G is for Genitalia (Body Folktales)

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

CW: Adult themes incoming! Obviously.

You didn't really think I was going to do a theme like this without addressing the obvious, did you?

(Note: Some of these tales say 'vagina' instead of 'vulva'. It may be factually incorrect, but I didn't want to mess with the translations.)

Wandering genitalia (Saora people, India)
This story claims that in the old days genitalia could detach themselves and go wandering at night. One evening, the creator Kittung accidentally stepped on a vulva which made a squealing sound. Feeling sorry, he put the small creature into the river, where it turned into a turtle (the head is the clitoris). He then made non-detachable parts for people.

Clitoris legends (India)

This collection from India contains a whole collection of amazing stories about the clitoris. One creation myth claim that lightning was born from Earth Mother's clitoris, therefore it "flashes and sparkles as the clitoris does." Another story says a woman was fishing in a stream one day when a crab pinched her vulva; a deity told her to cut off the claw, and she will have as much pleasure from it as she had pain. A third story tells of a girl who was so busy working that she misplaced her clitoris; she borrowed one from a bird and never gave it back.

My favorite, however, is another tale that claims that body parts used to go wandering on their own. One day, the breasts picked a fight with the vulvas, and chased them all away into the mountains. Dismayed, men set out to bring the vulvas back, but they are skittish creatures and hard to find. By the time they got back, some old women died, and people were left with extra vulvas. They divided them up equally in smaller pieces - creating the clitoris.

The wandering vagina (Mehinaku people, Brazil)

Yet another story that claims that in days of old, genitalia could wander around. A woman named Tukwi had an "especially foolish" vagina that crawled around the floor at night, looking for something to eat. It got into the porridge and started slurping, awakening a man in the house who went to see what it was, and accidentally scorched it with a torch. The vagina fled back to Tukwi, who then warned everyone not to let their vaginas wander around.

Vagina dentata

If there is one folklore trope that a lot of people are (painfully) familiar with, it's this one: vaginas with teeth (F574.1.1). There are entire books written about the folklore and mythology of this trope, so I'm not going to get into it. But I'm going to highlight some favorites. 

One is a Khond legend from India about a woman who used to have shiny, fiery teeth in her vagina until her husband took them out with a cord. After a long life, when their children were grown, she found the teeth again, buried in the garden - and they turned into fireflies. Ever since, they have been allowed to take shelter in people's houses.

The other story is a Mongolian legend about the death of Genghis Khan. It claim that the great khan desired a gorgeous woman named Gürbeljin Ghoa (Lizard Beauty). He put her husband to death and forced her to marry him. On her wedding night, she hid blades in her vagina - and thus murdered Genghis Khan. (Source here.)

An origin story from the Makka people in Paraguay claims that in the beginning, no one could have sex with women because they had piranhas in their vaginas. A wise shaman organized a dance party where he made women dance so much that all the piranhas fell out. Or rather, almost all - the smallest one stayed in and still gnaw, which is why periods exist.

Penis, Vagina and Testicles (Cameroon)

Penis and Testicles are best friends and they go fishing together. On the way back they meet Vagina who asks for some of their fish. Penis is happy to share, but Testicles are stingy. Later on, in the hot season, Vagina happily offers shelter from the sun to Penis, but not Testicles. The latter still try to get as close as possible. (A similar tale is told in Ghana about Penis and Testicles sharing ground nuts with Vagina, and getting shelter from the rain.)

Kwazerema and helpful Ant (Kapsiki people, Cameroon/Nigeria)

A man has two wives, but treats one of them very poorly, making her fetch water from the river every day. The woman meets a Red And who takes pity on her, and gives her medicine to put into her water jar. The husband has a habit of urinating in her jar - but this time, as he does, his penis gets stuck in it. Not only can no one break the jar, it also keeps singing a mocking song. Eventually he begs his wife to undo the curse, and decides to treat her better. She thanks Red Ant for the help.

Kapo-kohe-lele (Hawaii)

In Hawaiian mythology, Kapo of the Flying Vagina is the sister of the volcano goddess Pele. In one legend, the pig-god Kamapua'a pursues Pele and tries to rape her, but Kapo comes to her rescue: she uses her detachable vagina to distract the pig, leading him away from the goddess. (This story is reflected in Hawaiian place names. Other source here.)

The vagina girls (Jicarilla Apache legend)

The hero Killer-of-Enemies goes through many adventures, battling monsters and shaping the world. On his journey he defeats a monster and meets his four daughters in a house full of vaginas. The four girls are themselves vaginas in human form, and they use their teeth to devour people. The hero feeds them medicine, taking the teeth away, and they lay down the ground rules of how vaginas shall work. He picks two from their collection and takes them home to two girls; people experiment with where to put them on the body until they settle on their current placing. The four girls go on to live good lives among the humans.

The three wishes (1001 Nights)

A man earns three wishes - and immediately uses the first one to wish for a larger penis. His penis grows to a gigantic size, at which point he panics and wishes for it to go away. It does, and now he has to use his third wish to get it back.

The four champions (Hausa tale)

Four friends acquire grain together: they break the corn on one's head, thresh it with one's penis, winnow it with one's mighty farts, and carry it home with one's scrotum. The question of the dilemma tale is: who was the most heroic of the four?

(14th century illustration)

I am somewhat worried about the comments section now. Also, my general search history and upcoming Facebook advertisements.

Have a nice Sunday break, everyone!

Career tricksters (Following folktales around the world 188. - Mongolia)

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!

Mongolian Traditional Literature
An Anthology

Charles R. Bawden

Routledge, 2013.

This book is almost 900 pages long, and contains a selection of texts from Mongolian traditional literature, from the Secret History all the way to folk songs. Since it's a hefty volume, in this post I'll be focusing on the Folktales chapter (which was still almost 300 pages, and contains 110 stories). The tales were divided into sub-sections by topic: supernatural tales, trickster tales, Balansengge, mendicant tales, Shagdar, animal tales, nonsense tales, myths, triads, conversations.

The book itself is an essential volume for reading Mongolian literature in English. The Introduction talks about other available translations, as well as the history of Mongolian literature from the Middle Ages to the modern era. It talks about the Secret History, epics, legends, didactic stories, ritual texts, texts of Indian origin, Chinese-Mongolian literature, and other interesting sources. The book is an academic publication, so it comes with notes, sources, and language guides.

Highlights

I loved the tales of Balansengge, the Mongolian trickster. Many of them were familiar (such as "the pot gave birth" and "I don't have time to trick you"), but there were also many original tricks, such as the one where Balansengge made a rich man believe his bag was full of gems, but they would turn to ash if an unworthy person saw them. His favorite targets were greedy rich men. The longest tale started when he tricked a bunch of them into jumping in the river. The souls of the greedy men went to Erlig khan, the ruler of the Underworld, to complain. Erlig khan started sending his demons to fetch Balansengge, but he tricked all of them in turn, until the Underworld was in full on panic mode, and Erlig went to fetch the trickster himself. Balansengge outwitted him too, took his clothes, and became khan of the Underworld. Happy end.

Another great trickster tale was about a boy who made a khan eat dog crap (and also did other embarrassing things to him, and got away without being punished). I also liked the story about the old magician who showed a greedy khan a dream about how miserable his subjects were.

Among the myths I liked the story of Erkhii Mergen, the archer who shot six suns out of the sky to save the world. He failed to shoot the seventh, so in shame he turned into a marmot, and transformed his horse into a jerboa. Another lovely story was about the hares who thought they were the most miserable animals in the world for no one was afraid of them. They changed their mind when they managed to spook a bunch of sheep by jumping up in front of them.

There was a short but sweet tale about thoughtful animals: the bat who hangs upside down to make sure the sky doesn't fall; the grasshopper who keeps watch in case of a flood; and the crane that steps carefully to avoid caving the earth in. 

There was also a surprising number of origins stories about the Creator handing out balls and penises to various animals. 

Connections

Among the animal tales there was a seven kids story - here with two goat kids only, but it also explained how goats became domesticated (after a woodcutter saved them from a wolf). The faithful animal who saves a baby and gets punished was, surprisingly, a cat this time, killed by a hasty woman who regretted her action. There was once again a "how the camel was left out of the animal calendar" story (here the camel competed with the rat over who sees the rising sun first).

The tale of Solombo khan was the type where a young man seeks answers to his fortune; he had to go to Erlig khan with his questions. There was also another answer-seeking tale (Scripture Joy and Jewel Joy), a magic bird story (The sons of the hunter), a fake fortune-teller (Grasshopper Namjil), puss in boots (here a Cunning Yellow Fox) and extraordinary helpers (Jivaa the White). The ungrateful animal was a snake, tricked back into the trap by a clever girl. There was also a classic clever maid story, where she did not only solve the khan's impossible riddles, but also saved her father-in-law when he was kidnapped by the enemy. The cyclops story known from the Odyssey featured three mendicants. 

I have already mentioned the resident trickster above, but there was also another trickster-like figure, Shagdar, a mendicant born in 1869, who traveled the land and made fun of greedy, vain, or mean people such as corrupt officials, rich men, and questionable religious leaders. He usually did so in witty, short verse.

Where to next?

China!

Z is for Zong Belegt Baatar (Epics from A to Z)

Zong Belegt Baatar is a Mongol short heroic epic. "Short" in this case means under 500 lines (in chanted or sung oral poetry), and can be told in under 20 minutes. For epics, that is definitely short - but not any less epic.
(I read the English translation in this book.)

The Hero
The epic is named after its hero: Baatar means "hero" in Mongolian, and Zong Belegt is the name. He has a body of iron, and for all intents and purposes he is a giant of a man, and the leader and protector of a prosperous land. We don't find out a lot about his personality, but we do learn from the epic that his silk gown has seventy-five buttons.
(That's a lot of buttons)
His wife is praised for her wisdom.

The Highlights
The epic itself tells the story of Zong Belegt Baatar's fight against a terrible giant. The description of the giant is definitely a noteworthy moment: He is described in great detail and with a lot of exaggeration - His toenails are iron hooks, his face has blue stripes and his tongue has brown, and he can cover an entire continent in the smoke from his pipe. I can imagine younger audiences getting a kick out of this description alone... The fight between the hero and the giant is similarly cosmic and landscape-altering.
I found the mention of the iron body intriguing. Those of you who have been following me know that I published a book on superpowers in traditional stories. In it I included a Hungarian folktale about a hero with a body of ice, and a villain with a body of iron. Sounds like it's a popular theme...

This concludes our epic adventure from A to Z! Thank you for sticking with me, I hope you enjoyed the ride. Come back for the Reflections post on Monday (May 4th) - I will tell you a little about some of the epics that didn't make the cut!

Also, check out my book, titled Tales of Superhuman Powers (available on Kindle, Nook and in print), for more epic stories ;)

Outside of A to Z, I write regularly on this blog about storytelling adventures, mythology and MythOffs, books related to folktales and fairy tales, and other story-related odds and ends :) Follow or visit back for updates!

X is for Xanadu, the color not the movie

So, there is exactly one color that starts with an X. Xanadu, the color is named after Xanadu, the philodendron plant, which in turn is named after Xanadu, the city (not Xanadu, the movie). Following so far? Good.
Xanadu was Kublai Khan's first capital, founded in the 13th century, and we all know it from Samuel Taylor Colridge's poem. And that is pretty much all I am going to tell you about it, because everything I could say I would be copying from Wikipedia since I only read up on the details like 5 minutes ago. Also, I spent the entire weekend at a storytelling conference, so I have an excuse for not being human shaped right now.
I am also not going to tell you the story of Marco Polo, who visited the court of Kublai Khan, because he wrote a book about it and you can go read it, he tells it better than I do. However, he does tell us one particular story that I would like to introduce you to, and that story is about Kublai Khan's niece.
(Color-plant-city-ruler-writer-niece, still following?)
Khutulun, more commonly known as "that Mongolian warrior princess I heard about," was the favorite child of Kaidu Khan, and accompanied her father to battles where she proved to be an excellent fighter. Story says she decided that she was only going to marry a man who could defeat her in wrestling; but if they lost, they had to give her their horses. She ended up single, and the owner of 10.000 horses, before rumor started to spread that she had a relationship with her father, and she resolved to marry (without wrestling) in order to put an end to them. When her father died he intended to leave her the rule, but her male relatives stopped her from the succession. She died soon after, fighting in a legacy war against the guys in the family.

Just to go full circle: Aromaleigh, a cosmetics company that has an entire line of eyeshadow colors named after badass historical ladies, has an eyeshadow named after Khutulun - and it is a dark, grey-green color, just like the xanadu plant.

Ta-da!

I is for the Invincible Princess

Okay so this princess actually existed, but her life is the stuff of legends. She is also not a princess in the European sense of the word. Whatever.
She is from Mongolia.

Khutulun was the niece of Kublai Khan, and famous for her skills in wrestling. Apparently she was quite big and strong for a woman, and accompanied her father into war. Besides wrestling she was also skilled in other aspects of a warrior's training, including horseback riding and archery (let's note that this is Medieval Mongolia here, if you can't ride and shoot you don't live, so her own family probably did not see it was impressive as we do). She refused to marry anyone unless they could defeat her in wrestling - but no one ever did. All her suitors went home beaten and she remained unwed, even when her parents begged her to fake a fall for a particularly qualified man.

(This is very folktale-y; there are many stories where suitors can't marry the princess unless they can outrun/outwit her, see the Hawkeye Princess yesterday)

Khutulun remained unbeaten all her life - when she finally married, it was by her own choice, to a man she did not wrestle at all. Guess who wore the pants in that household...

I have read plenty of stories about strong and independent women in my career as a storyteller, but surprisingly enough Khutulun's story is not as well known as it should be. So. Here.

Full story in the link above, Wiki wisdom here.