The Snow Queen: Visions of Female Strength

The imperiously beautiful Snow Queen covers the town with a carpet of white 

Hans Christian Anderson's fairy stories have a peculiar, thought-provoking quality - a certain kind of magic that the better-known tales of the Brothers Grimm do not possess. Perhaps it is that his visions do not conform to the archetypes that pervade other fairy stories, or that they cannot be easily categorised. Some are more akin to myth; others are allegorical. Some are darkly funny, and yet others are pretty fancies full of charm but not much substance. While several of his stories are well known and appreciated today (the Little Mermaid, Little Thumb (Thumbelina), and the Steadfast Tin Soldier among others) - some of his lesser known works are uniquely powerful, such as the evocative The Bell, the patriotic Holger Danske and the strangely humorous Galoshes of Fortune. 

His best stories are those which are both mythic and allegorical - yet suffused with emotion and undeniable loveliness. Of all his tales The Snow Queen is my very favourite, for many reasons. I love the sheer glory and vibrant colour of the vision and its epic scope - with the window boxes; the robber cave; the garden of flowers and each flower's vision; the hanging beds like lilies in the palace the shadowy, galloping dreams; the flickering aurora hanging like curtains of light - and of course the  Snow Queen with her pristine and terrible beauty. I love the humorous touches - like the Raven couple and the wise woman writing words on a piece of dried fish. I love how the story of Gerda's journey seems to intersect with other, equally epic stories - like that of the princess and the robber girl. Most of all, I love the strong female characters, out of whom each have different agendas and competing powers - yet none of whom end the tale defeated. Alone among all fairy stories - this tale is one in which the female occupies almost all the heroic parts.

Here follows a description of these awesome female characters.

Gerda

Gerda and little Kay
Art by Arthur Rackham 

Gerda is the main heroine of the tale, and she undergoes a remarkable development through the story - gaining strength and courage through her adventures, while retaining her essential core of love and honesty.

In the beginning of the story, Gerda is an innocent little girl, who feels glee and simple pleasure in play and stories. When Kay becomes nasty and reductionist due to the splinter of enchanted glass in his eye and in his heart, she remains loyal to their friendship - and when he is thought dead, having tied his sled to the Snow Queen's chariot and disappeared, she nevertheless goes to seek him. At the start of her quest, Gerda behaves like any child would be expected in these circumstances - easily frightened and confused; trusting and gullible. Thus she is delayed (possibly for many years) by a witch and her garden - but in being reminded of her quest by the reappearance of roses, she makes the difficult choice to leave the comfort of the witch's abode where she "slept and dreamed as delightfully as any queen".

The door was locked; but she pressed heavily against the rusty hinges, and it sprang open, when out she ran in her bare feet, into the wide world... When she could run no long she... saw that the summer was gone; it was late in the autumn... How grey and depressing it was in the wide world!

Soon after this interlude, Gerda is befriended by a Raven, having learned bitterly "how much there lay in that one word "alone"" and despite hearing that Kay has supposedly married a princess of surpassing cleverness and beauty, she feels neither crippled by jealousy nor inferiority but with the help of the Raven's sweetheart creeps into the palace to the royal chambers. Here she is disappointed - for the new prince is not little Kay, but she does not lose hope. Resisting for the second time the lure of a pleasant life, this time in the palace, Gerda begs instead for the means to "go out again into the wide world" on her quest. She is given a golden coach.

They drove through the dark forest, but the carriage gave light like a torch, which affected the robbers' eyes so that they could not bear it. "That is gold! That is gold!" they cried, and rushing forward seized the horses...
Artwork by Arthur Rackham

Captured by a band of violent robbers, Gerda narrowly escapes death through the whim of the robber-girl, yet still does not give up on her quest, enlisting the aid of the robber girl and her animals. She is finally given a reindeer and set free, to continue her journey into the forbidding winter wilderness.

And the Reindeer flew as fast as possible through the great forest, and over heaths and marshes... "There are my old friends the northern lights," the Reindeer said; "see how they shine!" It ran day and night.
Artwork by PJ Lynch

From the frozen home of the wise "Lapland woman"  Gerda and the Reindeer journey to the strange hot-house of the "Finland woman". Here the Reindeer asks for Gerda to be given "the strength of twelve men, so that she may vanquish the Snow Queen". But the Finland woman knows better - scoffing at the suggestion: "that would help her a great deal!" Instead she recognises Gerda's inner strength, derived from her good and loving heart, and from her childlike belief in universal goodness.

"I cannot give her greater power than she already possesses, and do you not see how great that is? Do you not see that men and beasts must serve her and how, barefooted as she is, she has got on so well in the world? She cannot receive her power from us, that is in her own heart..."

Unlike the majority of fairytale heroes, who are endowed with magical gifts or otherworldly assistance, Gerda is now left "without boots and without gloves, in the middle of that fearfully cold Finland".  Undaunted, she continues alone, only to be met by a horde of icy monsters - the guards of the Snow Queen. But the words of the Finland Woman hold true - for Gerda's very breath solidifies into a host of golden warriors who "thrust their spears into the frightful snowflakes, breaking them into hundreds of pieces", and removing the chill from Gerda's hands and feet.

Gerda's breath becomes an army of golden angel-warriors who utterly rout the snow-monsters.
Artwork by PJ Lynch

 Thus she is able to enter the palace of the Snow Queen, and through her love and "bitter, burning tears" she rescues Kay and redeems him, washing the splinter of glass from his heart and thawing the ice.

Kay and Gerda reunited.
Artwork by PJ Lynch

Together then, the quest achieved, they turn homewards through a "beautiful, warm summer". Gerda has grown in that she has endured hardship and terror, and realised her inner strength. Yet she has also retained her child-like simplicity and empathy. Thus she (and through her, Kay) are "grown up and yet children" at the conclusion of the tale.

It is interesting to compare Gerda's journey and development with that of male archetypal heroes in fairytales - those who begin their quest to gain some prize (a golden apple or a throne or a king's daughter) or to slay some enemy\; who overcome their opponents through force or cunning, and often with magical aid, and whose reward is inevitably personal power and a lovely maiden to wife. Gerda is full as heroic as these characters - yet in comparison her motivations are less selfish, her methods less confrontational and her triumph more personal. If only there were more fairytales with such strong and positive female protagonists!

Grown up and yet children...
Artwork by PJ Lynch

The Princess

The princess is a supplementary character who only appears in one of the chapters of the Snow Queen story - but she is nonetheless an admirable and inspirational female character, whose story hints at a much longer and grander untold narrative.

According to the Raven:

"In this kingdom in which we are now sitting, lives a Princess, who is so immoderately clever; but then she has read all the newspapers that are in the world, read and forgotten them again, so clever is she. Lately she was sitting on her throne, when she began to sing, and the theme of her song was "Why should I not marry?" "Well there is something in that, she said, and so she determined to get married; but she must have a husband who knew how to answer when spoken to, not one who could only stand there and look grand, for that is too stupid."

What a fantastic introduction to a character! And what a refreshing change from the fairytale standard of princesses being first and foremost beautiful! The Princess decides on her own that she wants to get married, and she then goes on to specify what kind of a husband she is looking for - one who is intelligent, unabashed by royalty, unafraid of her power and one who "feels at home' with her.

The Raven then goes on to describe the meeting of the princess and her husband-to-be:

"He was gay and well behaved, but had not come at all to pay court to the Princess, but only to hear how clever she was. He had every reason to be satisfied with her, and she no less so with him."

Again, what a refreshing subversion of the princess trope! The princess' chosen husband is bright-eyed and merry; a poorly dressed "little person" - a wanderer with creaking boots and a knapsack on his back. No dragonslayer he - but one who can match the princess' intellect, rather than impress her with feats of arms.

Gerda sees the princess sleeping in a bed like a great lily suspended from a golden branch...
Artwork by PJ Lynch

As well as being clever, the Princess is later shown to be generous and sympathetic, willing to help Gerda into her new golden carriage herself without formality. Though her part is small in the overall story, and she and the Prince go away to "live in foreign places", one feels sure that such a great character must be the heroine of her own legend.

The Robber Girl

This character is my favourite in the whole story! A spoilt and wilful child, "so wild and wicked nothing could be done with her" - the robber girl is a flawed yet extremely likeable character. The daughter of another strong (and terrifying) female character, the head of the robber-gang, the robber-girl shows herself capable of managing her mother (jumping on her back and biting her ear). Through her wild behaviour, she nevertheless saves Gerda from being killed by the robbers - instead saying "They shall not kill you, if even I am angry with you; I'll do it myself then." She keeps a hundred pigeons and a pet reindeer, and sleeps with a knife in her hand, for "one can never tell what may happen".

The robber girl sets Gerda and the reindeer free
Artwork by PJ Lynch

Despite her (apparent) selfishness and cruelty, the robber-girl is full of unashamed exuberence and honesty - and she responds with sympathy to Gerda's story. Here Hans Christian Anderson again hints at an untold story - the robber girl's "melancholy eyes" are at odds with her fierce and wild behaviour - and her sudden generosity towards Gerda and her freeing of the reindeer are both rather startling given her previous behaviour... That is - until the end of the story, where she reappears.

This was the robber girl with a red cap on her head, and pistols in her belt. She had had enough of home, and was now travelling towards the north to take another direction later, if that did not please her.
Artwork by PJ Lynch

The robber girl evidently had been dissatisfied by her life in the robbers' den, and so had struck out alone and independent, choosing limitless freedom over her pampered life as a robber. The reunion with Gerda occurs with "great rejoicing" - and the robber girl proceeds to question Kay as to whether he deserved all Gerda's efforts on his behalf. (A question I ask myself sometimes...)

After exchanging stories with Gerda, the robber girl promises to visit her if she should ever pass through the town - then - (and this ending always thrills me) - she rode on into the wide world.

That is the last we, as readers hear of her. But oh - how inspiring! How unlike any other female character from myth, legend or fairytale! The "happy ending" for the robber girl is complete freedom.

The Snow Queen

A more lovely and intelligent face he never saw... 
Art by PJ Lynch

Of course, the most mysterious and powerful force in the story is the ubiquitous Snow Queen. Her beguiling of little Kay sets the quest in motion - yet I never think of her as a villain, and she is certainly not evil. In fact, the only evil in the story comes from the splinter of mirror-glass in Kay's heart and eyes, which causes him to have a distorted view of the world, and that was created by a sorcerer many years before, who desired to warp all beauty and goodness in the world. The Snow Queen does not want that. In fact, we never quite know what her motivations are. She is inscrutable as a blizzard, and as capricious as a winter wind that whirls the snow in strange wild patterns. She paints frost-patterns on the windows of the town, and covers all she passes in a blanket of pure, cold white.

Some flakes of snow were falling, and one amongst them, the very largest, remained lying on the rim of the flower box. It increased more and more, till at last it became a woman, dressed in the finest white crape, as if formed by millions of star-like flakes. She was so beautiful - but of ice - dazzling, glistening ice; and yet she was alive, Her eyes sparkled like two bright stars, but they were restless and unsteady. She nodded toward the window and beckoned with her finger...

The Snow Queen casts her mantle over the town...
Artwork by PJ Lynch

Why does the Snow Queen steal little Kay? Perhaps it was a whim - a way for her to fill the "cold, empty splendour" of her palace. She is a being of vast intelligence, and she appreciates Kay's "good mind". And I always think there is something undeniably beautiful about what she gives to Kay - the chance to fly with her in a sleigh drawn by white birds "high, high onto the black cloud"; the ability to hear "old songs" in the voice of the howling wind, and a chance to travel "over forests and lakes, over seas and continents". And she lets him play "the ice game of understanding" on the "mirror of reason", without feeling cold.

The Snow Queen sits in state in her ice palace while Kay plays on the floor beside her
Art by PJ Lynch

No, I do not think the Snow Queen is a villain. In fact - she seems to be outside the moral concerns of mortal beings altogether. When Gerda rescues Kay, she is not even there - rather "peeping into the black cauldrons" of the volcanoes. The Snow Queen is not defeated, though Kay is freed - because the task she set him is complete - the formation of the word "Eternity" out of pieces of ice.

In fact, the more I think about it - perhaps it was best for Kay that the Snow Queen took him - and that it was her snow that froze his heart before the mirror-glass could wholly taint it.

The Strange Old Lady

The strange old lady combs Gerda's hair and feeds her cherries.
Artwork by PJ Lynch 

A very interesting and powerful female character is that of the old witch with the flowery hat and enchanted garden of eternal summer. She delays Gerda, and tries to keep her within her garden - but she is not a villain, nor evil - rather she is well meaning but selfish, wanting to keep Gerda for her own as she had wanted a little girl. She is never fully explained in this story - but I would surely love to know how she got her power, and why her flowers have such strange and beautiful "stories" to tell.


The Lapland Woman

The Lapland Woman cooks fish over an oil lamp
Artwork by PJ Lynch 

Although this character is unable to give Gerda the advice she needs (sending her along to her sister in Finland) - she is intriguing because she is clearly a wise-woman of repute (the Reindeer knows to go to her first) and also because she writes on a piece of dried fish!

The Finland Woman

She read it three times, when she knew it by heart, so put the fish in the soup-pot, for it was good to eat, and she never wasted anything.
Artwork by PJ Lynch

Wiser and more powerful than the Lapland woman, the Finland woman is so clever that she can "bind all the winds of the world together with one piece of string" and concoct potions that will give the drinker the strength of twelve men. In yet another subversion of fairytale stereotypes, this "wise woman" is little and dirty and dripping with sweat in her steaming hot house. Yet without being told she knows the details of Gerda's quest, the secret of the mirror-glass and the hidden strength within Gerda herself.

In conclusion - the Snow Queen offers a refreshing, fascinating and inspiring array of strong female characters that go beyond traditional fairytale roles. Some are heroic, others mysterious. None are stereotypical. Could this be the first true feminist fairytale?

The Snow Queen flies in her great white sleigh, while beneath "the cold wind whistles and the wolves howl..."
Artwork by PJ Lynch

The Mythic Significance of Trees

The Garden of the Hesperides by Edward Burne-Jones

World-spanning, life-giving or destructive, bearing golden apples of life or the knowledge of good and evil - trees have immense presence in mythology, religion and story. 

All across the world, from the earliest epochs of recorded history, they have stood as religious emblems, or been worshiped as gods themselves. And it's not difficult to discern why. 

Who cannot help but feel small beside such a giant?

Anyone who has stood beneath a tall and verdant tree, looked up into the green vastness of its branches, listened to the whispering of thousands of leaves cannot but feel a sense of awe - standing so small beside something so huge and long-lived. Beside the transience of human lives, these living statues which endure for hundreds if not thousands of years are monolithic. 

The bright autumn foliage of maple flames bravely against the chill of approaching winter. 

But trees are not dead and grey as statues of stone. They are alive and vital - they leaf and bear fruit - they grow inexorably; thrash frantically against storms. With brilliant colours they blaze in the dying of the year. They sing - wind soughing through branches as through an Aeolian harp.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter: in all seasons, a tree is awe-inspiring.

From seed-time trees possess immense power - defying gravity with thin, translucent stems, pushing through soil toward the sun. Within the tiny seed - the energy to fuel the plant until it can put forth its first set of delicate leaves to catch sunlight. And each leaf - so slight and wafer-thin - is filled with a transformative power to transmute the life-giving warmth of the sun into starch to feed the plant. As a sapling, a young tree is a fierce competitor for resources, space and light. Full-grown, it is magnificent, whether a towering sequoia or a squat baobab.

Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse mythology was thought to connect the earthy and unearthly realms . 

Trees have creative force, supporting and sustaining life. Roosting birds make their home in the branches - fungi and lichen establish colonies on the trunk, squirrels nest in the hollows and innumerable insects swarm over and around it. With their proud crowns reaching the sky and roots firm-gripping the earth - they connect the physical and immaterial worlds. Thus it is not difficult to see how early peoples all over the globe chose a tree to represent the universe - the World Tree which connects life and death, reality and spirituality. Trees appear in almost all religions - symbolising fertility, immortality, interconnectedness, wholeness or even appearing as gods themselves.

Ankor Wat's magnificent stone temples are slowly destroyed by the roots of the strangler fig 

Trees can also be destructive - as the decaying city of Ankor Wat displays, their roots have the strength to split stone and consume human edifice. A falling tree branch can kill or severely maim. Thus our awe and reverence for trees is touched by fear. And thus the roots of Yggdrasil reach the underworld.

Grove of Crypotomera japonica, a hallowed tree to the believers of Shinto in Japan. 

Collectively, trees have the ability to transform space - exuding oxygen and water as a result of photosynthesis and transpiration - thus affecting the climate. But though the early humans did not know the scientific significance of trees to the global environment - they understood the power of the forest. Woods and groves are uncertain places - realms of living pillars, many ancient with the years of human generations. Light and shadow intermingle, creating a shifting, flickering border between the real and unreal - the earthly and divine. In recognition of the haunted, hallowed spaces that are created by forests, sacred groves were maintained and used by various religions. To the Ancient Greeks and Romans the groves were the sites of godly shrines. The Norse pagans of Scandinavia used the groves as sites of sacrifice.  Druids met in the groves of Albion, and in Japan they were the sites of Shinto reverence and ritual. 

The image of "golden apples of the sun" is a recurring one in myth and fairy-tale. 

In human consciousness trees are the sentinels at the gates of mystery. Although tree-worship has all but vanished, and deforestation continues to ravage some of the most beautiful and vital forests of the earth, trees continue to have a mythic power - which manifests itself in the modern myth-mediums of story, art and film. A few examples can be seen below:

The Trees of Valinor were sung into being to provide light to the universe, after the great cosmic Lamps were shattered . 

In crafting his fantasy world of Middle Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien created a whole mythological fabric upon which to embroider, like some glorious tapestry, his tales of wonder and heroism. In his creation myth, recounted in The Silmarillion the sun and moon are the flower and fruit of the twin trees of Valinor, silver Telperion and golden Laurelin. These glorious trees were sung into being by Yavanna, Queen of the Earth, who was also responsible for the creation of the Ents, sentient and wise tree-folk of The Lord of the Rings. The Trees of Valinor represent night and day, male and female, fertility and above all, life-giving light. Though they are killed by Melkor, their last light is caught in the peerless jewels called the Silmarils, which in turn drive much of the later mythology of Middle Earth.

Tolkien clearly felt trees to be of deep spiritual and symbolic significance, as they are a recurring motif in his stories - in the Lord of the Rings alone there is the Party Tree (centre of community life in Hobbiton), the aforementioned tree-folk the Ents, the arboreal elven city in the forest of Lothlorien and the White Tree of Gondor (a descendant of Telperion). 

Digory plucks an apple of immortality for Narnia, then ponders the merits of stealing a second... 

Tolkien's friend and colleague C.S. Lewis, creator of the Chronicles of Narnia also made trees a significant element in his Narnian creation-myth The Magician's Nephew. In order to protect Narnia from future harm, an apple must be plucked from a mysterious "Place", an orchard on a green hill and planted in the vital soil of young Narnia. These apple trees have similarities to the Tree of Life (as their fruit bestows eternal life on the taster), as well as the biblical Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (as transgression of the law "Take of my fruit for others" results in immortal misery). The Tree of Protection is another light-giving apple tree (clearly a powerful mythic image at work), but one with "silver apples like stars". Wood from its earthly descendants is fashioned into the eponymous Wardrobe of Lewis' most famous book.

In an interesting (though less cosmic) parallel to Tolkien's Trees of the Valinor, Lewis' world also contains a pair of trees, one pure gold, the other silver (grown from fallen coins from a miser's pocket). These are fashioned into the crowns of the first King and Queen of Narnia.      

The Tree of Souls is the spiritual centre of Pandora.

In James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar the indigenous people of the forest-moon Pandora, the Na'vi follow an anamistic religion, feeling a deep spiritual connection with "Eywa", the mother-goddess of the moon, and through her, with all life on their world. The "Tree of Souls" represents a tangible link between Eywa and the Na'vi - it is the beautiful, shining heart of the forest and the Na'vi culture.

Our ancestors called it Yggdrasil, and we call it the Universe, but Thor comes from a place where they're one and the same.. 

In the 2011 movie Thor the World Tree of Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is revealed as the structure of the universe - a "tree" of swirling nebulae and stars that links the "Nine Realms".

In conclusion, there is something undeniable and enduring about the power of trees - as sources and symbols of life, as totemic watchers, as ladders between here and the beyond - undoubtedly, they have a deep-rooted and mythic significance in our collective consciousness. 

Why are we so Fascinated by Pirates?

 

It is, it is, a glorious thing to be a pirate king.

Who hasn't dreamed of "a pirate's life" at some point in their lives? When we think of "pirates" our imagination flies to the Spanish Main, or to the Caribbean - even to Neverland. Our mental images of pirates have been shaped by popular culture for centuries - a myth-making and glorification of bandits, similar to the legend of Robin Hood. Since the writer "Captain Charles Johnson" published his influential work A General History of the Pyrates in 1724 - the figure of the pirate has assumed legendary qualities, and accrued some interesting (but fictitious) characteristics. We invest these beings with attributes we desire or feel we lack - courage, rebelliousness, a devil-may-care outlook on life, loyalty to others (in the form of "crewmates"), adventurousness, confidence... They become the agents of mystery - hailing from exotic locations, bound for strange shores. They do not conform to society - observe their bohemian dress and colourful language. Oh if only we dared to follow their example. 

We all know that the reality of piracy was not so attractive as popular culture has portrayed it. While the so-called "golden age" of piracy has been depicted as a time of lavish treasure and boundless opportunity for adventurous souls to discover new places and make their fortune - conditions aboard even the cleanest and best-equipped ship became quickly unsavoury when the sweaty and unwashed crew had sailed a week or two... While the captain's cabin was palatial compared to the rest of the ship (almost big enough to stand up in), most crewmembers had to bunk in cramped and squalid conditions, or swing in flea-swarming hammocks. Those picturesque Spanish galleons - they had the euphemistically named jardins instead of toilets. The food was at best bland and at worst rancid, bilge-soaked or rendered inedible by rats, mildew or weevils. The unsanitary conditions and poor nutrition made the ships into breeding grounds for disease. Did you ever wonder where the phrase "scurvy rascal" came from?

This is the face of your average pirate.

But surely we can afford to put up with a bit of hardship to live such a free and wonderful life as pirates led? Now they weren't stuck behind a desk all day. Nor are they required to conform to society's standards of beauty. And with the job comes so many cool tricks! We all know what pirates do - they swing around on rigging, quaff quarts of rum, romance (seduce is such an ugly word) beautiful and fiesty yet ultimately yielding women, engage in frequent and flamboyant sword-fights and walk around with parrots on their shoulders.

And we mustn't forget the golden lure. Just think of the treasure! Who doesn't love golden chalices and chests of silver coins? Speaking of chests - check out that beauteous buxom pirate wench! She even has a sword! How empowering is that? And anyway - everyone knows that pirates were gentlemen underneath... Well - maybe not gentlemen, after all they had hard lives and were rebels against society! But deep down underneath they were decent. Just look at Jack (I mean Captain Jack) Sparrow!

Just a lovable rogue... right?

The truth is, our perception of piracy is a romantic fantasy. "Piracy" really refers to acts of violent crime committed at sea (but can also be stretched to include violent robbery on land and air). And our image of the swashbuckling pirate is based only on a small period in history (the aforementioned "Golden Age" of piracy) whereas piracy has actually existed since the 14th Century BC and still exists today.

Nor were pirates the attractive idealists, attractive daredevils or unattractive-yet-comical characters we have seen on stage or screen. Rather they were hardened criminals who, although they did not commonly "kill all hands on deck" (simply because it would cost them too many lives), felt no compunction in committing murder, rape, extortion and theft.

Wait - you mean I'm not drawn from life?

Nor is piracy a Western phenomenon. Rather it is a global crime - with pirates found all over the world throughout history, including China, India and North Africa. In modern times pirates are still to be found in the waters of Somalia, Guinea and the Danube River.

Viewed out of the rose-coloured lenses of popular culture, a pirate presents a truly ugly sight. But is there nothing good we can take from the pirate trope? Is it necessarily a dangerous fantasy? Of course not!

The pirate legend satisfies the universal human need for heroes - mythical figures onto whom we project the "admirable" qualities we feel we lack in ourselves and our society. Today we feel restricted by bureaucracy, obliged to conform to social expectations and niceties. We look to the pirate ship as a means to sail away from the strictures of modern life. The pirate's crew, appeals to us with its tight-knit sense of belonging - a connection we feel we lack in a technologised society. In a world where  security is of paramount concern - the image of the adventurous, risk-taking treasure-seeker offers hope and consolation. The pirate reality was and is brutal and dark. But then, so was, in all likelihood the "reality" behind so many of our mythological figures - the ancient Greek heroes, King Arthur and Robin Hood...

It is the nature of the mythic to transcend its origins. We as humans need these inspirational, larger than life figures. Therefore the pirate fantasy figure has a great deal of value, so long as we remain aware of the disturbing truth; and do not let the attractive myth tempt us to glorify the ugly reality.