The Darkness of "Rinkrank", Grimm tale No. 196

I was recently reminded of a story I read a Long Time Ago. It never really appealed to me at the time, but on re-reading it, now, with 16 years of experience as a professional teller of tales, it has a very different sound to it.

The story of "Old Rinkrank" is tale No. 196 in the sixth edition of Grimm's Children's and Household Tales. It was collected by the brothers, found in Frisian Archiv von Ehrentraut - the archive of Ehrentraut.

The basic story is this: King has a glass mountain 'created.' Anyone wishing to marry his daughter has to cross the mountain, and if they fail, they lose their heads. A young man wants to marry said princess, who goes with him to help. She falls through the mountain herself and vanishes as it seals up. Young man goes back to king. King 'brings down' glass mountain. Girl finds herself in the bowels of the earth confronted by an old man with a long grey beard. He makes her his slave and takes her to his cave home/dwelling. Daily he leaves the cave-home climbing a ladder to the top world, returning with gold and silver. This is Rinkrank. When the princess becomes old, he tells her his name and names her Mother Mansrot. She has enough and plans her own escape. She lays a trap for him and locks his beard in a window. He eventually tells her where the ladder is, which she finds. She climbs up the ladder and with a string she has with her, attached at the other end to the window, releases Rinkrank from the trap. Princess goes home, tells her father the king, who digs up the underground lair, and kills Old Rinkrank. Princess marries her sweetheart who is still waiting on her and all live Happily Ever After.

This, to me, is a very different and sinister if not outright dark fairy tale, which I recently reacquainted with through the legendary Gwenda Ledbetter. When I re-read it today, I find a story unlike many others. To begin with the princess is old when she gets married. She rescues herself. She is renamed by her captor, who appears to only reveal his name years later when she is grey.

Let’s dig in.

Looking deeply into Old Rinkrank, if the king has the glass mountain made, he would have known that the mountain would open up and reseal itself. Did he plan to have his daughter vanish, or was the plan that his daughter would never marry? Was the mountain designed to capture the suitors, who would fall through the magical glass, never to be seen again? The king, then, would not have to marry his daughter off. If she were married there was always the possibility that the king would lose his kingdom. Kings and queens were often overthrown or murdered back then. Glass is a liquid, and quite often liquid is seen as representing love - Cups in Tarot etc.. Is the king freezing the love of his daughter as the glass mountain? The princess obviously loves this suitor (not a prince, or if he is, it is not specified) as she says she will go with him to help him succeed. The king does not object, so does he even know? Does she sneak off in secret to assist her true love?

Did the king know of the old man, Rinkrank? Again, he should if he had had the mountain built. Was the old man Rinkrank there to 'take care of' any falling suitor? Daily, Rinkrank goes to collect gold and silver. Is this his promised payment from the king in return for his deadly services? With the princess captured, is the payment now a bribe or ransom?

The king, frightened that the truth might come out, brings down the glass mountain. After all, neither he nor the suitor go in search of the princess. And Rinkrank hiding in his underground cave dwelling/home, collects the money still, presumably not giving away the secret to the king's daughter. She is made a servant, a slave to Rinkrank. The old man gives her the choice of slavery or death. She picks for the former and cleans and cooks for him. Everyday Rinkrank leaves, climbing a giant ladder to the above ground. He pulls this out of his pocket. Once up there he pulls the ladder after him only to return with the gold and silver.

For years she works for Rinkrank, and when she is grey and old, he names her Mother Manrot, and tells her his name. Bear in mind these stories are old and life expectancy was not as it is today. The king might have made it to fifty, so, if he had her when he was sixteen to eighteen years of age, not uncommon then, she would be around thirty years old now in the story, possibly. Why name her now? Did he feel he is losing his power over her and wants to strengthen that grip? The names are not kind nicknames but harsh names. Does Rinkrank smell? Mother Manrot - has she become rotten herself, or so ugly her appearance makes him rot? This is not important. Naming things - oneself or others - is powerful; that is what is important, and that she is there a long time before he names her and reveals his name. If it is because he feels his grip over her is weakening, and the naming will stop this, it backfires! It is at this point she decides to escape.

A colleague of mine, Charles Kiernan pondered on a possible Bruno Bettelheim explanation… The conflict and struggle between Mother Mansrot and Old Rinkrank reflects the internal struggle of an individual in whom the authoritarian superego (Rinkrank) has subjugated the id (the princess’s wants and desires) until the ego (in a burst of tenacity) releases the superego’s stranglehold and restores equilibrium, allowing the individual to reintegrate their personality.

Kiernan does not think this is the real reason. But the naming has to be the catalyst that has her finish her chores and then set a trap for Old man Rinkrank. She locks up the house, doors and all but one window - a small window which she leaves open and attaches a string to. She goes to another part of the house. Rinkrank arrives home and demands to be let in. The princess refuses. He finds the open window and puts his beard through planning on following, but the princess yanks on the string which traps his beard. He pulls and tugs but she will not let him free until he gives up where he keeps the ladder. We know from earlier in the tale that it is kept in his pocket, and he pulls it up after him once he has ascended. There must be another, as he admits it is hidden with the treasure. She finds it, climbs it, adds to the length of string until she is at the top and only then frees Rinkrank.

The princess, leaving Rinkrank to nurse his beard, runs off back to her castle. Her father and suitor are still alive and there waiting for her. The king immediately acts. The king has the old man killed - to keep his treachery concealed, I presume. They take the money, and the princess and her suitor are married -  and they All Live Happily Ever After.

This is, or could be, a very duplicitous story. The king is a complete tyrant, at least from this point of view. What are the king and the suitor doing all this time? Presumably the marriage would have taken place when she was sixteen at the latest, if this is a very old story, making her absence last fourteen years. If the plan was to be rid of the princess all along, and the suitor was in on this, why did they get married? Maybe the suitor figured out what happened, sent her a message, and he and the princess killed the king as soon as they could. This story provokes so many questions and gets me all excited about all the possible answers, and which ones are most relevant for today's audience.

Old Rinkrank is interesting and, if taken from this point of view, very dark indeed! I love it. I might, of course, be reading way too much into the story. But it is fun to ponder on these things.

What would you have the princess do? Is the suitor as much as a tyrant as the king? Is the story pure entertainment, the sort of Michael Creighton, Lisa Unger, Gillian Flynn, or Patterson story of it’s time? What are your thoughts? How would you tackle the story?

Curiously,

Simon

Becoming a storyteller - Beginning and beginners

I'm the one in green tights getting ready to be Peter Pan!

My mother says I came out of the womb telling stories. I wrote stories all through my teens and in to adulthood and still do. When I began telling stories to strangers and non-family members in 1990 at Youth Hostels on the South Coast of England, most were my own written tales. I learned a few folk tales, and fairy tales and told those too. Then a school group took me to a storytelling presentation by Eric Maddern in Battle, Sussex where the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. Eric brought history to life to everyone there. It was brilliant. So brilliant I bought a three tape cassette pack of his Stories in Historical Places. I still have it. Eric Maddern opened the door to storytelling for me and was to a degree, my first inspiration in that direction. And then I bought Northern Lights, stories,myths and sagas by Kevin Crossley-Holland. He too, was another great inspiration to me with storytelling. I was in love with the old traditional stories.

Avebury, England © Simon Brooks 2016

A few years later, I crossed the Atlantic and a good few years after that, in 2003 I got a job as a children's librarian in Thetford, Vermont.  I told stories again to non-family members and children of stranger and not friends!  The mommy circuit spread my name to other libraries and the dozen stories I told became too small a repertoire. So I began learning new stories.

For me, telling tales to kids was easy, but then every once in a while we would do a community event and I would tell tales to kids and grown ups and I got very nervous.  At first I would have a cheat sheet, or crib sheet near me that I could glance at it if needed.  Then I would break stories down to their main bullet points, reduce them to an essence and tell from those bullet points. And then I was told about Odds Bodkin and got to see him.  He made noises, sound effects, and great character voices.  This was a first for me.  He became my third inspiration and opened a new door for me.  I already used voices, but sound effects!  When I read to kids I used sound effects and voices, especially with my own kids, but never when I told stories.  Odds Bodkin 'gave me permission' to try something new with my storytelling and I took to it with gusto! A new dimension was added to my tales. The stories became more alive for me in my mind and that reflected outward to the audience who also came into the stories with me more easily and more willingly.

When I met Eric Maddern, he was standing telling his tales to a large group.  He might have used a couple of sound aids, in the form of a bull roarer, and maybe bells.  He did straight telling and when I later read the picture books he published, I could hear his voice telling them in his soft lyrical, yet powerful manner.  I still love listening to his tapes, which I was able to digitize, as do my kids.

When I heard Odds for the first time, he was all out - go-and-get-'um type of thing. But he softened his 'attack' with the instruments he used (harp and acoustic guitar), which lulled us as he spoke.  I also got hold of recordings of Jim Wiess who told in a soft gentle manner, occasionally using guitar.  His style made you feel you were sitting all cozy in a room, drinking hot chocolate with the kids on his lap. Odds was the only one, really, to use character voices and vocal sound effects.  The actor and mimic within me liked that, and as I was already reading to kids like that, had told stories and jokes since school like that, so it was a great step to make and very natural for me.

Some tellers use character voices and some do not.  Some use musical instruments, some do not. Some stand or sit and tell with their voice, some, like me bounce all over the place. I did not use musical instruments, as I only played the drums and taking a full kit to a storytelling performance would not work. I could not play guitar, or any other stringed instrument and my harmonica had rusted up, along with the very little skill I had of playing it. I decided to buy a bodhrán.  I did not know how to play it, but figured it could not be too hard as I was a drummer.

I bought a cheap drum, in case I did not like it, or decided not to go with it.  It took three days to learn how to play a steady beat, torture for all in my house at the time. I am still learning new ways of playing it today, more than six years later. I now have a very nice bodhrán! I can play it quite well with and without other musicians! When I set up and people are coming in and before I am introduced, I can pat away on my bodhrán and it helps get me into story space and takes my mind off the audience. It allows me to go to a place in my mind where the stories live and wait to be told, or jump out demanding to be told!

After I heard Odds Bodkin a few times, I thought I would never be as good as he is at telling stories. But then I realized I didn't have to be as good as he is, I needed to be as good as I could be. I had to be the best Simon Brooks I could be. Everyone has their very own style and voice. Sometimes when you start to learn anything new, you mimic those you love, those you read, listen to, etc.. But after a while you find your own voice. This goes for singers, musicians, writers everyone.

Me and Papa Joe

You might use a musical instrument, you might not. You might use character voices, you might not. You may jump about like a maniac on the stage, you might not. You might use mime, you might not. You will do what feels right for YOU. You will do what you do best. What you don't do best, you should drop like a hot brick. Or work at it, until you have it perfected. Or not.

The most important thing to do though, the two most important things you should do are:
1/. Tell stories that you LOVE. That will come over to the audience when you tell a tale. It comes across if you don't really love the tale too!
2/. Have fun with it. If you have fun, so will everyone else.

Oh, and a third thing: Don't beat yourself up if you make a mistake. We all make mistakes (even the very famous ones!). Those of us who have been doing this for a while cover it up well and you will too.

Peace,
Simon