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Author
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Comment
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JonathanGilmore
Registered User
(7/4/06 5:11 am)
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Taking hearts
Hi, does anyone know of any tales and/or folklore about the forcible taking of hearts? - I mean in a fairly broad sense - but nevertheless in a real, physical sense, the physical organ itself. For instance, the removal of a heart after death, or murder by the gouging out of the heart, or perhaps someone somehow surviving such removal... etc...
Any ideas would be appreciated.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(7/4/06 9:53 am)
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hearts
In Snow White, the
queen demands Snow's heart to eat. I believe that in one of the
Juniper Tree
variants involves specifically eating the kid's heart.
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ladyermine
Unregistered User
(7/5/06 9:05 am)
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Hearts
In the ballad of TAM LIN the fairy queen exclaims that if she hd known Tam Lin was going to escape she would have taken out his eyes and heart and replaced them with wooden ones... she may mean this literally.
There are several rather queasy folk tales involving the extraction of hearts: in POTTLE OF BRAINS the fool, who is seeking wisdom is told to bring the heart of the creature who loves him best extracts his mother's heart (after her death in the version we have, but I wonder...) and there is the even nastier one in which a wicked woman demands that her lover bring her his mother's heart - he kills the mother, and, rushing to his mistress with the heart, he trips, and the heart cries out "Oh my dear son, did you hurt yourself?"
Then there is the French romance in which a husband kills his wife's lover and serves up his heart at dinner - when she has eaten it he tells her what it was and asks if she enjoyed the dish "So much," she replies, "that I will never eat again.." and stabs herself
This, in the eighteenth century has become the story of a girl sent the ashes of her lover's heart, who, thinking it is a present of tea, drinks them
Many magicians and supernatural creatures have external hearts - often kept in eggs, inside birds, inside fierce creatures such as a boar...
Does any of this help?
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Colleen
Unregistered User
(7/5/06 10:06 am)
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Not a Traditional Tale...
... but interesting (and scary!) - in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there was an episode (Season 4, called "Hush") in which a fairy tale came to life in a deadly fashion. I'm assuming it's a tale Joss Whedon made up; I don't think it's a traditional one.
In the tale, a town is basically put under a curse of silence and when no one can make a sound, really scary-looking men called "The Gentlemen" drift silenty through town, cutting hearts out of living victims. They're accompanied by assistants who are all in, if I recall correctly, straight jackets. Once the Gentlemen have collected seven hearts - actually, I don't know remember what was supposed to happen because in the fairy tale, a princess found her voice and screamed and it defeated the Gentlemen.
In the episode, Sunnydale is the town cursed by silence and several people do have their hearts cut out before Buffy and her boyfriend Riley find the box containing everyone's voices. Once it's opened, Buffy screams long and loud, all the Gentlemen's heads explode, and Sunnydale is saved once again.
It's a great episode - worth renting if you've never seen it. The Gentlemen are truly scary and about 20 minutes of the ep is done in complete silence (watching Giles tell the fairy tale with sign language and an overhead projector is a scream. Hmm. Pardon the pun!). There's also a creepy little sing-song chant: "Can't even shout/Can't even cry/The Gentlemen are coming by.../Can't call to mom/Can't say a word/You're gonna die screaming but you won't be heard."
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InkGypsy
Registered User
(7/5/06 12:53 pm)
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Re: Not a Traditional Tale...
I'm sure this must be a fairy tale but I haven't been able to find it - saw it as a puppet show, complete with a beating flying heart, when I was a child and still remember it quite well to this day. It was called The Heartless Princess and I'm recounting it to the best of my four-years-old-little-girl-memory:
There once was a princess who, when she was born, was gifted with beauty and many other desirable attributes. In exchange for these gifts her parents were only asked to give the witch one thing: the princess' heart "for safe keeping". The princess' parents, just delighted to at last have a daughter, foolishly acepted the terms and the witch quickly departed with the baby's beating heart locked securely in a magic box.
The princess grew to be just as promised but was a cold and cruel girl. Her parents could not find any prince or nobleman she would accept as a suitor so desperately issued a challenge that whoever was accepted by her, whether low born or high, would have her hand in marriage. A young man (I think it was actually a prince from a far away land, in the show I saw) discovered the secret that where her heart should be beating was instead silence. He knew then that she could never be won until her heart was returned to her.
The young man set out on a perilous jorney to hunt down the witch who had taken her heart. After a perilous journey and many trials the young man found the witch's lair and the magic box. A fierce battle caused him to be severly wounded but not before he broke the lock on the magic box which held her heart. As he collapsed the last thing he saw was the beating heart, finally free and flying it's way swiftly back to the princess where it belonged.
The princess was suddenly overcome with fear for the young man and sent out a party of soldiers to his aid to bring him safely back to the castle. He arrived deathly cold and with barely a heartbeat but she cried warm tears on him and his heart responded with a strong rhythm. He regained his health and the princess remained faithfully and lovingly at his side from that time on.
I want to say she was no longer as beautiful on the outside but that it didn't matter but that may be my 4 year old self remembering it incorrectly. I'm also not sure about the absence of a heartbeat in the young man after his trial but I like to remember it that way.
If anyone knows this tale's origin I'd love to find out.
From vague memory (I'm away from my resources at present) there are quite a few stories of a heart being kept safe and other variations. Kay's heart in The Snow Queen also needed to be melted by the warmth of Gerda's tears so he could be freed. Although it wasn't taken from him, he was heartless for a while.
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Monika
Registered User
(7/5/06 2:32 pm)
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Re: Taking hearts
You may want to look at Aztec mythology as well. Removing the still-beating (i.e. still alive, and therefore valuable) heart from the body was the critical part of Aztec human sacrifices. It was also believed that by eating the victim's heart, you could absorb certain of their qualities - for example, by eating the heart of a warrior you might gain some of their strength and courage. Off the top of my head, I can't give you any examples of folklore or stories that reflect these beliefs, but I'm sure there must be some.
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LadyErmine
Unregistered User
(7/5/06 2:38 pm)
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Taking hearts
It is possible that Snow White's stepmother wanted to eat her heart in order to gain her beauty... btw there was a television programme recently which suggested that heart-transplant patients DO take on some of the characteristics of their donors...
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Daniel
Unregistered User
(7/6/06 5:44 pm)
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Re:Taking hearts
The early 19th century German fabulist Wilhelm Hauff wrote a tale called "The Cold Heart". It tells of a poor peasant who longs for wealth at any cost. When a mysterious spirit in the forest promises him all the gold that he wants, but in return for his heart, the peasant willingly agrees. The peasant becomes a wealthy man but, without his heart, he becomes incapable of feeling love or happiness. Eventually he decides that it is better to be poor but kind and loving rather than rich but cold-hearted. The tale has been translated into English.
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(7/6/06 7:51 pm)
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Re: Re:Taking hearts
Oscar Wilde's HAPPY PRINCE is about the statue of a prince who, in the form of a statue and with the help of a swallow, gives away all of his gilding and jewels to the poor. The swallow, because of his devotion to the prince, stays in the city too long into winter and dies, and upon his death, the leaden heart of the statue breaks. The next day, the mayor decides that the statue looks too shabby and has it melted down, but the lead heart will not melt. When God asks one of his angels to bring him the two most precious things in the city, he brings the broken heart and the dead swallow who are then rewarded in Heaven.
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korin
Unregistered User
(7/7/06 11:12 pm)
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taking hearts
In Transylvanian folklore, the heart of a 'boyar' -- a Transylvanian shaman -- was thought to have magical properties. I know there's at least on story where the boyar's heart is taken from his chest and brought to the graves of some newly dead people (the parents of the main character), and when the blood drips on the graves the people are brought back to life. The heart was then returned to the boyar's chest, without any apparent ill effects. In this case the boyar consented to the taking of his heart, so I don't know whether this counts. In some cultures, eating your slain enemies heart would give you their courage -- thus, African bushmen would not let children eat a jackal's heart, fearing it would make them cowardly. In Greek mythology Dionysus was slain and eated by the Titans, but Zeus saved and swallowed his heart so that Semele might give birth to him again.
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korin
Unregistered User
(7/7/06 11:18 pm)
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taking hearts 2
Plus, of course, there are the 'literary' vampire stories where the removal (and burning) of the heart is one way to kill the vampire. There's a story of a medieval revenant written by William of Newburgh where an evil man who was buried kept returning night after night to the village. Eventually the men of the afflicted town went to his grave to dig the body up. They discovered it very near the surface, swollen with blood, the graveclothes torn to shreds, whereupon they tore the heart out and ripped it apart, then burned the corpse.
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JonathanGilmore
Registered User
(7/12/06 2:00 am)
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Re: taking hearts 2
Thanks to everyone for all of these - great stuff, and lots to go on...
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Erica
Carlson
Registered User
(7/12/06 11:59 am)
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Re: Not a Traditional Tale...
I doubt this is exactly the same as your puppet show tale, but it sounds very similar. It's from Lang's Green Fairy Book:
Heart
of Ice
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israfel
Unregistered User
(8/8/06 12:04 am)
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Forcible removal of a live person's heart
In The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade there is a passage that mentions ripping out a living girl's heart. I haven't actually read this book, but it is no doubt an excellent source of acts of bizarre violence.
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