MOUNT ISLAND No.3: Folklore & Fairytales OUNT SLAND MAGAZINEM I No.3 Folklore & Fairytales Editor Desmond Peeples Poetry Editor GennaRose Nethercott Music Editor Sadie Holliday Associate Editors Anna Meister (poetry) Isabel Lachenauer (prose) Readers Nena Kelley (prose) Graphic Design Consultant Bethany Warnock Front cover (A Doe Bride) & back cover (Twilit Owl Child) by Maria Pugnetti Mount Island is published biannually, in spring and fall. ISSN 2373-521X (online). Printed in the United States. To subscribe, submit, or read online visit www.mountisland.com. Send inquiries to
[email protected]. © 2015, Mount Island Magazine and its contributors i — Editor’s Note — “If there is one ‘constant’ in the structure and theme of the wonder tale, it is transformation.” “...fairy tales measure to what extent we are losing the struggle against alienation and exploitation.” - Jack Zipes Whether or not you agree with those Zipes quotes above (Jack Zipes is a fairytale scholar and the author of numerous yummy books on the subject, if you were wondering), let’s take a moment to run with them: If fairytales revolve around transformation, then the “wonder” we feel in reading them comes from questions of cause and effect that the writers of so many such tales gloss over or omit. Therein lies the second Zipes quote—if a society’s standard fairytales reveal the progress of their struggle for justice, then the reveal depends on questioning the causes and effects of the depicted transformation. Exactly who or what was transformed—what were they to begin with, and what did they become? Who or what caused the transfor- mation, and why? Who does the transformation benefit, and who does it leave to suffer? And, lest we forget our lives off the page, how might the transformation affect our own narrative and the stories we tell each other? Consider this: fairytales begin in and return to the collective storytelling of the people - folktales.