Tarot Tales: L is for The Lovers

Welcome to the 2021 A to Z Blogging Challenge! My theme this year is Tarot Tales. I am making a selection of folktales, legends, and other traditional stories that correspond to tarot cards. Storytelling and tarot go well together. Do other stories come to mind? Let me know in the comments!

The card: The Lovers

Meanings: This card symbolizes the obvious: love, attraction, passion, romance, relationships, and following your heart. But it also broader than that, because it is connected to all kinds of meaningful relationships, harmony and communication, respect, and two forces coming together in a powerful union. In addition, this card is often used to symbolize choices and decisions, acting in accordance with your own values and beliefs, having integrity, and doing the right thing.

Selection process: The RWS Lovers card has very biblical imagery, with Adam and Eve and the angel and the serpent on the tree. I was looking for something less... biblical, and also something that makes a better love story. To make it extra difficult, I also wanted a tale that is about making choices. I finally decided on one of my favorite love stories in world folklore.

The story: The Pale Mountains (a.k.a. Prince of the Dolomites)

Origin: Italian, Tyrolean, Ladin

Summary: A prince falls in love with the moon, and pines away all his life wishing to reach it. One day he gets lost in the mountains, and in a dream he sees a radiant, beautiful girl who claims to be the daughter of the Moon King. The prince hands her a red flower, but when he wakes up, the girl is nowhere to be seen. 

Seeking the Moon Princess, the prince climbs the mountain with a bouquet of flowers, and encounters two old men who turn out to be citizens of the moon, on their way home. The prince begs them to take him along. They all fly up to she moon on a cloud, where the prince can finally meet the princess. They fall in love, get married, and live happily... for a while. The light of the moon is so radiant up close, however, that the mortal prince begins to go blind. He has to return to earth, and he takes his wife along. 

Once again, they are happy for a while; the princess plants moon flowers (edelweiss) all around, and she loves the people and colors of earth. However, she soon grows depressed and homesick, because the mountains seem dark and menacing to her. Eventually she has to go back home to heal; her husband follows her, but once again he begins to grow blind. The royal couple gives up hope of being together, and the prince, heartbroken, returns to earth alone.

Plot twist! The prince meets a band of Dwarves in the mountains, who are refugees from a war far East. Their king promises that if they can settle in the kingdom, they will help him. The prince convinces his father to give the high mountains to the Dwarves (since humans don't really go there anyway). In return, the Dwarves spin moonlight, and cover the rocks with it, turning the range of the Dolomites from dark grey to pale pastel colors - as they are to this very day. The Moon Princess can now happily return to earth, and live with her husband among the radiant mountains. 

Sources & notes: Read the story in this book, or here, or here.

Runner-ups: I was also considering some of my favorite feminist love stories, such as the Wooing of Pumei or Herburt and Hild. But since I already blogged about those, I wanted something new.

Have you ever been to the Dolomites? Would you like to visit now that you know the story? :)

Giants, Dwarves, Kobolds (Following folktales around the world 77. - Austria)

Today I continue the blog series titled Following folktales around the world! If you would like to know what the series is all about, you can find the introduction post here. You can find all posts here, or you can follow the series on Facebook!

In the Land of Marvels
Folk-tales from Austria and Bohemia
Theodor Vernaleken
Swan Sonnenchein, 1889.

The sixty tales included in this book were collected in Lower Austria and Bohemia in the second half of the 1800s by a professor named Theodor Vernaleken. He  gathered them from the oral tradition, aiming to create a supplement to the already famous Grimm collection. While the language of the stories is sometimes a little hard to follow, there were quite a few great, unusual fairy tales in the book; I left out the Bohemian ones from this post with a heavy heart, but I highly recommend reading them! Each story comes with notes, including the place where it was collected.

Highlights

Kreuzenstein

I really enjoyed the tale of Stupid Peter (despite the horrible title), in which a peasant boy found out about a magical castle from a knight, and proceeded to conquer it. He cot in through various tricks (including luring a lion into a bag, and throwing bacon at a dragon), and made friends with a woman named Pest. He threw an apple to an evil giant, and the woman got into the giant's stomach with the apple, and killed him. Don't eat unwashed fruit, children.
The story of Wild-Cat, regardless of the title, was not an animal tale, but a wild fairy tale adventure. The hero had for a godfather a wild man who rode a large black cat, and gave him gold (some godfathers are better than others). Wild-Cat fell in love with a princess, and even after the king kicked him out of the court, he managed to save the palace from being pillaged by robbers.
The story of Winterkolble was familiar, and yet unusual. A girl exiled from home (Grete, without Hansel) was raised by a dwarf, who only let a prince marry her if he could guess his name. When the prince did, the foster-father went back to the woods, since he did not want to live in a castle. Dwarves like him figured into other stories as well, in various ways. In The tailor and the hunter the two travelers lived with a dwarf for a while, but only the tailor treated him politely and kindly. When the hunter later left him in the underworld to die, grateful dwarves built him a staircase back to the human world. Dwarves were less kind in the story of Hondiddledo and the Fiddle. The tale started out with three brothers having to guard a tree of golden apples - but unlike the usual form, this time even the youngest one failed, and he fled into the world to avoid punishment. He encountered "small men," who tricked him out of his fiddle and his money, until our hero committed suicide in the end... Another tale with a similarly dark and unexpected tone was that of the Nine birds, in which a princess murdered nine of her suitors, until the tenth managed to outwit her with magic. The nine ghosts turned into nine birds, and sang the princess' guilt until she repented, at which point they turned back to men, and forgave her.

Connections

I found a very pretty version for the Golden-haired Gardener folktale type in this book. The hero was called Ferdinand, and he was helped by a white horse; he gardened only at night, wearing an outfit studded with stars, and gathered milk from a wolf, a bear, and a deer to cure an old king. My favorite moment was when the king still refused to allow his daughter to marry a gardener - at which point the princess "became enraged", and demanded the marriage.
Winterkolble was also not the only variant of the Rumpelstiltskin tale in the book. Kruzimügeli (I love the names in this tale type) was also one; here, the helpful little man even told his name to the girl, all she had to do was remember it for three years. Would you?...

The Brementown Musicians in this case were led by an old tomcat, and set out on Saint Martin's night to seek a new home. The Brave Little Tailor ended up in a kingdom where clothes were forbidden and tailors executed, but lucky for him, he multiclassed as a giant-killer, so all was well in the end. He got help from an old woman who handed him a hedgehog and a bird (bird was used as a "stone" in a throwing contest, while the hedgehog doubled as a bowling ball). In the end, the tailor-made-king used his magic scissors to cut good men out of bad ones, and his thimble to repair the wounds of soldiers.
In the story of the Outcast Son the hero was raised by a friendly giant, who also gave him advice on where to find a wife. However, when he stole the crown of a fairy maiden while she was bathing, the girl smacked him and got her crown back. Twice. Girl Power!
Once again there was a man seeking his luck (or rather, going to God to ask why he was not giving For one kreutzer a hundred, like the priest promised when collecting alms). There were also familiar tale types like Frau Holle (who was not making snow fall, but did have some souls trapped in bottles), Raven brothers, Catskins, Twin princes, Rabbit-herd, Gifts of the Wind, Magic Flight, and Animal Bride (except in this case the bride was a nightcap, instead of an animal...). There was also a magic tree that a hero named Hansl climbed, visiting old women named after the days of the week, and when he reached the top he just... stayed there, end of story.
The tale of the Shepherd and the Dwarfs reminded me of The Hobbit in many ways. The exiled king of the Dwarves and his sons asked a brave man to help them re-conquer their kingdom under the mountains, after it had been taken over by a dragon hungry for treasure...

Where to next?
Germany!

U is for Unexpected pregnancies

Welcome to the A to Z Challenge! My theme this year is Representation and Diversity in Traditional Stories. I am looking for rare and interesting motifs in folktales, fairy tales, and legends that add variety to the well-known canon.

This billboard kicked up
quite a bit of debate in 2011.

Today I want to diverge a little from positive representations, and talk about the touchy and often dark subject of unwanted pregnancies in traditional tales. And by "unwanted" I mean not condoned by the families / societies in general. Teen pregnancy especially is still a very common occurrence and a very complex issue, even in highly developed countries (*cough* USA *cough*) and it has a lot to do with how children and adolescents are educated about sexuality (I'll post about sex-positive stories later this week). Traditionally, many cultures believed that women's main purpose in life was to pop out children - but only under highly regulated circumstances. Therefore, today I collected a couple of tales that present the issue of underage / unexpected / out-of-wedlock pregnancies in interesting ways.

Rapunzel
I was surprised how many commenters said under my Pregnancy post that they didn't know about this part of the story. I especially love the pregnancy plot inf Rapunzel because it portrays a girl who is literally locked in a tower, kept innocent and hidden, and somehow she still manages to get pregnant - and even worse, she doesn't even know what is happening to her until the witch tells her. "Abstinence only" education doesn't work, people. Not even in fairy tales.
(Again, read the story in this edition)

Daughter of the Sun
A variation on the Rapunzel trope, in this Italina folktale a princess' fortune says she'll give birth to a child by the Sun before she turns twenty. In order to prevent this (the Sun won't marry her, after all), her father locks her in a tower. GUESS WHAT: It doesn't work. The scared princess sends the baby to be put out into the woods, where she gets found and adopted by a neighboring king.
(The rest of the story is pretty spectacular too. I love telling it)
(Read the tale in Italo Calvino's collection. I also included a version in my book.)

Little Eve and the Dwarves
One of my favorite stories from the famous "500 New Fairytales Discovered in Germany" Schönwerth collection. A mysterious maidservant gets hired by a strict stewardess to keep a castle clean. She makes friends with the Dwarves that live in the castle, and they not only help her hide her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, but also serve as midwives and care for the baby every day while she goes about her chores. In the end, they even go and find the baby's father so they can marry, and move with Eve to her new home to continue their babysitting work.
(Read it in English in Original Bavarian Folktales)

The three spindles
Another tale from the Schönwerth collection. In this one a pregnant girl who is kicked out by her parents saves the life of a forest sprite (fairy), and in exchange the fairies take her in and take care of her until her baby is born. They ask her if they can keep the child, and the girl agrees, knowing it will be a good place for the baby. They also give her gifts to start her life over, and she returns to her parents, and goes on to marry and have a happy family. There is a lot to say about this story in relation to the adoption stories I started the Challenge with.
(Read this story in The Turnip Princess)

Soslan's birth
Okay, so in most versions of this Nart legend, a baby is born from a stone after a man ejaculates on it, watching Satana, the wise and beautiful matriarch of the Narts take a bath in the river. The boulder grows big, and when a blacksmith splits it open, a baby is found inside - very mythical birth, similar to the birth of Erichthonius. In one variation, however, Satana is actually violated by the man by the river, and she asks the blacksmith's help to fake a magical birth, and cover up the origin of the baby. It is interesting to ponder which version could have existed first.
(Read multiple versions in the Nart sagas)

Aso and Ananse
While Ananse is most often known as the happy-go-lucky West African trickster figure, he also has quite an interesting history with his wife. Aso, a beautiful young woman, is married to a barren/impotent man, who hides her away from the world in jealousy. Ananse comes up with a plan to catch a glimpse of her - and once he does, he also finds a way to sleep with her, repeatedly. Aso soon becomes pregnant, and her enraged husband returns her to her family in disgrace. When she walks into the village, and points out Ananse as the child's father, he falls off a roof in surprise... Aso later marries Ananse, but in a very dark turn reflecting the values of the era the tale comes from, the out-of-wedlock child is killed by the family.
(Read the story in Akan-Ashanti Folk-tales)

Fair Janet
One of my favorite - sad and beautiful - English ballads. Fair Janet gets pregnant out of wedlock, from Sweet William (don't you love ballad names), even though she is promised to someone else. She hides her pregnancy, and William's three sisters help her deliver the baby in secret, and take it home to his mother. The next day, Janet has to go to her own wedding; during the celebration, she asks William to a dance, and dies in his arms. He dies too, and they are buried together, with the obligatory ballad ending of intertwined plants growing on their graves.
(Read about the ballad here)

Angoli Borbála
A Hungarian ballad, similar to the previous one. Echoing the Rapunzel story, it begins with a girls' skirt not fitting right - it is short in the front and long in the back (meaning she is pregnant). She first blames the seamstress, but when she is found out, she is condemned to death. She sends off a letter to the noble boy who got her pregnant, and he shows up, but too late, and kills himself from sorrow (because ballads). There are several versions of this ballad, and they portray very well the desperation of the young girl trying to hide her condition.
(Listen to an old lady singing this ballad, with lyrics in English and Hungarian, here)

Any other stories I should add to the list?

Folklore Thursday: 12 things you didn't know about German dwarfs

Today is Folklore Thursday on social media! If you want to find out more, follow this link, or click on the #FolkloreThursday hashtag on Twitter! Hosted by @FolkloreThursday.

This is both my Folklore Thursday and my Dietrich Cycle post this week, because I am taking PhD prelim exams and this is all I have energy for. So.

I am reading a PhD dissertation from 1976, written by George Hans Heide, titled Dwarfs in German Folk Legend: An Inquiry into the Human Quality of these Creatures. It is a well done study; the author marked and labeled all the German dwarf legends he could find (in English and in German), and summarized all he found out about Dwarf society thematically (Appearance; Habitation; Society; Possessions; Skills and Occupations; Amusements; etc.) I am about halfway through the book, and I have found some very exciting little tidbits that I wanted to share:


1. In some occasions dwarfs might dress up in clothes that imitate the colors of songbirds. (How awesome an image is that?!)

2. Dwarfs can have a variety of skin colors, from snow white to black (take that, Tolkien fandom).

3. Dwarfs pee. (It's documented)

4. Female dwarfs ("dwarfesses," according to Heide) are pregnant for 9 days. (Good for them?...)

5. Dwarfs in German legend are a lot smaller than you think: Most often they stand about 3 spans (27 inches = app. 69 cm) or 2'4" tall - although some stories make them somewhat taller, the height of a child. They can also be a lot smaller, the size of a fir cone. Newborn baby dwarfs are the size of a human thumb.

6. There is at least one documented legend about a human nobleman cheating on his wife with a beautiful dwarfess.

7. Dwarfs can have queens!!! (This is important to me for the Dietrich research)

8. Dwarf children ("dwarflings") can play with human children, and sometimes they contract lice.

9. Dwarfs like to eat peas, grapes and raisins.

10. Female dwarf musicians play cheerful music; male dwarf musicians play solemn music.

11. Dwarfs enjoy nine-pin bowling.

12. Dwarfs enjoy storytelling. (I knew I liked them for a reason)

Story Saturday: Dwarf Love, Elf Love (Exploring the Dietrich Cycle, IV)

As I am working on the Dietrich cycle, a full storytelling show is slowly taking form, pieced together from different parts of the sagas. It has to do with King Dietrich and his court, and their relationship with the Dwarven realms under the mountains.
Some of these relationships are fairly personal.

I have gotten several messages and opinions about the question I posed last week. While most people are comfortable with the idea of a Dwarf queen, some of them expressed worries that she would not make a good love interest for a human (let alone a human king).
Here is the thing: The storytelling show, as it looks now, includes not one, but two inter-species relationships. One of each: Dwarf king - Human princess, Human king - Dwarf queen.

I am the storyteller, therefore I have to make some decisions of how I tell these stories. And I have the same responsibility of representation as any other form of media would.

Here are some things I do NOT want to do:
1. Have an Elf queen rule over the mountains because she is prettier than a Dwarf.
2. Abduction and rape. That trope is just not happening on my watch.
3. Make one of those couples OK, but not the other.
4. Twist the original legends completely out of shape.
5. Completely rely on the Tolkien/pop culture images of Dwarfs.

Female Dwarf concept art
for The Hobbit movie

Here are some things that I DO want to try:
1. Expand ideas of beauty. There seems to be a huge debate on the Internet (thank you, LotR fandom) about what Dwarf women look like, and whether they can be attractive to human men or not. I think most of the debate is fairly dumb, and it mostly hinges on beards.
2. Explore inter-cultural relationships. For me, neither relationship has their most potential in physical Dwarf-Human compatibility. Rather, they come from very different places, and very different cultures, and they have to navigate the transition from one to the other (a human princess living in a Dwarf kingdom, a Dwarf queen running a human court).
3. Explore the male-to-male and female-to-female connections of these two related families. Laurin and Dietrich talk quite a lot, king to king; but I also want to find connection points where the Dwarf Queen can talk with the human princess. Put the two ideas of femininity and royalty next to each other. Make the saga pass the Bechdel test.
4. Play off of pop culture why staying close to the original sagas.

Gender-bent Thorin,
because Rule 63

Here are some things I know:
1. Dwarf-and-Elf love has been done in pop culture, with ambiguous results.
2. A lot of people are still bothered by the idea of a shorter man having a relationship with a taller woman. (Look at all the Kiliel fan art, they keep hiding the height difference)
3. A lot of people are still bothered with a woman having a stockier body type than a willowy Elf.
4. NO ONE in folklore ever had a problem with fairy maidens marrying human men.
5. Dwarf women are treated as mostly nonexistent, both in pop culture and in folklore. (My favorite counter-example, of course, is Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant.)

Also, I should be writing a take-home exam.
We'll see how this goes.

Story Saturday: Exploring the Dietrich cycle III. - DWARFS RULE

If you thought you got all your Dwarven Epicness needs fulfilled by The Hobbit - think again.
This is where Tolkien went to school.

"It should be known for what reason God created the great giants and the little dwarfs, and subsequently the heroes. First, he produced the dwarfs, because the mountains lay waste and useless, and valuable stores of silver and gold, with gems and pearls, were consealed in them. Therefore God made the dwarfs right wise and crafty, that they could distinguish good and bad, and to what use all things should be applied. They knew the use of gems - that some of gave strength to the wearer, others made them invisible, which they called fog-caps. Therefore God gave art and wisdom to them, that they built them hollow hills; he gave them nobility, so that they, as well as the heroes, were kings and lords; and he gave them great riches. And the reason why God created the giants, was that they should slay the wild beasts and worms (dragons, serpents) and thus enable the dwarfs to cultivate the mountains in safety. But after some time it happened that the giants became wicked and unfaithful, and did much harm to the dwarfs. Then God created the heroes, who were a middle rank between the dwarfs and giants. And it should be known that the heroes were worthy and faithful for many years, and that they were created to come to the assistance of the dwarfs, against the unfaithful giants, the beasts, and the worms... Among the dwarfs were many kings, who had giants for their servants; for they possessed rough countries, waste forests, and mountains near their dwellings."

This is a quote from one of the Heldenbücher, the Books of Heroes of German tradition (I got it from this source). And boy does it contain a lot to talk about.

There are a number of important Dwarf characters that play a part in the Dietrich Cycle. First and foremost, of course, is King Laurin, who rules over (or, rather, under) the mountains of Tyrol - more specifically, the group of the Dolomites in Northern Italy known as the Rose Garden. His realm is named after the garden his daughter planted on the mountains, in the open air (since roses don't grow in the Dwarfs' underground kingdom). The Rose Garden becomes the center (and the name) of one of Dietrich's most famous adventures.

Another Dwarven king we encounter is King Walberan, Laurin's uncle, who rules an immense realm ranging from the Caucasus to the Sinai. When Laurin is captured by Dietrich, and dragged to Bern (Verona), Walberan shows up with a Dwarf army to take revenge on Dietrich. The bloodshed is narrowly avoided by King Laurin's diplomatic skills, and the fact that he is in love with one of the knights' sisters, Künhilde. The story ends in reconciliation, and Dwarf-Human inter-species marital bliss.

The third person I want to mention is Queen Virginal. I know I have been all about her before, but I am circling back now. Here is the thing: She is not a Dwarf, but she should be. She is Queen of the Mountains, rules over Dwarves, wears a crown with a magic gemstone in it, and holds off an invasion of evil giants and DRAGONS. The stories call her an Elf maiden, but let's be real here, people: That's never gonna happen. Not on my watch.
So.
POLLING TIME! Cast your votes in an orderly fashion:
Would you rather hear a story about
1. An Elf maiden queen who rules over a mountain kingdom, and only manages to hold off the evil powers gathering against her by the power of the stone in her crown, until she is rescued by Dietrich, whom she marries, giving up her kingdom without a second thought, 
OR
2. A Dwarven queen who defends her lands with the unexpected last minute help of human knights, fights an epic battle, and ends up in an even more unexpected relationship with said human knight, eventually marrying him and maybe still ruling over her own kingdom?...

I am asking this for research purposes. Because one way or another, the Rose Garden and Virginal might end up being a full-hour show I work on. 

D is for the Dwarf Princess

Today's princess is once again brought you from Hungary. I'm Hungarian, deal with it.

Also, I am not being insensitive here. She is actually a Dwarf.

The story, this time, does not start with her. It starts with a prince called Palkó, who has two handsome brothers, but he is as short as a child, and his mother is so aad about this fact that she gets ill and dies. Of course the king blames his son for all of this.
(Tyrion Lannister much? You know you already love him.)

According to the queen's dying wish, a lily-of-the-valley has to be planted on her grave and guarded day and night. The king sees an opportunity in this to keep his son occupied. Prince Palkó and the old woman who brought the shining flowers sit by the grave together, day and night in quiet awkwardness.

Enter the princess. Whut?

As soon as the old lady falls asleep, a long-bearded Dwarf springs up out of the blue and tells the Prince a secret: the lily-of-the-valley is in fact a Dwarven princess, turned into this shape to be smuggled out of the kingdom of the Fairy Queen. Who is evil, by the way, and jealous of the princess' beauty.
(I can hear Legolas getting a stroke in the background)

The only way to turn the flower back into a beautiful Dwarf maiden is to break the Fairy Queen's ring. The opportunity offers itself when the Queen and seven of her witch-fairies (!) show up to get the flower back. After a couple of tries Palkó manages to get a hit in on the ring, and suddenly, he is presented with a princess just his size.

The lovers have to flee now. Fortunately for them the princess can call upon a chariot drawn by butterflies that takes the across the sky and back towards the Dwarf kingdom. But the Fairy Queen is hot on their heels astride a horse with seven legs, clearly bought for a discount price in Asgard, and she almost catches up to them when they finally round the Sun, and that is the border where the power of evil ends.

Palkó becomes a prince, marries the Dwarf princess, and all is well in the world.

This story has been turned into a cartoon and is available on YouTube here.

I personally have always loved the idea of a Dwarf princess, beard or no beard. The fact that her beauty beats Ilona the Fairy Queen just makes the whole thing better. Fae can't be the best at everything all the time, right? There is not much to know about dwarfs in Hungarian folklore at all, fairies are much more popular. This story is a rare exception. It is also interesting to note that apparently the Dwarf princess was a ward in the Fairy court until they grew jealous of her beauty. Talk about politics.