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joann
Unregistered User
(2/13/02 11:21:11 am)
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Seven Daughters and Seven Sons Origin
Anyone know the folktale origins (11th century Iraq) of the novel Seven Daughters and Seven Sons (Cohen, Lovejoy. 1982)? Plot: One of seven daughters leaves home disguised as a man, makes a fortune, falls in love with a prince, and tricks seven male cousins into getting tattoos of her initial.
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leah
Unregistered User
(2/17/02 9:14:16 am)
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i know the story
i read seven daughters and seven sons before. waht do you need to know about it?
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joann
Unregistered User
(2/18/02 9:54:43 am)
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seven daughters and seven sons
I would like to know the folktale the story is based on. The authors indicate that it is an Iraqui tale, but I can't find it anywhere. I've searched some folk tale indecies, gone through a number of anthologies and consulted a couple of relevant discussion groups.
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(2/18/02 12:10:09 pm)
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Will know more in a few days - maybe
Hello Joann,
I have read the book but have come across the tale earlier in a fairy tale collection. I keep a lot of my books at my parents house, including the collection. It should give some hint as to where the story is from. I may be mistaken, but I think it was not from Irak but somewhere else in that area. Then again, I might be mistaken. I will look it up as soon as I visit my parents, most likely next weekend. Hopefully I have something to report then!
Best regards, Lotti
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joann
Unregistered User
(2/18/02 2:49:30 pm)
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seven daughters and seven sons
I would very much appreciate your help. Any similar tale is of interest to me. Thanks.
Joann
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lmallozzi
Registered User
(2/19/02 10:53:53 am)
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another variant - possibly connected
I remember coming across an Italian story that sounds vaguely reminescent - 2 wealthy men are friends, one has 7 sons, the other, seven daughters, whom he keeps hidden, being ashamed of having only girls and no sons. The eldest son becomes sick and the father asks his friend to send one of his children (assuming wrongly that there are all boys) to keep the sick boy company. Desperate, the father appeals to his daughters to disguise themselves and help him out. None but the youngest agrees and she ends up nursing the sick boy to health. The sick boy suspects that the "boy" is a girl and falls in love. All ends well, with the seven daughters and seven sons marrying.
I think this tale is from the Pentamerone, but I might be mistaken. I'll go digging through my notes. There is an even more altered version of this story in Italo Calvino's Italian Folktales, which is what sparked my interest in the first place.
Hope this helps.
Luciana
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joann
Unregistered User
(2/21/02 1:10:35 pm)
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Seven Daughters and Seven Sons
Luciana,
Thanks for the lead. I've asked for the library to get the Pentamerone for me. And I checked out Calvino's book. The variant in that book is titled "First Sword and Last Broom." It was an interesting comparison to 7D and 7S. (I also stayed up late last night and read some Italian folktales. Quite enjoyable.)
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lmallozzi
Registered User
(2/22/02 6:03:05 am)
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Another italian tale
Calvino's book just sucks me in - it's hard to put down sometimes. Another tale in that book you should check out is "Fanta-Ghiro the Beautiful", which is also a variant.
Luciana
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joann
Unregistered User
(2/25/02 11:39:13 am)
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Seven Daughters and Seven Sons
Thanks to the leads I have received, I have been reading some interesting tales from the Middle East. I found one quite similar to 7D and 7S in Fearless Girls, Wise Women and Beloved Sisters by Kathleen Ragan. "Yousif Al-Saffani" is a tale from Sudan. There are seven daughters and seven sons, but only the youngest daughter and the oldest son are involved. She bests him in the contest by dressing as a man, Hassan the Clever, and making her fortune in salt. The sultan's tries to determine if she is a woman in some of the same ways as in 7D and 7S, and marries her when he finds out she is a woman.
Thanks to inter-library loan, I've also got Folk-Tales of Iraq by E. S. Stevens. There is a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs variant in it. Title - Hajir. Quite similar to German versions.
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spideri
Registered User
(2/25/02 1:14:19 pm)
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Re: Seven Daughters and Seven Sons
Lovely variant from Northern California tradition.
Wild Onions.
Seven women hike up a mountain where they find a delicious new food. Wild onions.
Mates complain. Ruins their hunting. Make women sleep outside under the stars.
Women continue to crave gathering and eating wild onions. Finally, they go up the mountain with their eagle down ropes and swing them and sing them up into the sky. Up they rise singing to become the Seven Sisters, which we call the
Pleiades.
Their mates hurry after them using their own feather ropes, bu the women's magic was stong and came first. The men become the Seven Brothers which we call Taurus.
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MelindaKimberly
Registered User
(3/3/02 12:09:36 am)
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Re: Seven Daughters and Seven Sons Origin
*is being something of a wiseguy and sort of serious*
Is there a tie-in to the musical "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"?
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(3/3/02 11:33:14 am)
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My source says the story is from Irak
Dear Joann,
sorry it took me a while. I just returned from my parents place and I did find the book which has the 7 daughters, 7 sons story. The book is in German, "Märchen von den klugen Frauen" (Fairy tales of the intelligent/wise women) ISBN 3-7684-3123-1. The publisher was Werner Dausien, Hanau. Curious footnote, when I looked up the story I realized for the first time that it was a reprint of an original published in the GDR. I have a number of books from Dausien, who had a wonderful range of fairy tales and always wondered how they had so many illustrators from Czecheslowakia, Hungary and so on. (It was, after all, back in the days of the cold war). I guess I never looked closely - I suppose most of them are reprints of GDR books. But back to the story!
It differs from the books you quoted in some details, some of which I find significant.
The heroine is Dschumana, the eldest daughter of a man named Jusuf. His older brother is named Hussein and he inherited the family fortune, while his younger brother inherited nothing (which explains the vast difference in fortune further than is done in the book). Dschumana sets out not as a penniless helper to a rich merchant, but disguised as a rich young merchant. The money for that and her merchandise is paid for out of 1000 dinars borrowed from Hussein. He gave them to his brother on the condition that in one year, he would pay back 2000 dinars or Hussein would take in the seven daughters as slaves (seeing as their father could hardly feed them anyway, as he puts it).
The girl names herself Ali an-Nasir and starts trading in a foreign city. The local Emir, Mahmut by name, hears of the young merchant, goes to watch "him" secretly and invites him to show his merchandise in the palace. The goods are bought (without haggling over the price, as the tale stresses :-)). Ali an-Nasir and Mahmut befriend each other.
In time, it is the Emir's mother, who suspects Ali to be a girl. She talks to her son, who is first surprised and than very happy with the idea of Ali being a girl and states immediately that he would marry the girl. The Sultana is less than happy with the idea but suggests testing "Ali".
The three test are:
- a game of chess
- looking at cloth and jewels vs. swords and other weapons
- a dinner of very hot and spicey food, flowers and sweets for decorations
The last is different from the book, of course. The girl realizes that she is tested, and eats her food slowly, eating everything, though it is burning her throat and even the men choke on it. The flowers are thrown aside after that and the fruit eaten (after the meal, not to lessen the hot dishes in between). After the girl behaves like that, the Sultana believes her to be a man and sends away the guards she had posted in the neighbouring room. There exit makes some noise, which the girl interprets correctly. It is the reason why she leaves, then. As in the book, she leaves a coded message which Mahmut understands.
On her way, she buys first three of her cousins out of slavery, than three more in another town. On return to her own city, she finds the youngest cousin begging near the city gates and tells him to follow her caravan (spelling?!). At home, she tell her father to buy a house, so they could entertain her uncle in style, as they would repay the 2000 dinars now. Her uncle, she learns, is dead. After his sons had left and he learnt of their failure and being sold into slavery, he died of shame. Dschumana offers her 6 cousins to repay the debt to their father by freeing them and buying back their house and in addition, to have her father train the youngest as a merchant. They gladly agree and the big party takes place. Guess who is gate-crashing? ;-) Of course, Dschumana and Mahmut are getting married, and happily-ever-after ;-)
I know this ís a long post, but I thought as I couldn't offer you much about the origin, I could at least give you the slightly different version (The fairy tale collection only states for the origin: "From Irak" (do you spell that Iraque??!?)).
I found some of the details rather fascinating - the conditions of the loan, which balance the self-afflicted slavery of the 7 sons against the possible "undeserved" slavery of the 7 daughters. Also, I found the idea of Mahmut's mother suspecting Dschumana/ Ali to be a girl very interesting.
Hope it helps at least a bit,
Best regards
Lotti
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(3/3/02 11:44:28 am)
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Should have proof-read
Sorry for all the misspelling! I also realized you wrote Iraq in your first posting, which is of course the answer to my question "How do you spell that?" Ahem. Sorry.
Lotti-looking-ashamed
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janeyolen
Unregistered User
(3/4/02 4:10:06 am)
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some background
I retold a Roumanian tale, Mizilca, in NOT ONE DAMSEL IN DISTRESS that had similar elements. Here is the note at the back of the book which might be of some help:
This Roumanian story from an old ballad can be found in a shorter version in Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales, where it is retold by Alison Lurie and in a longer and more Victorian version as "The Girl Who Pretended to be a Boy" in Andrew Lang's The Violet Fairy Book. The ballad itself can be read in Erich Seeman's European Folk Ballads where there is a magical talking horse as well.
This is a folk story that is popular throughout Europe and is directly related to the German story "The Twelve Huntsmen," as well as the Arabic story "The Story of the King, Hamed bin Bathara, and of the Fearless Girl (see C. G. Campbell's From Town and Tribe) which can be found in Oman, and Iraq. It is also quite close to the Sudanese story "Yousif Al-Saffani" found in Ahmed Al-Shahi and F. C. T. Moore's Wisdom of the Nile collection. I have borrowed one of the tests from the German tale--the peas under foot--and added it to the story to make it three (that magical number) tests. In "The Twelve Huntsmen" the other tests include displaying spinning wheels in the hall "because women always look at spinning wheels with eager interest" and the shooting of bows "Because a woman cannot shoot an arrow as a man can." "The Twelve Huntsmen" can be found in both The Green Fairy Book by Andrew Lang and The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from Around the World by Ethel Johnston Phelps.
In the Arabic story the tests are: silks and swords, pepper and cloves meal, whipping a child, bathing in the sea, In the Sudanese story, the tests are: dates with stones in them, hunting and catching something, climbing a tree to the top (this is a menstrual cycle trial), swords and dresses at the market, a massage, bathing in the river. In each case the girl outwits the king/sultan.
Young women who disguise themselves as men and go off to battle are not only popular in folk stories, but in legends and history as well. There are instances of disguised American women doing battle in both the Civil and Revolutionary wars; British women in shorn hair and pants were recorded as having served aboard ship, etc. Perhaps the most famous of these disguised soldiers were Deborah Samson who fought in the American Revolution, and Ann Bonney and Mary Reade who were pirates under Captain (Calico) Jack Rackham.
Jane
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Carrie
Unregistered User
(3/4/02 7:11:04 am)
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Woman Warrior
My favorite story of a woman disguised as a man is the story of White Tigers in Maxine Hong Kingston's book "The Woman Warrior." Has anyone here read it? It is a beautifully written book.
Carrie
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joann
Unregistered User
(3/6/02 2:18:53 pm)
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seven daughters and seven sons
Thanks to all of you who have helped in my search. Lottie and Jane are due a special thank-you for your detailed responses.
I haven't tracked down a specific Iraqui tale, but I've found references to most of the elements in 7D & 7S in a number of tales all of you have recommended. As I mentioned earlier, I've also encountered some wonderful detours along the way.
I'm leaving for Israel tomorrow, so will draw my participation to a close for now. Thank you again for the time and effort you have spent to help me out.
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