The Feminine in Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise von Franz

Author:Marie-Louise von Franz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala

As the man finished his song, he raised one arm high up toward heaven and dropped the other down toward the lake. The girl saw that the upper part of her body was naked and that her fur coat lay across the strange man’s arm.

Again the man sang the song, and as he finished it and raised one arm and dropped the other, the rest of the woman’s clothing flew over onto his raised arm. The girl sat there naked and ashamed, and couldn’t understand what was happening to her. For the third time the man sang his song, but this time the girl lost consciousness, and when she came to herself, she was sitting beside the man in his kayak. The man rowed far away with her, far over the lake with his bright copper oars, which glistened wetly in the air. They did not speak to each other until they came to a place where they saw two houses. At the entrance to the village was a big house and in the background a small one. Then the man said in a stern voice, “You must go into the big house, not into the little one.”

The girl did what the man told her and went into the big house, and the man rowed away. It was dreary in the big house, not a soul was in it, but she had hardly entered before a small woman ran in. She wore extraordinary clothes made out of the gut of a bearded seal. She cried out to the girl to come into the other house, for the man with whom she had come was dangerous and would kill her. The girl came out at once and went into the other house. Here a little girl, with whom the extraordinary woman dressed in gut skins lived, sat on the sleeping bench.

The young girl who had run away from the man she loved no longer thought about anything much. Sometimes she thought that she was already dead, but she heard what the others said and saw them go around the house, and the woman came and whispered to her that this time she was saved, but that the man with whom she had come was not an ordinary man, that nobody could resist him, and that soon he would come home and would be very angry that she had left his house. But the woman would help her, and she gave her a small cask filled with water in which were four small pieces of whaleskin. She told her that when the strange man came, she should hide at the entrance to the house and throw the pieces of whaleskin in his face, for the woman had sung a magic song over her present, so as to make it strong.

Soon the man came back in his kayak. He sat down beside the sea and called out that she should stay quiet in his house, that he would not do her harm, and that she could never be hidden from him.

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