Reading Notes: The Headless Princess, Part B

This week I chose, surprise, Russian myths. I think I am probably going to keep reading them as my extra credit until the stories run out, as I am really enjoying them.

Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887).

A king had a daughter who was a witch, nearby a priest lived and had a son of 10 years old who was learning how to read and write. One day he passed by the window of a princess, and he saw her dressing and noticed that she took off her head! She cleaned it and put it back on. He told anyone who would listen about what he saw.

One day, the headless witch became sick. She demanded if she died that the priest’s son reads something called a psalter over her three nights in a row. When she died, the king ordered the son to do as the princess had wished. The boy was unhappy, and when he told his teacher about it she gave him a knife for protection to trace a circle around him. She warned him he should do his work, but not to look up from the reading no matter what happened.

When he started reading, the princess rose from her grave, furious he had been a peeping tom and a gossip. She rushed the boy, but the circle protected him. She made all kinds of horrible hallucinations happen, but he never looked up. Once the sun came up, she went back to her coffin. The second night the same thing happened. The third night though, the teacher gave him a hammer and four nails, to nail the coffin shut and to hold the hammer when he started reading.

When the princess tried to leave, she found she couldnt and was furious. She made him think the church was on fire, but he did not look and when the day came the church was fine. As the princess rushed her coffin.-The king found her inside the coffin the next day, lid open and her body face down. The king found out from the boy what had happened, and a stake was driven through her chest. He rewarded the boy for his bravery with money and land. 

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End Thoughts

I love how at a loss I always am for these stories. Was the reading causing her to rise, or did she know she would rise and wanted him to be there to torment him, and the reading was a distraction for him? Why was she headless? Why did she die? Why punish a boy in the wrong place, wrong time? Why did the teacher have all the answers - was she a witch too? Maybe she had cursed the princess for some wrongdoing? Who knows, but this gives me an idea for a story.

And About My Image Choice 

I love the movie Mars Attacks! and when I searched for "female headless horseman" on google, the image results made me think of this scene in the movie where a lady whose obsessed with her dog gets a little switch-a-roony during one of the alien's experiments. If you are in the mood to watch a crazy weird and funny 90's movie, this would be a good start!

Week 6 Story: What You Give is What You Get

There once was a girl named Coral so beautiful that all the men in the land wished to take her hand in marriage. The king was distraught, as he felt no man was good enough for her; however, there were three brothers who were the son of a rival kingdom that wished to wed her. Seeking to form an alliance and to make peace, he allowed his daughter to pick one of them.

The girl was as kind as she was pretty, so she was herself distraught by the choice; she did not wish to hurt two of the three men's feelings, so she delayed the decision spending time with each of them. One brother was a priest, the other a smith, and the third a gardener. The men all loved talking with her, they took any chance they could to boast about why they would make the best husband.

But the decision would never be made, as one day she became ill and died.

All three men were grief stricken, they had spent so much time courting her they had not thought of the possibility of none of them getting her.

The priest was so struck with sadness he lost all faith and revoked his dedication to God. The smith was so depressed sailed out alone to sea. The gardener was so miserable he surrounded his house in rose thorns so no one would try to visit him.

One day at sea, the smith heard of a spell that could bring the dead back to life. Finding this prospect of having the chance at wedding that beautiful girl again he rushed back home to tell his brothers. He needed the priest to perform the ritual and he needed the gardener to collect the herbs for it.

They set about performing the ritual, and as they gathered around her grave they bickered on what would happen once she was back.

"Well obviously I should have her, as I am the one able to perform this ceremony." said the priest

"You may perform it, but I supply it with the needed ingredients. I should be her husband." said the gardener.

"None of this would be possible if I had not found the ritual. I am the one she should be with." said the smith.

They argued throughout the entire ceremony, and their selfish, vain bickering turned the herbs sour. The earth quaked, the sky darkened, and from her grave she rose; Coral came back to life, but she was a beautiful girl no more.

"Oh all that is holy, what menace is upon is!" said the priest

Coral was now a hideous shell of her former self. Her hair, before beautiful golden locks, now was slimy dreads filled with electric charge and pulsating leafs. Her skin, once a white porcelain canvas, now a rocky field of craters and protruding rocks of purples, yellows, reds, and many other unnatural colors.

The men were so horrified, they immediately threw her off of the nearest cliff they could find. She didn't even have time to comprehend what had happened in the time she rose to the time they rejected her so heinously.

The smith went back to the person from whom he received the spell, and asked why Coral was brought back so terrible looking.

"You had the ingredients, and you had a holy - or once holy man - to perform the spell. But what you did not have was genuine love for who you wished to return to the land of the living. Your shallow affection brought her back, but brought her back only as you deserved - hideous and untouchable."

The brothers' bad karma was not over yet, as the king had found out what they had done. 

"You disrupted my daughter's eternal resting place and may have dammed her soul from heavenly grounds. There is no alliance to be had with a king who raised you three!" The king waged war, decimating the opposing kingdom and banishing the sons to live lives of nomads.

While Coral was brought back from the dead as a multicolored monster, some beauty came from her sad story. As her body fell into the water from the cliff she had been cast from, she melted into the waters and became home to millions of others who appreciated all she had to offer. She became a new kind of beauty, she became the coral reef.

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Authors Note:

I was really inspired to write this story after reading the original, so I decided to write a story instead of doing the story-lab this week.

I took some of the things the men did and turned it into their jobs in this story. One man became a monk after the girl died, so I made him a priest. Another dipped her bones into the sea, so the only thing I could think of was a smith (someone who dips hot weapons into water) and made him the one travel to travel and find the spell to bring her back. The last I made a gardener, as he was the one to build a hut and sleep on her ashes. In the original story it was all focused on how pretty she was, so I made the point that the men had no real love for her, only her appearance; and in the end, none of them got her. I didn't want to end it as a happy-ever-after story, but I didn't want her to end up as just a prospect for some other guy to marry. So I gave her a sad spin, coming back hideous instead of pretty and her name in the original story gave me an idea to make this a creation story of how the coral reef was made. From that I was also inspired by Medusa's story, she was so hideous her gaze even turned sand to stone (or a coral reef, in the greek creation story).

Reading Notes: Goblins: The Snake's Poison, Part B

Story source: Twenty-Two Goblins, translated by Arthur W. Ryder, with illustrations by Perham W. Nahl (1917).

A prince wakes to see his wife has been taken, unknowingly to him by a fairy named Love-Speed. He is very distraught and his family tries to console him to no avail. He gave all he had to the Brahmans and set off to search holy places for his wife. He roamed through dreaded heat. The wife of Brahmans felt bad for him, seeing him starving she gave him food to take to eat near their pond. Right as he was about to eat, a passing hawk with a snake in it's claws died and dripped poison onto his dish without him seeing it. He thought the wife of Brahmans poisoned him, and as she searched for a doctor he died. Brahmans did not believe her, and thought she poisoned him on purpose. 

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The goblin tells this story to the king, and asks who killed the man - the hawk, snake, or wife. The king said none of them were to blame, as the man was to blame for accusing the woman of poisoning him. 

Reading Notes: Goblins: The Three Lovers, Part A

Story source: Twenty-Two Goblins, translated by Arthur W. Ryder, with illustrations by Perham W. Nahl (1917).

A girl was very pretty, and she attracted the attention of three brothers. For fear of hurting the feelings of two of the three, she waited to decide who she would marry. However, one day she died. Her body was burned to ashes that one brother slept on and got food by begging, another took her bones to dip in sacred rivers, and the third traveled the world as a monk.
The monk brother found a woman who threw her child in the fire, but she brought him back to life within seconds. The monk stole the book she had used, in hopes of bringing the girl - Coral - back to life as beautiful as ever. They fought over who should have her, and went to the king to decide.
The king knew who should have her, and if he did not say he was cursed so that his head would explode. The king decided the monk did what a father would do, so he could not be the husband. The one who kept her bones did what a son should do, so he could not be the husband. The one who slept with her ashes however, did what a lover would do - so he should be the husband.

Coral is like a phoenix, from the ashes she rose.