Animal as Bridegroom


In folkloristics, "The Animal as Bridegroom" refers to a group of folk and fairy tales about a human woman marrying or being betrothed to an animal. The animal is revealed to be a human prince in disguise or under a curse. Most of these tales are grouped in the international system of Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index under type ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband". Some subtypes exist in the international classification as independent stories, but they sometimes do not adhere to a fixed typing.

Overview

As consequence of the surge in folktale collecting and the beginnings of folkloristics as a discipline in the 19th century, scholars and folktale collectors compared many versions of "The Animal as Bridegroom" to the tale of Cupid and Psyche.
Folklore scholar Stith Thompson clarified that the animal bridegroom may have been born due to its parents' wishes, or alternates between human and animal shapes. Some tales have the animal son court a princess, but her father demands a brideprice for her.
In some versions, the father surrenders his daughter as his ransom. In others, it is the mother who delivers or promises her daughter to the monster, and it is also by the mother's insistence that the heroine breaks the taboo on her husband: the human heroine must not see him at night, or she must not reveal his true nature to her relatives.

Interpretations

The theme invites all sorts of scholarly and literary interpretations.
Scholar Jack Zipes describes these tale types as a mate selection wherein the human maiden is forced to marry an animal bridegroom as per the insistence of her family or due to her fate. In another work, Zipes writes that, in these tales, the supernatural husband goes through a process of civilizing himself, whereas to the human spouse it represents an initiatory journey.
Researcher Barbara Fass Leavy cited that these tales are interpreted under a feminist reading, which "applauds" the will of the main heroine, in contrast to passive heroines like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Leavy, as well as scholar Wendy Doniger, also stated that the "Animal Bridegroom" is the male counterpart of the "Swan Maiden" - both types referring to a marriage between a human person and a mythical being.
Richard MacGillivray Dawkins suggested that its endurance as a myth and a folktale was due to the story "reflect... much of the relations of man and wife."
To Donald Ward, type 425 is, on the one hand, an erotic story, the union between divine male sexuality and mortal female virginity, but, on the other hand, also a tale of "love, devotion, and willingness to sacrifice". Similarly, Wendy Doniger sees, in this cycle of tales, a contrast or a "tension" between "the human and the superhuman", and between "the animal and the divine".
James M. Taggart stated that these tales underlie a "metaphorical gender division of labor in courtship and marriage": while men take the active role in courtship, and women assume a more passive role, the latter are slotted into a role with "more responsibility" in maintaining the marital status.
In her book Off With Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood, in the chapter about animal husbands and the human women who marry them, scholar Maria Tatar concludes that the heroine of these tales is part of a complex set of actions and emotions. For instance, Tatar interprets the episode of Psyche's betrayal of Cupid identity as a contrast between the heroine's seeking greater intimacy and knowledge of her husband, and her existent attachments to her family - which causes the separation episode.
A line of scholarship associates human-animal marriages to ancient totem ancestry.
Another line of scholarship describes these tales as an initiatory journey for both parties: the husband becomes an animal or wears an animal skin as part of his marriage initiation, while the human wife burns his animal skin and begins her own quest to find her husband as part of hers.

ATU tale types

'''Note: the following sections are based on the descriptions of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index. Some information may differ in regional and national folktale indexes.'''

ATU 425: The Search for the Lost Husband

Folklorist D. L. Ashliman associated this general type with stories wherein the heroine crafts an artificial husband out of raw materials, who becomes a real man and a foreign queen falls in love with him. However, he noted that, among the tales he listed under this classification, some may also fall under type 425A, "Animal as Bridegroom". Folklorist Christine Goldberg named this narrative The Artificial Husband. She also took notice that the heroine, in the "Artificial Husband" tales, is the more active part and initiates the action, unlike the heroines of the other subtypes.
In folktales classified as tale type ATU 425A, "The Animal as Bridegroom", the maiden breaks a taboo or burns the husband's animal skin and, to atone, she must wear down a numbered pair of metal shoes. On her way to her husband, she asks for the help of the Sun, the Moon and the Wind, a sequence that appears in Northern Europe, Germany, Portugal, in the Slavonic languages and in the Balkans. In other European tales, the heroine's helpers may be three old crones, or her husband's relatives.
During her journey, the heroine is given three nuts that contain objects inside, objects that are related to weaving, or beautiful dresses representing the Sun, the Moon and stars, or the sea, the land and the skies.
At the end of her journey, the heroine finds her husband at the mercy of a second wife. She bribes the false bride with items she acquired on the way to spend a night with him, or breaks the nuts which contain gifts. Only on the third night the heroine manages to talk to her husband and he recognizes her.
In Celtic and Germanic variants of the subtype, before the separation from her husband, the heroine's children are taken from her and hidden elsewhere. Another recurring motif of the subtype involves the heroine washing three drops of her husband's blood that fell on his clothes - a motif that is located in French variants from Brittany.
According to Hans-Jörg Uther, the main feature of tale type ATU 425A is "bribing the false bride for three nights with the husband". In fact, when he developed his revision of Aarne-Thompson's system, Uther remarked that an "essential" trait of the tale type ATU 425A was the "wife's quest and gifts" and "nights bought".
  • About the astonishing husband Hora
  • Again, The Snake Bridegroom
  • The Calf's Skin
  • Enchanted Balaur
  • The Enchanted Pig
  • The Enchanted Prince Who was a Hedgehog
  • The Lizard With the Seven Skins
  • Black Bull of Norroway
  • The Brown Bear of Norway
  • The Daughter of the Skies
  • East of the Sun and West of the Moon
  • The Enchanted Snake
  • The Frog Queen
  • King Crin
  • Prince Crawfish
  • Prince Hat under the Ground
  • Prince Whitebear
  • The Iron Stove
  • The Serpent Prince
  • Sigurd, the King's Son
  • The Sprig of Rosemary
  • The Story of King Pig
  • The Tale of the Hoodie
  • The Tale of the Little Dog
  • The Three Daughters of King O'Hara
  • Trandafiru
  • White-Bear-King-Valemon
  • Whitebear Whittington
  • The White Hound of the Mountain
  • The White Wolf

    ATU 425B: Son of the Witch (The Witch's Tasks)

This category of tales involves the heroine performing difficult tasks for her husband's family. In this type, the heroine reaches the house of a witch, where she works as her servant. One of the tasks is to go to another witch's house, and fetch from there a box, a casket, a bag, a sack of something that her husband warns not to open, but she does.
Richard MacGillivray Dawkins also noted that, in some tales, the mother-in-law, to further humiliate the heroine, betrothes her son to another bride and sends her on errands to get materials for the upcoming wedding. Jack Zipes emphasizes that the heroine must perform the tasks before she has a chance to free her husband.
In some tales, the heroine is forced to carry torches to her husband's marriage cortège - a practice that Zipes and relate to an ancient Roman custom mentioned by Plautus in his work Casina. According to Donald Ward, Swedish scholar Jan-Öjvind Swahn stated that his type A, "the oldest", contains the motif of the heroine holding a torch to her husband's second marriage to the false bride - a trap set by the witch or her daughter with the intent to kill the heroine. However, she is saved when her husband takes the torch and drops it into the false bride's hands. Jan-Öjvind Swahn named this The Torch Motif and located it in tales from Scandinavia, Greece, India, Turkey, and Romance-speaking areas.
This type may be conflated with the previous one. However, Uther argues that the distinction between both categories lies in "the quest for the casket" and the visit to the second witch. Catalan scholarship locates the distribution of the latter motif in variants from Latvia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, France, Italy, Turkey, and Serbia.
As for the "quest for the casket", researcher Annamaria Zesi suggests that it occurs in Eastern Mediterranean variants. Similarly, Catalan scholarship located the motif of the box of musical instruments in Greek, Turkish and South Italian variants. In that regard, Swahn divided this motif in areas: in variants from Norway, Spain, Greece and Persia, the box contains something dangerous; in variants from Mediterranean tradition, the box contains instruments; in "Danish and Romance tradition", playing men leap out of the box ; in Scandinavia, it contains flying jewels.
According to Christine Goldberg and Walter Puchner, some variants of this type show as a closing episode "The Magic Flight" sequence, a combination that appears "sporadically in Europe", but "traditionally in Turkey". This episode also appears in the Bulgarian type 425B, "Момъкът с конската глава" or "Der Junge mit Pferdekopf", and in Iranian type AaTh 425B, Der Tierbräutigam: Die böse Zauberin.
A related tale type is type AaTh 428, "The Wolf", considered by scholars as a fragmentary version of the tale of Cupid and Psyche, lacking the initial part about the animal husband and corresponding to the part of the witch's tasks. Accordingly, Uther revised the international classification system and subsumed previous type AaTh 428, "The Wolf" under the new type ATU 425B, "Son of the Witch".