The White Goat

So I mentioned Henri Pourrat briefly in my last Beauty and the Beast post. He's really late for folklore collection—1940s and 50s. He collected over a thousand stories all from one specific region of France (Auvergne). I have a book from the library right now with English translations of 105 of them. I won't be able to spend nearly as much time with Pourrat as I would like; this is one of several books I currently have from the interlibrary loan system, which means I can't renew them. Fortunately the stories are organized by type, so I can at least pick out the ones most appealing to me pretty quickly, and just focus on those sections. Still, I'm not sure whether I'll have time for any more posts after this one.

Today we're going to talk about The White Goat.

We open with a pregnant woman—the wife of a lord—who begins having nightmares of a white goat. She eventually gives birth to a white goat. She and her husband are horrified, and send the baby goat to live in an abandoned castle they happen to own, with servants to care for him.

When the white goat is seven years old, he stops bleating and starts talking. When he’s twenty, he tells his father he wants to marry the princess.

The lord asks the king. Instead of just saying no, the king decides to set some impossible tasks.

First, the goat is instructed to make a highway from the king’s palace to his own in a single night. He summons shadows to do this. Next, the king wants a new palace build in a single night—one exactly identical to the king’s, down to the number of nails in the walls. The shadows come through. Then he wants a garden to match the palace, again in a single night, identical down to the number of leaves on each bush. With this done, the only thing the king can think to ask is that the garden be filled with birds.

The white goat cups his hands to call down the birds.

Cups. His. Hands.

What hands? He’s a goat.

Anyway.

Out of options, the king agrees to the marriage, and invites the goat to go hunting with him to celebrate.

When they’re alone in the woods, the king tries to kill the goat. He tries very hard. But, as the impossible tasks should have made clear, this is a magic goat. The king cannot kill him. The king admits defeat, and goes to inform his daughter of her engagement.

Dude. He asked to marry her. You could have just said no. If you hadn’t wanted to make fun of him, if you hadn’t wanted to make him think he had a chance, then demand feats you were sure he could never perform—

All you had to do was say no. This whole mess is because you decided to be mean about it.

The princess agrees to marry the goat only if he accomplishes an impossible task for her, too. She wants the Bird-Who-Tells-All in a golden cage.

The white goat goes out into the forest and whistles a tune that summons a serpent. All the birds in the world are drawn to this serpent, including the Bird-Who-Tells-All, and all of them fall to the ground in front of it. The goat takes the bird he wants, puts it in a cage, and takes it to the princess.

The princess agrees to a secret wedding at the goat’s palace. I am utterly baffled that the king and the princess think a secret wedding is going to work. They don’t even tell the queen. How are you going to hide a whole entire married princess?

Before the wedding, the goat takes a nap. He tells the princess not to look into his ear while he’s sleeping.

Obviously she looks.

In his ear is a golden key, which leads her to a door behind which she finds weavers and embroiderers and lacemakers, along with all their projects, and they tell her they’ve been working for her for the last seven years.

So apparently when the goat was thirteen he hired dozens of people to spend years making clothes for his future wife? Not exactly typical thirteen-year-old boy behavior. Was it, like, for her as in her the princess, or for her as in her the goat’s wife? Exactly how much planning went into this? And why is he keeping keys in his ears?

Alas, we will never know. She leaves and puts the key back. The goat wakes up. They get married.

After the wedding, the goat turns into a handsome young man. He explains that if she hadn’t taken his key, the spell would be broken entirely, but since she did, he’ll be a goat in the day and a man at night. But soon he’ll be a man forever. Unless she tells anyone about the spell, in which case Bad Things Will Happen.

In the meantime, the king has gone home, and been forced to explain the situation to his wife. Shocked and horrified, she rushes off to rescue her daughter.

Things start pretty normally. The girl insists on staying with her goat husband. The mom is not a fan of this plan. They argue. The mom asks her if he’s a goat all the time, or if he transforms at night—it’s unclear where mom got the idea—and she refuses to answer. Which, like, I would have taken as an answer; if he wasn’t, you’d just say no, right?

And then things escalate.

Mom says “Tell me the truth or I’ll cut your throat! I’d rather see you dead than know you’re the wife of a monster!” And she pulls out a knife.

Like. Okay. I get taking a hard stance against bestiality. But murder is not the answer!

Terrified, the princess admits the truth.

Immediately, the palace crashes down around them. Mom runs away. The goat comes out, pissed, because if she hadn’t said anything the spell would have broken tomorrow. Now, he’s going to continue to be a goat in the day, and also be taken to a mystery palace.

To save him, the princess must put on lead shoes that weigh 400lbs each. She must walk until the shoes wear away. Once this is done, she should find him in the finest room, and show him her wedding ring during the time when he is human.

She walks until she wears out the shoes. I don’t understand how she walks at all, with each step weighing 400lbs, but she does it. She winds up in country with no grass or flowers, where the sky has no stars. She finds the castle of the winds there.

The south wind doesn’t know where the goat is, but gives her a dress made of moon-cloth. The east wind gives her a dress made of star-cloth. The west wind gives her a dress made of sun. Not sun-cloth. Just straight up sun. The north wind tells her the goat is in a palace eight days’ walk from here, and he’s about to be married.

So the princess heads that way. On foot. What is up with all these winds who aren’t giving our characters a lift?

Also, when she’s talking to the winds, the princess mentions that the goat is in a palace with the Bird-Who-Tells-All. Which is the first mention we get of the bird since the goat caught him—the goat definitely did not tell her he was taking it along when he got whisked away. But it’s gonna be important.

She gets to the palace. She trades each dress for a night in the finest room in the palace, where the drugged goat is sleeping, and I’m not going to rehash the whole exchange again after this many stories featuring it, but what interests me about this is that she asks for the finest room. Not for a night with the bridegroom. Which makes a lot more sense than the usual? I mean, I don’t see why we couldn’t, like, move the groom to a different room for the night. But asking for a nice bedroom sounds like it would go over a lot better than asking for a night with someone’s almost-husband.

After two drugged nights, the goat—it’s day, so he’s still a goat—is wandering around the palace, and runs into the Bird-Who-Tells-All. And the bird, you know, tells all.

The goat apparently has forgotten all about his wife and their drama, but he avoids the drugging for night three, and when she shows him her ring he remembers everything.

It sounds like his second almost-wife in this situation just, like, didn’t know he was married, and she’s chill about the whole thing. No need for a daring escape. She’s bummed, but she has three cool new dresses and a wedding feast, so it’s okay. Unclear why she drugged him. Again, he could have just slept in another room for a few nights. But the goat’s spell is finally fully broken, and he and the princess live happily ever after.

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The Summer and Winter Palace

 The Grimm brothers released seven editions of their fairy tale collection over the course of 40 years. What we read today are mostly translations of the later editions. In 2014, Jack Zipes released a translation of the first edition.

I was actually at the launch party for this book. Jack Zipes is super cool, and more or less local—I’ve met him a couple times, and he's awesome. But I didn’t buy the book at the time. It was a large, brand new hardcover, which meant it was expensive, and I was in college. And I already had a Grimm brothers book, although it was a later edition. I bought another, older book at the event and had him sign it for me. I forgot all about it.

Then I did my research for the origins of the shift from victim to jerk for Beauty and the Beast, and came across a mention of this story. Wikipedia told me it was included it the first edition, but the Grimms later removed it because it was too similar to Beauty and the Beast.

I remembered that this book existed, requested it from the library, and here we are. Hopefully I’ll have time to read more of the later-removed stories before it’s due back.

The story begins with a man whose daughter has asked for a rose, but it’s winter. He stumbles upon a palace with a garden. It is winter in one half of the garden, and summer in the other. He finds a rosebush there and picks a rose.

A black beast appears and threatens to kill the man unless he gives back the rose. And I’m nominating this guy for most useless fairy tale dad, because this is a clearly reversible situation. The beast just wants the rose back, and we’ll be good. But the dad is determined to give this rose to his daughter.

The beast says he can keep the rose in exchange for the daughter. He says he’ll collect the daughter in a week. The man goes home, gives the rose to the daughter, and MENTIONS NONE OF THIS.

A week later, the girl is chilling at home with her sisters—the dad isn't even there—and the beast grabs her and takes her to the palace. The dad comes home and is SHOCKED AND HORRIFIED that his daughter has been KIDNAPPED. Dude. That is not a kidnapping. That is a deal that you made. All you had to do was leave the rose. The beast stated his terms very clearly. I’m sure your daughter would rather not have a rose if it meant she wasn’t going to be taken by a beast.

Once the girl is at the palace with the beast, they get along pretty well, and end up being quite fond of each other.

One day the girl gets this horrible feeling that there’s something wrong with her father, so the beast lets her go visit home for a week, warning her that if she stays longer, he’ll die.

Dad has made himself sick with guilt and anxiety over letting his daughter get taken and probably eaten by a monster, so, like, I can’t say I have a lot of sympathy. He very much brought this upon himself.

Father and daughter have a brief reunion, then father dies, which is obviously a bit of a distraction, with the mourning and the funeral and everything. So she forgets about her time limit, and gets back to the palace well after her deadline.

She can’t find the beast anywhere. She searches the palace. She searches the winter garden. She searches the summer garden. Finally she spots a pile of cabbages, and goes digging in it until she finds the beast’s body. The text does specify that it is a body. He is dead. He is dead. But she pours some water on him, and he stops being dead, and also turns into a prince. They live happily ever after.

Why cabbages? Why did the beast, knowing his end was near, decide that a huge pile of cabbages was the place to die?

Red cabbage is sometimes associated with life, fertility, and the cyclical nature of existence. Sometimes associated with purity. Prosperity. Vitality. Longevity. But we have no indication that this is red cabbage specifically, and none of those traditions appear relevant to nineteenth century Germany. Eating cabbage soup has been used as a shorthand for poverty and stupidity. None of this seems helpful. Please feel free to share any insights you might have on the symbolic relevance of cabbage.

In the notes at the back of the book, Zipes mentions some of the sources the Grimms cited for this story. These include Cupid and Psyche and a story by Villeneuve, the author of the original novel Beauty and the Beast—an unspecified story from a collection of fairy tales. The title is provided in French (contes marins ou la jeune americaine) but seems to translate to Sea Tales or the Young American. This was written in 1740, so before America was a country. I’ve never heard of this collection and don’t know where to find an English text, though I’ll certainly be looking. The only detail Zipes provides about the story in question is that the beast is a dragon.

The notes also include the Grimms’ summary of a similar story from a Leipzig collection, and I guess Leipzig is another person I need to look up soon. So I thought I would summarize that summary, as long as we’re here.

Father tries to get gift for daughter, has a run-in with a beast. A bear, this time. The usual. Beast goes to collect daughter. First two nights he can’t get her—the father locks him out. Third night, the doors magically unlock, the suitcases pack themselves, and the girl sleeps through the process of magically being dressed as a bride and having her hair curled. Beast takes her home. She never goes to visit her family, but sees them in a magic mirror. After she has a baby and three years pass, the spell is broken and the bear becomes a handsome prince. The end.

Apparently, the Grimms liked the beginning of this story, but felt the ending was contrived.

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The Singing, Springing Lark

 I have read my entire Grimm brothers book, which I have double checked includes this story, and somehow I have no memory of it, even though it’s exactly the type of story I go nuts about.

The title in my collection is The Singing, Soaring Lark. However, the title on Pitt.edu is The Singing, Springing Lark, which I prefer, because Rhyming. Btw, Pitt.edu is a fantastic online resource for folk and fairy tales. Any time I need a text and am away from home, I just google “Pitt.edu story title.”

This story begins with a man who has been traveling, and has offered to bring back gifts for his daughters. The older two request diamonds and pearls, which is easy enough, because this is the rare enchanted bridegroom story where the heroine’s family isn’t impoverished.

But the youngest daughter wants a singing, springing lark, and that’s a little harder to find. At last, on the way home, he spots one in a tree, and sends his servant to catch it.

A lion jumps out, roars, and threatens to eat anyone who takes his lark. The father immediately apologizes and says he didn’t know it belonged to someone, of course he won’t take it now. It is important to note that at this point, neither he nor his servant have even touched this bird. The bird is TOTALLY FINE.

Like, when Beauty’s dad gets her the rose, he’s already picked it when the Beast freaks out. This seems like a clear no harm, no foul situation. But the lion disagrees.

He says he’ll only spare the father’s life in exchange for the first thing that greets him when he gets home.

As we just discussed for The Girl Without Hands, the first thing that greets you is ALWAYS YOUR KID.

But this dad is genre-savvy! He says “no, my youngest daughter is usually the first one to greet me.”

Unfortunately, his servant is super scared of the lion, and convinces him that maybe the dog or cat will come greet him, and they should take the deal and go home.

Dude. You were SO CLOSE to not making the classic fairy tale father’s mistake.

So they take the lark home. The youngest daughter greets them. She’s remarkably chill about the whole situation, and goes off to meet the lion.

Now this lion is, naturally, an enchanted prince. In fact, he has with him a whole pride of enchanted lions, and all of them turn back into people at night.

And here we have the second major deviation from the fairy tale basics, after the dad’s brief moment of clarity: this is in no way a secret. The lion is totally open about his identity and the nature of the curse. She knows exactly who and what she’s sharing a bed with each night, and has fully consented to this arrangement. It’s amazing. It’s unheard of. This lion is my new favorite enchanted bridegroom.

(Btw she and all the lions just become nocturnal so she can hang with her husband in his human form during their waking hours.)

Some time passes, and her oldest sister is getting married. She goes to the wedding, along with a guard of lions, but her husband stays home. And in yet another subversion, her entire family including her sisters is happy to see her, is happy that she’s happy, doesn’t feel the need to launch an unwanted rescue, and makes no attempt to make her stay home longer than she told the lion she would.

This story just keeps on not doing what I expect. I love it.

When the girl’s second sister is getting married, she convinces her husband to come along, even though if he is touched by a ray from a burning light, he’ll be turned into a dove for seven years. The girl, the lion, and their baby go to the wedding. Yes, they have a baby now. Yes, this is the first we’re hearing of it.

Of course, at some point in the wedding, despite their best efforts, the lion is hit by torchlight. Although actually this appears to be a nighttime wedding—possibly because the bride wanted her brother-in-law to attend in his natural form?—so I guess the prince gets hit by torchlight, really.

He turns into a dove. He tells his wife that he must fly around the world for seven years, but every seven steps he’ll drop a feather and a drop of blood, so she can follow him.

Now. I’m thinking about the size of a dove, the length of a step, and how many times our girl might take seven of them in the course of seven years. And I’m thinking we’re gonna have a bald bird long before the time is up.

She follows the dove. No mention is made of the baby—maybe she left him with her dad and sisters?

The seven years are up, finally. And the dove just…disappears. No more dove. No feather, no blood, no lion, no prince. We got nothing.

She climbs up to the sun to ask if he’s seen anything. No explanation of what she climbed on to reach the sun. The sun has no info, but does kindly give her a small chest.

She asks the moon. No info, but here, have an egg.

She asks the night wind, who directs her to the east, west, and south winds. Yes, the four winds in this world are night, east, south, west. No north. And we’ve deviated from the pattern for this story type two more times—she’s been given two helpful gifts instead of the usual three, and it’s the south wind, not the north, that helps her.

The south wind informs her that her husband is at the Red Sea, he’s a lion again, and he’s fighting a serpent that’s actually an enchanted princess.

And then the night wind offers some more info, which makes no sense because he JUST SAID he didn’t know anything, that’s why they called the other three winds, but whatever. He tells her she’ll find some reeds at the Red Sea. She should cut the eleventh one, and use it to strike the serpent. This will allow the lion to overcome the serpent, and they’ll both regain their human forms. She should grab her husband, and a griffin will be hanging around to take them home.

Oh, and here’s our third gift, a little late in the game—a nut, which will grow into a tree that the griffin can rest on, otherwise he’ll be too tired to make the flight, and they’ll fall into the sea.

So she goes to the Red Sea—herself, none of the winds give her a lift—and everything goes as planned until the lion and the serpent are both human again. The recently-serpentine princess grabs the prince and climbs up on the griffin before our girl can. The griffin flies away with some random snake girl and OUR prince. Not cool.

There are no more magical helpers, here. No sun, no moon, no wind. Our girl just walks, and walks, and walks, until she reaches a castle where her husband and this new princess are living together. She is, of course, just in time for the wedding in a couple days.

She opens up the sun’s chest, finding a dress as bright as the sun. She puts it on and goes into the castle. The princess wants the dress for her wedding, and our girl offers to give it to her in exchange for a night with her lion prince. The princess agrees, but the prince is drugged. So, you know. The usual.

The second day she cracks the egg, revealing a hen and twelve chicks, all made of gold. The princess wants them. Same deal.

Now this prince is quicker on the draw than most, and has figured things out and avoided the drugged food already by the second night. He’s been bewitched to forget his wife, but remembers as soon as he hears her voice. They sneak out and find the griffin, who flies them home, resting for a while halfway through on the tree that grew out of the night wind’s nut.

Back home they reunite with their kid—the one they abandoned for seven years—and live happily ever after.

This is just…this is a lot. I’m still processing.

I really love the subversion of expectations, with the father’s self-awareness and the Beast’s honesty. I feel like both of those details add so much to the story. And the complete lack of family tension, too.

The baby. The baby. Look, if I didn’t have any kids, I would totally follow my husband around for seven years to free him from a curse. But if we had a child? I’d stay home with a child. And if I was an enchanted bridegroom? I would rather my wife take care of our kid than abandon him for my sake. Plus, like, there’s no indication that she needs to follow him? All he said was he’d have to fly around the world as a dove for seven years. The whole serpent princess situation kind of comes out of nowhere. Could she have just stayed at home with the kid, and when his seven years as a dove were up, he could rejoin them?

The serpent princess. Where did she even come from? How did our dove go from right above his wife to all the way over in the Red Sea? How did he wind up being a lion again? Who turned this princess into a serpent, and why? Why were they fighting? Why did she kidnap him?

Who turned our prince into a lion and a dove in the first place and why? Are they in any way affiliated with the princess, or whoever cursed her?

What ever happened to the singing, springing lark? What happened to all the other lions who were cursed with the prince? (Did they go on to befriend a boy with a blue belt?) (We still don’t know what happened to those lions in the end, either.)

I just have. So many questions. But overall this story was a great time.

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The Girl with No Hands

We begin, as is so often the case, with a foolish father.

Guys. Only make deals with clearly defined terms. Endless wealth in exchange for “the first thing that greets you” or “what your wife carries” is not a god bargain. “Oh,” you say, “I’m sure she’s just carrying her purse.”

No. You idiot. Why would a creature able to provide endless wealth want a random woman’s purse? Your wife is pregnant.

This particular father receives wealth in exchange for what stands behind his mill, reasoning that the only thing back there is the apple tree.

Think, man, think! Why does the strange old man want your apple tree?

The strange old man promised to come back in three years for what he’s owed, which, to the surprise of no one but the miller, is the miller’s daughter.

Three years pass. The miller’s daughter, who is beautiful and pious and clean, washes herself and then draws a circle around herself with chalk. Because of this, the strange old man—who, by the way, is the devil—is unable to approach her.

He demands that the miller keep water away, so that she cannot clean herself, and the miller, being a coward as well as an idiot, complies.

The girl weeps on her hands, making them so clean that the devil still cannot claim her. He demands that the miller chop off her hands, which he does. She then weeps on the stumps, cleaning them as well, and the devil gives up on the whole thing—this girl is just too clean for him.

The miller at least feels bad about maiming his daughter, and promises to take good care of her from now on, but understandably, she just wants to get away from him.

She wanders until she reaches the royal orchard, which is surrounded by a moat. She prays, and an angel dries the moat so that she can reach the orchard, where she eats several pears.

The gardener witnesses this and reports it to the king. The king comes along the next night, meets the girl, and falls in love. He marries her, and has new, silver hands made for her.

It’s all going well until the king has to go to war, leaving his pregnant wife behind in the care of his mother.

Now, this seems like an ideal set-up for an evil mother-in-law, but she’s actually cool. The problem here is the devil, who’s still mad he didn’t get the miller’s daughter.

She has a son. Mother-in-law writes a letter to the king, letting him know. The devil replaces the letter with one claiming she’s given birth to a changeling. The king is a little freaked out by this news, but writes back that they should continue taking good care of his wife, and he’ll be home as soon as he can. The devil replaces the letter again, with one that says the king’s wife and child should be put to death.

The mother-in-law is not cool with this. She attempts to talk her son out of this plan with several letters, all of which are intercepted by the devil. In the last, he demands that after they kill the girl, they should cut out her tongue and eyes to keep as proof that it’s been done.

Mom-in-law has eyes and a tongue taken from a doe to show her son when he comes home, and sends her daughter-in-law and grandson into hiding.

They leave the palace. The queen prays, and an angel comes to care for her and the baby. Her hands grow back. They just—they just grow back. Like, that’s a thing that happens. Because of “the grace of God and her own piety.”

Seven years pass.

Meanwhile, the king has come home, and he and his mom have talked, and while they’re not quite sure who switched out all their messages, clearly they’ve been sabotaged. The king goes off in search of his wife and son, vowing to neither eat nor drink until he finds them.

God keeps him alive through the nearly seven years of dehydration and starvation. Eventually, he reunites with his wife and son, all the misunderstanding are cleared up, and they live happily ever after.

I hate that her hands grow back. That wasn’t a detail I remembered going in, and I am not a fan. There’s no good reason for it. It contributes nothing to the plot; it’s just something that happens in the background.

Disability is never a part of living happily ever after. It’s always cured in the end, unless you’re evil, in which case you probably deserve it. The girl’s hands grow back. Rapunzel’s prince goes blind, but only until she weeps on him, and her tears restore his sight. (Whether that prince is good or evil is a whole different conversation, but that’s not relevant here.)

It feels…icky. A similar kind of icky as the fact that nearly all of the antagonists, and zero of the protagonists, in Basile’s fairy tales are black. It says certain kinds of people don’t get happy endings. And it’s a problem.

So that kind of sucks. But on the bright side. The mother-in-law. I love the mother-in-law. So, so often, this character is evil. There are several similar stories where, instead of the letter being switched out, the mother-in-law writes a letter lying about the birth in the first place. And so, so often, even when the mother-in-law is right about something (like it being creepy to keep a corpse in your bedroom and call it your wife), the narrative still acts like she’s evil.

This is a good mother-in-law! She argues with her son and is applauded for it! She protects her daughter-in-law and grandson! She rocks! I love her! We need more good mothers-in-law!

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