The Vine: Find That Book Fest III
Sars,
As a child I had a favorite book that was, my mother says, a folk tale from some Northern European country. Russia? The Ukraine? Norway? We can’t remember, or in any case disagree. It was a sort of a Paperbag princess story, in which a girl goes off into the woods to save a kidnapped prince. She keeps saying to herself, throughout the book, “You never know what’s going to happen to you when you wake up in the morning.” The philosophy, and the interest in folk tales, had a profound effect on me — I went on to get a degree in comparative mythology.
So, I’d love to have the book, for sentimental reasons, unfortunately I can’t for the life of me remember the title or character’s name. The closest thing I can find is the story of Tatterhood, which involves a beautiful twin and a dirty, tattered twin and the saving of some boys, but while it sounds pretty great and I might read it anyway, I don’t remember any twins in my story.
On the plus side, my Amazon searches have led to lots of interesting heroine-centric folktales, so I have lots of reading material I can pretend is academic.
Thanks,
A Mythology Nerd Since The Day I Learned to Read
Dear Myth,
That story sounds fascinating; I hope the readers can find it for you, so let’s see what they can come up with.
Tags: Ask The Readers popcult
I think I know what you’re talking about … I don’t recall the name of the story, but by any chance did they end up falling in love over chess? And the prince was in a cave, and there were three witches involved? Any of this sounding familiar???
Loganberry Books dot com has an excellent system (Stump the Bookseller) where people post their fragmentary recollections of childhood books and other people chime in with potential titles and authors. I found the title and author of one of my favorite books that way, a book I only read once as a child.
Hmmm…sounds like a variation of the tale of Vasilisa the Brave, or one of the other Baba Yaga stories
Try this: http://www.sisterschoice.com/heroines.html
RJ, wow that sounds a lot like a book I am currently trying to find! I even posted for it over on Loganberry (Stump the Bookseller). Your description sounds very similar to the one I vaguely remember, female lead character, prince in a cave, witches. Mine was a picture book, I read it when I was probably 6-8, so mid-70’s. I swear the main character had a really hard to pronounce name that was definitely foreign, like Sygny or Signey? I sure wish someone could remember the name for me, I have tried everything I can think of via the internet.
Yes! Sygny! With the cave! That’s the book I was talking about! I am so glad someone else read this book. My mom thought it was Finnish, so I looked at the Vasilisa the Brave stories, but aren’t they from the Kalevala? I think I’ve read the whole Kalevala (Mythology of Tolkein was a more informative class than I expected). I definitely think her name was Signey, or Sygny, and there was a cave and very likely chess. Man, “You never know what can happen to you when you wake up in the morning” has become like the motto of my life, and I would really like to find that book.
PS, I sent my details to Stump the Bookseller too, so maybe between teh two we can find our book. And actually, now that I remember the swans, I think Sygney and the Swans sounds really familiar, but I may be overly hopeful, and I still don’t know how to spell her name.
Definitely sounds like a Baba Yaga story…do you remember anything about how she uses a mirror that turns into a lake, or a comb that turns into a forest?
Actually, it’s an Icelandic tale; peasant girl Signy goes off, when everybody else has failed, to save Prince Lini. There’s a version in Kathy Henderson’s The Bedtime Book (2004), which you can see a bit of on books.google.com; it’s possible the one from your childhood is Half a Kingdom, adapted by Ann McGovern, which has a listing for used copies on Amazon and a cover image to jog memories.
It can be hard to track down a particular version of a folktale because they get titled differently. Big or academic libraries may have the series of volumes called the Index to Fairy Tales, Myths, and Legends, which allows you to search by motif or plot element for folktales published in books during that volume’s period.
Oh Deborah, I love you! Yes, yes!!! Half a Kingdom! That’s it! Oh I could just kiss you!!! Thank you so much! I’m off to purchase it right now! And thank you Sars for having this thread!! Yay, happy weekend! I see it was published in 1977, so I was right that I was 6-8 when I read it.
Super happy day! A seller from Abebooks has a copy and they are here in my town! Won’t have to wait for shipping, I’m getting it on Monday!
That’s my book! I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am. I might do a jig! Eek. Okay. I’m going off to order my book and squee.
Thank you, Deborah!!!!!!!
The name of the story in Icelandic is Sagan af Hlina kóngsyni, or The story of prince Hlini. http://www.snerpa.is/net/thjod/hlini.htm
In the Icelandic version of this folktale prince Hlini is kidnapped by two troll women, who Signý and the prince kill in the end.
However, in the traditional version Signý does say to herself:”You never know what’s going to happen to you when you wake up in the morning”, but of course there are probably many different versions.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! You have no idea how excited I was to find this! My older brother and I have been racking our brains for the title, and all we could thank of was the famous tag line. I’m totally buying both of us copies!!!