In one of those peculiar but enduring distinctions that exist between the worlds of high and low culture, the stories of the people of classical Greece have come down to us as ômythsö rather than ôfolktalesö û and so are to be considered in general of greater consequence. However, for the purposes of this essay on the importance of food in fairytales, we shall set aide this distinction for the moment because it is from Greek ômythö that comes the archetypal story of food and folklore.
The particular story being referred to is that of Demeter who was for the Greeks the goddess of corn and the harvest. When her daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades, god of the underworld, Demeter's grief was so great that she neglected the land; no plants grew, and famine devastated the earth. Dismayed at this situation, Zeus, the ruler of the universe, demanded that his brother Hades return Persephone to her mother. Hades agreed, but before he released the girl, he tricked her into eating four pomegranate seeds, an act that would force her to return to him for four months each year. In her joy at being reunited with her daughter, Demeter caused the earth to bring forth bright spring flowers and abundant fruit and grain for the harvest. However, her sorrow returned each fall when Persephone had to go back to the underworld. The desolation of the winter season and the death of vegetation were regarded as the yearly manifestation of Demeter's grief when her daughter was taken from her.
So why is this the archetypal story of food and fairytales? Because it spells out very starkly the idea that food has the power of transformation. Probably since the beginning of humanity, people have ascribed powers beyond the merely nutritional to what they ate. Taboos have been placed on certain kinds of foods since into the very earliest moments of pre-history, when only certain people were allowed to eat certain foods at certain times. Food has for m...