The Do's & Don'ts of Social Distancing Fairy Tales by Erin-Claire

"DO be like Little Red Riding Hood: take essentials to elderly and isolated relatives (but don't bring home any wolves/viruses!)"

Important note: The need for human connection is directly linked to mental health, yet, right now, we need to stay physically apart from each other in order for us all to have our best chance at survival and to protect the most vulnerable. With mental health becoming a serious issue after months of being forced to keep in-person interactions to a bare minimum, and no end to the coronavirus threat yet in sight, it is now being suggested that we replace the term "social distancing" with "physical distancing", to emphasize the importance of maintaining physical precautions while encouraging people to have and create connections in other ways. 

When the pandemic hit and we all went into quarantine in a global effort to slow down the spread of coronavirus, Erin-Claire began making illustrations of fairy tales as both examples and cautionary tales about social distancing. 

It's a very fresh and timely reframing of fairy tales, showing how they can be read and re-read in constantly new ways, helping us to reflect on our current situations, telling tales to remind ourselves of both consequences and possibilities, but above all, that we are all human and struggle with similar things, no matter where we are.

The diversely talented Australian artist, storyteller, and speaker, Erin-Claire Barrow, better known as just Erin-Claire, has been working with fairy tales for quite some time now and is passionate about diversity and representation in stories and empowering people, women especially. Her feminist fairy tales illustration series led to her speaking at #TedXCanberra on this very subject (you can see that HERE) and she has many more stories to tell and feels fairy tales can help us in so many more ways.

The captions below each image are the companions for the illustrations and, in that mysterious and wonderful way of fairy tales, ground us amid a sea of false narratives, and encourage us to get to the heart of issues we're dealing with and face them, head-on.

With "vigilance-fatigue" setting in, sometimes it helps to get the same reminder in a different way to re-energize us into being vigilant and protecting each other again. We think Erin-Claire's #SocialDistancingFairyTales series might help to do just that. 

Enjoy.

DON'T be like the True Sweetheart: Now is not the time to travel the world looking for an ex who forgot about you, attend his wedding ball three nights in a row, win him back then abscond to YOUR castle for yet another wedding party.

DON'T be like the Pied Piper of Hamelin: encouraging large gatherings in public places.

DO be like Rapunzel in her tower: just two visitors and only ever one at a time.

DO be like the witch in Jorinda and Joringel (especially if elderly and vulnerable): if any visitors you don't want come too close, turn them into birds or freeze them in place.

DON'T be like the Twelve Dancing Princesses: sneaking out of your home every night to dance your shoes to pieces with enchanted (or enchanting) princes.

DO be like the Lady from Llan y Fan Fach: if your partner is violent towards you, it is absolutely ok to leave your home to travel somewhere safe or seek help. Also to take all their cows, horses and other livestock.

Fairy Tale Bonus of the Day:

We had to include one of our favorite ink illustrations by Erin-Claire. Though this piece was created for a previous #Inktober (a yearly challenge for artists everywhere), rather than a specific work for her portfolio, it immediately caught our eye and showcases some of the lovely storytelling that comes through in her illustrations. It is titled "Wise Women", and reminded us that though we have to remain socially distant, we can still send magic into the world from where we are and help build a better future.

Thanks, Erin-Claire!

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Fearnot by Erin-Claire

The Six Swans by Erin-Claire

You can find Erin-Claire in these places around the web listed below (click to go to her sites), and continue to follow her #socialdistancingfairytales as she adds any, along with her continuing feminist fairy tales work and possibly even discover some lesser-known tales along the way:

Website - erinclaireillustration.com

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'The Girl Who Spun Gold', And How Rumpelstiltskin Explores Creativity Under Stress

All illustrations in this post by Leo & Diane Dillon for Virginia Hamilton's The Girl Who Spun Gold

This past couple of weeks in the Fairy Tale Newsroom, we've been thinking a lot about the trials of the usually-nameless girl in Rumpelstiltskin, forced to produce gold from the leftover dried stalks of cereal plants, after all the "good" parts have been removed (we call it straw), under fear of death if results - a.k.a. GOLD - aren't produced.

Boy does that feel relevant right now! In a world where we can barely find toilet paper, how are we supposed to produce beautiful and good things with substitute or substandard (or no!) resources? Let alone get in a creative flow when every tickle of the nose making us sneeze has us grabbing our always-within-reach thermometers, to see if we've (gulp!) gotten a fever and been infected?

It's a mad world and we feel like we've gone mad too, and oh-my-goodness-if-one-more-person-says-this-is-the-ideal-time-to learn-a-new-language-we-just-might-scream?! We might as well be trying to spin gold out of empty toilet rolls... Hey Miller's Daughter: we are so feeling your mood right now!

Did you notice the focus of this fairy tale tends to be about naming yet the girl at the center of the conflict, the one under duress, the one without whom the tale wouldn't be, rarely has a name of her own? We'll come back to that... it's important.

The Pressure To Produce "Gold" In A Pandemic
Although we don't have a tyrant threatening to kill us (personally), it's no exaggeration to say that all over the world we are currently living under bizarre conditions with the possibility of illness and death looming, and yet somehow we are required to keep "normal life happening" and, as it turns out, are being pressured to do a whole lot more. As fairy tale friends and professors Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman commented in an interview with Enchanted Conversation Magazine's Kate Wolford, just this week:

"..it's hard to tap into that creativity, to do the things you want to do and make the things you want to make, when your mind is caught up in a stress spiral or too awhirl to settle down. (If you've found yourself actually screaming 'STOP' out loud to your own brain in the last few weeks, know you're not alone!)"If you're scared, if you're stressed, it can feel impossible to do basic tasks, let alone be Super Creative and Accomplished!

Rumpelstiltskin provides some interesting ways to look at survival under pressure, at creativity under pressure, and, depending on how the tale is told, different ways to consider ingenuity, bargaining, and even helpers.

To quote the Carterhaugh Fairy Tale Profs:

"Spinning is, of course, about so much more than transforming fiber into thread."

The CarterhaughSchool for Folklore and the Fantastic course "Rapunzel's Circle: Finding Enchantment Under Quarantine", starting next week, seeks to find ways to help fairy tale folk through the stress and pressures to places of wonder and hope and to help the open the door to creativity despite the circumstances. The pressure to do the most ordinary of things (did you shower today?) is so very great at present, and the call to "be productive, creative, or reinvent yourself NOW, because this is the perfect opportunity and it will NEVER come again", puts even more pressure on top of basic survival. It's not as simple as it first appears; it's a very complex issue, swirling with human need, fear, worry, confusion, motivation, values, and having to remain on guard against misinformation.

Putting The Focus On (And Helping) The Ones In Crisis, Not The Unfamiliar Threat With A Weird Name

Names:

Coronavirus.

COVID-19 (which stands for coronavirus disease appearing in 2019).

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 )

Meanings:

Coronavirus is the family of viruses this new (novel) one belongs to (which include SARS and MERS).

COVID-19 is the official name for the disease.

SARS-CoV-2 is the official name of the virus that causes the disease...

See? We're already stressed out by focusing on the names of these threats, names we barely understand, and currently have no cure for, rather than the people - us! - in crisis who have to deal with the threat, no matter what its name happens to technically be. ("A rose is a rose by any other name...")

It's affecting people EVERYWHERE of all different backgrounds, cultures, social statuses, faiths, countries, and appearances. If anything, this coronavirus is a great equalizer. We are all at risk. And yet when we're stuck at home with our immediate families, we can forget that faces that don't look like ours are dealing with the exact same issues, worries, and stressors. But the wonderful thing is that remembering this can bring us together, even while separated, which is what we truly need to survive this: we need each other, just not in a way that we're used to.

For this post we thought we'd focus on a different representation of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale by the amazing African-American writer Virginia Hamilton, specifically to remind ourselves that this is a worldwide issue, not just a local or national one and that we should be focusing on what we - as people - are doing. 

The wonderful thing about this variant, too, is that instead of focusing on the foreign threat of Rumpelstiltskin, or in this case 'Lit'mahn Bittyun', it focuses on the woman at the center of the crisis, and how she employs her skills and resources at hand to solve the dual dilemma of surviving the king's threat and the magic-man's price.

All the illustrations in this post are by Diane Dillon and Leo Dillon for Hamilton's retelling of Rumpelstiltskin through the Caribbean, or West Indies, lens, titled The Girl Who Spun Gold. In a note in the rear of the book, Hamilton explains there are many cultural variations from different parts of the world (not just Europe) on the tale and that she chose one from the West Indies for her retelling. (Unfortunately, we have not been able to track down a traditional text or recording of the West Indies variant.) While we are keen to find that West Indies source, in the meantime, this book does a wonderful job of shifting our usual - sometimes too familiar - perspective on the tale, and makes us reconsider it in a different light. Gone is the child-snatching threat and instead the story focuses on the girl, who is given a name: 

Meet Quashiba, a beautiful, innocent girl who is about to be made a queen, although she is not a princess. No, she is merely a peasant girl, busy spinning the plainest thread on a day when the king comes riding up to her.“Oh, great Big King,” says her mama, hoping to catch the king’s attention, “my daughter is spinning a whole field of finest golden thread to make cloth for his Highest.”What can Quashiba do about her mama’s terrible lie? For the king decides to marry her, and in a year, he will padlock her in a room and demand that she spin and weave him three whole rooms of golden things.So begins the dramatic, fascinating fairy tale about Quashiba and the tiny, sinister creature who agrees to save her by spinning gold on one condition.During his three nights of spinning and weaving, she has three chances to guess his whole name. If she fails, he will make her tiny and carry her off.What will Quashiba do? (From Virginia Hamilton's website)

For those interested in cultural variations on well-known tales, a discussion of Virginia Hamilton's adaptation and the accompanying illustrations in relation to authentic West Indies cultural traditions and representation is included in the book Fairy Tales with a Black Consciousness: Essays on Adaptations of Familiar Stories (by Vivian Yenika-Agbaw, Ruth McKoy Lowery, et al). After a discussion of language, story rhythm, names, customs, hierarchy, food, and more, the writers concluded this book was a fair cultural representation "warts and all".

Picture of text excerpt from Fairy Tales with a Black Consciousness

But let's return to the main question: how does Rumpelstiltskin explore creativity under stress (or duress!)?

As already mentioned, not only are there many variants of Rumpelstiltskin, but there are as many ways to tell this tale as there are tellers, and everyone will focus on different things. That principle works very well in seeing how Rumpelstiltskin explores stress too. There is a known relationship between stress and creativity but it's a complex one. While many forms of stress do stifle - even ruin - creativity, others can enhance it, and a lot of "which stress has which effect", depends on the point of view of the person. If your goals have true personal meaning to you, (and that doesn't tend to include repetitive tasks or goals you feel are necessary, like cleaning EVERYTHING, EVERY DAY right now!) then that meaning kindles creativity.

"When people reach goals they consider meaningful, Amabile writes in her book, they "feel good, grow their positive self-efficacy," and "get even more revved up to tackle the next job."The relationship between stress and creativity here depends on how you perceive the stress you're under at any given time. Is it connected to a goal you find meaningful? Does it push you to accomplish this goal? If so, that little dose of stress may be helping you think outside the box.." (Teresa Amabile, from her book The Progress Principle)

The truth, though, is that even a "good stressor" can ruin creativity if it happens in excess - something that is more likely to happen in a pandemic/ quarantine/ isolation/ social distancing situation than it would under normal circumstances because these stakes are high... and this is where it's important to know what your limitations are. When to compromise, when to rest and when to accept help (even if it's not ideal) are all very important strategies for both surviving and getting that creativity flowing. Like the heroine in Rumpelstiltskin, sometimes you are out of options and need to acknowledge this task is not something you can do - or at least something that requires irregular help. What the ABC series, Once Upon A Time said continuously is true, though: "Magic always comes with a price..." and that's something that should be taken into consideration. Actions have consequences, even in dire circumstances when the main goal is just survival, and decisions made under these conditions sometimes compromise the result you wanted, possibly even affect the future. Sometimes that means accepting help and not being able to take full credit for a work that's important to you. Sometimes it means paying someone, or bartering a precious resource you have for services. The result of the trade-off is not always immediately apparent and it may change the course of your plans, or the future you had envisioned. Rumpelstiltskin can remind us of that too. 

But not all Rumpelstiltskin variants have helpers who result in negative fallout! Sometimes they are friends in disguise. Sometimes these helpers will become like family. Sometimes the price is that your life will never be the same - and that's a good thing!

We should also point out that the tale underlines fortitude, not giving up, thinking outside the box, adapting to a situation and then, if the endgame is something you are not happy with, (eg. still having to give up your baby!, or, in this case, not wanting to become a teensy person and carried away) that using your wits, using the resources you have now, and again accepting help (though notice this time it's in a different way in the tale the second crisis around) - all these aspects point toward the possibility of having a say in our destinies, no matter what authorities, situations and complications occur. 

We could go on for MUCH longer discussing pertinent parallels and themes that we could consider relevant to today's pandemic crisis but instead, we'll let you figure out how this fairy tale can be a good reference for your own situation, and, hopefully, make you aware of some choices you perhaps didn't realize you had, so that even now, under quarantine, instead of waiting in limbo, you are able to live your best life and look forward to the future.

Quick Reminder: We feel fortunate to help announce the appearance of a benevolent magical helper for all fairy tale and folklore folk, who need "something" to help them get through this time. Carterhaugh's School of Folklore and the Fantastic has created a custom-made-for-this-pandemic-crisis course "Rapunzel's Circle" and it begins MONDAY. Rather than focusing on achievements, assignments and projects, which can be yet another stress, this course is designed to help you find a safe and calm space, to build hope, discover community and help you dip your toe into some creativity if you feel up for it - all with no pressure, obligation or commitment. There is no way to fail this course and you are welcome to be as involved as you want to be. 

Sign up for this wonderfully tailored resource and access this benevolent magical help now!

#Folktaleweek Picks of Day 1: "Home"

This week is a week of opportunity for fairy tale and folktale people - to find new tales, tales new to them or new takes on tales they know - as well as a fantastic way to find fresh artists. As we wrote in an earlier post, artists from all over the world are posting their take on a prompt with a folktale theme, all week this week.

Search for #folktaleweek and #folktaleweek2019 - some folks are only using one or the other, though most people are tagging their entries with both hashtags to be more easily found. (Instagram is the main posting space.) If you like any of these, do go and find them on Instagram and let them know. Every participant is trying to stretch themselves and greatly appreciates the encouragement.

Though we are not yet certain if we will have time, we will attempt to share some standouts from every day that are bring posted. There are HUNDREDS though! So there's always a chance we've missed a few, or haven't had time to review all the entries, but this is more about sharing the incredible variety and creativity being created this week, specifically on folktales and fairy tales, so we hope you will go and have a look at the hashtags yourself. We chose for different styles, unusual scenes of known tales and most often, lesser-known tales beautifully done.

Today's prompt is HOME.

Note: As far as fairy tale and folklore trends, apart from the usual Red Riding Hood, Golilocks and Hansel & Gretel, we noticed there were a LOT of Baba Yaga and her chicken house interpretations, and a LOT of selkie women heading 'home' too. 

Enjoy - credits, and any pertinent notes, are below each image.

IG @shellsnroses

Artist comment: Day 1: Home. -Little mounds of earth are the homes of the fair-folk.

IG @laia.pampols

Artist comment: Day 1: Home 🏠 - ‘The wolf and the seven little kids’ was my favorite tale when I was a child.

IG @shelley_laslo

Artist comment: I chose to go with my first association with the word “Home”- the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In it, curious Goldilocks trespasses into the home of the Bear family, how rude!
I decided to treat this piece as a double spread, as I wanted to practice creative compositions in my visual storytelling.

IG @theuglymugwort

Artist comment: This is my interpretation of the Claddagh, a well-known Irish symbol usually in the form of a ring. The Claddagh goes back several hundred years and it’s said to have originated in a fishing village in Galway. Story has it that a silversmith, named Richard Joyce, was captured and enslaved to a Moorish goldsmith, sometime in the 17th century. While in captivity, he fashioned a ring with the symbols of the heart for love, the hands for friendship and the crown for loyalty. After 14 years, Joyce was finally released and was able to return home to Galway where he gave the ring to his long-lost love and was married. ⁣

IG @elitsa_nn

Artist comment: “A samovila does not a home make” is said of the samovili, nymph-like creatures in Bulgarian folklore. If you steal their shirt (red here, white traditionally), it renders them unable to fly and allows you to take one as a wife. In one fairy tale a man who did this hid the samovila's shirt by walling it in the house walls. After years of marriage the samovila sees a single thread sticking out, and tugs on it, retrieving her shirt and (thanks to her superhuman strength) destroys the home she has been confined to.

IG @alioliart

Artist comment: “On its 52 mile (8,5 Scandinavian mile) long way from The Rottnen Lake to the sea, The Ronneby River squishes itself through a geological cleft only 1,5 metres wide. The cleft is very narrow, but is said to have a depth of at least 17 - 18 metres.”

Woo I’m joining #folktaleweek2019 !! Through this challenge I’m going to pay homage to Sweden, my home, through Swedish folktales and fairytales. This first illustration is based on a local tale, in fact the place where this story takes place is just a short walk from my house, I’ve been there many times!
Hope you like this ❤️it was a bit hard translating the story correctly from the original Swedish one. 🙏
Also, I chose to use the border around the picture to illustrate the story as well, so you can read it visually too. 😊

IG @jimbradshaw

Artist comment: The Heceta Head lighthouse is said to be haunted by the ghost of a mother whose baby daughter fell to her death from the cliff upon which it stands. I'm guessing this was her home. The apparition which reportedly has been seen by many has been dubbed “The Gray Lady.” Man, most of the folktales I've been researching are tragic. I'm wanting to lighten these up a little and can't resist adding some of my regular doodle characters which I plan on doing throughout this challenge. They would be sorely hurt if I left them out.

IG @ashley_mckee

Artist comment: I’ve chosen to focus on Appalachian tales, namely Jack Tales. For “home” I chose Jack and the Northwest Wind. The wind blew so hard and cold that it was coming through the cracks in the walls of the shack jack lived in with his mother. He set out on a quest to stop that old wind, but a series of fortunate events changed his luck, allowing him to provide his mother with food, wood for heat, and golden eggs. He forgot all about stopping the wind that blew fiercely outside, finally cozy and content at home.

IG @papersilhouette

Artist comment: I chose the Korean folktale, The Heavenly Maiden and the Woodcutter 선녀와 나무꾼

IG @sash_d_art

Artist comment: The first prompt is "home" and here you can see Baba-yaga's izbushka (or little peasant house) on chicken legs. Do you know that:

• Baba-yaga is the most popular character of Russian fairy tales;
• She is rumoured to eat little children though she hasn't actually eaten a single one in fairy tales;
• She usually helps young and beautiful men and women;
• She gets along well with animals. In different tales she has got cats, mice, geese-swans, a giant frog and even a herd of especially swift and fierce horses;
• She lives on the edge of the forest which signifies her "border" status: she is situated between life and death, between the human and spiritual worlds. It's the same situation with her "bone" leg;
• She wields a bunch of magical artefacts: a mortar and a broom for flying, a ball of yarn which can show you the way through the forest to some unusual places, a saucer with a golden apple which can show you everything you want etc.;
• She's got a family! In some tales there are three Baba-yagas, three weird sisters, and sometimes she's got a daughter who is the apple of her eye.

IG @sarahmccollillustration

Artist comment: The folktale i will be illustrating this week is a Norwegian story called “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”. Day 1: (leaving) home!

IG @chaosego

Artist comment: N/A

IG @lalunadraw

Artist comment: Day 1-Home -My story is “House of Baba Yaga” - The legend is about a Witch from the Woods. She is scary and ugly, and eats children. The scariest part about her is that she lives in a house that walks on chicken legs, she uses her walking house to chase after any children she finds so she can catch them, so she can eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Tasty.

IG @madebysmitty

Artist comment: For prompt number 1 HOME, I’ve illustrated, embroidered, and hand-stitched these wee dolls, whose folktale embodies the essence of home for me. Home is a place where everything is not too hot, not too cold, not too hard, and not too soft. Everything is just right. .

I’ve always felt somewhat disconcerted by this flaxen-haired little villain who eats all the bears’ food, breaks their belongings and leaves without offering recompense or apology. Has anyone else ever wondered if this tale was somewhat prescient for how we humans treat the homes of animals today?

IG @sarahjdocker

Artist comment: Today’s prompt was ‘Home’. The House of Wind is an old Indian folktale about greed, jealousy and what happens when you let it get the better of you. In this story a young girl loses one of her only dresses to the wind, and follows it to a palace, home to the Mother of Wind. She is taken through halls of food, silver and gold yet takes nothing from the Mother of Wind but her clothing, which had been put inside a box, in a room with lots of other boxes filled with silver and gold. The girl chooses the lightest box wanting only her dress, and takes it home. She gets home to unfold her clothing to find a bar of gold inside the box too, a gift from Mother of Wind for taking only what belonged to her. Her jealous neighbour has been watching all of this happen, and decides to deliberately throw her own clothes to the Wind, a ploy in hopes of receiving gold at the House of Wind too. She follows the wind to the palace and eats all of the food, wasting lots, then takes away the biggest, heaviest box hoping that it is full of gold and silver. On returning home, the jealous neighbour opens it and finds her clothes, but no gold. Instead, bags and bags of sand. She walked all that way carrying a big heavy box for nothing! 

IG @birnam_wood

Artist comment: Prompt 1 - HOME "Home" - both my home, and the home of the Black Swine of Hampstead. Before London was really even a city, Hampstead was a rural village. A butcher there was preparing to slaughter a pregnant sow when the creature slipped its stall and escaped into the sewers; once safely hidden, she reared her young on the scraps and garbage swept into the sewers they now called home. From there, successive generations grew bigger and wilder and meaner in the sewers of London, where they remain to this day, bristly and stinking and half-mad with the darkness. They linger there still, unable to traverse the rapid flow of the subterranean River Fleet and leave their dank underground home. Should they learn how to broach the current, though, it's said that they'll storm the streets of Hampstead, rampage through Holloway, and tear Highgate Archway to the ground. This one owes more than a little to @neilhimself, whose efforts to warn the world about the Black Swine are considered to be fiction, and will presumably be held as such until the creatures learn to swim.

Artist comment: today’s theme is home. After all these years, this is the first time I’ve drawn Baba Yaga’s magical cabin.

IG @kaleigh.ford

Artist comment: Day one: Home. This one is from East of the Sun and West of the Moon, which was one I hadn’t heard of but really enjoyed!

IG @gunns_designs

Artist comment: Of course I’ll be sticking with the wildlife theme as always 👌🏻 So, first up is this piece inspired by ‘The Nightingale’ 🌿 #FolktaleWeek2019 A literary fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Anderson about an emperor who prefers the tinkling of a bejeweled mechanical bird to the song of a real nightingale. When the Emperor is near death, the nightingale's song restores his health. I’ve used oriental inspiration for the patterns and colour palette.

IG @toriboard

Artist comment: I like the colours and the concept but I’m not keen on the composition and would likely restart if I had time, probably make the den more like a human house, especially as part of the song says “cut up the goose with a fork and a knife” indicating a more anthropomorphic image.
I decided to choose a folk song to illustrate, called “the fox”. I remember being fascinated with this song when I had it on cassette as a child :) “The Fox"
The Fox went out on a chilly night/ He prayed for the moon to give him light/ For he had many a mile to go that night/ Before he reached the town-o, town-o, town-o/ He had many a mile to go that night/ Before he reached the town-o/ He ran till he came to the farmers pen/ The ducks and the geese were kept therein/ He said a couple of you are gonna grease my chin/ Before I leave this town-o, town-o, town-o/ A couple of you are gonna grease my chin/ Before I leave this town-o/ He grabbed the great goose by the neck/ He threw a duck across his back/ And he didn't mind the quack, quack/ And the legs all danglin' down-o, down-o, down-o/ He didn't mind the quack, quack/ And the legs all danglin' down-o/ Well the old gray Woman jumped out of bed/ Out of the window she popped her head/ Cryin' John, John the great goose is gone/ The Fox is on the town-o, town-o, town-o/ John, John the great goose is gone/ And the Fox is on the town-o/ He ran till he came to his nice warm den/ And there were the little ones 8, 9, 10/ Sayin' Daddy, Daddy better go back again/ It must be a mighty fine town-o, town-o, town-o/ Daddy, Daddy go back again/ For it must be a mighty fine town-o/ The Fox and his Wife, without any strife/ They cut up the goose with a fork and a knife/ And they never had such a supper in their life/ And the little ones chewed on the bones-o, bones-o, bones-o/ They never had such a supper in their life/ And the little ones chewed on the bones’

IG @joanieyoungman

Artist comment: Day 1: Home - For today’s prompt I chose the Irish folktale, “The House in the Lake.” It’s about a fisherman and his son who live in this hut that is held way up high on stilts in the middle of a lake. The son is sitting out on the platform when an otter swims over and tosses him a fish. He feels bad for the fish and decides to give it a chance, so he throws it back into the water (one reason I liked the story so much- he didn’t follow his dad’s fisherman habit and showed compassion for the fish 🙃🐟) Anyway, this happens a second time the following night-the otter brings him the same fish. Again he saves the fish, but this time when the fish hits the water, it turns into a beautiful swan. - There is more to the story after this, but that’s what I’ve illustrated for today’s folktale prompt, so I will leave it at that.

IG @gizemgozdeucar

Artist comment: #Folktaleweek first prompt: #Home 🏠 I have written my very own fairytale with hidden meanings and metaphors 😍 You can find out what happens next through #folktaleweek2019😊 🐤Once upon a time there lived a man, a lonely man and his bird, who wandered the world carrying a bird house hanging from his neck. He walked from town to town, searching for something he had yet to understand. "Why do you carry this thing around?" "Just put it aside for a while and rest, won't you?" cried the people he encountered. But he never did, he never rested. He never parted from them, not even in sleep. He carried it everywhere, all the time...

IG @nikolina_novosel_nezmah

Artist comment: Folktaleweek 2019 day one - home of Baba Jaga

IG @christinefaustillustration

Artist comment: This is a combination of my picture book style and an older pleinair painting. It's inspired by "Jorinde and Joringel", where an old witch divides young lovers by turning the girls into birds.

IG @mori_raito

Artist comment: Long way home and the first theme for #folktaleweek challenge.

IG @carolinebonnemuller

Artist comment: Day 1: Home - I illustrated ‘going home’ and I used the beautiful story ‘The company of Elves’ from Scotland. I found this story in the great book; The Lost Fairy tales, written by Isabel Otter and illustrated by Ana Sender, published by @caterpillar_books For many Sunday mornings I was reading these magical stories to my son.

IG @bryonycrane

Artist comment: My little offering for #folktaleweek Day 1: HOME. I chose the Brothers Grimm's 'The Mouse, the Bird & The Sausage' 🐀🐦🌭It tells the tale of a bird living in perfect harmony with his little mouse and sausagey friends, until one day he meets another bird who boasts about his own life and implies that Mr. Bird shouldn't be happy with his own. The seed of doubt was sown, so bird gets cross and makes everyone switch up their roles at home, at which point their harmonious life gets royally buggered up and - spoiler alert - the sausage gets eaten by a dog, and the mouse, (who isn't as skilled, nor tasty, a cook as sausage was!) gets accidentally boiled alive. Oops. After his friends' untimely demise, bird freaks out and ends up setting the house on fire before accidentally drowning while trying to fetch water from the well to put it out 🔥. "He who is too well off is always longing for something new / whoever is too well off always wants to try something different", which roughly translates to 'dont ruin a good thing, because the grass isn't always greener'.

IG @lbleckster

Artist comment: Linda Bleck's #folktaleweek piece inspired by the Hawaiian tale "King of the Sharks".

IG @aprilhartmanncreation

Artist comment: Folktale Week prompt “home.” Fossegrim is a spirit who makes his home in waterfalls, and plays the fiddle day and night. A creature of Scandinavian folklore, Fossegrim are always male and they can charm any female with their enchanting looks and music. “The sounds of forest, wind and water play over his fiddle strings” and when charmed, the females are almost always drowned.

IG @adelaydeart

Artist comment: I'm going to do a little story of Robin Hood! Today's prompt is home, so here is Robin Hood and Little John in their famous Oak tree home.

IG @peggysillustration

Artist comment: N/A

IG @kathwaxman

Artist comment: Folktale Week 2019 Prompt 1: House - Aesops Fable, Procreate - When Tortoise decides to skip Jupiter’s wedding because he’d rather stay in his cozy home, Jupiter issues a decree that Tortoise will always carry his home on his back to punish him for his rudeness. I get a sense Tortoise thinks he hit the jackpot ;).

IG @coalrye

Artist comment: Day 1 - Home. Lithuanian folk tale ‘Eglė the Queen of Grass Snakes’, very tragic story.

It’s about girl Eglė who was married King of snakes. He’s a handsome one, but turns to a serpent for others. The marriage was happy but Eglė’s relatives didn’t think so. She shouldn’t come back home.

IG @taranealarts

Artist comment: Day 1 of #folktaleweek is #home and my favorite home of lore ever if the chicken leg hit of babayaga. I was always intrigued by Her stories growing up, but not truly afraid of her so much as of her house — roaming the woods autonomously on scaly chicken legs, to capture I’ll-behaves children, or disappear! There are many stories of babayaga and I liked the ones where she behaved unpredictably and had these bodiless magic hands to help her.

IG @blikstjinder_illustration

Artist comment: “The best way to keep themselves warm at HOME was with a blanket made out of human hair” - Day 1 : HOME 🏡 - Doing research for this challenge I found out that the small village I live in is blessed with a werewolf folktale. The tale itself wasn’t that exciting but the inspiration was there to write a tale of my own! I hope you’ll enjoy it!

IG @olenka.illustrates

Artist comment: Day One: For the first prompt I chose the Celtic Folktale which called “Horned Women”. - It’s an old story about a woman who protected her house and family from 12 evil witches. Scary fact: first witch had one horn on her forehead, the second witch had two hornes and so on. So the last twelfths witch had twelve hornes on her head! - I decided not to draw all of that hornes but instead I did that little white moons which in celtic mythology interpret as hornes.

IG @wandatikklaar

Artist comment: The Plant Maiden- One morning a little old woman goes out to milk her five cows. On the way to the field she finds a five- sprouted herb, which she takes home and puts on her pillow. Then she goes back to milk the cows. Suddenly, she hears the sound of scissors falling and a tambourine clanging. The woman rushes HOME to find “a maiden with eyes of chalcedony and lips of dark stone, with a face of light colored stone and with eyebrows like two dark sables...her body was visible through her dress, her bones were visible through her body; her nerves spreading this way and that, like mercury, were visible through her bones. The plant had become this maiden of indescribable beauty. “ Source: Favorite Folktales From Around The World edited by Jane Yolen.

IG @natelledrawsstuff

Artist comment: The first prompt is HOME. For this, I chose part of the story of The Monkey King, who on his misadventures, was imprisoned by Buddha.🐒Buddha did this by tricking Monkey to jump into his palm, where it then magically turned into a mountain, enveloping Monkey in the process. The mountain became Monkey's prison home for 500 years. 😬🙈 A bit of a morbid start to Folktale Week but I promise it will get more lighthearted (somewhat 🤣) as we go along!

IG @misheru_does_art

Artist comment: Day 1: Home - An ANSISIT is a magical being known amongst the Ilokanos of the northern Philippines, who is typically depicted as an old man living in mysterious earth mounds like anthills or caves. He owned the land underground and in the afternoons would roam below the huts or sleep on anthills. He did not like farmers working with tractors for fear of these machines destroying his home. He also disliked sweeping of floors in the afternoons and when offended, he would would cause the offender discomfort like bruising or fevers. - This being is also known in other parts of the country only named differently. In Tagalog, he is known as “Nuno/Matanda sa punso” or literally old man on a mound. In other parts a similar creature transforms into a piglet and causes misdemeanor amongst enemies.

IG @olya_fu

Artist comment: The Raven King. 

IG @emilyhouse.design

Artist comment: Here's my illustration for the 'Home' prompt inspired by the English folktale, Mr & Mrs Vinegar.

IG @chezubo

Artist comment: Folktaleweek 01: Home - Let’s begin Folktaleweek with a story from my Hometown, Hamburg. „Die Hand des Himmels“ („The Hand of Heaven“) - In Blankenese lived an unlucky fisherman. His family was starving and desperate as he was, the fisher went out to sea although a huge storm was coming up. It was worth the risk! Every time he cast the net, it was immediately filled with fish until his yawl couldn’t carry any more. „One last time...“ the fisher thought, and as he pulled the stuffed net on board, a peal of thunder shook the sky. A white, dead hand was laying on the haul and the fisherman, scared to death, set sail and rushed back home. The hand was hung up in the church of Nienstedten, and did not rot for a weirdly long time. At long last it fell down, was burned to ashes and made into a wafer*. The fisherman however, lived a rich and prosperous life, protected by the Hand of Heaven, so the people say. - *the story says the host/wafer is still exhibited in the church, but I couldn’t find further information about that.

IG @rimasvaleikis

Artist comment: Influencer meets his target audience. #kolobok 

IG @sis.bobekova

Artist comment: N/A

IG @victoria_portraits

Artist comment: Day 1: Home 🏡This is the house that Jack built

IG @maxineleemackie

Artist comment: The Girl Who Married A Crow. The #artprompt is #home - the illustration shows the couple returning home. It's an adaptation of a #nativeamerican - Folk tale, and my first attempt at making #digitalart with #procreate (big learning curve). 

IG @oprunenco

Artist comment: My first folktales week. First day secret prompt,, Home " and story ,, Three piglets"

IG @liloobox

Artist comment: Day #1 'Home'. After she finished her chores, the old man's daughter picked the smallest, most ugly looking chest from Saint Sunday's attic and headed home... To be continued tomorrow 🍊...

- This is and old Romanian folktale about two step daughters that I've heard many times in my childhood. To find out the moral of the story keep an eye on my posts for the next 6days🤗

IG @bagu_illustration

Artist comment: First folktale, Home! - #folktaleweek #folktaleweek2019  #home  #goldilocks  #goldilocksandthethreebears

IG @liloobox

TOMORROW'S PROMPT IS SECRET.