WHAT YOU MISSED

 

HOW CLOUTS WERE CAST...

Mike, Maddie, Jane, Dan, Ian, Raph, Gary told; Janet, Babs, Norman and Gill largely listened.

Raph shared some recently acquired Jewish folktales at various points through the evening… The first was to do with a cast-off wife, rather than cast-off clothes – or, to be more accurate, two cast-off wives, the Devil’s and that of the man with whom He made a bargain, which He later chose to break (why should God have all the Capital Letters?) But the clever man knew how to drive the Devil out of the possessed Princess… by persuading Him that His Wife was approaching!

Jane gave us, since we were in the realm of relationships between the sexes, the story of the man with eleven children who, at the imminent arrival of the twelfth, rushed so precipitately to fetch the midwife, that he forgot to put any clothes on, and was arrested for exposing himself. The sympathetic magistrate found him not guilty, since it was no crime to advertise one’s business…

Mike shared, in this context, the story of the man whose spouse was ill, and, running to fetch the doctor, cannoned into a policeman, who asked the reason for his haste. “I don’t like the look of my wife!” said the man, before carrying on running. Surprised, as he pounded off up the street, to find the policeman puffing to keep up with him, the man said, “And why are you running with me?” to which the policeman replied, “I don’t like the look of mine, either!”

Raph told the Tale of Adam’s Diamond… and the repeated Fall… which turns up, in context, in Shonaleigh’s Stories.

Ian gave us a tale you can read here, that we recognised as The Three Aunts:

(Maddie has told it in her own way before, and Mike localises it, with social detail, in Wimborne, or Lymington, or somewhere down that way… and blames the mother-in-law’s meanness… )

As we’d got on to spinning, spiders entered our general conversation (because we don’t just tell stories, we sometimes talk about other things), and the use of cobwebs in first-aid (cutting-edge in the sixteenth-century, to stop bleeding!) or the weird webs spiders spin when they’re on drugs… and neurology. Spinning flax, we all agreed, was a really nasty test!

Maddie’s story fitted perfectly, both with the theme, and with Ian’s, because it came from the same collection: it was Prince Lindwurm, which you can find here https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/east-of-the-sun-and-west-of-the-moon-illustrated-by-kay-nielsen-1922-edition

in a wonderfully illustrated edition (and do look at the Public Domain Review, because it takes you to all the things that are available for free on the web, and have not been monetised by alamy or shutterstock or any of that lot, with their watermarks!) The clever girl, advised by the Wise Woman, saves herself with what is really a form of strip poker… and if the lesson might be that a woman always has one more layer of mystery than a man – well, why not?

Raph popped in Moses and the Ants, in which God justifies collateral damage as a consequence of annoyance. (Application to current events is left to your discretion.)

Dan told us about a Japanese rascal who stole a straw coat which conferred invisibility from a tengu and used it to play tricks and steal fish. However, his tidy mother burnt the coat, because it was dirty and smelly. Nonetheless, the rascal found that the ashes still had magical power, so he stripped off, coated his body with them, went to the tavern and drank saké invisibly for free – but when he began getting drunk and spilling and slobbering, the ashes were washed off. The rest of the customers chased him. Being fat and out of condition, he sweated, and the rest of the ashes ran down his body with the perspiration. His pursuers judged that the shame of being seen completely naked would be punishment enough, and let him go.

Jane reminded us of the dons, sunbathing naked in the punt, who, when observed, covered their private parts – all but one, who said, “Surely it’s my FACE they would recognise, gentlemen?”

Mike told his version of The Dancing Princesses, which involved a young lad with one leg shorter than the other who therefore became a cobbler, and a thirteenth princess in the same position who wasn’t taken on the nocturnal expeditions, and therefore revealed the secret of the worn-out shoes. At the end, the twelve princesses and their mother stay with their dancing partners on the far side of the enchanted lake, and the king is left with the thirteenth (the only one who is his own child) and the young cobbler who has corrected her limp, so that the pair of them can dance in the deserted castle.

And so there was a discussion of cobblers who needed to wear corrective footwear, and dancing – Janet told us about her work in carehomes, where one of the residents danced with her (the others assuring her that she would be safe, because he was an excellent dancer – which he was!) and how the story could have different dance-music as an accompaniment, to which the residents eagerly responded! And she also passed on a tale from another resident, who told how she had to climb out of her bedroom (with her mother’s connivance) to go dancing when her father had forbidden it…

And Maddie told us about a frosty moonlit night in the grounds of Blenheim Palace, after a party in Woodstock…

And finally, returning to clothes, Gary told us how Lies and Truth stripped off on a hot day, but Lies climbed out of the cool pool first and ran off through the world with Truth’s clothes, and has them still – which is why people cluster round gaily-garbed Lies and shun Naked Truth!

At which point, naturally, there was nothing more to say, and so we stopped.