Girl in the Chair: The Storyteller and the Bateleur, or, why researching animal tales is worth it

As I have mentioned before, I am busy working on my next folktale collection, focusing on animal tales. I have done a whole lot of research in the past year, making a long list of stories - and animal species - I would love to include. Right now, I am translating, retelling, and polishing the tales one by one, in writing and in telling. The latest one provided me with a bit of a research adventure, so I decided to share.

Before we get started:

1. There are a lot of animal tales out there. I could just Google "lion + folktale", find one, copy and paste, move on. Sadly, there are books on the market that do exactly that. But I do believe that the more work I put into a story, the better the book will be. And I also believe that in order to tell a story well (especially from another culture) I have to do my homework, and understand it as much as possible.

2. I set some goals for myself for this project. In order for a story to be included, it has to be enjoyable (exciting, interesting, polished), has to represent the animal in a positive way (not dumb, evil, or cursed), and the flora and fauna of the story has to match the place it comes from. The latter one is the important part for this post.

The case study

The story I am working with is a Mbaka folktale from Angola. I came across it during my Following Folktales Around the World reading challenge, and it stuck with me. It is titled The son of Kimanaueze and the daughter of Sun and Moon. The basic tale is that a great hero's son decides he wants a bride from the sky, but doesn't know how to get his letter of proposal to her. He asks various animals to help take the letter to the heavens.

The (bilingual) text mentions four animals:

Mbambi, translated as Deer,

Soko, translated as Antelope,

Kikuambi, translated as Hawk,

and Holokoko, translated as Vulture.

None of the four help the hero, actually, and they only have one line each in the tale, so I could have settled for these names and moved on. But since this whole book is about animals, I wanted to pay attention to detail, and go beyond stereotypes. 19th century British translators had a habit of labeling any bird a "pidgeon" or "eagle", and every ungulate "deer." So I looked up the book's end notes to see if these animals were really the ones they were translated into.

Obviously not. And here things got interesting.

Mbambi, according to the notes, is Cephalophus burchelii. This name, however, doesn't exist anymore. Taxonomic names can change a whole lot in a century, and it was obvious that Mbambi had swapped Latin names since 1894, but I had no idea to what. I was sure he is not a deer, given that Cephalophus refers to duikers. I also learned that the old name referenced British naturalist William John Burchell, so I started searching for terms like Burchell + antelope, Burchell + bushbuck, Burchell + Cephalophus etc. Nothing really came up, until finally I ran into an article about the catalog of Burchell's mammal collection. And there they noted the new name: Sylvicapra grimmia ssp. burchellii, common duiker. Win.

Soko was a more complicated case, given that the notes gave no Latin name at all. The translator only stated that it is some sort of an antelope, with longer horns. This was not much to go on, so I decided to look up antelop species that live in Anglola. Since Angola's borders have also changed, I looked up the regions where the Mbaka live and tried to cross-reference. Eventually I came across the Springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis), which matched the description, and also the role in the story (see below). I am not sure about this one, but decided to go with it until further notice. (Fun fact: antidorcas means "not a gazelle". Gee thanks.)

Kikuambi had a Latin name: Fiscus capelli. However, this one is also out of date. Luckily, my search came up with a very useful page, which led me to the current name, and another which helped me with names in different languages. This is how I found Lanius humeralis capelli - which is not a hawk at all. It's a small shrike (Northern fiscal). I also had to do some extra work figuring out what to translate it to in Hungarian, since we don't have a common name for it. But at least I had the species.

And then came Holokoko, Helotarsus ecaudatus. This one was pretty straightforward: Google told me that it is an older Latin name for Teratophius ecaudatus, the bateleur. Not a vulture. This bird:

This whole side quest took me about two hours, and resulted in finding out about four fascinating animals. With one line each in the folktale.

First off, I had to make decisions on how to incorporate them into the text. In a folktale, modern names can stick out like a sore thumb ("and then along came the Northern fiscal"). And yet, I like to tell the story with the accurate animals, and name them with their original names. So, I settled on "along came Kikuambi, a small shrike" - and put the rest in the Comments section after the tale. 

Why go to all this trouble?

Because the four lines in the story suddenly made sense in contet, and expanded into a small scene. The hero first tries to send the letter with the small and swift duiker, but Mbambi can't run up to the sky. Then he asks Soko, who can jump (pronk) very high - but not that high. Then he asks a bird who can perch in high places, but he can't help either. Finally he asks the bateleur, who can soar very high - but even he can only get halfway to the sky.

And now it all makes sense.

A lot of this was probably self-explanatory to people when the original text was collected. But if I am telling it to contemporary audiences in Hungary (or Europe), these things need spelling out. And yes, the story would still work if it was four random animals saying no to the hero - but with the specific species, and the background knowledge, the story gains richness, detail, and layered meaning.

And, honestly: I freaking enjoy doing this work. Hello, dopamine. I love the search, the discovery, the puzzle. And I love animals, I always have. So I enjoy finding out about interesting species, and doing them justice when telling people about them.

And now I am moving on to the second paragraph...

(Note: if you are a biologist, birder, anthropologist, or any other professional, and you see a mistake in this post, please educate me :) )

Girl in the chair: Luck, research, and wolves

It has been a while since I last did a Girl in the Chair in-depth research post. Incidentally, that one had also been about wolves. Yesterday I went deep down into a rabbit hole, and this time, luck played an important part in the process. So I decided to write down the play-by-play, to show what an adventure research can be.

It all started with trying to find folktales where the wolf is a positive character. I am working on a folktale collection that features animal tales, and I really wanted to get a good wolf story in there. This topic has come up recently at the FEST conference too, and it is a contentious point in Hungary right now, so I was extra motivated.

I went through a bunch of usual suspects - Prince Ivan and the Grey Wolf (which, I found out, has been translated at one point as The Grey Wolf and the Golden Cassowary), the Wolf Queen, Sirko and the wolf, etc. But so far most stories I have been interested in were about shapeshifter wolves, rather than the actual animal. In addition, stories where the wolf is a positive character have been rare and hard to find. And on top of that, I wanted the story to be interesting and exciting. And to say something about wolves being a useful part of the environment. NO pressure.

Then I vaguely remembered hearing a story about the creation of the first wolf, from a fellow storyteller. I only recalled that it was a Finnish (?) story, and the wolf was made of sticks, designed to be a guardian. I tried to Google Books "creation of wolf", "first wolf", etc., but came up blank. No Kalevala, no Finnish, no mythology. It was beginning to drive me crazy. After a while I decided to attack the problem from a different angle: I tried to remember who told it. Then it dawned on me that it must have been Kevin Strauss, whose awesome workshop about animal tales I have attended in the US. Once I remembered, I realized that Kevin has also published books on animal tales. I don't have his wolf book, or Tales with Tails (it has been on my wish list forever), but I thought maybe he included this story in one of those. So, I did the next best thing: I used Amazon Preview. And found out that "The First Wolf" was indeed included in Tales with Tails! Then I sent up a little prayer that Kevin, being the awesome researcher he is, included sources in the book. (And that they were visible in preview). And he did! (Thanks, Kevin! I'm buying the book). 

Kevin's source list led me to another book, The Enchanted Wood and Other Tales from Finland. And lo and behold, it had the story (this book is on Archive). Sadly, however, it did not note any sources that I could find. I was beginning to wonder if it came from a family tradition of some sort. I tried to do a reverse search, using terms from the text of the tale ("first wolf" "great wizard" "evil spirit" "burning eyes" etc.), but no hits. Then I thought maybe the source is in Finnish, so I used Google Translate to translate the search terms. Still no dice. After poking at it for a good hour, I gave up.

Next came the iffy part: if I can't find a source, but want to use a tale, I need permission. I looked up the publisher, and found out that Libraries Unlimited has recently become an imprint of Bloomsbury. Which means I need Bloomsbury's copyright permission for using the tale. I looked up Bloomsbury's permission policy, downloaded the permission request form, and got ready to work on it. However, at this point my spoons ran out, and I decided to postpone the form-filling for later.

In the meantime, I took another tack at finding other good-wolf stories. My usual go-to is to pull up the Thompson Motif Index, and search for a keyword in it. So I did Ctr+F "wolf", and started poking through the 300+ hits. I eventually came across motif G303.17.3.3: Wolf eats the devil; therefore, devil no longer lives in the world. This one sounded promising, so I pulled up the source referenced: the first volume of Natursagen by Oskar Dähnhardt. Since this was published in 1909, I went back to Archive to pull it up. Praise the gods it was not in Gothic letters, so between my rudimentary German and Google Translate, I managed to read the story on page 153. I realized that it sounded similar to the Finnish story! But not quite the same. Here, the devil created wolves too, but to spite God.

On this page, the author referenced a Ukrainian version by Dragomanov in the journal Mélusine, where other animals are also created from the wolf (bumblebees, flies, etc.). I got curious about this one, so I went on a whole side quest digging up volume IV of Mélusine, and sorting through the versions Dragomanov referenced (some in Russian). They all had the same basic structure as the Finnish story, with the Evil Spirit creating the first wolf, but they were missing a crucial part: the creation of the wolf as a guardian, rather than a monster.

Giving up on Dragomanov and his Slavic sources, I eventually wandered back to Natursagen. I decided it is a useful volume to leaf through, even if not for this particular tale. So I turned the pages back to the beginning of the Wolf chapter, to see what else is there.

And there was the damn Finnish story!

Almost word for word.

Except it's Estonian.

Bless Natursagen, this one had sources too! One was a collection of Estonian folktales from 1888, in German (also available in the public domain, but in Gothic letters. Luckily, they were good enough for the screen reader to be copy-pasted into Google Translate. Sometimes copy-paste turns Gothic into gibberish.) Another one was a collection that had Estonian and Latvian variants, and there was even a Hungarian collection referenced, although the story in this one was only tangentially related.

But! The Estonian book even came with notes that revealed some very intriguing details. For one, it finally named the "creator" as Jumah, the Estonian sky deity. For another, it specified the plant that is used for the tail as Daphne mezereum, which, funny enough, is named after wolves in Hungarian.

So. Yeah. I found the story's source after all!

Here are a few conclusions:

1. While tracing a story back to a public domain source is useful, that is not the primary reason to do it. As demonstrated above, a lot can get scrambled and lost during translation and adaptation (Jumah turns into Great Wizard, or firebirds turn into cassowaries). Also, the closer a source is to the oral tradition, the more intriguing details might be noted, as I found out in the end.

2. Even with the most dedicated research skills, sometimes luck plays a part. Turning to the right page, selecting the right motif out of 300, happening on the right workshop at the right time, or having access to the right page on Amazon Preview. I was wandering around, and lucked into something I almost gave up on.

3. Reading multiple versions of the same tale type is still a very illuminating process. There are similarities and differences, sometimes as subtle as the "evil spirit" noting that wolves are needed to protect the woods. That one line makes one version more fascinating than all the others - and more fitting for a contemporary message.

4. Wolves are awesome and deserve more positive representation!

5. I still very much love this part of my job :)

Tarot Tales: G is for the Green Goddess ( The Empress)

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: The Empress

Meanings: The Empress is a card about fertility and femininity. It is about nature, nurture, beauty, abundance, creativity, birth, and motherhood. It also has connection to comfort, pleasure, sensuality, health, love, and romance. It is an all-around lovely card.

Selection process: Obviously, this story had to be about a woman. Preferably one who is also royalty or divinity. World lore is full of mother and fertility goddesses, so there was a lot to choose from. The easy route would have been to pick one of the big names, such as Demeter, but I wanted to dig a little deeper, and shine a light on less well-known stories.

The story: The princess who made the forests green and the meadows bloom

Origin: Hungary 

Summary: A young prince decides that he will only marry the Princess Who Makes the Forests Green and the Meadows Bloom (Erdőzöldítő és Mezővirágoztató Királykisasszony). His parents try to hold him back, since no one actually knows if such a princess exists, but he sets out on a quest anyway. On his way he arrives to a dying kingdom where nothing grows. He finds out that the king had unwittingly promised his child to the Devil, but the refused to give the baby up, and in revenge the Devil turned the whole kingdom into a desert. The only way to break the curse is for the PWMFGMB to find her true husband, and travel across the land.

The prince meets an old beggar, who tells him that the princess can only marry a man who was a late child, and who wanted to marry her even before he knew she existed. When he finds out that the prince fulfills both, he grants him a magic wand that summons anything one draws with it. Using the magic wand the prince travels to the PWMFGMB's lush, thriving kingdom, and attends the royal ball two nights in a row. The princess falls in love with him, they get married, and on their way home they cross the desert kingdom. Wherever the princess passes, everything turns green, flowers bloom, vegetation grows, and nature comes to life.

Sources & notes: Hungarian text online here.

Runner-ups: A similar fertility blessing appears in the Indian tale of A story in search of an audience, where a newborn girl is blessed with magic nature powers. I also considered including the Lady Tree of the Narts, an actual world tree goddess from the Caucasus who holds magical knowledge (and has a baby with a hero).

Do you like green things? Are you a gardener? What are your favorite plats?

StorySpotting: Sometimes the forest eats people (Cursed)

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!

So, this new Netflix fantasy series is out, and it's pretty bad. The whole thing is (very loosely) based on King Arthur legends (obviously), so I'm not going to bother with those. But it also contains some smaller details in the mix that are interesting enough to blog about.

Where was the story spotted?

Cursed, Season 1 (all the way through)

What happens?

The main hero of the series, a Fey girl named Nimue (a.k.a. future Lady of the Lake), has magic powers that allow her to call on the spirits of nature (?) to help her when she is in danger. Despite the fact that they refer to her people as "Sky Folk", her powers are mainly connected to plant life; she makes roots and vines attack and kill people, and even seems to have some kind of a floral healing ability. In one scene she lures a small army into the woods, and then makes the trees murder them. The forest fills up with screams and no one returns.

What's the story?

The most obvious reference to the forest-murder scene is the historical event of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. In 9CE, German tribes lured three Roman legions, led by Publius Quinctilius Varus, into the wilderness of modern day Lower Saxony, and pretty much made them all disappear like a very bloody magic trick. It was one of the most humiliating defeats of Roman military history, in no small part because of the outrageous incompetence of Varus (Suetonius, who likes juicy gossip, claims that when Augustus heard the news he banged his head on a wall yelling "Varus, give me back my legions!"). Legend sprang up about bloody pagan rituals and human sacrifices in the deep woods, and the remains of the legions were not found until about six years later. Some claim that the battle left its mark on the legends of the Niebelungs.

Image from here

Apart from the bloody forests of Germania, there are other stories around the world that deal with carnivorous and martial plant life:

The Wonderful Wood is a ballad-folktale from Warwickshire, in which a girl flees into the forest from a murderous king who likes to hunt people. She treats the trees with respect and reverence and they let her through, but when the hunting party busts in after her, the oak trees close in... and the king is never seen again.

The Battle of the Trees (Cad Goddeu) is one of my favorite Welsh legends. In it, the magician Gwydion calls the forest into battle against an underworld army of monsters. Each tree has its own personality, and role in the fight. (Talking about pop culture: This is the story Tolkien based the Ents on.). A linguist named Mark Williams wrote a "fake" version of this legend in Welsh a few year back, tricking the internet into believing he had found a lost manuscript. He owned up to the joke, but the story he wrote is still damn good, and I enjoy telling it.

In the Oroqen folktale of Lunjishan and Ayijilun, the plants of the forest come to the hero's aid when he goes out to rescue his bride, a huntress kidnapped by a demon. A birch leaf flies him to his destination, and the vines of a morning glory entwine and choke the demon to death.

In the Hungarian folktale The Dream of the Fairy Queen, a mortal man wonders into the forest and gets trapped in an enchanted clearing. The spell can only be broken if he defeats the Forest Spirit in single combat. His lover, the Fairy Queen Tündér Ilona, ends up taking his place in the fight, and she soundly beats up the Forest Spirit, breaking the curse.

The Demon in the Tree is a Jewish legend from Germany, reminiscent of The Corpse Bride story. A young man puts a wedding ring on a branch (as a joke), and thus accidentally engages himself to a tree spirit. The spirit keeps killing his brides, until one clever bride takes the effort to talk to her and come to an understanding to share their husband.

For similar stories, see also the British tale of the Elder Tree Witch, and the Solomon Islands legend of the Boongurunguru. Read about man-eating trees here.

Conclusion

Sometimes the forest eats people.

S is for Singing Snails (Folktales of Endangered Species)

Welcome to the 2020 A to Z blogging challenge! This year my theme is Folktales of Endangered Species. I am researching cool traditional stories about rare, fascinating animals - to raise awareness of what we might lose if we don't get our collective shit together. Enjoy!

Partulina variabilis, image from here

Species: Lanai tree snail (Partulina semicarinata), Lanai tree snail (Partulina variabilis), Achatinellidae (tree snails)

Status: Endangered to Extinct

Kawelona and Lauka-ie-ie

Hawaiian legend

Lauka-ie-ie is a beautiful girl, raised by her aunt and uncle, who is friends with all the plants, flowers, and animals of her home in Waipio Valley. Her best friends are the singing sails; she sings along and plays with them every day. Lauka-ie-ie is protected by the goddess Hina-ulu-ohia, the red flowered ohia tree, who is also raising her brother.
When she grows up, Lauka-ie-ie sees a dream: she dreams of a handsome young chief whose face is bright like the setting sun. Her snail and plant friends all volunteer to set out to look for him together. They are aided in their search by the Wind, Lauka-ie-ie's brother, who carries the party from island to island, searching for the mysterious young chief.
Meanwhile, on the westernmost island of Kauai, young chief Kawelona also dreams about a beautiful young girl he's never seen. He sets out with the help of his friends, the iiwi birds (scarlet honeycreepers) to find her. The two traveling parties meet on the island of Lehua. They sail back to Waipio Valley on a white cloud and a giant shell, and throw an amazing wedding attended by all plants, kupua-spirits, gods, sharks in human form, and, of course, singing snails.
In some versions of the story Pupu-kani-oe, the singing snail, also falls in love along the way, and settles down on Oahu, only to return for the wedding along with her husband and daughters. 

Sources: Read the story here, here, here, or here. Read more about Hawaiian snails here.

How can I help?

Read about conservation efforts here, here, or here.

What plants and animals would you invite to your own wedding?

Image from here

B is for the Black rhino (Folktales of Endangered Species)

Welcome to the 2020 A to Z blogging challenge! This year my theme is Folktales of Endangered Species. I am researching cool traditional stories about rare, fascinating animals - to raise awareness of what we might lose if we don't get our collective shit together. Enjoy!

Species: Black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis)

Status: Critically endangered (some subspecies have already been declared extinct)

Why the rhino scatters its dung

Ndebele folktale

Story says that once upon a time Elephant and Rhino got into a big fight (in one Tonga folktale it was because they had a contest over who can make a larger pile of poop). Rhino was seriously injured in the fight, his hide torn in many places. He limped over to Porcupine, asking to borrow one of her quills to sew up his hide. Porcupine agreed to lend a quill, but only after making Rhino promise to return it after use. (Porcupine needs her quills to defend herself). Rhino, however, got tired from all the sewing, took a nap, and forgot about the quill.

When Porcupine came to take back her quill, Rhino realized it was lost. He figured he must have swallowed it in his sleep. So, ever since then, he has been digging around in his own piles of dung, hoping to find the lost quill and return it.

(Male black rhinos do stomp around in and scatter their dung; this is how they mark their territory.)

Sources: Read about this story here, here, or here. There are also other tales about the rhino you can find here, here, or here. There are some other legends about rhinos in hunting memoirs, namely this one and this one.

How can I help?

Check out black rhino conservation efforts by the WWF or the International Rhino Foundation.

Have you ever lent something to someone and never got it back?

Would you be brave enough to ask a rhino to return it?

The wisdom of the jungle (Following folktales around the world 144. - Uganda)

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 ​King of the Snakes
And other folk-lore stories from Uganda
Rosetta Baskerville
The Sheldon Press, 1922.

The book contains twenty-six Ugandan folktales from the turn of the last century. Some of them have been translated from a Luganda collection by the author, while others she collected herself over the years she spent in Uganda. The book also contains some songs and proverbs, although it's hard to tell how close the rhyming song translations are to the original. The book was meant for children, so I suspect the tales have been "prettied up" by the author, but it was still a pretty great read.
(The title refers to a story where a wise man sees a dream predicting the arrival of the whites carried by metal snakes - the railroads.)

Highlights

The story of Kintu revealed how death appeared in the world. Kintu was a shepherd boy who fell in love with Nambi, princess of the Cloud Kingdom, who slid down the rainbow with her siblings to play. Kintu and Nambi married, but when she moved to earth she was followed by her brother Walumbe, Death, who decided to stay among the people. In another story Mpobe the Hunter found the passage to Walumbe's underground realm, but Death let him go, making him promise not to tell anyone about his adventure. Of course the hunter broke the promise, and Walumba came to take him.
The story of Princess Peace started out great, but then took a nose dive, sadly. It was about a princess who wanted to travel and see other lands, but her father kept telling her that other kingdoms were full of strange people and not worth seeing. The princess set out anyway, crossing the great lakes with the help of a bird... and saw a foreign kingdom where people were different, so she returned home, concluding that her father was right. Boo.
Two wizards featured into the story of the Locusts, and they worked together to end the pest: one lured the locusts above Lake Victoria with the help of singing fireflies, and the other sent a storm from the top of his volcano to wash all the insects into the lake.
My favorite story in the book was that of The fairy foxes, where a greedy king built a zoo, collecting all kinds of animals, none of which were happy or treated well in captivity. One of his advisers, feeling sorry for the animals, convinced the king that there were "fairy foxes" in the jungle, and the king set out to find them. Over the weeks spent in the jungle the king's eyes opened to the beauty of nature, and he set his zoo animals free.
Another favorite was the story of Two friends. A strange, quiet boy went out into the jungle to think, and all kinds of animals gave him unwanted advice, until he was befriended by a hare, who treated him kindly and helped him find his own way.
These last two stories were the kind that makes this whole reading challenge worth it...

Connections

The story of the fairy bumblebee resembled that of the Queen Bee by the Grimms. Kinto saved a bumblebee from the rain, and in return it helped him get back his stolen cow from a wizard, with the help of various ants and a bamboo forest. The riddles of an evil king were answered by Walukaga the Blacksmith, rather than the usual clever maiden.
The motif of fire theft appeared in the tale of Kibate: here the fire had to be taken from the horn of a rhino, by telling it a funny story. The fire was successfully acquired by a lonely hunter, who'd spent enough time in the jungle to understand the humor of rhinos. There was once again a "why bats fly at night" type story (here, because they forgot to give a message to the Sun and they are hiding from him). The story of the animals inviting each other for dinner featured Frog and Lizard this time. There was also a tale where Rooster threatened all the animals with his "burning" comb - until Leopard's children figured out it was not dangerous at all.
The resident trickster was Hare once again. In one story he got rid of Lion and Hyena to get a better king for the animals (they had a contest about whose thoughts are more interesting). In another tale he traded a handful of corn for increasingly better things until he earned a cow (this was a very good variant for this tale type).

Where to next?
Kenya!

MythOff Budapest: Living Planet

This Wednesday we had the ninth MythOff event in Budapest - for the second time in our wonderful new venue, the Premier Kultcafé. The theme, courtesy of Bumberák Maja, was Living Planet - we told myths about the relationship between humans and nature, which held important relevance to current world events. Despite it being the middle of summer, we had a great audience and a full house of more than ninety people! The emcee was Nagy Enikő, who did a wonderful job. She did not only print us voting forms in advance, but also sewed cloth baggies as prizes for Plastic-Free July, and even made sure we raffled one off to the audience.

This is how things went down:

Round one: Sacred plants

Hajós Erika told the Greek myth of King Erysichthon, who cut down Demeter's sacred grove, and the goddess punished him with eternal hunger. Eventually, the king devoured himself. Klitsie-Szabad Boglárka, told another Greek myth, that of Daphne and Apollo. Erika's telling was dramatic, while Bogi's was humorous, and the two went great together.
Voting question: Which tree would you plant in your garden, oak or laurel?
The winner: Laurel!

Round two: Sea and animals

I began this round with a story from Oceania about how the women saved Guam from a giant fish sent by the angered spirits of nature (I love this one a lot, especially because women use their hair to weave a net together). My partner Bumberák Maja told the Inuit myth of Sedna, Mother of the Sea, whose hair gets dirty and matter, and traps sea animals until someone combs them out.
Voting question: Whose hair would you rather comb, your own (heroically cut), or Sedna's?
The winner: Sedna!

Round three: Fertile land

This round focused on life, renewal, and fertility. Stenszky Cecília told us about Ishtar, goddess off fertility descending into the Underworld (she, just as Maja, used a drum for telling). Gregus László told a Tahiti myth about the God of the Sea destroying all land to punish over-eager fishermen - all land except one island where his mortal lover lived.
Voting question: With whom would you rather go out for a coffee, Ishtar or the Tahitian princess?
The winner: Ishtar!

All three votes were close, which means that we all brought good stories to the performance. Sine counting ninety-something (!) votes took a bit of time, we told some more stories in the meantime - I told about Saint Peter and global warming, and Maja told about Saint Peter and rainfall.

It was, once again, an amazing experience to tell together, and have such an enthusiastic and dedicated audience. I'm looking forward to the next occasion! For more info, follow MythOff on Facebook!

Folktales about climate change

While "cimate change" as a scientific term is too recent to feature into traditional stories, make no mistake: People have been telling legends, myths, and folktales about our fragile relationship with Nature for many centuries. Since it is a very timely topic, here are some of my favorite examples of traditional tales with messages for the future:

The Lady of Stavoren
(Read versions here, here, or here.)

A legend from the Netherlands, with written versions dating back to the 16th century. A wealthy merchant lady orders a ship's captain to bring her the greatest treasure in the world. The captain goes on a long voyage, and after searching all over the world (and probably some introspection), he returns with a ship full of wheat, claiming that there is no greater treasure in the world than food. The lady grows angry, and, despite the begging of the poor of the city, orders him to dump the entire cargo into the harbor. The captain does so, and then leaves. The wheat, however, causes a sand bank to form, blocks the entrance, and trade coming into the city. The lady loses her fortune, becomes a beggar, and eventually, rising waters destroy the city itself.

How the Women Saved Guam
(Read versions here, here, here, or here.)

Chamorro legend from Guam. People anger the spirits of nature by taking from land and sea, and not giving anything back. First comes draught, and then famine, and then a giant parrot fish that keeps taking bites out of the island. Men set out but fail to trap it in their nets. Eventually, women discover where the fish is hiding in a cave under the island. They get together, weave a stronger net from their own hair, put their own strength and determination into it, and catch the fish with collective effort.

Sedna
(Read about her here, here, here, or here.)

Sedna, also known by several other names, is the Mother of the Sea in Inuit mythology. When the ocean is polluted, when people commit too many sins or dirty the waters with too many abominations, the animals of the sea get tangled in Sedna's dirty hair, water rushes into her house instead of out of is, and there is no food for the hunters to be found. At times like this, a shaman has to descend into Sedna's realm, patiently comb and untangle her hair (she can't do it herself since she has no fingers), and release the animals trapped in it. In some legends, he has to make a promise to treat the Sea with respect, and not kill more animals than people are allowed.

King Erysichthon
(Read here.)

The King of Thessaly angers the goddess Demeter by cutting down her sacred trees. The nymphs responsible for the trees run to the goddess, and she orders Famine to enter the king's stomach. Erysichthon is cursed by horrible hunger, and he devours everything, until people flee from his palace, and he is left with only one person - his daughter. He sells her for food, but she escapes (thanks to her shapeshifting abilities)... so he sells her again and again. But even so, there is less and less food to be found, and he eventually devours himself.

Saint Peter and the Frogs
(Read about the collection here.)

Macedonian folktale, originally titled Saint Peter and the Poor Man. Peter encounters a poor beggar who complains about winter, and how the cold weather is miserable for the poor. Peter asks God to make sure it is always summer. God warns him it is a bad idea, but Peter insists. God creates eternal summer, and in the warm weather, Nature goes wild - amphibians proliferate, and soon the entire world is covered in frogs. Frogs grow bigger and more intelligent over time, and Peter eventually admits that his idea was bad - when one of the frogs wants to marry his daughter. God sends a hailstorm, and all frogs freeze. Seasons return.

Encante
(Read about it here.)

There are many legends from the Amazonas basin about the boto, the pink river dolphin. Some of them tell about fishermen who wound a dolphin for sport or for entertainment. Dolphins drag the fisherman underwater, and take him to the Encante, the Enchanted City, where dolphins appear as humans. They show him the harm he has done, and make him tend to the wounded dolphins in a hospital until they are healed. The fisherman is released back to the land with a warning to treat the dolphins with the same respect as people.

The Revolt of the Utensils
(Read here, here, or here.)

A Moche myth, mostly reconsturcted from vase and wall paintings, and some Mayan parallels. From what researchers can piece together, it deals with an upside-down, apocalyptic time (either in the past, in the future, or happening periodically), when man-made objects and domesticated animals revolt against humans, allegedly for being mistreated, or being thrown away. Led by the goddess of Moon or Night (?), and they subdue, enslave, and/or kill humans in revenge.

Drop of Honey
(Read here, here, or here.)

A king drips some honey on the ground while eating, and refuses to have it cleaned up, claiming that it is "not his problem." The honey attracts a fly, which attracts a lizard, which attracts a cat, which attracts a dog, and the chain of events escalates from there to all-out civil war, until the palace burns down around him. The king has to finally admit - too late - that the drop of honey might have been his problem after all.

*Note: Not all of the stories above are foktales, some of them are myths or folk legends. I just wanted to make the title simpler than "traditional narratives." 

Down the research mole rat hole

Every year, various organizations in Hungary announce natural treasures of the year, to raise awareness of the country's flora and fauna, and gather resources for conservation. We have Bird of the Year, Mammal of the Year, Wildflower of the Year, etc. Since it is by now a very popular tradition, I decided that this year I'd make a storytelling program that contained stories for all these natural treasures; I named the idea Wonders of the Year, and got right down to research.

Just to show you what I was trying to find stories for:

Bird: Peregrine falcon
Tree: Mountain ash
Wildflower: Marsh gentian
Mineral: Fluorite
Fish: Asp
Insect: Emperor dragonfly
Mammal: Mole rat
Reptile: Viviparous lizard
Herb: Lavender
Fungus: Lion's mane

The idea was to find one story for each, and then take the whole show to educational settings. Since I had a fairly busy year, the program did not really come together until the end of September, when we have the national Night of Research: Research institutions, universities and museums are open all night, and have all kinds of exciting science-related programs. A friend of mine, Dr. Beáta Oborny, biologist and storyteller, suggested that we should take the show to the university's own Natural History Museum; she'd provide the exciting factual information for each natural treasure, and I'd tell the stories. So we did.

In the end, the research process was not at all what I'd expected. Falcons show up in lots of stories, but none mentioned a peregrine specifically (in Hungarian, "falcon" used to refer to this particular species to begin with, other falcons had other names), and of course I had to give up on the "viviparous" part of the lizard very early on. Mole rats rarely ever come to the surface, so the folklore on them was pretty scant as well. But on the other hand, delving deeper into nature stories did bring up some unexpected, delightful surprises.

I tracked down some Bulgarian folk songs in which a girl is forced to marry a dragon, only to find out that her husband has no power over gentian flowers, and she uses them to escape; bonus in the story was the way the dragon's marriage entourage arrived at her house, and the dragon women re-braided her hair "in their fashion, like a dragon." Fluorite seemed like a lost cause from the get-go, but then I learned about the famous Blue John mines in England, which just happen to have a fabulous dragon legend attached to them (courtesy of Ruth Tongue, from Forgotten Folktales).

In the cases where I could not find the exact species, I did my best to improvise. For example, lizards appear in many stories; I almost fell for one where Lizard helps find the stolen Sun, but then I found out that this particular species is known for living in colder climates and habitats, and is the northernmost reptile known in Europe. In the end, I tracked down a Hungarian folktale (a variant of the Frog Princess) where a girl, turned into a lizard, lived at the edge of the world, and ventured into underground kingdoms to help a prince acquire magical items. Similarly, I went all the way to Japan to find some worthwhile mentions of the lion's mane mushroom. There it is associated with the yamabushi monks, and it just so happens that there is a well known Japanese comedy that features such a monk trying to pray an infestation of demon mushrooms away.

The hardest challenge, in the end, was the mole rat. It has been chosen as Mammal of the Year because building the wall on our southern border (*cough*useless*cough*) cut its habitat in half, and now it is severely endangered. Because it rarely ever comes above ground, there is not much folklore attached to it, and the one that exists is pretty bad. In some parts of Hungary it was believed that killing one with your left hand gave you healing powers (not for the poor creature, obviously). Other than that, I found some beliefs that children born from sibling incest live as mole rats for 7 years (weremolerats, hey!), although the word they use for mole rat could also just be a word for a mythical creature. In the end, I found a newspaper clipping from 1927 in which a mole rat was found on the road by someone, captured, lost, found again, and eventually made it into town from where the local doctor sent it on to London. Using all these small moving parts, I made up a story from the mole rat's perspective, and spiced it up with interesting details about these fascinating creatures.

I am proud to report that in the end I managed to find stories for all ten things on the list; most of them traditional folktales and legends, with some creative additions. It was tons of work, and I didn't even get to tell all of them in one show, but I had great fun with working on it. I still have three months to take it to other venues... and I can't wait to find out what treasures we'll have on the list for next year!

F is for Flowerbeard (WTF Hungary - Weird Things in Hungarian Folktales)

Welcome to this year's A to Z Challenge titled WTF Hungary - Weird Things in Hungarian Folktales! You can find all other participating blogs on the A to Z Challenge main blog.

Today's folktale comes from a famous storyteller named Cifra János (1898-1983). He was of Hungarian Roma descent, and lived in Corunca, Transylvania, where his tales were collected by Nagy Olga in the 1970s. He was a storyteller of extraordinary imagination and talent.

My favorite tale of his is titled Nyeznyám, but I like to refer to it as Flowerbeard.

Pic from here

At the beginning of the story, a king is out hunting in the mountains when he finds a strange and very handsome man whose beard is made of spring flowers. The king takes this man home and locks him in a room (rude). He invites other kings to come and look at the curiosity... But while they are arriving, the little seven-year-old prince accidentally shoots an arrow inside the prison. Flowerbeard talks to him through the door, begging to be set free. The prince steals the key from his mother and releases Flowerbeard.
When the king finds out, he first thinks his wife cheated on him, and sentences the queen to death. Hearing this, the boy confesses, and takes on the death sentence. The king sends him out to the mountains with a servant who is supposed to kill him and bring back his heart, liver, and little finger. The boy manages to convince the servant to kill a dog instead, and offers his little finger to be cut off as proof.

From this point in the story, Flowerbeard takes care of the prince. As an invisible presence, he makes his finger grow out again, and then makes sure the boy is never cold, thirsty, or hungry as he wanders around the world. When the prince grows up, he goes on to kill dragons and defeat armies (all with the strength he got from Flowerbeard). Eventually he falls in love with a princess, and pretends to be a mute gardener to get close to her. He works as a gardener for the king until, after various challenges, he ends up marrying the princess.

At the wedding, Flowerbeard appears once more, thanking the prince for setting him free. He then takes off the beard of violets and other spring flowers, and places it on the prince's face. The prince becomes king, and lives happily ever after.

Pic from here

Obviously, there is tons of symbolism in this story. Masculinity, coming of age, changing of the seasons, man's relationship to Nature, you name it. Flowerbeard reminds me of all the Green Man legends I've read. And not only that - every time I run into this tale type, the magical captive is always some kind of a nature-related being; for example, in Estonia he is the Mushroom King.
Apparently, flowers in beards are a popular hipster accessory now. You can see a bunch of awesome photos here. 

Guardians of Nature (Following folktales around the world 46. - Belize)

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 under the Following Folktales label, or you can follow the series on Facebook!

If Di Pin Neva Ben
Folktales and legends of Belize
Timothy Hagerty & Mary Gomez Parham
Cubola Productions, 2000.

The stories in this book have been collected in the 1970s, mostly by the two editors, in Spanish and Creole, and then translated to English. The volume has two parts: legends and folktales, grouped into smaller sections by topic. They mention in the Introduction that they considered grouping them by culture, but too many motifs reach across cultural groups to make that distinction. In the ten folktales included in the second part they left the dialogues in Creole, to show the flavor of the original language; once again, I had to read aloud to understand what was being said... Every story came with a source, as well as the place of collection, and the age of the storyteller.

Highlights

There are many legends in the book about guardians of nature, beings responsible for keeping people from torturing animals, or killing more than what they need. One of them was Tata Balam, the "owner" of nature; Burucat, his helper (a donkey with a man's face) watched out for animals specifically. Warri Massa was responsible for wild pigs (and whipped a hunter for shooting all over the place). Nohochtat, the Lord of the Forest, chastised a hunter for wounding animals without killing them - but was also willing to show him a grow of valuable gum trees. Coconut groves also had their guardian, but the most important of all was Tata Duende, the guardian of the forest, who watched over all of nature (and sometimes kidnapped children).
Another, chilling and beautiful legend was that of the Day of the Dead (Los Finados), when people lay a table full of food for the returning souls of their deceased relatives (and a separate place for the forgotten souls). In this story, a sick little girl saw the ghost-women come to the feast, even though no one else could see them.

Out of all the folktales, one of the best was that of the Bird of Seven Colors, a Belizean variant of Cinderfella (yes, there is a male Cinderella tale type). In this story, a a farmer's peanut-field was being eaten up by a magic bird, until the youngest son managed to catch it - and then the bird talked him into letting it go, and they stuffed a parrot with peanuts instead, to trick the father. The bird helped the boy through various adventures - including a test where people riding a horse at full speed had to slip a ring onto a princess' finger (but she only held the finger straight for the one suitor she liked).
There was also an amusing pourquoi tale about Why mosquitoes buzz in people's ears (there are various story-answers for this question around the world). In this story, Mosquito lent money to his friend, Wax, but Wax never paid it back; it hid in people's ears instead, and Mosquito has been demanding his money ever since... Ew.

Connections

Belize also has beliefs of female demons haunting the riversides. Here they are known as Xtabay, and they don't only punish men, they also have a protective role: One of them scared a little boy away from shooting randomly at birds. There were also witches that could take off their skin and fly around at night (here called Heg).
The Sisimite monster that kidnapped people reminded me of the Sisimiquí story from Costa Rica; and so did the story of Rabbit and the Giant, which was a local variant of the same Costa Rican tale. There were also several Anansi stories among the folktales; I suspect that we have seen the last of Anansi until we cross over into Africa...

Bonus: If you'd like to know more about the Beliezan oral tradition, and how it can be used in education, I highly recommend storyteller Kristin Pedemonti's book on the subject!

Where to next?
With Mexico, we officially arrive to North America!

Folklore Thursday: Two words: Storm dragons

Today is Folklore Thursday on social media! If you want to find out more, follow this link, or click on the #FolkloreThursday hashtag on Twitter! Hosted by @FolkloreThursday.

I was going to slack off on today's FT post, but then someone brought up the topic of storm lore on Twitter, and I realized that I have some fun things to say about that.

Storms and dragons in Hungarian folklore

Storm lore in many places in Hungary is closely connected to the lore of the garabonciás - trained wizards (as opposed to the táltos, who are born with their knowledge). These wizards can warn people about coming storms, or even cause hail and thunder, depending on how they are treated when they come to town. They usually look like traveling students or beggars, ask for some milk, eggs, and bread, and judge people's kindness based on how they are treated. They can break witches' curses, find buried treasure, grant good luck... or do the opposite.

The garabonciás' most well-known companion is the dragon. While dragons in Hungarian folktales have multiple heads (three, seven, nine, and their multiples) and human traits, dragons in garabonciás lore are aquatic, serpentine creatures that the wizard can summon, saddle, and ride - invoking a storm.

The storm is mostly created by the dragon as it flies over the landscape. The low-hanging tail of the creature swipes off the roofs of houses, or tears trees up by their roots. Seeing storm clouds and lightning suggests that a garabonciás is traveling, riding his dragon within the clouds. In some cases, when the storm is particularly bad, people also said that multiple garabonciás were going to battle against each other, riding their dragons. They might occasionally turn into dragons themselves.
(In some stories, the garabonciás can also summon storms from his magic book)

Some folklorists say that all this makes the wizard related to the Germanic lore of the Wild Hunt. One way to keep the hailstorm away from a village was to ring the church bells. Like most creatures of pagan belief, garabonciás were not too keen on the sound of bells.

Garabonciás lore existed until fairly recently in Hungary. My native part of the country (north-western Hungary) is particularly known for it.

If you want to read a haunting love story involving a garabonciás, read Love in a Bottle by Szerb Antal, a well-known classic Hungarian author.

Note: I translated two garabonciás folktales for my book, Tales of Superhuman Powers.