The tale of the Turtle and the Rabbit. The turtle agrees to race the rabbit and in the mean time the rabbit decides he is too fast and takes a nap, and here comes the turtle, slow as a turtle, and came and beat him.

The meaning that Midori attributes to this piece of folklore is that patience is always going to get you what you want. She thought that the turtle won because he was simply more patient when it came to getting somewhere. She believes that this is the same in life for everyone and that we should all be slow and take the time that we need to accomplish a task.

I think that she heard this tale originally as a Tortoise and the Hare, but I am not sure. She could not remember exactly when or where she heard it. She did remember though that it was during her childhood that she heard the tale. If the case is that she has changed the characters I believe this is just a very good example of variation then. I know of the cartoon versions of the Tortoise and the Hare, but I have had her tell me the Turtle and the Rabbit before.

This just shows how different pieces of folklore can still have the same meaning. It also shows how sparse the tale really could be and still be able to get the message across to the listener.

I believe that the meaning of this tale is that of being humble. I think that because the Rabbit, or Hare was so cocky that he made a mistake and that had he been more humble that he would have won easily. Taking either meaning for the tale, it is most likely going to be popular among younger people, or older people. Older people relate to the story for they have generally become more patient over time, whereas younger people can be told this tale and gain a lesson from it, either to be more patient, or to be more humble.

Little Miss Muffet sat in the corner eating her curds away. Out came a spider and sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away.

This would be my grandmother’s interpretation of the Little Miss Muffet tale. I think this again shows how variation can occur. I heard the tale like this:

Little Miss Muffet, sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey. Along came a spider that sat down beside her, frightened Miss Muffet, spilling her curd and whey.

This would be an example of two different versions of the same tale. Both have the two characters: Miss Muffet, and the spider. Both have curds. And both have the spider frightening Miss Muffet. The difference seems mainly to be in how Miss Muffet reacted to the spider. In the first version (told by Midori) Miss Muffet is frightened away. In the second (told my me) Miss Muffet seems to be startled by the spider causing her to spill her curds and whey.

There may be deeper meaning in this tale, the spider my represent something that little girls might need to be scared of. This being the case it makes sense that for Midori, that Miss Muffet runs away, where as in my version Miss Muffet simply stays there, but is frightened. This may have to do with the fact that I am a male, and may actually be taking the meaning of the tale more literally to be a spider, and that I wouldn’t be that scared of a spider, so why would Miss Muffet run away.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all the kings horses and all the kings men could put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

This is a tale that was used by peasants to make fun of a king. Marty couldn’t remember which king, but thought it might be Louis the XIV. He remembers learning the tale as a child. He remembers it more because it was one of the first ones that he was ever taught.

I think that today most people would be able to re tell this tale, but again the variations are still around. I remember the men coming before the horses, but thinking about it I am not quite sure if that is true, or if it is because I just forgot the correct order.

No matter what the reason I would have told the tale a little differently which would have generated a new variation on the tale. The meaning that I attribute to the tale is that you always need to be careful because the one time that you make a big mistake it could cost you quite dearly. In this case, Humpty Dumpty was not put back together again, but was that because he was too badly damaged, or because the people around him didn’t want to help him? If this tale was written so that the kind could be mocked maybe the reason why Humpty Dumpty wasn’t put back together again was because of the peoples desires to let the king suffer.

“Little Red Riding Hood was going to her grandma’s and here in the wood comes the Big Bad Wolf, and he says what do you have Little Red Riding Hood? And she says something about taking things to the grandma, but in the mean time the Bad Wolf went to the grandma’s first and ate up the grandma and the Wolf was in bed in grandma’s clothes, Little Red Riding Hood didn’t know. But I don’t know what happened to her.”

This is a variation through omission. Midori tried very hard to tell this tale, but this was as close as she got in her interview to completing the story. She seemed very fixated on the fact that the grandma was eaten my the wolf. This might be in part because she is a grandmother herself.

I thought that maybe the fixation on the wolf could be like her concerns with growing old and dieing. She has in the past stated that she does not want to pass away because there is so much that she wants to she me and my sister accomplish before her time is up. I wonder if really she is subconsciously interpreting the wolf eating the grandmother kind of like death coming to get her. This would be a logical explanation for her fixation on the wolf eating the grandmother, and why she really didn’t know what happens to Little Red Riding Hood.

I also found it interesting that her variations were all incomplete in my experiences with these tales. This might be because she has not had a need to retell these tales to anyone, so the details are a little hazy now. This might be a reason for variations in any type of folklore. As people grow and mature so does their folklore and like anything else that it learned, if it isn’t used frequently parts are lost or forgotten. This might also have to do with the fact that we do not necessarily have as much folklore that is told by word of mouth instead we have written tales, so the room for error is much less.

Annotation:

Taylor, Archer. California Folklore Quarterly, vol. 3, No. 4. Western State Folklore Society. October 1944. p. 318.