Of course, she thought “a million bucks” would cover it. Ha Ha. I was thinking more along of a fiver, but I guess when you’re eight it doesn’t hurt to dream big.
My girls have these adorable “piggy bank” style boxes that come with a book to record the date and a satin pillow with a little tooth pocket. There was much drama first about IF five teeth with roots would fit in the pocket (they did) and if the Tooth Fairy would find five teeth on one night a bit suspicious (we left a note to explain they were pulled). So after everyone was tucked in, I found myself wondering, “How did the Tooth Fairy come about?”
Surprisingly there isn’t much out there about this. I found two sites with helpful info: Dr. Bunn’s site (Yes, I think that’s his real name) and the good ole’ Straight Dope site.
Both agree that our modern Tooth Fairy myth is a very new story—less then a century old. In the 30’s there were two stories by different authors published about her and this is apparently where the idea of a fairy who finds teeth under pillows and gives out money for the little pearly whites really took off. Straight Dope goes on to say the toothy miss wasn’t even commercialized until the 1980’s when such things as “Tooth Fairy” boxes (see above) began appearing on store shelves.
What is interesting to me as a paranormal author is the witch connection. Yes, the witch connection! While the kind, sparkly tooth fairy is a figure that gives comfort to modern day children across the nation, those poor middle-age peasant kids had no such luck. Instead people have found traditions in England and Europe that suggest baby teeth were burned or buried to prevent the local witch from using the baby teeth to CURSE the children.
Yep. I guess teeth worked even better than hair for hexing those serfs.
Wouldn’t that make the great opening of a paranormal story?
A mother burying the first tooth of her first-born believing she’s alone in the woods…and then when she leaves the scene—a haggard old creature could appear and dig through the freshly turned soil until a small yellow nugget of tooth is held gleefully in the fading sunlight!!!
Can you picture it?
I’m going to leave you with another interesting medieval tooth tradition. Some cultures believed that if a buried tooth was eaten by a dog, the child’s adult teeth would resemble a canine. This also worked with hogs and mice.
I didn’t know a person’s teeth could resemble a hog’s. But then luckily I live in a century where we can visit the dentist and have five teeth pulled so we don’t look like we’ve got a mouth two sizes too small with teeth two sizes too big.
Have a great weekend!
~Margo
6 comments:
There was a horror movie made a couple of years ago about the Tooth Fairy. Can't remember the name of it now. But it was done in the old style where you saw everything in shadow and it built suspense rather than gave you the straight on full slasher-flick style horror. Oh, there were dead bodies and mutilations aplenty, but I remember thinking the movie was much scarier for not fully seeing the threat until right at the very end.
-Kat
Your poor baby! Hope the payoff makes her feel better >G<.
My son sneezed his first baby tooth out, and we never did find it. (Someday we're going to pull up the carpet and there will be a baby tooth down there, I'm sure.) We had to do the letter-to-the-fairy routine to calm his nerves - and I've still got the letter in my keepsake box ;) Someday he'll get a nice laugh at it I'm sure. Or maybe his wife?
Ember- I've heard of kids swallowing their teeth but not sneezing it out :) That tooth must have been super loose!
I love how innocent children's stories grow from some of creepiest legends. For a long time I wondered why, but one night me and a friend developed a theory with the help a few bottles of Boone's Farm and a bonfire.
It works on the same premise as dealing with the school bully. While you can't fight him physically, you can subvert him with wit and sarcasm to make him look foolish. Do that long enough and people will think he was a weak witted twit all along. Do it well, and they'll will argue with you if you say he was ever a threat to their safety to begin with. As for the bully, he's stuck with the reputation for being a bumbling fool possibly forever.
Now if all the fairy tales were true, then, hey, the Grimm Brothers were just trying to do damage control on all those baddies. Sort of like the Men In Black without Will Smith to lighten the somber mood.
By the way, the movie with the evil tooth fairy is When Darkness Falls. I despise that movie, it gives me the complete willies.
We're so bad at our house. I'm always dropping the ball at getting the Tooth Fairy payments in on time. So far, I've been lucky. The first time, dd lost her tooth outside, never to be found. It took me a few days to remember to pay up, so I ended up writing an e-mail FROM the Tooth Fairy explaining a bureaucratic back-up as the reason for the delay.
Ds is about to lose his first tooth -- finally. I wonder how long it'll be before I remember to pay him for it.
A more recent movies been done called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, which has a certain edge to it. How true it is to real folklore I'm not so sure but what it does bring to mind is this;what are so special about teeth? I've put notes under the pillow 4 my 2 kids 4 any teeth that've been put there, but why do so many of these folklores & legends come from such dark & evil origins? Many innocent & seemingly innocuous traditions start out as something wicked & mysterious. The verse,'Round & round the garden like a teddy bear...a tissue,a tissue,we all fall down' is supposed 2 come from children perishing from the bubonic plague.
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