Reading Notes: English Fairy Tales (Part B)

  Bibliography: The following stories are from English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs (1890).

I've put a '✿' next to the stories I enjoyed the most, with notes on them below.


READING B:

✿Henny-Penny
Molly Whuppie
Mr Fox
Johnny-Cake
✿Mr Miacca
The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh
✿The Ass, The Table and the Stick
✿Fairy Ointment

Henny-Penny - Excuse me, what the heck is this story?! I thought the beginning was cute because the whole 'sky is falling' thing reminded me of Chicken Little. But the rest of the story where people were getting their heads ripped off and bodies thrown to the side in front of their friends. And then when the last guy had his neck snapped but was still alive so he tried to call for his friend... and she ran back home??? Like... I did not expect that ending.

Mr. Miacca - So basically this story is saying they've got a cannibal living down the street from children.. okay. That was a clever trick that Tommy did, saying he'll go home and get some pudding from his mom. It was really stupid of him to get caught by the cannibal again though. When the cannibal had Tommy stick out his leg and chopped it off so he could eat it, I literally gasped. And then when the story said Tommy ran home I was like, "how??" But in the end he'd stuck out a leg of the sofa. 

The Ass, The Table and the Stick - I thought the ending of this story was super cute. This guy's trying to marry his true love but has to show that he has enough money, and an innkeeper keeps stealing all his hard-earned fortunes. Well, he gets revenge on the innkeeper and gets his stuff back, and with all his wealth all the ladies back home want to marry him. He says he'll only marry the richest girl, so all the girls hold out all their riches and he kills them all except his true love. Then he takes their riches and declares his true love is the richest and that he shall marry her.

Fairy Ointment - I liked this story because of its depiction of a village and using ointments to cure things. I also liked that it involved pixies to an extent. The story overall didn't make much sense though, honestly, but I like the idea of an ointment being used to see an alternate world. Maybe I could use that for Arias in my storybook!

Photo by Jenelle Hayes on Unsplash