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Comment
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midori snyder
Registered User
(4/2/06 5:38 pm)
ezSupporter
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Birth in Fairy Tales
Hah! I seem to be the ying to Terri's yang. I am working on an article on Brith in fairy tales...heroic, mythic, difficult and sublime. I have been thinking along the lines of stories and ballands that seem to represent birth itself as a female heroic activity (for instance Janet or Margaret in Tam Lin is heroic precisely because she appears to give birth/rebirth to the man lost to the Elvin enchantment. In some of my favorite versions she is extremely pregnant, in a manger and manages to give birth to the infant and free Tam Lin (as a naked man reborn) simultaneously. Mary, Mother and Bride...love it!)
I have also been thinking about the flip side barrenness and how in many cultures, women resolve these issues by becoming pregnant in astonishing ways. In South African stories a barren wife becomes pregnant through the intercession of doves (her cruel cowives have only given birth to crows), another woman puts meal into a calabash and hides in it a tree--out of which two beautiful children grow.
and then we can go hugely mythic...Izanami in Japan giving birth to islands and dying when she births volcanoes.
I really want to emphasize the way in which pregnancy and birth in the stories become acts of heroism, fantastic acts in and of themselves (a way perhaps to celebrate that ambiguous space women occupy in the act of giving birth)
Also...curious about couvade stories too...
Thanks everyone for your ideas!
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(4/3/06 10:26 am)
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birth
You know, it's not fairy-tale related, but I can't help but think of Sharon Olds's poem "The Language of the Brag," which casts her labor as an extraordinary, explicitly heroic act. It might be worth a look, at least.
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midori snyder
Registered User
(4/3/06 3:08 pm)
ezSupporter
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Re: birth
lovely! thanks Veronica.
on a side note...I do remember some long (aren't they all) Scottish Child Ballad about a woman in labor who has been cursed to labor but never actually give birth...the whole song is about finding the origin of the curse before the laboring mother dies...something goaty under the bed? Really great stuff.
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dlee10
Registered User
(4/3/06 6:33 pm)
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Re: birth
In the back of my mind I remember a tale about a woman who had a curse put on her to keep her in labor so her son would not be born before his brother died. The curse was to keep the child from being the 7th son of a 7th son and therefore having powers. I wish I could remember more.
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agathajun
Registered User
(4/4/06 3:38 am)
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red branch
In the Ulster cycle, the fighting men of Ulster are cursed by Macha, a fairy woman forced to outrun the king's horses while heavily pregnant, to suffer the pangs of childbirth whenever danger threatens the kingdom. On the surface it could seem to use the experience of birth in a denigratory way, but of course Macha was showing them that the strength and power of childbirth is far beyond what they consider strength, and how the heroes of the Red Branch could be bested by a feminine heroic act.
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kristiw
Unregistered User
(4/4/06 2:56 pm)
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difficult labor
Dlee10, this probably isn't the story you're thinking of, but Hera sent Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to sit outside Alcmene's bedroom with crossed fingers, to prolong/prevent the birth of Heracles. I think it was to ensure he would be born after another child, Eurystheus, and therefore be disinherited.
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dlee10
Registered User
(4/4/06 5:52 pm)
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Re: Birth in Fairy Tales
It's not the same story but I wonder if the one I remember was based on that. Highly probable as so many tales have older roots.
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mmcphie
Unregistered User
(4/5/06 8:20 pm)
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Birth in Fairy Tales
Two very interesting stories in which a barren queen gives birth (through eating an enchanted plant or flower) to very dissimilar twins are "Tatterhood" and "Prince Lindworm."
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(4/6/06 3:15 am)
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Re: Birth in Fairy Tales
I can't think of any. Obviously there're loads of stories (a sizeable proportion, I'm guessing, if not the majority) which involve birth, and often birth complicated/traumatic enough to involve fatality, malformations, the birth of twins, etc. etc. But I can't think of any tales where the act/event of a labour/birth - and all its rich emotional/mythical ingredients - forms a significant part.
I just wondered if anyone had any idea why this might be. It does seem extraordinary, especially when many of them were told by women, presumably (at least) to other women or girls. Immediate suspicion would have to be some sort of censorship/self-censorship. Some version of 19th century "seemliness"? - I don't know.
Also just been trying to think of more figurative labours - the struggle of someone or something to emerge from someone or something else, but can't off hand think of any of those either.
(On the other hand, there must be a million 20th/21st Century examples.)
It just seems incredible to me that the act of giving birth was ever deemed lesser to the act of dying, nor that beginnings were ever thought less than endings - in both personal/emotional terms, or the mythical.
Why? Someone here must know!
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(4/6/06 7:40 am)
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Re: Birth in Fairy Tales
The only books I can think of that have birthing as an element are THE MIDWIFE'S APPRENTICE by Karen Cushman and THE BORNING ROOM by Paul Fleischman, both of whom give a historical account of birthings. Although the characters in these books might see something mystical or fantastical, they are written so that the reader understands that it is a historical view of a natural, scientifically understood event.
It's funny, in the last few days I have had the same reaction as DividedSelf--I know lots of birth stories in fairy tales and myth, but no birthing stories. Thinking out loud, I wonder if it isn't because the act of birth itself was filled with superstition, at least in large parts of Europe. Starting fires, shutting widows to heat up a room, followed by putting out the fire and opening all the windows and shouting into the birth canal for the child to come forth was supposed to "unstick" a difficult delivery. Salt was put in the mouth of the newborn to prevent theft by fairies. The bulb of a white lily was supposed to help the mother. Certain saints were called for different moments in labor. Birth and labor were generally misunderstood--in Karen Cushman's book she recounts how a husband thinks his wife is being consumed by a stomach worm or dragon, and when the baby is born is convinced it was through a miracle that the worm was transformed into a child.
The tales told to children were generally unhelpful. The story of the stork, or of children growing under cabbages left huge holes in understanding. And this was true even in agricultural societies where the birthing of cattle and farm animals was well known since childhood.
I wonder whether the act of childbirth was relegated to the same category as menses--something only a mother might speak to her daughter about, and then only in round-about ways. A dirty thing best left to midwives, an not discussed.
Best,
Alice
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(4/6/06 8:20 am)
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birth
I don't know; I can only speak about Renaissance England, but that doesn't seem to have been the case in that context. Confinement seems to have been a period of general female merriment, with friends, family and gossips clustering around the new mother's bedside and making the menfolk uncomfortable, and there are lots of documents discussing pregnancy and suchlike. Midwifes' guides start being published in the 17th century, and do pretty well.
Of course, that kind of stuff changes over time, and by the 19th century, things were quite different...
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midori snyder
Registered User
(4/6/06 10:27 am)
ezSupporter
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Re: Birth in Fairy Tales
South African tales feature birth quite a bit, in part because a woman's status was so dependant on her ability to give birth. Consequently, when a woman was unable, the whole story moves her into a relationship with the fantastic that allows her to figuratively if not in fact give birth herself. The point of the story seems to be the realignment of the woman with the creative forces of the fantastic and natural world: Birth being the most demonstrative act of creativity. Likewise, some of the stories focus on destructive relationships with the fantastic world in which the women give birth to crows...and the woman who does give birth to a beautiful child has to hide him away in a snake skin, or a calabash to protect him. Sometimes, when a child dies, there are witch-mothers who wish to steal the body and restore the child as a zombie...the flip side of birth as a creative, regenerative act.
And there are all birth of heroes...while the bulk of the epic may reside in the rites of passage of the hero, sometimes it is their mothers and their peculiar births that reveals their heroic potential. The source of the hero's creative power is an extension of his mother's creative ability.
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midori snyder
Registered User
(4/6/06 12:09 pm)
ezSupporter
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Macha
agathajun
yes! I had almost forgot and went back and re-read the piece. Fabulous stuff...
but it also reminds me of the fact that birth for the fantastic bride is something much more mythic--ambiguous. When Macha dies delivering her twins she also "births" a curse which insure the men of Ulster for many generations will suffer birth pains whenever Ulster is threatened (and so be unable to fight for their land.)...the birth here spells death for them. Also Medea, gives birth to sons...evidence of her creative union with Jason...but he disrespects her by treating her as a mere woman and she takes back the children through death. So birth (and it's twin death) for these fantastic brides becomes an expression of their power.
thanks everyone...these have been wonderful ideas...
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MaireSmith
Registered User
(4/14/06 2:18 am)
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Re: Macha
This thread reminds me of the story of Cybele, who unable to find a fitting mate, impregnates herself by dropping almonds on her breasts, then leaves the child to be raised by the tree.
She also tries to 'take back' her child, first as a lover, then, when he is uninterested in her that way (being in love with the almond tree nymph), by driving him to an insane suicide.
It's a terrifically involved set of relationships, with the son/lover being the prize in a totally unequal fight between the goddess and the tree, but also with the tree and the goddess collaborating to produce the son.
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Maire Smith |
Hallie
Unregistered User
(4/18/06 2:47 am)
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Ballad
That ballad is 'The Wax Baby' or 'Willie's Lady' - www.sacred-texts.com/neu/...ch006.htm.
I encountered it some 20 years ago, done by Wicky Sears - lovely
version they described as Irish meets belly dancing music (this
was in performance, rather than a serious description of the song).
Only just realised now it was a Child ballad, as I've never heard
it done by anyone else. She had witch-knots and combs of care in
her hair, as well as the kid under the bed - all that and in endless
labour too? Lucky she was so smart!
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