Best Obscure Fairy Tales (you’re missing out on) #1 Black, Red and Gold

Black, Red and Gold

This fairy tale is chock full of tropes.  Here’s a list of the awesome:

• Infertility cured by eating something
• Strange beggars showing up in the middle of the night
• Mysterious magical women
• Bees (and honey)
• Pirates
• Slavery (the G rated kind)
• Brother and sister parted as children
• Female friendship
• Magical hair
• Extremely useful christening gifts
• Happy ending
• No romance

Yes, no romance but it’s ok; there’s lovely female friendship and family love instead.

So, our tale begins with your typical fairy tale couple who would like children but haven’t been able to.  Enter the beggar who visits in the middle of the night.  A beggar who has prophetic dreams.

(Now, one might think prophetic dreams are useful enough he wouldn’t be a beggar wandering the countryside but maybe he has a tragic backstory.)

In return for their hospitality, the beggar tells them about a magical lady sleeping in a mountain cave nearby and how to get past her pet bees.  This where the honey comes in.

So, the husband climbs a mountain and lures the bees out with a jar of honey.  He wakes the lady, who has hair of three colours (oh look, the title of the story is becoming relevant).  She knows his situation and aids him, because apparently her pet bees really like honey?  Or maybe she’s just not the cranky sort when someone wakes her up?

She gives him a pear and an apple.  If his wife eats the pear she will have a girl, if she eats the apple she will have a boy.  She also tells him to take three hairs from her head (one of each colour) and give them to their first born as a christening present.

The husband (who is the sort to advice from the dreams of passing beggars) thinks this sounds legit, so takes the fruit basket and hair back to his wife.

The wife (who might take advice from the dreams of passing vagrants but has also tried every weird trick to get pregnant by this point) is sceptical.  But the pear looks tasty so she eats it and low and behold becomes pregnant and gives birth to a girl with golden hair.  They named her Catalina and the three hairs are braided into a necklace for the baby. 

A few years later the wife remembers the apple and eats it too, and so they have a son they name Johan.

Enter the pirates.

Catalina is grabbed by pirates while playing on the beach with her brother when she’s 14.  Her little brother could only watch from his hiding place.

Now, Catalina is lucky because this is a fairy tale, so instead of being sold as a slave to someone horrible, she’s bought by a kindly merchant who sees her as a stand-in for his lost daughter.  This is useful but it does leave her conflicted emotionally, but more about that later.

Now, there were two other slave girls of the same age in the merchant’s household; a girl with black hair from Africa and a red haired girl from Greece.  They grew up together and became close, although they were servants and Catalina was treated as the merchant’s daughter (with everything she wants except, you know, freedom).

Years passed and the African girl grew melancholy and sad.  She missed her home and her family and wanted her freedom more than her life.  Since Catalina was like the merchant’s beloved daughter, she tried to convince him to release her.

The merchant refused, saying that the girl would only come to grief if he let her go (young woman traveling the wild world alone and all that).  Instead he gave her a ring to pass along to cheer her up.

This of course did not work and the African girl fell into depression. 

Catalina grieved for her friend and wished she could help.  One night she had a dream of the lady with three coloured hair.  She told her to take out the black hair from her christening gift necklace and drop it to the floor.

The next day, Catalina (who like her parents takes advice from strange places) did as the dream bade.  When the hair hit the floor it transformed into a copy of the African girl, asking for orders. 

Catalina was no fool and ordered her to take the ring and serve the merchant happily.  She then took some money and gave it to the real African girl, telling her to take it and to be free; she’d found someone to take her place.  The African girl went on her way and the merchant didn’t notice she’d been replaced.

Sometime later, the Greek girl also fell into depression and wished to go home, regardless of the risks.

Again, the merchant refused.  This time he cited not just the wild world outside being dangerous but that the other servant girl had come around to her situation in the end.  Since a bauble had seemed to work so well on the African girl, he gave Catalina a chain to give the Greek girl to cheer her up.

This worked about as well as one would imagine.  Which is to say, not at all.

Catalina had another dream and the next day she dropped the red hair from her christening gift necklace to the ground.  A copy of the Greek girl appeared and was given orders to take her place.  Catalina gave the original Greek girl some money and sent her on her way.

After this, Catalina was lonely and grew more homesick than before.  Probably because magical simulacrums of her friends weren’t the same as her actual friends. 

And so we come to her emotional conflict. 

She wished for her freedom but didn’t feel right about leaving the merchant.  He had rescued her from slavery and treated her like a beloved daughter for years.  Leaving him would break his heart (and kill him from grief), but staying was breaking hers.

This is a terrible, impossible choice and Catalina spends some quality time moping on her balcony.

At which point her long lost brother walks past. 

Johan is all grown up and wandering the world as a knight. He befriends the sad “far from home” as she calls herself, but doesn’t realise who she is.  

Catalina eventually figures out who he is, but doesn’t tell him.

He offers to take her away from that place but she demurs because she’s so conflicted.

This lasts right up until she’s waving goodbye to his ship and the last strand of her necklace falls to the ground.  The golden hair transforms into a copy of Catalina and she orders it to stay and take her place.

Catalina catches up to Johan, who offers to marry her.  Catalina explains who she is and everyone lives happily ever after. 

(Except possibly Johan who now has to live with the knowledge he asked his own sister to marry him…but we can say that was pity instead of lust.  Right?)