Episode
The Princess Mayblossom
- Podcast
- The Three Ravens Podcast
- Published
- Apr 2, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2819
- Processing state
processed- Canonical source
- https://www.threeravenspodcast.com/
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Summary
The Lang Fairy Tale Project is BACK - although we're mixing things up with a new format for The Red Fairy Book. Rather than just reading the stories then saving our thoughts about them all for a big chat at the end we're now reading the stories to one another and discussing them episode by episode. We begin by setting some context - especially around Andrew Lang only contributing one tale to this entire collection, with the rest of the work undertaken by his wife, Nora, and a small army of female translators. Eleanor then reads "The Princess Mayblossom" which is a story translated from a French original by Madame d'Aulnoy from 1697. In her classic style, it's an example of an Animal Bride tale. Yet said bride never turns into an animal. Which makes no sense. To untangle things a bit, we then have a conversation about the story and the things which stood out to us about it, including the high points, the low points, and explore what we think this story might be trying to tell us about human nature... If you are unfamiliar with the Lang Fairy Tales, these seminal collections were assembled between 1889 and 1913 by a married couple, folklorists and translators Nora and Andrew Lang, with most of the work done to compile them completed by Nora, also known as Leonora Blanche Alleyne. Assembled and published in 12 colour-coded "Fairy Books," the corpus the Langs put together included 798 fairy tales from across cultures, many of which had never before been translated into English. They were amongst the most influential books of their time, changing the course of children's literature - although they're hardly just for children, and often deal with quite challenging concepts. Today, purchasing a complete set of the Lang Fairy Books in good condition costs over £4,000 ($5,…