Feral Children

A feral child is a human child who has lived in isolation for a long time from a very young age. Feral children have little or no experience of human contact, and as a result of this do not understand basic social skills and human language. Some feral children have been confined or abandoned by people (usually their own parents). Others have lived alone in the wild, or in some cases have been raised by animals, like Mowgli in the Jungle Book.

Famous feral children in literature include Tarzan, Peter Pan and Mowgli. These mythical children are commonly presented as having superior strength, intelligence and morals compared to "normal" humans, implying that because of their upbringing they represent humanity in a pure and uncorrupted state, similar to Rousseau's "noble savage" theory. This idea also has links with religion, as before Adam and Eve ate the apple they lived in the wild in a pure/uncorrupted state.

The Green Man and the Erlking

THE GREEN MAN.

• He is linked with the themes of life, death and rebirth
• He is usually presented as a protector of trees and plants
• He was originally a Pagan god, but over time he has overlapped with different stories such as Robin Hood
• He also has links with Christianity - that's why there's often sculptures of little faces with leaves around them in churches. I don't actually know what the link is though.
• He is green

That's all I managed to find out really, google wasn't very helpful.

I also checked out who the Erl-King was though, and he is a lot more interesting.

THE ERLKING.

The Erlking originated in Denmark, but the source of the more well-known version is a poem by Goethe.

The poem Erlkönigs Tochter (Elvrkonge’s Daughter), was a Danish work translated into German by Johann Gottfried Herder. The story portrays Sir Oluf riding to his marriage but being entranced by the music of the elves. An elf maiden, in Herder’s translation the Elverkonge’s daughter, appears and invites him to dance with her. He refuses and spurns her offers of gifts and gold. Angered, she strikes him and sends him on his way, deathly pale. The following morning, on the day of his wedding, his bride finds him lying dead under his scarlet cloak.

Goethe was inspired by Herder's ballad, and rewrote the story with some significant changes. In Goethe's version it is the Erlking himself who is the antagonist of the story, and he preys on children rather than adults of the opposite sex. The Erlking's motives are not made clear, but he sounds like a bit of a paedophile (in the poem he tells the little boy that he loves him and is "charmed by his beauty". Ew.

The Erlking is also portrayed as an omen of death, and will only appear to a person about to die. In Goethe's poem the little kid sees the Erlking and is like "aaah daddy the erlking's here" and his Dad says "no its fine it's just a tree". It goes on like this for the whole poem (it gets a bit repetitive/boring/annoying) And then the little kid dies. So his dad should have listened really.

Also, a person can tell what sort of death awaits them by the Erlking’s expression eg. a pained expression means a painful death, a happy expression means you'll get tickled to death. In Angela Carter's version, she doesn't really incorporate any of this, and her Erl-king is more like the Green Man than the traditional Erlking.

The endddddd.

Lil' Red Riding Hood

LRRH is probably one of the most famous fairy tales. The original story went something like this:

One day Little Red goes to see her grandmother

She walks through the woods by herself with a basket of fruit

She meets a wolf and tells him what she is doing and where she is going

The wolf runs off to granny's house and Lil' Red skips around the wood and picks flowers for a bit

The wolf eats granny

Lil' Red arrives at granny's house and the wolf disguises himself as granny to trick her

Lil' Red makes some comments about the size of wolf-granny's ears, nose, hands, eyes and teeth

Wolf eats Lil' Red

Basically the story was about stranger danger, and the message behind it was don't tell strangers or wolves where you live/where you are going because they will follow you and kill/eat you and your family if you do.

So in its original form, the story is quite effective for scaring children into not talking to strangers and warning them of possible dangers they might face.

However, the modern interpretation succeeds in confusing the message entirely and messing with children's brains.

Because Disney or whoever it was decided that Granny and Lil' Red dying was too upsetting, they changed the story so everyone lived happily ever after. the wolf still ate Granny and was about to eat Lil' Red, but then suddenly a nice woodcutter man appeared out of thin air and killed the wolf. The he cut the wolf down the middle and out stepped granny, alive and well. Lil' Red and Granny said thank you to the woodcutter and everyone went their separate ways.

This interpretation is stupid for two reasons.

1. It gives children the message that if they behave naively and tell strangers where they live it will still be okay because a magic woodcutter will save them

2. It tells them that if you get eaten by a wolf there is still a possible chance of survival.

Both messages are false, and I just feel sorry for all the little kids that trust strangers or aren't capable of understanding that once a wolf eats you, you're dead.

Also, if anyone wants to read a good book about creepy fairytales I seriously recommend "The Book of Lost Things" by John Connolly. It's a bit like The Bloody Chamber (but better), and it has a really disturbing version of Little Red Riding Hood in it.