International folk
tales are contemporary phenomena with origins of incalculable
antiquity. Perhaps they are almost as old as language
itself. These stories are not only orally transmitted
but also embedded like fossils in the world's myths
and religious texts which is indicative of origins
earlier than their settings. Whether we call them
Marchen, Fairy Tales or Barrie Mooskins, the tales
are the cultural equivalents of our anatomical tails.
For most of us
there have been considerable changes of circumstance
since these tales began. First we changed from hunting
to pastoralism and agriculture and now, although collectively
we still depend on agriculture for sustenance, most
individuals survive by selling their mental or practical
skills. Each change of economic strategy has necessitated
the creation of new orthodox descriptions of the world:
our 'new heads'. Just as we make the environment suit
our cars and lorries rather than create vehicles that
suit the world, we force ourselves into roles dictated
by our newer cultural descriptions in defiance of
our biologically evolved drives.
By contrast the
old tales are ruthlessly realist about the basic dynamics
of human nature and the human condition with its inevitable
mortality. Many contemporary ways of thinking and
the economic activities that result from them function,
like motor cars, only on restricted artificial pathways
and require adherence to sometimes arbitrary rules.
These tales which originate in a nomadic hunter/gatherer
culture can still be an intellectual vehicle suited
to the world we really live in. Modern man is currently
torn between mourning the old human culture and suppressing
the desire for it in himself while he persecutes its
surviving representatives and prohibits their activities.
