“Troutie, bonny little fellow, am not I the most beautiful queen in the world?” – Silver-tree
An extra specially long episodes this time and a fairy tale at that. Which therefore gets the extra special fairy tale level content warning for extreme bloodiness.
This a Scottish tale featuring a locked room mystery, something fishy, unusual naming conventions (women only), and a little ENM to top it off.
It also has two of the podcasts most beloved recurring characters (slight spoilers if you know what those are), and me going off on one about the Aarne-Thomson-Uther System, The Thomson motif index and if a fairy tale is a variant or not. So there’s that you’ve got to look forward to.
(Except that because of technical difficulties I had to record the discussion section four times before it was useable.. so the final version may not be exactly by my best ever work.)
Despite all that I hope you enjoy! I really love this tale and hope you do to!
P.S. (If you’re here looking for the forest event I mentioned at the start check out my live events page)
Selected Sources
- Celtic Magazine, Volume 13 – the first and only collected version. In Gaelic and English
- Tales of Type 709 – Writing in margins – A great compilation of ATU tale type 709, which I irritatingly found after having written my discussion section. Contains many links to other relevant articles – great stepping off point from my discussion section.
- A scottish Gaelic version of “Snow-White” – Alan Bruford – The other Gaelic version of Snow White – didn’t discuss this as much as I wanted in the discussion section. Bruford’s discussion is also very interesting.
- Folk-Lore/Volume 3/The Lai of Eliduc and the Märchen of Little Snow-White, by Alfred Nutt – Nutt’s interesting article pointing out the similarities to the Lai of Eliduc. Also containing his theory about the polygamy element of the tale which, as covered in the discussion section I respectfuly disagree wtih.
Musical credits for Episode 55: Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree
Intro music from the incredibly talented Alice Nicholls Music
Outro music and other various by Josh Keely and Mitch Newman
Other music, used under various Creative Commons and public Domain licenses:
Universfield
Dramatic Piano and Strings
Lee Rosevere
Night caves
Lionel Schmitt
Malignant Heart
Shards
Meet at Twilight
Rise of the Evil
The healing
Brian Folger
A Fool’s theme
Wood Spider
The Hag’s Spree
Jimena Contreras
The curse of the witches
Night Hunt
Doug Maxwell & Media Right Productions
Church Bell Celebration
Myuu
Living in the dark
Damiano Baldoni
The one who spred the sadness
Red Rose
Alexander Nakarada
Blood Eagle
One bard band
Aaron Kenny
Saving the world
SOUND EFFECTS
Heavy Door Slam by paf60
Celtic legends include the salmon of wisdom, the salmon eats the magic nuts that drop into a pool that gives the wisdom enabling the salmon species to swim out to sea after the parents are dead but still know how to swim back to where it was hatched.
Not a trout, but it the Celtic Salmon of wisdom tale is far to close to the trout part of the Reverend’s tale. Since the salmon of wisdom was respected, the reverend would have reason to make his trout an evil magical fish: a wise salmon is not in the Bible, so he might have wished to denigrate the salmon tale. Although it was God who made the salmon “wise” enough to find its way back to the spawning place, so the reverend lost the connection between the creator God and his wise creation.
Trees were important to ancient Celts. As were seasons of the year.
In Scotland autumn is brief and silver trees covered with ice follow quickly.
Hazelnuts drop in late summer to autumn, so Silvertree queen would be entering the autumn of her life when she met the trout. Her winter name might reference the coldness of the heart of the character of “Silvertree.”. In Scotland autumn is brief and silver trees covered with ice follow quickly.
Silver tree time is followed by one of the first trees to bloom, now called witch hazel, which does bloom a lovely golden yellow.
Interesting that you chose Rose for the name of Goldentree’s replacement, as Rose Red is also a fairy tale character described in the 1930’s to 1950’s fairy tales. And of course roses are for late sprint to summer, some blooming into early Autumn.
But I would have named her “Greensleeves” after the old old ballad. “Greensleeves was all my joy and O, Greensleeves was my delight. Greensleeves my heart of gold was all for Lady Greensleeves.” Just because green trees are summertrees, and roses are vines and bushes, seldom trees, and are thorny. Perhaps the character’s name was “Greenleaves. but Lady Greensleeves fits nicely and the Celtic legend could even be the origin of the song.
Celts did not write down their knowledge anciently, but rather sang songs of remembrance created by bards, who were singers of knowledge and legend. The wise understood the rel messages and remembrances, the less wise had a fairytale, and all were entertained. Amazing. how well we remember song and rhyme together:
“A B C D E F G, H I J K LMNOP, Q R S, T U V, W, X, Y and Z. Now I’ve said my ABC’s,”… do you recall the last line of the song? Thank the Celts.