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I've been re-reading 'Elijah's Violin' (the story) in the Howard Schwartz collection of the same title, and jotting down some notes on it. I'd previously read and annotated the story a couple of years ago, and had supplied invented names for the characters (partly for an original treatment of the story, but mostly just to keep the characters straight). This time round I just used abbreviations to identify the persons and things: E = Elijah, EV = Elijah's violin, EVB = Elijah's violin bow, EVBH = Elijah's violin bow hair, K1 = first king, K2D = second king's daughter, etc. One thing I had noted in my earlier round with the story was that the first time D3 (the King's third daughter, the POV character of the story) asks the Old Woman for something, it is for something her father wants (he has asked D3 to supply a specific request); while the second time she consults OW, it is for something she herself wants (the Prince's healing). The EVBH are used twice, by different parties but with similar effect (first time by K1 to free K2D - I always picture her like Han Solo in carbonite - and the second time by D3 to revive the P).
It's interesting that the story is fairly complicated - first there's K1's quest for EV (not for E himself, whom he actually meets first, but for the V from which E has been somehow separated), then there's D3's acquisition of the object - but the story is only half over. The "imprisoned melodies" haven't been set free simply by D3 picking up the bow and sawing away. Instead, the violin's magical music summons P, and it turns out that this is where the real story happens. The older sisters (D1 and D2) are perhaps overprotective, but I think that's understandable especially if there is no mother figure present. (I think we are entitled to wonder whether OW is in fact the mother, who has been somehow banished, but there's no direct evidence for this in the text.) In a conservative, traditional society, a young lady having a strange man in her bedchamber unbeknownst to the family is not a small matter, and frankly I'm a little skeptical of D3's judgement in the whole thing.
In any case, D3 finally manages to find P, and to deploy the magical EVBH, so that the lad is restored to health, and then we finally get to the happily-ever-after part. Clearly OW's goal was to get D3 happily matched and married, by means of EV. But the process also had the effect of forcing D3 out of her home (and perhaps cloistered existence) and into the world. [440]
It's interesting that the story is fairly complicated - first there's K1's quest for EV (not for E himself, whom he actually meets first, but for the V from which E has been somehow separated), then there's D3's acquisition of the object - but the story is only half over. The "imprisoned melodies" haven't been set free simply by D3 picking up the bow and sawing away. Instead, the violin's magical music summons P, and it turns out that this is where the real story happens. The older sisters (D1 and D2) are perhaps overprotective, but I think that's understandable especially if there is no mother figure present. (I think we are entitled to wonder whether OW is in fact the mother, who has been somehow banished, but there's no direct evidence for this in the text.) In a conservative, traditional society, a young lady having a strange man in her bedchamber unbeknownst to the family is not a small matter, and frankly I'm a little skeptical of D3's judgement in the whole thing.
In any case, D3 finally manages to find P, and to deploy the magical EVBH, so that the lad is restored to health, and then we finally get to the happily-ever-after part. Clearly OW's goal was to get D3 happily matched and married, by means of EV. But the process also had the effect of forcing D3 out of her home (and perhaps cloistered existence) and into the world. [440]
