The Girl and the Enchanted Quill

You never know when a crow is royalty.

Salutations, readers! This week, we look at a Bavarian folk tale, The Girl and the Enchanted Quill. I have to admit, I'm a huge fan of this story. It combines a few tropes, but it reads like something new. Click the link above to read it and continue below to analyze it with me.

It's possible that one of the reasons I like this story so much is because the female lead likes to read fairy tales and write. But it's also refreshing that when she needed "domestic" tasks, she couldn't do them well. So many heroines can cook the most amazing food. It's nice to see one that can't. Instead, she gets some help in the form of a quill. It kills me that apparently the crow didn't know that his quill could be magic. Although, since he was under a spell, it makes sense that his feathers could have magic on them. At least to me.

There are a few tropes in this story. We have a man in a family indebted to someone not human who wants a wife. The youngest sister is the one who agrees to marry him. The older sister(s) do their best to mess it up (although in this story it seems to be unintentional). The youngest sister has to go on a quest to free her fiance. There's a magical item that helps the protagonist with three difficult people (although the last one was a crowd of people). And the curse was broken when the youngest daughter proved herself. It kind of reminds me of The Black Bull of Norroway, actually.

That being said, the way all of these tropes are combined is pretty neat. It's not often the older sisters' curiosity has consequences. It's usually the curiosity they awaken in the youngest sister. Especially when it comes to looking at the male lead when they're not supposed to. And the magic item being something you can write with is pretty unique. Usually when you get your wishes granted, you have to say them out loud. But this heroine likes to write, so she gets to write.

It's also nice that, although she goes to serve in a king's castle, she doesn't marry him. She marries a prince who, I assume, is completely unrelated to that king. For all the king knows, his cook who suddenly became very good at her job, just left after some of his men went crazy.

We do need to talk about those "suitors". I don't consider them actual suitors because the heroine clearly didn't think they'd care about what she wanted. Otherwise she wouldn't have enchanted them to do something until they decided to leave her alone. What a great use of her magic. They could stop that action as soon as they stopped wanting to bother her. ...can I have a quill like that?

Anyway, it's obnoxious that all of these men keep trying to, well, woo her? Against her will? Bother her? I can't emphasize enough that they were going out of their way to bother her and she was doing what she could to stop them without hurting them. But they decided to beat her up and take away her quill. That's the other reason I can't call these men suitors in good faith. Clearly, they didn't actually care about her at all. So, since they wanted to whip her, she enchanted them to whip each other instead until they were too tired to think about her. Seems pretty legit to me.

Even after all of this, she's still willing to give up the quill so the crow can give it to someone else. She hadn't completed her task or broken his spell. And without the quill, she couldn't be a good cook. But she was willing to give him back his quill anyway. Fortunately, that was what it took to break the spell. Maybe her task wasn't to cook for the king, but to knock some sense into the men in that castle. Or for her to value others over herself by giving the quill back. Maybe her duties were fulfilled because she was able to serve the king an amazing meal? Hard to say.

The only thing I wish this story had done a little differently was to follow up on the sisters. They couldn't break the crow's curse, but did they try to help their sister find work, even behind the scenes? Did the youngest come home afterwards to tell them that she was okay? Did the sisters just go back home and go about their lives? I want to know. But I suppose that's what my modern version of the story is for.

The moral of this story is to use your cleverness to get you out of trouble. Alternatively, if your sisters are told not to snoop, make sure they can't so you don't get into trouble in the first place.

Have a different moral? Wondering where the parents of these sisters and their brother is? Have a story you want me to talk about? Comment below! And don't forget to subscribe if you like what you're reading.