Angela Carter's Book Of Fairy Tales

by Angela Carter

  (Tales of Old Malawi, retold and edited by E. Singano and A.A. Roscoe [Limbe, Malawi, 1986], p. 69.)

  PART ELEVEN: MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

  1. Achol and Her Wild Mother

  Another Dinka story featuring a human lion. This one is told by the daughter of Chief Deng Majok, Nyankoc Deng, who was then aged eighteen to twenty. Perhaps Achol’s mother’s grisly compulsion to gather wood and forfeit her hands and feet to the lion actually represent some other kind of misdemeanour, such as adultery. Angela Carter’s notes copied from Dinka Folktales would seem to support this: ‘lions are what the Dinka fear most’ (p. 25) and ‘A person who violates fundamental precepts of the Dinka moral code is often identified in the folk tales as an outsider and an animal’ (p. 161). She comments: ‘this differentiates the animal from the human, the lions of the stories are not really lions. Hence the emphasis on human interaction with lions. As in the other stories, the lioness is fed nightly by her daughter until her son arrives and beats the wildness out of her’ (see ‘Duang and His Wild Wife’, p. 411 in this collection).

  (Deng, p. 95.)

  2. Tunjur, Tunjur

  A fifty-five-year-old woman called Fatime, from the village of Arrabe in Galilee, told the story of Tunjur, a cooking pot. Angela Carter’s notes quote the description of another teller from Speak Bird, Speak Again (p. 31): ‘When she came to the part about the man defecating in the cooking pot and the pot closing on him, Im Nabil laughed; then, still laughing she said the pot chopped off the man’s equipment.’ Angela Carter comments that ‘men don’t like the stories, partly because some of the mores of which they are guardians, e.g. the “woman’s honour” thing, are consistently challenged in the tales – in which heroines predominate’. She goes on to quote again from Speak Bird, Speak Again (p. 14): ‘the ideological basis of the system lies in the father-son bond. The female is identified as the “other”.’

  In this story, the daughter – a cooking pot – is quite clearly the ‘other’, but is sparklingly in step with the cunning and playful heroine of ‘Šāhīn’ (see p. 252 note p. 468) in her ability to match every man in wits and strength. She is a recognizable female trickster of the famous British Molly Whuppie type (a female Jack-the-Giant-Killer), even to the extent of going that little bit further than she has to, for the sake of a bit of fun. The story is well in keeping with the woman’s need in society to articulate her capabilities without being in the custody of the male infrastructure, so men are entirely peripheral to this story except as fools.

  (Muhawi and Kanaana, p. 55.)

  3. The Little Old Woman with Five Cows

  A Yakut creation myth tells of a Supreme Being who created a small and level world, which was scratched up by evil demons and spirits making the hills and valleys. The evil spirits were regularly appeased and thanked by Yakut shamans. Today they inhabit the Lena basin and intermarry with Russians.

  The magical maiden in this Yakut tale has her origins in what would appear to be a foundation myth of sorts. The ‘middle land’ inhabited by the human race, here represented by the Yakuts, is clearly in need of honour or redemption and the maiden is sent down as the saviour, duly suffering trials, death and resurrection. Unlike ‘The Finn King’s Daughter’ (Christiansen, p. 147) and other tales, in which the reader is informed in a phrase or sentence about the metamorphosis, this tale contains the horrific and explicit process of transformation. The demoness herself is, like the muzayyara, an Egyptian water-nymph with iron breasts. (Folktales of Egypt, edited and translated by Hasan M. El-Shamy, University of Chicago, 1938, p. 180.) Angela Carter comments: ‘The ancient Indian stories contain many horrible descriptions of Rakshasas’ (ogres).

  The goddess Kali herself is depicted at her most ferocious, with her tongue hanging from her mouth like the demoness of this story who shoots out an iron tongue. Like the troll-woman in ‘The Finn King’s Daughter’, this demoness is not quite familiar with the social customs of the society she is attempting to infiltrate. There is a cryptic reference to the fact that ‘she wrongly fastened her horse to the willow tree where the old widow from Semyaksin used to tether her spotted ox’, and this merits the hostility of her husband’s clan. The editor of Siberian and Other Folktales notes that ‘each species of tree has a master of its own except the larch’ and it is with a larch branch that the plant maiden kindles the fire when she arrives, suggesting that she is in tune with humans and comes in fulfilment of a greater plan. She also knows of an interesting cleansing ritual vital to get rid of the internal and external pollution of her husband caused by coupling with the demoness. The hanging of the Khan’s son from the tree for purification is reminiscent of Christ on the crucifix and other suspended gods such as Attis (Anatolia), Sluy (Wales) and Wotan (Germanic), all of whom returned after a few days.

  (Fillingham-Coxwell, p. 262.)

  4. Achol and Her Adoptive Lioness-Mother

  In this tale told by a twenty-year-old woman, the incest taboo is once again threatened but maintained through the intervention of non-human creatures. (Cf. ‘Diirawac and Her Incestuous Brother’, p. 338.) Angela Carter comments: ‘Incest taboos are particularly complex and important in polygamous societies. Here for example, Achol and her brother cannot recognize each other, having been separated in early childhood through the deceit of their half brothers.’

  PART TWELVE: MARRIED WOMEN

  1. Story of a Bird Woman

  Angela Carter jotted down some salient quotes from Siberian and Other Folktales in her notes. ‘Stories of bird-women occur among the Yakuts, the Lapps and the Samoyedes’; ‘It is not unknown for a Siberian folktale hero to order a large supply of boots when he undertakes a great feat’; and ‘Generally speaking, the Chukchis believe that all nature is animated and that every material object can act, speak and walk by itself.’

  The transformations of animal goddesses into human wives is the primary component of this story. Japanese and Chinese folklore abound in these. The journey and magical battle of redemption found here are unusual, though. Generally the husband has to content himself with his children or – possibly – rare encounters with the departed wife. The Welsh classic, ‘The Song of Taliesin’, includes a series of incidents in which the goddess Ceredwen takes the form of birds, ranging from a mighty eagle to a macabre raven and a lowly hen.

  (Fillingham-Coxwell, p. 82.)

  2. Father and Mother Both ‘Fast’

  The true purpose of this joke, which challenges the incest taboo, is to rebound on the main protagonist. It contains bawdy references to adultery and illegitimacy, as do most cuckolded husband jokes. It was collected from Jim Alley by Richard Dorson.

  (Dorson, p. 79.)

  3. Reason to Beat Your Wife

  This piece of scatological humour comes from a thirty-year-old peasant woman from a village in the Nile delta, who remembered hearing it from her mother when she was ten. Her husband put up some resistance to her offer of telling the story to the (male) editor Hasan El-Shamy and acceded to his appeal only on condition that her voice would not be recorded. He enjoyed the story though, and joked that his wife had put it to good use.

  The editor adds:

  The climactic event in this humorous anecdote belongs under the general motif ‘absurd wish’. The overall motif may be contrasted to ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, which carries the local title of ‘Kill Your Cat on Your Wedding Night’.

  In fact it is the notion of a husband establishing his superiority over an already dutiful wife that gets its comeuppance here, so it is appropriate that the tale comes from a woman who got it from an older woman. The tale seems to advocate indulgence of the weaknesses of men and the fact that being dutiful pays off – but it hints at concealed guile with the robust, earthy humour familiar in Arab tales. For the audacious use of shit, see ‘Šāhīn’ (p. 252) and ‘Tunjur, Tunjur’ (p. 371 and note p. 476).

  (Hasan El-Shamy, p. 217.)

  4. The Three Lovers

  The paramour at the window in this tale from south-west
Mexico receives a similar fate to Chaucer’s character in ‘The Miller’s Tale’, after having his rump kissed.

  (Cuentos Españoles de Colorado y de Nuevo Mejico Vol. I, original text by Juan B. Rael [Stanford University Press, 1957], p. 105. This text translated by Merle E. Simmons, p. 427.)

  5. The Seven Leavenings

  Angela Carter notes: ‘Fatime again – two tales woven together by the personality of the old woman. The woman moves from father’s house to husband’s house and at no time has space of her own – but don’t dismiss the power of the “other” – expressed partly in telling of tales, embroidery, basket-making, pottery, wedding songs, laments.’ Then she quotes from Speak Bird, Speak Easy: ‘for the female, conflict is inherent in the structure of the system’.

  A footnote from the editors of that book reads: ‘Inability to get pregnant and have children is the most common theme in all the folktales in this collection’ (p. 207). Without a doubt this is one of the anxieties expressed by women in tales, particularly since ‘a man is more easily forgiven if he hits a wife who doesn’t have children’ (loc. cit.).

  The woman in this story is clearly an old crone with magical instincts, a wily and wise helper of women who speaks in a cryptic language of her own; for example, ‘The land is longing for its people, I want to go home.’ Perhaps the fact that the bread doesn’t leaven means that her work, the deliverance of women from their husbands, is never finished – except of course when it suits the storyteller to bring the tale to its end. Being an old woman, she is particularly suitable as the companion of a younger woman and unlikely to misguide her. This gives her the space to practise the necessary wiles to improve the lot of her protégée. Angela Carter quotes, ‘Older women are thought to be asexual; the husband is therefore more ready to believe in his wife’s innocence after the old woman confirms her interpretation of “black on white”’ (p. 211). The frame/vignette format is standard in the Middle East (cf. the Arabian Nights).

  The ‘seven’ in the title suggests that it is part of a cycle of severn stories narrated in the same formula.

  (Muhawi and Kanaana, p. 206.)

  6. The Untrue Wife’s Song

  Another daring woman teaches her husband a lesson in this story collected by Ralph S. Boggs from B.L. Lunsford aged forty-four, of North Carolina. This tale is based on ‘Old Hildebrande’, a longer tale originating from Europe and with an anticlerical bias.

  (Journal of American Folklore, 47, 1934, p. 305.)

  7. The Woman Who Married Her Son

  This story was told by an eighty-two-year-old woman from the village of Rafidiya, district of Nablus, in Palestine, notes Angela Carter.

  The familiar scenario of a wife being replaced by a rival has a twist here, when a mother replaces her daughter-in-law in her son’s bed and even becomes pregnant. Muhawi and Kanaana compare her pica (craving) for sour grapes to the western one for pickles. The same theme appears in ‘Rom’, in Jan Knappert’s Myths and Legends of the Congo (London, 1979). Rom’s mother’s action is in part prompted by pity that unknown to him, his sweetheart has abandoned him, so it is the young man himself who commits a grisly suicide, chanting:

  I entered the lap I came out of

  My strength went back where it came from (p. 27).

  Here though, the mother is motivated by selfishness and lust. In part her jealousy is triggered by sharing status with another woman. Angela Carter quotes a Palestinian proverb: ‘The household of the father is a playground and that of the husband is an education. A woman always belongs in one household or another.’ She jots down some phrases: sexuality – utterly disruptive of social fabric, especially female sexuality; sexes segregated; ‘honour’.

  The tale certainly demonstrates the fear of disruption caused by this example of female sexuality gone rampant. The slur to family honour – guarded by men but lodged in women – is punished with death by burning. Interestingly, though the editors Muhawi and Kanaana attribute the teller’s omission of the detail of this punishment to her quickening of pace and brevity towards the end of the story, it is really more likely to be her way of reducing the punitive consequences of female transgression. As for the segregation of sexes – perhaps that is what makes it easier to believe that a son could mistake his mother for his wife, however well disguised she may be. Of course, a mother-in-law could be as young as thirty.

  The brutality of the wife’s action in casually cutting out the innocent servant’s tongue is not particularly unusual in fairy tales or for that matter in history. Here it indicates her commitment to silence. When her time of silence is up she allows the messenger to keep his tongue. The silence of a woman in fairy tales, through either enchantment or commitment, is a standard narrative device to facilitate plot development. This is a legacy from the early Middle Ages, when women in European narratives lost their voices during the period between betrothal and marriage. The silence of heroines appears as a redemption motif in several German fairy tales, where loquacious heroines never became popular. In Europe, the silencing of heroines for fear of evil spells or the threat of everlasting condemnation was linked to concepts of power and retribution for the original sin.

  (Muhawi and Kanaana, p. 60.)

  8. Duang and His Wild Wife

  This story was told by Nyanjur Deng, another of Chief Deng Majok’s daughters, aged twenty. Angela Carter quotes from Dinka Folktales: ‘The late Chief of the Nyok extended the practice of diplomatic marriage further than anyone else in the history of the Dinka. He had nearly 200 wives drawn from most of the corners of Dinkaland. The family was closely knit, living in several large villages, and all kinds of dialects were spoken and subcultures represented’ (p. 99).

  Here Duang considers his wife’s pica (craving) to be unreasonable since the Dinka deplore the killing of animals for any reason other than ritual or sacrifice. His deceitful act re-emphasizes that from Amou’s point of view Duang has behaved as an ‘outsider’. Having gone through the civilizing ritual (see ‘Diirawac and Her Incestuous Brother’, p. 338 and ‘Achol and Her Wild Mother’, p. 367) she avenges herself with his death.

  (Deng, p. 97.)

  9. A Stroke of Luck

  One of a body of jocular tales about the inability of women to keep a secret. In some variants the trusting husband gets into trouble; here he turns it to his advantage.

  (Degh, p. 147.)

  10. The Beans in the Quart Jar

  Another cuckolded husband joke, told by Jim Alley to Richard Dorson (see ‘Father and Mother Both “Fast”, p. 394, and ‘The Untrue Wife’s Song’, p. 406).

  (Dorson, p. 80.)

  PART THIRTEEN: USEFUL STORIES

  1. A Fable of a Bird and Her Chicks

  A stern and darkly humorous fable about preparation for the tough and persecutory side of life, this story is representative of Yiddish humour and aphorisms.

  From Yiddish Folktales, edited by Beatrice Silverman Weinreich with a foreword by Leonard Woolf.

  2. The Three Aunts

  ‘Old Habetrot’ is the English variant of the Norse tale in which the helper presents herself to the lazy spinner’s husband as an illustration of what might happen to his wife if she is forced to pursue the crafts of spinning and weaving (cf. ‘Vasilissa the Fair’ p. 314, who actually does spin, weave and stitch the king’s shirts to perfection, so is naturally under no pressure to continue). The lazy spinner, though, resists the pressure of her straitened circumstances to tie her to a spinning wheel. Since the only release from her penury lies in marrying an affluent man, guile and subterfuge are necessary escape devices. What is most enjoyable is the conspiracy of women, which not only conceals the heroine’s trickery but saves her from a future of drudgery and rebuke. Not so the post-1819 editions of the Grimms’ story which demands of the reader, ‘You must yourself admit that she was a disgusting woman.’

  (Darsent, p. 194.)

  3. Tale of an Old Woman

  ‘Muriwa’ is the Bondes word for sycamore. An almost identical story occurs in
the South Pacific. These stories indicate that the conditions imposed by magical helpers are binding. If they are not duly respected, the creatures withdraw (see ‘Story of a Bird Woman’, p. 391). In both these stories nothing is left behind as a reminder of the days of grace.

  (African Folktales, edited by Roger Abrahams [New York, Pantheon Folklore Library, 1983), p. 57.)

  4. The Height of Purple Passion

  An unsolved mystery riddle ending in anti-climax. The author collected it from a nine-year-old American girl in the presence of her stunned parents. The source of the joke is probably a French literary story that still survives under various names including ‘The Bordeaux Diligence’, which occurs in a Hitchcock anthology of horror stories from the late 1960s.

  (The Rationale of the Dirty Joke, vol. II, by C. Legman [London, Panther, 1973], p. 121.)

  5. Salt, Sauce and Spice, Onion Leaves, Pepper and Drippings

  The power of the name is a fundamental premiss of this story. The password – the coveted man’s name – is only gained after a specific and vital test has been passed. Unlike the Tom Tit Tot group (stories like ‘Rumpelstiltskin’) the test is service and generosity of spirit rather than trickery and contest. As in all Dummling (simpleton) stories, the most unlikely candidate triumphs.