Sorry, I’ve Got No Head!

In my latest book, More Asexual Myths & Tales, I retell a story from Latin America that I call “The Wife With the Flying Head”. 

Support More Asexual Fairy Tales on Kickstarter.

I first came across this story in Jen Campbell’s The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers (2021). As soon as I read it, I knew I wanted to retell it. 

It’s about a wife who - whenever she is in bed with her husband - finds her head detaches from her body and goes flying about without her body. The symbolism really related to my experience of being a married ace. 

I traced a source tale in The Journal of American Folklore (1907). That version is taken from El Salvador, but there are versions of the “flying head” myth across Southeast Asia and Latin America, including Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Bali, Chile and Argentina. Readers from those cultures may recognise it as a vampiric creature, and probably know a lot more about it than I do. In my story, it’s not vampiric; it’s just a flying head. 

However, here are two “flying head” creatures I discovered in my research.

Penanggalan

A monster which is just a woman’s head and internal organs.

In Malaysian mythology, the Penanggalan is the flying head and internal organs of a woman with long, black hair. She feeds on pregnant women and infants. She smells of vinegar, because she has to soak herself in the stuff in order to shrink her organs. There are many variations of her tale around South-East Asia. Read more about her

Chonchón


A head with wings
Chonchón, from this website.

The Chonchón originates in Mapuche folklore and mythology. It is a head with large ears which serve as wings. It is said to be the disguise of a calcu (sorcerer) whose head detaches from their body at night. They also suck blood, and can be prevented from re-attaching by turning the body onto its stomach. It is known by different names around Latin America. Read more about it in this article, which includes a Chilean version of the tale I retell. 

I think it would be interesting to read Jen Campbell’s and my retelling together. Neither of us has gone for all-out horror (although Jen’s is meant to be a bit creepy). Jen’s is aimed at children and takes more of a feminist stance, with the wife wanting to escape from a husband who isn’t very nice. Mine is not scary at all (I hope!) and is more about the dilemma of a wife wanting to be both present and absent when it comes to marital relations. Mine also includes an ending I found in the source book, about the couple’s daughter. But you’ll have to read the book to find out more!

Support More Asexual Fairy Tales on Kickstarter.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Praise of Hairy Women

Image
Who doesn't love Lettie Lutz, the Bearded Lady character in The Greatest Showman, who sings   the iconic anthem, This is Me ? Yesterday, my daughter took me to a singalong version of the film for a Mother's Day treat, and we both belted out This is Me at the tops of our voices. Both Lettie and the song have become symbols for anyone who feels marginalised or different. It so happens that last week I watched another film about a hairy woman, the very beautiful Norwegian coming-of-age film,   Løvekvinnen , or The Lion Woman, based on a book by   Erik Fosnes Hanson.   It tells the story of Eva Arctander, who is born in a small town in the early 20th century and struggles to find her place in the world. Especially, it concerns her relationship with her stationmaster father, widowed at her birth. I loved this film - which I watched on Netflix - and I definitely want to see it again. One of my best reads of last year was Orphans of the Carnival by Carol Bi...
Read more

Beauty and the Beast: King of the Wood

Image
She asked for a rose.  Her father reaches out to pluck one.  Suddenly, a Beast appears, furious, accusing him of theft.  The penalty is death.  Or the surrender of his daughter. But why such a harsh penalty for plucking a rose?  Much has been said - or invented - on the possible meaning of the rose.  When the last petal falls, the Beast's fate is sealed eternally.  It is the first thing he has learned to love.  It symbolises virginity; the plucking of the rose mirrors the deflowering of the daughter; the aristocratic Beast is excercising his  droit du seigneur  over Beauty, the merchant's child. But why should the plucking of a flower carry such a heavy penalty?  And why does the same motif occur in other fairy tales?  For example, Rapunzel , in which the father must sacrifice his child as payment for picking herbs from the Witch's garden. One answer may lie in ancient mythology.  Most ancient polytheistic religions have s...
Read more

Amputation in Fairy Tales

Image
                            The Red Shoes: The Archers/J Arthur Rank, 1948 The other night, I was watching the classic 1948 film, The Red Shoes.  When the film was over, I decided to read up on the original tale by Hans Christian Anderson, which brought me back to the subject of amputation in fairy tales. When I was writing my novel, Silver Hands (based on Grimm's fairy tale, The Handless Maiden) I had to think carefully about how I was going to approach amputation in my re-telling.  I decided early on that, in my version, the hands were not going to grow back as they do in my source tale.  The 2012 Paralympics made everyone in my country much more aware of the achievements of amputees.  In real life, limbs do not grow back; what can grow, however, is confidence and new abilities.  This was what I wanted to portray in Silver Hands.  Margaret learns new skills in painting and calligraphy, ...
Read more