The Girl Who Got the Better of the Gentleman

It's hard to find a picture to fit this story, so here's a picture of Ireland.

This week, we travel to Ireland to look at one of their folktales, specifically, The Girl Who Got the Better of the Gentleman. It fits right in with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Well, almost.

In this tale, we have a wise girl with an old father. The man the girl's father works for keeps threatening to kill the old man unless he can answer these riddles. Of course, the girl figures them out and the old man's life is saved. What puzzles me is that this girl then agrees to marry the gentleman. Not only did he try to "take liberties" with her, but he kept threatening to put her father to death. Then again, they were beggars before the gentleman employed her father, and marrying a man who was so well off would ensure that she would never have to beg again. Hopefully, he respected her wishes after they were married.

In any case, I love these stories where the heroine answers the outlandish riddles to save someone's life. A riddle seems like a trivial thing to kill someone over, but it happens in several stories. Part of my enjoyment is that the woman is getting the better of the man asking the riddles, but also that these stories celebrate the intellect and not just brute strength. Many of our heroes are brave and strong, but we never really know how smart they are, because someone else always gives them the tricky answers to problems that they can't fight their way through. A perfect example of this was our story last week, The Fire Bird and Vasilisa. Of course, in this story, the wise partner is a horse, but that's another analysis entirely.

I suppose if we're looking for a moral to this story, there's a few. One is "Be careful not to damage your husband's fragile ego, or he'll try to get rid of you." Another moral could be, "The smartest girl gets the rich man." Or perhaps, it's simply, "If you are only able to take three loads out of the house with you when you leave, be sure to just have two kids."

Have another folk tale you want me to write about? Do you have a particular country or region you want to hear a story from? Comment below!