Common Sense 101
Why Folktales Aren’t just for Children
Want to know what the world needs right now? The world needs stories. And I’m not just saying that because I love writing them. More specifically, the world needs children’s stories. And, no, I’m not saying that just because I was a children’s librarian.
Even more specifically than that, we need folktales. We need folktales because of the deeply rooted truths that we find in them. There are several kinds of folktales, but the ones I’m talking about today are those stories that illustrate some of the not-so-brilliant things people do. Not fairy tales where the fairy godmother or prince charming appears and makes everything right.
Historically, folktales performed a certain role in society. Think back to what life was like when there were no electronic forms of entertainment…when printed books were rare and expensive, and many people could not read or write...when the main entertainment on long, cold winter nights was storytelling. Oral storytelling. The tales were handed down from generation to generation. But the thing is, the stories were not told only to the children. The whole family listened while they sat around the fire, mending clothes and harness, maybe whittling a new wooden bowl.
The stories were for the adults’ entertainment as well as the children. And oh, if I could just suggest a few folk tales for the adults of today.
The first one I would suggest is The Emperor's New Clothes.
In this story retold by Hans Christian Andersen, some new guys came to town and started bragging that they could weave the finest cloth ever created. It was so fine that only the most elevated people in society could see it. The Emperor, vain and powerful, had to have it, of course. So he paid the weavers a fortune to weave a royal outfit for him from the beautiful cloth. A grand parade was planned so he could show all his subjects his new royal finery. When the time came for the Emperor to try on his clothes, he was shocked to find that he could not see the fabric at all! But since the weavers (the ones he’d paid all that money to) said that only the most elevated people could see it, he could not possibly admit that he couldn’t. And neither could anyone else, lest people think they were not educated. Of course, there really was no fabric at all, and instead of being royally garbed, the Emperor was royally fleeced, shall we say. It was not until the fake weavers had already skipped town and the Emperor was parading in his invisible “garments” that a young boy cried out that the Emperor had no clothes on. The moral of the story, of course, is to use your common sense and not be hoodwinked into falling for what some tricksters, trying to make a buck off your pride or ignorance, are telling you is the latest, greatest stuff.
Remember The Pied Piper? (love this version!) It comes next. The version I learned as a child was only one of many interpretations, and they are based on legends from the city of Hamelin in Germany and appear to have been inspired by an actual historical event in 1284.
The story goes that the City of Hamelin was plagued by an infestation of rats, and the people asked the Mayor to do something about it. A man came to town, dressed in multi-color clothes (what they called pied back then), and offered to get rid of the rats by playing his pipe (flute). Everyone was delighted to find a solution to the problem, even if it sounded too good to be true. So the piper played his flute and lured the rats into the river, where they drowned, freeing the city from the destructive, disease-carrying rodents. Now that the rats were gone, the Mayor refused to pay the piper for his services. The piper left, vowing to return and exact his revenge in lieu of the payment he’d been promised. That summer, he returned and lured the children of the town away, never to be seen or heard from again. While the debate about the actual events is still underway, there is an undebatable truth here: It is wrong to fail to hold up your end of an agreement, and the consequences are far reaching. (And maybe you could say that losing the next generation is what happens when the present generation does not pay its own bills. Just sayin’.)
One of my favorites is the story The Husband who Minded the House or Swapping Places. (I know that this story can be seen as one perpetuating gender role stereotypes. But try considering the characters as two people having different types of jobs, rather than husband and wife. )
There was once a man who came home from a hard day’s work in the fields, tired and convinced that his wife had the easier job. The wife was eager to get away from the house, so they agreed to swap jobs the next day. This will be easy, the man thought. All I have to do is churn the butter, mind the cow and the pig and the baby and make the porridge for supper. So he started to churn the butter and realized the baby was missing, so he went to find her, and found her playing beside the creek. Thankfully, she had not drowned. But when he got back to the house, he found the pig had come into the house and knocked over the butter churn, so he yelled at the pig which made the baby cry, then he realized he hadn’t milked the cow yet, so there was no more cream for butter. And so went the day, with one calamity after another. The wife returned from the field to find the porridge was not done, and the pig was gone. Worse, the cow had fallen from the sod roof where the husband had left her to eat the grass that grew there. And the husband, who had strung a rope from the cow on the roof down through the chimney and tied it to his foot to keep track of the cow, was now hanging upside down in the chimney. Needless to say, he gained a sudden respect for her job as an essential worker, and never again berated her for having such a simple job.
There are hundreds more folktales, of course, from every culture under the sun. Each one was designed to engage the imagination, illustrate a valuable life lesson, and pass on a little wisdom.
But then oral storytelling lost its primary place in entertainment. And sometime in the later half of the last century, folktales gave way to more popular forms of children’s literature. Many people considered the old tales to be nothing more than old-fashioned social conditioning.
But to be honest, if there is anything that is true right now, it’s that people could use a little bit of old-fashioned common sense conditioning. Maybe some morals, too. The kind you find in folktales.
The kind a lot of us missed during the period of folktales’ unpopularity.
Consider the stories I mentioned. Each of these stories had a moral lesson to teach. But those lessons weren’t exactly applicable to children’s situations, were they? The morals of those stories—don’t fall for con artists; don’t renege on contracts; respect the work of other people—were for the adults. The lessons were what we would call Common Sense. Was common sense a lot more prevalent when people grew up hearing those stories?
And what do we have to take the place of those stories today? Are the stories we write and read and watch teaching the same kind of lessons? Are they promoting what we most need to learn as adults? Are they modeling the kind of people we should strive to be?
There is a reason folktales have lasted as long as they have. It’s because they offer universal truths and wisdom. Yes, they’re considered children’s stories, and children need to hear them. But even more than that, adults need to. So the next time you’re looking for answers or advice, or just need some source of common sense, try reading some folktales.
Know some great folktales? Have the lessons stuck with you? Where did you hear or read them? Did you pass them on to the children? Tell us about it in the comments section below.
