Leigh Shaw-Taylor
Common land was once very widespread, before being swept away by a process known as enclosure (discussed further below). In 1500, perhaps 50 percent of England and Wales was common land. There is a popular conception that this common land could be used by everyone, or at least by the whole village community. But as we will see, this is a highly misleading perspective.
Romola Davenport
Berhardina Midderigh-Bokhorst and Smith’s Fine Arts Publishing N.V. – The Hague. Hansel and Gretel (1937). Image credit: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum.
In the story of Hansel and Gretel, a famine drives a father to abandon his children in the woods, where they discover a house made of gingerbread and a cannibal witch. In the Magic Porridge Pot tale, a young girl forced by poverty to search for food in the woods and hedgerows is given a magic pot that produces abundant staple food on command.
These types of stories about hunger and famine abound in the folklore of most European societies, and embody folk memories of food scarcity. However, as the historian John Walter noted, these tropes are curiously absent from English fairy tales. Why?
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