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Author
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Comment
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shiara
the witch
Registered User
(3/25/04 11:21 am)
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animal husband
Does anyone know some fairytale where a woman marries an animal? Especially a fish, frog, whale, or some other water creature?
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Heather
KT
Registered User
(3/25/04 3:41 pm)
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Re: animal husband
Have you checked the section on tales like Cupid & Psyche/Beauty and Beast on the Sur La Lune website?
Tale Type 425, Search for the Lost Husband, often has the husband an animal. (Dwarf, bear, wolf, ass, snake, hog, hedgehog, frog, bird, or tree seem to be the most common ones.)
I've been researching this one, too-- from my Stith-Thompson photocopy:
#425 M Bathing Girl's Garments Kept until promise of marriage. Husband usually serpent or water-being... references cited (sorry-- I don't have the index) are Swahn 34, 343ff. -- Lithuanian (*425D) 27; German: Plenzat p. 24
Hope that gives you a starting place!
Best--
Heather Tomlinson
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Laura
McCaffrey
Registered User
(3/26/04 8:37 am)
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Re: animal husband
Some of the water stories here have animal husbands:
www.pitt.edu/~dash/water.html
You could spend some time on Orkney folklore, though the selkie tales usually are more about seal women.
www.orkneyjar.com/folklore/index.html
And of course, there's the Frog Prince.
Good Luck.
LauraMc
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Niniane
Sunyata
Registered User
(3/29/04 11:26 am)
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Re: animal husband
Check out Native American folklore; I recollect more than one tale with an animal husband. Same applies to African folktales.
Also, look up the Virago Book of Fairy Tales 1 or 2, compiled/edited by Angela Carter - IIRC there was some stuff in there too.
Anita Harris.
Terra Mythogene
www.mythopoetica.com
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Terri
Windling
Registered User
(3/30/04 8:04 am)
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Re: animal husband
I've got an article on animal brides/animal husband tales coming out in the next issue of Realms of Fantasy, so I've done a lot of reading on this subject recently. Two books I recommend:
The Frog King: On Legends, Fables, Fairy Tales and Anecdotes of Animals, by Boria Sax
The Seprent and the Swan: The Animal Bride in Folklore and Literature, by Boria Sax.
If you're interested in the related issue of animal-human transformation
tales, there's an article and on-line exhibition of art on this
subject here: www.endicott-studio.com/jMA03Autumn/gshifters.html
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rosyelf
(3/30/04 9:07 am)
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Animal husbands
I'm aware that lots of Eskimo tales deal with marriage of animals with humans. Sedna-I believe she is a goddess-married a storm-petrel, but he didn't treat her well. Have you looked at A Kayak Full of Ghosts: Eskimo Folk Tales ? It's a nice paperback available on Amazon and the tales are retold by Laurence Millman.
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Niniane
Sunyata
Registered User
(3/30/04 9:36 am)
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Re: Animal husbands
From my own corner of the world (Malaysia, S. E. Asia) I remember stories of females abducted by crocodiles to be their mates. Some of these stories crop up every now and then in an urban legend guise too.
I think J. Campbell talked about this link between maiden and serpent. There's also a Polynesian myth about an Eel with a human (although I think she's also portrayed as a Goddess).
site with picture
depicting Hina and the Eel
I've written an online novella which centers around this serpent/woman motif. It can be found in my online storytelling sequence:
Stormlight: A Digital,
Storytelling Web.
It's the "Lagoon of Secrets" link, if anyone is interested.
Anita Harris.
Terra Mythogene
www.mythopoetica.com
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janeyolen
Registered User
(3/31/04 6:46 am)
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Re: Animal husbands
Or look at my book THE FISH PRINCE and Other Merman Stories. (Interlink Books) It is both a book AB OUT mermen stories, with longish essays and about a dozen retellings of merman tales.
Jane Yolen
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Niniane
Sunyata
Registered User
(3/31/04 1:19 pm)
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Re: Animal husbands
Merman stories? *doubletakes*
This must go on my to-buy list, yes indeed!
Anita Harris.
Terra Mythogene
www.mythopoetica.com
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rosyelf
(4/1/04 1:01 am)
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dancing dolphins
Here's something on animal husbands from Brazil. The book is Dance of the Dolphin: Transformation and Disenchantment in the Amazonian Imagination. It is by Candace Slater. I haven't yet read it but apparently in the Amazon Basin region there are lots of tales of dolphins who are very charming/unreliable and who father many children, so this may be something worth looking up.(Some of the female dolphins have relationships with human men.)
Good luck. I think this is a fascinating subject. Thanks for posting the thread.
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