Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #24: HE WHO LAUGHS AT OTHERS, OTHERS SHALL LAUGH AT HIM

What I love about this very satisfying Armenian fairy tale is that the heroine is an ugly old witch. Not a beautiful maiden - not even a maiden enchanted to seem old and ugly, like Sophie in Diana Wynne Jones’s ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’. No! She is what she is. And although she can use her magic to make herself seem young and pretty, she doesn’t want to. She knows her true self and has the strength and self-knowledge to prefer her real appearance to any illusion, and to ignore jeers and laughter. In the end, though, the continued mockery stings – and she decides to do something about it.

You may also enjoy the snappish exchange, around the mid-point of the story, between the Queen and the rather useless King.

The tale was told c. 1900 "by the illiterate labourer Manuk Avdalian in the village of Koph, province of Taron", collected by I. Orbeli and S. Taronian. It was translated into English and published as 'The Mocker Mocked' in ‘Armenian Folk-tales and Fables’ by Charles Downing, OUP 1972. The illustration is by William Papas.

I don’t know who and where and when exactly, but once upon a time there was a King of a land in the East who, when he had finished his work for the day, was in the habit of sitting at the window of his pavilion to watch the people passing by. One day he looked out and caught sight of the most weird and fantastical little old woman scurrying by under his window. So comical indeed was she that he burst into gales of loud laughter, almost strong enough to split his sides. 

            “Never have I seen such a ridiculously hideous old crone!” he declared. “She must be some sort of she-devil, one that haunts the bottom of a well!”

            The poor old woman heard all this, but paid no attention to it and went on her way. 

            Well! One day, one week, one month later, when the King was again seated in his window, he caught sight of the old woman once more. As soon as he clapped eyes on her, up went the loud hoots and guffaws, and he laughed and laughed until the old woman finally lost patience. She came to a halt beneath his window. 

            “Laugh away, go on! Laugh!” she cried. “We’ll soon see which of the two of us laughs last!” 

            So saying, off she went. 

            Now don’t say a word to anyone, but between you and me this old woman was a sort of witch, able to take on any shape or form she wished. One day she might appear as a fine-grained angel, the next as some monstrous devil; she could turn the ugly into the beautiful and the fair into the repulsive; she could make the brainless clever and the intelligent stupid. 

Well, that’s everything you need to know about the old woman, I don’t need to go on about it. Enough is enough. So this silly King just can’t give up his bad habit; the more he sees the old woman, the louder he laughs, until one day he goes too far and touches her to the quick. Unable to bear the ridicule any longer, she changes her shape and form, turns herself into a pretty young woman and goes to see the Queen. 

“Your majesty,” she says, “I am as dust beneath your feet. My husband has died, leaving me with many little ones. Will you not hire me, as your maid, perhaps? I should come early in the morning, see to everything and go home in the evenings. That way I could earn enough to keep my children.”

“Well why not?” said the Queen. “You seem a pleasant, well-favoured body. You may bathe me and comb my hair. It’s my day of the week for a bath, so let us go now.”

They went to the bath-house, where the Queen had a good wash and then came out of the water. The witch took her comb and began to comb her hair – and no sooner did her hand touch her, than the Queen turned into a hideous old woman, so hideous indeed that the devil himself would have blanched to look at her! When the Queen saw herself in the mirror she had such a fright that she screamed out loud. 

“King! King!” she yelled. “Come quickly!” And at the sound of her voice, the witch vanished.

The King ran up – looked – and saw that his wife’s nose had grown to an enormous length, her lips hung down to her bosom, her hair was as tangled as tree-roots, and as for her face, it was so grey you might have supposed someone had flung a shovelful of ashes over her.

“Wife, what has happened to you?” cried the King. And the Queen explained as best she could.

“A pretty young woman came along and begged me to employ her as a maid. When I had taken my bath, as soon as her hand touched me I was changed into the hideous monster you see. Do something!”

 

“What can I do, wife?” asked the King.

“Find that woman!” snapped the Queen.

Now the King was completely at a loss, not knowing which way to turn. Among a million women in the city, how could he find the one who had acted as the Queen’s maid? Ah well, to work! Let him get on with it, while we return to the witch.

As soon as the witch got home, she changed shape again and resumed her true, fantastical guise. Her conscience began to prick her, though, and in the end she got up and went to see the King. But when she arrived at the door of the pavilion, the guards wouldn’t let her in. 

“Be off, you horrid old creature!” they cried. “The royal pavilion is no place for the likes of you!” And so saying, they thumped and shoved her, and shouted so loud that the noise of it reached the King. 

He looked out. “What is it, my lads?” said he.

The guards pointed at the old woman, and stupid he may have been, but a glimmer of sense passed for once through the King’s head. 

“Leave her alone!” he said. “Let her come in!”

He led her into the pavilion, sat on his throne and beckoned the old woman to stand before him. “What is your wish?” he asked.

“Your majesty,” said the witch, “I am the old woman you are always laughing at. Now do you see how your mockery has rebounded on your own head? If you want to know, I am the one who turned your wife into an ugly old woman. Are you still laughing?”

“Ah, woman!” said the King. “Now is a chance to make your fortune!  Turn my wife back to what she was before, and I shall give you your weight in gold!”

The witch laughed.

“What are you laughing at?” said the King.

“What then? Why shouldn’t I laugh, now it is my turn?” mocked the witch. “Listen to me, King! When you laughed at me, I thought to myself that there could be no one more stupid in all the lands of the East. What you do to others shall fall on your own head. I am sorry for your wife, not you. Call her, and I shall turn her back into the pretty woman she was before. And from now on, perhaps a little good sense shall dwell in your head, and you will not be so ready to laugh at people in future!”

The witch reached out her hand, and the hideous Queen turned back into a beautiful lady. And before the King could say a word, the witch vanished. From that day forth, they say, the King never again made fun of the faults of others.

'Star Daughter' - Guest Post by Shveta Thakrar

Pausing for a week my series on strong fairy tale heroines, I am delighted to welcome Shveta Thakrar to the blog. Her own words will introduce her better than I can, but having read and loved some of her short stories, I'm very much looking forward to her debut novel 'Star Daughter', which will be published in the USA on August 11th. (If like me you live in the UK, we have to wait until September 3^rd.) Shveta weaves wonderful fairy tales and legends into her work, and as Holly Black has said of her writing, it’s “as beautiful as starlight”. I can't wait to meet her new heroine, Sheetal - who is bound to be another strong, inspiring and magical young woman.

When, in my mid-twenties, I committed to becoming a professional author, I decided to focus solely on desi characters and their adventures. I would write first and foremost for the girl I had been, I promised myself, the lonely, confused, self-doubting girl who’d needed the Hindu and Indian heritage she’d grown up with to be given equal footing with all the modern Western stories she and everyone around her were steeped in. That desire has never wavered; in fact, it’s only gotten stronger as I move forward in my career.

            I have a whole catalog of published short stories and poems making good on this pledge, and now, as my debut young adult fantasy novel, Star Daughter, makes its way into the world, I’m thinking about the various flavors of mythology that appear in its pages. I’ve said elsewhere that it was pitched as Neil Gaiman’s and Charles Vess’s Stardust, an illustrated novel, meets Tanuja Desai Hidier’s Born Confused, a contemporary young adult novel, but the intersection of those two was really just the starting point.

            Over the course of many drafts and almost as many years, I layered in references to stories from ancient texts such as the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Purana, like the love story of Nala and Damayanti and the tale of Gajendra and the crocodile. I mentioned legendary characters from Hindu lore, like Urvashi the apsara and her erstwhile lover, mortal King Pururavas. Inspired by this vibrant source material, I even invented mythology of my own, like Sheetal’s mother’s tale of the origin of diamonds.

            In my eyes, to craft fantasy narratives that draw on the mythology—or sacred stories—of my faith is to write a love letter to it. Fan fiction about and for the gods. You could argue that mythology itself is fan fiction in a sense, the first works celebrating notions and beings greater than we can otherwise conceptualize, always tweaking details as necessary (just look at how mythological “givens” shift from region to region and from era to era). Oral storytellers have always done this, embellishing and reworking their source material to meet their audience’s expectations and the messages they themselves wish to convey.

From that angle, when I weave these old stories into Star Daughter, I’m merely adding my voice to a long and complex lineage, the great chorus that has been singing since the beginning of human history. (An apt metaphor, as starsong flows from the beginning of the novel to the end.) No mythology is without dubious and sometimes even problematic aspects and contradictions, of course, but you can say the same thing about human progress; the stories we choose to tell and the way we tell them are a reflection of us. As we change, so do our stories and the lens through which we view them.

            Mythology is not only mutable but timeless, too. No, you’re probably not going to wake up and find yourself an impossibly beautiful, mischievous, seductive apsara from the heavens—though with reincarnation, anything’s possible, right?—but who among us can’t understand pining after someone or something we can’t have? Pururavas and Urvashi undergo great trials for their love—including Urvashi being turned into a vine!—and while not all people seek out romantic relationships, I think it’s safe to say everyone yearns to love and be loved, whatever shape that takes.

Pururavas and Urvashi

 

            Another fabled couple, Nala and Damayanti, is named in the novel as one of Sheetal’s favorites. The two of them, though husband and wife, are separated for years by jealous would-be suitors and forced to endure terrible hardships, but through their steadfast devotion, they eventually overcome all obstacles and find their way back to each other. It’s a story about never giving up, about having faith and acting from a pure heart despite the treachery and selfishness of others. Ultimately, we can only be responsible for our own actions—but we must be.

            Speaking of faith, the story of Gajendra the elephant has always stuck with me. One morning when he makes his daily pilgrimage to the lake where he picks lotuses as an offering for Lord Vishnu, a wily crocodile surfaces in the water and closes his powerful jaws on poor Gajendra’s leg. The two of them, predator and prey, are trapped in that stalemate for a thousand years, during which time Gajendra’s entire herd gives up and leaves him for dead. Finally, with his last breath, Gajendra calls upon Lord Vishnu for help while holding up the lotus he never released, and Lord Vishnu kills the crocodile, freeing Gajendra. If that’s not a lesson in having faith and trusting that help will arrive when one truly needs it, then I don’t know what is.

Gajendra is rescued by Vishnu

 

            Now that I’m thinking about it, each of these themes comes through in Star Daughter. That’s no surprise, really; the stories from my heritage are like a warm, fuzzy blanket I’ve taken comfort in since my childhood. They resonate in my bones and connect me to my ancestors, even if I never knew most of them, a garland of lotus blossoms leading from the distant past to now. I couldn’t imagine writing a fantasy and not incorporating them in some manner.

And best of all, they’re fun. They’re fun to dust off and delight in and grumble at and reexamine and retell. To play with and use to create something new. After all, the power of a story rests squarely in the act of its being told, and so remembered. By giving these stories to Sheetal, I hope readers of my background will feel seen. For readers from different backgrounds, I invite them to explore these and other tales from the rich treasure trove of Hindu mythology.

From Sheetal and me, a blessing: may you, dear reader, burn bold in the deepest night. 

Shveta Thakrar

 

Shveta Thakrar is a part-time nagini and full-time believer in magic. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies including Enchanted Living, Uncanny Magazine, A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, and Toil & Trouble. Her debut young adult fantasy novel, Star Daughter, is out now from HarperTeen. When not spinning stories about spider silk and shadows, magic and marauders, and courageous girls illuminated by dancing rainbow flames, Shveta crafts, devours books, daydreams, travels, bakes, and occasionally even plays her harp.


Picture credits:
Pururavas and Urvashi by Raja Ravi Varma
Vishnu rescues Gajendra, India, mid-eighteenth century, Brooklyn Museum website
Shveta Thakrar, copyright