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Author
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Comment
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Terri
Registered User
(8/5/03 1:31 am)
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Red Riding Hood
Does anyone have information on the roads of "needles and pins" that appear in old French versions of Little Red Riding Hood (aka The Grandmother's Tale)?
In Paul Delarue's recounting of these versions, the girl meets the wolf (or, in this case, "bzou") in the woods, who asks her: "What road are you taking, the Needles Road or the Pins Road?"
"The Needles Road," said the little girl.
"Well I shall take the Pins Road."
The little girl enjoyed herself picking up needles. Meanwhile the bzou arrived at her Grandmother's....
In Delarue's notes, he says merely: "There are some variations in the names of the roads.... These absurd roads, which have surprised adults and provoked scholars, delight children, who find their existence in fairyland quite natural."
The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales says merely: "The wolf asks her if she is taking the path of pins or needles. She indicates that she is on her way to becoming a seamstress by taking the path of needles."
Catherine Orenstein (Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked) says: "She must chose a path of pins or needles -- the tools and symbols that appear in female initiation rites around the world, and particularly in France, where sending a young girl to apprentice with the seamstress for a year or so was, according to one scholar, a bit like sending her to finishing school, and carried a sense of sexual maturation."
Does anyone have further information on this, or know where I can find it? I've looked in Alan Dundes' Little Red Riding Hood Casebook, in Zipes' Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood, and in Marina Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde. I've been unable to look through back issues of Marvels and Tales because I'm in rural England now (many miles from a decent library) and my copies are all back in my U.S. house. I vaguely recall a good article on Red Riding Hood by Marcia Douglas (I *think* I'm remembering the author's name right) -- but that too, naturally, is back at the other house.
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gormghlaith
Registered User
(8/5/03 7:11 am)
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Re: Red Riding Hood
I was wondering this just last week! I have to get ready for work, but here's two sites i looked at: a past discussion here
www.surlalunefairytales.c...story.html
and
www.davidson.edu/personal...titute.asp
which i'm not sure i agreed with, but at the very least the works sited at the end may lead to more answers for you.
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Don
Registered User
(8/5/03 7:37 am)
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Re: Red Riding Hood
Yvonne Verdier discusses the paths of pins and needles at length in her article "Le petit chaperon rouge dans la tradition orale," which was translated and published in Marvels & Tales, vol. 11 (1997): 101-23. If M&T isn't accessible to you right now, perhaps the original source will be: the essay's in Verdier's Coutume et destin (Paris: Gallimard, 1995).
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Terri
Registered User
(8/5/03 11:55 am)
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Needles and Pins
Don, thank you! This article has precisely the information I need.
I tried to order a copy of Volume 11 from the Marvel and Tales office today, by the way, only to discover that it's now out of print. But in a stroke of luck, it turned out to be the single issue of Marvels and Tales in a neighboring artist's folklore library. Sometimes small Dartmoor villages have better resources than one expects.
Gorghlaith, thank you also for the links.
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RymRytr1
Registered User
(8/5/03 11:29 am)
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Re: Red Riding Hood
I'm wondering then, if the road of Pins, had to do with becoming a seamstress and the Needles had to do
with Knitting?
I realize that here in america, we think of a needle as that
with which you sew, but then we think a Biscuit is a round,
hot mass of dough on which one spreads butter and jam,
not a Cookie and a Scone...
Edited by: RymRytr1 at: 8/5/03 11:31 am
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gormghlaith
Registered User
(8/5/03 1:29 pm)
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Re: Red Riding Hood
i wonder if etymology of the phrase "pins and needles", the sensation you get when your foot or arm has fallen asleep and you start to move it again, has any loose connection? when i first heard the version with the paths, i pictured little red riding hood barefoot, with the choice of a path of little sharp stones that felt like pins, and a path fallen all over with pine needles.
Edited by: gormghlaith at: 8/5/03 1:36 pm
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Kerrie
Moderator
(8/5/03 7:21 pm)
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Clothing?
It makes me wonder if perhaps it has to do with her clothing. Pins for pinning up a dress that is too big, as for a child with a hand-me-down, and needles for resewing a dress that has become too small, as for a young woman who is getting bigger, possibly from a pregnancy. In other words, regressing, staying a child, or growing up, becoming a woman. Moving backwards or moving forwards. Just a few random thoughts.
Dandelion wishes,
Kerrie
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Terri
Registered User
(8/6/03 1:52 am)
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pins and needles
In the essay Don mentions above, Verdier (who did extensive fieldwork in rural France) discusses the symbolism of pins and needles at length, relating the path of pins to puperty and the path of needles to menopause. I won't try to paraphrase her argument here -- it's best read at length in her essay. It's rather more convincing than the odd (but entertaining) witchcraft theory posited on the web site Gormghlaith posted above.
I recall reading another essay about this -- I still can't remember where -- discussing at greater length than Verdier does the role of the village seamstress in French rural life of past centuries. As Verdier also mentions, young girls at the age of 15 or so were often sent to live with the seamstress for a period of time -- not only to gain practical skills, but also as a kind of "finishing school" and rite of passage between childhood and adulthood. In the essay I can't find, the author discusses rural communities (I can't recall specifically where in France) in which the village seamstress was generally a widow or spinster and viewed as someone with sexual knowledge -- sometimes even a prostitute or woman with loser morals than others -- exploring the notion that part of the knowledge the girls received during their stay with the seamstress was knowledge about sex, women's biology, birth control, etc. Though the witchcraft article Gormghlaith links to also briefly touches upon prostitution, this articled seemed a more credible one to me...or at least that's how I remember it. If I can track it down, I'll post the name of the article and the author here.
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selkie
no
Registered User
(8/28/03 3:33 am)
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Re: pins and needles
Hi Terri!
Shame I didn`t se this post earlier (I`m not in at this board too often), I could have saved you the trip to the library, because Yvonne Verdiers article is also aveilable on this page
expositions.bnf.fr/contes...erdier.htm
Some of Paul Delarues writings on this tale is also avilable here
expositions.bnf.fr/contes...elarue.htm
Yvonne Verdiers article is one of my definite favorites, but when I tell this story myself I do not rely on her interpretation when it comes to the roads of pins and needles. As you probably have noticed Yvonne Verdier and Paul Delarue differs in opinion on which road the girl actually chose. Yvonne Verdier says the road of pins, for puberthy, but in the version collected by Achille Millien and used by Paul Delarue she takes the road of needles. There is of course not a wrong or right way to tell this story, it has, like any healthy tale, been told and interpreted in different ways. In some tales the roads also has different names, like the road of thorns and little stones.
I prefer her taking the road of needles, and I`m thinking of this as her choosing to grow up. In the terminology of sewing to pin something is quick and short lasting, when you sew, using a needle, you take your time and creates something that is supposed to last, in a way you take responsibility. This also corresponds with the road of needles being short and quick - like pinning something. If the girl had chosen this path she would have reached her grandmothers house before the wolf and nothing would have happened.
Choosing the road of needles is a signal that she is ready to face danger, but also to take responsibility. It`s not the shortest way, but if you want to amount to something you must forget about the short cuts.
Selkie
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Jess
Unregistered User
(8/28/03 6:34 pm)
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Not sure if it is relevant
I too missed this post when it was originally put up. I am not sure whether this is relevant, but my mother has this tradition (which I am SURE didn't originate with her) that if two people go different directions around a post, they say "pins and needles" and then rejoin with their pinkies. This would be very similar to the wolf and LRR both heading to grandmother's on different paths only to be rejoined.
Jess
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Jess
Unregistered User
(8/29/03 8:25 am)
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I always thought the meaning was
that while pins hold material together on the "straight" path, the needles must go in and out of the material in a less direct manner. Still, they always meet at the material. Silly me - who'd a thought it was all so complicated?
Jess
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Terri
Registered User
(8/29/03 10:18 am)
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Re: I always thought the meaning was
Selkie, Jess: thanks for the info -- much appreciated!
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janeyolen
Registered User
(8/29/03 12:19 pm)
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Re: I always thought the meaning was
Jess--in NYC (and in Minneapolis, as my granddaughter just told me)--we said "Bread and butter," then did the pinkie thing.
Jane
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Jess
Unregistered User
(8/29/03 9:05 pm)
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Bread and Butter
I've heard that one, too, but my mom was strictly a "pins and
needles" lady.
Jess
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JoanneMerriam
Registered User
(8/29/03 11:47 pm)
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Growing up...
So if the road of pins is shorter and the road of needles is longer but means she's growing up, and the wolf wouldn't have gotten there ahead of her if she'd taken the road of pins (stayed a child)... then the wolf is really the danger of sexuality, of becoming a woman?
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selkie
no
Registered User
(8/31/03 5:44 pm)
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Re: Growing up...
Yes, I would say so. Remember that "bzou" means werewolf. I find the stories that indicates this kind of interpretation a lot more interesting than the bloodless (no matter which way you look at it) versions that you are bound to encounter if you chose the road of the Grimms...
(Although Charles Perrault probably was the first to name the wolf as merely a wolf, he clearly indicates that he is not - that`s more or less the point in his story. One must still call his version a step in the wrong direction stating that the girl is not capable of initiating herself, but at least he don`t transform her into an asexual child. And there is also the question wether people who preform their morals on rhymes should be taken literally...)
Selkie
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