Tricksters and
Fools in the Georgian Folktales
If there is one
common heroic archetype that persists throughout the Georgian Folktales
provided in the Un-textbook, it is the trickster. So too does the archetype of
the fool play a prominent role in many of these tales. Tricksters come in all
shapes and sizes in the folktales, from old men to dwarves. With fools there’s
an even greater variety of people and monsters. Sometimes a character even
combines elements of both types, as is the case of the fool in the story “The
Fool’s Good Fortune.” The Georgian folktales are rich in narratives of ordinary
people overcoming more powerful beings through the use of their wits.
One of my favorite
trickster stories of this unit is “Master and Pupil.” This story features a trickster
hero in the form of a peasant’s son. Although this young man starts out as an
ordinary person, he ends up mastering shape shifting powers under the tutelage
of a devil. The pupil combines these powers with a sharp mind to outwit both
ordinary wealthy people and his devil master who seeks to permanently keep him
in his clutches. After having deceived his master and gone away with his
father, the young trickster transforms into a hound and catches prey that a
noble’s hunting party had been chasing. After the boy catches the creature, the
hunting party happens upon the father and his “hound” and offers to give the owner much money to buy the dog. The father agrees and sells his son, and later down the
road his son escapes and transforms back into a man before meeting back with
him as per a prior arrangment. The boy does this several times, until his father, after not heeding his
son’s advice not to sell him to a man with “variegated eyes,” ends up peddling
his son back to his former master. This
action highlights the devil not as a fool antagonist, but as a competent
trickster in his own right. This is what makes the final showdown between these
two tricksters so exciting, as man and devil compete in a contest of wits and
shape shifting until finally the boy comes out on top.
“The Cunning Old Man and the Demi” was another one of my favorites, and the story that I re-told for
this week’s unit. As with “Master and Pupil,” what makes this story appealing
is the sheer difference in power between the trickster and his fool antagonist.
The old man in the story is just an ordinary, fickle elderly person. The demi
that he tricks into being his servant, on the other hand, is a powerful being
that can turn a stone to dust and squeeze the very moisture from rocks. The
old man uses a series of tricks to imitate these feats. In order to create the
illusion that he can also turn a stone to dust, he breaks a jar of flour
against the ground. In order to match the demi’s squeezing water out of a rock,
the old man takes an egg out and breaks it, letting the liquid ooze out. The demi, a fool in the most classic sense of
the word, believes the old man to be powerful and eventually begins to treat
him as his master. Even when he finally catches on to the old man’s ways thanks
to a tip from some local canines, he ends up unable to match the old man’s
quick-thinking mind and ends up devoured by a pack of wolves and jackals. The
story is a classic tale of brains overpowering brawn.
The fool in “The Fool’s Good Fortune” is both a fool and a trickster at different times in the story. Although
he starts out as a fool who is constantly being tricked into doing things that
get him into trouble, like telling a newly wedded couple to essentially rest in
peace, or advising some monks to be fruitful and multiply, things turn out
better for the protagonist when he finally gets around to using his head. Even
a foolish man can trick other foolish men if he tries, and the protagonist
demonstrates this when he uses a bell and a grave voice to scare some robbers
into thinking that he’s an angel sent to punish their wickedness. Once the
robbers flee the scene in fear, the fool takes the stolen wealth they left
behind and lives happily ever after.
What I like about
trickster stories is that they are consummate underdog stories. This is especially
the case with the tricksters of the Georgian folktales, because they tend to be very ordinary people who contend with beings more powerful than themselves. Although the fool in
the last story I discussed doesn't trick a devil or demi, the very fact that
such a foolish man can trick anyone makes the story another example of the
triumph of the underdog. So if one is on
the lookout for good trickster stories, this unit is an excellent source of
them.
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| Dadiani Palace, Georgia (Wikipedia Commons) |
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