Endicott Studio linked to a recent poem about Hansel over the weekend, prompting me to consider yet again how we interpret myths and folktales from the past. It's a lovely thing, "Hansel", playing with the idea of memory as pathways home. Here's a bit:

He decided to do it anyway—walked out the door
and dropped his first memory at the driveway's edge.
It was the beginning scene, way back when,
of the kid with the miraculous leg of wood
galloping across a neighbor's yard.

As it happens, I just watched the Buffy episode, "Gingerbread" where Hansel and Gretel are proven to be evil lilttle monsters and Hansel has been turning up in Fables as a stone cold killer.

The boy does get around from his days in the forest, doesn't he?

One of my favorite parts of YA literature is finding books that revinvent myths and fables. When I was young, I learned them at face value - these were the stories and this was all there was to them and you learn them and teach them to your kids and make sure to avoid witches living in candy houses in the woods. (Also all step parents suck.) But anyone who reads beyond the surface learns pretty quickly that the commonly known stories are only the top for what lies beneath - only the very beginning of where the myths come from.

As the years go by and I read more, I really like knowing what else is behind them (and also what modern writers can do with them).

Of course most of this interest lately stems from my preoccupation with the legend of St George and the Dragon. I still can't believe that he never went to England (since he's the patron saint of England) - that he was in fact Turkish (or Syrian or defintely from that Central Asia/Middle East sort of region of the world) and died as a religious martyr. The entire legend of George seems to be tied up in Christianity - there are churches all over Europe that picture him battling the dragon and as a symbol of evil against the church.

I don't remember learning any of that in Brit Lit in high school.

The more I uncover about St. George's truth, the deeper my own writing becomes. My book has morphed so much over the past year that it is almost unrecognizable from when I began. Still dragons, though - still some WWI, still some nastiness but more and more some quite churchy moments. I'm sure my long dormant inner Catholic girl is delighted by all this but increasingly I feel like I've been lied to. I thought St George was just a cool monster killer but turns out whoever he really was, his legend is all about church control of the masses.

Makes you wonder what that whole Hansel and Gretel story was really about, doesn't it?