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Author
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Comment
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NathanielLachenmeyer
Registered User
(10/11/05 1:18 pm)
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Folk tales about mental illness or homelessness
Hi, this is my first post. I wondered if anyone could recommend any traditional folk tales that address mental illness or homelessness, whether explicitly or implicitly. I am especially interested in folk tales that invite empathy for the afflicted individual or show them in a positive light. I have just started an ad-free discussion board on mental health and homeless issues, and would like to reference relevant folk tales to a section of the site.
Thank you in advance.
Nathaniel
www.NathanielLachenmeyer.com
www.nathaniellachenmeyer..../index.php
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Ruby Weapon
Unregistered User
(10/11/05 3:23 pm)
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Little Match Girl
The first one to come to mind was the Little Match Girl. surlalunefairytales.com/a...hgirl.html
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(10/11/05 3:27 pm)
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Re: Folk tales about mental illness or homelessness
Both are more modern terms, and although they existed in the past, they weren't understood the same way.
In many of the traditional stories "homeless" characters tend to be travellers and/or beggars. The travelling minstrel might fall into that category. One could also sell themselves into service, so a homeless person would blend in with the other poor. It's more common to find stories of the poor.
I don't know if there is much about mental illness since it really wasn't understood until relatively recently (20th C). Some would be considered simpletons or fools, while others would be villians. It would depend upon the illness. Depression might have simply been viewed as laziness. Of course depression for many would be the norm. And abuse was common.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(10/11/05 3:45 pm)
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Re: Folk tales about mental illness or homelessness
Irish folklore often features the character of the tramp as a quasi-supernatural figure; to be cursed by a tramp is a portent of bad luck to come. Yeats's collects "Twisting of the Rope" as one example, but it's a thread that runs through a lot of the folklore. Can't think of any other examples off the top of my head, though. In fairy tales, young men and women often encounter old, poverty-stricken men or women who need help; it's never explicitly stated that these people are "homeless," but they're usually just sitting on a tree stump in the woods or similar, and turn out to be fairies or witches in disguise. Diamonds and Toads is one of these, I believe. In "The House of Cats," a young girl is driven from her home and has to find a new home among the cats. Young women are driven from their homes in lots of stories, come to think of it.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(10/11/05 4:25 pm)
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Re: Folk tales about mental illness or homelessness
I guess it's got to be true that folk stories weren't written with these issues in mind.
Nevertheless, I'd've thought the states of being (a) itinerant and (b) - I don't know, let's say "on the path of the emotional and/or irrational" - were absolutely the essence of a vast majority of European tales - epitomised by "East o'the Sun..." type stories which are the ones a lot of people seem to cite in this regard, but it goes for loads of others.
The mysterious roadside characters in folk tales surely aren't the ones who represent the dislocated here, it's the ones who are going past them on that journey from wordless catastrophe to the sought-for peace.
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NathanielLachenmeyer
Registered User
(10/11/05 5:36 pm)
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Re: Folk tales about mental illness or homelessness
Wow! Thank you so much for your insights. This is a very insightful, knowledgable group! I had thought of the village idiot/fool as at least a possible parallel. Can anyone recommend any I might want to look at?
Nathaniel
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kristiw
Unregistered User
(10/11/05 10:01 pm)
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changelings
On the subject of mental illness, changeling folktales are also sometimes thought to be rationalizations of children with birth defects or illnesses, or women with post-partum depression. If so, a rather sad picture of what kind of reception those individuals would meet with. I think Terri Windling has an essay on changelings in Endicott Studio Gallery. . .
www.endicott-studio.com/j...lings.html
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(10/12/05 6:34 am)
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Re: changelings
"The first one to come to mind was the Little Match Girl. "
I thought of that one at first but if you read the story carefully you'll see that she came from an abusive poverty stricken home, so she at least had a home. It's a story of poverty, not homelessness.
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Don
Registered User
(10/12/05 1:02 pm)
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Re: changelings
Grimms' tale of "Freddy and Katy" has been interpreted as the tale of a woman's psychological disintegration. You might also look at Stephanie Golden's chapter on "Mythmaking" in The Women Outside: Meanings and Myths of Homelessness (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1992), pp. 73-94. There you'll find an interpretation of Grimms' "The Goose Girl at the Spring," which illustrates for Golden the way society projects its own fears on marginal women and endows them with a mythological function.
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janeyolen
Registered User
(10/13/05 5:01 am)
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Re: changelings
The Woodwose were wild folks of the woods, normally driven out of their homes by bankruptcy, fire, plague--and they joined communities of homeless in the deep woods. Became "wild" and stories grew up about them. (See my book MERLIN.)
Hansel and Gretl probably would work.
Then there are gypsy stories and stories of travelers.
And of course Robin Hood and his Merry Men.
Jane
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NathanielLachenmeyer
Registered User
(10/13/05 6:39 am)
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Re: changelings
Interesting about the changelings and woodwose. On the subject of mental illness, I know there are those who have argued that the tradition of the werewolf is derived from the delusions of the mentally ill.
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NathanielLachenmeyer
Registered User
(10/13/05 6:47 am)
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Re: homeless wanderer
Just came across the following in Aesop's Fables. The homeless wanderer has a long history, indeed.
THE JACKDAW AND THE PIGEONS
A Jackdaw, watching some Pigeons in a farmyard, was filled with envy when he saw how well they were fed, and determined to disguise himself as one of them, in order to secure a share of the good things they enjoyed. So he painted himself white from head to foot and joined the flock; and, so long as he was silent, they never suspected that he was not a pigeon like themselves. But one day he was unwise enough to start chattering, when they at once saw through his disguise and pecked him so unmercifully that he was glad to escape and join his own kind again. But the other jackdaws did not recognise him in his white dress, and would not let him feed with them, but drove him away: and so he became a homeless wanderer for his pains.
Nathaniel
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(10/13/05 12:45 pm)
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Re: homeless wanderer
That reminds me of the story of the dog and the wolf. The wolf comes prowling around man's home, sees the dog curled up by the door, and engages him in conversation, bemoaning the slim pickings he's had lately. "If you stay with man," dog says, "you will be fed every day, and never go hungry." "But you are out here, away from the shelter of the woods." "I am let in during the cold and wet," dog says, "and curl up by a dry warm fire." "You do not have a pack to howl and romp with," wolf says. "I have children who play with me, woman who pets me, and man who considers me his best friend." Wolf nods at dog's good forturne, but then sees the chain around dog's neck. "It is a good life," wolf says, "but not one for me." And that is why wolves remain forever wild.
I've always liked the story of the homeless beast who treasures his freedom above his comfort.
Best,
Alice
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Northerner4me
Registered User
(10/13/05 2:34 pm)
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Re: Folk tales about mental illness or homelessness
I'm not sure that travellers are necessarily homeless. It depends on the type of traveller. Some are nomadic rather than homeless, at least in the UK. I have a friend of traveller stock, though he is now settled. He is an outstanding storyteller and ballad singer.
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redtriskell
Registered User
(10/20/05 11:07 pm)
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Re: Folk tales about mental illness or homelessness
Well, I realize you asked for folktales, but I couldn't let you go without suggesting Charles De Lint's astounding story collections about his magical city of Newford. Since I'm not clear why you want them, I'll confine myself to saying Charles De Lint's work is entirely about the dispossessed. Many of his Newford tales deal very explicitly and directly with homeless people, the mentally ill, the disenfranchised, and the abused. If you are looking for stories to portray some of society's fringe folk in a kinder light, you cannot do better than Charles. His Newford collections are (in order of publication):
"Dreams Underfoot", "The Ivory and the Horn", "Moonlight and Vines", and "Tapping the Dream Tree". Good reading.
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neverossa
Registered User
(10/21/05 5:26 am)
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historical background
Hi, I would suggest that before looking for "folk tales", that is traditional tales, mirroring somehow the context in which they are born and firstly told, you check out some historical sources about madness. You can't really talk of madness in folk tales (and so in the past, at least in the early modern age) in terms of empathy... and what is more dangerous you can't attribute our own feelings and understanding about that to the people of the past.
The changeling example is a good one for the reception of difference, and also for a post-partuum behaviour that maybe we would imply to depression, but that in the past had all this kind of supernatural explanations.
About the werewolf or the witch: the sceptical thinkers of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries (Weyer in Germany, Scot in England to
mention the most famous)attributed such beliefs to the delusion
of the Devil that found a fertile place in the melancholic minds)
of the alleged witch or werewolf. More than mental illness they
stressed the attention on Melancholy.
Regarding the Irish tradition of the "wise fool" - well that deserves a special insight. The fool is an example for the link between madness, death and wisdom, something that you find in Yeats' poems - Yeats worked a lot on folkloric material. The fool was also often linked to fairies, he was the amadan, a supernatural being himself.
The typical travellers, or unlucky girls, such as the girl without hands in Grimm, or Brother and Sister, the seven ravens, and so on, of early modern fairy tales hardly belong to the category of homeless people (again as we, now, perceive it): but I think you can work on it, relating to the ritual meaning or the social context and the abandon of children.
Just try to define for yourself what a folk tale is; Andersen's example of Little match girl can be useful, but it is not working at all as a folk tale: it is the product of the wonderful author' sensibility and imagination, and of the modern age (we are in the nineteenth century!) in which it is settled.
The first book on Madness in history that I have in mind is Foucault's one: MADNESS AND CIVILIZATION but it can be a hard reading if you are not interested in the historical, philosophical subject, I'm afraid...
Sorry for the lenght of the message: just be aware of the historical problems!
Edited by: neverossa at: 10/25/05 4:54 pm
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(10/21/05 8:32 am)
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Re: historical background
Perhaps, but in my experience Foucault is the last person to have any real sense of historical context, as he tends to make sweeping statements that ride roughshod over history in order to support his assertions.
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neverossa
Registered User
(10/21/05 2:33 pm)
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Foucault
Foucault was a philospher more than a historian, he was "using" history for his purposes. But he did it in a wonderful way... That was the first title I had in my mind, just to have an idea of the past and also of how it can be interpreted or rearranged. I found Foucault fascinating, although one has not to follow him blindly... According to my experience there are a lot of books that I love and in which I found a lot of suggestions, even if I don't always agree completely with the author. Anyway, just to remain strictly in history, there's Roy Porter's book on Madness. Of course it can be contested and criticized as well. No author is free from other people's doubts or critics, I guess...
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Littlegoosegirl
Unregistered User
(10/24/05 6:49 pm)
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homelessness and mental illness
The first story I thought of was grimm's bearskin
another I thought of was Princess Furball (or fuzzball), which is a Russian folktale.
There may be quite a few Russian folktales involving the mentally ill or the homeless. An important figure through much of Russian history (pre-soviet)are the wandering prophets they called "Fools in Christ" (I think the Russian word for it is Iurodivye, but look it up first, I may be remembering it wrong), but they were usually homeless and mentally ill or handicapped and were given a somewhat special place in society, much like the old belief that the blind were closer to the spiritual world since they could not see this world. Rasputin is the most famous of these "Fools in Christ"
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NathanielLachenmeyer
Registered User
(10/25/05 1:44 pm)
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Re: homelessness and mental illness
Hadn't checked in in a while. Thank you for the additional folktale suggestions. I second the previous poster; I wouldn't recommend Foucault's Madness and Civilization to someone whose primary interest is learning about the history of mental illness.
Nathaniel
www.NathanielLachenmeyer.com
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neverossa
Registered User
(10/25/05 6:07 pm)
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Re: homelessness and mental illness
A quite comprehensive discussion of madness, medicine and history can be find in ROY PORTER' S books.
I think that also this book could be of some interest:
M. MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England; it is based on the experience of the physician Richard Napier, who practiced a kind of psychological medicine based on the horoscope and the influence of the stars on the bodily fluids, but who also tried a spiritual healing of his patients, leading them to talk of their lives and reflect on them.
Regarding Foucault: I didn't write that one has to agree with him; just that he is an author that is quite hard to avoid looking for something in history of madness... He does argue how madness was perceived, and some points are good for reflection, such has the relation between mental illness and the body and consequently the mind; and also the strong affinity that the estranged body of the madman could have with death itself. Something to reflect on is not necessarily something with which agreeing...
There's no empathy in traditional fairy tales, but if madness was understood (and in some sense it is still now) as a boundary, well you have a lot of forbidden boundaries in them.
The stereotype of mental illness is that of difference: a difference that is primary,although unconsciously, understood as a physical one - I've been working six years with an autistic girl. Lots of people at a first sight told me: "She doesn't look "mad" (or afflicted by handicap), she looks "normal"". It is not nice, but it is true. So I will suggest to look for extraordinary bodies in fairy tales and fairy "people"... In her book on fairies DIANE PURKISS tracks a disquieting parallel between the mythical fairies and the real freaks, exhibited as beasts during the eighteenth century. I think it is not a bad idea considering the topic of the bodily difference for madness as well.
Andersen of course deals a lot with difference and with the interior nature of creatures who is often (if not always) hidden to the eyes of common people by an exterior appearance. See The Ugly Duckling, The Little Mermaid, The Toad.
---- Just to satisfy my curiosity why not Foucault?
Edited by: neverossa at: 10/26/05 10:47 am
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