Fairytales and Folk Tales(2) by Daniel Ervin
One thing I noticed in Japanese and Irish folktales is that they are scary! In one Japanese story, an old man loves his dog very much. His dog finds some buried treasure. So his evil neighbor asks to borrow the dog. When the dog doesn’t find treasure for him, he kills the dog!! The story continues, but I thought it was a sad story because the dog died. Wicked people do similar things in Irish stories. I think in modern Disney fairytales, such sad, violent things don’t happen.
I’m an adult, so I really enjoyed reading these stories. But I wonder what it is like for children. It makes me think that people in the past were much tougher than we are nowadays.
東京都立清瀬高等学校
