Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 25 Apr 13 - 06:43 PM

Ignore the line at the top of the post

*folklore*

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 26 Apr 13 - 05:57 PM

And of course there's all of the expressions dealing with orphans... the Guerze, an ethnic group in Guinea, refer to durable shoes as "orphan's shoes." The idea of the cruelly treated orphan seems to be very common.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 27 Apr 13 - 05:13 PM

Yes, it does. The orphan and the step-child are often mistreated in folklore. Hansel and Gretel and Snow-white come to mind.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 27 Apr 13 - 07:59 PM

I think that that goes back to the vulnerability of the orphan who doesn't have family ties and needs to work for their keep.

Interestingly, in that folk version, the curse isn't that the evil wife will die, it's that for the year, but that the firewood won't ever catch light because of the constant rain :)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Apr 13 - 12:29 AM

*Ignore the "but that".

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Apr 13 - 08:22 PM

BTW, IMO this is an example of how some oral tales are actually LESS brutal than the literary versions. (notice how the boy doesn't pray to Ukko to kill the wife, just to make the firewood not catch fire. Also, in the literary version created by Lönnrot, Ilmarinen's wife makes a series of promises to Kullervo before cursing him.

In the literary version, too, there's a scene of the woman baking a stone into the bread, which doesn't exist in this song version (and maybe other variants) The folk version lets us infer that she baked it in, it doesn't show us outright.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 29 Apr 13 - 02:39 AM

Is "Syöjätär" meant literally or metaphorically? eg. is the implication that the mistress is literally a witch, or that she's a witch metaphorically?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 29 Apr 13 - 06:19 PM

refresh. Syöjätär often appears as a wicked stepmother in folktales from Karelia where the hero/heroine must look after her horses.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 30 Apr 13 - 03:40 PM

All these orphans remind me of one of my favorite fairy tales when I was a kid . It was about a Russian girl who was driven out by her stepmother and finds herself in the cottage of Baba Yaga. The cottage is on chicken legs, which gives you some idea of what Baba Yaga's like.

The girl has a little, magical doll whose eyes twinkle and which speaks when given a tiny offering of beer and bread. Is the doll her mother's spirit? Could be.

At one point the doll says something I have remembered all my life. It said, "The morning is wiser than the evening." More than once in my life I have found that a problem I couldn't solve at night had become clear by morning. And also, anger that wanted to be expressed in the evening had changed into an intelligent plan for changing things by morning.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 30 Apr 13 - 06:03 PM

@leeneia: I think that'd be Vasilisa The Beautiful. Baba Yaga's counterpart in these folktales is either an old crone (akka) or Syöjätär.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 01 May 13 - 05:44 PM

Refresh.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 02 May 13 - 11:31 AM

Yes, that's it! How did you find that out?

By the way, I checked on Amazon, and that set of books (the Junior Classics) came with Collier's Encyclopedia. Our set was the 1938 version. Someone is asking $200 for that set today - a set in fine condition.

There's another thing I remember from 'Vasilisa the Beautiful.' Baba Yaga mixes poppy seeds with dirt and orders the little girl to retrieve every tiny seed. The magic doll organizes an army of ants, who expertly get every seed out for her.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 02 May 13 - 06:38 PM

@leeneia: I read it on the SurLalune fairy tales page :)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 02 May 13 - 07:47 PM

Interestingly, Syöjätär can also be used to describe an evil or unpleasant woman, though I like the idea of Kalervonpoika as a witch's slave!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 May 13 - 11:35 AM

Are you familiar with Mussorgsky's music about Baba Yaga? (I bet you are.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PjIiavyAag

The music makes me think that the chicken legs aren't holding still. Creepy!

This is good music to play when you're angry about something. Put it on and turn the volume up good and high. In our house there was no carpeting on the stairs, so it really helped to stomp up and down the stairs at the same time.
===============
"Syöjätär can also be used to describe an evil or unpleasant woman..."

Let us bear in mind that the line between a witch and a woman getting old, demented, ill-tempered or crippled could be dangerously thin in the days of yore.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 04 May 13 - 01:13 AM

@leeneia: Yes.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 04 May 13 - 11:32 PM

But, oddly it doesn't say an unpleasant old woman... just an unpleasant woman.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 06 May 13 - 04:55 AM

And, apparently there are also versions with references to the Mistress of Pohjola.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 May 13 - 12:17 PM

Yes, that's true. Unfortunately, young or middle-aged women were sometimes accused of witchcraft too. But most of the time, a witch is old, I think.

This is not related to folkore such as we are discussing here, but it's a good thing to be aware of: the religious page of my newspaper had an article by a minister who visited a village in Ghana to which women accused of witchcraft are banished. I can't recall all the pathetic reasons for which women are banished, but here's one I recall clearly:

A woman can be labelled a witch and driven from her village and her family if people around her get sick from something, but she doesn't.

Isn't that terrible? Other villagers might have eaten some spoiled food which she didn't eat, but the villages don't know anything about microbes and food poisoning, and so she loses her home and family. Or the other villagers might have suffered a viral infection to which she had already developed immunity.

Stories like this make you realize the value of education.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 06 May 13 - 11:04 PM

Children are burned as witches by their fundamentalist families in parts of Nigeria.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Karelian folk song: orphan boy's revenge
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 07 May 13 - 01:11 PM

That is so terrible and so completely unnecessary.