Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 15:30:54 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] banditti

Tomorow's when we're supposed to start discussing "American Fairy Tales."
I've been gradually re-reading the Tales, with a good deal of enjoyment. In
advance of discussing the AFT as such, though -- it occurred to me to try
looking up stuff about Italian operatic bandits (a trio of such being the
title characters in the opening story, "The Box of Robbers"), and I ran
across some interesting background. I had an impression that there were lots
of operas/operettas featuring Italian bandits, and that may be the case, but
what I found in an Internet search was two fairly famous examples, Verdi's
opera "I Masnadieri" (based on Schiller's play "Die Rauber," The Robbers)
written in Italian although set in Germany, and Jacques Offenbach's "Les
Brigands," written in French but set in Italy. "Les Brigands" was
translated/adapted into an English version by -- W.S. Gilbert. Which perhaps
explains why Baum's banditti go about on "catlike tread," as did Gilbert's
own "Pirates of Penzance." Gilbert, by the way, was actually captured and
held for ransom by bandits at the age of 2, when his parents were traveling in Italy.
(They paid the ransom him, and the bandits returned him.)

Ruth Berman

Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 15:46:59 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] banditti p.s.

Oh, and another set of Italian bandits -- Gilbert also had a chorus of
bandits in his operetta, "The Mountebanks" (music by Alfred Cellier in
1892 -- this was before Gilbert broke up entirely with Sullivan -- "Utopia 
Limited" came out the following year in 1893 -- but they were having
problems getting along and looking for other collaborators) is set in
Sicily. It's one of Gilbert's many attempts to write an operetta around the
idea of a magic pill or potion that turns people into another form. The
mountebank's potion, in this case, transforms people into what they look
like, and as the bandits are disguised as monks, they get turned into real
monks. Sullivan could never stand this gimmick (although one of the first
G&S operettas, "The Sorcereror," involves a love potion which is more or
less another version of it). Sullivan's refusal to write more versions of
the pill-shtick led to one of the most popular G&S operettas, "The Yeoman of
the Guard" (Gilbert accommodated him with a no-transformations-and-no-magic,
semi-tragic plot), but it was also one of the factors in the break-up of the
partnership.

I would suspect that both "The Mountebanks" and "The Brigands" involved the
elaborate, brightly-colored, ribbon bedecked costumes Baum supplies to his
Robbers.

Ruth Berman

Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 15:26:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: Scott Hutchins <scottandrewhutchins at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] banditti p.s.

There are also "Banditti" in Shakespeare's Timon of Athens.

Ruth Berman <berma005 at umn.edu> wrote:  Oh, and another set of
Italian bandits -- Gilbert also had a chorus of
bandits in his operetta, "The Mountebanks" (music by Alfred Cellier in
1892 -- this was before Gilbert broke up entirely with Sullivan -- "Utopia 
Limited" came out the following year in 1893 -- but they were having
problems getting along and looking for other collaborators) is set in
Sicily. It's one of Gilbert's many attempts to write an operetta around the
idea of a magic pill or potion that turns people into another form. The
mountebank's potion, in this case, transforms people into what they look
like, and as the bandits are disguised as monks, they get turned into real
monks. Sullivan could never stand this gimmick (although one of the first
G&S operettas, "The Sorcereror," involves a love potion which is more or
less another version of it). Sullivan's refusal to write more versions of
the pill-shtick led to one of the most popular G&S operettas, "The Yeoman of
the Guard" (Gilbert accommodated him with a no-transformations-and-no-magic,
semi-tragic plot), but it was also one of the factors in the break-up of the
partnership.

I would suspect that both "The Mountebanks" and "The Brigands" involved the
elaborate, brightly-colored, ribbon bedecked costumes Baum supplies to his
Robbers.

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 15:36:57 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] "The Box of Robbers"

Martin Gardner, in his introduction to the Dover reprint of "American Fairy
Tales," comments that this book doesn't seem to have appealed much to
children -- certainly not as much as Baum's Oz books, and probably not as
much as his other full-length fairytales. He's even inclined to think that
"fantasy is at its best when it takes place in a far-off region or long ago"
(although he admits some exceptions, such as "Mary Poppins"). I suspect this
generalization would not hold generally -- other important exceptions to it
come to mind, such as George MacDonald's "At the Back of the North Wind,"
and most of E. Nesbit's books.

But I suspect that it's easier to plot a fantasy set elsewhere (or
elsewhen), because with a fantasy set here-and-now there's the question of
why the existence of actual magic hasn't resulted in a world drastically
different from ours. (J.K. Rowling and Diana Wynne Jones tend to set their
fantasy stories in a here-and-now which *is* drastically different from
ours, most often explicitly an alternate-universe with Jones and apparently
that with Rowling, although it could be argued that it's not drastically
different, so far as we muggles would know, since the witches and wizards
keep themselves so secret.)

Gardner quotes James Thurber and Russel Nye as examples of the reaction that
(as Nye puts it) "the heart goes out of the story" when Martha in "The Box
of Robbers" tells the robbers they are "on Prairie Avenue, in Chicago."
Gardner argues that to some extent the stories in the collection are more
likely to appeal to adult readers, with the political and social satire of,
for example, having Martha's mother away at the Women's Anti-Gambling League
card party, or having Martha suggest to the robbers that there aren't many
jobs nowadays for bandits, but they might get work at the gas company or
become politicians. (That one seems to hit home maybe even more strongly now
than then!) These jokes are likely to go over a child's head. Some are more
likely to get picked up by children, too, as Gardner comments. I wonder,
too, if children would get a special amusement out of the aplomb Baum's
children typically bring to their fantastical problems -- Martha is rather
like Dorothy in her quiet acceptance of impossibilities and calm resolve to
try to work things out. I suspect both adults and children enjoy Martha's
implausibly-detailed-ingenuity when she tells the robbers that there are not
just policement at the door, but 112 of them. I don't know of examples of
children's reactions to the book, though. (I first read it as an adult.)

Anyhow, I'm enjoying reading it a good deal now. I miss the appeal of the
world-building Baum did with his longer fantasies, although to some extent
it's replaced by an invasion of Baum's Oz-world into his America, when Ryls
and Knooks show up, as they do in "The Enchanted Types" and "The Dummy that
Lived." (I don't think I've run across any definite indication of whether he
was writing "Santa Claus," which came out the following year, and had 
already invented Ryls and Knooks when he put them into some of these short
stories, or if he came up with them casually for the short stories and then
elaborated them for the longer book, but I suspect he was already writing
"Santa Claus," even though the short stories came out first.)

I think maybe it'd be easier to discuss the stories one at a time, though,
so I'll pause here.

Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 14:17:08 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] the glass dog

The second story in "AFT" is "The Glass Dog." Glass is popular in
traditional fairy tales as an appropriate substance for magic, as in
Cinderella's glass slippers (apparently really glass, in spite of the
suggestion often made of a confusion between verre/glass and vair/fur), the
glass mountain, looking glasses that speak, etc. Martin Gardner comments in
the intro that a glass dog looks forward to the glass cat in "Patchwork
Girl." Bungle is actually a character, with a personality, though, whle the
Glass Dog is only an ingenious McGuffin. Did Baum have a fondness for pink
glassware? Bungle has her pink brains she's so proud of, and the dog is
entirely pink. (Not to mention the non-glass pink cat, Eureka.) Baum turns
the image of the glass dog into a comically unhappy-ever-after ending, as
the unlucky glassblower finally succeeds in winning the horrible heiress,
and the narrative summing up explains that because of her jealousy the
heiress led him "a dog's life." The reclusive wizard rather reminds me of
the Lonesome Duck in "Magic," and also of Brian Attebery's suggestion that
the Duck is something of a self-portrait of Baum in at least occasional
moods, wanting to be left alone to enjoy his creative powers without the
bother of sharing them with others. Certainly Baum must have had days like
this "accomplished wizard" when he wished that the "iceman, the milkman, the
baker's boy, the laundryman and the peanut woman" would not come to his door
trying to sell things just when he was having a good time reading or
stirring up a spell. The Wizard is the only one in this story who manages a
happy ending for himself (well, maybe the dog is happy to be restored to
guard duty at the wizard's door), leaving the narrator to throw up his hands
at the possibility of learning anything from this fable: "I suppose [the
Glass Dog' is there yet, and am rather sorry, for I should like to consult
the wizard about the moral to this story."

The moral, I suppose, might be: Let sleeping wizards lie.

Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 19:12:57 -0400 (GMT-04:00)
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: banditti

I find it telling that AMERICAN FAIRY TALES (the first edition, and presumably
the newspaper publications) repeatedly renders one of the bandits' names as
"Lugui." In one case it's "Luigi," which we can presume was
what Baum meant since he gave the other banditti common Italian names.

In the manuscript for MAGIC OF OZ, Baum spelled the French "fete" as
"fete". I wouldn't be surprised if the accent marks don't come
through to everyone, but suffice it to say he was throwing in accent marks with
no understanding of what they usually signified, only a memory that French
people liked to use them.

It seems clear that Baum's attitude toward the subtleties of foreign languages
was as casual as his concern for consistency in other areas.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

   Musings about some of my favorite
   fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 19:57:57 -0400 (GMT-04:00)
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: AMERICAN FAIRY TALES

Ruth Berman wrote:
>Martin Gardner, in his introduction to the Dover reprint of "American Fairy
>Tales," comments that this book doesn't seem to have appealed much to
>children -- certainly not as much as Baum's Oz books, and probably not as
>much as his other full-length fairytales. He's even inclined to think that
>"fantasy is at its best when it takes place in a far-off region or long ago"
>(although he admits some exceptions, such as "Mary Poppins"). I suspect this
>generalization would not hold generally -- other important exceptions to it 
>come to mind, such as George MacDonald's "At the Back of the North Wind,"
>and most of E. Nesbit's books.

I thought this was one of the most short-sighted comments in Gardner's Dover
introductions, not only because it shows ignorance of Baum's English
contemporary E. Nesbit, but also because it misses the charm of these stories,
and it misses how Baum played in the same mode in two novels that stayed in
print a long time: JOHN DOUGH and SKY ISLAND.

As in "The Dummy That Lived" and "The Enchanted Types,"
JOHN DOUGH begins with a shop display being brought to life in a busy American
city. (Other Baum characters said to be inspired by shop displays:
Wart-on-the-Nose in JOHN DOUGH and the Tin Woodman.)

SKY ISLAND begins with a child finding a
magical heirloom in the family attic, just like "The Box of Robbers."
SEA FAIRIES also had magic starting very close to the U.S. of A. instead of in
distant lands.

I think fantasies set in fairylands (or their dimensional, planetary, or other
equivalents) allow for more and deeper magical events than those set in the world
readers know. But that still leaves plenty of room for magical happenings. Baum
had his immortals remain invisible most of the time, as Father Time describes,
and his magicians tend to be locked up in their tenement apartments pursuing
their researches. Even the banditti are still upstairs in that trunk, we can
assume. Baum *doesn't* make magic an intrusion into a non-magical world, even
though its effects might be surprising and unwelcome. Rather, he portrays the
supernatural as part of the natural world we know.

>Gardner argues that to some extent the stories in the collection are more
>likely to appeal to adult readers, with the political and social satire of, 
>for example, having Martha's mother away at the Women's Anti-Gambling League
>card party, or having Martha suggest to the robbers that there aren't many
>jobs nowadays for bandits, but they might get work at the gas company or
>become politicians.

I think touches like those show the roots of these stories in newspapers, which
had to appeal to an adult readership foremost. When it came to theater and
movies, and the prose stories derived from them, I think that instinct of
Baum's often led him astray. He inserted tepid love stories or crass ethnic
stereotypes since those seemed to be what the broader adult audience wanted.
But nobody minds when there are quick jokes for all ages of readers.

Those ethnic stereotypes show up here, too. Indeed, it might be part of the
AMERICAN quality of the book that it includes stories about an African and a
Mandarin from China as well
as about Chicagoans, New Englanders, and Arizonans; all those people were parts
of Baum's turn-of-the-century America, particularly the urban America
where newspaper readers lived. (The Italian banditti are also types off the
stage, as Ruth Berman documented, but they're singularly unacquainted with the
reality of America.)


The ethnic stereotypes in AMERICAN FAIRY TALES aren't as crass as most other
popular writers of the time used, I believe. Gouie is the antagonist of the "Hippopotamus"
tale, but he's as smart, resourceful, and sympathetic as most other characters.
The Mandarin is more of a villain, but he's nasty in both China and America, not nasty because he's
Chinese. The New England farm couple in
"The Wonderful Pump", the vindictive bookseller in "The Girl Who
Owned a Bear", and other apparently WASP American characters are just as
nasty as the non-WASP, non-native American villains of the collection. I think
there might in fact be more *class* prejudice apparent in these stories than
*ethnic* prejudice, with the upper-middle-class children triumphing and
working-class adults getting the worst of the deal.

>I miss the appeal of the
>world-building Baum did with his longer fantasies, although to some extent
>it's replaced by an invasion of Baum's Oz-world into his America, when Ryls
>and Knooks show up, as they do in "The Enchanted Types" and "The Dummy that
>Lived." (I don't think I've run across any definite indication of whether he
>was writing "Santa Claus," which came out the following year, and had
>already invented Ryls and Knooks when he put them into some of these short
>stories, or if he came up with them casually for the short stories and then 
>elaborated them for the longer book, but I suspect he was already writing
>"Santa Claus," even though the short stories came out first.)

The AMERICAN FAIRY TALES stories appeared in newspapers in early 1901, so I
suspect they were the very first time Baum wrote about ryls and knooks. I also
think he was still working out how those creatures fit into his cosmology. The
mischievous Yellow Ryl doesn't fit with the nature-loving ryls of SANTA CLAUS
and later (but Baum did use bored or unfulfilled immortals to set his plots
going in SANTA CLAUS, ZIXI, and YEW). The knook in "The Enchanted
Types" has a special affinity for birds, while Baum later said they looked
after forest animals (SANTA CLAUS) and trees (ROAD), as I recall.

I think Baum consciously invented his own forms of immortals to make the point
that these stories were American originals. Gardner says that some in the collection have
no tie to America, but I think those are rather few. "The Queen of Quok" simply can't be
set in America since it depends on a hereditary monarchy. "The Laughing
Hippopotamus" and "King of the Polar Bears" must take place
where the title fauna live--though who's to say those polar bears weren't in 
America's Alaska Territory?

And, as I wrote above, including a story with a major black character might
have seemed to Baum to reflect America *more* rather than less.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

   Musings about some of my favorite
   fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 20:14:16 -0400
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Re: AMERICAN FAIRY TALES

On 8/2/06, J. L. Bell <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Ruth Berman wrote:
> >Martin Gardner, in his introduction to the Dover reprint of "American Fairy
> >Tales," comments that this book doesn't seem to have appealed much to
> >children -- certainly not as much as Baum's Oz books, and probably not as
> >much as his other full-length fairytales. He's even inclined to think that
> >"fantasy is at its best when it takes place in a far-off region or long ago"
> >(although he admits some exceptions, such as "Mary Poppins"). I suspect this
> >generalization would not hold generally -- other important exceptions to it
> >come to mind, such as George MacDonald's "At the Back of the North Wind,"
> >and most of E. Nesbit's books.
>
> I thought this was one of the most short-sighted comments in Gardner's
Dover introductions, not only because it shows ignorance of Baum's English
contemporary E. Nesbit, but also because it misses the charm of these stories,
and it misses how Baum played in the same mode in two novels that stayed in
print a long time: JOHN DOUGH and SKY ISLAND.

Didn't Nesbit also have a story in which illustrations in a book came
to life?  I think I've seen that idea used in other stories as well
(and a brief reference in my own OZIANA story hints at something
similar resulting in the death of one character's father), but the
mention of Nesbit brought that to my mind.

>"The Queen of Quok" simply can't be set in America since
it depends on a hereditary monarchy.

It is, however, set in a country that uses American currency.  There
are, of course, other countries that use dollars and cents, but do
they use the word "dime" to refer to a ten-cent coin?  Even if they
do, I think Baum was trying to give Quok somewhat of an American
flavor.

Nathan

Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 14:15:37 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] AFT & queen of quok

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> In the manuscript for MAGIC OF OZ, Baum spelled the French [fete with
> circumflex on first e as fete with acute accents on both e's]. I wouldn't
> be surprised if the accent marks don't come through to everyone, but
> suffice it to say he was throwing in accent marks with no understanding of 
> what they usually signified, only a memory that French people liked to use 
> them. It seems clear that Baum's attitude toward the subtleties of foreign 
> languages was as casual as his concern for consistency in other areas.>

Or, of course, he might have spelled it just fete (or even fete with a
circumflex) in the first place, and the typesetter and proofreaders might
have been the ones who made the error. I don't think he uses French words
often enough over different publishers to suggest definitely? But of course
his usual pattern was to let in a lot of small inconsistencies generally.

> I thought this [suggestion that other-world set fantasy stories are
> generally better than this-world-set ones] was one of the most
> short-sighted comments in Gardner's Dover introductions, not only because
> it shows ignorance of Baum's English contemporary E. Nesbit, but also
> because it misses the charm of these stories, and it misses how Baum
> played in the same mode in two novels that stayed in print a long time:
> JOHN DOUGH and SKY ISLAND. >

I suppose he'd count them as both being primarily other-world set. "Sea
Fairies," too, although the Sea Serpent's comments on history show that Trot
and Cap'n Bill are still in this-world in their adventures with the
mermaids. But it's a part of this-world with an other-worldly flavor.

Enjoyed your comments on shop displays in AFT & "John Dough" and heirlooms
in the attic in AFT and "Sky Island," and use of stereotypes in the stories.

> The AMERICAN FAIRY TALES stories appeared in newspapers in early 1901, so
> I suspect they were the very first time Baum wrote about ryls and knooks.
> I also think he was still working out how those creatures fit into his
> cosmology. The mischievous Yellow Ryl doesn't fit with the nature-loving
> ryls of SANTA CLAUS and later (but Baum did use bored or unfulfilled
> immortals to set his plots going in SANTA CLAUS, ZIXI, and YEW). The knook 
> in "The Enchanted Types" has a special affinity for birds, while Baum
> later said they looked after forest animals (SANTA CLAUS) and trees
> (ROAD), as I recall.  >

Could well be.

"Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com> wrote:
> Didn't Nesbit also have a story in which illustrations in a book came to
> life?  I think I've seen that idea used in other stories as well (and a
> brief reference in my own OZIANA story hints at something similar
> resulting in the death of one character's father), but the mention of
> Nesbit brought that to my mind. >

I think one of the stories in her "Book of Dragons" has the dragon coming
out of a book. Also in "The Magic City," many of the people who populate the
city have escaped from books used to build some of the walls.

"The Queen of Quok."
Speaking of its European-set and American-set details -- I notice that Ralph
Fletcher Seymour, in the picture of the little king making up part of one of
his border-frames, draws him as very much a European-looking little boy
(wistful expression, ermine robe -- not noticeably moth-eaten, and crown not
noticeably de-jeweled -- and sitting down -- could almost be Dinah Mulock's
"Little Lame Prince), while Ike Morgan in the full-page illo shows him as
much more an American boy (messy hair, mischievous expression as he spins
his peg-top, no robes or crown -- could almost be a Tom Sawyer). Morgan's
Chief Counselor, though, seems to be rather an Arabian Nights sort of vizier
(turban and sashed robe). Morgan's second full-pager for the story, with the
grown king and his family puts them in European royal robes (his cloak is
ermine-lined, and the queen's ruff looks Elizabethan, as does the general
outline of the little prince and princess), while the Chief Counselor has
the same Arabian Nights look, and Mary Ann Brodjinsky de la Porcus in her
high hat, stomacher, and panniers, looks perhaps like an American Puritan
(resembles some of the drawings of Old Mother Goose, but with unpleasant
instead of benevolent expression). Morgan's eclectic look corresponds to the
story's combination of details -- the hereditary monarchy, the
cash-on-the-barrelhead auction (and buy-back), and the Slave of the Royal
Bedstead, who would seem to be an amusing variation on Ali Baba's Genie of
the Lamp.

Ruth Berman

Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2006 23:10:45 -0500
From: David Hulan <dhulan at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Knooks and Ryls

Just wondering if it's my age, or if the subject has been discussed at some
point (I'll admit that I haven't been reading all the Regalia posts for the
past few months, as I've been looking for and moving into a new house), but
I know that when I first encountered "Knooks and Ryls" the first time I read
ROAD (didn't read SANTA CLAUS for another year or two, nor AFT for another
couple or three decades), I immediately thought of one of the verses of
"America." Which I'm reasonably sure Baum thought of too, considering that
Dorothy mused "I've heard of Knooks and Ryls," when she first encountered
them. I think it's the second verse, though it might be the third, that
includes the lines, "I love thy nooks and rills, thy woods and templed
hills, my heart with rapture thrills like that above." (And in thinking of
the lyric of that song I'm nearly appalled at how bad it is, pretty much all
verses. Nevertheless, back when I was in elementary school during Da Big
Wah, we sang all four verses most days as a patriotic gesture.)

David Hulan

Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 12:26:48 +0100 (BST)
From: Boq Aru <boq_aru at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Knooks and Ryls

David Hulan
  
>Dorothy mused "I've heard of Knooks and Ryls," when she first encountered
them. I think it's the second verse, though it might be the third, that
includes the lines, "I love thy nooks and rills, thy woods and templed
hills, my heart with rapture thrills like that above."

  
  America - second verse
  
  My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills,
My heart with rapture thrills
Like that above.
  
  I also sang this during the second war and I remembered it as "nooks and rills" also.
  Go figure.

Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 04:48:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Scott Hutchins <scottandrewhutchins at yahoo.com>
Subject: Fwd: Re: [Regalia] Knooks and Ryls

I asked Michael Patrick Hearn, and he said it was a misquote:

Michael Patrick Hearn wrote:
>Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 03:51:57 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Michael Patrick Hearn
>Subject: Re: [Regalia] Knooks and Ryls
>
>David Hulan has slightly misquoted the line from
>Samuel F. Smith's "America":
>
>My native country, thee,
>Land of the noble free,
>Thy name I love;
>I love thy rocks and rills,
>Thy woods and templed hills,
>My heart with rapture thrills
>Like that above.

Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 15:17:51 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Baum and foreign languages

Ruth Berman wrote:
>> In the manuscript for MAGIC OF OZ, Baum spelled the French [fete with
>> circumflex on first e as fete with acute accents on both e's].
>
> Or, of course, he might have spelled it just fete (or even fete with a
> circumflex) in the first place, and the typesetter and proofreaders might
> have been the ones who made the error.

As I said, Baum spelled "fete" with acute accents over both Es in his 
MANUSCRIPT. His error was corrected by the time MAGIC was printed.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 15:26:05 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Knooks and Ryls

David Hulan wrote:
> when I first encountered "Knooks and Ryls" the first time I read
> ROAD (didn't read SANTA CLAUS for another year or two, nor AFT for another
> couple or three decades), I immediately thought of one of the verses of
> "America." Which I'm reasonably sure Baum thought of too, considering that
> Dorothy mused "I've heard of Knooks and Ryls," when she first encountered
> them. I think it's the second verse, though it might be the third, that
> includes the lines, "I love thy nooks and rills, thy woods and templed
> hills, my heart with rapture thrills like that above."

"America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)" has lyrics written by Rev Samuel F.
Smith of Boston in 1831, to music by whoever wrote "God Save the
King"--so Baum and most of his audience would indeed have known it.
(Smith's buried about a mile from where I'm typing this, by the way.)

However, all the internet resources I've found give the pertinent line
as "rocks and rills," not "nooks..." I thought that there might have
been a typo or transcription error somewhere along the way to the web;
it wouldn't be hard to misread "rocks" for "nooks" in close-spaced type,
and both terms can fit the meaning of the verse.

However, the Library of Congress website has a Civil War-era song sheet
that clearly says "rocks and rills":

So unless we can find counterexamples of "nooks and rills" from Baum's
lifetime, that phrasing seems to be a variant known only to Oz fans.

I like the theory; it would add to the "American" roots of Baum's
stories in this collection. But I bet Baum came up with "knook" and
"ryl" by misspelling two separate quaint words, rather than two quaint
words that Americans knew as a pairing.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 14:41:45 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] "The Girl Who Owned a Bear"

David Hulan <dhulan at sbcglobal.net> wrote of knooks & rills as possibly from
"America," but others pointed out that that one is "rocks and rills." A
quick internet check shows a lot of Victorian works with descriptions of
landscapes that refer to nooks and rills (not in immediate juxtaposition,
but close enough to show that they were likely to turn up in the same
contexts). I'd imagine Baum was punning to suggest spirits of the landscape,
although maybe not thinking of any one specific such description.

"The Girl Who Owned a Bear"
Another thought on the motif of pictures that come out of the book -- I said
Nesbit's "Magic City" has the city partly people by the characters who come
out of the books used to make the walls. I don't think she specifies that
they come from the pictures in that way, though, but rather from the books
as wholes. Later than Baum (and probably not influenced by him) is P.L.
Travers' "The Children in the Story" episode of "Mary Poppins in the Park,"
when the 3 princes and their unicorn come out of "The Silver Fairy Book" to
visit Jane and Michael. (There actually is a book of that title, I hear,
although it doesn't have a story of 3 princes & unicorn. I suspect Travers
may not have known of it, and was intending to suggest a book in Andrew
Lang's Color Fairy Tale series, without actually using a color in his
series.)

Other related motifs are pictures that come to life in being drawn, like
Crockett's Harold with his magic crayon, or Roger Duvoisin's "Little Boy
Drawing" (which also has a quadruped that limps because drawn out of
perspective) or portraits that come to life and leave their frames, like the
one in Walpole's Gothic novel "Castle of Otranto" or the ancestral Baronets
of Ruddigore in G&S, or going into a picture, like the narrator in Kenneth
Grahame"s "The Golden Age," or the children in C.S. Lewis's "The Voyage of
the Dawn Treader." None of these seems very much like any of the others,
except that Gilbert may have been deliberately parodying Walpole in having
the whole portrait gallery come to life instead of a single pictured
ancestor.

The gimmick in the story is a good deal like "The Box of Robbers," with the
little girl left alone (in this case, Nora is still in the house -- taking
care of the time-consuming task of polishing the silver), endangered
(deliberately, by the frustrated author of the Book of Thingamajigs, not
accidentally) by opening a sort of Pandora's box of dangers, and saved by
her own coolness. In this case, the quick-thinking that saves her seems less
ingenious and more strained than Martha's was -- police at the door seems a
reasonable reason for the robbers to run back to their chest. Gladys's
ownership of the book, as shown by her name written on the title page,
doesn't actually seem like much of a reason for the bear from the book to
agree that she owns him. (And the mother's appearance at the door doesn't
seem like much of a reason for the pictures to go back to their pages. The
bear could eat the mother, after all.) It's fun, but not weaker than the
opening story of the Box. The anger of the unpublished author against the
rejecting publisher is an amusing factor, but his willingness to take out
his anger on the child seems a bit ...unamusing.

Ruth Berman

Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2006 13:26:24 -0400
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: [Regalia] The location of Quok

No indication is given in the story "The Queen of Quok" as to where
Quok is located, but Haff and Martin place it and its neighboring
countries in the southeastern part of the Ozian continent, near Arol
(from "The King Who Changed His Mind"), Thumbumbia (from "The Runaway
Shadows"), and Ribdil and Aurissau (both from "The Witchcraft of
Mary-Marie," although the mapmakers decided to make Ribdil into an
entire country, rather than just a city).  I think this placement
makes sense, given Baum's desire to fit all his fantasy countries into
one basic area.  Quok seems similar to a place like Ix or Noland, in
that it has some magic, but comes off as much more ordinary than Oz or Mo.  The
trick of a purse that's never empty is one that Baum would
use again in QUEEN ZIXI.

I've always found it interesting that one of the countries near Quok is the Republic
 of Macvelt.  While Baum sometimes has "the people"
instrumental in appointing a ruler of an Ozian country, most of his
imaginary lands are ruled by absolute monarchs.  This is probably the
only clear reference to a Baumian country with a representative
government.  (Actually, the Boolooroo from SKY ISLAND says that the
Blue Country is a republic, but it's obvious that the voting system is
a sham.)  According to the maps in ENCHANTED ISLAND, Macvelt is the
location of the port city of Seventon, off the coast of which Kapurta
temporarily found itself due to one of King Rupert's wishes.

Nathan

Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2006 10:46:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: Scott Hutchins <scottandrewhutchins at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] The location of Quok

The map, IIRC, places Maetta the Sorceress from _The Magical Monarch of Mo_ in
Macvelt.  I'm not sure why.

Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com> wrote:  No indication is given in
the story "The Queen of Quok" as to where
Quok is located, but Haff and Martin place it and its neighboring
countries in the southeastern part of the Ozian continent, near Arol
(from "The King Who Changed His Mind"), Thumbumbia (from "The Runaway
Shadows"), and Ribdil and Aurissau (both from "The Witchcraft of
Mary-Marie," although the mapmakers decided to make Ribdil into an
entire country, rather than just a city). I think this placement
makes sense, given Baum's desire to fit all his fantasy countries into
one basic area. Quok seems similar to a place like Ix or Noland, in
that it has some magic, but comes off as much more ordinary than Oz or Mo. The trick
of a purse that's never empty is one that Baum would use again in QUEEN ZIXI.

I've always found it interesting that one of the countries near Quok is the Republic
 of Macvelt. While Baum sometimes has "the people"
instrumental in appointing a ruler of an Ozian country, most of his
imaginary lands are ruled by absolute monarchs. This is probably the
only clear reference to a Baumian country with a representative
government. (Actually, the Boolooroo from SKY ISLAND says that the
Blue Country is a republic, but it's obvious that the voting system is
a sham.) According to the maps in ENCHANTED ISLAND, Macvelt is the
location of the port city of Seventon, off the coast of which Kapurta
temporarily found itself due to one of King Rupert's wishes.

Nathan

Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2006 13:53:34 -0400
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Mo, Macvelt, and Mulgravia
 
On 8/5/06, Scott Hutchins <scottandrewhutchins at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The map, IIRC, places Maetta the Sorceress from _The Magical Monarch of
Mo_ in Macvelt.  I'm not sure why.

No, she's shown as well within Mo, closer to Mulgravia than Macvelt.
The Bumpy Man's mountain is shown as being on the border with Macvelt
(although still colored pink, so as to indicate that it's part of Mo).
Given the description in SCARECROW, I would think that the mountain
would be closer to the Great Sandy Waste.

Nathan

> Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com> wrote:  No indication is given in the story "The Queen of Quok" as to where
> Quok is located, but Haff and Martin place it and its neighboring
> countries in the southeastern part of the Ozian continent, near Arol
> (from "The King Who Changed His Mind"), Thumbumbia (from "The Runaway
> Shadows"), and Ribdil and Aurissau (both from "The Witchcraft of
> Mary-Marie," although the mapmakers decided to make Ribdil into an
> entire country, rather than just a city). I think this placement
> makes sense, given Baum's desire to fit all his fantasy countries into
> one basic area. Quok seems similar to a place like Ix or Noland, in
> that it has some magic, but comes off as much more ordinary than Oz or
> Mo. The trick of a purse that's never empty is one that Baum would
> use again in QUEEN ZIXI.
>
> I've always found it interesting that one of the countries near Quok
> is the Republic of Macvelt. While Baum sometimes has "the people"
> instrumental in appointing a ruler of an Ozian country, most of his
> imaginary lands are ruled by absolute monarchs. This is probably the
> only clear reference to a Baumian country with a representative
> government. (Actually, the Boolooroo from SKY ISLAND says that the
> Blue Country is a republic, but it's obvious that the voting system is
> a sham.) According to the maps in ENCHANTED ISLAND, Macvelt is the
> location of the port city of Seventon, off the coast of which Kapurta
> temporarily found itself due to one of King Rupert's wishes.

Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 09:19:02 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] the enchanted types

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> As I said, Baum spelled "fete" with acute accents over both Es in his
> MANUSCRIPT. His error was corrected by the time MAGIC was printed. >

Oops, yes.

"Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com> wrote:
> No indication is given in the story "The Queen of Quok" as to where Quok
> is located, but Haff and Martin place it and its neighboring countries in
> the southeastern part of the Ozian continent, near Arol (from "The King
> Who Changed His Mind"), Thumbumbia (from "The Runaway Shadows"), and
> Ribdil and Aurissau (both from "The Witchcraft of Mary-Marie," although
> the mapmakers decided to make Ribdil into an entire country, rather than
> just a city).  I think this placement makes sense, given Baum's desire to
> fit all his fantasy countries into one basic area. <

Yes, the insertions seem to fit nicely with Baum's general mappings.

> I've always found it interesting that one of the countries near Quok is
> the Republic of Macvelt.  While Baum sometimes has "the people"
> instrumental in appointing a ruler of an Ozian country, most of his
> imaginary lands are ruled by absolute monarchs.  This is probably the only
> clear reference to a Baumian country with a representative government.  <

Technically, a republic isn't necessarily a representative government. The
Republic of Rome was, but they started using the term more to make the
distinction that they were not ruled by a king (or other hereditary
monarch). The Boolooroo's voting set-up is a sham, as you say, but his
description of the Blue Country as a republic is in the
not-an-inherited-monarchy sense of the term still accurate. I think Baum
might well have been thinking of "republic" as involving representative
government, though.

A typo in my comments on "The Girl Who Owned a Bear" -- I said "fun, but not
weaker than the opening story of the Box" -- I meant "weaker," not "not
weaker." Tsk.

"The Enchanted Types" -- Here Baum introduces his Knooks, as represented by
Popopo," and establishes by context that knooks are something like ryls and
that both knooks and ryls are something like fairies. (So he evidently
didn't come up with knooks and ryls separately, but from the start was
thinking of them as belonging to the same system of mythology.) The theme of
sympathy for animals and anger that they should be killed unnecessarily is
typical of Baum's work -- and so is the awareness that such issues are more
complicated than that, as shown when Popopo discovers in freeing the birds
that he has taken away the milliner's livelihood. The thought of cute little
(but thievish) velvety mice as something morally appropriate to substitute
as a hat decoration is also typical of Baum's humor, as making perfect sense
logically but being something that horrifies the milliner and would horrify
any potential customers. Baum's awareness of issues of marketing shows both
in the set-up to the story, as Popopo encounters the window display of
birded hats, and in the resolution, as the wise king of the knooks uses the
gullible persuadability of the advertising public to get the birds off the
hats more deftly than Popopo, with his literal approach, could.

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 11:29:35 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] laughing hippo

"The Laughing Hippopotamus"
Baum was to do more in the line of Animal Fairy Tales shortly after the
"American Fairy Tales" sequence. This story and "The King of the Polar
Bears" seems more like the Animal sequence -- although I think these two
animal stories are rather weak both compared to the later animal stories and
compared to the other "American" stories. Keo's incessant, unquenchable
laughter starts to seem unnervingly mechanical rather than jolly. (Although
it occurs to me that "guk-uk-uk-uk" might be a reasonable representation of
Mr. Sulu's laugh on :"Star Trek.") The twist that gets Gouie out of paying
any penalty to the hippos is maybe too easily arranged -- and I'm puzzled
that Gouie's conscience troubles him at the end for having quibbled his way
out of the penalty. Wouldn't he be proud of his ingenuity rather than
worried about the ethics of it? The parti-form Glinkomok (part beast, man,
fowl, fish by nature; sorcerer, wizard, magician, fairy by years of study)
sounds a bit better suited to the villainous Zog in "Sea Fairies" than to
what is apparently a benevolent (to respectiful animals, anyway) figure -- 
and the animals' fear of Glinkomok suggests that they are doubtful of his
goodness, anyway. The shift in focus from Keo the hippo to Gouie the human
means that at the end we don't get any word about the after-days of Keo. All
that strength and invulnerability Glinkomok gave him -- seems as if that
would have more results besides getting him out of imprisonment by Gouie.
Did he become a great-and-terrible or perhaps a great-and-beloved leader of
hippos, or hide from further special notice, or what? Some interesting
moments in this one (especially in the peculiar figure of Glinkkomok?), but
it's one of the weaker stories.

Ruth Berman

L. Frank Baum, Ike Morgan, Harry Kennedy, N.P. Hall and Ralph Fletcher Seymour

Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:25:23 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: laughing hippo

Ruth Berman wrote:
> The twist that gets Gouie out of paying
> any penalty to the hippos is maybe too easily arranged -- and I'm puzzled
> that Gouie's conscience troubles him at the end for having quibbled his way
> out of the penalty.

At first, the mention of Gouie's grandfather seems like a throwaway
joke, a bit of local color and perhaps a laugh at the locals. But that
detail turned out to be quite significant in the end. I liked how I
didn't see that solution coming (even though I'd read the tales before).

And I liked the fact that Gouie's conscience bothers him, for the same
reason: it's not your usual trickster story fare. As I recall, the hippo
demands that the man take that oath, so Gouie is really taking advantage
of the hippo's ignorance.

Of course, those surprises are made possible by how the story shifts a
bit of sympathy from its title character to his antagonist.

> The parti-form Glinkomok (part beast, man,
> fowl, fish by nature; sorcerer, wizard, magician, fairy by years of study)

> sounds a bit better suited to the villainous Zog in "Sea Fairies" than to
> what is apparently a benevolent (to respectiful animals, anyway) figure -- 
> and the animals' fear of Glinkomok suggests that they are doubtful of his
> goodness, anyway.

In a short story titled "Juggerjook," published in SAINT NICHOLAS, Baum
also imagined a monster that all the animals were afraid of. And then he
didn't do anything with that. The tale turned into a standard
be-nice-to-animals story of the period. This may be a motif that he kept
trying but didn't have room to expand on in his short stories.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 10:49:08 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] magic bon bons

"The Magic Bon-Bons"
This one was maybe Baum's favorite in the collection -- at least, it's the
one that got made into a movie by his Oz Film Company. With the sequence of
increasingly farcical moments as the bon-bon eaters are impelled into
artistic expression, it must have been visually effective, even as a silent,
without hearing the piano music and the elocution and singing. The dancing
and high-kicking would work especially well.  I notice that Mrs.  Bostwick's
recitations of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "The Boy Stood on the
Burning Deck" match up with the choices of the elocution pill made by the
Wizard that gets swallowed by one of Billina's chicks in "Emerald City." If
Mrs. Bostwick hadn't been interrupted, maybe we can guess that she would
also have gone on to "Excelsior." Dr. Daws the sorcerer-chemist and the
Wizard seem to have a similar taste in elocution choices. The comedy of the
mis-placed lozenges matches up nicely with the satiric material, of the
victims' scorn for each of the other outbursts, and Dr. Dawes' careful
insistence on getting paid before he hands over the lozenges, and Claribell
Sudds' talentless ambition and ultimate triumph. I wonder about her ultimate
triumph, by the way. Can she keep on as a famous vaudeville actress once her
replacement set of lozenges has worn off? Maybe the idea is that having felt
the magical talents once through, she was able to reproduce at least a
reasonable part of the same skills on her own.  The morals about not judging
others too severely and not leaving parcels about (or picking other people's
up) carelessly seem Entirely Appropriate.

Baum used a somewhat similar (but simpler) 2-pill sequence of lozenges taken
the wrong way in one of the "Queer Visitors" pages, "Eliza and the
Lozenges." The Oz books have a lot of pills (e.g., Dr. Nikadik's wishing
pills in "Land," the Wogglebug's lesson & square-meal tablets in "Emerald
City"), but used in rather different ways.

Martin Gardner quotes David Greene as wondering if the Yale professor at the
Boston dinner party is evidence that Baum was mixing up Yale and Harvard, as
Mrs. Bostwick apparently mixes up her husband's names (she addresses him as
both "John" and "William"). I suppose the Yale professor might have been in
Boston only for a visit.

Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:20:27 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: magic bon bons

Ruth Berman wrote:
> This one was maybe Baum's favorite in the collection -- at least, it's the 
> one that got made into a movie by his Oz Film Company.

That might have been simply because it was easy to film. A short, simple
plot that doesn't need much dialogue. No expensive exterior scenes. All
the magical effects reproducible simply with eager-to-work vaudeville
performers instead of special effects. Plus, no kids to make an adult
filmgoing audience pooh-pooh the comedy.

> Martin Gardner quotes David Greene as wondering if the Yale professor at the
> Boston dinner party is evidence that Baum was mixing up Yale and Harvard, as
> Mrs. Bostwick apparently mixes up her husband's names (she addresses him as
> both "John" and "William"). I suppose the Yale professor might have been in
> Boston only for a visit.

It's not that far, after all, and there's no statement that the
professor lives locally. I think it's more important to the story that
it takes place in Boston, then known for banning risque entertainment
and upholding an old-fashioned view of culture. Boston Brahmins doing
silly things was inherently funnier than rich people in other parts.

I wonder if Baum connected or expected his newspaper readers to connect
the Daws name with Boston.  There was a very prominent Dawes family in
Evanston, Illinois, a short distance from Chicago.  They had descended
from a family of Revolutionary Boston that included Judge Thomas Dawes
and alarm rider William Dawes, Jr. In Baum's time, local patriarch
Chester G. Dawes was known for his mansion in Evanston (built 1894-95)
and his close connection to President McKinley. Eventually he became
Vice President and wrote the melody now known as "It's All in the
Game."

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Unabashed gossip about the start of the American Revolution at

Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 16:42:28 -0400
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Re: magic bon bons

Getting back to the last tale before I start with my comments on this
one, I agree with John Bell that Gouie's grandfather's bonelessness
becoming an important point was a clever touch on Baum's part.  I did,
however, think that this wasn't entirely fair, since Gouie presumably
had another grandfather as well, and it's unlikely that NEITHER of his
grandfathers would have had bones.  Perhaps his other grandfather was
dead by that point, though.

Ruth:
> I notice that Mrs. Bostwick's
> recitations of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "The Boy Stood on the
> Burning Deck" match up with the choices of the elocution pill made by the
> Wizard that gets swallowed by one of Billina's chicks in "Emerald City." If
> Mrs. Bostwick hadn't been interrupted, maybe we can guess that she would
> also have gone on to "Excelsior." Dr. Daws the sorcerer-chemist and the
> Wizard seem to have a similar taste in elocution choices.

Were these poems commonly recited in Baum's time in order to
demonstrate good elocution?  It seems likely to me.

On 8/9/06, J. L.
Bell <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Ruth Berman wrote:
> > This one was maybe Baum's favorite in the collection -- at least, it's the
> > one that got made into a movie by his Oz Film Company.
>
> That might have been simply because it was easy to film. A short, simple
> plot that doesn't need much dialogue. No expensive exterior scenes. All
> the magical effects reproducible simply with eager-to-work vaudeville
> performers instead of special effects.

I get the impression that the story was one that might actually work
better in the visual medium than on paper.  That could have been
another factor in Baum's choice of this tale for filming.

> I wonder if Baum connected or expected his newspaper readers to connect
> the Daws name with Boston.  There was a very prominent Dawes family in
> Evanston, Illinois, a short distance from Chicago. They had descended
> from a family of Revolutionary Boston that included Judge Thomas Dawes
> and alarm rider William Dawes, Jr. In Baum's time, local patriarch
> Chester G. Dawes was known for his mansion in Evanston (built 1894-95)
> and his close connection to President McKinley. Eventually he became
> Vice President and wrote the melody now known as "It's All in the Game."

Also, Henry Laurens Dawes served as a United States Senator for Massachusetts
from 1875 to 1893.  And, as we know, a Senator is quite prominent in the story.

Nathan

Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 13:41:51 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] father time

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> and "Nathan DeHoff"
<fablesto at gmail.com> suggest that "The Magic Bon Bons" was the one Baum
chose from the collection for filming maybe not because it was his favorite
but maybe more because it was simple slapstick action that would film well
as  silent -- yes, that could well be. The simple slapstick action is
effective as narrative, too,so I think it is generally one of the favorites
in the group.

Nathan asks if "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "The Boy Stood on the
Burning Deck"  were commonly recited in Baum's time in order to demonstrate
good elocution. <

For as popular and as much quoted as they were, I'm sure they were also
popular choices for elocution exercises. (I recall from stories such as
"Caddie Woodlawn" and the "Little House" books that elocution displays were
common as exercises for school open-houses, but I don't recall if they
mentioned those two specifically among the elocution displays. "Caddie
Woodlawn" has a lot of fun with the exhibition-day when the three youngsters
have to recite, and the youngest, Warren, has only a proverb to recite: "If
at first you don't succeed -- " -- except that when he tries to recite it he
keeps ending up, " -- fry, fry a hen." Caddie and Tom have poems to recite,
but I don't remember offhand what they are.)

> Henry Laurens Dawes served as a United States Senator for Massachusetts
> from 1875 to 1893.  And, as we know, a Senator is quite prominent in the
> story. >

That does sound like an association that Baum might have had in mind for his
alchemical chemist Daws.

The story after "The Magic Bon Bons" is another of the favorites for most
readers in the collection, "The Capture of Father Time." H.G. Wells' "The
Time Machine" (1895) (and Martin Gardner mentions another Wells title, "The
New Accelerator" which came out in 1901, the same year as "American Fairy
Tales"). Lewis Carroll in "Sylvie and Bruno" had a magic watch that allowed
the holder to stop, re-set, or reverse time, and there were quite a few
other stories in the period that played on issues of playing with time. I
don't recall another example of doing it by capturing Father Time, though. I
think on that side the motif is perhaps related to the stories about
stopping deaths for a while by capturing Death (as in the movie"Death up an
appletree" -- later than Baum, but there are similar folktales from
earlier). Jim's mischief while he has Death tied up has something of a "Tom
Sawyer" flavor to it

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:20:21 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] wonderful pump

"The Wonderful Pump" is perhaps the grimmest of the stories in the
collection (even more so than "The Glass Dog" and "The King of the Polar
Bears"). I said that I thought Baum might be representing himself in the
anti-social wizard of "The Glass Dog," wanting to be left alone to practice
his art and not have to share it with others. Here again I wonder if Baum
was representing himself, this time not as the wonder-worker but as the pair
of humans who strike it rich with a pump that pumps out gold -- but only
twice. After that the pump has exhausted its store. Sounds kind of like Baum
himself, wondering if the best-sellers he had with Denslow, "Father Goose"
and the "Wizard" might be the only books he would write that would earn
enough to raise a family, or if he might have to think about getting back
his day job. Like Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in "Wizard," the couple in "Pump" 
have been prematurely aged by struggling to earn a living on infertile
ground (rocky New England rather than arid Kansas). This time, though,
instead of seeing the struggle from the point of view of Dorothy, who is
able to escape it, it is shown from the point of view of the old couple.
Their endurance and resignation come through at the start, when the farmer
listens to his wife's crazy-sounding story of a magic bug who tells them to
dig a well, and considers it as great a wonder to get water from a well on
their land as to find a talking beetle, and concludes that if his wife has
found the one, he may be able to find the other. He reminds himself that he
already has the pump, bought on a previous attempt, so another attempt will
cost him no money. The only cost will be "the labor of digging the well.
Labor I am used to; so I will dig the well." (The cost of what is, after
all, considerable labor, he ignores -- he can do it, so he will try.) The
inversion, with the 2-syllable "labor" heading off the sentence, followed by
monosyllables, gives force to his resolution. But the couple does not have
the wary prudence to avoid letting others know of their good fortune by
limiting their display of it, and the are robbed of their gold, and find
their is no more in the well. The beetle reminds them that gold is something
that is always subject to being lost or stolen, and leaves them the (not
very?) consoling thought that they can go back to working as hard as they
have worked all their lives anyway, and work is something "no one will try 
to rob you of, you may be sure." We don't find out whether the beetle's idea
of comfort is any comfort to the couple, or only a bitter reminder of their
lost chance -- the story shifts away from them to the story's sententious
moral, "to accept good fortune with humble hearts and to use it with
moderation." It's a sensible-sounding moral -- but I can't help noticing
that for the couple to have spent any of their magic gold at all would have
been to alert robbers that they had some amount of gold, and would have put
them in the same danger of losing it to their very own unboxed Robbers.

Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:51:35 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] the dummy that lived

Having portrayed a knook, Popopo, and mentioned ryls in "The Enchanted
Types," Baum went on to portray a ryl, the Yellow Ryl Tanko-Mankie, in "The
Dummy that Lived."  Popopo and the knooks are described as the guardians of
birds, which matches up partly, although not exactly, with the "Santa Claus"
description of knooks as the guardians of wild animals generally. In "Santa
Claus" (1902), the ryls are identified as the guardians and colorers of
flowers. "Dummy" doesn't give any indication of the nature of ryls, except
maybe in the identification of Tanko-Mankie as "the yellow ryl." In "Santa
Claus," the ryls who appear as characters are the Black, Blue, Green, Red, 
and Yellow Ryls, the King and Prince of the Ryls, and Nuter, "the
sweetest-tempered" of the ryls, who becomes Santa's assistant, appearing
both in "Santa" and in the short story "A Kidnapped Santa Claus" (1904).
There's no indication of what Nuter's specifically ryl-responsibilities
might be. The King of the Ryls gets a mention in "Yew" (1903) and,
identified as the White Ryl, in "The Yellow Ryl" (circa 1910-1915).

Of the color-ryls in "Santa," the Yellow Ryl is very slightly more important than
the rest, as the one who asks Santa not to plough the fields of "Laughing
Valley." (It might be possible that all ryls are considered field ryls, but
maybe Baum meant to imply that there were different groups of ryls -- field,
forest, maybe others?) Baum returned to the mischievous Yellow Ryl in "The 
Yellow Ryl," and included a single-flower-guarding ryl, the Easter Lily Ryl,
as the title character in "The Ryl," one of the three stories he added to
the 1908 edition of "Baum's AFT." An un-named wise ryl advises "The Runaway
Shadows" (circa 1902) to go back to their humans.

The knooks don't have as many separate appearances or individuals as the
ryls. Besides Popopo, there are the King and Prince of the Knooks in
"Santa," plus Will Knook, who grudgingly lets Santa use reindeer to draw his
sledge, and Peter Knook, who gives Santa a pet cat and becomes another of
Santa's assistants (likewise reappearing in "Kidnapped"). Groups of ryls and
knooks accompany Nelebel to exile in San Diego in "Nelebel's Fairyland"
(1905) and get a mention as having assisted Prince Marvel in "Yew." Baum
(surprisingly?) did not mention ryls and knooks or the Forest of Burzee in
the "Queer Visitors" episode, "How the Wogglebug and His Friends Visited
Santa Claus" -- Santa is based at the North Pole in the episode. (Jean
Kellogg inserted mentions of the ryls and Burzee into the Reilly & Lee
adaptation of "Visitors from Oz," though.)

I think it's J.L. Bell who's pointed out in the past that "Dummy" is
a story that grows directly out of Baum's experience as a
window-trimmer/storekeeper/salesman. We get a hint of Baum's knowledge of
sales-tricks in the tag that marks the dummy's dress as a "rare bargain" -- 
marked down from $20.00 to $19.98. The description of the Dummy's awakening
is an effective portrait of newborn confusion (like Jack Pumpkinhead's
confusion in similarly sudden awakening in "Land," or a little like the
Scarecrow's account in "Wizard" of his more gradual coming to life and
awareness). She has only some vague memories of store-goods and marketing
practices to guide her in finding any kind of way in the world -- she knows
to pick out a hat to wear and to look in the mirror to see if it is on
straight, but the narrator comments out that she has no sense of color. We
don't actually find out what color the dress is, or the non-matching hat,
but I suppose we can guess that the pea-green gloves chosen by the dummy
don't match either one.

The dummy's misadventures keep getting her identified by bystanders,
correctly, as a dummy, much to her confusion, as she doesn't know what the
term means and how precisely it fits her. (Was RPT remembering her when she
brought the stunt-dummy Humpy to life in "Lost King"?) She has a vague sense
that it may mean that she is being identified as being different from other
women, but she can't see how, knowing in her innocence that she looks just
like them and has been trying to act just like them. All around, it sounds
as if she doesn't have much fun being alive, and isn't losing much when
Tanko-Mankie turns her back into an ordinary dummy. Inspector Mugg concludes
(in his capacity as commanding officer and therefore, he assumes, someone
who knows better than ordinary policemen) that dummies aren't alive and
therefore this one was never alive. The policeman, unconvinced, says -- but
only in a whisper -- that although the Inspector's rule may be true in
general, "this one were a dummy as lived!" His assertion, in the emphatic
position of ending the story with its exclamation point, sounds as if it
means a little more than just asserting the fact that the dummy lived. He
seems to be feeling also that it is a good thing to be alive, and the dummy
managed it, in spite of all her misadventures, for a little while. Baum
didn't tag one of his comic morals onto the story, but just leaves it at the
policeman's assertion that this were a dummy as lived -- and leaves it to
the reader to try to figiure out if, on the whole, that was a good thing.

Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 23:45:57 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: wonderful pump

Ruth Berman wrote:
> "The Wonderful Pump" is perhaps the grimmest of the stories in the
> collection (even more so than "The Glass Dog" and "The King of the Polar
> Bears"). I said that I thought Baum might be representing himself in the
> anti-social wizard of "The Glass Dog," wanting to be left alone to practice
> his art and not have to share it with others. Here again I wonder if Baum
> was representing himself, this time not as the wonder-worker but as the pair
> of humans who strike it rich with a pump that pumps out gold -- but only
> twice. After that the pump has exhausted its store. Sounds kind of like Baum
> himself, wondering if the best-sellers he had with Denslow, "Father Goose"
> and the "Wizard" might be the only books he would write that would earn
> enough to raise a family, or if he might have to think about getting back
> his day job.

I can't share that reading. When Baum wrote "Pump," he was still on the
roll of FATHER GOOSE and WIZARD, with no downturn in sight. He hadn't
yet hit the wall of lower sales for some books, much less the bankruptcy
that followed the Radio Plays.

I also think that Baum wasn't identifying with the farm couple because
the story treats them with unusually little sympathy. They have no child
to tug at our heartstrings. They go to church, which is exceedingly rare
in Baum's fantasy stories, but largely to show off to their
neighbors--and that gets them in trouble.

> the story shifts away from them to the story's sententious
> moral, "to accept good fortune with humble hearts and to use it with
> moderation." It's a sensible-sounding moral -- but I can't help noticing
> that for the couple to have spent any of their magic gold at all would have
> been to alert robbers that they had some amount of gold

The morals at the end are another aspect of the AMERICAN FAIRY TALES
that's unusual for Baum's work. In most cases, the narrator seems to be
straining to pull out a moral, or winking about the convention. Some
tales have no moral at all. But in "The Wonderful Pump" the moral is
played straight, further reducing the story's humor.

All in all, this struck me as the most conventional of the AMERICAN
FAIRY TALES. Only the idea of a fairy insect seemed particularly novel
and Baumian, and I'm not sure that we won't find a precedent.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 15:20:03 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] king of the polar bears

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> All in all, this [Pump] struck me as the most conventional of the AMERICAN 
> FAIRY TALES. Only the idea of a fairy insect seemed particularly novel and 
> Baumian, and I'm not sure that we won't find a precedent. >

About the only thing I can think of as a precedent would be Lewis Carroll's
Looking Glass insects, but they're rather different. (Is the Jitterbug the
best known of any later examples? RPT has her Dissatisfied Bug in "Marvelous
Travels on a Wish" and the Bee-Little in "Enchanted Island." No, come to
think of it, the best known later example must be Kafka's "Metamorphosis,"
although, again, that's decidedly a different sort of thing.)

"The King of the Polar Bears" is the story in the collection that Martin
Gardner felt was the weakest, and he regretted that in the 1908 it was
shifted to the emphatic position of last in the collection, instead of next
to last, as it was before. I think my feeling about it is the same, although
the food-sharing friendship of the King and the gulls is kind of appealing.
But the King, although described as "wise and friendly" doesn't really show
any particular wisdom, and he isn't shown as particularly friendly to anyone
except the gulls. It's perhaps difficult to make a polar bear into a
sympathetic character (although Baum managed it rather better couple of
years later with a similarly large and dangerous predator in "Jaglon and the
Tiger Fairies"). And the magically strange events in the story -- that the 
gulls' feathers work as a temporary protection for the King, after his pelt
is stripped off, and that the returned pelt apparently is going to work,
too -- seem as if some more definite explanation would be called for than
just the wolves' speculation that the King's good luck in hunting must come
from magical skill or fairy protection. (Looking back at it from the "Animal
Fairy Tales" a few years later, we might guess that the King is protected by
the Polar Bear Fairy as Jaglon was by the Tiger Fairy -- but, at that, I'm
not sure that making such protection explicit in this story would improve
matters.)

Ruth Berman

Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 20:05:30 EDT
From: WCam60 at aol.com
Subject: Re: [Regalia] king of the polar bears

Don't forget the Talking Cricket from Pinocchio...

Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2006 14:25:06 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] the mandarin and the butterfly

WCam60 at aol.com wrote:
> Don't forget the Talking Cricket from Pinocchio... <

Yes, definitely a memorable bug. He gets a larger role in the Disney movie
than in the book, but is still fairly important in the book.

"The Mandarin and the Butterfly"
Martin Gardner was impressed by the closing sentece, saying that it
"startles with the abruptness, brevity and elemental poetry of a haiku."
Although it's maybe not so much the final sentence ("When night came it
slept in a rosebush.") as the contrast between the serenity of the closing 
and the understated rage of the end, as the butterfly frees itself from
slavery to the mandarin -- and puts an end to the mandarin's insatiable
anger against children -- by turning the mandarin's stolen magic against
him, leaving no one in the laundry but "a repulsive, scrawny pig which
squealed most miserably." The intro compares the butterfly's conscienceless
tenderheartedness to the Tin Woodman's behavior in "Wizard," where Nick,
because he knows he does not have a hearrt, is scrupulous about behaving as
if he did. This is maybe not really a close comparison. The narrative says
that the butterfly is able to lie to the mandarin "with great readiness and
a certain amount of enjoyment" because it has no soul and therefore no
conscience. The narrative voice doesn't sound entirely trustworthy on this
point -- a human would probably lie under similar circumstances and enjoy
doing it, too. But the butterfly flits about emotionally as it does
physically, and is to that extent unlike humans. Nick would think earnestly
about such questions, where the butterfly is much more careless (it ignores
the mandarin's charge to turn a child into a pig in the first place not out
of tenderheartedness but because it is enjoying the flower garden and has
forgotten the errand). Still, the butterfly, when it remembers to think, is
tenderhearted in its cooler way (note the "rather" in "I rather like
children myself and shall not harm them").

The gimmick of having the butterfly test the mandarin's potion by seeing
what it does to a pig (turns it to a bad-tempered, aggressive boy, which the
butterfly then turns back into a pig) reminds me of Lewis Carroll's Alie and
her confusion over the Duchess's baby. It seems to her to be behaving more
and more like a pig, and when it turns into one, she comments that it would
have made an unattractive child, but makes quite a nice pig. And both
Carroll and Baum probably remembered Circe in the Odyssey, whose magic
potion turned men into pigs or lions or bears according to which brute was
closest to the victim's character.

And that brings me to the end of the collection in commenting. I enjoyed
re-reading the stories (and maybe appreciated the satire and dour humor more
in looking at them one by one than I've done in the past looking at the
group as a whole).

I was commenting in connection with "The Box of Robbers" about operatic
bandits -- I'd forgotten that besides Gilbert's "The Mountebanks" and 
Gilbert-and-Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance," there was a Gilbertless
Sullivan bandit opera, too, "The Contrabandista" (libretto by Francis 
Burnand, from before Sullivan started working with Gilbert -- it was
Sullivan's first full-length operetta, following up on the success he and
Burnand had with "Cox and Box"). It turned up on the radio night before
last. I'd never heard this before -- it's not considered an outstanding
work, and I had trouble making out the words, but the music is lovely.

Ruth Berman

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 12:43:07 -0400
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] father time

On 8/14/06, Ruth Berman <berma005 at umn.edu> wrote:
> The story after "The Magic Bon Bons" is another of the favorites for most
> readers in the collection, "The Capture of Father Time." H.G.  Wells' "The
> Time Machine" (1895) (and Martin Gardner mentions another Wells title, "The
> New Accelerator" which came out in 1901, the same year as "American Fairy
> Tales"). Lewis Carroll in "Sylvie and Bruno" had a magic watch that allowed
> the holder to stop, re-set, or reverse time, and there were quite a few
> other stories in the period that played on issues of playing with time. I
> don't recall another example of doing it by capturing Father Time, though.

Father Time, like Santa Claus and Jack Frost, is a character that Baum
appropriated from earlier folklore.  While I believe the old man with
the sickle as a personification of Time is essentially an image of
Saturn, he probably would have been best known to Baum's
contemporaries from woodcuts in almanacs and the like.  Death as a
skeleton with a scythe is also a popular figure in those kinds of
pictures.  When Baum had Death appear in SANTA CLAUS, though, it was
as a woman.

I'm not really sure where Jack Frost originates.  He seems to be a
character that everyone recognizes, but whose beginnings can't be
traced back to a fourth-century bishop or an ancient Roman god.

Nathan

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 12:54:29 -0400
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] the dummy that lived

On 8/16/06, Ruth Berman <berma005 at umn.edu> wrote:
> "Dummy" doesn't give any indication of the nature of ryls, except
> maybe in the identification of Tanko-Mankie as "the yellow ryl." In "Santa
> Claus," the ryls who appear as characters are the Black, Blue, Green, Red,
> and Yellow Ryls, the King and Prince of the Ryls, and Nuter, "the
> sweetest-tempered" of the ryls, who becomes Santa's assistant, appearing
> both in "Santa" and in the short story "A Kidnapped Santa
Claus" (1904).

It's unclear as to whether there is only one Ryl of each color (in
which case Tanko-Mankie would presumably be the same as the Yellow Ryl
in SANTA), or several different ones (in which case Tanko-Mankie could
still be SANTA's Yellow Ryl, but wouldn't have to be).  I would be
inclined to think the latter, since it doesn't seem like the former
would allow for the existence of that many Ryls.  I suppose some of
the less prominent Ryls could specialize in different shades of the
same colors, though.  (The Teal Ryl?  The Auburn Ryl?)

Incidentally, both SANTA and "A Kidnapped Santa Claus" refer to Kilter
(another one of Santa's helpers) as a pixie, but it's never clear what
pixies actually do in Baum's mythology.  Kilter is identified as a
former assistant to Ak, but do all pixies serve in that capacity, or
did Kilter just happen to be both a pixie AND Ak's assistant?

> The dummy's misadventures keep getting her identified by bystanders,
> correctly, as a dummy, much to her confusion, as she doesn't know what the
> term means and how precisely it fits her. (Was RPT remembering her when she
> brought the stunt-dummy Humpy to life in "Lost King"?)

Possibly.  I think there's also a similarity between the dummy and
Benny from GIANT HORSE, both of whom immediately try to accessorize
after leaving their accustomed places, in order to be more like the
other people they've seen.

Nathan

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 13:18:30 -0400
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] the mandarin and the butterfly

On 8/18/06, Ruth Berman <berma005 at umn.edu> wrote:
> The gimmick of having the butterfly test the mandarin's potion by seeing
> what it does to a pig (turns it to a bad-tempered, aggressive boy, which the
> butterfly then turns back into a pig) reminds me of Lewis Carroll's Alie and
> her confusion over the Duchess's baby.

I found that to be an interesting addition to the tale, and it's
interesting that a pig-turned-human still acts like a pig, and very
much unlike the civilized Swynes from TIN WOODMAN.  It makes me wonder
whether the mandarin retains his human memory upon turning into a pig.

Another interesting detail is that Baum identifies the magician from
whom the mandarin steals the book as Haot-sai.  Is there any
significance to this name, or is it just Baum's attempt to come up
with a Chinese-sounding appellation?  Regardless, it would be
interesting to learn more about this magician.

Nathan

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 21:07:00 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Jack Frost and Father Time

Nathan DeHoff wrote:
> I'm not really sure where Jack Frost originates.  He seems to be a
> character that everyone recognizes, but whose beginnings can't be
> traced back to a fourth-century bishop or an ancient Roman god.

Jack Frost seems to have started out as a northern European mythological
figure, but his American popularization might owe a lot (like Santa
Claus) to Thomas Nast:

As for Father Time, here's Lagarde's "Santa Claus and Father Time" from 1888:

Time is a gaunt old man carrying a sickle, as Baum and his illustrators
presented him thirteen years later, and Santa shows Nast's influence.

HARPER'S WEEKLY had shown Father Time very differently for Christmas 1870:

With his pine tree and the food and drink surrounding him, this "Father
Time" seems much more like Santa. American artists and publihers were
apparently still codifying the popular images of these American icons.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 21:59:34 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Queen of Quok

Nathan DeHoff wrote:
>> "The Queen of Quok" simply can't be set in America since it depends
> on a hereditary monarchy.
>
> It is, however, set in a country that uses American currency.  There
> are, of course, other countries that use dollars and cents, but do
> they use the word "dime" to refer to a ten-cent coin?  Even if they
> do, I think Baum was trying to give Quok somewhat of an American
> flavor.

The American Congress decided on the term "dime" on 8 Aug 1786, starting
from a French or Latin root for "tenth." (Their debate began the
previous April, already using the word "dime." They referred to an essay
called "Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit and on a Coinage for
the United States" by Thomas Jefferson, but apparently he had suggested
coins worth a fifth and a twentieth of a dollar, not a tenth, and he was
in France during this discussion. In 1792 Jefferson as Secretary of
State submitted a plan for a coin he spelled as "disme," but the federal
Congress chose the older spelling. Nevertheless, some sources give
Jefferson credit for the term "dime.")

So, although the term "dime" has been adopted by some other nations, and
Canada started using a ten-cent coin during Baum's childhood, the term
does lend an American flavor to Quok.

Baum could have told his story using the turn-of-the-last-century
fascination with American heiresses marrying poor (or sometimes rich)
European noblemen to gain titles in exchange for their fortunes. But
that would have meant the only Americans in this story would be
title-hunting women, and that would hardly have been flattering to his
American readers.

The mention of the Republic of Macvelt might also have been a slightly
"American" touch in this story. As you note, it's one of the very few

times Baum even implies that fairylands might be ruled by anyone but a
monarch or a usurping dictator.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 22:00:43 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Dummy That Lived

Nathan DeHoff wrote:
> I think there's also a similarity between the dummy and
> Benny from GIANT HORSE, both of whom immediately try to accessorize
> after leaving their accustomed places, in order to be more like the
> other people they've seen.

So does John Dough, who grabs a hat and (candy) cane as he first departs
the bakery, and keeps them for most of his adventures. A gentleman
didn't go out without his hat, after all. John strives hard to fit into
polite bourgeois society in the same way that the dummy in this AMERICAN
FAIRY TALE does.

Indeed, "Dummy That Lived" is in retrospect a dry run for JOHN DOUGH.

Both tales start with a figure made for a shop-window display being
brought to life, then struggling to blend into an American city. Both
main characters cause public sensations, then suffer accidents that
would be fatal to a meat person. But in his short story Baum cut off the
action with the ryl reversing his spell. In his novel Baum took John to
more adventures, and made the reason he came to life also the reason
he's most in danger.

Obviously Baum's experience as editor of THE SHOW WINDOW came through in
those stories about window-display figures. Two other Baum characters
with ties to merchandise displays are Wart-on-the-Nose, the cigar-store
Indian in JOHN DOUGH, and the Tin Woodman himself, according to Frank J.

Another element of "Dummy That Lived" which Baum used several other
times is how the action is triggered by a bored immortal. That's how
ZIXI and YEW begin, and arguably SANTA CLAUS as well.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 22:18:05 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Girl Who Owned a Bear

Ruth Berman wrote:
> the quick-thinking that saves her seems less ingenious and more
> strained than Martha's was -- police at the door seems a reasonable
> reason for the robbers to run back to their chest. Gladys's ownership
> of the book, as shown by her name written on the title page, doesn't
> actually seem like much of a reason for the bear from the book to
> agree that she owns him.

I agree that this story is less tightly thought out than the others, and
its set-up is so similar to "Box of Robbers" that my memory of this one
fades behind the other. But I sense that Baum was playing with an
interesting notion about the power of ownership. "Owned" is in the title
and the moral, and the trigger for the plot is an act of commerce--or
attempted commerce. "Now we are coming to business," the salesman tells
Jane Gladys. But by making his book the little girl's property, he
undermines his own planned revenge.

"Robbers" is all about theft, of course, but this is about legitimate 
property and what being an owner means. To have a book, the story
implies, is to have power over its contents. We might remember the
feeling of pleasure that Oz books' "This Book Belongs To" pages can
bring.

As for the animals being inexplicably afraid of Jane Gladys's mother,
perhaps that's not the only reading:
++++++++++++++
"The fault lies with yourselves," said Jane Gladys, severely. "Why
didn't you stay in the book, where you were put?"

The animals looked at each other in a foolish way, and the clown blushed
under his white paint.

"Really--" began the bear, and then he stopped short.

The door bell rang loudly.

"It's mamma!" cried Jane Gladys, springing to her feet. "She's come home
at last. Now, you stupid creatures--"

But she was interrupted by them all making a rush for the book. There
was a swish and a whirr and a rustling of leaves, and an instant later
the book lay upon the floor looking just like any other book, while Jane
Gladys' strange companions had all disappeared.
++++++++++++++

The bear seems to stop short BEFORE the door bell rings and clearly
before Jane Gladys announces her mother. He and the other creatures are
already flummoxed by the girl's question. So perhaps she as owner of the
book can order them back into it, and the mother just happens to arrive
at the next moment. Baum's telling isn't clear, so I can't argue that's
what he implied, but it's one way of putting those details together
which might force the story to make more sense.

> The anger of the
> unpublished author against the rejecting publisher is an amusing
> factor, but his willingness to take out his anger on the child seems
> a bit ...unamusing.

It's curious, since you've been seeking Baumian figures in these
stories, to consider how this villain might act out some feelings the
author himself had had. Baum had worked as a traveling salesman. He had
tried to get his work published. He was trying to sell books, albeit not
door to door. How he might have wished to have his books' pictures come
alive to bother recalcitrant customers!

All the pictures have complaints about how they're drawn, which implies
that the salesman's books aren't great quality after all. And after he
realizes the salesman's mistakes, the bear sighs, "That author is as
disappointing as most authors are." Baum often made gentle fun of
himself or people like him.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 22:24:02 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Enchanted Types

Ruth Berman wrote:
> "The Enchanted Types" -- Here Baum introduces his Knooks, as represented by
> Popopo," and establishes by context that knooks are something like ryls and
> that both knooks and ryls are something like fairies. (So he evidently
> didn't come up with knooks and ryls separately, but from the start was
> thinking of them as belonging to the same system of mythology.)

Do we know in what order Baum published these stories? I suspect that
would be the best clue about the order in which he wrote them, better
than the order in which they appear in this volume. He rearranged them
for the second edition, after all.

In this case, he could have come up with ryls for "The Dummy That
Lived," then alluded back to them in "Enchanted Types." Or indeed he
could have come up with both terms at the same time.

> The thought of cute little
> (but thievish) velvety mice as something morally appropriate to substitute 
> as a hat decoration is also typical of Baum's humor, as making perfect sense
> logically but being something that horrifies the milliner and would horrify
> any potential customers.

I like that detail because it's more fresh and original than the
free-the-birds main plot. Birds on women's hats had become a prominent
public issue after Bostonians Harriet Lawrence Hemenway and Minna B.
Hall founded the Massachusetts Audubon Society in 1896 to lobby against
the fashion. But by putting mice on the hats and making the style a
reductio ad absurdum, Baum was using his humor to extend the argument in
a new direction.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 22:49:30 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Capture of Father Time

This story interests me in having a young American hero who's not simply
a generic boy, but a particular type--an Arizona cowboy out of place in
the big eastern city. The story itself is mostly a stunt, without much
plot, but I wouldn't mind seeing Jim again.

Father Time says, "I like boys, becuse they grow up to be men and
people my world." The word "my" seems to imply that he controls or
belongs to this world, the world of time. Either Time reigns here, or
Time has no place in another world of immortality. Indeed, in such a
world Father Time might feel as out of place as Jim does.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 22:57:03 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: King of the Polar Bears

Ruth Berman wrote:
> the food-sharing friendship of
> the King and the gulls is kind of appealing. But the King, although
> described as "wise and friendly" doesn't really show any particular
> wisdom, and he isn't shown as particularly friendly to anyone except
> the gulls.

Because the animals in this story aren't particularly appealing or
ethical, and because the magical elements (a pelt of feathers?) seem so
strange, it reminds me more than any other in the collection of truly
ancient stories--tales from the oral traditions of the Iroquois, for
instance. It's unsettling because it doesn't conform to our ideas of
what a story should say or how it should unfold. Not that I think that's
what Baum had in mind, or that I find it any more satisfying.

Incidentally, while the makes of the GOLDEN COMPASS/NORTHERN LIGHTS
movie adaptation continue to make casting announcements, there's still
no word on what polar bear will play Iorek Byrnison.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 23:01:07 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Mandarin and the Butterfly

Ruth Berman wrote:
> The narrative says
> that the butterfly is able to lie to the mandarin "with great readiness and
> a certain amount of enjoyment" because it has no soul and therefore no
> conscience.

Hans Christian Andersen was careful in what he wrote about souls--to
keep his stories within the bounds of contemporary Christian orthodoxy,
I sense. He says the little mermaid doesn't have a soul, for instance,
and her goal is to achieve one, and thus a shot at immortality.

Baum is more free here, but he still says that one needs a soul to be
troubled by acting immorally--though he soon undercuts that by saying
the butterfly is troubled by injustice. I think he's trying to make us
readers willing to accept the butterfly's deceptions and trickery, but
that's probably not necessary. He's painted the Mandarin as such a
horrible person (both in Chinese society and in America) that we're glad
to be rid of him.

It seems significant that Baum hardly ever mentions this sense of "soul"
in the Oz books, despite all their talk about heart (the Tin Woodman's),
conscience (the Hungry Tiger's), equal right to life (the yellow
butterfly's), etc.

The closest he comes is in WIZARD, when the Wicked Witch of the West
"she happened to look into the child's eyes and saw how simple the soul
behind them was, and that the little girl did not know of the wonderful
power the Silver Shoes gave her."

[Shades of George W. Bush on Vladimir Putin in June 2001: "I looked the
man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.
  We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his
soul."

]

In a later AMERICAN FAIRY TALE, Baum has Mary-Marie ask, "must I sell my
soul to Satan?" She's quickly told no, that's nonsense. In these tales,
Baum seems to have felt some need to address American beliefs about
souls, but in the latter he denies some of that tradition.

> The gimmick of having the butterfly test the mandarin's potion by seeing
> what it does to a pig (turns it to a bad-tempered, aggressive boy, which the
> butterfly then turns back into a pig) reminds me of Lewis Carroll's Alie and
> her confusion over the Duchess's baby. It seems to her to be behaving more 
> and more like a pig, and when it turns into one, she comments that it would
> have made an unattractive child, but makes quite a nice pig. And both
> Carroll and Baum probably remembered Circe in the Odyssey, whose magic
> potion turned men into pigs or lions or bears according to which brute was

> closest to the victim's character.

Is there a pig-boy connection in SYLVIE AND BRUNO as well? Or is there
simply an awful boy who looks like a pig?

Nathan DeHoff wrote:
> Another interesting detail is that Baum identifies the magician from
> whom the mandarin steals the book as Haot-sai.  Is there any
> significance to this name, or is it just Baum's attempt to come up
> with a Chinese-sounding appellation?  Regardless, it would be
> interesting to learn more about this magician.

I think that, as with "Grogrande," which is French for "big-fat," but
clumsy French, and "Ali Dubh" and the names in Orientalist novels like
DAUGHTER OF DESTINY, Baum was just trying for something that sounded
right for the ethnic type he'd chosen to write about.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 23:10:54 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: glass dog

Ruth Berman wrote:
> Baum turns the image of the
> glass dog into a comically unhappy-ever-after ending, as the unlucky
> glassblower finally succeeds in winning the horrible heiress, and the
> narrative summing up explains that because of her jealousy the
> heiress led him "a dog's life."

I thought this was one of the more successful AMERICAN FAIRY TALES,
despite the lack of a child protagonist, because of the twists of the
plot and the way everything worked out. Baum had many ways of showing
unhappy marriages (as well as some happy ones--usually of older
couples). In this case, both the glass-blower and Miss Mydas the heiress
have lied and deceived and broken promises, so the story seems to imply
that they deserve each other as spouses. Like O. Henry, but nasty
instead of sweet.

The glass-blower's preparation for suicide comes across as very harsh,
however. I doubt Frank Reilly would have let Baum keep that in a first
edition.

> Brian Attebery's
> suggestion that the Duck is something of a self-portrait of Baum in
> at least occasional moods, wanting to be left alone to enjoy his
> creative powers without the bother of sharing them with others.
> Certainly Baum must have had days like this "accomplished wizard"
> when he wished that the "iceman, the milkman, the baker's boy, the
> laundryman and the peanut woman" would not come to his door trying to
> sell things just when he was having a good time reading or stirring
> up a spell.

I don't see Baum in that personality type. He seems to have been so
theatrical a person that he liked the public acclaim. You don't label
your homes "Sign of the Goose" and "Ozcot" if you want to be a recluse.
He could understand and portray the wizard in his tenement room, the
same way he could portray the glassblower with his greed and lust, but I
doubt he identified with either man.

> The Wizard is the only one in this story who manages a
> happy ending for himself (well, maybe the dog is happy to be restored
> to guard duty at the wizard's door), leaving the narrator to throw up
> his hands at the possibility of learning anything from this fable: "I
> suppose [the Glass Dog' is there yet, and am rather sorry, for I
> should like to consult the wizard about the moral to this story."

Except that in its fates for the glass-blower and the heiress it seems
to have a very strong moral indeed. So strong, indeed, that the narrator
can joke about the possibility of finding a moral at all.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 12:36:52 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] aft

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> sent a group of messages about aspects
of AFT -- all interesting!

> Nathan DeHoff wrote:
>> I'm not really sure where Jack Frost originates.  He seems to be a
>> character that everyone recognizes, but whose beginnings can't be traced
>> back to a fourth-century bishop or an ancient Roman god. >>
and J.L. commented:
> Jack Frost seems to have started out as a northern European mythological
> figure, but his American popularization might owe a lot (like Santa Claus) 
> to Thomas Nast: ... As for Father Time, here's Lagarde's "Santa Claus and
> Father Time" from 1888:
>

 Time is a gaunt
> old man carrying a sickle, as Baum and his illustrators presented him
> thirteen years later, and Santa shows Nast's influence. HARPER'S WEEKLY
> had shown Father Time very differently for Christmas 1870:

With his pine tree and the food and drink surrounding him, this "Father
Time" seems much more like Santa. American artists and publihers were
apparently still codifying the popular images of these American icons. >

I think the gaunt old man with a sickle was the more usual image even before
the 19th century. Father Time seems to go back to the Roman Saturn as an
agricultural reaper god and the identification of Saturn with both Cronos
(the equivalent Greek god) and chronos (the Greek for "time").

> "Dummy That Lived" is in retrospect a dry run for JOHN DOUGH.  Both tales
> start with a figure made for a shop-window display being brought to life,
> then struggling to blend into an American city. Both main characters cause 
> public sensations, then suffer accidents that would be fatal to a meat
> person. But in his short story Baum cut off the action with the ryl
> reversing his spell. In his novel Baum took John to more adventures, and
> made the reason he came to life also the reason he's most in danger. >

John Dough has a lot more luck than the Dummy does in meeting up with the
4th-of-July rocket that takes him out of ordinary "civilized" society to the
Borderlands countries -- where he's still in various sorts of dangers
(including the pursuit by Ali Dubh), but can more easily find beings who
understand what sort of being he is and can assist him.

> Subject: [Regalia] Re: Girl Who Owned a Bear ...
> I sense that Baum was playing with an interesting notion about the power
> of ownership. "Owned" is in the title and the moral, and the trigger for
> the plot is an act of commerce--or attempted commerce. "Now we are coming
> to business," the salesman tells Jane Gladys. But by making his book the
> little girl's property, he undermines his own planned revenge.  "Robbers"
> is all about theft, of course, but this is about legitimate property and
> what being an owner means. To have a book, the story implies, is to have
> power over its contents. We might remember the feeling of pleasure that Oz

> books' "This Book Belongs To" pages can bring. >

Interesting points. Your suggestion that the story doesn't actually say that
the arrival of Jane Gladys's mother is the element that triggers the
pictures's rush to get back inside their book -- yes, possibly. But your
wording suggests that you think yourself the interpretation is a bit forced:

> The bear seems to stop short BEFORE the door bell rings and clearly before 
> Jane Gladys announces her mother. He and the other creatures are already
> flummoxed by the girl's question. So perhaps she as owner of the book can
> order them back into it, and the mother just happens to arrive at the next 
> moment. Baum's telling isn't clear, so I can't argue that's what he
> implied, but it's one way of putting those details together which might
> force the story to make more sense. >

> It's curious, since you've been seeking Baumian figures in these stories,
> to consider how this villain might act out some feelings the author
> himself had had. Baum had worked as a traveling salesman. He had tried to
> get his work published. He was trying to sell books, albeit not door to
> door. How he might have wished to have his books' pictures come alive to
> bother recalcitrant customers! All the pictures have complaints about how
> they're drawn, which implies that the salesman's books aren't great
> quality after all. And after he realizes the salesman's mistakes, the bear 
> sighs, "That author is as disappointing as most authors are." Baum often
> made gentle fun of himself or people like him. >

Perhaps he and Denslow both sometimes wished that Denslow's pictures could
get out and go after slow editors?

> Do we know in what order Baum published these stories? I suspect that
> would be the best clue about the order in which he wrote them, better than 
> the order in which they appear in this volume. He rearranged them for the
> second edition, after all. In this case, he could have come up with ryls
> for "The Dummy That Lived," then alluded back to them in "Enchanted
> Types." Or indeed he could have come up with both terms at the same time.
>  >

Someone probably knows, but I don't. You're right that "Types" could have
been written before "Dummy" -- anyone here know for sure if the book ordere
corresponds to the newspaper publication order?

> Incidentally, while the makes of the GOLDEN COMPASS/NORTHERN LIGHTS movie
> adaptation continue to make casting announcements, there's still no word
> on what polar bear will play Iorek Byrnison. >

Too bad Janos Prohaska, who played assorted bears for Andy Williams, Lucille
Ball, and Red Skelton, as well as various primates and monsters (for "Star 
Trek" and others) is no longer alive. Although at that -- considering that 
adaptations of books into movies typically have to leave out some
material -- maybe the character isn't going to wind up being in the movie>

> Is there a pig-boy [as in "Mandarin/Butterfly"] connection in SYLVIE AND
> BRUNO as well? Or is there simply an awful boy who looks like a pig? >

Uggug turns at the end into some kind of monster that looks like a giant
porcupine.

> Nathan DeHoff wrote: ...
> >  Is there any significance to this name [Haot-sai], or is it just Baum's
> > attempt to come up with a Chinese-sounding appellation?  >
> I think that, as with "Grogrande," which is French for "big-fat," but
> clumsy French, and "Ali Dubh" and the names in Orientalist novels like
> DAUGHTER OF DESTINY, Baum was just trying for something that sounded right 
> for the ethnic type he'd chosen to write about. >

But grosgrande does actually mean something in French, and "ali" (I don't
know about the dubh" part) does actually mean someothing in Arabic. It'd be
interesting to know if dubh and haot-si mean something in the appropriate
languages. I'd guess they might not, as Baum would be more likely to have
picked up some French vocabulary (and would know Ali from such examples as
Ali Baba) than some Arabic or Chinese -- unless he took time to go do some
research. He didn't know much French, though, or he probably wouldn't have
named a "Yew" character "Baron Merd."

Ruth Berman

Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 14:17:37 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] more aft

"Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com> wrote
> It's unclear as to whether there is only one Ryl of each color (in which
> case Tanko-Mankie would presumably be the same as the Yellow Ryl in
> SANTA), or several different ones (in which case Tanko-Mankie could still
> be SANTA's Yellow Ryl, but wouldn't have to be).  I would be inclined to
> think the latter, since it doesn't seem like the former would allow for
> the existence of that many Ryls.  I suppose some of the less prominent
> Ryls could specialize in different shades of the same colors, though.
> (The Teal Ryl?  The Auburn Ryl?) >

And the Easter Lily Ryl and the mention of the Field Ryls who will supply
Santa with food if he doesn't plough the valley represent yet different ways
of divvying up their jobs. Do Forest Ryls look after flowers that grow as
blossoms on trees? Water Ryls to look after water-lilies and lotuses?

> Incidentally, both SANTA and "A Kidnapped Santa Claus" refer to Kilter
> (another one of Santa's helpers) as a pixie, but it's never clear what
> pixies actually do in Baum's mythology.  Kilter is identified as a former
> assistant to Ak, but do all pixies serve in that capacity, or did Kilter
> just happen to be both a pixie AND Ak's assistant? >

I wonder if Baum was thinking that Kilter as the Master Woodsman's assistant
had some special responsibility for the well-being of trees. If so, when he
identified Kilter as a pixy in "A Kidnapped Santa Claus," he might perhaps
have been thinking of pixies as tree-fairies. I notice with some surprise
that the dictionary says pixy/pixie is of unknown origin. But the
identification of Kilter as Ak's assistant and as a pixy came in different
stories, so maybe it's just as likely that there's no particular connection
between the two functions.

> the mandarin and the butterfly ... it's interesting that a
> pig-turned-human still acts like a pig, and very much unlike the civilized 
> Swynes from TIN WOODMAN.  It makes me wonder whether the mandarin retains
> his human memory upon turning into a pig. >

Considering that the customer who doesn't find the mandarin finds a pig
squealing "most miserably," I suspect the pig does have his human memory,
and that's why he feels so miserable. (On a long-term basis, I wonder if the
pig might do something like scratching the recipe for the potion in sand or
nudging the book open to the appropriate page to get someone with hands to
try making a batch of potion the pig could get at, and so recover his human
shape and make more mischief in the world. But perhaps the human memory
would fade and the pig after a while be only a pig -- preferably, as a
matter of kindness, before someone with a taste for bacon comes along and
collars the pig! Or perhaps if Haot-sai got his human shape back the
experience would make him more sympathetic to other people, not to mention
pigs.)

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 03:06:10 +0100 (BST)
From: Boq Aru <boq_aru at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: the magican Haot-sai

Nathan DeHoff wrote:
> Another interesting detail is that Baum identifies the magician from
> whom the mandarin steals the book as Haot-sai.  Is there any
> significance to this name, or is it just Baum's attempt to come up
> with a Chinese-sounding appellation?  Regardless, it would be
> interesting to learn more about this magician.

I think that, as with "Grogrande," which is French for "big-fat," but
clumsy French, and "Ali Dubh" and the names in Orientalist novels like
DAUGHTER OF DESTINY, Baum was just trying for something that sounded
right for the ethnic type he'd chosen to write about
  
  Haot-sai is Fukianese for master of transformation.
  Haot-sai in Mandarin would be Hua-zhe, which means one who makes
metamorphoses. Interesting name in a story about a butterfly. Not to mention
one who in using the book was himself metamorphosized by his own metamorphosis.

L. Frank Baum, Ike Morgan, Harry Kennedy, N.P. Hall and Ralph Fletcher Seymour

Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 22:11:54 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: American Fairy Tales

Ruth Berman wrote:
>> Subject: [Regalia] Re: Girl Who Owned a Bear ...
> Interesting points. Your suggestion that the story doesn't actually
> say that the arrival of Jane Gladys's mother is the element that
> triggers the pictures's rush to get back inside their book -- yes,
> possibly. But your wording suggests that you think yourself the
> interpretation is a bit forced

Yes, I was offering a reinterpretation of the facts Baum stated in his
story that I strongly doubt was what he meant to convey. Something that
might work in an "AMERICAN FAIRY TALES-as-history" approach, but doesn't
make that story a better piece of literature.

>> I think that, as with "Grogrande," which is French for "big-fat,"
>> but clumsy French, and "Ali Dubh" and the names in Orientalist
>> novels like DAUGHTER OF DESTINY, Baum was just trying for something
>> that sounded right for the ethnic type he'd chosen to write about.
>
> But grosgrande does actually mean something in French, and "ali" (I
> don't know about the dubh" part) does actually mean someothing in
> Arabic. It'd be interesting to know if dubh and haot-si mean
> something in the appropriate languages. I'd guess they might not, as
> Baum would be more likely to have picked up some French vocabulary
> (and would know Ali from such examples as Ali Baba) than some Arabic
> or Chinese -- unless he took time to go do some research. He didn't
> know much French, though, or he probably wouldn't have named a "Yew"
> character "Baron Merd."

Yes, "Grogrande" clearly has French roots, but I think a French writer
would turn up her nose at it. The first part is an incomplete but
homophonic spelling of "gros," the masculine form of "fat." The second
part is the *feminine* form of "big." (Another linguistic gender
confusion appears later in JOHN DOUGH when the Princess is named
Jacquelin, not Jacqueline.)

We can tell Grogrande's not a real French name by Googling it. Instead
of coming up French computer technicians and public figures, all the
references are to JOHN DOUGH.

Yes, Ali is a common Arabic name. "Dubh" is one transliteration for an
Arabic word for a type of lizard, but I doubt Baum knew that in 1905. I
bet he just liked the exotic sound, which echoes the names of councilors
of Noland in ZIXI: Tallydab and Tullydub.

Google finds one person called "Ali Dubh" (different pronunciation)
besides the JOHN DOUGH villain.

>> Incidentally, while the makes of the GOLDEN COMPASS/NORTHERN LIGHTS
>> movie adaptation continue to make casting announcements, there's
>> still no word on what polar bear will play Iorek Byrnison. >
>
> Too bad Janos Prohaska, who played assorted bears for Andy Williams,
> Lucille Ball, and Red Skelton, as well as various primates and
> monsters (for "Star Trek" and others) is no longer alive.  Although at
> that -- considering that adaptations of books into movies typically
> have to leave out some material -- maybe the character isn't going to
> wind up being in the movie

I don't think even Hollywood could film GOLDEN COMPASS without Iorek.
But these days the great polar bear king will be rendered through CGI
animation with some celebrated actor's voice. Especially since polar
bears have proven popularity in CGI (those Coke commercials).

In a ROGER RABBIT world, the moviemakers would simply cast the Coke
polar bear in the film and provide a dialect coach.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 15:42:11 -0400
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Re: Mandarin and the Butterfly

On 8/20/06, J. L. Bell <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Ruth Berman wrote:
> > The narrative says
> > that the butterfly is able to lie to the mandarin "with great readiness and
> > a certain amount of enjoyment" because it has no soul and therefore no
> > conscience.
>
> Hans Christian Andersen was careful in what he wrote about souls--to
> keep his stories within the bounds of contemporary Christian orthodoxy,
> I sense. He says the little mermaid doesn't have a soul, for instance,
> and her goal is to achieve one, and thus a shot at immortality.
>
> Baum is more free here, but he still says that one needs a soul to be
> troubled by acting immorally--though he soon undercuts that by saying
> the butterfly is troubled by injustice.

The mandarin says that the fact that butterflies have no souls means
that they "cannot live again."  Is he a believer in reincarnation,
perhaps?

Nathan

Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:52:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: Scott Hutchins <scottandrewhutchins at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Re: Mandarin and the Butterfly

I've read that he was.  I think it's a basic tenet of Theosophy.  He
and Maud believed that they had lived many lives together.
  
  Scott

Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com> wrote:
  On 8/20/06, J. L. Bell wrote:
> Ruth Berman wrote:
> > The narrative says
> > that the butterfly is able to lie to the mandarin "with great readiness and
> > a certain amount of enjoyment" because it has no soul and therefore no
> > conscience.
>
> Hans Christian Andersen was careful in what he wrote about souls--to
> keep his stories within the bounds of contemporary Christian orthodoxy,
> I sense. He says the little mermaid doesn't have a soul, for instance,
> and her goal is to achieve one, and thus a shot at immortality.
>
> Baum is more free here, but he still says that one needs a soul to be
> troubled by acting immorally--though he soon undercuts that by saying
> the butterfly is troubled by injustice.

The mandarin says that the fact that butterflies have no souls means
that they "cannot live again." Is he a believer in reincarnation,
perhaps?

Nathan

Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 15:56:14 -0400
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] more aft
 
On 8/21/06, Ruth Berman <berma005 at umn.edu> wrote:
> > Incidentally, while the makes of the GOLDEN COMPASS/NORTHERN LIGHTS movie
> > adaptation continue to make casting announcements, there's still no word
> > on what polar bear will play Iorek Byrnison. >
>
> Too bad Janos Prohaska, who played assorted bears for Andy Williams, Lucille
> Ball, and Red Skelton, as well as various primates and monsters (for "Star
> Trek" and others) is no longer alive. Although at that -- considering that
> adaptations of books into movies typically have to leave out some
> material -- maybe the character isn't going to wind up being in the movie>

Actually, I think I've seen designs for the armored bears in the upcoming film.

> I wonder if Baum was thinking that Kilter as the Master Woodsman's assistant
> had some special responsibility for the well-being of trees. If so, when he
> identified Kilter as a pixy in "A Kidnapped Santa Claus," he might perhaps
> have been thinking of pixies as tree-fairies. I notice with some surprise
> that the dictionary says pixy/pixie is of unknown origin. But the
> identification of Kilter as Ak's assistant and as a pixy came in different
> stories, so maybe it's just as likely that there's no particular connection
> between the two functions.

There actually is one reference in the final chapter of LIFE AND
ADVENTURES to Santa's helpers as "the Fairy, the Pixie, the Knook and
the Ryl."  By default, Kilter would have to be the Pixie, and he is
specifically defined as such in "Kidnapped."  While I think the
general image that people get when they think of pixies is a
Tinkerbell type of being, I suppose it could also refer specifically
to wood fairies.  That would raise the question as to why there would
need to be both wood-nymphs AND pixies to take care of trees, and the
statement in ROAD that Knooks tend to trees further complicates
matters.  The duties of Baum's nature fairies are never all that
clearly delineated.

Nathan

Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 22:03:00 +0100 (BST)
From: Boq Aru <boq_aru at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Mandarin and the Butterfly

>The mandarin says that the fact that butterflies have no souls means
>that they "cannot live again." Is he a believer in reincarnation,
>perhaps?

  The mandarin would certainly believe in reincarnation. It is a basic
tenet of the Chinese fairy faith. All birth and death rites of Taoist, Buddhist
and Confucianist practice involve an implicit belief in reincarnation.

Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:18:03 -0400
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Re: Mandarin and the Butterfly

On 8/24/06, Boq Aru <boq_aru at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >The mandarin says that the fact that butterflies have no souls means
> >that they "cannot live again." Is he a believer in reincarnation,
> >perhaps?
>
>
>  The mandarin would certainly believe in reincarnation. It is a basic
tenet of the Chinese fairy faith. All birth and death rites of Taoist, Buddhist
and Confucianist practice involve an implicit belief in reincarnation.

Is the belief that butteflies don't have souls and can't be
reincarnated part of any of these systems, though?

Nathan

Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2006 01:06:58 +0100 (BST)
From: Boq Aru <boq_aru at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Mandarin and the butterfly

Nathan DeHoff
  
  >>  The mandarin would certainly believe in reincarnation. It is a basic
>>tenet of the Chinese fairy faith. All birth and death rites of Taoist,
>>Buddhist and Confucianist practice involve an implicit belief in
>>reincarnation.

>Is the belief that butterflies don't have souls and can't be
>reincarnated part of any of these systems, though?
  
  Common to them is that human beings (Chinese) have 10 souls, 3 rational
and 7 animal. When a human dies these 10 usually separate from one another at
their owin pace and go their separate ways. Eventually. That which is
reincarnated is the focal juncture of the 3 rational souls. It ordinarily
remembers nothing.

  Half humans (certain non Chinese) have only 2 rational souls and so are
incapable of being fully rational unless they make a special effort.

  Talking and non talking animals (most non Chinese and actual animals)
have only 1 rational soul and so require a long long time and a lot of effort
to become rational.

  As far as the Taoists go, all living and non living coherant entities
reincarnate under specific circumstances. If you're wondering how a stone dies,
or can be born for that matter, that's a whole thing in itself.

  As far as Chinese Buddhists go, all living things have Buddha nature,
which is the coherant, recursive focality of all those souls. Thus as far as
they're concerned, the butterfly will live again. Over and over and over...

  If the mandarin is really a Mandarin, that is, a state official, he is
probably a Sung Neo Confucian. Anything else would get him in trouble with the
Ching government. As far as they're concerned all 10 of those souls get
recycled, but the focal essense of the butterfly (having only 8 active souls)
does not. Where as the focal essense of a human does.

  It would be fair to express that in western terms, that the butterfly
has no soul and will not live again.
If you're a Mandarin.

Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:46:14 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Mandarin and the Butterfly

Nathan DeHoff wrote:
> The mandarin says that the fact that butterflies have no souls means
> that they "cannot live again."  Is he a believer in reincarnation,
> perhaps?

Most of Baum's readers, being orthodox Christians, would probably have
interpreted that to mean the butterfly would have no place in heaven
after death. Christian theologians had long stated that animals, unlike
humans, have no souls.

It's possible that Baum had something else in mind for his Chinese
character, but I doubt he'd read carefully about Chinese beliefs in
souls. We know the Baum family explored Theosophy, but that's a
different system. And if he had done special research on Chinese
beliefs, he would probably have written more about it.

Baum says other Chinese-Americans recognize the mandarin by "the red
button in his hat." The term "red button" was indeed used by mid-1800s
British in China to refer to high-ranking mandarins--but only the high
ranking. Furthermore, by using the word "mandarin" itself, derived from
a Portuguese traders' term, Baum tipped his hand that he was writing
from a Western point of view instead of expressing what a Chinese
bureaucrat would himself have said and thought.

The whole passage offers an interesting contrast between the two
characters' understandings of life. The butterfly doesn't contradict
what the mandarin says, leaving readers with the impression that it's
correct (at least so far as this story goes). But the butterfly sees
life differently:
++++++++++++
"I expect that," replied the butterfly, with a sigh. "But my race is
shortlived, anyway; it doesn't matter whether death comes sooner or later."

"Yet you like to live, do you not?" asked the mandarin.

"Yet; life is pleasant and the world is beautiful. I do not seek death."

"Then," said the mandarin, "I will give you life--a long and pleasant
life--if you will promise to obey me for a time and carry out my
instructions."

"How can a butterfly serve a man?" asked the creature, in surprise.

"Usually they cannot," was the reply. "But I have a book of magic which
teaches me strange things. Do you promise?"

"Oh, yes; I promise," answered the butterfly; "for even as your slave I
will get some enjoyment out of life, while should you kill me--that is
the end of everything!"

"Truly," said the mandarin, "butterflies have no souls, and therefore
cannot live again."

"But I have enjoyed three lives already," returned the butterfly, with
some pride. "I have been a caterpillar and a chrysalis before I became a
butterfly. You were never anything but a Chinaman, although I admit your
life is longer than mine."

"I will extend your life for many days, if you will obey me," declared
the Chinaman. "I can easily do so by means of my magic."

"Of course I will obey you," said the butterfly, carelessly.
++++++++++++

We can read this story as the tale of the butterfly growing up a bit,
becoming less "careless" about what it promises to do. It might even
sacrifice some of its "long and pleasant life"--or at least its steady
supply of molasses drops--when it transforms the mandarin. But being an
agent of nastiness made its life less enjoyable.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:46:17 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Mandarin and the Butterfly

I found this passage interesting, in that Baum wrote the tale to appear
in newspapers:
+++++++++++
"Have you changed two of them [children] into pigs?" he asked, at once.

"I have," replied the butterfly. "One was a pretty, black-eyed baby, and
the other a freckle-faced, red-haired, barefooted newsboy."

"Good! Good! Good!" screamed the mandarin, in an ecstasy of delight.
"Those are the ones who torment me the most! Change every newsboy you
meet into a pig!"
+++++++++++

Such a child would presumably have been familiar to newspaper readers,
and (depending on his literacy) might also have enjoyed Baum's story. As
with the author/book salesman in "The Girl Who Owned a Bear," there's a
bit of self-reference.

Baum wrote at least one other about a newsboy, as I recall: "How Scroggs
Won the Reward," which appears in the Oz Club's new volume of Baum's
collected short stories.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:38:12 +0100 (BST)
From: Boq Aru <boq_aru at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Mandarin and the Butterfly

J.L.Bell
  
  >Furthermore, by using the word "mandarin" itself, derived
>from a Portuguese traders' term, Baum tipped his hand that he >was
writing from a Western point of view instead of >expressing what a Chinese
bureaucrat would himself have said >and thought.
  
  On the other hand, one wonders what his readers would have thought if he
had used the Chinese word "kwanyuean" instead of the English word
"mandarin". Perhaps he might have needed to add a bit more in the way
of explanation.

  Of course he could have always said "Chinese bureaucrat" but
why? Mandarin is the normative English word. What single word or phrase could
he have used to indicate that he wanted the reader to understand that the point
of view would be that of an actual Chinese bureaucrat?

Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 14:17:00 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] pixies

"Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com> wrote:
> There actually is one reference in the final chapter of LIFE AND
> ADVENTURES to Santa's helpers as "the Fairy, the Pixie, the Knook and the
> Ryl."  By default, Kilter would have to be the Pixie, and he is
> specifically defined as such in "Kidnapped."  While I think the general
> image that people get when they think of pixies is a Tinkerbell type of
> being, I suppose it could also refer specifically to wood fairies.  That
> would raise the question as to why there would need to be both wood-nymphs 
> AND pixies to take care of trees, and the statement in ROAD that Knooks
> tend to trees further complicates matters.  The duties of Baum's nature
> fairies are never all that clearly delineated. >

Not exactly clashing so much as to be an outright inconsistency, but, as you
say, not very clear. In general usage, there's no clear difference between
pixies and fairies/elves. With origin of the word unknown, there's not much
basis for having a clear difference between them, either. Checking the
Wikipedia entry on them, I notice that it says you'd expect the word to have
a Celtic origin, since the term "pixies" comes from the Cornwall/Devonshire 
area, but it also points out that no suggested derivation has been accepted
as quite satisfactory. A dialect variant of the word is piskey, and you'd
think that might have something to do with the word "pesky," but the
Webster's Collegiate says that's probably an easier-to-prounce version of
pest-y.

(When I was little, we had a cocker spaniel named Pixy, because she was such
a small, cute puppy. As she grew up to be quite a large round dog, the name
became noticeably inappropriate.)

Ruth Berman

Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2006 00:29:05 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] The Ryl and Strange Adventures of an Egg

The second edition of AMERICAN FAIRY TALES contained some stories not in
the first, and therefore not in the Dover reprint. They appear in the
Books of Wonder edition of that title, however, and Scott Hutchins has
transcriptions on one of his websites:

"The Ryl" (a/k/a "The Ryl of the Lilies") and "The Strange Adventures of
an Egg" (a/k/a "The Easter Egg") are both Easter stories, so it makes
sense to comment on them together. They're both very simple stories as
well. "The Ryl" has practically no twists at all: a boy wants flowers,
meets a ryl, takes a bottle from his house as a favor for the ryl, but
then suffers no surprises or bad consequences--he just gets the flowers
he wants. "Egg" is a round-robin story: the characters pass around an 
egg, not realizing that it contains a gold coin, until it ends up with
the poor girl we see early in the tale.

Apropos of our discussion of pixies, etc., the title character of "The
Ryl" hotly denies that he's a Fairy or Brownie. (Pixies, knooks, and
other immortals don't come up.) He also complains that nurses don't tell
stories about ryls, unlike those other immortals. To draw out this
story, Baum has the ryl unable to ask a favor of a mortal; I don't think
that's the case in other stories, such as YEW.

"Egg" defies physics just as much as "The Ryl," but has no supernatural
creatures. Instead, Baum sets things going in a chicken-yard, and tells
his readers that a hen can conceal a gold coin inside an egg. Obviously,
the author of THE BOOK OF HAMBURGS knew better. But he had to make that
egg valuable some way.

I'm guessing the Easter Bunny tradition hadn't taken hold yet around
1902, making it hard to write about Easter without writing about a
Christian church. And indeed both these stories involve the church, as
do a couple more in AMERICAN FAIRY TALES.

"The Ryl" is unusual, however, in showing a minister as a sympathetic,
even wise, figure, and his congregants as pure of heart. (The boy wants
lilies to decorate the church, but not for any egotistical reason.)
Interestingly, this minister is also able to accept the little boy's
story of meeting a ryl, not denying it because of his own faith; Baum
thus slips a bit of syncretism into what seems to be a traditional tale.

In contrast, the minister in "Egg" is, like most of the story's other 
characters, happy to give away the egg as an Easter gift because (a)
it's badly dyed, and (b) he expects to earn gratitude. The sexton's wife
is the only truly charitable character: she can't see the egg's defects,
and she passes it on *anonymously* to a even poorer family.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2006 04:30:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: Scott Hutchins <scottandrewhutchins at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] The Ryl and Strange Adventures of an Egg

As Baum told his mother in his inscription for _By the Candelabra's Glare_, he
was only mocking "selfish Christianity" in his poem "The
Heretic", but he might have simply said that to appease his devoutly
Methodist mother, though "An Easter Egg" would seem to confirm he was
sincere.
  
  Scott

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
  The second edition of AMERICAN FAIRY TALES contained some stories not in 
the first, and therefore not in the Dover reprint. They appear in the
Books of Wonder edition of that title, however, and Scott Hutchins has
transcriptions on one of his websites:
<>

"The Ryl" (a/k/a "The Ryl of the Lilies") and "The Strange Adventures of
an Egg" (a/k/a "The Easter Egg") are both Easter stories, so it makes
sense to comment on them together. They're both very simple stories as
well. "The Ryl" has practically no twists at all: a boy wants flowers,
meets a ryl, takes a bottle from his house as a favor for the ryl, but
then suffers no surprises or bad consequences--he just gets the flowers
he wants. "Egg" is a round-robin story: the characters pass around an 
egg, not realizing that it contains a gold coin, until it ends up with
the poor girl we see early in the tale.

Apropos of our discussion of pixies, etc., the title character of "The
Ryl" hotly denies that he's a Fairy or Brownie. (Pixies, knooks, and
other immortals don't come up.) He also complains that nurses don't tell
stories about ryls, unlike those other immortals. To draw out this
story, Baum has the ryl unable to ask a favor of a mortal; I don't think
that's the case in other stories, such as YEW.

"Egg" defies physics just as much as "The Ryl," but has no supernatural
creatures. Instead, Baum sets things going in a chicken-yard, and tells
his readers that a hen can conceal a gold coin inside an egg. Obviously,
the author of THE BOOK OF HAMBURGS knew better. But he had to make that
egg valuable some way.

I'm guessing the Easter Bunny tradition hadn't taken hold yet around
1902, making it hard to write about Easter without writing about a
Christian church. And indeed both these stories involve the church, as
do a couple more in AMERICAN FAIRY TALES.

"The Ryl" is unusual, however, in showing a minister as a sympathetic,
even wise, figure, and his congregants as pure of heart. (The boy wants
lilies to decorate the church, but not for any egotistical reason.)
Interestingly, this minister is also able to accept the little boy's
story of meeting a ryl, not denying it because of his own faith; Baum
thus slips a bit of syncretism into what seems to be a traditional tale.

In contrast, the minister in "Egg" is, like most of the story's other 
characters, happy to give away the egg as an Easter gift because (a)
it's badly dyed, and (b) he expects to earn gratitude. The sexton's wife
is the only truly charitable character: she can't see the egg's defects,
and she passes it on *anonymously* to a even poorer family.

J. L. Bell JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Musings about some of my favorite
fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Mon, 04 Sep 2006 17:12:25 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Witchcraft of Mary-Marie

"The Witchcraft of Mary-Marie" appears in the second edition of Baum's
AMERICAN FAIRY TALES, and a transcription is on Scott Hutchins's old
website:

This tale has the least connection to American culture: there's no
dollar currency, there are no ethnic types familiar to Americans. At the
same time, it strikes me as containing many elements of Baum's
fairy-tale style, lumped together in one short story. Among those:

1) A journey with several obstacles, natural and personal, most of them
overcome through practical magic. The bridge over the chasm, for
instance, has parallels in MO and SCARECROW, as well as a non-magical
bridge in WIZARD.

2) A character switching between male and female identities, as in
Baum's novels from 1903 to 1906. In this story, the heroine's mentor
turns out also to fill the roles of love interest and royal to be rescued.

3) Magic mixed with the modern. Mary-Marie's mentor offers lessons in:

    WITCHCRAFT IN ALL ITS BRANCHES
    TAUGHT BY THE MOST APPROVED MODERN METHODS
    
That might reflect Baum's knowledge of store signage. The witch ends up
rejecting cash payment, another recurrent Baum motif.

4) Magical powers not correlated to morality or innate powers.
Mary-Marie starts out with the idea that witches are "withered dried-up
old hags" who "sell their souls to Satan." Once she learns better, she
decides to try the career herself since she has no better prospects.
Later we meet a wicked magician, overcome by his own blood thirst. The
clear implication is that anyone can learn to work magic, and that magic
is bad only if the magic-worker is. The witch assures Mary-Marie, "you
shall not become a wicked witch, but rather a good and faithful one,
using your arts for the benefit of all mankind."

There's also the common Thompsonian plot of returning a prince to his
rightful throne, though Baum used that himself on occasion.

As in "The Mandarin and the Butterfly," the plot revolves around a plan
to transform someone into an animal as punishment. This tale takes that
a step further toward murder: Mary-Marie is supposed to deliver the
enchanted animal to a butcher to be killed. And she agrees. Mary-Marie
isn't a kind-hearted heroine, by and large: she laughs at the thought of
enchanting the king, and though his bleats as a goat excite her pity she
rather quickly tells him he deserves his fate.

Though we see very little of him, the butcher-magician Gurd has the
makings of one of Baum's worst villains. But since he's in a short
story, there's not really room to explore his wickedness.

King Gruph's name has obvious links to General Guph the Nome and to King
Phearse and King Krewl of Jinxland.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 10:38:16 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] oz rivers & rabbits

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote [in interesting discussion of
"The Ryl" and "Adventures of an Easter Egg"] --
> I'm guessing the Easter Bunny tradition hadn't taken hold yet around 1902, 
> making it hard to write about Easter without writing about a Christian
> church. And indeed both these stories involve the church, as do a couple
> more in AMERICAN FAIRY TALES. <

The tradition was around, according to a website on holidays I looked at
just now, but may not yet have been well known. The website's account sounds
plausible, but it doesn't name particular sources for the assertion that the
Easter Bunny was primarily German folklore, recorded from about 1500 on, and
brought to America in the 1700s, that German candymakers in the 1800s
started making chocolate Easter Bunnies, and at the end of the 19th century
it occurred to candy manufacturers to combine the separate traditions of
having eggs for Easter and an Easter rabbit by claiming that the EB brought
the eggs. (Query: what did the EB have to do with the holiday before then?
Was it just an assumption that it must be spring when you started seeing
baby rabbits out and about? Was eating rabbit a holiday tradition?) All the
examples I can think of of EB stories are recent enough to be post-Baum,
which is probably a measure of how long it took for the EB to become widely
familiar. (The EB shows up under Oz in the McGraws' "Merry-go-Round." Baum
has several rabbit characters in his stories, but the portrayals of "Little
Bun Rabbit," the rabbit that helps Timtom in "Mo," the "Emerald City"
Bunnybury rabbits, Pittypat on the Mifkets' island in "John Dough," and the
"Sky Island" roaring rabbit pet don't involve any references to eggs or to
Easter.)

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 14:56:21 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] more on the 1908 aft addenda

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Apropos of our discussion of pixies, etc., the title character of "The
> Ryl" hotly denies that he's a Fairy or Brownie. (Pixies, knooks, and other
> immortals don't come up.) <

The brownies that Baum describes, with potato-like bodies and stick-thin
limbs, are specifically the popular brownies in the stories (and
illustrations) of Palmer Cox. More traditional stories, such as James Hogg's
"The Brownie of the Black Haggs," are short, and grotesque-looking (Hoggs'
brownie looks like a normal, if stunted and ugly, human being).

> To draw out this story, Baum has the ryl unable to ask a favor of a
> mortal; I don't think that's the case in other stories, such as YEW. >

Well, he says "not allowed" rather than "unable." Sounds as if it might be a
temporary restriction, so maybe it could be explained away by assuming it
was a punishment for something, or a reaction to a temporary problem
(immortals' security restrictions?). And we don't actually find out if it
applies to brownies and fairies and all those other beings-not-ryls. I don't
think there are any other ryls who ask favors of humans, are there? It's a
fairy (complete with the flowing gold hair and gauzy dress sneered at by the
ryl, I think) who asks to be turned into Prince Marvel in "Yew."

> Obviously, the author of THE BOOK OF HAMBURGS knew better. <

Speaking of Baum's knowledge of chicken-characteristics -- I think the
rooster's curiosity over the piece of gold, and the hen's possessiveness
towards her eggs (and the piece of gold)  come out of his knowledge of the 
real thing?

"Mary-Marie" is a bit unusual in Baum's work in being a romance (he has
others, but it isn't his usual choice of plot). I wonder what becomes of the
unseen Princess Pritikin of  Aurissa. With the prince of the neighboring
country restored, but married off to Mary-Marie, the princess seems to be at
a loss for obvious marital prospects. Of course, she could follow Prince
Melra's example and look for someone non-royal but appealing in her own
country

Ribdil and Aurissa for a long time were the two items on the Haff/Martin map
of the Borderlands that called forth the most questions, when there was no
edition of "AFT" including those 3 extra stories in print. "The Ryl" and "An
Easter Egg" don't add any locations outside America to Baum's map, but "MM"
did, so it's nice to have it available in on-line and in-print versions.

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2006 17:30:38 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Easter Egg

Ruth Berman wrote:
> The tradition was around, according to a website on holidays I looked at
> just now, but may not yet have been well known. The website's account sounds
> plausible, but it doesn't name particular sources for the assertion that the
> Easter Bunny was primarily German folklore, recorded from about 1500 on, and
> brought to America in the 1700s

Here's another site that says, "In a German book published in 1682, a
tale is told of a bunny laying eggs and hiding them in the garden."

A lot of other websites give the same date without any more information,
implying they're all copying from each other or a common source, which
doesn't inspire great confidence.

A paper published by the Lancaster County [i.e., Pennsylvania Dutch
country] Historical Society in 1948 says, "The _Gross-Brockhaus_
encyclopedia finds the belief that the rabbit lays the eggs to be at
least as early as 1682."

"GroS Brockhaus" seems to be a standard reference publisher in Germany.
So presumably there is a 1682 book that its experts had actually studied.

> (Query: what did the EB have to do with the holiday before then?
> Was it just an assumption that it must be spring when you started seeing
> baby rabbits out and about? Was eating rabbit a holiday tradition?)

Easter was most likely a pagan fertility holiday. Rabbits are very
fertile. Eggs, too, are a fertility symbol, the folklorists tell us.

> examples I can think of of EB stories are recent enough to be post-Baum,
> which is probably a measure of how long it took for the EB to become widely
> familiar. (The EB shows up under Oz in the McGraws' "Merry-go-Round." Baum
> has several rabbit characters in his stories, but the portrayals of "Little
> Bun Rabbit," the rabbit that helps Timtom in "Mo," the "Emerald City"
> Bunnybury rabbits, Pittypat on the Mifkets' island in "John Dough," and the
> "Sky Island" roaring rabbit pet don't involve any references to eggs or to
> Easter.)

Yes, the fact that Baum wrote those two Easter stories without any
mention of the Easter Bunny or rabbits, and wrote a lot about rabbits
(also the blue one in TIN WOODMAN) without any mention of Easter or eggs
led me to conclude that there wasn't a solid tradition for him to glom
onto yet. He happily appropriated Santa Claus, after all.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.

Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 15:35:24 -0500
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] more bunnies & waters

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Here's another site that says, "In a German book published in 1682, a tale
> is told of a bunny laying eggs and hiding them in the garden."

Thanks for the extra site info. It does sound as if the info they're giving
is probably accurate, but without any real source-info it's hard to be sure.

> Easter was most likely a pagan fertility holiday. Rabbits are very
> fertile. Eggs, too, are a fertility symbol, the folklorists tell us. >

Yes, that's the reason for associating them with spring -- but it doesn't
really answer the question of what kind of observance was used to embody the
association in the holiday. Easter eggs are colored and decorated and then
maybe kept for a while or maybe eaten; Passover eggs go on the Seder plate
and are eaten at the appropriate portion of the Seder. Stockings are hung up
for Santa Claus to fill, and Santa is identified as the bringer of the
presents. Since the one site says that the Easter Bunny wasn't identified as
the bringer of Easter eggs until the 19th century candy makers made the
association, I'm wondering what the Easter Bunny was supposed to be doing to
be part of the holiday before that. Bringing decorated real eggs, but not
being expected to leave candy eggs? But the wording of the site I looked at
seemed to say that the earlier EB wasn't the egg-bringer at all. So if not
that, then what -- maybe part of the meal?

> Yes, the fact that Baum wrote those two Easter stories without any mention 
> of the Easter Bunny or rabbits, and wrote a lot about rabbits (also the
> blue one in TIN WOODMAN) without any mention of Easter or eggs led me to
> conclude that there wasn't a solid tradition for him to glom onto yet. He
> happily appropriated Santa Claus, after all. >

In fact, the main part of the story the Little Bun Rabbit tells Dorothy is
how he met and visited Santa Claus.

Ruth Berman