Tuesday, June 10, 2025

The Dragon of the North

 We’re still in the Yellow Fairy Book, and this is an Estonian story, collected by a Dr. Friedrich Kreutzwald, whose work was then translated to German by F. Löwe; Lang cites the German version as his source, with the German title and the name of the Estonian collector, which would at a glance give the impression that this was a German story. So consider this your periodic reminder not to take Lang citations at face value.

There was once a dragon who laid waste to large tracts of country. Described as having a body like an ox, legs like a frog, and a tail like a serpent, ten fathoms long. Every hop it takes covers half a mile. Worth noting at this point that the translation of the original Estonian title is “The Frog of the North.” It has eyes like lamps, which bewitch anyone who looks in them, compelling them to run into his mouth.

The frog dragon likes to settle in one place for several years at a time, eat absolutely everything, and then move on. Anyone who tries to fight him ends up walking into his mouth to be eaten.

Wise men say the dragon can be defeated by whoever possesses Solomon’s ring, because there are instructions on an inscription engraved on it. However, no one knows where the ring is, or how to read the language the inscription is written in.

A young man sets out in search of the ring, and after some years meets a famous eastern magician, who advises him to consult with the birds. He gives him a magic potion which makes him able to understand birds, and tells him to come back when he gets the ring, because he happens to be the only person in the world who can read the inscription.

The young man resumes his search, and eventually overhears some birds discussing a witch maiden who either has or knows of the ring, and will be coming to a nearby stream in three nights, for her monthly face-washing, to prevent aging.

He goes to the stream, where the witch maiden catches him spying on her, and invites him over. He goes back to her place, and the birds advise him not to give her any blood, or it’ll cost him his soul.

The witch maiden lives in a beautiful enchanted palace, and she invites him to stay forever, and asks him to marry her.

He asks for some time to think over the marriage, and hangs out with her at the palace in the meantime. One day she shows him the golden ring that powers most of her magic, and says she’ll give it to him as a wedding gift. But in order for their love to last forever, he must give her three drops of blood from the little finger of his left hand.

He asks her about the ring. She tells him she can only half read the engraving on it, but can still perform incredible magic with it. She shows him how she can use it to fly, to turn invisible, to turn invulnerable, to create anything she desires, and to have superstrength. She also confirms his suspicion that it is, indeed, King Solomon’s ring.

He asks for a demonstration. Then he asks to try it himself. And she agrees.

At this point, he’s been here for at least several days, possibly several weeks. It seems like this woman has genuine feelings for him, though the whole blood-soul situation does raise some red flags.

He takes the ring, plays around with its different powers for a while, and then turns himself invisible and leaves. Once he’s far enough away, he flies back to the magician, who takes seven weeks to fully translate the engraving before sending him back to the frog dragon with very specific instructions.

He finds the dragon, who’s moved on since he was last home, and the king of the land it’s currently occupying is offering his daughter’s hand and a large part of the kingdom to anyone who can defeat it.

Our guy rides an iron horse on wheels toward the dragon, using his superstrength to propel it. He gets into the dragon’s open mouth, and drives an iron spear two fathoms long into its jaw, as thick as a large tree and pointed on both sides, positioned so the dragon can’t close its mouth. He chains the spear to iron pegs driven into the ground so the dragon has no chance of dislodging this thing.

 

The dragon struggles for three days before it’s too weak to lash out with its tail, and then our guy approaches again and clubs it over the head with a large stone, killing it. It’s unclear why he couldn’t have done that bit three days ago, when he was already right there by the dragon’s head.

He marries the princess, and everything is going great until the dragon’s rotting body poisons the air and starts killing people. He goes to consult with the magician, but the witch maiden catches him on the way over, takes back the ring, and chains him to a rock in a cave. She promises to bring him food every few days, so that he can live out his natural life chained up, instead of dying quickly of hunger.

The princess and the king are frantically searching for him, consulting all sorts of magicians, and eventually a guy from Finland works out that he’s somewhere in the east. The king sends messengers who encounter our first magician, who rescues him.

Seven years have passed since he was first captured.

He gets home just in time to become king, as his father-in-law died that very morning, and he and his wife live happily ever, though he never gets the ring back.

The whole poisoned air situation is never followed up on. No resolution there.

The story ends with a question: “Now, if you had been the Prince, would you not rather have stayed with the pretty witch-maiden?”

Um, no? His goal was to save his entire region from death by frog-dragon; if he’d stayed, hundreds would have died. She proved herself to be fairly vindictive, which, okay, I do see where she was coming from. But there was the whole thing with his soul being at risk. Like, that’s a major concern. Even if he could talk her out of the originally proposed blood-letting, in an entire lifetime together, surely he’s going to shed some blood. Kitchen accidents. Shaving accidents. Things happen, you know?

But I do think he could have handled the whole situation better. Maybe he could have said, “hey, I made a commitment to slay this dragon, and I bet this ring would be really helpful for that; would you maybe like to go on a dragon-slaying adventure with me?” Maybe he could have said, “hey, I feel a little weird about this bleeding thing. I’ve heard some rumors. Can we maybe talk about that?”

I mean, he did very much screw over this girl who opened up her heart and her home to him. And okay, her asking for his blood was a little weird, but we only have the word of some random birds that this was a soul-costing situation. She was nothing but nice to him until after he stole her most important possession.

Like, at the very least, maybe he could have returned it after slaying the dragon?

Again, we have nothing but hearsay from birds to indicate that this woman is evil. The chaining him in a cave thing was…not great, but he did betray her in a big way.

I would not rather have stayed with the witch maiden. But I would have rather he tried being a little nicer to her.


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The Iron Stove

 From the Grimms, although I don’t recognize it, by way of the Yellow Fairy Book.

A prince is cursed to sit in a large iron stove in the woods. After many years, a princess gets lost in the woods, and comes across the stove. The prince inside offers to help her get home and to marry her if she promises to come back and get him out of the stove.

She agrees, he tells her to bring a knife when she comes back, and he summons a guide for her.

Back home, she explains to her father that she’s promised to marry a stove. Understandably, he has concerns. Less understandably, he sends the miller’s daughter back in her place.

The miller’s daughter, as instructed, scrapes at the stove with a knife all night, trying to make a hole in the iron. It doesn’t work, and he figures out she’s not the princess, and sends her away.

They try the same trick with the same results with the swineherd’s daughter, and then the princess has to go back and keep her word.

She works a small hole in the iron almost immediately, which is probably magic, and answers the question of why the guide the prince can apparently summon from inside the stove couldn’t get him out. On the other hand, it might have just been easy because two other girls put several hours into the project already.

The princess frees the prince, falls madly in love with him, and agrees to go home with him, but she needs to say goodbye to her father first.

She’s warned not to say more than three words to her father. Which of course doesn’t work out, because how on earth are you supposed to explain, “there was a handsome prince inside the stove and I freed him and now I’m going to go back to his kingdom and marry him, so please don’t worry if you never see me again,” in only three words?

As soon as she says word number four, the stove is sent away, over a mountain of glass and sharp swords. The prince is not in the stove, but apparently he disappears to somewhere, too.

The princess sets out in search. She winds up in a house full of toads, with a wonderful feast on the table. The toads invite her in, feed her, set her up in a nice bed, and give her instructions in the morning. She has to cross a glass mountain, three cutting swords, and a great lake to reach her prince. The toads give her three large needles, a plough wheel, and three nuts to help.

She uses the needles to climb over the mountain—I’ve never seen a needle I could drive through glass, but I’ve never seen a talking toad, either, so we’ll allow it. She rolls over the swords on her plough wheel, which to be honest is 100% of the reason we’re talking about this story; I wanted you all to see this image:

 

Apparently she doesn’t need any magical aid to cross the lake.

So the prince is here; apparently he travelled with the stove even though he was no longer trapped inside it. He’s set to marry another princess, apparently because he thought our princess was dead?

Dude, she went to talk to her dad. You knew this.

And we go through the usual thing. There are gowns in the nuts. She trades three gowns for three nights in the prince’s bedroom. The prince is drugged, but he doesn’t take the drugs on the third night. They reunite.

Then they steal a carriage, steal all the other princess’ clothes so she can’t follow them, and go back across the lake and the swords and the mountain, to the little toad house, which turns into a beautiful palace. All the toads turn into princes and princesses, and they stay there and live happily ever after.

So, like, is this the prince’s family? Is this the home he was trying to take the princess back to? Or did they just find a free palace and forget all about his family? It’s really not clear.

I always feel so bad for these second brides. Like, not the East of the Sun West of the Moon types who are, like, evil, but these random girls who get engaged not knowing these men had other girlfriends before, and then they just get screwed over. Like, okay, they usually drug the guys, which is not cool. But I think it’s to prevent any funny business, not to hide the first bride from them?

Still, the correct solution is to discuss this, like, hey, there’s this dress I want to wear to our wedding, but the girl who owns it won’t let me buy it unless I let her spend the night in your room. Yeah, I know it’s really weird. But I really like this dress. What are your thoughts on the situation?

So the drugging is a bad move. But, like, they stole all her clothes? So she couldn’t follow them? That was seriously unwarranted. And they called her the “false bride,” like give the girl a break, all she did was get engaged to a man who was, as far as she knew, available.

All her clothes. Yikes.


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Tuesday, June 3, 2025

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  • Sensory overload

  • Other processing difficulties

  • Large gaps in education

  • Large gaps in social development

  • Large gaps in physical development

  • Codependency

  • Trust issues

  • Fear of intimacy due to previous trauma

  • Depression

  • Heightened anxiety

  • Attachment difficulties

  • Trouble setting boundaries

  • Trouble understanding boundaries

  • Trouble understanding age appropriate behavior

  • Trouble understanding species appropriate behavior

  • Difficulties with nutritional intake

  • Agoraphobia

  • Insomnia

  • Anger issues

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Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Hermod and Hadvor

 This is an Icelandic story from the Yellow Fairy Book.

We begin with a widowed king, his daughter Hadvor, and his foster son Hermod. Hermod and Hadvor secretly pledged as children to marry each other, so not a sibling relationship.

The king once promised his wife to only ever remarry if he was marrying the Queen of Hetland the Good. Oddly specific, but a lot less problematic than the standard “only someone as beautiful as me,” which has the unfortunate tendency to result in attempted incest.

Anyway, the king meets a woman claiming to be Hetland; he meets her in a secondary location, since she allegedly recently escaped pirate kidnappers. Strangely, she doesn’t have any inclination to return home, let her people know she’s survived, collect her things, set up a plan to either rule remotely or appoint a regent, etc. Just agrees to marry the king, and she, her daughter, and her maid go home with him. 

Dude. This is so shady. You meet a random woman, tell her you’re a king searching for Hetland so you can marry her, and she magically happens to be her? You need some proof of identity.

Hadvor and Hermod aren’t much interested in the alleged queen and princess, but Hadvor becomes good friends with the maid, whose name is Olof.

At some point, the king goes off to war, which is always when trouble starts.

Allegedly-Hetland wants Hermod to marry her daughter. Hermod says no. So she curses him to go to a desert island, be a lion by day and a man by night, and always be thinking of Hadvor. The spell can be broken only by Hadvor burning his lion skin.

Hermod curses her right back, which is the first and last mention of Hermod having any magical powers. He says that as soon as his curse is broken, she’ll become a rat, her daughter will become a mouse, and they’ll fight in the throne room until he kills them with his sword.

So now Hermod is missing, and the king is still gone, but fortunately we have a solution in the form of Olof, who conveniently knows exactly what the queen did to Hermod, exactly how to undo it, and also what the queen is planning to do to Hadvor. She’s going to turn her three headed giant brother from the underworld into a beautiful prince and get Halvor to marry him. (And the brother pretty much confirms my suspicion that this woman is not actually Hetland.)

In the course of her massive info dump, Olof also lets us know that she was kidnapped by the queen and forced to serve her, but the queen can’t actually hurt her because she has a magic green cloak. Then she says that the giant brother will be coming up through the floor, and should be easily eliminated by some blazing pitch.

This girl really does have all the answers.

Some time passes. The king comes home, and is very distressed to find Hermod missing. (Hadvor, this would have been a great time for you and Olof to share some info with your dad.) Hadvor makes a habit of having blazing pitch always on hand, which I imagine raises a lot of questions among the staff.

Finally she hears the sound of the ground opening and someone coming up through the floor, and she pours her pitch. The queen finds her brother in the morning, burned to a crisp, and proceeds with her plan to turn him into a beautiful prince. She also casts a spell so that Hadvor can’t say anything in her own defense.

Then she accuses Hadvor of murdering her poor innocent brother.

Now, we know Hadvor can’t defend herself, but she doesn’t even get the chance, because despite there being absolutely no evidence that she killed this man, the king, without even trying to speak with her, immediately believes that she did it, and leaves her punishment to his wife.

This king is the biggest idiot I’ve covered in, like, at least two weeks.

The queen plans to put Hadvor into a burial mound with her brother, where presumably she’ll suffocate and die.

But the all-knowing Olof comes through for us again! She tells Hadvor how to escape the giant’s ghost, and how to get more info about Hermod while she’s at it.

Actually, I retract “all-knowing.” She told us the pitch would take care of this guy, which clearly it did not if we now have a ghost to contend with. And apparently she doesn’t know exactly where Hermod is, since Hadvor is supposed to get that information from the ghost.

Hadvor goes into the mound, along with the giant ghost and his two dogs. The ghost wants his body cut up and fed to the dogs, which Hadvor does in exchange for the location of Hermod’s desert island, and the information that she can only reach it by taking the skin off the soles of his feet and using them to make herself shoes, which will be able to walk on both land and sea.

Ew.

She’s already cutting him up for the dogs, so she pockets the soles. The ghost then lets her stand on his shoulders to escape the mound—it is unclear why he’s helping her get out or how she’s able to stand on the shoulders of a ghost.

At the last minute he tries to grab her and pull her back down, but Olof warned her about this; she’s wearing a large cloak, which she unclasps, escaping and leaving him with the cloak.

Hadvor reaches the island with her disgusting shoes, but on the island runs into a cliff she doesn’t know how to get past. She dreams that night of a woman who promises to drop a rope for her. She also promises to leave her a belt that will keep her from being hungry.

She wakes up, puts on the belt, and finds the rope. She reaches the top of the cliff and finds a little cave where she waits. Before long, a lion comes in, sheds his skin, and becomes Hermod. She takes the skin and burns it immediately, and then they have their reunion.

They’re not sure how to get back home, since there’s only one pair of shoes, so they go ask the local witch, who has fifteen sons and sends people helpful dreams and anti-hunger belts.

The witch lends them a boat, but warns them that the ghost giant has now turned into a giant fish—this guy really doesn’t let death slow him down, does he?—and will probably attack them. if he does, they can call her for help.

The fish attacks. They call for help. The witch and all fifteen of her sons turn into whales and take care of that, and then they’re home free.

The king, meanwhile, is worried about his missing wife and stepdaughter, and incredibly frustrated by this rat and mouse that are constantly fighting in his hall, which no one can get rid of.

Hermod and Hadvor come in, Hermod kills them, and their bodies turn into witches. It is unclear whether they returned to the bodies the king was accustomed to seeing them in, or if that was a disguise and they are now in some other, original form.

They tell the king everything, they get married, and Olof marries a nice nobleman. No mention is made of trying to return Olof to her home and family. No mention is made of the queen and her daughter leading active ghost lives like her brother. The text never tells us whether or not she was really Hetland, but I’m going to stick with my original theory of “absolutely not,” since there is literally no evidence, this woman has been proven to be a liar, she has a brother who is not human, and her behavior is not consistent with someone known as “the Good.”


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Tuesday, May 20, 2025

The Witch

 The Witch, as I’m sure will surprise no one at this point, is also a Russian fairy tale from the Yellow Fairy Book. It’s sort of Hansel and Gretel meets Little Red Riding Hood.

A woman has two step children—a little boy and a little girl—who she hates. One day she sends them out into the woods to visit her grandmother.

They decide to stop and visit their own grandmother on the way. She tells them the woman they’re on their way to meet isn't actually their step-great-grandma; she’s an evil witch! Then she gives them some milk, bread, and ham, and sends them on their way. To the witch. Instead of, you know, keeping them at her house, or going to find their dad and asking, “hey, are you aware your wife is trying to murder your kids?”, or any of the sensible things one could do when faced with two small grandchildren on their way to certain death.

The children reach the witch, and are assigned some tasks to complete, otherwise she’ll fry and eat them. She sets the girl to spinning yarn, and the boy to fetching water from the well with a sieve.

Some mice help with the yarn in exchange for bread. Some birds tell the boy how to stop up the sieve with clay so it can hold water, in exchange for more bread. A cat gives them an enchanted comb, an enchanted handkerchief, and directions home in exchange for ham.

The next day, they make their escape. A dog is going to stop them, but they give him some more bread—seriously, how much bread do these children have?—so he lets them go. Some enchanted trees try to stop them next, but the girl ties their branches back with ribbons.

The witch discovers that the children are gone, and that her pets and servants have let them go because the children treated them better than she ever did. She goes after them on her broomstick, but they use the handkerchief to make a deep river to slow her down, and then the comb to make a dense forest. She can’t get through the forest, so gives up and goes home.

The children go home, too, and tell their father what happened. He’s furious, and drives their stepmother out of the house, never to be seen again. Which is THE APPROPRIATE WAY TO HANDLE THIS SITUATION. Take notes, dad from last week.

Also. They didn’t have to go through any of this. Their dad was not aware of or on board with this plan. Their grandma knew it was a trap. If she had just TOLD THE KIDS NOT TO GO, and TALKED TO THEIR FATHER ABOUT THE SITUATION, the whole mess could have been avoided.

I’m a big fan of dad who do not let their wives murder their kids.

One unanswered question I have is why the grandma sent the kids off with milk. Was it just for them to drink? The bread and ham went to various animals, and the girl provided her own ribbons to deal with the trees, but the milk is never mentioned again. It’s probably not of any significance, but I’m particularly attuned to instances of unexplained milk because I still don’t understand the relevance of milk to King Lindorm.

The only other really noteworthy thing about this story is the broomstick. Witches have been depicted flying on broomsticks for hundreds of years. Fairy tales are chock full of witches. But I think this is the first time I’ve ever encountered a witch flying on a broomstick in a fairy tale.


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Tuesday, May 13, 2025

The Story of King Frost

 The Story of King Frost is yet another Russian fairy tale—The Yellow Fairy Book is very Russia-heavy.

We start, as we so often do, with a poorly blended family. Widower, widower’s wonderful daughter, widower’s second wife, and second wife’s awful daughter. But this stepmother is…she’s really something.

Bullying and abusing your stepdaughter, okay, yeah, we’ve all seen that. Trying to get rid of your stepdaughter? It’s been done before. But this woman openly tells her husband, “I want your daughter dead.”

She wants him to abandon the girl in a field in the winter, so she’ll freeze to death.

I’m gonna go ahead and quote the story here for the father’s response to this suggestion:  “In vain did the poor old father weep and implore her pity; she was firm, and he dared not gainsay her.”

I’m sorry, you implored her pity? She was firm? You dared not disagree? Dude, get a grip. You’re gonna abandon your kid to freeze to death because your wife was FIRM about it? There should be no imploring of pity, here. You should not even be trying to convince your wife to change her mind. The correct response to “I think we should murder your daughter” is “get out of my house before I murder you.”

This absolute loser does as his wife says and abandons the girl.

In the freezing field, the girl meets the frost king. She’s very polite, he’s very impressed, he sends her safely home with a bunch of furs and jewels and a beautiful gold and silver dress.

She appears back at the house with all this while the stepmother is making pancakes for the funeral, and arguing with her talking dog, who’s warning her that her stepdaughter is gonna be just fine, but her own daughter will soon die.

Side note: I’m intrigued by the idea of funeral pancakes. Maybe pancakes are too fun to suit the general mood of a funeral, but I like it. Apparently it’s a Russian tradition.

Ignoring the talking dog, the stepmother demands that her husband also abandon her daughter in the frozen field, so she can get all this cool stuff too. But this girl is very rude to the frost king, so he freezes her to death, and when her mother touches her body, she freezes to death too.

Which is the end of the story.

This follows the same general pattern as a great many stories—wicked stepmother despises stepdaughter, stepdaughter rewarded for good behavior while daughter punished for bad behavior. There are two things that make it interesting to me.

Firstly, the frost king. Generally, the role of punisher-and-rewarder goes to an old woman, so we’re already breaking the pattern there. But usually if we see any kind of king in a story like this, he’ll end up marrying the good girl. So having a man—and a royal man at that—show up, richly reward a beautiful young woman, and then just leave again, is intriguing.

It’s worth noting that the illustration does not depict him as exactly a compelling candidate for matrimony, but there’s nothing in the actual text to describe his as the illustration shows:

(Also, why is this girl wearing, like, a toga, in a frozen field in Russia? Most of these illustrations feature this style of dress, and I have a very hard time believing that anyone was ever dressing like this in winter in Russia.)

Except, of course, we have to remember that this is a translated story, and we may be losing some nuance in English. So let’s do some further research.

The original Russian title is “Морозко,” which as far as I can tell just translates to “Frost.” But other English translations call the story “Father Frost.”

“Father” and “King” have completely different connotations in fairy tales. Father Someone is the weird old man you meet in the woods, who helps you in your quest. King Someone is the dashing man you marry and live happily ever after with. But neither “Father” nor “King” appears in the original Russian title. “Father” certainly makes more sense in this context, and I suspect there’s something in the Russian text itself, if not in the title, to support that translation.

I’d really like to know why the Yellow Fairy Book translated it as it did; I definitely spent more than half the story expecting the girl and the frost king to end up together, based largely on the title, with nothing in most of the text to contradict the idea. I would have gone into it with completely different expectations based on that one word difference in the title.

But the really noteworthy thing in this story, for me, is the dad. He makes me so angry. And usually anger is what drives me to make fairy tale blogs.

Mostly, now, we see absent fathers in our fairy tales. They remarried and then they died. They didn’t do anything wrong; they weren’t here for their daughters’ suffering.

We go back a little ways and we see passive fathers. They don’t interfere when their wives mistreat their daughters. Very bad parenting. We disapprove.

But this dad isn’t just not interfering. He’s actively participating in the murder of his daughter because his wife pressured him. It’s insane. We’re taking peer pressure to a whole new level here. The text makes it clear that he Does Not Want To Do This. But he does it anyway, because his wife told him to. We do not commit murders because our wives were firm with us! That will not hold up in court.

And this man faces exactly zero consequences. Presumably he profits off his daughter’s new wealth—we don’t get any information past the freezing of his stepdaughter. But he’s so awful! He should also have frozen to death! We don’t just excuse attempted murder because you didn’t really want to do it. Where are the consequences for his actions? I was hoping the daughter would be whisked away to a beautiful ice kingdom by the dashing frost king, but since he’s actually a frost father, this poor girl is stuck at home with her pathetic loser dad.


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