A is for Anus (Body Folktales)

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

Yeah, I went there.

NSFW bodily functions ahead, ahoy! Although nothing sexual.

Here is the thing: Way more folktales feature anuses than you'd think. And many of them are very amusing.

(Let's not think about what this post will do to my search statistics.)

How the birds got their colors (Mocoví)

This story... keeps on giving. It begins with Fox getting into some sort of a fight, and accidentally landing butt-first on a tree branch. Because of this his anus becomes too big, and anything he swallows falls right out. To fix the issue, Fox asks the bees to plug up the hole with clay - a fix that is a little too successful, because now nothing comes out at all. When Fox begins to bloat, he asks Woodpecker to break the clay seal, and all the birds gather to watch the operation. The moment Woodpecker breaks through, things make an... explosive exit - splattering all the birds with the colors and patterns they wear to this day.

The parts of the body have an argument (Portugal)

Some of you may be familiar with the story of the argument between different parts of the body (also known in folktale terms as ATU 293: Debate of the Belly and the Members). It appears among Aesop's fables. In the well-known version, body parts all argue for their own supreme usefulness, and dismiss the stomach as lazy. But when the stomach stops digesting, all the other body parts start failing, until they admit the stomach is, indeed, useful. Moral A: Don't dismiss any member of a team without knowing their hidden talents. Moral B: Don't be angry at the ruling classes for being seemingly useless? Depends on what century the story was told in.
Anyway, there is another variant of this folktale type from Portugal where, instead of the stomach, the outlier body part everyone makes fun of is the anus. Everyone claims its useless. To teach them a lesson, anus decides to pucker up. With disastrous consequences, known to anyone struggling with severe constipation. Eventually, the body parts beg forgiveness and decide to vote anus MVP. Moral A: One a**hole can effectively ruin things for everyone. Moral B (worded by the folk tellers themselves): "In order to be a leader, it's not enough to think, you also need to be able to take a decent s**t."

The monster that devoured people (Kota people, India)

You thought man-eating monsters were bad? Meet Ponac, a terrifying creature from the stories of the Kota people. In the olden days, people didn't only have snakes, tigers, and elephants to worry about, they also had Ponac, who hunted humans, and devoured them whole - through his anus. He devoured ten to fifteen of them before a hero heard about what was going on, and set out to fight the creature with a sickle and a knife. When Ponac made an appearance, the hero held the sickle over his head and the knife pointing down to his feet, and thus he was crammed (their words, not mine) whole through the monster's anus. Once inside, he cut everything to pieces, and thus destroyed the creature. The village headman rewarded him with two wives.
Talk about true heroism.

Tafakula and the thieves (Tonga)

Tafakula is a deity in Tongan mythology with a very special... feature. In one story, some gods from Samoa visit an island under Tafakula's protection at night, with the intention of stealing one of the smaller islands from the lake on the larger island (islands within islands, people). As they are carrying the island away towards the east, Tafakula is notified by a subordinate deity of the theft. He stops the thieves in a spectacular fashion: he bends over and turns his anus towards them. Because his anus is "bright like the sun", the Samoans think they are seeing the sunrise, and drop their loot as they flee from the radiance. The discarded island can still be seen today.

Welcome to this year's A to Z Challenge! 

Don't forget to leave links to your blogs in the comments so I can visit ;)

Tarot Tales: N is for Nine of...

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!

This is once again an unconventional Minor Arcana post. I am picking four tales for the four Nine cards in the tarot deck. I have struggled with the Nines, because they are not easy for me to grasp in concrete terms, but I am trying my best.

Nine of Wands

Nine of Wands is exhausted but not broken. It is a card about still standing after going through a lot. It is about resilience, overcoming obstacles, standing your ground and not giving up. It is also about boundaries - the boundaries that protect you, that you have fought hard for. They keep others from bringing you down, even when it feels like everything is testing your resilience.

Trouble when one's young (Azores)

In this tale, a girl's Destiny appears to her in the shape of an eagle, and asks her if she wants to be fortunate when she is young, or when she is old. She chooses fortune for her old age - which means misfortune plagues her while she is young. The eagle follows her everywhere, and messes up whatever she tries to achieve. She goes through a lot, gets kicked out of all her jobs, until finally she manages to find a place as a servant in a king's palace. In her most desperate moment, her misfortune finally breaks, and she ends up marrying a prince.

This tale type has many other variants. You can read one here, or here, or here. It's tale type ATU 938A.

Nine of Swords

This is not a nice card. It is about anxiety, fears, worries, and all those other dark things that literally keep you up at night. It is despair, lack of self-confidence, and haunting thoughts. 

The Princess in the Shroud (Hungary)

A princess dies of a broken heart, and demands that someone should guard her crypt every night. However, each guard is found dead in the morning. Turns out the princess transformed into a monster who crawls out of her coffin at night to eat people. One brave man volunteers to spend three nights in the cathedral where she is buried. On the first two, he hides in various places, terrified she'd find him; on the third, he jumps into her coffin and locks himself in. She screams and scratches the lid all night, but he holds out. By morning, the curse is broken.

Yes, you know this one from The Witcher. I always thought this folktale is about anxiety. Folktale type ATU 307.

Nine of Cups

This one is also known as the wish card. It is about wishes coming true. It is about satisfaction, blessings, happiness, gratitude, living your best life, having it all. I wanted to find a story that has a water element (Cups), a wish, and a content happy ending.

Search for the Magic Lake (Ecuador)

A king is searching for someone who would bring water from a magic lake to cure his sick son. Two young men set out but they fail. Eventually, their little sister sets out on a journey too, and with the help of her pet llama and some grateful birds, she manages to find a lake. The birds make her a magic fan from their feathers, a fan that fulfills her every which. At the lake, she uses it to defeat a giant crab, an alligator, and a flying serpent. She takes the water to the king in a golden jar. In return, the king grats her three wishes. She receives a large farm for her family, and lives happily ever after. The ever-full golden jar keeps the royals healthy and safe.

(You can also read the story here or here, or find a lovely Spanish telling here.

Nine of Pentacles

If Cups is about wishes, this one is about wealth. It is about having financial security, the ability to enjoy the fruits of your hard work. It is a card for luxury and comfort. It also usually depicts a woman surrounded by nature, enjoying her life. It's the treat yourself card.

The magic brocade (Zhuang)

A poor widow supports herself and her three sons from her weaving. One day she sees a beautiful painting of a palace with gardens, and she decides to weave it into a brocade, escaping into the beautiful imaginary world while she works. When the brocade is finally finished, the winds picks it up and carries it away, and the widow, after so much work, falls ill from disappointment. Her sons set out to find the brocade, but only the youngest succeeds; he finds it in a palace of fairies, where they are busy copying it. He takes the brocade home - and when he unfolds it, it comes to life, providing a gorgeous garden and a palace for the widow (and a fairy wife for her son). They live happily ever after.

If you could have a wish, what would you wish for? If you had the resources, what would you treat yourself to? What keeps you going when times are hard?

Islands made of flowers (Following folktales around the world 96. - Portugal)

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!

Portugal is our last stop in Europe. The series will take a short winter break, and we'll continue in February with Africa!

Islands of Magic
Legends, folk and fairy tales from the Azores
Elsie Spicer Eells
Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1922.

I have been looking forward to reading this collection for a long time. The 34 stories were collected in 1920-21 by Elsie Spicer Eells to prove that folktales were still alive in the oral tradition on the Azores. She re-worded the stories "for American children" and published them with pretty illustrations. Because the islands were uninhabited before the Portuguese colonization (or so we assume), the stories mostly come from the Portuguese and larger European tradition. Since this is a book for children, it did not contain any sources or notes, but it was still an interesting read.

Highlights

The most interesting stories in the book were the islands' own legends. Princess Bluegreen, for example, told about how a princess taken by the fairies, and an impatient king, brought destruction to Atlantis, which sank in the place where the Azores are now. Another legend claimed the islands were born from flowers dropped by an angel who was exiled from Heaven, and wanted to bring their favorite flowers with them. There were other marine legends as well, such as the Island of Seven Cities (a medieval classic), or the Island of St. Brendan that appears and disappears at times. The latter had a beautiful love story attached. about a knight that fell in love with a girl, and fled to the legendary island from an earthquake to live on together. Another pretty local legend what that of the Pearl necklace, in which a handsome fisherman was abducted by a mermaid, but his mother won him back by magic. Later, when he married a mortal woman, he found a necklace of pearls on the beach, but did not remember who it was from...
Among the fairy tales, my favorite was about The princess who lost her rings - mostly because she was helped by two old storyteller women. I also enjoyed St. Anthony's godchild, who dressed up as a boy and stole things from a Moorish king. I have encountered this tale type both with male and female heroes, but this was the first one with a female hero disguised as a boy. I also loved The daughter of the King of Naples, in which a prince set out to marry the princess of Naples - without actually knowing whether Naples had a princess or not. In the end, it did, and she accidentally ran away with the wrong man, and it took some time to find her again.

Connections

After Oceania and America I once again encountered a story that explains Why dogs sniff each other. In this case, they do it because one of them left a party to get some pepper, and never came back, so they have to look for the smell of spices on everyone. I also found a parallel of an Italian folktale here, in which a girl was asked if she wanted to be unlucky while young or while old; she picked a former, and had to work through a flood of misfortune before she could settle down. Saint Peter's mother appeared once again, and once again did not make it into Heaven - hence the Portuguese saying "Standing in the door like Saint Peter's mother."
There were several familiar fairy tale types, such as Three kidnapped princesses, Magician's apprentice, Tom Thumb (Manoel Littlebean), and Snow White (a dark and gory version, but at least the dwarves turned into princes in the end). The Portuguese version of Catskins, Linda Branca, was especially interesting because the girl did not run away from her father, but rather set out disguised as an ugly servant because she was tired of being too beautiful and getting too much attentin. Of course she changed her mind in the end.
As for tricksters, there was Peter-of-the-pigs, who tricked others, but was ultimately tricked to death himself. There was also a classic "top of the crop, bottom of the crop" trickster story in the book.

Where to next?
We will reach Africa at Morocco!

A is for Almonds

I found out about the A to Z challenge a mere few hours before it started! Since it is such a fun project, with so many participants, and it feeds my grafomania that is not satisfied with currently working on a Master's thesis, of course I had to sign up for this!!!

My personal challenge within a challenge is to post story- and storytelling-related posts every day. Starting with A...
A could stand for so many things! But because trees are in bloom, and spring is all over the place, and because I have been telling this story a lot lately...

... well, for me, A is for ALMONDS!

Some of you might now this story as The Queen who longed for Snow. I have been telling it as a folktale, with a prince and a princess, for a long time before I decided to read more about where the tale came from. And what I found out was much, much more interesting!

First of all, we have a young Moorish sultan, Ibn Almundin, who rules over Al-Gharb, later known as Portugal - more than eight hundred years ago. Tales do not say much about him, except that he is always victorious in battle. One day, when prisoners are brought in front of him, one of them catches his eye: a young woman called Gilda with light hair and blue eyes, a girl from a snow-covered country in the North, far far away. The young sultan falls in love, frees her, and asks for her hand in marriage; she agrees. They live happily for a while; people adore their new queen; but as time goes on, Gilda seems to be fading away, longing for something that no one can name. The young sultan is frantic to find out what he can do to bring the smile back onto her face; finally, he asks a poet who has been captured in the same battle she was, to explain to him what makes the queen so sad. The poet explains that Queen Gilda longs for snow and winter; in the kingdom of Al-Gharb summer rules all year round, and it never snows. Ibn Almundin thinks about this for a while; then he orders his people to bring him almond trees on ships from far away, and plants them around the castle as far as the eye can see. The next spring, one day, the queen walks to her window, and she sees a white blanket covering the hills and the valleys; she smiles for the first time in months, and runs out of the castle, to discover that the white blanket is not snow but petals of the almond blossom. From that day on, Queen Gilda is happy again; and every year, when the almond trees are in bloom, the whole kingdom celebrates.

Such a beautiful story! Also, so full of symbols and images. The young Moorish sultan (when I tell this story, I describe him with almond-shaped eyes, long before I tell my audience that the trees are almond trees), the fair Norse girl, the trees in bloom... Ibn-Almundin's name that sounds like almonds, and the sweet taste of marzipane and turrón. I was amazed when I came to the USA that so few people know what marzipane is...
Also, almond trees are native to the Middle East and Asia; the Arabic conquest of the Iberian peninsula brought them to Spain and Portugal, just like many other things. Fascinating story, with a colorful historical background!