The tale of Thumbling: Making your way through a world that doesn't fit
This is my own retelling of the story, based on Google's Auto-Translate from the German, here: Daumesdick (warning: if you hover your mouse too long over a passage, a bubble pops up with the original...
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The Lame Smith God, and the Two Sides of "Myth"
Blogging Against Disablism Day, 2011 -- growing archive (click to see what others are writing).[Author's note: in this article, I am citing ancient Greek myth and epithets, so I'm primarily using the...
View ArticleAn Aesop fable, presented without a moral (because questions are more...
THE BLIND OLD WOMAN AND THE PHYSICIAN (Retold from this version by the Rev. George Fyler Townsend (1867))There was once an old woman who had become totally blind. She hired a physician who promised he...
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(Quote)CELIA: Didst thou hear these verses?ROSALIND: O, yes, I heard them all, and more too; for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear.CELIA: That's no matter: the feet might...
View Article"I was sad, for I had no shoes" -- Distorted views through the Pity Lens.
From The Gulistan of Sa'di (1258 C.E. -- Persia):Chapter 3: On the Excellence of Contentment:(Quote)Story 19 I never lamented about the vicissitudes of time or complained of the turns of fortune except...
View Article"The Girl Without Hands." Physical disability as a "Divine mark" --...
Once upon a time, there was a miller who'd fallen on hard times, and the only thing he had to support him was his mill and the apple tree that grew behind the barn. A mill isn't much good if no one...
View Article"The Lame Man, the Blind Man, and the Donkey" -- a Fable on the Birth of a Fable
This is a story I learned from my mother. My memories of her telling it go back at least forty years. She would retell it often, to the point where just mentioning it would make us giggle. She...
View ArticleI wish I could say more about this ...
In 1697, Charles Perrault published a small volume of folktales polished into fine literary form. The frontespiece featured an illustration of an old woman sitting in front of a roaring fire with her...
View ArticleThe Squirrel and the Fox -- Awe and fear in the face of Disability
Before I share this story, a few comments on my "process."I've known most of the stories here for many years. And, for the folktales, at least, I've read several different translations and versions....
View ArticleMrs Smith from Persuasion -- Physical Disability and Illness as the great...
Excerpt from Persuasion, by Jane Austen -- first published 1818:Chapter 17While Sir Walter and Elizabeth were assiduously pushing their good fortune in Laura Place, Anne was renewing an acquaintance of...
View ArticleChangelings: When parents fear the child they did not expect
This is a changeling legend I came across recently, from Verstermanland region of Sweden, collected in 1882:Every intelligent grandmother knows that the fire must not be allowed to go out in a room,...
View ArticleHans-my-Hedgehog: when disabled children are hidden for shame
HANS-MY-HEDGEHOG (A Grimms' Tale, retold from memory, from various translations)Once, there lived a wealthy farmer, who had a fine house, and all the land and money he could want. But he had no...
View ArticleThe "False-Parted" woman in "comic" ballads
A BURGLAR'S EXPERIENCE WITH AN OLD MAID (Transcribed by Jim Dixon, and posted to the Mudcat Forum May 3, 2011 (with additional transcription by myself); from a YouTube video posted by "MusicBoxBoy"...
View Article"They that went on Crutches" (the intersection of disability and old age)
The Winter's Tale(Act 1, Scene 1; lines 20-45)ARCHIDAMUS:I think there is not in the world either malice or matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable comfort of your young prince Mamillius: it is a...
View ArticleJust a quick note: how I've done things, how I will do things
Up until now, all the folktales I've chosen to discuss are those I've known well and long, through several translations; this has given me the confidence that my words are my own, and I'm not...
View ArticleHalfman -- navigating the barriers of mockery and hatred
Source: Halfman: a tale from Greece (Collected and translated into German by Johann Georg von Hahn in 1864 -- Translated from German by D.L. Ashliman, Copyright 2011) Summary (of the plot points...
View Article"Sammle's Ghost" -- a Tale for Halloween
This is a retelling I composed something like thirteen or fourteen years ago, as best as I can recollect; I've not been able to find an etext version on line, yet. Source: Briggs, Katherine. "Sammle's...
View ArticleA-Begging We Shall Go: the accusation of faking disability for the sake of...
A-BEGGING WE SHALL GO, or "A Jovial Beggar" (from a seventeenth century broadside; attributed to Richard Brome, for use as a chorus in his play The Jovial Crew[1] There was a jovial Beggar, he had a...
View ArticleTiny Tim and the Role of Disabled as Object Lessons
A Brief Excerpt from A Christmas Carol IN PROSE BEING a Ghost Story of ChristmasBy Charles Dickens (first published 1843) [Quote] So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at...
View ArticleMary's Child: the Privilege of Speech and Human Identity.
I first read this story some twenty-five years ago, as part of a survey course on fairy tales in college. I admit that I've not given it much thought since then, until a reader of this blog brought it...
View Article"The Steadfast Tin Soldier" (the Disabled would be happiest 'with their own...
"The Steadfast Tin Soldier"By Hans Christian Andersen, 1838(Excerpt quoted from the The English Translation by Jean Hersholt, 1949)(Quote)All the soldiers looked exactly alike except one. He looked a...
View ArticleThe Goose-Girl at the Well (feelings of Distrust and Duty toward the Elderly...
The Goose-Girl at the WellTranslated from the German in 1884 by Margaret Hunt; her source was the seventh edition of Kinder- und Hausmarchen, of 1857. My online source:...
View ArticlePied Piper of Hamelin: the children left behind
Excerpt from The Pied Piper of Hamelin, by Robert Browning, 1842 (lines 208 - 255)The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood As if they were changed into blocks of wood, Unable to move a step, or cry To...
View Article"But these things are monsters" (The Etymologiae of St. Isidore)
Today is "Blogging Against Disablism Day" on the Internet, when bloggers all over the world unite in their efforts to speak out against bigotry against people with disabilities (A link to the growing...
View Article"They hate me for it ... I am resigned." the Trope of the "Bitter Cripple"
From H. M. S. Pinafore, Act One (Libretto by William S. Gilbert, 1878):BOATSWAIN. Aye, Little Buttercup – and well called – for you're the rosiest, the roundest, and the reddest beauty in all...
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