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Illustrated by Eric Kincaid and Eric Rowe Adapted by Lucy Kincaid ISBN 0 86112 136 8 © Brimax Rights Ltd 1982 Published by Brimax Books, Cambridge, England 1982 Printed in Hong Kong |
This collection of retold fairy tales was published by Brimax Books in 1982 as part of the 'Cast a Spell' series, a series of four books featuring fairy tales adapted by Lucy Kincaid and illustrated by Eric Kincaid and Eric Rowe. See series list.
The cover of Magical Stories shows pink and purple circles radiating out from a white centre above a collection of characters from the stories within: A giant couple with fantastic hats, laughing pixies, a drummer, an old woman with a large white hat, and the central figure of an enchantress, with a red cape, ram ears and bat wings, and a snake atop her black hair. Below them are whorls of blue, perhaps representing water, wind, or the casting of a spell, and pouring over to the back cover where we see a sulky giant. This cover format (radiating circles and whorls with characters from the collection) is repeated across the other covers in the series.
The endpapers show a cloudy mountainous vista with craggy outcroppings, and characters such as a wizard reading from a book, an armour-clad giant, and a crag shaped like a dragon's nose, with a castle on its top. These endpapers are identical to those published in The Kincaid's Book of Wizards, Giants, Trolls and Magic (an 80 page collection published by Brimax Books in 1980).
The loose endpaper and title page illustration is shared across all four books in the 'Cast a Spell' series. The double-page spread shows a misty forest at night, with a Tudor homestead in a meadow in the distance, and tiny doors in the trunks and roots of the trees.
The title pages note that some of these stories also appear in Witches Goblins Ogres and Fantasy (WGOF); Wizards Giants Trolls and Magic (WGTM); and Tales of Magic and Enchantment (TME), all published by Brimax Books. I've marked the stories I've identified as appearing in identical form in the previous works below.
The six stories collected here are:
- The Drummer (WGOF)
- Pixie Visitors (WGTM)
- Mother Holle (WGTM)
- Digging for Fish (WGOF)
- The Crystal Ball (WGTM)
- Once There Was a Forest (WGOF)
No sources are given for the adaptations, but I've identified most of these, as outlined below.
The Drummer
The first story in this collection is an adaptation of the Grimms' tale 193* by the same name.
In Kincaid's adaptation, a drummer boy happens to be walking beside a lake when he sees three pieces of fine white linen. He takes one home with him and is visited that night by the daughter of a king, who explains the linen is her shift and she is under the spell of a witch. The drummer boy asks how he can free her and she tells him he must go through the forest where the giants live to reach the top of the glass mountain.
The Drummer wakes a sleeping giant in the forest and claims he is leading the way for "thousands" following him, who will kill the giants as they sleep. The giants carry him to the foot of the glass mountain, where he sees two men quarreling over a magic saddle that can carry whoever sits on it to wherever they want to go. He suggests settling their quarrel by seeing who can win a race and steals the saddle while they're preoccupied.
At the top of the mountain he meets an old witch who gives him three impossible tasks. A girl from the house completes the tasks for him and gives him other information which leads him to rescue the girl (revealed to be the princess) and send the witch to her end. They fill their pockets with treasure from the witch's house but when the Drummer kisses his parents on both cheeks against the princess's warning he forgets her. He builds a palace with his share of the treasure and is engaged to another girl.
The princess offers the girl a beautiful dress if she will let her sit outside the Drummer's room. His fiancée agrees but gives him a sleeping potion. On the third night, after receiving a dress as golden as the sun, a dress as silvery as the moon, and a dress that glistens like the stars, the Drummer doesn't drink the sleeping potion and his memory is returned when the princess speaks to him.
I loved Kincaid's simplistic ending to this complicated story:
"So, there was a change in the wedding plans. The Drummer married the Princess. As for the girl who was to have been his bride, she had the three most beautiful dresses in the world, so they all lived happily ever after."
The dumbfounded expression on the woken giant's face was my favourite illustration from this fairy tale, as well as the glorious gold of the first beautiful dress.
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| A dumbfounded giant: detail from illustrations for "The Drummer" |
Pixie Visitors
I haven't been able to identify a source for this tale, and I'd be grateful if anybody can enlighten me. In this story, a farmer and his wife both work very hard every day, yet they go sleepless every night when a crew of pixies decide their farmhouse kitchen is the perfect place to party all night. They don't want to offend the pixies by forcing them out but "[w]hen the farmer's wife fell asleep in the hen house and dropped all the eggs she had been collecting, the farmer decided the time had come to do something."
He drops a fork through a hole in his floor onto the coat tails of the pixie fiddler, which causes them all to flee in fright, fearing a giant. I liked the description and the image of the pixies turning themselves as small as files and flying "in a swarm through the keyhole"... "Whishshshshshshs"...
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| Swarming pixies: detail from illustrations for "Pixie Visitors" |
Mother Holle
This story is an adaptation of the Grimms' tale 24*, also known as "Frau Holle", "Mother Hulda", and "Old Mother Frost".
Like many other fairy tales, this is a story of a stepdaughter whose stepmother favours her own daughter, and who must do all the work. Also like many other fairy tales, it shows one girl rewarded, and the other sent to achieve the same but failing due to their character flaws.
In Kincaid's tale, "Anna was always busy. She HAD to be, for she was only a step-daughter." Her stepsister "Martha was idle and never did a thing unless she HAD to, which wasn't very often for she was her mother's favourite."
When busy Anna accidentally pricks her finger on her shuttle and drops it down the well, her stepmother sends her to get it, and Anna finds herself in "a pleasant field". When bread cries to be taken from an oven, she removes it. When an apple tree cries to be shaken as its apples are ripe, she does that, and when she meets a witch who asks her to work for her (Mother Holle) she works hard for her. Mother Holle rewards her with a shower of golden rain.
When the stepmother sees Anna's gold she sends Martha to get the same, but Martha doesn't rescue the bread, doesn't shake the tree, and invites herself to work for Mother Holle, only to laze about. When Mother Holle sends her on her way it is with a shower of black pitch instead of gold rain. Hard work is rewarded, idleness is punished.
One of Mother Holle's tasks is for her mattress to be shaken - "If my bed is not shaken properly there will be no snow."
I loved the images of Mother Holle offering work to Anna, and Anna getting covered in a shower of rain – the detailed European traditional clothing is wonderful.
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| Anna and Mother Holle: illustration for "Mother Holle" |
Digging for Fish
"Digging for Fish" is a rather grim tale of a group of fishermen who are cursed by a witch when they refuse to take her skinny-looking son out to sea with them to learn their trade. Not realising the mother is a witch, they jeer at her and her son, so she throws a silver thimble into the sand and curses them to never be able to catch fish again until they find the thimble (which magically sinks into the sand and cannot be found).
The story was poignant, with the boy pleading "Please... I'm stronger than I look" and the fisherman immediately realising their error: "Have pity on us..." But no pity is to be had:
"They are digging to this day. Their boats are neglected and falling to pieces. Their nets are tangled and rotting. All because they dared to laugh at a witch and jeer at her son."
The illustrations are suitably spooky, with broken ragged boats, and in the distance silhouettes of men digging. I particularly liked the image of the old woman and her unprepossessing boy, how the blue tone lends them a sad and supernatural quality:
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| Witch and son: illustration for "Digging for Fish" |
I've not yet been able to locate a source for this adapted tale. Does anyone know its origin?
The Crystal Ball
This story is an adaptation of the Grimms' tale 197* by the same name. Like "The Drummer", it's a somewhat complicated tale, which might be why both tales have never reached the popularity of the most famous fairy tales.
In this tale, an enchantress fears her own sons, and turns one into an eagle and one into a whale. The third, Richard, escapes before she can cast a spell on him, and comes to learn of a princess imprisoned in the Castle of the Golden Sun. He determines to rescue her, and finds an easy path there when he agrees to settle a debate between two giants fighting over a wishing cap by holding it while the two race to him. This is very similar to the scene in "The Drummer" in which the protagonist gains a magic saddle, although in this tale the theft appears more accidental than deliberate, as he just happens to think of the princess while wearing the cap and is transported to the castle.
He finds the king's daughter "in a room deep in the heart of the castle". Her real form is hidden by an ugly enchantment, but he is able to see her real beauty in a mirror. He learns that he can break the spell that makes her ugly by holding a crystal ball in front of the Enchanter, which will destroy his power and make her look like herself again.
Richard follows the princess's instructions to kill a wild bull which causes a fiery bird to rise into the sky. With the help of his brother (the eagle) the bird is caught, and with the help of his brother (the whale) the egg it holds is kept from melting and cracked to reveal the crystal ball inside. The Enchanter's powers are removed and he gives his castle to Richard, who marries the princess and uses the crystal ball to restore his brothers, so that they all live happily ever after.
It's quite an interesting story, although I did wonder why the wishing cap couldn't have helped him in most of his aims!
The enchantress is clearly the figure in the middle of the cover of the book, for she shares the ram horns and batwings, although we never see her face in the story illustrations, and she wears blue rather than red. I love the tableau that shows the story of her relationship with her sons, especially the running motion of the escaping youngest son:
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| Enchantress and sons: Illustration for "The Crystal Ball" |
Once There Was a Forest
While I can't find a direct folk or fairy tale as the source for this tale, I can identify it as an adaptation of a regional tale associated with St Michael's Mount in Cornwall. See Giants of the Mount (Cornwall Heritage Trust).
In Kincaid's tale, a giant and his wife live in a forest but the forest is accidentally destroyed by their labours to build a stronghold. The giant is lazy and wants his wife to do all the hard work of lugging white granite for the build. When she tries to replace the white granite with the lighter and closer greenstone, he kicks her in fury and she drops the boulder she was carrying, causing the forest to fall into the earth and sea to pour in.
The Cornish tale identifies the giant as Cormoran and his wife as Cormelian. Cormoran is apparently also the giant killed by Jack the Giant-Killer, which is obliquely referenced in Kincaid's tale, which explains that the giant wants to build his stronghold because:
"He wanted to be able to eat his breakfast in peace, without having to get up every five minutes to answer the door to another Jack-the-Giant-Killer."
I liked the way Kincaid describes the long-suffering wife ("Any plan of her husband's usually meant a lot of hard work for her") and the illustration of her and her husband, in European traditional dress, complete with chatelaine carrying keys and dagger.
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| Disgruntled wife and husband: illustration for "Once There Was a Forest" |
Summary
I really enjoyed these six tales, both for the fresh narration by Lucy Kincaid and the evocative artwork by Eric Kincaid and Eric Rowe. I also liked that the tales weren't the usual familiar ones, but less well-known tales.
As with other titles in this series, there don't appear to be many copies of this title available online, but all the stories in this collection can be read online at the Open Library (Internet Library) in the earlier collections Witches Goblins Ogres and Fantasy (WGOF) and Wizards Giants Trolls and Magic (WGTM).
Footnote
* Grimm's tale numbers are the numbers of the fairy tales collected in Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM). The numbers range from KHM 1 (The Frog Prince/King) to KHM 210 (The Hazel Branch). The numbers are based on the 1857 edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen, which is divided into 2 volumes. The original Kinder- und Hausmärchen was first published as two separate volumes (Vol. 1 in 1812 with 86 stories) and Vol 2. in 1815 with 70 stories). The 1857 edition was the seventh edition, much expanded, and with changes to the tales. This is the edition that most English translations are based upon and is the quintessential "Grimm's Fairy Tales".
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