"Asphurtzela" and the Bear's Son Tradition

Public statue of the giant- and dragon-slaying Georgian culture hero Amirani, ამირანი, a figure associated with the Greek Prometheus myth. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

A year or more ago, I read the Georgian tale “Asphurtzela,” collected, translated and published by the English scholar Marjory Wardrop in 1894, and immediately I recognized elements I knew I had seen in various scholarly texts related to Beowulf. I recently began working through all of the sources I have that deal with the topic to determine which works of literature share the closest affinity with “Asphurtzela” and at this time, I’ve come to the conclusion that “Asphurtzela” falls into a category of tale described by Friedrich Panzer as Bear’s Son tales, one or more of which may have been an orally-transmitted antecedent to the Grendel section of Beowulf. In 1910, Panzer identified more than 200 such tales, with the purpose of identifying the roots of this particular section of Beowulf. He published his findings in a volume titled Studies in German Saga History. The theory found resonance in scholarly Beowulf circles and the larger purpose of my posts on “Asphurtzela” is to determine the nature of the relationship between the folk tale and the Old English poem. This post will begin by laying out an argument for “Asphurtzela” as a Bear’s Son Tale in the mold of “Strong Hans,” a tale in the Grimm collection that is often used as the exemplar of the type, which is also described as Aarne-Thompson type 301, “The Three Stolen Princesses,” and as AT type 650A, “Strong John”. To say that “Asphurtzela” qualifies as a Bear’s Son Tale does not give it a direct relationship with Beowulf. It would give the tale a relationship with a tradition of tales that the Beowulf poet may have drawn from. The next step of this study will investigate similarities and differences “Asphurtzela” shares with the premier Beowulf analogue, Grettis Saga.

The Bear’s Son Tale narrative, Bärensohn, Jean l’Ours, is widespread in Europe and has been identified as far away as Asia. The tales refer to an unusual child parented by a bear in some way. In the French tradition, the character may even have the ears of a bear, but bear-like strength is the most common element. Because these tales were transmitted orally in different cultures, there are differences among them, and the element of bear parentage may present as simply as the child being raised in a cave. Beowulf scholar R.W. Chambers identified six aspects of the Bear’s Son Tale narrative: a young man of extraordinary strength:

1. Sets out on adventures and joins with companions;

2. Resists a magical being in a house which his companions have failed to resist;

3. Follows the path of the magical being to a spring, or hole in the earth;

4. Is lowered into the earth by a rope or cord;

5. Overcomes foes in the underworld, sometimes with the help of a magic sword which he finds below;

6. Is betrayed by his companions, who leave him in the hole when it was their duty to have helped him back out.

Those with a knowledge of the plot of Beowulf will already recognize some of these elements but not others. Chambers, J.R.R. Tolkien and others identified what amount to the fossilized remains of some of the less apparent Bear's Son motifs in Beowulf. These elements seem to have existed in source material for Beowulf because they tend to coincide with moments in Beowulf where the text is ambiguous or doesn’t seem to follow the logic of the story. The most striking example of this for me, and for the many students I have taught Beowulf, is the death of the Geat, Hondscio, whom Beowulf allows Grendel to eat without raising a finger. From Benjamin Slade’s online translation, Grendel “bit into the bone-locks, from the veins drank blood, swallowed great chunks, soon he had the unliving one all devoured, feet and hands” (742-745). It is hard to imagine lying still while a companion was devoured in this manner. It is grossly inconsistent with what we’ve been taught about an Anglo-Saxon comitatus, or what we would expect of any band of warriors in any time period. Chambers argues that Hondscio is a vestigial remnant of a folktale element where Beowulf and two other companions take turns facing a marauding creature on successive nights. Tolkien goes further in his “Selic Spell,” a tale he wrote to emulate a lost antecedent of the Beowulf story, in which Hondscio and Hrothgar’s adviser Asher were not only Beowulf’s two companions, but they were companions with magic powers of their own; Hondscio (whose name means glove) had magical gloves; Asher (whose name is related to the tree that spears were made of) had a magic spear. Tolkien surmised that Asher in this tradition may also have related to the coast guard who raises his spear to challenge the Geats upon their landing in Hrothgar's lands. Tolkien renamed the characters Handshoe and Ashwood to help them relate to make their natures clearer to English speakers. Again, the Bear’s Son Tales do not need to agree in all details, and some of the typical elements of the Bear’s Son Tale narrative are definitely absent from Beowulf: the rescue of a princess from the hole, for instance. Furthermore, this tale is thought to relate only to the part of Beowulf in which the hero faces Grendel and Grendel’s mother and obviously eschews the courtly particulars of later legendary figures, like Hrothgar, and places, like Heorot.

Standing guard in a dwelling with companions against a monster is an element Beowulf readers will recognize that occurs in both “Strong Hans” and “Asphurtzela.” In both stories, the hero has gathered to him companions who, like him, have supernatural talents. Hans has the aptly named Fir-twister and Rock-splitter, who respectively can twist trees into twine and smash rock with his fists. Asphurtzela has the Clod-swallower and the Hare-catcher, a man who swallows clods of dirt that fly up while plowing, and a man so fast that even with mill stones tied to his feet can catch rabbits. Unlike in Tolkien's “Selic Spell,” the specific superpowers of the companions in “Strong Hans” and “Asphurtzela” do not play any particular role in the stories. The characters are introduced as having special powers, but those powers are not referred to again. Tolkien’s characters not only have special names that reflect their special talents, but use the talents to overcome particular challenges in the tale. Tolkien’s Handshoe uses his magic gloves to open a locked gate and Ashwood uses his magic spear to clear away enemies. I take from these details that Tolkien would have believed that in an earlier version of “Strong Hans,” the Ash-twister’s ash twisting must have played a more significant role in the tale, likewise with the Rock-splitter. Chambers saw the character Stein, in the Beowulf-analogue Grettis Saga as analogous to the Rock-splitter: Stein “seems to represent the faithless companions of the folk tale... for in the folktale one of the three faithless companions of the hero is called the Stone-cleaver, Steinhauer, Stenklover or even, in one Scandinavian version, simply Stein” (Chambers, Beowulf, An Introduction, 66). Detecting evidence of Stein’s power over stone would be thrilling and I will explore this in my next post, reviewing the similarities between “Asphurtzela” and Grettis Saga.

Not only do Asphurtzela and Strong Hans participate in staying alone in a haunted house, but both folk tales have another element, which is not to be found in Beowulf or Grettis Saga, but is notable in its similarity between the folk tales. In both tales one companion is left alone at the dwelling to cook a meal while the other two go hunting. In both tales the supernatural enemy, a dwarf in “Strong Hans,” a lame devi in “Asphurtzela,” appear and demand the companion for food or food and drink. Devis in Georgian tales function as trolls in Scandinavian tales. They can be gruesome and monstrous, but they can also be found living in families in houses just like humans. In both tales the companions refuse the enemy and are beaten or chased out of the dwelling. Finally, Asphurtzela and Hans rout the enemy, who escapes (in two pieces in “Asphurtzela”) to the hole where the next part of the story takes place. I have read that this enemy is sometimes called the giant dwarf in “Strong Hans,” stories, which brings to my mind the lame element of the devi, in that both have fractional natures; they are both powerful and weak. In Beowulf, Grendel’s nature is also split: he is both impervious and torn apart. Furthermore, although Grendel attacks while Beowulf merely keeps watch instead of preparing food, Grendel, like the dwarf and devi, has come for food and is by nature insatiable. When Hans faces the dwarf, he gives him food twice before refusing the third demand and coming to blows with the creature.

Tracking the monster to a hole in the ground is present in both folk tales, Grettis Saga and Beowulf, if one accepts Grendel’s mere to be a hole in the ground, which I do: it is a cave underwater. In the respective tales, the hero and companions follow the enemy to a hole, whereupon the hero is lowered down by rope by his companions. Both Asphurtzela and Hans find captive(s) in the hole; Hans finds one maiden; Asphurtzela finds three princesses. This element does not occur in Beowulf, but a remnant of the next part does, albeit in fossilized form. Both Hans’s and Asphurtzela’s companions strand the hero in the hole after the maiden, or princesses, are extracted from the hole. Chambers and Tolkien see this element in Beowulf when Hrothgar and the Danes lose heart and leave Beowulf behind in Grendel’s mere when blood from Grendel’s mother boils up the surface. A similar thing happens in Grettis Saga, when Stein, entrusted to watch the rope, sees blood below the waterfall and likewise abandons his post. Chambers found it unreasonable that allies would abandon a hero expressly going to kill an enemy when they saw blood bubble up in the water. Clearly blood was in the plan. This then is interpreted by Chambers and Tolkien as a detail from the source material that no longer made sense, but remained in the story in altered form. Unlike the faithless comrades who wish to make off with the reward of the maiden or princesses, neither the Danes, nor Stein, has a motive to betray their hero. In "Selic Spell" Tolkien actually has the Unferth figure, named Unfriend, abandon the rope on which he lowers the hero, here named Beewolf, into the cave. Unfriend purposely leaves Beewolf to die because he bears him a grudge for the insult which we know from Beowulf. Incidentally, it has always seemed suspicious to me that Unferth’s magnanimously-offered ancestral blade would then fail Beowulf in his fight with Grendel’s mother. In early readings, I always expected something to go wrong with Hrunting and I know that my students were always likewise suspicious.

I think that I’ve made it clear that “Asphurtzela” shares many remarkable similarities with the Grimms’ “Strong Hans,” and as such belongs to the tradition of tales identified by Panzer as Bear’s Son Tales, and by Aarne-Thompson type 301, “The Three Stolen Princesses,” or type 650A, “Strong John”. I’ve also shared details to explain why a further study and comparison should be made to determine how many degrees of separation exist between “Asphurtzela” and Beowulf and the Beowulf-analogue Grettis Saga. I will pick up my writing on the topic of “Asphurtzela” and Grettis Saga next.

The Mahabharata for the Intimidated

An Illustration to the Mahabharata: The Pandava and Kaurava armies face each other, circa 1700, Mewar, India; courtesy of Wikimedia.

To begin, this is an introduction for beginners by a western, three-time reader of the Mahabharata. It is meant to quiet the fears I had when I sought to read the great Indian epic for the first time. The good news is that the Mahabharata is very readable, very enjoyable, and importantly, will not stump a reader who lacks knowledge of Indian literature, religion or culture. The trickiest part of the Mahabharata is the number of characters, but this can be overcome. I was a little confused my first time through until the narrative settled on the main characters. At that point I had moments of confusion when some of the other characters appeared, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the story. And that would be my message to the reader: just truck on through. The story is good and the messages meaningful to the first-time reader. Like any other work of literature, multiple readings will add to what you get out of it, but I say give it the one chance for now. It’s worth it.

The hardest part of getting to the basic story of the Mahabharata was reading through the lineages of the main characters. The Mahabharata is generational in scope, but the great majority of it deals with a set of brothers in conflict with their cousins (another set of brothers.) And these sets of brothers aren’t hard to keep straight. The protagonists are a superhero team including Hawkeye, the Hulk, and Captain America (without powers) and two younger brothers who sort of have special powers, but just sort of go along. (I think one of them is handsome and the other maybe can foretell the future but will be punished if he ever reveals anything; this never comes into play.) The other set of brothers is basically Loki with ninety-nine red-shirt brothers. That’s probably not too intimidating. (And Marvel Studios should definitely get on this!)

The tricky bit is keeping the uncles and grandsires and gods and gurus straight. Reading with a family tree print-out sitting next to the text is too distracting for me, but if you are the sort of person who can brook no uncertainty about a character’s identity, this might be good for you. I’m not providing graphics or family trees here because I’m not a graphic designer and there are plenty of family trees out there. I’m just providing the moral support that you can handle this -- and should!

If you are like me the first-time reading Mahabharata, you can really wait until the Pandava brothers show up to devote energy to remembering names. They are the main story. Yes, there are other significant characters, but for my brain, the Pandavas were the hook. They are the superhero team and are basically the protagonists. And the stories that come before the Pandavas take over the narrative are not a loss even if there are so many new names you have trouble holding them all. They are good folklore stories: The king has forsworn society and locked himself in his castle; The goddess feels unappreciated by her husband and wishes to run off with another god; The father asks his son to make a great sacrifice. I’m interested in rereading these now and I still can’t recount the names of the characters!

To further entice you to try this foundational epic, let me tell you about the new set of mythological creatures and characters you get to learn about. The savage Rakshasas, the wise Nagas, the sylph-like Apsaras, the musical Gandharvas, to say nothing of a European-style pantheon of gods interacting with various incarnations of a tripartite capital-g God and his human avatar. I don’t know if a Hindu would agree with this analogy, but to me, the Hinduism of the Mahabharata looks like what would have happened if the various polytheistic European cults accepted Christianity, but made no effort to obscure their earlier beliefs. Imagine Zeus or Odin (and all of the various members of those pantheons) interacting with the three figures of the Christian trinity and no one finding that odd. This is exciting stuff if you like mythology and these elements are woven throughout the text.

And in case you feel you’ve read enough mythology to think you’ve seen it all, gender fluidity and female agency are two elements of the Mahabharata that one can find in small doses in Greek and Norse stories, but seem much more prominent and at home here. Krishna becomes female and marries a hero so he doesn’t die a virgin. A king raises his daughter as a male because an oracle tells him that she is destined to become a male; a nature spirit lends her his penis on her wedding night. The great hero Arjuna spurns the advances of a nature spirit and is forced to live as a eunuch for a year, giving dancing instructions to princesses. Women also seem to have more agency in these stories than in European mythology. A forum is held to hear a goddess’s complaints against her husband, and she is only forced to stay with him because the universe will come unraveled if she leaves. One has to compare this to Greek goddesses having to take special care not to be forced to marry whomever Zeus chooses. The main heroes of the story share a wife, which sounds bad, but she has five husbands. There may be examples of polyandry in European mythic tales, but they are so little known that I can’t think of any. As with gender fluidity, which does exist in Greek and Norse myths, it may be that these are the tales that did not make it past Victorian censors and have never really caught on because mythology has been the province of children’s literature.

My final pitch is that the Mahabharata is essentially about promoting dharma, or pro-social behavior. That means that might does not make right. Even the gods are held to this standard. The plot revolves around what happens when one doesn’t live up to one’s vows. And though this sounds very western, and it is fairly easy to recognize and root for heroes in the story, there is an ambivalence about whether there are good guys. The Pandavas are not perfect. The bad guys are not all bad. The capital-G incarnations of God are prey to the laws of right and wrong.

I hope you are excited to dive into the Mahabharata. My personal introductory edition was Devdutt Pattanaik’s illustrated Jaya. I have also read P Lal’s condensed Mahabharata, which I loved, but it was very hard to get a decent hard copy of. I haven’t seen an electronic version of it either, but I prefer reading physical books. Lal’s language is exciting and worth it if you fall in love with the text. I have read parts of DK’s 5.7 pound The Illustrated Mahabharata, but I found that the many lovely images and informative sidebars were too much for a first time reading, and it’s just unwieldy. There is a long tradition of regional Mahabharatas and every edition will be abridged in some way. This means there is not one correct edition for a newcomer. Find one you like and get reading!

The year 2020 will be remembered for other things by most, but for me, among other obviously more prominent things, it has been a year of reading and studying the Mahabharata and being challenged, intrigued and enamored enough to move on to the Ramayana and supporting literature to these masterpieces. I hope I’ve eased your fears at jumping into one of the oldest works of literature. It deserves a place in western study and will bring you fulfillment.

The Protester and the Power of Ancient Ireland

Portland protester, photographed by Dave Killen, Oregonlive.com and a Sheela-na-Gig (Lavey, Cavan) found in a churchyard in 1842 and housed in the Cavan County Museum, photo courtesy of the National Museum of Ireland.

When an anonymous nude woman, wearing only a mask and hat, confronted scores of equally anonymous, but armed and armor-clad federal agents in Portland this summer, she carried with her the power of the medieval Irish kings. The protester, a woman in her thirties, said in an interview in a Portland podcast she felt provoked in a “feminine place,” when she saw the line of men, who bore the label police, but had donned the look of soldiers in a war zone. She withdrew to a closed shop entrance, doffed her clothes and before long was photographed from behind sitting on the pavement with her legs spread wide in the attitude of sheela-na-gig, a medieval religious warning that the kings of Ireland co-opted as a sign that they ruled by right of the Irish mother goddess and no one had better cross them.

A sheela-na-gig is a medieval figural carving of a woman with an exaggerated vulva. Such carvings have been found in churches across Europe, but the Irish name has stuck. Sheela-na-gig is a relatively modern term for the figures, not making its way into print before 1840. It is not known what the carvings were originally called. The name has been translated various ways: Sheela of the beasts, Sheela on her hunkers, but Sheela of the vagina seems nost straightforward to me.

I first reposted the image of the nude protester in Portland facing off against federal agents in July and suggested that the image and attitude fell within the sheela-na-gig tradition, but I wanted to find an expert to respond to the image and give an educated opinion. Last week I reached out to Dr. Eamonn P Kelly, author of Sheela-na-Gigs; Origins and Functions (Town House and Country House, 1997) and retired Keeper of Antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland, and he graciously responded to my request for an interview.

Dr. Kelly was delighted by the protester’s decision to defy police with her nakedness and saw the similarity I saw in the viral photo. “Comparisons with sheela-na-gig certainly seem apt,” said Kelly. In good Irish fashion, Kelly also supported an underdog able to stand up against the power of a state. Kelly said that female sexuality has remained a powerful symbol and he could only imagine what the Federal officers thought when faced by the woman’s nudity: “It must have been intimidating as hell for them. Good luck to her and well done! If only all riots could be ended this way.”

It turns out that the image of sheela-na-gig, at least in Ireland, has always been wedded to power, but its message has changed over the ages. Kelly said the carvings of exhibitionist females arrived in Ireland with the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century, who used the image to warn against the dangers of lust. If this strikes you as a particularly misogynistic message, wait for the Irish response. Kelly described Irish attitudes towards sexuality as traditionally, “more laid back” than the English and they had a different attitude to women and power. By the 14th century, areas of Ireland affected by Anglo-Norman rule had returned to their Irish roots and the English Christian message of sheela-na-gig, against sex and women, almost flipped on its head, with the figure representing a reverence for the female divine and pride in her exposed body. At this time, “The figures begin to be associated with the goddess of sovereignty,” said Kelly.

This Irish mother goddess played a role in the secular power structures of pre-Christian Ireland, with kings of Irish kingdoms wedding or sexually consummating a relationship with the land itself as a representation of the mother goddess. As native leaders established more control, sheela-na-gigs began to appear on fortified tower houses, non-religious native structures with symbolism that saw feminine sexual power as a part of a kingdom’s power, rather than a danger to the human soul. Kelly said that this attitude held until the 17th century when Cromwell reconquered Ireland.

If the Irish kings used the image of exaggerated female genitalia as a symbol to project the physical power of the mother goddess then this protester-used the same symbol for a very similar purpose. Interviewed on the Unrefined Sophisticates podcast, she said she saw the armored soldiers, whom she described as adopting a warrior stance: heads up, chests out, legs apart. “At that moment I was provoked. This really feminine place within myself felt provoked and fired up.” She had already been struck in the foot with a pepper ball fired by an officer and saw the line of men she confronted being reinforced by vehicles meant to detain the protesters when she made the decision to bare herself even more completely: “I got down on the pavement and I spread my legs and put my elbows on my knees and my hands up, facing my palms upward, and it was like, shoot this. I mean, look at this. You really can’t say I have a weapon now. Other than this yoni.” (Quotations courtesy Unrefined Sophisticates).

While the protester did not acknowledge a desire to reference sheela-na-gig, she clearly meant to confront the show of violent masculine force with a display of feminine sexual power. In using her genitalia as a projection of power she seems to have shared the intention of people who used sheela-na-gigs to confront. To my mind though, her display most aligns with the Irish kings and an Irish goddess who was unafraid to reveal herself in human terms.

As a New Englander with ancestors tracing back to the Irish diaspora, I was surprised to learn that the Irish who remained have an altogether calmer response to sexuality and the female nude. The Anglo-Normans tried and failed to colonize the religious sensibility of Irish culture, which Kelly said only took on a Victorian English prudishness and devotion to attending church during the Irish Potato Famine, when competing religious authorities took advantage of a starving population. Kelly said modern Ireland has returned more to its relaxed attitudes toward religion. I told him that my family still retains that puritan streak toward sexuality, and I wouldn’t dare share the image of sheela-na-gig with my mother. This made him laugh. “The (American Irish) are conservative as be-damned. They think we’re a bunch of heathens!” Kelly told me that his family had a more skeptical view of the clergy (and other traditional figures of authority, including the police.) We laughed at the irony that the oft-colonized Irish took over the local governments and power structures of several American cities, including my local Boston.

I told Kelly I’d read about sheela-na-gigs being defaced and seeming altogether to be in danger in modern Ireland and assumed prudishness led to attacks on the figures. Kelly surprised me by telling me that they were more in danger of being looted from Irish shores. He was actually once approached by the FBI in an investigation of the theft of an Irish sheela-na-gig by organized crime in Boston. Its intended destination? The very Irish Catholic Boston College!