Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat: Fairy Tales from a Living Oral Tradition ed. by Anita Best, Martin Lovelace, and Pauline Greenhill

Abstract

Reviewed by: Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat: Fairy Tales from a Living Oral Tradition ed. by Anita Best, Martin Lovelace, and Pauline Greenhill Millie Tullis (bio) Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat: Fairy Tales from a Living Oral Tradition. Edited by Anita Best, Martin Lovelace, and Pauline Greenhill, Utah State University Press, 2019, 313 pp. Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat: Fairy Tales from a Living Oral Tradition, edited by Anita Best, Martin Lovelace, and Pauline Greenhill, highlights the talents of two Newfoundland oral storytellers, Philip Pius Power and Alice Lannon, "whose many long and complex stories show just what artistry is possible without the written word" (3). The tales of Power and Lannon are framed by imaginative, original illustrations by Graham Blair at the beginning of each chapter, and are followed by relevant ATU tale types, motifs, and a concise but detailed commentary section from the editors. The three editors share interest in fairy-tale studies and Newfoundland folklore. Anita Best has an honorary doctorate from Memorial University based on her work as a singer, storyteller, and folklorist working with Newfoundland [End Page 321] culture; she recorded and transcribed Power's tales. Martin Lovelace was an associate professor of Folklore at Memorial University and recorded and transcribed Lannon's tales. Pauline Greenhill is a professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Winnipeg and edited Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms (2012) with Kay Turner. Lannon grew up the daughter of a Newfoundland teacher and received a good education (21). She was greatly influenced by her grandmother's oral tales and primarily told her stories in family settings and frequently to children. Power was a fisherman who told stories to family and friends as well as in more public settings. He often incorporated his audience into his stories "referring to their habits or relatives" or calling on themes relevant to significant events in their lives (29). In the introduction, the editors provide brief histories of Newfoundland as Lannon and Power knew it during the twentieth century. Their account of Newfoundland culture stresses the cultural significance of oral traditions and "good talk" (5). The editors highlight how these living tales are "passed along a network of people" recalling and creating relationships (11). "When narrators tell the tales, they remember not merely words and a plot but also . . . the sound of a voice and often also the warmth of a relationship or a desire to communicate obliquely something that social norms forbid saying directly" (11). Clever Maids emphasizes the living nature of these oral tales, using a transcription method that shows the "interplay between teller and audience" (15). The editor's ethnopoetic transcriptions combine the work of Dell Hymes and Dennis Tedlock to maintain the "word-for-word" nature of Hymes's transcriptions and the "pauses in speech evident on audio recordings" in Tedlock's transcriptions (293). As the "oral fairy tale . . . is never the same tale twice," these transcriptions show the construction of oral tales through familiar but flexible formulas (15). The oral nature of these tales is also reflected in the tales' relationships to similar tales. The tales in Clever Maids do not fit neatly into familiar tale types; most of the tales intersect with several tale-types, which the authors list out. By cataloging the comparable tale types and motifs, the editors illustrate the "flexible, creatively variable" nature of oral tale performance and development in these tales (15). Therefore, Clever Maids works powerfully against the canonizing effect of older published anthologies of fairy tales that seem to cement dynamic tales into one rendering. The organization of the tales frequently emphasizes this flexibility as well; tales such as Power's "Peg Bearskin" and Lannon's "The Clever Girls" are placed next to each other and analyzed in direct conversation with each other in a shared commentary section. However, the editors' commentary sections do not merely connect each tale to the relevant tale type and motif index classifications for comparative purposes. As "identifying folk narratives . . . is not an end in itself," the editors [End Page 322] spend most of their commentary connecting these unique tales to existing fairy-tale research, discussing the role of...