A Learning Curve

By luigi_pagano

Wed, 01 Aug 2018
  • 1103 reads
4 comments
 
Many fairy tales and nursery rhymes
have been with us since the year dot;
things have changed during that time
but those fanciful narratives have not.
 
Some of them were meant to be true
or be representative of an actual event.
was Cardinal Wolsey the Little Boy Blue?
It's been inferred but there is dissent.
 
From Rock-a-bye Baby on the tree top
a perceptive reader can always discern
that a newborn baby is likely to drop
if the cradle is dangling on a sago fern.
 
And what is it about the Pied Piper
that the children find so fascinating?
We must condemn this shameful viper
whose foul deeds proved devastating.
 
Most of these fairy tales we just skim
and we don't realise the significance
that their content is much too grim
even though written with elegance.
 
I feel that we are on a learning curve
as we try to understand the allegories
when we examine with some reserve
the message in those gruesome stories.
 
© Luigi Pagano 2018
Certificate U
Poem
Mutevoli pensieri
Fantasy
Inspiration Point (work that responds to our weekly writing cue)

Comments

Submitted by Rhiannonw on

You stir up thinking about the subject, Luigi.

Having grown up on Welsh nonsense/nursery rhymes, I've never grown fond of English ones (what are Italian ones like?). Their popularity seems to be for a nice tune and words that sound jolly but don't appear at first sight to mean anything, so rhythmic sound of music and words.

A lot of fairy tales seems to have very unpleasant characters, sometimes with attractive exteriors but duplicitous natures! Again I grew up more on Welsh mythology and fairy stories, certainly in primary school. I disliked Hand Anderson tales, but it may have been particularly because of the illustrations. I seemed to enjoy the copy we had of Grimms, but that didn't have illustrations. We had a 'Poetry Monthly' strand some time ago, and I was looking for what I'd written there.

https://www.abctales.com/story/rhiannonw/grimm-fun-poetry-monthly

Rhiannon

 

Submitted by luigi_pagano on

Hi Rhiannon,
In Italy we had translations of the brothers Grimm and of Charles Perrault classic fairy tales and of Aesop's fables but we also had 'made in Italy' stories which were more or less morality tales like Carlo Collodi's 'Geppetto'. We didn't have nursery rhymes as such but fun little poems called 'filastrocche'. 
The English nursery rhymes disguise deeper meanings often based on historic events that happened either at the time they were written or prior to that like 'Ring-a-ring -a- roses' reflecting the plague.
I do recall that particular Poetry Monthly for which I wrote an 'updated' version:  

https://www.abctales.com/story/luigipagano/parable-our-time-poetry-monthly

Thanks for your feedback. Luigi x

 

 

 

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

Hi Luigi, I love the tale of Pinocchio with his nose growing when he told lies. I loved Sleeping Beauty as a child. For me many of the Walt Disney films enchanted me and was the best introduction to fairy tales.

Jenny. xx 

 

Submitted by luigi_pagano on

Hello Jenny.
Of course I should have said Pinocchio; Geppetto was his putative father.
I came across this character in print long before Walt Disney made it universally famous. 
Its author was Carlo Lorenzini who took the pen name Carlo Collodi from the town where he spent most of his childhood. He began writing for kids by translating Perrault's fairy tales.
In 1880 he started writing The story of a marionette, the adventures of Pinocchio which was published weekly in the first italian newspaper for children. 
It was probrably the first book that Italian children were gifted.

Best wishes, Luigi xx