|
Author
|
Comment
|
Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(8/1/02 12:51:17 am)
|
Untombi-yapansi and Goose Girl
Midori (and to anyone else who is interested),
I have finally added this Zulu tale similar to Goose Girl to SurLaLune. (I rediscovered it in my notebook. It ended up there before my last move and has stayed there since until recently rediscovered!) Anyway, it does appear to be out of copyright, so I have made it available online. Perhaps this will help you or anyone else wanting to use it for a class. I am grateful for anything not European that I can find to add to SurLaLune.
It is an interesting story--I have become very familiar with it after editing the scans I took of the copy you sent me.
Here is a direct link to the tale:
www.surlalunefairytales.c...pansi.html
Thanks again for sharing,
Heidi the Insomniac
"Will summer reading ever really end?" she asks.
|
Midori
Unregistered User
(8/2/02 4:09:10 am)
|
Untombi yapansi
Heidi,
Thanks so much for putting the story up on your site! It really is a wonderful little tale I think because it has all my favorite things--the imbulumakasana (the little creature who likes to switch places with young women) a girl on her rite of passage who has her own storehouse of fantastic possiblities, and that fabulous ending where as she completes her rite of passage, her whole village is reinstated into the world above, cleansed and purified. I think I have always liked it because the tale focuses not so much on the preparation of a girl for marriage, but ties that journey to the greater and more powerful union of the human with the fantastic, the integration of the natural and the human world, and affirms the girl's journey as one of huge importance to the continued creative life of the community.
Carolyn--though not a Robber Bridegroom story, Untombi Yapansi has within it images that support the notion that marriages are between communities as much as individuals...that such unions are intended to strengthen families and villages. Untombi, although she arrives at the Prince's village as a servant, maintains certain proprieties and strictures of a bride (she will not eat the food of his house until acknowledged as a bride for instance)..and she can bring forth her village from beneath the ground when she out in the fields to help her. (a trick itself since her village was destroyed by fire at the start of the story--and is then is "reborn" as Untombi purifies herself in the water and brings them out to accompany her as a bride). The two families, the two villages, the two forces of the fantastic and the human, and the bride and groom are joined in the final scene.
|
|
