H is for Hands, Hair, Hips, Heels (Body Folktales)

This year, my A to Z Challenge theme is Body Folktales. Enjoy!

(Yes, I am aware it's Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels, but it was low hanging fruit.)

HANDS

There were some obvious choices here that I'm omitting, such as Beaumains from Arthurian legends, or the folktale type of the Handless Maiden (which I really hate, except for one Hungarian variant).

Invisible Grandfather (Italy)

A girl sets out to seek her fortune, and ends up in an enchanted castle. She encounters no one except a floating pair of hands that serve her food and make her bed. The hands turn out to belong to Invisible Grandfather, who helps the girl secure a king as a husband - but when she doesn't follow his instructions, he curses her to grow a beard. Unusually for folktales, the curse is lifted by an apology.

The most beautiful hands in the world (Philippines)

A girl is proud of her beautiful, soft hands but refuses to do any work to help others. She mocks another girl for having rough, dirty hands. And yet, when that other girl helps a poor woman, she is rewarded with riches - and told that her hands are the most beautiful.

The legend of St. Kilda (Scotland)

According to legend, people from both Uist and Harris coveted the island of St. Kilda. They decided to have a rowing race, and agreed that whoever lays a hand on the island first will be its owner. As they neared the shore, people from Harris were winning - but the leader of the boat from Uist, Colla MacLeod, chopped off his left hand in the last minute, throwing it to the shore, and thus won the race.

HAIR

Hair is very common in folktales. Think Rapunzel, think the Devil's three golden hairs, think Lady Godiva, or The youth with the golden hair (ATU 314). From mythology, think Sif's golden hair, Sedna's tangled hair, Prince Zal's white hair, or the myth from Guam where women catch a monster fish with their hair. (If any more come to mind, sound off in the comments!)

I picked some lesser known, interesting examples:

The king's daughter who lost her hair (Akamba people, Kenya)

My favorite hair-themed story. A haughty princess goes bald from a curse, and sends people out to find a magic tree that grows hair. A young man travels far and finds the enchanted island where the tree grows; he brings back all kinds of hair for the princess.

The maiden with the red-gold hair (Hungary)

This is a "False bride" folktale where the false bride (forced into pretending by her mother) is treated surprisingly kindly. The story tells about a prince who is looking for a special maiden with red-gold hair, and an evil countess who disguises her own daughter to fit the description.

The raven-haired prince (Slovakia)

In a kingdom where everyone has red hair, a raven-haired prince is born. His parents try everything to change his hair color but nothing succeeds; eventually they send him abroad to try his luck. On his way home his servant blackmails him to swap places. After that, the prince goes through a series of dangerous quests, even dies and is revived, and eventually reclaims his rightful place. And his hair turns red.

The girl who became a bird (Hausa, Niger)

A very beautiful Cinderella variant where the prince falls in love with the girl when he sees her at the party in tattered clothes, and asks about her life. Later, her stepmother braids a charm into her hair and turns her into a bird; she is found and rescued by her brother and her husband.

The dragon prince (Spain)

A girl encounters an injured dragon in the woods, and helps him. Later she discovers he is an enchanted prince who can only be saved if someone creates a suit of golden hair for the giant who cursed him. The girl takes up service as a princess' handmaid, and begs her for her golden hair - but she has to promise her the prince's hand in exchange. Luckily, it turns out the golden-haired beauty is the dragon prince's sister, so our heroic girl gets to marry him in the end.

HIPS

Father and Daughters (Morocco)

This is a "Basil Maiden" type folktale, about a clever girl who saves herself and her sisters from the intrigues of a prince. When he tries to put sleeping powder in their food, she manages to stay awake and kicks the guy out of the house so hard he breaks his hip. Later on, disguised as a doctor, she shows up at court to treat his injury (and get up to more shenanigans). At the end of the story the prince is sentenced to death for trying to harm her, but she commutes his sentence.

The lazy beauty and her aunts (Ireland)

A "Three Spinners" type tale, where a lazy girl is taken to a prince's castle with her mother's promise that she can work miracles in spinning and weaving. Three mysterious old women show up to help her - one with large feet, one with a large nose, and one with wide hips (Cailleach Croman Mór, Woman of the Big Hips). Each in turn tells the prince that their shape is due to the hard work they had done all their life. Alarmed, the prince forbids his bride from working ever again.

HEELS

The most obvious example would be Achilles' heel, but I'm not going to repeat it. If you are curious about a lesser known myth about the same, you can find it in my book.

How mosquitoes came to be (Tlingit)

A giant keeps killing people and devouring their heart. A brave man pretends to be dead, and the giant takes him to his house. There, he discovers that the giant is unkillable because he keeps his own heart in his left heel. As he enters the house again, the hero plunges a knife in his heel, killing him. He then burns the body - and the ashes turn into the first mosquitoes.

How rice came to Earth (Indonesia)

A poor boy walks up to the heavens on the rainbow, following some fairies. There, he encounters rice for the first time, but he is forbidden from taking any of it. When he tries to steal some, he cuts his heel on the rainbow bridge while fleeing and gets caught. The second time, he hides some grains inside the healing wound on his heel, and smuggles them safely down to earth.

The soldier and the wizard (Russia)

The folktale version of a villain being brought down by his own monologuing. A soldier encounters a wizard at night in a cemetery and goes on a clandestine nighttime adventure with him. At one point the wizard takes blood from a young couple, and tells the soldier they can only be revived if someone cuts them on the heel and restores their blood. In the end, the soldier learns all the wizard's secrets, and kills him.

Did you have fun with the stories on this list? Do you have a favorite?

A Whirlwind of Stories

Sunday is Visiting Day! We take a break from writing A to Z, and catch up on visiting other blogs. If you are looking for A to Z posts, scroll on down!
In the meantime, I am going to write about an awesome storytelling gig I had earlier this week.

After a long semester of snow days and schoolwork, I finally had the time and the opportunity to return to the local school that I adopted for storytelling practice purposes. They invited me in for Right to Read Week. I was scheduled to visit 7 classrooms on Thursday, and 2 on Friday - it was going to be a whirlwind of stories!
I unleashed a full semester's worth of pent-up storytelling energy. The kids didn't know what hit 'em. I broke in three new stories:

The King's Daughter who Lost her Hair (an Akamba folktale, about a princess who is mean to a magic bird and in return she goes bald; a hero has to go out and find a magic hair tree for her)
The Red Lion (a Persian folktale, about a prince who is terrified of lions, but no matter ow far he runs, he keeps encountering them, until he learns to face his fear)
The Sisimiqui (a Costa Rican folktale that features a rabbit riding an armadillo into battle) (yeah you read that right) (5th grade actually tagged this one "Assassin's Creed: Bunnyrabbit")
All three worked great. I did the princess one multiple times, and it was not only tremendous fun to tell, but it also managed to hold the kindergartners' rapt attention for almost twenty minutes!

I told a bunch of other things as well, such as Greek myths in 4th grade (Dionysus and the Pirates, and the fable of Momus - because they asked for my favorite), Journey to the West and some Nart sagas in 6th grade (I was really not planning on the former, but they were still talking about our trickster stories from last year, and before I knew it, I was asking them "have you ever heard about the Monkey King?..."), the adventures of St. Vincent de Paul (it's a Catholic school), and the meeting of Oisín and St. Patrick (to explain how tales get written down).
One of the things I loved the most was the questions kids asked. After every story they got to ask me anything they wanted to know, and most of them had great questions (if you ask me, the education system needs to encourage all students to ask as much as they can...). The first and second graders, for example, after hearing the tale of Oisín and Niamh and St. Patrick, had a slew of fun questions, such as "Who was Oisín's mother?" and "What was the name of his friends?" and "How could the horse run on water?" and "Where did the fairies go?" and "Are the Fianna the same as knights?" and even "Why did Oisín not die when he aged 300 years?" I was happy that I have a solid background knowledge in Fianna legends - answering their questions promptly and with real information delighted both them and me.

I was completely spent by the end of the day, but it was totally worth it.