DAME SLAP

Dame Slap is one of the persons the children and their friends come across on one of their adventures to the Faraway Tree. Dame Slap is the teacher at the school. In fact she is the only teacher. Pixies, brownies fairies and other folk are sent to her school if they can't behave. Here they can live under strict rules by the dame, and learn to behave, even though it doesn't seem like her punishment has much influence on the naughty pupils. Dame Slap can a bit of magic, but not much. For instance she once turned all the food; they were having for dinner, to stone, except her own. She is a strange being, and has a strange way of teaching. For instance one might get the question; "if a train runs 70 miles pr hour, what are we having for dinner then?" The questions are simply unanswerable, and the person to answer this question is certainly to get a good slapping if he or she can't answer.

The first time the children meet her, is in the book "the Enchanted Wood". This happened to be more or less an accident. The children were flying in an aeroplane, which Jo was stirring, finding their way home. Suddenly the plane starts getting tired; yes some aeroplanes can get tired. Therefore they had to land as fast as possible on a nearby ground. This happened to be in the garden to Dame Slap's school. The children have a hard time here and barely escape some time later, by the help of Silky's watch. The second time the children meet this dreadful teacher is in "the Folk of the Faraway Tree", where the Saucepan Man's, (one of the children's friends) mother happens to work for Dame Slap as a cook. Of cause the children the children would love to meet Saucepan's mother, but they are not pleased by going to Dame Slaps school. Anyway the children decide to go, because it is his mothers birthday, and because Saucepan gets terrible disappointed and offended when the children tells him that they are afraid of Dame Slap and don't want to go.

In newer editions of the Faraway Tree series, the name of Dame Slap is re-named to Dame Snap and she no longer practises corporal punishment but instead reprimands her students by yelling very loudly. The fact that she hits and slaps the pupils at the school is not political correct in our times, and is the reason for the change. Well all this political correctness is very strange, by my opinion, and somehow removes some of the drama and atmosphere to the stories.

I have alway thought that Dame Slap was one of the most scary persons of all times, I still don't know why