Folk Tales

I love the book The Uses of Enchantment, by Bruno Bettleheim. He says it is important for the rage and violence in folk tales not to be edited out or softened, so children have a place to project and process their anger. I couldn't agree more! Robert Bly's works, Iron John, The Sibling Society, and The Divine Child (a collaborative lecture with Marion Woodman) are my favorite discussions of the nourishment that can be harvested through reading and re-reading folk tales. I revisit them because the facets of the story change as I change.

Dorrie and the Blue Witch, a childrens book by Patricia Coombs, is the story of a family of witches; mother, daughter Dorrie, and a cat named Gink. Dorrie is left at home alone after her mother, rushing off to a witch meeting, warns Dorrie to guard against a big bad blue witch who is on the loose. When there's a knock at the door, Dorrie accidentally lets the big blue witch inside and invites her to join Dorrie and Gink for milk and cookies. Dorrie raids her mother's magic cupboard and puts shrinking powder in the blue witch's milk. The witch, intending to leave and take Dorrie with her, starts commanding Dorrie to hurry up and get her things. While Dorrie searches her sloppy bedroom for matching stockings and cloak, the blue witch is yelling yet rapidly shrinking, angrily jumping up and down at the bottom of the stairs. This was terrifying to me! Dorrie comes down and puts the now weensy shrunken bad blue witch into a jar the size of a light bulb, seals it, places it inside the piano, and piles it with books! Then she runs and hides under her mother's bed until her mother comes home. The black-and-white illustration of the shrunken witch being placed in the jar was so powerful to me I couldn't touch the page!! I still can't! Ironically, because my husband is piano player and tuner, my home is full of pianos, covered with books. This story was the folk tale of my childhood, of the ways in which I was powerless but also powerful.