man would marry which young woman.
When the evening came to a close,
as young man would walk home a girl he fancied
and he would carry her spinning wheel.
In fact, the [inaudible] became so popular
that many local officials became alarmed and tried to stop them.
"All kinds of immoralities and fornication!"
one official streaked.
The evenings, though, continued.
And when a couple married, the young woman often received a [inaudible] a
wedding spinning wheel.
When a young woman married, for example, her friends
or families would wind the finest flax
onto a spinning wheels dis staff.
Her [inaudible] and decorated her load dis staff
with ribbons of many colors.
What can we say now about the tiny gold spinning wheel
on the tiny gold reel that All Kinds of Fur puts
in the soup for the king to see?
Since the spinning wheel on the reel is so identified with sexuality,
her use of them shows her to be a young woman announcing herself
as ready for sexual encounter.
Worthy of marriage.
To bring together what I suggested so far about the tale.
The middle section of the tale with its powerful imagery
of domestic spaces and domestic objects emphasizes journey
and transformation.
And shows All Kinds of Fur to be an active heroin who takes a vital part
in her own transformation.
She devises the rough fur mantel.
She hides her female self behind the word child.
Emboldened by the life lessons of the kitchen and the cook,
All Kinds of Fur begins to change her outer skin back
and forth, back and forth.
Between rough fur mantel and fine gowns.
She hides herself.
She reveals herself.
She drops her gold rings, spinning wheel and reel into the soup
of the young king and announces her royalty,
her readiness for courtship, sex, marriage.
As it's fitting for a victim of incest and abuse,
it will take All Kinds of Fur time to become a queen and human again.
And it will take the king just as long to recognize
who she truly is and why he needs her.
These new understandings show Allerleirauh
to be a meditation on transformation.
This immense story also puts before us multiple ethical dilemmas.
What would we do if another behaved inappropriately toward us?
What would we need to do to survive to bring ourselves back to health?
The tale dramatizes the choice that characters make,
and asks us to debate their choices.
The story does not offer one moral or one short path.
It opens a door to debate discussion.
Imagination.
It is this open door of these international wonder tales that lead
so many people to write stories and poems or make films that re write,
revise, re interpret the tales.
And as I conclude this afternoon, I want to share
with with you my [inaudible] poem of Allerleirauh.
Another way at looking at this tale.
A word first about [inaudible] poetry.
It's a contemporary poetic practice
where poets suggest a foundation text.
Erase our strike out or ghost out selected words and create new poems.
Just by looking at the covers of a few books
of a [inaudible] you can see the practice.
Ronald Johnson's 2005 [inaudible] of Milton's paradise lost,
offers his interpretation of the poems and its major themes.
Janet Holmes, 2009.
The manuscript of my kin.
An [inaudible] of the poems Emily Dickinson wrote during the Civil War
years that focus our attention on war, past and present.
Travis Macdonald, in his 2008 omission [inaudible] volume 1
of [inaudible] of a omission era, attacks on the unit.
Takes the commission report on a 9 11 terrorist attacks
on the United States as its source text.
And among many other purposes, comments on the actions and language
of contemporary politicians.
With [inaudible] poets are constrained by their source text.
How poets work the dialogue between the source text and the new poems.
How, in other words, the source text haunts the new poem is one
of the compelling challenges of [inaudible].
Other challenges relate to the spacing of words and letters.
You'll see some examples in my poem.
My thanks to Kevin, who is helping me today.
Reading my translation of the Grimm's Allerleirauh.
He'll read a section of the story.
And then I'll read my [inaudible] poem of that same section.
We'll be presenting just the first third of the story and the poem.
Kevin Stoy [phonetic].
In writing my [inaudible], kins fur,
I've kept in mind the Grimm's Brothers edited Allerleirauh
and other stories.
That they often deleted, de emphasized womens' voices.
And so, as I write I ask "What would All Kinds of Fur say
if her words could rise?"
After our poetry reading, I look forward to talking with you.
[ Background Noise ]
>> Once there was a king who had a wife with golden hair.
And she was so beautiful that no one like her existed anywhere on earth.
It happened that she laid Ill.
And when she felt that would soon die, she called the king and spoke.
"After my death, if you intend to wed again,
take no one who is not just as beautiful as I am.
And who has not such golden hair as I have.
This you must promise me."
After the king promised her this.
She closed her eyes and died.
>> Margaret Yocom: Oh, golden hair.
My intent is a promise close here.
>> For a long time, the king could not be consoled.
And he would not let himself even think about taking a second wife.
Finally, his counselor spoke.
It cannot be otherwise.
The king must wed again so that we will have a queen.
Now, messengers were sent far and wide
to find a bride who's beauty would match
that of the dead queen completely.
But in the entire world, there was no such a one to be found.
And even if they had found one, there was certainly no one
who had such golden hair.
So the messengers returned home.
Their task unfulfilled.
>> Margaret Yocom: For a long time I could not, would not let,
even think about his tell.
But if they, oh golden hair, tell.
>> Now the king had a daughter.
She was just as beautiful as her dead mother.
And also had such golden hair.
Once when she had grown up, the king looked at her and saw that she
in every way was like his dead wife.
And suddenly, he felt an intense hot tempered love for her.
>> Margaret Yocom: Daughter, mother such golden hair.
She, her. She, wife me.
>> Then he spoke to his counselors.
I shall marry my daughter
because she is the very image of my dead wife.
And because I can find no other bride who is her equal.
When the counselors heard that,
they suddenly became frightened and spoke.
God has forbidden that a father should marry his daughter.
From sin, nothing good can come.
And the kingdom will be drawn with you into ruination.
>> Margaret Yocom: I, a daughter, a dead wife, and other bride.
Oh, come kingdom, be drawn into ruin.
>> The daughter was even more frightened
when she heard her father's decision.
But she hoped that she can yet then turn him away from his plan.
So she said to him "Before I grant your wish,
I must first have three dresses.
One as golden as the sun.
One as silver as the moon.
And one as brilliant as the stars."
Furthermore, I demand a mantel pieced together
from a thousand kinds of pelts and fur, and every animal
in your kingdom must give a piece of its skin for it."
>> Margaret Yocom: The night herders' mall opens.
First, get at mantel piece.
Pelt, gut, skin.
>> But she thought, getting such a mantel is quite impossible
and in this way, I will turn my father from his evil thoughts.
>> Margaret Yocom: Turned, turned, rut, turn, run.
>> The king did not give up his idea.
In the most skillful maidens in his kingdom had
to weave the three dresses.
One as golden as the sun.
One as silver as the moon.
And one as brilliant as the stars.
And his hunters had to catch all the animals in the whole kingdom,
and cut off a piece of each one's skin.
From that, a mantel of a thousand kinds of fur was made.
>> Margaret Yocom: His done dear nears.
Catch, cut, skin, hide.
>> Finally, when everything was finished,
the king had the mantel brought to him.
He spread it out in front of her and spoke,
"Tomorrow shall be the wedding."
Now, when the king's father saw that she could no longer hope to bring
about a change of heart in her father.
She made up her mind to flee.
[ Background Noise ]
>> Margaret Yocom: All is red.
All. Hind.
Hope. Hand.
Go. Go. Oh, go, go, go.
Moon and stars.
A shell, fur and soot, go.
Walk, nigh heckity [phonetic].
Call down a fell sleep and still.
So, begin.
It ring around.
Skin game.
Hide and seek.
[ Background Noise ]
Touch a forsaken other.
It. Me. You.
All kinds of See, the ashes are cast.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
Thank you so much for your kind attention.
Thanks again to Kevin Stoy.
It would be fun to talk with you about anything that you'd like to.
Yes?
>> Can you talk about the problems with translation?
And the best known version of Cinderella,
the old version we know of the glass slipper.
But that may be a mistranslation
because there are several words they have
in French [inaudible] as a flash.
There's also the VAIR, which is fur.
All Kinds of Fur.
>> Margaret Yocom: Yes, it's really interesting isn't it?
And the choices that we make as translators,
as you point out are key.
And in doing this translation, first, you know,
you have to learn about the tale.
And working with my German professor, you know,
just kept pulling layers and layers out of this story.
And when I realized the shift in pronouns, and I thought, well,
what other choices have translators made?
And that's been, you know, very exciting for me to learn about.
And it reminds us how important learning other languages are
for all of us as scholars.
To go back to, you know, those original language texts.
And if we can't do the translation work ourselves
to have someone work with us.
It's been a revelation for me as I've continued my work in German.
Yes?
>> I'm honestly curious about the role of the huntsman
that always seems to pop up in these.
The story of Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Hansel and Gretel.
What was your take on that?
And
>> Margaret Yocom: Yes.
Oh, the question of the role of the huntsman,
which is a really good question.
Because the forest, the hunt, the animal, the hunters all
of this is a place in so many of the folktales,
and such an important one.
The for me, the hunters are really vital here because they're the ones
who come in contact with, you know,
this creature in transformation with Allerleirauh.
And they're the ones, you know, who see her it, for the first time.
And have to decide what to do.
And I spend a lot of time translating them their words.
And thinking about what they were doing.
What choices were they making as they took her back?
Where were they putting her on the cart, you know?
Is she being laid gently or harshly?
All of their actions are really key.
They seem to take up a small room in the tale.
But they're vital.
They link the world of the king with this creature becoming.
And they are the ones who live in the forest best.
And they keep going back between forest
and castle, forest and castle.
They also name her in the story it's the hunters
who give her the name, Allerleirauh.
And so, one things well, are they well, it seems teasing.
It seems like a joke, you know, All Kinds of Fur.
But they are the ones who name her.
And they are the ones who place her with the cook in the kitchen.
Which is absolutely key.
So they're really they seem like a small role.
But they're vital.
They are the transition point.
They are the transition point.
Thanks for your question.
Hi.
>> Speak more about the name changing.
That seems to be a big theme through all of the different tales and all
of the different countries you mentioned.
Does that show that the heroin has power because she is closer
to nature or closer to the spiritual world?
>> Margaret Yocom: You're right.
I just think that's one of the key places in the tale.
And, oh, you know that's a big and wonderful question.
Remind of the first part of your question?
>> What does that signify?
Power or control?
>> Margaret Yocom: I think it's one
of those very very rich emblems that has multiple parts.
You know, what was she thinking when she was trying
to avoid marriage with her father?
That she asked for this cloak of many skins.
And she's asking for, you know, a piece of like fur to be jacked, cut,
bloodied taken out of every single animal.
Is she asking for the power of those animals to be placed next to her?
And so, she's putting that together and she moves out into the forest.
Does she know what's going to happen to her?
Absolutely not.
So this is certainly a way to protect herself.
But, what's marvelous about it is to see how she uses it
in different parts of the tale.
And it's all in our imagination of course.
When I ask students to draw pictures of some of the scenes
like Allerleirauh when she first goes into the tree and hides.
And she's got the fur on.
I love seeing whether people will draw her with a fur hood
over her golden hair or not.
How much of herself is she covering?
You know? That is completely open to our imaginations.
And you know, in my thinking of the story in the beginning
in the kitchen, she's really covering herself up.
But as the time goes on and her life experience happen,
she is able to take that skin off a little bit, and a little bit more,
and a little bit more, and a little bit more.
And so, it really is showing her becoming her own self
and transforming.
That skin is crucial.
It's a powerful metaphor in so many stories.
And I think that's one of the major things about Allerleirauh,
is teaching us about skin about the skins we live in
and the skins we see in other places.
Thank you for your question.
>> I'm struck by I don't know this story very well, but I'm struck
by some really odd where the mother makes husband make this promise,
and yet in the story she appears as a helper,
you know [inaudible] pact to help her daughter.
Am I getting it right?
And another place where she comes back to the kitchen and
yet she kept revealing herself by putting things in the soup.
Why would you do that?
Why would you reveal yourself?
You know, I don't
[ inaudible] so complicated.
>> Margaret Yocom: Yes, It's wonderful.
So, yes you're asking me about about the mother.
And let me head into it this way.
First of all let's see.
How do I do this?
I'm thinking here or the difference and similarities between Cinderella
and Allerleirauh, of course.
And one of the most important things is that in Cinderella,
in the German version, she does go to the grave
of her mother and asks her help.
You know? And so, you can sort of feel that in Allerleirauh.
You know, the other than story.
But in Allerleirauh I'm trying
to refocus my attention on your question.
No, tell me the second half again.
>> That she's trying to hide and save herself and
yet she keeps revealing herself.
>> Margaret Yocom: Right.
I think that's really key to transformation.
That, you know, how do you come out of incest?
Or how do you come out of a former life into a new life?
And this story of Allerleirauh shows us that that slow
and amazing process of moving out and moving back
and moving out and moving back.
Now, these objects that she has,
and she puts in the king's soup time after time after time.
In many ways she's saying to him, "Come on here.
You know, focus.
Understand who I am."
In some versions, not the Grimm's version, but in some versions
of the story, the young king
and Allerleirauh were engaged to be married.
And those gifts those objects had been gifts he gave to her.
Now it's not in the final version of the Grimm's tale.
So I mean, you can look at that and think okay.
But even without that, you know, this is a lovely process
of her saying, this is me.
Can you see it?
You know, can we have this marriage and understanding?
And in some ways, it's her testing of him each time.
Here is this gold ring.
How could this get into your soup unless I put it there.
Can you see through my ugly coat of fur to who I am?
Can you see me?
And in some ways we ask that of all our lovers, right?
Can you see me?
Are you seeing me?
And I think that's a you know, your question nicely turns us
to I think one of the vital places of this story.
Yes.
>> Can you give us more details
about the 9th century Chinese version that you mentioned?
>> Margaret Yocom: It is available online for you to read.
It's you type in YEH SIEN.
And you can read the whole thing.
Especially there's a wonderful website by a German scholar,
who's also friendly to folklore.
His name is DL ash lemmon [phonetic].
And he has a marvelous website of electronic texts that you can trust.
And you'll find that version and many other variance
of Cinderella and also of ADU 510A.
And also of All Kinds of Fur which is ADU510B, in the wonderful indexes
that is we as folklores use to learn about these tales and be
in conversation with people all over the world.
Yes.
>> Did you find the tale more interesting?
If there's a link to Christian [inaudible]or the westerners don't
have a link with the Christian [inaudible]?
>> Margaret Yocom: Me personally?
Do I find the tales more interesting if they have a link to
>> Because you have the transformation
as to the Last Supper, the last [inaudible].
>> Margaret Yocom: Yes.
Well, you know, I understand what you're asking me.
I link the tales and mythological tales together and see what we
as folklores call motifs throughout all of them.
So, yes. You know, one of the powerful things about our discipline
of folklore is the way it is truly international and truly local.
And the tales are one of our best examples of this.
So that we learn and tell our stories well at our home,
in our home countries, in our hometown.
But we know is we're talking,
that we have these variance all through the world.
And the power of that vision is what draws so many
of us to folklore studies.
>> I'm sorry, we don't have time for more
about from Professor Yocom will stay and take several more questions but,
I want to thank you all for coming and especially
for [inaudible] Yocom for coming.
Let's give her a fair round of applause?
[Applause]
>> This has been a presentation of The Library of Congress.
Visit us at LOC.gov.