T is for Tamarind Tree (A to Z Challenge 2019: Fruit Folktales)

Sampaloc Lake is the largest of seven lakes near San Pablo City in the Philippines. There is a legend about how the lake was born, and that legend just happens to be tied to a tamarind tree.

The legend tells of a greedy couple who lived nearby once upon a time, and owned a huge tamarind tree. On a hot day, an old woman stopped at their house, begging for some tamarind fruit from the tree; she was sick, and only the sour taste of the fruit could cure her. The couple, however, rudely told her that the fruit was not for sale, and they would definitely not give it away for free. The old woman kept begging, and even tried to pick a fruit, until the evil couple set the dogs on her.

Chased away from the tree without any fruit, the old woman cursed the owners. They laughed at her words... but soon after an avalanche was unleashed, and it buried them, house and all. The avalanche was followed by a deluge, and a new lake was formed where the house had once been.
Legend says that the huge tamarind tree still stands on the bottom of the lake, full of fruit. Legend also says that the lake claims a life every day, so people should not be swimming in it.

The lake is called Sampaloc Lake - sampaloc is the Tagalog word for tamarind.

(Read the legend here or here.)

S is for Starfruit and Greed (A to Z Challenge 2019: Fruit Folktales)

The first time I met someone from Vietnam, and asked her about folktales, she told me the story of the starfruit tree. I have encountered the story in many Vietnamese collections since then - but I have yet to actually eat a starfruit...

The story begins with two brothers and their parents who, when they die, leave all their wealth to their oldest, while the younger boy only inherits a single starfruit tree. The older brother lives in comfort and luxury, but is very greedy and mean, while the younger, as poor young people in folktales usually are, is kind and generous. He lives in a small shack under the starfruit tree.

One day a giant eagle lands on the tree, and asks the young man if he can have some fruit. He agrees, and the eagle eats his fill, then leaves. He comes back the next day, and the day after that, and the young man keeps offering as much fruit as he wishes. Eventually, however, the fruit is almost all gone, and the owner of the tree respectfully asks the eagle to leave enough to take to the market. The eagle, in response, asks the young man to hang a bag from the tree - and spits a bar of gold into it. The young man takes the gold to town, sells it, and buys everything he needs.

The older brother soon finds out about the luck of his sibling. He offers to trade everything he owns for the starfruit tree, in hopes of getting more gold from the eagle. The younger brother agrees to the trade, and moves into the mansion. The older brother sits around, waiting day after day, for the eagle to come back. Eventually it does, and asks for some fruit. The older brother tells the eagle that payment is needed for the fruit, and hangs a bag from the tree. But even so, he doesn't trust the bird, so he climbs the tree, and grabs the eagle's feet to make sure it doesn't escape before (literally) coughing up some gold. The bird takes flight, taking the man along, and when it arrives to the ocean, the older brother falls into the water, never to be seen again.

The young man, now owning the estate (and the starfruit tree) lives happily ever after.

(Read the story here or here.)

R is for Raspberries and Punishments (A to Z Challenge 2019: Fruit Folktales)

Raspberries are one of my favorite fruit. I can't get enough of them. I eat them straight off the bush, but I also like them on cakes and pastries (and definitely in chocolate brownies and chocolate ice cream). My parents grow them in the garden, but I have to compete with our (self-inflicted) fruitarian dog to get to them first.

The story I found for today is from Ireland. It is about two men, Murroghoo-more and Murroghoo-beg, who are cousins; the stronger of the two, Murroghoo-more, treats the smaller one very badly, and keeps bossing him around. One day, he orders Murroghoo-beg to go and gather raspberries. Murroghoo-beg does, but then it starts to rain, and he hides in the bushes, gets hungry, and eats all the raspberries. When he gets home with an empty basket, Murroghoo-more beats him. The next day, the same thing happens - Murroghoo-beg can't resist, and eats the raspberries again. Same thing on the third day.

By this time, Murroghoo-more is so angry, that he puts out the eyes of Murroghoo-beg, and leaves him at the church at night to die. Luckily, magic cats are having a storytelling circle in the church at night, and Murroghoo-beg overhears them talking about a sick princess and a magic well. In the morning, he crawls to the well, gets water, heals the princess, and heals his own eyes. He becomes a rich man. As these stories usually go, Murroghoo-more hears about what happened, and demands to know how Murroghoo-beg did what he did. He decides to spend a night in the church too...

... except this time the cats pay more attention, find the eavesdropper, and tear him apart, leaving nothing but his bones.

(Read this story here, and another, similar story here.)

How do you imagine a cat storytelling circle? What kinds of stories cats would tell each other, I wonder... Would you be brave enough to eavesdrop?

Q is for Quince and Kings (A to Z Challenge 2019: Fruit Folktales)

There is a folktale motif that involves a magic tree and stolen fruit. It is very common in Hungarian stories; the fruit, usually pears or golden apples (although occasionally it's bacon) is stolen every night by some mysterious force, until the hero finds a way to protect it. Here is a version from Albania:

A king has a magic tree that bears only three quinces every year. The king desperately wants to enjoy the fruit, but every time it is stolen by a dragon. The king's three sons volunteer to stand guard, but the first two, in true folktale fashion, get scared and fail miserably. The third, a "scurf-head", manages to wound the dragon, which disappears through a hole in the ground.

From this point on, the tale follows along traditional lines. The scurf-head volunteers to descend into the underworld. He meets and rescues three princesses (three Earthly Beauties), plus a princess that has just been offered to the dragon as a sacrifice. He slays the dragon, and restores water to the underground kingdom. On his way back, his brothers pull up the three girls first, but decide to leave the scurf-head in the hole, and keep all three princesses to themselves. Following sage advice from the youngest girl (and with the help of a giant bird), however, the hero gets out of the underworld, goes home, and wins his place back in the kingdom. In the end, he turns into a dashing warrior, and marries the youngest princess.

At this point I think it is safe to assume that the king finally gets to eat his quinces in peace, too.

(You can read the tale here.)

Have you ever tried quince? Do you have a good recipe?My grandma grew them in the garden, and used to make a kind of hard jam out of them (we called it "quince cheese").

P is for Perilous Persimmons (A to Z Challenge 2019: Fruit Folktales)

Of course, there is an overabundance of fruits with P. Pears, pomegranates, peaches, papayas, plums, pineapples, prickly pears, pomelos...

Here is well known and much loved folktale from Korea.

A tiger sneaks into a village at night, hungry for some prey. As he sneaks around, he hears a baby crying loudly in a house. The mother tries everything to keep the baby quiet, but to no avail. Eventually, in her desperation she even says "here comes a tiger!", which makes the tiger really proud of himself - but the baby keeps crying. The mother, exasperated, decides to give the baby a treat, and says "here's a persimmon!" Content with the treat, the baby falls quiet.

Tiger, hearing this exchanges, grows scared. What on earth is a persimmon, that it could scare a child into silence, when the threat of a tiger could not? What in the world can be more terrifying than a tiger? What kind of a monster is a persimmon, and what is it doing in that house?! Thoroughly freaked out, the tiger runs away, and takes shelter in the barn where the dreaded persimmon can't get him.

In the meantime, there is someone else sneaking around the village: A thief. The thief gets into the barn, hoping to steal a cow, but it is so dark in there that he can only find his way around by touch. Groping around in the darkness, he grabs on to the tiger's back, and thinks it is a cow with a very lush coat. He gets on the back of the tiger (facing backwards) and holds on. The tiger, terrified that it is the persimmon that is on his back, bolts, and runs away crying "Help! A persimmon is after me! Don't eat me, Mr. Persimmon!" while the thief is crying "Don't eat me, Mr. Tiger!"

And that's the end of the story.

(Read the story here, here, here, or here. Read more about the symbolism of persimmons in Korea here.)

I don't know about you, but I'm kinda curious now: What would a persimmon monster look like?

O is for Olives and Detectives (A to Z Challenge 2019: Fruit Folktales)

Well, we just had oranges yesterday, so today I have to do olives. Luckily, olives play an important role in many cultures, and a such there are countless tales and legends that revolve around them. Today, I picked one of my favorites. Here is a story from the Thousand and One Nights (more specifically, from nights 639-643).

Ali Khwajah, the merchant lives in Baghdad in the time of the famous wise caliph Haroun Al-Rashid. One day he decides to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca. He sells all his goods, and since he doesn't want to carry all his wealth to Mecca, he puts a thousand gold coins into an olive jar, spreads some olives on top, and seals the jar. He then takes the jar to a merchant friend of his, and asks him to store the jar in his house while he is away. The merchant friend agrees, puts the sealed jar in his cellar, and forgets about it.

Ali Khwajah goes on the pilgrimage to Mecca. On the way, he meets other merchants, and decides to accompany them to faraway lands, and travel the world. He is away for seven long years.
In the meantime, towards the end of the seven years, the other merchant's wife starts craving olives. The merchant opens the sealed jar (despite his wife's protests), and finds that the olives have gone bad, but there is gold underneath them. He takes the gold, fills the jar with fresh olives, and seals it back up.

Soon after Ali Khwajah comes home, greets his friend, and takes back his jar. When he opens it, he finds it full of olives, and all thousand pieces of gold are gone. He returns to his friend to complain, but the merchant denies that he's ever opened the jar. The matter ends up at court before the judge, but since there are no witnesses about the gold, the case is dismissed. The desperate Ali Khwajah goes before Haroun Al-Rashid, asking for justice. The caliph promises to think it over.

That evening Haroun Al-Rashid goes walking in his city, and notices a handful of children playing. They are reenacting the (high-profile) case of Ali Khwajah. One child pretends to be the judge. He asks "Ali" to bring the jar of olives in for inspection. He tastes the olives and finds them fresh. He orders two olive merchants to tell him, from their expertise, how long olives keep in a jar. The merchants testify that no olives keep for more than three years. The child-judge thus concludes that the jar had been opened and refilled, and decides the trial in Ali's favor.

Haroun is so impressed with the child that he orders him to court for the next day. When the merchant and Ali Khwajah arrive, the caliph does exactly what the child has done, and since the olives are fresh, the truth of the matter comes out. Ali gets his money back, the boy also gets a thousand pieces of gold, the merchant is hanged for his crime, the judge is disciplined for being bad at his job. Justice prevails, thanks to the wisdom of a child.

(Read the story here.)

Do you think there would have been another solution for Ali to reveal the truth and get his money back?

(Also, I checked, and modern olives also have a 3-year expiration date...)

N is for Naran White (A to Z Challenge 2019: Fruit Folktales)

Okay, so I am cheating here a little, but this was too good to pass up.

In Catalonia, there is a folktale known as La Tarongeta. It is often translated as "Little Tangerine" and even "Little Grapefruit", but "taranja" in Catalan means "orange."
(Watch my hands: the English word originated from the Indian naram, the Persian narang and the Arabic naranj. In Spanish, orange is naranja, and in my native Hungarian, it is narancs. There is your N.)

Anyway, the story might look a bit familiar:

There was once a queen who wanted to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Every day, she asked her magic mirror, and every day her vanity was confirmed. One day, she purchased an orange from a traveling merchant. As she ate it, the orange peel fell on the snow in the garden. Seeing that, the queen wished for a daughter who would be white as snow and gold as the orange. In time, a beautiful baby girl was born, and named La Tarongeta - Little Orange.

From the moment Tarongeta was born, the mirror stopped flattering the queen. Enraged, she ordered two servants to take the girl into the woods, kill her, and bring her heart as proof. The servants, however, did not want to kill the princess, so they killed a goat instead, and told the girl to run. A talking dove led Tarongeta to a house deep in the woods. In the house lived thirteen giants.

Tarongeta spied on the giants, noting how they opened and closed their house with a magic spell. Eventually she sneaked inside, and spent three days hidden in the house, until they finally found her. Telling her story, she made the giants feel pity for her, so they kept her as a servant. In the meantime, the queen found out she was still alive, and talked to a witch, who went to the house in the woods, offering a ring to Tarongeta. The girl put the ring on, and fell into a deep sleep.

The thirteen giants put Tarongeta into a cave as a crypt. Some time later, a prince happened to find her, fell in love with her, and carried her home. One day, when she was alone, a servant woman tried to steal the pretty ring, and the moment she slipped it off the finger, Tarongeta woke up. She married the prince, they burned the queen publicly, and they lived happily ever after.

(Joan Amades: Les cent millors rondalles catalanes, 1974.)

I don't know about you, but I want to know what part of her was white and what was orange. I guess it would be her skin and her hair, respectively, but it would be funny the other way around...

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Also, this is how you end a Snow White tale without non-consensual kissing. With grave robbery. Modern parents, you're welcome.