"Whitebear Whittington." In
Richard Chase. Grandfather Tales. Boston: Houghton, 1948.
pp. 52-64. With one full-page drawing of the wife and a white bird
along the road, by Berkeley William, Jr. Also referred to as "Three
Gold Nuts" by storytellers such as Dicey Adams (one of Chase's
sources). "Whitebear Whittington." In Eulalie Steinmetz Ross, ed. The Blue Rose: A Collection of Stories for Girls. Illus. Enrico Arno. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966. 186 pp. Thirteen fairy tales from older sources, including literary fairy tales by authors such as Eleanor Farjeon, Walter de la Mare, Laurence Housman, Ruth Sawyer, Howard Pyle, George MacDonald, Hans Christian Andersen, and others. "Whitebear Whittington" from Richard Chase's Grandfather Tales contains a full-page drawing of the heroine riding on the white bear with three children (at left). This is the oldest book in AppLit's bibliography Feminist Collections of Folktales. Hooks,
William H. Snowbear Whittington: An Appalachian Beauty and the
Beast. Illus. Victoria Lisi. New York: Macmillan, 1994.
N. pag. A number of unpublished versions of this tale from various oral informants, titled "The Three Gold Nuts" (JTA-125, 3078, 3079), and "The Man that Turned Himself into a Bear" (JTA-112, 113) can be found in the James Taylor Adams collection in the Blue Ridge Institute. Adams' typed transcript of JTA-125 notes, "Told me on August 13, 1940, by Mrs. Dicy Adams [his wife]. She heard her mother tell it. I heard my own father and mother tell this tale forty-four years ago." Full text of this version in this web site. JTA 3078 and 3079 were collected by Richard Chase. "Three Gold Nuts." In Mountain Tales by Roadside Theater. 1 33 1/3 rpm, mono. sound disc (36 min.). Whitesburg, KY: June Appal Recordings, 1980. Other stories: "Jim Wolf ," "Fat or Lean," "Fat Man," "Cat and Rat." Also includes songs: "Cripple Creek." "Thousand Legged Worm," "Old Smokey," "Handsome Molly." "Whitebear Whittington" is retold in Lee Smith's adult novel Fair and Tender Ladies (NY: Ballantine, 1988), as one of the traditional tales that influences the heroine Ivy Rowe from childhood. At the hour of her death in old age she thinks of Whitebear Whittington as a "wild, wild" bear running at night up on Hell Mountain (p. 316). More details at Folklore Themes in Longer Appalachian Fiction. George Ella Lyon's Gina. Jamie. Father. Bear. (New York: Atheneum/Richard Jackson, 2002) is a young adult novel that links a contemporary story of divorce and family relations with the family stories in folktales like "Whitebear Whittington." More details at Folklore Themes in Longer Appalachian Fiction. Ransom, Candice. Finding Day's Bottom. Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books, 2006. In this novel for children about a Virginia girl mourning the death of her father in a sawmill accident in the 1950s, her grandfather tells her three folktales (based on Richard Chase's versions in Grandfather Tales): "Whitebear Whittington," "Gallymanders! Gallymanders!" and "Like Meat Loves Salt." "To Jane-Ery’s surprise, Grandpap’s funny ways and strange stories bring her a comfort she never expected" (from publisher's book description). See more on this book in Folklore Themes in Longer Appalachian Fiction. Three Drops of Blood is a lively Lime Kiln Theater performance of the same tale. Creative Activities for Three Folktales includes several activities for "Whitebear Whittington." Related Appalachian Tales:"The Girl That Married a Flop-Eared Hound-Dog," in Marie Campbell. Tales from the Cloud Walking Country. Indiana UP, 1958. Rpt. Athens: U of George Press, 2000. Collected by Campbell in Kentucky in the 1930s, this unusual variant of the tale features a king so addled by a talking hound-dog that he lets it marry his youngest daughter. The bewitched groom appears as "a natural man" at his wedding, since the nice girl is willing to marry him of her own free will. After 3 visits to her family's home, the wife, who gives in to her sisters' threats and reveals that her husband's secret name is Sunshine on the Dew, must travel 3 nights to recover her husband and babies. Reprinted in Catherine Peck, ed. QPB Treasury of North American Folktales. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1998. "The Little Old Rusty Cook Stove in the Woods" from Marie Campbell's Tales from the Cloud Walking Country, pp. 59-62. Reprinted in Judith V. Lechner. Allyn & Bacon Anthology of Traditional Literature. New York: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon, 2004. A princess, lost in the woods, finds a bewitched king's son trapped in a rusty stove. After her father sends substitutes to do her job of releasing him and then the princess breaks her vow by speaking more than three words when she goes to say goodbye to her father, "the stove man" disappears and she must climb a glass mountain to find his castle. Some toad-frogs having a play-party give her magical objects to help on this quest, including three nuts. She works as a cook, trades beautiful dresses found in the nuts to the prince's false bride for chances to sleep with him, and on the third night, when he doesn't take his wife's sleeping potion, she gets his attention. He gets rid of the bride that fooled him and marries the heroine. The narrator reminisces about the days when cook stoves were new to her and wishing to have the stove in the tale to play with when she was a girl hearing the tale from a woman her granny knew. Campbell cites tale type 425A, The Search for the Lost Husband, and Grimms' "The Iron Stove." "The Snake Princess" in Marie Campbell, Tales from the Cloud Walking Country, pp. 151-55. Told by Uncle Tom Dixon in E. KY. The roles are reversed in this tale of a boy who dies while helping break the evil spell on an enchanted snake. The Snake Princess then revives and marries him. During a visit home, he breaks his promise to never wish her off the Golden Mountain. He must travel and overcome three giants before he can return to his Snake Princess in her castle on the Golden Mountain. This tale told in the 1920s and '30s seems racist to today's readers, with "little black men" in far-off lands who trick the boy's father into giving his child to him, and later torment the boy to death as he tries to rescue the enchanted princess. "The Bewitched Princess" in Ruth Ann Musick's Green Hills of Magic.1970. Rpt. Parsons, WV: McClain, 1989. Also about a man marrying a snake that is an enchanted princess. The snake stops him from killing himself when he couldn't find a wife and he follows her instructions for organizing a wedding even though there is no woman visible at first. "The Boy That Had a Bear for a Daddy." In Campbell, Tales from the Cloud Walking Country, pp. 190-91. In this unfinished tale, a woman is raped by a bear, gives birth to a bear child, and dies seven days later. The bear boy gets into trouble with his superhuman strength. The White Bear is described as "a unique merging of Appalachian and Norwegian variants of this great old story." Told by Vermont storytellers Tim Jennings and Leanne Ponder. In World Tales Live at Bennington College. Audiocassette and CD. Eastern Coyote Prods. No date is given at Folktale.net, except that it is a 1999 American Library Association Notable Children's Recording. There is a big white bear that gives Jack a star out of the sky and a ride home, flying on its back, in Anne Shelby's original Jack tale, "Jack and the Christmas Beans." In A Kentucky Christmas. Ed. George Ella Lyon. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2003. Also in Shelby's The Adventures of Molly Whuppie and Other Appalachian Folktales. Illus. Paula McArdle. Chapel Hill: Univ. of NC Press, 2007, pp. 55-61. See more under Shelby's name at Appalachian Folktales in General Collections, Journals, Web Sites and Appalachian Folktale Collections K-Z. The Frog King is another animal-groom or beast husband tale. "A Bunch of Laurel Blooms for a Present" (described on that page) begins like "Whitebear Whittington" or "Beauty and the Beast," but the heroine saves her father by going to live with a witch, who makes her stay with a frog (enchanted man). Compare "Whitebear Whittington" with:"East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon" from Asbjørnsen's Popular Tales from the Norse, translated by G. W. Dasent and adapted in many versions. Full text reprinted online with revised translation by D. L. Ashliman. Also reprinted online from Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book at Rick Walton, Children's Author: Classic Tales and Fables.
Hague, Kathleen and Michael. East of the Sun and West of the Moon. New York: Voyager/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980. Picture
book. Willard, Nancy. East of the Sun & West of the Moon. Illus. Barry Moser. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1989. A poetic play adaptation with realistic paintings by Moser. The Winds are three women and their brother North Wind, who function as a chorus from the beginning. "The Greenish Bird." In Carter, Angela, ed. Strange Things Sometimes Still Happen: Fairy Tales from Around the World. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1993. pp. 37-42. This is an interesting Mexican tale in which the heroine falls in love with a Greenish Bird, seeing that he is a man. When her jealous sisters injure him, Luisa sets out on a quest to find him. The sisters are orphans and in this tale it not through fault of the parents or the heroine that the hero must be rescued. Luisa gets help from the dangerous Sun and Moon and Wind, and their mothers. An eagle takes her to the palace where the Greenish Bird, now a leprous human, is about to marry another. Luisa gets work as a servant and the prince demands to marry her in the end, recognizing her partly through a cup of chocolate she prepares for him. "Beauty and the Beast"—different versions in many books and films. Reprinted online from Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book at Rick Walton, Children's Author: Classic Tales and Fables. Other variants of tale type 425C are reprinted in D. L. Ashliman's Beauty and the Beast, including "The Bear Prince" from Switzerland. Animal Brides and Animal Bridegrooms: Tales Told by North American Indians, edited by D. L. Ashliman, gives the texts of tales such as "The Bear Who Married a Woman." The Girl Who Married a Bear, a Native American legend retold by a contributor to Animal Myths and Legends. Peesunt, a vain Chief's daughter, has no fear of or respect for animals in the woods. She follows a man in a bearskin, finds herself trapped in a bear village married to a kind bear, has 2 children that are half bear and half man, and eventually turns into a bear herself although her brothers find her and she returns to the human world until she and her sons become bears in the woods. Her husband instructs her in how her brothers should kill him and treat his body, teaching Peesunt's people how to respect bears they kill. Many novels based on "Beauty and the Beast" were listed at Once Upon a Time . . . (no longer online?) and are listed at Sur La Lune Fairy Tales. Last
update:
06/26/2008 |
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The
wife who rescues her husband from bestial enchantment has more
dignity, power, and independence than her counterpart in European
tales (See "East of the Sun," below). The more active, trustworthy,
and diligent wife in the Appalachian tale is portrayed developing a
fulfilling relationship with a working man and earning the right to
reunite her happy family. For more analysis, see
A verse narrative and romantic
illustrations depict the strong heroine who marries a bear and
rescues her husband from beastly enchantment. When Nell betrays her
husband by telling her father his name, and the bear runs away, she
sees "the red stains on his back, like heart's blood." On
her quest to rescue her husband, Nell receives help from birds and
three magic nuts from an old woman (gold, silver, and brass). Tears,
roses, and love finally break the evil spell on the husband. Double-page
color illustrations alternate with smaller black and white drawings.
Hooks notes that the book "is based on the various oral versions
that I have heard over the years of what began as Beauty and the
Beast."
