I've moved this into OT, Elisabeth, as there's no indication it has anything to do with fanfic.
Favourite fairytale...hmmmmm. Well, that depends. On DVD, it's actually The Swan Princess. A beautifully WAFFy and funny rendition of Swan Lake. Not made by Disney. It has great characters, a romantic storyline and terrific songs. It has such depth and layers that it seems demeaning to call it a cartoon.
Favourite Disney on DVD...would have to be The Lion King.
Back when I was a teenager, I used to devour fairytale books at the local library. There was a whole series of books themed by colour: The Green Book of Fairytales, The Lilac Book of Fairytales...I was delighted a while back to find them all again on the Project Guttenburg site.
My favourite fairytale though comes from a very old book that I have on my shelves which is a collection of folk tales from Asia. It's called The Tiger's Whisker. Basically, it's the story of a young woman whose husband has returned from war much changed. He's moody and violent and in despair she goes to an old mountain man for a spell to give her back the sweet, lovable husband she used to have.
The wise man tells her that the spell requires the whisker of a living tiger. Horrified, the young woman turns away, convinced it's an impossible task. However, some months later, she returns with the required whisker. The wise man examines it and then, convinced it's from a living tiger, throws it into the fire.
The woman is shocked. Why did he do that?
The wise man asks her how she got the whisker. She explains that over many months she hid in the jungle watching the beast, gradually, slowly moving closer, feeding it tidbits, earning its trust, until one night she had earned its trust to the point where it let her snip off a whisker.
The old man nods. "And is your husband any less able to appreciate patience and kindness than the tiger?" he asks.
I just love that.
LabRat
