Plenty of characters in Grimm’s fairy tales get caught up in predicaments that they would like to get out of. And, more often than not, the way out is to trick someone by using a clever turn of phrase to make them think you’ve got something they want.
Giants seem especially easy to fool, scholars too.
This week we meet a scholar who is so jealously pursuing wisdom that no matter how odd the latest teaching method is, he’ll do it without thought. In seeking wisdom, he acts foolishly.
In The Turnip, a poor farmer finds himself stuck up in a tree in a sack where he has been hastily hidden by a band of murders hired by his own brother.
You see, his rich brother is mad that the king rewarded our protagonist with riches in exchange for his giant turnip, but when the rich brother went to the king for a reward, all he got was….the turnip. (See the first reversal? Poor becomes rich; rich becomes poor.)
In anger, the brother hires a group of murders, and while they were in the act, they hear someone coming and hoist the farmer up a tree.
Who should come along, but a scholar.
In a Grimm story, if someone is a scholar, they are a fool. If they are a simpleton, they are not necessarily wise, but stumble into wisdom. If they are poor, they will become rich. Grimm is a teller of “reversals.”
When he who was aloft saw that someone was passing below him, he cried, “Good day! You have come at a lucky time.”
The student looked round on every side, but did not know whence the voice came. At last he said, “Who calls me?”
Then an answer came from the top of the tree, “Raise your eyes; here I sit aloft in the Sack of Wisdom. In a short time have I learnt great things; compared with this all schools are a jest; in a very short time I shall have learnt everything, and shall descend wiser than all other men. I understand the stars, and the signs of the Zodiac, and the tracks of the winds, the sand of the sea, the healing of illness, and the virtues of all herbs, birds, and stones. If you were once within it you would feel what noble things issue forth from the Sack of Knowledge.”
The student, when he heard all this, was astonished, and said, “Blessed be the hour in which I have found thee! May not I also enter the sack for a while?”
Ah, the scholar bought it hook, line, and sinker.
These types of reversals work best for characters who are the underdogs. Consider using a reversal in your fairy tale. Bonus points if you can find a way to add humor, your own “Sack of Knowledge!”
