Tarot Tales: A is for Adjustment (Justice)

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: Justice (a.k.a. Adjustment)

Meanings: Justice (obviously), fairness, law. Making impartial and objective decisions, finding the truth, staying true to your principles. It also symbolizes critical thinking and responsible action. 

Selection process: Justice and fairness is one of the staple motifs of folktales, so there was a lot to choose from. One thing I wanted to pay attention to was that in the RWS card the figure is usually a woman, so I wanted to find a tale where justice is upheld by a woman. 

The story: Princess Learned-in-the-Law

Origin: Myanmar

Summary: A clever and well-educated princess' necklace disappears while she is bathing in the garden. The guards accuse the old gardener, and bully him into an admission of guilt. The princess, however, suspects that something is wrong. She listens to the trial from behind the scenes, while the gardener and various courtiers accuse each other of theft to shift the blame. Eventually the princess devises a clever test to find out the truth: the necklace had been stolen by monkeys. She collects a bunch of monkeys, gives them fake jewelry, and sets them free. The monkey that stole the pearls brings them out from their hiding place to show them off to her companions, and the princess manages to recover the necklace, proving the old gardener's innocence. In the end, the gardener is redeemed, but the courtiers are exiled for dishonesty. 

(Princess Learned-in-the-Law is a recurring character in the folklore of Myanmar, famous for making clever judgments.)

Sources & notes: Read it in this book. There is also an entire book of Princess-Learned-in-the-Law tales!  

Runner-up: Catherine, Sly Country Lass (Italy). A classic Clever Maiden story (ATU 875), where a wise queen steps up when her husband makes an unjust decision, and proves he has been wrong.

Do you have a favorite Justice card, or a tale about wise judgment? Tell me in the comments!

Royal wisdom and trickery (Following folktales around the world 190. - Myanmar)

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!

The Snake Prince, and Other Stories
Burmese folk tales
Edna Ledgard
Interlink Books, 2000.

I usually love Interlink folktale collections, but this one was not my favorite. Not because of the stories - they were great - but rather the collector's attitude. Edna Ledgard is the child of American Baptist missionaries who spent the first 9 years of her life in Burma in the 1930s. She has love and nostalgia for the country, which colors this book with romantic notions as well. In addition, she says the morals of these tales "had to be changed for Western audiences" (ouch). According to Buddhist tradition, villains don't necessarily have to be punished at the end of folktales, because everyone is aware they will be punished in the next life. Ledgard, however, added all kinds of arbitrary punishments to the end of the tales, for "improvement" (including a dragon climbing out of the sea and eating the greedy rich man). At least she tells us in the Notes what she changed, but still, not ideal for a folktale collection.

Highlights

There were several great tales in the book. One of my favorites was Princess Learned-in-the-Law, who rendered judgment in classic tales such as "smell of fool, clinking of coins." I also loved the legend about the Magic Pincers, which cut off people's hands if they lied - until a young monk tricked them on a technicality, proving that blind tools can't always render justice.

My top favorite tale, however, was The Shy Quilt Bird. The Lion, king of the land animals, agrees to fight the evil Naga, ruler of the seas. The animals of the land decide to work together to save their king, lead by the wise trickster, Golden Rabbit. They make a plan to pretend they are the giant Galon bird to scare the Naga off, helped by the giant but shy Quilt Bird, who, by the end of the story, turns into the tiny wren. It is a lovely cooperation, community, and teamwork tale, and it became an instant favorite in my repertoire. 

Connections

There was a snake-husband story that appears in multiple countries around Southeast Asia - here, an old woman sold her daughter to a snake for some fresh fruit.

The resident trickster is Golden Rabbit, who had a tale similar to Mouse Deer stories I know.

Where to next?
Laos!

StorySpotting: Rubies and royalty (The Crown)

StorySpotting is a weekly or kinda-weekly series about folktales, tropes, references, and story motifs that pop up in popular media, from TV shows to video games. Topics are random, depending on what I have watched/played/read recently. Also, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. Be warned!

Where was the story spotted?

The Crown, season 4, episode 3 (Fairytale)

What happens?

Lady Diana is selecting an engagement ring for herself from a box of royal jewels, supervised by the Queen and the Crown Jeweller. She picks up a ring with a gorgeous ruby stone in it, and the Jeweller asks if she knows where the Mogok Valley is. She doesn't, so he launches into a legend about a time when only beasts and serpents lived in northern Burma... at which point Lady Di changes her mind, and picks as sapphire instead, interrupting the story. 

What's the story?

I don't like it when a story gets interrupted, so here is the whole thing. 

(Side note: I really like shiny things, and I recently read a whole book about rubies, it was fascinating.)

The legend of the ruby mines of the Mogok Valley was reported by G. F. Kunz in 1915. It's a short story: a female naga laid three eggs in the mountains. From one came Pyusawti, King of Pagan; from one came a Chinese emperor; and from the third came the rubies of the Mogok ruby mines.

A more elaborate version of this legend comes from the Glass Palace Chronicle, a historical record compiled in the early 19th century in Myanmar and translated to English in the 1920s. 

According to this story, a Naga princess named Zanthi came from her realm to the world of humans to practice virtue. While living near Mt. Mali she fell in love and slept with the Sun prince, and became pregnant. However, the Sun abandoned her. When she was about to give birth she sent a white crow to bring her rubies from the Sun. At the bird's insistence, the Sun bundled up some gems and handed them over. The crow, however, was distracted by the food of some human merchants on the way, and left the bundle unattended. The humans switched the rubies for dry dung. Disappointed by the bundle, Zanthi returned home, leaving her eggs on the mountain. 

A hunter, carried away by spirits, found the egg(s?) some time later. However, on the way down, he had to cross a flooding river; the eggs slipped away. A gold-colored one broke in the Mogok Valley, filling it with rubies and iron. One black egg floated downriver and hatched a beautiful girl who later became a queen. A white egg floated down the river Irrawaddy and hatched a boy, who was prophesied to become the great King Pyusawhti. 

There are countless variations in gemstone-related literature about the "dragon" egg bursting open to fill the Mogok Valley with gemstones. It is a very appealing image. 

Conclusion

Diana's sapphire engagement ring became famous, and now it is worn by the Duchess of Cambridge. As for royal rubies, here is a blog post about some of them. And here is a picture of the ruby engagement ring of Sarah, Duchess of York (it apparently cost a lot of money):