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A Fairy Tale for Conservatives
Once upon a time, there was this rich guy, we’ll call him Hugo.
Everything was given to Hugo by his parents, including a Rolls Royce so ritzy that the little tree air freshener hanging from the mirror was infused with a perfume created by Coco Chanel just for Hugo’s Rolls.
At the dinner table, Hugo regularly ate squabs covered in edible gold and drank Cognac at $3,000 a bottle. And foie gras was always on the plate, of course. Always with the foie gras. That’s because each bite of those little goose livers not only sent a tiny frisson of pleasure to his refined palate, but also called to his mind a pleasing image: the milling PETA protesters, camped just outside his gilded gates, being tased daily by his private guards.
You get the idea. Hugo’s world was posh and Hugo himself was a bit of a wanker.
But despite eating food fit for a king, Hugo wasn’t satisfied. Duck embryos in the shell? Boring! Live sea urchins? Old hat! Cobra hearts? So last year!
Hugo lay abed at nights yearning for some kind of food that would re-excite his jaded palate. It ate at him so badly that he finally left his mansion in SoCal and set out to find a dish that would surpass anything he had ever eaten before. So he wandered the world for five years, from the cafes of France to the food stalls of Hong Kong and beyond.
One snowy day in Central Asia, our Hugo, cold and hungry, came across a ramshackle hut deep in the woods. He knocked on the door.
A toothless hag opened the door. “What’s a rich guy like you doing way out here?” she asked.
Hugo said, “I’m looking for the best food in the world, something that will surpass anything I’ve ever eaten.”
The hag told him she would show him where that precious food could be found if he would do her a favor: Chop down fifty trees that were blocking her scenic view of a miasmic swamp.
Hugo hacked at those trees until, six months later, exhausted and almost cadaverous by now, he showed up again at the hag’s door. “I’ve cut down your trees. So where’s the best food in the world?
The hag gave Hugo a crust of bread and a cup of vinegary wine.
And damned if that wasn’t the best food in the world, surpassing anything that Hugo had ever eaten.
Published in General
What is given will never be enjoyed as well as what is earned, eh?
Ah, Arahant, you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Let’s not tell the others, though.
Would never think of it.
Gotta watch out for us old hags. We have the power to cloud men’s minds, even those of us who can’t cook and need some trees chopped down.
She, do you remember the bones of this story from somewhere or another? I came across the basic story a few years back, but for the life of me I can’t remember where. I googled the hell out of it but still couldn’t locate it.
Well, @kentforrester, you know what happens when you ask a used car salesman for something–he’s going to sell you a used car, right? Ask a medievalist a question like that, and she’ s going to tell you about the loathly lady. Which, when crossed with Beauty and the Beast, sounds like a variant of your tale. Transformation of beast into prince, or old hag into beautiful young lady, timeless quests (whether for good food, what women desire most, holy artifacts, or anything else), a series of tasks or ordeals set by one party or the other to show the strength and fidelity of the hero or heroine, all those things are all over the place in all those stories.
Sir Gawain and the Lady Ragnell is the tale of Arthur’s capture by a woodland giant. After negotiating with him (perhaps he’d read The Art of the Deal while riding around in the woods), Arthur wins his freedom for a year and a day, provided he comes back with the answer to the riddle, “what do women most desire?”
At some point in the next 366 days, an old hag arrives at Camelot, and says she has the solution to the riddle, but she’ll only give it to the king if his greatest and noblest knight agrees to marry her. Poor Sir Gawain undertakes this horrible ordeal in order to save the king. Of course, when he takes the old bat into the bedchamber and kisses her, she turns into a sweet and beautiful young thing. (Love does strange things to people. A friend told me.)
Turns out this lovely maiden is the daughter of the nasty giant. After some machinations, she gives Gawain the solution to the riddle, enabling Arthur to escape the Giant’s curse, and she (Ragnell) and Gawain live happily ever after.
Your story is somewhat different, and I’ve never heard it put in exactly those terms, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if you’d ended it properly, Hugo and the old crone would have kissed, and
At least, I hope so. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Thanks, She, though the Gawain story doesn’t quite fit, does it? (It’s a good one, though. I remember teaching it, oh, a few hundred years ago.
That pulsing heart is getting on my nerves.
Need more comments.
Update: I fixed it. Don’t want to precipitate a cardiac event in one of my favorite Ricochetti.
About what?
Well, that was my solution for moving the pulsating heart (which you might have missed) up the page and out of the way. It was having a longcat sort of effect on our friend. He couldn’t look away.
Oh, I thought you meant about a good story. If you want the longcat, I have it…
If it weren’t for She and Arahant, my Ricochet life would be just a small, inconsequential thing.
No, no. I wouldn’t want to trouble you. Also, it might send the mods up the wall . . . .
And this is a bad thing?
Only a cat nerd like Arahant would know about longcat. I had to google it.
This longcat is much longer than just longcat. At full size, you have to scroll through 16 pages of picture and pop culture memes.
Value is determined by the buyer’s need, not the need of other people.
Starving and thirsty people (like Hugo at the end) will consume anything to satisfy their cravings. It’s why addicts choose their fix over food and water. Your fairy tale displays classic cult psychology by rendering someone vulnerable and then offering them exactly what they need.
If you stated I must climb all of the steps in the Sears Tower to receive a moldy piece of bread, or offered me a steak dinner for free, I’m not going to enjoy the moldy piece of bread more than the steak dinner.
I remember a story from our grade school reader. A young boy asked an old man how he could get stronger. The old man told him he would share the secret to adding muscle. But first he had to clear a section of his property. The boy toiled all summer and earned the secret.
The parable here was actually the focal question in what most people would consider a totally cotton candy sitcom of the 1960s, “Bewitched”. Early on in the series, producer Danny Arnold and writer Earl Barrett attempted to answer the question, “Why does Samantha choose to live as a mortal with Darrin, when she can just conger up anything her heart desires?”
The set-up for the answer here was Samantha giving Darren the power to control everything in the Stephens’ home while he’s bedridden with an injury, and then discovering Darrin has fallen in love and become addicted with the idea of getting something for nothing, quits his job and just wants to live off magic for the rest of his life.
The denouncement comes when he gives Samantha a six-month wedding anniversary gift he bought before his injury. For a show which is known for having very little substance (and had a very liberal cast and crew for the day), it’s a dead-serious scene, and one of the most conservative messages you’re going to see on a network TV show about the value of work, versus having things simply given to you….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bozDie5Ftmw
This sounds like the Quiltmaker’s Gift.
The story centers on a king who has everything in the entire world, and yet he is unhappy. He finds out there is one thing he doesn’t have – a quilt made by an old woman whose skill is quite magical. She tells him she only gives quilts to those who have nothing, so he spends quite a few years getting rid of all his stuff.
At the end of the story, he is a very happy man, walking up to her cottage with nothing to his name, and she wraps a quilt made just for him around his shoulders.
Stina, I’ve never come across that tale. I like the sound of it.
It is something like mine, isn’t it? I’m still on the hunt for the archetype of my story. I’m sure I read something like it before.