StorySpotting: Body and soul mix-and-match (Locke & Key)

StorySpotting is a weekly or kinda-weekly series about folktales, tropes, references, and story motifs that pop up in popular media, from TV shows to video games. Topics are random, depending on what I have watched/played/read recently. Also, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. Be warned!

Locke & Key, in my opinion, is a seriously underrated show (I haven't read the comics but I hear they are good too). With the new season out, they gave me multiple things to Story Spot.

Where was the story spotted?

Season 3, episodes 4-6.

What happens?

The basic premise of Locke & Key is about an old house that hides various old keys, each with its own magical property. The Ghost Key has been a staple since Season 1. It essentially opens a door that separates one's soul from their body when they walk through. It has been used in various creative ways over the course of the show.

In this season Dodge, the demon who has been the main heroes' arch nemesis, manages to use the door to knock the young boy Bode's soul out of his body. She then leaves her own mortal shell, and takes over the boy's body instead. Bode, left as a floating ghost, eventually manages to regain his own body by projecting his soul into a sparrow, and then transforming back into human shape. (Complicated, I know, but kinda genius).

What's the story?

The whole body-snatching-taking-refuge-in-a-bird thing is actually one of the creepiest pieces of folklore I have ever encountered. And as I looked into it again, it seemed a lot more common than I had believed. It even has a couple of Thompson motif numbers: E725.1 - Soul leaves the body and enters an animal's, and K1175 - Minister dupe raja into entering body of a dead parrot, then enters raja's body. And yes, that latter one is hella specific.

The first time I encountered this trope was in a collection of Tibetan folktales titled Tales of the Golden Corpse. The tale of The Travelling Spirit was about two friends, a prince and a minister's son, who went to school together. The prince was lazy, but the other lad learned the secret art of projecting his soul out of his body (known as phowa). Jealous that the minister's son might upstage him, the prince tricked his friend into showing off his skills - and destroyed the unattended body. Seeking a new place, the boy's lost soul entered an old woman's dead parrot, reanimating it. Later on, the parrot managed to catch up to the prince, and tricked him into falling out of a window... And then the minister's son's soul entered the prince's empty body, and walked away home.

Excellent creepy revenge ending.

As I was reading my way around the world, I encountered this trope again in a collection from Thailand, in a tale titled The Weaverbird Princess. In this story, a silent princess is promised to the suitor who can make her talk. A prince comes along with his mentor, both of them versed in the art of projecting their soul. The mentor projects his soul into various objects in the princess' room, and the prince has conversations with the objects, telling them clever stories. The princess can't help but interject, and thus the prince wins her hand. 

Later on, the prince goes to the forest with his mentor, and, seeing a dead deer, decides to project his soul into the animal and go exploring. He trusts his body to his mentor. However, the evil mentor in turn takes over the prince's abandoned body, burns his own, and goes home to take the prince's place. The prince, not finding a body to return to, transfers himself into a dead parrot. He flies home and tells his wife what happened. The princess manages to trick the mentor into leaving the body and transferring into a goat to show off. The prince thus gets back into his body, and kills the goat in revenge.

Once I started pulling on the king-in-the-dead-parrot thread, a whole lot of other tales came tumbling out. 

There is one in the Turkish story collection titled The history of the forty vezirs, where the evil vezir, instead of burning his own body, puts a slave's soul into it for safekeeping (and the king, while in parrot form, also judges some court cases). Interestingly, in this version the queen recognizes that her husband is not behaving like himself, and refuses to sleep with him.

There is also a version from Pakistan in this book, where the king takes on the parrot's body to pick mangos for his queen. The queen, who is aware of the evil servant's soul in her husband's body from the get-go, devises a clever plan to trick the soul into a lamb's body.

The tale also appears in The Three Princes of Serendip, the English translation of the Italian translation of a medieval Persian tale collection. You can read the story about The Emperor who turned into a parrot here. Once again, the wife's suspicion plays an important part in restoring her husband to his body. Added bonus: the Emperor uses his body-switching ability to travel his kingdom in the disguise of birds, and right wrongs.

Another version of the story can be found in Hatim's Tales, a book of Kashmiri stories collected from storyteller Hatim Tilwon in 1896. The fun part of this one is that the vezir loses the king's stolen body when he goes hunting, and decides to inhabit a bear for greater efficiency. The king then shoots the bear, saying "we can't have a bear for a vezir"... The tale also appears in other Kashmiri collections. It even has a variation in the famous Ocean of the Streams of Stories. Here, a person takes over a recently deceased king's body, but a minister suspects the change. Still, the minister decides an impostor is better than the child heir, and makes sure the soul doesn't have another body to return to. Now this would make a great movie...

In India, the story is known as The Metamorphoses of King Vikramaditya (you can read it in two versions in this volume of North Indian Notes and Queries). In this one, the parrot ends up at his father-in-law's house, judging court cases. Once he actually judges the case of a woman whose husband has been replaced by a shapeshifting dev. Eventually his wife (who is suspicious of her "husband") hears of the parrot and discovers the truth. In the second variant, the evil servant is tricked into the body of a goat and then beheaded, and the head of the goat still laughs and weeps as it's hung in the bazaar.

(I even found a popular comic book adaptation of this story from India.)

A distant relative to this motif is a story from Melanesia, where an evil spirit pushes a girl off a cliff, and takes over her body and identity.

Conclusion

So here we have a folktale type that spans a continent at least, and also several centuries in time, all the way from 11th century Kashmir to 21st century Netflix. Traveling souls and body-snatchers are a rich topic for people to think about. It probably has something to do with our mortality...

(Fun fact: I originally started working on this post when I was watching The 100)

Stars from the sky, tales from the mountains (Folktales of Chinese minorities 12. - Tibet)

As a sequel to the Following folktales around the world reading challenge, I decided to start reading minority and indigenous folktales. First up are the minority peoples who live in China. You can find previous posts here, and you can follow the challenge on Facebook here.

A hóoroszlán meséi
Tibeti mesék
Ábrahám Linda & Szántai Zsolt
Sudhana Könyvkiadó, 2010.

Tibet was mostly a sovereign country for hundreds of years on the borders of China, until in 1951 it was occupied by them. Since then, the six million Tibetans have been counted by Chinese authorities as one of the 55 official ethnic minorities. This book sadly didn't contain any information other than the tales themselves (a total of 96). The stories were selected and translated from Shelton's Tibetan Folk Tales, as well as other English and Tibetan sources.

Highlights

I liked the tale of the wise bat who saved all the birds in the world from being silenced. A king was going to make them mute on the order of his evil wife, but the bat's cleverness and bravery made him see he had been wrong. Another story that featured an evil woman (a stepmother) was about two half-brothers who loved each other so much that their devotion could even soften a cruel serpent-spirit's heart.

I enjoyed the exciting tale about the illusionist who drew a king into a whole alternate life, and only got away in the end without punishment because the king had signed a waiver ahead of time.

The most beautiful story in the book was about a boy named Chering, who traveled into the sky with the help of a magician. There he could see how dragons were causing storms and distributing rain, and he even managed to pluck a star and put it in his pocket. Another likable tale was about a little shepherd who used his magical music to gather animals, and teach a lesson about generosity to a greedy landlord.

There were several teaching tales in the book. In one of them, a judge announced that he was going to sentence a rock and a donkey for a disputed accident - then fined everyone who showed up to the hearing, for chasing sensation instead of demanding justice. In another, a fox tried to cause strife between a bull and a tiger who had grown up together. The two animals realized the trick just in time, and trampled the fox instead. My favorite, however, was that of the foolish judge who did not want to listen to people. His wife gave him sleeping powder, dressed him as a beggar, and abandoned him in the street. Having to survive among the poor, the judge learned about their life and returned to his post wiser and kinder.

Connections

Despite people thinking of Tibet as a place far removed from the rest of the world, there were many familiar tale types in the collection. I encountered international classics such as the Bremen town musicians (The two kittens), animals running a race (Hare and frog, with a duck stealing their prize in the end), wise woman solving a king's riddles (and she became an adviser in the end, not a wife), gold-spitting princes (The prince and his friend; The gold-spitting frog), six brothers who rescued a woman together (and then couldn't decide who should marry her, so they cut her into pieces...), chatty flying tortoise, "who is the strongest" (Mouse Princess, who was sadly married to a cat), Solomon's judgment (between a tortoise and a peacock), Death deceived with a clever trick (The woodcutter and death), a king who had horns; clever chicken, ungrateful animal in a trap (with wolf and hare), ebony horse (The iron fish and the wooden horse), a boy who saves his grandfather from being abandoned (Fathers and sons), Beauty and the Beast (The white rooster, which ended in separation), and even Cinderella (The white cow). The adventures of Nyima were a combination of the Aladdin tale and the journey of the man seeking his fortune.

I once again encountered the tale (in multiple versions) where someone rescues three animals and a human, and while the grateful animals later return the favor, the treacherous human doesn't. The tale of Pelzang was similar to European and Indian legends: it was about an illusionist who tricked a skeptic into living half a life inside an illusion. There was also a story about a hunter who accidentally killed an animal (here a raven) that tried to warn him of danger. The story of the foolish family who did not know what a mirror was sounded familiar from Japanese collections.

Among the tricksters there was a frog who made the tiger believe he fed on tigers. The most popular trickster seemed to be Uncle Tinpa (a clever old man featured in multiple stories), but there was also a young lad named Big Mouth who placed tricks on a greedy landlord. I was amused by the story where clever thieves stole a king's diamond by replacing it with a piece of ice.

Who is next?

The Yugurs

Tarot Tales: X is for X of...

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!

Today I once again post about four cards instead of one: the Tens (X's) of the Minor Arcana. Tens are the highest non-court cards, and thus they represent the completion or fulfillment of the symbolism of their entire suit.

Ten of Cups

This one is a lovely card (although I struggle to differentiate if from the Nine of Cups...). It is about joy, happiness, love - living a whole and harmonious life filled with nurturing and meaningful relationships. Cups represent water and emotion, therefore this is all about nice warm and fuzzy emotions.

The Bird of Happiness (Tibet)

A young man sets our from a cold and desolate village to bring the Bird of Happiness to his people. As he climbs higher and higher in the mountains he encounters various monsters that threaten him, and demand payment for letting him pass. The payment is always killing or hurting someone else from the village, so the young man repeatedly refuses, and suffers the consequences instead. Finally, blinded, starved, and bruised, he finds the Bird of Happiness. The bird heals him and carries him down to the village, singing a beautiful song that makes the sun shine, the fields bloom, and everyone's heart fill up with joy.

Ten of Swords

This is a baaad card. It is about deep pain, grief, loss, and despair. It is about hitting rock bottom, going through your darkest hour, being betrayed, hurt, abandoned. Lots of hard, painful feelings. The silver lining of this card is the proverbial "nowhere to go from here but up." 

The Nameless Son of Urizhmag (Ossetian Nart saga)

One of the most heartbreaking stories I know. The great hero Urizhmag kills his own child in a freak household accident. The child's spirit begs the ruler of the Underworld to let him return to the land of the living, to go on one adventure with his grieving father. He receives permission, and returns to his father's village. Urizhmag does not recognize him, but he decides to go on an adventure with the brave young warrior anyway. When they return, the boy has to go back to the Underworld; his mother realizes too late who he was. She runs after him, begging the sun to stand still on the horizon, giving her a few precious moments to catch a glimpse of her child before he disappears again.

Ten of Wands

As an overachiever, I relate to this card a lot. It is about taking on too much, and struggling to carry all the responsibility. It is about things weighing you down. This card usually signals that you have to learn to say no, and choose your battles carefully. The workload is too much, and something's gotta give.

The Magic Hen (Hungary)

There are many legends in Hungary about a creature called a lidérc, a kind of spirit that can be both helpful and dangerous. In one story, the lidérc takes the shape of a black hen that never stops working. It brings its owner whatever she desires - gold, silver, diamonds, food, etc. - and keeps bringing more and more of it until it is told to stop (or until the house fills up). If it doesn't get a new task, it takes the owner's soul to Hell. It is very hard to get rid of: the only way to kill a lidérc is to give it a task it cannot fulfill.

Ten of Pentacles

Another nice card. It is about long-term wealth, success, and financial security. Basically it represents achieving a place in life where you can provide safety and comfort to your own family - whether they are blood relations or otherwise. It is about an abundance of material resources that create a secure and nurturing environment. 

The Pasha's Only Daughter (Arab folktale)

A version of the King Thrushbeard tale, but with a better outcome. A pasha's wise and clever daughter refuses to marry anyone she doesn't love. When she rejects a very high ranking suitor, her father grows furious and orders her to be married to the most wretched man in the city. Such a man (a fire stoker from a public bath) is selected, and married to the girl, then they are both kicked out of the palace to fend for themselves. However, the young woman, Uns-ul-Juloos, does not panic. She starts befriending her new husband, little by little, and he turns out to be a kind, trustworthy man. She sells her jewelry and begins renovating the small hovel they live in. She also helps her husband find a new job, and slowly but surely their lives turn for the better. By the end of the tale, with the help of a friendly jinn, they become a wealthy and respected couple. They live in their own palace comfortably, and even manage to make peace with the girl's parents and family.

These cards all represent great highs and lows. How are you feeling about them? 

Once more to the graveyard: The Tales of the Golden Corpse 2. (Epic Day 2016/2)

The whole reason I was in San Francisco last week was to participate in the year's second Epic Day performance. As you probably already know, our epic-loving crowd tells a full story twice in one year (usually in February and October). We have done Tales of the Golden Corpse from Tibet once already, and it was time for the repeat performance.

Our group was a little smaller this time - merely 17 tellers, and we got through our stories in a little under 4 hours, not counting the breaks and dinner. While some people had to cancel at the last moment, the lineup was still very much impressive, and all of my favorite stories were still there (Tales of the Golden Corpse is a string of folktales in a frame story, much like the 1001 Nights). We ate delicious snacks and listened to awesome stories for most of the day, sharing our enthusiasm and fascination for Tibetan tales. Once again, the frame story took the cake - everyone had their own version of the loquacious corpse, and the ways it managed to cheat the boy to let him fly back to the graveyard. The moment when the boy accidentally spoke up at the end of each tale, breaking the spell, was always a comedic highlights that everyone appreciated, and executed creatively.
(If you have no idea what I am talking about, read the book. It's worth it.)

Since this was out second performance for the year, it was also the time to vote on what we will be telling in 2017! Cathryn piled several options on the coffee table in the form of books, and people spent the breaks browsing through them, discussing the stories, sharing what they knew about them, and why one or the other would be cool to tell together. The lineup included well-known classics such as Beowulf and the Iliad, epics of great cultural importance such as Journey to the West, Tales of the Heike, and Sunjata, and a few last-minute contestants such as Tales of the Narts (courtesy of our Silk Road House concert the night before). At the end of the day, we all voted on our three favorites, to narrow choices down for the online poll. We ended up with Sunjata, Journey to the West, and Orlando Furioso as our top contestants. They are all very significant stories, and they all have their exciting and alluring qualities. I personally am hoping for Orlando - I have told parts of it before, but I have never read the entire epic, and I would love to.
The poll is still pretty much tied - I can't wait to find out which one we'll be telling in February!

Epic Day tellers, October 22nd, 2016.

The Tales of the Golden Corpse (Epic Day 2016/1)

I had the pleasure and the privilege to once again join Epic Day. After telling the Táin twice last year, both of which events were an amazing experience, I returned to California for a long weekend for a brand new epic, and some spectacular storytelling.

This year's selection came from outside Europe, as traditional for Epic Day, which is celebrating its 12th year in 2016. We voted last fall, and the majority decided on the Tibetan Tales of the Golden Corpse. This is not as much an epic as a traditional collection of tales within a continuous frame story (much like the 1001 Nights). It was different enough from the previous year's bloody war story that participants were eager to delve into it, and revel in the contrast.

There were 18 storytellers and some audience present; about 25 people gathered in Cathryn Fairlee's great storytelling room, bringing snacks and stories. We begun telling around 11 am, and finished just before 6 pm - not counting the breaks, the string of stories amounted to about five and a half hours. It was a nice, comfortable day of storytelling - and great fun as well.
In Tales of the Golden Corpse, a boy has to atone for his rash decisions by fulfilling a quest given to him by a Buddhist master: He has to carry a magical gold-and-turquoise corpse from a cemetery all the way to the master's cave, and he is forbidden to speak even a word while doing it. If he speaks, the corpse flies back to where it started, and the boy has to begin the trek all over again. The corpse, on the other hand, tries its best to make the boy lose - in order to coax a verbal reaction out of him, it keeps telling enticing stories that end with a twist or a cliffhanger. The boy falls for the trick every single time... hence, we get a long series of stories.
The tales themselves are more folk- and fairy tale-like than truly "epic." Some are variations of the animal husband or Beauty and the Beast; others have elements of the Kind and the Unkind Girls. All are saturated in Tibetan culture; some heroines remembered their past lives, and the story I selected dealt with the journey of a soul stuck outside its original body (which, by the way, was the eeriest of all the tales, and it could have easily doubled as a D&D adventure).
It was stunning to see how differently this Epic Day felt from the Táin. While the latter was a form of deep trance, following a hero from birth to bloody death and riding the emotional rollercoaster of Iron Age Irish myth, the Tales of the Golden Corpse were mostly light-hearted and often hilarious. There is something to say about the storytellers being a tad more comfortable here: Everyone had their own individual tale, so we worried a lot less about connecting with the others telling before and after; this also encouraged tellers to bring their own style to each tale, instead of trying to match others (in addition, there were a lot less names to painstakingly pronounce). The tales also felt less serious, and allowed for more playfulness, which we all took advantage of (while still respecting the stories and the culture, obviously). I am not saying this experience was any better or worse than the Táin - but it was profoundly different, and I am glad I got to experience both.

Some things stayed the same, though. For example, once again the true nature of the tales only emerged from oral telling. I read the book in preparation, and many of the stories felt "off," weird or even grotesque - but when I heard them told live, they all made perfect sense, and "grotesque" turned into "hilarious." We also soon found our connecting rhythm of running jokes - in the frame story. Everyone had to narrate Daychosangbo trekking back to the cemetery before their own story, and narrate the moment when the boy spoke and the corpse flew away in the end. This repetition did not only connect our telling into one continuous, shared experience, but also offered a great opportunity to add our own creativity to the repetition. Some people simply mimed the motions; others winked at the audience while the boy swore that this time he will surely keep his mouth shut; and everyone had a lot of fun with the questions or comments that burst out of the boy's mouth and ruined the silence. I also learned in practice that these questions or comments worked in telling, even if they seemed strange on paper. I changed  mine, because it didn't make sense to me when I read it; but after this experience, I think I'll switch back to the original question when we tell again in the fall.
(This is why I love it that there are two events for each year's epic)

One of my favorite moments of the day was Liz Nichols' telling of the Gold-Spitting Prince. In this story, two friends defeat a giant frog and a giant turtle; the monsters turn into tiny gems, and by swallowing them, the boys gain the power to spit gold and turquoise. Liz brought us bowls of gummy turtles and gummy frogs, in case we wanted to try for ourselves. Of course no one swallowed any of them whole (I think), but it was still very amusing to munch on some candy while listening to the tale (it's one of my favorite folktale types, I included the Mongolian version in my book).

All in all, we had a great day of fun tales, tasty snacks, and storytelling friends. I am looking forward to doing it all over again in the fall!

T is for Turquoise, and Crafty Old Men

Turquoise is a precious (albeit unspellable) stone with a lovely blue-green hue (the pavilion of the Blue Princess mentioned early on is usually called the Turquoise Pavilion). There are many tales attached to it, especially in indigenous cultures in the Americas. You can read a Hopi legend here, and a Navajo legend here (this latter one associates turquoise with the female spirit).

There is a folktale from Bhutan about an old man who finds a huge piece of turquoise on his land one day. He cheerfully walks down the road with it, and then quickly exchanges it for a horse, then the horse for an ox, then the ox for a sheep, sheep for a goat, goat for a rooster, and finally, exchanges the rooster for a song, and walks home singing to himself, perfectly content and happy. I label this story "old man destroys capitalism." It reminds me of some Jack tales, except the song makes more sense to me than magic beans. Some bands nowadays wish they could buy a song for a rooster...

Anyhow. Another story, this one from Tibet, also features an old man and a turquoise. In this one, an old man is left alone with his two daughters-in-law who use him as a slave. He manages to get a message to his daughter, who sends him a turquoise stone. The old man tricks both women in the house into believing that he will leave the stone to the one who treats him better, and lives out the rest of his life in peace. Before he dies, he hides the stone, and sends another secret message to his daughter, telling her where to look for it. A lovely father-daughter tale, but not a very good story for in-laws.

On MopDog today: Túró Rudi, Hungarian candy that tastes like heaven and unicorns.