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Author
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Comment
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kristiw
Unregistered User
(1/26/06 10:50 pm)
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eating things to get pregnant/ swallowed whole
Scavenger hunt, anyone?
I'm looking for some examples of:
(a) women in fairy tales who eat things in order to become pregnant. I can think of at least one, title of which I can't recall, where the queen cooks some fish and eventually gives birth to a son, but the cook or servant eats the leftover and becomes pregnant herself. Maybe another where a queen is told to eat only one of something, but it is so delicious she eats the second and has twins.
(b) stories besides LRRH and the Seven Young Kids where characters are swallowed whole and then re-emerge unscathed.
Thanks!
--Kristi
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(1/27/06 4:14 am)
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Re: eating things to get pregnant/ swallowed whole
In Tatterhood, the Queen eats two flowers she finds under her bed to become pregnant, and in the Young Slave, an early Snow White variant, Cilia becomes pregnant after swallowing a leaf.
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Laura McCaffrey
Registered User
(1/27/06 6:12 am)
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Re: eating things to get pregnant/ swallowed whole
Do you only want stories where women intend to get pregnant, or also stories where that's the result regardless of intention?
Cerridwen/Caridwen chases Gwion after he swallows the brew she intended for her son. They both go through a series of transformations. Then he becomes a grain of wheat. She becomes a hen and eats him. She bears him as her child and he later becomes Taliesin.
From The Mabinogian , translated by Lady Charlotte Guest.
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Kevin Andrew Murphy
Registered User
(1/27/06 2:30 pm)
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Re: eating things to get pregnant/ swallowed whole
Let's see. In Greek myth, Attis's mother eats an almond and gets pregnant from that. (Check Bullfinch's Mythology for the particulars.) There's the business with the two flowers already mentioned, and then there are the two fruits in "Prince Lindworm" where the witch told the queen to peel the fruit first before she ate it, but she skipped it with the first but peeled all seven skins with the second and then gave birth to a lindworm and a regular prince. Unfortunately, the lindworm keep coming back to demand brides to eat until he got a girl who knew something of witchcraft and came in wearing a dress and seven shifts underneath, then told the lindworm "If I must shed a shift, you must shed a skin" until she was at last left with a naked prince and her final shift.
And then there's "The Snow Daughter and the Fire Son" where the old woman swallows an icicle and a spark, jokes about having kids made of ice and fire, then actually does.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(1/27/06 2:45 pm)
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Re: eating things to get pregnant/ swallowed whole
As for being swallowed whole and emerging unscathed, I think most of the Olympian gods were swallowed whole by their father, Cronus, in a vain attempt to prevent himself from being toppled by his son Zeus.
Did Jonah emerge unscathed from the belly of the whale? Baron Munchausen certainly does, in his stories.
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kristiw
Unregistered User
(1/27/06 3:52 pm)
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Lindworm
Oh hm, I turned up Prince Lindworm in an old archived discussion, but I couldn't find the text online and I think a previous poster might have confused it with the flowers from Tatterhood; I had them both as queens eating flowers-- is it a straight up mistake or are there multiple versions?
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Angie
Registered User
(1/27/06 8:22 pm)
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Re: eating things to get pregnant/ swallowed whole
There is a Sicilian folk tale called 'Saint Oniria' in which an innkeeper's daughter serving two hunters, finds a heart in one of the hunter's pocket. She can't resist it's aroma and eats it whole. Soon after this she becomes pregnant and is beaten and abused by her father who believes she has disgraced the family by becoming pregnant before marriage.
The heart, belonged to Saint Oniria who had been killed by a fire, the only thing being left of him was his heart from which he was to be born again. As the innkeeper's daughter ate the heart, although a virgin, she conceived him to be born again and he is born Saint Oniria again with morals to teach the abusive father and humanity in general.
You can find the whole tale in 'Beautiful Angiola' a treasury of Sicilian folk and fairy tales collected by Laura Gonzenbach and translated by Jack Zipes.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Angie
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