emberleo | Favorite Folktales?

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What are your favorite folktales with female protagonists?

I'll accept anything with unknown author as "Folktale" whether it's a parable, a legend, a saga, a fairytale, or whatever.

I guess I don't mind knowing about works with known authors too provided you cite the author's name for reference.

But I'm really looking for the kinds of patterns that primarily manifest when a story has gotten told and retold and reshaped and retold over time, rather than a single person's idea of a good story, however grounded in tradition it may be.

-E-

Current Mood: curious

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From:

lferion

I have always been fond of Donkeyskin - the folk/fairy-tale version with the dresses and the trunk that travels underground. Largely because of the dresses, and because the princess has gumption.

Tam-Lin, in a myriad of tellings - Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip, the ballad, etc.

Then there is Ursula K LeGuin's The Tombs of Atuan, which certainly had a formative influence on me, and for sheer word-wonder, just about everything Patricia Mckillip has written, particularly Ombria in Shadow and Song for the Basilisk.

From:

emberleo

Donkeyskin... not sure I've heard that one. Do you have a link for it online?

Tamlin...ooh, hmm, I'd forgotten that, Janet IS the protagonist, isn't she, and she is a proactive one, at that, but is she tricky?

-E-

From:

lferion

Here's a link to a bare-bones telling: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault11.html It was written/collected by Perrault.

Janet is certainly steadfast in Tamlin, tricky depends on the tale.

Other ones I've thought of: Princess and the Frog -- the one where she takes the frog back to the palace because she promised she would, after he rescues the thing she dropped in the pond.

Beauty and the Beast

From:

emberleo

There are variations of the themes in Beauty and the Beast that occur in tales not reconstructed by Perrault, but Perrault's reconstructions seem to have the effect of constricting female characters to proper behavior in a way that non-Perrault versions don't. I'm twitchy about his work, although I do appreciate the way he takes fragmented stories and turns them into more cohesive tales.

I'm primarily familiar with the poem/song version of Tamlin. Are there other primary sources for the tale?

-E-

From:

lferion

Child apparently collected some dozen or more versions of Tam Lin, and the Thomas the Rhymer story is related to it as well, and at least 200 years older (1300s rather than 1500s). Children/people stolen by fairies goes way back. I don't have resources to hand to give any details or references other than wikipedia though.