The Thammasat University Library has newly acquired a book that should be useful for students interested in ASEAN history, literature, political science, Denmark, the Philippines, and related fields.

Hans Christian Andersen and José Rizal: From Denmark to the Philippines focuses on the unexpected interaction between a Filipino statesman and a Danish author of fairy tales.

José Rizal was a Filipino nationalist and writer and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial era of the Philippines.

He is considered a national hero of the Philippines.

An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain.

He was executed by the Spanish colonial government for the crime of rebellion after the Philippine Revolution broke out; it was inspired by his writings.

Though he was not actively involved in its planning or conduct, he ultimately approved of its goals which eventually resulted in Philippine independence.

The TU Library collection includes many books by and about Rizal.

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author.

Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales.

Andersen’s fairy tales, consisting of 156 stories across nine volumes, have been translated into more than 125 languages.

They have become well known to children as well as adult readers.

His most celebrated fairy tales include “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, “The Little Mermaid”, “The Nightingale”, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”, “The Red Shoes”, “The Princess and the Pea”, “The Snow Queen”, “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Little Match Girl”, and “Thumbelina”.

Andersen’s stories have inspired ballets, plays, and animated and live-action films.

The TU Library collection also includes several books by and about Andersen.

The newly acquired book features five fairy tales in English written by Andersen and translated into Tagalog by Rizal.

Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by the ethnic Tagalog people, who make up a quarter of the population of the Philippines, and as a second language by the majority.

Its standardized form, officially named Filipino, is the national language of the Philippines, and is one of two official languages, alongside English.

Tagalog is closely related to other Philippine languages, such as the Bikol languages, the Bisayan languages, Ilocano, Kapampangan, and Pangasinan, and more distantly to other Austronesian languages, such as the Formosan languages of Taiwan, Indonesian, Malay, Hawaiian, Māori, Malagasy, and many more.

The fairy tales translated by Rizal were “The Fir Tree,” “Thumbelina,” “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Angel,” and “The Little Match Girl.”

The volume also contains four critical essays by researchers on the life and works of Andersen and Rizal.

Although why Rizal chose these stories to translate remains unknown, some scholars have pointed out that he preferred tales about tiny characters, and he hoped to help develop the literary language of Tagalog for young readers.

“Thumbelina” (in Danish, Tommelise) is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.

It was first printed in 1835 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“Thumbelina” is about a tiny girl.

She has several adventures with a toad, a mole, a field mouse, and other creatures of field and forest.

At the end, she meets and falls in love with a prince just her size.

“Thumbelina” was one of nine fairy tales Andersen printed between 1835 and 1837 in a series of three booklets.

These booklets were called Fairy Tales Told for Children.

“Thumbelina” is completely Andersen’s invention, unlike other tales which adapted from older sources.

He did however know tales about tiny people such as “Tom Thumb” and the six-inch tall Lilliputians in Gulliver’s Travels.

He may have taken some inspiration from these tales.

“The Ugly Duckling” (In Danish, Den grimme ælling) is another literary fairy tale by Andersen.

Andersen lavished great care on this story, spending a year perfecting it.

It was first published in 1844 in his New Fairy Tales.

Andersen considered the story “a reflection of my own life.”

The moral of the tale:

“It does not matter if you were born in a duck yard if you originated in a swan’s egg.”

The tale has been adapted to various media such as animated movies.

In the story, a mother duck hatches six pretty little ducklings.

A seventh bird is hatched. He is homely. The other ducks abuse him.

He runs away. He is given a home by an old woman. Her cat and hen do not like him. He runs away again.

Winter comes and a kind farmer gives him a home. The little bird almost dies. Spring comes. The “ugly duckling” has grown into a beautiful swan. The other swans welcome him as their own. They bow to him. He is happy for the first time in his life.

“The Little Match Girl” is a much sadder story about child labor, which was a problem in the Philippines of Rizal’s time and today.

According to the website of the International Labour Organization (ILO), a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards, in the Philippines, there are 2.1 million child labourers aged 5 to 17 years old based on the 2011 Survey on Children  of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). About 95 per cent of them are in hazardous work.

Sixty-nine per cent of these are aged 15 to 17 years old, beyond the minimum allowable age for work but still exposed to hazardous work.

Children work in farms and plantations, in dangerous mines, on streets, in factories, and in private homes as child domestic workers.

Agriculture remains to be the sector where most child laborers can be found at 58 per cent.

“The Little Match Girl” by Hans Christian Andersen was first published in 1845.

Andersen got the idea to write the story after seeing a print by the Danish painter Johan Thomas Lundbye of a little girl selling matches.

The story has been adapted to various media including an animated movie.

In the tale, an impoverished little match girl lights all the matches she carries to keep herself warm on a cold New Year’s Eve.

Afraid of being punished by her father because she could not sell any matches, she was unable to return home.

In the glow of the firelight, she sees visions of a Christmas tree and a festive dinner.

In the sky, she sees a shooting star, which her late grandmother had told means someone is on their way to Heaven.

Her last vision is of her late grandmother, the only person to ever show her any love.

The little match girl dies in the cold, and ascends into Heaven with her grandmother.

The website of the United States Department of Labor reports:

In 2022, the Philippines made moderate advancement in efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor. The government enacted the Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act to hold private sector entities responsible for addressing human trafficking.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)