Thursday, August 27, 2015

Juvenile Fiction: Short and Shivery, Robert D. San Souci & Katherine Coville

Short and Shivery
Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Katherine Coville
ISBN: 0440418046 (Yearling paperback)
Re-Read August 2, 2015

I had this book as a child, so when I saw it in the "freebies" bin at a local used book store, I couldn't help but snatch it back up and re-read the stories.  I was especially interested in revisiting this now that I've been working on my own storytelling.  I seem to be edging towards southern versions of tales, and there were three in particular that were very interesting: Tailypo (of course), The Witch Cat, and Scared to Death.

Short summary and thoughts on each "shivery" in the collection:

1) The Robber Bridegroom, from the Brothers Grimm.
A classic fairy tale set-up with a greedy merchant and a lovely, clever, and resourceful daughter who rescues herself and an old crone from being sold into marriage slavery to a sadistic robber.

Some interesting modern parallels here with the recent high-profile long-term kidnapping cases, and to the Boko Haram / ISIS focus on terrorism through sexual slavery.  Some nasty things in the world, but they aren't new things.

2) Jack Frost, from the Russian folklore tradition.
Another classic fairy tale.  A mother with a daughter and step-daughter, of course the step-child is the good one who is despised and ill-treated.  Mother sends her out into the harsh Russian winter to freeze, but the girl is so good and sweet that even cold-hearted Jack Frost is touched, and gifts her with furs and diamonds.  Mom sends the sulky real daughter out to get her own share, but the girl can't resist being a snot, and is frozen to death by morning.

Love the parallels here with Diamonds and Toads, and the faint feel of Vasilisa and Baba Yaga stories.  There are some interesting links possible with this story.

3) The Waterfall of Ghosts, from a Japanese folktale.
This one was interesting, because it was mainly women characters.  A group of weavers in a town below a haunted waterfall sit up late one night talking boasts, and one girl gets carried away, boasting that she'll travel to the shrine at the base of the waterfall and back that very night, and bring the donation box back with her as proof.  The other girls all pledge their day's weaving if she does.  She travels out, but is overcome by greed and steals the coins from the box, bringing a nearly-empty box back to the others and bemoaning the sad state of charity in the world.  Later that night, she's hunted down by the ghosts of the waterfall, and returns the money to the shrine, along with all her winnings from her boast.

I was mainly interested that this story has the boastful claims entirely among women.  Usually it's a group of men who are trying to one-up each other.  This made for a nice change.

4) The Ghost's Cap, from a Russian ghost story.
Another boaster, but this one is a girl who is trying to show off for the boy she's after.  She brags that she'll go to a haunted graveyard and return with the name of the ghost that people have seen there.  She goes and scoffs at the ghost (believing it to be her boy) and snatches the cap from his head to take back as proof she went.  She gathers her winnings, and tosses the nasty cap into the river.  That night, she's visited by a presence wanting the cap back, but she hasn't got it.  A sad ending for her, as the priest tries an exorcism, and the vengeful ghost takes the girl back with him, leaving nothing but her hair and jacket behind.

This one has fun shades of Tailypo there, and that Lovecraft story about the gem from the Dutch grave - in that losing the item the ghost wants dooms the person.

5) The Witch Cat, from Virginia, USA.
A widower and his young daughter go against local advice and settle in an abandoned farmstead next to a pond.  The widower is soon courted by a willowy young lady from the plot next door, with bright green eyes and long sharp nails.  His daughter is afraid of the lady, but the father is smitten, until the girl begins to take ill and complain of something stealing her breath at night.  The farmer sits up one night to trap the intruder, and is shocked to chop the arm off of an enormous black cat creature.  The next morning, the lady is also missing an arm, and the farmer finally figures it out.  Too late for him, as the confrontation kills both him and the lady, leaving the daughter an orphan.

This one is great fun.  The nice touch for me is the townspeople warning them away from the suspiciously empty homestead, without ever coming out and accusing anyone of anything.

6) The Green Mist, from Lincolnshire, England.
This is one of the only fae tales in the collection.  I also know it as Crown of Cowslips.  A village girl is very ill one winter, and is about to die, but she declares that if she could live "just one summer like the cowslips, she'd be content."  Her mother hushes her quickly, but that night the healing spring "green mist" flows over the land and the girl recovers.  That spring she is lively and happy, and falls in love as spring begins to mature into summer.  Her lover spots the stand of cowslips beside the door and plucks them to make a summer crown for his love, but when she sees the cut flowers she shrieks and bars the door, leaving him alone and confused.  She dies that night during the Summer festival.

There are a lot of things going on with this one.  Firstly, the fae influence is slight but present.  Her declaration is understood to be heard by a bogie and granted as an evil mischief.  I'm also interested in the specificity that she's only to live as long as those specific cowslips (and why, if the mother was so worried about anyone messing with them, she didn't just put a sign up beside them).  I also feel really bad for our unnamed suitor, who did everything right, and got shut out and abandoned at the end with no explanation.  If I were telling, I think that would be the main thing that got changed, or I'd use it to start some sort of Orpheo & Eurycide sort of quest.

7) The Cegua, from Costa Rica.
A traveler-beware tale; a version of the nasty hitch-hiker.  A young man is traveling late at night and sees a beautiful maiden by the side of the road.  He offers her a ride, and she slowly morphs into a nightmare being with a skeletal horse's head and long talons.  He's saved by arriving at the busy hacienda he was traveling to.

I always get a little grumpy about these - when the mysterious old man tells you at the cafe before your trip that seductive strangers are actually demon creatures, why would you then immediately let the sweet seductive girl onto your horse with you?

8) The Ghostly Little Girl, from gold-rush California.
A group of girls makes a new friend: a girl from the settlement of fishing shacks along the ocean.  The girl is excited to be going to school with her new friends, but makes one last trip out with her father - and that night is a terrific storm, and they never come back.  The girls worry about their new friend, and head down to the now-abandoned shack to see if they can find her - but find her waterlogged ghost instead.

Extra creepy because of the inclusion of grade-school kids for the cast-members.  Love the morbid descriptions of the moldy old fishing shack and the wet slap of the ocean waves.

9) The Midnight Mass of the Dead, Norse folktale.
A very pious elderly lady attends mass every day, and is excited to attend the very first early Christmas mass, so she sets out her best clothes, and says a prayer for her best friend, who died earlier in the year.  Awakened by a strange light, she fears she's late for church, and hurries to the chapel, where a strange priest and oddly-familiar parishioners fill the building.  She's even more upset when the sermon and verses are all about death and punishment and hatred of the living.  When she realizes that the only sound coming from the pews is from her, she realizes her mistake.  Her newly-dead friend warns her to run before the service is over, but she is too slow, and loses her coat to the vengeful dead old neighbors as she flees.  Returning to church the next morning, the shreds of her coat are too much to bear, and she flees once more.

The sweet dead friend giving her a warning was a nice touch, but I wanted to know why the dead are so unhappy on Christmas particularly, and why they were so evil and confrontational to begin with.  There's also a sloppy bit at the ending where the wording is contradictory and confusing.

10) Tailypo, rural USA.
An old man lives in the woods with his hunting dogs, but he's been on lean times - nothing to hunt or fish for weeks.  So when he spies a strange critter in his cabin and evicts it by hacking off it's long luxurious tale, he isn't too proud to stew that tail right up and eat it for dinner.  That night he hears a whisper "where's my tailypo?" and he sends a dog out after it.  The dog doesn't return, but the voice does.  Next dog goes and fails to return, and the voice is soon back.  Last dog is now in bed with him, but he sends it out and it's gone with a horrible yelp - and the voice is now inside, and now on the bed.  He finally claims "I don't have your tailypo!"  and the voice rejoins "Oh yes you have!" and eats him right up.

This one has been around for ages. It would be interesting to see if it could be linked up with some other tales and made longer or more elaborate without ruining the arc of the horror about the thing creeping up to exact revenge.

11)  Lady Eleanor's Mantle, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
This one claims to be based on a true story.  Lady Eleanor is from England, so she's miles better than any of the hick rube Americans in this stupid Boston town.  She insists on wearing her fancy mantle from the continent, and likewise insists on scorning a young suitor who had followed her across the ocean.  A ball was held in the Lady's honor to welcome her, and all noted her reserve and weary aspect, but also noted the beauty of the English mantle.  Halfway through, the ball was cancelled abruptly, when the Lady's absence was noted.  That next morning, the fearsome warning ran through the city - a smallpox outbreak, and the Lady's house was quarantined.  The stinger has the young man braving disease to race to his Lady's side, where he finds a hideous pocked figure in her bed, and goes quite mad.

A very strange early entry in the world of medical suspense thrillers.

12) The Soldier and the Vampire, a folktale from Russia
Another traveler-beware tale like The Cegua, and a Clever-Jack sort of story.  A Russian soldier is on leave to attend his sister's wedding, when he's warned about a wizard who recently died in a nearby village.  He travels home without seeing anything amiss, until he reaches the house and discovers his sister, anemic and near death.  The soldier, being a man of the world, knows that the wizard is using vampirism to steal the life from his sister and return from the dead.  That just can't be allowed, so he races off in the night to find the wizard's grave and kill it for good.  Along the road, he is joined by a silent figure, who he realizes is the evil one himself, and the soldier passes himself off as an apprentice wizard.  They then walk and camp in companionable nature, until the wizard reveals that he was not taken in by the soldier's ruse, and they fight until dawn, when the evil one collapses, then morphs into a writhing mass of insects and grubs that the soldier has to individually exterminate to truly kill the monster.

Nice touch with the bugs at the end.  Would have liked to get more than one sentence about the sister recovering.

13) The Skeleton's Dance, from Japan.
Two friends head off to the big city to make their fortunes.  One works hard and becomes wealthy, while the other falls in with gamblers and druggies.  They both decide to travel back to their hometown to get Mr Bad Life Choices away from his temptations, but BLC realizes he has a chance at a new life, and kills his friend in a mountain pass, then claims his friend's life as his own.  After running through all his friend's money and accrued goodwill, he heads back to the city, and is accosted by his friend's bones laying in the path where he was killed so many months before.  The bones rise up and offer to provide a means of easy employment - the bones will dance for free (needing no food or support) and the friend can collect easy money from people gawping at the spectacle.  This works great for Mr BLC until he's famous enough to be hosted by the local lord, whereupon the skeleton fails to act, is abused, and finally calls BLC out on his treachery and murder.
A really nice and satisfactory delayed-justice story.  Loved the way that BLC just walked right into his own doom and didn't see it coming, because he was too wrapped up in his own selfishness and feeling like everyone owed him.

14) Scared to Death, from Charleston, USA.
Another braggart tale.  This one has a young debutante trying to steal a beau away from his current girlfriend, a shy and mousey girl.  In an attempt to impress the young man, the young lady swears she'll go to a haunted grave in the nearby graveyard, and snatches the gentleman's walking stick to leave at the grave as proof.  She heads out alone, makes it over to the grave, and slams the walking stick into the soft ground, but she's nervous and jittery in the spooky darkness.  Her fears are realized when she tries to leave and she's held back by a mysterious unseen force.  She freaks out, falls down, and is found dead the next morning, her cloak pinned to the ground by the walking stick she slammed down her own self.

This one also is nicely karmic - if you're going to be a snotty braggart, don't be stupid about it.  It also has a nice common-sense touch to it.  Everyone's had a not-so-proud moment when you worked yourself up or scared yourself about something that turned out to be completely harmless or normal.

15) Swallowed Alive, a British folktale.
A sneaky washerwoman is always around when things go missing, and she' accused by her neighbors of being a thief.  She calls upon God and the Earth as her witnesses that she's an honest woman, even when she's pretty much caught in the act.  The earth opens up like a whirlpool and sucks her in up to her waist, and the priest begs her to repent and be saved, but she insists that she's not a thief, whereupon the whirlpool sucks her entirely in, and subsequently spits back out the stolen items.

This one reads like the awful heavy-handed morality tales I got fed as a child from the Uncle Arthur books.  Yikes.

16) The Deacon's Ghost, an Icelandic folktale.
A Deacon lived on one side of a fjord, and his love on the other.  They fell in love one winter, and he promised to come back and fetch her for a wedding the next winter as soon as the fjord ices over again.  Sadly, he's killed on his way back in a freak accident, and she doesn't know it.  When he returns to fetch her, he acts strangely, but she's simply glad to see him again.  They get to the church, but it's late at night, and he's not headed towards the church itself, but to the churchyard, where there's a single disturbed and empty grave!  She fights free, and is guarded by the villagers every night from the undead lovesick deacon, until a priest from the closest city arrives to put him down for good.

This one was very sad.  I felt sorry for the poor deacon and the poor girl who was left alone, and then frightened out of her wits afterwards.  Sad ghost stories are harder, because they really drive home the utter unfairness of life and death.

17) Nuckelavee, from the Orkney Islands.
Short and shivery indeed.  Nuckelavee is a weird cross between a kelpie and a demon, and it terrorizes the islanders, but is easily avoided by crossing fresh running water.  This short bit tells of a local man's bad night when he found Nuckelavee coming towards him on a long empty road, with no running water nearby.  A brazen approach, a quick sprint, and a tiny rivulet defeats the monster.

Not much too this one, but it's a fun little story that I can totally see a grizzled old man telling in a pub as a sort of "big fish" story.

18) Adventure of the German Student, Washington Irving.
Our German student has arrived in Paris to rid himself of a gloomy obsession; a demon is after his soul.  Unfortunately, his timing isn't so hot, as he arrives just as Revolutionary fervor is hitting it's peak, and the smell of blood from the guillotines hangs heavy in the air.  Understandably, his morbid fancies aren't much improved, and he hides out in his garret trying to avoid the masses of frenzied Parisians.  He does have to head out for groceries, and tries to do so in the early mornings or late evenings when the streets are less crowded.  One night walking home he spies a weeping lady on the steps of the guillotine.  He rescues her and takes her home, and over the night falls in love with the wild young mourner.  They pledge their hearts and souls, and he heads off the next morning without disturbing her to look for a bigger apartment.  On his return, he finds her beheaded, and the officers confirm his worst fears - the lady was a victim of the guillotine the day before, and he's now pledged his everlasting soul to a dead woman walking.

This one needs a better name, to be honest.  The French Lover would be at least slightly more descriptive.  I love the association with a specific place and specific events, and the descriptions of the poor lady and the besotted (although not so bright) student are lively and morbid all at the same time.  One of my favorites from the book.

19) Billy Moseby's Night Ride, from New England, USA.
Billy lives with his grandparents out on their rural farmstead, and everyone keeps clear of old Francis Woolcott - rumor is that he's a wizard.  Billy is overcome with curiosity, and spies on the neighbor's bonfire one night, and is kidnapped on a wild ride through the countryside as the man releases spirits and hexes to torment his neighbors.  When the night is over, Billy is encouraged to leave well enough alone, but now he's really inspired - he wants power like that himself.  When he finally gets his courage up to go apprentice himself, he's too late.  Woolcott is lying near death, and Billy watches helplessly as the demons that Woolcott worked with return in force to fetch his unwilling pitiful soul off to hell.

Another of the morality tale sort, but at least it has a younger protagonist, and an interesting look at the predjudices of old farm people.  This one might be an interesting pairing with the Witch Cat - Woolcott and the cat lady would be an interesting pair.

20) The Hunter in the Haunted Forest, compiled from three Teton Sioux tales.
A brave hunter must venture into the haunted forest to feed his starving family, even though he knows that powerful spirits run rampant there, and have no love for the living.  First he is overtaken by a powerful storm, and tries to shelter in a clearing, in a convenient teepee, but he overhears voices inside planning dark plots, and races away from them.  When he camps deeper in the woods, and old man comes to his campfire, and reveals himself to be a ghost.  The ghost offers a wager - if they wrestle and the hunter wins, he'll find plentiful game and a peaceful forest, but if the ghost wins, the hunter will be haunted and his whole family will die from hunger.  The hunter wins (with a nice trick) and turns the ghostly old haunt into ashes, and then is delighted to find that the pact holds true, and the game is plentiful thereafter.

It's easy to tell that these are disconnected snippets, but I think that they all flow together decently well - they're more of a sequential narrative than a single arc, but they all hang together well, and give a nice picture of how frightening it must have been to be a hunter alone in the fall woods, knowing your skill is all that keeps your family alive.

21) Brother and Sister, a folktale found in Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi.
Another nasty-bridegroom story.  A sister is promised in marriage to a man claiming to be from a rich neighboring tribe, but her brother is supicious of the strangely-acting man.  He follows the wedded couple to the man's home, and quickly realizes it's a den of hyena demons.  While the demon family is outside changing form, the boy races into the hut to warn his sister.  They block the entrance to the enclosed yard with thorns, and barricade themselves in the hut, then as the demons continue to advance, escape out a window and into the nearby trees, where they flee frantically as the hyenas pursue them (destroying the trees as they go) until they reach a wide river.  The bridegroom hyena continues to swim after them, even after the sun rises and he changes shape back to a man, but the siblings pelt him with rocks until he turns back.

A nice sibling story, but a little frustrating that all of the escape ideas are from the brother.  Ah well.

22) The Lovers of Dismal Swamp, from Virginia, USA
A young pair of lovers lived on the edge of a swamp, until one day the young lady took sick and died.  Her lover was utterly distraught, and refused to believe she was dead.  As time went on, he began to obsess that she was alive, out in the swamp, and needed him to rescue her.  He rushed out into the swamp one day, convinced that he saw her in the mist, with a lantern in her hand.  He built a homemade raft and poled out towards her, and that was the last anyone saw him alive.  Now hunters and fishers in that swamp claim you can see the duo poling a rickety raft along the waterways at dusk.

Short and shivery indeed - just over two pages long!  The tone of this one is interesting, because there's no malice or evil ascribed to the boy or girl, even as ghosts.

23) Boneless, Shetland Isles.
Villagers were terrorized by a creature they called "Boneless" or simply "It" because no one could agree on what it looked like, or even what sort of thing it was.  It gave off an aura of evil and terrorized households and farm animals simply by it's presence.  One Christmas night, a farmer had enough.  After a night of It bumping against his doors and scaring his cattle, he resolved to kill it for good.  He raced out into the night and hurled an axe at it, killing it near the sea-cliff edge, and then burying it for good measure.  That spring, a folklorist was curious about the legend, and learned where the burial spot was.  He began to dig it up, until he noticed the "curdled light" and the milky fog seeping out of the hole. He ran for his life, and watched as It seeped out of the hole and headed towards the ocean.  Two nights later, as he was wandering the cliff edges, he saw It in the water, long and stretched out, and formless.  He turned to run, but it overtook him in an instant, and wrapped misty tentacles around him, dragging him over the edge of the cliff.  He prayed desperately aloud, and the thing recoiled, took fire, released him, fell, and sizzled on the surface of the water below.

This sounds like a folktale that might have influenced Lovecraft back in the day.  The insistence on the thing being unformed and indescribable, of strange oil-shimmer colors on white fish-belly hue, and the affinity to water - sounds like a baby shoggoth to me.  The fact that a folklorist is the one to poke at it and get punished for his temerity is also very Lovecraftian.

24) The Death Waltz, New Mexico
Elizabeth was newly come to Fort Union, and she was a beauty from back East.  Everyone adored her, and all the soldiers and ranchers courted her, but she was too good for any of them, and laughed at them.  The handsomest and best social match was Frank Sutter, who was smitten with him.  She was perfectly happy to be courted by such a fine officer, and when they had to leave on a raid and he asked her hand, she agreed - and upped the deal by promising that even if he died, she'd never wed another.  Of course, the obvious happens.  During the raid, someone saw him go down, but his body was never recovered.  The fort gossips noted that Elizabeth didn't seem too perturbed by the death of her forever love, and tongues wagged even more harshly when she became engaged to a man from back East, who was leaving the fort to return there.  At the wedding reception, the night turned stormy and wild, and the doors slammed open to reveal Sutter, muddy and corpselike, with terrible wounds all over his body.  He grabbed the new bride from her husband, motioned to the band, and began a terrible waltz with her - by the end of it she was dead.  

This was another of the ones I remembered from childhood, because I always thought the "bride" was a silly heartless thing to take advantage of someone and make stupid promises, especially to a soldier in wartime.  Serves her right.

25) The Ghost of Misery Hill, California, USA.
Old Tom Bowers worked the mine on Misery Hill, until he passed away.  He was an ornery and private man, and even after he passed, no one could bring themselves to jump his claim - even after death.  That is, until Jim Brandon's debts got so bad he had no other choice.  It started calmly enough, with him noticing that his tools and equipment were misplaced every morning.  Then he started noticing someone using his sluice to pan gold.  If that wasn't bad enough, then the notices started going up, claiming the mine in Tom Bower's name.  Then he saw the ghost and his nerves vanished, and he shot it - which of course made Old Tom mighty unhappy, and the now-vengeful ghost came after Jim with his pickaxe.  No one ever saw Jim again, but they did find his gun - pinned to the ground by a faintly-glowing pick driven straight through the barrel.

A good old wild-west gold-mining ghost story is such fun.

26) The Loup-Garou, a French-Canadian folktale.
Another short one, of the evil-thing-chasing-you-in-the-woods category.  Pierre lives in a lovely cabin in the woods, and he and his wife are very happy there, until she gets sick and he has to ride through the woods after dark to fetch a doctor for her.  He sets off, and while they're making good time at first, suddenly the horse slows down as if he's pulling a heavy load.  Pierre looks behind him - straight into the eyes of an enormous wolf.  Pierre freaks out, and he and the horse begin the run for their lives, but it's no use - the thing catches them.  Pierre draws his knife and manages to draw blood before the wolf eviscerates him, and the loup-garou (as tradition dictates) is forced to change back into human form and flee.  Pierre gets while the getting is good, and he and the doctor make sure to bring crosses with them as they pass through the woods on the return trip.

This one really isn't much, but the requirement to change to human and flee if blood is drawn is an interestingly specific limitation.  I am very curious about that part.

27) The Golem, an original tale based on Jewish folklore.
A merchant learned of the mysteries of the golem, and hired a rabbi to create one for him.  He immediately began abusing this perfect servant, treating it like the dirt it came from.  But the golem kept growing, and it slowly got less obedient, and even began to act sullen and unhappy.  The merchant refused to admit that he had a problem, and kept on abusing his magical servant, until one day he woke to find the golem systematically dismantling his house.  He flees to the rabbi who teaches him how to destroy the golem, but when the merchant manages to do so, the golem collapses into a mass of inanimate clay that falls onto the merchant, crushing him to death.

LOVED this story, and the just desserts of the pompous asshole merchant who thought he had the perfect slave to abuse.

28) Lavender, raodsides, USA. (see also Seanan McGuire's Sparrow Hill Road's base ghost story)
Two guys were headed to the dance, and they see a pretty girl by the side of the road, dressed in a lavender party dress.  They stop and pick her up, and one of the boys lends her his jacket.  They have a great time at the dance, but when it's time to leave, the girl is distraught and demands to be let out on the side of the road, close to where they found her originally.  The boys are convinced she was just "letting them down easy" because she didn't want to go steady with either of them, and they head down the dirt driveway to visit her the next day.  The door is opened by an ancient woman, who weeps when she hears their story.  Her little girl's favorite color was lavender, and she's been dead for nearly 50 years now - every spring she goes out to dance with the boys, and every time she almost gets back home before she fades away.  The boys think this is a set-up or a trick and leave affronted, until they see the graveyard next door, with Lavender's gravestone draped with the letter jacket from last night draped over it.

Sweet and sad, and one of my favorite ghost stories. Love how it's so universally USA - it doesn't need a time or a place or any identifying details to be haunting and mystical.

29) The Goblin Spider, a legend from Japan.
Raiko, the famous samurai, is sent by the lord to kill a ferocious goblin that is shaped like a giant spider, and is terrorizing the countryside.  On the way there, he is directed by the floating skull of a former victim of the spider.  They find a deserted palace, inhabited by a creepy bug like ancient crone.  She warns them away, then shifts into a mist and sinks through the floor as a legion of demons attack the samurai and his companion. They fight for hours, until the sun begins to rise, and the demons vanish.  Then a beautiful pale maiden appears, but blinds them with unwholesome light, and shapeshifts into a creepy elongated monstrosity that oozes sticky white threads.  She also changes to mist and seeps into the floor, and the samurai realize that she bleeds white sticky blood.  The sun has fully risen, and now the samurai realize that there is a cavern or hollow beneath the flagstones.  They pull them up, angering the mighty spider (who was the hag, and then the fair maiden) who attacks them brutally.  The samurai fight valiantly, and finally slay the hellish spider beast, and take it's head back to court for their rewards.

Ew.  Spiders.

30) The Halloween Pony, a folktale from France.
Grandmother warned the boys to stay inside on Halloween night, but the lively lads are determined to have some fun.  They run out and find a neighbor's pony has gotten loose from it's pen.  They all pile on, and strangely, even 4, 5, 6 and more boys seem to fit comfortably on the small pony.  The pony doesn't even seem to mind the weight, and frolics and cavorts around, until he reaches the seaside, and the boys try to slow it down.  It refuses, and they then try to dismount, but they're stuck.  The boys can do nothing but watch in terror as the pony descends into the sea, and none of the village boys who were out that night were ever found.

So, the French version of kelpies, essentially.  Plus a little morality guilt laid in on top.

I would have preferred this collection to stop at 28, and just skipped the spider and the silly morals, and ended on a high note with Lavender.  Ahh well.





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