Valentine's Day folktales: Tricksters in Love

Two years ago my Valentine's Day post was about polyamory in folktales. This year, once again, I put up a poll on Twitter to see what love-related folktale theme I should blog about, and the winner was Tricksters in Love. I adore trickster tales, and I'm currently working on a whole book of them, so here are some of the stories I found about tricksters falling in love.

Side note: Trickster relationships are very rarely easy or harmonious. Probably for the obvious reason that tricksters themselves are very rarely easy or harmonious characters; breaking rules, tricking others, and going outside the ordinary is within their nature. So, the following tales might not be what people would describe as romantic...

Links in the titles.

How Ananse the Spider got Aso in marriage (Ghana)

Ananse (or Anansi) the Spider is one of the world's most well-known tricksters. His wife, Aso Yaa features into many of his stories; sometimes she helps him, but more often they mutually trick each other. Aso is a clever lady, and she can certainly hold her own against Ananse. In their 'origin story', she is married to an abusive and jealous man who keeps her hidden from everyone else. Ananse uses trickery to approach her in secret, and eventually he gets her pregnant. When the truth comes out, Aso is returned to her community, and marries Ananse. All in all it is a fun story, except for the end, where they sacrifice their first baby for some reason. (I tend to blatantly disregard that part.)

Anansi and Miss Flame (Jamaica)

In another story Anansi falls in love with Fire herself, and Fire flirts with him (he is "drawn to her like ants to sugar"). However, when she comes to visit him at night, she shows up as a "full grown woman" rather than a nice little flame, and Anansi flees from her. Fire burns his house down. In other versions, he puts her out with water.

Coyote dances with a star (Klamath)

Coyote falls in love with a star and wants to woo her. At first he sings to her, but she doesn't respond, so he climbs up a mountain and jumps up to the sky to dance with her. They dance around and around the night sky but Coyote gets exhausted and scared, and eventually the star lets go. Coyote falls back down to earth, creating a great big crater. 

Coyote and the Whirlwind Woman (Mandan-Hidatsa)

Coyote falls in love with a strange woman who claims that no one wants to marry her because she moves camp too often. Coyote claims he loves to move and travel, so they marry. However, when it is time to move camp, the woman turns out to be the Whirlwind, and she drags and tosses Coyote along. After a few moves, he leaves her with Groundhog's help.

Brother Rabbit's Courtship (African-American, USA)

This is a story from one of Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus collections, also rewritten by Julius Lester. Br'er Rabbit falls in love with one of the daughters of Miss Meadows, and she likes him too, but they are both very awkward, and she does not want to marry until she gets a sign through some love magic. So, Br'er Rabbit manufactures a sign himself, and they get happily married. Cute story. 

Jack and the King's Girl (Appalachia, USA)

A classic tale type where a foolish young man does everything wrong following someone else's advice. However, here we have a princess who never laughs, and she is the one talking to Jack every day - so the whole story comes off as Jack doing silly, funny things just to make the princess laugh.

Zaynab the Coney-catcher and Mercury Ali (1001 Nights)

Okay, so this one is full of problematic elements, but if you leave those out, it is a pretty fun story. Zaynab is a second-generation trickster; the chapter preceding hers is about how her mother, Dalilah the Wily, made a fool of the entire city guard of Bagdad multiple times. Mercury Ali is an infamous trickster in his own right, who comes to Bagdad and has a run-in with Zaynab. They immediately like each other, and start a very intense prank war as foreplay to their marriage. In the end, Ali marries three other women as well as Zaynab, and they have their adventures written down for posterity. 

Kuzunoha (Japan)

One of the most famous kitsune (fox spirit) legends is about a kitsune named Kuzunoha who falls in love with a mortal man who saves her life. Her son, Abe no Seimei, inherits some of her powers, and becomes a famous magician who speaks the language of animals. Eventually he discovers his mother's secret and she leaves the family, but her husband searches for her and finds her again.

Nasreddin Hodja's perfect wife (Middle East)

A short and poignant tale about the trickster and wise fool Nasreddin seeking the perfect wife around the world... only to find out that the perfect woman won't marry him, because she is looking for the perfect husband.

The First Love of Khodja Nasruddin (Temur Zulfiqorov)

This is not technically a folktale, but rather a very beautiful short story from a Tajik author about how the young Nasreddin Hodja first falls in love with the forbidden daughter of a very rich man. He manages to visit her, but they can't run away together, and eventually he is exiled into the world to become the traveling wise man, fool, and trickster he is known as. 

If there are other trickster love stories you'd like to see on this list, let me know in the comments! Happy Valentine's Day!

Folktales about polyamory (Valentine's Day #FolkloreThursday Special)

Today is both #FolkloreThursday and Valentine's Day! I didn't want to do a plain old "love stories" theme, so I polled people on Twitter about what they wanted to read. The majority vote went to polyamory. So, here we go.

(Disclaimer: I'm not poly. Please correct me if I got something wrong.)

First off: What is polyamory? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it is "the state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time." It is about being in relationships with more than one other person at a time.

You can read a lot about it from various sources, such as this article in Teen Vogue, or this video, or this webcomic on non-monogamy. Don't take my word for it, please educate yourselves.

In terms of finding folktales that are "about polyamory", here are some things that I had to consider:
1. Polyamory is not polygamy. Polygamy means one person being married to multiple people (usually a husband with multiple wives) and is a cultural and legal practice where participants are not necessarily all equal.
2. Polyamory is not cheating. Someone having multiple lovers who don't know about each other is not polyamory.

With this said, the following folktales might not fit the definition perfectly either. I wanted to collect them so that people can pick them up and play with them, be inspired by them, and make tales with better representation. Because oral tradition works that way.

Gold-tree and Silver-tree
Scottish folktale

In this Celtic Snow White variant, Gold-tree is the daughter of a king and a jealous queen, Silver-tree. Since she is more beautiful, her mother wants to kill her; her father helps her escape with a prince, and start a new life. When Silver-tree finds out, she manages to find the girl when her husband is out hunting, and stick a poison thorn in her finger. Gold-tree falls into a death-like state. Her husband puts her in a glass coffin and grieves, and after a while, marries again. The new wife one day finds the coffin, and revives Gold-tree (so that she can see her husband happy). Not only that, but when Silver-tree shows up again, the second wife saves Gold-tree once and for all, tricking the mother into drinking her own poison. After that, the prince and his two wives live happily ever after.
Polygamy? Yes. But also, a whole lot of interaction between the two wives, and one woman rescuing another. Also, Kaleidoscope's Cassie Cushing tells a very pretty version of this.

The girl with three husbands
Spanish folktale

A father has a very strong-willed daughter. When three men court her at the same time, she decides she wants to marry all three of them. Her father tries to talk her out of it, but she insists, to he decides to send them on a quest, and see which one brings the best gift. One guy buys a magic mirror; one buys a magic ship, and the third a magic ointment that can revive the dead. The first looks into the mirror, and sees that the girl is dead. The second flies them all home on his ship, and the last uses the ointment to revive the girl. Getting out of her coffin, the girl tells her father "See? I need all three of them." And they live happily ever after.
(Once again, polygamy that could also be told as a polyamorous tale.)

Tengöri Hereberi Atyámuram
Hungarian folktale

A Magic Flight type tale, in which a boy, unwittingly promised before his birth, goes to serve on an island in the house of Tengöri Hereberi Atyámuram (a god-like figure, named after the first line of the Cuman translation of the Lord's Prayer). He falls in love with the lord's daughter, who helps him complete various tasks, and then they run away together. Her mother, however, curses them so that the young man forgets his love the moment he goes to visit his parents, and never returns to her in their home. Eventually, she finds him and reminds him, breaking the spell, but by that time, he is married again. I am including this story on this list because of what happens next: The husband says he loves them both, the two women get together, spend some time talking, and eventually return, telling him that they are satisfied with this arrangement. And they all live happily ever after.

The boy's dream
Greek folktale

A boy sees a dream, but refuses to tell anyone what it was about. His mother and father get angry and chase him away. The kings hires him, but soon becomes curious about the mysterious dream; when the young man refuses to tell, the king orders him to be executed. The princess, however, rescues the young man in secret, and they spend time eating and studying together every day. They fall in love, obviously. Eventually Kirali (a Turkish ruler or hero) starts sending tests to the king - which the young dreamer solves in secret, and the princess conveys to her father. Eventually the truth comes out, and the young man is invited to Kirali's court - where he finds out that Kirali's daughter is a witch, and she has been making up tests to lure him away, because she is in love with him, and jealous of the princess. When our hero finds this out, he suggests that he can marry both of them, and the women agree (no need for jealousy). One day, as they are all sitting together, the witch with a baby girl in her arms and the princess pregnant, the young man finally reveals his dream: He saw himself surrounded by three roses, "one open, one about to open, and one still a bud." It was his picture of perfect happiness.
(In my mind, this story is about two kinds of courtship, one a friends-to-lovers story and the other a love-hate story full of banter.)

The bear and the prince
Marathi folktale

In this stunning folktale from India, a bear who is "a demon and a magician" lives in an underground garden of trees that grow blood fruit. His daughter is human, and he makes the girl lure men into the cave every day, so that he can use their blood to water the trees. One day the girl comes across a prince in the jungle and lures him in - but they also fall in love. It turns out he has been on a mission, looking for the blood fruits to cure a sick princess he is also in love with. The girl helps the prince kill the demon bear and gather the fruit. The prince ends up marrying both her and the (cured) princess.
(I love the imagery in this tale, and also the implied love stories.)

Representation matters, people. There is more than one kind of happily ever after.