StorySpotting: People marrying trees (As seen on the news)

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!

I’m hopelessly ‘treevoted’ to protecting and preserving our #greenlung #saverimrosevalley The Elder is looking well groomed in this one!...x... pic.twitter.com/LlYqm50lhg

— Kate Rose Elder Fuller (@KateRoseElder1) October 1, 2019

StorySpotting is usually for film, comics, TV shows, and other popular media, but every once in a while, I see something on the news that is also worth including. Like, in this case, where a true story reminds me of a few folktales...

Where was the story spotted?

A bunch of articles came out last week about "a woman married to a tree", who is celebrating her first wedding anniversary. Just google "Kate Cunningham" and "tree."

What happens?

Her maiden name is Kate Cunningham, and her married name is Kate Elder, since her tree-spouse is an elder (she also has a human boyfriend and two children). She is an environmental activist who married the elder tree in Rimrose Valley Park last year, in an attempt to stop a road being built through the park. She got the idea from Mexican activists who do the same to halt illegal logging. It is basically a very dedicated (and newsworthy) form of tree-hugging for environmental conservation. It even has its own Wikipedia page. 

What's the story?

Marrying trees is not exactly unheard of in world folklore. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes it doesn't, but either way, it makes for a good story. 

In a Sangu folktale from Tanzania a woman marries a tree while her sisters take animal husbands. She later discovers that her tree-husband sheds its bark at night in the form of a pangolin, and turns into a handsome human man. At dawn, the pangolin returns, and the man becomes a tree again. The marriage goes on like this until the woman eventually kills the pangolin (poor pangolin!), and the husband remains human.

There is a Makka legend from Paraguay about a woman who marries a lignum vitae tree. She falls in love with the beautiful tree and scratches it gently every day, until the tree bleeds, and visits her at night, becoming her husband. It brings abundance to the crops of the village, and has a child with the woman, but when she cheats on it, the lignum vitae ascends to the sky. But even then, it makes sure child and family never go hungry. 

In a Tlingit legend, a girl dreams about a man visiting her multiple times, and then gives birth to a boy. No one knows who the father is, and no man takes responsibility, so the girl's father invites all the "people of the trees". When they arrive, the boy crawls straight to the old man by the door, who turns out to be the spirit of an old spruce tree. The mother marries him.

In an Indonesian folktale from Sumatra, a brave princess named Kemang falls in love with a beautiful mango tree who turns out to be an enchanted prince. She manages to find a way to break the enchantment, and transform the entire forest into a kingdom.

In the heartbreaking Japanese tale of the Willow Wife, a young man saves a willow tree from being cut down for timber. Soon, a mysterious woman appears in his life, and turns out to be the spirit of the willow tree he loved so much. Sadly, people eventually cut the tree down anyway, and the willow wife disappears in the same instant. 

The Indian folktale of The Flowering Tree features a girl who has the power to transform herself into a tree filled with beautiful flowers. Eventually some jealous women trap her in her half-transformed stage and tear her branches and flowers, and she has to go through a lot of pain and suffering until her husband's love restores her.

In a Jamaican folktale, a lonely hunter sees a pretty tree, and wishes it was a woman, because I would love to marry her. Lo and behold, the tree transforms into a woman, and she marries the man. Later on another man kidnaps her, but her husband goes to the rescue.

Some tales are even darker than that. A storyteller named Emily Dean, of mixed Fox Indian and Black heritage, told a tale in the 19th century about a hunter who married a pretty but mysterious girl by the forest. At night, he felt like he was touching bark and branches, and during the day the girl disappeared, until he eventually figured out he is married to a tree spirit, and managed to reveal her as an old hag that turned into a hollow log. The Jewish tale of The demon in the tree is very similar to the story known (thanks to Tim Burton) as The Corpse Bride. Here, a young man practicing his wedding vows puts a ring on a tree branch, just to find himself married to a tree demon. The demon kills all his brides, until he marries a woman sensible enough to strike a deal with her. The double marriage is resolved by negotiation in the end.

Conclusion

I guess one could do worse than a tree for a spouse.

Returning the selkie skin: Divorce in folktales, in a positive light

I somehow ended up being the "positive divorce" storyteller on Twitter.
My parents divorced two years ago, in a friendly way, and ever since then I have been interested in traditional folktales that portray divorce in a different light. There are situations in life where divorce is absolutely the solution, even if it means a painful ending to something that had been good once.

Here are some of my favorite examples so far:




Why the Sun shines in the day and the Moon shines at night (Lithuania)

This story tell us about the mythic divorce between Sun and Moon, and how they decided to share custody of their child, the Earth. They decided Sun will keep an eye on her during the day, and Moon will do so at night. The arrangement seems to be working so far.

How Soslan married Kosher (Ossetian Nart saga)

The most famous of the Nart heroes, Soslan, fights for the hand of a lady who lives in a magic flying tower. After many adventures and some flirting, she agrees to marry him. However, eventually she grows bored of living in one place, and since Soslan won't leave the Narts, they decide it's better for them to divorce. They say goodbye, and she flies away in her tower.

The marriage of Sultan Hasan (Egypt)

A sultan is told he'll have seven years of bad luck, so he dresses as a beggar and goes into exile to keep his family from suffering. In a village he encounters a rich man who keeps divorcing and re-marrying his wife out of cruelty. According to law, after three divorces he can only marry her again if she's had another husband in between. So they marry her to the first random beggar (the sultan), hoping to divorce them the next morning. However, they take a liking to each other, and decide not to divorce. Instead, they live on in a much happier, harmonious marriage.

The selfish husband (Zambia)

During a time of famine a family moves into the wilderness. The husband finds a lot of wild honey, but doesn't give any to his wife and children. The wife sets out on her own and catches an antelope, but can't carry it home alone. People from a nearby village help her, and since she can now care for her children with the help of the community, she divorces her selfish husband.

The selkie wife (Scotland)

A fisherman who doesn't have anyone, and wears a birthmark on his face, meets a selkie. First he steals her skin so she can't return to the sea, but then he feels bad about it and gives the skin back to her. The girl decides to stay with him anyway. Fifteen years later, however, she grows homesick, and returns to the sea, telling her husband to follow in time. When their children are grown, the fisherman goes into the sea and turns into a seal as well.
(I don't know if this is divorce or separation, but it's the best selkie story I know.)

Red Roderick and the selkie (Scotland)

Also a selkie story, except here the wife steals back her own skin after the birth of three children, and walks into the sea, telling her husband not to hunt seals ever again.

Fallen men spoil virtuous women (Syria)

In this tale type that exists in East Africa and the Middle East, a man divorces his three wives because each has a character flaw. Another, kinder man decides to marry them, and discovers that "character flaws" are actually largely the result of how badly the women had been treated by their husband (e.g. the one called "gluttonous" never got enough to eat).

The man who spoke the language of animals (Eritrea)

A classic tale type, where a man can't tell his wife where he got his magic powers. However, here in the end instead of beating his wife they simply divorce over their differences - and thus divorce is introduced to the world for the first time.
(This divorce saves the man from dying, and the woman from a dishonest marriage.)

The three little eggs (Eswatini)

Not as much divorce as escape from an abusive husband, towards a better future. I wrote about this story in detail in the Feminist Folktales series (see link).

Skadi and Njörd (Norse myth)

The goddess Skadi accidentally marries Njörd, the old god of the sea. They are such an awful match, however, that they decide to separate, and Skadi goes on to fall in love with Ullr, god of archery, who is a much better match for her.

I is for Intimacy and Independence

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 had some difficulty with picking a topic for I - in the end, I thought about Intimacy and Independence, two features that make a marriage strong, and yet are rarely portrayed in traditional tales.
I was specifically looking for stories about strong, admirable marriages that portray caring couples without making one solely exist to be a plot point for the other. Since many fairy tales end with marriage, I had to go looking for stories that went beyond the happily ever after...



Queen Anait
An Armenian folktale about a clever peasant girl who makes a prince learn a useful trade before she agrees to marry him. Once queen, she often rules while her husband is away to walk his kingdom in disguise. When he is captured by bandits and forced into slavery, he manages to get a message out that only his wife can read. Anait rescues her husband, and they return home together.
(You can find the story in this wonderful book)

Meat of the Tongue
A Sultan's wife is sick and unhappy, while a poor man's wife is cheerful and healthy. The Sultan asks the poor man what his secret is, and he is told his wife needs "tongue." (Yep, the audience usually snickers at this point). He tries to feed tongue meat to the sultana, but she doesn't get better - so he orders the poor man to swap wives with him. The poor man agrees, and works his magic - turns out "meat of the tongue" was a metaphor for talking to his wife every day, sharing stories, and listening to her (get your minds out of the gutter, people.)
(You can read the story in this book)

Fallen men spoil virtuous women
Much like the previous story, a king in a miserable marriage with three wives swaps them for a poor man's happy wife, claiming he can't live with the three because they are good for nothing: One steals, one sleeps around, and one lies all the time. By treating the women with trust and kindness, the poor man builds a loving relationship with two of them (he does divorce the liar...), while the king manages to turn his new wife into a shrew. Moral of the story: The king should not have expected his wives to be ideal if he himself was not a good husband to them.
(You can find the story in this collection of Syrian folktales from refugees)

Tiger's whiskers
The same story I mentioned about Adoption, where the stepmother won her stepson's trust through patience and kindness, also exists in versions where a woman is trying to win her husband's love back after he returns from war (PTSD?).
(Read the Korean version of this tale in this book)

Tale of the Yellow Princess
Okay so we don't know how "traditional" this tale is, since it is from Nizami's Seven Wise Princesses, but it is a good one (and includes a story within a story). A king purchases a slave girl who refuses to speak or look at him, and seems miserable all the time (go figure). Turns out she doesn't want to love anyone because women in her family always die in childbirth. The king tells her he loves her even if they never have any children, and marries her (also tells a story about King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, and how they learned to talk their problems out).
(Read this tale in Seven Wise Princesses)

The origin of almond trees
In this Portuguese legend, a young king tries to make his wife happy by bringing snow into his ever-summer kingdom. We'll talk more about them later on in the Challenge.
(Read about the story here)

What are your favorite mythical/legendary/fairy tale marriages? 

Let me know!