Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #20: MAOL A CHLIOBAIN

This story, collected by JR Campbell in ‘Popular Tales of the West Highlands’(1860) and told in Gaelic by Ann MacGillvray of Islay, is a rougher, tougher Highland version of the better known Lowland Scots fairy tale ‘Mollie Whuppie'. The heroine’s name, Maol a Chliobain, is pronounced something like: ‘Muell uh chlee pin’ – the ch sounding soft as in ‘loch’ and the ‘p’ very soft too. The second part of the name seems to mean something soft and flabby, like a cow’s dewlap, so she may have started out as one of those vivid, ugly heroines who (like Tatterhood) take no prisoners and eventually transform into beauties.[1] Refreshingly, her looks aren't mentioned at all in this tale though. 

And Maol a Chliobain is a fiery, determined character. When she and her two sisters set out to seek their fortunes, their mother bakes them bannocks and offers each daughter a choice between a small half-bannock and a blessing or a large half and a curse. The two eldest take the large half of the bannock and their mother’s curse; Maol a Chliobain, the youngest, takes the small half and her mother’s blessing. The two eldest try forcibly to dissuade the youngest from coming with them, but she persists. They spend the night at a giant’s house, sleeping in the same bed as his daughters, and Maol a Chliobain saves herself and her sisters by swapping the string necklaces they all wear for the amber necklaces the giant’s daughters wear. (This is not a story in which you are supposed to feel sorry for giants and their families.) She makes a getaway, throws a magic bridge of hair over a river, returns to rob the giant of various treasures, orchestrates his death… 

I love the lengthening litany of challenge-and-answer between Maol a Chliobain and the giant. It not only serves to remind the listeners of all that has happened, it’s a drama in itself as the girl stands her ground and answers back, proudly owning her deeds: there was a convention that when dealing with a dangerous Otherworldly enemy, you should make sure always to have the last word. The story ends with Maol a Chliobain competently marrying her sisters and herself off to the sons of a rich farmer…

Or does it? JF Campbell has recorded another, slightly different telling of this story ‘very prettily told at Easter, 1859’ by ‘a young girl, a nursemaid to Mr Robertson, Chamberlain of Argyll, at Inveraray’. In this one the heroine drowns the giant. Towards the end of the telling, somebody asked, ‘And what became of Maol a Chliobain? Did she marry?’ 

‘Oh no,’ the girl replied, ‘she did not marry at all. There was something about a key hid under a stone, and a great deal more which I cannot remember. My father did not like my mother to be telling us such stories, but she knows plenty more –’ and the lassie departed from the parlour in great perturbation. 

A key hidden under a stone! A great deal more of the story! Did she marry or didn't she...? If we only knew what happened! But maybe we're free to imagine our own endings. The storyteller's words serve to remind us (if we needed reminding) that none of these tales are set in stone. Everyone who told them would change them a little - even I, for I've tweaked it a little to make it read better. JR Campbell's version has a few passages where it's clear small points have been missed.

Vocabulary: A bannock is a cake baked on a griddle. A glave is a sword. A gillie is a manservant.

 

Long ago there was a widow who had three daughters, and they said to her that they would go to seek their fortune. She baked three bannocks and said to the eldest, “Which wilt thou have, the little half and my blessing or the big half and my curse?” “I like best,” said she, “the big half and thy curse.” She said to the middle one, “Which wilt thou have, the little half and my blessing or the big half and my curse?” “I like best,” said she, “the big half and thy curse.” She said to the little one, “Which wilt thou have, the little half and my blessing or the big half and my curse?”

            “I like best the little half and thy blessing.” 

            This pleased her mother; she gave her the blessing and the two other halves as well.

            The three daughters went away, but the two eldest didn’t want the youngest to be with them, and they tied her to a stone and left her; but her mother’s blessing came and freed her, and when they looked back they saw her coming with the rock on top of her! They let her alone a while, but coming to a peat stack they tied her to the peat stack and went on. But her mother’s blessing came and freed her. And when they looked back what did they see but her coming, and the peat stack on the top of her. They let her alone a turn of a while, till they reached a tree and tied her to the tree, but her mother’s blessing came and freed her, and what did they see but their sister coming with the tree on top of her! So they saw it was no good, and loosed her, and let her come with them. 

            On they went until nightfall. They saw a light a long way from them, but they made such speed they were not long in coming to it. When they knocked, what was this but a giant’s house! A carlin old woman opened the door: she was the giant’s mother. They asked to stay the night, she said they might, and they were put to bed with the giant’s three daughters, with a golden cloth spread over them. There were twists of knobs of amber about the necks of the giant’s daughters, and nothing but strings of horse-hair about their own necks. They all slept, but Maol a Chliobain did not sleep.

            In the night, a great thirst came upon the giant. He called to his bald, rough-skinned gillie with the glave of light to bring him water, and the rough-skinned gillie said there was not a drop of water to be had. “Kill,” said the giant, “one of the strange girls and bring me her blood to drink.”  

“In the dark, how will I know them?” said the bald, rough-skinned gillie. 

            “There are twists of knobs of amber around the necks of my daughters, and nothing but twists of horsehair about the necks of the rest.”

            Maol a Chliobain heard the giant, and quickly she put  the horsehair strings about the necks of the giant’s three daughters, and the twist of amber knobs she put about her own neck and her sisters, and she lay down again so quietly. And the bald, rough-skinned gillie came and killed one of the giant’s daughters with the glave of light and took the blood to him. He drank it and asked for ‘MORE’, and the next one was killed. Again he asked for ‘MORE’, and the gillie killed the third one.

            Maol a Chliobain woke her sisters and said there was need to be going; she took them on her back, and she took with her also the golden cloth that lay on the bed. The golden cloth cried out! The giant woke; he saw Maol a Chliobain leaving with her sisters, and he ran after her. So close was he, the sparks of fire she was putting out of the stones with her heels leapt up and struck the giant’s chin, while the sparks of fire the giant was bringing out of the stones with the points of his feet, they were striking Maol a Chliobain in the back of the head. And so they ran till they reached a river, and Maol a Chliobain plucked a hair from her head and flung it over the river to make a bridge, and she ran across the bridge and the giant could not follow.

             “There thou art, Maol a Chliobain!”

            “I am, though it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou didst kill my three bald brown daughters!”

“I killed them, though it is hard for thee.”

“When wilt thou come again?”

“I will come when my business brings me.”

They went on till they reached the house of a farmer, who had three sons. When they told what had happened to them, the farmer said to Maol a Chliobain, “I will give my eldest son to thy eldest sister, if thou wilt get for me the fine comb of gold and the coarse comb of silver that the giant has.”

“It will cost thee no more,” said Maol a Chliobain.

She went, she reached the giant’s house, she got in unseen, she took with her the combs and out she went. Loud cried the gold comb, loud cried the silver comb! The giant perceived her, and after her he went until they reached the river. She leaped the river, but the giant could not leap.

“Thou art over there, Maol a Chliobain!”

“I am, though it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou didst kill my three bald brown daughters!”

“I killed them, though it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou hast stolen my fine comb of gold and my coarse comb of silver!”

            “I stole them, though it is hard for thee.”

“When wilt thou come again?”

“I will come when my business brings me.”

She gave the combs to the farmer, and her big sister and the farmer’s big son married. “I will give my middle son to thy middle sister, if you will get me the giant’s glave of light.”

            “It will cost thee no more,” said Maol a Chliobain. Off went she, and when she reached the giant’s house, she climbed to the top of a tree that grew about the giant’s well.  In the night the giant grew thirsty, and along came the bald, rough-skinned gillie with the glave of light to draw water from the well. When he bent to haul up the water, Maol a Chliobain came down. She pushed him into the well and drowned him, and she took with her the glave of light.

Loud cried the glave of light! The giant ran after her till she reached the river; she leaped the river and the giant could not cross. 

“Thou art over there, Maol a Chliobain!”

“I am, if it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou didst kill my three bald brown daughters!”

“I killed them, though it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou hast stolen my fine comb of gold and my coarse comb of silver!”

            “I stole, though it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou hast killed my bald, rough-skinned gillie!”

            “I killed, though it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou hast stolen my glave of light!”

            “I stole, though it is hard for thee.”

“When wilt thou come again?”

“I will come when my business brings me.”

She reached the house of the farmer, with the glave of light, and her middle sister and the middle son of the farmer married. “To thyself, I will give my youngest son,” said the farmer, “if you will bring me a silver buck the giant has.”

“It will cost thee no more,” said Maol a Chliobain. Off she went and she reached the house of the giant, but the giant was lying in wait, and when she laid hold of the silver buck, the giant caught her. 

“What,” said the giant, “wouldst thou do to me, if I had done as much harm to thee as thou hast done to me?”

Maol a Chliobain said, “If thou hadst done as much harm to me as I have done to thee, I would make thee burst thyself eating milk porridge! I would then put thee in a sack. I would hang the sack from the rooftree and and set a fire under it, and I would belabour thee with clubs till thou shouldst fall to floor like a bundle of sticks.” 

            The giant made milk porridge and made her drink it. She smeared the milk porridge over her mouth and face and laid herself over is as if she were dead.  The giant put her in a sack, and hung it from the rooftree, and then he went away, he and his men, to fetch wood from the forest. 

The giant’s carlin mother was within the house. When the giant was gone, Maol a Chliobain began – “Ah, the wonders I can see! ’Tis I that am in the light! ’Tis I that am in the city of gold. Ah, the wonders!”

“Let me in, let me see them!” said the carlin. 

“I will not let you see them.”

“Let me in, let me see them!” The old woman let down the sack, Maol a Chliobain crept out and the carlin crept in. Maol a Chliobain hooked up the sack to the rooftree, took the silver buck and went away. 

When the giant came back, he and his men lit the fire under the sack and set about belabouring it with their clubs. The carlin was calling, “’Tis myself that’s in it!” “I know ‘tis thyself that’s in it,” the giant kept saying as he laid on the blows. Down came the sack like a bunde of sticks and what was inside it but his own mother? When the giant saw how it was, he took after Maol a Chliobain; he followed her till she reached the river. Maol a Chliobain leaped the river, but the giant could not leap it.

“Thou art over there, Maol a Chliobain!”

“I am, if it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou didst kill my three bald brown daughters!”

“I killed them, though it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou hast stolen my fine comb of gold and my coarse comb of silver!”

            “I stole, though it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou hast killed my bald, rough-skinned gillie!”

            “I killed, though it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou hast stolen my glave of light!”

            “I stole, though it is hard for thee.”

            “Thou hast killed my mother!”

“I killed, though it is hard for thee.”

“Thou hast stolen my silver buck!”

“I stole, though it is hard for thee.”

“When wilt thou come again?”

“I will come when my business brings me.”

“If thou wert over here, and I over yonder,” said the giant, “what wouldst thou do to follow me?”

“I would stick myself down,” said Maol a Chliobain, “and I would drink and drink, and I would drink the river dry.”

The giant stuck himself down and he drank and drank until he burst. Then Maol a Chliobain and the farmer’s youngest son were married.

---

[1] (I owe the information on the pronunciation and meaning of 'Maol a Chliobain' to my Scottish friend and fellow writer Gillian Philip.)


Picture Credits:
 
Maol a Chliobain is not a story which has been much illustrated, so the two illustrations to this post are from Errol le Cain's version of the story's Lowland counterpart 'Mollie Whuppie' - which is similar in plot but different in detail.

The Master-Maid: the role of women and girls in fairyland

by Ellen Renner

Recently, during a school visit, an eleven-year-old boy said he found my book Castle of Shadows 'girly' and asked, 'Did I mean it to be that way?'

I was, frankly, horrified. Castle of Shadows is about love and hate, power and powerlessness, politics and science. Charlie, the main character, is the least frilly princess imaginable. In a reversal of the fairy-tale tradition, she is the hero and her helper a boy. When I invited him to imagine the exact same sequence of events with a boy as the main character, my questioner had to admit that there was nothing intrinsically feminine in either plot or themes. It appeared that the thing preventing him from identifying with the story was that fact that it had a girl protagonist who, moreover, was a princess.

He went on to ask many more lively and interesting questions, but the incident remains with me as an example of the truism that, while girls will happily read books where the main character is a boy, the same cannot be said for boys. Which begs the question: Why?

Are girls innately more empathetic? Are there biological and evolutionary reasons which tend to make men see women as 'other', while women sometimes identify so strongly with those they love that they can lose their own sense of self? Or is the reason cultural: the fact that active female protagonists – female 'heroes' – are so hard to find in our stories and cultural myths? If the boy in that school had grown up with stories and cultural myths where 'heroes' are girls as often as boys, would he have had the same reaction to my book?

Castle of Shadows began as a fairy-tale: a missing queen, a forgotten princess, a mad king who neglects both daughter and kingdom, the corrupting desire for power. I was aware of these fairy-tale elements from the moment of inception and also of my own ambivalence towards them. I was particularly wary of having a princess for a main character. Fairy-tale princesses held little charm for me as a child.

I read mythology, folk lore and fairy-tales voraciously, yet certain tales felt inappropriate and even irritating long before I was capable of analysing why that might be. They annoyed me in the same way Barbie dolls did. These were the stories featuring passive girls, usually born or destined to become princesses, like Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella. Girls whose physical attractiveness was the sum of their identity; girls who were not so much protagonists as prizes.

I yearned for heroines I could identify with and aspire to be like. Girls who DID things. Who underwent hardship and suffering and overcame the odds by use of their own wit or courage. And I found Gerta in Andersen's The Snow Queen and the brave sister in the Grimms tale, The Six Swans. I found Gretel in Hansel and Gretel; Janet in Tam Lin; and the redoubtable, spendidly named Molly Whuppie – the female Jack who bests her giant. Molly may marry and disappear into  'happy-ever-after', but you know she will go on dominating life just the same.

I had a more complicated reaction, no doubt because of the darker themes of forced marriage and the bestial interpretation of male sexuality, to tales such as Mossy Coat, The Black Bull of Norroway, and East of the Sun, West of the Moon, but I still admired the courage and cleverness of the heroines. In these tales, a young woman is forced to perform nearly impossible tasks in order to recover a lost fiancé or husband, and sometimes their children. She succeeds with the help of magical advisers and gifts.

Similar, but missing out the forced marriage aspect, are versions of The Master-Maid as told by Andrew Lang in The Blue Fairy Book. This tale and its variants, including Sweetheart Roland, Nix-Nought-Nothing and The Battle of the Birds, are classified, by those who enjoy such things, as 'girl helps hero flee' (Arne-Thompson type 313). It's a strange classification, since the heroes in these stories are less interesting than the heroines. The 'helpers' are the true protagonists. These heroines have no advisers, are given no gifts. They succeed by dint of their own magical abilities, courage and cleverness. These are witches, one and all; daughters of ogres or giants, who wield far more power than than their mortal lovers.

In The Master-Maid, the king's youngest son goes off into the world to seek his fortune and takes employment with an evil giant. The giant sets him three impossible tasks which the prince is only able to complete by following the advice of the Master-Maid. 'Master' here means skilled, and the young woman is obviously a magician employed as a servant by the giant. Their relationship is never explained. (In some versions, she is the Giant's daughter.) The giant, suspecting her involvement, orders her to kill the prince and cook him for his supper. Master-Maid pretends to obey, but when the giant falls asleep, she puts her plan into action:

So the Master-Maid took a knife, and cut the Prince's little finger, and dropped three drops of blood upon a wooden stool; then she took all the old rags, and shoe-soles, and all the rubbish she could lay hands on, and put them in the cauldron; and then she filled a chest with gold dust, and a lump of salt, and a water-flask which was hanging by the door, and she also took with her a golden apple, and two gold chickens; and then she and the Prince went away with all the speed they could ...

Of course, the giant wakes, is fooled for a short time by the three drops of blood, who answer his calls in the Master-Maid's voice. He tastes the mess in the cauldron; the game is up and he gives chase. This pursuit was always my favourite part, but I prefer the version in The Battle of the Birds, taken from The Well at the World's End, Folk Tales of Scotland retold by Norah and William Montgomerie:

 ...the giant jumped out of bed and, finding the Prince and his bride had gone, ran after them.
In the mouth of the day, the giant's daughter said her father's breath was burning her neck.
'Quickly, put your hand in the grey filly's ear!' said she.
'There's a twig of blackthorn,' said he.
'Throw it behind you!' said she.
No sooner had he done this than there sprang up twenty miles of blackthorn wood, so thick that a weasel could not go through.

The giant is delayed while he chops the wood down, but he's soon after them again:

'In the heat of the day, the giant's daughter said: 'I feel my father's breath burning my neck. Put your hand in the filly's ear, and whatever you find there, throw it behind you!'

He found a splinter of grey stone, and threw it behind him. At once there sprang up twenty miles of grey rock, high and broad as a range of mountains. The giant came full pelt after them, but past the rock he could not go.

He is delayed again as he digs through the rock, but the lovers' respite is brief and she once more instructs him to reach into the filly's ear:
  
This time he found a thimble of water. He threw it behind him, and at once there was a fresh-water loch, twenty miles in length and breadth.
The giant came on, but was running so quickly he did not stop till he was in the middle of the loch, where he sank and did not come up.

The giant defeated, the lovers reach the Prince's home, but their trouble is not over. The Master-Maid warns him: '... if you go home to the King's palace you will forget me, I forsee that.' But the stubborn Prince insists. And as though he were a mortal venturing into the fairy realm, she instructs him not to speak to anyone there, and especially not to eat any food, or else he will forget her. Of course, he eats and forgets. In the second half of the tale, she must use all her magic to cancel the spell and win back her beloved.
  
Most tales about the winning back of a lover or husband put the blame for his forgetfulness onto women: the mother and daughter troll; the hag and the enchantress. Only in darker versions of Sweetheart Roland do we find the heroine killing both rival witch and straying betrothed. In all other cases, it is only the rival women who are killed. From The Master-Maid:

So the Prince knew her again, and you may imagine how delighted he was. He ordered the troll-witch who had rolled the apple to him to be torn in pieces between four-and-twenty horses, so that not a bit of her was left ...

This is the first mention in the story that the young lady is a troll. It seems rather stiff punishment for proffering an apple to a man who takes your fancy, but such are the rules of fairy-tales.

As for hags, in these as in most fairy-tales, elderly women come in for harsh treatment, which doubtless says much about the social attitudes of the times in which they were written. The Master-Maid needs somewhere to live in order to win back her man, and when she spies a little hut in a small wood near the King's palace, she more or less moves in:

The hut belonged to an old crone, who was also an ill-tempered and malicious troll. At first she would not let the Master-Maid remain with her; but at last, after a long time, by means of good words and good payment, she obtained leave.

The crone is less pleased when the Master-maid starts redecorating:

The old crone did not like this either. She scowled, and was very cross, but the Master-maid did not trouble herself about that. She took out her chest of gold, and flung a handful of it or so into the fire, and the gold boiled up and poured out over the whole of the hut, until every part of it both inside and out was gilded. But when the gold began to bubble up the old hag grew so terrified that she fled as if the Evil One himself were pursuing her, and she did not remember to stoop down as she went through the doorway, and so she split her head and died.

Such is the fate of hags and crones. They are either trolls to be killed or, more rarely, advisers whom the heroine would be wise to listen to.

The best of all hags must be Baba Yaga, as powerful as she is terrifying; who eats stupid girls but offers the wise and brave ones power and life. Lucy Coats has done an excellent post on Baba Yaga and my favourite fairy-tale heroine, Vasilisa.

I can't leave hags behind without mentioning a modern fairy-tale, the brilliant 'Howl's Moving Castle', in which Diana Wynne Jones takes the motif of the fairy-tale hag and turns it on its head from the inspired moment in the book when she transforms her protagonist into an aged crone, which she remains for much of the novel. Wynne Jones knows, as all women do, that there is little difference between heroine and crone. Time's slight-of-hand – a malicious magic – and the princess becomes the hag.

In most fairy-tales, the heroine's ultimate reward is marriage, whereupon her adventures cease. But then, so do the hero's.

As for my own heroine, the princess Charlotte, I grew to know her better as I wrote the book. Like the Master-Maid and Molly Whuppie, she is girl who knows her own mind. She is, like all girls, the heroine of her own life, not merely a prize or a helper, and her story needed to reflect that reality. Castle of Shadows is no fairy-tale. Charlie resembles the real life queen, Elizabeth the First, far more than she ever will Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. In the passing of time, she will grow to become a wise and powerful crone. And like that monarch (for Charlie is a queen now too), she may be destined never to know what happens in the land of 'happy-ever-after'.

Ellen Renner was born in the USA, in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, but came to England looking for adventure, married here, and now lives in an old house in Devon with her husband and son. Her first book, ‘Castle of Shadows’ (2010) is set in an alternate world similar to nineteenth century England, in a city not unlike London.  Young Charlie (Charlotte) is the Princess of Quale.  Years ago her mother the Queen – a notable scientist – mysteriously vanished. Her eccentric father the King spends all his time building ever more elaborate card-castles.  Neglected and hungry, bullied by the housekeeper, Charlie runs wild and scrambles at will over the roofs of the castle, her only friend the gardener’s boy, Toby – until the day when the suavely intelligent Prime Minister, Alistair Windlass, begins to take an interest in her.  But is he a true friend, or does he have some other motive for turning Charlie back into an educated, well-dressed, 'proper' princess?  

‘City of Thieves’ continues Charlie’s story, with further focus on her friend Toby and his efforts to escape both the family of thieves who claim him as their own, and the machinations of the sinister yet strangely attractive Windlass.  Quale is in deadly danger – and Charlie and Toby are forced to take opposite sides.

The plotting is delightfully complex: more twists and turns than a chain-link fence.  These are books hard to categorise – a fantasy world with no magic, a hint of steam-punk, lots of interesting politics, some fearsome inventions, and brilliant characters you really care about.  Ellen’s writing is reminiscent of Joan Aiken’s.  If only one could introduce characters from one author’s books to another’s!  How I’d love to see tough, passionate Charlie meet Aiken’s irrepressible gamine, Dido Twite...

Picture credits:
'The Black Bull of  Norroway', by John Lawrence, from 'The Blue Fairy Book', 1975'Molly Whuppie' by unknown 19th century (?) illustrator at this link: http://nota.triwe.net/lib/tales16.htm
'East of the Sun, West of the Moon' by Henry Justice Ford
'The Giant in The Master Maid' by John D Batten
'Mollie Whuppie and her Sisters' by Errol le Cain