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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