Folktales
The forest as a place of magic and danger is found among folklore wherever the natural state of wild land is forest: a forest is a location beyond which people normally travel, where strange things might occur, and strange people might live, the home of monsters and witches. Peasants who seldom if ever traveled far from their villages could not conclusively say that it was impossible that an ogre could live an hour away. Hence, in fairy tales, Hansel and Gretel found a cannibalistic witch in the forest; Vasilissa the Beautiful, Baba Yaga herself; Molly Whuppie and her sisters, a giant. It was in a forest that the king of The Grateful Prince lost his way, and rashly promised his child for aid, where the heroines, and their wicked stepsisters, of The Three Little Men in the Wood and The Enchanted Wreath met magical tests, and where Brother and Sister found the streams that their evil stepmother had enchanted. In Beauty and the Beast, Belle's father is lost in the forest when he finds the Beast's castle. The evil cat-spirits of Schippeitaro live in the forest.
Indeed, in Grimm's Fairy Tales, the hero always goes into the forest. It is not itself enchanted, but it contains enchantments and, being outside normal human experience, acts as a place of transformation. The German fairy tale has an unusual tendency to take place in the forest; even such neighboring countries as France or Italy are less like to have fairy tales situated in the forest.
Even in folklore, forests can also be places of magical refuge. Snow White found refuge with dwarfs from her stepmother, The Girl Without Hands found a hut to stay in when she had been slandered to her husband, and Genevieve of Brabant found not only a refuge from slander but a doe magically came to her aid. Even Brother and Sister hid in the forest after their stepmother turned the brother into a deer.
At other times, the marvels they meet are beneficial. In the forest, the hero of a fairy tale can meet and have mercy on talking animals that aid him. The king in many variants of the ballad The Famous Flower of Serving-Men finds an enchanted hind that leads him astray uncanny, but it brings him to a talking bird that reveals to him a murder and that a servant of his is actually a woman, whom the king then marries. It is in the forest that the dwarf of Rumpelstiltskin and the fairy of Whuppity Stoorie reveal their true names and therefore the heroines of those tales have a way to free themselves. In Schippeitaro, the cats reveal their fear of the dog Schippeitaro when the hero of the tale sleeps the night in the forest.
The creatures of the forest need not be magical to have much the same effect; Robin Hood, living in the greenwood, has affinities to the enchanted forest. Even in fairy tales, robbers may serve the roles of magical beings; in an Italian variant of Snow White, Bella Venezia, the heroine takes refuge not with dwarfs but with robbers.
Read more about this topic: Enchanted Forest
Famous quotes containing the word folktales:
“Most of the folktales dealing with the Indians are lurid and romantic. The story of the Indian lovers who were refused permission to wed and committed suicide is common to many places. Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)