T is for Trickster women

Welcome to the A to Z Challenge! My theme this year is Representation and Diversity in Traditional Stories. I am looking for rare and interesting motifs in folktales, fairy tales, and legends that add variety to the well-known canon.

I have a soft spot for tricksters. A huge, huge, huge soft spot. As a storyteller, no one sticks by you better than a good trickster story - kids love them, adults love them, I love them. And yet, when it comes to trickery and shenanigans, male tricksters are definitely in the majority in the world's folklore. Think Loki, think Hermes, think Coyote, think Ananse, think Monkey King, think Kanchil... So, since tricksters rock, I wanted to spend a post talking about the women.

Trickster women.


NOTE: I am very picky about what characters I'd consider a trickster - it is not enough to have tricked someone once, and not enough to trick someone just for survival (this is why Scheherazade did not make this list). Similarly, a lot of books call women who cheat on their husbands "tricksters," but I don't like that definition. Tricksters need a certain liminality and playfulness, a certain disrespect for rules mixed with innate curiosity - a trickster is someone that messes with the rules just for the heck of it.
For the sake of brevity, I am also excluding male trickster figures that sometimes shape-shift into female bodies (which is pretty common in tricksterdom)

Dalila and Zaynab
Probably the most badass female trickster mother-daughter duo out there. Their story is included in the 1001 Nights. Dalilah the Wily is a widow, living with her spinster daughter Zaynab the Coney-catcher. She is described as "mistress in all manner of craft and trickery and double dealing." Dalilah and Zaynab go toe to toe with some infamous male tricksters (with delightful names like Calamity Ahmed and Mercury Ali) and come out on top. Pretty epic stories.
(Read them here)

Aso
While the wives of tricksters are not always automatically tricksters themselves, Aso, the wife of Ananse the Spider, definitely fits the bill. She even tricks her own husband a couple of times - or calls him on his bluffs. Among others, she once catches him coming back from the grave and stealing food from their garden, by applying a tar scarecrow, the same trick used in stories of Br'er Rabbit.
(Read about her in Akan-Ashanti Folk-tales)

Kitsune
Probably the most famous female trickster figure in world folklore, Kitsune is a type of trickster, rather than one person. They are more commonly known as the "fox fairies" of Japanese folklore. They are almost always female, and deal mostly with seduction and illusions, in all kinds of genius ways.
(Read about them here)

Madame Malice
Apart from the awesome name, this lady is pretty cool too. She exists in Haitian folktales along with her male counterpart, Ti Malice. No one is exactly sure what they are, but they are said to have evolved from some kind of an African animal trickster - most likely a rabbit.
(Read about her and Ti Malice in The piece of fire)

The Princess of Tomboso
This is the French-Canadian version of a fairly popular folktale type, featuring three brothers who inherit magical items, and a princess that cheats them out of all three. While she is the "villain" of the story, she usually gets away with being taught a lesson in the end (by magically growing antlers and then losing them when she apologizes). In most versions of the story, she does not end up marrying anyone, and it seems like she was just swindling people out of their magical treasures for fun.
(Read the story in this book. I also included a version in my own collection of folktales about superpowers)

Wicked Girl
I have mentioned this Turkish lady before, talking about female friendships, but I am mentioning her again, because she is just cheeky, and goes out of her way to mess with men.
(Read her story here)

The old woman and Death
I also mentioned her before in detail, but she should be on this list - not many people cheat Death permanently, even among tricksters!
(Read about here in my previous post)

For more female trickster tales (in a broader definition than mine), read the wonderful book titled Scheherazade's Sisters.

Any other crafty women I should add to the list? :)

S is for Stories of Slavery

Welcome to the A to Z Challenge! My theme this year is Representation and Diversity in Traditional Stories. I am looking for rare and interesting motifs in folktales, fairy tales, and legends that add variety to the well-known canon.

How do we tell stories of slavery? Every semester, I spend a class talking about how history is told, and I usually learn 2 things:
1. That almost none of my undergraduate students know what Uncle Remus tales are, and
2. That many of my undergraduate students would "rather talk about something happy."

This is not unique to students, however. Several articles have addressed the issue recently, pointing out how the history of slavery is often:

1. Sanitized (e.g. slaves called "workers" in textbooks)
2. Focused on white saviors
3. Presented as something that "wasn't so bad."
The fact that people don't know how talk about slavery is reflected in this hilarious YouTube series by a historical interpreter who portrays a slave character at Mr. Vernon, titled "Ask a Slave." Pay attention to the questions people ask her.

So, what do storytellers have to add to all of this?
Books. The stories are there. The books are there. Here is a list of some of the best ones:

People could fly
An American black folktale, published in a gorgeous book by Virginia Hamilton. The book contains several black folktales of slavery and freedom. The story that is named in the title talks about people finding their innate powers to fly, and flying away from a plantation to freedom.
(Read it the book with the same title. I also included a version in my own book, because it beautifully illustrates why people dream of superpowers in the first place)

Old Master and John
A group of folktales about John, the clever slave, tricking the Old Master. There are several of them, in several sources, portraying the endless struggle of power between oppression and resistance.
(You can read an entire chapter full of these stories in African American Folktales)

Adventures of High John the Conqueror
High John the Conqueror is an African-American folk hero surrounded by legends, folktales, and traditions. He is a trickster figure that looks out for his people, and plays the slaveholders for fools. There are many stories about him.
(Read them in this book of the same title)

Uncle Remus tales
Usually known as cute, funny animal tales, these stories were collected from slave communities, who told them as a form of subtle resistance, keeping their traditions, and making fun of the people in power through symbolism and metaphors.
(Read the book here)

You can also find several slavery-era American folktales and anecdotes in:
An Anthology of American folktales and legends
American folktales from the Library of Congress
American Negro Folktales
African American Folktales
A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore
Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows

In addition to folktales and historical legends from America, there are also some older stories involving slaves that are worth mentioning - because they are good stories. I tell my versions of both of them frequently, and they are always a great experience.

Rhodopis
One of the earliest appearances of the Cinderella tale type takes us back to Ancient Greece and Egypt. Rhodopis was a beautiful Thracian slave girl, bought and sold multiple times until she ended up in Egypt, and became a courtesan. It is not clear that the Cinderella story that follows (an eagle stealing her sandal and the pharaoh searching for her) is about her or another Egyptian courtesan named Rhodopis... but it is still a fascinating piece of story. Added bonus that for a while Rhodopis was a slave in the same household as Aesop, one of the most famous storytellers in Antiquity.
(Read about Rhodopis here)

Dionysus and the Pirates
A group of Tyrrhenian pirates decide to kidnap Dionysus, God of Wine and Pleasure (thinking he's just a pretty boy) and sell him into slavery. The deity wreaks havoc on their ship, burying it in vines and summoning wild animals, until finally all the pirates jump into the sea and turn into dolphins.
(Read the story here)




Also, for true stories of slavery, check out the amazing Finding Eliza blog, participating in the A to Z Challenge for the past 4 years!

What other books or stories should I add to the list?

R is for Religious diversity

Welcome to the A to Z Challenge! My theme this year is Representation and Diversity in Traditional Stories. I am looking for rare and interesting motifs in folktales, fairy tales, and legends that add variety to the well-known canon.

Representing religious diversity, especially in Western legend and folklore, is something that either happens very rarely, or when it does, happens in very stereotypical ways (such as "Moors" or "Jews" being mentioned in German or Italian folktales with negative connotations). For today's post, I wanted to pick some tales that feature positive encounters, and even collaboration, between people of different religious backgrounds.

Ogier the Dane
I talked about this epic last year, but I am bringing it up because it features friendship and collaboration between a Christian knight and a Muslim knight, who save each other's lives and fight shoulder to shoulder for honor (without either of them converting to the other's religion).
(I wrote about the story in detail here)

The legend of the almond trees
Also mentioned this one earlier in the Challenge, but putting it on this list took, because it features a Norse, Christian princess falling in love with a young Muslim sultan.
(Read about the story here)

Sir Palomides
I know I know, I am repeating myself, and also, Palomides eventually converts to Christianity. And yet, I find it endlessly cool that King Arthur's court accepted a Muslim knight in the first place. Somehow a lot of sources don't talk about this part.
(Read about him here)

The honest neighbor
This Jewish folktale features a Christian and a Jewish merchant who are friends. When the Jews are banished for the kingdom, the Christian promises to take care of his friend's money until the law is overturned and he can return. Years later, when the new king invites the Jews back, the merchant finds his Chirstian friend in poverty - his shop burnt down, but he refused to use the money to help himself. They open shop together in the end.
(Read this tale in Stories for the gathering)

Akyazili Baba and St. Athanasius
There is an Ottoman era türbe in Obrochiste, Bulgaria that is a place of pilgrimage both for Christians and Muslims - it is said to be the resting place of both Muslim saint Akyazili Baba, and Chirstian saint Athanasius. Local legend claims that they were great friends in life. One of them (depending on the version) fell in love with a girl from the other religion, and since it was forbidden, they got executed for it. Before they died, however, they asked their friend to build a grave site for them in one night, and the surviving friend fulfilled the wish with the help of magical powers (in some cases, they had to lie and say it was to be their own grave, since burying the executed would not have been allowed).
(Read about the story in this book, and this article)

Kanchil, the Mouse-Deer
Okay, so Kanchil stories are from Southeast Asia (mostly Malaysia and Indonesia), and since Indonesia hosts 12% of the world's Muslim population alone, it makes sense that Kanchil is usually portrayed as Muslim as well. Nothing out of context. BUT I am putting him on the list anyway, because as a storyteller, I want to pay attention to likable folktale characters that just happen to be Muslim, and Kanchil is a rock star. I have had parents in the US clutch their pearls when Kanchil happened to say "Allah" instead of "God" in a folktale. That is exactly the reaction why we should pay attention to these stories. For less pearl-clutching.

In addition, check out amazing storyteller Pam Faro's story CD "Andalusian Trilogy: Stories of Jews, Christians, and Muslims of Medieval Spain"

What other tales of religious coexistence should I add to the list?

Q is for Queens without kings

Welcome to the A to Z Challenge! My theme this year is Representation and Diversity in Traditional Stories. I am looking for rare and interesting motifs in folktales, fairy tales, and legends that add variety to the well-known canon.

Since Q is a notoriously hard letter to do, and I am not done talking about feminist stories yet, I wanted to spend today's post on Queens that don't have a King at their side. I already discussed marital bliss and equality and partnership, which is obviously the ideal case, but when it comes to traditional tales, stand-alone kings are a lot more common than independent queens. I wanted to find some stories that represent strong, capable, independent queens by their own right. With no king attached.




Aisha
There is an Algerian folktale about a girl called Aisha (or Aicha) who kicks major demon ass. After being injured by a ghoul she kills, she is destined to wonder the world, killing monsters. Multiple cities she saves invite her to become their queen - when she finally gets rid of the ghoul's curse, she becomes a queen in her own right.
(I included the first part of Aicha's adventures in my book)

Bilquis
Better known world-wide as the Queen of Sheba. While she is most commonly known for visiting King Solomon, and having a son with him, she is a queen with her own sovereign kingdom, who interacts with the legendary king as an equal, and goes back home to her people instead of giving up sovereignty for marriage.
(I especially liked Bilquis' story as it is told in Fabled Cities, Princes and Jinn)

Tündér Ilona
While she is often the love interest of heroes in Hungarian folk tales, Tündér Ilona is the ruling Queen of the fairies. She is said to live in a palace under water or on an island, and have long golden hair. In some stories she moves her people out of the world of mortals, and up to the Milky Way; she only comes back once a year to see if she can find one decent person to give them hope for return.
(Read in detail about Hungarian fairies here)

Niamh
Queen of Tír na nÓg, the Land of Eternal Youth in Irish legend. She shows up one day out of the blue, picks up the hottest guy on the block (Oisín, the bard of the Fianna), and takes him home as a lover. While Oisín eventually leaves Niamh and goes home, we get a glimpse of her, and what life is like in a land ruled by an immortal queen.
(Read the story in Gods and Fighting Men here)

The Queen of Many Colors
This Hungarian folktale features a widow queen who has a special power - her face changes color every hour of the day - and who gives very stern, specific directions to her son: He can only marry a girl who has the same color-changing ability. While she is not the protagonist of the story, she is clearly an exceptional lady.
(I included this tale in my book as well)

A prince in search of immortality
While there are many versions of this folktale, about a prince who seeks a land where he'd never have to die, the Hungarian variant in particular features not one, but two queens. The first one is the sole and wise ruler of the Blue Kingdom, destined to live as long as she has needles to work with. The second one is the Queen of Life and Death who admits the prince into her kingdom, and saves him from death in the end.
(Read the story in English here)

The City of Brass
In this, my very favorite story from the 1001 Nights, an expedition of wise men and adventurers sets out to find the fabled City of Brass in the middle of the desert. When they get there, and manage to get the gates open through positively D&D-style adventures, they find that everyone in the city has been dead a long time... including their queen (protected by Indiana Jones-style traps), who left a written note telling the story of her city.
(Read the story here)

What other queens should I add to the list? Which one of them would you like to see on a throne?

P is for Pregnant and capable

Welcome to the A to Z Challenge! My theme this year is Representation and Diversity in Traditional Stories. I am looking for rare and interesting motifs in folktales, fairy tales, and legends that add variety to the well-known canon.

I ran into a storyteller a while ago who claimed that pregnancy is such a sacred mystery that traditional stories don't even talk about it. Because I am by nature a contrarian, I could not restrain my instinct of "Actually..." and I started collecting stories about women who are pregnant, and in addition to that, very much capable. Here are some of my favorites!






Rapunzel
One of the Internet's favorite bits of fairy tale trivia: Rapunzel does not get rescued from the tower by the prince. She gets visited by the prince, and then gets kicked out by the witch when she becomes pregnant. With twins. And then she goes to live in the woods, and that's where the prince finds her again.
Pregnancy actually figures twice into this tale - in many versions Rapunzel is taken by the witch in the first place because her mother had cravings for parsley, and sneaked into the witch's garden. Go figure. (This part actually symbolically features into Disney's Tangled)
(For the uncut, uncensored first edition of Grimm tales, including pregnant Rapunzel, read Jack Zipes' new translation)

Macha
The Irish legend of the Curse of Macha features a mysterious woman that marries a mortal man, and warns him never to brag about her. When he does so anyway (claiming she runs faster than anyone), the King orders Macha, who is nine months pregnant, to run a race with his horses. Macha does not only win the race (and gives birth to twins right after), but she also curses the men of Ulster who did not protect her, to have labor pains for three days whenever their land is in danger.
(Read the story here)

Malei
In this Zhuang (Chinese minority) legend, a pregnant woman named Malei sets out to save the world by bringing back the sun that had disappeared. She takes on the quest saying that if she can't fulfill it, her child will.
(I wrote about this story in detail here)

Tamlin
This Scottish ballad is most well known as a love story - but not many people realize that Janet, the girl that saves Tamlin from the spell of the Fairy Queen is pregnant while doing so.
(Read about the ballad here)

Psyche
In the love story of Eros and Psyche, Psyche is given tasks to fulfill by her jealous mother-in-law, Aphrodite. Since she is already carrying Eros' child, she fulfills the tasks while pregnant, before she is reunited with her husband and they can live happily ever after.
(Read the story here)

What other stories should I add to the list? Do you have a favorite portrayal of pregnancy?

O is for Old heroes

Welcome to the A to Z Challenge! My theme this year is Representation and Diversity in Traditional Stories. I am looking for rare and interesting motifs in folktales, fairy tales, and legends that add variety to the well-known canon.

And by that, obviously, I mean "senior" or "elderly" or "not a teenager", but I needed the letter O...
Generally, I was trying to collect stories where the hero is not young. People, regardless of age, have the potential to be the hero of their own story. In order to combat ageism, here are some stories that prove just that:

The old woman and Death
In this folktale type, popular all over Europe, and old woman (sometimes man) attempts to avoid Death knocking on her door, because she loves living so much. She manages to convince Death to come back the next day, asking him to write "TOMORROW" on the door frame. The next day, when Death returns, she points out that the sign says "tomorrow" and sends him away. Getting away on a technicality this way she continues to live, until Death erases the sign. The next day, trying to hide from her fate, she first hides in a barrel of honey, and then in the bed, turning into a honey-and-feather "monster" - when Death shows up to take her, he is so scared he never returns.
I like this story because 1. It features a female trickster, and 2. It shows that the love of life and living (and the right to fight for it) does not solely belong to the young.
(Read this story in Dan Keding's Elder tales)

By the way, Elder tales is an amazing collection of traditional stories that feature elder protagonists. Dan Keding has pretty much done my job for this post, so I'll just mention some that I particularly like.

Old woman returns fire to people
I heard this Greek folktale at the FEST conference last year, on the island of Kea. It said that God took the fire away from people for their sins, and then an angel appeared, selling burning embers for outrageous prices - years of life, eyesight, other things people were not willing to give up, even if they suffered without fire. Finally an old woman showed up, asking the angel about the prices of embers, poking at them with her walking cane. What the angel didn't know was that the cane was hollow, with straw inside, and this way the old lady managed to steal fire back to the people. This is clearly a version of the myth of Prometheus - although it is questionable which one came first, the titan or the wise old woman...

Old Rinkrank
In this unusually dark Grimm tale, a princess falls into the depths of the Glass Mountain, and is imprisoned by a little old man, who threatens to kill her if she does not do his household chores. He leaves every day, and comes back with gold, but never lets her leave. The princess grows old, and the man named Old Rinkrank starts calling her Mother Mansrot. Finally one day she figures out how to set a trap for him, and rescues herself.
(Read the story here)

Old Man's Wisdom Saves the Kingdom
This is a folktale type, ATU 981, popular in several parts of the world. In it, a king orders to kill off all old people in the kingdom, either because of a famine, or just because he is crazy. One young man saves his old father/parents and hides them in a secret location. Later, when the kingdom is in trouble, the solution is provided by the elders to the young man, who manages to save the kingdom, change the king's mind, and/or become a just king himself.
(Read one version in Latin American Folktales)

Ilya Muromets
Not "old," but still unusual in the world of tales - this Russian legends tells about a hero that lived at home with his parents, doing nothing, until he was thirty (or forty) - when one day he finally decided to go out into the world and be a hero. It is never too late to start out on one's hero's journey.
(I included part of his story in my book, Tales of Superhuman Powers)

What other tales should I add to the list?

N is for Neurodiversity

Welcome to the A to Z Challenge! My theme this year is Representation and Diversity in Traditional Stories. I am looking for rare and interesting motifs in folktales, fairy tales, and legends that add variety to the well-known canon.

Neurodiversity is a fairly new term (my spellcheck doesn't even recognize it yet) for the concept that neurological conditions like autism, ADHD, etc. are variations in the human genome, rather than "mistakes." Here is an excellent rundown on how the concept works.
I used neurodiversity for N, but today I also want to post some examples of traditional tales that handle mental illness. Part of the topic of representation is how these things are presented and handled, and while traditional tales are not usually very sensitive to them, there are a few interesting examples.

The tale of Ivar Ingimundarson
This old Icelandic story tells of a bard who loses the love of his life (she marries his brother in secret) and falls into depression. His king, who likes him a lot, tries to drag him out of it by offering all kinds of things - money, lands, a bride, etc., but nothing works. In the end, the king offers the only thing left: He sits down with Ivar every night, and listens to him talk. I love this story, because it shows the importance of listening, instead of simply trying to "fix things" for someone else.
(Read the story in The complete sagas of the Icelanders)

The Sleepy Lady
Yet another folktale collected from Pályuk Anna. A rich girl sleeps all the time, and is always too tired to live her life. Her father is worried about her, but doesn't know what to do - in the end, three sisters from a poor family volunteer to help, and by spending time with the girl, they figure out ways to keep her awake until she can go on with her life.
(I will include an English translation of this tale in my upcoming folktale collection)

The tiger's whiskers
I already mentioned this tale twice, but I am putting it on this list too, because it is often used by storytellers to illustrate how family members might deal with someone they love having PTSD.
(Read it in this book)

The white disk
This Maldivian folktale tells about a girl that cries every night, and her family is at a loss of how to cheer her up. They try kindness and all kinds of tricks, and the father gets angry and scolds her, but nothing stops her from being sad. One night her sister notices a glowing white disk above her bed, and she and their father try to figure out a way to break the spell.
(This story equates the "sadness" with the influence of a spirit, but it can also be read symbolically. Also I am including it because it starts with a very good description of how the girls "sadness" affects the rest of the family)
(Read it in Folk-tales of the Maldives)

Contest in repartee
This is not one story, but a folktale type, ATU 853, which seems to exist all around the world. A princess wants to marry a man who can defeat her in banter. Three brothers set out to try - the youngest one is mocked and bullied by his brothers for being "slow" and "simple." He keeps falling behind on the road, picking up useless objects like dead birds, rusty nails, etc.,which only earns him more mockery. But when they get to the princess, the "simpleton" boy floors everyone with his quick and witty answers, using the "useless" items as props, and wins her hand in the end. The story shows that seeing the world differently is not necessarily a bad thing.
(You can read a Norwegian version here, a Russian version here, and an Appalachian version here)

The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship
This is the title of the Russian version of the extremely popular folktale type ATU 513, the Extraordinary Helpers. In it, three brothers set out to win a princess whose father requires a flying ship. The youngest is mocked and left behind by his brothers for being a "fool," but he demonstrates traits the others don't: Kindness, patience, and trust. With it, she does not only win a flying ship, but also makes friends with people who have superpowers and become his companions.
There was an old Hungarian term used for mentally challenged people: "Good with others." I always liked it, because it referred to how, as long as the community supported them, they were just as "good" as anyone else.
(Read about the Russian tale here. I also included several version of this folktale type in my book about folktales and superpowers)

The boy who wanted to walk on the clouds
Yet another folktale from Pályuk Anna, about a boy who daydreams about walking on the clouds, and everyone labels him "lazy" and "good for nothing." After his mother dies, he sets out to make his dream come true, and achieves it by never showing fear in front of anyone.
(This story will also be included in my upcoming folktale collection)

There are many folk- and fairy tales about people labeled "fools" or "simpletons" who become heroes in the end. Which ones should I add to the list?