Born a Monster

While animal bridegrooms are an extremely popular folktale motif, it’s fairly rare to encounter bridegrooms who were originally born non-human. (This is particularly interesting as it is much more common for brides to be born nonhuman—see “The Little Mermaid,” anything about selkies, “Undine,” “Melusine”—there’s also a distinct aquatic theme here, but I’m getting off-topic.)

There are only two other stories like this that come to mind: “The Pig King” (Italian and French) and “Hans My Hedgehog.” (German) (I am sure there are other stories out there that fit into this category, but there are hundreds of thousands of fairy tales in the world, and I can only read a small percentage of them, and can remember even less.)

“Prince Lindworm” differs from these other two born-a-monster stories in that his reason for being a monster is slightly more traditional. Monster bridegrooms are generally turned into monsters as a punishment—usually for a fairly minor offense, such as general rudeness or turning down romantic advances. The lindworm is a lindworm because of his mother’s minor offense of eating too many flowers. There’s no punishment involved in Hans’ or the Pig King’s monstrousness; their parents wanted desperately to have children, and someone magical heard their pleas and said yeah, okay, sure—but with a fun little twist. (Although Hans’ dad totally brought it on himself by saying “I want a kid so bad I wouldn’t even care if he was a hedgehog.”)

All three stories involve the beast marrying before his transformation. But while Hans and both versions of the Pig King remain beasts at least part-time for some time after their marriage (we’re talking months, here), the lindworm is transformed on their wedding night. Hans and French pig are the types of characters that can only be permanently freed from their animal forms when the animal skins are destroyed. Which their wives handle, having become extremely fed up with this whole bestiality situation. The terms of transformation for the Italian pig are just that he be married three times. (Which, by the way, no one actually knew about. The terms and conditions were totally secret in this situation. And personally, if I didn’t know about the 3 weddings deal, I probably wouldn’t have kept getting married after multiple spouses attempted to kill me, but whatever, you do you.)

Prince Lindworm just feels more like an enchanted bridegroom story than the others—partly because of the consequences-for-your-actions element of his lindworm-iness, but mostly I think because of the transformation sequence? And the role the main girl plays.

Hans’ bride comes off more like a Brave Little Tailor girl than an enchanted bridegroom girl; you don’t really get the sense that she’s saving him from enchantment. He won the right to marry her through tailor-typical feats, and their relationship is something that she endures until she figures out she can make it a little more bearable by trashing his hedgehog skin.

The pig king’s bride lying with him every night when he’s not wearing an animal skin is actually pretty common in folklore, with the best example being “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”—and of course there’s “Cupid and Psyche” there, too. But I do feel that a fundamental part of those stories is the journey that the girl goes on after seeing his face. “The Pig King” just feels—I don’t know.

I think an important part of enchanted bridegroom stories is the step where the girl does something to save the beast—whether that’s going on a journey to find him, initiating a bizarro transformation sequence, or searching frantically through the palace to find him and marry him before he dies of sorrow.

I don’t know. I just think that "Prince Lindworm" is better than the other born-enchanted stories I’ve encountered. It just feels right.

I can’t think of a good ending, here. Whatever. Remind me to come back to that whole girls-more-commonly-start-out-non-human thing sometime when I have the energy to spare for anything non-Lindworm related. (Even when bridegrooms are born monsters, they’re still distinctly enchanted, born from normal humans. Brides are more likely to be just naturally nonhuman, which is—there’s something significant in that, I’m sure, and I actually meant it to be a part of my seminar paper five years ago, but the professor made me narrow my focus, which was probably a good idea as the paper was still like 25 pages long.) 

Preorder my book, Lindworm, here!

Hecuba

Hecuba. Hecuba. Hecuba. Mother, captive, queen. I don’t know what to say about her, but I know that something must be said. So we interrupt our scheduled programming to talk about last night, when I saw Euripides performed in Stratford-upon-Avon. There will be time for Sexual Abuse in Folk Traditions another day. And tomorrow, of course, we see Shakespeare, but how, even here, could it possibly compare to the beauty of Hecuba?

Don’t get me wrong; Shakespeare is great. But Euripides, guys. I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to see a Greek tragedy on stage. And technically, I guess I didn’t. It was all rewritten, perspectives shifted, a new and different story. But Euripides was there. And Hecuba. Hecuba. I have no words for her, or none I can think of now. Fortunately, there’s an entire blog to be spent searching for them.

I have always had a soft spot for the women of Greek tragedy. I have risen to their defense, every time, no matter how little there was to be said, since the first time I read Sophocles.

Medea, well, there’s not much wiggle room there. She did what she did, and it was an awful thing to do. But oh, how she must have paid for it after, when she saw what she’d done in her madness. Medea, sacrificing everything she had for Jason, Medea, rejected and abandoned, Medea, alone with the blood of her sons on her hands. Medea.  Antigone, poor Antigone, always in the right, and always doomed to fail.

And how I fought for Clytemnestra. Her daughter dead, her husband gone for ten years, fighting for another woman, returning with another and the two children she’d born him. I would have killed him too. Agamemnon, that monster, so many words to describe him that I dare not type—I know my grandparents will be reading this post. I have seen a thousand-thousand portrayals of Agamemnon, that killer of daughters, that killer of nations, that monster disguised as a man. A thousand-thousand portrayals, and never once have I felt an ounce of sympathy.

In Hecuba I did. In Hecuba I saw him slaughter children, and for his sake—for his sake as well as theirs—I nearly cried. Agamemnon, a man in an impossible situation, the blood of his daughter still wet on his hands, Agamemnon, fighting only to survive the war, Agamemnon fighting harder for the trust of his troops than the gold of the Trojans. Agamemnon, eternally alone, the ghosts of little girls and boys to haunt his nights, and nothing but death awaits him in his longed-for home. For this monster I could have wept.

Cassandra, the girl who bore him those two children, the un-believed prophetess, the Trojan princess who foresaw the end, Cassandra was perhaps the greatest feat of the show. Bitter and angry in modern dress, a beautiful anachronism on the Grecian stage. I had never imagined her portrayed like this, but the classical character, always set apart from the world by her gift and her curse—of course she was bitter, un-trusted, unloved. She could never belong with the rest of them, never fit in with anyone of her world. Her presence on the stage was jarring, disconcerting, utterly perfect.

And Hecuba, Hecuba, the woman herself, her husband and her sons all dead, sitting on his throne with weeping girls around her, holding his head in her hands. There were few props in the performance, but that head, oh, I could see it, though she held only air.

You may have read the original play by Euripides—I have not, though I was given a detailed summary. That is a story of the Greeks, the victors. This was a story of Troy. In the original Hecuba goes mad after the death of her last and youngest son, blinds a man, kills his sons in turn.

This Hecuba did not. She was anger and agony and mercy, fighting fiercely for her children’s lives, failing, yielding, ultimately, with dignity and grace. She died still a queen.

I have another two months now to spend traveling across Europe. We leave the day after tomorrow. But if it were up to me, I think I would just stay here, watching every performance of Hecuba until it ended.

(Also, it was my birthday, and oh my goodness, what an amazing way to spend it. Twenty-three, you have a tough act to follow.)