The Princess of the Spring: A Brazilian Folktale- Fairytale Flip Ep:23

Forget the gods of Greece, Brazil has Giants!
Join us as we explore the rich tapestry of Brazilian folklore, mythological transformation, and cultural influences from indigenous tribes, Portuguese colonization, and African heritage. In this episode we discover how stories of giants and natural spirits reflect Brazil's unique worldview and social history.
Key Topics:
The story of Persephone's abduction and its mythological parallels in Brazilian folklore
The significance of giants in Brazilian storytelling as embodiments of nature spirits
The influence of Portuguese colonialism on local mythologies and storytelling styles
How water and nature symbolize power, agency, and cultural identity in Brazil
The differences between European patriarchal stories and matrilineal or nature-centered narratives in Brazil
The impact of colonization, slavery, and migration on Brazilian cultural mythos
The symbolism of the number 40 and other elements rooted in spiritual and cultural beliefs
Timestamps:
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to Fairy Tales from Brazil & Greece

02:00 - "Princess of the Spring" story summary and cultural backdrop

08:00 - The influence of indigenous and European cultures in Brazil

15:00 - Historical context: colonization, slavery, and migration

22:00 - Water as a living force and symbolism in Brazilian mythology

26:00 - The wind and nature spirits’ role in folktales

34:00 - Persephone's abduction vs. Brazilian "Princess of the Spring" agency

40:00 - The symbolism of the Mother of Pearl Palace and liminal spaces

45:00 - Feminine agency, reluctant brides, and maternal bonds in myth

50:00 - The cult of Demeter, Persephone, and secret rites

55:00 - The symbolism of numbers and elemental motifs in folklore

58:00 - How cultural influences shape storytelling and cultural identity

59:30 - Closing remarks and suggestions for further research

Resources & Links:

• The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore
• Persephone - Greek Mythology
• Elsie Spicer-Ellis' "Tales of Giants from Brazil" (availability varies)
• Maria Gimbutas' "The Language of the Goddess"

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Transcript

Vanessa (00:01.236)
Welcome, welcome to Fairy Tail Flip. We are in the month of March, actually recording this on the last day of March, so this will probably be put out in April rather than in March. I am Vanessa By Rogers of Fabrica Folklore, and this, my co-host is Donna Lee Fields. Doorways to Learning is her podcast, and she also has Scaffolding Magic website, which is an education resource for educators.

span the ages and we come together once a month and we do an episode about a fairy tale or a fairy tale adjacent story like we're doing today which is more of a folktale the Princess of the Spring which is a Brazilian Folk Tale which I know we say this every month and we say this when we were talking together

It's funny how every month we're like, is such a fascinating story. We have so much to talk about. So I am gonna do the quick rundown of the spring, the princess of the spring. Basically there is a princess born of two giants, the god, the giant of the moon and the giant of the river. And she's called the princess of the spring and she marries reluctantly.

Donna (01:01.12)
It's true. Yeah.

Vanessa (01:25.506)
the giant of the sun and she only does so because he agrees to let her visit her mother for three months of the year. However, he doesn't stipulate that when she bears her child that she's not allowed to bring the child with her to visit her mother. And so when that occurs, when she bears his child, he says no, you have to leave this child here. He may not leave the palace and so she goes to...

find her mother, but her mother is nowhere to be found. And she eventually finds the giant of the wind who leads her to a castle where a land giant is holding her captive. And she rescues her mother. go back to their palace, the palace of...

pearls where the river and ocean meets and she discovers that she's been gone way longer than three months and originally her husband was worried and then he just is angry and he decides he's done waiting and he marries a new wife and the new wife is jealous of the old wife and puts the baby in the kitchen to be a slave and when she discovers her child is in the kitchens and that her

her husband has remarried, she takes her baby back and she dives down into the deepest parts of the ocean and she cries for 40 days and 40 nights until the oceans and the rivers swell to cover the forest and to cover the palace. And then once she, her grief has spent after the 40 days, her son is called the Giant of the River. And it is an explanation. that's right, right.

Donna (03:03.618)
Giant of the rain. Sorry, Vanessa. Giant of the rain. Yeah, because otherwise we're going to confuse our listeners. You're doing such a great job, though. Sorry.

Vanessa (03:07.171)
of the rain. I hope that I said it correctly when I was recording it because maybe I recorded it incorrectly. So that's...

Donna (03:13.944)
I'm sure, I'm sure. Okay. Okay, so the sun was called the Giant of the Rain. Yeah.

Vanessa (03:21.045)
That's right. The sun is called the Giant of the Rain and it is an explanation for the rainy season in the Amazon basin. any other any other things that you wanted to point out of that that tale that I

Donna (03:35.68)
No, no, no, you did it. Yeah. And I wanted to say that I asked Vanessa to do both the introduction and the summary of the story because I would have gone into way much more detail and she just recorded her version of the story. So she, you she has it in the back of her mind. She did it gorgeously. And it's hard to get all the giants straightened out. So I'm not surprised and forgive me for interrupting you.

Vanessa (03:54.552)
I know and I always want to call them gods and goddesses because that is what we are used to in the European tales and so it was really difficult for me to continuously call them giants and giantesses.

Donna (04:06.284)
Right, right, right. So let's talk about that because I believe that the whole idea of a giant instead of gods is because of Brazil itself and the influences. And you wanted to talk about the history of Brazil and the influences of folktales on Brazil, which is virtually the same thing. So you want to start?

Vanessa (04:26.455)
Sure, but you know, I honestly what I discovered about the giant part was that it they didn't It was assumed it's not really known But it was assumed that it was in part due to that then not really having a word that encapsulated what their specific folklore was in part because the European ideas were quite different from what the indigenous tribes had

their spirits were more imbued and so they were part of the earth whereas in a lot of the mythology that we are familiar with in much of Europe they are apart, they are not in the earth but kind of apart. I'm saying apart but I'm saying further, not on the same plane basically. And so the ideas...

came together of the indigenous people and the European Portuguese and it kind of got smushed and formed into the word giant. And so that is what we are left with. There's a lot of different stories about giants. This particular story comes from a collection of 12 different stories about the giants in Brazil.

Donna (05:43.5)
Yeah, and it's really important that we do talk a little more about giants later on in this podcast because there aren't any other cultures, I believe, that use giants as their god replacement. And it's really important that the gods are about nature. They all have to do with the god. Excuse me, the giant of, see, we all, I get so confused. The giant of nature. And in Brazil, nature is all important. So spirituality is a huge.

Vanessa (06:05.089)
Yes.

Donna (06:12.598)
It's an enormous part of the Brazilian culture. And that also comes from the Portuguese and African influence. And I just wanted to say, just to start it, because again, giant for me is very important and it's fascinating, is that it comes from the Portuguese influence. And Portugal is a teeny tiny country. It's not one of the smallest country in the world, but it's very small. it's just a part of the Iberic peninsula.

In my mind, they needed something big, not just a god, they needed a big god, like a big presence to sort of support them in not being swallowed up by a culture literally right next to them that could very easily just sort of breathe in them, breathe them in.

Vanessa (06:52.451)
And it's interesting because in European tradition, giants are often these big lumbering dumb creatures of chaos, right? They just create a lot of chaos wherever they go and they smash things and they have tiny, peeny weeny brains. But in this instance, they are not that at all, right? They are encompassing nature spirits, basically.

Donna (07:13.102)
You

Donna (07:21.42)
That's right. I love that. I didn't even think about that. But it's true, because in this, the brilliant Brazilian folk tales, it originates from the Amazonian myths and the Portuguese folklore, as we were just saying. But they're magical beings, and they're guardians of the forests, and they're guardians of nature, the supernatural forces. So in that respect, it's very different.

Vanessa (07:41.09)
Yeah. All right, so let's talk. I always like to ground us in our place where the story comes from. So I want to talk a little bit about Brazil and the history of the colonization of Brazil because it really comes into play in the story about how this story was even kind of formed and created. So Brazil, if you're looking on a map, is the fifth largest country in the world. Russia is the largest. It goes China.

Donna (07:48.684)
Yeah.

Vanessa (08:09.087)
US, Canada, then Brazil is very populous. And it also has one fifth of the water that runs on the Earth's surface is carried by the Amazon, which is for reference, it's ten times what the Mississippi River holds. At its flood season, it can be up to 30 miles wide. The Amazon River can be up to 30 miles wide. And it can rise and

30 feet annually and it can cover entire forests, which is insane to even conceptualize. can't conceptualize that at all really. This is an interesting fact that I didn't look into very much, but I feel it could be a cool podcast on its own. There's a hidden river underneath the Amazon that was discovered in 2011.

Donna (09:02.073)
my goodness, how fascinating.

Vanessa (09:03.615)
Yeah, and it's a second river flowing 2.5 miles underground the Amazon. Isn't that crazy?

Donna (09:10.562)
Does it follow the entire Amazon River? my goodness.

Vanessa (09:12.867)
Oh, I didn't look into it. That's nothing to look into, for sure. Okay, so there are 228 languages spoken in Brazil, which made me kind of go down a rabbit hole because I was like, but wait, how many languages are in the US? And it says, according to Wikipedia, it was 350 to 430. So that's a wide span of we don't know.

Donna (09:18.498)
Okay.

Vanessa (09:38.948)
how many languages. 117 of the, if we're looking at North America, of those languages are, 117 are indigenous and 99 % of those indigenous languages are endangered. And that is reflective as well in Brazil. Their indigenous languages are 217, so more than in North America, but they also have.

most of them are endangered. I think they have fewer than we do that are endangered in part because there are still areas that tribes do not have really a lot of connections with other people and so there are still some tribes that speak their own language but by and large Portuguese is the main language of Brazil. And this is a fun fact that I

Donna (10:16.76)
Thank goodness.

Vanessa (10:32.013)
that I came across in my cultural anthropology class. Brazil is really held up by cultural anthropologists as the shining example of race being a culturally shaped idea rather than biological. So in the United States and a lot of European countries, we see race as something that's biological and we hold it to a really rigid scale if you have one.

drop of African blood, we call you black, whereas in Brazil, the government took a consensus, a census, recently in the northeastern part of Brazil and asked people what color they were and they received 134 different answers for what color they were. They had 134 colors to describe themselves. So that means that if you are a sibling,

that from the same parents and you have the same ancestry and the same genetics, you can still be considered two different races because it's not just based on your skin color, it's based off of your hair color and your eye color and your class can come into it, like how much money you make and how many achievements you've made. So your race can actually change based off of where you are socially and in the ranks and also if you've gotten a suntan.

Like if you go out and get a sunburn, you can change your race. And so this is really held up by cultural anthropologists when we're talking about race as race is not perceived the same across the board. And Brazil is not the only country that does this, but it's their shining example of it being a cultural construct rather than something that is true. Any thoughts?

Donna (11:59.278)
My goodness. my goodness.

Donna (12:25.4)
So Vanessa, I think that's really, really interesting and you've researched it really well. And then we have to say, why does it matter? Why is it that it's so important to have these statistics and to classify people? And to me, just means that's why it could very well be the reason why Brazilians lean so much into nature because nature is nature. don't need to, you know, it doesn't matter about money. It doesn't matter about birth or, you know, your origins. All that matters is that it's a living being. Nature is a living being.

and we are living beings within nature. So, how crazy.

Vanessa (12:58.039)
You know, there's quite a bit of debate about what is a better system of perceiving race. And some people argue that the way that Brazil does it is more equitable. However, if you look at their economics, it doesn't actually pan out that way. And some people say that it's easier for movements, for instance, in the US, like anyone who...

considers themselves black or has one drop of black blood can be in a movement to try and fight for inequality and it makes it easier in that instance. So there's this ongoing debate between lots of different groups about what is a better way to fight injustice and inequality when we're talking about race. so because race is very much a part of our everyday life,

Donna (13:45.718)
Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (13:54.016)
even if it's just something that we're perceiving and culturally ingrained in us. so being able to have that language is helpful. And so it's an interesting debate, for sure.

Donna (14:06.668)
Well, again, and I will just go back to the tale that we're analyzing today, and that it's all about nature. There's no hierarchy in the beings in the tale, really just about nature itself and contemplating the forces of nature and whether they're being fair to each other. I find that fascinating. And a big part of this tale is being true to the nature of wind and sun and moon and land. So I find that fascinating. And race doesn't come into it.

So.

Vanessa (14:36.673)
Yeah, at the end, at the end, there's a, there's a line that does come into it,

Donna (14:43.212)
What is the line? I know we're skipping ahead, but what is the line you're thinking of?

Vanessa (14:44.899)
When the baby is placed in the kitchen, the text says like a little black slave boy. Yeah. Yes. And you will not be shocked after you hear these statistics. So this is the history. This is a really fascinating history and it's really tragic really. Brazil is colonized by Portugal in 1500. So that's just right after Columbus has discovered quote,

Donna (14:48.766)
It's true. It's true. I was shocked by that line. Yes.

Donna (14:59.938)
Okay.

Vanessa (15:13.645)
quote unquote, discovered the Americas. When they arrived to Brazil, these are extremely rough estimates, there's about two to 10 million, somewhere between two and 10 million people, indigenous people already living in Brazil. And we talked about this earlier when we talked about the Popocatépetl and Iztacihuatl tail.

Donna (15:13.986)
discovered quote unquote, right?

Donna (15:36.332)
Wow, I'm impressed.

Vanessa (15:40.17)
when the Spanish came to conquer the Aztecs and everybody basically died of, you know, yellow fever and typhoid and all of the European illnesses. The same thing occurred across the board, all across, all across the Americas. This wiped out, I think, 80 to 90 % of the population, the indigenous population. So it's extreme devastation to the indigenous population with just the

Lack of immunity to the European illnesses. So Brazil gets its name because the first product that they begin to mine is Brazil wood. And then it goes to sugar production and then they start mining gold and diamonds in late 1600s and later. Now because they're doing all of this, they need labor. And so of course they try and enslave the indigenous people, but they

Terrible slaves because they are able to easily escape because it's extremely forested So they're able they know the land and the layout and so they're able to leave much easier than someone Who's being brought in so they start bringing in slaves from Africa before anyone else starts the slave trade? Slave trade and they bring in five million enslaved Africans, which is ten times the number of the US and Canada

And part of that is because their cost calculation told them that it was cost effective, more cost effective to bring in a new African slave than to take care of and keep alive the slaves that they'd already brought in. Which is insane to even think of. I will say that the Jesuit missionaries who had been brought over were quite against all this slave trade and they protested vehemently. So there's...

Donna (17:15.618)
This is awful.

Donna (17:23.502)
Yeah. Yes.

Vanessa (17:37.688)
There's something to be said about that, but it didn't stop them. But if you look at the demographics of Brazil now, you can tell that there's a strong African influence for the people who are there currently, that's why, because of the sheer number of kidnapped and captured people that they brought over to Brazil to be their slave labor.

Donna (18:04.662)
And if you don't mind, let me just add that you're saying that they're the first ones that have slaves and they were also the last country to abolish slavery. so in my, in, you know, my interpretation also is that folk tellers in Brazil would want giants to be their champions because they needed, they needed a big presence to help try to free themselves. And it seems that nature in their stories, it seems natural that they would anthropomorphize nature because humans around them were so cruel to them.

Vanessa (18:10.113)
Yes. Yeah.

Vanessa (18:19.733)
yeah.

Vanessa (18:33.067)
Yes. Yeah, that's very true. Another, so after they stopped bringing in slaves, they start bringing in immigrants. And unlike the US, so we started using indentured servants, which were basically slaves, but just European. They had a more just immigration system. And so they bring in a...

Donna (18:33.294)
So that's also really interesting.

Donna (18:38.104)
Okay.

Donna (18:48.878)
Yeah, right, right. Just sounds better.

Vanessa (18:59.523)
Portuguese, Germans, Astro-Hungarians, Slavic groups, Middle Eastern, Asian. So Brazil is one of the most diverse countries in the world because of all the different immigrants that moved. Do they actually have the largest Japanese population outside of Japan? Yeah.

Donna (19:17.102)
Really? I thought that was in South America. Brazil is in South America. Interesting. Okay.

Vanessa (19:23.723)
Yeah. And then, so we get, I mentioned this before, we get the story from Elsie Spicer-Else, who wrote this book for North American children in 1918 in the book of Tales of Giants from Brazil. She was a Portuguese woman who was married to a missionary. And so most of these tales that are from there,

I have later on in my notes, she actually got it from someone else who was a collector, and I'll find his name later. But so she's changing the story so that it will be more palatable for children as well. And it's also gone through a lot of different variations by this point that we get the story from.

Donna (20:19.32)
So I wonder if we could just talk about the title of the story first, because I found that a really intriguing contradiction from when I was doing the research. The title of the story is The Princess of the Springs, right? Or Princess of the Spring, right? And me, I went immediately to spring water, know, a spring of water. And the reviews that I read about it were talking the spring as in the weather, the season.

Vanessa (20:36.003)
Mmm.

Donna (20:44.712)
And they felt that that was very ironic because Brazil doesn't have spring. It doesn't have that season of spring. And I thought, what are you talking about spring? It's a season for it. It's about the daughter of the river. So obviously, it's a spring of water. And to me, that makes a lot of sense. So what did you think about that whole argument?

Vanessa (21:02.805)
That makes so much more sense because I also thought of spring as in the season. so, and I will talk about this point later because I want to talk about what you brought up. I originally went to Persephone, the story of Persephone because she's the goddess of the spring. But it took my mind a while to come to that realization that, wait, Brisell doesn't have a spring. How does that make any sense? But she, her son is the

Donna (21:19.228)
huh.

Vanessa (21:32.276)
giant of the rain which is They have two seasons right they have rainy and dry, but some people say not really a dry season It's just less rain Rain and rainier season And so but I think that that makes a lot of sense and a lot of the Portuguese origin stories that I'm gonna cover later really cover

Donna (21:34.84)
and

Donna (21:43.224)
Right? Yeah.

Vanessa (22:00.163)
female entities and spirits that encompass water. So that makes a lot of sense.

Donna (22:07.886)
Okay, because there's more continuity in my book. mean, our listeners can decide what works for them, but there's more continuity. We can start with the giant of the moon, and I love when I first read it, was the moon reflected in the river. So you can just have this beautiful image of the moon traveling down the river in water. And so they birth the princess of the spring, just a smaller river, although she is a force of nature. And then she has the son of the rain. yeah, it's more continuity that the water passes down.

What I find really interesting in the story, I don't know if we can go anywhere this, is that the moon kind of disappears as a character in the story. He marries, he convinces the river, the giant of the river to marry him and then he's gone. The sun comes into the story. Did you find that at all?

Vanessa (22:53.141)
Yes, I had that same question. I was like, when the princess goes to the castle or the palace and she's looking for her mother, I was like, well, where's her dad? Why is he not around and helping?

Donna (23:02.446)
Right? That's right. There was also, I mean, I just wanted to talk about specific lines in the story also, because it's very beautifully told. And it talks about the baby daughter of the moon giant and giantess. And that's the last time we hear about the moon. And that's the second paragraph of the story. It was decreed among the giants that she should be the princess of all the springs and should rule over all the rivers and lakes. Again, to me, it makes sense that she is the water, the spring.

And the light of her eyes was the moon, it was like the moon beams and her smile was like moonlight on still waters. Again, just this beautiful visual image of the moon wafting down water. And her strength was the great river and her fleetness afoot was the swiftness of the great river. So for me, the appearance comes from the moon and the strength comes from the river. The strength comes from water. And what you've been saying about weather is,

It's obvious the water is such a presence in Brazil.

Vanessa (24:04.003)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Donna (24:05.454)
All right, and then a couple of other things because the moon does disappear in the story for some reason, but the sun comes out and you were just about to start talking about different other folk tales that are similar to this story, Persephone for one. In this story, the sun moves the daughter and she makes a choice. She doesn't want to marry the sun at first. The princess of the spring doesn't want to marry the sun giant in the beginning, but she does. She agrees to it and it's her decision.

to only go for nine months of the year. And those three months, she insists on going back to her mother, the river. So that's my distinction, Vanessa, is that it's her choice. It's not Zeus's choice, as in Persephone's. So would you like to comment on that?

Vanessa (24:43.277)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (24:49.153)
Yeah. No, think, I mean, I think that you, that's a good distinction between the two stories and the two characteristics, the two characters in the story that she has more agency and she determines her own, her own path more so than does Persephone. Persephone is much more passive than this princess.

Donna (25:06.232)
Well said, well said.

Donna (25:16.524)
Right, and so the other part I find interesting is that the prince rejects the sun suitor because she won't leave her mother the river. And so she does finally leave her, but she wants to be with her mother. She's so attached to her mother. And why is it, if you think of the sun, one could see the sun as fairly stagnant in the sky. It's not. I mean, it has this incredible power of light coming out of it, shooting out of it, and light is movement.

Vanessa (25:38.114)
Right.

Donna (25:44.398)
But we could say the sun is stagnant in the sky while her mother flows across the land. And to her what's attractive is movement. That's one of the big takeaways I had of the story. Go ahead. Yeah.

Vanessa (25:58.67)
So on that point of movement, one of my questions I was gonna ask you is kind of commentary that I found funny was when she goes to the giant of the wind and he's basically throwing this giant temper tantrum until he's hangry, right? He's just hangry and then once he gets the food in him, he's a civilized person. And that has to do a lot with how...

Donna (26:11.213)
huh.

huh.

Donna (26:17.567)
It's angry.

Vanessa (26:27.115)
The wind is a bit temperamental, I believe, and the movement of the wind, can be very strong or very light.

Donna (26:37.304)
That's right. One of the commentaries that I read about the story, I agree with it wholeheartedly, is that they're very true to the nature of nature. And so, wind comes in furiously, and it doesn't make distinctions of what it affects. So a huge torment of wind is going to pick up anyone in its path. Now, the father, its father, knew that. So it knew that the princess of the spring should not talk to the wind when it was in its fury, but wait for it to calm down. And wind does.

calm down. And so, as you're saying, it was hangry. had dinner, and then the father was smart enough to wait until it had a dinner and it could calm down before it introduced the princes of the spring. And then it was absolutely happy to help. And I found it fascinating that the wind thought for a minute and then knew exactly where the mother of the river was. And it's just like the nature of wind. Wind can get into virtually anything. And so the wind, you know, hits mind.

Vanessa (27:27.831)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (27:33.44)
yeah.

Donna (27:36.286)
saw into every element, every corner of the earth and found where the mother was. So to me again, these stories, especially presented by the author that you were talking about, are very true to the nature of nature. Okay?

Vanessa (27:50.915)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (27:55.107)
Did you have something else or should we talk about it for Stephanie?

Donna (27:55.416)
Sorry, where do you want to go? No, let's talk about Persephone, please. Let's talk about the fact that,

Vanessa (28:02.059)
Okay, so I'm interested to hear your take because I immediately went to Persephone when I read this story. Actually, I thought about Persephone and then I thought about Sedna, but I'll talk about her later. And Persephone, just to remind our listeners, she was abducted by Hades because Hades and Zeus made a secret pact saying that Hades could marry Persephone, but he didn't consult the mother Demeter or Persephone, and so Demeter

Donna (28:13.869)
Okay.

Vanessa (28:31.223)
throws entire world into a grief-stricken winter until Zeus relents and says, you know, basically says everybody's gonna die unless Demeter allows things to start growing again. And so he allows Persephone to come live with her mother for a part of the year because she's tricked into eating pomegranate seeds and so that ties her down to the underworld and so she's not allowed to live her entire existence on the normal plane, but she has to live with Hades for a certain part of the year.

And so the visiting of the mother and the living in two different places in two different times, that made me really think of the Princess of the Spring as well. But what is fascinating is that Portuguese has its own version of the Persephone tale. And it's thought that so this the woman, the goddess is called Adagina and it's from the lust.

Lustianian people and it's thought that the prototype, I don't know the linguistic terms, comes actually from a very old tale. So Homer wrote these tales down for Greek mythology in the 7th century BC, so 700 something BC. But these tales are older than the Celts.

They are likely over 4,000 years old, coming from the Bronze Age, 3,000 years old, and they believe that the story of Persephone and Adagina come from the same root, and the peoples spread throughout all of Europe, and so the stories are slightly different, but have same structure. So Adagina literally means reborn. She's a goddess who dies and returns and explains the seasons when she returns to the underworld.

It's winter when she comes to the land. It's spring and summer. But she's not married. She is power and she is darker than Persephone because she's always been the queen of the underworld. And when the Romans come to Portugal to kind of claim that space, they discover all of these inscriptions. What do they call them? There's all these stone markings of this girl.

Vanessa (30:54.627)
who they, yes, the Roman version is Proserfina, that's Proserpina is what they call her in the Roman mythology, and they automatically recognize her as Persephone as well. And so that's really fascinating that she's a really strong presence in Portugal as well, this princess.

Donna (30:55.254)
like hygroglyphs or something like that.

Vanessa (31:22.797)
who is attributed to the seasons. There's also another female deity pre-Christianity that is associated with springs and forested valleys who was worshipped by these same people, the Lustianian, Lust, these people prior. okay.

Donna (31:46.51)
You usually pull off those pronunciations.

Vanessa (31:51.012)
it's a lot of syllables, luss- lussian-tinian- i don't- i didn't write it out. and she marries-

Donna (31:59.084)
Let's have one of our listeners send us a recording of that saying that five times fast.

Vanessa (32:03.555)
Yeah, she marries Rio who is the son, he's god of thunder and mountains and they believe that he is basically the prototype to Zeus. is who Zeus is mapped after and her name is Nabiah and she and Rio marry and so it is believed that this is like the skeletal structure.

of the Princess of the Springs who is basically a water goddess and who has a union with a sky god. And then we mentioned talking about this story, this journey kind of changes through the generations. And this is a story that we've talked about, the more encantada. Do you remember us talking about possibly doing this story?

Donna (32:56.426)
No, but I love it. Let's go for it.

Vanessa (32:58.069)
This was one that we had voted on prior, but it wasn't voted on. So it was one I told it wasn't one that you had recorded, so I was probably more familiar with it. But it's believed that Nabiya basically transformed in more modern days into this folk tale of this Moorish princess who's awaiting her husband to return, and he doesn't return, and so she becomes enchanted.

Donna (33:02.61)
okay.

Donna (33:08.418)
Okay.

Vanessa (33:26.515)
attached to a water source. Most of the time she's attached to a water source and she's guarding a treasure and only a pure-hearted and brave soul is able to gain the treasure from her and she's always seen combing her long black hair with a golden comb. But she's considered kind of like a water genie of sorts.

And so it's believed that Nábia kind of transforms into this folk tale that is widespread throughout Portugal today. And then that story was brought over to Brazil and kind of changes into what we see today.

Donna (34:11.854)
Wow, Vanessa, that's really fascinating. I have two questions for you. First of all, kind of comparing Persephone, the Persephone story, not the Roman versions of it, but the Greek version of Persephone, with the Princess of the Spring, is again, I'm saying Persephone was a victim and the patriarch made decisions for her. She was first kidnapped and then we could say she was raped. We're not sure, but anyway, she was kidnapped.

She was sold off by the king of the gods, by Zeus. She was sold off without even her mother knowing. And then she was tricked into staying for those six or three or whatever, how many months, whatever part of the country you're in, because she was hungry and she ate and she was tricked into having to stay. It wasn't her decision. Whereas with our story with the Princess of the Spring, she's completely empowered. She makes her own decisions.

Vanessa (34:55.095)
Mm-hmm.

Donna (35:08.43)
I will say, this is a little tangential, that you were saying, I love how you said the sky and the water met in these stories, and that's exactly what happens in Princess of the Springs. It's the daughter, the Princess of the Springs and the son, and every night, I live in the most amazing place in the world, and every night I go out to the beach and watch the sunset, and it is the son kissing the water as it goes down, know, melting into the water, and so there's a union. And so it really makes sense, but what I'm saying here in this story is that the...

Vanessa (35:17.493)
Mm. Yeah.

Donna (35:36.76)
Princess is empowered and not Persephone. And I'm wondering how then Sedna plays into this. Is this something you found that it's also similar thread because Sedna is another complete victim of men.

Vanessa (35:47.81)
Yes, I want to go into the sadness story, but I want to comment on your story. I'm wondering if it's the Brazilian influence of these stories. These stories are coming from Portugal, and then they're being transformed once they hit Portugal, and they're having the influence of the indigenous people who live in Brazil. And I'm wondering, because if you think of more Encantada, she's also pretty passive, right? She's waiting. She's just waiting for her husband to...

Donna (35:52.919)
Yeah.

Vanessa (36:14.755)
to come or she's waiting for a prince to come. And I'm wondering if it's this European ideology that is being placed on them, whereas maybe, and I didn't do enough research to really speak to, maybe some of the cultures in Brazil are more matrilineal, matriarchal, and have a more,

Donna (36:36.987)
Matriarchal, matriarchal, yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (36:43.219)
aggressive female ideology. And so maybe that is just placed on to that story because that's how their culture or one of the cultures at least was thinking. I see it just not, not that they're not connected, but maybe it was a change of how the cultures wanted to accept that story.

Donna (37:08.374)
It's very possible. Neither of us did as much research as we wanted to on Brazilian culture. it's not easy to do because, as you were saying, there's so many different indigenous influences on the Brazilian culture. I do know in very little bit about is Brazilian is color. mean, to me, Brazil is color. It's loud. It's music. It's expressions of different types of communication with the body, with the voice, with the land.

And so these stories to me also are celebration of the inner person. Again, what we're seeing in the beginning is they don't represent any hierarchy of race. They represent the nature and the equanimity, but the trueness of nature. so, I mean, to me, it makes a lot of sense and I feel very comfortable with it.

Vanessa (37:38.968)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (38:00.099)
Yeah.

Vanessa (38:05.261)
Okay.

Donna (38:05.998)
Whereas, as you were saying, the European stories have so much of the patriarch embedded in the telling of the story and in the plot, you the line of what happens to the men and women. yeah.

Vanessa (38:16.12)
Yes.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so going back to Sedna. So Sedna was a story that we examined in episode 17. And if you were interested in listening to the Persephone and Demeter story, I believe that was 16. I went back and looked in case people wanted to listen to those stories. Sedna's, the story of Sedna is basically a girl, she's under,

Donna (38:38.538)
are you good?

Vanessa (38:48.463)
the theme of reluctant bride and there's a lot of these reluctant bride themes throughout global folklore. And we talked a lot about this in Persephone and also in Sedna in how that know women didn't have a lot of agency and at some point like men just have the choice to marry whomever they want but Sedna doesn't want to marry and finally she's wooed by someone who is extremely handsome but it turns out

that he was a shape-shifting raven and he abandons her and then her father tries to capture her but he ends up having to throw her into the ocean and she becomes the goddess of marine life for the Inuit people up in the northern realms of the Arctic. And so I was immediately thought of her because and I don't actually remember if we talked about the meaning of her name actually meant

the one who did not want a husband. Do you remember that's what her name meant?

Donna (39:48.862)
It's possible we talked about it, I don't remember it, so it's possible we didn't say anything. Say it again? What does her name mean? Say that again, please? The one who... my goodness. Okay. They're empowering her with her name. Like, yeah, that's... Give me voice. Say my name.

Vanessa (39:51.428)
Yeah, I don't know if we did. I'll have to go back. The one who did not want a husband. That's what it translates to.

Yeah. And so, and so we see this time and time again. We see it in a lot of Greek mythology stories. Daphne is one of the Greek mythology stories where she is a devotee of Artemis, who is the goddess of purity of virgins. And she is, tries to refuse Apollo. And in doing so, she transforms herself into a laurel tree so that he can't

capture her and force her into marriage. And then there's all sorts of stories about swan maidens. I talked about in my episode on fabric of folklore, selkies, which are basically shape-shifting seals who come onto the land and they take off their seal skin. And if someone captures that seal skin, and a lot of times men would capture the seal skin and force these selkie women to marry them.

Donna (41:02.872)
Patriarchy, patriarchy, yep.

Vanessa (41:05.027)
Yeah, and so there's all sorts of different examples. And then this is not a folklore. This is not a folk tale. This is a story that I read recently by Kate Moore, the woman they could not silence. And it's a true story about a woman named Elizabeth Packard and she is imprisoned by her husband in an insane asylum because at that point if your wife or your sister or any female in your life was a nuisance to you.

you could just put them in the insane asylum and lock them away. And so that's basically what they did to this woman. And she finally escapes the insane asylum, Elizabeth Packard, and she tries to fight for custody for her children and realizes as a married woman, she has no agency. She does not exist in the letter of the law. She does not exist. It's only the male who has any say. And it's only married women, single women have more rights than do.

married women. And so she is, I feel like every woman should know who this woman is because she fought for so much legislation. It's the foundation for all female rights that we have today. She got all of those, like all of these laws in place to allow us to have the rights that we currently have in the United States today. Her name is Elizabeth Packard.

Donna (42:08.238)
you

Donna (42:24.056)
Can you tell us her name again?

Vanessa (42:28.167)
and the book is The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore. Anyways, this just made me think of this because I read it at the beginning of the year and it made me think about how married women oftentimes don't have rights. Like once you are married, your rights are taken away. And so it made me think about this book and I feel like everyone needs to be reading this book because it's so important to know how we were able, where we came from and how we got to where we.

Donna (42:28.184)
Thank you.

Vanessa (42:57.281)
the rights that we have today. All of that to say is under the reluctant bride theme.

Donna (43:01.298)
No. No, but I think it's really important that you brought that up because we think that we often judge the Arabic countries so harshly because of how women are treated in most Arabic countries. Most, not all. And yet we really only have rights as women in the past, 200 years at the most? And actually in the 80s, I think it was only in the 80s that a woman could have a credit card. So, you know, it hasn't been that long. Their own bank account. Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (43:17.473)
Yeah, at most.

Vanessa (43:23.403)
Yeah, or they own bank account. I think it was the seventies, but yes, same, same difference.

Donna (43:30.092)
Right, right. Thank you for bringing that up. where are we going now?

Vanessa (43:37.892)
So I talked a little bit about the mother daughter separation, which is a little bit of what we talked about earlier in Persephone and Demeter how there's this, this is seen a lot in lot of different tales as well because it was, these tales were a way to grieve because once you got married you were.

encompassed by the male side of the family and you may or may not get to see your mom again and you because of your lack of agency you don't actually get to have strong relations with your mom and that that the bond oftentimes gets severed and so I think that that is an important element in this story as well.

Donna (44:23.798)
It's very important and I think it's really interesting that she is the princess of the springs demands a connection with her mother, continued connection to her mother. She demands that as part of her marital vows and the son does permit it of course that she's only permitted a third of the time in, excuse me, a fourth of the time, even less, a fourth of the time with her mother. But again, and then I find it fascinating the whole idea that the mother

Vanessa (44:36.28)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (44:47.245)
Mm-hmm.

Donna (44:52.642)
some reason, the mother didn't think her daughter was going to come visit once she had her son. Once the princess had her son, I thought that was very, very strange. So she goes wandering off as a river does. river wanders off, and she's captured by the land as happens because a river will dry up during the hotter seasons. Now, we don't think of any water source in Brazil to dry up because there's so much water. But this is what happens. So again, it's being true to nature.

Vanessa (44:56.203)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Donna (45:22.324)
and the Princess of the Springs has to go find her.

Vanessa (45:22.434)
Yes.

Vanessa (45:26.177)
Yeah, that's a really good metaphor. I really like that. That's an interesting way of looking at it. It's of nature. Okay, there is a point that I think that you will enjoy. There is a woman, her name is Maria Jimbutas. Maria Jimbutas. She was a Lithuanian-American archaeologist. She wrote a book called The Language of the Goddess in 1989.

Donna (45:38.84)
Okay.

Vanessa (45:54.532)
And she made the claim that old European cultures were, this is where I got the word, matrilineal, but matriarchal. Because she discovered all sorts of people, so we're talking the time period between 6000 BC and 3000 BC. And so she found all sorts of evidence that showed that a lot of these cultures were goddess-centered cultures.

Donna (46:23.917)
Right?

Vanessa (46:23.947)
And then when these steppe people in around 4000 BCE migrate into Europe, they bring their patriarchal, war-like social structures and displaced these societies. And so she makes the argument that a lot of these societies were women-centered and then they become male-centered because of

this migration from the Kurgan culture. This is hotly debated. This idea. is known is that something changed and that there was migration of different cultures and that there were goddess-centered cultures. But what is not known is whether or not they were actually

Donna (47:02.606)
Probably debated by who? By men, probably.

Vanessa (47:19.103)
matriarchial societies or if they just had goddesses at their their center. And so people a lot of people will not concede to that theory but it is a theory that there were quite a few. And so this also feeds into the Persephone story because we talked about this with the when we did the episode with Persephone and Demeter the Ellusinian mysteries Ellusinian mysteries are the

cult or cult is being used as an organization word, meaning a group of people and only women worshiped Persephone and Demeter and their rituals were unknown and that's why they're called mysteries. But it believed that it's potentially that was a cult prior to the story of Persephone being captured by Hades.

later on and that story was placed on Persephone later after these ritual cult groups existed for thousands of years and then the Olympian stories were placed on top.

Donna (48:34.424)
Well, that's really interesting, Vanessa. Okay, so I need, yeah, I know that's really, really interesting. So I'm going to cut this out because now I'm kind of at a loss. Where would you like to go? You have brought up so many interesting things. Where would you like to go for the last five minutes or so?

Vanessa (48:36.353)
I thought you would like that.

Vanessa (48:51.789)
Symbology, let's talk about some this and the I really just have symbolism for what? People in Brazil would know and maybe you can talk about I mean do you have any other symbology that you want to talk about?

Donna (49:06.934)
Yeah, not as much as I usually do. So, okay, we're going to start again.

Vanessa (49:09.783)
Okay, well I'll talk about some symbology and then you can just comment on it.

Donna (49:14.966)
Okay, so what we wanted to talk about in the last few minutes is my favorite theme and interestingly enough, I have less of it than I usually do and Vanessa has tons of symbology, know, different meanings of different elements and motifs of the story. So Vanessa, would you like to begin?

Vanessa (49:30.754)
Okay, so the first one that I noticed was the 40 days, and we were both commenting on this prior to the recording, and 40 days is really a Christian notion, and this would make sense because Catholicism was forced upon the people of Brazil, and so a lot of their religious practices, I think still today they're a very Catholic country, but a lot of their practices still have indigenous roots and still have indigenous practices, but the...

Abrahamic tradition, 40 days of Noah's flood, 40 days of Moses on the Mount Sinai, 40 days in the desert. We also see this pre-bible in Gilgamesh. 40 days appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh as well. So it's really a number that we continue to see when we see cosmic events. And so I think that's really where the 40 days comes from. It's familiar.

Donna (50:25.806)
Okay, and the only thing I can add to that, because usually numbers really are a big flash and red flag for me because in my mystic groups, the numbers are very, very meaningful. And 40 doesn't come up as much as I expected it to, and as you say, it's mostly biblical. However, a lot of people do consider human pregnancy as commonly measured as 40 weeks. There was a 40-day isolation in the Middle Ages to avoid the plague, and some people say turning 40 is a time for reflection.

Vanessa (50:43.585)
Yes.

Donna (50:52.374)
you can decide if that's subjective or not, but it just adds a little more to the number. Okay.

Vanessa (50:56.203)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so one of the things I wanted to look at is how the symbology that people from Brazil or even South America would understand that those of us from North America or European origin countries would not necessarily get. And I think this is probably one that you can comment on quite a bit.

is when a westerner or someone from North America would read this story, the giant of the great river is a character associated with the river. Whereas in Brazilian mythology, it would be read as she is the river. She's not a metaphor. She's the literal fundamental river. And so that really is central to the indigenous Brazilian spirituality. Nature is conscious. It's a living being. It comments.

Donna (51:38.424)
That's right.

Vanessa (51:49.738)
It communicates and interacts with humans. The natural human and sacred worlds are woven together. like for instance, an Amazonic shamanic belief, when a man is sick, it might be because his soul has been seduced by a beautiful Anaconda woman and has gone to live with her underwater family. And that is one way of explaining an illness in South America.

Donna (52:07.542)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Vanessa (52:19.363)
So it's just a different way of reading the story that we would have a completely different way of interpreting it.

Donna (52:29.26)
And I think that makes a lot of sense because when you can disassociate yourself from an entity, you don't, you're not being cruel to that entity. You're just simply disconnected. And if it's in your way, you can get out of your way. What I mean by that is for instance, I'm a vegan, you know that. And for, me, any living being is a divine presence of the universe. I am very, I try to be as present as possible with any living being.

people who eat meat, eat dead animals, I'm so sorry to say that, but that's the truth, then they need to disassociate from animals to be able to consume them, right? If we considered in the Western culture that nature was a living entity, then we would be horrified. We would not be able to sleep at night knowing what we're doing to nature. And so in Brazil, I've never been to Brazil. I've been all over the world, but never to Brazil. So I do not know how they really...

on a day-to-day measure how they interact with nature. But if they consider nature and their folktales to be living beings, then they're going to be much more respectful and much more present with it. So it makes a lot of sense. So thank you for bringing that up.

Vanessa (53:41.163)
Yeah. Okay, the Mother of Pearl Palace. Did we decide if it was a Mother of Pearl or just a Pearl Palace? I can't remember what the text says.

Donna (53:51.266)
The only remember, what I remember is that they made a mother of pearl palace, but the princess of Springs wore a green and pearl dress. So that's the only distinction I found in the story.

Vanessa (53:56.033)
Okay.

Okay. Okay. So a European origin reader would read picture a fairy tale, but a Brazilian reader would understand it's where the great river runs into the sea. That's part of the wording of the tale, but it's not as significant to someone from a European origin as it is to a Brazilian because it would be seen as a liminal space, a threshold between worlds.

where spirits are concentrated because of the mixing of freshwater and sea water and there's this strength in that mixing of in this place and so it's exactly where the known world ends and the unknown begins.

Donna (54:51.874)
Yeah, I find that interesting. The unknown begins in seawater because there's so much magic in ocean water and salt water. So I think that we'd have to really research that more. But I do find it fascinating that they, again, they were very true to nature and that it is an actual place where the mother of the river exists on the boundary between freshwater and salt water. So it's again true to the nature, what's happening around us.

Vanessa (55:22.263)
So this is interesting. The Boto is a folktale. It's a shape-shifting dolphin. And he is a suave, handsome man. I think he often is wearing a hat to cover up his blowhole. And he seduces women and gets them pregnant, and then he abandons them and their children. And it's kind of this explanation of when there single women who don't have fathers, they are...

they had relations with the Boto and it's just the explanation. And so it echoes the Sun giant who abandons his wife and his son and marries someone else and it's not necessarily seen as evil, it's just in his nature.

Donna (56:08.024)
Beautiful. Beautiful.

Vanessa (56:10.051)
And then,

Yeah, think that's the end of my symbology that I think we're gonna have time to talk about. Did anything else come up for you during this conversation?

Donna (56:28.362)
No, what I would just love our readers to take away from this is that, know, Brazilian fairy tales, offer a unique, it's very unique with the giants instead of gods, a unique window into the country's soul. And it embodies their vibrancy. And much more than European tales, it's about harmony between humans and nature. And that's what's so unique about it. And it features the jungles and the rivers. And in this story, there were no animals.

but there are many animals and other folktales of Brazilian origin. And the influence of the indigenous mythology is very important as well. Tales, you know, the four spirits and the respect for nature, and they respect ancient beliefs, which are very much part of modern day beliefs from what we understand. So I'd love that. I'd love readers to do more research on it and to read more fairy tales from Brazil.

Vanessa (57:00.247)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (57:13.634)
Yeah.

Vanessa (57:18.531)
Well, I will say I found the name that I was referencing earlier. like I said before, Alisi Spicer-Elves wrote this story in 1918. But she says that she got the story both from the collection of stories from Silvio Romero, who wrote an 1883 published contos.

Pupilares de Brasil, the first major collection of Brazilian folk tales, organized under three headings. Traditions of European origin, traditions of African origin, and traditions of savage races of Brazil. So we know that he was not a, quote unquote, savage race. He was not of indigenous nature, but he does get his stories. So that would be a...

great resource for anyone out. I'll have to look to see if we can find that because that would be really fascinating. she says that the story comes from his book and then also retellings that she heard from around where she was traveling with her missionary husband.

Donna (58:27.854)
Gorgeous. I think we did it again, Vanessa. I think we explored it pretty darn well.

Vanessa (58:33.409)
And I would love to hear people's thoughts if you've been to Brazil, if you've heard this story before, if something came up for you, some sort of connection we want to hear your comments. If you're on YouTube, make sure you're commenting down below or you can send us either one of us an email. We love to hear from our listeners and we'd love to hear your suggestions as well for stories that we can do in the future. We've been talking about doing a tale from

North America next, we might be doing that. Donna and I are going to talk about it later. And make sure you're hitting that like and subscribe button because it really helps podcasts that are independent like ourselves to get noticed by other listeners. If you feel that it's worth your time, share it with your friends as well. That's really helpful. So thanks so much for listening and keep the fairy tales alive.

Donna (59:32.78)
Thanks for your energy.

Vanessa (59:37.315)
I've lost my mouse. I can't find it. Where is it?

Donna (59:39.353)
Hahaha

Donna (59:43.148)
I'm wondering if I can stop it. think only you can stop it. Okay.

Vanessa (59:45.326)
There we go. There we go. I found it. Okay.