The Fairytale Tarot - The Lovers

A close-up - showing the not-so-happy prince - and the rather-pleased-with-herself Tatterhood. VI The Lovers: Tatterhood Norwegian Traditional Tale Once upon a time there were a king and a queen who had no children and so they took into their palace an adopted girl. One day this little girl began playing with a beggar’s child who was passing, tossing a golden apple between them. When the queen saw this she scolded her daughter and tried to chase the beggar child away.”If you knew my mother’s power, you wouldn’t drive me out,” said the girl. When the queen asked what she meant, she told her that her mother could help the queen to have her own children. So the queen called the beggar woman up to her rooms, and eventually persuaded the woman to give her advice. She told the queen to bring two pails of water to her bed chamber. She was to wash herself in each of them then throw the water under the bed. The next morning, she would find two flowers growing where the water fell, one beautiful and one ugly. The beggar woman told her sternly to eat the beautiful flower but not the ugly one. The queen followed these instructions, except that she found that the beautiful flower tasted so good when she ate it, that she also ate the ugly one. Sure enough, the queen became pregnant, and gave birth to two girls. The first was horribly ugly, and was born with a wooden spoon in her hand. The second was incredibly beautiful and sweet. The elder twin they called “Tatterhood,” because she was always so dishevelled and ragged, and because she had a hood which hung about her ears in tatters. One Christmas eve, when the girls were nearly grown up, there was a frightful noise in the hallway outside the queen’s apartment. Tatterhood asked her mother what it was, and eventually the queen reluctantly told her that it was a group of trolls and witches who had come to celebrate Christmas. Tatterhood immediately marched off with her wooden spoon, and began to hunt out and drive away the hags and trolls. The noise and disturbance of the fight was tremendous. The beautiful twin sister peeped out from a crack in her door to see what was going on, and up came an old witch, who whipped off her head, and stuck a calf’s head on her shoulders instead. Seeing this, Tatterhood was angry, but said that she would save her sister. So she took her - complete with calf’s head - and they sailed off in a ship to the land where the witches lived. When they arrived, Tatterhood rode on her goat to the witches’ castle. There she saw her sister’s head hung up by a window, so she grabbed it and rushed back to the ship. The witches pursued her, angry as a swarm of bees, but Tatterhood beat them off with her wooden spoon and reached the ship, where she replaced the calf’s head with her sister’s own head. Once this was done, Tatterhood sailed off again on a long journey to a strange king’s realm. This king was a widower, and had an only son. When he saw the strange ship approaching , he sent messengers down to find out where it came from and who was on board, but when they got to the dock, the only person they saw the ship was Tatterhood, riding around and around the deck on her goat with her hair streaming in the wind. They asked if she was the only person on the ship and she said no, she had a sister with her, who she would not let them see. “No one shall see her, unless it’s the king himself,” she said. The men returned to the palace, and told the king what they had seen on the ship, and he at once went to take a look himself. When he arrived at the ship, Tatterhood brought out her sister, who was so gentle and beautiful that the king at once wanted to marry her and make her his queen. But Tatterhood this was only possible if the king’s son would take Tatterhood herself. The prince did not at all want to do this, because Tatterhood was such a rough and ugly girl. However he was put under such pressure by his father that he relented at last, though with very bad grace. After the weddings the king left with his bride and she was so lovely and so grand, all the people stopped to look at her. After that, along came the prince on horseback by the side of Tatterhood, who trotted on her goat with her wooden spoon in her fist. The prince rode silently and looked very sad. “Why don’t you ask me why I ride upon this ugly goat,” said Tatterhood. “Why do you ride on that ugly goat?” asked the prince. “Is it an ugly goat? Why, it’s the most beautiful horse that a bride ever rode,” answered Tatterhood; and in an instant the goat became the finest horse ever seen. They rode on a bit further, and Tatterhood said, “Well, now you can ask me why I ride with this ugly spoon in my fist.” “Why do you ride with that ugly spoon?” asked the prince. “Is it an ugly spoon? Why, it’s the loveliest silver fan that a bride ever carried,” said Tatterhood; and in an instant it became a silver fan, so bright that it glistened. Again, they rode until Tatterhood told the prince to ask about her hood.“Why do you wear that ugly gray hood on your head?” asked the prince.“Is it an ugly hood? Why, it’s the brightest golden crown that a bride ever wore,” answered Tatterhood, and it became a crown at once. On they went, and next the girl told her new husband to ask why her face was so ugly and gray.“So,” said the prince, “why is your face so ugly and gray?” “Am I ugly? You think my sister beautiful, but I am ten times more beautiful,” said the bride, and when the prince looked at her, she was so beautiful, he thought that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. After that, both prince and king set out with their brides to the princesses’ palace, and there was no end to the celebration. I know this story is true, as I was at the feast myself. KEYWORDS AND PHRASES Active passion - for a person or possibly for an activity or interest • Choice in making a relationship • Beauty is in the eye of the beholdert • Issues of beauty, ugliness and the true nature of both • sexuality and love There are a myriad of lovers in fairy stories, indeed it seems as though half the traditional tales include a wedding or two. So there were many stories that we might have used to represent The Lovers if one thinks of this card simply as being about love or passion between two people. However, The Lovers card in modern Rider Waite Smith based decks is very significantly different from that in pre-RWS decks such as the Tarot de Marseilles. The older decks usually showed a man choosing between two women, one young and beautiful, the other more mature. This card was sometimes even subtitled “choice”. It was this element of a conscious and active choice about a relationship that I wanted to convey in this card, and the lovely and unusual feature in the story of Tatterhood is that for once it is the girl who does the choosing. For this reason, Tatterhood is a story that was rediscovered and to some extent reinvented in feminist retellings of tales in the 1970s and 80s. Tatterhood herself is, after all, that rare thing in traditional fairy story, an ugly girl who is active, brave and intelligent, who takes matters into her own hands, and who finds and gets (in spite of the odds against it) the husband that she wants. The story is a remarkable one. Here is a girl who was not desired - not in fact supposed to have been born at all - and yet she saves her household, and specifically her sister, from a bunch of trolls and witches, and then sets off on a self-navigated journey, sister in tow, that ends with her marrying her off to a king, and herself to a prince. A self-actualised heroine indeed! So what does this mean for our reading of The Lovers card? Certainly, it puts the emphasis on initiative and choice; it asks us to think carefully about whether one partner is the more active one in making a choice to commit to a relationship, and if so, which partner? This alone is something not always considered when reading this card. More importantly, and on an entirely different level, this story also asks us to consider what a passionate relationship is based on and what really matters to a lover. It does seem, at the end of the tale, as though the way in which Tatterhood finally wins her prince’s admiration is to conform and become the rich, elegant and most of all beautiful young girl that’s required for a “happy ever after” in fairytales. Yet surely things aren’t quite so straightforward? For we have to ask, if all it takes for the ugliness to change to beauty is for Tatterhood to be questioned about it, then why did she remain ugly in the first place? She is not, apparently, under a spell; and in fact, so active is this girl, able to defeat witches and trolls with ease, that being subject to enchantment seems highly unlikely. So could it be a matter - again - of choice? Is Tatterhood able to do so much and have such freedom - in contrast to her sister who seems an entirely passive pale shadow - because she’s considered ugly? This throws us right back to considering again the old version of the Tarot Lovers. The usual interpretation of that card is that it shows a man choosing between a beautiful girl, who may have little to offer except her beauty, and a less attractive older woman who may be the more sensible choice - in terms of money, position and stability. Is it so simple really? When we make a choice about the person we form a relationship with, is it such a cool weighing up of the pros and cons that influences us? Or do we tend to get swept away by passion? What if we flipped the original card around and saw it in terms of two women making a choice about whether or not they want the young man in front of them - what would that do to the way we read this card? Relationships are, as we know at heart, varied, unpredictable, and often very different from conventional cliched expectations. At the end of Tatterhood we have an odd formula; the girl tells the prince what question to ask, and in response a transformation takes place. Surely one way we can interpret this is through the old idea that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”? Tatterhood literally asks the prince to look again, to look afresh, and when he does, things are suddenly different. Although the tale appears to end conventionally, the process of getting there is, in fairytale terms, extremely unusual. It’s this that makes these Lovers so very interesting.