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Is It You?

“Is It You?” a tale of Montezuma from the Nahua (Mexico), Latin American Folktales (Pantheon Folktale Series), edited by John Bierhorst.

A Spanish Marquis approaches Montezuma and asks, “Is it you?” Montezuma’s fame has preceded him. Montezuma says, “Yes, I am he.” He believes the Marquis to represent the return of an ancient god and king, so he welcomes him and says that he has seen his coming foretold in the mists and the clouds. He says that he has merely held the throne for a time until the god returned.

Considering that Montezuma’s kingdom fell to the Spanish, this is very chilling and poignant to read.

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The Return of Quetzalcoatl

“The Return of Quetzalcoatl,” a tale of Montezuma from the Nahua (Mexico), Latin American Folktales (Pantheon Folktale Series), edited by John Bierhorst.

A poor man tells Montezuma that he has seen something that looks like a large hill moving on the water. He is imprisoned for this tale because Montezuma thinks he is lying. Nonetheless, the king sends out noblemen to check things out, and they come back with the same tale. Later they understand the hill to be a large ship when they see men in smaller boats going back and forth to the ship. These men do not look like anyone they have seen before, though. They have pale skin and strange clothes. They speak a strange language.

They are the Spanish, but Montezuma and his people believe them to be heralds of the return of Quetzalcoatl. They treat them like gods and offer them food fit for gods and sing songs of Quetzalcoatl.

Montezuma could have used some of his warnings from the gods to tell him not to trust these strangers. This is a tale rather than a history, but it makes me want to read more about Montezuma to find out what we do know about Montezuma’s first encounters with the Spanish.

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Eight Omens

“Eight Omens,” a tale of Montezuma from the Nahua (Mexico), Latin American Folktales (Pantheon Folktale Series), edited by John Bierhorst.

This is a list of omens seen in the years before the Spanish arrived, foretelling the fall of Montezuma--comets, fires, lightening strikes, mysterious sounds of weeping, and other strange events. It’s really quite chilling.

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Montezuma’s Wound

“Montezuma’s Wound,” a tale of Montezuma from the Nahua (Mexico), Latin American Folktales (Pantheon Folktale Series), edited by John Bierhorst. 

In this lesson for the great king Montezuma, a poor man is swooped up by an eagle one day and carried to a mountain top where he meets the Lord of Creation. The Creator says he is there to deliver a message to Montezuma. He shows the man that Montezuma is drunk on his own power and pride. The Creator leads the man into an elaborate chamber where Montezuma is basically passed out drunk on power. He tells him to use a lit pipe to burn the sleeping form of Montezuma. The man is then sent home with instructions to deliver a message to the king that it is time to mend his ways. The proof that the message comes from the Creator will be Montezuma’s burn wound.

It’s hard to humble when you are king, but if you don’t want to be struck down by God, you’d better try.

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The Talking Stone

“The Talking Stone” a tale of Montezuma from the Nahua (Mexico), Latin American Folktales (Pantheon Folktale Series), edited by John Bierhorst.

In this tale, Montezuma discovers that there are mysteries beyond the power of even the greatest king. He wants a new stone for sacrificing prisoners. He wants the biggest and most beautiful stone to be found. He sends people out to find the perfect stone that will be a monument to his own greatness. They find just the right bolder. Stone cutters come in to chisel it into shape. It’s painted and decorated and blessed. They start trying to move it. That’s when things get weird. The stone starts talking and claiming it will not go on the journey. No matter how many ropes and levers and men they use to move the stone, they can’t budge it until it agrees to move. It does this in stages. They move it part way and stop several times until they read a lake. Halfway across the causeway, the stone announces that it will not go any farther. It sinks into the lake. Divers are sent to search for it, but they can find nothing. Later, when Montezuma sends people out to check the original spot the stone was taken from, it is back in it’s place, with its new shape and decorations and all.

The story comes with omens and warnings that Montezuma will not always be king, the even the time of kings comes to an end.

It’s a wonderful reminder of life’s mysteries. It’s a reminder that the spirit world and the natural world follow their own laws and are not subject to the governments of men.

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The Master Thief

“The Master Thief” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, from The Great Fairy Tale Tradition (Norton Critical Edition), translated by Jack Zipes. Read online. 

This tale is a variation on “Cassandrino the Thief.” This time the thief is the son of a peasant couple who has returned to visit his parents after a long absence. He is dressed like a nobleman, and he admits that he has become a master thief. He reassures his parents that he is not a bad person by claiming to only steal from the rich. He’s a bit of a Robin Hood in that he says he gives to the poor, but I don’t think we could say his motives are altruistic. He obviously keeps most of the spoils of his trade for himself.

The thief pays his obligatory visit to the local count, presumably his parents are tenant farmers on the count’s land. The count gives him a series of tests of his skills that are almost identical to those in “Cassandrino the Thief.” He passes the tests against impossible odds and therefore wins the right to keep living. The count lets him go with orders never to return.

He won’t see his parents again, and he won’t be of any help to them in their poverty or their old age, but at least they will know that their rascal of a son is doing okay for himself somewhere out there in the world.

I feel for these parents. This is one tale I’d like to add an epilogue to in which the parents are take away to a place where they can live a better life. Or perhaps they receive mysterious gift baskets from time to time, and strangers pass through town with money for the old people to use to hire some help. My version isn’t realistic even for a fairy tale, though. We all know that no matter how charming this thief is, he isn’t considerate enough of others to think of helping his parents from afar.

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Cassandrino the Thief

“Cassandrino the Thief” by Giovan Francesco Straparola, from The Great Fairy Tale Tradition (Norton Critical Edition), translated by Jack Zipes.

From The Facetious Nights of Straparola, this tale is about a thief who is so clever and charming that he gets away with everything. Everyone knows he is a thief, but the magistrate likes him and wants to help him. The magistrate gives Cassandrino a series of tests to find out just how talented he is as a thief. If he fails, he will pay for his crimes. If he passes all three tests, he will be given a cash reward. The tests seem impossible, but Cassandrino is indeed clever, and he manages to pull off every one of them. He is given gold, escorted out of the city, and told to never return.

This is a sort of lovable rascal character. He’s not good, but he’s not evil either, and we want him to be successful even if he is operating on the shady side of the law.

I suppose this is why we love pirates. We don’t want to be fleeced by a pirate, but we sure do admire their style.

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The Waiting Maid’s Parrot

“The Waiting Maid’s Parrot” by Hao Ko Tzu, from Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (Pantheon Folklore Series), translated by Moss Roberts.

A young girl is serving as a maid in a great household, and the master favors her, which is bad news for her because it means that he plans to make her his concubine. She feels shame over this but has no power to escape the fate.

She’s given the job of caring for a prize parrot, though, and it turns out this parrot is no ordinary parrot. It makes promises, and it promises this young maid a proper husband.

The bird escapes and goes out searching the countryside for a husband. She finds just the right guy and starts passing messages back and forth between him and the young maid. Meanwhile, there’s much jealousy on the part of the other maids, and they start to spread petty gossip about her being involved with a man.

The master beats the girl nearly to death and buries her still alive. The bird gets killed trying to deliver messages. The lover sees a vision in his dream and finds out that the bird is the sister of the young maid from a former lifetime. He also finds out that his love is still alive, and he goes to rescue her and somehow he manages to both marry her and keep her hidden from her former master with murderous intentions.

It’s a Chinese version of a princess story with past lives and visionary dreams and animal communion and all sorts of wonders.

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The Cricket

“The Cricket” by P’u Sung Ling, from Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (Pantheon Folklore Series), translated by Moss Roberts. 

In this story, cricket fighting is popular in the court, and the people have to provide the crickets. The story itself is a fantasy, but cricket fighting is real. The system of oppression of the people depicted here is also real.

The story is about a local official named Make-good who was unable to meet his cricket quota. He was unwilling to use the same brutal tactics that other officials used of raiding people’s homes and forcing others to hunt crickets for him. He tried to do his own cricket hunting, but he wasn’t very successful.

From there we enter the realm of fantasy when Make-good’s wife consults a fortune teller. Make-good finds a prime fighting cricket, loses the cricket, almost loses his son who falls into a coma for a long time, finds another cricket, enters that cricket into fights that lead all the way to the palace and to prosperity for the family, and finally ends with the son waking up to tell about his dreams of being the champion cricket while he was in the coma.

This is such a beautiful tale. There’s a lot of reality in it. We get a pretty good glimpse of what life is like for the common people who are oppressed for the sake of the entertainment of the wealthy. But then we are also shown the fantasy in which the humble are rewarded.

By society’s standards Make-good is not making good. He is not tough enough, ambitious enough, or assertive enough to make good. Yet in the fantasy he is rewarded for his lack of cruelty and his persistence and faith.

It’s pretty to believe that the meek shall inherit the earth.

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What One Can Think Up

“What One Can Think Up” by Hans Christian Andersen, from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Marte Hvam Hult. Read online.

Another HCC story throwing shade at critics in which a young man wants to be a writer but laments the fact that all of the good stories had already been told. He goes to see a wise woman. She shows him that there are still plenty of stories in the world, but she also says that she can’t help him to become a writer because imagination can’t be taught. She suggests he become a critic instead since critics don’t require an imagination.

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Something

“Something” by Hans Christian Andersen, from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Marte Hvam Hult. Read online.

I get the feeling HCC was not all that fond of critics. In this tale, there are five brothers, each with an escalating sense of ambition. They all want to be “something.” The first wants to be a simple brick maker. The second wants to be a mason. The third wants to be a builder. The fourth wants to be an architect. The fifth wants to be a critic.

The fifth brother believes he is a genius and is superior to all of his other brothers, and he does seem to prosper in life because he outlives all of his brothers. When he reaches the Pearly Gates, however, there’s some question about letting him in because he has not accomplished “something” in life.

Criticism doesn’t count as something in Heaven. Everyone else made a contribution to the world and to the people around him.

Finally, the snooty brother is admitted into Heaven based on the good deeds of the poorest of his brothers, the lowly brick maker. It’s the lesson of the widow’s mite. The world might value clever superiority, but Heaven is another matter.

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The Fairies

“The Fairies” by Charles Perrault, from The Complete Fairy Tales, Charles Perrault, Oxford World’s Classics. Read online.

It’s another “bad mother” tale. There were two daughters. The mother preferred the oldest and treated the youngest like a servant. She sent the youngest out to fetch water. While the girl was at the well she met an old woman who asked for water. She very kindly provided the water. The woman turned out to be a fairy, and she rewarded the girl for her kindness by tell her that whenever she spoke flowers and jewels would fall from her mouth. The mother wanted her oldest daughter to have this gift, so she sent her to the well with instructions to be nice to the old lady who asked for water. This daughter was disagreeable by nature, though, and when the fairy appeared to her in a different form, she did not recognize her. She was rude, and as a result she was cursed with having frogs and vipers fall from her mouth whenever she spoke. The youngest daughter prospered and married a prince. The oldest daughter died alone and homeless.

I personally don’t think having gems and flowers fall from you mouth is a very good reward. Why couldn’t they just appear? Having a mouth full of pearls and roses all the time sounds pretty painful. We’re not really supposed to ask these things, though. Fairy tales operate on our ability to suspend our disbelief.

Perrault says the moral is that a “a gentle word is worth more than all the gems on earth.”

What interests me, though, is the psychology of what makes a kid a decent person. Harry Potter is based on the same principal of child rearing. The spoiled child (Dudley, Draco, etc) is a disagreeable brat incapable of getting along in the world, whereas the neglected and abused child (Harry) is a beacon heroism and human decency. No doubt Dumbledore (and JK Rowling) had read a lot of fairy tales before the decision was made to place baby Harry with the Dursleys.

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Puss in Boots

“Puss in Boots” by Charles Perrault, from The Complete Fairy Tales, Charles Perrault, Oxford World’s Classics. Read online. 

Such a clever cat! The youngest brother of three was left with no inheritance but a cat, and he thought he would starve to death while his brothers prospered, but this was no ordinary cat. Through a series of clever tricks, the cat ends up winning his new master a fortune, a castle, and a princess.

Perrault says the moral of the tale has to do with the value of ingenuity.

There is great advantage in receiving a large inheritance, but diligence and ingenuity are worth more than wealth acquired from others.

I like that Perrault considered lies and tricks to be the right type of ingenuity for getting ahead. I’ve also just finished rereading Homer’s Odyssey, and I’m sure that Clever Odysseus would agree that lies and trick have always been exactly what a guy needed most for getting ahead.

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The Twelve Brothers

“The Twelve Brothers” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, from The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes. Read online.

There’s so much happening in this tale. Parts of it overlap with “White as Milk, Red as Blood” from the von Schönwerth tales. Other parts are almost Oedipal in nature with a father ordering the executions of his sons.

A king has 12 sons and decrees that if the 13th child is a daughter, all 12 of his sons will be killed. There seems to be some discrepancy on the motivation of the kind from version to version. In Jack Zipes’ translation in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, the king doesn’t want a daughter and seems to be ordering the deaths of his sons to spite his wife if she so contrary as to produce a daughter. However, in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, another version which was also translated by Jack Zipes’ says that the king wants his sons killed so that his daughter will inherit everything. It seems the Brothers Grimm themselves changed this tale somewhat from edition to edition of their collected tales.

Regardless, the brothers flee to the forest where they live either in a cave or in an enchanted cottage depending on which version you read. They agree to slaughter any girl that shows up because all of their troubles have been caused by a girl. One day, though, little sister finds out about their existence and goes out looking for them. She finds only the youngest brother at home, and she convinces him to both spare her life and to let her live with her brothers and keep house for them. This works for a time, but then she picks 12 flowers from the forest, and that turns her 12 brothers into ravens. She is told that the only way to change them back is to not say a word for 12 years (or a mere 7 years in the later version).

The commits to the plan to save her brothers. Meanwhile, a king comes along and falls in love with her, takes her home with him and marries her, silent treatment and all. The king had a cruel mother, though, who spoke ill of little sister on every occasion and eventually wore the king down into believing that his wife was guilty of some treachery. Luckily, by the time he decided to have her put to death for her imagined crimes, her 12 years were up. Her brothers transformed back into themselves and showed up at the last minute to rescue her. She was able to to finally speak up for herself.

And the wicking mother-in-law was boiled in oil, of course.

The differences between the two versions of the tale are interesting. In the later version, the youngest brother is named Benjamin, which draws a clear parallel between this story and the Biblical tale of Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. Is the sister a Joseph figure? Perhaps partially. She does restore her brothers to their former lives in time, but instead of being wronged by them as a child, she is the reason for their displacement twice. She then has to pay penance over time in order to save them.

The tale has its share of true villains but the lesson here is in the importance of paying penance for the harm done to other inadvertently or unintentionally. This is one of life’s difficult tests that few people could pass.

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The Stolen Pennies

“The Stolen Pennies” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, from The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes. Read online.

This is a ghost story in which the spirit of a dead child is unable to rest because of an unresolved wrongdoing in life. The child had been given two pennies to give to the poor but hid them underneath the floorboards to save for buying a treat later. He died before spending the money or confessing to his sin. After his death, a family friend saw his spirit wandering the house and attempting to dig up the pennies. The parents lifted the floorboards, found the pennies, and gave them to a poor man. After that the child’s spirit was able to rest.

I’d say this falls in the tough love category if people told it in order to warn kids not to disobey.

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The Hand With the Knife

“The Hand With the Knife” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, from The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes. Read online.

This tale puts the grim in the brothers Grimm. A little girl lives with her mother and three brothers. The mother loves the brothers but neglects and abuses the little girl. Every morning the child was sent out to dig up peat--with a blunt shovel no less--for the family fire. This would have been an extremely arduous task for a little girl. The girl had an admirer, though, in the form of an elf. The elf would stick his hand out to give the girl a sharp knife. When the girl finished her work, she would return the knife.

One day the family became suspicious about how the child was finishing her work so fast, so the brothers followed her. They took the knife away from her, and when the elf stuck out his hand to take the knife back, those nasty brothers cut it off--the elf’s hand, that is. The elf believed the little girl had betrayed him, and he was never seen again.

What a horror story. Yes, elf dismemberment is pretty brutal, but the real horror is the abusive mother and her minion sons. They are so toxic toward the sister that they are willing to destroy anyone who befriends her.

I hope you run away as soon as you are big enough to survive, little girl. No prince is coming to save you from your abusive mother, but your chances of survival are better on your own than with this family.

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The Nightingale and the Blindworm

“The Nightingale and the Blindworm” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, from The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes. Read online. 

A story of greed and vengeance, this one is similar to “Companionship of the Cat and Mouse.” The nightingale has one eye, and the blindworm has one eye. One day the nightingale asks to borrow the blindworm’s eye for a party. The blindworm agrees. The catch comes when the nightingale decides not to return the eye. Ever since nightingales have had two eyes while blindworms have remained without any eyes, but ever since blindworms have also attempted to feed on the eggs of the nightingale.

Vengeance is a dish best served cold, they say, and this is one cold dish by now, but it is still being served.

This is a little different from the other Grimm’s tales I’ve read so far because it is an origin tale, explaining why something is the way it is in nature. At any rate, it has the structure of an origin tale, though this one is pure fantasy. The only thing I’ve been able to find so far that is called a blindworm is actually a lizard, and it does have eyes. They are just tiny.

Oh, well. The tale itself still works to illustrate the consequences of greed. Maybe you don’t pay immediately, but it’s possible that your children’s children’s children will still be paying for your sin. How very Old Testament.