For this Reading Notes I chose to draw from part B of Indian Fair Tales. Of the three stories, The Fairy Bride was the one that most intrigues me and that I have chosen to write about. One thing I personally liked about the story was its slow development. While I was reading the first three quarters of it, it seemed that there was a lot of information that did not all tie completely together. But, the way that the ending did relate everything was like a pay-off of sorts for having read the rest carefully. It was hard for me to grasp a central theme through most of the story, but in the end I believe that I finally understood its purpose. The story focuses on a young girl named Neen-I-zu. Neen-I-zu's parents only wish for her to be like the other girls in their tribe. They want her to find a hunter, marry him, and take on the role of wife and mother for the rest of her life. However, she is not so keen on following their will. She spends her times out in the woods and in the sand hills nearing the lake, searching for fairies and what she knows as the Happy Land. This was a place where no harm was ever done, nobody ever suffered, and there was an eternal summer. She dreamed that one day a fairy would beckon her from the edge of the woods and then lead her into the Happy Place. She even once thought that she saw a fairy who was a shade of green lighter than the pines behind it. However, there came a time that her parents could wait no longer, and she agreed to marry a hunter. On her wedding day, she took one last walk into the woods and towards her dream. The guests at the wedding did not think anything of it at first, as was normal for her. However, after hours they began to wonder where she went and if she was coming back. Finally, they accepted that she was not going to return, but wondered what had happened to her. The next day, a hunter returned saying that he thought he had seen Neen-I-zu over the hills and approaching a grove. She took the hand of a man that appeared to be dressed in green leaves of the forest and walked happily away.
As I said previously, the theme of this story was hard to understand until its final scene. I take the story as a promotion for one to follow their dreams. Neen-I-zu always dreamed of venturing away to the Happy Place as the wife of a fairy, but her parents and fellow tribe members tried to mold her into a hunter's wife. But she never lost sight of what her goal in life was, and managed to accomplish this goal just at the last possible moment.
Bibliography: American Indian Fairy Tales by W.T. Larned, with illustrations by John Rae (1921). The Fairy Bride.
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