Folktale Selection: Sometimes you just have to let toxic people go

Folktales and other traditional stories carry a community's values. They teach us about important things such as empathy, forgiveness, acceptance, teamwork, and more. They are not always as black and white as one may think: heroes can make mistakes and learn from them; villains can be forgiven.

But every once in a while, forgiveness is not the answer. Just like in real life, abusive relationships cannot be mended by second, third, fourth chances; no matter how well you communicate your feelings, you can't negotiate with an abuser who doesn't care if they hurt you. In these cases, the pressure to "forgive and try again" only results in more hurt. In these cases, even folktales know that the best course of action is severing ties with the ones that keep hurting you.

I have encountered many folktales that have a "happy ending" that involve people returning to spouses or parents that hurt - or even tried to kill - them, without the other party showing any sign of remorse. To balance out the scales, I made a selection of folktales about people who walk away from toxic relationships, and never look back.

Links in the titles, as usual.

Holua-Manu (Hawaii)

This is a very strong story. A boy's parents have magic powers and solely use them to torture their child for fun. He wants to go and play, but there are always more chores to do, and he can never do them well enough to please his parents. When he makes a decision to go do something for himself anyway, his parents grow furious and attack him. In the end, he manages to get away, and makes a decision to leave for good. The gods, as punishment, take away the parents' powers.

Three orphan sisters (Tu/Monguor people)

A couple wants a son, but instead they have three daughters. With the birth of each child, they resent each other and the children more and more, for not having a son. In the end, they take the girls out into the wilderness and abandon them. The girls are found by hunters and taken to a good home; eventually, they marry good men and live happily. One day they return to visit their parents, hoping to reconcile... but they find their parents still busy praying for a son and showing no remorse. So the girls leave without a word.

Youngest Brother Returns Favors (Tu/Monguor people)

Four orphan brothers each pursue different trades; the youngest goes to school and studies for examinations. When he wants to travel to take the exam, only one brother lends him support, the others mock him and turn him down. In the end, the boy becomes emperor - but when his cruel brothers come to him for favors, he turns them away. Later drought hits the lands, and he makes sure to help the brother that had been kind to him.

Nisang shamaness (Daur people)

This is a long and fascinating epic about a brave shamaness who descends into the underworld to save the soul of a young man. On the way back she encounters the soul of her late husband, who berates her for not saving him too. She tries to explain that she can't, but he gets violent and threatens her - so Nisang summons spirits to lock him up and leaves him behind. It is implied that he had not been a good husband while he was alive.

The king and the weaver bird (Nigeria)

A king marries a woman he loves, despite the warnings that women in her family often give birth to twins (an offense traditionally punishable by death). When she does indeed have twins, the king decides that his family is more important than what people think, and they all leave, transforming into weaver birds to live in the forest.

My Beauty (Haiti)

A girl is tortured by her cruel stepmother in the absence of her (grown-up) brothers. The stepmother eventually promises her to the Devil. In the last moment the brothers come to the rescue and take their sister away. Years later they return, only to find the stepmother telling lies and the father claiming that he did not notice anything at all. They all leave again, to live happily elsewhere.

A woman and the king's treasury (Syria)

A kind and little simple woman is abused by her husband, until one day he throws her out of the home. She wanders away, and accidentally witnesses two thieves dividing up treasure they stole from the King. She tells her husband, who takes the treasure, covers his tracks, and threatens her into silence. She decides to stand up for herself, and goes to report it all to the King - the thieves and the husband are arrested, the woman gets half the treasure, and she can live in wealth and peace for the rest of her life.

I also wrote a blog post about folktales that feature divorce, among them stories where people leave abusive spouses. You can find that post here.

Tarot Tales: S is for the Star

Welcome to the 2021 A to Z Blogging Challenge! My theme this year is Tarot Tales. I am making a selection of folktales, legends, and other traditional stories that correspond to tarot cards. Storytelling and tarot go well together. Do other stories come to mind? Let me know in the comments!

The card: The Star

Meanings: The Star is a lovely card. It is about hope, a ray of light in the darkness. It is a promise that things will get better. Things are calming down (probably after some difficult times), there is a breath of fresh air, new inspiration, awakening creativity. It's a very optimistic card.

Selection process: Obviously there are millions of stories around the world that involve stars. I recently ran into a special one that I'd like to share. I also wanted it to be a story about hope in times of darkness.

The story: My Beauty 

Origin: Haiti

Summary: A dying mother gives her two sons and her daughter a special parting gift. She puts one seed in the forehead of each of them. The seeds turn into shining stars. She promises that when they need strength, they can touch their star and think of her. Also, each star can fulfill three wishes.

After the death of the mother, the children soon get a stepmother. The boys grow up and move away across the sea, while My Beauty, the girl, stays at home. The stepmother, who is a washerwoman, meets the Devil at the river one day, and promises to give him her stepdaughter. However, My Beauty is loved and admired so much by the children of the village that every time she is sent to the river, they surround her and the Devil can't take her. Eventually he decides to catch her at night, on her way home from a party. When the Devil attacks, My Beauty uses her star to banish him twice. The third time, she uses her last wish to call to her brothers for help. Using their own stars, the brothers come to her rescue. 

Once the Devil is killed, the brothers take My Beauty across the sea to live with them. Years later they return and reveal the truth. The stepmother, along with the father who did nothing to stop her (!) is exiled.

Sources & notes: Read the story on JSTOR here.

Runner-ups: How Sasruquo plucked down a star (Nart saga). A story about a hero who is not accepted by his fellow warriors, until he saves them by shooting down a star to keep them from freezing in a blizzard.

Do you have a favorite star? Or a favorite story about stars?

Of singing turtles and magic orange trees (Following folktales around the world 36. - Haiti)

Today I continue the blog series titled Following folktales around the world! If you would like to know what the series is all about, you can find the introduction post here. You can find all posts under the Following Folktales label, or you can follow the series on Facebook!

I was tempted to read The Magic Orange Tree for Haiti - but in the end, I decided to pick a less well-known and well-read book by a Haitian storyteller instead. Most of the American storytelling community is very familiar with Diane Wolkstein's volume already.
 

When Night Falls, Kric! Krac!
Haitian Folktales
Liliane Nérette Louis
Libraries Unlimited, 1999.

Liliane Nérette Louis is a Haitian storyteller of great skill and a long family tradition. Reading the tales in this book, you can sense that they were honed in the oral tradition; the text is alive, showing call-and-response elements, rhymes, songs, and other features of live storytelling. The thirty stories are organized by themes (Stepmothers, Love, etc.), representing various facets and genres of the oral tradition. The book has introductions written both by the author and the editor, introducing Haitian history and culture; in the back we can find color photos, a glossary, and some wonderful Haitian recipes. A very complete and compact volume, much worth reading.

Highlights

My favorite tale from the book was about The turtle that could sing. In it, birds go to steal peas from a man's garden in the time of famine; they give their feathers to their friend, the singing turtle, so that he can go with them (he doesn't even like the peas, he just enjoys the flight). Of course the garden's owner eventually catches the turtle; when he finds out it can sing, he makes a whole lot of money from putting Turtle on display. Eventually the king decides he wants the magic turtle, but the animal is exchanged for a non-singing turtle by a boy the night before, so both gardener and king are left empty-handed. But at least the turtle got away...
Talking about singing: I would love to hear the story of Kinan Kinan told live. In it, a prince is reluctant to select a wife; his advisers offer him all kinds of willing princesses by singing their praises, but in the end, he takes a liking to an "ugly" peasant girl, who turns out to be lovelier and more beautiful than any other woman. There were no music notes attached to the story, and I am really curious how it sounds in live telling.
This book also contains the story of the Stepmother and the orange tree. In it, a stepmother abuses a girl constantly, and even eats the oranges the father brought home for the both of them. The girl plants the seeds of the oranges on her mother's grave, and from them grows a wonderful orange tree that does not only feed and obey her, but it also throws the stepmother off hard enough to shatter her into a million pieces. This is not the only story that was familiar from Wolkstein's collection: I also found a version of Taizan the Fish-lover, where a girl fell in love (and made love to) a fish, and when her parents wounded him, they merged into one body, and became a mermaid.
I also enjoyed the tale of Bouki wins the king's contest, in which suitors had to count to ten before an orange tossed into the air landed, in order to win a princess (I read this in a Liberian folktale before). Bouki won by trickery, but the princess hated him, since he only wanted her so that he could eat meat from the royal kitchens. In the end, his greed led to a hunting accident, in which Bouki was shot. At least the princess got away...

Connections

In the chapter about stepmothers there were multiple Kind and Unkind Girls type tales. In one of them (The lost silver spoon), the old woman helper's back had to be washed, but it was covered in shattered glass and made the girls' hands bleed; it reminded me of the Trinidad version that I really liked.
I was also familiar with the tale type of King Vletout, in which a king had all old people killed, so that the youth in a village could not resist his conquest. One family hid a grandmother, and she gave them advice that helped save the entire community. I have read this story from various cultures, but this was one of the best variants I have encountered so far.
There was a terrifying Bluebeard-like tale called the Case of the Key, in which a girl found out that her aunt kept zombies (zonbies) in the closet under the stairs. There was an entire chapter of zombie and monster stories, by the way, following their popularity in the Haitian oral tradition.
The local trickster is Malis (Konpé Malis or Ti Malis), usually accompanied by his silly and greedy friend, Bouki, who never fails to gets into trouble (with or without help). I remember reading that originally Malis was a hare and Bouki was a hyena, but in these tales they both appear as people. Several of the stories was already familiar from the other half of the island, the Dominican Republic (where, according to the other book's notes, they migrated from Haiti).

Where to next?
To the Bahamas!