Solar Eclipse Myths

Anybody else getting excited for the solar eclipse coming on August 21? Over at timeanddate.com, they have not only a countdown  but a list of world folklore related to solar eclipses.

The Hindu deity Rahu, who causes eclipses

Here's an example:

The Pomo, an indigenous group of people who live in the northwestern United States, tell a story of a bear who started a fight with the Sun and took a bite out of it. In fact, the Pomo name for a solar eclipse is "Sun got bit by a bear". 

 After taking a bite of the Sun and resolving their conflict, the bear, as the story goes, went on to meet the Moon and take a bite out of the Moon as well, causing a lunar eclipse. This story may have been their way of explaining why a solar eclipse happens about around 2 weeks before or after a lunar eclipse.

Many folk beliefs involving eclipses foresee doom and destruction, but not all. Many attributed the phenomenon to mythical creatures stealing or eating the sun or moon.

That one shows a connection between science and folklore, and here's one that encourages peacemaking:

The Batammaliba, who live in Benin and Togo, used a solar eclipse as a teaching moment. According to their legends, an eclipse of the Sun meant that the Sun and the Moon were fighting and that the only way to stop them from hurting each other was for people on Earth to resolve all conflicts with each other.

Click through to read more legends as well as modern superstitions! This page on historical eclipses also has some interesting information on different beliefs/results from eclipses.

Myths and Legends Podcast

Normally, I prefer to read old fashioned, physical books over any other form of reading-including from a Kindle or listening to audiobooks. But now that a good chunk of each day (and night) is spent nursing my baby, hands-free listening is the way to go to pass the time! I had shared the Myths and Legends Podcast earlier and I've been listening to more episodes. Some ones that I particularly enjoyed:

Episode 56-Nepali Folklore: Hope You Guess My Name-From the title I thought this might be a sort of Rumpelstiltskin tale, but it's a sort of Cinderella story, only with a completely different ending. There's no Prince Charming, and after the main character thinks she has escaped her horrible life, she ends up returning home and confronting her problems rather than marrying and magically erasing past issues! A great alternative to the traditional Cinderella tales to tell to modern audiences

Episodes 5A and 5B: Two fascinating stories about Koschei from Russian folklore. He's a fascinating villain I was eager to learn more about. The first tale has a gender reversed Bluebeard element to it, but with a very different result! Also an opening scene in which bird magicians fly in through a window and ask for brides, which made me wonder if David Bowie's entrace as the Goblin King in Labyrinth was a nod to this story?

In the second tale, Jason, the narrator, expands a little on Koschei's character and motivations. In fact, the way he tells it, I not only felt sorry for him, but realized Koschei has an uncomfortable resemblance to Disney's Beast...in fact, he's less abusive than Disney's Beast...

Episode 32-Tricksters: Wager-I'm sadly ignorant of trickster tales; they tend not to be as common among people who rewrite or analyze fairy tales. The tales can have troubling moral implications but are highly entertaining if you don't take them too seriously. There are several shorter tales in this episode from around the world, including a version of a Tortoise and the Hare race, in which the Native American Coyote races a turtle; there is also a story about Anansi the Spider, and Loki and Thor.

The Lost Spear-an "African" fairy tale

This fairy tale comes from South Africa. In this post I referenced the issues of African fairy tales being influenced by Westerners, and I think that influence is very clear through this tale.

It starts with a typical Western motif: a challenge set to a group of men to win the beautiful princess. The princess goes for the underdog, the poor herdsman Zandilli. Now, the concept of the underdog rising victorious is pretty universal. But after Zandilli fairly wins the first challenge, the princess' father sets another challenge, since he doesn't want his daughter to marry a herdsman. This is a spear throwing contest, and the father gives Zandilli a faulty spear. He outthrows his opponents, but is told he cannot marry the princess until he returns with the spear.

This starts a journey for our hero, including another very common Western element; the compassion the hero shows towards animals along the way later ends up saving him, as the same animals return to help him accomplish impossible tasks. Eventually Zandilli reaches a fairy cave, and this is the part I scoffed at: "each fairy sat singing as she combed her long golden hair." Later, it gleams against their "snowy breasts." Now often people do seek after the most rare traits as those which are beautiful, but come on, did Africans really value golden hair and snowy breasts independantly of the white men interpreting their fairy tales? Zandilli's speech to the Fairy Queen: "Oh, great Queen! whiter than the sind-clouds, fairer than the dawn..." her eyes were "blue as the lake."

The fairies give Zandilli further tasks before he can go home to his princess; making a black chamber beautiful, which is accomplished by the butterfly he had saved, and filling a hundred boats with the wings of flies from which the fairies' robes are woven-helped by the frog he rescued earlier.

I'm no expert in African culture, and the Princess Zandilli is in love with is called "the beautiful black-eyed Lala," which itself makes sense. Who knows, maybe Africans did imagine white-skinned fairies with blue eyes. The belief in fairies themselves, or at least a supernatural race of strange and powerful creatures, is universal, but these fairies are very similar to the stereotypical fairies of the Western tales. It's possible that some elements of the tale could have been independantly invented in each culture, but on the whole it's too similar. The spear throwing, though, seems to be an authentic African contribution to the tale.

PS-it's really hard to find images to go along with obscure fairy tales, especially when the characters are African...there's Fred Crump, who illustrates tales with African heroes...

African Cinderella

First of all, in googling images for this post, I came across images for a Ghanaian play version of Cinderella. A writeup claims,

"The story of the girl who has lost her mother and ends up in a step-family was originally an African saga that the Brothers Grimm brought to Europe and Walt Disney brought to the US. African Cinderella keeps to the storyline but the Cinderella we meet is a young Ghanaian girl. Despite the harsh environment she encounters in her new family, she manages to preserve her integrity and her pride, and demands that those she meets along the way view her as a human being and an equal, even if they happen to be an Ashanti prince!

The parallels with the day-to-day lives of young Ghanaian girls are striking. The theme – growing up in a step-family – is a familiar one to many girls in Ghana, not least because like many other parts of Africa the country has been hard hit by HIV/AIDS. In this connection, theater is a powerful and highly effective means of making people more aware of children’s rights. The impact is immediate.

“When you watch this production with a thousand kids and hear them shouting things like ‘No-one’s allowed to hit me! You can’t treat me badly just because you’re a grown-up! I can go to the police and do something about it!’ it really makes you believe that theater makes a difference,” says Anders Öhrn."

That first paragraph is full of misinformation. Cinderella is not originally an African saga, unless they are referring to the fact that it may have originated in Egypt. The Grimm brothers did not "bring it to Europe-" it was in Asia long before, and probably circulated in European oral tales long before Perrault penned his famous version, which was before the Grimms. Likewise, Disney did not "bring it to America," as if no one in America had heard of the classic tales before Disney made his film versions (although, nowdays, they're usually the only versions people know.)

But the second two paragraphs are really moving.

ANYway, I was going to share what I learned from William Bascom's Cinderella in Africa essay from "Cinderella: A Casebook." Now, the problem with African folklore is that there's no way to tell how much and to what extent the folktales have already been influenced by Western tales. Not surprisingly, Cinderella-type tales are more similar to our Western Cinderella in countries closer to Europe. Bascom shares a tale from northern Nigeria called "The Maiden, the Frog, and the Chief's Son."

In this tale, a man lived with two wives, each who had a daughter. One he favored. The wife he didn't love as much died, and he allowed his favorite wife to mistreat her stepdaughter. She did all the hard work but was not allowed to eat the food she made, so she often ate at her brother's house.

One day a frog spoke to her and wished to repay her for her kindness. So on the day of a Festival, he picked her up and swallowed her, and spit her back out. The first time she was crooked, so he spit her out again and she was straight. He vomited out clothes and jewelry, which she wore to the dance. The frog instructed her to leave one gold shoe at the Festival and keep her silver one. At the Festival, the chief's son noticed her and told her to sit on the couch, and they talked all evening. Eventually she said she must go, but he found her shoe. When the maid got back, the frog swallowed and spat her out again and she was in rags as before.

(Book version of Cinderella available at Nubian Gifts)

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Meanwhile the chief's son tried the gold shoe on every maid, and it fit none of them. Finally someone remembered the mistreated slave girl, and it fit her, and she was married to the chief's son. The new wife went back to the frog and thanked him, and he vomited up many gifts for her. He also instructed her to tell her stepsister, should she ever visit, to do rude things to the chief's other wives, concubines, and to the chief himself, whereas he instructed the kind girl to great each with gifts and respect. She obeys, and the stepsister is deceived into making the household into enemies. For this, she is chopped up and the pieces taken back to her home. The wife asked the frog for one more gift-that the frogs all live in a well by her home. Her husband had it built for her.

Bascom gives us an idea of which elements were taken directly from Europe by providing a list of elements found in previous collections of folklore from Africa, verses those not found at all. Granted, the previous collections were not exhaustive, but still more likely to be authentically African. Though the elements of cruel stepmother and stepdaughter heroine seems to be universal, as well as lowly heroine marries prince, these elements are not found in the earlier collections: abused youngest daughter, cruel stepsister, hearth abode of unpromising hero, supernatural helpers, clothes produced by magic, golden shoes, glass shoes, silver shoes, carriage from pumpkin, magic animal supplying treasure, prince that is enamored with heroine when seeing her at a ball, taboo of staying too long at a ball, or false bride's mutilated feet. However, the element of a hero being identified by a boot test seems to be found several times in African folklore.

African tales

"Many familiar themes crop up in folk traditions that are otherwise culturally different. In a sense, then, these tales are part of a universal language which can speak to peaple across human frontiers, just as music does."

So says Alexander McCall Smith in the introduction to his collection of African tales from Zimbabwe and Botswana. So the next time someone asks me what I do, I should just say, "Oh, I dabble in universal languages."

And it's true that while the tales may not be the same from Africa to Western cultures, many similar themes appear. In the tale of "The Children of Wax," a couple has wax children for some unknown reason. They love their children, but because of their unique condition they can never see the sun. The prohibition of not seeing the sun also exists in tales such as Madame D'Aulnoy's "The White Deer" and the Norwegian "The Three Princesses of the Blue Mountain."

Image from here

And, just like in Western tales, the prohibition is bound to beviolated-one son, Ngwabi, can't control his curiosity. He walks outside at noon and melts into a puddle. His dismayed siblings wait until the sun goes down to go out and collect his remains. The oldest sister makes them into a wax bird. Once the sun rises, the wax bird turns into a bird that flew away, "and the children knew that their brother was happy at last." Birds are significant in many Western tales, as magical helpers and in other roles-but the specific image of a death that turns into the life of a bird is very much like "The Juniper Tree."

Warwick Goble

Of course I was drawn to the Animal Bridegroom tale. Though the title, "The Girl Who Married a Lion," might sound very much like one of our tales, it takes a different spin on marriage to an animal. A girl marries a strong, handsome young man. Everyone is happy for her-except her brother, who is convinced that her husband is a lion in man's disguise. No one believes him, but years and two sons later, the wife admits to her brother that her husband has an odd smell. The brother comes over and confirms that it is lion smell. To test him, they tether a goat to a pole outside. The next morning, the goat is gone and only the bones are left. This confirms that the husband was a lion, and the wife is able to escape the potentially dangerous marriage.

The wife is concerned about her sons. To test this, her brother puts his nephews in a cage by where the lions walk. The lions are about to attack the boys when their uncle saves them. The fact that the lions wanted to attack the boys meant they are not really lions, so the happy mother lives with her boys.

Our animal bridegroom tales generally involve a man in disguise as an animal, not the other way around. And maybe I'm just so used to this, but what did the husband do wrong, other than smell funny and eat a goat? He's a lion who somehow appears human, and must have desired to marry the woman of the tale. Despite his lion nature, he had never harmed her or his sons. The tale just says that he might have eaten her in the future.