Scary Fairy Tales: The Lover's Ghost

Here's a creepy Hungarian tale, The Lover's Ghost. (There are also other similar tales in the Specter Bridegrooms section of D. L. Ashliman's page if you like this one!)

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There were two young lovers who were on the verge of their wedding when war broke out, and the groom was called away to go fight. He promised that he would be back to wed his beloved after three years, and she promised to wait for him.

The war ended after two years, and the bride, Judith, was overjoyed. She often went out to the road to see when her John would return, but a year passed, and then another, and still no news. She became impatient and went to her godmother, who was also a witch.

Her godmother instructed her to get a human skull from the gravedigger at the cemetery. The godmother put the skull, along with some millet, in a large pot and brought them to a boil. Suddenly a huge bubble popped, and let off a loud sound like a musket firing. The skull was balanced on the rim of a pot, and it said in a vicious tone, "He has started."

Images-Cauldron and Skull

The pot let off two musket sounds, and the skull informed her that he was halfway there; after three, he was in the yard. She saw John, clothed all in white. He asked her to come with him to the country in which he dwelt, and she agreed.

She mounted the saddle with him and they began their journey, which John assured her would not take long. Three times he asked her,
  "How beautifully shines the moon, the moon,
   How beautifully march past the dead.
   Are you afraid, my love, my little Judith?"

Judith each time replied that she was not afraid as long as she could see her lover. They finally arrived at an old burial ground, enclosed by a black wall. The house Jack had promised her was an open coffin, and he told Judith to get in.

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She replied, "You had better go first, my love. You know the way."

As soon as John descended into the grave, Judith started running away. He attempted to overtake her, but could not. She finally found a mansion, but all the doors were locked, except for one that led to a corridor with a man's corpse laid in a coffin. Judith hid in the corner.

John got to the door and knocked, saying, "Dead man, open the door to a fellow dead man." The corpse in the coffin complied, and together he and John agreed to tear Judith in pieces. They approached her, but just as they did, the cock began to crow, and as it was daybreak, the two ghosts disappeared.

The owner of the mansion was very grateful to Judith. The man in the coffin was his brother; he had attempted 365 times to bury him, but each time he returned. He offered to marry Judith, and she agreed.

Scary Fairy Tales: White Cap

Here is an Icelandic tale, White Cap:

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"A certain boy and girl, whose names this tale telleth not, once lived near a church. The boy being mischievously inclined, was in the habit of trying to frighten the girl in a variety of ways, till she became at last so accustomed to his tricks, that she ceased to care for anything whatever, putting down everything strange that she saw and heard to the boy's mischief.

 "One washing-day, the girl was sent by her mother to fetch home the linen, which had been spread to dry in the churchyard. When she had nearly filled her basket, she happened to look up, and saw sitting on a tomb near her a figure dressed in white from head to foot, but was not the least alarmed, believing it to be the boy playing her, as usual, a trick. So she ran up to it, and pulling its cap off said, "You shall not frighten me, this time."

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 "Then when she had finished collecting the linen she went home. But, to her astonishment -- for he could not have reached home before her without her seeing him -- the boy was the first person who greeted her on her arrival at the cottage. Among the linen, too, when it was sorted, was found a moldy white cap, which appeared to be nobody's property, and which was half full of earth.

 "The next morning the ghost (for it was a ghost that the girl had seen) was found sitting with no cap upon its head, upon the same tombstone as the evening before. And as nobody had the courage to address it, or knew in the least how to get rid of it, they sent into the neighboring village for advice. 

"An old man declared that the only way to avoid some general calamity, was for the little girl to replace on the ghost's head the cap she had seized from it, in the presence of many people, all of whom were to be perfectly silent. So a crowd collected in the churchyard, and the little girl, going forward, half afraid, with the cap, placed it upon the ghost's head, saying, "Are you satisfied now?"

 "But the ghost, raising its hand, gave her a fearful blow, and said, "Yes, but are you now satisfied?" The little girl fell down dead, and at the same instant the ghost sank into the grave upon which it had been sitting, and was no more seen."

Variants of Robber Bridegroom

The Grimms' "Robber Bridegroom" isn't nearly as famous as Perrault's "Bluebeard," which is a shame because I think most people like it better. It's still every bit as creepy, as it features a woman who witnesses her betrothed and his friends killing and eating an innocent woman, but the heroine is clever and resourceful-she is able to find her way home because she throught to scatter lentils on the path to the house. Then she exposes the murderer safely by telling the story in public as if it were a dream, but then producing as proof a finger of the dead woman that had flown into her lap.

The great Russian writer Alexander Pushkin wrote several poems based on fairy tales, including "Robber Bridegroom." This poem isn't nearly as exciting, in my opinion, as the Grimm tale. It tells the perspective of the bride's family and friends who don't know why she is so upset until the very end, when she reveals that she witnessed her new husband killing a girl cutting off her hand, and produces the hand with a ring on it as proof. Pushkin's tale also doesn't have the gory details of the Grimms, including the cannibalism of the victims. The poem can be read here.

Mr. Fox is a very similar English tale. The heroine visits the house of the murderer, and first discovers buckets of blood and skeletons, then the men come home and she witnesses a killing. She exposes them in the same way as the bride in "Robber Bridegroom."

D. L. Ashliman has collected several fascinating variants of this morbid tale as well. In a different German version (not the Grimms'), the bride is given the choice of being either boiled in water or oil, and on the witch housekeeper's advice, says she prefers water. This means she draws the water herself, giving her an opportunity to hide. Although the cannibal slices off her toes in his attempt to find her, the blood magically disappears so as not to lead him to her hiding place in a tree, and a prince conveniently stops by the woods and saves her in the nick of time.

In some English versions, the girl comes across her sweetheart digging a grave and later hints at what she saw; sometimes the murderer is frightened off by her knowledge, but in a legend that supposedly took place at Oxford, he stabs her. The "Robber Bridegroom" story is also told in the form of another English legend, Bloody Baker.

In the Welsh Laula, the murderer succeeds in killing the first sister, but her elder sister had followed them and exposed the crime.

The Cannibal Innkeeper is a very dark Romanian tale. After a young servant girl refused to marry a man, he sold her to a cannibalistic innkeeper who locked her in a room and forced her to cook human flesh, which he then served to his guests. One day his mother, who was a witch and wanted to punish him, turned the girl into a duck, so she was able to fly out of the room and escape-but the girl remained a duck for the rest of her life.

In the Lithuanian story Greenbeard, a woman will only marry a husband who has a green beard. The murderer dyes his beard green for her. The moral of this story seems to be for women not to be so picky about the men they marry, for after the crimes are witnessed and exposed in a similar manner, it's added that the girl no longer has such in interest in green beards (and of course the image also links the tale to "Bluebeard"). It strikes me that in this tale, as well as others, the cannibals are not referred to as "murderers" or "cannibals," but simply "robbers." Why is their evil downplayed by that choice of words? The same question applies to the Grimm tale-why is it "Robber Bridegroom" and not "Murderous Bridegroom" or "Cannibalistic Bridegroom"?

Illustrations-Walter Crane, Arthur Rackham, John Batten

Fairy Tales About Contentment

The Grimms' tale "The Fisherman and his Wife" tells the story of a magical fish that could grant wishes, and the wife who was never satisfied and ultimately ended up back where she started, in a poor little shack by the sea. It essentially imparts the classic moral "be careful what you wish for," which has good uses, although it might bother modern readers because of what the tale seems to say about women (the wife in the story is the greedy, never satisfied one; although the pushover husband is not the most admirable character either).

There is a similar Japanese fairy tale I learned about via the Myths and Legends podcast that both I and the host Jason Weiser prefer to the Grimm version, The Stonecutter. (This tale can also be found in Lang's "Crimson Fairy Book".)

It tells the story of a poor stonecutter who, for many years, was content to work hard, knowledgeable and strong from his years of experience. But one day, delivering a gravestone to a rich man's house, he became envious of the large, cool mansion, allowing him to escape from the heat of the day. He wished out loud that he could be a rich man, and the spirit of the mountain granted his wish.

He lived for a while, happy to enjoy his new wealth. But one day, he saw a prince ride by, and realized that despite his riches, a royal prince had more power than he. So he wished to be a prince.

Yet he was not content as a prince, and he realized the sun had more power than he to give discomfort. He next became the sun, and relished his power, until clouds blocked him from scorching the earth, and he wished to be a cloud.

As a cloud he felt powerful, as he covered the earth with rain, but he realized that though he could drown people and plants, there was a large boulder that remained unaffected by his storms, so he wished to be a rock.

Image source

As a rock, he was immovable and powerful-until one day, a poor stonecutter came away and chipped away his pieces. He wished to become a stonecutter, and ended up as his former self, and was content to do his work again.

I like the cyclical nature of power as shown in this fairy tale. First of all it challenges our perception of power, as it shows that all natural forces have their own influence. Also, the stonecutter actually learns his lesson from experience. The fisherman's wife simply climbs up the ladder, is never satisfied, and then is sent back down to the lowest rung of the ladder when she wishes to be like God. She never experiences what that might be like and learns there are negatives to the things we long for, and there's no sense of empowerment to the poor working person. (Note: this is not just in the Grimms' collection, but in another German tale, "Hanss Dudeldee," with essentially the same plot.)

There is a Russian tale that is very similar, but with a slight twist at the ending; rather than wishing to be like God, the fisherman's wife-turned-czarina wishes to have power over the oceans and fish. It makes sense that the magical fish would rather not be at her mercy.

"Fisherman and his Wife" illustrations by Kay Neilsen

Maid Maleen: When Fathers Imprison Their Daughters

In Surlalune's fantastic collection of Rapunzel tales throughout the world, Heidi Anne Heiner includes a small section of Maid Maleen tales. "Maid Maleen" is one of the tales in the collection of the brothers Grimm, and it's related to Rapunzel in that it includes a young woman imprisoned in a tower.

However, Maid Maleen is imprisoned not by a witch, who can be seen as an overprotective mother figure, but her father-for she is in love with a man her father does not approve of and refuses to marry the man he chose for her. As punishment, her father imprisons his daughter and her maidservant in a tower-yet this one appears much more terrifying than Rapunzel's tower. She and her waiting woman are walled in it, almost like being buried alive-they have no light and the walls are too thick for sound to come through. They were left with enough food for seven years, and the father promised to return and see if he had weakened her resolve.

Arthur Rackham

Only no one came at the end of the seven years. Realizing they might be left alone, Maid Maleen suggests they try to break out using a bread knife (why didn't they try that at the beginning of the seven years?). The women discover that the land has been destroyed and her father is gone-they take employment as servants at a palace that just so happens to be where Maid Maleen's former lover lives, but he is betrothed to another, ugly, wicked woman.

Maid Maleen drops a series of hints at who she is as the wicked bride forced her to take her place at the alter, for fear she will be mocked because of her ugliness. I'm not especially impressed by the Prince's lack of efforts to get her out of the tower in the first place, if she could make a hole with a bread knife, or at how slow he is to get the hint, but of course at the end he discovers the truth, is married to Maid Maleen, and the wicked false bride suffers the punishment she intended for Maid Maleen-beheading.

Paul Hey

If that tale is dark, "Princess Who Was Hidden Underground," a German tale recorded in Andrew Lang's Violet Fairy Book, is even more depressing. The father in that one builds a palace for her underground, simply because she has grown up, and killed the architect who built it. He declared that anyone who could find her could marry her, but many died in the attempt. And even in this he was not honest, for once the hero of the story had found the Princess (by disguising himself as a lamb to be given to the Princess as a gift), there is an additional trial: the hero must identify the Princess even after she and her maidens have been turned into ducks. Fortunately, the Princess knew of this, and arranged a signal between herself and the young man. Finally they defeated the King's evil plot and were able to marry.

My favorite was the last, "The Girl Clad in Mouse-Skin," a Danish tale. In this one, the father is not evil or controlling-he simply creates a safe house where his daughter can hide while he goes away to fight in a war, and she is not locked in. After seven years, the young woman leaves and finds that her father died nobly in battle.

Like Maid Maleen, she finds work as a servant in a Prince's Castle. Yet the Prince's betrothed is not evil or ugly-she (like Maid Maleen) is in love with another, whom her father has forbidden to marry. The women mutually agree to switch places at the Prince's wedding, and both women end happily married.

R. Leinweber

I like that in this series of tales, the heroines prove to be their own agents of change-you can't accuse these ladies of waiting around for a Prince to save them, they escape and get husbands using their wits. Another fairy tale stereotype is to pit female characters against each other-mothers/stepmothers or sisters are the villains. There aren't too many fairy tales with males as the villain, and even in common tales like Donkeyskin, he is never really punished and the blame too often gets put on his first wife.

What do you think about Maid Maleen tales? Read these stories for yourself, Heidi Anne Heiner has made text available through the Surlalune website!

Read Maid Maleen
Read The Girl Clad in Mouseskin
Read Princess Who Was Hidden Underground

The Wonderful Frog

It's no secret that I am a big, big fan of the Surlalune series of Tales From Around the World. I am slowly but surely amassing my collection...although The Grateful Dead collection was just recently released, I'm finally adding two of the books to my library I'm very excited about: Frog Prince and Rapunzel.

These books will really fill out my fairy tale library. It's possible to find versions of some of the most famous tales, like "Cinderella", "Snow White", and "Little Red Riding Hood", in other sources, but "Frog Prince" and "Rapuzel" are a little more on the fringe. They're still very popular and well loved but it's a little harder to find information on them, or related tales.

And it is SO important for any folklorist (or amateur fairy tale nerd) to go beyond the most famous versions of the tales. We so often fall into the trap of analyzing all the details of the brothers Grimm or Perrault/Anderson versions of a tale without realizing that those details are not essential to the tale itself (and maybe weren't even present in the first edition of the Grimm tales, but added later as editorial choices). Only when studying multiple versions of the tales from various cultures do we start to see a picture emerge-what elements of the tales are found everywhere? What elements change with the culture?

I'll be sharing more from both of these books in the future, but for now enjoy this interesting, if not slightly disturbing, Frog Prince tale from Hungary:

The Wonderful Frog

"There was once, I don't know where, a man who had three daughters." One day the father told his eldest to fetch him some water out of the well. When the girl arrived, a huge frog called out to her from the bottom of the well, that he would not allow her to draw water until she threw him down her gold ring. The eldest refused to give her rings to such an ugly creature, and returned without water.

Next the father sent his second daughter, and the same thing happened. Finally the father sent his youngest, Betsie, pleading with her to find a way to save him from suffering thirst. Because Betsie was so fond of her father, she threw her ring down to the frog, and her father was delighted to have fresh water.

In the evening, the frog crawled out of the well and started banging on their door, crying,  "Falther-in-law! Father-in-law! I should like something to eat." The father was angry, and told his daughters to give the frog a broken plate to gnaw on. But the frog demanded some roast meat on a tin plate, and afraid the frog would cast a spell on them otherwise, the father obliged. For the same reason, the father eventually gave in to the frog's demands for wine and a silk bed.

Next the frog demanded a girl. The father commanded his eldest daughter to lie down next to the frog, but she refused. So did the middle child. The frog croaked that he didn't want the other daughters, he wanted Betsie. "So Betsie went to bed with the frog, but her father thoughtfully left a lamp burning on the top of the oven; noticing which, the frog crawled out of bed and blew the lamp out." The father attempted twice more to light the lamp, but always thwarted by the frog, "was therefore obliged to leave his dear little Betsie in the dark by the side of the ugly frog, and felt great anxiety about her."

In the morning, the father and his two eldest daughters were astonished to find a handsome lad by Betsie's side. He asked for Betsie's hand, and they were married. The elder sisters were now envious of Betsie, and she herself was very happy.

Illustrations by Charles Robinson
Tale summarized by me; full tale available in the book

The Greedy Daughter

I'm not sure if this would be classified as a "Little Red Riding Hood" variant. It almost reads like a more modern subversion of the classic tale, but is an Italian Folktale included in the Tudor Publishing Company's 1930 Folk Tales of All Nations. The cast is pretty much the same, with a mother instead of a grandmother, but the role of each character is completely changed. Yet the message is still clearly didactic, and this story does not include a happy ending for the young girl.

Jennie Harbour

The Greedy Daughter

"There was a mother who had a daughter so greedy that she did not know what to do with her. Everything in the house she would eat up. When the poor mother came home from work there was nothing left.

G. P. Jacomb Hood

But the girl had a godfather-wolf. The wolf had a frying-pan, and the girl's mother was too poor to possess such an article; whenever she wanted to fry anything she sent her daughter to the wolf to borrow his frying-pan, and he always sent a nice omelette in it by way of not sending it empty. But the girl was so greedy and so selfish that she not only always ate the omelette on the way, but when she took the frying-pan back she filled it with all manner of nasty things.

At last the wolf got hurt at this way of going on, and he came to the house to inquire into the matter.

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Jennie Harbour

Godfather-wolf met the mother on the step of the door, returning from work.

"How do you like my omelettes?" asked the wolf.
"I am sure they would be good if made by our godfather-wolf," replied the poor woman, "but I never had the honour of tasting them."

"Never tasted them! Why, how many times have you sent to borrow my frying-pan?"
"I am ashamed to say how many times; a great many, certainly."

"And every time I sent you an omelette in it."
"Never one reached me."

"Then that hussy of a girl must have eaten them by the way."

John Deffett Francis

The poor mother, anxious to screen her daughter, burst into all manner of excuses, but the wolf now saw how it all was. To make sure, however, he added: "The omelettes would have been better had the frying-pan not always been full of such nasty things. I did my best always to clean it, but it was not easy."

"Oh, godfather-wolf, you are joking! I always cleaned it, inside and out, as bright as silver, every time before I sent it back!"

The wolf now knew all, and he said no more to the mother; but the next day, when she was out, he came back.

Ethel Franklin Betts

When the girl saw him coming she was so frightened that she ran under the bed to hide herself. But to the wolf it was as easy to go under a bed as anywhere else; so under he went, and he dragged her out and devoured her. And that was the end of the Greedy Daughter."

Beauty and the Beast in Greece: Part II

Continuing with interesting Greek versions of Beauty and the Beast, as found in Heidi Anne Heiner's/Surlalune's Beauty and the Beast Tales from Around the World:

I like "The Sleeping Prince" because it's sort of a gender-reversed Sleeping Beauty. A beautiful Princess determines she will watch at the sleeping Prince's side for three years, three months, three weeks, three days, and three hours, without falling asleep herself, in order to wake him. But when the Prince awakens, he finds a slave girl who claims she is the one who woke him, and becomes the False Bride. The False Bride makes the True Bride into a goose girl, who requests a rope to hang herself with, but tells her story to the rope and is overheard and rescued.

In "The Sugar Man," a hopeful bride creates a man out of sugar and brings him to life by praying. Heiner notes that while other tales feature objects being brought to life, using sugar is unique. Maybe a play on the fact that lovers will call each other sweet, or give each other nicknames such as "sugar" or "honey?"

The Gingerbread Man from Shrek

Once the daughter has married her sugar creation, another Princess falls in love with the man upon hearing of him, arranges for him to be kidnapped, and marries him. The True Bride hunts him down, and as in, many other BATB stories, trades valuables to the Princess in return for staying one night with the King. The Queen drugs him so he can't hear what the True Bride says, but when a friend of the King's tells him the truth, he avoids the potion on the last day. Yet I don't know that I find this King worth all the trouble-he didn't seem to have any problem marrying a second wife so quickly (in other similar tales, the wife's disobeying of a command separates the lovers, and usually some cruel witch or enchantress is behind it; he may later be engaged to another woman but not married. It's sometimes implied that he was under a spell/had forgotten about his past).

Last but not least, "The Enchanted Head"-after providing money for an old woman and her two daughters, a disembodied head demands that the old woman go to the Sultan and ask for his daughter in marriage (not the old woman's daughters, as I initially expected). When the Sultan sees the strange suitor, he is disgusted, but his daughter "placed her head gently on his arm. 'You have given your word, my father, and you cannot break it...Yes, I will marry him. He has a beautiful head, and I love him already.' "

Omar Rayyan

After they are married, the bride, and only the bride can see his true form-the rest of his body; an unusual feature, since usually the transformation is hidden from the world at first but later he is completely himself.

Definitely some strange, weird things in these versions. What did you like/not like about the stories from this post and Part I?

As usual, these stories are summarized and a lot has been left out; to get the whole flavor and pick up on many of the other elements of the story, I highly recommend you get a copy of this book yourself. Another great feature is that Heidi has included an ATU index with descriptions of the different tale types, and the tales in the book that correspond; very helpful when trying to narrow down which of the 188 stories to read!

Beauty and the Beast in Greece: Part I

Sometimes reading through a collection of versions of the same fairy tale may seem daunting, because many times versions are so similar it feels like reading the same story over and over again. Yet I find my Surlalune Fairy Tale Series books invaluable-not only for comparing and contrasting similar tales, but because there are so many unexpected and surprising versions of the tales. These samples from Greece are just a few examples of the different versions of "Beauty and the Beast" that will provide interest to even those who are familiar with most standard European versions. (Many of these are closer to "Cupid and Psyche" than BATB: there may not be a rose, and the husband may not be beastly at all, but supernatural-the classification is technically "Search for the Lost Husband" and not "Animal Bridegroom").

In "Donkeyskin," (which is not the Donkeyskin tale as we usually know it, an incestuous Cinderella variant,) two mothers are childless. The noble mother claims that if she had a daughter, she would not mind marrying her to a donkey; the poor mother wishes for a son, even if he were a donkey.  The two children were born, a girl and a donkey, and promised to each other. The girl was very upset and cried at the thought, but after the wedding he was revealed to be a handsome man.

The girl's parents had conspired to kill the donkey after the wedding, to keep their daughter from such a husband, but when they found she was happy, they let him live.

The enchanted donkey warned his wife not to let anyone know who he was. However, when his wife was attending a wedding, he came to her in human form and danced with her. Everyone thought it was a pity she was married to a donkey and not this man; but when her mother questioned her she revealed the truth. As a result he was carried off by three fairies, his sisters, and his bride had to find the fairies and her husband. However, a false bride claimed her husband, and shut the true bride in a donkey's stall. However, a friend heard the girl telling her story to herself, and told the husband, who found his wife and punished the false bride.

This version is interesting because of the involvement of the mothers-it is incredibly hard to find a version of BATB in which the mother is present at all; usually it is the father who controls his daughter's fate and mothers are absent. As in other fairy tales, such as Snow White or Rapunzel, the wishes the parent makes about their child end up determining the child's fate. In almost every version of BATB the bride is cautioned against either looking at her husband, revealing who he is, or not returning to him in time; yet the husband never really makes this easy for her to fulfill.

In "The Lord of the Underearth," the father of three daughters comes across the servant of the Lord of the Underearth. He demands that the father bring him his eldest daughter, and serves her a rotting human foot, which he wishes her to eat. She cannot. The second daughter cannot eat the rotting human hand, but when presented with a stinking human stomach, the third daughter asks for cloves and cinnamon to season it. When the stomach is found in her own, she pleases the servant, who brings her to the Lord of the Underearth, where she is given drugs in her coffee so she doesn't remember her husband coming to her at night.

(this image is of a prop, not an actual human hand)

Her sisters come to visit, and tell her not to drink the coffee, and to turn the key in his navel, which will enable her to see the world. She does so, but because of this she is forced to leave. She trades her clothes with a shepherd, and disguised as a man, becomes a servant for the King and Queen of another country. However, the Queen falls in love with the servant and tries to seduce him/her. When the bride/servant doesn't comply, the Queen accuses the servant of trying to rape her, and he/she is sentenced to be hung. Only then does the Lord of the Underearth come to rescue her. He asks the Queen the reason she is hanging the servant, and upon being told, asks, "And if this man is a woman, what shall we do to you?" to which the Queen replied that they should hang her instead. When the servant is revealed to be a woman, the Queen is hung, and the Lord of the Underearth took his bride away. The story ends with "I was not there, and neither were you, so you need not believe it!"

The episode of the daughters being given rotted human flesh to eat is so unusual and disturbing. Is there some historical precedent for a wife's value being found in eating disgusting food? The cross-dressing feature is rare, but presents a wife who is resourceful in disguising herself (although you wonder why she can't tell the King the truth herself).

Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters

Image from here

It's really quite difficult to make accurate generalizations about fairy tales. Although people do it all the time, they're usually using the most well-known collections of folk tales as their source (most often, Grimms' "Household Tales"). Yet the Grimm fairy tales in common knowledge are a collection of fairy tales brought to us by two brothers, which have undergone change after change due to editors, publishers, illustrators, and translators, which served to reinforce and enlarge differences in gender roles, and utilizing the tales as moral lessons for children. Most copies of Grimms' fairy tales is not a complete edition, so the editors have to choose which tales to pull and which illustrations to use (and much has been lost or changed in translation into English as well), and often these collections don't represent the full scope of the collection well. Maria Tatar even states that part of her purpose in creating The Annotated Brothers Grimm was to restore the gender imbalance present in most collections.

Yet there are so many other fairy tales that exist outside the Grimms' and other standard collections. Some tales, such as Cinderella, have hundreds of variants all over the world, while others remain known in only small pockets of the world; yet those tales are a significant part of that culture's history as well as a valid piece of folklore for consideration.

In 1998 Kathleen Ragan helped counter people's incorrect assumptions about fairy tales in general by putting together a collection featuring all strong, female protagonists, Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters. It's a great collection. Sometimes you go through a fairy tale book and turn to a tale you don't know and realize it's not really the best story and there's a reason it isn't well-known; yet this book seems to contain all hidden gems (from what I've read, I haven't read it straight through). Ragan also includes helpful notes at the end of each story.

I don't think that girls only identify with female characters; yet I understand people's concern when stories show potentially harmful gender patterns repeated over and over again. This book features women who are witty problem solvers; who bravely go on journeys and rescue people along the way; who turn down marriage proposals from princes and wisely rule countries, who are kind and promote justice among the poor and overlooked.  One of my favorites is "How the King Chose a Daughter-in-Law" from Romania, which is sort of like "Princess and the Pea" but with a contrasting message:

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Once there was a king whose son was of an age to marry, and he wanted to see him happily settled. But the king wanted "a good, hard-working daughter in law and not some silly featherbrain." So he built a great palace with a thousand rooms and invited all the neighboring kings and princes to bring their daughters and see which one could find her way through the maze.

Pena National Palace, Portugal

Skilled workmen from all over the world created the palace, and when it was finished there were all sorts of visitors from abroad, eager to try their luck. Yet none of the girls could find their way through the complicated rooms, and the king began to lose hope.

Among the crowd was a poor old woman and her daughter, and the daughter watched the royal girls leave without success and thought she might like to try. Her mother scolded her for being so bold, but when the king's son saw how lovely the girl looked he asked her to try.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau

The poor daughter went into the palace and from room to room, finding an engagement ring in one and wedding dress in another. When she came out, she had a token from each of the rooms with her as proof that she had been there. She and the prince were married. The king asked her how she had been able to navigate the labyrinth of rooms: the girl had brought her whole distaff full of thread into the palace, left it at the door, and held the other end of the thread all around the palace. On her way back she wound up the thread again on her spindle so she didn't get lost.

"And from that time on there has been a saying that clever folk can be found in mud huts too, not only in palaces."

The Magic Mirror: A Romanian Snow White

The more I learn about Snow White tales, the more I'm convinced it is the most violent tale group. Even when compared to the obvious ones like Bluebeard, in which the husband murders multiple wives-that one shocking plotline is the premise of all Bluebeard tales. Yet with Snow White, there seems to be no end to the ways storytellers have come up with to torture the beautiful young girl. Take the Romanian tale, "The Magic Mirror":

W C Drupsteen

Once there was a beautiful woman who possessed a magic mirror, who always told her that she was the fairest woman in the land. When her daughter grew older, the mirror told her that her daughter's beauty had surpassed her, and she hated her daughter and was determined to kill her.

The woman baked a salted cake. She took the cake and a jug of water, and took her daughter into the forest. After they had gone a ways, the girl began to get hungry, and begged her mother for something to eat. "If you want something to eat, take this cake, but you must cut out your eye first," said her mother.

The mother gauged out her daughter's eye and kept walking. After a while, the salted cake made the daughter extremely thirsty. She begged for water, which her mother would only give if she gauged out her other eye, so the girl was now blind. She pushed her daughter over a slope that ended in a savage river and hurried home. The mirror conceded that the mother was now fairer than her blind daughter.

The daughter, after giving thanks to God for her safety, was instructed by the Virgin Mary to wash her eyes in a fountain, and her sight was restored. She fell asleep and was found by twelve robbers. They each wanted her for themselves, but decided to let her decide. When she woke up, they told her they were each willing to take her as a wife, but if she did not desire any of them, they would take her home and treat her as a sister. She chose the latter and went home with them.

The next day when they went out, they warned her not to answer the door for anyone. Yet by this time the girl's mother had discovered that her daughter was alive and well, and now more fair than her again. So she instructed an old hag to take a poisoned ring to her daughter in the woods.

The girl did not let the old hag in, but as she hadn't been instructed not to accept anything through the door, she took the ring. The ring made her faint and she fell down in a deathlike sleep. When the robbers returned they discovered the ring and removed it.

Jennie Harbour

The mother sent the hag again, with enchanted earrings, which also were poisoned. When the robbers discovered the earrings, the mother decided to enchant a flower, for the robbers wouldn't notice such a natural thing. And as the daughter often wore a flower, they could not undo the magic the third time, and set her body in a bier made of firs, evergreens, and flowers, and put her in the open air of the forest.

Soon the prince of the land found the beautiful girl's body, and, unable to restrain himself, kissed the dead girl fervently. He ordered them to bring her down carefully, lest anything happen to the precious statue. One of the king's men had decided to take the flower as a gift for his own beloved, and when it was removed, the girl woke up. The prince was delighted and took the girl home to marry her.

Yet her mother discovered she was alive once again. After her daughter had delivered her first baby, the mother came to be the new midwife. When the prince had gone to sleep, she put a knife in the baby's heart, and was about to kill her daughter as well, when the prince woke up and said, "don't you dare, you witch!"

"But I must murder anyone more beautiful than me!" the woman cried. The emperor jumped in between his wife and her mother and saved his wife; the story of her mother was found and she was put to death, and the couple was able to live undisturbed for many, many years.

****

I find several aspects of this story, from a 1845 collection, to be fascinating. First of all, the heartless violence of the natural mother who does not initially hire anyone to get rid of her daughter (no huntsman here), but determines right away to personally get rid of her daughter. But though she could have killed her right away (she clearly had no qualms about that), she prolongs the episode, causing her daughter to hunger and thirst, gauging out her eyes one by one, and THEN sending her to her supposed death.

Possibly more shocking is that a band of twelve male thieves-exactly who you would expect to present the most danger to a young, beautiful girl, end up protecting her. In this version they provide a fascinating contrast to the prince, who cannot control himself. The twelve men, who could easily have overpowered one young girl, restrain their desires even though they each want to marry her. You don't get that sense of sexual desire from the versions with dwarves! They love her and treat her as a sister, whereas the prince blatantly objectifies her, calling her lifeless body a "precious statue" (yes, that was a direct quote!!). I found myself disappointed she ended up with that creepy guy and wishing she had fallen in love with one of the robbers.

And then, after the wedding when many other versions end, the mother gets one more chance to be cruel. She kills a helpless baby, her own granddaughter-a piece of evil which is never undone, as many spells often are at the end of a fairy tale.

Tale found in Surlalune's Sleeping Beauties: Sleeping Beauty and Snow White Tales From Around the World.

On a totally different note: who else is psyched about the new French Beauty and the Beast movie?? Once Upon a Blog has great coverage (as always)

Gigi and the Magic Ring: An Italian Fairy Tale

A young man went out from his mother's house to go out into the world. On his way he passed an old woman carrying a heavy jar, and offered to carry it for her. In gratitude, the woman fed him and gave him her dog and cat as companions, and a ring, which she promised would grant him wishes. Gigi didn't think much of the ring itself, and didn't want to rob the poor old woman, but she insisted, so he took the ring and the animals and went on his way.

Later on, Gigi was hungry. He happened to be playing with the ring in his pocket and thinking, "I wish a table could be set before me now, with a fine supper on it," when all of a sudden it appeared. Gigi and his animals ate a full meal, and Gigi thought of all the other things he could wish for-but stopped himself, not wanting to lose his head over his good luck, and fell asleep.

In the morning he thought of wishing for horses, but laughed and decided to continue walking. On his way he passed a home with a beautiful maiden looking out of the upper window. He decided to use his ring to wish for a fine home to be built across from hers. He was able to get to know the maiden, Maliarda, and her parents, and by the end of the first day Gigi and Maliarda were engaged.

However, the eve before the wedding day, Maliarda asked him how his house had sprung up so suddenly, and, being trusting, Gigi told her the truth. Maliarda told her mother, who advised her daughter to slip a sleeping potion into Gigi's drink, and take the ring from his finger. She did this, and put the ring on, and wished that Gigi's palace would be moved to the highest, steepest, snowiest peak of the mountain range.

Gigi woke up cold, and was perplexed as to why he was on the top of a mountain, but knew it didn't matter as long as he had his ring. It was only when he discovered his ring was missing he suspected the beautiful Maliarda to be a traitor.

Gigi's dog and cat made the trek down the mountain to gain his ring back for him. The door to Maliarda's room was closed, with a hole too small for either of them to get through. The cat caught a mouse and promised to release him if he would first gnaw the hole larger. The mouse gnawed until all his teeth were broken, but the hole wasn't large enough for even him to go through. So the mouse's littlest child went in through the small hole, bit Maliarda's finger in her sleep so she took off the ring without waking, and brought it back.

The cat and dog went back to the palace on the mountain, but quarreled along the way as to whose credit it was that they had retrieved the ring. As they quarreled, the ring fell into the river and a fish snapped at it. The dog jumped it and got the ring from the fish's mouth. Gigi assured them that they were both equally loved, and he wished his palace and Maliarda's to switch places. After a few days Gigi felt sorry, and wished them halfway down the mountain, where they could reach safety, but their useless mansion was left at the top.

After a year had passed since Gigi first began his adventure, he returned home, where his mother and sister were amazed at his fortunes. His mother hid the ring away so as to avoid more mischief, and Gigi already had enough money to live on. Gigi meant to return the ring to the old woman if he should ever see her, but she was never seen again. As for Gigi...

"Is the ring still in the wedding-chest? Does Gigi ever take it out, put it on his finger and wish? I do not know. When I have passed his way I have seen him ploughing with a fine team of fat oxen, and singing the while, or in the woods with his good friends the cat and dog, for they are still alive and hearty. He has not yet gone back to live in a palace; but all the neighbors envy his mother and her good son Gigi."

*Story by Anne Macdonell, found in My Bookhouse Through Fairy Halls.

In the Hall of the Mountain King

The Woman in Green: Besides those rags you have other clothing?
Peer Gynt: Ah, you should see my Sunday garments!
WIG: My week-day garments are gold and silver.
PG: It looks to me more like tow and grasses.
WIM: Yes. There's just one thing to remember:
We mountain folk have an ancient custom;
All that we have has a double shape.
So when you come to my father's palace
It would not be in the least surprising
If you were inclined to think it merely
A heap of ugly stones and rubbish.
PG: That's just the same as it is with us!
You may think our gold all rust and mildew,
And mistake each glittering window-pane
For a bundle of worn-out clouts and stockings.
WIG: Black looks like white, and ugly like fair.
PG: Big looks like little, and filthy like clean.
WIG: Oh, Peer, I see we are splendidly suited!

This passage is from Ibsen's play "Peer Gynt," which is (loosely) based on Norwegian folklore. It strikes me for multiple reasons-the characters here are lying but it's a common aspect of Faerie lore that the enchanted person may see a beautiful palace full of riches, which in reality is a shack full of rags and broken utensils, or something to that affect. Yet, if there are two possible ways of perceiving, who's to say which version of the Faerie world is real? Even when the literal facts don't change, sometimes all it takes is a little imagination and contentment to make a situation enchanting for one person but miserable for another. The aspect of not judging by initial appearances of course brings to mind Beauty and the Beast, but the element of deception also has similarities to the Emperor's New Clothes.

After this part of the play, Peer goes to the Hall of the Mountain King to marry his new bride (the Woman in Green is really the Troll King's daughter), but is turned upon by the Trolls when he isn't willing to have his eyes gauged out so that she will seem beautiful to him. Don't feel too sorry for Peer though-he only wanted to marry her because he heard she was rich. Hence this very famous classical piece, which I bet you've heard even if you're not into classical music. Below is a metal version by Apocalyptica.

Jultomten

In general, our modern Santa Claus came from a historical figure, St. Nicholas. But in Sweden, their Santa Claus figure was actually once a house elf.

The Swedish tomte is the equivalent of a hob, brownie or house-elf found in other parts of Europe. They live in houses and can be quite helpful, but very nasty if denied their usual salary (porridge with butter on Christmas night) or if he felt offended, after which he would punish people-sometimes harmelss pranks, other times killing those who ate his porridge.

Denmark's house elf, the nisse, started bearing presents on Christmas around the 1840s, and the Swedish tomte followed his example. Jenny Nystrom illustrated the tomte as a more Santa Claus-like figure-wearing red with a white beard (illustrations shown above). He had a goat rather than reindeer, and though over time he's been more and more influenced by the Western Santa Claus, some in Scandinavia still leave out porridge for him (I'd rather have cookies, myself...).

Other Swedish Christmas traditions come from ancient folklore. Long ago people believed that the dead would come back to visit their homes on Christmas, so lights were left on, beds were left open (the people slept on the floor), bath houses were warmed, and food was left out for them. Some of these traditions have been attributed to being for the Christ-child, but that's not where they originated. There was much superstition attached to every activity done on Christmas-for example, if a light went out during the night it was an omen of death in the coming year, and I wonder if that's the original reason for why we still have outdoor Christmas lights on through the night. Sleigh bells served the purpose of making noise to keep away goblins and demons. Goblins were supposedly often present at Christmastime, and there are many stories of people who were whisked away to another spirit world on Christmas. Christmas, like fairy tales,

tends to have a reputation that it's mainly for children (and marketing), but both things started out much darker and not exclusively for children at all.

One other interesting thing-there was a belief in ancient rural communities that the well-being of a farm was dependent on the well-being of a certain tree, called an ancestral tree-often thought to be the home of the farm's house elf. Christmas trees are a relatively recent tradition in the long history of Christmas, but earlier generations may have had those associations in mind when decorating their sacred Christmas trees.

Dragons

"Fairy tales don’t tell children that dragons exist. Children already know dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed."- G. K. Chesterton

Dragons are part of the stereotyped fairy tale story-hence the quote by Chesterton, and the fact that the image above is listed under "fairy tale figures" on this site. But can you think of any fairy tales that feature dragons? If you thought of Sleeping Beauty, that was only Disney's invention to have the Prince fight Maleficent as a dragon.

I can only think of a very few fairy tales that actually have dragons in them, and they're very obscure. However, this little Serbian tale may give us insight into an example of the dragon stereotype:

There was an emporer with three sons. One day the eldest was hunting and saw a hare spring out of a bush, and chased it. Only the hare was really a dragon, and it ate him (killer rabbit from Monty Python, anyone?). The same thing happened to his middle brother. The third son went hunting, but chose not to follow the hare. He went to hunt elsewhere and returned to find an old woman. He greeted her respectfully, and she told him that the hare was really a dragon who killed many people. The prince wished to free the old woman from the dragon, and instructed her to flatter the dragon into telling her where his strength was kept. Wherever he told her, she was to fondle and kiss that place as if out of love.

The old woman did as she was told. The dragon told her false locations twice, but believing her show of love for him, he told her the true location of his strength: in another emperor's court, in a lake, in a dragon, in a boar, was a pigeon, and that pigeon was the dragon's strength.

The prince set out for the kingdom, disguised as a shepherd, and offered his service to the emperor of the other land. The emperor sent him out where no other shepherd had returned. The prince brought with him a falcon, hounds, and a bagpipe. He called to the dragon, "Dragon, dragon! come out to single combat with me to-day that we may measure ourselves together, unless you're a woman." (In the book this tale is in, there's a footnote here that explains, "This is intended as an insult.")

The dragon responds to the taunt. They wrestled till afternoon, when the dragon requested to moisten his head in the lake. The prince claimed "if I had the emperor's daughter to kiss me on the forehead, I would toss you still higher." They separated, and the people of the kingdom were astounded to see the new shepherd return alive. The emperor sent two grooms to watch what he did, and the same thing happened the next day. The emperor sent his daughter to go with him on the third day, who went weeping, but her father had full faith in the shepherd.

The same thing happened the next day, only after the shepherd taunted the dragon with the kiss, the emperor's daughter ran up and kissed him. The prince threw the dragon p in the air, and when it fell it burst into pieces. The boar sprang out, and the prince shouted to the shepherd dogs to hold it. They tore it to pieces, and out came the pigeon. The prince loosed the falcon, who captured the pigeon. Once the prince asked the pigeon where his brothers were, he killed the pigeon. The prince then married the princess and released his brothers.

Swan of Tuonela

In the Kalevala, Finland's national poem, several characters of Finnish mythology are included to make one epic poem. One of these characters is Leminkainen, who makes a journey to the underworld, or Tuonela. From wikipedia:

"In one myth he drowns in the river of Tuonela (the underworld) in trying to capture or kill the black swan that lives there as part of an attempt, as Ilmarinen once made, to win a daughter of Louhi as his wife. In a tale somewhat reminiscent of Isis' search for Osiris, Lemminkäinen's mother searches heaven and earth to find her son. Finally, she learns of his fate and asks Ilmarinen to fashion her a rake of copper with which to dredge her son's body from the river of Tuonela. Thus equipped, she descends into the underworld in search of her son. On the banks of the river of the underworld, she rakes up first Lemminkäinen's tunic and shoes, and then, his maimed and broken body. Unrelenting, she continues her work until every piece of Lemminkäinen's body is recovered. Sewing the parts together and offering prayers to the gods, the mother tries to restore Lemminkäinen to life, but succeeds only in remaking his body, life is still absent. Then, she entreats a bee to ascend to the halls of the over-god Ukko and fetch from there a drop of honey as ointment that would bring Lemminkäinen back to life. Only with such a potent remedy is the hero finally restored."

Akseli Gallen-Kallela

Finnish composer Sibelius wrote a suite describing the adventures of Leminkainen. "The Swan of Tuonela" depicts the dark swan gliding along the lake of the Underworld. The music is slow and ominous, yet beautiful at the same time.

French fairy tales

This spring I have the wonderful opportunity to travel to France and Germany. I'm really excited and I was thinking about trying to do French and German fairy tale-themed posts, but it's kind of impossible to have a fairy tale blog and avoid French and German fairy tales. Just about every well known fairy tale is from either Perrault or the Grimms (Beauty and the Beast is not, but is still French, as we shall see.)

Today I'm focusing on the rise of the French literary fairy tale. France is really where fairy tales became popular with the upper class- a couple Italian collections existed previously, but we have the French to thank for much of fairy tale popularity today. Previous to 1690, fairy tales were thought to be for children and peasants, and scorned by the upper class. Those who did share fairy tales were doing it all orally. Fairy tales became more popular as aristocratic French women formed salons, in which they would gather to discuss important topics to them-art, literature, love, marriage, and freedom. They wanted to set themselves apart as intellectuals and were a bit elitist. One of their goals was to improve their speech and discuss morality and manners, and to do this, they would practice telling each other fairy tales. They would be practicing the art of storytelling, speaking, and instilling their values into the stories at the same time. Telling fairy tales was the thing to do at gatherings back then-guests would take turns telling tales, speaking as if making it up on the spot, but really the tales had been planned out and rehearsed at home.

The attraction to fairy tales was linked to the spirit of the times-Louis XIV wanted his court to be the most radiant in Europe. The French wanted to translate the splendor of their country into splendid stories. The women who told the tales also added their own values-often feminist, their characters would resist male dominance, and their supernatural worlds would be governed by all-powerful female fairies, not male monarchs.

The palace of Louis IV

Fairy tales went through three stages in France. The first was the salon stage. Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy kicked the whole thing off by including the fairy tale The Island of Happiness in a novel. Other authors (including Charles Perrault) jumped on the bandwagon and published their own collections of fairy tales. For the first time these salon fairy tales were traveling beyond the salon and becoming literary tales. Around 1688, France had its own recession that makes ours look like a walk in the park. Louis XIV continued to live his extravagant lifestyle and taxed all levels of French society, so even the aristocrats felt the sting. Because of censorship, the fairy tale was a way to critique the government subtley, as well as instill hope. Most of the famous authors from this period were aristocrats who got in trouble with the king at some point.

Louis XIV

The tales themselves were not complete inventions, nor were they pure folktales. Tellers would know the folklore of their regions of France, embellish tales in the salons, share ideas and edit with each other. Together they established a common tone for the tales, and really set a lot of standards for fairy tales as we still know to be part of the fairy tale formula. The French salon writers didn't shy away from violence-"in fact, the salon tales of the refined French ladies make the Grimms' tales look prudish." The protagonists of the tales had to suffer in order to demonstrate her nobility (much like many of the authors themselves suffered). The tales in general were very serious in tone-not escapist in the sense we often think of. "The fairy tales were meant to make readers realize how deceived they were if they compared their lives to the events in these tales."

The second stage was the Oriental Fairy Tale. The Translation of 1001 Nights (Arabian Nights) into French in 1704-17 made those tales very popular. Disillusionment with the decline of Louis XIV's court and the appeal of the exotic made the Middle East a more appealing option. Significantly for this period, women played less of a dominant role in the tales, and "the tales were no longer connected to the immediate interests of the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie."

The final stage was the Comic and Conventional Fairy Tale. (I find this fascinating because we seem to have gone through the same stages-minus the Oriental stage. Wouldn't you say fairy tale parodies are very popular right now?)

In France, the same parodying happened. Once the fairy tale genre had become well known, authors could start playing with it- either through gentle mocking, or by taking themes and expanding on them in a more serious vein. Mlle. de Lubert and Mme. de Villeneuve did the latter. Beauty and the Beast fans, take note! This is the Mme. de Villeneuve who wrote the 1740 long version which is the origin of Beauty and the Beast as we know it today! (Influenced by former tales, as other posts discuss.)

Prior to this, fairy tales had been circulated among adults. Only later, by Mme. Leprince de Beaumont, were fairy tales rewritten exclusively as teaching moments for children. Beauty and the Beast fans should recognize her name as well-she's the one who simplified Villeneuve's tale and made it famous, in 1757. Others also simplified and moralised the tales, distributing them to children and the peasants, where the literary tales once again became integrated into oral folk lore. So even the tales which have not reached universal fame today are influential in the standards they set for the fairy tale genre-each generation molded the tales according to current ideas, handed their creation to the next generation to keep altering and evolving, and the process is still going on today.

Source: Jack Zipes, introduction to Beauties, Beasts, and Enchantment: Classic French Fairy Tales(the link is to the Hardcover version, though it is more expensive, because only it includes the Villeneuve version of batb)