Reading Notes: Week 9 Extra Credit Reading

Title: English Fairy Tales -- Binnorie
Author: Joseph Jacobs
Link: Story link.

Plot:

• Two sisters, daughters of the king, live in their castle in the realm of Binnorie.
• Sir William, a dashing figure, falls in love with the eldest sister and she cares for him dearly.
• Regrettably, the fellas only want one thing and Sir William eventually has eyes for the younger sister, who is the more beautiful of the two.
• The older sister is greatly distressed by the fact that William doesn't love her any more and she hatches a nasty plan.
• The two sisters go to the river under the pretense of taking a boat ride together.
• The older sister throws the younger into the river and -- a la The Lion King -- refuses to pull her back up to safety. Long live the king and so on.
• The younger sister drowns and her body washes up downriver. 
• A famous harper spies her body and crafts a magic harp from her bones and hair.
• He brings the harp to the royal court and entertains for the night.
• At the evening's close, the harp sings of its own accord and outs the older sister as the murderer of the younger.

The harper fashions the instrument from the younger sister. Source: Project Gutenberg.

Setting:

• Binnorie: Binnorie doesn't appear to be a real place, though due to the tale's genesis in Scotland, it is ostensibly based on a Scottish glen.

Characters:

• Older sister: Vengeful and spiteful, and not aware that blood runs thicker than water.
• Younger sister: Beautiful enough to steal the heart of her sister's beloved William.
• Sir William: Falls in love with the older sister, then changes his mind and decides he's into the younger one. He seems flighty and foppish and not really worth the girls' time.
• Harper: Famous for his abilities and rightly so -- he appears to be some sort of sorcerer as well as a delightful evening entertainer.

Writing Style:

• This tale mixes prose and verse throughout, though it primarily relies on prose. Dialogue is mixed in, which I like -- stories that are exclusively narrative really start to drag for me after a while.
• The inclusion of harp songs intermittently gives it kind of a Tolkien-esque feel in my opinion. Variety is the spice of life and the songs give us an opportunity to take in writing that has a different format, different feel, different meter, etc. It breaks the "wall of text" monotony that can set in towards the end of a story nicely.