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Author
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Comment
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megatsunami18
Unregistered User
(7/24/06 3:06 pm)
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Need help finding a fairy tale: prince, mirrors, windows
Hello,
I am looking for a fairy tale, which I remember reading as a child (in the 80's) - I'm pretty sure it was in a collection of fairy tales. I thought perhaps it was one of Andrew Lang's books, but couldn't find it there.
As I remember it, the story went roughly like this:
A vain, selfish prince is taken to live with his fairy godmother. She leaves him alone in her house, where the walls are made of alternating mirrors and windows. He spends all his time looking at himself in the mirrors. He does not notice that, day by day, the mirrors are expanding and the windows are shrinking. Soon the windows disappear and the walls are covered in mirrors; he is trapped in the dark room.
Eventually he realizes there is a songbird in the room as well, and makes friends with it. As he takes care of the bird and starts to develop kindness and caring, the windows start to appear and expand again. This is a sign that he has overcome his selfishness.
Please let me know if you recognize or have heard of this fairy tale.
Thanks.
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pinkolaestes
Registered User
(8/8/06 9:54 am)
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Re: Need help finding a fairy tale: prince, mirrors, windows
hello there
Andrew Lang's works are in public domain and can be searched by keyword. There are many sites online with his full works. I would use the symbols you gave us and search the text. It may be there by a name that is obscure. Lang has at least 10 if not 15 fairytale collections to look through.
Also, just as a small aside; I have noticed that sometimes we 'mis-remember' tales and stick two or three together as though they are one tale, and then drive ourselves half crazy trying to find a non-existant tale that is actually more than one tale. I find that a charming limerance in human beings...it is a little bit like dreaming function in putting 'parts' together with a different intent than ego alone realizes. Not saying you have 'misremembered', but I have done it myself once, and recently wrote about how unusually that worked out... in one of my forthcoming books.
I so know an old tale about a songbird kept in a house of weirdness, the house itself being under a spell of its owner, but it does not have any of the other details as you have explained them in your message. Darn it.
Do let us know what you find!
with kindest regards,
cpe
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darklingthrush
Registered User
(8/9/06 10:04 am)
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Not an exact answer
For some reason, the description of your fairy tale reminded me
of "The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling-Cloak."
It's certainly not an exact match but being whisked away and living
in tower and the songbird seem to remind me of this fairytale by
Dinah Marie Mulock Craik. I am also a child of the 80's and read
this particular story in Hearn's collection, The Victorian
Fairy Tale Book.
Here's a link to the tale: etext.virginia.edu/toc/mo...lLitt.html
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(8/23/06 10:40 pm)
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Re: Need help finding a fairy tale: prince, mirrors, windows
I don't know how much searching you did in Lang but there's a wonderful site for searching them all by keyword.
www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/
It couldn't find the story tho. :-)
The mirrors growing and the windows shrinking is a wonderful image. The summary you gave sounds like something that might happen in a CAbinet des Fees story. Or maybe some story written in the 19th century.
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