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Bright Tear Child

by Ruth Manning-Sanders

This week in the Book Club we are reading 'Bright Tear Child' by Ruth Manning-Sanders, from the collection of folk tales 'A book of Heroes and Heroines'. The book is quite hard to come by, there are some affordable copies that can be found as former library books.

The book contains a collections of short fairy tales and folk stories all from different cultures and countries. This week’s story 'Bright Tear Child' is a North American Indian tale. young children wander too far into a dark wood and find themselves confronting a huge witch who snatches them up and takes them back to her house. The story combines elements that are not unfamiliar from fairy stories, such as the brothers grim and some Slavic folk lore such as the tale of Baba Yaga. The Heroine of the story comes in the form of a mysterious little child who is born from the tears of one of the mothers who has lost a child to the witch. As with most fairy tales and folk stories there is also a moral lesson or warning, this story seams to combine both of these elements with several moral and emotional messages intertwined with the overall warning and lesson. 

"Now in all these stories, as in fairy tales about witches in general, you may be sure of one thing however terrible the witches may seem – and whatever power they may have to lay spells on people and to work mischief – they are always defeated. ... Because it is the absolute and very comforting rule of the fairy tale that the good and brave shall be rewarded, and that bad people shall come to a bad end." Foreword from 'A Book of Witches'

About the Author

Ruth Manning-Sanders (21 August 1886 – 12 October 1988) was a Welsh-born English poet and author, well known for a series of children's books in which she collected and related fairy tales from all over the world. All told, she published more than 90 books during her lifetime. Ruth Vernon Manning was the youngest of three daughters of John Manning, an English Unitarian minister. She was born in Swansea, Wales, but the family moved to Cheshire when she was three.

After the Second World War and her husband's accidental death in 1953, Manning-Sanders took to publishing dozens of fairy-tale anthologies, mostly during the 1960s and 1970s. She writes in the foreword to a 1971 anthology, A Choice of Magic

"There can be no new fairy tales. They are records of the time when the world was very young; and never, in these latter days, can they, or anything like them, be told again. Should you try to invent a new fairy tale you will not succeed the tale rings false, the magic is spurious. For the true world of magic is ringed round with high, high walls that cannot be broken down. There is but one little door in the high walls which surround that world – the little door of "once upon a time and never again." And so it must suffice that we can enter through that little door into the fairy world and take our choice of all its magic."

There is more to be found about Manning-Sanders in this biography: Ruth Manning-Sanders

What is the book club?

Join us every week for a book club, each week we will read a new short story of part of a larger book, the books will be made available as an audio book and we will meet as a group via zoom to chat about the story. All are welcome, hope to see you there. 

How to join the club to chat

Once you are singed up the link to join via zoom will apear above on this page at 3PM on Thursday. To join you will need a phone/tablet or laptop with a built in camera and microphone (most modern devices come with this) you may need to download the zoom app onto your phone if you are using a phone to join. 

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