Once Upon a Time...
IT is a mistake for people to automatically conflate European folklore with stories that have been specifically designed for children. The opening words of most folk tales, at least when I was growing up and long before, would invariably contain the immortal lines 'Once upon a time'. However, there are few people today who realise that this preliminary turn of phrase was not originally designed to imply that what one is about to read must be taken with a pinch of salt on account of its fantastical and fictitious nature, but that the words 'Once upon a time' may be equated with the idiom 'at no specifiable time'. In other words, these tales are trans-temporal and designed to convey a more symbolic meaning than one might find in the limitational immediacy of the modern world. Symbolism, after all, is tantamount to the expression of a profound reality and thus a means of communicating beyond ordinary methods of discourse. Whilst children themselves are naturally more susceptible to these allegorical messages than adults, they were never intended for young people alone and therefore 'Once upon a time' should not be interpreted as a signal for the suspension of belief.