Sun, Moon, and Talia

Spin some flax? What could possibly go wrong?

We've covered the story of Sleeping Beauty already on this blog.  Today, I thought we could look at a variant, called Sun, Moon, and Talia. You can find it here. It's just a little different.

Firstly, it is interesting to me that even though the cause of the death-like sleep is now flax instead of a spindle, the vehicle is still the same. I wonder why spinning was such a terrible thing. The difference is very important because Talia didn't need a kiss to wake her; she needed the flax removed. This allowed the king to come into the house and rape her without her waking up. At least she's happy about her twin babies whom she doesn't remember making.

Honestly, the king is a slimeball. Not only does he rape this girl, but then he promises to bring her and their children to his kingdom. Which he never does. It works to his advantage to leave Talia, Sun, and Moon in their secluded castle where no one will know about them, and rule the kingdom with his wife. It doesn't seem like Talia even knows he's married. She also doesn't seem to mind that he slept with her when she wasn't awake to consent. That's either got to be his delivery or her not knowing that's wrong.

We also have the king's current wife, the queen. The story makes us dislike her as soon as she's introduced. At first, she does nothing wrong. She just wants to know if her husband was cheating on her, which turns out to be a valid concern. Her actions after that are less than stellar. Who even thinks about cooking up babies and feeding them to their father? Besides the stepmother in The Juniper Tree, I mean.

At the end, everything works out well for Talia. Or, as well as it can. I have trouble with the moral written as part of this story. Talia did not get good fortune in her sleep. The real moral of this story is that if you're leaving someone alone and they're passed out, you'd better be sure they're safe. Perhaps if she'd had a hedge of briars...

Do you have a folk tale you'd like me to talk about? Leave a comment below!

Unanana and the Elephant

He looks like he could eat a couple of kids whole.

Hello, reader. This week, I'd like to look at a tale that is probably unfamiliar to you. Unanana and the Elephant is a folktale from Southern Africa and it's pretty great. You can find the version I'm talking about here, just try not to get lost in all of the pictures.

Firstly, Unanana is dedicated to her children. She has been out all morning gathering firewood and when she hears her children have been kidnapped, she only stops to get what she needs before going out again. She is going to rescue them by herself. Also, think about how far she must have already walked that morning, and how far she walked after getting her beans and knife. Once she finds the elephant, she has to be worn out, but she doesn't let the elephant know that, which leads me to my next point.

Unanana is also incredibly brave. She goaded that elephant with one tusk into eating her alive. She had no real way of knowing what would happen to her after she was eaten, but if there was a chance that her children were still alive, then she would be too. Luckily for her, they were alive and so she didn't die either. She brought her knife along not so that she could try to kill the elephant when she found it, but so that she could cut her way out from inside of it. This is not a woman you want to cross.

We aren't told much about appearance except for Unanana's children, who are beautiful. It doesn't matter in this story what anyone else looks like, which is kind of a nice change from the Grimms' formula. Although, it is sad that the children are kidnapped because they're pretty.

So, if we're looking for morals, this one is simple: don't kidnap the kids of a woman who will do anything to get them back. Especially if she has a giant knife.

Have a story you want me to talk about? Leave me a comment below!

The Six Swans

Guys, can you hurry up? I'm burning, here.

Today, we're meandering back toward the known path with this story. The Six Swans is a fairy tale that has a female protagonist who does more than look pretty. There are several stories like this in the world's folktales, thank goodness. Go ahead and read this story here.

As usual, we do have the moral that if you look pretty, things will turn out well for you. It was because the princess looked so nice that the king in that land took her away to marry her. It is interesting to note that we are not told how she feels about this marriage until nearly the end of the story when she calls the king "dearest husband", and we just have to take it on faith that she means this genuinely. She also has three children and she didn't die in childbirth, so it's a win all around.

However, let's look at the other side of this. This princess got what she needed through hard work. She was too afraid to tell her father that her stepmother had bewitched her brothers, but she went after them. On her own. Once they tell her the way to set them free, she gets to work right away. This is a princess. She could have come home and gotten someone else to do it, or gotten the king to make her stepmother do it as punishment for transforming the boys in the first place. She takes personal responsibility for this quest and starts making shirts out of flowers. She's got six years to do this, which makes me wonder how well preserved the flowers would be, but I assume part of the spell keeps them in good enough shape to make a garment. She is dedicated enough not to speak, even when her mother-in-law accuses her of eating her own children. I'm impressed by our protagonist's dedication, but also very confused by the mother-in-law. How did she decide on cannibalism, of all things, as the way to defame her daughter-in-law?

In the end, we learn one overwhelming truth: don't give strangers your necklace, or they'll want everything else you have too.

Have a story you want me to talk about? Leave me a comment below! It doesn't have to be a Grimm fairy tale. I'll be expanding to the folk tales of other cultures soon.

The Juniper Tree

All this for an apple?

So far, I've looked at standard fairy tales. Most people know those stories, and those versions of them. Today, I want to take us down a less well-traveled road. Around the Victorian era, someone decided that fairy tales should be for children, so they cleaned up what they could, and completely erased others. Like this story. The Juniper Tree has murder, cannibalism, and some more murder. Not exactly something you want the nanny reading to your children before they go to bed. The link to the version I'm talking about is here.

Let's begin with the women in this story. In the most obvious aspect, you have the stepmother as the villain. She kills her stepson and makes her daughter think that she had killed the boy instead. Then they hide the body in a stew. Which the father eats all of. Crafty, but in a gross way. She's defeated when her sins come home to roost, literally, and the bird drops a millstone on her head. In a way she set up her own demise, but I doubt she was thinking her stepson would come back as a magic bird after he'd been eaten.

On the other hand, we have the boy's mother. I know she died after the first few paragraphs, but she still plays a role in this story. She clearly loved the juniper tree quite a bit, even eating the berries, which might have been a terrible idea, since it's possible those berries were poisonous. That might explain why the mother died. Whatever her cause of death, it's very important that she was buried beneath the juniper tree. That's the reason the tree was able to change the little boy's bones into a magical bird. It's because, as much as this woman loved the juniper tree, she loved her son even more. This story can be seen as two women's wills battling because they are the ones who set these events in motion. In the end, the mother's love wins out over the stepmother's greed and insecurity.

However, let's not discount the boy entirely. It was through his mother's love that he came back, but his actions after that were his own. Once he is a bird, he learns the lesson that everyone who wants to make a living in the arts has learned: never sing for free if you can charge for it. He charges pretty high prices too, a gold chain, red shoes, and a millstone. He also plays his cards well, dispensing gifts to his father and stepsister, and death from above to his murderous stepmother. Once he is revenged, he turns back into a little boy and the family happily goes inside. I guess someone else had to clean up the mess under the millstone.

I suppose the moral of this story is not to murder anyone, because they might come back to kill you.

The Little Mermaid

Oh hey. Wanna fall in love?

This week, let's look at the Little Mermaid. I mean the story written by Hans Christian Anderson, found here. It's a bit longer than most fairy tales, but I'll wait while you read it.
Love is a funny thing. Anderson spent most of his life pining for someone and that shows through in his stories. In this one, the mermaid falls in love with a man who considers her like a sister and they are never together the way she wants them to be. Poor little princess.

In this story we learn that if you give up everything for someone, you might not end up with them. I'm not sure if the little mermaid considers a shot at having a soul better than getting to live with and love her prince. Or even if she considers spending 300 years to earn a soul better than turning to foam on the sea. I can see why Disney changed the story when they made it into a movie. It's not a happy ending, but it's not as sad as it could have been, I suppose.

We also learn that communication is incredibly important and that if you're going to pin your hopes on loving someone, you'd better be sure they aren't in love with someone else first.