Yes, I vaguely remember that you were berating me for having read fairy tales in my youth. Well, yes, I cannot say that I had gone through that phase of reading fairy tale books that were in our library, although I cannot quite remember which ones. After a while they all start sounding the same, all those stories about witches and wizards and fairies and magic. But to seethe with hatred at the very thought of reading fairy tales seems a bit overmuch. What are you going to do when a flying saucer lands on your head? But I digress?
But the fad for collecting mythology and folk tales, so raging in the 19th century, has somewhat passed. Libraries are chock full of books of folk takes and fairy stories. Probably yours are nothing new so nobody is clamoring to interview you about that. Probably we can find your folk tales or similar already recorded in the library anyway.
Besides, who can approach the fairy stories of Knatchbull, a sort of distant cousin to the Montagus of England.
And anyway, didn't William Shakespeare already record, beautifully, in Romeo and Juliet, which we studied in high school, the saga of the dueling Montagus and Capulets, thus showing how those people fight each other like cats and dogs, so what more can we foreigners expect to get from that?
Shakespeare was kind to Juliet, whereas it is said that alternate histories are not so kind to Juliet. But who is keeping track of that?
If the fairy tales of Knatchbull really bother you, does that make you a Capulet? And what have we to do with either side of that ancient feud of no interest to us. We have other things on our minds.
