The Lady and the Lion (The Singing, Soaring Lark)

Now this is a tale you shouldn't miss. I’m surprised I hadn't heard of it before. It reminded me both of “Beauty and the Beast” and of “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” and of the book inspired by that tale “East” by Edith Pattou. While “The Lady and the Lion” definitely has it's own story, perhaps the similarities to well known tales are the reason most people haven't heard of it- it's silly to introduce a tale which seems like a patchworks of others already known and loved.

The Tale:

The story starts out very similar to Perrault's “Beauty and the Beast”. A merchant with three daughters sets out on a journey and asks each what gift they want him to bring back for them. The first wishes for pearls and the second for jewels, but the third daughter asks for a rose. The rose was the hardest gift for the merchant to find because it was wintertime, but he loved his youngest daughter the most, so he searched far and wide. At last he comes across a fine castle, which had an enchanted garden. Half the garden was in winter and the other half in summer. In the summer half, the merchant saw a rose bush and immediately took one to return to his beloved daughter. But lo and behold, as he was riding away, a fierce lion jumped out at him and declared he would eat the thief who stole the rose. The man begs and pleads until the lion agrees to spare the merchant's life in return for the first thing that comes out to greet the merchant on his return home. The merchant is unwilling to agree, but at last decides that it might be merely a dog or a cat, and leaves with his life and the rose.

As I’m sure all of us have guessed so far, the first one who comes out to meet him is none other

than his youngest and favorite daughter. He begins to weep and tells the girl of the bargain he had made and begs her to stay. She decides that the promise must be fulfilled and tells her father she will go to the lion and convince him not to eat her. The next morning, she sets off with a bold heart. (Till here Beauty and the Beast).

Now, it turns out that the lion is really (you're never going to believe this) an enchanted prince who takes on his true form at night but becomes a lion by day. The rest of his court also turn into lions during the day (a much better fate than singing crockery, don't you agree?). The prince greets the lady so courteously that she agrees to marry him immediately. They get married at once, but the girl only sees her husband at night- during the day, he roams off. Then, one day, the lion/prince tells the girl her sister is getting married and offers to have a lion lead her there if she wishes to go. Of course, she goes and surprises everyone who had believed her eaten by the dreadful lion. When the wedding feast is over, she returns to her happy marriage life. Then it's time for the next sister to get married, but this time the lady insists that her husband comes with her. He refuses, claiming that even the smallest ray of light will turn him into a dove and be obliged to wander for seven years until he regained human form. The girl insists she will be careful and no light will fall on him, but alas, despite their precautions, the light hits the princes and he turns into a white dove. The girl decides to follow her husband as he is forced to wander, and he drops a white feather every once in a while, so she will be able to keep track of him.

She follows him diligently for seven years, but towards the end, she misses one of the feathers and looses track of the dove. She immediately turns to the sun and the moon and asks them if they saw the dove. They both reply that they have not, but give her a gift- a casket and and egg- to open when she is of dire need. Then she asks the same of the night wind, who refers her to the east and west wind, and finally to the south wind, who had seen the dove. He had reached the Red Sea and turned once more into a lion, where he was battling an enchanted princess in the form of a dragon. The princess, of course, wishes the separate the girl from her love. The night wind then gives the girl council and tells her how to defeat the princess. She does as she's told and breaks off the eleventh reed and smites the dragon with it. Both she and the lion regain human form, but the girl and the prince dally just long enough for the princess to whisk the prince away.

Forsaken and forlorn, the girl somehow finds the courage to decide that; “As far as the wind blows, and so long as the cock crows, I will journey on until I find him once again!”

At last she arrives at the castle where the princess took the prince and sees that a wedding feast is being prepared. The girls takes out the casket the sun gave her and finds a beautiful dress which she manages to trade with the princess in return for a visit to the bridegroom in his chamber that evening. The princess tricks the girl and gives the prince a sleeping draft so that when she comes to him, he is fast asleep. The girl sits down next to her husband and says; “ I have followed thee seven years; I have been to the sun, the moon and the night wind, to seek thee; and at last I have helped thee to overcome the dragon. Wilt thou then forget me quite?”

To the sleeping prince, the words sound like the murmuring of the wind.

The next day, the girl trades the moon's gifts- twelve golden chicks and a hen that hatched from the egg- in order to see her husband the next night as well. The princess decides to to drug the prince again, but when the prince asks the chamberlain why the wind had “murmured so in the night”, and the chamberlain tells him everything. The prince then throws away the sleeping draught, and the girl comes and finds him in a natural sleep. She tells him again “what woes had befallen her and how faithful and true she had been to him”, and he wakes up, remembering her voice. He tells her she has woken him from a spell where he did not remember who she was, and the happy reunited couple sneak away from the castle in the dead of night and return to their home. Their they find their son, who has grown into a hansom man these past seven years, and they all live happily ever after.

Discussion Points:

Phew. Sorry for the length of that. I'll try to keep the discussion points short.

I'll start this time with the moral of the story, because other aspects of it interest me more. There seem to be two main options- this story could either be renamed “The Guide to Being a Perfect Wife” or “The Gide to Perseverance”. I’m going to stick to the second, because in this feministic age, some of the guiding points in the first are hard to swallow. For the first option, the wife marries her husband to save her father, brings out the best in her husband, bears him a son, and follows him to the end of the world and back again while he gets himself engaged to a princess. Basically, she gives up everything for him and doesn't get much in return. She devotes her life to a very needy enchanted man and serves him in everything.

The second option is a lesson for everyone. It tells us how far you can go for someone/something you care about. I can't help but admire the girl's traits- she's brave, she's resourceful, she can see past faults and she just doesn't give up. There were so many times she could have given up, and yet she doesn't. She keeps going, on and on and on, until she accomplishes her goal, and I think there is something all of us can learn from this. There is another important lesson to learn as well; there is no need to completely destroy those who stand in your way to accomplish your goal in order for you to succeed. We see this very nicely when the girl and the prince sneak away in the dead of night and don't punish the princess as often happens in fairy tales (though admittedly, she was in more of a position of power than they were).

Now for things that I found intersting in the tale:

Firstly, that son is mentioned only at the end. I couldn't find any referrence to him throughout the story until he pops up when they come home. Could he be some symbol of the perfect family life now in store fore the girl (and the prince turned lion turned wandering dove turned kidnapped prince) after all the hardships they have gone through? Maybe it shows the cost they had to pay- for their devotion to each other (the lion turned dove because of his agreement to go to his sister in law's wedding for his wife while the girl followed him on foot for seven years). They missed many things back at home, including the chance to raise their son. I think the first idea is more feasible, considering the tone of the story when the son is mentioned is more happy than lamenting.

Secondly, I love the part when the girl asks for the help of the sun and the moon and the winds. I think it's very poetic and beautiful, and truly signifies how she accomplished the impossible. The sun and moon are so out of reach, that in order for them to be her last hope, the only ones she can turn to, her mission must be very difficult indeed. There is no one else to turn to, so she turns to the masters of the sky, who are always above her. It must have been very intimidating for her to turn to them, but yet she did so, again and again.

As for the princess- I feel as though this love triangle is very familiar. Many woman must have lost their husbands to another. This story almost seems to try and comfort them- the husband doesn't know what he is doing, he is under an enchantment which is why he is with another, but he still loves you, and you can get him back if you try hard enough.

Any thoughts on this tale and (really long) post?

*I want to apologize for my irregular posting the past few weeks. Hopefully life will get more into routine next week, and I'll be able to post regularly again. 

*All the illustrations are from "The Lady and the Lion: A Brother's Grimm Tale", illustrated by Laurel Lang.