Black Bull of Norroway (Fairy tale)

Author: Joseph Jacobs

Time Period: 1851 CE–1900 CE

Country or Culture: England; Western Europe

Genre: Fairy Tale

Overview

“Black Bull of Norroway” is an intriguing nineteenth-century English version of a popular European marriage tale that mythologizes a girl’s psychological and physical passage into womanhood. Based on “Beauty and the Beast,” this and similar marriage tales feature brave female protagonists who rescue animal-princes from evil spells and then marry them. Joseph Jacobs adapted the language of “Black Bull of Norroway,” originally a Scottish tale, and included it in his 1894 volume More English Fairy Tales. His inclusion of the story affirms and qualifies the nineteenth-century European fascination with stories of heroic girls who civilize their partners and secure their own marriages.

The story tells of a woman’s youngest daughter who seeks her fortune by visiting an old washerwife who is also a witch. There, she finds a black bull and reluctantly departs with him. While traveling, they lodge at three castles that belong to the bull’s brothers. At each castle, the young woman is given a magical fruit, which she is told to reserve for a dire emergency. The young woman and the bull travel further until the bull instructs her that she must wait on a stone while he goes off to fight a devilish figure. She is told not to move her hands or feet, or he will be unable to find her. When the bull wins the battle, she rejoices and accidentally moves a foot, thus remaining alone. The young woman wanders and finds an insurmountable glass hill, but a smith agrees to make her a pair of iron shoes if she serves him for seven years. When she finally passes over the hill after seven years’ service to the smith, she again finds the old washerwife, who tells her of a knight seeking a wife via a test that entails washing blood out of his clothes. The washerwife and her daughter have repeatedly tried to wash the clothes but have been unable to remove the blood. The young woman succeeds at the task, but the washerwife pretends that her own daughter has done so. The young woman uses her three magic fruits to outwit the washerwoman’s daughter, and the knight’s companion helps her to reunite with the knight. After the knight has the washerwife and her daughter burned, he marries the young woman.

“Black Bull of Norroway” is exceptional because it emphasizes female freedom to the extent that its status as a marriage tale is not clear until the story’s very end. Unlike other marriage stories of this type, this tale also does not connect the identity of the bull with the knight, and the washerwoman is ambiguous, as she first leads the young woman to the bull but later tries to undermine her. Although these puzzling details suggest that “Black Bull of Norroway” is strangely incoherent, the story greatly underscores the freedom and agency of its female protagonist. A comparative analysis reveals that Jacobs could have chosen the more coherent variant “Red Bull of Norroway” instead. That he opted for a less accomplished but more original version suggests he might have preferred this version because it presents a tale of high adventure in which marriage is the outcome but not the sole focus of its remarkably free heroine, a feature compatible with Jacobs’s progressive views of women and his intended audience of children. With this feature, the story emerges as an important prototype of the feminist fairy tales that appeared in the second half of the twentieth century. A comparative analysis thus goes beyond identifying the variants’ strengths and weaknesses to suggest an important historical context for “Black Bull of Norroway” and Jacobs’s preference for it.

Summary

The story begins by introducing the Norwegian setting and a woman who has three daughters. The oldest daughter tells her mother to bake a “bannock” and roast a “collop, for I’m going away to seek my fortune” (Jacobs 208). After the mother prepares the bread and meat, the daughter sets off for the house of an “old witch washerwife” (208), who tells her to stay and look out the back door of the house. For two days, the daughter sees nothing, but on the third day, she sees a carriage drawn by six horses. She tells the washerwife, who announces, “Yon’s for you” (208), so the coach takes the daughter away. The second daughter makes the same request, so her mother prepares the food, and the daughter meets the washerwife, waits for three days, and is then taken away by a four-horse carriage. The story repeats the formula for the third daughter, but rather than finding a carriage outside of the washerwife’s back door, she sees an enormous black bull “crooning along the road” (209). She is terrified when the washerwife declares the bull to have come for her, “but she [i]s lifted up and set on his back, and away they [go]” (209).

And aye they rode, and on they rode, till they came to a dark and ugsome glen, where they stopped, and the lady lighted down. Says the Bull to her: “Here ye must stay till I go and fight the Old Un. Ye must seat yourself on that stone, and move neither hand nor foot till I come back, else I’ll never find ye again.”

“Black Bull of Norroway”

The bull and the daughter, now referred to as a lady, travel until she is hungry, at which point the beast tells her to eat out of his right ear and drink out of his left ear. They journey at length until they arrive at a castle that the bull says belongs to his brother. The lady is received into the castle, and the bull is sent “away to a park for the night” (Jacobs 209). The next morning, the castle dwellers give the lady an apple and tell her to break it open only when she finds herself in “the greatest strait ever mortal was in the world” (210). The lady and the bull again travel far until they reach another castle, which the bull says belongs to his second brother. Again, they lodge for the night, with the bull resting in a field, and the lady is this time given a pear with the same instructions to save the magic fruit for an emergency. The pattern continues, leading to the largest castle yet, in which the bull’s youngest brother dwells. This time, the lady is given a magic plum with the same instructions.

The bull and the lady ride until they reach a dark valley, where the bull declares that the lady must remain while he goes off to fight the “Old Un” (Jacobs 210). He orders the lady to sit on a rock and keep her hands and feet still until he returns; otherwise, he will never be able to find her again. He adds that if everything suddenly turns blue, this is a sign that he has won his battle, but if all becomes red, he will have lost. The lady sits on the stone, and when everything around her turns blue, she is overjoyed at the bull’s victory and unthinkingly crosses one foot over the other. The bull then searches for her to no avail.

The lady weeps for some time but finally begins to wander until she finds a “great hill of glass” (Jacobs 210), which she tries to climb without success. Weeping again, she walks around the bottom of the hill and comes to a smith’s house. The smith promises that if she serves him for seven years, he will make her a pair of iron shoes with which she can climb over the hill of glass. All goes as planned, and seven years later, she receives her iron shoes and climbs over the glass hill. On the other side, she finds the house of the old washerwife, where she first saw the bull. The woman tells her of a knight who has set a task to find a wife: Whoever can wash his bloody clothes clean will become his bride. Neither the washerwife nor her daughter has succeeded, but the lady easily washes the clothes clean. The washerwife then tells the knight that it was her own daughter who washed the clothes, so they plan a wedding.

The lady is greatly distressed, as she is “deeply in love” with the knight (Jacobs 211). Breaking open the magic apple, she finds it filled with gold and jewels, which she offers to the washerwife’s daughter if the latter will delay her marriage and allow the lady into the knight’s room at night. The washerwife’s daughter agrees, but her mother prepares a sleeping potion for the knight so that he fails to wake when the lady sings to him in his room. The next day, the lady breaks open the pear to find even richer jewels than before. She again uses them to bargain her way into the knight’s room that evening, but again, he cannot hear her voice.

The next day, when the knight goes hunting, a companion reveals to him the noise in his room, so he decides to stay awake that night. In the meantime, the lady, distressed at her lack of success, breaks open the magic plum to find the richest jewels yet. She again bargains her way into the knight’s room. This time, however, when the washerwife brings the sleeping potion to the knight, he requests sweetener for his drink. While the woman fetches honey, he pours the drink out and then tells her that he decided to drink it without the sweetener. When the lady sings to him that evening, he wakes and hears her, and they share their stories. The knight has the washerwife and her daughter burned, after which he and the lady marry and live “happy to this day” (213).

Bibliography

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