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Author
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Comment
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jcklaus
Registered User
(1/19/06 12:51 pm)
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Fairy Tales with a bargain someone has to get out of
Thank you to everyone who responded to my previous Rumplestiltskin post. I realized I misworded exactly what I was looking for.
I'm trying to track down fairy tales that deal with a bargain being struck (Rumplestiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, Pied Piper), that the "hero" character needs to try to get out of after he/she has made it. I would be so grateful for any help on this.
Thank you
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Kinarey
Unregistered User
(1/19/06 1:30 pm)
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hmmm
How about Aladdin? He bargain with a sorcerer in the original tale, i believe
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Richard Parks
Registered User
(1/19/06 1:43 pm)
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Re: Fairy Tales with a bargain someone has to get out of
Though it's more in the legend/fiction category than fairy tale, how about Gawain and the Green Knight? By his own agreement, Gawain has to answer the knight's question by the end of the year or get his head cut off.
http://dm.net/~richard-parks |
Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(1/20/06 12:20 am)
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bargains
Hmm. It depends on whom the bargain is with. In "The Three Spinners" and "Tom Tit Tot" the main character has to get out of a bargain she or her parent made to spin a lot of flax. There wasn't really a bargain in Sleeping Beauty--nobody agreed to anything, there was just a curse. In "The Frog King" the princess has to get out of a bargain so as to avoid sharing her bed with a creature she finds repulsive and is successful. In Ricky of the Tuft, a princess wants to get out of a bargain she made to marry a very ugly man, and she sort of does.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(1/20/06 6:10 am)
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Re: bargains
I'd've thought bargains were a staple of fairy tales, and pretty much any other sort of tales. From Faust to "do this that and the other and you will win my daughter and half my kingdom" sort of thing. (How many are there of those?! The Story of the Boy Who Set Out to Learn Fear is a good one.) Or "the son who does x will inherit the kingdom" (Firebird etc.)... Or "I will help you so long as you follow these instructions exactly" (The Princess in the Chest etc.) There are quite a few bargain with the devil stories if you look on the Ashliman site. And there are the stories where someone's enslaved to the devil or a monster and they have to answer riddles or perform some task to get free. (Three Hairs of the Devil etc.)
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princessterribel
Registered User
(1/20/06 11:27 am)
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Middle English
Have you thought about looking at some middle english poems? Often they contain much about the realm of faerie and what is called the 'rash promise' in which the hero/heroine makes a promise. A particularly good example is Chaucer's 'The Franklin's Tale'. Or the rash promise of the Faery King in 'Sir Orfeo'. They make for very interesting reading too.
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jcklaus
Registered User
(1/20/06 3:13 pm)
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bargain
Thank you for all these suggestions. The bargain I'm trying to hone in on is one where someone bargains away their child (or something that precious to them) then has to find a way to get out of it later.
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