The Brown Bear of Norway

The Brown Bear of Norway is an Irish fairy tale collected by Patrick Kennedy which appeared in his Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (1866).^[1] It was later included by Andrew Lang in his anthology The Lilac Fairy Book (1910), though Lang misattributed his source as West Highland Tales (cf. The Brown Bear of the Green Glen).^[2]

Synopsis[]

A king in Ireland asked his daughters whom they wanted to marry. The oldest wanted the king of Ulster, the second the king of Munster, and the youngest the Brown Bear of Norway. That night, the youngest princess woke to find herself in a grand hall, and a handsome prince on his knees before her, asking her to marry him. They were married at once, and the prince explained that a witch had transformed him into a bear to get him to marry her daughter. Now that she had married him, he would be freed if she endured five years of trials.

They had three children in succession, but an eagle, a greyhound, and a lady took each one, and the princess, after losing the last child, told her husband that she wanted to visit her family. He told her that to return, she had only to wish it while lying down at night, and the next morning, she would wake in her old bed. She told her family her tale, and while she did not want to lose any more children, she was certain it was not her husband's fault, and she missed him. A woman told her to burn his bear fur, and then he would have to be a man both night and day. She stopped drinking a drink he gave her before she went to bed, and woke up and burned his fur. The man woke and told her that now he had to marry a witch's daughter; it had been the witch who had given her that advice.

The princess chased after her husband, and just as the night fell, they both reached a little house. A little boy played before the hearth, and her husband told her that the boy was their son, and the woman whose house it was, was the eagle who had carried the boy away. The woman made them welcome, and her husband gave her a pair of scissors, that would turn anything they cut into silk. He told her he would forget her during the day, but remember at night. At the second night, they found a house with their daughter, and he gave her a comb that would make pearls and diamonds fall from her hair.

At the third night, they found a house with their third child, and he gave her a hand-reel with golden thread that has no end, and half their wedding ring. He told her that once he entered a wood the next day, he would forget her and the children utterly, unless she reached his home and put her half of the ring to his. The wood tried to keep her out, but she commanded it, by the gifts she bore, to let her in, and found a great house and a woodman's cottage nearby. She went to the cottage and persuaded the woodman and his wife to take her as their servant, saying she would take no wages, but give them silk, diamonds, pearls, and golden thread whenever they wanted. She heard that a prince had come to live at the witch's castle.

The servants at the castle annoyed her with their attentions. She invited the head footman, the most persistent, and asked him to pick her some honeysuckle; when he did, she used the gifts she bore to give him horns and make him sing back to the great house. His fellow servants made mock of him until she let the charm drop. The prince, having heard of this, went to look at her and was puzzled by the sight. The witch's daughter came and saw the scissors, and the princess would only exchange them for a night outside the prince's chamber. She took the night and could not wake the prince, and the head footman ridiculed her as he put her out again. She tried again, with the comb, to no better success.

The third day, the prince did not merely look at her but stopped to ask if he could do anything for her, and she asked if he heard anything in the night. He said he had thought he heard singing in his dreams. She asked him if he had drunk anything before he slept, and when he said he had, she asked him to not drink it. That night, bargained for with the reel, she sang, and the prince roused. The princess was able to put the half-rings together, and he regained his memory. The castle fell apart, and the witch and her daughter vanished. The prince and the princess soon regained their children and set out for their own castle.

Analysis[]

The tale is classed as Aarne–Thompson type 425A, the search for the lost husband. Others of this type include The Black Bull of Norroway, The King of Love, The Daughter of the Skies, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, The Enchanted Pig, The Tale of the Hoodie, Master Semolina, The Enchanted Snake, The Sprig of Rosemary, and White-Bear-King-Valemon.^[3]

Variants[]

Ireland[]

In the tale Tarbh Mór na h-Iorbhaig ("The Great Bull of Irvaig"), three princesses talk about their future husbands, and the third says she wants to marry the Great Bull of Irvaig. The bull himself appears the next week and demands the third princess. He takes his wife to their new home and takes off the cochull or bull cowl, and tells her she must not lay a finger on the cowl, nor must reveal that he is a man under the bull skin. A year passes by and she gives birth to a son, who is taken away from her by a huge hand that come down the chimney. The Bull husband asures their son is safe wherever he is. The same fate befalls their second son. When she gives birth to their third son, she visits her relatives and reveals everythin about the bull husband. The third son is also taken by the mysterious hand, as the bull husband enters a frenzied state and takes her back to their island palace. He tells the boys are being kept by three giants, gives her a pair of boots and departs. The princess visits the three giants, receives objects to travel a river of fire, a mountain of glass and a mountain of thorns to reach her husband's kingdom. She then meets a princess by the side of a river who tells her the prince will only marry the one who can wash a stain of blood out of his three white shirts. The tale concludes as the princess spends three nights trying to make her husband remember.^[4]

County Leitrim[]

In a variant from County Leitrim, The Glass Mountains, a man enchanted into bull form marries a human wife, and she tells him she prefers for him to be human during the night. He also tells her that, whenever she gives birth, she must not shed a tear to whatever happens to their child. Just as his husband promised, a black dog comes down the chimney and takes the child from her - this happens to her first two sons. When she gives birth to a daughter and the black dog comes, the wife sheds a tear and her husband disappears. She goes in search for him. She finds a cottage with an old couple and a little boy (her son). She spends the night and when she is leaving the boy gives her a comb. This happens again in the next house, and her second son gives her a pair of scissors. The maiden arrives at last at the foot of the titular Glass Mountain, where lies another house with an elderly couple with her daughter. The third old man tells her that her husband is married to another woman and they live at the castle atop the Glass Mountain. Her daughter gives her an egg and she departs to climb the mountain. She asks for shelter at the castle and buys her place at her husband's bed with the gifts her children gave her.^[5]

Mabel Peacock wrote down another variant of The Glass Mountain from County Leitrim, which she claimed was "imperfect" and told to her when she was a child. In this version, a woman lived with her three daughters in a cottage. A man comes and asks for night lodgings. The matriarch relents and gives him shelter. The next day, the man asks for the hand of the youngest daughter in marriage. They marry and go to his castle, where he asks her which form she prefers: for him to be a bull or man during each time of the day. She prefers for him to be a man by night. Three children are born, and she wishes to visit her mother. She reveals the strange nature of her husband, he disappears and she seeks him with her children. However, Mabel Peacock noted that the tale, as given to her, was "defective", but she noted down the song the maiden sings to her sleeping husband to jog his memory, referring to him as the "Bare bull of Orange".^[6]

Wales[]

Scottish folklorist John Francis Campbell claimed that an oral version told in 1812 to a man named John Dewar by a servant woman, was a version of a "popular tale" written in Wales "about 400 years ago".^[7] In this tale, titled an t urisgeal aig na righre Righ na thuirabhinn agus righ nan Ailp, the King of Ailp and his kingdom were killed by the druids, leaving only a son and a daughter. His daughter was trained by the druids and gained skin green as moss. The son climbs a mountain name Bean ghloine with his father's sword and scepter. Another druid curses him into animal form (a grayhound). He abandons the items on the mountain and flees to his sister. The prince, then, must remain as a grayhound until a maiden agrees to marry him, and his sister nurses three children and receives a kiss from a king's son. Some time later, the King of the Urbhin, while at war with another king, loses his way into a thick mist and ends up at the greyhound's castle. He kicks up the former king's bones and the grayhound, for this affront, demands the king of Urbhin surrenders one of his daughters as ransom. The princess lives with the greyhound and discovers he is a human prince. They marry, and her sisters become jealous. The princess's brother also falls in love with the grayhound's sister, the green girl, after drinking a potion of "mheadair Bhuidh" (yellow mead) from her hand. The princess's sister conspire with a druid to dethrone the her sister and become the greyhound's queen: when the time comes to give birth, for three times the princess's child is taken form her by a green hand in a window, but each child cries and the mother takes the teardrops. The grayhound, now a human prince, announces he will marry the one who can retrieve his father's sword and scepter from the glass mountain. The princess accomplishes it, but her sisters steal the credit. Next, they must wash the bloodstained shirts that belonged to those slain by the druids. The princess also washes all but one, and stays three nights on the (now human) greyhound's bed. On the first two nights, he is asleep, but acknowlegdes his wife on the third night, and they return to the former kingdom of Ailp with the green girl (hs sister). The tale continues as the "wicked druid" Dubhmalurraidh changes one of the princess's sisters into her shape, to cast the king into confusion. However, the green sister produces her father's sword and scepter (retrieved by her sister-in-law) and her three nephews.^[8]

Germany[]

In a variant from Franconia, collected by Ludwig Bechstein, Die Knaben mit den goldnen Sternlein ("The Boys with the Little Golden Stars") (de), a young count overhears three girls talking, the third promising to marry the count and bear him two children with golden stars on their chests (tale type ATU 707, The Three Golden Children). The count marries the girl and she bears the children. His mother casts the children in the water, but a servant rescues them. The wife is accused of giving birth to cats and is expelled from home. The servant gives back her children and they live in solitude. Years later, she decides to seek her husband out, in Portugal. She takes her children to a castle, whose lady asks for one of her children and in return gives her a golden spinning wheel. The same thing happens in a second castle: she gives up one of her children and receives another golden trinket. She uses both to buy two nights with her husband in Portugal.^[9]

America[]

In a variant from Schoharie, New York, Wolf of the Greenwood, a woman has three daughters and a "witch chair" to charm possible suitors for her daughters. One man sits on the chair and chooses the youngest. They marry. However, a witch who lives in a castle atop a mountain curses the man into a wolf form during the day. The couple has three children, but a dog sent by the witch takes the children to the husband's brothers, whom the witch cursed not to remember their familial ties to the maiden. The wife visits her brothers-in-law: two give her a magical accordion and a comb; the third advises her to ask a blacksmith to fashion a pair of iron shoes to climb the mountain. She does and meets her husband, who acts as the witch's woodsman, and the witch herself.^[10]

Other sources[]

Mabel Peacock noted another tale inserted in Mary Hallock Foote's tale, The Last Assembly Ball, published in The Century Magazine. In this version, a king has six daughters and a magical wishing-chair on a dais. Every daughter sits on the chair and makes her wish. When it is the youngest's turn, she wishes to be married to the "Roan Bull of Orange". Some time later, the Roan Bull himself appears at the palace and demands the princess. The king tries to substitute his daughter for the daughter of the hen-wife and the daughter of he swineherd. The Roan Bull discovers the ruse by giving his bride-to-be a white wand. He gets his true bride at last and departs with her.^[11][12]

See also[]

• Habogi
• Nix Nought Nothing
• The Master Maid
• The Three Daughters of King O'Hara
• The Three Princesses of Whiteland

References[]

External links[]

• The Brown Bear of Norway