Prince(s) and the Pea

I've heard of tales related to Princess and the Pea in which other women were so delicate that even flower petals, moonbeams, and sounds gave them bruises, but this story from Csenge Virag Zalka's Tales of Superhuman Powers is the first story I've heard of that gives us a gender swapped version of delicate skin!

"Three Critical Men" from India tells of three brothers who are all trying to avoid fetching a turtle for their father to sacrifice, each using his sensitivities as an excuse, the eldest to food, the middle to women, the youngest to beds. Since they couldn't decide who was the most critical, their father gave them each a test. The eldest found the smell of a gourmet feast to be repulsive, smelling like corpses, and it was discovered the rice had been grown in fields that were close to a funeral burning place. The second son couldn't stand the smell of a beautiful woman that was sent to him, saying she reeked of goats, and it was found that the woman had been raised on goat's milk. And when the youngest had a bruise on his side from his bed piled with seven mattresses, a single strand of hair was found under the mattresses. In the end each brother was given gold and said to be equally critical, and the turtle was forgotten about.

There are other related tales to this around the world, Zalka shares. The sensitivity of the Princess in Andersen's famous tale could be seen, if not as a literal unfortunate condition, symbolically or satirically. In "The Three Critical Men", the sensitivities are really more like really refined tastes-each is a connoisseur in his respective field, and at the end they are referred to as "abilities" (although it seems like they would just make life more difficult for the brothers).

There is also The Tale of the Dragon, from Greece, in which a King tests a young man by putting ragged bed covers on his bed, to see if it will interrupt his sleep and reveal if he is truly rich or not. The man tosses and turns all night, satisfying the King-but not because of the covers, but because he was afraid of losing his pea with which he was to start his fortune. (Interesting way to connect a pea with loss of sleep...)

UPDATE: The Earl of Cattenborough is a Puss in Boots tale in which the young man is tested to see if he is really royalty by being given a "mean truckle bed." It's the cat who spots this potential red flag and tells the hero to refuse to sleep in it. (Thanks, Aster Haiku, for the link in the comments!)

Are there other gender reversed versions of "Princess and the Pea"?

Illustration by Kay Nielsen

Punchkin: An Indian Rapunzel Tale

This story from India is found in Surlalune's Rapunzel Tales From Around the World Collection, although it reads like an epic mashup of Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel, with some fun twists!

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Once there was a Raja with seven daughters,but the youngest, Balna, was more clever than the rest. Their mother had died, so the sisters cooked the dinner.

Every evening, a widow and her daughter would come begging for some of their food. Balna warned her sisters not to help the widow, but her sisters insisted on being generous. Only, when no one was looking, the widow would ruin the meal by putting mud in the bowls.

The Raja noticed the food was ruined, but knew his daughters wouldn't spoil it on purpose, so he hid to watch what happened. When he saw the widow, he called her to him, and she claimed that she had only done it to get an audience with him, and her words pleased him, so he married her.

The new Ranee (Queen) hated the Princesses, and wanted to get rid of them. She gave them only a little bread to eat, and none of the nice things they were used to. The sisters used to go to their mother's tomb and weep. As they did that, a pomelo (citrus fruit) tree grew up and gave them food, so they didn't even want any of the bad food their stepmother offered them.

This made her suspicious, so she sent her daughter to see how her stepdaughters could be so healthy, and her daughter discovered the pomelo tree. Balma noticed her, and told her sisters they should send her away, but the sisters saw no harm. So the Ranee's daughter told her about the tree. The Ranee feigned sickness, and told the Raja that only the tree that grew on his wife's grave could cure her, so he had to cut it down.

The sisters wept at this, but by the grave they saw a white cream that hardened into cakes, and they ate this instead. Once again, the Ranee sent her daughter to discover how the seven sisters could be happy and healthy, and despite Balma's warnings, the sisters didn't send her away, and she discovered the truth.

The Ranee pretended to be sick again, and this time demanded that the daughters be killed, because only their blood on her forehead and palms would make her better. But the Raja could not bring himself to kill his daughters, so he brought them out to the jungle and left them there. When they woke up alone, they started crying, but seven Princes found them, who each married a Princess.

They all went to live in the Princes' land, and were very happy. The only one to have a child was Balma, who had a son, and all the royal couples loved the son and raised him together.

They were all happy for a time, but one day, Balma's husband went out hunting, and never came back. Each of the brothers went out looking for him, and also never returned. The Princesses were very grieved.

One night a stranger entered the castle, claiming to be a holy man; he was really an evil sorcerer named Punchkin. He saw Balma and thought her the most beautiful, and offered her to come home with him as his wife. She refused, saying that after raising her son she would go in search of her husband. He was angry at this, and dragged her away, and locked her in a tall tower.

Balma's sisters discovered she was missing, and the committed to raising their nephew. When he turned 14, they told him the truth about his missing parents and uncle, and he was determined to go out and find them. Despite his aunts' protests, he journeyed until he came to a land with a tall tower.

He was befriended by a kind woman who told him that the country belonged to a great enchanter who turned anyone who displeased him into a tree or a stone, and had trapped a Princess in the tower who refused to marry him. The boy realized this must be his family. He disguised himself as the woman's daughter and the sorcerer had him deliver things to his mother in the tower. The son had a ring that had been given to him by his mother at birth; when he showed this to her, she realized who he was.

Balna's son told his mother to pretend to have accepted the sorcerer's proposal, but first to demand to know the secret of his power. She did this, and learned that in a far away jungle there was a parrot, and if the parrot died, so would the sorcerer; only, the parrot was guarded by thousands of genii who would kill anyone who approached.

So Balna's son left again, for the remote jungle. On his way, he saw a serpent about to attack an eagle's nest. He slew the serpent, and the eagles were so grateful they were willing to fly him above the genii while they slept and steal the parrot.

The boy used the parrot to get the sorcerer to undo all of his spells, before dismembering the parrot and wringing its neck, killing the sorcerer. His parents and uncles were free from their enchantment, and they returned to their families and lived happily
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Some of my favorite things about this tale:

-Positive sister relationships. Even though Balma is cleverer than her sisters, there is no ill will between them, even after her sisters' foolish choices made a lot of trouble for them! In turn, her sisters weren't jealous or spiteful that Balma was the only one to have a child, but lovingly raised him together in her disappearance.
-Kindness-but not gullibility. At first I was a little bothered that Balma was rewarded for not being willing to share a little food and fire with a widow and her daughter, as if it's clever to never risk anything to give to those who have little. Yet, it's true that there are times to be cautious and not overly nice-we teach children about stranger danger, and people need to be aware of cyber crime scams that prey on people's good intentions to get their money. This is where knowing folklore as a whole can be beneficial-overall, kindness is rewarded, but that doesn't mean every situation is the same! (Plus, we do see Balma's son being kind and going out of his way to save the eaglets, and he is clearly rewarded for that, so even in the same tale we see a balance)
-Balma is saved not by her Prince, but by her son. I don't have anything against lovers rescuing each other, per se, other than the fact that it's become a bit of a cliche in fairy tales. Having the son do the rescuing is a refreshing change, especially since this tale shows:
-A clever and resourceful heroine. True, she is temporarily rendered helpless when trapped in a tower by a sorcerer, but she was the only one to spot the danger from her stepmother and stepsister earlier, and was able to lead the sorcerer into thinking she would marry him, and give up his secret. Again, I love the balance in this tale-I don't like the argument that showing females as victims for part of the story is unfeminist, because there are times where we might all be rendered helpless, and we should never blame the victim. I like tales where the characters work together.

Also, the Tower images in this post (taken by Rebecca Stice, found here) are from Helen's Tower. If anyone is able to vacation in Northern Ireland, you can live out a Rapunzel fantasy by renting this tower out on airbnb!

The Frog Prince: A Sri Lankan Tale

Found this very curious Sri Lankan version of the "Frog Prince" tale in Surlalune's The Frog Prince and Other Frog Tales From Around The World. And although it features a frog who turns into a prince, it's pretty different from our standard, Grimm version of the tale of the same name.

This frog prince was not enchanted or cursed to have a frog form, but was simply born as a frog to a poor widow. One day the King proclaimed that whoever brought him the Jeweled Golden Cock from the home of the Ogress Rakshasi should be given half the kingdom and an elephant's load of goods. His mother pounded rice for a living, and one day he strung some of the rice on a date tree, and became a handsome Prince. (One wonders why he hadn't already done this? And what correlation the action had to the consequence? The mysteries of the fairy tale world...)

From there the tale continues for a while like a typical hero tale-the Prince travels, is given magical gifts from several Kings to help him in times of trouble (a piece of charcoal that will turn into a fire-fence, a stone that becomes a mountain, and a thorn that creates a thorn fence). He arrives at the Rakshasi's home and is hidden and protected by the Rakshasi's daughter. She hides him in a trunk, tells the Ogress that the human flesh she smells must be from elsewhere, and the next day provides a distraction so the Prince can get away with the Jeweled Golden Cock. (The Rakshasi and her daughter seem similar to Baba Yaga, who also sometimes has daughters who tend to fill the same helper functions while Baba Yaga tries to eat the hero).


The ogresses begin to chase the hero, and he uses his magical objects to throw barriers in their way. The thorn fence and mountain don't seem to be too much trouble for him, but they are both burned in the fire (even the daughter who helped him! Although the narration does say she all of a sudden starts running towards him to eat him. I had sort of been hoping that the ogress' daughter would become beautiful and marry the Prince).

Liga-marta

Then the ending is surprising and sudden. The frog returned to the string of rice that transformed him, ate the rice, and resumed his former frog form. "After he became a frog, the clothes that he was wearing, and the horse, and the Jeweled Golden Cock vanished. Out of grief on that account, that frog died at that very place."

Rakshasa image from Wikipedia
Read the full tale on Surlalune

*Also: I've added the tag "unhappy endings" to this and several older posts. So if you want to find world folklore and/or versions of traditional tales with a tragic twist, they're easier to find in my archives now

The Dog Bride

Kate over at Enchanted Conversations shared an Animal Bride tale, The Dog Bride. It's related to the group of selkie tales where creatures that are thought to be animals shed their skins and are really beautiful women, and men steal (or in this case burn) the skins and basically force them to become a bride. This tale is unusual in that, initially, the other villagers laugh at the man who wishes to marry a dog (he is the only one who knows the dog's secret). It may be disturbing that the other villagers eventually allow him to do so, but in other animal bride and bridegroom tales, marriage to animals seem to happen with little reaction from the outside world. Fathers give their daughters over to bears and other beasts with frighteningly little resistance in many Animal Bridegroom tales. Of course, that could also be due to the style of fairy tales themselves, which generally represent any emotion or inner conflict through action or symbol, as Max Luthi describes.

The story also ends with a friend of the main character's who marries a dog, hoping to get the same kind of surprise as his friend did-but he is only met with humiliation. So, the moral of the story is, don't marry a dog unless you know for sure she's secretly really hot.

Indian mythology-Ganges

Indian mythology is intertwined with Hindu beliefs. Indian epic poems "are some of the oldest epic poetry ever created and some works form the basis of Hindu scripture" (from wikipedia), unlike Western fairy tales, which existed before the spread of Christianity, and when Christianity came, some tellers of tales infused the newer Christian theology into the older fairy tales.

Although, apparantly the Hindu tales were also revised a bit for the sake of religion. In a 1928 book from my library, Washburn Hopkins retells some of these ancient stories. He says, "I have endeavored to tell the tale as I conceive it to have been before it was tampered with, to remove the priestly interpretation and re-interpret the story as it should have descended to us, with the emotional implications (suppressed by the priests) intact." I am not familiar with the other versions of these stories (or if modern scholars agree with Hopkins' claims), but the ones Hopkins tells are retold beautifully. Here I am going to relate excerpts of his tale "Ganges" (also known as Ganga).

"There lived of yore a maid divine, a daughter of the sky,
And all the gods rejoiced in her whenever she passed by.
Like shining water leamed her form, her laugh was like a rill,
She was so happy in her heart she never could be still.
Now sorrow she had never known, and ne'er had heard of woe;
So joyous in the clouds she lived she seldom glanced below;
She had no time for other things, but all her life was play.
She had the clouds to toss about, to sing and greet the day,
And chase the little wandering starts that always got away."

One day Ganges comes to the door of heaven, from where she can look down and see earth. But when she does she is stricken to see the sufferings of the people down below.
"As Ganges looked, the joyousness slow faded from her face,
The dancing light that loved her eyes fled to another place,
And for the first time in her life she felt no longer glad;
She became sorrowful; Ganges was sad."

The other gods find Ganges and attempt to distract her.

"Turn thy face from earth, dear, turn thy head and smile.
We from thee have hid the truth but ah, so short a while!
Life is linked with suffering. The truth at last we own,
Which all the gods concealed from thee. We would not make it known"

The gods go on to explain that the earth is in draught and they cannot do anything to help, because Fate has ruled that until a god leaves heaven and gives up their life for the sake of man, the ocean will continue to dry. None of them could imagine giving their lives for the humans, but after considering the matter, Ganges decided she would be the one to make the sacrifice.

The Ganges River in India

Ganges, fair Ganges, stood at heaven's high door.
She looked around on all the scenes she was to see no more;
But in her face no sadness showed, her sorrow was at rest,
She felt a wonder of great joy that flooded all her breast.
She gazed upon the earth below, into the distance deep,
There was no fear within her heart to take that deadly leap;
But she loosed her flowing garment and she clasped her hands on high,
And straight before the tearful gods sprang headlong from the sky.

"Thus she leaped, the immortal goddess, thus she left her home above;
Leaped to earth to show to mortals how a heart divine may love.
Touch we e'en her garment, lo! our souls are purified,
And all sins shall be forgiven him that bathes in Ganges' tide."