The farm of the youth’s parents

Nearly every traditional story is a metaphor of the constant migration from the town to the city, and that’s why, our main character, abandons the farm where he was born and where he has lived his childhood, to go to the town and make fortune.

This is like that because in the medieval European society, the subsistence possibility was strictly reduced to the sufficient food existent to maintain a delimited number of habitants. So, when epidemics or wars permitted it, a good number of peasants saw themselves forced to go in search of another way of support.

The difference between a story or a novel from a prestigious author, to any of our popular stories lies in the fact that the writer tries to arrive to a selected public and astonish with all the literary recourses he knows, that is why the descriptions are detailed and sometimes even rambling; in the other hand, in traditional stories, the anonymous author’s finality is a lot less pretentious, and the public to which its directed is a lot more simply and humble. The finality of traditional stories is to transmit some education values, at the same time that amuses and entertains. That’s why, these anonymous authors that in their days imagined these stories, didn’t find necessary to describe with all luxurious details something that merely can imagine the less sharp reader.

Maybe this is the reason why these stories have arrived until our days with so much validity and actuality, as if they could happen today in any place of the world. Even thought the roots of these stories can get lost in the unknown world of the Indo-European language, a lot before Christianity, and even before the Greek and Roman culture.

Therefore, we don’t know how the farm of our story is because the author doesn’t describe it, but we can guess that it wouldn’t be luxurious, I would rather say, poor and simple, because of the boy’s father tells his son that he has to learn something by which he can earn his bread, unmistakable sign that he can not stay in the farm and live from its work. If the family of the boy was rich, not only he wouldn’t need to learn a job, but also he could stay and work in the family’s properties, or celebrate a profitable wedding with any neighbour belonging to any distinguish family. Also he could become part of a Christian monastery or develop a military career in the king’s army.

We also guess that in the farm there weren’t any luxurious furniture, paintings or tapestry wall- hanging, by which the boy stood all the afternoons sat in the ground of a corner next to the chimney.