Flaws in Folktale Resources

 

Folktales and Fairy Tales: Traditions and Texts from Around the World (2016) is among the most comprehensive resources in English, packed with illustrations, cross-references, and an extensive bibliography. The older version is even available online here. But the articles are occasionally wrong. One quote demonstrates this: "Fathers do not offer their sons as prizes for tasks rendered" (pp. 336).

Fathers do actually give their sons as rewards to the heroines of numerous stories. "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" has the merchant wed his boy to a slave because she saved them. "Tatterhood" bargains to marry the prince in exchange for letting the king marry her sister. "Hairy Rouchy" and "Maol a Chliobain" steal treasure from giants so that farmers will let them and their sisters marry their sons. The book should've said that fathers rarely offer their sons as prizes.

This mistake is attributable to three people. D.L. Ashliman, who wrote the "Father" article, and the editors Donald Haase and Anne Duggan, who didn't notice the issue originally. Granted, they have mitigating circumstances. The former seems to be an expert on German (1576), so he might've been unfamiliar with Arabic, Celtic, and Norwegian traditions. The latter two had to review hundreds of pages of writing so small details might've slipped by. Nevertheless, they presented misinformation to non-experts and failed to correct it for the newest edition. This undermines both their intellectual integrity and the encyclopedia's overall quality.

The Odyssey, Translation, and Politics

The Odyssey (2026) by Melinda Sue Gordon—Universal Pictures

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey has received backlash for every aspect of its production: dialogue and accents, costuming and set design, and especially its casting choices. Among the controversies was Nolan's use of Emily Wilson's translation for inspiration. The issue is largely political since Wilson is a feminist whose beliefs influenced her work and media outlets have celebrated her, partly, because she is female. But is their evidence that Wilson's work might be detrimental to the story?

Yes.

Scholars have noted that Wilson's translation imposes certain interpretations. John Byron Kuhner highlighted how she translated the same word - huperphialos - as "insolent" or "arrogant" for Penelope's boorish suitors but as "high-minded" for a drunken, cannibalistic monster. Deborah H. Roberts and Richard Whitaker mentioned that she placed more blame on Odysseus for the deaths of his crewmen than the original.

The simplifying of Odysseus is a reoccurring problem with Wilson's translation. She says he "has affairs with Calypso and Circe in the course of his wanderings" (40) and calls him "an adulterer" (79) but misses how these experiences might be rape. Calypso keeps Odysseus on her island against his will and he's so unhappy that he sits on the shoreline, crying (5. 151 - 158). That said, Odysseus does return to bed with her after she's ordered to let him go (5. 226 - 227), but that may be due to habit rather than desire. Circe, meanwhile, had to be bedded or she would've killed him and his men (10. 280 - 300). Granted, we only have Odysseus' word for that, and he's known to lie. But taking both scenarios at face value, they involve coercion and contravene his ability to consent, so framing him as just a philanderer erases the text's complexity and the possibilities of sexual victimization. 

Wilson further undermines Odysseus by dismissing love as a motive for leaving Calypso:

Presumably, Odysseus is inspired by a deep loyalty to his wife, son, father, and the place of his birth, and moved by a deep and constant love for those he left behind. But we must avoid projecting the anachronistic ideas of chivalric romantic love onto Odysseus, who is not a medieval knight performing valiant deeds for the sake of a beautiful lady... If Odysseus had stayed with Calypso, he would have been forever subservient to a being more powerful than himself. He would have lost forever the possibility of being king of Ithaca, owner of the richest and most dominant household on his island—an estate wealthy in pigs, sheep, goats, fruit, grain, wine, and slaves, with an old father, a young son, and a desirable, much-courted, and valuable wife all devoted to him, and all increasing his value in the eyes of his neighbors" (60).

Robert Girvan, however, found multiple translations with a line about Odysseus missing Penelope and Ithaca (1. 10 - 15). Wilson's was among two that didn't. Either she thought this detail was insignificant or she wanted to hide contradictory information. Neither bolsters her integrity as a scholar or translator. And if Nolan took inspiration from her distorted work then the skepticism and backlash appear warranted.

Folktale Art

"The Four Skillful Brothers" (1909) by Arthur Rackham

"The Further Adventures of the Fisherman" (1912) by René Bull

"Rapunzel" (1914) by Florence Susan Harrison

"Beauty and the Beast" (1913) by Warwick Goble

"Snow White and Rose Red" (1911) Jessie Willcox Smith

"The Snow Queen" (2009 ) by Lisa Hunt

Obscure Find

In 2015, Jacqueline Simpson published an article, "They Say England Has No Folktales," where she outlined the misconceptions people have about the country's narrative tradition. One striking reference concerned a variant of tale type 1525A, "Tasks for a Thief":

Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor (1861) gives a short, vigorous rendering of a version of The Master Thief, here entitled Clever Jack, which was told him by an intelligent looking 16-year-old boy in a London workhouse. The boy said the inmates would sometimes tell stories among themselves – romantic ones, bawdy ones, and ones about ‘some big thief who was very clever at stealing’. He added that they would always call the hero Jack. 

It was an exciting discovery. The tradition-bearer was unexpected (young, working-class, male), there was some context for the telling, and the story was published in a non-folklore book. Finding the tale was mildly difficult, since Simpson didn't cite the volume (3rd) or page numbers (389 - 390), but here it is:

Clever Jack

    You see, mates, there was once upon a time, and a very good time it was, a young man, and he runned away, and got along with a gang of thieves, and he went to a gentleman's house, and got in, because one of his mates sweethearted the servant, and got her away, and she left the door open. And the door being left open, the young man got in and robbed the house of a lot of money, 1000ℓ., and he took it to their gang at the cave. Next day there was a reward out to find the robber. Nobody found him.

    So the gentleman put out two men and a horse in a field, and the men were hidden in the field, and the gentleman put out a notice that anybody that could catch the horse should have him for- his cleverness, and a reward as well ; for he thought the man that got the 1000ℓ. was sure to try to catch that there horse, because he was so bold and clever, and then the two men hid would nab him.

    This here Jack (that's the young man) was watching, and he saw the two men, and he went and caught two live hares. Then he hid himself behind a hedge, and let one hare go, and one man said to the other, 'There goes a hare,' and they both run after it, not thinking Jack's there. And while they were running he let go the t'other one, and they said, ' There's another hare,' and they ran different ways, and so Jack went and got the horse, and took it to the man that offered the reward, and got the reward ; it was 100ℓ.; and the gentleman said 'D-n it, Jack's done me this time.'

    The gentleman then wanted to serve out the parson, and he said to Jack, 'I'll give you another 100ℓ. if you'll do something to the parson as bad as you've done to me.'

    Jack said, 'Well, I will;' and Jack went to the church and lighted up the lamps, and rang the bells, and the parson he got up to see what was up. Jack was standing in one of the pews like an angel, when the parson got to the church.

    Jack said, 'Go and put your plate in a bag; I'm an angel come to take yon up to heaven.' And the parson did so, and it was as much as he could drag to church from his house in a bag ; for he was very rich. And when he got to the church Jack put the parson in one bag, and the money stayed in the other ; and he tied them both together, and put them across his horse, and took them up hills and through water to the gentleman's, and then he took the parson out of the bag. and the parson was wringing wet.

    Jack fetched the gentleman, and the gentleman gave the parson a horsewhipping, and the parson cut away, and Jack got all the parson's money and the second 100ℓ., and gave it all to the poor. And the parson brought an action against the gentleman for horsewhipping him, and they both were ruined.

    That's the end of it.

Review: Fairy Tale Mothers

 

Fairy Tale Mothers (1990) examines mothers, stepmothers, and mothers-in-law in Germanic and Scandinavian tales. The book has nine segments: preface, introduction, Grimm tales, the kind and unkind girls, stepmothers with stepsons, tales of spinning, mother-son bonds, birthing episodes, and a conclusion. Its author, Torborg Lundell, was a Professor of Swedish at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Having published articles about folkloristics and motherhood, Lundell revisits those topics here, but her contribution to fairy tale studies is picayune.

The primary flaw is her psychoanalytical framework. Inger Lövkrona mentioned this in her review, stating "I miss in her study a discussion of Jung's theories and their relevance to preindustrial peasant society and a thorough methodological demonstration of how to carry out the analysis. The ahistoric premise in psychological theory is problematic when it is applied to cultural and social phenomena that are historically determined and changeable" (179). 

Lundell's inadequate contextualization of the stories led to unsubstantiated conclusions. For instance, she claimed that the changes the Brothers Grimm made to "Hansel and Gretel" were "a mechanism to impose guilt on all normal mothers who, even if they have enough food, sometimes while raising their children may often wish they would get lost for a while" (34 - 35). But Yseult de Blécourt argued that the tale "can be seen as a collaboration between the Hassenpflug sisters and Dortchen Wild, orchestrated, as it turns out, by Marie Hassenpflug" (41). Thus, the nefarious subtext Lundell identified was unproven and misattributed.

Her imputation of malicious intent where none exists is a reoccurring issue. She used the term "male fantasy" to describe three tales with possible or actual incestuous themes: "Snow White" (36), "Strong Hans" (45), and "Thousandsfurs" (54). Lundell's equating of male heterosexuality and even fatherhood with perversion and abuse was so blatant and unjustified that R. J. Alexander noted it in a review: "many readers will be offended by the snide, quasi-chauvinistic remarks that mar the text from time to time" (103).

The book even suffered from basic grammar and typographical errors. "Femininity" was misspelled as "feminity" (19), "fountain" was needlessly split as "foun tain" (84), and a "material confront" wrongly substituted for "material comfort" (172). In fairness, her editors deserve blame for missing these gaffes before the book's release.

Despite the above, Lundell's work has some value. It examined a representative sampling of European texts - "close to 2,000 tales" (1) - it included translations of German (53) and Swedish (57 - 59) texts, and it made interesting observations. Among them were how stepmothers inadvertently helped their stepdaughters (44), spinning tales didn't depict women sharing stories as they would've historically (117), and lazy daughters receiving harsher treatment than lazy sons (167). But none of that earns it a recommendation.

Link Roundup

England - The Land Without Folklore?

Folklore and Mythology Catalogue: Its Lay-Out and Potential for Research

Balkan and Carpathian Links of the Mythology of the Peoples of the Caucasus

Humor, Unlaughter, and Boundary Maintenance

Folk Research: A Query and a Critique

The Relationship between Oral and Literary Tradition as a Challenge in Fairy-Tale Research: The Case of Finnish Folktales

Female Warrior Ballads

 

Source: Historie der Engelsche zee-roovers (1725)

The Warrior Women Project is a database for English-language ballads depicting female combatants. Most of these texts are known to us because of Dianne Dugaw's extensive archival work for Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850 (1989). As her book shows, this trope is flexible, appearing in all types of modes. A sampling of ballads proves this:

Mary Ambree is one of the oldest of these ballads. Three thousand enemy soldiers surround a troop. Amidst battle, the sergeant dies. His lover swears revenge, donning a helmet, grabbing a sword, and leading her men into the fray. She's betrayed by a member of her unit, but prevails.

The Valiant Virgin has an unusually strong homoerotic element between the disguised heroine and her lover. An heiress loves a farmer but her father wants her to marry a wealthy man. Dad has the farmer conscripted. The lovers become a soldier and a surgeon mate, respectively, aboard a vessel. After returning home, they learn her father is dead, and marry.

Susan's Adventures on a British Man of War skips the courtship period to jump into the action. A man is called to sea; his lover follows. They endure menial labor, harsh weather, and deadly battles until they return home.

William and Harriet is a largely romantic narrative with a tragic ending. A daughter and father argue over her romance with a farmer. The man decides to have the lad drafted. The lovers join the navy together, with the girl disguised as a boy. A shipwreck strands them on an uninhabited, uninhabitable island where they die.

The Female Cabin Boy, Or the Row Among the Sailors parodies the idea of a woman pretending to be a man. An adventurous maiden enters a year-long position on a boat. The captain learns the truth and gets frisky with her. She gets pregnant. Everyone celebrates.

Jack Munro gives roughly equal attention to wooing and warring. A girl in love with a sailor joins him in a war against Germany. She does well. She reveals her identity to her lover and they are married. When they return to England, she reunites with her parents and even the queen is amused by their situation.

The Transmogrified Witch

Tales about witches are popular in European folk narrative traditions. "Hansel and Gretel" tells of two abandoned children beset by a cannibalistic woman in a gingerbread house. Baba Yaga in "Vasilisa the Beautiful" is also a flesh-eating enchantress living alone within a dark forest. But there is an arguably more widespread story: that of the sorceress who morphs into an animal to make mischief.

Werewolf of Apchon (1590 - 1611)

The Severed Hand: I (1851)

The Severed Hand: II (1852)

Beer Cats (1863)

Auvergne Witch (1865)

The Witch Girl (1873)

Witches of Thurso (1877)

Hunted Hare (1879)

The Miller and the Cat (1883)

Witches of the Inn (1887)

Island Insect (1890)

Georgian Mill Witch (1894)

The Cat Which Lost a Claw (1896)

The Brothers who married Witches (1899)

The Doe Witch (1909)

The Weaver's Wife and the Witch (1911)

Various versions (1913)

Cat on the Lap (1914)

The Woman-Cat: I (1917)

Woman-Cat: II (1921)

Woman-Cat: III (1922)

Woman-Cat: IV (1923)

Sop, Doll, Sop (1925)

Cat Witches (1926)

Southern Witch (1926)

Witch of Laggan (1926)

The Witch and the Overseers (1928)

Vernon Castle Witches (1929)

Cats and the Occult (1933)

A Witch in the Form of a Black Cat (1934)

Swarm of Cats (1938)

The Witch-Cat Woman (1942)

Review: The Heroine with 1001 Faces

 

The Heroine with 1001 Faces is an examination of women and their stories from antiquity to the twenty-first-century. It has an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. Each chapter covers multiple, frequently overlapping topics, but the book broadly covers Joseph Campbell’s writings and legacy, female characters in classical texts, the silencing and discrediting of women, curiosity (etymology, connotations, artistic representations, etc.), and female writers in fiction and real life. Maria Tatar, a Harvard professor of Germanic Languages and Folklore and Mythology, is theoretically well-equipped to write an excellent monograph about heroines. In actuality, her work is of uneven quality.

On the positive side, Tatar possesses an impressive knowledge of literature and folklore. She found a reference to Homer in E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (49), an allusion to The Thousand and One Nights in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (107), and parallels between Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (272 – 273). Her expertise is so thorough that she can correct authoritative works like the Oxford English Dictionary, which misidentified Raymond Chandler’s “Bay City Blues” (1937), as the earliest literary use of the term “private eye,” when Carolyn Keene used it in her 1930 novel, Nancy Drew: The Mystery at Lilac Inn (207 – 208). She even went so far as to confess that her colleagues in Harvard's English and American Studies departments excluded popular books like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and L. M. Montogomery’s Anne of Green Gables (175). Between that and highlighting successful authoresses who were self-deprecating or disparaging of each other – Frances Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, George Eliot, Sylvia Townsend Warner (136) and Agatha Christie (224) – Tatar fulfilled her objective to "acknowledge, credit, and memorialize women, real and imagined, from times past" (288).

On the negative side, the book suffered from omissions that would've nuanced some of its points. Tatar mentioned the #GamerGate controversy of the 2010s, which involved debates about whether video games were sexist, but no video game characters were discussed. Moreover, Tatar expressed concern about the “unsettling sexual politics and gender dynamics in myths, epics, and stories from times past” (15) but neglected to address the “Homeric Question” – a longstanding debate about the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey – and Samuel Butler’s argument that a woman composed one of Western culture’s canonical poems. She also praised Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad for retelling The Iliad and The Odyssey from female perspectives, but didn't acknowledge how Ovid’s Heroides did that centuries earlier. And despite her admission that trans and nonbinary identities were becoming mainstream (268) and her extensive analyses of Ovid's Metamorphoses, sex-shifting characters like Tiresias, Iphis, and Caeneus went unmentioned. She even included a section titled “Warrior Women” (257 – 262) which examined Disney characters like Queen Elsa and Moana, but strangely excluded Mulan and non-Disney fighting women such as Banu Goshasp, Li Chi, or Bradamante.

Another problem was Tatar's outdated sociopolitical biases. She mentioned that women were only 15 of the 116 Nobel prize winners for literature (136), citing that as proof of women's marginalization as writers, but in that same year, women comprised 74% of the American publishing industry. Tatar also demonstrated an uncritical attitude towards the #MeToo movement - a stance that would be difficult to maintain following the controversial Depp vs. Heard trial and the conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell for her role in trafficking girls to Jeffrey Epstein's island. Both events occurred a few years after the book's release.

It's worth noting that the book was written during the COVID-19 lockdowns and published a year later, so some of the issues it has may be a consequence of a stressful environment coupled with a rushed publication. However, those circumstances don't fix Heroines many flaws and it's hard to recommend it.

Link Roundup

 Are Folklorists Studying the Tales of the Folk?

Sensationalist Scholarship: A Putative “New” History of Fairy Tales

The Teacher and the Taught: Structures and Meaning in the "Arabian Nights" and the "Panchatantra"

Folklore's Nature and the Sun's Myth

Some Unpublished Correspondence Between William Forsell Kirby and William Alexander Clouston

Review: Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World

Kathleen Ragan’s anthology is a triumph of folktale scholarship. She compiled 100 individual tales (rescuing some from obscurity), adhered to folkloristic standards by faithfully reproducing the content and wording of the texts, and provided cultural context in the endnotes. That said, the anthology has multiple oversights that hinder it.

Ragan lamented the "dearth of South American Indian stories," citing the limited availability of English language materials as the cause. However, the sole SAI tale she included - "The Magic Eagle" - came from Genevieve Barlow's Latin American Tales, which featured another female-centered story: "The Search for the Magic Lake." Moreover, Johannes Wilbert and Karin Simoneau published a twenty-four volume series called Folk Literature of South American Indians, which was completed six years before Ragan's anthology debuted.

Another shortcoming is the inconsistent content of the commentaries. Sometimes they summarize the plots while highlighting aspirational traits the protagonists have. Others give short biographies of historical figures. Occasionally, they contain personal anecdotes or describe Ragan's feelings about a story. This could've been remedied by focusing on folkloristics. For instance, "Whuppity Stoorie" provided an opportunity to discuss the AT Index (later ATU) and other variants of tale type 500 like "Rumpelstiltskin" and "Tom Tit Tot." Similarly, "The Pigeon's Bride" could've mentioned Motif D350, "Transformation: bird to person." Information about the tradition-bearers (name, age, gender, context, etc.) could also have been added whenever such data was available.

The inconsistencies extend to the tales themselves, which infrequently contradicted Ragan's motive for creating the anthology: "In the scarcity and poor quality of heroines my daughter was constantly told 'you don’t exist, you’re not important.' I love my girl too much to let her listen to that." Thus, she sought folktales in which “The main characters are female and they are worthy of emulation.” If so, then why include abusive protagonists? “The Three Sisters and Their Husbands, Three Brothers,” depict women manipulating and publicly humiliating their spouses; "The Fortune-Teller," cons men into paying for a fraudulent prediction; “The Innkeeper’s Wise Daughter,” violates her prenuptial agreement and abducts her unconscious husband; “Molly Cotton-Tail Steals Mr. Fox’s Butter,” centers a thief, who encourages violence against her patsy, and causes a years-long family feud; “The Close Alliance: A Tale of Woe,” the protagonist accuses her husband of laziness, insults his intelligence, and dismisses his fear of the tiger; "A Calabash of Poi" has a goddess ruin a household's crops because the residents offended her; and in “Moremi and the Egunguns,” the protagonist escalates nonviolent raids into a war and commits human sacrifice. While these characters are outnumbered by heroic ones, Ragan never acknowledges how they are incompatible with her standards.

Shortcomings aside, the book is among the best folktale anthologies ever published. It's representative sample of international folktales is rivaled by few other books and this alone make the book required reading for general readers and folklorists.

Spooky Tales

 

Halloween is coming! Some people will be taking their children or younger siblings out trick-or-treating. Others will be handing out candy (preferably not laced with poison or razors). But for anyone staying indoors and ignoring the sounds and pranks of the kids, here are horror-flavored folktales to keep you up:

The Soldier and the Vampire

Bluebeard

The Tailor and the Corpse

Sop, Doll, Sop

The Three Cows

The Wolf

Bonus: The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions (1989) by David J. Hufford

Variants of "The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers" (ATU 451)

 

"Six Swans" by Elenore Abbott in Grimm's Fairy Tales. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920.

A group of brothers are transformed into birds and it falls to their littlest sister to rescue them. Sometimes she must remain silent for several years. Or she has to go on a long quest to reach the mountain they reside in. No matter what, the familial love and loyalty always breaks the curse.

The Twelve Wild Ducks

The Six Swans

The Seven Crows

Snow-White and Rosy-Red

The Wild Swans

The Twelve Brothers

For more information on the ATU acronym, read this post.

Folktales and Psychology

 

Since the days of Sigmund Freud, people have tried to assess the relationship between the human mind and the stories we tell. More so when those stories are popular and/or passed down for generations. While the quality and content of the material may vary, there's no denying that the study of folk narrative and psychology is a rich field.

"Psychoanalysis and Folklore" (1930) Ernest Jones. 

"Jungian Psychology and Its Uses in Folklore" (1969) by Carlos C. Drake.

A Psychiatric Study of Myths and Fairy Tales: Their Origin, Meaning, and Usefulness (1974) by Julius E. Heuscher.

"Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Folklore" (1974) by David Hufford.

La Terra in Piazza (1975) by Alan Dundes and Alessandro Falassi.

The Hand Made Object and Its Maker (1975) by Michael Owen Jones.

"Language Differences" (1975) by Warren Ten Houten.

The Uses of Enchantment (1976) by Bruno Bettelheim.

"The Misuses of Enchantment: Controversies on the Significance of Fairy Tales" (1985) by Kay F. Stone.

The Japanese Psyche: Major Motifs in the Fairy Tales of Japan (1988) by Hayao Kawai.

Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales: Preschool Children and Gender (1989) by Bronwyn Davies.

"The Structure and Interpretation of Fairy Tales Composed by Children" (1990) by Kristin Wardetzky.

“A Qualitative Study of the Perceived Impact of Fairy Tales on a Group of Women” (1995) by Rita J. Comtois.

The Interpretation of Fairy Tales (1996) by Marie-Louise von Franz.

The obvious limitation of this list is that the sources predate the rise of social media. Nor does it account for how perceptions of fairy tales and other folklore genres have changed due to newer media (e.g., Frozen, 2013) and later scholarship. But it does provide an excellent overview of how the standards and practices have evolved (or not).

Variants of "The Name of the Supernatural Helper" (ATU 500)

 

People in terrible situations often resort to drastic measures escape. One method involves accepting favors from questionable individuals. Chances are, the beneficiaries will owe more than they are able - or willing - to give. But with luck, there's a loophole that'll let them keep their boon and avoid their debts.

Rumpelstiltskin

Duffy and the Devil

Gilitrutt

The Wild Jager and the Baroness

The Pretty but Idle Girl

Additional variants can be found here. An analysis of the tale type is available here.

For more information on the ATU acronym, read this post.

Link Roundup

 The Folktale Origin of The Taming of the Shrew

A Case Study in Folktale Analysis: AT 514, "The Shift of Sex," in Hispanic Societies

Galland's "Ali Baba" and Other Arabic Versions

Forget Me Not: Recognizing and Remembering in Medieval Romance

What Are You So Afraid Of? A Rapunzel Analysis

Siblings in Alf laylah wa-laylah

Genderbending in Folklore

 

Genderbending has a surprisingly long and varied history in folklore. It involves both crossdressing and sex changes. It can be temporary or permanent as well as comedic or serious. Characters who indulge the practice range from gods to mortals and their morality - or lack thereof - is equally varied. While it would be impossible to give a comprehensive list of examples, the following should serve as a decent starting point.

Crossdressing Women:

Agnodice

This legend comes from Hyginus’s Fabulae. It says that women were dying from health complications because 1) there were no female physicians and 2) the women did not trust the male doctors they had. A girl who wanted to learn medicine disguised herself as a man, tutored under Herophilus, and served treated the women of Athens. But when the men stopped receiving medical calls from women, they became jealous. Agnodice was accused of seducing the women - who were faking illness - and even revealing her sex didn't help her. Then the women of Athens chastised the men for condemning the only doctor who helped them and they decided to let freeborn women learn medicine.

Mulan

A Chinese legend from the Yuefu Shiji. It tells of a girl who chooses to take her father's place in the army during the war. She goes all over town buying supplies (horses, weapons, etc.) and rides out without telling her parents. After serving for a decade, she returns home. When her old comrades visit they're shocked; they had no idea that she was a woman and Mulan explains that, essentially, males and females are more alike than not.

Transwomen (Male to Female):

A Hymn to Inanna (lines 115-131)

An ancient Sumerian poem by Enheduanna. One line says that "To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inana."

Bhangaswana 

A myth from the Mahabharata. A king wants children but struggles to conceive. During a ritual meant to aid the baby making process, he offends the god Indra, who leads him to a magical lake that turns him into a woman. However, she resigns herself to her fate. Ceding the kingdom to her sons, she moves into the forest where she meets an ascetic and becomes his wife. They have one hundred sons whom Indra causes to battle to the death w)ith the other princes. After a conversation between the mortal woman and the god, where she apologizes for her mistakes (and claims a mother loves her children more than the father), Indra decides to revive all the boys. He also offers to change her back into a man. She declines on the ground that female orgasms are better.

Story of the Abbot of Druimenaig, Who Was Changed into a Woman (pages 176 - 178

A legend found in various medieval manuscripts (e.g., Book of Fermoy). According to the story, a man finishes preparing an Easter banquet and decides to visit the hills. He falls asleep, reawakens, and learns that he's been transformed into a. he struck them again. Initially, disbelieving, she meets a random woman who confirms the truth. After a short journey, she meets and marries an erenagh, with whom she had seven children. She revisits the hill that transformed her and is returned to her male state. He then goes about explaining the situation to his old and new family and his ex-husband decides to share take half the children while he takes the other half (the last one goes to fosterage).

Crossdressing Men:

Achilles

A segment from the Statius' fragmentary Achilleid. Achilles is taken to an island by his mother Thetis to keep him safe from conscription. She tries to convince him to wear women's clothes but he refuses. Then a bunch of pretty girls arrive and Achilles is so smitten with one that he agrees to his mother's plan so that he can get closer to her. It works. They even have a son together (via rape). But Achilles is exposed by two soldiers who then recruit him for the war.

Þrymskviða

A story found in the Poetic Edda. It recounts how Thor woke up one morning and found his hammer missing. He confided in Loki who helped him locate it. The impish deity told him that a troll had stolen it but would not return it until Freyja, goddess of love and fertility, agreed to marry him. She refused. The gods convened and decided on a plan: disguise Thor and Loki as Freyja and a bridesmaid, and have them go to the tolls. Thor reluctantly agreed. He behaved unladylike at the banquet (eating too much, glaring at the bridegroom, etc.), which Loki made excuses for until the hammer was returned. Thor proceeded to kill everyone.

Transmen (Female to Male):

King Sikhidhwaja the Hermit; Chudala as the Brahmin Boy Kumbha 

A narrative arc in the Yogavasishtha. King Sikhidhwaja rejects his wife's wisdom and forsakes his kingdom to live in the woods. Chudala decides to use her powers - including astral projection and shapeshifting into a man - in order to help her husband learn valuable lessons. After a series of philosophical discussions, storytelling sessions, and another marriage, Sikhidhwaja returns home with newfound appreciation for his wife.

Yde and Olive

A poem from the "Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino Ms. L II.14". A princess escapes from her incestuous father and ends up serving in the army of a Roman king. She defeats an invading army, earning the king's esteem, and his daughter's love. The king then weds Yde to Olive. Her secret is revealed by an eavesdropping servant, and the king decides to burn both women, until an angel tells the king that God has turned the princess into a man.

Link Roundup

I Bet You Didn’t Know Captain America was a Golem!

YHWH'S Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach

As Woman as Can Be: The Gendered Subversiveness of an Arabic Folktale Heroine

A Tale of “The Lord of the Sea” in Qatari Folklore and Tradition

Jeju Researcher Transforms Ieodo Folklore into Modern Fairy Tale

The Snow Queen (1957)

Father Tales

 

"The Holy Family with a Little Bird,” Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Ca. 1650.

It's Father's Day and in order to celebrate, we're going to look at some of the best dad-related folktales in the oral and literary traditions.

1. Untitled myth about Ares. The Library by pseudo-Apollodorus mentions an incident where a son of Poseidon tried to assault one of his daughter. Ares killed the guy to protect her. When Poseidon took Ares to court, he was acquitted.

2. "The Black Dragon and the Red Dragon." In this Turkish narrative, a man's children are kidnapped and he goes on an epic quest to retrieve them. He also helps a mother dragon reunite with her young.

3. "The Good Stepmother." Despite the title, this Icelandic tale features a wonderfully thoughtful king. After his wife dies he refuses to remarry because he fears that a stepmother will abuse his daughter. It's not until his brother vows to find a good woman that he relents. His fiancée even ends up saving the princess.

4. "The Doomed Prince" This ancient Egyptian text, with its lost ending, begins with a pharaoh wanting to know his son's destiny. The prophetesses tell him that the boy will die. He tries to keep his son in a tower in an effort to protect him, but eventually allows the boy to leave and live his own life.

5. "The Smith and the Fairies." A Scottish changeling tale in which a boy is abducted and enslaved by the fair folk and his father ventures into their domain to rescue him.

Fun fact: biological fathers experience sympathetic pregnancy symptoms.

Miserably Ever After: Fairy Tales with Sad Endings

 

"Happily ever after" is the most famous closing formula for fairy tales in the Anglosphere. But plenty of folktales, even traditional fairy tales, end on a real down note. It's not be a pleasant aspect of the genre (naturally), but it adds dynamism to it.

The Fisherman and His Wife

The Adventure of Cherry of Zennor

The Angel of Death

The Story of the Man Who Went to Wake His Luck

Yallery Brown

There's even a book about narratives, old and new, that upend our expectations: Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment by Catriona McAra.