Folktale Selection: Sometimes you just have to let toxic people go

Folktales and other traditional stories carry a community's values. They teach us about important things such as empathy, forgiveness, acceptance, teamwork, and more. They are not always as black and white as one may think: heroes can make mistakes and learn from them; villains can be forgiven.

But every once in a while, forgiveness is not the answer. Just like in real life, abusive relationships cannot be mended by second, third, fourth chances; no matter how well you communicate your feelings, you can't negotiate with an abuser who doesn't care if they hurt you. In these cases, the pressure to "forgive and try again" only results in more hurt. In these cases, even folktales know that the best course of action is severing ties with the ones that keep hurting you.

I have encountered many folktales that have a "happy ending" that involve people returning to spouses or parents that hurt - or even tried to kill - them, without the other party showing any sign of remorse. To balance out the scales, I made a selection of folktales about people who walk away from toxic relationships, and never look back.

Links in the titles, as usual.

Holua-Manu (Hawaii)

This is a very strong story. A boy's parents have magic powers and solely use them to torture their child for fun. He wants to go and play, but there are always more chores to do, and he can never do them well enough to please his parents. When he makes a decision to go do something for himself anyway, his parents grow furious and attack him. In the end, he manages to get away, and makes a decision to leave for good. The gods, as punishment, take away the parents' powers.

Three orphan sisters (Tu/Monguor people)

A couple wants a son, but instead they have three daughters. With the birth of each child, they resent each other and the children more and more, for not having a son. In the end, they take the girls out into the wilderness and abandon them. The girls are found by hunters and taken to a good home; eventually, they marry good men and live happily. One day they return to visit their parents, hoping to reconcile... but they find their parents still busy praying for a son and showing no remorse. So the girls leave without a word.

Youngest Brother Returns Favors (Tu/Monguor people)

Four orphan brothers each pursue different trades; the youngest goes to school and studies for examinations. When he wants to travel to take the exam, only one brother lends him support, the others mock him and turn him down. In the end, the boy becomes emperor - but when his cruel brothers come to him for favors, he turns them away. Later drought hits the lands, and he makes sure to help the brother that had been kind to him.

Nisang shamaness (Daur people)

This is a long and fascinating epic about a brave shamaness who descends into the underworld to save the soul of a young man. On the way back she encounters the soul of her late husband, who berates her for not saving him too. She tries to explain that she can't, but he gets violent and threatens her - so Nisang summons spirits to lock him up and leaves him behind. It is implied that he had not been a good husband while he was alive.

The king and the weaver bird (Nigeria)

A king marries a woman he loves, despite the warnings that women in her family often give birth to twins (an offense traditionally punishable by death). When she does indeed have twins, the king decides that his family is more important than what people think, and they all leave, transforming into weaver birds to live in the forest.

My Beauty (Haiti)

A girl is tortured by her cruel stepmother in the absence of her (grown-up) brothers. The stepmother eventually promises her to the Devil. In the last moment the brothers come to the rescue and take their sister away. Years later they return, only to find the stepmother telling lies and the father claiming that he did not notice anything at all. They all leave again, to live happily elsewhere.

A woman and the king's treasury (Syria)

A kind and little simple woman is abused by her husband, until one day he throws her out of the home. She wanders away, and accidentally witnesses two thieves dividing up treasure they stole from the King. She tells her husband, who takes the treasure, covers his tracks, and threatens her into silence. She decides to stand up for herself, and goes to report it all to the King - the thieves and the husband are arrested, the woman gets half the treasure, and she can live in wealth and peace for the rest of her life.

I also wrote a blog post about folktales that feature divorce, among them stories where people leave abusive spouses. You can find that post here.

Shamans and spirits (Folktales of Asian minorities 17. - Daur)

As a sequel to the Following folktales around the world reading challenge, I decided to start reading minority and indigenous folktales. First up are the minority peoples who live in Asia. You can find previous posts here, and you can follow the challenge on Facebook here.

China's Dagur Minority

Society, Shamanism, and Folklore 

Kevin Stuart, Li Xuewei & Shelear

Sino-Platonic Papers 1994.

The Daur live on the Chinese side of the border with Mongolia, they are related to Mongolians, and number about 130 thousand people.This detailed book is divided into three parts: The first introduces Daur culture, the second discusses Daur shamanism, and the third contains all the stories - 82 tales and 6 myths total. From the first chapter I learned a lot about Daur life, language, traditions, history, festivals, poetry, music, and crafts. The shamanism essay was very Chinese in the way it labeled all beliefs antiquated superstitions ("all religions are absurd"), but at least it admitted that recording them can be useful from an ethnographic point of view. The folktales in the third chapter have been recorded by a Daur native collector named Sayintana in the 1980s; 50 of them were told by an old storyteller named Qiker. The stories came with their own introduction about translation and cultural elements.

Highlights

The best story in the book was the legend of Nisang Yadgan, a long and epic underworld journey undertaken by a famous female shaman to bring a young man back from the dead. They met (and bargained with) gods, demons, spirits, Nisang's ex-husband, and other obstacles; they witnessed afterlife punishments that would put Dante to shame. Nisang appears in other neighboring cultural traditions as well. She must have bee a remarkable lady.

 I also loved the story of the man who (unwittingly) married a Ginseng Spirit. The feud between ginseng girls and spider demons became a complex multi-generational tragedy, but luckily it ended on a good note. Among the less happy love stories my favorite was the Yearning Swans, in which a boy and the girl fell in love while they studied together. Outside of romance, I loved the tale about the friendship between a kind boy and a tiger.

There was a memorable tale about a hunter and his nephew. The hunter's sister was half-eaten by a monster, so the hunter tried to get rid of her; her son, when he grew up, managed to return the other half of his mother's body, and even befriended the monster. When the hunter attacked them, he tied ten thousand bags of chili powder to birds' feet, and chili-bombed the enemy soldiers...

An interesting legend explained why the Daur don't have writing. It was about the monk Tang Seng who brought the holy scriptures of Buddhism (see Journey to the West). On the way, he lied to a giant turtle, and it ate him in revenge. The scriptures were scattered in the ocean, and the peoples who managed to fish some out are the ones with written literature.

Among the origin myths, the one about Holier Barken was the most fascinating. It was about a magical antelope that brought havoc to all the land; the Chinese tried to kill it multiple times but failed. In the end the antelope and an Oroqen man (see later) were struck by lightning at the same time, and their spirits combined into one deity. Combined spirits like this were actually common in Daur mythology.

Among the shaman legends the stories of Gahucha yadgan were memorable: he could make a river freeze over in the summer, but it cost him 10 years of his life. I also loved the short legend that claimed that trees have their own shamans that heal other trees. 

Image from here

Connections

Once again there was a myth about raising the sky; it said that it used to rain oil and snow flour, but when people started wasting food, the sky grew angry and rose up high out of reach. There was also a flood myth, combined with the tale type where animals rescued from the water are grateful, but humans aren't.

This book contained the best "princess in the shroud" variant I have ever read. In the tale of The boy and the demon, a young man married a dead girl unwittingly, and then they went through all kinds of adventures until an old drunk was brave enough to break her curse and bring her back to life. There was a great variant for "why old people are respected" as well: here the rescued father helped his son climb up to the sky, and find tools to defeat a giant rat demon.

There were other familiar tale types, such as three kidnapped princesses (Bear's Son), handless maiden, magic flight (here with a snake wife), sister turned into a monster (here a vulture spirit), and dragon slayer (here a pearl diver who blew up a sea serpent with gunpowder). The story of Aqinbu was also a kidnapped princesses tale, very similar to an Oroqen story I know.

As for tricksters: Sun Wukong, the Monkey King appeared in a legend - he was responsible for creating caves in the mountains. Tricksters got their own chapter in the book, and were mostly nameless poor boys or orphans. Many stories were familiar: fake fortune-teller, master thief, exchanged punishment, and other classic (and often bloody) tricks. I especially liked the tale where the Chinese tried to build a military camp by a Daur village - so the people moved the camp across the river at night, and pretended it had been blown over by the wind.

Image from here

Who's next?

The Hani people