Glass Slippers, Fur Slippers! Cinderella's Shoes.

January 7, 2020, 12:40 pm

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There are extraordinary numbers of superstitions about shoes - though most are now unfamiliar to us 21^st century mortals.  According to Iona Opie and Moira Tatem’s ‘Dictionary of Superstitions’, an old shoe hung up at the fireside was thought to bring luck. You would turn your shoes upside down to prevent nightmares, or to stop a dog from howling; it was unlucky to put your right shoe on before your left; burning a pair of old shoes could prevent children from being stolen by the fairies; bad luck was bound to follow if a pair of new shoes was placed upon a table -- and so on and on. In fact, shoes have often been often hidden within the fabric of buildings, possibly as apotropaic charms to ward off evil.

Here's a photo of a whole collection of such shoes from East Anglia, courtesy of St Edmundsbury Heritage Service. Northampton Museum keeps a ‘Concealed Shoe Index’; in a pamplet written for the museum J.M. Swann describes some of the finds, dating from the early 15^thcentury into the 20th:  

The shoes are usually found not in the foundations but in the walls, over door lintels, in rubble floors, behind wainscoting, under staircases…  shoes occur singly or with others, very rarely in pairs, occasionally in ‘families’ – a man’s, woman’s, and a range of sizes of children’s. Sometimes they are found with other objects – a candlestick, wooden bowl or pot, wine glass, spoon, knife, sheath, purse, glove, pipe… The condition of the shoes, like the objects found with them, is usually very poor: worn out, patched, repaired.

My mother preserved some tiny silver shoes which were used to decorate her wedding cake. Old shoes used to be thrown after the departing bride and groom for luck and I can remember at least once seeing old boots tied to the bumper of the honeymoon couple's car. Maybe this still happens?  It's a practice which goes back centuries. Opie and Tatem quote John Heywood in 1546: ‘For good lucke, cast an olde shoe after mee’ and Ben Jonson in 1621: ‘Hurle after an olde shooe, I’le be merry what e’er I doe.’  Francis Kilvert writes in his diary for January 1, 1873:

The bride went straightway to her carriage. Someone thrust an old white pair of satin shoes into my hand with which I made an ineffectual shot at the post-boy, and someone else behind me missed the carriage altogether and gave me with an old shoe a terrific blow on the back of the head…

Shoes are very personal items. They literally mould themselves to the shape of an individual’s foot. Anyone who’s sorted through the clothes of someone who’s died will know how the sight of a pair of their empty shoes is especially poignant. It’s as if well-worn shoes have almost become part of the person. Perhaps that’s why, as the folklorist Sabine Baring-Gould writes in his 1913 ‘Book of Folk-Lore’:

…when we say that a man has stepped into his father’s shoes, we mean that the authority, position and consequence of the parent has been transferred to his son.

Now to Cinderella. Numerous variants of the Cinderella story (tale type ATU 510A) include the motif of the heroine’s shoe which is dropped or lost and, when restored and matched to her foot, proves her identity and worth.  In Basile’s ‘La Gatta Cenerentola’ or ‘The Hearth-Cat’ (1634) the heroine Zezolla drops a fashionable ‘stilted shoe’ or ‘chopine’ as she escapes from the festa: when she appears at a banquet which the King has ordered for all the ladies in the land,it darts to her foot like iron to a magnet.  Chopines were the platform shoe to end all platform shoes – more like towers than platforms, as you can see below – and must have been extremely difficult to walk in: no wonder Zezolla lost one.  (They're almost incredible, but apparently some were as tall as twenty inches high and you can find out more about them here.)

16th century style Venetian chopine

Perrault’s Cinderella has slippers made of glass, such an improbable material for shoes that some have argued it must be a mistake, a confusion between ‘vair’ (parti-coloured fur) and ‘verre’ (glass).  But really, when has improbability ever troubled a fairy tale?  Aschenputtel’s shoes are golden, Scottish Rashin Coatie’s slippers are made of satin, and in one of my favourite versions, the Irish tale ‘Fair, Brown and Trembling’, the heroine Trembling gets the jazziest shoes of all. She asks a henwife (a magical figure in Irish tales) for clothes fit to go to church in. On the first day the henwife obliges with a dress as white as snow and green shoes, on the second she provides a dress of black satin and red shoes, and on the third day Trembling demands:

“A dress red as a rose from the waist down, and white as snow from the waist up; a cape of green on my shoulders, and a hat on my head with a red, a white and a green feather in it, and shoes for my feet with the toes red, the middle white and the backs and heels green.”

Flamboyant in these fairy colours, riding on a white mare with ‘blue and gold-coloured diamond-shaped spots’ all over its body, Trembling cannot enter the church and has to listen to mass from outside the door, but the king’s son sees her and falls in love.  Racing beside Trembling’s horse as she rides away, he pulls a shoe from her foot and searches all Ireland for the fair lady.  

In a story from China dating to 850/860 AD, the heroine Yeh Xien loses and has restored to her a gold shoe ‘as light as down’, and in what may be the oldest recorded variant of the tale – from the early first century AD – there is still a shoe, or at least a sandal.  It comes in part of an account of the Pyramids by the Roman historian, geographer and traveller Strabo. After describing the Pyramids, he explains that one of them: 

… is said to be the tomb of a courtesan, built by her lovers, and whose name, according to Sappho the poetess, was Doriche. She was the mistress of her brother Charaxus, who traded to the port of Naucratis with wine of Lesbos. Others call her Rhodopis.

A story is told of her, that, when she was bathing, an eagle snatched one of her sandals from the hands of her female attendant and carried it to Memphis; the eagle soaring over the head of the king, who was administering justice at the time, let the sandal fall into his lap. The king, struck with the shape of the sandal, and the singularity of the accident, sent over the country to discover the woman to whom it belonged. She was found in the city of Naucratis, and brought to the king, who made her his wife. At her death she was honoured with the above-mentioned tomb.

Needless to say, this isn't true... It may be argued that this story doesn’t fit the Cinderella tale type because Rhodopis isn't downtrodden and neglected, but while downtrodden and neglected heroes and heroines are two a penny, the shoe motif seems to me the distinguishing feature of the Cinderella story. And on this evidence, the tale has been around for at least 2000 years. In some versions – as in Basile’s – the shoe literally leaps to the true owner's foot: ‘[Rashin Coatie] ran away to the grey stone, where the red calf dressed her in her bravest dress, and she went to the prince, and the slipper jumped out of his pocket on to her foot, fitting her without any chipping or paring. So the prince married her that very day…’

As well he might, since the fitting of the shoe may actually have been part of the ceremony.  The folklorist Sabine Baring-Gould wrote in 1913:

In some French provinces, when the bride is about to go to church, all her old shoes have been hidden away. In Roussillon it is always the nearest relative to the bridegroom who puts on her shoes, and these are new. The meaning comes out clearer in Berry, where all the assistants try to put the bride’s shoes on, but fail, and it is only the bridegroom who succeeds. It was also a custom in Germany for the old shoes to be left behind and the new shoes given by the bridegroom to be assumed.

What did it mean?  Perhaps many things. If it was traditional for the bridegroom to place new shoes on the bride’s feet, it’s possible he was asserting authority over her, especially since Baring-Gould goes on to add that ‘A harsher way … was for him to tread hard on the bride’s foot, to show that he would be master.’  (These are moments when one feels that folk-customs aren’t so charming after all. Hmmm.) Baring-Gould says,‘When in the Psalm [60] the expression occurs, ‘Over Edom have I cast out My shoe’, the meaning is that Jehovah extended His authority over Edom.’ So a shoe could be a symbol of dominance, of trampling on someone. But in ‘The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren’ Iona and Peter Opie write, ‘When anyone receives a pair of new shoes the custom is to stand on her toes for luck.’  As with most of human nature and culture, it’s all in the interpretation.

The young man kneeling in front of his bride, touching her ankles as he slides new shoes on to her feet – you don’t have to be a died-in-the-wool Freudian to see something sexy about that, and I bet quite a few young couples enjoyed the frisson of – finally! – permitted, public, personal contact.  But I think there’s more to it.  A very long and complicated Irish tale ‘The King Who Had Twelve Sons’ contains the Cinderella ‘lost shoe’ motif, but the roles are reversed: it’s the princess who tugs the hero’s boot off as he rides past.  Taking on what we tend to think of as the male role in this story type, she proclaims ‘a gathering of all the men in the three islands that she might see who the man was whom the shoe fitted’.  In this case too, as soon as the hero arrives, ‘The shoe was in her hand, and it leaped from her hand till it went on his foot. "You are the man that was on the pony the day that he killed the piast," the princess proclaims, "and you are the man whom I will marry."’ 

Given the very personal nature of shoes – people rarely lend them – and the number of superstitions about them, it seems to me that the shoe in the Cinderella stories is more than something to walk about in. First of all, it’s a status symbol: in all of the stories the shoe is of high quality and made of rare materials. This, in a time when many people had no shoes at all. But it seems to me that it belongs to the heroine in almost the same way as her hair or fingernails do: it fits no other foot, no other person can wear it. The Cinder-girl is identified and revealed through the medium of the glass or fur or brocade slipper because her shoes are a magical representation of her true self. 

What chopines said about Zezolla though -- I don't know!

Picture credits:

Cinderella: Watercolour by Edward Burne-Jones, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Wikimedia Commons 

Concealed shoes, St Edmondsbury: Wikimedia Commons

Miniature silver shoes, author's possession.

Reconstruction of a (moderately high) Venetian chopine in the Shoe Museum, Lausanne: Wikimedia Commons

Rashin-Coatie and the Red Calf, by John D. Batten

Cinderella, by Warwick Goble

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Our Craft or Sullen Art

February 9, 2020, 4:17 am

≫ Next: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines: a series!

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IN MY CRAFT OR SULLEN ART


In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.


Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

                                          Dylan Thomas

When I was a girl I used to memorise poems. I could get drunk on words, mutter them under my breath while waiting for buses, chant them aloud in woods or on windy hills where no one would hear me, murmur them at night, poem after poem, to send myself sliding away on a raft of poetry down a river of dreams. Actually I still do.

Dylan Thomas’s poems are incantations that fill the mouth and roll off the tongue like thunder:

Altarwise by owl-light in the halfway house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies…

Whatever does it mean? I have no idea, but it sounds good. Better than good! Grand – restorative – like the crashing chords of a cathedral organ; like wonderful spells. I remember suddenly reciting ‘And death shall have no dominion’ to my ten year-old nephew:

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon,

Though the bones be picked clean and the clean bones gone

They shall have stars at elbow and foot:

Though they go mad, they shall be sane;

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost, love shall not:

And death shall have no dominion.

His eyes opened wide and he said, ‘Wow!’

Back in the 1970's, there was quite a fashion for obscure poetry; almost every glam-rock album could do the mysteriously evocative stuff. Look at the lyrics of early Genesis under the aegis of Peter Gabriel:

Coming closer with our eyes, a distance falls around our bodies,

Out in the garden, the moon shines very bright,

Six saintly shrouded men walk across the lawn slowly

The seventh walks in front, with a cross held high in hand…

In either case – Thomas’s poems or Gabriel’s lyrics – I wasn't bothered about the literal meaning: often there wasn’t one, but the  imagery evoked magical inward visions, emotions and feelings. Not that every song by Genesis or poem by Thomas was quite so obscure, but even in those poems I could make some sense of, like the luminous ‘Fern Hill’ or ‘Poem in October’ –  it was the music which enchanted me.

Nowadays, though I still love the music, I look for meaning too. And behold, it's there, and now I understand it a little bit better.

‘My craft, or sullen art.’ How honest that adjective is, ‘sullen’: because writing can be so hard, so difficult, so damned uncooperative! You try and you try, and it’s not good enough, still not good enough, but you keep trying. You keep trying because what you’re really aiming for, what you want the most – and he’s right, he’s so right – isn’t money, isn’t ‘ambition or bread’, nor fame: ‘the strut and trade of charms/On the ivory stages’. No!

We don't write for the critics. We don't write (we wouldn’t dare, though maybe Thomas dared) with an eye on posterity and the hope of joining the ranks of ‘the towering dead with their nightingales and psalms’. We don’t write for fame and most of us don’t get it – or even make a living out of it. We're grateful to those who find and read our words, for no one owes us any attention and most will pay no heed. I think we write because this sullen, difficult art won't let us go. We write to honour ‘the lovers, their arms round the griefs of the ages’, because each person in this world is such a lover. We write to share, as best as we are able, the common wages of the secret heart.

'The Lovers' by John Everell Millais, British Museum

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines: a series!

February 18, 2020, 7:27 am

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In 2013 Disney released the story of two princesses: Elsa, with power over ice and snow, and her young sister Anna. When Elsa’s magic accidentally strikes frost into her sister’s heart, the film plays on our expectation that a prince’s kiss will save Anna. Instead, in a feminist twist, the spell is broken by sisterly love and courage while romance is sidelined. It seemed utterly fresh and exciting. 'Inspired by' rather than 'based upon' Hans Andersen's 'The Snow Queen', 'Frozen' wowed children and parents worldwide and became the highest-grossing animated film of all time.

Why was 'Frozen' so successful? It satisfied the hunger of a modern audience keen to identify with strong heroines. Why did the focus on Anna and Elsa seem so unusual? Because there is a persistent misconception that fairy tale heroines are passive. People who may not have read a fairy tale in years recall Snow-White in her glass coffin or Cinderella weeping in the ashes, and assume they stand for all. A discussion on BBC Radio 4’s The Misogyny Book Club (back in December 6 2015) dismissed the entire genre as projecting images of insipid princesses whose role is to lie asleep in towers waiting for princes to rescue them with ‘true love’s kiss’. Fairy-tale fans on Twitter and Facebook erupted, posting examples of tales featuring strong heroines: even so, a relatively small handful of titles kept recurring. There are many, many more.

It would be astonishing if the thousands of traditional tales told across Europe didn’t include characters who could appeal to and satisfy the desire of women as well as men for action and adventure. And of course, they do. In the Grimms’ fairy tales alone, there are more than twice as many heroines who save princes, as there are heroes who save princesses. In fact, taking the collected Grimms’ tales as an example, and discounting the hundred or so which are animal tales, nonsense tales, religious fables and so on, about half of the remaining stories contain main or prominent female characters who rescue brothers or sweethearts, save themselves and others and win wealth and happiness.

This is less surprising when you remember that whether male or female, fairy-tale protagonists are generally underdogs – orphans, simpletons, the youngest child or step-child, whose success is achieved by other means than strength. The major cause of any protagonist’s success is some sort of magical assistance gained by kindness, innocence, quick wits or luck. Not only does this put the sexes on an equal footing, but several heroines have the added advantage of being magic-workers themselves, a skill few heroes possess.

How has this gone unnoticed? Because a long-standing process of social and editorial bias has favoured and raised to prominence the handful of fairy tales we recognise as ‘classic’. When we think of Cinderella’s glass slipper, fairy godmother, pumpkin coach and passive, gentle heroine, we’re thinking of Charles Perrault’s literary version of the story, written to amuse a seventeenth century salon. The Grimms’ version contains none of these elements. Their Cinderella – Aschenputtel – is a girl with her own mind and her own agenda. Her power comes from a magical tree she plants on her mother’s grave: she runs, jumps, climbs and gets her own back on those who have mistreated her. Yet Perrault’s version is the best known, the one found in most picture books for children, the one adapted by Walt Disney for the cartoon and the more recent film.

Seventeenth century writers like Giambattiste Basile, Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy and others transformed nursery and folk tales into a sophisticated literary art form for the amusement of genteel audiences. Yet Perrault’s conscious, arch rendering of ‘Cinderella’ is certainly not less authentic than the version the Grimm brothers patched together more than a century later ‘from three stories current in Hesse’ which all had different beginnings and endings. In fact, both versions are literary: the search for authenticity is vain. Driven by Romantic taste and nationalist motives, the Grimms touched up or wholly rewrote many of the fairy tales they collected, looking to achieve an apparently artless, pure style which would represent the true voice of ‘the folk’. To them we owe the ‘fairy tale’ we recognise today: a construct, but an extraordinarily powerful one.

Inspired by the Grimms, nineteenth century collectors from Russia to Ireland, from Norway to Romania turned to their own peasantry to record and improve traditional tales in the mould of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen. In the process they not only uncovered but contributed to what Joseph Campbell has called the ‘homogeneity of style and character’ of the European fairy tale. And from the nineteenth century on, social and moral gatekeepers have preferred the docile charm of Perrault’s heroine to the energy and wild magic of the Grimms’. Most of the famous fairy tales are those whose heroines display the qualities Victorian gentlemen most wished to see in women: gentleness, beauty and passivity. Sir George Dasent who translated the Norwegian tales collected by Asbjørnsen and Moe recognised the strength of Tatterhood or the Mastermaid, but he preferred heroines of ‘the true womanly type’. Surprise, surprise.

And so to illustrate the vitality and strength of the neglected heroines within the classic European fairy tale tradition, from next week I’m beginning a series of new posts. In each, I will introduce a fairy tale with a strong heroine, which can then be read in full. Most of the stories I’ve chosen have been been in print for well over a hundred years, available to everyone, yet most are unknown to the general public. Tatterhood, Lady Mary and the Mastermaid are not household names like the Sleeping Beauty and Snow-White. And ‘The Woman who Went to Hell’ and Margaret, from ‘Simon and Margaret’ are likely to be new even to the most die-hard of fairy tale enthusiasts. At least I think so! I hope there’ll be surprises for everyone.

Of course it’s been done before, notably by Angela Carter. Her seminal collections of folk and fairy tales for Virago in 1990 and 1992 (republished as ‘Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales’, 2005) present a wonderfully diverse selection, a kaleidoscope of different story forms from a worldwide range of cultures and featuring women in all kinds of roles, ‘clever, or brave, or good, or silly, or cruel, or sinister’. She sets a characteristically bold, adult tone for the anthology, opening with a brief Inuit tale about the powerful woman, Sermerssuaq, whose clitoris is so big ‘the skin of a fox would not wholly cover it’. Though striking, this seems to be a tall tale rather than a fairy tale, and one of several which are not easy to interpret. Is Sermerssuaq human, shaman, some kind of goddess? Does she figure in other Inuit stories? Carter’s collection is dazzling, but includes a number of tales which, divorced from their cultural context, we are in danger of reading as exotic oddities.

Fables, cautionary tales, tall tales and jokes are forms intended to deliver a single, memorable point: a warning, a lesson or a laugh. They sometimes fail today because we reject the message (a hen-pecked man asserting himself by beating a bossy wife, for example), and they offer nothing more. By contrast, I take the classic fairy tale to be an adventure story: a sequence of marvellous events occurring to a single main character, or perhaps to a pair of lovers or siblings; and it’s the adventure, not the conclusion, which is important. Though the good usually achieve happiness while the wicked are punished, fairy tales have no didactic intention and no single message. Rather, like poetry, they generate an emotional and interpretative response.

For the purposes of this series I’ll be using the word ‘heroine’ to mean more than ‘main character’: it will indicate someone whose actions and qualities deserve admiration or respect. This might rule out characters like Rapunzel. She’s certainly the protagonist, but the best we can feel for her is pity. Or is it? Look more closely even at that story, and we remember that the prince fails spectacularly to rescue her, and she restores his sight: some of the most passive heroines have more about them than you might suppose. But there is no need for special pleading when so many fairy tales across Europe celebrate active, courageous young women who seize control of their own destinies. How about the heroine of a Romanian tale who sets off in armour on her war-horse to save her father’s honour? Hailed as a hero, she fights dragons and genies, and ultimately rescues and marries another princess, Iliane Goldenhair. The heroine of an Irish fairy tale ‘Simon and Margaret’ fights and kills a giant while her lover sleeps. The flamboyant heroine of the Norwegian ‘Tatterhood’ drives off trolls and witches as she gallops about on a goat. And when brothers and sisters adventure together, it is nearly always the sisters who do the rescuing, not the other way around.

Even the heroes of fairy tales rarely make their way by force. A good heart is more use than a sword. Kindness to animals or old women is rewarded by valuable advice or magical assistance: and where heroes rely on others, heroines often possess their own magical powers. The young peasant girl Bellah of the Breton story ‘The Groac’h of the Isle of Lok’ uses her magic skills to rescue her sweetheart from an enchantress. The giant’s daughter of the ‘The Battle of the Birds’ and the eponymous Mastermaid save their hapless lovers by conjuring up whole catalogues of magical ruses and illusions.

Female intelligence is valued, too. The fiery Scottish heroine Maol a Chliobain uses both magic and sharp wits to trick a giant, while the peasant girl in ‘The Peasant’s Wise Daughter’ is clever enough to save her father and marry a king – whom she later kidnaps in order to teach him a much-deserved lesson. Finally, quietly determined heroines also deserve admiration: the ones who trek stubbornly over glass mountains and wear out iron shoes, the ones who win through by their resolute endurance. Renelde in the Flemish tale ‘The Nettle Spinner’ rejects the advances of her rich overlord and brings about his death by patiently weaving him a nettle shroud. ‘The Woman Who Went to Hell’ endures seven years in Hell and outwits the Devil to bring her lover, an Irish peasant boy, back from the dead. And Maid Maleen survives seven years’ imprisonment in a dark tower, chipping her way out through the wall. All these heroines are brave and not one of them needs rescuing by a man: but fortitude is also courage, historically perhaps particularly the courage of women, and it’s underestimated.

Finally, fairy tales are not romances. In spite of the Disney song ‘One day my prince will come’, ‘Snow-White’ is not a love story. It’s a tale of a cruel queen, a lost child, a dark forest, a magic mirror. The arrival of the prince at the end is no more than a neat way to wrap the story up. Not every fairy tale ends in a marriage, and when they do, something more hard-headed is usually going on. Few fairy tale heroines are princesses by birth. Most are the daughters of merchants, millers, woodcutters or even giants; they are orphans, peasants and servant-girls – the same kind of people who told the tales in the first place, and who prized financial security. Marriage-with-the-prince (or princess) combines wealth and high status in an easily-grasped symbol, and indicates that a person’s endeavours have lifted them to the top of the social heap. I’ve said this elsewhere, but it’s significant that the disapproval directed at heroines who marry princes never seems to be aimed at the many heroes who marry princesses. All those tailors, pensioned-off soldiers, youngest sons and simpletons – no one seems to have any trouble recognising, in their tales, a royal marriage as a metaphor for well-deserved worldly success.

Fairy tales continue to pervade popular culture. Besides Frozen, in the last few years Walt Disney Studios has released Tangled (2010), Maleficent (2014), Into the Woods and Cinderella (2015), Maleficent 2 (2019), a live-action film of Beauty and the Beast ( 2017), and Frozen II (2019). Universal has released Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) and its sequel The Huntsman (2016). More are bound to follow, but it’s a pity that most of these films are based upon the same few well-worn tales – about a girl locked in a tower, a girl who sleeps for a hundred years, a girl who has to marry a Beast, and a girl in a glass coffin. Perhaps I’m not being entirely fair here, but that’s the gist. In the effort to turn these modest heroines into something feisty enough to appeal to 21st century audiences, scriptwriters have gone so far as to transform the wicked fairy of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ into the central, sympathetic character. It was ingenious and successful… but there is plenty more choice out there.

Picture credits:

Mollie Whuppie, by Errol le Cain
Cinderella, silhouette, by Arthur Rackham 
Tatterhood, Princess of Wands, from The Fairy Tarot by Lisa Hunt
Bellah finds the Korandon, by HJ Ford
Maid Maleen by Arthur Rackham
Snow White by Benjamin Lacombe

Strong Fairy Tale heroines #1: SIMON AND MARGARET

February 25, 2020, 2:08 am

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SIMON AND MARGARET

This tale was told in the 1880s by Gaelic-speaking Michael Faherty of Renvyle in Connemara, Co Galway to William Hartpole Lecky, who wrote it down verbatim; it was then translated by Irish poet William Larminie for his collection ‘West-Irish Folk Tales (1893). Larminie was a careful and responsible collector who took down most of his tales in person. He not only names his sources but gives brief descriptions of them: 'Michael Faherty,' he says, 'was when I first made his acquaintance, a lad of about seventeen. He ... lived with his uncle, who had, or has still, a small holding... and who was also a pilot and repairer of boats.' Unlike many 19th century collectors Larminie did not attempt to improve or embellish the stories he was told; he was so conscientious that his collection even includes one unfinished tale, with a note to explain that the storyteller had forgotten the ending!

In this complete tale, the heroine Margaret follows her married lover Simon to sea, only to be cast overboard like Jonah when the ship is threatened by a female sea serpent with a great dislike of the Irish... It's easy to inagine this story being told aloud: deadpan and deceptively naïve, with elisions, sudden surprises and touches of sly humour. We hear how the two lovers are reunited, how the level-headed Margaret saves Simon by fighting the giant of the White Doon, and how in spite of his attempt to take credit for the victory, he's forced to admit that she was the one who did it. 

Long ago there was a king’s son called Simon, and he came in a ship from the east to Eire. In the place where he came to harbour he met with a woman whose name was Margaret, and she fell in love with him. And she asked him if he would take her with him on the ship. He said he would not take her, that he had no busines with her, “for I am married already,” said he.  But the day he was going to sea she followed him to the ship, and such a beautiful woman was she, that he said to himself that he would not put her out of the ship, “but before I go further I must get beef.” He returned back and got the beef. He took the woman and the beef to the ship and ordered the sailors to make everything ready that they might be sailing on the sea.

            They were not long from land when they saw a great bulk making towards them, and it seemed to them that it was more like a serpent than anything else whatever. And it was not long before the serpent cried out, “Throw me the Irish person you have on board.”

            “We have no Irish person in the ship,” said the king’s son, “for it is foreign people we are; but we have meat we took from Eire, and, if you wish, we will give you that.”

            “Give it to me,” said the serpent, “and everything else you took from Eire.”

            He threw out a quarter of the beef, and the serpent went away that day, and on the morrow morning she came again, and they threw out another quarter, and one every day till the meat was gone. And next day the serpent came again, and she cried out to the king’s son, “Throw the Irish flesh out to me.”

            “I have no more flesh,” said the prince.

            “If you have no flesh, you have an Irish person,” said the serpent, “and don’t be telling your lies to me any longer. I knew from the beginning you had an Irish person in the ship, and unless you throw her out to me, and quickly, I will eat up yourself and your men.”

            Margaret came up, and no sooner did the serpent see her than she opened her mouth, and put on an appearance as if she were going to swallow the ship.

            
 “I will not be guilty of the death of you all,” said Margaret; “get me a boat, and if I go far safe it is better, and if I do not, I had rather I perished than the whole of us.”

            “What shall we do to save you?” said Simon.

            “You can do nothing better than put me in the boat,” said she, “and lower me on the the sea, and leave me to the will of God.”

            As soon as she got on the sea, no sooner did the serpent see her than she desired to swallow her, but before she reached as far as her, a billow of the sea rose between them, and left herself and the boat on dry land. She saw not a house in sight she could go to. “Now,” she said, “I am as unfortunate as ever I was. This is no place for me to be!” She arose and began to walk, and after a long while she saw a house a good way from her. “I am not as unfortunate as I thought,” said she. “Perhaps I shall get lodging in that house tonight.” She went in, and there was no one in it but an old woman who was getting her supper ready. “I am asking for lodging till morning.”

            “I will give you no lodging,” said the old woman.

            “Before I go further, there is a boat there below, and it will be better for you to take it into your hands.”

            “Come in,” said the old woman, “and I will give you lodging for the night.”

            The old woman was always praying by night and day. Margaret asked her, “Why are you always saying your prayers?”

            “I and my mother were living a long while ago in the place they call the White Doon, and a giant came and killed my mother, and I had to come away for fear he would kill myself; and I am praying every night and every day that some one may come and kill the giant.”

The old woman owns a ring, which will only fit the finger of the one destined to kill the giant. Simon’s wife and his brother Stephen arrive together to kill the giant, but the ring will not fit Stephen’s finger, and the giant slays them both. At last, Simon himself arrives at the old woman’s house.

            The next morning there came a gentleman and a beautiful woman to the house, and he gave the old woman the full  of a quart of money to say paternosters for them till morning. The old woman opened a chest and took out a handsome ring and tried to place it on his finger, but it would not go on. “Perhaps it would fit you,” said she to the lady. But her finger was too big.

            When they went out, Margaret asked the old woman who were the man and woman.

            “That is the son of a king of the Eastern World, and the name that is on him is Stephen, and he and the woman are going to the White Doon to fight the giant, and I am afraid they will never come back; for the ring did not fit either of them; and it was told to the people that no one would kill the giant but he whom the ring would fit.”

            The two of them remained during the night praying for him, for fear the giant would kill him; and early in the morning they went out to see what had happened to Stephen and the lady that was with him, and they found them dead near the White Doon.

            “I knew,” said the old woman, “this is what would happen to them. It is better for us to take them with us and bury them in the churchyard.”

            About a month after, a man came into the house, and no sooner was he inside the door than Margaret recognised him.

            “How have you been ever since, Simon?”

            “I am very well,” said he; “it can’t be that you are Margaret?”

            “It is I,” said she.

            “I thought that billow that rose after you, when you got in the boat, drowned you.”

            “It only left me on dry land,” said Margaret.

           “I went to the Eastern World, and my father said to me that he sent my brother to go and fight with the giant, who was doing great damage to the people near the White Doon, and that my wife went to carry his sword.”

            “If that was your brother and your wife,” said Margaret, “the giant killed them.”

            “I will go on the spot and kill the giant, if I am able.”

            “Wait while I try the ring on your finger,” said the old woman.

            “It is too small to go on my finger,” said he.

            “It will go on mine,” said Margaret.

            “It will fit you,” said the old woman.

            Simon gave the full of a quart of money to the old woman, that she might pray for him till he came back. When he was about to go, Margaret said, “Will you let me go with you?”

            “I will not,” said Simon, “for I don’t know that the giant won’t kill myself, and I think it too much that one of us should be in his danger.”

            “I don’t care,” said Margaret.  “In the place where you die, there am I content to die.”

            “Come with me,” said he.

            When they were on their way to the White Doon, a man came before them.

“Do you see that house near the castle?” said the man.

“I see,” said Simon.

“You must go into it and keep a candle lighted till morning in it.”

“Where is the giant?” said Simon.

“He will come to fight you there,” said the man.

They went and kindled a light, and they were not long there when Margaret said to Simon, “Come, and let us see the giants.” [There are baby giants as well as the old one.]

            “I cannot,” said the king’s son, “for the light will go out if I leave the house.”

            “It will not go out,” said Margaret; “I will keep it lighted till we come back.”

            And they went together and got into the castle, to the giant’s house, and they saw no one there but an old woman cooking; and it was not long till she opened an iron chest and took out the young giants and gave them boiled blood to eat.

            “Come,” said Margaret, “and let us go to the house we left.”

            They were not long in it when the king’s son was falling asleep.  Margaret said to him, “If you fall asleep, it will not be long till the giants come and kill us.”

            “I cannot help it,” he said.  “I am falling asleep in spite of me.”

            He fell asleep, and it was not long till Margaret heard a noise approaching, and the giant cried from outside for the king’s son to come out to him.

            “Fum, far, faysogue!  I feel the smell of a lying churl of an Irishman.  You are too great for one bite and too little for two, and I don’t know whether it is better for me to send you into the Eastern World with a breath or put you under my feet in a puddle.  Which would you rather have – striking with knives in your ribs or fighting on the grey stones?”

            “Great, dirty giant,” said Margaret, “not with right or rule did I come in, but by rule and by right to cut your head off in spite of you, when my fine silken feet go up, and your big, dirty feet go down.”

            They wrestled till they brought the wells of fresh water up through the gray stones with fighting and breaking of bones, till the night was all but gone. Margaret squeezed him, and first squeeze she put him down to his knees, the second squeeze to his waist, and the third squeeze to his armpits.  

            “You are the best woman I have ever met.I will give you my court and my sword of light and the half of my estate for my life, and spare to slay me.”

            “Where shall I try your sword of light?”

            “Try it on the ugliest block in the wood.”

            “I see no block at all that is uglier than your own great block.”

 

She struck him at the joining of the head and the neck, and cut the head off him.

In the morning when she wakened the king’s son, “Was not that a good proof I gave of myself last night?” said he to Margaret. “That is the head outside, and we shall try to bring it home.”

He went out, and was not able to stir it from the ground.  He went in and told Margaret he could not take it with him, that there was a pound’s weight in the head.  She went out and took the head with her.

            “Come with me,” he said.

            “Where are you going?”

            “I will go the Eastern World, and come with me till you see the place.”

            When they got home, Simon took Margaret with him to his father the king.

            “What has happened to your brother and your wife?” said the king.

            “They have both been killed by giants.  And it is Margaret, this woman here who has killed them.”  

The king gave Margaret a hundred thousand welcomes, and she and Simon were married - and how they are since then, I do not know!

Find more about fairy tales and folklore in my essays "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available from Amazon here and here.


Picture credits:
'Leviathan' by Arthur Rackham
Illustration by Arthur Rackham to 'The Manuscript Found in a Bottle' by Edgar Allen Poe

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #2: THE THREE SISTERS

March 3, 2020, 2:46 am

≫ Next: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #3: THE PRINCESS IN ARMOUR, or Iliane of the Golden Tresses

≪ Previous: Strong Fairy Tale heroines #1: SIMON AND MARGARET

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THE THREE SISTERS

This haunting story is a Romany tale collected and translated by John Sampson (1862 – 1931). Sampson was a self-taught linguist, scholar and printer, and librarian of University College, Liverpool. On a walking tour near Bala in the late 1900s he encountered and was befriended by members of the Wood clan, descendents of the eighteenth century ‘King of the Gypsies’ Abram Wood, and speakers of Welsh-Romani: ‘a quite pure, inflected Romani dialect’ which became his principal study. Edward’s brother Matthew, and his four sons, told Sampson many folktales some of which were published by the Gypsy Lore Society.

“The Three Sisters” is a tale bathed in a sinister half-light as one after another, the sisters journey to the land ‘where the devil never wound his horn and the cock never crew,’ and white stones glimmer in an eternal dusk. The old woman in the red cloak and her brother in the red jerkin are clearly powerful fairies – red is a dangerous, fairy colour – and the gate leading to the hill, through which each has to pass, suggests it is an entrance to the Otherworld. At the end of the story, the youngest sister triumphs because she has, significantly, taken the initiative from the fairy man by speaking to him first, which enables her to ignore the cries of the white stones. She then supplants the woman in the red cloak as ruler of the fairy kingdom but still takes care to address her as 'good aunt': she has learned that you shouldn't offend the fair folk.

This tale and others can be found in  “XXI Welsh Gypsy Tales” by John Sampson, (Gregynog Press, 1933)

There was a cottage, and there lived in this cottage an old man and his wife. They had three children, and these children were three little sisters. And they dwelt there summer after summer until their father and mother died.

            And two summers after their father and mother died, there came to the cottage a little old woman who wore a red cloak. And she went to the door and begged for a cup of tea. “No,” said the eldest sister, “we have not enough for ourselves.” “I will bind thy head and thine eyes, if I bind not thy whole body,” said the crone to her. With that she departed.

            And now these three sisters grew poor. And one day the eldest sister said to the two others, “I am going to seek work somewhere. And do you three stay here to look after the house. But if ye see the spring dried up and blood in the ladle, some evil has befallen me. Come then, one of you, in search of me.” And so in the morning when they arose they used to look for the tokens of which their elder sister had spoken.

            Let us leave the two younger sisters for a while and follow the eldest one. 

            The eldest sister journeyed to where the devil never wond his horn and the cock never crew. Night fell. Presently she saw a little man in a red jerkin. This little red-jerkined fellow was brother to the old woman of the red cloak. And before the girl asked aught of him, he put a question to her. “Art thou seeking work?” “Yes,” replied the girl. 

            Little Red Jerkin gave her no hint of the trial that lay before her. He opened a gate. “Go up there and thou wilt get work!”

And up she climbed. There were little white stones all the way up the hill. “Stop and look!” cried one white stone. The girl stopped and looked at the stone. She was bewitched into a trance and transformed into a white pebble. Thus did old Red Cloak bind her head and her eyes with a spell. And now she has bound her whole body.

Let us leave her there and return to the two younger sisters. 

One morning the second sister arose and ran to the door to look. She opened the door and there was the spring dried up and blood in the ladle. Horror overwhelmed her when she beheld these things. “Some evil has befallen my sister,” she cried to the youngest girl. Then the spring flowed and the ladle was bright again. Now she, in her turn, said to her younger sister, “If thou seest the spring dried up and blood in the spoon, some misfortune has overtaken me. Come then and seek for me.”

Let us leave the youngest girl now and follow her who set out in search of the eldest sister. 

She journeyed to where the devil never blew his horn and the cock never crew, until she met this same man in the red jerkin.  And before she could utter a word to him, Red Jerkin spoke. “Art thou looking for work?” asked he. “No,” answered the girl, “I am looking for my sister.” “Thy sister is up yonder; she has found work, and is doing well.”

The gate was opened and the girl climbed the hill. “Stop!” cried one white stone. The girl did not pause, but went straight on. “Look!” called another stone. The girl went on. “Lo! here is thy sister,” cried a third stone. She stood still and looked around when she heard this news about her sister. And she was bewitched into a magic trance and transformed into a white pebble. 

Let us return now to the youngest sister who was at home. 

She arose one morning and went to the door and opened it. There was no water in the spring; it was dried up. There was blood in the ladle! Then the youngest sister burst into tears. 

But she had more spirit than the other two. She knew not where they had gone, she knew not where to seek them. So, after making fast the door, she took the road on which she had seen her sisters set out. 

And she journeyed to where the devil never wound his horn and the cok never crew, until she met the little fellow in the red jerkin. Before he could open his mouth, the youngest sister spoke to him. She got in the first word. She asked him about work. “Yes, there is work for thee.” His heart was well-nigh broken, because the maiden had got in the first word.

He opened the gate and the girl climbed the hill. As she climbed, one white stone called to her, “Stop!” The girl went on. “Look!” cried a second stone. “This is the place!” cried a third stone. The maiden was quite fearless. She paid no heed to them. “Lo! here are thy two sisters,” cried yet another stone. 

“Kiss them, then,” quoth she. And on she sped until there were no more stones and she reached the little old woman in the red cloak.

When Red Cloak saw the girl she fell on her knees. “Hast thou found me then, little lady?” “I have,” quoth the little lady.

And now, lo and behold! all that slumbrous spell was broken. And all these white stones were restored to their former shapes. It was this maiden who had broken the whole enchantment: the dear God had put in into her heart to achieve all this and to have no fear. 

And she went to her two sisters and led them up to the old woman in the red cloak. “Here are my tow sisters,” said she. “I know them,” answered Red Cloak. “but it is thou who art mistress here now. All is left in thy hands. Do as thou wilt.” “I thank thee, good aunt.”

Red Cloak showed the youngest sister where all the treasure was. Then the girl gave her two sisters a bagful each,and charged them to send her word if any mischance should ever again befall them. And they both fell on their knees before their youngest sister. They were escorted home.

And she became the greatest lady in all that land, far and wide, and she married Red Jerkin. And they live there happily to this day.

More on fairy tales and folklore in my book "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available  here and here.

Picture credits:

Details from 'The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke' by Richard Dadd

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #3: THE PRINCESS IN ARMOUR, or Iliane of the Golden Tresses

March 10, 2020, 3:38 am

≫ Next: Fairy Tale Heroines #4: THE GROAC’H OF THE ISLE OF LOK

≪ Previous: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #2: THE THREE SISTERS

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This wonderful Romanian fairy tale plays all kinds of deliberate tricks with sexuality and gender stereotypes. It was collected (and perhaps enhanced, who knows?) by the Romanian folkorist Petre Ispirescu and was rendered into French by Jules Brun in 'Sept Contes Roumaines' (1892) with a commentary by folklorist Leo Bachelin.  

The title varies from translation to translation. Jules Brun calls the tale ‘Jouvencelle, Jouvenceau' or ‘Young Woman, Young Man’ - which sounds neater in French than it does in English. Translating Brun’s story for ‘The Violet Fairy Book’, Andrew Lang’s wife Leonora Blanche Alleyne renamed it ‘The Girl Who Pretended to be a Boy’ (and added a few passages to emphasise the heroine's femininity). A translation directly from Romanian by Julia Collier Harris and Rea Ipcar in "The Foundling Prince and Other Tales" (Houghton Mifflin 1917), gives the title as ‘The Princess Who Would BeA Prince: or Iliane of the Golden Tresses’. All of these titles sound a little cumbersome in English, so I've gone out on a limb and called it 'The Princess in Armour', but kept the subtitle which refers to the second heroine of the story - for there are two!

The first heroine is an unnamed warrior princess who quite literally becomes the Romanian sun-hero, Fet-Frumos (Beautiful Son: Făt-Frumos in Romanian) - a warrior of immense chivalry and prowess. Besides his mythic origins, Fet-Frumos is the Prince Charming of Romanian fairy stories and the lover of Ileana Simziana: Iliane of the Golden Hair. Leo Bachelin considers Iliane to be the personification of youth and springtime, dawn and twilight; while he describes the warrior-girl heroine of this story as a sort of androgynous Apollo whose powers of light are bound to put shadows to flight. After all, her/his horse is called Sunray...

In the original Romanian, the heroic princess has to fight a folkloric creature called a Știmă. (Two of them, in fact.) All the translations I've mentioned above render this word as 'genie', so I've followed them - but it almost certainly gives the wrong impression, especially if Disney's Aladdin comes to mind, since a Știmă seems to be a kind of dangerous nature spirit, who often has a connection with water: this may explain why the one which holds Iliane prisoner lives in 'the swamps of the sea.' 

The version below is my translation from Brun's 'Sept Contes Roumaines'. The subtitle 'Iliane of the Golden Tresses' is important because Iliane is another significant personage in Romanian folk tales and mythology. According tothis article in The Journal of Romanian Linguistics and Culture she is "the heroine of numerous songs, carols, and fairy tales; the most beautiful of all fairies, their queen, so beautiful that ‘one could look at the sun but not at her’. Her epithets are ‘the beautiful’, the moon fairy, ‘lady of the flowers’, protector of the wild animals and the forests..." 

Given all this, the final twist at the end of the story might be taken any number of ways, but to my mind it is a consciously ironic comment on the power of masculinity. 

There was once an emperor – oh yes, there was; if he hadn’t existed, how could I tell you about him? Very well then, there was once an All-Powerful Emperor. Victory after victory, he extended his empire over the whole wide earth, as far as to the place where the devil suckles his children! And he forced each of the emperors whom he subjugated to send him one of their sons to serve him for ten years.

Now, on the very edge of the borders of his realm, one last emperor stood against him. Year afteryear this emperor defended his realm and people until, growing old at last and losing his strength, he realised he too would have to submit.

But how was he going to to obey the command of the All-Powerful Emperor and send a son to serve him? He had no sons, only three daughters. How he worried! If he couldn't send a son, the Emperor would think him a rebel! He didn’t talk about it, but he imagined himself and his daughters thrown out of their lands and dying in misery and distress.

The sadness shadowing his face threw black sorrow on the white souls of his three daughters. Not knowing the cause, they tried their best to brighten up their old father, but nothing worked. So the eldest took her courage in both hands. “What troubles you, father? Is it something we’ve done? Have your subjects turned against you? Please tell us what is poisoning your old age. To blot out the least of your troubles we would shed our blood. You’re our life, you know that! We will never fail you.”   

“Ah, I know that’s true, you three have never disobeyed me; but you can’t help me, my dear children. Little girls! Nothing but girls, alas! Only a boy could get me out of the trouble I’m in. My sweethearts, from childhood on, all you’ve ever learned to handle are spindles and needles: spinning and embroidery are all the tasks you know. Only a hero can save me now – a young man who can whirl a heavy weapon – brandish a sword – gallop at the foe like a dragon at lions!”

His daughters cried out, “What are you hiding from us? Speak!” They threw themselves on their knees before him and the emperor gave in. “My children, this is why I’m sad. When I was young, no one dared touch my empire, but the years have frozen my blood and drunk my strength. My enemies are no longer afraid of me: foreign soldiers will set fire to my roofs and water their horses at my wells. There’s nothing to be done, I must submit to the All-Powerful Emperor, as all other emperors on earth have done before me. But he makes all his vassals send the best of their sons to serve ten years in his court, and I have no sons, only three daughters.”

“So what? I’ll go!” cried the eldest, “I’ll save you!”

“No, poor child, it’s useless!”

“Father, one thing is sure, you shall never be ashamed of me. Am I not a princess, and daughter of an emperor?”

“Very well. Get yourself ready and you may try.”

The gallant girl jumped for joy and rushed to prepare for her journey. She turned coffers upside down and emptied chests, packing enough gold-embroidered garments and fine jewels for a year, with all kinds of provisions. She took the most spirited horse from the royal stables, a splendid steed with fiery eyes, silken mane and silver coat. 

When her father saw her armed and mounted, making her horse prance in the courtyard, he gave her the best advice, telling her all kinds of tricks to disguise her true sex and warning her against gossip and indiscretions so that everyone would believe she was a young prince chosen for an important mission. Finally he said, “Go with God, my daughter, and keep my advice tucked safely between your two ears.”

Horse and rider leaped away. The princess’s armour shone like a flash of lightning in the eyes of the stunned guards: she split the wind and was gone in the blink of an eye. And if she hadn’t slowed down for her retinue of boyards and servants, they would have been lost, unable to catch up.  But although she didn’t know it, her father the emperor – who was a magician – wished to test her. Hurrying ahead of her, he threw a copper bridge over the way, changed himself into a wolf with fiery eyes, and crouched under the arch. As his daughter came by, the wolf leaped howling from under the bridge, teeth gnashing and rushed at her, as if to tear her apart.

The poor girl’s heart leaped with fright, the horse gave an enormous bound – and in panic she wrenched him around, spurred him away and didn’t stop till she was back at her father’s palace. 

The old emperor had got back before her. He came to meet her at the gate and shaking his head sadly, welcomed her with these words, “Didn’t I tell you, my little one, flies can’t make honey?”

“Alas, father, how was I to know that on my way to serve an emperor I would have to fight  raging wild beasts?”

“There, stay by the fireside with your needle, and may God have pity on me! He alone can spare me from shame.”

Now the second princess came to ask permission to attempt the adventure, swearing that she would stop at nothing to see it through. She begged  so hard that her father let her have her way, and off she went, all armed, followed by her baggage train. But she too met the wolf barring the way at the copper bridge, and returned discomfited just like her older sister. The old emperor received her in the same way in front of the gate and said sadly,  “Didn’t I say to you, little one, not every bird can be caught?”

"But father, this wolf was really scary. He opened his jaws so wide he could have swallowed me in one gulp, and his eyes flashed rays of lightning as if to destroy me on the spot!’”

“Then stay by the fireside, embroider cloth and make bread. May God help me!”

But here comes the youngest daughter:“Father, it’s my turn. Let me too try my luck. Perhaps I shall laugh at the wolf!”

“After what happened to the others? You have a nerve, you baby! How dare you talk about laughing at the wolf? You’re hardly old enough to use a spoon!"

The old emperor did everything he could to dissuade her, but it was no good. “For you, father, I’d chop the devil into pieces – or turn devil myself. I feel sure I’ll succeed, but if God is really against me, at least I’ll come back with no more shame than my sisters.”

Her father continued to hesitate, but his daughter coaxed him so sweetly that he was beaten. “Very well, I shall let you go. How much use it will be, we shall see. At least I shall have a good laugh when I see you coming back, head hanging, and staring down at your pretty little slippers.”

“Laugh if you wish, father, I shall not be dishonoured.”

The first thing the girl decided to do was to go to an old, white-haired boyard for advice – and remembering the stories she’d heard of the deeds of her father when he was young, she thought of his warhorse, which reminded her she needed to pick one for herself. So she went to the stables and looked in every stall, with her nose in the air. The best horses and mares in the empire – not one of them pleased her. Finally, after a long search, she found the famous horse of her father’s youth, a hairless, broken-down old nag lying in the straw. The girl gazed at him in pity, unable to move away. Then the horse spoke:

“How sweetly you look at me! If only you’d seen me as I was on the battlefield, when your father and I won glory together! but now I’m old, no one rides me any more. See how dry my coat is? My old master neglects me, but if someone cared for me properly, I’d be better than the ten best horses in the stable.”

“How should you be cared for?” the young woman asked.

 

“Sponge me down morning and evening with rainwater, give me barley boiled in new milk, and most important of all, ginger me up with hot cinders.”

“I’ll do it, if you’ll help me in my plans.”

 

“Mistress, you won’t regret it!” 

The princess did everything the magical horse had asked. On the tenth day, a long shiver ran through his hide. He was glossy as a mirror, fat as butter and agile as a mountain goat. Looking joyfully at the young woman, he kicked up his heels and said, “May God bring you happiness and success, for you’ve given me new life. Tell me your plans! Command, and I obey!”

                The king’s daughter made ready for the journey. Instead of weighing herself down with a year’s provisions like her sisters, she gathered together some plain, loose-fitting boy’s clothes, underwear and food, with a little money in case she needed it. Then she caught her horse and came before her father. “God and his saints protect you, my dear father, and keep you safe till I return!”

“Bon voyage, my child! Just remember my advice: turn to God in every danger. Only he can bring you aid.” The young woman promised, and off she went.

Now, just as he’d done before, the emperor hurried ahead, flunga copper bridge over the way, and waited. But before she got there, the magical horse warned the princess what tricks her father was up to, and told her how to get out of it with honour.

                As soon as she arrived at the copper bridge, the wolf leaped at her – flaming eyes, raging teeth, mouth like an oven, tongue like a firebrand – but the gallant girl spurred her horse and rushed at him, sword flashing – and she would have split him down the middle from nose to tail if he hadn’t recoiled and run away. She wasn’t playing, that girl! Her strength came from God and she was determined to accomplish her task. Then, proud as she was brave, she crossed the bridge. Delighted with her courage, her father took a short cut. At the end of the next day’s march, he threw a silver bridge across the way, turned himself into a lion and lay in wait. But the horse warned his mistress of this trick, too. As soon as she arrived at the silver bridge, out jumped the lion, covered in spiny hair. His teeth were like cutlasses, his claws like knives, and he roared loud enough to uproot forests and make your ears bleed. The princess caught her breath – but she charged the lion, sword raised, and dealt a blow of such force that if he hadn’t twisted aside she would have cut him in quarters. Then she crossed the bridge in a single leap, praising God. 

But her father got ahead of her again. Three days’ march ahead he threw a golden bridge over the way, turned himself into a dragon with twelve heads and hid beneath the arch. When the princess came in sight, the dragon leaped into view. His tail clattered and coiled, smoke billowed from his fiery jaws, and his twelve tongues waggled and wove about, covered in bristles. The young woman’s heart nearly failed, but the horse urged her on: she raised her sword, spurred forwards and fell upon the dragon. They fought fiercely for an hour until, striking sideways with all her force, she slashed off one of the monster’s heads. He roared to crack the sky, did three somersaults and disintegrated in front of her, taking on human shape. 

Even though the princess had been warned, she could scarcely believe it was her own father, but he embraced and kissed her, saying, “Now I see that you are as brave as the bravest! And you’ve picked the right horse; without him you would have fared like your sisters. Now I believe you will fulfil your mission. Remember my advice, and above all, listen to the horse you’ve chosen.” She knelt for his blessing and they parted.

On she went till she came to the mountains that hold up the roof of the world. Here she came across two genies who’d been fighting to the death for two years, neither one of them managing to overcome the other. Assuming her to be a young hero riding out on adventure, one of them cried, “Hey, Fet-frumos, help me! And I’ll give you a horn which can be heard for a distance of three days journey!”

The other shouted, “No  – help me, and I’ll give you my precious horse Sunray!”

The princess quickly consulted her own horse. “Take the last offer,” he advised. “Sunray is my younger brother, and even wiser and more active than myself.” So the princess hurled herself at the other genie and split him in half from the skull to the belly-button.  

The genie she’d rescued thanked and embraced her (noticing nothing strange), and together they went to his house so that he could give her Sunray as he’d promised. Here the genie’s mother greeted them, delirious with joy to see her son safe and sound. Hardly knowing how to thank him, she kissed the young champion – and immediately suspected something. Still, she showed ‘him’ to the best chamber – but the princess insisted on tending to her horse first. And in the stables, the horse told her everything she needed to know.

For the old woman was brewing up mischief. She whispered to her son that this handsome young fellow was really a young woman – and just the sort to make him an excellent wife. The genie didn’t believe her. Never! Ridiculous! No mere woman could handle a sword like that. But his mother persisted, and promised to prove it. That evening, at the head of each bed, she placed a magnificent bunch of flowers, enchanted so that it would wither overnight at a man’s bedside, but stay fresh at a woman’s. 

During the night, the young woman got up (as the horse had advised), tiptoed into the genie’s bedroom, lifted the already-withered bunch of flowers, and slipped her own still-fresh one into its place, knowing that its beauty would soon fade. She went back to her room, lay down and slept. Early next morning the old woman rushed to her son’s room and found the flowers withered, as she’d expected. Next she went to the girl’s room, and was shocked to find those flowers equally faded. But she still couldn’t believe her guest was a boy.

“Can’t you see?” she said to her son. “What man has so graceful a figure? That blonde hair, those lips as red as cherries, those bright eyes, those delicate wrists and feet? This simply has to be a young noblewoman dressed up in armour!”

So they dreamed up a second test. Next morning the genie took his young friend’s arm and suggested a walk in the garden. He showed off all his flowerbeds, and invited ‘him’ to pick any or all of them. But warned by the horse, and suspecting a trick, the king’s daughter demanded roughly why they were idly discussing flowers, when there was man’s business to be done – the stables to visit, horses to tend? So the genie swore to his mother that their guest was certainly a boy. Yet still his mother obstinately judged otherwise. 

For the last test, the genie showed the girl into his armoury, full of rows of scimitars, bayonets, maces and sabres – some plain and simple, others decorated with jewels – and invited her to choose one. The princess looked at them, carefully testing the points and edges. Then like a practised warrior, she thrust into her belt an old rusty Damascus blade, curved like a crescent, and told the genie she was leaving and it was time to give her Sunray. Seeing her choice of weapon, the old woman despaired of ever learning the truth, though she was sure in her own mind of what she’d told her son – that this was a clever and tricky girl. But they had to do as she wished. They went to the stables and gave her the horse, Sunray.

The emperor’s daughter leaped on Sunray’s back and pressed him to run faster and faster. Galloping alongside, her father’s old horse said to her, “Mistress, now you must go on with my young brother. Trust him as you do me. He is like myself, but younger and more vigorous. Sunray can show you what to do in difficult times.” Then with tears in her eyes the girl dismissed her old horse, the horse of her father’s youth.

She journeyed on, when all of a sudden she saw a bright curl of golden hair lying in the road. Pulling Sunray to a halt, she asked if she should pick it up or leave it. Sunray answered, “If you take it you’ll be sorry, but if you don’t take it you’ll still be sorry: so take it.” She picked it up, stuck it into the collar of her tunic and rode on. They went by mountains and valleys, through dark forests and sunny meadows, they passed over springs of fresh water, they came to the court of the All-Powerful Emperor, where the sons of other emperors served him like pages. The Emperor was delighted to see this spirited young prince and soon appointed him as a personal companion. This made the other pages jealous. Spotting the lock of shining golden heir tucked into the collar of his shirt, they went to the emperor and told him that their new companion had been boasting that he knew where Iliane lived, golden Iliane, beautiful Iliane of that song,

Tresses of gold,

The fields grow green,

The roses blossom…

and that he’d shown them a lock of her golden hair. As soon as he heard that, the All-Powerful Emperor ordered the girl to be called before him.“Fet-Frumos, you’ve deceived me. Why did you hide from me that you know Iliane of the Golden Hair? How did you steal that curl? Bring her to me, or your head will roll where your feet are now. I have spoken.”

All the poor young woman could do was bow and retreat, but when Sunray learned what had happened, he said, “Don’t worry! A genie has kidnapped Iliane, whose golden hair you picked up on the road, and imprisoned her in the Swamps of the Sea. She refuses to marry her kidnapper unless he can round up her stud of mares, which is a dangerous thing to do. Go back to the All-Powerful Emperor and say you need twenty ships, and a cargo of precious goods to put in them.

’

The girl went straight to the emperor. “Son,” said the emperor, “you shall have all of it! But bring me Iliane of the golden hair.”

Well, neither wind nor waves delayed them. After a voyage of seven weeks to the Swamps of the Sea, they came to the coast of a beautiful island all covered in revolving palaces, castles which turned around by themselves so as always to face the sun. The emperor’s daughter disembarked, and taking some bejewelled slippers she rode towards the castles on Sunray, where three of the genie’s eunuchs who were guarding Iliane, came to meet her. (The genie was away from home trying to round up Iliane’s mares, leaving only his old mother in charge.) The girl told them she was a merchant who had lost his way in the sea marshes, and had luxury goods to sell. 

Now looking from her window, Iliane had spotted the handsome merchant already. Her heart gave a sudden thump at the sight of him, and she persuaded the genie’s mother to let her go down and try on the wonderful slippers. They fitted perfectly, and when the youth told her that his ships held even finer and more precious things, she went on board. While she was looking at all the enchanting merchandise (and exchanging glances with the young merchant) she didn’t notice the shore receding and the sea spreading out over the swamps so far, so far, that soon there was no sign on the horizon of the island and the coast. A good wind blew, the ships flew like seabirds, and beautiful Iliane of the golden hair found herself in the middle of the sea, but did she care? Not when she lifted her eyes to the face of the young merchant who had delivered her from prison. 

Nearly had they reached the opposite shore when they saw the genie’s mother rushing after them. Wading over the blue billows, hopping from wave to wave, one foot in the air and the other on the splashing foam, she was almost on their heels, flames streaming from her mouth. The instant the ship touched land they leaped ahore, and the emperor’s daughter threw Iliane up on to Sunray’s back. She leaped up herself, told Iliane to hold to her waist – and away they galloped with the old crone’s breath hot on their shoulders. “I’m scorching!” Iliane cried. 

So the emperor's daughter leaned down to the horse and asked him what to do; and Sunray answered, “Reach into my left ear, pull out the sharp stone you’ll find there and throw it behind you!”

The emperor’s daughter did just that. Then all three of them began to race like a hurricane, while behind them in one stroke a rocky mountain rose up to touch the sky. But the genie’s mother flung herself at it, hoisting herself from rock to rock. Look out! Beware! 

Twisting around, Ilaine saw her coming. In fright she buried her head in the young merchant’s neck, covering it with kisses and crying out that they would be overtaken. Again the girl bent over the horse’s neck and asked him what to do, for the flames jetting from the witch’s mouth were burning their waists. 

“Reach into my right ear, pull out the brush you’ll find there and throw it behind you!”

The emperor’s daughter did just that. Then they ran harder than ever, while behind them sprang up a vast, dark forest, too thick for even the tinest animal to thread its way through. But the crone swung herself through the trees, crushing them, clutching their branches in a burning grip, shoving and shaking their trunks, and after them she came, onwards, onwards, whirling like a tornado. 

Iliane saw her coming and, her head buried in the merchant’s neck which in her terror she was now both kissing and biting, she sobbed out her fear of being caught, which was surely now a certainty.

For the last time the girl bent over the horse's neck and asked him what they should do, for the crone was spitting out a column of fire and frizzling the golden hair on their heads. And Iliane was writhing in pain, and Sunray gasped, “Quick, take the ring from Iliane’s finger and throw it behind you!” And this time, up shot a stone tower, smooth as ivory, strong as steel, bright as a mirror, tall enough to crack the sky. 

Raging and cursing, the genie’s mother gathered her strength, bent like a bow, and shot herself up to the top of the tower; but she fell through the hole of the ring, which formed the tower’s turret, and couldn’t climb out again; all she could do was cling with her claws to the niches and crannies, with no hope of climbing up or getting out. She did everything she could, she shot out flames for a distance of three hours travel, hoping to grill the fugitives; but barely a spark fell at the tower’s foot where the two lovers were snuggled. And the witch kept puffing out fiery sparks and set fire to the countryside for leagues around, for she could hear her enemies laughing and hugging and taunting her, till in her final rage she crumbled to bits and died. Then the tower bowed gently down to the handsome young merchant, who put his finger through the ring as Sunray had told him, and the high tower vanished as if it had never been there, and there was the handsome girl’s finger with the ring around it. And off they darted like mountain eagles till they came to the imperial court.

The All–Powerful Emperor received Iliane with great respect. He could hardly contain his joy; he fell in love with her at first glance,and decided to marry her. But Iliane was depressed and saddened; she longed to be like other girls who could do as they wished. Why did her fate seem aways to be in the hands of those she disliked – genie or emperor – while her heart was given to the handsome young merchant of the island? 

She replied, “Glorious emperor, may you rule your people in honour forever! Alas, I am forbidden even to dream of marriage until someone rounds up my herd of mares and their fierce stallion.”

At this, the All-Powerful Emperor called the warlike girl and gave the order, “Fet-frumos, fetch me this herd of mares, along with their stallion. If you don’t, I will cut off your head.”

“Dread emperor, I kiss your hands. You have put my head in danger already, sending me on a dangerous task, and now you’re giving me another. I see plenty of valiant sons of emperors here, with nothing to do; it would be fairer to send someone else on this errand. What will become of me, where will I find this herd of mares you order me to fetch?”

“How should I know? Ransack heaven and earth if you must, but I’m telling you to do it, and don’t dare to utter a word!”

The girl bowed. Off she went to tell Sunray everything, and the wise horse answered, “Find me nine buffalo hides, cover them in pitch, spread them over my coat and don’t be afraid, for with God’s help you will succeed in this mission; but believe me, mistress, in the end he’s going to play you false.”

She did just what the horse had told her and the pair of them set out. It was a long, hard journey, but at last they came to the region where Iliane’s herd of mares was to be found. Here wandered the genie who had stolen Iliane. He thought she was still in his power under strong guard, but since he had no idea how to perform the task she’d set him he spent his time went running here and there after Iliane’s horses, not knowing what saint to call upon for help and generally exhausting himself. When the heroic girl told him that Iliane was gone from the revolving palace and that his mother had died of spite, the genie became fire and flame and flung himself upon her. They fought together till the ground shook and the noise terrified the birds and beasts for twenty leagues around. Finally, with a mighty effort, the girl chopped off her enemy’s head, left the carcase to the crows and magpies, and found the plain where the mares were running. 

Sunray now told his mistress to climb a tree and watch what happened. Armoured in the nine buffalo hides, the splendid horse whinnied three times and the whole herd of mares came running to him with their stallion – who was white with foam and roaring in anger. The stallion leapt at Sunray, but with each bite he tore away only a mouthful of buffalo hide, while every time Sunray bit him, he tore away a mouthful of flesh. When the stallion sank down, bleeding and conquered, Sunray hadn’t suffered a scratch, but his buffalo-hide armour hung in tatters. Then the emperor’s daughter came down from her tree, mounted him and led the herd away to the All-Powerful Emperor’s court, where Iliane came and called all of the mares to her by their names. And as soon as he heard her voice, the wounded stallion was healed and looked as fine as he had before, without even the tiniest scar.

Iliane now told the All-Powerful Emperor he must have her mares milked, so that he and she could be betrothed by bathing in their milk. Yet who could do this? The mares kicked fiercely at anyone who came near; even a single kick could cave in your chest, and no one could touch them. The Emperor ordered ‘Fet-Frumos’ to get on with it and do the job. 

The emperor’s daughter felt a darkness in her soul. Was she always to be given the hardest tasks? She would collapse under the strain if this went on! Fervently she prayed God to help her, and since she was pure in both body and soul, her prayer was answered. It began to rain – the sort of rain that comes down in buckets. Water rose as high as the mares’ knees, froze to ice as hard as stone and locked their legs in place. The girl thanked God for this miracle and began milking the mares as if she had been doing so all her life.

But by now the All-Powerful Emperor was almost dying of love for Iliane. He kept staring at her the way a child stares at a tree covered in ripe cherries, but she used all kinds of tricks to put off the day of their marriage. Finally running out of ideas, she said, “Gracious emperor, you have granted my wishes, but I would like one little thing more, after which we shall be married. Get me the flask of holy water which is kept in a little chapel beyond the river Jordan. Then I will become your wife.” 

The All-Powerful Emperor summoned Iliane’s rescuer and said, “Go, Fet-Frumos, and don’t come back without the flask of holy water, or I will cut off your head.”

The young woman withdrew with a heavy heart, but when Sunray heard what had happened he said, “Dear mistress, here is the last and hardest of your tasks. Keep up your faith in God! Time is nearly up for this wicked and abusive emperor. The flask of holy water stands on an altar in a little chapel guarded by nuns, who sleep neither night nor day. However, from time to time a hermit visits them, to instruct them in holy things. A single nun remains on guard while they listen to his words, so if we can pick that very moment, all will be well. If not, we’ll have plenty of time to regret it.” 

Away they rode. They passed over Jordan river and came to the chapel just moments after the hermit had arrived and called the nuns to chapter. A single nun remained on guard, but the hermit’s lesson went on for so long that, tired out by the endless watch, she lay down over the threshold and went to sleep. 

Soft as a cat, the emperor’s daughter stepped over the the sleeping nun. Stealthily she lifted up the holy flask, leaped on her horse and galloped away! The clatter of Sunray’s hoofs woke the nun. She saw the flask was gone and began to wail and cry. The other nuns came rushing. Seeing the rider disappearing at top speed and realising there was nothing to be done, the hermit fell on his knees and called down a curse upon the thief: “Thrice holy Lord, grant that the wretched knave who has stolen the holy flask of thy baptismal water may be punished! If it is a man, may he become a woman! – or it is a woman, may she become a man!”

But see how the hermit’s prayer was answered! When the emperor’s daughter suddenly felt herself a gallant boy in both body and soul, just as she had always seemed, she was neither astonished nor upset. In fact, the thoughts of this new he flew straight to Iliane… Delighted with the transformation, hardier and bolder than ever, the youngster returned to the All Powerful Emperor’s court and handing the flask over, said, “Mighty emperor, I salute you. I have completed all the tasks you set me; I hope this will be the last of them. Be happy then, and reign in peace, as you hope to receive mercy from our Lord!”

“Fet-frumos, I am pleased with your services! After my death you shall succeed me on the throne, as up till now I have had no heir. But if God gives me a son, you shall be his right hand,” the Emperor replied. 

But Iliane Goldenhair was very angry that this last wish of hers had been fulfilled. She decided to take revenge on the Emperor for always handing the hardest tasks to the invincible young hero she loved. She thought that if her royal admirer was sincere he ought to have fetched the flask of holy water himself. So she ordered a bath of her mares’ milk to be heated, and asked the All-Powerful Emperor to bathe in it with her – he agreed with delight. Once they were in the bath together, she had the stallion from her herd brought in to blow cool air on them. At her signal, the stallion blew cool air upon Iliane through one nostril – and through the other he blew a blast of red-hot air at the All-Powerful Emperor. It was so fierce it charred him to the bone, and he fell back dead. 

               There was great confusion in the land at the strange death of the All-Powerful Emperor! From all sides they assembled, crowds ran to witness his magnificent funeral.After that, Iliane said to the youth, 

 “You brought me here, Fet-Frumos: you rounded up my herd of mares with their stallion and all the rest, you killed the genie, and the witch his mother, you brought me the flask of holy water from beyond the Jordan. My life and love belong to you. Be my husband! Let us bathe together and marry!"

“Yes, I’ll marry you, because I love you and you love me,” the youth answered in a voice just as soft as when he was a girl,“but know that in our house, the cock will crow and not the hen…” And guess what? Just because he was a man now, he added, “I’ll have my way!” So they were married, and reigned with justice and in the fear of God, protecting the poor, maltreating no one, and if they haven’t died yet, he and Iliane are reigning still.

And I was there at the wedding, indeed I was! I stood around gaping at all of the parties, for nobody dreamed of offering me a chair. So what did I do?

I sat on my saddle like any old farmer

And I told you the story of the princess in armour.

More about fairy tales and folklore in my book "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available from Amazon here and here.



Picture credits:The Princess Charges the Lion, by H J Ford, illustration for The Violet Fairy Book
The Valkyrie Lagerta, by Morris Meredith Williams, 1913

Fairy Tale Heroines #4: THE GROAC’H OF THE ISLE OF LOK

March 17, 2020, 5:22 am

≫ Next: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #5: THE THREE PRINCESSES

≪ Previous: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #3: THE PRINCESS IN ARMOUR, or Iliane of the Golden Tresses

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This lively fairy tale comes from Brittany (the Isle du Loch is a real island off the Brittany coast, and as the name suggests, it has a lake) and it's another traditional story in which a young man has to be rescued by his dauntless, magic-working sweetheart. The Groac’h of the title is a fairy enchantress, but a groac’h (Gaelic gruagach, Irish grogan) is a creature which turns up in many Celtic fairy tales. The word is sometimes claimed to mean ‘old woman’, but JG Campbell explains it literally as ‘the long-haired one’ and ‘a common Gaelic name for a maiden, a young woman.’ Emile Souvestre (see below) thinks the word once applied to druid priestesses on offshore holy islands: whether or not that is so, it must gradually have become a catch-all: some gruagachs seem to be the same creature as the glaistig, ‘a tutelary being haunting farms and stables’, who appears as a finely-dressed young man or woman with long hair. Others seem the equivalent of brownies or boggarts. In ‘A Dictionary of Fairies’, Katherine Briggs tells us that the grogan of the north of Ireland tends to follow the brownie tradition, while the groganof the south is more usually a supernatural wizard, and often a giant too, or a type of ogre.  

"The Groac’h of the Isle of Lok" is included in ‘Le Foyer Breton’ by Emile Souvestre (1844) and he has almost certainly embellished the tale with a number of charming ‘literary’ descriptions – for which it is none the worse! Andrew Lang’s wife Leonora Blanche Alleyn translated it for ‘The Lilac Fairy Book’ (1910), but she cut out nearly all the Breton references, especially those to do with the Christian religion or Breton saints, while the korandon (a Breton folkloric creature also known as a korrigan) becomes a generic ‘little man’. Alleyn has also removed anything she felt unsuitable for children – such as a few mild sexual references and a moment when the hapless hero drinks far too much of the Groac’h’s wine. The effect is to make the tale blander, less risqué, and less funny. So this my own translation, slightly abbreviated, of Souvestre’s version.

In the days when miracles happened in Brittany even more often than christenings and funerals do today, there lived in the village of Lanillis a young man named Houarn Pogamm and a girl called Bellah Postik. They were cousins, and when they were in the cradle together, their mothers had hoped for them one day to marry, but since then their parents had died, and they’d had to hire themselves out as servants, so they were too poor to get married. 

            “If only we had a little cow, and a skinny pig to fatten up,” said Houarn. “I’d buy a bit of land, the curé could marry us and we’d live happily together.”

            “Yes,” said Bellah with a sigh, “but these are hard times. Cows and pigs fetch high prices at the Ploudelmazeau market. God no longer seems to care what happens in the world.”

            This made them both unhappy, and one day Houarn came to Bellah and told her he was going to go away and seek his fortune, so that he could come back and marry her.  

            Bellah begged him not to leave. But his mind was made up, so she said, “Go then, since you must, and may God protect you! But first I will divide with you what my parents left me,” and taking him to her room she opened a small chest and took out a bell, a knife and a wand. 

“These relics,” said she, “are heirlooms which have never left my family. Here is the bell of Saint Kolédok; it can be heard at any distance, however far, and will ring to tell our friends if we’re in danger. This knife belonged to Saint Corentin and anything it touches will be freed from any enchantment. Last of all, this wand is the baton of Saint Vouga; it will carry the one who holds it wherever they want to go. I give you the knife to guard you against the spells of magicians or demons, and you shall have the bell to warn me of any dangers you meet, but I shall keep the wand so I can fly to your help if ever you need me.”

Houarn thanked her, they embraced and cried a little, and he set out. Along the way he came to a little town called Pont-aven, set on a river bordered with poplars. As he sat by the inn door, he overheard two men who were loading their mules talking about the Groac’h of the isle of Lok. 

“Whatever is a Groac’h?” he asked, and the men told him it was the name of the fairy who lived in the lake on the Isle of Lok, and she was richer than all the kings of the world put together, and many men had journeyed there in search of her treasure, but not one had ever returned. 

“I will go, and I will return too!” said Houarn. And although the men told him not to throw his life away, he went down to the sea and paid a boatman to carry him over to the isle of Lok.

He found the lake without any trouble. It was in the middle of the island, surrounded by marshland. He walked around it till at one end he saw, in the shade of a clump of yellow broom, a little sea-blue boat shaped like a sleeping swan floating gently in the water with its head tucked under its wing. Houarn marvelled, and climbed on board to take a better look, but no sooner had he set foot on it than the swan woke. Its head came out of its feathers, its big feet struck the water and it paddled briskly away from the bank. The young man exclaimed in fright, but the swan sped towards the middle of the lake, and just he decided to jump overboard, the bird plunged its head into the water and dived, carrying him down with it. His cry was stifled, he had to shut his mouth so as not to swallow the muddy water, and soon he arrived at the Groac’h’s home.

The palace was made from shells of many colours. The approach was by a crystal stairway made so that each step, as you trod on it, chirped like a woodland bird. All around the palace were huge gardens, forests of marine plants and lawns of green weed strewn with diamonds instead of flowers. The Groac’h herself was resting on a golden couch in the first hall. Her face was as pink and white as the shells of her palace, her black hair fell to her feet, woven with strings of coral, and her sea-green dress flowed as she moved. Houarn was dazzled by her beauty. 

The Groac’h rose smiling and came towards him as gracefully as a white wave passing across the sea. “Welcome,” she said. “There is always a place here for strangers, especially handsome boys. Tell me your name, and what you want.”

            Houarn told the Groac’h who he was, and how he wished to make enough money to return to Lanillis, buy a cow and a little pig, and marry his sweetheart. 

            “That is easily done,” she answered. “Come now, drink with me!” And she led him into a second hall decorated with pearls and gave him eight different wines to try, served in eight silver goblets. The wine was so good that Huoarn drank all eight at once, and then he had eight more of each, and at each cup the Groac’h seemed to him more beautiful than before. And she encouraged him, teasing that he needn’t worry about impoverishing her, as the lake of the isle of Lok had an entrance to the sea, and all the rich treasures from all the shipwrecks were swept to her on a magic current. 

            “Upon my word!” cried Houarn – who was now very merry – “no wonder everyone speaks ill of you; rich people are always envied. As for me, I’d settle for a tiny fraction of your wealth!”

            “You may have all of it if you wish,” said the Groac’h.

            “How?”

            “I’m a widow. My husband the korandon is dead, and if you would like me, I’ll marry you.”

            He, Houarn? – to marry the beautiful Groac’h? – and live in this splendid palace? – and have eight varieties of wine he could drink at his will? It’s true he’d asked Bellah to marry him, but how easily men forget that kind of promise! He accepted with joy.

            “Then let us perform the ceremony,” said the Groac’h, and she led him down to a little fish-tank at the bottom of her garden. 

             “Hey, attorney! Hey, miller! Hey, tailor! Hey, chorister!” she called, holding out a steel net. At each cry a fish jumped into the net , and when it was full she went into the kitchen and threw them all into a golden frying pan and started to fry them. But as the fat heated, Houarn seemed to hear little voices crying. 

            “Who’s crying in the golden frying pan?” he asked. “It’s only the fat spitting,” said she, but it didn’t sound like that to Houarn.“There it is again!” he cried. 

            “It’s just the fire-wood crackling,” she replied, but the noise grew louder, like little shrieks. Houarn became uneasy.

            “What can it be?” he exclaimed, but the Groac’h said, “It’s nothing but the cricket chirping on the hearth.” And she began to sing so loudly he could hear nothing more. But all of this was causing Houarn to think again. He was becoming frightened, and he began to feel remorseful.

  

            “Jesu and Mary!” he thought, “how is it possible I could have forgotten Bellah for the sake of a Groac’h who is quite possibly the daughter of the devil? How could I say my evening prayers while living with a woman like that? I’d be sure to go to hell!” But while he was having these thoughts, the Groac’h finished frying, and she set the pan in front of him and told him to eat, while she went to the cellar to find him a dozen more wines. 

            Houarn sat down and took out the knife Bellah had given him, but as soon as the blade touched the fish they turned into little men, each dressed according to his station – an attorney in his robes, a tailor in purple stockings, a miller covered in flour and a chorister in his surplice – and they cried together as they swam in the hot fat, “Save us, if you yourself hope to be saved!” 

            “Holy Virgin! What are these little fellows doing, singing out in the melted butter?” young Houarn gasped.

            “We are Christian men like you! Like you we came to the isle of Lok to seek our fortunes, and like you we agreed to marry the Groac’h, but the morning after the marriage she turned each of us into fishes as she’s done to many men before, and now we all swim in the fish-tank together!”

            “No! How can she look so young, if she’s already been married to all those fishes?”

            “She's a fairy! And the same will happen to you – caught and fried, and served to the next comer!” 

            Houarn jumped up as if he was already sizzling in the gold frying pan. He rushed for the door, but the Groac’h was on the threshold and had heard everything. She threw the steel net over his head, turned him into a little green frog and took him down to the fish-tank to join all her other husbands.

  

At that very moment, the little bell which Huoarn wore around his neck rang by itself, and Bellah head it in Lanillis, where she was skimming cream in the dairy.“Houarn’s in danger!” 

            Without waiting for anything or speaking to anyone, she ran to put on her Sunday clothes and slippers, and her silver cross, and left the farm with her magic wand. Coming to the cross-roads she drove the wand into the earth, murmuring: 

Apple-wood wand, carry me

On earth or wind or water:

In the name of St Vouga, bear me

Wherever I want to go.

At once the stick turned into a little red horse of St Thégonec all nicely combed, saddled and bridled, with a rosette at each ear and a blue feather on his forehead. Bellah leaped on his back and he set off at a walk, a trot, a canter, faster and faster till ditches, trees, houses and bell-towers flew by like a whirling wheel. But he wasn’t fast enough for Bellah, so she bent to his ear and said,  “A swallow is swifter than a horse, the wind is swifter than the swallow, the lightning is swifter than the wind, but you my little horse must gallop faster than all of them, so I may rescue my love.” And the horse now galloped like a straw blown by a hurricane till they reached the foot of a rock called the Deer’s Leap. There he stopped, for neither horse or mule could climb it and Bellah knew this, so she sang,

Little red horse, now carry me                                                          

On earth or wind or water,

In the name of St Thégonec, bear me

Wherever I wish to be!

As soon as she had finished, wings sprouted from the horse’s sides and he turned into a great bird which carried her easily to the summit of the rock. Here at the top she found a nest made of clay and line with dried moss, and in the middle of the nest was a tiny little korandon, all black and wrinkled, who cried out, 

            “Here’s the pretty girl who has come to save me!”

            “Save you! Who are you, my little man?”

            “I am Jeannik the korandon, husband of the Groac’h of the isle of Lok, and she has imprisoned me here!”

            “But what are you doing in this nest?”

            “I’m sitting on six stone eggs, and I can’t be set free till they have hatched.”

            Bellah could not help laughing. “Poor little cockerel!” she said, “and how am I to save you?”

            “By saving Houarn, who is in the power of the Groac’h!” 

            “Ah! Tell me how and I will do it, even if I have to crawl on my knees around around four bishoprics!”

            “You must disguise yourself as a young man and go to find the Groac’h. Then you must take the steel net that hangs from her waist, and shut her up in it for ever.”

            “How can I find a set of boy’s clothes?”

            “I shall manage that.”  And pulling four red hairs from his head, the korandon blew upon them and changed them in the twinkling of an eye to four tailors. The first carried a cabbage, the second a pair of scissors, the third a needle and the fourth an iron. They sat cross-legged in the nest and made a suit of clothes for Bellah with the cabbage leaves as cloth, and when she was dressed she looked like a handsome young man dressed in in green velvet lined with white satin. She thanked the little mannikin, jumped on the back of her bird and flew away to the isle of Lok, where the bird changed back into a wand, and the blue swan-boat carried her to the Groac’h’s palace. 

            “By my cousin the Devil,” said Groac’h to herself when she set eyes on this new visitor, “here is the handsomest young man I’ve ever seen in my life. I could make love to him three times a day for three days!” and plying Bellah with endearments she led her through the great hall where the wine cups stood and fruit lay piled on the table… and the young woman spied the knife of Saint Corentin, which Houarn had dropped. She hid it her pocket to use later, and followed her fairy hostess into the garden. The Groac’h showed her the diamond flowerbeds, the perfumed fountains and the fish-tank, where rainbow-coloured fish swam in their hundreds. 

            Bellah pretended to be enchanted with these. She stood at the edge of the water gazing as they flashed and twirled. 

            “How would you like to stay here and watch them for ever?” asked the Groac’h, and Bellah replied that she would like nothing better. 

            “So you shall, if you will marry me here and now!” cried the Groac’h.

            “Yes,” said Bellah, laughing, “but first you must lend me your net and allow me to try and catch one of these lovely fishes.”

            “Take it, my beautiful fisherman,” said the Groac’h, “let me see what you can catch!” 

            “I’ve caught the devil!” cried Bellah, casting the net over the Groac’h’s head,  “In the name of the Saviour, become in body what you are in soul!” and instantly the lovely fairy of the sea was changed into a hideous toad. Bellah pulled the net tight and ran to fling it into a pit, over which she rolled a stone sealed with the sign of the cross, so the Groac’h could never escape until Judgement Day.  

            Then she ran back to the pond, where a great procession of fishes greeted her like strange little monks, all of them croaking, “All hail to our lord and master who has saved us from the steel net and the gold frying pan!”


             “And I am the one who will restore you to your proper shapes!” said Bellah. Drawing the magic knife from her pocket she was just about to transform the first ish, when her eye fell upon a small green frog. He crouched sobbing on the edge of the fish-tank, with the magic bell around his neck and his little hands placed over his heart. 

            “Is it you, my Houarn?” she cried. “Is it you?”

            “It is,” croaked the little frog, and as the knife touched him he sprang up a man again, and they fell into each other’s arms. 

            Then Bellah began to transform all the fishes to their human shapes again. It took a long time, there were so many, and just as she finished who should arrive but the korandon from the Deer’s Leap Rock in a chariot pulled by six oak flies, June bugs as you might call them, which he had hatched from the six stone eggs. 

            “There you are, the pretty girl!” he called to Bellah. “You’ve broken the enchantment  which held me and here I am to thank you – for out of a chicken you’ve made a man! Now for your reward,” and he led the two lovers to the Groac’h’s coffers, all stuffed with gold and jewels, and told them to help themselves. Bellah and Houarn filled their pockets, their belts, their hats and even their pantaloons, and when they had taken as much as they could carry, Bellah made her wand turn into a winged chariot big enough to carry not only themselves but all the men they had rescued back to Lanillis. There the banns were read, and Houarn married Bellah – only now, instead of a little cow and a skinny pig, they were rich enough to buy  up all the land of the parish, and the men who had been fishes became their tenants, and they all lived happily to the ends of their days. 

More on fairy tales and folklore in my book "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available from Amazon here and here.



Picture credits:

Bellah and Korandon  by HJ Ford
The Swan-boat dives  by Théophile Busnel 
Houarn Enjoys the Groac'h's Wine by Théophile Busnel
The Groac'h calls the fishes into her net  by HJ Ford 

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #5: THE THREE PRINCESSES

March 24, 2020, 2:49 am

≫ Next: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #6: GILLA OF THE ENCHANTMENTS

≪ Previous: Fairy Tale Heroines #4: THE GROAC’H OF THE ISLE OF LOK

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THE THREE PRINCESSES

This Hungarian story, in which the spirited third daughter of an impoverished king is abandoned in the forest with her two elder sisters, comes from ‘The Folk-Tales of the Magyars’ by W Henry Jones and Lewis L Kropf (Folklore Society Publications, 1889). It incorporates elements recognisable from Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, and the Scottish tales Mollie Whuppie or Maol a Chliobain (in which the youngest child of a group of siblings defeats a giant), but although the ingredients may seem familiar and similar variants are told across Europe, this tale has a freshness and interest of its own. Wicked stepmothers and weak fathers are standard fare in fairy tales: sometimes the tales explore such relationships a little further but often, as in this case, the reader has to accept them as given and move on. I think you'll enjoy the surreal nonsense opening (intended to catch the attention of perhaps a rather raucous audience) and I love the mischievous manner in which the heroine gets her own back on her sisters on her final ride to the palace – and the bargain she strikes before agreeing to marry a particularly bloodless prince.

Once – I shan’t tell you where but you’d better believe me – there was a broken-down oven in splendid condition barring the sides, and it had cakes baking in it. One of you has eaten them! Well then, on the Komáran mountains, on the glass bridges, on the beautiful golden chandelier, there was once a Debreczen cloak with ninety-nine tucks in it, and in the fold of the ninety-ninth I found this tale…

                There was a king with three daughters, but the king was so poor he could hardly keep his family; so one night his wife, who was the girls’ stepmother, told her husband that in the morning she would take the girls deep into the forest and leave them where they wouldn’t be able to find their way home.

                But the youngest overheard her, and as soon as the king and queen fell asleep she hurried off to her godmother, who was a magic-worker, to ask her advice. Her godmother’s pony was waiting at the front gate, and taking her on its back it ran straight to the magic woman, who knew just what the child needed. She gave her a reel of cotton which she could unwind in the wood and so find her way back; but she made the condition that the girl was not to bring her elder sisters back with her, for they were very bad and proud. 

                Next morning the girls were led by their stepmother far into the wood to gather twigs, so she told them – and when they had wandered about for a long time she told them to rest. They sat down under a tree and soon all three fell asleep. Seeing this, the stepmother hurried home.

                When they woke and discovered their mother was gone, the two elder girls began to cry, but the youngest was quiet. Then she said she knew how to find her way home but could not take them with her, upon which her sisters began to beg and implore and scold her, till at last she gave in. On their arrival home their father received them with open arms while their stepmother feigned delight. Next night she told the king that she would lead them even deeper into the wood. Again the youngest overheard the conversation, and just as before she rode the little pony to her godmother, who scolded her for having brought home her bad sisters. Making her god-daughter promise to obey this time, she gave her a bag full of ashes to scatter along the path as they went in; so the girls were led into the wood again and left there. And this time too, the youngest took her sisters home.

                On the third night the stepmother once again schemed to lose them in the forest; and this time the girl didn’t have the courage to speak to her godmother; she thought she could help herself, so she took a bag full of peas, which she threw behind her as they went.  When the mother abandoned them the two elder girls again began to cry, but the youngest said laughing that they could find their way home just as easily as they had before – but she could not find a single pea, for the birds had eaten them all. 

                Now the three outcasts wandered all day through the wood hungry and thirsty, for until sunset they did not find so much as a spring of water to quench their thirst. Here they found an acorn lying under an oak tree under which they chose to spend the night. They planted the acorn, and carried water to it in their mouths to water it, and by next morning it had grown into a tree as tall as a tower. The youngest girl climbed it to see if she could spy any house or dwelling from the top, but she saw nothing, and they spent the whole day crying and wandering about. 

                On the following morning, the tree was as tall as two towers, and still the girl could see nothing from its summit; but by the end of the third day the tree was as high as three towers, and from its topmost branches she saw a lighted window shining far away. She led her sisters in the direction of the light. They walked for three days and three nights, until at last they came to a beautiful castle. And now, far from being grateful, her sisters began to beat and bully her, and told her that when they knocked at the door she was to say that they were grand ladies and she was their servant.

                What a fright they had! The door was opened by a woman as tall as a tower, with an eye as big as a plate in the middle of her forehead and teeth a foot long, which she gnashed at them. “What lovely girls!” she said. “What a splendid roast dinner you will make!” All three were terrified, but the youngest spoke up and told the giantess how skilled they all were at needlework, and described the beautiful clothes they could make for her, if only she would let them live. 

                The woman with the big teeth listened and agreed, and she hid the girls in a cupboard so her husband would not see them when he came home. But the giant sniffed about and demanded the  human flesh he could smell, and his wife had to bring the girls out. Now the youngest again spoke up and told the giant what good cooks she and her sisters were, and described the wonderful food they could prepare for him, if he would spare their lives. 

                The giant’s mouth watered, but he thought to himself that he would let the girls cook the food first, and then eat them afterwards. So the three sisters began baking and roasting: the two eldest kneaded the dough, and the youngest built up the fire in the oven, which was almost big as hell, and when it was red hot she popped a pot of lard into it and called the giant to taste the lard with his tongue to see if it was hot enough and if the oven had reached its proper heat.  

                This tower of flesh tried it – but the moment he put his head in the oven, the girl gave him a push and he was a dead man in the fiery furnace. The giantess flew into a rage at this and would have swallowed them up at once, but the youngest sister begged her to wait until they had beautified her, which she agreed to do. 

                “First let me comb your hair,” said the girl, and she took a ladder and climbed it, but instead of combing the giantess’s hair with the big iron comb, she knocked her on the head so hard with it that the creature dropped dead on the spot. The girls had the giants’ bodies carted away by twenty-four pair of oxen, and now they were the owners of the magnificent castle. 

                Next Sunday, the two eldest dressed up in their best clothes and went to a dance in the royal town. But they left their younger sister behind to do the housework. While they were gone, the young girl set out to explore all the rooms, passages and closets in the castle, and during her search she saw something shining in the flue of a fireplace. Knocking it free with a stone, she found it was a beautiful golden key. She tried it in every door and cupboard, but it fitted none of them until in the end she managed to open a small wardrobe full of beautiful dresses, all of which seemed made to fit her. She flung on a silver dress, the little pony was waiting for her outside, and like a hurricane she galloped away to the ball. 

                Here every eye was turned on her, gentleman vied to dance with her, and her two sisters, who until her arrival had been the belles of the ball, were set aside. But before the dancing ended, the young lady suddenly disappeared and was waiting in her servant’s clothes to greet her sisters when they returned. They told her they had enjoyed themselves very well at first, until some impudent female had stolen all the attention. The youngest sister laughed and said, “Suppose that had been me!” but they boxed her ears and called her names.  

                Next Sunday the same thing happened again, but this time the girl was dressed in gold, and on the third Sunday she appeared in a dress all covered in diamonds. Now the young men kept such a close eye on her that when she made her escape she had no time to pick up a shoe she had accidentally dropped in a corridor: she only just got back in time to receive her sisters. But the prince of the land found the shoe and kept it carefully.

                A few days later he fell ill. No one could tell why or find a cure for him, until at last one foreign doctor announced the cause: he had fallen in love with the mysterious lady who had lost the shoe, and would not recover until he married her.  So it was proclaimed throughout the realm that all the ladies of the country should come to the palace next Sunday to try on the shoe, and whoever it fitted should be the prince’s wife. The two eldest sisters joined the crowds swarming to the capital: they felt they has a good chance, since their younger sister had scraped their heels raw to make their feet smaller. 

But after they’d gone the youngest sister wrapped the second shoe of the pair in a handkerchief, jumped on the pony’s back in her best dress, and galloped off to the palace. She overtook her sisters on the way, and jumping the pony into a puddle, splashed them all over with mud. The moment she was seen approaching, a hundred cannons were fired off and all the bells were rung, but she wouldn’t acknowledge the shoe as her own without a trial. It fitted exactly on her foot, and when she produced its mate, three hundred cannons greeted her as the future queen. 

She accepted the honour on one condition,  that the king should restore her father’s conquered land. Her wish was granted and she became the prince’s wife. Her sisters returned to their royal father who was now rich and powerful once more. And if they are not dead yet, they are living there still. 

More on fairy tales and folklore in  "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available here and here.

Picture credits:

As I couldn't find any illustrations of this particular Hungarian tale, the one at the top of the post is from the fairy tale 'Mollie Whuppie' and it's by Errol le Cain.

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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #6: GILLA OF THE ENCHANTMENTS

March 31, 2020, 4:02 am

≫ Next: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #7: THE MASTERMAID

≪ Previous: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #5: THE THREE PRINCESSES

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GILLA OF THE ENCHANTMENTS

Told in the 1880s by Patrick McGrale of Dugort, Achil, County Mayo, to William Larminie (“West Irish Folk-Tales”, Camden Library, 1893). Larminie says of this tale that it combines domestic incident with romantic extravagance. It is a variant of Aarne-Thompson Tale Type 451: the brothers who are turned into birds. Towards the end of the story I have made some slight changes where Patrick McGrale's oral rendition, faithfully reproduced by Larminie, becomes a little unclear as to who does what to whom.

Although the parallels with better-known tales are clear (such as the Grimms''The Six Swans', KHM 49, and 'The Seven Ravens, KHM  25), this story has its own individual character. It’s both confusing and fascinating, with a great deal to puzzle over. On the death of his wife the queen, Gilla’s father sends his three sons away to a ‘greenawn’ – a sort of sunny pavilion on an island. He appears to do this in order to keep them safe from his new wife, from whom he has kept all knowledge of them. But his daughter Gilla has inherited powerful magic in the shape of a cloak left to her by her dead mother (just as the power of Aschenputtel’s dead mother is channeled to her through the tree planted on her grave). She cannot be harmed while she is wearing it. Only Gilla may ever visit the brothers; she brings them food, and she cuts off, washes and replaces their heads each day. It is as if they are dependent on their sister for continuance in life: perhaps the greenawn itself is an otherworld, a liminal land which requires them to undergo a daily resurrection only Gilla can perform. Gilla is both a magic-worker, and a person who can bring back the dead. At the same time, she belongs to the fairy tale sisterhood of those who persist and endure trials in order to rescue the brothers they love. The motif of the death of a child, and smearing its mother with blood in an attempt to frame her for its murder, is reminiscent of the story of Rhiannon and her son Pryderi, in the First Branch of the Mabinogi. 

There was a king in Ireland and his wife, and they had but one daughter, whose name was Gilla of the Enchantments, and she had a magic coat that her mother had left her when she died. And there was a man courting her whose name was George nă Riell, and the two were courting.

                When her mother died the king made a fair and beautiful greenawn [a summer-house or sunny palace] for his three sons on an island in the midst of the sea, and there he put them to live, and he sent his daughter to them with food every evening.

                It was not long after that till he married another wife, and by this wife he had three daughters. She was one day walking in the garden and she got the corner of her apron under her foot and she fell.

                “May neither God nor Mary be with you,” said the hen-wife.

                “Why do you say that?” said the queen.

                “Because the wife that was here before you was better than you.”

                “Was there a wife before me?”

                “There was; and that one is her daughter, and there are three sons also in an island in the sea, and the daughter goes every night to them with food.”

                “What shall I do to the three of them, to put them to death?”

                “I’ll tell you,” said the hen-wife, “if you will do what I advise you.”

                “I will do it,” said she.

                “Promise a dowry to your eldest daughter if she will follow the other daughter out when she is going with food to her brothers.”

                So the queen sent her daughter out after Gilla who was going with food, but Gilla looked behind and saw the other one coming, and she made a bog and a lake between them, so that the queen’s daughter went astray and was wandering all night. She told her mother, and her mother went to the henwife, and the henwife said, “Promise a dowry to your second daughter.”

                And she did this, and the second daughter fared in the same way as the first, and she came and told her mother. And the mother went to the hen-wife, and the hen-wife said, “Promise the dowry to your third daughter.”

                Now the third daughter followed Gilla of the Enchantments as she was going with the food, and this time Gilla did not look behind her. She parted the sea and she came to her brothers’ house, and she put the pot of water down and cut off the heads of her three brothers and washed them, and put them on their shoulders again. And the half-sister was at the window looking on at everything she did, and she went home through the sea, before the sea returned together, and while they were eating their supper, Gilla came home.

                The mother went next morning to the hen-wife and told her the third daughter had succeeded, and had learned everything. And she asked her what she should do.

                “Say now, your daughter is going to be married, and ask Gilla for the loan of her coat. She will not know that the power of the coat will be gone if she gives it away. So long as she keeps the coat herself she can do everything; there are spells on the coat so that the sea must open before it, without closing after it; but she does not know that the spell of the coat will be lost.”

                The third daughter got the loan of the coat from Gilla, but instead of going to be married, this is what she did. When night came she put the coat on and went to the house of her half-brothers, knocked at the door and asked them to open it. And one of the brothers said, “That is not my sister.” But another looked out of the window and saw the coat and recognised it, and he opened the door and let her in. She cut the three heads off, and took them three-quarters of a mile and put them into a hole in the ground, and went back to her other and told her she had killed the three.

                She gave the coat back to Gilla of the Enchantments, and Gilla went in the evening to her brothers with food, and whatever sort of fastening the other one put on the door she could not open is, but had to go in by a window, and she found her three brothers dead.

                She wept and she screamed and pulled the hair from her head in her lamentations, till the whiteness of the day came upon the morrow. She had not one head of the heads to get, but she followed the trace of the blood, and three-quarters of a mile from the house were they, in the place where they were buried. She dug them up and took them to her, and washed and cleaned them as was her wont, and put them on the bodies, but down they fell. She had to take them up at last, and cry to God to do something to them, that she might see them alive. And they turned into three otters, and she made another otter of herself. They were swimming that way for a time and then they made themselves into three doves, and she made of herself another dove. They were flying and she was flying, and the four came and settled on the gable of the house, and in the morning the man [the king] said to his wife,

                “There is a barrel of water. Let it be wine in the evening.”(He thought to test her, he thought it was not the right woman he had got.)

                Then said one of the brothers to the sister, “Go in, and do good in return for evil, and make wine of the water.”

                She went down, and when she got in, and she in the shape of a dove, the old blind wise man who was lying in his bed under the window got his sight, and he saw her dipping her finger in the water and making of wine, cold and wholesome.

                And in the morning the man said to his wife, “Here is a barrel of water. Let it be wine with you in the evening.”

                And the second brother said to his sister, “Go in, and do good in return for evil, and make wine of the water.”

                She went down, and when she went in at the window, and she in the shape of a dove, the wise old blind man who was lying on the  bed under the window got his sight, and he saw her dipping her finger in the water and making it wine, cold and wholesome.

                And in the morning on the third day the wise old man spoke to the king, and said to him that he had seen a beautiful woman come in by the window on two days, and that he got his sight when she came in and lost it when she went out and (said he) “Stretch yourself here today, and when she comes in and makes wine of the water, catch her as she is going out.”

                And he did so, and the third brother said to his sister, “Go in, and do good in return for evil, and make the wine.” And she did this; and as she was going out the man caught her. And when her brothers heard that she was caught they went away. And she asked the king to to give her leave to take just one look at her brothers. “Here’s the corner of my apron.”

                So he took hold of the corner of her apron, and she slipped out of it and left it with him and went away after her brothers.  When they saw her coming they waited for her, and she asked them if there was anything at all in the world that would make them come alive again; and they said there was one thing only, and that hard it was to do it.

                “What is it?” said she, “and I will try it.”

                “To make three shirts of the ivy-leaves in a day and a year, without uttering a word of speech or shedding a single tear, for if you weep we shall lose a part of ourselves.”

                And she said to them to make a little hut for her in the wood, and they made her the hut and went away and left her there. She was not long before she began to get material for the shirts, and she began to make them.

Now the queen’s daughter had her dowry. And she thought the king’s sons and the king’s daughter were dead, and she married George năRiell, and her mother died and her father, and now she was queen.  But Gilla of the Enchantments was not long in the house in the wood, till George năRiell found her, and she did not speak a word to him, but he was with her till she had a child to him.

                A young man was in the wood one day and a dog with him, and the dog took him to the place where the woman was, and the man saw the woman and the child there, and he went home and told the queen there was a beautiful woman in the wood. And the queen went and found the woman and the babe, and she killed the babe and caught up some of the blood and mixed the blood and ashes together and made a cake and she sought to put a piece of the cake in the woman’s mouth. And Gilla dropped one tear from her eye; but the queen who was her half-sister went back to her husband and said to him that great was the shame of him to have children by that woman, and that Gilla had killed her own child and eaten it.

                “It is not possible,” said he, “that she has killed my child.”

                “She killed and she ate.”

                He went to her and found the child dead; but Gilla did not speak a word to him. He said then that he would burn her at twelve o’ clock of the next day. He commanded that every one should come in the morning with sods of turf and sheets of paper, and everything to make a fire.And she was brought and put there, and she was still sewing. When it was twelve o’ clock, the sign was given to light the fire, but an old man in the crowd asked them to give her another hour by the clock, and when that hour was passed he asked them to give her a half-hour; the woman in it (he said) was under geasa. “You see that it is not her life that is troubling her, but that she is always sewing.”

                It was not long before they saw a black cloud coming through the air, and they saw three things in the cloud coming. “Well,” said the old man, “there are three angels from heaven, or three devils from hell, coming for her soul.”

                There were three black ravens coming, and their mouths open, and as it were fire coming out of their mouths, till the three black ravens came and lay in their sister’s bosom, and she on top of the pyre, and she put the three shirts on them and said, –

                “Finn, Inn and Brown Glegil, show that I am your sister, for in pain I am today.”

                They took hold of her and lifted her down from the pyre, and the brothers told George nă Riell everything that the half-sister had done, first that she had killed the three of them, and afterwards that it was she that killed their sister’s child.

                So the half-sister was thrown into the fire. And they went home, and George nă Riell married Gilla of the Enchantments, and they spent the rest of their lives as is right.

 NB: since Gilla sheds one tear, it's possible that one of her brothers lacks an eye, but the narrator does not say so.


More on fairy tales and folklore in my book "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available from Amazon here and here.

Picture credit: 
The Ravens of Wotan, Arthur Rackham

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #7: THE MASTERMAID

April 7, 2020, 1:40 am

≫ Next: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #8: ASCHENPUTTEL

≪ Previous: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #6: GILLA OF THE ENCHANTMENTS

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This fast-moving Norwegian fairy tale from Asbjørnsen and Moe was translated into English by Sir George Dasent in ‘Popular Tales from the Norse’ (1859). Nineteenth century translations can feel a little stiff nowadays and we tend to read them with too much respect. I decided to tell this story aloud a few months ago, but it came to life for me when I tweaked it a bit and told it in a strong Yorkshire accent (which is where I'm from). Traces of this should be obvious in the version below. This helped me bring out not only the Northern-ness of the tale, but also the sheer fun and naughtiness of the original, such as the bit near the end, where the Mastermaid takes various men to bed with her only to make them stand up all night gripping such suggestive items as a poker or a calf’s tail...

The story begins as if it’s all going to be about a prince, but though he’s an attractive, cheeky lad, he can’t achieve anything without the Mastermaid (the clue’s in her name)! The tale is classed as Aarne–Thompson type 313A, 'the girl helps the hero flee', a category which in my opinion ought to be renamed 'the heroine rescues the boy'. The Mastermaid saves the prince's life four separate times, provides him with invaluable advice, organises his escape, saves him from marrying a troll, and generally sorts everything out with tremendous aplomb.

There was once a king’s son who had a fancy to see the world. Off he set, and after travelling for several days he found a door that was built into the mountain. It was the door to a troll’s house; he spent the night there and hired himself out next day as the troll’s servant.

            In the morning, before the troll went out to graze his herd of goats on the mountain meadows, he told the king’s son to shovel out the stable. ‘I’m an easy-going master,’ he said, ‘when you’ve done that, you can have the rest of the day off, but do your work well, and don’t go poking into any of the other rooms in the house, or I’ll tear your head off.’ 

‘He does seem an easy master!’ said the lad to himself. He thought he’d have plenty of time, so he walked about humming, and then he thought he wouldtake a look into some of the other rooms. What might the troll be hiding? 

In the middle of the first room a big cauldron was boiling and bubbling away with no fire under it! ‘What’s cooking?’ the king’s son wondered, and he looked in, a piece of his hair swung down into the broth and came out with each strand bright as copper.

‘Funny soup, that!’ said the lad, ‘if anyone sipped it, they’d have copper lips!’ and he went into the second room.

Here was another cauldron simmering away with no fire. ‘I’ll try this one too,’ he says and dips a second lock of hair in. Out it comes, shining silver. ‘Expensive soup!’ says he, ‘we’ve nothing like it my father’s castle, but how does it taste?’ and he went into the next room where there was a third cauldron bubbling and steaming. 

The lad dipped another lock of hair in, and this time it came out gleaming gold. ‘Anyone who drank that would get a gilded gullet!’ he said, ‘but if that’s gold, what’ll I find next?’ and he opened the door to the fourth room, and in it a girl was sitting on a bench, the loveliest lass the lad had ever seen. 

‘God in heaven,’ she says, ‘what do you want? And what are you doing here?’

‘I’ve just been hired by the troll,’ he says.

‘Have you any idea what you’ll have to do for him?’ she asks.

‘Oh he’s an easy sort of chap,’ says the king’s son. ‘All I have to do is muck out the stable, nothing hard, and then I can take time off.’ 

‘You think that’s easy? If you set about it the usual way, ten shovelfuls will fly in for every one you chuck out. I’ll tell you what to do: turn the pitchfork around and shovel with the handle, then all the muck will fly out by itself!’

He’d do that, all right, thought the king’s son, and then the two of them sat chattering away, falling in love, till as evening came the lad thought he’d better go out and do his work, and as soon as he turned the pitchfork upside down, all the muck flew out by itself to the dungheap and the stable was as clean as clean.

Troll comes back with the goats. ‘Have you shovelled out t'stable?’ he asks

.

‘I have that, it’s as clean as clean.’

‘I’ll see for myself!’ says the troll, and he came and saw, and he says, ‘You must have been talking to my Mastermaid! You haven’t got enough between the ears to have managed it yourself.’  

‘Mastermaid?’ says the lad, pretending to be thick, ‘what sort of a thing is that? I’d love to see it. Can I see it?’

‘You’ll see soon enough,’ says the troll. 

Next morning the troll gave the lad instructions to go up the mountain and bring down the horse which was grazing up there. ‘When you’ve done that you can take things easy the rest of the day, but don’t go into any of the other rooms, or I’ll wring your head off!’ 

‘Kind master or not,’ thought the king’s son, ‘I’ll talk to the Mastermaid all the same. Yours, is she? What if she’d rather be mine?’ and he went to see her.

‘What work has he given you today?’ she asks.

‘Nowt much,’ says the king’s son. ‘Just go up the mountain to fetch his horse.’

‘And how are you going to do that?’

‘Shouldn’t be hard, should it? I’ll bet I’ve ridden better horses than his!’

‘It won’t be as easy as you think,’ said the Mastermaid, ‘but I’ll tell you what to do. It’ll rush at you as soon as it sees you, breathing fire and flame, but if you take that bridle hanging there by the door and throw it over its head, it’ll calm down and follow you like a lamb.’

Well, the lad would certainly take her advice, and so they sat chatting and thought how wonderful it would be if they could get away together and escape the troll… and he would have forgotten all about going to fetch the horse if the Mastermaid hadn’t reminded him as evening came on, so he took the bridle and climbed the mountain, and as the horse came rushing at him with blazing eyes and flaming jaws he threw the bridle over its head, and then it was tame and followed him back like a lamb.

Troll comes home. ‘Is horse in’t stable?’

‘Oh aye,’ says the lad. ‘A nice quiet nag, I rode it back and shut it in the stall, I did.’ 

‘I’ll see for myself!’ says the troll. And there was the horse, just as the lad had said. ‘You must have been talking to my Mastermaid!’ said the troll. ‘You could never have worked that out for yourself!’

‘Mastermaid? Mastermaid? You said that yesterday, and still I don’t know what a Mastermaid is. I wish you’d show me, master, indeed I do,’ said the king’s son, thick as a brick. 

‘You’ll find out soon enough!’ said the troll. 

Next day the troll went out with his goats as before. ‘Today it’s off to hell with you, to fetch the fire-tax,’ he said to the lad. ‘You can take it easy the rest of the day! Lucky for you I’m such a kind master.’ Off he went.

‘Oh aye, very kind,’ says the lad, ‘to give me all the dirty jobs. I’d better find the Mastermaid.’ And he went to her. ‘What’ll I do? I’ve never been to hell. I don’t know the way! And I don’t know how much to ask for!’

‘Oh, I can tell you all that. Go to the cliff face below the mountain, take this club with you and knock on the wall with it. Then someone will come out with sparks flying off him. Tell him your errand, and when he asks how much you want, you say, “As much as I can carry!”’  

Well, the lad thought he could do that, and then they sat talking all day long and he would be sitting there still if the Mastermaid hadn’t reminded him to go and fetch the fire tax before the troll came home.

Off he went and knocked at the cliff with the club, and out came someone swarming with sparks, fire flying from his hair and eyes and nose. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve come from the troll, for the fire tax!’

‘How much?’

‘Oh, just as much as I can carry.’

‘You’re lucky you didn’t ask for more. Come with me!’ So he led the king’s son into the hill, and there were piles of gold and silver like stones in a rockfall, and the lad took as much as he could carry and went home. 

Troll come backs. ‘Where’s fire tax?’

‘In that sack by wall!’

‘I’ll see for myself!’ said the troll, and he looked in the sack and it was full to the brim with gold and silver. ‘You’ve certainly been talking to my Mastermaid – and if you have, I’ll wring your head off!’

‘Mastermaid?’ said the lad. ‘You keep talking about this Mastermaid. I wish I could see the thing. I really do!’

‘You’ll have your wish,’ said the troll. ‘I’ll take you to see her tomorrow.’

Next day troll takes the king’s son to t’ Mastermaid and says to her, ‘Get on and butcher him, and cook him up in’t big cauldron while I have a nap. When broth’s ready, call me!’ He lay down on’t bench and went to sleep, snoring so loud it shook the mountain. 

The Mastermaid takes a knife, cuts the lad’s finger and lets three drops of blood fall onto a three-legged stool. She piles up all the old rags and worn-out shoes and rubbish she can find, and drops them into the cauldron. She fills up a box with powdered gold, grabs a block of salt and a flask of water. Then she catches up a golden apple and the troll’s two golden hens, and off she goes wi’t king’s son, fast as they can, till they come to t’ sea, jump on board ship and set off over the waves. 

Back home, the troll stretches a bit and stirs.  ‘Is broth ready yet?’

‘Just started to boil,’ said the first drop of blood and the troll goes back to sleep. After a while he stirs again. ‘In’t it ready yet?’

‘Half-cooked!’ says second drop of blood. So the troll goes back to sleep. Hours later he yawns and rubs his eyes. ‘Is it done?’

‘Ready!’ says third drop of blood. So the troll got up and he couldn’t see the Mastermaid, but the cauldron was steaming, and he was clemmed. Hungry! He took the ladle and tried the soup, and it’s nothing but mashed up rags and old leather, and he was so angry he didn’t know what leg to stand on, and he sest off after the Mastermaid and the king’s son as fast as he could go. Soon he comes to the edge of the fjord, and he can see the two of them far off on the ship, but he can’t cross the water. So he calls his River-sucker, and the River-sucker lies down at the fjord’s edge and sucks and sucks till the fjord’s almost dry. 

‘Throw out that block of salt!’ cries the Mastermaid, so the king’s son threw out the block of salt behind the ship, and it turned into a mighty mountain too high to climb, that blocked the way. ‘I’ll call for my Mountain-borer!’ yelled the troll, and his Mountain-borer came and bored a hole right through the mountain, but jusr as the troll was scrambling through it the Mastermaid cried, ‘Pour out the flask of water!’ and the king’s son did, and the tunnel filled with water and the troll was swept away and drowned.

So now the lad wants to take Mastermaid back to his father, but he wants to do it in style. ‘Just wait for me here, while I go on. There’s seven grand horses in my father’s stable, and a carriage. I’ll fettle them up and bring them for you.’

‘Oh no, don’t do that!’ said the Mastermaid, ‘if you go home without me, you’ll forget me, I know you will.’

‘How could I forget you after all we’ve been through together and when we love each other so much?’

‘All right’ said the Mastermaid, ‘go if you will, but don’t speak to anyone and whatever you do don’t have a bite to eat – if you do, it’ll be bad luck for both of us.’ He said he wouldn’t, and off he went.

But when he got to his dad’s castle, one of his brothers had just got married and they were all celebrating. They were right glad to see him and asked him to join the feast, but he wouldn’t say nowt, he brushed them off and went to t’ stables to hitch up the horses. Well, this woman comes after him, she’s the bride’s step-sister, and she chucks him an apple, ‘If you won’t stay with us, have a bite of that,’ she cries, and as he were hungry and thirsty he took a bite, and all at once he forgot the Mastermaid and all that had gone on wi’ him and her. ‘I must have gone mad. What do I want these horses for?’ And he went back into t’ castle, and no time at all he was engaged to marry the woman who gi’en him the apple, who was really a troll.

The Mastermaid waited and waited, but as king’s son didn’t come she walked along till she came to a dirty little cottage close by the king’s meadows. In she goes and lights a fire, and then she takes out the box of gold dust and chucks half of it on’t fire so it spits and splutters and gilds the whole cottage inside and out, till it shines like the sun. 

Who should come riding by but the Constable? He was so mithered by the glittering cottage and so smitten by the lovely lass sitting by t’ door, that he asks her to marry him, straight off.

‘I might, if you’ve plenty of brass,’ she says.  

Oh, he had plenty of that! So he comes back that evening with half a sackful, leans it in’t corner and they go to bed. But soon as they’re in bed, the Mastermaid sits up. ‘I forgot to stoke fire,’ says she.

‘I’ll do it!’ says Constable, and he jumps out of bed.

‘Tell me when you’re grabbed hold of poker,’ says the Mastermaid.

‘I’m holding it now!’ says he.

‘Then you hold on to the poker and the poker hold you, and you can chuck coals all over yourself till morning!’ says the Mastermaid. So the Constable stands there all night, flinging fiery coals and embers all over himself till daybreak, and then he could the poker go and took to his heels as if the devil was after him. And did he say a word to anyone? Not likely!

Next day an Attorney comes riding past, and when he claps eyes on t’ golden hut and the beautiful maiden, down he goes on his knees and asks to marry her. ‘I might,’ said the Mastermaid, ‘if you’ve plenty of brass, I might…’

The Attorney was rich enough, so he come back that evening with a big sackful and leans it in the corner, and they went to bed. But as soon as they lie down, the Mastermaid sits up. ‘I forgot to shut porch door,’ said she.

‘Lord, what a time to remember that!’ says Attorney. ‘I’ll do it,’ and he jumps out of bed. 

‘Tell me when handle’s in your hand,’ says the Mastermaid. 

‘I’m holding it now,’ calls the Attorney.

‘Right, well you hold door handle and door handle hold you, and rush you this way and that till morning!’ said she. Well, the Attorney never had such a night, as the door rushed him this way and that all night long, almost battering him to death, and as daybreak came he fled home, leaving his money behind. And did he breathe a word to anyone? Not likely!

On the third day, a Bailiff came by, and same thing happens. He wants to marry the Mastermaid and she says she might, if he has enough brass! Oh, the Bailiff had plenty. Back he comes that evening with an even bigger sack than the Attorney – so that was all right, and off they go to bed. But hardly did their heads touch pillow when the Mastermaid sits up.

‘I’ve forgotten to shut the calf away,’ she says. ‘I’ll have to go out and do it now.’

 

‘I’ll do it!’ says Bailiff, and he jumps out of bed.

‘Tell me when you’ve got hold of calf’s tail,’ says the Mastermaid.

‘I’ve got hold of it now!’ cries the Bailiff.

‘Then you hold on to the calf’s tail, and the calf’s tail hold you, and you can run over the whole world till daybreak,’ says the Mastermaid. And off goes the calf, kicking and leaping, and drags the Bailiff up mountains and down dales, and the more he yells the faster it runs, and by daylight he’s so worn out he can hardly limp home.

Now the very next day was the day of the King’s son’s wedding to the sister of his brother’s bride, the woman who gived him the apple. But when they climbed into t’ carriage to drive to the church, one of the axles broke, and it couldn’t be mended, and then Constable, who’d come to t’ wedding, said there was a lass living in a gold cottage down by the meadows, and they ought to ‘see if she’ll lend you her poker, that’ll hold all right!’ So they sent a messenger, and the Mastermaid didn’t say no, and they used poker instead of axle and it worked! 

But as soon as they got going, the floor of the carriage drops out underneath them. So the Attorney says, ‘See if the lass in the gold cottage will lend you her gilded door, I guarantee that won’t break!’

Well, the Mastermaid lends the door. So that’s fettled, but this time when they try to set off again, the horses won’t move. They hitch up six, then eight, then ten, but still the horses won’t stir, and it’s getting late. The Bailiff spoke up. ‘See if the lass in the gold cottage’ll lend you her calf. That beast’ll pull anything!’

Well, the Mastermaid lends them the calf and they unhitch the horses and put it in the traces and what did it do? It shoots away with that carriage over hill and dale, sometimes on the ground, sometimes in the air, and when it reaches the church it goes around and around the steeple like a yarn-winder, and they only just manage to get out. And on t’ way back from the wedding it does the same, only even faster. 

Now as they sat down to feast, the king’s son – the bridegroom – thought they ought to invite the lass in the gold cottage, who’d lent them her poker, her door and her calf, ‘Without her, we’d never had got to church in time!’ And the king said this was only fair, and he sent five of his best men down to the gold cottage to invite the lass to dinner.

‘If king’s not good enough to come and see me, he’s not good enough for me to come and see him,’ said the Mastermaid, so the king had to go down himself and invite her to dinner, and the Mastermaid went with him and he put her in the seat of honour, next to the bridegroom. When she’d sat down, the Mastermaid took out the two gold hens and the golden apple she had brought from troll’s house and put them on the table, and the two hens started pecking and fighting over the golden apple. 

‘By heck,’ said the king’s son, ‘look at the way them hens is struggling to get at the apple!’

‘Aye,’ says the Mastermaid, ‘That’s just the way we two struggled to get our freedom, when we were shut in troll’s house under the mountain.’

Then the king’s son remembered everything! He knew who she was, and you can’t think how happy they was, the two of them! As for the troll bride who’d given him the apple, the king told her off to be torn in twenty pieces between twenty horses, and then they could really celebrate, and Constable, Attorney and Bailiff danced all night at the wedding!

More about fairy tales and folklore in "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available from Amazon here and here.



Picture credits

The Mastermaid by Charles Folkard
The Prince collects the fire-tax by HJ Ford
The River-Sucker by HJ Ford

 

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #8: ASCHENPUTTEL

April 14, 2020, 2:26 am

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 Aschenputtel: The Cinderella of the Brothers Grimm

The most familiar of fairytales can seem strange when we read a different version from the one we’re used to. Most of us know the one generally offered to children, the one Disney adapted, the one based on Charles Perrault’s ‘Cendrillon’. ThatCinderella is a long-suffering, patient, gentle girl; her fairy godmother is a civilised sponsor who launches her protégé into society with the aid of delightful conjuring tricks, transforming pumpkin and mice into a splendid coach and uniformed servitors. At the end of Perrault's tale, Cinderella forgives her stepsisters and marries them off to ‘two great lords of the court’. Everything is in excellent taste.

But the heroine of the Grimms’ ‘Aschenputtel’ is different. Her story is less literary, more magical: almost savage in tone and detail. There is blood within the shoe. The dead return as birds. There's no pumpkin coach, no fairy godmother. No panic, no deadlines, no clocks striking twelve. No glass slipper – and no forgiveness.

The mother’s deathbed adjuration, that if her daughter remains good, she will watch over her from heaven, is less a pious wish than a supernatural promise, fulfilled when her father asks his daughters what he should bring them as gifts and Cinderella asks not for beautiful clothes, pearls and jewels as her step-sisters do, but for ‘the first branch which knocks against your hat on the way home’. Like the rose in Beauty and the Beast, this humble gift will prove the most precious, as well as being something that will certainly pass under her step-mother and step-sisters’ radar. Cinderella plants the hazel twig on her mother’s grave and waters it with her tears. And in contrast to the civilised patronage of Perrault’s fairy godmother, the power the girl derives from her true mother’s grave is a miraculous inheritance that rises from the earth in green sap and leaves, with spirit-like birds sitting in the branches.

At her call, these birds flock down to perform the impossible tasks her stepmother sets for her – and each time Cinderella succeeds, the stepmother breaks her promise to allow her to go to the festival. We are not meant to view this realistically, or ask why the stepmother and Cinderella should expect any different outcome from each other after the first demonstration. We are witnessing the breaking of a ritual, magical contract which will earn a ritual, magical punishment.

The unbroken bond between Cinderella and her dead mother trumps the step-mother’s broken promises. For the next three nights, as the white birds in the hazel tree shower down upon her their transformative gold and silver,  Cinderella stage-manages the whole affair. She goes to the dance alone. She leaves when she pleases. She runs, climbs trees and jumps out of them. She performs lightning costume-changes, and she lies low to deceive the family.

It's a story which pulls few punches. Quite frankly, a great deal of the pleasure it affords is the pleasure of revenge. This Cinderella gets her own back on everyone who has ill-treated her. When her neglectful father’s pigeon house is destroyed, we shouldn't think of a cute ornamental dove-cot sitting on a pole. We should imagine the pigeon-house of a grand mansion: a great, circular, stone-built affair with hundreds of niches inside it for nesting places, and a revolving ladder from which servants might collect eggs and young birds. Its destruction would be a social and financial blow. Her father also loses his magnificent pear tree - it is chopped to pieces – and her ambitious step-sisters fare even worse. And, an incidental detail - the prince doesn't need to try the slipper on the foot of every girl in the kingdom. By the third night he's got a very good idea of where Cinderella lives, so the mysterious maiden has to be one of the three daughters.

The translation is by Margaret Hunt.

The wife of a rich man fell sick, and as she felt that her end was drawing near, she called her only daughter to her bedside and said, “Dear child, be good and pious, and then the good God will always protect you, and I will look down on you from heaven, and see you.” Thereupon she closed her eyes and departed. Every day the maiden went out to her mother’s grave and wept, and she remained pious and good. When winter came the snow spread awhite sheet over the grave, and by the time the spring sun had drawn it off again, the man had taken another wife.

The woman brought with her into the house two daughters, who were beautiful and fair, but vile and black of heart. Now began a bad time for the poor step-child. “Is the stupid goose to sit in the parlour with us?” they said. “He who wants to eat bread must earn it; out with the kitchen-wench.” They took her pretty clothes away from her, put an old grey bedgown on her, and gave her wooden shoes. “Just look at the proud princess, how decked out she is!” they cried, and laughed, and led her into the kitchen. There she had to do hard work from morning till night, get up before daybreak, carry water, light fires, cook and wash.  Besides this, the sisters did her every imaginable injury – they mocked her and emptied her peas and lentils into the ashes, so that she was forced to sit and pick them out again. In the evening when she had worked till she was weary she had no bed to go to, but had to sleep by the hearth in the cinders. And as on that account she always looked dusty and dirty, they called her Cinderella.

It happened that the father was once going to the fair, and he asked his two step-daughters what he should bring back for them. “Beautiful dresses,” said one, “pearls and jewels,” said the second. “And you, Cinderella,” said he, “what will you have?”  “Father, break off for me the first branch that knocks against your hat on the way home.” So he bought beautiful dresses, pearls and jewels for his two step-daughters, and on his way home as he was riding through a green thicket, a hazel twig brushed against him and knocked off his hat. Then he broke off the branch and took it with him. When he reached home he gave his step-daughters the things which they had wished for, and to Cinderella he gave the branch from the hazel bush. Cinderella thanked him, went to her mother’s grave and planted the branch on it, and wept so much that the tears fell down on it and watered it. And it grew and became a handsome tree. Thrice a day Cinderella went and sat beneath it and wept and prayed, and a little white bird always came on the tree, and if Cinderella wished for anything, the bird threw down to her what she had wished for. 

It happened, however, that the King gave orders for a festival which was to last three days and to which all the beautiful young girls in the country were invited, in order that his son might choose himself a bride. When the two step-sisters heard that they too were to appear among the number, they were delighted, called Cinderella and said: “Comb our hair for us, brush our shoes and fasten our buckles, for we are going to the wedding at the King’s palace.” Cinderella obeyed, but wept, for she too would have liked to go with them to the dance, and begged her step-mother to allow her to do so.  “You go, Cinderella!” said she; “covered in dust and dirt as you are, and would go to the festival? You have no clothes and shoes, and yet would dance?” However, as Cinderella went on asking, the step-mother said at last, “I have emptied a dish of lentils into the ashes for you; if you have picked them out again in two hours, you shall go with us.”

The maiden went through the back door into the garden and called, “You tame pigeons, you turtledoves, and all you birds beneath the sky, come and help me to pick

The good into the pot

The bad into the crop.”

Then two white pigeons came in by the kitchen window, and afterwards the turtledoves, and at last all the birds beneath the sky, came whirring and crowding in, and alighted amongst the ashes. And the pigeons nodded with their heads and began pick, pick, pick, and all the rest began also to pick, pick, pick, and gathered all the good grains into the dish. Hardly had one hour passed before they had finished and all flew out again. Then the girl took the dish to her step-mother, and was glad, for she believed that now she would be allowed to go with them to the festival. 

             But the step-mother said, “No, Cinderella, you have no clothes and you can not dance; you would only be laughed at.” And as Cinderella wept at this, the step-mother said, “If you can pick two dishes of lentils out of the ashes for me in one house, you shall go with us.” For she thought to herself, “That she most certainly cannot do again.” 

When the step-mother had emptied the two dishes of lentils among the ashes, the maiden went through the back door into the garden and cried: “You tame pigeons, you turtledoves, and all you birds beneath the sky, come and help me to pick

The good into the pot

The bad into the crop.”

Then two white pigeons came in by the kitchen window, and afterwards the turtledoves, and at last all the birds beneath the sky, came whirring and crowding in, and alighted amongst the ashes. And the pigeons nodded with their heads and began pick, pick, pick, and all the rest began also to pick, pick, pick, and gathered all the good seeds into the dishes, and before half an hour was over they had already finished, and all flew out again. Then the maiden carried the dishes to ther step-mother and was delighted, and believed that she might now go with them to the wedding. But the step-mother said, “All this will not help; you cannot go with us, for you have no clothes and can not dance; we should be ashamed of you.” On this she turned her back on Cinderella and hurried away with her two proud daughters.
   

            As no one was now at home, Cinderella went to her mother’s grave below the hazel tree, and cried,

            “Shiver and quiver, little tree,

            Silver and gold throw down on me.”

             Then the bird threw a gold and silver dress down to her, and slippers embroidered with silk and silver. She put on the dress with all speed, and went to the wedding. Her step-sisters and the step-mother did not know her and thought she must be a foreign princess, for she looked so beautiful in the golden dress.  They never once thought of Cinderella and believed she was still at home in the dirt, picking lentils out of the ashes. The prince approached her, took her by the hand and danced with her. He would dance with no other maiden, and never let loose of her hand, and if any one else came to invite her, he said, “This is my partner.”

 

            She danced till it was evening, and then she wanted to go home. But the King’s son said, “I will go with you and bear you company,” for he wished to see to what family the beautiful maiden belonged. She escaped from him, however, and sprang into the pigeon-house. The King’s son waited until her father came home, and then he told him that the unknown maiden had leapt into the pigeon-house. The old man thought, “Can it be Cinderella?” and they had to bring him an axe and a pickaxe that he might hew the pigeon house to pieces, but no one was inside it. And when they got home, Cinderella lay in her dirty clothes among the ashes, and a dim little oil lamp was burning on the mantle-piece, for Cinderella had jumped down quickly from the back of the pigeon-house and had run to the little hazel tree, and there she had taken off her beautiful clothes and laid them on the grave, and the bird had taken them away again, and then she had seated herself in the kitchen amongst the ashes in her grey gown.

            Next day when the festival began afresh, and her parents and the step-sisters had gone once more, Cinderella went to the hazel tree and said,

 “Shiver and quiver, my little tree,

            Silver and gold throw down over me.”

 
Then the bird threw down a much more beautiful dress than before. And when Cinderella appeared at the wedding in this dress, everyone was astonished at her beauty. The King’s son had waited until she came, and instantly took her by the hand, and danced with no one but her. When others came and invited her, he said, “This is my partner.” When evening came she wished to leave, and the King’s son followed her and wanted to see to which house she went. But she sprang away from him and into the garden behind the house. There stood a beautiful tree on which hung the most magnificent pears. She clambered so nimbly between the branches like a squirrel that the King’s son did not know where she had gone. He waited until her father came and said to him, “The unknown maiden has escaped from me, and I believe she has climbed into the pear tree.” The father thought, “Can it be Cinderella?” and had an axe brought and cut the tree down, but no one was in it. And when they got into the kitchen, Cinderella lay there among the ashes as usual, for she had jumped down on the other side of the tree, had taken the beautiful dress to the bird on the little hazel tree, and put on her grey gown.

            On the third day, when the parents and sisters had gone away, Cinderella went once more to her mother’s grave and said to the little tree, 

“Shiver and quiver, my little tree,

            Silver and gold throw down over me.”

And now the bird threw down to her a dress which was more splendid and magnificent than any she had yet had, and the slippers were golden. And when she went to the festival in the dress, no one knew how to speak for astonishment. The King’s son danced with her only, and if anyone invited her to dance, he said, “This is my partner.”

             When evening came, Cinderella wished to leave, and the King’s son was anxious to go with her, but she escaped from him so quickly he could not follow her.  The King’s son, however, had caused the whole staircase to be smeared with pitch, and there, where she ran down it, the maiden’s left slipper had remained stuck. The King’s son picked it up,and it was small and dainty, and all golden. Next morning he went to his father and said, “No one shall be my wife but she whose foot this golden slipper fits.” 

            Then the two sisters were glad, for they had pretty feet. The eldest went with the shoe into her room and wanted to try it on, and her mother stood by. But she could not get her big toe into it, and the shoe was too small for her. Then her mother gave he a knife and said, “Cut the toe off; when you are Queen you will have no more need to go on foot.” The maiden cut the toe off, forced her foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain and went out to the King’s son. He took her on his horse as his bride and rode away with her, but the way took them past the grave and there on the hazel tree sat the two pigeons and cried, 

            “Turn and peep, turn and peep,

            There’s blood within the shoe,

            The shoe it is too small for her,

            The true bride waits for you.”

Then he looked at the foot and saw how the blood was trickling from it. He turned his horse around and took the false bride home again and said she was not the true one, and that the other sister was to put the shoe on. Then this one went into her chamber and got her toes safely into the shoe, but her heel was too large. So her other gave her a knife and said, “Cut a bit off your heel; when you are Queen you will have no more need to go on foot.” The maiden cut a bit off her heel, swallowed the pain, and went out to the King’s son. He took her on his horse as his bride and rode away with her, but when they passed the hazel tree, the two little doves sat on it and cried,

“Turn and peep, turn and peep,

            There’s blood within the shoe,

            The shoe it is too small for her,

            The true bride waits for you.”

He looked down at her foot and saw how the blood was running out of her shoe and how it had stained her white stocking quite red. Then he turned his horse and took the false bride home again. “This also is not the right one,” said he, “have you no other daughter?” “No,” said the man, “there is still a little stunted kitchen wench which my late wife left behind her, but she cannot possibly be the bride.”

            The King’s son said he was to send her up to him, but the mother answered, “Oh no, she is much too dirty, she cannot show herself!” But he absolutely insisted on it, and Cinderella had to be called. She first washed her hands and face clean, and then went and bowed before the King’s son, who gave her the golden shoe. Then she seated herself on a stool, drew her foot out of the heavy wooden shoe and put it into the slipper, which fitted like a glove. And when she rose up and the King’s son looked at her face he recognised the beautiful maiden who had danced with him and cried, “That is the true bride!” The step-mother and the two sisters were horrified and became pale with rage; however, he took Cinderella on his horse and rode away with her. As they passed by the hazel tree, the two white doves cried, 

“Turn and peep, turn and peep,

            No blood is in the shoe,

            The shoe is not too small for her,

            The true bride rides with you,”

and when they had cried that, the two came flying down and perched on Cinderella’s shoulders, one on the right, the other on the left, and remained sitting there.

            When the wedding with the King’s son was to be celebrated, the two false sisters came and wanted to get into favour with Cinderella and share her good fortune. When the betrothed couple went to church, the elder was at the right side, and the younger at the left, and the pigeons pecked out one eye from each of them. Afterwards as they came back, the pigeons pecked out the other eye from each and so, for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness for the rest of their days. 

Picture Credits: 

Cinderella: by Edmund Dulac

Cinderella at the hearth: John Everett Millais
Aschenputtel at her mother's grave: by Liga-Marta

Aschenputtel and the turtledoves: by Alexander Zick 
Aschenputtel and the stepsisters: by Hermann Vogel
Cinderella at the ball: by Edmund Dulac
Shiver and Quiver, Little Tree: by Millicent Sowerby 
Pitch on the stairs: by John D Batten
Cinderella running: by Arthur Rackham

Cinderella tries on the slipper: by Walter Crane

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #9: EDERLAND THE POULTRY-MAID

April 21, 2020, 2:57 am

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This light-hearted story comes from 'Danish Fairy Tales', collected by Svendt Grundtvig, (1824-1883) and is a good follow up to last week's tough Cinderella, employing several of the same motifs to very different effect. A dying mother leaves most of her possessions to her two eldest daughters, gifting the youngest, little Ederland, with nothing but a dough pan, an apron and a broom. Her sisters deride her, telling her that their mother thought nothing of her, but Ederland holds fast to a belief in her mother's love. When her sisters make further difficulties for her, she visits her mother's grave - again like Cinderella - where her faith in her mother is upheld, and her apparently poor legacy turns out to be the very thing that makes her fortune. 

Buoyed by her mother's advice, Ederland sets off on her adventures. With cheerful élan she tricks a family of trolls and wrests three precious things from them, one of which - the pig that never diminishes no matter how much bacon is sliced from it - perhaps hails back to the boar Sæhrímnir on which the Norse gods feast nightly in Valhallr (besides irresistably reminding me of the Dish of the Day in Douglas Adams'  'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe': see link here.) Ederland's marriage to a distinctly selfish master ('You could easily do it if you wanted to!' he keeps moaning) is the traditional fairy tale coda, denoting her worldly success. Fairy tales are almost never romances. 

I hope you'll agree with me that Ederland is another tough cookie. Just don't feel too sorry for the trolls!

Once upon a time there was a woman who had three daughters. She was very ill and she expected to hear death knock at her door from day to day; so she called together her three daughters and divided what she had among them. But she did not make an equal division: she gave the two older daughters, who were always nice to look at, and kept themselves well dressed, all that she had; and the youngest, little Ederland, received only a dough-pan, a broom-stick and an apron.

The mother lived but a short time, and when she had died, what she had left was divided between her children as she had arranged. Then the two older sisters said to Ederland, "That shows you once more, Ederland, that our mother thought more of us than she did of you, for all she gave you was that wretched dough-pan, and the broom-stick and apron."

But little Ederland was patient, and held her tongue, and still believed that her mother had loved her just as much as she had her two sisters.

In the course of time all three sisters took service in a fine house. The two older sisters were in the house itself, and helped with all the housework; but little Ederland was only the poultry-maid. Yet before long the master of the house noticed that his poultry had never been in better condition than since Ederland had taken charge; and therefore he praised her continually in her sisters' presence.

They did not enjoy hearing it at all. At last they decided to tell their master that Ederland could do much more, if only she felt like it. They knew positively, that she could get him a candlestick that would give light without a candle; and if she said she could not, it merely showed that she would not.

When their master heard this, he at once sent for Ederland and said to her, "I hear that you can get me a candlestick that gives light without a candle. I want to have it very much, and you must get it for me. It is useless for you to refuse, for I know that you can if you feel like it."

Little Ederland cried, and said she would like to oblige him if only she knew how; but that he had set her a task she really could not accomplish. Yet her master would not believe her.

"All your speeches won't help you," he said. "You must get the candlestick for me, but you shall have two bushels of gold for getting it!"

Little Ederland left the house in tears, and went straight to her mother's grave. As she stood there and cried, her mother rose from the grave and said, "Do not cry! Go back home, and ask your master for two bushels of salt, take your broomstick, set it up as a mast in the dough-pan, tie your apron to it for a sail, and sail out to sea with your two bushels of salt. Then you will come to the place where you can get the candlestick that gives light without a candle!"

And with that the mother sank back into her grave, and little Ederland went home and asked her master for the two bushels of salt. She got them, and then set up her dough-pan with the broom-stick for a mast, and the apron for a sail, took her two bushels of salt, and sailed out on the stormy sea, letting the waves carry her along as they chose.

She sailed a long way, but at last she landed on the island of the trolls, and went ashore with the two bushels of salt. Somewhere about she saw a house. She went up to it, climbed on the roof, and looked down the chimney. Down below stood the old troll mother, cooking mush for her sons. On the hearth, beside the kettle of mush, stood the candlestick that gave light without a candle. This was just what Ederland wanted, and when the old troll mother turned her back, she poured down her two bushels of salt into the mush. The old troll mother turned right around again, and tasted the mush; but it was terribly salty. So she took up a bucket to get some water to cook over the mush. Then Ederland slipped down the chimney in a trice and ran after her, and as the old troll mother was stooping over the edge of the well to draw up the bucket, Ederland gave her a push so that she fell in head over heels, and did not come up again. Ederland now quickly secured the candlestick and ran down to her ship. She was no more than a short distance from land, when she saw the trolls come home, and a moment later they ran down to the strand and called after her, "Ederland, Ederland! You have thrown our mother into the well and taken our candlestick! If you ever come here again you will have to pay the price!"

But Ederland called back, "Well, I am coming back twice!" and sailed gaily home.

Her master was filled with joy when he saw the candlestick that gave light without a candle, and little Ederland received her two bushels of gold and was happy as well. But her two sisters grew more angry with each passing day at her good fortune, and their only thought was of how they might mar her pleasure. At last they again told their master that Ederland could do much more if she only would. She could get a horse with bells on all four legs, one that could be heard long before it was seen, and that could be found again, no matter how far it had strayed. Their master would much rather have had a horse of that kind even than the candlestick he already possessed. He had Ederland called at once, and told her that he was well aware that she could obtain a horse that had bells on all four of its legs, which one could hear in the distance, and could always find if it strayed. She must get him that horse! Ederland cried and said she was only too willing to get it, but she did not know how. Yet her master would not content himself with her answer.

"You could, if you only would," he said. "You must get that horse for me and I will give you three bushels of gold for it."

Again Ederland went to her mother's grave and cried, and was very unhappy. And again her mother rose from the grave and said to her, "Do not cry, my little Ederland! Go home and ask your master for four bunches of tow, take them and sit down in your dough-pan with the broomstick and the apron as before. Then you will reach the place where you can obtain the horse with the bells on all four legs."

Thereupon her mother sank back into the grave; while little Ederland went home and asked her master for the four bunches of tow. He gave them to her at once, and she sailed out to sea in her dough pan, with the broomstick for a mast, and her apron for a sail. This time she also landed on the island of the trolls. 


It was just at the time when the trolls were at home, and were eating their dinner, and the horse with the bells on all four legs was grazing in the field before the house. Ederland slipped up to him, tied a bunch of tow around each leg, so that the bells could not ring, and led him down to the strand. Just as she was leading him into the boat, however, the bunch of tow about one of his legs fell off, the bell at once began to ring, and all the trolls hurried down to the strand. Little Ederland had led the horse safely aboard, and had just put a bit of water between the boat and the shore, when the trolls reached the beach. They fell into a terrible rage when they saw that Ederland was escaping with their horse, and called after her, "Ederland, Ederland! You pushed our old mother into the well, and took our candlestick, and now you have stolen our horse! When you come again you will have to pay for it!"

But Ederland called back to them, "Well, I am coming back once more!"

When Ederland reached home with the horse, her master was filled with joy. He gladly gave her the three bushels of gold he had promised her, and Ederland herself was very happy. But her two sisters were not at all pleased with her good fortune, and day and night they thought only of what harm they might do her. Before long they said to their master, "Ederland could get you something far better than she has already obtained for you: a pig that stays just as fat as it was, though you cut as much bacon from it as ever you will."

That seemed the best of all to their master. Ederland had to come to him at once and he said to her, "I have heard that you can get a pig for me from which I may cut as much bacon as ever I will, while it stays as fat as it was. That pig I must have."

In vain Ederland wept and said, "I would, if only I could; but I cannot get any such pig for you."

Her master would not listen to her. "You can and must obtain that pig for me," he said, "and in return I will give you all the beautiful things which you see here."

But little Ederland was very sad. She went to her mother's grave and wept bitterly. Then her mother rose from her grave, and said to her, "Do not cry, my little Ederland! Go home and ask your master for two flitches of bacon, seat yourself in your boat, and sail out to sea. Then you will come to the place where you can get the pig. "" When she had said this she sank back into her grave.

But Ederland went home and got the two flitches of bacon, put them in her dough-pan with the broomstick for a mast and the apron for a sail, and the wind blew her across the sea to the island of the trolls. It was just the time when the trolls were taking their after-dinner nap. The pig was in the meadow, but the trolls had hired a little boy to watch it.

Ederland ran up to the little boy and said to him, "These two flitches of bacon are for the trolls. Will you carry them over to them while I take care of the pig for you in the meantime?" The boy saw no harm in this, so he took the bacon and ran with it to the house. But as he was telling the trolls how he came by the two flitches of bacon, they at once thought that Ederland might have a hand in the matter again, so they ran down to the beach as fast as they could. And there Ederland had been unable to get the pig into the boat.

So the trolls seized her as well as the pig. They dragged Ederland into the house, and handed her over to the old troll father, telling him to slaughter her, and dish up a real tasty supper for them when they came back from work. Then the trolls went off, and Ederland stayed behind with the old troll father. He dragged up a great block of wood, put down the axe beside it and said to her, "Now lay down your head on the block so that I can chop it off."

"Yes," said little Ederland, "I'm willing to do so, but I do not know how. First you will have to show me."

"Why," said the old troll father, "it is quite simple, you only need to do like this," and as he spoke he laid his head down on the block. In a moment Ederland had seized the axe and chopped off his head with a single stroke. She at once put a nightcap on the head, laid it in bed, and thrust the body into the soup-kettle that hung over the hearth. Then she ran down to the beach, took the pig and sailed away in her boat.

Not long after the trolls came home, and at once fell on the supper cooking over the stove. They were much surprised to find the meat so tough, when the person who had furnished it was so young. But they were hungry and managed to get it down. At last it occurred to one of them that their old father should also have his share. He went over to the bed and shook him; but they all were much frightened when they realized that his head alone was lying on the bed. At last they saw how everything had happened, left their supper and ran down to the beach. But by that time Ederland was far out to sea. The trolls came down in the most furious rage, and called after her, "Ederland, Ederland! You pushed our old mother into the well, you took our candlestick, you stole our horse, and now you have killed our old father and robbed us of our pig. If you come here again you will have to pay for it!"

But Ederland called back, "I shall never, never come back, and you need not expect me!"

So little Ederland sailed home, and her master received her very joyfully, and soon after they married and lived in peace and contentment. Her sisters lived with her, but they did nothing day by day, save brood over Ederland's good fortune.

One day Ederland said to them, "If you feel like sailing, you are welcome to my boat." The sisters decided to try it at once. They got into the boat, set sail and came to the island of the trolls. But when they got there the trolls seized them, cooked them and fried them, and were pleased as pleased could be to have made such a haul. 

Picture credits: 

Ederland the Poultry Maid: 'She sailed out upon the stormy sea, letting the waves carry her as they chose' : by George W Hood

Troll mother and son, by John Bauer

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #10: WHUPPITY STOORIE

April 28, 2020, 2:34 am

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Illustration by Kate Leiper: www.kateleiper.co.uk/Instagram:kate_leiper_artist

This Scottish tale is included in Robert Chambers’ ‘Popular Rhymes of Scotland’ (1841 edition) and comes from the manuscript of Chambers’ friend Charles K. Sharpe. It’s presented as if narrated by one ‘Nurse Jennie’ of Annandale whose Lowland Scots tongue is so vivid and racy (whether she actually existed or not!) that it would be a shame to anglicize it. So I have simply added a variety of explanatory notes, some within the text and some footnotes. I'm sure we Sassenachs can manage! 


The heroine of the story is ‘the goodwife o’ Kittelrumpit’. The narrator suggests this place may be situated “somewhere amang the Debatable Ground”. In fact I think it’s a joke, a made-up name with a comic and mildly rude meaning;‘Tickle-arse’ would be my best bet, though I’m no Scots scholar, so if anyone knows better, do let me know. The Debatable Ground does exist: it is the much fought-over area between Scotland and England which, in the 16th century, was the haunt of the Border Reivers.

The tale is one of the many variants of the Rumpelstiltskin story, but a lot funnier and livelier. The goodwife and the green fairy woman are splendidly-matched antagonists – two energetic, determined women with sharp tongues in their heads: but the goodwife wins hands down when she turns the tables on her foe. The lovely illustration is by Scottish artist Kate Leiper and you can see more of her beautiful work by clicking the link below the picture: also here: http://kateleiper.co.uk/

The storybegins when the goodwife’s husband goes off to the fair one day and never comes back: he was “a vaguing sort of body” anyway and not to be depended upon. Left to fend for herself – “A’body said they were sorry for her but naebody helpit her, whilk’s a common case, sirs,” – she has nothing left but her cottage – a “sookin’ lad bairn” (that's a baby boy still at the breast) – and her pride and joy, a “soo” (sow) which is about to give birth to piglets. If all goes well, the goodwife’s stock will be much increased. But one day she goes to the pigsty to fill the sow’s trough, and shock! horror! what should she find but the sow “lying on her back, grunting and groaning and ready to gie up the ghost”? 

Read on! 

I trow this was a new stoon [blow] to the goodwife’s heart; she sat doon on the knocking-stane[1] wi’ her bairn on her knee and grat [cried] harder than she ever did for the loss of her ain goodman.

                Noo, the cot-hoose of Kittlerumpit was built on a brae[2] with a muckle fir-wood behind it, o’ whilk ye’ll hear mair afore lang. So the goodwife, while she was dichtin her een[wiping her eyes]chances to look doon the brae, and what does she see but an auld woman, almost like a lady, coming slowly up the way. She was buskit in green, all but a white short apron, and a black velvet hood, and a steeple-crowned beaver hat on her head. She had a lang walking stick, as lang as herself, in her hand – the sort of staff that auld men and women helpit themselves with lang syne; I see nae sic staffs noo, sirs.

                Aweel, when the goodwife saw the green gentlewoman near her, she rose and made a curtsie; and “Madam,” quo’ she, weeping, “I’m the maist misfortunate woman alive.”

                “I dinna wish to hear pipers’ news and fiddlers’ tales,” quo’ the green woman. “I ken ye’ve lost your goodman – we had waur losses at the Shirra Muir[3]; and I ken that your soo’s sick. Noo, what will ye gie me to cure her?”

                “Onything your leddyship’s madam likes,” quo’ the witless goodwife, never guessing who she had to deal with. 

                “Let’s wet thumbs on that bargain[4],” quo’ the green woman, so thumbs were wet, I warrant ye, and into the pigsty madam marches. 

                She glowers at the soo for a lang time, and then begins to mutter to herself what the goodwife couldna well understand; it soundit like “Pitter patter, Haly watter.” Then she took oot of her pouch a wee bottle wi’ something like oil in it, and rubs the soo with it around the snout, behind the lugs and on the tip o’ the tail. “Get up, beast,” quo’ the green woman, and nae sooner said than done – up bangs the soo wi’ a grunt and awa’ to her trough for her breakfast. 

                The goodwife o’ Kittelrumpit was a joyful goodwife noo, and wad hae kissed the very hem o’ the green madam’s gown-tail, but she wadna let her. “I’m no fond o’ demonstrations,” said she, “noo that I hae righted your sick beast, let’s finish our bargain. Ye’ll no find me an unreasonable, greedy body – I like aye to do a good turn for a small reward – all I ask, and will have, is that lad bairn in your bosom.”

                The goodwife o’ Kittelrumpit let oot a skirl like a stickit gryse [stuck piglet]. The green woman was a fairy, nae doubt of it, so she prays and weeps and kneels and begs and flytes, but it wouldna do.  “Ye may spare your din,” quo’ the fairy, “skirling as if I was a deaf as a doornail; but this I’ll tell ye – by the law we live on, I canna take your bairn till the third day after this; and no then, if ye can tell me my right name.” And off gaes madam around the pigsty end,  and the goodwife falls down in a swoon behind the knocking-stane.

                Aweel, the goodwife couldna sleep that night for weeping and a’ the next day the same, cuddling her bairn till she near squeezed its breath out; but the second day she thinks o’ taking a walk in the wood, and wi’ the bairn in her arms she sets out and gaes far in amang the trees where there was an old quarry hole grown o’er wi’ gorse, and a bonny spring well in the middle of it. Before she came very nigh, she hears the birring of a lint-wheel [a wheel for spinning flax], and a voice lilting a sang; sae the wife creeps quietly amang the bushes, and keeks [peeps] ower the brow of the quarry, and what does she see but the green fairy kemping at her wheel and singing:

“Little kens our good dame at hame

That Whuppitie Stoorie is my name!” 

                “Ah ha!” thinks the wife. “I’ve gotten the mason’s word at last: the de’il gie them joy that tell’t it!”  And she gaed hame far lichter than she came out, as you may guess, laughing like a madcap wi’ the thought of begunkin [befooling] the auld green fairy.

                Aweel, ye must ken that this goodwife was a jocular woman and aye merry when her heart wasna sair overladen, sae she thinks to have some sport wi’ the fairy: and at the appointit time she puts the bairn behind the knocking-stane and sits down on it hersel’. Syne she pulls her nightcap ajee[awry] ower her left lug [ear], crooks her mouth on t’ither side, as if she were weeping – and a filthy face she made, ye may be sure. She hadna lang to wait, for up the brae mounts the green fairy, neither lame nor lazy, and lang afore she got near the knocking-stane, she skirls out, 

                “Goodwife o’ Kittelrumpit, ye ken weel what I come for – stand and deliver!” 

                The wife pretends to greet sairer [weep more sorely] than before, and wrings her nieves [fists], and falls on her knees, wi’: “Och, sweet madam mistress, spare my only bairn and take the weary soo!”

                “The de’il take the soo, for my share,” quo’ the fairy. “I come na here for swine’s flesh. Dinna be contramawcious, hizzie [hussy, wench], but gie me the gett [child; begotten] instantly!”

                “Ochone, dear leddy mine,” quo’ the goodwife, “forbear my poor bairn and take mysel’!”

                “The de’il’s in the daft jade,” quo the fairy, looking like the far-end o’ a fiddle[5] [sour], “She’s clean dementit! Wha in all the earthly warld, wi’ half an ee in their heads, would ever want wi’ the likes of thee?”

                I trow this set up the wife o’ Kittelrumpit’s birse [put up her hackles]; for though she had two bleared een and a lang red neb [nose] forbye, she thought hersel’ as bonny as the best o’ them. Sae she bangs aff her knees, sets her nightcap[6]straight, folds her two hands in front of her, makes a curstie down to the ground, and, “In troth, fair madam,” quo’ she, “I might hae had the wit to ken that the likes o’ me is nae fair to tie the warst shoe strings o’ the high and mighty princess, Whuppity Stoorie!”

                Gin a fluff o’ gunpowder had come out o’ the ground, it couldna hae made the fairy loup [leap] higher than she did; then down she came again, thump on her shoe-heels, and whirling around, she ran down the brae, screeching for rage like an owlet chased wi’ the witches.

                The goodwife o’ Kittelrumpit laughed till she was like to ryve [split]; then she takes up her bairn and goes into her hoose, singing all the way; 

A goo and a gitty, my bonny wee tyke,

Ye’s noo hae your four-oories;

Sin’ we’ve gi’en Nick a bane to pyke

Wi’ his wheels and his Whuppity Stoories.”[7]

               

---

[1]‘the knocking-stane’: a stone with a hollowed out basin in which grain could be ground by pounding it with a wooden mallet.

[2]‘brae’: a steepish hillside; the brow of a hill.

[3]‘waur losses at the Shirra Muir’: Chambers notes: “This was a common saying formerly, when people were regretting trifles.” The Battle of Sherrifmuir near Stirling in 1715 ended the Jacobite Rebellion and the Earl of Mar’s attempt to place James Stuart, the ‘Old Pretender’, on the throne

[4]Licking thumbs and pressing them together (an exchange of bodily fluids) was a country way of sealing a bargain. 

[5]“looking like the far-end o’ a fiddle’: ‘A person of sour countenance is said to ‘hae a face like the far en’ of a French fiddle’: G. Fraser ‘Lowland Lore’, p156, 1880

[6]Nightcap: in the original Scots, ‘mutch-croon’.

[7]‘A goo and a gitty’: nonsense words to coo to to a baby. ‘Tyke’: literally a dog: naughty little lad. ‘Four-oories’ – I have no idea; Scots speakers please help!  ‘Nick’: Old Nick, the devil, to whom the goodwife assumes the fairy belongs. ‘a bane to pyke’: a bone to pick.

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #11: FUNDEVOGEL

May 5, 2020, 2:43 am

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FUNDEVOGEL, or BIRD-FOUNDLING

This sweet story is one of the Grimms’ ‘Children’s and Household Tales’. translated by Margaret Hunt in 1884. The Grimms note that it comes “from the district of Schwalm in Hesse. It is also told that the cook was the wicked wife of the forester, and the question and answer are differently given: for instance, ‘You should have gathered the rose and the bush would have followed you.”’ Like 'The Mastermaid', this tale is is Aarne–Thompson type 313A, 'the girl helps the hero flee' - which I reckon ought to be renamed 'the heroine rescues the boy'!

It’s a simple but satisfying tale: Lina, who has magical skills, is the boy’s foster sister and he her adopted brother. The pair are only children, but the tenderly repeated refrain, ‘Never leave me and I will never leave you’ suggests they may marry later on, as happens in another of the Grimms’ tales, ‘Sweetheart Roland’, to which it is related. This type of tale is very different from those darker stories in which sisters endure hardship and suffering for the sake of their brothers. 

The extorted promise with which the wicked cook binds little Lina is a standard feature, as is the wickedness of the cook in the first place (fairy tales are built of standard features - we accept them as we accept the construction of a sonnet), but in this story the bond between the children proves stronger than the promise.

There was once a forester who went into the forest to hunt, and as he entered it he heard a sound of screaming, as if a little child were there. He followed the sound and it led him to a high tree, and at the top of this tree a little child was sitting – for a bird of prey had seen it, flown down and snatched it away, and dropped it into the tree. 

                The forester climbed up and brought the child down. He thought, “I’ll take him home, and he shall grow up with our Lina.” So he took it home and the two children grew up together, and they named the boy who was found in the tree Fundevogel, since a bird had carried him away. And Fundevogel and Lina loved each other dearly.

                Now the forester employed an old woman to cook for him. One evening she took two pails and kept going back and forth to the brook, fetching more and more water. Lina saw this and asked, “Old Sanna, why are you fetching so much water?”

                “If you will never repeat it to anyone, I will tell you.” So Lina said no, she would never repeat it to anyone, and then the cook said, “Tomorrow morning when the forester is out hunting I will heat the water, and when it is boiling, I will throw Fundevogel in, and boil him to death.”

                Early next morning the forester got up and went out hunting while the children were still in bed. Then Lina said to Fundevogel, “If you will never leave me, I will never leave you.” Fundevogel said, “Never will I leave you – not now, nor ever!” Then said Lina, “Then I will tell you. Last night old Sanna carried so many buckets of water into the house that I asked her why she was doing it, and she said that she would tell me, if I promised not to tell anyone, so I promised, and she said that early in the morning when father was out hunting, she would boil the water in the big kettle and throw you in. So let us get up quickly, dress, and go away together.”

                So the children dressed themselves quickly and went away. When the water in the kettle was boiling, the cook went to the bedroom to find Fundevogel, but both the children were gone. The cook was now terribly alarmed. “What shall I say now when the forester comes back?” she said to herself. “The children must be caught and brought back home,” and she sent three servants running after them.

                When the children looked back from the edge of the forest and saw the three servants running after them, Lina said to Fundevogel, “Never leave me and I will never leave you.” Fundevogel said, “Neither now, nor ever will I leave you.” Lina said, “Then you shall  become a rose tree and I the rose upon it.”

                When the servants came to the forest, there was nothing to be seen but a rose tree with one rose on it; the children were nowhere. “Nothing to be done here,” said they, and returned to the old cook and told her they had seen nothing but a rose tree with a single rose. 

                How the cook scolded! “You simpletons! You should have cut the rose bush in half and broken the rose off and brought it to me: go and do it at once!” 

                Off went the servants for a second time, but again the children saw them coming. Lina said, “Fundevogel, never leave me and I will never leave you.” “Neither now, nor ever,” said Fundevogel, and Lina said, “Now you shall become a church, and I’ll be the chandelier in it.”

                So when the three servants came, nothing was to be seen but a church with a fine chandelier hanging inside it. “What can we do here?” they said to each other. “We will have to go home.” So they went home, and told the cook they had seen nothing but a church with a chandelier in it. “Fools!” scolded the cook. “You should have knocked the church to pieces and pulled down the chandelier and brought it back with you.” And now the old cook herself set off with the three servants in pursuit of the children.

                When the children looked back this time and saw the old cook waddling after them, Lina said, “Fundevogel, never leave me and I will never leave you.” And Fundevogel said, “Neither now, nor ever!” Then said Lina, “You shall be a fishpond and I will be the duck on it.”

                Well, the old cook caught up with them, and she saw the pond, and lay down beside it so that she could drink it all dry. But the duck swam smartly up to her. It seized her head in its beak and pulled her into the water, and there the old witch was drowned. Then the children were heartily delighted and went home together, and if they have not died they are living there still. 

More on fairy tales and folklore in "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available at these links:hereand here.


     

Picture credits: 

Fundevogel - the child in the tree - by Mercer Mayer

Fundevogel: The cook goes back and forth to the well: Arthur Rackham
Fundevogel -  The children see the three servants - Artist unknown

Strong Fairytale Heroines #12: THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO HELL

May 12, 2020, 2:47 am

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The next three fairy tales in the series take a darker turn. This story of a young woman who goes down into the underworld to save her lover was narrated in Gaelic some time around 1885 by Patrick Minahan, of Malinmore, Glencolumkill, Co. Donegal, to William Larminie who translated and published it in ‘West Irish Folk-Tales’, (Camden Library, 1893). Larminie - one of those excellent 19^th century collectors who named and respected their oral sources - says of Minahan:“I obtained more stories from him than from any other one man. He said he was eighty years old; but he was in full possession of all his faculties. He also had a holding on which he still worked industriously. … His style, with its short, abrupt sentences, is always remarkable, and at its best I think excellent.”

Of the tale itself, Larminie has only this to say, but it’s to the point: “This touching tale has a curious far-away resemblance to certain classical legends. A good deal must [have been] lost, and in consequence the long struggle of the young man with the devil has much that requires explanation. It is unique among Celtic stories.”

I can’t be sure what classical stories Larminie had in mind – Persephone’s sojourn in Hades, perhaps, for it’s not really the young man’s struggle so much as that of the young woman who becomes his wife! Myself, I'd like to note that the restorative fire in which the dead man asks the young woman to burn him to ashes reminds me of the fire of roses in George Macdonald's  'The Princess and Curdie'– and that her return home, worn and almost unrecognisable, reminds me of the return of Homer's Odysseus. 

The story begins when the devil tricks a woman into promising him her 'burden', which she assumes means the cabbages she is carrying. In fact it is her unborn son. The boy is born, grows up and dies suddenly aged 18. When a young woman enters the chapel where his body lies coffined, the dead young man arises and persuades her to help him. By burning his corpse she restores him to a kind of spirit life, and he sires a son on her. But the devil claims him - unless someone else will go to Hell in his place. His lover volunteers. 

The young woman's descent into Hell and her subsequent ascent reminds me of a story older even than Homer's - that of Inanna of Sumer, Queen of Heaven and Earth, the goddess of love and of the morning and evening star, whose descent to the realm of Ereshkigal Queen of the Dead is chronicled on clay tablets dating back to 2000 BCE.

In summary, it goes like this: Inanna abandons her temples and palaces in heaven and earth and goes down to the underworld. Her journey seems to be a rite of passage rather than an attempt to rescue a friend or lover such as those of Gilgamesh and Orpheus. In order to pass through the underworld’s seven gates she must relinquish at each one a part of her 'mes' (roughly her power), signified by regalia of crown, beads, robe, ring, breastplate, measuring rod and line. At last, naked and powerless she enters the throne room of Ereshkigal where the goddess strikes her dead and hangs her body – now nothing but ‘a piece of rotting meat’ – from a stake. But, following Inanna’s previous orders, her faithful servant Ninshibur persuades Enki, god of wisdom, to save her. He creates two sexless creatures from the dirt under his fingernails, furnishes them with the food and water of life, and sends them to the underworld to ask for Inanna’s corpse. Sprinkling the corpse with the food and water, the creatures restore it to life, but the judges of the underworld decree another must take her place. As Inanna ascends, the 'galla' or small demons of the underworld cling to her side and rise with her. They ‘know not food, they know not water, they know not sprinkled flour,’ but their purpose is to seize and bring back the one who will die for her. Her loving servant Ninshibur and her own sons offer themselves, but Inanna refuses to give them up. She chooses instead her husband Dumuzi, who has not even risen from his throne to welcome her home! Dumuzi is taken to the underworld. After his death, Inanna weeps for him, and later in the tale she allows his faithful sister to take his place for six months of every year.[1] 

This myth has cast a long shadow. Sumerian Inanna and Dumuzi became the Akkadian Ishtar and Tammuz, and the Egyptian goddess Isis perhaps shares some of Inanna’s attributes. It predates the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades, first noted in Hesiod's Theogony, by one and a half millennia. Now, obviously there can't be any direct connection, but I feel there’s still a faint trace of it in this Irish story – in the young woman’s voluntary descent, and in the touching moment when the lost souls cling to her, clotted in her hair.   

There was a woman coming out of her garden with an apron-fullof cabbage. A man met her. He asked her what she would take for her burden. She said it was not worth a great deal, she would give it to him for nothing. He said he would not take it, but would buy it. She said she would only take sixpence. He gave her the sixpence, and she threw the cabbage towards him. He said that was not what he had bought, but the burden she was carrying. Who was there but the devil? She was troubled then.

            She went home and she was weeping. It was a short time till her young son was born, and he was growing till he was eighteen years old. Then he was out one day and fell, and never rose up till he died. When they were going to bury him, they took him to the chapel and left him there till morning. 

            There was a man among the neighbours who had three daughters. He took out a box of snuff to give the men a pinch, and the last man to whom the box went round left it on the altar. They all went home, and when the man was going to bed he looked for his box. The box was not to be got; it was left behind in the chapel. He said he could not sleep that night without a pinch of snuff. He asked one of his daughters to go to the chapel and bring him the box that was on the altar. She said there was loneliness on her. He cried to the second girl, would she go? She said she would not go, that she was lonely. He cried to the third, would she go? And she said she would go, that there would be no loneliness on her in the presence of the dead.

            She went to the chapel, she found the box, she put it in her pocket. When she was coming away she saw a ring at the end of the coffin. She caught hold of it till it came to her. The end came from the coffin. The man that was dead came out. He begged her not to be afraid.

            “Do you see that fire over yonder? If you are able, carry me to that fire.”

            “I am not able,” said she.

            “Be dragging me along with you as well as you can.”

            She put him on her back. She dragged him till they came to the fire. “Draw out the fire,” said he, “and put me lying in the middle of it; fix up the fire over me. Anything of me that is not burnt, put the fire on it again.” 

            He was burning till he was all burnt. When the day was coming she was troubled on account of what she had seen in the night, and when the day grew clear there came a young man, who began making fun with her. 

            “I have not much mind for fun on account of what I have seen during the night.”

            “Well, it was I who was there,” said the young man. “I would go to heaven if I could get an angel made by you left in my father’s room.” 

            Three quarters of a year from that night she dressed herself up as if she was a poor woman. She went to his father’s house, and asked for lodging till morning. The woman of the house [the young man's mother] said that they were not giving lodging to any poor person at all.

 She said she would not ask for more than a seat by the fire. The man of the house told her to stay till morning. They both went to lie down. She sat by the fire. In the course of the night she went into the room and there she had a young son. Her husband came in at the window in the shape of a white dove. He dressed the child, the child began to cry, and the woman of the house heard the crying. She rose to get out of her bed. Her husband told her to lie quiet and have patience. She got up in spite of him. The door of the room was shut. She looked in through the keyhole and saw him standing on the floor; she perceived it was her son who was there. She cried to him, was it he that was there? He said it was. 

“One glance of your eye has sent me for seven years to hell.”

“I will go myself in your place,” said his mother. 

She went then to hell. When she came to the gate, there came out steam so hot that she was burned and scalded, and had to return. “Well,” said the father, “I will go in your place.” He had to return too. The young man began to weep. He said he must go himself, but the mother of the child said she would go.

“Here is a ring for you,” said he. “When thirst comes on you, or hunger, put the ring in your mouth; you will feel neither thirst nor hunger. This is the work that will be on you – to keep down the souls: they are stewing and burning in the boiler. Do not eat a bit of food there.There is a barrel in the corner, and all the food that you are given, throw into the barrel.”

She went to hell then. She was keeping down the souls in the boiler. They were rising in leaps out of it. All the food she got she threw on the barrel till the seven years were over. She was making ready to be going then. The devil came to her; he said she could not go yet awhile till she had paid for the food she had eaten. She said she had not eaten one morsel of his: “All that I got, it is in the barrel.” The devil went to the barrel, and all that he had given her was there for him.

“How much will you take to stay seven years more?”

“Oh, I am long enough with you,” said she; “if you give me all that I can carry, I can stay with you.” 

He said he would give it. She stopped. She was keeping down the souls during seven more years, she was shortening the time as well as she could till the seven years were ended. Then she was going. When the souls saw her going they rose up with one cry, lest one of them should be left. They went clinging to her; they were hanging to her hair, all that were in the boiler. She moved on with her burden. 

She had not gone far when a lady in a carriage met her.

“Oh! great is your burden,” said the lady, “will you give it to me?”

“Who are you?” said she.

“I am the Virgin Mary.”

“I will not give it to you.”

She moved on with herself. She had not gone far when a gentleman met her. “Great is your burden, my poor woman’; will you give it to me?”

“Who are you?” said she

“I am God,” said he.

“I will not give my burden to you.”

She went on with herself another while. Another gentleman met her. “Great is the burden you have,” said the gentleman; “will you give it to me?”

“Who are you?” said she.

“I am the King of Sunday,” said he.

“I will give my burden to you,” said she. “No rest had I ever in hell except on Sunday.”

 

“Well, it is a good woman you are; the first lady you met, it was the devil was there; the second person you met, it was the devil was there, trying if they could get your burden from you back. Now,” said God, “the man for whom you have done all this is going to be married tomorrow. He thought you were lost since you were in that place so long. You will know nothing till you are at home.”

She knew nothing till she was at home. The house was full of drinking and music.  She went to the fire. Her own son came up to her.

She was making him wonder, she was so worn and wasted.  She told the child to go to his father and get a glass of whisky for her to drink. The child went crying to look for his father. He asked his father to give him a glass of whisky. His father gave it. He came down where she was by the fire. He gave her the glass. She drank it, there was so much thirst on her. The rinf that her husband gave her she put in the glass.

“Put your hand over the mouth of the glass; give it to no one at all till you hand it to your father.”

The lad went to his father. He gave him the glass, The father looked into it, and saw the ring. He recognised the ring.

“Who has given you this?” said he.

“A poor woman by the fire,” said the lad. 

The father raised the child on his shoulder that he might point out to him the woman who had given him the ring. The child came to the poor woman. 

“That is the woman,” said he, “who gave me the ring.”

The man recognised her then. He said that hardly did he know her when she came so worn and wasted. He said to all the people that he would never marry any woman but this one; that she had done everything for him; that his mother sold him to the devil, and the woman had earned him back; that she had spent fourteen years in hell, and now she had returned

This is a true story. They are all lies but this one. 

 

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[1]My summary  of Inanna’s descent into the underworld is based on the translations in ‘Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer’ by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer, Rider, 1984. It is wonderful and I recommend it.

More on William Larminie's "West Irish Folk-Tales" in my book of essays on folklore and fairytales, "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles"

Picture credits: The Woman Who Went To Hell - (artist unknown) frontispiece to "The Woman Who Went To Hell: and other ballad and lyrics" by Dora Sigerson (Mrs Clement Shorter), De la More Press, 1902

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Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #13: THE NETTLE SPINNER

May 19, 2020, 3:14 am

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THE NETTLE SPINNER

Another dark fairy tale: this is a Flemish story, 'La Fileuse d’Orties', from ‘Contes du roi Cambrinus’ (1872) collected by Charles Deulin. The English translation was madeby Leonora Blanche Alleyne (Mrs Andrew Lang) for ‘The Red Fairy Book’, and it's a strange, sinister story which takes the old theme of the girl who weaves nettle shirts, and stands it on its head. You'll remember tales such as Hans Andersen's 'The Wild Swans' and the Grimms’ ‘The Twelve Brothers’ in which the heroine spins and weaves nettle shirts to disenchant the brothers she loves. (A similar healing magic is performed by 'Gilla of the Enchantments': #6 in this series.) But when the heroine of this story tells a wicked count that she prefers marrying her sweetheart to succumbing to his wiles, the count effectively responds,‘Over my dead body!’ and orders her to perform what he assumes will be the impossible tasks of weaving a nettle wedding-gown for herself, and for himself, a nettle shroud. Of course it isn't impossible, and as she steadily spins the nettles and weaves the shroud, he begins to sicken… 

Renelde is one of those strong, long-persisting heroines who keep their eyes firmly fixed on what they've decided is right. You'll note that while the women in this story are active agents, the men are ultimately ineffectual. Neither the count nor Renelde's fiance Guilbert can persuade her to act differently from her principles. Her behaviour is so consistent and so quietly inexorable that one almost begins to feel sympathy for the wicked count.

Almost. Not quite. 

I

Once upon a time there lived at Quesnoy in Flanders a great lord whose name was Burchard, but whom the country people called Burchard the Wolf. Now Burchard had such a wicked, cruel heart that it was whispered he used to harness his peasants to the plough and force them by blows from a whip to till his land with naked feet. 

His wife, on the other hand, was always tender and pitiful to the poor and miserable. Every time she heard of another of his misdeeds, she would secretly go to repair the evil, so that she was blessed throughout the whole countryside. This countess was loved as much as the count was hated.

II

One day when he was out hunting the count passed through a forest and at the door of a lonely cottage he saw a beautiful girl spinning hemp.

                “What is your name?” he asked.

                “Renelde, my lord.”

                “Aren’t you tired of living in such a lonely place?”

                “I’m used to it my lord, and I never get tired of it.”

                “If you come to the castle, I’ll make you a lady’s maid to the countess.”

                “I can’t do that, my lord. I have to take care of my grandmother, who is very helpless.”

                “Come to the castle, I tell you. Be there this evening,” and he went on his way.  But Renelde knew very well not to trust him, and she was betrothed to a young woodcutter called Guilbert, and besides, she did have her grandmother to look after. 

                Three days later the count rode by again. “Why didn’t you come?” he asked the pretty spinner. 

                “I told you, my lord, I have to look after my grandmother.”

                “Come tomorrow and I will make you lady-in-waiting to the countess,” and he went on his way. But his offer had no more effect than the last, and Renelde did not go to the castle.

                “If you will just come,” said the count, the next time he rode by, “I will put the countess aside and marry you.” But two years before when Renelde’s mother was dying of a long illness, the countess had helped them and been very kind to them, so even if the count had really meant to marry Renelde, she would still have refused. 

III

A few weeks passed, and Renelde hoped she had got rid of him, but one day the count stopped at the door, his duck-gun under one arm and his game-bag on his shoulder. This time Renelde was spinning not hemp, but flax. 

                “What’s that you’re spinning?” he asked roughly.

                “My wedding shift, my lord.”

                “You’re going to be married, are you?”

                “Yes my lord, by your leave.” For at that time no peasant could marry without his master’s permission. 

                “I will give you leave on one condition. Do you see those tall nettles that grow on the graves in the churchyard? Go and gather them, and spin them into two fine shifts. One shall be your bridal gown, and the other shall be my shroud, for you shall be married the day I am laid in my grave.” And with a mocking laugh, the count turned away.

                Renelde trembled. No one in all Locquignol had heard of such a thing as spinning nettles. And besides, the count seemed made of iron and was very proud of his strength, often boasting that he should live to be a hundred. 

                Every evening when his work was done, Guilbert came to visit his bride-to-be; this evening he came as usual, and Renelde told him what Burchard had said.

                “Shall I watch for the Wolf and split his skull with a blow of my axe?”

                “No!” Renelde answered, “there must be no blood upon our bridal. And – we must not hurt the count. Rememher how good the countess was to my mother.”

                An old, old woman now spoke up, she was the mother of Renelde’s grandmother, and was more than ninety years old. All day long she sat in her chair nodding her head and never saying a word. “My children,” she said now, “in all the years I have lived, I have never heard of a shift spun from nettles. But what God demands of us, we will have the strength to do. Why shouldn’t Renelde try it?” 

IV

Renelde did, and to her great surprise found the nettles, crushed and prepared, gave a good thread, supple and light and firm. Quite soon she had finished the first shift, which was for her wedding. She wove it and cut it out at once, hoping the count would not force her to begin the other. Just as she finished sewing it, Burchard the Wolf passed by. 

                “Well,” said he, “how are the shifts getting on?”

                “Here is my wedding gown, my lord, “ Renelde answered, holding up the shift, which was the whitest and finest ever seen. The count went pale, but he replied roughly, “Very good. Now begin the other.”

                The spinner set to work. As the count returned to the castle a cold shiver passed over him; he felt, as the saying goes, that someone had walked over his grave. He tried to eat his supper but could not; he went to bed shaking with fever. He did not sleep, and in the morning he could not rise.

                Such a sudden illness, which was becoming worse, made him very uneasy. He was sure Renelde’s spinning wheel was doing it. Was it necessay that his body, as well as his shroud, should be ready for burial?  So Burchard sent a message to Renelde to stop spinning and put away her wheel. She obeyed, but that evening Guilbert asked her, “Has the count agreed to our marriage?”

                “No,” said Renelde.

                “Continue your work, sweetheart. It’s the only way of gaining his consent. He told you so himself."

V

Next morning, the girl sat down to spin. Two hours later, two soldiers arrived and when they saw her spinning they seized her, tied her arms and legs and carried her to the river, which was swollen with rain. They flung her in like a dog and left her to drown. But Renelde rose to the surface, her bonds fell away and she struggled to land. 

As soon as she got home she sat down and began to spin.

Again the soldiers came to the cottage and seized her. They carried her to the river, tied a stone around her neck and threw her into the water. But the momet their backs were turned the stone untied itself. Renelde waded to the ford, returned to the hut and sat down to spin. 

Now the count resolved to go to Locquignol himself, but he was so weak he had to be carried in a littler. And still the spinner spun. As soon as he saw her he fired a shot at her, but the bulled rebounded with hurting her – and still she spun on. 

Burchard fell into such a rage it almost killed him. He smashed the spinning wheel into a thousand pieces and fell to the ground in a faint. He was carried back to the castle unconscious, but the next day the spinning wheel was mended and the spinner sat down to spin. The count ordered her hands to be tied, but the cords fell away. He ordered every nettle to be uprooted for miles around, but no sooner had they been torn from the soil than they grew again thicker than before, and they even grew up through the cottage floor and sprang to the distaff ready for spinning.

And every day Burchard the Wolf grew worse and watched his end approaching. 

VI

Moved by pity for her husband, the countess at last found out the cause of his illness, and begged him to consent to Renelde’s marriage. But the count in his pride refused more than ever to do so.

                So without his knowledge the lady went herself to pray for mercy from the spinner, and in the name of the girl’s dead mother she begged her to spin no more. Renelde gave her promise, but in the evening Guilbert arrived at the cottage, and seeing no progress in the cloth from the day before, he asked the reason. Renelde confessed that the countess had pleaded for her husband’s life.

                “Has he agreed to our marriage?”

                “No.”

                “Let him die, then. The countess will understand that it is not your fault. The count alone is guilty of his own death.”

                “Let us wait a little. Perhaps his heart may soften.”

                They waited for one month, for two, for six, a year. The spinner spun no more. The count has ceased to persecute her, but still he refused his consent to the marriage. Guilbert became impatient. “Let us have done with it!” he cried. 

                “Wait a little still,” pleaded Renelde, but the young man grew weary. He came more rarely to Locquignol, and then he did not come at all. News came that he had left the country. Renelde felt her heart would break, but she held firm and another year went by.

VII

                Then the count became more ill. The countess thought Renelde, tired of waiting, ahd begun her spinning again, but when she came to the cottage to find out, the wheel stood silent in the corner. 

                But the count grew worse and worse. The doctors had given him up, the passing bell was rung and he lay expecting Death to come for him. But Death was not so near as the doctors thought, and still he lingered, getting neither better nor worse. He could neither live nor die; he suffered horribly and called aloud on Death to put an  end to his pains. 

                In this extremity he remembered what he had said to the little spinner long ago. If Death was so slow in coming it was because he was not ready to follow him, having nor shroud for his burial.  

                He sent for Renelde, placed her by his bedside and ordered her at once to go on spinning his shroud, and as soon as she began the count felt his pain begin to lessen.  At last his heart melted and he was sorry for all the evil he had done in his pride, and he ibegged Renelde to forgive him. So she forgave him, and went on spinning night and day. 

                When the thread was all spun she wove it with her shuttle, and then she cut the shroud and began to sew it. And as she sewed the count felt the life sinking within him, and when the needle made the last stitch he gave his last breath.

VIII

At that same hour Guilbert returned to the country. He had never stopped loving Renelde, and eight days later they were married. He had lost two years of happiness, but comforted himself by thinking that his wife was a clever spinner – and what was far better, a brave and good woman.

More on fairy tales and folklore in  "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available  here and here.

Picture credits:

Illustrations to The Nettle Spinner by HJ Ford

for The Red Fairy Book

               

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #14: MR FOX

May 26, 2020, 2:06 am

≫ Next: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #15: TATTERHOOD

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MR FOX

This is one of my top ten favourite fairy tales. It is old – perhaps the oldest known version of the ‘Bluebeard’ story, though as I wrote in my book of essays on fairy tales, ‘Seven Miles of Steel Thistles’, I think it’s a great deal better than ‘Bluebeard’. When courageous Lady Mary discovers the reason why her fiancé, the suave Mr Fox, seems unwilling to let her visit his castle, this very self-possessed and steely heroine turns the tables on him. 

Shakespeare knew and quoted from the story, and Edmund Spencer also quotes from and references it in Book 3 of ‘The Faerie Queen’. Then it disappeared from view, until Joseph Jacobs, looking for stories for his ‘English Fairy Tales’ (1898) rediscovered it in an addendum to Edmond Malone’s 1790 edition of the complete works of Shakespeare. A Mr Blakeway contributed a note to explain the line in Act I, Sc 1, of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, where Benedick says to Claudio: ‘Like the old tale, my lord: it is not so, nor ‘twas not so; but, indeed, God forbid it should be so.’ (To find out more, you can read my post on the history of the story by clicking on this sentence.) In his note, Mr Blakeway recounts the story in an abbreviated form, explaining that his great-aunt had told it to him in his childhood. He concludes: 

Such is the old tale to which Shakspeare evidently alludes, and which has often ‘froze my young blood’ when I was a child. I will not apologize for repeating it, since it is manifest that such old wives’ tales often prove the best elucidation of this writer’s meaning.

This accidental survival of such a very strong fairy tale makes me wonder, with something of a sigh, how many other English fairy tales we may have lost?

'Mr Fox' is literally a ‘twice-told tale’. During the first telling, Lady Mary is a witness to frightening events. Then she seizes control of the narrative and wields it: and the person who owns the story owns the power. The many children to whom I‘ve told this tale have easily intuited this, and they have all loved its sinister power, rising suspense and easy-to-remember mantras. 

Lady Mary was young, and Lady Mary was fair. She had two brothers, and more lovers than she could count. But of them all, the bravest and most gallant was a Mr Fox, whom she met when she was down at her father’s country house. No one knew who Mr Fox was; but he was certainly brave, and surely rich, and of all her lovers, Lady Mary cared for him alone. At last it was agreed upon between them that they should be married. Lady Mary asked Mr Fox where they should live, and he described to her his castle, and where it was; but, strange to say, did not ask her or her brothers, to come and see it.

                So one day, near the wedding day, when her brothers were out and Mr Fox was away for a day or two on business (as he said), Lady Mary set out for Mr Fox’s castle. And after many searchings she came at last to it, and a fine strong house it was, with high walls and a deep moat. And when she came up to the gateway she saw written on it:

Be bold, be bold.

And as the gate was open, she went through it, and found no one there. So she went up to the doorway, and over it she found written:

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

Still she went on, till she came into the hall, and went up the broad stairs till she came to a door in a gallery, over which was written:

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold

Lest that your heart’s blood should run cold.

But Lady Mary was a brave one, she was, and she opened the door, and what do you think she saw? Why, bodies and skeletons of beautiful young ladies all stained with blood! So Lady Mary thought it was high time to get out of that horrid place, and she closed the door, went through the gallery, and was just going down the stairs and out of the hall, when who should she see through the window but Mr Fox, dragging a beautiful young lady along from the gateway to the door. Lady Mary rushed downstairs, and hid herself behind a chest, just in time, as Mr Fox came in with the poor young lady who seemed to have fainted. Just as he got near Lady Mary, Mr Fox saw a diamond ring glittering on the finger of the young lady he was dragging, and he tried to pull it off. But it was tightly fixed and would not come off, so Mr Fox cursed and swore and drew his sword, raised it, and brought it down upon the hand of the poor lady. The sword cut off the hand, which jumped into the air, and fell of all places in the world into Lady Mary’s lap. Mr Fox looked about a bit, but he did not think of looking behind the chest, so at last he went on dragging the young lady up the stairs into the Bloody Chamber. 

                As soon as she heard him pass through the gallery, Lady Mary crept  out of the door, down through the gateway, and ran home as fast as she could. 

                Now it happened that the very next day the marriage contract of Lady Mary and Mr Fox was to be signed, and there was a splendid breakfast before that. And when Mr Fox was seated at the tables opposite Lady Mary, he looked at her. “How pale you are this morning, my dear.” “Yes,” said she, “I had a bad night’s rest last night. I had horrible dreams.” “Dreams go by contraries,” said Mr Fox, “but tell us your dream and your sweet voice will make the time pass till the happy hour comes.”

                “I dreamed,” said Lady Mary, “that I went yesterday to your castle, and I found it in the woods, with high walls, and a deep moat, and over the gateway was written:

                                                Be bold, be bold.

                “It is not so, nor it was not so,” said Mr Fox.

                “And when I came to the doorway over it was written: 

                                                Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

                 “It is not so, nor it was not so,” said Mr Fox.

                “And then I went upstairs, and came to a gallery, at the end of which was a door, on which was written: 

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold

Lest that your heart’s blood should run cold.

                “It is not so, nor it was not so,” said Mr Fox.

                “And then – and then I opened the door, and the room was filled with bodies and skeletons of poor dead women, all stained with their blood.”

                “It is not so, nor it was not so. And God forbid it should be so,” said Mr Fox. 

                “Then I dreamed that I rushed down the gallery, and just as I was going down the stairs I saw you, Mr Fox, coming up to the hall door, dragging after you a poor young lady, rich and beautiful.”

                “It is not so, nor it was not so. And God forbid it should be so,” said Mr Fox. 

                “I rushed downstairs, just in time to hide myself behind a chest, when you, Mr Fox, came in dragging the young lady by the arm. And, as you passed me, Mr Fox, I thought I saw you try and pull off her diamond ring, and when you could not, Mr Fox, it seemed to me in my dream that you pulled out your sword and hacked the poor lady’s hand off to get the ring.”

                “It is not so, nor it was not so. And God forbid it should be so,” said Mr Fox, and he was going to say something else as he rose from his seat, when Lady Mary jumped up, crying, “But it is so, and it was so. Here’s hand and ring I have to show,” and she pulled out the lady’s hand from her dress and pointed it straight at Mr Fox.

And with that, her brothers and her friends drew their swords and cut Mr Fox into a thousand pieces!

More on fairy tales and folklore in my book "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available  here and here.

    Illustration by HJ Ford          

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #15: TATTERHOOD

June 2, 2020, 2:54 am

≫ Next: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #16: THE WELL AT THE WORLD'S END

≪ Previous: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #14: MR FOX

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Art by Yoshi Yoshitani

This wonderfully vigorous story from Norway was collected in 'Norske Folkeeventyr', by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, and translated into English by Sir George W Dasent in ‘Popular Tales from the North’ (1859). It has echoes of the  Scottish tale 'Kate Crackernuts', in which sisters stick together after a witch has given one of them a sheep’s head, and of the Norwegian tale 'Prince Lindworm' in which a queen eats two flowers and gives birth to a poisonous lindworm, the northern dragon. While Dasent’s translation is in many ways delightful, his mid-19^thcentury style  now feels rather too formal to do the story justice, so I’ve loosened it up to make it more colloquial. Do check the 'Picture Credits' at the bottom of the post for links to the artists and to see more of their beautiful work.

As so many fairy tales do, it begins with a queen who longs for a child. To satisfy her longing, the king and queen adopt ‘a stranger lassie’, no kin to them, and bring her up as their own. One day the child strikes up a friendship with a little beggar-girl. The queen scolds her for making an acquaintance unsuited to her adoptive rank, and the beggar-girl, piqued, boasts that her old mother has the power to help the queen get a child of her own. The old woman does this: and that’s the last we hear of the adopted daughter or the beggar-girl, though to me it feels as if by some fairy tale alchemy or karma the pair reappear – are reborn – as the queen’s own children! For the queen disobeys the old woman’s instructions. Told to eat just one of the two flowers that spring up under her bed, she eats both – first the pretty one and then the ugly one – and in due course gives birth to twins, one lovely and cherished, the other ugly and neglected. This child is the marvellous Tatterhood - and surely in some way the avatar of the unsuitable beggar-girl?

Ugliness in fairy tales often signifies wickedness, but this is never so if the ugly person is the main character. His or her ugliness conceals real worth, and puts other characters in the story to the test. (Will they recognise it?) Initially despised or rejected, the ugly protagonist - often like Tatterhood an ebullient, self confident character - sets off on a series of successful adventures and finally persuades someone to marry them. If the betrothed person keeps their promise, no matter how reluctantly, the protagonist’s ugliness changes to beauty. 

That is how the the story of the Frog-King works: the princess doesn’t want the ugly frog to share her plate and sleep in her bed. She is constrained to do so, not by her own but by her father’s sense of honour:“You must do what you have promised,” he says. She even hurls the poor frog at the wall! But so long as the contract is kept to the letter, the spirit doesn’t matter: the transformation will occur. Breaking a promise, in a fairy tale, is one of the worst things you can do. In the Grimms’ tale 'Hans My Hedgehog', a peasant rashly exclaims, “I’ll have a child even it’s a hedgehog,” and the babe is born half-hedgehog, covered in spikes from the waist up. (His poor mother!) Like Tatterhood with her goat and wooden spoon, Hans rides away on his cockerel, merrily playing the bagpipes. He assists a couple of kings and obtains promises from each of them to marry him to their respective daughters. One father-daughter pair renege on the promise and are disgraced: the other pair honour it and are rewarded by the usual transformation of the apparent monster into a handsome young man.

So these stories say something about the importance of keeping faith: also about not judging by appearances. In 'Tatterhood', though the prince is unflatteringly miserable about his approaching nuptials, he intends to keep his word. It's not about how you feel, it's what you do that counts. And I love the way Tatterhood makes the prince talk to her – question her, take an interest in her – and it's this process of questioning, this dialogue, which reveals her and allows him to see her as she really is.

Art by Lisa Hunt

Once upon a time there was a king and queen who had no children, This which made the queen very unhappy. How dull and lonely the palace was! “If we only had children, there’d be plenty of life!” she said, for as she travelled around the kingdom she saw children everywhere, and saw their mothers scolding them and cuddling them. Oh how she wished she could do the same!

            At last the king and queen took a young stranger lassie into their palace to bring up as their own, and one day this little lassie ran down into the palace yard and began playing with a golden apple. Just then an old beggar woman came by with a little girl, and in no time at all the little lassie and the beggar’s child were playing together like best friends, playing catch and tossing the golden apple between them. 

            When the queen noticed, she tapped on the window for her foster-daughter to come up. She obeyed at once, but the beggar-girl came too, and they went into the queen’s bower holding hands. Then the queen scolded her foster-daughter: “You’re a little lady! You shouldn’t be chasing about with a tattered beggar’s brat!” And she tried to drive the beggar-girl downstairs. 

            “If the queen knew my mother’s power, she wouldn’t drive me out,” said the little beggar-girl, and when the queen asked what she meant, she told her that her mother could help her get children of her own. The queen wouldn’t believe it, but the beggar-lassie stood her ground and insisted every word was true. So the queen sent her downstairs to fetch her mother.  

            Well, the old woman came up. “Your daughter says you can get me children,” says the queen.

            “Queens shouldn’t listen to silly tales from beggar-girls,” says the old wife, and she turned around and marched out of the room. Then the queen was angry, but the beggar-girl swore it was all true. “Give her a drop to drink and get her merry, then she’ll soon find a way to help you!” 

            The queen wanted a child so very much, she decided to try it, so the beggar wife was fetched up again and treated with as much wine and mead as she wanted. Her tongue began to wag, and she told the queen what to do. 

            “Wash yourself this evening in two pails of water, and throw the water under the bed. Look under the bed next morning and two flowers will be growing there, one pretty and one ugly. Eat the pretty one, but leave the ugly one alone. And mind you don’t forget it!” That’s what the beggar woman said. 

            So the queen had water brought up in two pails, washed herself and emptied them under the bed. Next morning, two flowers stood there. One was ugly with black, prickly leaves, but the other was so bright she’d never seen anything lovelier. She gobbled it up at once. It tasted so sweet, she couldn’t resist eating the other one too, for – she thought – “It’s not going to help or harm me either way, I’m sure.”         

            But time went by, and the queen gave birth to twins. The first to pop out was a girl. She was gripping a wooden spoon in her hand and riding on a goat; she was dreadfully ugly, and she came into the world bawling, “Mamma!”

            “I must have done something terribly wrong to be yourmamma,” said the queen. “God help me mend my ways!”  

            “No need to be sorry,” said the girl who rode on the goat. “The next one will be much better looking!” and sure enough, a short while later the queen gave birth to a second girl, the loveliest child imaginable – and with this one at least, she was well pleased. 

            The two girls grew up together. They called the eldest twin ‘Tatterhood’ because she was so ugly and ragged, and wore a hood that hung about her ears in tatters. Her mother could hardly bear to look at her, and the nurses tried to keep her out of sight, but it didn’t work. For the sisters loved each other dearly, and wherever one was, the other would always be there too. 

            Well! One Christmas Eve when they were half grown up, a dreadful banging and clattering and burst out in the gallery beyond the queen’s bower. Tatterhood asked what it was it that was dashing and crashing about so?

            “Oh,” said the queen, “nothing worth asking about.” 

            But Tatterhood wouldn’t take that for an answer! She wouldn’t give up until at last the queen told her that a pack of trolls and witches had invaded the palace and meant to spend the whole of Christmas there, partying and misbehaving and doing as they liked.

            “I’ll get rid of them!” said Tatterhood. The queen feared it would only make things worse and begged her not to, but Tatterhood was determined to drive the trolls and witches out. She warned the queen to keep every door closed tight, and to make sure no one opened them by even so much as a crack. Then out she rushed brandishing her wooden spoon and began hunting the trolls and harrying the hags and driving them up and down, and it made so much noise out there in the gallery that it sounded as if the floorboards were splitting and the roofbeams breaking. 

            How it happened I just don’t know, but somehow a door was opened a chink, and Tatterhood’s sister peeped through to see how her twin was doing, and as soon as she put her head just a tiny bit out – POP! – up came an old witch and whipped her head off, and stuck a calf’s head on her shoulders instead. And the princess jumped back into the room and ran around it on all fours, mooing. 

Art by Lauren Mills

            When Tatterhood saw what had happened she was furious with everyone, including the Queen. Why hadn’t done what they were told, and kept her sister safe? “See what your carelessness has done!” she scolded. “Look at the poor child, turned into a calf! Still, I’ll see what I can do to save her.”

            She told the King to get her a ship all ready to sail and fitted with plenty of stores. She didn’t want any captain or sailors, oh no! She was going to sail away with her sister, just the two of them alone. Of course the King argued, but there was no stopping Tatterhood. And she got her way! 

            Off she sailed and steered her ship to the land where the witches lived. When she came to the landing place she told her sister to stay quietly on board, while she herself rode her goat straight up to the witches’ castle. There she saw that one of the windows in the gallery was open, and her sister’s head was hanging by the window frame. Tatterhood leaped her goat right through the window, snatched up the head and galloped off with it. The pack of witches rushed after her, thick as a swarm of bees: but the goat snorted and puffed and butted them with his horns, and Tatterhood banged and bashed them with her wooden spoon until the witches gave way and fled. 

            So Tatterhood got back to her ship. She took the calf’s head off her sister’s shoulders and put her own back in its place, and she was a girl again, as pretty as before. Then Tatterhood sailed the ship a long, long way across the sea to the shores of another country. 

            The king of this land was a widower with just one son, and when he saw the strange sail approaching he sent messengers down to the strand to discover where it had come from and who owned it. But when the king’s men arrived they could see no soul on board but Tatterhood, riding round and round the deck on her goat at top speed, till her elf-locks streamed in the wind. The folk from the palace were astonished. “Who are you? Is no one else on board?” they called. 

            “Oh yes!” said Tatterhood, pulling the goat up. “My sister is with me.”

            “Let us see her!”

            “No one shall see her, unless the king himself comes!” she cried, and set to galloping about on her goat again till the deck boomed and thundered.

            When the servants got back to the palace and told him what they’d witnessed down at the ship, the king wanted to set out at once to see for himself. As soon as he got there, Tatterhood led out her sister who was so gentle and pretty that the king fell head over heels in love with her on the spot. He invited them back to the palace with him, and wanted to have the sister for his queen. But Tatterhood said, “No! You shall not have her in any way – unless your son the prince pledges to marry me as well.” And this set the cat among the pigeons, for the prince thought Tatterhood the ugliest girl he’d ever seen. He wouldn’t have her! He didn’t like her! But the king and the others in the palace talked at him and persuaded him, and at last he gave in and promised to take Tatterhood for his wife and princess; but it went very much against the grain, and he was a doleful man.

            So there was brewing and baking and much making ready for the wedding, and when it was done they all set off for the church. In front went the king in his carriage with his bride at his side, and she was so lovely and so grand that people all along the road stopped whatever they were doing to stare, and gazed after her until she was out of sight. 

            Then came the prince, riding on horseback with Tatterhood at his side, trotting along on her goat with the wooden spoon in her fist. But to look at him, you’d think the prince was going to a burial rather than a wedding – and his own burial at that, he was so doleful and he had nothing to say for himself. 

            “Why don’t you talk to me?” asked Tatterhood, when they had ridden for a bit.

            “Why, what should I talk about?” answered the prince. 

            “Well you might at least ask why I ride upon this ugly goat,” said Tatterhood.

            “Why do you ride on that ugly goat?” asked the prince.

            “Is it an ugly goat? Why, it’s the most splendid horse any bride ever rode on,” answered Tatterhood, and in the blink of an eye the goat became a horse, the finest ever seen.

            Then they rode on again, but the prince was as woeful as before and couldn’t get a word out. So Tatterhood asked him again why he didn’t talk, and when the prince answered that he didn’t know what to talk about, she said,“You can at least ask me why I ride with this ugly spoon in my fist.”

            “Why do your ride with that ugly spoon?” asked the prince. 

            “Is it an ugly spoon? Why, it’s the loveliest silver wand any bride ever carried,” said Tatterhood; and in a trice it became a silver wand, flashing brightly in the sun. 

            Well they rode on another bit, but the prince was still sorrowful and never said a word. In a little while, Tatterhood asked him again why he didn’t talk. This time she told him to ask why she wore that ugly grey hood upon her head. 

            “Why do you wear that ugly grey hood on your head?” asked the prince.

            “Is it an ugly grey hood? Why, it’s the brightest golden crown a bride ever wore,” answered Tatterhood, and it became a crown upon the spot.           

            Now they rode on for a long time, and still the prince was sad, and sat on his horse without sound or speech as before. So again Tatterhood asked him again why he didn’t talk, and she told him to ask her now, why her face was so ugly and ashen-grey.

            “Ah!” said the prince, “why is your face so ugly and ashen-grey?”

            “I, ugly?” said Tatterhood. “You think my sister is pretty, but I am ten times prettier,” and when the prince looked at her she was so lovely, he thought there could never have been a lovelier woman in all the world. And with that he found his tongue at last, and no longer rode along with his head hanging.

            So they drank the bridal cup both long and deep, and then the king and the prince set out with their two brides to Tatterhood’s father’s palace, where they had another bridal feast and even more to drink, and if you run to the palace – quick, be quick! – you might even get there before they drink it all.

Picture credits:

'Tatterhood as the Knight of Wands' is by Yoshi Yoshitani, whose delightful fairytale Tarot series can be viewed here on tumblr: https://yoshiyoshitani.tumblr.com/  

(Tatterhood seems to lend herself to the energy and disruption of the Tarot:)

Tatterhood as Princess of Wands' by Lisa Hunt, from 'The Fairytale Tarot' - whose fascinating website can be viewed here: http://lisahuntgallery.com/
https://www.thefairytaletarot.com/index.html

'Tatterhood scolding the household' is from 'Tatterhood and the Hobgoblins', gorgeously illustrated and retold by Lauren Mills. I love the sister's shocked calf-head peeping out at the bottom right. The link to her website seems broken, but here's a profile, with more of her lovely art: https://kathytemean.wordpress.com/2016/02/06/illustrator-saturday-lauren-mills/

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #16: THE WELL AT THE WORLD'S END

June 9, 2020, 2:40 am

≫ Next: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #17: THE WATER KING AND VASILISSA THE WISE

≪ Previous: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #15: TATTERHOOD

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This is another story from Robert Chambers’ ‘Popular Rhymes of Scotland’. It's told in Scots and the original spelling of the title is ‘The Wal at the Warld’s End’. It likely dates back to at least the mid 16^thcentury, since a list of titles in ‘The Complaynt of Scotland’ (1548) includes one called ‘The Wolf of the Warldis End’ which is a probable misprint of this one.  

I’ve anglicised the spelling just a little, but you need to know that ‘to flit’ means ‘to move’ in the context of relocating an animal to a new pasture or moving one’s abode – that ‘hecklepins’ are the sharp prickly combs used for teasing out flax – and that ‘scaud’ means ‘scalded’; I've consulted a Scottish friend who sugests that in this context it may mean 'scabby'! To ‘weird’ is to foretell or prophesy, like the ‘weird sisters’ in Macbeth.  

This heroine succeeds without the assistance of any prince (the one who turns up at the end has nothing to do with the story; he's introduced simply to underline her good fortune and contrast it with her step-sister's). She is rewarded for her kindness and courtesy. But her ride 'far and far' over the wild moorland to the well at the world's end reminds me of the Lyke Wake Dirge (hear it here): it seems her adventurous journey takes her to the edge of the Otherworld.

If you would like to read more about eerie heads floating in wells, and the stories which contain them, I’ve written about some of them here: 'Haunted By Heads'.

 

There was a king and a queen, and the king had a daughter, and the queen had a daughter. And the king’s daughter was bonnie and guid-natured and a’body liked her; and the queen’s daughter was ugly and ill-natured, and naebody liked her. And the queen didna like the king’s daughter, and she wanted her awa’. So she sent her to the well at the world’s end, to get a bottle o’ water, thinking she would never come back. 

                Weel, she took her bottle, and she gaed and she gaed till she came to a pony that was tethered, and the pony said to her, 

                “Flit me, flit me, my bonnie May

                 For I havna been flitted this seven year and a day.” 

And the king’s daughter said, “Ay will I, my bonnie pony, I’ll flit ye.” So the pony gave her a ride ower the moor of hecklepins. 

                Weel, she gaed far and far, and farther than I can tell, before she came to the well at the world’s end; and when she came to the well it was awful deep, and she couldna get her bottle dipped. And as she was lookin’ doon, thinking how to do, there looked up to her three scaud men’s heads, and they said to her,

                “Wash me, wash me, my bonnie May,

                And dry me wi’ your clean linen apron.’

And she said, “Ay will I; I’ll wash ye.” So she washed the three scaudit men’s heads, and dried them wi’ her clean linen apron; and syne [then] they took and dipped her bottle for her. 

                And the scaud men’s heads said the tane to the tither [one to the other]

                “Weird, brother, what’ll ye weird?”

And the first ane said, “I weird that if she was bonnie afore, she’ll be ten times bonnier.” And the second ane said, “I weird that ilka [each] time she speaks, there’ll be a diamond and a ruby and a pearl drop oot o’ her mouth.” And the third ane said, “I weird that ilka time she kaims her hair, she’ll get a peck o’ gold and a peck o’ siller oot o’ it.”

                Well, she came hame to the king’s court again, and if she was bonnie afore,she was ten times bonnier; and ilka time she opened her lips to speak, there was a diamond and a ruby and a pear droppit oot o’ her mouth, and ilka time she kaimed her hair, she got a peck o’ gold and a peck o’ siller oot o’ it.  And the queen was that vexed, she didna ken what to do, but she thought she would send her own daughter to see if she could fall in wi’ the same luck. So she gave her a bottle and telled her to gang awa’ to the well at the world’s end, and get a bottle o’ water. 

             Weel, the queen’s daughter gaed and gaed  till she came to the pony, an’ the pony said,

“Flit me, flit me, my bonnie May

              For I havna been flitted this seven year and a day.” 

And the queen’s daughter said, “Oh you nasty beast, do ye think I’ll flit ye? Do you ken wha ye’re speaking till? I’m a queen’s daughter!” So she wouldna flit the pony, and the pony wouldna give her a ride ower the moor of hecklepins. And she had to gang on her bare feet, and the hecklepins cutted her feet, and she could hardly gang at all.

 

                Weel, she gaed far and far, and farther than I can tell, before she came to the well at the world’s end. And the well was deep, and she couldna get her bottle dipped; and as she was looking doon, thinking how to do, there looked up to her three scaud men’s heads, and they said till her: 

“Wash me, wash me, my bonnie May,

              And dry me wi’ your clean linen apron.’

And she said,”Oh ye nasty dirty beasts, div ye think I’m gaunie wash ye? Div ye think wha ye’re speaking till? I’m a queen’s daughter.” So she wouldna wash them, and they wouldna dip her bottle for her.

And the scaud men’s heads said the tane to the tither,

           “Weird, brother, what’ll ye weird?”

And the first ane said, “I weird that if she was ugly before, she’ll be ten times uglier.” And the second said, “I weird that ilka time she speaks, there’ll be a puddock and a taid [a frog and a toad] leap oot o’ her mouth.” And the third ane said, “And I weird that ilka time she kaims her hair, she’ll get a peck o’ lice and apeck o’ fleas oot o’ it.” 

                So she gaed awa’ hame again, an if she was ugly afore, she was ten times uglier, and ilka time she opened her lips to speak, there was a puddock and a taid droppit oot o’ her mouth, and ilka time she kaimed her hair she got a peck o’ lice and a peck o’ fleas oot o’ it. So they had to send her awa’ frae the king’s court. And there was a bonnie young prince came and married the king’s daughter; and the queen’s daughter had to put up wi’ an auld cobbler. 

Picture credit:

'The Three Heads in the Well' by Arthur Rackham

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #17: THE WATER KING AND VASILISSA THE WISE

June 16, 2020, 2:20 am

≫ Next: Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #18: THE WOMAN OF PEACE

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This very long Russian fairy tale was collected by Alexander Afanasiev and translated by W.R.S. Ralston in ‘Russian Folk-Tales’ Smith, Elder, 1873. A 1945 translation by Norbert Guterman gives the title as ‘The Sea-King and Vasilissa the Wise’, but Ralston’s version is so readable I’ve stuck with him and only tweaked a few words here and there. This is just the second half of the story, effectively a tale in its own right; but here is a brief account of the first part.  

A King is befriended by an Eagle, whose life he has spared out hunting. This Eagle carries the King through the air and over the sea to visit his mother and three sisters. At the end of the visit he gives the King two chests, green and red, with advice not to open them until he gets home, and provides a ship to carry him back across the sea. Pausing at an island on his voyage home, the curious King opens the red chest to find what’s in it. Out comes a vast quantity of cattle, so numerous the island barely has room for them. The King is dismayed. How will he ever put them back in the chest again?

But a man comes out of the sea. “Why are you crying?” he asks – and offers to put the cattle back in the chest if the King will give him “whatever you have at home that you don’t know about.” 

Believing he knows everything of value that he has at home, the King agrees – and of course when he arrives, his wife has given birth to a baby boy. Without daring to tell her what he has promised, he opens the red chest, and out come herds of cows and oxen, and flocks of fine sheep. He opens the green chest: a wonderful garden appears. He’s so delighted he forgets his bargain. Years go by, the Prince grows into a young man, and one day, walking by the river, the King is confronted by the same man as before – who rises from the water and demands that he pay his debt. 

Elements of this story will remind you of others. The assistance lent on condition of a reciprocal promise to give  ‘whatever greets you on your homecoming’, or ‘the first thing you see’, or ‘the thing you carry’ – it always turns out to be a child – is a motif at least as old as the story of Jephtha’s daughter in the Old Testament. ‘Rapunzel’ comes to mind, and the beginning of the Irish tale, ‘The Woman Who Went to Hell’, #12 in this series. The second half of the story, as you will see, follows the pattern of ‘The Mastermaid’, #7 in this series): the heroine is the active, canny, magic-working daughter of a supernatural father (sea-king, troll, enchanter, ogre, giant, etc) who saves the hapless prince’s life, orchestrates his escape and reclaims him after he has forgotten her. 

Then doesn’t this make them ‘all the same story’? No, no and no! ‘The Water King and Vasilissa the Wise’ is very different in character from the forthright Norwegian comedy of ‘The Mastermaid’. A Baba Yaga in unusually amiable mood helps the urbane Prince, perhaps because he politely calls her ‘granny’: the tasks he must perform are on a palatial scale far removed from mucking out stables or catching horses, and the episode in the bath-house is linked to Russian peasant customs (or at least Eastern European customs, since something similar is also to be found in the Romanian tale ‘Iliane of the Golden Tresses’, #3). Though the same motifs recur in fairy tales across Europe, the resulting tales are delightfully individual variations on themes – which is all part of the pleasure.  

We begin at the point where the King confesses the truth: his son is promised to the man from the sea. 

The King went home full of grief and told the truth to the Queen and Prince. They mourned and wept together, but there was no help for it: the Prince must be given up. So they took him to the mouth of a river and left him there alone.

                The Prince looked around, saw a footpath and followed it, trusting God to lead him. He walked and walked till he came to a dense forest: in the forest stood a hut: in the hut lived a Baba Yaga. 

                “Suppose I go in,” thought the Prince, and went in. 

                “Good day, Prince!” said the Baba Yaga. “Are you looking for work or avoiding it?”

                “Eh, granny! Give me something to eat and drink first, then ask me questions.” So she gave him food and drink, and the Prince told her where he was going and for what purpose. 

                Then the Baba Yaga said: “My child, go to the sea-shore. You will see twelve spoonbills come flying in; they will turn into maidens and begin bathing. You must creep quietly up and steal the eldest maiden’s shift. When you have struck a bargain with her, go to the Water King; and on your way you will meet with three heroes: Obédalo [‘the Eater’], Opivalo [‘the Drinker’], and Moroz Treskun [‘Crackling Frost’] – take them with you; they’ll do you good service.” 

                The Prince bid the Yaga farewell. Down to the sea-shore he went, and hid behind the bushes. Soon twelve spoonbills came flying in, struck the moist earth, turned into fair maidens and began to bathe. The Prince crept from the bushes, stole the eldest one’s shift and hid again – he didn’t move an inch. The girls finished bathing and came to shore: eleven put on their shifts, turned into birds and flew away leaving only the eldest, Vasilissa the Wise. She began praying and begging the good youth.

                “Do give me my shift!” she says. “I know you are on your way to the house of my father, the Water King. When you come, I will befriend and help you.” 

                So the Prince gave back her shift, and immediately she turned into a spoonbill and flew off after her companions. Going further on his way, the Prince met the three champions,Obédalo, Opivalo and Moroz Treskun: he took them with him and went on the Water King. 

                The Water King greeted him: “Hail, my friend! Why have you been so long in coming to me? I have grown tired of waiting for you. Now get to work. Here is your first task. In one night you must build me a great crystal bridge: it must be ready by tomorrow. If you don’t build it – off with your head!” 

                Leaving the Water King, the Prince burst into floods of tears. Vasilissa the Wise opened the window of her upper chamber. “Prince, what are you crying about?”

                “Ah, Vasilissa the Wise, how can I help crying? Your father has ordered me to build him a crystal bridge in a single night, and I don’t even know how to handle an axe.”

                “No matter! Lie down and sleep; the morning is wiser than the evening.”

                She ordered him to sleep, but she herself went out on to the steps and called aloud with a mighty, whistling cry. From all sides, carpenters and workmen came running; some levelled the ground, others carried bricks. Soon they had built a crystal bridge and painted it with marvellous devices; then they vanished to their homes. 

Early next morning Vasilissa the Wise called the Prince: “Get up, Prince! the bridge is ready; my father will be coming to inspect it.”

Up jumped the Prince, seized a broom, took his place on the bridge and began sweeping here, clearing up there. 

The Water King praised him. “Thanks!” says he. “You have done me one service; now here is another. By tomorrow morning you must plant me a garden green – big and shady. It must be full of song-birds and blossoming trees, with ripe apples and pears dangling from the branches.”

Away went the Prince from the Water King, dissolved in tears.  Vasilissa the Wise opened her window and asked, “What are you crying for, Prince?”

“How can I help crying? Your father has ordered me to plant a garden in one night.”

“That’s nothing! Lie down and sleep: the morning is wiser than the evening.”

She made him go to sleep, but she herself went on to the steps, called and whistled with a mighty whistle. From every side gardeners of all sorts came running, and they planted a garden green, and birds sang in the garden, flowers bloomed on the trees, and ripe apples and pears dangled from the branches.

Early in the morning Vasilissa the Wise awoke the Prince: “Get up, Prince! the garden is ready and Papa is coming to see it.”

The Prince snatched up a broom and ran to the garden.  He swept a path here, trimmed a twig there. The Water King praised him and said, “Thanks, Prince! You’ve done me good and trusty service. Now choose yourself a bride from among my twelve daughters. They all look exactly alike: in face, in hair and in dress. If you can pick out the same one three times running, she shall be your wife, but if you fail I shall put you to death.”

When Vasilissa the Wise knew about this  she seized the chance to say to the Prince: “The first time I will wave my handkerchief, the second time I will be arranging my dress, the third time you will see a fly above my head.” So three times running the Prince guessed which was Vasilissa the Wise, and he and she were married, and a wedding feast was got ready. 

The Water King prepared so much food of all kinds that more than a hundred men could not have got through it, and he ordered his son-in-law see that everything was eaten. “If anything’s left over, the worse for you!” says he. 

“My father,” begs the Prince, “there’s an old fellow of mine here. Please allow him to take a bite with us.”

“Let him come!” 

At once appeared Obédalo, the Eater. He gobbled up everything in sight and even then he wasn’t full. So the Water King set out forty barrels of all kinds of strong drink and ordered his son-in-law to see that they were all drained dry.

“My father,” begs the Prince again, “there’s another old man of mine here; let him too come and drink your health.”

“Let him come!”

Opivalo the Drinker appeared, emptied all forty barrels in a twinkling, and asked for a drop more to wash it all down. The Water King saw he couldn’t win that way, so he gave orders to prepare a bathroom for the young couple – an iron bath-room! – and to heat it as hot as possible. Twelve loads of firewood were set alight, and the stove and walls became red-hot – it was impossible to come within five versts of it.

“My father!” says the Prince; ‘let an old fellow of ours go into the bath-room first for a good scrub, just to try it out.

“Let him do so!”

So Moroz Treskun – Crackling Frost! –went into the bath-room. He blew into one corner, blew into another – next moment, icicles were hanging there. The young couple followed him into the bath-room, scrubbed and steamed themselves and came home.[1]

 

Vasilissa said to the Prince, “We must get out of my father’s power. He is terribly angry with you and may be plotting some evil deed.”

“Let us go,” said the Prince. At once they saddled their horses and galloped off into the open plain. They rode and rode; many an hour went by. 

“Jump down from your horse, Prince, and lay your ear to the earth,” said Vasilissa. “Can you hear the sound of those pursuing us?”

The Prince bent his ear to the ground but he could hear nothing. Then Vasilissa herself leapt down from her steed. She laid herself flat on the earth and said, “Ah, Prince! I hear a great noise of those chasing after us.” She turned the horses into a well and herself into a basin and the Prince into a very old man. Up came the pursuers.  “Hey, old man!” said they, “have you seen a young man and maiden pass by?”

“Indeed I did, my friends, but it was long ago. Why, I was a just a young man myself at the time I saw them ride by.” 

The pursuers returned to the Water King. “No trace of them at all,” they said, “no news: we saw nothing but an old man beside a well, and a basin floating on the water.”

“Why didn’t you seize them?” cried the Water King. He ordered them to be put to a cruel death and sent another troop after the Prince and Vasilissa the Wise.

In the meantime the fugitives had ridden far and fast. Vasilissa the Wise heard the noise of the fresh troop coming after them, so she turned the Prince into an old priest and she herself became an ancient church, its walls crumbling and covered in moss. Up came the pursuit. ‘Hey, old man! have you seen a young man and maiden pass by?”

“I saw them, my children! but it was a long, long time ago. I was only a young man when they rode by; it was while I was building this church.”

So the second set of pursuers returned to the Water King, saying, “Your royal majesty, there is neither trace nor news of them. All we saw was an old priest and an ancient church.”

“Why did you not seize them?” cried the Water King louder than ever, and putting the pursuers to a cruel death he galloped off himself in pursuit of the Prince and Vasilissa the Wise. This time Vasilissa turned the horses into a river of mead, with banks made of pudding, and she changed the Prince into a drake and herself into a grey duck. The Water King flung himself on the mead and the pudding, and he ate and ate and drank and drank until he burst! And so he gave up the ghost.

The Prince and Vasilissa rode on. At last they drew near to the home of the Prince’s parents. Then said Vasilissa, “Go on in front, Prince, and announce your arrival to your father and mother while I wait for you by the wayside. But remember these words: kiss everyone else, but don’t kiss your sister; if you do, you will forget me.”

The Prince reached home, greeted everyone – kissed his sister too – and no sooner had he kissed her, he forgot all about his wife. It was as if she had never even entered his mind. 

Vasilissa the Wise waited for three days. On the fourth day she dressed herself like a beggar, went into the city and took up lodging in an old woman’s house. By now the Prince was preparing to marry a rich princess, and orders had been sent throughout the kingdom for everyone to bring a wheaten pie to the palace to congratulate the bride and bridegroom. So, like everyone else, the old woman began sifting flour to make a pie. 

“Why are you making a pie, Granny?” asked Vasilissa.

“Why, don’t you know? The King is giving his son in marriage to a rich princess: everyone must go to the palace to serve the dinner to the young couple.”

“Well now! I will bake a pie too, and take it to the palace. Perhaps the King will give me some gift in reward.”

“Bake away in God’s name!” said the old woman. 

Vasilissa took flour, kneaded dough and made a pie. And inside it she put some curds, and a pair of live doves. 

Well, the old woman and Vasilissa the Wise reached the palace just as dinner was being served. What a feast it was, fit for all the world to see! Vasilissa’s pie was set on the table before the bridegroom. As soon as it was cut in half, the two doves flew out. The hen bird seized a piece of curd, and her mate said to her,

“Give me some curds too, Dovey!”

“No I won’t,” replied the other dove, “else you’d forget me, as the Prince has forgotten his Vasilissa the Wise.”

Then the Prince remembered his wife. He jumped up from the table, caught her by her white hands and seated her close to his side. And from that time on they lived together in happiness and prosperity.

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[1] Translator’s note: ‘The Russian bath somewhat resembles the Turkish. The word here translated ‘to scrub’ properly means to rub and flog with the soft twigs used in the baths for that purpose. At the end of the ceremonies of a Russian peasant wedding, the young couple always go to the bath.’

Picture credit: 

The Water King: Russian lacquer box painted by Aleksey Zhiryakov