Creative History

On May 26, 1828 a teenaged boy with a limping gait, wild eyes, torn clothes and long unkempt hair mysteriously appears wandering the streets of Nuremberg Germany. No one in the city has any idea who the boy is.  It is as if he has appeared by magic, fallen from the sky, and landed right in the middle of Bavaria’s second largest city. On being questioned the boy is only able to repeat, “Horse, horse,” over and over again. After searching the pockets of his clothes it is discovered that the boy is carrying two letters.  The first letter is addressed to a Bavarian cavalry officer named Captain von Wessering and is simply headed, “From the Bavarian border: 1828”. The letter is not signed.  It says only that the boy had been given over to the author’s custody in October of 1812 while still an infant.  The author claims that he has done his best to instruct him in reading, writing and the Christian religion but that he/she has never allowed the boy, “to take a sing...

            The evil queen commands the huntsman, “Kill her and as proof that she is dead bring her lungs and liver back to me.” The huntsman doesn’t kill her.  Instead, he sets out into the forest and slaughters a wild boar.  He brings the liver and lungs of the boar back to the evil queen and his ruse works. Greedily, the evil queen devours the entrails that the huntsman brings to her in a frenzy of cannibalistic ecstasy. In a few years, a magic mirror tells the queen that she has been deceived by the huntsman, and she sets out once again to kill the young maiden.  This time she believes she has accomplished her goal after pretending to be a farmer’s wife and convincing the maiden to eat a poisoned apple. But the queen has been fooled yet again.  The girl did not die.  The poisoned apple has only caused her to lapse into a sort of coma after becoming lodged in her throat.  Her seven companions, all suffering fr...