H is for Hands, Hair, Hips, Heels (Body Folktales)

This year, my A to Z Challenge theme is Body Folktales. Enjoy!

(Yes, I am aware it's Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels, but it was low hanging fruit.)

HANDS

There were some obvious choices here that I'm omitting, such as Beaumains from Arthurian legends, or the folktale type of the Handless Maiden (which I really hate, except for one Hungarian variant).

Invisible Grandfather (Italy)

A girl sets out to seek her fortune, and ends up in an enchanted castle. She encounters no one except a floating pair of hands that serve her food and make her bed. The hands turn out to belong to Invisible Grandfather, who helps the girl secure a king as a husband - but when she doesn't follow his instructions, he curses her to grow a beard. Unusually for folktales, the curse is lifted by an apology.

The most beautiful hands in the world (Philippines)

A girl is proud of her beautiful, soft hands but refuses to do any work to help others. She mocks another girl for having rough, dirty hands. And yet, when that other girl helps a poor woman, she is rewarded with riches - and told that her hands are the most beautiful.

The legend of St. Kilda (Scotland)

According to legend, people from both Uist and Harris coveted the island of St. Kilda. They decided to have a rowing race, and agreed that whoever lays a hand on the island first will be its owner. As they neared the shore, people from Harris were winning - but the leader of the boat from Uist, Colla MacLeod, chopped off his left hand in the last minute, throwing it to the shore, and thus won the race.

HAIR

Hair is very common in folktales. Think Rapunzel, think the Devil's three golden hairs, think Lady Godiva, or The youth with the golden hair (ATU 314). From mythology, think Sif's golden hair, Sedna's tangled hair, Prince Zal's white hair, or the myth from Guam where women catch a monster fish with their hair. (If any more come to mind, sound off in the comments!)

I picked some lesser known, interesting examples:

The king's daughter who lost her hair (Akamba people, Kenya)

My favorite hair-themed story. A haughty princess goes bald from a curse, and sends people out to find a magic tree that grows hair. A young man travels far and finds the enchanted island where the tree grows; he brings back all kinds of hair for the princess.

The maiden with the red-gold hair (Hungary)

This is a "False bride" folktale where the false bride (forced into pretending by her mother) is treated surprisingly kindly. The story tells about a prince who is looking for a special maiden with red-gold hair, and an evil countess who disguises her own daughter to fit the description.

The raven-haired prince (Slovakia)

In a kingdom where everyone has red hair, a raven-haired prince is born. His parents try everything to change his hair color but nothing succeeds; eventually they send him abroad to try his luck. On his way home his servant blackmails him to swap places. After that, the prince goes through a series of dangerous quests, even dies and is revived, and eventually reclaims his rightful place. And his hair turns red.

The girl who became a bird (Hausa, Niger)

A very beautiful Cinderella variant where the prince falls in love with the girl when he sees her at the party in tattered clothes, and asks about her life. Later, her stepmother braids a charm into her hair and turns her into a bird; she is found and rescued by her brother and her husband.

The dragon prince (Spain)

A girl encounters an injured dragon in the woods, and helps him. Later she discovers he is an enchanted prince who can only be saved if someone creates a suit of golden hair for the giant who cursed him. The girl takes up service as a princess' handmaid, and begs her for her golden hair - but she has to promise her the prince's hand in exchange. Luckily, it turns out the golden-haired beauty is the dragon prince's sister, so our heroic girl gets to marry him in the end.

HIPS

Father and Daughters (Morocco)

This is a "Basil Maiden" type folktale, about a clever girl who saves herself and her sisters from the intrigues of a prince. When he tries to put sleeping powder in their food, she manages to stay awake and kicks the guy out of the house so hard he breaks his hip. Later on, disguised as a doctor, she shows up at court to treat his injury (and get up to more shenanigans). At the end of the story the prince is sentenced to death for trying to harm her, but she commutes his sentence.

The lazy beauty and her aunts (Ireland)

A "Three Spinners" type tale, where a lazy girl is taken to a prince's castle with her mother's promise that she can work miracles in spinning and weaving. Three mysterious old women show up to help her - one with large feet, one with a large nose, and one with wide hips (Cailleach Croman Mór, Woman of the Big Hips). Each in turn tells the prince that their shape is due to the hard work they had done all their life. Alarmed, the prince forbids his bride from working ever again.

HEELS

The most obvious example would be Achilles' heel, but I'm not going to repeat it. If you are curious about a lesser known myth about the same, you can find it in my book.

How mosquitoes came to be (Tlingit)

A giant keeps killing people and devouring their heart. A brave man pretends to be dead, and the giant takes him to his house. There, he discovers that the giant is unkillable because he keeps his own heart in his left heel. As he enters the house again, the hero plunges a knife in his heel, killing him. He then burns the body - and the ashes turn into the first mosquitoes.

How rice came to Earth (Indonesia)

A poor boy walks up to the heavens on the rainbow, following some fairies. There, he encounters rice for the first time, but he is forbidden from taking any of it. When he tries to steal some, he cuts his heel on the rainbow bridge while fleeing and gets caught. The second time, he hides some grains inside the healing wound on his heel, and smuggles them safely down to earth.

The soldier and the wizard (Russia)

The folktale version of a villain being brought down by his own monologuing. A soldier encounters a wizard at night in a cemetery and goes on a clandestine nighttime adventure with him. At one point the wizard takes blood from a young couple, and tells the soldier they can only be revived if someone cuts them on the heel and restores their blood. In the end, the soldier learns all the wizard's secrets, and kills him.

Did you have fun with the stories on this list? Do you have a favorite?

W is for Whale sharks (Folktales of Endangered Species)

Welcome to the 2020 A to Z blogging challenge! This year my theme is Folktales of Endangered Species. I am researching cool traditional stories about rare, fascinating animals - to raise awareness of what we might lose if we don't get our collective shit together. Enjoy!

Species: Whale shark (Rhincodon typus)

Status: Endangered

Lolo Awing

Bantoanon legend from the Philippines

Muslim pirates capture an old man from his island, but they decide he is not useful to them, so they put him ashore on a deserted island. With no way to get home, the old man prays every day to God for help, and survives by foraging. One day a whale shark swims up to the shore. The next it comes back with another whale shark. On the third day there are three of them. The old man hopes they were sent by God, so he tells them to swim away and come back, to prove they understand him. When they do, he sits on the back of the largest whale shark, and it carries him safely home, with the other two swimming along for protection.

I also found a Swahili legend from Kenya and Mozambique, in which God creates all the creatures of the sea, and he is so pleased with how beautiful the whale shark turned out that he and the angels throw handfuls of gold and silver coins at it. The coins stick, and the whale shark has had spots on its back ever since. In Kiswahili they call it "papa shillingi."

Sources: Read Lolo Awing here. Read the Swahili story here.

How can I help?

Read about conservation efforts here, here, here, or here.

Would you swim with a whale shark? They are the largest fish in the ocean, and they only eat plankton! 

Nuggets of story wisdom (Following folktales around the world 145. - Kenya)

Today I continue the blog series titled Following folktales around the world! If you would like to know what the series is all about, you can find the introduction post here. You can find all posts here, or you can follow the series on Facebook!

East ​African Folktales 
For all ages from the voice of Mukamba
Vincent Muli Wa Kituku
August House Publishers, 2005.

The book contains eighteen short Kamba folktales in English and in the original Kikamba language. The author was born and grew up in Kenya, and then moved to the United States where he decided to write down the teaching stories of his mother's tradition in the 1990s. Each story comes with comments about the moral, but the author does note that stories can mean different things to different people. The book has black-and white illustrations, and motifs from Kenyan cloth patterns. The introduction was written by none other than David Novak, one of my favorite American storytellers.

Highlights

There was a very poignant story in which Hamster's grandmother was handing out tails to the animals so that they could keep the flies away. Hamster did not bother to show up early for a tail, thinking his grandmother was going to put one aside for him anyway. However, grandma did not play favorites, and hamster was left with a small stub of a tail.
In a tale about the origin of death Raven and Chameleon competed in getting a message to the people. If Chameleon had won, people would come back to life after death - but Chameleon walks very slowly, so Raven got to us first with a more depressing message.
I also liked the small story about Hyena and the rock, in which nice king Hyena tried to start a conversation with a rock, and when all attempts failed, he peacefully walked away saying "at least you listened."

Connections

The story of the monkey's heart was familiar from many other places; here once again it was the shark who got tricked. The story of the dog who fought his own reflection for a bone was a classic teaching tale. Matema, who cut the tree under himself was familiar from Nasreddin hodja's antics, and the man who cried hyena got into trouble just like the boy who cried wolf.
The resident trickster was Hare, who scared a hungry hyena away.

Where to next?
South Sudan!