U is for the Underworld Voyage of the Nisan Shamaness (Women's Epics A to Z)

This year my theme for the A to Z Blogging Challenge is Women's Epics. My goal was to read 26 traditional epics from around the world that have women as their heroes. Because epics like this do exist, and they are fascinating! Read the intoduction post here.

The Epic of the Nisan Shamaness
Manchu

This Manchu epic is dated to the beginning of the 17th century, although it likely existed in the oral tradition way before that. It is preserved in multiple Manchu language manuscripts - the one this translation is based on was collected in the 1910s. It was written down by a storyteller named Dekdenge.

I read this one in a Hungarian translation, but it has also been published in English. I read a Daur version of the epic in this book.

What is it about?

TL;DR: Nisan, an eccentric and gifted young shamaness descends into the Underworld to bring back the soul of a fifteen year old boy.

A rich official named Baldu Bayan loses his young son to illness. Late in his life, he has another son, named Sergudai Fiyangu, but when this boy turns fifteen, he falls prey to the same illness while on a hunt. At his funeral an old man visits the devastated parents, and suggests they should find Nisan, a powerful shamaness who can bring people back from the dead.

The father sets out immediately, and manages to convince Nisan to come and help his son. She first proves her power by describing what happened, without any previous knowledge. She then goes to Baldu Bayan's house with her helper, goes into a trance, and descends into the Underworld to fecth the boy's sould back.

While in the Underworld, Nisan goes through various adventures: she encounters the ferryman of the dead, witnesses punishments doled out to sinners, meets the goddess who creates babies, and meets her own dead husband. The husband wants her to resurrect him too, accusing her of doing for strangers what she has not done for him. She refuses (apparently there was no love lost between them). When he tries to attack her, she summons a bird spirit to take him to the city in the underworld where no one ever reincarnates from, making sure she is rid of him good.

Nisan purchases the soul of Sergudai Fiyangu from the lord of the Underworld (for a rooster and a dog), and returns to the land of the living. The boy is resurrected, and Nisan is rewarded with riches. However, her mother-in-law finds out that Nisan did not bring the husband back, and complains of her to the magistrates. Nisan has her shaman tools taken away, and does not work her powers anymore after that.

The highlights

Nisan is a great character. She is a young, eccentric, and talented shamaness with a personality that comes through in the epic. When Baldu Bayan first meets her, she pretends to be an ordinary woman and sends him on a wild goose chase to find "the great shamaness". Later when he comes back, he still mistakes Nisan's old mother-in-law for "the great shamaness", while Nisan is sitting by the fire, calmly smoking a pipe. All through the epic, she has an ease and confidence about her - she takes the job because she wants to, and she knows she can do it. "Don't cheer if I succeed, and don't mourn if I fail!" She is also a trickster: besides Baldu Bayan, she also plays games with the spirit she has to barter with to get the boy's soul back.

Video game based on Nisan

When Nisan first starts the ritual, the local shamans gather to drum for her. However, they are incapable of holding the rhythm she requires, so she can't fall into a trance. Instead, she sends for her young helper Nari Fiyangu ("a lad born to seventy-year-old parents"); he is the only one who can match her rhythm and help her complete the ritual. Nisan says "if a shamaness is worth three parts, she will only make it back alive if her helper is worth seven parts!" It is not clear from the text itself (as far as I could tell) but the translator's notes pointed out that Nisan actually had a romantic/sexual relationship with Nari Fiyangu. They do, however, end their partnership after Nisan's adventure.

When Nisan descends into the underworld, she finds out that Ilmun Khan, lord of the underworld, actually killed Baldu Bayan's son ahead of time because he wanted to make the boy his own son. He put him to a series of tests, and he excelled in all of them. I liked this detail because it made Sergudai Fiyangu a lot less passive as a character.

I especially enjoyed the parts of the epic where Nisan called on her helping spirits. It was a long list of various animals, including wolverines, kingfishers, wagtails, and vultures. She used a crane spirit to get rid of her husband.

There are two scenes in the whole epic that stand out for me. One is where Nisan meets her (ex) husband. It is a powerful encounter. She states that she is happy without a husband, and absolutely refuses to be guilted into bringing him back. It costs her her tools in the end (which is outrageous, really), but she does it like a boss.

The other part I loved was her visit to Mother Omoshi, the goddess who creates children (it is not a necessary stop, Nisan just wanders there out of curiosity). Omoshi has a whole court set up, with people manufacturing children and sending them up to the world of the living to be born. Here Nisan encounters a friend who died young and was granted a job in Omoshi's court. She also learns her own origin story: as a baby soul, she refused to leave the palace, so Omoshi made her a shamaness to get her out the door. (She also learns that all living creatures are created in this place and sent up to the living world).

THIS STORY IS AN UNDERWORLD JOURNEY TO MATCH ANY OTHER GREATS IN WORLD LITERATURE.

What do you think? What would you expect to see on an underworld journey?

The soldier in the Kingdom of Monkeys (Following folktales around the world 71. - Croatia)

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!

Croatia was once again a challenging country to find a folktale collection for. But I did find this:

Katona a majmok országában
Frankovics György
Napkút kiadó, 2011.

This book is a collection of 112 Croatian and Roma folktales from small villages along the Hungarian-Croatian border river, the Drava. While the villages are technically on the Hungarian side, the tales themselves are mostly Croatian, or have been strongly influenced by the Croatian oral tradition. They have been collected by Frankovics György, a Croatian-Hungarian writer and folklorist, who spent most of his life gathering oral tradition along the border. Sadly, the book has no introduction or notes, other than labeling each tale with the name of the storyteller, and the place and year of collection. It contains a variety of different stories, from long fairy tales to folk beliefs and historical legends; the latter were very similar to the Serbian folk epics.
(You can find some Croatian folktales in English here)

Highlights

The title story tells about a soldier who steals some seven-league boots, and accidentally teleports himself into the Kingdom of Monkeys. Initially he does not like the place, and does not speak the language, but eventually it turns out that the Monkey princess can read and write seven languages, so they manage to communicate (and, after getting married, they break the monkey-curse as well).
There was a lovely, symbolic tale titled Marvelous Beauty, in which a king wanted to get rid of the hero to marry his beautiful and magical wife, so he ordered the man to go somewhere and bring him something. After a long quest, aided by some old women and a magic frog, the hero acquired the friendship of Intellect, an invisible being who could fulfill all his wishes.
Similarly lovely was the tale of The miller and the devil, in which the devil tried to get rid of a kind.hearted miller by spreading lies about him, blaming him for the draught. Still, his village community persisted, and when the miller exiled himself, they went after him to bring him home.

The book contained several interesting legends an beliefs. One of them told about how the Vedovnjak (shamans) stole acorns from the Vilas, to make sure the acorn crop in the woods would be plentiful that year. Both beings appeared in several stories; the most famous vedovnjak, Petrisa, had his very own little story collection, with all kinds of shamanistic elements. Among nature stories, the funniest one was about the Winds, in which the North and the South wind took turns pranking each other.
One a more thrilling note, I found a great version of the devil-lover tale type, titled Moonlight like Sunlight. Instead of a mysterious suitor from hell, in this tale a young woman used magic to revive her dead husband, then got scared, and had to get rid of him with the help of an old witch. The old woman smashed the corpse chasing the girl over the head with a hammer, repeatedly.
Last but not least, the winner of the category "this is not what it looks like" was The loyal soldier, who protected his king on his wedding night from a nine-headed dragon. He knew from the talk of birds that the young queen would perish if someone did not lick the dragon's blood off her face... so after the dragon was slain and gone, the king got to wake up to his soldier licking his wife's face. Of course this led to no good, but in the fashion of other "loyal servant" tales, all was well in the end.

Connections

After Serbia and Montenegro, I once again encountered Real Steel, Son of the Bear, and the Nine peacock girls and the golden tree. But even beyond these close connections, the book contained several familiar tale types with some unexpected twists.
The ninth daughter was another sex-change type folktale about a heroic girl turning into a man. Destiny was yet another tale of a man seeking his fortune, and taking other questions along the way; at the end of this one, however, he found out that he had no destined fortune, however, he could raise a foster daughter, who would bring good fortune with her. less fortunate was the ending of the tale of Two brothers, in which one twin did manage to save the other, but when the brother found out that his twin had shared a bed (unwillingly) with his wife, he killed him, and became a hermit.
The girl in the wooden dress was a variant of Catskins / All kinds of fur, except here the dying mother herself advised her daughter on how to get away from her father, which was a touching moment. Similarly pretty was the part in The prince and the frog princess in which the hero had to set out to find his frog-wife again because she asked him to prove his love that way (after she proved hers by saving him).

There was Fox and Hunter instead of Puss in Boots, and Martinkovics Márton instead of Rumpelstiltskin. There were tales about The wisdom of old people (and why they shouldn't be killed), the Rooster and his diamond (or coin), the Clever Maid, a sad princess who was brought to laughter by a bug and a crayfish dancing, and Why men need wives (the tale about husband and wife swapping jobs for a day). Talking about marriage, sadly there were several wife-beating tales in the collection, although to be fair, a husband also got beaten once, for being lazy, by his wife who dressed up as a soldier.
The blacksmith's three wishes was similar to the Tía Miseria / Blacksmith and the Devil tales, except here Death came to get him first, and then the Devil, and finally the Fairies. The blacksmith trapped all of them, and lived happily until angels came to take him to the Moon, where he still works today.
The girl who cried pearls was a variant of the princess who could see everything (and the boy who hid from her by turning into a rose in her very own garden). How the shepherd got himself three kingdoms was a version of Princess on the Glass Mountain, which a funny addition: The princess, knowing that she wanted the handsome shepherd to win the jumping contest, talked to him in secret and urged him to teach his sheep to jump, so that he could win... The shephred had magic horses, in secret, but he played along anyway, training a ram every day in the art of jumping, to show the princess he wanted to win her.
There was a little legend about how the hidden children of Adam and Eve became fairies (familiar from Iceland), and some classic trickster-tales, Sharing Crops among them. In the latter, God shared crops with the Devil, and tricked him into getting the useless top/bottom parts.

Where to next?
Slovenia!

Folklore Thursday: Celestial transport is kind of a mess

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.

Returning to our regularly scheduled #FolkloreThursday fun in 2016! I'll be continuing my new theme of the folklore of natural phenomena and constellations from Hungary. So far, we have had rainbows that cause sex-change, and a very klutzy star.

Today, we talk about the Big Dipper. Or, as Hungarians know it:

Göncölszekér (Göncöl's cart)
(Sometimes called Nagygöncöl - Big Göncöl -, as opposed to Kisgöncöl - Small Göncöl)

Göncöl, according to legend, was a táltos, a wise man or shaman, a "knowing person" who traveled in a cart with a crooked shaft that was not drawn by horses. He could talk to animals, birds, and plants, he could read the stars, and perform miracles. No one saw him die, so people concluded that he had ascended into the sky, and now his cart with the crooked shaft can be seen at night among the constellations as he continues his wandering.
(This legend comes from old records about the folklore of Great Rye Island, or, as we know it, Csallóköz. The record also claims that Göncöl was a popular name in the area, even though the táltos never had children. Ahem.)

Other names for Ursa Maior include:
Carriage of Angels
Cart of Elijah
Cart of Job
Cart of Saint John
Johnny's Cart
Cart of Saint Peter
Devil's Cart
Star Cart

This is one crowded vehicle of celestial transport, people.
Whoever sits on the Cart, however, has to answer for quite a few things, including, but not limited to:

1. The stars. Some legends say Göncöl / Job / whoever is driving is supposed to keep an eye on the stars.
2. The Milky Way. There are stories about how the cart is transporting hay, but it has been losing the cargo on the way, hence the Milky Way.
(Hey! It rhymed!)
3. The crooked shaft. There is at least one delightful story where Saint Peter accidentally drives the cart into the Pearly Gates of Heaven, and breaks the shaft. Great job, Peter. Don't pray and drive.
4. Yet another legend claims that the cart is driven by a king who was killed by a pagan Hungarian warrior to make him the warrior's servant in the afterlife.

Saint Peter and David go on a joy ride

According to one legend, Saint Peter and David wandered far from Heaven one day, and God wanted them back. He sent an angel called Göncöl to fetch them. Göncöl complained about not having a ride; God told him to build a cart from stars (you are an angel, Göncöl, for Heaven's sake). Sitting in the cart drawn by fiery horses, Göncöl picked up Peter and David and started on the way home. They flew so fast that they bumped into the Moon; the cart's shaft broke, and David got flung out of the vehicle (SAFETY BELTS, PEOPLE) and left behind. The rumble of the cart is thunder, and the sparks flying from the horseshoes is lightning. Peter got so scared on the ride that he turned seven different colors - God, to remind him of the scare, created rainbows.

(Never, ever let God send you an Uber driver.)