Wow.

I really, really like it.

...a few salutary applications of the marble floor to the chamberlain’s head…

Indeed.

I like it, too. It’s comforting.

It is what some people desperately need.

:) Thankee.

This reminds me of the Children’s and Household Tales of Brothers Grimm. Perhaps you’re a fair amount more eloquent than the Grimm brothers, but all the elements of a good fairy tale are certainly there. Very nice.

Thank you very much! I love fairy tales and think about them often, and I believe I was in a ‘let’s write a fairy tale mood’ when I remembered that there are several fairy tales where a girl’s brothers (usually around 7) are transformed into birds—the whole thing grew out of that. I can’t recall if those are included in Grimm or not.

I checked your link, and apparently the Grimms found three – judging from the classification work that site creator had done (he had three with ‘Type 451, The Brothers Who Were Turned into Birds’ in the classification)

A popular occurrence, obviously. Perhaps there is some deeply rooted connection between a sister’s love of her (younger) brother – or perhaps it’s really a mother’s love of her son, possibly projected to and assimilated by a female sibling – and this image of transformation and loss? I wonder if this is covered in any degree by Jungian symbolism.

I don’t know—I’m intrigued by what I know of Jung, but haven’t delved into it as yet.

My guesses as to the meaning so far have been these: A) recovering the ‘lost’ boys requires sacrifice and/or hard work on the part of the sister - see the seven swan princes, where the girl has to make seven shirts out of nettles with her bare hands and not speak a word until they are finished - and that, in some way, this is supposed to be about the idealized place/role of woman in society. Women are the preservers of home, and the weapons they bring to the fight are their own sacrifice and diligence. I, of course, took a different tack with my own story, making the required virtues more in line with my own ideals. Although the sacrifice element is still there, as I think it usually is in any family love story.

The other symbol I wonder about is—why birds? Is it because men in a traditional society are more free than women? As Flaubert had it,

A man, at least, is free; he can explore each passion and every kingdom, conquer obstacles, feast upon the most exotic pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted. Both inert and yielding, against her are ranged the weakness of the flesh and the inequity of the law…. Always there is the desire urging, always there is the convention restraining.

Or is it a cautionary image of the dangers of adolescence to a young man? That in exploring his freedom, he risks losing himself, his identity, his family, which are, of course, intimately connected? That’s what I see in the bird as symbol…freedom and isolation/irresponsibility/loss of identity (flocking, and they’re dumb.)