Something Worth Writing About

It has been an awfully, awfully long time since I've productively blogged these past few seasons. I was a little lost in what I would be writing about - there aren't many people who would be actively interested in the comings and goings of my life, and I wouldn't want to subject anybody to that anyway.

After I stopped looking into the Irish Travelers (upon a sensible request from my father - when research starts requiring contacting law enforcement, it's probably good to back off), I suffered from a major lack of inspiration. I have a lot of education going on in my life right now - between the MBA program (looking to top off in November 2010!), various stops-and-starts in linguistic pursuits, and all the research I'm doing for spiritual stuff, I was surprised not to feel more inspired blog-wise. But I think I finally came up with something that will keep both me happy and engaged, and everybody else actually interested.

Fairytales! Not the Disney nonsense - while I like the animated mice in Cinderella as much as the next over-stimulated American, don't mistake those for anything other than watered-down versions of the real stories. I am talking about the real folklore, legends, and bed-time stories where not every ending was a happy one, and the good guys and bad guys were often not terribly easy to tell apart. I've always loved the Grimm fairy tales - and I became especially enamoured of even modern spinners of fairy-tales like George MacDonald. But the stories collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and Iona and Peter Opie, those are what are truly worth study.

The Grimms and the Opies had a dedication to keeping to the truth of oral storytelling that few others during their time had an interest in. I find the Grimms particularly interesting, since the fairy tales they collected were a by-product of their real research. The brothers were linguists, and their dedication to tracking down the true patterns and origins of their language (German) were what enabled them to keep a clear focus on writing down the stories exactly as they were told.

Oral traditions are an extremely important part of every society's culture - the European folk stories that give us Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood (told to the Grimms by Wilhelm's own wife and chilhood friend), and countless others tell us an enormous amount about the cultures, mythology, traditions and beliefs of our forefathers.

I'll start my research focusing on the stories gathered by the Brothers Grimm. I'll try to keep up with one meaty post per week - it ought to be fun!