Calumniated Wife

The Calumniated Wife is a motif in traditional narratives, numbered K2110.1 in Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. It entails a wife being falsely accused of, and often punished for, some crime or sin. This motif is at the centre of a number of traditional plots, being associated with tale-types 705–712 in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index of tale-types.

Overview

Before the edition of Antti Aarne's first folktale classification, Svend Grundtvig developed — and later Astrid Lunding translated — a classification system for Danish folktales in comparison with other international compilations available at the time. In this preliminary system, four folktypes were grouped together based on essential characteristics: folktypes 44 Den forskudte dronning og den talende fugl, det syngende træ, det rindende vand ("The Disowned Queen and the Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, the Flowing Water"); 45A Den stumme dronning ("The Mute Queen" or "The Fairy Godmother"); 45B Født af fisk ("Born from Fish") and 46 Pigen uden hænder ("The Maiden without Hands").Lunding, Astrid. "The System of Tales in the Folklore Collection of Copenhagen". In: Folklore Fellows Communications (FFC) nº 2. 1910. pp. 17-18.

The mother falsely accused of giving birth to strange children is in common between tale types 706 and 707, where the woman has married the king because she has said she would give birth to marvelous children, as in The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird, Princess Belle-Etoile, Ancilotto, King of Provino, The Wicked Sisters, and The Three Little Birds.Stith Thompson, The Folktale, p 121-2, University of California Press, Berkeley Los Angeles London, 1977 A related theme appears in Aarne-Thompson type 710, where the heroine's children are stolen from her at birth, leading to the slander that she killed them, as in Mary's Child or The Lassie and Her Godmother.Stith Thompson, The Folktale, p 122-3, University of California Press, Berkeley Los Angeles London, 1977

Stith Thompson remarked that the core narrative action of tale types ATU 705, ATU 706, ATU 707 and ATU 710 seemed so uniform as to transfer from one type to the other."The main action of the four tales which we have just examined—the discovery of the persecuted maiden in the woods or a tree, her marriage to the king, the slander concerning the birth of her children, the loss of the children, the abandonment of the queen, the eventual discovery of the truth, and the reunion of the family—is so uniform that there has been much transfer from one tale to the other". Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. p. 123. However, he glanced a possibility that these types may be further related to each other."...if, indeed, they are all essentially different stories." Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. p. 123.

In the same vein, scholar Linda Dégh suggested a common origin for tale types ATU 403 ("The Black and the White Bride"), ATU 408 ("The Three Oranges"), ATU 425 ("The Search for the Lost Husband"), ATU 706 ("The Maiden Without Hands") and ATU 707 ("The Three Golden Sons"), since "their variants cross each other constantly and because their blendings are more common than their keeping to their separate type outlines" and even influence each other.Dégh, Linda. Narratives in Society: A Performer-Centered Study of Narration. FF Communications 255. Pieksämäki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 1995. p. 41.

ATU Tale types ATU 705A: Born of a Fruit (Fish) Analysis Comparative mythologist Patrice Lajoye and folklorist Stith Thompson both remarked on the similarity between the initial part of the tale type ATU 705A, "Born of a Fish", with tale type ATU 303, "The Twins or Blood Brothers": a fisherman catches a fish in the sea and brings it home to his wife to eat. Through the ingestion of the fish, a miraculous gestation occurs and a child is born."[...] Born from a Fish (Type 705). As in the tale of The Two Brothers (Type 303), a man catches a magic fish which he is to feed to his wife...". Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. p. 123. .Lajoye, Patrice. "La conception du héros par ingestion. Un essai de typologie des versions eurasiatiques". In: Nouvelle Mythologie Comparée. numéro 5, 2019-2020. p. 10. Alternative, according to scholars Anna Angelopoulou and Aigle Broskou, editors of the Greek Folktale Catalogue, the heroine's father ingests a fruit that was to be eaten by his wife and gives birth to the heroine.Angelopoulou, Anna; Brouskou, Aígle. "ΚΑΤΑΛΟΓΟΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΩΝ". Vol. 3: ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 300-499. Tome B. Athens: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ Ε.Ι.Ε, 1999. p. 52. .

Thompson described that the tale type involves a male pregnancy caused by the ingestion of the fish. The pregnancy is carried on the father's thigh (knee). The child born of this unusual pregnancy, a girl, is carried off by birds and raised in a nest. The maiden, now an adult, is found by a prince in the woods.Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. p. 123. .Uther, Hans-Jörg. The types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography, based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. Volume 1: Animal tales, tales of magic, religious tales, and realistic tales, with an introduction. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia-Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004. p. 377. . This sequence exists as its own type in the Georgian Tale Index, numbered -407***, "The Forest Girl": the girl is born from the man's ankle, and is raised on top of an oak tree or poplar by the eagle or the raven.

At the end of the tale, after the maiden is expelled from the palace, she is summoned to the king's presence and narrates her tale in the form of a riddle or a story-within-a-story, by which the king recognizes her.Angelopoulos, Anna and Kaplanoglou, Marianthi. "Greek Magic Tales: aspects of research in Folklore Studies and Anthropology". In: FF Network. 2013; Vol. 43. p. 15. Scholar Anna Angelopoulos sees the storyline as a process of humanization for the heroine of the tale, albeit with participation of an evil female character (the king's stepmother).

Distribution Stith Thompson, in his book The Folktale, claimed that the tale type was "purely Scandinavian",Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. p. 186. . since most of the available variants at the time were collected in Denmark (10 tales) and Sweden (5 tales), apart from 6 tales recorded in Greece and some tales sparsely collected in other countries.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 240. However, Chilean folklorist collected a Chilean tale with the initial episode of the male pregnancy with a fruit, and his daughter being taken by an eagle to a treetop. Saavedra supposed that, if a variant exists in Chile, then the tale type must exist in some form in Spain.Pino Saavedra, Yolando. Cuentos folklóricos de Chile. Tomo II. Santiago, Chile: Editorial Universitaria. 1961. pp. 316-317. Also, scholar , in his book The Types of the Norwegian Folktale, reported 3 Norwegian variants of type 705, Fiskebarnet ("The Fish-Child").Hodne, Ørnulf. The Types of the Norwegian Folktale. Universitetsforlaget, 1984. p. 152.

Further studies show a larger area of distribution of this tale type, including in the Arab-speaking regions. For example, professor Hasan M. El-Shamy, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, locates variants across the Mediterranean: in North Africa, in Asia Minor, in the Middle East, in the Near East, even into Subsaharan Africa.El-Shamy, Hasan M.. "Fisch: Vom Fisch geboren (AaTh 705)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Online, edited by Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Heidrun Alzheimer, Hermann Bausinger, Wolfgang Brückner, Daniel Drascek, Helge Gerndt, Ines Köhler-Zülch, Klaus Roth and Hans-Jörg Uther. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 1212. https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/database/EMO/entry/emo.4.148/html Project MUSE. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/112081. In addition, Anna Angelopoulou and Aigle Broskou, editors of the Greek Folktale Catalogue, list 55 variants found all over Greece.Angelopoulou, Anna; Brouskou, Aigle. CATALOGUE RAISONNE DES CONTES GRECS: TYPES ET VERSIONS AT700-749. ARCHIVES GEORGES A. MÉGAS: CATALOGUE DU CONTE GREC-2. Athenes: CENTRE DE RECHERCHES NÉOHELLÉNIQUES, FONDATION NATIONALE DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE, 1995. p. 52. . Scholars Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana remarked that the "complete type [with the episode of the ingestion of the fish] is more common" in Palestine.Muhawi, Ibrahim, and Sharif Kanaana. Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1989. p. 330. .

Mythological parallels The unusual circumstances of the heroine's birth from a male body part are noted to resemble the births of Athena and Dionysus of Greek mythology.

When analysing an Egyptian variant, The Falcon's Daughter, scholar Hasan M. El-Shamy saw that "basic parts" of the tale type found resonance with Ancient Egyptian religion: the falcon represented solar deity Horus, and the maiden on the tree Hathor, a deity with solar traits "believed to dwell in a holy sun tree" (the sycamore).Dorson, Richard M. Folktales told around the world. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press. 1978. p. 159. ."Amongst the ancient Egyptians (...), trees were enthusiastically worshipped (...) as the homes of various divinities. The splendid green sycamores (...) were accounted divine and earnestly worshipped by Egyptians of every rank, (...) The most famous of these sycamores—the sycamore of the South—was regarded as the living body of Hāthor upon earth; ..." Philpot, Mrs. J. H. (1897). The Sacred Tree; or the tree in religion and myth. London: MacMillan & Co. pp. 9-10.

ATU 706: The Maiden Without Hands This tale type is also known in folkloristics as belonging to the Constance-cycle.

Origins The tale's origins, according to the historical-geographical study of Alexander H. Krappe, point to Eastern Europe; more precisely, the tale is "a migratory legend of Oriental, i. e. Byzantine, origin". On a similar note, scholar Jack Zipes stated that motifs of Helene de Constantinopla (including incest and bodily harm to the heroine) "stem from Byzantine and Greek tales and medieval legends".Pitrè, Giuseppe; Zipes, Jack David; Russo, Joseph. The collected Sicilian folk and fairy tales of Giuseppe Pitrè. New York: Routledge, 2013 . p. 847. . Professor Thomas Leek chronologically situates the birth of the story after the Fourth Crusade and the fragmentation of the then existent Byzantine Empire, and suggests an interaction between eastern and western sources to form the tale.

An early version of the tale type is said to be found in the compilation of The Arabian Nights. Versions of the tale were also known in medieval European literature since the 13th century,Marzolph, Ulrich; van Leewen, Richard. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. Vol. I. California: ABC-Clio. 2004. p. 452. (e-book). such as Manékine and Roman de la belle Hèlene de Constantinople, from the 13th century.Trinquet, Charlotte. Le conte de fées français (1690-1700): Traditions italiennes et origines aristocratiques. Narr Verlag. 2012. p. 216. . Another predecessor of the tale type is the Life of King Offa, a European mediaeval tale that also shows that Offa's future wife has escaped an attempted incest by her father - a motif close to Donkeyskin and variants.

German scholar suggested that the Normans mediated the transmission of the tale type between England and France.Tegethoff, Ernst. Französische Volksmärchen. Zweiter Band. Aus neueren Sammlungen. Jena: Eugen Diederichs. 1923. pp. 324-325.

Distribution