The Tales of Beedle the Bard - "Clever as I am, I remain just as big a fool as anyone else."

I've been meaning to write something about this for a while.

Beedle the Bard didn't generate nearly as much hype as something with the name 'JK Rowling' attached to it would normally generate. This is at least partially because of the content, for the book is a series of short stories intended for wizard children in the Harry Potter universe with academic commentary by Dumbledore. It was written for charity and probably took her about a week to put together. Still, one has to wonder to wonder if JK Rowling's sun has set. I guess we won't know that for sure until she releases another real book though.

But in any case, while Beedle the Bard is a decent enough read it is also rather forgettable.

The fictional author "Beedle the Bard" is modelled after Shakespeare, betraying JK Rowling's English geek roots. The theme of his stories is one of wizard-muggle harmony, which I guess is meant to extend into a general message of tolerance. The character of Beedle sort of bothers me, in that he's a bit too clean and good. The Dumbledore commentary constantly emphasizes that he's ahead of his time in terms of his progressive beliefs about Muggles, but the problem is he's too ahead of his time. There isn't a drop of prejudice in any of the stories. A bad decision, in my opinion. A drop of prejudice would have added a lot of character to the guy.

Anyhow, I've now gathered all their cover images, so the first story is "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot"...


It's probably the worst story. It's about a guy who has a pot that follows him around making noises every time he refuses to help a Muggle with his magic until finally the wizard succumbs and decides to be nice. The Dumbledore commentary afterward is mostly a bunch of historical junk about muggle prejudice... but um... wait, what is the lesson here? You get the idea that it's supposed to mean 'if you don't help others, then it'll hurt you in the long run' but what I got out of it was 'if you piss someone off enough, they'll do what you want just to get you to stop.'

Maybe that's intentional and JK Rowling was just trying to call attention to Dumbledore's silly idealism... but it didn't really feel that way when I read it. It felt more like she was trying to make a Point.

"The Fountain of Fair Fortune" is the second story in the book...

It's about three witches and a knight looking for the aforementioned fountain. It's a nice little story without so many of the thin moral attachments of the first. It's just a story of four people on a little quest, overcoming obstacles with some humour along the way. Nothing to get too excited about, but it certainly isn't bad. Dumbledore's commentary afterward is also good for some more laughs, what with a story of Hogwarts students putting on a play.

Still, I got the feeling reading this that it was JK Rowling on autopilot. She could spit out a dozen stories just like this if you locked her in a room for a weekend. I guess this is what it looks like when a fairly talented author rests on her laurels.

Next up is "The Warlock's Hairy Heart"

Rowling seems to have put a bit more effort into this one. You've got a Warlock who doesn't want to have anything to do with women, because he believes that such unions spawn weakness. As you can see from the story's cover image, it gets surprisingly gruesome, all things considered, and is probably the one story amongst this lot that gives me hope for Rowling's future works. I think she really has the potential to hit readers hard with a 'mature' storyline.

There's an artificial moral in this one too, mind you, but I guess these are meant to be kid's stories.

The last original story is "Babbity Rabbity and her Cackling Stump"...

This is about as bad as it sounds. It's full of tolerance babble and isn't a particularly interesting story either. There's a king, a witch and a con-man and it goes on and on. Dumbledore's analysis does little to improve it.

In two words: shit sucks.

Also included in the book is "The Tale of the Three Brothers"...

Which has the best cover image, but which you have already read in Harry Potter 7. And that story is in itself inspired by the Pardoner's Tale by Chaucer. It's probably the best of the stories in Beedle, which should tell you a lot. Still, what made the story so interesting in the books was the fact that it was of immediate relevance to the plot. On its own, it wasn't exactly awe-inspiring.

So I guess the real question with Beedle is whether anyone would take two looks at these stories if the name JK Rowling weren't attached to them. And the answer is probably no. They're passable, but extremely bland. If you're as big a fan as I am, then lower your expectations a bit and pick it up. But make no mistake: it's skippable.