StorySpotting: Body and soul mix-and-match (Locke & Key)

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!

Locke & Key, in my opinion, is a seriously underrated show (I haven't read the comics but I hear they are good too). With the new season out, they gave me multiple things to Story Spot.

Where was the story spotted?

Season 3, episodes 4-6.

What happens?

The basic premise of Locke & Key is about an old house that hides various old keys, each with its own magical property. The Ghost Key has been a staple since Season 1. It essentially opens a door that separates one's soul from their body when they walk through. It has been used in various creative ways over the course of the show.

In this season Dodge, the demon who has been the main heroes' arch nemesis, manages to use the door to knock the young boy Bode's soul out of his body. She then leaves her own mortal shell, and takes over the boy's body instead. Bode, left as a floating ghost, eventually manages to regain his own body by projecting his soul into a sparrow, and then transforming back into human shape. (Complicated, I know, but kinda genius).

What's the story?

The whole body-snatching-taking-refuge-in-a-bird thing is actually one of the creepiest pieces of folklore I have ever encountered. And as I looked into it again, it seemed a lot more common than I had believed. It even has a couple of Thompson motif numbers: E725.1 - Soul leaves the body and enters an animal's, and K1175 - Minister dupe raja into entering body of a dead parrot, then enters raja's body. And yes, that latter one is hella specific.

The first time I encountered this trope was in a collection of Tibetan folktales titled Tales of the Golden Corpse. The tale of The Travelling Spirit was about two friends, a prince and a minister's son, who went to school together. The prince was lazy, but the other lad learned the secret art of projecting his soul out of his body (known as phowa). Jealous that the minister's son might upstage him, the prince tricked his friend into showing off his skills - and destroyed the unattended body. Seeking a new place, the boy's lost soul entered an old woman's dead parrot, reanimating it. Later on, the parrot managed to catch up to the prince, and tricked him into falling out of a window... And then the minister's son's soul entered the prince's empty body, and walked away home.

Excellent creepy revenge ending.

As I was reading my way around the world, I encountered this trope again in a collection from Thailand, in a tale titled The Weaverbird Princess. In this story, a silent princess is promised to the suitor who can make her talk. A prince comes along with his mentor, both of them versed in the art of projecting their soul. The mentor projects his soul into various objects in the princess' room, and the prince has conversations with the objects, telling them clever stories. The princess can't help but interject, and thus the prince wins her hand. 

Later on, the prince goes to the forest with his mentor, and, seeing a dead deer, decides to project his soul into the animal and go exploring. He trusts his body to his mentor. However, the evil mentor in turn takes over the prince's abandoned body, burns his own, and goes home to take the prince's place. The prince, not finding a body to return to, transfers himself into a dead parrot. He flies home and tells his wife what happened. The princess manages to trick the mentor into leaving the body and transferring into a goat to show off. The prince thus gets back into his body, and kills the goat in revenge.

Once I started pulling on the king-in-the-dead-parrot thread, a whole lot of other tales came tumbling out. 

There is one in the Turkish story collection titled The history of the forty vezirs, where the evil vezir, instead of burning his own body, puts a slave's soul into it for safekeeping (and the king, while in parrot form, also judges some court cases). Interestingly, in this version the queen recognizes that her husband is not behaving like himself, and refuses to sleep with him.

There is also a version from Pakistan in this book, where the king takes on the parrot's body to pick mangos for his queen. The queen, who is aware of the evil servant's soul in her husband's body from the get-go, devises a clever plan to trick the soul into a lamb's body.

The tale also appears in The Three Princes of Serendip, the English translation of the Italian translation of a medieval Persian tale collection. You can read the story about The Emperor who turned into a parrot here. Once again, the wife's suspicion plays an important part in restoring her husband to his body. Added bonus: the Emperor uses his body-switching ability to travel his kingdom in the disguise of birds, and right wrongs.

Another version of the story can be found in Hatim's Tales, a book of Kashmiri stories collected from storyteller Hatim Tilwon in 1896. The fun part of this one is that the vezir loses the king's stolen body when he goes hunting, and decides to inhabit a bear for greater efficiency. The king then shoots the bear, saying "we can't have a bear for a vezir"... The tale also appears in other Kashmiri collections. It even has a variation in the famous Ocean of the Streams of Stories. Here, a person takes over a recently deceased king's body, but a minister suspects the change. Still, the minister decides an impostor is better than the child heir, and makes sure the soul doesn't have another body to return to. Now this would make a great movie...

In India, the story is known as The Metamorphoses of King Vikramaditya (you can read it in two versions in this volume of North Indian Notes and Queries). In this one, the parrot ends up at his father-in-law's house, judging court cases. Once he actually judges the case of a woman whose husband has been replaced by a shapeshifting dev. Eventually his wife (who is suspicious of her "husband") hears of the parrot and discovers the truth. In the second variant, the evil servant is tricked into the body of a goat and then beheaded, and the head of the goat still laughs and weeps as it's hung in the bazaar.

(I even found a popular comic book adaptation of this story from India.)

A distant relative to this motif is a story from Melanesia, where an evil spirit pushes a girl off a cliff, and takes over her body and identity.

Conclusion

So here we have a folktale type that spans a continent at least, and also several centuries in time, all the way from 11th century Kashmir to 21st century Netflix. Traveling souls and body-snatchers are a rich topic for people to think about. It probably has something to do with our mortality...

(Fun fact: I originally started working on this post when I was watching The 100)

Thailand, complex and fascinating (Following folktales around the world 194. - Thailand)

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!

Fascinating Folktales of Thailand
Thanapol Lamduan Chadchaidee
BooksMango, 2014.

This book is true to its title: it was one of the best ones I read for this challenge. It was written by a Thai author who personally translated the tales into English. The text is a bit strange at points (e.g. "palace police" instead of "palace guards"), but it did not take anything away from the enjoyment of the stories.

The only thing I was disappointed by is that the tales are included in a shortened, summarized version (because otherwise they would have been too long for the volume). They are mostly told in short basic sentences ("Prince and princess met. Fell in love. Married. A giant attacked the palace. The prince defeated it." etc.). But even so, they are still exciting and interesting, mostly because of their colorful complexity. I would love to read the more extensive versions...

Highlights

The first story I liked was about an ungrateful man who helped a beggar and received magic powers in exchange: he could make any tree burst into flowers and fruit with his touch, in any season. He used his power to grow rich, however when he was too ashamed to admit it was given to him by a beggar, the power went away.

The story of Krai Thong was about a conflict between people and crocodiles - crocodiles could take on human forms, and their daughters even married mortal men.

By far my favorite story was the God of Three Seasons. Three deities who were very good friends wanted to be born to earth together, but a mistake was made, and they all ended up sharing one body. The body changed with the seasons - winter, summer, rain - into a man, a woman, or a giant respectively. The whole story is very long and complex, but you can always tell what season it is by what form the hero is in. They had a wife, a husband, children, and a whole lot of adventures. 

The Garuda, who
appears in multiple
stories

There were multiple small moments in the stories that I really liked. In one, there was an assassin who could swim in earth as if it was water, and he could pop up from the ground anywhere. In another, there was a tree with colorful leaves, and each color turned the person who ate the leaf into a different animal. One story featured a hermit who walked around with his eyes bandaged because whatever he looked at way burned to ash (hello, Scott Summers). There was also an evil Christian priest, and a passive-aggressive talking cat that accompanied a persecuted princess through her adventures.

I liked it that in most stories villains were exiled or reprimanded rather than killed, saying hate can't be erased by vengeance, and karma will take care of them anyway (while killing them would have added to the hero's negative karma). Buddhist values showed up in multiple stories, for example in endings that went "everyone who committeed good deeds lived happily."

Connections

Many motifs were familiar from European tales. There was a false bride, babies exchanged for puppies, baby put into the river in a basket, princes and princesses disguised in animal skins, dead wives turning into trees, a girl born from bamboo, and even a silent princess. One story resembled Grimm's Queen Bee (here a fruit fly helped select the real princess from a crowd of identical women), another the Golden-haired twins, and the Golden-haired gardener tale type seemed especially popular in Thailand.

There was a frog bride type tale, except here it was a prince who came out of his hiding place and cleaned his family's house while they were away (we like domestic princes). There were shapeshifting demons and magic arrows I knew from the Ramakien, the Thai version of the Ramayana.

The most interesting connection was the Weaverbird story, which was made up of three parts, all three familiar from the Tibetan Tales of the Golden Corpse. One was a version of the Silent Princess, one was about a girl who remembered her previous lives, and one was the tale of the wandering (body-snatching) spirit. It was a fascinating tale with some very logical explanations.

Where to next?
Malaysia!

Oil sold to iguana (WTF - Weird Things in Folktales)

Welcome to my A to Z Challenge blog series titled WTF - Weird Things in Folktales! Find the introduction post (explaining the theme) here. Find all other participating blogs in the comments of each day's post on the main blog! You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Once again, there is no O in the Motif Index (probably because it looks too much like a zero). So I just searched for random terms that begin with O in the Motif Index, and came up with this gem:

J1852.1.2 Oil sold to iguana

This is a folktale from the Shan people in Southeast Asia, titled The Poor Man.

The tale tells about a poor man who wants to make some money. He hears about a city where there is a shortage of oil, so he borrows money from his friends, buys two gourds of oil, and sets out to sell it. On the way to the city he sees an iguana; the iguana sees him too and runs. The man chases the iguana, hoping to catch it for dinner, but the lizard disappears in a hole in the ground. The man starts digging - and lo and behold, finds three pots full of gold, and three pots full of silver. He tosses the gourds of oil away, takes the six pots, and sets out to the city.

When he gets to the marketplace, he wants to walk around, but the pots are very heavy. He goes to a house, and asks the people who live there to watch his pots, saying "there is only a little oil in them." He spends the day strolling around the market, enjoying the thought of being rich... and by the evening, he completely forgets which house he left the pots in. So he goes from door to door, asking for his pots of oil, but everyone denies having them.

Disappointed and tired, the poor man goes back to the hole of the iguana, hoping to find more gold. What he does find, however, is a day's wages in coin, and a written note: "The owner of the gold and silver thanks you for carrying his pots to the city."

The poor man goes home and remains poor.

(Read the story here.)

I have so many questions. Who was the owner of the pots? Was it the guy the poor men left the pots with? Was it someone else? Was it the iguana?!?!

R is for the Ramakien (Epics from A to Z)

A lot of people have heard about the Ramayana, one of India's (and the world's) great epics. In the spirit of introducing readers to less well-known (at least in Western education) works, I picked another version of the same story: Thailand's national epic, the Ramakien.
I first came into contact with this epic when I told a short portion of it for a MythOff event. For this challenge, I went back and re-read the full English prose translation, and I found it even better that I remembered. The version I read was based on an 18th century document; earlier written versions of the epic were destroyed and lost in 1767.

Origins
The Ramakien (sometimes also spelled Ramakian) tells the story of an epic war between demons and humans - the latter side led by reincarnated deities and supported by a great monkey army. It is also a story of rescuing a damsel in distress (war breaks out when the king of the demons, Totsakan, kidnaps the hero's wife), and re-arranging the cosmic Thai landscape with the involvement of Heaven, earthly kingdoms, and several countries of the Underworld.

The Heroes
The power couple of the epic is Pra Ram (the human reincarnation of the god Pra Narai) and his wife and love Nang Sida (the reincarnation of the goddess Laksamee). They are surrounded by a stellar supporting cast including Hanuman the monkey-deity-trickster hero, Pra Ram's brother Pra Lak, Pipek the demon seer who betrays his evil brother and joins the human side, and a whole line of distinguished monkey generals and warriors.
Interestingly enough, the demon side is just as diverse and full of intriguing characters. The main villain for most of the epic is the ten-headed, twenty-armed Totsakan, surrounded by terrifying demon warriors and supported by his wife and love Nang Monto. While Totsakan is definitely the bad guy, he is also surprisingly gentle and loving with his family, and at the moment of his death he goes out with dignity and humility. The demon side involves a lot of good characters such as Benjakai, Pipek's shapeshifter daughter who falls in love with Hanuman while working to deceive the monkey army, and ends up marrying him after the war is over.

The Highlights - 12+1 times the Ramakien is truly epic
1. Monkey. Army.
2. Magic in this story works in amazingly logical ways. Shapeshifters have to see the person they want to copy. Magic weapons have to be charged with a certain amount of power before they are used. People have to go through a rite to become immortal. When incantations are interrupted, rituals fail. The heroes (and villains) of the epic take advantage of these rules in multiple ways.
3. The main form of combat in the Ramakien is archery, performed with powerful magic arrows that have various effects such as a rain of snakes (or birds of prey to eat the snakes), rings of fire, diamond nets, lightning and thunder, and even bringing dead soldiers back to life. Heroes and villains pick their arrows to counter the effects created by their opponent. Magical combat archery.
4. When Nang Sida is accused of adultery and exiled by her husband, she gives him an epic run for his money. Once Pra Ram realizes he was wrong, he tries to make amends (with the wife who just lived ten years in exile because he didn't believe her word). Nang Sida is having none of that, and after giving him a piece of her mind multiple times, she goes as far as divorcing him. In the end, and entire committee of gods is needed to convince her to give him a second chance, and even then all she says is "I'll try."
5. Queen Kaiyakeese holds the chariot of her husband together with sheer force while they fight a demon.
6. The sweet moment when Nang Sida gets married and leaves the house of her parents. As they are left alone in the quiet, the old parents "pledge their love to each other."
7. Sadayu the magic bird sacrifices his life to stop Totsakan from kidnapping Nang Sida. He fails, but manages to stay alive long enough to bring the news to the husband.
8. Hanuman sleeps with  mermaid, and the result is a tiny monkey with a fish tail. They keep him in a little lotus pond. At one point he tries to beat his father with a flower.
9. "Fighting a battle is like throwing water: Both sides get wet."
10. The time when Hanuman sneaks into the demon city and ties Totsakan and Nang Monto's hair together as they sleep. The magic knot can only be broken if Nang Monto punches her husband in the face three times.
11. The fact that even after Hanuman gets his own kingdom, he still spends his time climbing trees and scratching his head with his feet.
12. The time when Nang Sida gets a stern lesson in motherhood from a bunch of female monkeys for leaving her child alone in the forest with a meditating hermit for a babysitter.
+1. The time when Hanuman does the "I've got a jar of dirt!" routine with Totsakan's heart in a box.

Fun fact: According to an image published in Time Magazine, Barack Obama carries a small figurine of the Ramakien's Hanuman in his pocket for good luck. How cool is that.

G is for the Giant Princess

Since we already had a dwarf.

This princess comes to you from Thailand, particularly, from this book.

The giant princess is not really the protagonist in this tale, as much as one more problem two star-crossed lovers have to overcome in order to finally be together. On the other hand, she is more interesting than the actual heroine.

The giant princess' name is Princess Phakar, and the is the only daughter of the widow queen of the giants, Queen Warsan (I wonder what happened to the king). She is young and innocent: she has never even tasted human flesh before. This seems to be kind of a coming-of-age ritual, because the Queen, as soon as her giant soldiers bring her a human prince (who happens to be the hero of this story, snatched away from his bride who at the time is disguised as an old priest, don't ask, long story) - orders the rare delicacy to be brought to the princess for consumption.

There is a problem: Princess Phakar falls in love with the human.

Talk about ill-fated love. If they could overcome the difference in size, there is still the matter of the whole star-crossed lover destiny thing, and the fact that the "other woman" is the daughter of the god Indra.

And you think your love life is complicated?!

Unfortunately I have not managed to get my hands on the original book yet, so, courtesy of Google Book Preview, the last page of the tale is missing. You have been warned. I am guessing the star-crossed lovers get together, and the giant princess can be happy to escape with her life.

Let's hope the next human she encounters is not called Jack.

B is for the Bird Princess

Today's princess is brought to you from Thailand (although the story is known in other Southeast Asian countries as well).

Her name is Manohara, and she is a Kinnari: half bird, half human (lower half swan, as shown in the picture). She is not just any Kinnari either, she is the youngest of the seven daughters of the King of the Kinnara. She lives in the mythical forest Himavanta together with many other amazing creatures of the mythology of South-East Asia.

(Before we go any further with this it bears mentioning that Kinnari can transform themselves into a fully human form as well, which probably makes them marrying humans a lot less awkward)

Manohara wears a precious gem on her forehead that gives full control over her to whoever holds it. This becomes important as soon as a hunter called Halaka lassoes her and drags her out of the lake where she was taking a bath.
(The magic lasso has a whole fascinating story behind it, by the way)
The hunter proceeds to hand the swan-girl over to a prince called Sudhana, who promptly falls in love with his captive (but not enough to give her back the jewel). Manohara returns the feelings and becomes his wife.

In the second part of the story the prince goes away to war and the Kinnari's jewel is handed over to the queen mother. When some advisors in court start scheming to have Manohara sacrificed for the success of the war, the queen finally hands her jewel back and lets her escape. Manohara leaves clues along the way for her husband, and then flies home, and spends her time "trying to wash the human smell off."

Of course the prince eventually finds her, following the clues. He is a hero, after all. 

You can read the full story here as depicted on the reliefs of the temple of Borobudur in Java.

This story belongs to a folktale type known in most parts of the world, called AT 400 - The Swan Maidens. You can find several other versions listed here and here. In China a similar story is the basis of a yearly festival.
This tale type usually includes a male hero catching a bride when she sheds her animal form (usually a bird, sometimes a seal - these are called selkie stories). There is always something that gives the man power over the supernatural bride: it is usually the shed skin or feathers, or sometimes a robe or a veil. In this case, it is a jewel (since Manohara does not shed her feathers to swim in a lake, which leads to her being lassoed around the neck instead of just having her skin stolen, ain't it nice?) Usually the bride finds this hidden item later, after having children, reclaims it, and returns to her own home, leaving the husband and the bunch of half-human babies behind.
It is a woman's tale, and rarely ever has a truly happy ending. Even in Manohara's case the means of her becoming the prince's wife are more than questionable and scream Stockholm syndrome. But let's not forget, this story was born in another time, and another place.