The Fourth Pig (Oddly Modern Fair Tales)
Naomi Mitchison
Language: English
Pages: 257
ISBN: B007SHT6XA
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Fourth Pig, originally published in 1936, is a wide-ranging and fascinating collection of fairy tales, poems, and ballads. Droll and sad, spirited and apprehensive, The Fourth Pig reflects the hopes and forebodings of its era but also resonates with those of today. It is a testament to the talents of Naomi Mitchison (1897–1999), who was an irrepressible phenomenon—a significant Scottish political activist as well as a prolific author. Mitchison’s work, exemplified by the tales in this superb new edition, is stamped with her characteristic sharp wit, magical invention, and vivid political and social consciousness.
Mitchison rewrites well-known stories such as “Hansel and Gretel” and “The Little Mermaid,” and she picks up the tune of a ballad with admiring fidelity to form, as in “Mairi MacLean and the Fairy Man.” Her experimental approach is encapsulated in the title story, which is a dark departure from “The Three Little Pigs.” And in the play Kate Crackernuts, the author dramatizes in charms and songs a struggle against the subterranean powers of fairies who abduct humans for their pleasure. Marina Warner, the celebrated scholar of fairy tales and fiction author, provides an insightful introduction that reveals why Mitchison’s writing remains significant.
The Fourth Pig is a literary rediscovery, a pleasure that will reawaken interest in a remarkable writer and personality.
swung his gold-mounted cane: “Those, I take it, are the kilns whose furnaces killed your employee?” “You clear out of my yard this instant or I’ll have the police in!” Bill flinched, but not Denys Backhouse, who had never had occasion to fear the police. He waved the cane once more. Something peculiar seemed to be happening to the kilns. The bricks in the walls were bulging. Three or four dropped out with a loud, disconcerting noise. Bill stayed very still, crouched a little, twisting his cap
could not have seen this clearly and plainly and been able to explain it convincingly to her generation! Was she in some way ashamed? Or could she just not quite believe in it? Presumably, until it happened, it could only be a hypothesis. All she could hope to say with any conviction was: there may be going to be something of this kind, if we can make a set of circumstances which will allow it to happen. And then, of course, she got so involved in making the set of circumstances (which meant, for
awake outwardly and I would not still suffer dark flames wavering through me bursting into light fringes at brain level. But he is not speaking to me because he does not want to, he does not know or care whether I stand firm on ground, or rock in All-Father’s flames. He does not want speech with the woman who I am, but rather possession of the woman whom he thinks he sees and whom he thinks will be made his by continuous sight and grasp and hearing, by the constant usage of her mouth and lips for
the Solway tide, But the fairy woman she came from Ireland And my love stayed on the further side; My love lies snug in Carlisle Castle With the changeling woman for year-long bride. Waters of Tweed are deep between us, Fierce and steep the unridden fells; But the fairy woman watches the swallows And tastes the clover and hears the bells, And my love watches and hears and follows. MIRK, MIRK NIGHT (for strange roads, with Zita) O they rade on, and farther on, And they waded rivers
that brought back to me clear memories, where in Fairy Land I had only perceived faint intimations of something coming increasingly between me and joy. Thus I remembered dumping grounds and back-yards, not so spacious as these, but still devastating enough for the indigenous humans. It seemed to me that I had seen such places very commonly on Middle Earth and that out of that life and place I could remember many more objects which were flawed or broken or chipped or in some way mishandled, than