The Golden Maiden (Armenia):
There was a young woman who whose father married a widow who mistreated her and her younger brother. The stepmother pressured her husband into abandoning his two children in the mountains. The siblings managed to find their way home, but not before the brother had been magically transformed into a lamb. The stepmother wanted to eat the lamb, so the maiden took her brother and fled once more into the mountains. There, she met a fairy crone who took pity on her and changed her into a golden-haired fairy maiden with golden garments.Link to full story is in Notes section.
The golden maiden returned home with her brother and hid her golden garments. But she could not hide her golden hair. Her stepmother, on hearing how her stepdaughter came by her golden hair, sent her own daughter from a previous marriage to the mountains. But the fairy crone disliked the stepsister and turned her into a hideous being. Because of that, the stepmother hated her stepchildren even more.
One day the ruler of that country announced that his son would be choosing a wife. Despite her stepmother's repeated obstructions, the golden maiden was chosen to be the prince's wife after he identified her as the owner of the golden slipper that was left in his fountain. After the wedding, the stepmother and stepsister of the bride came to pay her a visit. On the pretext of bathing in the sea, the stepmother pushed her stepdaughter into the sea, stole her golden clothes, put them on her hideous daughter, and sent the veiled stepsister back to the prince in place of his bride.1
But the golden bride did not drown. A great fish had swallowed her. From the fish's belly, she called out to the church sexton, who told the prince what had happened. The prince went to the sea, rescued his bride from the fish, and then put the wicked stepmother and stepsister to death.
Muchie Lal (South India):
A childless queen adopted a pretty little fish to be her son. As the fish grew bigger and bigger, the queen had a huge tank made for him, and twice a day she fed him boiled rice. One day, the fish asked his mother to find him a wife. The queen sent messengers to the people, but nobody wanted to give their daughter to a giant fish who would undoubtedly eat her.Link to full story is in Notes section.
The messengers eventually reached a village where a fakir lived with his daughter by his late first wife, his second wife, and her daughter. The second wife had been treating her stepdaughter abusively. Since her husband was out of town, the woman took the chance to sell her stepdaughter to the queen's messengers, thinking that she would become fish food.2
Before leaving with the queen's messengers, the girl went down to the river to wash her sari. There, she wept about her impending doom. A seven-headed cobra who lived in the river bank came out, and after hearing her story, told her not only how to prevent the fish from eating her, but also how to return the fish prince to his true human form.
Despite her terror, the girl followed the snake's instructions when she was installed in her apartment in the fish tank. The fish prince was originally a human prince who had angered the gods and been turned into a fish as punishment. The girl broke the enchantment on the fish. He turned back into a handsome young prince and married his savior.
They lived happily with his adoptive parents, the king and queen, until the new princess' stepmother, having heard of her good fortune, re-established contact with her. The kind princess forgave her stepmother's cruelties and went back to her native village to visit her father. There, the stepsister, following her mother's instructions, tricked the princess into going to the river with her. She pushed the princess in to drown her, and stole her jewels.
The stepmother then dressed her daughter in the princess' jewels and sent her back to the fish prince. It wasn't long before the prince discovered the fraud. He turned the stepsister out of the palace, and sought the stepmother to learn the whereabouts of his wife. But the wicked woman had gone into hiding.
The princess had not drowned. The cobra, her old friend, rescued her and brought her back to his cobra hole where he and his wife took care of her. The princess gave birth to her son Muchie Lal there, and for three years he lived there, playing with the cobra couple's children, until his father, who had been searching all through the land for his mother, finally found them. The cobra family sent them off with costly gifts.
Tam and Cam (Vietnam):
Tam was a young woman who lived with her abusive stepmother and younger half-sister Cam. One day, after the deceitful Cam had stolen Tam's shrimp catch, a wise old man appeared to the distressed Tam by the river. He told Tam to take the single tiny fish that she caught, and raise it in the well. The stepmother and sister eventually learned about the fish and killed it. The wise old man then told the grieving Tam to bury the bones of her fish friend under her bed.Link to full story is in Notes section.
When the king held a festival, the stepmother tried to prevent Tam from attending. But the old man once again came to her aid. The fish bones turned into fine apparel and a horse, which Tam used to go to the festival. She lost her shoe on the way there. It was found by the king, who decided to wed the owner of the shoe. He found Tam, who was made the queen.3
When the queen went back to her original home to help her stepmother prepare for her father's death anniversary, the stepmother murdered her by engineering her fall from a tree. Tam's stepmother then sent Cam back to the palace to replace her, telling the king that Tam had drowned in a pond by accident.
Tam then went through several reincarnations - first as an oriole, then as two peach trees, then as a loom, to reunite with her husband. Each of these was destroyed by her sister. Finally she became a golden apple, which was found by an old woman. The old woman made Tam retain her human form and adopted her as her daughter. One day, the king came to the old woman's house and unexpectedly found his wife there. Tam was restored to the palace. Cam was rewarded with a gruesome death, and her mother died of shock on learning of it.
The Vietnamese and Armenian tales share the motif of the heroine losing a shoe, which is then used to choose her as a royal bride. In both tales, the stepmother attempts to prevent the protagonist from attending a public event by giving her a time-consuming task involving grains (wheat in the Armenian story, rice in the Vietnamese one). In both cases, birds were used to solve the problem. However, the Armenian story did not involve the intervention of a 3rd party in this part of the tale. The heroine came up with the idea of using chickens on her own.
The Indian and Armenian tales share the plot element of attempted murder by drowning. All 3 stories involve the substitution of the murderous or complicit stepsister/half-sister. The Vietnamese and Indian stories both involve the heroine's adoption by a loving new family before her reunion with her spouse.
Anyway, these stories had me wondering about why people choose to stay in touch with family members that they know hate them and want to hurt them. They had a chance to turn their backs on old relations after marriage. But perhaps I take for granted the privileges afforded by individualism in modern societies. In the traditional societies of our ancestors, where people depended on the mutual help offered by the extended family and the larger community for survival, a clean breaking of ties is probably much less socially acceptable.
Notes
- "The Golden Maiden", The Golden Maiden and other folk tales and fairy stories told in Armenia, A. G. Seklemian. Web. 21 October 2017
- "Muchie Lal" , Old Deccan Days, Or, Hindoo Fairy Legends, Mary Frere. Web. 21 October 2017
- The Story of Tam and Cam, Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 21 October 2017
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