Tag: episodes-on-the-run • BookLikes

quote 2013-10-01 01:54

...In "La Poupee" (tale type 571C), a simple minded orphan-girl fails to observe these three basic rules after receiving a magic doll, which excretes gold when she says, "crap, crap my little rag doll."

The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History - Robert Darnton

p. 54, chapter 1 - Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning in Mother Goose, in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History.

Just pause a moment and imagine reading that aloud (I don't think I'll ever get so old that I wouldn't snicker a bit at that line). The rules mentioned in that quote are about trusting no one when it comes to money, etc. And the doll excretes, er, excrement on the person that steals it and tries to have it crap gold for him. (La Poupee is French for doll. And should have an accent on the first e, but I never have remembered the key combo to add that. Sorry, French purists. At least I know where I am flawed!)

I had completely forgotten the stories mentioned in this chapter dealing with farting. (This is a reread for me, btw.) I'll be sure to add some lengthy quotes/examples of those when I finally review this. They're too weird to not discuss.

And the font is still way too big in this quote function, but I can't resist quoting "crap, crap my little rag doll."

quote 2013-09-28 21:26

Batgrl: Bookish Hooha

...About 45 per cent of the Frenchmen born in the eighteenth century died before the age of ten. Few of the survivors reached adulthood before the death of at least one of their parents. And few parents reached the end of the procreative years, because death interrupted them. Terminated by death, not divorce, marriages lasted an average of fifteen years, half as long as they do in France today. ...Stepmothers proliferated everywhere - far more so than stepfathers, as the remarriage rate among widows was one in ten. Stepchildren may not have been treated like Cinderella, but relations between siblings probably were harsh. A new child often meant the difference between poverty and indigence.

from chapter one, Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose, in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History.

(After the break my apologies for the HUGE font...)

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