Tweet25-12-2009 om 00:07 by Sueli Brodin

“And they lived together happily ever after.” Already as a child, I found that such story endings came as an anticlimax after all the captivating adventures that had led to them. To me, bitter-sweet, or even seemingly sad endings, were much more effective and left a longer lasting impression.

Every year my children’s school chooses two or three important themes to be treated and exploited in all the classrooms, such as “Food”, “Autumn” or “Gardening”. Two years ago, the choice fell on “Reading” and among the many activities that were organised around the subject one consisted in inviting non-Dutch parents to come and tell some of their favourite fairytales from their home country to small groups of pupils.

I was enthusiastic about the idea and volunteered to share two of my favourite French and Japanese children stories: “La Chèvre de Monsieur Seguin” (Mr Seguin's goat) by Alphonse Daudet and “Urashima Taro”, a famous Japanese folktale. I brought the books with me, passed them around and read a few lines from each story. The children were fascinated, especially by the Japanese signs and the sound of Japanese. When I started telling them the stories however, their smiles faded and were gradually replaced by increasingly puzzled looks. At the end of the stories, they would often comment: “But that’s not a happy ending!” or ask: “It’s not fair… why couldn’t the little goat be rescued?”


“La Chèvre de Monsieur Seguin” (Mr Seguin's goat) by Alphonse Daudet

I remember getting slightly worried about their reactions and even wondering whether I would receive parents’ complaints about the unconventional type of stories I was telling their children.

Reflecting further on the stories themselves, I realised that they were actually very similar in the way that they both dealt with the theme of wanderlust. The central figures in “La Chèvre de Monsieur Seguin” and “Urashima Taro” are helplessly drawn away towards new and enticing places. Both the pretty little goat Blanquette and the young fisherman Urashima Taro leave their safe and protected homes and loved ones to pursue their quest for new horizons and adventure, and both end up paying a fateful price for it.

“These stories teach you that going on an adventure also involves risks,” I would explain to the children. “Even for those like Urashima Taro who do eventually make it back home, it can be difficult to pick up life where they left it, because everything has changed while they were gone.”


Kuniyoshi Utagawa, Station 38, 1852. The print depicts Urashima Taro beneath a pine tree on the shore;
he is accompanied by a tortoise, from whose mouth issues a vision of Horai.

Every year around Christmas, I’m reminded of another story I once heard as a child at school. It’s the tale of a little fir tree that lives in the woods and cannot wait to grow up to be cut and taken away to far and exciting places. Instead of enjoying its beautiful surroundings and its many friends, it keeps thinking about a brighter and, as it sees it, more glamourous future elsewhere. First it dreams of becoming a stately mast on a ship sailing on far away seas and then, after hearing some sparrows describing the magnificent beauty of Christmas trees in the large town houses, it starts longing to be chosen to become one as well. When its time finally comes, however, its moment of splendour and glory only lasts one night. As early as the next morning, it is discarded away in the attic, where it is left alone in the dark until spring time. This is when the fir tree starts regretting its time in the forest but it’s too late. By the time it is taken outside, its branches are all “withered and yellow” and it ends up being chopped up and burnt.

The story had such an impact on me that to this day I cannot see a Christmas tree without thinking about it. I have often shared it with friends, hoping that someone would be able to tell me its original title, which I had forgotten, and where it came from. A few years ago, I received a surprise Christmas present in the mail: it was a booklet entitled “The Fir Tree” by Hans Christian Andersen.


The Fir Tree, by Hans Christian Andersen

Tomorrow we’ll go to my mother in law’s and celebrate Christmas with my husband’s family. My mother in law has a pretty artificial tree and a book of Christmas stories, from which she always reads to my children. One of them is called “The fir tree”, “based” on Andersen’s story, and it has a happy ending.

In this adapted version, the beautiful fir tree has a fine time with the mice in the attic and when spring time comes, it is nicely and painlessly chopped up before usefully being converted into green manure for the vegetable garden.

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