V49.1. Werewolves hold mass (WTF - Weird Things in Folktales)

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

V in the Index stands for Religion. It includes tales and motifs that have to do with worship and sacrifices, sins, prayers, funerals, religious festivals, saints, angels, etc., as well as some fairly familiar people: "V211. - Christ," "V250. - The Virgin Mary," and "V294. - The Pope." On a more supernatural note, there is also:

V49.1. Werewolves hold mass

Which is a legend from Gascogne in France.

According to Gascon belief, even though they don't have souls, wolves hold midnight mass every year on New Year's Eve (the night before the feast of St. Sylvester). The mass is performed by a Priest Wolf; there are also Bishop Wolves, Archbishop Wolves, and even a Pope Wolf, allegedly, but no one talks much about them.
Legend says that once there was a wheelwright, who moved away from his home town of Mauvezin when he got married. One year, seven days before the feast of St. Sylvester, a messenger came to him, bringing news that his father was gravely ill. Being too far away to travel fast, the wheelwright went to a seer and asked for help. The seer told him that the only thing that could cure his father was eating the tail of a Priest Wolf - hair, skin, bones, marrow, and all.
In order to acquire the tail, the wheelwright agreed to be turned into a wolf. He spent a week with the other wolves, roaming the woods, killing sheep, and doing other wolf things. On the night of the new year, they all gathered in the woods for the mass. The Priest Wolf was in need of a helper, so the wheelwright-turned-wolf volunteered, and helped him perform the mass from start to finish.
After the mass, the wheelwright stayed behind to help the Priest Wolf undress - and as he did, he bit off its tail and ran away back home. When he got to the seer, he was changed back to a man... except he still had wolf ears (and he was still holding the bloody tail in his mouth). The seer tore the wolf ears off, and a pair of "Christian ears" grew in their place.

I am not entirely sure why Thompson tagged this as "werewolves" - the story just calls them wolves, although they are quite sentient. They even have a Pope.

(Find the original text - in French - here.)

Runner-ups
V1.10.1. Man worships a cake which from time to time he eats
V5.2. Negligent priests buried under bags filled with words omitted from service
V5.3. Devils cause monk to perspire and stay away from church service
V30.1.1. Flesh of Artemis eaten as quail or bear
V34.2. Princess sick because toad has swallowed her consecrated wafer
V41.1. Imprisoned miner kept alive by masses performed by his wife
V61.3.0.3. Man buried upright beneath kitchen stairway in order that he may watch his family
V143. Saint’s bones for lack of worship remove themselves from church
V211.1.6. A “crown of thorns” among gifts given by the shepherds to Joseph, husband of Virgin Mary.
V211.1.8.2. Christ in form of an infant fondled by nuns
V224.4. Performing fox accidentally killed miraculously replaced for saint
V229.2.2. Saintly babe disgorges unclean food
V229.2.3.1. Saint as baby refuses to take mother’s breast on Wednesdays and Fridays.
V229.14. Saint in anger shows strength: wall broken by his kick
V261.2. Virgin pardons man who repented for cheating in election
V346. Skeptic kicked by sacrificial animal
V523. The only king ever saved in spite of himself

T543.4. Birth from fungus (WTF - Weird Things in Folktales)

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

T is the Motif Index stands for Sex (I'll never understand why he could not just make the initials line up...). Also, love ("T92.1. - The triangle plot and its solutions"). Marriage. Chastity. Incest. But no actual sex acts, so if you were hoping for something dirty, you are out of luck. What we do have, however, is all kinds of miraculous births and conceptions. For example:

T543.4. Birth from fungus

This tale from the Ekoi people in Nigeria and Cameroon is called The Fungus Daughter. It starts with a classic folktale motif: A childless couple wishes for a child.

The husband goes out into the bush and searches for a child. Instead, he finds a giant "ebbuya ball" (a sort of puff fungus), and, hoping it would turn into a child, carries it home in his bag. And lo and behold, the fungus indeed turns into a lovely daughter.
When the girl is old enough, she is sent to the fatting-house (a place of seclusion where she is supposed to fatten up to be healthy and attractive). A slave girl is supposed to care for her, but she refuses: "You are not the proper daughter of those whom you call parents. You are nothing but an ebbuya ball!"
Hearing these unkind words, the fungus girl returns to the bush, and turns back into a puffball. Her parents find out from a servant boy what happened, and the father goes out to search the bush for ebbuya balls again - but none of them turns into a child ever again. The story claims that if she had not been hurt by unkind words, people could still get children from puffballs.

Fungus children are children too.

(Read the story here.)

Runner-ups
T10.3. Girl continually falling in love
T11.4.4. Love through seeing marks of lady’s teeth in fruit which she has bitten
T76. Princess calls her suitors ugly names
T85.3. The Pot of Basil. Mistress keeps murdered lover‘s skull in flower-pot
T99.1. Death from excess of women
T117.5. Marriage with a tree
T126.2. Marriage of mountain and cockle-shell
T146.2. Woman requires thirty men
T322.1. Woman kicks lecherous monk down the stairs
T333.5. Hero cuts off head and wraps it in napkin so he will not be tempted by sight of virgins
T511.3.2. Conception from eating spinach
T511.8.3. Conception from eating mess of fairy pottage
T511.8.5. Woman impregnated after accidentally partaking of crane‘s dung
T515.1. Impregnation through lustful glance
T517.3. Conception through ear
T525.2. Impregnation by a comet
T532.1.3. Impregnation by leaf of lettuce
T532.10. Conception from hiss of cobra
T552.2.1. Child born bearing lizard in each hand
T581.2.2. Blind wives fall into a pool where they give birth to children
T583.1.1. Pains of woman in childbirth repeated in person of the man
T586.5.1. Woman bears child every month
T589.1. Co-operative birth. Each of two wives bears a half-boy. They are placed together and form a real boy

S139.2.2.4.2. Brains of enemies fashioned into balls (as trophies for play) (WTF - Weird Things in Folktales)

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

S in the Motif Index stands for Unnatural Cruelty (it says a lot about traditional stories that this one needed its own category...). It includes things such as "S10. - Cruel parents," "S20. - Cruel children and grandchildren," and of course the all-time classic: "S31. - Cruel stepmother." Also, this:

S139.2.2.4.2. Brains of enemies fashioned into balls (as trophies for play) 

This is actually a pretty well known Irish legend, but it is worth repeating. 

The story starts with Mes Gegra, the king of Leinster, who is killed in single combat, and his brains are fashioned into a hard little ball with lime. (That'd the motif, everyone can go home now.)

The ball is kept as a trophy by the King of Ulster, Conchobar Mac Nessa. He likes to take it out sometimes to show it off. One day, the brain-ball-thingy is stolen by Cet, a notorious troublemaker from Connaught, who decides to save it for killing Conchobar. Every time there is a fight between Ulster and Connaught, Cet is there with the little brain-ball, until finally one day he gets a clean shot at the King of Ulster. He puts the brain-ball into a sling, and hits Conchobar right in the forehead.

And this is how Conchobar died.

Just kidding. He survived the shot, even thought two-thirds of the ball went into his own skull. The physician that examined him concluded that he would die if the ball is taken out, but he would live if it was left in there. Conchobar was keen on the latter, so they stitched the skin over the brain-ball with golden thread, and Conchobar went on living for another seven years. The physician also warned him not to ride a horse, lie with a woman, run, eat too much, or get angry, so those seven years were probably not much fun for him.

Eventually one day the sky darkened and the earth trembled. Conchobar asked his druids what was going on, and he was told that Christ, the son of God, had been crucified. Conchobar got so angry over the news, and so indignant about Jesus' death, than the brain-ball flew out of his skull, and he dropped dead. It's all good, though; according to some versions of the legend, the blood flowing from his forehead qualified as a baptism, as he was one of two people who believed in God in Ireland before the arrival of Christianity.

(Read the story here.)

Picture from here

Runner-ups
S110.3. Princess builds tower of skulls of unsuccessful suitors
S110.3.1. Princess makes necklace of heads of unsuccessful suitors
S111.2. Murder with poisoned lace
S111.7. Murder with poisoned slippers
S111.9. Murder by placing a poisoned fingernail on step
S115.3. Murder by piercing with pins and needles
S139.5. Murder by cutting off uvula
S143.2.1. Tortoise placed in tall tree and left
S263.1. Highest ranking man in land to be sacrificed for good crops
S268.2. Son sold for transfusion of blood to sick king
S326.1. Disobedient child burned
S461. Tale-bearer unjustly drowned for lack of proof of accusation

Interesting story dislodges frog from queen's nose (WTF - Weird Things in Folktales)

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

Here is the thing: There is no I in the Motif Index (probably because it looks too much like the number 1). So instead of going through a section for today, I searched the Index for words that begin with I, and picked the story that fit best. And was the strangest.

N641.2 Frog removed from queen's nose by telling such interesting story that she gives quick breath and dislodges him

This is a folktale from Sri Lanka, titled The Frog in the Queen's Nose (you might have noticed by now that Thompson's motif index is very heavy on South Asian stories). 

One day a Queen, walking in her gardens and smelling flowers, accidentally inhales a small frog, which gets stuck in her nose. People are summoned to get it out, but six of them fail in a row, and are executed for their failure. The King announces that whoever succeeds at getting the frog out of the Queen's nose shall receive a district of the kingdom, and also as much treasure as an elephant can carry.

In the kingdom there is also a couple. The wife is cheating on the husband; one day, while he goes to the rice fields, she makes hot rice milk for her lover. However, the husband's plow breaks, therefore he has to return home early. The wife hides the hot delicacy under the bed in a hurry. The husband comes home, sits on the bed, and burns his butt.

Some time later, the wife hears about the King's announcement - and decides that if her husband is executed, she'd be free to be with her lover, therefore she gets the King's messengers to take him to the palace.

The poor husband, nervous that he will be killed, starts talking about what happened to him earlier - he tells the story to the Queen about the plow, and the rice milk, and his poor burned behind. Hearing the story the Queen is so amused that she snorts - and out comes the tiny frog, flying, from her nose.

The poor man is richly rewarded; and as a bonus, the wife gets to live with her paramour.

(Read the story here.)

The Great and Powerful A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal!

This is my 6th year participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge, and my 3rd year co-hosting it. It has been tons of fun every time, and I am looking forward to what 2017 will bring to the A to Z community!

It has become a tradition over the years for participants to announce their themes for the Challenge at the end of March. That day is today! I once again have a theme - and yes, it is once again storytelling-related.

*Drumroll*

My theme for the 2017 A to Z Blogging Challenge is

WTF - Weird Things in Folktales

Vegetable lambs. They are a thing.
(Check out this artist)

I got the basic idea from browsing through the Thompson Motif Index. For those of you not folkloristically inclined: The Index is a list of motifs that have been sorted and numbered by American folklorist Stith Thompson, and first published in 1955. Folktale motifs are smaller building blocks you can find in traditional tales, myths, and legends around the world; you will find such things in the book as "A1010 - Deluge" (collecting all the myths that involve a flood), or "D1065.1 - Magic boots." The numbers help folklorists find all the stories that have that same element in them, compare them to each other, and see the larger patterns in world folklore. For practicing storytellers such as myself, the Motif-index is a godsend, helping us locate stories about specific things.

Since the motifs in the book are categorized in groups from A to Z, I thought the Challenge would be the perfect excuse to browse through them, and pick out some of the most unexpected ones. Because while it is not exactly surprising to find things like "A101.1 - Supreme god as creator," one tends to run into completely out-of-the blue things as well, such as "F521.3.3.2. - Person with golden anus", or "A1319.3 - Why ear wax is inside the ear."

Our ancestors told tales about the weirdest things.

Each day of the challenge, I'll pick a motif from the Index, and bring you a folktale or myth that contains it. 
The motifs usually make a whole lot more sense in context. A descriptions that makes you go "whut now?" might be a completely common occurrence in folktales, that Thompson somehow managed to make sound strange when taken out of its element. My point, therefore, is twofold: One, to place some of the Motif Index into context, and two, to show off the stunning, amazing, endless richness of folk imagination that is rarely explored these days.

There will be...
... Poisonous eyebrows
... Assassin mice
... Thieving butterflies
... Women snacking on human nails
... lobsters mistaken for Norwegians
... Kings getting a Darwin Award for burning to death in an alcohol bath...

... and many other fascinating tidbits from around the world.

See you in April!

* * *

Don't forget to check out the other blogs participating in the Challenge! People will be posting the links to their Theme Reveal posts in the Comments section of today's post on the main blog.

My previous Challenge themes:

2016 - Representation and Diversity in Storytelling

2015 - Epics from A to Z

2014 - Tales with Colors

2013 - Weird Princesses

2012 - First year, no theme