Robert's Raves

Heroines to the Rescue
by Robert Rodriguez

K, now that the villains have had a chance to strut their stuff on center stage and ply their malevolent trade, it’s time to shift gears, as it were, and turn the spotlight over to the good guys, or in this particular case, the good gals. Once upon a time, long before there was Xenia, Warrior Princess, Red Sonya, or Jirel of Joiry, long before there was Phoenix, or Tomogoesen, or Nioka Gordon, or Lady Death-strike, or Eowyn, shield-maiden of the Rohirim, there was a realm most wondrous over the hills and far away, just the other side of imagination, where ballads were sung and tales were told in which female protagonists rose to the occasion and heroines made their mark upon the folklore landscape using every possible device from physical prowess and trickery to wit, cleverness, compassion, intelligence, and a resourcefulness that could put any male hero to shame.

The world of traditional ballads from the British Isles and North America certainly seems to have no shortage of heroine figures. Byrd Janet risks the enmity of the Faerie Queen and her entire court when she confronts them at Miles Cross on Samhain Eve to disenchant her lover Tamlin and keep him from being sacrificed to hell’s dark powers. Lady Isabel turns the tables on a sinister elfin knight and sends him to a well–deserved aquatic grave for his previous crimes. The Turkish lady, sometimes given the name Sophia, helps liberate Lord Bateman from her father’s imprisonment and then travels over half a world to remind the forgetful Northumbrian nobleman of his promise to wed her. The heroine of "William Taylor" travels to a foreign shore in search of her lover, discovers he has been unfaithful to her, shoots him and his new love, and is given command of a ship of war by an admiring sea captain. In "The Crafty Maid’s Policy," a young woman accosts a gentleman as he rides along a highway, and demands that he give to her what lies betwixt his thighs. Eagerly expecting a most pleasant afternoon of joyous dalliance he eagerly dismounts from his horse, only to see her mount the animal and ride off down the road, leaving him most chagrined as she chides him for misunderstanding her request and, hopefully, having taught the pompous fellow a lesson.

In one of the strangest ballads from the traditional repertoire, a heroine known as the Bonnie Lass of Angelcy, using the ancient ritual of a dancing contest to settle disputes that might otherwise erupt into actual warfare, not only out–dances a king and a dozen of his chief nobles, but also manages to abscond with much of their wealth, including swords, armor, and other valuable items. Mary Ambree’s tale, composed around 1600 as one of the very first Broadside ballads to be sold by street hawkers all over Britain, is remarkable, even for the plot of a traditional ballad. Mary follows her lover, a sergeant, to the Low Countries and after his death in battle, she takes over his command, leading three thousand soldiers in the successful siege of Gaunt, a pivotal battle. That remarkable story would be popular with the British public for nearly three centuries, and would be the keynote ballad in a series of songs and tales involving women who, using the male disguise, would engage in everything from highway robbery to gallant tours of duty in both the British army and navy. A number of these ballad heroines, in one form or another, would travel across the Atlantic and would find their way into songs and stories told and retold from the Ozarks and Appalachians to rural New England and the Canadian Maritimes. They include such well known songs as "Banks of the Nile," "Sovay," "Cabin Boy, "Jackie Monroe," "Martinmas Time," and "The Female Drummer."

If there is one characteristic that is often central to a heroine’s success, it is resourcefulness, often compounded by an inborn wit that, no matter what the heroine’s actual status in life, nonetheless gives her a premier stature in world tales and legends. Morgiana, though a slave girl, still showed her cleverness and guile by saving Ali Baba’s life, foiling the murderous plot of the forty thieves, and even doing in their captain with her own hand, for which actions she received her freedom and was married to Ali Baba’s own son. There is a tale from Yorkshire in which a serving maid once foiled a band of robbers intent upon murder and mayhem; she manages to extinguish the dreaded Hand of Glory, which the robbers employ to disable the residents of the inn they wish to attack. She alerted the hitherto sleeping folks into action to drive the bandits away. In a tale from Dagistan in the Caucasus, a newly-employed serving maid discovers that her employer and his family are demons disguised as human beings; by using holy water and a cross she manages to banish them to hell, for which service the local boyar’s son marries her and raises her to the status of a noblelady.

In a tale from the Palestinian Arabic tradition containing some very unusual allegorical imagery, an old woman takes time out from baking her bread to make several voyages to distant cities where she winds up saving two young women whose husbands wish to punish them, one because she has not born him a son and the other because he believes her to be unfaithful to him. In a story from Ireland, the youngest daughter of a poor woman successfully wakes the corpse of a young man by breaking the spell placed on him by a wicked magician.

If poverty and humble status are no barrier to a successful heroine’s accomplishments, then it is equally true that neither do influence, and high position interfere when a resourceful heroine is called for. A Cambodian princess named Amaradevi once outwitted and punished a quartet of wicked royal advisors who had caused the exile of the man she loved. In an Indian tale, the Princess Savitri successfully challenged and tricked Yama, lord of death, into granting her three wishes that could only be accomplished if her husband was restored to life. In a Polish legend, a princess named Wanda took her own life rather than submit to a marriage with a foreign ruler she detested. This act of sacrifice so galvanized her people that for generations they remained secure from foreign invasion.

Heroines seem to do quite well when confronting the devil or his minions, and a number of tales reflect this to a faretheewell. In a tale from the Acadian French tradition of eastern Canada, a young girl named Ti Flor once saved her entire village from being taken over by the devil using only her wits and three broken fiddle strings. The late fantasy writer and historian Manly Wade Wellman once related a story from North Carolina and West Virginia in which a young girl saved her family from being taken to hell by luring Old Scratch into a trap, tying his tail to a tree stump, and forcing him to listen to love songs played on her mountain dulcimer for one entire night. When he fled at sunrise, he out-distanced the wind behind him and overtook the wind in front of him, as the Irish storytellers say. It seems that the devil doesn’t like love songs of any sort. In a tale from Mexico, a young girl named Salina once confronted and outwitted the demonic figure known as El Sombreron, so-called because he always wore a hat. She used a brand new guitar that had never heen touched except by the hands of a virgin who had never known the touch of any man.

The Basques of Spain tell a story in which a farmer, in danger of going to hell, was saved when his clever wife disguised herself as a hideous creature the devil could not identify by covering herself with honey, feathers, and animal droppings. When told that the farmer had seven more creatures like this roaming his land, the devil took off for parts unknown and has never been seen since in the Basque country.

Some heroines have managed to attain a truly international character on the folklore map of the world, Among the best known are the clever peasant girl who outwits and out-riddles the judge or other male authority figure; she may be Manca to the Czechs, Similitca to the Russians, Semantha in Kentucky, or Danyshman to the Kirghiz of Central Asia, but the results are always the same. Then there is the heroine who unmasks the serial killer through a dream sequence or some other clever strategem as in such tales as the Robber Bridegroom, Bluebeard, Mr. Fox, or Old Foster. There is the heroine who must go on a quest to find her lost husband after she has disobeyed the injunction never to look at his human shape at night as in such stories as "Cupid and Payrha" of Ancient Greece, "East of the Sun, West ofthe Moon" from Norway, "The Black Bull of Noraway" from Scotland, and "White Bear Wittington" from the U.S.

There is the heroine who aids a hero in his flight from an ogre, magician, demon, or simply a strange old man with unnatural powers. She may be Mastermaid in Norway, Fidelma in Ireland, Blanca Flor in Mexico, or the devil’s own voluptuous daughter Ruthie Matoothie in the southern Appalachians, but her actions are always similar. She aids the hero in the various tasks assigned him when he takes service with the devil, giant, or magician in question. She aids the hero in his actual flight from the sinister villain who is pursuig him, and eventually she also must disenchant him from his amnesia spell before he marries the wrong lady and ruins the ending of a perfectly good story. There is the heroine who must undertake a hazardous journey in order to clear her name and regain her honor after her husband mistakenly believes her to be unfaithful. In the end, she not only regains her honor, but also unmasks the real villain in the piece, usually a business rival of her husbands who had made a wager with him concerning his wife’s virtue and chastity.

Even death itself does not get in the way when a determined heroine wishes to accomplish a needed purpose. From Trinidad comes the tale of Ma Yarwood who came back from the grave to take a terrible revenge upon the man who not only murdered her but also stole her wedding ring. From California comes a story from the Depression era in which a woman returns from beyond the grave to nourish her newly-born baby with milk until it could be rescued by folks in a nearby migrant camp. A similar story can be found as far afield as Vietnam. In a strange story from the Yukon Territory, a prospector’s dead wife returns from the grave not only to show her husband the location of a valuable treasure but also to save his life when he has taken ill during a particularly harsh winter.

I have saved perhaps the best heroine for last, and it is no accident that she may have just been the best storyteller of all time. I, of course, refer to none other than the grand lady of yarn-spinning, the one, the only, Sheherezhad herself. She never outwitted giants like Molly Whuppy or Una; she never led armies into battle or held castle ramparts like Mary Ambree; she never matched wits with a king while disguised as a man as did Vasilisa. But as a true heroine, Sheherezhad has few equals when all is said and done. She not only managed to keep her own head on her shoulders, day after day, while night after night, she kept her sultan hushand quite happily entertained with marvelous tales for nearly three years. She managed to save all the other women in her kingdom from suffering the grizly fate of all the sultan’s previous wives. But more than anything, she gave to the world one of the most enduring and grandest collection of stories this planet of ours has ever known, a collection that has come down to us in the form of the stories known as the Thousand and One Nights. She was a true heroine in every sense of the meaning of the word: clever, intelligent, resourceful, determined, self-reliant, and talented to the nth degree. To Sheherezhad and her kindred sisters, heroines all, long may your spirits thrive and flourish where good songs are sung and tales are told. The heroines have come to the rescue; their ballads are sung, and their stories are told; in your hands I now leave them.

—published in WIP Winter 1999

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